The Woman Hidden

by Lucas Mattias

  “Told you I’d be back.” He whispered, closing the door behind himself. “I hope it didn’t bother you, our conversation.”

  Jason crossed the room he hadn’t visited for a long while and put the plate on the nightstand, removing the fallen lamp previously knocked down – a horrible French piece of furniture he had been given by an old friend, years before – and throwing it on the top shelf of the closet on the corner of the room, something he had always wanted to do. It was incredible to see how, after such a long time, the old wardrobe had kept its perfection and glow, always reminding him of his long gone childhood close to one of those. The carpet in the room had also kept its softness and cleanliness, in that colors’ profusion under the bed, which was enough to warm up the room along the heating system. Jason glanced to the window of the room and, although it was just a guestroom on the ground floor, it still had an amazing view to the mountains and the distant and cold lake far away from them inside those strong and solid wooden structures. He stared the distant lake with its frozen surface for a few seconds; the winter was just starting, after all.

  He was still lost in his thoughts, impressed with how those walls looked fresh after having that chalet for more than ten years, when the woman coughed, turning his attention back to her.

  “I…” She coughed again, it was difficult to talk. “I...”

  “Hey, it’s okay.”

  Just then he realized, as he got closer to the stranger, that part of the morning glow on her face was not simply sunlight, but also tears. The cough was not a simple cough; it was a sob. She held her ring finger strongly, spinning the ring around her long and thin finger, while her lips tried to put words together.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “It’s normal”, Jason got even closer and, after some hesitation, he sat beside the stranger, considering whether it was a clever choice to lay a hand over her shoulder in comfort. He decided then that it would be reasonable and did it anyway. “My son once fell from the stairs and he couldn’t remember the re—”

  She turned her face to Jason, her lips trying to compose a faded smile, a smile that seemed to say something more and that had, imprinted on it, an unmeasurable sorrow. Her lips were still trembling when she blinked her wet eyes and shook her head, still facing Jason.

  “I can’t remember anything.”

  What are you supposed to do in such situation? Jason clearly didn’t know. Even though it was rude of Marco to want her ready to go and disappear right away, having a stranger woman without memories in his house was a bigger burden for him to carry in that moment. Before thousands of ideas and frugal thoughts could cross his mind, he did what he thought to be more sensible – he embraced her inside his strong arms when she leaned her tired and bruised body onto him.

  And she wept.

  II

  He inhaled again and allowed the smoke to leave his nostrils slowly, peacefully enjoying the calmness feeling it brought. The air was deadly cold and the snow would soon return to falling endlessly, but he needed that moment alone, outside.

  The posterior terrace was an extended balcony, with a stair access to the pool, which used to be opened only during summer, and it also had a magnificent view from the valley around, filled by a wide carpet of pine tree tops and the snow sprinkled mountains in the back. Behind Jason, glass walls with sliding doors gave him a clear view of the house interior from beyond the kitchen, while he enjoyed his nicotine fix and the moment he had taken for himself to put some ideas in order.

  In front of him, on the wooden table from the deck, he had an open laptop beside a mug of coffee that was already cooling down as the pointer on his screen waited for the next words to be typed down.

  Nothing.

  He was not interested on writing or planning stories, he didn’t want to check his bank account balance nor the weather forecast for the next few days, he just wanted a moment for himself, a moment to be sure about what he was doing and about to do, to be sure of what was happening inside those four walls behind him.

  After the nervous breakdown he had seen the stranger fall into – the one he still didn’t know the name – he suggested her to eat and made available everything she would need to make herself a little more comfortable: clothes, clean towels and even the location from the TV remote. She had decided to take a shower and he decided to wait for her, believing that having that time for herself would somehow reverse the damaged memory of hers.

  Julianne. She looked like Julianne. Or maybe he was just associating her features to the ones of Julianne Moore. Kate? Perhaps a richer name, something more elaborated, something that would connect to that porcelain skin and the imported ginger hair, something like…

  “It is soothing, out here.”

  Her voice caught him unprepared, completely kicking him out of his trance. It was something similar to a whisper, but an unexpected one. He turned back and saw the stranger standing by the glass sliding door, quietly observing the immensity of the nature that surrounded them. Her hair was still wet, although she was very well protected under some layers of coats on top of a soft and long robe that was dragging behind her feet. She was less tall than he had expected, seeing her lying down or being carried away hadn’t given her the best first impression.

  “I hope the clothes smell clean.”

  He took another drag from his cigarette, releasing the smoke along the wind, away from them.

  She nodded. It was then that Jason realized how red her eyes were, as well as her nose. She had been crying, maybe during the whole bath.

  “Worry not.”

  “Luckily I had those clothes. They belonged to my wife.”

  He said it in such a mournful manner that he noticed when her eyes changed for a moment, abandoning the glimmering to become something stiffer, rueful.

  “I’m sorry.” The stranger walked towards Jason, stopping next to one of the chairs. “May I?”

  “Please.” He replied, offering her more space and shutting down his computer for good, ignoring his postponed works. “Something on your mind?”

  She shook her head, still blankly staring the horizon line, quite lost.

  “Nothing. Maybe with time, I... It might return slowly.” She turned to Jason. “Do you know what it is like to wake up one day and not remember who you are at all?”

  He shrugged, finally ending the cigarette and putting it out by pressing it against the near ashtray, a simple crystal piece.

  “No, but sometimes I wish I could share the feeling.”

  She stiffened her lips in a painful smile, turning her eyes down again, facing her hands where her wedding ring lay.

  “I have those excoriations and cuts and yet what hurts the most aren’t the bruises, but not knowing how I might’ve gotten them.”

  “We found you on the woods, close to a dirt road.” He said, trying to help. “I can’t tell you how long you’d been there, but I’m pretty sure that had we taken a little longer to find you, you wouldn’t have even survived.”

  She laughed in a fast puff through her nostrils, as if almost enjoying the irony of the situation.

  “Maybe by chance,” He went on. “Marco found you in the middle of his morning jog and called me to help. We thought you were dead and then I found your pulse and avoided the hypothermia.”

  “Doctor?”

  “Hunter, as a hobby. You learn.”

  She took a deep and long breath, leaning her head backwards while her eyes remained closed.

  “Clarice.”

  “Who?”

  “My name. I believe it to be Clarice.” She kept a calm voice, a melodic and eloquent whisper, a voice Jason would easily place on a kindergarten teacher. Or maybe that’s how he would describe it, with his writer’s mind.

  The woman, then, removed her wedding ring from her finger, having some difficulties with the task, and placed it on the table, close to Jason’s mug. He took her small ring between his own fingers and observed the inner face of it, where two names had been carved do
wn – Clarice & Nathan.

  Entwined names, matrimony, marriage. Jason analyzed the names and observed the stranger – now, Clarice – for some moments, giving in to his own thoughts once again. It was incredible how he could see now that, beneath the lifeless body found on the woods, in the snow, there was a history, a book, a long and complex narrative about an entire life, scars that had been opened and closed through time and by the time, impressions to which nobody had access but herself. He hoovered on how fragile the human being can be, having a whole world inside of itself, thousands of boxes with names, other histories, harnessed frustrations and expectations that, in a blink of an eye or with a mere shock against the hard ground, could disappear, leaving behind a thin skinned vase exposed to the fate’s dangers and pressures of the external world. The necessity of knowing who we are and the consciousness about where we’ve come from and the place we are going to suddenly became ethereal. Maybe those questionings were, after all, empty and unnecessary, once knowing that all of this would, someday, vanish, having never been under our control. The emptiness of feeling or being empty. The emptiness of becoming empty and falling into a limbo of oblivion.

  “It’s funny, though.” She went back on speaking, between sighs. “Not knowing who I am, because at the same time I know things that have no apparent reason for being here. I know that there are some studies showing that memories can return through sensory stimuli from objects and things that might refer to intimate bonds…” She laughed. “What could ever be more intimate than a wedding ring?”

  Jason exhaled, showing his similar admiration for Clarice’s perception of things.

  “And there’s this sentence echoing in my mind, maybe some quote… ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’.”

  “Alphonse Karr.” He replied and he noticed when her face got lost. “French writer.”

  “So it is a quote, indeed.”

  “From one of my favorite writers, yes.” He continued, although his voice had lost the rhythm at the end of the sentence. “One of the reasons I met my wife.”

  The woman took some time to process the information. Maybe only then she had realized what he meant to say about his wife. She hadn’t left or disappeared on a Canadian forest.

  “She died.” Clarice came to her conclusions, in a comment that probably went out louder than she had expected.

  “Three years ago.” Jason took a second with his eyes still lost on the wedding ring between his fingers while his mind floated on endless bonds that, before expected, would come to an end. “Coincidences.”

  Clarice tried on a soft smile. Although the conversation seemed to cheer her a little, it was clear that she was still caught on not knowing who she was, caught on the inexistence of any other memory of piece of herself that she could find and conclude something else. There, mostly, she would certainly not find it.

  He slid the ring along the table, being careful enough not to damage the beautiful stone incrusted on the circlet, and returned it to its owner, the mysterious Clarice.

  “I can tell you that you are a rich woman. From a wealthy background, at least.”

  Clarice stared him bewildered, maybe not sure on how to react. She blankly stared at him for a few seconds, which made him unpleasantly uncomfortable, until she opened a slight smile without any trace of pain and let a laugh out.

  “Really? What reasons made you say that?”

  He lifted one brow, seeing there one of the reasons.

  “First of all, you speak a little fancy.” He held still while she laughed again. “And I have to say, the clothes we found you with… That’s not something you find on a thrift shop. I’ll even say in advance that I feel for your fur coat, we couldn’t save it.”

  Her eyes flicked a bit to the ring and, finally, to something distant and calm in the wilderness. She had some sort of serenity around her, some kind of peace that Jason hadn’t witnessed in a while.

  “You clearly have traits of someone who has been well treated. Good studies, skin care and, well… look around you. It’s not like you are on vacation in a place meant for the general population.”

  “Besides a hunter for hobby, are you also a police officer?”

  He smiled back.

  “Part of my job consists on observing people and wondering about them. I learn how to capture those details and transcript them, giving life to people who should be as complete as we are…” He stopped himself when he noticed what he was implying.

  And Clarice seemed to have noticed what he had concluded. Complete as we are with memories and reminders, feelings and motivations. Something she was not, not in that moment.

  “You are a writer.”

  “Jason Flyce, nice to meet you.”

  In a humorous gesture, he offered her his hand, which she accepted and shook it. Clarice flinched as she did it, recalling her still hurting arm from the bruises that were so mysterious as their owner.

  “The world needs more people like you, Jason Flyce.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone who’s willing to care about a stranger who was found in the woods? Not all people are good Samaritans.”

  “I don’t think I qualify as a good Samaritan.”

  She did not reply, there was no need for that. On the other hand, she remained distant, observing the wedding ring on the wooden table, lost in her own silent thoughts. Jason could question her what she was thinking of, or he could just wonder what was happening inside her mind. Maybe they were questionings about the life she had in the past; at that point, it was possible to assume she would be torturing herself already, getting lost among those intense tides of regret and pain for having lost basically everything that composed her.

  Then she started shaking. Clarice’s hands were uncontrollably trembling on top of the table, causing the ashtray to shake too against the metal ring. Slowly, he noticed her breathing become irregular and irregular, as she tried to recover her breath and take it deeper, failing while her lips tried to say something. Her eyes, so pacific moments before, now were oscillating as if the memories had decided to gently return, probably some heavy and difficult to digest memories all of sudden. For some people, not remembering the past was a privilege and Jason, better than anyone, knew that painful truth.

  He put his hand over hers, trying to calm her down, but as a response all he got was a sudden jump from Clarice, who pulled her hand away from him, trying to hug herself, trying to feel protected. Something was really wrong.

  “Nathan…” She whispered, her voice cracking.

  “Clarice… try to breath.”

  “I don’t know…” Her heavy breathing became a long sigh, a turbulence just before the real storm hit. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “You remember something.” He didn’t question, he assumed. It was visible that she was disturbed due to that sudden memory.

  She looked at him and he was able to capture the exact moment in which her tears saturated on the surface of her eyes and a large drop rolled down her skin. Followed by another one. And another. Harder than not knowing who you are, Jason concluded, is learning who you really were before.

  The woman put her hands back on the table, and Jason saw in that another chance to take them inside his to offer some heat, comfort. A cold strong breeze blew over them again, but being so immerse in those feelings allowed him to block the wry coldness to keep on staring her. Jason wouldn’t ask, he didn’t want to know, not in that moment. The memory had struck her hard, deconstructing all he had seen and built about Clarice in his mind thus far. She seemed extremely strong up to a few minutes ago and now he wasn’t sure about it anymore. As her mind, her skin seemed cold, fragile porcelain about to break itself in a million pieces. For that reason, he kept on holding it on, keeping her cracks still, supporting her.

  “It’s alright, Clarice. If you want to lie down again…”

  “Thank you. I just need… some air.”

  Her face turned away from his and, although for
kilometers ahead there was nothing but beautiful mountains and an ineffable lake, he surely knew she wasn’t seeing it. She could have even had her eyes closed, as the tears flowed down gently. He noticed the tremble of her shoulders as she deeply inhaled the frozen air and when she cleared her throat, maybe trying to conceal the lump that was there.

  “If you want to, we could go to a hospital… or maybe the police.”

  She lightly shook her head.

  “No, I’m fine. I just need… to pull myself together.”

  “Maybe there is someone over there looking for you.”

  He heard a noise that could be either laughter or a sob.

  “I am not sure I want to be found.”

  Jason wanted to ask her. He desired to know what was happening or the reason she was so shaken up. A part of him said he had the right to know, once he was sheltering her. The other part, the rational, told him to calm down. He knew that, although he had been providing her bed and breakfast, that had been his choice to begin with and he needed to know how to deal with that. It had been his choice not to drop her on the nearest hospital after providing the immediate help, it had also been his choice canceling the 911 call when they took too long to arrive, knowing they could have taken her to some shelter or any psychiatric ward around. Not anyone, but him, Jason Flyce, had taken the decision to aid the stranger until she could walk with her own legs and, in that moment, she still couldn’t.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Helping me. You don’t even know me... God. I don’t know me.”

  “It is the right thing to do.”

  She wiped her face with the robe sleeve and faced him once more and, despite the clear signs of shakiness and tears, Clarice looked calmer.

  “You seem to be dragging a load of demons with you.”

  “A few. We are all human, aren’t we?”

  She forced a smile in agreement. Jason, for unknown reasons, felt calmer, too. He had a clean conscience and knew that there could may be a light in the end of it all and that the stranger could be that light, despite it all seemed too dark and blurry.