“I hope they’ve shut that thing down,” I said.
Alberto was silent as he drove over a bridge and past the plant, then turned right. He hadn’t said anything since leaving Paris. After dropping off my bag of food in our room, I had found him in the hotel bar, sitting with a middle-aged Canadian couple and a young woman in a University of Minnesota sweatshirt. The middle-aged man was saying, “We were on our second honeymoon.” The young woman said, “This was my first trip to Europe.” Alberto sighed, then said, “We were going to look at some of the chateaux along the Loire before starting back to Italy.” It struck me then that everyone was using the past tense, as if their earlier lives were over.
I had let Alberto decide what to do. He seemed to think that the place to be was outside the major cities. Whatever happened now was likely to affect the cities first, so it was better to get out of Paris and then consider what to do next. His thinking had seemed reasonable to me when we were sitting in our room, with the TV tuned in to CNN International for the latest news—or non-news—and the sounds of cars, honking horns, and tolling bells outside growing louder by the minute. Now I wasn’t so sure. Alberto had decided to head toward the Loire Valley because that was where we had originally planned to go. I was beginning to think that he simply didn’t know what to do, that he preferred to pretend that there was some purpose to his actions rather than sit around in our room or the hotel bar speculating about what might happen and freaking himself out. Probably all the people crowding into Paris and other cities didn’t know what to do, either. Maybe they just wanted to be in a crowd while they waited instead of getting terrified all alone somewhere.
Alberto turned on to another road. A high stone wall at our left surrounded forested land. I gazed absently at the map on my lap, on which the roads were not very clearly marked, then thrust it into the glove compartment. “Where are we now?” I asked.
“Near Chambord,” he replied, speaking at last. “You remember, Lois—we were going to stop there first. It is considered one of the most spectacular of the châteaux, perhaps the grandest. It was the project of François the First—”
“I know all of that,” I muttered, wondering why he was mentioning it now.
“—who was a great admirer of Renaissance art, particularly Italian art. Leonardo da Vinci has been credited with drawing up some of the plans for Chambord.” Alberto sounded like a tour guide. Hearing him speak in such a flat, matter-of-fact manner made me even more apprehensive. I realized then that he was probably just trying to distract himself from any fears he might be harboring with this pretense of normality. By then, I was wishing that we had stayed in Paris.
My lord and master. I had called Alberto that in jest during the early days of our relationship, even though I was never sure if he caught my sarcasm or sensed that the phrase was my little joke. Now those terms seemed only too accurate. He was always in charge; there was never any doubt of that. He didn’t have to go out of his way to demonstrate it, either; his dominance was simply assumed, without question. A lot of American men might make noises about being in control, but in practice many of them were willing to share some authority, even cede some of their traditional territory. There was an almost appealing insecurity in American men that I hadn’t properly appreciated before getting involved with Alberto, whose behavior seemed part of an earlier age.
“We could try to drive back to Rome,” I said.
“No. It’s much too far. The hotels along the way might be full by now, with no one to attend to anyone, and the service stations will probably be closed.” Then his voice got more strained, his accent thicker. “Would you want to pass your time now running a service station or attending to hotel guests?”
“I guess not.” I didn’t want to pass the time looking at chateaux, either, trying to pretend everything was still normal. There wasn’t even any way at the moment to find out what was happening in the rest of the world, since Alberto’s car radio had died during the drive from Lyon to Paris. I was about to suggest that we head back to Orléans and take our chances there when the sky suddenly turned white.
Alberto hit the brakes. I covered my face with my hands, thinking wildly of laser beams and advanced weapons, then peered between my fingers. The sky was still white; the stone wall along the road rippled, as if I were seeing it through water, and the forest beyond was black under the piercing light.
I don’t know how long it lasted. There was no sound of explosions, no heat, no firestorms, quakes, or other signs of destruction, only the bright whiteness of the sky and the blackness of the trees on the other side of the rippling wall. I glanced to my right and saw that the sky to the west was still blue, the flat land green. I turned back. The white light vanished abruptly; the black leaves of the trees on the other side of the wall were once again green.
Alberto crossed himself. We sat there for a while, and then he started the car again.
They were scanning us, I thought. They would satisfy their curiosity about us and then go on their way. I was so busy trying to reassure myself that we were through a gate and on the road leading to Chambord’s parking lot and visitors’ entrance before I noticed our surroundings again.
Alberto sucked in his breath; I looked up. That was when I saw the traffic ahead.
Cars and buses were speeding straight at us along both lanes of the road. Horns beeped and wailed, warning us to get out of the way. Alberto slowed, then quickly drove onto the shoulder and into the grass. Vehicles raced past us, heading toward the gate. The cars sped ahead of the buses, but even the buses were barreling along, pebbles flying from under their wheels.
I stared after them until the long procession was out of sight. “If they’re all in such a hurry to get out of here,” I said, “maybe we’d better follow them.”
Alberto rested his hands on the wheel. “To where?”
“Anywhere.”
“And what will we do when we run out of gasoline? Staying here is as reasonable as going somewhere else. Think, Lois—where could we be completely safe now?”
I was silent.
“And I must confess to being curious about why all those people were driving away so rapidly.”
Of course, I thought. Alberto would never admit to being afraid of anything, even when there was good reason to be fearful. But I didn’t feel like arguing with him, and everything looked peaceful now. In the distance, pale stone towers seemed to be floating against the sky, a magical place apart from this world; that had to be the chateau. Maybe all the people in the cars and buses had simply panicked after seeing the sky brighten. They would come back when they came to their senses.
Alberto drove back onto the road. The parking lot was empty when we reached it. So were the walkways near the souvenir shops and cafés of the tiny town. Alberto parked near an ice-cream counter. We got out and wandered along the street in the direction of the château.
Beyond the rows of trees up ahead, the ticket booth was empty, its door open. I could see the chateau clearly now. Chambord loomed over a vast plain of cropped grass. The pale stone facade was crowned by four large towers and several smaller towers and turrets. One slender tower topped by a dome, taller than the others, stood in the center. It was hard to accept the structure’s size, its hugeness; only a megalomaniac could have built such a castle. But Chambord’s massive- ness and solidity were also reassuring. We would be safe here after all, I told myself. The château would protect us.
The sky was growing gray, the autumn air colder. A voice behind me shouted, “Hey!”
I spun around. A tall lanky white-haired man stood in an open doorway. “Hey!” the man called out again. “You speak English? Anglais?”
“Yes,” Alberto replied, “I do.”
“Everybody just took off—didn’t even wait for us.”
The stranger had a flat Midwestern accent and looked harmless enough. Alberto strode toward him; I followed. “We saw them,” Alberto said. “They ran us off the road.”
“Scared, tha
t’s what they were. We were walking to the castle there, ahead of all the others on our bus. Couldn’t get back in time.” The man motioned with one hand. “Better come inside.”
We entered the building. Wooden tables and chairs stood against one wall; a bar ran along the other side of the room. A stocky woman with short curly gray hair was perched on one of the stools. Like the man, she was wearing a windbreaker, sweatshirt, loose jeans, and athletic shoes.
“You’re Americans,” I said as we sat down. “So am I.”
“Well, I’ll be,” the man said. “You don’t look American.”
“I’ve been living in Italy.” I wondered if I would ever see my own country again.
Alberto introduced us. The couple’s names, they told us, were Edna and Jim Haworth, and they came from a suburb of Kansas City. Jim had been in France with the army toward the end of World War II and had brought his wife there on a trip with several other retired people, all of whom had apparently fled on one of the buses with their tour guide.
“Didn’t even wait for us,” Edna Haworth said, shaking her head.
“Just took off like a bat outta hell,” Jim Haworth muttered, “right after the light changed and the air got all thick. Heard this sound, like a big giant heart beating, and by then my hair was standing up. It went on and on, that sound and the rippling air and all, till I like to be sick. Folks were running out of the castle there, trying to make it to the parking lot—damn near trampled us. Edna was hanging onto my arm like a little kid, and then we started for the bus, but by the time we got to here, they were already driving off.”
“We saw something strange,” I said, “The sky going white, and—”
“Didn’t just see it, young lady. Felt it, right in my guts. I was scared. Edna felt it, too.”
“We didn’t feel anything like that,” I said.
“It’s them.” Edna gestured toward the ceiling. “Has to be.”
She didn’t have to say what she meant. I thought of how quickly everything had changed in just three days. Three days ago, I was trying to figure out how to tell Alberto I was going to leave him and go back to New York. Three days ago, nobody had even suspected that visitors from outer space were suddenly going to show up. A physicist interviewed on CNN had said something about the alien vessel stitching its way through spacetime, which was his way of trying to explain how it had appeared near Earth so abruptly, without any warning.
The aliens had come here in a spherical ship the size of an asteroid—if that alien globe could be called a ship. They had sent no messages, no envoys, no signs of hostile intent, no signals, no greetings at all. The Russians had two cosmonauts in orbit, and the United States had begun a space shuttle mission several days early, replacing the scheduled crew with members of the armed forces; they now had some footage of the vessel from a distance, and the aliens still had not reacted. No one was even sure if there were any aliens inside the ship; one theory was that it housed an artificial intelligence, a computer mind of sorts. Nobody knew why it was here, or what the aliens—or the artificial intelligence—wanted.
No wonder people were starting to get unhinged. Anyone could understand malevolent aliens attacking the world, or kindly aliens arriving to solve all our problems. But this ship was just sitting out there, inside the orbit of the moon, and we didn’t know anything more about it than we had three days ago. Waiting without knowing anything—that was the worst of it.
Alberto took out his cigarettes, lit one, then slipped his leather case back into his pocket. I had long since given up what he called my puritanical American habit of chiding him about his smoking, and the Haworths didn’t object; maybe they were thinking we had more important things to worry about now.
I noticed the TV over the bar. “There must be some news on,” I said. That was a safe bet; there hadn’t been anything except news on TV ever since the alien ship had appeared. “We haven’t heard anything since leaving Paris.”
“We tried it,” Jim said. “Set’s not working.”
We sat there for a while. I suppose we were all thinking that some of the people who had left might come back. At last Jim said, “Well, what do we do now?”
We searched through the souvenir shops and cafes. That was Alberto’s idea. The doors were unlocked, the rooms empty; it seemed that everyone had fled. Edna and Jim weren’t surprised; they remembered how terrified they had been, how the impulse to get away from the terror they had felt had overwhelmed them. Occasionally, we tried one of the radios or TVs we found in a few of the buildings, trying to pick up some news, but none of them worked. A power failure couldn’t be the cause; the lights were still working. Maybe the government had ordered an end to the broadcasts. A couple of ministers had been claiming that several reporters were only adding to the panic with their speculations.
“Didn’t look like too many people were here to begin with,” Edna said as she and I sat down at one of the tables under the trees lining the walkway.
“There wouldn’t have been as many at this time of year.”
“I know. We wanted to avoid the big crowds. That’s why we came in October—it was cheaper, too.” Edna gazed toward Alberto and Jim, who were walking toward the empty ticket booth. “Funny. I don’t feel scared at all now. I almost feel glad to be here.”
I knew what she meant. I was feeling the same way. Under the circumstances, I should have been feeling anxious, jumpy, afraid, despairing, or depressed, all of which were common enough mental states for me anyway. Instead, I was feeling almost reassured; that bothered me.
We got up and joined the men. Alberto and Jim were standing by the booth, staring at the chateau. The sky still looked gray and overcast, but Chambord’s pale walls and cupola-topped towers glowed with a golden light. A few horses, dwarfed by the massive chateau, were grazing on the groomed grass near the moat.
“Where’d the horses come from?” I heard Jim ask.
“They use them for the carriage rides,” Edna replied. “That’s what our guide said, remember? Patrick was telling us about how most of the woods around this castle is a big game park where tourists aren’t allowed, and then he said that the horses—”
“Someone is with them,” Alberto said. I squinted and glimpsed a tiny human form before it disappeared around the far tower. “Perhaps we should investigate.”
I was thinking that we should leave, but the chateau drew me. It was strange to feel so drawn to it, especially when a small part of my mind was insistently telling me that we should get out of here and head somewhere else. I would be safe here. The rest of my mind was insisting on that, drowning out my fears.
Alberto drove along a walkway to the chateau. He and Jim Haworth sat in the front of the car; Edna and I were wedged into the back.
“So you’ve been living in Italy,” Edna said.
“In Rome, for about a year.”
“Is that where you two met?” She smiled. “‘Three Coins in the Fountain’ is one of my favorite movies—so romantic.”
Older American women often seemed to find my situation romantic. I had once thought of it as romantic myself. My taste for romance was probably why none of my relationships had lasted very long; the romance always wore off in the end.
“Actually, we met in New York,” I said, “trying to hail a cab on the same corner. Alberto was there on business—his firm imports a lot of American products. We ended up going to dinner, and one thing led to another, and a couple of months later, I was living in Rome.”
“How adventurous.”
I had never been adventurous; it only sounded that way. However great my longing for romance and a break from my everyday life, I always covered my bets. My job was safe at the ad agency because my best friend owned the agency; Karen had faxed only last month to say I could come back any time. My apartment had been subletted, so I would still have a place to live if I returned to New York. It wasn’t my style either to burn my bridges behind me or to commit myself completely by abandoning my previous life. I had r
ead that Francois I, Chambord’s builder, had needed thousands of horses to bring his luggage, servants, and courtiers to this chateau just for short visits. I could sympathize with that. I took all my baggage with me, psychologically at least.
All of my past caution might not make any difference now, I reminded myself. At the moment, there might be little security for anyone. That thought should have brought on another wave of despair and fear. Instead, I found myself placidly looking forward to a closer look at the magnificent château. Something’s wrong, my inner voice told me; I ignored it.
The great château was even larger than I realized. We could have walked around it, following the wide pathway that led around the moat to the entrance on the other side, but it would have been a long walk. If any visitors were still inside, I had the feeling we could wander through the chateau for days without ever finding them. Chambord was a world in itself; I no longer feared what might be happening elsewhere.
The main entrance was in the center of a wall; the doors and the gate of the arched entryway were open. The towers of the keep rose behind the wall, still golden even under the overcast sky. We got out and went through the entrance to the pebbled courtyard in front of the keep.
“How strange,” Alberto said softly. “I feel as if I belong here.” In the past, I would have teased him about his arrogance, but the same feeling of belonging had stolen over me. Perhaps it was the strangeness of our situation, of being alone in this monument to Renaissance architecture while the world outside waited—for what?
“Know what you mean, son,” Jim was saying to Alberto. “I feel kind of easy here, too. Almost seems like we got all scared for nothing.”
Across the courtyard, the two doors leading into the keep were also open. We walked toward the steps that led to them. “It’s almost as if someone wants us to come inside,” I said.
“Probably the folks trying to get away just didn’t bother to close up,” Edna said.
The Mountain Cage Page 23