Abandon (37 page)

“What kind of game?” It would never be the dangerous kind, the kind where you ask another person what he most dislikes in you, or what he most wants to tell you but can’t; it would be a game that tried to magic reality away.

It was. “We choose words, and then we make them into something else. And the closer they are to us, the more relevant they are to what we’re doing, the more points you get.”

“Points from whom?”

“Points from the referee who isn’t here.” She was changing “could be” into “is,” he thought, and “never again” into “occasionally.”

“Okay. You start, so I can see what’s going on.”

“NEXT GAS 91 MILES,” said the sign they passed. Occasional names in the emptiness Indian or whimsical or meaning nothing at all.

She looked out at what wasn’t there, and he could all but see her spinning letters in her head. Then, extended as if it were a gift, she said, “ ‘Rain.’ And ‘Iran.’ ”

It didn’t seem a great triumph, and he wondered what she was really thinking of. “You know that ‘rain’ is a word for grace in their tradition? It’s what they most pray for?”

“Of course I do. It’s a desert,” and, not for the first time recently, he was reminded of how much he underestimated her. She knew at least as much as he did about the Middle East.

“It’s your turn.”

He let his mind wander as he drove. He saw her bright face as she took him to the dervishes, and then through country as desolate as the one around them now. He saw her sobbing, and backing away from him, the dark spirit in her dream, even when she hadn’t dreamed it, at her side.

“ ‘Rumi,’ ” he said slowly, choosing the very first word that came to him. “And ‘Muir.’ John Muir must have been here once.”

“Lame,” she pronounced, as it was, but he could tell she didn’t want to stop. “It hardly has anything to do with us.” He heard the “hardly” and saw again how she was beginning to wear his colors, his cadences: she sounded more European the longer they spent time together, and he wondered if finally she’d become so close to him that all the novelty and difference would be gone. The problem with actresses is that one never knows—maybe they never know—when their parts are chosen ones.

She said nothing, as if she were trying to push as close to him in her mind as she could, and then at last she announced, “ ‘Eden’ and ‘need.’ ”

It was a dangerous choice, both of them knew; it all but dared him to think of the things about her that were most unsettling.

“Well, the ‘Eden’ part at least is relevant. I don’t know about the other.”

“Now you.”

“You’re too good at this.”

“You can’t give up so soon.”

“Okay, let me see if I can come up with one more pair.” The light across the far mountains was more than ever like something in some old allegorical painting, about heavens and the fight with earth.

“You’re going to laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“Okay. ‘Sufi’ and ‘if us.’ ”

“That’s awful,” she protested. “It means nothing. It’s terrible. And it’s two words. You can’t do that.”

“You never told me the full rules before. Anyway, it’s relevant.”

“Just barely. It doesn’t mean anything at all.”

“Shall we stop?”

“One more. A last one.” And very quickly, as if she’d been planning it all along, she said, “ ‘Sacred.’ And ‘scared.’ ”

He looked over to see what lay behind the choice, but there was so much in her face, of delight and apprehension, and the wish to put herself on his side, that he said nothing. “You’re too good. I give up.” The long, straight road stretched on before them.

The game had beguiled a few hours, and the afternoon was moving on by the time they came to a small road in what seemed to be a blank nowhere: a narrow, two-lane path between high mountains and the occasional adobe house along a thin dirt road. The sky was throwing its punctual late-afternoon fit of pique, and the skies around were turbulent and visionary. He pulled onto an unmarked trail, and the car began jouncing and juddering over potholes and bumps. The path was unpaved, and the car found itself hurtled into puddles, and propelled this way and that across the rough ground.

“This can’t be right.”

“I think it is.”

“You really know where you’re going?”

“I think so. I hope so. This must be the right road—there aren’t any others for miles.”

As they bounced and bumped from side to side, the heavens turned jet-black above them, and suddenly, from what had not long before been a cloudless sky, a furious, penitential rain came down, as if announcing the end of the world. Hailstones beat against the front of the car, the windshield, the windows, and the roof, and as he drove into what seemed to be a downpour of small rocks, the car careened to one side of the road, and he stopped underneath a tree.

Pebbles continued beating against them, as if flung by angry children on every side, and when they abated the rain came angrily down, so strong they couldn’t see a thing. The road ahead, the road behind, invisible.

“It’s scary,” she said. “I feel like we’re in the Old Testament.”

“We seem to be drawn to clouds. We’re always in a storm.” And she said nothing.

Then, again, “You sure this is the right road?”

“Absolutely. They don’t have signs where we’re on our way to. That’s one reason people go there.”

Then, as suddenly as it had come on, the rain desisted, and the storm moved over the mountains far away. He started up the car again, and they began to proceed once more towards their unknown destination, the puddles wider than before, and deeper, the car more buried then ever, the skies above all a furious radiance.

“You’ve never been here before?”

“I came close once. I was here to look in on the Penitentes, during the crucifixions they stage at Easter.”

“In the Sangre de Cristos.”

“Yes.”

“And was it what you’d hoped it’d be?”

“I never got there. They aren’t so keen on scholars coming to see them, as you know. But I got to know the area a little, and I heard about this place.”

“How come you never came?”

“I wanted to keep it in reserve. For sometime special.”

She said nothing, and the silence in the car grew richer.

“I thought that if ever I needed to think about something, in peace and quiet, this would be the place.”

As he drove, he saw tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. As they often did, but with a brimming fullness now.

“And then, last week, I thought it might be better to be here alone together. If you see what I mean.”

“I’m touched,” she said, and then said no more, because she was shaking in some quiet way, at the fact he hadn’t given up on her, quite yet.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d be upset.”

“Don’t be. I’m really touched.”

The sun had nearly disappeared over the mountains by now, and already the heat of the day was leveling off.

“That—that you’d want to come to a special place with me,” she said, and then she couldn’t say any more at all.

They passed over a rickety bridge, gold in the sky now, and lavender, the imminence of dark, and when they pulled into a clearing, it was to see six or seven cars lined up, neatly, on a patch of grass. The air was singing when they got out, and the silence pulsed around them. She wiped her face clean, and they walked into the small bookstore that served as a reception desk, and the monk on duty, shrouded in a full white cowl, said, “Welcome. How was the drive?”

“Tumultuous.”

“Yes. If you go along quickly now, we’ll be singing vespers in five minutes.”

A straight path passed through the darkening desert, the chill of night coming on, the first stars above the peaks, and they walked into a clean, open space, with five wooden benches in a row, and a fresh, modern opening at one end. Behind the single cross that represented the altar was a large picture window that opened onto nothing but red rock. As if the real altar of the place was the cliff itself, its officers the light just visible at its tops and the noises, early lights of the desert.

There were ten or twelve monks lined up in rows, facing one another, at the front, and when they began to sing it had the sound of frail petitioners in the wilderness. Not rich and full and silvered, as in Westminster Abbey, but starker somehow, small and thronged, in this intimate, remote young space. The hymnal the two of them shared was old, cracked in places, and the words were all of warfare and blood. But the small space in the shadow of the cliff seemed consecrated to something other than the psalms. The monks bowed, as to the rock, and then, after a quick valedictory, proceeded in a straight line out into the dark, followed by the dozen or so laypeople in attendance. The sky now abundant with stars.

Dinner was served quickly, silently, in a room of blond wood tables, with windows everywhere: thick soup, large bowls, the lights of the desert outside, and the dark, making them feel as if they were dining with the heavens. When they walked out, they could just make out a silver trail of water running beside the “Enclosure,” as it was called.

They put their things into the room assigned them, and then, not wanting to smudge the place with talk, went out again, and walked into the desert night.

“Do you want to see what the chapel looks like in this light?”

She nodded, and they followed the path, lit by stars, to the large structure that towered over the whole community. A single candle glowed at its entrance. Another sat under a Virgin, by the altar; another under an ancient depiction of the Mother and Child. There seemed nothing but candles in the place, and they sat in chairs, on far sides of the room, and closed their eyes, caught their breath, said prayers.

Then he stepped out, and she came soon after. They made their way, saying little, to the stream, and walked beside it for a few minutes. They could hear small animals—a squirrel, perhaps, or rabbits— in the undergrowth; the water made a soft song as it ran over rocks in the dark.

“It’s calm here. It’s hard to think of anything else.”

“And when you do, it seems better than it really is.”

She smiled, and went exploring, picking up rocks, bending down to see how deep the water ran, and what was caught inside it. Far away, the few rooms in a circle sat with their faint lights in the dark. The sound of foraging, of water running over rocks, water everywhere in the distance, as in Granada.

“I like the person I am when I’m with you.”

“I’m glad.”

“You like the parts of me that I like. I guess I’ve said that before.”

“Not in the same way.”

“It’s never happened before.”

Then her voice stopped, and he didn’t pick up the thought. They sat, together and apart, on the rock, by the stream, the rooms in the distance. When it seemed time to go back, the little cell they entered was furnished with starlight and silence. Its two simple beds were pressed against opposite walls, and above each of them, on the wall, was a cross. A lectern sat by the window through which the stars, the desert came. A short typed list of rules asked for respect of solitude and silence.

When they awoke, the light coming in through the uncurtained windows, there were bells ringing with jubilation in the distance, and when they stepped out for breakfast, the day was immaculate. There was a desert sharpness in the air, and the monks were everywhere, going about their rounds, preparing food and cells, as precise as a regiment going through a well-practiced maneuver.

“I think I’ll go and explore,” she said, and he was touched by the gesture: a way of leaving him in the aloneness he’d said he’d wanted once. He sat in their small room in the morning sun and tried to think himself into another desert, where man felt vulnerable and alone with presences far greater than himself. The vast open space the mosque re-created.

When he looked out, towards lunchtime, she was sitting far off, against a rock, in a broad-brimmed hat, a sketchpad before her, intent. She had found the courage here to let go a little, and sat in her flowered dress, hair falling to her waist, like someone who’d kept D. H. Lawrence company. “I’m going off with Hilda,” she said when they met at lunch. “She knows a way into the mountains,” and he thought how wary she was of new contacts in her usual life.

In the evening, when they made their way back to the rocks on which they’d sat before, she said, “It’s amazing. I feel cleaned out.”

“I’m happy. That’s what I hoped.”

“And you?”

“Me, too. Like a cup left full of water in the sink, and all the impurities come to the top.”

“It’s what you write about.”

“Write about, but don’t experience.”

It became their daily rite, to walk out after dark to the rock and share what the day had brought, though their words grew more sparse with the passing days, and soon it seemed there was no need for any at all. They sat across from each other on the rocks, and nothing moved but stars.

One night, as he bent down to pick up a pebble, she stole up behind him and kissed him on the fleshy part of his ear. The sudden tingle went through him like a shock; the latent sensuality of the place released in a torrent. It was an arousing site, with its restraints, its barriers; it took them back to their early nights together.