The Adventures Of Indiana Jones (17 page)

He knows it, she thought. He knows it, too.

He brought his face close. She could smell the sweetness of his breath. No no no, she thought. But she didn’t speak. She knew she was leaning forward slightly, anticipating the kiss, her mind dancing, her desire intense. It didn’t come. There wasn’t a kiss. He had bent down and was beginning to untie her ropes, moving in the same way as before, letting the ropes fall to the ground as if they were the most erotic of garments.

Still he hadn’t spoken.

He was looking at her. There was a light in his eye, the faint touch of warmth she’d imagined before—but she couldn’t tell if it was real or if it was something he used, a prop in his repertoire of behavior.

Then he said, “You’re very beautiful.”

She shook her head. “Please . . .” But she didn’t know if she was begging to be left alone or if she was asking him to kiss her, and she realized she’d never experienced such a confusion of emotion in her entire life. Indy, why the hell hadn’t he rescued her? Why had he left her like this?

Repelled, attracted—why wasn’t there some hard and fast borderline between the two? Signposts she could read? It didn’t matter: there was a melting of distinctions in her thoughts. She saw the contradiction and she understood, with a sense of horror, that she wanted this man to make love to her, to teach her what she felt was his deep understanding of physical love; and beyond this, there was the feeling that he could be cruel, an insight that suddenly didn’t matter to her either.

He brought his face closer again. She looked at his lips. The eyes were filled with understanding, a comprehension she hadn’t seen in a man’s face before. Already, even before he kissed her, he knew her, he could look into her. She felt more naked than she’d ever felt. Even this vulnerability excited her now. He came nearer. He kissed her.

She wanted to draw away again.

The kiss—she closed her eyes and gave herself to the kiss—and it wasn’t like any other kiss in her life. It moved into a place beyond the narrow limits of lips and tongues. It created spaces of bright light in her head, colors, webs of gold and silver and yellow and blue, as if she were watching some impossible sunset. Slow, patient, unselfish. Nobody had ever touched her before. Not like that. Not even Indy.

When he drew his face away, she realized she was holding him tightly. She was digging her nails into his body. And the realization came as a shock to her, a shock that brought a sudden sense of shame. What was she doing? What had possessed her?

She stepped back from him.

“Please,” she said. “No more.”

He smiled and spoke for the first time: “They intend to harm you.”

It was as if the kiss had never existed. It was as if she had been manipulated. The abrupt letdown she experienced was the wild drop in a roller-coaster ride.

“I managed to persuade them to give me some time alone with you, my dear. You’re a very attractive woman, after all. And I don’t want to see them hurt you. They’re barbarians.”

He came closer to her again. No, she thought. Not again.

“You must tell me something to placate them. Some information.”

“I don’t know anything . . . how many times do I have to tell them?” She was dizzy now, she needed to sit down. Why didn’t he kiss her again?

“What about Jones?”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Your loyalty is admirable. But you must tell me what Jones knows.”

Indy came swimming back into her vision.

“He’s brought me nothing but trouble . . .”

“I agree,” Belloq said. He reached for her, held her face between his hands, studied her eyes. “I think I want to believe you know nothing. But I cannot control the Germans. I cannot hold them back.”

“Don’t let them hurt me.”

Belloqshrugged. “Then tell me
anything!”

The tent door flapped open. Marion looked at the figure of Arnold Toht standing there. Behind him were the Germans she had come to know as Dietrich and Gobler. The fear she felt was like some sun burning in her head.

Belloq said, “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t move. She simply stared at Toht, remembering how badly he’d wanted to hurt her with the poker.

“Fräulein,” Toht said. “We have come a long way from Nepal, no?”

Stepping backward, she shook her head in fear.

Toht advanced toward her. She glanced at Belloq, as if to make some last appeal to him, but he was going from the tent now, stepping out into the night

Outside, Belloq paused. It was odd to be attracted by the woman, strange to want to make love to her even if the act had begun out of the desire to extract information from her. But after that, after the first kiss . . . He stuck his hands in his pockets and hesitated outside the tent. He wanted to go back inside and make those worms stop what they were about to do, but his attention was suddenly drawn to the horizon.

Lightning—lightning concentrated strangely in one place, as if it had gathered there deliberately, directed by some meteorological consciousness. A congregation of lightning, spikes and forks and flashes spitting in one spot. He bit on his lower lip, deep in thought, and then he went back inside the tent.

Indy moved toward the altar. He tried to ignore the sound of the snakes, a mad noise—made more insane by the eerie shadows thrown by the torches. He had splashed oil from the canisters across the floor and lit it, creating a path among the snakes; and now these flames, thrusting upward, eclipsed the lightning from overhead. Sallah was behind him. Together they struggled with the stone cover of the chest until it was loose; inside, more beautiful than he’d ever imagined it to be, was the Ark.

For a time he couldn’t move. He stared at the untarnished gold angels that faced one another over the lid, the gold that coated the acacia wood. The gold carrying-rings affixed to the four corners shone brilliantly in the light of his torch. He looked at Sallah, who was watching the Ark in reverential silence. More than anything else now Indy had the urge to reach out and touch the Ark—but even as he thought it, Sallah put his hand forward.

“Don’t touch it,” Indy exclaimed. “Never touch it.”

Sallah drew his hand away. They turned toward the wooden crate and removed the four poles that were attached to the corners. They inserted the poles into the rings of the Ark and raised it, grunting at the weight of the thing, then levering it from the stone chest into the crate. The fires were beginning to die now and the snakes, their hissing beginning to sound more and more like a solitary upraised voice, were slipping toward the altar.

“Hurry,” Indy said. “Hurry.”

They attached the ropes to the crate. Indy tugged on one of the ropes, and the crate was pulled up out of the chamber. Sallah took the next rope and quickly made his ascent. Indy reached for his exit rope, pulling on it to be certain of its support—and it
fell,
itself snakelike, from the opening at the top into the chamber.

“What the hell—”

From above, the Frenchman’s voice was unmistakable: “Why, Dr. Jones, whatever are you doing in such a nasty place?”

There was laughter.

“You’re making a habit of this, Belloq,” Indy said.

The snakes hissed closer. He could hear their bodies slide across the floor.

“A bad habit, I agree,” Belloq said, peering down. “Unhappily, I have no further use for you, my old friend. And I find it suitably ironic that you’re about to become a permanent addition to this archaeological find.”

“I’m dying of laughter,” Indy shouted up.

He continued to squint upward, wondering if there were any exit from this . . . and he was still wondering when he saw Marion being pushed from the edge of the hole, falling, dropping. He moved quickly and broke her fall with his body, sliding to the ground as she struck him. The snakes edged closer. She clung frantically to Indy, who could hear Belloq arguing from above.

“She was mine!”

“She is of no use to us now, Belloq. Only the mission for the Führer matters.”

“I had plans for her!”

“The only plans are those that concern Berlin,” Dietrich said back to Belloq.

There was a silence from above. And then Belloq was looking down into the chamber at Marion.

His voice was low. “It was not to be,” he said to her. Then he nodded at Indy. “Indiana Jones,
adieu!”

Suddenly the stone door to the chamber was slammed shut by a group of German soldiers. Air was sucked out of the Well, torches went out, and the snakes were moving into the areas of darkness.

Marion clutched Indy tightly. He disentangled himself, picking up two torches that were still lit, passing one to her.

“Just wave the torch at anything that moves,” he said.

“Everything
is moving,” she said. “The whole place is slithering.”

“Don’t remind me.”

He began to fumble around in the dark, found one of the oil canisters, splashed the oil toward the wall and lit it. He stared at one of the statues above, feeling the snakes encroach ever closer to him.

“What are you doing?” Marion asked.

He poured what remained of the oil in a circle around them and set it ablaze.

“Stay here.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back. Keep your eyes open and get ready to run.”

“Run where?”

He didn’t answer. He moved backward through the flames to the center of the room. Snakes flicked around his heels, and he swung his torch desperately to keep them away. He stared up at the statue, which reached close to the ceiling. From under his robes he took his bullwhip and lashed it through the half-light, watching it curl around the base of the statue. He tugged on it to test its strength, then he began to climb one-handed, the torch in his other hand.

He hauled himself up and twisted once to look down at Marion, who stood behind the dwindling wall of flame. She looked lost and forlorn and helpless. He made it to the top of the statue when a snake appeared around the face of the statue—hissing directly into Indy’s eyes. Indy shoved his torch into its head, smelled the burning of reptile flesh, watched the snake slip from the smooth stone and fall away.

He jammed himself in place, his feet stuck between wall and statue.
Let it work,
he thought. Snakes were climbing up around the statue, and his torch—failing badly—wouldn’t keep them away forever. He flailed with it, striking this way and that hearing snakes drop and fall into the chamber. Then the torch slipped from his grasp and flickered out as it dropped. Just when you need a light, you don’t have one, he thought.

And something crawled over his hand.

He yelled in surprise.

As he did so, the statue gave way, came loose from its foundation and swayed, shivered, tilting at a terrifying angle to the roof of the chamber. Here we go, Indy thought, holding onto this statue as if it were a wild mule. But it was more like a log being clutched in a stormy sea—and it fell, it fell while he struggled to hold on, gathering speed, toppling past the startled Marion, who stood in the dying fires, whizzing past her in the manner of a tree felled by a lumberjack, breaking through the floor of the Well and crashing into darkness beyond. Then the voyage astride the statue stopped abruptly when the broken figure hit bottom, and he slid off, stunned, rubbing the side of his head. He fumbled around in the dark for a moment, aware of faint light filtering through the ragged hole from the Well. Marion was calling to him.

“Indy! Where are you?”

He reached through the hole as she peered into it.

“Never ride by statue,” he said. “Take my advice.”

“I’ll make a point of it.”

He caught her hand and helped her in. She held the torch over her head. It was a poor light now—but enough for them to see they were inside a maze of interconnected chambers running at angles beneath the Well, catacombs that tunneled the earth.

“So where are we now?”

“Your guess would be as good as mine. Maybe they built the Well above these catacombs for some reason. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. But it’s better than snakes.”

A swarm of distressed bats flew out of the dark, winging around them, beating the air like lunatics. They ducked and passed into another chamber. Marion flapped her hands over her head and screamed.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “It scares me.”

“How do you think it makes
me
feel?”

They went from chamber to chamber.

“There has to be some way out,” he said. “The bats are a good sign. They have to find the sky outside for feeding purposes.”

Another chamber, and here the stench was sickening. Marion raised her torch.

There were moldering mummies in their half-wrapped bandages, rotting flesh hanging from yellowed bindings, mounds of skulls, bones, some of them with half-preserved flesh clinging to their surfaces. A wall in front of them was covered with glistening beetles.

“I can’t believe this smell,” Marion said.

“You’re complaining?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Great,” Indy told her. “That’d cap this experience nicely.”

Marion sighed. “This is the worst place I’ve ever been.”

“No,
back there
was the worst place you’ve ever been.”

“But you know what, Indy?” she said. “If I had to be here with anybody . . .”

“Got you,” he cut her off. “Got you.”

“That’s right. You do.”

Marion kissed him gently on the lips. The softness of her touch surprised him. He drew his face back, wanted to kiss her again—but she was pointing excitedly at something, and when he turned his face he saw, some distance away, the merciful sight of the desert sun, a dawn sun, white and wonderful and promising.

“Thank God,” she said.

“Thank who you like. But we’ve still got work to do.”

T
HEY MOVED
among the abandoned excavations, closer to the airstrip that had been hacked out of the desert by the Germans. There were two fuel trucks on the strip, a tent supply depot, and someone—clearly a mechanic to judge from his coveralls—standing at the edge of the runway with his hands on his hips, his face turned toward the sky. And then someone else was moving across the strip toward the mechanic, a figure Marion recognized as Dietrich’s aide, Gobler.