by Nancy Adams
Once he was only a few rows behind her, Jules slowed down and merely kept with her pace, watching her movements the whole time, mesmerized by her presence, by the general aura that appeared to resonate from her. For a moment, he felt like a stalker and recoiled inwardly a little. But then his soul raised its voice, demanding that he never let her out of his sight. Not that he wouldn’t have turned and fled the moment she turned around and told him off for following her. He could never act shamefully toward this woman. It was just that Jules had never felt this way before. Never in his whole twenty years of life up until that point had he felt such glory exist inside of him. None of the girls back home had ever been anything but fun for him and he’d never felt this type of light glint upon his soul at the mere sight of a woman. Something in Jules whispered to him that this was his whole light, his whole destiny moving daintily in front of him.
So, you see, even now, thirty-four years later, Jules was still following that girl.
Back in Rome in '66, Jules had followed her for several blocks until she turned down a side street and made her way to a large building. Jules stood on the other side of the street as she entered it through a big set of double doors painted red. Looking the place up and down, he thought at first that it was a hotel of some kind, and wondered if he could perhaps enter, pretending to be in search of custom. But this appeared too creepy to him. Searching the building’s facade, Jules noticed that all the shutters were sealed on the large windows, except for a few, even though it was summer, and that the front door had been heavily bolted after the girl had entered.
Just then a passerby walked behind Jules and the boy turned to the man and enquired what the building across the street was used for. The man had grinned and informed Jules that that particular building was used for the oldest game alive. When Jules had enquired as to what that game happened to be, the man’s grin had broadened even more and he had laughed a little at Jules’s innocence. “A brothel, my boy,” the man had beamed in Italian. “It’s a place where men go to buy women.”
Jules had stood slack-jawed for a moment, let the man go on his way, and then gazed back incredulously at the building. After his initial shock, he shrugged it off and forgave his love everything in a second. It had taken only that long to let go the fact that the girl he had become infatuated with was a prostitute. In fact, he could forgive his love anything.
The next day Jules returned to that same street and opened up his art stall on the sidewalk opposite Marco’s brothel in the hope of snatching a fleeting glance of the woman whom he had promised himself he would do everything in his power to marry.
Sitting on the bus, bumping his way to Villa de Leyva, Jules sensed that since that first time he had forever been following her along that sidewalk, always destined to find a bolted door barring his way from ever having her for real. Even now, he wasn’t sure that he was doing the right thing. His heart drove him on with whips of fire, his desire screaming out of it. But in his mind he had begun to understand over the previous sixteen years, many of them spent on his own in a cell with nothing but his thoughts, that his infatuation wasn’t healthy and that it had led him to do so many things that had harmed him personally. During his incarceration, he’d studied a lot of psychology and had begun to notice symptoms of obsessive behavior in himself, some of it pathological.
When he was released, Jules had promised himself that he would leave Juliette be. But as the days counted down to when he could eventually leave the country and go in search of her, Jules found himself constantly dreaming of finding Juliette again. And so it had been that he had gotten back in touch with Margot a month before and found out where Juliette was. It had been Margot who had always sent him at least two letters a year since he had been in prison, often acting as his only contact with the outside world, and the only intermittent ray of light to look forward to while locked up inside a fortress of steel and concrete with so many angry men.
With a shudder up his spine, Jules looked out the window at the sinking sun and let out a sigh. He was in God’s hands now and would accept his fate no matter what. Even if it meant that he would never see Juliette again in his life after tomorrow.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Juliette sat upon the balcony watching the sun disappear behind the hilly jungle, the beautiful colonial town of Villa de Leyva spread out in front of her, the low sun drenching it all in glints of gold and vanilla, the bright terracotta tiled rooftops shimmering in the sunbeams. Stretched out at her feet was Johnny, a local mutt that she’d named and one that had lived out on the balcony outside her room ever since Juliette had been foolish enough to feed him one night. Now he was a permanent resident, and Juliette felt cruel every time she showed him any attention, as she knew that soon she would be leaving Villa de Leyva and Johnny would lose the comfort that she provided him, having to return to scouring the streets once more for food or shelter, fighting with the more territorial or pack-oriented street dogs until he found another kind gringo to give him a little space of sanctuary.
Searching the beautiful townscape with her eyes, Juliette remembered back to the first time she had visited Villa de Leyva eighteen years ago. She and Jules had traveled down on motorbike from the U.S, through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and then into Colombia. It had been such an amazing journey that she smiled now as she sat on the balcony reminiscing. They had passed through so many cities, towns and jungle roads, the wind breezing through her hair, the two of them riding on forever with nowhere to go, only each other for company. They didn’t need anyone else back then, just each other.
When they’d reached Villa de Leyva, the two spent a month simply exploring the little town and its surrounding countryside. One week they’d trekked out into the jungle and spent several nights in the little mountainside villages that didn’t even offer guesthouses, spending the nights in little rooms that they’d rent from one of the locals. One such night had been spent in what Juliette could only describe as a ‘cowshed.’ However, neither of them complained as it was a fair distance from the main house, so it meant that they wouldn’t be overheard—if you get my drift.
That night they forgot about the smell of the dank room and made love on the straw mattress with the crickets going off in the long grass outside. The heat of the stuffy shed only increased their passions and the two fell asleep in each other’s arms, staring into one another’s eyes. Their love, although sixteen years old at that stage, bore an element of innocence back then. Sure, they had experienced in those years more heartbreak than they deserved, but they’d come out of it side by side, survived all the barbs that they were dealt together.
This last one, however, Jules had had to deal with on his own.
She had saved his life once and now he had saved hers. He had taken onto his shoulders all the ills and atrocities that were due to her. For that she felt deep shame that when Jules had taken the fall, she had never once tried to stop it all from happening. That she merely made a statement to the police corroborating what he’d said in his own confession and couldn’t even bear to stay for his subsequent trial.
Everything had been so beautiful for a couple of years up until that cataclysmic point in '84. It had been four years since their son Danny had died in 1980 and the two had spent a long subsequent year getting their heads out of that awful time. Having survived their son’s death, the two were once more free spirits, their demons put to rest. They resolved to simply sell their house, take all their money and travel the world on motorbike. This they did, and Juliette began to feel an ease inside herself that she hadn’t experienced since she was a little girl growing up in the Tuscan countryside back in Italy, dancing with her friends among the poplars and the delightful olive gardens.
With the wind in their hair, the two lovers traveled about carefree watching one town disappear into another, one set of country merge with another, always moving forward, nowhere to go, nothing bearing down on their shoulders: free birds.
They fi
rst set off down through Central America into South America, moving from one place to another, one country to another, transient collections of people, animals, cities, villages, jungles, rivers, mountains, beaches, oceans. This they did for three years until they decided to come back and travel the U.S.A. Those years down in Latin America had washed away so much of the sadness from Juliette’s heart and she felt almost clean again. Coming across the border into California, Juliette saw America in a softer light than the one she’d left with.
But that light would once again diminish and Juliette’s unease would return with a vengeance. Always in her life she felt that the darkness hovered over her, always looking for an opportunity to swoop down like a hawk and devour her happiness into misery. It had been like that with Danny. They were such a happy family. And then the boy, only ten at the time, got ill. After his death, she and Jules had spent a year gradually climbing their ways out of the abyss that had swallowed them up. Having pulled themselves free and with nothing left to them, they decided to spread their wings and fly down to South America. Their trip had lasted almost three years by the time they returned to America in the Spring of ’84 and it had invigorated them both as individuals and as a couple.
One night, however, was all it took to unwind their lives and send the couple spiraling apart. Since then, she’d not seen Jules for sixteen years and she hated herself for it. More than the guilt she felt for him taking the rap for a crime she committed, she felt shame for having abandoned him, and with each passing day it felt harder to do the right thing and make contact.
She was aware that he’d been released a year ago and not a day had gone by when she didn’t fear his presence over her shoulder. In that presence, she would feel so small and so ashamed of herself. She was weak, always had been the weak one of the two. It was why he’d instantly decided to take the blame the minute they were arrested; because he knew that she wouldn't survive prison. Not that she wasn’t a cat when it came to a fight. It was just her sensitivity would make the loneliness too much for her to bear. Jules knew that she would wilt under such conditions, and he feared that the dead souls would call her to them inside that place.
When Danny had died, it had been Jules who had brought her back from the brink. He’d sat with her night after night as she lay crying in bed over their dead son. He too was grieving beyond words, but in her selfishness she had ignored his grief in place of her own special mother’s grief. He had traveled down that long despairing tunnel with her, held her hand and directed her back toward the light. He had traveled down into hell in order to carry her out upon his back. A whole year she had mourned their boy; a whole year. And for each of its days, Jules sat by her side and coaxed her through it all.
He must think I hate him, Juliette thought, sitting on the balcony and gazing into the sun. I have been nothing but a callous bitch to him. Where was I when he needed me, huh? Where was I when he needed support in that rotting dungeon, where I sent him? The least I could have done was stay alongside him and be his wife. After all, that’s what I am. He should hate me for what I’ve done.
Juliette feared Jules at that point. She feared the shame he would induce in her. But more than that, she feared that he would look at her with hateful eyes. Oh! How she feared his hate more than anything in the world. On many lonely nights, she had asked herself if she too would hate him if he ever abandoned her in such circumstances. She shuddered now when she thought that yes. Yes, she would harbor hatred for him if he treated her as callously as she had treated him.
“Juliette?” came a woman’s call from the room behind Juliette, breaking her out of her morbid reverie.
Juliette turned and saw the presence of Margot coming in through the door.
“Out here, love,” Juliette called to her friend.
When Margot came out onto the balcony, Johnny momentarily pricked his ears up and the woman bent down to ruffle his fur, before taking a seat on the other side of a round little table that Juliette sat next to. Once she was seated, Margot sat and joined her friend in watching the beautiful vista for a moment.
After a while, she turned to Juliette and was about to say something, but stopped the moment she caught sight of Juliette’s face. Looking sadly at her friend, Margot remarked, “Juliette, you’ve been crying.”
Juliette raised one of her hands to her cheek and felt a tear. She then turned to Margot and smiled.
“I didn’t notice,” Juliette confessed.
“Sad memories?”
Juliette’s smile creased a little at the corners and she answered, “Always.”
“Oh, love!” Margot let out, reaching her hand across the little table and taking her friend’s.
They then turned their eyes back to the slither of sun resting on the horizon, the sky above it blood red and drenching the colonial town in a crimson hue.
“Claude and I,” Margot began after a moment of silence, not removing her eyes from the vista, “went to one of the small jungle villages today. They put on a market in the street on Wednesdays and the whole place turns up. It was very nice, all handcrafted things, local medicines—Claude bought some special tea—and lots of other stuff. It was very nice, you would have liked it.”
“How is Claude?” Juliette asked nonchalantly.
Margot smiled.
“He’s Claude,” she let out with a wave of her hand. “He’s so hard to tell sometimes. Like today, for instance. I wanted to go and see this little bookshop that they had in the village. It was really ancient and the whole place was full of these little labyrinthine corridors that led to more little side rooms. Anyway, I could tell that he didn’t want to go in, but he gave in to it.”
“As always,” Juliette interjected with a smile.
Margot gave her a smirk and then stuck out her tongue, making Juliette grin.
“Anyway,” Margot continued, “he was really sweet. He even joined in and began translating the Spanish books for me. We spent almost an hour in this quant little place, exploring it, even getting lost at one point and having to be guided out by the old man that owned it. When we left, I couldn’t help but turn to him and kiss him. I was so happy then.”
Margot beamed to herself for a moment, her eyes lost to the remembrance of the delightful occasion earlier in the day. But then her smile dropped.
Juliette, having observed the sudden drop on her friend’s countenance, enquired, “Then what did he do?”
“I understand his point. I do. It’s just when it’s in your face, you can’t help yourself.”
“What couldn’t you help?”
“Well,” Margot began in a soft tone, “we’d had a lovely day up until that point and were just getting back on the bike when this homeless woman came up to us grasping a little child to her chest with one hand and holding the other hand out to us. I couldn’t help but dip my hand into my pocket at the sight of the wretched creature. Claude, meanwhile, was simply packing up the bike and ignoring her. But then he saw me hand her a few thousand pesos—no more that a couple of dollars—and he went crazy. He began marching up to the woman and trying to snatch back the money. I had to hold him back. He was so angry, he didn’t talk to me the whole way home and just a minute ago, he simply dropped me off here, when we supposed to be going to that little place by the river to have dinner. I just got off the bike and came straight up, didn’t even give him the pleasure of turning around and looking back.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. He just roared off on his bike. I mean, he didn’t have to go so crazy. It’s my money, after all.”
“He’s a stubborn oaf, love,” Juliette remarked, smiling at her friend.
“Yes,” Margot smiled.
“I’m sure that he’ll call you tonight or turn up tomorrow with flowers.”
Margot’s grin expanded at the thought.
“It’s almost worth it,” she commented. “I almost feel that if it wasn’t for him screwing up, I’d never get flowers or gifts.”
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“Remember that time in Thailand when he went missing for four days?”
“Of course,” Margot exclaimed. “But I remember more the book of poetry that he wrote me to make it up.”
“One poem for each month of your love wasn’t it?” Juliette enquired.
“Yes,” Margot beamed. “He promised to write me one every month since as well.”
“And has he?”
Margot’s face became even brighter.
“Yes,” she let out softly.
“Then perhaps the suffering is worth the pleasure; the love that it induces out of him.”
“But I want him to be romantic when he isn’t trying to make it up to me. I want him to write me poetry out of love; not guilt!”
“Oh, Margot, my love!” Juliette let out, turning a benevolent look upon her friend. “I love your wondrous innocence. Even at the age of forty, you dream of a love basking in nothing but light, but I tell you, this isn’t life. This type of existence would only desensitize you to the light. You’d become bored by it. You’d even begin to not even notice it. I’m afraid that without suffering, there is no happiness; no day without night; and no light without the dark.”
“That’s not what my mother promised me,” Margot then grinned and the two friends began to laugh.
“Mine neither,” Juliette giggled. “I was expecting a castle, and all I got was a tent!”
“I always dreamed of Prince Charming, and all I got was the frog!”
The two remained laughing for some time before gazing at the twilight that had flooded the sky, the sun now gone.
“Hey,” Juliette suddenly said as they sat silently, “shall we go to the riverside restaurant ourselves?”
Margot smiled and then replied, “That would be wonderful, love.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
