He hesitated awhile, and then said, “I love you.”
The great fires in the west made his face ruddy and shadowy. I moved, so that he thought I was going to speak. He held up his hand. I’ve often seen him raise his hand that way, talking with Gran, as he sought a word, an idea.
“When you were in college, in the late forties, you’d come home at Christmas, summers. You waitressed at the old Chowder House. You’d come into the store, shopping for your mother.” He smiled, so broadly, so cheerily that I smiled too. “You were my delight,” he said. “Understand me: there was nothing wrong between May and me. There never has been. I came out of the Army, you know, and found that I’d got me this wife, and a baby. And that was a wonder. It was amazing. And then Tim came along. And I loved running the store, the business. I didn’t want anything but what I had. But you were my delight.”
He held up his hand again, though I hadn’t been about to speak.
“You went east, got married, got divorced, took your degree—I lost you for years. But I’d go into Dorothy’s shop and see your mother, like a wild cottontail rabbit there behind the counter, making change. Or I’d get talking with Jane, after council meetings. And there it was. Not pleasure, not contentment, but delight. All I had with May and Stoney and Tim, I could hold. In my hands, in my arms, I could hold what I had. And that was happiness. But with you Hernes, I held nothing. I could only let go, let go. And it was the truer joy.”
His sons are both in Vietnam. I turned away from him in shame and sorrow.
“There is the family of my body,” he said, “my parents, my brothers and sister, my wife, my sons. But you have been my soul’s family.”
He stood looking out into the red sky. The wind had turned. It blew from the land, smelling of the forest and the night.
“You are my brother’s daughter,” he said.
“I know,” I said, for I wasn’t sure he knew I knew.
“It means nothing,” he said, “nothing to him, to any of them—nothing but silence and lies. But to me it has meant that, however much I held, I had to let go, too. Not to hold. And now it’s all letting go. Nothing left to hold. Nothing but the truth. The truth of that delight. The one perfectly true thing in all my life.”
He looked across the air at me, smiling again. “So I wanted to thank you,” he said.
I put out my hands, but he did not take them. He did not touch me. He turned away and went round the house to the driveway. He was walking down the road to town as the last colors faded and the light greyed to twilight.
I believed what he said. I believed in that truth, that delight. But I wanted to cry for him, for the waste of love.
Edward was my first love, when I was thirteen, fourteen. I knew who he was, but what did it matter, what did it mean? He was kind, thin, handsome, he joined the Army, he married May Beckberg. I was a kid with a crush. I saved the cigarette butt he put out in the ashtray in Mother’s house when he came to say good-bye. I kept it in a locket on a chain, and never took it off. I worshiped May and the baby. I held them in holiness. Pure romance: to love what you can never touch. And was the love he thanked me for, his pure delight, ever more than that—a bubble without substance, that a touch would break?
Yet I don’t know if anything is more than that. He held his sons, as I held Jaye that night, and tonight, close, close against the heart, safe, till sleep comes. We think we hold them. But they wake, they run. His sons have gone now where only death can touch them, where all their business is death.
If they die, I see him follow them. Not touching them, but following. And May, that strong woman, alone. She always was alone, maybe. He thinks he held her, but what do we ever hold?
Lily, 1965
WHEN I WAS VERY, VERY young, Mother took me downstairs to see the candles lighted on the Christmas tree in the lobby of the hotel, the hotel we lived in before I can remember. But I remember that, now, all at once, like a picture in a book. The page has turned, and I see the picture. All around me and above me are great shadowy branches, shining with ribbons of tinsel, and in the shadows are round worlds, many, large ones and small ones, red, silver, blue, green, and candles burning. The candle flames are repeated and repeated in the colored worlds, and around the flames is a kind of mist or glory.
They must have set me down there under the tree. Maybe I wasn’t walking yet. I sat amongst and under the branches, in the pine smell and the sweet candle smell, watching the colored worlds hanging in the hazy glory and the shadows of the branches. Near my face was a very large silvered glass globe. In it were reflected all the rest of the ornaments that reflected it too, and all the flames, and the shoots and tremblings of brightness down the tinsel, and the dark feathering of the needles. And there were eyes in that shining globe, two eyes, very round. Sometimes I saw them, sometimes not. I thought they were an animal, looking at me, that the silver bubble of glass was alive, looking out at me. I thought the tree was all alive. I saw it as a world full of worlds. It is as if all my life I have seen the tree, the candles burning, the bright eyes, the colors, the deep branches going round and up forever.
Do you see the angel at the top of the tree?
A man asked that. A man’s voice.
I only wanted to look into the branches of shining worlds, the universe of branches, the eyes looking back at me. I cried when he lifted me up. Do you see the angel, Lily?
Fanny, 1898
WE WAITED FOR LOW TIDE to ford Fish Creek. As the horses started into the water a great bird flew suddenly down the creek between the black trees, over us. I cried out, What is that! It looked bigger than a man. The driver said, That is the great blue heron. He said, I look for it whenever I cross this creek.
There is not much to the town. End of the world, Henrietta Koop said. The General Store where I will work for Mr. Alec Macdowell and his son Mr. Sandy Macdowell. One fine house belonging to an Astoria family, the Norsmans, but they are seldom here, I’m told. The smithy and livery stable owned by Mr. Kelly. A sorry farm across the creek. And fourteen houses among the stumps. The streets are laid out good and straight but are mud two feet deep.
Mr. Sandy Macdowell had me this house ready. A man’s idea of ready. It is two rooms and sets by itself under the black spruce trees just behind the sand dunes. It is some south of where the platted streets stop, but a sand road runs in front of the property. Mr. Macdowell calls it the Searoad, and spoke of a stage line they hope to run along that road, when they have cut a road across Breton Head north of the town. Mail is carried up the beaches from the south, now, when the carrier can ride through. He can’t when there’s high tides in winter. Mr. Macdowell apologized for the house. It is just a shack, small and dark. Stove is all right, and all the wood I want to cut lying handy. The roof is bad. He said he hoped I would not feel lonesome. It was the only house empty just now till they can fit up the place upstairs behind the store. He told me ten times there was nothing to fear, until I said, Mr. Macdowell, I am not a timid woman. I guess you’re not, he said.
He said there were no Indians and nobody had shot a cougar for ten years. But there is the old woman who lives down behind Wreck Point, I have seen her twice now. And this morning I was up to light the stove while the children were still sleeping. The rain had stopped. I stood in the doorway in the first light. I saw elk walk past, going south in a line along the dunes. One walked behind the other, tall as tall horses, some with antlers like young trees. I counted them: thirty-nine. Each one as it passed looked at me from its dark, bright eye.
Virginia, 1975
THERE’S ALWAYS THE STORY, THE official story, the one that is reported, the one that’s in the archives, the history. Then there’s the child of the story, born of the story, born out of wedlock, escaping from between the sealed lips, escaping from between the straining thighs, wriggling and pushing her way out, running away crying, crying out loud for freedom! freedom! until she’s raped by the god and locked in the archives and turns into white-haired history; but not before he
r child is born, newborn.
The story tells how the grieving mother sought her daughter over land and sea. While she grieved and while she sought, no grain grew, no flower bloomed. Then, when she found the maiden, spring came. The wild grass seeded, the birds sang, the small rain fell on the western wind.
But the maiden no longer maiden must return for half the year each year to her husband in the underworld, leaving her mother in the world of light. While the daughter is dead and the mother weeps, it is the fall and winter of the year.
The story is true. It is history.
But the child is always born, and the child has her story to tell, the unofficial, the unconfirmed, the news.
She had done her time inside. She had held court as Queen of Hell for half eternity. She had shelved the law books in the archives and filed all the files of the firm. She had lived with her husband for the appointed time, and the season of her return was at hand. She knew it by the way the roots that hung down through the low stone ceilings of the underworld—taproots of great trees, oaks, beeches, chestnuts, redwoods, only the longest roots could reach down so far—by the way those roots sent tiny fibrils, curling split ends, growing out, groping out from the damp, dark grout between the rocks that make the sky there. When she saw the thin root hairs reach out she knew the trees were needing her to come and bring the spring.
She went to her husband, the judge. She went to the courthouse, appearing before him as a plaintiff. The uncomplaining multitudes of the dead, the shadows of life awaiting judgment, made way for her. She came among them as a green shoot comes through the sodden leaves at winter’s end, as a freshet of black living water cracks the rotten ice. She stood before the golden throne of judgment, between the pillars of silver, on the jewelled pavement, and stated her case: “My lord, by the terms of our agreement, it is time I go.”
He could not deny it, though he wanted to. Justice binds the Lord of Hell, though mercy does not. His beautiful dark face was sad and stern. He gazed at her with eyes like silver coins, and did not speak, but nodded once.
She turned and left him. Lightly she walked the long ways and stairways that led up. The dog barked and the old boatman scowled to see her stand alone on the dark side of the river, but she laughed. She stepped into his boat to be ferried over to the other shore, where the multitudes waited. Lightly she stepped out and ran up the brightening paths, and came through the narrow way at last into the sunlight.
The fields were dun and sodden after long snow and rain. Her feet, that stayed so clean in Hell, were black at once with mud. Her hair, always so dry and neat in Hell, was windblown and wet at once with rain. She laughed, she leaped like a deer, she ran like a deer, running home to Mother.
She came to the house. The garden was untended, winter-beaten. “I’ll tend to that,” she said. The door of the house stood open. “They’re expecting me,” she said. The kitchen stove was cold, the dishes had been put up, no one was in the rooms. “They must be out looking for me,” she said. “I must be late. Why didn’t they just wait here for me?”
She lighted the fire in the stove. She laid out the loaf and the cheese and the red wine. As evening darkened she lighted the lights so that the windows of the house would shine across the dusk, and her mother and grandmother, trudging the road in the rain, would see the light: “Look there! She’s home!”
But they did not come. The night passed, and the days passed. She kept the house, she planted the garden. The fields grew green, trees leaved, flowers bloomed: daffodil, primrose, bluebell, daisy, by the garden paths. But they did not come, the mother, the grandmother. Where were they? What was keeping them? She set out across the fields to find them. And she found them soon enough.
I don’t want to tell the story. I don’t want to tell that a child sees her grandmother burned to death and her mother raped by the enemy by the soldiers by the guerrillas by the patriots by the believers by the infidels by the faithful by the terrorists by the partisans by the contras by the pros. By the corporations by the executives by the rank and file by the leaders by the followers the orderers the ordered the governments the machinery. To be caught in the machinery, to fall into the machine, to be a body torn to pieces, harrowed, disemboweled, crushed by a tank by a truck by a tractor, treads and wheels smash the soft arms, the bones snap, the blood and lymph and urine burst out, for flesh is not grass but meat. I don’t want to tell that a child sees the god, sees what the god does. I don’t want to tell the story of the child, the child who is the spring of the world, who went out of her house and saw her grandmother doused in gasoline and burning, the grey hair all afire. She saw her mother’s legs pulled apart by the machinery and the barrel of the gun pushed up into her mother’s womb and then the gun was fired.
She ran, ran like a woman, heavy-footed, her breasts jouncing with each step, her breath in gasps, ran to the narrow way and down, down into the dark. She did not pay the boatman, but commanded him, “Row!” In silence he obeyed her. The dog cowered down. She ran the long ways, the dark stairs, heavily, to the house, the courthouse, the palace of precious stones under the stone sky.
The anterooms and waiting rooms were full as always of shadows, fuller than ever before. They parted, making way for her.
Her husband, her father’s brother, sat on his throne holding court, judging all who came to him, and all came to him.
“Your mother is dead,” she said. “Your sister is dead. They have killed Earth and Time. What is there left, my lord?”
“Money,” her husband said.
The seat of judgment was solid gold, the pillars were silver, the pavements were diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and the walls were papered with thousand-dollar bills.
“I divorce you, King of Dung,” she said.
Again she said, “I divorce you, King of Dung.”
Once more she said, “King of Dung, I divorce you.”
As she spoke the palace dwindled into a pile of excrement, and the dark judge was a beetle that ran about among the turds.
She went up then, not looking back.
When she came to the river, great black waves beat against the beaches. The dog howled. The boatman ferrying souls across tried to turn back to the far shore, but his boat spun round, capsized, and sank. The souls of the dead swam off in the black water like minnows, glimmering.
She plunged into the river. She swam the water of darkness. She let the current bear her, riding the waves, borne to the mouth of the river where the dark waters broadened to the breakers across the bar.
The sun was going down towards the sea, laying a path of light across the waves.
Wrecked on the sand of the sea-beach lay the salt chariot, the sparkling wheels broken. The bones of the white horses were scattered there. Dead seaweed like white hair lay on the stones.
She lay down on the sand among bones of seabirds and bits of broken plastic and poisoned fish in the scum of black oil. She lay down and the tide came in across the bar. The waves broke on her body and her body broke in the waves. She became foam. She was the foam that is water and air, that is not there and is there, that is all.
She got up, the woman of foam, and went across the beach and up into the dark hills. She went home to the house, where her child waited for her in the kitchen. She saw the light of the windows shine across the darkening land. Who is it that lights the light? Whose child are you, who is your child? Whose story will be told?
WE HAVE THE SAME NAME, I said.
THE MATTER
OF
SEGGRI
The first recorded contact with Seggri was in year 242 of Hainish Cycle 93. A Wandership six generations out from Iao (4-Taurus) came down on the planet, and the captain entered this report in his ship’s log.
Captain Aolao-olao’s Report
WE HAVE SPENT NEAR FORTY days on this world they call Se-ri or Ye-ha-ri, well entertained, and leave with as good an estimation of the natives as is consonant with their unregenerate state. They live in fine great buildings they call
castles, with large parks all about. Outside the walls of the parks lie well-tilled fields and abundant orchards, reclaimed by diligence from the parched and arid desert of stone that makes up the greatest part of the land. Their women live in villages and towns huddled outside the walls. All the common work of farm and mill is performed by the women, of whom there is a vast superabundance. They are ordinary drudges, living in towns which belong to the lords of the castle. They live amongst the cattle and brute animals of all kinds, who are permitted into the houses, some of which are of fair size. These women go about drably clothed, always in groups and bands. They are never allowed within the walls of the park, leaving the food and necessaries with which they provide the men at the outer gate of the castle. They evinced great fear and distrust of us. A few of my men following some girls on the road, women rushed from the town like a pack of wild beasts, so that the men thought it best to return forthwith to the castle. Our hosts advised us that it were best for us to keep away from their towns, which we did.
The men go freely about their great parks, playing at one sport or another. At night they go to certain houses which they own in the town, where they may have their pick among the women and satisfy their lust upon them as they will. The women pay them, we were told, in their money, which is copper, for a night of pleasure, and pay them yet more if they get a child on them. Their nights thus are spent in carnal satisfaction as often as they desire, and their days in a diversity of sports and games, notably a kind of wrestling, in which they throw each other through the air so that we marveled that they seemed never to take hurt, but rose up and returned to the combat with wonderful dexterity of hand and foot. Also they fence with blunt swords, and combat with long light sticks. Also they play a game with balls on a great field, using the arms to catch or throw the ball and the legs to kick the ball and trip or catch or kick the men of the other team, so that many are bruised and lamed in the passion of the sport, which was very fine to see, the teams in their contrasted garments of bright colors much gauded out with gold and finery seething now this way, now that, up and down the field in a mass, from which the balls were flung up and caught by runners breaking free of the struggling crowd and fleeting towards the one or the other goal with all the rest in hot pursuit. There is a “battlefield” as they call it of this game lying without the walls of the castle park, near to the town, so that the women may come watch and cheer, which they do heartily, calling out the names of favorite players and urging them with many uncouth cries to victory.
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