The Other Side of the Sun

by Madeleine L'engle

  He regarded me, startled at my presence, perhaps, but not surprised, and smiled in welcome. “Mrs. Theron Renier, the newest?”

  I acknowledged this with a small nod.

  “I’m Tron Zenumin—no, Tron’s not a nigger nickname for Theron, my name is Terence Ronald. My half brother, Ronnie, is the Theron in the Zenumin nest. I’m honored to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Renier. My mother has talked to me about you, and how you’ve already made friends.”

  “Your mother has been very kind to me.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be? Zenumins have a big debt to pay the Reniers. Me, for instance. I talk half Illyria, half scrub, because Mado taught me to read and write. We’re all anxious to make you feel at home, Mrs. Renier. By the way—please excuse my asking you—who told you about this room, and that Tron would be here?”

  “Nobody.” I looked around me, then across the desk, past Tron to the big map on the wall. It was, I thought, a map of Africa, but I was far more interested in Tron than I was in the map.

  “Then how you happen to be here?”

  “I was exploring—exploring Illyria.”

  “Why, sure enough, Mrs. Renier, Illyria will be yours one day, won’t it? Course you want to look it over.”

  “Mine? Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Yours and Terry’s. Why not? Who else Honoria going to leave Illyria to but Terry?”

  “You and Ron?”

  “Me? You don’t know my grandmother, Miss Stella, if you can think that. Maybe she might want to leave it to Ronnie. He her pet. But she can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Riders.”

  “What could they have to do with it?”

  “Burnings or lynchings or other merry pranks.” He came from behind the desk and drew up a chair for me. “Won’t you be seated, Mrs. Renier?”

  I took the offered seat. “Do you live here?”

  “Me? Not little old Tron. I live back in the scrub like my mother. Maybe Tron be the link between Illyria and the scrub. Illyria’s in my blood, sure enough. And right now I’m doing some work for Mr. Hoadley. Miss Stella, ma’am, it not my place to make suggestions to you, but it be best if you don’t talk to nobody about this room, or finding Tron.”

  “All right. I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to.”

  “Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong about my being here. Tron got some right to be in Illyria. But Mr. Hoadley, he might not want it known. Mr. Hoadley, he do special work, very special, and he allow me to help him some. But he say Tron not to tell anybody. Nobody knows about this room, or about his work, not Miss Irene, not the old ladies. So if you could see your way—”

  “I won’t say anything.”

  “Thank you, Miss Stella, ma’am. That make me feel easier. I knowed I could ask you, because of what my mother say about you. Now, ma’am, if you would so kindly go downstairs, I finish up what Mr. Hoadley done ask me to do.”

  I left him, shutting the door carefully behind me, and found my way back to the library with only a few false turns. I stood amidst the fusty smell of books and listened: the house was quiet, was warm with peace. I went towards the kitchen, seeking the comfort of ordinariness, of a stove, a sink, a pump, pots and pans. Seeking the comfort of Honoria and Clive.

  They were there, sitting at the kitchen table with Ron and the twins, drinking glasses of cold tea.

  “Don’t get up,” I said swiftly, and moved to an empty chair that was pulled slightly back from the table as though waiting for me.

  There was about Dr. Ron James and Terence Ronald Zenumin the same veiled look to the eyes, the same fine flare of nostril. Tron had disturbed and intrigued me almost as much as his brother, with his odd speech, slipping from the educated cadences of Uncle Hoadley to the dark rhythm of the scrub. There was in the two young men none of the peaceful strength that was so powerful in their grandparents. Nevertheless I felt an intense desire to know both of them better. And perhaps peace had not come easily or early to Honoria and Clive.

  Honoria, put a cool glass in my hand.

  “Thank you, Honoria! That tastes wonderful.”

  “Wonderful,” Willy said.

  “Wonderful, wonderful,” Harry echoed. They held out their glasses for more.

  “Willy and Harry,” Ron said, “there was a total eclipse of the moon on Good Friday, April 2, 1865. The next eclipse of the moon on Good Friday will be April 12. What year will it be?”

  “1968,” Willy said.

  “1968,” came Harry’s answer a fraction of a beat behind.

  I asked, “But twice six divided by three is too difficult?”

  Ron James smiled gravely, “Much.”

  On impulse I turned to the two little men. “Willy, Harry, what’s 0 × 3?”

  The two tea glasses were lowered simultaneously, set down on the scrubbed surface of the table. Willy closed his eyes. His face was expressionless. But Harry screwed up his round, wrinkled face, grimacing as though in pain.

  “Nothing,” Willy whispered. “The answer is nothing. Nought.”

  “Nothing,” Harry echoed, and then, “I don’t want it to be nothing!”

  “But it’s nothing!” Willy shouted in sudden excitement. “Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!”

  Ron pushed his chair away from the table. “Sit down, Willy, drink your tea. Be quiet.” He took Harry in his arms and held him close. “Hush, Harry. It’s all right. Don’t be frightened.” As Harry relaxed in the young man’s arms, Ron looked over the white head at me, moving his lips silently: “No, I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “A keg of powder,” Honoria murmured. “It was a keg of powder. Why?”

  0 × 3 = 0. It had annoyed me; it had seemed unreasonable, and I did not like unreason. But the twins’ reaction frightened me. There was fear in the kitchen and I left it and went out onto the back veranda, taking comfort in our bathing dresses kicking on the line, looking almost like marionettes. There were tea towels on the line, too, and old linen napkins, worn and darned.

  When I heard Tron’s voice I did not want to go back to the kitchen. But I was curious. I stood in the shadow of the chinaberry tree where I could hear.

  “Tron.” Honoria’s voice did not sound welcoming. “What you doing here?”

  “Where Miss Stella?” he asked.

  “Gone to her room to rest, probably,” Honoria said.

  “All right, Tron, what you want? What you doing here? Clive sounded austere and unwelcoming.

  “I want Grandmother to run the cards for me.”

  “You can want,” Honoria said.

  “What I want to know doesn’t have only to do with me. It’s you and Grandfather, too. If what I aim for to do not come to pass, then we die, all of us. Please. Help me.”

  “I do not run the cards.”

  “Grandmother, the Granddam is afeared. Run them now. The Granddam send me.”

  “If the Granddam be afeared, why don’t she run the cards?”

  “She run them. She afeared of what she see. And she don’t have the gift like you do. Sometimes it play her false.”

  “How come she got the reputation, then? And the clients?”

  “Granddam live on it, Grandmother. How else? It as good a living as any for a Zenumin. And she don’t cheat. If she don’t see, she don’t tell. She see enough. She on the edge of the gift, like my mother. But you right in the center.”

  “Those with the gift do not take money.”

  “Grandmother, when did you last ask the cards something?”

  There was a cold silence; out on the veranda I felt the cold; and then a cracked voice singing, “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” The twins backed out the sagging screen door and almost fell over me.

  “Boys, I—” Guilt and confusion made my face hot.

  Willy held his finger to his mouth. “Sh.” He stood beside me.

  “But we oughtn’t—”

  “Sh!” Willy was vehement. “Listen. Learn.”

  Honoria’s voice came harshly to
us. “Get out of my kitchen, Tron. You made trouble when you was a little boy. You make trouble now.”

  “Grandmother—”

  “Go back to the Granddam. Or your mama. Maybe she won’t make you pay, though I never know her do anything for free.”

  “She done a lot of loving.”

  There was contempt in Honoria’s voice. “Her?”

  “We wouldn’t be in this kitchen without it, Ronnie and me.”

  “It don’t take love to make a baby. Would God it did.”

  I tried again to move, to reveal myself, but again the twins hushed me. “You tell Honoria,” Willy said. “Tell her you hear.”

  “Scared of Tron,” Harry said. “Got to find out. Listen. Tell later.”

  Tron’s voice came out to us, loud and bitter. “Grandmother, you just don’t want to understand me, do you? What I done you should always say me no? I should have known better than to ask for something now the favorite is home. Ronnie, he live in Illyria. Tron, he just go back to the scrub. Teach me Illyrian ways and send me back to the scrub.”

  Clive’s voice was cold. “You made the choice, Tron.”

  “Grandmother be scared, just like the Granddam, only more, because she seen something. What you see, Grandmother?”

  “Tron. Sometimes I has the gift of knowing what is going to happen in time that is to come. Sometimes the Lord tells me what is going to happen.”

  “How? How he tell you?”

  “He just tell me. It like seeing around a corner of the sky. The sky opens, there comes a crack, I see through. That is the gift. It is given, and it is up to the Lord to tell me how to use it. If I run the cards—if I try to find out that way what the Lord is up to, then I be trying to manipulate him.”

  Tron laughed. His laugh was very like his mother’s. “Maniwhatsit: that’s not your word, Grandmother. That’s old Mado.”

  “So.”

  I had forgotten Ron was in the kitchen until I heard his voice. “It’s superstition.”

  “What be superstition?”

  Honoria said, “It’s something that gets between you and God.”

  “You think you can keep things from coming between you and God, Grandmother? You just listen to little old Tron. You didn’t take me out of the scrub the way you did my baby brother. You never live in the scrub yourself. Maybe Tron could learn you something.”

  “Go,” Clive said. “Leave us, Tron.”

  “I understand I not wanted. But not why.”

  “Because trouble come with you.”

  “Nobody from Illyria going to send love to my—our—mama?”

  “You are not a bearer of love, Tron.”

  Suddenly the twins grasped my arms, hurried me around the corner of the veranda. We were hidden by the shadows, by the ludicrous swinging bathing garments. Tron ran swiftly down the back veranda steps, along the pink brick path, past the fig tree, vaulted over the Spanish Bayonettes and disappeared into the jungle.

  “Now,” Willy said, “you tell Honoria and Clive.”

  “Now. Tell Honoria. Tell her you hear,” Harry said.

  “Boys listen. Don’t tell. Pretty lady must tell.”

  “Goodbye, lady. Good lady. Tell all. Boys go home now.”

  The kitchen smelled warm and safe and familiar. From the black pot on the stove came the good, solid smell of meat and onions. Honoria was shelling peas into a dented colander. Clive was at the sink washing the glasses. Ron was still sitting at the table. He rose as I came in and pulled out my chair.

  “Please let me help with the peas,” I said. “Please.”

  Honoria handed me a sack of peas, put an old newspaper on the floor beside me. “You can throw the pods here. I cook the English peas with lettuce and a little onion, the way Miss Mado show me.”

  I wanted to say that the twins had made me listen, had made me stay on the back veranda when I wanted to stop eavesdropping. “The twins—” I started. I took a pea pod and ran my finger through it. The small green pellets bounced into the colander. Bending over the colander, I told them what I had done.

  There was a grey, empty silence. They did not say any of the things they might have said.

  “Ron told me not to be like Bluebeard’s wife. I was worse. Please forgive me.”

  “Miss Stella,” Honoria said dispassionately, with no condemnation, “I grew up a long way from here. I never went to school. I learn to speak English from the slaves, not from Claudius Broadley. He wanted for me to be the African princess, beautiful and silent. It was Miss Mado who teached me to read and write. She teached me sometimes with words, and sometimes with silence. We could sit for hours and never speak a word, and yet we were talking with each other all the time. When I wanted to run the cards for her, she wouldn’t let me. It was never that she doubted my power to read the cards. But to do it, to ask the cards what is going to happen, this is wrong. How can I tell you what I mean? Supposing when Ronnie, here, was little, he ask Clive could he do something, and Clive say him no; and then supposing Ronnie he turn around and ask me over Clive’s head: that would be wrong, wouldn’t it?”

  Ron had been listening intently, and now he gave the most spontaneous and free laugh I had heard from him. “Which is precisely what I used to do. Over and over. Anything to get my own way. And both of you made me realize that it was wrong to try to play you off against each other that way. Maybe my bottom learned the lesson before the rest of me, but I did learn. Though I still like to get my own way.” He ran his slender fingers through his short-cropped black hair (I had never before seen hair of the strange consistency of the Negroes’, and I wanted to touch it, to see what it felt like to my fingers).

  Honoria regarded him gravely. “So if I ask the cards, it’s like you going over Clive’s head. I’m going over the Lord’s head.”

  “Why, Grandmother?” I was glad that he was taking her seriously, that he was not laughing at her.

  “Why do I have to ask the cards, son? Why can’t I ask the Lord? If I ask the cards over the Lord’s head, then I’m believing that the cards know better than he does, aren’t I?”

  “Not necessarily, Grandmother. You’re just being a child trying to get around him.”

  “But I am not a child, son. I have not been a child for a long time. If I have something I want to know, I’ll ask the Lord, not the cards.”

  Ron drained his glass, added it to those he had taken to the old stone sink. “Thanks for the tea, Grandmother. It helped.” He hesitated, pumped water so that it splashed into the glass. Then, “Was Tron right when he implied that you have, in fact, run the cards recently?”

  Honoria bowed her head. “Yes. God help me.”

  “You asked the cards something?”

  “Yes.” She sat down, putting her face into her large, strong hands, bowed over in shame and grief.

  Outside the kitchen window the mockingbird in the chinaberry tree began to sit inebriatedly. A yellow jacket hummed against the window; I looked out over the flowers bordering the brick path to the vegetable garden and the bamboo grove, to the protecting swords of the Spanish Bayonettes, and the fig tree with one live branch.

  Clive pulled the shutters closer to keep out the heat of the sun, which was dipping westwards. And I felt cold. I could not see the garden, or the fig tree.

  And in this strange, chill shadowiness I could no longer push back the memory of Cousin Augusta taking me with her to the gypsy. It happened when I was about fourteen. Cousin Augusta was going through one of her periodic enthusiasms; this time it was for spiritualism and the occult. One spring she arranged to have me go with her to a strawberry tea; she was making one of her periodic efforts to have me take part in what she considered normal life. I enjoyed the afternoon and the other girls and boys. It was one of those rare spring days when a picnic by the river was perfection. There was a striped awning to keep out the sun, or an unexpected shower, and we played battledore and shuttlecock, and croquet, and I laughed and got hot and happy, and when the carriage came to take us
home I was sorry to leave.

  On the way back, on the outskirts of the city, Cousin Augusta had the driver turn down a mean little street, to a house set back in the shadows. ‘Since we are so close,’ she said, ‘I thought we’d stop off for a moment. I’ve heard there’s a marvelous gypsy here who tells one absolutely extraordinary things.’

  There was a sign outside the house with strange symbols on it, and within was a dirty old woman who had a pack of greasy cards, gold loops swinging in her ears, and dark hairs springing out of ears and nostrils. The place smelled of sweat and filth and incense. I was both repelled and fascinated.

  Money passed between Cousin Augusta and the old woman.

  Then the cards were run, spread out on a rickety table. The gypsy told Cousin Augusta all the usual things, and perhaps a few which were unusual, for how could she have known of Cousin Octavian’s frequent trips to Africa, or his interest in primitive civilizations? She flattered Cousin Augusta, mentioning her beauty and talents as a hostess. But it was all done by rote. She was not interested in what she was saying, though Cousin Augusta hung on every word.

  Then the gypsy turned to me and asked to see my palm.

  Cousin Augusta pushed me forward. ‘Go on, child. Don’t be shy.’

  The gypsy took my hand in her dirty old claw and looked at it intently. I tried to pull away, mumbling that I didn’t have any money, knowing that one is supposed to cross a fortune teller’s palm with silver.

  The gypsy cut Cousin Augusta short. ‘I do not take money for this one.’ She studied my palm for a long time, not speaking, and then she began to spread the cards on the table; it was all quite unlike the indifference with which she had regarded Cousin Augusta. In the end, as I try to reconstruct it, the gypsy told me very little. She said that in a few years I would make a long journey across the ocean; that was not in any way extraordinary; isn’t that what gypsies usually tell people? But she did tell me that the man I would marry would come from far away, and that I would go to live and bear my children among strangers. ‘But the Guardians will care for you, if you recognize them for who they are.’ I had no idea what she was talking about; the smell in the dirty room made me nauseated.