Warm as it is, she turns cold at the sight of her paintings lined up along the back wall with their secret sides exposed. Leander is sitting cross-legged before the display, lost in contemplation. He seems not the least alarmed at her intrusion. He unfolds to his full height and bows from the waist.
“Sophia, my congratulations. What marvels! The flowers of a singular mind. I’ve always said to Gideon, leave her to herself, away from the proprieties of the Academy, and she’ll do wonders. You pretend to dabble, but in your quiet way, you’ve grown into a true artiste.” He points to the painting of the flying serpent. “You’ve caught me, dear lady. That wicked eye of yours has pinned me to the board. I admit, the motif is a little startling. I’ve heard of Jews with horns, but wings? An innovation!”
“What right have you?” She is trembling. “Is there no end to your arrogance?”
He holds up a pacifying hand. “I meant no harm. I wondered what was under the cloth, that is all. Why do you hide your work? It should be seen.”
“My pictures weren’t intended for your eyes, or any other’s. Could you not leave me this one last thing? You’ve taken everything else.”
Her sense of violation is overwhelming. Against her will she starts to cry, ugly coughing sobs.
“Sophia. Sophy, please.” Leander raises his arms as if to comfort her; lets them drop. “What have I taken that I haven’t given back thrice over? My money, my time, the house that shelters us, this pretty room you paint in. All that I have is yours.”
“The price is too high. You’ve destroyed my family—left me with nothing. Because of you Gideon persists in this foolishness. He deprives his own son!” Her voice spirals up and up. Aleph is sleeping on the other side of the wall. Let him wake, let him hear. “Give Gideon back to me and you can keep the rest.”
“He isn’t mine to give, or yours to possess.” Leander is quiet in measure to her shrillness. “Neither of us owns him, but he needs us both. These seers who live in their exalted minds—the world makes short work of them. Without us to brace him, he would try, and fail, and compromise, and flounder, and one day he would not get up. You and I, we make it possible for him to exist. To be his splendid self.”
Her cheeks flame. “That is a wife’s job.”
“A wife might do the trick for an average fellow. Our Gideon is more complicated. What you call foolishness is the breath of life to him. Madness would be more accurate, for once the obsession takes hold, it has no end. First the words, then the roots, then the letters, then the mystical numbers, each box promising revelation but opening to a smaller box. I had a touch of the malady once, and I can testify—some never find their way back.”
“You don’t share his affliction? I’m not surprised. You seem a very worldly man. Maybe you’ll explain what you want with my poor deluded husband.”
“My temperament inoculates me. The curiosity is still with me, but the zeal—that’s long gone.” Leander gives a little shrug, dismissing his youthful passion. “You accuse me of possessing Gideon, demonizing him. I assure you, my powers are strictly mundane. I put his gifts to practical use. Keep him anchored on our sad old planet. Some women would thank me.” He has been pinioning Sophy with his eyes, as usual, but now his gaze sweeps the length of the glass room: the flourishing plants, the green world outside. “I wonder if you appreciate how unique our situation is. Such a pure, wholesome experiment. I find it endlessly interesting. We are plowing virgin fields.”
The image undoes her; she can see it. She says, faintly, “You destroy my child for your entertainment.”
He shakes his head—more in astonishment, it seems, than in denial. In the moment it takes him to answer, she realizes she’s stung him.
“I love Aleph, too, can’t you see that? Do you think a man like me—a worldly man, as you quaintly put it—has no tender feelings? Show me a father who is more devoted to the son of his flesh than I am to our little one. If harm comes to him—to any of you—through me, may it be on my head!”
Vows resound, Sophy thinks. If spoken loud enough, they could shatter glass.
When he speaks again, his voice is level. “You paint me as the serpent hanging over the innocent young couple, casting a shadow over their lives. But it was never bliss, was it? There was trouble long before I came. Gideon was restless and discontented, and you were, shall we say, confused. Am I wrong?”
“We weren’t perfect, but we were a family. Now I don’t know what we are.”
“Still a family! A stronger one, if only you would allow yourself to see. To accept.” Leander takes a step toward her. “When I first met you, I saw a couple who were at odds by nature. Charming, yes, this union of earth and air, but the attraction that drew you to each other also worked against you. Forgive me for speaking candidly, but I believe your barrenness was a symptom of an elemental antipathy.” He advances another step. “I undertook to be your alchemist. Fortunately, I have some acquaintance with the art. The result? Our beautiful boy.”
Sophy would move away, but she is rooted to the spot. “You have no part in Aleph.”
“Have I not? It seems inevitable that fate called upon me to bring him into the world.” His white grin. “Naturally, I was terrified at the time.”
Have I not? The foreign inflection, the old world coiling about her simple country ways. The shrewdness, which reminds her of how much she doesn’t know.
“Who are you?” Three plain words to counter his. She puts what is left of her strength into them.
Leander reaches for her rocking chair, spins it around to face her and sits heavily. “Who I am, you ought to know. But you are really asking who I was. What if I were to tell you that I was born in Germany, in a town called Kassel; that my father was respectable and despaired of me, and my mother was rich and doted on me; that I had a wife I tolerated, and a child I dearly loved . . . and they died. That some men are content with the families they are born to and the life they inherit, and others travel the world seeking their true kin. Would you know me any better?”
“You were married?” She would like to ask him about the child. She had caught him once bent over Aleph’s cradle, tracing the baby’s face with his finger, his touch lingering and delicate. Now she wonders if another child’s face was written there. But sympathy is a luxury she can’t afford.
“It was arranged,” he says curtly, and looks away.
Sophy begins to grasp his method. Answer a question with a question. “You travel the world and you end up in Ormsby? With the likes of us?”
“You are remarkable, both of you. The serendipity of finding you here, of all places—it’s enough to make an old cynic like me believe in destiny.” Leander tilts back in the chair and cocks his head, studying her from a new angle. His eyes are hooded like the serpent’s in her painting, but there is a need in them that she’s never seen.
“You ought to try to care for me a little, Sophia,” he says. “We could help each other. We’re cut from the same cloth, you and I. Earthy folk who find their satisfaction in earthy pleasures. Do you know the old story about Lilith, Adam’s first wife? She was made of dust, just as he was—quite literally his other half. She could fly, they say . . .”
It has been a long time since anyone looked at Sophy with desire. The shock of it disturbs her rhythm, addles her. From the day she met Leander Solloway, she has called him Enemy and Adversary. Papa used those names to cloak the Devil. Sophy wields them to cover Leander’s nakedness. Living side by side, they keep a careful distance, but she has known his nature since his first visit, when he lounged in the doorway of her old room as though he had a right to be there, at home in his body as Gideon never was. That night, lying beside her husband, she’d closed her eyes and spied on the stranger who was sleeping in her bed. Come so close she could see the grain of his skin.
She is tired. Months of resistance have worn her down, and the future is bleak at best. How much simpler it would be to show him the gratitude he’s earned. Fulfill the bargain that the desperat
e make in fairy tales: You preserved my life and my son’s; you own us now. A silent giving-in. Her head resting on his chest. His arms drawing her close, wrapping her in the circle of his wide love. She can feel the pull of him, the heat of him, even as she fends him off.
“I suppose it’s your mother’s money that has kept us all these months?” she says. “I hope she would have approved of our glasshouse. Was her fortune very vast?”
Leander continues to gaze at her for a few seconds, as if she hadn’t spoken. Then, putting his weight on the arms of the rocker, he hoists his long body out of the low seat. “She liked a garden, my mother did. Gardens reminded her of the country house she grew up in.” His tone is thoughtful, without a trace of mockery. “Her fortune was comfortable, not vast. I’ve drawn on my portion when I needed to and put some back along the way. But our little household has drained me dry. I tell you frankly, I’m almost at the end of my resources. I don’t know what we will do when the cold comes.”
As he passes her on the way to the door, his eyes rest briefly on the blanket and twine. He glances once again at the impromptu exhibit against the wall. “Perhaps we’ll chain you to your easel, Sophia. These might be worth something.”
CHAPTER 38
____
LEAVING
THERE IS A MOON. THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A MOON, BUT ITS appearance on this night is a courtesy, if not a grace. It could have been shrouded in clouds. It could have been a sliver, with limited candlepower. That it is three-quarters full and shedding light on Sophy as she makes her way up the road with Aleph in her arms must surely be due to special intercession. Mama must be arranging the celestial calendar, Papa has possibly won an argument with God.
She and Micah contrived the plan, but the first part has fallen to her alone. It is too risky for him to bring the horse and wagon near the house; the clatter would be heard half a mile away. All you have to do is leave, Micah told her: slip out with Aleph while the others are asleep and walk straight till the road forks. If you’re frightened, think of me waiting for you.
A simple stroll, he made it seem. These past few weeks she has been calculating each step, rehearsing every obstacle in advance. Gideon’s long hours of watchfulness could work in her favor; voices and visions might poison his dreams, but lately he sleeps like the dead. If she could extricate herself from the house without waking him, she would have a chance. Should the worst happen, she could contrive some excuse—assuming he gave her time, given the state of his nerves and the nearness of the gun. Her mind averted from this extremity. She meant what she said, he is not a man for killing. Still, he had hinted at the consequences of betrayal. Told her she was expendable.
Leander sleeps in a small room off the kitchen, near the rear entrance—if he sleeps at all. Sophy took him at his word when he claimed to keep one eye trained on the ceiling. He is well situated to monitor their comings and goings. His magic might be mundane, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew what she would do before she knew it herself. Aleph was the other question. He might wake crying when she lifted him, or snuggle against her and go on sleeping. Her best hope was that he’d disturbed their rest before. Gideon and Leander were both accustomed to her nocturnal pacing as she soothed the baby.
Then there were the doors, fastened with primitive latches since the trouble started; Leander secured them each night before retiring. And the weather, which, halfway through September, had shaken off summer without stepping firmly into fall. If the cold blew in, if the clouds were thick, if it rained, how would she keep the baby warm and quiet, how would she see a foot ahead of her? The passage from her bed to the bend in the road where Micah was to meet them seemed as fraught with peril as Odysseus’s journey across the sea, and as endless.
THE DAY BEGAN in ordinary fashion, as momentous days often do. Up at dawn to attend to Aleph and settle him back in his crib for another hour; he’d need the rest, poor mite. Gideon was snoring gently; he had rolled over when she left the bed, his vigilance relaxed as morning approached.
Sophy had one errand to accomplish, and she wanted to do it before breakfast. With Micah’s help, she had wrapped and tied her paintings as planned, with some vague idea of preserving her claim to them. But where to hide them in a house as open and bare as this one? She had poked around the wasteland of sawdust-strewn rooms upstairs and crept down in defeat. She had wedged the bulky package into the back of her shallow wardrobe, but her few dresses provided little cover, and the doors kept swinging open. In the end she settled for an obvious solution. Hidden, not quite in plain sight.
The parlor was a grand space designed for formal gatherings, now more a crossroads than a room. Though each of them passed through numerous times a day, there was no reason to linger; its one piece of furniture, the settee, had been moved to the dining room. Leander, who was forever rhapsodizing about Spain, called the sun-splashed expanse their inner courtyard: “A lemon tree, a stone bench, and we could be in Sevilla!” Against a wall, where lovers might have communed on the bench, was the trunk Mama had packed for them, empty now except for the remnants of their move. A cumbersome thing with curling paper lining, it had been ignored for so long that no one talked any more of hauling it upstairs. Sophy put the paintings inside, along with the cloth bag she had filled for the journey, and covered them as best she could. She had not dared to check on them since.
This morning the lid creaked when she raised it—a modest complaint, but, to her strained senses, loud enough to open Leander’s other eye. The package was awkward to lift from the depths of the trunk, heavier than she remembered, and her hands shook so that she almost dropped it. With the paintings clutched to her bosom and the bag over her arm, she struggled, first to unlatch the front door, then to push it open. Rarely used, it seemed to have absorbed the inhabitants’ perpetual distrust of outsiders.
There was a rhododendron bush by the pillared porch, a wild, overgrown shrub that had yet to produce a flower. Sophy set the package behind it, flat against the house under the shelter of the portico roof. She concealed the traveling bag in the bed of earth and leaves around the roots, as near to the stairs as she dared; a hundred times she’d imagined bending to retrieve it in the dark while carrying the baby.
The paintings would have to wait for Micah to pick up on another day. Better to leave them outside, they’d decided: the weather was less a risk than the door shut in his face. Sophy knew she might not see them again. Leander could discover the package and turn its contents to profit, a view of Eden for a bag of flour; Gideon could destroy them in a rage. So be it. One day, if life permitted, she would make others. But, whatever their fate, she was purely glad that these trifling works of her hand had been liberated. It was as though they were harbingers, making their way into the world before her.
The weather was promising: sunny and brisk, the breeze strong enough to send leaves flying. Already the rich mulch of fall was in the air, summer’s parched leavings turning to gold. Sophy wondered idly why the first hints of decay were so stirring to the senses, why the heart quickened in full knowledge that the long winter lay ahead. It struck her suddenly that almost a year had passed since they moved into the house. The rain came back to her, and Mama weeping at the farmhouse door. The ride in the rocking chair, hugging her belly to protect the baby as the wagon jounced on the wet road. Crying herself to sleep in her strange room. Wandering into the glasshouse at first light and being dazzled by a world ablaze. And now, at the start of another autumn, Mama was gone and Aleph was nine months in the world and she was moving again.
Leander hailed her from the road, a sack over his shoulder. So fixed was her image of him listening in his room that Sophy was at first disoriented, as if he’d conjured a doppelganger to confuse her.
“The mistress at her front door! I was feeling a little winded, but the sight of you spurred me on.” Panting, he dropped the bulging sack at her feet. “I woke this morning with apple pie on the brain. Walked all the way to Haskell’s place without a bite of breakf
ast and raised the old man from his bed. My zeal got the better of me—I picked too many and forgot I had to carry them.” He loosened the strings of the sack and the apples rolled and settled, a few tumbling to the ground. “I don’t suppose you’d deliver some of these beauties to their just reward?”
“I’ll make a pie,” she said, “if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No more, no less, dear lady. One day, you know, we’ll have an orchard of our own.” He lifted his face to the sun and breathed deep. “Do you love this season as much as I do?”
“It’s my favorite, I think—though why rot should be so appealing is a mystery.”
Leander shrugged. “Most men believe life begins in spring. For me, the sap always rises in autumn. A chilly morning, a whiff of woodsmoke, and I get the most powerful urge to move on. Year after year it shook me loose and drove me here and there, as if I had no more substance than one of these brittle leaves. I’d be drifting still, if I didn’t keep it down by force. Perhaps you feel the same?” Squinting, he gazed at the house, dwelling briefly on the bush. “Next spring it will flower,” he said. “I hear the little one crying. Shall we use the visitor’s entrance?”
He followed her up the stairs, and held the door open as she went inside.
PIE IS A GREAT HARMONIZER: the rolling-out of dough, the slicing and sugaring, the crimping of the crown. In need of an extra measure of calm, Sophy made two. The aroma of baking lured the men to the kitchen. Leander declared that the fragrance was a meal in itself; he wouldn’t sully such perfection by reducing it to the gross processes of mastication and digestion. “More for the rest of us then,” Gideon said. They ate the first pie warm and bubbling at noon. The silence was for once contented, the men cutting slice after slice and eating slivers off their knives like peasants. Sophy mashed a bit of apple with her spoon and put it on her finger for Aleph to suck. Gideon looked her full in the face and smiled for the first time in weeks. It was an effort for her to smile back. Did he think that a moment of sweetness could heal the rift between them?
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