Galilee (77 page)

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 prickled; 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. Not simply resigned; happy at its imminence. But Cesaria had changed all that. She'd given him hope, damn 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 toward 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 passage. 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 any moment 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! WAIT 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.

T
here 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 was still on their faces.

“Eddie!” she said brightly. “We were just coming to say hello.”

“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 scrap 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 buttermilk, 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 shoulders. “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 their 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.

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 the dense 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?”

I brought out the Griswold and Gunnison revolver. He trained the flashlight upon it.

“Lordie,” he said. “That's an antique. Is it safe to use?”

“Luman told me it was fine.”

“I hope to God he knows what he's talking about.”

I could see the expression on Dwight's face from the light splashing up from our pale hands, and it was plain he was just as unnerved by the atmosphere as I was. I felt more than a little guilty. I'd instigated this adventure, after all.

“Why don't you give me the flashlight?” I said. “I'll lead on.”

He made no objection to this. I took the flashlight off him, trained it on the bushes ahead, and we began our trek afresh.

We didn't have much farther to go. Ten yards on and we cleared the shrubbery: the stables were fifty yards from us, their pale stone visible even in the murk. As I've pointed out before, the place is remarkable; an elegant building of some two thousand square feet, which might be mistaken for a classical temple, with its modest pillows and portico (which is decorated, though we couldn't see it in the gloom, with a frieze of riders and wild horses). In its glory days it was an airy, sunlit place, filled with the happy din of animals. Now, as we came into its shadow, it seemed like one immense tomb.

We halted in front of it. I splashed the flashlight beam over the enormous doors, which were open. The light barely penetrated beyond the threshold.

“Marietta?” I said. (I wanted to shout, but I was a little afraid of what forces I might disturb if I did so.)

There was no answer at first; I called again, thinking if she didn't answer on the third summons we could reasonably assume she wasn't there, and retreat. But I got my answer. There was the sound of somebody moving inside the temple, followed by a bleary
who is it?
Reassured by the sound of Marietta's voice, I stepped over the threshold.

Even after all these years, the stables still smelled of their tremendous occupants: the ripe scent of horse sweat and horseflesh and horse dung. There had been such life here; such energies contained in stamping vessels of muscle and mane.