“No,” Rachel protested. “I didn’t mean to say—”
“Say whatever you feel like saying,” Deborah said, her tone still distracted. “Take no notice of Mitchell.” She looked in Rachel’s direction, her gaze uncommitted. “He told me you were angry at him. I don’t blame you, frankly. He can be very controlling. He doesn’t get that from George, he gets it from Garrison. And Garrison gets it from Cadmus.” Rachel didn’t remark on any of this. “He said you had quite an argument.”
“It’s over with now,” Rachel said.
“I had to pry it out of him. But he knows better than to try and conceal anything from his mother.”
Several thoughts had come into Rachel’s head at the same time and were competing for attention. One, that if Deborah didn’t find it odd that her son was sharing bedroom conversation with her, then she was indeed just as strange as the rest of the family. Two, that Mitchell wasn’t to be trusted to keep their intimate business to himself. And three, that she would hereafter take her mother-in-law at her word, and say whatever the hell came into her head, however unpalatable it sounded. They were stuck with her now. She was going to give the Geary clan a child. That conferred power upon her.
Margie put it best, in fact, when she remarked that “the kid’s going to give you something to bargain with.” This was a grim vision of things, to be sure, but by now all of Rachel’s romantic delusions were in retreat. If the child she was carrying was a necessary part of getting her way, then so be it.
In late January, on one of those crystalline days that make even the most arctic of New York winters bearable, Mitchell came to the apartment at noon and told Rachel he wanted to show her something; would she come with him? Right now? she asked him. Yes, he said, right now.
The traffic was abnormally snarled, even for New York. The leaden sky had begun to shed snow; a blizzard was promised within hours. It reminded her of that first afternoon, in Boston. Snow on the sidewalk, and a prince at the door. It seemed so very long ago.
Their destination was Fifth Avenue, at 81st: a tower of condominiums which she knew by reputation only.
“I bought you something,” Mitchell said, as they stepped into the elevator. “I think you should have a place you can call your own. Somewhere you can shut out all the Gearys.” He smiled. “Except me, of course.”
His gift awaited them at the top of the tower: the penthouse duplex. It had been exquisitely appointed, the walls hung with modern masters, the furniture chic, but comfortable.
“There are four bedrooms, six bathrooms, and of course . . . he led her to the window “ . . . the best view in America.”
“Oh my Lord,” was all Rachel could say.
“Do you like it?”
How could she not? It was beautiful; perfection. She couldn’t imagine what it had cost to create luxury on such a scale.
“It’s all yours, honey,” Mitchell said. “I mean, literally yours. The apartment, everything it contains, it’s all in your name.” He came over, and stood behind her, looking out over the snow-brightened rectangle of Central Park. “I know it’s hard for you sometimes, living in the middle of this fucking dynasty. It’s hard for me, so God knows what it’s like for you.” He put his arms around her from behind, his palms laid against her swelling belly. “I want you to have your own little queendom up here. If you don’t like the pictures on the walls, sell ’em. I tried to choose things I thought you’d like, but if you don’t, sell them and get something you do like. I put a couple of million dollars in a separate bank account for you, to change whatever you want to change. Put in a pool table. Or a screening room. Whatever you want. You call the shots here.” He put his mouth close to her ear. “Of course, I hope you’ll let me have a key, so I can come in and play sometimes.” There was a gravelly tone to his voice, and his hips were moving gently but insistently against her backside. “Hey, honey?”
“Yes?”
“Can I come in and play?”
“You need to ask?’ she said, turning in his arms so that she faced him. “Of course you can play.”
“Even in your delicate condition?”
“I’m not delicate,” she said, pressing against him. “I’m feeling fine. Better than fine.” She kissed him. “This is an amazing place.”
“You’re amazing,” he said, returning her kiss. “The more I know you, the more I fall in love with you. I’m not very good at telling you that. You throw me off my stride. I’m supposed to be Mr. Cool, but when I’m with you, I get stupid, like a kid.” He put his mouth against her face. “A very, very, very horny kid.”
She didn’t need to be told; he was so hard against her. And his pale face was flushed, and his neck blotchy. “Can I put it in you?” he said.
That was always his overture; can I put it in you? When she’d been angry with him, and thought of this phrase, it had struck her as perfectly ridiculous. But right now she was persuaded by its idiot simplicity. She wanted it inside her; that it which he couldn’t bear to name.
“Which bedroom?” she said.
They made love without fully undressing, on a bed so big she could have thrown an orgy amid its countless pillows. He was more passionate than she could ever remember his being, his hands and mouth returning over and over to her silky belly. It was as if he was aroused by the evidence of his own fecundity; muttering words of adoration against her body. The session didn’t last more than fifteen minutes; he couldn’t hold back. And when he had finished, he was up and showering, and then away downstairs to make some calls. He was late for his meetings, he said; Garrison would be cursing him.
“I’ll catch a cab and leave the limo downstairs for you,” he told her, leaning over to kiss her forehead. His hair was still wet from the shower.
“Don’t get a chill. There’s a blizzard out there.”
He glanced out. The snow was coming down so heavily it had almost obscured the park.
“I’ll stay warm,” he said softly. “I’ll think of you two lying here, and I’ll be toasty.”
When he was gone her body remembered the motion of his erection inside her, as though there were a phantom phallus still sliding in and out of her. And she remembered too the way he spoke when he was aroused. Often, in the heat of the moment, he’d called her baby, and this afternoon had been no different. Baby o baby o baby, he’d said as he put it in. But now, when she conjured his voice, it was as if he were speaking to the child in her, calling to it in her womb. Baby o baby o baby.
She didn’t know whether to be moved or disturbed, so she told herself to be neither. She pulled the sheets and quilt up around her, and slept, while the snow lay its own fat white quilt on the park below.
ii
Since I wrote the foregoing passage—which was yesterday afternoon—I’ve had no less than three visits from Luman, which have so distracted me that I haven’t been able to get back into the mood for continuing my story. So I’ve decided to tell you the matter of my distractions, and maybe that will put them out of my mind.
The more time I spend with Luman, the more troubling he seems to be. He’d decided from our last conversation—after all these years of estrangement—that I was now his best buddy: a smoking companion (he’s been through half a dozen of my havanas), a confidante, and of course a fellow writer. As I told Zabrina, he’s got the notion lodged in his head that I’m going to collaborate with him on the definitive tome about madhouses. I’ve agreed to no such thing, but I haven’t got the heart to spoil his dream; it’s plainly very important to him. He comes to my room with odd little scribblings he’s made (actually, he doesn’t barge in the way Marietta would; he waits on the veranda until I chance to look up, see him there, and invite him in) and gives me what he’s written, telling me where he thinks it’s going to fit in the grand scheme of his book. He’s obviously thought the whole project through in great detail, because he’ll say: this belongs in Chapter Seven; or: this goes with the stories about Bedlam, as though I shared his vision. I don’t. I can’t. For on
e thing, he hasn’t communicated what this book of his is going to be (though he clearly assumes he has) and for another I’ve got a book of my own to think about. There isn’t room in my head for two. In fact there’s barely room for this.
I suppose it would have been better for all concerned if I’d just told him that I had no intention of collaborating with him. Then he’d have gone away and left me to get on with telling you what happened to Rachel. But he was so impassioned about it, I was afraid he’d be a wreck if I did that.
That’s not the only reason that I didn’t tell him the truth, I’ll admit. Though it’s a disruption having him come in and pick my brains the way he’s been doing, he’s also been strangely stimulating company. The more comfortable he becomes in my presence, the less effort he makes to keep his conversation on any coherent track. In the midst of telling me some lunatic detail of his book he’ll veer off onto a completely different subject, then veer again, and again, almost as though there was more than one Luman in his head, and they were all vying for the use of his tongue. There’s Luman the gossip, who has a chatty, faintly effeminate manner. There’s Luman the metaphysician, who gazes at the ceiling while he pontificates. There’s Luman the encyclopedia, who’ll out of the blue talk about Roman law, or the finer points of topiary. (Some of the information he’s provided in this latter mode has been fascinating. I didn’t realize until he told me that in some species of hyena the female is indistinguishable from the male, her clitoris the size of a penis, her labia swollen and drooping like a scrotum. No wonder Marietta took to them. Nor did I know that the temples where Cesaria was worshipped were often also tombs; and that sacred marriages, the heiros gamos, were celebrated there, among the dead.)
And then there’s Luman the impersonator, who can suddenly speak in a voice that is so unlike his own it’s as though he were possessed. Last night, for instance, he impersonated Dwight so well if I’d closed my eyes I wouldn’t have been able to tell it from the real thing. And then later, just as he was leaving, he spoke in Chiyojo’s voice, quoting a piece of a poem my mother wrote:
“My Savior is most diligent;
He has me in his book
With all my faults enumerated,
And I am certain there.
It’s only the Fallen One
Who wants us perfect;
For then we will not need an angel’s care.”
You can imagine how strange that was to hear: my wife’s voice, still distinctly Japanese, speaking a thought that came from my mother’s heart. The two great women in my life, emerging from the throat of this raddled, wild-eyed man. Is it any wonder I’ve been distracted from the flow of my story?
But the strangest portions of these exchanges are those with a metaphysical cast; no question. He’s evidently thought long and hard about the paradoxes of our state: a family of divinities (or in my case a semidivinity) hiding away from a world which no longer wants us or needs us.
“Godhood doesn’t mean a damn thing,” he said to me. “All it does is make us crazy.”
I asked him why he thought it had done that. (I didn’t argue with his basic assumption. I think he’s right: all the Barbarossas are a little mad.) He said he thought it was because we were just minor gods.
“We’re not that much better than them out there, when you come to think of it,” he said. “Sure, we live longer. And we can do a few tricks. But it’s not the deep stuff. We can’t make stars. Or unmake ’em.”
“Not even Nicodemus?” I said.
“Nah. Not even Nicodemus. And he was one of the First Created. Like her.” He pointed up to Cesaria’s chambers.
“ ‘Two souls as old as heaven . . .’ ”
“Who said that?”
“I did,” I replied. “It’s from my book.”
“Nice,” he said.
“Thanks.”
He fell silent for a few moments. I assumed he was mulling over the prettiness of my phrasing, but no, his grasshopper mind had already jumped to something else; or rather back, to our problematical godhood.
“I think we’re too farsighted for our own good,” he said. “We can’t seem to live in the moment. We’re always looking off beyond the edge of things. But we’re not powerful enough to be able to see anything there.” He growled like an ill-tempered dog. “It’s so fucking frustrating. Not to be one thing or the other.”
“Meaning?”
“If we were real gods . . . I mean the way gods are supposed to be, we wouldn’t be pissing around here. We’d be off—out there, where there’s still things to do.”
“You don’t mean the world.”
“No, I don’t mean the world. Fuck the world. I mean out beyond anything anybody on this planet ever saw or dreamt of seeing.”
I thought of Galilee while he was talking. Had the same hunger as Luman was describing—unarticulated, perhaps, but burning just as brightly—driven Galilee out across the ocean on his little boat, daring all he knew how to dare, but never feeling as though he was far enough from land; or indeed from home?
These ruminations had put Luman into a melancholy mood, and he told me he didn’t want to talk anymore, and left. But he was back at dawn, or a little thereafter, for his third visit. I don’t think he’d slept. He’d been walking around since he’d departed my study, thinking.
“I jotted a few more notes down,” he said, “for the chapter on Christ.”
“Christ’s in this book of yours?” I said.
“Has to be. Has to be,” Luman said. “Big family connection.”
“We’re not in the same family as Jesus, Luman,” I said. Then, doubting my own words: “Are we?”
“Nah. But he was a crazy man, just like us. He just cared more than we do.”
“About what?”
“Them,” he said; “Humanity. The fucking flock. Truth is, we were never shepherds. We were hunters. At least, she was. I guess Nicodemus had a taste for domesticity. Raising horses. He was a rancher at heart.” I smiled at this piece of insight. It was true. Our Father, the fence-builder.
“Maybe we should have cared a little more,” Luman went on. “Tried to love them, even though they never loved us.”
“Nicodemus loved them,” I pointed out. “Some of the women at least.”
“I tried that,” Luman said. “But they die on you, just as you’re getting used to having them around.”
“Do you have children out there?” I asked him.
“Oh sure, I’ve got bastards.”
It had never occurred to me until this moment that our family tree might have undiscovered branches. I’d always assumed that I knew the extent of the Barbarossa clan. Apparently, I didn’t.
“Do you know where they are?” I asked him.
“No.”
“But you could find them?”
“I suppose so . . .”
“If they’re like me, they’re still alive. Growing old slowly, but—”
“Oh yeah, they’re still alive.”
“And you’re not curious about them?”
“Of course I’m curious,” he said, a little sharply. “But I can barely stay sane sitting out there in the Smoke House. If I went out looking for my kids, turning over the memories of the women I bedded, I’d lose what little fucking sanity I still possess.” He shook his head violently, as though to get the temptation out from between his ears.
“Maybe . . . if I ever go out there . . .” I began. He stopped shaking his head, and looked up at me. His eyes were sparkling suddenly: tears in them, but also, I think, some little flame of hope. “Maybe I could look for them for you . . .” I went on.
“Look for my children?”
“Yes.”
“You’d do that?”
“Yes. Of course. I’d . . . be honored.”
The tears welled in his eyes now. “Oh brother,” he said. “Imagine that. My children.” His voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper. “My children.” He caught hold of my hand; his palm was prickly against my skin, his agitation o
ozing from his pores. “When would you do this?” he said.
“Oh . . . well . . . I couldn’t go until I’d finished the book.”
“My book or yours?”
“Mine. Yours would have to wait.”
“No problem. No problem. I could live with that. If I knew you were going to bring me . . .” He couldn’t finish the thought; it was too overwhelming for him. He let go of me and put his hand over his eyes. The tears coursed down his cheeks, and he sobbed so loudly I swear everyone in the house must have heard him. At last, he recovered himself enough to say: “We’ll talk about this again some other time.”
“Whenever you like,” I told him.
“I knew we’d become friends again for a reason,” he said to me. “You’re quite a man, Maddox. And I choose my words carefully. Quite a man.”
With that, he went out onto the veranda, stopping only to take another cigar from my humidor. Once outside, however, he turned back. “I don’t know what this information is worth,” he said, “but now that I trust you as I do, I think I ought to tell you . . .”
“What?”
He began feverishly scratching his beard, suddenly discomfited. “You’re going to think I’m really crazy now,” he said.
“Tell me.”
“Well . . . I have a theory. About Nicodemus.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t believe his death was an accident. I think he orchestrated the whole thing.”
“Why would he do that?”
“So that he could slip away from her. From his responsibilities. I know this may be hard to hear, brother—but I think the company of your wife gave him a hankerin’ for the old days. He wanted human pussy. So he had to get away.”
“But you buried him, Luman. And I saw him trampled, right there in front of me. I was lying on the ground, under the same hooves.”
“A corpse ain’t evidence of anything,” Luman replied. “You know that. There are ways to get out, if you know ’em. And if anyone knew those ways—”
“—it was him.”
“Tricky sonofabitch, that father of ours. Tricky and oversexed.” He stopped scratching his beard and made me an apologetic little shrug. “I’m sorry if it hurts to have me bring it up, but—”