A Live Coal in the Sea

by Madeleine L'engle

  ‘Was that why you asked me out for coffee, to tell me that?’

  ‘Actually I wanted to talk to you about astronomy and some implications in the equations in your last paper which bring up interesting questions, particularly your addressing of the paradox between Maxwell’s speculations and Newton’s absolute space.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry, then. Another time?’

  ‘Why not? Another time.’

  She left the classroom, managing to push Grange out of her mind by thinking of the impossibility of catching up with the speed of light, which, in Newton’s absolute space, should be within possibility. If one chased a beam of light at the velocity of light, then the caught-up-with light should be at rest. But, as Einstein was to show, velocity is inherent to light.

  She went out into the spring evening. Eight o’clock. With daylight saving time, it was not yet dark. The sky was flushed with pale green and lemon yellow. Daffodils and tulips were blooming in the flower beds. The trees were soft against the sky, not fully leafed out. She stopped under a maple. Lilies of the valley were blooming in its shade, sending their fragrance into the evening air. She went close to the tree, pressing her ear against it.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  She turned in surprise. ‘Mac!’

  FOUR

  Mac held out his hands, grasped hers. His hands were warm. She thought she could feel his pulse, steady and strong. ‘I’m back. What were you doing?’

  She felt herself flush. ‘Listening to the tree sing. It’s a little like putting a seashell to your ear. Every tree sounds different.’

  He put his arm about her, balancing himself as he leaned in to the tree, listening with a delighted expression. He was thinner, and tanned from the African sun; her heart was thudding so wildly that she felt dizzy.

  ‘I want to listen to an elm,’ he said. ‘There won’t be many more chances.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dutch elm disease is getting them. One by one, they’re going.’

  ‘Oh.’ She shook her head. ‘I should have know that. I’m a city kid. One of my friends who was a music major taught me to listen to the trees. I don’t want them to die.’

  ‘Can’t stop it, Camilla. It’s a lousy disease. Coffee?’

  ‘Sure. Thanks.’

  ‘I’ve checked out our old haunt. Nobody’s there. C’mon.’

  They went into the familiar room in the Church House where Camilla still sat and listened on Tuesday afternoons. Mac dug around in the shelves until he found the same mugs they had used before, far in the back. He talked about Kenya, and how much he had learned. ‘From the animals. From the people. From what they’ve endured without losing their joy. They love each other, and they love the planet in a way we’ve lost in our affluent society. You listen to the trees, and that’s wonderful. They listen to the stars. They taught me so much—they even taught me when it was time to come home.’

  He had been gone a year.

  He asked, ‘How’s your mother?’

  ‘She’s not going to change.’

  ‘What’s it doing to you?’

  Me?

  She thought of Grange, and her inability to go out for coffee with him. ‘Not too much. I don’t fall apart as badly as I used to. I’ll have my master’s in June.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I’ll probably go on to get my doctorate. I’d like to write something about non-linear time.’

  ‘What about this summer?’ He took her empty mug from her hands and put it down on the table. ‘More?’

  ‘No, thanks. I can probably get a job at summer school here.’

  ‘I sense a lack of enthusiasm.’

  ‘Oh, I’m moderately enthusiastic. I enjoy teaching, and I’m good with the freshmen, and a lot of them go on to major in astronomy. I’m moderately innovative.’

  Mac put his hand over hers. ‘But you listen to the singing heart of a tree. Does it tell you anything?’

  She shook her head. ‘I just listen to it sing. That’s enough.’

  ‘The Bushmen listen for guidance in the tapping of the stars. Sometimes I thought I could hear them, too.’

  She looked up. Through the dirt-streaked window she could see Venus, bright against the darkening sky. A single star glimmered above it. ‘They probably give better advice than people.’

  ‘If we listen right. Oh, Cam, you remind me of a passage in John’s Revelation when he said of the people of Laodicea that they were neither hot nor cold. So then, he said, because they were lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, he would spew them out of his mouth. You’re not lukewarm, Cam. Listen, I’m going to be spending a couple of weeks in Nashville with my parents in June. Why don’t you come?’

  He had been gone nearly a year and he was talking with her as though their conversations in the Church House had never been interrupted. ‘To your parents? Me?’

  ‘Of course you.’

  ‘But would they want me?’

  ‘Of course. It’ll be hot in Nashville, but the bedrooms are air-conditioned. Please come.’

  ‘I’d really like to, if you think they wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘They’ll love you,’ Mac said, ‘and you’ll love them.’

  She realized that what Mac was offering her was extraordinary.

  She received a warm invitation from Mac’s mother.

  And what else would she do with those two weeks (so carefully checked out and planned by Mac, she learned later)? School would be over, summer school not yet begun. Luisa wanted her to come to New York, but she could not envision spending more than a night or two on that pull-out couch, surrounded by medical students.

  Mac met her at the airport and drove her to the rectory, a spacious old house of soft-pink brick, a few blocks away from the church. A large screened porch in the back overlooked a green sweep of lawn at the end of which was a small stream. A ceiling fan moved the air so that there was a feeling of coolness. All the rooms were high-ceilinged and many-windowed to catch the breeze. There were marble mantelpieces surmounted by portraits in heavy gold frames.

  ‘My wife’s relatives,’ Mac’s father told her, ‘mostly long gone. The camera has replaced the paintbrush. The present cousins, aunts, and uncles still aren’t used to this second-generation usurping Greek American, but they all think Mac is perfect, and they can pretend that his name is really MacArthur instead of Macarios.’

  ‘Nonsense. Don’t listen to Art,’ Mac’s mother said. ‘The sun rises and sets on him, and my family is very aware of it, even if one of my cousins insists on calling him Arthur, knowing perfectly well his name is Artaxias. I’m sorry you couldn’t come in the spring when this place is a riot of blossom. Right now we’re mostly green.’ She noticed Camilla looking at a portrait. ‘That’s my Great-something-or-other-Aunt Olivia. I’m named after her. Isn’t she lovely?’

  ‘Lovely,’ Camilla agreed.

  ‘There are some fascinating family stories about her behaving like a little flibbertigibbet but going behind the lines with messages during the—what we still call The War. I’m told that her favorite place in all the world was a rambly old cottage up on the dunes in North Florida. I was left a nice piece of land on the beach between Jacksonville and Saint Augustine, and Art and I have built a little cottage, an escape route. I’d like to retire there, rather than Charleston. Art’s father came from Florida.’

  ‘He was an itinerant peddler,’ Art said. ‘But he read classic Greek, which is not usual, and he believed I could do anything I wanted to do. I love the beach house.’

  ‘You’ll have to see it sometime,’ Olivia said.

  What was Olivia Xanthakos taking for granted?

  Camilla had not been prepared—though why not?—to have the Xanthakoses be even shorter than Mac, both delicately-boned, with small hands and feet. But large in love and welcome. She had never been in a household like this before. No tension crackled from the walls. There was laughter, and acceptance.

  How had they managed, Mac’s parents, to get to t
he place of radiance in which they lived? Was there a secret? Mac was relaxed, and so was Camilla, far more than she had expected to be able to be. The second night, she helped Olivia prepare dinner, set the table with silver, china, crystal, light the candles.

  ‘Quite a lot of the china is chipped,’ Olivia said calmly, ‘but I’ve never seen the point of saving it for special occasions. Every dinner that has us gathered around the table together is a special occasion and deserves our best. Now I think everything is ready. Let’s call our men.’

  Our men, Camilla thought. Are they?

  Art said grace, then turned to Camilla. ‘What do you know about Thales of Miletus?’

  Camilla almost choked on a mouthful of rice and gravy. ‘He is believed to have calculated the height of a pyramid by measuring its shadow at exactly the moment when the length of his own shadow was the same as his height.’

  Art Xanthakos clapped his hands. ‘A mathematician’s response!’

  Camilla smiled at his enthusiasm. ‘It’s a mistake to underestimate the pre-Platonic philosophers. Anaximander, also of Miletus, thought that our world was only one of an infinite number of worlds.’

  ‘Not so dumb, eh?’ Art said. ‘Neither are you, lovey. I’m a Greek, but the average college education doesn’t necessarily include the early Greek philosophers.’

  ‘And,’ Olivia said triumphantly, ‘Camilla likes my okra casserole. Not many Yankees like okra.’

  Mac smiled. ‘Camilla has an experimental palate. Not many people of any kind like the coffee I produce in the Church House.’

  After dinner Art announced that he would do the dishes, and Mac took Camilla behind the house, across the stream, and a little way into the woods. ‘My tree house,’ he said, ‘that I promised to show you a year ago.’ There was pride and also a strange shyness in the way he pointed to the wooden platform built into the fork of an oak. ‘We won’t climb up it tonight. I have to test the rope ladder. Camilla, darling, will you marry me? I’d planned to wait until much later in the visit to ask you, but if I don’t do it right now, my parents will beat me to it.’

  Her body felt like water. ‘Anaximenes, who came a little later than Thales and Anaximander, thought everything came from water. Water is condensed air, and he pushed it even further, so that air was the origin of water, earth, and fire.’

  ‘Camilla! Did you hear what I just asked you?’

  ‘Yes, I heard you. Yes, I will.’

  She was still water, but she was also fire as his arms went around her. Finally he pushed himself away from her, reaching into his pocket. ‘Years ago Mama told me I could have her mother’s rings for my bride. So I raided her jewelry box this afternoon. Is that okay?’

  ‘Raiding your mother’s jewel box?’

  ‘My grandmother’s rings. Or do you want me to buy you something? Some people like platinum now instead of gold.’

  ‘No platinum, thanks. I’d love your grandmother’s rings.’

  He held out his hand, revealing a wide gold band, and a smaller band with a diamond in a Tiffany setting. ‘It’s old,’ he said, ‘and pretty good. I mean, I probably couldn’t buy you that good a diamond today.’

  ‘The size doesn’t matter. It’s that—that—oh, Mac, you’re sure your mother would want me to have these?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. She’s practically proposed to you on my behalf already. So has Papa. You don’t know what you did for him, knowing all about his favorite old philosophers. Oh, my darling, are you sure you’re sure?’

  She had been sure the whole year he was in Kenya, though she had not believed that this would ever happen. She took his face between her hands, put her mouth to his.

  Olivia and Art were, as Mac predicted, ecstatic. Art produced a bottle of Armagnac. ‘I’ve had this for fifteen or more years, and pour from it only for the most momentous occasions, and the bottle is still half full. So, to this most momentous of momentous occasions, and to our beloved children—’ He poured them all a small amount and raised his glass. ‘Praise God!’

  Yes, Camilla thought, she, too, felt like praising God, though those were words she had never heard in her own household, or even from any of her friends.

  Camilla watched Olivia and Art Xanthakos with awe, their gentleness with each other, occasional light touching of finger to finger, smiles of mutual understanding. Sometimes they argued, loudly, with great gusto, enjoying every minute of it. Art waved his arms and threw in Greek words, and Olivia’s Southern accent deepened with the argument.

  She found herself laughing at Mac’s parents and falling in love with them and hoping that she and Mac would have the same radiance in their marriage. But she was not yet ready to argue with Mac.

  On Sunday she went to church with them, sitting between Mac and Olivia, watching Art in his role as priest, liking his evident affection for his people, and theirs for him. She liked the way the service flowed, music and words in easy counterpoint with each other. She did not know what she had expected, something less gracious, more formidable. Art talked about the Eucharist, which is, he said, the Greek word for ‘Thank you.’

  She had expected to be embarrassed by church, but she was entranced, sitting there with Mac’s arm unembarrassedly around her.

  After the service they had a picnic with some parishioners in a screened-in summerhouse, and Camilla was introduced as Mac’s fiancée.

  Camilla helped Olivia in the garden, transplanting, thinning, pulling weeds. A yard man came once a week for the heavy work, but there was still plenty to do. Olivia Xanthakos might be tiny and delicate, but there was amazing strength in those small hands.

  ‘My dear,’ Olivia said one afternoon, sitting back on her heels on the grass, ‘how well do you know Mac?’

  Camilla, too, sat, her lap full of green clippings. ‘I’m not sure. He’s wonderfully warm and generous, but he’s a very private person.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I think I’m basically pretty private, too. But with Mac I haven’t been. When I literally bumped into him on the campus I just blurted everything out, about—about my mother’s infidelities.’

  ‘Mac told us a little about her problems. I’m sorry, my dear. It’s hard. Hard on you all.’

  ‘Does it make any difference?’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To your feelings about my marrying Mac?’

  ‘Oh, Camilla, dearest, of course not. Mac is marrying you, not your mother.’

  ‘I’m like my father,’ Camilla said, ‘as my mother keeps reminding me. Square. But I love Mac.’

  ‘He loves you. That is quite apparent.’ Then, ‘Do you ever wonder about Kenya?’

  —All the time. All the time. What could she say to this perceptive woman? ‘He left very abruptly. I didn’t understand.’

  ‘But he kept in touch?’

  ‘He wrote. Nice letters.’

  ‘Not love letters, you mean?’

  She nodded. The short grass prickled against her legs. ‘He did sign them Love, Mac.’

  Olivia laughed, then sobered, picking up her garden shears, opening and closing them. ‘And then he came back.’

  Camilla looked at Olivia, at the kindness in the soft blue eyes. ‘I was so glad to see him. But it was also strange to me. He picked up as though nothing had happened.’

  Olivia gently touched the ring on Camilla’s left hand. ‘That didn’t make you hesitate?’

  ‘I love him.’

  ‘And it is evident to Art and me that he loves you. Camilla, you were upset at his leaving so suddenly?’

  ‘Yes. He got the letter from Kenya and he left the next day.’

  Olivia pulled grass from around some sweet alyssum that bordered the path. ‘He’d had the letter from Kenya for quite a while.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘There are times when Mac just goes away. Escapes whatever it is that is too much for him.’ She looked questioningly at Camilla, her hands full of grass and a few flowers.

  Camilla said, slowly, ‘Whe
n Mac told me he was leaving for Kenya, it seemed to have something to do with Korea.’

  Olivia asked, ‘Did he talk to you about Korea?’

  Camilla shook her head. ‘No. Luisa Rowan—’

  ‘Frank Rowan’s sister?’

  ‘Yes. We’re old school friends. She, well, she discovered I was seeing Mac, and she said something about Mac and Frank meeting in Korea, and it was much bigger than it seemed.’

  ‘Yes,’ Olivia said. ‘It would be.’ She smiled at Camilla. ‘Mac will probably tell you about it.’ She got onto her knees, then pushed herself up and stood, looking down at Camilla. ‘I need to go take a small rest before I think about dinner. Tomorrow we’re going out. I hope you don’t mind being shown off. You make us very happy.’

  ‘Camilla, Camilla,’ Mac said. ‘You make me so happy. Let’s go to the tree house. I tested the rope ladder this afternoon and it’s fine. Last summer I replaced the ropes and some of the wooden slats. It’s easy enough to climb up.’ She followed him across the little stream and into the woods. Mac held the rope ladder firmly for Camilla, who scrambled up easily enough. He followed her, then pulled up the ladder and grinned.

  ‘Now nobody can get to us. I’m glad I told you about T.J.’

  She nodded. ‘Your friend who died of leukemia.’ She leaned her head against his shoulder. There was hardly any motion of the leaves, and she could just hear the murmuring of the brook.

  ‘I told you about T.J. but I didn’t tell you everything,’ he said, ‘and I think I need to.’ Camilla looked through the canopy of leaves, found a star. She waited.

  Finally Mac said, ‘T.J.’s sister, Cissie, was the girl everybody knew was a cheap lay. Sorry. That’s what she was. She got pregnant. Was careless. Said I was the kid’s father.’

  Camilla opened her eyes wide, as though to see him better. He sat up and put his arms about his knees.

  His voice was thin. ‘I was a virgin. And I had, oh, God, I had such a reputation for being perfect. People wanted to believe I wasn’t as good as all that. And I wasn’t—of course I wasn’t. Nobody is. But I was a virgin.’