“Anyway,” he said. “I’ve moved into an apartment.”
She was silent.
“It was getting ridiculous living in that house as it was. Every brick—every corner of it, every hall and window and angle, even with all the trophies and the pictures down, it all reminded me of—kept calling everything up.”
She felt something now that went beyond the sympathy she had felt for him since Buddy’s death, or even the gratitude she had harbored during her last days in Oxford. Something about the sharp curve of his eyebrows rendered him present in a new way, as if an aspect of his being had unexpectedly been laid bare for her, and she was seeing the man alone, isolated from everything she had known about him or thought about him. She came close to reaching across the table to offer him her hand.
She said, “When I was a little girl, I used to say a prayer at night. ‘Bless everyone I’ve laid eyes on, and everyone they’ve laid eyes on.’ I don’t even know where I got it, or learned it. But I used to say it every night. And then when I was fourteen, the night of my fourteenth birthday, something happened—a man who was supposed to be responsible for me put his hands on me in a way I knew was wrong, and he went all to pieces, and for me things—the world—went to pieces. And I couldn’t say that prayer anymore. It had no meaning, you know. But I still like it, the sound of it. I like it more every day, these days.”
“Say it again?” he said.
She repeated it. Then said, “It’s silly, I know.”
“It’s wonderful, Lily. And if you think about it, it’s what we pray for that says the most about us. I think of my mother praying for a spade in a damn bridge game, you know?”
She laughed. And then they were both laughing.
“Dom and Violet and Manny will all be home soon,” she said. “Why don’t you stay?”
“I really have to get back,” he said. He started to say something else, but then stopped. His features drew into a discouraged frown.
“Nick,” she said, “what is it?”
“Hey, hell—nothing.”
“I’d like to see you again,” she told him.
He shifted in the chair, looking beyond her for a second, and then bringing his gaze directly on her. “Well, we’ll do that—stay in touch. Sure.” He held both hands out, a gesture of openness. “I’m gonna read the play.”
“Nick,” she said.
“I don’t want you to think—” He halted. “I didn’t come down here to take advantage of you.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
He leaned slightly toward her. “Look. I know we’re both—we’ve both been through it. And—but I want to be truthful with you. I’d be lying to you if I said I haven’t had you on my mind.”
“I’ve been thinking about you, too,” Lily said.
He stood, and she stood, too. For what seemed a paralyzingly long time neither of them moved. At last he strode down the long hall. His coat was hanging on the coat tree there, and he put it on. She had followed him. When he turned, he said, “I’d still like to see you.” And his soft smile contained something of the old self-mockery. “Next time I’m in the neighborhood.”
“Oh, the play,” Lily said. “Wait here.” She turned and headed up the stairs, into her room, where she checked on Mary. Still sleeping, one hand up by her mouth with the thumb cupped into the fist. The pages were on the nightstand. She collected them, looked at Mary once more, and then hurried back to the stairs. It came to her that she wanted Nick to see Mary. So she stopped at the landing, turned, and went back up to the room. She put the play in the drawer of the nightstand, and called downstairs.
“Come up and see Mary.”
“Oh, the baby. Sure.”
He came up to the room, and they stood over the crib. “Beautiful,” he said.
She went to the nightstand and opened the drawer, feeling how absurd this little charade had been. Handing him the pages, she said, “I just thought—you might—I wanted you to see her.”
“She’s beautiful,” he murmured.
They both stood there.
“How’s Dom doing with it?”
She hesitated. “It’s—it was a little tough at first. But he’s great with her now.”
“Must’ve been strange, telling him.”
“You could say that.” She laughed.
“So you’re a family.”
“A household, Aunt Violet calls it.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
She touched his sleeve. “Then stay. They’ll be home in a little while.”
“I really can’t.”
There seemed nothing in the world left to say. Then he held up the play and said, “When I’ve read this, I’ll come down and I’ll see them then.”
Slowly, they left the room, and went down the stairs to the door, Nick leading the way. At the door he paused again, hand on the knob.
“I do want to see you,” Lily said.
He stepped closer and put his arms around her, and she kissed his cheek. He held her quite tight, the side of his face against hers. She smelled the rain in his hair and felt the rough, damp cloth of his coat. After a moment he backed away. She looked at him, feeling the tears come.
“Sometime when it’s not about them,” he said.
“I don’t care about it, Nick.”
“I know.” He reached up and took the tear from her cheek with a soft touch of his thumb. “I’ll come see you again. Soon.”
“Promise?” she said.
He nodded, his expression nearly solemn. Opening the door, he stepped out on the stoop. “Don’t go anywhere I can’t find you.”
He went down the stoop and along the sidewalk to his car. She didn’t realize until he had driven down the street and turned, and gone out of sight, that the rain had stopped. There was just a smoky haze on the city now. Dominic and Violet and Manny would be home soon, the other members of this household, this family. She did not know what would happen with Nick, or where anything would be in a month, a year, two years, ten years. She didn’t know what the outcome of the finished play would be, and for now, she didn’t want to think about it. She felt ready for anything—no, she felt hopeful about it, whatever it might be.
She sat by the window looking out on the street. Nothing to do just now, nothing requiring her attention. How wonderful it would be to stitch together a real family. She thought of Buddy Galatierre, who had always behaved as if he had stumbled onto happiness. Manny and Violet would be home soon, as would Dominic, her friend, who was turning out to be a father. She would be cheerful with him when he arrived; she would let him see how glad she was of him.
A little later, she lifted herself from the chair, realizing that she was physically quite tired, her legs aching, her hips sore. She thought of her spiritual companion of the past eight years, saw her on a pitching, yawing troop ship in the South Atlantic Ocean, a public figure in the brown uniform of an army nurse, treating sick sailors and soldiers, a still-young woman in the middle of heartbreak and exhaustion and all the physical hardships, far from anything she might call home, concentrating her attentions and her gifts on these boys, many of whom were already dying. Mary had gone out in the world and made her way, asking no special favors, requiring only that she be allowed to proceed as she wished; she had never been more nor less than herself. Taking a book from the table before her, Lily opened to Mary’s picture, looked into the beautiful dark eyes, so matter-of-factly courageous. Another human soul is also a wilderness, and the exploration of that requires courage, too. It was as though she could hear Mary saying it, and in that moment, there was a stirring upstairs. Lily made her way there, climbing the long staircase, legs aching almost pleasantly, to her room in this house, where Mary Kingsley’s namesake had awakened, and was standing in her crib, singing.
—Broad Run, Virginia, 1997–2002
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I wanted in particular to write about friendship, and about the affections we form for those who have gone before us. Some of
what Mary Kingsley is known to have done is here, all of it in a form that is transmuted by fancy—Keats’s deceiving elf. Moreover, and most important, it should be noted that I imagined a very large number of things for which there is no record. For instance, Mary’s letters to an imagined someone in the future, her modern “correspondent,” are the product of my imagination, as are many of the people Mary comes into contact with. Even those whose names come down to us from the time are, of course, imagined as they appear here. The fact is, I have presumed upon Mary Kingsley with the liberty of the novelist, but with great respect and affection for her, along with the growing admiration one experiences when examining her extraordinary life, and her uncanny ability to form lasting friendships while remaining a mystery to everyone. More than anything, of course, I wanted to tell a good story. Those who wish to read about the factual and historical Mary Kingsley should consult Katherine Frank’s beautifully written A Voyager Out, or Cecil Howard’s Mary Kingsley. There is also The Life of Mary Kingsley, by Stephen Gwynn, who knew her; and Kathleen Wallace’s novel This Is Your Home. Or you might read Mary’s own Travels in West Africa, and West African Studies, and finally Catherine Alexander’s One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley. These books were an immense help to me in the construction of the novel, and I hereby acknowledge my debt to all of them.
—RB
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Along with having large sections of the work read to her while I was composing the novel, Karen printed it out and read it, and was, as always, indispensable as a reader, friend, advisor, editor, and loving accomplice. The same goes for my eldest daughter, Emily Chiles, my son Paul, and his companion Merrill Feitell, who read portions of the book in manuscript. Also, I want to thank George and Susan Garrett for too many things to list, including strength, and of course the other dear friends who encouraged and stood with me during this arduous labor, and the months of delay: Cary and Karen Kimble, Allen and Donny Wier, Charles and Martha Baxter, Thomas Mallon, Andrea Barrett, Mary Lee Settle, Alan Shapiro, Allan Gurganus, Harriet Wasserman, and Michelle Field. I am grateful to Dan Conaway for his labor and his great insight in the editing of an enormous manuscript, which he inherited.
The writer Nolde Alexius provided important details about New Orleans and Mardi Gras for me. I have incorporated them almost as she gave them to me. I am very grateful for her help. Two other writers, Tania Nyman and Richard Ford, at different times, took me on walking tours of the Quarter, as did Ms. Alexius and her brother Fritz. I send them all John Berryman’s lovely poem/prayer: “Lord, bless everyone in the world, especially some, thou knowest whom.”
RB
Broad Run, Virginia
December 2001
About the Author
RICHARD BAUSCH has received numerous awards and commendations, including the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Esquire, Best American Short Stories, and many other publications. He lives with his wife, Karen, and their five children in Virginia.
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Praise for Hello to the Cannibals
“[A] wise, brilliant, expansive novel about two very different women—explorers both—whose parallel lives intersect in beautiful and unexpected ways. Hello to the Cannibals is a fiercely original love story as big as the world.”
—Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls
“A tour de force.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Authentic and utterly believable…. Bausch successfully intersects two lives and two stories that, it seems, couldn’t be further apart in Hello to the Cannibals, his intriguing new novel that combines fact with fiction.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“This masterful creation, utterly absorbing in the fashion of the best nineteenth-century novels, rewards us tenfold for our patience and full attention. As he intertwines the stories of two amazing women and their endeavors, Richard Bausch illuminates not only Mary Kingsley but the meaning—the vitality, the courage, the capacity for friendship—of her remarkable life. Reading this is pure delight.”
—Andrea Barrett, author of Voyage of the Narwhal and the National Book Award–winning Ship Fever
“Richard Bausch’s novels are among the best being written in America today.”
—Robert Stone
“Ambitious not only in its historical and geographical sweep but also in the author’s choice to confine himself, with admirable conviction and credibility, to the consciousness of two women…. Bausch writes some of the most gripping dialogue [in American letters]…. Beautifully balanced between comedy and hopelessness.”
—New York Times Book Review
“No writer has a finer insight into the delicate nuances of the human heart than Richard Bausch. And now, miraculously, he has found a way to give his most subtle wisdom a thrillingly epic sweep. Hello to the Cannibals is a magnificent and moving book. It is, in a word, a masterpiece.”
—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
“A novel that is both epic and personal.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ALSO BY RICHARD BAUSCH
Real Presence (1980)
Take Me Back (1981)
The Last Good Time (1984)
Spirits, and Other Stories (1987)
Mr. Field’s Daughter (1989)
The Fireman’s Wife, and Other Stories (1990)
Violence (1992)
Rebel Powers (1993)
Rare & Endangered Species: Stories and a Novella (1994)
Selected Stories of Richard Bausch (The Modern Library, 1996)
Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea (1996)
In the Night Season (1998)
Someone to Watch Over Me: Stories (1999)
The Stories of Richard Bausch (2003)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HELLO TO THE CANNIBALS. Copyright © 2002 by Richard Bausch. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © APRIL 2008 ISBN: 9780061882081
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