Bellefleur

  Part of the problem was that Bromwell was extremely young—only eleven and a half—and all the other boys were older by several years. (The boys’ ages ranged from fourteen to eighteen; there was even a nineteen-year-old, a slack-jawed sadistic ox, who either could not manage to graduate, or did not wish to graduate.) Even for his age Bromwell was undersized, though his fair brown hair that looked, in certain lights, as if it were shading into silver, and his stern, rather censorious expression, and his glasses, gave him the air of a forty-year-old. Despite his physical size and the frequency of the other boys’ bullying he could not seem to resist, especially in the classroom, murmuring sarcastic comments when they displayed their ignorance; he was not even able to keep to himself (though surely it would have been politic to do so) his amused incredulity as his instructors’ blunders. But do you want to be so rigorously disliked by your peers, the headmaster asked, and Bromwell replied, after a moment, in a startled voice: Is being liked or not being liked important? Is it something other people think about . . . ? I must say, I have never considered it.

  Everything about the school vexed him though he realized, as he said in his letters to Leah, that he couldn’t remain at home: he couldn’t endure those embarrassing tutorial sessions with uncle Hiram, and of course it was out of the question for him to attend the local school, or even the public school in Nautauga Falls. So he would try, he would try. . . . He would try to accommodate himself to the school’s idiotic schedule (the boys were roused by clanging bells each weekday morning at 7:00 A.M. and were allowed to sleep until eight on weekends; “lights out” was at 10:30 P.M. every day except Fridays and Saturdays, when they might stay up until 11:30; if a boy did not march into the dining room with the others in his corridor, if he came in even a minute late, alone, he was turned away from his table; and of course they all had to attend—what primitive folly!—chapel).

  No concessions were made to his repeated pleas that he be allowed to stay up as late as he wished, in the laboratory (which was shamefully inadequate) or the library (which was even more shamefully inadequate: the worst of it was, his own books were still in their crates, unpacked, in the school’s damp basement, because there wasn’t “enough room” for them elsewhere). He craved, with an almost physical desire, to stay up through the night . . . to know that his was the only consciousness, the only thinking consciousness, in the building . . . and as a consequence he lay awake until two or three in the morning, quite miserable, his mind beset by mathematical problems and astronomical speculations until he felt he might go mad.

  Do you want me, Mother, he inquired politely, to go mad? Is that part of your design?

  But Leah rarely answered his letters. She sent him his allowance, and usually scribbled a few words of a cheerful or innocuous nature (telling him nothing, even, about Christabel: the last news he had, she and her lover were being pursued by two separate teams of detectives, Schaff’s and the family’s, and had been traced to Mexico), making no reference to his queries.

  He wrote to Gideon, and to grandfather Noel; he even wrote to his cousin Raphael, whom he almost missed—though he suspected that if he were back home, Raphael’s moodiness would soon bore him. He complained that the athletic activities he was forced to endure were destroying him. During a recent basketball game, for instance, the boys had repeatedly thrown the basketball at him, right at his face, regardless of the fact that the referee was blowing his whistle like mad, and Bromwell’s nose was dripping blood (his glasses, of course, had been knocked off immediately, and were—again—cracked); when at last, after great hesitation, he had ventured out to the end of the diving board, trembling with cold, a boy had rushed past him to dive into the pool, giving him a playful shove with the flat of his hand, and he’d fallen, sideways, to everyone’s amusement, and so badly slapped his side, and filled his head with water, that he had nearly drowned. Yet these events were always called accidents, or instances of his classmates’ high spirits. . . . Most distressing of all, Bromwell complained, was the fact that Bellefleur was so frequently whispered about. At the start of the term some of the older boys barged into his room, throwing themselves on his bed, eager to make friends; they had heard all sorts of things about his family, up there at Lake Noir, didn’t the Bellefleurs own racing horses, weren’t they mixed up in politics, weren’t they wealthy, hadn’t there been murderers in the family, and someone sent away to prison . . . ? Meeting Bromwell, then, had been a considerable disappointment.

  (During the spring term news came of the Fort Hanna shootout, during which uncle Ewan and his deputies gunned down four men who were barricaded in a rooming house with rifles and a considerable amount of ammunition—but Bromwell met his classmates’ respectful inquiries by claiming that he had never met Ewan Bellefleur, the popular sheriff of Nautauga County. He was a distant relative.)

  IT WAS SHORTLY after the Fort Hanna incident, and after Bromwell had had to endure the ignominy of earning a grade of 55 on his American history exam (his grades in history were always poor, since he never studied), that he conceived of the idea of running away. The Bellefleurs had so wildly unrealistic a notion of his expenses at the school, and his pastimes, and the “treats” he might wish to buy for his friends, that several of them sent him allowances on a fairly regular basis, and there were frequently unexplained cash gifts from Leah and grandmother Della: so he had managed to acquire, without giving it any thought, more than $3,000. (Which he was shrewd enough to keep, not in his room, or even in the academy’s safe, but in a bank in the village.)

  He then wrote a highly formal letter to the Mount Ellesmere Institute for Advanced Study in Astronomy, which was located in a distant western state, expressing his hope that, despite his lack of official training and his age (which he did not give), they might allow him to study there. He received an application form, and an impersonal covering letter, so he filled out the form and mailed it back and, one Saturday morning in mid-May, without having heard from Mount Ellesmere, he simply left the New Hazelton Academy for Boys—arose at the usual time, breakfasted with the rest of the pack, and, wearing several layers of clothing (which his roommate thought was odd, but then Bromwell was odd), strolled down the school’s brick driveway to the road and disappeared. Later, it was discovered that he had withdrawn all his money—a considerable sum—from a local bank, and that he had destroyed all his family’s letters, and the few snapshots he’d brought with him to school. When last seen he was walking down the drive, his hands in his pockets; his lips were pursed, and he was whistling a cheerful, tuneless little air.

  The Jaws Devour . . .

  It was on a fair June morning that Leah woke with a headache and the curious words The jaws devour, the jaws are devoured, running through her mind. And then again on a July morning, very early, before dawn, waking with the thought that there was someone in the room with her, someone who meant harm, The jaws devour, the jaws are devoured, a hoarse phlegm-rattled mutter that was her own voice, but much altered. And again later in the month. No matter that her life was now a series of triumphs. No matter that the titanium—its quality as well as its astonishing quantity—now being extracted from the Mount Kittery mines would make it possible for the family to buy up the rest of Jean-Pierre’s empire. The dull pulsing headache, the orangish parched taste at the back of her mouth, the sudden conviction that her arms and legs would not respond: that she would lie paralyzed in her bed until someone discovered her. . . . That morning in June, and two mornings in July, and then again in mid-August, before the busloads of migrant workers arrived and it was evident that, this year, the Bellefleurs would have trouble: the sensation of heaviness, despondency, too leaden to be panic, the sensation of grief, but grief, she wanted to shout, for what?—in Christ’s name, what?

  She was triumphant, she carried all before her, within a year or two her plans would be complete (though she was ready for a battle since certain property owners in the mountains, being nearly as wealthy as the Bellefleurs themselves, would not willing
ly agree to sell), on all sides she was admired, and feared, and of course envied; and disliked. But as Hiram told her, the Bellefleurs did not appear on this earth to be liked, but to fulfill their destiny. Old Jeremiah had been well liked, in a pitying contemptuous sort of way, and what good had that done him, or anyone? He hadn’t even a place of rest in the family cemetery. . . .

  She was triumphant, yet the moods came upon her with increasing frequency. Of course she recognized them as mere weaknesses, one of the manifestations of the silly Bellefleur curse, in which she did not really believe—not really—for how could she believe in what was almost the sanctity of despair, seeking its expression in a variety of unlikely (sometimes comically unlikely) forms? There was an old family tale of a Bellefleur woman who had simply retired to bed for the rest of her life: she hadn’t even pretended, to herself and others, as most female invalids of that era had, that she was ill. And Della with her tiresome perpetual grief, which was so obviously nothing more, now, so many decades later, than a way of irritating the family; and Gideon with his selfish moods. . . . Well, it was clear to Leah that such behavior was contemptible. She would have roused that complacent old woman from her goosefeather pillows, and turned her out of her room: here, here is the world, it’s here, you can’t deny it! Over the years she had done her best to deflate Della’s pretentious mourning, though with little effect: for Della was one of the most stubborn of the Bellefleurs, and would probably leap smiling into her grave knowing that she had managed, throughout the decades, to vex and annoy and sadden everyone who had known her. And then there was Gideon. Gideon with his black rages, his black despondency. Hidden from his admirers. Unguessed-at by his women. (For Leah conceded that he had, from time to time, though only casually, women: very much in the plural. But so long as no one in the family knew that she knew, or suspected, so long as Gideon himself didn’t know, she was, in a sense, still innocent of her husband’s infidelity—a kind of virgin—a defiant and righteous virgin who would one day, at her leisure, have her revenge. But then she sometimes toyed with the idea of a reconciliation. For of course she could win her husband back, if she wished. Whenever she wished. She hadn’t any doubt but that he loved her, beneath, or beyond, or simultaneous with, his numerous adulteries. Perhaps she would summon him back to her bed someday. If she wished.)

  The jaws devour, the jaws are . . .

  So Leah fell, day by day, into despair. She knew very well that it was absurd, it was quite senseless, yet she could not help herself; she woke earlier and earlier in the morning, no longer with her old sense of impatience, but with a sense, leaden and horrible, of infinite patience . . . her limbs so heavy she could barely move them, her head weighed down, her eyelids burning as if she’d spent the night, in secret, in tears. It was mid-August. It was late August. Eight busloads of migrant workers, jabbering their strange, sibilant, malicious tongue, were threatening to go on strike: or the foreman who now represented them (for the old foreman, the one the Bellefleurs had always dealt with was gone—rumor had it he had been killed earlier in the season) was threatening to go on strike: and the acres and acres of peaches, pears, and apples from the Bellefleur orchards would be lost, falling rotten from the trees, to lie in mounds, food for yellow-jackets, flies, birds, worms. Ewan and Gideon and Noel and Hiram and Jasper were greatly upset, and every day, nearly every hour, something was happening; but Leah, a damp cloth over her eyes, lay on her chaise longue in her darkened bedchamber, too weak to move, too indifferent to care, hearing only a hoarse sluggish voice, The jaws devour, the jaws are devoured, a voice she did not recognize and in which she had no interest, any more than she had, now, in the Bellefleur fruit harvest or the Bellefleur fortune.

  Water going down a drain. Counterclockwise, did it move? Ever more quickly and quickly as it ran out. A sucking gurgling sound. Not at all disturbing. Restful. Restful as the compost heap the gardener kept, just outside the garden wall. Restful as old Raphael’s mausoleum. (But sometimes it angered her, even in her lethargy, to realize that Raphael too had been betrayed by his workers. His employees. After the poor man had begun improving their living quarters along the edge of the swamp, after he had allowed himself to become convinced by a visiting Manhattan physician that it was his responsibility, as their employer, to provide better sanitary conditions for them, and to treat, or attempt to treat—for there were so many!—those who were suffering from that mysterious intestinal ailment: after he had actually made a number of improvements, why then the reporters had swarmed into the village, eager to “expose” him, under instructions from their editors, who were in turn under instructions from newspaper publishers who wanted, for crude political reasons, to ruin Raphael Bellefleur’s chances for election. The injustice! The irony! And there was nothing he could do, no way to suppress the fact that thirteen people had died, among them a number of very young children (who were, as the gloating reporters insisted in story after story, working in the hop fields in 102-degree heat alongside their parents)—no way to erase from the minds of the sensation-greedy masses the charges that were laid against him in the public press. And now, and now, Leah thought wearily, that ugly tale was repeating itself, and the family would be helpless, the fruit would rot and thousands upon thousands of dollars would be lost, the workers were being led by a madman, a common criminal, but nothing could be done . . . the Bellefleurs would not only lose their fruit crop but they would be, throughout the Valley, possibly throughout the state, held up to ridicule in the press, and “pitied” by their competitors. Leah would have been angrier but she was so tired: so simply, helplessly, shamelessly tired.)

  The jaws devour . . .

  Those words, which rose in her mind at unpredictable times, frequently brought with them a wraithlike image of Vernon’s face: she wondered if he had written them, if they were from one of his long, baffling, exasperating poems. And in that instant, suddenly, she missed him. She missed him very much. So many winters ago, in the downstairs drawing room, knowing that he adored her, smiling and laughing and touching his arm, teasing, making him smile, making him boyishly happy. . . . Pretending to listen to his recitations. But sometimes listening (for the poems were not always incoherent, there were snatches of beauty here and there, and melodic sounds), making an effort to listen. If only she hadn’t been so distracted . . . ! She could not remember, now, what had distracted her. And now Vernon was dead. They had killed him. That they were now dead themselves as a consequence of Ewan’s shrewdness (he had known that to take Vernon’s murderers alive would be a blunder, since no witnesses would come forward to testify, and even if they did, and Varrell and Gittings and the others were convicted, some indifferent judge might hand down to them a light sentence, and they might have been paroled in a few years)—that justice had been done, revenge taken—did not soothe her. She missed Vernon. Somehow it had happened that she had not mourned him. One day he was with them, the next day gone: killed by drunken idiots on a Saturday night, thrown bound by his ankles and wrists into the river!—one day she had taken him for granted, as everyone did, and the next day he was gone forever. She hadn’t had time, then, to mourn him; or even to think much about him. She had wanted of course to destroy his murderers, and she had been fairly certain that they would be destroyed, in a matter of months; but she hadn’t had time to dwell upon Vernon himself. And now those strange, haunting, unpleasant words reminded her of him. And she almost wept—she wanted to weep—lying motionless on her chaise longue.

  Vernon, who had loved her, was dead: and the young woman he had loved, with such passionate shyness, was dead.

  Thoughts of Vernon pulled her toward thoughts of her daughter Christabel, whom she had lost; and now there was Bromwell (though a week ago a picture postcard showing mesquite and cactus in flower, addressed merely to “The Bellefleurs,” arrived with an enigmatic little message on it and Bromwell’s initials: he hoped he had not caused them any worry, he said, but his flight had been necessary, and everything was quite fine in his life); and Gid
eon, of course; Gideon who had deserted her bed after Germaine’s birth; Gideon who failed to love her sufficiently. She wanted to weep, and indeed her face constricted, and her mouth opened in a soundless wail; but there were no tears. She hadn’t wept, Leah thought, for years.

  Gideon, dancing about so clumsily to that tune, how did it go, the needle’s eye, the needle’s eye, staring into her face, speechless with emotion, Gideon so tender, so absurd, crimson-faced, his silly nose bleeding so that he ran out of the room and the children laughed. . . . He had been such a fool, even as a boy.

  Hiram wanted to talk with her about Gideon. But her eyelids were so heavy, she yearned only to fall asleep. . . . What does it matter, she whispered, her lips dry and cracked, what does it matter, let him make a fool of himself negotiating with those people, let him give them everything they ask and we’ll go bankrupt and everyone will laugh at us, what does it matter, she said, her voice so feeble Hiram could barely hear.

  Leah, he said.

  Yes.

  Leah, is it this strike that has upset you?

  I’m not upset.

  Are you worried about the crop?—are you worried they might set fire to the barns?

  Your voice is too loud, she whispered.

  Are you worried they might incite the other workers—

  Leave me alone, my head aches, your voice is too loud, she whispered.