Eden Burning

by Belva Plain

“Look at the—”

  “No.” Marcelle spoke firmly, her lips snapping shut on the word. “No.”

  Now came the infant’s first cry. Quavering and long it held, then broke for the intake of breath, quavered into a strong wail and ended in a sob. The sound tore at something in Tee’s chest. Here he is, after the long months; unsought for, unwanted, already he weeps—

  “I want to see him,” she whispered.

  “No, I said. There’s nothing to be gained by doing that, and much to lose. Now lie back and rest, there’s a good girl, and leave everything to us, will you?”

  Conscience, guilt, relief, all clamored in Tee’s tired head. Still she protested. “But isn’t it monstrous of a mother”—and stopped at the word mother, so incongruous, so impossible, applied to herself.

  “Monstrous!” Marcelle was indignant. “Yes, that a girl—a child—like you should be in a fix like this, that’s what’s monstrous! Listen here, Teresa, you’ve got to look out for yourself from now on. Self-preservation, that’s the main thing, always, and don’t you ever forget it.”

  “You listen to her, she’s right.” Agnes came in and bent over the bed. “Better you don’t look at this baby. He go his way, you go yours. No way you can walk the same road together. Not in this world, the way it is. Here, let me fix your ribbon, lift all that hair off your neck.”

  Yellow ribbons, pink ribbons, taffeta and velvet; blue shadows from the Morne leaping from the window to the mirror; Agnes tying the bow—

  “Don’t cry, Tee. You’ve cried enough. Now get your strength back. You’re all worn out.”

  “Stop torturing yourself, stop worrying,” Marcelle admonished. “Haven’t I been telling you Anatole would see to things? You’re not to bother your head. Anatole has got instructions and plenty of money, and Agnes is going to keep the child. Tell her, Agnes.”

  “Well, you know me, you know what I always wanted. So now I can have what I want, can’t I?” Two warm, wiry hands held Tee’s between them.

  “Yes, it’s a fine solution all the way around, don’t you think?” Marcelle spoke cheerfully. “Agnes’ll pass him off as her own. Probably they’ll stay in Marseilles. It’s a polyglot place with all kinds of people always coming and going, so she won’t feel strange there. Don’t you agree it’s a good idea?”

  “A good idea,” Tee repeated. So the need to think and decide had been taken away from her. Better so. She wasn’t thinking clearly and hadn’t been able to for a long, long time.

  “Your lips are cracked. Take some water. So,” Marcelle said briskly, “it’s all over. All over, Teresa.”

  Tee looked up into the alert, strong face. Such faces belonged to people who solved things, who knew their way in the world.

  “Where am I going to go?” she asked softly. “What am I going to do now?”

  “Well, do you want to go back home?”

  Home to Père and the silent knowledge that would forever lie between them. Home to Julia. Home to Morne Bleue. You could scarcely go anywhere on the island without looking up at Morne Bleue, unless you stared straight out to sea.

  “No. I’m not going back. I’ll never go back again.”

  “Never is a long time. Still, it’s understandable. So you’ll stay with us, that’s all. Anatole will think of something,” Marcelle said with pride. “He always does.”

  The room on the top floor of Anatole’s house had a balcony on which stood three pots of geraniums. From it one could look out and watch the city wake up, that city of which Père had so often told, city of flowers and delights. But there was no temptation in it.

  Tee shivered, although the late spring sun was warm. She passed her hand over her waist, which was flat and firm again.

  “That comes of being young,” Marcelle said cheerfully. “The muscles snap back like rubber.”

  Tee thought again, I should at least have looked at it—the words he or him being impossible to form in her mind. Yet she knew that if “it” had been brought to her, she would have been too terrified to look. So of course she had done right. Where would you go with it? What would you do with it? Marcelle and Anatole had said, over and over.

  “When will you get this girl some clothes?” Anatole inquired one day.

  “Whenever she’s ready. I’ve asked you often enough, haven’t I, Teresa? I want to teach you how to dress, so you won’t look like a provincial when you go places.”

  “What places am I going to? I’ve nowhere to go.”

  “No, only the entire city of Paris. Or do you expect it to come to you on your balcony?”

  Tee was growing used to Marcelle’s sharp tongue and able to smile a little.

  “Do you know you’re very, very pretty when you smile? Do you know that?” Anatole demanded.

  “I’m not pretty.”

  “Who told you?”

  “No one. I’ve just always known it.”

  “Well, you’ve known all wrong.”

  “I’m awkward, too serious, too shy. I—”

  “Awkward? You have extraordinary grace! You are too serious and shy, that’s true.”

  “Leave her alone, Anatole. Will you go out with me tomorrow, Teresa? The first thing we ought to do is get your hair cut.”

  “Oh, what a shame!” Anatole protested. “That hair—it’s positively aphrodisiac.”

  “Yes, but nobody wears it like that anymore. This is 1938.”

  So now in the mornings they would descend the steep flight before Sacré Coeur and go down into the streets, Marcelle guiding Tee as though she had been ill or were blind, and talking, always talking, at the hairdresser’s, the shoe store, and the milliner’s.

  “Watch that young girl, Teresa.”

  “Who? Where?”

  “That one, in the blue dress with the fortune in pearls around her neck. That old man, in case you want to know, is certainly not her father. Pay attention, Teresa my dear, you’re always dreaming. What were you thinking of, you were so far away?”

  “Thinking how odd it is never to see a dark face.”

  “I shouldn’t think you’d miss them.”

  “I miss Agnes. I think of her.”

  “Well, she was good to you, I must say, although she got paid for it. But she’s well provided for and content. What we have to do now is to provide for you.”

  They walked on silently for a little time until Marcelle spoke again.

  “Anatole and I have been talking it over. You will have to get married soon, Teresa. It will be the best thing for you. There’s really nothing else for a woman, anyway. Yes, you’re thinking, ‘She’s a fine one to talk about marriage!’ But you’re not me. You saw where I came from. I’m better off with Anatole than I ever was, even though he won’t marry me. Yes, I’d like to be a respectable married lady, only I can’t be, and that’s that. But it’s different for you.”

  “Strange. That’s what Agnes always said.”

  “Of course. She’s a realist. Negroes have to be. They know what the world is, how the machinery works.”

  A young couple passed and entered a park. The father carried a young child astride his shoulders.

  Looking after them, Tee said bitterly, “Who would marry me? Who would want me?”

  Marcelle stopped still. “My God, what kind of ten dozen fools are you? You don’t actually mean you would tell a man what happened?” Then, more softly, she went on, “Listen, Teresa, you’ve had bad luck, a bad deal, and the sooner you put it behind you the better for you. Lock it up at the back of your head. Do you think every girl who marries a duke brings a notarized personal history along? Women have to be very smart, Teresa. Never be fooled into thinking you can bare your whole soul to a man. Any man who knew the truth about you would throw you away like a paper handkerchief after he’d blown his nose in it. That’s the injustice of being a woman. A man may tell you he loves your soul, but what he really loves is your body, fresh and unused, your hair, your breasts, and the ribbons on your charming hat. Remember that.”

  “
It’s so terribly sad,” Tee said. And she understood that if Julia had been one to speak her true mind, she would have spoken like Marcelle.

  “Well, yes, if you want to think so, but that’s the way it is, all the same.”

  “You’re beginning to feel better,” Anatole remarked that evening and, without waiting for an answer, “Come, I want to show you something. I’ve finished it. I’ve put you in a grape arbor, you notice.”

  Already framed, beneath a splendor of leafage and clustered grapes, sat a girl, a stark and simple shape in a brown woolen dress, her face half concealed by the fall of her rich hair; her thin, cold, blue-white hands were folded over the huge curve of her belly in an attitude of patience which she had not felt.

  “The grapes are ready to harvest. A nice parallel, don’t you think?”

  “It doesn’t seem as if I could ever have looked like that.”

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have shown it to you?”

  “It’s all right. I can’t hide from myself forever, can I?”

  Anatole’s red-brown eyes puckered in a smile. “You’re growing up. A few months ago you were sixteen, with the mind of a twelve-year-old; now you’re even a little older than your age. You really have changed, Teresa.”

  Well, changing anyway, she thought, if not changed.

  “I think you’re ready now,” Anatole said next.

  “Ready for what?”

  “There’s a young man I want you to meet. An American. He’s a stockbroker and an art collector. That’s how I know him. He’s been coming here for the last few summers.”

  She waited a moment or two before replying, “I know why you’re doing this.”

  “Of course. I’m thinking he would be a good man for you to marry, if it should work out that way.”

  “No, I mean I know why. You really don’t believe in this sort of thing.”

  Tee surprised herself with her own words. Only a few months before, she had not known enough to “size up” anyone, nor would she have spoken so candidly if she had. But a bold instinct for survival was now rising within her.

  “You have two sides,” she said. “One for yourself, the artist who lives the way you do and believes what you believe, but the other is practical, like the rest of the world. You’re doing this because it’s what Père would want you to do for me.”

  “Not bad!” Anatole laughed. “Then you’ll meet him? He’s healthy, decent, and has enough money of his own not to be attracted to you for yours. His name is Richard Luther.”

  At first sight of him, so finely dressed and out of place in Anatole’s studio, she thought that Anatole had made a foolish mistake. This blond, assured young man with the easy smile and the air of always getting what he wanted could not be for her, nor she for him. The world, and Paris most certainly, was full of lively, confident girls who knew where they were and where they were going. What would he want with Tee Francis? So she gave him her hand and avoided his eyes.

  But later in the room upstairs Marcelle said, “Anatole was right. Frankly, I didn’t think you’d be his type. He likes you, though. He wants to take you to the theater tomorrow.”

  They went to a play and afterwards to supper, at which he ordered oysters, raspberries, and champagne. From a vendor on the corner he bought an extravagant sheaf of gladioli for Tee to bring home.

  “Tell me about St. Felice,” he urged. “It sounds so strange to me, like Patagonia or Katmandu. Who lives there? Is it all sugarcane? Do they have pineapple? Telephones? Do you have great parties on the estates? Tell me about it.”

  She laughed and was pleased at his curiosity, pleased at having been given something to say. And while saying it she understood that St. Felice had been the cause of attraction, that St. Felice—and therefore she herself—was exotic to Richard Luther, something new. He was a person who would want the different and the new: the latest fashion, the artist about to be discovered, the master chef in the tiny restaurant at the end of the hidden street. Having taken from all these what he wanted, then he would be off to something newer. So it would be with her, she saw.

  Meanwhile, though, Richard gave her what she needed that summer, what she had not even been aware of needing. He gave cheer. Life was to be enjoyed. He was kindly (sugar lumps for the drayhorse at the end of Anatole’s street); generous (a pocketful of francs for the flower vendor and an admonition to go home out of the rain). They were constantly on the move: a picnic in the country, a boat ride, the races, the art exhibits, the auctions, where he bought beautiful, expensive objects, which did not surprise Tee, for had not her mother also been a buyer of extravagant objects?

  She went with him, then, a quiet presence, an observer, almost, of his enthusiasms, carried along, bemused and soothed.

  Anatole asked no questions, but Marcelle probed for him. “What do you think of Richard, Teresa?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You are the strangest girl! What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?”

  Actually, Tee was thinking, Is he, or is he not, just a little conceited? Is his face, so handsomely symmetrical, a little weak? And puzzled, she answered with a question.

  “I have no means of comparison, have I?”

  Marcelle softened. “True, true. I keep forgetting how young you are. Well, take it from me, he’s ready for marriage, it’s the right time for him. He’s twenty-five, he’s done all the sampling he wants. And you’re different from anyone he can have known. Only sixteen! There’s charm in that.”

  “I suppose I am different.” What did he call her? Dark child, aloof—

  “Your family would be pleased. He’ll make a good husband.”

  “He hasn’t asked me.” In fear her heart accelerated, partly because he might not ask her (for what was she to do then?), and partly because he might.

  Late in the summer, when it was almost time for him to go home, Richard Luther did ask her. They had left the bookstalls, where he had bought two old volumes, when he stopped and took a flat box out of his pocket.

  “Open it,” he said.

  On gray velvet lay a triple strand of tenderly shining pearls.

  “For you, Teresa. Pearls for the young and innocent. Diamonds for a little later.”

  “But I can’t accept a present like this!”

  “I know you can’t, not from a stranger. This is just my way of asking you to marry me.”

  “You hardly know me!” she cried.

  “I know enough. Teresa—it’s a gentle name, like you. I’d be very good to you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “I’ve lived in New York with my mother since my father died. My mother would be enchanted with you,” he said confidently. “But of course we’d have our own place. We could have a country house, too. I’ve been thinking about New Jersey; there are miles of soft hills; they might even remind you of your mountains at home.”

  Still she hesitated.

  “Are you thinking that you want to go back to St. Felice? Is that it?”

  Her hands went unconsciously to her throat. “Oh no, oh no, I don’t want to go back, ever!”

  “Yes, now that you’ve started to see the world, I can understand that. Well, then? I do love you, Teresa.”

  They were standing at the river where the bridges, in both directions, arched like loops in stone, time-stained, yellowing and streaked. For minutes Tee looked down. So long ago, in another age, she had stood watching a river twist to the sea, watching the same slow flow of water, the little froth and bubble, the water, like time, maybe, carrying things away, the self with the flow.

  Oh, I can, it can be, I want—she thought, as she turned to him. He’s a good man, so lively and kind. He’s a happy man. You feel happy yourself when you’re with him! You feel as if nothing would ever hurt you. You’d never be alone anymore.

  He put his arms around her. Smiling, he stroked her cheeks and her hair. His face glowed with his smile, making a glad hope surge in her. Perhaps this, after all, was lo
ve, the real and true, and it would keep on growing forever. Oh, she would return his kindness, his goodness, ten times over, be everything he wanted, surprise him beyond his expectations.

  And at the same time she was thinking, We have nothing to talk about, and I don’t know if we ever will have….

  They were to be married quite simply in Anatole’s small, unkempt garden. There were, in the preceding weeks, moments that stabbed her.

  “Will I ever make this work?” she cried to Marcelle. “Tell me, how can it possibly work?”

  “Why not? Why shouldn’t it? Listen, you’ll be a good wife, you couldn’t be anything else, and he’s crazy about you. Have many children, that’s what will be best for you. You’re the type for it and it’ll keep both of you busy and happy. Above all, no guilt, no looking back! Never. Do you hear?”

  So, on a gilded autumn day, just one year after she had arrived in France, Teresa Francis married Richard Luther. The very next morning they sailed for New York.

  Richard’s mother was indeed enchanted by the bride. “How young! How shy and young!” she said, and everyone marveled, “Born on an island in the West Indies, imagine!” And someone whispered, “There’s no end to the wealth those people have there….”

  Well, anyway, they gathered her to themselves, and even in a New York winter, they warmed her. Richard went back to the brokerage office and was gone all day while Tee furnished a house. This world now was so different from St. Felice that one could forget its very existence. Besides, she was already pregnant….

  Eleven months after the marriage, she gave birth to a fine, large boy, fair like his father. Sitting up in her flower-filled hospital room, Tee held the child close, laying her cheek on his head. Here, here was repayment for everything! Hers now, her own! Never to love anyone as much as him; never to be loved by anyone as much as by him. She would be such a mother to this child! Nothing would ever hurt him, not the rough sleeve of his father’s coat, nor the faintest draft from the door to the hall. There was something special between the two of them.

  And indeed it was to be so, although she could not really have known it then.

  On the day of his christening the baby wore the lace robe that had been in the Luther family for five generations. Afterwards they brought him home and took his picture with his parents on the velvet sofa in front of the fireplace, then laid him lovingly to sleep in his nursery upstairs.