Galilee

  Now he knew better; and what more perfect place to come to that realization than here, where he’d showed a truer face than he’d ever shown his family? Shown it, but been unseen, because its only witness had never opened her eyes.

  Perhaps it was time. He set down his brandy glass, got up off the chair, and went over to the bed. The woman remained as still as stone. He reached across her body, hooked his hands beneath her, and rolled her over onto her back. She rolled most convincingly. He went down on his haunches, and lay his hand, palm down, on her stomach.

  “The game’s over . . .” he said.

  She didn’t move. He lifted his hand off her belly and laid it against her breast.

  “I can feel your heart,” he said. “You’re good at what you do, but I can always feel your heart.” He leaned close to her. “Open your eyes.” He tweaked her nipple. “No more playing dead. I’m resurrecting you.”

  A tiny frown nicked her brow.

  “You’ve been wonderful,” he went on, “really. Very convincing. But I don’t want to play any more.”

  She opened her eyes.

  “Brown,” he said. “Your eyes are brown. I always thought they’d be blue.”

  “You’re done with me?” the woman said. Her voice was slightly slurred. Perhaps she played the corpse so well because she was in a drugged state.

  “I’ll be done with you when I tell you I’m done with you,” Garrison said, “not before.”

  “You said you didn’t want to play any more.”

  “Not that game,” he said. “Another.”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “I’m not letting you mess with me—”

  Garrison laughed, so hard and loud the whore gaped. Then he reached out and took hold of her breast. “I can do what the fuck I like to you. I’m paying for your company. And you’re very expensive.”

  She visibly brightened at the mention of her commercial value. “What do you want?” she said, looking down at his hand, the fingers of which were digging deep into her breast.

  “Look at me.”

  “What?”

  “Just look at me. At my eyes. Look into my eyes.”

  She let out a halfhearted giggle, like a little girl playing a naughty game. The incongruity of it made Garrison smile. “What’s your name?” he said. “Your real name.”

  “Melodie’s my real name,” she replied. “My mother says it’s because I was singing to myself even before I was baptized.”

  “Your mother’s still alive?”

  “Oh sure. She moved to Kentucky. I’m going to move there too, as soon as I get enough money. I want to get out of New York. I hate it.”

  With his newly sharpened sight Garrison seemed to be able to see right into her as she spoke. She was bruised to the marrow, poor bitch; whatever hopes she’d ever had for herself gone to hell.

  “What would you do in Kentucky?” he said.

  “Oh . . . I’d like to have a little hairdressing place. I’m good at fixing people’s hair.”

  “Really?”

  “But . . . I don’t . . .” The words slid away.

  “Listen to me,” Garrison said, his hand going up to her face. “If you want something you have to have faith. And patience. Things come when you least expect them.”

  “That’s what I used to think. But it’s not true. It’s a waste of time hoping for things.”

  Garrison suddenly stood up, his motion so abrupt Melodie flinched. He gave her reason: a blow across the face so hard she fell back onto the bed. A sob escaped her, but she didn’t try to move out of his range.

  “I shoulda known,” she said. She raised her head off the bed. Tears of shock ran from the corners of her eyes, but she didn’t otherwise seem concerned. She’d been struck before, many times. It had its price, like everything. “You leave marks, and it’ll cost you,” she said. She sat up again, presenting her face to him. “It’ll cost you big time,” she said.

  “Then I’d better make sure I get my money’s worth, hadn’t I?” he said, and struck her again so hard spatters of blood hit the wall.

  He got her to beg him to stop eventually, but it took time. She let him strike her over and over—mainly her face, but on occasion her breasts and thighs. Only when she was so sick from his assault that she fell, and found that she was too weak to get up again, did she tell him she’d had enough. He didn’t listen, of course. The more he hurt her, the more he felt that bright, strange self rising up in him; and the more it rose the more he wanted to hurt her.

  Only once did he pause, catching his reflection in the mirror, his face shiny with sweat and exhilaration. He’d never been a narcissist, unlike Mitchell; never enjoyed the sight of himself. But now he liked the way he looked, more than a little. There was a magnificence about him, no question. He began to beat the woman with renewed vigor, deaf to her protests, her sobs, her pathetic attempts at negotiation. She would do this, she would do that, if only he would leave her alone. He ignored her, and beat on, blow after blow after blow, driving her into that corner where she attempted to rise, and finding that she couldn’t, began to panic.

  She was afraid for her life, he saw; afraid that in his new state he would casually dispatch her. As soon as he saw that look, he stopped striking her, and without another word returned to the bathroom to piss and wash his hands. There had been nothing faintly arousing about what he’d just done. He suspected he was beyond arousal now (it was too human: a thing of the past). With his hands clean and his bladder emptied he went back into the bedroom.

  “I need your full name,” he said to the woman, who had made an attempt to crawl to the door (which he had locked anyway, pocketing the key).

  The woman mumbled something he didn’t comprehend. He pulled the chair out from the table, and sat down.

  “Try again,” he said. “It’s very important.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out his wallet and his checkbook. “I’m going to give you some money,” he said. “Enough money for you to go to join your mother in Kentucky and buy yourself a little business, and start over.”

  Even in her confused and semiconscious state Melodie understood what she was being told. “This is a filthy, perverted city,” Garrison went on, “and I want you to promise me that if I give you this money—” he was writing the check now “—let’s say a million dollars—that you will never come back. Never. Your full name.”

  The woman had begun to sob quietly. “Melodie Lara Hubbard,” she said.

  “I’m not paying you this for what I just did to you,” Garrison said as he wrote, “I did that because I wanted to, not because you were offering me a service. And I’m not paying you to stop you going to some supermarket gossip rag. I couldn’t give a fuck who you tell. Do you understand? I couldn’t care less. I’m giving you this because I want you to have some faith.” He signed the check, then took a card from his wallet and scrawled a short sentence on the back of it. “You take this to my lawyer, Cecil Curry, tomorrow, and he’ll make sure the funds get transferred.” He got up from the table and put the check and the card on the bed, among the crushed flowers. Melodie squinted at the row of noughts Garrison had set down. Yes, there were six, preceded by a dollar sign and a one.

  “I’ll leave you to clean up then,” Garrison said, fishing the key from his pocket. “Be clever with what you’ve been given. People like me don’t come along very often.” He inserted the key, turned it, and opened the door. “In fact, they never come along twice. So you count yourself lucky.” He smiled at her. “And you name one of your kids after me, huh? The one you love the most.”

  VI

  Garrison didn’t sleep for most of the rest of the night. He went back to the apartment in the Trump Tower, and took a long ice-cold shower, which left him feeling pleasantly tender. Then he sat in the big armchair where he’d sat talking with Mitchell about Margie’s death. He’d felt inviolate that night, but the feeling was nothing beside the sense of power that suffused him now.


  He sat through the rest of the night, thinking what his next move should be. Plainly he had first to make good on his promise to Mitchell, which prospect pleased him. The Pallenberg woman posed no threat to him whatsoever, but if she was such a thorn in his brother’s side, then it was better for all concerned that she be summarily dealt with, as Margie had been dealt with. Once that was done he’d have Mitchell’s full attention, and they could begin their real work. He didn’t doubt that whatever the nature of the other self he’d discovered rising in him, it was also in Mitchell. Dormant, but there to be awoken, and called out into glory. What a revelation they’d make together!

  At dawn, with a pleasant weariness finally coming over him, he retired to bed. He slept for no more than two hours, and dreamed a species of dream his head had never before entertained.

  He dreamed he was floating through a great forest. The canopy was thick overhead, but not so thick that sunlight didn’t pierce it, falling warm on his upturned face. Somebody was talking to him—a woman, her voice light and happy. He couldn’t understand anything that she was saying, but he knew there was love in the words, and that the love was for him.

  He wanted to see her face; he wanted to know what kind of beauty he had accompanying him. But though he tried to make his dream-gaze obey his will, and shift in the direction of her voice, he was not sufficiently master of himself. All he could do was float, and listen, and feel the sweetness in the woman’s voice bathing him, caressing him.

  Finally, his motion slowed, and then stopped. For a moment he hovered there, and then he was slowly lowered to the ground. Only now, when he was laid in grass that was tall enough to partially obscure his view, did he realize that he had not been traveling independently, as he’d thought, but been carried: that in this dream he was a babe in arms. And now, majestically, the woman who’d carried him walked into view. Her back was turned to him, her focus fixed upon a house, a magnificent house, which was situated some distance from them.

  He started to cry. He wanted the woman to come and pick him up again. But she just kept looking at the house, and though he couldn’t see her face something about the way she stood, her arms hanging at her sides, convinced him that all the happiness he’d heard in her voice had deserted her, and that now she was consumed with yearning. She wanted to be there, in that splendid, white-pillared place, but she was forbidden.

  And still he bawled, doing his best to get her to attend to him, his sobs echoing around the glade of moss-draped trees with such violence birds rose in panic from the branches and fled away. Finally, she gave up watching the house, and looked back at him.

  It was his mother.

  Why was he so astonished by that? Why did the sight of her face so startle him that the dream-scene fluttered and threatened to be extinguished? It was his mother; mothers were supposed to carry their babies in their arms, weren’t they?

  And yet he was shocked to see her; distressed even. It wasn’t the fact that her face was tear-streaked and pale (that was his preferred state for a woman’s face) it was the fact of her very presence here, where he sensed the uncanny. She belonged to a more mundane existence, whose minor enchantments could be bought and sold like any other commodity; not here, not here.

  She went down on her knees beside him, as if she intended to pick him up. Tears fell from her eyes, and splashed on him. Then she said the only word in the entire dream he understood. She said:

  “Goodbye.”

  Those syllables said—and without kissing him, without laying so much as a finger upon him—she stood up again, and walked away, leaving him there in the grass.

  He started to cry again, his voice shrill and pathetic. But now his lips could form words—“Don’t leave me!” he sobbed. “Mama! Mama! Don’t leave me!”

  He woke to the din of his own voice, crying out in his sleep. He sat up in bed, his heart beating furiously. He waited for the inevitable retreat of the images that his mind had conjured up, but they didn’t go. Even with his eyes wide open, feeding on a hundred concrete details of his bedroom, the sights he’d just seen and the feelings he’d felt insisted upon him.

  Perhaps this was part of his transfiguration: his mind revisiting old anxieties so that they could be dealt with and sloughed off. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience, but any change—especially one as powerful as that which had seized him—brought with it some measure of discomfort.

  He got out of bed, and went to the window to open the drapes. As he did so—as his hand caught hold of the heavy fabric—he was suddenly seized by a sickening suspicion. He put on his robe, and went across the landing to his study, where he’d left Holt’s journal. He’d begun reading it as soon as his brother had brought it to him, but events had overtaken his analysis, and he’d not returned to it. Now he began to search through its dog-eared pages, scanning the text. He passed over the passages about Bentonville, and the section dealing with Holt’s return to his house; on through the portions dealing with the events in the East Battery, on through Holt and Nickelberry’s departure from Charleston. The deserters were moving north, in Galilee’s company, heading back to the Barbarossas’ territory. There were four or five pages devoted to the precise methodology of entrance: several small diagrams that almost looked like brands, and paragraphs speaking of the mysteries of L’Enfant, which if unsolved would prove fatal to any who attempted to gain access to the Barbarossa residence. He lingered long enough on this passage to confirm that the solutions had indeed all been set down on the page, then he moved on to look for a description of the house itself.

  And there, just a few pages from the end of the journal, he found the passage he was afraid he’d find.

  I have never seen such a house as was presented before us as we came between the trees, Holt wrote, nor felt so strongly the sense that we were walking in the presence of things unseen, forces that would have done us calamitous harm had we not been Samaritans carrying a prodigal back onto his native soil. That’s two Biblical stories in one, but that’s probably appropriate, for I believe that here, gathered in this place, were enough mysteries to be the subject of a dozen Testaments.

  So the house. It was painted white, with a classical façade, such as you might see in many great plantation houses; but there rose above these familiar forms a dome of such beauty and magnitude, shining white in the sunlight—

  Garrison put the book down. He’d read all that he needed to read. The house in his dream was the same which Holt had written about: the Barbarossas’ great mansion. He’d be going there soon enough. But did the dream mean that he’d already been there? If not, how had he imagined the house so well?

  Mystery upon mystery. First the death of the old man, and all the destruction that had accompanied it. Then his transfiguration: the force he’d seen in the mirror, blazing back at him. Now this enigma: dreaming’ of his mother abandoning him on the grounds of the Barbarossa home.

  He’d always been a man who trusted his intellect: in matters of money and in the management of human beings it didn’t do to be too emotional. But a wise intellect knew its limitations. It didn’t go where analytical power had no jurisdiction. It fell silent, and left the mind to find other ways to comprehend whatever troubled it.

  Here was such a border, where intellect retreated. To go on, into the place of sloughings and furies and abandonments that lay ahead, he would need to look to his instincts, and hope they were sharp enough to protect him.

  Others had taken similar journeys and lived to tell the tale. One such traveler had written the very journal that sat there on Garrison’s desk: the captain whose life and seed lay fatally close to the root of the Geary family tree.

  Perhaps that same prospect lay ahead for him; perhaps he was on this journey so as to found a dynasty of his own. The idea had never occurred to him before, but why would it? He’d been sweating in service of the Gearys all his life; a sterile preoccupation at best. Now he was free both of his servitude and his skin. It was time to think things ove
r from the beginning. To find wombs; to make children. And to take them—in his own arms if need be—and lay them down in the grass where he’d been lain, where they might see the pillars and the dome of the palace that the Barbarossas had dreamed into being, but which he would steal from them, by and by, to house his own sons and daughters.

  VII

  This time, Rachel didn’t come to the island as the pampered Mrs. Mitchell Geary. The deferential Jimmy Hornbeck wasn’t there to meet her, eager to cater to her every whim. She rented a car at the airport, loaded in her bags, and with the help of a map she’d been given at the rental office drove to Anahola. The sky was overcast, the heavy, rainbearing clouds that had previously masked the heights of Mount Waialeale now lowering over the entire island. It was still hot, however; humid, in fact. She decided against sealing the car windows and turning up the air-conditioning. She wanted to smell the air: the fragrance of the flowers, the sharpness of the sea. She wanted to be reminded of what it had felt like to be here before, not knowing what lay in wait for her.

  It was impossible, of course, to return to a state of innocence, especially when its loss had brought with it such far-reaching consequences. But as she turned off the main road and wound her way down the rutted track that led to the house, she was surprised to discover how readily she could make believe the agonies of the recent past belonged to somebody else, and that she was coming here unburdened.

  The trees and shrubs had swelled and thickened since her last visit, and had largely gone untrimmed. The vines had grown up over the eaves and were creeping across the roof; large rotted blossoms littered the front veranda, and the geckos that scurried there seemed less alarmed by her presence than previously, as though they had assumed possession of the place, and were not about to be intimidated by her trespass.

  The front door was locked, which didn’t surprise her. She walked around the back, remembering that the lock on the sliding door had been faulty, and hoping (not unreasonably given the general neglect) that it had not been mended.