Reinhold Speck watched the motionless form of Wanda Ases in his rear-view mirror. He wondered if she were only pretending to be sleeping. He didn’t like the way his comrade insisted on holding the revolver against her head. He didn’t believe that revolutionary zeal should completely obliterate one’s capacity for human respect. Still, it was just such moral weakness that got one strangled from behind. Better to be safe than sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wanda was bruskly shaken awake sometime in the middle of the night. She fought to clear her head and maybe catch a hint of her whereabouts. They led her across a starlit farmscape, toward an adobe cottage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They brought her inside and instructed her to sit in the chair by the table. There were heaps of papers all around and in the corner, under a tarpaulin, Wanda could make out the shape of a printing press. Strewn about the table and floor were propagandist leaflets and scraps of musical notation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Why have you brought me here?” she demanded, “What do you want?” Speck sat down opposite her and looked into her eyes with a tenderness that she recognized immediately as true religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I beg a thousand pardons, Miss Ases,” he said, “but you are about to be afforded the highest honor to which a Buena Salidan can aspire.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Torture?” she suggested, icily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“No Ma’am,” he told her humbly. “I bring you here at the orders of our greatest Freedom Fighter, Archard Venango.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Freedom Fighter,” she scoffed. She shuddered to think how many Seven International landed lords had been tried and beheaded in the name of the outlaw Venango.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Let me assure you,” he insisted, “This visit is strictly for your benefit.” Wanda then flashed on the strange apparition at the airport; the staggering man and the message that had been her welcome upon landing in Buena Salida: Everything that’s done is done for you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n They directed her to the back of the cottage, where she found a wall hanging that covered the opening to a small cave. In the center of the room, bathed in incense and candlelight, sat a mild gray man in peasant homespun cotton. “Hello, Wanda,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She took just a moment to recover, and the tension inside her spent itself like a spring snapping. “Hello, Carl,” she said, “I had wondered about you from time to time.” And, just like she’d done that first time in Carlo Shlemmer’s filthy Princeton apartment, she sat down lotus position in front of him and opened her soul to his pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Main image: Courtesy Wikimedia Commons: Blackrock Cottage: a much-photographed Grade B listed cottage at the head of Glencoe. Mountain in the background is Buachaille Etive M\u00f2r. by Dave.Dunford<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n