The Language of Paradise: A Novel

by Barbara Klein Moss

  “I g-gave it a good polish,” Micah says, carrying in the cradle. When he sets it near the hearth, Sophy’s eyes fill. She remembers rocking Micah in this very cradle when she was scarcely more than a baby herself. For a moment, she feels the strength and fellowship of those who endured before her: that long line of bearing women at her back, each of them anxious for the child to come, each looking ahead with joy, and also with dread. Sophy takes one of the worn gowns and lays it in the cradle, smoothing out creases as sharp as seams. Mama has been watching, half-nodding over her tea, but now she darts forward and snatches up the gown.

  “Never do that!” She clutches the thin cotton to her chest as if she’d rescued it from the fire. “It’s bad luck to croon over a cradle before it is filled. The Spoiler sees and interferes.”

  Shaken, Sophy is tempted to rebuke Mama for her superstitions. Then she remembers the three little girls Mama lost. Three porcelain dolls capped and robed in white, each laid out in her wooden box. She’s rarely given them a thought until this moment, for Mama isn’t one to brood over griefs past. She sees sweet pinched faces, tiny fists peeking out of ruffled sleeves.

  Mama takes note of her expression. “Now come here, let’s have a look at you,” she says, glancing sidelong at Micah. “If the young man will take his tea elsewhere? There are rooms enough to choose from.” As soon as he is gone, Mama creaks to her feet and begins to poke and prod expertly beneath Sophy’s apron. “All seems in order, as far as I can tell. You’re carrying low and narrow, which ought to mean a boy, though Mother Nature has fooled me more than once. A big boy for a wisp of a thing like you. You’re like the woman who swallowed the cow, and I suppose you feel like her, too. I doubt you’ll last till January.”

  A clamor in the hall. The men have returned early, in boisterous good humor from the sound of it, Leander shouting, “My kingdom for a horse!” and Gideon laughing as he never laughs with anyone else. Gideon relishes these excursions. Leander brings out a bluff, raucous side of him, as if he were made of coarser stuff. It’s not enough for some men to bring angels down to earth, she thinks; they must wrestle them to the ground and rub mud in their hair, all in good fun. They tramp in, bringing the smell of snow with them, Gideon as rosy as a boy. “Sophy, you’ve never seen such a nag as Leander’s honest farmfrau tried to sell us—”

  The sight of Mama strikes them dumb. Sophy would swear that Gideon’s color fades on the spot. By now they are so caught up in their grand scheme that they can’t fathom the unexpected. Mama was not planned for; therefore she cannot be here.

  Leander recovers first. “Mrs. Hedge, what a delightful surprise! That slybones Micah never told us you were coming. Doesn’t our Sophia look blooming? You see what good care we’re taking of her.”

  Gideon surveys the bounty with a wincing smile. “The little one will be well provided for,” he says, “thanks to you, Fanny.” He pats the sleeve of a gown, self-conscious, and riffles the stack of nappies like the pages of a book. With a cautious touch he sets the cradle to rocking, staring at it fixedly as if it were a new invention. Only then does he brush a kiss on Mama’s stiff cheek.

  No one seems to know how to proceed after pleasantries have been exchanged. “Well, have you been shown the house yet?” Leander asks. “Let us give you the grand tour, then. It’s changed quite a bit since you saw it last.” He takes Mama’s arm and ushers her into the next room, drawing her attention to improvements they’ve made. Gideon sends Sophy a long, questioning look. Is this your doing?

  She finds Micah in the pantry. His legs are curled around the stumps of a low stool and he is snoring softly, his head pillowed against a sack of flour on a shelf. His talent for napping anywhere, on the instant, is legend in the family. She makes mouse tracks up his neck to wake him. “Silly, what are you doing in here?”

  He blinks, shaking off sleep. “It’s warm. M-Mama brought some food, I was putting it away.”

  Sophy lowers her voice. “Gideon and Leander are back so we haven’t much time. Have they told you what they’re planning?”

  “You mean about n-n-not talking to the, the b-bah . . . ?” He cradles his arms as the word slithers away from him.

  “What do you think about it?”

  “It’s d-d-daft.”

  So he has known for a while—perhaps before she did. She wonders if he grasps the peril, or if he’s too young to understand that this is more than a harmless whim.

  Then he says, “They th-think silence is better than medicine, that it will mend the world, maybe w-wake the dead. They think it will cure this.” He points to his mouth. All delivered in a smooth rush, the wit bringing the fluency.

  Sophy sometimes forgets how quick his mind is, how much he observes. She reaches for his hand, which feels older than the rest of him, the callused fingers rough in her palm. “Micah, I am depending on you to come as often as you can. I need someone on the outside, someone I can trust.” She looks down at the mound, and his eyes follow hers. “I tell myself Gideon will come to his senses when the baby is born. Once he sees his child and holds him, he’ll throw off Leander’s influence. I pray we won’t need help. But if we should . . .”

  He nods and squeezes her hand. She never misjudges his heart. It’s as good as done.

  Another thought occurs to her. “Does Mama know?”

  “They said not to t-t-trouble her. To keep it to myself f-for now.”

  “Perhaps that’s best,” Sophy says. “There’s enough worrying her already. It hurts my heart to see her looking so ill.”

  IN THE GLASSHOUSE, Leander is consulting with Mama about plants. “I’m told we can start bulbs any time and get a jump on spring. Pots of earth have their own beauty, isn’t it so? The city dweller sees plain brown dirt, but the gardener is already imagining a new bloom stirring beneath the surface.” When Sophy comes in with Micah, he gives her a courtly little bob.

  Mama dismisses this fancy talk by ignoring it. She confines her attention to the plain brown earth outside, rapidly being coated with a layer of white. “We’d best get going while we can find the road,” she tells Micah. “This is a sticking snow, it doesn’t look like much yet, but could be a heap by morning. Sophy, you had better pack a few things and come back with us. I thought we had a week or two, but sooner would be best. You oughtn’t to be stuck in the middle of the woods in your condition.”

  Gideon has been quiet, hanging off to the side while Leander expounds—counting off the minutes, Sophy thinks, until their visitor is gone. Now he snaps alert and puts a husbandly arm around Sophy’s shoulders. “How can you think of it, Fanny? Sophy will give birth at home, as other women do—as you must have yourself. Her home is here, with us. You have my solemn promise, we’ll send for you when the time comes, and the doctor too, if needed. We have weeks to go before we need to worry.”

  “Arithmetic doesn’t apply here,” Mama says. “Babies are not obliging creatures, first ones least of all. Her pains could come on at any time, and what would you great thinkers do then? My mother was by my side for a month before Sam, and I had women at the ready for the others. It’s as good as deserting her to leave her alone with a pair of men.” She mutters, as if to herself, “And in December, no less. Never make it easy, Lord.”

  Gideon tightens his embrace. “My wife’s welfare is our first concern,” he says. But his voice is feebler than his grip. Sophy senses his confusion. He and Leander have been so busy plotting the baby’s first months that they’ve given little thought to its arrival. She can hardly blame him. She’s known her pains would come, but hasn’t dared to dwell on them. She remembers being taken to see Micah swaddled in the cradle, and Mama on the bed: the flatness of her beneath the covers, and her depletion, the labor of her smile. If there were screams, she’s forgotten; perhaps a neighbor kept her until it was over. Women of the parish suffered from their babies—died of them, too—and after church or over sewing, talked about the agonies endured, not sparing the particulars, and Mama didn’t always shoo her away. That this s
ame course will be worked in her cannot be imagined. Yet, once begun, it must be completed. She will be brought to bed soon, whether she is ready or not.

  She might die. Her mother did, of her. Papa never said as much, never blamed her, though he must have thought of his only sister whenever he looked at her. How her questions must have tormented him, and how carefully he had replied, every word a cautionary tale. What did she look like, Papa? Small, like you. Light on her feet. Meaning, she was made for dancing, not mothering, and you had better acquire enough heft to avoid her fate. Sophy has never thought of that bedchamber—what child cares to go back that far? —but she would summon it now, if she had any idea where it was. Did her mother give birth in the shelter of the Hedge house or alone in some dingy room, whispering Papa’s name to a landlady who would have sent the mewling infant to an orphanage? All she will ever know for certain is that her mother loved life, clung to it fiercely even beyond the grave. And now Sophy has killed her a second time, evicted her to make room for a new tenant.

  “Even a short journey wouldn’t be wise at this late stage,” Leander is saying. “We can’t have her jostled in the wagon. The little one might be shaken from its nest. And in such weather! No, she is better off where she is, safe and warm, with all her familiar things around her, and two loving companions to cater to her. I assure you, dear Mrs. Hedge, all the best physicians would agree.”

  Seeing his error, he adds, hastily, “Not that anything can compete with a woman’s experience.”

  Micah says, “Well, then, Mama should stay here,” and Mama says, “No, no, I’d only be a burden, I’d rather sleep in my own bed where I can hack and cough without risking Sophy’s health,” and Gideon reminds Mama that they are only a few miles away, and Leander begs everyone to keep calm and remember that birth is a part of nature, animals drop their young unattended, and so-called primitive peoples do the same, he has seen it himself . . .

  They are talking about her as if she isn’t here.

  Sophy rests heavily against Gideon’s side. If she doesn’t get off her feet soon, she will surely faint. She feels light-headed, light all over, as though her soul fled early, leaving the great bulk of her to travail on its own.

  CHAPTER 32

  ____

  NATIVITY

  IT IS NOT EASY TO FESTOON A GLASSHOUSE WITH GREENERY, but Leander and Gideon are doing their best. Leander, atop a ladder, damns his eyes and other body parts as he tries to pin bunches of juniper and holly to the wooden frames between the panes. His fingers keep fumbling, and the fragile bundles that Sophy tied with thread come apart and litter the floor. He has no right to curse, for it was his idea to garnish the conservatory as the Germans do, Christmas being two days away. “It’s about time we had some vegetation in here,” he said, and, as ever, the others jump to do his bidding. Gideon has arranged numerous pine boughs in numerous crocks. He has run out of containers, but Lem Quinn is still dragging in severed limbs. He reminds Sophy of an automaton which, once set to a task, must repeat it unto eternity.

  “Enough now, leave a few branches to shade us in the summer,” Leander tells him, and the boy turns slack at his master’s mild reprimand and shuffles to a corner, scowling. He misses the thwack of the axe, Sophy guesses; also the sticky ooze of the wounded tree. Lem is a souvenir of Leander’s teaching days, recently ended. He does much of the physical work about the place, and is most tolerable when occupied. She and Gideon are a little afraid of him, though Leander insists he’s a gentle soul, roughened by hard use. Deprived of activity, he emanates a noxious compound of ill will and strong odor. Smells—even good ones—don’t always sit well with Sophy in her present state. She is grateful for the pungent, scouring fragrance of the pine.

  In the midst of all this industry, she is the potted plant, spreading where they’ve placed her. She spends the brightest part of each day in here, conscientiously basking for the baby’s sake. Young plants don’t grow well in the dark, Leander reminds her, and it stands to reason that the same applies to infants. Sophy shuts her ears to his lectures on the Romans and their solariums, but has to confess she finds the sun nourishing. They’ve moved her rocking chair in, and someone—Gideon, she hopes—has thought to provide a chamberpot. Gideon keeps her company when he can. He has inherited a couple of Leander’s old students, sons of a dry goods merchant with aspirations beyond the village school, and three days a week he walks an hour to their house to tutor them; after months of tedious labor, he’s eager to call upon his old skills. Sophy doesn’t mind being alone. If Leander wanders in, she pretends to be asleep. Conversation is an effort. Her thoughts are few and sluggish. Her paintings are stacked along the back wall, safely covered. Pictures don’t come to her any more, but neither do the fears and worries that plagued her only weeks ago. She has surrendered to her body. At night she lifts her gown and combs the stretched skin with her nails. This is her greatest pleasure, though never enough to sate the itching. If Lem weren’t here, she would risk a swipe under her apron now.

  MAMA’S THROAT HAS NOT IMPROVED, but she makes her presence known in her notes and potions. Lately she’s instructed Sophy about Hardening the Nipples, and sent tincture of myrrh to toughen them for nursing. Twice a day, dutifully, Sophy lowers her chemise and bathes her breasts in the solution, marveling at their size and fullness, wondering if the baby will suck them small again or if she’ll be allowed to keep them. Usually she performs this rite in private, but on a morning last week she delayed her ablutions to coincide with Gideon’s. He seems oblivious to her lately, except as a vessel for the child. At times she even misses his skewed attentions in the study.

  It was perhaps not the best moment. He was preparing to see his students, harried, pulling out one drawer after another in search of a shirt that could pass for clean. “We’ll have to find someone to do the washing until you’re able to work again. Look at this rag. You’d think I cleaned a lamp with it—” He waved a shirt at her, and she was ready, turning from the basin, breasts glistening.

  He gaped and looked away, but not before she caught the raw shock in his face. “What are you doing, Sophy? Cover yourself, you’ll catch cold!”

  She could have offered a simple explanation. She meant to. Instead she said, “I thought you might enjoy that I’m more womanly now—seeing as the rest of me is unsightly.”

  He pulled a shirt over his head. “Why must you use such a word? Naturally you’re more womanly now, what else would you be? You look just as you ought to, and I enjoy you as I always have. You must try not to be so hard on yourself. Leander says women often fall into these moods toward the end.” He dropped a distracted kiss on her brow, staying well clear of the startling objects below, and went back to the dresser to root for a cravat.

  HALF-PAST THREE, the sky already darkening. Gideon and Leander gather armfuls of branches for the sitting room, and Lem follows, a stroke behind. The greenery has put them in a festive mood. Leander is promising to make eggnog “with a drop of brandy to help our little mother sleep.” Sophy understands, from a drowsy distance, that they are having a joke at her expense, for at this hour of the afternoon she couldn’t stay awake if she wanted to; by now she’s half-gone. Gideon adjusts her lap robe and he and Leander look down on her with that fond, patronizing gaze: she is another kind of prodigy now. Lem’s heavy presence is felt in passing. Even his shadow must be thick.

  The room is warm, too warm, but outside snow has begun to fall as it does most afternoons when the sun sinks: big, lazy flakes drifting down. What a thin skin the glass is, yet how strong, keeping out the elements and who knows what creatures of the wild, wolves, bears . . . The baby moves suddenly, sharply, and she imagines him on his knees, his fists punching at the wall of her, trying to see out. Then it is she, Sophy, peering through a window. Bars interrupt her view, but she can see the spears of pine trees marching into a brilliant white distance. The sight fills her with longing. Such a vastness out there, and less and less room inside, the air so thick with moisture she can scarce
ly draw it in, even if she had space for a full breath. Her arms—how long have they been pinned to her sides? In a fit of impatience she works her wedged hands out until she can grab hold of the bars and shakes them until they way. She rises, the ground dwindling beneath her. At first it seems nothing has changed. The atmosphere is as oppressive as before, but her vision has sprung free. She is hovering above, looking down upon a mountain of a man sprawled on his side across the snow, solid as the earth he rests on but for the aperture in his middle, in which is framed . . . a woman’s face. Perspective is the Devil’s trick, but wonder of wonders! The world is infinitely larger than she knew, and so brazen-bright it pricks her eyes.

  “Such a beatific smile. You must be dreaming of angels.” Gideon breathes brandy into her face. “Are you ready to wake up and be merry with us?”

  While she slept, they transformed the conservatory around her. Candles glimmer atop upright logs and on pedestals of stacked stones, their flames doubled, blearily luminous in the glass. They’ve moved the table in, and dressed it tastefully: a white cloth, a vase of holly with a candle on either side, three flowered china plates from some long-departed aunt, and cut-glass goblets at each place, mismatched but harmonious.

  Sophy blinks, suspended between two dreams, trying to make sense of this dazzling new realm. Gideon is her only orientation, and he is flushed and grinning, his hair tumbled over his forehead. “Come see what the elves wrought.”

  He arranges her shawl around her and helps her to her feet. She is a little shaky, as she sometimes gets after a long sleep, and the whiff of spirits is not pleasant. Putting a hand on his arm, she moves stiffly, with a dawning sense that something has shifted inside her. A few more steps, and she knows she isn’t imagining it. The mound has descended. It is a revelation at once momentous and casual, for here she is, still in one piece and in no apparent discomfort. She takes an experimental breath, and finds that the crowding she’s endured for weeks is eased, the air reaching deeper down.