I sighed. “You’re an enigma.”
“No. I am a nigger.”
That silenced me.
After a while Ron said, “When Tron was little he got hold of a magnifying glass somewhere. There was a nest of ants on the brick path leading to the fig tree, and Tron shone the sun down on them through the magnifying glass and roasted them alive. I saw him doing it and I lit into him and ended up with a bloody nose and a black eye. I’m almost two years younger than he is and I was a lot smaller then. Maybe now I’d just let him burn the ants.”
“No. No, Ron.”
“Why not?”
I wanted to answer: because there is love in the world, and laughter, but the words stuck in my throat.
Blown to us on the wind came a faint snatch of song: the twins. I asked, “What about Willy and Harry?”
“What about them?”
“They’re—they’re special, aren’t they?”
“Why? The idiot-savant is recorded all through history. The kink in their strange brains isn’t unique.”
“Yes, I know that. But in the Middle Ages, at any rate, the idiot-savant, or even the plain idiot, was regarded as special, almost a little holy.”
“Every age has its own ignorances.”
I looked across the wrinkled darkness of water. “Why was Harry so upset by 0 × 3 = 0?”
“Why indeed?” He held out his hand to help me down from the dock.
12
Finbarr, standing beside me on the dock, gave his coat a great shake. I was covered with sand. Holding Ron’s hand, I jumped down, brushing sand off my dress, from my face, spitting sand. Ron said good night, walked up-beach towards the twins. “All right, Finny,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
Uncle Hoadley had waited up for me. He pulled out his gold watch and looked at it.
“Sorry, Uncle Hoadley. We didn’t eat till so late—sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you up.”
“The ladies have all gone to bed. Aunt Olivia asks that you go in and say good night to her.”
The old lady greeted me from the great bed. “Did you have a good walk, Stella-love?”
“I met Ron.”
“That’s good. Did you talk, the two of you?”
“In a way.”
“In a way. Yes, that’s about all anyone can manage with Ronnie. Except, I suppose, Honoria and Clive. And who knows what they talk about when they’re not with us.”
“What about his mother?”
“Whose mother?”
“Ron’s.”
Aunt Olivia made a distasteful grimace, as over her after-dinner coffee. “I think of Honoria and Clive as Ronnie’s mother and father. I suppose, biologically, Belle Zenumin is. It’s easy enough to understand that she’s Tron’s mother. Tron frightens me. He’s all Zenumin. There’s none of Jimmy in him, or Honoria and Clive. He belongs to the Dark Clearing. Mado tried to rescue him, to take him out of the scrub. She taught him to read and write and talk, and he’s bright enough—but he prefers darkness to light. But Ronnie belongs to Illyria. I love Ronnie, even though he won’t let me, most of the time. He’s a good doctor, too, like Theron.”
I wanted to hear it from Aunt Olivia. “How did he happen to get educated in England?”
She said quietly enough, “Hoadley saw to it. On Utteley money, of course. But he’s not the first young man the Reniers have sent to England for an education. James and Theron educated several promising boys before the war—Xenia would say, This one needs more than I can give him, and this one. One of the Nyssa boys, Burton James, a cousin of Clive’s, became an actor and played with the Salvinis, both in Europe and America. But of course there was trouble when the company came to Southern cities, and eventually he settled in Rome.”
“Why was England chosen? I mean, as the place for education?”
“I suppose it could have been anywhere in Europe, but there wasn’t any language barrier in England, so it seemed the logical place, and we still have connections there. We always sent our boys to Lancing. It became a tradition.”
“But why not the United States? Aren’t the schools good? Sorry, I know I’m ignorant.”
“Sometimes, sometimes I think the very fact that you don’t have preconceptions—well, I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of the insurrection in Charleston in 1822?”
“No.”
“Denmark Vesey—he was a free Negro—tried to get the slaves to revolt and take over Charleston. I sometimes wonder what he’d have done if he’d succeeded? He very nearly did. Most of the slaves were ready to go along with him—who can blame them? The extraordinary thing is that so many of them refused to kill their masters. It was one of our Desborough cousins’ slaves who betrayed Vesey, because he wouldn’t go along with the bloodshed. But we whites didn’t have the same qualms. Slaves were executed. Idiotic, rigid rules were clamped down, curfews of Negroes, nightly road patrols. And white people were forbidden to teach their slaves to read or write: don’t let them learn anything or they’ll become troublemakers. James almost got thrown out of Charleston because he took the education issue to the Supreme Court. He said it was unconstitutional. But he couldn’t break prejudice and its power, and the rule stayed. So that was another thing about Nyssa that was resented, that everybody was given schooling. So you see why we had to send our boys to England.”
“Even after the war?”
“The war really didn’t change anything. We have all the same problems; we just give them different names. People still don’t want Negroes educated.”
I felt abysmally sad.
“Ever since Ronnie came home last Christmastime, I haven’t let another doctor near me, which doesn’t please Hoadley. If it weren’t for Ronnie I’d be tied to this bed, I’d become like Xenia. Oh, never, God, please, never let me be like Xenia, let me die first. When Ronnie came home I was much worse than I am now, I had much more pain. At first I’d see him just in the kitchen—he’d make suggestions to me there. And then one morning when I had an attack—I wake up sometimes with my joints all full of fever and abominably sore—I made Honoria bring Ronnie to me instead of sending for that fat idiot friend of Hoadley’s. Sometimes Ronnie forgets who he is and talks to me like a human being. Mado might have been able to reach him. I can’t. Not any more.”
“Why not?”
The old woman closed her eyes. “His mother’s a Zenumin, and he’s had a white man’s education, and he’s trying to be a doctor in a world that doesn’t know what black and white is, and doesn’t know what it isn’t, either. He’s brilliant, but he’s got chips on his shoulders the size of mountains. No wonder he stoops. I’m old and sometimes I can take a hatchet and chip away at them. But not often. Only when I remember Mado—” She reached with difficulty into the drawer of a small chest on one side of the bed and pulled out a notebook similar to Mado’s journals. “Here. This is mine. Not a journal—it’s translations of Mado’s poetry. She always wrote poetry in French, and French poetry is impossible to translate, so it’s not very good. But you might like to glance at it.”
“Very much indeed. Thank you, Aunt Oliva.”
“I miss Mado’s angels. Sometimes I think it might almost be easier to believe in angels than to believe in God. But I wonder—if there are angels at all, why are they necessarily all good guardian angels? What about the fallen angels? Evil angels? If God in his infinite compassion has given us each a guardian angel to love and help us, what about the devil? Is he going to sit by and take that and do nothing? Do you suppose Satan has assigned an angel to each of us, too? An angel of darkness, constantly spilling his poison into our hearts?”
Honoria, in her nightgown and wrapper, came padding into the room, carrying a bottle. “Miss Olivia, I rub you now if you ready.”
“Oh, Honoria, bless you, how did you know I need it?”
“You has fever tonight.”
“Do I?” Aunt Olivia touched her cheek with the back of her hand. “Yes, I guess I do. And my joints hurt so much. But I want Stella to stay. P
lease?”
“Of course, Aunt Olivia.” Still holding the book of poems, I sat in the tall rocker by the bed.
“Angels—maybe it’s only because of Mado that angels seem quite reasonable and logical to me. So does the devil. If you’d been around the South for as long as I have, you wouldn’t have much trouble believing in the devil. I wish believing in God were that easy. Read me one of Mado’s poems while Honoria rubs me—”
I opened the book at random. Aunt Olivia’s writing was much like Mado’s, probably deliberately. The ink was her usual purple, still unfaded.
Honoria peered under the bed. “You there, Finny?”
“Of course he’s there.”
“Mr. Hoadley say he to sleep in the kitchen.”
“Don’t tell, then. Hoadley doesn’t get scared at night the way I do.”
“Don’t he?” Honoria asked softly. She turned the old lady over in the bed, pulling up the long white nightgown to reveal a back as tender and delicate as a young girl’s.
“Honoria’s liniment smells terrible,” Aunt Olivia grumbled. “She makes it out of herbs. Can you stand it?”
As Honoria uncorked the bottle a strong, pungent odor filled the room, a mixture of eucalyptus, mint, lavender, and some other less identifiable and less pleasant herbs. It reminded me of something—of Belle Zenumin. Honoria’s mixture was different, perhaps less musky, but definitely reminiscent.
She looked at me. “You takes what grows, and you mixes a little of this and a little of that, and depending on what and how you mix, you can use it to help, or you can use it to hinder. Like Miss Olivia said, we has a choice.” She poured a little of the oil into her hand.
“Honoria sets great store by her liniment, and Ronnie says it can’t hurt, but I think it’s Honoria’s fingers have the healing in them. Maybe Ronnie got his healing hands from Honoria. But—oh, dear—” She clapped her hands to her mouth, then said quickly, “Read one of the poems, please, Stella.”
I looked down at the fine handwriting.
“If and that we grow apart
Earth’s orbit shakes.
With the rending of one heart
All heaven breaks.
Steadfast love, like gravity,
Keeps stars in place.
Enduring love’s hilarity
Burns bright with grace.
If and that our love is pain,
So does love grow,
That heavenly Love’s bewildering reign
Earth’s hearts may know.
“Why, it’s beautiful, Aunt Olivia! How much of that is Mado, and how much is you?”
“Oh, the thought, the feeling of the poem is all Mado’s. I apologize for the faults in translation. ‘Gravity’ and ‘hilarity’ don’t rhyme, and there’s one syllable too many in ‘bewildering,’ but anything else changed the meaning. I’ve never had that kind of joy about the hurts of love, though Mado tried hard enough to teach me.”
“It seems,” I said tentatively, “an odd kind of poem for a young French girl to have written.”
“She wasn’t so young when she wrote that. And Theron encouraged her. For all he was a totally dedicated doctor he loved music and painting and poetry. He and James both played the violin. Xenia had a beautiful contralto voice, and I could play the piano in those days, and Mado was a soprano, so we often made music together. Rub around my hip a little more, Honoria, gently, that way. Oh, good. Thank you.”
Honoria picked Aunt Olivia up, pulling the nightdress down over the smooth white back, laying the old woman against the pillows. She slid down in the bed, pulling the sheet up under her chin. “Good night, my dears, good night.”
“Good night, Aunt Olivia.”
“See you in the morning—” she said anxiously.
“See you in the morning,” I responded firmly, then followed Honoria out.
“Miss Stella,” Honoria said, “come to the kitchen and I fix you a posset.” At the kitchen door she paused, “How you say it, Miss Stella? If you do not know, then maybe I has not seen things the way they has to happen?”
Honoria would not be as easily diverted and comforted as the great-aunts. I tried to sound strong and certain. “The future is still open.”
She poured milk from the jug into a little saucepan and put it on the stove, looking down at it somberly. “Miss Stella, since Miss Mado died I have had no woman friend to talk with. You mind me of Miss Mado.”
I could not say thank you to this enormous compliment. All I could do was look at her, and smile a totally inadequate gratitude. We remained in silence, but it was a good silence, and I remembered Honoria speaking about how she and Mado often communicated without words.
I looked away from the stove and towards the windows. The shutters were open now to get the benefit of the night breeze. Insects fluttered in and beat about the flame of the candle burning comfortingly on the kitchen table. I felt relaxed and happy. Then, in the darkness just outside the window, I saw a face. As quickly as I looked it was gone. I had no idea who it was, I could not possibly have described it. I was certain it had been there.
“Honoria—” She turned from the stove. “Honoria, there was a face at the window—”
She strode to the window, looked out. “Don’t see nothing.”
“But there was—I’m certain.”
She did not doubt my word. “Was it white or black?”
“I don’t know. I just saw a face, and whoever it was ducked down and disappeared. But it wasn’t imagination. There was someone there. And Cousin Lucille was complaining today about a face at her windows. She said it was the twins.”
“It was not the twins,” Honoria said.
The twins might be listeners, but they were not peeping Toms. “I know it wasn’t. Who was it?”
Honoria shook her head. “Best if you don’t say nothing, Miss Stella. Don’t want nobody frightened. I’ll tell Clive.” She poured the hot, fragrant milk into a cup and handed it to me.
The face at the window had destroyed my peace. “Honoria, I don’t mean to meddle. But things are happening, and I’m part of them.”
“I want you out.”
“Can you keep me out?”
A film seemed to come over Honoria’s eyes. “I can try.”
“But when I first came—”
“Miss Stella, I asked for help. And I thought you had been sent to us by God as well as by Terry. But if I have—if I have brought you, by my prayers, across the ocean and into danger—”
“Your prayers didn’t have anything to do with it. Where else could Terry ask me to wait for him?”
“Your kinfolk—”
“My only living relatives are the Dowlers. I’m fond of them, and I suppose if I hadn’t married Terry I might have stayed with them. But I am Terry’s wife, and my place is with my husband’s people.”
Honoria said slowly, “You have the ring—”
I touched it. The golden snakes felt cool, as though they were constantly touched by a breeze I did not feel, or were lying on a rock beside a cool stream.
There was a knock at the outside door and I jumped. But Honoria went calmly to answer it. A little black boy stood there, his eyes and teeth shining white in the moonlight. Had it been his face at the window? No, it had not been a child’s face.
“Honoria, ma’am, please, where Dr. Ron? The baby not coming like it should and my mama she screaming and screaming—”
“Who with her?”
“Papa and the Zenumin. Then Papa send the Zenumin away and say get the doctor. The baby like to kill my mama.”
“Ron not here,” Honoria said. “He up at the twins’. Run, child, and you find him there.”
I was sad, and frightened: was this what childbirth was like?
“Yes, Honoria, ma’am, thankee.” The little boy turned and disappeared into the night.
Honoria said, “The ring come from my people. It mean that two are one, and justice must be done, and prayers prayed, and reparation made …”
�
��Why did you give it to Mado?”
“Claudius Broadley and I weren’t never one. He just knowed the ring always went to the princess, so he bound to have it. On my finger the ring burn like fire. Claudius Broadley took me, stole me, like a thief. He come with his guns and his glass beads—what his beads mean to us when we had the real thing? He no fool—he saw that and put his broken glass away. But he cause us to fear his guns. We knowed about precious stones, the fire that come out of the earth. But we didn’t know about the fire that come out of the black mouth of guns, the fire that kills. Mr. Claudius Broadley, he shoot to kill. When he kill enough, he make bargain with my father. Honoria the price—my flesh and blood and a big dowry. He want both. Then he willing to spare my tribe—what he’d left of it. My father knowed he mean what he say. Better I should die for the white man’s lust and greed than the entire tribe roped together and hauled into the ship for slaves. Better I die. To my father I be dead. There no other way. I bring with me jewels, many jewels. I bring the ring. The ring on my finger be a lie. On Mado it once again be truth.”
“What about when you married Clive?”
“The ring, once given, stay given. Or it lose its virtue.” As usual, Honoria seemed to know what I was thinking. “There no magic in the ring, Miss Stella. Virtue be not magic. But a thing may hold within it something of them who make it, or who touch it, or wear it and give it grace. Then it be no longer a thing. But this be not magic.”
But at nineteen I did not know that essentially there is no such thing as a thing. I fingered the ring, turning it on my finger.
Honoria said, “You want to ask something, ask it.”
“The ring—did it help Kitty?”
“I said the ring not magic, Miss Stella.” She rose, and her shadow with her, stretching enormously up the wall and across the kitchen ceiling in the flickering light. “With Miss Kitty—as with others—there be too many questions. Too much talk. Too much darkness.” She looked down on me. “I feel you asking, Miss Stella. You want to know about Jimmy.”
The Other Side of the Sun Page 22
