The Dutch Wife (18 page)

Forrestal (who was really twenty years younger than Rowland had thought) had the ability to tolerate such unpleasant realities. “We do what we can,” he said, “which isn’t always what we’d prefer.”

He was a curious mixture of a man. One Saturday morning, he invited Rowland to coffee and rolls before work at a little café near the Museum. Afterwards, as they were walking to work, he carefully avoided stepping on the dew worms on the sidewalk, and even helped some of them into the shade. Yet, that very afternoon, he took Rowland to the bullfights, where he seemed quite impervious to the suffering of the bulls.

Rowland could hardly bear to watch the sickening violence.

Forrestal assured him that was because he was seeing the spectacle wrongly, that a bullfight was actually the performance of an ancient sacrificial ritual. “The bull represents a tragic hero,” he said, “and the Matador stands for the arbitrariness of Fate. He’ll sever its spinal cord so that its death will be relatively painless.”

Rowland tried hard to look at it that way. But no matter how hard he tried, all he could see was an elaborately costumed butcher, hacking at the bull’s neck with a sword, having great difficulty finding its spinal cord; and a staggering, terrified animal, spouting blood from a hundred wounds.

That was the last time Rowland went to the bullfights.

HE CAME TO KNOW HILDA,
Forrestal’s wife, quite well. The Curator was very proud of her charitable work and her selflessness: she was a trained nurse who laboured daily in the barrios. She was painfully thin, having caught from her patients more than her share of fevers and diseases.

Rowland was often a guest at their home, an old stone house on the mountainside, the walls adorned with woven Quiboan blankets full of ancient hieroglyphs, the rough furniture made by a local carpenter from the now rare Quiboan mahogany tree. Only a photograph of a ship with the Statue of Liberty in the background and a bookcase with the
Encyclopedia Britannica
and a variety of books in English indicated that the Forrestals might have come from another place.

ON ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS
when Rowland was invited to supper, he arrived before Forrestal came home from the Museum. Hilda greeted him and poured him a drink. They sat together in the living room. It was the first time he’d been alone with her.

“You must find your work with the poor very satisfying,” he said. He was astonished at her response.

She began to weep.

Alarmed, he asked her what was wrong.

“Why do men always have to drag their wives to these awful places?” she sobbed. “Why can’t they find things to do in their own countries? Why must they come to these godforsaken parts of the world?”

She wept helplessly for a while, then calmed down. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I’m worn-out. I’m afraid I’m going to die in this place. I’d give anything to go back to the States. That’s where we belong. I want to be able to speak my own language and breathe clean air again.”

“Have you told John?” Rowland said at last. “What does he say?”

“I haven’t told him,” she said. “You know him well enough. He’d never forgive me.”

Rowland feared she might be right.

HE WAS SORRY TO HEAR
that the Forrestal marriage wasn’t all it seemed to be, for he was very fond of them. But he was even fonder of their fair-haired daughter, Elena, who’d been born in Quibo twenty years before. Fondness, in fact, was no longer the word for what Rowland felt about her.

When he’d first started to work in the Museum, she’d been out on a field trip: the Museum employed her to track down and examine sites of archaeological interest. Three months later, she’d returned and been introduced to Rowland. He liked her immediately. She had an office in the Museum and they often talked. She was a mixture of both her parents—an idealist, but practical, too.

One thing led to another. Before he knew it, Rowland had fallen in love with her and—miracle of miracles—she loved him back. It was as though she’d been specifically trained with him in mind, their interests in archaeology and anthropology were so complementary: they both loved to unearth that which was concealed. Even their discussions of their work were a form of love-making.

As for their physical relationship, at times, when they were twined together, Rowland felt they had become one unified being, as when different types of trees are grafted together to become a new species. Elena believed their growing sense of physical dependence on each other was the outward expression of a deep spiritual affinity.

The Forrestal parents approved of the relationship. It was assumed the lovers would marry, in the course of time.

ROWLAND, OF COURSE, HAD A PROBLEM.
He hadn’t told Elena that he was already married. He’d tried to several times, but she was so convinced their love was predestined and unique that he was afraid his revelation might taint the experience for her. Their love story, for her, was something marvellous: a mysterious stranger (Rowland) from a distant land (Canada) is driven by destiny across the seas to an exotic place (Quibo) and meets a soul-mate (Elena); they fall in love at first sight (almost); they marry and live happily ever after.

Rowland enjoyed that story. Yet he wondered if the true story might not have been a good one too: after an unhappy marriage, a restless traveller (Rowland) washes up by pure chance in a distant country in a strange city (Quibo) and finds, at last (isn’t that a miracle too?), a woman of similar temperament and interests (Elena); they marry (after his divorce, of course) and live happily ever after.

Or something of the sort.

Rowland knew he’d eventually have to tell that story to Elena, but not right then, when she was so happy. So he kept putting off the moment he’d have to reveal his earlier mistake.

ELENA ASKED HIM
to accompany her, along with a team of six Quiboan workers, on an expedition to explore some deep caves under Mount Arribo. Her father believed that an ancient people might have used those caves for their rituals and that some artifacts might be hidden there.

A week’s hike through forests and foothills brought the party to Mount Arribo. It was part of the great Cordillera which, though massive in dimension, was a newcomer in geological time. The sight of the high ranges put Rowland in a melancholy mood. “Every time I see these mountains, Elena,” he said, “I realize just how transient human beings are.”

“That’s why, Rowland,” she said, smiling, “we must never waste whatever time we have.”

He loved her even more for that.

THEY SET UP CAMP
at the entrance to the caves and began their work. For the first two days, they didn’t venture in too far in their search for relics of the ancient people. They found nothing but a few wall hieroglyphs that had already been observed by previous expeditions. Disappointed, they came back out and spent the nights in tents outside the entrance.

On the third day, Rowland suggested that this going in and coming back to the camp was wasting too much time. Why didn’t they advance as deeply as they could into the cave and stay down there overnight? In this way, the next day they’d be starting from an advanced point.

Elena thought that was a good idea, but three of the Quiboan crew refused to stay overnight in the cave even though they were offered extra pay. Elena wasn’t surprised. The Quiboans were superstitious, and it was hard enough persuading them to go into the caves even in the daytime hours. But Sanchez, the foreman, and two other crew members reluctantly agreed to the plan out of loyalty to Elena.

So, the party of five set out into the cave after breakfast. By two in the afternoon, they’d reached the point where they would normally have turned back. This time, they were able to keep going, and by four o’clock they came to a vast cavern. To their delight, they saw, on a flat wall beside a pool of water, a painting of several intertwined snakes with some hieroglyphs underneath. In the light of the torches, the colours were as bright as if the painter had finished his work just that very day.

Elena decided this was a good place to stop for the night. So they made camp in that cavern.

It was an eerie experience, sitting there listening to the echo of water drip-dripping from stalactites into the pool, watching the snakes on the wall painting come to life in the flickering torchlight. Once in a while, they heard a long, sad groan from deeper in the cavern. Rowland and the Quiboans were alarmed, but Elena assured them it was only the wind that had found its way through some fissure in the mountain above.

The night passed slowly. The Quiboans were uneasy and slept with their machetes handy. Rowland held Elena’s hand under their blankets. For the first time in weeks, they couldn’t make love, because of the lack of privacy.

NEXT MORNING,
after some biscuits and water, the party descended deeper into the mountain. The air was becoming warmer so far underground and they no longer needed sweaters over their shirts. Sometimes the passages were so narrow that they had to douse the torches and crawl along, relying on candles in their helmets for illumination. At other times, the ceilings of the galleries were so high that the light of the torches wasn’t strong enough to reach them. Rowland noticed, too, that the air was becoming less pure and breathing required a conscious effort.

Around noon, they came to a short, narrow tube at waist height that gave onto another large cavern. The tube was smooth, like the neck of a bottle, and Rowland said he felt just like a cork sliding through it, it was such a tight fit. On the other side, they relit their torches and saw how yellow the flames were in the thin air. Elena wasn’t sure they’d be able to go much farther, but they did manage to progress through a number of slightly wider tubes for another hour. They had just come into an especially large chamber when Sanchez, who was in the lead, called out and pointed at the wall ahead. On it were a set of ornate hieroglyphs that weren’t painted but chiselled into the surface.

Elena was excited. She explained to Rowland that these chiselled hieroglyphs usually meant a major burial site wasn’t too far ahead. Searching for it, however, would have to wait for another time and a better-equipped expedition. She would just make some rubbings of the hieroglyphs for study at the Museum, then they’d head back to the surface.

That was when they all felt a slight
bump
—as though the cavern had been lifted an inch and dropped. It didn’t amount to much, and Elena wanted to go ahead with the rubbings. But Sanchez, who’d been her ally so far, said no. His men were disturbed by that noise they’d just heard and would like to get back to the surface. Reluctantly, Elena agreed.

THE RETURN JOURNEY
was slightly uphill and so a little more awkward, especially in some of the narrow tunnels where there was little purchase. Whoever was in the lead would laboriously scramble through, then help pull the others.

Everything went well till they arrived at that brief, waist-high tube they’d traversed earlier. Rowland, who’d found it the tightest fit on the way down, was in the lead. Again he had trouble slithering through till Sanchez grabbed his legs and gave him a hard push. Rowland popped out on the other side. He called to Elena to follow. She entered the tube and stretched out her arms towards him. He took her hands and pulled. She was coming through quite easily, her head and shoulders already protruding on his side, when there was another, much louder bump from the mountain above.

Rowland kept pulling on Elena’s arms, but she stayed where she was.

“I’m stuck,” she cried.

At first, neither he nor she could quite believe it. He pulled, she squirmed, the Quiboans in the chamber behind her pushed. It was useless. The tunnel had somehow constricted and encircled her waist, like a tight ring round a finger.

“I can feel something on my back,” she said. “It’s heavy. It feels like a rock.” She was gasping.

Rowland tried pulling harder. He called to the men on the other side to push as hard as they could. When that didn’t work, he tried pushing her back towards them while they pulled. That didn’t help. Rowland tried not to panic, but the Quiboans on the other side were becoming desperate. The air in the chamber had been bad enough, but now it was becoming foul. Elena was blocking off whatever fresh air there had been.

Her breathing was now very harsh. She could no longer raise her head to look at Rowland. One last desperate session of pushing and pulling took place, then she begged him to stop. She said she was being slowly crushed by the weight on her back. After that, she became silent and wouldn’t respond to his questions. She was unconscious; her pulse was feeble.

ROWLAND VANDERLINDEN CONSIDERED
his awful dilemma. Elena was doomed and was slowly killing three other people. Sanchez, his voice weak, appealed to him to do something.

But what was he to do? He waited and he waited. Elena’s head was sunk between her dangling arms. Again he felt her pulse: it still beat faintly. Sanchez’s voice, faint too, still called out to him for help. But if Elena was going to die, Rowland didn’t care if the others died. They were not the ones he loved.

He waited and he waited. In spite of himself, he knew he must do what she would she have wanted him to do. He remembered the bullfights. He slid his knife from its sheath. He remembered the way the Matadors had tried to kill the bulls.

In this case, too, it took many attempts before he succeeded.

THAT WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING
of the nightmare. Rowland, at his end of the passage, worked with his knife; Sanchez, at the other, worked with his machete. When the tube was cleared, they could see that the cylindrical stone that had pinned her had been released through a hole in the roof. It was covered in bloody hieroglyphs. They found a way of propping it up while the Quiboans squeezed through the passage. Rowland would have stayed where he was, but Sanchez, himself all bloody, took his arm and coaxed him along with them back towards the surface.

They walked all day long till they reached the outside of the mountain. The other Quiboans greeted them like men who’d risen from the grave, for they’d heard rumbling from the mountain and feared their workmates were entombed. And, indeed, the survivors had been outside only an hour when the mountain shuddered and an infinite number of rocks rolled down and covered the entrance to the tunnel.