Sophie and the Rising Sun (23 page)
Read Sophie and the Rising Sun Online
Authors: Augusta Trobaugh
Tags: #Romance, #Literary, #General, #Historical, #Fiction
But when he was lost, that sad, sweet light began to grow, fueled by her own deepest dreams. Until, at last, the glowing image of her imaginary lover had stood in her full sunshine. And had stayed there, young and beautiful and alive and in love with her. For over thirty years.
A thing to keep forever. Like sad little mummy-birds in a box on the pantry shelf.
Dear Lord!
Miss Anne said:
When Big Sally came back, she came right into my room and sat down on the side of my bed.
“It’s all taken care of. You don’t need to worry about it,” she said.
“But taken care of, how?” I asked, because I was really used to knowing what was going on. Certainly, I trusted Big Sally—I’d better trust her, what with the secret I’d blubbered out to her. But I still wanted to know.
But she just looked at me and smiled. Why, I’d never seen her smile before in her whole life. Never even heard of such a thing. Her smiling.
Looked just like a big old sphinx, she did.
For hours, Mr. Oto stayed under the cot, just as silent as a ghost. No longer out of fear—for his heart had stopped its frantic thudding when he knew that Miss Ruth was looking at his painting of Sophie as the Crane-Wife. Loathing, then, had replaced his initial fear. And grief. So that, even after she was gone for a long time, he was immobilized by the most incredible exhaustion he had ever felt. Too tired, almost, to wonder if she would figure everything out about him.
When, finally, he felt some semblance of his strength returning, he came out from under the cot and the first thing he did was to look at the painting. Look at Sophie sitting in the chair, with the sunlight on her pale arms and the hat shading her face. The loose tendrils of hair by her cheek. Behind her, the distinctly sensual figure of the great crane, with the wing-feathers somehow one with her arms. The great, purple eyes filled with passion.
But what he also saw in the painting—that which no one else would be able to see—was Sophie’s mind focused on that particular sky over where the ocean and the river came together. The place of no edges. Of oneness. Of infinity.
He kneeled down on the floor before the painting, sat back on his heels, and continued to gaze at it—meditating over it—for the whole remainder of the long afternoon. Because in the moment he saw it again, he resolved that he would look at it as long as he pleased. That he would not move. Not hide. No matter who came— even if it was Miss Ruth. He would not move.
He never stirred until the long, slanted fingers of sunlight came beneath the bottom of the torn blanket over the window. The wind rising— he could tell from the whisperings of it in the tall Australian pines. And an aroma in the breeze that crept around the edges of the blanket. The aroma of moisture and warm, Gulf air. A storm, perhaps.
Finally then, he stood and bowed deeply to the painting once again before he began moving quietly and deliberately about the cabin—gathering and folding the sheets from the cot, removing the towel from where it hung on a nail near the door, taking the remaining cans of food and the last bottle of water, and carrying everything out into the back of the cabin. Into the deepness of dusk beneath the great trees. There, he dug a large hole with his hands in the soft, sandy soil and placed those things in it. And covered them up most carefully, being sure to brush a little pine straw and a few bits of dried grass over the place where he had dug.
The cabin now was a vacant stage—where the happiest hours of his long life had played themselves out. The painting, alone, remained, still resting on the wooden box against the wall.
He took it into his hands with great reverence and slowly rolled one side of it inward until he painting was no longer a painting, but a cylinder of white paper. This, he tucked carefully into his belt and then looked around the cabin once more before he lifted the blanket for the last time, went out into the yard, and walked off toward the ocean through the ever-deepening dusk.
By the time he was close to the shore, the darkness was complete and the wind had begun whipping in hot, moist gusts that fluttered his trouser legs and shirtsleeves. As he came up over the last sand dune, the wind drove the sharp and stinging sand right into his face, so that he found himself squinting painfully at an entirely different ocean from the one where he and Sophie had been together, the night before.
For in place of that dark expanse of rolling water glistening in the moonlight, this ocean was glowing with ghostly froth—like a wild, living thing that was trying to escape from its confines. Yesterday’s long, easy waves that lifted slowly to curl over into creamy froth upon the sand were replaced by choppy, black wavelets whose foaming tops were shaved off by the wind and hurled through the air.
Leaning against the wind, he walked across the short expanse of beach and into the churning water, where he removed the rolled painting from his belt.
“I give to you, my Crane-Wife, the great dream of your spirit. I return you to the ocean and the river. No one will ever gaze upon you with irreverence, and I will love you forever.’’
He lowered the painting reverently into the black, churning water, and held it under while the waves battered against his knees and splashed salt water into his eyes—holding it until he felt the paper growing heavy in his hands, absorbing the ocean water. The current lifted it from his loosened fingers and pulled it away. It reappeared briefly in the uppermost portion of yet another angry wave, sodden and undulating like a flounder, while the strong undertow tugged at his knees.
How easy it would be,
he thought. To
have the ocean take me also, here and now. Only a kneeling would do it.
But his knees did not bend. Because giving a painting to the ocean was easy. For the frothing waves would lift away the paint. So that if ever the paper washed upon some shore, it would be just that—paper. Not a painting.
But if he gave himself to that same ocean, and if his body later came ashore, he would still be recognized. Even in death, he would still incriminate Miss Anne. And Sophie. So he did not kneel.
My dear Sophie! If only you could have come to me on this night, I would never have let you go again.
Sophie went straight home
from the riverfront soon after Big Sally left, and when she was once more back in her own bedroom, she shed her clothes, glanced briefly in the mirror at herself, slipped on a cool, cotton wrapper and sat down at the dresser to decide exactly how to do what was to be done.
Beside her brush was the completely withered sprig of bougainvillea. She picked it up and studied it, turning the stem in her fingers until the movement of the sprig, reflected in the mirror, caught her eye.
She gazed at herself, as if her image would speak to her in silence. Say whatever it was she needed to hear. But the moment she saw her own face, she realized that what was gazing back at her was someone she hadn’t known before. Her face, but no longer familiar.
No longer grieving for... what?... Henry? Her own youth? The lost years?
No. This face bore no trace of sadness and very little of age, in fact. This face was vital and alive and with the heightened color of round cheeks glowing between deep green eyes and the white V of her skin at the neckline of the blue wrapper.
The slow, silent dance of the faded bougainvillea in the mirror, and watching in strange detachment as her hand came up slowly toward the neckline of the wrapper and hesitated only briefly before slipping it from the rounded shoulders. So that her pale body was, at last, revealed to her in the glass.
The breasts somewhat pendulous, and the neck slightly lined. But the face more alive and vibrant than it had ever been, even in her youth. The eyes smoldering with something unknown. She raised her arms, then crossed them behind her head, and gazed at herself for a very long time. Until her image lost its meaning, fragmented into a meaningless montage of brows and mouth and breasts and arms.
And it was taking very little for her to see the delicate feathers and the purple eyes of the great crane, right there in her mirror.
And what in it that happens between a man and a woman?
she wondered. W
hat secret things will I learn from loving a man who is real?
When the dusk was deepening
rapidly and the wind steadily rising, she finished packing the small suitcase—even though she knew that she would wait for full dark before she left. And as soon as she had closed the lid and snapped it shut, there was only one thing left for her to do before she would be free, at last. She went straight to the pantry, to where the familiar box sat alone on the bottom shelf, and she didn’t need to lift the lid to see the eyeless, mummified feather-creatures inside.
Silently, she carried the box—as light as if it were empty—out onto the back porch, where the increasing wind flung open the screen door, as if holding it open for her to pass through. Out into the yard to where the wind was blowing wildly—wind that ripped off the box lid, just as she tossed the mummified bodies into the air—wind that swept them away, as if they still could fly.
And at that very moment, there was a sudden flurry of live wings in the twilight backyard, where a flock of mourning doves lifted in one enormous and swift movement out of the swaying crepe myrtle tree, strong, white wings bearing them straight up and into the last light.
Beneath the sudden whirring of their wings, Sophie stood and watched where spirit-children shrieked and chased each other and took turns in the tire swing, laughing and pushing each other higher and higher into the twilight sky.
Grove! Wait for me! I’m coming!
In the small room
behind Miss Anne’s kitchen, Big Sally had gone to bed early. Lying awake and listening to the whine of the rising wind, she was startled a little when she heard the fronds of a cabbage-palm near her window flap-flapping against the glass.
Sophie?
No.
No one there.
Finally, in spite of the wind and the intermittent flapping of the palm fronds on the window, Big Sally felt herself drifting into that half-world between sleeping and waking.
Where she was a child again, wearing the red rag wrapped around her head. And Mama said, “You
take good care of the little ones, Sally. You hear?”
“Yes’m, Mama.”
And little Sophie there, too, in her dream. In a white pinafore, darting around the yard, laughing and squealing. The bright green eyes and the white arms. Like a little white egret.
It was Sophie’s turn to swing in the tire swing and Sally’s turn to push her. Higher and higher, up against the blue sky and the green leaves.
Fly, little white bird! Fly!
And the white wings reaching for the blue air and the strong downbeat flapping against the red rag wrapped around Sally’s head.
Flap-flap!
TAP-TAP.
Miss Anne said:
Big Sally went to bed early that night, but before she did, she brought me a cup of tea and my book and plumped up my pillows and smoothed my sheets. I thought of asking her once again to tell me how she’d “taken care of things,” but something about the broadness of her shoulders stopped the words before I could utter them.
And after all, I really didn’t have to ask. Quite obviously, she’d found Sophie, admonished her not to go to the cabin again, and explained to her about Ruth’s snooping.
Nothing so complicated about that. So I said good night to Sally, drank my tea, and then read myself to sleep.