“Stop hiding your brilliance in secret dumps in the Mojave,” Ashton said at the start of their senior year. “Time for the big leagues, baby. It’s all you want. It’s what you deserve. Stop hiding from your family, stop being ashamed. Show the world what you got, bro, because what you got is dope. You can throw a punch, but even more important, you can take a punch. You’re superfast, you got killer reflexes, and you’re not afraid.” Ashton banged on Julian’s chest. “Instead of a heart,” he said, “inside you is a boxing glove. You need a true title fight. And that’s exactly what I’m going to get you, and what we’re going to work and train for. And then we’ll invite your family so they can finally see you for what you really are—a fighter.”
Julian fought better and better guys all during his last year in college. Right before graduation in May, Ashton set up a pre-championship match. Julian had three months to train for the all-important bout in August. The winner would face the legendary Bernard Hopkins for the World Middleweight title. This was as big as it got. Julian was up against the undefeated Marcus “Deathblow” Hill. “Undefeated so far,” Ashton and Julian yelled with dramatic high-fives.
But between Julian and Deathblow lay Topanga. The fight never took place. Julian was in a coma. And Marcus Hill died in a car crash while awaiting sentencing for killing his girlfriend.
Part Four
Tragame Tierra
“Earth, swallow me whole.”
A Spanish saying
41
The Plains of Lethe
FOR A LONG TIME JULIAN WALKED ON THE FIVE RIVERS THAT encircled Hades. He walked down the river of hate and the river of fire. He walked down the river of sorrow and the river of lament, and he walked down the river of forgetting, but not long enough. He didn’t swim or row a boat because all the rivers were sheathed in ice. The dead arrived at the barren wasteland called the Plains of Lethe, nothing but a wilderness of desolation and despair. In Dante, Lethe is an earthly paradise atop the Mountain of Purgatory. The River of Lethe flows down to hell and freezes into ice around Satan. Julian had merged with a demonic force and was now forced to travel into the mouth of hell. To break the spell that hung over his life, he might have to engage Satan himself in hand-to-hand combat. Or he might have to smash the crystal of souls, as Ashton had suggested. For a moment, Julian doubled over.
He had seven weeks to wander the streets of her frozen world.
Would she recognize him, would she know his face?
He barely recognized himself.
Love did that.
Death, too.
The worst has happened. All dreams must go. Great God! What was this awful place? He was in a glacier cave, enormous and deathly still. He walked and walked but never got anywhere.
Julian gave his heart to know wisdom, yet all he knew was madness and folly. She died, and he was never heard from again. His little life went on without him. It barely even noticed he was gone.
And then it broke apart.
He vanished once more into the blue ether, pretending to search for her in the unknown universe but really he vanished to hide.
It was so cold, the tears turned to ice on his face.
∞
The cave is an underground corridor a continent long, an ocean wide. Ice spears hang down instead of stalactites. Julian walks for so long he forgets where he’s going, he almost forgets where he’s been. Though not quite. Eventually, the cavern opens into an endless field. He finds a gulley by the side of the road, falls into it, throws grass and leaves over himself for warmth and drops into a restless anguished sleep. In his oblivion he sees black lightless streets and immovable trees. He moans and stirs, trying to wake up. Where is that ice bag Riley used for a pillow so she would stop thinking about Ashton at night.
You and I, we leaned on our elbows across from each other in our eternal amity. But now I’m alone in a ditch. Woe to him who is alone when he falls, but if two are together then they have heat, for how can one be warm alone? Julian is so cold. All go into one place, searching for unattainable salvation, all are of the dust and to dust they return.
∞
Eventually he crawls out. Around him are wet flat fields. There’s a chill wind from the south. The day wanes. Or not. It’s gray out, as if the sun never shines. There are no rolling hills, no vivid green grass. Where is he?
For many hours Julian walks down the dirt road before he acknowledges he might not be in London. To be honest, it doesn’t even look like England. This kind of flatness is new to him. Yet there is an unmistakable sharp smell of salt water assaulting his nose, stinging his eyes.
When he finally spots a lonely farm, set back from the road, he’s sure the door will be opened by her. There’s nothing else around. He tries to imagine what she will look like. All he sees is forever-ago Josephine behind the wheel of a speeding car.
The woman who opens the door is not her, at least Julian doesn’t think so. She is a wide, tall, hard-looking woman with a dark unwelcoming face and black hair. In the poor light she looks as if she has swirling tattoos around her chin.
“Who are you?” she says and before he can answer adds, “Do you come in peace?”
“Yes,” he says, trying to peek behind her broad frame for a flash of a daughter. Indeed, a younger woman sits on the couch. “Is that your daughter?”
The woman is shoved away from the door by a tall grim man who holds a walking stick in his hands—a walking stick with a sharpened tip that makes it look like a spear. “Who wants to know about my daughter?” he says. “What do you want with her, whiteman? Do you wish to marry her? You must work first.”
“Manaia, leave him alone,” the woman says, pushing the man aside. “We have no work for you. We hire our own. Go to town if you want work. Or to Bluff if you know how to fish.”
“Ask him what he wants with our daughter, Aroha.” Both the man and the woman stand at the door. Julian thinks they could be Hawaiian, both tattooed, him more, tall and broad, both severe. Julian wants to look around but will not take his eye off the man with a spike in his hands.
“If you’re a traveler, where are your things?” Aroha says. “You carry nothing with you? That’s not good. That’s a concern to every person, native or not, who meets you. Why you wear a black suit like you’re the undertaker?”
Aroha is right. Julian has nothing with him. He wears a suit, black tie, white shirt, black shoes. On his neck is the headlamp. Don’t leave home without it. Sometimes the road is dark, and you can’t see where you’re going.
“It’s an Armani,” Julian says of his suit. “It’s timeless in any age.” Why are they provoking him with their take-no-prisoners glares? Well, he has his Penance Stare in return. He doesn’t know which of them itches for a fight more, him or them. A minute ago, Julian was walking bent as if without a spine, and now look. He stands straighter. What he doesn’t have is a wetsuit, or special boots, or grappling hooks. Besides his hands, he has no weapons, certainly no finely honed spear like the Polynesian gentleman. Over his hands Julian wears fine leather gloves, not waterproof thick Thinsulate, not boxing gloves.
He steps back. He hasn’t even clenched his fists. “I’ll be on my way, then. What town is this?”
“Underwood that way.”
“What’s after Underwood?” There doesn’t look to be anything to Underwood.
“Invercargill. Just keep walking south. Where you coming from, Dunedin?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Dunedin? Did Julian bring a map of the world with him? Has he memorized all the snow-capped palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself? Is he in Scotland? Dunedin sounds vaguely Scottish.
“How far is Edinburgh from here?” he asks.
“I don’t know where that is.” The woman slams the door, but not before she says, “Watch your back, whiteman. Your back, your front. It’s not safe for you here, wandering about as you are, with nothing in your hands, setting folks on edge.”
Invercargill, wherever that is,
is a long way to walk under hulking gray skies after a lifetime in the ice cave. Nothing comes his way down the road, no car, no horse.
It’s not so much cold as brutally windy. Julian has not planned for this weather. By his outfit he’d say he hasn’t planned for much of anything. He picks up the pace to keep warm. The sky turns to granite, then slate, then black. He switches on his headlamp and walks on.
He’s heard the name Dunedin before, he’s almost sure of it.
He doubles over, struggling to get his breath back before his mind can catch up with the segue of seemingly unrelated thoughts that lead him to the answer of where Dunedin might be, where Invercargill might be. Robert Falcon Scott sailed for Antarctica from Port Chalmers, and in the documentary he saw with Ashton when they first moved to Notting Hill, the narrator talked about a whisky distillery near Port Chalmers that produced Scotch almost as good as Scotland itself. It was called the Dunedin Distillery. The explorers bought whisky to take on the Terra Nova on their last voyage to the South Pole. Port Chalmers was in New Zealand, way down on South Island.
Julian stops walking. Is he in New Zealand?
So that family weren’t Hawaiian. They were Maori. What little he knows of the Maori troubles him. They’re fierce warriors.
Remembering the documentary about Robert Scott doubles Julian over again, as if bowing before the merciless God. Groaning, he presses his fists into his stomach until the agony passes and he can breathe again. He resumes walking, but slower.
A sign tells him he’s entering Invercargill, New Zealand, settled by the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1853, population 12,782, coordinates 46S, 168E.
Longitude 168º east? Another dozen degrees and he’d be on the opposite side of zero meridian. Does the International Date Line also open up to the infinities of souls in the middle of the Southern Ocean? Since Julian is all the way here, he doesn’t doubt it.
He finds himself on Clyde Street, an exceptionally wide boulevard that runs from the outskirts to town center. It’s wide like an airport runway or the Interstate. A few hundred feet in the distance, a tavern glows. Soon he’ll be in the warmth. Julian tries to walk faster.
From the pub a figure strolls out, lights a cigarette, turns, and stares up the road. The shape is bundled up but small and rounded like a woman. As she sees him approaching, she continues to smoke, watching him for a few moments.
And then the cigarette falls from her hands.
The woman scrambles and vanishes inside the tavern called the Yarrow. A minute later, a tall thin man walks out calmly into the road and turns his head in Julian’s direction.
Julian blows into his palms. He’s astonishingly cold. He can’t feel his face. It’s the blasted wind. It’s shocking.
The man is in his sixties, with dark skin, black hair, black eyes. He also has curly-cue tattoos on his face, but faded, and only along the jawline. He lights a cigarette himself and smokes, exhaling vapor into the swirling air and watching Julian.
“Hey,” Julian says, switching off his headlamp. “Place open for business?”
“Do you come in peace?” the man asks.
Must be an ancient greeting. Julian confirms that indeed he does.
“My name is Kiritopa,” the man says. He gestures toward the tavern. “She’s been waiting for you.”
Julian takes a step back and scans the road for perhaps another tavern. “I don’t know who she is. But she must be mistaking me for someone else.”
“I don’t think so,” says the Maori. “A man will come out of the darkness, she’s been telling us for years, dressed in black and he will wear light.” He points to Julian’s headlamp and throws out his cigarette. “Come in,” he says, “but a word of warning. She’s not as calm as I am. Are you ready?”
“No,” Julian says, following the man inside. “I’m most certainly not ready.”
“Yeah,” the man says, not even glancing at Julian. “You don’t look ready.”
Inside is dark, candlelit, and very warm. There’s a fireplace in the far corner. The place is empty. Either it’s late or it’s a Monday and business is light.
“She’ll be out when she gets herself together. Meantime, what can I get you? You’ve come a long way?”
“Just Underwood,” Julian replies, trying to deny their theories about him. “How about a beer?”
“You’re six years too late,” Kiritopa says. “No liquor sales in Southland since 1905.”
So it’s 1911. “A pub without beer?” Julian fights the urge to double over his knees. “What do you serve, tea?”
“Tea, yes. Apple cider.”
“Apple cider will do,” Julian says. “Put some whisky in it, will you?”
Kiritopa returns with a tall steaming mug. “I did put some moonshine in it for you,” he says quietly. “The Kahurangis over in Bluff make the best. But don’t tell no one.”
“Who am I going to tell.”
“Maybe your friends in Underwood?”
“Mum’s the word.” Julian downs the hot cider with the moonshine in it in three long, desperate gulps. The homemade liquor is Krazy Glue strong.
“The strongest moonshine in Southland,” Kiritopa says with a hint of pride.
“Your place?” Julian asks, looking around the homey tavern.
“Hers technically. But we’re in it together.” Kiritopa doesn’t look nearly as upset to see him as the woman did. Perhaps it’s his phlegmatic disposition. But it’s something else, too. Slight relief maybe? Like, finally, the next part of this man’s life can begin. He seems ready for whatever that is. “Next time someone asks if you come in peace,” Kiritopa says, “reply with kia ora. It means have life, be well.”
The Yarrow is uncommonly warm. The burning fire doesn’t explain the pervasive heat throughout the entire restaurant, with no cold spots and no drafts.
Kiritopa tells Julian the Yarrow was built directly over a hot spring. The steam heats the entire building, even the upstairs. And downstairs, in the cellar, the geyser shoots hot water into the grottos. “You can have a bath if you want. Get warm. Get clean.” Kiritopa says it as if Julian needs to.
“Where is she?” he asks the Maori man, who stands by the side of his table, observing him, but not sitting down and not volunteering more information.
“Who?” Kiritopa asks quietly.
Julian rubs his face. “The woman who saw me outside, I suppose,” he says. “We’ll start with her.”
As soon as Kiritopa leaves, Julian falls asleep in the warmth, his elbows resting on the table, his head in his hands.
“I’m Agnes,” he hears a crusty voice say through the fog in his head. He opens his eyes, jerks his body upright. The small white round woman stands in front of him, her weathered face blotchy red as if she’d been crying. Her black hair is half-gray.
Julian is exhausted and can’t fathom the expression in the woman’s eyes. Fear and sadness and relief and grim satisfaction. But mostly fear.
“I’m Julian,” he says. “Agnes what?”
“Does it matter? Agnes Patmore if you must know.” She rolls her Rs quite strongly. It almost sounds like a foreign accent. Must be the Scottish dialect.
Now Julian is awake. Nothing focuses the mind like an anxious female face and the name Patmore. “Did you say Patmore?”
“Why, do you know someone named Patmore?” she asks, crestfallen.
He shrugs. “I might’ve known someone named Patmore. Not from here, though.”
“From where, London?”
“Yes.”
“Who, Coventry?”
“What? You knew the supernumerary at the British Museum?”
“What are you looking around my tavern for? He’s ten years dead. And not a supernumerary. A poet first. Coventry was a fine poet. I married his son.”
Julian sits back down. He feels unmoored by the unexpected anchoring. “Kiritopa is Coventry’s son?”
“No, Kiritopa is Kiritopa. He’s the son of a Maori chief. His family came to the Otago
Peninsula five hundred years ago. He comes from one of the first men. I married Jacob Patmore.”
“Jacob Patmore?”
“Why,” she says, and in her voice, as in Julian’s, is also exhaustion, hers the bone weariness of a sentry having been on the watchtower too long. “Don’t tell me you know Jacob, too.”
The woman in front of him married Jacob Patmore, the little boy Julian used to play with in Grey Gardens with Mirabelle. It’s a coincidence. It simply can’t be the same person.
“We were married in 1880,” she says. “We were twenty-seven.”
So it can be the same person—and is. Because nothing is a coincidence. “Jacob, Emily Patmore’s son?”
“Yes. Did you know her, too?” Agnes’s voice is low. “She wasn’t a well woman, my mother by law. Didn’t want me to marry her son. Told me I’d be the death of him. Can you imagine your mother by law saying that?” She doesn’t take her probing eyes off Julian.
“Is Jacob still alive?” Wouldn’t that be something. But what’s Agnes Patmore doing in Invercargill?
Agnes shakes her head. “He died during our passage here.” She tuts. “I hate that my husband is dead, but I really hate that his mother was right.”
“Did you”—Julian doesn’t look up—“did you have any children?”
Agnes is darkly quiet. She sinks into the chair across from him. “You know I did,” she says. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
Julian breathes in and out to keep his voice steady. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just passing through.”
“Passing through on the way to where, Antarctica, the Ross Sea?”
They don’t speak for a few minutes.
“I hate that you’re here,” she says. “Know that, before I say anything else.”
Julian is not thrilled to be here himself. “You can stop right there,” he says, “and tell me nothing.”
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