The Testament of Yves Gundron (43 page)

The mist on my cheeks stung like tears. I licked it, and savored its taste, like tears.

“Ruth will not go home with her brother and sister.”

This, then, was what had brought forth the flavor, the secret pain. But I could not grasp his meaning.

“Yves, are you listening?”

“As ever.”

“She is not leaving with them.”

“Our fondest hopes,” I told him, “are not always our due.”

He started briefly and examined me, but I had nothing more to say.

At last the cairn reared its tottering head in the distance. Through the mist I felt it beckoning.

“You do not hear me aright. I have asked her not to leave. She is not leaving.”

My brow furrowed, each crease chill from the damp. I would hold my tongue until we reached our destination, for pain had begun to rip at my cold feet. Still I felt him straining against the fullness in his breast. I leaned harder into my stick as walking grew more difficult. The pile of stones approached, grew more distinct, showed its colors from leaf brown to deep mottled gray. Some of them—one like an egg, almost rosy in tone, a second for all the world like a shankbone—I could remember placing there in my youth. My wonder never ceased that they did not tumble. Hammadi's smaller mound looked pitiful beside it. The pain in my feet had clearly marked the way I took each step, for there were aches and twinges in my legs the likes of which I had never yet known. Gratefully did I turn my back upon the great somber cairn, sit down upon the wet ground, and lean into the rocks. Below me lay the body of my grandmother, unless she was spirited back to the sea; before me farther than the eye could see, to the edges of eternity, it seemed in such weather, stretched my fecund land, full of seeds to protect it against the coming snow. Mandrik crouched beside me, his joints giving forth cracks at the exertion.

“Yves,” he said, “I do not like this silence when I tell you what's in my heart.”

Only then did I turn my face full to him. Water ran down his cheeks in rivulets, stuck all but the edges of his curls to his head, turned his cassock darker than the mud. His eyes were full of fire, but mine, I am certain, were blank. “What you're telling me can't be.”

He looked out to the rain for answer. “I had no plan ever to—I thought never to relinquish my vows, my life. And yet—”

“There have been rumors about the township, and I have had my doubts, but I chose not to believe them.”

“Perhaps you shouldn't have done that.”

“Surely you don't—”

“But I love her, Yves.” Such words I had never thought to hear issuing from his mouth; they hung on the air like the ringing of distant bells. Had he been a child of sixteen, before his journeys or his visions, how welcome would such words have been; but from a man near thirty, likely close to the end of his natural life, and devoted until then to the pursuits of the spirit, they were unseemly.

“She is a stranger, Mandrik. You know nothing about her but her impertinent questioning. Perhaps they're all like she is. You have no way of knowing.”

“Yes, I do.” He was not looking at me.

“From the brother and sister?”

“Sure, from them.”

I quieted my breath. “And from visions?”

“From visions, yes. And from the world. I have known other people in the world. Her countrymen, her peers.”

My heart beat against my breastbone, and all my strength could not restrain it. “But she comes from the west, from the Great Land to the west.”

“Yes.”

“And you east, in Indo-China—”

“Not exactly. No.”

“You—”

“Not to Indo-China, no. To America.”

Like a trapped beast did my heart clamor to escape. “You told me of a place you'd never been?”

“I could not—”

“Mandrik,” I shouted, then fought to resume control of my voice, “a few days ago I thought you had merely withheld some of the truth, and now it comes to light that you plucked stories from the air? You not only told me nothing of the truth of where you'd been, but made up lies about the world beyond?”

“The stories were better, those that I made up. I told you this, Yves. I've explained this.”

“Better than the truth?”

“Yes.”

I slapped the ground, raising a muddy splash. “The men in dresses, and the Silk Road paved in brass, and the hookah pipes with their sinister bubble and suck—”

“Based on good authority.”

“But none of it seen with your own eyes?” My lungs hardly dared breathe for me; I had to force them along. The sky was opening.

“Nay, brother, none.”

Oh, for a loose boulder to crack open his head. “Where were you, then?”

“In America, Yves, in Ruth's country.”

“Her city? Did you visit her city?”

“Once, briefly. I did not meet her there.”

“In America.” My head shook of its own volition. “I cannot believe this.”

“And the things I saw there put the Silk Road to shame.”

“Then why did you not tell me of them?”

“Had I told you what was true, and how close it was, Yves—I have explained this already—I know you would have gone off, as all the rest are now, after the new life.”

“Do you see me running off?”

“Who can say what you—”

“Do you see me running?”

“I had the opportunity to excite your imaginations—all of your imaginations—”

“Mandrik, it's no excuse—”

“Look how you loved the stories. Think how much pleasure they gave you, all mine to bestow.”

“You knew of her people. You knew of her world.”

“Yes.”

“You knew what wonders they possessed—that they could fly in the air.”

“I knew this all, Yves. I have flown in the air myself.”

“And tell me, brother, can they raise the dead?”

“No, they—”

“Can they bring what has given itself up to God back to the world of the living?”

“They have medicine more advanced than we have, sure. But God's will is God's will ever. Man's desires cannot change that.”

“And when Elynour died—”

“Yves, please.”

“When Elynour died, you sat by her bedside praying, when all the while you could have run across the hills and brought back someone who might have saved her? Who might have saved my son?”

His mouth opened wide, halfway between a grin and a shout of pain. “No, Yves. No. It was too far. Before the roads were paved, before the new carts, it would have taken four days to get to them, and even then they could have done no more than call to the mainland for assistance.”

My head shook back and forth. I could not stop it. “You might have gone before she went into labor.”

“No, Yves.” He was weeping outright now. “It was God's will. We had no way of knowing how she would suffer. Look you at Adelaïda—she gave birth to Elizaveta without hindrance. How could we have known beforehand what Elynour would suffer?”

“I don't know. You're the one, of any among us, who could have seen the future.”

“Yves, stop. I am no medium.”

“You killed my wife.”

“I did not kill her.” He wept bitterly. “I did not kill her. God carried her home. While we wallow in the muck of life and death, she has gone to bliss. Would you deny her that? And think, Yves, had God not called her, you would never have had Adelaïda and Elizaveta. Would you give up that happiness?”

How could I be unfaithful either to the love of my wife or to the memory of her I had lost? “How can I say?”

“Would you give them up?”

My eyes now seeped their own salt, their own deep wound. “No.”

His arm reached across me, and for all that I hated him at that moment, hated him more than I hated the darkest demons of Hell, once more I could not resist the draw of him. He knew my weakness, knew how I yearned for the closeness of family. I hid my face in his sleeve, the taste of sweat and dirt and salt rain filling my mouth from the dark fabric.

“My box,” I said, surprised that so petty a thought could occur to me at such a moment, “is not from Indo-China?”

“No.”

“My brother.”

“That hasn't changed.”

“It has if I don't know you. It has if you lie to me outright.”

“Ruth will be my wife, Yves.”

I pulled away. “Oh, Christ, this is too much.”

“Why? It's what any other man would do.”

“She's not—”

“If Stanislaus won't marry us, then we'll marry ourselves.”

I wanted to bite him. “Damn you, Mandrik.”

“Why do you turn against me?” I had not heard his voice raised in ages, and I took note. “Is it not hardship enough that in all of the village I shall be outcast and made mock of, that as often as they have ever reviled me they will revile me a hundred times more?”

“They have not reviled you, because you were holy, Mandrik, because you were blessed.” My voice scraped against my straining throat. “Do you know what you do?”

“Yes.”

“I don't think you do.”

“I know full well.”

“Your life will not be the same. All of your vows, for nothing. All of your writing, and healing—”

“Why can't I do all of that with a wife?”

“Because no one will trust you any longer.”

“The small-minded may turn against me—”

“Everyone will turn against you.”

“Even you, my brother?”

As gentle as the rain came my soft answer: “I cannot yet say.”

The cairn stretched up to Heaven behind.

“Yves, you are my only brother. If you love me half as dearly as I love you, you love me well. And I know you care for Ruth, that her presence in your home has pleased you. So why do you turn against us if she stays?”

The mist began to thicken into droplets, which trickled down upon us from the rocks. “Because my Elynour is rotting beneath the sod while we sit here amid all the blessings and curses of the living.”

He drew a long breath. “I thought you would be glad Ruth wasn't leaving.”

I startled myself by making a sound less human than animal, deep back in my throat. “Have you any idea how dearly I loved her?”

“Yes, Yves, I believe I do.”

“Mandrik.”

“I know you love Ruth. I know you will be happy she stayed.”

I scanned his blue eyes, dark against the rain. “I love you both. It murders me to watch what's becoming of you.”

“I have not changed. I have only found someone with whom I wish to share my home.” He watched me for a reply, but I had none. “Yves, you must understand that. You must have longed for release from your solitude before I brought you Adelaïda.”

“Yes, but it's different.”

“Why?”

“And how long have you—”

“Since first she came, I suppose. Though I did not know she reciprocated until well into the summer.”

Whether from my feet or the general circumstance, I felt certain I'd be ill. “I don't want to know about it.”

“I want you to be glad of this, Yves.”

“After you have lied to me and to everyone we know. After you allowed my Elynour to die.”

“I did not—”

“After you have debased and defiled yourself with an utter stranger.”

“Why does it defile me to do what all of you have always done?”

“Why did you reject it in the first place, then?”

“I have had more time for meditation than any man in this village. It has borne its fruit, and led me to this happiness. Do not begrudge me it.”

“Tell me how you will look after a wife, man? I've looked after her this half year by the sweat of my brow.”

“I can manage her.”

“She would have died.”

“Brother,” he said, looking at the ground, “give me your blessing. For among everyone else I will no doubt be a mockery from now on. If, indeed, anyone is left here at all.”

My throat burned despite the chill. I wanted to curl into sleep and wake to find myself a lad, one child among many, restlessly waiting for the winter to be over that we might all run outside. “All my life I have been proud,” I began, “to have such a brother as you; I have been proud of what you chose to make of yourself. What have I to be proud of now?”

“That you will have her, still, and all her wit and work? That you'll have nieces and nephews to carry on your name?”

“An ignominy.”

“You will be glad when you realize—”

“What about her family? They are too gentle to force, but they have come to ask her to go back among them. What will they think? How will they feel?”

He could not answer right away, for another man's feelings always seem less immediate than one's own. “They will return with her assurances that she and I, together, will go some time later.”

“No.” I felt that I could not move my limbs, which was only in part a consequence of the cold. “I will not have you leave again.”

“Not forever.”

“I forbid it.”

“Yves, listen to what you're saying.”

“For three long years I looked to the heavens each morning, scanning them for a portent, some sign, asking if you made your way among the living. They said nothing. Three long years they held their silence—and how I wept and prayed that I not be left alone, and all along believed that you were drowned.”

“You had your wife.”

“So shortly to die. And a stranger compared to the one last person I
had known all my life. After all our family had left me, I would not have you leave, too.” This cairn, the bodies beneath the churchyard, would never have sufficed, despite my siblings' visits. “I will not have you go.”

“And exile my wife from her people the rest of her days?”

“She may leave tomorrow if she so desires. They are here to take her back. If she chooses not to go with them, so be it.”