Montega's Mistress (26 page)

When Matteo went to pick up the provisions, Helen saw Alma standing outside her tent, watching their departure. As Matteo rejoined her, she walked over to the dark woman, who waited for her warily. Matteo observed the encounter, his posture alert, ready for anything.

“Adios, Alma,”
Helen said, sticking out her hand.
“Buena suerte.
Good luck.”

Alma took her hand and shook it, her heavily lashed eyes unreadable. But as Helen walked back to Matteo, Alma looked at him over her shoulder, and then turned away, unable to meet his eyes.

“You have a lot of class, do you know that?” Matteo greeted Helen quietly as she approached him.

“Don’t bet on it,” Helen responded. “That was very hard to do.”

“But you still did it,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Helen was surprised at the number of people who called to her as they walked out of the camp. Word had evidently gotten around that she was leaving, and they stood outside the entrances to their tents, waving and sending messages of farewell. One of the guards who first picked her up in Florida shouted something in his deep bass, and Matteo glanced at her, as if to see if she had understood.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He said to remember him when you’re back in your beautiful country,” Matteo translated.

Helen halted, touched. “But they don’t like Americans,” she said.

“They envy Americans,” Matteo replied. “And they like you.”

Helen started to walk again, looking around her as they left the cleared central path and entered the woods.

“I’ll never forget this place,” she murmured.

“When you’re an old lady you can tell your grandchildren about the time you spent in a rebel camp, and they’ll look at you in your shawl and think you’re making it up.”

“Young people think old people were never young,” she replied, and he grinned.

“Would you mind repeating that, please?” he said.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. When I was a kid I used to ignore my grandmother. She was just a funny woman with a black mantilla on her head and a rosary in her hand. She loved me, though, used to kiss me every time I ran past.” He shook his head. “Now I wish I could talk to her.”

“Your mother’s mother?”

He nodded. “She died when I was eight. She lived in abject poverty all her life, but she could make the most beautiful lace. The nuns taught her when she was young, at the convent where she cleaned. She used to bring in extra money selling arm covers, things like that, to the people who could afford them. She kept it up until arthritis twisted her fingers so bad she couldn’t work the needles any more.” He jerked his head, as if to clear it. “I wonder what made me think of that.”

“I never really knew my grandparents,” Helen said thoughtfully. “They were distant, formal, unreachable. I remember them as dressed up all the time, being served dinner in a big wainscoted dining room with a crystal chandelier, giving parties where all the ladies wore gowns that rustled and smelled good. These were my father’s parents; my mother’s died when I was too young to recall them. Except that I have one lingering image of Sophia’s mother, which everyone tells me I must have gotten from her portrait, but I swear I remember it: a black silk dress, white hair and diamonds.”

“My grandmother had the black dress and the white hair,” Matteo offered dryly, “but I don’t recall any diamonds.”

Helen glanced over her shoulder, where the view of the camp was already obscured by the enclosing foliage. “Shouldn’t Alma have left the same time we did?” she asked Matteo. “If she doesn’t contact her brother he won’t be there to meet us.”

“Alma will do what she’s supposed to do,” Matteo answered briefly. “Don’t worry about her.”

Helen let it drop, hoping that his faith in his former lover wasn’t misplaced. If she were really vindictive, there were any number of ways she could screw up their plans, but Matteo didn’t seem to consider that a possibility.

They walked on through the morning, and Matteo kept Helen entertained with stories of his childhood and his transition to school in America, so that she wouldn’t think about their imminent parting. She couldn’t imagine how he knew where they were going; the paths they followed were hardly wide enough for a person to walk single file, and every tree looked like every other tree for miles around. It was obvious they were going on foot to avoid the police on the roads, but she didn’t know how he could keep his bearings without so much as a landmark or a sign. Toward noon he stopped and looked around, squinting into the sun.

“There’s a clearing right around here,” he said, turning his head. He pointed. “There it is.”

Helen followed him into a small grassy area. There he opened their pack and handed her a sandwich made of Theresa’s dark bread and thick goat cheese, which Helen had learned to tolerate.

“You’re doing a lot better on the trip out than you did on the way in,” he observed, taking a bite of his lunch.

“Hey, this experience has turned me into an expert hiker, climber, all round nature girl. I’m thinking of tackling the Appalachian Trail when I get home.”

He smiled, taking out a bottle of water and drinking from it. His smile faded as he said to her, “Helen, I want to tell you some things you have to know about getting home.”

She separated the crust from the slice of bread she held and asked, not looking at him, “Can’t it wait? There’ll be plenty of time for that, won’t there?”

He studied her expression and then nodded, allowing her to avoid dealing with the reason for their outing until it was necessary. They ate in companionable silence until he wrapped up the remnants of their repast and said, “Siesta. You’ll be stronger this afternoon if you take a little rest.”

Helen looked around. “No pillow?” she said, raising an eyebrow.
 

Matteo settled with his back against a tree and slapped his thigh. “Right here,” he answered.

Helen stretched out in the warm grass and laid her cheek on the denim covered surface of his leg. The large muscle tensed under her, and she looked up at him.

“Don’t move,” he said, “or the siesta will turn into a fiesta.”

She smiled devilishly. “You were the one who suggested a nap,” she reminded him.

He sighed dramatically. “Sometimes I’m just too sensible for my own good.”

“Not often,” she said sarcastically.

He tapped the top of her head with his index finger. “Go to sleep.”

She half sat and stared at him, annoyed. “You’re always telling me to go to sleep. What are you, a hypnotist?”

“That’s because you talk when you should be sleeping. I’ve never seen anyone function on so little rest.”

“Me! What about you?”

“Are we going to fight, now, or what?”

Helen shot him a look and settled down huffily, trying to find a comfortable position on his thigh, which was like a rock. But she
was
exhausted and could have slept on nails; she was asleep in no time and so was he.

Matteo shook her awake about forty minutes later, and she sat up, feeling hot and sticky. She dampened a handkerchief with water from the bottle and dabbed her face and neck, screwing her hair into a makeshift bun on top of her head.

“How much farther is it?” she asked, looking up at the sky, in which the sun shone like an open furnace.

“Ten miles. We’ll make camp at dusk and walk the last little bit in the morning.”

“The last little bit” was what she didn’t want to consider. That would be the beginning of the end.

Matteo picked up the pack and slung the straps over his arms.

“Ready?” he said, and she nodded.

The remainder of the trek was worse; no longer as fresh as they’d been in the morning, they trudged along, battling the heat and their own fatigue. At about six Matteo held up his hand to silence Helen, and she watched as he moved forward and parted the foliage to look at something below. He glanced over his shoulder at her and gestured for her to come closer; he put his finger to his lips as he moved aside to let her see what he’d been observing.

There was a road cutting across the mountain just under the rise where they hid. It was overrun with police, armored cars and
cabos
with their distinctive tunic uniforms. Helen’s heart began to beat faster as she thought about what these people would do to Matteo if they knew he was perched above them, overlooking their movements.

They crept away from the scene, and when Matteo signaled that it was all right for her to talk she whispered, “Are they looking for you?”

“They’re looking for anybody. Especially me. They lost five rocket launchers when Martin and I blasted their hideout, and they don’t have an unlimited supply. Your government is getting fed up with their human rights record and is holding back on the money.”

“You shouldn’t have come out here with me,” she said miserably. “It’s too dangerous.”

He shook his head. “As long as we keep to the bush, we’ll be okay. There’s not a
cabo
in the army who can get around in here the way I can. They lug their cars and tanks with them; they have to stick to the roads.”

“What about everyone back at the camp?” Helen asked worriedly. “The
cabos
know where it is.”

“It’s no longer there,” he replied. “Everyone’s gone, Helen; they moved as soon as we left. Don’t think about them; I promise you they’re okay.”

They traveled for another two hours, and then as the light was fading from the sky Matteo pointed to a flat elevation outlined against the vanishing sunset.

“Tres Luces,” he said. “In a little while you’ll see where it gets its name. Three stars hang in the sky just above it like lamps.”

Helen wasn’t interested in tidbits of local color; she stared at the mesa, thinking that in the morning she would take her leave of Matteo there.

“There’s a stream just ahead,” he added. “You can take a dip if you want.”

They walked until they came to the banks of the stream Matteo mentioned, and he took off his pack gratefully and dropped it to the ground. Helen sank to her knees and studied him as he took out fruit and cheese and handed them to her. She should have been hungry, but she wasn’t; she settled for a long drink of water and then relaxed on the grass, easing her aching back.

“The stream has its source in the mountains to the east,” Matteo said, “and it’s always fresh. You can drink from it if you want.”

He continued the travelogue as she listened without comment, aware that he was talking for her sake, and maybe for his own. He stretched out on the ground and put his hands behind his head, staring up at the night sky.

“Everything looks so peaceful up there,” he said softly. “You’d never believe that all over the world tonight people are trying to kill each other.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she replied.

“Yes, it does,” he answered flatly. “As long as some people are trying to take advantage of others, there will be those who’ll fight to stop them.”

And that about sums it up, Helen thought, the thing that will keep us apart. She was a “have,” and he was a “have not”—had chosen to become one in fact—and all the love in the universe couldn’t change that one simple fact.

Matteo didn’t speak again and didn’t move. After a while she concluded that he had fallen asleep. She got up quietly, taking off her borrowed clothes, and slipped into the stream. It was tepid but refreshing, and she moved around in the water almost noiselessly, rinsing the dust of the trip from her skin and hair.

“Helen.”

Matteo’s voice was husky with anticipation, with desire. She turned to see him standing on the bank, watching her. She went toward him, and when the water was about knee deep he could wait no longer, splashing in to meet her, seizing her about the waist and lifting her into his arms.

She was slippery, streaming, but he didn’t pause to dry her off, merely set her on the pile of her discarded clothes and covered her with his body. His mouth was everywhere, hot against her flesh cooled by the recent bath. He was silent, transferring his eloquence to his hands and his lips, telling her without words how much she meant to him. Helen writhed beneath him, clutching his waist, the back of his head, hanging on to the reality that would soon become a memory. When he finally rose to strip, she watched his shadowed movements in the moonlight, reaching up for him eagerly as he descended to embrace her.

Their lovemaking had the bittersweet quality of parting, and when it was over and she had settled against his shoulder, he caught the glitter of tears on her cheeks. Matteo said nothing, holding her until she drifted off and looking into the vault of stars above his head until he fell asleep as well.

He woke before it was light and saw by his watch that the sun would rise in half an hour. He dressed and waited until the last possible moment to wake Helen, who hadn’t even stirred when he left her to get up.

She opened her eyes and saw the mist clinging to the water, saw the orange streaks of sunrise bisecting the sky. She dressed without saying a word, avoiding his eyes, then faced him when she had pinned up her hair and adjusted her clothes and there was nothing left to do.

“I’m ready,” she said, and he picked up his pack.