The Casanova Embrace (36 page)

"You have no right."

"No right?"

"You're his enemies." She started to move toward
the door.

"Believe me, Marie," Frederika said, gently now.
"There is no escape from the reality of it."

"He wouldn't," Marie began. Eduardo, she cried
within herself.

"He did.... "Anne said quietly. She looked at the
two women, the sense of commonality coming quickly. She was trying to conclude
something in her mind, to accept something. She could see the anguish in the
other women's faces.

"I planted a device in the embassy" she said
finally, remembering what she had done for it, remembering the pain, the
humiliation.

"So you see.... "Frederika said. "You are in
it with us."

She turned toward the wall and banged her fists into it,
more in anger than despair.

"My God, how I hate him!" she cried, feeling the
essence of her life slip from her. How could he betray me? Surely, it was
different with them.

"Hate?" Anne asked. "You said hate."

"What else is left?" Marie cried, turning again.
"Do you feel as foolish as me?"

"Not foolish," Anne said.

"Used?" Marie asked.

"Not that either."

"What then?"

"I'm not sure," Anne said.

"Nor me," Frederika interjected. "It is too
complex to fathom."

Too complex to fathom. A wisp of an idea intruded in
Marie's mind. It was the mode of Eduardo. If he did not want to explain it, it
suddenly became too complex. And she had accepted that explanation. She had
accepted every explanation from Eduardo. Now the truth was emerging, like a
chick from a cracked egg. He had felt nothing, nothing. Only the nerves of his
body had reacted, mindlessly.

"It is possible he loves all three of us?" Marie
asked suddenly, surprised at her own lucidity.

"He loves none of us," Anne said, her lips tight.
Her face had paled. There was a long silence. "Perhaps Miranda."

"Who?" Marie asked.

"Miranda."

"I never heard her name."

"Nor I," Marie said. "Who is Miranda?"

"Maybe all of us," Anne said. Marie turned to
Frederika, echoing her confusion.

"What does it matter?" Marie said bitterly.
"He is beneath contempt, a Casanova. One woman is like another."
There was never anything beyond "the event," the sexuality, and the
way in which they, the women, could be fitted into the master plan, the cause.
The words, as they cascaded in her mind, had the ring of truth. But there was
something peculiar in her perception of it. The story of Casanova, or what she
imagined was the story of Casanova, was never told from the woman's point of view.
It is a fraud, she told herself suddenly. She leaned against the wall, watching
the other women.

"I am sick in my heart," she said quietly.
"I feel unclean." She wanted to say more, hesitated, watched the
other women watching her, feeling their pain, as if they were all in the same
hospital ward isolated because of the same disease. "I am deeply jealous,
as well," she admitted aloud.

"It will curdle your insides," Frederika said.
"I have already passed through that valley." She tossed her head.
"I am still passing through that valley. The idea of it inflames me, burns
me inside. The thought of Eduardo. My Eduardo." She paused. "You
think I am cruel and presumptuous. That is the way I think of him. My Eduardo!
There, I have said it. Later when I picture Eduardo, my Eduardo, in the arms of
each of you, I will ache. I will want to die from the pain of it."

"Yes," Marie said. "I see." There was a
stab of compassion as she looked at the older woman, who turned her eyes away.

"I suppose you would think it ludicrous if I were to
confirm the same reaction in me ... the older woman." Her fingers worked
together nervously. "I am nearly fifty," she said. "And I was
under control. I had seen it all, all except.... "She swallowed hard.
"...love." Standing up, she faced the blinds. "What a ridiculous
stupidity. I had no idea what it was to be a woman until Eduardo. Such a gift
demands repayment. What is anything against such a value, the knowledge of
oneself? My life was a charade until Eduardo. And yet, despite what I feel, I
could not bear to share him. Up till this moment, I thought perhaps I could
resolve to do so. Now I am certain. I could not bear to share him. I would
rather die."

"Nor I," Frederika said.

Marie felt now the sense of terror. "What then?"
she said. Then loudly. "But I need him. I cannot leave him."

"Don't you see, Marie. It is impossible,"
Frederika said. "He cannot be possessed. He can only be shared. If not
with us, with others. None of us know him. None of us have him. We have, all
three of us, been betrayed by him."

"But why us?" Anne said. They turned to her,
watched her hands move together, her fingers constructing an abstract
cathedral. "He must have searched carefully, seeking out the most
vulnerable.... "She looked at the two women. "...like us. Smoldering
ashes in dead bonfires, waiting for the gift of renewal, of fire. I was ready
for him. I was vulnerable...."

"He was laughing at us," Frederika said.

It's true, Marie thought. Eduardo had cast the line. And we
bit like hungry fish. Who could possibly live with that? The bastard. She
cursed him now.

"He is a bastard," she said aloud.

"I am not made for a sheik's harem," Frederika
said, an edge of humor breaking the tension. "Not me," she
emphasized. "The idea is disgusting." Then she laughed. "We
could pass him around between us like a credit card. Use his flesh. Treat him
as a kind of game, a toy."

"He could never be a game to me," Anne said. The
words carried a sense of authority.

"Then there is no solution," Frederika said. She
sighed. "Look at us," she said sadly, shaking her head. "Three
intelligent women, rendered hopelessly incompetent ... no, paralyzed, by the
effect of one man. I don't know how you both feel, but I feel ashamed, ashamed
for myself, ashamed for my ... sense of womanhood, that I should even feel this
dependence, this lack of control. How dare he exercise such power? How dare he
do this to me, to us? I love him, yes. Does that sound so terrible coming from
me, knowing how you must all feel?" She paused. "But you know, at
this moment, just now, I could kill him and feel no remorse whatsoever."

Marie felt the idea pass into the air, loose and free, a
bird suddenly released from its cage, swirling above their heads, a loathsome
thing, with a furred beak and little barbs on spindly legs and shaggy wings
with an odor that was thick enough to induce nausea. It was her bird, as well,
she thought, now that it was loose, her possession as well.

"How can you kill what you love?" she asked,
knowing that she was speaking for all of them, certain that they had run to
ground on the same track, as if they had suddenly possessed a single heart, a
single brain, a single nervous system.

"Better to kill it than suffer with it." It was
Anne speaking, softly, but it was their voice now.

"Kill Eduardo?" Frederika asked, her voice low,
in the same key as Anne's. "Did I suggest that?"

"I can't believe we are thinking it," Marie said,
calmer now, a tranquillity descending over her like a shroud.

"Not thinking it, Marie," Anne said, her fingers
entwined, the knuckles white. "Concluding it."

"It was only a metaphor," Frederika said. "A
figure of speech."

"Was it?" Anne asked.

"I hadn't meant...."

"Come now, Frederika," Anne said. "It's
hardly the time for dishonesty between us."

Marie forced her mind to darken, to pretend that she was
not in this room, that she was not really herself, that she was somehow someone
else, watching, merely observing.

"You are serious?" Frederika said. "I think
you are both actually serious."

"Better that," Anne said, "than living with
the truth of him, the knowledge that he will always be shared."

"I'll forget him," said Frederika. "You'll
see. In a month, a year, he won't mean a damn to me. Not a damn. Haven't you
ever been in love before when the guy meant everything? You couldn't live
without him, then poof, it all disappeared, the hurt was gone, and then another
guy popped up and it started all over again?"

"Is that the way you expect it will be?" Anne
said.

"Yes."

"And has it been that way?" Marie asked. It will
never come again, she told herself. Eduardo is mine. I will share him with no
one. I would rather have the memory of him than to know the sharing of his
flesh with others.

"But to kill Eduardo," Frederika protested,
although the power of the protest was fading.

"We have already killed him in our hearts," Anne
said.

"I will never love another man," Marie said.

"But how?"

"I have no idea," Anne said.

Silence descended in the room, palpable, thick. Marie could
hear the obscene flutter of the bird's wings, the sound creating a cacophony
beyond the wave of ordinary hearing. She could not tell how long the odd sound
filled the room, only that she was sure that they all had heard it.

"They will think his enemies did it," Frederika
said suddenly, obviously contemplating a concrete idea.

"So there is also the instinct of survival
present," Marie said thankfully. She had imagined that the deed would mean
the death of them as well. And she was secretly preparing herself for it,
although she was afraid. Death, after all, would be the end of it. She could
endure anything now, she told herself.

"An act of terrorist revenge," Frederika said.
"It could be contrived. That is the business he is involved in. It could
be contrived."

"How?" Anne asked.

"There are ways."

"Like what."

"Are you both sure?" Frederika asked. "It
can only be a decision by the three of us." She breathed deeply and they
could see a mist begin in her eyes. "I am so ashamed of my thoughts. I
could not bear to know that I was thinking this myself."

"You're not," Marie said, sensing the air of
finality, the ritualization of the pact between them.

"I'm scared to death," Frederika said. "My
thoughts are frightening me."

"There is no other way," Anne said.

Again the room filled with the sound of the bird. Eduardo!
Somehow Marie felt his presence in the room, guiding them.

"All right then. There is one logical way. The weapon
is the same the terrorists use. Quick. Loud. There is no pain." Frederika
seemed introspective, as if she were talking to someone else in the room.

"I could not bear for him to have any pain,"
Marie said.

"A bomb." Even the word, as Frederika uttered it,
had the force of an explosion. They waited, perhaps sensing that the debris
must settle, the psychic blast must be weathered. A bomb, Marie wondered. What
did they know of bombs? But the question did not linger long.

"Arrangements can be made." Frederika looked at
Anne. "It can be bought."

Even as she recounted it later in the car, Marie could not
remember any conversation beyond that, no planning, no confirmation, only the
understanding that something was to happen with her concurrence which would
mean the end of Eduardo. It was nearly midnight, and as she drove the car
toward home, she prepared herself for the inevitable explanations. She was
barely in the door when her children and Claude confronted her. The children
hugged her.

"We were so worried, Mommy," her little girl
said.

"Daddy was going to call the police," the boy
said.

She patted them both on the head, kissed them, marveling at
her own hypocrisy, the ability to move in this world with such dissimulation,
then dismissed them and passed into the kitchen where she heated some water and
prepared some tea. She felt Claude's eyes watching her.

"What was it?" he asked, the sarcasm apparent.

"Some trouble with the carburetor. I had to wait
interminably."

"Wait." He paused. "Where?"

"A garage."

"Where?" She had felt her alertness falter. Now
it returned with full vigor. It's an interrogation, she thought. He knows.

"Really, Claude, I have been through a lot today. I
have no patience."

"What garage, Marie?"

"Someplace near Georgetown. I can't remember the
name."

"I called them all. I called almost every garage in
the area. Many of them were closed." She turned, saw the redness on his
neck, the inflammation of anger. His lips were tight, compressed.

"Where were you, Marie?" His eyes met hers and
she turned away.

It is the moment, she thought. The opportunity. The
confrontation she had longed for in her heart, the time to lift the burden, to
confess. But she could not find the words and she knew they were drowned in
fear.

"You simply missed the correct one," she said,
her voice a whisper.

"I've been a fool. Haven't I, Marie? A self-centered
fool."

"That's absurd." She turned away again and poured
the hot water into a teacup. Strike me, she told herself. Punish me.

"You have been betraying me, Marie," he said. His
tone seemed gentler or was it merely the air of futility? But the moment had
passed. She paused, gathered her strength. I must survive this somehow.

"It is not what you think," she said. She saw her
reflection in the polished toaster, distorted, swollen. Her skin was dead
white, her hair awry. She saw her lips move. The distortion was the mirror of
her own view of herself.

"I'm listening."

"Tomorrow, Claude. I am tired now. I promise. It is
not what you think. I will tell you tomorrow." He stood stiffly, his fists
balled, then shrugged.

"Tomorrow then." She heard his footsteps depart.
Tomorrow. She would think of something tomorrow. Perhaps she might die with
Eduardo. The thought seemed a deliverance. Without Eduardo what did it matter?