Eden Burning (57 page)

On the fourth morning Patrick Courzon was buried. The cathedral in Covetown was filled; crowds teetered on the steps and filled the street outside.

“He was a man of the middle, without hatreds,” Father Baker began, in the dry voice of an old man, straining. “His political ambitions were small. There were others far more ambitious and far more skilled in the art of politics. But what he possessed was infinitely precious and rare, an innate goodness and the will to persevere on a rational course.” For an instant the old voice broke, then resumed: “Who did this to him? That is the question which absorbs us, and will continue to absorb us.”

In essence, Francis thought, the ones who did it were the ones he loved most: Nicholas and Will. And he looked down at the front pew where Will, who had just flown in a few hours before from wherever he had been when Patrick died, was sitting with Désirée and the daughters, all in deep black, and with Clarence, who was weeping.

“Both sides had their reasons for eliminating a man who stood so firmly, so honorably, in the way of their desires, a man who believed so passionately in the worth of the individual and in peaceful solutions.”

“Thank God we’re leaving this crazy place,” Marjorie murmured in Francis’ ear.

He did not answer. Suddenly he was washed by a wave of sickness. His own emotion, combined with the heat of bodies closely jammed, overwhelmed him. Seated in the path of the sun as it streamed through pastel stained glass, he was dizzied by spots of lavender moving on his knees.

And it seemed to him that heat was rising everywhere; he imagined he felt the presence of fire, just as, waking in the night, one can imagine the acrid fumes of smoke—so it must have been on that other night. Now, though, it was not only a house that was on fire, it was the planet; the skies of every continent were ominous; the very air, the very flowers, burned.

He must have made a sound, for Marjorie turned to him with an expression of curiosity and alarm.

“Don’t you feel well?”

“So hot in here.”

“It’s almost over, thank heaven. Look, look who’s over there, will you?”

And he saw that Kate was sitting a few rows down across the aisle. She was wearing a little round straw hat. Her funeral hat, she called it, because it went with anything and was suitably decorous. She kept it in a clear plastic box on the top shelf of the closet with her tennis racket and a red-striped sweater. Yes.

He hadn’t seen her in two weeks and he would never see her again. He would never have time to know her entirely. It was strange to think that actually he knew Marjorie so much better! Marjorie existed in familiar territory; he was not at home in her territory, but at least he could find his way around in it. Marjorie was always predictable; you could never predict what Kate would do. One thing, though, you could say and never be wrong. A tag of Latin from years ago repeated itself in his head:
Nihil humanum mihi alienum.
Nothing human is alien to me. Or nothing animal, either.
And he had to smile, watching the little straw hat, remembering her dogs and her birds, her stray cats and her indignations.

They were standing now, and the nausea receded. While the organ recessional poured overhead, the coffin was borne out. The crowd on the street had been forced back to let it pass. From the high steps Francis looked down upon what is always described as a sea of faces, an apt enough description, to be modified here, he thought, to a sea of young faces. How many of them there were! The island, the whole earth, was bursting with impatient, restless young.

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!”