The Shadows Behind

by Kristi Petersen Schoonover

  In those eyes I see so many things. Her face nearly touching mine as we extracted pottery shards from the dirt. Her old mattress, practically new because she was so busy shovel-bumming she was hardly home. Her leap into my arms when she got the assistantship at the ruins near Hekla. Her thrill when we finished touring Pompeii and cruised Naples in search of the world’s best torta caprese. Her awe at the imposing loom of Mt. Paektu; her sadness at the ash-thronged landscapes beneath Mount Aso and the Soufrière Hills. Our pushpin-spangled wall map . . . we’d marked every volcano. Green meant we’d been there. Red meant we hadn’t.

  We had a lot of greens and only a few reds when things broke down.

  “I tried to secure a permit myself, but they made it clear they don’t want an unaccompanied woman going up there.” She reaches for the wine, tops off both of our glasses.

  “What do I need to do?”

  “I told them you were my husband and you were on your way. We have money, we have each other, we have passionate careers. We are fulfilled and there is nothing the mountain can take away from us.”

  I can’t believe I’ve just heard those words. Husband. I can almost feel the small of her back beneath my fingers, and my mind goes other places, and I remember something she said: You know that poem, rage, rage against the dying of the light? What was it like in those last hours in Pompeii? What were people doing? Were they holed up in their homes making love to take their minds off the terror? Were they hoping that, if they insisted on living life, it would never end? What did the air smell like, was it—

  “. . . with a fork?” she asks.

  I’m jarred. “What?”

  “I said, ‘Wouldn’t you rather eat that with a fork?’ You’re sitting there squishing the chilis between your fingers.”

  “Oh! Oh, yeah.” My cheeks flush with embarrassment as I reach for the cloth napkin.

  She watches me intently over the rim of her glass, but when I meet her gaze she looks down at her food. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your happiness with . . . whomever . . . it is you have back home. We’ll keep this between us.”

  I harrumph out of nervousness. There’s something there, isn’t there? The candle on the table flickers. “I . . . I don’t, actually.”

  I fail to get the pleased response I’m expecting.

  Instead, she stiffens her back—much as she would when she’d open a letter and discover she’d been denied whatever residency or grant to which she’d applied—and her brow furrows. “No?”

  I shake my head.

  The only sounds are the far-off cries of unfamiliar birds and a low rumble.

  “There was someone for a while, but . . . it didn’t work out.”

  She drains her wine. “I’m sorry.” She gets up from the table, takes her dish, and sets it in the wash basin.

  “Hey, no, it’s fine, really, I—I’m good.”

  Her only response is turning on the tap and furiously rubbing a cloth against her plate.

  I push back my chair, relieved to be away from the judgmental glare of the fish, but having a hard time quelling the need to go to her and set my hands on her arms. Instead, I stop short of the counter. “Rosie.”

  “I’ve changed my mind.” She shuts off the spigot and fixes her gaze on the small box for a moment, then faces me. “I think it’s best that you go. We’ll arrange for your travel in the morning.”

  “Rosie—”

  “Your room is across the way.” She motions with her head. “Good night.”

  ~~**~~

  In the bowels of night, I sweat awake to the taste of scorched paper and a rumble in the distance. I’m not sure where I am.

  Rain spattering into my room grounds me in Sumbawa, at Rosalia’s, after a painful conversation. I feel exposed; interior rooms are wall-less and border a courtyard. Although I can’t see her room from mine—it’s obscured behind the wall of the formal dining room—I can see into the now-dark kitchen, and beyond that, the front door.

  The rectangular swimming pool, its surface shimmering in the moonlit rain, beckons.

  I flip back the sheet and listen, straining in vain to hear her snore that I know would lull me back to sleep.

  Didn’t she say she needed me, specifically?

  Yes. That there were plenty of eager kids, but that she needed my instincts.

  Me. She needed me. So why this sudden shift?

  I hear a noise in the kitchen. A petite shadow moves in its depths.

  “Rosie?”

  There’s no response, and I remember that often, when renting in these remote places, Rosalia would hire a local to keep the place clean so we could concentrate on the work; sometimes they came at strange hours. Still, if that were the case, wouldn’t she have said something? Why is this person working in the dark?

  The figure steps onto the grass and pads toward me. She appears to be the young woman I’d seen in town—Orange Dress. She seems undisturbed by the rain, except to cup her delicate hand over the flower in her hair.

  When she reaches the threshold of my room, I can see it isn’t Orange Dress at all.

  It’s Rosalia.

  My breath catches in my throat as she glides into the room and approaches the bed, her fire-red batik robe—open and exposing her slender, slip-clad form—caressing my thigh as she settles close.

  I find my voice. “I thought you wanted me to leave.”

  She presses a finger to her lips, traces a delicate line down my cheek. Her touch is strangely cool.

  Things are stirring.

  You know what you really want, Thompson.

  Her hair coils around me like a silk curtain, and as her mouth blossoms on mine, I close my eyes and taste all notes familiar but one: piquant and reminiscent of an extinguished match.

  “I just haven’t seen you in a very long time.” She smiles in an almost coy manner. “I need you here.”

  The sky opens up, thunder roars, and lightning electrifies the night.

  ~~**~~

  At the furthest reach of my consciousness is Rosalia’s voice, and I become aware of a burning sensation in my throat. I open my eyes and it feels as though someone has smeared mud on my eyelids.

  The world is filmed in gray.

  Rosalia is over me. “Get up, Thom.” She coughs. Her breath smells like brown sugar. “Get up.”

  I wheeze and feel like I can’t get enough air. “What—was there an eruption?”

  “No, just ash. Permit or no permit, we’re going up the mountain.”

  “What?” I set my hands on her arms. Her skin is coated in grit.

  She’s not wearing the robe or slip I’d removed when we made love last night. She’s in a silk tank with no bra. Aware that I’m staring, she moves her violet kimono over her chest.

  It’s odd, but there are more imperative matters.

  “But you said—”

  She leaps off the bed and seizes my bag from a nearby chair. “We know Tambora ashed for months before the disaster.” She unzips the bag and rummages through it. “It won’t be long before scientists arrive. If we’re headed toward another eruption, my disc—our find—could be buried even deeper. It will be inaccessible for a long time.” She tosses jeans, jacket, and socks on a carved chest in the corner. “We have to travel light.”

  I sit up. “Did you mean what you said last night?”

  She straightens her back and doesn’t turn to face me. “Circumstances have changed.”

  “Then I’m here.”

  She pivots to give me a sad expression that vanishes so quickly I’m not sure it was even there. “Hurry up. Rimbo will guide us. He’s not afraid.”

  She moves across the room and stops on the courtyard grass, a brilliant butterfly of purple against the gray that coats our world. “Thom.”

  “Yeah?”

  Her hands are clasped so tightly her knuckles are white. “I’m sorry.”

  It’s true that the last twenty-four hours have been emotionally confusing, but I know where I stand now. We’ll get up on th
at mountain. We’ll get back to that kaleidoscopic world of passion-work-thrill. We’re not far from a new wall of pushpins . . . I can feel it.

  “It’s okay.” I get on my feet. “It’s fine.”

  ~~**~~

  It was bread-oven hot yesterday, but there’s an almost greasy humidity that accompanies an ash fall that even the breeze while riding the motorbike doesn’t alleviate.

  We reach a plantation on which the main building is a palette-rendered shack. On its sagging porch, Rosalia makes arrangements with a little man, whom she introduces as Rimbo; he’s hunched over, like a chili, but she assures me he’s the most nimble guide on the island.

  A dozen sweaty hours later, after switchbacking through car-sized boulders, parched fields of tall grasses and near-impenetrable tropical forests, it’s evening. We’re camped not far from Rosalia’s discovery. She was right about Rimbo not fearing the ancient devils, but he grouses plenty about the rotten-flesh stench of rafflesia—corpse flower—as he makes us a meal of mutton.

  Rosalia contemplates the cooking fire, which only adds feverishness to an already steaming jungle, over the rim of a tin cup of coffee. She looks more youthful than yesterday; it seems even her crow’s feet have faded.

  “What do you think is there?” She sips. “A house? A barn? A temple? Was there anyone inside? If there was, what was he doing?”

  The fire snaps, hisses. A drop of sweat runs down my chest.

  “Did he even understand what was going on?”

  There’s a distant rumble.

  She looks up, her brow furrowed in worry. “I wish we could start now. I just want to get up there.”

  For a moment there’s only the sound of the fire and the echoing, fervent chatter of animals, the crashes of them moving through the undergrowth. Rimbo, who’s sleeping on a bed of fronds on the other side of the fire, pulls at his damp shirt in his sleep.

  I have an insistent, burgeoning need to kiss her, and begin to close the distance between us.

  She stands up, empties her cup on the fire. A hish of steam rises into the night. “Well, I’m going to turn in. Or try to, anyway.”

  “Rosie?” I look over my shoulder.

  “Yes?”

  Her expression isn’t one that gives me any indication she wants me to join her. “Never mind.”

  She frowns and holds my gaze a moment. Then she says, “I’d stay up longer, but . . . I’ve been waiting for a day like tomorrow for a very long time.”

  I wipe my forehead with my sleeve. “I know.”

  She ducks into her tent, and I can’t help thinking that last night didn’t mean what I thought it would. There’s no breeze, but the faint whiff of sulfur in the air strangely makes me wish I hadn’t left the puppet the captain gave me back at Rosalia’s.

  ~~**~~

  I only half descend into sleep.

  I’m haunted by the rumbling ground, the waft of corpse flower, the sting of sulfur and Rosalia: the rise of her stomach beneath my hands as we motorbiked to her rented place, the smell of apples on her skin and brown sugar on her breath. Her untethered breasts. The sound of her voice: Are you happy?

  Someone’s near my tent.

  I wake to the salt of my own sweat on my tongue; it seems as though the air has gotten hotter and thicker in the past few hours. There’s a silhouette in the pale light from our camp’s lantern: the petite shadow of Orange Dress; there’s no mistaking the shape of the flower in her hair.

  Stop it, you’re delirious in this heat. What would she be doing out here?

  I open my eyes and see Rosalia—carnal gaze, sullen mouth, damp halter top, tangy scent. “I can’t sleep,” she purrs. She crawls toward me and straddles my legs. I touch her cool skin.

  The noise of the mountain and the brutal heat. The stink of rafflesia. The smart of sulfur in my eyes and nose.

  I forget it all.

  ~~**~~

  At dawn, there’s an empty spot where Rosalia had curled up next to me. I drag myself into the sweltering day. The land is dusted in more ash. There’s a rustle in the underbrush.

  “Rosie?”

  It’s Rimbo who steps clear of the wild grasses at the edge of the woods. He beckons me to follow him.

  The path is narrow, and I curse when a stinging nettle gets me. I steel myself to the pain, trying to forget his warning about nettles resulting in instant infection.

  We reach a clearing. Rosalia, taking photographs, is dwarfed before a towering embankment where layers of eruptive material are exposed: ash, pumice, pyroclastic matter. Stones similar to the piece she showed me litter the ground.

  “It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?” She’s sheened in sweat and blots her brow with her forearm. “We should plan on getting equipment, maybe even some ground-penetrating radar. We’ll have to hire extra guides, porters, students to help us dig. Right now, I’m thinking I want to follow some of this back up toward the summit. See if there are clues to how big this settlement may have been.”

  She stands before me and my breath hitches in my chest: she’s as stunning as she was in youth, and I’m back in that glorious past, watching her scrutinize an ancient grape seed unearthed in the ruins of Pompeii, photograph the buried city of Plymouth on Montserrat, flick a brush around the edges of a ten-thousand-year-old tool up on Nabro.

  I kiss her, hard and full of fire.

  She pushes me away. “What the hell are you doing?”

  My cheeks burn. “What do you mean? We’ve . . . we’ve been together the last two nights.”

  She furrows her brow. “What are you talking about?”

  I detail. The stormy night in my room. The sultry night in the tent.

  She pales. She covers her mouth with her hand and turns from me.

  I watch her back rise and fall with every breath.

  Finally, she says, “Listen to me. You were dreaming.”

  The humid air sits heavy between us.

  “You were as real as you are now.” I settle my hands on her shoulders, kiss her neck. “I love you.”

  “No you don’t.” She smacks me away. Shrugs me off. “You can’t love me. You can’t.”

  I’m confused. “I do.”

  She pivots and gives me a smoldering stare. “How was I supposed to know that? What was I supposed to think?”

  I’m stunned. “What?”

  “You made your choice. Your work over me. You stopped calling.” Her voice breaks. “You decided to make your big discovery at Akrotiri and leave me behind. Like everything we’d shared wasn’t important. Like I didn’t matter to you at all.”

  It’s as though someone’s stolen the air. “What? No. We just . . . we were both busy. Work always came first.”

  “No. Mine never did until now.” She swipes a tear from her cheek.

  The jungle comes alive with noise as birds take to the sky.

  I’m dizzy, but I’m not sure if it’s because of the heat or because somewhere in my gut I think something terrible is about to happen. “What is going on?”

  “Nothing. Just go.” She returns to the formation, presses her hand against it, and bows her head as her shoulders sag. “Just go.”

  I make my way back to camp amid an eerie quiet, laboring to breathe in the steamy air.

  ~~**~~

  The inside of my tent is broiling and reeks of sulfur and melting vinyl as I shove gear into my pack: socks. Towel. Bandages. She needs me. She doesn’t. She doesn’t love me. She does.

  Rosalia ducks inside the tent.

  “What do you want, Rosie?”

  She hangs her head. “I’m sorry.”

  Khakis. “You call me from halfway around the world to play your husband. You’re upset when you find out I’m not with anyone. You want me to leave. You want me to stay.” Last night’s shirt. “You make love to me. You say I can’t love you.”

  I feel her arms settle about my waist. The press of her cheek on my back. I’m about to push her away when she murmurs, “Do you remember the pushpins?”

 
No, no. Don’t let her do this to you again.

  Her grip tightens around my middle.

  I close my eyes and heave a sigh. “Yes. Yes I do.”

  “Come with me. To the summit.”

  I put down my pack and turn to face her. “Rosie. We need to—”

  God she’s beautiful. I wipe the smear of dirt from her cheek. I want to go anywhere with her.

  No.

  A feverish wind ripples the tent. “Do you hear that?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Exactly. Nothing.” I brush a strand of hair off her forehead. “No birds, no animals. I think it’s not safe. I think we should leave.”

  She gives me a tight-lipped smile. She reaches into the pocket of her jeans and presses a green pushpin into my hand.

  In her eyes, I see the us that hasn’t happened yet. Her hair beneath a kerchief as she’s piecing together the objects from the lost culture she’s just discovered. Her beckon to a hot spring to soothe my sore muscles. The press of her lips on a champagne glass after she’s cut the ribbon on our exhibit in a marbled museum. Her beauty even in age, her face wrinkled but still kind, her hair gray but still soft.

  I forget everything, and I follow her straight up.

  ~~**~~

  As we near the crater, the heat is molten. The changing landscape is a paradox the farther we go; steam rises from cracks in black barren earth, but a stream trickles lazily down the side of a lush embankment. Dead birds dot a patch of wilted plants, but dwarf trees, their fruitful, thick branches gnarled like arthritic hands, riddle the pathway. When we are at last just a few feet from Tambora’s rim, the clouds are too thick to see anything. Rosalia guides me across a patch of red sand, and everything clears. Before us stretches the caldera, a four-mile wide hole ringed by centuries-old scree, a scalding lake of acid, patches of boiling mud and spewing fumaroles. It’s like standing near a blast furnace. Sweat runs into my eyes.