She opened her eyes again, just to be certain the world she"d left out there, beyond her lids, was still in existence. There was a nice, mellow sense of dislocation in all this: no paranoia, no fear; simply suspicion that things outside her head were not to be taken too seriously tonight.
The room was still there: the ring of lamplight on the ceiling, the open window, the drapes lifted and let go by the breeze; the carved bed in which she lay, with its lovers lying in their ripe bowers; the door at the end of the bed, leading out onto the hallway, down the stairs- Her gaze seemed to go with her thoughts, out onto the darkened landing-floating up to the ceiling one moment, grazing the footworn weave of the rug the next.By the time she got to the top of the stairs an unbidden thought had formed in her head: she wasn"t alone in the house. Somebody had come in. As silent as smoke, and just as harmless- surely, on a night like this n.o.body meant harm-somebody had entered the house and was there at the bottom of the stairs.
The realization didn"t trouble her in the slightest. She felt absurdly inviolate, as though she had not simply watched the fire on the beach but stood in its midst and walked through it unscorched.
She looked down the flight in the hope of seeing him, and thought she caught the vaguest impression of his form, there in the darkness: a big, broad man; a black man, she thought. He started to climb the stairs. She could feel the air at the top of the flight become agitated at his approach, excited at the prospect of being drawn into his lungs. Her gaze retreated along the landing, back toward the bedroom; back into her head. She would pretend she was asleep, perhaps. Let him come to her bedside and touch her awake. Put his hand to her lips, to her breast; or if he wanted to, press his fingers against her belly; then down, between her legs. She"d let him do that. None of this was quite real anyway, so why the h.e.l.l not? He could do whatever he wanted, and no harm would come to her. Not here, in her carved bower-bed. Only joy here; only bliss.
For all these fearless thoughts there was still a corner of her intellect that was counseling caution.
"You"re not being rational," this fretful self said to her. "The smoke"s got into your head. The smoke and this island. They"ve got you all turned about."
Probably true, the dreamy wildling in her said. So what?
"Butyou don"t know who he is," the cautious one pointed out. "And he"s black. There aren"t any blacks in Dansky, Ohio. Or if there are, you don"t know any. They"re different."
So am I, the wildling replied. I"m not who I was, and I"m all the better for it. So what if the island"s working magic on me? I need a little magic. I"m ready. Oh Lord, I"m more than ready.
She"d closed her eyes, still thinking she would pretend to be sleeping when he came in. But as soon as she felt the stirring of the air against her face, announcing his presence at the threshold, she opened them again, and asked him, very quietly, who he was.
By way of reply, he spoke one word only.
"Galilee," he said.
II.
A that moment, on the cloud-obscured summit of Mount Waialeale, the rain was falling at the rate of an inch and a half an hour. In gorges too inaccessible for exploration, plants that had never been named were drinking down the deluge; insects that would never venture where a human heel could crush them were sheltering their brittle heads. These were secret places, secret species;rare phenomena on a planet where little was deemed sacred enough, exquisite enough, tremulous enough, to be preserved from the prod, the scalpel, the exhibition.
Out in the benighted sea, whales were pa.s.sing between the islands, mothers and their children flank to flank, playful adolescents breaching in the dark, rising up in frenzied coats of foam and twisting so as to spy the stars before they came crashing down again. In the coral reef below them, its caves and gullies as untainted as Waialeale"s heights, other secret lives proceeded: the warm currents carrying myriad tiny forms, transparent flecks of purpose which for all their insignificant size nourished the great whales above.
And in between the summit and the reef? There was mystery there too. No less an order of life than the flower or the plankton, though it belonged to no cla.s.s or hierarchy. It lived, this life, in the human head, the human heart. It moved only when touched, which was rarely, but when it did-when it shifted itself, showed itself to the creature in which it lived-there was revelation. The prospect of love could stir it, the prospect of death could stir it; even, on occasion a simpler thing: a song, a fine thought. Most of all it was moved by the prospect of its own apotheosis. If it felt its moment was near, then it would rise into the face of its host like a light, and blaze and blaze- "Whoever you are..." Rachel said softly, "... come and show me your face."
The man stepped into the doorway. She couldn"t see his face, as she"d requested, but she could see his form, and it was, as she"d guessed, a fine form: tall and broad.
"Who are you?" she said. Then, when he didn"t reply: "Did you make the fire?"
"Yes." His voice was soft.
"The smoke..."
"... followed you."
"Yes."
"I asked it to."
"You asked the smoke," she said. It made an unlikely kind of sense to her.
"I wanted it to introduce you to me," he said. There was a hint of humor in his voice, as though he only half-expected her to believe this. But the half that did believe it believed it utterly.
"Why?" she said.
"Why did I want to meet you?"
"Yes...""I was curious," he said. "And so were you."
"I didn"t even know you were here," she said. "How could I be curious?"
"You came out to see the fire," he reminded her.
"I was afraid..." she began; but the rest of the thought eluded her. What had she been afraid of?
"You were afraid the wind would blow the sparks..."
"Yes..." she murmured, vaguely remembering her anxiety.
"I wouldn"t have let that happen," Galilee rea.s.sured her. "Didn"t Niolopua tell you why?"
"No..."
"He will," Galilee replied. Then, more softly. "My poor Niolopua. Do you like him?"
She mused on this for a moment; it hadn"t been something she"d given much thought to. "He seems very gentle," she said. "But I don"t think he is. I think he"s angry."
"He has reason," Galilee replied.
"Everybody hates the Gearys."
"We all do what we have to do," he replied.
"And what does Niolopua do? Besides cutting the gra.s.s?"
"He brings me here, when I"m needed."
"How does he do that?"
"We have ways of communicating that aren"t easy to explain," Galilee said. "But here I am."
"Okay," she said. "So now you"re here. Now what?"
There was more than enquiry in her voice. Though her tongue was lazy, the words slow, she knew what she was inviting; she knew what answer she wanted to hear. That he"d come to share her bed, whoever he was; come to exploit the dreamy ease she"d inhaled, and make love to her.
Come to kiss her back to life, after an age of thorns and sorrow.
He didn"t give her the answer she expected. At least, not in so many words.
"I want to tell you a story," he said.She laughed lightly. "Aren"t I a bit too old for that?"
"No," he said softly. "Never."
He was right of course. She was perfectly ready to have him weave a story for her; to let the deep music of his voice shape the colors in her head: give them lives, give them destinies.
"First," she said, "will you come into the light where I can see you?"
"That"s part of the story," he said. "That"s always part of it."
"Oh..." she said, not understanding the principle of this, but accepting that at least for tonight it was true. "Then tell me."
"It would be my pleasure," he said. "Where should I start?" There was a little pause while he considered this. When he spoke again his voice had changed subtly; there was a lilting rhythm in it, as though there was a melody to these words, that he was close to singing.
"Imagine please," he began, "a country far from here, in a time of plenty, when the rich were kind and the poor had G.o.d. In that country there lived a girl called Jerusha, whom this story concerns. She was fifteen at the time when what I"m about to tell you happened, and there was no happier girl in the world. Why? Because she was loved. Her father owned a great house, filled with treasures from the furthest reaches of the empire, but he loved his Jerusha more than anything he owned or anything he ever dreamed of owning. And not a day went by without his telling her so. Now on this particular day, a day in late summer, Jerusha had gone out taking a winding path through the woods to a favorite place of hers: a spot on the banks of the River Zun, which marked the southern perimeter of her father"s land.
"Sometimes in the morning when she visited the river bank the local women would be there washing their clothes, then spreading them out on the rocks to dry, but the later in the day she went the more likely she was to be there alone. Today, however, though it was late afternoon, she saw-as she wound between the trees-that there was somebody sitting in the water. It was not one of the women. It was a man, or nearly a man, and he was staring down at his own reflection in the river. I say he was nearly a man, because although this creature had a man"s shape, and a pretty shape at that, his form glistened strangely in the sunlight, silvery one moment, dark the next.
"Now Lord Laurent, who was Jerusha"s father, had taught her to be afraid of nothing. He was a rational man. He didn "t believe in the Devil, and he had over the years punished any man who committed a crime on his land so quickly and severely that no felon ventured there. And he had also taught his daughter that there were far stranger things in the world than she"d seen in her schoolbooks. Perfectly rational things, he"d told her, that one day science would explain, though they might at first glance seem unusual."So Jerusha didn"t run away when she saw this stranger. She just marched down to the river"s edge and said h.e.l.lo. The fellow looked up from his reflection. He had no hair on his head; nor did he have lashes or brows; but there was an uncanny beauty to him. which awoke feelings in Jerusha that had not stirred until this moment. He looked at her with his flickering eyes, and smiled. But he said nothing.
" "Who are you?" she asked him.
" "I don"t have a name," he told her.
""Of course you do," she said.
" "No I don"t. I swear," the stranger said.
" "Were you not baptized?" she asked him.
" "Not that I remember," he told her. "Were you?"
""Of course."
" "In the river?"
""No. In a church. My mother wanted it. She"s dead now-"
""If it was in a church then it wasn"t a true baptism," the stranger replied. "You should come into the river with me. I would give you a new name."
" "I like the one 1 have."
" "Which is what?"
" "Jerusha."
""So, Jerusha. Please come into the river with me." As he spoke he stood up, and she saw that at his groin, where a normal man would have a p.e.n.i.s, there was instead a column of water, running from him the way water pours from a pipe, all corded and glittering, and seeming almost solid in the sunlight..."
Rachel had been completely still until this moment; enraptured by the pictures these simple words were conjuring: of the girl, of the summer"s day and the riverbank. But now she sat up a little in the bed and began to scrutinize the shadowy man in the doorway. What kind of story was he telling here? It was certainly no fairy story.
He read her unease. "Don"t worry," he said. "It"s not going to get obscene."
"Are you sure?""Why? Would you prefer that it did?"
"I just want to be ready."
""Don"t be afraid.""
"I"m not afraid," she said.
"" "Come into the river."""
Oh, she thought; he"s started again.
""What is that?" Jerusha said, pointing to the stranger"s groin.
" "Do you have no brothers?"
" "They went away to war," Jerusha said. "And they"re supposed to come back, but every time I ask my father when that will be he kisses me and tells me to be patient."
" "So what do you think?"
" "I think maybe they"re dead," Jerusha said.
" "The fellow in the water laughed. "I meant of this," he said, looking down at the water flowing out of him. "What do you think of this?"
"Jerusha just shrugged. She wasn"t very impressed, but she didn"t want to say so."
Rachel smiled. "Polite girl," she remarked.
"You wouldn"t be so polite?" Galilee said.
"No. I"d be the same. You don"t want to break his heart with the truth."
"And what"s the truth?"
"That it"s not as pretty as..."
"As?"
"... you"d like to believe?"
"That"s not what you were going to say, is it?" Rachel kept her silence. "Please. Tell me what you were going to say."
"I want to see your face first."There followed a moment in which neither of them moved, neither of them spoke. At last Galilee made a soft sigh, as though of resignation, and took half a step toward the bed. The moonlight grazed his face, but so lightly she had only the most rudimentary sense of his features. His flesh was a burnished umber, and he had several days" growth of beard, which was even darker than his skin. His head was shaved clean. She could not see his eyes: they were set too deeply for the light to discover them. His mouth seemed to be beautiful, his cheekbones high and fine; perhaps there were some scars on his brow, she couldn"t be sure.
As to the rest of him: he was dressed in a heavily stained white T-shirt and loosely belted jeans and sandals. His frame was, as she"d already guessed, impressive; a wide, solid chest, a slight swell of a belly, ma.s.sive arms, ma.s.sive hands.
But here was what she hadn"t guessed: that he"d lingered in the shadows not to tease her but because he was unhappy being looked at. His discomfort was plain in the way he held himself; in the way he shuffled his feet, ready to retreat once she"d seen all she needed to see. She ahnost expected him to say can I go now? Instead he said: "Please finish your thought."
She"d forgotten what she was talking about; the sight of him, in all its contrary sweetness-his effortless authority and his desire to be invisible, his beauty, and his strange inelegance-had taken all thought of anything but his presence out of her head.
"You were telling me," he prompted her, "how what he has isn"t as pretty as..."