Canaan's Tongue (35 page)

A Single Breath.

VIRGIL TURNS AND GOES, says Clementine.

A look of disgust is on his face, as I’d meant there to be. A few breaths later he is down the stairs and gone. Only Delamare is left, and he’s nearly fevered under. I’ll serve as sole witness, then, to my own passing. As the R—— promised that I would.

A sound carries in from the hall—: a rasping. Parson is there in the doorway, looking down at Delamare. Virgil’s foot-falls sound on the verandah. He’s away, then. Gone out of the house. As the R—— promised he would be. Parson looks down at Delamare, waiting on some sign. I’m still shivering from my fit. But Virgil is gone. It’s important that he be away, I said. Let him be gone when the R—— comes down.

Promise me that, Parson. Will you promise me?

The room goes quiet as a church. Nobody breathes. Parson keeps his eyes on Delamare. What’s he waiting on? I wonder. Maybe Delamare needs to be gone, as well, for the wedding to begin.

Another while goes by. I begin to ask myself if now is not the Time. I stir on the floor and make a wondering sound.

Parson tilts his head toward me. He’s not surprised to see me crouched at Delamare’s bed-side. He’s pleased to see me there.

Get up, Clementine, he says.

I do. Parson stands before me now, or I stand before him. He brings a hand to my face and opens my mouth with two hooked fingers. He lets them rest atop my tongue. He takes a gentle hold of it.

Breathe, he says to me. He says it kindly.

The feeling is like when my Cecilia came, but back-to-front, and quicker. The pain comes sharp, then softens. I expect the change will come up through my belly but—!

But when it comes it steals in through my open mouth. One lonely breath, sucked quiet from day-light, that fills me like a bottle. A ravenous breath, and cruel. As careless of my fears and wants as the world outside my body is. The breath suckles my body, and my body suckles it in turn. The knowledge comes upon me in a swift and certain piercing—:

I’ve just gotten religion.

The breath trains itself upwards and outwards in every direction like a clambering vine. My bones and blood have nothing more to offer it—; neither does my name.

You may breathe out, Parson says.

I let a small breath loose.

I’M SENT OUT OF MYSELF on that last sigh. I fall straight down from my mouth and scatter like a cup of flour across the floor. My body has no further use for me. Neither does Parson. Neither does this room.

In the space of an instant I’m gone from all three.

I billow upwards through the rib-cage of the house, along the gaps between lath and plaster-work, through the air trapped between the floors, trellising playfully along the beams, running up and over the attic steps—; past Parson’s attic with its collection of jars and parchments, round the beveled eaves and gables, off the peaked roof at last and into the violet evening air. It took one breath—: one only. Parson raised two fingers and took my tongue between them. No secret is my secret now, but I might savor that one for a spell. Or I might tell it to Virgil.

Virgil!

I see Virgil below me, crossing the red clay park. I’ll follow him a ways. All it took was one breath! No more than that. One coin-purse’sworth of air.

Virgil moves with purpose-minded steps. He’s making for the tobacco-shed—; he drags a spade behind him. His head is bent low and his shoulders are set straight and stiff. He walks as though he expects someone to stop him. All of us, perhaps.

In fact he is no danger to anyone—: of course he does not know this. He believes the ball he’s set to rolling can be stopped. The ball that by now is become a boulder, a mud-slide, a cliff tumbling into the sea. The event he fears has long since come to pass. Its shadow has a greater weight than he has.

He arrives at the newest of Dodds’ holes. He’s amazed to find it already filled with dirt. Who is buried there? he wonders. He stares at it awhile, runs a hand over his face, mutters to himself. The soil is damp and rich, brought to the grave from elsewhere. He takes up the spade, glances back toward the house, and commences to dig.

The digging is easy—: the soil has not yet settled. Nothing resists his spade. He’s frightened now, frightened of what he might uncover, and his digging gets wilder and clumsier with each spadeful. He’s soon past the depth of burying, down in the wet, stubborn clay, fashioning a red sarcophagus for himself. And still he keeps on, hacking away as though the ground itself were between him and some deeper-buried thing, something ancient and indifferent to his fate. Finally he stops, defeated by his own resolve. He looks down into the empty, man-shaped hole.

One day, my son, he murmurs. All that you see before you will be yours.

He stands there a moment longer, mustering his breath. Then he takes up the spade and goes slowly and deliberately from one hole to the next. Some he clears to the red clay bottom—; some he takes down only a few feet. None hold anything but coffee-colored dirt, so fine that it looks sifted through a bed-sheet. At the last of the eight holes, the one in the orchard, he sinks wearily to his knees. It’s as empty as all the others, filled in carelessly, hurriedly, a theater-prop whose usefulness is past. He lies down mutely in the grass.

Now he begins to see the swamp belief has led him into. The events since Harvey’s death revolve in a wheel of transparent fire before his eyes, but try as he might to take hold of the wheel, to arrest its spin, his dirt-caked fingers find no purchase. The empty graves have bewildered him completely. Harvey’s letter, the
sephiroth,
even the name “Canaan’s tongue” seem less like clues to a great riddle, suddenly, than the punch-line to a joke. Tears marshal in his eyes.

Poor halved-and-quartered Virgil. Have you never once done a thing, looked upon your work, and been convinced of it? The fault lies in your mulatto self. The Jewish half of your brain flourished under the Trade—; the Protestant saw no fun in it at all. The Jew in you revolted at the abominations it was forced to witness—; the Protestant looked on in casual contempt. Was it this back-and-forth that made you question each idea, each urge, each desire you ever harbored? Was it this that made you late at every turn?

No. You harnessed yourself to a man whose every action was a certainty. Your R—— was nothing if not a perfect whole. Your R—— was consummate, indivisible. You paid tribute to him for seven years—; you learned certainty from him, or so you thought. And finally, by way of proof, you drove a sliver of pier-glass through his neck.

But you were late again, Virgil. You only murdered him by half.

You’re lying sideways in the grass, staring ahead of you at nothing, when a figure appears at the edge the woods. The sight clears your brain completely, even of thoughts of the R——. You welcome the sight, ill-omened though it is, for you know straight-away what it means. At long last something has happened that you can understand.

The figure is a field scout for the Union Army. He’s dressed in a sea-blue uniform, neat and well-tailored, and when he comes level with the house he looks back over his shoulder, clear-eyed and expectant as a faun. You understand his look at once—: there is a company of infantry not a quarter-mile behind him. That gives you perhaps ten minutes, certainly no more, to return to the house and get Clementine away. This is your only thought, and it arrives in your mind luminous and fully formed. To your great relief you find that you are fatally determined. This once, this last time, you will not be late.

The scout moves behind the first of the out-buildings, advancing playfully, his rifle cradled loosely in his arms. You guess from his stride that he is very young. As soon as he’s out of view you fall headlong into running.

As you run you curse your muddle-headedness of a few instants before. You have no pistol, no rifle, not even a scrap of pier-glass. But the scout has not yet seen you, and the scout is young and full of careless pride. You smile to yourself. That is worth more than a pistol.

You run to a stand of choke-cherry-bushes mid-way across the lawn. A moment goes by, then another. The scout comes into view between the stable and the kitchens. You neither move nor close your eyes nor draw a breath. The scout’s face is fixed retriever-like on the house. He’s perhaps ten yards away—: a pebble’s toss. You have just enough time to see the Colt in his left hand before he passes out of sight.

Left-handed, you think, dashing forward. Bad luck. The scout is behind the kitchens, the last point of shelter before the house. You reach the kitchens yourself and lay your hands against the brick. The solidity of the wall is a balm to you. You rest your face against it. The weight of the thing you are about to do is on you now and you feel frail and close to death.

There are windows set into the wall, six in number, with an unhindered view through the kitchens. You’re mindful of them as you scuttle forward. As you draw nearer to the scout, you think of him for the first time as a reasoning creature. Is he scouting a route, or a billeting-place? Is he searching for Foster? Will he steal back to camp after circling the house, or will he go inside? You remind yourself that there is no camp, only a power of soldiers on the march. You glance across the lawn at Geburah. It looks benevolent and mild. Its windows are blank and shutterless, oil-colored where they catch the light. No military force is stationed there—; that much is clear. In fact it shows no sign of life at all.

“Damn!” the scout says suddenly. “Hell and damnation!”

He’s stumbled over something—: a loose brick, perhaps, or a splinter of crockery. He’s no more than three paces off, just around the corner. His voice quiets somewhat but you can still hear him clearly, muttering feverish encouragements to himself. You were wrong to think of him as prideful. He can’t be more than sixteen years of age.

Being Virgil Ball, being set against yourself, you feel an urge to embrace the scout when he comes round the corner—: to reassure him, to relieve him politely of his gun, to send him sternly but affectionately about his business. He’s as skittish as you are, as easily bewildered, as anxious to please his betters. You can hear it in his muttering, in his cursing, even in the way he breathes. You feel accountable for the scout, indulgent toward him, concerned about his future and his health. And at the same time you know that you will kill him if you can.

The muttering gets shriller now, angrier, more urgent. In a matter of seconds it will carry the scout forward. Your grip on the wall tightens, then goes tighter still, as though you mean to bring it down on top of you. All at once a brick under your right hand comes away, smoothly and without the slightest noise, as though it were eager to be of service. You gaze down at it in wonderment. For a moment it’s agreeably heavy in your hand, warm and undeniable and rough, and the next it has dropped the scout to the ground with a sound like wet plaster dropping off a beam. His eyes roll upward, then cross, as if a wasp had landed on his brow. He lies quite still. You bend down, thinking to question him, perhaps, or even to beg his pardon. But his face has gone vacant as a cow’s.

You leave the scout where he lies and walk back to the house. The verandah door is three-quarters open, exactly as you left it. You cover your dead eye, as if to ward off further visions, then slip inside.

Good-bye to you now, Virgil Ball. The house has let go of me and I would not return there. An answer of a kind awaits you to the mystery you cherish, the one that sprang god-like from your brow, fully-grown and hungry. I’m high in the air already, curling heavenwards like smoke. Parting from me is as simple as taking in a breath.

The Redeemer’s Voice.

A SMELL HANGS IN THE ROOM, says Delamare.

When Virgil comes back he doesn’t see that anything has changed. I don’t see it either. My eyes are closed, shut tight. But I can hear him, him and the others, and picture the abomination clear. My eyes are shut because I don’t have need of them any longer. The smell is enough to send me to my grave.

Virgil comes into the room, into the smell of it, like a worm crawling into a cankered fruit. He’ll close his own eyes soon enough.

He’s distracted, short of breath, and sees nothing out of place. Parson is there but Virgil steps right past him. “They’ve finally come,” he says. “I caught a scout. I killed him.”

Nobody breathes.

“I’m taking you,” he says. “Get up.”

He says these five words, gentle as a thrush, to Clementine’s body in the middle of the floor.

Clementine moves. I don’t need to see it. Clementine’s head turns creakingly on her neck. Virgil stops short. His lips open and flutter. Now he sees it clear.

“What have you done to her?” he says.

Parson hums and clucks.

“Clem!” says Virgil. “Its time for us to go, Clem! Do you hear? There’s a company of infantry a quarter-mile—”

Her mouth snaps open.

“You should have seen them
coming
! Shouldn’t you, Kansas? With your magical, fantastical,
virginal
white eye!”

Her mouth snaps shut. Her teeth click together like carpet-tacks.

The voice that spoke was the Redeemer’s.

VII

You ask my name, and how my trade is ply’d—;
My trade is aulder than the sea is wyde.

—Thomas Cowpers

Belief.

BELIEF IS A RIVER, Virgil says.

Belief is a river and it has drowned me. I was swept up like a bird’s-nest in its rushing gray immensity. I vanished into it like a house-boat into a squall.

If I’d truly had a gift, the gift of foretelling, the gift of mystic sight, or even—most impossibly—the gift of natural courage, might I have changed the course of this river? Might it have shifted its banks slightly, carved itself a new chute, and simply passed us by?

No. It never would have passed us by. There is no changing the course of this river. There is no overcoming its current and its weight. This river has no beginning and no end—; it seems, to those swept up in it, to cover the entire world. It seems as final as the sea.

But the river has limits. It has banks. Escape from the river is possible.

To escape I had only to stop believing. I had only to stop believing, but belief is my great and only gift. Morelle said my dead eye was charmed and I believed him, deferred to him, though the whole of my conviction spoke against it. Barker told me in Memphis about the deathlessness of the Trade and I believed in that, as well. I believed Clem’s lies and Asa Trist’s delusions and Dodds’ mush-mouthed testimonials and the Colonel’s half-truths. I believed each fiction Parson fed me, till I saw ghosts in every wrinkle of his skirts. Belief was poured into me like water into a weir.

To escape I had only to unlearn what Parson had taught me, what Morelle had taught me, what the Trade itself had taught me to believe. That was all—; but it was inconceivable. My visions, my theories, even my doubts sprang from my belief. My suspicion of Parson—justified though it was—was born of the tricks he played, the illusions he fashioned, the burlesques he put on for our benefit. The more proof I gathered, the more my fear of Parson grew. Such is the nature of enchantment. I had only to doubt him—to say “nay” just once, as Harvey put it in his letter—to be immune to all his witchery. But my faith in Parson had long since grown unshakeable.

I’d just killed a man for him—throttled Foster in the cellar, proved the full measure of my faith—and I must have seemed entirely his lamb, to use as he saw fit. But Parson grew careless in his strength. A final test was put before me. He saw fit—perhaps as a punishment, perhaps simply on a whim—to make me choose between myself and Clementine.

A woman now stands crookedly before me. If I’m to trust my eyes, the woman is Clem, though hideously altered. If I’m to believe my visions, my theories, everything I’ve puzzled out since Harvey’s murder, then the woman is none other than the Redeemer. The Redeemer has been poured into her the same way belief was channeled into me—: violently, mercilessly, wholly. And I’ve lost my Clementine forever.

To believe anything else is to doubt my own existence—; to disbelieve in Virgil Ball as a sane man, as a man of understanding, as anything but a paper doll. Parson has me stuffed and mounted. But success has made him careless, as I’ve said. He’s forgotten something even Kennedy could have told him. He’s forgotten my most sovereign trait, the bed-rock of my character, the secret of my advancement in the Trade—:

I feel no great love for Virgil Ball.

The woman takes a step toward me, hesitates, then lets out a cautious breath. Her face is heavier, slacker, not its earlier shape at all. She teeters subtly on her heels. The thing inside her is uneasy in its new body, unsure of where it ends.

Parson comes forward, cock-sure as a stable-hand, to assist her.

“Tell Virgil about the Trade,” he says, smoothing back her hair.

I never saw Parson, never recognized him for what he was, until this day and hour. Never before has he been so vivid, so convincing, so exquisitely detailed. Now I see how many of Morelle’s airs and affectations—even his peculiarities of speech—were Parson’s own. How could I have mistaken Thaddeus Morelle, even for an instant, for the architect and master of the Trade?

The Trade would have found its way without Morelle. It would have flourished without Kennedy, without Harvey, certainly without Virgil Ball—; without Parson, however, it would never have drawn breath. It was Parson who sheltered it, Parson who shaped it, Parson who gave it suck. Morelle was useful to him, of course, perhaps even beloved. But when Morelle was taken from him—cruelly and prematurely taken—Parson simply found himself another. She stands before me now.

The woman lifts her arms and gathers in a breath, stuffing it into her mouth like spun-sugar at a fair. I begin to see the Redeemer in her face and force my sight away. Delamare lies splayed across the bed, his fists opening and closing, his chest arched off the pallet as though the weight of the sheets might crush him. His eyes are shut but I know him to be listening. For some reason this emboldens me.

Parson has misjudged me. Belief is nothing to me now. I choose Clementine, not Virgil. I have only to take her hand in mine, to depart this house—this revival tent, this medicine-show, this cabinet of horrors—and leave Parson and his witchery to the wolves. I have only to take hold of Clem’s hand and away.

“I don’t believe in you,” I say, stepping toward her.

Parson kisses her on the cheek. “
Tell
him, dearest.”

IN AN EAGER, GRACELESS VOICE, a voice still strange to the mouth that shapes it, the woman begins our lesson. Her voice is a river, a hold full of slaves, a high attic window. Her voice is an education. Bright reels of time unspool as I listen, hang between us in the air, then plait together into history. Whole ages pass in a single turn of phrase. The voice is both Clem’s and the Redeemer’s and I have no defense against it. The lesson is one I’ve heard before—many times, in fact—but have always failed to master.

The lesson is called “The Future.”

The future is made of
passings,
she explains. The passing of slavery, the passing of the Confederacy, the passing of the South. The passing of proclamations, of reconstructions, of humiliations run through centuries. The Trade, however, will not pass. A newer, more resilient strain will issue from the old, fashioned entirely out of breath. Its transparency will be its shelter. It will pass unnoticed, a low and lifelong fever, feeding temperately on its host. “The country itself will have this fever, Virgil.” She trembles at the beauty of this idea. “The country
itself
will keep it fed!”

She tells me more, far more than this in her euphoria and her spite, and Parson lets her rave, knowing that she grows stronger with each breath she draws. I’m given to see, as if through leaded glass, a future in which the Trade has been mistaken for natural law. Canaan’s tongue will be spoken by whores and archbishops, sales-clerks and senators alike. The life of the elect will be the
only
life, she tells me. Their law the only law. Their Trade the only—

“You’re proud of your handiwork, I suppose,” I say to Parson, cutting the lesson short.

Parson grants me an indulgent smile. “I am, Virgil. Aren’t you proud of her?”

I shake my head.

“That hardly matters. She wasn’t fashioned to amuse
you,
google-eye.”

I study Parson for a moment—: his hands, his mouth, his perfectly opaque gray eyes. Something’s hidden just behind them.

“I think she was,” I say.

“She was
fashioned
—with no small amount of care—as the vessel for the Redeemer’s wandering spirit.” Parson toys, as he speaks, with the woman’s filthy collar. “I thought you understood that much.”

Escape from the river is possible.

“No,” I say. “There is no Redeemer, Parson—; Delamare and I snuffed his candle. I took a piece of pier-glass—”

“And yet, you
can’t
snuff the Redeemer’s candle, as you see.” Parson clucks contentedly. “The Redeemer stands before you, hale and full of fire.”

I look hard at the woman now, dreading what I’ll find—; but the illusion has passed away like winter steam. I see nothing but an empty body.

“You might as well have poured the Trade into a paper sack,” I say.

A change has taken place in me—a small but indefatigable change— and Parson knows it. The smile is still fixed on his face, but the naturalness has gone out of it like water from a sponge. We stand facing one another like book-ends, a column of dead air pressed between us. Only Clem’s shallow breathing cleaves the quiet.
Her
breathing—; not anybody else’s. I don’t look toward her yet. I keep my eyes on Parson. To my great satisfaction his face begins to twitch.

“You’ve been a delightful under-study, Mr. Ball. A proper little bumbler. But that was your
part,
after all, in our Punch-and-Judy show.” His grip on Clem’s shoulder tightens. “Don’t try to write yourself another.”

“I’m not writing any part,” I say quietly. “Your under-study is leaving the theater, Parson. And he’s taking your Judy with him.”

So saying, I take Clem lightly by the hand.

As soon as I touch her the floor drops out from under me and a number of things happen all at once. Parson and Clem start hissing like tea-kettles, Delamare thrashes in his corner like a bull at stud, and my vision is flooded by a host of shapes, so many the room is all but set afire. I don’t let any of this unsteady me, however. I’ve been moving toward this moment since the night of Harvey’s death, since my arrival in this hell-hole, since my earliest apprenticeship to the Trade. Not toward the discovery of Harvey’s killer, not toward an answer to Parson’s riddles, not even toward Morelle’s murder—; only toward this moment. My investigation failed because I had no idea what I was after. I found answers wherever I looked, all of them to questions that I hadn’t dreamt of asking. Now, at long last, I’ve hit upon my question—: I have only one, it seems. And it carries its answer within it, savory and chaste, like a peanut in its shell.

What is there to keep me in this house?

My vision clears. No more than a few seconds can have passed. Delamare is still splayed across the bed, but he is gripping his Colt Peacemaker now and his eyes are wide and blood-shot. Parson is unchanged, studying me through slitted eyes as though I were a sparrow-hawk he’d previously mistaken for a sparrow. Clem is still breathing in short, brittle gasps. Her hand is warm and spirited in mine.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Parson,” I say, passing an arm around Clem’s waist. “I don’t feel the need for a Redeemer any longer.”

“
Back,
Virgil! Step away from it!”

Delamare’s voice, quavering and wild. He’s reached his limit sooner than I’d reckoned. He’ll be wanting a clearer shot at Parson—; I don’t blame him in the slightest. I bow to him and step aside, drawing Clem along with me. I shepherd her gently toward the open door. Parson hisses and rattles, cursing us all, but his voice barely cuts the air. His outline’s gone watery, as I thought it might. He’s a jumble of color, no more than that—: a memory, a child’s fable, a stray beam of light in an empty room.

Clem grows more Clem-like with each step we take. Her body, formerly so rigid, now bends willingly to mine. As we reach the door it occurs to me that I have won. I allow my eyes to fall briefly closed, then break into a helpless grin, wide as a revivalist’s bonnet. No more Trade. No more shadow-puppetry. No more visions. Clem’s body is soft and undeniable against my own. Tentatively, shyly, my eyes come open that I might see her. There she is.

A black globe, spinning silently, crosses my sight from right to left.

“B—A—L—L,” Parson spells out with his mouth.

A sound is heard. The report of a gun, miles away but fast approaching, overtaken as it comes by its own echo. An instant later it arrives. Clem is torn away as if by a rider on horse-back and hurled against the wall. She falls to the floor flutteringly, like an empty dress. Parson is screeching and thrashing behind me but I can’t hear him for the echo. It’s the echo of the echo that I’m hearing now. I stand as quiet as an engraving, enraptured by my freedom from the Trade, by my new and perfect knowledge, and by the warmth—already dwindling— of Clem’s tender body against my own.

DELAMARE SITS BOLT UPRIGHT on the bed, staring hungrily at Parson. The Peacemaker is unwavering in his right hand. The sight of him, of Parson beating his face and keening, and of the body, not even Clem’s any longer, heaped against the base-board, is so very strange that it takes me a spell of time—perhaps a single breath, perhaps a score—to understand that I’ve been shot as well. There is only sight at first—: the echo still holds everything suspended within it, coldly and transparently, like bubbles in a pane of glass. My hand when it comes away from my shirt-front glistens with blood and bile and a clot of hard, pearly matter that I can’t quite identify.

Perhaps it’s the last crumb of my belief.

As yet I feel nothing but a round, polished coolness, as though a dinner-plate had been pressed against my ribs. Perhaps my face will soon take on that knowing, self-contented look I saw on Goodman Harvey, that morning back at the beginning of the end. I shouldn’t wonder if it did.

The first echo—the bright one—must have been the shot that hit me. Delamare fired twice. I nod to myself, bring both hands up to my belly, then fall twitchingly to the floor.

“Nobody leaves this room,” says Delamare.

In spite of the echo I hear those four words plain as day.