“What now?” Henry heard himself asking.
She smiled and it made him burn with happiness. She opened her arms. “This. Something that’s not Paris or New York or Havana. Something… transcendent.”
Henry didn’t know what the word meant, hut her voice told him and he understood.
Her face glistened with a sheen of sweat from the hike and the climb. Henry’s body was damp, too. The wind pushed over the ridge and fanned him cool. Maria’s hair rippled like black water, and she closed her eyes.
“Would you like to hunt with me?” Henry asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you ever seen an animal killed?”
“In Cuba once. I watched a pig slaughtered for roast.”
“To your eyes it might not be pretty.”
“I can take it. What will you hunt?”
“We passed through a meadow on our way here. I saw rabbit droppings.”
She stood eagerly. “Hasenpfeffer for dinner?”
Henry looked up at her dumbly.
“Fancy roast rabbit,” she said.
“I don’t know about fancy.” He smiled and rose beside her.
They returned to camp in the early afternoon with a fat, dead snowshoe rabbit in hand. Its coat was dark brown. Henry had explained to Maria that in winter, the fur would turn soft white to match the snow. He set about the skinning and cleaning and quartering, and Maria did not turn away. When he’d finished, he made a fire, settled a pot of water at the edge, and put the cut-up rabbit in to stew.
Maria said, “I’m going for a swim. Come with me?”
Henry laughed, thinking she was joking. The nights were cold and the lake would be like ice.
“All right then.” She disappeared into her tent and came out a few minutes later dressed in shorts and a man’s white undershirt. Her feet were bare, and Henry saw that her toes were painted red. “Last chance,” she said.
Henry shook his head. “You’ll be out fast enough.”
“Think so?”
She dashed toward the lake and dove in. She disappeared for a long time. Henry left the fire and ran to the rocky shore. He was about to go in after her when she burst through the surface and began stroking evenly away. He watched her, admiring how smoothly she moved through the water, leaving a wake like a comet’s tail.
Henry went back to the fire and cut onions and carrots and potatoes to add to the stew. All the while he kept an eye on Maria. She stayed a long time in water Henry knew would make his own muscles cramp.
Finally she returned to shore and climbed from the lake. Strands of her black hair clung to her cheeks. Beneath the thin wet cotton of her undershirt her skin was visible and pink. The dark areolas of her breasts were like eyes behind a veil.
Henry looked away, but not before she caught him looking and not before she smiled.
TWENTY-SIX
Henry couldn’t sleep. He lay in his tent staring up at canvas that was drenched in silver moonlight. It wasn’t the canvas he was seeing. It was Maria, stepping soft and pink from the lake. He didn’t understand what was happening to him or the way he felt. Strong, but also very weak. Full of fire and at the same time ice. Hard in every muscle but yielding deep inside. He’d never felt anything like this, not even during his brief courtship of Dilsey.
He threw back his blanket and stepped into the night. The ground was cool against his bare soles. The four tents had been arranged in a semicircle around the campfire. He crossed to Maria’s tent, his shadow crawling up the canvas. He longed to see her, even a glimpse, and he considered pulling her tent flap aside just for a moment.
But he was afraid.
Instead, he walked to the lake. The water was silver fire. The ridges on the far side stood gray and ghostly against the black southern sky. Henry glanced back at the camp, then quietly undressed. He stepped into the lake. The cold hammered his legs, but he pushed on, farther and deeper. He wanted the icy water to kill the fire that wouldn’t stop burning in him. He let out his breath and sank toward a place where the moonlight didn’t reach.
He felt a disturbance of the water and came up quickly. He looked toward shore and saw her slender figure slipping into the lake. He wasn’t certain, but he thought she was naked. She swam toward him, her face a pale, beautiful bubble. Henry stared at her, too amazed to speak. He felt the loop of her arms around him and the press of her warm body. She kissed him, her lips the softest touch he’d ever known.
“You’re freezing,” she said. “Come with me.”
Out of the water and in the moonlight, her naked skin was jeweled with shining droplets that rolled down the line of her spine, along the curve of her buttocks, and fell from her like pearls off a broken string. She stooped and gathered her clothing and his and led him to her tent. She drew aside the flap and slipped inside. Henry hesitated. Her hand appeared, beckoning him in. He followed.
Her sleeping bag was open. She lay on it in the silver-green light of the moonlit canvas. She reached out and took his hand and drew him down to her.
“Let me warm you,” she murmured.
She rolled on top of him, blanketing him with her own body, her breasts against his chest, her thighs cupping his. She kissed him again, and he grew hard and kissed her back. Her lips broke away and drifted across his cheek, his neck, his chest.
“Maria,” he whispered, desperate and grateful.
She put her finger to his mouth. “Shhhh. No noise.”
She pushed herself up to straddle him and looked deeply into his eyes. Her own eyes were full of silver-green fire. She moved ever so slightly, and he was surprised and amazed to find himself inside her, a place warmer and more welcoming than he’d ever imagined. He grasped her hips and tried to push deeper, but she laid a hand on his chest and shook her head.
She leaned to his ear and whispered, “Let me.” She kissed him for a long time.
The first time was over quickly, and Henry wasn’t sure if he’d done things right. He’d been divided, worrying about what he was doing with Maria and worrying about whether the white men would hear. But Maria smiled and snuggled into his arms and whispered he was wonderful, and like magic he was ready again. This time he did not worry about the white men.
Since he was sixteen Henry had had dreams full of animal desire from which he woke breathless and emptied. The first night with Maria was like nothing he’d ever dreamed, nothing he could ever have imagined. Their desire was a well without bottom. Henry had never been as happy as he was with Maria in his arms.
Long before dawn, long before the white men would be stirring, he rose and returned to his own tent, but he couldn’t sleep. He was too full of Maria.
She didn’t appear at breakfast. Wellington and Lima ate the biscuits and the oatmeal Henry had prepared. As sunlight began to climb the distant ridges, they set off across the lake. When they were out of sight, Henry went to Maria’s tent. He reached out, but held back from opening the flap, suddenly unsure.
“I’m awake,” she said from inside.
He found her still in her sleeping bag, looking at him with a tired smile on her face. He lay down beside her.
“You smell like smoke,” she said. “Take your clothes off and sleep with me.”
He dreamed of a snowfall that covered the forest, so deep he could barely move. Among the trees, wolves circled and he knew he could not escape them.
“You’re shivering,” she said, and that woke him.
They made love again. The tent was warm in the sunlight, and, afterward, they lay together, wet with their own sweat.
Henry heard the sound of music, a muffled chime.
“What’s that?” he said.
Maria reached into her canvas bag and pulled out a small box. Inside was a gold watch.
“It’s a present for my father,” she said.
She snapped it open and handed it to Henry. Opposite the face of the watch was Maria’s face, a small photograph behind glass.
“His birthday is next week. On the front, see the writing? It’s Spanish. It says, ’To my beloved papa.’ I wish it said ’To my beloved Henry.’ I wish I had something to give you. A present.”