Bellefleur (11 page)

“I must—I want—You see, my father and his friends—Their plans for cutting down timber—Their plans for building roads and bringing in tenants—”

Germaine stared at him. “Oh, but, Jedediah,” she whispered, “what if something happens to you? Up there in the mountains all alone . . .”

“Nothing will happen to me,” Jedediah said.

“When the first snowfall comes, what if you can’t get out? As Louis said—”

Jedediah had begun to tremble. It alarmed him that he would
remember
—he would
see
—this young girl’s face even after he had fled her. “I want to—I want to withdraw from the world and see if I am worthy of—of—God’s love,” he said, blushing. His voice shook with a fanatic’s frightened audacity.

The girl made a sudden helpless gesture, as if she wished to touch his arm. And Jedediah drew back.

“Nothing will happen to me,” he said curtly.

“But if you leave now—if you leave now—you won’t be here when the baby comes,” Germaine said. “And we thought—Louis and I thought—We
want
you to be the godfather—”

But Jedediah withdrew, and escaped her.

IN HER YOUNG
husband’s arms she lay sleepless and dazed, and surprisingly bitter, for the first time since their marriage. “He doesn’t love us,” she whispered. He was running off and leaving them, he was going to risk his life in the mountains, maybe turn into one of those deranged hermits you sometimes hear about: men gone mad from too much solitude. “He doesn’t want to be our baby’s godfather,” Germaine whispered. “He doesn’t love us.”

Only half-hearing, Louis nuzzled her neck and murmured Now, now, Puss.

“Just when our first baby is coming,” Germaine said.

Louis laughed, and tickled her, and buried his warm bearded mouth in her neck. “But he’ll be back for the second, and the third, and the fourth,” he said.

Germaine did not want to be consoled. Open-eyed, sleepless, she found herself rather angry. It was not like her: but then no one in this household really knew her: they thought she was a sweet docile little girl. And so she was, when it suited her. “He won’t be back for any of them,” she said. “He is abandoning us.”

Like several of her Dublin relatives—her female relatives—little Germaine prided herself on being, from time to time, but always unpredictably, clairvoyant—gifted with second sight. So she knew, she knew. Jedediah would not only not return for the birth of their other children but he would
never
see his nieces and nephews—never in this lifetime.

“Oh, how do you know, Puss!” Louis laughed, rolling his burly weight upon her.

“I
know,
” she said.

“Powers”

L
eah with her immense swollen belly. At five months she looked as if she were already nine months pregnant, and the baby might force its way out at any moment. What odd feverish dreams she endured, half-lying on pillows, the muscles of her legs now packed with soft plump flesh, her slender ankles swollen, her eyes rolling back into her head with the violence—the queerness—of her ideas! Were they hers, or the unborn child’s? She felt the creature’s power, her head aswim with dreams that left her panting and feverish but utterly baffled. She could
feel
the unborn child’s spirit but she could not
see
in her mind’s eye what it wished of her, what it craved.

I am going to accomplish something, she thought frequently, opening and closing her fists, feeling her nails press against the palms of her hands. The soft pliant eager flesh. . . . I am going to be the instrument, the means by which something is accomplished, Leah thought.

And then again days passed and she thought nothing at all; she was too lazy, too dream-befuddled to think.

Her hair lay loose on her shoulders because it was too much trouble for her to plait and roll it, or even to have one of the girls tend to her. She lay back against her pillows, yawning and sighing. Her puffy hand caressed her midriff, as if she feared nausea and must remain very, very still: for at the oddest, least expected times she was overcome by a spasm of retching that quite unnerved her. Until now she had
never
been sick to her stomach—she prided herself on being one of the healthy Bellefleur women, not one of the sickly self-pitying ones.

Leah holding herself still, very still. As if listening to something no one else could hear.

Leah wild-eyed and sly as if she had just arisen from love, a forbidden love, her mouth fleshier than anyone remembered, curved in a slow secretive smile.

Leah in her drawing room, on the old chaise longue, in a dream-stupor, her lovely eyes heavy-lidded, a teacup about to slip out of her fingers. (One of the children would catch it before it fell; or Vernon would lean forward on his knees, on the carpet, to take it gently out of her hand.) Leah ordering the servants about in her new voice, which was petulant and shrill and rather like her mother’s—though when Gideon said so, perhaps unwisely, she angrily denied it. Why, Della did nothing but
whine
the livelong day, wasn’t Della famous in the family for her monotonous mournful self-pitying dirge—!

Leah more beautiful than ever, with her healthy high-colored complexion that put the other women to shame (winter bleached their cheeks, gave them a listless dead-white skin), her deep-set eyes that seemed enlarged with pregnancy, a very dark blue, almost black, keen and thick-lashed and usually glittering, as if flooded with tears—tears not of sorrow or pain, but of sheer inchoate emotion. Leah’s laughter ringing out gaily, or her robust full-throated girl’s voice, or her suddenly warm, faintly disbelieving murmur when she was struck with gratitude (for people—neighbors, friends, family, servants—were always bringing her little gifts, fussing over her, inquiring about the state of her health, staring with an unfeigned and most gratifying
reverence
at the mere size of her). Only her husband was a witness to her body’s amazing elasticity, which rather frightened him as the months passed: her lovely pale skin stretched tight across her belly and abdomen, tight, and tighter still with each week, each day, an alabaster-white, astonishing. Whatever was growing inside her was already alarmingly large and would grow even larger, stretching her beautiful skin tight as a drum,
tighter
than a drum, so that Gideon could do no more than murmur words of love and comfort to her, while staring, or consciously not staring, at that remarkable mound where her lap had once been. Had he fathered twins again, or triplets . . . ? Or a creature of unprecedented size, even in a family in which hefty infants were quite common?

“Do you love me,” Leah murmured.

“Of course I love you.”

“You
don’t
love me.”

“I’m faint with love for you. But intimidated.”

“What?”

“Intimidated.”

“What does that mean? Intimidated? Now? Why?
Really?
”

“Not intimidated,” Gideon said, stroking her belly, leaning down to kiss it, to press his cheek gently against it, “not intimidated but in awe, somewhat in awe. Surely you can sympathize. . . .”

He pressed his ear gingerly against the tight-stretched skin, and began to hear—but what
did
he hear, that so immobilized him, that drew the irises of his eyes to mere pinpricks?

“Oh, what are you chattering about, I can’t hear you, speak up, for God’s sake,” Leah would cry, seizing him by the hair or his beard, and tugging him up so that he would be forced to look at her face. At such times she might burst unaccountably into tears. “You
don’t
love me,” she said. “You’re terrified of me.”

Indeed, she was to grow colossal with her pregnancy so that, in the final month or two, her very features appeared gross: the mouth and the flared nostrils and the eyes visibly enlarged, as if a somewhat ill-fitting mask had been forced upon her. Her lips were often moist, there was spittle in the corners, a certain feverish breathlessness that enhanced her beauty—or was it the curious
power
of her beauty—and made Gideon look away, stricken. She was his height now. Or taller: standing barefoot she could gaze quite levelly into his eyes, smiling her perverse, secretive little smile. And Gideon was of course an exceptionally tall man—even as a boy he had had to stoop somewhat to get through doorways in ordinary houses. She was his height now or a little taller, a young giantess, beautiful and monstrous at the same time, and he
did
love her. And he was terrified of her.

THAT WINTER LEAH
was the uncontested queen of the household. There was no disputing her authority: Lily kept prudently to her part of the manor, though it was ill-heated and shabby, and cautioned her children (who, smitten with Leah, disobeyed her) not to cross her tyrannical sister-in-law’s path; Aveline was uncharacteristically silent in her presence, and deferred even to her brother Gideon; aunt Veronica, appearing for a few minutes in the evening, if Leah was still awake, or briefly in Leah’s cozy drawing room just before dinner, when the warm flames of the fireplace were reflected in the darkened windows, and the lovely great cat Mahalaleel might be dozing at Leah’s feet, would stand silently gazing upon her nephew’s young wife, her placid sheep’s face showing only a curious impersonal interest—though she gave Leah a number of small, charming gifts that winter, and was to give the infant Germaine an antique rattle that had once belonged to her own mother, and which had considerable sentimental value. Even grandmother Cornelia began to defer to her, and did not answer back when Leah spoke insolently; and great-grandmother Elvira, often too weak to come downstairs for days at a time, was continually asking how Leah was, and sending servants and children back and forth with little messages and admonitions. Della Pym moved back into the manor to be with Leah in the final weeks of the pregnancy, despite her son-in-law’s quite explicit lack of enthusiasm, and brought with her Garnet Hecht, who was not exactly a servant but a “girl who helped out”—and even Della, closemouthed and stubborn, was observed backing down before her daughter’s demands. And of course all the men of the household were entranced by her. And nearly all the children.

After the fifth month Leah was immobilized much of the time. It was too awkward for her to climb stairs so she began to spend nights in the drawing room that overlooked the garden, half-sitting and half-lying against goosefeather pillows on a handsome old chaise longue. This room, sometimes called Violet’s Room by older members of the household (though Violet Bellefleur, Raphael’s unhappy wife, had disappeared into Lake Noir many decades ago and would surely never return, and even Noel and Hiram, her oldest grandchildren, could barely remember her), was an exceptionally attractive room, beautifully decorated with crimson silk wallpaper and oak wainscotting and alabaster lamps with white globes, and in one corner was a clavichord built for Violet by a young Hungarian cabinetmaker, a small, delicate-appearing, but quite sturdy instrument made of numerous woods: the jewel of the room though it was cracked on top and no one played it any longer. (Leah had tried; flushed with the excited, audacious complacency of her condition she had actually tried, remembering only dimly, and in fragments, the rudimentary piano lessons she had had at La Tour many years ago, and had resisted sullenly at the time—but her weight was nearly too much for the bench with its slender legs of veneered oak, and in any case her oversized fingers were too clumsy for the delicate walnut keys. She tried to play “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and the scale of C-major and a nameless boisterous square dance tune but the sounds that came out—tinny, jerky, shrieklike—were embarrassing. In the end she brought her fist down on the keys, which protested faintly, and closed the instrument, and forbade the children to play it, though Yolande’s touch was reverent and sensitive and she could
almost
play a recognizable tune.) The carpet was still fairly thick, a mazelike design of crimson, green, creamy-white, and very dark blue; there were numerous old chairs, some of them generously overstuffed, and a horsehair sofa the children loved to bounce on; and an armoire with mother-of-pearl fixtures and a dramatic carving of the Bellefleur coat of arms (a falcon volant, a snake draped about its neck); and a seven-foot fireplace made of fieldstone. Violet’s portrait had hung above the mantel for some time, but in recent years had been replaced by a rather dark, badly cracked landscape painting of indeterminate origin, thought to be “Italian Renaissance.” About the room were curious things brought in from other parts of the house by the children—a ferocious tiger (thought to resemble Mahalaleel) carved from a whale’s tooth, brass prickets with aged candles that would not burn, a queer distorting mirror about three feet high with an ornate ivory-and-jade frame that had been in the drawing room for years, but no one had troubled to hang—so that it was merely propped up against the wall and, because of its odd, oblique angle, sometimes reflected things perversely, or did not reflect them at all. (Once, gorging herself on chocolate-covered cherries and walnuts, and allowing greedy Mahalaleel to lick her sticky fingers, Leah had glanced across to the mirror and was startled to see, framed by sallow ivory and lusterless jade, absolutely nothing at all—neither herself nor Mahalaleel. And when one of Lily’s boys, Raphael, leaned forward to accept a chocolate from her, he was reflected only in a vague muddy haze. Another time sweet-faced Vernon, entering the room, was reflected as a narrow, twisted column of light; and once, though Leah and Mahalaleel and the twins were quite normally reflected in the mirror, aunt Veronica, passing before them, was not only not reflected at all but blotted their images out as well, so that only the corner of the room remained.)

There was a parquet-topped table where Leah and the children and Vernon played cards that winter and spring, and the chaise longue—once an extremely beautiful piece of furniture, with carved mahogany legs and a sumptuous gold brocade covering—upon which poor Leah lay with increasing frequency, as the months passed and the child she carried grew larger and distinctly heavier. At first Leah had tried discreetly to hide her swollen belly, especially when friends came to visit—Gideon’s closest friend Nicholas Fuhr, who was unmarried, and who had always been—or so Leah thought—halfway in love with her; and Leah’s friend from girlhood, Faye Renaud, now married and the mother of several young children herself; and older friends of the Bellefleurs, and neighbors—with shawls, comforters, quilts, and even drowsy Mahalaleel himself, or at any rate his enormous fluffy plume of a tail. She troubled to arrange folds in a decorous fashion, to drape herself in shapeless dark gowns, even to loop strands of pearls about her neck, and to snap on oversized earrings—for, as grandmother Cornelia said, such tricks drew the eye upward. And the sight of her belly
was
disconcerting. (Even Gideon’s cousin Vernon, a year or two older than she, and so clearly and painfully infatuated with her—the poor gangling young man liked nothing better than to read poetry to her on those dreary afternoons when the sun set at three o’clock, or failed to appear at all, Blake and Wordsworth and certain of Hamlet’s soliloquies, and lengthy, incoherent, passionate poems of his own that put Leah in a comfortable stupor, her great eyes half-closed, her slightly swollen fingers clasped together over her belly as if securing it, one of the twins—usually Christabel—frankly napping nearby: even Vernon with his eager shy smile and his hopeful gaze and the reverent, melodic dipping of his voice as he read, or recited,
God appears and God is light / To those poor souls who dwell in night / But does a human form display / To those who dwell in realms of day,
appeared to be intimidated by the very fact of her, and if she groaned with sudden discomfort, or pressed a hand in alarm to her belly, feeling an instant’s terrifying pain, or even made a good-natured allusion to her condition—which
did
make certain routines of life, like washing one’s hair, and indeed bathing at all, and going to the bathroom—extremely difficult, poor Vernon would blush at once, and stare at her face with somewhat widened eyes as if to emphasize his
not
looking elsewhere; and smile his childlike perplexed smile, hidden in his beard. Though he was a Bellefleur himself, he never knew when the Bellefleurs were joking, or when they were being deliberately coarse in order to unsettle him, or when they were—as, upon occasion, they certainly were—utterly without guile.)