The Other Side of the Sun

by Madeleine L'engle

  But when I got out to the kitchen Willy and Harry and Dr. Ron James sat at the kitchen table eating corn bread and syrup. All three rose as I entered, and Willy handed me something wrapped in an old paisley scarf. I opened it: there were the shoes and stockings I had lost the night before.

  “Thank you, Willy! I was going to have to go look for them this morning. Did I drop them when I was with you?”

  “No, no.” Willy shook his head. “Bad to let Zenumins get. Bad.”

  “Hurt, hurt,” Harry warned.

  Willy put his arms around me, kissing me gently on the cheek. He smelled of tobacco and fish and the oil used for the insect repellent; it was not an unpleasant smell. “We like you.”

  Harry was immediately behind him. “Want to kiss the pretty lady, too.”

  “Leave her alone.” Ron’s voice startled me with its Englishness.

  “No, it’s all right, we’re friends. I met them last night on the beach.” I turned my cheek to Harry. The twins were dressed this morning in faded blue trousers and what had once been red and white checked shirts, and could be told apart by their neckerchiefs, Willy’s blue, Harry’s red.

  “Willy,” Ron said, “if I have five apples to sell at five cents each, and you buy two, how much do you pay me?” Willy bowed his head, unable to face disappointing Ron. “Don’t know. Too hard.”

  “Can’t afford apples nohow,” Harry said.

  “Maybe if it was oranges?” Ron suggested.

  Willy shook his head. “Still too hard. Oranges, grapefruit, kumquat, still too hard, too hard. Can’t do apples.”

  I smiled, remembering when I was a small girl and my father was trying to teach me arithmetic. We, too, had had our problems with apples, when he tried to teach me that nothing times something equals nothing: a simple mathematical fact, but totally incomprehensible to me. 0 × 3 = 0. It was as impossible to me as five apples at five cents each to Willy and Harry. I actually succeeded in annoying my father—which wasn’t easy—with my obtuseness.

  ‘0 × 3 = 0 is a fact,’ he said.

  ‘But, Father! Take three apples. I can see that if you have no apples, and you multiply them by three, you still have no apples. But if you already have three apples, and you multiply them by nothing, that doesn’t make them go away, does it?’ My father told me rather brusquely that he was trying to teach me mathematics and not metaphysics. ‘But, Father, if it’s true in metaphysics, it has to be true in mathematics, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I never said it was true in metaphysics.’

  ‘But if you have three apples—’

  ‘Stella, for the time being you will have to accept that 0 × 3 = 0. The entire multiplication table is an agreed-upon fiction to make life more convenient, and you will have to bear with it.’

  Odd: I couldn’t. I never had any trouble with complicated equations; for instance, when we were studying astronomy, my father taught me to determine the distance between the earth and the moon by observing the size of the earth’s shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse, this being the method first suggested by Aristarchus of Samos around 250 B.C., and this had not confused me in the least. Perhaps the difference between my understanding of mathematics and the twins’ was one of degree, rather than kind.

  It took me a great deal of pain and fear before I learned that my father was right. After a while he stopped trying to make me understand that 0 × 3 does indeed equal 0, because—I’m sure—he knew that only experience can teach the truth of that particular mathematical fact. It’s not a pleasant rule, but it has to be accepted. You can have something—even if it’s only three apples—and if you multiply them by nothing, then you don’t have them any more. But this was something I still had to learn as I sat in the dappled sunlight in Honoria’s big kitchen on my first day in Illyria.

  As though to make up for failing us over the price of apples, Willy pushed back from his chair, smiling and beckoning. Harry followed him, and they went out onto the kitchen porch, bobbing, calling, “Come, pretty lady, come. Come, docdoc.”

  Out on the veranda hung a straw basket. “Sunflower seeds for the birds,” Ron said, “and for—wait.”

  Willy reached into the basket and came out with a little green wriggly lizard which he held on the gently curled palm of his hand. The lizard, interrupted from its morning nap, puffed up in fear like a little balloon, and Willy began to stroke it with a gentle finger, and I could see the little creature calming down, returning to its normal size. When it was completely relaxed and comfortable, lying in Willy’s steady hand, it began to roll its eyes.

  “Loves us! Loves us!” Willy cried joyfully.

  Ron said, “I read once in a scientific textbook that when a lizard wants to express affection it rolls its eyes. But I’ve never seen it happen except with Willy and Harry.”

  Willy held his hand towards me. “Pretty lady.”

  This was both gift and test: I held out my hand, and the lizard was slid onto my palm. For a moment it puffed up; then, as I took my finger and stroked it as Willy had done, it shrank again. Its tiny claws tickled my palm as it wriggled slightly. It felt cool, the way jade does, no matter what the weather. I looked down on the little thing, tender green with jeweled eyes, beautiful and innocent, and laughed slightly with the pleasure of this new experience. “Oh, thank you, Willy!” I returned the delicate little creature. Willy slid it back into the hanging basket and beckoned again, tiptoeing around the veranda to a great brass pot which contained a geranium plant, the most enormous and luxuriant geranium plant I have ever seen. Curled up around the plant was a little green snake.

  “Shh!” Willy held one finger to his lips. “Sleeping.”

  “Nice dreams,” Harry whispered, “oh, pretty, pretty.”

  Ron spoke reassuringly to me. “It’s just a garden snake, Mrs. Renier, and the geranium pot is its favorite bed. And of course, where there are snakes there’s never any problem with rats.”

  The little snake curled around the plant reminded me of the snakes on my ring. The twins either caught my thought or had it, too. Willy put out an exploratory finger to touch the ring. Then he smiled up at me. “Love.”

  Harry, too, touched the ring. “Strong.”

  “Not soft,” Willy said. “Stern. Just. Always.” He turned away, skipping across the worn boards of the veranda. “Hungry!”

  Harry clapped his hands. “Hungry!”

  I followed them back to the kitchen.

  Harry sang in his rusty voice, “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s. Honoria, ma’am, please—” He held out his plate. “A little corn bread to finish my syrup—”

  Willy held out his plate. “A little syrup to finish my corn bread.… When will you pay me, say the bells of Old Bailey?”

  Harry, wiping corn bread and syrup around on his plate, said, “When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch.”

  And Willy, fork to his mouth, “Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.”

  Harry spoke through a mouthful. “Glad the pretty lady’s come. Stop the chopper.”

  “Glad, glad,” Willy said. He reached his hand towards mine and gently touched my ring. “Good lady.”

  I took my shoes and stockings up to my room and put them away, wondering where the twins had found them.

  I stood out on the back veranda. A redbird sat in the chinaberry tree and screamed at me. Minou, the kitten, came pouncing around the corner and spat at the redbird, who flew off. I started down the back steps and Minou twined himself around my ankles, then swished down the steps, tail erect and quivering, looking back over his shoulder as much as to say, “Come along, I have something to show you.” I followed him down the path of old, pale-pink bricks set in a zigzag pattern. At the foot of the kitchen garden was a windbreak of bamboo, and just in front of this was an ancient fig tree, old and gnarled, many of its branches bare of leaves. One branch alone was fresh and green and heavy with fruit. Minou sat down under it, curled his tail about
himself, and began washing his face.

  The sun beat down on my head. I turned back to the house and exploration. Throughout Illyria was the smell of sea, of mustiness, almost a fungoid smell. The rolling of the breakers surrounded the walls of Illyria, so that it was as though I were walking within an enormous conch shell, winding my way from chamber to chamber.

  And birds: sea gulls screamed, and again I heard the mockingbird’s pure and underisive song; surrounding it was a constant chittering of birds I could not identify. The wind rattled in the palms. Loose shutters clattered.

  Downstairs, the main body of Illyria consisted of the two big rooms, living and dining; adjoining these were the small writing room and Aunt Olivia’s room—I peeped in the half-open door to see an enormous mahogany four-poster bed with dotted-Swiss summer curtains. There was a massive mahogany bureau and a highboy even larger and in poorer repair than the one in my room; a large mahogany rocking chair; a dressing table; a wardrobe with a speckled mirror. Everything was massive, dark, too heavy for the tiny, delicate old lady who would be lost in that huge bed. On the walls were seascapes of storms, dark still-lifes. I moved on to look in the other major ground-floor room, the library, a square room, the walls covered with books, books piled on tables, on the floor: I choked over the smell of leather mold and paper dust. A portrait hung over the mantelpiece, a young, brown-haired woman, elegantly dressed. It must be the portrait of Mado which Clive had told me about, Mado holding a flute so that it did not quite touch her lips, lips puckered slightly as though for a kiss, rather than as though she were about to play. The eyes were blue, a darker blue than Aunt Olivia’s—they were, in fact, very much the same color as mine. And yes, they did look expectant, as though she were watching a sunrise.

  “Oh, you’re lovely,” I said to her, “and someone should take care of these books or they’ll all fall apart.” I sneezed.

  Rubbing my nose, I leaned against a section of bookcase and was startled to have it swivel around under my weight to reveal a large, beautifully proportioned ballroom. Spider webs threaded delicately through the prisms of the chandelier and bound a few rickety gilt chairs against the wall. Long windows, looking out to sea, led onto a kind of promenade. I pushed at one of the windows, but damp had stuck them tight. The promenade, I realized, was where Uncle Hoadley had been pacing the night before.

  I moved through the ballroom and out the far door, climbed a rush-carpeted staircase, and went down a long hall with rooms on either side. Most of the rooms were at least sparsely furnished; some had matting on the floors, others threadbare Persian or Chinese rugs. The walls all had paintings, seascapes, still-lifes, a series of faded prints of native flowers, or at least I assumed them to be native; and everywhere were portraits, portraits looking at me with following eyes, accusing, wistful, occasionally sinister, but usually welcoming eyes: hello, newest Mrs. Theron Renier, wearer of the ring, we are your family, you belong to us.

  And you to me, I extended my welcome in return. One day you will hang on our walls, Terry’s and mine, and I will say to the children, ‘This is your Aunt Olivia. This is your cousin James.’

  Terry had promised me that Illyria was a joyful house. I stood still, sniffing, sensing. It was, I thought, a waiting house. There was a feeling of expectancy about the rooms. There was, I thought suddenly, a demand: a demand of me.

  I did not want it.

  I turned away. Terry had talked to me about the comfortable pleasure of sitting in the kitchen with Honoria and Clive, drinking milk and eating cookies, and then, when he was older, tea or coffee. That’s what I would do, I decided, needing comfortableness; I would go find Honoria and Clive.

  It took me a few minutes to realize that I was lost. I had run down a flight of stairs, thinking to find the kitchen, but the rooms it led to made a separate wing to the south of the main house. I found another flight of stairs; this led me to what I took to be the north wing, mostly bedrooms with tables and chests which looked as though they had been brought from China, some definitely Chinese vases, and then a glass case full of porcelain horses which I was sure must be infinitely valuable. I went on up the stairs to the third floor, the floor I shared with Honoria and Clive. I was, perhaps, not far from my own bedroom, but the wings of the house did not seem to connect up on the third floor, and I could see no way to get from this cul-de-sac to the part of the house with which I was familiar. There was only an iron ladder leading to a skylight almost obscured by cobwebs.

  I was not quite frightened. If I did not feel the joy which my husband had led me to expect in Illyria, at least I felt no threat, no evil, only the waiting, the expectancy. I opened a door with a white china handle.

  But here was a room which was used. The walls were covered with maps in which red- and green-flagged pins were stuck. A large table in the center of the room served as desk and was piled with papers. Spread out on the desk was some kind of plan.

  This was a War Room. I had a sudden anxiety that someone would come in and see me where I had no business to be. The War Room did not want me. I was an intruder. I backed out, running away before I was caught.

  I ran down the stairs, pushed open the door on the next floor which would be directly beneath the War Room, ran through it—a pretty and peaceful bedroom with French furniture—found a flight of stairs, ran down them and half fell into the library, knocking over a pile of books in a cloud of dust.

  There was nobody in the kitchen.

  Only the heat, filtering through the shutters, moving sluggishly in the breeze.

  I wanted Honoria and Clive.

  I ran upstairs, the familiar stairs to the third floor, past my room, knocking at closed doors and opening them to find first a bedroom; then a big box room—there were my emptied trunks; another bedroom; and finally Honoria and Clive.

  They were standing facing each other across an old iron bedstead with sagging springs. I was embarrassed and apologetic over having blundered in on them this way.

  But they welcomed me, turning from each other to the door and saying, “Come in, Miss Stella.”

  I entered, awkwardly. Theirs was a big and airy room, sparsely furnished but full of wind and light. Besides the bed there were two old and comfortable but extremely shabby chairs, evidently retired from the main house, one on either side of a rosewood table. In one corner, above a large chest of drawers, was a mirror framed in seashells.

  Clive looked at it affectionately. “Jimmy made that for us one Christmas—with a lot of help from Therro, of course.”

  (Clive and Honoria, Honoria and Clive,

  Keep Illyria’s light alive.

  They had a son whose name was Jim—)

  “Your son.”

  Clive said, very quietly, “Yes. Jimmy was born here at Illyria.”

  Beneath the mirror was a framed daguerreotype, browned and speckled with age and sea damp, a picture of seven boys, ranging in age from fifteen or sixteen down to a toddler, a little black boy with great innocent eyes and a winsome, wistful smile, sitting on the lap of the eldest boy, the boy I recognized as Therro, blond and stocky and cocksure; and a baby, a tiny black button, held by a tall, thin boy I was sure was Uncle Hoadley.

  “That was the children the way we was then,” Clive said, “Therro, Mr. Hoadley, the twins, Jamie, Jimmy, and Honor.”

  “Jamie and Honor?” I asked.

  Honoria answered with a quiet and stark acceptance I did not understand. “Jamie was Miss Mado’s youngest; Honor, Clive’s and my baby. They died of scarlet fever that next spring after the picture was taken. All the children took it; the others pull through, with long nursing. It were a killing fever that year. It be good we have the picture. Miss Mado had it made for us.”

  It was a charming picture; all the children were handsome and appealing, with the fey exception of the twins, already their full size, already gnomish, shorter than Therro and Uncle Hoadley. Odd: I thought of my husband’s father as Therro; but Uncle Hoadley, even as a slight, rather melancholy-looking young boy
, I still thought of as Uncle Hoadley. Jimmy was the kind of wide-eyed, wistful child people would immediately want to pick up and cuddle; it was difficult for me to imagine him a grown man, the father of Dr. Ron James.

  Holding the picture, I said, “Jimmy—he’s sitting on Therro’s lap?”

  “Yes, Miss Stella,” Clive answered. “Mr. Therro’s shadow, we called him. Therro was very patient with Jimmy. He was good with the twins, too. They was about his age, but acted more like Jimmy, and Therro would spend hours with them, teaching them to swim, going crabbing or digging for clams.” He spoke slowly, carefully. It seemed as though he were deliberately trying to find kind things to say about my husband’s father. “Or donax; you ever had donax soup, Miss Stella?”

  “No. What’s donax?”

  “Next time you walk on the beach, look for little bubbles in the sand; that mean donax, and you can just dig with your hand down in the sand and pick them up, little shellfish no bigger than your fingernail, all pinks and blues and lavenders. Honoria, you make Miss Stella some donax soup soon, hear?”

  “I’ll do that,” Honoria said. But they were not thinking about donax.

  “Jimmy,” I said again, then stopped.

  “James Theron James,” Clive said. He paused; then, “You see, Miss Stella, slaves didn’t have no names, excepting what their masters give them.”

  “No names? No names of their own?”

  “Like a horse or a dog, Miss Stella.” He was stating a fact. “But that’s not the way it was at Nyssa, and I was born at Nyssa. I always knowed who I am. I grew up always knowing Mr. James and Mr. Theron. When a slave was freed by his master.—”

  “If,” Honoria said. “Not many were.”

  “—he had to have a name, and often he would take the name of the man who freed him. Sometimes out of honor, sometimes because it was easiest. When my mother had me baptized she give me the name of James, Clive James, after Mr. James, and I always been proud to bear it, and give it to my sons. Mr. James the best man I ever knowed, Mr. James and Mr. Theron, and the best friends to me, and to each other. Renier men understand friendship.”