The old people wanted him to stay but he had no time for them.
Let me make you some breakfast, aunt Matilde said. I know you haven’t eaten. Eggs, buckwheat pancakes, sausages, muffins—blueberry muffins, Gideon—don’t you have time for us, really?
But of course he hadn’t time.
Ah, Gideon, look at you—! Aunt Matilde sighed. So thin—!
He stooped to kiss Germaine goodbye but she turned half-aside in disgust.
She was such an outraged, poker-faced little lady, he couldn’t help laughing at her. It’s because of the wind, he said, the wind isn’t right, it’s coming from the mountains too hard, it would knock our little plane out of the sky. Germaine? Do you understand? Another day, when it’s calmer, I’ll take you up. We can fly right over Lake Noir and see the castle and the farm and you’ll be able to see Buttercup out in the pasture, and wave to him, all right? Another day. But not today.
Why not today! Germaine screamed at him.
He waved his hat at them as he backed away, smiling. But it was nothing more than the shadow of a smile, just as his eyes weren’t anything more than the shadows of eyes, and of course she knew.
She knew, she knew. And would not even glance at the watch he left behind for her—the big ugly watch with all the confusing numerals and lines.
He got in the car and backed it around and drove away, and even waved at them out the window, but he was already gone, she wouldn’t wave back, she stood there staring at him, panting, no tears left, the salty tears already drying on her cheeks, and when the car was out of sight down the narrow lane she wouldn’t let the old people comfort her because she knew she would never see him again, and it would do no good to cry, to scream, to throw the watch down into the dust and stamp on it: she knew.
Another time, another time, great-grandmother Elvira whispered, touching Germaine’s hair with her stiff chill fingers.
A Still Water
In a strange land where the sky has disappeared and the sun has gone dark and the rocky inhospitable soil beneath our feet has vanished, on the borders of Chymerie . . . on the borders of the deathly-dark lake . . . beneath the waters of the deathly-dark lake . . . the god of sleep, they say, has made his house.
For there are, according to the immense monograph A Hypothesis Concerning Anti-Matter, by Professor Bromwell G. Bellefleur, slits in the fabric of time, “portals” linking this dimension with a mirror-image universe composed of identical (and yet unrelated, opposed, totally distinct) beings.
How may they be identical, and at the same time “unrelated, opposed, and totally distinct”?
The god of sleep, a corpulent god, a most greedy god, has made his house where the sun has no dominion, eclipsed by the brute matter of the earth. There, no man may know aright the point between the day and the night. In that place a still water abides . . . a still, lightless, bitter-cold water which runs upon the small stones and gives great appetite for sleep.
A HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING Anti-Matter. Eight hundred dense pages long, filled with Bellefleur’s small, chaste, rigorous handwriting, and hundreds of equations, and graphs, and sketches, and impatient desperate doodles, which mimic the work’s somber thesis. Prefaced with an enigmatic and loosely translated remark of Heraclitus, on the nature of time: or, rather, on the nature of our conception of time.
Those who read A Hypothesis Concerning Anti-Matter and were not acquainted with the brilliant young man who wrote it feared for his sanity; those who knew Bromwell were disturbed but not at all surprised. And of course they did not fear for his sanity, for who among them was half so sane as that boy-genius who had never grown up . . . ?
(For Bromwell had changed only superficially from the boy who walked so briskly away from New Hazleton Academy for Boys long ago. A “child” of no more than four feet nine inches, with a wise, lined face, and thick wire-rimmed glasses, and thinned-out hair that looks blond in some lights and silver-gray in others. There is a rumor among his associates at Mount Ellesmere, and among his disciples, and even among his many rivals and enemies (for of course he has enemies, though he knows none of them by name), that he has a twin: but who, or what, might this “twin” be—! Of course no one has ever seen Bromwell’s twin, nor does anyone know whether the twin is a male or a female.)
Over the long years, as he labored on the Hypothesis, Bromwell chose to live on the most meager of part-time salaries, supplemented at times by grants and fellowships, not so much confident in the ultimate worth of his research as indifferent to his circumstances and surroundings. If he never grew past the height of four feet nine, observers claimed, it was primarily because he didn’t try. And of course he ate poorly, and slept little, and worked himself to the brink of collapse—and may even, on one or two occasions, have crossed over into that murky indefinable terrain known to the impoverished of imagination as madness. But he soon righted himself, and returned. For there was not his kingdom, there his splendid mind had no dominion.
He was condemned, as he saw from the start, to sanity. His rejection of the remorseless claims of blood was but one aspect of his sanity. Even when word came to him of the destruction by fire of Bellefleur Manor and the deaths of both his parents, and, indeed, of most of his family, he showed nothing more than the startled concern a sensitive person might feel for any catastrophe—he might mourn, but he could not truthfully weep.
He had proven, in his massive study, that the future as well as the past is contained in the sky—and so of course there is no death. But there is no pathway to that other dimension, whether it is called “future” or “past.” Only by way of miraculous, unwilled slits in the fabric of time that link this dimension with a mirror-image universe of anti-matter can one pass freely into that other world. But of course they are unwilled.
The author of A Hypothesis Concerning Anti-Matter maintained a most unusual equilibrium of mood: neither blissful nor melancholy as his fame spread. For since he had proven that the future as well as the past exists, and exists at all times, he had of course proven that he himself existed, and that everything about him existed, and had from the beginning of “time,” quite without justification.
Nevertheless he sometimes dreamt of the god of sleep who swallowed them up one by one by one. In that dark place where the sun has no dominion, and a still water abides . . . a still, lightless, bitter-cold water which runs upon the small stones and gives great appetite for sleep. And sometimes he even dreamt, oddly, that the water (but the water was only a metaphor!) had frozen, and those who clung to its surface, upside down, were trapped beneath the ice, their heads lost in the chill shadow, the soles of their feet pressed against the ice. After news came of the destruction of Bellefleur Manor he had this hideous dream, several times. And then, gradually, it faded.
The Destruction of Bellefleur Manor
And so it came to pass, on the fourth birthday of the youngest Bellefleur child, that the renowned castle and all who dwelled within it both as masters and as servants (and all—a considerable number of persons—who were attending the family council that afternoon, summoned by Leah: attorneys and brokers and financial advisers and accountants and managers of a dozen businesses and factories and mills) were destroyed in a horrific explosion when Gideon Bellefleur crashed his plane into the very center of the castle: a quite deliberate, premeditated act, of unspeakable malice, and certainly not accidental, as Gideon’s flying associates were to claim. For how could the destruction of Bellefleur Manor and the deaths of so many innocent people have been an accident, when the plane that dived into the house was evidently carrying explosives, and when it was directed so unerringly, so unfalteringly, into its target . . . ?
(And how ironic was the fact that Gideon’s brother Raoul had just arrived at the castle, summoned by a telegram of Leah’s—Raoul who had not visited Bellefleur for decades, and who had refused his parents’ invitations and summonses and even their frequent pleas. Raoul, about whom so much was whispered, living a decidedly peculiar life down in Kincar
dine. . . . But so appalled was the family by his behavior, so stricken were they, that they never spoke of him; and Germaine was never to learn the smallest detail about him.)
(Ironic too was the fact that Della was at Bellefleur Manor that week, partly to console her brother for the loss of Hiram—who assuredly was dead, and had been buried, though Noel complained of hearing him bumping and stumbling about the corridors late at night, afflicted still with his sleepwalking mania. Ironic also, that young Morna and her husband Armour Horehound were there, visiting aunt Aveline; and Dave Cinquefoil and his bride Stella Zundert; and a Bellefleur from Mason Falls, Ohio, whom no one had ever met before, but with whom Leah had evidently been corresponding, about the possibility of the Bellefleur corporation acquiring a steel mill there; and there were several others, relatives or acquaintances of relatives, visiting the castle on that unlucky day. Only great-grandmother Elvira and her husband, and great-aunt Matilde, and of course Germaine herself, of the Lake Noir Bellefleurs, survived. Most of the household cats and dogs, with the probable exception of Mahalaleel, who had been missing for some time, were, of course, also destroyed.)
So powerful was the blast, so great the assault upon the earth, that the ground of nearby Bellefleur Village heaved and cracked, and the windows of most of the houses were shattered, and dogs set up a mad forlorn clamor; and Lake Noir rose darkly and pitched itself against its shores, as if it were the end of the world; and the tranquillity of mountain villages as far away as Gerardia Pass and Mount Chattaroy and Shaheen was shaken. The inhabitants of Bushkill’s Ferry who rushed from their homes to watch the holocaust across the lake—seven miles wide at that point—were seized with a collective panic, and stared, rigid as paralytics, at the flaming castle, convinced that the end of the world had come. (There were those who claimed afterward to have heard, across that great distance, the unbearable screams of the dying, and even to have smelled the hideous blackly-sweet stench of burning flesh. . . . )
Though Bellefleur Manor had appeared to be centuries old, it was, in fact, only about 130 years old. And of course it was never rebuilt since there was no one to rebuild it, or at any rate no one who wished to rebuild it, or had the financial resources to do so: the ruins remain to this day, on the southeastern shore of remote Lake Noir, some thirty-five miles north of the Nautauga River. Weeds and saplings and scrub pine grow there freely, amid the rubble, and every year the earth reaches up a little higher to reclaim it. The place, children say, is not haunted.
SHORTLY AFTER HE became the Rache woman’s lover Gideon arranged for instructions in the Hawker Tempest with his former teacher Tzara, despite Tzara’s superstitious dislike for the plane (he had had, he told Gideon passionately, his fill of bombers in the war: it seemed to him that former warplanes stank of death though they were always miles away from the ghastly deaths they unleashed); and after only seven or eight hours in the air he felt confident, or very nearly confident, that he could manage it alone. It rode the air differently, of course, than any of the lighter planes: one could feel something crude and monstrous about it. While the other planes inspired affection and even love the Hawker Tempest inspired only grim respect.
And there was the matter, too, of the Rache woman’s intangible presence, which acted keenly upon Gideon’s somewhat overwrought senses.
(For he was very much aware of her, once in the cockpit, with the Plexiglas roof closed and secured. Gideon now owned the plane but he could not help thinking, each time he climbed into it, that he was trespassing; he was violating the woman’s innermost being; and he was enjoying it immensely, with an exhilaration he had not felt since the early days of his love for Leah. Tzara never mentioned the Rache woman, though Gideon suspected that he knew she was now Gideon’s mistress. He was confident, however, that only he could discern her scent amid the rough odors of metal and gasoline and leather—a scent that lifted from her hair as she shook it impatiently loose; a scent that arose, salty and gritty, from between her small hard breasts with their puckered nipples that looked always as if they were outraged; the scent of her belly and thighs. . . . How many women have you had before me! she said with mock bitterness. And Gideon said: But you will be the last.)
How fierce the Hawker Tempest was, even when it floated, comparatively noiselessly, at the highest of altitudes! Fierce and urgent and combative and never playful, like the other planes. With its more powerful engine and its greater weight it did not simply ride, it thrust itself forward, like a swimmer, always forward, penetrating the harsh northerly winds as effortlessly as it penetrated the shimmering hot currents of a thermal day. It quivered with strength, it began to look, to Gideon’s eye, absurdly crippled on the ground, with its canvas top pulled snug over it like a blindfold on a horse. The red and black of its fuselage seemed to him a muted shout. Such an airplane must be freed from the spell of gravity, it must be taken into the air as often as possible: so Gideon came to think, exactly, perhaps, as the Rache woman had come to think. When Tzara told him in an offhanded manner that he really should stay away from the Tempest for a few weeks, since the feel of such a plane could become addictive, and could spoil the other planes for him, it was already too late. There it is, Gideon thought, when he arrived at the airport each day, that’s the one, it will be only a matter of time now.
AFTER LEAVING GERMAINE at aunt Matilde’s Gideon drove directly to the airport, and arrived at midmorning. He was observed in a loose-fitting white suit, wearing a sporty Western-looking white hat no one had seen before, with what appeared to be a band of braided leather. (The hat was later discovered in Gideon’s office, left behind, for of course he had worn a helmet and goggles in the plane.) He spoke to Tzara and one or two of the mechanics; he avoided talking with his friend Pete, who arrived at the airport at 10:30, and took up a Wittfield 500; he opened mail, dictated a few letters to the office’s only secretary, spoke briefly on the telephone; strolled out along the edge of the runway, in the oil-flecked weeds, his hands in his pockets, his head flung back. (Like all pilots Gideon now studied the air. He knew that the vast ocean of air that stretched invisibly above him, from horizon to horizon, was far more significant than the land. He knew that his human life was conducted on the floor of that invisible sea and that he might redeem himself only by rising free of the land, from time to time, however briefly, however vainly. So nothing mattered quite so much as the texture of the day: were there clouds, and what kinds of cloud; was it warm; was it cold; was there humidity, and haze; was it clear; above all what was the wind—that feeble word intended to explain and to predict so much, in fact everything, that was not the earth! He could see and hear and taste the wind, he could feel it on every exposed part of his body; his fingertips twitched with a secret and ineffable knowledge of its mystery.
So his employees observed him, strolling along the runway. Old Skin and Bones, he was. With his limp, and his maimed right hand. With his hot glaring half-crazy eye for women, which was, as the women discovered to their chagrin, really a sign of his vast indifference, his contempt. Old Skin and Bones. Shrunken inside his clothes. His cheekbones prominent, his nose jutting. Elbows and knees jerky. Restless. He could not sit still, could not bear to remain behind his desk, was always pacing, so the secretary complained, imagining he was staring at her when he passed behind her desk, though in fact he had no awareness of her—no interest, of late, in any woman except Mrs. Rache. Gideon Bellefleur. The Gideon Bellefleur about whom so much was whispered. His automobiles, and before that, long ago, when he was a young man, his Thoroughbred horses: hadn’t he once owned a magnificent albino stallion, hadn’t he once ridden it to victory in a race that had brought his family hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal bets? Or was that, perhaps, another Bellefleur?—his father, or grandfather? There were so many Bellefleurs, people said, but perhaps most of them had never existed. They were just stories, tales, anecdotes set in the mountains, which no one quite believed and yet could not quite disregard. . . .
Though Gideon, of course
, certainly existed. At least until the day he committed suicide by diving his airplane into Bellefleur Manor.
HE LEFT HIS rakish white hat in his office, and strapped on a pilot’s helmet with amber goggles. His figure was quick and spare, and he walked, observers noted, with an unusually pronounced limp. He had told Tzara he might take the Tempest up for an hour or so but he didn’t check with Tzara beforehand, and the perfunctory flight notes he had made—pencil scrawls, nearly unintelligible—were left behind on his desk. Quickly he checked the airplane: the oil, the sparkplugs, the fuel line connections, the propeller, the wings (which he caressed somewhat more hastily than usual, as if not caring what dents or cracks or other imperfections he might discover), the tires, the brakes, the generator belt, the gasoline. And all was well. Not in perfect condition, for the Hawker Tempest was an old plane, rather battered from the War; it was said to have survived more than one crash-landing, and more than one pilot. But it would do, Gideon thought. It was just the thing for him.
With a sudden burst of energy Gideon hauled himself up onto the wing, and into the second cockpit; and there, crouched down in the first cockpit, hugging the two-by-four box on her lap, was Mrs. Rache, awaiting him. She was twisted about, gazing at him over her shoulder. A slow smile, a wordless greeting, passed between them.
So she had come, as she’d promised! She had been waiting for him all along. But discreetly out of sight.
Gideon did not lean into the cockpit to kiss her; he smiled upon her with a lover’s lordly yet somewhat dazed smile. She had come, she was his, and the box was on her lap: so it would take place, as they had planned. . . . He did not kiss her, knowing she would draw away in displeasure (for she detested any public show of affection or intimacy, or even friendship), but he could not resist reaching down to squeeze her gloved hand. Her fingers were hard and strong, returning the pressure. It excited him to see that she wore khaki trousers and a long-sleeved man’s shirt and a badly scruffed leather vest, and the helmet with the amber goggles that resembled his own. Every tuft, every tendril of hair had been tucked severely into the helmet; her darkly tanned face looked, in the glare of the August sun on the fuselage and wings, almost featureless. My love, he whispered.
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