The Language of Paradise: A Novel (52 page)

The Divinity School is outside the Yard, further than he should walk. “If we’re to be in time for Mr. Sturgis . . .” she begins.

“I’m tired.” Gideon’s grip on her arm is firm. “I’ve enjoyed this, but I’m ready to go back now.”

THE PORTRAIT IS FINISHED
. Caroline is pleased with the result. She gazes at her image, widening her eyes and puckering her lips in the
moue
of feigned surprise that she wears before the looking glass.

“You’ve
seen
me, Sophy,” she says. “You’ve painted my soul.”

This is a semblance of the truth, not the whole. In painting Caroline, Sophy has learned much about the painting of faces in general. Capture the features with some accuracy, but refine where possible. Look behind the eyes to discern how the person sees herself, how she wishes to be seen, what she longs for that life has denied her. Seek the balance between flattery and revelation. It is a narrow ledge to teeter on: more precarious than landscapes; more exacting, if less satisfying, than the paintings she spins out of her own fancy. A skill she can put to use, if she has to.

What does Caroline long for, more than attention and admiration, more even than love? Dignity. Looking at the portrait, Sophy thinks, I’ve given her that.

Caroline has devoted a great deal of thought to the unveiling. “Jepson will hang the picture this afternoon—all in secret, of course. I’ll be sitting in my usual place tonight, wearing the blue gown. Can you imagine Reuben’s expression when he sees two of me?” Sophy has to remind her that the paint is only just dry; that, in any case, a painting can’t be hung without a frame. By way of compromise, they decide to set the easel near Caroline’s chair and cover the painting with a cloth.

“I suppose it will be more theatrical,” Caroline says. “Isn’t that what they do with statues?”

By dinnertime she has worked herself into a frenzy of nerves, bolting out of the chair again and again to correct the angle of the easel, questioning the drapery—the ivory shawl looks foolish, but where to find a sheet small enough?—and the wisdom of wearing the dress she was painted in. Sophy tries to soothe her, but she is nervous, too. If Reuben is a true son of Mama and Papa, there must be some kindness in him. She says a silent prayer that it will show itself tonight.

He strides in, trailed by Gideon and Micah. He smells of the city, of tobacco and hair oil, wool-clad men in close rooms. “What have we here? A bust of Washington? Someone’s shy old auntie?”

Sophy wills herself to be calm. She had intended to make a little presentation at meal’s end, when Reuben was mellow with brandy. A few deferential remarks, the shawl swept off with a flourish to give Caroline her moment of drama. But Caroline won’t last that long. She has composed herself with care, but she’s taut with the effort, near to trembling. A brusque word will undo her.

Better to be quick about it. Sophy rises, and, without a word, uncovers the painting. Clutching the shawl awkwardly she returns to her seat.

No one speaks at first. Then Gideon says, “Very fine, Sophy. A remarkable likeness.”

“B-best you’ve ever done!” Micah flushes, as though he’s heaped praise on himself.

“Any merit is due to Caroline,” Sophy says. “She was the perfect subject.”

The lady in question has not stirred. Her agitation has ebbed; her bosom rises and falls gently. She seems to have sunk into a reverie, indifferent to their praise, oblivious even to Reuben’s narrow, assessing gaze. Sophy wonders if her soul has passed into the painting after all. Mama’s cautions may have been sound: this capturing of images is a more literal business than she bargained for, and not to be undertaken lightly.

Reuben’s eyes rove from the painting to Caroline, and back again. Sophy guesses it has been some time since he troubled to look at her.

He turns to Sophy, chin in hand, and nods. “You had better do one of me, too, Sis. My wife will be lonely staring at a bare wall.”

IT IS MARCH BEFORE
they get away. She has painted Reuben, and the pug dog Caroline acquired, and a pastoral scene for the drawing room. Micah has made a handsome rocking chair and an ingenious ladder that slides along the top of the shelves in the library, should Reuben ever feel moved to read the books he purchased with the house. Aleph has left his first birthday behind, and is already walking. He is his own small person now, an adventurous spirit, refusing to be confined to the room Caroline designated as the nursery. He’s learned a few words, and flaunts them incessantly; Gideon wonders if it is too early to introduce him to Latin.

Reuben has offered to find them decent lodgings in Boston. “You could do well here,” he says. “Why run off when you’ve made a good start?” But not one of them wants to stay in the city. For all the comforts, it has been a hard winter. Gideon fell ill after Christmas with a cold that settled in his chest, and Aleph sickened soon after. Sophy, worn out with nursing, feared that neither would see his next birthday. Micah blames it on the sooty city air, the crowds breathing in the foulness and spreading it around. He draws Sophy’s attention to the gray snow: “If we stay here much longer, our insides will look like that.” Though, of all of them, he is the most miserable, Sophy misses the country herself. Reuben has been true to his word and purchased them a carriage so capacious that—she tells herself—they could almost live in it. They may have to. The money in her purse won’t last forever.

THE WEEK BEFORE
they are to leave, one of the maids presents her with a letter. It is addressed to her, but has come by way of Sam, who sent it on to Reuben. Parson Entwhistle’s handwriting is neat with little flourishes, like the man himself. He asks after her family’s health and well-being, trusts that they are prospering wherever the Lord has led them.
How empty my house seemed after your departure! The quietness I had cherished rebuked me. You may think your long visit was a burden, but I never doubted I was entertaining “angels unawares.”

He encloses a letter he has received, after a number of fruitless inquiries, from Rabbi Goldenblum of the synagogue in Kassel. The paper is thin and crisp like parchment, the looping script so antiquated that Sophy at first mistakes the formal English for German. She manages to decipher that the rabbi knew of no Leander Solloway, but was acquainted with one Leopold Solomon, son of Immanuel, a banker whose estimable family had been pillars of the synagogue for generations. The younger Solomon, though gifted, was afflicted with a mercurial temperament, dabbling in finance and the study of medicine but persisting in neither. His father arranged an early marriage, hoping to stabilize him, but, alas, his wife perished after a few years, and his little son did not long survive her. In the wake of this loss, the young man ceased attending synagogue and resumed a youthful infatuation with the occult—“a quest for the forbidden that, since the time of our First Parents, has never had a happy end.” Father and son were soon permanently estranged. Leopold left Kassel, all ties cut, and has not been heard from since. Both parents are dead; there was a sister, much older, who married and settled in Hamburg years ago. “I do not know if young Solomon is the person you seek,” the rabbi concluded, “but some men wear many faces, and Leopold was one of those.”

Mr. Entwhistle writes:
Whatever the fate of our Mr. Solloway, it is a great pity for anyone to be so alone in the world.

CHAPTER 41

____

WORKING FROM LIFE

F
ACES, SCATTERED ALONG THE KNOBBY SHORELINE OF NEW
England. Oil or watercolor. Paid for with coins or paper. Bartered for meals and lodging, children’s garments, the attentions of a doctor when Gideon is poorly. A week here, a fortnight there, a month elsewhere.

In Marblehead, triplets: three little beans in matching pinafores. She does what she can to distinguish them, giving one a shiny apple, another a flower, the third an open book. “Now I can tell them apart!” the Mama exclaims, as if they came equipped with these emblems in life.

In Salem, a minister, his wife, five children, and ancient mother, with deceased paterfamilias glowering from a frame on the wall. It takes over a month, and not a smile among them.

In Gloucester, a young salt in a sailor suit, pet parrot on his shoulder.

In Ipswich, newlyweds who pose on either side of a table displaying their most important acquisition, a brass-and-marble lamp lavished with crystal drops. “Could you put in a bit of the carpet for the same price?” the wife wants to know.

In Newburyport, a baby on the eve of its burial. She is reluctant, but the mother pleads so, she can’t say no. She paints the eyes open, as requested.

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a peacock of a fellow who swells his chest and thrusts a hand in his jacket like Napoleon. Though he says the portrait is for his fiancée, his eye is always wandering to the ruby stickpin that adorns his cravat, a beauty that draws his tender glances, the furtive caresses of his thumb. Can one be adulterous with objects? Sophy makes the jewel as red and glaring as a devil’s mark, and hopes the lady will be warned.

Portsmouth is the first place they think of staying. It’s a handsome town with sturdy brick buildings lining the main streets, the legacy of several ruinous fires. “Enough” is the word Sophy uses most often when presenting the idea to Gideon and Micah. Large enough, but not too large. Far enough from where they started, but not so far that they can never go home. Prosperous enough that folks will pay to be immortalized. And—her best argument—fine furniture is made here. Traveling from town to town, Micah brings in a few extra dollars making frames for her paintings. In Portsmouth he can apprentice himself to a cabinetmaker, learn the trade, one day have a shop of his own.

They are standing on the wharf, four inlanders looking out at the Atlantic on a humid day in July, savoring the breeze that lifts their hair and pastes her skirt to her legs. Sophy knows already that they will never live far from the ocean, yet she fears the sea as much as she is drawn to it. Fears it with a proper awe, as Papa said she must fear God, but more so, for she can’t buy its mercy by being good. It will swallow what she loves without a thought. Aleph would jump right in if she didn’t keep a tight hold on his hand; he is straining toward the water now, excited by the gulls, the boats, the endless slapping of the waves. All boys want to run away to sea, but hers won’t end up a sailor if she can help it.

Her worry for Gideon is different, though its end is the same. He stares at the water with glazed attention, like a man hypnotized, ready to jump on command. He’s too quiet these days, too compliant, never protesting when their lodgings are less than ideal or when they move on yet again. His will, once so strong, seems to have expired, a casualty of the fire. Or the purpose that I stole from him, she thinks. He waits, without urgency, to be overtaken by a greater force, if not man then nature. Her free arm is looped through his. She almost lost him once. She won’t let the ocean take him without a fight.

Still, she says, “We could make a life here, don’t you think?”

“One place is as good as another,” Gideon says.

Micah has been silent all this time, watching Aleph watch the gulls. “T-t-too many here doing what I do. I w-want to be on my own—not working under some p-p-puffed-up fellow who gives me orders. I s-say we go on.”

He is rarely so emphatic. He’s more certain of himself now, Sophy realizes. He’s grown into his opinions, as a man must. Portsmouth is a good place, but for them not good enough.

They move north toward Maine. The state, proclaimed as such for a scant twenty years, seems to her rough-carved out of wilderness and half civilized, Indian names cohabiting with the English. The pine trees are thick and dark, and cast long, pointed shadows. Even in broad daylight there is a hush, a sense of presences concealed and waiting. Massachusetts, with its tamed land diced neatly into farms and village greens, is very far away.

But there are towns, and they are revelations, the houses nestled cozily in the immensity that surrounds them, the ocean lapping at the edges of their domesticity. In Kennebunk Port they board with a sailmaker’s wife. Sophy paints her in profile, looking out her window toward the shed where her husband works, “keepin’ an eye on ’im one way or t’other,” as the woman says.