“And you think that not telling your family how you feel is the best solution?”
“You know I do! No one but I should have to endure these nightmares. I will never speak of them to anyone—except you.”
Samuel continued to stare at his patient, almost transfixed. He noticed that her face was flushed from frustration. Tiny patches of pink were spreading across her cheekbones. The blush made her look even more alluring.
Her striking features were even more beautiful in profile: her full lips, her thick mane of hair, her obsidian eyes. Even when she lay upon the couch, her tiny frame encapsulated in a simple green sheath, she had an irresistible ripeness.
During Salomé’s past few sessions, Samuel had struggled to sustain his objectivity. He had to remind himself that, as a psychiatrist, he maintained a sacred position. Not only was it his responsibility to listen to Salomé, but also to guide her. He realized it would be wrong of him not to point out that she needed to confront Octavio about her feelings. It would be even more wrong of him to encourage her to dissolve her marriage.
“So you will never share these nightmares with Octavio?” he asked, trying to be fair.
“Not even to Octavio.”
“You just plan on leaving him…”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t think he’ll demand an explanation, after all you’ve been through together?”
“He has to realize that something has stopped working between us. After all, we haven’t had physical relations since I was abducted.”
“These things can take time, Salomé. It is understandable that you haven’t been able to make love to your husband.”
“But what if I want to be able to make love…just not with him.”
Samuel raised his eyebrows. Something that Salomé had just said struck him as out of character for her. He knew that her feelings were far from unfounded, considering all she had endured. And considering that it was her husband’s actions, not her own, that had led to her abduction, her anger was only normal. But why did he feel as if Salomé was trying to tell him something more?
He began to feel uneasy, and to doubt his own professionalism toward his patient. Had he been too aggressive in trying to get Salomé to admit her anger toward her husband? And where did this zeal on his part come from? Was it his own selfish desires?
He couldn’t deny that he no longer saw her as just another patient, but also as a woman whom he was strongly attracted to. He wrestled to regain control of his emotions. This was forbidden territory. Not only because he was married, but because he was Salomé’s doctor. To harbor feelings toward one’s patient was unethical and could bring serious harm as well. But was she now suggesting that she found him attractive as well? His mind began to ache from the tension he sensed mounting between them.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head and pressed her palms over her eyes. “I want to start over. I still love my husband, I just can’t live with him anymore. Is it really that odd that I would now desire to be with someone who is able to acknowledge that I’ve changed? Someone who has the capacity to understand what I’m going through?”
“No, your feelings are not strange, Salomé,” Samuel replied as he tried to regain his concentration. “I think we all sometimes feel that—in any marriage.”
“Do you?”
“It would be wrong for me to talk about myself in your session, Salomé.”
“Well, I’ve made up my mind. I’m leaving him.”
“I think you should take some more time to think about this.”
“What’s the point?”
“Your mind should be clear for such an important decision.”
Salomé remained quiet.
“What about your children? After all, they are also suffering from the stress of relocating to a new country and having to make new friends…learn a new language. Now their entire family structure will be changing.”
Salomé was quiet for a moment. “Rafael will be able to handle it. He’s strong and resilient. But, you’re right, explaining it to the two girls will be difficult.”
Samuel nodded.
“Look, I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone as much as my husband. I doubt there’s a more poetic, idealistic soul on earth. But I just can’t continue living with him.” She paused and readjusted herself on the sofa, crossing her feet at the ankles.
“May I ask you something, Dr. Rudin?”
“Yes, of course.” He looked up from his notes.
“Do you think I’m attractive?”
“Attractive?” Samuel blurted. It was as though he had been hit with a stone between his eyes.
“Yes, attractive,” she repeated.
“I’m your doctor, Salomé. It would be inappropriate for me to answer that question,” he said, obviously flustered. “But,” he mumbled underneath his breath, “I do think any man would find you beautiful.”
She found herself blushing at his answer. A moment of silence lingered between them and increased the tension in the air.
“I’m sorry, I should never have put you on the spot like that,” she said. “It was a stupid question. Let’s just forget I even mentioned it.”
Samuel adjusted himself in his chair, relieved that the subject of physical attraction between them had terminated.
He took a few seconds to gather himself. He glanced over his notes and fiddled with the tape recorder to make sure it was still working. He switched his pen, replacing it with another from his leather blotter, then finally looked up.
“Salomé, are you feeling stronger than when you first came to me five weeks ago?”
“Yes, immensely.”
“Good. Have you listened to any music? Have you tried to test your response to it, as we discussed?”
“A little. I’m improving, I think. Sometimes, I allow the children to play the radio when I’m in the apartment.” She paused. “I never used to, before our sessions. It was too painful. Even if it was music other than opera, I couldn’t stand it. Just as I couldn’t stand the sound of dripping water because it reminded me of the electric shocks.
“Still, I am beginning to feel stronger. My nightmares are lessening since our conversations here.” She paused, touching her fingers to her throat. “I suppose I’ve just needed someone with whom I could be completely honest.”
“Of course. That’s why I’m here.”
“And since my sessions with you, I’ve realized that, ultimately, I need to start over. I need to live on my own for a while.
“Of course I’d take the children with me,” she continued. “But I need to have space from Octavio. I need to have time to sort out my feelings.”
“Well, perhaps some time apart would benefit the both of you.”
“It will devastate him to hear that I’m leaving.”
“Life cannot always be beautiful and poetic, Salomé.”
She nodded, her eyes finally fixing on the brown-beamed ceiling. “Yes, I know. If only Octavio knew that too.”
Samuel tried to regain his objectivity. “Still, I urge you to think carefully before you do anything. Remember, even if you believe your eldest, Rafael, is strong, he is still a child.”
“I know.”
Samuel pressed the off button of the tape recorder. “Unfortunately, our time today seems to have expired.” He glanced at the clock. “Will I see you next week?”
Salomé nodded, and her lips formed a small smile.
He watched as his patient stood up from the couch in her lime green dress and slowly left his office. He admitted to himself what his professional ethics had prevented him from telling her. He was wholly and undeniably attracted to her.
Fifty-two
VESTERÅS, SWEDEN
MARCH 1975
Trying to calm himself after the tension from earlier that afternoon, Samuel remained in his office for nearly three hours before preparing to leave for home. In an overly deliberate manner, he finished going through his notes, filed them in his patients’ fold
ers, and inserted the cassettes into the appropriate stapled paper pockets. Finally, after he could think of no further excuse for not leaving, he capped his pens and replaced them in the drawer, stood up, and pushed in his chair.
He had been looking forward to the spring for several months, and now, although the temperature had become somewhat warm and balmy, he had heard that rain was in the forecast. Peering through one of the venetian blinds, he noticed a light drizzle was already dancing off the steps of his building.
The patter of rain soothed him. Samuel walked over to his coatrack and slipped into his mackintosh, pulling each of his arms through the satin-lined sleeves. I mustn’t forget my umbrella, he reminded himself, smiling as he looked over and saw the red umbrella propped against the corner. His wife had bought it for him several months earlier, before she had grown listless and withdrawn. She told him that she had chosen the color because she knew he would never be able to forget it anywhere. She was always thinking of other people—never herself, even when she was at her most despondent. Sometimes he wished she’d be more selfish and put herself first. He made a mental note to himself to have a talk with her about it soon.
He checked over his desk one last time. The tapes of his afternoon patients had already been filed away. His tea mug had been washed and dried, his notepads stacked high to the left of his phone. Everything was where it should be. He buttoned his coat, smoothed out the pockets, and finally opened the latch of the door.
As he opened up the crimson hood of his umbrella, his black-loafered foot stepping to the first-floor landing, he noticed that the rain was soft and misting. In the gray light of twilight, the fog was lifting off the pavement.
At first, he had thought it was his imagination. He had seen the patch of lime green material and believed he was seeing things. But, as he lifted his umbrella to rest against his shoulder, he saw that, indeed, he had seen correctly. Salomé Herrera was sitting by herself on a bench directly across from his office, her black curls soaking against her shoulders, her face glistening from the onset of rain.
He rushed across the street and stood over her. He held the umbrella over her to shield her from the water, though she was already soaked and shivering. Her teeth were chattering, and the lines of her body could clearly be seen underneath her dress.
“What’s the matter, Salomé?” Samuel asked with great concern.
She looked up at him, her eyes not wet from the rain but rather from something deep inside. She was shaking.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m not sure.” She stood up to face him. She looked at him for less than a second before wrapping him in her wet, slippery arms.
He surprised himself by kissing her back as strongly as he did. He dropped his umbrella to grasp her more firmly. He moved one hand up her back slowly and felt the weight of her long, black hair, all the while kissing her. She tasted like almonds to him, as if her body were laced with the delectable, intoxicating perfume of marzipan.
She bit him sweetly on his bottom lip and he fell on her bosom, kissing her. He cupped his hands around each breast, caressing them with a wandering thumb.
But then, she stopped.
“We shouldn’t do this here, outside. What if people see?” Salomé whispered.
They were staring at each other now, both their faces streaked with water. Their skins felt suddenly cold in places that, only seconds before, had been warm from each other’s breath.
“We shouldn’t be doing this at all, Salomé.” Suddenly Samuel was overcome by great embarrassment. How could he have unleashed himself on this woman who was not only not his wife, but his patient? How could he have shown such a lack of control?
“You’re the only person who understands me now,” she said, tears now streaming down her face.
“You shouldn’t think like that, Salomé.”
“You were right to make me see my husband in his true light.”
“I never said that, Salomé.” He was now trying to peel himself from her arms.
“You didn’t have to…”
She was shaking and Samuel took off his coat and placed it around her shoulders. “Come,” he said softly. “Let’s go inside.”
In the few minutes it had taken him to run up and open the door to his office and usher Salomé inside, he had told himself that he had to apologize to his patient. What he had done was wrong, a cardinal sin in his profession and to his marriage. But somehow, as he brought Salomé in from the rain, the sensation of her kisses still lingering on his lips and the traces of her fingerprints on his bones, all of his ethics seemed to vanish.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he tried to mumble. But, Salomé had already come close to him again.
“Salomé,” he whispered, and at the sound of her name she placed a trembling finger over his lips.
“You never speak this much in our sessions,” she said, her mouth curling slightly.
“Salomé,” he said once again. But this time, his voice was even fainter, his eyes locked on hers.
He believed he took her by the shoulders to speak some reason into what they were about to do. But he only ended up faltering. He slid the straps of her dress over her arms, the material falling to the ground like tissue paper.
She was so beautiful standing there in the moonlight, the beads of rain having moistened her olive skin. Her breasts were round and high. The small nipples like crushed raspberries, pink and textured.
He wanted to cover her in her nakedness, keep hidden to himself that which was so beautiful and fragile. Yet, he ended up bringing her closer to him, allowing her to unbutton his shirt, his trousers, until he too stood there naked against her, his pelvis nestling into hers.
“You are the first man to touch me since this happened to me.” She placed her small, delicate hand on her left rib and touched where the skin was red and raised.
He looked down at her and was overcome by just how beautiful and brave she seemed to be by standing there completely revealed to him.
“You’re beautiful, Salomé.” He lifted her chin so that her mouth nestled into his.
He felt her pushing herself closer to him. He felt her breath on his neck and her hair light against his skin. He could no longer think clearly, his mind made dizzy by her perfume. He did not utter a sound as he lifted Salomé’s tiny form and brought her over to his armchair. He sat down, his damp chest heaving, and held each of her hands as she mounted him, coiled her legs around him within the chair’s winged sides, pulling him so close to her that, in the moonlight, he could see the faint traces of her feather-light scars.
Fifty-three
VESTERÅS, SWEDEN
MARCH 1975
Salomé couldn’t shake from her mind something in the way he made love to her. He had tenderly kissed her in all those red, raised places, where the skin had stitched itself up in a feeble attempt to camouflage where there had once been a wound. He had traced his fingers all over her body, like a navigator reading a map. She knew that he knew the story behind every scar he lingered over. He was aware of who had put it there, and how it had felt for her to be branded. Yet still he caressed every corner of her, for there wasn’t a part of Salomé that was not beautiful to him.
She had not felt that way—felt attractive—for some time. A year had passed since the Villa Grimaldi, and this was the first time she had ever revealed her body fully to anyone. Now, being embraced by a man, and disrobing completely, she was being seen and revealed in her entirety. Someone could see her scars and accept them as being part of her.
Yes, somehow, Samuel had restored her. She suddenly felt different. She suddenly felt alive and whole again.
Her heart did not love him the way it had loved Octavio in the past, but she craved him nonetheless. It was strange. Samuel knew so much about her, but she knew almost nothing of him.
Salomé knew that her doctor had spent a portion of his childhood in Latin America because she had questioned him once during one of their sessions about the o
rigin of his accent. He had told her that his family had fled France and settled in Peru, thus explaining his soft, melodic way of speaking Spanish, which was so different from a Spaniard’s or a Chilean’s, but beautiful nonetheless. She had loved the gentle, lulling way he slipped into the language. Having a doctor with whom she could communicate in her native tongue had made her feel instantly comfortable with Samuel.
She also knew that he was married and that he had a young daughter. She had seen their photograph on his desk. The little girl had been dressed in her Midsummer’s costume—all in white with a wreath in her hair—and Salomé couldn’t help but think of her own daughters, who would back in Chile pick flowers from the garden and place them through the straps of their dresses and slip the larger blooms behind their ears.
Walking down Föreningsgatan, Salomé’s fingers still ached from the intensity with which he had grasped her hands. She could still recall the taste of his mouth and the movement of his shoulders pressing into hers. She could not possibly wait until the following Thursday when her next appointment was scheduled. She wanted to see him before then. But by the time she returned home to her apartment, to find Octavio asleep and the children in their rooms, she realized she had other things to attend to first. So, for the moment, the matter of Samuel would unfortunately have to wait.
Fifty-four
VESTERÅS, SWEDEN
MARCH 1975
Samuel walked home that evening, discoving Kaija awake and playing with Sabine.
“You worked late tonight, darling,” she said softly. “I’m afraid your dinner got cold.”
He immediately felt so guilty seeing her crouched on the floor with their child on her knee. The little girl was fingering the tiny wisps of her mother’s blond hair and pulling it toward her own.