The Tongues of Angels

by Reynolds Price

  She looked me over with standard medical disdain—from what bog of ignorance had I dared to crawl? Then she said “When I need to see the patient, I will.”

  I had the nerve at that point to ask if she knew the Latin word that patient comes from.

  “No,” she said, “but I bet Mr. College is going to tell me.” This to be sure was back before everybody went to college.

  I said “Yes he is. The word is patiens. And all it means is sufferer”

  To the best of my knowledge though, Rafe and I slept more or less undisturbed. At some point in the darkness, he woke me up and said “Turn off the loudspeaker, doctor. You’re yelling too loud.”

  It was news to me and I denied it.

  But Rafe said “Sorry, I heard every word.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “No sir,” he said, “you’d never forgive me.”

  And I was back under, gone again. Later though I woke myself up at the end of what was surely a shout. I’d dreamed I was deep asleep in a room with my father. He needed me and I couldn’t move. Still in the dream I thought if I yelled loud enough I’d wake myself up and be able to help him. I thought I was yelling my actual name. But once I woke up, I listened for Rafe’s complaint. He sounded asleep. So I got up to pee. I didn’t turn on a light, and I kept as quiet as possible.

  But once I was back and lying down, Rafe said “Don’t let anybody ever tell you that you don’t sleep like a damned baby —you do.”

  I wondered how a damned baby slept, but I said “How do you know? You’re over there snoring like a sawmill.”

  He said it like a fact in court. “I have not shut an eye this night.”

  People in general won’t let you cast aspersions on their sleeping habits, but I hadn’t really heard him. For all I knew he was telling the truth, so I said he should have asked for a sleeping pill.

  He said they didn’t give sleeping pills to children and that anyhow it was normal for him. He didn’t need sleep, just some quiet time to think.

  I said “Is there anything you want to think out loud about?”

  “And give you a quicky psychiatrist’s license? Dream on, Bridge. Your guardian’s awake.”

  I’m glad I remember thanking him. I also asked “Was I yelling my name just now?”

  Rafe said “No, you were saying ‘I’m sorry.’ “

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  Rafe laughed. “I figured you ought to be sorry, poor fool.”

  I laughed too, thinking he recalled Chief’s sex speech and the “pure tool.” Since I was awake by then, I thought he might want to talk. So again I brought up the subject of his future. I guess I was so full of my own plans for life that I couldn’t imagine a younger person not sharing my taste for the bright horizon. Would he keep on dancing or be a writer, since he read so much and used words well, or just a rich farmer?

  Rafe said he lived “from sunrise to sunrise” and therefore didn’t plan to lean on the future.

  I gave him a short version of my sermon on the absolute duty that’s on us to use any talent with which we’re endowed by fate or whomever.

  He was quiet till I thought he was finally asleep. Then he said “You talk about that tomorrow, Bridge, when your mind’s a little clearer. Your tendency to babble has taken over. Remember what I told you. I’m on guard here. You’re all I’ve got so my attention’s undivided. Now go on to sleep. Christ Jesus in the sky!—you need rest, boy.”

  I gladly acknowledged that surely I did, but I told Rafe not to strain his back and eyes.

  He said “Simmer down, boy. You earned you some rest.”

  Strange as it sounds I lay in that dark—hospital dark is as deep as dark gets—and thought That’s the thing I’ve waited to hear since spring. Somebody’s awake so I can rest. I recalled my unfinished canvas. I could see every misjudged stroke on its surface. Remember that, for a painter, the image a viewer sees is only one of thousands of pictures that lie stacked and smothered beneath the final abandoned top visible layer. Many times you long to recover a shape that you’ve now obscured, a whole idea that you think you remember. But you can’t. Press on.

  Under past conditions I’d have got up then, dressed and walked back to camp to paint. But the sound of Rafe’s breathing, plainly awake, eased me again. There where I couldn’t see his size and youth, he did seem a thoroughly trustworthy watchman. And I knew he meant his pledge of care. So I lay back still and let my mind take a long free leap. I really do believe I fell down deeper than on any other night since Father’s illness alerted my mind.

  When the doctor stopped by right after breakfast, he told Rafe that things were clearing by the hour but that he should stay at least one more night. That would put everybody concerned “on the safe side.”

  Rafe just said “I can’t speak for others, but the safe side’s where I want to be, sir.”

  Once the doctor left, Rafe turned to me. “You thumb yourself on back to your job. I’ll be all right.”

  In the next half hour I tested him from several angles and convinced myself that he was sincere. Then I checked with the doctor, who said “Go by all means. He’s a strong little bear.” So I gave explicit instructions to a nurse—Tess had left at dawn—to let us know if the least hitch developed. Then I asked Rafe again.

  He said “Dr. Boatner, if you don’t somehow get your nerves back into your skin, and then get yourself out of my sight, I’m liable to complain to the Youth Patrol and get your pitiful ass torn off.” The Youth Patrol was a complicated and woefully incompetent paramilitary group he’d invented for his general protection.

  So just before eleven that morning, I did step out in the road and ventilate my thumb, as we said back then in that last age of safe hitchhiking. Just that much time alone, with frank August sun pounding my head and clean mountain air rushing past me, felt like the grandest luxury yet in a lucky life. I was also thinking I’d won a round in my ongoing match with danger and death.

  THREE

  I‘D BARELY been missed. My boys were deep into rest time when I breezed in. Half of them were asleep, but the others just looked up and smiled. One of them did say “Boy, Sam is a lot stricter than you.” And another one asked about Mr. B—did he get to keep the dead snake’s skin? In spite of the tale of the Tsali boys’ debacle, every camper’s heartfelt desire was still a snakeskin belt or hatband. But produce a real snake and you’d see all available butts in unseemly flight. When I told my boys that Rafe’s snake was still loose on the mountain behind us, they got respectful and dreamy again. They incidentally showed me that Juniper campers had kept no tradition of Rafe’s family tragedy. Only the hard-core staff seemed to know, and that was a real relief. I must have felt somehow that if Rafe’s own generation didn’t know, then he stood a better chance of surfacing finally, alive and whole in a possible world.

  First I climbed the mountain and retrieved my sketchbook, safe and dry. I kept my eye well peeled for the rattler but saw no trace. Then I hunted up Kevin, Sam and Chief and brought them up to date. Then I went to the Indian lore room. The boys there with Bright Day and Mike were much more concerned. How swollen up was he? Would his leg be well in time for the closing night dances? I set them straight and we all sat down to hear Day’s little talk for the afternoon.

  It was about the way various northern tribes would freeze a skin of ice on their straw baskets in winter and, that way, they’d have sealed containers for liquids and grains. We all nodded sagely, Good idea. Before anybody could press me harder, I ducked out, got my canvas and went to paint.

  Confronted with the actual distant subject, the picture so far looked as raw as I remembered. After one night away it seemed as unnerving as a flayed face. But I thought I understood my reaction. Rafe’s near-miss made it all the more urgent for me to finish this painting. Finish it true and beautiful and— now—finish it in time for Rafe to see before he headed to Georgia.

  Again I’m up against a serious problem here. The thing is, I need to describe my diff
iculties in painting a particular canvas without a boring amount of technical discussion or art-critic hot air and without reproductions of the picture in its various stages. The only writer I can think of who comes even close to managing the task is Virginia Woolf. Towards the end of To the Lighthouse, as Lily Briscoe the Sunday painter finishes her picture, I’ve always felt I can see the picture and taste its final success. It takes Woolf not much more than a page, but Lily’s thrill in the quickening process shines right through. Strangely enough Woolf was not a painter, though her sister was; and they were close from early childhood.

  Let me try this and then I’ll drop it—my problem was limbs. How was I to interpret the space of eight miles that lay between my hand and the coded horizon, since that space contained no sizable objects to lend a scale? All eight miles were paved with leaves, hundreds of thousands of cubic tons of air and billions of green leaves and needles. And all of them were moving gently in the haze of opaque evergreen breath, which is what puts the smoke in Smoky.

  A lot of good painters never learn to paint leaves. With help from Poussin and Constable and Gainsborough, I’d worked out early my solution for leaves. No, my problem now was to show what stood beneath the leaves and bore their immense weight towards me and the sky. I followed Cezanne and experimented on a smaller canvas with a system of planes that tried to hint at the bony struts under all that green. But a long look told me that tinted planes were just untrue. To my eyes anyhow, here and today.

  What I wanted in the picture was the feeling I now had, watching this valley. Here was a whole bowl of splendid space made out of a few billion small green things. None of them broad as the palm of my hand. And under them all was the upward thrust of this powerful logical network of limbs. Once I knew that—especially once I got the notion of logical—a new courage seized me. And as if I’d learned it in my sleep last night, that courage showed me a code of my own, not just for leaves and the infinite spaces among them but, better still, the occasional ghost of a whole tree beneath them, right down to the roots. Patient and stronger than rocks themselves.

  When it was almost time to quit and go up to check my boys for cleanliness before supper, I’d conquered a palm-sized patch in the lower left quarter of the canvas. Right-handed painters tend to work from left to right. All around me boys and counselors were giving off the tired sounds of late afternoon. The words in the air were shower and chicken. It was fried-chicken night, which also entailed home-cranked ice cream. Even that sorely tempted, I could hardly stand to quit. And nothing but the coming of sunset made me. Otherwise I’d have let the boys find their own way to the feeding trough.

  For the first time in my life, I had the sweet desperation of suspending fruitful work with nothing stronger than a prayer that I survive the night with mind and hands intact, such as they were. And to hell hereafter with any such hedging. I’m a serious artist now and I was then. I also knew it. In my experience the ones who always cry ‘Umble, ‘umble turn out to be exactly that. Humble indeed, in power and stamina. In any case for the first and last time, I had another prayer. I said it directly through the air to Rafe Noren. It was bountiful thanks that his latest bad luck, which I’d partly caused, had now bloomed out in a beautiful usable thing that he could see and understand. As I’d seen his daring and learned my own.

  I woke up at the first hint of dawn, slipped into my shorts and ran downhill through the cold light for confirmation. Had it lasted the darkness? Was it as good a solution as I remembered? Even in the white early light, even when I took it to the Indian lore room and examined it there in the makeup mirror, I could honestly say a solid yes to both worries. So I sat on the nearly frozen terrace and worked for an hour till reveille. I galloped uphill and rushed my boys through wake-up and breakfast. Then I briskly posted my class to their several viewing stations, while I settled in to paint air and leaves and their unseen piers.

  That kind of seizure advertises itself. When I stopped by Bright Day’s table at lunch to say I’d miss Indian lore again today, he said “All right.” That was a voluble outburst for a man as careful with words as he. But then he laid a huge lean hand over mine, there flat on the table. And he said “The important thing is your eyes.” With both forefingers he drew long lines in the air from his eyes. He’d seen the picture late that morning but hadn’t said anything till now.

  No white man to that point, and only a few dippy white women, had ever called my work visionary. But Day’s word eyes sounded hard and at least half true. Secretly I took it as a license, and a license from people who knew a vision when they saw one. Bright Day was still for instance rehearsing his clutch of white doctors’ and lawyers’ crewcut sons in a bone-earnest Ghost Dance that meant to rewind our tragic history and redeem it with permanent peace. He knew I knew it, and he knew we’d agreed in mutual secret not to discuss the outrageous fact.

  There was no sign of Rafe at supper. I went to Sam’s table. He said the doctor had phoned and confirmed Rafe’s progress but wanted to keep him just one more night. Sam added that he’d also spoken with Ray. “The boy surprised me. He sounded almost homesick for us. Asked about a painting you’re doing. Sent you good luck.”

  Since the doctor had told Sam to collect the boy anytime after breakfast tomorrow morning, I didn’t worry. I only wanted to have as much as possible accomplished on the surface of my picture in time for his arrival. So I worked that night by electric lamp, a source I seldom use. In this case I felt endorsed by two things. The first was a need to show Rafe some reward for a trial that I’d at least triggered. Second was my firm memory of the colors of day in that valley between me and what those limbs and rocks were meaning.

  * * *

  Towards midnight I heard somebody in the hall of the crafts cabin. At first I thought it was Claiborn, the watchman. Then with a chill of surprise, I thought it might be Rafe, back and prowling the dark again. Fine. I was ready.

  It was somebody else but welcome also, to me at that point. Bright Day suddenly stood in my door.

  I realized I’d never seen him after dark. He slept in a small back room at Chiefs. But did he go to sleep that early or work in his room? I must have expressed surprise to see him.

  He waited to let that fly on past him. Then he said “I want you to know now. The night before our council fire, you will be inducted into the tribe here. We leave it to you to make preparations with the Spirit in the way you choose.”

  I’d heard from Mike Dorfman that there was such a tribe, consisting of staff and a very few campers. Induction was earned, not applied for; and the standards were secret. I assumed that the elders were Mike, Chief and Bright Day. And I’d left it at that with a lingering suspicion that this was a strictly local mystery, something else that couldn’t be safely exported beyond the gate of Juniper. A good deal that seemed dignified, even beautiful, here would surely seem laughable the day I left. So now I felt a certain shamefaced pleasure, an honorary brave in a nonexistent tribe at a rich white kids’ camp. But to Bright Day then and there, solemn as if he were bringing the wing of a snow-white eagle to Crazy Horse in full moonlight, I bowed my head and said thanks.

  Day said simply that I’d earned induction. Whether it was for my painting, my care of Rafe or what, he gave no hint and I didn’t ask. Then he said I’d be told when and where to come on the night in question. Meanwhile stay silent. He turned to leave, took three steps, then looked back again. “You are free to refuse.”

  I shook my head and said I was honored.

  Day waited in place, maybe giving me one last chance to refuse. Then he put a hushing finger to his lips and was finally gone.

  It was a gauge of both Day’s weighty tone and my own present mood that I suddenly wondered if he meant me to stay entirely silent till the induction or just silent on this news. I rose to ask him—too late. When I got to the terrace, I saw a body swinging, pendulum slow, toward Chief’s. But late as it was I didn’t call.

  And Day didn’t look back.

  Again next mo
rning I went down early. Till here and now more than thirty years later, the whole left half of the picture is veiled in a soft dawn light while the rest is frankly sprawled in sun. Knowing why, I’ve almost enjoyed the difference. And viewers seldom ask about it.

  At breakfast nobody mentioned Rafe’s return. Kevin and his boys were normally groggy with their oatmeal and stewed fruit. I didn’t ask them. And Sam didn’t stop by and ask me to ride with him to Asheville. So I met my class. For the first time I tried to apologize to them for possible neglect. Truthful or not, they all said they were learning more from watching me. To be strictly honest, they said they were having more fun this way. So I plunged back in.

  Even at the time, I recalled a story from my history professor. When the great founder of the Jesuit order, Ignatius Loyola, was a student at the University of Paris, somebody asked him, while he was playing tennis, what he would do if they learned the world were to end in an hour. And Ignatius said “I’d go on playing tennis.” Whatever my world was about to do, I went on painting my slice of the Smokies and felt a good deal more heroic than the facts called for. I was further elated by the wait for Rafe. Surely he’d be back in time for lunch.

  Rafe Noren’s return from what appeared to be an uncomplicated snakebite seemed one of the simpler rescues of his life. But my mind was not in simple condition, as I’ve tried to show. It was still hungover from my father’s death and from all my grappling with unearthly codes and angel faces, not to mention the news of Rafe’s old horror and the net of lies he and I had strung beneath us. So a boy’s return had taken on unnerving size in my life that day.

  I worked till lunchtime but never saw Rafe or even Sam’s car returning from town. When I got to the dining hall though, Rafe was at Kevin’s table. The dietitian who’d promised him life was standing over him, rejoicing in her foresight. And Mrs. Chief was awaiting her chance. Rafe was standing by a chair, answering questions with his old self-possession—no fearful boy now. He was maybe a little peaked in the face. He certainly looked a pound or two lighter, and his tan was fading, but otherwise he looked very much like himself. Once my boys were served and bolting their food, I thought of stepping over to welcome him back.