She turned over what Mitchell had said, about coming home of her own volition, or having the police come and fetch her. It was nonsense, surely. She plainly wasn’t a suspect, so any information she could supply would be purely anecdotal. If they needed to talk to her, they could do it by phone. She didn’t have to go back if she didn’t want to; and she didn’t want to. Especially now, with so much to work out between Galilee and herself.
She’d finished her cigarette by now, and had almost finished her tea. Rather than sit on the veranda she decided to go back inside and change into fresh clothes. She picked up some cookies on her way through the kitchen, and went into the bathroom to shower.
It was only when she caught sight of herself in the mirror—her skin flushed from wind and sun—that she realized how strangely calm she felt. Was she simply too stunned by all that had happened in the last few hours to respond to it? Why wasn’t she weeping? Her best friend was dead, for God’s sake, and here she was staring at herself out of the mirror without a tear shed. She looked hard at her reflection, as though it might speak back to her and solve this mystery; but her face showed her nothing.
She went to the shower, and turned it on, shedding her clothes where she stood. The flow of water was weak, but she luxuriated in it nevertheless, remembering Galilee’s touches as she sluiced off her salted skin. His hands on her face, her breasts, her belly, his tongue at play between her legs. She wanted him again, now. Wanted him to be whispering to her the way he’d whispered that first night: a story of water and love. She’d even take a tale of sharks if that was what he felt like telling. She was in the mood to be devoured.
Taking her leisurely time, she washed her hair and then rinsed the remaining soap from her body. She’d neglected to bring a towel from the rack, so she stepped out of the shower soaking wet, and there he was, standing in the doorway, looking at her.
Her first instinct was to cover her nakedness, but the way he was looking at her made the idea nonsensical. There was nothing salacious in his stare; the expression he wore was almost childlike in its simplicity. His eyes were wide, his face almost slack.
“So now they’re killing their own,” he murmured. “I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.” He shook his head. “This is the beginning of the end, Rachel.”
“What do you mean?”
“My brother Luman predicted all this.”
“He knew there was going to be a murder?”
“Murder’s the least of it. Margie was a sad creature, and she’s probably better off—”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. We both know it’s true.”
“I loved Margie.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“So don’t say she’s better off dead, because that’s not right, that’s not true.”
“Nobody could have healed her. She’d been swimming in that poison for too long.”
“So I shouldn’t care that she’s dead?”
“Oh no, I’m not saying that. Of course you should care. Of course you should mourn. But don’t expect any justice to be done.”
“The police already have her husband.”
“They won’t have him for long.”
“Another of your brother’s predictions?”
“No, that one’s mine,” he said. “Garrison’ll walk away from what he did. He’s a Geary. They always find someone else to blame.”
“How do you know so much about them?”
“They’re the enemy,” he said simply.
“So what makes me any different?” Rachel said. “I’ve been swimming in the poison too.”
He nodded. “I know,” he said. “I tasted it.”
She was reminded of her nakedness as he spoke. It was no accident; as he spoke of tasting the poison his eyes had left her face. Gone to her breasts; to her sex.
“Will you pass me a towel?” she said to him.
He dutifully took the largest of the towels off the rack. She reached out to take it from him, but rather than pass it over he said, “Please, let me . . . ” and, opening the towel, he pressed it against her body and began to dry her. Despite the prickly exchanges they’d had of late—first in the boat, now here—she was instantly comforted by his attentions; the intimacy of his touch muted by the plushness of the towel, but all the more teasing for the fact. When he dried her breasts she couldn’t keep herself from sighing appreciatively.
“That feels nice,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Yes . . .”
He drew her a little closer, carefully drying beneath her breasts, then making his way down toward her groin.
“When will you go back to New York?” he asked her.
She had some trouble concentrating on the question; even more formulating an answer. “I don’t see . . . any reason why I should.”
“I thought she was a friend of yours.”
“She was. But I’m no use to her now. I’m better off here, with you. I know that’s what Margie would tell me. She’d say: you’ve got something that gives you pleasure, hold on to it.”
“And I’ve given you pleasure?”
“You know you have,” she purred.
“Good,” he said, with a kind of forced brightness, as though the idea was in equal measure pleasing and troubling to him.
His hands were between her legs now. She took hold of the towel and pulled it away. “Let’s go to the bedroom,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Here,” and suddenly his fingers were inside her, and he was pressing her against the wall, his mouth on hers. He tasted strange, almost acidic; and the way he stroked her was far from tender. There was suddenly something ungainly about all of this. She wanted to call a halt, but she was afraid of driving him away.
He was unbuckling his pants now, pressing himself so hard against her she could barely draw breath.
“Wait . . .” she said to him. “Please. Slow down.”
He didn’t heed her. If anything his behavior became more frenzied. He pushed her legs open. She felt his erection jabbing at her, like something blind, poking around for its bed. She told herself to relax; to trust him. He’d made the most extraordinary love to her last night; he understood the signals her body was putting out better than any man she’d ever been with.
So why did she want to push him away now? Why did it hurt when he got inside her? What had seemed like a wonderful fullness a few hours before now made her want to cry out. There was no pleasure in this; none.
She couldn’t govern her instincts any longer. She closed her mouth against his kisses, and put her hands on his chest to push him away.
“I don’t like this,” she said.
He ignored her. He was buried deep in her, to the root, his cock brutally rigid, his hips grinding against hers.
“No,” she said. “No! Will you please get off me?’
Now she pushed him as hard as she could, but his body was too strong, his erection was too implacable: she was pinned against the wall.
“Galilee,” she said, trying to look into his eyes. “You’re hurting me. Listen to me! You’re hurting me.”
Was it the fact that she was shouting now, her words echoing around the tiled walls, that roused him out of his stupor? Or was he simply bored with his own cruelty, as his body language seemed to suggest? He pushed himself off and out of her like someone leaving a dining table because the food didn’t suit them, his expression one of mild distaste.
“Get out of here,” she told him.
He retreated a step or two, still not looking at her, then turned and crossed to the door. She hated everything about him at that moment—his idling gait, the way he glanced down at his erection, the little smile she caught in the mirror as he slipped through the door. She closed it after him, then listened as he made his way through the house. Only when she heard the sound of the French window opened, and then being slammed as he exited, did she go to her clothes and start to dress. By the time she ventured out into the house he??
?d disappeared.
Niolopua was sitting on the lawn watching the ocean. She went out onto the veranda, and called to him.
“You had an argument?” he said.
She nodded.
“He didn’t even speak to me. He just went down onto the beach, looking like thunder.”
“Will you stay here for a little while? I don’t want him coming back.”
“I’ll stay, if it makes you feel more comfortable, but I’m sure he’s not coming back.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“He’ll set sail now,” Niolopua said. “You’ll see.”
“I don’t care what he does as long as he stays the hell away from me,” she said.
Just as Niolopua had predicted, Galilee didn’t come back. The day waned, and Rachel stayed in the house, feeling drained of any energy or desire, eating a little, drinking a little, but getting pleasure from nothing. As she’d requested Niolopua kept his. watch on the lawn, coming to the veranda once to ask for a beer, otherwise leaving her alone. The telephone rang several times, but she didn’t pick up. It was probably Mitch, or perhaps Loretta, trying to persuade her to go back home. In fact, since Galilee’s leaving, she’d started to think that returning to New York was not such a bad idea. Certainly staying here in the house would not be wise; she’d only brood on things. Better to go back to the family, where at least she understood her feelings. After the emotional chaos of the last few days there would be something bracingly plain about being among the Gearys. They were hateful, it was as simple as that. No confusion, no ambiguity, no kisses one moment and brutality the next. Maybe she’d just get drunk and stay that way, like Margie; pronounce against the world from behind her funeral veil. It wasn’t a very pretty prospect, but what did she have left? This island had been a last resort: a place to heal herself; to watch the miraculous at play. But it had failed her. She was left empty-handed.
As the last of the light was going out of the sky she heard Niolopua calling her name, and went out onto the veranda to find him standing at the bottom of the lawn pointing out to sea.
There was The Samarkand. Even though its sails were little more than white specks against the darkening blue, Rachel knew without a doubt it was Galilee’s vessel. For an aching moment she imagined herself on deck with him, looking back at the island from the sea. The stars coming out overhead; the bed below, waiting for them. She indulged the romance for a moment only, then told herself to stop it.
Even so, she couldn’t turn her back on the ocean; not until he’d gone. She watched the boat get smaller and smaller, until at last it was utterly eroded by distance and darkness. Only then did she look away.
So that’s the end of it, she thought. The man she’d fleetingly imagined might be her prince had gone. And what a perfect departure he’d made, carried away by the tide; who knew where?
Still she didn’t weep. Her prince was gone, and she didn’t weep. Yes, there was regret. Of course there was regret. However long she lived, she’d never stop wondering what would have happened if she’d better navigated the shoals of his nature; wonder what kind of life they might have had together in his house on the hill.
But there was something else besides regret: there was anger. That, she finally decided, was what kept the tears from coming: her fury at the way life piled hurt on hurt. It dried her eyes the moment they moistened.
Margie’s methodology had been much the same, hadn’t it? By turning spite into an art form, by pronouncing loudly on the meaninglessness of life, Margie kept herself functioning.
That’s how things would have to be for Rachel from now on. She’d have to learn to be just like Margie.
God help them both.
PART SIX
Ink and Water
I
i
So Galilee sailed away; I cannot tell you where. If this were a different kind of book I might well invent the details of his route, culled from books and maps. But in doing so I would be trading on your ignorance; assuming you wouldn’t notice if I failed to get the details right.
It’s better I admit the truth: Galilee sailed away, and I don’t know where he went. When I close my eyes, and wait for an image of him to come I usually find him sitting on the rolling deck of The Samarkand looking less than happy with his lot. But though I’ve searched the horizon for some clue as to his whereabouts I see only the wastes of the ocean. To an eye more canny than mine perhaps there are clues even here, but I’m no sailor. To me, one seascape looks much like the next.
I will confess that I tried to apply what I thought would be simple logic to the question. I took down from the shelves several maps I’d been given over the years (the older ones may even have belonged to Galilee himself; long before he left to wander the world, he loved to trace imaginary journeys) and having spread them out on the floor of my study I walked among them with a book on celestial navigation in one hand and a volume on tides and currents in the other, trying to plot the likeliest course for The Samarkand to have taken. But the challenge defeated me. I set his course north past the island (that much I remember seeing, through Rachel’s eyes); I began to calculate the prevailing winds at that time, and set The Samarkand before them, but I became hopelessly distracted by the very charts that were supposed to be anchoring my imagination. They were, as I said, old charts; made at a time when knowledge was not so vigorously (some would say calamitously) divided from the pleasures of fancy. The makers of these maps had seen nothing wrong with adding a few decorative touches here and there: filigreed beasts that rose out of the painted ocean to foam at passing ships; flights of windy angels poised at every quarter, with streaming hair and trumpeters’ cheeks; even a great squid on one of the maps with eyes like twin furnaces and tentacles (so the note informed me) the length of six clippers.
In the midst of such wonders, my pathetic attempts at rational projections went south. I left off my calculations and sat in the midst of the maps like a man trading in such things, waiting for a buyer.
ii
Galilee had been in love before, of course, and survived to tell the tale. But he’d only once been in love with a Geary, and that made all the difference in the world. Loving a woman who belonged in the family of your enemy wasn’t wise; there were plenty of tragedies that testified to that. And in his experience love always ended up a bitter business. Sweet for a time yes, but never for long enough to justify the consequences: the weeks of self-recrimination, the months of lost sleep, the years of loneliness. Every time a romance ended, he’d tell himself that he’d never fall again. He’d stay out at sea, where he was safe from his own appetites.
What did he want from love anyway? A mate or a hiding place? Both perhaps. And yet hadn’t he raged again and again against the witless contentment of his animal self, smug in its nest, in its ease, in the comfort of its own dirt? He hated that part of himself: the part that wanted to be wrapped in the arms of some beloved; that asked to be hushed and sung to and forgiven. What stupidity! But even as he railed against it, fled it, out to sea, he shuddered at the thought of what lay ahead, now that love was gone again. Not just the loneliness and the sleepless nights, but the horror of being out in the fierce, hard light that burned over him, set there by his own divinity.
As he guided The Samarkand out into the ocean currents, he wondered how many more times he’d be able to sail away before the toll of partings became intolerable. Perhaps this was the last. That wouldn’t be such a terrible oath to take: to swear that after Rachel there’d be no more seductions, no more breaking of hearts. It would be his mark of respect to her, though she’d never know he’d made it: to say that after her there would only be the sea.
That said, he couldn’t readily put the woman from his mind. He sat out on deck through the night, while The Samarkand was carried further and further from land, thinking about what had passed between them. How she’d looked, lying in the carved bed that first night; how she’d talked to him as he told the story of Jerusha and the riverman, asking questi
ons, prodding him to make the story better, finer, deeper. How she’d imitated the child bride while she lay there, pulling the sheet off her body to show herself to him; and how exquisite that sight had been. How they’d touched; how he thought of her all the time they were parted, wondering whether to risk bringing her on board the boat. He’d never let a woman set foot on The Samarkand before, holding to ancient superstition on the matter. But her presence made such fears seem nonsensical. What boat would not be blessed to have such a creature tread its boards?
Nor did he now regret the decision. Sitting under the stars he seemed to see her, turning to smile at him. There she was, with her arms open to welcome him in. There she was, saying she loved him. Whatever wonders he saw after this—and he’d seen wonders: the sea turned silver with squid, storms of gold and vermilion—there would be no vision out of sea or sky that would command his devotion as she had.
If only she hadn’t been a Geary.
II
So, Galilee sailed away, and—as I said—I don’t know where he wandered. I do know where he ended up, however. After three weeks The Samarkand put into the little harbor at Puerto Bueno. There had been storms all along that coast earlier in the month, and the town had taken a severe battering. Several houses close to the quay, repeatedly assaulted by waves breaking over the harbor wall, had been damaged; and one had collapsed entirely, killing the widow who’d lived there. But Galilee’s house at the top of the hill was virtually unharmed, and it was here he returned, climbing the steep streets of the town without speaking to anyone he encountered, though he knew them all, and they all knew him.
The roof of the Higgins house had leaked during the storms, and the place smelled damp. There was mildew everywhere; and much of the furniture in the upper rooms had begun to rot. He didn’t care. There was nothing here that mattered to him. Any vague dreams he might have once entertained of bringing a companion here, and living a kind of ordinary life, now seemed foolish; laughable. What a perfect waste of time, to indulge dreams of domesticity.