The Other Side of the Sun

by Madeleine L'engle

  Aunt Mary Desborough spoke, looking more than ever like a ruffled brown owl. “Your behavior is inexcusable. Leave us. At once.”

  “Now, Miss Des.” The Rider who held me, one hand firmly over my mouth, sounded apologetic as though he were, indeed, no more than a naughty boy. “Now, Miss Des,” he repeated, “we don’t want to inconvenience you.”

  “Go,” Aunt Mary Desborough said. “Go at once.” Only then did she seem to see that I was held by the Rider, still half covered by the flowing folds of his white robe. “Stella—”

  “Put her down!” Aunt Olivia cried furiously. I thought she would raise her cane and attack the Rider, but she did not. She stood very still by Aunt Des.

  “Go away,” Aunt Des repeated. For a moment she swayed, reached for the porch rail for support, but stood firm.

  The Rider’s hold on me tightened, but his voice was courteous, almost gentle. “Don’t be afeared, Miss Des. We ain’t going to hurt you. You just give us the nigger and we’ll leave.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My sister and I—”

  “The bastard Zenumin nigger, Miss Des. That clear?”

  Aunt Olivia’s voice came strong. “Tron Zenumin is with his men. He is not here. And even if he were, we wouldn’t—”

  The Rider cut across her words. “Not him. He screaming in the Spanish Bayonettes. Let him die there. We after the other one. The brother.”

  Again Aunt Olivia’s voice was clear and cold. “You will have to be more specific. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “The nigger calls himself a doctor, the nigger what come back to San Feliz poking into white men’s business.”

  Aunt Des said, “Please leave us. Our Cousin James—our nephew, Mr. Hoadley—” Her old voice trembled.

  “Mr. Hoadley and Mr. James down on the beach, Miss Des. Our men holding them. Nobody going to stop us now. Come on, we know the nigger’s in the house. We aim to have him. He been seen with Mr. Terry’s bride. We ain’t putting up with that.”

  Aunt Olivia said, “My sister and I will not tolerate this kind of talk. You know Mr. Hoadley would never permit this rudeness. Please leave Illyria at once.” The old-fashioned phrases seemed totally out of place in this night of obscenity and violence. The great-aunts were small and ineffectual in their valiance against the evil pressing towards them.

  The horse under me stamped nervously, the hoofbeat sounding hollow against the boards of the ramp. There was an impatient rumbling from the Riders behind us. There were shouts and cries of men and horses from the barrier of Spanish Bayonettes on either side of the ramp. Torchlight threw flickering shadows over the veranda, over the old ladies.

  “Miss Des, Miss Livvy, we wish you no harm, but you let us by or we burn Illyria.”

  Aunt Olivia said scornfully, “If you want to search the house quietly and peaceably, you may. But you won’t find him.”

  “No, Miss Livvy? Mr. Hoadley done told us about the secret room. Now you just let us in, and we get the nigger, and nobody else going to get hurt.”

  Aunt Olivia stepped towards us with difficulty; she leaned heavily on her cane and one hand was lost in the folds of her skirt. “I don’t think you’ll burn Illyria,” she said levelly. “Miss Irene is inside, and neither my sister nor I will leave. The twins are inside, too. I don’t think you want to be responsible for murdering innocent people. White people.”

  The Rider kicked his heels into the horse’s sweating flanks and came directly up the steps and onto the porch. His laugh was ingratiating. “We get you and Miss Des and Miss Irene out, Miss Livvy, and we don’t give a hooting damn about them spooky idiots.”

  Two of the Riders behind us jumped down from their horses. The old planks of the ramp creaked and groaned under the shifting, crowding beasts.

  “See, Miss Livvy, they ain’t going to wait much longer. We just looking to have us a nice little necktie party.” He snapped his fingers and the two men who had dismounted pushed by the old great-aunts and into the house.

  Aunt Des screamed.

  “You won’t lynch Ron,” Aunt Olivia cried. “I won’t permit it. I’ll stop you.”

  “Just how you going to stop us, Miss Livvy?”

  I tried to speak through the Rider’s hand, which was still clamped about my mouth. “My husband—” My words were smothered in his sweaty palm.

  “Your husband would lynch the nigger with us, Miss Stella.”

  I jerked my head and managed to bite his hand. He pulled it away and hit me across the mouth. I tasted blood.

  Then I saw Ron.

  The two white-robed men dragged him out the screen door, forcing him to his knees. He struggled to stand.

  There was a roar from the white-robed men. Through my mind flashed everything Ron and Aunt Olivia had told me about lynching. I knew what the Riders would do to him. I fought wildly, mindlessly, to escape the arms which crushed me, to stop them, anything, anything to stop them. The black tongue of a whip flicked viciously against me.

  I heard Aunt Des scream, “No! Livvy, no!”

  Aunt Olivia held a gun.

  The Rider drew me up in front of him so that I shielded him. Ron broke away from the men, struggled to his feet.

  There were cries of “Lynch him!” from the men.

  Aunt Olivia shot Ron. She shot him through the heart.

  6

  The Negro uprising at San Feliz is nothing but a small footnote to history. Some men were killed, both black and white. Tron might better have been one of them, for he was no longer a man; the Spanish Bayonettes had quite literally torn him apart. True, he had already spawned so many that his seed stood in no danger of ceasing to be, but in his world he was worse than dead; he had been multiplied by O: annihilated. Aunt Des nursed him until he was able to be returned to his mother and the Granddam, and Belle came for him with nothing but contempt in her eyes. Tron would never again be king of anything, not even the Dark Clearing.

  Most of his men had disappeared into the scrub; I had seen enough of the scrub to know that it is not difficult for a man to lose himself in its depths. Uncle Hoadley, with the death of his dream, moved like a dead man. He was, perhaps, more impotent than Tron, and more dead than Ronnie. With the help of Cousin James he did manage to rouse himself enough so that the inquest was no more than a formality, and the coroner did not even question Aunt Olivia; the verdict was death by accident.

  This was not enough for the White Riders, and a group of them went into the scrub, still hungering after a lynching, but all that happened was that one of them was bitten by a moccasin. The snake, it was said, appeared out of nowhere; it was witchcraft.

  The man died. He might have lived if they could have taken him to Ron. But Ronnie was dead.

  Nobody else went back into the scrub. Neither did Tron come out.

  I went to the beach, careless of the morning sun, and curled up on the hot sand of a dune, nursing my dry-eyed pain. Honoria came after me.

  “Come in, Miss Stella.”

  I shook my head, but she held a firm hand out to me.

  “Come.” She pulled me to my feet. “Miss Stella, do you realize what Miss Olivia done? She kill herself when she save Ronnie.”

  “Saved!”

  “You ain’t seen a lynching, Miss Stella. Pray you never will. Miss Olivia kill herself much more than ever she kill Ronnie. She love him that much, enough to do that, and that be a lot of love. Miss Olivia mortal scared of death, and now she never walk without it by her side. Ronnie her baby, like Jimmy. For your baby you can do things you couldn’t never do for yourself. That be true of you, too, Miss Stella. You can’t go getting too much sun again. Come in the house now. We all grieving for Ronnie. You got some grieving to do, too. I don’t forget that. But Miss Olivia—she the one who took the pain this time. We got a grief we can bear, Miss Stella, because Miss Olivia loved.”

  We walked back to Illyria. I asked, “Honoria—what was it that you saw in the cards?”

  She stopp
ed. The high sun threw her shadow, small and dark, against the sand. Her voice was guttural, Kairogian. “What happen was not what I see in the cards. You and Miss Olivia make it be different, when you throw the doll into the fire, when Miss Olivia take her gun and—” She bowed her head. “It were not what I see in the cards. I see Ron lynched, and my prayers not strong enough to carry any of his pain. I see what happen to Jimmy happen all over again, and nothing to help Ronnie bear it. I see Illyria burn and the baby dead and bloodshed everywhere. You make it not to happen.”

  I held my hand protectively over my belly. “But, Honoria, the baby might still—and they might come back, the Riders—”

  Honoria raised her head, tall and strong. “No, Miss Stella. The baby be all right. God tell me. Not the cards; the Lord. And it be over. The Lord has Ronnie. It be over. For this time. Come, Miss Stella. Miss Olivia be waiting for you. She need you.”

  I went with Honoria back into Illyria.

  The summer days and nights moved slowly across the beach. We resumed the pattern of life at Illyria, though we were not the same people we had been before that night. Aunt Irene was strangely gentle with Uncle Hoadley, stroking his thin hand, trying to find little ways to please him. Now that his power had crumbled she seemed, at last, able to love him. Aunt Olivia’s strength continued to sustain her, though I think we were all fearful that it might leave her at any moment, so Cousin James spent a great deal of time with us. Once she remarked to me that it was ironic that she, who had talked so much to Ronnie about dying and her fear of death, should be the one still to be alive.

  Aunt Mary Desborough worked a great deal in the garden, a floppy straw hat shading her white head. It worried her that she and Aunt Olivia no longer played Shakespeare.

  Only the twins, who were living with us at Illyria, talked to me about Ronnie. My belly swelled with the life within it. Cousin James told me that he had been informed by Washington that Terry was on his way home.

  I do not know when the angel began to move closer to Illyria, but Honoria and Clive, going quietly and steadily about their duties, kept listening.

  I walked, one evening after coffee on the veranda, slowly up the beach. I walked past the charred remains of the twins’ little cottage, the cottage where Ronnie’s surgery had been. Then I turned and walked the long way home.

  Coming towards me was a man, a man who walked like Terry: Ron.

  But it could not be Ron.

  I began to run.

  The man began to run.

  Terry.

  I was in his arms.

  Around and over Illyria the wind blew, moving through the palms, shaking them like angel’s wings, angels in a great and mighty rush, returning to Illyria.

  SEVEN

  They sat on the porch of Illyria, the old woman and her grandson; she, rocking gently in the old wooden rocker; he, sitting on the steps with his head against her knees. If a drowning man can relive a lifetime in a few seconds, she thought, it was hardly surprising that she had fallen so swiftly into the deep waters of those first weeks in Illyria. She felt exhausted and yet relaxed for the first time in many days. She gave a little shiver, then yawned and laughed.

  “Theron, my dear, tell you all that happened at Illyria? Not tonight—I’m too tired. You can drive me back to Jefferson now, if you like, and keep the family happy. We’ll sit the hurricane out there. I don’t need to stay in Illyria now. I know what has to be done.”

  “What, Grandmother?”

  “Sometimes, when you make your journey through the sun, many things are burned before you come out on the other side. We have to let things go.”

  “Illyria—”

  “I think so. Perhaps it’s only by letting it go entirely that we can keep it. What will be done with the property if we sell it?”

  “I hear they’d like to put a bowling alley here, or a skating rink.”

  She let out a long, low sigh.

  He said, “I suppose you’re right, Grandmother. But are you really sure?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I admit that I have sometimes thought of Illyria as a place where I could bring Margaret and the children if things get too bad in Jefferson.”

  “You think if there’s rioting and bloodshed in Jefferson it won’t reach San Feliz?”

  “Yes, of course, Grandmother, it will. It’s childish of me to look on Illyria as a place of safety.”

  She rose, stiffly. “All right, Theron. Let us go. The storm is coming.”

  “And the angels, Grandmother?”

  She laughed. “Yes. I admit that I worried for a moment there about the angels. Illyria’s angels: I don’t have to tell them where they’re needed. I think they go with people rather than places. You’ll need them. We’re probably even further from the place where lion and lamb abide, at this moment in time, than we were sixty years ago.”

  He helped her down the steps, down the ramp to where the old Rolls-Royce waited; helped her in.

  Then, without looking back, they drove along the hard-packed sand at the ocean’s edge. A pelican, brooding on a broken and barnacled piling, rose, stretched clumsily, then soared in an arc across the stormy ocean and winged across the sky.

  A Biography of Madeleine L’Engle

  Madeleine L’Engle was the award-winning author of more than sixty books encompassing children’s and adult fiction, poetry, plays, memoirs, and books on prayer. Her best-known work is the classic children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, which won the Newbery Medal for distinguished children’s literature and has sold fourteen million copies worldwide. The Washington Post called the science fantasy tale of an adolescent girl and her telepathic brother’s journey through space and time “one of the most enigmatic works of fiction ever created.”

  L’Engle was born on November 29, 1918, in New York City, where both of her parents were artists—her mother a pianist and her father a novelist, journalist, and music and drama critic for the New York Sun. Although she wrote her first story at the age of five and devoted her time to her journals, short stories, and poetry, L’Engle struggled in school and often felt disliked by her teachers and peers. She recalled one of her elementary school teachers calling her stupid and another accusing her of plagiarism when she won a writing contest.

  At twelve, L’Engle and her family moved to France for her father’s health (he had been a soldier during World War I and suffered lung damage), and she was sent to boarding school in the Swiss Alps. Two of her novels, A Winter’s Love and The Small Rain, drew on her experiences in Europe. She returned to the United States three years later to attend another boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina. L’Engle flourished during these years and went on to graduate from Smith College with honors in English.

  After college, she moved back to New York City and started work as a stage actress while devoting her free time to writing. During this time, she published her first two novels, The Small Rain and Ilsa, and wrote many plays that were produced in regional theaters. While touring in a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard as an understudy, she met actor Hugh Franklin, and they married in 1946. After the birth of their daughter Josephine the following year, they bought an old farmhouse, which they called Crosswicks, in Goshen, a small town in rural Connecticut, planning on weekends in the country. When she became pregnant with their second child, Bion, they moved to Crosswicks permanently and ran the local general store. Their family grew with an adopted daughter, Maria. After nearly a decade in Connecticut, they moved back to New York so her husband, who would go on to star in All My Children, could focus on his acting career. She was happy to return and hoped that she would find success as an author again. Indeed, A Wrinkle in Time was published in 1962.

  The family often returned to Crosswicks over the years and these visits inspired L’Engle’s Crosswicks Journals, including Two-Part Invention, which tells the story of her marriage, and A Circle of Quiet, in which she explores her role as a woman, mother, wife, and writer.

  Back
in Manhattan, L’Engle worked as a librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, a position she held for more than three decades. Her lifelong fascination with theology and philosophy, and her personal faith, largely influenced her work. A Wrinkle in Time hints at many Christian themes, yet religious conservative groups have spoken out against the book, accusing L’Engle of misrepresenting God in a dangerous world of witchcraft, myth, and fantasy. It has been one of the most banned books in the United States. Apart from her religious influences, she said that Einstein’s theory of relativity and other theories in physics also served as inspiration. The novel’s combined use of both science fiction and philosophy established it as a sophisticated work of fiction, proving L’Engle’s belief that children’s literature deserves a place in the literary canon.

  However, L’Engle initially struggled to achieve success and recognition for her work, and she almost quit writing at forty. She finally broke out onto the literary scene in 1960 with Meet the Austins, the first in her popular young adult series about the Austin family, which includes Newbery Honor Book A Ring of Endless Light. Even A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by twenty-six publishers before being accepted by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Although it was an instant commercial and critical sensation and has never gone out of print, the book’s strong female protagonist and intellectual themes were unusual in children’s fiction at the time.

  L’Engle’s long literary career expanded far beyond the publication of A Wrinkle in Time. Among her many books are adult novels dealing with relationships, faith, and identity, including Certain Women, A Live Coal in the Sea, and A Severed Wasp; several books of poetry; and more overtly religious works like her Genesis Trilogy of biblical reflections. She won countless accolades, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the National Religious Book Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. In 2004, President Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal. L’Engle lived out her final years in Litchfield, Connecticut, and passed away at the age of eighty-eight on September 6, 2007.