by Tom Crockett
Gradually she lost enthusiasm for the pilgrim’s road. She stopped looking.
But there was another climb, deeper in her muscles, that she recalled now. Not lush and green like this, but hot and hard across sun-blasted stones. She’d been climbing with Christophe through the mountain passes on the northern border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. They had not been alone. They were tagging along with smugglers bringing American arms supplied by the CIA to the Mujahedin guerrillas.
She had few illusions about the side she was photographing. Their fundamentalism would in time make them terrorists, and they would not know they’d crossed any line. But for now, they were fighting the good fight, resisting the full weight of the Soviet war machine with weapons that could be carried on the backs of camels and donkeys.
It had been an excruciating ordeal, that climb, made worse by the men’s clothing she wore. Her hair had been oiled, tied back, and piled under a wool hat. Sweat, gritty with dust and sand, had dripped constantly into her eyes. Her breasts had been bound tight to her chest with long strips of what had once been a turban. She’d worn a rough wool shirt, heavy brown vest, baggy trousers, and old leather sandals. She’d balanced her cameras and film on either side of her in tired leather pouches.
She’d fooled no one in the party she traveled with. No matter how many days she had been away from water, soap, shampoo, or perfume, the men could still smell the woman in her. She also hadn’t looked, for all her efforts, nearly mannish enough to pass close inspection. But, at a distance she could pass for a man. And this was all she needed, to avoid drawing attention to the party she traveled with.
Christophe had been dressed as roughly as she, though he carried it better than she did. He’d had the luxury of removing his hat, or opening his shirt to take advantage of a light breeze. He’d been bronzed by the sun to a shade darker, but more reddish, than her own complexion. His hair had been black and he’d had a rough stubble of beard on his angular face. He and Marina had been the same age, nearly the same height, and strangely similar in some of their features. If Christophe, who had an ear for dialects and spoke several languages fluently, had said that Marina was his sister, he would have been believed.
Still, despite her discomfort, she recalled walking along behind him, distracted by erotic fantasies. They had been lovers for six months, in and out of Afghanistan. When they traveled across borders like this as man and man, they had the added thrill of finding ways to make love secretly as they camped at night. Sometimes they would lay close, as all the men did for warmth, and share a single blanket. Feigning sleep, Christophe would explore her body beneath her clothes and bandages, making her nipples ache and her thighs quiver, and causing her to mimic the shifting of a restless sleeper to disguise her orgasms.
Other times they would wander away from camp after dark and find some sheltered ledge upon which to lay down together. She would let him open her shirt, then, and unwrap her breasts in the moonlight, the stone still warm beneath her, the air cool around them. Their unwashed bodies did not distract them, rather the raw scent of sweat and attraction added to their excitement. Sometimes Marina would insist that they both remove all their clothes and make love naked and exposed. Other times it was only important that he take her clothes from her. If Christophe kept rough shirt and trousers on as he slipped against her, it made her feel more open, more vulnerable. She sometimes imagined herself being taken half against her will.
She still could not cry out when making love. When the surging rhythm crested within her she would pull Christophe down over her mouth to silence her screams—so much of her passion held inside.
These were the things she’d thought about as she walked along behind Christophe. It had taken her mind off the heat, the boredom, the discomfort.
She’d loved Christophe. There had been things they disagreed about, sometimes violently, but she had not loved him less for their arguments. The thing she’d hated most was the rifle he carried over his shoulder.
Christophe had been a good photographer. He had been lucky and brave and smart when it came to getting good photographs, but that had not been enough for him. Marina believed that life with the hard mountain rebels had challenged Christophe’s notion of what it was to be a man, to believe in things, and to fight for them. He’d still carried a Nikon, but he’d also carried a captured Kalyshnikov rifle. He had practiced with it and knew how to use it, and that scared Marina.
She had tried to explain to Christophe her belief in the shield a camera wrapped around a photographer, but it had been no use. He would not convert to her religion. There had been times when they had separated. She wondered if he had used his rifle during those times. She was afraid he had. The men had seemed to treat him differently. They had a name of respect for him.
It wasn’t that she believed him wrong for wanting to do more than just record events. She had felt the same pull herself—the desire to be more “in” life than “beside” it had come over her numerous times. But she felt, perhaps, less distanced from the world by her profession than Christophe had. When the photographing was good, when she was in the channel of the moment, she felt no distance at all from her subjects, her world. Afterward perhaps there was guilt, or remorse, or some soul-numbing wall that went up, but in the moment she truly felt linked to everything and everyone around her.
She had been thinking these thoughts as she’d trudged up the steep mountain track, lost in the rhythm of her stride and her breath and the banging of camera bags against her hips. Some part of her must have heard the familiar rumble of helicopter rotors, because she’d found a camera in her right hand even as she’d run into Christophe, who had stopped suddenly in front of her.
They had all stopped. Strung out along the narrow trail, some had looked up, some simply listened with cocked heads. The donkeys had been skittish, stepping backward and forward, constricted by the wall of stone to their right and the drop to their left. Bringing up the rear, Marina had taken several steps backward. If they had to run, she hadn’t wanted to be trampled by stampeding pack animals. She looked for some place that might serve as cover.
Christophe was looking for cover, too. She thought it was for the both of them.
“Down there,” he yelled over the growing roar.
They could not yet see them, but the helicopters had been close. He’d taken Marina by the arm and led her to the edge of the mountain path. Just below the trail an overhanging boulder had offered some shelter from above. It was a steep drop but a short one. She’d thought they were making it together, but when she hit the loose sand and gravel, sliding hard into the boulder, she had been alone.
“Christophe!” she’d yelled. “No!”
He had pulled the rifle from his shoulder and was aiming it along the ridge above them at the point they knew the helicopters would appear.
“No, damnit!” Marina was screaming, but Christophe could not hear her.
What had happened next took seconds, but in her memory, replayed countless times over the years, it had become an agonizing slow-motion ballet. She’d brought her camera up to her eye, focused, and zoomed in on Christophe in one smooth, practiced twist of her wrist. Perhaps some part of her wanted to extend her shield around him. She’d brought him up sharp in her viewfinder, caught the first of the dark spinning blades emerging over the ridge in front of him. She’d pressed the shutter button and let the motordrive spin the film forward.
Little clouds of smoke had popped from the Kalyshnikov. Christophe’s shoulder had jerked back repeatedly. Marina remembered a blue bruise on Christophe’s shoulder. He’d made some excuse for it, and she’d accepted it.
She’d seen him, one eye to the viewfinder, one eye open, tracking. She’d seen when the little jerks of the rifle’s recoil had become a big slam against his chest. He’d spun once or twice, still clutching the rifle. Marina had seen no blood. Perhaps he’s simply lost his balance, she’d thought.
He’d come to a stop, still standing. He’d bent at the
waist, leaning on the rifle, its smoking muzzle in the dirt. He’d clutched at his chest, then pulled his hand away. It had been moist and red. He’d studied it, turning his hand over and back.
Then he’d turned his head and looked at Marina. He’d reached out his hand to her, as if she could somehow come to him, somehow help him. He’d taken a few staggering steps toward her, but she had not moved. He’d looked at her quizzically. He had not looked sad or in pain, merely surprised. Then he’d smiled at her. And she had realized why he was smiling. She had been looking at him through the viewfinder of her camera. No, it had been more than that. She had not been calling his name, not crying, not running to drag him to cover. She had been photographing him.
The next moment his knees had buckled and he’d dropped down and forward. He had not moved again.
She could never remember how long the little firefight took. It had been so quiet in the mountains, then so loud, then, as quickly, so quiet again. She’d heard a whirring in her ear long after the helicopters had gone and the gunfire had ceased. She’d realized she still had her finger on the shutter release of the Nikon and that the motor drive had still been whining even though she had shot her whole roll.
There had been survivors, but not many. There had not been enough of them to even bring the bodies of their comrades down off the mountain. She had buried Christophe as best she could beneath a pile of stones. She’d buried him with his rifle and said a few words for him. She’d built a cairn to mark the place he lay. Marina had taken the St. Christopher’s medallion he’d always worn to give to Christophe’s mother. For his sister, she had taken his journal and the little Leica rangefinder he still carried. For herself she’d taken nothing. While he had been alive he had given her everything she needed or wanted from him.
She still had the roll of film she shot that day. It had been in her camera bag in her cabin on the ship. She had never developed it.
She had begun to hate herself then, to hate in some little way how she hid behind the lens of her camera. Some little shadow was born in her on that mountain—some infection of the spirit. She could replay the event in her mind and examine it rationally. She knew that she had brought her camera up to her eye by instinct. It was what every good photojournalist did. It was what Christophe should have done. If he’d remembered to be a photographer and not a soldier, he would not have died. She could get angry at him for this. She also knew that the firefight had lasted only seconds. There was nothing she could have done for Christophe short of dying with him. But, in the end, none of these facts mattered. She dwelt on Christophe’s last image of her—coldly documenting his death—and she could find no forgiveness for herself.
It was not that she had lost the man she loved, it was that she had failed him, failed herself in some way. She had thought to hold back death with the talismanic power of stainless steel and ground glass. But had instead silently invited death to walk with her.
* * *
When the trail Marina was climbing grew so steep as to be an exercise in scrambling over boulders, it suddenly changed from a straight course up to a series of switchbacks. She also moved out of the cover of trees for the first time. The sun was setting behind her and that was a good sign. She knew that she was still moving in the right direction.
She could see down into a valley, over a lower set of hills and ridges and then down to the beach. Beyond the beach, a ring of coral reefs seemed to spread out half a mile into the sea, forming a pale halo around the island. It was where she had come from. She knew that instinctively, but there were no features she recognized from her vantage point. She thought perhaps she could see the cove and the little waterfall and pool near Rafael’s hut, but she wasn’t sure.
She could not see much of the eastern side of the island, but she could see what was directly ahead. The trail wound back and forth up the west face of the slope before disappearing over the crest. The way looked easier than the climbing she had been doing, but it also looked as if it would take time. Without the switchbacks it would have been much too steep and dangerous for her to climb. Avoiding the switchbacks was out of the question, as was any hope of circumnavigating the peak. The only way was up and over. She glanced down at the sun on the horizon. It seemed to be falling fast into the sea.
She turned back to the trail and hurried on.
She wasn’t certain where her urgency came from. Perhaps her dream of jumping again from the Blue Pearl lingered with her. Perhaps it was that voice that had called her. She wasn’t afraid of death. She had faced death, fully willing to go down that path, but she had learned things she had not known. She had a chance that she knew she would not get twice. She did not intend to waste it.
The long looping trail took even longer than she had feared. It was dark when she passed between two huge and eroded boulders to cross the western crest of the mountain. But even then she still hadn’t fully crossed over.
She saw now that the mountain was a volcano. Ancient and perhaps extinct, but still a volcano. There was a deep caldera—a bowl sunk down on the hardened lava dome. Its base was filled with water—a still, black pool—sister to the mirror pool Atana had shown her. The path to the other side led down and up the far wall. It looked steep and it was hard to judge the true distance, but there was no other way. The moon was not yet up and she could just barely find her way by the light of the stars.
She wondered if she couldn’t wait out the night and cross this place in the morning. She had, after all, made it to the top. The mountain had come to symbolize a turning point in her journey back to the living world. Perhaps it was only a symbol. Was crossing over truly necessary?
She knew that it was.
With a dark foreboding she descended into the heart of the shadowy volcano. She picked her way down the trail. The black pool was larger than it had appeared. As she went down into the bowl of the volcano, the terrain changed dramatically. Glittering black sand and rock surrounded her. She could see nothing green, but dead, twisted branches seemed to claw up from the ground around her.
She had gone down several hundred yards, almost falling twice, before she heard the voices.
“Marina.” She recognized the voice. It was the voice from her dream the night before, a voice so like the Turtle Woman, but also different. This was the voice that had tried to lure her back. For a moment she wondered if she was asleep. But no, she hurt too much to be asleep. She didn’t answer the voice.
“Marina. You’ve learned so much, you’re so close.” Marina felt as if she was hearing the voice in stereo. It seemed to be coming from all around her.
“Come back to me.”
“Go back to them.”
Marina heard both of these statements at the same time. They sounded similar, as if they had come from the same person, but now Marina could sense something different. It was not that the voice was coming from all around her. Two different voices were calling her. They both sounded like the Turtle Woman she had known and they both sounded different.
“Go!”
“Stay!”
Marina ignored both voices. She was coming down to the pool now. The path seemed level. It appeared to run close to the pool in a half circle before ascending the eastern ridge on the other side. The bank into the pool was black and steep. It looked slippery and it sparkled with the shimmering black sand around its edge.
“What are you most afraid of, Marina?” It was eerie to hear her name called by the disembodied voice.
“You must face what you fear most before crossing this place.” This was the second voice. Still Marina tried to ignore them both. She kept her eyes on the trail at her feet and tried not to look at either the pond or the high circular wall around her.
“Marina.”
“Marina.”
Both voices called softly, seductively. She risked a look at the black pool. Something moved. Twin ripples spread out from different places in the pond as if two pebbles had landed at the same moment. She stopped and watched. As the wave patte
rns crossed, the interference pattern seemed to run back to the source of the ripples. At first she thought she saw little islands, then she saw shells, turtle shells.
Two women stood up slowly at the same time. It was the Turtle Woman who had helped Marina and what appeared to be a perfect mirror image of her, only Marina could not tell who was the original and who the reflection.
She was afraid of them both, but felt malice from neither of them. One seemed to want her to continue, the other wanted her to come back, but there was no self-interest in their pleas. It seemed to Marina as if this was simply what they were made to say.
“What do you fear most?” Was this the one who wanted her to go forward or turn back? Marina wasn’t sure.
“There is a way for you not to face that thing, Marina,” the second woman said softly. They both began to move toward her, wading through the thigh-deep black water gracefully.
“You cannot avoid this. It is one of the reasons you came here.”
“I can help you. Come with me and never feel pain or fear again.” This was the one who wanted her to turn back. Marina sensed this instinctively. She was the one Marina feared most. But no sooner had she identified the Turtle Woman’s dark twin than they crossed in front of each other and crossed again. Marina lost track.
“What is it you are not remembering?”
“What is it you do not want to remember?”
It was hopeless. She could not keep them separate in her mind. She wanted to turn, to run, but her legs seemed frozen.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Marina cried, addressing them for the first time.
“Come with me.”
“Why are you doing this to me? I thought you wanted to help me.”
“We do.” They both spoke in unison, and it was chilling.
“Think of what you cannot remember.” Only one of them spoke now, but which one?
“How can I think of what I can’t remember?” Marina asked.
“Yes, how?” One of the women was closer to her and reached out a hand. Marina could not have reached it from where she stood, but it made her want to step off the path and slide down the bank into the pool.