Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Domestic help began to arrive, and were housed in the old coachman’s lodge: cooks, butlers, maids, groundsmen, even a lampman, even several page boys (who were Hiram’s idea: he remembered liveried page boys from his youth, or claimed he did, and had always associated them with the aristocracy). Three seamstresses; two hairdressers; a “floral artist”; a Hungarian gypsy band from Port Oriskany; a string quartet specializing in nineteenth-century Romantic music. A team of electricians came to arrange strings of brightly burning electric lights indoors and out, strung along the battlements and from tower to tower, so that they would be visible for many miles, across the entire width of Lake Noir. “How lovely,” Leah murmured. “How lovely everything is. . . .” Two truckloads of flowers were delivered: roses, gloxinias, lilies of the valley, carnations, orchids. Leah and Cornelia and Aveline helped arrange them, in every part of the house; a great basket of orchids was brought to Elvira’s suite where the old woman, wearing a wrinkled floor-length houserobe, and pretending to be somewhat peeved by all the attention, claimed there was no logical place for them. “Cut flowers are a shameful waste,” she said. “We have more flowers than we know what to do with in the summer.”

  “But this isn’t summer, Mother Elvira!” Cornelia said lightly.

  “I’m not even certain it is my birthday, this week.”

  “Of course it’s your birthday!”

  “. . . or that I’m really the age you say,” the old woman murmured, shivering in her gown. “Bellefleurs always exaggerate.”

  A pity, Leah thought, gazing at great-grandmother Elvira, that her husband wasn’t still alive; or that no one of her generation had survived. How lonely it must be, to have outlived everyone. . . . Elvira was said to have been an extremely beautiful young woman when she became betrothed to the luckless Lamentations of Jeremiah, more than eight decades previously; and with her fine white hair, her unusually soft complexion, and her slender, almost girlish frame she was still an attractive woman. She might have been sixty-five years old, or seventy. Hardly more than eighty. Ah, but one hundred . . . ! It seemed impossible. She, Leah, would never grow so old.

  “Why are you staring at me, miss?” Elvira said sharply.

  Leah blushed. She realized that the old woman had forgotten her name.

  “I was thinking—I was thinking—”

  “Yes?”

  “That this will be a birthday for us all to remember, and to cherish,” Leah said weakly.

  “Yes, I don’t doubt that.” Great-grandmother Elvira laughed. Leah spent a sleepless night, her mind reeling with last-minute plans. So many guests had accepted invitations. . . . So much food had been delivered. . . . (Several truckloads of choice beef and lamb; Cornish game hens; red snapper, sole, salmon, and sea bass; crabmeat and lobster.) There was a hideous tapestry in one of the third-floor guest rooms that she must take down, after all: it showed a naked potbellied drunken Silenus on a swaybacked ass, being led in a riotous procession of nymphs, satyrs, and fat little cupids. Quite possibly the ugliest thing she had ever seen. . . . And what if Germaine were ill, in the morning? And what if Gideon disappeared as he had threatened? (But he wouldn’t dare betray the family.) And suppose old Elvira stubbornly refused to come downstairs, to open her presents. . . .

  Near dawn Leah had a confused waking dream. She was back at the Powhatassie penitentiary (which she had visited twelve days earlier), being led once again through the five locked gates, one after another after another, in her fox coat and her black silk shantung suit. She tried not to notice the high granite walls, the crumbling concrete, the stench. . . . In the high-vaulted visitors’ room she was led to an elderly man said to be her uncle Jean-Pierre Bellefleur II. Silvery-haired, diminutive, with small rheumy colorless eyes; his skin dry and flaking, and dead-white; thin lips stretched in a mock-courteous smile; a hump, small but prominent, between his shoulders. As she approached he raised his eyes to her and his gaze pierced her like a blade: for it was obvious that he was a Bellefleur. Even in his ill-fitting gray-blue prison uniform he was a Bellefleur, one of her people. . . .

  “Uncle Jean-Pierre! At last! Oh, at last! I’m so grateful to be allowed to see you!” she cried.

  The courtly old man (who looked far older than Noel or Hiram) acknowledged her words with a slight nod of his head.

  She sat on the very edge of her uncomfortable chair, and began to speak. There was so much to say! So much to explain! She was Leah Pym, his sister Della’s daughter; she was his nephew Gideon’s wife; she had come to bring him hope. After so many years, after so many years of the vilest injustice. . . .

  As she talked, more and more rapidly, the silver-haired old gentleman merely gazed at her. From time to time he nodded, but without conviction.

  He had been falsely accused and falsely found guilty, but his case had not been forgotten, and she and her attorneys were in the process of reviewing it, and soon, very soon, they might have encouraging news. . . .

  Around them, other visitors and prisoners were shouting at one another. There was a considerable din. A heavyset young woman beside Leah merely stared at her husband, through the scratched glass partition, and the two of them wept. Ah, Leah thought with a thrill of terror, how awful!

  The skin of her uncle’s face was like an aged palimpsest. His eyes, close-set and watery, struck her as very beautiful. We haven’t forgotten you, we haven’t betrayed you, Leah said, speaking more and more quickly, her own eyes filling with tears. It amazed her, that she should be facing, after so long, her uncle Jean-Pierre: that after having refused to see her for so many months, he should suddenly have relented. His expression was slightly mocking; yet wise; kind; good. She could see that he had suffered. She could see that he half-pitied her, for her idealism. He thought she was a fool—perhaps. A silly goose of a girl. But she would show him! She wouldn’t give up so easily as the others had.

  Because I know you are innocent, she whispered.

  His lips twitched in a smile. He raised one liver-spotted hand, and drew it slowly beneath his nose.

  . . . I know, I know you are innocent, she said.

  The visitors’ room was a great concrete cavern lurid with voices and echoes. Somewhere, far away, rain pelted against windows. But the windows were opaque. Leah, squinting, could not see the sky—could not see where the angry rain struck.

  “The Innisfail Butcher!” This gentle broken-spirited old man with the kindly pitying eyes and the dry wrinkled skin that seemed to lie against his bones in layers, like the skin of an onion. . . .

  Leah talked and talked. Perhaps he heard. Perhaps he understood. At any rate he did not try to dissuade her. He said only two things during the course of their ninety-minute visit, and Leah, though straining, could not hear them precisely. The first sounded like If old Raphael gets in office I think he might pardon me. Leah, surprised, managed to smile faintly, and to explain that there was a man named Grounsel in the governor’s office—and that she and her attorneys had already begun petitioning him. The second remark of Jean-Pierre’s was made in response to Leah’s spirited statement, that she wished—ah, how she wished!—Jean-Pierre might be a free man by the time of his mother’s birthday; it would be, he must know, his poor mother’s hundredth birthday. The old man, gazing at her with his mild rheumy eyes, frowned for a moment, and said what sounded like My mother—do I have a mother—

  The rain interrupted them, slamming against the windows.

  And Leah awoke, her heart pounding—and it was raining—the morning of the birthday celebration, and pouring rain—vicious pouring rain.

  TOWARD 9:00 A.M. THE rain stopped, and the sky appeared to open. But how queer, how alarming it looked—as if, Leah thought, one were gazing into a bottomless chasm. But the rain had stopped.

  The Bellefleur women hurried about the house, giving orders to the help, frequently contradicting one another. Leah wanted The Triumph of Silenus taken down at once from the guest room reserved for W. D. Meldrom, but Cornelia insisted that it remain: wasn�
�t it one of the treasures of the estate, an oil attributed to Caravaggio? Aveline wanted most of the furniture in the main drawing room moved about, so that the atmosphere was less casual; she preferred, she said, the original formality of the house, before Leah had gone changing everything around. Della, who had been pressed into a visit, who had, as she said, far more important things to do at home, found fault with the gloxinia plants. They were already dying: sent up from the Falls at such absurd expense, and already dying . . . ! Lily followed the maids about, uncharacteristically critical, stooping to sniff at cushions (she was convinced—it had become one of her obsessions, since the party was planned—that the manor’s many kittens had fouled these wonderful old pieces of furniture), ordering floors repolished, sighting strands of cobweb floating from the high, shadowy, vaulted ceilings. It was imperative, she kept saying, that they not make fools of themselves.

  The sky continued to lighten, though it was not exactly clear. Warmer and warmer the day became. A hazy sun glared through vast caverns of cloud: ah, how very hot the manor was! The windows must be opened. It was mid-November, there had already been a considerable snowfall, but it had melted, and now the temperature was rising as if it were midsummer: 50°, 53°, 57°, 59° . . .

  Leah burst into tears when she saw that one of the children, evidently accompanied by a dog, had tracked mud onto a silk-and-wool carpet that had just been cleaned. And what time was it? The first of the guests—on the specially reserved Bellefleur coach on the train from downstate—would be arriving in about six hours.

  The sky darkened suddenly. And suddenly there was a tremendous wind, which blew up out of nowhere. Running to the windows, the Bellefleurs saw to their astonishment that the sky had turned boiling-black: and, in the distance, Mount Chattaroy and Mount Blanc were ringed with clouds that appeared to be on fire.

  Then there was a blinding flash of light, followed immediately by a crack of thunder so loud that several of the children screamed in terror, and the dogs set up a howl. Lightning! Lightning must have struck!

  They ran about shutting windows. But in some cases it was already too late—the wind was too strong, torrents of rain had soaked everything, one could hardly push the windows closed; and there was the danger of lightning. (It had struck nearby—fortunately only a giant oak in the park, which had been struck many times in the past.)

  So the Great Storm began: which was to rival in violence and damage the Great Storm of twenty years previously: when all of the low-lying areas were flooded, and so many people lost their lives, and even the dead were washed out of their graves.

  The winds were of hurricane force. Sometimes the air was sulfurous and warm—sometimes it was quite cold, bringing walls of ice that struck the windows like bullets, and in many cases cracked them. Trees were felled. Sheets of rain pounded against the gravel walks and drives, turning them to mud. In his tower Bromwell observed, through a telescope, how Mink Creek had already risen: and its waters had turned an unrecognizable clayey-orange.

  “Our guests—our party—Grandmother Elvira’s birthday—”

  “But this cannot happen—”

  “Why is the sun so bright—”

  “Is it a hurricane? Is it the end of the world?”

  “Get one of the men to stop that water coming in under the door—”

  “Ah, look at Mount Chattaroy!”

  “Is it a volcano? Is that fire?”

  “What will happen to our wonderful party!”

  The sky shifted from side to side as if it were alive. A sickly greenish-orange. And then a livid magenta. Clotted clouds raced from horizon to horizon. The rain lightened; and then suddenly increased; again it fell in sheets, with such malevolence the entire house trembled. There had never been anything like it! The Great Flood of twenty years back had been less violent, and shrouded in mist, so that one couldn’t actually see what was happening. No, there had never been anything like this. . . .

  The winds continued to blow, and the rain continued to fall, hour upon hour. Power lines to the manor were blown down, and though it was midday candles had to be lit; but even the candles were in danger of being blown out by capricious fingers of air. Devilish spirits raced up and down the curving staircases, loosed by the storm, frenzied as hysterical children. And the children—the children were hysterical: some of them were so frightened they had run away to hide, others were leaning out of windows and shouting (“Come on, come on, what are you waiting for, come on, you can’t get us, come on and try!” feverish Christabel screamed from out a nursery window). Leah huddled in a corner of the kitchen with Germaine, trying to comfort her (though it was really herself she was comforting), and then, every few minutes, restless, infuriated, she jumped to her feet and ran out to see—to see—if perhaps the storm wasn’t lessening?—and the party might be salvaged after all?

  “I could curse God for this! For this vile trick!” she shouted.

  Hiram, who had dressed that morning for the party, and was wearing an elegantly tailored suit of the finest lightweight wool, with a very white and very starched shirt, and gold-and-ivory cuff links, and his usual gold watch chain, turned sharply to her, and raised his voice to be heard over the drumlike tolling of the wind: “Leah. How can you. If one of the children heard you—! Such superstitious rot, you know very well there isn’t any God, and if there is the poor thing is too feeble to have managed this.”

  Nevertheless Leah ran about like a madwoman, peering out one window and then another, as if she believed the storm might alter from one angle of perception to another, saying to anyone who would listen, “It’s a trick. A vile trick. Because we’re Bellefleurs. Because they want to stop us—He wants to stop us—and He isn’t going to!”

  Ewan and Gideon came in (for they had been—incredibly—out in the storm) to report that the Nautauga River was rising a foot an hour; and that most of the roads were washed out; the Fort Hanna bridge was said to be washed out; there had been a train derailment at Kincardine. And already three people were reported missing. . . .

  “You’re pleased about this, aren’t you!” Leah screamed. “The two of you! Aren’t you!”

  . . . and Garth and Little Goldie, who had planned to return from their honeymoon in time for the party, must be caught in the storm somewhere to the south. . . .

  “Oh, I hate you all! I hate this! I won’t stand for this! It was Elvira’s hundredth birthday and it won’t come again and all my work—my weeks and weeks of work—my guests—I won’t stand for this, do you hear!” poor Leah screamed. In her frenzy she ran to Gideon and began pounding his chest and face, but he caught her wrists, and calmed her, and led her back into the kitchen (which was the only warm place in the drafty old house) where he instructed Edna to make a rum toddy for her. And he stayed with her until her sobbing quieted, and she pressed her tear-lashed face against his neck, and fell into a kind of stupor, murmuring I wanted only to do well, I wanted only to help, God has been cruel, I will never forgive Him. . . .

  In the end the storm was to be somewhat less severe than the Great Flood of twenty years previously; but it was still a hellish thing, and took away the lives of some twenty-three people in the Lake Noir area alone, and caused damage of upward of several million dollars. The roads were washed out, many of the bridges damaged past repair; trains were derailed and train beds torn away; Lake Noir and the Nautauga River and Mink Creek and innumerable nameless creeks and runs and ditches flooded, propelling debris along: baby buggies, chairs, laundry that had been hung out to dry, lampshades, parts of automobiles, loose boards, doors, window frames, the corpses of chickens, cows, horses, snakes, muskrats, raccoons, and parts of these corpses; and parts of what were evidently human corpses (for the cemeteries once again flooded, and relief workers were to be astonished and sickened by the sight of badly decomposed corpses dangling from roofs, from trees, jammed against silos and corncribs and abandoned cars, washed up against the foundations of homes, in various stages of decay: some aged and leathery, some fresh,
soggy, pale; and all of them pathetically naked); and spiders—some of them gigantic, with bristling black hairs—ran about everywhere, washed out of their hiding places and frantic with terror.

  Flood damage was comparatively minor at Bellefleur because the house was on somewhat higher ground. But even there the fruit orchards and gardens stood in a foot of muddy water, and the handsome pink gravel of the walks and drives was washed into the lawn, and the newly planted trees and shrubs in Leah’s walled garden were uprooted; and it was a terrible sight, the drowned creatures everywhere—not only wild animals but some of the household cats and dogs, and many of the game fowl, and a pet black goat belonging to one of the boys. A number of Bellefleur workers had to evacuate their cottages and the low barracks-type building at the edge of the swamp; they were moved by truck to temporary quarters in the village, at the Bellefleurs’ expense, and of course the Bellefleurs volunteered to pay for their food and clothing, and to reimburse them for their losses in the flood. Elsewhere, on other Bellefleur-owned property, there was considerable damage, the most grievous being the loss of an entire herd of Holsteins, drowned when a creek overflowed. The creatures had been penned up, rather stupidly, on low ground.

  At the castle the cellar was flooded (the cellar was always flooded, even in minor rainstorms); many windows were broken; slate was torn from the roof and flung for hundreds of yards. Every chimney was damaged, every ceiling was water-stained. When the Bellefleurs, at the height of the storm, at last remembered great-grandmother Elvira, and hurried up to her room, they found the poor old woman in her rocking chair, in a virtual rain that fell from the ceiling. She had pulled her black cashmere shawl up over her head, and though she was shivering, she did not seem especially pleased to see them. She’d sent her maid away hours ago, she said, because she wanted to enjoy the storm in private; and so she had enjoyed it, despite the dripping ceiling and the terrible cold. She had particularly liked, she said, the lightning flashes over the lake.