Mysteries of Winterthurn

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Poor Abigail could not determine whether this question was merely rhetorical or serious: thus she fumblingly essayed to answer it, while Simon Esdras smiled in her direction, but gave little sign of attending to her words: and, of a sudden, laying his napkin down, declared that he must be off, for his work beckoned, and he had not “time to deal with such knotty subjects, even with persons of demonstrated brilliance like herself.”

  After he had made his gracious exit, the ladies sat in subdued silence; then Abigail ventured the opinion that Simon Esdras was a most original genius, of which the family had good reason to be proud: yet it must give him pain to be pressed into drawing-room conversation of the usual sort.

  “No, dear Abigail,” Georgina said, “such trivial matters cannot give Uncle pain; for I have reason to believe, he has rarely experienced so vulgar a thing in all his sixty-odd years. Pain, as you must know, is too common altogether: it is but a female prerogative.”

  . . . HOW INAPPROPRIATE FOR BABY & ME to be placed in this opulent bedchamber, Abigail took note in her diary, to which she had restlessly turned when, it seemed, Holy Writ failed her, a room for a General & his bride, surely,—a room for a queen—yet one’s soul is dwarfed in such chill splendor: & Baby & me much the better served to be housed in more humble quarters.

  The General’s Room, or, to give it its more notorious appellation, the Honeymoon Room, was executed in conspicuously ornate French style: which is to say, more precisely, in the “Americanized” manner of the Louis Seize revival style of the France of Napoleon. Its original decor must have been eighteenth-century, as it had been prepared for General Pettit Kilgarvan and his beauteous young second wife, a daughter of Thomas Pinckney’s, a full century before; in the 1870s it was redone by Georgina’s grandfather, the somewhat eccentric Phillips Goode, whose stated aim it was to see all three of his sons,—Erasmus, Simon Esdras, and young Lucas—firmly ensconced at the very pinnacle, as he phrased it, of their chosen professions: and to see Glen Mawr Manor established as one of the premier “jewels” of the Winterthurn Valley: money being no problem, for a gentleman of Revolutionary blood who had increased his fortune tenfold in those unparalleled years following the War Between the States.

  Thus it was, Phillips Goode heard word of the fashionable architect Richardson, and his controversial “monumental” style, and hired him, at great expense, to redo several rooms at Glen Mawr, the most resplendent being the room in which Abigail now found herself: which boasted not one but two exquisite French fireplaces, decorated in filigree, mosaics, and mirrored surfaces; and numberless graceful niches, for the display of costly objets d’art; and an entire wall magnificently covered in morocco, or a most cunning imitation; and gilt-framed mirrors with etched glass, in designs of gay floating cherubs, ivy, roses, and the like,—the which reflected, to Abigail’s way of thinking, singularly disagreeable ghost-images of herself. The room’s furnishings, in a bold composite of Louis Seize, Italian Renaissance, and something approaching the medieval, had all been provided by the famed Herter Brothers of New York City, and were most impressive indeed: yet the outstanding feature of the Honeymoon Room was its several Fairfax Eakins paintings, in ingenious trompe l’oeil style,—the which Phillips Goode had hoped would call wide cultural attention to Glen Mawr, and to his role as a patron of the arts.

  The most ambitious of these paintings was a mural that covered much of a wall, and part of the ceiling, freely copied from a fifteenth-century German painting known as “The Virgin in the Rose-Bower” (artist unknown). While speaking with Abigail earlier that day, Georgina had said in a somewhat uncharacteristic moment of frankness that her late father bitterly regretted the fact that his sire had been so extravagant as to have Eakins paint his masterpiece directly on the wall. “So it is, and always shall be, that Glen Mawr’s splendid ‘Virgin in the Rose-Bower’ blooms unseen,” Georgina said, her voice low with passion, “—a great loss to all lovers of our native American art.”

  Doubtless it was a principle of aesthetic harmony, Abigail thought, that the artist had executed the mural with so resolute an eye for balance and symmetry: for all the figures, despite their floating, and careening, and lurching about, had been placed upon a sort of grid,—this being the central trellis of the rose-bower, which looked, to the superficial glance, rather like a spider’s web. Abigail made a show of admiring the Virgin, though, in her surly medieval, or Teutonic, guise, she seemed little desirous of awakening admiration in the viewer; and wondered aloud, to Georgina, whether it might result in some such predicament,—being divine, that is, while at the same time being human. “Indeed,” Abigail observed, with a slight shudder, “I should find it a distinctly uncomfortable position to have given birth under such circumstances: and to take up the mantle, as it were, of maternal responsibility, at the request of Our Lord Himself. And, also, oh dear!—how it should disturb Mr. Whimbrel as well!—the role of St. Joseph being somewhat ambiguous, as I recall.”

  It was not the figures of the Virgin and Child, however, but those of the angelic host, executed in flamboyant trompe l’oeil style, that gave the mural its disconcerting effect. One or two angels were painted in a conventional flat manner; but all the rest appeared in motion; and alive; and in three dimensions. Several of the more developed angels, executed with their heads, shoulders, and torsos out of proportion to the rest of their bodies, gave the uncanny impression of leaning out of the wall,—so much so that Abigail had to resist the childlike impulse to raise an arm, that she might ward them off. There were upward of a dozen of these remarkable cherubs: some recognizably,—and altogether shamelessly—male; some daintily feminine; some more sensuously and unapologetically female; and one or two of indeterminate gender. Ah, what a cornucopia of wings!—large, and absurdly small; straight, curved, bent, and hooked; feathered in silky black, or silver, or white; or feathered not at all, it seemed, so much as scaled. As if the artist had been lazily indifferent to his craft, the quality of the angels’ faces differed widely, some being most skillfully rendered, and others but hurriedly. One or two possessed the rubicund heartiness of the Germanic or Dutch nationality; some clearly derived from a more delicate Latinate heritage; some, with pronounced cheekbones, and sly, slanted, almond-shaped eyes, betrayed Mongol blood. There were complexions of so stark an alabaster white, the wan Georgina seemed healthy set beside them; while the more portly angels exhibited a florid puffiness, of the kind associated with sybaritic overindulgence—! And how puzzling, too, the contrasting facial expressions: rapt adoration in one; indifference in another; and hauteur; and faint repugnance; and bemusement; and childlike wonder; and,—but did Abigail’s affrighted eye mislead her?—frank lascivious interest, directed toward the chaste Virgin herself.

  So entranced was Georgina, she seemed to have forgotten Abigail altogether in her frowning admiration of the figures: and only roused herself to observe, finally, that she never entered the Honeymoon Room without being reminded of those mysterious words of St. Theresa’s,—“An angel with a flaming golden arrow pierced my heart repeatedly. The pain was so great that I screamed aloud, but simultaneously felt such infinite sweetness that I wished the pain to last eternally . . . It was the sweetest caressing of the soul by God.”

  Uttering these words in a reverent tone, Georgina was, of a sudden, overcome by a fit of coughing and breathlessness; and shrank from Abigail’s solicitousness, as if wishing not to be touched. Abigail was reminded of a scene of many years previous,—why, at her own wedding-day banquet, in her parents’ Contracoeur home:—when Georgina, in the midst of the fish course, began to cough and choke with such violence that it was feared she might have swallowed a bone: and Judge Kilgarvan suggested, in a brusque but not unkindly voice, that she betake herself upstairs until she was recovered from her fit, and less flushed, and “fit again for decent eyes.” Poor Georgina!—she who was so proud, and so fastidious in her bearing, and so self-conscious! With her napkin hiding half her flaming face, she had had to suffer not only the discomfort o
f the coughing spell (caused by nothing more substantial than a mouthful of Burgundy wine) but the humiliation of feeling all eyes in the dining room upon her: and knowing that her artful pompadour had been shaken loose, and certain swaths of false hair, designed to disguise the thinness of her own, revealed to the keen eyes of the ladies.

  Now, as then, Georgina had steadfastly resisted aid; and Abigail, feeling rebuffed, took note of the ghost-reflections of herself and her cousin in one of the large mirrors: the one tall, pale, alarmingly thin, with a skin that seemed to radiate white heat; the other much shorter, and plumper, and healthier in her skin tone and general bearing,—yet, it seemed, far less intriguing. Though they stood near each other, the two women gave every impression of being absolute strangers; figures in a coolly executed mural, that hinted of no tender ties of blood and kinship. “Nay, do not fuss, Abigail,” Georgina managed to say, when her breath was shakily restored, “I am quite all right.”

  IMPATIENT WITH WAITING. With longing. So lonely. So hungry. These many years. O cruel belovèd Mother: our time now approaches.

  She had nodded off to sleep, it seems, her diary sliding from her lap and her stubbed quill pen quite lost in the languorous folds of the bed. Yet she was able to bestow another kiss on Baby’s warm brow; and to give the wicker cradle a final rocking caress; and to extinguish the lamp’s flame, that voluptuous shadows might rush forward, from the bed-chamber’s niches and mirrors, to embrace her. O Mother. O belovèd. O cruel. These many years . . .

  Why did the sight so disturb?—angels with the cruel-hooked wings of bats or vultures, all apulse with their secret life, the painted flesh they inhabited, which did not satisfy them. An angel most lewdly stroked the strings of his mandolin while a companion angel, female, with peacock’s feathers of an oily slickness, strummed at her harp, squinting and dimpling. Abigail’s head had grown heavy in the space of a few seconds. Her calfskin diary had been spirited away: ah, and the pen!—would not ink despoil the bed linens?

  A baby or midget angel no larger than a rat, with comical wings that were but wisps of down sprouting from his shoulders, crouched at the Virgin’s chaste foot, piccolo in hand, and carmine lips pursed in an attitude of kissing, or sucking: such boldness!—but then he was naught but a babe, and knew no better. Surprised by pain, Abigail whimpered aloud, pushing the small head from her breast. Why, how was it possible, Charleton had slipped into her bed, and burrowed beneath the covers, and opened her nightgown? He had never done such a thing before: and now his lips were greedy, and pulled with an amazing violence at poor Abigail’s nipple—! Impatient. Impatient. O cruel belovèd . . .

  Close about her were fluttering wings, and high-pitched anxious cries, and a tumult of flesh,—ruddy, and creamy-pale, and starkly white; on all sides mouths, sucking lips, bared teeth; eyes that winked and glittered. O Mother: cruel Mother! We have waited so long! Abigail drew breath to scream but could not utter a sound, for, of a sudden, the babe’s gums grew teeth, of a remarkable sharpness, which fastened in her flesh and could not be shaken away. Flushed cheeks,—dimpled bellies,—mouths, and lips, and tongues: so many: and Infant Jesus’s ravenous mouth at her breast, wildly sucking her life from her. It is our time. It is our time. You cannot resist. “Monsters,” Abigail cried, “—and devils: how dare you touch me thus? I am not your mother.”

  Yet it seemed she could not resist: and the lapping and sucking noises grew louder: for if, in a frenzy, she pushed one heated face aside, did not another, equally greedy, nudge forward to take its place? All desperately she tugged at the forelock of a great shambling boy-angel, a creature but flimsily clad, with protuberant blue eyes, and garish flushed cheeks, and lardy thighs and buttocks so disfigured by dimples, they appeared pocked: but tears of angry despair ran hotly down his cheeks,—how then could she deny him? “But spare Charleton! Spare my Charleton!” Abigail pleaded. Both her breasts, though already streaming blood, were taken up, in ravenous mouths, and sorely abused: no angel being willing to give way until, sated, sighing, he sank beside her, burrowing and clutching close. “I am sinful,—yet blameless,” Abigail murmured. “O dear God have mercy—” The very wall beside her head echoed in uncouth laughter, amidst the drunken sound of pipes, and horns, and mandolins, and tambourines. Slippery as an eel, an infant cherub crawled exhilarant to the foot of the bed, beneath the covers, to suck, with unparalleled audacity, at Abigail’s toes—! Whereupon a swoon of such incalculable sweetness overtook her, she had no breath with which to protest: and no words: for it seemed the very Devil clutched her fast in his grip, and would not release her.

  The Keening

  Our time is six weeks previous; our setting, the gravesite of Chief Justice Erasmus Kilgarvan, in the Temperance Vale Cemetery. For it is here that a most puzzling event occurred, even as Reverend De Forrest led a small contingent of mourners in a final prayer for the repose of Mr. Kilgarvan’s soul.

  Of a sudden, it seemed that a peculiar alteration of the air defined itself: the wintry sun, though hidden all morning behind cruel-ribbed banks of cloud, now glared forth, and harshly illuminated certain granite and marble surfaces in the cemetery; and, with especial malevolence, the high-polished surface of Erasmus Kilgarvan’s ebony casket. Why, it seemed for a disconcerting instant that the very stones might speak! Then, to the amazement of all, an uncanny sound lifted: faint, musical, aggrieved, yet subtly angry; of so eerily poignant a quality, it could scarcely be attributed to the cry of a mere bird or animal. Yet it did not seem to be human: nor was it issuing from any of the mourners assembled close about the Kilgarvan tomb.

  Numerous persons glanced up in surprise, and some alarm. But none of the deceased’s daughters was weeping; Miss Georgina in particular, standing stiff beside her uncle Simon Esdras, her face nearly hidden behind a black muslin veil, gave no outward sign of distress. The sound retreated; then lifted yet again, and defined itself as a high-pitched tremulous wail, or keening, of such inexpressible grief, it was all but unbearable to hear.

  Ah, what a temptation it was, for the youngest of the mourners, to investigate the source of the sound: but of course no one wished to interrupt Reverend De Forrest’s concluding prayer. Even young Xavier Kilgarvan stood his ground, his head bowed in an attitude of prayer, though his sensitive nerves were roused at once; and he knew himself in the presence of mystery.

  I HOPE IT IS NOT to young Xavier’s discredit that he felt some small disappointment that the funeral ceremony at Grace Episcopal Church had proceeded with no remarkable interruptions: for there had been a most alarming rumor, spread promiscuously through town, that divers lowlife persons would rush into the church to disrupt the prayers,—these being enemies of the deceased. But all had proceeded with a tedious sort of solemnity; and the lengthy funeral procession, snaking its slow way through town, had rather more evoked awe and frowning apprehension than any visible expression of malcontent. Then, too, the late Chief Justice had been provided with a substantial police escort,—the which assuredly discouraged acts of mischief.

  “Can it be,” young Xavier inwardly wondered, “that my hateful uncle will be laid in his grave in peace?”

  A curious sort of impiety, one might think: but it must be recalled that the boy had been fed, since earliest childhood, all sorts of confused tales of the way in which his father, Lucas, had been disinherited by Phillips Goode Kilgarvan, on that gentleman’s very deathbed: to the great advantage of Erasmus and Simon Esdras. And, too, at the time of the Glen Mawr murders, Xavier was but a fresh-cheeked lad of sixteen, who liked to imagine opposition, and actual enmity, where perhaps there was naught but indifference.

  Though it was often charged against Xavier Kilgarvan, in later years, that he had been a Free Thinker, or an Anarchist, or a traitor to his class,—indeed, a born troublemaker—from boyhood onward, the facts are otherwise: for our young man, though bristling with every sort of adolescent impulse, and nursing, as it were, a smoldering species of resentment, was very much a child of his time. It would have greatly
incensed him to hear reasoned arguments against the Episcopal Church; or against his conception of the Divine Power of the Universe. (Fortunately, the youth had been but slightly exposed to such atheistical notions as Darwinism, Communism, and Anarchism, though he had found Mr. Reade’s curious Martyrdom of Man in a secondhand bookstore, and intended to peruse it soon.) While kneeling at his daily prayers Xavier oft pondered over certain principles of faith which vexed him, as they were so slippery to grasp; but he had not the sensibility of the doubter. Already, though hardly more than a child in years, he had essayed to bring together the fundamental principles of his religious faith and his “detective’s” faith,—for he had long fancied, in secret, a career of crime detection. “The Universe is so constructed, I believe, that balance and justice are inherent in it,” he thought, knitting his smooth brow, “—God the Father being the highest manifestation of Truth, and Jesus Christ our sole means of apprehending that Truth. Yet,” he sighed, running impatient fingers through his curly hair, “—I must confess that these are but words to me; and I am bound to put my faith in,—faith.”

  As it was Lucas Kilgarvan’s stubborn dream that, of his several sons, one or two at least might become gentlemen, despite the family’s loss of fortune, he had enrolled Xavier in the prestigious Winterthurn Academy for Boys: albeit the tuition was extremely high, and Mr. Kilgarvan might well have used the money to settle some of his debts. At school, however, Xavier managed to excel in most of his studies; and evinced a quick, inquisitive mind, to the delight of his teachers. He was discovered to have a natural if undisciplined flair for drawing; an energetic sort of talent for music; and, in his spare hours, he liked to construct experimental models for his father’s toymaker’s workshop (albeit his successes quickly bored him, and his failures roused him to fits of ill temper). Unknown to his parents, he had acquired, since the age of thirteen, an alarming appetite for nickel-and-dime novels of the trashiest,—nay, the most lurid—species: and surreptitiously exchanged with his classmates every manner of adventure tale, of the Wild West, the Seven Seas, and “crime detection,” which the majority of the Academy boys read with shameless avidity when they ought rather to be studying their Caesar.