by Robert Stone
The Germans were lumpy-faced and broad-shouldered, clear-eyed and scrubbed. Their young folk were freckled and fair, possessed, it seemed, of a radiant innocence.
Across the church, he saw a man named Harold Lawlor, who with his wife, Frances, constituted the dynamic of the local anti-abortion struggle. Michael put his glasses on and assumed an easy stance from which he thought he might observe Mr. Lawlor at his Sabbath devotions, telling his beads, eyes raised in the Maiden's Prayer.
Lawlor's elderly cousin, a man named Brennan, had shot a priest in South Dakota—crippled him for life—for permitting a twelve-year-old girl to assist at Mass. Brennan had insisted on altar boys; it was said he had spent the day of the shooting stalking the twelve-year-old, whose young life was preserved from his nine-millimeter bullet by chance. The plea had been Alzheimer's. Brennan was eighty and had died the same year. A martyr.
Watching Mr. Lawlor's watery blue eyes fixed on the numinous, Michael gave way to a spasm of rage; his jaw trembled. His fists contracted to claws. He had to remind himself that this man was not the shooter. As Michael watched, he completed the last decade of his rosary. Oh, the sorrowful mysteries! thought Michael. Lawlor crossed himself with the chaplet's crucifix, kissed it and fixed his rheumy gaze once more on unending bliss.
The celebrant priest, short, square Father Schlesinger, read scripture.
"I will go to the altar of God," he declared. And the pale, buzz-cut server, kneeling with the soles of his Reeboks toward the congregation, replied, "To God who giveth joy to my youth."
Beside Michael, Paul was praying. Decently, head down, following the order in his missal. The storms of impending adolescence had for the moment subsided. From the look of him, Michael thought, he was making contact. Casting the line up there, bending the reverent eye on vacancy, discoursing with the idle air. He saw the boy clasp his hands to his chest the way he had as a small child, and indeed, as far as Michael could tell, took hold of something and hugged it to his heart. Acknowledged and confessed it, rejoiced and partook. Outside, spring birds that should not have been present at that latitude warbled and trilled.
On his left sat Kristin; Michael saw that she too was watching Paul as he prayed. They could not take their eyes away. Their son was alive, the guest, like everyone, of random singularity. Random singularity, a mere machine, required no sacrifice. Yet around them secrets ascended with the incense and song. The farmers and clerks and cops, the professors, the young women on their own, all of them fought to merge their desperate inner lives with the peace that, it was written, passed understanding.
Finally Michael stood at the point of trembling, burning with shame and self-despising rage. The church that taught humiliation as a blessing was providing him all the humiliation he could bear. He regretted ever having led his son into its fragrant candle lighted rooms. He thought of Kristin in the hospital, leaning on the God she had conceived, imploring the mercy of dreams. He wanted to be out of there. Once, his mind wandered from a fit of anger and he imagined that there was a tiny old lady beside him, a doll-like creature with a death's-head smile. Marinette. She smelled of sachet. One of those waking dreams in the empty space he had come to church to contemplate.
Driving back, the best he could do by way of Sunday meditation was the picture of Lara among coral arches, her long body gliding past luminous tendrils or against the silky surface.
They went home to the ancient hum of after church. Pancakes for the young communicant. Ice water and the Knicks-Heat game for himself. Kristin took off her church clothes and put on a pair of tight jeans that caught his attention. He stood at the front window ignoring the basketball game, watching her rake winterkills in the yard. Those warm curves at the hip and the choice ones at the seat. The center seam taut, deep in. It was strange, ever since Lara had come into his life he had been in a state of sexual tension that focused itself equally on the two women. He was in different ways besotted with both of them. The high-pitched ache of desire was always one sensation away.
When she came in he thought she must know the way he had been watching her. All she said was, "What was the date of that dive charter?"
"Twenty-fourth. Easter."
"I guess it'll be nice there."
"Want to come?" He wondered if he had not hesitated too long on the false question.
"Shall I?"
"Sure," he said, "if you want."
"Yeah?"
So he wondered: What are we playing here?
"I just know," she told him, "you'll have a better time without me."
It was not quite what he had wanted to hear.
10
IN SAN JUAN, Lara played number 18 with five-dollar chips, covering it from every possible angle: corners, lines, neighboring digits, plus red, middle twelve and even. After four spins of the wheel it connected. She followed that by betting thirty-six covered and won.
The jolly croupier congratulated them. Michael saw her wink and slide him a fifty-dollar chip.
"Come on," she said. "I'm buying."
The service to St. Trinity had been suspended before they landed in Puerto Rico. There were difficulties subsequent to the election there, and the army had divided against itself. The airline treated them to a night at an Isla Verde hotel. From their room sixteen floors above the beach, they could hear the breakers but Lara was eager to hit the tables.
Nice-looking Puerto Rican teenagers in evening dress rushed breathlessly through the corridors, outrunning their families, who were talking over each other in a doubling of languages. After Lara's win, they found a bar that overlooked the rocks at the edge of the beach. It had tables set in a grotto surrounded by bird of paradise plants and traveler's palms. The place seemed agreeably cheerful, as though all intrigues were for fun and jungles were places for sipping cool drinks under the tropical moon. There was one of those as well, almost full, silvering the reef. The lights of San Juan made it look like a city without a care.
She raised a glass. "The founder of the feast, his memory."
Michael drank carefully.
"You're not to think I'm callous, Michael. Or that I didn't love my brother. I've told you I mourned him."
"I wasn't sure you meant John-Paul. I thought it might be some gnome in Washington."
She only looked at him, not answering. He took a lighted candle from another table so that they might have more light.
She was on the phone in English, French, Creole, getting tickets out of San Juan; she did it all with the fortunate smile that won at roulette. "Let's go back to our room," she said, "where I can really get on the phone."
When she was on the bed, between desperate phone calls, he lay down beside her. "Is there something more you should tell me about our trip?"
"Like what?" she asked him. After a while she said, "Where to begin?"
"Maybe begin where the papers leave off," he suggested. He had been following the story, though she never spoke of it. His strategy had been not to mention anything out of St. Trinity until she did. The stories in the Miami Herald that morning described burning roadblocks and lawlessness. He put his glass down and stared at the ocean.
"Don't look so worried, Michael. Everything will be with us. I do love you, you know. That's why I asked you to come."
"I came because I wanted to be with you, Lara. I could go back tonight if I wanted to." In fact he wanted to share a taste of danger with her. To descend as far, to take as much of her as he could survive, and risk even more.
"Are you mine in the ranks of death?" she asked, laughing.
She wrapped her leg around and under his. He moved close and put his hand against her, against the wet silk and strands of hair.
"You see," she said, "it isn't a question of life and death. I don't believe that. I'm not really asking for protection. Just the company of someone I've come to care for."
Her tone seemed to have changed ever so slightly since he had first questioned her.
"Whatever you need," he said, "whatever I can giv
e you..."
"I've told you we're selling the hotel, right?"
"I assume the hotel was funded in some way," Michael said. "To political purpose."
"Yes, and now I'm trying to collect my very small share. After the service, after our goodbyes sort of, we're dividing who gets what. I can take care of all that. I just didn't want to be on the island completely alone."
"You said you had an American passport?"
"Yes, I have American nationality through my mother. My father's family owned the hotel since it was a sugar mill. Since there were slaves. Like a lot of people on the island, my father's family came originally from Haiti in the nineteenth century. They brought slaves with them."
"But they were white?"
She smiled and shrugged.
"On St. Trinity, Purcell is an important name. But on the highest levels of colonial society"—she shook her head in mock sadness—"not tiptop. And a lot of the old colonials would tell you: Purcells? Wonderful people. South part of the island. From Haiti, you see. Touched here and there. French. Creole, see?"
Michael nodded.
"All I can tell you," she said, "is my granny was never asked to leave a Pullman car in the southern United States." He looked at her solemnly. "Damn, Michael," she said, "John-Paul used to get a laugh with that."
She told him that she expected no trouble but that she would be carrying valuables home, and the political situation there was extremely volatile. Everyone who read the papers knew that.
"Also, my brother and his partner were in business with some people in South America and I don't know how hard they want to contest the final count. I'm not expecting violence or anything. I don't want to be unaccompanied."
He thought back to the tropical gargoyle guarding her on the Internet.
"We'll be arriving separately," she told him. "So there are a few things you have to remember."
That they were arriving separately was news to Michael.
"Why separately?"
"Oh, it fell out that way. They had a seat on the American flight to Rodney, so I put you on it. I think I may have a seat to All Saints Bay by way of Vieques." She took his hand. "Don't look so abandoned, poor baby. We'll fly back together. The thing is, I have to get there for my brother's rites."
"Funeral rites."
"No, the Catholic ceremonies are over. These are local. Masonic, sort of."
"Presumably I'll see something of you on the island."
She closed her eyes and did the anticipation of bliss.
"From Rodney you have a bus ride," she told him. "People are very poor. You're beyond their sympathy. Watch your bag every minute."
"I could rent a car."
"I wouldn't. Alone."
"Even in daytime?"
"A rogue will get you at the first pothole. A laid-off soldier with an expensive weapon. Take the bus or even an omni. It's not Haiti, but these days it provides a few bad moments. But we know that, eh?"
"Yes, we know that. I hope it's a pretty ride. Rainforest."
"A pretty ride," she repeated. "Yes."
"Of course I understand that the road might pass through a lot of local trouble this week..."
He realized that she was cutting him off.
"Let me tell you something, Michael. The Masonic rituals are island things. Local practices. They're not like anything you've ever experienced."
She lowered her voice and looked into his eyes.
"Let me tell you what people believe. They believe that the souls of people who died the year before are taken to a place under the sea called Guinee. After a year or so the souls are brought back from the sea. That's what our ceremony is for."
"All right," Michael said. The traditional nature of it all comforted him.
"My brother was a volatile, restless man. People believed he had special powers and that he could do wicked things."
"Did he? Do wicked things?"
"People believe that he gave my soul away. That he gave it away to an old woman called La Marinette."
"Your godmother."
"She lived centuries ago," Lara said. "I belong she. I belong to her." He was looking into her eyes as she spoke. "La Marinette," she repeated in a whisper. "She began the killing. She drew the first French blood."
"And you want your soul back."
"I have to ask John-Paul to give it back when we take his ti bon ange, his soul, from Guinee."
"Lara," he said slowly, "I think you have a perfectly good soul, quite intact."
"No," she said, "you're mistaken. You've never seen me. In a way."
"That can't be," Michael said. "Then everything between us would be illusion." When he said it, neither of them moved. He considered what he had said. At the base of it was a simple thought he did not dare to complete.
She held his eyes and covered his mouth with her fingers. "I am free to love. To love more. I love you beyond death, I swear."
"Beyond death isn't necessary."
"Maybe it is," she said.
"I got to believe you," Michael said, mocking them.
"That's something people say."
"Yes. I say it. Here I am."
"Truly?"
"Yes, truly."
"Look," she said, "that's all I can explain. Tell me you won't leave me now."
"You know," Michael said, "we were supposed to go diving down here. That was the original intent."
"Oh, yes," she said. "We will go diving the best. We'll dive the most beautiful reefs time has ever seen."
He thought it a strange way of putting it. But then, perhaps to illustrate time, he put her hand against his body, had it descend the wall of his belly.
Just then in the hotel room, the soft lights of the Old City visible in the window behind her, she seemed frail and anxious as he had never seen her. He felt a distant stirring of madness somewhere. Not Lara's necessarily. Nor his own. Not anyone's madness, maybe just a different arrangement of things over some horizon.
"All right," he said. "As long as we get to go diving."
"Oh yes."
Their telephone rang and after a moment's hesitation Lara answered it. She spoke to a woman in excited Spanish. With the woman still on the line she put her hand on Michael's knee.
"Michael, I can get a flight by way of Vieques if I leave this minute. It's one seat but I have to be there for the reclamation. You know why. I mustn't miss anything. Will you forgive me if I take it? Please?"
"Of course," he said. "Go ahead."
Back on the phone, she cheerfully disposed of Michael's future and hung up.
"And you're confirmed on the flight tomorrow to Rodney. Don't miss it."
"I haven't missed a plane or a bus or a train since I was eleven."
"Well, don't miss your bus in Rodney." She brushed his hair to one side. "It's going to be a shock after the Caribe Hilton. Don't forget to watch your bag."
"My bag would be a disappointment to marauders."
"Don't joke, my dear, because it is dangerous. Stay by the bus—there'll be a security guard there. Everything in Rodney is rent-a-cops. Don't try to be a sophisticated traveler, you'll be killed. When you get off—get off at the market in Chastenet. Go to a shop run by a man called the Factor. He's not a real official, but he can tell you where to find the Bay of Saints Hotel. Most people are sweet. When you get to the hotel, stay there."
"All right," he said. "I guess I've got it."
"No," she said, "you haven't understood what I've told you. I can see that you haven't."
"Do you mean about the bus? You were clear enough."
"I don't mean about the bus. I mean the other things. You don't understand a word I'm telling you."
"It's not my world, Lara."
"And it would be easy for you to go home. To leave me here and go back to ... everything. But you must come with me."
He tried to consider everything. Everything seemed lost, traded for something rich and bright, a deeper darkness, alien light, dangerously insubstantial.
11
FROM THE VERANDA, Lara could see across the high walls studded with spikes of many-colored glass that enclosed her family's house. The view was one she remembered from childhood: the sky, the blue shades of the bay, the mountains beyond. That morning she was up at daybreak. The early-morning fragrances lingered until the sun had cleared the Morne and lit the green peaks and the brazen geometry of the mountains.
The night before, after the flight, she had been listening to drums from the ruinous Masonic lodge in the nearby hills. They had sounded through most of the night.
It seemed to her that when she was small there had been more birds and that they had more agreeable calls. Now there were hordes of crows, along with the vultures she remembered, clustering in the high palms. On the landward side of the house, smoke from charcoal fires almost obscured the overhanging peak. The top of the mountain was a ridge of bare rock.
"I listened to the drums last night," she told Roger Hyde.
"Did you dream?" Roger asked her. "Not at all," she said. "It's all like a dream here. It seems so strange."
"It's not a dream, baby. It's a mistake. You shouldn't have come. Especially on one of those flights."
Roger Hyde had gone to Harvard with John-Paul. He had been her brother's companion since their twenties and had spent nearly all of John-Paul's last year on the island, bringing medicine, persuading the American doctors from the medical mission to treat him.
"I've come to get what belongs to me. I have a right."
"I never thought of you as greedy, my dear."
"Don't be ridiculous," Lara said. "I have my needs here too."