Delivering Virtue

by Brian Kindall

  “Would you care to join me in this enterprise?” he asked.

  I was eager to return to my mother and, admittedly, to Marguerite. But I sensed that before me was an open door that I dare not let close. There is nothing like a well-traveled man to impress a lady, and I was in the midst of hatching a plan to win my true love’s heart.

  “Yes,” I answered. “I will go.”

  *****

  Rather than voyage by ship, we traveled a circuitous route across the continent. We stopped at art collections and cathedrals along the way, studying the paintings and sculpture, and assessing the architecture. We went to operas and concerts. We spoke Italian and Latin and Greek. We read poetry, and even rendezvoused with certain of the poets themselves, as they were all acquaintances of Mister Dirge. I toured with wide-eyed enthusiasm. Never had I experienced so many wonderful encounters with culture and civilization. Never had I been more inspired.

  But there was one aspect of my apprenticeship that I found most troubling. Winston Dirge, so debonair and civilized by day, became something else entirely by night. No matter where we were, he was able, by way of some well-honed skill, to find himself a bawdy encounter.

  “A man has two natures, Didier. And he is only half a man if he exercises but one of them.”

  He encouraged me to join him in these perversely sexual revels. “Your father most certainly would have,” he assured me. And that, in part, may well have been what dissuaded me. I had no desire whatsoever to be like my father, whom, I had learned, was little more than a wealthy whoremonger. I strived for something more elevated, something worthy of my dear, pure Marguerite. To this end, I would forego Dirge’s invitations, and instead spend my evenings curled over my pen, working out my poems.

  I had it in my mind to create a collection of sonnets, something like those of the great Bard himself, all dedicated to Marguerite, and all brimming with my heart’s most strident song. Upon return from my travels, I would present her with my verse, confess my love, and she would then have no choice but to take me as her lover. We would be married, and I would begin my illustrious career as a poet.

  For now, all I needed was to work hard, and keep my virtue intact. I had not yet lain with a woman, as I was saving myself for Marguerite. But I was a young man, full of simmering virility, and it pained me often to endure those earliest phases of what would become my life-long affliction. The pressure was great, and what with Winston Dirge’s gallivanting, the opportunities were many to alleviate its niggling bother. But I refrained.

  *****

  We crisscrossed Greece, sailed between its islands, explored its ruins, and scribbled down its words in long lists, always investigating their undercurrents, matching them with the sounds we found hidden in other languages. We then traveled on to the Holy Land, doing the same with Arabic and Hebrew and other tribal tongues, wandering the shores of the salty Dead Sea, searching, searching for those secret words lost under the many miles of sand.

  “In the beginning was the Word,” Dirge told me. “And the Word was God.”

  He sincerely believed this. It was his religion. Winston Dirge most devoutly believed that in order to reach what one might call God, one must dive into the deepest pools of language, and rediscover that first pure Word. This was a man’s only hope of salvation. Only then could he enter into paradise.

  I grew to share Dirge’s enthusiasm for the search. I even grew to believe there was truth in what he said. But through it all, my mind never abandoned Marguerite. My dreams were full of her. Any word she uttered was, for me, the Word. For surely she was an angel.

  *****

  Two years passed. I returned to Cherbourg with my poems in my hand, and my hope in my heart.

  In that short time, Marguerite had developed from a girl into a woman. Upon first encountering her in my mother’s shop, I could not help but stare at her breasts. I admonished myself for this, but still – they were so round and full and inviting, almost to burst from inside her apron. The vision that leapt to my mind was of myself ripping apart those lapels and burying my face between those fleshy mounds, breathing deeply of her skin, gasping like a boy in blissful danger of being drowned.

  I had rehearsed the moment of our reunion a thousand times in my mind, knowing full well what I would say, and how. It was to be moving and gentle and persuasive. But Marguerite’s burgeoning femininity had unarmed me. It stopped my tongue and clouded my brain.

  “Voila!” was all I could manage to get out. And, blushing red, I handed her my sheaf of sonnets. “I wrote these for you.”

  “Oh, Didier,” she said, and regarded the packet that I so hoped would touch her deepest soul. She turned it over. “Merci,” she said, and smiled kindly. “But you must know I do not read.”

  And then, indifferently, she handed me back my poems and walked away to fetch a bolt of cloth.

  I stood there.

  With my worthless words.

  For the longest time.

  Unbelieving.

  How was it that I never knew Marguerite was illiterate? It had never occurred to me. Not once. I had always imagined her lying in her bed that night, a candle illuminating my verse, her heart swooning at my cleverness and rhythmic confessions of love.

  But now…

  I was at a loss.

  *****

  I spent the remainder of that painful day traipsing stuporously along the piers and beaches. They were the same as they had always been, but different to me now. My experiences in life, my travels, had drained my boyhood haunts of their color. It was April – le mois le plus cruellement – and it was raining a cold and penetrating rain. Cherbourg was most ugly. I felt to be wandering in a wasteland. I had all but abandoned my hope, had all but given up on my dreams of Marguerite, when I was struck with an inspiration.

  “Bien Sur!”

  I would simply read my poems aloud to her. The thought both thrilled and horrified me. It would take great courage and composure. It would be most challenging not to let the passion of my words cloud their delivery, but I would do it as if my life depended upon it. Surely, in so many ways, it did. I plucked up a stone and threw it resolutely into the waves. And then, before my courage abandoned me – before that stone touched the bottom of the sea – I ran up the strand through the darkness to Marguerite.

  She did not share my mother’s apartment, but lived in a room of her own on the next street over. I had never been inside, but knew which room was hers. I had many times crept up the stairs to her door and lay my hand on its coolness, willing myself into her dreams. But this night would be different. Tonight I would step through that door to the other side. My heart galloped at the notion.

  Now I can only guess that when I was traveling through old Hellas, I had inadvertently disrespected the gods on their mountaintop, making them sore angry with me. I have felt ever since that they have hounded my steps with their cruel and ironical manipulations of my fate. But never have those malign immortals moved the game pieces around so much that they have ever surpassed the wry humor inflicted upon me that night. It must have been a most amusing drama to watch from on high.

  I stood with my poems before Marguerite’s door. I did not know if I was shaking from fear, or from the dampness of my clothes. I took a deep breath, and rapped my knuckles timidly against the wood, softly calling her name. “Marguerite.” Part of me almost hoped she would not answer. But then I heard her voice through the panel. I did not understand clearly what she had called – it was as if she were speaking from under water – but I assumed she had summoned me to enter. And so I did.

  Boldly.

  Throwing the door wide and stepping in.

  The room was small, barely spacious enough for a table, a wardrobe, and a bed. A short window hung on one wall. A lamp burned with low light from atop the table. But the overriding sensation that met me was the repellent and odoriferous wave of sweat and sweet cologne. The room had a vulgar aroma that I did not expect. And then I heard the moans, and saw the confusing tangl
e of arms and legs of the two-backed beast bucking on the bed.

  I stood there for the longest time, trying to understand just what I was seeing.

  At last, it occurred to me that my dear Marguerite was pinned beneath that mass of heaving masculine flesh. Fortuitously, I had arrived just in time to save her. I quickly scanned the room, looking for what I could use to bludgeon the brute. That is when I saw the man’s clothes on the floor. That is when I spied the pistol on his belt.

  I fired a single shot into the man’s bare back.

  Someone screamed in pain.

  The man arched and tensed, and then, without spectacle, withered to lifelessness.

  I tossed the gun into the corner and, dropping my poems, leapt forward, pulling the dead man from off of Marguerite. His carcass thumped onto the floor, rolling face up. Of course, it had been my father all along. An expression of shock and wonder was frozen onto his face, as if he had been granted a startling vision just at the instant of his demise. I do not wish to be gratuitous, or even to disrespect the dead (no matter how much I might have disrespected them in life), but it struck me as most odd that his member remained erect. But I did not waste time on him, and instead turned to help my poor Marguerite.

  She lay on her back, trembling. I could not, even in that terrible moment, avert my eyes from her stunning naked body. It glowed warmly in the lamplight, a wilderness of feminine mystery.

  “Oh, Love,” I said. “It will be all right. I have saved you. I have delivered you from that beast.”

  But the look on her face gave me to know that she had not been asking for salvation. Her expression was one of contempt. Her smile gave me to know that she held onto her secret, and that I would always be separate of it. I could not meet her eyes, and averted my gaze downward.

  “Rain,” she whispered, and stopped shivering. “Pluie.”

  That is when I saw the hole in her chest.

  That is when I understood that she was dead.

  The bullet had missed my father’s ribs, and had passed through him into her dark heart.

  “Oh!” I wept.

  Even still, the gods were not yet done with their fun.

  *****

  I knew that I would be found out soon. Surely someone had heard the pop of my father’s pistol, or Marguerite’s scream. At the least, Marguerite or Horatio would be found missing on the morrow, and an investigation would ensue, leading to my capture. So much had changed so quickly. My life seemed over just as it was set to begin. Stunned, I stumbled my way to my mother’s apartment.

  “Maman!”

  “Didier?” she called. “Je suis ici.”

  I burst into her bedroom only to find her stepping from out of her bath.

  “Alors!” she said, but did not cover herself. In that confusing instant, with me in a state of such childish distress, it was as if we had returned to our past.

  I was her little boy again.

  She was my doting mother.

  And we resumed that easy way with each other that we had enjoyed so many years before.

  “Qu’est que c’est?” she asked, and stepped from the steaming tub. She began toweling herself dry.

  “Oh, maman!” I cried, and went to her.

  She could tell I was distressed, and that something most dreadful had happened. But she did not ask me questions just yet. Instead, she held me to her bare damp skin. She squeezed me tight. She kissed me.

  Again and again.

  OUR LITTLE CAMPFIRE SNAPPED and spit some sparks up into the darkness, shaking me from my painful reverie. I was shocked to find myself trembling so terribly with the effects of the frigid night air. Summer was most definitely past. I squeezed myself tighter within the paltry protection of my velvet dress. I looked up to see Virtue still sitting in her blanket before me. She was a blurry image, but then, after I had wiped the moisture from my only good eye, she appeared more well defined and striking. Truly an angel. I bit my lip, insecure at my erstwhile candor, and shrugged.

  “Well,” I said.

  Virtue seemed to be waiting for me to continue, but I knew it was my choice. She was leaving it to me if I wanted to tell more. She was allowing me to decide just how much of this embarrassingly histrionic and verbose catharsis I was in need. I felt I had said too much already. My speech was surely inappropriate for a young girl’s ears. And at the same time, I sensed I was being carried down a swiftly moving river, one that had yet to dump me out into a calming pool. I had a ways left to go.

  I picked up a nearby branch of sage, tossing it skillfully onto the fire.

  “Anyhow,” I continued. “I have since determined… after putting the pieces back together in a thousand different ways… that my mother’s loneliness… mixed up, as it was, with my own pendant and sabotaged romantic expectations for that evening… along with the fateful timing of my entrance into her private boudoir… resulted in the interaction we therein wrought. That is to say…” I cleared the smoke from my throat. “My mother and I became lovers.” I nodded to the rising flames, barely believing the audacity of my words. “She was my first.”

  A rush of whelming disconcertment passed through my body right then. Followed by an enormous outbreath of relief. I all but fell over dead with the sudden liberation of that secret factoid. It flapped away into the night like a startled bird. I realized just how many years I had been holding that confession caged inside of me, without ever really being conscious that I was. No one knew that part of my story but myself and Marie DeRosier – my mother.

  A long moment passed before I could lift my gaze to Virtue. I feared she would be so appalled at my aforementioned deviance that she would now regard me as the loathsome animal I truly was. Such a response from the young lady might well have shattered my heart for a final time. I so valued her friendship and opinion. But her reaction was one of calm composure. I saw it in her face. She held that same equipoise and wizened demeanor I had perceived in her from the first moment we had met, way back when I had held her in my arms as a babe.

  “How,” she asked, “did you come to America?”

  “Oh. My mother snuck me onto a ship that very night – one of Horatio Rain’s own – a cargo vessel that happened to be casting away at dawn. In a matter of hours, I was bound westward over the dark and slopping waves of the Atlantic.”

  The very recollection of that voyage moved me to seasickness. I felt I might heave up right there. But I did not.

  “I decided during that crossing that I would rebuild my life. I would learn the American Vernacular as best I could, submerging my foreign accent beneath its idioms and syntax. I would travel farther west, out into the wild territories, and seek out a new truth around which to exist. What had happened had happened – undeniably, regrettably – but now I would take that experience and give back to humanity in order to absolve my sins. I would create an epic – something to rival Milton, one Joseph Smith, or even Mister Alighieri himself. My previous sonnets had been naïve. But now I was poised for something far greater. The gods had granted me a second chance. I had, in a sense, been reborn.”

  I felt a surge of that old thrill of when I had first devised my plan. I felt a youthful vigor and hopefulness stirring deep inside of me. But then, almost at once, I recalled all the intervening years since that day. All that wasted time! All that dissolution! All those squandered nights of never jotting so much as a single line! And then I felt myself once again plunged into regret. It was quite a push and pull journey between euphoria and despair. Most exhausting.

  “Well…” I forced a smile. I rubbed my palms conclusively on my velvet-clad thighs and peered with my one eye up into the stars. The coyote had stopped his singing some time ago, without me even noticing that he had. The moon had slipped behind the western horizon with a silent hiss. “Maybe,” I said with feigned bravado, “I will write that epic yet.”

  Virtue did not reply except for a small, almost imperceptible, forward bob of her head. I abruptly became aware of my self-indulgence. I was disgu
sted with myself for taking this whole evening to, so to speak, wash out my laundry. What of Virtue herself? She was surely burdened with a certain degree of apprehension about her upcoming meeting with the Prophet. Forget your own already traveled path, I told myself. Consider the girl.

  “You remind me of your mother,” I said.

  She blushed a bit, and smiled coyly. “Truly?”

  “Yes. Very much.” I felt I was recalling a dream, so long ago had been that encounter beneath the catalpa tree in Independence, but there was truth in what I said. “She is lovely, too,” I continued. “And with a quiet way of strength. You are much alike.”

  This pleased the girl immensely. She could not hide her joy, and that made me feel very good. “I am sure,” I continued, “that she would be most proud if she could see how you have developed.”

  I was surprised to see the young lady’s eyes shining with tears. In all this time we had passed together – seemingly years and years by now – I had never known her to cry. It was most endearing to witness. Her face contorted into a lovely expression as she struggled to hold back her emotions. I did not know what else to say.

  Virtue looked at me over the flames and smiled weakly, wiping her fingers across her cheeks. At last she lifted herself up and stood. The fire lit her beautiful nubile form. A backdrop of heaven spread out behind her. It was a most stunning scene to behold. Then, with her blanket folded in her arms, she stepped around the fire and came close to me, standing between the flames so that her face was darkened in shadow. She held her hand down to me. I lifted my hand to her. I confess, I was a bit flummoxed. I was not sure how to respond, or to what degree she was pulling me forward into the next moment. She held my hand in that cold air, her own warm fingers gently squeezing mine. I realized rather incongruently that I was suffering from a merciless thirst, as if I had had nothing to drink for years but salt tears. Another moment passed, eternal, full of my hesitance. Then she let me go.

  “Bonne nuit, Didier,” she said at last. “Thank you for delivering me.”