IT WAS IN the garden, half-dozing in the slanted honey-warm sunshine, that Leah recalled Germaine’s birth: no more than an hour of labor, and then the miracle of the baby, put into her arms, nursing vigorously at once; and Gideon at her bedside gripping her hand. You were the easiest of all, Leah murmured. You were no trouble at all. Why I hardly bled. . . .
Now there was a mossy stripe on her belly. And her belly, her waist, her thighs, were flaccid. And her breasts drooped. But she was losing weight gradually, already her ankles and calves were back to normal, and her face showed only a few lines of strain. How good you look, Leah, people said. And to Gideon: How beautiful your wife looks. . . . (And Gideon smiled stiffly and thanked them, for what else could he do?)
The garden, the hum of insects. Mealtimes, naps. Kittens rolling and tumbling underfoot. A game of peek-a-boo around the sundial, around the lonely towering statue of Hebe. Under the low-hanging branches of the cedar of Lebanon. (Where, one morning, they discovered a partly devoured opossum Mahalaleel had dragged over the garden wall.) Leah ripping open envelopes, letting them fall to the terrace floor. Leah calling impatiently for one of the servants. Leah bumping her nose against the baby’s pug nose, or wiping the baby’s mouth, or sauntering about with the baby on her hip, listing to one side. Leah shaking the rattle—of carved hardwood, with coral and silver ornamentation—that was aunt Veronica’s present to Germaine. Or blowing up a red balloon and allowing it to streak away, fluttering, falling to the grass as Germaine squealed. Leah hauling Germaine up, out of the brittle dead leaves in the old fountain, her voice ringing, Now what have you done, for God’s sake, do you want to blind yourself?—as the baby cried.
It was in the garden one May morning, when Gideon was leaving for a five-day trip to the Midwest, in connection with a number of horses he was selling, that Leah first brought up the subject of his uncle Jean-Pierre, who must be released from prison, and the necessity of regaining all the land—all the land—the Bellefleurs had lost. Gideon was bent over the baby’s cradle, one forefinger gripped by the baby’s surprisingly strong fingers; he made a grunting sound that might have been an assent.
“Then you’ll help me? Gideon?” Leah said.
She moved to slide her arm around his waist, then hesitated. Gideon was staring at his daughter’s greeny-hazel eyes, that so powerfully seized him: that seemed almost to grip him, to fix him where he stood. He had never quite comprehended the fact of the twins, the fact that he had fathered Christabel and Bromwell, and it was beyond him, it was dismayingly beyond him, that this baby was his as well. Of course it was all ordinary, even routine, he had even helped choose her name, everyone had behaved matter-of-factly about the birth (he knew of course about the difficult labor, he knew nothing about the birth itself), these things happened all the time, it was better to let the mind skate lightly over them, not to puzzle or brood. . . . When he pulled his finger away the baby’s grip tightened.
“Ah, she’s strong! She’s wonderful, she’s so quick!” Gideon laughed. “She’s strong.”
“You’ll help me?” Leah said.
Straightening, Gideon brushed his hair back from his forehead with both his hands, in a brusque movement, and smiled toward Leah without exactly looking at her. “Of course,” he said, “whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want . . . ?” Leah said, sliding her arm around his waist.
“Whatever, whatever, whatever,” Gideon said, backing away.
Bloody Run
On the bluff above Lake Noir where wild lilac grew in the midst of second-growth pines, beside the foot-wide Bloody Run (in early June still fed by melting snow on higher ground, and plunging with an eerie guttural music down the bluff’s granite outcroppings, in a half-dozen frothy cascades, to the dark water ninety feet below), on the very earth where once, on other June evenings, others, other Bellefleurs, love-sickened or love-obsessed or loveless, stood to gaze across the lake’s moody planes to the forest on the far shore and the crescent of Silver Lake in the distance, luminescent even when the moon was smothered by cloud—on the very soil, tufted with wild grass and saxifrage and clover, where Jean-Pierre Bellefleur in his middle years stood dreaming of a girl, a girl’s face, he had not seen for three decades, and Hepatica Bellefleur first succumbed to the embrace of that swarthy bearded man, now nameless, who courted her with such vigor and eventually won her, to the misfortune of both, and Violet Odlin Bellefleur, pregnant for what was probably the tenth time (there were so many brief pregnancies, so many miscarriages, and several infants dead at birth or surviving only a few days, she had not only lost count but considered it part of her obligation as a wife and as a dutiful obedient Christian to withhold from any activity so conscious as counting), walked in the moonlight, restless, murmuring aloud, occasionally punctuating the low-throated noise of Bloody Run by peals of girlish laughter, as she rehearsed not the vigorous rejection of Hayes Whittier’s proposal to her, which was so inevitable, so ineludible, she need not have groped after the words, but the acceptance which she knew she would not give (no matter that her rejection would destroy for the second time her husband’s hopes for the governorship, and perhaps his spirit as well—Violet was a virtuous wife, incapable of imagining herself otherwise), and Veronica Bellefleur strolled in secret with that Swedish nobleman who called himself Ragnar Norst and who explained away his dusky complexion and his dark liquid thick-lashed eyes by alluding merrily to some “Persian” blood on his mother’s side of the family, and Ewan Bellefleur lay vigorously upon one or another of his anonymous girls, in the heat, the near-maniacal obsessive heat of his precocious and prolonged adolescence, which was quite a serious matter to Ewan most of the time and to his innumerable hapless girls all of the time, and Vernon Bellefleur wandered and was to continue to wander, a book in one back pocket, papers inked with ideas for poems, stray words that struck him as musical, first lines of love sonnets—in whose convoluted syntax his cousin Gideon’s wife was to emerge as one Lara, the supreme and unearthly love of the poet’s life, the only reason for the poet’s life—in his other pockets or in hand, growing moist in hand, as insomnia and dread of sleep compelled him to climb up along Bloody Run though he was quickly breathless, and beggarlice and burdocks stuck to his trouser legs, and his heart contracted with the knowledge that all that he did was futile, and Yolande, unknown to him, was to walk, in the sunshine, half-dreaming of—of who?—of what?—sometimes the seductive image of her reverie possessed a face, a man’s face, her uncle Gideon’s?—or the face of a stranger?—or that of a young man from a cattle farm on the Innisfail Road whom she rarely saw; and sometimes the image wasn’t a man’s face at all but her own, uncannily transformed, shining with unexpected ethereal beauty like that of a May poplar (supreme in its golden-green-radiant glory for a few days, before the other trees come into leaf), not only shining but somehow magnified, her face spread out semitransparent against the lake, the forest, the sky itself, arching over her as she paused intoxicated with the promise of—the heady rich seductive promise of—of whatever it was—whatever it would turn out to be, that image worthy of Yolande Bellefleur’s devotion: here the lovers pressed mutely together, ground themselves helplessly together, clutching each other, whimpering, Don’t move, don’t move, for if nothing happens, if nothing actually happens and no seed is released then Gideon hasn’t been unfaithful, not precisely: and there will be no consequences.
One June night, beside Bloody Run, on the hill above Lake Noir, and not for the first time in this secret place: Gideon and Garnet locked together, their straining bodies joined, wed, implacably fused together: Gideon whispering Don’t move like a prayer.
His eyes shut tight. Entering her, not breathing. Ah, the slightest move! The slightest error! She lies very still, gripping him. Breasts pressed flat against his chest. Unmoving, unprotesting. They must avoid the slightest friction. . . . He has forbidden her to say that she loves him, it is a wild little snarl of a song he doesn’t want to hear, any more than he wants to see h
er pale rose-petal of a face, bruised and torn and befuddled by the mere size of him, and what he must perform. Don’t move, he whimpers. Their heads are a few feet from Bloody Run but already they are unaware of the rivulet’s gurgling. They are unaware of the lake below, or the sky above, which is dissolving slowly in a rather chill ecstasy of moonlight. Naturally there will be consequences but the lovers are locked too fiercely together to comprehend even that they are locked together, that they belong in two separate bodies and that there is danger, grave danger, in what they are doing, impaled upon the moment, the present moment, the past and future forgotten: everything else forgotten.
Every part of his immense body, every cell, quivering, about to discharge itself. They must remain motionless and innocent as the dead. As figures on the tombs of the dead. Breathing slowed, slowed. A preternatural calm. They must. Don’t, he murmurs, his eyeballs aching, his hands fumbling to hold her still. (He feels her prominent pelvis bones against his thumbs.) That skinny little thing Garnet, who would be able to love such a skinny thing, isn’t she pathetic, of course I’m fond of her and she is pretty but isn’t she pathetic, so in love with you. . . . But then all the women are in love with Gideon Bellefleur aren’t they. . . .
Stop, Gideon whispers.
He is so large, so swollen, so tense with this piercing, terrible pleasure, which wants only to shout madly and dispel the night, that the girl’s neck and backbone might easily snap; so he must hold himself as rigid as possible, his knees trembling with the unnatural effort, an icy sweat broken across his forehead and back. In his mind’s eye he sees, jumbled together with a dozen other things, two horseshoes where his jaws should be, pressing, pressing together with awful violence. Stop. Wait. Don’t. His ribs are steel bands that have begun to quiver so finely, so minutely, that they are in danger of shattering: it is almost intolerable that the girl’s stunned fingers should grope against them. His neck is a rod, his penis is a rod: his lungs contract with infinite cunning for if they swell suddenly all is lost: his eyes, held fast behind his glaring lids, have begun to bulge and are in danger of starting out of his head. His penis is a rod, an anguished rod, pushing slowly into the girl, pushing her down into the grass, into the earth, moment by moment, beat by beat. There is no stopping it. There is no stopping. But he whispers, Stop through his gritted teeth.
The needle’s eye, the needle’s eye, tiny voices sing, mixed in with the sound of the tumbling little brook, and Garnet, hearing them, instinctively draws in her breath, and tightens her grip—her slender arms across his back, her surprisingly strong legs against his. The needle’s eye has caught many a smiling lass and now . . . and now it has caught you. . . . At the wedding, at the very altar, she had nudged against him and given him a look that made him feel faint, whispering, You don’t love me: you’ve had so many women! You don’t love me! In the dazzling white gown of moiré silk, hundreds of pearls sewn to it, her veil more delicate than the crystalline stars of Lake Noir’s deep ice, so quivering with life that the rich powerful beats of her heart were visible in her eyes, she simply stared at him: and her wide beautiful mouth relaxed, but almost imperceptibly, so that he knew he was saved. She ran recklessly to the edge of the cliff and dove off, her body plunging downward so gracefully, so perfectly, that it seemed she must be willing it: and he wanted to run after and throw himself into the water beside her, but he could not move. The needle’s eye, the needle’s eye . . . Her head, a colt’s head, came up to bump his jaw. And there was laughter. You don’t love me, you are such a bully, the voice rang out, teasing him almost to a pitch of madness, I will never forgive you for what you did to Love, I will never forget, laughing shrilly as he tried to undress her and she wriggled away to run heavy-footed about the bedroom of the hotel suite, and he gave chase, his laughter frightened, an unfamiliar laughter, his arms clumsily outstretched, and then she was slapping at him, harder than she should have slapped, and her skin was hot to the touch, and her eyes glared feverishly, and she kissed him full on the lips, sucking and biting, and then reared back, and pushed him with the heel of her palm, and looked at him for the first time, her face distended with exaggerated revulsion—Oh, just look at you, just look, grizzly! Baboon! Look at the hair, the frizz, on you, oh, my God look, her voice rose gaily, wildly, and a coarse bark of startled laughter escaped from her, How can you!—how is it possible!—I didn’t marry a baboon, did I! Gideon, stricken, ashamed, did not at first run after her but tried to say—what was it he tried to say—stammering, mumbling, his overheated face going hotter still with the impact of his bride’s disgust—tried to say that she must have seen him swimming, hadn’t she—he couldn’t help himself—the hair on his chest, and on his belly—he couldn’t help it—he was sorry—but she must have seen him swimming, hadn’t she, and other men as well— Rain like demons’ merry insubstantial faces pressed against the bedroom window, Gideon halfway thought in his confusion that people in the hotel knew about them and had somehow climbed up to stare, or were they his friends, his brothers and cousins, come to mock him, while Leah in a distant corner of the room crouched, her body rosy with candlelight, gleaming as if it were, like his, covered with a fine oily film of perspiration, and then she burst into tears, and he hurried to her and embraced her, surprised at how small she was, in his arms, and how passionately she pressed her face against his chest Oh I love you, Gideon, I love you I love you—
Don’t move, Gideon says faintly.
Don’t don’t don’t move.
The girl, exhausted, sobbing, lies motionless beneath him, but cannot relax her grip on him, in terror of the voices so close to her head in the wild grass, and the presence that sprawls beside them, Don’t stop, go on, what the hell are you doing, you two, do you think I don’t know about this, do you think I haven’t been spying all these months, go ahead, go right ahead, what a pair of idiots, what a pair of contemptible idiots, Leah laughing angrily, jubilantly, a straw or a blade of grass between her teeth so that she can tickle poor Gideon, drawing the invisible blade from his ear to his lips and back again, tickling, tickling, poking the blade into his ear, drawing it down along his vein-taut neck, along his shoulder, slick with sweat, Do you think I don’t know everything that goes on in my house, do you think I haven’t seen you two looking at each other or whispering together, what a pair of idiots, drawing the teasing blade across his back, along his backbone, and then suddenly, without warning, her warm moist bold hand falls upon his back, rubs his backbone, rubs at the very base of his spine, at that small knob at the base of his spine, rubbing with such robust lewd energy that Gideon is at once plunged—catapulted—into a delirium from which, out of which, he can never hope to return, though even in his final paroxysm he begs No please don’t stop wait no no—
The Poet
Germaine’s great-uncle Vernon, the poet, prematurely grizzly, sweet-faced, with the mismatched eyes that so delighted her (Vernon loved to squat before her, closing one eye and then the other, the blue eye, the brown eye, the blue eye, as the child gasped and muttered and waved her fists, sometimes shutting both her eyes in the excitement of the game, squealing with laughter that grew wilder as the game accelerated and the brown eye, the blue eye, the brown eye, the blue eye opened and shut more and more rapidly, until tears streamed down Vernon’s cheeks and were lost in his beard) was said, openly, with that Bellefleur “frankness” that caused so much grief, to be a disappointment to the family and especially to his father: not simply because he was evidently incapable of adding up a column of figures (something Bromwell had mastered at the age of two), or intelligently following family discussions on the perpetual subject of interest rates, debts, loans, mortgages, tenant farmers, investments, and the market prices of various Bellefleur commodities, and not even because as a slope-shouldered, absentminded, apologetic bachelor whose face resembled (as his niece Yolande affectionately said) a hunk of aged cheese, and whose shapeless clothes, so rarely changed, gave off an unfortunate odor of onions, stale sweat, solitude, befuddleme
nt, rotting fruit (he thrust apple and pear cores into his pockets, orange rinds, banana skins, even half-eaten tomatoes, for he usually ate while on one of his walks, composing poetry in his head and then scribbling it down on slips of paper which he also thrust into his pockets, often not quite conscious of what he did), and—but how might it be expressed?—simple oddness, he was unlikely to marry into a prominent or prosperous family, and in fact unlikely to marry at all; but because of his essence, his soul, his very being.
Of course the family did not use these words. They used other words, and frequently.
“Remember that you’re a Bellefleur,” Hiram told Vernon irritably, when he set out on one of his rambles (sometimes he went no farther than the cemetery, or the village; sometimes he hiked all around Lake Noir and turned up in Bushkill’s Ferry where, despite his extreme shyness (in public, even at times in the presence of his own family, he suffered a perpetual blush as if his somewhat roughened skin were windblown) he offered to recite his most recent poems in the general store or at the feed mill or even at one of the taverns (where men who worked for the Bellefleurs were likely to gather); sometimes his poetic inspiration (which he explained as “God dictating”) was so complete that he lost track of his surroundings and wound up along a wild stretch of the Nautauga, or up in the foothills in bad weather; once he disappeared for seventeen days and had to be hunted down by hounds, lying weak with malnutrition and a “storm” of poetry in the ruins of a trapper’s hut some forty miles northeast of Lake Noir in the shadow of Mount Chattaroy). “Remember that you’re a Bellefleur, please don’t bring embarrassment on us, don’t give our enemies reason to ridicule us,” Hiram said. “As if they don’t have reason enough already.”
“We don’t have enemies, Father,” Vernon said softly.
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