“My fault,” he says, and pulls from his backpack packets of raw meat that he opens and heaves in all directions. “Maybe this will entice them.”
They wait for hours, Willem on his knees, his eye at the camera that stands on the tripod, Joan on the ground, watching and waiting. It is peaceful sitting still in the midst of this preserve, listening to the blood sluicing through her veins, feeling the beat of her heart, the sunshine hot on her head, the way her eyes are fluttering closed on their own. Thoughts enter her mind and she lets them go, doesn’t try to hang on. It is the best meditation she has yet experienced. Hours later, in their same places, not a single buzzard has come forth to claim the meat.
*
Up on the roof that night, a glass of Willem’s wine in her hand, the sky is its own dark lake, a sea of dazzling stars high above, their twins reflected across the land, bouncing off the water in the distance. They eat and drink the good wine, which makes them loose and quick to laugh, but she’s aware they skirt the personal, the facts about their individual lives, don’t talk about those wishes strangers talk about, the ones kept at the back of the mind. Willem has not asked if she is married—he would not have learned that information from her books or from any of the articles once written about her—or why she is here on her own. She has not asked whether he has found romance again in the years since his wife died. He is a man of angles and contradictions, happy in solitude, talented at conviviality. He talks with directness, does not mince words, but there is an innate diplomacy to his speech, even when he speaks bluntly. Joan wonders if it is a Dutch thing to not inquire too closely about the lives of others.
At the fifth-floor landing, Willem brushes his lips against her cheek, the kiss as soft as she imagines a bird’s feathers to be. She is disappointed when he continues down the next flight and disappears into his room at the end of the hall.
She’d left the windows in her room open, and the night air is warm and dry, the sky as impenetrable as she has ever seen it here in India. She thinks again about the pressure walks she and Martin started taking in March, distinct from their meandering neighborhood walks. After, Martin is always on a mission. He ignores their sweatiness, dispenses with their ritual kisses and caresses, instead he strips her, flips her over, and plunges in. Her hair in his fist, her head yanked back to the point just before pain, a forearm clasping her from shoulder to shoulder, hands gripping her ass, pulling her onto her knees, fingers wrapped tight around her throat, then driving back in—a fantasy she once enjoyed—but she never orgasms with him those times. The first time, it was the tenor that confused her, startled to be taken by her husband turned unfamiliar. That her pleasure was irrelevant to him had heated her blood in anger, until the air atomized. She had surrendered then, allowed him to press her head down into their pillows, aware he wanted her to dance at the end of his cock. That mental submission triggered the physical sensations, but still she had not come. When he finished, he had kissed the back of her neck and said, “I love you so much,” and left her belly-flopped on their bed, shiny with their sweat and their liquids, shocked, a hint of bruise spreading across her jugular that would not bloom until the next day. Martin had turned back once more and when she smiled, she had not known whether her smile was real, whether she meant it. Over the surging shower water, she heard him whistling, a pleased taker of that which he wanted, demanding in a way that was new. After all their years together, new for him too, she had hoped. The sweat on her body remained moist, and Joan did not know what exactly she felt. The act had excited her. She and Martin still had the habitual lovemaking down pat. Once or twice, sometimes three times a week, year in and out, but the frenzied need they used to feel for each other, that had endured despite one baby, two babies, and life itself, had dissipated, then fallen away. Only when Martin headed into another part of the house had she moved, taken a bath, touched herself while imagining Martin holding her throat firmly, forcing her to arch and arch, he thrusting and thrusting. She had come in less than a minute.
Here at the Pong Wetland, in her scholastic bedroom on the fifth floor of the lodge, wishing perhaps Willem had swept her away, Joan tosses her clothes onto the other bed, and climbs naked under the chenille. For the first time since arriving in India, she replays that particular scene with Martin in her mind, substitutes Willem for Martin, shivers deeply when she lets go, and is asleep in an instant.
*
Late in the afternoon on the third day, Joan takes herself, and the small notebook in which she’s recorded the names of birds she’s seen, to the empty rooftop restaurant. Has this venture, these birds, taught her anything about her plan for the future, about herself? Is there something in her old life not yet fully extinguished, or in these pages of notes she has taken, in these fine days she has spent with the Dutchman, the trips to the reservoir, sitting at shrines, wandering through stone temples, tracking the birds, that she can use?
She scribbles away, surprised to find she’s written Vita, Camille, Ela, old woman in the blue sari on the train.
Hesitant. That’s what she feels. When she rolls the word around in her mouth, it is as hard as a marble, capable of choking her if it slid down her throat, and Joan knows she has arrived at a truth. But hesitant about what, specifically? To recommit herself to her work? She makes it a statement, says to herself, I fear I will not be the writer I once was, but the statement sounds false, like she is telling a lie. Is she hesitant because of what she may need to do in order to return to her writing? That thought squirms down into her heart and nudges itself into place, next to the knots formed by Daniel. However wonderful it might be, but a love affair with handsome Willem Ackerman is not going to resolve anything. What she needs to resolve is her own life. Should she take the theft of Words of New Beginnings as a sign to rebuild, or not to rebuild? She turns to a fresh page in her notebook. When Willem arrives on the roof, camera around his neck, carrying two glasses and a bottle of champagne, her pen is still poised in the air.
“A treat,” he says, pulling out a chair with his boot, placing the glasses on the table. “The kitchen staff kept it cold for us since we arrived.”
He pops the cork and pours and Joan is glad that he does not touch her glass with his, or make a toast. Their silence feels right, any words spoken a pretense about their ability to mold civilization. There is the snap of the bubbles and the sun gasps its last flares before it vanishes behind the mountains.
Willem fills her glass back up and says, “Joan Ashby, I think it’s time I took you to bed.”