Galilee

PART SEVEN. The Wheel of the Stars

Today I made my peace with Luman. It wasn't an easy thing to do, but I knew that I was going to have to do it sooner or later. Just a few hours ago, sitting back from my desk to muse on something, I realized suddenly how sad I'd be if events were somehow to quicken, and L'Enfant fell, and I was to have reconciled with Luman. So I got up, fetched my umbrella (a pleasant drizzle has been falling for most of the day; perhaps it will clear the air a little) and took myself off to the Smoke House.

Luman was waiting for me, sitting on the threshold, picking his nose and staring down the path along which I approached.

"You took your time," was his first remark to me.

"I did what?"

"You heard me. Taking all this time to come an' tell me you're sorry."

"What makes you think I'm going to do that?" I replied.

"You look sorry," Luman replied, flicking something he'd mined from his nostrils into the vegetation.

"Do I indeed?"

"Yes, Mr.-High-and-Mighty-I'm-a-Writer-Maddox, you look very sorry indeed." He grabbed the rotted doorjamb and pulled himself to his feet. "In fact I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't jus' throw that sorry carcass down on the ground an' beg me to forgive you." He grinned. "But you don't have to do that, brother o' mine. I forgive you your trespasses."

"That's generous of you. And what about yours?"

"I don't have none."

"Luman, you virtually accused me of killing my own wife."

"I was just telling the simple truth," he said. Then added: "As I saw it. You didn't have to believe me." His goaty face became sly. "Though somethin' tells me you do." He regarded me in silence for a time. "Tell me I'm wrong."

What I really wanted to do was beat that smug smile off his face, but I resisted the temptation. I'd come here to make peace, and peace I was going to make. Besides, as I've admitted in these pages, the guilt for Chiyojo's death does in some measure lie with me. I'd confessed it on paper; now it was time to do the same thing staring my accuser in the face. That shouldn't be so difficult, should it? I knew the words; why was it so much more difficult to speak them than to write them?

I put my umbrella down and turned my face up to the rain. It was warm but it still refreshed me. I stood there for perhaps a minute, while the raindrops broke against my face, and my hair became flattened to my scalp. At last, without looking back at Luman, I said:

"You were right. I'm responsible for what happened to Chiyojo. I let Nicodemus have her, just as you said. I wanted…" I began to feel tears rising up in me. They thickened my voice; but I went on with my confession. "I wanted to have his favor. To have him love me." I put my hand up to my face, and wiped the rainwater off. Then, finally, I looked back at Luman. "The thing is, I never really felt as though I was his son. Not the way you were. Or Galilee. I was always the half-breed. So I scampered around the world trying to please him. But it didn't work. He just took me for granted. I didn't know what else to give him. I'd given myself and that wasn't enough…" Somewhere in the midst of saying all this I'd started to tremble; my hands, my legs, my heart. But nothing short of death would have now stopped me finishing what I'd begun. "When he set eyes on Chiyojo I felt angry at first.

I was going to leave. I should have left. I should have taken her-just the way you said-taken her away from L'Enfant so we could have had a life of our own. An ordinary life, maybe-a human life. But that wouldn't have been so bad, would it?"

"Compared to this?" Luman said softly. "It would have been paradise."

"But I was afraid to go. I was afraid that after a while I'd regret going but that there'd be no way back."

"Like Galilee?"

"Yes… like poor Galilee. So I ignored my instincts. And when he came after Chiyojo I looked the other way. I suppose, deep down, I hoped she'd love me enough to say no to him."

"Don't blame her," Luman said. "The Virgin Mary would have given up her pussy for Nicodemus."

"I don't blame her. I never blamed her. But I still hoped."

"You poor idiot," Luman said, not without tenderness. "You must have been a mess."

"The worst, Luman. I was torn in half. Part of me wanted her to reject him. To come running to me and tell me he'd tried to violate her. And part of me wanted him to take her from me. Make her his mistress if that made him pay more attention to me."

"How was that going to happen?"

"I don't know. He was going to feel guilty so he was going to be kinder to me. Or we'd simply have shared her. Him at one end and me at the other."

"You'd have done that?"

"I think so."

"Wait. Let me be certain I understand this. You would have had a mlnage a trots with your wife and your own father?" I didn't answer, but I suppose my silence was reply enough. Luman slapped his hand over his eyes with comic gusto. "I thought I was twisted," he said. Then he grinned.

For myself I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This was more than I'd confessed with pen and paper; this was the dirtiest truth; the most wretched, sickening truth.

"Anyway, it never happened," I said.

"Well that's something," Luman replied. "You're still a pervert, mind."

"He took her and fucked her and gave her feelings I guess I never gave her."

"He could do that," Luman said. "He had the gift."

"Was it… physical?" I asked him, voicing a question that had haunted me for years. Luman looked at me blankly. "His gift," I said. "Oh come on, Luman, you know what I'm talking about. Was that how he made women love him?" I glanced down between my legs. "With that?"

"Are you asking me how big his dick was?" Luman said. I nodded. "Well, judging by my own attributes, sizeable. But I think that's only half the story. If you don't know how to wield it…" He sighed. "I never have, you see. That's always been my problem. Plenty of substance, but no style. I'm hung like a stallion but I fuck like a one-legged mule." Finally, I laughed, which plainly pleased Luman no end, because he beamed. "Well we certainly know more about one another than we knew five minutes ago," he said. Then, more quietly:

"Pervert."

We talked a little longer before I returned here to the study, with him standing in the shelter of his door, and me out in the rain. Only a couple of significant things were said. Luman suggested that in the near future the two of us go down to the stables and visit Nicodemus's grave. I agreed that we should do so, adding that I didn't think we should delay going, in case events overtook us and we were denied the opportunity. Luman's response to this was interesting.

"Are we at war then?" he said. "Should we expect an invasion any day?"

I told him I didn't know, but that the House of Geary had become unstable of late, which was certainly reason for nervousness.

"If you're nervous then I'm nervous," Luman said. "I'm going to get out my knives tonight. Start polishing. Have you got yourself a gun?"

"No."

He ducked back inside the house and reemerged a few moments later with an antiquated pistol. "Take it," he said.

"Where did you get it?" I asked him.

"It belonged to Nub Nickelberry," he said. "He gave it to me when he left. In fact Galilee made him give it to me. He told Nickelberry he wouldn't have any use for it. He had all the protection he'd ever need."

"Meaning himself?"

"I guess so." He proffered the weapon again. "Go on, Eddie, take it. Even if you don't think you'll ever use it. I'll feel better knowing you've got something to wave around 'sides your pen, which will do you no damn good when things get nasty."

I took the weapon from his hand. It was a Griswold'and Gunnison revolver, my researches later discovered; plain and heavy.

"It's fully loaded," Luman said. "But that's all the bullets I got for it, so you're going to have to choose your targets. Hey! Point it away from me. How long is it since you handled a revolver?"

"A long time," I admitted. "It feels strange."

"Well don't be afraid of it. Accidents happen when people pussyfoot around a gun. You're in charge of it, not the other way about. Got it?"

"I got it. Thanks, Luman."

"My pleasure. I'll see what else I can dig up. I've got a nice saber in there somewhere, made in Nashville. They had a factory there in the war, turned plowshares into swords."

"How very Biblical."

"You know what else I got?" He was smiling from ear to ear now. "I got a Confederate snare drum."

"From Nickelberry?"

"No… Marietta brought it back, just after the war ended. She found it out there in a ditch somewhere. Along with the drummer. He wasn't going to be beating it no more so she pried it out of his hands and brought it back for me. I'm going to have to learn to beat it again. Nice and loud. Sound the alarm…" His smile had gone again; he was staring at the revolver in my hand. "Strange," he said. "After all these years, things you never thought you'd need again."

"Maybe we won't."

"Who are you kidding?" he said. "It's just a matter of time."

I returned to my study thoroughly soaked, but curiously revivified by my conversation with Luman. While I was stripping out of my sodden clothes I looked around the room, and realized that it had deteriorated into chaos: piles of notes everywhere, books and newspapers heaped on every side. It was time to clear the mess away, I thought; time to put things in better order; to gird myself for whatever battles lay ahead. I began right there and then, without even putting on a dry pair of socks. Naked as a babe I set to work, sorting through the stuff I'd accrued over the months I'd been writing. The books were easily collected up and returned to the shelves, the newspapers and magazines I bundled up and set outside the study door for Dwight to collect. The real challenge was my notes, of which there were many hundreds of pages. Some were midnight inspirations, jotted down in darkness when I woke from a dream; some were doodlings I made to break my own silence on a day when the pen refused to move. Some read like the jottings of a dyslexic poet, some like a paranoid's stab at metaphysics; the worst are beyond comprehension.

I've been afraid to throw any of them out, in case there was something here that I was going to need. Even in the foulest of this shit I thought there might be something that illuminated a murky corner of my intentions; offering a glimpse of grandeur where my text was squalid.

Enough of that, I told myself. It all had to go. I need to proceed from here less encumbered than I've been. I need to travel lightly to keep up with events. Things are getting desperate for everyone, and I need to be right there at their shoulders as they make love, at their lips as they whisper their dying words, in their heads as their sanity curdles. So it all goes. My potted history of the warlord Timur-i-leng, for instance, whose bones lie in Samarkand: I'll never make use of it. Out it goes. My notes on the genital configurations of the hyena; all very interesting, but wholly irrelevant. Out they go. My pages of meditations on the nature of my endeavor-pretentious stuff most of it, written while I was high-they have to go too. There's no room for that kind of stuff now; not if we're preparing for war.

It took me about seven hours to finish all this tidying, including a thorough scouring of the drawers of my desk. By the time I had finished it was dark, and I was exhausted. It was a pleasant exhaustion, however; I'd achieved something: I could see the rug again. And my desk was clear, except for my single copy of the book, which I'd set in the upper left corner; a pile of paper, along with my pen and ink, set in the middle, and the revolver Luman had given me, which was set on my right, where I could quickly snatch it up if occasion demanded.

There remained only one thing to do. The redundant notes I'd collected up needed to be destroyed. I didn't want anyone sifting through them at some later date, finding my sentimental ramblings or my spelling mistakes; nor did I want to be tempted back to them myself, at some moment of weakness. I gathered them all up in my arms and took them out onto the lawn. I was still stark naked, but what the hell? Nobody was going to waste their time spying on my nakedness; it's a singularly unedifying sight. So out I went, and dumped the papers in the grass. Then I struck a match, and set fire to them. There was no wind to blow the burning sheets around; they simply blackened and curled where they lay, one after the other. I sat down on the grass, which was still damp from the rain, and toasted the disappearing words with a glass of gin. Every now and again I'd catch a phrase as it was burned away, and once-watching something I rather liked eaten up before my eyes-a wave of regret broke over me. I tried to comfort myself by thinking that if these thoughts had flown through my head once then they'd always be there to be recaptured, but I don't entirely believe that. Suppose the mind that's making this book is steadily winding down-the heat-death of its creator reported on its pages in a hundred subtle ways? Then there's no recovering what I've burned; none of the meditations anyway. The facts, yes; the facts I can find again. But the feelings I set down? They've gone, and they've gone forever.

Oh Lord! A few minutes ago I was in a fine old mood about what I did, and now I'm sickened. What's wrong with me? This bloody book, that's what's wrong. It's wearing me out. I'm tired of listening to the bloody voices in my head. I'm tired of feeling as though I'm responsible to them. My father wouldn't have wasted a day of his life, long though it was, writing about Galilee and the Gearys. And the idea that anyone, let alone his son, could sit down day upon day to report the voices that chatter in his head would have struck him as ludicrous.

My only defense would have been to convince him that my book keeps at bay a creeping madness that I owe entirely to him. Though even as I say that I can well imagine what his response would be.

"I was never mad."

How would I reply? "But Poppa," I'd say. "There were months on end when you wouldn't speak to anybody. You let your beard grow to your navel, and you wouldn't wash. You'd go out into the swamp and eat rotted alligator carcasses. Do you remember doing that?"

"Your point?"

"That's the act of a madman."

''By your definition.''

"By anybody's definition, father."

"I was not mad. I knew exactly why I was doing what I was doing."

"Tell me, then. Help me understand why half the time you were a loving father, and the rest of the time you were covered in lice and excrement-"

"I made a pair of boots out of excrement. Do you remember those?"

"Yes, I remember."

"And one time I brought back a skull I'd found in the swamp-a human skull-and I told my bitch-wife that I'd been away in Virginia and I'd dug up you know who."

"You told her you had Jefferson's skull?"

"Oh yes." He gives me a sly smile here, remembering with pleasure the pain he caused. "And I reminded her how his narrow lips had looked, and put my fingers in his sockets where his watery eyes had been. I said to her: did you kiss his eyes?Because this is where they lay…"

"Why did you do something so cruel?"

"She did a lot worse to me. Anyway it was good to see her weep and wail once in a while. It reminded me she still had a heart, because sometimes I doubted it. And oh Lord, how she carried on! Screaming at me to give her the skull. It wasn't dignified, she said. Dignified! Ha! As if she ever gave a damn about being dignified! She could behave like the filthiest gutter whore when she was in heat. But she came after me, telling me about dignity!" He shook his head, laughing now. "The hypocritical slut."

I remembered this now. The walls of L'Enfant literally shaking as husband and wife raged at one another. I hadn't known what was at issue at the time; but in hindsight it's little wonder Cesaria was so distressed.

"Eventually she snatched the thing from me-or tried to-and somehow in the mllee it dropped to the ground and smashed. Pieces flew in every direction and she let out such a shriek and went down on her knees to gather these pieces up so fucking

tenderly you'd have thought he was still in there somewhere…"

"So did you tell her it wasn't Jefferson's skull?"

"Not right then. I watched her for a while, sobbing and moaning. I'd never been completely certain of what went on between them until that minute. I mean I'd had my suspicions-"

"He built L'Enfant for her."

"Ah, that proved nothing. She could make men do anything, if she put her mind to it. The question wasn't: what did he feel for her? The question was: what did she feel for him? And now I had my answer. Watching her picking up the pieces of what she thought was his bones, I saw how-oh how-she loved him.'' He paused and regarded me with black and turquoise eyes. "How did we get to this?"

"You being mad."

"Oh yes…" He smiled. "My madness… my wonderful madness…" He drew a deep breath; a vast breath. "I was never mad," he said again. "Because the mad don't know what they're doing or why. And I always knew. Always." He exhaled. "Whereas you…" he growled.

"Me?"

"Yes, my son. You. Sitting there day after day, night after night, listening to voices which may or may not be real. That's not the behavior of a sane man. Look at you. You're even writing this down. Just take a moment and think about how preposterous that is: setting down something as if it were the truth, though you know you 're inventing it."

"I don't know that for certain."

"But I've been dead and gone a hundred and forty years, son. I'm as dusty as Jefferson."

I fumbled for an answer to this. The thing is, he was right. It was strange-no, it is strange-to be exchanging words with a dead man the way I am now, not knowing how much of what I'm writing is reportage and how much of it invention; not knowing if my father is speaking to me through my genes, through my pen, through my. imagination, or whether this dialogue is just evidence of some profound insanity in me. Sometimes I hope it's the latter. For if it's the former-if the man is here in me now-then that prospect he said I feared so much is dose; that time when he comes back from his journey into death, leaving the door through which he passed open wide.

"Father?"

Writing the word on the page is a kind of summons, sometimes.

"Where are you?"

He was here moments ago, filling my head with his voice. (That story of the skull he showed to Cesaria; I'd never heard it before. When I see her next I'm going to ask her if it's true. If it is, then I'm not inventing his voice, am I? He's here with me.) Or at least he was.

"Father?"

Now he doesn't answer.

"We didn't finish our conversation about madness."

Still silence. Ah well; another time perhaps.

I began this passage talking about clearing my desk, and I end up with a visitation from my deceased father. That's how it's been from the beginning: the strange, the grotesque, even the apocalyptic, has constantly intersected with the domestic, the familial, the inconsequential. While I sat sipping tea I dreamed I was on the Silk Road to Samarkand. While I listened to the crickets I saw Garrison Geary playing the homy mortician. While I was plucking the hairs from my ears one evening I saw Rachel looking back at me from the mirror in my bathroom, and I knew she had fallen in love.

It's perhaps not surprising that I choose the Silk Road as an example of the strange and Garrison's cold coupling as an image of the grotesque. But why do I think of Rachel and Galilee when I picture the apocalyptic?

I don't exactly know, to be honest. I have some uneasy suspicions, but I'm afraid to voice them in case doing so turns a possibility into a likelihood.

I can only say this with any certainty: that as the visions continue to come, it's Rachel I feel closest to. So close in fact that sometimes when I get up from a period of writing about her-especially if I've been recording something that happened to her in private (just the two of us, in other words)-I feel as though I am her. My body's heavy and hers is light, my skin is Italianate, hers is pale, I move like a man who has only just regained his mobility (I'm lumpen; I stumble), she moves as though she were a silk sail. And yet, I feel I am her.

Many, many pages ago-having somewhat awkwardly described the first liaison between Rachel and Galilee-I remember writing that I was faintly sickened by the pall of incestuous feeling that attended such description. I can honestly say now that all such concerns have disappeared, and for that I must thank the presence of my Rachel. She's made me shameless. Taking this journey with her, listening to her weep, listening to her rage, listening to her express her longings for Galilee, I have become braver.

Had I to tell that scene again, I wouldn't be so puritanical. If you doubt me, wait a while. If they meet again I'll prove the boast. Maddox will have vanished from the equation: I will be Rachel, lying in the arms of her beloved.

Rachel opened her eyes, just a slit, and looked at the clock. It was just a little after six; only an hour since she'd given up on the journal and retired to bed. Her head was throbbing, and her mouth tasted stale. She contemplated getting up to take some aspirin, but she didn't have the will to move.

As her eyes fluttered closed, however, she heard a noise on the floor below. Her heart jumped. There was somebody in the apartment. She held her breath, raising her head from the pillow half an inch so as to hear better. There was another sound now; not a footfall this time, but a voice, a man's voice. Was it Mitchell? If so, what the hell was he doing letting himself into her apartment at this hour of the morning; and who the hell was he talking to? She strained to hear the words. She recognized the cadence of voice, though she could make no sense of what he was saying. It was indeed Mitchell; the bastard! Walking in as though he still had the right to come and go.

There was a short pause, then he began to speak again. He was on the telephone to somebody, she realized, and to judge by the speed of his speech, he was excited.

She was almost as curious as she was enraged: what had got him into such a state? She got up, quickly slipped on her underwear and a sweatshirt, and went to the door.

Once she got there she could hear him more clearly. He was talking to Garrison. Even if she hadn't heard him say his brother's name, which she did, she would have known from the tone of his voice: that mingling of respect and familiarity which he reserved for Garrison alone.

"I'm coming over right now…" Mitchell was saying, "just let me grab some coffee and-"

She opened the door and went out onto the landing. He was still out of sight, but he obviously heard her coming because he truncated his conversation. "I'll see you in an hour," he said, and put the phone down.

She was at the top of the stairs now, and she could hear him getting up from the table and crossing the room, though she still couldn't see him.

"Mitchell?"

Finally he stepped into view, a sunny smile already fixed on his face, though his pallor was gray and his eyes bloodshot.

"I thought I heard you up there. I didn't want to wake you, so-"

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Just dropped by to say hi," he replied, the smile still in place. "You look like you had a rough night. Are you okay?"

Rachel started down the stairs. "It's six in the morning, Mitchell."

"There's a lot of flu going around, you know. Maybe you should see-"

"Are you listening?"

"Don't be mad, baby," he said, the smile finally making its exit. "You don't have to yell and scream every time we see one another."

"I'm not screaming," Rachel said calmly. "I'm just telling you I don't want you in my apartment."

She was three steps from the bottom of the flight. He stepped back, hands raised in surrender. "I'm going," he said, and turning on his heel walked back toward the table. "I should have known she'd pass it on to you," he said as he went. He was talking about the journal. It was there on the table where Rachel had left it. "Garrison said you were all bitches, and I didn't want to believe it. Not my

Rachel. Not my sweet, innocent Rachel." He reached for the journal.

"Don't touch that," she said.

"I'll do what the fuck I like," Mitchell said. He picked up the journal, and turned back to look at her. "I gave you a chance-"he said, waving his prize in front of him as he spoke. "I warned you at the gala: don't mess with things you don't understand because you'll end up having nobody to protect you. Didn't I say that?"

"It's not yours, Mitch," Rachel said, doing her best to preserve her equilibrium. "Put it down and leave."

"Or what?" Mitchell said. "Huh? What can you do? You're on your own." His manner softened abruptly, as though he was genuinely distressed at her vulnerability. "Why didn't you just come to me and tell me she'd given you this?"

"She didn't give it to me. I found it."

"You found it?" The softness was gone as quickly as it had appeared. "You went digging around in Garrison's place?"

"Yes."

He shook his head in disbelief. "You are a piece of work," he said. "Do you have any idea what you're playing around with?"

"I'm beginning to."

"And you thought your lover-boy Galilee was going to come and save you if you got in too deep?"

"No," she said, slowly walking toward him. "I know that's not what happens. I have to look after myself. I'm not afraid of you. I know how your mind works."

"Not any longer you don't," he said. The look in his bloodshot eyes gave credence to the claim; there was something she hadn't seen there before; something unstable. "You know what you should do, baby? You should go back to Dansky and be thankful you got out alive. I really mean that, baby. Go and don't look back…"

At the gala his threatening talk had seemed faintly ludi crous; now it carried weight. He frightened her. She was weak with sadness and confusion and lack of sleep; if he chose to harm her now, she wouldn't be able to put up much of a defense.

"You know you may be right," she said, doing her best to conceal her unease. "I should go home."

He was clearly pleased that he'd made some impression on her. "Now you're being smart," he said.

"I hadn't realized…"

"No, how could you?"

"… things are more serious…"

"Than you thought. I did try and warn you."

"Yes. You did. And I wasn't ready to listen."

"But now you see…"

She nodded; he seemed to have bought her performance. "Yes, I see. I was wrong and you were right."

Oh, he liked that; that made him smile from ear to ear. "You know, you are so sweet when you want to be," he said. Without warning, he approached her, his free hand reaching out and catching hold of her chin. She smelled sour sweat and stale cologne. "If I had the time…" he said, that volatile gleam clearer still now he was a foot from her, "I'd take you upstairs and remind you what you're missing."

She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but there was nothing to be gained from escalating things again when she'd just worked to turn down the heat. Instead she kept her silence, and let him plant a dry kiss on her lips, in that proprietorial manner that had once made her feel like a princess. He hadn't finished with her, however. His hand dropped from her chin and lightly touched her breast. "Say something," he murmured.

"What do you want me to say?"

"You know," he said.

"You want me to ask you to come upstairs?"

He gave her a crooked-eye grin. "It might be nice," he said.

She swore to herself she'd make him suffer for this one day; she'd have her foot on his neck. But until then: "Well, will you?"

"Will I what?" he said.

"Take me upstairs-"

"And?"

"-fuck me."

"Oh, baby, I thought you'd never ask." His hand made one final descent, from her breast to her groin. He slipped his fingers beneath the waistband of her panties. "You're not wet, baby," he said. He pushed in a little. "Peels like a fucking grave." He pulled his hand out, as though he'd been stung. "Sorry, baby. Gotta go."

He turned away from her and started in the direction of the door. It was all she could do not to go after him, telling him what a worthless piece of shit he was. But she resisted the temptation. He was leaving, and that was all that mattered right now.

"One thing-" he said when he reached the door.

"Yes?"

"Do you want me to put this place back on the market for you? You're not going to stay here are you?"

"You can do what the hell you want with it."

"Whatever I get for it, I'll put in your account." He glanced over his shoulder, though not far enough to lay eyes on her. "Of course, if you don't trust me…"

"Sell it, Mitch. I'll be out of here in two weeks."

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know yet. I've got plenty of friends. Maybe back to Boston. I'll keep Cecil informed."

"Yeah. Do that, will you?"

That was his departure line: a remote echo of a man who'd once cared for her, and whom she'd been ready to call her husband to the end of her days.

What had happened to him? What was happening to them all? It was as though everybody was shedding their skin, and revealing somebody new-or perhaps somebody they'd always been-to the world. The question that lay before Rachel was simple: who was she? She was no longer Mitchell's wife, that much was certain. But then nor was she Galilee's lover. Was she doomed to be one of the melancholy women she saw around town noted only for the brevity of their moment-a failed marriage to a public man, or a taste of celebrity, then eclipse? Growing old as gracefully as they knew how: preserving their place at the table with minor good works though half the time people couldn't quite remember who they were.

She'd go back to Dansky before she'd live a life like that. She'd propose to Neil Wilkens and if he'd take her, settle down to a life of total anonymity. Anything, rather than be pointed out as the woman who'd loved and lost Mitchell Geary.

But she was getting ahead of herself. Her first concern was to preserve her life and sanity in the midst of a situation that was far from safe. She could still see the subtle gleam of lunacy in Mitchell's eyes, and the curl of his lips as he took his fingers out of her.

Feels like a fucking grave…

She shuddered, thinking of what he'd said. Not just of its easy cruelty-though that was horrible enough-but the fact that it seemed to taint her with death. Was that what Mitch really believed? Did he look at her and see a woman who was already halfway to joining Margie on the Golden Floor? It would be nice and convenient for him if she died, wouldn't it? He could play the grieving soulmate for a little while, and then move on to find himself a more accommodating wife-one who'd pop out little Gearys on a regular basis and who wouldn't be too critical of her husband's lack of passion.

This was probably all paranoia, she told herself, but that didn't make her any less fretful. And to add to her sum of anxieties, there was the fact that Mitchell now had the journal. It was plainly important to him; and to Margie too apparently, or else why had she gone to so much trouble to hide it? What was the significance of its contents, that Mitchell had been so happy to have it in his hands?

Well, there was no use sitting and stewing over it all; what was done was done. The best thing to do, she decided, was to get the hell out of the apartment and walk.

She quickly got dressed, and headed down to the street. The day was fine and bright, and she knew as soon as she started walking that she'd made a smart decision. Her spirits lifted, especially once she got into the crowds on Fifth Avenue. There was a pleasant sense of anonymity there; she was just one of thousands striding the sidewalks, enjoying the day.

The subject of Mitch and his vile talk didn't come back into her head, but thoughts of Galilee did. The mysteries that attended him didn't trouble her as they had previously. In the open air, with the bustle of people all around her, they seemed simply intriguing: inexplicable, even magical, elements in her personal landscape. What was he, this man who spoke of shark gods as though they were his bosom buddies? Who had lived several lifetimes, wandering the oceans of the world? Who was so lonely, and yet took no comfort in the presence of other living beings?

She wished she'd quizzed him more closely when they'd been together, particularly about his family. Assuming that he'd been telling the truth when he'd said he had no grandparents, what did that imply about his mother and father? That they were somehow original souls, the Adam and Eve of their species? If so, then what did that make Galilee? Cain or Abel? The first murderer? The first victim?

Biblical parallels wouldn't have seemed so pertinent but for the fact of the man's name. He was called Galilee, after all; somebody in his family knew their Gospels.

Well, whatever he was, whatever the nature of his mystery, she didn't expect to be solving it any time soon. The journal's contents had only served to confirm the suspicion that his path and hers went in very different directions.

She would not be sitting down to talk about his name or his childhood anytime soon. He was gone from her life, perhaps forever; and she had no way back to him. No means of tracing him except through the coils of Geary family history, where she was now effectively forbidden to go. She was an exile, like him. He on the water, she on Fifth Avenue; he alone, she surrounded by people: but still, in the end, outcasts.

Walking gave her a hunger, so she dropped into Alfredo's-a little Italian place she'd gone more than once with Mitchell-for lunch. She arrived thinking she'd have a salad, but when she scanned the menu her appetite sharpened, and she ended up with a plate of spaghetti followed by profiteroles. What now? she wondered as she ate. She couldn't walk the streets of New York forever; sooner or later she was going to have to decide where her best hope of safety lay.

Her espresso was not brought by her waiter but by the owner of the establishment, Alfredo himself: a round, pink, cherubic man who had never lost his thick Italian accent. Indeed he probably nurtured it, as part of his charm.

"Mrs. Geary…" he said, with great gravity, "… we are all so very, very sad when we hear about your sister-in-law. She came in once, with the older Mrs. Geary-Lor-etta-and we all just fell in love with her."

Loretta and Margie, sharing a bottle of wine and reminiscences? It was hard to picture.

"Does Loretta come in here often?"

"Now and again," Alfredo said.

"And what do you make of her? Does everybody love Loretta too?"

The plainness of the question defeated Alfredo's considerable powers of diplomacy. He opened his mouth, but no answer came.

"No instant love for Loretta, huh?"

"She is very powerful lady," Alfredo finally replied.

"Back home in Italy we have such women. Very strong, in their hearts. They are the real power in the family. All the men, they make the noise, they make the violence sometimes, but the women just go on in their way, you know, being strong."

That certainly described Loretta: hard to love, but impossible to ignore. Perhaps it was time Rachel paid her a visit; followed up on the conversation they'd had just after Margie's death, when Loretta had so very clearly laid out her vision of the way things would be, and had asked Rachel to side with her. Was it too late to say yes? She didn't particularly like the prospect of asking for Loretta's help; but the woman had known whereof she spoke that night. We need each other, she'd said; for self-protection. Whatever your dense husband thinks, he's not going to be running the Geary empire.

Why not? Rachel had asked her.

And the answer? Oh, Rachel remembered it well, and with the passage of time it began to look like an astonishing prophecy.

"…he's inheriting a lot more than he 'II be able to deal with," Loretta had said. "He'll crack. He's already cracking…"

She thanked Alfredo for a delightful lunch, and went out into the busy street. The espresso had given her a fair buzz, but it wasn't just coffee that quickened her step as she headed north; it was the sudden realization that she had, after all, a place of refuge, if it wasn't too late to request it.

Given how little warmth there is in my relationship with Zabrina (I think my last reported exchange with her was in the kitchen, while she juggled the devouring of pies) you can imagine how surprised I was when she appeared in my room yesterday evening. She had tears pouring down her face, and all the usual ruddiness had gone out of her skin.

"You have to come with me!" she said.

I asked her why, but she insisted that she had no time for explanations. I was simply to come; right now.

"At least tell me where we're going," I said.

"It's Mama," she said, her sobs coming on with new vigor. "Something's happened to Mama! I think maybe she's dying."

This was enough to make me get up out of my chair and follow Zabrina, though as we went I was quite certain she'd made a mistake. Nothing was ever going to happen to Cesaria: she was an eternal force. A creature born out of the primal fire of the world does not pass away quietly in her bed.

And yet the closer we got to Cesaria's chambers the more I began to suspect there might be real reason for Zabrina's panic. There had always been a subtle agitation in the passageways close to Cesaria's rooms, as though her presence excited motion at a molecular level. To be there was to feel, in some unaccountable way, more alive. The light seemed dearer, the colors brighter; when you inhaled you seemed to feel the shape of your lungs as they expanded. But not today; today the passageways were like mausoleums. I began to feel a prickling dread creep over me. What if she was dead? Cesaria Yaos, the mother of mothers, dead? What would that mean for us who were left behind? The Gearys were about to mount an assault against us, I had no doubt of that. Holt's journal, containing a detailed description of how to get to this very house, was in the hands of Garrison Geary himself. And Mama Cesaria was dead? Oh God.

Zabrina had halted a few yards from the door of Cesaria's chambers.

"I can't go in again…" she said, a new flood of tears coming.

"Where is she?"

"In her bedroom."

"I've never been in her bedroom."

"Just… go straight in, make the second right, and it's at the end of the passageway."

I was more than a little nervous now. "Come with me," I said to Zabrina.

"I can't," she said. I don't think I've ever seen anyone look so scared.

I left her to her trembling, and entered, my dread growing with every step I took. No doubt Cesaria had intended that anyone coming into these chambers should feel they were entering the temple of her body; certainly that was how I felt. The walls and ceiling were painted a purplish red, the bare boards underfoot were darkly stained. There was no furniture in the passageways; the rooms that lay to right and left were too gloomy for me to see into very dearly, but they also appeared to be bare.

I made the second right as Zabrina had instructed. For the first time since my healing at Cesaria's hands I felt a stab of the old pain in my legs, and had a paranoid vision of my muscles atrophying in this dead air.

"Stop it," I murmured to myself.

I might have uttered the words-m a vacuum. Though I could feel my palate shape the syllables, and my breath expel them, the passageway refused to hear them uttered. They were snatched away and smothered.

I didn't say anything more; I didn't dare. I simply walked on to the door of Cesaria's bedroom, and stepped inside.

It was as gloomy as all the other rooms, the heavy drapes dosed against the sky, against the world. I waited for a few moments to let my eyes accommodate themselves to the murk, and by degrees they did just that.

There was a massive bed in the room. That was all, a massive bed, upon which my father's wife lay like a body on a catafalque. None of her splendor was removed by her supine position. Even in death-if indeed she was dead-the physical fact of her demanded reverence. There was an uncanny precision about her; she seemed perfect, even in this state: like a great funereal work sculpted by her own genius.

I approached the bed, glad now that Zabrina hadn't come with me. I didn't want to share this moment with anybody. Though I was afraid, it was a glorious fear, a fear that surely you could only feel in the presence of a dead or dying goddess: a fear mingled with great swelling gratitude that I was allowed this sight.

Her face! Oh her face. The great black mane of her hair swept back from her wide brow, her dark skin gleaming, her mouth open, her lids open a little way too, but showing only the whites of her eyes.

Finally, I found the courage to speak. I said her name.

This time, the air consented to bear my word; it went from me lightly. But there was no response from Cesaria Yaos. Not that I expected there to be. I was increasingly certain that Zabrina was right. Mama was dead.

What now, I thought. Did I dare approach the bed and actually touch the body? Look for vital signs as if the woman before me were just a common cadaver? I couldn't face that possibility. Better to go to the window, I thought, and open the drape a little way, so that I could see the body more clearly. That way I could make an assessment of her condition from a respectful distance.

Moving with due reverence I crossed the room to the window, thinking as I went what a life of sad confinement Cesaria had lived since my father's passing. What had she done to fill the years, I wondered? Had the memories been enough to give her a taste of happiness? Or had she stewed in her sorrow up here, cursing her longevity, and the children who'd failed to give her joy?

I caught hold of one of the drapes, and started to pull it open. But as I did so, I felt something brush the back of my neck-just a feather touch, but it was enough to make me freeze. I glanced back over my shoulder, my hand still gripping the fabric. Had some subtle change come over Cesaria's face? Were her eyes open a fraction wider? Her head was turned a little in my direction? I stared at her for fully a minute, studying her face for some evidence of life. But I was imagining it: there was nothing.

Mastering my courage, I once again began to draw back the drape, and had opened it perhaps an inch when whatever had brushed my neck a little while before came against my face, not lightly this time, but like a blow. I heard a cracking sound in my head, and the next moment blood began to run from my nose. Needless to say, I let go of the drape instantly. If I hadn't had to pass the bed to get to the door I might have run for it there and then, but I decided passivity was the wisest response. Whatever was here in the room with me, I didn't doubt it could do me some serious damage if it set its mind to the task. I wanted to prove that I was no threat to it; or, perhaps more pertinently, to the sanctity of the body on the bed.

I didn't even tend to my bleeding nose while I waited. I just let it run, and after a while the flow slowed and stopped. As for my attacker, wherever he was, he seemed satisfied of my innocence, because he made no further assault upon me.

And then, the strangest thing. Without moving her lips, Cesaria spoke.

Maddox, she said, what are you doing here?

The question wasn't presented as a challenge. There was a gentle musicality in her voice. She almost sounded dreamy, in fact; as though she were speaking in her sleep.

"I thought-that is, Zabrina thought-something had happened to you," I said.

It has, Cesaria replied.

"Are you sick? We thought perhaps you were dying?"

I'm not dying. I'm just traveling.

"Traveling? Where?"

There's somebody I need to see, before he passes out of this life.

"Cadmus Geary," I said.

She murmured her assent. Of course you've been telling his story, she said.

"Some of it."

He lived a troubled life, Cesaria said, and he's going to die a troubled death. I'm going to make certain of that. She spoke without vehemence, but the observation made me glad I was nowhere near the dying man. If Cesaria wanted to give him grief, then grief she would give, and let anyone in his vicinity beware.

You're hurt, she said.

"No, just-"

You 're bleeding. Was that Zelim 's doing?

"I don't know who it was. I was trying to open the drape, to get a better look at you."

-and you were struck.

"Yes."

It was Zelim, Cesaria said. He knows I don't like the light. But he was being overzealous. Zelim? Where are you?

There was a sound off in the far corner of the room like buzzing of bees, and it seemed to my somewhat befuddled eyes that the murky air knotted itself up, and something that resembled a human form appeared in front of me. It was only rudimentary; a slim, androgynous creature with large dark eyes.

Make your peace, Cesaria said. I assumed the instruction was for me, and I proceeded to apologize but she broke in: Not you, Maddox. Zelim. •

The servant bowed his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "The error was mine. I should have spoken to you before I struck you."

Now both of you can leave me, Cesaria said. Zelim, take Maddox into Mr. Jefferson's study and make him a little more presentable. He looks like a schoolboy who's just been in a brawl.

"Come with me," said Zelim, who by now had reached such a level of corporeality that his nakedness was somewhat discomforting to me, despite the naive form of his genitals.

I followed him to the door, and was just about to step out when I heard Cesaria call my name again. I looked back. Nothing had changed. She lay as she had, completely inert. But from the direction of her body there came-how can I describe this without stooping to sentimentality-there came a wave of love (there, I've stooped) which broke invisibly but touched me more profoundly than any visible force could have done. Tears of pleasure ran from my eyes.

"Thank you, Mama," I murmured.

You're very welcome child, she said, now go and be tended to. Where's Zabrina by the way?

"She's outside."

Tell her not to be a ninny. If I were truly dead I'd have every creature in the county weeping and wailing.

I smiled at this. "I think you would," I said.

And tell her to be patient. I'll be home soon.

Mr. Jefferson's study, as Cesaria had referred to it, was one of the small rooms I had passed by on my way to the bedroom. I was ushered into it by Zelim, whose newfound politeness did nothing to sooth my unease at his presence. His voice, like his appearance, was wholly nondescript. It was as though he were holding on to the last vestiges of his humanity (I say holding on, but perhaps it was the other way about; perhaps I was simply witness to the final and happy sloughing off of the man he'd once been). Whichever it was, the sight of him, and the sound of a voice that barely sounded human, distressed me. I didn't want to spend any time in his company. I told him there was nothing he need do for me; I'd quite happily mend myself once I got back downstairs. But he ignored my protestations. His mistress had told him to make good the damage he'd done, and he plainly intended to do so, whether I considered myself an injured party or not.

"Can I get you a glass of brandy?" he said. "I understand you're not a great imbiber of brandy-"

"How do you know that?"

"I listen," he said. So the rumors were true, I thought. The house was indeed a listening machine, delivering news from its various chambers up to Cesaria's suite. "But this is a bottle we seldom touch. It's potent. And it will take away the sting."

"Then thank you," I said. "I will have a little."

He inclined his head to me, as though I'd done him great service by accepting the offer, and retired to the next room, allowing me the freedom to get up and wander around the study. There was plenty to see. Unlike the rest of the rooms, which were empty, it was filled with furniture. Two chairs and a small table, a writing desk set in front of the window, with its own comfortable leather chair tucked in beneath it, a bookcase, weighed down with sober tomes. On the walls were a variety of decorations. On one hung a crude map, painted on the dried pelt of some unlucky animal: the territory it charted unfamiliar to me. On another a modestly framed drawing, in a very academic style, of Cesaria reclining on a chaise longue. She was dressed prettily, in a high-waisted gown much decorated with small bows. An unfamiliar Cesaria; at least to me. Was this the way she'd looked when she'd been the glory of Paris society? I assumed so. The rest of the pictures were small, undistinguished landscapes, and I passed over them quickly, saving the chief focus of my attention for the strange object which sat on Jefferson's desk. It looked like a large, carpentered spider.

"It's a copying machine," Zelim explained when he came back in. "Jefferson invented it." He pulled out the chair. "Sit please." I sat down. "By all means try it," he said. There was paper on the desk, and the pen already fitted into the device. Now that I knew its purpose it wasn't hard to fathom how it worked. I raised and dipped my pen-which, courtesy of a system of struts, automatically raised and dipped the second pen, and proceeded to scratch out my name on a second sheet. Glancing over to my right I found my signature replicated almost perfectly.

"Clever," I remarked. "Did he ever use it?"

"There's one at Monticello he used all the time," Zelim explained. "This device he used only once or twice."

"But he definitely used it?" I said. "I mean… Jefferson had his fingers around this very pen?"

"Indeed he did. I saw him with my own eyes. He wrote a letter to John Adams, as I remember."

I couldn't prevent a little shudder of delight, which you might think strange given the divine company I've kept. After all, Jefferson was only human. But that was perhaps the reason I felt the frisson. He was mortal stuff, reaching for a vision that was grander than most of us dare contemplate.

Zelim handed me my glass of brandy. "Again, I apologize for my violence. May I wash the blood off your face?"

"No need," I said.

"It's no trouble."

"I'm fine," I told him. "If you want to make amends-"

"Yes?"

"Talk to me."

"About what?"

"About what it's been like for you, over the centuries."

"Ah…"

"You're Zelim the fisherman, aren't you?"

The pale face before me, despite its lack of specificities, seemed to grow troubled. "I don't ever think of that any longer," he said. "It doesn't seem to be my life."

"More like a story?" I ventured.

"More like a dream. A very distant dream. Why do you ask?"

"I want to be able to describe everything in my book. Only everything, that was my promise to myself. And you're a unique individual. I'd like to be sure I tell it all truthfully."

"There's nothing much to tell," Zelim said. "I was a fisherman, and I was called into service. That's an old story."

"But look what you became."

"Oh this…" he said, glancing down at his body. "Does my nakedness trouble you?"

"No."

"The longer I live with her the more I tend to androgyny, and the less important clothing comes to seem. I can't remember how I looked any longer, when I was a man."

"I've got a picture of you in my head," I said. "On the shore with Cesaria and Nicodemus and the baby. Dark hair, dark eyes."

"My teeth were good, I do know that," he said. "The widow Passak used to love to watch me tear at my bread."

"So you remember her?"

"Better than most things," Zelim replied. "Better than my philosophies, certainly." He gazed toward the window, and in the wash of light I saw that he was virtually translucent, his eyes iridescent. I wondered to myself if he had bones in his body, and supposed that he must, given the blow he'd delivered. Yet he seemed so very delicate now; like a frail invertebrate visitor from some deep-sea trench.

"I forgot her for a while…" he said, his voice gossamer.

"You mean the widow Passak?"

"Yes," he murmured. "I moved on through my life, and the love I felt for her…" The sentence trailed away; his face fluttered. I didn't prompt him-though I badly wanted to hear what more he had to say on the subject. He was in a deeply emotional state, for all the colorlessness of his voice. I didn't want to disturb his equilibrium. So I waited. At last, he picked up the thread of his ruminations: "… the love I felt seemed to pass away from me. I thought it had gone forever. But I was wrong… the feelings I had toward her come back to me now, as though I was feeling them for the first time. The way she looked at me, when the wind came off the desert. The sweet mischief in her eyes."

"Things come around," I said. "Didn't you teach that to your students?"

"I did. I used the stars as a metaphor, I believe."

"The Wheel of the Stars," I prompted.

Zelim made the faintest of smiles, remembering this. "The Wheel of the Stars," he murmured. "It was a pretty idea."

"More than an idea," I said. "It's the truth."

"I wouldn't make that claim for it," Zelim said.

"But the proof of it's right here. You said yourself that your feelings for Passak have come back."

"I think it may be for the last time," Zelim replied. "I've run my course, and I won't be rising again after this."

"What do you mean?"

"When L'Enfant falls-as it will, as it must-and everybody goes out into the world, I'm going to ask Cesaria to put an end to me. I've lived as a man, and I've lived as a spirit, and now I want an end to it all."

"No more resurrections?"

"Not for me. I think it's what comes naturally, after androgyny. Out of sexlessness into selflessness. I'm looking forward to it."

"Looking forward to oblivion?"

"It's not the end of the world," he said with a little laugh. "It's just one man's light going out. And if it's no great loss to me than why should anybody else be upset?"

"I'm not upset, I'm just a little confused," I said.

"By what?"

I thought about the question for a moment before I replied. "I suppose living here I've got used to the idea of things going on."

"Or rising again, like your father."

"I beg your pardon?"

Zelim's features fluttered again, as they had when he'd first begun to talk. His Socratic calm disappeared; he was suddenly anxious. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have-"

"Don't apologize," I told him. "Just explain."

"I can't. I'm sorry. It was inappropriate."

"Zelim. Explain."

He glanced back toward Cesaria's chambers. Was he fearful that she'd come to punish him for his indiscretion? If so, his glance reassured him that he was not being overheard. When he looked back at me, his agitation had almost gone. Apparently Cesaria was off on her way to meet with Cadmus Geary.

"I'm not sure I could explain anything where your father's concerned," he said. "Explanations and gods are mutually exclusive, aren't they? All I can do is tell you what I feel."

"And what's that?"

He took a deep breath. His body seemed to grow a little more substantial with the inhalation. "Cesaria's life is empty here. Completely empty. I know because I've shared it with her, day after day after day for the last God knows how many years. It's an empty life. She simply sits at the window, or feeds the porcupines. The only time she steps outside is when one of the animals dies and we have to go out to bury it."

"I have something of that life myself," I said. "I know how wretched it is."

"At least you had your books. She doesn't like to read any longer. And she can't abide television or even recorded music. Remember this is a woman who has been the toast of every great city in the world at some point in her life. I saw her in her glory days, and they were beyond anything you could imagine. She was the very essence of sophistication; the most courted, the most adored, the most emulated woman in the world. When she left a room, they used to say, it was like a kind of death…"

"I don't see what this has got to do with Nicodemus."

"Don't you think it's strange that she stays?" Zelim replied. "Why hasn't she pulled this house down? She could do that. She could raise a storm and trash it in a heartbeat. You know she raises storms."

"I've never seen her do it, but-"

"Yes you have. It was one of her storms that came in the night your father mated Dumuzzi."

"That I didn't know."

"She was angry because Nicodemus was showing more interest in his horses than he was in her, so she conjured a storm that laid waste to half the county. I think she was hoping the animals would be struck dead. Anyway, my point is this: if she wanted to bring this house down she could. But she won't. She just stays. She watches. She waits."

"Maybe she's preserving the house for Jefferson's sake," I suggested. "It's his masterpiece."

Zelim shook his head. "She's waiting for your father. That's what I believe. She thinks he's coming back."

"Well he'd better be quick about it," I said. "Because if the Gearys get here there'll be no more miracles-"

"I realize that. And I think so does she. After all these years of idling, suddenly things are urgent. This business with Cadmus Geary, for instance. She would never have stooped to meddle with one of the Geary family before this."

"What's she going to do to him?"

Zelim shrugged. "I don't know." His gaze left me; he looked off toward the window again. "But she can be very unforgiving."

If he had more to say on the subject of her lack of compassion, he didn't get a chance to say it. There was light rapping on the study door and Zabrina appeared. She'd sought out, and found, some comfort for her anxieties about Cesaria. She carried not one but two slices of pie in between the fingers of her right hand, and like a cardsharp manipulating aces at a poker table, delivered first one then the other to her mouth.

"All's well," I told her.

"So I gathered," she said.

"I'm sorry. I should have come to tell you earlier."

"I'm used to being ignored," she replied, and made her departure, pausing only to maneuver the last remaining pieces of pie crust into her mouth.

A I headed back downstairs I found myself in a mingled state of exhaustion and agitation. What I needed was a little entertainment. A conversation with Marietta would have been the perfect thing, but she was off making wedding plans with her beloved Alice, so I decided to smoke a little hashish and let my mind wander over the contents of my conversation with Zelim-the talk of his love for the widow Passak, his hopes for oblivion, his reflections on the loneliness of Cesaria's life, and what her patience really meant-and wondered, in that nonchalant, noncommittal way you wonder when you're smoking good hashish, if I shouldn't have spent less time with the Gearys in my book, and more time here at home. Had I trivialized what might have been a mightier work by following the story of Rachel Pallenberg so closely; been seduced by that most populist of idioms, the rags-to-riches story, when the real meat of what I should have told lay in the troubled body of the Barbarossa dan?

Back in my study I picked up the manuscript and flicked through it, deliberately letting my eye go where it would, to see how the thing sounded when sampled arbitrarily. There were plenty of stylistic infelicities which I promised myself I'd fix later; but the matter seemed to walk the line I'd intended it walk, between this world and that other, out there beyond the perimeters of L'Enfant. Perhaps I could have been less gossipy in my accounts of the daily business of this house, but there's honesty in that gossip. Whatever the mythic roots of this family may be, we've dwindled into pettiness and domesticity. We're not the first gods to have done so, of course. The occupants of Olympus bickered and bed-hopped; we're no better nor worse. But they were inventions, we're not. (I suspect, by the way, that in the creation of divinities we see the most revealing work of the human imagination. And of course in the life of that imagination, the most compelling evidence of the divine in man. Each is the other's most illuminating labor.)

Where does that leave me? I, who sit in the middle of a house of divinities talking about invented gods. It leaves me in confusion, as always; set against myself, as though my heart were divided, and each half beat to a different drummer.

The hashish put an appetite on me, and after a couple of hours of skipping through my text I went to the kitchen and made myself a sandwich of rare roast beef on black bread, which I ate sitting on the back door step, feeding the crumbs to the peacocks.

Then I slept for a while, thinking I would get up in the middle of the evening and continue to tinker with the text. Those few blissful hours of sleep were, I suspect, the last easy slumbers I will enjoy; for when I woke (or rather, was woken) it was not only with visions of the Geary house in New York filling my head, and my right hand twitching as if it were warming up for the challenge of setting down all I was about to see, but also with the uncanny sense that any last vestige of calm had gone from the places I was witnessing.

The final sequence of cataclysms was about to begin. I drew breath and ink; waited, watched, and then began to write.

When Rachel got to the mansion to see Cadmus she was told by one of the staff, a pleasant woman called Jocelyn, that she couldn't see Loretta tonight. The old man had been very sick since noon, and Loretta had sent the nurse away, saying she wanted to look after Cadmus herself, which she was doing. Her instructions were that they were not to be disturbed.

Rachel was insistent: this wasn't business that could be put off until tomorrow. If Jocelyn wouldn't go up and get Loretta, Rachel said, then she'd be obliged to do so herself. Reluctantly, Jocelyn went up; and after ten minutes or so Loretta came downstairs. It was the first time Rachel had ever seen her look less than perfect. She looked like a painting that had been slightly smeared; her hair, which was usually immaculate, a little out of place, one of her drawn brows a little smudged.

She instructed Jocelyn to make some tea, and took Rachel into the dining room.

"This is a bad time, Rachel," she said.

"Yes, I know."

"Cadmus is very weak, and I may need to go up to him, so please, say whatever you have to say."

"We had a conversation in this room, just after Margie's death."

"I remember it, of course."

"Well, you were right. Mitch was at my apartment a little while ago, and I don't think he's entirely sane."

"What did he do?"

"You want the short version and I'm not sure there is one," Rachel explained. "Margie had a book-I don't know the full story, but it was a kind of journal-and it came into my hands. It doesn't matter how. The point is, it did; and contains information about the Barbarossas."

Loretta showed no sign of response to any of this, until she spoke. When she did, her voice betrayed her. It trembled.

"You have Holt's journal?" she said.

"No. Mitchell does."

"Oh Jesus," she said quietly. "Why didn't you come to me with it?"

"I didn't know it was so important."

"Why do you think I've been sitting upstairs with Cadmus, listening to him ramble for hours on end?"

"You wanted the journal?"

"Of course. I knew he had it because he'd told me, years ago. Never let me see it-"

"Why not?"

"I guess he didn't want me to know anything more about Galilee than I already knew."

"It's not very flattering. What Holt says about him."

"So you've read it?"

"Not all of it. But a lot. And the way Holt describes him… oh Lord, how's it even possible?"

"How's what possible?"

"How could Galilee have been alive in 1865?"

"You're asking the wrong person," Loretta said. "Because I'm just as much in the dark as you about how and why. And I gave up asking a long time ago."

"If you gave up asking, why do you want the journal so badly?"

"Don't come here looking for my help and then start needling me, girl," Loretta replied. She looked away from Rachel for a moment, expelling a long, soft sigh. "Would you fetch me a cigarette?" she said finally. "They're on the sideboard over there."

Rachel got up and brought the silver cigarette case, along with the lighter, back to the table. While Loretta was lighting up Jocelyn came in with the tea. "Just set it down," Loretta said. "We'll serve ourselves. Oh, and Jocelyn? Would you go upstairs and check on Mr. Geary?"

"I just did," Jocelyn said. "He's sleeping."

"Keep looking in on him will you?"

"Of course."

"She's been a godsend," Loretta observed when Jocelyn had gone. "Never a complaint. What were we talking about?"

"Galilee."

"Forget about Galilee."

"You once told me that he was at the heart of everything."

"Did I now?" Loretta said. She drew deeply on her cigarette. "Well I was probably feeling sorry for myself." She exhaled the blue-gray smoke. Then she said: "You're not the only one who's been in love with him, you know. If you really want to understand what's happening to us you have to stop thinking from a selfish point of view. Everybody's had their disappointments, Rachel. Everybody's had their lost loves and their broken hearts. Even the old man."

"Louise Brooks."

"Yes. The exquisite Louise. That was in Kitty's time, of course. I didn't have to endure his mooning over the woman. Though she was lovely. I will say that. She was lovely." She poured herself a cup of tea as she spoke. "Do you want some tea?"

"No. Thank you."

"He's going to die in the next twenty-four hours," Loretta went on, matter-of-factly. "And when he's gone, I intend to take charge of this family and its assets. That's what's in his will."

"You've seen the will?"

"No. But he's promised me. If the will says what he swears it says then I'll be in a position to make some kind of deal with Garrison and Mitchell."

"And if it doesn't?"

"If it doesn't?" Loretta sipped her tea before replying. "Then maybe we'll need Galilee after all," she said quietly. "Both of us."

In his bedroom on the floor above, Cadmus woke. He was cold, and there was an emptiness at the pit of his stomach which was not hunger. He turned his face toward the dimmed lamp on the bedside table, hoping its light would drive from his head the shadowy forms that had accompanied him from sleep. He didn't want them with him in the real world. They'd have him soon enough.

The door opened. He raised his head from the pillow.

"Loretta?"

"No, sir. It's Jocelyn."

"Where's Loretta? She said she was going to stay with me."

"She's just downstairs, sir. Mitchell's wife came by to see her. Do you want something to eat, sir? Maybe some soup?"

"Send Rachel up."

"Sir?"

"You heard me. Send Rachel up. And have her bring me a snifter of brandy. Go on, woman."

Jocelyn went on her way, and Cadmus let his head sink back into the pillow. Lord, he was so, so cold! But the thought that Rachel was downstairs, and that he'd be laying eyes on her in a few moments, made him a little happier with his lot. She was a sweet girl; he'd always liked her. No doubt some of her innocence had been sullied by Mitchell; she'd lost some of her faith in the goodness of things. But she was a strong creature; she'd survive. He reached out, opened the drawer of the bedside cabinet, and reached around for a roll of peppermints. He could no longer chew gum-his jaws didn't have the power-and his mouth was so filled with cankers that brushing his teeth was an ordeal, but he wanted to be sure his breath was reasonably sweet when Rachel came to sit with him. With palsied fingers he fumbled a peppermint on to his dry tongue, and began, as best he could, to suck.

Somebody was shouting in the street outside, and he longed to be there; out from this cold bed, where he could see the sky. Just once more; was that too much to ask?

In finer times he'd liked to walk. He didn't care if it was fair weather or foul; he'd just get out of his limo wherever and whenever the urge struck him and walk. Arctic winter mornings, he remembered, and blistering August afternoons; days in spring when he'd felt like a happy truant, meandering his way home; evenings in midsummer, with half a dozen martinis in him, high as a king, singing as he went.

Never again. Never the street, never the sky, never a song. Only silence soon; and judgment. Much as he'd tried to ready himself, he was prepared for neither.

The window rattled. There was quite a wind getting up. The rattling came again, and this time the heavy drapes shook. No wonder he was cold! That silly bitch of a nurse had left one of the windows open. Another gust, and the drapes filled like sails. This time he felt the wind across the room; it was strong enough to shake the lampshade.

He felt a fluttering in his empty belly, and pushed himself up against the headboard to get a better look at the billowing drapes. What the hell was going on?

He needed his spectacles; but as he reached to pluck them up from amid the bottles of pills he heard somebody say his name.

A woman. There was a woman in the room with him.

"Loretta?"

The woman's voice plunged into a deeper register, and this time there were no words, just a sound, like a kind of roar, that shook the bed.

He fumbled to get his spectacles on, but before he could do so the lamp was thrown off the cabinet, and smashed, leaving him and the trespasser together in the darkness.

"What in God's name was that?" Loretta said. She got up from the table, yelling for Jocelyn, but Rachel was ahead of her, out into the hallway.

There was a shout now: a shrill shout. Ignoring Loretta's instructions to wait, girl, wait! Rachel headed for the stairs. She had a momentary flash of dija vu: ascending the flight two or three steps at a time, hearing the din of panic above, and the howling of wind. This was a scene she'd played out before, and for some reason she had kept the memory in her soul.

At the landing, she glanced back down the flight. Loretta was coming after her, clinging to the banister for support, Jocelyn at the bottom of the stairs, asking to know what the noise was.

"It's Cadmus, you damn fool!" Loretta yelled back at her. "I thought I told you to look in on him!"

"I did!" Jocelyn said. "He asked for brandy. And for Rachel."

Loretta didn't respond to this. It was Rachel she called after.

"Stay away from that door!"

"Why?" Rachel demanded.

"It's not your business! Just go back downstairs."

The door was rattling, violently, and there was no small part of Rachel that wanted to do exactly as Loretta had instructed. Perhaps after all this wasn't her business-it was Geary lunacy, Geary grief. But how could she ignore the sobs of panic that were coming from the bedroom? Somebody was terrorizing the old man, and it had to be stopped, right now. She turned the handle of the door-which rattled in her palm-and pushed. There was a force pressing on the door from the other side; she had to lay her whole body against the door to get it to open. When it did, it flew wide, and she pitched forward, so that appropriately enough she didn't step but stumbled into the midst of the tragedy waiting for her on the other side.

Cadmus's room was chaos. The enormous bed was empty, the covers thrown off, the pillows scattered around. All but one of the lights had gone out, the exception being his bedside lamp, which lay on the floor, flickering nervously. The cabinet it had stood upon had been overturned, as had the chairs and the small dressing table. All the appurtenances of the sickroom-the pill bottles and their contents, the medicines and the measuring spoons, the IV stand, the vomit bowl and the oxygen machine-were littered about, smashed, pounded, rendered useless.

Rachel looked for Cadmus, but she couldn't see him. Nor could she see any sign of whoever had caused this mess. She advanced into the room a little way. The drapes fluttered. The window, she saw, was open wide. Oh Lord! Had he tried to escape and fallen? Or been thrown out? As she started across the room, pills and glass crunching under her feet, she heard a soft sobbing. She looked in the direction of the sound, and there, crouched in the deep shadows in the corner of the room, she saw Cadmus. He was naked, his hands cupping his genitals, his face like that of a terrified monkey: lips curled back from his teeth, brow deeply furrowed. His eyes were upon her, but he made no sign of recognition. He simply stared, and shook. "You're going to be all right," she said to him. He said nothing. Just kept staring at her as she approached. The closer she got to him, the more she saw the harm that had been visited upon him. There were raised-we\\ts on bis shouVdm and chest, fiercely red against his sallow skin; and there was blood coining between his fingers, and pooling between his legs. She was appalled. Who would come into a dying man's room and cause such suffering? It was inhuman.

He had begun to sob loudly now. She hushed him gently, as a mother might hush a frightened child, but his eyes grew more panicky the closer to him she came.

"Don't…" he said, "Don't touch me…"

"I have to get you out of here," she told him.

He shook his head, drawing his limbs still closer to his body. The motion caused him pain, she saw; he dosed his eyes for a moment, and a little cry escaped him.

From the landing now, the sound of Loretta yelling at Jocelyn, telling her to go back downstairs. Rachel glanced up at the door. She had time to catch a glimpse of Loretta, then the door slammed hard, locking Loretta out. The noise started Cadmus wailing, the frail knot of his body shaking violently.

She didn't attempt to soothe him. He was too traumatized to be comforted; she'd be wasting her breath. Besides, she had another concern. Whatever force had slammed the door in Loretta's face, and was holding it closed, it was here in the room with her. She could feel its power, grazing the back of her neck.

Very slowly, she turned round. She wanted to be face to face with it if it decided to move against her: to see it plainly, if it was the last thing she did.

She scanned the room again. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the light from the flickering lamp, but they were still unable to find the cause of the maelstrom. She decided to simply call it forth.

"Where are you?" she said. Behind her, the old man's wails abruptly died away. He seemed to hold his breath, as if anticipating the worst. "My name's Rachel," she went on, "and he-" she pointed back toward Cadmus "-is my grandfather-in-law. I'd like you to let me take him out of thisToom and get him some help. He'sbleeding."

There was a silence. Then, a voice, across the room: a place between the windows which her gaze had twice passed over and found empty. Now she saw her error. There was somebody sitting there, formally, like a statue, every drape of her dress, every hair on her head, immaculate.

I didn 't touch him, the woman said.

Even now, though Rachel's eyes had found her, the woman was hard to keep in focus. Her black, silken skin seemed to deflect Rachel's gaze. But she persevered. When her eyes slid left or right, she returned them to the woman, back and back and back again, refusing to be put off.

He tried to unman himself, the woman was explaining, thinking it'd placate me.

Rachel didn't know whether to believe what she was being told or not. The idea that Cadmus had done the damage between his legs to himself was grotesque.

"May I take him then?" Rachel said.

No you may not, the woman replied. I came here to watch him die, and that's what I'm going to do.

Rachel glanced back over her shoulders. Cadmus was watching his tormentor, the terror on his face replaced with a blank look, as though he was too used up by what he'd endured to even weep.

You may stay with him if you wish, the woman went on. You won't have to wait very long. He's only got a few more breaths left in him.

"I don't want to watch him die," Rachel protested.

Where's your sense of history? the woman replied. She rose as she spoke, and dropped the last defenses she'd put up against Rachel's gaze. She was perhaps the most beautiful woman Rachel had ever seen; her glorious face had about it the same nakedness that Rachel had seen in Galilee's face, that first night. Skin and nerve and muscle and bone all extolling one another.

Now she understood what the woman meant when she talked about a sense of history. She was a Barbarossa, attending the death of a Geary.

"Are you his sister?" Rachel said.

Sister?

"Galilee's sister?" (

The woman made a tiny smile. No. I'm his mother: Cesaria Yaos Barbarossa. And you… who were you before you were a Geary?

"My name was Pallenberg."

Rachel Pallenberg.

"Right."

Tell me… do you regret it? Marrying into this wretched family?

Rachel contemplated the question before replying. Perhaps it would be politic to tell the woman that she regretted it heart and soul, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. It wasn't true. There were losses and gains, as in everything.

"I thought I loved my husband, and I thought he loved me," Rachel said. "But I was in love with a lie."

And what was that?

"That I'd be happy once I had everything-"

-even though you lost yourself?

"Almost," Rachel said. "Almost lost."

Tell me: is your husband here in the house?

"No."

Just the women out there? Cesaria said, glancing toward the door.

"Don't hurt them," Rachel said. "They're good people."

I told you, I didn't come here to hurt anybody. I came to bear witness.

Rachel glanced at the destruction on all sides. "So why do this?"

He annoyed me, Cesaria said, trying to bargain with me. "Leave me alone and I'll give you whatever I've got." Her eyes flickered in Cadmus's direction. You've got nothing I want, old man, she said. Besides, this house needs to be cleansed from top to bottom. He knows why. He understands. It's time to strip

away all the pretense. All the comforting things he collected to make him feel like a king. It all has to go. She began to walk back in Cadmus's direction. In the end, it'll be easier for him to move on, when there's nothing to keep him here.

"If you want to wreck the house," Rachel said, "that's one thing. But he's just a sick old man, and sitting here watching him bleed to death is cruel." Cesaria stared at her. "You don't think it's cruel?"

I didn't ask myself, Cesaria said. But yes, probably. And let me tell you, he deserves a lot worse, for the things he's done.

"To you?"

No, to my son. To Atva. Or as he prefers it: Galilee.

"What did Cadmus ever do to Galilee?"

Tell her, Cesaria said. Go on. Tell her. You'll never have another chance, so say it! Rachel looked back at Cadmus, but there was no answer forthcoming. He'd hung his head, whether out of exhaustion or shame Rachel didn't know. Did you thinkyou were so secret that nobody saw? Cesaria went on. I saw. When you made my child murder your own flesh and blood. I saw. There was a barely audible sob out of Cadmus. Tell her it's true, Cesaria said. Don't be such a coward.

"It's true…" Cadmus murmured.

Does your wife know, by the way? Cesaria said.

Very slowly, Cadmus raised his head. If he'd looked sick before, he looked a dozen times sicker now. There was no blood left in his face; his lips were bluish, his eyes and teeth yellow. "No," he said.

Let her in, Cesaria told Rachel. I want her to know what he hid from her. And tell the servant to leave. This is family business.

Though Rachel didn't much like being treated like a servant herself, she didn't argue with the instruction. She dutifully went to the door, which opened without effort. Both Loretta and Jocelyn were waiting there, Jocelyn sobbing uncontrollably.

"Why did you lock the door?" Loretta demanded.

"I didn't," Rachel told her. "Cesaria Barbarossa's in there with Cadmus. She wants you to come in. And she wants Jocelyn out of the house."

"Cesaria…?" Loretta said, her strident tone dropping to a murmur. "How did she get in?"

"I don't know," Rachel said, moving aside to allow Loretta a glimpse into the sickroom. "She says she's come to watch Cadmus die."

"Well she's not going to have the pleasure," Loretta said, and pushing past Rachel stepped through the door.

"What should I do?" Jocelyn wanted to know.

"Just leave."

"Shall I call Garrison?"

"No. Just get out of the house. You've done what you can."

It was clear from the fearful expression on Jocelyn's face that she wanted to go; but deep-seated loyalty was preventing her from doing so.

"If you don't go now," Rachel warned, "you may not get another chance. You've got your own family to think of. Go."

A look of relief crossed Jocelyn's face; here were the words that let her go with a dear conscience. "Thank you," she said, and slipped away.

Rachel closed the door after her, and turned back to face the events of the room. Loretta had already decided on her method of dealing with Cesaria: head-on attack.

"You don't have any business being here," she was saying. "You're trespassing in my house and I want you out."

This isn't your house, Cesaria said, her eyes fixed not on Loretta but on the man still squatting against the wall. And it isn 't his either. Loretta started to protest but Cesaria waved her words away. My son built this house, as he-she pointed at Cadmus-well knows. He built it with the blood he spilled to make you your fortune. And the seed he spilled.

"What are 'you talking about?" Loretta said. Her tone, though still assertive, was tinged with unease, as though she knew there was truth in what she was hearing.

Tell her, Cesaria said to Cadmus. The figure crouched in the shadows shook its heavy head. Cesaria took a step toward Cadmus. Old man, she said. Get yourself up off the floor.

"He can't-" Loretta said.

Shut up, Cesaria snapped. You heard me, old man. I want you up.

As the instruction left her lips Cadmus's head rolled backward, so that now he was looking straight up at Cesaria. Then, inch by quivering inch, he started to rise, his back pressed against the wall; but not of his own volition. His legs were too wasted to bear him up this way. This was Cesaria's doing. She was raising him by sheer force of will.

It seemed he was not entirely unhappy to be puppet-eered this way. A tight-lipped smile had crept onto his face, as though in some perverse way he was taking pleasure in being handled this way; in feeling the woman's power upon him.

As fascinated as she was appalled, Rachel crossed the room and went to stand at Loretta's side. "Please, don't do this," she said to Cesaria. "Let him die in peace."

He doesn't want to die in peace, Cesaria replied. Then, to Cadmus: Do you? It's better to suffer now, because that way you think you will have paid your debts. Isn 't that what you hope?

Cadmus made the tiniest of nods.

You may be right, by the way, Cesaria said. I don't have any better idea of what waits for you than you do. Maybe your soul's free after this. Maybe it's the ones you leave behind who'll pay the real price. She took another step toward him. Your children. Your grandchildren. Your wife. She was so close to him now she could have touched him. But she didn't need to make physical contact; she had a profound hold on him: that of her will and her words.

His eyes were filled with tears. His mouth opened a little way, and he started to speak. It was the ghost of a whisper.

"Can't we… make peace?" he murmured.

Peace?

"Your family… and mine."

It's too late for that.

"No…"

You had your own flesh and blood murdered by my son, Cesaria said. You drove Atva to madness for your ambition. You sowed terrible seeds when you did that. Terrible, terrible seeds.

The tears were pouring down Cadmus's face now. The perverse smile had gone; he looked like a mask of tragedy: his mouth turned down, his cheeks gouged, his brow furrowed.

"Don't punish them for what I did," he sobbed. "You can stop this… war… if you want to."

I'm too tired, Cesaria said, and too old. And my children are as willful as yours are. There's nothing I can do. If you'd come to me fifty years ago, and repented, maybe I could have done something. But now it's too late, for all of us.

She drew a little breath, and it seemed that as she did so the last of Cadmus's life went from him. His body ceased to shake, his face, that tragic mask, was abruptly wiped clean. There was a long moment of absolute stillness. Then Cesaria turned to Loretta and said: He's all yours, and turned her back on wife and corpse. The moment she withdrew her patronage, Cadmus slid back down the wall like a sack of bones. Loretta let out a tiny cry and went down on her knees beside him.

Cesaria wasn't interested in the drama, now that Cadmus had left the stage. She didn't turn to look back at Loretta keening over the body; she simply strode to the door and out onto the landing. Rachel went after her.

"Wait!" she called.

She could feel the air in Cesaria's wake becoming agitated. An aura rose off her, like heat off a stove. The air shook and melted. But Rachel wasn't about to let the woman go without at least attempting to question her. Too much had been said that needed explanation.

"Help me understand," she said.

There's nothing you need concern yourself with. It's over now.

"No, it's not! I need to know what happened to Galilee."

Why? Cesaria said, still descending. The emanations were beginning to cause some major disturbances now. The ceiling was making a peculiar grinding sound, as though the beams were shaking behind the plaster; the banister was rocking, as if buffeted by gusts of wind.

"I love him," Rachel said.

Of course you do, Cesaria replied. I'd expect nothing less.

"So I want to help him," Rachel said. She'd hesitated at the top of the stairs, but now-realizing that nothing she could say was going to halt Cesaria-she went down after her. A wave of sickly air struck her, smelling of camphor and dirt. She plunged through it, though it stung her eyes until they watered.

Do you know how many men and women have wanted to heal my Atva over the years? Cesaria said. None of them succeeded. None of them could.

She was at the bottom of the stairs now, and there hesitated for a moment, as if making up her mind where she would start her blitzkrieg. If Rachel had entertained any doubt that Cesaria intended to take up the offer made in Cadmus's room, and wreck the mansion, she had it silenced now, as the great Venetian mirror hanging in the hallway shook itself loose and came crashing down, followed in quick succession by every item on the walls, even to the smallest picture.

Rachel halted, shaken by the sudden violence. Cesaria, meanwhile, moved off down the passageway toward Cadmus's sitting room. "You should go," said a voice above.

Rachel looked up. Loretta had come out onto the landing, and was now standing at the top of the stairs.

"She won't hurt us," Rachel said; brave talk, though she wasn't entirely certain it was true. The noise of vandalism had erupted again; clearly Cesaria was demolishing the sitting room. The woman might not intend to do any hann, but when such chaotic forces as these were loosed, was anybody safe?

"Are you leaving?" Rachel said to Loretta.

"No."

"Then neither am I."

"Don't go near her, Rachel. What's going on here is beyond you. It's beyond us both. We're just little people."

"So what? We just give up?"

"We never had a prayer," Loretta said, the expression on her face bereft. "I see that now. We never had a prayer."

Rachel had watched events transform a lot of people of late: Mitchell, Cadmus, Galilee. But none of those changes distressed her quite as much as the one before her now. She'd looked to Loretta as a place of solidity in a shifting terrain. She'd seemed so certain of her path, and what measures she had to take to dear the way ahead. Now, suddenly, all that certainty had drained out of her. Though she'd known Cadmus was not long for this world, and though she'd certainly known the Barbarossas were something other than human stock, the proof of those facts had undone her.

I'm more alone than ever, Rachel thought. I don't even have Loretta now.

The din from the sitting room had died away during this exchange, and had now ceased entirely. What now? Had Cesaria tired of her furies already, and decided to leave? Or was she just catching her breath between assaults?

"Don't worry about me," Rachel said to Loretta. "I know what I'm doing."

And with that hopeful boast she headed on down the stairs and into the passage that led to the sitting room.

A bizarre sight awaited her. The room which Cadmus Geary had used as his sanctum had been as comprehensively trashed as the sickroom and the lobby, but two items had been left untouched by the assault: the landscape painting on the wall and a large leather armchair. Cesaria sat in the latter looking at the former, surrounded by a brittle sea of shards and splinters. Bierstadt's masterpiece seemed to have her entranced. But she was not so focused upon the canvas that she missed the fact of Rachel's presence. Without turning to look at her visitor, she started to speak.

I went out west… she said… many, many years ago.

"Oh?"

I wanted to find somewhere to settle. Somewhere to build my house.

"And did you?"

No. Most of it was too barren.

"How far west did you go?"

All the way to California, Cesaria replied. I liked California. But I couldn't persuade Jefferson to join me.

"Who was Jefferson?"

My architect. A better architect than he was a president, I may say. Or indeed a lover.

The conversation was rapidly straying into the surreal, but Rachel did her best to keep her amazement to herself. "Thomas Jefferson was your lover?"

For a short while.

"Is he Galilee's father?"

No, I never had a child by him. But I got my house.

"Where did you end up building it?"

Cesaria didn't reply. Instead she got up. from the armchair and wandered over to the painting, apparently indifferent to the shards of ceramic and glass beneath her bare feet.

Do you like this picture? she asked Rachel.

"Not particularly."

What's wrong with it?

"I just don't like it."

Cesaria glanced back over her shoulder. You can do better than that, she said.

"It tries too hard," Rachel said. "It wants to be really impressive and it ends up just… being… big."

You're right, Cesaria said, looking back at the Bierstadt. It does try too hard. But I like that about it. It moves me. It's very male.

"Too male," Rachel said.

There's no such thing, Cesaria replied. A man can't be too much a man. And a woman can't be too much a woman.

"You don't seem to try very hard," Rachel replied.

Cesaria turned to face Rachel again, a look of almost comical surprise on her exquisite features. Are you doubting my femininity? she said.

Challenged, Rachel lost a little of her confidence. She faltered before beginning to say: "Upstairs-"

You think womanhood should be all sighs and compassion? The expression on Cesaria's face had lost its comic excess; her eyes were heavy and hooded. You think I should have sat by that bastard's bed and comforted him? That's not womanhood. It's trained servitude. If you wanted to be a bedtenderyou should have stayed with the Gearys. There's going to be plenty of deathbeds to tend there.

"Does it have to end this way?"

Yes. I'm afraid it does. I meant what I said to the old man:

I'm too old and I'm too weary to stop war breaking out. She returned her gaze to the canvas, and studied it for a little time. We finally built the house in North Carolina, she went on. Thomas would go back and forth to Monticello, which he was building for himself. Forty years that house of his took to build, and I don't think he was ever satisfied. But he liked L'Enfant because he knew how much pleasure it gave me. I wanted to make it a glorious place. I wanted to fill it with fine things, fine dreams… Hearing this, Rachel couldn't help but wonder if Cadmus and Kitty, and later Loretta, hadn't felt something of the same ambition for this house, which Cesaria had just waged her own war against. Now of course the Gearys are going to come, and walk into that house of mine and see some of those dreams for themselves. And it's going to be very interesting to see which of them is the stronger.

"You seem quite fatalistic about it."

That's because I've known it was coming for a very long time. Ever since Galilee left, I suppose, somewhere in my heart I've known there'd come a time when the human world would come looking for us.

"Do you know where Galilee is?"

Where he always is: out at sea. She looked back at Rachel. Is he all you care about? Answer me honestly.

"Yes. He's all I care about."

You know that he can't protect you? He's never been good at that.

"I don't need protecting."

We all need protecting sometimes, Cesaria said, with a hint of wistfulness.

"Then let me help him," Rachel said. Cesaria looked at her with a strange gentility. "Let me be with him," Rachel went on, "And take care of him. Let me love him."

The way I should have done, you mean, Cesaria said. Rachel had no opportunity to deny the accusation. Cesaria was up and out of the chair, coming at her. There aren't many people I've met who'd talk to me the way you talk. Not after having seen all that's gone on here tonight.

"I'm not afraid of you," Rachel said.

I see that. But don't imagine being a woman's any protection. If I wanted to harm you-

"But you don't. If you hurt me then you hurt Galilee, and that's the last thing you want."

You don't know what that child did to me, Cesaria said. You don't know the hurt he caused. I'd still have a husband if he'd not gone off into the world ... She trailed off, despairing.

"I'm sorry he gave you so much pain," Rachel said. "But I know he's never forgiven himself."

Cesaria's stare was like light in ice. He told you that? she said.

"Yes he did."

Then why didn't he come back home and tell me? Cesaria said. Why didn 't he just come home and say he was sorry?

"Because he was certain you wouldn't forgive him."

I'd have forgiven him. All he had to do was ask and I'd have forgiven him. The light and ice were melting, and running down her cheeks. Damn you, woman, she said. Making me weep after all these years. She sniffed hard. So what is it you 're asking me to do? she said.

"Find him for me," Rachel replied. "I'll do the rest. I'll bring him home to you. I swear I will. If I have to drag him myself, I'll bring him home to you."

Cesaria's tears kept coming, but she didn't bother to wipe them away. She just stood there, while they fell, her face as naked as Galilee's had been that first night on the island; all capacity for deception scoured from it. Her unhappiness was there, plain to see; and the rage she'd nurtured against him all these years. But so too was her love for him; her tender love, planted among these griefs.

You should go back to the Garden Island, she said. And wait for him.

Rachel scarcely dared believe what she was hearing. "You'll find him for me?" she said.

If he'll let me, Cesaria said. But you make sure he comes home to me, woman, you understand? That's our bargain.

"I understand."

Bring him back to L'Enfant, where he belongs. Somebody's going to have to bury me, when all this is over. And I want it to be him.

"Are we at war then?"

That was the question Luman had asked me, the day I went down to the Smoke House to make my peace with him. I didn't have an answer for him at the time. Now I do. Yes, we're at war with the Gearys, though I would still be hard-pressed to tell him when that war actually began.

Perhaps, in reflection, that's true of all wars. The war between the states for instance, from the furnace of which the Gearys rose to such wealth and power-when did that begin? Was it the moment that the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter? That's certainly a convenient choice for historians: they can pinpoint the day, the date and even the man-a trigger-happy civilian called Edmund Ruf-fin-who did the firing. But of course by the time this even takes place the grinding work of war had been under way for many years. The enmities which fueled that work in fact go back generations, nurtured and mythologized in the hearts of the people who will bankrupt their economies and sacrifice their sons for that enmity.

So it is with the war between the Gearys and the Barba-rossas: though its first casualty, Margie, may only just be in the ground and the knives have only lately been sharpened, the plots and counterplots that have brought us to this moment go back a long, long way. Back to Charleston, in the early spring of 1865: Charles Holt and Nub Nickelberry stepping into Galilee's strange boudoir in the ruins of the East Battery, and giving themselves over to pleasure. Had they known what they were initiating would they have done otherwise? I suspect not. They were living in the moment of their hunger and their despair; if they'd been told, as they consoled themselves with cake and meat and the comfort of kisses, that the consequences of their sensuality would be very terrible, a hundred and some years hence, they would have said: so what? And who would have blamed them? I would have done the same, in their boots. You can't go through life worrying about what the echoes of the echoes of the echoes of your deeds will be; you have to do what you can with the moment, and let others take care of their moment when it comes.

So I lay no blame with Charles and Nub. They lived their lives, and moved on into the hereafter. Now we have our lives to live, and they will be marked by a period of war that may undo us all. It will be, I suspect, a subtle war, at least at the beginning, its significance calculated not in the number of coffins it fills, but in the scale of the structures it finally brings to ruin.-1 don't simply speak of physical structures (though those too will inevitably come down); I speak of the elaborate edifices of influence and power and ambition that both our families have constructed over the years. When this war is over, I doubt any of them will still be standing. There will be no victor: that's my prediction. The two dans will simply cancel one another out.

No great loss, you may say, knowing what you now know about us. There's a certain pettiness in the best of us, and such malice in the worst that their passing will probably be something to be celebrated.

My only hope as we move into these darker times is that the war will uncover some quality in one or other of us (I dare not hope all) that will disprove my pessimism. I don't wish to say that war is ennobling, you understand; I don't believe that for a moment. But I do believe it may strip us of some of the pretensions that are the dubious profits of peace-the airs and graces that we've all put on-and return us to our truer selves. To our humanity or our divinity; or both.

So, I'm ready. The pistol lies on one side of my desk, and my pen lies beside it. I intend to sit here and go on writing until the very last, but I can no longer promise you that I'll finish this story before I have to put my pen aside and arm myself. That only everything of mine now seems like the remotest of dreams: one of those pretensions of peace that I was talking about a few paragraphs back.

I will promise you this: that in the chapters to come I won't toy with your affections, as though we had a lifetime together. I'll be as plain as I know how, doing what I can to furnish you with the means to finish this history in your own head should I be stopped by a bullet.

And-while I'm thinking of that-maybe this isn't an inappropriate place to beg mercy from those I've neglected or misrepresented here. You've been reading the work of a man learning his craft word by word, sentence by sentence; I've often stumbled, I've often failed.

Forgive me my frailties. And if I am deserving of that forgiveness, let it be because I am not my father's son, but only human. And let the future be such a time as this is reason enough to be loved.