Defeat after defeat, she thought wearily. She had not felt so depressed in months.
It was almost two o’clock when she came out upon the avenue that followed the harbor to the hotels. There was a slight breeze from the Mediterranean and the sky was an arc of rich blue over the blue harbor. She was very tired and it seemed to her that her life lay about her in pieces, like a tower of blocks that had been leveled. She walked slowly up the boulevard, pausing once to watch from a distance two fishermen folding up their nets. They had kind, friendly brown faces; one of them glanced up and waved at her and Melissa smiled and waved back. The gesture brought contact and she walked on feeling a little less isolated. Those fishermen at least had souls, she thought; they felt life through the touch of simplicities, the fish they caught, the nets they mended, the sound of the sea and the feel of the earth. They did not retreat inside of themselves until a smile was like the breaking of congealed flesh and a wave of the hand like the breaking of wood.
Ahead of her lay a small triangle of park, fashioned out of flowers and grass for the weary. On impulse Melissa walked in among its line of well-pruned hedge and sat down on a bench within the triangle. She realized that she had been wandering for nearly two hours; she had not known how tired she was, and how weary of restless movement. Her feet ached and she felt utterly wretched. She lifted her face to the sun, which held in it the heat of noon, and as the sun warmed her face it mingled on her cheeks with the faint pleasant breeze from the water. Melissa looked out upon the boats, the water, the clipped green hedges and at two old women in black gossiping with their heads together across the path from her.
The act of affixing these things in her mind soothed her for she had gazed without seeing all morning. She sat very still, her hands in her lap, and slowly, softly the tension began to slip away from her, turning this into a good moment, a tranquil moment, after a day of narrowing and anger. And as she let go of her fears, life began to flow into and through her again, melting the walls she had intricately erected to keep herself untouched, unhurt, and unlived. With this hushedness there came over her a strange tenderness, a feeling of presences, so that she felt, almost reverently, that she was not alone, after all, but was a part of this world, of the sky and the air and the sun and the sea and the brilliant flowers, she was a part of life anywhere in this world, homeless yet at home. Here in the sun in Palma, Majorca, she needed no one; it was enough simply to be here, and to be alive.
Surely, she thought, although she was blind to it, life had meaning. She felt this suddenly with absolute certainty. Its meaning was not discernible to her, and perhaps not to any other human being because it must be a very large pattern imposed upon the smaller human pattern, the greater one remaining indecipherable to humans who had not yet learned a larger language. Yet when she looked back upon her life now, upon the darkness of the past that she had endured, the fact that she was sitting here in a park in Majorca seemed miraculous and incredible to her. There had been no discernible signs in that past to prepare her for this moment, no hint that she would one day travel an ocean to view her life from this green bench in the sunshine. Yet at the same time, looking back, she saw that, on a deeper, perceptual level, every day of her life had been building inevitably toward this point of time. It was understanding that awed her now. It was as if in some curious manner each human being lived upon two levels: that while they were occupied with an external life of blind, unconscious action, there was also living within them something well-hidden and eternal, a deeper intelligence which—when it spoke—they must obey or deny at the risk of losing the eternal. It was how each person answered this that ultimately gave or denied meaning to their lives.
She closed her eyes, savoring the warmth of feeling again and of being at peace. Wisdom was like a hand laid across her heart and speaking in a still small voice. It was very sweet. And softly, in this tenderness, she remembered Adam. “Adam,” she whispered, and feeling a tug of pain she opened her eyes to meet the curious glances of the two women seated across from her on the opposite bench. At once they glanced away and resumed their gossiping but now Melissa looked at them and really saw them, each in dusty black, their faces round and stolid and roughened by wind and labor. But they were women, too, she thought in astonishment, they as well as herself and the flawless woman in the Paris café who had driven Adam from her; all of them were joined together by the common denominator of humanness.
She looked again into the coarsened features of the two women, imagining their lives, and she thought, “But nothing like Adam ever happened to them, or ever could.” If once or twice they had felt great beauty, then it had long since been covered over by the silt of time and dreariness. Why had she allowed cynicism to diminish the only real and lovely experience that had ever happened to her? She thought, “It wasn’t external beauty that drew Adam, no matter what his original motive, it was kindredness of spirit. We enjoyed each other.” She had forgotten this. Like a hypochondriac she had sought for hurt, she had injected pain into his memory so that she might reject him. Why—because he was never to be possessed, never to be seen again? She had always resisted life because of its pain, but did she not—by demanding too much—use the pain of loss to keep life at a distance? She saw now that this was the greatest cruelty of all, for to turn the heart away from beauty was to murder both beauty and the heart. Out of some arrogant, unmet, neurotic need she had begun subtly to distort and corrupt the first reality she had ever met and trusted. She had reached out to Adam and given: was this not enough? Was not experience enough, if one did not demand its permanence?
She thought in astonishment, “I have always demanded proofs. Proofs that I am loved, that I matter, that I am missed; proofs that I exist, and yes—now I look for some magic signs that it is worthwhile for me to go on living. Today is not enough, I must have proof that tomorrow will be better and easier.”
She sighed. “Nor is this all,” she realized sadly. “I’ve always demanded rewards as well, for proofs and rewards go hand in hand. I want—even now—a reward for having come this far alone. I want someone to say, ‘Well done, Melissa, you’ve suffered enough alone, now go home and rest a little.’ But there isn’t anyone to say this.”
Proofs and rewards! This then was why she had begun rejecting Adam—because he had not, after all, been a reward, he had only briefly entered her life and then left forever and now she had no existing proof that she mattered to him.
She thought softly, “But I have learned this much about reality: life cannot be sustained by proof. Something else has to take its place.”
“Faith,” she thought in astonishment.
Faith—it was a beautiful word, and one so fraught with risk that she trembled before it. Faith…for lacking faith she must forever be condemned to Charles’ circle of safety. Faith meant trusting, it meant the horror of trusting the unknown, of placing faith in what could neither be seen nor touched nor proven. It meant going on when one’s very soul cried out to turn back, it meant, above all, unending risk.
She thought, “But Adam was a gift, not a reward. How could I have been so blind?” She realized that in this quiet moment she had arrived at the most dangerous crossroad of her life: whether to commit herself wholeheartedly to a life without guarantees, or to continue distrusting life, escaping it, and waiting eternally for the consoling arm of rescue.
“Faith,” she thought, trying out the sound of it on her tongue. “I believe…I believe,” she whispered. “If I believe at this moment in what happened to me in Copenhagen…if I believe in the reality that was Adam…if I believe in what happened between two people from opposite corners of the world, meeting briefly, never to meet again…if I believe that this could happen, and did, then I must believe also that life is worth trusting…”
She thought suddenly, “I have been given three gifts of value, and perhaps the greatest test of my life is in what I do with them. I have been given the gift of freedom to begin a
different, wiser life—if I dare. In Copenhagen I was given an experience of rare beauty which I may reject or use—if I dare.
“And yes—even this—I have been given a package of value, Stearns said so, to deliver safely here. And if I choose to take the first two gifts and carry them farther as responsibilities to myself—why, then I must discharge this third responsibility, too, or all of them will fail.”
It was this knowledge then that she had been carrying with her today and resisting. For if life had meaning, and if Adam was a part of its meaning, then Stearns was a part of it, too. For what Stearns had in effect given her was what she had spent her entire life evading: responsibility.
“Of course I don’t have to,” she thought mechanically. “I don’t want to, and Stearns had no right to involve me, no right at all.” She had only to forget the book, take it home with her or throw it away and no one would ever know. Stearns had died for this package after all.
Yet if she chose to commit herself unquestioningly to life—?
She stood up and began walking, very quickly now, because she was not just a woman traveling alone or a meaningless statistic, she had substance and content, she was herself, Melissa Aubrey, and she was going to have to deliver Stearns’ book for him. She had known for a long time that she must, but around this knowledge she had built higher and higher walls until she had erected a maze in which she herself had become lost. Now she must carry out this bequest of a dead man, just as she’d had to leave the ship at Bremerhaven and compel herself toward Copenhagen, and then to Paris and at last Majorca, not willingly—and always unready—but growing to each new change. And perhaps this was all there was to life, the growing and the anguish of it, the going on and the trusting to new possibilities. How was she to know if she hung back? How was she to know unless she tried?
“My key please, 297,” she told the desk clerk.
“Sí, Señora,” he said, smiling at her radiance.
She took the key and hurried to her room to find Stearns’ book.
15
There were two men in black waiting in the lobby when she stepped from the elevator; she saw them standing near the door of the souvenir shop glancing over postcards. She did not underestimate the care she must exercise in losing them or the cleverness needed to outwit them. She had first understood this when she confronted Stearns’ book in her room, recognizing its significance in their eyes and feeling suddenly very self-conscious about separating it from her other books. When she had slipped it into the right-hand pocket of her trench coat, she had added a second paperback book to her left pocket, and then she had picked up a third to carry in her hand on the supposition that the presence of three books would conceal or confuse the significance of the one.
Pausing now in the center of the lobby she conspicuously brought out her map of Palma to examine. Reestablishing the location of the Veri Rosario she looked for a central point and found it in the street that contained in one short row the telephone company, the police station, and the post office. Very good, she thought, she would take a taxi to the Gran Via José Antonio and dismiss it at the post office, an act which should obscure her real destination to the two men if they eavesdropped, and—hopefully—divert them when they followed her. Moving very suddenly she walked outside and waved a hand; at once a taxi disengaged itself from the line of waiting cabs. “The Gran Via José Antonio,” she said, climbing inside.
“Sí,” replied the driver, and pulled just as quickly away from the hotel. Turning, Melissa looked back at a street empty of moving cars, nor did any cars swing precipitately out from the curb as her taxi turned into the traffic of the boulevard to head for the center of town. She continued her rear-window vigil, but her hasty departure did not appear to have been noticed. Certainly it had not caused any obvious flurry of activity behind her: it was nearing siesta time and the boulevard was nearly devoid of traffic, the only car in sight was pulling up now beside the harbor to deliver three children and a woman to the pavement. A feeling of infinite relief filled Melissa; she had not expected to lose them so quickly. This time, by moving swiftly and engaging a taxi instead of walking, she had succeeded in surprising them. And high time, she thought, for she had submitted long enough to their shadowing, until the weight of their presence had diminished and dispirited her.
They were approaching the government buildings on the Gran Via José Antonio. Impulsively she leaned forward and spoke into the driver’s ear. “The Plaza Veri Rosario, please.”
“Sí—what number?”
“I will tell you when we get there.”
He nodded, and swerved to avoid a dog crossing the street. Her heart was beating rapidly now as she leaned forward to watch the street signs. When she spied the words Plaza Veri Rosario her throat went dry for this was a name she had lived with for a very long time, and then the taxi turned and entered the charming street that she had unwittingly visited on the preceding day. Ahead she saw the protruding sign of the Anglo-Majorcan Export Company. “Number eleven, please,” she said, and opening her purse she began fumbling for pesetas.
The tires of the cab scraped the curb as it slowed to a stop. Pesetas in hand Melissa had one hand on the knob of the door when it was abruptly wrenched open from the outside. A man insinuated his body through the door and fell into the seat beside her. Melissa said indignantly, “Look here—” and then she gasped as the taxi abruptly pulled out from the curb and sped at breakneck speed past Anglo-Majorcan Exports.
“How dare you,” cried Melissa, and leaning forward she pounded on the driver’s back. “Stop! I haven’t gotten out yet! Stop this car immediately!”
But the driver ignored her, and the man beside her pulled her back against the seat. It had never occurred to her that the taxi driver might be one of them, it was like a nightmare, they had people everywhere like spiders weaving a web around her: the taxi driver, the two men at the hotel, and a man outside the Anglo-Majorcan Export Company, each of them watching for this single moment of weakness—or strength—on her part.
“Stop,” she said again, but feebly.
“The car will not stop,” said the man seated next to her, and to add punctuation to his statement he drew a pistol from his pocket and laid it across his lap, one finger caressing the trigger.
“Look here,” she said, trying again, “I’m an American and you can’t do this. If it’s money you want, I’ll give you what I have. Just take it and let me out.”
The man beside her yawned boredly.
“It amounts to kidnaping, you know,” she said angrily, “and there are laws against kidnaping.” But she was speaking into a void. Damn these voids, she thought peevishly, and subsided. She thought of offering to sign over all her travelers’ checks as a bribe, she thought of attempting to jump from the car but a sense of great futility swept over her, for it was not money they were after, and what was the point of deluding herself? It was Stearns’ book they wanted. Stearns—always Stearns, she thought furiously. Tears came to her eyes, and because she was beginning to feel very frightened she straightened her shoulders and sat up, hands crossed in her lap, as if posture alone might conceal from these men the frailness of the woman they were abducting. They must not know she was afraid.
The cab had left the central part of the town and was threading its way through streets lined with shuttered, pastel-colored pensions and villas. Siesta time had arrived and the streets had emptied themselves of people. Their progress felt increasingly unreal to Melissa. With each passing street she felt smaller and more fragile, her sense of identity was being stripped from her and left behind on the road like so many scraps of paper that the wind would soon scatter—and then who would Melissa Aubrey be? That was the horror of it. “Only nothing,” she thought, her throat tightening with grief. The wind passeth over it and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
The cab slowed and turned and Melissa glanced up to see a wall of
hibiscus and a wrought-iron gate. Ahead lay a sandy crescent-shaped drive leading up to a white stucco villa almost concealed by espaliered trees and vines. They were still in Palma and they had reached their destination. The car drew up to a secluded front door decorated with lacy grillwork behind which stood glass, framed in cedar. Melissa closed her eyes and braced herself, thinking, “Like Stearns you may have to die for this, Melissa.”
She had named it now: death.
She was frightened but as they opened the door of the car she could feel her weakness tighten into a magnificent strength-giving fear. She saw that what she had experienced before was anxiety, which was formless and had devoured her without focus, but behind these walls lay the source of her terror, someone human and knowable whom she must face at last. And realizing this she felt her anxieties knit themselves into this defiant, angry, splendid fear, and it was beautiful to feel again. Fear was strengthening, fear brought challenge and a racing of the pulse, fear galvanized and healed and drew together; her fear was a thing of beauty, making her alive again and real and very human, and out of it was born the same heightened awareness, the same exalted sense of life that she had felt with Adam, so that she became capable—in the moment between car and house—of seeing light and shadow, green and scarlet, death and life, as she had neither seen nor felt them before.
Walking between the two men she passed through the wrought-iron door and into a long, polished hall.
* * *
—
She was taken into a room at the end of the long hall, and presently a small woman in a dusty black dress came in and with gestures indicated that Melissa was to be searched. Her wristwatch, purse, and coat were given immediately to someone outside, and then Melissa was forced to disrobe and submit to a thorough search of her clothes and her body. It was humiliating and it was insulting, and only Melissa’s anger carried her through it.
Uncertain Voyage Page 15