Eden Burning

by Belva Plain

  Someone touched his arm. This time he looked down into an old face, into a quilting of wrinkles on Chinese cheeks.

  “Did you happen to know him?”

  “Yes, very well. Did you?”

  The old man wanted to talk. “Just when he was a boy. But I remember him clearly. In Sweet Apple, it was, where I had a store. Ah Sing’s store.” And he folded his hands into his sleeves, a gesture he had brought from his homeland more than half a century before. “He’s not a person you would forget.”

  Francis nodded. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  And he looked back at the sorrowful, respectful crowd. Calm now, all of them calm. Next time we might not be this lucky.

  “I’m not going to the graveyard,” Marjorie said. “I suppose you are?”

  “Yes, and afterwards to the house. The family is going back to Clarence’s. Désirée wanted to.”

  “Well, you go then. I never knew them all that well, anyway. I’ll get a lift.”

  Neighbor women had taken over the house and sent Désirée upstairs to rest, leaving the front room to the men. Clarence, Franklin, and Will were by themselves when Francis went in.

  “It could as easily have been one of Mebane’s men,” Will was arguing. “Far more easily. You always blame the left!”

  “I didn’t say it couldn’t have been one of Mebane’s,” Clarence retorted. In his grief he had aged; his dark face was powdered with gray. “But also, it might not have been. You aren’t going to tell me your heroes don’t kill? Russians and Cubans and the rest who are going to deliver this world from all evil—they don’t kill?”

  “You don’t understand,” Will said. “You never did. You never will.”

  “I understand that you don’t care, that this death is nothing to you.” In anger, Clarence half rose from his chair.

  “I don’t think he meant—” began Franklin, his tone admonishing Don’t be too hard on him, when Will made his own defense.

  “You think I’m indifferent because I take a larger view! I’m sorry, of course I’m sorry! But how much can you grieve for one man in a world where millions suffer?”

  Clarence was contemptuous. “It’s the same with all of you. Oh, the wringing of the hands on behalf of the masses! But where is the human feeling for the family or the friend? Pity in the abstract for the masses, yes, but for the individual, none. Torture even, and the gulag for him.”

  “I have pity.” Will stood his ground. “But Patrick was misguided. He was ineffectual. All his nice words, his laws and rules—crumbs! They’ll come to nothing.”

  “Yes,” Clarence said bitterly, “that’s very true, if you and your kind have anything to say about it. You’ll make sure that they come to nothing.”

  Will stood up. He has the eyes of a fanatic, Francis thought. I should hate to be at his mercy. And yet—so young, so bright, so—wasted!

  “Where are you going?” Clarence asked.

  “The Trenches. I have friends there.”

  “Friends! You’re still welcome to stay here.”

  “No. Thanks anyway.”

  “Where will you be going after that?”

  “Grenada in a couple of weeks, I think.”

  “And where then?”

  “It depends.”

  “Cuba?” Clarence persisted.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Yes, maybe. I’ll see you again before I go.”

  When the screen door had slammed behind Will, Francis spoke. “Caught in a vise.” It was the first thing that had come to his mind.

  “Yes, very sad.” Franklin spoke quietly. “And there are many, many like him. You can see we have our work cut out for us.”

  “Strange. Patrick always said you would take over for him, and now you are.”

  Franklin nodded gravely. “I know. I’m going to try to do what he was trying to do. That is, if I’m elected after I fill his unexpired term.”

  “You will be,” Francis said.

  Franklin made a pyramid of his hands, regarding it thoughtfully. “There’s just so much! Deal with terrorism. Stop the brain-drain. I’m hoping the United States will stand by with economic help—”

  Clarence interrupted. “Good thing Will didn’t hear you say that about the United States.” He was still fuming.

  Franklin smiled. “Well, Marxism dupes the young. It sounds so hopeful, doesn’t it? Funny they don’t ask themselves why there’ve been more than six million refugees from communist governments. It’s a case of wanting to believe. Phony miracle cures like any phony miracle cure!” He returned to the subject. “Yes, I’m looking to the United States as the—what’s the phrase? The last best hope on earth? It’s strong, it has always been generous and above all, it’s free.”

  The voice was confident, but not brashly so. And Francis thought, Patrick judged well. He suspected that Franklin might prove to be even stronger than Patrick. For one thing, he was younger, but might it not also be that he had no internal conflicts about his own identity and his place in the world?

  “I had such a crazy feeling,” Francis said, “during the service this morning. It was a terrible illusion that the whole world was on fire. For a minute or two I was sick with it. I feel a lot better now, though, after hearing you.”

  “Fires can be put out,” Franklin replied quietly, as Désirée came down the stairs.

  She was a tall black stem; her head was a dark flower. There were two blacks, the matte cotton of her dress, and the gloss of her long hair. A beautiful woman, even on this day.

  Hearing her descent, the women came in from the kitchen. “What are you going to do?” someone asked, while another remonstrated gently, “You don’t have to decide a thing now, honey. It’s much too soon. Take your time,” this being the usual advice that is given to widows all over the world.

  “I don’t know,” Désirée murmured. “I don’t know.”

  “You can go with us, Mama,” Maisie said. “You can be with us in Chicago. You always wanted to leave here, anyway.”

  “Yes, I always wanted to leave, but your father never did.”

  “If you stay, Mama,” Franklin said, “you can help us make what Patrick wanted us to make of this country. Of course, one can’t promise anything, one can only try.”

  Désirée’s large, grieving eyes moved around the room, out to the hall, out to the porch, and back in to the kitchen, covering the familiar spaces of the home in which she had grown up. For a few minutes no one said anything, nor did she. Then she spoke.

  “I’ll stay. Yes,” she said simply, “I’ll stay. I’ll live as we—as he planned. As I would have lived if he—” she did not finish.

  Now the family would want to be alone, Francis saw. He stood up and said his good-byes. Franklin Parrish saw him out to the porch.

  “I believe,” he said, as Francis looked back up the walk at him, “I still believe we can make it so decent, so beautiful here—” and he threw out his hands in a gesture as moving, as graceful as a blessing.

  When he got home Francis put his car in the garage and walked away from the house. Down the hill he went, crossed the little river at the footbridge and found his familiar flat rock on the beach, where he disturbed a tribe of squawking black birds who had been flurrying in the beach grape behind the rock. For long minutes he sat very still. Then he picked up a flat green disk of grape leaf, traced its rosy veins with his fingertip, threw it away, and was so still again that the birds dared to return, bold on their stalky legs, and so close that he could see into their shallow, cold, yellow eyes. And still he did not move.

  When at last the birds flapped away he was still sitting there. Silence enveloped the little crescent of beach; the wind, which had been so faint, now died; even the mild waves made no sound as they approached and receded. There was only the thin, high buzz of silence. Like a ceaseless insect hum in grass it was, or like the streaming of blood in the arteries of the ear. The sound of silence.

  Not long ago, and yet it began to seem very long ago, he had sat in this same
place, had walked up and down here, up and down, then gone back to the house and announced his capitulation.

  He got up now and began to walk, up and down, to the far edge of the beach and return, back and return.

  “You can’t live isolated,” something said inside his head. “Can’t live without—can’t live—”

  And an idea which had been unacceptable, alien to everything he had believed and the way he had looked at life, suddenly and soundlessly, unfolded and revealed itself as do those tightly furled paper flowers that when placed in water ripple open and gently spread their brilliant petals.

  He could not live without her! And desire for her overpowered him, a cruel hunger, as if he had been starved. He was filled with a consciousness of her presence. He looked up to the hill where she had stood on that first day, here on this dear ground, and it seemed to him that she was standing there now, that her arms were out to him, begging him to stay. Kate! And he was filled with a rush of love, for her, for this land, a love for everything alive. That caterpillar crawling near his foot, a curious creature, black-and-yellow—striped with a red head; it too wanted its life, its own short, free time in the sun. And he stepped aside to spare it. How much time did it have, and how much had any of us, when all was said and done? So little! Kate!

  And now he rushed, he ran, he leaped the little river, he raced back up to the house.

  Marjorie was sitting on the terrace before a silver tea tray. She had changed into country clothes, meaning pastel; it would have been incorrect to wear light colors to a funeral in town. At sight of him she set the cup down.

  “Well! I must say you look like death warmed over.”

  “It’s not been the happiest day of my life.”

  “Hmph! We’re lucky they didn’t follow him and decide to kill him here. We might all have been shot on account of your precious friend.”

  Francis sat down. He wet his lips. He had a flash of memory, of himself as a child being angry at adults for being so stupid as to marry each other, when even a child could see they didn’t belong together and never could.

  “I want you to go,” he said. “Take Megan. Leave here. Without me.”

  “You what?” She gave a high laugh. “You want me to go?”

  “Yes. Let’s make a final end to the waste.”

  “Waste? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about our time. There isn’t all that much of it in anybody’s life. What are we proving by staying together? There’s nothing left and you know it. You want to leave here and I don’t. It comes down to that.”

  She rose from her chair, clattering the tea things. “You want to marry Kate Tarbox, you mean!”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “I knew you went to her that night the elections were called off, when you rushed away from the party! I knew it! But I didn’t want to look like an idiot by accusing you if by some chance I was mistaken. Oh, the bitch! The whore!”

  “I don’t want to hear that, Marjorie.”

  “That first time here at Eleuthera, I knew it, too! I saw it!”

  “You knew more than I did, then.”

  “I ought to mutilate her face so you wouldn’t look at it anymore. Throw lye on it, the way the natives do here.”

  He was astonished. “Why? You don’t care about me, about us. You haven’t in a long, long time.”

  She didn’t answer. Furious tears were falling and she groped for a handkerchief, not finding one. He gave her his.

  “You don’t care,” he repeated. “We hardly ever sleep together anymore.”

  “Really,” she mocked, “for such an ardent lover as you are—”

  He interrupted. “I know I haven’t been for a long, long time. Doesn’t that tell you anything? I’m young, I’m healthy.” His voice rose passionately. “This is no life, two solitary beds—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! Moderate your voice, you fool! Do you want the servants to hear such talk?”

  “The servants! The servants! They’re human beings like you and me. Don’t you think they have eyes in their heads? I don’t have your sense of propriety—”

  “Keep your voice down, I said! Megan is napping! Do you want to frighten her awake?”

  At once he whispered, “If we hadn’t had Megan we’d have ended this long ago, Marjorie. We’ve been using her, both of us have. And I should never have brought you here. It was wrong of me. It wasn’t fair to you.”

  “You know damn well I’ve tried to make a go of it. I’ve run your house and entertained your guests and been a credit to you”

  “Yes. Yes, you have.” But the chasm between us is wider than St. Felice, he thought, and would have opened if we had never heard of the place.

  “I do my best to take care of the defective child you gave me, too.”

  This cruelty silenced him and he bowed his head while she continued.

  “My child wouldn’t have been like this if it hadn’t been for your family.”

  “You don’t have to remind me,” he said dully.

  “Apparently, I do, since you seem quite willing to dump us. Trading us off for a tract of land and a new woman.”

  He raised his head. She wanted to cheapen his feelings, he understood that. He wasn’t going to let her.

  “I’m not ‘dumping’ you,” he said angrily. “I intend to take perfect care of you and Megan. Always, even if you should—establish yourself. No matter.”

  “Establish myself! In what, please tell me? What chance have I had to learn anything? I’ve thrown my life away for you!”

  He wondered scornfully what things she would have learned and done if she hadn’t “thrown her life away” for him. But no, that wasn’t fair; she was an intelligent woman and this was nineteen-eighty; in other circumstances she would have done other things.

  “Or maybe you meant establish myself with another husband? A rich one?”

  “Whether you do or not is immaterial. Megan is my responsibility. But I hope you do find another husband, someone more suited to you than I’ve ever been,” he added bitterly.

  “And what about Megan? All of a sudden, you’re so willing to part with her! A new development, to say the least.”

  “We’d have to anyway. She’ll have to go to a special school, eventually. You know that.” His heart ached. “Oh, don’t you see how sorry it all is? For you, for me, for Megan? But from the day she was born we’ve lived as if we’d abandoned all hope for ourselves, and that’s not right! No human being should be required to do that. We’ll do the best we can for her, all our lives, but—”

  “You bastard.”

  “Why? Because now I’m the one who wants to end this charade? It was all right last month when you threatened to walk off with the child if I didn’t do what you wanted me to do. That was all right! It’s your damned pride that’s injured now, that’s all. ‘What will people say?’ Well, you needn’t worry. I’ll be chivalrous. I won’t talk.”

  “You bastard.”

  “If it makes you happier to say that, keep on saying it.”

  “Oh, go to hell!” she cried, with her fist against her mouth.

  He knew she was ashamed of weeping before him and he looked away.

  “Oh, go to hell,” he heard again. The door slammed and her high heels clattered on the stairs.

  A few days later he rose early and looked in the mirror at a face gone haggard, spent with turmoil and lack of sleep. As if he were counseling it, he spoke aloud to his face.

  “Yes, it’s better to be honest, even to go through this pain. Divorce is terrible. It’s a rending, breaking. Destruction. When you marry you’re sure it will last. But what did I know? Nothing. Nor did she. Glands, that’s all it was. That and illusions. Strange to think it’s all turned to hatred. No, not hatred. Anger. She’s more angry than I am, though. A woman’s pride. There must be someone who’s right for her. A Wall Street type. Someone less—less what?—than I…. Less intense, maybe. She’s better off, in a way, than people like
Kate and me. We look into each other’s souls, we want everything from each other. Well, you can’t help what you are.”

  At the edge of the terrace he had built a large feeder, filled with sugar, for the yellowbirds. It had been intended to amuse Megan. But her attention span was too short, not more than half a minute. They were standing there now, when he came downstairs, Marjorie pointing out the birds while Megan, not interested, looked in the other direction. It struck him that Marjorie already looked like a visitor, a stranger.

  Hearing him, she turned around. Her eyes were darkly circled and he felt a sudden painful pity.

  “Well?” she said. The syllable was clear and cold as a chip of ice.

  Once again he made an effort at concilliation. “Well, I hope you’re feeling better, that’s ail.”

  “As if you give a damn how I fee!!”

  “Believe it or not, I do.”

  “If there’s anything that disgusts me, it’s a hypocrite!”

  “Whatever other faults you’ve found in me, I can’t think hypocrisy is one of them.”

  She bit her lip. Her lower lip was raw.

  “As long as we’re going to do this, wouldn’t it be better to do it decently and quietly, Marjorie?”

  “Decently and quietly! The next adjective will be ‘civilized,’ I suppose. ‘A civilized divorce.’”

  “Why not? You want to go. Why not go in peace?”

  “In peace! With another woman waiting to move in while my bed’s still warm.”

  Megan was staring. He wondered whether any of this could be making an impression on the mind behind those apathetic blue eyes. And he spoke very gently.

  “In case you are having any—thoughts about yourself, I want to tell you something. You’re a very desirable woman, Marjorie. This isn’t a case of someone else being more attractive. You’re a lovely woman. People turn to look at you—”