The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (7 page)

spirits, which had been lagging these past several weeks. Christmas

away from home was most trying, and though John endeavored to

explain to me that I had a new home now, it only made matters

worse.

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That home is, of course, the grand house, and what pieces of

information we’ve obtained while away are encouraging indeed.

The walls are up, the roof going on. It is said to have thirty windows

on the front of the house alone. The glass is being ordered

for them now. I have continued to collect, starting in the Paci?c

Islands with lovely wood carvings, some coral and one enormous

?sh that John had taxidermied. Its species escapes me, though

indirectly he’s told me a dozen times as he loves telling this ?shing

story at nearly every dinner table we enjoy. I believe John

caught some two hundred ?sh during the course of our stay, and

with only this one to remember it by, he stretches the story a little

longer (the ?sh too!) each time he tells it.

But John started me thinking about the house, and now I ?nd

I am hard pressed to do otherwise. Planning for its decoration

and its completion consumes me. I bought a hundred yards of

silk for wall covering while in Siam; beige, and exquisitely woven.

Another hundred yards of a similar linen, also for wall covering.

(We skipped India because of the anticolonial uprisings there.)

John keeps encouraging me to “buy, buy, buy,” emphasizing the

enormity of our future home. To my great relief, the home itself

has drawn us close together again. We talk of it constantly, consulting

the plans, he inviting my opinion. I can actually see it

growing as we discuss it, as strange as that may sound. These

“visions” of mine seem a preternatural connection to the house

itself, effortlessly reaching across the thousands of miles of

ocean—a radio of the mind. (Radio has not yet reached Seattle,

but it was all the talk before we left.) I have kept the existence of

these “visions” to myself—John has no mind for any of it—while

all the time actually “seeing” the house grow behind the work of

the hundreds of men now on-site.

A most remarkable thing happened two days ago, worth sharing

here. In studying the plans with John, he was pointing out the

Breakfast Room, a well-intentioned space left of the Banquet

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Hall and below the Kitchen on our plans, and one obviously

thought up by a man. I’m annoyed with its placement, as its only

windows face west into the garden, and any woman knows that it is

the morning’s east light that so pleases the morning soul. John

argues that I may take my breakfast wherever it pleases me,

including the Parlor, which does, in fact, face east and south, but

with an uninspired view of the driveway. He reminds me that the

home will be staffed with over thirty, and that if I wish to have

breakfast in bed every day of my life, so be it. But he misses the

point, of course, of the aesthetics of the placement of the

Breakfast Room and my belief that it shall go virtually unused

because of it. No matter. What was astonishing was this: in the

course of our heated discussion, John pointed to a second of the

room’s windows in the plans. I told him no, that the window had

been lost, as the architect had only recently discovered a need to

relocate the pantry from north to south, to provide better access

to cold storage and the china storage in the basement below,

access to which was to the north of the Kitchen. He’d heard

nothing of this, he reminded me, even taking the time to sort

through his many telegraphs. But you see, I knew, quite clearly,

that this change had been made. I had “seen” the wall being

erected already, the bricks laid in place, the trowels tossing the

mortar. I knew, and no one had ever told me. When John

received a telegraph late that evening, he came to our rooms

somewhat ashen. He passed me the telegraph and said, “Explain

this, Ellen.”

“A premonition is all, my love.”

“A premonition?”

“Exactly so.”

“Concerning the house,” he said.

“This particular time, yes.”

“You’ve had others, then?”

“The world is opening up to me, dear husband, just as you

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said it would. This voyage of ours has already proved most . . .

illuminating. One might even say, enlightening.”

“And what else do you . . . ‘see,’ if I may ask.”

“You dare not ask, I would suggest.”

“Me? Is it ever me?” He looked nervous, visibly upset.

“And if it was?”

“I don’t believe in such rubbish.”

“Then you’ve nothing to worry about, dear soul.”

“Do not call me that.”

“I see you with women,” I answered. “Young women, barely

budding. I see you performing unspeakable acts with these dark

women with whom we’ve surrounded ourselves since we left

home.” I was crying now, but trying so hard not to. I’m sure I

must have looked the fool.

He blanched. “Ridiculous!” A hoarse, dry whisper that I fear

even he did not believe. Void of the usual ?are of temper, he left

our rooms in quietude.

To my surprise, he returned later, sober and unusually considerate

and polite. That night he was husband to me as gentle as

our wedding night. He luxuriated me in my own pleasures as he

has never done before, and later I heard him crying in his sleep.

It’s the heir, Dear Diary, the all-important heir. I am now the

vehicle through which to deliver him his lineage, and any other

will be bastard. (I fear we have left a string behind us on this trip

already!) He needs me in this endeavor, my willingness to take to

bed with him, or this dream of passing along his fortune will

never take light. It is this need that compels him to treat me with

respect and dignity, no matter what the truth of our union be. I

do believe I have struck the fear of God in him. But truth be

known, it is the Devil, for who else invoked in me such a lie as I

told him that night, having never had such visions of him with

others. Suspicions, to be sure. But brought forward as images, I

do believe that he brie?y saw them as well, reliving his unfaithful-

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ness, and that perhaps these memories, so vivid and so clear,

afforded him the opportunity to believe that I too had witnessed

his depraved acts. Am I to believe he simply invents these things

he puts me through when in bed with him? He learned them, of

course, and we both know it, and we also know that I am not that

teacher.

And so the little games we play continue. Acting out husband

and wife. Reviewing our grand house plans as if none’s-theworry.

Me, beginning to communicate with Sukeena and enjoying

her company so very much. He, taking off on his safaris for

days at a time and returning with guilt on his face and a fallen

impala under his arm. Me, with my visions. He, with his dreams.

And my womanhood the secret that holds the balance for both of

us. When my monthly issue does come, he shrinks into the bottle

and depression for days, only to return to try again, sometimes

tenderly, sometimes desperately. I am the key to his future happiness,

and he, in turn, is the key to mine. I am beginning to learn

the ways of marriage.

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15 may 1908—kenya, africa

I have not made entries in this personal chronicle for nearly a

month—three weeks and ?ve days, to be exact. I do so now, only

weakly, unable to hold this pen for long, I am afraid. I have been

unconscious for some of this time and delirious for the rest,

stricken with what our recently departed fellow travelers believed

was malaria. I have lost no fewer than ?fteen pounds—my rib cage

protrudes front and back like some of the native women in our

employ. I have suffered from fever for days at a time, a complete

loss of appetite, sweats and tremors. Only through the tender

care of Sukeena and her bitter teas and remedies she has fed me,

and my own endless prayers for recovery, have I survived. For

these four weeks I have never left the con?nes of my tent, quarantined

from all but the natives. Even John has avoided contact,

standing outside at the far end of my tent and talking to me

through a small triangle of light caused by a turned-up tent ?ap.

It is this isolation that has worn on me, driven me at times to the

very edge of my sanity. Only my rough conversations with

Sukeena, an awkward combination of words and gestures, have

maintained my link to this world. In my delirium I have traveled

to unthinkable places, at times believing it so real, only to have

Sukeena pull me back. I do believe that no less than three times I

was within a breath or two of death, hovering in a netherworld

where at once I felt both refreshed and fearful. This delicate contact

with what I perceive of as the other side has left me far less

apprehensive of my own demise, and yet with mixed opinion as to

whether I was in Heaven, or Hell, or Purgatory. What I know, and

know for certain, is that God saved my life, but that the Devil may

have bargained for my soul. The exact conversations escape me

now (though they were extremely clear at the time), but I know

for certain I made promises that perhaps I should not have made.

Sukeena, who has served me as both nursemaid and witch doc-

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tor, as sister and friend, has known the truth all along, that my

fevers and in?rmity resulted neither from the water nor from the

jungle insects that do infest this godless place. Instead my illness

was contracted by contact with my husband, for I am plagued by

an unmentionable disease carried by men and suffered by

women. The remedy for my af?iction is most unpleasant, though

as I understand it, is far less worse than it is, or will be, for John,

who has no doubt undergone, and will continue to undergo, a

series of injections to an area of the male body that is also

unmentionable.

This, in turn, explains John’s sweats of nearly six weeks ago, a

lingering illness that put him of foul mood, unable to walk, and

accounted for his sending for certain medications, of which I was

unaware until Sukeena recently informed me. His recovery, however,

appears to have gone much more quickly than my own, for

he has returned to hunt and safari these last three weeks while I

lay here in my tent. (I am told, again by Sukeena, that the reverse

is usually true—that women tend to suffer far less than men from

this horrible af?iction. What curse on me reversed these odds?)

Husband and wife have not spoken of this, nor will we ever.

Of this I am certain. Much have I cried and agonized over my

husband’s unfaithfulness, his failure to live up to the mutual

consent of our marriage vows and the lack of respect he has shown

me. Much have I now suffered for his pleasures, and I ache for a

way to return such shame and pain to him. It is the heir, of

course. To deny him the right to continue his line, but I cannot

throw myself into this cause with much heart, for I, too, would

welcome the distraction of children. And yet the thought of joining

him physically I ?nd so repugnant as to literally make me sick

to my stomach. I vomit if any such image enters my mind. I expel

it and swear it will never come to fruition. I have now lived the

error of forgiveness (for certainly I’ve known all along what he

was up to!). I will never fool myself again. He will be made to beg

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me. He will be made to cry. To pay, both ?nancially and emotionally,

for the trials he has put me through if he wishes to have

his heir. This inferno that has lived in my loins and in my head

these many weeks has taken root in my condemnation of my husband

and my determination for revenge. If it’s money that he

loves then I shall bleed him. This grand house of his will never be

complete. Construction will never stop. No expense will be

spared. He will watch as the frivolity of my mood directs the

depletion of his funds in whatever unnecessary and trivial manner

I can and do imagine. And he will be loath to stop it, to even try—

for my legs shall close upon his lineage forever, like a springed

trap.

The call for revenge drives me to take the soup Sukeena offers.

To allow my sweat-soaked bedsheets and nightgown to be

removed and replaced, rather than succumb to the fevers. To tolerate

the treatments Sukeena puts me through, at once both

painful and humiliating.

I will prevail to leave this tent, to face my husband across the

dinner tables erected beneath what appears to be a banyan tree. I

will look him in the eye and show him my resolve to right his

wrong. And he will know. He will wither under the power I have

gained both through my prayers (to both sides) and from my dear

friend, Sukeena. She has the power to heal, the power to connect

to the other side. Her dolls of black hardwood. Her musical

chants and infusions. In what my husband may only slowly come

to see, my illness has led to strength of mind, my suffering to