Galilee. Part 32

No; not even that excruciating luxury was granted him. He lay there alive, and deafened, until somebody came and found him.

His thoughts, if such they could be called, were chaotic. There were still fragments of filth in the stew, but they were no longer complete words. They were just syllables, thrown against the wall of his skull by the relentless whine.

When Celeste came back in, she was a model of proficiency. She cleared her patient's throat of some vestiges of vomit, ascertained that he was breathing properly, and then called for an ambulance. That done, she went back out into the hallway, alerted a member of the household staff to the crisis, and told them to find Loretta, and have her go to Mount Sinai where Cadmus would be taken. When she returned to Cadmus she found that he'd opened his eyes, just a fraction, and that his head had turned away from the door.

"Can you hear me, Mr. Geary?" she asked him gently.

He made no reply, but his eyes opened a little wider. He was trying to focus, she saw, the object of his attempted scrutiny the painting that was hung on the far wall of the room. The nurse knew nothing about art whatsoever, but this mammoth picture had slowly exercised a fascination over her, so much so that she'd asked the old man about it. He'd told her it was painted by an artist called Albert Bierstadt and that it represented his conception of a limitless American wilderness.

Looking at it, he'd said, was supposed to be like taking a journey: your eye traveled from one part of the panorama to the next, always finding something new. He'd even shown her how to look at it through a rolled-up sheet of paper, as if viewing the scene through a telescope. On the left was a waterfall feeding a pool where buffalo drank; behind them, stretching across the canvas, was a rolling plain, with patches of bright sunlight and shadow, and beyond the gra.s.slands a range of snow-capped mountains, the grandest of which had its heights wreathed in creamy cloud, exceptfor its topmost crag, which was set against a pocket of deep blue sky. The only human presence in the picture was a solitary pioneer on a dappled horse, who was perched on a ridge to the right of the scene, studying the terrain before him.

"That man's a Geary," Cadmus had once told the nurse. She hadn't known whether the old man was joking or not, and she hadn't wanted to risk his ire by asking. But now, watching his face as he struggled to focus on the painting, she somehow knew that the pioneer was what Cadmus' eyes were straining to see. Not the buffalo, not the mountains, but the man who was surveying all of this, in readiness for conquest. At last, he gave up: the effort was too much for him. He made a tiny, frustrated sigh, and his top lip curled a little, as if in contempt at his own incapacity. "It's all right..." she said to him, smoothing a stray strand of silver-white hair back from his brow. "I can hear them coming."

This was no lie. She could indeed hear the medics outside in the hallway. A moment later, and they were tending to him, lifting Cadmus up off the floor and onto the stretcher, covering him with blankets, their gentle rea.s.surances echoing her own.

At the last, as they picked the stretcher up to carry him out, his gaze went back in the direction of the canvas. She hoped his exhausted eyes had caught a glimpse this time, though she doubted it.

The chances of his ever coming back to study the painted pioneer again were, she knew, remote.

V.

For Rachel the house was a different place now that she knew that Galilee had built it. What a labor it must have been for a man on his own; digging and laying the foundations, raising the walls, fas.h.i.+oning windows and doors, roofing it, tiling it, painting it. No doubt his sweat was in its timbers, and his curses, and a kind of genius, to make a house that felt so comforting. It was no wonder Niolopua's mother had wanted to possess it. If she couldn't have its builder, then it was the next best thing.

Following the conversation on the veranda Rachel no longer doubted that Galilee would come back, but as the afternoon went on, and she turned over all she knew about the man her mood grew steadily darker. Perhaps she was deceiving herself, thinking that something rare and tender had pa.s.sed between them the previous night; perhaps when he returned he'd be doing so out of some bizarre obligation. After all she was just another Geary wife as far as he was concerned; another bored b.i.t.c.h getting her little fix of paradise. He didn't know how much of a captive she felt: how could he? And how could he be blamed if he thought her despicable, taking up residence in his dream house, lying in the cool like some planter's wife while Niolopua trimmed the gra.s.s?

And then, as if that weren't enough, the things she'd done last night! She grew sick with embarra.s.sment thinking about it. The way she'd displayed herself to him; what the h.e.l.l had she been thinking? If she'd seen any other woman behave that way she'd have called them a s.l.u.t; and she'd have had reason. She should have protested the instant she'd realized where his story was going. She should have said: I can't listen to this, and firmly told him to leave. Then maybe he would have come back because he wanted to; instead of-"Oh my Lord..." she said softly.

There he was, on the beach.

There he was, and her heart was suddenly beating so loudly she could hear it in her head, and her hands were clammy and her stomach was churning. There he was, and it was all she could do not to just go to him; tell him she wasn't a Geary, not in her heart; she wasn't even a wife, not really; it had aH been a stupid mistake, and would he please forgive her, would he please pretend he'd never laid eyes on her before, so that they could start again as though they'd just met, walking on the beach?

She did none of this, of course. She simply watched him as he made his way toward the house.

He saw her now; waved at her, and smiled. She went to the French window, slid it open and stepped out onto the veranda. He was halfway up the lawn, still smiling. His pants were soaked to the knee, the rest of him wet with spray, his grubby T-s.h.i.+rt clinging to his belly and chest. He extended his hand to her.

"Will you come with me?" he said.

"Where are we going?"

"I want to show you something."

"Let me get my shoes."

"You won't need shoes. We're just going along the beach."

She closed the screen door to keep out the mosquitoes and went down onto the lawn to join him.

He took her hand, the gesture so casual it was as though this was a daily ritual for them, and he'd come to the lawn a hundred times, and called to her, and smiled at her, and taken her hand in his.

"I want to show you my boat," he explained as they took the short path to the sand. "It's moored in the next bay."

"Wonderful," she said. "Oh... by the way... I really think I should apologize for last night. I wasn't... behaving... the way I normally behave."

"No?" he said.

She couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. All she could see was the smile on his face, and it seemed perfectly genuine.

"Well I had a wonderful time last night," he said, "so if you want to behave that way again, go for it." She offered an awkward grin. "Do you want to walk in the water?" he said, moving on from her apology as though the whole subject was over and done with. "It's not cold.""I don't mind cold water," she said. "We have hard winters where I come from."

"Which is where?"

"Dansky, Ohio."

"Dansky, Ohio," he said, turning the words over on his tongue as he spoke them, as though savoring the syllables. "I went to Ohio once. This is before I took to the sea. A place called Bellefontaine. I wasn't there long."

"What do you mean when you say you 'took to the sea'?"

"Just that. I gave up the land. And the people on it. Actually it was the people I gave up on, not the land."

"You don't like people?"

"A few," he said, throwing her a sideways glance. "But not many."

"You don't like the Gearys, for instance."

The smile that had been at play on his face dropped away. "Who told you that?"

"Niolopua."

"Huh. Well he should keep his mouth shut."

"Don't blame him. He was upset. And from what he was telling me it sounds like the family gave everybody a raw deal."

Galilee shook his head. "I'm not complaining," he said. "This is a hard world to get by in. It makes people cruel sometimes. There's a lot worse than the Gearys. Anyway... you're a Geary."

The smile crept back. "And you're not so bad."

"I'm getting a divorce," she said.

"Oh? Don't you love him then?"

"No."

"Did you ever?"

"I don't know. It's hard to be sure of what you feel when you meet somebody like Mitch.e.l.l.

Especially when you're just a Midwestern girl, and you're lost and you're not sure what you want.

And there he is, telling you not to worry about that anymore. He'll take care of everything.""But he didn't?" Galilee said.

She thought about this for a moment. "He did his best," she admitted. "But as time went by..."

"The things you wanted changed," Galilee said.

"That's right."

"And eventually, the things you end up wanting are the things they can't give you." He wasn't talking about her any longer, she realized. He was talking about himself; of his own relations.h.i.+p with the Gearys, the nature of which she did not yet comprehend.

"You're doing the right thing," he said. "Leaving before you start to hate yourself."

Again he was talking autobiographically, she knew, and she took comfort from the fact. He seemed to see some parallel between their lives. The fears that had threatened her that afternoon were toothless. If he understood her situation as he seemed to-if he saw some sense in which his pain and hers overlapped-then they had some common ground upon which to build.

Of course now she wanted to know more, but having made the remark about hating yourself he fell silent, and she couldn't think of a way to raise the subject again without seeming pushy. No matter, she thought. Why waste time talking about the Gearys, when there was so much to enjoy: the sky turning pink as the sun slid away, the sea calmer than she'd seen it, the motion of the water around her legs, the heat of Galilee's palm against hers.

Apparently much the same thoughts were pa.s.sing through her companion's head.

"Sometimes I talk myself into such foul moods," he said, "and then I think: what the h.e.l.l do I have to complain about?" He looked up at the reef of coral clouds that was accruing high, high above them. "So what if I don't understand the world?" he went on. "I'm a free man. At least most of the time. I go where I want when I want. And wherever I go..." his gaze went from the clouds to Rachel "... I see beautiful things." He leaned toward her and kissed her lightly. "Things to be grateful for." They stopped walking now. "Things that I can't quite believe I'm seeing." Again he put his lips against hers, but this time there was no chasteness. This time they wrapped their arms around one another and kissed deeply, like the lovers they'd been bound to be from the beginning.

It pa.s.sed through Rachel's head that she wasn't living this but dreaming it: that every detail of this moment was in such a perfect place there was no improving it. Sky, sea, clouds, lips. His eyes, meeting hers. His hands on her back, at her neck, in her hair.

"I'm sorry..." he murmured to her.

"For what?"

"For not coming to find you," he said. "I should have come to find you.""I don't understand."

"I was looking away. I was staring at the sea when I should have been watching for you. Then you wouldn't have married him."

"If I hadn't married him we'd never have met."

"Oh yes we would," he said. "If I'd not been watching the sea, I would have known you were out there. And I would have come looking for you."

They walked on after a time, but now they walked with their arms around one another. He took her to the end of the beach, then led the way over the spit of rocks that marked the divide between the two bays. On the other side was a stretch of sand perhaps half the length of the beach behind them, in the middle of which was a small, and plainly very antiquated, wooden jetty, its timbers weathered to a pale gray, its legs s.h.a.ggy with vivid green weed. There was only one vessel moored there: The Samarkand. Its sails were furled, and it rode gently on the incoming tide, the very picture of tranquillity.

"Did you build it?" she asked him.

"Not from scratch. I bought her in Mauritius, stripped her down to the bare essentials and fas.h.i.+oned her the way I wanted her. It took two years, because I was working on my own."

"Like the house."

"Yeah, well, I prefer it that way. I'm not very comfortable with other people. I used to be..."

"But?"

"I got tired of pretending."

"Pretending what?"

"That I liked them," he said. "That I enjoyed talking about..." he shrugged "... whatever people talk about."

"Themselves," Rachel said.

"Is that what people talk about?" he said quizzically. It was as though he'd been out of human company so long he'd forgotten. "I mustn't have been paying attention." Rachel laughed at this.

"No seriously," he said, "I wouldn't have minded if they'd really wanted to talk about what was going on in their souls. I'd have welcomed that. But that's not what you hear. You hear about pretty stuff. How fat their wives are getting and how stupid their husbands are and why they hate their children. Who could bear that for very long? I'd prefer to hear nothing at all."

"Or tell a story?""Oh yes," he said, luxuriating in the thought, "that's even better. But it.can't be just any story. It has to be something true."

"What about the story you told me last night?"

"That was true," he protested. "I swear, I never told a truer story in all my life." She looked at him quizzically. "You'll see," he said, "if it isn't true yet, it will be."

"Anybody could say that," she replied.

"Yes, but anybody didn't. I did. And I wouldn't waste my time with things that weren't true." He put his hand to her face. "You have to tell me a story sometime soon. And it has to be just as true."

"I don't know any stories like that."

"Like what?"

"You know," she said. "Stories that could stir you up the way that story stirred me up."

"Oh it stirred you up did it?"

"You know it did."

"You see. Then it must have been true."

She had no answer to this. Not because it made no sense but because after some fas.h.i.+on that she couldn't articulate, it did. Obviously his definition of true wasn't the standard definition, but there was a kind of c.o.c.keyed logic to it nevertheless.

"Shall we go?" he said, "I think the boat's getting lonely."

VI.

i A they walked along the creaking jetty Rachel asked turn why he had dubbed his boat The Samarkand. Galilee explained that Samarkand was the name of a city.

"I've never heard of it," she told him.

"There's no reason why you should. It's a long way from Ohio."

"Did you live there?"

"No. I just pa.s.sed through. I've done a lot of pa.s.sing through in my life.""You've traveled a lot?"

"More than I'd like."

"Why don't you just find a place you like and settle down?"