Galilee. Part 22

"It's not a novel, if that's what you mean. I'm telling the truth as best I can."

He mused on this for a moment. The news of my work had clearly unsettled him. Perhaps he feared what I would uncover; or already had.

"Before you ask," I said, "it's not just our family I'm writing about."

By the expression on his face it was clear that this went to the heart of his anxiety. "Oh Christ,"

he murmured. "So that's why I'm here."

"I suppose it must be," I said. "I was thinking about you and-"

"What's it called?" he said to me. I looked at him blankly. "Your book, dummy. What's it called?"

"Oh... well, I'm toying with a number of t.i.tles," I said, pretending my best literary tone. "There's nothing definite yet."

"You realize I know a lot of details that you could use."'

"I'm sure you do."

"Stuff you really can't do without. Not if it's to be a true account."

"Such as?"He gave me a sly smile. "What's it worth?" he said. It was the first time in this meeting I'd seen a glimpse of the Galilee I remembered; the creature whose confidence in his own charms had once been inviolate.

"I'm going to Mama for you, remember?"

"And you think that's worth all the information I could give you?" he countered. "Oh no, brother.

You have to do better than that."

"So what do you want?"

"First, you have to agree."

I just said, "To what?"

"Just agree, will you?"

"This is going round in circles."

Galilee shrugged. "All right," he said. "If you don't want to know what T. know, then don't. But your book's going to be the poorer for it, I'm warning you."

"I think we'd better stop this conversation here and now," I said. "Before it goes bad on us."

Galilee regarded me with great gravity, a frown biting into his brow. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"So am I," I said.

"We were doing so well, and I got carried away."

"So did I."

"No, no, it was entirely my fault. I've lost a lot of social graces over the years. I spend too much time on my own. That's my problem. It's no excuse but..." The sentence trailed away. "Well, shall we agree to talk again?"

"I'd like that."

"Maybe around this time tomorrow? Will that give you sufficient opportunity to talk to Mama?"

"I'll do what I can," I said.

"Thank you," Galilee said softly. "I do think of her, you know. Of late, I've thought of her all the time. And the house. I think of the house."

"Have you visited?""Visited?"

"I mean, you could come looking and n.o.body would know."

"She'd know," he said. Of course she would, I thought. "So no," he went on. "I haven't dared."

"I don't think you'll find it's changed."

"That's good," he said, with a tentative smile. "So much else... almost everything, in fact...

everywhere I go... things change. And never for the better. Places I used to love. Secret places, you know? Corners of the world where n.o.body ever went. Now there's pink hotels and pleasure cruises. Once in a while I've tried to scare people off." His shape shuddered as he spoke, and in the midst of his beauty I saw another form, far less attractive. Silver slits for eyes, and leathery lips drawn back from teeth like needles. Even knowing that he meant me no harm, the sight distressed me. I looked away. "See, it works," he said, not without pride. "But then as soon as my back's turned the rot creeps in again." I glanced up at him; his rabidity was in retreat. "And before you know it..."

"Pink hotels-"

"-and pleasure cruises." He sighed. "And everything's spoiled." He glanced up at the sky. "Well I should let you go. It won't be long till morning, and you've got a day's work ahead of you."

"And you?"

"Oh I don't sleep that much," he replied. "I'm not sure that divinities ever do."

"Is that what you are?"

He shrugged, as though the issue of his G.o.dhood were neither here nor there. "I suppose so. Ma and Pa are as pure a form of deity as this world will ever see, don't you think? Which makes you a demiG.o.d, if that makes you feel any better." I laughed out loud. "Goodnight then, brother," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

He started to turn from me, and in so doing seemed to eclipse himself. "Wait," I said. He glanced back at me.

"What?"

"I know what you were going to ask for," I said.

"Oh do you?" he said with a little smile. "And what was that?"

"If you gave me information for the book you were going to demand some kind of control over what I wrote.""Wrong, brother," he said, pivoting back on his heel and eclipsing himself again. "I was only going to ask you to call the book Galilee." His eyes glittered. "But you'll do that anyway," he said. "Won't you?"

And then he was gone, back to whatever sea glittered in his eyes.

IV.

Need I tell you that Galilee did not come back the following night as he'd promised? This despite the fact that I spent most of the day seeking an audience with Cesaria in order to plead his case.

In fact, I failed to find her (I suspect she knew my purpose, and was deliberately avoiding me).

But anyway, he didn't turn up, which I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at. He always had an unreliable nature, except in matters of the heart, where everyone else is unreliable. There he was divinely constant.

I told Marietta what had transpired, but she already knew. From Luman, who had happened to see me there by the swamp, apparently having a conversation with a shadow, and pa.s.sing through so many moods, he said, that he knew I could only be talking to one person.

"He guessed it was Galilee?" I said.

"No, he didn't guess," Marietta said. "He knew because he had conversations like that himself."

"You mean Galilee's been here before?" I said.

"So it seems," she said. "Many times, in fact."

"At Luman's invitation?"

"I a.s.sume so. He wouldn't confirm it either way. You know how he gets when he thinks he's being interrogated. Anyway it doesn't really matter whether Luman invited him or not, does it?

The point is, he was here."

"Not in the house though," I said. "He was too afraid of mother to go near the house."

"He told you that?"

"You don't believe it?"

"I think it's perfectly possible he's been spying on us all for years without our knowing it. The little s.h.i.+t."

"I think he prefers the word divinity."

"How about divine little s.h.i.+t?" Marietta said."Do you really dislike him so much?"

"I don't dislike him at all. It's nothing so simple. But we both know our lives would have been a d.a.m.n sight happier if he'd never come home that night."

That night. I must tell you about that night, sometime soon. I'm not being deliberately coy, you understand. But it's not easy. I'm not entirely certain I know what happened the night Galilee came home. There were more visions and fevers and acts of delirium at work that night than had been unleashed on this continent since the arrival of the Pilgrims. I could not tell you with any certainty what was real and what was illusion.

No, that's a lie. There are some things I'm certain of. I know who died that night, for one thing: the desperate men who made the mistake of accompanying Galilee onto this sacred ground, and paid the price of trespa.s.s. I could take you to their graves right now, though I haven't ventured near them in a hundred and thirty years. (Even as I write this the face of one of these men, a man called Captain Holt, comes into my mind's eye. I can see him in his grave, his form in such disarray it seemed every bone in his body, even to the littlest, had been shattered.) What else am I certain of? That I lost the love of my life that night. That I saw her in my father's arms-oh Lord, that's a sight that I've prayed to have removed from me; but who listens to the prayers of a man sinned against by G.o.d?-and that she looked at me in her last moments and I knew she'd loved me, and I would never be loved with such ferocity again. All this I know is incontestably true. If you like, it's history.

But the rest? I couldn't tell you whether it was real or not. There was so much high emotion unleashed that night, and in a place such as this rage and love and sorrow do not remain invisible.

They exist here as they existed at the beginning of the world, as those primal forces from which we lesser things take our purpose and our shape.

That night-with senses raw and skins stripped-we moved in a flood of visible feeling, which made itself into a thousand fantastic forms. I don't expect to see such a spectacle ever again; nor do I particularly want to. For every part of my being that comes from my father, and takes pleasure in chaos for its own sake, there is a part that makes me my mother's child, and wants tranquillity; a place to write and think and dream of heaven. (Did I tell you that my mother was a poet? No, I don't believe Idid. I must quote you some of her work, later.) So, after all my claiming I could not find the courage to describe that night, I just gave you a taste of it. There's so much more to tell, of course, and I'll tell it as time goes by. But not just yet.

These things have to be done by degrees.

Trust me; when you know all there is to know, you'll wonder that I was even able to begin.

V i Where did I last leave Rachel? On the road, was it?, heading back into Manhattan contemplating the relative merits of Neil Wilkens and her husband?Oh yes, and then thinking that they were both in their secret hearts sad men, and wondering why.

(My own theory is that Neil and Mitch were in no way unusual; that they were unhappy in their souls because many men, perhaps even most, are unhappy in their souls. We burn so hard, but we shed so little light; it makes us crazy and sad.) Anyway, she came back into Manhattan determined to tell her husband that she could not bear to live as his wife a moment longer, and it was time for them to part. She hadn't worked out the exact words she'd use; she preferred to trust to the moment.

That moment was delayed by a day. Mitch.e.l.l had left for Boston the night before, she was told by Ellen, one of Mitch.e.l.l's phalanx of secretaries. Rachel felt a twinge of anger that he'd departed this way; wholly irrational, of course, given that she'd done precisely the same thing a few days earlier. She called the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, where he always stayed. Yes, he was a guest there, she was informed; but no, he wasn't in. She left a short message, telling him she was back at the apartment. He was obsessive about messages, she knew, usually picking them up on the hour, every hour. The fact that he didn't call back could only mean that he was choosing not to speak to her; punis.h.i.+ng her, in other words. She resisted the temptation to call him again. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of imagining her doing exactly what she was doing, sitting by the phone waiting for him to call her back.

About two in the morning, just as she'd finally fallen asleep, he returned the call. His manner was suspiciously convivial.

"Have you been partying?" she asked him.

"Just a few friends," he replied. "n.o.body you'd know. Harvard guys."

"When are you coming home?"

"I'm not quite sure yet. Thursday or Friday."

"Is Garrison with you?"

"No. Why?"

"I just wondered."

"I'm having some fun if that's what you're getting at," Mitch said, his tone losing its warmth, "I'm sick of being a workhorse, just so that everybody stays rich."

"Don't do it for me," she said.

"Oh don't start that-"

"I mean it. I-""-was quite happy with nothing," he said, doing a squeaky imitation of her voice.

"Well I was."

"Oh for Christ's sake, Rachel. All I said was, I was working too hard..."

"So that we could all stay rich, you said."

"Don't be so f.u.c.king sensitive."

"Don't swear at me."

"Oh Jesus."

"You're drunk, aren't you?"

"I told you, I've been partying. I don't have to apologize for that. Look, I don't want to have this conversation any more. We'll talk when I get back."

"Come back tomorrow."

"I said I'd come Thursday or Friday."