The Language of Paradise: A Novel

by Barbara Klein Moss

  Gideon suspected that a stately graded descent might be more to the parson’s taste than a long tumble; it was difficult to picture him, even in extremity, plummeting heels over head, limbs askew.

  “It pains me to think of you sinking so low, sir,” he said. “I hope you won’t mind my asking how you . . . recovered yourself.” He had neatly avoided the word “saved,” though the symmetry of the sermon to come was already obvious. The tripartite fall could only mean that the Holy Trinity was waiting on the front line, prepared to retrieve the fallen soldier. But Reverend Hedge surprised him again.

  “That, too, came in stages. The first step was making a chest for my father. A small one, to hold his pipes.” Hedge reached for the tray and ran his fingers through the Hebrew letters, sifting them. He flipped one into his palm—a Lamed, Gideon noted—and palpated it with his thumb. “I’d done nothing for months. The torpor of my mind was such that study was impossible; I’d taken leave from the College and come home, and spent the better part of each day lying on a couch with a cloth over my eyes. My poor mother and father must have plotted between them to contrive some project to divert me. I still remember how timidly they approached me, asking if I felt well enough to consider the vexing problem of the stray pipes . . .”

  He smiled, his face softening at the recollection. “I doubt that I will ever lift anything heavier than that first piece of wood. The task seemed gargantuan, but it drew me out of myself and back into the world. Reflect on it, Mr. Birdsall—I had thought to stretch my mind to the far reaches of the cosmos, and now my whole being was concentrated on a little box! You will say it is a diminution. Yet I can tell you that this box was the opposite of Pandora’s, for all my blessings came out of it. My good wife—perhaps not so fair of form as my first love, but far better suited to the rigors of the clerical life. My family. My calling itself. And this, the humble but useful work of my hands.” He swept out both his arms in a gesture meant to encompass not only the study, but the house, the garden, the orchard, the spreading field. “How great is our God, and how infinite His mercies!”

  “Indeed,” said Gideon. “An inspiring story.” The Reverend’s cautionary tale had caused his mood to plunge as swiftly as one of Hedge’s falling angels. What was a man of vision to aspire to, then? Growing a superior squash? Making a chair? “But I think you will agree, sir,” he said, “that the fault is not with language, which was God’s gift to us in Eden. I hope you haven’t forsaken poetry altogether.”

  “‘Forsaken’ is the wrong word. Rather, I’ve diverted the stream.” Hedge sounded suddenly weary. Sharpness had crept into his voice. “I’m told my sermons are more varied and numerous than those produced by any of my colleagues. My lectures you are familiar with. My correspondence alone is of such volume that I often pray to the Lord for patience.” He took up his glass and twisted the stem between two fingers. “I do undertake the occasional poem of a sacred nature—eulogies and moral lessons and the like. Only last month, I was moved to commemorate the hanging of a local blacksmith, a drunkard who murdered his wife; I printed copies of the verse for my congregation, with an illustration of the sad event, and the demand was such that I exhausted my supply. But I’m a better man when I confine myself to the practical crafts. There’s a purity about them that the higher arts lack. They turn the imagination to wholesome ends. Given your own susceptibilities, you could do worse than follow my example.”

  “I’m no artist,” Gideon said, stung again. “But I can’t agree that creating beauty, or seeking it, or contemplating it, leads to sin. If that is so, why do you hang a painting above your desk?”

  Hedge regarded him coldly. “You are no artist, Mr. Birdsall, and I hope you’ll agree that I am no Philistine. The painting is Sophy’s; I saw you looking at it earlier. She has some ability, I think, though this isn’t one of her better efforts. The sentiment behind it compensates for its shortcomings. She painted it for my birthday, and I display it to please her.”

  “I think it’s quite good. She’s taken such care with the details.” Remembering Sophy’s wish for a centerpiece for her garden, Gideon felt a sudden surge of tenderness for the fountain’s lack of scale. The Reverend would never see, as he did, that she had enhanced it in measure to her longing. “Mrs. Hedge believes Sophy has inherited your talents,” he said.

  “I haven’t discouraged her,” the parson said. “Quite the contrary. I’ve taught her what little I know, though it’s never enough for her. It’s in the blood, you see. For good or ill, the artistic strain runs in my family, a thin line, but persistent. Her mother was my only sister—a great favorite of mine. Mary was a blithe spirit, the bright star of our sober brood, always making up rhymes and songs and stories. I used to think she must be a changeling—that the midwife had spirited off the true Hedge and left this sunny creature instead.” He sighed. “She assumed all men were as open-hearted as she was. Far too fanciful for this hard world, and the world took advantage of her, as is its way. She didn’t tarry here for long.”

  Hedge paused, hand on chin, contemplating the painting. “Mary would have named her daughter for one of the Muses—I believe Calliope had been mentioned.” He raised his eyebrows. “When she died, the task fell to us. I never saw such a mite as that infant was! I tell you without exaggeration, my own were giants compared to her. The midwife doubted she would survive, but I sensed a will there, and my Consort, bless her, was untiring in her efforts. It was my idea to call the baby Sophia. I thought wisdom would be a tree of life to her, after such a precarious beginning. If my sister had possessed more of it, she might be among us still.” He turned to Gideon, his eyes misted over with an old sorrow. “Next month Sophy turns eighteen. A good girl, but flighty, and willful in her way. Time will tell whether the name has tempered her nature.”

  THEY WALKED BACK to the house in silence. Though Hedge had exhausted his store of words, he had endowed Gideon with a number of his written works as compensation: A discourse on “The Peculiar Nature of Time and Tense in Ancient Hebrew.” An essay roguishly titled “An Eye for an Eye: Some In-sights into the Function of the Letter Ayin.” And the only remaining copy of “The Blacksmith’s Lament: The Last Words of Abner Turnbull Upon the Occasion of his Execution for the Heinous Murder of His Wife (With Illustrations from Life).”

  Gideon was glad to be released from the study. This was his favorite time of day. Late-afternoon light glazed the fields and painted the yellow house a rich ochre—the color of blessing, he had always thought. The Hedge homestead looked as natural in this setting as if it had grown from seed, as cozily eternal as a village in a Dutch landscape.

  “The day has gotten away from us,” Hedge said, “pleasurable as it was. Will you take some supper before you go?”

  “I’ve imposed on your hospitality enough,” Gideon said quickly. “But if you can tolerate me a little longer, I’d like to see some of Micah’s handiwork. He has a quality that’s quite remarkable.”

  “I’m glad you sense it. Micah has a depth that is missing in his brothers. I wish my firstborn had a tenth of his seriousness. Sam was once handsome to look at, agreeable in company, but a shallow stream. At seminary he lasted less than a year. Instead of attending to his studies, he entangled himself with a clothier’s daughter, and now he’s locked in a hasty marriage, working in her father’s shop in Lowell.” The parson took off his hat and fanned at a circling bee. “The education I gave to Sam would have been better spent on Micah, but to what end? He will never preach.” Hedge’s voice was too flat for bitterness, but his face clenched as if the bee had stung him. “At times I’m weak enough to cry out about his condition. The sins of the fathers, Mr. Birdsall. I know all too well why the Lord hobbled his tongue.”

  The dog was waiting at the door, and Reverend Hedge took his leave of Gideon there; he had to help his sons with evening chores. “Micah will be out,” he said, “but my wife will show you a few of his pieces. Or Sophia. She loves to trumpet her brother’s talents.”

  CHAPTER 6


  ____

  A SINGLE EYE

  GIDEON WALKED THROUGH THE HALL ON THE BALLS OF his feet, trying to keep from pressing too loudly on the floorboards. He hoped Mrs. Hedge was busy elsewhere. She would insist on giving him a complete tour of the house and its contents, and he would never get away before nightfall.

  Sophy was in the sitting room, at her easel by the window, blessedly alone. She looked up brightly when he came in, as if she were surprised to see him. “There you are, Mr. Birdsall! I’ve been waiting all day to show you my chair, but you took so long with Papa that I worked on my picture instead.”

  “May I see it? I’ve just been admiring your fountain.” He stood at a respectful distance, wary of coming closer with only the two of them in the room. The canvas was clearly visible: a hut under a low-hanging fog of foliage, vaguely suggested in thick strokes of green.

  “Please don’t look. You mustn’t, it’s not finished.” She stood and blocked the easel with her body: a gesture that struck him as too functional to be coy. “It needs a cow, I think. I’m very fond of cows, but I never can get them right. Mine always look like barrels with tails.”

  Gideon laughed, relieved that he wouldn’t have to conjure up profound remarks about the painting. Her dancing was far superior to her artwork, but he understood that he must make no reference to it. “Then I’ll have to settle for Micah’s chair,” he said.

  Sophy wasn’t as pristine as she’d appeared that morning: a ribbon of hair had come loose and broken the symmetry of her face, and a smudge of green marred one cheek—a suitable emblem, Gideon thought: the elf in her coming to the surface. But even these flaws were a charm.

  She showed him a chest of drawers first, and then a clock that Micah and the Reverend were building—a labor of love, she explained; the intricate works still claimed their evenings, though the case had been completed months ago. Proudly she pointed out fine details in the carving, little flourishes that differentiated her brother’s style from the father’s. “And they’ve asked me to decorate the face,” she said. “Isn’t that trusting of them? I’ve already made some sketches. I wish my hand were as sure as Micah’s. The design is in my head, but what I paint is so far from what I dream.”

  “I’ve had the same experience with my translations,” Gideon said. “But the important thing is to have a dream, don’t you think? It’s like a compass. It points us in the direction we’re meant to go.”

  The thought seemed to delight her. “I’ll think of myself as traveling, then,” she said, “and not be so unhappy that I haven’t arrived. I can tell that you’re a very determined person, Mr. Birdsall. You will surely reach your destination.”

  Sophy’s chair was made of oak like the others, but Micah had managed to infuse some of her airy spirit into the wood. The finials were birds on the wing caught in mid-soar; in their beaks they held the corners of a scroll that stretched between them, forming the back post. “Matthew 6:22” had been carved on the post in an elegant hand.

  “I ought to know the verse from the citation, but I don’t,” Gideon said. “Will you share it with a stranger?”

  “Oh, it’s very mysterious.” She traced the inscription with a finger as if it would open at her touch. “The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. What do you suppose it means? I haven’t any idea what use a single eye would be to anyone. Unless you have the misfortune to be born a Cyclops.”

  Gideon wasn’t about to offer an exegesis. “I wonder why your father chose that passage.”

  “Even Papa can’t tell you. He prays over the chair and a verse comes to him. He has faith that the Lord will tell him what we need to know.”

  And Hedge had accused him of mysticism, Gideon thought. How was Sophy to profit from a verse she couldn’t understand? He remembered the passage now, and the even stranger one that followed it. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be filled with darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! When he first read the verses as a boy, his orderly mind had rebelled at the odd diametric of “single” and “evil.” But he had thrilled, too, at the whiff of paganism that the words gave off—incantations and the black arts infiltrating the familiar neighborhood of the Golden Rule. Could the good shepherd that Gideon and his mother prayed to each night really have inflicted such a dire prophecy? The exclamation point at the end had filled him with pleasurable terror: he had imagined a hooded Druid priest poising his long knife over a bound sacrifice. It seemed a travesty that Sophy’s slender back should rest against such an enigma night after night, with only her innocence to shield her.

  She had left him to his meditations on the chair and was looking out the window. “Mama is coming back from the garden,” she reported. “Mr. Unsworth is carrying her basket. He reminds me of an old dog, the way he follows behind.”

  “I think you mean to say that he is faithful,” Gideon said, making no attempt to suppress the lilt in his voice.

  “Oh, he is that, I suppose—he’s always underfoot. I wish I liked him more. He stares at me when he thinks I’m not watching. I’m sure he means no harm, but he makes me uncomfortable.” Sophy turned to Gideon and lifted her chin, swiping with one hand at the errant lock of hair. “It would be quite different if you were boarding with us, Mr. Birdsall. We would have wonderful conversations about deep subjects—art and philosophy and true religion. Do you know, when I saw you in the meadow with the sun glinting on your hair, I thought you were an angel? That was why I ran away. I knew I wasn’t fit to meet an angel.”

  SHE WASN’T THE FIRST GIRL to draw conclusions about his character from the color of his hair. Gideon was reminded of this as he retraced his path through sweet-smelling fields back to the road, the drone of insects making a soothing counterpoint to his thoughts. For as long as he could remember, women had cooed over his blondness, assuming that a boy so fair must be as angelic as he looked. As a child he’d delighted in mocking their effusions, screwing up his face and sticking out his tongue while his mother feigned horror.

  When he was not quite fourteen, he began to stir another kind of interest. Gideon had been waiting in the schoolroom one afternoon when the girl who cleaned up after class stopped in front of him. She had never spoken to him before, and on the rare occasions when they’d shared the space, he’d ignored her presence. She was a farmworker’s daughter, a vacant, lumbering creature who moved sullenly around the room with her mop and pail, choosing at random the patches of floor she would favor with suds that day; his mother was always complaining about her. The girl gaped at him, her mouth half-open. “It shines like gold!” she said, and before he caught her meaning, she reached out two grubby fingers to touch his hair. Gideon was too startled to recoil. Then, as if to pay him in kind for the liberty she’d taken, she grabbed his hand and thrust it under her bodice. The sudden contact with her flesh shocked him. The spongy fullness overflowed his palm. Until that moment, he had hardly seen her as a person, much less a woman. It seemed to him that she said things, but he couldn’t absorb them. He didn’t know how long he stood there—long enough for her to mistake his paralysis for pleasure and lift her skirts. Only then did he find the strength to wrench away from her and run out of the room.

  His mother wanted to know why he wouldn’t stay in the schoolroom anymore. He couldn’t tell her. The experience had nothing to do with him; it had happened in an underworld he never planned to visit again. But in spite of his best efforts to lock it away, he would see the girl’s face, at once knowing and stupid, the tip of her tongue between her slack lips; he would hear her whisper in his ear—breathy exhalations, a murmurous crooning—and even as his mind revolted, his body would be roused.

  After a few weeks, he went again, telling himself he would exorcise her once and for all. The girl laughed lazily, as if she had been waiting for him, and without a word began to unbutton her dress. He pelted her with names to keep her away: “Fat cow! Filthy pig!�
� For a boy who acquired words easily, he knew few bad ones. Even these weren’t so very bad—feathers rather than stones, for they tickled the girl, and the more he flung, the more she showed him, lifting her skirt to display thighs the color of curd, a great puckered rump that she parted with her hands, looking at him coyly over her shoulder. When he could stand it no more, he ran. She hadn’t touched him—all the times he would go to her, she never touched him—but as soon as he got home, he touched himself. It was as though they had reached an agreement.

  Love wasn’t something Gideon felt a need for, nor did he connect it with the eruptions of his body. His college classmates attributed his restraint to an excess of piety. It was simply that whoring had no meaning for him, didn’t kindle his desire. Why should he go to some degenerate stranger to slake a momentary urge that he could stifle on his own? This was a sin, he knew, but he was neat and quick about it. In his own mind he was preserving himself for the wife of his destiny, though his notions about that worthy goal were vague. Love, when he thought of it at all, was an exalted enigma, not unlike the Lord Himself: infinitely lofty, conveniently remote. Until this morning, it had never had a face.

  Gideon could not say, even now, why that face should be Sophy’s. Nothing about her seemed to warrant such an operatic intensity of feeling. She was small and spare—skimpy, his friends would judge her, no ornament for a man’s arm—and uncommon to the point of being odd. Her manner was the opposite of artful. Although it was their first meeting, she had not bothered to disguise her admiration for him, and had openly hinted that he should take Unsworth’s place in the household. Yet he liked all these things about her: liked her childish looks and the frankness that went with them, which would have seemed audacious in any other girl; liked her solitary dancing, and yes, even the endearing ineptitude of her paintings, which were only clumsy sketches of her dreams. Maybe, Gideon thought, love was nothing more than a series of likings, strung together like beads on a chain. Not pearls or rubies, but humble wooden beads: the sight of a girl in a field, the part in her hair, the feeling of possession that came over him when he entered the room where she sat alone. Had Dante felt more for Beatrice, Petrarch for Laura? Or were they simply more skilled at translating such moments from the vernacular of life into the high language of art?