Galilee. Part 58

"Well you failed."

She narrowed her eyes. He was certain another boat-shaking a.s.sault was on its way, but no: when she replied she did so softly, the sound of her voice almost drowned out by the slop of the waves against the hull.

Yes I failed... she said... and I've paid for my failure with years of loneliness. Years when I might have expected my firstborn to be some comfort to me.

"You drove me out, mother. You told me if I set foot in L'Enfant ever again you'd kill me."

I never said that.

"Oh yes you did. You ask Marietta."

I don't trust her opinion on anything. She's as willful as you. I should have torn you both out of my womb with my own hands.

"Oh Christ, mother, not the womb speech! I've heard it all before! You regret having me and I regret being born. So where does that leave us?"

Where it always leaves us, Cesaria said after a moment, at each other's throats. She sighed, and the sea shuddered. 1 can see this is a waste of time. You're never going to understand. And maybe it's better this way. You've done enough damage for a hundred men- "I thought you didn't care about the blood I'd spilled?"

It's not spilled blood I'm talking about. It's the broken hearts. She paused, touching her fingers to her lips, stroking them. She deserves someone who'll care for her. Stay with her. Right to the end.

You don't have what it takes to do that. You're all talk. Just like your father.

Galilee had no reply to this. Just as his earlier remark about "the aftermath" had struck a nerve, this little stab found its place. She saw what she'd done too; and made it her cue to depart.

I'll leave you to your martyrdom, she said, turning from him. Her image, which had appeared quite solid until now seemed to shake like a torn sail. In a few gusts it would be carried away.

"Wait," Galilee said.

Cesaria's image continued to flutter, but her eyes fixed upon her son like driven nails. The moment she looked away, he knew, she'd be gone. Only her scrutiny was keeping her here.What now? she said.

"Even if I wanted to go back to her..."

Yes?

"... I don't have the means. I destroyed everything on board."

You didn't leave yourself so much as a raft?

"I didn't plan to change my mind."

Cesaria raised her chin two or three inches, regarding him imperiously down her nose. But now you have?

Galilee couldn't stand the piercing stare any longer. He looked down at the deck. "I suppose... if I could..." he said quietly, "I'd like to see Rachel again..."

She's waiting for you, not six hundred miles from here.

"Six hundred?"

On the island.

"What's she doing there?"

I sent her there. I told her I'd do my best to send you to her.

"And how do you intend to do that?"

I'm not certain I can. But I can try. If I fail, you'll drown. But you were ready for that anyway.

Galilee gave her a troubled glance. You're not so ready now, are you?

"No," he confessed. "I'm not so ready."

You'd like to live.

"Yes... I suppose I would..."

But, Atva- This was the first time in the exchange she'd used the name he'd been baptized with; it made what followed ring like an edict.

I'll do this and you grow bored with her and desert her-"I won't."

I'm saying: if you do, Atva, and I hear about it, I swear I'll find you and I'll drag you back to the sh.o.r.e where we baptized you and I will make it my business to drown you. Do you understand me? She said none of this with great drama; it was simply a statement of fact.

"I understand you," he replied.

I won't do this because I bear Rachel any great affection, I don't. She's a d.a.m.n fool for feeling what she feels for you. But I will not have you leave another soul dying for love of you. I know how it feels, and I'd rather slaughter my own child than have him visit that hurt on one more heart.

Galilee opened his arms, palms up, like a saint surrendering. "What do I need to do?" he said.

Prepare yourself... Cesaria replied.

"For what?"

I'm calling up a storm, she said, which will drive what's left of this little boat of yours back toward the islands.

"It won't survive a storm," Galilee warned her.

Do you have a better idea?

"No," he replied.

Then shut up and be thankful you 're getting another chance.

"You don't know your own strength when you do these things. Mama."

Well it's too late to stop it now, Cesaria said. Even as she spoke Galilee felt the wind come with fresh power against his face. It was veering, south-southeast.

He looked up. The clouds above The Samarkand were in uncanny motion, as though they were being stirred up by an invisible hand. The newly shown stars were abruptly eclipsed.

He felt a distinct quickening in his own veins; plainly whatever force of divine will Cesaria was using to stir the elements had some casual government over his blood.

The Samarkand bucked, broadsided by a wave; he felt its timbers shudder beneath his feet. The short, wiry hairs at the nape of his neck p.r.i.c.kled; his stomach began to churn. He knew what feeling this was, though it was many, many years since he'd last experienced it. He was afraid.

The irony of this was not lost on him. Half an hour ago he'd been resigned to his demise. Notsimply resigned; happy at its imminence. But Cesaria had changed all that. She'd given him hope, d.a.m.n her. Despite her bullying and her threats (or perhaps in some part because of them) he wanted a chance to be back with his Rachel, and the prospect of death, which had seemed so comforting just minutes before, now made him afraid.

Cesaria was not indifferent to his unease. She beckoned to him. Come here, she said. Partake of me.

"What?"

You'll need all the strength you can get in the next few hours. Take some of mine.

She made quite a sight there at the bow, her arm extended to him, her body-lit by the flickering lamps-gleaming against the murderous sky.

Make it quick, Atva! she said, her voice raised now against the wind, which was whipping up spume off the waves. I can't stay here much longer.

He didn't need another invitation. He stumbled towards her along the pitching deck, reaching out to catch hold of her hand.

She'd promised him strength, and strength he got, but in a fashion that made him wonder if his mother had not changed her mind and decided instead upon infanticide. His marrow seemed to catch fire-a profound and agonizing heat that rose from the core of his limbs and spread out, through sinew and nerve, to his skin. He didn't simply feel it, he saw it; at least his eyes reported a brightness in his flesh, blue and yellow, which spread out through his body from his stomach; coursing through his wasted limbs, and revivifying them with its pa.s.sage. This was not the only sight he saw, however. The blaze climbed into his head, running around his skull like wine swilled in a cup, and as it brightened there he saw his mother in a different place: in her room in the house Jefferson had built for her, lying on her temple-door bed with her eyes closed. Zelim was at the foot of the bed-loyal Zelim, who'd hated Galilee with a fine, fierce hate-his shaved head bared as if in prayer or meditation. The windows were open, and moths had fluttered in. Not a few: thousands, tens of thousands. They were on the walls and on the bed, on Cesaria's clothes and hands and face. They were even on Zelim's pate, crawling around.

This domestic vision was short, supplanted in a couple of heartbeats by something entirely stranger. The moths grew more agitated, and the flickering darkness of their wings unsealed the scene from ceiling to floor. The only form that remained was that of Cesaria, who now, instead of lying on the bed, hung suspended in a limitless darkness.

Galilee experienced a sudden, piercing loneliness: whatever void this was-real or invented-he had no wish to be there.

"Mother..." he murmured.

The vision remained, his gaze hovering uncertainly above Cesaria's body as though at anymoment it, and he, might lose their powers of suspension and fall away into the darkness.

He called to his mother again, this time by name. As he called to her, the form before him shimmered and the third and final vision appeared. The darkness didn't alter, but Cesaria did. The robes in which she was wrapped darkened, rotted, and fell away. She was not naked beneath; or at least his eyes had no chance to witness her in that state. She was molten, laval; her humanity, or the guise of that humanity, flowing out of her into the void, trailing brightness as it went.

He glimpsed her face as it melted into light; saw her eyes open and full of bliss; saw her burning heart fall like a star, brightening the abyss as it went.

The insufferable loneliness was burned away in the same ecstatic moment. The fear he'd felt hanging in this nowhere seemed suddenly laughable. How could he ever be alone in a place shared with so miraculous a soul? Look, she was light! And the darkness was her foil, her other, her immaculate companion; they were lovers, she and it, partners in a marriage of absolutes.

And with that revelation, the vision went out of him, and he was back on the deck of The Samarkand.

Cesaria had gone. Whether in the process of tending him her strength had exhausted her, and she'd withdrawn her spirit to a place of rest-the bedroom where he'd seen her lying, perhaps-or she'd simply made her departure because she was done with him and had nothing more to say (which was perfectly in keeping with her nature) he didn't know. Nor did he have time to ponder the question. The storm she'd stirred up was upon him, in all its ferocity. The waves would have been high enough to match the mast, if he'd had a mast, and the wind enough to tatter his sails, if he'd had sails. As it was-and by his own choosing-he had nothing. Just his limbs, no longer wasted by denial, and his wits, and the creaking hull of his boat.

It would be enough. He threw back his head, filled with a fierce exhilaration, and yelled up at the roiling clouds.

"RACHEL! WATT FOR ME!".

Then he fell down on his knees and prayed to his father in heaven to deliver him safely from the storm his mother had made.

IX.

i There was a great commotion in the house a few hours ago; laughter, for once. L'Enfant hasn't heard a lot of laughter in the last few decades. I got up from my desk and went to see what the cause was, and encountered Marietta-holding the hand of a woman in jeans and a T-shirt-ambling down the hallway toward my study. The laughter I'd heard were still on their faces.

"Eddie!" she said brightly. "We were just coming to say h.e.l.lo.""This must be Alice," I said.

"Yes," she replied, beaming with pride.

She had reason. The girl, for all her simple garb, was slim and pretty; small-boned and small- breasted. Unlike Marietta, who enjoys painting herself up with kohl and lip gloss, Alice wore not a sc.r.a.p of makeup. Her eyelashes were blonde, like her hair, and her face, which was milky white, dusted with pale, pale freckles. The impression such coloring sometimes lends is insipid, but such was not the case with this woman. There was a ferocity in her gray eyes, which made her, I suspected, a perfect foil for Marietta. This was not a woman who was going to take orders from anybody. She might look like b.u.t.termilk, but she most likely had an iron soul. When she took my hand to shake it, I had further proof. Her grip was viselike.

"Eddie's the writer in the family," Marietta said proudly.

"I like the sound of that," I said, extricating the hand that did the writing before my fingers were crushed.

"What do you write?" Alice asked.

"I'm writing a history of the Barbarossa family."

"And now you'll be in it," Marietta said.

"I will?"

"Of course," Marietta said. Then to me: "She'll be in the book, won't she?"

"I guess so," I responded. "If you really intend to bring her into the family."

"Oh we're going to marry," Alice said, laying her head fondly on Marietta's shoulder. "I ain't lettin' this one out of my sight. Not ever."

"I'm going to take her upstairs," Marietta said. "I want to introduce her to Mama."

"I don't think that's a good idea right now," I told her. "She's been traveling a lot, and she's exhausted."

"It don't matter, honey," Alice said to Marietta. "I'm goin' to be here all the time soon enough."

"So you two are going to live here at L'Enfant?"

"Sure are," Marietta said, her hand going up to her beloved's face. She stroked Alice's smooth cheek with the outer edge of her forefinger. Alice was in bliss. She closed her eyes languidly, snuggling her face deeper into the curve of Marietta's neck. "I told you, Eddie," Marietta said.

"I'm in this for keeps. She's the one... no question."I couldn't help hearing an echo of Galilee's conversation with Cesaria on the deck of The Samarkand; how he'd promised that Rachel would be the idol of his heart hereafter; that there would be no other. Was it just a coincidence, or was there some pattern in this? Just as the war begins, and the future of our family is in doubt, two of its members (both notably promiscuous in their time) put their wild ways behind them and declare that they have found their soulmates.

Anyway, the conversation with Marietta and Alice meandered on for a little while, pleasantly enough, before Marietta announced that she was taking Alice outside to look at the stables. Did I want to come? she asked me. I declined. I was tempted to ask if Marietta thought a visit to the stables was wise, but I kept my opinion to myself. If Alice was indeed going to be a resident here, then she was going to have to know about the history of the house-and the souls who've lived and died here-sooner or later. A visit to the stables would be bound to elicit questions: why was the place so magnificent and yet deserted? Why was there a tomb in thejr midst? But perhaps that was Marietta's purpose. She might reasonably judge by Alice's response to the atmosphere of palpable dread which clings about the stables how ready her girlfriend is for the darkest of our secrets. If she seems untroubled by the place, which well she might, then perhaps Marietta would sit her down for a couple of days and tell her everything. If on the other hand Alice seemed fearful. Marietta might decide to dole the information out in easy portions, so as not to drive her away. We'll see.

The point is they departed to go walk about, and I went back to my study to begin the chapter which will follow this, dealing with the arrangements for the funeral of Cadmus Geary, but the words refused to flow. Something was distracting me from the business at hand. I set down the pen, sat back in my chair and tried to work out what the problem was. I didn't have to puzzle over it for very long. I was fretting about Marietta and Alice. I looked at the clock. It was by now almost an hour since they'd left the house to visit the stables. Should they not be back by now?

Perhaps they were, and I hadn't heard them. I decided to go and find out; plainly I wasn't going to get a stroke of work done until I laid my unease to rest.

ii It was by now the middle of the evening, and I found Dwight in the kitchen, sitting watching the little black-and-white television. Had he seen Marietta lately? I asked him. He told me no; then- obviously seeing my anxiety-asked if there was a problem. I explained that she had a guest and that the two of them had gone to visit the stables. He's a smart man; he didn't need any further information. He rose, picked up his jacket and said: "You want me to go and see that everything's okay?"

"They may have come back already," I said. He went to check. Two minutes later he was back, having picked up a flashlight, reporting that there was no sign of Marietta about the house. She and Alice were presumably still outside.

We set off; and we needed the flashlight. The night was dismal; the air cold and clammy.

"This is probably a complete waste of time," I said to Dwight as we made our way toward thedense screen of magnolia trees and azalea bushes which conceals the stables from the house. I very much hoped this was the case, but nothing about the journey so far had given me any reason for optimism. The unease which had got me up from my desk in the first place had escalated. My breathing was quick and jittery; I was ready for the worst, though I couldn't imagine what the worst could be.

"Are you armed?" I asked Dwight.

"I always carry a gun," he replied. "What about you?"