The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  Suddenly she came upon a stairway made of earth held into place by rough logs. It climbed the mountainside for at least a hundred steps, yet was hidden, arched over by hibiscus bushes larger than any she had ever seen. Reaching to two or three metres, stalks so slender that they could not bear the weight of their own height, they flopped over, forming a tunnel through which the steps ascended the mountainside.

  Celia climbed rapidly, her previous confusion erased by exhilaration. At the top of the steps, just to the left, would be the cookhouse with a tree growing up through the roof. Do not cut the trees, she heard herself saying. If we protect the trees they will protect us. Celia peered inside, to where the floorboards had been sawed short to allow the forked trunk of a huge jagüay to pass into and through the room. One fork, the larger one, was dead and half-rotted away. The smaller fork continued on through the roof, its spreading boughs still green with leaves, concealing the cookhouse from the air.

  Celia did not linger in the cookhouse but followed a trail that her feet seemed to know. A thatch-roofed cottage came into view. The side from which she approached was ground level, but at the back it perched on stilts, high above a steeply sloping hillside.

  She paused. On her left, against a vertical bluff hung with tropical vegetation, was a rough wooden bench. Fidel’s place to sit, think, write, talk. On the opposite side of the narrow trail the land fell away so that the view—a view that seemed as familiar to Celia as the one from her apartment balcony, was into the tops of plants that grew tall in a forest such as this: the twisted upper trunk of a great mahogany tree, and a hibiscus that would have been ten metres tall, had it stood upright instead of arching like a rainbow with the weight of green leaves and red blossoms.

  Celia faced the cottage. There was no door, just a plain plank wall barely two metres high, overhung by the thatched roof. She studied the wall, momentarily confused. Not about where she was; she knew exactly where she was. But confused about how one entered because in her mind’s eye she saw that room from the inside, open to the forest.

  Without forethought, she knelt, felt for the bottom of the wall, and lifted. It was heavy but came up easily, a section about six feet square. Of course; that was how it had been designed: to lock down at night and be raised like an awning by day. She looked around for a long stick to prop it open but saw nothing she could use, so she slipped inside and lowered the wooden flap behind her.

  The sense of familiarity was so strong that it took everything she had to keep herself in herself. A few times in the past two years she had felt herself slipping through cracks into the past, but here she was surrounded by past. She could swallow it whole—or be swallowed by it.

  “No time travelling,” she said aloud, or almost aloud. She was whispering because whispering was what they had been trained to do. Batista’s men were loud; the rebels were not. No one spoke above a whisper here, ever.

  “But that was then,” she told herself, trying to raise her voice, which again came out as a whisper. “This is now. I am now.”

  Perhaps because she asserted it with such firmness, the room did not claim her. It was a kitchen, not even three metres across. From where she stood she could reach the skinny built-in cupboard on one wall and the rough wooden table on the other. Directly in front of her was a small gas refrigerator, and next to it an open doorway.

  In four steps Celia crossed the kitchen and stepped out onto the balcony. She touched a narrow, L-shaped bar built into the railing of the deck. “See?” she whispered. “If this was then it would be covered with her papers, or cleared to make room for their té. But there’s nothing here, has been nothing here, for the whole of my life.”

  The view from the balcony was idyllic. The forest-and-fern-covered slope fell away to a stream with small waterfalls dropping from one bath-sized pool to the next. A steep narrow stairway led partway down, a stairway not fastened to the deck but leaning against it; built, she knew, to provide easy access to the stream for drinking water and bathing—yet movable, so that if danger threatened from that direction, it could be pushed away in an instant.

  There was a flash of lightning followed by a thunderclap so close that she nearly jumped out of her skin. Rain, which until then had been scattered drops, came down in a gush. Celia dived inside the house and stood there laughing, breathless. All I need is time, she thought. If I can stay here long enough, it will all come together; I know it will.

  As her eyes adjusted to the murky light of the kitchen, she saw that her sneakers had left muddy tracks across the rough wooden floor. Celia pulled off her shoes and socks and walked barefoot to the hut’s one other room.

  The bedroom was dark. The only light came from the kitchen, which itself was dim with the big wall flap closed. The bedroom would not have been dark if the wooden flaps on each of three walls had not been closed. Had they been propped open, awning style, as they were designed, the effect would have been that of an unwalled tree house.

  The room held only a double bed—a bed that, with two people curled tightly together, would not have seemed small. She crouched next to the bed and, pushing back the plastic covering it, stroked the coarse off-white sheet. A musty scent filled her nostrils, but it was overridden by another, more animal smell: that of the two warm bodies who had shared this intimate space.

  “Forty-five years ago you were here,” she whispered and waited for whatever it was she needed to know about forty-five years ago and now.

  Out in the kitchen, she heard the flap lift and the rushing sound of rain driven by wind. The sound persisted for a few seconds. The person entering was looking, as she had looked, for something to prop it open. Finding nothing, the flap closed again, shutting out the wind and darkening the room. Celia waited for the sound of footsteps, but there were none. For a moment she did not move, but remained on her knees, clutching the rough-woven sheet. She tried to stay where she was, who she was. It was no use.

  She rose and walked to the door of the bedroom. He was kneeling, unlacing a boot. He pulled it off and, one white foot bare and gleaming, went to work on the second boot. It and the sock were sopping wet, as if he had walked through the creek or stepped in a puddle. He sat down like a child and grasped the boot with both hands to wiggle it off his foot.

  As it slid free his eyes flickered to his left, to where she stood, then travelled slowly upward from her feet to her face. For several seconds he sat completely motionless, boot and sock suspended in mid-air, dripping. Then, with extreme quietness, he set the boot on the floor. He dropped the sock beside it and stood up.

  Celia moved to him and with her sleeve blotted the wetness from his forehead. She ran her hands down the sides of his face, wiping away droplets of rain clinging to his beard. Her fingers moved lower to undo the buttons of his shirt. It was very wet.

  She smiled up at his surprise. You expected me to be at the hospital or meeting with my commanders. But I am here. We are alone. No one, friend or foe, is coming through that rain. It is a torrent, a wall. We are inside a fortress made of water.

  She turned and walked into the bedroom. Although she could not hear his bare feet moving silently behind her, she knew he was there. At the bed she paused and waited for him to grasp what her body was telling him. My decision, your command; take it, feel your power. It means nothing to me.

  His fingers, light as feathers, stroked down her arms. She unbuttoned her shirt and he peeled it back over her shoulders. When she started unzipping her jeans his hands left her shoulders. She knew without turning around that he was doing the same.

  Her jeans were tight. She got them and the panties only to her hips, then sat down on the bed to wiggle them off. He knelt on the floor, took each pant leg in turn, and pulled until her legs were free and bare.

  They did not stare at each other; little good it would have done anyway in the shuttered, storm-darkened room. It was all by feel. When his damp, warm-skinned weight lay full against her, it was wonderful soundless as it always is, and swift as it must be. But
too quick, oh! She bit her lip to keep from crying out, knowing that he would not, had never, left her like this.

  She felt the discipline of his body as it resisted the urge to melt into her own heat, maintaining the rhythm until she came, gasping. Almost immediately she pushed to roll him off her. He clasped her shoulders, resisting.

  Why do you always do that? She pushed again. He gave way to the pressure and rolled onto his back. In the same motion she rolled on top of him, felt his body shudder and relax.

  See? This is what you need, as much or more than the sex; your back protected by the bed, the floor, the earth itself, my body a shield against what might come at you front on—my body and the rain, which for this moment in time, guards us both.

  They slept.

  SEVENTEEN

  CELIA could not have said whether she felt the man’s body beneath her first, or first opened her eyes to the darkened room. She took it that she was in some kind of hallucination, but the physical reality of the body, its musky maleness, caused her to hold her breath in terror. Who was this person? Who was she? Where was she?

  The where answered itself first, as she recognized not so much the room as the sound of the rain. It had slackened some but was still pelting down. Without moving her head, for fear of disturbing she knew not who, her eyes roved frantically, looking for clues as to whether this was or was not a hallucination.

  The man, whose hands rested lightly on the small of her back, must have sensed her wakefulness because he slid them higher and tightened his embrace. The movement panicked Celia. As swift as a bird taking wing, she was off of him and into a sitting position on the side of the bed. She would have been gone entirely, with or without her clothes—probably without because she had not yet figured out where they were. But his movement was almost as quick as hers, quick enough to catch her by the wrist.

  “Hey!” he said softly. “Don’t go.”

  Celia sat, trembling. “Who are you?”

  “Now you ask,” he said in a teasing voice. “I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me.”

  Then something, perhaps tension in the wrist he was holding, must have caused him to realize how frightened she was. He immediately released her, rose from the bed, and reached for his pants. She looked for her own, but he was between her and them, between her and the door. She remained perched on the side of the bed. His pants were at her feet. When he picked them up, they brushed against her leg.

  “Your clothes are soaking wet!” she said in surprise.

  “Well, yeah. It’s raining out there.” He glanced around, perhaps looking for his underpants. Not seeing them, he pulled on his jeans.

  “Is that where you came from? Out there?” she whispered.

  Seemingly oblivious to the fact that his crotch was no more than a foot from her face, he unselfconsciously slipped his hand between penis and pants to avoid pinching as he pulled up the zipper. “Well, yeah. I work here. Where did you come from?”

  Perhaps he sensed that his standing tall, quizzing her like that, was increasing her fear because he sat down cross-legged on the floor, looked up at her, and asked in soft-voiced wonder, “And why did you come to me the way you did?”

  “I thought you were . . . someone else,” Celia whispered.

  He gave a quirky, self-mocking smile. “Funny. For a second I thought you were somebody else.”

  “Who?” Celia whispered, not wanting to know and afraid she already did.

  “When Fidel lived here he had this companion, Celia Sánchez. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of her. In most of them she’s wearing pants, and a man’s shirt, with papers sticking out of the pockets.”

  “Notes,” Celia whispered. “Things Fidel needed to remember or wanted done. She did all the follow-up.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that. Anyway, there you were, in the doorway of what used to be their bedroom. In pants, with something sticking out of your shirt pocket. It was so weird! For a second I thought you were her ghost.”

  Celia began to cry, not sniffling but great, wracking sobs.

  “I’m sorry!” He reached to comfort her but she fell to the side, arms crossed on her chest as if to shield herself. He drew back. “I didn’t mean to upset you!”

  “I don’t know what happened,” she sobbed.

  “Nothing. At least, nothing to cry about.”

  “You don’t understand!” For the first time, her voice rose above a whisper.

  “No, but—”

  “I am becoming interchangeable with her!”

  “With who?”

  “Celia Sánchez.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Before only a few seconds and only in my head. Never with someone else!” Until now. Now she had not only come into Sánchez’s space; she had come into the woman, or the woman into her, in a way that seemed not only psychological but physical.

  Celia wiped her eyes and looked at the man, this time, looked carefully, a sort of last-ditch attempt to ascertain whether he was real. He was about her age, perhaps younger. The short, untrimmed beard made it hard to tell. His feet were bare, as was his chest, which was almost hairless. All he wore were the wet jeans, which were mud-caked about the ankles.

  She registered the fact that he had made no threatening moves toward her. In fact, he was not moving at all. There was about him a rather amazing stillness. She supposed his eyes were brown but could not tell for sure in the dim light. His head tilted slightly to one side in a posture of thoughtful attention. When she lay still except for a spasmodic jerking of her chest, he spoke in a conversational tone.

  “I spend most of my time observing animals in the wild. Sometimes they come to me, sit on my foot, or perch on my head. Mice have even climbed into my pocket. I don’t know why they do it. But it’s kind of nice.”

  “Nice for you,” Celia sniffed. “But for me to take that kind of risk is—” She paused, not knowing how to characterize what she had done. Finally she said. “Over the edge.”

  “Maybe you should see a doctor,” he said gently.

  Celia laughed hysterically. “I am a doctor. Dr. Celia Cantú. I have just come from a conference in Santiago.” She gripped the fabric beneath her head and, realizing it was her own shirt, sat up and jerked it on. “That is where I am supposed to be right now!”

  She tried to button the shirt but could not; her fingers were trembling too hard. He leaned forward, began a button below the one she was unable to fasten and worked his way down, closing the shirt button by button with deft movements that did not cause pressure against her skin.

  “And what does Dr. Cantú think?”

  “I have no idea! There have been only a few incidents. The pattern is . . . unclear.”

  As she spoke, Celia was looking about for the rest of her clothes. The man rocked to one side and pulled something white from beneath him. Her panties.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know I was sitting on them. Now they’re wet too.”

  Celia stood quickly and, turning slightly aside so that her crotch wasn’t directly in front of his face, pulled them on.

  He handed her jeans to her. “So what’s the problem with this fantasy?”

  “I am not the kind of person who goes around fantasizing!” Celia snapped, feeling more herself once she had her pants on. “Forgetting who I am. Jumping into bed with—” The enormity of what she had done struck her full force, and to her dismay, she began to cry again. “It’s inexplicable!” she gasped.

  He shrugged. “Isn’t everything?”

  She choked back the new round of sobs. “Everything?”

  “That’s how I see it.” He made a palms-up gesture. “For example, why does a rain-soaked biologist who’s been mucking about in the bush since before dawn walk through the door into the oldest fantasy on earth?”

  “What fantasy?”

  “You know. The one where the woodsman takes shelter from a storm in an abandoned cottage and finds a woman with a sweet warm body waiting for him.”

 
Celia blushed but said nothing. What was there to say?

  His eyes slanted with humour. “Was that magic? A miracle? Or just one of life’s beautiful surprises?”

  She made no attempt to answer and he made no attempt to touch her as she edged past him. Once out in the kitchen where there was more light, she felt better. The rain had become a drizzle. Her shoes lay just inside the doorway to the balcony. She sat down to put them on.

  He came out of the bedroom buttoning his shirt. “Know what that is?” he asked, pointing to the floor near where she sat.

  She glanced down, saw the trap door, and in her mind’s eye, the darkness beyond. “An escape route,” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” he said. “The tunnel caved in long ago, but that’s where it was, with a stash of emergency supplies in case the place got surrounded and they had to make a quick getaway.”

  “Celia Sánchez designed this place,” she said, her voice again coming out so low as to be almost a whisper. “This one and all the others up here.”

  “That’s what I heard,” he said easily.

  She stood but did not move toward the place where a section of the wall could be lifted to let her out onto the trail because he had sat down there and was putting on his boots. When the last one was laced and tied, he rose and faced her. His eyes were so full of question that she felt compelled to ask, “What?”

  “If you were Celia Sánchez when I came in, who was I?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Who were you?”

  He did not answer. He looked at her a moment longer, the question still in his eyes, then lifted the large wooden flap. Holding it up so she could pass under it and out onto the trail, he said, “I’ll walk you down.”

  “That is not necessary,” she said quickly. “The guides will be here any minute.”

  “Not likely. After a storm like this they’ll wait a couple of hours. They may not come at all. It’s not safe for you to go alone.”

  The man on the trail had said that too, and she remembered the promise she had given him, that she would not go down alone. Still she hesitated. “They were expecting tourists. Surely they will want to come, now that the rain has stopped.” She stated what she hoped was the obvious, and waited to see if he would contradict her.