Red Desert - Point of No Return (6 page)

I noticed the
silver-handled paper knife resting on a notebook with the hotel’s
logo. I realised nobody knew I was there, in Germany. In two days I
would take a flight from Stockholm to the United States. I had
returned to Europe just to arrange a few last things before my
departure. I had told nobody about this brief diversion, nor had I
revealed that I’d traced my father to anybody. Anyway I would be
unreachable in a week. Even if they discovered something, I’d be
out of any jurisdiction for the rest of my life.

All that crossed my
mind in a little more than a second. Then I seized the paper cutter
and turned to him. He looked at me, bewildered, but before he
noticed what I was holding in my hand I jumped at him and, using
all the strength I was capable of, I plunged the blade into his
abdomen.

His arrogant
expression disappeared, and fear took its place.

I saw his terror and
realised what I had done. Overwhelmed by panic, I released my grip
on the paper cutter and I backed off.

He kept staring at me,
and placed a hand on his wound. When he removed it, it was covered
in blood. Growing bigger by the second, a stain was forming on his
grey jumper. He looked at me once more, and I caught sight of an
unusual serenity in his face. He cracked a smile, which transformed
into a grimace of pain. He tried to step forward, but his body
swayed and fell to the floor with a thud.

For a long instant I
watched him, and then regained control. I looked around, to
reassure myself that nobody had seen me, and then I ran from the
room. Once I reached the corridor, I tried to walk normally,
keeping my hands covered and my bloody gloves in my pockets.

While descending the
stairs, I met her. Leila, his wife. I avoided her gaze and kept on
going down. When I reached the lobby, I imagined her arriving in
front of the door, inserting the electronic key and opening it.

I was leaving the
hotel when I heard her screaming in the distance.

Sometimes I looked at
him, secretly, while he was writing in his studio, lit by a wide
glass wall overlooking the garden. He was so absorbed he didn’t
notice me. His hands seemed to dance on the keyboard, like those of
a pianist. He stared at the screen, but the expression on his face
changed, interpreting his stories, moment by moment as he created
them. Sometimes he smiled, or his face contracted in dismay. He
stopped his writing for a moment and gestured, while his lips
slurred his characters’ words. Then, with renewed passion, his
fingers went back to work, tireless.

He could go on like
this for hours, losing all sense of time. Who knows how he lived
those moments; perhaps he saw himself inside the story, while
reality around him disappeared. What I perceived in his eyes was
pure happiness, something with which I could have never
competed.

We had been together
for more than three years having moved almost immediately to
Houston, so that I could attend the training at the Johnson Space
Center. Any place was alright for his job, even if from time to
time he had to go to Europe or Canada for the promotional tour of a
book. Nevertheless our relationship had become stronger, going
beyond the initial passion and allowing our feelings to grow.

The divorce
proceedings progressed slowly, although I didn’t mind somehow. The
enthusiasm he felt toward our affair was something palpable and if
he had had the chance, he would have proposed to me for sure. For
the last few months that thought had often crossed my mind, but it
made me feel so uncomfortable that I tried to dismiss it. It was
pointless wasting time figuring out how our life together would be.
I wouldn’t have known what the future had in store for me until the
conclusion of the training, and the remaining three crew members of
the
Isis
were chosen.

I’d waited a long time
for that day to come and had repeated the speech to myself many
times. While doing so I’d felt strong in my beliefs, sure he would
understand. But now, while watching him in secret, like he was
under a spell, all my certainties evaporated in a moment. I felt
petty to have hidden the truth from him for all that time, to have
deluded him about a future that would never exist. And for the harm
I was about to do him.

“I’d like to read your
last novel,” I said all of a sudden. I had read all his books
translated into English, but some never left the Francophone
market, and this last one would surely do it too late.

Hearing my voice, Jan
raised his gaze from the screen and saw me. In a moment his face
lit up.

“Hey, baby, how long
have you been there?”

He stood up and came
closer to me.

“A few minutes.” I
tried to smile at him, even if I felt like I was dying.

He welcomed me with a
kiss, but then he paused to look me in the eye. I sensed him
reading the apprehension I was feeling.

“First of all, you
should learn French,” he made fun of me. He had offered to teach it
to me many times and I had always wheeled out some excuse, because
I really didn’t fancy that. It had become a kind of joke between
us.

Even though his family
was Flemish and therefore his mother tongue was Dutch, like
everybody in Belgium he was bilingual and had studied for a long
time to have the maximum mastery of French, which was much more
useful for his literary ambitions. Now that he lived in America, he
could count on new opportunities to have his books translated,
although he did hope to be able to write directly in English one
day, which would allow him to make a further leap in his
career.

“You know very well
that what I like most about French is that I don’t understand it,”
I commented laughing. “If I learnt it, it’d end up losing all its
mysterious
charm. And anyway, it’d be no use to me.”

“Really?” He pretended
indignation. “Well, yeah, you are right,” he continued, teasing.
“It isn’t really as useful as Swedish!” I tapped him, which made
him laugh even more. “In fact, you know what? When we are married,
I promise I’ll learn your language, so that you’ll feel forced to
learn mine.”

All my hilarity
disappeared in a brief moment.

“What’s up?” he asked,
alarmed. “Everything alright?”

I sighed, searching
for the right words. It was time to talk; I couldn’t defer it any
more. “We got the results today.”

The importance of the
news and the sad expression on my face brought him to the wrong
conclusion. “Oh God, baby, I’m sorry,” he said, hugging me. “Sorry,
I’m just prattling … I didn’t even know today was the big day.”

Feeling I was
contracting in his arms, he let me go and watched me with an
inquisitive gaze. No doubt he couldn’t understand why I was pushing
him away.

I stepped away from
him and turned my back. I couldn’t face telling him while looking
him in the eye. I hated myself for getting in that situation. I had
kept on lying to make him stand by me as long as possible. I wanted
him to love me without being influenced by my intentions.

“It’s not the end of
the world.” He tried to comfort me, even if he was perplexed by my
attitude. “I’m sure you’ll be able to try again for the next
mission, you’ll just have to be patient.”

“They’ve taken me,” I
interrupted him. I had started talking and should go all the way
now.

“They’ve taken
you?!”

I heard enthusiasm in
his voice and then I backed off even more, leaning against the
wall.

“But it’s fantastic!”
He followed me, pulled me to him and held me tight, lifting me from
the floor. “We must celebrate!” He put me down again. “When do you
leave?” he asked.

“In eight months.”

“Well, there’s still
time.” He sighed. “When I saw your expression, for a moment I
thought you were leaving in a few days. It won’t be easy to stay
apart for a year and a half, but at least I have time to prepare.”
He paused, as if he was imagining that waiting. “And anyway,” he
exclaimed, coming back to himself. “This isn’t the moment to think
about sad things. You’ve been selected! You’ll go to Mars. It’s
terrific. Enough working for today: let’s celebrate!”

“I won’t be coming
back,” I had the courage to whisper. For a fraction of second a
part of me hoped he hadn’t heard and considered the idea of turning
down the mission.

But Jan had heard.

“What?” The enthusiasm
in his eyes had completely vanished. “What are you talking about?”
There was no astonishment, but a slight hint of anger in the tone
of his voice. What I had just said should’ve appeared nonsense to
him; it wasn’t so.

“It’s an open-ended
mission,” I explained. “No return spacecraft is expected, save for
some extraordinary event … like, we find the Martians.”

I stole a glance at
him, to see how he reacted to my attempt to crack a joke. It wasn’t
too late to let him believe I was making fun of him. Or to let him
think I had just learnt what the mission was about. Or even to lie,
saying that the mission’s typology had been changed only recently.
I might still have saved our relationship. I might still have
refused to leave and he would never have known I had lied to him,
not for years.

“You knew since the
beginning.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.

I looked at him,
unable to utter a word. Each second that passed pushed me away from
the chance to tell him any of those lies I had just invented. I
realised that, even if I could have avoided telling him the truth,
I wasn’t able to openly lie to him.

I nodded.

Jan threw a punch
against the wall beside me. I started, but remained where I was. I
deserved all his rage. His hand was bleeding. I’d have liked to
help him, but I feared his reaction to any movement of mine.

“They proposed it to
me the same day we met in Brussels,” I said.

He looked at me, a
severe expression in his eyes. Since the day we got together, we
had never fought. I’d had the chance to see his self-control while
facing bad news or people who did their best to annoy him, and now
he was really applying himself to listening to what I had to say,
without shouting at me.

“At the beginning I
saw it as something highly unlikely. I didn’t believe they would
ever fund, or even authorise, such a mission. And, as it took
shape, part of me kept on not believing, or thinking, hoping, this
day would never come, the day I would have to make a choice.”

“A choice between me
and the mission,” Jan said, completing my thought.

I nodded again. I
almost hoped that he’d fly into rage and hit me. The total absence
of love in his gelid gaze frightened me more than anything
else.

Instead, Jan backed
off and turned to look through the glass wall. “I’ve always known
you were hiding something from me,” he said, at last. “I felt that.
You were too vague. Whatever the reason, I’ve always known it
wouldn’t last between us, even though I tried to do everything so
that you wouldn’t leave me, so that you’d love me.”

“But I do love you!” I
exclaimed.

He turned quickly.
“Not enough. Otherwise you’d have no choice to make.”

He was like that. He
always put feelings ahead of everything else. He didn’t understand
that there were more important things. I knew that, but I tried to
justify myself anyway.

“It’s not that simple.
We’re talking about going to Mars. Living on Mars! How can I give
up becoming one of the colonisers of another planet? To enter the
history books? To explore a new world? I love you to death, Jan,
but we’re talking about something that goes beyond me and you,
beyond our feelings. Try to understand.”

“I understand
perfectly.” He gave a nervous laugh. “It’s convenient for you to
have a great enterprise to undertake, because you can justify
running from your fears once more. In the end you aren’t so
different from your father.”

I felt wounded more by
the hatred in his voice than by what he had just said. He wasn’t
entirely wrong. I was more afraid of building a life with him than
I was of starting an interplanetary journey with no return. I was
aware of that, but I didn’t want him to believe I was so weak.

I ignored his
accusations. “You could join me,” I barely murmured.

“Join you?” His tone
was sarcastic.

“Yes,” I exclaimed
with vehemence. I had just found the solution to my problem and I
felt confident about myself and my beliefs again. “You should
obtain the final decree of the divorce in six months. If we married
then, you’d have the priority in the selection of the crew leaving
for the next mission, in two years … or four.” We had to become the
first colonisers but, if everything went well, others would join us
in one of the next launch windows. It all depended on the
government funds, but it was a concrete opportunity.

How is it that I
hadn’t thought of it before? There were fifteen of us to be
selected, including a married couple. As such, the selection’s
regulations imposed they had to join the mission together or
neither of them could have been chosen. It was the same rule
whereby Francis had accepted the mission command only if he could
have taken his wife Michelle with him.

If Jan and I were to
marry before my departure, he could participate ex officio in the
following selection and, save some serious physical issues, he
would be included in one of the next launches.

It seemed such a
brilliant proposal to me and I couldn’t help but smile with hope,
while I suggested it. But he didn’t change his expression, apart
from a rapid grimace, which he controlled soon after.

“So … let me
understand,” he said, after having listened to me in silence.
“After you have lied to me for all these years, after you clearly
told me that a planet hundreds of millions of kilometres from here
is more important for you than me, I should marry you and then wait
two
or
four years,
alone
, to join you to die on
Mars?”