The Language of Paradise: A Novel (46 page)

A
UGUST. A DRY SPELL, THE EARTH PARCHED, FOLIAGE DROOP
ing. Leander diverts himself from deeper worries to fret about the state of the well and the garden. The wall struts bravely across the front of the property and straggles off to nothing at the sides: Lem and his brother have left without warning to help a farmer with his harvest. Heat lounges in the house like a shiftless uncle. Twice, birds have plummeted down the chimney and run Sophy ragged from room to room, eluding the swipes of her broom. Mosquitoes plague them at night: Gideon scratches in his sleep, Aleph whimpers under his gauze tent. The weather imposes its own stasis. Day after day, under siege or no, they go on.

After a brief respite—the parson, Micah reported, had preached on tolerance—human wildlife has been spotted at all hours, ogling them from the road. Gideon claims he can hear voices after midnight, loud enough to wake him, though no one else is disturbed. “They sit on the wall, arrogant as jays,” he says, “planning how to torment us. I thought I heard James last night.” It does no good to remind him that James won’t come near the house. Logic only makes him more avid. He spends half his waking hours hunched in a corner of the wall—“like a statue in a niche,” Leander says—with the rifle and his journal. Glancing out the window, Sophy has seen him bent over his book, writing with fierce concentration. She wonders what he can possibly be recording. He has little time for Aleph now.

“One of us should always be on guard,” he tells Leander. “Day and night, like a ship’s watch.”

“How would we manage that, with only two of us and someone always needed in the house?” Leander inclines his head slightly toward Sophy. “Don’t expect me to volunteer for duty night after night. I’ve spent enough hours of my life staring at the stars.” But he assures Gideon that he sleeps with one eye open. “A useful habit from my years of living rough.”

Gideon is militant even when unconscious. He keeps the rifle at his bedside, standing at attention against the wall. Fast asleep, he throws an arm over Sophy, trapping her ankle with his foot or clutching her nightgown in his fist. She doesn’t mistake this possessiveness for affection, but chooses to call it need. He reaches for her at night because the two of them are still one flesh, and no one—not the interloper who lives with them, not the stranger Gideon has become—can sunder them. The ugliness that passed between them is etched on her, yet she can’t bring herself to hate him, or fear him as she fears Leander. Since their confrontation they circle one another stiffly, never locking eyes. When she opens her dress to nurse the baby, he looks away. It is a matter of faith to Sophy that the face he hides shows the same raw pain she saw that morning, when Leander burst in. At his core, he can still feel shame.

On nights when she lies awake, restless in his grip but wary of disturbing him, Gideon’s sermon about Paradise comes back to her with a force she never felt in church. There is a world parallel to our own, and in that world she and Gideon are the young couple they were when they courted, advancing gracefully in time. Gideon teaches at the seminary, and she keeps house and paints when she can, and at night she slips into his study and dances for him, and they live for each other and their son. It seems so familiar, that world; so tantalizingly near. Some mornings, waking from an hour of snatched sleep, she believes they’ve lived there all along.

IN THIS WORLD
, Sophy is making plans for her departure. Visitors are discouraged—Gideon is in a nervous state, apt to shoot before he thinks—but Micah still comes, and they find a few moments to themselves. On his last visit, he brought some news. James has developed a sudden interest in his nephew—his nephew’s soul, to be exact. The poor little pagan is half a Hedge, and entitled to the full measure of salvation through baptism. He’s made it his personal quest, Micah says; he talks of little else. Their welfare is not James’s only concern. He is convinced that the presence of his sister and her son in the house is staying the hand of Judgment. To allow the Lord free rein, Sophy and Aleph are to be plucked from their unclean surroundings and resettled among the righteous. In a few weeks James intends to take the coach to Dedham to see a banker about a loan to keep the farm going. While he is gone, he will leave the horse and wagon for Micah.

“Why doesn’t he come get us himself?” Sophy asked. “He puts the whole burden on his little brother. It isn’t right.”

“Y-you know why. He w-won’t even cash the rent checks, Sophy! Throws them in the f-fire while the farm goes to ruin.”

“And once Aleph’s soul is seen to, will he bring us home?”

“M-maybe. Or board you in t-town. Place isn’t fit for pigs.”

To calm herself, Sophy makes lists of essentials in her sketchbook, adding two items for every one she crosses out: Mama’s brooch weighs nothing, the jade rabbit will bring them luck, Aleph won’t sleep without his lamb. Today she thinks of her paintings, baking under a cloth in the conservatory. She can’t take them with her, but should at least pack them securely and see that they’re stored in a safe place until Micah can bring them to her. In the trunk, she finds an old blanket that Mama wrapped dishes in, and some twine. She feels a pang of conscience for her neglected children. They deserve to await Armageddon in a cooler spot.

IF ELSEWHERE THE HEAT OPPRESSES
, in the glasshouse it transports. Once she closes the door behind her, she could be in a perfumed isle, or Spain. Short, scorching New England summers are all she’s ever known. The glasshouse reminds her that there are places in the world where people bask in moist, fragrant air all year round, where they move through life unhurried. It is difficult for Sophy to remember that this tropical zone used to be her studio and Gideon’s laboratory. In August, only the plants are diligent.

Warm as it is, she turns cold at the sight of her paintings lined up along the back wall with their secret sides exposed. Leander is sitting cross-legged before the display, lost in contemplation. He seems not the least alarmed at her intrusion. He unfolds to his full height and bows from the waist.

“Sophia, my congratulations. What marvels! The flowers of a singular mind. I’ve always said to Gideon, leave her to herself, away from the proprieties of the Academy, and she’ll do wonders. You pretend to dabble, but in your quiet way, you’ve grown into a true
artiste
.” He points to the painting of the flying serpent. “You’ve caught me, dear lady. That wicked eye of yours has pinned me to the board. I admit, the motif is a little startling. I’ve heard of Jews with horns, but wings? An innovation!”

“What right have you?” She is trembling. “Is there no end to your arrogance?”

He holds up a pacifying hand. “I meant no harm. I wondered what was under the cloth, that is all. Why do you hide your work? It should be seen.”

“My pictures weren’t intended for your eyes, or any other’s. Could you not leave me this one last thing? You’ve taken everything else.”

Her sense of violation is overwhelming. Against her will she starts to cry, ugly coughing sobs.

“Sophia. Sophy, please.” Leander raises his arms as if to comfort her; lets them drop. “What have I taken that I haven’t given back thrice over? My money, my time, the house that shelters us, this pretty room you paint in. All that I have is yours.”

“The price is too high. You’ve destroyed my family—left me with nothing. Because of you Gideon persists in this foolishness. He deprives his own son!” Her voice spirals up and up. Aleph is sleeping on the other side of the wall. Let him wake, let him hear. “Give Gideon back to me and you can keep the rest.”

“He isn’t mine to give, or yours to possess.” Leander is quiet in measure to her shrillness. “Neither of us owns him, but he needs us both. These seers who live in their exalted minds—the world makes short work of them. Without us to brace him, he would try, and fail, and compromise, and flounder, and one day he would not get up. You and I, we make it possible for him to exist. To be his splendid self.”

Her cheeks flame. “That is a wife’s job.”

“A wife might do the trick for an average fellow. Our Gideon is more complicated. What you call foolishness is the breath of life to him. Madness would be more accurate, for once the obsession takes hold, it has no end. First the words, then the roots, then the letters, then the mystical numbers, each box promising revelation but opening to a smaller box. I had a touch of the malady once, and I can testify—some never find their way back.”

“You don’t share his affliction? I’m not surprised. You seem a very worldly man. Maybe you’ll explain what you want with my poor deluded husband.”

“My temperament inoculates me. The curiosity is still with me, but the zeal—that’s long gone.” Leander gives a little shrug, dismissing his youthful passion. “You accuse me of possessing Gideon, demonizing him. I assure you, my powers are strictly mundane. I put his gifts to practical use. Keep him anchored on our sad old planet. Some women would thank me.” He has been pinioning Sophy with his eyes, as usual, but now his gaze sweeps the length of the glass room: the flourishing plants, the green world outside. “I wonder if you appreciate how unique our situation is. Such a pure, wholesome experiment. I find it endlessly interesting. We are plowing virgin fields.”

The image undoes her; she can see it. She says, faintly, “You destroy my child for your entertainment.”

He shakes his head—more in astonishment, it seems, than in denial. In the moment it takes him to answer, she realizes she’s stung him.

“I love Aleph, too, can’t you see that? Do you think a man like me—a
worldly
man, as you quaintly put it—has no tender feelings? Show me a father who is more devoted to the son of his flesh than I am to our little one. If harm comes to him—to any of you—through me, may it be on my head!”

Vows resound, Sophy thinks. If spoken loud enough, they could shatter glass.

When he speaks again, his voice is level. “You paint me as the serpent hanging over the innocent young couple, casting a shadow over their lives. But it was never bliss, was it? There was trouble long before I came. Gideon was restless and discontented, and you were, shall we say, confused. Am I wrong?”

“We weren’t perfect, but we were a family. Now I don’t know what we are.”

“Still a family! A stronger one, if only you would allow yourself to see. To accept.” Leander takes a step toward her. “When I first met you, I saw a couple who were at odds by nature. Charming, yes, this union of earth and air, but the attraction that drew you to each other also worked against you. Forgive me for speaking candidly, but I believe your barrenness was a symptom of an elemental antipathy.” He advances another step. “I undertook to be your alchemist. Fortunately, I have some acquaintance with the art. The result? Our beautiful boy.”

Sophy would move away, but she is rooted to the spot. “You have no part in Aleph.”

“Have I not? It seems inevitable that fate called upon me to bring him into the world.” His white grin. “Naturally, I was terrified at the time.”

Have I not?
The foreign inflection, the old world coiling about her simple country ways. The shrewdness, which reminds her of how much she doesn’t know.

“Who are you?” Three plain words to counter his. She puts what is left of her strength into them.

Leander reaches for her rocking chair, spins it around to face her and sits heavily. “Who I am, you ought to know. But you are really asking who I was. What if I were to tell you that I was born in Germany, in a town called Kassel; that my father was respectable and despaired of me, and my mother was rich and doted on me; that I had a wife I tolerated, and a child I dearly loved . . . and they died. That some men are content with the families they are born to and the life they inherit, and others travel the world seeking their true kin. Would you know me any better?”

“You were married?” She would like to ask him about the child. She had caught him once bent over Aleph’s cradle, tracing the baby’s face with his finger, his touch lingering and delicate. Now she wonders if another child’s face was written there. But sympathy is a luxury she can’t afford.

“It was arranged,” he says curtly, and looks away.

Sophy begins to grasp his method. Answer a question with a question. “You travel the world and you end up in Ormsby? With the likes of us?”

“You are remarkable, both of you. The serendipity of finding you here, of all places—it’s enough to make an old cynic like me believe in destiny.” Leander tilts back in the chair and cocks his head, studying her from a new angle. His eyes are hooded like the serpent’s in her painting, but there is a need in them that she’s never seen.

“You ought to try to care for me a little, Sophia,” he says. “We could help each other. We’re cut from the same cloth, you and I. Earthy folk who find their satisfaction in earthy pleasures. Do you know the old story about Lilith, Adam’s first wife? She was made of dust, just as he was—quite literally his other half. She could fly, they say . . .”

It has been a long time since anyone looked at Sophy with desire. The shock of it disturbs her rhythm, addles her. From the day she met Leander Solloway, she has called him Enemy and Adversary. Papa used those names to cloak the Devil. Sophy wields them to cover Leander’s nakedness. Living side by side, they keep a careful distance, but she has known his nature since his first visit, when he lounged in the doorway of her old room as though he had a right to be there, at home in his body as Gideon never was. That night, lying beside her husband, she’d closed her eyes and spied on the stranger who was sleeping in her bed. Come so close she could see the grain of his skin.

She is tired. Months of resistance have worn her down, and the future is bleak at best. How much simpler it would be to show him the gratitude he’s earned. Fulfill the bargain that the desperate make in fairy tales: You preserved my life and my son’s; you own us now. A silent giving-in. Her head resting on his chest. His arms drawing her close, wrapping her in the circle of his wide love. She can feel the pull of him, the heat of him, even as she fends him off.