The Coming of Bright (34 page)

With dripping fingers, oily sugary fingers, the lovers fed each other the salad. They did their best to keep the juices of their food off t-shirt, jeans, pajamas. They eschewed napkins—they had to rely on licking clean each other’s fingers, wiping clean each other’s lips and chin. Zora couldn’t decide which she savored more, the salad’s burst of flavors, its colors and textures bleeding together in her mouth, or licking off Victor’s fingers each time he fed her the greens. Each time she had to fight the temptation to bite down on his fingers, to cave in to her cannibalistic urges. A gastronomy of living flesh was so very inviting.

And then the salad was done and the heart was ready. Messiness quickly began to outrace the lovers’ licks. Drip, drip, drip onto fabric and floor. So tender was the braised heart that with her eyes closed, Zora could have sworn she was eating the richest butter, flavored at its core with the wild plants of the karst.

Had she actually known any of those plants, the ones the deer loved, she could have picked up their notes of flavor by name. Notes of mesquite. Of mistletoe. Of woodsorrel. Of Venus’ looking-glass. Of coralberry. Of flameleaf sumac. Plants whose names formed a poem of nature, spun out verse after verse of life, more hopeful and enduring than a Shelleyan dream.

The heart really did seem to bleed. Its own juices, its own vermilion, trickled together with the fruited blood of the earth. The terror of the deer, its animal fear facing death, mingled together with the
terroir
of the soil that birthed the wine.

And oh how the diners bled on each other, feeding each other. Fingers would have a crimson cast for hours, if not days. Redness flowed down forearms, cascaded over wrists—following the same crimson line as the arm’s main artery. The lovers were culinary artists of blood, painting the palate, the lips, even the cheeks, with the luscious red of delicious death. Bloody fingers groped at mouths, played on tongues, smeared across teeth.

The lifeblood of the deer was gone almost as quickly as the life that had borne it. That blood would dissolve into theirs, the deer’s devoured heart finding new life coursing through the chambers of their hearts. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, blood to blood, heart to heart. A new verse in a very old story.

But they were not done. Far from done. For how could they fully nourish themselves without the sacred fruit of Juno Caprotina? The queen of the gods who dressed herself in figs, whose womb rained figs upon the earth? Could the lovers ignore the generations of Roman women who celebrated the regenerative powers of the goddess in the summer shadows of the
caprificus
, the wild fig tree?

They might hardly have realized it, but Victor and Zora already worshipped the goddess. They adored her as they adored each other. They celebrated her regenerative powers by lavishing their own upon each other, time and time again. The passion with which they played with the fertility, the fruitfulness, the fig nature, of their entangled bodies was proof enough of that. The ancients knew full well what the fig represented—its sweetness, its fecundity, its sensuality. And lest we forget—its genital lusciousness. Aristophanes himself, the great Greek playwright, put into words the highest possible blessing for two people embarking on life together:

May you have a fine house, no cares, and the finest of figs:

The bridegroom’s fig shall be great and thick,

The bride’s soft and tender.

These immortal words did fit the lovers well—Zora’s fig was indeed soft and tender, Victor’s was great and thick—but there was one minor problem: bands of gold did not yet grace their fingers. Not yet. For now an exchange of figs would have to do.

Victor laid the figs out on the counter: the freshest plumpest darkest fruits you could imagine. Black Mission figs. First brought to California by Franciscan missionaries—strange for such holy men to show such devotion to such sinful fruit. It must have been their one surrender to the sins of the flesh. They would savor a fig like other men would savor a beautiful woman. Slowly, sensually, with every part of the mouth.

Victor was far from being a Franciscan missionary—about as far away as a man could be—but he was trying to prove to Zora that he possessed the one quality that the missionaries cherished above all others: devotion.

Zora reached out to grab one of the figs from the small carton they came in. He slapped her hand away with a fruitful smirk.

“Too soon. They’re missing their filling. These figs need to have a heart.
Les figues fraîches farcies au neufchâtel emmiellé
. Fresh figs stuffed with honeyed Neufchâtel cheese.”

From under the counter he retrieved their heart—a package of Neufchâtel cheese, softening and gooey. You can guess from the name on the wrapping,
Coeur de Bray
, what shape the cheese assumed. A moment later the cheese lay bare on its wrapper. A naked milky heart.

It would need some honey, some Texas honey, oozing dark out of the Hill Country, the color of molasses. The bees in the Hill Country had their own loves. Their own blooming desires. Their own poem of nature, more floral than the deer’s. A poem of bluebonnets. Of lemonmint. Of coreopsis. Of white prickly poppy. Of goldenrod. Of mountain laurel. Of chocolate daisy.

Victor and Zora dipped their fingers into the honey, into the floral poem, and drizzled the cheese with the fruit of the bee’s desires. Of course each had to lick off the finger of the other. Eros would never have permitted them to do otherwise—nor would have Juno. The lovers were now part of both mythologies, in the midst of birthing a mythology of their own.

Victor prepared the first fig. With the tip of his index finger and thumb he pinched off the top of the fig. He burrowed his pinky into the innards of the fig so that they gushed out, sticking like seeded glue to his finger. Which he promptly compelled Zora to lick off by sticking the gooey fig finger in her mouth.

She obliged as suckingly as she could. She would not be the only one lucky enough to use her tongue. Victor brought the opened package of honeyed cheese up to his mouth, holding the wrapper in his palm. With his tongue, he dug out a small piece of the golden dripping whiteness. Still using his tongue, he inserted the piece of cheese deep into the fig, filling up the tiny body of the fruit.

The fig was ready to finish its journey. Ready to go back to the goddess. Her mouth open, Victor placed the honeyed fig on the center of her tongue, his fingers brushing against the inside of her mouth. As eager as Zora was to bite down, she waited a few moments for him to retrieve his fingers to the open air. Licking his fingers had been sensuous; chewing on them would be fruitless.

They fed each other a handful of figs with the same dance of fingers and fruit and saliva. The same interplay of milk and honey. Like Eros and Juno, they revolved lovingly around each other, coming together and falling apart, from two different worlds, two different soils, two different lives. Myths are made to be broken—they exist only to serve life and love. When life changes, when love transforms, the myth must grow. Bear fresher fruit on freer vines.

Their meal done, Zora and Victor went into the living room, fell together onto the couch. Completely sated. Victor had a CD he wanted to play for her while they lay together. Zora nestled in the hollow of his chest. The music started. They could feel the pulse of each other through clothing and skin as clearly as they could hear the notes that filled the room. She didn’t ask what the music was and he didn’t tell her.

A poem of sound enraptured them, a symphony of feeling swirling and streaming around them. Layered, textured, conflicted—like body and spirit, like the collision of two souls in the dark. It was Schoenberg’s
Pelleas und Melisande
. The music told the story of Pelleas and Melisande, of their forsaken love. A love that could never live. How could a princess ever hope to love the brother of her husband, the brother of the prince? Love cannot defy power and hope to survive on earth. A love so perfect, a love meant for another world, could only end in death. In fratricide. And in new life—the birth of a baby girl. Zora fell asleep in Victor’s arms just as the prince killed his brother in the swelling and soaring of notes.

When Victor woke her, the symphony had long ended. The brother was long dead. The tragedy was long over. It was time for them to leave, time for the meeting of the Juris Club. Time to change. No bloody pajamas, no ruby jeans. They decided to walk over as Blackcoats, not hide their identities away from the world, and Victor assured her that after tonight she would be proud to call herself a Blackcoat. Over her dead body, she said.

In the mosaic room, everyone was waiting. They sat. Vane sat at the left hand of his brother, a Patrician next to a Caesar. The brothers had almost become equals. Sitting side by side, both tasting power, they were as close as they had ever been to love.

Vane’s eyes still burned for Zora. Burned black. Scathing, hating. She still didn’t understand why. Misogyny? Definitely. Man transcending everything it was not. But something else raged behind his eyes, deeper, more primordial. Power wanting to destroy everything it perceived as a threat. These feelings were alien to Zora, and that was why power viewed her as alien to itself, as a danger to its very existence. And no one cared more for power than Vane.

Caesar began with his customary speech. What else could Caesar do but engage in grand oratory? Such was his lot in life.

“All of you I respect greatly, and all of you I love.”

On the last word he fixed his eyes lovingly on Zora. Vane noticed, his face draining of what little color it had.

“This group, this family, is my life. I mean that. My life. I would sacrifice everything, my reputation and even myself, to protect the integrity of who we are. Our sanctity. Our life together. Our vision.

“But integrity is an evolving concept, and life has to evolve. I used to think that our integrity was our strength, and that our strength was our integrity. I used to think that those who hold power ought to hold power, and those who lack power ought to wither on the vine.

“But this should not be our vision, and this can no longer be our life. The law that we all practice, the laws that we all have sworn to uphold—these need to make us all stronger, not simply a select few of us.
We
should serve all people equally, empower all people equally, not aim to serve ourselves and further our narrow set of—”

Vane cut him off. He rose next to his brother, looking fiercer, more domineering, than Caesar. He didn’t look at Victor, addressing the room instead.

“What are you trying to say, Brother? That we should abandon our founding principles? We all believe, we have always believed, that true equality weakens society, that the weak are a burden on the strong. We
do
care about the less fortunate, the downtrodden. We are the shepherds, they are the sheep. But to say that the sheep and the shepherd are equal is a terrible lie. A lie that will only lead to chaos.”

All along the room, up and down the table, heads nodded—just subtly enough not to be an affront to the most powerful man there. The rest of them, the sheep of the group, didn’t have the courage, or the righteous anger, of Vane.

Victor looked at his brother with a sadness, an infinite sadness, that Zora had never seen on his face before. He placed his hand on Vane’s left shoulder. The room vanished around them. Grand principles were a thing of the past. They were nothing more than two people linked by blood and a knowledge of good and evil.

“Vane, I’m sorry but I can’t protect you anymore. You can’t be a part of this anymore. You have done so much wrong, my brother, so much wrong.”

Tears brimmed in Victor’s eyes. A few fell down his face.

“Such terrible wrong.”

The light in Vane’s eyes darkened to black, his pupils grew sharp. With every shade of sorrow, of weariness, of suffering, on Victor’s face, Vane wore a shade of fury.

“What do you mean, protect me? Tell me what wrong I have done.”

“Brother, do I have to tell you—think of that poor woman. Dorothy. How she suffered because of you. How
they
suffered. They most of all. Those innocent people.”

Spittle flew from the corners of Vane’s mouth, sparks from the corners of his eyes.

“Lies. Nothing but lies. All you speak are lies. You know nothing about what I have done. You could never understand what I have done.
You
are the one who can’t be a part of this anymore. You are unfit to be our leader.
I
will be our leader from now on.”

Victor stepped forward to clasp his brother in love, to surround him with simple human warmth. Vane stepped back into the coldness behind him, the coldness he carried with him.

“Vane, you are sick. You have a disease. Of mind. Of soul. You have to get help. And you will have to receive justice. I will have to see to it. I can’t protect you from
that
anymore—but I will do everything in my power to save you from injustice. As I have saved Dorothy.”

These words, of one brother seeking justice for the other—seeking
punishment
—brought Vane to his breaking point. Coldness erupted into licking fire, a conflagration of inhuman feeling.