by Dianne Day
She didn’t reply but simply sat and gestured for Michael to take the seat opposite.
Outside the small window between them the landscape streamed by, a blur of brown and different shades of green, with occasional patches of white. More mountains, now in Nevada, Michael assumed. Truth to tell, he’d been so distracted he hadn’t paid attention to their exact whereabouts.
‘‘Thank you, but I am not hungry,’’ Meiling said a little belatedly. ‘‘I paid the steward to fetch me coffee and biscuits earlier, when he came to make up the bed.’’
Michael sat leaning slightly forward, fingers of one hand splayed upon his knee. Feeling idiotically ill at ease he nodded, said, ‘‘That’s good, then,’’ and fell to reflecting on Meiling’s physical resemblance to the men, rather than the women, in her family.
Perhaps Meiling really had inherited her grandmother’s peculiar spell-casting skills, but at least she didn’t look like that old Chinese witch. Michael had been very fond of Meiling’s grandmother, but he’d been sensibly wary of her too. Now he felt wary of Meiling, which seemed a bit ridiculous, seeing as how he’d known her since she was only a babe in her unfortunate mother’s arms.
Meiling smiled, not broadly but rather with the faintest hint of amusement. ‘‘I am not—what is that word, crazy? Yes. I am not crazy, Michael. You do not have to be afraid of me.’’
‘‘What?’’ His head snapped up and he felt a sudden chill. Uncanny!
‘‘When I said that I would consult with my grandmother, what I meant was, I would consult the sources of wisdom that have been my legacy from her. To do this I need uninterrupted quiet; therefore I must be alone, and so I asked you to leave. It is true that sometimes I do, at such moments, seem to hear her voice speaking to me. But I know that is an illusion.’’
Michael forced himself to lean back in a more relaxed attitude. He crossed one leg over the other, adjusted the crease of his dark trousers, flecked an invisible speck of dust from his black socks.
The train rumbled around a curve. Meiling swayed with the motion of the car, tipping her head to one side as if to better observe the man across from her.
Michael counted the buttons that punctuated the upholstery of the bench seat behind Meiling’s sleek black hair—anything rather than look into her eyes. Suddenly he felt as if she could see right into him, as if nothing he might do could stop her from seeing into his mind and heart. Not even Fremont could do that, at least not when he deliberately closed himself off. No one could. Except now, maybe, Meiling. He didn’t like it; it made him feel vulnerable. Yet he kept still.
Finally she spoke: ‘‘The signs tell me we must both get off this train as soon as possible. You must decide when and where that should be.’’
‘‘Nonsense!’’ His eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘‘I can take care of myself. If your mysterious signs foretell so much danger, then you, Meiling, can get off the train at the next stop and return to San Francisco. I am certainly not leaving!’’
Slowly, with that maddening calm possessed by so many persons of her race, she shook her head back and forth. ‘‘We each need the other for our task. We will find Fremont more quickly together. Without each other, we may not find her at all.’’
Michael considered this statement, which did not sit well with him. For a very long time—certainly his whole adulthood and probably even before that—he’d been convinced he did not need anyone or anything, in either his professional or his personal life. In point of fact, the one and only time he’d allowed himself to want someone to the degree of need—it had been a woman of course, Russian, named Katya—disaster had been the result. Katya had died. Her death had been his fault. They—the nebulous they of the spy’s world— thought he’d confided secrets to her, secrets worth killing for.
A bitter memory indeed. Michael had not told Katya anything. He’d deliberately kept her ignorant, thinking in his youthful inexperience—for he’d been young then —and amid the vigorous delusions of new love, that he could keep her safe. Katya had died because he’d loved her, needed her, thought he couldn’t live without her. . . .
‘‘Michael?’’ Meiling called him back.
He put his good hand to his head and rubbed his forehead. ‘‘Sorry. I . . . I must admit, I’m . . . that is, I’m . . . confused.’’
‘‘The immediate question to be answered is, how soon can we leave this train?’’
Michael rubbed harder, as if he could rub away the beginnings of what promised to be a blinding headache. ‘‘I should not have asked you to help, Meiling. It was selfish of me.’’
Then with resolution in his voice he looked straight into her eyes and said, ‘‘I made a selfish mistake for which I apologize. You must go back. I will continue on alone, and that’s all there is to it.’’ He stood up, intending to leave the compartment.
Meiling put out her hand and snared his sleeve with slim fingers. ‘‘Wait, Michael,’’ she said with sudden, new urgency in her voice, ‘‘forget that. Be quiet instead and listen. What am I hearing outside the door?’’
Of course I worried myself silly that Norma would tell someone of our arrangement. Good common sense, of which I like to believe I have plenty, suggested that she would not tell, because it would hardly be in her own best interest. However, on the basis of good common sense I got perhaps ten minutes’ rest for every hour of worrying. The days of Pratt’s absence on his doctor-fetching errand crawled by, with me having a devil of a time pretending to be sicker than I was.
In truth, I had taken a sudden turn for the better, and hence was ravenously hungry almost all the time. I would have given much for a chair with wheels, so that I might wheel myself to the kitchen and sneak some food. I had fantasies about such forays all the time. Yet the reality was, I didn’t even dare eat everything on the trays the wives so faithfully brought. It was essential that I appear much more ill than I was; essential, but so very, very difficult that I began to fear less for my body’s health than for my sanity. All this close confinement was putting odd thoughts and strange longings into my head.
Somewhere I’d read about prisoners who began, in their extremity, to eat dirt . . . and I lay in my bed gripped by a passionate desire to hurl myself, useless legs and all, through my one window, for then I could land in the grass and claw my way to the bare dirt, feel it all soft but slightly gritty in my fingers. I would smell it—it would smell of dust and freedom.
Two days, Pratt had said, one there and one back. On the second day I’d yelled at Sarah: ‘‘Leave me alone!’’ Not because I wanted to be alone, oh no, but because I wanted her company, indeed any company, so badly that I could no longer trust myself. Who knew what I might say? Oh, I made a poor prisoner, that was certain.
The one person I could have talked to openly was Norma, yet perversely she was the very one, the only one, who did not come to my room. The more time passed without her appearance, the more I worried that I had made a mistake in asking her to help me.
After I had yelled at Sarah, Tabitha, and Verla each in turn, it came as no surprise that it was Selene who then appeared with my supper.
Selene was of such a sweet nature that I could not yell at her. It was very hard for me to be rude to her at all. Impossible, in fact. The merest frown refused to wrinkle my visage at the sight of her luminous youth and beauty.
‘‘May I stay?’’ she asked in her characteristically gentle way.
I just looked at her, trying to harden my stare and my heart, but without much success. If there was any angel spending time in Melancthon Pratt’s proximity, it was this girl with the long, fine, straight blond hair.
‘‘If you will tell me a story,’’ I said, ‘‘while I try to eat something. I do not have much appetite, so this should not take long. Pointless, I suppose, for you to go away and then so soon have to come back again.’’
Selene smiled and said, ‘‘Thank you.’’
She brought the chair that was by the window closer to the bed.
She we
nt on, ‘‘I’ll tell you a story, but you must promise—promise!—to eat everything on your tray!’’ In mock admonishment she waggled her finger at me. She sounded like a child playing house, being the mommy to her dolls.
Thank you, Jesus! I thought, though most likely he was the wrong personage to thank in this Mormon household.
Eat everything on my tray? Heavens to Betsy and Saints be praised! That would not be a problem in the least. The roast chicken was making my mouth water to an embarrassing degree.
‘‘I’ll try,’’ I promised demurely, all the while restraining myself from attacking the chicken with my bare hands.
‘‘What would you like a story about?’’ she asked. ‘‘I don’t know very many, I’m afraid.’’
‘‘Tell me more about the Urim and the Thummim,’’ I said, more because the two names continued to intrigue me, and were what sprang to mind, than out of any real interest.
‘‘Well . . .’’
In the long pause that ensued, I glanced at Selene and saw to my surprise that her normally pale cheeks had gone quite pink. Perhaps I had asked her a question on a subject about which she was ignorant?
Nothing, I was about to learn, could have been further from the truth. As it is impolite to speak with one’s mouth full, I just continued chewing and let her wrestle with whatever was causing her to blush.
Selene lowered her head and gazed into her lap, getting control of herself. Then she looked at me directly, though her cheeks still flamed. ‘‘Someone has been telling tales on me, I think.’’
‘‘No, not at all. Why would you say such a thing?’’
‘‘Because I’m very interested in Urim and Thummim, and I have been trying to get books on the subject of things like that.’’
‘‘Things like what? From what Sarah and Tabitha told me, those stones are unique, there are no others like them—or rather I should say they were unique, because certainly they don’t exist anymore.’’ If they ever did, I added to myself.
‘‘What, exactly, did the sisters tell you?’’
‘‘That the Angel Moroni gave the Urim and the Thummim to Joseph Smith in order to help him read the Tablets of Gold, which were in some kind of hieroglyphics. He—I mean Smith, not the angel—went in a dark room or someplace and put the stones in his hat, and then buried his face in the hat, and somehow a knowledge of the translation came into his head. Which he then dictated to someone whose name I forget.’’
I hoped Selene would soon pick up the story without further help from me, because that long explanation had taken me away from my food for entirely too long. With the chicken was a lovely casserole of escalloped potatoes, rich with cream sauce and tender onions, that was calling to me from my plate.
‘‘Joseph Smith was very interested in mysticism,’’ Selene said. She seemed to have settled into her chair and was more composed now, no longer embarrassed, as if she’d also settled something in her mind. ‘‘But a lot of people thought he was a crackpot. Did you know that?’’
I raised an eyebrow. My mouth was full but still I managed syllables that sounded approximately like ‘‘Interesting!’’ which was what I’d intended to say. I struggled to finish the bite because there were questions I wanted to ask. But strangling myself on partially chewed food was not necessary since Selene had the bit between her teeth now, as it were, and she was running with it. Every word she said demonstrated something that came as no great surprise to me: The docile girl we saw every day was only a part of who this young woman was. The other part was more than a student, she was a scholar—and that scholar was lecturing me now.
‘‘Some say that Brigham Young had his doubts about Joseph Smith. And it’s entirely possible that in later years, after Father Joseph died, Brigham Young may have suppressed some of Father Joseph’s writings. Some of the early documents may have been lost on purpose. Do you understand what I’m saying?’’
‘‘Oh yes. Of course I do,’’ said I, waving my fork in the air. ‘‘That kind of thing happens all the time.’’
So much for consistency. Here I’d just commented how Urim and Thummim were unique, but never mind. It is perfectly true that founders of religions tend to be, well, one supposes the word is ‘‘visionary’’; but then visionaries have certain qualities that can be rather embarrassing, so who knows what may end up having to be suppressed later. Religion seems mostly a lot of bunkum to me anyhow, but I was not about to make such a radical statement to anyone in this household.
‘‘Or so one hears,’’ I added for good measure.
Selene gazed off to her right for a moment. She had placed her chair facing me near the foot of the bed, so her back was toward the bureau against the opposite wall. Over to her right was that small sanity-saving rectangle, the window, which was all I’d known of the outside world for far too many weeks. But something about her expression told me she was not looking at the view, whether to her it might be bleak or bright; instead she was lost in thought.
Presently, about the time I finished my potatoes and was returning to the chicken, she roused herself and turned her head toward me again. Once more the color rose in her cheeks. ‘‘Mormon women are not supposed to take much interest in these things,’’ she said rather lamely. Her eyes, full of light, hardly reflected lack of interest.
‘‘Why on earth not?’’ I asked, even as I understood now how the high color had come to be in her cheeks.
‘‘Only the men can be priests. Only the priests concern themselves with the Mysteries of the Faith. But there is so much they don’t tell us! Things that happen behind closed doors in the Great Temple in Salt Lake, old documents kept in libraries on the Temple grounds that we women never get to see. . . .’’
I made some noise of encouragement while I cut my remaining chicken into tiny pieces to make it last longer.
Selene blushed more fiercely and ducked her head. ‘‘Of course we at New Deseret are above all that, we have no real need for anything of Salt Lake, as we seek to return to Joseph Smith’s ways. But I keep on thinking about how Father Smith, even before meeting the Angel Moroni, had studied all the mystical things. He must have, because he was criticized for it! Yet Father— I mean our husband, Mr. Pratt—is really not at all interested in Mormon mysticism. He says he doesn’t need to be because he has his own angel who talks directly to him. Surely it cannot be but good to have an awareness of the past, particularly if we are to return to what Father Joseph really taught, and so I thought it might be, er, acceptable for me to study—’’
Selene blurted it all out in such a rush that I had to strain to get the words, especially as they were directed not at me but somewhere in the vicinity of her lap. She had stopped short, her sentence incomplete.
However, I did not have to hear the rest of that sentence to catch the workings of her mind. I was fascinated. So fascinated I forgot all those little pieces of chicken I had just so carefully cut up.
What we had here was a very young woman, extremely bright, consumed with the subject she had chosen, which just happened to be on the farthest fringe of the only world she knew. I could not help but wonder what would happen if such a mind were let loose in the classrooms and libraries of Wellesley, my alma mater. Or perhaps even—because of its access to the libraries at Harvard—Radcliffe College.
‘‘I think this is quite wonderful,’’ I said. ‘‘Sincerely.’’
Slowly she raised her head, and as she looked me square in the eye the heightened color drained slowly from her now-solemn face. ‘‘I thought perhaps you would understand,’’ she said, ‘‘but I wasn’t sure. I mean, I didn’t know how I would ever be able to tell you—’’
Before she could venture into that ever-awkward territory of too much gratitude, I urged, ‘‘Now let’s please get on with the story of Urim and Thummim. I am so eager to hear it that I am all ears.’’
‘‘Very well. My version is quite different from the one told to you by Sarah and Tabitha. No one knows which one is true.’’
&
nbsp; Most likely neither, I thought, but said nothing. I was once again eating, but slowly, as I hung on Selene’s every word. The content of what she said was not so important as the fact that she had ferreted out and assimilated this material, and was eager to do more along the same lines.
‘‘The Urim and the Thummim are part of a tradition that’s very ancient, and it’s Jewish, so in a way that makes it Christian too. The Hebrews far back in Old Testament times believed that certain jewels had magical properties. King Solomon was a great magician— that was how he got the reputation for being so wise— and he knew how to use the powers in the jewels. He had a breastplate made, called the Breastplate of Solomon—well, of course it would be, wouldn’t it?’’—a quick flush just along the cheekbones, just as quickly gone—‘‘and he had all these magical jewels sewn into it. Among them were the Urim and the Thummim. This is in the Bible, and in some Jewish teachings called the Kabbala. I’m not sure what the specific qualities of the Urim and the Thummim were supposed to have been, but considering that the Angel Moroni gave them to Joseph Smith to help him read the hier— er, ah—’’
Selene interrupted herself, momentarily looking troubled.
‘‘What is it?’’ I asked.
‘‘I don’t like to be so contradictory—I’ve been told it’s an unattractive quality I have. When someone says something that seems to me wrong, often I have corrected them before I even realize the words are out of my mouth. I was just about to say something that might sound that way to you, Carrie.’’
‘‘I assure you I do not mind in the least. I have often been accused of the same thing myself.’’
‘‘Really?’’
‘‘Yes, really. So go right ahead.’’
‘‘All right, but really you must remember, I don’t mean to be critical.’’
‘‘I promise I’ll remember.’’
Selene took a deep breath and returned to her discourse. ‘‘The writings on the Tablets of Gold were not in hieroglyphics. They were in what is called hieratic writing, which is different. I am not sure exactly how it is different, as I have never seen it. But I have seen pictures in books of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and I should like very much to see hieratic writing someday, and to know how it is different.’’
