The Beginning of Sorrows

by Gilbert, Morris

  She didn’t try to guess the meaning, only enjoying a small satisfaction at understanding the rather difficult phrase. As she listened further, both men repeated a phrase that she couldn’t even envision in her mind, much less translate. She grew very still and listened harder. Both of the soldiers had deep voices, and some of the conversation was lost in the never-ceasing song of the waves, but she could tell they were talking about dates, times, the future . . . ?

  “ . . . Tagundnachtgleiche herbstlich . . .”

  She stood still, repeating the difficult phrase in her mind. She’d finally visualized it, though she didn’t know what it meant.

  “Sprechen sie Deutsche?”

  The harsh question, barked behind her right ear, made Victorine jump. Whirling, she looked up into Rand von Drachstedt’s eyes, which were narrowed to tight slits with suspicion.

  “No, Herr Oberstleutnant, I don’t speak German,” Victorine answered calmly.

  He stared at her, and she stood, unflinching, serenely returning his heated gaze.

  After what seemed like a very long time to Victorine, the colonel almost imperceptibly relaxed, though he seemed reluctant to dismiss Victorine. “Your accent, it is very good for someone who doesn’t speak German, madam.”

  Victorine nodded gracefully. “I try to address my guests properly, sir. It’s a matter of courtesy.”

  After only a moment more of hesitation, he nodded brusquely. “Don’t allow me to interrupt your work, Madam Thayer.”

  “I am finished, Herr Oberstleutnant, if you will excuse me . . .” Quickly gathering her cleaning supplies, she left the condo. Though she felt Colonel Rand von Drachstedt’s suspicious gaze burning into her back, she managed, with a great effort, not to turn around.

  Hurrying to her own unit, she went into her bedroom. Two walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves. Victorine, without fumbling, put her hand right on her German-English dictionary. “Herbstlich . . . That’s autumn, isn’t it? . . . yes, autumn, or autumnal . . . the other word—of course, it’s a compound word.” Grabbing a pen and scribbling on the back inside cover of the well-worn dictionary, Victorine wrote:

  Tag—day

  und—and

  nacht—night

  gleiche—same

  She looked up, comprehension dawning on her still features. “‘Day and night same’ . . . it’s the equinox. The autumnal equinox.”

  Project Final Unity—whatever that ominous-sounding thing might be-–was to take place in less than three months.

  Without warning, a shard of a Scripture popped into Victorine’s head that made her draw a sharp, ragged gasp of breath:

  . . . pray ye that your flight be not in the winter . . .

  ELEVEN

  AS JESSE MITCHELL STROLLED DOWN Main Street, it occurred to him that Hot Springs, Arkansas, had been designed not by a human architect but by two lakes— Lake Catherine and Lake Hamilton. These two bodies of water pushed and nudged at the city, stretching it out at times, at other times squeezing it into a ridiculously narrow girth. Jesse was rather surprised that the Man and Biosphere Project had changed the city so little. Perhaps physically it could not be changed, for the traffic plan was simple enough. Central Avenue ran just as he remembered it, the length of the city, and Grand Avenue crossed it at right angles. If anyone cared to go anywhere on either of those streets, there were possibilities. Otherwise it was a matter of searching down one of the twisting, winding streets that changed names sometimes as often as they changed directions. The main feature on Central was a thoroughbred racetrack. It had not been used for many years, but Jesse remembered visiting there long ago and thinking how strange it was for people to watch horses run around in circles. Now, of course, people thought that it violated the horses’ rights to make them run races. Jesse thought that was very odd, too; it had always seemed to him that thoroughbreds really liked to run. He wondered, now, if there were any thoroughbreds left in the world, for that was the only reason people had had them, to watch them run.

  He found the city depressing, and he had had enough. Reversing his steps, he made his way back down Grand Avenue and entered the double doors of a six-story building. It was an old hotel, and the lobby had a sad aura of lost grandeur. The floor and great staircase were of marble darkened with age and careless use and grimed with years. Slowly he climbed to the top story and went down a dark hallway lined with ancient and blackened wooden doors, and entered into Noemi’s and his room.

  She was standing in the tiny cubicle of a kitchenette, cooking. Without looking up she said, “Hello, you. Thought maybe you’d decided to take a grand tour, see all the sights.”

  “I saw all I needed to see. More than I wanted. Smells good, Noe.”

  “Here’s fresh corn bread. Don’t know how I managed it in that little nothing of a pretend kitchen, but maybe it’s edible.”

  Jess sat at the ugly chrome and glass table for two and eagerly pulled over the pan of corn bread. Cutting himself a generous slice, he crumbled it up into an old stemmed goblet of half-inch-thick glass. His goblet and Noe’s iron skillet were two of the few things they’d kept through their lives. When his glass was crammed full of the corn bread chunks, he poured the milk over it, then bowed his head, holding the spoon in his right hand. “Lord, thank You for this prime corn bread,” he said. Dipping his spoon into the glass, he scooped the rich mixture into his mouth and chewed with delight. Talking around the mouthful, he said, “Edible! You know you’re just talking nonsense. Nobody can make corn bread like you can, Noe.”

  “I ought to know how. I must have made ten million pans of it for you.”

  The old couple sat without speaking, the kind of easy, warm silence that only many years of love and dedicated companionship can produce. The only sound was Jesse’s enthusiastic smacking as he ate the corn bread and the scraping of the spoon on the glass. When he finished, she asked, “More?”

  “Not right now. Might have another helping just before bed.”

  Moving rather slowly, Noe got up and picked up the glass and the spoon. Quietly she washed and dried them and put them into the single cupboard. Now her kitchen was clean.

  “Why don’t you read to me, Jesse?” she asked, coming to join him in one of the two ugly armchairs in the living room.

  Jesse Mitchell reached over and pulled the well-thumbed Bible with the faded black leather cover toward him. “I think I’d like to read a little in Hosea today,” he announced.

  “I always liked Hosea. He was a good man.”

  Opening the Bible, Jesse began to read. It was obvious, however, that he scarcely needed the printed page before him. For the last seventy years he had done little else but read the pages of the Bible. He had a phenomenal memory, and if he had been stranded on a desert island with nothing but a pen and tablets, he could probably have re-created nine-tenths of the King James Version of the Scripture. Noe had asked him once, “Why haven’t you learned all of it?”

  “Can’t see any sense in memorizing Numbers,” he had scoffed. “It’s mostly a list of the names of the tribes and the heads of the tribes and the children of Israel. Doesn’t hurt to go back and look all that up.”

  But if he was weak in the book of Numbers, he was strong in the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament. It was a time in which many people barely even knew exactly what the Bible was, but to Jesse Mitchell and his wife the old book had been the very heart and center and foundation of their entire lives. Jesse had even made a translation from English to Apache, an accomplishment that gave him great satisfaction.

  For a long time Jesse’s voice broke the silence while Noe sat leaning her head back, her eyes closed. When Jesse finished the book and looked up, he saw that her mouth was drawn together with a hint of tension. “Your hands hurt?” he asked quietly.

  “Oh, I feel all right,” Noe said quickly, lifting her head to smile at him. She never complained, but she never deceived him, either. They had lived together for so long that they could practically read one ano
ther’s thoughts.

  Running his hand over the worn cover of his Bible, Jesse sat quietly for a time, staring into space. It was difficult for Noe to tell if he was praying or simply thinking, for he was, at times, prone to go off into long silences. This had never disturbed her, and she never bothered him when he was in such deep introspection, no matter how long it lasted. Sooner or later he would talk to her about whatever was on his mind.

  After a long while he reached over and covered her gnarled, blue-veined hand with his rough one. For a moment he ran his thumb over the plain gold wedding band, then he smiled. “I remember the day I put this on you.”

  “So do I. Even though it was—what, about a hundred and ten years ago?”

  “Seems like. I thought you were the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.” Jesse grinned and squeezed her hand. “I still do.” He patted her hand, then leaned back in his chair and finally said what was on his mind. “I’ve got an uneasy feeling, Noe.”

  “I knew something was bothering you.”

  “Ever since we’ve come to Hot Springs, I’ve felt like something was wrong.”

  She asked thoughtfully, “Wrong . . . you mean that we’ve done something the Lord didn’t will us to do? Or that we’ve made a mistake or something?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I mean. It’s something else.” He shifted in his chair, ran his fingers through his thick white hair in a gesture of frustration. “It’s sort of odd—and hard to explain—” He stopped, then blurted out, “I’ve got the feeling that someone’s looking at me.”

  Blankly Noe responded, “Looking at you! What does that mean? What—who would be looking at you?”

  “I know it sounds . . . strange.”

  “Well, yes, it sure does, Jess. You mean—you feel like somebody’s stalking you like—like they do those Cyclops people or famous people?”

  “No. Not like that. I don’t know how to explain it to you.” He was obviously frustrated.

  Noe studied him, frowning. “Do you feel it now?”

  “No, no—not really. It comes over me, sort of, when I’m alone.” Jesse went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. Returning to his armchair, he held his mustache back and sipped it noisily. His strange mood clouded his hazel eyes, and frustration tightened the lips almost hidden by his sweeping mustache. “You know how sometimes we’ve laughed because we’re so used to being together that we talk to each other, but we turn around and no one’s in the room?”

  “Yes . . . ,” Noe said hesitantly.

  “But that feeling—that certainty—you get that I’m there, right in the room, you’re just so sure I am that you start talking? You know how that feels?”

  “Sure do. I just know it. That’s why it’s so funny that you’re really not there.”

  Uneasily Jesse said, “Well, that’s the closest way I can think of to explain it—only with this, it’s not funny. I’m just sure, in the way that humans have, that someone’s there, watching me, looking at me. But I turn around, and there’s no one there.”

  Shifting restlessly, Jesse took another sip of the coffee. He dropped his head for a moment and then looked up at her with pain, and a touch of fear, etched across his face. Noe hadn’t seen her husband look like that in—forever. It had never entered her mind or thoughts or prayers that Jesse Mitchell could ever be frightened of anything again.

  With great calm and assurance, she said, “Well, Jess, whatever it is, you know that we’ll find the truth, and the answer, in God’s Word. Now, it doesn’t sound to me like this—experience—is in any way a godly one. Right?”

  He focused on her intently. “No. No, it’s not God’s presence I feel.”

  “So if it’s not some kind of communication from God, then it could only be one other thing.”

  He grimaced. “That I’m going out of my mind?”

  “Jesse Mitchell! You know better than that! You have the mind of Christ!” she staunchly asserted.

  Instead of looking chastised, he grinned at her, and looked twenty years younger. “Times like these I recall just why the Lord gave me such a gift as you, Noe. You’re a treasure.”

  She smiled, pleased, then prodded him, “Don’t try to charm me, you rascal. We’re going to work through this, with the Lord’s guidance. Now, tell me, if it’s not the presence of the Spirit of our Lord you sense, what else would it be? Evil, of course. Pure and simple.”

  Jesse, now sober, sat back in his chair; his eyes searched a far distance again. Noe waited patiently; she had told him of her knowledge, but Jesse was the prophet. He would, she knew well, in the end have to deal with this himself. She would never leave his side, but God had required much of Jesse Mitchell, much more than He had of her or of most of His children. Following and upholding Jesse on his difficult path had been both Noe’s greatest joy and her hardest tribulation. But always, in the end, Jesse had to stand alone with his God.

  The church that Jesse and Noe had been attending while in Hot Springs was located on a side street two blocks west of the long, narrow strip of downtown. The church was old, built in a time of lavish monies spent for Gothic cathedrals. Built of dusky gray sandstone, the tall needle-pointed spire rose to heaven. Jesse had said when he had first taken Noe there, “I remember seeing this church when I was a little boy. Then I was young and foolish, and I wished we could go to this fancy ‘High Church’ instead of the little country churches my father always took us to. Turned out I was just a ‘Low Church’ kind of man, after all.”

  “People and their foolishness,” Noe sniffed. “High church, low church. We’re all God’s people.”

  Now as the couple sat six rows back and directly in the center, Jesse studied the auditorium, which was at least three-quarters filled. On this cheerful Sunday morning light streamed in through the stained glass windows, casting effulgent brilliant colors on the faces of the worshipers. The ceiling rose to a sweeping arch by hammered beams and lent an air of spaciousness to the building.

  Jesse’s eyes were still trained upward; he was thinking that this church looked like the sort of place where angels might be flitting around the rafters.

  Noe poked him lightly in the ribs and whispered, “Jess, you still haven’t told me what you think of this pastor.”

  “I’ve not made up my mind yet.”

  To Noe this was a rather strange response, for Jesse was ordinarily quick to discern people. She understood his reticence, for Tybalt Colfax was unlike any preacher either of them had ever seen. The couple had spent so many years in the desert under primitive conditions and with a people that lived in a world out of time. It seemed that the world of theology had whisked by them, as had the style in preachers. Both of them remembered in their past poorly dressed, rough-hewn men weathered and beaten by the elements and by struggles simply to get by. But the man who pastored this United America Church was nothing like that.

  Reverend Colfax was a fine-looking man in his mid-thirties. He had a pair of sharp blue eyes and was roughly handsome. He was articulate, even eloquent, but Noe found her mind wandering.

  She shifted her eyes to Mrs. Colfax, the pastor’s wife, who sat on the front row. At twenty-seven, she was eight years younger than her husband, and although Noe was not sophisticated enough to realize it, even as young as Galatia Colfax was she had already had several corrective surgeries. Her hair had been color-corrected to that glowing platinum blonde that was a rage since the Lady of Light had grown so popular in the religious world. Galatia’s eyes were a dark brown, which clashed slightly with the platinum blonde hair, and a hint of melancholy touched her pleasant features even though she kept a smile on her face. She kept her eyes fastened on her husband in such a way that Noe Mitchell suddenly thought, I’ll bet she’s had trouble with that man of hers. He’s too nice looking for a preacher. Women go after preachers so much anyway, what the poor souls are looking for I’ve never understood . . . but I’ll wager that they must have been after that one a lot.

  Jesse had somewhat of the same
idea but he was trying to concentrate on the sermon. It troubled him. The words of the minister were smooth and the delivery fluent, and it was certainly scriptural. Still Jesse felt uneasy.

  Finally he realized, He knows a lot of theology, but it all seems to be coming from his head. In all truthfulness, Jesse Mitchell loved preaching, regardless of quality or articulation or intelligence, that came from the heart. In his younger days, he had mistaken volume for this quality and had sought out preachers who had rattled the windows with thunderous voices, or roved across the platform and even into the audience like raging lions, shaking their fists, the veins in their foreheads swollen with blood. But Jesse had passed through that stage and had come to realize that the voice of God often came in a small whisper rather than in a thunderous blast of words. The catch was not the method of delivery, but the content of His Holy Spirit. Reverend Colfax certainly was not a shouter nor a Bible-thumper and he certainly did have a graceful and smooth delivery. But still, Jesse decided that his words came from intellectual resources, not from the throne of grace.

  One of the sure tests for Jesse Mitchell of a preacher’s power was his ability to keep the attention of his listeners. In spite of his determination to pay attention to what the man was saying, Jesse found himself thinking of other things and he also found that his eyes were wandering over the congregation. He couldn’t help himself from wondering, with a bit of dread, how so much had changed, and he hadn’t been aware of it for so many years.

  For one thing, this church was a United America church, and apparently that was about all that was left. Somehow over the years the government had managed to phase out the tax-exempt status of many of the big denominations. The heavy monetary burdens imposed upon them, plus the legislative restrictions placed upon them, had forced the different denominations to align themselves with this organization. The government had designated the United America group as a true nonprofit organization, and it and the Catholic Church—and, of course, Earth’s Light—were the only religious groups that had tax-exempt status.