Tibetan Cross

by Mike Bond

  Cohen read the splintered sign nailed to an oak:

  Ste. de beaureceuil

  CHASSE GARDÉE

  par les BRIGADES MOBILES

  de la FÉDÉRATION

  “I don't know. It says no hunting; perhaps the brigades are a national guard.”

  “Piss on them and their guns. Here's mint! Smell it. How like Andalucía!”

  “Is every beautiful thing like Andalucía?” Cohen caressed a slender purple thistle.

  She jumped up. “Catch me if you can!”

  ON THE PEAK a rusty cross shivered in the wind over undulating green and whitecapped mountains. The wind worried at them, snatching sleeves and yanking hair. They retreated eastward along the mountain's spine, white stegosaur backbones of limestone ridging up from green oak scrub, to a sunny bowl overlooking white-ribbed cliffs. Dark tufts of bush obtruded from the vertiginous rock face that plunged distantly down into oaks and pines falling away to white-bouldered basins.

  She sat cross-legged against the round back of the cliff and opened the sack. “I've been thinking about your future.”

  “I have one, then?”

  She passed the wine. “How's your wound?”

  “Less sore.”

  “How quickly you heal.”

  “I've been happy, these few days.”

  “You're a curious one, calentorro. Arriving from outer space, refusing to speak of your past. Now, tomorrow you'll leave.”

  “And my future?”

  “You could be safe here.”

  “Mountains are never safe.” He flinched as rifle shots burst like ragged firecrackers in the canyons below. “The Brigades Mobiles, no doubt.” He sank back into the cliff. “Shooting practice.”

  “In Marseille, you could be safe. You could carry drugs for Léon, work a ring of girls or boys on the Côte d'Azur, anything…Léon protects his own.” She drank from the bottle and gave it to him. He nudged against her, his back to the rock. “Un sandwich pâté,” she said.

  How funny, the simplest words sometimes have most meaning: food, woman, sun. The thin air magnified the red taste of the wine on his tongue, the sting of mustard.

  “But you won't stay.” She took a joint from her shirt pocket, lit it and passed it to him.

  “I could return, some day.”

  “Why would you?”

  “I like it here. I like you.” He stretched out on the warm, blanched soil next to her, inhaling the denim odor of her blue cotton shirt. He kissed her neck where the collar opened.

  “Are all Americans single-minded like you?” She tickled his cheek with her chin. “I could make a fortune over there.” She kissed him tentatively, drew back. “I'm not comfortable.” She rolled aside, slipped her fingers under his shirt and slid it up his chest, kissing him there. “It is better, your wound.”

  Lying under his kiss, she licked her tongue softly over his teeth, under his lip, ran fingernails down his neck. As he unbuttoned her shirt she lay back on her sable hair, eyes crinkled against the sun. “You'll come back?”

  “To Sainte-Victoire?”

  “Don't tease me.” Her body surging up was white softness in the sunlight, bright from the delft sky. Crushed scrub and limestone dust fused in his nostrils with her jasmine odors and the musk of her hair. There was no end to the deepness of her, or to the pressure of her slim channel that gripped him in its delicate, hot grasp, her thighs clenching his back. “Dios,” she moaned, “Dios mío,” her head twisting in the chalky dust.

  They leaned together, overlooking the tumbled ruin of cliffs and green ridges. She drank from the bottle and red spilled on the pale inside of her thigh, against the black curls. “Sangre de Toro,” he said, wiping it away with his finger.

  “Buena suerte,” she answered. “In the corrida, it is always good luck when the bull's blood spills.”

  Lobo rose whining beside them; Cohen rubbed absent-mindedly at his ruff. The world felt in place again. The jumbled landscape of lilting blues, emeralds, aquamarines, and limestone was tranquil, unthreatening. It's true, I'm sorry to be leaving. “Caring,” he said, “what a difference it makes.”

  Her ribs touched his elbow as she inhaled. I will always love this one, he thought, for who she is. It's not romantic, love. What matters is not being loved but loving, a gift that in giving we get. A cool breeze played with her hair against his cheek and baptized their nakedness in thyme, juniper, and aphyllanthe. A red-roofed castle in a far green valley wavered in the heat. Swallows burst from the ridge below and blew past them, chittering. Lobo whimpered. “He wants to play,” she said.

  Cohen pulled loose a sharp bright pebble that had poked into his knee. It was the color of the Mediterranean, a pool of hardened color reflecting a miniature sun. “It makes the sun far away.” He showed her the tiny reflection.

  “But the sun is far away,” she remonstrated.

  “It is not of Sainte-Victoire, this rock.”

  “It is el jade. I do not know the word in French.”

  “The same.” She leaped forward to grab it as it slipped between his fingers. Her head exploded, her body smashing into him, her blood and brains spattering him. A second bullet smacked above his head and screamed stinging away like a hornet at the mountain. He hugged her, screaming, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” Blood was pouring down his face and over his arms. A bullet knocked white splinters into his eyes. On his stomach he squirmed over her body to the far side of the bowl. Maria's crushed head spun before his eyes. They were making love but she had no head. Pebbles rattled downslope. Lobo crouched snarling beside her.

  He leapt into space, air rushing between his naked thighs, skidded down the cliff, jammed his feet in a crease. Emptiness below. He grabbed a shrub rooted in the cliff. Its bark was peeling: umber on the outside, lizard yellow beneath. “Jesus! Stop! Oh Jesus Jesus Jesus…”

  Pulse thundered in his temples. Releasing the shrub he scrambled along the crease, his hand feeling blindly overhead for another hold. The crease ended at a vertical fracture. Ten feet farther it resumed, following the cliff's curve out of sight. He could see nothing; with one hand he wiped the blood and tears from his eyes.

  Lobo snarled. He glanced up, losing his grip, the cliff yawing. He clawed a fingernail's hold in the rock and looked down, the rock face undercurving, vanishing between his naked legs.

  Stones crackled on a talus slope below and to the right. He backed up to the shrub, sprinted for the gap in the crease but stopped at its edge, scattering pebbles that faded, tiny and white, dipping back and forth till lost in the rippling void. Stones rained around him. He sprinted, ignoring the emptiness and the sharp wham that spattered the crease between his feet. Again the rifle fired. His foot bounced off the far side, his fingers caught. The crease broke away like cake, chunks of it hitting his knee. Bullet splinters whined past his face. Nothing underfoot, one hand clutching pebbles he grabbed a hold, dragged himself two handholds further, groin scraping the rock. A voice yelled in the bowl, Lobo snarling. A different gun fired. Lobo squealed. Dangling in emptiness he swung hand over hand along the crease. The crease widened, his fingertips no longer bumping the cliff behind it.

  A bullet sucked at his head. He hauled himself onto the crease and ducked round the bulge of the cliff. An overhung chute blocked his path; below it was space. The chute was streaked with water; grass grew in cracks along its edges. Beyond it the cliff was straight down and smooth. Voices came from above and below. Under the overhang the rock was dark. They were making love but she had no head.

  He stepped into the emptiness of the chute. The sole of his left foot against the wet rock at the far side of the chute, he leaned out and planted the fingers of his left hand. Sliding his right foot to the near edge he slowly increased his left hand pressure on the far slimy wall of the chute, pushed his right hand against the slick near wall, swung his right foot into the chute, and hung facing outward over the void, supported by the pressure of his palms and naked toes against the slippery vertical rock.

  V
oices rattled off the rocks. Ignoring them he inched backward up the chute, one pressure point at a time. The wet rock smelled stagnant and glistened with algae. His thighs trembled. Footsteps closed in along the ledge. Climbing faster, he slipped, pushed out frantically. He was down where he had begun, toes and hands skinned and rubbery. His knees would not stop shivering.

  A thousand feet under his groin the foothills began to dip and swim. Steps halted at the gap in the ledge, around the cliff from the chute. “Ist er abgestuerzt?” yelled a voice.

  “Vielleicht,” answered another from below.

  The overhang was near. He jammed himself against the chute, slipping, the lip of the hole above and behind his head, glanced at the tiny ridges a thousand feet below. Plenty of time to think before I hit.

  He spun in empty air and scrabbled for a hold on the slippery stone, fingertips skidding down. Tearing with his nails he pulled one arm above the lip then the other and swung himself up into the hole, twisted round to stare down the chute past the glissading rock, below the vast, aching space to the rolling tiny panorama of forest and hills.

  The voice came frequently now from the ledge, answering questions poised from below. He slid further up the hole, cradled himself shivering and fetal-like into a crevice of icy stone, head on his arms, his cheek wet from the sour, calcifying seep. “Oh my God,” he begged. “What have I done?”

  The voices dimmed, returned, moved away again. The wind rose, quickening the faraway tree canopy, agitating the grasses that clung to the chute. The sun fell to the bony hills, bleeding red-brown down their slopes and carmine on their peaks.

  17

  STOP NOW. JESUS I will. Every move causes more horror. Stay here, let them come to me. Finish it. Down the chute dark sickening emptiness. In Athens once I almost jumped, from a roof, but it wasn't far enough to kill. Not for sure. A warm feeling it gave, though, the thought of death. That's what the bomb does – makes horror seem normal. Numbing. Don't let it.

  Maria to bring you back I'd die a thousand tortured deaths. Each step I murder the innocent. Phu Dorje, Seral, Kim. Captain Andrev – what's happened to you now? Everyone I touch turns to clay. I'd be so happy now to jump into this darkness, but I can't leave you, Paul. Not till I know for sure you're dead. Seven days more. Trapped here now. In this mountain.

  HE EDGED DOWNWARD to the lip of the hole. The trickle of water had frozen in the shadowed chute. No sound from them lately. But now with ice in the chute I can't chimney down. Trapped here till the sun melts this ice. Tomorrow midmorning. By then they'll have finished searching below the cliff for my body, will be looking here again. I'm trapped.

  Cold as the tomb. He rubbed his feet; they were too numb to tingle. His shoulder was immovable with pain; an icy, feverish sweat dribbled from his forehead.

  He squirmed up the hole, bumping his head in the blackness. The hole seemed to end in a vertical slit between two parallel planes of rock poised directly above the chute. Reaching in darkness for the cold slippery edges of these planes, he swung under the slit, feet hanging over nothingness. Come down, called the darkness.

  Exploding sound and dark forms beating his face, whirring wings and whistling, scratching claws, his fingers skidding, darkness sucking him down. Spinning by two frozen fingers as the bats clattered past shrieking and battering their wings on the icy rock, he held gasping, expecting the weightless moment of fall as his other hand scrabbled uselessly at the fissureless stone, his legs pinwheeling wildly. The two fingers weakened; he reached out with his toes for the side of the hole but could not reach it. Feeling the rock like a blind man he found a hair-thin seam and steadily raised his foot till his toes were planted against it, then forced himself up till his shoulders jammed against the slit. It was too small; his toes slipped from the seam and there was no other handhold, his feet kicking frantically, touching nothing, fingers skating down, snagged on one side of the slit and he fell dangling.

  No terror to die. Any moment. Let go this hold. All it takes. I won't. Don't look down. Move one finger. Feel for a grip. Oh God my shoulder. Here a crack. Fingernail in. Second fingernail. No room.

  Other hand now. Forget the shoulder. Lift. An inch. Another. Keep going. Oh God the pain. Here a little bump. Slippery. Hold. Slipping. Other hand quick up an inch. Why am I doing this? Dead – nothing lost.

  New crack. Get in one fingertip. Hang. Other hand. Oh Maria. No grip here. Higher. Still nothing. Finger dying with pain. Shoulder jamming. Force it. Here a seam, handhold. Up and in. Sideways – don't jam. Gasping and shivering he waited ten seconds, rock constricting him on all sides, darkness total, the mountain icy on his stomach and heavy on his back. Made it – but to where? Oh Maria. The slit had the odor of old roof drain, of trash left to rot in the snow.

  Higher. Twist. Feet touching now. Push, toes. New hold. Pull. For you, Maria. For you, Paul.

  The slit tilted from vertical, narrowing to a glacial funnel with a rippling, rifled bore. For several hours he forced himself up this tube, stopping constantly to gasp for breath, never able to fill his lungs against the pressure of the rock encasing his chest. A coffin, a tomb. “This is what it'll feel like,” he reminded himself. “Forever.”

  The funnel narrowed, jamming his shoulders; he beat it with his fist, jammed one shoulder through, then could not back up. He rested, licking water from the stone. A week of hunger and I can get through. Don't have a week. Again and again he drove against the scaly stone, twisting and wrenching his body through the distortions imposed by the funnel, wriggling finally into a chamber smaller than a car trunk. Icy air entered from a crack in the ceiling.

  It seemed this crack opened on another narrow space between parallel walls of rock. He thrust his head through it, then one arm and shoulder, waited to catch his breath, and wedged up it for another hundred feet until it tightened.

  The rock had a mica, mossy taste. His thighs and stomach were scraped raw, wooden with cold. Forcing the air from his lungs, he rammed himself through the crack into a slightly larger chamber. Here the draft was stronger, falling on his neck from a gap at the top. The draft was chill and tasted wet. His fingernails slipped, he crashed down to the floor of the chamber. He felt round the chamber but could find no other draft, no other exit.

  The gap was barely larger than his head, the ceiling four inches thick. His fingers found a seam in the floor. Clawing away the dirt, he dug out a chunk of limestone and hammered it left-handed against the gap.

  The limestone crumbled. He found another and smashed it to bits on the gap. But the edges of the gap also were crumbling. After an hour he had used up all the chunks in the floor and began to pummel the gap with the side of his fist. It gave way and he elbowed up and into another round room, this one taller, again ventilated by a hole in the ceiling through which he corkscrewed into a perpendicular chimney. After an endless time of working his way up this chimney he was shocked to see the faint outline of his hand on the rock.

  With a snarl and flailing claws a dark cold hard body thudded into him and he smashed it away in terror, slipping down the chimney away from its weasel's rancid odor, its nails slashing his frozen skin, and it turned and scrambled upward into the silence, leaving him swearing and shivering. Badger. Goddamn badger. Means there should be an exit. Where are you, badger? He inched forward; there was no sound but a distant hissing.

  The chimney was lightening but closing in. His head caught sideways. He reached up for a handhold and found nothing, wind and wetness flitting through his fingers. His head was free. He saw a shallow valley blanketed by snow; stars glittered overhead. The wind smelled of new grass and snow.

  Orion lay on his side like a dying warrior; from his position over the horizon there seemed perhaps three hours to dawn. Cohen twisted his body out of the chimney and ran through shin-deep snow to the edge of the valley. The white summits of Sainte-Victoire undulated westward. Above the horizon, under Orion's dagger, rose the crucifix.

  Frozen-footed and shivering, he loped along the ridge t
o the crucifix. From it the mountain tumbled down, shimmering cliffs under star-bright snow. The red-yellow glint of a fire flickered among boulders on a saddle five hundred feet below.

  He stumbled numbly down over slippery rock toward the wind-fitful fire, halting when he saw two men hunched in its light. One crossed the fire's gleam and began to climb toward him. Cohen wriggled into a snow bank; the man yanked a dead juniper from the snow and returned to the fire. His tracks left shadows in the snow; other such shadows fanned out from the fire across the saddle.

  The man broke up the juniper and cast part in the fire, crouched on his heels before it. Cohen dug a hatchet-shaped rock from the snow. Masking his naked darkness behind boulders and brush he inched closer. The juniper's snapping boughs threw flaring shadows on the snow and reddened the crouching man's face. The other man, his back to Cohen, did not move.

  There was no sign of others. The crouching man stood several times, turning his back to the fire, slapping his hands on his thighs. Cohen beat his frostbitten feet and legs, crawled back up the slope, turned north and down the ridge, switching eastward again to pass below the saddle. Downhill from the fire he ascended the ridge. Firelight licked the boulder tops. Windblown snow needled his groin.

  In a sudden scrunch of snow a man was on him. Cohen leaped aside and smashed the rock into his face. The man spun grunting; he slammed the rock against his head, fell on him holding his mouth, the man trying to scream as Cohen pounded his temple with the rock, then hammered the rock against his spine at the neck until the man shivered and lay still. Cohen stood silently, looked round, then bent down to beat the stone against the man's temple until a wide badge of blood blackened the snow.

  Shivering uncontrollably, he tugged the man's jacket and trousers free and yanked them on. Again he peered toward the fire, ducked down, and tore off the man's shoes and socks. He looked at the corpse. “The least of my brothers.” He moved to smash the corpse's gaping teeth but restrained himself, fearing the noise.