Kidnapped and a Daring Escape

by Gian Bordin

  "Later, later," he calls back.

  Without saying a word, he stops in front of one of the three or four two-storey houses along the street. "This is the guesthouse. Dolores is the owner. I vouch that she is an excellent cook."

  They get off and thank the man. André ponders whether they should try to go further since according to the sun it is only noon. They could search for something to eat here and then wait for another lift. He notices Bianca’s longing looks at the run-down house and decides to give in to his own urge for a decent wash, a rest and hopefully a good meal.

  "All right, since you want to sample the hospitality of this five-star establishment, let’s see if they have a room."

  She smiles gratefully.

  "Or do you want a room for yourself?"

  "No, I want to be with you." Her response comes fast, with a hint of panic.

  "I prefer that too, and it is wiser to stay together."

  He enters through the bead curtain into what looks like a dining room. There are four tables with benches along two walls. Through a half-open door at the back, he hears the banging of pots being put away.

  "Buenas tardes. Any vacancy?" he calls out.

  After maybe half a minute, a tall, middle-aged woman enters while wiping her red hands on her off-white apron. Her mien strikes André as a mixture of perpetual suspicion and resigned suffering. Didn’t the farmer who gave them a lift call her ‘Dolores’? The name fits her perfectly. No need for a nickname. Her long black dress and black kerchief, hiding graying hair, suggest that she is a widow. She must have once been a stunning woman in her youth before the unforgiving Cordillera countryside soured her life. Behind her stands a boy of ten or twelve. The skin of their faces is light, hinting that at least the woman is of immigrant stock. Both look them over from top to bottom.

  André repeats his question. Dolores nods. "How many nights, señores?" Her accent points to Spain as her origin.

  "One only. How much does it cost, including lunch and dinner for today for the two of us?" He asks himself whether the forty thousand pesos will suffice, although it should at a place like this.

  She scrutinizes him for a couple of seconds and then answers: "Thirty thousand pesos for a room with a matrimonial bed, and you pay in advance."

  He has little doubt that this is possibly twice the sum she charges somebody local. But he doesn’t want to bother. "That includes hot water for a bath," he says in a tone that expects no denial.

  "No bath, señor, there is a shower next to the toilet."

  "That’s fine. Please show us the room, señora."

  Without uttering a further word, she goes to a door at the right back corner of the room. It leads to an outside wooden staircase up to an open landing along the length of the house. He counts six evenly spaced doors, presumably guest rooms. She opens the one at the end. They enter a small room with one window on the wall opposite the door. A double bed in the right inside corner leaves little more than four feet of free space. At the foot of the bed in front of the window are a small table with a large bowl and a chair on each side, while a narrow wardrobe fills the far corner. The window has no curtains.

  Dolores remains standing at the door. André guesses that she is waiting for the money. He quickly checks the bed linen. Its color is greyish, but it seems clean. He retrieves the two peso notes from the pocket of his rain jacket and hands it to her. She turns each over twice, before she nods and says: "Walter will bring you the change." With that she makes ready to leave.

  "Señora, please wait. Would you show us where the toilet and showers are?"

  She pauses in the door. "They are at the bottom of the stairs. They are shared with all guests, señor."

  "And towels?"

  "Walter will bring you one and a jug of water."

  "Would you by chance have anything for shaving?"

  She frowns and then replies: "I will check. My oldest son may have left some stuff. Walter will bring it to you."

  "And when will you be ready to serve us lunch, please?"

  "In about a quarter of an hour." With that she closes the door, precluding any further questions.

  André puts the backpack next to the wardrobe. Bianca sits on the edge of the bed.

  "Is this OK with you?"

  She nods. "I’m so tired. I simply want to lie down and sleep, but I want to take a shower first."

  "So do I. But let’s eat before that. We can sleep for a while in the afternoon. We should also wash some of our clothes and let them dry before evening."

  He sits next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders, hugging her briefly. "We will get out of this alive, Bianca."

  She only places her head on his shoulder. They sit there silently. A few minutes later, Walter brings them a towel, a jug of water, a glass, a disposable shaving blade, and a ten thousand-peso note.

  "Lunch is served in the dining room. It will be ready shortly," he says.

  "Thank you. Tell me, when does the bus north pass through Las Delicias?"

  "In the morning, but it has already left today and there isn’t another until next week."

  "Next week? When?"

  "I think on Tuesday. There are only three buses each week."

  "I see. Thank you. We will be down shortly."

  That is not good news. He tells Bianca. "We can’t risk staying here for three nights, waiting for that bus. Even one night is risky. I’d expect that our kidnappers have contacts in all towns around here. Some of their people may even be recruited from here or live here. So we have to find another way to move on."

  "But please, let’s stay the night."

  He already has real misgivings about staying even one night in this place. So he does not answer. Instead, he says: "Let’s go down for lunch."

  At the bottom of the stairs are indeed two doors with rusty enameled signs, one marked baño, the other inodoro.

  Lunch consists of corn tortillas, with a topping of beans in a tomato sauce and goat cheese, but it tastes delicious. They are both hungry. Dolores seems pleased to see them eat with such healthy appetite and offers them a second helping. They both thank her before returning to their room.

  "And now the shower. You go first, Bianca," says André, handing her the soap and towel.

  "No, I don’t want to go alone. You have to stay with me."

  "All right."

  He locks the room door, and they go downstairs. Bianca insists that he join her inside the baño. "I’m scared. I don’t want to be alone, not even in there," she repeats.

  It is a narrow room with a small washbasin toward the door and a shower at the end. Only a few empty hooks hang from the shower curtain rod. The shower rose is encrusted with calc deposits.

  He turns on one of the shower taps. Nothing happens. He tries the other one. After some spluttering, cold water trickles from the shower rose. He opens the tap completely and holds his hand under the water, waiting for half a minute. The flow increases, probably just enough to rinse off the suds, but remains on the cool side. "So much for a hot shower."

  Bianca is already undressing and hangs her garments on one of the two hooks next to the washbasin. She brushes past him and stands under the water flow.

  "It’s bearable," she mutters.

  He hands her the soap. While she lathers herself, he undresses and then watches her. The soapsuds both hide and enhance her sensuous body. She seems completely uninhibited. "You are a beautiful woman," he says softly.

  "Is that all you can think about? Do my back, please," she replies, holding her face into the water spray, her eyes closed tightly.

  He rubs her back, fighting the threatening erection, but not succeeding. After she has rinsed herself, he hands her the towel and quickly steps into the shower. While he soaps himself and shaves off his seven-day old stubbles with the rather blunt blade, she washes her underwear, shirt, and socks with the soap and then puts them on wet as they are. He does the same afterward.

  Back in their room, she undresses again, hangs her
wet underwear over a chair and uses the only metal hanger in the wardrobe for her blouse. Then she dries herself superficially with the towel, slips into the sheets and turns her back to him. A minute or so later, her regular breathing tells him that she has fallen asleep.

  He places the other chair under the door handle, barricading the door from being opened, and then joins her in bed. He reflects on the implausible sequence of events that now finds him sharing a matrimonial bed with the girl he met only a week earlier, both of them naked, she asleep, he aroused, like an ordinary married couple.

  * * *

  André wakes with a start. Something is wrong. He is cold. The sheet does not cover him anymore. Opening his eyes, he looks straight into Bianca’s. She is lying on her side next to him, still naked.

  "I thought you would never wake up," she remarks. "I want to fuck you."

  "I don’t fuck," he answers.

  "No? So what did we do at the lake?" She sounds piqued.

  "Making love."

  "Same thing."

  "No, fucking is taking your own pleasure selfishly. Making love is giving and receiving pleasure. I’ve not fucked a woman since my late teens. Haven’t you discovered that giving pleasure heightens your own response?"

  She smiles and reaches for his slowly growing penis. "Then make love to me."

  He lets his hand slide from her shoulder, past her right breast, over her waist, down her hip and thigh, and then back up again, barely touching, repeating it a second time, passing over her mound.

  "I like you better like this," he says, playing with the new growth of black fuzz.

  "I had a Brazilian wax for Franco. He liked it better without hair."

  "I prefer making love to a woman, not a child, nor a woman pretending to be one. But maybe some men need it to overcome their own sexual inadequacy."

  "Franco was not sexually inadequate." Her eyes briefly flare up. She pushes his hand away.

  "Then tell me, was he fucking you or making love to you?"

  "That’s none of your business."

  "No, it isn’t, but tell me anyway. Did he make sure that you got as much pleasure as he? Did you climax every time with him?"

  "You’re disgusting. Why do you want to know?" She sits up, hugging her legs, turning her face away from him.

  He realizes that the moment for making love has slipped away, but something pushes him on to continue challenging her. "Maybe because I want you to see Franco for what he really is. A narcissistic man, superficially charming and maybe a brilliant archaeologist, a man who steps on other people’s toes, both literally and figuratively, and laughed when he told ‘le trapu’ he would leave it up to him to do with you whatever he wanted."

  "Oh, I see. You’re now also an amateur psychologist. But you’re wrong. Franco has always been considerate and unselfish toward me."

  "How he belittled you in front of Paolo and me when I apologized to him, you call that considerate? I could see you were hurt, and your reaction also told me that it wasn’t the first time he did it. Not to speak of the paternalistic tone he used with me." He perfectly imitates Franco’s haughty voice and elocution. "No need to apologize, young man. As I said, Bianca was surely grateful to you." Switching back to his normal way of speaking, he continues: "Our age difference is hardly large enough to justify calling me ‘young man’, but then he may already consider himself as an old wise man."

  "You’re so mean. I hate you." She turns away from him.

  "Yes, I was mean right now, but the truth is sometimes ugly."

  "Ha, the truth!" She shoots around, facing him. "I clearly remember your lecture that there is no such thing as the truth. But when it’s convenient for you, it suddenly exists."

  He cannot help smiling. "You’re correct again. So let me rephrase it: my perception of the truth … But Bianca, don’t you see how well we suit each other. Even fighting with you is entertaining and brings us closer."

  "Bringing us closer? Oh, what arrogance!" she exclaims, exasperated, but the smile is back in her eyes. "You want to fuck me now, sorry, I mean make love to me now?"

  "No, my love, that can wait, but the food can’t. I prefer it hot. Can’t you smell it?"

  Strong kitchen smells are wafting in through the partially open window. He gets up and checks his underpants. They are almost dry. He dresses. She remains sitting on the bed, her arms still hugging her legs. He tosses her dry thong and bra to her.

  "Bianca, I would like your company for dinner. Please, join me."

  * * *

  Dinner is a tomato chicken stew, delicately seasoned, with corn mash and a ratatouille dish made from local vegetables he does not recognize. They share it with another man. André cannot tell why the nickname ‘the peddler’ immediately comes to mind. Is it something in the man’s demeanor that paints him as a door-to-door salesman?

  The dishes are excellent, but the atmosphere has changed, not only between Bianca and him, but particularly with Dolores, their hostess. She shows signs of nervousness. The worry lines in her face are carved in deep. She does not smile when she serves them, as she did at lunch, and she avoids his eyes. He observes that she twice goes to the bead curtain and looks outside, as if she were expecting somebody. He has the sudden urge to run, get away from the village. His face has turns somber again.

  "I’m sorry Bianca, but you must hurry up. We have to leave."

  She scrutinizes his face for a second or two and then nods, quickly chewing and swallowing the last few bites. Once back in their room, he locks the door from inside, leaving the key blocking the hole and wedges the door handle again with a chair. When Bianca reaches for the light switch, he says: "No light."

  Then he takes the rope from his pack and loops it around the center post of their window.

  She watches with a frown. "What’s going on? What are you doing?"

  "We’re leaving … via the window."

  "Why?"

  "Because I expect that any moment now we will get visitors we don’t want to meet … Yes, it’s another of my premonitions. Put on the leather jacket."

  "I thought we were to stay the night here. I don’t want to go."

  "Please, Bianca. You promised to do what I ask you to."

  "But —"

  "Psst," he interrupts her.

  Shouts come from the street. A few seconds later, several people are noisily trampling up the stairs. He holds the leather jacket open. Now she quickly slips it on. After checking the alley under the window, he throws one end of the rope outside and then helps her onto the windowsill. He gives her the end hanging down outside, while holding the rope looped around his back. "Hold the rope firmly, … stretch your legs, … and now lean back. I’ll hold you." She is leaning out, her boots on the windowsill. "Now as I lower the rope, walk slowly down the wall, always bracing one leg against it, and keep leaning back. Yes, that’s good."

  He watches until she jumps the last yard or so. The footsteps have come to a halt outside their door. Somebody tries to open it, shaking the handle. "Here," he hears a voice, and then a key is inserted into the lock. Low swearing erupts. He experiences an adrenalin rush, as he now climbs outside the window, the pack on his back. He closes both window panes and the shutters as much as he can and, holding on to both ends of the rope, lowers himself quickly. Once on the ground, he lets go of one half and pulls the rope down, winding it into tight loops at the same time. He stuffs it into the pack. Loud banging and shouts of "open up" can be heard.

  "Follow me," he whispers and quickly moves along the wall toward the street below.

  Peeking around the corner, he sees a mud splattered pickup truck and two off-road motorbikes in front of the guesthouse entrance. The only man around, in army fatigues, is leaning against one of bikes. It is obvious that he is keenly listening to what is happening on the balcony. An easy target, André reckons.

  "Wait here until I call," he whispers, handing her the pack, "and then bring this."

  He silently flits toward the motorcycles. His
flat hand hits the guy at the side of the neck like a blade. Unaware, the man collapses into a heap without at sound. He sees Bianca peek around the corner and beckons her over. Then he inspects the bikes for a second or two. One is a newish Honda 650, the other an older Yamaha 500. He inserts the blade of the imitation Swiss army knife into the front tire of the Yamaha, until he hears the hiss of the escaping air.

  "Wear the pack," he whispers, as he mounts the Honda. "Hop on, and hold on tight around my chest."

  She does. He feels her tremble against his back. He starts the bike, switches on the headlight, and roars off down the street, while Bianca tightens her hold on him. Within a few seconds they leave the village behind, speeding away on the road north. It winds through a highly broken up valley, full of twists and turns. He checks the rearview mirror for any signs of pursuers, but can never see any lights. After eight or so miles, they approach another village. He shuts off the motor and light and lets the machine roll silently through the street. A few houses have lit windows, but otherwise the village seems already asleep. Not even dogs are barking as they pass. Before putting the bike into gear to start the motor, he asks: "Are you OK? Holding up? Or is the pack too heavy."

  "Yes, I’m fine. This is only the second time I sit on a real motorcycle."

  "It’s fun, isn’t it?"

  "Yes, but also scary."

  He briefly presses her hands around his chest, glad to have her safely at his back. "Just hold on to me tightly."

  Past the village, the road veers gradually south and then rises slowly toward another low pass, where it turns again more northerly. Whenever the road goes downhill, he shuts off the motor. "To save fuel," he exclaims. The low whine of the chain and the crackling of pebbles on the road is the only noise then. He keeps alert for any sound of a vehicle pursuing them, but there is none. A short time later, they come to San Sebastian, more than simply a one-street village. There are still people and the occasional vehicle around. Loud music blares from one of the three pubs along the main street. There is even a gas station.