The Other Side of the Sun

by Madeleine L'engle

  She reached out to touch his hair. “What is it?”

  He shifted position so that he could lean against her chair. “Questions.”

  “Go ahead and ask them.”

  “One of your reasons for coming to Illyria was to avoid questions.”

  “Will your questions be the ones the others would ask, Terry?”

  “Terry—that was your name for Grandfather, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” There was sudden, bleak pain in the response.

  To try to ease it, he asked, “Do you remember your rhymes, Grandmother? The Kings of England rhyme, and then the Theron Renier rhyme?”

  “Of course. I taught Terry the Kings of England, and then he made up the Theron rhyme for me in exchange.”

  Together they recited,

  “Willy, Willy, Harry, Ste,

  Harry, Dick, John, Harry Three,

  One, Two, Three Neds, Richard Two,

  Harry Four, Five, Six, then who?

  Edward Four, Five, Dick the Bad,

  Harrys twain, and Ned the lad.

  Mary, Bessie, James the vain,

  Charlie, Charlie, James again.

  William and Mary, Anna in Gloria,

  Four Georges, William, and Victoria.

  Edward Seven was next and soon

  We’ll put George Five upon the throne.”

  “I was the only medical student who could recite the Kings of England—that is until 1910. After George V, I had to put them in without rhymes.” He began to intone again, schoolboy fashion:

  “Theron the ambassador

  Went to France before the war;

  Doctor Theron, his young son,

  There met Mado, loved and won,

  But lost the War Between the States,

  1861 to ’65, the dates.

  Theron and Mado had a son

  Known as Therro by everyone.

  Therro’s son was then called Terry:

  English Stella, fair and merry,

  Married him in 1910,

  And came across the ocean then.

  “And then we added when I married Margaret,

  “Terry and Stella birthed their Theron,

  Remember, Theron rhymes with heron.

  Theron in turn produced a boy

  Who married Margaret to his joy.”

  “And all the Therons,” her voice was calm again, “are long-legged as herons. I hope the silly rhyme was as helpful to Margaret as it was to me. I couldn’t have kept the generations straight without it. What did you want to ask me, my dear Theron?”

  He leaned back against the old woman’s knees. “I suppose I want to separate fact from fancy, truth from fairy tale. That telegram was important to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “If there can be reconciliation between the Reniers and the Zenumins, then perhaps, after all, the angels—” She let her words drift off.

  “I don’t know all that’s gone on between the Reniers and the Zenumins.”

  A gull screamed, a raucous, angry cry. “I don’t suppose anybody knows all of it. I know only the smallest part.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I told you years and years ago.”

  “When I was a boy. I know you never bowdlerized the way everybody else does, but you must admit you omitted.”

  “Did I? Perhaps I did. But I’m not sure any more what really happened. People aren’t as good as I thought they were—or as bad.”

  “How old were you when you came to Illyria?”

  “Nineteen. Everybody else was old—the great-aunts, Honoria and Clive, Cousin James. Everybody except Ron.… It never occurred to me that one day I would be as old as Aunt Olivia and Aunt Des. Even now I really don’t believe in my own antiquity. But I am old, and I’m not sure that I can tell you the truth, not because I’m not willing to, but because I’m afraid some of it may have been lost somewhere in the past. I don’t think it’s possible to remember without the burden of hindsight. Think. You’re still a very young man—”

  “Not so very.”

  “A man in his thirties is very young to someone in her eighties. Try to remember something important that happened ten years ago. Can you remember it as it truly was? Or is your memory distorted by what you know now? All my memories are colored by the person I’ve become. And I’m a most opinionated old woman, as you have cause to know.”

  Theron smiled into the deepening dusk. “If it’s too difficult for you, Grandmother—”

  She gave a sharp yank to his hair. “How well you know me. All right. I’ll try. I’ll talk, and I’ll think, and I’ll remember, and maybe I’ll dream a little—I’m very tired. But you have a right to know something of what it was all about.”

  He closed his eyes as her gentle fingers moved over his hair. The waves battered against the bulkhead; palm fronds rattled in the rising wind. “Being here with you like this—it’s worth having the family dithering because Theron and Grandmother are off doing something crazy again.”

  “Is it crazy? Maybe that’s what people think of all the essential actions.” Far out at sea the beam from the lightship swept across the stormy darkness. “Perhaps going all the way through the sun, all the way through the fire, does tend to make people a little mad.” She closed her eyes. There was a ripping, cracking sound as the arm of a palm was torn from the tree. The wind howled. The veranda seemed to shake, but the old woman realized that this feeling was as much from her overworked heart as from the gale. For a moment she thought that she, too, might be dying, and this did not disturb her. She leaned back and let her past wash over her as the waves washed over the beach.

  TWO

  1

  They were here on the veranda waiting for me when I finally reached Illyria, the four women: Honoria, tall, powerful, purply-black; the two old great-aunts, small and pale; Aunt Irene, half the age of the other three—but when one is nineteen, middle age is old. Honoria stood calmly aside as the others, twittering like birds, palm-leaf fans fluttering, rose to greet me. Aunt Irene held out her plump hands. “Stella! It is Stella, isn’t it?”

  “Who else would it be?” one of the old ladies whispered.

  I felt the eyes of all four probing me. I was being measured, judged. I smiled brightly to hide my discomfort.

  “Stella, honey, welcome to Illyria. I am your Aunt Irene.” She drew me to her. Her voice was bright-pink crushed velvet and she smelled of heliotrope. She called herself ‘Ant Ah-reen’ and, probably because I was so keyed up, I almost giggled.

  “And this is your Great-aunt Mary Desborough, and your Great-aunt Olivia.”

  The two old ladies moved forward. Unlike Aunt Irene, who looked like a fashion plate, they were dressed in rusty and old-fashioned clothes, with their hair parted in the middle, and their ears poking out in the fashion (I learned later) which had been popular during ‘The War.’ “Welcome, child,” one of them pecked me on the cheek. “We welcome the new Mrs. Theron Renier. I am Aunt Mary Desborough.”

  “And I’m Aunt Olivia,” the other old lady said, and reached to kiss me. She smelled lightly of lemon and lavender; the old-grey watered silk of her dress rustled as she moved, and her voice was like it, a dry, gentle rustling.

  “Clive! Clive! Ronnie!” Aunt Irene called. “Oh, there you are. Please see that Miss Stella’s things are taken to her room so that Honoria can unpack them.”

  The old colored woman moved to me; there was something majestic about her; she took my hands in her very strong ones and looked into my face. I felt like a child instead of a married woman. “We welcome you, Miss Stella.”

  This, then, was Honoria. I knew that Honoria was important. Immediately after Mado’s death it was Honoria who saw to it that her ring came to my Terry for his bride.

  The Renier ring. Touching that ring got me through a lot of bad times. Not that I thought it had any magical properties, although I was to find that many people did indeed believe this. It was just that the ring always made me know who I was: Mrs. Th
eron Renier. I touched it now, a heavy ring, made of two beautifully etched gold serpents, entwined like those on a caduceus, with rubies for eyes.

  ‘It came to Mado from Honoria,’ Terry had told me when he first showed it to me the night he asked me to be his wife.

  ‘Mado—’

  ‘My grandmother. Marguerite Dominique de la Valeur Renier. She was always called Mado.’

  ‘And Honoria?’

  He hesitated. ‘I suppose you might call her Mado’s housekeeper. I love her almost as much as I loved Mado. Maybe as much, because they belonged together.’

  My husband, of all the Renier men, was the one who was most full of laughter, but when he took the ring out of its velvet box to give it to me, he was totally serious. ‘It carries a responsibility,’ he said, ‘a responsibility of healing. The serpent isn’t always a symbol of evil. You remember that the twined serpent is the doctor’s emblem, and my Grandfather Theron was a doctor.’

  (Doctor Theron, his young son,

  There met Mado, loved and won,

  But lost the War Between the States …)

  I looked at the ring, fingering the rubies. ‘How would a housekeeper get a ring like this?’

  ‘Honoria was born in Africa,’ Terry had said, as though that explained everything.

  Honoria withdrew to the side of the veranda as Aunt Irene fluttered about me. “Honey, sit down. You must be exhausted. Was it a terrible, terrible trip?”

  I didn’t know whether she meant the ocean voyage or the long drive from Jefferson to Illyria, so I just said, “It was beautiful,” and sat in the rocking chair Honoria pulled up for me.

  Aunt Olivia, moving with difficulty, lowered herself into her chair; she was crippled with rheumatism. A silver-handled cane lay on the floor by her chair. “Honoria will bring you something to cool you off. I can see that you need it.”

  “Livia,” Aunt Mary Desborough reprimanded. But it must have been wholly obvious that I was hot, wrinkled, and travel-worn.

  “Stella isn’t used to the heat,” Aunt Olivia said, and smiled at me with eyes faded to a soft kitten’s blue; everything about her was a little faded: her ash-blond hair was the color of bleached sand; her skin was soft and finely wrinkled; the once rich material of her grey moiré dress was faded, too. “They have snow in England. Don’t you, Stella?”

  “Yes, but not in summer.”

  “Here, lovey, this will help.” Aunt Olivia handed me a large fan made from palm fronds. Aunt Mary Desborough and Aunt Irene were slowly swishing similar fans back and forth against the sluggish air. Honoria reached behind one of the shutters and brought out another fan for Aunt Olivia.

  The old lady nodded her thanks. “What do we have to give Stella, Honoria? Do we have some sangaree?”

  Aunt Mary Desborough sat down briskly, though I guessed her to be the elder of the two old ladies. Her voice was disapproving, rusty brown like her dress; she looked, I thought, like a little brown owl. “Livia, you know Hoadley doesn’t like us to imbibe anything with spirits until he arrives.” Her dress might be frumpy and out of style, but her fingers bore two magnificent rings, and the pendants which hung from her ears were, I was sure, real pearls.

  “Sangaree is hardly spirits,” Aunt Olivia said. “I’m sure Hoadley wouldn’t object.” Her gnarled and twisted little fingers could not support rings, but the throat of her dress was fastened with a superb brooch.

  Hoadley was Aunt Irene’s husband; it was Uncle Hoadley and Aunt Irene who had taken Terry into their home after his parents were drowned in a boating accident.

  “I think she’d like some strawberries,” Aunt Olivia said. “Don’t you think Stella’d like some strawberries, Des? Strawberries and cream.”

  “Strawberries aren’t in season.”

  Aunt Olivia snorted, “Daz it. Strawberries and cream taste even cooler than sangaree.”

  “How about a little claret lemonade?” Aunt Irene suggested.

  “But—” Aunt Mary Desborough demurred.

  “I wanted something special to welcome Stella,” Aunt Olivia said. “I wish we had some strawberries.”

  “If wishes were horses—” Aunt Mary Desborough started.

  “Beggars would ride,” Aunt Olivia finished. “Anyhow, that doesn’t count, Des. We’re playing Shakespeare today. And in any case, just because thou art virtuous, shall there be no more cakes and ale?”

  “Twelfth Night. Sir Toby Belch. Point for me.”

  “You’d have been pretty silly if you hadn’t identified that one. What about figs? There’s nothing nicer on a hot day than a cool bowl of figs and cream.”

  “Livia,” Aunt Mary Desborough pursed her lips. “You know perfectly well the fig tree hasn’t borne since the year Mado died.”

  “Virtue!” Aunt Olivia cried, undaunted. “A fig! ’tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners.”

  “Shakespeare, of course.” Aunt Mary Desborough huddled into herself in thought, so that she looked more owlish than ever. “I know! Othello!”

  “Daz it,” Aunt Olivia said.

  “Stop swearing.”

  “I just said daz. That’s not a swear word. I made it up myself.”

  “You made it up to use as a swear word.”

  “But it isn’t one, and you can’t scold me for it. Daz. Daz. Daz it, Des.”

  “Livia!”

  “Miss Olivia,” Honoria said softly, sternly, “that is enough.”

  “Daz anyhow.”

  “Hush.” Honoria held up her large, strong hand, night-black on the back, a soft wrinkled pink on the palm and the insides of the fingers. “Hush and listen.”

  The two old ladies in the rocking chairs leaned forward, suddenly alert as sea gulls: I listened, too. I heard the wind rustling the palms with a sound like paper; I heard the soft slur of sea against sand; that was all.

  “What?” Aunt Mary Desborough asked impatiently.

  “The wind has changed!” Aunt Olivia cried. “That means the storm tonight will cool things off. That’ll be nice for you, Stella. I hope the storm will come soon. There isn’t much time.”

  “Time for what?” Aunt Mary Desborough asked crossly. “Don’t sound-silly.”

  “Don’t raise your voice. It’s not polite. That time when thou shalt strangely pass and scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye.”

  “Oh—something obscure like Titus Andronicus, I suppose.”

  “It is not. It’s the Sonnets. Point for me. You’re losing your memory.”

  “Aunties,” Aunt Irene chided.

  “Are you sure the fig tree didn’t bear this year?” Aunt Olivia asked.

  “Now who’s losing her memory!”

  “There are people,” Aunt Olivia said, “who can make fig trees bear.”

  “If you remember,” Aunt Mary Desborough said with heavy emphasis, “that particular fig tree did not bear. And it got blighted.”

  “So? That was only one fig tree. What about all the others?”

  I managed to get a word in. “What I would really like is a cup of tea, and then to change out of these clothes into something cool.”

  Honoria moved quietly across the veranda, opened the screen door, and went into the house.

  “Now, I call that a sensible suggestion,” Aunt Mary Desborough said approvingly.

  What Honoria tried to keep simple, the aunts managed to make complicated, but we did have tea, with milk for Aunt Mary Desborough and me, and thin wheels of lemon stuck with cloves for Aunt Olivia and Aunt Irene. There were cucumber sandwiches—it didn’t taste like English cucumber—and thinly sliced raisin cake, but I wasn’t hungry, and I was relieved when Honoria came to the screen door and said that she had unpacked a few things for me, and perhaps I would like to go to my room.

  Aunt Irene started to rise, but Honoria said, “I’ll see that Miss Stella has everything she need.” Her voice was unlike any of the other strange, warm Southern voices I had heard. It was deep and gu
ttural, with a quality like some dark metal dug deep out of the center of the earth.

  I followed her into a vast, dusty, wind-swept room, or, rather, two rooms, one leading into the other, so that there was an open sweep from front veranda to back. The front room, shuttered and dim, contained the kind of ornately scrolled bamboo furniture which came from India or China or maybe both, I’m not sure. There was a day bed covered with an Oriental rug, and above this a huge portrait in a great gold frame of two young women in Empire dresses. One was singing, the other accompanying her on a harpsichord, and though they must have been long dead, they reminded me of Aunt Olivia and Aunt Mary Desborough.

  I did not notice the dog and kitten on the day bed until Honoria said, “Now! This minute!” I turned, startled, thinking she was talking to me, then saw an elderly Irish wolfhound and a small amber kitten slither to the floor, both looking guilty. “Finbarr,” Honoria said. “Minou. Just because my back is turned and Miss Stella is arriving don’t give you no right to sit where you don’t belong. Remember who and what you is, and the time is dark.” She glanced from the animals to the portrait, fondling the old dog’s ear. “That Dr. Theron’s mother, singing—Miss Mado’s Dr. Theron—and his aunt, Olivia Hugeot. Painted by the younger Mr. Peale when he visiting Charleston.”

  There were other portraits in the front, or living room, and also in the rear, or dining room; and I anticipated studying them and getting further acquainted with my husband’s family: these people on the walls would be the ancestors of our children. I felt past, present, and future swirl around me like the sea breeze which came through the screen door and brushed against my hot cheeks.

  (Edward Seven was next and soon

  We’ll put George Five upon the throne

  Theron and Mado had a son

  Known as Therro by everyone)