The Prosperous Thief

by Andrea Goldsmith

  They park the car and start off immediately. Raphe carries a pack containing water, a light supper, torches, a cellular phone. Laura had watched him with his preparations and wondered whether he wasn’t being just a little too cautious. He assured her they would be going to some of the most dangerous land on the face of the earth. She thought it was probably hyperbole but kept her thoughts to herself. But now as they start walking over the lava bench and she sees signs everywhere warning of a multitude of hazards, and other signs strongly warning against walking over the lava bench at all, she is fast changing her mind. Raphe assures her that as long as you know what you’re doing it is perfectly safe.

  From the very beginning the going is rough. The ground is like a solid turbulent sea, huge swells falling to low curving swirls of rippling lava. But before long she gets herself into a pattern, a sort of nimble goat pattern despite her sturdy boots, and although very watchful, feels her feet and legs learning the lie of this terrain. Nell would never have come here, she finds herself thinking. Nell by her own reckoning was not much interested in nature. And it occurs to her that not so long ago a future without Nell was as inconceivable as this volcano. It’s a satisfying thought.

  She looks across at Raphe with his clouded desires and his bittersweet sadness, Raphe clinging to his losses for fear of what might happen if he were to let them go, Raphe who seems somehow hobbled to himself. If he could only forgive all the wrongs he feels have been done to him he would be a far happier man. But forgiveness, requiring as it does such an awesome muting of self, a moral victory, in fact, over one’s desires and self-interests, is, she suspects, beyond Raphe’s reach. Forgiveness, Laura has long thought, is really among the most unnatural of acts. Yet she has always known how to forgive, has done so many times over the years. Out of love she would have forgiven her parents anything. And perhaps it is out of love she has managed to forgive a good many of Nell’s actions. But not the theft, she can’t forgive the theft of her mother’s story. That act, so instrumental, so self-serving, so unequivocally cruel, has cast a shade over all their years together. That act was unforgivable.

  The sun is sinking, but still so hot. She removes her hat and wipes her brow, and immediately Raphe is by her side offering her the water bottle. They both sit on a huge swell of lava while she drinks, their legs occasionally touching.With him now so close, she recalls the kiss of last night, a long, close kiss, yet oddly chaste, she is now thinking, and a relief after the erotic charges of some of their past meetings. She reaches for his hand. She doesn’t know why, but she has an overwhelming desire to help him. It could be she simply wants to repay her gratitude – for she is grateful, is aware at this very moment of standing at a fulcrum in her life, behind her a weary, depleted landscape and in front unknown dangers and unknown excitements. How different it is for Raphe. You have to grab your understandings wherever you can get them, but you have to desire them first.

  He helps her to her feet and they are walking again. Closer and closer to where the boiling lava streams from the tube into the ocean. The fountain of steam is larger now, the crash of waves too. She forges ahead, driven by excitement and a strange sense of recognition. The warning signs are now so numerous they stand like sentries along the cliff edge. At one point where the road reappears briefly, a huge chunk of land has fallen into the sea. Raphe takes her arm and leads her back from the edge, and keeps his hand on her until the rough terrain requires them both to clamber on all fours. The sun is sinking but the wind remains hard. They stop again for water. She wishes the sun would set; at the same time she’s fearful of this place in the dark. Pele is rather like the Old Testament God, she is thinking, protective to those who obey, but angry and vengeful when provoked. From the little she knows of Raphe, he seems to share some of the same qualities. Gods and humans, and both yet to understand the utter futility of revenge.

  Night is falling as they approach the end of their journey. The sight is awesome. A huge fountain of shooting steam and sea spray spiked with hydrochloric acid, and beating the air a thunderous noise. And finally, her first glimpse of lava, a stream of black and orange liquid shooting into the spray. And she cannot remove her gaze for a second, stands buffered by the wind as the sky darkens and the lava spilling from the tube into the ocean becomes brighter. Raphe is alongside her and when she steps forward he pulls her back.

  ‘You don’t know the danger,’ he says.

  She smiles at him. ‘I’m not here to be safe. If I wanted safety I’d be back in Melbourne with my job, my house and my cat.’ She leads him forward to gaze into the fiery stream. And the cold ocean fizzes and steams with the molten fire from the centre of the earth.

  They are standing close, he puts his arm about her shoulders. Her body is tensed, alert to the breathtaking display, but he’s kept his silence long enough, he’s desperate to speak to her.During the walk over the lava bench his thoughts kept returning to their future, he even tried to engage his grandfather, but his grandfather remained silent.And Raphe so pleased he did, for through the silence he heard Laura and she was saying yes, to his plans, yes, she feels as he does, yes, she will return to America with him.

  She’s pulling away from him, wants to go still closer.‘You can’t,’ he shouts over the noise.‘You can’t.’ Just the previous week a young couple were killed here, a storm, the night dark, the steam and lethal spray more violent than usual and they were washed off the bench. He pulls her back.‘You can’t,’ he says again, and she smiles at him, a smile of utter radiance. At him.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be extraordinary to stay the night here,’ she says.

  He tells her it is far too dangerous, and besides – at last, at last – there’s something they need to talk about. And with the crash of the water against the new rock, the fizzle of fire as the molten lava hits the cold sea, and the storm inside him, he pulls her close and begins to talk right into her ear, talk beyond the tumult outside. He simply can’t wait a moment longer.

  He tells her he has worked it out. ‘You said how much I’d helped you.We can help each other, we’ll be each other’s strength, our old demons will be silenced together.’

  She is trying to interrupt, she is pulling away. He has to make her understand. He talks and talks like he’s never talked before, he loves what he is saying. These are dreams actually happening. He talks about his grandfather, a man her own father knew, he talks with tears filling his eyes, he talks to her, to her,whom he now knows to be his salvation.

  ‘I always knew there was something more. I thought it was my grandfather, I even thought it was Juno. But now I know it’s you.

  You’re the one I’ve been groping towards.’

  She is shaking her head. No, she is saying. ‘It’s a moving story, and I know it’s heartfelt, but it’s not mine. It has nothing to do with me.’

  It has, it has, she doesn’t understand. ‘Your father,’ he says, ‘I’ll tell you about your father.’

  She is fierce in her refusal.‘Don’t you dare.’

  ‘But it’s your story,’ he’s pleading with her. ‘It’s our story. You have to listen.’

  ‘No I don’t.’ And now taking his hand. ‘I’m not your answer,’ she says.‘I am not your answer. And –’ this last said firmly, defiantly, ‘I don’t want to know.’

  She’s wrong, he knows she’s wrong. He’ll not give her up. He’s worked it all out. She turns away. She’s walking back over the lava bench. He sees the play of her torch, the flicker of her body in the jiggling light. It’s too late for her to leave now. He starts after her, he’s calling above the hiss of lava, the roar of the sea.

  ‘You have to know. Your father, my grandfather, you have to know.’

  She doesn’t stop, she refuses to listen.

  ‘I’ve worked it out,’ he shouts over the boiling sea.‘I’ve worked it all out.’

  She continues walking over the lava bench, walking away from him. He stares after her a moment longer then turns back to gaze into the shooting fire and steam.
She’ll come around, she has no choice. He sees it all so clearly. Their future. He is aware of a rare contentment as he stands alone on the rock, and, amid the tumult of the boiling sea, he hears a clear voice speaking to him, placating him, protecting him. The voice belongs to her.