Galilee

  I protested, but Nickelberry advised me to hold my tongue. They had a perfect right to pleasure themselves with the drunken Miss Morrow if they so chose, he said; such was the law of this place. Olivia confirmed the fact. If I was to intervene, she warned me, and Galilee chanced to hear of it, he would kill me . . .

  Rachel had not noticed the journey back to the apartment; nor the trip in the elevator. Now she was sitting at the window, with the glory of New York before her, and she didn’t see it. All she saw was the house in the East Battery, its rooms a catalog of excesses; and the captain, sitting at the table, gorging himself—

  I asked what manner of man this Galilee was, and Olivia smiled at me. You’ll see, she said. And you’ll understand when he starts to speak to you, what kind of king he is.

  King? I said, of what country? Of every country, Olivia replied; of every city, of every stone.

  He’s black, the widow Harris said, but he was never a slave. I asked her how she knew this, and she answered, simply, that there was not a man on earth who could put Galilee in chains.

  All, needless to say, strange talk; and while it was going on the sounds from the adjacent room growing louder, as Maybank and the boy violated Miss Morrow.

  Nickelberry left the table, and went to watch. He called me presently to join him, and to my shame I picked up the bottle of wine I had all but emptied and went to see.

  Miss Morrow was no longer incapacitated, but responding to her violations with vigor. The boy was naked by now, and straddled her, rubbing his little rod between her breasts, while Maybank took the route between her legs, which he had made available by tearing her fine silk dress apart.

  The scene was entirely bestial, butI will not lie: I was aroused. Fiery, in fact.

  After years of sickness and corpses, I was glad to see healthy flesh sweating healthy sweat. The din of their mutual pleasuring filled the room, echoing back and forth between the bare walls so that it was as though there were not three but ten lovers before me. I began to feel giddy, my head pounding, and I turned away to find that Nickelberry was back at the table with Olivia, who had bared herself for his perusal. He looked like a greedy child his hands plunged into plates of creamy dessert, which he then smeared upon the woman’s handsome bosom. She seemed quite happy at this, and pressed his face against her, so he might lick the cream off her body.

  The widow Harris now came to me, and offered her own flesh for my pleasure. I declined. She promptly told me I could not. If I was capable of giving her the pleasure of love, then I was obliged to do so. This too was the law.

  I told her that I was a married man, at which she laughed saying that in this place it mattered not at all what a man or woman had been before they entered; that all histories were forgotten here, and a person became what suited them.

  Then I do not belong here, I told her. Are you so proud of what you were out there? she said to me, her face all flushed. You fled your duty; you lost your family and your house. You’re less than me, out there. Imagine that! You who were so fine, less than an ugly old widow.

  She angered me, and I struck her, drunk as I was, I struck her hard across her painted face. She fell back against the wall, shrieking at me now—obscenities I would not have believed she knew, except that she was spitting them at me in a vile stream. I threw down the bottle I’d been drinking from, and for a moment, thinking perhaps I meant to do her more serious harm, she ceased to shriek But then I turned from her, and she began again, following me like a fury, berating me.

  In my drunken desire to get away from the woman I became lost. The route I had supposed would take me out into the street brought me instead to a darkened flight of stairs. I ascended them stumbling, and crouched in the gloom halfway up. The widow had not seen me ascend; she passed below, cursing me.

  I waited there in the darkness, shuddering. Not from fear of the widow, but from grief at what she’d said, The woman was right, I knew. I’m nothing now. Less than nothing.

  And then, as if my sorrow had been spoken, a man appeared at the top of the stairs and looked down at me. No, not at me; into me. I never felt such a gaze as this. I was in fear of it at first. I felt he might kill me with it, as readily as a man who reached into another’s body and took hold of his heart.

  But then he came down the stairs a little way, and sat there, and quietly said: “A man who is nothing has nothing to lose. I am Galilee. Welcome,” and I felt as though I had a reason to live.

  XIII

  i

  A reason to live.

  Rachel put the journal down and stared out across the darkened park. It was impossible that this Galilee be the same man as she’d met, but it was so easy to imagine him there on the stairs, imagine him speaking those words of welcome, imagine him being the man who’d given the captain reason to live.

  Hadn’t he done that for her, in a way? Hadn’t he reawakened her sense of her own significance, her own power?

  She set the journal down on the table, glancing at the opening of the next paragraph.

  How shall I say what happened to me then?

  She looked away from it. She couldn’t bear to read any more, not tonight. Her head was too filled up, sickened almost the way the captain had been sickened, by the sheer excess of what she’d read. There was a change in the prose too, which was not lost on her. The earlier entries had been nicely written, but their eloquence had been that of a man striving for some distance from the horrors in which he was immersed. But now he had begun to write like a storyteller, creating the scene and his place in it with terrible immediacy. The visions his words had put in Rachel’s head still swarmed before her: the house, the food, the sexual couplings.

  The last time she’d felt so consumed by a story, Galilee had been the man telling it—

  She looked at the journal again, without touching it; at the way the words were neatly laid on the page. Too neatly perhaps. Was this the diary of a man who was living out these experiences, and hours later setting them down? Or had this all been constructed after the fact, by a man who’d been tutored in the art of telling a tale? Tutored by a man who loved stories; who told them as seductions.

  “No . . .” she said to herself. No, this was not the same man; once and for all, there were two Galilees: one in the journal, the other in her memory. She looked at the teasing words again:

  How shall I say what happened to me then?

  It was a clever bluff, that sentence. The writer knew exactly how he was going to say what happened to him; he had the words ready. But it made those words seem more true, didn’t it, if they appeared to come from a man uncertain of his own skills? She felt a spasm of revulsion for the story, and for her own complicity in its deceits. She’d gorged on it, hadn’t she? Lapped up every decadent detail, as though this other life could give her clues to her own.

  So far, it had shown her nothing of any real value. Yes, it had titillated her with its Gothic nonsenses; its tales of ghost children and unearthed limbs, but these scenes in the house had gone too far. She didn’t believe it any longer. It might pass itself off as history, but it was a fabrication; its excesses made it absurd.

  She was still angry with herself when she went to bed, and she couldn’t sleep. After an hour and a half lying in an unease doze she got up, popped a sleeping pill, and went back to bed to try again. The pill turned out to be a bad idea. Something in her simply didn’t want to rest, and her body fought the soporific. When she finally succeeded in falling asleep for a few minutes her head was filled with a chaotic rush of fragments, from which she woke in an aching sweat, with such a dread upon her, such a profound, wrenching dread, that she had to get up again, turn on the light and talk herself back into a semblance of calm.

  She padded down to the kitchen, made herself a cup of Earl Grey tea and returned to the journal. What was the use of trying to resist it, she thought as she sat down in the circle of lamplight and turned her eyes to the page. Nonsense or not, it had her in its grip, and she couldn’t be free of it
until it had finished with her.

  ii

  Halfway across town, lying awake in his bed, Cadmus Geary thought of his beloved Louise, and of those days of dalliance that sometimes seemed so far off they’d happened in another life and at others, as tonight, seemed to have taken place just a few days ago, the memory was so clear. What a beauty she had been! Entirely deserving of his devotion. Of course she was playing hard to get tonight, but that was one of the prerogatives of beauty; all he could do was stay close to her, and hope she saw his sincerity.

  “Louise . . .” he murmured.

  A man’s voice answered. “There’s nobody called Louise here,” it said quietly.

  His faint condescension irritated Cadmus. “I know that,” he snapped. He reached for his spectacles which were on the bedside table.

  “You want some water?” the man said.

  “No, I want to see who the hell I’m talking to.”

  “It’s Mitchell.”

  “Mitchell?” His fumbling fingers had found his spectacles, and he put them on, peering at his grandson through the thumbed glass. “What time is it?”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “We’ve been talking, on and off.”

  “Have I been making any sense?”

  “Of course,” Mitchell reassured him. This was not strictly true. Though the old man had been more coherent than Garrison had reported, he was still in a semidelirious state much of the time. “You’ve been sleeping, on and off.”

  “Talking in my sleep?”

  “Yes,” Mitchell said. “Nothing scandalous. You’ve just been calling for this woman Louise.”

  Cadmus sank back into the pillow. “My lovely Louise,” he sighed. “She was the best thing that ever happened to me.” He closed his eyes. “What are you waiting for?” he said. “You’ve got to have something better to be doing than sitting here. I’m not planning to die just yet.”

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  “So go have a party. Get drunk. Fuck your wife, if she’ll let you.”

  “She won’t.”

  “Then fuck somebody else’s wife.” He opened his eyes again and laughed, the sound like the hiss of escaping air. “That’s more fun anyway.”

  “I’d prefer to be here with you.”

  “Would you really?” the old man said incredulously. “Either I’m more interesting than I thought or you’re even duller.” He raised his head an inch or so and peered at his grandson. “You got the looks didn’t you, Mitch? I mean, you really are a handsome fellow. But . . . you’re not as bright as your mother and you’re not as honest as your father, and that’s a pity, because I had some hopes for you.”

  “Help me then.”

  “Help you?”

  “Tell me how you want me to be, and I’ll work at it.”

  “You can’t work at it,” Cadmus said, his tone close to contempt. “Just get on with what you’ve got. Nobody blames you. It’s the luck of the draw.” He settled his head back on his pillow, delicately, as though his skull was cracked. “Are you here alone?” he said.

  “There’s a nurse . . .”

  “No. I mean your brother.”

  “Garrison’s not here.”

  “Good. I don’t want him here.” He closed his eyes. “We’ve all done things we regret, but . . . but . . . oh Lord, oh Lord . . .” He shivered a little.

  “Should I get another blanket for you?”

  “It doesn’t help. I’m just cold and there’s nothing to be done about it. What I want is my Louise . . .” He made a puckish little smile. “She’d warm me up.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Your wife . . . resembles my Louise . . . did you know that?”

  “Really?”

  “We have that much in common, at least. A taste in beauty.”

  “Where is she now?” Mitchell said.

  “Your wife?” Cadmus said. “You don’t know where your wife is?” He made another laugh. “That was a joke, Mitchell.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t remember you being so humorless.”

  “Things have changed. I’ve changed.”

  “Well, don’t lose your sense of humor. In the end it may be all you’ve got. Christ knows, it’s all I’ve got.” Mitchell started to protest, but the old man hushed him. “Don’t tell me how deeply loved I am because I know better. I’m an inconvenience. I’m standing between you and your inheritance.”

  “We just want to do our best for the family,” Mitchell said.

  “We meaning . . .

  “Garrison and myself.”

  “Since when was murder a smart thing to do?” Cadmus said, with agonizing sloth. “All your brother has brought this family is shame. Shame. I’m ashamed of my own grandchildren.”

  “Wait—” Mitchell protested. “That was all Garrison. I had nothing to do with what happened to Margie.”

  “No?”

  “Absolutely not. I loved Margie.”

  “She was like a sister to you.”

  “She was.”

  “You don’t understand how it could have happened. It’s a tragedy. Poor Margie, poor drunken Margie. What did she ever do to deserve it?” He bared his brown teeth. “You want to know what she did? I’ll tell you what she did. She gave birth to a nigger, and your big brother never forgave her that.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t know? She had Galilee’s kid. At least, that’s what Garrison thought. How could it be his? I mean, he’s a Geary. So how could it be his, a little black fuck of a thing?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think that’s the first honest thing you’ve said tonight. No, I’m sure you don’t understand. I’m sure it’s all completely beyond you.” He shook his head. “What did you really come here for?’ he said.

  “Wait. Backup. I want to know about Margie.”

  “You’ve heard all you’re going to hear from me. I want to know what you came here for.”

  “I just wanted to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Anything you wanted to talk about. We used to be so close and—”

  “Stop. Stop,” Cadmus said. “I’m squirming, listening to this crap. I’ll ask you one more time: what did you come here for? You answer me truthfully or get the hell out of here and don’t ever come back.” He leaned up out of the pillow. “And when I say that, I mean it. Don’t ever come back.”

  Mitchell nodded. “Okay,” he said quietly. “So . . . it’s simple. I want to find the Barbarossas.”

  “Now we get to it,” Cadmus said. For the first time in the conversation he looked genuinely pleased. “Go on.”

  “Garrison says there’s a book—”

  “Does he indeed?”

  “—some kind of journal, which your first wife told him about.”

  “Kitty didn’t know how to keep her mouth shut.”

  “So this book exists?”

  “Oh yes. It exists.”

  “I came here to get it.”

  “I don’t have it, son.”

  Mitchell leaned closer to his grandfather. “Where is it?” he said again. “Come on. Tell me. I’ve been honest with you.”

  “And I’m returning the compliment. I don’t have it. And even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you.”

  “Why the hell not? What do you care what we do to those people?”

  “By we you mean this family?” He narrowed his watery eyes. “Are you planning a war, Mitch? Because if you are, don’t. You don’t know what you’re taking on.”

  “I know the Barbarossas have got some kind of hold over us.”

  “They have more than a hold,” Cadmus said, his voice emotionless. “They own us. And let me tell you, we’re lucky, we are very lucky, to have been left alone all these years. Because if they took it into their heads to come after us, we wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “Are they Mafia?”
/>
  “Oh Lord, wouldn’t that be nice? If they were just men with guns.”

  “So who are they?”

  “I don’t know,” the old man replied. “But I’m afraid I’m going to find out, the moment my heart stops beating.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Does it make you nervous?” Cadmus said. “It should.” His eyes were shiny with tears. “There’s more to this than you’ll ever get your head round, son, so for your own sake, let it go. Don’t let Garrison pull you into this mess. He’s got no other option, you see. He was born into it. But you . . . you can walk away if you want to. Save yourself. God knows it’s too late for me. And for your brother. And of course your wife—”