"I was just..." She swept her hand toward the house. "You know..."

"You have that look," Javier said, half accusingly, half teasing.

"What look?"

"Like you're either starting a new book in your head or planning something big." He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to his side. "I think I caught you just in time."

"Maybe not. I think it's too late."

"I have to watch you or you'll fly away." He ma.s.saged her shoulders. "Are those tight muscles I feel-or wing buds?"

She threw him a glance filled with a plea that rose from her heart. "Javier..." Her eyes searched his face, begging for understanding.

"What, Caleepso? What?"

"I've been thinking."

"Yes." The old, dipping, and rising intonation, denoting obviously.

"And I think we've been out of balance."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that...Let me think how to say this...You know I love Rancho Cielo."

"Yes."

"And of course, you do, too." She frowned, searching for words to express her morning's revelations. "But it's only part of who we are, Javier. Northern Mexico's wild and it's exhilarating. It challenges us with hard work and with harsh weather and difficult politics." She wouldn't meet his eye.

"Yes. And?"

"And this morning I'm realizing that there's another part of me. And of you, I think. One that wants rest from the difficulties. Safety even. And roots in a culture that's more than just five hundred years old." Her eyes flew to his.

"I feel safe here, Javier. And I feel the history that's saturated into this soil. Think of it! The Celts, the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Moors, the Franks, and the Gauls. Charlemagne, the Count of Toulouse, the Cathars and the troubadours, chivalry, and courtly love. Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, pilgrim trails, the Black Virgins..."

She stopped for breath, her arms outstretched, as if they could embrace thousands of years of French culture.

Javier looked at her there, so earnest and graceful, dappled with golden coins of light beneath the dancing plane trees, and his heart filled with both love and sorrow.

"You don't want to live at Rancho Cielo anymore, Caleepso?"

She came to him and took his hand, raising it to her lips, then resting it on her heart.

"Javier, of course I want to live at Rancho Cielo again. I'm as eager as you are to see the new house. But I also know that this"-she gestured toward the house and garden-"has been missing in our lives.

"Imagine going to the opera in Montpellier! Or having neighbors who want to talk about Lamartine or Proust, instead of cattle insemination or the local cartel death toll.

"You and I are unique, Javier. We can live in both worlds-and we need to live in both."

Javier fought with the bitter disappointment that was rising in his throat like acid. It felt as if Calypso were in revolt, disparaging everything they had built together.

"You find Mexico wanting, Caleepso?"

Her look was exasperated as she pulled away from him. She stood with her back to him, her fists clenched. Her shoulders heaved as she took deep breaths to calm herself. How could she communicate to him the longing that was rising in her, the deep and persistent need? Difficult as it was, she had to speak her truth.

"No, Javier. I don't find Mexico wanting. But I find it Mexico. Think of it as cooking. I love Mexican cuisine-but does that mean I'm a traitor if I also like French food?

"Something in me is going unanswered, Javier. Some part of me that longs for this!"

She flung her arm toward the desolate pile before them.

"You're just having house envy, Caleepso. Once you have a home of your own again, this won't seem so urgent."

"No! I am not having house envy! I have a genuine need-a need right in my soul-for France. Mexico is raw and difficult, Javier. It's the wildness and the mystery that I love about it. Here in France, the centuries have tamed the land but in a kind way. A way that honors the soil and brings up this kind of richness and beauty from it."

She spun, holding her arms out as if presenting him with the full beauty and mystery of the old garden.

"You won't find this in Mexico," she said stubbornly. "It's too far south and the water's too scarce and the plants that grow here won't grow there. I can't replicate it in Chihuahua. And this is the very thing that my soul craves."

"I didn't realize how much you hate Mexico."

She stamped her foot in frustration.

"No! I do not hate Mexico. That's so unfair! I've given the better part of my life to Mexico. And after what we've just been through, it's a wonder one or both of us didn't give our lives, period. You could have been killed, Javier! I thought you were. And I could have been, too. Climbing that cliff was the hardest thing I've ever done. When I fell, I thought I was going to die. And let's not even think about going through the tube-three times!"

Flames were scorching his heart again. How could Calypso do this, when the new house was half built and a new start was almost theirs? He tried to collect his thoughts.

"What is it you want, Caleepso?"

"I want to buy this place and renovate this house," she said. It was straightforward and simple-how could he object?

"And what about Rancho Cielo? You taking up bilocation now, Caleepso? You becoming a shaman?"

"We could live part of the year at Rancho Cielo and part of the year here. Pedro can run the ranch for us while we're away."

Javier frowned. "You think Pedro can run it as well as I can?"

"It's not a matter of who runs it best. Don't you see, Javier-it's time for us to retire. Oh! Don't get me wrong," she added hastily, "I know we'll never really do that. We both have too much we want to accomplish. But we've been working hard for years, Javier. It's time for a change. Life is more interesting that way. And it's part of being in late midlife, to keep growing in new directions.

"Besides, I know you have a new book in your head. And I know you can influence your country more by writing it than by doing hand to hand combat with the cartels."

"I can write it at Rancho Cielo," he growled.

Calypso knew this stubborn mood and how obstinate it could be, but she persisted.

"But you won't and you know it. There are a thousand distractions to keep you from it. If the sheep aren't lambing, then it's the cattle needing branding or the haying or shoeing the horses or..." She raised her hands in a helpless gesture. "You know it's true, Javier."

And he did. He knew in his heart that everything she was saying was true. He felt the urgency of the book pressing inside him. He felt a weariness that was the need for a long physical rest. He knew the pressure of the endless rounds of work on the ranch. And he understood Calypso's need for safety and some time out from the perilous political realities of the northern Sierra and the cartels. Why, then, was his heart so set against her and her proposed project?

"I don't want you to do this, Caleepso. I want us to go home to the ranch like we planned. I feel like you lured me here to France, knowing that you didn't want to go home again."

Calypso shrieked in rage. "That is so not true! This place ambushed me! I'm astonished by its hold over me! It's like the locket-its irresistible. I'm as surprised by this as you are."

The wind was picking up. The canopy of branches lifted and seethed in agitation. Their shadows pooled about them in the late morning sun like cast-off clothing, his as upright and rigid as a post, hers dancing with frustration, and streaming with windblown hair as if emitting coils of energy.

They stared at one another, her eyes pleading, his adamant.

"We're out of balance, Javier," she said again. "We need a change of pace." Even to her it felt feeble in the face of his resistance.

"I'm going to do this thing," she said with more conviction. "I'm going to take the money from the last two books and I'm going to buy this place and renovate it. Please stay and help me. Please, Javier."

He stood his ground, still staring at her, his face hard and closed. Then he spun on his boot heel and strode down the garden path toward the rental without a word.

"Javier!" she called after him. But he did not answer and he did not stop. When she got back to the orangerie, he was gone.

Calypso stood her ground but being separated from him proved to be a living h.e.l.l. She was surprised, at first mildly and then with increasing alarm, to find her heart so lacerated by simple absence. That such pa.s.sion existed, unguessed, caused her to question her entire being: If this could loiter in the recesses, what else might be there, lurking? What was possible for her? Of what acts of self-betrayal or self-sacrifice might she be capable?

As weeks went by, the feeling grew in force until it was a hurricane of grief and loss that flung her about the bed at night and bowed her shoulders by day. The quiet, orderly life she was accustomed to inhabit was ripped apart by the force of these winds. Her mind was like a corrugated tin roof-everything around and within her seemed to flap, squeal, groan, or shudder from the unseen gale. Food lost its savor. Her skin grew pale, all blood having sunk, she surmised, by some psychological deep-diving effect, into the core for self-preservation.

She stopped seeing friends, the slow rituals of the cafes seeming tedious now and meaningless. Not given to drink or drugs, she could find no anesthesia for the howling pain. She went sleepless, walked ceaselessly, sat and stared.

Without warning and in the most inappropriate places, tears would start, brim over and roll. All she could do was turn away from the curious or sympathetic, whose lame ministrations revolted her, knowing there was no way to stop the flow until some secret source went dry or shut its weirs for a period of replenishment.

She was utterly helpless in the throes of it all and too absent-spirited even to be angry about it. She must have arrived, finally, at the iron gates of love. Hammering there was b.l.o.o.d.ying, exhausting.

The word Please! can be flung into the empty maw of the universe only so many times without losing its apotropaic powers. A sense of fatedness began to settle upon her like smothering smoke. She could taste its bitterness. It burned her nostrils and left her throat parched and scratchy. Her heart, always so glad and eager, hunkered down in the quivering, terror-stricken pa.s.sivity of mortified flesh. The world was absolutely void of solace.

Then, in her cowardice, she would consider packing her bags and returning to Rancho Cielo. She would hover in this meek, servile place for a day or two, and then come out fighting.

A thousand times she vowed simply to throw him off. Willed herself to forget. To move on. But like a mother bird whose nest has been robbed by the dark probings of a raven, her mind flew in endless circles, shrieking and grieving around the emptiness that had so lately been full of life and promise.

There seemed to be no remedy. No cure for the endless hemorrhagic flood of sorrow and longing that was bleeding her to pallor. She listened for his step on the gravel path. Sat by the phone, knowing he would not call. She read and reread a careless note he had written and stuck on the orangerie refrigerator, seeking to draw some faint scent from it, some tincture of love that surely must have motivated its posting.

Her eyes, blurry from weeping, looked blankly into the future without seeing a single flicker projected on that white screen. Would she creep back to Mexico, leaving her heart's longing unfulfilled? Without him there, there was no plan. No meaning. No point in continuing.

She feared her health would collapse. She thought of walking into the depths of the garden, where the shrubbery was overgrown and almost impenetrable, and putting a pistol in her mouth.

In the hurricane's eye was the stillness of death.

Two factors saved her. The first was the somewhat sly realization that Javier must be suffering just as badly as she was. They had been together far too long for her to ignore either his emotional pain or the intellectual rigor he would be bringing to the issue of their separation.

He would count up the years she had spent by his side in Chiapas, nursing him back to health after his imprisonment and torture, helping him build Rancho Cielo, and acting as a full partner in both the ranch and in their political activities. He would not forget to add in the sale of her Paris flat to Hill, even though she had made that decision on her own.

Against that summation, in the other pan of the scale, he would throw his own devotion to her. And what else? He had resisted every suggestion of hers that they take vacations, travel a little, relax more. In her more rational moments, she knew he would be deeply troubled by the emptiness of that side of the balance. Not that she wanted him to suffer, of course, but some obstinate place in her at least demanded the fair hearing that she had not gotten.

The second factor was the property-and if she was rigorously honest with herself, it was the fascination with the old house that really saved her. To distract herself, she threw herself into negotiations with the owner of the mas. To her surprise, it was just as the rental agent had suggested. The owner was not only willing but eager to make a deal with her for the sale of the entire property.

She would never forget the first time she entered the old house. The heiress to the estate, an attractive, businesslike young woman who drove over in her BMW from Narbonnes to show Calypso around, was an executive in an international chemical conglomerate. She breezed through the shuttered rooms, throwing out dismissive gestures at all the collected treasures of generations of her family.

"All this old stuff!" she exclaimed, pulling a two-hundred-year-old faience plate from the depths of a kitchen cupboard. "I can have a dealer come in and get it out of your way, if you want."

Calypso's heart leapt and it was all she could do to reply calmly, "No, I'd like to include the furnishings and all in whatever price we finally arrive at, if that works for you."

The young woman wrinkled her nose and shrugged. "That's fine with me. I'm a minimalist myself. I can't bear all this fusty old stuff."

Calypso downplayed her interest slightly, saying, "I'm sure there will be a couple of pieces that I'll want to keep and I can dispose of the rest."

She cast her eye over the treasures for whose continued existence in the house she was now responsible. She peeked at Provencal armoires and Louis Quinze and Seize fauteuils. The contents of the house ranged from early to late Baroque with lovely Rococo pieces, to second phase of Neocla.s.sical with its elegant ebony and gilt evocations of Egypt of the Napoleonic era known as Empire. All stood patient and forlorn under dust covers. She felt as if she were negotiating the release of prisoners of war, of entire families that would otherwise be separated at best and demolished at worst.

Finally, over cups of coffee, they settled at the orangerie dining table to talk business. Calypso was not unmindful that, for all her disparaging of the contents of the house, the young woman was more than aware of their value. After an afternoon of haggling, the two women settled on a price.

Despite the eagerness of the owner to make the sale, the negotiations for the purchase of the property were more convoluted than Calypso had imagined. She was obliged to engage a notary who could deal with the legal complications. Bureaucratic delays were lengthy and frustrating. Nevertheless, she was able to make a contractual agreement with the seller so that she could begin renovations on the house, even before taking legal ownership.

Luck was with her. She heard about a retired builder in the village, Monsieur Signac, and set about to convince him to take the job. He wandered through the rooms of the house, smacking walls with his fist to demonstrate the plaster falling away in dust, bouncing on the upstairs floors to test the integrity of the wood, humming dejectedly over antiquated wiring, and snorting in disgust at the unorthodox web of lead plumbing pipes.

He spent two days in isolation, making calculations, during which time Calypso paced the property and took to biting her nails. Finally, on the morning of the third day, the builder appeared, papers in hand.

They sat at the garden table, their coffee growing cold, and hammered out an agreement and a price. They shook hands and Monsieur Signac announced that work would begin the following day.

He arrived at seven the next morning with two stout-looking a.s.sistants, who immediately began erecting two portable metal sheds on the gravel ap.r.o.n in front of the house, one for a tool shed and one for storage of the furniture. By afternoon, the two young men, Luc and Jean-Pierre, were engaged in moving ma.s.sive armoires, beds and sideboards into the shed. By evening, both sheds sat filled and locked, their silvery sheen looking strangely alien through the garden growth, against the backdrop of golden stone.

The work went on for months. Summer pa.s.sed in heat and clouds of dust, as walls were rid of rot and replastered. Electricians came in their square vans and rooted in the depths of the house, as did plumbers. A sheet metal specialist raised an unG.o.dly din for weeks, installing ductwork for central heating and air conditioning. A roofing contractor began pitching broken roof tiles into the yard, and barely finished securing the house before the coming of the autumn storms.

A bl.u.s.tery autumn turned into a dismal winter of cold wind and torrential rain. Working under portable lights, the men began the finish work. The parquet of the upstairs floors was stripped in preparation for refinishing. Plaster was smoothed in preparation for painting. Original wallpaper was restored. New faucets were installed over old basins.

A seamstress in the village, Madame Simard, labored over yards of hand-blocked Souleiado fabric making draperies and cushions. Calypso made excursions into the neighboring towns and villages, always returning with some treasure to feather her nest. The pile of boxes and bags grew in the second bedroom of the orangerie.

Everything, in fact, was going well except her relationship with Javier. He had, of course, headed straight home to Rancho Cielo after their tiff. At first, he refused to speak with her on the phone, to the consternation of their maid, Maria. "I tell him, Senora, but he no come," she wailed. "When you come home? We miss you!"

As the weeks went by, he deigned to hold brief conversations, during which they discussed the weather and the present state of the cattle herds and not much more. Calypso was grateful even for that. Both carefully avoided the subject of the new house each was tending into existence on separate continents.

She ended each conversation by saying, "I love you."

"I love you, too," he would say, but it sounded stiff and not very convincing.

One day in early spring, just after the signing of the final papers, Monsieur Signac came to the door of the orangerie with an odd look on his face.