The Other Side of the Sun

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  “But, Cousin James, you don’t think—”

  “No, Stella, of course I don’t. We can’t wipe out past violence by more violence. We can’t save ourselves, or future generations, this way. We can, perhaps, open a way for those who want it, as with Liberia, but we can’t force it.”

  “Can you stop it? Can you stop Uncle Hoadley?”

  “Not singlehanded, certainly. But I will get in touch with Washington, and hope not to be discounted as a crackpot. I hope my record will give weight to my words, despite the fact that I have nothing tangible to tell them.”

  “What were you doing in Jefferson yesterday?”

  “Talking with Washington about Tron and the Black Riders.”

  “Cousin James, I want to ask you about Ronnie.” I turned my face away from him.

  “Ronnie is an extraordinary young man.”

  “He is Terry’s brother, isn’t he? Therro was Ronnie’s father.”

  I was not prepared for Cousin James’s astonishment. “But Hoadley—”

  “Not Hoadley. Therro.” I told him what Belle Zenumin had said. “And Aunt Olivia gave me Mado’s journals to read. Mado never said it, but—”

  “What has Olivia said?”

  “She hasn’t.”

  “It explains—” Cousin James stroked his beard. His hand trembled more than usual. “It explains a great deal. We tend to forget that Olivia knows how to be silent when she wishes to. Did Hoadley say anything to you last night?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure.” My head pounded.

  “I have misjudged again. Hoadley has gone all these years allowing everybody to think—God forgive me. Therro was the person in the world Hoadley came closest to loving. He idealized him. This must have been a bitter blow, far worse than Therro’s death.”

  I said nothing about Uncle Hoadley and Kitty. I did not think it was all dream and delirium, but I could not be sure. We stayed in silence, then, for a long time. I am not sure just when Cousin James left.

  7

  And I am not sure exactly how much time I lost with my sunstroke, or heat prostration, or crise des nerfs, or whatever it was. Ronnie visited me daily, and Honoria nursed me. There was, I am sure, something in her herb teas and broths which relaxed and sedated me, probably for the sake of the baby. I felt quickening while I lay there in bed, and for a long time my entire consciousness was centered on the tiny fluttering movements in my belly.

  Uncle Hoadley came to me. When? I am not sure.

  “You’re better now, my child, aren’t you.”

  “Yes, thanks. My headache’s almost gone. Ronnie just wants me to take it easy.”

  “Stella, while you were delirious you kept calling for Ron. I think it would be a good idea if you do not see him this week while I am in Jefferson.”

  “He is my doctor.”

  “I would prefer you to see someone else.”

  “There isn’t anybody else at the beach. And Ron is an excellent doctor. You know that, because you saw to it.”

  “Child,” he said heavily, “you are young and innocent and naïve. You do not understand—”

  “What don’t I understand?”

  “Perhaps Irene is right. You do not understand men. Renier men.”

  “I understand that Ron is a Renier.”

  “Ron is a Negro. He does not, and never will, have the name of Renier. Do not forget this.” His voice was harsh. As I started to speak he held up his hand to silence me. “There is one thing you must know about me. I want peace. We have had enough war in our time, both within and without the family. I am, basically, as much a pacifist as my Uncle Theron. But if Ron—if Ron should ever speak to you in a way in which it is not suitable for a Negro to speak to a white woman, I will have him shot.”

  “You needn’t worry,” I said coldly. “If there’s any worrying to be done, I’ll do it. And not about Ronnie. About the Riders, maybe.”

  “Stella, if Ron does something to set the Riders on him, I will not stop them.”

  “What have you got against Ronnie?”

  “Stella, Stella, what has happened? What has he done to you? I cannot bear this wall of misunderstanding between us.”

  “I’ve had sunstroke Uncle Hoadley,” I said, and turned my face to the wall.

  The twins came to my room, bowing and bobbing and scraping imaginary sand off their feet onto an imaginary mat. Their rosy faces were puckered with love and concern. I sat up in bed and hugged them both, and the three of us laughed as though we had escaped from some wild danger and were hilarious with relief.

  Then the laughter ended. Willy’s round face drooped; his mouth turned down; tears blurred the dancing of his eyes. He held out his hand, curling it as though to hold something, raised the forefinger of his other hand and stroked, and the ghost of the little lizard was with us.

  A tear rolled down Harry’s cheek. “Lady give little one back to God. Lady good. Whoever hurt lizard bad. Willy and Harry angry. God angry.”

  Willy nodded, still stroking with one gentle finger. “Stars angry. Moon and sun. All grains of sand. All water of sea.” With mercurial suddenness he clapped his hands. “Lady better now. Lady sleep. Get strong again. Get ready.”

  “Ready for what be to come. Must be ready. Sleep,” Harry said.

  Smiling and bowing, they backed out.

  On Friday after Uncle Hoadley got in from Jefferson, he knocked on my door. “Stella, do you feel like coming downstairs to the table?”

  “Honoria said—”

  “Stella, I am asking you how you feel. Only you know the answer to that. I think it might be good for you. I think that you are well enough to, but something is holding you back. Am I right?”

  I whispered, “I don’t know.”

  “I think that you are confusing what happened in your delirium with reality. Wouldn’t you like to talk about it? To tell me what you are afraid of?”

  I was afraid of Uncle Hoadley. I said, “I’ll get dressed and come down for dinner. Just give me fifteen minutes.”

  My legs were shaky, my head a little light, but there was no more pain, and my fever had been gone for some time.

  There comes a time in all illness where one has to give it up, let it go, move back into life again, and this time had come for me. We sat at the table and everything seemed as usual. Everyone welcomed me; the aunts bickered over Shakespeare; there was no feeling of impending danger in the air.

  “I thought Xenia recognized me last Sunday, Livvy,” Aunt Des said. “But of course you can never be sure.”

  “James is still looking for a miracle as far as Xenia is concerned,” Uncle Hoadley said. “Too bad, because the miracle is not going to happen.”

  Honoria, passing silver dishes, paused by Uncle Hoadley. “More spoon bread, Mr. Hoadley?”

  “Honoria,” Aunt Olivia asked, “what is a miracle?”

  Aunt Irene said, “Honoria, I’d like some more soldier beans, please.”

  Aunt Olivia held up her hand. “Wait. Honoria, what’s the difference between magic and a miracle? That ought to interest you, Irene.”

  Honoria stood, holding the silver dish in a linen napkin. “A human being can do magic. God do the miracle. Magic make the person think the power be in hisself. A miracle make him know the power belong to God.” She went out to the kitchen.

  “Stella,” Aunt Des said, “when the light shines on your face that way, you can still see the place where Minou scratched you.”

  Honoria returned. “Your beans, Miss Irene.”

  “Thank you. Honoria, do you believe in magic?”

  “I believe in miracles, Miss Irene.”

  “But do you believe in magic?”

  “Will you have coffee after dinner, Miss Irene? or cold tea?”

  “Stella,” Aunt Olivia said, “do you still have the little cross you and Des made at the train station?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you keep it with you?”

  “I think it’s still in the pocket of the dress I
was wearing.”

  “Auntie, that’s superstition, a cross made out of two pins!”

  “Have it your own way, Irene,” Aunt Olivia said.

  I reached up and touched the thin line on my cheek which marked Belle Zenumin’s scratch. That, at any rate, had not been dream. And I did not know if I believed in either magic or miracle.

  In the morning I put on the dress I had worn when we went to the station to meet Uncle Hoadley. I reached into the pocket, and there was the little flat cross made of two pins. I went out to the kitchen and gave it to Clive.

  He was pouring coffee from the old enamel percolator into the silver pot. “What this, Miss Stella?”

  “I don’t understand about the cross, Clive, so it’s wrong for me to keep it. It would be right for you.”

  “Because you give it to me, Miss Stella.” He put the pot down, took the cross from my hand, and put it in his pocket.

  I continued to hold my hand out towards him, my left hand with the ring which Honoria had once worn, and Mado, and Kitty, and which now encircled my finger. “I think I understand about the ring, because it is love.”

  “So is the cross, Miss Stella,” Clive said.

  After breakfast I sat in the writing room, trying to decide what I could tell Terry without worrying him. I knew that I had to find out what was delusion caused by sunstroke and what was real. At this point I was certain of nothing, except that Belle had scratched me. This meant, at least, that the Granddam was real, too, and, probably, that Aunt Irene had taken me to the Zenumin clearing. But I wasn’t sure about the War Room or the map of Kairogi or anything Uncle Hoadley had said to me that terrible night, or even the conversation with Cousin James while I was still driven by fever. Oddly, I did not doubt that Ron was Terry’s brother.

  It suddenly occured to me that there was one way I could make a test which would help me find the fine line between fantasy and fact. If the War Room was exactly as I remembered it, then I could trust the rest of my memory, too.

  I left the great-aunts, went through the library, through the ballroom, up to the War Room with the white china doorknob.

  So the door to the room was there. It didn’t mean that there was anything on the other side.

  I paused, then threw the door open.

  The room was empty, save for a large, flat-topped desk which was bare except for a curling green blotter. The walls were bare.

  I stood in the doorway, my heart beating painfully.

  Then my explorations of Illyria, my discovery of the War Room, had never, in fact, happened, had been conjured up by sunstroke, or brain fever. None of the horror about Kairogi was real. It was nightmare.

  No. I did not accept the verdict of the empty room. I went up to the wall on which I had dreamed there was a map of Africa, with little flagged pins stuck into the section of Kairogi. There were tack holes in the wall where a map might have been, but that didn’t prove anything.

  The horizon between reality and illusion flickered like a heat mirage.

  I went to the desk. Ran my finger across the wood, leaving a mark in the sand dust. Looked at the blotter. It had been much used. Ink marks crossed and crisscrossed each other. It was impossible to see sentences, or even words, I picked the blotter up and took it to the window. Towards the left hand corner I saw, in mirror writing …

  A sudden noise made me swing around in terror.

  It was Minou, tail swishing, making his most demanding miaow. I picked him up and held his small, completely real body. “Minou, I wanted it to be delirium almost as much as Uncle Hoadley wanted me to think it was. I didn’t want to have to believe it. And Uncle Hoadley almost—oh, Minou, if he cleaned up the War Room to make me think it was all sunstroke, then Cousin James—” I almost dropped the little cat. Uncle Hoadley would guess that I had talked to Cousin James. He would have to do something to stop Cousin James going to Jefferson and getting word to Washington—Uncle Hoadley, or Tron.

  By evening I knew what I had to do—the only thing I could do. After dinner I went for my walk. Finbarr’s cold muzzle pressed into my palm as he trotted along after me. He splashed in and out of the waves, coming out and shaking water and sand over me, loping ahead, and then coming back to circle around me, long tongue hanging out. I was still a little weak, but my physical strength had returned with amazing swiftness, probably because I had been well and moving freely about my room for some time before Uncle Hoadley made me come downstairs.

  Ahead of me I saw a speck, a small swirl of dust, coming closer. A horse and rider. I wanted it to be Cousin James, knew it was not. In any case what I had set out to do was find Ron and tell him everything I knew and ask his help.

  He drew up beside me on Thales. Dog and horse greeted each other affectionately. Ron dismounted and walked along beside me. “Feeling all right now?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “I’d have come by to check on you more often this past week, but it did not seem wise.” Then he put a warning hand on my arm. “Come.” Quickly he led Thales across the beach and in behind a dune. Finbarr and I followed. We were out of sight before I could easily identify the sound of hoofs.

  When they had passed I was cold with anger. “I hate hiding this way! It’s idiotic that we should be afraid to be seen together! Ronnie, I have to talk to you.” I told him, as coherently as I could, all that I knew. It sounded, as I put it together, more than a little mad, really incredible. No wonder I had doubted it, had tried to push it onto delirium.

  But Ron simply listened quietly, nodding occasionally. When I had finished he said softly, “What to do … what to do …”

  “You think it’s real, Ron? You don’t think it’s just nightmare?”

  “It’s nightmare, all right. But it’s real.”

  “Would Uncle Hoadley or Tron hurt Cousin James?”

  “Tron wouldn’t stop at anything.”

  “But what’s he up to? Do you think he wants to be King of Kairogi?”

  “No, Mr. James is right. Africa is not in my brother’s plans.”

  “What is?”

  “His Riders. And revenge. He’s king of a gang of men who’ll listen to anything he tells them. Only ill can come from it.”

  “For you?”

  “For me, as long as I have anything to do with Illyria. Or with doctoring. Or with you. You’d better go back now, Stell—Miss Stella. I’ve got my work cut out. If I don’t get to you during the day tomorrow, I’ll send you a message by the twins.

  8

  On Sunday we had Morning Prayer with Cousin James in Cousin Xenia’s room, but came home for the midday meal, since it was thought it would be too much for me to have lunch at Cousin Lucille’s. For that mercy I was grateful.

  And then I was given a week of grace in which to regain my strength. Each evening when I went for my walk the twins came to me, talked about Docdoc, nodded happily—so I knew he was all right, nothing else horrible had happened—and trotted along the beach with me, like Finbarr or Minou. There was a sense of waiting, of an invisible vacuum waiting to be filled. I did not want it filled; I was afraid to think about what would fill it, even with the corners of my mind.

  Friday came, and Uncle Hoadley would be returning to Illyria, and this false peace would, I was sure, come to an end. I woke up on Friday morning and lay in bed, unwilling to leave the enclosure of the mosquito netting, the gentleness of light flickering over walls and ceiling, the protection of the walls of my room. There had been, I remembered vaguely, a thunderstorm during the night, but I had slept through it. I wished I could sleep all day, and thus avoid whatever storms it held in store.

  Uncle Hoadley surprised us all by arriving in time for lunch. He had been fortunate enough to be able to leave Jefferson immediately after breakfast and drive down with one of the Yacht Club officers. “I am planning to take my little holiday now, and stay with you ladies for ten days or a fortnight. Cousin James has kindly consented to take my place, as he had to come up to Jefferson on business. I could never
take a holiday if it were not for Cousin James.”

  “What about Morning Prayer on Sunday?” Aunt Des asked.

  “I am quite capable of reading it here in Illyria,” Uncle Hoadley said.

  “But Xenia—”

  “Won’t know the difference,” Aunt Irene murmured.

  Uncle Hoadley said that he would send messages to Saintie, and to Cousin Lucille, and then looked about the table cheerfully and commented on how well I looked, “though your cheeks are still pale, child.”

  I tried to rest after lunch, but, despite Uncle Hoadley’s unusual attitude of relaxation because of the holiday ahead of him, I found that I did not believe him. As Aunt Olivia would have remarked, I was certain that he had something up his sleeve.

  In the evening after coffee I went for my walk, hoping that I would see Ron himself, rather than just getting a message from the twins, so that I could share with him my sense of unease, of foreboding.

  But the twins, not Ron, came trotting across the beach towards me, carrying butterfly nets. This evening they were not laughing. Willy dropped his butterfly net on the sand and flung his arms about me. “Mr. James gone, gone.”

  Harry jumped up and down in distress. “Away, away.”

  “He’s in Jefferson, boys,” I said. “He’s taking over for Uncle Hoadley for a week or ten days.”

  They shook their white heads and Willy stamped on the hard sand for emphasis. “No. No. Gone. Not of hisself.”

  “Tooken. Tooken away.”

  “Hasn’t he gone to Jefferson?”

  “No, no, put him in a pumpkin shell.”

  “Ding-dong bell, put him in a well.”

  “Boys, I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me?”

  Harry lifted his net high and caught an imaginary butterfly.

  “Birdie in your cage so high,

  Tell me why you cannot fly.”

  Willy screwed up his eyes, made stuttering, strangling sounds, trying desperately to catch hold of some words.

  “Stone walls do not a prison make,

  Nor iron bars a cage—”

  I gave up. “Boys, where is Ron?”