Galilee (37 page)

Lush was an understatement. Off to the left of the highway, toward the island's interior, were fields of rich red earth and green sugar cane. Beyond them, velvety hills, rising in ambition as they receded, until they became steep peaks whose heights were draped with sumptuous cloud.

“The problem is that the little backroads just aren't being taken care of the way they should be,” Hornbeck was saying. “And there's a little tussle going on right now about who's actually responsible for the road to the house. The local council says it's really part of the property, and so I should be getting money from your people to get it fixed. But that's nonsense. It's public property. The council should be filling in the holes, not a private contractor.”

Rachel was only half-attending to this. The beauty of the fields and mountains—and on the other side of the highway, the blue, pounding ocean—had claimed her attentions.

“So this argument has been going on for two years,” Hornbeck went on. “Two years! And of course nothing's going to be done about the road until it's resolved. Which means it just deteriorates whenever there's rain. It's very frustrating so I apologize—”

“There's really no need . . .” Rachel said dreamily.

“—for the vehicle.”

“Really,” she said, “it's fine.”

“Well just as long as you understand. I don't want you thinking I'm neglecting my duties.”

“Hm?”

“When you see the road.”

She glanced at the man, and saw by his fretful demeanor, and the whiteness of his knuckles, that he was genuinely concerned that his job was in jeopardy. As far as he was concerned she was a visiting potentate; he was afraid of making a mistake.

“Don't worry, James. Do people call you James or Jim?”

“Usually Jimmy,” he said.

“You're English, yes?”

“I was born and raised in London. But then I came here. It'll be thirty years ago next November. And I said to myself: this is perfect. So I never went back.”

“And you still think it's perfect?”

“Sometimes I get a little stir-crazy,” Jimmy admitted. “But then you get a day like today and you think: where else would I want to be? I mean, look at it.”

Rachel looked back toward the mountains. The clouds had parted on the heights, and the sun was breaking through.

“Can you see the waterfalls?” Jimmy said. She could. Silvery threads of water plummeting down from cracks in the mountainside. “Up there's the wettest place on earth,” Jimmy informed her. “Mount Waialeale gets about forty feet of rain a year. It's raining right now.”

“Have you been up?”

“I've taken a helicopter trip once or twice. It's spectacular. If you like I'll organize a flight for you. One of my best friends runs a little operation down in Po'ipu. He and his brother-in-law pilot these little choppers.”

“I don't know that I trust helicopters.”

“It's really the best way to see the island. And if you ask Tom he'll take you out over the ocean whale-spotting.”

“Oh that I'd like to see.”

“You like whales?”

“I've never seen any up close.”

“I can arrange that too,” Jimmy said. “I can have a boat organized for you at a day's notice.”

“That's kind, Jimmy. Thank you.”

“No problem. That's what I'm here for. If there's anything you need, just ask.”

They were coming into a little town—Kapa'a, Jimmy informed her—where there were some regrettable signs of mainland influence. Beside the small stores of well-weathered clapboard stood the ubiquitous hamburger franchise, its gaud somewhat suppressed by island ordinance or corporate shame, but still ugly.

“There's a wonderful restaurant here in Kapa'a which is always booked up, but—”

“Let me guess. You have a friend—”

Jimmy laughed. “I do indeed. They always keep a prime table open each night, for special guests. Actually, I think your husband's stepmother invested some money in the place.”

“Loretta?”

“That's right.”

“When was she last here?”

“Oh . . . it must be ten years, maybe more.”

“Did she come with Cadmus?”

“No, no. On her own. She's quite a lady.”

“She is indeed.”

He looked over at Rachel. Clearly he had more to say on the subject, but was afraid to say anything out of place.

“Go on . . .” Rachel said.

“I was just thinking that . . . well, you're different from the other ladies I've met I mean, the other members of the family.”

“How so?”

“Well, you're just less . . . how should I put it?”

“Imperious.”

He chuckled. “Yes. That's good. Imperious. That's perfect.”

They had emerged from Kapa'a by now, and the road, which still hugged the coastline, became narrower and more serpentine. There was very little traffic. A few of the locals passed by in rusted trucks, there was a small group of bicyclists sweating on one of the inclines, and now and then they were overtaken by a slicker vehicle—tourists, Jimmy remarked, a little contemptuously. There were however several long stretches when they were the only travelers on the road.

Nor was there much evidence of a human presence beyond the highway. Occasionally there'd be a house visible between the trees, sometimes a church (most so small they could only have served a tiny congregation), and on the beaches a handful of fishermen.

“Is it always this quiet?” Rachel asked.

“No, it's off-season right now,” Jimmy said. “And we're only slowly recovering from the last hurricane. It closed a lot of the hotels and some of them still haven't reopened.”

“But they will?”

“Of course. You can't hold back the rule of Mammon for ever.”

“The rule of what?”

“Mammon. The demon of acquisitiveness? I mean commerce. People exploiting the island for profit.”

She looked back at the mountain, which in the ten minutes since she'd last glanced toward the interior had transformed yet again. “It seems such a pity,” she said, picturing the Hawaiian-shirted tourists she'd seen in Honolulu traipsing through this Eden, leaving trails of Coke cans and half-eaten hamburgers.

“Of course he wasn't always a demon,” Jimmy went on. “I think originally
he
was a
she:
Mammetun, the mother of desires. She's Sumer-Babylonian. And with a name like that she probably had a lot of breasts. It's the same root as mammary. And Mama, of course.” All this he said in an uninflected voice, almost as though he were talking to himself. “Don't mind me,” he said.

“No, it's interesting,” she said.

“I was a student of comparative religion in my younger days.”

“What made you study that?”

“Oh . . . I don't know. Mysteries, I suppose. Things I couldn't explain. There's a lot of that here.”

Rachel glanced again at the clouded mountains. “Maybe that's why it's so beautiful,” she said.

“Oh, I like that,” Jimmy murmured. “No beauty without mystery. I hadn't really thought about it that way before, but that's nice. Elegant.”

“I'm sorry?”

“The thought,” he said. “It's elegant.”

They drove on in silence for a time, while Rachel pondered the notion that a thought, of all things, could be elegant. It was a new idea for her. People were sometimes elegant, clothes could of course be elegant, even an age; but a thought? Her musings were interrupted by Jimmy.

“You see the cliff straight ahead of us? The house is half a mile from there.”

“Margie said it was right on the beach.”

“Fifty yards from the ocean, if that. You can practically fish from your bedroom window.”

Despite this promise the road now took them out of sight of the water, descending by a winding route to a bridge. They were now in the shadow of the crag which Jimmy had pointed out earlier, the origins of the river which the bridge spanned, a torrent of water that cascaded down the rock face above.

“Hang on,” Jimmy said, once they were over the bridge, “we're going on to that lousy road I was telling you about.”

Moments later they made a hard right, and just as Jimmy had warned, the road deteriorated rapidly, the hard asphalt of the highway replaced by a pitted, puddled track that wound back and forth between trees that had obviously not been trimmed for many years, their lower branches, heavy with blossom and foliage, brushing the top of Jimmy's vehicle.

“Watch out for the dog!” Rachel yelled over the din of the revved engine.

“I see him,” Jimmy said, and leaning out of the window, yelled at the yellow mutt, who continued to sit in the middle of the track until the last possible moment, when it lazily raised its flea-bitten rump and sauntered to safety.

There was other animal traffic on the track: a fine-looking cockerel strutted about while his wives pecked in the ruts of the road. This time Jimmy didn't need to yell. They were up in a flurry of aborted little flights, and into the dense foliage of what had once perhaps been hedgerows. Here and there, when there was a break in the greenery, she saw signs of habitation. A small house, in an advanced state of disrepair, a piece of farm machinery, rusted beyond reclamation, in a field that had mutinied many seasons before.

“Are there people living around here?”

“Very few,” he said. “There was a flood about four years ago. Terrible rains; disastrous. In maybe two or three hours the river washed out the bridge we crossed, and washed a lot of houses away at the same time. A few people came back to rebuild. But a lot more decided to go somewhere less risky.”

“Was anybody hurt?”

“Three people drowned, including a little kiddie. But the waters never came as far as the Geary house. So you're quite safe.”

During this conversation the track had deteriorated yet further, if that were possible, the thicket to the left and right so fecund it threatened to obliterate the track completely. Now the birds that rose before the vehicle were not wild chickens but species Rachel had never seen before, winged flashes of scarlet and iridescent blue.

“Almost there,” Jimmy promised, as the track threw the vehicle back and forth. “I hope you didn't pack any fine china.” There was one last kink in the rutted track, which Jimmy took a little too fast. The vehicle tipped sideways, and for a few moments it seemed they'd overturn. Rachel let out a little shout of alarm.

“Sorry,” Jimmy said. The vehicle righted itself with a thump and a squeak. He applied the brakes, and brought them to a halt perhaps ten or twelve yards from a pair of large wooden gates. “We're here,” he announced.

He turned off the engine, and there was a sudden flood of music from the birds in the trees and thicket, and from somewhere out of sight, the thump and draw of the ocean.

“Do you want to go in alone, or shall I show you around?”

“I wouldn't mind just a couple of minutes on my own,” she said.

“Of course,” he said. “Take your time. I'll just unload the baggage, and have a cigarette.”

She got out of the vehicle.

“I wouldn't mind one of those,” she said, as Jimmy lit up.

He proffered the packet. “I'm sorry, I should have offered. So few folks smoke these days.”

“I don't usually. But it's a special occasion.”

She took a cigarette. He lit it for her. She drew a lungful of tobacco smoke. It was the first cigarette she'd had in a while, and the rush made her feel pleasantly light-headed: a perfect state, in fact, to enter the house.

She went to the gate, stepping gingerly between the frogs squatting in the long, damp grass, and lifted the latch. The gate opened without her needing to push it. She glanced back at Hornbeck. He was sitting with his back to her, staring up at the sky. Comforted that he was as good as his word, and would not be interrupting her, she stepped through the gate and into the presence of the house.

I
t was not magnificent; not by any stretch of the imagination. It was a modest structure, built in the plantation style, a veranda running around it, shuttered windows and pale pink walls. For perhaps two-thirds of its length it was a single story, but at one end a second floor had been added, giving the whole structure a lopsided look. The tiles on this portion of the roof were ocher rather than reddish brown, as they were elsewhere, and the windows were mismatched, but none of this robbed the place of its charm. Quite the reverse. She was so used to environments that had been designed by protofascists, polished and grandiose, that it was a relief to discover the house was so quirky.

All of this would have been beguiling enough had it stood in isolation, but it did not. The house was entirely swathed in greenery and blossom. Giddy palms swayed languidly over its roof and vines crept over its veranda and along the eaves.

She lingered at the gate for a minute or so to take all this in. Then she took a last drag of the cigarette, put it out beneath her heel, and wandered up the front path to the door. Vivid green geckos darted ahead of her like a nervous welcoming committee, ushering her to the threshold.

She opened the front door. Before her was an extraordinary sight. The interior doors stood open, and by some conceit of the architect were so aligned that standing on the doorstep a visitor might see through the house and out the other side, as far as the glittering ocean. The rooms themselves were dark—especially by contrast with the sunny pathway—so for a few enchanted moments it seemed she was staring into a dark maze in which a sliver of sky and sea had been caught.

She paused there on the threshold to admire the illusion, then stepped inside. The impression she'd had from the exterior—that this was by no means as luxurious a property as the rest the Gearys owned—was quickly confirmed. The place smelt pleasantly musty; not the must of neglect, perhaps, but rather of walls dampened by the sea air, or by the humidity of the island. She wandered from room to room to get some general sense of the layout of the place. The house was furnished eclectically, almost as though it had been at some time a repository of items that had some sentimental attachment. None of it matched. Around the dining table—which was itself scored and nicked and stained—were five distinctively different wooden chairs, and one pair. In the sizable kitchen the pots and pans that hung overhead were refugees from a dozen mismatched sets. The cushions that were heaped in hedonistic excess on the sofa were similarly unlike. Only the pictures on the walls showed any sign of homogeny. By contrast with the austere modernist pieces Mitchell had chosen for Rachel's apartment, or the vast American West paintings Cadmus collected (he owned a Bierstadt the size of a wall), there were modest little watercolors and pencil sketches hung everywhere—all renderings of the island: bays and boats; studies of blossoms or of butterflies. On the stairs was a series of drawings of the house, which though unsigned and undated had obviously been made many years before: the paper was yellowed, the pencil marks fading.