Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Veronica tearfully agreed; yet, once in Norst’s presence, she forgot everything. He was so manly. He could entertain her for hours with Swedish folksongs played on a curious little instrument that resembled a zither, and produced a keening and yet lulling, almost soporific, sound, a “music” so intimate that it played along her nerves and pulses, and left her quite drained. He told her of his many travels—to Patagonia, to the African interior, to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Jordan, India, New Guinea, Styria, the land of Ganz—and began to intimate, more and more explicitly, that she would soon accompany him, if she wished. And then he addressed her as no other man had ever addressed her, seizing her limp hand and raising it to his lips, kissing it passionately: murmuring shamelessly of “love” and “kindred souls” and “mutual destiny” and the need for lovers to “surrender” themselves completely to one another. He called her “dearest,” “my dear Veronica,” “my dear beautiful Veronica,” and did not seem to notice her discomfort; he spoke in a tremulous voice of “rapture” and “passion”—that “unexplored country” which a “virgin like yourself” must one day traverse, but only in the company of a lover who had opened himself completely to her. There must be, he cautioned, no secrets between lovers—absolutely no corners or recesses of the soul kept in darkness—otherwise the raptures of love will be merely physical, and short-lived, and if the lovers die into each other they will die literally, and not be resurrected—did she understand? Ah, it was imperative that she understand! And he embraced her, fairly shuddering with emotion; and poor Veronica nearly fainted. (For no man had ever spoken to her like this, nor had anyone so abruptly, and so passionately, taken her in his arms.)

  “But you shouldn’t! That isn’t nice! Oh—that isn’t nice!” Veronica gasped. And, like a frightened child, she burst into peals of laughter. “That isn’t—nice—”

  That night she retired early, her head reeling as if she had drunk too much wine, and she was hardly conscious of pulling the bedcovers up before she slipped—sank—was pulled into—sleep. And in the morning she found the heart-shaped bloodstone on the pillow beside her!—simply lying on the pillow beside her. (She knew at once, of course, that it was a gift of Norst’s, for two or three days earlier, as they dined in the Avernus Inn overlooking the magnificent lake, she had made a fuss over his cuff links—she’d never seen so richly dark a stone before, and found its scintillating depths quite fascinating. The family jewels she had inherited—a single sapphire, some modest-carated diamonds, a handful of opals, garnets, pearls—struck her suddenly as uninteresting. Norst’s bloodstone cuff links might very well be, as he insisted gaily, inexpensive, even commonplace, but they exerted a fascination upon Veronica, who found it difficult to take her eyes off them during the meal.) And now—what a surprise! For several minutes she lay without moving, staring at the large stone, which was both green and red, and layered with darkness: could such a beautiful object be, indeed, commonplace?

  He had gotten Veronica’s maid to tiptoe into her room and lay the stone beside her, of course, and though the girl denied it—for her mistress was not so flummoxed by passion as to fail to wonder at the propriety of Norst’s tipping (or bribing) a domestic servant—Veronica knew that this was the case: an audacious gesture, of which her family would angrily disapprove, but one which (ah, she couldn’t help herself) quite charmed her.

  She slipped the bloodstone on a gold chain, and wore it about her neck that very day.

  THE MORE FREQUENTLY Veronica saw Ragnar Norst, the less she felt she knew of him; it frightened her, and excited her, to realize that she would never know him at all. For one thing, his moods were so capricious. . . . He could start off on a walk with her in excellent high spirits, obviously filled to the brim with energy; fifteen minutes later he would be suddenly weary, and ask if Veronica wouldn’t mind sitting on a bench for a while, and simply gazing, without speaking, at the landscape. Or perhaps he was sweetly melancholy, and kept staring mournfully into her eyes, as if he were yearning, starving, for something, for her . . . and then again, a few minutes later, he would be telling one of his lengthy, convoluted folktales, set in Sweden or Denmark or Norway, punctuated with bursts of laughter (for some of the tales, though sanctified by tradition, struck the blushing young woman as distinctly ribald—not really suited for her ears). He was at all times unusually perceptive, however: she felt that he was seeing and hearing and thinking with an almost preternatural clarity. At one unfortunate luncheon, high on the terrace in the walled garden, Veronica’s brother Aaron—a 230-pounder with an exaggerated sense of his own powers of ratiocination, far more suited for hunting than for civilized discourse—began to interrogate Norst almost rudely about his background (“Ah, you claim there is Persian blood on your mother’s side of the family?—indeed? And on your father’s side, what sort of blood, do you think—?”), and it was quite remarkable to witness Norst’s transformation: he seemed immediately to sense that a direct confrontation with this brute would be not only disastrous, but distasteful, and so he replied to Aaron’s questions in a courteous, even humble manner, readily admitting when necessary that he couldn’t altogether explain certain . . . certain discrepancies . . . no, he regretted that he couldn’t account for . . . not altogether . . . not at the present time. Veronica had never witnessed a performance of such exquisite subtlety and tact; she gazed upon him adoringly, and did not even trouble to be angry with her boorish brother (he was five years her senior, and imagined that he knew more than she, and that a great deal of what he knew had to do with her), even though his questioning had brought droplets of perspiration to Norst’s forehead.

  And then, afterward, it struck her—Persian blood! But how marvelous! How enchanting! Persian blood: which accounted for his swarthy skin and his dark mesmerizing eyes. Little as she knew about Swedes she knew even less about Persians and found the combination totally enchanting. . . .

  “That ‘Count’ is an impostor,” Aaron said. “He doesn’t even trouble himself to lie intelligently to us.”

  “Oh, what do you know!” Veronica laughed, waving him away. “You don’t know Ragnar at all.”

  (Later it was revealed that Aaron had spoken with Senator Payne, and with two or three acquaintances in Washington, to see if Norst’s visa couldn’t be canceled—if Norst couldn’t be, with a minimum of legal squabbling, simply deported back to Europe. But he must have had friends in high positions, or at any rate friends whose authority was greater than that of Aaron’s contacts, for nothing came of the move; and when Ragnar Norst returned to Europe he did so solely at his own wish.)

  And so Veronica Bellefleur fell in love with the mysterious Ragnar Norst, though she was not conscious of “falling in love” but only of becoming more and more obsessed with him—with the thought, the aura, of him, which pursued her in the unlikeliest of places, and was liable to call forth a blush to her cheeks at the least appropriate of times. Even before her illness she was susceptible to odd lethargic reveries during which his image haunted her; she would give her head a shake, as if to cast herself free of his spell. A warm lulling erotic daze overcame her. She sighed often, and her words trailed off into silence, quite maddening Aaron, who knew, no matter how she denied it, that she was in love with the count. “But that man is an impostor,” Aaron said angrily. “Just as I’m sure that stone of yours, if you allowed me to have it examined, would prove to be a fake—!”

  “You don’t know Ragnar in the slightest,” Veronica said, shivering.

  Yet she herself was often disturbed by him. He insisted they meet in the evening, in clandestine places (in the boathouse; beside Bloody Run; at the very rear of the walled garden, where there was a little grove of evergreens in which, by day, the children sometimes played) no matter how such situations compromised her; he insisted upon speaking “frankly” no matter how his words distressed her. Once he seized both her hands in his and murmured in a voice that shook with emotion, “Someday, my dearest Veronica, this masquerade will end—someday you will be mine�
��my most precious possession—and I will be yours—and you will know then the reality of—of—of the passion which nearly suffocates me—” And indeed his breath became so labored it was nearly a sob, and his eyes glowed with an unspeakable lust, and after a terrible moment during which he stared into her eyes almost angrily he turned aside, throwing himself back against a railing, his arm upraised as if to shield himself from the sight of her. His chest rose and fell so violently that Veronica wondered for a terrible moment if he were having a seizure of some kind.

  For several minutes afterward Norst remained leaning against the railing, his heavy-lidded eyes closed, as if he were suddenly drained of all strength. And afterward, escorting her back to the manor house, he said very little, and walked feebly, like an aged man; in parting he did no more than murmur a gentle, melancholy goodbye, and failed even to lift his gaze to hers. “But Ragnar,” Veronica asked, bold with desperation, “are you angry with me?—why have you turned away from me?” Still he did not look her in the face. He sighed, and said in a weary voice, “My dear, perhaps it would be for the best—for you, I am thinking only of you—if we never met again.”

  That night she dreamt of him once again, far more vividly: she saw him more vividly, it seemed, than she had seen him in the flesh. He seized both her hands and squeezed them so hard she cried out in pain and surprise, and then he pulled her to him, to his breast, and closed her in his strong arms. She would have fainted, she would have fallen, had he not held her so tight. . . . He kissed her full on the lips, and then buried his face in her neck, and then, while the swooning girl tried with feeble hands to prevent him, he tore open her bodice and began to kiss her breasts, all the while holding her still, and murmuring lulling commanding words of love. It excited him all the more, that she was wearing the bloodstone around her neck (for indeed Veronica was wearing it in bed, beneath her nightgown). You must stop, Ragnar, she whispered, her face crimson with shame, you must stop, you must stop—

  By day she only half-recalled her tempestuous dreams, though she was still under their spell. Strange emotions washed over her, and left her so drained of energy that her mother asked more than once if she were ill: she was by turns fearful, and disgusted, and wildly exhilarated, and ashamed, and defiant, and impatient (for when, when, would he see her again?—he’d left word with a servant that the embassy in Washington had called him), and delighted as a child (for she was certain he would see her again). Sometimes she ate ravenously, but most of the time she had no appetite at all—she simply sat at the dining room table, oblivious of the others, staring into space, sighing, her head aswim with languorous wraithlike images of her lover.

  You must stop, Ragnar, a voice rose shrilly, you must, you must, you must stop before it’s too late. . . .

  AND THEN A tragic accident befell poor Aaron, and it was Ragnar Norst himself who comforted the stricken young woman.

  Unwisely, against his father’s reiterated wishes, Aaron went out hunting alone in the woods above Bloody Run, accompanied only by one of his dogs. While crossing a white-water stream he evidently lost his footing, fell, and was carried hundreds of yards downstream, over a seven-foot falls, to his death in a swirling shallow rapids in which rocks and logs lay in manic profusion. The poor young man’s throat was slashed by a protruding branch, and it was estimated that he must have bled to death, mercifully, in a matter of minutes. By the time the search party discovered him (he had been missing then two days) his body, so large, once so intimidating, was bled white, trapped in a tight little cove of froth-covered rocks and logs.

  (Neither the dog nor the shotgun was ever recovered, which added to the mystery of the death.)

  The stricken Veronica wept and wept, as much for the senselessness of Aaron’s death as for the death itself: for to her there was no mystery, there was only the fact that she would never see Aaron again, never exchange words with him again. . . . No matter how they had quarreled they had loved each other very much.

  How ugly that death was, and how pointless! If the headstrong young man had only listened to his father’s words . . . No, Veronica could not bear it; she would not bear it. She wept for days on end and would allow no one to comfort her.

  Until Ragnar Norst returned.

  One morning he drove up the graveled lane in the stately black car (whose engine was overheated), and insisted that he be allowed to see Miss Veronica: for he had learned, in Washington, of Aaron’s death, and he knew at once that Veronica must be comforted if she was to survive the crisis. She was so exquisite, so sensitive, the horror of a brute accidental death might undermine her health. . . .

  The very sight of Norst enlivened her. But she took care, being a discreet young woman, to hide her feelings; and, indeed, a moment later, the memory of her brother’s death swept over her once again, and she succumbed to a fresh attack of weeping. So Norst took her aside, and walked with her along the lake, at first saying nothing at all, and even urging her to cry; and then, when it seemed to him that she was somewhat stronger, he began to query her about death. About, that is, her fear of death.

  Was it death itself that terrified her . . . or the accidental nature of that particular death? Was it death that so alarmed, or the fact that she would not (or so she assumed) ever see her brother again?

  Above the choppy dark waters of Lake Noir they paused, to listen to waves lapping against the shore. It was nearly sundown. Veronica shuddered, for a faint chill breeze had arisen, and quite naturally, quite gracefully, Norst slipped his arm about her shoulders. He was breathing heavily. He gave off an air of excitement and exhilaration. But his voice was steady, steady and restrained, and Veronica gave no indication that she was aware of his emotion; indeed, she kept her gaze shyly averted. She wondered only if he was aware of the bloodstone she wore, hidden inside her shirtwaist. But of course he could hardly be aware of it . . . he could hardly know, under the circumstances. . . .

  His arm tightened about her slender shoulders and he brought his mouth close to her ear. In a gentle, trembling voice he began to speak of death: death and love: death and love and lovers: and how, by the sacrament of death, lovers are united, and their profane love redeemed. Veronica’s heart beat so powerfully she could barely concentrate on his words. She was aware of his nearness, his almost overwhelming nearness; she was terrified that he would kiss her, as he had in her dreams, and abuse her, ignoring her astonished cries. . . . “Veronica, my dearest,” he said, cupping her chin in his hand, turning her face so that he might look into her eyes, “you must know that lovers who die together transcend the physical nature of the human condition . . . the tedious physical nature of the human condition. . . . You must know that a pure spiritual love redeems the grossness of the flesh. . . . So long as I am beside you, to guide you, to protect you, there is nothing to fear . . . nothing, nothing to fear . . . in this world or the next. I would never allow you to suffer, my dear girl, do you understand? . . . do you trust me?”

  Her eyelids were suddenly heavy; she was nearly overcome by a sense of lassitude, vaguely erotic, that very much resembled the lassitude of her most secret dreams. Norst’s voice was gentle, soothing, rhythmic as the waves of Lake Noir, beating against her, washing over her. . . . Ah, she could not have protested had he attempted to kiss her!

  But he was speaking, still, of love. Of lovers who would “eagerly” die for each other. “I for you, my dear sweet girl, and you for me—if you love me—and by that we are redeemed. It is so simple, and yet so profound! Do you see? Do you understand? Your brother’s death offended you because it was an animal’s death—brute, senseless, accidental, unshared—and with your sensitivity you crave meaning, and beauty, and a spiritual transcendence. You crave redemption, as I do. For by death in one another’s arms, my love, we are redeemed . . . and all else is unadorned unimagined folly, from which you are perfectly justified to turn aside in horror. Do you understand, my love? Ah, but you will!—you will. Only have faith in me, my dearest Veronica.”

  Faintly
she murmured that she did not understand. And she felt so suddenly exhausted, she must lay her head against his shoulder.

  “Life and death both, if unadorned by love,” Norst continued, in a rapid, low, excited voice, “are ignominious . . . mere folly . . . mere accident. They are indistinguishable when not enhanced by passion. For ordinary people, as you must have seen by now, are little more than aphids . . . rats . . . brute unthinking animals . . . quite beneath our contempt, really . . . unless of course they frustrate us . . . in which case they must be taken into account . . . taken into account and dealt with . . . ugly as that might seem. Do you see, my dear? Yes? No? You must trust me, and all will become clear. You must have faith in me, Veronica, for you know, don’t you, that I love you, and that I have sworn to have you . . . from a time long past . . . a time you cannot remember and I, I can but dimly recall. . . . As for ordinary people, my dear, you must give them no thought . . . you will one day learn to deal with them as I do, only out of necessity . . . I will guide you, I will protect you, if only you will have faith. . . . And you must not fear death, for the death of lovers, dying into love, being born again through love, has nothing of the crudity of ordinary death about it: do you understand?”