Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  She seemed to have forgotten, or perhaps did not care to mention, the fact that it was her hundredth birthday, and that a great celebration had been planned: which of course would not now take place.

  SO THE STORM passed by, leaving damage and heartbreak in its wake, and next morning the Bellefleurs looked out to see a transformed world: ponds everywhere, great puddles of water that, reflecting the sky, looked like glassy lead, fallen trees, small mountains of debris that would have to be cleared away. The men—Gideon, Ewan, even Vernon, even grandfather Noel—made their way by foot down to the village, to help with the flood relief; Cornelia talked of “opening the castle doors” to the homeless. In the end, however, the only flood victim who was taken in was an elderly man discovered by one of the boys over in the barnyard—jammed against the stone foundation of the stable. At first, the boy said, he naturally thought it was a corpse: but it wasn’t a corpse: the poor old man was alive!

  So they brought him in, carrying him, since he was too exhausted to walk, and Dr. Jensen was summoned, and he was laid, half-unconscious, in one of the downstairs maids’ rooms. A very elderly man—with a livid scar on his forehead—toothless—his cheeks sunken—his skin cancellate, as if it had been soaked for some time—his ragged clothing in shreds—his arms and legs hardly more than sticks, he was so thin. Though his pulse beat was weak it was a pulse beat, and he was able, with difficulty, and with much dribbling, to drink some broth Cornelia gave him. Ah, how pathetic! He spoke incoherently—did not seem to know his name, or where he had come from—or what had happened—that there had been a terrible storm, and that he had been caught in it. You are safe now, they told him. Try to sleep. We’ve called a doctor. Nothing can happen to you now.

  When the men returned they looked in upon him, and there he was, propped up against pillows, blinking dazedly at them, his toothless mouth shifting into a hesitant smile. A miracle, they said, that he hadn’t been drowned. (And he was such a very old man, and so very frail.)

  But he was safe now. And he could stay with them as long as he needed. “This is Bellefleur Manor,” Noel said, standing at his bedside. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, until your people come to claim you. You don’t remember your name . . . ?”

  The old man blinked and shook his head no, uncertainly. His cheekbones were so sharp they seemed about to push through his veined skin.

  In the late afternoon great-grandmother Elvira came downstairs to see him, followed by her cat, a white-and-bluish-gray female, and when she came to the foot of his bed she fumbled in her pocket, and took out her spectacles. She peered at the old man through her glasses, rather rudely. He was just waking from a light doze, and he peered at her, smiling his uncertain smile. The cat leapt up onto the bed, making a querulous mewing sound; it began to knead its paws against the old man’s thigh. For some minutes great-grandmother Elvira and the elderly man stared at each other. And then Elvira took off her spectacles, and thrust them back in her pocket, and mumbled, “. . . old fool.” And she gathered up Minerva and left the room without another word.

  In the Mountains, in Those Days . . .

  In the mountains, in those days, there was always music.

  A music composed of many voices.

  High above the mist-shrouded river. In the thin cold many-faceted light. Ice, was it?—or sunshine? Or the teasing mountain spirits (which must have to do with God, since they live on the Holy Mountain where the Devil dare not appear)?

  Many voices, plaintive and alluring and combative and taunting and lovely, achingly lovely, so very very lovely one’s soul is drawn out . . . drawn out like a thread, a hair . . . fine, thin, about to break. . . .

  God? Jedediah cried in his ecstasy. Is this God?

  BUT NOT GOD, for God remained hidden.

  IN THE MOUNTAINS, in those days, there was always music.

  Catching at one’s soul. Seductive, yearning, frail as girls’ voices in the distance. . . . But not God. For God remained hidden. Coy and stubborn and hidden. Oblivious of Jedediah’s impassioned plea. Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord. Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt. (For his father’s spies prowled the Holy Mountain, despite the danger of God’s wrath. Defiling the clear bright cold sky, the snowcap easing downward, downward, one day soon to swallow up the entire world in its frigid cleansing purity. . . . He saw them. If he did not see them, he heard them. Their mocking voices, “echoing” his most secret, most silent prayers.)

  GOD’S BLESSING IS not always to be distinguished from His wrath. Consequently Jedediah did not know—should he fall to his knees in gratitude to God, that he could hear (and sometimes even feel) the presence of his enemies?—or should he beg God to diminish the power (now grown extraordinary, and frequently painful) of his senses, particularly his sense of hearing?

  O give thanks unto the Lord; call upon His name: make known His deeds among the people. Sing unto Him, sing psalms unto Him: talk ye of all His wondrous works. Seek the Lord, and His strength: seek His face evermore.

  IN THOSE DAYS there was always music but perhaps it was not always God’s music. The voices, for instance. Quarreling and chattering and teasing. God won’t show His face, whyever should He!—to a comical wretch like you! (So the dark-eyed girl giggled, lifting the lid off a pot of rabbit stew and flinging it against the wall. And why? Just for meanness. For deviltry.)

  Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God.

  A voice, lightly jeering: Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace. . . . But with a false, wicked emphasis: Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God. . . . (As if the spirits were mocking someone of very limited intelligence. Halfwitted or retarded. Brain-damaged. Senile.)

  IN THE MOUNTAINS, in those days, the gigantic white bird with the naked red-skinned head appeared frequently, as if in response to a thoughtless utterance of Jedediah’s. (For just as he could hear so keenly, so could other creatures hear keenly. If he stepped on a twig all of the mountain was alerted. If one of his monstrous coughing attacks overcame him all of the mountain region heard.) A silent gliding bird. Its shadow, deceptively light, scudding across the stony ground. And then, suddenly overhead, its hideous shrieking: so that Jedediah’s heart nearly leapt out of his chest: and it was all he could do, to beat the creature away with the hardwood cudgel he carried with him everywhere.

  Pray God, beg God, plead with God, Louis’s wife teased, pinching at his ribs, and what sails along but that nasty old bird.

  The bird gave off a terrible stench—it must have been its breath, fetid as if its very bowels were rotten.

  Behold the fowls of the air.

  Seek ye first the kingdom of God.

  The spirits brushed near, nearer than the bird dared, and pretended to take his side. God isn’t listening, God is busy down in the flatland, God has betrayed you. Throw that silly old Bible down into the river!

  (Ah, but it was one of the surprises of Jedediah’s life, that the Bible was lying some twenty or thirty yards down the cliff. . . . He could not believe it but there it was: someone had thrown it there: and it took him the better part of a morning, and cost him many cruel welts and scratches, to retrieve it. Even so, several pages were ripped away, and many pages were damaged. His bowels writhed with disgust and anger, and could he have laid hands on that bright-eyed spirit, what might he have done to her! I would show no mercy, he whispered, weeping, because you deserve no mercy.)

  But the outrageous incident had the effect, at least, of loosening his bowels. For poor Jedediah, though he prayed God for relief, suffered cruelly from constipation.

  In the winter especially. In the winter, certainly.

  He had built a crude little outhouse in a thicket some distance from the cabin, hidden from the cabin. Bodily functions had always disquieted him. Not-to-be-thought-of, so he commonly silenced certain t
houghts. Except when the pain overtook him deep in the pit of his belly and he was bent nearly double and even the spirits, aghast, fled his torment.

  THE OUTHOUSE, OF skinned pine; and a sturdier chimney; and a pretty little piece of stained glass, about a foot square, in a window facing east (sent up by way of Henofer, along with other unwanted things—a bright turquoise blue with beige and red lines—silly, vain, breakable—but undeniably pretty—and, he supposed, harmless: a gift from his brother’s wife down below); a shallow well halfway down the mountain into which spring water ran for several months of the year.

  “You’re going to stay here forever, are you?” Henofer laughed, rubbing his cracked hands briskly and looking about. “Just like me! Just like me!”

  Henofer and his letters, supplies, gossip, news of the War. (To which Jedediah only vaguely listened. For what did God care of the paltry doings of men—their lust for territory, for goods, for dominion over the high seas? Saliva flew from Henofer’s lips as he spoke passionately of the surrender of Fort Mackinaw. An allied force of British and Indians had captured it. And there was Fort Dearborn: captured by Indians: and most of the garrison including women and children had been slaughtered. By a general order issued from the War Department the state militia were arranged in two divisions and eight brigades, and thousands of men would soon see battle. The war was necessary; at the same time Henofer did not quite understand its background; nor did he (and naturally Jedediah did not ask, being too courteous) intend to enlist. He was supplying hides to Alexander Macomb and doing quite well. Quite well. Did Jedediah know who Alexander Macomb was? Formerly a partner of John Jacob Astor who was worth (so rumor had it) $10,000,000; could Jedediah comprehend what $10,000,000 was? No? Yes? Of course Macomb was not as wealthy but he was a rich man and perhaps it would interest Jedediah to know that his father Jean-Pierre had had some dealings with Macomb not long ago. There was trouble of some kind: and one of Macomb’s trading posts, out near Kittery, had been burnt to the ground. “Lightning was the cause,” Henofer said, laughing, wiping his eyes. But then some months later the Innisfail Lodge, which Jean-Pierre had owned, was burnt to the ground as well. However . . . the Innisfail Lodge was said to have been substantially insured. But of course Jedediah knew nothing of such things . . . ?)

  So he chattered, pulling his filthy woollen cap down low on his forehead. He chewed tobacco and spat onto Jedediah’s hearth. Edgy, restless, he could hardly remain seated on the stump before the fire, but kept pulling at his cap and his beard, and looking around the cabin—staring and assessing and memorizing—in preparation for his report to the Bellefleurs down below. For of course he was a paid spy. And of course he knew that Jedediah must have known.

  Nevertheless Jedediah remained courteous, for God dwelled with him; or at any rate the promise, the hope, of God dwelled with him. He was a Christian man, humble and soft-spoken and willing to turn the other cheek if necessary. He could not be stirred to anger by Henofer’s slovenly presence, or even by the obscene anecdotes he rattled off (a half-breed Mohawk woman raped by a small gang of Bushkill’s Ferry men, out by the lumber mill, and turned loose in the snow, naked and bleeding and out of her mind: the Varrells had their fun there, Henofer said, wiping his eyes), or boisterous farfetched tales of the war, which were sometimes meant to inspire mirth and sometimes patriotism. In Sackett’s Harbor, it seemed, five British ships with eighty-two guns began an assault against the Oneida. . . . After two hours of firing it was found that most of the shots on both sides had fallen short. Finally a thirty-two-pound ball was fired by the British, and struck the earth harmlessly, ploughing a deep furrow; and a sergeant picked it up and ran to his captain saying, “I’ve been playing ball with the redcoats. See if the British can catch back again.” And the ball was fitted into the American cannon, and fired back at the enemy, with such force that it struck the stern of the flagship of the attacking squadron, raking her completely, and sending splinters high into the air. . . . Fourteen men were killed outright and eighteen were wounded. And so the enemy retreated while a band on shore played, “Yankee Doodle.” What, Henofer asked passionately, did Jedediah think of that?

  Henofer would not be seeing Jedediah again until the following April. Which was a very long time away. Yet it came quickly: all too quickly. And Henofer returned, cheerful and garrulous as always, with more war news to which Jedediah did not listen. Or perhaps it wasn’t the following April but the very next week. Or the previous April. At any rate there was his halloo in the clearing, and his grizzled pitted face with the gap-toothed grin. (No matter that he must have known Jedediah was sabotaging his traps—springing some, opening others to take away the dead or dying or grievously wounded creatures to throw them down into the oblivion of the river.) It might have been the previous April, the April before the pane of stained glass was brought to Jedediah.

  Time pleated and rippled. Since God dwelt above time, Jedediah took no heed of time. When he glanced back at his life—his life as Jedediah Amos Bellefleur—he saw how minute that life was, how quickly the mountains with their thousands of lakes swallowed it up.

  HENOFER DISAPPEARED, GRUMBLING at Jedediah’s silence. He took his revenge by lurking in the woods for days afterward, spying and taking notes. As a prank he left a wolf’s skull behind—hardly more than the jawbone, really—on Jedediah’s granite ledge, facing the Holy Mountain. Why he had done it Jedediah would never know.

  Perhaps God had used Henofer to send a message . . . ?

  Jedediah contemplated the thing, which was bleached white, and oddly beautiful. He saw himself snatch it up and throw it off the edge of the mountain—but, later in the day, it was on the stone hearth before his fireplace.

  Are you testing me? Jedediah whispered.

  Outside the cabin spirits hummed in their nervous high-pitched manner. Jedediah was able to ignore them, as he ignored the girl’s fingers poking and prodding inside his trousers.

  God? Are you testing me? Are you watching? he called aloud.

  The jaws, the clean white-bleached jaws. Ravenous appetite: God’s.

  Jedediah woke, startled. He had been dreaming of an angry man, a man shouting and waving his fists at God. But the man was himself: he had been shouting.

  To do penance he slept outside for several nights, naked, on the granite ledge. Beneath the freezing winking stars. He brought the jawbone with him because it was a sign, it had to do with his sinfulness, though he did not understand it. Why am I here, what have I done, how have I displeased You? he pleaded. But there was no reply. The jawbone was silent.

  Fateful Mismatches

  When snow fell from the cavernous sky in angry swirls day upon day, and the sun but feebly rose at midmorning, and the castle—the world itself—was locked in ice that would never melt, then the children slept two or three in a bed, swathed in layers of clothing, with long fluffy angora socks pulled up to their knees; then there were, throughout the day, cups of steaming hot chocolate with marshmallows that, half-melted, stuck wonderfully to the roof of the mouth; afternoons of sledding followed by long lazy hours before the fireplace, listening to stories. What is the curse on the family, one of the children might ask, not for the first time, and the answer might be—depending upon who was there—that there was no curse, such talk was silly; or it might be that the nature of the curse was such (perhaps the nature of all curses is such?) that those who are burdened with it cannot speak of it. Just so, uncle Hiram liked to say, sadly fondling the tips of his mustache (which smelled so strongly of wax!), just so do creatures in nature carry the distinguishing, and sometimes magnificently unique, marks of their species and their sex, without ever seeing them: they pass through their entire lives without seeing themselves.

  If uncle Hiram was morose and oblique, others—grandmother Cornelia, for instance, and aunt Aveline, and cousin Vernon, and sometimes even (when his breath smelled sweet with bourbon, and his poor misshapen foot ached so that, stretched out luxuriously before the huge fieldstone fireplace in t
he parlor, the second-warmest room in the house, he pulled off his shoe and massaged the foot and pushed it daringly close to the fire) grandfather Noel—were surprisingly generous with their words, and seemed to be drawn, perhaps by the high-leaping crackling flames of the birch logs, into disturbing labyrinthian tales the children perhaps should not have been told: wouldn’t have been told, surely, by daylight. But only if no other adult were present. Now don’t tell anyone about this, now this is a secret and not to be repeated—so the very best of the stories began.

  The stories, it seemed, always had to do with “fateful mismatches.” (This was the quaint term employed by the older women—they must have inherited from their mothers and grandmothers. But Yolande quite liked it. Fateful mismatches—! Do you think, when we grow up, she whispered to Christabel, giggling and shivering, do you think that might happen to us?) While most Bellefleur marriages were certainly excellent ones, and husband and wife supremely suited for each other, and no one would dare question their love, or the wisdom of their parents in consenting to the marriage, or, in many cases, arranging for it—still—still there were, from time to time, however infrequently, fateful mismatches.