“I’m so sorry,” Meryam said again, amid her own shuddering tears. “I’m sorry I can’t give you the life you wanted.”
Adam held her at arm’s length, studying her, as if he could see the cancer inside of her. “That’s why you’re sorry? Not because you didn’t tell me? Not because you let me think you didn’t care anymore, that you didn’t want to get married? You’re not sorry for that?”
Meryam waved her head back and forth, her whole body rocking. “I’m sorry for it all. But it wouldn’t have been fair, love. Tying you to a dying woman. I prayed the diagnosis was wrong, and when the doctors confirmed it, I just prayed for another adventure, and then another. Adam and Eve conquer the world. I didn’t know how many more adventures we’d have.”
Adam stared at the dark, heavy circles beneath her eyes. He saw, at last, how prominent the bones in her cheeks had become, how thin even her neck seemed now. It’s not altitude sickness, she had told him when she’d become ill that first morning, just before discovering the ark. He’d sensed something then but there had already been tension in their relationship and he hadn’t wanted to press. Memories cascaded through his mind, moments when she’d stumbled or gotten sick or seemed so exhausted, and he had chalked it up to the stress of the project.
How could I not have seen it? How could I not have pressed for the truth?
“We’re partners,” he said, taking her face in his gloved hands, forcing her to meet his gaze. “This should’ve been us together.”
Meryam scowled. “How does that work, Adam? How do we have cancer together? You’re not the one who’s going to die.”
“Fuck’s sake! I know I can’t share your goddamn cancer! But you don’t have to deal with this alone. That’s always been the problem, hasn’t it? You never really understood what it meant to be in love, to share your life—”
She ripped his hands away from her face and shoved him backward with such force that he fell on his ass. Shaking, she rose to her feet and retreated a step, glaring down at him.
“If you mean I never understood why people vanish into their relationships, you’re right about that much. You knew that about me long before we were engaged. I wanted a partner, an ally, not the kind of romantic, fanciful bullshit spun by schoolgirls and women raised to cook your bloody dinner. I’m not looking for my other half, someone to complete my fucking puzzle. I’m whole unto myself, Adam. I wanted someone who was just as whole.”
Adam heaved a shuddering sigh, anger seeping back into him. He pushed off the ground and rose to his feet.
“You want me to apologize for needing you? For loving you? For wanting to help you deal with this diagnosis?”
“And what would you have done?” Meryam demanded, shouting now.
She marched toward him and he stepped back out of the stall. The wind crashed along the passage, blasting snow around him. Heads poked out of the camp shelters and he saw the faces of some of the archaeology grad students, and then Mr. Avci. Silhouetted in the dark passage, he saw Feyiz standing and watching like some silent monitor, a dark angel sent by God to record but not intervene.
Record, he thought. His camera was in his jacket pocket. Calliope was nowhere to be seen. There would be no film of this moment and for once Adam was grateful for the lack of footage.
“What the hell would you have done?” Meryam shouted, following him into the passage. “You’d have treated me like fine China, locked me up in a cabinet somewhere to protect me, and that would’ve killed me much faster than this damned mountain.”
Adam couldn’t argue against the truth. “I’d never have agreed to this project, that’s for sure.”
Wiping at her tears, almost sneering, Meryam nodded. “My point.” She glanced at those who were watching them, then spotted the silhouette further up the passage. “Damn you, Feyiz. You see what you’ve done?”
The whole of the ark seemed to shimmer with bitterness and sorrow, to vibrate with hostility.
“Stop,” Adam said.
Meryam wiped at her tears again, face red with anger. “It wasn’t his secret to tell! It’s my life. Not his, and not yours!”
Adam had been feeling for a while that they had all been slowly infected with a poison of the soul, and that it had been spreading. But now it seemed so much worse, as if every time he exhaled, a little more of him was leaving, and every breath he took was replacing him with something else. Some other, angrier, uglier Adam.
Even as the thought struck him, he felt a tug inside him. The strings of the marionette he’d imagined himself to be.
“It is my life,” he said, but it wasn’t him. His voice and his lips, but not him. “How could you be so selfish?”
One of the staffers swore, shocked by the exchange. From somewhere outside of himself, a sickness and horror spreading in his mind, Adam could only watch and listen.
Meryam laughed. “Me? I’m the selfish one?”
Feyiz called his name. Adam heard the caution there, but could not respond.
His legs moved. His body turned. His arm cocked back.
He slapped Meryam so hard that she spun halfway round, the echo of the blow ricocheting off the walls up and down the passage. Moments of silence followed, filled only by the howl of the storm.
The ark itself seemed to hold its breath.
Something inside Adam began to laugh.
FOURTEEN
Walker woke to his name. Hands shook him roughly. His foot went astray, out from under the thick covering of the sleeping bag, the zipper scraping his shin. The cold air slithered inside and gooseflesh rippled across his naked flesh.
“Jesus, what?” he groaned, opening his eyes.
Father Cornelius knelt beside him, angry and urgent as he gave Walker one last shake. Polly stood behind him, just outside the tent. But her presence wasn’t the problem. Walker glanced around, the past few hours coming back to him all at once. The tent did not belong to him and the heavy-duty sleeping bag was warm and soft but also not his own. Kim lay against him, her bare leg draped across him, and only now did her eyes begin to open.
The moment she saw the priest, she closed her eyes again and muttered something in Korean that Walker assumed was either a curse or a prayer. Then she slid down inside the sleeping bag, pulling it up over her head.
“Stop,” Father Cornelius said, grabbing the corner of the sleeping bag and yanking it down to expose Kim’s face and the upper part of her chest.
She cried out in alarm.
“Father, what the hell?” Walker snapped. “I know how this looks—”
“We don’t care how it looks,” Polly said, tugging the tent flap open further, staring in at the three of them.
“She’s right.” Father Cornelius patted his shoulder. “You two screwing is the least of my concerns. Get some clothes on and do it fast.”
The priest reached up a hand and Polly helped him to his feet, rubbing one arthritic knee as he stood. When he’d left the tent and Polly had cinched the flaps closed behind him, Walker dragged his scattered clothes over to the sleeping bag and hurriedly dressed. Kim gazed at him in abject horror and then hid herself again.
“Come on,” he said.
“I’m Catholic,” her muffled voice explained from beneath the heavy sleeping bag.
“Didn’t you see the look on his face? That wasn’t about us.”
Walker tossed Kim her clothes. She nodded and slipped into her bra, quickening her pace until—moments later—she pulled him toward her and kissed him so deeply that Walker had to break away to catch his breath.
“What—”
Kim smiled. “It’s going to take a dark turn, now. Yes, I saw that look in the Father’s eyes. So I wanted to let you know, right now, that this part, at least—this was good.”