Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But they let her alone. Perhaps they were afraid of her.

  So she worked on her quilts, happy in her solitude, and grandfather Noel brought Germaine over to visit, and they spent wonderful long afternoons: Germaine was allowed to help Matilde sew, and Noel settled by the fire, his boots off and his stockinged feet twitching with pleasure, a pipe clamped between his teeth. He loved to gossip about the family—the schemes Leah had!—the woman was ingenious—and Ewan’s behavior—and Hiram’s problems—and what Elvira said to Cornelia—and what Lily’s growing children were up to: the children were all growing up so quickly. Matilde laughed, but said little. She was deeply absorbed in her work. Noel complained of the swiftness of time’s passing but Matilde could not agree. “Sometimes I think time hardly passes at all,” Matilde said. “At this end of the lake, at least.”

  The quilts, the enormous wonderful quilts!—which Germaine would remember all her life.

  Serendipity: six feet square, a maze of blue rags, so intricate you could stare and stare and stare into it.

  Felicity: interlocking triangles of red, rosy-red, and white.

  Wonder-Working Providence: a galaxy of opalescent moons.

  Made for strangers, sold to strangers, who evidently paid a good price for them. (“Why can’t we buy one of them,” Germaine said to her grandfather, “why can’t we take one of them home?”)

  Celestial Timepiece was the largest quilt, but Matilde was sewing it for herself—it wasn’t to be sold: up close it resembled a crazy quilt because it was asymmetrical, with squares that contrasted not only in color and design but in texture as well. “Feel this square, now feel this one,” Matilde said softly, taking Germaine’s hand, “and now this one—do you see? Close your eyes.” Coarse wool, fine wool, satins, laces, burlap, cotton, silk, brocade, hemp, tiny pleats. Germaine shut her eyes tight and touched the squares, seeing them with her fingertips, reading them. Do you understand? Matilde asked.

  Noel complained that Celestial Timepiece made his eye jump. You had to stand far back to see its design, and even then it was too complicated—it gave him a headache. “Why don’t you just sew some nice little satin comforter,” he said. “Something small, something pretty.”

  “I do what I am doing,” Matilde said curtly.

  Sometimes, back in the castle, Germaine shut her eyes and called back Matilde’s cabin. She saw the white leghorns picking in the dust, and the single dairy cow with the white face; and Foxy the red-orange cat, so much more gentle that the castle toms. (Mahalaleel’s offspring were everywhere, underfoot, and though they were extraordinarily handsome cats even the females were short-tempered. You could not help petting them—they were so alluring—but you risked being scratched.) Matilde had a pet cardinal, kept in a wicker cage; he twittered and scolded like a tame bird. Germaine saw, in her mind’s eye, his bright red feathers—his chunky orange beak. And the hollyhocks at the rear of the kitchen garden. And, in the washing shed, the wooden washtub with a “pounder”—a long tin tube, flared at the bottom. There was a stoneware churn with a wooden dasher. A spinning wheel. A loom, which Matilde used to weave her rugs, in yard-wide sections, out of balls of dyed rags. (Weaving was hard work, harder even than sewing quilts. It was especially difficult to get the correct number of balls for each stripe.) In the living room there was an aged wood-burning stove, made of iron; and Matilde’s bed, a plain four-poster with white ruffled skirts, a cornhusk tick and feather bed on top, and one of Matilde’s quilts for a counterpane. The high hard goosefeather pillows were covered with starched white cases edged with handmade lace. Germaine often napped on this bed, with Foxy curled up close beside her.

  “Why can’t we come to aunt Matilde’s to live,” Germaine asked querulously.

  “You don’t want to leave your father and your mother, do you?” grandfather Noel scolded. “What kind of talk is that!”

  Germaine put a finger in her mouth, and then another; and then another. And sucked on them defiantly.

  Nightshade

  Superstitious Bellefleurs spoke of Nightshade as a troll (as if anyone had the slightest notion of what a troll was!) but it is more reasonable to assume, as Leah, Hiram, Jasper, Ewan, and other “reasonable” Bellefleurs did, that he was a dwarf. Not altogether an ordinary dwarf of the kind one might find elsewhere—for surely Nightshade, hunchbacked as he was, and with his wide, thin, near-lipless mouth that stretched fully across his face—was unusual. For one thing he was distressingly ugly. If you wanted to like him, or simply to “take pity” on him, his oversized but wizened face with its chiplike colorless eyes, and the queer indentation on his forehead (as if, it was observed, someone struck him long ago with the blunt edge of an ax), and that maddening unslackening joyless wide smile, were so repulsive, you turned away in alarm, your pulses racing; and the things Nightshade carried about in his numerous leather pouches and boxes (they were rumored to be bits of dried animals but were probably only medicinal herbs, like boneset, heal-all, henbit, dogbane, and, indeed, nightshade) gave off a sickish odor that intensified in humid weather. Bromwell estimated that Nightshade would have been about five feet tall had he been capable of standing upright: but he was so badly deformed, his spine bent and his chest so caved in, that he stood no more than four feet nine. Isn’t he sad, people said when they first saw him; isn’t he pathetic, they murmured upon subsequent sightings; isn’t he hideous, isn’t he unspeakable, they finally said, when neither the poor thing nor Leah was within earshot. (It was to be one of the most nagging of the Bellefleur mysteries, Nightshade’s appeal for Leah. For surely he came to acquire an extraordinary value in her imagination, during Germaine’s third and fourth years, and a remarkable intimacy as well—an intimacy, alas, that, though it never overstepped the affectionate but formal relationship of a woman and her favored manservant, nevertheless provoked, in the ignorant, all sorts of cruel, foolish, spiteful, and obscene speculation.)

  Nightshade came to dwell at Bellefleur Manor quite by accident—through, in fact, a series of accidents.

  After the tragedy of the infant Cassandra’s death, a number of Bellefleur men, joined, at various times, by friends and neighbors and visiting relatives (among them Dave Cinquefoil and Dabney Rush), sought, with shotguns and rifles and even a lightweight multiple-action gun of Ewan’s, the Noir Vulture, which was believed to inhabit the deepest reaches of the swamp; but their expeditions were fruitless. They shot and killed, or shot and left for dead, any number of other creatures, in their understandable disappointment—deer, bobcats, beavers, skunks, hares, rabbits, raccoons, opossums, muskrats, rats, porcupines, snakes (copperheads, ringnecks, water moccasins), even turtles, and even bats; and a great variety of birds, primarily herons, hawks, eagles, and egrets, who somewhat resembled the deadly vulture—but they came away, exhausted and bitter, without the object of their hunt. Gideon, who had shown little interest in hunting, in recent years, was especially determined to kill the Noir Vulture, and led nearly all of the expeditions into the swamp; even when feverish from snakebite he insisted upon joining the other men. He never spoke of Cassandra, still less did he speak of Garnet, but he often spoke of the Noir Vulture and how he would hunt it down—how he wouldn’t rest until it was killed. (Bromwell frequently told his father that there must be, of course, more than a single bird, though legend had it that only a single Noir Vulture existed—for how, otherwise, the primly courteous boy inquired, could the creature reproduce itself?) But each of the hunting expeditions ended in failure, and Gideon became increasingly bitter. He once suggested that the entire swamp—some sixty or seventy acres—be firebombed: couldn’t Ewan (who had just been elected, by a narrow margin, sheriff of Nautauga County) acquire the necessary equipment . . . ? But Ewan laughed away the notion, which must have been a joke. We’ll kill the thing eventually, he said. Don’t worry, it won’t escape us.

  Yet the weeks passed, and the Noir Vulture was not even sighted, let alone shot.

  By a happy coincidence there arrived at the manor, after
an absence of many years (no one could quite remember how many, not even Cornelia), Gideon’s brother Emmanuel, who had been exploring the Chautauquas in order to map them thoroughly: for even at the present time maps were crude and unreliable. Emmanuel reappeared in the kitchen one afternoon in his sheepskin jacket and hiking shoes, carrying a weathered knapsack, and asked the cook, in his softspoken, rather inflectionless voice, if he might have something to eat. The cook (newly hired, since the debacle of great-grandmother Elvira’s birthday party) had no idea who he was but saw the Bellefleur nose (in Emmanuel it was a long straight beak of a nose, with unusually small nostrils), and was shrewd enough to serve him, quietly and without fuss. He was an extremely tall man, perhaps Gideon’s height, with silvery brown hair that fell to his shoulders, and tanned, leathery skin that glinted with something metallic—salt, mica—and long, narrow, impassive eyes in which the dark iris floated like a tadpole, with a tadpole’s tiny curl of a tail. It was difficult to say how old he might have been: his skin had so weathered that it looked ageless, timeless: he must have been about Gideon’s and Ewan’s ages but looked much older, and at the same time perversely younger. A servant ran to get his mother, and soon the whole household was alerted, and though most of them crowded into the kitchen Emmanuel continued to eat his beef stew, chewing each mouthful slowly, smiling and nodding in reply to excited questions.

  It was evidently the case—much to his family’s surprise—that he was not home for good; he planned to stay at the manor only a few weeks. The cartography project was not completed. He said, softly, in response to an exclamation of Noel’s, that it was far from being completed, it would require years more of exploration. . . . Years more! Cornelia said, trying to take his hands in hers, as if to warm them, what on earth can you mean! Emmanuel pulled away, expressionless. If his face seemed to have an upward cast, a half-smiling air, it was because of his long, curling eyes; his lips were quite immobile. He explained quietly that the project he had set himself was a difficult, even a merciless one, and though he’d already covered many thousands of feet of parchment with his mapping and notations, he was really nowhere near finished for, for one thing, the land was always changing, streams were rerouting themselves, even the mountains were different from year to year (and even from day to day, he told the family, solemnly, they were eroding: Mount Blanc was now only about nine thousand feet high, and lost a fraction of an inch every hour), and a fastidious cartographer could take nothing for granted, though he had once charted, judiciously enough, all that he knew. But is that important, Noel broke in, laughing uneasily, I mean, you know, an inch here, an inch there—! Isn’t it time you began to think, Emmanuel, about marrying—settling down—taking your place here with us—(It might have been at that precise moment that Emmanuel decided not to stay at the manor as long as he’d planned; but his face was impassive as he listened to his father’s remarks. He was to leave home again on the morning of the fourth day of his visit, explaining to one of the servants that the manor was too warm for him to sleep comfortably, and the closeness of the ceilings oppressed him. And a certain gully at Lake Tear-of-the-Cloud nagged him, for he was convinced, suddenly, out of nowhere, that he had charted it incorrectly.)

  But before he left he was able to answer Gideon’s questions about the Noir Vulture. From out of his heavy oilskin knapsack he took a roll of parchment which he opened, carefully, spreading it on a table, explaining that this crude and really quite inadequate “map” was meant to cover the desolate swamp- and marshland to the south of Mount Chattaroy, which he had first investigated as a boy (indeed, hadn’t Gideon accompanied him on one of his expeditions?), and again a few years ago, but without entirely satisfying himself that he knew it. However, he said, pointing with a forefinger (the nail of which curved wickedly, like an eagle’s talon), I’m reasonably sure that the bird you want inhabits this region here. And he indicated an area of lakes and islands some twenty miles north of Bellefleur Manor.

  Gideon stood leaning over the map, careful—for his brother seemed rather nervous—not to touch it. The intricate meandering lines were dizzying; he had never seen a map quite like this; and the few words that were included were obviously Indian names, no longer used, faded from memory. But he could, he thought, make his way to the Noir Vulture’s habitat without difficulty. . . . Evidently they had underestimated its distance from the lake.

  He straightened, smiling. He halfway wanted to seize his brother in his arms, and embrace him; but he mastered the impulse. That bird, that thing, that devilish son of a bitch, he laughed, won’t escape us.

  WHILE THE IGNOMINIOUS failure of the earlier expeditions had not dampened Gideon’s ardor, but seemed, rather, to have increased it, the other men—Ewan in particular, who was busy with his new responsibilities—were somewhat discouraged; and the weather was growing chillier day by day. (After the terrible heatwave of late August a wall of cold air moved downward from the mountains, and brought a premature frost on the very first day of September.) So Gideon was able to cajole only Garth, Albert, Dave Cinquefoil, and a new friend named Benjamin (who shared Gideon’s fascination with cars) into joining him on the hunt.

  They took one of the pick-up trucks from the farm, and drove some fifteen miles north, along dirt roads and lanes and logging trails, until they were forced to give up and walk; at that very moment a light chill rain began to fall though the sky appeared cloudless. Gideon passed his flask of bourbon generously about but drank very little himself. He was almost desperately anxious to press forward. At first the others tried to keep up with him, then they gradually allowed themselves to fall behind. Garth was the only person who had actually sighted the Noir Vulture: he had seen it, or something closely resembling it, while hunting white-tailed deer as a boy of twelve. Albert had never seen it but believed fervently in it. Young Dave Cinquefoil and Benjamin Stone of course hadn’t any idea what they were hunting—only that it had carried off and devoured an infant, and must be killed. Gideon had convinced himself that he had once seen the bird, many years ago, but the creature in his mind’s eye was shimmering and indistinct, a fabulous bird composed of steaming vapors, with a glaring red eye and a daggerlike beak. It was a monster and must be killed. It had, after all, carried off a Bellefleur child . . . it had carried off his child.

  His long desperate strides carried Gideon away from the others, but he took no notice. A dangerous way to hunt, but he took no notice. In the distance he heard a curious sound: at the very first it put him in mind of bowling (for he frequented the bars of certain roadside bowling alleys where, over the months, he had made interesting new acquaintances); then he thought it must be thunder, low and rumbling; then he wondered if it might be a waterfall. He was climbing a ridge, the marshy land to his right, and it was altogether likely that a small river or creek lay ahead. He thought there might be a waterfall—he believed he had once hunted this area, many years ago.

  The thunderous sound rose and fell, and went silent. But it had come from somewhere close by. Gideon, panting, climbed the ridge as the sun began to shine with a sudden summery warmth. The swamp to his right gave off a rich brackish odor of decay and the tall pale oatlike grasses through which he plunged smelled of moisture and heat. He was suddenly very excited—he heard laughter ahead—he raised his gun and touched his trembling finger lightly against one of the triggers.

  And then—and then, at the top of the grassy knoll, he found himself staring down in astonishment at a group of children. They were playing in a meadow. The grass was short, and extremely green; it was close-cropped enough to be pastureland, but Gideon was certain that this land wasn’t used for grazing. The children were playing rowdily, shouting at one another, emitting high-pitched squeaking laughter. They were bowling—lawn bowling—it must have been a schoolhouse picnic—but why were they trespassing on Bellefleur land, and who were they?—and where was their teacher? The sound of the wooden balls (which were about the size of croquet balls) striking the clubs was disproportionately loud, as
if the noise echoed in a small room, ricocheting off a low ceiling. Gideon flinched. The children’s high-pitched laughter was also extremely loud. Though ordinarily Gideon liked children and even the idea of children it struck him suddenly that he didn’t like these children and would take pleasure in running them off his land. . . .

  So he descended the slope, shouting at them. They turned in amazement, their faces screwed up in angry, belligerent expressions, and he saw that they weren’t children—they were midgets—some fifteen or twenty midgets—or were they (since their heads were oversized and their bodies misshapen, some of them quite grotesquely, with humps between their shoulders and crooked, caved-in chests) dwarves?—but why were they trespassing on his property—and where had they come from—