The Language of Paradise: A Novel

by Barbara Klein Moss

  He had poured wine into a glass. Gideon, anticipating a ritual anointing, hoped he would take care not to sting the baby’s eyes; he saw that Sophy had the same misgiving. But Leander dipped a forefinger in the wine and traced three strokes on the brow. Gideon recognized the letter’s slanting spine, the vestigial arms sprouting unevenly from its sides.

  Leander lifted Aleph on the palms of his hands and mouthed his name. Ignoring Sophy’s gasp, he held him up for a few seconds before placing him in Gideon’s arms. The baby was calm, though Gideon sensed he was puzzled at this sudden expansion of his close, milky world. The letter had dried to an indecipherable smear. Gideon felt a pang to see the clear forehead marred, even so slightly; he had an urge to wet his thumb and wipe the stain away. Was it his imagination that the face was more defined, the expression livelier? He would have liked to reflect on the mystical properties of naming and its effect on the molding of character, but a patch of damp was spreading under his hand. In haste he gave the baby to Sophy, who took him to the bedroom to do the necessary.

  Leander drank from the wine in the glass, then offered it to Gideon: “One sip, to celebrate the occasion.” After the two of them had finished what was left, he reached into the folds of his coat and brought out a small scroll, tied with ribbon. “A souvenir of our first great work,” he said. He watched as Gideon unrolled the single sheet and read aloud,

  ALEPH BEN GIDEON

  Aleph, son of Gideon

  “And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”

  Beneath was a line of Hebrew, the characters inscribed in an ornate style that was difficult to read. Faltering, he translated,

  Such shall be the covenant between me and you

  He looked up, confused. The fragment seemed an odd fit for the occasion.

  “There is more, much more, of course,” Leander said, “but your friend is no scribe, he lacks the stamina and the skill, in this case also the space. I thought, since a boy acquires his name at the circumcision, this passage would be appropriate . . . the third covenant, you know . . . first the Sabbath, then the rainbow, then”—he scissored his fingers—“then the snip! But it is too obscure, I chose badly and ruined the whole . . . ” He broke off. “I’m a bit addled these days. This ceremony has raised phantoms from the past.”

  “No, not at all. It’s a perfect memento. Splendid. I’ll keep it in my study to remind me how blessed I am to be a father.”

  Gideon was already feeling the effect of the wine; he was very tired and the day had hardly begun. He felt pity for Leander’s rambling discomfort—a rare show in such a confident man, and more than a little unnerving—but he had no energy to cope with him now. He wanted to be alone with his son: a private communion where he could pursue the thoughts that had come to him during the ceremony.

  The opportunity came in the afternoon. Leander had gone off on an errand and Sophy was busy in the kitchen. The baby had been fed recently, but was still wide awake, kicking his legs in his cocoon of blankets. Gideon took courage and lifted him out of the cradle, careful to support his head. Sophy looked up from the potatoes she was peeling and nodded. She liked to see him with Aleph.

  Gideon carried the baby into the dining room and pulled a chair up to the hearth, where a fire was still clinging to life after the midday meal. He loosened Aleph’s wrappings to give him more freedom, and thought he saw some slight alteration in the child’s expression that might signify gratitude. How tempting it would be to have a father-son chat, to laugh with a conspirator over the fussiness of women! For a second he believed he would actually speak. He sometimes had these spasms of nostalgia in Leander’s absence, when it was just the three of them, a little family like any other. Aleph my Son. Gideon shaped the words, searching the soft features for the change he had glimpsed that morning. The eyes were different, but he couldn’t say how. It was like staring at the letter Beth in Hedge’s study. Now you see it, now you don’t.

  Aleph stared back at him. He was already extraordinary, Gideon decided: few infants had such a power of concentration. Likely, the silence had done that. He moved his finger back and forth, and Aleph’s eyes followed. They looked darker. It was no trick of light: the blue was less liquid, deepening to brown around the pupils, retreating from the color of his own. He had never noticed how widely spaced they were. Perhaps it was the setting that gave them their contemplative look, both dreamy and penetrating, the observed object only a conduit to wonders just beyond. There was no mistaking the imprint. Sophy’s eyes.

  CHAPTER 34

  ____

  ALLITERATION

  TREE. SOPHY IS NOT PERMITTED TO SAY THE WORD, SO SHE thinks it, hard, as she introduces Aleph to a silver maple. It is finally warm enough to take him outside, spring having muscled through early this year, and she imagines his fledgling senses exulting, just as hers are, to feel the air on his cheek and smell the earth, to see the new greenery without the barrier of glass. Gideon was hesitant, but she persisted, and in the end curiosity got the better of him. He is right behind them with his journal, starting at every rustle and twig snap and bird cry, ever on guard against fugitive word-spouters who might turn up in their woods and pollute the baby’s virgin ears with a clumsy greeting or a request for directions. They have recently been spied upon.

  On Sunday, a warm bright day, she had carried Aleph into the conservatory for his morning feed, thinking how pleasant it would be for him to dine in the sun. She was about to unbutton her dress when the baby turned his head. At the far end of the room, two urchins were staring in at them, their noses and hands pressed against the glass. She had grown so used to seclusion that she froze like a deer. Aleph was delighted. His small body quivered with excitement; he pushed against her with his fists as he used to in the womb, and let out a shrill squeal—a sound he had never made before. Any noise from him was a reassurance; he was a quiet child. She lifted his hand and waved it, and the boys grinned and waved back. When Gideon came in a moment later and hurried them back to the bedroom, the baby wailed in protest. He seldom cries these days, except for the occasional bleat to let them know he is wet or hungry. Leander says it is because he has everything he needs.

  Leander went out to investigate. “A couple of my pupils,” he reported. “Harmless fellows, missing their old master. I had a word with them and they won’t trouble us again.”

  Gideon was not convinced. “Now that they know where the Pied Piper lives, they’ll be flocking here in droves. The warm weather will bring them out.”

  Sophy bends a low-hanging branch, tickles Aleph’s chin with the tender new leaves. A smile is her reward. Are trees like people to him, creatures with faces? She sometimes wonders how Aleph sees the three of them. The milk one. The fair one that hovers. The tall dark one. Today she has shown him an oak, a maple, a birch. Is each a separate phenomenon, springing up like a jack-in-the-box to astonish his eyes, or does he join them in his mind? If so, with what glue? His mother can’t tell him, leaf, branch, trunk.

  Gideon perches his spectacles midway down his nose and records the leaves and the smile. All part of the process, he has assured her: a smile is the embryo of a syllable; they have only to let it ripen and be born as speech. Having captured the observation, he expands on it without looking up, the crease in his forehead deepening, his mouth pursed like an old man’s. Sophy hates those spectacles, and not only because they make him look pinched and ungenerous. They narrow his sight even as they sharpen it. The small, round lenses magnify his own notions, and the wide world—the wife, the blooming child, the lush foliage—fades to a blur at the fringes.

  She is showing the baby a cardinal preening on a nearby oak, imagining that red and loud will be fused for him, when an insistent tapping disturbs the tranquility. The BIRD flies off—Sophy can track its reeling path AWAY in Aleph’s eyes—and Gideon drops his book and claps his hands over the baby’s ears.

  It’s only Micah, knocking on the glasshouse walls to get their attention. Leander must
have let him in. He’s as light-footed as an Indian; they never heard his step on the path. He promised weeks ago to help with the garden, but James must have kept him at home.

  The sight of him blowing out his cheeks at the baby makes it easier to return to the glass box.

  MICAH CAN’T GET ENOUGH of Aleph. He is fearless with him. He swings him aloft and takes him on wild flights across the room, welcomes him back with smacking kisses and belly-nuzzles. The baby adores it all; he gurgles and laughs for his uncle as for no one else.

  Gideon watches these antics tensely. M. treats baby like a toy, he writes in the message book. Don’t worry, Sophy answers, you can trust his hands. In a way, Aleph is a toy for her brother. Micah was the youngest, everyone’s favorite, but isolated by his infirmity. She had been his only playmate, and she was four years older. She remembers how clever he was as a little child, how eager to learn. He talked early, as Mama predicted. He has been trying to catch up with himself ever since.

  “You’ve tired him out,” Sophy says, after restoring Aleph to his cradle. “Now he’ll sleep all day and wake us in the middle of the night.”

  Micah shrugs. Speech has become such an effort for him that he no longer wastes words on trivial matters. His stuttering has gotten worse since Mama died. Sophy thinks it’s the strain of being stretched between two households, each a fractured remnant of the family he once had. He is the only link between them, but however hard he tries, he can never mend what has been broken.

  “We’ll talk later,” she says, releasing him to the garden, where Gideon and Leander are waiting. She has Micah’s unexpected visit and Aleph’s early nap time to thank for this rare respite. When the baby is awake, one of the men is always with her, and even when he sleeps they’re never far, keeping watch to make sure she doesn’t break the trust. Thus far, her transgressions have been too subtle to alarm them. Sophy spoke to her son when he was inside her, and she speaks to him now in her thoughts. Only a few short months have passed since he was bathed in her juices and lulled by the drumming of her heart. They are still close enough that he can hear her without words, but as he gets older he’ll grow away from her. She must find a way to do more while she can.

  Lately she’s been bolder. When Gideon is lost in study or expanding on his observations in the journal, she will sometimes hold the baby close to her face and whisper in his ear, or shape an endearment with her lips and punctuate it with a kiss.

  Sophy steals back to the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Aleph has thrown off his blanket and is sleeping on his back, one arm thrown over his chest. Soon he’ll be turning over, he’s right on the cusp. She’s restrained herself for so long that her throat closes; she manages a raspy “Ahhh” before his name emerges. “Mama,” she says, pointing to her bosom as if he can see her; then, risking, “Mama loves Aleph.” The baby stirs, whimpering, and her skin creeps with the certainty that someone is outside the door. She adjusts the coverlet and makes it snug around him. She had hoped to give him more, but he has three new words, at least, to add to the others that have slipped through the net. Leander’s exclamation when he was born. The doctor’s chatter when he examined him. The sentences they’ve all started, blurted out of habit before a warning finger cuts them off. Words that can’t be taken back. She counts them like coins. One day Aleph will open his mouth, and out will pour treasure.

  Outside the door, the house is empty and still. It hardly matters. Leander haunts her, whether he is here or not. It is impossible, now, for her to stand aloof from him. The man has pulled a baby out of her. He has a knowledge of her that Gideon never possessed, even in the days when they still made love. Leander gave her the gift of her son and probably saved her life, yet she can’t thank him for it. She thinks instead, what more will you take?

  MICAH HAS ALWAYS had a hearty appetite, but lately he eats like a starving man. He has worked his way through two bowls of stew without resting his spoon, and has designs on a third. Sophy doubts there’ll be enough left in the pot for supper.

  “You and James, you’re managing with the cooking?” Leander asks. They all try to pose their questions in a fashion that will be easy for him to answer.

  Micah shakes his head. “N-n-nocooking. W-weeatwhat’shandy, m-m-moh, momohmoh—mostlycold.” Struggling up the slope, sliding down. Sometimes he never makes it to the top.

  “The poor fellow is still grieving his losses. Sorrow upon sorrow. I would ask him to share a meal with us, but he would never come.”

  And what wiles would you work on him if he did? Sophy thinks.

  “H-h-huh-huh—” Micah grabs his throat, as if he would force the word out. She knows he isn’t choking, but the effect is the same. He brings up a resonant belch. Looks down at his plate, reddening, though no one is smiling.

  “Alliteratio,” Leander pronounces. Sententious, a doctor naming a malady. “Moses’s curse. Also his blessing.”

  Gideon sends her a look across the table. Papa’s dinner-table sermons on the subject of Micah’s stuttering are lamentably fresh in both their minds.

  “Moses flings himself at the first letter again and again, begging entrance to the word, but there it stands like the angel at the gate, waving its flaming sword whenever he comes near. With each attempt, he puts his whole soul into the struggle. Eventually his pleas reach the ear of the Almighty, who hears a prayer like an incantation, a rhythm that transfixes like a spell. ‘So,’ says the Holy One, ‘here we have a man who loves my letters so much he can’t let them go. Such a man will I send to lead my people out of Egypt.’ When Moses protests that he is slow of tongue, the Lord tells him, ‘My boy, you’re already a magician. All you need are a few tricks to impress the elders.’”

  He plants his forearms on the table and leans close to Micah. “You suffer because your tongue is slow, but we are the ones who lag behind. Words come easily to us, so we use them carelessly. We spit them out like apple pips and never look to see where they land. You value each syllable for its full worth; you test your strength against it and respect its power. When our experiment begins to bear fruit, you will be holding Aleph by the hand, striding ahead of us to the Promised Land. In fact”—he reaches two fingers to tap Micah’s wrist—“I have been thinking you ought to consider moving in with us. The second floor could be yours, for now. Do the finishing work and claim it as your kingdom. You would blossom here—and I don’t have to tell you that we could use your skills.”

  Micah chews his lip. He looks to Sophy.

  “How would James manage?” she says quickly. “He is our brother. We can’t leave him to cope with the house and farm by himself.”

  “It might be the best thing for him,” Gideon says. “The church is his family now. I had the impression that Entwhistle is a little jealous of him. He’s become Mendham’s pet, your sainted father without the manner. If you were to leave, Micah, he’d be more likely to find the good Christian wife he should have courted to begin with, and start again.” Seeing Micah’s face, he added, “Not that you’re a burden to him. But James is a brooder, he clings to the past. You tie him to his old life.”

  Sophy is startled by Gideon’s quick assent. Usually he takes a while to assimilate Leander’s swerves and leaps. He said once that Micah would always be part of their family, but that was before he had a son of his own.

  “Micah is reaching an age where he can make decisions for himself,” Leander says. “How many years are you, boy?”

  “S-s-sixteen.”

  “Almost a man! By the time I was sixteen, I had already plotted my escape. I ran away to the nearest port to be a seaman on a merchant ship, but my father had a long arm and fetched me back.” He peers at Micah under heavy lids. “When it comes to making plans, it is sometimes a great impediment to have a parent.”

  THEY HAVE THEIR MOMENT alone later in the afternoon. Lem arrives to consult with Gideon and Leander about building a stone wall around the house, and at first sight of him, Micah takes refuge in the glasshouse to help Sophy with the po
tting. Spring is fickle in Massachusetts; they are starting some plants indoors in case the cold comes back again. She finds it satisfying to bed the wispy seedlings, pat fresh earth around them with fingers practiced at tucking in. Leander is convinced they’ll sprout like Jack’s beanstalk and sprint up to the ceiling by summer’s end. Sophy doesn’t want these babies to grow up too quickly. She hopes for cloudy days and cold spells—any whim of nature that will preserve her view.

  “Would you actually come here?” She hushes her voice by instinct now. “They don’t know where your loyalties lie. Keeping you near is their way of making sure of you.”

  Micah shakes his head. “J-J-James w-w-w. . .”

  If she waits for him to expel the words banking in his throat, there’ll be no time to talk. The message book is too risky. Scanning the room, she lights on her old sketchbook, stowed in a corner alongside her paintings. The last used page is filled with her failed sketches of Leander. She turns it over quickly. One way or another, he is always watching.

  Micah writes with his wrist curved inward, fencing the letters in as he shapes them. James will never let me go. Thinks y’r house is curs’t.

  “How cursed?” Sophy asks.

  Some folks at meeting say L. keeps you all Mezmerized. Ask where is Sophy? Baby never baptized. Gossips talk Devil worship. Stupid women but James listens.

  Sophy’s eyes sting. These are the people she grew up with. Papa’s congregation, the wayward sheep he chastised on Sunday. She has always been a trifle strange in their sight—she will own that—but still the Reverend’s daughter, secure under the Hedge mantle. Now they suspect her of dancing with the Devil?

  “Leander is often in the village, and Gideon goes there to teach. Is it really so odd to keep a newborn at home during the winter?”

  Folks fear what they don’t see. Come to meeting. I’ll bring you myself.

  “You know they won’t let me take the baby. I can’t leave him, he’s too young.”