The Language of Paradise: A Novel (48 page)

Even on a night as clear as this, the forest presses in on either side of the path. Sophy keeps up a steady pace for Aleph’s sake, though her instinct is to run. How many evenings has she tried to make peace with her captivity, courting sleep with thoughts of wolves and foxes and wild dogs and bears,
out there
? Predatory creatures looking for a meal, and now she has no walls to hide behind, and not even a stick to fend them off. These fears she can keep a rein on. A country girl, she has anticipated rustlings and eerie cries, dark shapes slinking across her path. Harder to banish is the sense that she is observed—that same feeling she’s had so often in the house. She doesn’t know which she dreads more: the anonymous vandals waiting to do their damage, happy to expend some malice on a helpless woman, or Leander, who sees what other men don’t. At any moment he might materialize from a cluster of trees.
Off for a midnight ramble, Sophia?

The only antidote is to keep her mind on what she is walking toward. James has arranged for the three of them to stay at the parsonage until his return from Dedham. He’s instructed Entwhistle to proceed with the baptism as soon as possible, Micah says. No need to wait for Sunday meeting, or for James himself.

At the bottom of the hill, the road widens. The wind picks up; they are walking through the coldest part of the night. The baby burrows into her and bleats a thin cry, a sound so forlorn that it pierces her heart. She wonders if she is taking Aleph from the only Eden he will ever know, a haven of sunny silence and light dancing on glass; a place he will revisit in dreams and wake up desolate, filled with vague longing. She gives him a finger to suck and rocks him awkwardly in one arm, wishing she could stop to nurse him, to take a rest herself. He’s no longer a feather to carry, and the bag is heavier than she thought. Micah says the junction is no great distance, but he is young and strong and unencumbered.

Each step is an act of will. The house is long since gone from view. Her worries had been spent on leaving it, with none spared for the rest of the journey. Now the doubts creep in and nip her with their sharp teeth, and she is too weak to contend with them. If she were to sink down under a tree, Micah would look for her. She knows that. But what if the old horse should go lame, or collapse on the road, or bolt and throw Micah from the wagon? What if he’s prevented from coming at all? James is a man of iron convictions, but even he can change his mind. What if he’s decided that his sister and her son are weeds in God’s garden, destined to be disposed of from the beginning of time? Or that Sophy is the property of her husband and must live with the consequences of her choice? And if he chooses to exercise his crabbed charity, what can she hope for but years of servitude, the fallen sister earning her repentance and her keep? A grimmer version of the life her mother might have lived if Sophy hadn’t released her by being born. If, if, if . . . .

When she hears the pounding of hooves, she assumes it must be a stranger and withdraws to the shelter of a tree. The wagon rattles past her and would have continued up the road if Aleph hadn’t commenced to wail in earnest—as though, she will think later, he knew his future was at stake.

Micah takes her bag, and helps her into the seat by his side. “I was w-w-worried the j-j-junction might be too far,” he says.

“You came at the right time,” she tells him.

And with this slight exchange Sophy realizes that they are having a conversation in the presence of the baby. The spell of silence has been broken, the experiment is over. Whatever lies ahead, she has done the essential thing, and only good can result. For Gideon, too, she believes. He will be angry at first, but he will come back to her and Aleph eventually, and together they will go on with their lives. She does not spare a thought for Leander, whose power—whose very substance—seems to ebb as they leave the house behind. They’ve already reached the bend in the road. The woods have thinned, and meadow stretches out on either side. Off to the right, a cottage, smoke wisping from the crooked chimney. The straggling beginnings of the village, here a farmhouse, there a field of cornstalks, here a flock of sleeping sheep, squat and still as gravestones in the moonlight. Aleph takes it all in with wide eyes. He has forgotten he is hungry, but she offers him the breast anyway, and serenades him while he drinks, the one tune she can remember, the night air having driven all others from her head. “Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool . . .”

THE PARSONAGE
is a gracious old house not far from the village center. Mendham has done well by his nephew; other parsons supplied their own accommodations. Pastor Entwhistle greets them at the door in his cap, a capacious robe, and slippers that turn up at the toes. It must have been after twelve when Sophy left, for it’s past two now; they’ve kept the poor man up most of the night. Still, his concern is for them. Would they have some sandwiches? A little sherry to help them sleep? He regards Aleph—wide awake and reeking—with tender trepidation. “And the little fellow, what can I get for him? Does he, ah, chew yet? You’ll excuse my ignorance.”

The sitting room smells pleasantly of wax polish and dried herbs and flowers that effuse their faint spice from china bowls—“a hobby of mine,” the parson tells her. “I confess it only to you.” The fragrance is familiar to Sophy from Mama’s mixtures, though hers were never so artfully arranged. The house glows with order and comfort, a settled domesticity that seems forever out of reach. Never more than now, when she can’t see far enough ahead to know where they will sleep next week. It seems foolish to mourn the loss of a tranquility she’s never coveted; still, the thought pulls a sigh out of her. Mr. Entwhistle, all repentance for his chattiness, shows her to the room he has set aside for his mother’s visits. At the door he says, “When James returns, we will appeal to him. I am sure he will do what is needed. What is right.” He looks down, the candle illuminating his plain face; he is the homeliest item in his house, Sophy thinks. “I would gladly have you here, but my, ah, position constrains me. You are a parson’s daughter. You will understand. If I had a wife, people would call it hospitality, but, as it is, they would talk. They have such minds . . .” He shakes his head and scurries down the hall.

Flowered curtains, a maple four-poster, a white counterpane resting like a fallen cloud on a high, plump mattress. Their disheveled selves are an intrusion here, but Sophy is too tired to care. She draws back the counterpane to change Aleph, washes his face and hands in the basin and then her own. The bed is as enveloping as it looks. She snuffs the candle and folds her son to her, hoping that her closeness and the dusky warmth will soothe him back to sleep. She can see the shine of his eyes; he begins to play with his fingers—a good sign—and to croon one of his tuneless songs. Sophy drifts off to it, the single note repeated over and over, softer and softer until it fades into the dark:
baaa, baaaa, baaaaa
. . .

CHAPTER 39

____

RAKING ASHES

S
OMEWHERE BENEATH HER SLEEP A SUBDUED COMMOTION
. Voices, hurried footsteps in the hall, Micah shaking her shoulder, light slicing through the parting in the curtains. The next thing she knows is Aleph fussing at her side, tugging at her shift in search of his breakfast.

The house is silent. Bread and preserves and a covered jug of milk have been laid out on a table in the dining room, along with a place setting for one. No note that she can find. The clock on the mantel reads a quarter-to-ten, a sinful hour to be starting the day. She looks outside, but both the carriage and the wagon are gone. If Micah left with the parson, he should have let her know; he has no right to go off, given all they have to decide. She tells the baby so, and is gratified that he listens so attentively. She senses that Aleph is anxious too, and a little lost, waking up in this strange place with all his familiar landmarks vanished. After eating, she carries him from room to room, introducing him to the house, telling him the names of things. She finds the room where Micah slept, his pack on the floor, the bedclothes tossed carelessly; it’s no wonder he’s fallen into bad habits, living with James. The door to the parson’s bedroom is open, and she is surprised to see that his bed, too, is unmade.

Sun is pouring into the sitting room. She perches gingerly on a silk-covered settee with the baby in her lap, thinks better of it, and sets Aleph on the Turkish carpet to give him some freedom; lately he has shown signs that he is ready to crawl. The parsonage, which last night seemed a bastion of comfort and security, strikes her today as too neat, too finicky in its perfections. She has the urge to mar it in some way, to upset a bowl of potpourri, as the parson called it, or dent a cushion, or etch a careless scratch on the buffed surface of the table. Then she is ashamed. Why should she begrudge the good man his retreat from the troubles he ministers to all day?

Aleph hasn’t stirred from where she sat him. He keeps his eyes on her, as if she might disappear. “Shall we learn a new song?” she says. “Shall we learn ‘Mary had a little lamb?’” She begins to sing, her voice falsely bright. He claps his hands over his ears and rocks back and forth, a sound coming out of him that she has never heard, more a moan than a cry. Sophy has a vision of what his world must have been before: a harmony of sounds and shapes, continuous, blended into a single fabric that she has cut to pieces with her words. All in the name of saving him for society, of making him fit to live like other men. She tells herself that she did what she had to—the only thing she could—but when she picks him up and holds him close, she is quelling her own guilt as much as his distress.

The clatter of wheels in the yard comes as a relief. “Your Uncle Micah is back!” she tells Aleph, and speeds him to the door to the dissonant chiming of the house clocks striking twelve, not quite in unison: a celebratory sound, the music of normalcy restored. The parson comes in, alone. He is covered with grime from head to foot, his eyes rimmed in white circles behind his spectacles.

“Has something happened to my brother?” she asks, when she can speak.

“Micah is fine. He stayed to help . . .” The parson’s voice is hoarse. He glances at Aleph, then spreads his soot-blackened hands helplessly. “Sophia—ah, Mrs. Birdsall—I think it would be best if you sit down while I tell you what I know.”

NO ONE KNEW
when the fire started. A nearby farmer, up before five to milk his cows, was the first to notice the smoke and flames. By the time the alarm was sounded in the village and sufficient volunteers had struggled up the hill with their buckets, the house was a torch, its occupants likely beyond saving. There were those who settled for standing back to watch the spectacle, the glass walls buckling and falling in, liquefying to streaks of festive color in the blaze. But a small core of stalwarts went to the well again and again to fill their buckets, futile as the exercise seemed. Micah would have flung himself into the midst of it. They had to haul him away and wrestle him down, and when he saw there was no hope, he kicked and cried, inconsolable. Even after the blaze was contained, he refused to leave, though the parson had pleaded with him. Someone might be trapped inside, still alive. He wouldn’t give up until he was sure.

“We can always hope,” the parson concludes, “but we must be realistic and prepare for the worst.” He steeples his smudged fingers. “The Lord does not send us more than we can endure.”

Sophy doesn’t cry. She is by now well acquainted with grief. She knows that it begins as disbelief, a numbness creeping up the body like the poison Socrates drank, freezing the vitals as it makes its slow, cold progress to the heart.

“I should never have left Gideon,” she says. “Even a night was too much. If I had been there, I would have saved him.”

She can’t bear that he died by fire. His beauty has always been touched with holiness for her. That it should be ravaged and consumed by an impersonal force seems a depravity, a corruption of all that is good.

“Thank God you did leave,” Entwhistle says. “I hate to think what would have happened if you and the baby had stayed in that house last night. You put your child first, and you were right to do so.”

Aleph has been twisting in her lap, fiddling with her buttons and whining for his lunch. Apart from anchoring him with one hand, she has hardly been conscious of him. The parson’s words remind her that her son will never know his father, that Gideon will be first an absence in Aleph’s life, then a blurred memory fading to a print on his senses, then not even that. It is this that brings her, finally, to tears.

The parson is very wise. He lets her cry; he doesn’t impose solace on her, or besiege her with pieties as wave after wave of grief washes over her. He gives her a little brandy and watches while she chokes it down. When she has wept herself dry, she takes the baby to the bedroom to nurse, and lies down beside him after he’s had his fill, stroking his back. Sleep seems impossible, but it engulfs her. She dreams that she and Gideon are sitting by the stove in Papa’s study, and there is a knock on the door, and Micah comes in with a boy straddling his shoulders who is Aleph and not Aleph, bright-eyed and apple-cheeked but blond like Gideon. Micah says, I think he’s hungry, can we keep him? and Gideon says, We must test him to see if he talks, and Sophy says, I made a pot of soup, and there is a simple, happy feeling, as if she has solved everything.