The Language of Paradise: A Novel (5 page)

The parson began in a benevolent mood. He preached briefly on God’s bounteous provision—“You who made your way here on foot no doubt beheld the lilies sprouting in our humble fields”—before veering into a rebuke of those misguided Boston preachers who, in addition to offering their parishioners the sop of universal salvation, had departed so far from the fold as to make an idol of nature.

Gideon tried to listen attentively in case Hedge should question him afterward, but his mind wandered. He could not stop thinking of his own view of the field, and of the lily he had seen there. The girl was incidental, he told himself: one element in a charming rural scene. If he hadn’t caught her dancing—that extraordinary pagan ballet!—he might have forgotten her by now. One couldn’t cling to such beauty, and if she were indeed Hedge’s daughter, the illusion might be cruelly fleeting. He’d scarcely glimpsed her face; for all he knew, she might be snaggle-toothed, or sharp-featured like her father. Still, he kept his eyes on the bonnet and remembered the part in her hair—a marvel of geometric straightness, better achieved with a ruler than a comb—and the two perfect wings that followed the curve of her cheekbones and folded back over her ears.

After the service, Gideon waited in the yard while Reverend Hedge took leave of his flock. People came out of meeting and drifted into clusters, greeting each other, gossiping. In this little village, everyone knew everyone else, and knew their places, too. It was as if they stood in trenches that had been dug before they were born. Sooner or later dirt would cover them, the parson would say a few words, a stone would be erected, and a new generation would sprout up in soil fertilized by its elders. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing, Gideon reflected, feeling like the outsider he was. He had never felt part of a community. From the moment he could think at all, he had seen himself as singular and self-contained, a collection of attributes making its way through the world.

HIS MOTHER ENCOURAGED
his independence. She had always stood aloof from her surroundings: dutiful and competent, immaculate in the remnants of her beauty, coldly civil to the matrons who condescended to her. She carried herself like a queen, but her pride was in her son. As a boy, he had quickly grasped that his gifts were all she required of him. The only way to thank her for her sacrifices was to forge ahead and leave her behind. Not until her death the year before—a sore throat acquired from a student turned to diphtheria and took her in a fortnight—had Gideon been haunted by a nagging, shapeless suspicion that he shook off before it could congeal into words. During the day he managed to keep it at bay, but at night it materialized like a demon, taunting him and troubling his sleep.

“It is all taken care of,” she’d whispered at the end, clutching his fingers with a force she couldn’t bring to her voice. After the funeral, Mr. Pilkington, the mill owner, parroted her words. “Taken care of,” he told Gideon. “School fees, all of it. See that you make her proud.” And then he’d turned away and honked noisily into a kerchief—a bulky, red-faced, pragmatic man who quoted Scripture at every turn and had none of the polish he admired in others. Gideon was ashamed to call him a benefactor, but was eloquent in his gratitude nevertheless, mindful that important men like to be flattered. Only later did Gideon remember Pilkington’s periodic visits to his house during his school years—“to discuss your future,” his mother had explained—and how, instead of reciting a poem or showing off his Latin, he was always made to leave. He had resented these enforced exiles, especially during the winter, when it was too raw outside to walk, and he was banished to the icy schoolroom with nothing but a book to divert him. Once, when his mother came to get him, he flung his book to the floor in a temper.

“Two hours! What do you talk about with that stupid man? Does he really have that much conversation?”

His mother was always very quiet after the mill owner’s visits, but that afternoon there was an iron stillness about her. She folded her white hands and set her lips in a smile.

“I sing your praises,” she said.

THE OCCUPANTS OF THE FRONT
pew were the last to leave the church. The older woman headed straight for Gideon, followed by the hulking youths and, a few paces behind them, the girl in the blue dress, who appeared to be encased in a dream. No one had deigned to notice the newcomer before, but now every eye went to him, as if he’d just arrived.

“Mr. Birdsall? I am Fanny Hedge, and here are James and Reuben and Micah, and our schoolmaster, Mr. Unsworth, who boards with us. That moony thing there is Sophy, who isn’t always so bashful.”

So she was the parson’s daughter, after all. The fact seemed no less fantastic for having been confirmed by a reliable source. He had read of spirits who took up residence in human form, though he had never expected to meet one. In the old stories, they fell in love with mortals. His fellow students would be gratified to see Mrs. Hedge, Gideon thought: she was as functional as they’d imagined her, a plain woman with a horsy, good-natured face and hands as broad as spades. The boys were clearly hers, but the moon-girl, who stood at a little distance watching two squirrels play hide-and-seek among the gravestones, bore no resemblance to her. Her mother had to call her twice before she came over.

“I think we already met, informally.” Gideon spoke softly to prevent her shying like a deer and running away. “On my way to church I saw you in the meadow.”

“I was hunting for asparagus, but there weren’t any. It’s too late, I think.” Her voice was barely audible, but she looked up at him. If she was chagrined that he had seen her dance, or fearful of what he might reveal, she did not show it. Her eyes were dark like her father’s, but widely spaced and luminous. There was something disconcerting about her glance, at once direct and unfocused; she seemed to be gazing through him toward a distant vista, of which he was a random but interesting feature of the landscape.

“I don’t think she looked very hard,” said Mrs. Hedge. “I picked some yesterday.”

“I must take exception. She was a model of diligence,” Gideon said, “so intent on her task that she didn’t even notice me.”

This earned him a fleeting smile from Sophy—of sufficient duration to prove that her teeth were straight—but Mrs. Hedge was oblivious. She chattered on about her herbarium and what she would plant in the garden, about weather prognostications and last year’s yield, about the treacherous nature of lettuce. After listening to the good woman for five minutes, Gideon knew that she would pluck irony and allusion from conversation like so many weeds—not because they offended her, but because they were of no practical use. The Hedge sons and Mr. Unsworth had backed away, perhaps all too familiar with such monologues. Sophy stood by quietly, nodding when her mother mentioned the “smelling garden” she was starting, but never interrupting the flow of words. She wasn’t comely in the usual way, Gideon decided; his classmates wouldn’t look at her twice. Her forehead was too high and her cheekbones too pronounced to fit the tranquil oval of classic beauty. Except for her eyes, her features were undistinguished, the mouth erring on the generous side. But her face was full of life even when still, and she had a piquant charm that he found appealing. Whether it was a girl’s charm or a woman’s, he lacked the experience to say. She looked fifteen or sixteen, but her smallness could be deceptive. She was made as neatly and precisely as a doll; he could easily span her wrist with a thumb and forefinger.

Soon no one was left in the churchyard but the Hedges and their boarder. “I see you’re already acquainted,” the Reverend said, joining them. He seemed relaxed, even jovial.

“You’ve spoken of your family so often that I felt we had already met,” Gideon said.

“I like to remind my students that a well-ordered family is one of the blessings of this life. A prefiguration of Heaven—
ordained
for the benefit of our foreparents in Eden,
sustained
by grace after the Fall,
attained
, alas, by all too few. I’m happy to say that I am fortunate in mine.” Reverend Hedge regarded his clan fondly, with a touch of smug approval that Gideon had seen in the classroom. The parson could easily have been expounding on his well-constructed furniture or his well-designed garden. It was clear that he regarded the household as a felicitous collaboration between himself and the Almighty. Gideon wondered how the others felt about being reduced to anonymous—though well-oiled and smoothly meshing—parts in a predestined plan. Mrs. Hedge and Sophy took no notice, but he thought he saw James and Reuben exchange glances.

The eight of them formed another procession going back to the house, and Gideon was flattered to be at its head, keeping up a brisk pace with the Reverend. Unsworth walked alongside them at first, but fell back when the talk turned to Gideon’s translation.

“An interesting effort,” Hedge said. “Ingenious in its way. You have been so literal that you’ve wrested a rough poetry from the text. Too rough, I think—though there is a precedent. The Lord made Adam out of clay, and who is to say that our ancestor was the vision of perfection we imagine? A little coarse, a little raw—you can observe it in our masculine natures to this day. If it were not for the civilizing influence of woman, what would we be? When I think of the impulses of my youth—” He cleared his throat. Mrs. Hedge and Sophy were following close behind. “It’s perhaps too much to call a field a ‘flat place’ and to speak of the trees ‘clapping their palms.’ Such a rendering may be exact—may even give us a glimpse of a world that wrongheaded men call primitive. But it doesn’t
sing
, you see.”

Gideon did see, though he was aware that Hedge had just jabbed him with another of his quilled compliments. “I’m grateful you found any merit in it at all,” he said. He hesitated and went on. “It’s true that the primal drew me, but the coarseness you speak of is my lack of skill—not what I saw. It was as though the text were a wall, and, I was on one side of it, peering through tiny cracks at a world I could just glimpse. I would have given anything to breach that wall, sir! Only my ignorance prevented me.”

The Reverend stopped in mid-stride. He wheeled around and looked Gideon full in the face. “Tell me, Mr. Birdsall, what is the purpose of a wall?”

“Why—to contain, I suppose. To mark boundaries.”

“And the function of a boundary—its whole reason for being—is to
keep intruders out
.” The last words emerged with full stops between them, each a fortification unto itself. Hedge drew nearer as he spoke, stopping so close to Gideon that he seemed to be admonishing his Adam’s apple.

“It is one thing to recognize that such wonders exist, quite another to covet them beforetime. I’ve observed in my ministry, and also among my students, that mysticism is an enticement for certain young men of sensitive disposition. The given world isn’t enough for these fragile souls. They confuse their own curiosity with spiritual seeking, their restlessness with the inbuilt longing for Heaven. Too often, when life thwarts them, they turn to drink or opiates. Or worse, a universalism diluted even from its original anemic brew. Think of it—rather than wait for the joys to come, they worship the sun and bow their heads to trees and rocks like pagans! No one loves the natural world more than I, but I do not mistake the Creation for its Author.”

He had raised one hand, as was his habit while lecturing, and his forefinger was inches from Gideon’s nose. “I pray you will avoid their fate, Mr. Birdsall. Remember, we are caretakers. There is more than enough to occupy us here.”

Later, Gideon would reflect that the pastor had timed his exhortation perfectly. The Hedge homestead loomed before them, the yellow house set amid apple orchards and tamed fields: a perfect denouement to the spontaneous sermon. To Gideon, it was a parable come to life. He was reeling from Hedge’s unexpected scolding. One moment they had been talking like equals, and the next the thread of sympathy—so palpable in their first conversation—had been severed, and he was once again a lowly student, fit only to be chastised. Worst of all, he had been shamed in front of the family. Although he couldn’t look at them, he could feel them at his back, halted in place like a team of yoked oxen. He would never dare to speak to Sophy now, and what did it matter? The meadow was no amphitheater, and she was only a clergyman’s dallying daughter, not the ecstatic dancer of his vision. But such fantasies were only to be expected of a fragile soul, prey to every whim of his overworked imagination. How well his teacher knew him!

Mrs. Hedge stepped up and gave her husband a sour look. “If you don’t mind, I’ll borrow Mr. Birdsall for a few minutes and show him the gardens before you hide him away in your study. I have to cut some rhubarb for dinner and get lamb’s ear for Micah’s foot.”

“As you can see,” the Reverend said to Gideon, “the duties of rural life are such that it is difficult for us to rest, even on the Lord’s Day.” He sounded chastened, even a bit sheepish. It was clear that his Consort knew how to douse his fire.

Though Mrs. Hedge had described the gardens at length, Gideon was unprepared for the sheer variety of plantings that flourished behind the Hedge house. Much of the vegetable garden was still nascent, but Mrs. Hedge pointed out fledgling beans and peas, cucumbers and squash, Indian corn, cabbage and potatoes and carrots. Sophy followed behind with a basket, a dog frisking about her skirts, as her mother culled what she could. There was even a peach tree, a gnarled specimen covered with pale pink blossoms. “Some say they don’t thrive in this climate, but ours drops more than we can use,” Mrs. Hedge said. “I can only make so many pies and preserves—after a while even the pigs get loose bowels. But the first bites are like heaven. Such sweetness! This year I am being very bold, though some would call it foolish.” She glanced at Gideon, one eyebrow raised, assessing where he might stand on the matter. “I won’t dissemble with you, Mr. Birdsall. I am contemplating melons.”

Her pride in the vegetables was utilitarian; they were servants following orders. But the herbs were her gifted children. She had arranged them in families and planted them in elevated beds, looking down on the crops raised for mere sustenance. The way she spoke of them, Gideon thought, they might as well have magical properties. “Bloodroot, now there’s a wonder. It will take down a fever and soothe the rheumatics; nothing else would help my poor father. Lovage and sage do as much good to the stomach as they do for turkey dressing. Here, take a sniff of this . . . lemon balm, a true prodigy. Sophy likes it for the smell, but I call it Mother’s Friend, for it lifts the heart and calms the mind.”