Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

“I have so much to tell you, Elliot,” she whispered. “I need your help….”

“Later,” he said.

She tried to whisper, but her voice had evaporated. Only her thoughts appeared, and they were inchoate, more like sensations than ideas. It was impossible even to begin to speak about Bill, about Dr. Geddes, about Juanita and the Master — and just as she tried, she began to fear that he would float away. He would evaporate like a dream. She clutched at his arm, but felt strong fingers remove her grasp. Then she sank backward into a sensuous river of sleep.

When Janice awoke, her body was clean and fragrant, and her hair, soft and recently washed, fanned out blackly against the clean linen of the pillow. A beautiful sunlight slanted in from the mountain clouds, creating strong polygons against the rough stone wall. The two boys sat up, drinking soup out of a tin so hot their eyes winced as they greedily consumed the broth.

Hoover stepped into the house, his tall figure bending under the low-cut wooden doorjamb.

“My hair smells so pretty! I feel so clean,” she said, laughing.

He cleared his throat, and dug a small, sharp knife into the edge of the door.

“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” he said.

She blushed. She lay against the pillow, happy to be alive, breathing in the fresh odor of green grass, the cool mountain water outside the house, and to know that she had at last found Hoover.

Janice stared at him. He too looked abnormally thin, almost bony around the face, but a sense of strength radiated from him, as though the monsoon flood had burned away everything but the core of his masculinity. He was like a wolf, grown lean but sinewy from hunger.

“You must have wanted very much to see me.”

“I did. I’ve come a long way. I have so much to tell you.”

Disturbed, he walked into the room, and began boiling more soup in the corner for the boys. Their small bodies, sitting up and more animated now, blocked his face. A smell of hot water, vegetables, and fatty meats swirled around the room.

“Do you mind that I’ve come?” she asked hesitantly. “There’s been an emergency. I needed you.”

Hoover rose and rubbed his face with both hands. He deliberately ignored her.

“I went back to the ashram, ” he said, leaning against the wall. “They told me an American — a woman — had been looking for me — black hair…”

“Did you know then it was me?”

He nodded. For a long time neither spoke. A strong but indecipherable emotion clouded Hoover’s face. He turned away, as though to examine the clouds breaking up overhead, but in reality to avoid her stare.

“I didn’t want to see you,” he said softly.

She watched him, sitting on the windowsill, feet on the floor, and he looked exhausted, more exhausted than it seemed possible for any man to be. His words came tonelessly.

“But when they told me you had crossed the river,” he said, “I knew I had to get you out of there. The monks don’t understand warfare. To them it’s all a temporal part of life.”

“So you followed my footsteps to the outpost. And all the time I thought I was following you.”

He continued to ignore her, as though he were deaf or trying to obliterate her, to make certain that it was he who dominated the house. He began to look worried, and his voice grew louder but less certain of itself.

“To them your death would have been accepted quite philosophically. Like an insect’s.”

Janice said nothing. India had changed Elliot Hoover from what he had been in Manhattan.

Something had altered him forever.

“Anyway, what does it matter?” he said. “We’re both still alive.”

He slumped further against the sill, looking tired enough to sleep standing up.

“I didn’t want to see you,” he repeated. “But I was afraid of what the soldiers might do. You don’t understand this country. Down in the south, what happens during even a small war…”

“I can only thank you, however feeble that must sound.”

“Forget it. When you feel better you’ll tell me why you came to India. Now you should sleep.”

She drifted into a haze of heat, a reddish cloud of slumber that was draining. Hoover slept on the floor, his soft snores rising and falling rhythmically. Janice thought she saw the two boys remove his muddy coat, push a pillow under his head, but then she fell asleep again. When she awoke, many hours later, the boys were outside, and it was late afternoon, and the ox was stamping its foot into the earth while it munched long yellow stems of grass.

“We have to go down into the valley,” Hoover said quickly.

“What? Why?”

“The soldiers are moving this way. But now they’re only a bunch of bandits.”

Dizzily Janice saw Hoover load the cart, and the boys climb inside; then he came back into the house, took her by the arm, and led her into the warm sunshine. She walked slowly, leaning against his side. She followed his glance and saw, far off on the slope, a cluster of dark dots in a ragged movement coming down the road toward them.

“Once we get into the valley we’ll be safe,” he confided. His eyes shifted to her eyes and discerned the fear in them. “The Tejo Lingam is sacred. They won’t bother us.”

Janice put a foot onto the cart, but stumbled, and Hoover lifted her bodily like a sack of stones and set her onto the dirty wooden back of the wagon. He got quickly into the front, slapped the ox with a thin sapling, and the cart rumbled downhill, away from the mountain house, away from the soldiers five miles behind them.

The cart jostled down toward the south. As they descended the air grew humid again, but not as oppressive and suffocating as it had been before the monsoon struck. This was a delicate moisture, and it brought the fragrance of crushed ferns and palm fronds.

The two boys now watched, their eyes wide, as the new landscape rolled past. They were twins. Orphans, Janice was certain. To them, life had just revealed its most brutal realities, and they were still in a daze. Instinctively they trusted Hoover. To them death was not new. It had just come closer to them this time instead of to their elders or to the animals of the field. Janice toyed with them, tickling their small bellies until laughter came and their happy cries rose like bird melodies over the sad, death-infested forest.

Hoover stopped the cart where two tiny streams buckled into a small rapids. A thatched hut stood in a small muddy clearing, and enormous bougainvilleas stormed upward on vines and branches around the conical roof. Crimson-robed men stopped, amazed, frozen in their tracks.

Hoover approached, put his palms together in greeting, and the men returned his bow. One of the men, overcome, suddenly embraced him. The sound of Hoover’s weeping was extraordinary. A sweet, harmonious sound, like the lifting of a death curse. It seemed to release something deep inside him, unfreeze something horrible, and make him live again. He wiped his eyes, and the monks came with him to the cart.

As the monks carried the twin boys toward a series of smaller conical-roofed huts, Hoover helped Janice down to the ground. She still found it difficult to keep her balance, as she was light-headed. The brilliance of the sunlight dazzled her. The yellow butterflies among the red flowers were like a profusion of sensory impressions too strong to absorb. It was warm, and she made her way slowly toward a small hut.

“These are my friends,” Hoover said.

“Yes, I know. One of the monks here told me where to find you.”

Hoover looked at her, surprised. “Usually they do not speak to strangers.”

“Perhaps I looked desperate.”

“Probably. At any rate, they thought I was dead. We are not indifferent to one another down here.”