The Language of Paradise: A Novel

by Barbara Klein Moss

  Gideon led the parson on a winding route through the house, making sure he saw the grandest rooms. He knew that Entwhistle, with his well-made clothes and air of refinement, would look beyond their bareness and appreciate the elegant lines. Passing quickly through bedroom musk, thankful for the closed curtains, he opened the door to the conservatory.

  It had been perhaps an hour since Gideon left the glasshouse, but the pale morning light had ripened to gold in the noon sun, and he would swear that the plants were taller, that buds tightly furled minutes earlier had burst into flower. Micah, the only witness to the miracle, was dozing in a corner. And in the midst of this fecundity, just as Leander had foreseen, the sweetest bloom, his son. They stood around the quilt, charmed by the picture the baby made on his bed of colorful scraps. Aleph had been sleeping on his stomach, but now he stirred and, turning over, opened his eyes to his mother and smiled. Gideon hoped Entwhistle noticed how full his cheeks were, and how rosy.

  The parson put his hands to his heart. “Lovely!” he breathed.

  Gideon and Leander walked out with the pastor as he took his leave. Leander was effusive in his thanks, but also urgent. “All we ask is that you tell them what you saw. We live in simple harmony here, and enjoy our own society, and do no one any harm. Seclusion isn’t a crime.”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll preach a sermon on it.” Entwhistle patted the horse’s nose. “But you will give some thought to baptism? Mine is not the strongest voice.”

  LATE THAT NIGHT, Gideon rose from a restless bed and went back to the glasshouse. In the dark he picked his way among plants until he found the rocking chair. The air was pleasantly cool, and the slumbering greenery breathed out a mineral smell, more of earth than leaf. He sat for a while, letting the quiet enfold him, calm for the first time in hours. He had been angry since the parson’s visit, and his anger had made him impatient—with Sophy for her treachery, born of weakness and yet to be dealt with; with Leander for his infernal optimism. Even Aleph had grated on him, wide awake after his long nap and refusing to go to sleep. All their work—what had it come to? Leander pleading with the parson to intercede for them with his flock of Philistines. Himself begging the merchant for the privilege of educating his lumpish sons.

  Once, not long ago, there had been a naïve young man who’d compared the text he translated to a wall, and confessed his longing to penetrate it. How flattered he had been by his teacher’s attention, how eager to confide in the great man, how unprepared when the question came slamming down on him like an iron gate. Tell me, Mr. Birdsall, what is the purpose of a wall?

  It came to him that Hedge had not stopped him. He had persevered, and he had broken through. He was not so young anymore—certainly not so innocent—but there was no doubt that he was on the other side of the wall: a new settler in the country he’d glimpsed through chinks between stones. A foreigner still, not yet fluent in the language nor acquainted with all its ways, but a citizen, with a citizen’s rights. He had overcome Hedge’s moral certitude and his tidy Calvinist exclusions. He would not be evicted now.

  If the Reverend were to ask him that same question today, he would have a ready answer. “To discourage intruders, to be sure. But the real purpose of a wall is to keep Paradise intact.”

  His purpose also. Closing his eyes, Gideon gave himself over to his new resolution, the swell of it filling his breast and spilling into the room and the sleeping house beyond. In the darkness his own borders seemed to dissolve. He felt immense, invincible. The pettiness that oppressed him earlier—what power did it have against such a will as his?

  But when glass shattered behind him, once, twice, he pitched forward as if holes had opened in the back of his head.

  CHAPTER 36

  ____

  FORTRESS

  GUNSHOT IS HER FIRST THOUGHT. THE BLASTS OF NOISE, one after another, followed by silence, then the baby’s broken crying. She flings herself at the crib, lifts Aleph and clutches him to her. He’s wet and frightened, though otherwise unharmed. Gideon is not in bed. She puts the baby back in his crib, still weeping, and lights a candle, her fingers cold and deliberate. The door to the glasshouse is unlatched. Before she can open it, she feels a hand on her shoulder.

  Leander, armed with a lamp and a stout log. He motions for her to stay where she is, but she follows him in.

  Gideon is sitting in the rocking chair in a litter of glass. He is so still that Sophy runs to him, certain he must be injured, or worse. He squints when Leander lowers the lamp to his face, but gives no other sign that he sees them.

  Leander does a quick scan of the damage. “Only a couple of panes gone. Not bad, considering the artillery we provided.” Kneeling, he picks two small rocks from among the shards. “They have some wit, these devils. They use our own defense against us.”

  ALEPH SENSES THAT something is amiss. He screams and reaches for her whenever she tries to settle him. Sophy walks with him from one end of the bedroom to the other, and back again, bone-weary but alert to every sound. Gideon and Leander are out patrolling the grounds. After perhaps an hour she hears them come in and walk toward Leander’s room at the other end of the house, conferring in low tones. Toward morning, asleep on her feet, the baby an inert weight on her shoulder, she lays her burden down on the bed and curls up beside him.

  Sun drizzling through a gap in the curtains wakes her. Aleph is still sleeping; he hardly stirs when she moves him to his crib. Even in the shut and darkened room, summer is heavy in the air, defying the window seal and cutting the staleness of the bedclothes. Sophy knows perfectly well that the events of last night were no dream, but a childish belief possesses her as she opens the door to the conservatory. On a summer morning—if it is still morning—anything can be undone, everything is possible.

  The damaged areas have already been fitted with boards. Oddly symmetrical, they look like sightless eyes in a comely face as all around them clear panes show off the beauties of the day. Someone has swept up the shattered glass. If it weren’t for the parson’s warning, she might be tempted to dismiss this as a prank, a bit of costly mischief, to be taken up with parents or, at worst, the magistrate.

  Sophy latches the conservatory door behind her and tiptoes past the crib. The central rooms are peaceful, somnolent in the sun slanting through the long windows. Not a sound in the house, and she hears nothing outside. After months of being observed, she’s developed a sense of presence: Gideon’s has a different texture than Leander’s. There is a vacancy now that beckons like an invitation. Is it possible they have left her alone with Aleph?

  She ought to be nervous after last night, but this sudden respite brings her to a full stop in the middle of the parlor. She could be cautious, feed Aleph a few phrases with his breakfast, bring him outside and risk recriminations if the men come back too soon. Vandals, Sophy! Lurking in the bushes, behind the trees! If you haven’t a care for yourself, think of the child!

  Or she could bolt. Leave with Aleph and, keeping to the woods along the road, make her way to town, or stop at a house along the way. She is still the Reverend’s daughter; someone will take them in until she can get word to Micah. Now that the idea is in her mind, she feels that she might actually reduce this enormity to simple steps: put one foot in front of another, grab the baby and a little food, and go. As she approaches the kitchen, she remembers what Mama always said when they were small and hanging back from some errand out of fear: What is the worst that could happen? A moot question in those days, when Mama was always there, a citadel of common sense, to come back to if things went wrong. But she has no time to dwell on misgivings. Intent on her purpose, she can’t immediately comprehend the sight of Gideon in a chair by the hearth, greeting her with a serene smile.

  “You must be walking in your sleep, Sophy. You’re staring as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  He has shaved and slicked his hair back and looks as fresh-faced as a schoolboy, except for the dark shadows under his eyes. A different man from last night, s
he would think, if it weren’t for the rifle across his knees.

  “Aleph still sleeping? I came in earlier and the two of you were lost to the world. You looked so comfortable, I didn’t want to wake you. Leander’s gone to town to inform the sheriff, for all the good it will do.”

  “For the Lord’s sake, Gideon,” she says. “Where did you find that?”

  “Our friend is endlessly resourceful. He told me he got the gun when he first came to Ormsby, to shoot varmints with. Apparently the schoolhouse had rats. I had to beg a lesson, never having touched one. It’s really quite a simple mechanism. I believe I could use it with some confidence.”

  “You would put a bullet in someone? You’re not a man for killing.”

  “I didn’t think I could, at first—not so much as a squirrel or a rabbit. When Leander showed me how to aim it, my hands were shaking. There we stood in the pink dawn of a tender morning, and braced against my shoulder, none too steady, was this awkward object fashioned to kill. I hadn’t slept or eaten, and I don’t mind telling you the thing unnerved me. But when I thought of all that was at stake, I knew I had to make friends with the old soldier. All morning I’ve been sitting with him, hearing his stories.” His fingers caress the stock. “We’re intimates now. We have an understanding. He’ll help me protect what is mine.”

  Sophy can tell at a glance that this old soldier never saw a battlefield; Reuben had one like it to shoot small game. It isn’t the gun she fears, but Gideon’s grip on it, and his eyes. She says evenly, “What do you think you’re protecting?”

  “How can you ask me? Our home. The life we’ve made here. After last night, do you have any doubt we’re under attack?”

  “The house isn’t ours,” Sophy says. “And the life we have here is no life at all. We see no one, we hide like fugitives, and because we hide, they suspect us. Is this the Paradise you’d raise your son in? An armed camp?”

  “The armed camp is out there.” A bold assertion, but Gideon’s voice is barely audible. He shifts in his chair, keeping both hands on the gun. “I suppose you think it would be a kindness to send our innocent lamb to live among the savages and learn their ways.”

  “I think this is the only world there is, and we’re meant to make the best of it until we pass on to a better one. Your Paradise is a dream. A fever dream. I’ve had enough, Gideon. I’ve abided all these months, out of love for you. I’ve prayed for you to see reason. But I won’t stand by any longer while you sacrifice Aleph to your notions.”

  “My notions. Mental trinkets, you mean, that rattle round my brain. Such a racket they make as my little wife waits for me to come to my senses.” Gideon shakes his head slowly. “The real amusement—the amazement—is what I made of you. Holding you up as a superior being. A child of nature, a pure mind. I confided in you—told you things I told no one else. Who better than a wood nymph to comprehend another world?” A bark of laughter. “I was the innocent. What did I know of women? No more than I knew about guns! A more experienced man would have seen you for what you are, if he bothered to give a second glance. A common country girl whose mind is as small as the town she was raised in. As stunted as—as—”

  He stands suddenly and with elaborate care props the rifle against the hearth. Advances toward her. Takes a breast in each hand. “I wonder what we’ll do with you when we have no more use for these. The boy will be weaned one day. Poor old milk-cow, what then?” He tightens his grip, and she cries out. Two damp circles spread on the front of her dress.

  “Do you think I don’t know that you betray me?” he says, very low. “I hear you talking to Aleph. I hear you!”

  The door slams and Leander’s footsteps reverberate in the hall. He strides into the kitchen, mopping his brow with a kerchief. “So! Daniel has returned from the lion’s den, still in one piece.” His eyes move from Gideon to Sophy, and back again. “All well here?”

  Aleph begins to wail for his morning meal, and the quiet house fills with noise.

  CHAPTER 37

  ____

  QUESTIONS

  AUGUST. A DRY SPELL, THE EARTH PARCHED, FOLIAGE DROOPing. Leander diverts himself from deeper worries to fret about the state of the well and the garden. The wall struts bravely across the front of the property and straggles off to nothing at the sides: Lem and his brother have left without warning to help a farmer with his harvest. Heat lounges in the house like a shiftless uncle. Twice, birds have plummeted down the chimney and run Sophy ragged from room to room, eluding the swipes of her broom. Mosquitoes plague them at night: Gideon scratches in his sleep, Aleph whimpers under his gauze tent. The weather imposes its own stasis. Day after day, under siege or no, they go on.

  After a brief respite—the parson, Micah reported, had preached on tolerance—human wildlife has been spotted at all hours, ogling them from the road. Gideon claims he can hear voices after midnight, loud enough to wake him, though no one else is disturbed. “They sit on the wall, arrogant as jays,” he says, “planning how to torment us. I thought I heard James last night.” It does no good to remind him that James won’t come near the house. Logic only makes him more avid. He spends half his waking hours hunched in a corner of the wall—“like a statue in a niche,” Leander says—with the rifle and his journal. Glancing out the window, Sophy has seen him bent over his book, writing with fierce concentration. She wonders what he can possibly be recording. He has little time for Aleph now.

  “One of us should always be on guard,” he tells Leander. “Day and night, like a ship’s watch.”

  “How would we manage that, with only two of us and someone always needed in the house?” Leander inclines his head slightly toward Sophy. “Don’t expect me to volunteer for duty night after night. I’ve spent enough hours of my life staring at the stars.” But he assures Gideon that he sleeps with one eye open. “A useful habit from my years of living rough.”

  Gideon is militant even when unconscious. He keeps the rifle at his bedside, standing at attention against the wall. Fast asleep, he throws an arm over Sophy, trapping her ankle with his foot or clutching her nightgown in his fist. She doesn’t mistake this possessiveness for affection, but chooses to call it need. He reaches for her at night because the two of them are still one flesh, and no one—not the interloper who lives with them, not the stranger Gideon has become—can sunder them. The ugliness that passed between them is etched on her, yet she can’t bring herself to hate him, or fear him as she fears Leander. Since their confrontation they circle one another stiffly, never locking eyes. When she opens her dress to nurse the baby, he looks away. It is a matter of faith to Sophy that the face he hides shows the same raw pain she saw that morning, when Leander burst in. At his core, he can still feel shame.

  On nights when she lies awake, restless in his grip but wary of disturbing him, Gideon’s sermon about Paradise comes back to her with a force she never felt in church. There is a world parallel to our own, and in that world she and Gideon are the young couple they were when they courted, advancing gracefully in time. Gideon teaches at the seminary, and she keeps house and paints when she can, and at night she slips into his study and dances for him, and they live for each other and their son. It seems so familiar, that world; so tantalizingly near. Some mornings, waking from an hour of snatched sleep, she believes they’ve lived there all along.

  IN THIS WORLD, Sophy is making plans for her departure. Visitors are discouraged—Gideon is in a nervous state, apt to shoot before he thinks—but Micah still comes, and they find a few moments to themselves. On his last visit, he brought some news. James has developed a sudden interest in his nephew—his nephew’s soul, to be exact. The poor little pagan is half a Hedge, and entitled to the full measure of salvation through baptism. He’s made it his personal quest, Micah says; he talks of little else. Their welfare is not James’s only concern. He is convinced that the presence of his sister and her son in the house is staying the hand of Judgment. To allow the Lord free rein, Sophy and Aleph are to be plucked from their unclea
n surroundings and resettled among the righteous. In a few weeks James intends to take the coach to Dedham to see a banker about a loan to keep the farm going. While he is gone, he will leave the horse and wagon for Micah.

  “Why doesn’t he come get us himself?” Sophy asked. “He puts the whole burden on his little brother. It isn’t right.”

  “Y-you know why. He w-won’t even cash the rent checks, Sophy! Throws them in the f-fire while the farm goes to ruin.”

  “And once Aleph’s soul is seen to, will he bring us home?”

  “M-maybe. Or board you in t-town. Place isn’t fit for pigs.”

  To calm herself, Sophy makes lists of essentials in her sketchbook, adding two items for every one she crosses out: Mama’s brooch weighs nothing, the jade rabbit will bring them luck, Aleph won’t sleep without his lamb. Today she thinks of her paintings, baking under a cloth in the conservatory. She can’t take them with her, but should at least pack them securely and see that they’re stored in a safe place until Micah can bring them to her. In the trunk, she finds an old blanket that Mama wrapped dishes in, and some twine. She feels a pang of conscience for her neglected children. They deserve to await Armageddon in a cooler spot.

  IF ELSEWHERE THE HEAT OPPRESSES, in the glasshouse it transports. Once she closes the door behind her, she could be in a perfumed isle, or Spain. Short, scorching New England summers are all she’s ever known. The glasshouse reminds her that there are places in the world where people bask in moist, fragrant air all year round, where they move through life unhurried. It is difficult for Sophy to remember that this tropical zone used to be her studio and Gideon’s laboratory. In August, only the plants are diligent.