The Laughing Falcon (37 page)

It is the twenty-fourth of January as I enter my fifth week of internment at the Darkside of the Moon, three days since Benito Madrigal was deposited here in all his fragmented glory, three days since that big, shuffling redhead whispered his promise to return for me
.

Mr. Cardinal seemed confused by what he witnessed here (and how stupefied he looked when the camera flashed). I can only hope he has managed to relay my message that those in charge must reject violent solutions. If the man has any receptive powers at all, he must have grasped that my hosts are harmless
.

To give him credit, he has complied with our terms: my note has been read many times on the air, and I have seen it in close-up on Channel Seven. No mention was made in the media, however, of his role as go-between or of the tribute offered — and rejected — for my release. Nor, oddly, has the grant of freedom to Benito Madrigal been made public. I am sensing, from the people-on-the-street interviews, that public opinion is shifting in the commandos’ favour, in particular, the sympathies of the poor
.

We are still waiting for Jacques Cardinal’s next visit, hoping he will not be followed, uncertain whether events will end with a bang, a whimper, or waves of fond farewell and misting eyes. But I am more optimistic now, for the opposition (as I have almost begun to regard them) seems eager to come to terms; my worth alone has been assessed at more than half a million dollars
.

I remain convinced I took the right course by refusing to part from Gloria-May; I would never dream of leaving such a dear friend to face danger alone. (I will continue to insist that my expressed desire to stay to finish this book was quite secondary.)

Our remaining days here may be short. Halcón has agreed we should move to another refuge that the commando maintains. (I am not at liberty to say where.) Detection has become a concern: Zorro, while stationed at the gate, contended yesterday with a couple seeking recruits for God, and has previously turned away campesinos selling melons and
manzanas de agua.
Twice, on consecutive nights, a thief has tried to climb the fence, only to be run off
.

For the balance of my stay, I will continue to be a slave to the routines that allay the boredom of the long, long wait and the discomfort of fractious eruptions to which people in close quarters fall prey. I rise each day at dawn, attend my Spanish class (“
Cómo amaneció?”
they say — not “How did you sleep?” but “How did you wake up?”), followed by a spate of cleaning and sweeping, a nap, a guided stroll about the grounds, and the Channel Seven news over dinner
.

While doing so I often picture a scene at home: my brothers at the farm, Aunt Ruthilda and Uncle Ralph, watching the Channel Ten Eye to the Universe. “Good evening, it is day thirty-eight of the Costa Rica hostage crisis,” the announcer is gravely saying. “The ordeal continues for Saskatoon’s own Maggie Schneider …”

Afterwards, I ascend to my room to scribble – by candlelight, because no electric bulbs are allowed upstairs. But I write in spurts all day as well; these notes are being composed in the afternoon, downstairs where it is cooler and where Halcón is taking his siesta on the hammock next to me. He looks sad in sleep, his handsome brown face creased, his eyelids moving — occasionally his lips, too, as if forming words. I wonder what dreams come to him. He often shows up in mine, and I awake disturbed, my mind in disarray …

S
he hoped he would wake soon, because it was four o’clock when she usually took her turn outside. Glo preferred her outings in the mornings, exercising on the patio or strolling
about the gardens with Halcón. He never allowed them outside together; he remained strict about that.

From across the room, she could hear Benito muttering to himself, probably about Halcón making secret signs. This was one of his oft-voiced complaints; every hand gesture by Halcón or nod of his head was a cause for suspicion. Maggie was not as convinced as his nephew Buho that his schizophrenic disorder had been induced by capitalist-lackey doctors in the state hospital.

Benito had finally begun to take to Maggie, who had extended him many kindnesses. He had been leery of her at first because of her practice of writing as she wandered about the house. The ever-patient Buho had explained she was less a prisoner than a friend, that she was compiling notes for a book about them, about the guerrillas of the Fifth of May. “It is the story of the struggle, Don Benito.”

He had the appearance of a bespectacled balding intellectual, and often communicated as one. Though delusional, he occasionally showed a startling lucidity, and some of his speculations — delivered in heavily accented English — were oddly incisive. (“Jacques Cardinal, he plays a sinister game, but he is the only outsider we can trust.”)

She was determined to befriend Benito, to seek interesting quotes, for he was one of the central characters of this drama, its inspiration. It bode well that earlier today he hinted, in a conspiratorial voice, he had important secret information for her book. It concerned her, though, that he was so antagonistic toward Halcón. “He still thinks he is running this show. Soon, I make my move. Don’t put that in your book.”

The bland-looking economist had assumed the right to command upon his arrival: issuing orders, demanding his own room, a desk, a secretary, the prerogatives of leadership. Halcón gave him his bedroom, and when Benito did not settle down he locked him in it for a day. Then Buho had a talk with his
uncle, and prevailed upon him to maintain a lower profile. It was clear to all but Benito himself that the once charismatic leader of the Popular Vanguard had been demoted to the sidelines, an object of pity and even softly spoken humour.

Halcón was awake now, staring at the ceiling, frowning, as if deep in thought, perhaps about the logistics of their impending move. She had concurred with him that they should all migrate to his alternative hideout on the Caribbean coast; they would leave in the truck with Gordo, who would be returning in a few days.

She simply did not trust Jacques Cardinal enough to stay here longer, to risk his penchant for debacles. She hoped this former double agent would not turn out to be a double-dealer. She still had not told Halcón the truth about him – Glo had made her swear not to; it was a dilemma. Still, Halcón’s faith in the go-between seemed not entirely misplaced: Cardinal knew the location of the Darkside; if he had betrayed them, surely there would be signs of police activity.

Halcón finally rose and went to the bathroom — without once looking at her. She had the niggling sense he was purposefully avoiding her — he had recently become more cautious with her, had toned down the teasing and flirting. That kiss on the riverbank was never spoken of; it fluttered over them like a banner, obvious but as unmentionable as dirty underwear. She was baffled by her intense attraction to him, fearful of playing the role of love’s fool. Her long search for the meaning of that most passionate of emotions seemed to be dissolving in turmoil.

As a protective measure, Glo persistently drew them apart, monopolizing Halcón, playing cards with him, diverting him with humorous comments and anecdotes. She had continued to counsel Maggie: screw your head on straight; pull back or you’re heading for the big fall. Maggie tried to tune into her friend’s voice of reason, to persuade herself the lure she felt was not true romantic love but a secondary emotion.

Keep a firm grip on that wandering heart, she repeated to herself. This surely was not love in any true form. But what else could it be? She remembered the many reports of those who had fallen afoul of the fixation known as Stockholm Syndrome – it created unnatural bonding; the emotions played tricks. But she knew herself; she was too strong to fall prey to such thinking.

“ ‘Be wary of your hidden desires.’ ” Glo was lying on an air mattress with her
Complete Annual Horoscopes
. “ ‘Giving in to temptation may cause serious regret.’ Who wrote this book, some total depressive? That should be
your
horoscope.” She was smoking again, panhandling cigarettes from Halcón.

“What
is
mine?”

“Aries. ‘Do something silly today. You may be pleasantly surprised at the effect it has on others.’ ”

“I’ll wait for inspiration to strike.”

Halcón was pacing about the room, still deep in thought. Maggie was entitled to her yard time, a right imbedded in custom. She swung from her hammock and tinkled the copper chimes by the window. Halcón returned to this world, unlocked the door, and ushered her out.

During these daily sojourns, Maggie had taken to tending the flowering shrubs and picking blooms for the house. Halcón still wore a far-away expression as he watched her snipping at the ginger and jasmine and anthurium. “I have seen heliconia by the river,” he said. “Would that add to the display?”

She had not visited the river since the ignominious kiss. Glo had made a few excursions, though, and told her that its flow had abated. She followed him down the rock steps, refusing the hand he offered, managing the steep parts by herself. As she clambered toward the waterfall, she was reminded of how beautiful it was here. (“You add to it,” he had said.)

Bright red claws of heliconia stretched toward the river from the shade of a pejibaye palm. This time she accepted his
hand, following him over the slippery rocks, watched as he drew his long knife from its sheath and sliced across the stems.

“It almost seems a sacrilege,” she said. “Take just a couple.”

As she stepped forward to receive them, she stubbed her foot on a rock and lost her balance. For a moment, she teetered, whirling her arms like windmills. He reached out for her but failed to find her hand, and she splashed into the water.

The current carried her a few feet to a barricade of boulders, and she clutched at one as the stream poured by. But the river was shallow here, only a metre deep, and she was able to gain her feet. The initial cold shock of the water dissipated quickly, and she found the frothing current refreshing. She reached for Halcón’s hand and tugged gently.

“Come on in.”

“I am not so good a swimmer.” He sat on a stretch of sand nearby.

After playing in the swift current for a few minutes, she climbed out and joined him, lying on her back to dry under a sun still hot at five o’clock. Her halter-top was sticking to her, her nipples shamelessly erect. Halcón did not seem to notice.

“You seem very subdued,” she said.

“I am thinking about how we must soon go away.”

Their alternative refuge was another large house, on the Caribbean side. He had not been more specific.

“I think I’ll miss the Darkside,” she said.

“We are too comfortable; that is when we become careless.”

“Where will you settle when this is all over?”

“I have a place.”

“You’re not going to tell me where?”

“I tell you too much.”

He leaned over her to shelter a match from the breeze, lighting a cigarette, his eyes squinting, his cupped hands inches from her bosom. She felt her throat constrict, her speech tight: “This has been … a really strange time for me.”

“For me, too, Maggie. It has caused me some problems. With my
emociones.”

What was she to read into that? But he remained mute, staring at the smoke curling above his nicotine-stained fingers. She sought words that might cause him to open up, to reveal those emotions, to confirm or deny that she was a source of at least some of them. “Do you remember when I kissed you? Here, by the river.”

“Of course.”

She sat up. “I want to … I need to explain it. You’d been so kind to Glo and me … You still are, and … you’re a very attractive man.”

She was flushed with embarrassment, yet found herself unable to resist touching his arm: dark, sinewy, lightly haired. He shrugged. His smile was helpless and apologetic, but his eyes were like pulling magnets, and she felt herself being drawn into them, and she could no longer restrain herself and moved toward him, to his lips.

“Oh, God, I can’t help myself, Halcón.”

But their lips did not touch; he pulled away and fended off her reaching arms.

“No, Maggie, we cannot allow this to happen.”

Maggie was ablaze with the shame of this abrupt rejection; she struggled to her feet, tears rushing to her eyes. “Oh, wow, I feel so ridiculous.”

“Please understand, it is because of the feelings I hold.”

“Yes, well, let’s never
reveal
them.”

She flew up the steps, but slowed before she neared the house; she would feel even more wretched if everyone saw her tears. She stood for a moment, wiping them with her fingers. How scandalously she had acted; how utterly humiliated she felt.

Lying on her bed, her door locked, she mentally lashed herself. Making another blunt overture to Halcón – had her brain
turned to mush? Why had she not just raced from here with Slack Cardinal, back to civilization, to reality, to her senses? The agitation within her was terrible. She had to face up to the disastrous truth: she was a prisoner of love. She could no longer even pretend to deny it.

So this was how the miracle felt. This was the wild, mindless rush of feelings that she had tried to conceive, on paper and in reality, all her teen and adult life. She had never dreamed love could come with such power. She was no longer its keen researcher but its blind victim, too bewildered even to try to grasp the forces that had drawn her into its tangled nets.

She remembered a pact she had made with herself in snowy Saskatoon: that she would find romance in paradise, a sublime conjoining of spirits that she could share with Fiona Wardell. Not for a millisecond had she contemplated her heart would fall to a revolutionary Marxist kidnapper. She was twice his prisoner.

But how well was she focusing? Perhaps she was overreacting and had misread Halcón’s gentle rejection. Clearly, he held feelings toward her beyond ordinary friendship. Why should she assume he was not struggling with his own feelings? His attempt to deny his
emociones
would explain his brooding and restlessness, even his avoidance of her. In all good conscience he could not misuse his position as her captor; that was the reason for his rectitude.