But then I think how all I know of this man I’ve made up myself in my daydreams. Maybe I don’t even like him. I probably don’t really want to do it. I’d be in big trouble if anything happened. And do I want yet another half-breed of the enemy roaming about? Do I want my daughter taken from me—and me, thrown out of my village?
I pull myself away. I begin to cry… out of fear of what I would do, not what he’d do. He lets me go right away, so fast I feel abandoned even though I’m the one that stopped it. I’m on my knees beside him but I turn my back so he won’t see me cry. He’s still not well, but he sits up, groaning—I suppose in pain, and puts his hand on my shoulder. I’m tempted to turn around and let myself get hugged. He keeps saying how sorry he is and how good I’ve been to him all this time and how it won’t happen again. He seems to think it’s all his fault. I know I had a part in it. I say, “I tried to calm you but you kept shouting. I couldn’t wake you.” That’s my excuse but it’s a lie. I wanted to be close to somebody male again.
I build up the fire, and we sit on the pad before it and talk for the first time and I like him—more and more. Before, it was just my made up person that I liked, but now I like the real man. That scares me.
He’s the one, now and then, that reaches over to stir the fire or put on another log. I feel…. But of course, I picked him out on purpose to fall in love with. I hope he’s not as nice a person as he seems.
He asks me where we are. I say I’m not allowed to tell, but there’s a good view of Basin Mountain. I say that on purpose. I know he’ll know. He asks, is he a prisoner? When I say, yes, he says he thought so. Then he thanks me for treating him so well all this time. He asks my name. We’re not supposed to tell them, but I do. Mara. And I ask his. We’re not supposed to ask that either. We’re supposed to name them anything we feel like that’s short and easy to remember. (Sometimes their names are peculiar and hard to pronounce. I call all mine Don. A name I don’t care anything about.) He’s Sebastian. He says again how sorry he is. How I don’t have to worry, he’ll never do any such thing again.
All of a sudden I’m worried about my freckles, my chopped off hair …. Do I have even one thing to wear that’s remotely female? And my calloused hands! How can my touch feel gentle and womanly? Then I think: What am I doing? At my age? At my age!
I could have talked ’till dawn, but I’m feeling so strange. And I’m still shaky. I know I won’t sleep, but I have to leave the firelight that flickers over his face, that sparkles in his eyes when he turns to look at me. Even with those old clothes I dressed him in, he has a kind of dignity. And when a sad man smiles …!
I have to think. I tell him we should sleep. Of course after I go to bed I neither sleep nor think.
My room is large. There’s a place for my loom. My bed is away from the fireplace on a kind of bench. It’s behind the table. (When there are guests they have to sit on my bed to eat.) I’m far enough across the room to feel safely hidden from him but I can hear the rustling of his every move, his grunts and groans.
In the morning he seems much improved. He sits up. Stretches. I think to wrap the blanket around his shoulders but I don’t dare get close. I don’t even dare go see to the fire. He does it. Things have changed between us. When I hand him the breakfast gruel I don’t look at him. Out of the corner of my eye I see him glance at me, as if to ask something. I eat at the table in the far corner by my bed. He eats on the floor by the fire. We don’t speak. We didn’t speak before either, but now it seems self-conscious. I’m in a hurry to leave. Besides, the turnips need putting away in the underground bins before the frost. I grab my hoe and go out without washing our bowls and without saying goodbye.
But I don’t go up to our field. I stay close and work in the kitchen garden. I have this feeling that I have to protect him. What if the other women knew he was a general and thought he was too dangerous to have around?
I leave the hoe and get down on my hands and knees. Working like this has always helped me when I felt upset.
Then … here he is, working beside me. I hadn’t heard him coming. Again, we don’t talk, but this time the silence is companionable. My birds warble. The donkey watches from over the fence. The sun warms us.
When we go in for lunch, and he’s walking beside me, I see he’s a smaller man than I expected—not much taller than I am. But it’s too late now, I like him even so.
Inside, I see he’s washed the bowls and put them on the shelf. Rolled the sleeping pad and stood it against the wall. He’s straightened out my bench-bed, too. When … when! has anyone ever, ever, ever done such things for me? I have to turn around and go right back outside. I wish there was a place where I could be alone. But there’s nothing to do out there except take a few big breaths and go back in.
I fix him bread and lard, but I can’t eat. Thank goodness he doesn’t say anything or look at me.
The minute I take him to work on the terrace, my daughter will have to come back. That’s the rule. You can’t hide things from children. They see right through you. I don’t want to take him to the fields but if the weather turns too cold the turnips will rot.
I’ll go up by myself. I can’t do much alone but I’d get some done. I have to get away and try to forget what I’ve started. I leave without any lunch. I’ll nibble outer cabbage-leaves. (The main part of the cabbages have to go to the army.)
All the fields are narrow terraces, one on top of the other. Mine is the highest of those still used. It’s a hard climb. My general will have to be in fairly good shape just to get up here.
Always, once I get there, I turn around and waste more time than I should, looking at the view. I feel renewed just looking. You can see all the way to headquarters. Farther on, you can see the flashes of the mortars, though you can only hear them when the wind is right.
When you look in the opposite direction, up to the snowy peaks, past the old, unused terraces, abandoned when the men left for the war, there’s an old castle so high you can just make it out. There are lights up there. They say it’s haunted. Once a woman went up. They found her at the bottom of the cliff, shot five times.
When I finally let myself climb down from my field, I’m so tired I don’t think I could blush if I wanted to. I stop where my daughter is staying before I come to my own hut. She rushes into my arms shouting, “When can I come back? What’s he like? Is he going to be a good one?” I say, “Soon as he’s a little better,” and, “I’m not sure if he’s a good one yet.”
He’s asleep when I get back. I don’t see anything changed this time, but I’ll bet he’s been snooping. Things don’t look quite right but I couldn’t say why. I sit down over tea, to rest for a while and look at him. He’s sleeping as though exhausted still, curled up and covered with the blanket. I’ll not wake him by stirring the fire. I’ll use the propane burner to heat the grease to fry the finches.
It’s the smell of frying birds that wakes him. I lay two places at the table. He gets up, is about to sit down, then hesitates, asks, “Is it allowed?”
Of course it’s not, but I say, “Yes.” And then I realize I can’t do it when my daughter comes back. “That is, until my daughter comes.”
“You have a daughter.”
I say, “And a husband.”
I see him hesitate with half a bird in his mouth. He chews more slowly, thinking.
I tell him that when I take him out to the field, I’ll have to bring my pistol or else the women will wonder. He says he understands.
I always like nights in front of the fire, making things or repairing things. That little goats-wool cap of his won’t be much help up here. I start on a wide brimmed hat.
That night it happens again—he yells, but this time I manage to wake him without too much trouble. I hold him as he calms down. Then he sits up beside me and we hold each other. This time it’s companionable. At first. By now we know each other better. He says, “It’s going to be all right.” But then he’s kissing me again. Suddenly he stops. And says
it, too. “Stop me!”
But I don’t want to. I don’t care what happens.
We fall asleep in each other’s arms, warm by the fire. I’m thinking, he’s right, from now on, everything is going to be fine.
I wake when he brings me tea the next morning. I can tell it’s late. I pop up. “I haven’t time for tea. Did my daughter come by?”
“I told her you were tired. She looked in at you. She wanted to wake you but I told her not to. I’m coming to help you. You were so exhausted yesterday.”
“But when my daughter sees you on the terrace she’ll have to come back home.”
“I want to help. Isn’t that what I’m for?”
My cheeks are scratched from his needing a shave. I wonder if it’ll show and the women will all know what happened.
“I have to take my pistol.”
“I know.”
He still limps, (they had torn out toenails), but he climbs to my terrace with no trouble. At the top we do what I always do, look down on the village and the switchbacks and then headquarters, all laid out as if a map.
Below us, here and there, prisoners and women work on the terraces. One woman, one prisoner, one donkey to a terrace. Here and there a child helps out.
Then we turn around and look up. Above, on the old deserted terraces, are the sheep, and above them, on the ground too steep even for terraces, are the goats. I wave to my daughter. She’s hardly more than a red dot. She waves back like crazy, even does a little dance. She knows a man on our terrace means she can come home.
He says, “Is that High Peak outpost? I’ve not seen it before. Looks to be a day’s climb.”
“I suppose. We don’t go there. There’s lights up there at night.”
He looks at it as if thinking about it, as if judging the trail up, then turns and looks down one more time as if memorizing everything, and then we get to work.
That night I’m happy even with my daughter here. She talks and he talks back. She even asks him what they call him. First he says, “I told you, Sebastian.” She says, “No, I mean when you were little, like they call me Sisi though my name is Simone.” He says, “Basti.”
Sisi says, “I knew it!” though how could she?
I love to see a sad man throw back his head and laugh.
She says, “Shouldn’t you sleep outside by the door like you’re supposed to?”
He says, “You’re right,” and gets the blanket and gets ready to go out, but she starts to cry. “I didn’t mean you should do it. I want you to be warm in here with us.”
“We’ll give him the bench,” I say before she has a chance to say how nice and warm she’ll be sleeping with us both. Is she too young to know we shouldn’t?
He slaughters a sheep for us. We leave parts to simmer as we go up to the field. Sisi goes on, up higher with the goats. Of course we have to share the mutton. You can’t butcher a sheep and not have everybody know about it. That night we give Sebastian the head in broth, all to himself. I tell Sisi not to tell anybody he got the best part.
I like to see a strong man struggling with the plough in a way I couldn’t do. He’s good at it, too. He works like a peasant. I ask him how he knows … he, a general … all the things an ordinary man would know, plowing, butchering, and such. He says he is an ordinary man. He says he became a general in the field.
He still has nightmares. I think he was tortured more than the men I usually have. Since he’s a general, he probably knew things. When he yells, I rush to the bench to wake him. Sisi starts to cry. She only stops when I tell her to come and help me comfort him.
Now and then Sebastian and I find a moment to ourselves. Once we went into the donkey shed.
Cold weather is settling in. I keep him in with us though it’s not allowed. But most of my other men didn’t last through the winter. I’m weaving in the evenings and piecing out the wool for trousers and jackets for all of us. We’re quiet and cozy. It’s Sisi who talks and asks. I find out things about him I never would have learned without her.
“Do you have a sister? You’re old. Is your mama alive? Is she too old, too? Do you miss your sister and your ma? Have you ever gotten shot? Did it hurt? Did you ever almost cut your thumb off? I did. Did you ever throw up? I did. Did you ever cough so hard you turned yourself inside out? Did you have a picnic on your birthday? Do you like my mom?”
(It’s yes to all these.)
When have I ever been this happy?
The next sunny day he says to bring a picnic and not tell Sisi. We pack bread and lamb fat and a blanket. There’s no place to hide near the terraces. We go higher, up into the trees and boulders but far from where the goats are browsing. He spreads the blanket for me.
His beard has grown. It’s soft against my cheek. It’s coming in mostly white though his hair is only partly grey. I say, “I love you,” but I know it won’t do any good. All he thinks about is war.
After, he hides the blanket under a thorn bush. I’m happy, thinking, it’s for another time. But it isn’t.
Well, that’s that, then. My pistol’s gone, too. I don’t want to ever bother with another prisoner. I’ll do the work myself.
Not only that, eight of our prisoners went with him. Thank goodness nobody knows it’s my general did that. Nobody even knew he was a general.
I should have guessed. Before he left he slaughtered two goats for us. Hid the meat so it looked as if he’d only killed one so we only had to give a part of one to the neighbors.
I have a feeling the men went up to that old castle. I remember how he looked at it and thought about it.
I climb to where the snow begins and look for tracks. I ask Sisi to tell me if she sees any. I tell her they might be from Basti and we need to know where he is and if he’s all right. She doesn’t act like herself at all now that he’s gone. I hear her crying at night. She doesn’t want me to know so I pretend I don’t. She curls up beside me but I lie flat on my back and look up, stiff with fear.
I’m pregnant. Not a one of our men has been back here for months. Everybody will notice soon.
Every night I look at the lights shining from the castle. They look warm and inviting. I have such yearning. But I don’t even know if Sebastian is up there.
I don’t tell Sisi what I’m planning. I pack when I’m supposed to be on the terrace. I pick her up on my way. Our goats follow.
Sisi is frightened. I can tell because she doesn’t ask any questions. Not only that, she doesn’t talk at all. We go fast. The goats love this. The steeper it gets the more they like it.
I thought we’d be there by evening. The trail is washed away in so many spots—that makes it take longer. We huddle down for the night. Sisi says right out, she wants to go home.
“Don’t you want to see Basti?”
“Not this much.”
“Of course you do.”
“How do you know he’s there?”
Now I’m the one ready to cry. I say, “I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s all right, Ma.” She hugs me. “You don’t need him, you have me.” Then she says what I always tell her. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”
She falls asleep right away, but I don’t. She’s right, I don’t know where Sebastian is. If I were a general and had eight men with me I’d try to get back to my own army. I wouldn’t climb up to the castle. What good would that do?
From here, so close, you can see long strings of lights up there. They’re so intriguing. They look warm.
But next morning we look up at the grey cliff, streaked with breaks and lengthwise cracks, stained as if etched with black. The castle is made of the same grey rock it sits on. Now that we’re this close and it’s daylight, I can see the castle isn’t a castle at all, but a fort with redoubts every hundred yards or so. It doesn’t look as inviting as at night. And it does look haunted. Who would want to be here? What land is it protecting except land too steep to use?
There’s no way to get up there except from around the back. I’
m starting to feel as Sisi feels. Why am I doing this? And what about that woman that got shot?
We eat the rest of our food. We all—the whole herd of us—take off, skirting the cliff below the fort.
Sisi says, “Is it the enemy’s? Is Basti up there because he’s an enemy?”
“Maybe.”
“He’s not my enemy.”
“Nor mine.”
“I like enemies.”
Of course those are the only men she’s ever known.
We keep circling. We find a sort of stairway. Actually, the goats find it. If they’d not been here we wouldn’t have noticed it. It’s almost too steep for a human being. There are chains along the sides to help pull yourself up by. It winds in and out of cracks in the cliff until we’re finally right up against the fort.
A shot hits the dirt in front of us the minute we step out from behind the rocks. Somebody calls down from the wall. “Who goes there?”
“A woman and a little girl. We don’t know the password.”
“Approach so I can see you.”
We do. “It’s Mara and Simone, come looking for General Sebastian.”
“Climb to the left and enter through the gap.”
There’s a ramshackle wooden door. It’s so beat up we probably could have crawled under it. The man who opens it is wrinkled and white haired and bent. He’s an old-age kind of thin. He’s wearing an officer’s uniform of the enemy. The elbows and knees are completely worn through, threads hang from the wrists. He has a dozen medals on his chest along with food stains. He points an old rusty rifle at us as we come in, but he puts it down so as to check us for weapons. Even Sisi, top to bottom. When I object he says it’s regulations. With me he spends more time than is necessary on my stomach. I’ve been wearing loose clothes down in the village, but they don’t hide anything from him. He says, “You’re pregnant.”
I Live With You Page 16