CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The screech of birds and the general babel of the jungle woke me from a dreamless sleep where Jahnu lay behind me, eyes still closed in sleep, one forearm across his brow.
Had Eve felt as I did now, after she’d eaten the fruit and realized she was naked?
I slipped my tunic back on, not sure when it had been removed in the passion of the moment.
I stared out across the turquoise water, our unlikely relationship was forever changed in the whirlpool of passion and consummation.
What had I been thinking? Now my logical brain reasserted itself.
Where had she been an hour ago? What had this circumstance set into motion?
The trajectory of my life had been changed—forever—by this amazing, wild man.
What about Greg? But I hadn’t thought about Greg either, and the realization struck me, uncomfortably. How can we even know what our heart will choose? My heart and mind had been single-focused. I had made my choice, and now I would have to live with the consequences.
I sat, watching the peaceful rise and fall of his brown chest, and I did not regret my choice. I loved Jahnu, and the realization washed me over with gooseflesh and a fresh bout of guilt.
What would I tell Greg?
The flutter of birds caught my attention.
There were three, two with a bright red-orange tail fluttering and flapping their wings, as if to impress the one plain, maroon-brown bird.
They perched on the branch and the homely bird flittered back and forth between the two males as if having to choose whose tail feathers she wanted to take home.
How like that brown bird I was.
Two men. Two worlds. Was love truly what I felt for Jahnu, unknown to me a month prior but so full of passion. I began to ask myself if love was truly what I felt for Greg. Or was it simply familiarity? I knew I could psychoanalyze myself crazy, but I needed to know.
I was like a different person with Jahnu than I was with Greg.
I felt freer and more at rest, as if I knew he was always watching out for me.
Ironically, with Greg I felt I was the one watching out for him, buttoning up the issues his anger might cause, conceding to his desires and whims, and keeping quiet to keep peace and the image of success he so desired.
I knew I should stop trying to figure it out, but I was like a moth to a flame and felt at war with the conflicting desires inside me.
On the one hand, I wanted to get back to Makia.
I wanted Greg to know I was ok, safe, and alive—if he was even still on the island.
I had been missing over thirty days. Was he even still looking for me or had he returned to America, thinking me dead?
But like the bird flitting between two mates, the other desire rose like a flood inside me.
I had fallen in love with Jahnu.
It wasn’t just passion and lust. It was something deeper.
He saw me—with eyes dark as coal that seemed to peer right through me.
He made me feel known, as intimately as he’d known my body just before.
He didn’t know the person I had to be for everyone else.
He knew the real me—my pain, my secret guilt, my trauma.
Being with him was like my soul had finally exhaled a breath I didn’t even know I was holding, saying, There you are!
but not realizing I had been searching. I’d never felt this way with anyone.
Not with Greg, I thought sheepishly. Not with anybody, and that’s what scared me.
Because as much as I wanted to return to Makia and then to my life as normal, I knew I would never be the same again.
But how could I love someone like Jahnu? He was a savage, primitive man, by his own admission. We were as different as night and day, as contrasting as the very skin on our bodies, and we fought as much as we didn’t.
I watched him sleeping peacefully as a pang of love squeezed my heart.
A savage and a nurse.
We were an impossible pairing. He was a man of violence, because his life had forced him to be that way.
I’d seen the devastation of the fire. He’d taken his revenge by attacking Makia, the very people I came to give aid.
Would he call the men to arms to keep a civil war from breaking out in his own tribe?
Wars had been started for lesser things than revenge.
Where would I be if that happened? Would my loyalties be split?
I didn’t have time to analyze the questions. The pressure of a hand on my back broke me from my scrutiny.
“Halloo.”
“Hello,” I whispered.
“You are well?”
I looked back at him and nodded. He sat up. Finding my hand and bringing it to his lips, he kissed it softly.
“What are we doing, Jahnu?” I asked, unsure of what came next
“Are we not allowed to follow our hearts, Sid-de-ne?” he asked calmly, with an implied answer.
“I did not think it was possible to feel this way again after losing Alupa, but the heart knows only caring and not caring…and I care for you with my whole heart…especially now.” Jahnu’s thumb smoothed the crease on my forehead.
“I love you, Sid-de-ne. I tried not to, but…I love you” he said slowly, timidly, watching for my reaction.
“I love you, too, Jahnu.” And I did. Saying it out loud didn’t feel any different than admitting it privately to myself.
“Then, you will stay here with me?”
“Oh, Jahnu,” I moaned and covered my face with my hands.
I realized now the depths of my lack of honesty and integrity in hiding my relationship with Greg.
“How can this ever be more than what we have already given?” But even as I said it, there was a profound recognition of our oneness, far beyond the river bank experience—but I could not just stay here for the rest of my life!
What about Greg? What about my profession? Hell, what about civilization? Third world countries, after all, were a mission field to develop, not a place to permanently merge oneself…but then I thought of Robert and Sali.
I staggered with the weight of my actions, all too late, as the enticing fantasy of the romantic mirage morphed into reality.
Betrayal, thwarted love, racial barriers, and economic disparity crashed down on me. And yet…my heart still quickened just laying here beside this man—even after the very real passion had subsided.
I rehearsed our love making in my mind and knew I was forever changed. I already thought in terms of ‘we’. Jahnu’s problems as well as his people had become my own. My identity had so radically changed in the course of a few weeks.
Reluctant to break the spell, I rose without speaking.
“How can I be without you by my side, Sid-de-ne?” he asked, clearly reeling from our powerful physical intimacy.
“I don’t know, Jahnu…” I put him off, postponing the inevitable rejection.
This was just an isolated event. These things just happen.
It’s nobody’s fault. Just a fling…caught off guard in a weak moment…
it was just a strong physical attraction, lust even…
but the caring…what had Jahnu said? ‘The heart cares or cares not?’ I definitely cared.
I was inextricably caught in a tangled web of caring—so much it hurt.
Because even in the afterglow, knowing I was about to cause his heart to break, I was still provided with a circle of safety that I couldn’t explain and had never experienced before.
Jahnu came up behind me and sought my hand. I gave it. It was like coming home.
Overwhelmed by a hundred thoughts, I took a moment knowing I had to tell him before Greg might show up with the messengers and make it painfully obvious.
“Jahnu, I—I haven’t been completely honest with you.” Oh my God, what have I done? “I came to Makia with someone…”
“Someone?” He dropped my hand.
“With a man…a man I was supposed to marry.”
Jahnu was very still, no flicker of emotion as I admitted the one thing I should’ve told him long ago. He stood and walked away from me, hands on his hips, his back rigid. Silence stretched on for an eternity.
“Jahnu,” I whispered. “Jahnu, say something.”
“What would you like me to say?” came the terse reply. He still had not turned around.
“I should’ve told you…I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. At first, I didn’t trust you. Then I…I didn’t want things to change between us, because I, dammit, I was falling in love with you and I knew if I told you about Greg, it would drive you away!”
“You should’ve told me,” he said, turning painfully angry eyes on me. “If I had known, I never would have…” he growled and shouted, “You have made me a thief, Sid-de-nee! You…what a fool I am,” he sighed, placing a hand over his face in shame.
“No,” I said, coming to him. I held his arms, trying to convince him. “No. You’re not a thief.”
“You belong to him,” he said, gritting his teeth.
“We aren’t married, just engaged. I don’t belong to anyone!” I tried to calm him, to explain.
“Me, least of all,” he said sarcastically, turning black, fiery eyes on me.
“What did you think, Jahnu, that if you kept me here long enough I would fall in love with you and decide to stay here forever, like Robert?” Even as I said it, I regretted it.
I could see how my words wounded him, but I didn’t know how to stop, and the berating that came from my mouth was really meant for myself.
He was just the unfortunate bystander that conveniently took the arrows I wanted to pierce into my own heart for all the damage my choices had caused.
I hated this feeling of raw vulnerability and clawed for an escape, desperate to erect the protective walls he’d managed to crumble. “Why did you keep me here?”