The Confessor (31 page)

He could feel her body rising and falling beside him, with a slight tremble in the valley of her breaths, as if she had been through a hard spell of sobbing.

‘I loved them so much – and I loved the
feeling
of loving them. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I’ve never loved anyone, Christine. I’m not made that way.’

‘What does that mean – “not made that way”?

She felt his fingertips begin tapping the space between them in a waltzing beat.
Tap
– tap – tap . . .
Tap
– tap – tap . . .

Christine’s head turned on the pillow, and she studied him. His features looked less angular in profile – less vulpine.

‘Then why are you doing this?’ she said.

‘I was an instrument of suffering – for a long time – and now Harry and Matheson are suffering because of me. And if they die, Ezra will also suffer.’ He turned his head to her. ‘And I have much less to lose than they do.’ The finger-tapping stopped. ‘I need to sleep.’

Geiger closed his eyes. His breathing changed within a few seconds, an engine shifting down from drive to neutral, settling into an even idle. The thoughtless, heartful part of her wanted to touch him, let her fingertips brush against his cheekbone just above the sharp line of his beard. It was not the flesh she wanted, but the sense of connection . . . for a moment . . .

Her hand slid across the comforter till it found his. When she rested hers in his open palm, there was no response. She couldn’t tell if he was already asleep – or simply being true to himself, remaining unconnected. With tiny increments of movement, she found a position that felt lasting and natural, and entwined two fingers in his as a kind of anchor. Then she closed her eyes and hoped to dream.

He had left the waking world behind him, and was in the antechamber to deep sleep when he felt someone take his hand – and pull him into a place where he was both present and observer . . . and instantly aware that the vision was not a dream . . .

. . . His six-year-old ghost, barefoot in faded overalls . . .

The cabin was the work of a master carpenter, the walls and cathedral ceiling made of massive split logs, windows set oddly high so all that was seen of the world were lush treetops and infinite sky.

He sat in the sun-washed great room beside an off-kilter cot where his mother lay beneath a dog-eared sheet, her long, thick braid of black hair stretched across the pillow. Her pallid skin shone with sweat, her gray, almond eyes gleamed with a warm but fading light – and the scent of her lavender water was in his nostrils.

The linen rose around her swollen belly, and at her inner thighs the fabric held the glistening proof of her distress. One hand lay flat and still upon her chest and the other at her side, fingers interlaced with her son’s. A string quartet’s concerto sprinkled down from the rafters and, to the boy, seemed to shift in mood with the slow rise and fall of his mother’s chest.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Ma. I’m all right. What should I do?’

‘You can’t do anything, sweetness,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to do.’ More than her words, the fuzzy hush in her tone and sibilant breath through parted lips gave the boy his answer.

‘Ma . . . I could go try and find a doctor.’

‘You can’t go off the mountain. You know Father’s rule.’

‘But this is . . . different.’

‘No. No doctors. It would end up being much worse for you – later on.’

Tears spread out along the rims of the boy’s eyelids, and then spilled over.

‘And wipe those tears away before your father comes back.’

The boy used the back of his hand to erase the evidence. Pain suddenly stretched his mother’s lips into a flat horizon.

‘Why is it doing this to you, Ma?’

‘It isn’t the baby’s fault, sweetness.’

‘But it’s hurting you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want it to hurt you anymore.’

‘It’ll stop hurting. But I may have to go away.’

‘Go away where?’

Her smile was late arriving. ‘Don’t worry, sweetness. It will all make sense.’

‘What will?’

‘Just stay here with me now. I’ll sing to you.’ She squeezed his hand tighter. ‘You are the sunshine of my life . . .’ The song was more than melody and words. It transcended sound and meaning. It was a chord of life that had joined them, warm and soothing, since his birth, in sleep and wakefulness. ‘That’s why I’ll always be around . . .’ But it had become more fragile, tremulous – and now seemed an echo of itself.

‘Ma . . . If you go away, are you going to forget me?’

He heard her breath catch – and felt her fingers tighten around his.

‘I won’t forget you, sweetness. That’s the best part about loving someone. You never forget them.’

The crunch of a metal latch being lifted screwed his head around as the room’s only door swung open. His father stepped inside, a steel bucket in each hand, and milk spilled over their edges onto the floor as he walked toward the wide, cast-iron cooking stove.

‘She gave plenty, Mother,’ he said.

‘That’s good,’ said his wife.

He set the pails down on the stove and rubbed his palms dry on the front of his overalls. He had the look of a domesticated creature – born wild, trained to live in a world of people and cabins and dogma. He held his massive hands up to his face, examining the crooked fingers, bent by a thousand slips of a hammer, then shoved them down into his overalls’ pockets and stared at his pale wife.

‘Do you still feel it moving?’

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Some.’

‘Stay strong, Mother. It isn’t time yet.’

‘I know. I will.’

His father’s gaze moved to the boy. ‘Are those tears, son?’

The boy knew that crying was a failing. But lying was unthinkable.

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Then we need to remember to talk about that, later.’

‘Yes, sir. I won’t forget.’

‘Good.’

He got out his pack of Camels and loosed a cigarette, took a wooden match from the jar on the stove, scraped it across the iron top, lit up and sent a rich bloom of smoke into the room.

‘I’m going to warm some milk for you, Mother. You need to drink more milk.’ He looked over at the large stone hearth. ‘Shall I light a fire? Are you cold?’

When no answer came, both father and son turned to her. The boy had forgotten that he still held her hand, and realized now that her fingers had stopped gripping his. His father’s cigarette dropped to the floor. The boy wasn’t sure whether he meant to do it or not.

‘Mother . . . ?’ his father said. He walked slowly to the cot – and laid two fingers on the white, smooth throat.

‘What’s happened, Pa?’

The great, dark head slowly slumped downward. Something had given way within him. The silence in the room was a visitor commanding that no one speak. The boy thought it reigned over the world too. He heard no chirps from the birds, no hum of wind or chatter from the leaves on the trees. Even the sonata seemed chastened.

The boy stood up. ‘Ma?’ He put his hand on his mother’s shoulder. ‘Ma?’ He gave her a soft nudge. ‘Did she go away, Pa?’

Slowly, his father glanced at him. ‘Is that what she told you?’ Embers suddenly flared at the center of the coal-black eyes – and he looked back down to the body. ‘Is
that
what you told him?!’

The boy could almost taste the bitterness laced in the question, though he didn’t understand its presence. He didn’t understand anything. He felt adrift, in between places. He watched his father’s fingertips run slowly across the length of her braid, then move to her face and gently trace a line along her cheek.

‘You will be missed, Mother, terribly,’ he said, ‘but damn you for your weakness. You’ve left me with a miserable job to finish for you.’ He pulled a hunting knife from a sheath on the tool belt round his waist, and grabbed hold of the sheet. ‘Move away, boy – and look away.’

The boy turned and found a small, solitary cloud beyond the trees to watch. It was creeping across the sky, moving east, toward the top of the mountain like a lamb searching for the flock. Sounds were rushing back into the room, and he was being wrapped in an odd melange – the crisp, light strokes of the classical players punctuated by the tympani of his father’s grunts of effort, and the soft squish of flesh giving way to honed steel. He knew the sound from the many times he’d watched his father gut a deer. Then he heard the knife hit the floor, and looked over at it. The sunlight flashed bright red on the wide blade – and he understood whose blood it was.

A noise came out of his father, bearish but muted, and some primal urge – shock, or grief, or anger – prodded it to a higher pitch before it slowly died down and out, revealing another intonation beneath it. A quiet stirring. At first the boy thought it was leaves nuzzling against each other in a sudden breeze, but the sound was inside with them.

‘Is that the baby?’ he asked.

His father’s breath came out of his nostrils in short, staggered puffs. ‘Get two towels.’

‘It’s alive, isn’t it?’ the boy said.

‘
Do as I tell you!
’

. . . The bludgeoning force of the command almost knocked Geiger back into consciousness – but his mind refused to let go of the vision. He would not leave it. He would stay until the end . . .

The boy ran to a tall armoire against a wall, flung the doors open and grabbed a pair of towels from a shelf. As he started back, his father turned, blocking the body from sight with his own. He held out a bloodied hand. Drops formed at the blunt edges of fingernails – hanging like small, ruby berries, then giving in to gravity and falling.

‘Give them here. Don’t come close.’

He took the towels and turned back to his task. The boy watched his arms shift in concert with muscles in his wide back, pistons in an engine performing a grim service. Something was growing in the boy’s chest, weeds snaking out, getting tangled round his heart . . .

His father turned around, holding the swaddled newborn. The boy couldn’t see the infant, but a rheumy, irregular wheeze drifted out from inside the towel.

‘It
is
alive,’ said the boy.

‘It will not live long, son.’

‘Why?’

‘. . . Because it isn’t meant to.’

‘Can I hold it?’

‘For a short while. Sit.’

The boy sat down in the chair beside the cot.

‘Put your arms like this.’ His father demonstrated the cradling position, the boy prepared his arms, and his father placed the bundle in them – and then walked to the stove, struck another match and lit another cigarette.

The boy was surprised by the lightness of what he held. The weak murmur was slipping out through a narrow opening in the wrap – and he slowly widened it with a finger . . .

It was the smallest living thing he had ever seen, and the oldest – wrinkled and ashen, yet somehow unfinished. Its only movement was the slow, stuttering rise and fall of its chest. The eyes were closed. The boy wondered if they would ever open.

‘It’s sick.’

His father spoke from behind a dense haze of smoke. ‘It’s dying.’

‘But . . . it’s just
born
.’ Something was taking hold of him – far beyond understanding – a sense there was a great spirit, even more powerful than his father, able to make terrible things happen just by deciding it should be so, and its reasons would always remain unknown.

He nudged the tip of his forefinger into the infant’s hand – and the impossibly tiny fingers slowly closed around it. His mother had asked him many times if he wanted a brother or sister. He had always said he didn’t care which. He looked over at her. His father had pulled the sheet up to her neck. Her blood had turned the mid-section of it dark red. Her face was smooth and white – cool, elegant marble. He felt a pulsing start up in his ears.

‘Father . . . I think I’m gonna cry. I’m sorry.’

His father walked over, slightly hunched. To the boy, it looked as if the original, untamed beast in him was coming alive. He bent down and picked up the hunting knife – and when he straightened up the boy saw his face head-on. It had turned rigid, as if flesh had petrified to stone beneath the thicket of beard. And death had paid a visit to his eyes, bringing condolences and darkness . . . and taking the light with it when it left.

‘Go on then – cry,’ he said. ‘Then there will be no more crying. And there will be no more
weakness
in this house. No more
frailty
. I will see to it.’ He wiped the blade off on a pantleg of his overalls – slowly, one side, then the other. ‘You will have no brothers or sisters now – and I’m going to find a way to make you strong. Stronger than your mother. Stronger than
me
. So cry now, for the last time.’

He started for the door.

‘Where are you going, father?’

‘To get a shovel.’ He swung the door open, stepped through and slammed it closed behind him.

The boy looked down at the infant. Father was right – it didn’t look like something that belonged in the world. It reminded him of a baby bird born without wings, a sad, nonsensical thing with no place to be. He looked over at his mother.

‘Don’t forget me, Ma,’ he said. ‘Please don’t.’

And he began to weep – for the last time . . .

Geiger’s eyes opened. There was a slight, soft tremble in his breath rippling across the grain of his heartbeat, and within it was an ache. He was the student and master of pain, his and others, but he didn’t know this sensation. It was not a product of force, of cruel acts, of the darkest of human intentions. It was not of flesh and nerve-endings and muscle and joints. It was a revelation.

Christine was asleep, nestled against him, one arm lying across his chest.

He glanced at the clock on the night-table. Eight-forty. He’d been asleep for over five hours. He’d never slept that long before. He wiped his tears away – and then gently tapped Christine’s arm. One sleepy eye opened, regarding him languidly . . . and then awareness kicked in – of his identity, and her position, and the precarious tilt of the world. She turned onto her back, and they watched the ceiling together.