Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

Nina there, as did you, dear. We took the same upriver trip. This was all four years ago. They met us at the landing, just as we met you. Understand, Addie, Paloma hadn’t seen her daughter since she was that swaddled bundle either. We came down the gangway, smiling, arm in arm. They were smiling, too. At first. Then Paloma’s expression sobered. She turned absolutely gray. ‘Mamá!’ Clarisse cried, grinning with all that light and life up in her eyes. And then, ‘Mamá? Mami?’ with concern, and her face fell, too. ‘What is it, Paloma?’ Father asked, but she covered her mouth with both hands and shook her head. I thought I knew, Addie. I thought the fact that we were lovers—which she could hardly fail to glean—had shocked her. I thought that when we announced the purpose of our visit, when she saw that my intentions were honorable, Paloma would be pacified. But it wasn’t that. It had nothing to do with that. Do you know what it was?”

“Tell me,” Addie whispers, though she’s afraid she knows, and her hand has crept to her breast, her fingertip is at the button, circling and circling the polished shell.

“Father didn’t see. Nor I. It took a mother’s eyes. Paloma took Clarisse’s hands in hers. She stared at them, the backs, and then the palms. Then she turned to Father. ‘Do you not see whose hands these are? Do you not see whose grin?’”

Harlan leaves the question there to hang. The room is hushed.

“She is your sister after all,” Addie says.

“She is my sister after all.”

“Oh, Harlan! Oh! But how…”

“She’d been with him, with Father, before the faro game.”

“And with her old master, too.”

“With Wenceslao, too,” he says. “And Paloma never knew until she saw my father’s grin in her grown daughter’s face.”

“My God! My God, Harlan!”

“You begin to see the predicament in which I found myself.”

“And what did you do? What did you do then?”

“Exactly, Addie. What does one do then? Briefly, each of us went mad. Mad. We wept and raged. We fought. We reconciled. We asked ourselves if we could live with it. We answered yes. We tried. I tried. Repeatedly. Each time, I failed. The notion filled me with revulsion in some deep way that I was powerless to change. How can I reproach myself for feeling the same horror felt by all mankind?”

“No, my dear,” she says, “of course you can’t. I understand. I understand!”

Now Harlan takes her hands, and she surrenders them. He bows his head and kisses them.

“And Clarisse?” she says.

He shakes his head. “Clarisse felt differently. So, little by little, Addie, we, who’d loved each other more than anything on earth, came to be bitter, silent enemies. I did all I could to make the parting amiable, to make it kind. But she’d given everything, you see. Everything. Even her religion. She’d damned herself for me, and there was no way back—or so she felt. And so she took my withdrawal as a betrayal, Addie. I had to be strenuous with her, strenuous and stern, in order to escape. And this is where I came to see the difference in our characters, Addie, this is where I came to see my fault and my mistake. It was when I crossed the line of race. Cuba cast its spell on me, and I forgot the truths of my own faith, where it’s written, ‘Of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession and they shall be your bond-men forever.’ My compass was struck by lightning and degaussed. I wandered, Addie. I wandered as my father had and almost lost myself, like him. I came so near, so near. Do you see? But I put this sorry episode behind me and set out to reform myself and live a proper life.”

“And you met me.”

“And I met you. Understand, Addie, my intentions toward you were honorable from the start. And are. For a year before we met, I hadn’t been with her, not until…”

“Our wedding night.”

“Our wedding night.”

“Our wedding night, Harlan! Tell me how I am to bear it?”

“By understanding what only dawned on me today. I thought Clarisse had accepted it, Addie. I thought she’d set me free. But that is not the case. My sister has begun to throw on me.”

“To throw…”

“Don’t you see? All the pain and discord of the last two days—this is her doing, Addie. It’s brujería, witchcraft.”

“Witchcraft, Harlan? Witchcraft? Tell me how I am to understand that. Help me to believe.”

“You must trust me, Addie. You must understand I’ve traveled in a world that you know nothing of and make a leap of faith toward me. If you can’t, then I release you from your vows. Because I need you, Addie, I need your strength, your love, your courage. I need you to fight for me, as I intend to fight for you.”

“I will try! I will try!” she says, almost in despair. “But, Harlan, if such things are possible, if they’re true, how is one to fight them? What is one to do?”

“Truthfully?” he answers. “I don’t know. Through faith in God and in each other—those are the only weapons we possess.”

And they fall silent now. They gaze into each other’s eyes and weigh what has been said. But something has been left unsaid, too, and Addie says it now.

“I saw something in the woods last night, a pot, I think. It was covered with a cloth, but I think it was the same as the one you described.”

His eyes smolder. “You believe me then?”

“I don’t know what I believe. I’m trying to. But, Harlan, do you think…?”

“Yes, my dear?”

What happened in the swamp, the voice she heard, and what she felt toward Jarry when he came…All this passes now through Addie’s mind, and was it not, in some way, like a dream, a