A French Kiss in London (14 page)

The only thing perturbing the stunned silence that followed was the small hum of the old-fashioned ceiling-fan. Because it seemed that Gerard and Linda hadn’t grasped the meaning of what he was telling them, Jean went on, “In spite of all these, even now, after nearly two hundred years, there are plenty of people who claim to have seen the cabin in the woods from a distance. They all say it appeared whole and untouched by flames. Generally, the others prefer not to believe them or to avoid the subject. But no one has
ever
mentioned meeting or talking to somebody out there.”

He sighed, looking at his guests’ stricken faces. Then he added, “The informant’s name was never known, but his wife was legendary in Transylvania. She was the daughter of a great nobleman and had run away from home to get married, thus provoking a huge scandal. Her name was Maria.”

Linda was shaken by a chill so strong it rattled the ice in her glass. Gerard saw her trembling hand take the glass to her mouth, to wet her dry lips.

“What…What are you trying to tell us, Jean-Paul? That we’ve imagined the whole thing?” he asked, incredulous.

The old Frenchman remained silent for a moment, then looked at his wife, who had stayed quiet, her dark expressive eyes fixed on the guests.

“I don’t know if
imagine
is the correct verb for this, my friend. These so-called
paranormal
phenomena are not a fruit of our imagination. They are something beyond explanations and the logic we know.”

Linda put her glass down and lifted a hand to interrupt him.

“Wait a minute. All this is very interesting, but we perfectly know what we saw. You can doubt the word of one person, but there are two of us. We didn’t dream. We didn’t hallucinate. That woman was as real as you. We talked to her. She drew a route for us. What more tangible proof do you want?”

“Where is this drawing?” asked Jean reasonably.

“On that freaking notepad I can’t find,” she replied, frustrated. “It must be in the car.”

“I’m going to look for it,” said Gerard.

He stood up abruptly, feeling the acute need to counteract this bombardment of incoherent information with action, with something concrete.

He went into their room and grabbed the Jeep’s keys, then walked the short distance to the place it was parked, on the side of the street. He searched all the places and corners where an object could have been placed or dropped, but his efforts were in vain. He found no trace of the notepad, nor of the drawing they’d used to guide them.

In his mind, he recalled dozens of times the episode in the woods, reliving each sensation, seeing each detail of the cabin, of the woman’s appearance. He remembered every line that had been spoken.

It seemed absolutely impossible for it not to have been real. A figment of imagination, of a dream, of another type of phenomena? Unconceivable! Then where was that damned notepad? So he can flaunt it into Jean’s face, then laugh together at the theories and phantasmagorical tales he had blabbed about.

He stopped suddenly, remembering something. He locked the car and rushed back to the house.

“The pictures!” he exclaimed, as he entered the living room. “Linda took pictures. Isn’t that solid proof? I don’t think the cabin actually appears in the photos, but…”

He paused, noticing that Linda was in fact holding the camera. But the expression on her face was far from encouraging.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, an unpleasant, sinking feeling bearing down his shoulders.

No one said anything for a moment. Linda looked at him with such helplessness and panic that he was instantly alarmed. He went quickly to her and cupped her shoulders with his palms, massaging them gently.

“What happened?” he asked, now thoroughly concerned.

“They’re not here,” she replied weakly. “The photos don’t appear anywhere. Look!”

He took the digital camera from her hands and accessed the menu, which displayed the photos recorded on the memory-card. Indeed, there was no trace of the pictures taken into the forest. He went over all the images twice. There were the beautiful photos of the landscapes they’d admired together, taken from inside the car, or on stops. The pictures they’d taken at the restaurant, images of all the dishes served, a picture he’d taken of Linda while she sassed him with her tongue out. He’d thought that was very hilarious at the time. However, now it was the last photo from the gallery, then the images repeated cyclically. Not a single photo from that damned forest was here.

Damned?
he asked himself, amazed by his choice of words. Yes, he couldn’t find another word. His mind seemed to be blocked. But that particular word conferred a maleficent aura to that place, yet they hadn’t seen anything evil there.
Strange, bizarre, but not evil
, he thought, remembering the kind woman who had opened her home’s door for them and showed them the way back to civilization. True, all of the objects and the cabin itself seemed detached from another era, but still…They were in a country unfamiliar to them. He couldn’t know how civilized or primitive these people were. After all, Jean and Mariana’s house wasn’t exactly a technological center. But at least they had electricity.

“I remember now,” he said abruptly, capturing everyone’s attention. “That cabin didn’t have electricity. It was lighted only by some kind of lamps.”

“And that woman asked us where we’d left our carriage,” Linda put in, nestling closer to his chest. “She was so awed by our clothes, by the pen we gave her. She seemed never to have seen such things in her life! My God, Jean, are you really serious about this? Is it truly possible it has all been a paranormal experience?” she asked, her voice rising in a tone of absolute incredulity.

Jean looked at Mariana, then nodded.

“I can’t think of another logical explanation, and I don’t think you can either,” he said, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. “You’re not the only ones who had unusual experiences in the Hoia Forest. But no one mentioned an occurrence like the one you described.”

Both couples stood still as statues, while dozens of thoughts crossed their minds, in an unavoidable vicious circle.

Eventually, Gerard said, “You must be wrong, Jean. Probably there is a real cabin into that forest and we simply stumbled upon it. The name of that woman is just a coincidence. Maria is extremely common, worldwide. And from what I understood, in Romania there are still entire villages that don’t have electricity. So this doesn’t prove anything.”

The older man watched his friend for a long moment, perfectly understanding his need for denial and his difficulty of accepting the unacceptable.

On a long breath he asked, “Do you still know how to reach that cabin?”

Gerard and Linda looked at each other.

“I believe we do,” answered Linda. “We had made a wrong turn, but we didn’t change directions many times. Once we got out of the woods, the road was simple. Especially with Madame Maria’s indications.”

“Then tomorrow, after you and I conclude our business,” Jean told Gerard, “we’re going over there to see what we find. I’ll leave you two to guide me, because I don’t know the forest well. However, I do know the place where that cabin burned. We’ll see if it’s the same or not. Agreed?”

“Perfectly agreed,” Gerard replied. “You’ll see we’re not wrong. I just hope we won’t bother Madame Maria too much.”

“I seriously doubt that Madame Maria could be bothered in the last two hundred years or so,” muttered Jean in French and got to his feet.

In darkness, in their comfortable bed, Linda curled against Gerard’s chest, embracing him tightly.

“Do you really think Jean-Paul is mistaken?” she asked, a trace of uncertainness in her voice.

He stroked her hair gently, considering her question, which was circling into his mind as well. After a while he said, “I think there has to be a rational explanation for all this. In any case, one way or another, tomorrow we’ll learn the truth.”

Following another long silence, just when he thought his lover had fallen asleep, she spoke again.

“What if Jean is right and we are the ones who are wrong? It seems absurd, I know. But when I listened to him telling that story, in that matter of fact tone, I wondered for a moment if it’s possible we just
thought
we’ve experienced what we think we did in that forest.”

“If he’s right, then we must come to terms with the thought that we were witnesses— no, participants,” he corrected, “to a paranormal phenomenon. We’re not the only ones, you heard Jean. If it’s so, we’ll have to be grateful that nothing bad has happened to us.”

He caressed her smooth, soft cheek, then kissed her forehead.

“I don’t even want to think what I’d do if something bad happened to you. I’d kill anybody or anything that would want to harm you. Be it real or imaginary, man or spirit!”

He sensed her relaxing against him, as though a pleasant, comforting warmth had seeped into her.

“I’ve never felt this happy and protected in my life, the way I feel around you. I love you,” she whispered. She fell asleep without knowing how much it meant to him to hear her say those words, and knowing they were true. He was always the first to profess his love, freely, without hesitation. Sometimes his heart constricted with the fear that she won’t reciprocate.

“I love you too, Linda,” he whispered softly, even knowing she couldn’t hear him. Nevertheless, he felt the acute need to say those words, so simple, but which expressed such complex feelings. He drew her closer to him, breathing deeply the fresh perfume of her hair, before falling into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Fifteen

Gerard could have ignored the annoying sunray that had sneaked through the old shutters. But the sound of a rooster, which cheerfully set the tone for an entire troop of unidentifiable beasts made Linda jump, literally. She rose abruptly, all tousled hair and huge eyes. She looked around disoriented for a moment, then exclaimed startled, “What the hell was that?”

He started laughing and smoothed back her hair, tucking a few rebel strands behind her ears.

“That, my love, is a cock.”

His laughter grew even louder when he saw her suspicious gaze heading toward his lap.

“Oh, no,” she said emphatically, shaking her head firmly. “I’ve seen one of those and it doesn’t make any sound.”

He collapsed back onto the bed, roaring with laughter and holding his stomach. When he was able to catch his breath, he pulled her against him and whispered directly into her ear, “I adore the analogies your dirty little mind makes sometimes. However, I wasn’t talking about
that
kind of cock, but about those you find as fillets in the supermarket.”

“Is that so?” she asked, wide-eyed and intrigued. “This horrible noise comes from a future fillet? I want to see what this monster looks like.”

She rushed to the window, opened it and stuck her head out.

In the neighbors’ yard, a synod of more or less domesticated creatures was in full activity. A few chickens were running over each other’s feet to pick up the grains someone had spread around for them. From the height of a coop, the harem’s leader was supervising them. He was a rooster of impressive proportions, motley and bumptious, who was showing remarkable vocal abilities. Among the chickens strolled an odd beast, strangely colored. Linda found out later it was a turkey.

“I think I’ll seriously consider becoming a vegetarian,” she said around a yawn, stretching languorously, then came and curled back onto the bed.

Gerard smiled, wrapping his arms around her. He curved her body against his, spoon-fashion, sliding his hands under her T-shirt.

“I don’t think that’s a wise choice, my love,” he said in a low voice, while his hands were busy stroking her warm, luxurious skin. “There are certain studies which show that vegetarians are more predisposed to illness, and their immune systems are weaker than those of people who eat meat. There isn’t any real adequate substitute for the substances contained by meat. That’s why the human is genetically built to be…omnivorous.”

He turned her to face him, slipping her T-shirt up to reveal her breasts. He bent to take one rosy, sweet nipple into his mouth and sucked it gently, as her breaths grew choppy and shallow.

Right at that moment, the loud creak of the bathroom door came from the hallway. Gerard growled in frustration, his face buried between Linda’s breasts. He gave himself a few seconds to clear his head, but that didn’t help extinguish the fire burning in his stomach—or, rather, a few inches below. When she arched her back and pulled him closer, he groaned and let out a long, suffering sigh, then drew away from her.

He kissed her swiftly and got to his feet, muttering, “Duty calls. We’ll finish this later,” he promised when he saw her pouting and dragging her T-shirt down to cover herself. “You get some more sleep, my love. I’m going to wash and see if Jean’s awake. Then we’re going to the clinic to talk. He told me he’d like me to see the patients he has here.”

He took a pair of faded jeans from the closet and pulled them over his boxers. He had a hard time buttoning them, due to the side effects of unfulfilled lust.

Watching his struggles with the fly, Linda smiled cheekily and slid her tongue over her lips.

“Are you sure you can’t stay for five more minutes?” she asked, stretching out a long leg to caress his abdomen with the velvety sole of her foot.

His eyes narrowed and his stomach muscles tightened, but he shook his head regretfully, then slipped a black sleeveless T-shirt over his head.

“What I want to do to you will take a lot more than five minutes,” he growled, then pecked a kiss on her cheek. “Try to get some more sleep.”

“It’s not polite for me to sleep that long,” she protested weakly, but rolled back between the sheets.

When her head sank into the fluffy pillows, sleep claimed her almost instantaneously. Gerard smiled lovingly toward her sleeping form, before walking out quietly.

* * * *

When Linda woke up, the light was terribly strong. She realized she’d forgotten to lower the blinds. For a moment, she looked around in confusion, then remembered where she was. She’d never liked sleeping in unfamiliar places, but this house had something welcoming. She loved the lavender and wood smell, the scent of freshly washed clothes. The air wasn’t nearly so fresh in London, like it was in this city—in fact, in the whole country. These people had something special, not only dreamlike landscapes and delicious food. They also had an interesting history…

Suddenly, she remembered their experience in the woods. Each detail flashed through her mind so clearly that everything Jean-Paul had told them the previous night seemed a bad joke.

She stood up, rubbing a hand over her face, still groggy from sleep. She took the camera from the nightstand, where she’d left it before going to bed. She turned it on and noticed it had a low battery level. Still, she browsed through the photo gallery, but there was no trace of the pictures she’d taken into the forest.

“Unbelievable!” she said aloud, stunned, crossed by a tide of contradictory feelings. She combed her fingers through her hair in absolute frustration, trying in vain to put the episode out of her mind. For some unknown reason, she dreaded going back to that cabin, but at the same time, she was anxious to see it again, to prove to the Battistes that it was real.

She dressed into a pair of short jeans and a pink tank top, then made the bed and tidied up the room. She went into the bathroom in the hallway, next to their room. It was modest and clean, like the rest of the house. After washing hastily, she brushed her hair and twisted it into a long braid. Taking a deep breath, she went off in search of Mariana.

She found her in the kitchen, preparing breakfast.

“Good morning!”

“
Bonjour
!” Mariana replied, turning to her with a smile on her pretty face. “Sleep well?” she asked in her rudimentary English.

“Excellent! Can I help you?”

“No, no. Sit. You eat?”

Linda looked longingly at the sandwiches with ham, cheese, tomato slices, cucumber and fresh dill.

“Definitely,” she said, nodding enthusiastically. “Where are Gerard and Jean?”

“At the clinic,” the woman replied, placing a huge plate in front of her guest. Then she added a mug of milk. “Talk medical business.”

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Linda asked, indicating the plate and the seat in front of her.

“I don’t eat morning. I have to go to market. You come with me?”

“Yes, if you’ll wait for me to eat,” she replied returning the smile, then started demolishing the simple, yet delicious food.

The market was at a short walking distance from the house. It was a crowded place, where Linda felt utterly lost. All the vendors were attempting to entice her to buy their merchandise, talking so fast she got dizzy only by trying to follow their lips. Of course, she didn’t understand a thing.

Mariana held her arm, as though she was afraid not to lose her. After a few bargaining rounds, they left the crowd loaded with strawberries, fresh vegetables and two cantaloupes, which smelled divine. Mariana had explained to her that the way to test them was to smell them.

They retraced their steps back to the house, chattering in a strange language—a mix between several tongues and the infallible expressivity of gestures. Since they both had their hands full of bags, this communication system was a bit difficult, but it created a state of amusement, as well as a bond beyond words between them. Now and again, they stopped in the middle of the road, laughing, trying to make themselves understood by the other.

* * * *

“You just might be a genius, boy,” Jean-Paul told Gerard as he lighted yet another cigarette, studying the notes and reports in front of him.

Together, they had made the visits and routine check-ups of all patients, exchanging impressions and suggestions. Now, seated into Jean’s smoky office, they finally got down to discussing the reason that had brought the young couple to Romania.

“If you succeed in obtaining more positive results and document them, with this treatment you will revolutionize the entire medical world,” Jean went on, watching his friend from over the top of his eyeglasses. “It could be something fantastic!”

“I could say the same about your hellebore treatment,” replied Gerard, who sat on the other side of the desk, carefully reading the data from Jean’s file. “From what I see here, you’ve obtained more results than I, and not only regarding a single type of cancer. Do you realize how many people we could save with these papers, Jean?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with the passion and altruism that guided him during his whole life. “Thousands, maybe millions! Not to mention that your treatment is considerably less expensive than mine. You could grow huge plantations of hellebore. The Mojave rattlesnake’s venom isn’t that easy to get. So who’s the genius?” he exclaimed, elated for the first time in a long while, feeling the vital importance of their discoveries.

Jean-Paul took off his glasses and looked at him seriously.

“Gerard, don’t get too enthusiastic yet. I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, but I’m not the one who invented or discovered this plant’s healing properties. Here, in Romania, there’s an old history about this. There was a famous case, of a Romanian lawyer. His name was Dumitru Calina. I’ve read his story in a magazine a few years back.”

Jean shifted in his chair, making himself more comfortable, then went on with his story.

“He had developed throat cancer from an untreated pharyngitis, and his entire skull had been infested with pus. No doctor gave him a chance. In the hospital, he met an old woman who told him he could try a treatment with hellebore, if he dared. Obviously, the man didn’t find anything more dangerous than death, which was imminent anyway, so he looked everywhere for this plant and for a formula on how to prepare it. Due to its high level of toxicity, hellebore can’t be found in drugstores. Eventually, he encountered some old people who told him where to find this root and how to prepare it properly. They warned him that they used this brew only for animals, in case of serious diseases. They didn’t know what effect it had on humans. So Dumitru Calina used himself as a guinea pig.”

Gerard rubbed his hand over his mouth, thinking about the length of that man’s despair. He didn’t know if he’d have the courage to do the same as Dumitru Calina, and he hoped never to find out.

He returned his attention to Jean, who continued his story.

“After countless experiments on his own body, he was declared healed, to the amazement of the entire medical world. Something that might have helped him more were the cobalt radiations. During the procedure he noticed that, because of his taking hellebore, his hair hadn’t fallen off like the other patients’.”

Gerard was listening carefully, completely fascinated by this impressive story of a man whose name he’d never heard before.

Jean took another drag from the almost forgotten cigarette, then resumed his story.

“Following this miracle, Dumitru Calina opened a practice in Iasi and developed a treatment with which he cured hundreds of cancer patients. But the Romanian government made things so difficult for him that he was forced to close his practice. The Americans, however, were smarter. They picked him up immediately. Now he’s at a private center of study from Louisiana, where they research this plant, with amazing results.”

“Well, why wasn’t this incredible treatment put into practice here in Romania?” asked Gerard intrigued, after a moment of silence.

Jean looked at him meaningfully, then extinguished the cigarette-butt with his long, tobacco-stained fingers.

“Why else? From the same reason the genius Burzynski met with such impediments after discovering antineoplastons. Worldwide conspiracy,
mon cher
. No human in this world has managed to defeat it. Pharmaceutical and food industries—the financial empires paved with so many dead bodies. Be careful, my friend. Know what you’ll have to face. There’s a huge price you’ll pay for your discovery and for the comfort you want to offer.”

Gerard curled his fists involuntarily, knowing how much truth there was in his friends’ words. He shook his head sadly.

“Jean, our oath as physicians will stand anywhere, anytime. No matter what happens, I won’t stop my research. There has to be a way for us to do our jobs peacefully, to save lives, to do our duty. And you,” he pointed his index finger to the other man, “I hope you haven’t resigned to this small clinic, to curing only a few patients, when there are millions of people out there who need these!” he said, lifting his hand and the papers he held.

The older man smiled wistfully and lighted another cigarette, then let out a long gust of breath, along with a cloud of smoke.