Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  She had come, she was his! And the box she had promised was on her lap.

  Trembling with excitement he climbed inside and settled into place and fastened his seat belt. No parachute—no time for a parachute!—and of course she had not troubled with one either. He smiled at the control panel. He primed the engine and started it and listened carefully to hear how it sounded, and he watched the controls as the oil pressure came up, and all was well, all was as it should be. He released the brake. He began to move—it began to move—taxiing somewhat jerkily out along the runway. The engine grew ever louder and more powerful. Daddy, screamed the heartbroken little girl, why did you lie—! But the sound of the engine drowned her out as the air-speed needle leapt off its peg and started around the dial. The control wheel vibrated in his hands.

  Farewell to Tzara, who had, perhaps unwisely (for he had sensed from the first the melancholy drift of Gideon’s mind), taught Gideon to fly so well; farewell to the mortgaged airport which would soon be bankrupt and abandoned, its runway overgrown with weeds. Farewell to the twelve or fifteen brave little planes spaced about in the grass, awaiting their turns in the air; farewell to the frayed weathercock, and to those who witnessed the fighter’s takeoff into a glowering hazy-humid sky in which, at an altitude of less than 1,000 feet, the contours of the land would probably be lost. Farewell to the earth itself: Gideon’s pride was such that he hoped never to set foot upon it again.

  The runway flew beneath. The propeller’s blades disappeared in a blur of speed. The wind, the wind, suddenly the wind came alive, and beat against the plane, but Gideon held it steady and all was well. Sixty miles an hour, sixty-five. The wind wanted now to seize the plane beneath its wings and lift it into the air, perhaps to overturn it, but Gideon held it steady, and near the end of the runway he eased the wheel back and the nosewheel left the ground and they were in the air—they had left the ground, and were in the air—three inches, eight inches, a foot, two feet in the air—in the air and rising—rising—to clear that line of poplar trees—

  Now they were safe in the air, and rising steadily: climbing eight feet a second, ten feet a second: and Gideon’s hands instinctively maneuvered them through the bumps and pockets of air. The great ocean was invisible, but it was quite solid. One must be extremely skillful to manage it. Three hundred feet, three hundred seventy-five, and climbing, climbing steadily, at six hundred feet he banked to the right, at eight hundred he began a long sweeping climb out and away from the airport, turning toward the south.

  All was well: within a half-hour the ordeal would be completed.

  He climbed to 2,500 feet, then to 3,000 feet. The ground was invisible. The heat-haze lay everywhere, thinning out only as the plane rose. And then over Lake Noir, over the cooler air of Lake Noir. The noisy plane plunged through shreds of cloud and opened suddenly into patches of clear blazing sunshine and then reentered the clouds again, at 3,500 feet. Gideon felt in the engine’s throb and in the fine vibration of the wheel that all was well.

  Stray blasts of wind. Voices, faces. Some tore at the windshield as if wishing to open it and pull him out to his death. But of course their frantic fingers were powerless: he was in the cockpit, and in control. Others drifted alongside the plane, clutching playfully at the wings, their long hair streaming. Gideon! Gideon! Old Skin and Bones!

  He did no more than glance at them, amused. He wondered what she thought of them.

  An uneventful and fairly smooth passage across the lake, despite its legendary dangers. (Its waters were so cold near the center, pilots said, that planes were tugged downward—tugged downward as if someone were pulling at them. But not Gideon, not today.) Thirty-five minutes from the Invemere airport, on a southwesterly slant across the lake, flying at a moderate speed, for of course there was no hurry: and then they broke through the heat-haze and saw the immense stone castle, glowing a queer pink-gray, a contorted and unnatural sight rising out of the green land.

  How oddly it had been constructed, Bellefleur Manor, with its innumerable walls and towers and turrets and minarets, like a castle composed in a feverish sleep, when the imagination leapt over itself, mad to outdo itself, growing ever more frantic and greedy. . . . Gideon had of course seen it from the air in the past; he had spied upon the place of his birth, the place of his ancestors, many times; but on this warmly glowering August day he seemed to see it for the first time, as the destiny to which he had been drawn all his life, as the roaring plane was drawn, descending now from 4,000 feet and beginning to bank, to circle, deftly, shrewdly, with infinite patience (for hadn’t he, really, forever?—forever in which to calibrate his own doom, and his release?), now only minutes from the explosion and the conflagration.

  In the whitely-hazy August sunshine the castle took on a variety of seductive colors: dove-gray, an ethereal feathery pink, a faint luminous green shading into mauve shading once again into gray. Yet it was stone: a place of massive stone: and he saw that it was his destiny, just as this moment, this last long dive, was his destiny, which he would not have wished to deny. He was Gideon Bellefleur, after all. He had been born for this.

  Behind the amber goggles his gaze was unwavering.

  Here. Now. At last.

  And so—

  The Angel

  One spring day there came to Jedediah a young man with straight, lank white-blond hair and Indian features—a curious combination indeed—who introduced himself, stuttering slightly, as “Charles Xavier’s brother.” When Jedediah told him that he had no knowledge of “Charles Xavier” the young man looked confused, smiled, squatted on his heels in the dirt, and appeared to be thinking; for some minutes he said nothing, making marks with both forefingers in the soft, pliant earth; then he gazed up at Jedediah with his pale stone-colored eyes and said again, softly, that he was “Charles Xavier’s brother” come to bring Jedediah back with him.

  Back? Back where?

  Home, said the young man, smiling faintly.

  But my home is here, Jedediah said.

  Home. Down below.

  With my family, you mean—! Jedediah said contemptuously.

  The young half-breed shook his head slowly, and gazed upon Jedediah with a look of pity. You have no family, he said.

  No family?

  No family. Your brothers are dead, your father is dead, your nephews and your niece are dead: you have no family.

  Jedediah stared at him. He had been clearing underbrush all that morning, working shirtless in the May sun, and the exertion, though satisfying to his body, nevertheless made his head ring; he could not be certain he had heard correctly.

  No family—? The Bellefleurs—?

  Dead. Murdered. And your brother Harlan came to revenge them, and was shot down at their grave, where he’d gone to mourn them—he was shot down rushing at the sheriff, which is the way he must have wanted to die.

  Harlan? Revenge? I don’t understand, Jedediah said faintly.

  The young man pulled something out of his vest—a soiled gentleman’s glove, lemon-yellow. He held it reverently, and explained that it was Harlan’s glove: after Harlan had been carried away he’d found it by one of the muddy graves. Did Jedediah want it? Everything else had been confiscated—you would have thought Harlan’s possessions might have been given to Germaine, but they were confiscated: the handsome black hat, the Mexican boots, the silver-handled pistol, the magnificent Peruvian mare with the long, long mane and tail and the hooves (so everyone said, and Charles Xavier’s brother had seen for himself) that glittered like quartz or rock crystal. Everything confiscated! Stolen! And the widow bereft! Of course she had the satisfaction of knowing that four of the murderers had been shot down by Harlan. . . .

  I don’t understand, Jedediah said. His knees buckled; he sat heavily on the ground. I . . . You are telling me . . . My family has been murdered . . . ? My father, my brother . . .

  Your father and your brother Louis and your nephews and your fifteen-year-old niece, the young man said in a soft incantatory voi
ce, and now your brother Harlan. Four of the murderers were shot down, as they deserved to be, by your brother Harlan; but the others remain living. Everyone in the community knows who they are. I will tell you their names when it is time for you to act.

  Jedediah buried his face in his hands. My father, my brother, he whispered, my brothers, my nephews and my niece and . . .

  No, said the young man gently, they didn’t kill your brother’s wife. She survives, a most unhappy woman. Of course you know her well. And she knows you: she awaits you.

  Jedediah had begun to weep. My father, my brothers . . . Will I never see them again . . . !

  You will never see them again, the young man said.

  Dead? Murdered?

  It was your choice, Jedediah, to escape them, and to live on Mount Blanc for twenty years; it was not God’s will but your own.

  Twenty years! Jedediah said. He lowered his hands to stare at the young man. But I haven’t been gone twenty years.

  Twenty years. It is now 1826. It is the year of Our Lord 1826.

  The date meant nothing to Jedediah, who continued to stare at the young man’s pale hard rather insolent eyes. What are you telling me! he whispered. What lies! You have come here to—to—

  He looked about wildly. Had he no weapon? Only the ax, dropped a short distance away; and a hand saw with a rusted blade. And perhaps the sinister young Indian was armed—

  Your sister-in-law Germaine awaits you, the young man said evenly, watching Jedediah with the same pitying expression. You must return and marry her: you must continue the Bellefleur line: and you must exact revenge on your enemies.

  Germaine—? Marry—? I—I—

  She has not sent me here, no one has sent me here, the young man said, holding the soiled yellow glove out to Jedediah, who was too confused to take it. I act out of a deep love and respect for your family, because I am Charles Xavier’s only surviving brother.

  Germaine—? She is waiting—? For me? But there is Louis—

  Louis is dead. Murdered before the poor woman’s eyes, along with his father and his children. And his father’s mistress as well—but of that you needn’t know, at this time.

  I am to return and marry her, and continue the family line, and—

  And to exact revenge upon your enemies.

  Revenge? But how do you mean—

  Revenge. Of the sort your brother Harlan exacted. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. As it is written.

  But I don’t believe in such things, Jedediah whispered. I don’t believe in bloodshed.

  In what, then, asked the young man, with a subtly ironic curve of his lips, do you believe?

  I believe in—I believe—I believe in this mountain, Jedediah said, and in myself, my body—my blood and bones and flesh—I believe in the work I do, in this field I’ve been clearing— In the wild geese that are flying overhead at this very moment: do you hear them?

  You believe in nothing, the young man said flatly. You live on your mountain in your selfish solitude and you believe in nothing, and the nothing in which you believe makes you perfectly happy.

  Jedediah pulled at his beard, staring at the young man’s harsh Indian features. But I did once believe—I did once believe in God, like everyone else, he said, uncertainly, I did believe, once, but it passed away from me—I was purged of my madness—and—and then—

  And then you believed in nothing, and you believe in nothing now, said the young man, except your mountain; and, of course, your perfect happiness.

  Is it wrong, then, to be happy, Jedediah whispered.

  For twenty years you have hidden on your mountain, the young man said, again holding the glove out to Jedediah, pretending that God had called you here. For twenty years you have wallowed in the most selfish sin.

  But I don’t believe in sin! Jedediah cried. I have been purged of that—of all of that—

  And now your sister-in-law awaits you. Down below. The same woman—almost the same woman—whom you fled twenty years ago.

  She awaits me—? Germaine—? Jedediah said doubtfully.

  Germaine. None other. Germaine whom you love, and must marry, as quickly as possible.

  Marry—?

  As quickly as possible.

  But my brother—

  Louis is dead.

  The children, the babies—

  They are dead.

  But there is no God, Jedediah said wildly, and no one can deceive me: I know what I know.

  You know only what you know.

  But they’re dead? And Harlan too?

  Harlan too.

  Harlan came back for revenge, and—?

  He killed four of the murderers, and was shot down himself. He acted with great courage.

  But the family is all dead, even my father—?

  All dead. Murdered in their sleep. Murdered by people who want the Bellefleur line to become extinct.

  Ah—extinct! Jedediah whispered.

  Extinct. An ugly word, isn’t it?

  And only Germaine survived?

  Only Germaine. And you.

  Only Germaine, Jedediah whispered, seeing again the sixteen-year-old’s rosy face, the dark bright eyes, the mole beside the—was it the left eye?—the left eye. Only Germaine, he said, and me.

  The young half-breed straightened, rising above Jedediah, who was too weak to stand. He held out the glove to Jedediah a third time, and now, gropingly, as if he were only barely conscious of what he did, Jedediah accepted it from him.

  Only Germaine, he repeated, blinking at the glove. And me.

  How vividly he saw the girl’s pretty little face, so darkly-bright, and her eyes so lovely! Twenty years were as nothing: he had not been gone twenty years. He looked up at the strange young man, with those harsh Indian features and that lank blond hair that fell to his shoulders, and that queer intimate stare that would, in another time, have maddened him to fury (for of course Jedediah would have believed the stranger was a devil, or at the very least one of the deceitful mountain spirits) and perhaps even to violence: but now, this morning, he did not know, he simply did not know, and wanted to weep with the sorrow of his own ignorance.

  Well—she awaits you. Down below. And the others—the murderers—they await you too, the young man said.

  He was preparing to walk away.

  Jedediah scrambled to his feet, panting. But I—I—I don’t believe in the shedding of blood—

  Do you believe, then, at least, said the young man impatiently, in marriage?—in children? In your Bellefleur blood?

  He was backing away. His expression was no longer pitying; Jedediah thought instead that it showed anger, a half-amused anger; but he was backing away, he was preparing to leave, and Jedediah was too weak to pursue him.

  I—I—I don’t know what I believe, Jedediah sobbed. I wanted only happiness—solitude—my own soul uncontaminated—

  The young man made a dismissive gesture, whether of resignation or disgust Jedediah could not tell. Jedediah had fallen back onto his haunches again, his head ringing, his vision splotched, as if he were about to collapse from heat exhaustion. But he hadn’t been working in the sun that long, he was certain he hadn’t been working more than an hour or two. . . .

  When Jedediah’s belief in God had been purged from him the previous year his belief in spirits and devils had been purged as well, and since that day he no longer feared visitors: there had been times, surprising times, when Jedediah had actually welcomed visitors to his cabin: but perhaps, he now thought, burying his overheated face in his hands, he had been mistaken. This insolent stranger had brought him such ugly news. . . .

  I don’t know, he whispered, I don’t know what I believe—I wanted only solitude, and—

  The young girl’s face arose again in his mind’s eye, and he saw that she was smiling shyly; she held an infant to her breast, she was nursing an infant so very small, it must have been less than a month old! He stared, astonished. Whose infant was it? Twenty years were as nothing: surely th
e half-breed had been mistaken, had miscalculated: Jedediah had not been parted from Germaine for twenty years.

  The young Indian had gone. Jedediah was alone in the half-acre of stumps and underbrush, sitting on the damp ground. It was unwise to sit like this but he felt too weak, too confused, to stand. And what was this he held, clutched in his trembling fingers—a gentleman’s finely-stitched glove, a most impractical lemon-yellow, made of dyed suede cloth now badly soiled?

  He stared at it. Harlan’s glove. So the young man had said. But perhaps he lied? Perhaps he lied about Germaine as well? But here was the glove: here was the glove: it was incontestably real, as real as Mount Blanc itself.

  His father—dead?

  His brother, his nephews and niece?

  And Germaine waiting for him?

  And the burden of revenge?

  I don’t know what to believe, Jedediah cried aloud, clutching the glove in his hand.

  Afterword

  The “key” to most works of fiction is a voice, a rhythm, a unique music; a precise way of seeing and hearing that will give the writer access to the world he is trying to create. (Yet this world is sometimes so real in the imagination that its construction, in terms of formal art, seems rather like a re-creation, a re-construction.) Sometimes one must wait a long time for this key to present itself—sometimes it comes rather quickly. In the case of Bellefleur I waited several years.

  The entire novel grew out of a haunting image: there was a walled garden, luxurious but beginning to grow shabby; overgrown, “old,” yet still possessing an extraordinary beauty. In this mysterious garden the baby Germaine was to be rocked in her regal cradle; and a less fortunate baby was to be carried off by an immense white bird of prey. My vision gave me the Bellefleur garden with an intimidating clarity, yet I could gain entry to it only by imagining all that surrounded it—the castle, the grounds, the waters of Lake Noir, the Chautauqua region, the State itself with its turbulent history, and the Nation with its still more turbulent history. In the foreground the Bellefleur family emerged as prismatic lenses by which the outer world is seen—an “outer” world abbreviated and in some cases mocked by the Bellefleurs’ ambition for empire and wealth. It had always interested me that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America wealthy men were eager to establish themselves as “nobility” of a sort by reconstructing immense castles, and in many cases importing great sections of European castles for this purpose. (A castle, after all, is a castellated structure—that is, it is fortified for war.) The American castles were fascinating in themselves (the most notorious being of course Hearst’s San Simeon) and in what they symbolize. Naturally the walled garden was a garden attached to a castle—though the Bellefleurs, with an air of unconvincing modesty, preferred to speak of their home as Bellefleur Manor.