Half a Sky: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 2
Page 25
Dana was several times in and out of the United States in these years ‘for the finishing of the man.’ How could the unfinished United States provide the finishing of a man? If this phrase was composed by Scheherazade of Amsterdam (who sometimes composed lives for Dana independent of his own living them) then it was just one of those phrases that she tossed off hurriedly. After all, she was busy making up lives for everyone in the world. Angelene of Basse-Terre was also busy at weaving a life for Dana that was not in complete accord with his actual life. Dana the man would never be finished.
In New Orleans, Dana mingled in the high life with Lady Valiente and her son Serafino and her son's wife Carolina. He also mingled in the low life with the destitute Irish who had come to this city in uncommon numbers from the long famine at home.
Dana made an extensive trip up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers (not on the Catherine Dembinska), mostly in the company of the poor Irish who were looking for homes or employment.
Dana was out of pocket all the coin he had for them on this trip, and he groaned for Count Cyril to come to his aid with more. The Count, for once, was deaf to him. Dana went up the Missouri as far as Kanesville (now named Council Bluffs); Otis Ranker was with him on at least part of this trip. Otis washed gold dust out of the muddy Missouri to pay for further passage of some of the poor people. Actually he didn't; he already had the gold dust, he pretended to wash it out of the muddy river. Otis went back to Mexico later, once with Dana, once without him.
Dana did not return to Basse-Terre during this two year period, not till early 1854. The details of all that he did do are not meant to be given. Every man of note will have had seven hidden years in his life, for the real finishing of the man; he'll not become a man of note without them. But these years need not all be in one piece. Dana'd had at least one such year (in foreign parts and ports) before his summons to leave Bantry Bay for Hendaye to begin his public adventures. He'd have other such years in the years to come. He himself would never reveal any of the doings of his hidden years, and nobody else should. In old Burton it is given that men inquired what was in a certain covered box. ‘It is covered that you may not know what is in it,’ they were told.
Dana came home to Basse-Terre in the early part of the year 1854. He came now in the Catherine Dembinska. With him were not only the Lady Valiente with Serafino and Carolina, but also (unaccountably) the English Lady Elaine Kingsberry, and the Basse-Terre man named Charley Oceaan. When had Charley left Basse-Terre, and when had he joined Dana? That isn't to be given either; it was also one of the hidden things of the hidden years. The Catherine Dembinska arrived home (but how could it have been home? She had never been there before) from a United States port.
She'd not been there before? Then why had there been, for many decades, a shoal in the passage between Guadeloupe and Marie-Galante Island that was named The Grave of Caterina Dama Binación? This, if it could be interpreted at all, might mean The Grave of the Catherine the Lady of the Double Feast or the Double Mass. But it also sounded, if the ear caught it just right, mighty like The Grave of Catherine Dembinska.
All the people of Basse-Terre seemed to be gathered at the little docks to greet them. That wasn't strange. Often they'd gather to greet any boat whatsoever, and just as likely were they to pay no attention at all to an arrival — out of a happy group malice. What was strange was that they had fabricated welcoming signs, and signs with something even stranger on them. There was no telegraph on Basse-Terre, no way that the news of the arrival could have reached there. But not only did the people whoop out “B’envenu,” and beat drums and toot horns for all that party coming home, and sing and chant; but they also had posters or signs carrying the words of their chant. There was even a linen weaving with the words picked out on it, the words that were as constant as they were curious:
“Hourra po'r llez noces d'dana — Hurrah for the nuptials of Dana.” And there was another sign lettered in English “All welcome to Dana Cosquin and his happy marriage.”
(The people of Basse-Terre had always misspelled the surname of Dana Coscuin, had done so for more than a hundred years. It's as though they didn't know there was no q in Irish.)
“My eldest son is getting married, and he hasn't told me,” Lady Valiente said slyly. “Surely he should have told his new mother about his new bride.”
“Whom do you marry, Dana?” Elaine Kingsberry asked anxiously. What she was really asking under her words was “Will it be myself?” There may have been a little something going on between Dana and Elaine recently.
“I'm as much stranger to this as anybody,” Dana grinned his puzzlement. “None has asked me to marry her, and I've asked none to marry me. Can noces mean anything besides nuptials?”
“Oh, it can mean a spree,” Lady Valiente laughed. “But should not every marriage also be a spree?”
“It can mean walnuts in the patois,” Charley Oceaan offered helpfully but not hopefully. “But they are not calling ‘Hurrah for the walnuts’.”
“And they also use the words mariage and boda,” said Serafino Tirana. “And some of them shout ‘Wedding’ in English, and the priest cries ‘bainis’ in Irish. No, they are not cheering for walnuts, but let us hope they are cheering partly at least for a spree.”
“Dana might not marry at all,” Carolina put in monkeyishly. “I do not remember giving my approval. I have not approved any wife for him yet. Serafino has not. And the Catherine has not.”
But there was a sudden pleasant sounding in the rigging, like rats romping, like breeze blowing over strings; like no other sound than that of the Catherine herself. And always someone was able to interpret Catherine's message.
“ ‘Who says that I have not approved?’ — that is what the Catherine says,” Carolina interpreted. “Ah, the tricky skiff! She's known all about it, and never told me once. She's a sly minded ship not to have told me. I always tell her everything.”
Then they all tumbled off the sly minded ship with some parts of their baggage. It was good for them to be home, even for those who had never been to this home before.
The priest, that puny man of all the seven bloods of Basse-Terre (though Dana had not noticed before that the Irish predominated in him), spoke to Dana first and clasped him.
“You are in grace again,” he said, “and I am happy for you. I've been in the worry about you for several years. I know it's a strong and joyous and happy marriage you'll have, though I foresee long separations (though never divisions) in it. It will be in two days time.”
“Grace to you also, Monsieur l’abbé, padre, sagart,” Dana said. “Coming home is itself like a benediction, though I don't understand how it's become so strongly my home. One other thing I don't understand! They say in Ireland, when you have a question in a strange land (or a strange home), ask the priest. Whom am I to marry?”
“Why, Dana Coscuin will marry the Bride of Dana Cosquin, of course.”
Then Dana remembered with a laugh.
The sous-sous governor Guerchin also greeted Dana warmly.
“You are a blessing to the land and to the eyes of the land,” he said. “And know you one thing. Thanks to the influence of your own great friend and protector, I am not the contemptible sous-sous governor any longer. I have been restored to my rightful office of sous-governor.”
“Had I a great friend and protector here?” Dana asked.
“This is true. He was here,” said a man who on Dana's previous stay on Basse-Terre had bowed to Dana repeatedly but had never spoken to him. “The Count was here at his own estate for more than two weeks. He has left a month since, but he said that Dana Cosquin would be here, and that we should open the gates of both the island and the estate to him, for both of them are his home.”
“The Count? You are saying the Count Cyril?” Dana asked. (The man who had just spoken to him was steward of the estate named Greenfields.) “Greenfields is the estate of Count Cyril?”
“One of the estates of the great man,�
� the steward said, “one of his favorite estates. It is ready, for you, or for as many guests as you wish to bring there.”
“Dana wishes to go and dwell in that rocky cairn that is named the House of Dana Cosquin,” Carolina said. “Never mind how I know about it, I know. It is more builded now that it was when he was here before. He will dine and revel at Greenfields, but he will live in the House of Dana.”
“We ourselves will live in Greenfields for as long as we are here,” the Lady Valiente said. “Myself, and my son Serafino, and my son's wife Carolina. We ourselves are all kindred of the Count Cyril Prasinos, and he'd welcome us there.”
“He's done so,” the steward said. “You three he mentioned by name as coming also.”
“The Count, what does he look like?” Dana asked. “I've never seen him.”
“You passed as the double of Bernardo O'Higgins once,” Lady Valiente said. “You could have passed as a younger double of Rosas had Rosas not been still strongly in evidence. You could pass as a double of the Count Cyril, as he was thirty years ago (or perhaps three hundred years ago). Have you never been taken for him, Dana?”
“I have, yes. But I've never seen him. It seems that I never shall.”
“It is said here that it isn't right for a man to meet his other person,” Charley Oceaan contributed. “One of them must die then, or go away.”
“We're not each's other person in that meaning,” Dana said, “though it's true that I've been mistaken for him, or taken for him anyhow.”
The Count Cyril had been a haunt to Dana, but a pleasant and fatherly (or avuncular) haunt. “Just what is your kinship with the Count Cyril?” Dana asked the Lady Valiente.
“I am the third cousin of him,” she said. “There's an oddity about that, though. My mother was also third cousin to him, as was my grandmother and great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother. I believe, in fact, that the direct relationship goes back quite a few generations further than that. The Count has the gift for making himself contemporary with each generation and he's done it for a long, long time. Thus my sons Brunone and Serafino are also third cousins to the Count Cyril, direct and not removed.”
“You, Valiente, have the gift of making yourself contemporary with every generation of legend, which is what I call this benevolent lie of yours,” Dana accused. “You generate legends yourself, and you are the mother and grandmother of them. I'd not be surprised if you yourself were three hundred years old or even older.”
“Do I look three hundred years old, Dana my newest and eldest son?” Valiente asked.
“Sometimes you do, Valiente. There's an ancient and spectral quality in your eyes.”
“Ah, but I'm still solid enough in my flesh,” she said, and she hugged Dana in a scandalous and near bone-crushing way. Where did small Valiente get her large strength? “You're still a boy to me, my eldest son, and I'm still too young to be your blood mother for all the three hundred years in my eyes.”
“But I am of an even closer kinship to the Count Cyril,” Carolina said with merry solemnity, “for I am niece direct. He is brother of my own mother, and of my mother's mother, and of my mother's mother's mother, and of — ”
“Be off with the pack of you,” Dana scoffed. “A man'll not rebirth himself like that.”
“What he does, Dana,” Serafino explained, “is renew himself every generation, every thirty years and three months. He sheds his skin like a serpent at these times, and he sheds the thirty years and three months each time he does it. Thus he returns again and again to the ideal full age of man which is thirty years and three — ”
“Quiet, you barking pup,” Dana howled. “I'm but three days short of the period myself. Stand, and you may see myself do the wonder. Ye should all three of ye be Irish with the crookie tongues ye have in your heads.”
“It is a fact that the three of us do all have Irish blood,” Valiente said, “as has the Count. We are all of the seven bloods, as are the good people of Basse-Terre, but not of the same seven. All good persons everywhere have approximately this one seventh Irish blood. To have more than that becomes a little bit bad mannered. To have very much more than that becomes — what is the word for it — ”
“Danesque,” Carolina supplied.
Dana took only his sea-bag and the child's coffin to the place that was called The House of Dana Cosquin. Celeste, the bright belle of Dana and of Basse-Terre, carried the coffin (which was some days very heavy and some days very light, and from her handling of it one could not guess which it was today) on her head up the paths with Dana.
“Is this bright and shining one the bride?” Elaine Kingsberry asked with pleasant hurt.
“No, I am only the belle and the bridesmaid,” Celeste laughed. “Oh, you the English lady, in your eyes, in your eyes, the jealousy.”
“Oh, it's that too,” Elaine admitted, “but it's more than that. It's the mystery. Who is the bride?”
“She is herself,” said Celeste. “How else can you name the bride except Bride?”
Celeste set the child's coffin down in the house of Dana Coscuin. And then she left Dana. The belle may only trespass so far.
The house had been building considerably since Dana had last seen it. A very great area had been flagged over and floored with flat stones set in volcanic mortar. Several rooms, including one very large and high room, had been walled and roofed. Dana took up residence in this very large room. It had table and chairs of bay-laurel or noble-laurel wood, fine hewn and rippled and the floor was carpeted with green bay leaf. There was a big bay-wood bed filled up with fronds and island moss, and decked with fine-woven sheet and cover with a green-colored field and crested-gold design. The whole was very aromatic.
There was a single setting on the table, just laid, but there was nobody around. The setting was a platterful of hot goat meat in a mix of lens shaped seeds that were cousin to the lentil, and permeated with the essence and aroma of another plant that was said to be a species of mandragora.
“I have come this way before, with the mandragora,” Dana said. “Someone, I believe, fed that to me on my first day on this island. It induces erotic afternoon dreaming in one, and now it is only morning.”
But Dana ate it all. It was, as he understood it to be, a ritual meal. The ritual of it he didn't understand yet, but it was a formal and studied thing.
Then Dana wandered about on foot for several hours. It was an erotic sort of travel lust that the ritual meal gave Dana, a not quite clean avidity to see new things, or to follow ordained things past their limits. Dana went up the volcano on whose southwestern flank his own house was abuilding. He went as far as he should go, and a little further; he went to the top, but not to the part of the top where it opened. Something inhibited him from completely exploring the fiery and chaotic pate of this smoking mountain-uncle of his.
Dana went down by the Great Thermal Springs which are hard south of the volcano. He knew that, for two more days yet, this was forbidden territory to him. He did not come absolutely to these Springs, though he yearned to do it. Something again inhibited him. He was looking for the Spirit of the Island, but he knew that he must not encounter that spirit prematurely.
Dana then went very near to that hewn cavern which is named The Grave of Dana Cosquin. This was on the southeastern flank of the volcano. Dana came through brush to, and a little below, the mouth of the Grave. He didn't come near enough to see into its depth, though. Now he was looking for the Spirit of Self, and he knew that he hadn't the right to find it yet. Inside the Grave (which was actually a horizontal cave going back into the rock), there was said to be a low-relief depictment (either natural or carved) of the face of the man who would lie there. Dana was both avid and afraid to see that face, to discover whether it was indeed his own face, to know if or not he was only a masquerade Dana or the true Dana of the island. He wished also, but with considerable trepidity, roughly to ascertain from that face what would be the age of that man when he was laid there.
Dana nooned and afternooned with Charley Oceaan and his friends. It was pleasant to be back with the real bucks, with the strong and earth-growing men. He late-afternooned with Elaine Kingsberry and with Celeste the belle, with whom Elaine was staying. Elaine had been feeding her curiosity with many facts and half-facts that the merry Celeste gave her, and now she had a more lowering curiosity than ever.
“Dana,” she asked, “this girl or woman you are to marry, is she not — ?”
“Is she not the Spirit of the Island, Elaine? Certainly. She is the green Spirit of the Island, she is the earth eruption.”
“No. I mean, is she not — how shall I say it with my own insular and straited mind? — is she not — ?”
“Is she not of all seven of the bloods of Basse-Terre, Elaine? Yes, she is of my blood, and of thine, and of all the others. How else would she be green Spirit of the Island?”
“Are you sure that you know what you're doing, Dana?”
“No. Of course I don't know what I'm doing till I do it. I'll do what I'm ordained to do. Why should I fail it?”
“Well, Dana, do not tell me again that you are ordained to do something by a cloud-castled Count, or by a mad God's-girl in Amsterdam, or by a fate-weaving woman of this very island. You are fog-headed, Dana. You must make your own life.”
“I'll not believe that, Elaine. I'll make it, yes, out of such pieces as are provided to me, and the gimcrackery of some of those pieces rocks me back a little. I will make it with strange instruments that are wielded in me by clownish and extravagant persons who in their turn are manipulated by (it isn't really blasphemous to use such words, Elaine) a merry and clownish God. Should God be sober and serious always? Who is able to command that He be? He too must have His fun, and some of it He has with Dana Coscuin.