The Pagan House

by David Flusfeder

  Their New York days passed in a sottishness of the senses; they seldom ventured out, their hotel-room curtains drawn against the traffic on Second Avenue. Much of the time they were naked, the Captain’s continuing campaign against shame and bashfulness; his body was lightly covered with copper-coloured hair, his chest and right thigh were scarred from a shipping accident in his youth, his shoulders were freckled, his physique was muscular. When she was tracing the lineaments of his body with her hands, with her pilgrim’s kiss, she was happy. As the days went by, less and less was she able to look at his face, the Captain’s sharp, proud green eyes. She would press a finger to his mouth when he tried to speak. His orator-spirit had to be satisfied by ventures into mission halls and debating chapels.

  It is late morning, full summer; the frogs are singing by the river. George Pagan in his night-clothes sits at the table, blind to the unconsoling Bible before him. Doltish, self-abashed, he sits unmoving, unaware, until dimly he perceives the sound of horse hoofs. He does not get visitors. Occasionally an Onyataka woman comes sullenly begging to the back door, to whom he will donate a parcel of his and Jess’s surplus turnips. Beggars do not come on horseback. George waits for the sound of the hoofs to pass and diminish in the distance. They do not diminish. They get louder, and stop. A rider dismounts in the yard. A horse is tethered. For an awful, futile moment, George’s heart lifts. It is Mary, returned, his idol, his wife, having cut short her mission to Greencastle. This is what he has been waiting for; she is whom he sits for, drowsily vigilant, perpetually waiting. Is it so unlikely that she might miss him almost as painfully as he misses her?

  Urgently, George rushes to the bedroom, rips off his nightshirt, finds his trousers, an almost clean shirt, his boots, struggles into them, hops, runs, stockingless, folding his shirt-cuffs, to the door.

  It is not Mary who stands without. It is John Prindle Stone, brushing off the dust of his journey, smiling, reaching out his hand.

  ‘Mr Stone.’

  ‘Mr Pagan.’

  John Prindle turns George’s handshake into a brotherly embrace. They have met twice before. The first occasion was after a public meeting in Vermont; the second was in Rondout, early in the Pagans’ stay here, a banquet of sorts attended by Perfectionists from Vermont and Brooklyn. It was at the latter event that Mr and Mrs Pagan made the decision to throw in their lot with Stone’s under-teacher, to make a sortie at Bible Communism, living in fellowship of possession and heart, without sin.

  ‘Captain Carter is not here,’ George says.

  ‘I am not here for Captain Carter.’

  John Prindle Stone’s aspect is stern, humorous, comradely, fatherly, angelic. He has large, capable fingers, like an engineer’s, which he strokes through his beard. George hopes he has not shown too much disappointment.

  ‘I had not been expecting guests. I have been solitary for some time and am not used to company. I hope you will excuse me. Things have been on the slide.’

  Mr Pagan bids Mr Stone sit at the parlour table. He brings in a pot of coffee and apologizes again for the house’s appearance, for his own. His hand, intending to smooth down his uncombed hair, knocks off his sleeping-cap instead. George laughs, as does John Prindle, who picks the cap off the floor as George’s laughter is drowned, inexorably, by his tears.

  When he manages to exert some order over his emotions or, rather, their outward manifestation, he again apologizes and conquers himself sufficiently to pour the coffee without spilling a drop, which, in a very small way, pleases him.

  ‘Where is Captain Carter?’ Mr Stone asks.

  ‘In Greencastle. He and my wife are missionaries to a new community there, as decreed by you, I understand.’

  Mr Stone brings out two letters. He passes them to George. The first is from a representative of the Greencastle community, a Mordecai Short, who complains of perpetual darkness. When, he asks, is the promised missionary to arrive, the dispenser of light?

  George’s understanding struggles with this.

  ‘The letter must have been sent shortly before their arrival.’

  Mr Stone passes George the second letter. It is from Chastity Green.

  A large angry script, full of underlinings and exclamation marks, tows George through the dry canals of jealousy and unrewarded labour (for the true reward of labour is love). Chastity Green declares her surprise at seeing Mrs Pagan and Captain Carter walk entwined into Union Square for a public meeting of Abolitionists: ‘Can this be so?! Mr Stone: Is this being done with your knowledge and permission? Is this the cargo that your liberty views carry? I cannot believe that!’ George, reading the letter for the third time, making sharp little grunts that at first he takes as a strange animal sound from outside—a wolverine, an injured bear—grips hold of the parlour table as his world topples down.

  There is no spurious sanctimony to John Prindle Stone. Were this Abram Carter, George would find his hand clasped, his eyes met by a look of bogus holiness, his ears thundered with dizzying biblical recital. John Prindle is brisk; and, being holy, he has no need to pretend to be so.

  ‘First we shall put this place in order. Are you to sit here for ever in your sleeping-cap, feeling sorry for yourself?’

  ‘Are you staying? I can make up a bed in, in Captain Carter’s room.’

  ‘That would be kind.’

  ‘How long can you stay?’

  ‘For as long as you need me.’

  George Pagan’s heart swells with gratitude. John Prindle is the most energetic, and the busiest, man George has met. He preaches, he writes, he publishes, he proselytizes, and loves. He is doorkeeper to the new dispensation.

  ‘How can you spare the time?’

  Abram Carter would respond with something along the lines of all time being eternal in the Lord. John Prindle instead searches for broom and mop. They clean the floors, they sweep the yard. When the house is returned to order, they sit in the kitchen and eat soup.

  ‘I had hoped to protect her. We had thought it our new Eden,’ George says, ‘and so it was. Together we enacted our own version of the Fall. Woman tempts, man justifies and conceals.’

  ‘We can begin again,’ John Prindle says. ‘The garden planted anew.’

  Silently, George shakes his head.

  ‘And where will you go? What will you do?’

  ‘Return to the city. Find a situation in a newspaper office or counting-room.’

  ‘And that will satisfy? I have a proposition to put to you. Our family is being driven out of Vermont. We are beginning again, up by Turkey Street. A believer has donated to us some land, where we will build our Mansion House. Join us and spend the winter with me in studying the Bible and waiting on the will of God.’

  This is more than he could have expected, the individual fellowship of John Prindle Stone, whose spirit and oratory illumine the dark pathways from New York to Boston to Philadelphia. George cannot comprehend the magnitude of this offer. There are congregations, besieged in dark places, starry lights in the empty American sky, that require John Prindle Stone. And yet he is offering to heap his authority and strength on the unworthy soul of George Pagan, so unworthy that George cannot keep from being reminded at this moment of the Bible-studying ministrations of Abram Carter, so unworthy that he cannot keep from wondering what thing unspoken lies behind the offer, what matter politic, or whether it is offered out of some guilt at what has been perpetrated here in his name.

  ‘I cannot accept such a benevolent offer.’

  ‘Do not misunderstand me. I am accustomed to use words to express rather than conceal my thoughts.’

  And bows his head. He has found, or, rather, been found by, a man of solid truth, who recognizes no politeness, no human grace or embellishment, however fashionable, except it be of a pure, sincere, truth-loving heart.

  ‘Yes,’ George says, like a drowning man reaching for a rope, a sailor on a sinking ship ready to make the plunge into unknown waters. ‘I should be glad to leave this place.’

  And
as he says this, he is not sure how sincere he is; he has grown used to the house, it suits his melancholy, but he is conscious only of the desire to please John Prindle Stone, and a need to tell him everything, to show him the wound he lives with, the ache in his ribs that corresponds to the absent shape of his wife.

  ‘Has it been so unbearable for you here?’

  He cannot answer. He weeps, and this time John Prindle moves to embrace him, and George shudders and spills against John Prindle Stone’s shoulder. He had not thought he contained such a reservoir of tears inside him. Giving himself up entirely, yielding his soul to John Prindle Stone, George yet marvels that he had contained so many unshed tears, and then he marvels too at his capacity to marvel while giving himself up so entirely, and so it spins, a doubling and quadrupling and octupling and so on, an infinite progression of split selves, marvelling and weeping and surrendering; and throughout it all John Prindle holds him close. So it stands: the lion with the lamb. The saint and the saved.

  Finally, miraculously, there are no more tears to shed. He has reached the bottom of the reservoir, tilled the depths of the ditch. George’s heart and throat are as dry as the land that he and Jess ploughed in their ordeal. He lifts his head from John Prindle’s damp shoulder. He is able to talk again. The word cracks in the desert of his throat.

  ‘Amen.’

  9

  On Tuesday mornings, Warren washed Fay’s hair. The first time he observed this ceremony, Edgar was wearing soccer shorts and socks. He stood uncertainly in the corridor outside the bathroom, feeling he was watching something entirely private, unable to pull himself away.

  Fay was kneeling on the floor, her head lowered over the bathtub. Warren crouching beside her poured water from a jug over Fay’s hair.

  ‘How’s the temperature?’

  ‘Perfect. Absolutely perfect,’ said Fay.

  Her eyes were closed. Her breathing was deep and gratified. Warren applied the shampoo and massaged her head before rinsing the shampoo away, paying special care to the brow and temples, which was where she suffered the worst of her headaches.

  ‘My face is still very prickly. So are my hands.’

  ‘We’ll speak to Newhouse about that but it looks just like a contact dermatitis to me. As if you’ve been handling something allergenic.’

  ‘You sound very familiar with this kind of thing. Does the other—’

  ‘Dr X had a lot of cases like this one. I’ll put in the conditioner now.’

  Dr X! No boy detective ever had a better clue. Edgar moved closer. He had not heard Warren interrupt Fay before, it shocked him, a new tone in their relationship of mistress and companion. She didn’t seem to take offence, which was maybe more sinister than if she had, and the slightest tilt of her head was acknowledgement that she was ready for the next stage. Warren rubbed in the conditioner, threading the lotion through the strands of her hair with his fingertips. He twisted the hot-water faucet further shut but it continued to drip.

  ‘I can hear that sound at night,’ Fay said.

  ‘I’ll have another go at fixing it,’ Warren said.

  ‘It’s another reason why I can’t get to sleep.’

  Warren rinsed the last of the conditioner from Fay’s hair. He rubbed her head with a towel roughly and fast, which made watching Edgar gasp. He waited for the violence of the action to crack her pale skull open, egglike. Somehow it survived, and Warren draped the towel around Fay’s shoulders, which seemed to be shedding the flesh around them. Her shoulder-blades protruded like the sharp stumps of wings.

  ‘Thank you Warren, that was very nice,’ said Fay in the tone, restored, of complacent mistress.

  ‘Should I give you a comb now?’ he said.

  ‘Please.’

  Edgar tiptoed away. He would have to put on the rest of his loathsome soccer uniform and visit Warren and Fay when they were involved in a less intimate activity.

  ‘Let’s see you.’

  ‘No,’ said Edgar.

  ‘Let’s see you.’

  ‘I look ridiculous. Where does this go? And this?’ Holding up a semi-circular plastic thing with a greyed foam pad inside and straps hanging down like spider legs, Edgar stepped into the kitchen.

  ‘You look very good,’ said his grandmother.

  ‘Sporty,’ said Warren.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fay.

  Warren’s expression was stern as if he was forcing himself to pay proper attention to this moment or just trying to keep himself from giggling.

  If his mother were here she would be tousling his hair until he made her stop. Then she would go away to find her camera, which would take an age, and force him to pose for her while she adjusted for the light and criticized the expression on his face. If his father were here, as he was meant to be, Edgar wouldn’t have to be doing this at all. How Edgar wished his father was here. The car waiting outside, the two guys together, talking about love or sport or gambling as the fat tyres of the Cadillac ate up freeway miles.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s what they call a cup,’ said Fay. ‘You wear it down your shorts and it’s a perfectly respectable piece of apparatus. Now, I suppose I ought to take a picture. Your mother would never forgive me if I didn’t.’

  ‘It’s what they call a box where I come from,’ said Warren.

  ‘That tells us something, doesn’t it, about the differences between our two cultures? But I couldn’t say what,’ said Fay.

  ‘I’m not going to wear it,’ said peevish Edgar.

  ‘Stand straight please young man,’ Fay said with mock severity while she snapped his photograph with an ancient Instamatic, which she carefully placed on the kitchen table and her energy fell away and she looked at Edgar and then at Warren as if she had no idea who they were.

  Edgar was the only person to arrive in his soccer clothes—everyone else carried a sports bag and went into the locker room to change—and he was noticeable for this and therefore risible, but Edgar preferred that to doing the locker-room thing. He had considered wearing his box outside his shorts because the resulting ridicule would have got all his humiliation over straight away and he wouldn’t have to come here ever again. Instead he wore his kit in its appropriate way and assumed an expression of wise indifference and a posture that was both casual and alert and which he hoped might imply barely contained power.

  He wore a red bib for the first part of the practice, during which he touched the ball six times: the first two were random kicks that went straight to the nearest opposing player, the third an aerial event that smacked into the back of his head. The fourth was so nearly the ignominious moment he had been expecting: his hand slapped a shot clear of his own goal but, despite the ferocious appeals of the opposing players, Coach Spiro was busy refereeing the A-game and didn’t notice. Edgar was praised by his goalie and slapped on the rear by a boy he nervously recognized as weaselly Ray from the pizza parlour. Most of the opposing players cursed him. One of their attackers, an olive-skinned girl who had black hair and a lazy eye and a blue Forza Italia! shirt and a weird kind of beauty, shook her head sadly at him. He watched her for a while and was impressed by what he saw. She ran very well and very straight with her hair lifting and falling like the flaps in airplane wings, and when she kicked the ball it went where she wanted it to go.

  The fifth time he touched the ball he kicked it hard to try to get rid of it and the ball ballooned off his sneaker—Edgar was one of the few here not in soccer boots—and over green-bibbed opponents and into the path of Ray, who was so surprised he fell over. Coach Spiro, red-faced, hard-breathing, ran up to Edgar. ‘Good play, Ed.’ And ran off back to the A-game, tersely berating Ray along the way. Edgar had received the coach’s benediction and even though the next time he tried it, the ball went sailing out of play, the coach was on the other pitch at the time, and Edgar had won, at least with Spiro, the reputation of a skilful long-pass specialist.

  At half-time Edgar and Ray, undeservedly, and the Forza Italia girl,
deservedly, were promoted into the A-game, whose star was Husky Marvin, who slammed in goals with apologetic power. Edgar was placed on the left wing and told to restrict his running to ‘the channels’, so, dutifully, he ran up and down the sideline in careful incongruity with the passage of the ball, hoping it would never come to him and it seldom did.

  Walking slowly home, he prayed that on the next day it might rain. He glumly inspected the sky, which was desolately blue and clear. Glumly he waved to Warren, who was standing in the porch of Guthrie’s house, returning a casserole dish while Guthrie stood with her arms crossed, as if she was blocking the way. Glumly he went up to the music room and listened to some of his father’s records and waited for the magic of music to dispel his mood, which, magically, it did.

  10

  If we walk in the light, as God is in the light, we have commu nism one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. (I John, 1:7)

  The Perfectionist Bugle, John Prindle Stone and George

  Pagan, editors, 1847

  Winter passes in chaste ecstasy. The donated land, which lies either side of Onyataka Creek, is paradisal, woods of beech and maple and white pine and silver birch, and a hundred acres of alluvial soil—a revelation of earth raised from the water, their new new Eden on which George Pagan and John Prindle Stone plant crops and the future.

  Their neighbours are bears and muskrats and racoons and mink, cardinals and bluebirds and nightjars, and further away the score or so of Onyataka Indians, who had previously held title to all this land but have been limited by government deed to their longhouse and surrounding reservation at Onyataka Castle where they subsist with a few head of cattle, their ears of corn, a desultory trade in pelts. A wooden shack, until recently an Indian habitation, becomes a horse barn into which George tethers blind Jess, a shelter for her to die in. George and John Prindle work the land, cut timber. They build themselves a winter cabin on the rise above the horse barn. Their land stretches out further than they can see, bounded by the train line to the east, the Indian reservation to the west, past the trading post at Turkey Street to the blue hills of the south, and Lake Onyataka to the north, to which, on a sabbath after their spring crops have been planted, George and John Prindle make a trek in the company of a local fur-trapper, Seth Newhouse.