Galilee. Part 64

"I wouldn't be welcome."

"Maybe you would now," Rachel suggested.

He looked at her through the flames. "Is that what you want to do? Go home and meet the family?"

"Yes. I'd like that very much."

'They're all crazy," he warned.

"They can't be any worse than the Gearys,"

He shrugged, conceding the point. "Then we'll go back, if that's what you want to do," he told her.

Rachel smiled. "Well that was easy.""You thought I'd say no?"

"I thought you'd put up a fight."

Galilee shook his head. "No," he said, "it's time I made my peace. Or at least tried to. None of us are going to be around forever. Not even Cesaria."

"She said at Cadmus's house she was feeling old and weary."

"I think there's a part of her that's always been old and weary. And another part that's born new every day." Rachel looked confounded, and Galilee said: "I can't explain it any better than that.

She's as much a mystery to me as to anybody. Including herself. She's a ma.s.s of contradictions."

"You told me once, when we were out on the boat, that she doesn't have parents."

"To my knowledge, she doesn't. Nor did my father."

"How's that possible? Where did they come from?"

"Out of the earth. Out of the stars." He shrugged, the expression on his face suggesting that the question was so unanswerable that he didn't think it worth contemplating.

"But she's very old," Rachel said. "You know that much."

"She was being worshipped before Christ was born, before Rome was founded."

"So she's some kind of G.o.ddess?"

"That doesn't mean very much anymore does it? Hollywood produces G.o.ddesses these days. It's easy."

"But you said she was worshipped."

"And presumably still is, in some places. She had a lot of temples in Africa, I know. The missionaries destroyed some of her cults, but those things never die out completely. I did see a statue of her once, in Madagascar. That was strange, to see my own mother's image, and people bowing down before it. I wanted to say to them: don't waste your prayers. I know for a fact she's not listening. She's never listened to anyone in her life, except her husband. And she gave him such h.e.l.l he died rather than stay with her. Or at least pretended to die. I think his death was a performance. He did it so he could slip away."

"So where is he?"

"Where he came from presumably. In the earth. In the stars." He drew a deep breath. "This is hard for you, I know. I wish I could make it easier. But I'm not a great expert on what we are as a family. We take it for granted, the way you take your humanity for granted. And day for day,we're not that different. We eat, we sleep, we get sick if we drink too much. At least, I do."

"But you're able to do things the rest of us can't," Rachel replied.

"Not much," Galilee said lightly.

He lifted his hand, and the flames of the fire seemed to leap like an eager dog. "Of course we have more power together-you and I-than either of us had apart. But maybe that's always true of lovers."

Rachel said nothing; she just watched Galilee's face through the fire.

"What else can I tell you?" he went on. "Well... my mother can raise storms. She raised the storm that brought me back here. And she can send her image wherever she wants to. I guess she could go sit on the moon if she was in the mood. She can take life like that-" he snapped his fingers "- and I think she can probably give it, though that's not her nature. She's been a very violent woman in her time. She finds killing easy."

"You don't."

"No, I don't. I'll do it, if I have to, if I've agreed to, but no I don't like it. My father was the same.

He liked s.e.x. That was his grand obsession. Not even love. s.e.x. f.u.c.king. I saw a few of his temples in my time, and let me tell you they were quite a sight. Statues of my father, displaying himself. Sometimes not even him, just a carving of his d.i.c.k."

"So you got that from him," Rachel said.

"The d.i.c.k?"

"The love of s.e.x."

Galilee shook his head. "I'm not a great Jover," he said. "Not like him. I could go for months out at sea, not thinking about it." He smiled. "Of course, when I'm with someone, it's a different story."

"No," Rachel said, with a smile of her own. "It's the same story." He frowned, not understanding.

"You always tell the same story," she said, "about your invented country..."

"How do you know?"

"Because I recognized it when I heard it again."

"Who from? Loretta?"

"No.""Who, then?"

"One of your older conquests," Rachel said. "Captain Holt."

"Oh..." Galilee said softly. "Where did you find out about Charles?"

"From bis journal."

"It still exists, after all these years?"

"Yes. Mitch.e.l.l took it from me. I think his brother's got it now."

"That's a pity."

"Why?"

"Because I think it probably contains the way into L'Enf-ant. I told it all to Charles when we were going in there together, and he wrote it down."

"Why did you do that?"

"Because I was sick and afraid I'd lose consciousness before we got there. They would have been killed trying to find their way in without my help."

"So now Garrison knows how to get to your mother's house?" Rachel said.

Galilee nodded. "Ah, well. Nothing to be done about it now. Did you read all the journal?"

"Most, not all."

"But you know how we met? How Nub brought Charles to see me?"

"Yes. I know all that." A flurry of s.n.a.t.c.hed pictures pa.s.sed through her mind's eye: the battlefield at Benton-ville, the phantom child on Holt's horse, the ruins of Charleston and the grisly sights in the garden of the house on Tradd Street. She'd seen so much through Holt's eyes. "He wrote well," she said.

"He'd wanted to be a poet in his youth," Galilee said. "He spoke the way he wrote, believe it or not. The way sentences fell from his lips; it was beautiful to hear."

"Did you love him?"

Galilee looked surprised at the question. But then he said: "I suppose I did, in a way. He was a n.o.ble fellow. Or at least he had been. By the time I met him he was so very sad. He'd lost everything.""But he found you."

"I wasn't adequate compensation," Galilee said, smiling ruefully at his own formality. "I couldn't be his wife and children and all the good things he'd had before the war. Though... maybe I imagined I could. I think that's always been my big mistake. I want to give gifts. I want to make people happy. But it never ends well."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't give anybody what they really want. I can't give them life. Sooner or later they die, and dying's never very good. n.o.body dies a good death. People ding on. Even when they're in agony they want a few more minutes, a few more seconds-"

"What happened to Holt?"

"He died at L'Enfant. He's buried there." He sighed. "I should never have let them take me back.

It was asking for trouble. I'd been away such a long time. But I was wounded. All used up. I needed somewhere I could heal myself."

"How did you come to be wounded?"

"I was careless. I thought I was untouchable... and I wasn't." His hand went up to his face, his fingers instinctively seeking out the scars on his brow and scalp, touching them delicately as though he were reading something there: the braille of past suffering. "There was a woman called Katherine Morrow," he said. "She was one of my... what's the word? Concubines? She'd been quite the Southern virgin until she came to be with me. Then she showed her real feelings. This was a woman who had no shame. None. She would do whatever came into her head. But she had two brothers, who had survived the war, and when they returned home to Charleston came looking for her. I was drunk that night. I was drunk most nights, but that night I was so drunk I don't think I knew what was happening to me until I was out on the street, surrounded by a dozen men-the brothers and their friends-all beating me. It wasn't just that I'd seduced the girl. I was a n.i.g.g.e.r, and they were so full of hatred, because that spring all the n.i.g.g.e.rs in America were free men and women, and they didn't like that. It was the end of their world. So they beat me and beat me, and I was too stupid with drink and my own despair to stop them."

"So how was it they didn't kill you?"

"Nickelberry shot the brothers dead. He walked up with two pistols-I can still see him now, just parting the crowd around me, and blowing holes in their heads. Bang! Bang! Then Charles was there, threatening to do the same to the next man who tried to land a blow. That made them scatter. And Charles and Nub picked me up and took me away."

"Off to L'Enfant."

"Eventually.""What happened to the people who'd been with you in your..."

"Pleasure palace? I don't know. I went back to Charleston a few years later, to look for them. But they'd all gone their separate ways. I heard Miss Morrow went to Europe. But the rest...?" He shrugged. "So many people have come and gone, over the years. So many faces. But I don't forget them. I never forget them. I see them all still. I dream about them, as though I could open my eyes and they'd be there." His voice dropped to a murmur. "And maybe they would..." he said.

He halted for a moment, then he got to his feet. "The fire's too bright," he said. "Walk with me, will you?"

iii They walked together, down the beach. Not hand in hand, as they'd walked that bright day when he'd taken her to see The Samarkand, but a little way from one another. He was so raw, right now; she was afraid that she'd hurt him, if she so much as touched him.

He continued to talk, but in the darkness he lost the thread of what he'd been telling her, and now he offered only fragments; disconnected observations about how his life had been in those distant days. Something about how his homecoming had unleashed a string of catastrophes; about horses killing his father; about his sister Marietta protecting him from his mother's rage; about his other sister's skills with the poultices and pills, which had helped heal him. Rachel didn't press him with questions about any of this. She just let his mind wander and his lips report.

Though Galilee made no defense of his actions, I feel that for the sake of veracity I must offer some observations of my own. Though he took the blame upon himself as though every sin committed at L'Enfant in those few grim days were his fault and his alone, this was simply not so.

He wasn't responsible for my giving Chiyojo over to Nicodemus; he wasn't responsible for Cesaria's unrepentant rage; he wasn't responsible for the death of his friend Charles Holt, who died by his own hand.

He was, however, responsible for something he didn't mention in his account. When he. Holt and Nickelberry entered L'Enfant, they were followed. Their pursuers weren't common marauders; they were a small group of men led by Benjamin Morrow, the father of Katherine, who had lately lost both his sons to Nub's pistol. He was an old man by the standards of that age, well into his sixties, and perhaps his years made him more cautious and clever than a younger man might have been. Though he and his posse of five G.o.d-fearing Charlestonians had several times come close to their quarry as they'd chased them north. Morrow had refrained from attack. He wanted to get to the heart of the unholy power that had so besotted his beloved Katherine that she'd lost every drop of propriety, and gone to be a wh.o.r.e for this n.i.g.g.e.r Galilee. His caution and his curiosity had saved both his life and the lives of his men. By following in the footsteps of their quarry they'd unknowingly negotiated the traps that would have claimed them had they come into L'Enfant on their own. Once Cesaria realized she had trespa.s.sers, of course she descended on them like a fury.I saw them in their graves, and I will never forget the expressions on their faces. They would have been better served by fate if they'd misstepped somewhere along the way, and perished in one of the traps. Instead they'd looked as though they'd been mauled by a cageful of hungry tigers. But given that they'd been killed by Cesaria, I'm certain even that would have been a kindness.

Anyway, now you know. And I have to say that in some corner of my being I believe the horrors that were visited upon us all soon after the dispatch of the Charleston Six would not have been so disastrous-indeed might not have happened at all-had they been forgiven their error and allowed to leave. Blood begets blood; cruelty begets cruelty. Once the Six were dead, it was all storms, horses and horrors. Galilee wasn't the cause of all that. She was; the G.o.ddess herself. Though she'd been the one from whom the glories of L'Enfant had come, she was also, in her madness, the architect of its darkest hour.

II.

Rachel and Galilee didn't return to the fire. They went instead to sit on the rocks at the end of the beach. The sea was calm, and perhaps its soothing rhythm made it easier for him to confess what he still had to tell.

"It was Nub got me out of the house," he began, "just as he'd got me in. I think he probably believed Cesaria was going to kill me-"

"She wouldn't have harmed you. Would she?"

"In one of her furies, anything was possible. She'd made me, after all; I'm sure she believed she was quite within her rights as a mother to unmake me again. But she didn't get the chance.

Marietta distracted her, and Nickelberry spirited me away. I was delirious most of the time but I remember that night-oh my G.o.d, how I remember it-stumbling through the swamp, thinking every sound we heard behind us was her coming after us."

"What about Nickelberry-the things he'd seen. How did he deal with that?"

"Oh Nub was a cool one. It was all too much for Charles, but Nub... I don't know, he just took everything in his stride. And he saw power. That was the crux of it. He saw power the like of which he'd never seen before, and he knew that if he had me, he had a piece of that power. He wasn't helping me out of Christian charity. He'd lived the life of an underdog. He'd been brought up with nothing. He'd come out of the war with nothing. But now he had me. My life was in his hands, and he wasn't going to let it slip away."

"Did you talk about what he'd seen?"

"Later. But not for many weeks. I was too sick. He'd brought out medicines that my sister Zabrina had given him, and he promised me that he'd stay with me and make me well."

"What did he want in exchange?""At the time, nothing. We made our way out to the sh.o.r.e, and we lived there in the dunes for a few weeks. n.o.body came there; we were quite safe from discovery. He made a shelter for us, and I lay in it, listening to the sea, slowly getting well. He was my nurse, he was my comforter; he fed me, he bathed me, he listened to me rave in my fevers. He went out and brought back food. G.o.d knows where he got it. What he did to get it. His only concern was to make me well. I know it may sound perverse, but when I look back on that time, I think of it more fondly than any of my time in Charleston. I felt this great weight off me. Like I'd been cured of some sickness. I'd had every excess known to man. I'd made love to so many bodies, had so much beauty in my hands.

I'd been so high I thought I'd never come down. And now it was all over. I was living out under the stars with nothing to call my own, just the sea, and time to think. That's when I first began to dream of building myself a boat and sailing away...

"Then one day Nub started talking about his own dreams. And I realized it wasn't going to be so easy. He had a friend in me; that's what he believed at least. We were going to work together, when I was well.

""This is the perfect time to start over,' he said to me. 'If we work together we could make a fortune out there.'"

"What did you say to him?"

"I told him I didn't want to have anything more to do with people. I'd had my fill of them. I told him about my dream of building a boat and sailing away.

"I expected him to laugh. But he didn't. In fact he said he thought it was a very good idea. But then he said: 'You can't just sail away and forget what we've been through together. You owe me something.'

"And of course he was right. He'd risked his life for me in Charleston, shooting the Morrow brothers. He'd risked his life getting me out of L'Enfant. Lord knows, he'd seen things that would have driven lesser men mad, because of me. And then, when we'd reached the sh.o.r.e he'd tended to me night and day. Without him and Zabrina's poultices I would have been disfigured; maybe died. Of course I owed him. There was no question about it.

"So I asked him what he wanted from me. And he had a very simple answer: he wanted me to help make him rich. The way he saw it there were opportunities to make fortunes out there.