Chapter Nineteen

Raven wasn’t in Montreaux. I hit the cheap hotels, the youth hostel, and found out that the only campground was two stops east by steamer. I reasoned that Eric would have too much pride to let Raven pay his way, so I decided not to worry about the more expensive places. I had to set some limits on my search.

The steamer passed the Château de Chillon, a lovely pile built out in the waters of Lac Léman, then moved on down to Villeneuve. It was a short walk to the campground, where the operator did not recognize either picture. It was nearing evening, so I took a place and pitched my tent. I walked around the campground, through the nearby parks, down by the lake, out onto the docks, and back to the steamer pier without seeing a familiar face.

The campground at Villeneuve was as beautiful a place as I could remember. The whole length of Lac Léman stretched westward toward the setting sun. High cirrus clouds were taking fire in an impossibly blue sky, above an impossibly blue lake. On either side of the lake and surrounding Villeneuve itself were huge rounded hills cloaked with intense green, and southeastward, dominating everything, were the snowy peaks of the main Alps.

As I approached the steamer pier, I heard bagpipes. It was Colin MacAdam, a street musician I had met in Paris, striding up and down in full kilt. He had a swatch of tartan spread over a cardboard box to collect the tourists’ money. I tossed in a few francs as he passed. He nodded without breaking rhythm. When he finished the piece he was playing, Colin grinned at me and said, “I haven’t seen them yet, Ian. I’ll keep looking and asking if you want.” I thanked him, scribbled the number of the consulate at Marseille on a piece of paper, and told him to ask for Will Hayden if he got any news.

He went back to work and I stayed for the pleasure of the pipes. They are an acquired taste. I probably would not have given them the repeated hearing it takes to accustom American ears to the drone and the strange intonation of the notes if I had not been interested in my own Scottish ancestry.

After Colin had finished his set, I went down to the docks near the campground. The sun was just setting. The sky was maroon and gold. The lambent light reflected off the varnished sailboats and painted golden reflections in the still waters. A mother duck had made a temporary home on one of the finger piers, with her brood of half-fletched young piled up around her. I said hello, but she only hissed a warning. I skirted them carefully to avoid disturbing them. I unlaced my boots and sat on the end of the pier, dangling my feet in the cold waters of Lac Léman while I watched the sky turn Prussian blue.

I wanted to reach out and take Raven’s hand, and share this beauty with her. At the same time, I felt a kind of bitter freedom.

I walked back to the campground. The tents were crowded together on a lovely, treeless lawn. Even here, where the beauty of nature was as wild and moving as any American national park, there was no thought of giving each camper a space of his own, and there were no campfires. European campgrounds are a Sunday picnic, not the Frontiersman conquering the wilderness. more tomorrow

I remembered one more incident with Raven. It was the afternoon we had climbed to the Monmarte, a few hours before we met Eric. We had entered the cathedral of Sacre Couer, and were sitting side by side. The roof was lost in shadow and the stained glass windows were rich with the light of afternoon. There were only a few tourists; they seldom get past Notre Dame. Most of the people coming and going were genuine worshippers. I watched one old woman as she entered, genuflected, and made her slow and painful way to an alter in a side chapel. She lit a candle and remained there on her knees for a time, then with equal slowness, came back past us and went back out into the world. It was a simple thing, repeated a thousand times a day in every cathedral in Europe, but it touched me.

Raven gave me an odd look as I wiped my eyes and made a deprecating mouth. We had never talked about religion. I asked, “Are you Catholic?”

“Sort of. I go a few times a year, and I feel a little guilty that I don’t go more often. I don’t think about it much. You?”

I shook my head. “Protestant background. Fire and brimstone Baptist, to be exact. My folks would give me hell for even being in a Catholic cathedral. I stopped believing a long time ago, but I think about it a lot.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have a superstructure of priests to do my thinking for me.”

She was silent for a while. I thought I had offended her. I could have added that Reverend Billy Thompson had been as willing to do the thinking for his Baptist congregation as any Catholic priest ever could be. But that wasn’t what was on her mind. She finally said, “Doesn’t it scare you?”

“Sure.”

“So why don’t you go back?”

“Faith isn’t something you can turn off and on. When it’s gone, it’s just gone.”

“Don’t you ever think maybe you’re wrong?”

I shook my head.

“Just like that?”

I shrugged.

“And when you die?”

“I just die.”

“I couldn’t live like that.”

“I wouldn’t want you to. I don’t try to talk people into thinking my way. It’s much more comfortable to believe in God.”

“Don’t you ever miss it – miss Him?”

I shuffled the words around in my mind to get them just right. It was something I didn’t want Raven to misunderstand.

“What I miss,” I said, “isn’t the assurance or the comfort. Not any more. That’s what a kid misses. What I miss is . . . like this: I go out in the evening and I’m alone and I see a beautiful sunset. The clouds are on fire and the sky is so blue it’s almost green. It is so beautiful it makes me hurt and I just want to look up and say, ‘Thank you.’ But there’s no one to say it to. That’s what I really miss. Having someone to say ‘thank you’ to.”

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The steamer was pulling into Montreaux. The other passengers were gathering up their baggage. I dropped my feet from the rail and slipped my arms into the packs traps.

I could still see Raven’s face as it had looked there in Sacre Coeur. It was as if she had stepped back three paces while sitting still. Her body was still there, but in her mind, she had gone far away.

Just like she had gone away, completely away, two mornings later. There was a connection between the two events. I could feel the connection, but I could not define it. And unless I did, she was lost to me forever. I might find her, warn her, and save her from the assailants who had attacked her, but unless I unlocked the greater puzzle of Raven herself, I would never hold her in my arms again. more tomorrow

On April thirteenth I picked Raven up out of the sea. On June thirteenth, she left me. Two months to the day, and in all that time we were never separated more than the few hours. Such a strange beginning; such a swift, cruel end. So much to remember, yet so few really intimate conversations.

I remembered the day we finally entered the Mediterranean. The levante had brought warm, clear skies and more wind than the damaged sails could use. It was the kind of day that made me hunger to have the Wahini functioning properly again. We slipped smoothly through a rippled sea, making three knots under conditions that should have given us twice that speed.

Raven and I were nestled together, naked. We had found a favorite position. I sat with my back braced against the weather davit. Raven sat in front of me, leaning back against me, with her foot on the wheel lazily keeping Wahini on course. My hands were locked beneath her breasts, with fingers free to make occasional teasing excursions upward to her nipples. We could keep that position for hours if I was in post-coital lethargy, but no matter how worn out I was, the gentle swaying of the boat would eventually take my mind off seamanship and we would make love.

Today, we hadn’t reached that stage. We were simply talking. I had told Raven about my father and how he had abandoned my sister and me after my mother died. It is not something I talk about easily, and I had eventually grown tired of the bitterness in my own voice and had shut up. There followed a long silence, until Raven said, “You would like my father.”

“Oh?”

“You’re a lot like him. He is a powerful man. I don’t mean physically, and I don’t mean his political clout. He is a man who knows his mind and doesn’t swerve once he has decided on a course of action. He has enormous self-confidence. Like you.”

I didn’t know what to say. I do have a lot of self-confidence, but it isn’t polite to say so. I just said, “It must be nice to have a father like that.”

“It’s hell.”

“What?”

“Oh, it’s okay for my mother. She loves him, worships him, almost; and my sister gets along fine with him. They are both the shy, retiring types.”

“And you aren’t?”

It was a joke, of course. I said it lightly, but she replied, “Damned straight!” Then she got up so fast that she almost tore herself out of my arms, and walked stiffly away, a firm, fine, living, cafe-au-lait statue of Venus. She disappeared below, and I didn’t see her again for two hours. When she came back up, she had dressed in Will’s jeans and shirt, and she didn’t mention her father again.

An omen perhaps. Certainly a warning, but it had not made sense to me at the time. It still didn’t, not where my thinking mind lives, but in the undermind where all is groping after glimpses of pattern against a background of chaos, it fit. It rang true. Her words on that fine Mediterranean day and her leaving me without warning or explanation were like two pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle. They fitted together, but while the rest of the puzzle lay scattered, they meant little. more tomorrow

At my elbow, a heavy American tourist with a Texas accent talked about triple compound expansion, and from the references he made it was clear that he owned a small steam engine of some kind. Whether it was the kind you put in a launch, or one of those silly live-steam trains that you see grown men riding around on top of, he didn’t say.

Technical conversations fascinate me, and dedicated enthusiasts fascinate me. Another time, I would have made an excuse to engage the man in conversation to learn more about these steamers I liked so well. But not today. Today was for solitude.

I went on to the upper deck. Since I was using the Senator’s money, I had bought a first class ticket. The view was the same as it had been from the second class section on the main deck. Gorgeous. Steep, grassy hillsides dotted with chalets, cattle grazing, and all reflected in the glassy perfection of the lake. In the distance off the bow, beyond Montreaux, the snow clad peaks of the true Alps were playing peek-a-boo among the clouds.

Eventually, I became aware that one of the other passengers was eyeing me. She was young and lovely, in a tight mini-dress and sandals. She had hair cut shorter than mine, very black and straight, and lashes too long to be real. Her companion was blonde and frilly with a habit of hiding her mouth when she talked. They were leaning against the rail, talking, and giving me covert looks.

I don’t know why girls do that. I would not call myself handsome. Not like Will is. I am just six feet, one ninety, broad where a man should be broad and narrow where a man should be narrow, but no one would ever put me on the cover of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. Field and Stream, maybe. Not that I mind the attention, but it confuses me. My first reaction is always to wonder if they are joking. Did I forget to zip something?

Normally, I like the attention, but today I had Raven on my mind. When the girl with the lashes finally sent me a smile that would have melted a statue, I shook my head and turned away. When I looked around later, she was gone.

So then, naturally, I found myself regretting the lost opportunity. Consistently inconsistent.

I wedged my pack against the seat, put my feet up on the rail, and made myself comfortable. Fifty-two hours. That was how long it had been since I woke up to find Raven gone. Fifty-two hours, and I was still in shock. I was walking through my life half awake. I was eating, sleeping, making conversation, making decisions, choosing logical courses of action, not falling overboard. But I was doing it all with my mind only half engaged.

I sighed. It was one of those sighs that starts in the back of your throat and shudders you all the way down to your feet. It was good that no one was sitting near; they would have called the paramedics. And then I chuckled. Pitiful. Pathetic. Too sad to live. You can only take yourself so seriously, and then all your actions turn into farce. more tomorrow

Chapter Eighteen

When I traveled in Europe after I got out of the Army, I was stretching out my money by camping and eating grocery store picnics. It was then that I discovered the oddly opposed set of feelings that establish the rhythm of living close to the ground. Whenever I set up camp, there was always a feeling of relief and belonging, like a little homecoming. Even if it was only for one night, the campsite became my home, my own personal piece of the Earth. For a person traveling far and fast, there was great comfort in falling asleep looking at the same walls every night, even if those walls were blue nylon.

But whenever I broke camp, there was an equally strong feeling of freedom. Once my tent and sleeping bag were stored in the pack, and everything I owned was on my back, there came a transcendent feeling that I was once again unfettered. I could go anywhere.

As I left the hotel the next morning, I had that feeling again. The comfort of well worn pack straps, the snug grip of well worn shoes, the solid weight of the pack, and the beckoning sun filled me with joy. Oddly, not a little of that joy came from leaving Susyn behind. She was delightful, but she was not Raven. And I needed time to be alone. Since Raven was thrown off the cruise ship, I had not had an hour of true solitude, and I was feeling the lack.

I took my time walking down to the steamer dock, enjoying the town. When I reached the lake, I still had an hour to wait. I walked around the marina, admiring the sailboats, then went down through the park to the water’s edge. It was too early for any of the street musicians to be out; Susyn would come by here in the afternoon asking her questions. Now there was only sunlight, deep blue water, green grass, and young lovers strolling about. And swans. Sometimes I think half of the charm of Europe is her swans. Now, in early summer, the cygnets were big and awkward, gray and ugly-cute, just like Hans Christian Andersen described them. I squatted at the edge of the lake, a hundred yards from the steamer pier, and held out my hand. A pair of waddling adolescents came up to beg, found me breadless, pecked at my boots, and wandered off looking for a better handout.

I watched the steamer come in, and went on board with the tourists. The rest of the tourists. When you live close to the ground there is a tendency to forget your real status and believe that you are more a part of the landscape than you actually are.

Most of these lake steamers were built around the turn of the century. Their lines speak of better days, or at least days with greater attention to style. They are long, lean side-wheelers, with massive steam engines on the main deck, huffing and wheezing in plain sight. I leaned on the brass rail to watch. Fine machinery is always fascinating, and this was kept polished and shining. At my elbow, a heavy American tourist with a Texas accent was explaining it all to his wife. She listened with polite disinterest, patting his arm from time to time. You could see that the words meant nothing to her, but she was happy to see him happy. more tomorrow