Galilee. Part 35

"Just as what you saw a moment ago isn't all of me."

"But it's the truest part, isn't it?" I said. Under other circ.u.mstances I surely wouldn't have pressedher on this business so closely, but I knew the chances of my having the freedom to interrogate her like this again were nil. If I was to know who Cesaria Yaos was before the house of Barbarossa came crashing down, it was now or never.

"The truest part?" she said. "No. I don't think I have one face that's truer than any other. I used to be worshipped in dozens of temples, you know."

"I know."

"They're all heaps of rubble now. n.o.body remembers how I was loved..." Her voice trailed off.

She'd apparently lost her point. "What was I saying?"

"n.o.body remembering."

"Before that."

"All the temples-"

"Oh yes. So many temples, with statues and embroideries, all depicting me. But not one of them resembled any other."

"How do you know?"

"Because I visited them," she said. "When your father and I had a spat we'd go our separate ways for a while.

He'd go find himself some poor woman to seduce, and I'd go touring my holy sites. It's comforting when you're feeling a little woebegone."

"Hard to imagine."

"What? Me, woebegone? Oh I can be self-pitying, just like anybody else."

"No. I meant it's hard to imagine how it must feel, going into a temple where you're being worshipped."

"Oh it can be wonderful. Wandering among your devotees."

"Were you ever tempted to tell them who you were?"

"I did it many, many times. I usually picked somebody who wasn't a particularly reliable witness.

The very old. The very young. Somebody with a sanity problem, or a saint, which is often one and the same."

"Why do that? Why not show yourself to somebody literate, intelligent? Somebody who could spread your gospel?""Somebody like you?"

"If you like."

"Is that what your book's going to be: one last desperate attempt to put your father and me back up on our pedestals?" What did she want to hear from me? I wondered. And if I chose incorrectly, would I be subjected to her fury again? "Is that what you're up to, Maddox?"

I decided on the truth. "No," I said, "I'm simply telling the story as best I can."

"And this conversation? Will it be in your book?"

"I'll put it in if it seems relevant."

There was a silence. Finally, she said: "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter whether you do or you don't. Stories; temples. Who cares nowadays? You're going to have fewer readers than I have worshippers, Maddox."

"I don't have to be read to be a writer," I pointed out.

"And I don't have to be worshipped to be a G.o.ddess. But it helps. Believe me, it helps." She made a phantom smile, and I-to my great surprise-returned it. We understood one another better at that moment than we ever had. "So, now... Marietta."

"One more question," I begged.

"No, enough."

"Please, Mama. Just one. For the book."

"One then. And only one."

"Did my father have temples?"

"He certainly did."

"Where were they?"

"That's another question, Maddox. But, as you're so curious... The finest of his temples to my way of thinking was in Paris."

"Really? Paris. I thought Nicodemus hated Paris."

"Later, he did. It's where I met Mr. Jefferson, you see."

"I didn't know that.""There's a great deal about that man you don't know; that the world doesn't know. I could tell you enough about him to fill five books. He was such a charmer. But quiet... so quiet when he talked that you had to strain to hear him. I remember the first time I met him he'd just been given an apricot, which he'd never tasted before. And oh, the blissful look on that pinched face of his! I wanted him to make love to me on the spot."

"Did he?"

"Oh no. He played very hard to get. He was in love with an English actress at the time. What a wretched combination that was: English and an actress. The worst of all possible worlds.

Anyway, Thomas toyed with my affections for weeks. There was a revolution going on around us, but I swear I was so besotted with him I barely noticed. Heads being lopped off every hour and I was wandering around in an adolescent daze trying to find a way to make this scrawny little American diplomat love me."

"How did you do it?"

"I'm not sure I ever did. If I were to raise him up now, out of his grave at Monticello, and say to him: did you love me? I think he'd say, at best, for a day or two, an hour or two, that afternoon you showed me the temple."

"You took him to my father's temple?"

"Every woman knows if you fail to get the man you want with words, you show him a sacred place." She laughed. "Usually it's the one between your legs. Don't look so shocked, Maddox. It's a fact of life. If a woman's going to get a man on his knees, she has to give him something to worship. But I knew raising my skirts for Jefferson wasn't going to be chough. He'd had that from his tarty little actress, Miss Cosway. I had to show him something that she could never supply. So I took him to your father's temple."

"What happened?"

"He was very impressed. He asked me how I knew about the place. It was a very secret cult your father had at that time. n.o.ble families, mostly. And of course they'd either fled or lost their heads. So the temple was deserted. We wandered around while the mobs raged on the streets outside, and I think-just for that little while-he was quite in love.

"I remember he asked me who'd designed the place, and I took him to the altar, where there was a statue of your father. It had a red velvet doth draped over it. And I said to Jefferson: before I show you this, will you promise me something? He said yes, of course, if it was in his power. So I said to him: design me a house, where I can live happily, because it'll remind me of you."

"So that's how you got him to design you this place?"

"I made him swear. On his wife. On his dreams of Monti-cello. On his dearest hopes for democracy. I made him swear on them all.""You didn't trust him?"

"Not remotely."

"So he swore-"

"-and I uncovered your father's statue. There he was in all his tumescent glory!" Again she laughed. "Oh, Thomas was the very picture of discomfort. But to be fair to him, he kept his aplomb and asked me, with great seriousness, if the representation was a true and proportionate likeness. I rea.s.sured him that it was an exaggeration, though not much of one. I remember exactly what he said to that. Then I am certain, ma'am, you are a very contented wife.' Ha! 'A very contented wife.'

"I showed him how contented I was, there and then. With your father's painted eyes looking down at us, I showed Jefferson how little I cared for marriage.

"We never did it again. I didn't really want to, and I'm quite certain he didn't. His affair with the actress ended in tears, and he went back to his wife."

"But he built you your house, just as he promised he would."

"Oh he did more than that," she said. "He also built a perfect copy of the temple. Perfect down to the last detail."

"Why?"

"That's another question for his ghost. I don't know. He was a strange man. Beautiful things obsessed him. And the temple was beautiful."

"Did he put an altar in it?"

"Do you mean did he have a statue of your father? I wouldn't be surprised."

"Where was this place?"

"Where is it, you mean."

"It's still standing?"

"I believe so. It's one of the best kept secrets in Washington."

"Washington..." The thought that there was a place of ritual sacred to my perpetually priapic father laid in the heart of the nation's capitol astonished me. "I want to see it," I said.

"I'll write a letter of introduction," Cesaria said."To whom?"

She smiled. "To the highest in the land. I'm not entirely forgotten," she said. "Jefferson made certain I would never want for influence."

"So he knew you'd outlive him?"

"Oh yes, he understood perfectly, though he never put what he knew into words. I think that would have been too much for him."

"Mother... you astonish me."

"Do I really?" she said, with something approximating fondness in her voice. "Well I'm pleased to hear it." She shook her head. "Enough of this," she said. "I'm quite talked out." She pointed at me. "And you be careful how you quote me," she said. "I won't have my past misrepresented, even if it is in a book that n.o.body's going to read."

So saying, she turned her back on me, and calling her porcupines to follow, she headed off down the pa.s.sageway. I called after her: "What do you want me to do about Marietta?"

"Nothing," she growled. "Let her play. She'll regret what she's done. Maybe not tonight, but soon."

While I was pleased to be relieved of the duty of going after Marietta, I was left somewhat curious as to the felony my half sister had committed. Indeed I was tempted to seek her out and ask her for myself. But I had such a wonderful freight of information from Cesaria, and I didn't want to risk forgetting a word of it. So I went straight back to my room, lit the lamps, poured myself some gin, and started to set it down. I paused only once, to reflect on what it might mean that Thomas Jefferson, the princ.i.p.al architect of the Declaration, the father of democracy in America, should have built a replica of my father's temple. To have gone to all that trouble in pursuit of beauty seemed to me unlikely. Which begged two questions: one, why had he done it?

And two, if there was some other purpose, did anybody on Capitol Hill know what it was?

VIII.

i I will revisit Marietta's theft in due course; be a.s.sured of that. There are several threads of this tapestry woven together in her crime as you'll see. And-just as Cesaria predicted-there would be consequences.

But first, I must return to The Samarkand, and the pair who'd pa.s.sed the night upon it.

When Rachel woke, dawn was creeping into the tiny cabin, and by its virtuous light she sawGalilee asleep at her side, one arm thrown over his face, the other across her body. Comforted by the sight, she dosed her eyes and went back to sleep. When she stirred again, he was gently stroking her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, kissing her face. Still only half-awake she slid her hand down between their bodies and raised her leg a little to guide him into her. He murmured something against her cheek that she didn't catch, but she was in too dreamy a state to ask him to repeat it. All she wanted was the fullness of him inside her; his gentle motion, his touch. She didn't even need to see him: he was there in her mind's eye when she closed her lids; her perfect lover, who'd brought her more s.e.xual pleasure in one night than she'd experienced in all the years preceding it. She reached out and touched his chest, his nipples, then to his armpit and the ma.s.s of his shoulder, luxuriating in the polished muscle beneath her fingertips. One of his huge hands was at her face, stroking her with the back of his fingers, the other down between her legs, parting her, easing the pa.s.sage of his s.e.x by spreading her fluids down its length.

She made a little sob of pleasure when he was fully housed; begged him to stay there. He didn't move. Just kept his place, her body enclosing him so tightly she could feel the tick of his blood.

At last, she began to move; just a tiny motion at first, but enough to send a shudder through him.

"You like that?" she whispered.

He replied with a short expulsion of air, almost a grunt, as he pressed his s.e.x back into her, and the next instant withdrew it almost entirely. She let him do so without protest; the emptiness was delicious, as long as she knew it was only temporary.

She reached up and put her arms around his neck, knotting her fingers at the base of his skull.

Then, oh so slowly, she preempted his return stroke by raising her hips toward his.

He spoke again. This time she heard what he said.

"Oh Lord in heaven..."

Slowly, slowly, she took him into her, both of them tender from a night of excesses; the line between bliss and discomfort perilously fine. As she rose he started down to meet her motion, and the image of him she'd had in her mind's eye lost its particularity, his substance dissolved in the wash of pleasure. The gleaming darkness of his limbs spread behind her lids, filling her thoughts completely. He was quickening now. She urged him on, her urges incoherent. No matter; he understood. She didn't need to tell him when to redirect his pressure, she'd no sooner formed the thought than he was doing so. And before he lost control of his body and came, she was distracting him from his crisis, slowing her own motion so as not to have their pleasure end too quickly.

So it went on, for two hours, almost three: sometimes a contest-jabs and sobbing; sometimes so quiet, so still, they might almost have been asleep in one another's arms. They made no declarations of love; at least nothing audible. They didn't even speak, not even to call out one another's name. There was no failure of feeling in this; just the reverse. They were so entirely immersed in one another, so entirely joined in their bliss, that for a short, sacred time they imagined themselves indivisible.ii Not so, of course.

The illusion pa.s.sed when their bodies had been wracked to exhaustion. They lay beside one another shivering in their sweat, gloriously satisfied, but returned into their own skins.

"I'm hungry," Rachel said.

They hadn't gone entirely without sustenance since boarding The Samarkand. Though Galilee had returned the fish to the sea as an offering to Kuhaimuana-all thirty fathoms of him-he'd opened cans of shucked oysters and brandied peaches in the middle of the night, which they'd eaten off and out of one another's bodies, so that the satisfying of one appet.i.te didn't interrupt the satisfying of the other.

Still, it was now midmorning, and her stomach was complaining.

"We can be back on land in an hour," Galilee said.

"I don't want to go," Rachel replied. "I never want to go. I want to stay out here, just the two of us..."

"People would come looking," he said. "You're still a Geary."

"We'd find somewhere to hide," she said. "People disappear all the time, and they're never found."