Merciless, Chapter 8: Tangos
Vi Moreau and Suzanne Herring
Write the authors c/o Bridget Mintz Testa, btesta@houston.rr.com.
RATING: PG-15 for language and one sexually-suggestive scene
Special thanks to Michelle Wolfe for co-writing this chapter and
loaning us her Immortal character, Emma Cuzo.
Duran [estancia] outside Buenos Aires, Argentina, December 8, 2008
Elena could hear the voices, always there, always murmuring in the
background, like a soft breeze flowing through the tall grass, like
small animals chattering in the fields ... and she couldn't make out
the words, usually, especially when she raised the music volume to
drown them out.
["Adios, muchachos, companeros de mi vida ..."]; and other tangos,
too, about lost loves, lost youth, lost years: ["desde que se fue,
nunca mas volvio ..."] the music ever playing in the background: [hoy
esta solo mi corazon], filling in for her life: her lost life; her
worthless, lost life. And sometimes she sang along.
But she couldn't make the voices go away; and she knew they were
about her; they were talking about her; she could hear her name,
repeated often, like a litany.
"La senorita ... those damn tangos ... so sad ... Elena ... no, she
won't eat ... she won't talk to anyone! ... Mariaelena ... yes, of
course I've tried ... she scares me ... MacLeod? No, impossible!
What if he kills her, too? ... la senorita ... she just won't ..."
But today she heard something else, something different and
discordant. And then she realized it was not something she heard.
It was a sensation; a feeling. It was something she felt. It was
dangerous, deadly. And it was coming. The feeling was getting
closer.
But Elena sat by the window, gazing out over the dry grasses, flat as
far west as the eye could see. She waited for the danger, patiently,
quietly. Because she really didn't give a damn. Because if the pit
of hell opened up before her, yawning in its fiery brimstone, filling
her nose with the smell of sulfur and her heart with her imminent
damnation, she still wouldn't care.
The door opened, and the sensation was there, in the room with her,
filling it; it was an Immortal, but she couldn't be bothered to turn
to face him. Then someone turned her music off abruptly, and
footsteps approached.
Someone knelt in front of her chair, and she tore her eyes away from
the [pampa] to look, still curious somehow. It was a face: blue
eyes, delicate pink lips, cream complexion. A lovely young, pale
face, framed in red. Red hair. [Pelirroja.] Flaming red -- maybe
this was hell, indeed. The lips mouthed her name, softly,
caressingly; a hand came up to touch Elena's face, to stroke it
gently. She heard her name, again: Elena. Then the lips came
closer, right up to Elena's mouth, in a tender, loving kiss.
Elena smelled the other woman's familiar fragance. "Cuzo," she whispered.
The face nodded. "It's me, Emma. How are you?"
Elena didn't answer. So Emma continued, softly. "You know what, my
dear? You look like hell."
But Elena turned away, back to the window. Hell? Hell, indeed.
Cuzo should say something Elena didn't already know. "Hell is other
people," Sartre wrote. But, no, somehow that wasn't quite right.
Hell was other Immortals....
Yes.
Hell was other Immortals. Even the Immortals she loved.
Especially the Immortals she loved. The faces, so unwelcome and so
painfully dear, flashed in her mind: her father, Don Alvaro; her
husband, Gordon; her friend, Maria-Feliz; her son, Stephen. All
dead. All gone. And Duncan, who still lived but might as well be
dead to her. [Dios mio], how the thought of him still hurt her!
Duncan MacLeod, with the kind, forgiving eyes ... but they weren't
kind or forgiving, his killer's eyes, as they followed the path of
his own katana, slicing through the air, heading for Stephen's neck,
her Stephen!
But no, she didn't want to think about this, she wouldn't be bothered
with them, not anymore, not even with the face right before her, the
eyes like troubled skies and the hair of burning red. So she pushed
them all away, looked out the window again, saw the heat shimmer over
the grasses. In the distance, an animal.
"Elena," she heard a whisper, a sigh. The hands were still stroking
her face, brushing her hair from her eyes; she felt the fingers but
they never quite reached her -- she'd retreated too far to be reached
with a lover's touch, retreated from the surface of her skin.
"Oh, Elena, what are we going to do?"
Later, Elena was still sitting by the window. The sun had dropped
down under the horizon, and the moon rose above the grasslands.
There was silence; her music was gone. But soon Emma's voice
returned, added to the other voices, close and cheery, cajoling her,
urging her to eat, tempting her with wine and fruit and cheese.
"All right, Maria Elena Conchita Duran y Agramonte! Heads up! I've
got a '91 Chilean cabernet here. Not even the mightiest warrior can
resist a red wine like this. I got fresh starfruit; papaya;
Maribet's hot bread, right out of the oven; and Swiss chocolate;
smoked camembert; and brie; and I'm gonna smear it all over you,
sweetheart, if you don't eat some of it soon."
But Elena didn't answer. The smell turned her stomach. And she
turned her head away, as Emma raised the wineglass to Elena's lips.
"Okay. No wine. Very abstemious of you. Hey, why don't we go
riding tomorrow? You can have fun watching me fall off the horses."
Elena sighed and stared away into the night, waiting for this voice
to go away, to fade, like all the others. But it didn't; not [la
pelirroja]. Unfortunately she wasn't afraid, she wouldn't tiptoe
away, whispering. Eventually, instead of going away, Emma threw the
plate of food onto the floor, hurled the wineglass at the wall.
Broken glass and blood red liquor sprayed everywhere. But neither
woman moved.
"Enough of this. Do you think I don't know what you're doing? Look,
I know I'm young, I know there's lots I haven't seen, and lots I
haven't done. I know I haven't lived for four centuries, I know I
haven't fought a guerrilla war against the Spanish, or lived with the
aborigines, or loved an Aztec and a samurai, or lost a son, or
survived Claude Bethel. But what you're doing right now, girlfriend,
this I know, this I've done. Been there, bought the T-shirt."
"Then why stay? Just go away, Cuzo."
"Because there's a difference between us. When I was busy giving up,
self-indulgently pathetic and wallowing in guilt and self-pity, I was
twenty-two years old. Among Immortals, I was --" a short dry laugh
"-- am ... nobody. A kid. The only person I was hurting was myself.
Well," she amended, "and maybe Connor...."
Connor MacLeod, Elena thought. He wouldn't be here, talking to her
-- words, words. He'd just look at her with that intense stare of
his, this time full of contempt. Like the contempt Emma Cuzo was
probably feeling, even now. To hell with them! To hell with them
all! "Cuzo, get out; I don't want you here."
"Yeah? Well, maybe what you *want* or don't *want* isn't important
anymore. Damn it, Elena, do you know how many people love you?
Depend on you? And how many Immortals there are who want to hang
your sword, your head, on their wall?"
"And it has nothing to do with you," Elena said, listlessly.
Emma stared. "Who are you? Are you Elena Duran? Do you know when I
walked in here, and you didn't know who I was, you just sat there,
with your *back* to the door? Where's your sword?"
Elena shook her head wearily. "I don't need my sword, Emmi."
"No? No. Maybe not. Not against me. But what if I'd been an
enemy? What if I'd come for your head? Or don't you care?"
"[No me digas - !que lista!]"
"Maybe you want me to take your head, relieve you of this tiresome existence."
"Cut clean," Elena answered.
Elena heard more than felt the impact of Emma's palm, the hard slap
across her face. She didn't have the energy to get angry, or feel
the pain. But it made her look up, for just a moment, the sticky
sweet taste of blood in her mouth, to see the young Immortal look
down dumbfounded at her own hand, to see worry worsen in Emma's eyes,
when she realized that even this, this affront, could not rile Elena,
or make her care. Then Elena looked away again, unable to stay
interested.
"What would Don Alvaro say?" Emma exclaimed. "He'd say, [!fajate!]
wouldn't he! Fight!"
Her father's face swam before her, but faded, old, with no power to
move her any longer. "Don Alvaro died a long time ago."
"But you're still alive. How can you give up like this? You told me
never to give up, never!"
"Emmi, why are you still here?" She shook her head, filled with
emptiness, with nothingness. "Maybe I've changed."
"No, there are some things we can't change. Not us. Not about
ourselves, not about who we are. At least, that's what you and
Connor and Duncan taught me, isn't it? You can hide up here, put the
tango CD on repeat and cry for days. But you're still Elena Duran,
you're still immortal, and you still have people to protect. Elena,
I'm sorry about Stephen. And I'm sorry about Maria Feliz. And about
Carmela, my God!" She took a trembling breath. But I don't want to
have to come back here and tell you that I'm sorry about Juanito, and
Francesca, and Maribet! I don't want any more friends to mourn. I
don't want any more graves to visit. I have plenty already, thanks."
"They have nothing to do with me, [nina]," Elena said patiently.
"I'm just sitting here --"
"I know," Emma interrupted. "And while you were just sitting here,
Juanito and a couple of the guys performed surgery on an Immortal
three days ago. And that, [*chica*,] has something to do with you."
At this, finally, Elena turned slowly in her chair to look at Emma.
"No! What are you saying?!"
"What? You didn't know? Hmm," Emma paused in mock reflection. "No.
No, that's not good enough, is it?" Emma came close, put her face in
Elena's. "God, don't look so surprised! They know how to kill us,
it's no secret to them. And they've talked about this before,
whispered plans in the kitchens and the stables. I've overheard
them, and so have you. Anything to protect 'la senorita.'"
Elena was horrified. "Juanito ... killed an Immortal?" This is what
she'd always warned them against -- and yet, her being here ... She
could picture Juanito, Fernando, Manuel, holding a man, or a woman,
maybe, holding her down, squirming, fighting for her life against
them, yelling for her right, her right of combat, helpless, seeing
the sword coming for her neck ... and having Juanito -- it had to be
him -- wielding the blade, murdering someone in cold blood. For
Elena. For her. [!Madre de Dios!] She panted, feeling a terrible,
painful hole in her stomach.
"Chop, chop. With an axe." Emma smiled mirthlessly. "It's very
simple, Elena. You stay here and they will come. As they always
have. Immortal after Immortal, come to challenge the great Elena
Duran, the Amazon of Argentina. It's not right, mortals doing your
killing for you. Mortals you swore to protect. It's not right to
push their hands down into our pool of blood!"
With an ax. Gentle Juanito Onioco with an ax, with blood on his
hands, with those stains on his soul! Elena thought, horrified.
"And it's not right, allowing an Immortal to be killed that way, no
honor, no fight, her Quickening wasted, everything she ever was,
lost...."
Elena remembered Darius, beheaded in his own church, on Holy Ground,
by Hunters, imagined the horrible silence as his head fell from his
body, no Quickening; two thousand years of life, love, experience}
just leeched away into the air.
"[!No, no me digas eso, no es verdad!]" Elena cried out finally,
gripping the chair back, shocked by the pictures developing in her
head.
"I didn't make this up. Juanito showed me the axe. And the grave.
Elena --" Emma stopped, hesitating. "You know I'll stay here, for
awhile. For you and for them. But I can't stay forever, and..."
No. Elena's heart went cold. It was too much. Juanito, the others,
killing for her. And Emma, immortal for just barely a decade,
offering to fight for her here, to die for her essentially, because
Elena knew Emma was right. The Immortals would keep coming, and she
knew what kind would come: the old and the experienced. Sooner or
later, Emma would be outmatched. Sooner, probably.
Yet all this, and still Elena knew that she didn't have the heart,
the soul, to pick up her sword again. No, not again, not the
fighting, not the killing, with mud, or rainwater, dust or grass
clinging to her sweat-drenched body like a second skin. And the
pain, and fear, and rage, gripping her insides, ripping out her guts
and her spirit. And always, always, without fail, there was the
blood: red, cloying, tacky. Everywhere.
No. Not again.
("We don't have a choice, [hija]," her mentor, Don Alvaro, had said.)
But she did. She had *one* choice, one chance. And one chance for
the Indians and the Latinos at the ranch, too. And for Emma, who had
her own battles to fight, her own demons to slay, who shouldn't even
be here. The decision made itself. Elena stood, almost jumped to
her feet, feeling dizzy, weak with hunger and from sitting for so
long. Emma came to prop her up. "Emmi, Emmi, no! I have to go! I
can't stay here!" urgent, almost panicking.
"Okay, okay. We can do that, maybe it's the best thing. I'll help
you pack. We'll drive north to that convent you told me about, the
one in Peru, you can meditate, get your head together, stay there for
a few months...."
Translations: (all Spanish)
pampa - Argentine grassy plain
pelliroja - redhead
no me digas. que lista - you don't say. how clever you are
fajate - fight
nino/nina - boy/girl
no me digas eso. no es verdad - don't say that. it's not true
hijo/hija - son/daughter
THE END OF "MERCILESS"
