The Deepest Water (32 page)

Hi, honey,

I’m writing this letter on the assumption that for whatever reason, we won’t have talked about these things when you receive it.

“She was a child, and I was a child in our kingdom by the sea.” Her name was Xuan Bui, she was seventeen years old, I loved her, and I killed her.

They sent me to Bali, to a hospital. One day as I bicycled around the island with two other patients, we came across an old man on the beach, carving something. He was as brown and wrinkled as a walnut, and the wood he was carving was driftwood, bleached bone-white. He motioned for me to join him and I did. The other two men began to walk along the shore, looking for shells, but I sat near the old man, neither of us speaking for a long time. Now I could see that he was carving a bird with outspread wings, one foot already drawn up for flight, but the other foot still attached to the driftwood base. Each feather was detailed, the ruffled breast feathers parted by the wind, the wings taut and strong. Then he stopped carving and said in perfect English, “She is still bound to the earth, she is not released yet.” He handed the piece to me. He got up and walked away, so ancient, so frail and small, he looked unreal. The other two men returned and asked where I had found the carving; all they had found were a few worthless shells. I said the old man had given it to me, and they said there had been no one with me. I had sat there by myself while they walked. They had checked now and then; we were all considered to be suicidal, you see, and not permitted to go out alone. One of them must have reported to the doctor that I was delusional, and the following week, they sent me home, booted me out of the army. Go home and be crazy was the message I got loud and clear.

You’ve seen the bird, Abby. It’s real enough. Was he? I don’t know to this day. I went home and was crazy for a long time. I met your mother in San Francisco, and at first, seeing her from the back, I thought it was Xuan Bui. Her hair was long and black, straight to her waist; she was slender… Three weeks later we were married.

I did your mother two terrible wrongs, Abby. I married her when I didn’t love her, trying to substitute her for someone else. And I failed to provide for her afterward. I never blamed her for leaving me. The wonder is that she didn’t do it many years sooner, the day she came to know that I couldn’t love her.

I knew I had to do something, something important to me, and I couldn’t find what it was. I tried to write, I read, I meditated. All useless. Then I saw a woman drown out by Siren Rock, and it was as if everything in me shattered, and when it grew back together, I knew.

I had to write the novel, a long novel, several volumes. Now three are done, and there is one more to do. They will make a great deal of money, and I will build a school in Vietnam. I was responsible for the destruction of a village, and the death of a lovely young girl. Maybe I can redeem myself. The school has been started, and as more money comes along, it will grow. It is called the Xuan Bui Institute.

You will have wondered what I did with the cashier’s checks, and now you know. One other person knows, and he has helped me through every step. He is very old and I’m afraid he won’t live to see it all completed. Because his health is failing, we have set up a legal trust, the Xuan Bui Institute Trust Fund, in the Bank of America Trust Division in San Francisco, and that is where I deliver the checks.

In the unlikely event of a fatal accident—the plane crashes, the boat sinks, lightning strikes—I have instructed Harvey Durham to deliver this letter to you thirty days after my death. And you should also know that if, God forbid, your death should have followed before the thirty days have passed, then all the money due me would have been sent straight to the institute trust fund. Since you are now reading this letter, the thirty days have passed, and you will have had time to start down the very difficult path of recovery from the merciless grief of the death of a loved one, and Harvey by now will have destroyed, unopened, the second part of this document.

Honey, please understand that this letter is in no way a demand on you. It’s meant only to inform you so you won’t worry and speculate about the checks, as I know you would without hearing this from me. I failed you in the same way I failed your mother by not providing adequately too many times, and I am sorry, and yet your unquestioning love never wavered, and for that I am truly grateful. I don’t believe the sins of the fathers are visited on their children. You have no obligation to repay my debt, and I would never try to dictate from the grave. Whatever I leave is yours without restraints, without strings. But you should know what I did, what I’m doing.

My truest wish is that one day I’ll burn this letter and you will never see it. But, Abby, since you are reading it, know this: I have been blessed twice. I have loved and been loved by a woman who was heroic, and I was given a magical child. My two loves. My life has been blessed.

One last bit to ponder. A puzzle without an answer, a cosmic riddle. The day I finished SIREN ROCK, I felt a freedom I had not known before, a release, as if I had been in restraints that I could not identify, could not find, could not escape. And on that day when I picked up my lovely bird, it came apart in my hands, set free from its driftwood trap. The bird is for you, Abby. Be whole, my darling, be free, be unhurt. I love you.

She read the letter twice, then slowly folded it, returned it to the envelope, and put it in her purse. She crossed the office to stand at the window, seeing nothing outside, looking instead into the past, her father in Vietnam, Brice lost on the black lake, her mother’s tears.… She had been weeping for her lost child, not her lost husband, Abby understood now.

And she was seeing the final scene from her father’s last novel. The man Link, exhausted, defeated, was staring at the mud bath, slowly undressing. He never had believed a word of the myths that had arisen about the mud bath, its power to heal, to cleanse, or to cling as a stench that could not be washed away, but still he hesitated. Finally he moved forward, and up above the big hot spring pool he saw the woman he loved, holding a large white towel, waiting for him. He stepped into the mud bath.

Abby was startled by the voice of the attorney; she had not heard him reenter the office.

“Are you all right, my dear?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yes.”

“How can I reach you, if the need arises?”

“Willa Ashford will know where I am,” Abby said. “I have to go to Seattle, stay with my mother for a week or so. Willa has her address and phone number.”

When she left the offices and walked out to her car, the words were in her head:
Be whole, be free, be unhurt.
“I’ll try,” she said under her breath. “I’ll try.”

• • •

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Kate Wilhelm

Kate Wilhelm’s first short story, “The Pint-Sized Genie” was published in
Fantastic Stories
in 1956. Her first novel,
More Bitter Than Death
, a mystery, was published in 1963. Over the span of her career, her writing has crossed over the genres of science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy and magical realism, psychological suspense, mimetic, comic, family sagas, a multimedia stage production, and radio plays. She has recently returned to writing mysteries with her Barbara Holloway and the Charlie Meiklejohn and Constance Leidl Mysteries novels. Her works have been adapted for television, theater, and movies in the United States, England, and Germany. Wilhelm’s novels and stories have been translated to more than a dozen languages. She has contributed to
Redbook, Quark, Orbit, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Locus, Amazing, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mysteries, Fantastic Stories, Omni
and many others.

Kate and her husband, Damon Knight (1922-2002), also provided invaluable assistance to numerous other writers over the years. Their teaching careers covered a span of several decades, and hundreds of students, many of whom are famous names in the field today. Kate and Damon helped to establish the Clarion Writer’s Workshop and the Milford Writer’s Conference. They have lectured together at universities in North and South America and Asia. They have been the guests of honor and panelists at numerous conventions around the world. Kate continues to host monthly workshops, as well as teach at other events. She is an avid supporter of local libraries.

Kate Wilhelm lives in Eugene, Oregon.