“A grain.”
“And what does that make me, Bill, if I was sleeping with you for that reason?”
“Mati Hari?”
“‘A whore,’ is what I’d say, Bill. Free-spirited I have no doubt been. But my body has never been available for a price. It’s insulting that you would think that were possible.”
“Don’t try to turn the tables on me, Esma, and make yourself the injured party. You betrayed my trust.”
“Yes of course.” She nodded eagerly, virtually bouncing up and down on the sofa. “I understand why you feel that way. And I have explained. But we are in touch, Bill, in a vital way, you and I. A deep way. You don’t have to call it love, although on my side, I believe that may be the word. But please don’t turn from this because I made a foolish error.”
As she’d expected, in Esma’s presence I felt her full force, not just the deep sensual appeal but that fierce intelligence that was so deeply engaging to me. In her company, I’d always felt like life was being lived at a faster speed.
“Esma, when I read that newspaper, I realized what I’d known all along—that I was an idiot. Even if I accept your word that there will be no further ‘mistakes,’ as you put it, that the words ‘Barupra’ and ‘Ferko’ will never be uttered between us again, the appearances remain. They compromise me at the Court. I have dodged a bullet somehow, but I’m not going to chance it again. We must end this.”
She stopped and looked at her hands and again drew her lips into her mouth for a second, then glanced up trying to be brave.
“You are resolved.”
“I am.”
She edged closer and reached for my hand.
“Then come to bed with me, please, one last time.”
I took a second. “To what end?”
“To make one more remarkable memory. Or are you saying you wouldn’t enjoy it?”
“You know better.”
“Then come.” Still holding my hand, she stood. “Haven’t you ever heard of a farewell fuck, Bill? Come fuck me farewell. Come on. And do a good job of it, please.”
With the terms so clearly established, there seemed no reason to say no. It was the price she was asking—and yes I’d heard of such things. The bedrooms were up a spiral staircase. The one she was occupying contained a platform bed, and to my amazement, a mirror on the ceiling. Even when I was on top, it left me feeling that we were being watched, and as ever with Esma, I found a way to enjoy that.
If she thought I would feel sharper regrets, recognizing what I was losing, she was right about that, too. Even if this was not our greatest moment together, it was close enough, and the memories of the others were so much at hand that at the height of things I even thought briefly, You’re insane, this is realer than anything else, this is. But it became one of many great truths that dissolved within moments of reaching climax.
Afterward, Esma napped. I rose and dressed. In the living room I drank down the rest of my water. Across the way, in the rosewood breakfront, in the intensity of the halogens over the glass shelves, dozens of netsuke, the little Japanese ivories Esma collected, reposed. I admired the intricacy of the detail on several. Then I found a pad in my briefcase and scribbled a note.
Sorry to run off, but rush hour can be such a mess, and probably better this way anyhow. Will miss you. Truly. Bill.
I couldn’t mark the precise start of my relationship with Esma. The intensity had been unrivaled, but the duration was not. Since my divorce, whenever I’d known a woman about two months, Bermuda Triangle forces seemed to exert themselves.
In the elevator down, I thought again about what a remarkable person she was. Then my heart stalled as my mind stumbled over certain details. The mirrored ceiling seemed a bit much for a respectable lady still in the midst of a divorce, and I was also suddenly struck by the collection of little ivories. Who, no matter how eccentric, transports thousands of dollars of antiquities to a temporary residence? Let alone for only a month or two?
This, the place I’d left, was Esma’s home. It had to be. But by the time the doors opened into the hushed lobby, I had turned all of that over again. My suspicions made no sense—why bother claiming I was in somebody else’s house? I realized instead that my brief unwillingness to take her word was symptomatic of how deeply ingrained my distrust for her had become. It was just as likely that the client, Madame Jahanbani, had stimulated Esma’s interest in building a collection of netsuke of her own.
I stood a second longer studying the patterns in the marble floor and absorbing my overriding response to all of this. Esma would always be a person of enigmas. What was striking to me now was the conviction in my core that I no longer cared about figuring her out.
20.
Buried Again—June 2
I flew to Vienna and made an early morning connection to Tuzla, landing at the site of the former Camp Comanche. I was expecting Attila, but she’d sent one of her drivers instead, who had me back in Barupra around 10:30 a.m. Spring had arrived since our last visit. Up here on the rock it was gusty, but the sun was bright and there were shirtsleeve temperatures, the low 70s, which I was already starting to think of as 20 Celsius. Goos was up top to greet me, but he pointed below to the old mine where the French geologist was already at work.
From her name, I had expected Madame Professor Sofia Tchitchikov to be shaped like a refrigerator and sporting a tweed jacket over an estimable bosom. But the woman who was scrambling over the former site of the Cave was an athletic fortysomething with brass curls, dressed in baby-blue zippered coveralls. She waved as she saw me hiking down the mine road beside Goos.
“Halloo,” she yodeled and hopped over the hillside of loose rocks as nimbly as a kid. As soon as I had shaken her hand, she took several pebbles out of a front pocket to show me her initial discovery, the black edging on each of the brown stones.
“Gunpowder?” I asked.
Her English was far better than my French, but with Goos there to translate, she stuck to her native tongue.
“Maybe,” Goos said. “Certainly burn marks. She’s found dozens of such stones with a little excavation, most of them at a radius of three hundred meters.”
“Suggesting an explosion?”
She nodded. Goos said that the ballistics folks at NFI would tell us for sure, and could probably also determine whether there was an explosive agent adhering to the stones. If so, they might even be able to identify the device that had detonated. None of us had any idea whether the gunpowder in US hand grenades was distinguishable from Yugoslav.
“What Sofia can say is that the explosion is not recent,” said Goos. “Most of these fragments were several millimeters below the current surface material. This is a windy place up here. So nothing stays on top for much time.”
“Any way to tell how long ago the blast occurred?”
The professor and Goos had a long back-and-forth in French. Rocks lasted a lot longer than humans, and geologic time was therefore measured in eons, not years. She could say only that the burn marks on the debris were less than a century old, although the lack of wear suggested a much shorter period.
Madame Tchitchikov moved to the side then to show me the fall line of the hill. Goos translated, although he seemed to understand little more than I of the real meaning of what he was repeating.