When she pulled away, her eyes searched his, glittering dark in the moonlight. Her hand remained on his cheek. She asked, “What is it that makes you so sad?”
He wanted to say he wasn’t sad at all, but he couldn’t give voice to the lie.
“At first I dismissed you as detached and arrogant, a sophisticated New Yorker viewing us with amusement and using us for his own purposes. But that’s not so.”
He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.
“That’s the real reason I brought you here. So you could tap into whatever this place has to offer. And I hoped you’d tell me...” She waited, eyes still on his.
At first his old self-protective mechanisms kicked in. There was no way he would allow another human being to witness his pain. Then he thought, She’s already witnessed it. She needs to know where it comes from.
And I need to tell her.
The realization made him weak, both with relief and dread. He moved away from her and sat down on the retaining wall with his back to the relentlessly devouring sea. Unburdening himself to Rhoda would mean letting her into his life, and he knew all too well that a person who enters one’s life can just as easily be lost. Of course, there was also a measure of loss in keeping someone at an arm’s length...
“I was married once,” he began, “to a woman named Diana.” Just speaking of her conjured up the image of her warm eyes and thick fall of chestnut hair. He could feel the softness of her skin, hear her low-timbred voice, smell her light perfume.
Rhoda sat down, leaving a respectful two feet between them, and waited. After a moment he went on. “We were happy. I suppose most people who’ve lost a spouse claim that, but in our case it’s true. We shared both our lives and our work. But the work, that’s where it went wrong. Maybe if we hadn’t...”
He shook his head. For too long the thoughts of how it might have gone differently had tortured him. “Three years ago, Diana and I were on a two-week trip to East Timor. The former Portuguese colony that’s resisted being absorbed into Indonesia for over twenty years.” He heard his voice becoming flat and unemotional, even professorial. As Rhoda’s had sounded when she’d taken him to the canyon. He was insulating himself too.
“I was gathering material for a book, and Diana was taking photographs. We were going to document the plight of eight hundred thousand people who were suffering extreme violations of their civil rights at the hands of the government in Djakarta. We thought we could make a difference.” In his peripheral vision he saw Rhoda nod; she was also a person who wanted to believe she could make a difference.
“We were staying at a monastery outside of Dili, the capital city,” he went on. “Guests of an old monk who was active in the struggle for independence and had offered to put us in touch with knowledgeable and forthcoming sources. The work went well, but the atmosphere was bad there. Government troops were everywhere. By day they caused a tension that was exacerbated by the heat. They were less noticeable by night, but still there was a feel of menace in the soft breeze.
“After a few days Diana and I realized we were being watched. By the beginning of the second week the old monk, who had acted as if he’d seen it all and feared nothing, became nervous. Diana wasn’t a timid or fanciful woman, but she became infected by his fear. She begged me to leave early.”
This was where the emotional terrain grew dangerous, where he could sink into a mire of self-loathing and — pity. He paused for a long moment before he added, “Four more days, I told her. Four more days to get the last few pieces of information I needed, and we’d be out of there. It was the worst mistake of my life.”
He heard the sudden raw note in his voice and glanced at Rhoda. Neither her expression nor her body language acknowledged it. Allowing him his feelings without embarrassment. He swallowed before he went on.
“The night before we were to fly home, the monastery was set on fire. The monk urged us to escape while we could, to the countryside where one of the sources I’d interviewed would shelter us. We hid in a shed on the man’s property for a week, sleeping on the ground, refusing most of the food he tried to give us because we knew he needed it for his family. When he thought it was safe, we went back to Dili. The monastery was in ruins, the monk gone, presumably dead. And government soldiers were waiting for us.”
Now he began speaking faster, rushing to get through this before he broke down. “The commander of the unit told us their orders were to escort us to the airport, but I doubted we’d ever arrive there. I could tell Diana did too. She was...” His voice broke and he shook his head. Raised his arms and pushed his hands palms-out in front of him, hoping to somehow relieve the pressure in his chest.
“She was worn out. Weak from lack of food and sleep. But she wasn’t afraid, not like I was. She was angry. I saw her getting her camera ready. I should have stopped her, but instead I did nothing. As the soldiers approached us, she raised it for a last photograph. I heard the shutter click at the same time one of the soldiers shouldered his carbine and shot her in the head.”
Rhoda moaned, a sound that told him she was living it with him.
“To this day,” he said, “I can’t sort out the sequence of events after that. Chaos and disbelief and pain, that’s all. Then I was on a government transport plane, flying to Bangkok, where a State Department official met me.”
“What did the government do about it?”
The fact that she’d spoken startled him. He looked into her eyes and saw the same kind of anger he’d seen in Diana’s. Rhoda still believed in justice, and he feared someday the lack of it would break her.
“There was a cover-up, of course. The Indonesian government hadn’t intended any harm to come to either of us; the soldier had acted on his own. They called it a dreadful, regrettable incident. And our government wasn’t willing to offend an important Asian country of two hundred million people, so they accepted the official version and apology. They had Diana’s body returned for burial in Massachusetts, where her family lives. And I had no strength to fight either government, so I retreated from the world. Where I’ve more or less been ever since.”
“Less now.”
“...Maybe.” His eyes were full of tears; he closed the lids against them, but they leaked out and slipped down his cheeks. He hadn’t cried in three years, not since the night after Diana’s funeral, shut away in the apartment that, without her, would never again be home. When Rhoda’s hand touched his, a shuddering sob caught in his throat. He let it out and when he could speak again said shakily, “There’s a footnote to the story.”
“Oh?”
“Six months later I received a package postmarked Sydney, Australia, containing Diana’s camera. Sent through one of those mailing services, no note or explanation, and the final roll of film still inside. It was a year before I could bring myself to take the roll to the processor, but when the prints came back I had my evidence. A shot of a young Indonesian soldier, his eyes hard with hatred, raising his carbine as his superior officer smiled in approval. That photo and its negative now live in my safe-deposit box, and if I ever find a way to use it, I will.”
His tears were falling freely now, but he felt no need to stem them. He’d finally told it all, to someone who cared. Told it all, as he’d never have to tell it again.
Chrystaclass="underline" Before
Friday, October 6
12:37 P.M.
Okay, there it is — Forrest Wynne’s old Buick. All covered up with pine needles so you can’t hardly tell what color it is. I remember him working on that car while Leo made music and smoked dope.