The Wall Around Eden

by Joan Slonczewski

  XIII

  NOW THERE WERE angelbees hovering over the Chases’ house, first two, then four or five, slipping through the red and yellow foliage of the taller trees. At night they ventured closer to her window, and she imagined them laughing at her, like the witches in Macbeth.

  “Isabel.” It was after dinner. Marguerite faced her, her chafed hands clasped upon the table, the muscles taut in her neck. “You know this can’t go on.”

  “What do you mean?” said Isabel.

  Andrés was regarding her gravely. Keith looked down at his hands.

  “You know,” her mother repeated. “The radio. It’s got to go.”

  “What’s a few angelbees? Nothing’s happened, yet.”

  “But it will happen, sooner or later. They’ll come over in a cloud, put us to sleep, and take what they want. I can’t have that, at the hospital.”

  How would they take it, she wondered, vaguely picturing the angelbees with their spacecraft-thing. They did not even have arms.

  “I’ll hide it in the barn.”

  “That’s even worse. They won’t know where to look for it. You tell her,” Marguerite appealed to Keith.

  Keith looked up. “It might be all right. If there’s no sign of a transmitter, they may just go away after a while.”

  Isabel stared at her plate. She had told no one about the signal from the scale, and now she felt extremely uncomfortable.

  The next day, Isabel was scrubbing the hospital rooms when she heard a knock on the front door. Marguerite was out examining Charity, Andrés was out in the orchard, and Keith was back in the micro lab. So she hurriedly rinsed her hands and went downstairs to get the door.

  Liza stood outside, in her gray Quaker dress and bonnet. With her were Vera and Ruth, who was carrying Benjamin asleep in a sling from her shoulder.

  “Isabel, we have a concern for thee,” Liza said. “I hope this is not a bad time.”

  “Of course not. Please come in; sorry about the ammonia.” With a sinking feeling, she realized what it was: a Committee of Concern, from the Town Meeting.

  The three women settled themselves in the sitting room, while Isabel started the kettle for some tea.

  “Is thee enjoying the new college classes?” Liza called to her.

  “Yes, very much. Though sometimes I wish we could go further in the book. In physics, that is.” Isabel got out the spoons, and hunted for unchipped cups and saucers.

  “Teacher Matthew says he has never seen such promising work from the students as this year.”

  Isabel’s face grew warm, but she said nothing. When she sat down, she looked up at Ruth. “Is the honey flow doing well this year?”

  “The flow has been good,” said Ruth. “We’re several gallons ahead of last year. The Geiger count’s not too bad.” Some years the bees managed to find their way to the spring behind the old Feltman place, where all the flowers were contaminated. “You’ve been a big help,” Ruth answered her. “The new escape board works much better, and your help with the harvesting has eased things for me.”

  Isabel nodded. She had learned to tell brood cells from honey cells, and the overbuilt queen cells that meant a colony was about to swarm away, and the signs of waxworm in the comb. Now the main task would be to winterize the hives so the bees could keep themselves warm until spring.

  “Becca enjoyed your company,” said Ruth. “She did, so much. I wanted you to know that.”

  “I know.” Isabel swallowed hard. This was going to be worse than she had thought.

  “Poor Becca,” murmured Vera. “You see, Isabel, that’s just the point. That’s what concerns us about you.”

  Isabel blinked. “You mean, you think that I—that it was my—”

  “No,” said Liza. “Thee is not to blame. We worry, though, that a similar fate may befall thee.”

  She returned Liza’s look, but could find nothing to say. Outside the autumn wind gathered strength, and the tree limbs could be heard knocking together. In Ruth’s arms the baby yawned in his sleep, wrinkling his tightly shut eyelids as he stretched, then lay still again.

  Vera stirred her tea. “Of course, we all want to do something about that Wall. But really, what use is it to flout the rules for nothing?” She meant the radio.

  Isabel looked hard at Liza. “You stood up to the Pylon.” She would always remember that night, Liza in black from head to foot, raising the burning stick from the fire.

  Liza nodded. “So I did.”

  “Of course she did,” said Vera. “Liza is Town Clerk, and besides, her child is full grown. Whereas—”

  “Yes, that is so,” Liza interposed gently.

  “So what should I do?”

  There was silence again.

  Vera said, “We must put the town’s welfare first, Isabel.”

  “Don’t I do enough for the town? I barely have time to study for my tests.”

  Ruth leaned forward and extended her arm to clasp Isabel’s hand. “Isabel, I don’t care about the town; I’m worried for you. I can’t think of losing you, too, do you understand?” Her voice shook.

  “I put away the radio,” Isabel forced herself to say. “Keith said it would be okay.”

  Silence again.

  “You want me to leave it at the Pylon.”

  “We knew you’d understand,” said Vera.

  Liza put down her teacup. “I think we’ve given Friend Isabel enough to think on and reach her own decision. Now, Ruth, thee’ll be wanting to get the baby home.”

  As the committee members departed, Vera lingered a little. At the door she turned and whispered quickly, “Isabel, it’s time you thought about your future. My Sal and Deliverance both will be engaged to young men by Christmas, only don’t breathe a word. Now, with your brains, I suppose you’re bored with the younger men; have you ever thought of someone like Matthew, perhaps? I know he’s very partial to you.” She patted Isabel’s arm and departed.

  When her mother returned, Isabel faced her accusingly. “You put them up to it, didn’t you?”

  “The town is worried,” said Marguerite. “You attend Town Meetings; you know what goes on.”

  “I thought you said I could finish college before getting married.”

  “What?” Her mother looked up sharply. “They weren’t supposed to get into that.”

  “Vera did, afterward. How can I ever go back to physics class after…what she said about Matthew?” She found herself shaking, and tears came. She liked Matthew intensely, as a teacher; to think of him in another way was unbearably unsettling.

  Marguerite closed her eyes. “That woman. I should have known.”

  “But what am I to do?”

  “I’m sorry about this, truly. As for Matthew, think no more of it; that’s all in Vera’s head. Matthew will never marry again, not since Janet—” She cut herself off. The shell of Matthew’s old house still stood, just outside the Wall where it crossed Peachtree Court. That was why he lived with the Browns now.

  “Not that he hasn’t felt the pressure, too,” Marguerite continued. “Especially since men are in short supply, in your generation.” Marguerite sighed and fell into a chair, putting her feet up on the coffee table, something she had long ago forbade Isabel to do. Having a second doctor had not meant any less work, it turned out; it only meant that everyone expected house calls. “You know, in medical terms, Vera’s dead right.”

  “But life is more than medicine. I want to marry when I’m good and ready, just the right person. You know, like Hermia and Helena,” she added, referring to Shakespeare’s heroines.

  “Well said. The trouble is, we educated you for civilization, not for survival. Not that you don’t do your part. But there’s no arguing with mortality.”

  “Why did you have only one child?”

  “I nearly died, with you. I hemorrhaged, and nobody else knew what to do. They couldn’t afford to lose me.”

  Isabel looked away.

  “You might make things easier if you at least look l
ike you’re, well, socially interested. Wear a skirt to Meeting, at least. Then they’ll feel better.”

  “You still promise they can’t make me get married?” she asked suspiciously.

  Her mother gave a wry smile. “Of course not. For better or worse, this is still a Christian town.”

  That evening, Isabel packed the radio into the carriage and drove out to leave it at the Pylon. A couple of angelbees watched her owlishly against the sky, which was banked with pink-lined clouds in a brilliant sunset, the kind of sunset the Little Prince would have loved. Isabel watched the angelbees guiltily, and she hoped they could not read her mind, as some feared they had read Becca’s. The radio she gave up was missing a number of essential parts, the ones hard to obtain from Sydney. She planned to take Keith up on his offer to help build a new one.

  XIV

  FOR WORSHIP, THE second Sunday of November, Isabel assembled an outfit of some clothes from her mother’s college days. A navy skirt, calf-length, with a faded print blouse and dark winter panty hose completed the picture. She then decided her hair needed a trim. Keith offered to oblige, insisting that he was an expert stylist. Keith took a great deal of amusement in her project. “’Struth, you look sharp enough for a night out at the Whale!” he said, meaning the famous Sydney Opera House.

  Isabel felt self-conscious throughout the worship service, convinced that everyone must be staring at her. Afterward, she braced herself for the remarks.

  “How nice you look,” said Debbie sincerely. Her face had developed brown blotches, but she was basically well, the baby gaining on schedule despite her blood loss. “Que vous êtes belle!”

  Isabel looked away, abashed at this quote from The Little Prince, complimenting his rose. “Thanks,” she murmured, adding, “we have four pints of blood on hand, so far.”

  “Thank you,” Debbie whispered.

  Jon approached her with a lot of questions about gravitation and planetary motions. She answered politely, but wished Peace Hope would have stayed.

  Deliverance stopped by, with Daniel in tow. “Isabel, could you use some more clothes? Would you like me to do you a wool skirt for winter?” Deliverance had become an accomplished seamstress, and now Daniel, too, was learning to sew with Anna Tran. “We’ve got this new dye, maroon, that the wool picks up fine. The A-line is in right now, in Sydney.” Daniel’s hand was clasped in hers, and Deliverance swung his arm back and forth. She had just completed a new suit for him.

  Isabel said, “I’ll bet Daniel could sew it just as well.”

  Daniel said, returning her look with a smile, “I’m just a novice.”

  Deliverance laughed. “Oh, Daniel picks up at the needle, quick as that.” She pulled him away, her woolen skirt swishing around.

  Isabel muttered, “‘Get you gone, you canker blossom.’” Before she could slip away, Grace stepped in front of her, smiling broadly.

  “See, I learn sign word!” Grace placed her open right hand in the crook of her left arm, cradling her right arm with her left, then rocked her arms back and forth.

  “Very good. Is that…‘doll’?”

  Grace shook her head vigorously.

  “No? Is it…‘baby’?”

  “Yes! My baby!”

  Keith caught her arm at last. “Quit being the life of the party. The horse is waiting.”

  On the way out, Isabel noticed an angelbee floating discreetly above the tar-paper roof. It had to be the same one she had seen at home that morning, because it had a daughter cell-growing out the side, at just the same stage of development. She was convinced that it had been following her, for the past week if not longer.

  That afternoon Isabel picked apples, just about the last of the crop. The branches of the aging dwarfs bowed so low that some of the limbs brushed the ground, and she had to stoop for the ripe apples one after another, the ones with just a touch of pink on one side. Pluck, and the branch swooped back with a rustle, and her sack swelled full until her back ached, and it was time to unload into the wagon below.

  As Isabel reached up again to the uppermost branches, a cool wind on her forehead brought welcome relief. She paused to bite into one particularly ripe fruit, and its sharp, sweet taste brought a shock of pleasure after hours of exertion. The crunch of the apple and the wind in the leaves were the only sounds stirring Gwynwood, it seemed, as she looked out on the patchwork farmlands, sheltered by Gwynwood Hill to the north, rimmed to the south by the deadland.

  Her eye caught a movement, someone coming along the path where the orchard gave out. It was her father, striding at his usual measured pace, herding the sheep. For the moment the sight plunged her back into childhood, when her earliest image of God was just that: a man in an apron of tools, unhurried, striding across His creation. That was so long ago; she had long since discarded any tangible picture of God, although she had not admitted so to anyone but Peace Hope. Still, the force of it shook her for a moment.

  Andrés came off the path at last and approached the wagon by the tree. Isabel tossed away her apple core, wiping her hands on her overalls.

  “The generator’s out again,” he told her.

  “And you’ve spent the whole morning on it, without calling me? You should know better by now.”

  “Watch out, Belita; who taught you to hold a wrench, eh?” He punched her arm. Then his face changed, and Isabel could see he had something else on his mind to say. “You know, we don’t often talk anymore.”

  “No?” She half smiled. Suddenly she wondered, Would he ask if she believed in God? But no, her father would never ask a thing like that. He probably guessed what she thought, anyway.

  “Our friend Keith Moran; he’s a good doctor, no?”

  “And a very good person.” It vexed her that her father still kept a distance from Keith.

  “Of course, he’s a very good man.” Her father looked away, clasping his hands as if trying to wring the words out of them. “I know you’ve rather taken to him. I just don’t want to see your feelings hurt, before it goes too far.”

  “You think I—and Keith?” Astonished, Isabel shook her head. “He’s a friend, he’s—” She started to say “a member of our Underground.”

  “That is good. I hadn’t seen young Daniel around much lately.”

  “Well, Daniel is busy with the school.” Still, she felt a pang inside, fearing that for some reason Daniel was slipping away from her. “But why do you think Keith would hurt my feelings?”

  “He would not return your feelings. He is, I think, a lover of men.”

  Isabel paused to figure this out. She knew little about love between men, aside from occasional references in the Herald. She thought of the scene in Moby Dick where the narrator finds himself sharing a bed with a cannibal. “A lover of men? But how do you know that, about Keith?”

  Andrés looked away. “One knows.”

  “What do you mean? You shouldn’t just say a thing like that.”

  “Such a person seeks others, you understand.”

  “You mean—he thinks you are, too? Did he fall in love with you?”

  “No, by God.” Andrés’s face swelled and reddened, and his look was wild, like a stranger. “What do you think I once killed a man for, if not for saying that?”

  At first Isabel could not comprehend him; then she felt herself shaking all over. Then she broke away and stumbled back to the trunk of the apple tree, steadying herself against the rough bark.

  “God knows I’m sorry,” said Andrés behind her, quietly again. “You always wanted to know, didn’t you? Maybe it’s about time.”

  “But…I don’t understand.” She started to cry and let it go for a minute or so, then forced herself to stop. She turned around to face him again, her back to the tree as if for support. “It is time. I want to know.”

  Andrés looked helpless. “How can I say? One’s youth is a dangerous time.”

  “But to kill someone—how could you do that?”

  “You’ve never lived outside the Wall, in a co
untry of eight million. People are like grains of sand.”

  “But still…what is wrong with ‘loving a man’?”

  Andrés seemed to draw into himself for a while. Then he said slowly, “You are fortunate you will never know. What I knew, outside, was this: To kill a man, though wrong, might be honorable, but to love a man, no matter how right, was shame.”

  “But you’re a Christian. Christ would have said that love is right.”

  “Yes. It is easier to listen to Christ within this Wall.”

  For some reason Isabel recalled her Underground pledge of honor, then the schoolroom portrait of John Dickinson, the man who would not kill to free the Colonies. Was he trying to warn her of that, too? “Is it different then, here, in Gwynwood? I mean—you wouldn’t do it again?”

  “How can I say for sure? Don’t fool yourself: no one, not even a Friend, can say for sure.”

  “Well I wouldn’t. I would never kill a person. An angelbee, maybe. Don’t tell me that’s wrong.” Her pulse raced at having said it.

  Andrés laughed and slapped his hands on his overalls. “You have much company, then. What has every righteous man always said? Do you think my grandmother would have left Germany if they had considered her a person?”

  Isabel said nothing for a bit, gazing past him. She could not help trying to visualize it; her father, striking someone in some blurred sort of movement, the body falling and fading into a skeleton, its skull staring out at her like those beyond the Wall. “Does Mother know?”

  “You mean, why did she marry such an evil fellow? That, you should ask her,” Andrés said quietly.

  XV

  ISABEL COULD NOT bring herself to ask her mother about what her father had said, but she did tell Peace Hope after physics class. They were standing outside the Browns’ house by the horses.

  Peace Hope considered the news. “So that’s how it happened, after all.”

  “Is that all you can say? When my father’s a murderer?”

  “Well, thee always suspected so. Why else would he not tell?”

  “But that was just imagination,” Isabel insisted. “This is a fact.”