Eventually, Gerard said, “You must be wrong, Jean. Probably there is a real cabin into that forest and we simply stumbled upon it. The name of that woman is just a coincidence. Maria is extremely common, worldwide. And from what I understood, in Romania there are still entire villages that don’t have electricity. So this doesn’t prove anything.”
The older man watched his friend for a long moment, perfectly understanding his need for denial and his difficulty of accepting the unacceptable.
On a long breath he asked, “Do you still know how to reach that cabin?”
Gerard and Linda looked at each other.
“I believe we do,” answered Linda. “We had made a wrong turn, but we didn’t change directions many times. Once we got out of the woods, the road was simple. Especially with Madame Maria’s indications.”
“Then tomorrow, after you and I conclude our business,” Jean told Gerard, “we’re going over there to see what we find. I’ll leave you two to guide me, because I don’t know the forest well. However, I do know the place where that cabin burned. We’ll see if it’s the same or not. Agreed?”
“Perfectly agreed,” Gerard replied. “You’ll see we’re not wrong. I just hope we won’t bother Madame Maria too much.”
“I seriously doubt that Madame Maria could be bothered in the last two hundred years or so,” muttered Jean in French and got to his feet.
In darkness, in their comfortable bed, Linda curled against Gerard’s chest, embracing him tightly.
“Do you really think Jean-Paul is mistaken?” she asked, a trace of uncertainness in her voice.
He stroked her hair gently, considering her question, which was circling into his mind as well. After a while he said, “I think there has to be a rational explanation for all this. In any case, one way or another, tomorrow we’ll learn the truth.”
Following another long silence, just when he thought his lover had fallen asleep, she spoke again.
“What if Jean is right and we are the ones who are wrong? It seems absurd, I know. But when I listened to him telling that story, in that matter of fact tone, I wondered for a moment if it’s possible we just thought we’ve experienced what we think we did in that forest.”
“If he’s right, then we must come to terms with the thought that we were witnesses— no, participants,” he corrected, “to a paranormal phenomenon. We’re not the only ones, you heard Jean. If it’s so, we’ll have to be grateful that nothing bad has happened to us.”
He caressed her smooth, soft cheek, then kissed her forehead.
“I don’t even want to think what I’d do if something bad happened to you. I’d kill anybody or anything that would want to harm you. Be it real or imaginary, man or spirit!”
He sensed her relaxing against him, as though a pleasant, comforting warmth had seeped into her.
“I’ve never felt this happy and protected in my life, the way I feel around you. I love you,” she whispered. She fell asleep without knowing how much it meant to him to hear her say those words, and knowing they were true. He was always the first to profess his love, freely, without hesitation. Sometimes his heart constricted with the fear that she won’t reciprocate.
“I love you too, Linda,” he whispered softly, even knowing she couldn’t hear him. Nevertheless, he felt the acute need to say those words, so simple, but which expressed such complex feelings. He drew her closer to him, breathing deeply the fresh perfume of her hair, before falling into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Fifteen
Gerard could have ignored the annoying sunray that had sneaked through the old shutters. But the sound of a rooster, which cheerfully set the tone for an entire troop of unidentifiable beasts made Linda jump, literally. She rose abruptly, all tousled hair and huge eyes. She looked around disoriented for a moment, then exclaimed startled, “What the hell was that?”
He started laughing and smoothed back her hair, tucking a few rebel strands behind her ears.
“That, my love, is a cock.”
His laughter grew even louder when he saw her suspicious gaze heading toward his lap.
“Oh, no,” she said emphatically, shaking her head firmly. “I’ve seen one of those and it doesn’t make any sound.”
He collapsed back onto the bed, roaring with laughter and holding his stomach. When he was able to catch his breath, he pulled her against him and whispered directly into her ear, “I adore the analogies your dirty little mind makes sometimes. However, I wasn’t talking about that kind of cock, but about those you find as fillets in the supermarket.”
“Is that so?” she asked, wide-eyed and intrigued. “This horrible noise comes from a future fillet? I want to see what this monster looks like.”
She rushed to the window, opened it and stuck her head out.
In the neighbors’ yard, a synod of more or less domesticated creatures was in full activity. A few chickens were running over each other’s feet to pick up the grains someone had spread around for them. From the height of a coop, the harem’s leader was supervising them. He was a rooster of impressive proportions, motley and bumptious, who was showing remarkable vocal abilities. Among the chickens strolled an odd beast, strangely colored. Linda found out later it was a turkey.
“I think I’ll seriously consider becoming a vegetarian,” she said around a yawn, stretching languorously, then came and curled back onto the bed.
Gerard smiled, wrapping his arms around her. He curved her body against his, spoon-fashion, sliding his hands under her T-shirt.
“I don’t think that’s a wise choice, my love,” he said in a low voice, while his hands were busy stroking her warm, luxurious skin. “There are certain studies which show that vegetarians are more predisposed to illness, and their immune systems are weaker than those of people who eat meat. There isn’t any real adequate substitute for the substances contained by meat. That’s why the human is genetically built to be…omnivorous.”
He turned her to face him, slipping her T-shirt up to reveal her breasts. He bent to take one rosy, sweet nipple into his mouth and sucked it gently, as her breaths grew choppy and shallow.
Right at that moment, the loud creak of the bathroom door came from the hallway. Gerard growled in frustration, his face buried between Linda’s breasts. He gave himself a few seconds to clear his head, but that didn’t help extinguish the fire burning in his stomach—or, rather, a few inches below. When she arched her back and pulled him closer, he groaned and let out a long, suffering sigh, then drew away from her.
He kissed her swiftly and got to his feet, muttering, “Duty calls. We’ll finish this later,” he promised when he saw her pouting and dragging her T-shirt down to cover herself. “You get some more sleep, my love. I’m going to wash and see if Jean’s awake. Then we’re going to the clinic to talk. He told me he’d like me to see the patients he has here.”
He took a pair of faded jeans from the closet and pulled them over his boxers. He had a hard time buttoning them, due to the side effects of unfulfilled lust.
Watching his struggles with the fly, Linda smiled cheekily and slid her tongue over her lips.
“Are you sure you can’t stay for five more minutes?” she asked, stretching out a long leg to caress his abdomen with the velvety sole of her foot.
His eyes narrowed and his stomach muscles tightened, but he shook his head regretfully, then slipped a black sleeveless T-shirt over his head.
“What I want to do to you will take a lot more than five minutes,” he growled, then pecked a kiss on her cheek. “Try to get some more sleep.”
“It’s not polite for me to sleep that long,” she protested weakly, but rolled back between the sheets.
When her head sank into the fluffy pillows, sleep claimed her almost instantaneously. Gerard smiled lovingly toward her sleeping form, before walking out quietly.
* * * *
When Linda woke up, the light was terribly strong. She realized she’d forgotten to lower the blinds. For a moment, she looked around i
n confusion, then remembered where she was. She’d never liked sleeping in unfamiliar places, but this house had something welcoming. She loved the lavender and wood smell, the scent of freshly washed clothes. The air wasn’t nearly so fresh in London, like it was in this city—in fact, in the whole country. These people had something special, not only dreamlike landscapes and delicious food. They also had an interesting history…
Suddenly, she remembered their experience in the woods. Each detail flashed through her mind so clearly that everything Jean-Paul had told them the previous night seemed a bad joke.
She stood up, rubbing a hand over her face, still groggy from sleep. She took the camera from the nightstand, where she’d left it before going to bed. She turned it on and noticed it had a low battery level. Still, she browsed through the photo gallery, but there was no trace of the pictures she’d taken into the forest.
“Unbelievable!” she said aloud, stunned, crossed by a tide of contradictory feelings. She combed her fingers through her hair in absolute frustration, trying in vain to put the episode out of her mind. For some unknown reason, she dreaded going back to that cabin, but at the same time, she was anxious to see it again, to prove to the Battistes that it was real.
She dressed into a pair of short jeans and a pink tank top, then made the bed and tidied up the room. She went into the bathroom in the hallway, next to their room. It was modest and clean, like the rest of the house. After washing hastily, she brushed her hair and twisted it into a long braid. Taking a deep breath, she went off in search of Mariana.
She found her in the kitchen, preparing breakfast.
“Good morning!”
“Bonjour!” Mariana replied, turning to her with a smile on her pretty face. “Sleep well?” she asked in her rudimentary English.
“Excellent! Can I help you?”
“No, no. Sit. You eat?”
Linda looked longingly at the sandwiches with ham, cheese, tomato slices, cucumber and fresh dill.
“Definitely,” she said, nodding enthusiastically. “Where are Gerard and Jean?”
“At the clinic,” the woman replied, placing a huge plate in front of her guest. Then she added a mug of milk. “Talk medical business.”
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Linda asked, indicating the plate and the seat in front of her.
“I don’t eat morning. I have to go to market. You come with me?”
“Yes, if you’ll wait for me to eat,” she replied returning the smile, then started demolishing the simple, yet delicious food.
The market was at a short walking distance from the house. It was a crowded place, where Linda felt utterly lost. All the vendors were attempting to entice her to buy their merchandise, talking so fast she got dizzy only by trying to follow their lips. Of course, she didn’t understand a thing.
Mariana held her arm, as though she was afraid not to lose her. After a few bargaining rounds, they left the crowd loaded with strawberries, fresh vegetables and two cantaloupes, which smelled divine. Mariana had explained to her that the way to test them was to smell them.
They retraced their steps back to the house, chattering in a strange language—a mix between several tongues and the infallible expressivity of gestures. Since they both had their hands full of bags, this communication system was a bit difficult, but it created a state of amusement, as well as a bond beyond words between them. Now and again, they stopped in the middle of the road, laughing, trying to make themselves understood by the other.
* * * *
“You just might be a genius, boy,” Jean-Paul told Gerard as he lighted yet another cigarette, studying the notes and reports in front of him.
Together, they had made the visits and routine check-ups of all patients, exchanging impressions and suggestions. Now, seated into Jean’s smoky office, they finally got down to discussing the reason that had brought the young couple to Romania.
“If you succeed in obtaining more positive results and document them, with this treatment you will revolutionize the entire medical world,” Jean went on, watching his friend from over the top of his eyeglasses. “It could be something fantastic!”
“I could say the same about your hellebore treatment,” replied Gerard, who sat on the other side of the desk, carefully reading the data from Jean’s file. “From what I see here, you’ve obtained more results than I, and not only regarding a single type of cancer. Do you realize how many people we could save with these papers, Jean?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with the passion and altruism that guided him during his whole life. “Thousands, maybe millions! Not to mention that your treatment is considerably less expensive than mine. You could grow huge plantations of hellebore. The Mojave rattlesnake’s venom isn’t that easy to get. So who’s the genius?” he exclaimed, elated for the first time in a long while, feeling the vital importance of their discoveries.
Jean-Paul took off his glasses and looked at him seriously.
“Gerard, don’t get too enthusiastic yet. I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, but I’m not the one who invented or discovered this plant’s healing properties. Here, in Romania, there’s an old history about this. There was a famous case, of a Romanian lawyer. His name was Dumitru Calina. I’ve read his story in a magazine a few years back.”
Jean shifted in his chair, making himself more comfortable, then went on with his story.
“He had developed throat cancer from an untreated pharyngitis, and his entire skull had been infested with pus. No doctor gave him a chance. In the hospital, he met an old woman who told him he could try a treatment with hellebore, if he dared. Obviously, the man didn’t find anything more dangerous than death, which was imminent anyway, so he looked everywhere for this plant and for a formula on how to prepare it. Due to its high level of toxicity, hellebore can’t be found in drugstores. Eventually, he encountered some old people who told him where to find this root and how to prepare it properly. They warned him that they used this brew only for animals, in case of serious diseases. They didn’t know what effect it had on humans. So Dumitru Calina used himself as a guinea pig.”
Gerard rubbed his hand over his mouth, thinking about the length of that man’s despair. He didn’t know if he’d have the courage to do the same as Dumitru Calina, and he hoped never to find out.
He returned his attention to Jean, who continued his story.
“After countless experiments on his own body, he was declared healed, to the amazement of the entire medical world. Something that might have helped him more were the cobalt radiations. During the procedure he noticed that, because of his taking hellebore, his hair hadn’t fallen off like the other patients’.”
Gerard was listening carefully, completely fascinated by this impressive story of a man whose name he’d never heard before.
Jean took another drag from the almost forgotten cigarette, then resumed his story.
“Following this miracle, Dumitru Calina opened a practice in Iasi and developed a treatment with which he cured hundreds of cancer patients. But the Romanian government made things so difficult for him that he was forced to close his practice. The Americans, however, were smarter. They picked him up immediately. Now he’s at a private center of study from Louisiana, where they research this plant, with amazing results.”
“Well, why wasn’t this incredible treatment put into practice here in Romania?” asked Gerard intrigued, after a moment of silence.
Jean looked at him meaningfully, then extinguished the cigarette-butt with his long, tobacco-stained fingers.
“Why else? From the same reason the genius Burzynski met with such impediments after discovering antineoplastons. Worldwide conspiracy, mon cher. No human in this world has managed to defeat it. Pharmaceutical and food industries—the financial empires paved with so many dead bodies. Be careful, my friend. Know what you’ll have to face. There’s a huge price you’ll pay for your discovery and for the comfort you want to offer.”
Gerard curled his fists involuntarily, knowing how
much truth there was in his friends’ words. He shook his head sadly.
“Jean, our oath as physicians will stand anywhere, anytime. No matter what happens, I won’t stop my research. There has to be a way for us to do our jobs peacefully, to save lives, to do our duty. And you,” he pointed his index finger to the other man, “I hope you haven’t resigned to this small clinic, to curing only a few patients, when there are millions of people out there who need these!” he said, lifting his hand and the papers he held.
The older man smiled wistfully and lighted another cigarette, then let out a long gust of breath, along with a cloud of smoke.
“I’m old now, my friend,” he said, simply. “I do what I can, and I will continue doing it until I die. Still, I don’t have the strength, nor the energy I had back in my youth. But you have the warrior spirit, the honor and motivation necessary to win such a battle. That’s why I called you here. Take it,” he said, indicating the file, which contained his life’s work. “I know you’ll make sure it won’t fall into dirty hands.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was mid-afternoon when Linda heard the front door opening. She was sitting on the couch with Mariana, watching an American movie. On her lap rested Daniela, the Battiste family cat. Linda couldn’t be separated from her since they’d met, earlier that day. Mariana told her the cat had been away for two days and that she’d probably returned pregnant again—the way she used to do at least twice a year.
Daniela’s golden fur was dusty and disheveled, but Linda didn’t care. She caressed her lovingly, as she would her darling Pirata, whom she missed so much.
Gerard and Jean-Paul entered and took off their shoes in the doorway, as was the custom in the Battiste home. This was generally a custom in all Romanian homes.
“You finish medical business?” Mariana asked, rising.
“More or less,” her husband replied. “Daniela, you slut, you’re back?” he addressed the cat, who jumped from Linda’s arms and began rubbing herself against her master’s legs. “She floods us with nephews every year,” he told Gerard, who knelt to stroke the cat’s golden fur.
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