Galilee (41 page)

“No . . .”

“He will,” Galilee replied. Then, more softly. “My poor Niolopua. Do you like him?”

She mused on this for a moment; it hadn't been something she'd given much thought to. “He seems very gentle,” she said. “But I don't think he is. I think he's angry.”

“He has reason,” Galilee replied.

“Everybody hates the Gearys.”

“We all do what we have to do,” he replied.

“And what does Niolopua do? Besides cutting the grass?”

“He brings me here, when I'm needed.”

“How does he do that?”

“We have ways of communicating that aren't easy to explain,” Galilee said. “But here I am.”

“Okay,” she said. “So now you're here. Now what?”

There was more than inquiry in her voice. Though her tongue was lazy, the words slow, she knew what she was inviting; she knew what answer she wanted to hear. That he'd come to share her bed, whoever he was; come to exploit the dreamy ease she'd inhaled, and make love to her. Come to kiss her back to life, after an age of thorns and sorrow.

He didn't give her the answer she expected. At least, not in so many words.

“I want to tell you a story,” he said.

She laughed lightly. “Aren't I a bit too old for that?”

“No,” he said softly. “Never.”

He was right of course. She was perfectly ready to have him weave a story for her; to let the deep music of his voice shape the colors in her head: give them lives, give them destinies.

“First,” she said, “will you come into the light where I can see you?”

“That's part of the story,” he said. “That's always part of it.”

“Oh . . .” she said, not understanding the principle of this, but accepting that at least for tonight it was true. “Then tell me.”

“It would be my pleasure,” he said. “Where should I start?” There was a little pause while he considered this. When he spoke again his voice had changed subtly; there was a lilting rhythm in it, as though there was a melody to these words, that he was close to singing.

“Imagine please,” he began, “a country far from here, in a time of plenty, when the rich were kind and the poor had God. In that country there lived a girl called Jerusha, whom this story concerns. She was fifteen at the time when what I'm about to tell you happened, and there was no happier girl in the world. Why? Because she was loved. Her father owned a great house, filled with treasures from the furthest reaches of the empire, but he loved his Jerusha more than anything he owned or anything he ever dreamed of owning. And not a day went by without his telling her so. Now on this particular day, a day in late summer, Jerusha had gone out taking a winding path through the woods to a favorite place of hers: a spot on the banks of the River Zun, which marked the southern perimeter of her father's land.

“Sometimes in the morning when she visited the riverbank the local women would be there washing their clothes, then spreading them out on the rocks to dry, but the later in the day she went the more likely she was to be there alone. Today, however, though it was late afternoon, she saw—as she wound between the trees—that there was somebody sitting in the water. It was not one of the women. It was a man, or nearly a man, and he was staring dawn at his own reflection in the river. I say he was nearly a man, because although this creature had a man's shape, and a pretty shape at that, his form glistened strangely in the sunlight, silvery one moment, dark the next.

“Now Lord Laurent, who was Jerusha's father, had taught her to be afraid of nothing. He was a rational man. He didn't believe in the Devil, and he had over the years punished any man who committed a crime on his land so quickly and severely that no felon ventured there. And he had also taught his daughter that there were far stranger things in the world than she'd seen in her schoolbooks. Perfectly rational things, he'd told her, that one day science would explain, though they might at first glance seem unusual.

“So Jerusha didn't run away when she saw this stranger. She just marched down to the river's edge and said hello. The fellow looked up from his reflection. He had no hair on his head; nor did he have lashes or brows; but there was an uncanny beauty to him, which awoke feelings in Jerusha that had not stirred until this moment. He looked at her with his flickering eyes, and smiled. But he said nothing.

“ ‘Who are you?' she asked him.

“ ‘I don't have a name, 'he told her.

“ ‘Of course you do,' she said.

“ ‘No I don't. I swear,' the stranger said.

“ ‘Were you not baptized?' she asked him.

“ ‘Not that I remember,' he told her. ‘Were you?'

“ ‘Of course.'

“ ‘In the river?'

“ ‘No. In a church. My mother wanted it. She's dead now—'

“ ‘If it was in a church then it wasn't a true baptism,' the stranger replied. ‘You should come into the river with me. I would give you a new name.'

“ ‘I like the one I have.'

“ ‘Which is what?'

“ ‘Jerusha.'

“ ‘So, Jerusha. Please come into the river with me.' As he spoke he stood up, and she saw that at his groin, where a normal man would have a penis, there was instead a column of water, running from him the way water pours from a pipe, all corded and glittering, and seeming almost solid in the sunlight . . .
”

Rachel had been completely still until this moment; enraptured by the pictures these simple words were conjuring: of the girl, of the summer's day and the riverbank. But now she sat up a little in the bed and began to scrutinize the shadowy man in the doorway. What kind of story was he telling here? It was certainly no fairy story.

He read her unease. “Don't worry,” he said. “It's not going to get obscene.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why? Would you prefer that it did?”

“I just want to be ready.”

“ ‘Don't be afraid.'

“I'm not afraid,” she said.

“ ‘Come into the river.' ”

Oh, she thought; he's started again.

“ ‘What is that?' Jerusha said, pointing to the stranger's groin.

“ ‘Do you have no brothers?'

“ ‘They went away to war,' Jerusha said, ‘And they're supposed to come back, but every time I ask my father when that will be he kisses me and tells me to be patient.'

“ ‘So what do you think?'

“ ‘I think maybe they're dead, ‘Jerusha said.

“The fellow in the water laughed. ‘I meant of this,' he said, looking down at the water flowing out of him. ‘What do you think of this?'

“Jerusha just shrugged. She wasn't very impressed, but she didn't want to say so.”

Rachel smiled. “Polite girl,” she remarked.

“You wouldn't be so polite?” Galilee said.

“No. I'd be the same. You don't want to break his heart with the truth.”

“And what's the truth?”

“That it's not as pretty as . . .”

“As?”

“ . . . you'd like to believe?”

“That's not what you were going to say, is it?” Rachel kept her silence. “Please. Tell me what you were going to say.”

“I want to see your face first.”

There followed a moment in which neither of them moved, neither of them spoke. At last Galilee made a soft sigh, as though of resignation, and took half a step toward the bed. The moonlight grazed his face, but so lightly she had only the most rudimentary sense of his features. His flesh was a burnished umber, and he had several days' growth of beard, which was even darker than his skin. His head was shaved clean. She could not see his eyes: they were set too deeply for the light to discover them. His mouth seemed to be beautiful, his cheekbones high and fine; perhaps there were some scars on his brow, she couldn't be sure.

As to the rest of him: he was dressed in a heavily stained white T-shirt and loosely belted jeans and sandals. His frame was, as she'd already guessed, impressive; a wide, solid chest, a slight swell of a belly, massive arms, massive hands.

But here was what she hadn't guessed: that he'd lingered in the shadows not to tease her but because he was unhappy being looked at. His discomfort was plain in the way he held himself; in the way he shuffled his feet, ready to retreat once she'd seen all she needed to see. She almost expected him to say
can I go now?
Instead he said: “Please finish your thought.”

She'd forgotten what she was talking about; the sight of him, in all its contrary sweetness—his effortless authority and his desire to be invisible, his beauty, and his strange inelegance—had taken all thought of anything but his presence out of her head.

“You were telling me,” he prompted her, “how what he has isn't as pretty as . . .”

Now she remembered. “As what
we
have down there,” she said softly.

“Oh . . .” he replied. “I couldn't agree more.” Then, so quietly she would not have caught the words had she not seen the shape his mouth made: “There's nothing more perfect.”

He raised his head a fraction as he spoke, and the moonlight found his eyes. For all the depth of their setting, they were huge; filling the sockets with feeling; so much feeling she could not hold his gaze for more than a few seconds.

“Shall I go on with the story?' he asked her.

“Please,” she said.

He kindly averted his stare, as though he knew its effect from experience, and didn't want to discomfort her. “I was telling you how the man had asked Jerusha how she felt about his cock.” The word startled her. “And Jerusha had not answered.”

“But she wanted to go into the river to join him; she wanted to know what it would feel like to have his face close to hers, his body close to hers, his fingers on her breasts and belly, and down between her legs.

“He seemed to know what she was thinking, because he said:

“ ‘Will you show me what's under your petticoats?'

“Jerusha pretended to be shocked. No, that's not fair. She
was
shocked, though not as much as she pretended. You have to remember this was a time when women wore clothes that smothered them from neck to ankle, and here was this man asking—as though it were just a casual question—to show him her
most
private place.”

“What did she say?' Rachel asked.

“Nothing at first. But as I told you at the beginning, she was fearless, thanks to her father. He would have been appalled, of course, if he'd seen what his lessons and his kisses had created but he wasn't there to tell her no. She had only her instincts to go by, and her instincts said: why not do it? Why not show him? So she said:

“ ‘I'm going to lie down on the grass where it's comfortable. You can come and look if you like.'

“ ‘Don't go into the trees,' he said to her.

“ ‘Why not?' she asked him.

“ ‘Because there are poisonous things there,' he replied. ‘Things that have fed on the flesh of dead men.'

“Jerusha didn't believe him. ‘That's where I'm going,' she said. ‘If you want to come, then come. If you're afraid, stay where you are.' And she got up to leave.

“The man called after her, telling her to wait. ‘There's another reason,' he said.

“ ‘What's that?' she said.

“ ‘I can't go very far from the water. Every step I take is dangerous to me.'

“Jerusha just laughed at this. It was a silly excuse she thought. ‘Then you're just weak;' she said.

“ ‘No. I—'

“ ‘Yes you are! You're weak! A man who can't climb out of a river without complaining? I never heard anything so ridiculous!'

“She didn't wait for him to reply. She could tell by the expression on his face that she stirred him up. She just turned around and traipsed off into the trees, wandering until she found a small grove where the grass looked soft and inviting. There she lay down on her back, with her feet toward the river, so that when the stranger found her the first thing he'd see was what lay between her legs.”

Rachel had not missed the fact that her own position, lying there on the bed in front of Galilee, was not so unlike that of Jerusha.

“What are you thinking?” he said to her.

“I want to know what happens next.”

“You could make it up for yourself if you'd prefer,” he replied.

“No,”
she said. “I want you to tell me.”

“Your version might be better,” he said to her. “Less sad.”

“Is this going to end sadly?”

He turned his head toward the window, and for the first time the moonlight showed her his full face. She hadn't been mistaken before: his forehead
was
scarred, deeply scarred, from the middle of his left eyebrow to his hairline, and his mouth was indeed wide and full: a sensualist's mouth, if ever there was one. But it was the foundation upon which these details rode that were the true astonishment. She had never seen a face, in a photograph or a painting or the flesh, that so exquisitely wed the curves and gullies of its bones with the filigree of tissue and nerve covering them. It was as though his flesh, instead of masking his skull, expressed it. And his skull—which had been made long before the sorrow in his eyes—had known in the womb that sorrow was coming, and had shaped itself accordingly.

“Of course it's going to end sadly,” he said. “It has to.”

“Why?”

“Let me tell how it goes,” he said, glancing down at her. “And if you know a better way to finish it, please God tell me.”