The Runaway Wife (12 page)

T
HEY'D BEEN HIKING A STEEP ASCENT FOR TWO
hours. Calliope had tripped and fallen several times. Her lips were blue, and when she spoke, her teeth chattered. Perspiration covered her forehead and cheeks—a glistening, like dew at dusk instead of dawn. Her gasps and wheezes were punctuated by the hooting noises coming from the owl in her pocket.

Jim whispered to himself, as if he were repeating the refrain of a song, “Please don't let it snow.”

He encouraged Calliope to drink from the almost-empty thermos. They would have to find a river or waterfall within the next few hours. But Calliope refused to drink.

“I'm cold,” she said, “and hot.”

When he brought what was left of Valasian's bread and
cheese to Calliope's lips, again she turned her head. Her face looked as pale as the cloud cover.

“'Amlet,” she said, feeling around blindly in her knapsack. She handed the dropper and water bottle to Jim.

“I should have fed
you
like this,” he told her, as he squeezed the liquid into the owlet's beak.

She lowered herself to the ground as if in preparation for a long night's sleep.

“We can't stop here,” he said.

“Time to sleep,” she insisted.

The ascent sloped into the dispiriting distance for as far as his eye could see. He guessed they had three more hours of hiking to get to the Cabane, but Calliope's stopping along the way could delay them another hour.

He removed her knapsack, bow, and quiver of arrows and tied them onto his knapsack. He wrapped the blanket around her.

“I'm going to carry you,” he said, squatting down to where she lay. “Place your arms around my neck.”

She lifted her arms, then dropped them as if they didn't belong to her.

“It's too hot,” she mumbled, nudging her head into his chest.

He lifted her and the restless owlet in her pocket off the ground. Despite her pallor, her skin was on fire.

Within minutes, she was asleep in his arms. It made for slow climbing. About an hour into the hike, Jim stopped to rest. He looked up and saw that the great blue eye of the
sky was closing. And then it began to snow—thick, wet flakes.

“Damn!” he yelled. Calliope stirred. He placed her gently on the ground, untied his tarp, wrapped it around her, and lifted her once again. She felt lighter. Was she disappearing in his arms?

By now he should have seen the sign to the Col des Eaux Froides. He had memorized Valasian's drawing. They should have crossed the pass an hour ago. Had he walked in the wrong direction without knowing it? He should have carried a compass, like every other hiker.

Everywhere he looked, he saw gray and now wet gray and black. He was hiking through Death Mountain instead of Death Valley: the black-rock interior of the Wildhorn.

Calliope stirred in his arms. “Tell me the truth, Jim,” she whispered, looking up at him, her teeth chattering. “We aren't going to Anzère. This is the way to the Cabane. You know it, and I know it.”

If only he could lie to her.

“I can see through you,” she said, looking into his eyes.

“I shouldn't have let you convince me to visit your hermit friend—”

“You lied to me, Jim. You!” She wrestled out of his grip, sobbing, and fell to the ground.

“Calliope. You can't do this alone,” he said, lifting her into his arms, her lovely face wet with tears.

“If only I weren't sick,” she said, her tears mixing with
the snow on her face. She coughed into the crook of her elbow.

“The hutte will be warm. If this isn't severe bronchitis, it's pneumonia. At the Cabane—”

“Don't you see? They're waiting for me there!” She kicked at him with renewed force. Jim caught her before she slipped to the ground.

“We could both die in these mountains,” he said, gripping her tightly. “
Do you want that?
”

She turned her face away from him, her lips, firmly clamped.

They couldn't afford to waste the white light of day by stopping so frequently. As Jim trudged into the snow, he felt himself a part of the lonely, rugged landscape.

“I was in my chalet.” Her voice was muted. She spoke as if she knew it was a way to keep a grip on consciousness. “Was it a dream? I heard growling outside. I ran to make sure the door was closed tightly. And it was, but a huge black bear pushed it open. Even as I panicked, I marveled at this bear's shiny, luscious black coat. I escaped into the next room and slammed the door shut, but the bear broke through! His claws were out; he wanted my honey. I fled to the window, and before I jumped out, I looked back. He was the most powerful and beautiful creature I'd ever seen.”

She closed her eyes, as if she was picturing the bear again.

“Did you escape?”

“I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.”

JIM GUESSED IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN IT HAPPENED
. The clouds became ghosts, the mist painting everything around him white. The opaque fog insinuated itself everywhere, separating even Calliope from his view. The horizon had disappeared. The white of the clouds had converged with the snow at his feet. He could not make out any contrasts in the space ahead of him. It was a whiteout.

He extended his hand and could not see his fingers.

“Jim!” she yelled in a thin voice. “Jim! We're sleepwalking in a cloud!”

In these conditions there would be no chance for a husband's valiant rescue, presidential candidate or not. When Jim released her just a little, her knees buckled.

They had no choice but to sit it out. One move in the wrong direction, and they could stumble off a cliff. Who knew how long this snowstorm would last? Only an apple was left from Valasian's and Calliope's food supply.

In the absence of visibility, Jim became keenly aware of the sounds and sensations around him—the wind whirred in a high pitch, as if nature's alarm was ringing in his ears. Each snowflake pressed into his skin, branding him with its imprint. Was he hallucinating?

He imagined the senior partner at Wolfe, Taylor pursing her lips, rapping her fingers on her desk, wondering where he was. She would refer back to prior e-mails about their agreed first day of work. She would call Jim's cell phone and e-mail him. How long would it take Jim's parents—and Sally, if she cared; would she even notice?—his friends, to
realize that he hadn't returned on his scheduled flight? His mother would be angry, concerned that he would forfeit his job; his father would be busy placating his mother.

Calliope and he could die up here, tomorrow, three days from now. Why was he worrying about Wolfe, Taylor?

“HELLOOOOO!” he called out. The white monster ate his voice.

“We're in heaven together!” Calliope interrupted his dark thoughts. Finally, she was awake. “You and I, and the whiteness of rabbits' whiskers and the white feathers of swans. Thank you for hiding me in this white cloud from the
chop chop chop
, the black predator spider in this vast white heaven.”

The snow began to dive at them in sharp miniature icicles. Now there was plenty to drink, and Jim tipped the filled water canister to her dry and chapped lips. He tried to feed her small bites of the apple, but she refused, so he ate most of it himself. His hungry eyes rested on Hamlet, then on Calliope's bow and arrows. He shivered at the thought. The owlet hooted only occasionally, and when it did the sound was a trembling wwwwwwwaaaa . . . wa . . . wa. The snow had matted down its feathers; it looked half its normal diminutive size.

Jim slid down next to Calliope and pulled the tarp, blanket, and his Windbreaker over them.

“Have we gone to a place where the white is the night?” she asked, as if he had the answer.

Calliope did not like her name, but she was true to it. In
less than four days since he had met her, Jim Olsen felt more himself than he had ever before, more capable and powerful. The muse had called on him to rescue her.

He listened to the icicles striking the tarp and found himself hoping for the sound of the once-dreaded helicopter. Without a moment's hesitation, he would offer Calliope to her captors in exchange for her safety.

WHEN JIM WOKE, THE NEXT MORNING, SATURDAY
morning, soaked through and shivering, to the sound of Hamlet's hissing, he turned toward Calliope, lying on her side beside him. Her face was pale and lifeless. In a panic, he dipped his ear to her lips to listen to her breath and placed his hand on her cool forehead. Her eyes were closed, her breathing irregular.

“Calliope,” he said gently, laying the backs of his fingers against her warm cheeks. Everything was wet: her hair, her cheeks, her lips, her body. She shivered in response to his touch, opened her eyes slowly, coughed thickly, and surprised him with a smile.

How could she smile when she could hardly breathe? He brought the thermos to her lips.

“Attagirl.”

In the distance—what a relief—he was able to make out a path. The whiteout had finally lifted. Above them on the ridge, pockets of snow looked like white fillings in the black mountain teeth. He was glad he hadn't been tempted
to move during the whiteout; they surely would have fallen off the edge of the cliff only ten feet away. The chute was steep, and a cloud was nestled inside it.

Wildhorn, I will never underestimate you. I promise. Never!

A belt of clouds hung at eye level, and then another, and another, repeated as far as the eye could see. They reminded him of scene changes in a Kabuki theater: actors in the foreground and background holding clouds made of boards, rearranging the furniture of the skies.

“We can move again,” he whispered to Calliope, crouching down next to her. The skin under her eyes was shaded blue, reminding him of the color of Calliope's lake at dawn.

Breathing took effort. Was the air thinner after a whiteout? Or had he grown weaker? Calliope's weight was now almost unbearable. He considered dropping the tarp and blanket, even the thermos, to lighten his load, but he decided against it. Calliope was barely conscious. The owlet peeped and hooted only seldom. Were the glint of sunlight and the majestic mountain views mirages? Would the shiny-nosed Monsieur Acolas bound from the front door of an imaginary hutte, offering to carry Calliope down the rest of the mountain? Or was he inside, stirring up a dinner of lamb stew, ready to tuck them into eiderdown comforters? Jim could almost smell the roasted garlic.

To keep himself awake, Jim regaled Calliope with tales of his Viking ancestors and his grandfather Ocean Olsen, whose legs were as strong as the trunks of oak trees. He told her about generational battles against the Frost Giants,
whose scattered bones became the mountains and whose blood fed the rivers, lakes, and seas. Jim had underestimated how many stories he could tell. They had been lying dormant for years.

Only after his stories were told, his mirages had dispersed, and the day had begun to discard itself did he see the saddle rising in the mist above the shattered ice-gray plateau. Valasian had told him that the Col des Eaux Froides was the highest point between the two valleys. Once they crested this pass, according to Valasian's directions, the path would lead them to the back entrance of the Cabane. The contour lines resembled an hourglass lying on its side. From where he stood, he could see snow blocking the pass.

He was sorry that the new crop of clouds had snuffed out what he imagined was a majestic view of the Bernese mountain range beyond.

“Calliope,” he whispered in her ear. “We're almost there.”

She shifted her shoulders, lifted her head on her tall swan's neck, and frowned, then nestled into him as if he were a down feather bed.

“‘But all the gods pitied him except Poseidon,'” she recited in a slow and deep voice, “‘who, stayed relentlessly angry with godlike Odysseus until his return to his own country.'”

“Am I Odysseus?” Jim asked, but she did not respond.

When they reached the peak that was a narrow gap in the mountains, Jim laid Calliope on the blanket to rest his
back and take a drink. He tried to cover her with the soggy tarp, but after three attempts that involved running after the tarp in the wind, he gave up and tucked it back into the knapsack. He pressed snow on Calliope's wet and warm forehead.

Mr. Politician Husband, collect your treasure!

For the rest of the dark afternoon, as Jim cleared a path over the pivot of the valley, as he strode with Calliope in his arms through the barren snowfields, Calliope said nothing. She slept; she coughed; she was feverish, then cool, and she did not stop trembling.

He imagined the Castellane sisters awaiting him in Paris: Clio's eyes narrowed at him in judgment; Thalia's flirtatious smile, perhaps more hesitant. Would she retract the line of poetry she had translated for him, “Remember, I wait for you forever.”? It was the thought of Helene's softly yearning eyes that compelled him to walk faster.

W
HY WOULD ANYONE LOCK A CABIN ON ONE OF
the most forlorn peaks of the Wildhorn Mountain? To keep out desperate, hungry, and stranded tourists in life-threatening snowstorms? Using his Swiss Army knife, Jim tried to break the locked door of the Cabane des Audannes while the listless Calliope asked inchoate questions followed by the refrain, “Jim, why here?” He had placed her sitting against the doorstep, and now she lay down on the wet gravel terrace beside it.

After giving up on his Swiss Army knife and bending two of Calliope's arrows, Jim finally cracked the lock. He carried Calliope, with the now-silent Hamlet in her pocket, into the icebox chalet and laid them beside the cleaned-out metal fireplace. Jim sprinted through the hut in search of
food, medicine, and something to light on fire. What had been a cozy refuge stoked with singers and hikers from all over the world, including the lovely Castellane sisters, was now a hollow shell. How quick the transformation had been. The seasons had shifted in a week's time!

The Swiss were neat and tidy; he would give them that. Jim's frantic rummaging produced a jar of gooseberry jam, a Toblerone chocolate bar, two sets of hand warmers, a first-aid kit complete with homeopathic medicine for colds and flus, aloe vera for sunburns, and a box of matches. No antibiotics. No wood for the fire. Not a scrap of paper to burn.

He scurried up the ladder and pulled down two mattresses and a comforter. He laid the inert Calliope and Hamlet on one mattress near the fireplace and placed the comforter over them. Using a steak knife from the kitchen, he shredded the other mattress and fed scraps into the fireplace. With the matches—thank God for the matches—he lit a fire. He filled pots from the kitchen with blocks of snow from outside and placed them on the stove top. He found the gas pipe under the cabinet, turned the lever to open it, and lit the stove. Outside the Cabane Jim spread out his red Blackhawks sweatshirt, logo staring upward, and used rocks to pin it to the holding wall. The area surrounding the cabin was large and flat, a perfect helicopter landing pad.

When Jim returned to the fire, he found Calliope mid–coughing fit, feeding pieces of chocolate to the bird in her arm. How could the scrawny fowl still be alive, and, more important, why would she feed it the little they had? Jim
was ravenously hungry. Before he could speak in anger, she raised her head and smiled at him, a smile so serene and innocent that his flash of rage melted away. They split the rest of the chocolate, and Jim spoon-fed her the gooseberry jam and the homeopathic pills. He tipped a cup of heated water into her mouth and watched the rosy color return to her cheeks. Her forehead was burning, her lips gray blue. As she was too weak, he removed her wet clothes and then his. He looked away in panic when he saw how her hipbones jutted out, how concave her stomach was. The owlet lay on its side as well, and Jim noticed that its trembling had stopped. Calliope fell asleep immediately, and he listened, sleeplessly to her labored breaths until the dawn approached.

ONLY AFTER HE FELT HER BODY BECOME RIGID DID
he hear it—a faint trace of the sound he'd been praying for for days.

Calliope sat up, alert. “There's a storage cellar below—we'll hide there.”

She was the commander in chief again, despite her sickness and fever.

Jim rose groggily, threw on his damp shirt, pants, and boots, and ran outside.

It was still cloudy, but the morning sun cleaved a bright path through the thick soup of ashen sky. Jim guessed it was 9 a.m. He must have fallen asleep just after dawn. He grabbed the wet red sweatshirt from the wall and began waving it in
the air, jumping up and down until he grew dizzy. It had begun to snow again—a little blizzard, but nothing like the thick white glue he had hiked through the day before. It looked like the black speck in the faraway skies was making a beeline toward him. Valasian must have told the pilots that they were headed to the Cabane.

“What are you doing?”

He turned at the sound of her hoarse voice. Calliope held herself up by the knob of the Cabane's outer door. With her other hand, she held the comforter to her body. He continued to wave the sweatshirt. She ran at him with what must have been the last strength she had preserved in her weakened condition.

“Stop!” she cried, her eyes too large for her face.

Now almost overhead, the helicopter was clattering, thundering. From where he stood, the blades and their shadows on the snow looked like the spikes on the back of a dragon.

She was screaming and coughing and crying, but he could not hear her. He rushed to her, holding her in a tight embrace as the chopper blew a tornado of snow around them.

“
NON!
” She was hitting him with her fists. “Let me GO!”

The chopper dipped and dropped and dipped, banking to the right, then the left, and then it rose up again as if on a string that would not let it down, its madly slicing blades trammeling the air above them. Calliope and he were in its
shadow. In its clutches. She was shivering from the exertion, her lips chattering and blue, her cheeks flushed dark pink.

“No!” she said, crying, close to his ear. “Jim, I beg you, take me to the cellar, take me. I beg you.”

Why wouldn't the chopper land? It looked as if it was caught in a wind tunnel above them; its carriage was buffeted by the competing air drafts and snow.

She wrenched herself free from him with one last burst of energy and ran inside. He followed her down the stairs to the cellar. She knelt beside the thick metal cellar door and pointed her bow and arrow at him. He remembered the last time the arrow had been aimed at his heart. Then, he'd been part of a playful dance; now, she wanted to kill him.

“Open the door,” she demanded in a quavering voice that he barely heard above the din of the helicopter outside. “I can't open the door by myself with that heavy padlock on it. Open it, or I will kill you.

“I will shoot you!” she yelled, pulling back the arrow on the taut bowstring. Her fingers shook. She was having trouble focusing.

“I will do it.” She shut her eyes. “Even with my eyes shut. I will.”

In a swift dash he grabbed the bow from her, avoiding the arrow that jettisoned up the cellar stairs. She bent her head onto her chest and began to sob. When she looked up, her eyes were filled with panic.

“'Amlet? Where is 'Amlet?” She struggled past him on
the stairs. “'Amlet, 'Amlet, where are you?” she called, looking frantically around the room.

From the starkness of the silence outside, they both knew that the helicopter had landed. The sound of men's voices punctured the quiet.

Jim approached her as if he were trapping a cornered wild animal. She struggled as he lifted her in his arms. After a few moments of kicking, her body went limp. Her eyes were bright, watery blue, and in what was left of her voice she whispered:

“I know, my American Galahad, that you alone could break the padlock on that cellar door, you alone . . .”

For a moment they were both convinced that he would do what she wished. Then he turned his face from her and carried her outside.

THE SNOW WAS FALLING GENTLY NOW. THE MASSIVE
and unwieldy copter, its long tail lit at the end with a flashing light, rested on the stone terrace where not long ago Jim had watched the Italians gather for a smoke. Jim heard the engines revving, and the blades, which had slowed, now spun into a blur.

“‘Nothing,'” she said in a strange, deep, clear voice, loud enough for him to hear above the windmill of noise and swirling snow, “‘nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend.'” When he looked into her face, her eyes narrowed. “‘A wise enemy is to be preferred.' La Fontaine always has the last word.”

“I can't let you die, Calliope!” Jim yelled over the clamor, making his way around the copter.

“You are sightless,” she yelled, and her warm breath tickled his ear. “You are blind as the ocean, yes, the ocean! Can't you see it? Look! Down below! The lights of a town, a short walk below! We could go—”

His eyes followed her pointing, trembling finger; the twinkling lights of the town below were surely a mirage that would disappear. Had Jim been so exhausted by the day's hike with Ambrose to have missed seeing the glimmering lights only a week ago?

The copilot appeared at Jim's side. He opened his arms. Despite the barrage of snow and sound, Jim noticed the man's bearded and handsome face. From one man to another. As Jim delivered her, he imagined Calliope's father doing the same: bestowing the prone Calliope as an offering to her husband.

“
You have betrayed me
,” she yelled out to Jim in staccato, short breaths.

Having deposited Calliope into the whirring chopper, the copilot, with snow in his beard, rotated his arms in large circles, urging Jim to join them.

Jim was tempted. He could ensure that she landed safely and that the ambulance dispatched her immediately to a hospital. But how could he look Calliope in the face after he had failed her, her daughters, and himself, by delivering her into the hands of her abusive husband?

“No,” he yelled, waving his arms. “Go!”

“Allez, allez!” yelled the copilot.

“No,” Jim yelled back. “GO!”

The rotor blades beat the snow-filled air like eggs in a blender.

“May they be safe,” Jim said under his breath. “May they be safe.”

Hamlet. When he found Hamlet, he would walk with the owlet in the crook of his arm, as Calliope had done, to the small town that Calliope had spotted below. His legs felt like lead and his back ached as he dragged himself into the cold and empty Cabane des Audannes. He listened for hooting but could only hear the clattering copter outside.

From the constancy of the sound, it seemed that the chopper had stalled and was not able to move forward. Perhaps Calliope had threaded an arrow onto the bow and was aiming at the captain.

He stepped into the mudroom and as he passed the map on the wall, he saw one of Calliope's arrows struck into it. The map was on the wall directly at the top of the cellar stairs. In her anger, had she struck her arrow into this map on her way up the cellar stairs? Or could this have been the arrow that had been intended for his heart and had missed? The arrow pierced the mountainous area half an inch from Anzère! Could she be that good?

At last he heard the engines of the chopper accelerate into a roar. He could no longer resist. He dashed out of the Cabane to watch the chopper transition from hovering to forward flight. Its nose pitched downward and it cut
through the white, falling sky, the victorious battle weapon bringing back the spoils of war. She was coughing just then, or crying. Or she was reciting a stanza from a French poem to the pilots. Or covering her ears with her hands, the way she'd done when she heard the helicopter nearing. How like a young girl she looked when she did that, her elbows raised to eye level, her forefingers delicately pressing into her ear canals.

He was sure she had pneumonia. She could die on the way to the hospital. It was unforgivable that he had not brought her back before the predicted snows.

“Whiteout.” He said it aloud, as if he were explaining it to Thalia. The truth was that Jim had lost track of time; one day had melted into the next. Calliope's illness had slowed them considerably, as had the snow and their visit to the hermitess.

He listened to the faint drone of the chopper in the gathering stillness, trying to calibrate each diminishing decibel. He wanted to catch that moment when the hum of the chopper vanished. From mountain world, Calliope world, enchanted world, to . . . what?

Silence. The world had emptied itself out.

Jim walked around the outside of the Cabane. He spotted a path, now snow covered, that meandered around the jagged boulder down into the valley below. Calliope knew the mountain as well as anyone. Should he have listened to her? But what looked like a few miles as the crow flies could take hours, possibly days, by foot.

“Hamlet!” he called out.

A single hawk flew overhead. Jim remembered Calliope's reaction along the trail when she had seen a similar white-tailed hawk—she had covered the owlet from its sight with a swoop of her hands, quickly, deftly, as she did everything.

The town lights beckoned him. Her face, her tears, her words
You have betrayed me
, gnawed at him, as did his hunger.

After some time, he gave up his search for the owlet. The clouds were meeting again in the white congress of day. The snow was falling again, thick and fast.

She was gone.