The Book of Heaven: A Novel (30 page)

Even then, she did not fall to the ground.

Jarre called for the superintendent of the house. “I have made Rain Immortal. Remove her childhood from her room. Bring the toys and the masks.” This was a heartrending ceremony marking a girl's entrance into Immortal life, her separation from her family and from her father's protection. I witnessed many such occasions during my time on the Peninsula.

We followed the superintendent to the young girl's room. There we took up gaily painted boxes full of her childhood toys: a box of dolls, a box of toy animals, a box of gilded balls and batons with which the girls played in rounds their charming toss and catch games, looking like muses playing casually with golden worlds.

The balls and batons, along with the girl's jewelry, would be given to Peninsulan philanthropies, an arrangement that greatly increased the scope of their works.

I took up the doll's house, as it was bulky and awkward to carry, fully furnished as it was with replicas of the villa's own pieces. All the girls of the Peninsula, even the less wealthy, were given these houses, toys that doubled as an education in the domestic arts, as they mastered the aesthetic and economic management of a household in miniature. Dolphin had an identical villa on a table in her own room.

We carried the boxes into the seaside salon where the family was waiting, Rain still standing, and Dolphin now standing beside her. Two servants emerged from the grand arched doorway opposite, carrying a small tent of finely worked golden mesh, which they threw over Dolphin. The material was so delicately woven that it was almost transparent; her features were clearly visible beneath it, even her tears. There, swathed in the precious meshes of safety, she was taken to stand in between her parents' chairs.

We then spread the floor with the thickly embroidered silk quilts we had taken from Rain's bed. And using scissors, knives, hammers, and our hands, we destroyed her toys one by one. We dismembered the dolls, and shredded the costumes for the girls' traditional dances.

The doll's house with its furniture was pulverized, roof crushed, windows broken, balconies dangling, looking exactly as real houses do in the aftermath of the earthquakes that were unfortunately familiar occurrences on the Peninsula.

The silk quilts were littered with arms and legs and heads with staring eyes, with mosaic fragments of gardens and ships from puzzles, with the heads of clay horses bridled in red leather. A little ballerina poised in an arabesque had kept her supporting leg, but lost the extended leg that defined the pose. Stars and a moon cracked like eggshell were scattered over the rubble, from the smashed nocturnal sky of a toy theater set.

An entire world lay in ruins on the cloth. It was an apocalypse, for toys are alive, toys are the children of children. They feel their first passions for the blocks, soldiers, animals, and dolls, exercise on them their first cruelties and repentances, deliberate maltreatment and tender reparation. To them, they say for the first time, “I hate you.” And “forgive me.” Here are the first crucifixions and resurrections, the first tragic intimations that they themselves might be toys.

Rain did not cry even at that scene, though when a brilliantly painted scarlet-and-lapis-colored bird plunged to the floor, losing both its wings, I saw her mouth shape an anguished “O” of compassion, as if she saw a living creature wounded. Some of the toys had stayed alive for her, even ones she clearly hadn't played with in some time. This bird was still apparently in flight in her, it was not a figure of the past, but had soared through it outside time into her soul. I saw her pocket the wingless body with its head still intact, bright-eyed, its mouth opened in song. Perhaps it was wrong of me, but I said nothing.

And when there was nothing left of her room's childhood to be destroyed, two black silk blindfolds were brought on a pillow and set before General Jarre. He stood, and bound one of them around Rain's eyes. I helped him to bind the other around his own. He pronounced the ritual formula of dismissal, “Your father sees nothing more of you.” I led her away, blindfolded, to her room, now stripped of all her possessions.

She would not be sent away to the House of Immortals until her sister's marriage, though her life in her former family would never be the same. Her final glimpse of them would be at Dolphin's wedding.

Now serious suitors were free to come forward, knowing which of the Jarre daughters was the eligible bride. Hours of the general's time were taken up by conferences with the potentials. He studied scrupulously the account books and deeds they left with him, as well as examining the written statements outlining their religious lives that they submitted to confirm that they were among God's Crowned Ones.

The choice fell at last on a squat, fat man who had been a bachelor for perhaps longer than desirable, but who had his own fleet of ships, as well as a splendid villa on the sea, and farmland in the old monarchy to which he had managed to retain title, through impoverished aristocrats he'd made cooperative. The Peninsulans outwitted with a special relish the aristocrats who had been so condescending to them.

His extraordinarily moving and detailed account of the way in which God had made him part of the Holy Court decided the matter for General Jarre. He ordered the publication of the betrothal, set the wedding preparations in motion, and informed Dolphin of her impending marriage.

The vast copper cauldrons were set up for the wedding banquet, and the copper trays so large that it took eight men to carry them were readied to be set out in the great square for the poor, students, foreigners, and widows.

The ceremonial meals were prepared, as was the tradition, by pagan cooks, who were acknowledged to be the great masters of the kitchen, and were tolerated on the Peninsula for their unequaled skills. They operated taverns and inns throughout the Peninsula, always recognizable by the large painted signs outside with the image of the Cauldron constellation in glittering silver paint.

Their mother dressed the two girls for their weddings, for it was a wedding day for both daughters. Dolphin was dressed in white and her dowry gold, and Rain in red brocade. She gave them each a wedding blessing. “May you have many children,” she said to Dolphin. “May you have none,” she said to Rain.

She ushered Dolphin through the marriage door into the seaside hall, and handed her to her ape of a groom. She returned and led Rain to the opposite door, where in place of a groom, the governess of the House of Immortals stood waiting.

“Don't be downcast,” the Lady Mother said. “Your sister obeys, and so do you. You are both alone. Dolphin has no idea what her future will be like, whereas you will never go hungry, and you know how you will live. The greatest blessing for a woman is a known fate. You are out of the wind.”

After the vows, Dolphin was crowned, as a sign that she was now a Princess of the Elect. A magnificent banquet followed, and the last of the rites were performed.

Dolphin danced a slow, elegiac dance, her final dance, since birthgivers relinquished dancing. Rain danced a virtuosic dance, in which each movement was repeated at greater speed, until the steps ended in wild accelerations. It was the dance that signified her entry into the guild of the women who dance always.

They made wide circles around the room. Then they met in the middle to cross to the opposite doors from which they would exit, stepping forever from the path of the other.

The girls started toward the doors at their stately pace, but turned back, as if each had half the other's impulse. For a moment they held each other close, each one's head pressed to the other's shoulder. It was an unusual display, but they had been, as twins often are, deeply attached.

Blindfolded, Rain was taken by the governess along the sinuous roads that led away from the sea toward the mountains, where she was to be housed. She was not to know the route, or understand clearly where she was, a wise precaution of the system.

Unlike many countries, the Peninsulans did not permit the perpetual bride houses to be situated by the sea, but scattered them on the heights. Not only did this solve many of the common problems this service presented to neighboring communities, but it also served to regulate the crime sometimes associated with it, ensuring that all its revenues were strictly recorded and rendered to the state. So the state flourished through the repentance of women, and their tears were transformed into gold.

Visas were granted at the ports for men to visit the houses on the peaks; ingeniously, this served to identify precisely the men, foreign and local, who visited the Immortals. In this way, the Immortals were of further use to the state as a conduit for information about business and politics.

I, along with other agents, was dispatched each month to interview brides who had entertained men of interest to the state, and to make detailed reports of my findings for General Jarre and the other governors. With the use of the visas, particular men could even be directed to houses where brides had been instructed to listen with rapt attention to their stories. So garrulous were many of these men that one had the impression they visited the brides as much to talk as out of lust.

The House of the Immortals, for which Rain was destined, was surrounded by fields, cultivated gardens, and terraced vineyards, in which the aging brides worked during the days. They were charged with supplying themselves, and also the great households of the towns, with food.

“For those of us who have been taken out of time, labors never end,” Madam explained to Rain impassively. “Though of course, we enjoy the repose decreed by God the King on the day of the Court of the Divine. A Crowned One ministers to us each week. And every resident of the house attends weekly Divine Court without fail.” She was a handsome woman who wore the sober, elegant clothes of an impeccable matron. Her jade-green eyes were permanently narrowed, as if she were trying to see through a dust storm.

Over the arched doorway of the house was a carved and gilded Crown of the Elect, as was displayed on all the public buildings of the Peninsula. “Stand up straight,” Madam said. “I saw that you are a fine dancer. Hold yourself like one.” Madam was ever watchful and passionate about matters of deportment.

Inside was an arrangement of four houses, each separated from the other by an ample courtyard. They passed through the first house, from whose windows Rain could see men and women talking and laughing in an outdoor gallery. The noise was imperceptible in the second house, thanks to the arrangement of the courtyards.

In the center of the second courtyard, there was a party of men and elegant boys, for the men who preferred the children of the Immortals. Madam acknowledged the guests with practiced charm, and beckoned to a server to see that more wine and pastries were sent out. The guests raised their glasses to her, savoring her attention to their enjoyments.

The two women advanced to the third house, and again, there was an illusion of perfect separation; none of the laughter and chatter Rain had heard reached them.

In the center of the third courtyard was a raised stage for performance. “It is the house of dancers,” Madam said. “This is where you will be lodged.” A group of women, ranging from youth to elder, were sorting through trunks of costumes and arranging flowers for the evening's entertainments. She had not seen older women at the first house.

Madam divined what Rain had noticed. “This is the house with the greatest variety of women. The older women stay as teachers, as costumers, and the great ones as dancers, long after the women of the other houses are put into the kitchens and the fields. You are fortunate to have been chosen for this house.

“The clients are often superior as well. Some want simply to be thought of as polished connoisseurs of women. Some like the dancing women because to command their companionship afterward is like playing at marionettes. Some, though, love the classical dances, and will reward a girl for a well-made dance.

“Here, too, you will learn to sell them the finer wines, for the same reasons. And you will become expert. Those dark red wines change from one form into another. Money changes wine into shoes; the ruby in the throat becomes the red-heeled dance shoes in which you leap high enough to make the visitors buy more red wine.”

They passed from the courtyard into a lavishly furnished great hall, the decor evoking the palaces of the old monarchy. From the window of the room Madam led her to, Rain could see another group of buildings set on a slope, surrounded by terraced vineyards and gardens.

“Those,” Madam said, again divining her curiosity, “are the kitchens, the dining hall, and the houses where the brides bring up the children they have borne. Occasionally, if the father is known, he may choose to take the child and bring it up in his own country. But that is rare. The children belong to the house.” She was careful to tell Rain very simply what she had to tell, as one tells a child of the murders and marriages in a fairy tale as they happen, never sure what the child might know of such matters.

The room Rain was given was fresh and pleasant, with a window opening onto the garden instead of the courtyard. Rain put away the small store of clothing she had brought. Most carefully, she made a secret nest of silk scarves, and hid the clay bird with broken wings that she had managed to conceal on the day of her Immortality. The broken toy was all she had to cling to. She smoothed the scarves and evened them, as concerned for the bird's comfort as if it were real.

She climbed the hill, as instructed, to take her meal. Along the path, there was a magnificent view down from the vineyards cut out of the mountain like angelic ladders, all the way to the sea. She could make out the customs house, and see the distant ships in the port.

She passed the house of children, caught in its cloud of music. From its various windows, she heard sobs and coos, screams of delight, soft voices singing lullabies, a brocade of all the traditional Peninsulan lullabies she had grown up with, and many that were unfamiliar, perhaps brought to the brides by strange visitors. She heard them, as if from the bottom of the sea, though she was high above it.