The Runaway Wife (10 page)

“Les chauve-souris!” one of the men yelled, his voice strained. Bats!

“Allez!” yelped the other. “Sortons d'ici!” Let's get out of here!

They waited for the sound of the men's voices to recede and that of the thundering bat wings to dissipate. She was the first to move. Outside, blinking in the twilight-infused air, she coughed into her arm until she cried.

“What if I could
promise
that your husband would leave you alone if you returned to the Cabane des Audannes with me?” Jim asked.

“I wouldn't believe you.”

“A restraining order.”

“He'd kill me if he couldn't contain me.”

“Calliope,” he said, looking into her large eyes, the color of the blue-green-gray expanse of evening around them. “What are you saying?”

She turned away from him and sat down on the edge of the cliff.

“I'm an impediment to his career,” she said. “Underneath all his charm, I suspect that he hates women. You don't know what he's capable of—those men might have come to push me off a cliff. ‘Wife of minister of interior took one step too many.'”

“You're sounding paranoid.”

“You sound like
him
. ‘You seem unstable,' he would tell me anytime I disagreed with him. ‘Isn't there something you can take for that?' A drug that will make you surrender every ounce of independence to your husband!”

Was
her mind healthy? The thought came to him swiftly, like the screeching of the bats moments before. Who would come so far away to live in isolation? What if her politician husband was right, and Jim was falling under the spell of someone who was not well, who had concocted this story . . .

“I have a hard time believing—” started Jim.

She rose and walked to the other side of the cliff ledge. He followed her. The stench was thick there, and he felt dizzy.

“You, too,” she said calmly, stroking the owlet's feathers. “Rationality is a delusion.
Everyone
is blind! Isn't that right, little one,” she said, bringing the owl to eye level. It twisted its head, raised its feathers, and snapped its bill. “Too bad,” she said, addressing Jim, “you missed the helicopter ride to the bottom. I'll be going on my way now.”

She placed the owlet in her pocket and, at a run, jumped the chasm they had crossed on the way there. She turned to begin her descent down the cliff face. The white scarf
around her neck, which he hadn't noticed before, glowed in the blue night.

“Wait,” Jim said breathlessly, joining her on the other side of the chasm. She did not look up but continued to make her way down the side of the cliff.

The helicopter revved its engine and lifted off the lake, sending ripples into the water and into the empty, darkening sky.

“They'll be back tomorrow,” she said once he'd joined her at the bottom.

“We'll hike to the Cabane des Audannes at the crack of dawn,” he said.

“One thing you should know about me,” she said, “is that I never go back the way I came, and that's the way I came. Never. My grandfather's principle. There's a sign to Anzère over the next cliff. I've seen it. But I'm going back to my chalet for the night. Wait. Valasian is near. He sees us up here. Back up. There, there, little owl.”

“Hiding from everyone. Is that your grandfather's principle, too?”

Even in the faint light he could see the contemptuous expression in her eyes. He'd crossed the fine line of familiarity.

She sped ahead hidden by the cliff, along the border of the dark copse of pine trees, toward the chalet. Some light had appeared in the north, where the moon was rising. When they finally reached the chalet, breathless, everything was as they'd left it except for the boards torn off the entrance door and one other detail: the window just inside the door was missing the curtains with the orange pom-poms.

C
ALLIOPE PLACED HAMLET ON THE TREE-TRUNK
stool just inside the door and lit what was left of the candles on the table in the small room. She lifted the pot of ratatouille from under the floorboards and hung it on the hook over the tamped-down fire. From a replenished supply (Valasian must have been to the chalet after the men had gone), Jim fetched logs and revived the fire.

He walked with Calliope to the barn. It was cold in the large space, and there was no trace of the owls, even the younger ones. Neither she nor Jim spoke; they returned to the flickering firelit room, the ratatouille, and candles. Calliope sat on a stump and fed the baby owl with the eyedropper.

“This will be our last supper here,” she said, staring into his eyes. “At least,
my
last. Jim, you are welcome to stay, or
you can return to your Cabane des Audannes tomorrow morning, as that is what you wish to do, or you can come to Anzère with me. The train from Anzère to Geneva takes three hours. Everyone is free to do as they please, rule of the house. Come and go, no guilt, no burdens, as free as the owls.” She coughed into her elbow.

“
That
owl is not exactly free,” he said, nodding at the small bird.

“Not now, but one day he will be, won't you, my hesitating Hamlet. He doesn't know his capacity for freedom yet, like so many of us.” She lifted the bird to eye level to look at it. “We die without knowing how truly free we were. I suppose that if we never knew freedom in life, God gives us the chance to know it in death: the ultimate liberty.”

She placed the pot of ratatouille on the table and ladled the vegetable stew onto their pewter plates. Sitting across from Jim, she bowed her head.

“Will you please say grace?” she asked.

Jim's parents were not grace sayers, but he remembered a short prayer he'd learned at a friend's house as a child.

“Bless this food to our use, and us to thy loving service. Amen.”

She burst into laughter. And laughed and coughed and laughed. Hamlet raised his tufted ears.

“You ridicule me,” he said.

“
Non, non
,” she laughed, “I am sorry,
non
, you speak grace like . . . like a child . . . in a child's voice.”

“It's your turn to say grace,” he said.

She closed her eyes, bent her head, and raised tightly clasped fingers. “Bénissez-nous, Seigneur, et la nourriture que, grâce à Votre libéralité, nous allons prendre. Amen.”

“Amen to whatever you said,” Jim said.

“
Bon appétit
,” she added. “But wait!” She jumped up from her chair. “On our last night, we must have a final blessing from the Benedictines.”

Jim took the black bottle that she lifted from under the floorboards. With his jackknife corkscrew he yanked at the cork as he had done the night before, to no avail. She removed an arrow from the quiver that she'd hung on a hook at the doorway and pressed the dart into the cork.

“
Merde
,” she muttered. “This really
is
the last supper,” she said, shaking her hand back and forth quickly. “Blood and wine.”

“You need a bandage.”

“
Non
, it's fine.”

He stood, placed the bottle between his legs, and pulled. Finally the cork gave way. He poured the thick black syrup into their tin cups.

“To your Chalet of Owls,” he said, raising his cup to her.

“
La maison des hiboux
,” she said, her eyes closing as she sipped. “To Jim.” She lifted her glass, her eyes meeting his. “To finding yourself lost in a place where the straight path has vanished. Dante starts his journey through the
Inferno
like this. But for you, I think, deviating from the course won't be such a bad thing at all.”

Neither spoke for some time. A soft darkness filled the
contours of the room. The quiet bound them together as if they were discovering a new place. In the dim light, he noticed that her cheeks were flushed. He rose from his seat to touch her forehead.

“You have a fever,” he said. “We should have left this morning.”

“Please don't ruin this last night,” she said, dropping her eyes to the table.

THE RATATOUILLE WAS SWEET AND EVENLY TEXTURED;
each vegetable had a distinct taste. Calliope was an excellent cook.

“These Alps shape the contours of my mind,” she said suddenly, looking up at him. Did she speak in such poetic rapture in her daily Parisian life, he wondered, as she bought a baguette or a round of Camembert at the local market. “As a child, I pretended they were God's Gothic church, thrust up from the ground especially for me. Up and up and up, they would draw my eyes to what really mattered. This is the place that tells me that everything about life—for instance, even this little wildflower—is meaningful.”

She pulled a Queen Anne's lace wildflower from the bouquet in the glass jam jar at the center of the table and twirled the stem, the flower spinning like a pinwheel.

“Do you have a place, somewhere in the whole wide world—or it could be inside you—a place that calls to you?”

“Are you like this with everyone you meet, asking these
unusual open-ended questions? Or is this what happens when you seclude yourself for a few months?”

“What do you mean?” She cocked her head to the side.

“I mean asking things that no one else asks.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Does no one ask about your inner desires and passions? Or is everything in America evident, open, and obvious?”

Jim took a deep breath and struggled against her question. He could not remember a time when anyone had been interested in what he really thought, what he wanted to do with his life, who he really was underneath the crisp cotton shirts and well-tailored suits. It was enough for his parents to follow his progress up the ladder to East Coast financial success. All other life questions were moot. Sally shared his parents' neighbor-envy. “My friend Allie and her boyfriend just rented a house in Montauk for the summer,” she had said in the tone of a complaint. “Why don't we do that?”

Calliope was waiting for him, her eyes on his as if they would never let go. Then he saw it, as if it were at the forefront of all his thinking, as if it had been there all his life. Sea, wide expanses of sea, waves crashing on a beach. It was a mottled gray-and-blue day; pieces of blue were falling out of the sky as if out of a puzzle. The wind blew a dappled pattern in the sand. It was cold and barren and open, and no one, no one, could put a claim on any of it. He told her his vision.

“Your belonging . . .” she said.

It was the view of the North Sea from Norway, the
view he'd never seen but had pictured from his grandfather Ocean's many fondly recalled descriptions.

“. . . often becomes your longing,” she finished.

“I shut my heart,” he said, “after . . .” He stopped. What was he saying?

How ridiculous to think that he could actually “shut” his heart. To resist the hurt of heartache, of Sally's rejection, of his career's misadventure, of his alienation from his family, of his father's daily disgraces. Distraction worked pretty darn well. But for how long can you turn off a feeling?

“It's true,” she said. “So often, we choose to deceive ourselves. I know I—”

They heard a sound in the barn, a scuffling and scurrying. In one swift motion, Hamlet rotated his head 180 degrees.

“The owls are back. I'm hoping that one of the mother owls will warm up our fledgling,” she said, taking the owlet and rising from the table.

“When and where will they go?” he asked as she headed toward the barn.

“It's almost a full moon tonight. I thought they'd left for good. They've been ruffling their feathers for a week now; I feel their restlessness. It's too cold in the barn, and they've sensed the intrusions—first you, then the pilots. Many have already left. I'm not sure where they'll go, probably somewhere in the lower Alps. They might leave tonight at their usual hunting time and return again in early spring. We'll depart as well, but in the first flush of dawn. You'll go your
way tomorrow to the Cabane and work your way back to Geneva and New York. I'll be heading to Anzère. I'll pack food and water for each of us. And I recommend that you dress warmly.” She coughed.

“I took your warm bed,” he said.

Either she did not hear, or she did not care to respond.

“Come with me to say good-bye to the owls,” she said.

As they entered the barn, he felt as if the otherworldly moaning emanated from his own lungs.

“C'est moi, mes hiboux,” she whispered to the owls. “It's me.”

The flame of the candle in her hand trembled.

“I'm worried about your fever,” he said.

They heard movement above them in the rafters, and they turned and watched as, in the dim light, one by one the owls took flight and disappeared out the barn door. Soft-feathered wings into the silent night . . .

“Au revoir,” she whispered. She coughed, and he noticed how much deeper the cough had become. “I will miss them.”

She turned to face him, her eyes watery in the candlelight. “Thank you, Jim, for your courageous efforts on behalf of my daughters, for taking your mission so seriously. One of my daughters and you, I can see it very clearly . . .”

She hesitated as if she wanted to say more.

“Yes?” he asked.

She quickly turned toward the door and stepped back into the chalet, taking the little light in the room with her.

I
N HIS DREAM HE WAS DIPPING HIS FINGER INTO
the muddy Benedictine wine, and with his wine-wet finger-turned-paintbrush he was drawing a line down Sally's aquiline nose. Along her almond-shaped, blue eyes, the top of each cheekbone, around her sharp chin, her collarbones, her luscious breasts . . . He finished with a dot on her belly button. In the moonlight, the wine paint sparkled.

When he woke, he wasn't sure if he'd dreamed of Sally or Freyja, the Norse goddess of love and battle. As a child, he'd cherished the colorful depictions of Freyja in her red cloaks battling fire-breathing dragons in a book of Norse myths that his grandfather Ocean had read to him.

But
was
that Sally's chin in the dream? Jutting out sharply, as if in bold opposition? No, it was Helene's! Were those Sally's
eyes? No, Thalia had such clear eyes, like a blue day with no clouds. Whose face had he been painting? Whose breasts? Something in the dream had been disturbing. What was it?

He heard the clanging of a pot, and Calliope's cough. The morning light was streaming in opaque white strips through the small window. The mountain sky was a stamp of blue. He dressed and walked into the makeshift kitchen. Calliope stood at the fire, a wooden spoon in her hand, which she lifted as he entered. Her wand.

“Bonjour,” she said, smiling.

“Your cough is worse,” he said.

She laughed in the light way she had. She wore her white T-shirt and her riding pants and the velvet maroon ribbon around her neck. Was the shiny hue in her rosy cheeks caused by the fresh mountain air, or by her fever?

“You look as if you could gobble down three of these,” she said as she flipped an omelet in the pan.

“More logs,” he said. He wondered how many hours she'd been awake.

“No more logs,” she said, intercepting his movement toward the door. “We leave as soon as you've eaten, you to the Cabane and I to Anzère. I've packed food for each of us, and even for the owlet; the garden is nearly empty. We'll pick up water as we go. They'll be here soon.”

He heard a hooting and saw the fledgling owl, eyes blinking, on the stump.

“Yes, sadly, the brood left Hamlet behind. I'll bring him with me and hope he'll take flight along the way.

“Stand aside,” she continued, sliding the omelet onto his plate. When she was finished cooking the second omelet, she led the way into the garden with her plate and forks and napkins for the two of them.

The bright day had that crisp feel of autumn to it. He sat next to her as she bowed her head and closed her eyes, and he said inside himself the first authentic grace he had said in his life—praying that he could convince Calliope to come with him to the Cabane.

“Did you dream last night?” he asked.

She laughed. “One dreams every night in these mountains!”

“More likely it's the Benedictine wine that makes you
think
you're dreaming.”

“Tell me what I dreamed.”

He would make it all up.

“Okay,” he began. “You dreamed that you were in a place where there were many doorways, but for some reason you couldn't escape.”

“Many doorways,” she said, tilting her head and looking across at the mountain peaks. “That could be the piece of the puzzle that went missing. Yes, very possibly. Thank you, Jim, for completing the picture. Now it's my turn.
You
were dreaming of a fire raging—where was it, in a barn, in your grandfather's barn?” Was she right? He'd dreamed of painting Sally, or Thalia—or Helene actually, but there had also been something violent, something that caused him to startle awake. Dreams were grab bags. A blazing fire was
vaguely familiar, but wasn't everything? Had he dreamed twice in the space of a night?

“In my dream,” she said, “I was drunk—no, I wasn't really, I was pretending to be drunk. I'm not sure why, perhaps because I was trying to escape from the place among doorways that you just described. I was slurring my words. I stumbled and deliberately fell to the ground. I was
not
intoxicated; but I
acted
as if I were.” She stood, balanced the plate on her head, and then stumbled on purpose and caught it.

“Most people drink to escape,” he said. “
Pretending
to drink to escape: I'm learning that that would be
you
.”

She resumed her seat next to him. “
Your
dream?”

“I was painting my ex-fiancée's face—and her breasts, actually—using your Benedictine wine as the paint and my finger as the brush,” he said.

She smiled brightly. “How did she look after you painted her?”

He remembered the deep-set, clear blue eyes that did not blink, Thalia's eyes; the long, aquiline nose, Helene's chin. He was so confused.

He would not tell Calliope. “She looked like Freyja, the goddess of love and battle,” he said.

“Who?”

“Norse mythology.”

“How could she be goddess of both?”

“As a child I asked the same question. Freyja introduced desire into the world, which causes war; the two will always be intertwined.”

“Life appears so complicated, but voilà. It's so simple. The two sides of a coin can never be separated.”

“Freyja,” he said, “loved her husband, Óòr so much that when he went on long journeys, she cried red and golden tears that turned into amber and gold when they fell to earth.”

“How sweet,” she murmured. “Sadness appearing in forms from the physical world.”

She sighed and pushed her hair behind her shoulders. “I'm sorry that this will be our last meal together, you and I, such lovely new friends.” Her hand shook as she lifted her fork. She placed it back on the plate.

“This is no change-of-seasons cold.” He placed his palm on her forehead. “Your forehead is burning. By the sound of your cough, you've probably got bronchitis, if not walking pneumonia. You need antibiotics.”

“The mountains are my antibiotic.”

“You're coming to the Cabane with me this morning,” he said. “We will find a first-aid kit there, hopefully with some antibiotics.”

She narrowed her eyes. “As I've told you, I'm hiking to Anzère. You forget: I know the mountains better than you. We separate after breakfast.” She placed her untouched plate on the flat rock slab between them. “I'm sad to leave this, my refuge.”

“You've made it home.”

Her sorrow was at once so powerful that he dropped his fork.

“I say good-bye and thank you to this house,” she said, turning to look behind her at the door to the chalet, “that has held me in such happiness.”

“Eat something,” he said. “You have a vigorous day of hiking ahead of you.”

“No time,” she said. She rose, took his plate from him, and walked back into the chalet.

HE STOMPED OUT THE FIRE. NO NEED TO BOARD UP
the front door this time. She pulled her bow over her shoulder and her quiver and small knapsack over her back. The owlet peeked out of her vest pocket as she raised a handkerchief to her mouth. She coughed at the exact same time that the chalet bell tinkled as the door closed behind them.

“We part here,” she said. “The route to the Cabane is around that bend,” she pointed, “much easier than the way you arrived, by way of the steep aiguille. Jim, I'm so happy that we've shared these last days of summer together.” Her body looked about to wilt.

She kissed him on each cheek and then took off at a run down the hill toward the lake. He could no longer see her, but her cough trailed behind her.

He hesitated.

It was Thursday. To get back to New York for Monday's first day of work, he would have to catch a train from Anzère to Geneva on Sunday morning at the very latest. Calliope had said that it could take four days to get to Anzère. They
would have to sprint. How many times had Jim readjusted this schedule in his mind? Somehow, sticking to a schedule was impossible on the Wildhorn. Or maybe this was Calliope's magic?

Another cough echoed up to him, ricocheting against the craggy folds of crust and rock, and his dream became clearer. He
had
been painting Helene's chin, her high cheekbones, and her breasts.

“Calliope,” he called, running after her. He could not leave her alone.

When he caught up to her, she turned to him and laughed. She seemed so much frailer than she had the moment he had first seen her only two days before, arrow stretched across the bow.

“Jim, are you playing the hero in your Norse mythology?”

When they reached the banks of the lake, they filled their canisters with water and balanced on rocks that looked as if they'd spilled from the mountains above. Jim almost fell in, then caught himself.

“I'm glad you came to your senses,” she said. “You will adore Anzère.”

She gazed at the sun-dappled lake. He could tell that in her quiet way, she was saying good-bye. To the lake, or to her reflection in the lake?

When they heard the machinelike purr in the distance and saw the copter's dark shadow staining the mountain behind them, they accelerated their pace along the narrow
path. Whisking the clouds in its path, the chopper flew above the trail in the direction of the Cabane des Audannes.

“I just had a vision,” she said, panting, after an hour of strenuous hiking. He slowed his pace to walk beside her. Her face was pale. “I saw the hermitess.” She pronounced the word without the
h
, as
ermitess
. “Valasian told me that she lives in the north-facing cave on the other side of a mountain of gray scree, and now I realize that this is the mountain, right here. She's so very alone.” Her eyes widened.

“Isn't that the nature of a hermitess, to be alone?”

“I'm sure even you know, Jim, that there is aloneness, and then there is loneliness.
Les deux solitudes
. One is a soul complete and still; the other is a restless and hungry person crying out to be fed by another.”

They could no longer hear the helicopter, and both knew it must have landed. Calliope began climbing a steeper, less visible path. If Jim did not think of some way to divert her, they would be stopping to see the female hermit for who knows how long and then hiking for four more days to Anzère.

“We're so close to the hermitess that we cannot
not
pay her a visit.”

“Calliope, your cough—”

“My grandfather and I ran into her years and years ago on one of our high Alpine climbs. She was walking with a stick along a mountain ledge, and she seemed so happy. I think it's the only time in my life that I have witnessed bliss.”

“If I were not on a tight deadline to get back and if you were healthy, it would be a joy to visit her. As it is—”

He plucked a bluebell growing at the edge of the rock.

“This has snow on it,” he said, offering it to her.

“It's the morning dew!” She placed it against her forehead and sighed. “Snow is too much on your mind,” she said, and she licked the moisture off the flower as if it were a miniature ice-cream cone.

“Look,” she said, pointing to a small marmot that they must have frightened from its hiding place. The small, furry animal carved a path along the flowers, creating a rippling effect in the meadow of wildflowers. The massive cliff of the Wildhorn above them, with the sun bouncing off the granite, looked like a sparkling chandelier in the sky.

“I see Valasian.” She stepped onto a large rock to catch a better glimpse. Valasian appeared over the ridge of the nearby copse. He had a way of emerging from nowhere, wherever he and Calliope were. It was as if they lived in a small village. Jim was grateful to see the lanky figure of the old man.

He was beside them within minutes. His face looked thinner than before; the skin under his eyes was puffy. His clothes smelled of smoke.

He spoke to Calliope in French, using his arms to express exasperation.

Jim understood that the “men” had set the chalet and barn on fire. The two buildings were still burning as they spoke. Only now did Jim notice that the old man's wiry eyebrows were black, as if singed by flames.

“A fire, no . . .” She shut her eyes and melted to the ground. “He would know that would be the worst . . .” She covered her face with her hands. “No . . .” She coughed into her handkerchief.

She lifted her head and looked blankly ahead. “My brother,” she said in a whisper, “died in a fire when we were young. I was saved, but he wasn't able . . .” She coughed deeply. Both men knelt beside her, as if their bodies were buttresses of a Gothic cathedral. Valasian's head was bent.

A fire. Calliope had told Jim that he'd dreamed that a barn was burning, and now he recalled the dream. He'd been painting Helene with the wine, and she'd suddenly told him to stop because she smelled smoke. Indeed, the owls' barn was burning, and Helene was crying, her tears red stains on her pale face. That was it. She was screaming that her mother was inside. Flames were bursting through every orifice of the wooden barn. He had to get her out. That was when he woke.

Valasian talked quickly, drawing circles and lines with his hands. Jim understood that the old man had tried to convince the pilots that the chalet was his, but they hadn't believed him. He'd tried to stop them from setting fire to the chalet, had tried to extinguish the flames, but one of the men held him down. They asked repeatedly where Calliope was, and he told them he didn't know.

To escape the pilots, Valasian began talking to himself and raving like a madman about the hermitess, how she held
the secrets of the universe in the folds of her gown. Finally he was able to get free.

“Valasian,” Calliope said, looking up with tears in her eyes at the old, tired man, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“Where will you go?” Valasian asked, in English this time, the creases in his brow like a crevice in the granite mountainside.