“Yes,” he said, with that same frail smile. “Maybe you did.” He was looking at her with the gratitude of a child saved from a nightmare.
“I swear. They’re not coming back. Whatever happened, sweetheart, they’ve gone and they’re not coming back You’re safe.”
“I am?”
She lifted his cold face up to hers and kissed him. “Oh yes,” she said, certain of this as she’d been certain of little else in her life. “I’m not going to let anything hurt you or take you away from me ever again.”
XVII
i
He was all but naked, his wasted body covered in wounds and bruises; but when she finally managed to get him up onto his feet—which took five minutes of maneuvering, then another five of her rubbing his legs to restore his circulation—his old command of himself, and the authority of his bearing, started to return. She offered to go down ahead of him and bring Niolopua up to help, but he wouldn’t hear of it. They’d make it, he said; it would just take a little time.
They began the descent, tentatively at first, but gathering speed and confidence as they went.
Only once did they halt for any length of lime, and it was not because the path became too steep or treacherous, it was because Galilee suddenly drew a sharp, frightened breath and said: ‘There!”
His eyes had darted off to their left, where the foliage was shaking, as though an animal had just fled away.
“What is it?” Rachel said.
“They’re still here,” he murmured, “the ones that came after me.” He pointed to the swaying foliage. “That one was staring at me.”
“I don’t see him,” she said.
“He’s gone now . . . but they’re not going to let me alone.”
“We’ll see about that,” she said. “If they’ve got business with you then they’ve got business with me. And I’ll make them take their sorry asses back where they came from.” She spoke this more loudly than she strictly needed to, as though to inform any stalking spirits of her belligerence. Galilee seemed reassured.
“I don’t see them anymore,” he said.
They began their descent afresh. It was easier now; Galilee seemed to have taken strength from the exchange they’d had, but they were both exhausted by the time they reached the shore, and sat for a little while to gather their breath. There was no sign of Niolopua.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t have driven away without me,” Rachel said. “I hope he didn’t go up in there . . . ” She looked back toward the wall of vegetation. As the day crept on the green looked less and less welcoming; she didn’t like the idea of going back up the slope in search of Niolopua.
Her fears were unfounded. They’d been sitting catching their breath on the beach perhaps five minutes when he appeared out of the trees further along the beach. As soon as he saw Rachel and Galilee he let out a whoop of happiness and relief, and began to run along the beach toward them, only slowing down when Galilee got to his feet to greet him. Niolopua slowed his approach, halting a few yards from them.
“Hello,” he murmured. He bowed his head as he spoke; there was reverence in his every muscle.
“I’m pleased to see you.” Galilee replied, with an odd formality of his own. “You thought you’d lost me, huh?”
Niolopua nodded. “We were afraid so,” he said.
“I wouldn’t leave you.” Galilee replied, “Either of you.” His gaze went from Niolopua’s face to Rachel’s, then back to his son.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” he said, offering his hand to Niolopua.
Rachel thought he intended it to be shaken, but they had an odder, and in some ways more tender, ritual of greeting. Taking his father’s hand Niolopua turned it palm up and kissed it, leaving his face buried in the lines and cushions of his father’s immense hand until he had to lift it again to draw breath.
ii
The hours stretched on, and Mitchell was alone in the house. He was far from comfortable there. Though he was exhausted, nothing would have persuaded him to lie down on any of the beds and sleep. He didn’t want to know what kind of dreams came to men who slept here. Nor did he want to touch anything in the kitchen. He didn’t like the idea of behaving domestically here; of letting the house lull him into believing it was innocent. It was not innocent. It was as guilty as the women who’d fornicated here.
But as the day passed, he got wearier and hungrier and ranker and fouler-tempered, and by two in the afternoon he was feeling so weak that he realized he was in serious danger of compromising the business he’d come here to do. He would go out and find something to eat, he decided; maybe some cigarettes, and some strong coffee. If his bitch-wife came back while he was away, no matter. He knew the layout of the house now; he could ambush her. And if she was still gone when he returned, then he’d be fortified, and ready to wait out the night if necessary until she came back.
It was a little after two-thirty when he left the premises, on foot. It was a relief to be out in the open air after the confines of the house; his gloomy spirits rose. He knew where he was heading: he’d spotted a small general store not more than half a mile back along the highway from the turnoff down to the house. Meanwhile, there were incidental pleasures along the way: a radiant smile from a local girl hanging out washing to dry; the scent of some flower in the hedgerow; the drone of a jet overhead, and his looking up, squinting against the brightness of the sky, to see it making a white chalk line on the blue.
It was a good day to be in love, and for some strange reason that’s how he felt: like a man in love. Perhaps there was an end to his confusions in sight; perhaps, after all, when the shaking and the tears were over, he could settle down with Rachel and live the kind of lush life he knew he deserved. He wasn’t a bad man; he hadn’t done any harm to anybody. All that had happened of late—the death of Margie, the business with the journal, the chaos attending Cadmus’s demise—none of it had been his responsibility. All he wanted—all he’d ever wanted—was to be seen and accepted as the prince he was. Once he’d achieved that modest aim there’d be a golden time again; he was certain of it. Garrison would finally shrug off his depressions, and put his energies back where they belonged, organizing the family business. Old dreams would be realized and new futures made. The past, and all its grimy secrets, would be footnotes in a book of victories.
All these happy thoughts went through his head as he walked, and by the time he reached the store the profound unease that had visited him in the house had been eclipsed. He went about the store whistling; picked up some soda, some doughnuts and two packs of cigarettes. Then he sat outside on the wall of the red-dirt parking lot and drank and ate and smoked and enjoyed the warmth of the sun. After an idling while it occurred to him that perhaps he should return to the house prepared to defend himself. So he went back into the store, and wandered around until he found a kitchen knife that was pretty much to his purpose. He bought it, and went back out to sit on the wall again and finish his little meal. The doughnuts and soda had given him a pleasant sugar buzz; there was quite a spring in his step when he finally started on back to the house.
XVIII
Galilee’s reserves of strength were all used up by the time Rachel and Niolopua got him to the car. He’d become a dead weight, barely able to lift his head for more than a few moments before it sank down again. On the journey back to Anahola he was clearly fighting hard to stay conscious. His eyes would flicker open for a time and he’d speak, then he’d lapse into long periods when he seemed nearly comatose. Even during the periods of consciousness he was barely lucid. Most of what he said was muttered fragments. Was he reliving the destruction of The Samarkand? It seemed perhaps he was, the way he’d suddenly shout, his face a grimace. At one point he began to make choking sounds, and for several agonizing seconds his body stiffened in Rachel’s arms, every muscle hard as stone, as he desperately tried to draw breath. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the attack ceased and he relaxed in her embrace, his breathing quite regular
.
After that, they got to the house without further incident. It was almost night by the time they arrived, and the house was in darkness. But Galilee seemed to know where they were, despite his delirium, because as they escorted him up the path, his weight borne almost entirely by Niolopua, he raised his head a few inches, and looked at the house from beneath his heavy lids.
“Are . . . they . . . there?” he said.
“Who?”
“The women,” he replied.
“No, baby,” Rachel said. “It’s just us.”
He made the tiniest of smiles, his eyes still fixed on the murky house. “Let me sleep,” he said. ‘They’ll come.”
She didn’t argue with him. If the thought of the Geary women returning here comforted him, then that was fine and dandy. And the prospect seemed to motivate him for those few yards. He made an agonizing effort to enter the house under his own steam, as though there was some point of honor here: that he, who had raised this house, did not want to be seen returning into it with his strength so reduced he could not step over the threshold without help. Once the attempt at autonomy had been made, however, and he was inside, he had no choice but to relinquish himself to Rachel and Niolopua’s support. His head drooped again, his eyes closed.
Niolopua suggested they lay him down on the couch, but Rachel had no doubt where he would recover most quickly: upstairs, in the carved, painted bed. It was hard work getting him up the flight of stairs, but Niolopua put his back to the task, and after five minutes of ungainly struggle they got up to the top. From there it was easy enough: along the landing, through the door, and onto the bed.
Rachel tucked a pillow under Galilee’s head, and pulled the sheets out from under his body to cover him. He was cold again, as he’d been when she’d first found him, but at least he didn’t have the same ashen pallor. His lips were dry and cracked, so she fetched some balm, and applied it thickly. Then she tore away the remains of his vest, and examined the contusions on his torso. None of them were bleeding, so she fetched a washcloth and bathed them, one by one, just to be sure there wasn’t any dirt in the wounds. Niolopua helped her roll Galilee over so that Rachel could bathe the cuts on his back. Then she unbuckled his belt and together they removed his pants. Now he lay completely naked on the white sheet, his massive languorous form sprawled on the bed as though he’d fallen there, out of heaven.
“Can I go now?” Niolopua said. He was plainly uncomfortable at being in the room with his father while he lay there in this state. “I’ll just be downstairs. Call me if you need me,” and off he went.
Rachel went back to the bathroom and washed out the cloths she’d used to clean the wounds. When she came back into the room she couldn’t help but stop for a moment and drink in the sight before her. Oh, he was beautiful. Even in this profound repose, with the great mass of his muscle diminished by deprivation, there was still power in him. In those immense arms, which had so effortlessly wrapped her up; in the thick trunk of his neck; in that aristocratic head of his, with its high bones; his mouth, shiny with balm, his brow, deeply etched, his dense, black-and-salt beard. And down past the raked muscle of his belly, the other power here, presently dormant. Lying against his groin in its sleeping state, hooded and huge. She would have a child out of him, she thought, looking at him like this; whatever the risks to her own body, she would have something of him inside her, as proof of their union.
She set to washing the wounds on his thighs and shins; tenderly, tenderly. There was something about his utter passivity that was unbearably erotic. She was wet thinking of what it would be like to sit astride him; to run his flesh in the groove of her sex until it hardened, then take him up inside her. She tried to put the thought away, and concentrate on the business of tending to him, but her mind, and her gaze, returned again and again to his groin. Though he showed no sign of stirring from his sleep, she had the uncanny sense that his sex was aware of her. Wishful thinking, of course; and yet the suspicion persisted. Galilee was lost in dreams, but his cock was awake. Though she was working at his feet now, it stirred and thickened. The hood drew back a little as its head swelled with blood.
She put down the washcloth, and reached between her legs. It knew what she was up to. It saw with the glistening slit of its eye; it luxuriated in the heat off her blushing face. She touched herself, running her fingers over her labia then sliding them up into her body. Then she took the wetness and ran it, oh-so-lightly, up and down the length of his cock. It responded like a stroked animal, rising to press its black spine against her caress, luxuriating in her touch.
She watched his face, half-thinking this was all some subtle seduction he’d engineered, and that he would open his eyes at any moment and smile at her, invite her to climb onto him and be pleasured. But there was no sign of motion, other than that at his groin. His eyes didn’t flicker, his mouth didn’t twitch. He lay there, as he had from the beginning, in a state of complete quiescence. There was no sign of the man who’d made such intricate love to her on The Samarkand, nor of the thug who’d fucked her against the bathroom wall. Only this fat ticking stick, its length as knotted as a vine, its head all but naked now.
There was no resisting it. She undressed, and climbed up onto the bed, still glancing up at his face now and then to see if he stirred. But his breathing was even, slow and soft. He was deep in slumber. Her own body ached with fatigue, and her hips complained at the effort of climbing astride him. But the pleasure of his body more than compensated for the discomfort. As for any dregs of doubt that she was somehow exploiting his passivity—taking this pleasure when it wasn’t freely offered—they drained away the moment he was housed inside her. The chill in his body had gone; his hips, his groin, his cock, were feverishly hot, and knew their duty without prompting. She felt him shift beneath her; then he began to press his length up into her until he won a sob, and another, and another.
She was barely aware of the sounds she was making until they came back to her off the wall, gasps and cries, echoing around the little room. The bed creaked as the rolling motion of his hips escalated; she fell forward, her hands dropping against his chest, which was as burning hot as his groin. She reached down once to feel the place where their bodies met; it was awash with her moisture. The smell of her rose between their bodies. Not fragrant, not perfumed; nothing so delicate. A ripe smell, the smell of her ache and her loneliness pouring out of her and anointing its cure. She felt, as she had never felt in her life before, the primal nature of this act. No words of love, no promises of devotion were necessary: this was the act unadorned by sentiment; a piercing and a possession, her flesh embracing his, demanding its due. If somebody had asked her what her name was at that moment she wouldn’t have remembered it; nor his. She—who’d fought so hard not to lose herself—had found her way through the labyrinth in order to come to this place of forgetfulness, where all the Rachels she’d been—the wildling and the sophisticate, the shop-girl and the society wife—were eclipsed.
As she moved on him, she seemed to feel the room around them trembling. The glass in the windows rattled; her sighs and sobs came back from the wall, manifold, as though her noise had woken other voices, their vibrations captive until now. It was not, she realized, simply her appetite for him that had made her so shameless; there was a profounder summons here.
She opened her eyes again, and through a fluttering veil of her pleasure looked down at her lover’s face. There was no change in his expression, but his eyes had opened, just a crack, and he was looking up at her.
Then he spoke.
“We’re not alone . . .” he said.
XIX
Down on the beach, the surfers had come for a last ride before dark. Their shouts of exhilaration drifted up across the lawn to the veranda, where Niolopua sat smoking the last of his joint. The sight of his father, laid out naked on the bed, had unnerved him. Though he’d known Galilee a human lifetime, he had never seen him so vulnerable. And though he believed Rachel’s intentions to h
is father were good, and her feelings sincere, there was part of him that wanted to take Galilee away from her, away from this wretched house, so full of sad remembrances; take him off to the hills where neither Rachel nor any other Geary woman could ever lay claim to him again. Love wasn’t enough; not in this world. Love ended in betrayal or the grave, sooner or later, it was only a question of time.
But the pot put a little perspective on this dour thought. He should not be so pessimistic he told himself. Just because he’d never tasted joy didn’t mean it wasn’t there to be had. It was just so very difficult, to face the changes ahead. He’d lived a hard life—hidden away in his shack most of the time so that the islanders didn’t notice that the years failed to take their toll on him the way they did on others. What little purpose he’d had for himself had been a function of his father’s continuing visits to the island. He’d been the go-between, down through the decades; the one who’d sent the message out to his father to tell him that his services were required; the one who’d facilitated each liaison, and more than once stayed to comfort the woman upon his father’s departure. He’d never questioned his function, nor his ability to fulfill it. There was a resilient bond between father and son; a bond of minds. It meant that all Niolopua had needed to do was sit in the quiet of his shack and speak his father’s true name—Atva, Atva—and Galilee would hear him, wherever he was. No other instruction was needed. Niolopua had only ever called that name when a female member of the Geary had instructed him to do so. And at the summons, Galilee had always come, his skills as a mariner so flawless, and his knowledge of wind and current so profound, that he was sometimes there before the woman whom he’d been called to pleasure had even arrived. It was a dispiriting business, to Niolopua’s eye; his glorious father, the great wanderer, brought to heel like a dog. But it was not his place to challenge the ritual. On the one occasion he’d begun to do so, Galilee had told him in no uncertain terms that the subject was not open for discussion. Niolopua had never dared raise the subject again. He wasn’t fearful of his father’s anger; Galilee had never shown him anything but love. It was the glimpse of his father’s pain that had silenced him. He had resigned himself to never knowing why Galilee played the lover to these lonely women. It was simply a part of both their lives.