The Drop Edge of Yonder (13 page)

"With me or with the journey?" he asked.

"Both. As soon as we land I want to go back."

"Back?" he asked impatiently. "Back to where?"

"France, Egypt, Russia. Does it matter?"

"You know that I have been banished from those countries," he replied. "Listen to me. We go on or we perish. The Captain and I have discussed the situation. He agrees that a brief separation will benefit both of us. And now that the wind has started up again I'm quite content to be in the cabin. I see it as a kind of retreat. A gift and a privilege. Amazing how certain dramas affect one's state of mind."

As the cello repeated the first stanza of "The Death and the Maiden," she turned and walked down the companionway to her cabin.

he was sitting on her bunk, staring out the porthole when Zebulon appeared behind her. Not taking her eyes off the horizon, she allowed him to undress her, then lower her down on the bunk.

"Slowly," she whispered as he raised her legs over his shoulders.

"Too late for slowly," he said and plunged into her with such force that she cried out for him to stop.

He kept on even when she bit into his arm and chest.

Finally they collapsed and she rolled over on her stomach, her head on his thigh. For the first time he noticed the tattoo of a three-headed snake swaying up her back.

"When I saw you in Vera Cruz," she said, "I wanted you to rescue me... but just now, in the water, it was me that rescued vou.

When he pulled her to him, she went limp inside his arms.

"Do either of us know how to surrender?" she asked.

Surrender? It was something that he had never considered.

He shut his eyes and she placed her hand on his stomach, then slowly moved it up to his chest as she leaned up to kiss him, positioning her body on his as she opened her thighs. Once he was inside her, she matched her breathing to his, dissolving his resistance and confusion. When they were both empty and her stillness had become his, she laid her head on his shoulder and wept.

She whispered into his chest. "When I first saw you, I thought you might be a ghost."

"And I thought you were a witch."

"I am a witch," she said.

He suddenly felt overwhelmed by anger and a confusion that he couldn't deal with.

"Did Ivan buy you?" he asked.

"I am expensive, if that's what you mean," she said evenly. "I have certain skills. I know how to deal with men. I speak English, French, and Spanish, as well as Russian and several African dialects. I cook and wash clothes."

"Who are you?" he asked.

She went on: "My mother was French and Abyssinian, my father Ethiopian and possibly Turkish. He would never say. They were killed when I was captured by an Arab raiding party. I was taken to Djoubouti on the Red Sea and sold to a French arms trader. He was cruel and he beat me, but he taught me about the world. We traveled through the Sudan, then across the Sahara to Egypt. When we reached Paris, Andre - that was his name - began to gamble and smoke opium. When he lost me to Ivan in a card game, he shot himself."

She propped herself on an elbow, looking down at him. "Ivan will do anything to save me. Even if it means losing me."

He stood up and pulled on his pants. She didn't look at him when he went out the door.

Later that night he appeared in her cabin. When he lay down beside her, he let her wrap her legs around his waist and slowly guide him inside her.

HE NEXT DAY CAPTAIN DORFHEIMER SUMMONED ZEBULON to his quarters. Delilah and the Count were already seated. Neither of them looked up as the Captain waved him to a chair.

The Captain cleared his throat before he spoke. "We have been discussing a painful situation. But I believe that we have arrived at a solution. No one has been hurt. Everyone appears to have forgiven one another, and I see no grounds for punishment or any kind of further restriction. However, because it is obviously awkward for all of you to live together in such close quarters, I've decided that as soon as we land, it would be best for Mister Shook to find another ship, one that will carry him up the coast to Panama, where he will be able to take a train to the Pacific and then a ship to San Francisco."

"If anyone leaves, it should be me," Delilah said.

"I thought we had reached an agreement," the Count said impatiently.

Delilah looked at Zebulon, then at the Count. "Why don't both of you go to California? If we all reach Sutter's Fort, then we can decide if we want to go on."

"Dear lady," the Captain protested, "you're contradicting everything that we have agreed to."

"I am not a dear lady," Delilah objected.

"You've obviously gone mad," the Count said.

"Are you referring to yourself?" she asked.

"You know very well what happened," the Count said.

"Do I?" she asked. "I'm not at all sure, except that you dictated the terms, as you always do."

When there was no answer from the Count, the Captain lifted a bottle of rum from a side table and poured them all drinks.

"I have a proposal," he said. "I'm prepared to wager five hundred dollars that Zebulon Shook will never arrive in San Francisco. That somewhere along the trail he'll disappear or find something or someone else that holds his interest. After all, he's a man whose fate has always been decided by the prevailing winds."

Delilah nodded towards Zebulon. "Do you agree?"

"Do I have a choice?" he replied

"At this particular moment, no," the Captain replied.

"How will I pay for my passage across Panama," Zebulon asked. "And then up to San Francisco?"

"That will be arranged," the Captain said. "A hundred dollars should be enough."

"I'll match the Captain's hundred," the Count said.

"And if you show up in San Francisco, I'll give you two hundred," the Captain promised. "With no strings."

"And if you don't show up, I'll do the same," the Count added. "A man with your tracking abilities should be able to find us."

"And if you find us," Delilah said, "you will have your job back."

"Double the offer," Zebulon said.

The Count looked at the Captain, who nodded his approval.

"Done," the Count said.

The Captain lifted his glass: "To long life, prosperity, and wind in our sails."

The Captain clinked his glass against Zebulon's, then did the same with the Count and Delilah.

"Have faith and abide," the Count said, saluting Zebulon as he went out the door.

wo days later The Rhinelander put in for supplies on the northern coast of Columbia. It had been raining for two weeks and the streets and the squalid collection of fishing shacks that were spread around the crumbling cathedral were covered with green moss and mud.

When Zebulon left the ship, Delilah was waiting by the gangway, oblivious to the sheets of rain slashing across the harbor. It was the first time they had seen each other since the meeting with the Captain.

"Take care of yourself," he said, as if she was nothing more than an acquaintance.

She pressed a gold necklace lined with rubies into his hand. "You'll get a good price. It belonged to the Czar's cousin."

He handed the necklace back to her. "You'll need this more than me."

She fastened the necklace around his neck. "If a person refuses a gift from someone to whom they are special, the one who offered it will die."

As he made his way down the gangplank, she called out to him: "I will find you.... You are no other than myself, even though I am not... now... you..."

The rest of her words were drowned in the rain and wind.

'EBULON SPENT HIS DAYS WAITING FOR A SHIP ON THE veranda of the port's only hotel, a crumbling two-story wooden structure surrounded by wilted stalks of hibiscus and oleander. Occasionally he was joined by the sallow-faced manager of a nearby sugar plantation who spoke only three words of English: woman, gold, and money. Not that they could have heard each other anyway with the rain clattering like rifle fire across the tin roof.

When he wasn't drinking he shot billiards in the rundown lobby, an activity that he gave himself to with maniacal concentration despite a tilted table that sent all the balls rolling into the same corner. One afternoon he was interrupted from his hopeless activity by a piercing whistle from the harbor. Walking out to the veranda, he watched five men slog down the washedout street towards the hotel, their heads lowered like penitents beneath the rain. Stumbling towards him, they collapsed on rickety whicker chairs. Their leader was a large white-haired man wearing a blue and red hand-tailored naval uniform with enormous epaulets hanging in clusters over a chest full of medals and ribbons. Tufts of hair splayed out of his nostrils, and thick sideburns ran down the side of his massive thick-browed face. Banging a fist on the table, he ordered one of his men to check inside the hotel, then shouted in broken Spanish for hot lemon water and rum.