The Runaway Wife (6 page)

F
ROM WHERE HE STOOD, THE WOMAN DID NOT
look like the mother of three daughters, nor did she resemble the image Jim carried in his mind of the legendary hermitess. Valasian must have led him to a younger woman of the mountains, a huntress. A braid ran down the middle of her back, the end of which was tied loosely with a ribbon. She wore a white T-shirt, a vest, riding pants, and boots, and a small quiver of six arrows hung carelessly from her back. Jim advanced behind her quietly, as if he were a spy. She was within fifteen, now ten feet. She, and now he, faced a circular target with a yellow bull's-eye at the center. The target was tacked to a hay bale about ten strides away.

“Don't move,” she said in a voice that was rich and
deeply accented—a dancing, playful voice, warm with the last drops of sunlight.

Jim stood motionless. Kestrels chirped above him. The wind stirred the woman's hair, and wisps fell from her braid. The world was vibrant in the moment, heated by the last glimmer of the sun.

She drew the arrow back in one fluid motion and then released it. The arrow hit the target an inch off the center of the bull's-eye and vibrated there in its certainty.

Still the woman did not turn around.

“What took you so long?” she asked.

Jim looked behind him. Was she addressing someone else?

She reached behind her, her elbow pointing up in the air for a brief moment, and extracted a second arrow from the small leather pouch on her back.

“It took you longer than you expected,” she said, threading the arrow into the bow and slowly drawing back. Her French accent was fused with a British one. Her voice resembled all the sisters' voices in his head. It was her: Calliope Castellane.

With surprising swiftness and in one move, she turned and pointed the arrow at him. The arrow's target was his heart. Had Calliope's solitary existence transformed her into a madwoman? A lock of light-brown hair fell over her eye.

“Yes,” he said. He didn't move. She was more beautiful than in her photograph. Her cheekbones were more pro
nounced and higher, her nose was a straighter line—but it was her large, intense blue-green eyes that demanded attention.

She laughed, then twisted her body back in the direction of the target and released the arrow. In the dimming light, he could see that she'd missed the bull's-eye by only a fraction. As she retrieved her arrows, he noticed that the ribbon that held her braid was identical to the maroon velvet one that Thalia had given him from around her neck.

From the picture the sisters had shown him, he'd expected an attractive older woman of forty-nine, but here, now approaching him, was a woman in full bloom, with a rosiness in her cheeks that spread down her jaws. She was, as her daughters had described her and as the photograph had suggested, the physical embodiment of her daughters. He noticed the high cheekbones of Clio, but in her mother, more refined; the blue eyes of Thalia, in her mother, deeper set and more intense; the stubborn defiance in Helene's chin, in her mother's face, more pronounced.

“Now it's your turn,” she said to him.

He noticed a thin line of perspiration above her lip as she handed him the bow. She reached behind her back and offered him an arrow.

He tried to still his ricocheting mind. The last time he'd shot an arrow, he was twelve years old at Camp Chippewa in Wisconsin. He stood perpendicular to the target, as she had, and placed the arrow on the shaft of the bow at eye level. He
squinted down the spine of the arrow and pulled back the string, trying to ignore the throbbing in his thumb; he'd lost his T-shirt bandage during his climb up the ledge. He was about to release the arrow when he heard her laugh, an extended throaty laugh. He pointed the arrow to the ground, then turned to see what she found so amusing. Was she distracting him to rattle his concentration? She
was
distracting, that was undeniable. Her eyes were now the gray blue of the nearby lake at dusk.

He returned his focus to the target.

She laughed again.

“The last time I did this—” he began.

She did not let him finish. “Then it's fresh in your memory.”

It was Thalia's voice, but lower in pitch, more assured, more worldly, if a voice could be such a thing.

He turned back to the target, relaxed his fingers, and released the arrow. Where had it landed? It had not even hit the board.

“You were not
fuckising
,” she said, her accent confusing him for a moment.

“No,” he said to her, “I was not
focusing
. How did you know to speak to me in English?”

She left his side to gather his errant arrow from the rocks far to the left of the target. How had she seen where it had gone? When she returned, she surprised him by taking his arm and guiding him up the small incline toward the chalet.
Her audacity reminded him of Thalia's dauntless arrival at his and Ambrose's table at the Cabane.

“You haven't answered me,” he said, feeling like a petulant child.

“You Americans are so obvious,” she said, and laughed. “How could I not hear your exhalations that carried on the wind?” He remembered yelling out as he was throwing himself over the vertical rock face. She covered her ears. “Now all I can hear is your breath! You've walked far today.”

She was making fun of him.

“I'll show you your room, so you can change out of your wet clothes. We also need to properly bandage your thumb.” Her English was as flawless as her daughters'.

“I am Calliope,” she added. “You?”

“With all your listening, it's a wonder you don't know my name. Jim Olsen.”

In response she again took his arm, this time more formally, as if they were about to step onto the dance floor. Her body moved smoothly, rhythmically beside him. She led him past a small garden of green vegetables and herbs to the open door of the small chalet. He paused on the threshold to inhale the fragrance of sweet roses and looked up to see, amid the gnarly brown vines, a profusion of pink and white. The bell in the small tower rang in the evening breeze.

“Your daughters . . .” he began.

“Have sent you here to fetch me . . .”

He nodded. He hesitated, his hand fingering the velvet ribbon in his pocket.

She laughed again, and she was the photograph Thalia had showed him, her head tilted back, her hair falling across her eye.

What spell had the mountains cast upon him? Only the night before, he had been ready to consider himself part of the one-death-a day-in-the-Alps statistic.

“My daughters don't realize that I'm at home here,” she said, unlocking arms with him. “I'm more at home here than I am anywhere else in the world.”

He'd only just met her, but he could tell that it was true: she looked as if she belonged on this threshold of roses. How luminous and rose-colored she was, in contrast to the melancholy blue dusk that beckoned nighttime.

“It looks as if you've been hiking for many days,” she said, cocking her head and studying his thumb, “but the Cabane, where I believe you met my daughters, is only half a day's hike away.”

Not possible!

“You must have come down the scenic route. Take off your boots. You're limping! Here, sit here.” She pointed to the tree stump just outside the door of the chalet. He removed his boots.

“Your socks, too!”

He stretched out his aching and blistered feet and bleeding ankle.

“This chalet looks as if it's from another era,” he said,
peering inside at the blackened beams lining the ceiling.

“It's what's left of a Benedictine monastery, I'm guessing from the sixth century. It's amazing that the chalet and the barn have endured since then. I think the Benedictines chose this spot because the land here is unusually fertile for a mountain peak.”

Her accented, lilting voice slowed down time. In New York City Jim had learned to talk fast, rush through conversations, finish people's sentences, and wait vigilantly for opportunities to prove his intelligence and superiority. Sarcasm and skepticism won you extra points. But in the presence of this elegant woman in such eternal mountain surroundings, edginess seemed hollow.

Still, he had a flight to catch tomorrow, Wednesday. Walking in circles had cost him a full day. Even if he left with Calliope first thing in the morning, they would only get back to the Cabane by the midday. On Thursday they would arrive in Gstaad; he would leave Calliope on her own and contact the sisters to let them know that their mother was safe from the snows and her husband. He would then catch the afternoon train from Gstaad to Geneva and just maybe make it to the Geneva airport in time for a 6 p.m. flight back to New York. But that was pushing it. Luckily his first day of work was not until Monday. Since his ticket was nonrefundable, he'd have to pay for another full fare back to the States.

“Your anger, your agitation, I can feel it.”

“You caught me planning—”

“The pass of perpetual snow.” She pointed to the small gap between twin white snowcapped mountains above them. “It's one of the most difficult passes in this part of the world. At any point during the year, there might be seven to eight feet of snow up there, but in the winter the drifts can reach more than forty feet. French and German pilgrims still cross it on their way to Rome. Back in the day, the monks who lived here offered them food, medicine, and rest.

“Come inside, you look like you could use a little of all three. How hungry you are,” she added, as if in an afterthought.

He was famished.

INSIDE THE CHALET, SHE WAS ALL MOVEMENT. SHE
lit two candles in the dark wooden interior, stirred the contents of a pot hanging by a hook over a fire, stoked the fire, and disappeared somewhere into the darkness at the far end of the room. While she was gone, Jim gazed around in amazement at the chalet's interior. Two copper pots and a pan hung above a wide wooden trough that served as a sink, and a red-and-white checked cloth, similar to the ones in the Cabane des Audannes, covered the small table that was set for two. Thick red napkins had been placed at the center of each pewter plate. Tin cups took the place of glasses. What was the spice in the pot that filled the room with a sweet, earthy aroma?

“You were expecting me for dinner?” he asked when she reappeared.

“Again you're surprised!” As she laughed, the ribbon in her hair fell to the ground and her braid loosened. Jim was quicker to reach the ribbon, and she took it from him playfully. Instead of tying the ribbon around the bottom of her braid, she held it up to her neck and, elbows raised horizontally, tied the ends together.

“Valasian must have told you,” he said, but he doubted that the old man had a cell phone or that there was cell service here. Perhaps he'd taken a shortcut and beaten Jim to the chalet to warn her.

Was that music coming from the room where she'd been? He recognized the tinkling bell, but it was accompanied by a low-pitched throbbing sound.

How had she brought all these supplies—the pots, pans, plates, napkins, forks, and tablecloth—to this remote peak? She bent down, lifted a floorboard, dipped her hand into the opening, and removed a dusty black bottle. Holding it, she approached Jim and stared up into his eyes.

“You didn't believe me when I said I heard you coming.”

“No,” he said.

She closed her eyes as she handed him the bottle.

“Is this wine?” he asked.

She turned from him to tend the fire. Only after a long pause did she answer.

“You may not believe this, either. It's from the Benedic
tines' stash, possibly left behind a century ago. This is the first time I've filched, but I would call a dispatch in the form of a messenger from my daughters a special occasion.”

Jim pulled out the Swiss Army knife that Ambrose had given him at the beginning of their hike and, after several fumbles, managed to pull the cork from the bottle using the tiny corkscrew. He poured black syrup into each tin cup.

“Could use a little opening up,” she said, raising the cup to her long, elegant nose. He noticed a slight bump in the middle of it. She laughed, the creases next to her eyes deepening into upside-down crescents. Reflexively, he laughed with her. For this woman, to laugh seemed as easy and thoughtless as taking a breath.

“To the Benedictine monks,” he said, raising his glass.

“To your arrival,” she said. She smiled over her cup as she sipped. She placed the drink on the table, and without warning, she'd tossed another log onto the fire and returned to stirring the pot. Even when she wasn't moving, she vibrated like a flame dancing in the wind. Like Thalia had.

“Sit down, please,” she commanded.

He obeyed and sat down on one of the two tree-stump stools at the table, his knees scraping the top of the log table. He heard the mysterious sound again; again, he tried but failed to place it. A moaning of sorts grew into a chorus of cries, only to fall away to a murmur. The lament arose from the wall on the opposite side of the fireplace.

“What—” he began.

“Tomorrow,” she interrupted, “I'll teach you how to shoot an arrow. My falcon, Dalí, and I will.”

He remembered Clio's derisory comment to Thalia, that she was always playing a game. Possibly she had inherited this trait from her mother. “Excuse me. Did you say your falcon named Dalí?”

“Doubting Jim, I shall call you. I've been sharing my residence with Dalí and many other fowl friends, mostly owls. They're the ones creating the sounds you are working so desperately to identify,” she said, nodding toward the back of the chalet.

Owls? A falcon? Surely she was making it all up. Weren't owls solitary creatures? Would so many owls remain in such close proximity to a human?

Calliope vanished into the back of the chalet again. When she reappeared, she placed a small tube of antibiotic ointment and a bandage on the table. She pulled her tree-stump stool beside his and studied the slice on his thumb. After she gently spread the ointment and secured the bandage over the wound, she smiled triumphantly, as if the wound had healed immediately, thanks to her careful attention.