“Oh sure.”
“You are. You might actually make a good boss of that thing. The Foundation. A Pisces with your planets. If you wanted to do it.”
“I don’t.”
“Then who will?”
“Una Knox,” said Rosie.
Val shook her head, and the two women exchanged a glance like a handshake, complicit in that game of Boney’s, if only because they had both been fooled, for a moment at least. And yet—no soul anywhere knew this, not even Boney’s that now stood just beyond Death’s threshold, and so could or should have known—it was only these two, Val and Rosie, who could free Boney from Una’s thrall, if he were ever to be freed, which on that night was not certain. Val, the daughter he was unwilling to own up to, whose forgiveness he had not accepted; and Rosie, on whom he had laid an impossible and unrefusable task, heavy as a spell. They couldn’t know that the duty or privilege of freeing their dead ancestor was theirs; nor did they know how to accomplish it. If they had known, they might have chosen not to do it.
We act on earth as best we can, and do what it seems we must or ought to do; and yet by so doing we sometimes bring about redemptions—and defeats, too—that we never know of, in spheres we cannot perceive. It’s only because of the rebounding geometries of the rays, the ceaseless rays whose intersections link the lives of all the worlds. Maybe those who are freed or foiled by our actions know what we’ve done, but most of the time we here do not; it’s only a few of us who ever guess it’s possible at all, and soon enough it no longer is.
12
At evening that day Rose called Pierce from the Sandbox: called before coming (she said) to make sure that he was home; had stopped there (she didn’t say, but he would guess) to get courage; he heard dimly the sounds of Happy Hour proceeding in the background, as he had heard them in whatever bar it was that Axel had called him from. She asked if it was okay to visit. Of course it was okay. So once again she came to the little house by the river; Pierce came out, a drink of his own in hand, and they stood together in the night.
“Your car’s fixed,” he said in some surprise. It lay up on the rise beyond the bungalow, canted slightly in the grass as though grazing there beside his own Steed.
“Yes. For a while now. It was fixed the last time I was here, Pierce.”
“Not possible. I would have noticed.”
“Well I would have thought so, but.”
“I thought it couldn’t be fixed.”
She shrugged, smiled. “Can I come in?”
“Actually,” he said, “I was going up to the Winterhalters’. I promised that once a week or so I’d check things out. I haven’t yet.” He drank. “You can come.”
“Oooh.”
He put down his drink on the seat of a backless chair that had always stood on his porch; he shook the keys in his pocket to be sure he had them. Then they proceeded up the long rise past the cars toward the house.
“The return to the chateau,” Pierce said. It was a French Renaissance house in a 1920s stucco version, cheerful by day, not at night. He took her hand. He remembered how in Kentucky once—in the year he started a forest fire by mistake—he had dreamed that he and his whole family had died and been consigned to Purgatory, which was a burnt-over hillside where they all walked warily together, wondering from which direction the punishments would come.
“That was a kind of mean letter you wrote,” she said. “I mean it started out nice. But it didn’t end very nice.”
They passed by the black oblong of the pool and its fittings; there the path to the house began.
“You know,” she said, “one of the hardest parts of this for me, doing this, was what you’d think of it. How you’d react.”
He said nothing.
“Like when you said, ‘If God walks into your life you can just walk right out of mine.’ That made it hard.”
He didn’t remember or believe that he had said this. Maybe he had. He marvelled at his tough-mindedness.
“You know what I think, Moffett? I think you are getting so angry at this not because of me or religion or the Powerhouse but for another reason.”
He waited to hear what this was, or if she would say, or leave it to him to guess it: for he thought it likely, he thought it certain even, that there was another reason, and he didn’t know what it was.
“I think,” she said, “that you wanted to break up, you were tired of this or whatever, and just needed a good excuse; and so now you can tell all your smart friends, Oh Rose joined some freaky Christian cult so of course I had to drop her.”
So bizarrely wrong was this that a sort of warning light installed deep in Pierce’s consciousness lit up: something has been woefully or hilariously misunderstood, by me or another, and if by another then probably also by me. Then it went out, and Pierce’s awareness defaulted to the sensations that her hand and her voice had started in him, a boiling or seething of the blood, fight or flight.
“No,” he said, “no. No no. That’s untrue. Completely untrue.”
“Well.”
“What smart friends? What smart friends do I have that I need to tell these stories to?”
She withdrew her hand, and closed her arms around herself. They crossed the wide flagged veranda, past the French windows, around the groups of globular shrubs clipped in cock-and-balls shapes, to the little kitchen door to which he had the key; he let them in.
“Mice,” she said. They stood a while and listened to the small sounds, which might be field mice who had retreated to the abandoned interior from the cold fields; maybe rats. Or the wind too. The kitchen was a big old-fashioned one, a long scarred table down the middle over which hung sinister utensils on an iron rack. Rose took Pierce’s arm as they walked on through.
“What are you supposed to do?”
“Just look out for things. I could actually move in if I wanted to. No one the wiser.”
“Really?”
“I could.”
The big rooms reminded Pierce of Arcady, or even of Kraft’s house, the same air of aged-bachelor neglect, of having been last decorated and furnished some years ago and then ignored. He had never seen Mrs. Winterhalter. Maybe she was gaga, or an invalid.
“A piano,” Rose said.
It was a baby grand, neat oxymoron; glossy black, closed, used mostly maybe to hold photographs in silver frames. Rose sat on the bench, and lifted the cover.
“You play?”
She began tentatively, softly, putting forth notes like suggestions and withdrawing the wrong ones. Sheep may safely graze. She grew more confident. Her downcast black-lashed eyes and the fall of her hair, one leg tucked beneath her, foot shod in a girlish loafer; her concentration, the simple compassion of the music, made more so by her errors: he began to tremble. Bach was a Christian. Believed in eternal damnation, feared it no doubt, knew that Jews and the unbaptized were in for it; didn’t really think much about it, though, maybe; the tremendous numbers of them, the billions, not weighing with him (this must be common) against God’s goodness to him and his flock of children, and why maybe should they? Why did he, Pierce, seem to himself to have come upon a shocking secret about Bach and all Bach’s fellow churchgoers, weren’t the permanent human facts of fear and gladness, of being lost and found, all that were really being expressed here, all that mattered, since after all no souls were really being tormented anywhere anyway?
“When I was a kid I took lessons from the organist of our church,” Rose said. “A lot of us did. It was I guess our way of supporting her. She was a funny woman. I mostly learned hymns. Bach.”
“Handy,” Pierce said, “I guess, now.”
“Oh we don’t have Bach,” she said. She laced her fingers together and like a virtuoso cracked her knuckles. “He wasn’t a Christian, so.”
“Bach not a Christian? Bach?”
“Well according to them. We have our own stuff. Modern. Actually it’s sort of poor, frankly. I could do without it.” She smiled, as though amused by this, by them, a
nd Pierce logged this, her first animadversion. She played again: Wachet auf. Pierce thought: I believe in the resurrection of the dead, the awakening of those who sleep, I do, but only before the grave, not after it; after it all hopes are cancelled, all fears too. Rose thought: Why did I once come here, by the river, I once did but why; why do I know I have heard this music here before? Why did I sleep then, was it just so I could wake? Am I really, really awake at last?
The rest of the house was like the main rooms, fully furnished without intimacy; they walked through it cautiously and talked of what could or might be done in these rooms, in these two broad beds in separate bedchambers. Last they came to the library or study, turned on a single green-glass-shaded lamp, and both noticed at once a peculiarity. The walls and their moldings and panels and coves, the ceiling too, were black.
“Black,” she said. “What for?”
He came up behind her as she stood pondering, and embraced her. “So listen,” he said.
“What. No. No no. It’s too.”
“Come sit,” he said. “This has always been my favorite room. The windows are double glass; the doors are thick. Do you know why?”
“Pierce,” she said, a warning, a negative.
“Rose,” he said. “Come sit.”
He sat himself, slowly, on a wide deep sofa, and stroked its cold leather; prop for a movie he might make.
“What if I don’t want to?” she said, crossing her arms before her.
“Take off your coat,” he said. “It’s really warm, don’t you think? They want it kept high. The old man was terrified the pipes might freeze.”
She stood a while, and then, as though it were her own idea, took off the coat and sat carefully beside him, knees tight together.
“It’s not warm,” she said smiling.
“It’ll get warmer.”
“It won’t.”
He looked at her a long time, at her imp’s face: one he knew. “All right,” he said. “Now …”
“No,” she said, plainly. “Huh-uh.” She still smiled.
“Rose.”
“You wanna fight?” she said, and held a fist up to his chin. He took her wrist in his big hand.
“Fight,” he said. “I don’t think you want to.” She did want to. She grabbed for his chin with her other hand and Pierce took it as well, fighting for it as for a writhing snake.
“I can get out of this,” she said. “I’m stronger than you think. I was always stronger than my brother.”
“You aren’t stronger than I think,” Pierce said. “You are exactly as strong.” She resisted his grip on her, but couldn’t move him, either forward or back.
“My strength is as the strength of ten,” he said, having to exert more force, an unexpected amount. “Because my. Heart. Is pure.”
She nearly broke his grip, and to keep her he wrenched her arm behind her and turned her, face down, on the couch. He inhaled its mildew. He remembered his childhood in Kentucky, how his older cousin Joe Boyd had liked to induce him to fight; how it had felt to be beneath him, Joe Boyd holding his head to the floor. Say uncle. The grip of him, unbreakable, an iron grip exactly.
“Okay,” Rose said, but not in assent, meaning instead Okay you’ve got the better of me momentarily but I’m thinking of a way out; and she twisted forcibly and suddenly against his weight, and did manage to turn halfway around before he locked her tight again. She laughed lightly. Her long body lay half-on, half-off the couch, her clothes disordered. His face burned, the familiar flush of a fight; he seemed to be her brother, one of those boys who wrestle girls.
“I think that’s enough, Rose,” he said, the Soft Voice. “I think.”
But she made another effort, and by a combination of force and fraud, nearly got away; trying to keep her he fell from the couch to his knees, but before she had slipped from him entirely he had clambered up roaring, and as one beast they stumbled over the floor. Her hip smacked an end table, and a brass lamp toppled as she cried out. He brought her down onto the dusty carpet.
“Now Rose I think,” he said. “I think.”
“No,” she said. She was pinned by his bulk, his hot cheek was on hers, his arm around her and beneath her chin. With his other hand he began to pull up her skirt.
“No,” she said again.
“Rose,” he said. “Now we’re going to find out who’s stronger. Aren’t we. Who’s really finally stronger. We have to. Isn’t that right.”
This was the moment, always, that he feared most, the moment that she needed most, when she resisted him with all her might and they contested and he won. Her strength was terrible: not that he couldn’t hold her, but he could feel how little able he would be to force her if she didn’t submit, who he would have to become in order to force her. At school once a coach had said of Pierce, The trouble with Moffett is he knows his own strength. Afraid of it, sure he could break bones if he used it to the fullest. I’m a lover not a fighter he had told her once, not in bed though. And now he had to cross that burning bridge once more.
“Rose. Don’t you agree.”
She was silent, breathing hard. He pulled open his pants (not easy with one hand and the two of them pressed so close together) and freed his penis, and with his lips laid gently against her cheek and eyes closed he released from his heart just enough tenderness to fill and raise it. Rose, he whispered, Rose now god damn it. He yanked at her underpants. She had not yet said Yes. He could see, turned up toward him, her eye, small living and hating, like a being caught within her looking out. With his knee he parted her. Uncertain he could enter her—he did not understand how real rapists and sadists ever managed this—he tried to lift her from beneath; and with a sudden cry and a twist she was free. Seeing her face Pierce knew, as though tumbling from a height, that he had misread her.
“No,” she said. “I said no.”
“Rose.”
“Just don’t.” She didn’t stand, wouldn’t pull down her skirt, nor would she stop looking at him in awful reproach. He could almost see her heart beating in her breast.
“Say it then,” he said. “Say it.”
She said nothing. For an instant he became convinced that he was not to stop, that he was to push through this too and find her on the far side, gratified, glad. I love you. It was when he had not ceased that she had said that, and if it was not spoken to him, still it was he who had driven her to say it.
“All right,” he said, and opened and flexed his big hands. “All right, Rose.”
A bad angel on his left told him to be brave, hadn’t he done worse before, hadn’t he left marks, lasting ones, they had gloated over them together, aroused, proud of each other. A good angel at his right told him he was about to lose her forever and must beg her forgiveness now with every real tenderness he knew. The bad angel kicked and screamed: no no no you’ll lose her forever that way, this is the last test, take it.
He lowered his hands.
“You hurt me,” she said. “You really hurt me.”
“You knew what to say to stop me,” he said. “You didn’t say it.”
“What.”
“‘I tell you three times.’ You didn’t say it.”
“You knew I meant it,” she said. “You knew.”
“No.”
“You knew. You wouldn’t stop it.” She brushed tears from her cheeks. She looked nine years old, or a hundred. “You wanted to hurt me. I think you’re really angry at me. I know you are.”
“No. No I’m not.” He was not to apologize, that would be the end; if he apologized something would instantly shatter, the walls would dissolve and he would find himself alone naked on a cold hillside. Also if he did not apologize immediately. He moved to her to touch her, to pull her skirt down; she put out a policeman’s hand to stop him.
“‘I tell you three times,’” he said. “You agreed.”
It was a test, but not of his nerve; it was a test of his unwillingness to hurt her, of his ability to tell when he had, or would, no clues per
mitted, no secret signs, only his own clouded senses; punishment for failure being. Being this. He had ceased to breathe, his chest rising and falling but no air seeming to enter him. He thought: this is the moment that will last forever, this the stasis I begged for.
Pierce might at that moment have perceived (but actually could not have perceived, or recognized, except in the form of his own unreasoning guilt and longing) the beings of the time to come, who were looking in upon him with their receiving eyes, looking into the past from which they themselves would by then be freed, or banished; waiting, with anxious sympathy, or impatience, or contempt, for Pierce to get it at last, to do what he was supposed to do, move the big hand his one allotted notch to help it pass the little hand, but which he could not do: not right then, not right there.
So somehow the moment was got past without it, he would later be able to tell himself how only in a general way (somehow we got past that moment) and have a clear memory only that they came back across the lawn, a sliver moon having arisen, and spent a long time in his bed, but only fooling with a book of ancient word games he had found in Kraft’s house (Q: What is it that I give to others daily and yet never part with?) until—late at night, the lights out—he made her lie still, and lowered his head between her legs (this was the one act she had always resisted, he could imagine why) and fed himself there, fed till after a long time she held on to his ears and came. He clambered up her, his face wet as a baby’s, and they fucked moaning wordlessly and holding each other tight in the dark.
Then it was day again, she was going again, her little car already roused and muttering; a cold day, dark at nine in the morning and a searching wind blowing.
“I love you,” he said. What had so recently been inconceivable to say aloud was now almost the only thing left he could say with conviction. He waited.
“Pierce,” she said. “That’s real hard for me. You know, saying.”
She had tied a figured wool scarf over her hair, knotted under her chin like a babushka, he touched it and her cheek with grievous tenderness. Then he took her cheeks in both his hands and made her look at him.