The Runaway Wife (3 page)

Jim glanced at Ambrose, whose brows were knitted together.

“But the thing that broke Maman,” Thalia continued, sipping her wine, “the reason we think that she is not in the lower Alpine chalet where she usually stays in the summer and is hiding out somewhere else where we can't find her was that she found out from the press,
from the press
, as did
we
, that Papa recently had a child with one of the many women, apparently a Russian model. A baby girl.”

“The press? Why the press?” Jim asked.

“Small detail,” said Thalia. “Our papa is Yves Castellane, minister of the interior, who just announced his bid for the presidency.”

MONSIEUR ACOLAS THREW A LOG INTO
THE FIREPLACE
nearby and prodded it with a wrought-iron poker that had been resting against the wall.

“We're running out of time,” said Helene. “Thanks to Thalia, who told Father when we still had cell reception that we couldn't find Maman, he's sent a helicopter up here daily to scour the peaks for her. He desperately needs her back for the press shots and all the publicity.”

Jim had been surprised over the past few days by the regularity of the helicopter's presence in the area. Ambrose had guessed correctly that the chopper was on a search mission, but they hadn't suspected that the sought-after party was in hiding.

“I overheard a group of hikers,” said Clio, tilting her chin to her left, “complaining about the noise. I don't think they'll vote for Papa if they know he's the reason—.”

“Father,” said Helene, addressing Jim and Ambrose, “cannot tolerate things not looking right to the world. He'll do anything to get our mother back—but it's really himself he is trying to save.”

“Papa's search mission has seen no trace of her,” said Thalia. “The last call I got before we lost reception was Papa demanding that I give him Maman's location so he can send the helicopter to retrieve her. He thinks we know where she is but aren't telling—”

“Thalia! You
wouldn't
tell him,” admonished Helene.

“If it means saving her from freezing to death in the
blizzard that's forecast, yes, of course—I would push her into Papa's helicopter.”

Helene frowned and dug her fork into her stew, but did not lift it. “I would
never
do that, even if she were freezing to death. Papa doesn't deserve her, and she's better off without him. It was hard enough for her to get away this time. She should never go back to him. I want her to be safe, but not back in Papa's cage—especially now that he'll parade her around by his side in front of the gawking press as if nothing has happened.”

“I can see the headlines,” said Thalia, spreading her arms to hold up a pretend newspaper. “‘Presidential Candidate's Wife Escapes to the Alps. If His Wife Cannot Live with Him, Why Should We—for the Next Five Years?'”

Jim rose to fill Thalia's and Helene's glasses with the remaining wine.

“We've had no contact with her for more than two months,” said Helene. “She probably has no idea about this freak snowstorm that's coming our way.”

“I agreed to Helene's Find-Hikers-to-Find-Maman plan to save her from Papa before we knew about the impending snow,” said Clio. “At this point, I think we should do what Thalia has suggested from the beginning and summon the Swiss Air Ambulance. Our mother is strong enough to weather Papa, but snow in the Alps is another thing altogether.”

“But don't you see?” said Helene, looking into all of their
faces, but gazing at Jim longer than the others. “The rescue service will take her back to
him
, you know he's paid them off not to listen to her wishes, but only to his. We want to save Maman not only from the snow but also from her marriage. Please, let's give her one last chance to come down the mountain on her own terms and get on with her life. Give her the option to escape what awaits her if she returns to Father.”

Now it was Thalia's turn. “Ok, Helene, we get it already!” She turned her bright blue eyes on Ambrose and Jim. “Since you two were likely planning on going in Maman's direction anyway, all we're asking is that if you see our mother during your hike, that you could persuade her to join you and descend the mountain with you, offering her an alternative to the helicopter exit. I have a feeling that
you
”—was that Thalia's long leg that brushed Jim's under the table?—“could convince Maman. She responds well to lovely people.”

She was now leaning so close to him that their arms were touching. Her perfume wafted around him.

Jim looked over at Helene. She had turned her chair away and was looking intently into the fire. An Italian from the neighboring table was trying to catch her attention.

“Before we get too distracted,” said Thalia, dipping her hand into her knapsack, “I have a photograph of Maman. It's not that good, but it will give you an idea. Oh yes, and while I'm at it, here's, where's my card, oh here it is.”

Jim took the business card from Thalia, gave her his and
looked over her sweet-smelling shoulder. The roses . . . The faded photograph showed a woman with long, dark-blond hair falling over one eye. She was laughing.

“Her name?” Jim asked.

“Calliope Marie Castellane,” said Thalia.

“Calliope,” said Ambrose, “the muse of epic poetry and the inspiration for
The Odyssey
and
The Iliad
. Now it's all making sense. Thalia, the muse of poetry. And Clio, the muse of history. Helene . . .”

“Not only do you know your Alps, but you also know your Greek muses,” said Thalia. “I'm impressed.”

“Helene,” continued Ambrose.

“The muse of men,” Jim interrupted, “‘whose face launched a thousand ships . . .'”

“Bravo,” said Thalia, clapping her hands.

“Back to Maman,” said Clio. “Today is . . .”

“Friday,” said Ambrose. “Unfortunately, I have to leave by Sunday morning. I have to be back in Paris by Monday.”

Jim didn't think; he just said the words: “I'll do it.”

Helene turned to him and smiled. It was as if the sun had dropped into the darkness, a rainbow after a rainfall, the colors shimmering in the mist.

“Jim, the Bernese Alps . . .” began Ambrose.

“My flight back to New York is next Wednesday,” said Jim. “Ambrose, you and I were planning to hike up the Col du Brochet tomorrow anyway, and return on Sunday. If we haven't run into your mother by Sunday, Ambrose will point me in the right direction. If I don't find your mother
by Tuesday, I'll continue my descent. As soon as I'm back in Gstaad on Tuesday night, I'll contact you to let you know whether my mission has failed or succeeded. If I don't find your mother, you can call in the Swiss army.”

“Very funny. Jim, it's never advisable to hike the Alps alone, especially for someone with no experience . . .”

“Does one need experience to walk? So far, the trails in these Alps have been very well-marked.”

“You don't know the Wildhorn,” said Clio, sitting back in her chair and darting a
told-you-so
look at Helene. “Jim, these are your last few days off after what sounds like many years of hard work. You should enjoy a good hike without searching for a woman who's determined to be lost. Not only that, but the snow could come any day. And waiting for you to tell us whether you have found her would delay the rescue service's search.”

“If they're hiking the Col du Brochet anyway,” said Helene, “there's no harm in looking for her. Perhaps they'll be lucky and find her, and it's not as if Father will call off the helicopters.”

“And if we find her within the next few days, then what?” asked Ambrose.

“You should bring her back here, to the Cabane,” said Clio. “The descent is easiest from here.”

“If we do find your mother, would you have something we could give her that proves we were sent by you and not your father?”

Thalia winked and laughed. “Bravo! He's great, isn't
he?” she said to Clio. She quickly removed the maroon velvet ribbon from around her neck. “Maman used to keep yards and yards of this velvet ribbon. Remember? She used it for everything that year, presents, shoelaces for her boots, belts, hair ribbons. We all have rolls of it. I use this piece as a choker. I would like it back,” she said, smiling at Jim flirtatiously.

The ribbon was warm from Thalia's neck. Jim folded it carefully and placed it in his pants pocket.

“The dining room is closing,” announced Monsieur Acolas, nearing their table. Jim looked around the room and saw that most of the tables were empty. He hadn't noticed the hikers leaving: were they already snoring on their thin mattress pads upstairs? The logs on the dwindling fire shifted.

“It would be best to depart at dawn tomorrow,” Clio said, rising from the table. “Come, let me show you the map.”

Ambrose and Jim followed her into the narrow mudroom with its cubbies neatly packed with overcoats, boots, hats, gloves, climbing gear, and trekking poles. On the far wall at the end of the room they stopped at the floor-to-ceiling map of the surrounding mountains, marked with a red arrow indicating
YOU ARE HERE
. Among the ranges closest to the arrow were La Pointe des Audannes at 2844 meters, Geltenhorn 3065, Le Sex Rouge 2893, Le Mont Pucel 3177, Le Six des Eaux Froides 2905, and Le Wildhorn 3248.

“Is there a smaller map that we can take with us on the trip?” Jim asked.

Clio looked surprised by the question. “We're paper-free up here in the Alps. Here are the markers along the way. It takes about six hours from here to get up to the Col du Brochet. I would then take the Geltenhorn pass down on the south side, here. You can stop for a rest and a bite at the Geltenhütte, a very charming chalet. This is a much safer route, and you'll avoid the ladder in the sky. And hopefully the snow.”

“Ladder in the sky?” Jim asked.

“A twenty-foot hanging metal ladder alongside a steep cliff face. The ladder swings out from the mountain with the winds, and —” She looked poised to say something else but closed her mouth around the thought and nodded at them before walking back to the table.

“She doubts our abilities,” said Jim to Ambrose.

“She's right to. We'll take our hike as previously planned and conduct a search along the way, but finding anyone on foot in this glaciated massif is a dream if not a joke. All I'm hoping for is some sun. Already, that's probably too much to ask.”

When they returned to the table, Jim noticed that Helene's eyes had become moist. All the mirth had left the room; the fire had died out. The Italians had gathered on the terrace outside the dining room, and small specks of orange from their cigarettes sparkled in the darkness.

W
AS IT THE HOWLING WIND THAT WOKE HIM, OR
the intermittent snoring in the far-distant corner? The room was so bright that Jim thought it must be morning, but his alarm had not sounded. He made out Ambrose's form on the mattress next to his, his back moving to the rhythm of his breath. From the blue cast that fell over the sleeping bodies, Jim realized that the room was lit by the moon. The light was channeled from a very small window near where the sisters slept.

In his dream, his mother had been playing bridge, shuffling the deck with her long red fingernails and smacking her red-lipsticked lips. The stiff-haired women's bridge group at the dining-room table were generals detailing the
next military operation in an army camp, their legs crossed under the table and their calloused elbows above it. But what was
he
doing in the room? The puzzle pieces of the dream were floating away one by one. Jim had never spent any time strolling along the idle distance of a dream. In his life at the investment bank, even on weekends Jim was out of bed and into the shower immediately after waking, his dreams long buried with thoughts of the coming day.

A pale-blue string of light from the moon was suspended like a tightrope from the small window near his bed to the partition wall near where Ambrose slept. Whose breathing did he hear, with a little singsong to it? Thalia's? Or was it her younger sister's, Helene's? How amazing it was to be privy to a stranger's sleep, something that belonged solely to that person. The guttural snoring from the far corner overtook the gentle sound. How could anyone sleep in such a din, between the sleep talkers, the snorers, and the whirr of the wind barreling around this tin capsule?

Jim stood and glanced around the partition at Clio. He saw her eyes open slightly, then close. He could not see Helene or Thalia.

He thought of Sally and their now-canceled wedding-to-be. He imagined their passionate kiss at the altar—no, she would have given him a self-conscious, public kind of kiss, actually. He envisioned himself placing a piece of wedding cake on her tongue. He thought of her red freckles. Her bright-green eyes, how her hips moved when she
walked and . . . How far away from her he felt. He missed the way she tucked her hair behind one ear, how she winked at him in her way that said,
Go on, tell me how beautiful I am!
Thalia's flirtatiousness reminded him of Sally, the day they had met at a conference five years earlier. Sally had touched his thigh under the table, had swung her leg as restlessly as Thalia had. It ached somewhere inside him to think that Sally was no longer in his life. Was it possible to turn off love, like shutting the flow of water at a spigot?

Was that Thalia's voice whispering to him from across the room?

“Jim!” the whispering voice called. “I can't sleep, either.”

It was Thalia. She patted her mattress, and he maneuvered around the sleepers to sit on the edge of her narrow bed. The scent of roses.

“I can't stop thinking of mother, alone and cold and the snow coming. Please let us know as soon as you find her, if you do, okay?”

“I will,” he said.

Someone stirred in the bed next to Thalia's and turned her head. It was Helene. In the blue moonlight, her face looked like a child's. She did not open her eyes.

“Go back to sleep,” Thalia whispered to her sister. “Now that I've seen you,” she addressed Jim, “I'll sleep better.”

Jim wanted to ask why, but he was afraid of disturbing the others. He rose and retreated to his mattress in the moonlight.

WHEN HIS ALARM WOKE HIM HOURS
LATER, IT WAS
darker than it had been when he'd been roused from sleep by the moon. Three men in the corner, rising quietly in the dim light, looked like souls levitating from dead bodies. Knapsack in hand, Jim followed Ambrose quietly down the ladder to the warm, yellow-lit kitchen below. Bread and cheese, muesli and yogurt, and a tin bowl of hard-boiled eggs were laid out on the buffet table for the early hikers. With a nod, Monsieur Acolas offered Jim a white mug filled with what looked like foamy hot chocolate.

Jim took a seat near the only window in the dining room. A speck of light over the mountains competed with a bright star for attention. How forlorn it was on this rocky plateau.

Ambrose joined him. “Found this at our communal sink,” he said, placing into Jim's hand a slender white book tied shut with a maroon velvet ribbon.

“It has your name on it,” Ambrose said, pointing to the elegant script in light-blue ink on a small note card slipped under the ribbon. Jim slid the ribbon off to reveal the title and author:
Alcools
by Guillaume Apollinaire. Two pages in the middle of the book were each marked with a small sprig of light pink heather. The poem on the first page was titled “L'Adieu.”

“You don't waste any time, do you?” Ambrose said, looking up as he chipped the shell off his hard-boiled egg. “What is written there, on the left?”

“This part has been translated.” Jim read aloud:

“I've plucked this sprig of heather

Autumn is dead, you will remember

On earth, we will see no more of each other

The smell, the scent of time, sprig of heather

Remember, I wait for you forever . . .”

“That's it?” Ambrose raised his eyebrows.

Jim nodded. “Another poem has also been marked, but only with a small exclamation point next to its title, ‘Clair de lune.' Translate it, will you?”

“You certainly made an impression! I need my coffee for this:

Smooth

“No . . . more like ‘sweet-sounding' . . .

“moon on the lips of the mad

The orchards and towns are greedy tonight

The stars are like the image of bees,

Of this luminous honey that

“. . . That—‘degoutte', I believe in this sense, it means ‘drips'

“from the vines,

For now, all sweet in their fall from the sky.

Each ray of moonlight is a ray of honey

Now hidden, I tell of the sweetest adventure

I fear darts of fire from the bee from the north

That places these deceptive rays in my hands

And takes its moon-honey, honeymoon

To the rose of the winds.”

Ambrose closed the book and handed it back to Jim. “Who do you guess?”

“You have to ask? Thalia kicked me under the table on several occasions, was leaning into me all night so that I'm still smelling her perfume, gave me the ribbon around her neck and asked for it back, and last night, while you were snoring, she said she would sleep better after seeing me.”

“All three sisters seemed pretty smitten with you.”

He remembered Helene's curious, searching eyes that seemed to grow more luminous when she spoke to him.

“I suppose not the eldest,” added Ambrose, “but even she cast a twinkle in your direction.”

“She doubted me from the start. Justifiably—she was worried about my inexperience. She's not invested in Helene's rescue mission. I'm guessing that neither is Thalia, really.”

“I thought I overheard one of the sisters talking about an engagement? Could it have been Thalia's?”

Jim picked up the book again. “In this poem, I think
Thalia is the honeybee who, I believe, would deflower me if we stayed here one more night!”

“Want to postpone our trip a day?”

Jim laughed. “Why do I still feel the need to be faithful to Sally?”

“A true Midwesterner, Jim. Straight as an arrow. Something our world needs more of.”

After they washed their dishes at the small tin sink in the corner, Jim followed Ambrose to the mudroom.

“Five years together, and it's as if Sally and I shared the same DNA,” Jim said, lacing his boots. “I can tell you anything you want to know about her: This is how she slept last night. On her side, curled up, her hands like this.” Jim tucked them, prayerlike, under his chin. “It's as if when she sleeps, she hides her wings underneath. She looks like an angel. Sally, lovely, kind, and yet . . .”

“She decided to go off with Mr.-Higher-Up-on-the-Pay-Scale.”

Ambrose picked through the trekking poles in the bin next to the door, reciting a checklist as he did so: “Water, food to last four days, if you decide to stay that long, though I think we should both return after tomorrow, rope, flashlight, knife, compass, first aid, extra socks, gloves, rain gear, tarp, blanket, trekking pole.” He filled his canister with water at the sink and chucked Jim one of Monsieur Acolas's famous brown bags of delicacies. Last night the other hikers had raved about the sorrel-and-chicken-filled baguette.

“The Castellanes are,” Ambrose added in a low voice, “if I'm correct, a very ancient French noble house from the ninth century. They've been involved in government since then. How interesting to have met them up here, and how unlikely. While you were gazing into the fire and daydreaming about Sally, I learned from Clio that their mother is a de Bonnin de La Bonninière de Beaumont, an equally important French aristocratic family.”

“How—”

“It's my business to know who's who,” Ambrose said. “Despite the French Revolution, a lot of art still resides in the castles of these families, and the auction houses keep a close eye on who owns what masterpieces.”

“I can't find my pole. I didn't use it to get up here . . .”

“You'll need it where we're going.” Ambrose was at the door.

“Can't argue with that—oh, good, there it is.” Jim untangled his pole from the jumble.

He turned and cast a glance up the ladder in the center of the room. He half hoped that Thalia would be there to blow him a kiss or whisper “au revoir” with her honeyed French accent and pronunciation that stumbled so pleasingly on consonants.

No such luck. He threw his knapsack, with attached blanket and tarp, onto his back and closed the cabin's thick wooden door behind him.

In the burgeoning light of dawn's early rays, Ambrose stood waiting at the nearby post with yellow signs pointing
in four different directions. It promised to be a sunny day.

“Sex Rouge?” Jim asked, tapping one of the signs with his pole.

“Sorry to disappoint, but it was originally spelled
Scex
—it's the name of a species of deer, now mostly extinct.”

“With your vast wealth of useless information, I'd have thought you'd have come up with something more titillating.”

Ambrose chuckled as they began to hike in the direction of Col du Brochet, ascending a narrow ridge of natural stepping-stones into the cavernous shadow of the mountain.

“WAIT,” SAID AMBROSE AT A TURN IN THE PATH, “I
almost forgot.” He dropped his pole, removed his knapsack, and got down on his knees. “I watched a hiking group do this earlier this morning. I had forgotten that it's Alpine tradition to say a prayer before you start a new hike.”

Jim looked around him. The faint sunshine at their backs now illuminated the white mountain cap ahead of them and the craggy, rocky cliff below. To their left, the path fell off to a shadowed shelf that resembled the cratered surface of the moon. “Why don't you pray for both of us, a twofer.”

Gradually, they began to ascend, single file, up the jagged incline. When Ambrose rounded the bend ahead of him, Jim heard him gasp. A few steps later, Jim realized why. Ahead of them stretched what looked like miles and
miles of a white boneyard, with no end in sight—and no distinct trail. How, around a single random corner, could the terrain of a mountain change so dramatically?

“I've heard about this, but I've never encountered it,” Ambrose said. “It's called
lapiaz
—it's caused when the surface freezes and then thaws. Maybe over the span of a few centuries. Keep your head down. Hikers have been known to fall into the crevices.”

“The one death a day in the Alps . . .” said Jim.

“Once we cross this, we'll hike about sixteen miles mostly uphill northeast toward Le Col du Brochet. I'm guessing it'll take us about two hours to walk this part, then three to four hours, depending on the terrain and altitude, to crest the Col du Brochet. Perhaps, along the way, we'll smell Madame Castellane's perfume.”

The slowly rising plateau ahead of them resembled a garbage heap of calcified bones. Each bone looked as if it had been chewed and licked clean over centuries. Jim crouched down for a closer look at the sun-bleached latticework. He took a two-euro coin from his pocket and dropped it into the crevice. No sound: they were standing over the black hole of the earth. He shuddered to think of Thalia's mother. What if she'd slipped and fallen into the mountain, and that was why the helicopter had failed to find her? He'd been a fool to give the sisters hope that they'd find her.

“Ambrose!” Jim yelled to his friend, who was far ahead, picking his way across. Ambrose stopped and turned.

“There's got to be another way!”

“There
is
no other way. Look for a red marker,” Ambrose shouted back, waiting for Jim to catch up. “There's the first one. Tuck your pole under the straps of your knapsack. You'll need both hands for balance.”

The red marker ahead was as faint as a thermometer reading.

“Now I know why you got down on your knees,” Jim said as he joined his friend. “Where's the warning sign with the skull and crossbones?”

“You're not in the US of A . . .”

“Why didn't the sisters warn us of this? This is downright dangerous.”

“Nothing new to them,” Ambrose said. “If you've come up this high, you've had to deal with a lot of nature's hand-me-downs. Can you step it up a little? At the rate we're going, we'll be adding our own bones to this graveyard.”

“I can't see the Parisian wife of the minister of the interior making this place her home for the summer months,” said Jim when he next caught up to Ambrose.