Troubling a Star

by Madeleine L'engle

  Aunt Serena was delighted. I put the albums on the table between us, and she opened one and laughed and pointed to a picture of a man in a uniform right out of Gilbert and Sullivan, wearing a sort of cocked hat with a great white plume. “That’s the governor of the Falklands, not Rusty Leeds, but an earlier one, who was governor when Adam went on his expeditions. He does look like a character out of a musical comedy, but Rusty wears the same dress uniform for special occasions.”

  “Honestly? Today?”

  “Honestly.” She turned the page to a picture of a group of men in fur-lined parkas, with what looked like a glacier behind them. I recognized Aunt Serena’s Adam because, although he was older, he still looked so like Adam, Adam III, that it was staggering. And there was Cook, looking just like himself, though his parka hood was pushed back, showing a full head of hair.

  “Even there,” I said, “he looks like a monk.”

  “Doesn’t he, though! He’s always had a monkish quality. There’s something about him that makes him easy to talk to, easy to confide in. He has a strange, slightly unworldly quality, as though he can see around corners that are hidden to the rest of us. I have sometimes wondered, if he hadn’t gone into the monastery, if he had gone with Adam on his second expedition, if then perhaps my son might have come home safely. But that is foolish speculation. There are many things we will never know. Not in this lifetime.”

  We sat in silence for a while, and finally, to break it, and her look of sadness, I asked, “How did Cook get to—to cook?”

  She smiled. “When he and Adam were at Harvard, living in a big old house—did you know about that?”

  “A little. Cook told me.”

  “When they distributed the jobs, he decided that he would prefer cooking to any other part of housework, and discovered he had a flair for it. After he left the monastery, and he did much of the cooking there, he was at loose ends, and Seth told him to go get a job as a chef, so he went to one of the good cooking schools and ended up in one of New York’s most prestigious restaurants. When Cook suggested coming to me, I was flabbergasted. He had a hard time making me believe he was serious. But I have to believe him, that his monastic vocation is basically that of a hermit. He likes the peace of the country, and the lack of stress. He has a few friends he listens to music with, or plays chess with. I will miss him in January when he goes to see Seth, but it is right that he should go. The brothers should not be apart for too long. Now, my dear, I have talked overmuch, and I am suddenly very tired, and when I am tired, my old brain does not work well. Will you come again soon?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you have plans for Saturday? Could you perhaps come for dinner?”

  “I don’t have plans, and I’d love to come for dinner.”

  Going to Aunt Serena’s became my reality in an autumn that was otherwise a drag. Not the countryside, not the glorious flaming of the trees, but my daily life. I knew most of my discontent was my own fault, but the only thing that seemed to get me out of it was getting off the school bus in Clovenford and having tea and talk with Aunt Serena. As long as I did my assigned chores at home, my parents didn’t mind what I did after school. Suzy was involved in various activities, and we were apt to get home at about the same time. Daddy said I was doing Aunt Serena a world of good, so nobody bugged me about it.

  I began doing most of my homework there in the peace and quiet of the attic. Under one of the windows was an old green velvet sofa, where I curled up with my books. Probably in summer the attic would be too hot, but it was just right in the autumn weather. When I finished my homework, if Aunt Serena was resting I’d go through the boxes of books, most of which seemed to have belonged to Adam II.

  The Halloween dance came and went. I didn’t go. I helped Suzy get dressed, and then I watched an old movie with Rob. I tried not to feel left out. Nanny Jenkins had offered to get me a date, too. I could have gone to the dance. But I didn’t want to. Not that way.

  The next day, while we were having tea, Aunt Serena handed me a big book wrapped in heavy, oiled paper. “One of my Adam’s journals,” she said. “The only one that hasn’t been lost. It gives some of his impressions of Antarctica, and since our present-day Adam is going there so soon, I thought you might enjoy glancing through it.”

  “Oh, yes! Thank you.”

  I took Adam II’s journal to the attic and curled up on the green velvet sofa. Adam II may have been a marine biologist, but he was also a poet. His description of the wind gave me prickles. Our house in Thornhill is on a hill, and I’ve always thought of it as the windiest place in the world, especially in winter, when the wind is unremitting. I’d even written a poem about it. “The wind is blowing fiercely from the poles / Swirling from north to south / Then south to north …” I’d sent it, and a couple of other poems, off to a contest suggested by my English teacher.

  Adam II wrote, “Wind is the milieu of the albatross, not water or earth or fire, but air, and in the sky they spend most of their lives. They are creatures of the wind, and their enormous wingspan would be crippling anywhere but in the eddies of wind which direct their course. They are the largest of all seabirds, but incredibly light in weight; their bones are hollow and air-filled. Their energy is the wind’s energy. Cookie says my bones must be hollow, too, because I, like the great birds, pick up energy when the wind is at its most fierce. I wish I could join them as they circumnavigate the globe, but I and my companions are bound to the earth, held down by our weight on this land of ancient ice.”

  Another day he wrote, “The six of us here are good friends. We each have our different areas of work. Cookie goes off in the early morning to meditate, or whatever it is he does when he is by himself. God is his milieu, as wind is that of the albatross. He comes to earth to do the cooking for us, and he is incredibly inventive with lentils and other dried beans, and makes heavenly messes out of them.” Adam II described the other four members of the team, and how the strange environment drew them together. “Cookie is enraptured that fire accompanies ice, that there are still active volcanoes in this place of glaciers and bone-chilling cold. Bill is studying the evolutionary process that produced volcanism, and is very matter-of-fact about it. Cookie sees God’s fingerprints, but he is such a marvelous cook that nobody bothers him when he disappears for hours at a time. Disappears is not right, since we must at all times be within sight of each other. But if his body is visible, we cannot follow wherever it is that his spirit goes.”

  For the next few days he wrote about politics and economics and Argentina and Vespugia and Chile not caring about the Antarctic continent as much as they cared about power and having their share of the continent. “El Zarco of Vespugia is the only visionary among them, understanding that we cannot abuse the Antarctic continent without grave danger to the rest of the planet. Guedder, the old Vespugian general, wants power, and sees it under the ice cap. His vision is of oil or even diamonds. His son, the younger Guedder, is even more frightening. I hope El Zarco will be able to continue to control them. If they think Argentina or Chile will get in ahead of them, I’m not sure.”

  This stuff did not interest me, so I put the journal on a small table. Most of it was too beautiful just to gobble up. I wanted to savor it over several afternoons.

  That night at dinner I told the family about Adam II’s journal, and how fascinating it was, except for the political stuff about Argentina and Vespugia and Chile.

  “Hey,” Suzy said, “get your head out of the clouds. That’s important. Ask Adam.”

  “Okay, I will.” I did not sound gracious.

  Daddy asked, “What about it, Suzy? What’s important?”

  “Ned was talking about it today.”

  —Here we go, I thought.—Ned again.

  Suzy continued, “Our Spanish teacher is from Vespugia and he showed Ned a clipping from The New York Times about Argentina giving missile parts to the U.S. for disposal. They have this ballistic-missile project called the Condor II, and Ned said Vespug
ia and Chile were upset because Argentina had more missiles than they did. At least I think that’s what it was. Anyhow, Ned said he was telling us this because he was interested, but what we were meant to be studying was elements, and we’d better get back to plutonium and uranium.”

  Rob asked, “Are they named after Pluto and Uranus?” I didn’t realize Rob was old enough to ask that kind of question, but when we were in New York he loved the Planetarium, and he did know the names of all the planets.

  “I’m not sure,” Daddy said. “It’s an interesting suggestion. Maybe Suzy could ask her teacher.”

  “Why are politics always bad?” I asked.

  Suzy said, “Because they’re about power.”

  “Ugh.”

  Mother said, “You can’t ignore politics entirely, Vicky.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Even the dreamiest poets have to know something about the world they’re writing about.”

  “I know.” I did, but it was something I hoped to put off at least until I got into college.

  The next day after school I went up to Aunt Serena’s attic and checked one of the boxes of Adam II’s books, looking for Shakespeare. I’d done well on my Hamlet paper, and now I was doing some work on the sonnets for extra credit. Lots more interesting than politics. Sure enough, I came to a leather-bound copy of the sonnets inscribed to Adam II by the other five members of his first Antarctic expedition. I began leafing through it, looking for some of my favorites, when out fell an air letter. It had never been opened. It was addressed to Adam Cook, Holy Trinity Monastery, and it was in Adam II’s writing.

  I took it downstairs and went out to the kitchen, where Cook was washing wild greens he’d picked that afternoon. I said, “I’ve been reading Adam II’s journal. Aunt Serena gave it to me.”

  He nodded; kept on with what he was doing.

  “He calls you Cookie.”

  “Um.”

  “Would it be all right if I do, too? It sounds—well, less stark than plain Cook.”

  “Cookie’s fine.”

  “And I found this—” I held out the letter.

  He dried his hands carefully before taking it. Then he took a sharp knife and opened it, reading rapidly.

  Then he turned white. All the blood drained from his face. I thought he was going to faint. He turned to me, his eyes suddenly enormous and almost black. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Walked out of the kitchen and out of doors, starting to run.

  Three

  The seal slid off the ice and into the water, barely making a splash. He did it so unexpectedly and so quietly that I hardly realized what was happening until he had disappeared.

  I watched the small ripples in the dark water where he had vanished. The sky was still high and blue, but there would be no night, as I thought of night, until well after midnight. The seal’s leaving probably meant that he was going fishing, because seals fish at night. What is night to a seal? Six o’clock? Ten o’clock? Or just whenever he’s hungry?

  I wrapped my arms about myself, not so much because I was cold, though I was, as because I was so alone.

  And frightened.

  I suddenly realized that, like Adam II, I might never get home.

  I had my sixteenth birthday. Adam called. That was nice. He was taking a Shakespeare course, too. “We’ve just read Measure for Measure,” he said, “so I’ll quote to you from it. ‘The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.’ Don’t change because you’re sixteen, Vicky. I like you the way you are.”

  “I’m still the same me,” I assured him, “even with a driver’s license. And I don’t think I’ve ever been very good.”

  “All depends on how you define it. This is just a happy-birthday call. I’ll see you after Thanksgiving when I come to Aunt Serena’s.”

  John called, too, and said he’d give me my present when he got home Thanksgiving weekend. I managed to keep Suzy and Nanny quiet at school about my birthday. And afterwards I went to Aunt Serena’s for tea.

  Her eyes were bright. “I had a letter from Adam III today. He tells me this is your birthday.”

  “Yes.” I looked down, feeling both pleased and slightly embarrassed.

  “Your sixteenth.”

  I nodded.

  “He says you’re going to have your celebration on Thanksgiving.”

  “John will be home then.”

  “And Adam is coming to Clovenford on Sunday. Can you come for a post-birthday dinner that evening?”

  “I’d love to. John will have to leave sometime in the afternoon to get back to Boston, so I’m sure it will be fine. Aunt Serena, where are you going to be on Thanksgiving?”

  “Right here, my dear. Stassy, Owain, and Cook will have the day off to visit family and friends, and I will enjoy my solitude. Do you have homework?”

  “Some.”

  “Get it done, then, and we’ll have another cup of tea before you go.”

  I went out to the kitchen. Cook had never referred to the letter I had given him, or to his extraordinary reaction, and I did not feel I could ask him about it.

  “Cookie,” I said, “can Aunt Serena go out?”

  He turned to me questioningly. “She does go out, and fairly frequently, to the hairdresser, her lawyer, and so forth.”

  “What about the evening?”

  “She no longer enjoys evening functions.”

  “What about Thanksgiving? Do you think she could come to us for Thanksgiving? We don’t eat dinner till evening, because Mother usually has a solo in church, and she doesn’t like to be rushed about cooking. This year we’re celebrating my birthday, and I’d love it if Aunt Serena could be there. Would it be too much for her?”

  Cook thought for a moment, rubbing his hand slowly over the bald top of his head. “I think it might be a good thing. Ask your father, and let him make the decision. He’s the one who could convince her.”

  He did, to my joy.

  Aunt Serena seemed really pleased at the idea, and she said that, like John, she would save her birthday present for me till then.

  I went out to the kitchen. Cook, Stassy, and Owain were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and talking, but greeted me smilingly.

  “It was a good day when Master—when Mr. Adam brought you here,” Owain said. “Madam was losing interest, and now it’s back.”

  Stassy said, “She can’t read as much as she used to, despite what she calls her new eyes. She’s had time on her hands.”

  Cook nodded. “We were worried about her loss of joie de vivre. She used to do a great deal of entertaining, and the house was always full. But she’s at an age when many of her contemporaries are dead.”

  “I’m glad she’s coming for my birthday party,” I said. “It won’t really be a party, just my family and Aunt Serena, but John will be home. I guess my best birthday present is my driver’s license.”

  Owain asked, “You won’t be needing me to drive you home anymore?” He did not look pleased.

  “Oh, yes. I mean, I’ll still be getting off the school bus in Clovenford, and we don’t have an extra car, anyhow. But I’ll be able to run errands for Mother and do things like that.”

  “Good, then,” Owain said.

  “I’m going up to the attic. Aunt Serena said to tell you we’d have tea a little later, when I come down, if that’s okay.”

  I left the sweet-smelling warmth of the kitchen and went up to the attic and sat on the green sofa and wrote Aunt Serena a poem. Poetry had not been flowing that early winter, but finally words came. I looked out the attic window at the great maples. Their last leaves were slowly drifting down, and their bare branches darkened the sky. I didn’t do any homework that afternoon, just spent time on the poem, and then copied it in my best italic writing.

  In winter structure is revealed.

  Water and rock, root and tree

  In summer are by green concealed.

  Now bare branches reach out free

  To lean against the snowy sky.r />
  Your structure, too, shows through the skin,

  And wisdom is uncovered in your face.

  When I am with you, then I can begin

  To learn from all your years of grace.

  You touch me even when I’m bruised

  And bathe me with your quiet gaze.

  And somehow, too, I am transfused

  By love’s accepting, warming ways.

  It was getting dark; the days in November were shorter and the nights longer. Cook had plugged in an old bridge lamp for me, but the shadows in the attic seemed to draw in closer, and I knew it was time to go downstairs, have a cup of tea with Aunt Serena, and tell Owain I was ready to go home.

  But I wasn’t ready. Not quite.

  I picked up Adam II’s journal.

  We are all awed by the proliferation of diatoms in these frigid waters, which is, Tim remarked, to the rest of plankton like the Milky Way to the other visible stars in the sky. This particularly intrigued Cookie, the non-scientist in our party. Dirk pointed out that there are, in the sea, somewhere around ten billion billion diatoms, little particles of energy invisible to the naked eye, and each as individual as a maple leaf or a snowflake. Ten billion billion is about the same order of magnitude as all of the stars in the universe. Cookie took this information and went off to meditate on it, his own face as luminous as a star.