For Love of Audrey Rose

by Frank De Felitta

  “Elliot,” she whispered.

  Something scampered across the floor of the hut—a tiny lizard—and darted toward the exterior. A child in the village cried, and its mother softly sang it back to sleep. The jungle stood only in small thickets around the tilled fields, but it still exuded the humid warmth of fetid growth.

  “Elliot—please…”

  “Janice,” he breathed hotly into the back of her neck.

  His hand slid gently, firmly, down the inside of her shirt, over her belly, along her hip. She stirred, rolled over, until they were pressed close against one another. Suddenly a jackal laughed hideously in the darkness, and the echoes trailed slowly through the village. Hoover released his grasp as though stung. He went to the window and peered out. Still breathing heavily, Janice slowly buttoned her shirt, her breasts rising and falling; the darkness had become a moral darkness, and she felt herself falling into a whirlpool of hell because she wanted this man—and all his hard, hot strength, and an end to the torment that had been eating at her for an eternity, though she had tried to deny it.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered.

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “I’d better sleep outside.”

  “Elliot…”

  Abruptly he went outside, leaving her inside with his bedroll, and he slept at the edge of a tilled field. She saw his form vaguely, as it slithered downward, miserably, to the mound of hard earth that had been plowed up. Once again the jackal cried.

  She wanted to go to him, to beg him for love, if necessary. She found herself a slave to something so deep inside her that it altered her, made her a creature she barely recognized. Dimly she realized how strong the passions were—like a storm that easily crushes any ship foolish enough to set sail on the sea—and it took nearly an hour before she knew she would not leave the shed to join Hoover.

  In the morning he bought several eggs, some milk, tomatoes, and yogurt from village families. He prepared them swiftly at the side of the road, and he also boiled some water, knowing that Janice still had no immunity against the south country microbes.

  “We must be very strong,” he said.

  She blushed, turning her head. The day was different from the night. In the dark she was so different, so overmastered by her primitive instincts, but in the day she wanted to think clearly, to see clearly, to act correctly.

  “The stakes are too high,” he said, trying to be matter-of-fact. “For both of us. In different ways.”

  “I know,” she replied without conviction.

  He looked at her. “It should be easier now that we come closer to civilization. Still, I don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Nor do I,” she said defensively.

  “Good,” he said simply, embarrassed. “Very good.”

  By noon a passing truck stopped in the village and met them two miles out on the road. They squeezed in the cab. The driver spoke a little Hindi and a little Tamil, and soon Hoover had him chuckling loudly. The truck careened down the road. Suddenly the road became paved—a miracle of a smooth ride—and the driver agreed to drive all the way into Pondicherry.

  He left them at a small hotel. There was only a single room left so Hoover slept on a lumpy couch in the fetid lobby, oblivious of the heat. Janice washed herself as best she could, soaked her clothes—her pitiful underclothes made her wince—and lay naked in the sheets. She tried to recapitulate all that she had seen in India, but it seemed to have happened to another person. As it had, she thought. Because she sensed that she was different. She was physically able to endure things that once would have crushed her. She had seen death—death on a vast scale. She had endured the hostility of the indifferent universe and survived.

  And something else had changed. Had Hoover stepped quietly up from the lobby and knocked gently at her door, she would have let him in. It was not moral. It was indefensible. It would destroy Bill if he even suspected. But then, India had taught her about the struggle for existence. About the close relationship between fecundity and annihilation. And she was part of it now. She did not fight it, she welcomed it. Like Hoover, she would have to relearn how to graft a veneer of civilization upon a living being that had been through far too much.

  Janice pondered long into the darkness of the night. She wondered if she had become tough or had merely degenerated in some terrible way. For an hour she nearly followed her impulse to go down to Hoover, to seek comfort from his warmth. But she resisted, though she did not know why. Who would know? Who would care? Down here, on the southeast coast of the Indian subcontinent? She stared into the darkness and wondered. Mercifully, sleep drifted into the seedy hotel and she knew only the partial answer of oblivion.

  Elliot Hoover had prevailed upon the hotel keeper to prepare an English breakfast: muffins, bacon, tea, and marmalade. Sitting in a small dark room, with pictures of erotic sculptures of Kharjuraha, it felt more like a honeymoon than a rescue mission—the warmth of the morning, the wallpaper peeling decorously from the wall, even a painting of the Duke of Wellington, much faded, over the table. The scene was too relaxed, too humorous to speak of the emergency waiting for them in Manhattan.

  Hoover cleared his throat, enjoying watching Janice consume her hearty breakfast. There was a twinkle in his eye.

  “I thought we would take a boat up to Calcutta,” he said. “Then a flight from Calcutta. I think it hops to Munich and then to New York.”

  “But what about our belongings? I’ve left everything in—God knows where sector five is.”

  “You’re right. I’ve an account at Barclay’s in Calcutta, but there must be a branch office in Pondicherry.” He smiled. “I’ll draw out enough money to see us back in style.”

  “When we return I want to pay for your trip to New York,” she said soberly.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Please. I’d rather.”

  “As you like. But don’t forget that I am not exactly in want.”

  She studied him. He was a complex man, a gathering of contradictions. He could chant prayers all night with the utter belief of a Hindu native, and yet he was as shrewd as a stockbroker when it came to managing his fortune. He lived in two worlds, fit into them equally well, a man whose charisma seemed to flow outward from himself in an undisciplined discharge.

  Hoover bought a brown jacket and trousers, some white shirts, leather shoes from Italy, and he had his hair cut at Pondicherry’s best hairstylist, where the barber threw up his arms at the matted, wild locks when Hoover walked in. Janice chose two short skirts, white blouses, and a new handbag. She bought a pair of sandals. Slipping into new underwear was an almost erotic thrill. She had forgotten the soft luxuries. It was like remembering a former life. Then she had her hair shampooed, cut, and styled. When she saw Hoover on the street they burst out laughing.

  “I feel very strange,” she confessed, displaying her new skirt.

  “It takes a few days to get used to it,” he agreed. “When I first arrived in New York from India I felt weird for a week.”

  They booked passage on a freighter that left Pondicherry for the north. After four hours of pacing the deck in agitation, Hoover calmed down. There was a magnificent toot overhead that resounded through the harbor, the hawsers were thrown off, and a tiny tug nudged the coffee freighter out into deep water. As they turned around, Pondicherry seemed to bank slowly, gliding into the distance, its crowded white alleys and waterfront busy with traffic the way ants swarm over a dead white log.

  The eastern seacoast of India glided by: sand dunes, bits of jungle refuse thrown up into clotted tangles at the mouths of rivers, and the broad blue ocean churned into a long white trail, arching backward as far as the eye could see. Janice and Elliot Hoover leaned against the orange rail and watched the continent go by.

  “It’s a lovely land,” Janice said softly.

  “The most beautiful in all creation.”

  “I never suspected, never realized.”

  He smiled. “Most peopl
e never do. India is too big. Too profound. One must come here to be changed.”

  For nearly an hour they watched the herons dip low over the shore marshes, the tall egrets nesting where the tidal flats were shimmering in seawater. Boys were visible, pushing boats with long poles, nets outstretched for fish, and wooden shacks leaned precariously over the muddy concourse of the incoming tides.

  “It’s life itself,” mused Hoover. “It is the source of all beauty. Life in all its complexity. It is the only source.”

  Janice watched the sunlight reflecting from his well-tanned face. In his new clothes it would be difficult for anyone else to know what spiritual depths animated his every action, his every word. He looked like a German tourist on his way back to Bremen.

  “In the mountains,” she confessed, “it occurred to me that you might have lost your faith. But I see I was mistaken.”

  “Not lost it. Just realized it was far more difficult than I had thought. One wishes to do good, and ends up doing…doing…”

  She placed her hand on his. “And ends up by doing good,” Janice said quietly.

  Hoover smiled gratefully. He tried to express his feelings, but found himself curiously tongue-tied. Then the crew became extraordinarily busy, and the freighter curved around a semisubmerged obstruction and plowed serenely to the north.

  It was not until well into the night that they reached Calcutta. The wharves were ablaze with lights from cranes and towers. Ship after ship was piled into the harbor, an army of sweating laborers bending low, pulling ropes, lifting coffee, rubber, bales, and auto parts up from holds. The sea was black, glistening with reflections of the world’s freighters at anchor.

  They stayed at a large dark hotel near the waterfront. In separate rooms. Hoover went to his bank in the morning to cash another draft, and emerged with the equivalent of a thousand dollars in cash and a small packet of checks. The balance of the day was spent at the American Embassy trying to secure a temporary visa to replace the passport Janice had lost in the flood. The difficulty was in establishing proper bona fides. It was a dreary wait between cables to and from New York and Washington. That finally accomplished, it then took an eternity to find a taxi. Another eternity to get to the airport. They sat on the couches of the Calcutta airport for four hours. Once Hoover’s hand squeezed hers and an electric thrill went through her. Their fingers slowly relaxed and drew apart. Not looking at him, Janice went to the large plate-glass window and watched the runways. It seemed impossible that she was leaving India. Somehow it was her home now, her real home, where she had become someone else, someone a thousand times more mature, a thousand times stronger.

  She cabled Elaine and Dr. Geddes. No apologies. A brief explanation. Would see them in New York. Regards. Hoover rose, took her arm, and they joined the line of passengers filing into the entrance corridor.

  “Nothing seems real anymore,” Janice said.

  Hoover knew exactly what she meant. They had had the chance to express the beauty of themselves to one another, but had not, and the chance would most likely never come again.

  “Nothing is real,” he said. “But one learns to survive.”

  They went onto the plane. The flight was delayed for two hours due to a faulty tire. Then the crewman waved a yellow flag, and Air India lifted its plane into the skies. There was a brief circle of a sensuous, compact city, and Calcutta banked and drifted under the wings of the plane, and then there were only clouds. Clouds that tore apart as the plane roared through. Janice closed her eyes.

  She was crying, and she did not know why.

  BOOK III

  ELLIOT

  “And I am in the heart of all. With me come memory and wisdom.

  I am the knower and the knowledge of the Vedas, the creator of their end.”

  The Words of Krishna

  17

  Alarge city rotated underneath like an octopus, its radiating arms busy with slow-moving metallic gleams. Around it were green marshes and reflective bits of cold water.

  “New England,” Hoover whispered to Janice. “Down there is Hartford… that must be the Interstate Thruway… See the sand dunes on the coast?”

  He paused. They both realized that Darien, Connecticut, also lay somewhere underneath them. A nondescript town with its hopes, fears, ambitions, and its hospital. A hospital where Ivy died, surrounded by thirteen physicians and assistants, in full view of the horrified court. Where Bill broke apart like the glass around the hypnosis chamber. Unlike the chamber window, he could not be replaced, and he still pawed through life, suspicious, half dead, threatening to come apart still more.

  Hoover licked his lips slowly, and Janice thought she saw his eyes grow moist. They avoided looking at one another, but they became intensely aware of each other’s breathing. Then Connecticut passed slowly under the fuselage, the thruways grew dense and tangled, and the great metropolis came into view.

  “It feels like a lifetime since I was here,” Janice said in a distant voice.

  “It is. You have become a different person.”

  Suddenly the great World Trade Towers, twin steel structures, light blue and gray where the clouds were reflected, rolled underneath. The warning chime sounded and the seat belts were requested. Seats were pushed upright, cigarettes extinguished, and with a sudden lurch the jet began to roar and Janice saw the flaps move downward.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, suddenly frightened. “Are we doing the right thing?”

  “I believe so,” he said, holding her hand. “As firmly as I have ever believed anything.”

  The jet suddenly screamed. Janice looked out the window, saw white clouds stream past like smoke. White concrete appeared, racing by in streaks, and beyond it the familiar layout of Kennedy International. With dread and horror she saw the ground leap up, slam against the tires, and a blast of air resounded in their ears. Then they were slowing, the great engines in reverse, slower and slower, taxiing to the terminal.

  “Manhattan,” Hoover said to the taxi driver. “West Sixty-seventh Street.”

  The taxi maneuvered slowly through the traffic crowding around the various terminals. Finally it inched along a thruway ramp, out to another system of highways, and then picked up speed on the south shore of Long Island. As they passed the rippling marsh grass, the shivering gray ocean in the sound, Janice turned to look out the north window.

  “Somewhere up there,” she said. “That’s where the institution is.”

  Hoover crowded closer to get a look. “May God grant him peace,” he said, peering into the dark, rising clouds to the north.

  Then the taxi slowed, crawled onto the Tri-Boro bridge, and a cityscape spread before them. Brown and gray tenements, crowded streets, all slow-moving and dull, as though life had nowhere to go, no place to grow but only went round and round in dilapidated rituals.

  Janice found herself staring at her homeland as though it had become a foreign country. The dizziness refused to go away. It seemed as though something were missing, either in the landscape or in her.

  “It’s all like a big vacuum.”

  He smiled. “You see? India has changed you.”

  Then the taxi drove rapidly into the canyons of the city and passed through Central Park. Against the leafy, humid summer afternoon were roller skaters, elderly people on small benches, and boats on the lake. Suddenly Janice’s heart constricted in an old pain as they approached the west side. By the time they got to Sixty-seventh Street her heart was beating rapidly and the dizziness was now troubling. Des Artistes stood in front of her, implacable stone, rain-stained, gray, like a prison and a fortress, full of threats and nearly forgotten promises. Janice found it difficult to step from the taxi. She was afraid that the slow maelstrom of despair would once again suck her in. And when she saw Mario, the doorman, emerge from the lobby, she quickly turned to Hoover.

  “Elliot,” she whispered, “it would be better if they didn’t see you. Some of them will remember your face.”

  “Yes, of course.
I’ll find a hotel. Give you a call when I have a room.”

  Hoover ducked his face as Mario opened the door and helped Janice out.

  “Why, Mrs. Templeton!” he exclaimed. “We sure missed you. You’ve been gone a long time.”

  “Hello, Mario. Just a little vacation. I’m entitled, no?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Mario laughed.

  He escorted her into the lobby as the taxi drove off with Elliot Hoover.

  The shock of seeing the familiar white-covered tables in the restaurant, the chandeliers, and the elevator—all signs and symbols of past joys and terrors—overcame her and she felt an arm reach for her as she swayed.

  “I’m all right,” she murmured.

  But she was sitting on the bench in the elevator. The door was closed, she was riding up, and Ernie stared at her in concern.

  “Ernie,” she said weakly. “How are you?”

  He laughed, his teeth gleaming against his light brown face, an infectious laughter.

  “How are you?” he exclaimed. “You stay away for two months and come back without a word and as soon as you walk in the door you start to pass out.”

  “Did I?” she said softly. “How embarrassing.”

  “You want a doctor?”

  “No. Thanks, Ernie. I just haven’t eaten today.”

  “Well, I’ll bring you up a sandwich, okay?”

  She smiled gratefully. When they got to her floor and the doors opened, her knees once again felt weak. Ernie assisted her to the door.

  “Oh, I’ve lost my key,” she said.

  Ernie produced a ring of keys, found hers, and opened the door. The vista of stained-glass windows, familiar carpets, and the lovely painted ceiling was too much for her. It wanted to reclaim her, to drain away every bit of strength she had gained in India, to reduce her once again to an automated shell struggling for the smallest spark of life.