Ark (41 page)

For music, we sang, all together, usually at night, under the moon and stars that were gradually becoming brighter. Gradually the sun, too, stopped being the wrong color and went back to being the blinding star that human eyes were not designed to look upon. The planet was beautiful again in a way that most living people had never realized it was meant to be. The dust of the hyperquake dispersed quicker than had been thought possible, and the ash and smoke of new volcanoes were less of a problem than Henry had thought they might be, partly because most of them were bubbling away underwater, attracting fishes to their warmth, instead of releasing dust and ash into the atmosphere. Tiney and her playmates took the only world they knew entirely for granted. Thanks to Clementine’s storytelling, the planet she lived upon was, to her, a Neverland in which children flew over the housetops in their nightgowns, holding hands with happy fairies that rang like bells, and a flying boy played the flute in his calmer moments, and nothing that was naughty or nice ever came to an end.

Because I was Henry’s wife, I lived as a vestal. No male dared to look at me with lust. To my great surprise, chastity suited me. All my sexual memories had to do with Henry. Other lovers, even the ones who had been more expert than Henry, even Adam, dissolved. Henry was the love of my life. I fantasized about finding his grave and lying down beside him one last time. Only my love for Tiney kept me from wandering off in search of his unfindable sepulcher. Gazing at our daughter as she played—golden hair, golden skin, golden hints of her father’s mind—I understood at last the meaning of the word
seed
as it applies to the begetting of children. From Tiney or her descendants, another Henry would sooner or later be born. I was sure of this. It was a banal thought, but what difference did that make? As time went by, I had fewer and fewer visitations from the past. My memories faded, my dreams about what used to be ceased. Though I remembered them, I never wondered whatever happened to Melissa or Adam or my abandoned child. Even Bear sank irrevocably into the mists.

Henry would never appear at the gate. I was sure of that. It was too unlike him. It was possible that somebody else would come, and though the visitor looked nothing like Henry, would insist that he was Henry. If that happened, would I play along like the wife in that medieval tale of impersonation? Would I sleep with the imposter, would I talk to him in the dark, would I make this absurdity into an idyll?

I didn’t think so, but how could I know? Maybe impulse
—
my oldest friend,
mon semblance
—
was not so withered after all.

If Henry
was
alive, the best thing he could have wished for, the most desired thing, was that he might at last pass through the world unnoticed. We did nothing that might cause him to be remembered. The last thing Henry had said to Clementine, she told me
(why hadn’t he said this to me?),
was that the commune should not be named for him, that there should be no monument, no biography, no gossip
calling itself history. In accordance with his wishes, our commune
did not bear his name. No child born there was ever named Henry. The formula worked. Quicker than even Henry might have hoped or
thought possible, he was forgotten outside the tiny circle that had
known what he looked like, sounded like, or how sometimes he loosened his grip on his singularity for a fleeting moment and smiled a whole, delightful smile instead of the furtive semi-smile that was nearly always on his lips.

I remembered everything. How Henry was, how he looked, how he had found all those grails and carried them out of the labyrinth and into the light. In the deepest recesses of my self, I thought, even while scoffing at the possibility, that he might sooner or later turn up. One morning just before I woke, he would call. Even if he came back as an old, old man, as ancient as I myself would be by that time, I would know him, as no one else could, for the Henry he was inside his disguise of raddled flesh and twisted bone. I would know what worlds spun behind his rheumy eyes.

Even if he looked me in the eye and smiled that unfinished smile and swore that he was Henry.