Copyright © 2009 Ernest Bloom.
"You're missing the passing countryside," Joe said. "Don't you want to watch?"
"No."
It sounded snippy, she realized. She sighed, added: "I'm happy with my book. Maybe I'll watch on the return trip."
"You've got years to read that book. Anyway, what makes you think we'll come back the same way?"
She didn't rise to the bait. She kept reading, although her concentration was shaken. She had to read the sentence three times to restore her place in the novel's flow.
Joe fell silent.
Eva was put out with him, but she was determined to deny him the satisfaction of relishing in her aggravation. Striving to maintain an air of inattentiveness to the unfamiliar country passing by around them, she'd focused instead on the book she'd brought along for the trip. Still, the situation was galling. No getting around that. Lucky for her, it was a good book.
"Trust me," Joe kept saying past his trademark soft, mildly supercilious smile, his puppy dog-sorrowful blue-gray eyes twinkling behind the old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses framing his bald head. But of course he refused to explain anything.
To be kidnapped by one's own husband! And the both of them in their sixties!
"It's just for a few days. Trust me. It's a surprise."
Trust him!
There was no sign of dementia about him. His behavior was unprecedented, but clearly he hadn't lost his mind. There was method to his madness, but she couldn't fathom what that method was.
The plan had been to vacation at Lake Manitoba for three weeks. They'd been planning the trip all year. The Baxters had gone there in 2006 and strongly recommended it. They'd packed all their gear for some serious walleye fishing, prepared to risk provoking the dreaded Manipogo, the legendary serpentine beast said to call the Manitoba home. When they left Bismarck everything had seemed normal, except for the fact that the cell phone had slipped out of Joe's pocket, and he'd run over it with the RV before they even got out of the driveway.
"No problem," he'd said. "We'll get one of those disposables to tide us over until we get back home."
But when they reached Fargo, Joe turned south instead of north, and that's when the trust me business began.
He didn't stop to buy another cell phone.
Besides having been looking forward so much to Lake Manitoba, what bothered Eva most was that she couldn't call the kids. She wondered how long it would be before they started to worry. She'd called Larry from the home phone before they left, telling him that the cell had been destroyed, and they would be getting in touch in a few days.
A few days could easily turn into several days. It might be close to a week before the kids realized something was wrong.
Or could they be in on this charade? Has Larry been Joe's secret co-conspirator all along?
Joe drove by day and they slept in rest stops by night. He kept his eye on her. There would be no blabbing to filling station attendants. No use of payphones.
"Remember: there's a surprise awaiting you."
She doubted that, but she couldn't help being intrigued. In their thirty-eight years together he'd never behaved even remotely like this.
What's the old man up to?
The miles unfolded. She couldn't guess what their destination might be. Who did they know in the South? No one. They spent the first night outside of Omaha, the second near St. Louis.
It was perfectly dark and silent in the RV. She was stirred from her sleep by his movements. He was quietly dressing. He moved to the front and started the engine. She looked at her watch in the dim light.
"For God's sake, Joe, it's the middle of the night!"
"Go back to sleep," he said.
Not likely, she thought. She dressed quickly and moved to join him up front as the vehicle pulled out of the rest area and back onto State Route 21.
"I guess I'd be wasting my breath asking where we're going?"
He didn't answer, sitting there behind the wheel like a wizening old Gandhi, eyes fixed forward into the night. There was, she thought, a fixity in his gaze now, a kind of wistful intensity that she'd seen many times over the years. She knew he was remembering things that he seldom cared to mention.
So little he ever told me about his childhood. Fleeing demented parents in Hungary on a plane ticket provided by a rich uncle, and all at fifteen years of age! Somehow he got citizenship. Living with a third cousin down in Temecula. Could this have anything to do with his family?
The night was very dark, but she could feel woods and cleared pastureland close all around them. Occasionally she saw commercial buildings and reclusive private homes set back on wide lots. The road cut through the rolling country in great, snaking curves. They crossed a narrow river.
Is there any fishing around here?
They passed through a few tiny towns. Racola, one sign read in shiny white on green reflective letters. Potosi. Shirley. The wooded hills seemed thicker now, and somewhat less developed.
Land developers. Euphemism to make us feel happy inside about nature's most prolific despoilers. Like calling butchers in their blood-stained aprons cow developers.
But nowadays uncontested time had drained the cynical marshes from under many unharmonious euphemisms, leaving only relic words to stand for one-time discreditable purposes or intents. The irony had been lost, which was itself a final, bitter irony that vanishingly few could still appreciate. Who remembered now the brutalities and cruelties yawning like naked, hungry throats behind the catchphrases? Unpleasant truths that catchphrases and euphemisms were custom-shaped to fill in and paper over. Down the decades the corporations and political manipulators hung you up on hooks of words the same way the butchers filled their freezers with red and white slabs of meat.
Who'd have believed human beings could so willingly forget their humanity? Ah, Orwell was right. It's all about persistence. Stay on message. Do not deviate. He who controls the language commands the entire social octopus.
They'd been on the road for about ninety minutes when he slowed the RV. She could tell he was watching for some obscure side road off to the left. He found it. They drove out into the scraggly woods of the Missouri Ozarks. After about another ten miles he turned off onto a narrower dirt road that twisted and turned back into much rougher country.
She shook her head.
"I hope you know what you're doing, old man."
"I do."
The thing was, she knew that he did know what he was doing. No matter that it made no sense to her. Her confidence in him knew no bounds. That was why she was willing to play along with this bizarre game.
They'd met at the University of Washington in 1971. He was some kind of boy-wonder back then, an electrical engineering prodigy, and she was trying to learn how to write fiction. They'd clicked right away. She remembered now his neat black beard and shoulder-length hair from those early days. All gone. His eyes had seemed ageless to her, from the very first time she ever saw him. They still did. Profoundly deep and wise. Her own personal Robin Hood, she'd called him. She'd been something of a flower child herself, a refugee from the San Francisco glory days. He'd gone to work for Boeing straight out of college, and a few years after he retired in 1995 they moved to North Dakota to be near her mother, who at eighty-seven still lived in New Salem.
She trusted Joe implicitly, but over the long years together they'd necessarily discovered about all there was to learn about each other. It was not boredom she felt, not contempt, but a certain continuing solace that they had. A pleasant comfort in their lives together. This stability assured her that, no matter what sacrifices had been made ‑‑ and everyone made sacrifices ‑‑ he would always be there for her. It was the comfort of steadfast resolve that perhaps underlay the foundation of any truly deep relationship. Love? Yes. She loved her children, and she loved Joe, but it was a different kind of love than they'd known those first few wild years in Seattle.
Well. . . .That's life.
It was Hemingway's Islands in the Stream she'd brought along for the Manitoba trip. She was re-reading it, actually: she'd first read it. . . .When? Back in the late 1980s, she guessed. It was the first posthumous Hemingway novel published, and it had a reputation of not really being a legitimate Hemingway novel so much as a cut-and-paste job executed on fragments of early drafts by his publisher after his death. It was clear why it had this reputation, because the novel was so episodic, with three or four different and distinct visions of the same protagonist revealed over the unfolding decades of his life. The first time she'd read the novel she had especially liked the first episode, sad though its ending was. But this time she found herself thinking that the critics had been premature to dismiss Islands in the Stream, because what Hemingway was doing was revealing how his protagonist, like everyone, really is a succession of different people over the years. In fact, except for The Sun Also Rises, she now thought Islands in the Stream was Papa's finest novel.
She thought of this now, as the RV rocked and wobbled back and forth in the circumscribed darkness, with secretive Joe in the driver's seat next to her, because now she had the perspective of the episodic nature of her own lifetime as a basis for comparison.
Who am I?
It was a strangely difficult question. She had played so many roles for so long in ways you could never foresee when you were young. She wondered whether Joe felt the same way. Probably. Was it possible, she wondered, that after all this time she no longer really knew who he was, either?
In a way we lose ourselves when we become members of any larger organization. A marriage. A family. And the entanglements of the workplace, and larger social conglomerations. We become part of them, and they are part of us. The entwined tendrils can't always be easily teased apart again. Or not tendrils, but mutually enmeshed cilia. We all fuse together in strange, unpredictable ways at a deep stratum, almost at a cellular level. Those episodes we lived through shaped us and distorted us without our permission, or even our knowledge that the changes were occurring. History changes us into different people. Who am I? Outside of the prevailing relativism of the moment, does that question even have an answer anymore? Does it have any meaning?
The headlights of the vehicle that had been slashing crazily across the washboard dusty road and the claustrophobic overhanging jungle-vegetation now illuminated a heavy and ancient iron gate set between a pair of towering brick pillars some distance before them. Joe slowed down and lowered his window. She saw there was some kind of plinth or call station there. The RV came to a halt and Joe reached his hand outside.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Intercom."
Momentarily she heard a voice, somewhat tinny, but distinctly a woman.
"Who's there?"
"Joe Markel."
"Joe? Are you alone?"
"I'm with my wife."
A pause. Eva wondered at it.
"Golden freedom cannot be purchased with yellow gold."
Eva frowned. Had she heard wrong?
Joe replied: "Fidelissimus ad Mortem."
"Mind the dogs."
He put the window back up.
"I'm not even going to ask what that was all about," Eva muttered.
He smiled without looking toward her. Before them the heavy black gate rolled aside, and they drove through.
Momentarily, through the side windows she saw five or six dogs sitting alertly along the sides of the road: great big, wide-chested fawn mastiffs, they appeared to be, with thick leather collars buckled around their massive necks. They seemed to have stationed themselves periodically along the road, and as the vehicle passed they rose up to follow alongside.
"What remarkable animals," she said.
Joe did not reply.
They approached the house, a warm, inviting structure built high up on what she decided must be the upper reaches of a stone-enclosed basement. A wide verandah seemed to encircle the whole house, with a wide sweep of steps descending in front. Something like Japanese lanterns that were tucked back under the eaves provided a muted yellow glow. A young woman who was wrapped in a heavy housecoat was coming down the stairs. She gestured toward the right side of the house, but Joe had already turned in that direction. The woman hurried ahead of them and guided them toward what seemed to be a very large, ramshackle two-storey barn. The RV's headlamps picked out its enormous rusted tin roof with twin cupolas high on top. The young lady unlocked a massive padlock and then rolled back a heavy sliding door by hand. Joe pulled inside. Bright lights suddenly bathed the entire room from above. Eva saw two other cars were parked there, an ancient faded blue pick-up truck and a shiny new Mercedes. The building also contained a long workbench and a plethora of farming and gardening equipment.
Joe turned off the ignition and turned to look at her.
"Well, we're here."
"Where's here?"
"You'll see. Just. . . .Don't rush things. Okay?"
"But Joe--"
"Just a little more patience. A little more."
They got out of the RV. Eva came around the front to see Joe already standing outside. The unknown young woman was embracing her husband.
She can't be more than twenty years old, Eva thought. It was strange. The lady-child stood about five and a half feet tall. She had silky brown hair and impossibly brilliant green eyes and a fantastic young woman's shape. Eva felt a pang of jealousy flash through her that she could not understand.
Several of the dogs had followed them into the barn. They sat down side by side and were watching the spectacle.
"Joe," the young woman in the housecoat said. She moved back a step and looked him up and down. "It's good to see you."
"How have you been, Erin?"
She smiled, dimples turning in at the corners of her mouth. A remarkably lovely smile, Eva thought.
"Good. You know." She shrugged. "Lonely. But. . . ."
Eva stepped toward them.
Joe looked at her.
"Erin, this is my wife, Eva. Eva, Erin Jones."
Eva put out her hand. To her surprise, the young woman ignored it and stepped forward to embrace her.
"So glad to meet you, Eva. I'm sorry. I hope you don't mind my using your first name. But. . . .I'm sure you and I will be friends, for a long time to come."
Eva had felt affronted, but something about the girl's demeanor was disarming. And. . . .Fascinating. Something. . . .
"No, that's perfectly alright. . . .Erin. I'm sorry. I have the strangest feeling that I should know you, but of course I don't know you. Although apparently you and my husband have met."
"Yes. . . ."
"Was it in Seattle?" But it couldn't have been Seattle, she thought. She would have been just a child.
"Eva," Joe said, "we'll get all these questions answered, but it can't be tonight. Tomorrow. . . ."
"Yes," Erin agreed quickly, "it's very late, and tonight we all need sleep." Picking up on Joe's cue! Eva thought. "Why don't we take your luggage in? I'll show you to your room. Tomorrow, I'm sure, everything will start coming clear."
* * *
Joe slept deeply. Eva did not.
The house, she discovered, was remarkably furnished. It was much more tasteful on the inside than the rustic exterior had suggested, all massive beams and pastel-colored walls and ornate, verdigrised copper and solid, dark iron fixtures. The floors were heavy flagstone with thick, clean rugs scattered about abundantly. The furniture she'd seen when they made their quick trek through the house was framed on heavy oak with thick, comfy padding. All ridiculously prosperous and exquisite, and all the more remarkable because the only occupants appeared to be little Erin Jones and her many big, watchful dogs.
How does she afford it? Where are her parents? Why's she living out here in the middle of nowhere all alone?
Eva lay unsleeping in bed, replaying the facts of the last few days over and over in her mind. She concluded precisely nothing.
She wanted to dislike this girl, Erin. But she did not. Erin seemed like a close friend. It was as she'd said in the barn. They should be friends. It felt like destiny.
The girl reminds me of someone. Who?
She couldn't place it.
The young girl had not been surprised at all by their arrival in the dead of night. She might have been expecting it.
The answers are in front of me, Eva suspected, irritated with herself. Decades ago maybe she could have pieced it all together, but the years had inevitably blunted the acuity of her thinking.
The brain learns to lean too much on experience and less on novel insight, she thought. Experience is useless here.
She sighed. Nothing to be done about it. Not a thing.
She was sitting up in a high, comfortable chair a few hours later when Joe finally awoke. He swung his legs around out of bed and sat up on the side facing in her direction. His eyes were still closed. He rubbed his pate and yawned. The sun had been up for an hour already. Birds were singing outside.
"Now, tell me what's going on, Joe."
He grunted.
"Joe!"
He made warding motions with a hand. Shortly he opened his eyes.
"Shower. Breakfast. Then. . . .Explain everything."
"Everything?"
He grunted again. He got up, shuffled through his suitcase, found the items he sought, and went to the bathroom.
She got her shower after his. She felt tired, but the hot water helped. She dressed and took her pills. Coming back in the bedroom, she found the old man gone.
Typical.
Strangely, she found that he had taken her swimsuit out of her suitcase and laid it out on the bed. He'd also written a note on a piece of stationery and left it there for her to find.
Wear this under your clothes, please.
It was an odd request, but she complied.
Momentarily she went out into the hall. She heard voices up ahead, coming from the kitchen. Joe, and their mysterious hostess. Erin.
That girl.
She slowed down. Walked quietly. She thought she could make out what they were saying. She felt a little guilty, like an eavesdropper. She was eavesdropping. But enough was enough.
"The technology continues to make everything more difficult," the girl was saying. "And the paranoia. Databases. Phony documents. Snoops and spies."
"How are things around here? Any special problems?"
"About the same. The rangers are curious sometimes, but they come and go, and they leave pretty well alone. The hikers cause more trouble, but the dogs are good about that."
"Wallace was good with computers."
"I'll miss him."
"So will I."
"I left his binders, of course. All his tricks. And I've added to them."
"Good."
"And your wife. Do you think. . . ?"
"Eva? Yes. She'll do fine."
"She doesn't know anything?"
"Of course not. You know how it is."
I don't know anything! Eva thought.
"Yes. . . ."
"I'll take her downstairs this morning."
"Good. I can get to work on that monster outside while you're there. An RV, Joe! Did you have to--"
Eva had straightened up and came around the corner.
"Good morning!" she said.
Joe was seated at the breakfast bar, she saw, a cup of coffee steaming in his hand. Erin was on the other side of the bar with her own cup, leaning toward him. Erin blinked when she came in, straightening up. Eva was surprised to see the young woman wore a suit of clean blue coveralls.
She suspects I was listening, Eva thought. Too bad.
"Good morning, Eva," Erin said. "The waffles are almost ready. Hope you're hungry."
"The bacon smells good," Eva said, coming to the bar to sit next to Joe. She smiled at him, then at Erin. "Any more of that coffee left?"
"Sure." Eva poured her a cup.
The breakfast was cordial enough, and they all successfully avoided mentioning the subject most on their minds. The only real puzzlement arose when Eva asked Erin what she did for a living. A wry smile flashed across her face, and she gave Joe a quick look before turning back to say: "Well, for now I'm the caretaker of this place. But I'll be leaving soon for college."
"Oh, college? Which one?"
"UCLA. College of Medicine."
"Oh, you want to be a doctor."
"Yes. Well, I'm interested in research, too."
"I see. Do you have a specialty in mind?"
"Geriatrics."
"Ah." She glanced to Joe, back to Erin. "Maybe that helps explain your connection."
Erin smiled again.
"I'm sorry, Eva, Joe, but I must excuse myself," she said. "I've got work to do, and the day's not getting any younger."
"I'm sorry," Eva said, "did I say something wrong?"
"No, of course not. I really do have chores that need doing. Maybe Joe can show you around the house. . . ?"
"Of course," Joe agreed, rising up from his stool at the breakfast bar. Eva did likewise. "In fact, I think we'll take a little tour downstairs."
"Good idea," Erin agreed, coming around the corner. Oddly, she took Eva's hands in her own and looked affectionately and deeply into her eyes. "I do hope you'll enjoy it here," she said. "I know you will. Joe is never wrong about such matters."
Erin left.
Joe sat back down and picked up his coffee cup.
Eva eyed him narrowly. "More coffee?"
"Have a seat, dear," he said.
She considered sniping, but decided against it. She sat.
He looked at her.
"I know this has been difficult for you. Actually, it's going to remain difficult for a little while longer, but not too long, I trust. With time everything will be easier to understand."
"Who's Wallace?"
"So you heard that. I thought so." He looked down into his coffee cup. Sadness clouded his features. "Wallace was an old friend of mine. He recently died."
"I'm sorry. How did he die?"
"Doing what he loved: trying to make the world a better place. An honorable death, but a tragedy. The scope of the tragedy can't be overstated. He was killed serving in Afghanistan."
"I see. Both you and Erin knew this Wallace?"
"Yes. . . .This is hard to explain."
"I'm sure."
"There were four of us. Erin, Wallace Hayes, a man named Aubrey Spindler, and myself. The four of us cooperate. We take turns. . . .And now Wallace has been killed. The way we cooperate, we need four equal partners." He looked back up at her. "You, Eva, are the forth partner."
She raised her eyebrows.
"And if I don't care to be a partner?"
He shrugged.
"No one's forcing you."
"Unless I'm mistaken, you did drive me down here against my will."
"Yes. . . .A necessity. You'll see. But you'll be free as ever to make your own decisions. Although I must confess I already know what your decision will be on this matter."
She reached out and touched his arm.
"Joe. Why don't you just tell me what this is about?"
He met her gaze and grinned. He threw back the last swallow of coffee.
"It's easier to show you. Follow me."
They got up again. He led her out of the kitchen and down the long hallway. A big mastiff lying there lifted its eyes as they passed but did not rise to follow them.
"You seem to know your way around here pretty well."
"Yeah."
Don't explain anything then! she thought.
He led her into a wide parlor and continued on toward its far end.
"You and your secrets, Joe! I'll never--"
She stopped short in mid-sentence, jolting to a standstill and staring, her mouth still hanging open.
On the wall hung a large painted portrait in an ancient gilded, wooden frame. It looked like it could easily be a century old. Probably older than that, judging by the attire of the pair portrayed there. The man in the painting had caught her eye. Even with the spectacles and old-fashioned high-collar suit, he looked remarkably like Joe had looked twenty years ago.
Joe was a second realizing she'd fallen behind. In a moment he came back to her side.
"Joe. . . .Is this. . . .Your grandfather? Or. . . ."
He fidgeted by her side, apparently at a loss for words.
Abruptly she clapped a hand to her mouth.
"That woman! She must be an ancestor of Erin's. Look! They have the same eyes, the same mouth. . . ."
She turned, now utterly perplexed, to Joe, her eyes sweeping his face. "Are the two of you related?"
"Not exactly." He looked exasperated.
"Then what exactly--"
"Come on!"
He whirled, and she had to hurry after him.
Behind an old grandfather clock a door opened to a small spiral staircase leading down. He flipped on a switch, and light came streaming up the stairs from far below. She followed him down.
"Many years ago in Hungary," he said as they made their descent down the tightly turning steps, "a man used to go out in the woods every day, checking his snares for rabbits. These were desperate times, and it was hard to feed one's family. People were starving across Central Europe. Poverty and disease ruled the land. To make matters worse, warfare and political wrangling were interminable. This man had watched his own wife and their six surviving children die one by one during the previous two years, and there was nothing he could do about it. The same was going on in every house throughout the land. He had become old and broken, as you'd expect. Psychologically ruined, you see. Every day he would go out to check his snares, but seldom did they hold any rabbits. When they did catch a miserable, skinny rabbit, the wolves usually got to it before he did. He was slowly wasting away, and the truth is that maybe he didn't see much point in continuing to live himself. But he did go on, by habit, or by sheer meanness. Tenacity. Luck. He was a survivor.
"One day he ventured farther up into the hills than he'd ever gone before. On this day, by accident, he discovered a cave. In fact he almost tumbled down into it before he even saw it. The entrance to the cave was nothing more than a narrow, dark crack overgrown by a thicket of brush. Had he fallen in, he would have joined the pile of mostly mummified animal corpses lying at the bottom two hundred feet below the surface. He had no way to explore the cave, but when he returned a few weeks later, he brought rope and a hammer and some iron spikes to use as pitons, and plenty of candles.
"This first chamber let into a series of several more. Tucked away in the back of one of the deeper chambers he discovered a beautiful pool."
They reached the bottom of the steps. Eva was a little winded. Joe had been hurrying down at a terrific pace, but the steps screwed down deeper than she'd anticipated. A few bright tungsten lamps set up at the bottom of the stairs shone back up the way they'd come down. The room they were now in was itself quite dim. They were not in a basement, she knew. The walls were natural rock. It was something like the story Joe was telling her: they were in some kind of cave located underneath the house. A strange odor filled her nostrils. It was not unpleasant; it was a little sweet, and a little musty, but fresh, too. She thought of mushrooms.
Her eyes continuing to adjust to the gloom, she saw Joe standing a short distance away, hands on his hips, looking away from her.
What's he looking at?
She came up to stand next to him.
A faint blue light was emanating from near the floor, she began to realize. She squinted. A sunken place was in the floor there. "Is that water?" she asked.
"A magic grotto," he announced softly. She heard him sigh, a shaky sigh of ease, or satisfaction. To her surprise, he began to undress, dropping his clothes to the flat stone floor of the chamber. He wore his swim trunks underneath. He finished undressing and stepped forward, down toward the pool, its faint blue glow making lazy ripples away from him as he waded in. He sunk down until he was in up to his neck. He had found a place to sit. It might be a hot tub, or a hot springs. She found herself intrigued, and half-enchanted.
"Is the water cold?" she asked.
"Only one way to find out." He put his arms out along the edge and reclined his head back. She could discern well enough now in the dusky glow that his eyes were closed. He looked thoroughly relaxed.
Well, why not?
She undressed down to her own swimsuit and approached the pool.
It was neither hot nor cold; in fact, it was curiously lukewarm, close to body temperature, she thought. There must be some heat source, she thought. The cave's colder than the water. Maybe it is a hot spring.
She found the apron edge of the rocky ring on which Joe was seated. She moved over to his side and sunk down, feeling the surface waters of the pool rise up to her neck, too. She moved into the curve of his arm and felt his hand cup around her other shoulder. She leaned into the crook of his neck and closed her eyes and felt all tension draining away.
"It's like paradise," she murmured.
"Yes. Paradise."
Her thoughts grew fuzzy and disconnected. She found she could not maintain her curiosity about this place and its mysteries. All would be revealed, in time. The pool drained away any lingering apprehension. She felt the comfort and security of Joe's familiar presence.
Joe. How long they'd been together. How much living they'd come through together. Snippets of vignettes flashed through her awareness. Their early days in Seattle. The double marriage with her sister and Felix, who divorced within three years. Larry's birth, and later, Jane's. Joe's meteoric rise at Boeing. He was one of their golden boys, and he was her golden boy, too, her Robin Hood. . . .Yes. Their years had been sweet together. Still were, although the years seemed now to be rushing so quickly toward a conclusion. But. . . .So many things they'd done together! The trips to Alaska, and to Hawaii, and to Great Brittan, and Rome and Italy and Greece. . . .They'd had their misfortunes too, like any family, their pains and sorrows, but they'd come through it all. Through the hurts and tears, the laughter, the joys. . . .
She felt some strange sensation in her limbs.
She started, as if from sleep. Have I been dreaming? she thought.
"It's okay," Joe said. She was still sitting next to him in the pool.
"I think I must have dozed off."
"It's the pool. It'll do that to you. You'll get used to it."
"My arms and legs feel as though they've fallen asleep. Only. . . .Not really. They're not tingling. They feel. . . .I can't explain it. Lighter."
"Mine too."
She looked up into his face, feeling a twinge of fear. But he looked perfectly at ease, his eyes closed.
"Joe ‑‑ what is it? What's going on?"
He opened his eyes and looked sideways at her.
"It's your first time," he said, as if just remembering it. He started to move. "We should get out."
They came up out of the water. He showed her to a large armoire full of plush towels. They dried off, and then he removed a pair of heavy terry bathrobes.
"Put this on," he said, handing one to her.
She did.
"Joe. The story about the cave in Hungary. How's that related to this cave?"
"Different caves," he said. "The same pool."
She frowned.
"How can that be?"
"Let's go. I'll explain upstairs."
She followed him up to the parlor. Crazy old man! she thought.
They sat down together on a couch that looked to be a century old. From somewhere outside the house she began to hear what sounded like a noisy band saw or grinding wheel, and the frequent clanking of heavy pieces of metal. She gazed at the painting on the wall opposite the settee. The resemblances were positively eerie.
He took her hand. She turned to look at him.
"Was the pool rejuvenating, Eva?"
"Very."
"You can use it once a day. No more."
She frowned.
"I will only enter it once or twice a week."
"Joe--"
"The pool ‑‑ or enough of it ‑‑ was brought here from Hungary shortly after the Civil War, in 1870. It was not an easy trip, as you might imagine. And not cheap. Of course you'd have to be insane to want to ship water from Central Europe to America: insane, or full of secrets. The journey was even more difficult than it might seem, as the waters of the pool had first to be hauled through Romania to the Black Sea in order to avoid certain difficulties in Germany, France, Italy and Greece at the time. What's more, the waters could not be divided up into separate barrels. It all had to be shipped as a single volume, which required the construction of an enormous water-tight container: not a simple prospect for 1870s technology."
"But. . . .Why?"
"Because the pool is not a pool of water, Eva. It is alive."
She stared at him.
"It's a living creature. Pure protoplasm, we once thought of it, with no cell membrane. We've learned more in recent years, although there's much we still don't know. For example, so far we've made little headway on attempts at genetic analysis. Does this thing have the equivalent of a nucleus? We think it should. Something must be directing its manufacture of enzymes. But so far, at least, its genetic material continues to elude us."
She shook her head.
"You keep saying us and we. Do you mean Erin and you?"
"Yes, and Wallace, and Aubrey. Aubrey has done a great deal of the biochemical work in Chicago. And now that we've lost Wallace, we need for you to join our small circle."
She laughed.
"I'm a writer, Joe. I write fiction. I could use your tale for my own purposes, but I don't see what I have to offer your little circle. What do I know about biology and biochemistry? Nothing. You know that. Even if I believed any of this fairytale, I could be of no use."
"You're mistaken," he said, his tone perfectly calm.
"Why?"
"For one thing, I did not say we need you to become a biochemist; although, if you ever decide you want to become a biochemist, there's no reason you couldn't do that ‑‑ I'm sure Aubrey would appreciate the help. But the immediate concern is to insure that we have four caretakers. We divide it into shifts of ten years each. We--"
"Ten years!" she interrupted, jerking her hand back out of his. "Joe, what in the world are you talking about? You've never--"
"We each take our shift," he explained patiently, "taking care of this house, keeping it up, tending the. . . .pool."
"Tending the pool? Adding chlorine? Keeping the algae down?" If he was here for ten years, it was before we met, she thought. He would have begun when he was six or seven years old! Ridiculous!
"Feeding it."
"Feeding. . . .What does it eat?"
He seemed to hesitate before answering.
"That's not exactly clear to us either," he said. "It's not a vegetarian. And it doesn't seem to like animals. Small animals, I mean. Squirrels. Rabbits. They don't last long."
"What do you mean, they don't last long?"
He drew a deep breath. He looked a long while into her eyes before continuing.
"It eats. . . .time. Not memories. Just time. About four days each time you enter the pool."
She stared at him. She was tempted to laugh, but something in his face prevented it.
"You mustn't overdo it," he said. "Entering the pool more than once a day can bring on a kind of psychological exhaustion. It becomes like a drug. You get high. It becomes compulsive. You--"
"Ten year shifts?" she said.
He nodded.
"Yes."
They rotate the schedule, she thought. Every forty years they come back for a decade, and they erase that time away.
It's the fountain of youth.
She looked up at the painting on the wall.
"That's you?"
"Yes."
"And Erin?"
"Erin wasn't her name then," he said. "And mine wasn't Joe. But yes: that's Erin."
She looked back at him.
"You were the one who found the cave? In Hungary?"
He nodded.
"And she. . . ?"
"My second wife," he said. "Remember, I lost my first family to starvation."
She shook her head.
"Oh my God."
Momentarily, his voice lowered, he spoke.
"There are compensations, Eva. You'll see."
"The kids. Larry, and Jane. We won't see them again?"
He rubbed her fingers with his thumb.
"We don't have rules like that," he said. "But it's best not to see them. They're grown adults. A clean break is bitter, but it's best. They don't need confusion."
"But what will they think?"
"They'll think we disappeared on the way to Manitoba. And we have disappeared. It'll be hard for them, but they have their lives. They'll get by, like everyone gets by."
She still heard the grinding noise outside, She guessed what it was.
"Eva dismantling the RV?"
He nodded.
"And how about you and me, Joe?" she asked. "What happens to us?"
"Ten years from now you will look and feel like you're twenty years old. I'll still be sixty. We'll always be connected, but you won't want to stay with me. You'll see. You'll leave to start a new life. I'll stay here another decade to work my shift. After me--"
"Aubrey. I see. The cycle continues."
"Yes, Eva. That's what I mean about compensations. Tradeoffs. We all make sacrifices, but think of what you'll be gaining. It's a different kind of life, and it can be different each time. It can be anything you want it to be."
How old is Joe? she wondered. How many times did Erin and he cycle through before coming to America?
Eternity's petals folded open before her.
Sorrows? Yes. But the possibilities. . . .
Tomorrows unnumbered! she thought, and she realized that, as usual, Joe was right. He had known already what her choice would be.
THE END.
