Let the Dark Flower Blossom

COPYRIGHT
©
2013
Norah Labiner

COVER & BOOK DESIGN
Linda S. Koutsky

COVER PHOTOGRAPH
PinkBadger, iStockphoto

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Labiner, Norah, 1967–

Let the dark flower blossom : a novel / by Norah Labiner.

p. cm.

ISBN
978-1-56689-331-2

I. Title.

PS
3562.
A
2328
L
48 2013

813'.54—
DC
23

2012036525

FIRST EDITION
  
|
  
FIRST PRINTING

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Lines of poetry are taken from the following: “Sweeney among the Nightingales,” by T. S. Eliot; “Ode to Broken Things,” by Pablo Neruda; “The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter” and “Hugh Selwyn Mauberly,” by Ezra Pound; and “Leda and the Swan,” by W. B. Yeats.

  
Chapter 1
Susu breaks the first rule of storytelling

  
Chapter 2
Sheldon finds no justice in poetry

  
Chapter 3
Susu wonders what it would be like to sleep with him

  
Chapter 4
Sheldon mythologizes the past

  
Chapter 5
Susu decides to go away with him

  
Chapter 6
Eloise hides the letter

  
Chapter 7
Susu defies augury

  
Chapter 8
Eloise argues about infinity

  
Chapter 9
Susu sees the burning king

Chapter 10
Eloise turns toward an undeniable conclusion

Chapter 11
Susu imagines that she is the heroine of a novel

Chapter 12
Eloise mistakes cruelty for a species of kindness

Chapter 13
Susu drinks all the wine in the winedark

Chapter 14
Eloise admits to objectification

Chapter 15
Susu draws a chalk outline around the body

Chapter 16
Sheldon digs in the hard frozen ground

Chapter 17
Susu breaks the second rule of storytelling

Chapter 18
Sheldon suffers for art

Chapter 19
Eloise lets the dark flower blossom

Chapter 20
Sheldon explicates the egg

Chapter 21
Susu puts the broken swan back together

Chapter 22
Sheldon rebuilds the ruined fountain

Colophon

Funder Acknowledgment

H
E ONLY SAID HER NAME TO ME ONCE
. It was a hot dull morning. We had coffee and oranges on the balcony. He stood at the crumbling stone peeling an orange. He looked down at the street below. He said, “I saw you once years ago.” I came to the edge, the stone, a balustrade, he called it; and stood next to him, holding my cup, a demitasse. The coffee was bitter black boiled through with cardamom and sweetened with honey. “It was snowing,” he said. “I called after you,” he said. He looked at me in the sun, and I pitied him, but didn't want him to know this. He put a hand to my face, and I knew that he wasn't really talking to me, that he was talking to her. He said, “I saw you in a coat with a fur collar.” And then he broke the orange into two, and he handed half to me. He said, “I'm sorry.” He said, “I'm sorry about the world. I'm sorry that this is all that is left for you, just bones and rotten broken things.” He looked down at the street. This was the last morning, wasn't it? of coffee and oranges and green birds. It was morning, and he talked, as he watched the girls on their bicycles, as we stood on the balcony. He waited. He waited. A bird flew low to him. I said, I asked him, “How does the story begin?” He picked up from his plate a heel of bread, buttered. He broke the hard floury crust to bits and scattered it for the birds. He licked the butter from his fingers. He did not answer. He turned. He went from the sun of the balcony back into the room all shadow. There was a box on the table. Each morning I opened the box. Each morning I asked him the same question. And he would not, he would never answer. I should have hated him, but I did not. I collected my things for the seaside: postcards; licorice; a
mystery novel. He sat at the table. I was at the door. I looked back. I had a terrible feeling. I felt, I thought that I might never see him again. I was going to leave and then, I did not leave, because I was young and I thought that I would never see him again, because the green birds and bread and oranges prophesied, promised omens, and that the foreign sky was too old, too hot, too ancient for me; I went back to him. I waited. I waited. In a vase on the table there were dark flowers. In the lobby of the hotel there was a statue of a goddess. And everyone said that she was a saint. There was sun from the balcony, but he sat in shadow. He took his manuscript from the table. The pages were tied around and knotted with string. He untied the knot. A sheet of paper fell to the floor. And he said, “The story begins with a rock and ends with a scissor.”

R
OMAN
S
TONE IS DEAD
. I read about it in the newspaper. His obituary ran in the
New York Times
with that picture of him from the jacket of his first book: twenty years old, smiling, fair-haired, and careless. He was never one to put on the serious face of the tortured artist for a press photo. He was never the intellectual caught in deep contemplation of the human soul. No, you'd find him grinning as though the photographer captured him just at a dirty joke's obscene one-two punch. He exemplified that rule so beloved by English professors, myself once included: he wrote from experience. Herein was—or
is
—the danger. He was a storyteller. His life was his logos. And his death—his murder—was only the second-best story that he never told.

I live on an island. Nothing goes to waste here. The apples are sweet. The grapes are sour. I have a hatchet and a shovel. Newspapers come to my box at the postal station. I save the old papers for kindling. This morning when I lit the stove, I found myself burning Roman's picture. I tried to get the page back from the fire, but I was too late.

What could I do but let it burn?

I have never found any justice in poetry.

He died six months ago in Virgil's Grove, Iowa, while watching a baseball game on television. He was discovered by a delivery girl bringing his dinner: two cheeseburgers, onion rings, and chocolate cake. She said that the door was open; that she heard the cheering crowd.

He wrote of fate and then fell to it.

The obit called him a provocateur.

The police called his death the result of a robbery gone wrong.

Anaxagoras said:
The descent to hell is the same from every place
, but it was my sister Eloise who pronounced on the day—or maybe it was night—she met him:
Roman Stone was born to be murdered
. She wasn't joking. Eloise, who is the younger twin by a matter of minutes, felt—or feels—an absolute narrative honesty that I myself have never quite been able to evince.

If there is a god who winds watches; if there is a destiny that shapes our ends; then Roman was lucky. He was lucky right up until the moment that he wasn't. His father was a Nobel Prize winner; his mother, an actress turned political activist. He was big and brash and relevant as hell. Even his death was relevant. America's literary zeitgeist cut down in the heartland? What did it mean? Was it a metaphor? Or a symbol? It was more than an ending; it alluded to godlessness and dark times ahead.

Roman's widow, Dibby, wore to his funeral a black dress made by some certain in-demand designer; and his mournful readers
wondered, without guile or accusation, only curiosity, about how much such a garment must have cost. Roman's two sons, in Eton suits with short pants and kneesocks, sat one on either side of their spectacularly pretty nanny. Dibby Stone sat further down the aisle—disconsolate; crying into a black lace handkerchief—propped between a foreign diplomat and a film star, both of them dear acquaintances of her late husband.

The eulogy began with a question.

Who was Roman Magnus Stone?

The question sounds like a quiz show answer. I remember suddenly a winter afternoon years ago. Nothing brings out nostalgia—even for the rotten times—like loss.

Who was Roman Stone?

I am Sheldon Schell.

I was once his sidekick. Back in the days when we were young, when the paparazzi loved nothing more than to catch a close-up candid of Roman—the loudmouth, the lothario—getting into trouble. Remember the time he threw that pompous actor into a swimming pool? Or how he smashed up his Porsche but walked away from the wreckage without a scratch? What about that award ceremony where he fell off the stage? You may not have noticed me in the photographs, but there I am nonetheless, lurking behind Ro or half-dissected—an arm or shoulder only—in the frame. There is one particular shot of us—; it was snapped at a Hollywood premiere. This was 1983. Roman's first novel had just been adapted into a film. He could do no wrong. He was romancing a starlet. His name was inscribed in the gossip columns. The photo appeared in a glossy magazine known for tracking the comings and goings of the latest glitterati. The girl, Roman, and I stand before an absurdly flowing champagne fountain. I am scowling. Roman has his arm around the girl. She is fawnish and fragile. He appears like a golden
good-humored satyr at her side. The caption reads:
Harlow Jamison and Roman Stone, with unidentified friend, also a novelist
. Soon after this, the girl made a splash by very publicly breaking up with Roman and then checking herself into rehab. I don't know to what substance exactly she was addicted, but she had a complete breakdown. I heard that she never quite recovered her mind. This is not said as an indictment of the poor girl's character; she was delicate. Soulful, even. I always liked her. I offer this detail as a testament to how difficult it was for the rest of us to keep up with Roman.