“Now Lord Laurent, who was Jerusha’s father, had taught her to be afraid of nothing. He was a rational man. He didn’t believe in the Devil, and he had over the years punished any man who committed a crime on his land so quickly and severely that no felon ventured there. And he had also taught his daughter that there were far stranger things in the world than she’d seen in her schoolbooks. Perfectly rational things, he’d told her, that one day science would explain, though they might at first glance seem unusual.
“So Jerusha didn’t run away when she saw this stranger. She just marched down to the river’s edge and said hello. The fellow looked up from his reflection. He had no hair on his head; nor did he have lashes or brows; but there was an uncanny beauty to him, which awoke feelings in Jerusha that had not stirred until this moment. He looked at her with his flickering eyes, and smiled. But he said nothing.
“ ‘Who are you?’ she asked him.
“ ‘I don’t have a name, ’he told her.
“ ‘Of course you do,’ she said.
“ ‘No I don’t. I swear,’ the stranger said.
“ ‘Were you not baptized?’ she asked him.
“ ‘Not that I remember,’ he told her. ‘Were you?’
“ ‘Of course.’
“ ‘In the river?’
“ ‘No. In a church. My mother wanted it. She’s dead now—’
“ ‘If it was in a church then it wasn’t a true baptism,’ the stranger replied. ‘You should come into the river with me. I would give you a new name.’
“ ‘I like the one I have.’
“ ‘Which is what?’
“ ‘Jerusha.’
“ ‘So, Jerusha. Please come into the river with me.’ As he spoke he stood up, and she saw that at his groin, where a normal man would have a penis, there was instead a column of water, running from him the way water pours from a pipe, all corded and glittering, and seeming almost solid in the sunlight . . . ”
Rachel had been completely still until this moment; enraptured by the pictures these simple words were conjuring: of the girl, of the summer’s day and the riverbank. But now she sat up a little in the bed and began to scrutinize the shadowy man in the doorway. What kind of story was he telling here? It was certainly no fairy story.
He read her unease. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not going to get obscene.”
“Are you sure?”
“Why? Would you prefer that it did?”
“I just want to be ready.”
“ ‘Don’t be afraid.’
“I’m not afraid,” she said.
“ ‘Come into the river.’ ”
Oh, she thought; he’s started again.
“ ‘What is that?’ Jerusha said, pointing to the stranger’s groin.
“ ‘Do you have no brothers?’
“ ‘They went away to war,’ Jerusha said, ‘And they’re supposed to come back, but every time I ask my father when that will be he kisses me and tells me to be patient.’
“ ‘So what do you think?’
“ ‘I think maybe they’re dead, ‘Jerusha said.
“The fellow in the water laughed. ‘I meant of this,’ he said, looking down at the water flowing out of him. ‘What do you think of this?’
“Jerusha just shrugged. She wasn’t very impressed, but she didn’t want to say so.”
Rachel smiled. “Polite girl,” she remarked.
“You wouldn’t be so polite?” Galilee said.
“No. I’d be the same. You don’t want to break his heart with the truth.”
“And what’s the truth?”
“That it’s not as pretty as . . .”
“As?”
“ . . . you’d like to believe?”
“That’s not what you were going to say, is it?” Rachel kept her silence. “Please. Tell me what you were going to say.”
“I want to see your face first.”
There followed a moment in which neither of them moved, neither of them spoke. At last Galilee made a soft sigh, as though of resignation, and took half a step toward the bed. The moonlight grazed his face, but so lightly she had only the most rudimentary sense of his features. His flesh was a burnished umber, and he had several days’ growth of beard, which was even darker than his skin. His head was shaved clean. She could not see his eyes: they were set too deeply for the light to discover them. His mouth seemed to be beautiful, his cheekbones high and fine; perhaps there were some scars on his brow, she couldn’t be sure.
As to the rest of him: he was dressed in a heavily stained white T-shirt and loosely belted jeans and sandals. His frame was, as she’d already guessed, impressive; a wide, solid chest, a slight swell of a belly, massive arms, massive hands.
But here was what she hadn’t guessed: that he’d lingered in the shadows not to tease her but because he was unhappy being looked at. His discomfort was plain in the way he held himself; in the way he shuffled his feet, ready to retreat once she’d seen all she needed to see. She almost expected him to say can I go now? Instead he said: “Please finish your thought.”
She’d forgotten what she was talking about; the sight of him, in all its contrary sweetness—his effortless authority and his desire to be invisible, his beauty, and his strange inelegance—had taken all thought of anything but his presence out of her head.
“You were telling me,” he prompted her, “how what he has isn’t as pretty as . . .”
Now she remembered. “As what we have down there,” she said softly.
“Oh . . .” he replied. “I couldn’t agree more.” Then, so quietly she would not have caught the words had she not seen the shape his mouth made: “There’s nothing more perfect.”
He raised his head a fraction as he spoke, and the moonlight found his eyes. For all the depth of their setting, they were huge; filling the sockets with feeling; so much feeling she could not hold his gaze for more than a few seconds.
“Shall I go on with the story?’ he asked her.
“Please,” she said.
He kindly averted his stare, as though he knew its effect from experience, and didn’t want to discomfort her. “I was telling you how the man had asked Jerusha how she felt about his cock.” The word startled her. “And Jerusha had not answered.”
“But she wanted to go into the river to join him; she wanted to know what it would feel like to have his face close to hers, his body close to hers, his fingers on her breasts and belly, and down between her legs.
“He seemed to know what she was thinking, because he said:
“ ‘Will you show me what’s under your petticoats?’
“Jerusha pretended to be shocked. No, that’s not fair. She was shocked, though not as much as she pretended. You have to remember this was a time when women wore clothes that smothered them from neck to ankle, and here was this man asking—as though it were just a casual question—to show him her most private place.”
“What did she say?’ Rachel asked.
“Nothing at first. But as I told you at the beginning, she was fearless, thanks to her father. He would have been appalled, of course, if he’d seen what his lessons and his kisses had created but he wasn’t there to tell her no. She had only her instincts to go by, and her instincts said: why not do it? Why not show him? So she said:
“ ‘I’m going to lie down on the grass where it’s comfortable. You can come and look if you like.’
“ ‘Don’t go into the trees,’ he said to her.
“ ‘Why not?’ she asked him.
“ ‘Because there are poisonous things there,’ he replied. ‘Things that have fed on the flesh of dead men.’
“Jerusha didn’t believe him. ‘That’s where I’m going,’ she said. ‘If you want to come, then come. If you’re afraid, stay where you are.’ And she got up to leave.
“The man called after her, telling her to wait. ‘There’s another reason,’ he said.
“ ‘What’s that?’ she said.
“ ‘I can’t go very
far from the water. Every step I take is dangerous to me.’
“Jerusha just laughed at this. It was a silly excuse she thought. ‘Then you’re just weak;’ she said.
“ ‘No. I—’
“ ‘Yes you are! You’re weak! A man who can’t climb out of a river without complaining? I never heard anything so ridiculous!’
“She didn’t wait for him to reply. She could tell by the expression on his face that she stirred him up. She just turned around and traipsed off into the trees, wandering until she found a small grove where the grass looked soft and inviting. There she lay down on her back, with her feet toward the river, so that when the stranger found her the first thing he’d see was what lay between her legs.”
Rachel had not missed the fact that her own position, lying there on the bed in front of Galilee, was not so unlike that of Jerusha.
“What are you thinking?” he said to her.
“I want to know what happens next.”
“You could make it up for yourself if you’d prefer,” he replied.
“No,” she said. “I want you to tell me.”
“Your version might be better,” he said to her. “Less sad.”
“Is this going to end sadly?”
He turned his head toward the window, and for the first time the moonlight showed her his full face. She hadn’t been mistaken before: his forehead was scarred, deeply scarred, from the middle of his left eyebrow to his hairline, and his mouth was indeed wide and full: a sensualist’s mouth, if ever there was one. But it was the foundation upon which these details rode that were the true astonishment. She had never seen a face, in a photograph or a painting or the flesh, that so exquisitely wed the curves and gullies of its bones with the filigree of tissue and nerve covering them. It was as though his flesh, instead of masking his skull, expressed it. And his skull—which had been made long before the sorrow in his eyes—had known in the womb that sorrow was coming, and had shaped itself accordingly.
“Of course it’s going to end sadly,” he said. “It has to.”
“Why?”
“Let me tell how it goes,” he said, glancing down at her. “And if you know a better way to finish it, please God tell me.”
So he began again, revisiting the scene that he’d been describing, to be sure she remembered where the story stood.
“Jerusha was lying down on the grass, a little distance from the river. She was certain he’d come, and she wanted to be ready for him when he did, so she pulled off her shoes and her stockings, then lifted her hips off the ground to pull her underwear down. Then she drew up her petticoats and her skirt until they were over her knees. She didn’t need to touch herself to be aroused. A warm breeze came along just as she opened her legs and moved like a breath against her sweet pink pussy; spears of grass sprang up and gently pricked the insides of her thighs. She started to moan; she couldn’t help herself. If her life had depended on her silence at that moment then she would have perished, she was so utterly overwhelmed.
“Then she heard him . . .
“The river god,” Rachel said.
“You’ve heard this before.”
Rachel laughed. “That’s what he is, isn’t he?”
“A god, no. But something like that.”
“Is he old?”
“Ancient.”
“But not very clever.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If he was smart he’d know to stay in the river. That’s where he belongs.”
Galilee sighed. “It’s not always possible to stay where you belong. You know that.”
She stared at him in silence for several seconds. “You know who I am,” she said.
“You’re my Jerusha,” he replied, conferring the name upon her with the greatest gentility. “My child bride.”
At this, Rachel reached up and took hold of the sheet that concealed her lower body. “Then I should let you see me,” she said, and pulled the sheet off. Her knees were a little raised; the space between them was shadowy. But Galilee’s eyes lingered there nonetheless, as though his gaze was piercing the darkness and seeing her clearly; piercing her too, maybe: insinuating himself between her labia to see what he would find.
The thought did not distress her; quite the reverse. She wanted him to look at her, and keep looking. She was his Jerusha, his child bride lying on a bed of soft grass, excited as she’d never been excited before. She was trembling with pleasure, and the prospect of pleasure, as aroused by him as he was by her; by his face, by his words, by his very presence. Most of all, by the sight of his watching her. She’d never experienced anything remotely like this before. She’d had sex with seven men in her life, including her fumblings with Neil Wilkens. She was no great sexual sophisticate, to be sure; but nor was she a complete novice. She’d had wild times. But nothing so intense as this; nothing so naked.
They hadn’t even touched one another, for God’s sake, and she was shaking. The bed between her legs was soaked. Her breaths were shallow and fast.
“You were telling me . . .” she said.
“Jerusha . . . ”
“ . . . lying on her back, waiting for the river god . . .”
“She looked up—”
“Yes.”
“—it was strange to see him coming between the trees the way he did, with every step an effort, a terrible effort, that made his head sink lower and lower.”
“Did she wish she’d never asked him?” Rachel whispered.
“No,” Galilee replied. “She was too excited for regrets. She wanted him to see her more than she’d wanted anything in her life.”
“And as he came toward her, there were times when he passed through a shaft of sunlight, and rainbows sprang from him, rising up into the trees.
“She was about to ask him if he liked what he saw when she heard the whirring of wings, and a beetle—about as big as a hummingbird, but dark and ugly—came circling over her. She remembered what the man in the river had said—”
“Poisonous things,” Rachel said. “Things that have been eating corpses.”
“This beetle was the worst of the worst. It ate only the bodies of people who’d died of disease. It carried every kind of contagion.”
Rachel made a disgusted sound. “Can’t you make it fly away?” she said.
“I told you before: you can finish it if you like.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I want to hear it from you.”
“Then the beetle has to circle . . . and suddenly it dropped down onto her body.”
“Where?”
“Shall I show you?” Galilee said, and without waiting for a reply he went to the bottom of the bed and reached between her legs. She wanted him to touch her labia, but instead his fingers nipped the inside of her thigh between finger and thumb. “It bit her,” he said. “Hard.”
She cried out.
“She cried out, more with surprise than pain, and killed the beetle with one blow, squashing its body against her white skin.”
He withdrew his hand. Rachel could feel the beetle’s ooze running down her leg; she reached up as if to wipe it away, and then reached further, to catch hold of Galilee’s fingers.
“Don’t go yet,” she said.
“I have not finished telling you what happened,” he murmured, and eased his fingers from her grip. Instinctively she pulled the sheet back over her nakedness. The story was souring. If Galilee noticed what she’d done, he made no sign of it. He simply kept talking.
“It was as if the beetle’s bite had broken a trance,” he said. “Jerusha looked down at herself in horror. What was she doing lying here this way? She started to get up, tears stinging her eyes.”
“ ‘Where are you going?’ she heard somebody ask her, and looked round to see that the man from the river was standing just a few yards from her.
“He looked wasted. His body, which had been shiny and strong when he was sitting in the water, was thinner now. His teeth were chattering. His eyes
were rolling in their sockets. How could she ever have thought he was beautiful, she wondered?
“Then she turned her back on him and started to make her way home.”
“Did he follow her?”
“No. He was too confused. He hadn’t seen the beetle, you see. He just assumed she’d changed her mind; decided he was too strange for her after all. It wasn’t the first time a woman had rejected him. He went back to the river, and sank from sight.”
“What happened to Jerusha?”
“Terrible things.
“Almost as soon as she got back into her father’s house she started to sicken. The beetle had put so much poison into her she was barely conscious by sunset. Of course her father sent for his doctors but none of them looked between her legs, because they didn’t dare, not with their patron standing over them, telling them what a good, pure child she was. They did what they could to bring down her fever-cold compresses, leeches, the usual rigmarole—but none of it worked. Hour by hour through the night she grew hotter and sicker, until blisters started to appear on her neck and face and breasts as the poisons showed themselves.”
“Finally, Jerusha’s father lost patience with the doctors and sent them away. Then, once he was alone with her, lying on the bed, he started to talk to her, whispering close to her ear.
“ ‘Can you hear me, child?’ he asked her. ‘Please, my sweet Jerusha, if you can hear me, tell me what happened to you, so I can find somebody to heal you.’
“At first she said nothing. He wasn’t even sure she’d even heard him. But he was persistent. He kept talking to her as daylight approached. And finally, just as dawn was breaking, she said one word . . .”
“River,” Rachel whispered.
“Yes. She said river.”
“Her father instantly sent for his majordomo, and told him to take all the maids and footmen and cooks and to comb the banks of the river until they discovered what had happened to his beloved Jerusha.
“The majordomo immediately roused the whole house, even to the smallest boy who dusted the ashes from the hearth, and they all went down through the woods to the river. Jerusha and her father were the only ones left in the great house, as the light crept through it room by room.