The Language of Paradise: A Novel (41 page)

“Fanny will rally,” Gideon whispers. “I believe she’s indestructible.” He realizes that he has feared her as one fears the whims of nature. If she wanted to see her grandson and babble to him in baby pidgin, she would find a way, Leander’s ploys notwithstanding. He is very fond of Fanny and would never wish her dead, but he can’t help thinking how much easier it would be if they were spared her good intentions.

The doctor has been up most of the night, and could reasonably expect a bite of supper, or, at the very least a celebratory dram. He is perhaps too tired to be more than mildly discountenanced when they put their fingers to their lips and usher him, firmly but graciously, to the door.

WASHED IN LARD
and warm water and wrapped in flannel, the child has been deposited in the cradle. It looks up at Gideon through slits of blue, as though mindful of the serious nature of the task ahead of them. Gideon offers his forefinger, and when the waxy fingers clutch, his heart contracts. It is more mottled than the infants he had imagined, not so alabaster and symmetrical, but without a doubt the seedling of a man, perfect in its way. The purity and the clarity: he had gotten those right.

LONG AFTER THE LIGHT FADES
, Sophy turns her head to gaze at him nestled in his cradle within easy reach of her arm. She thought she would feel empty when he was out of her. Instead she is filled to the brim, contentment coating her discomfort. It won’t last, any more than the ecstasy of her dancing lasted, or the peak of love. In an hour or two she’ll wake to a fretful wail, every part of her sore and aching, and gather him up with awkward hands, and blink back tears as he nibbles at her breasts. She’ll cradle his few pounds in the crook of her arm and know that the weight of his future is hers alone to bear. None of this touches her joy. If it ends, it isn’t Paradise, Gideon says, but Sophy is resting there tonight—and never has she been more alive.

WHEN SOPHY AND THE BABY
are asleep, and Leander has retired to his room, Gideon takes out his green journal. By the light of a single candle, he dips his quill in ink and writes at the top of the first page, in his best script,
December 24, 1838
. He hesitates, weighing the merits of “Male infant”—scientifically correct, but clinical—against the more succinct “Boy.” After a moment he writes:
Son born at ten past three o’clock in the afternoon to Gideon and Sophia Birdsall. A strong piercing cry.

CHAPTER 33

____

NAMING

T
HE REVEREND WILLIAM ENTWHISTLE WAS A YOUNG MAN
—no more than thirty, Gideon estimated—but he had a graybeard’s comfort with platitudes. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” he said, shaking his head over the two new entries in the parish register. He had intoned the same words earlier that morning in the Hedge parlor as Fanny scowled up at him from the plain pine box she had requested, and repeated them an hour ago to the harsh scraping of ropes as she was lowered into her last resting place beside her husband.

“And what name will you give the baby?” Entwhistle asked, pen poised.

“I—we—haven’t decided yet.” Through the window behind the parson’s head, Gideon watched as a pair of gravediggers shoveled dirt over the coffin, the turned earth a raw gash in the snow. How had they managed to carve a hole in ground this hard? “A loss like this, so soon after the birth . . . My wife has been distraught. We thought it better to wait until she was more herself.”

The pastor nodded. “No need to hurry. You will let me know before the little one is baptized?”

Gideon was grateful for the tentative note. He had not returned to church since his dismissal and had dreaded meeting his successor, who must surely have been informed of his reprobate ways. But Entwhistle was nothing like his Uncle Mendham. He was a conciliator: a short, round-cheeked fellow with nervous hands that seemed always to hover in the vicinity of his chest, as if to ward off misunderstanding. Gideon had no intention of bringing his son to be christened—he had discussed the matter of infant baptism with Leander, and they had both remarked on its absurdity—but he felt that the new parson would be genuinely flattered if he did.

He walked rapidly away, glad to leave the church and its rigidities behind him. The experience hadn’t been as bad as he feared. At Fanny’s funeral there had been a few stiff faces, but whatever his former congregants thought of him and his apostasy, their judgments had been softened by grief. He had stood next to Micah in the Hedge parlor and collected all the heartfelt sentiments that came his way to take home to Sophy. He could truthfully tell her that Fanny had been held in greater regard even than the Reverend; that long after the house was filled a silent flock continued to gather outside, on foot and in wagons, assembled as if for a revival meeting; that the procession to the churchyard was an endless caravan, as long as anyone could remember.

He had offered this consolation, though he wasn’t sure Sophy really believed that Fanny was dead. When the doctor and Micah came with the sad news—Micah’s face swollen with weeping—she seemed not to take it in. “If you will just show her the baby, she’ll come back,” she pleaded with Craddock. “We must leave right away.” They’d had to restrain her from getting out of bed.

In a sense, Sophy was right, Gideon thought now. Fanny would always come back, if given half a chance. It was her nature. An oppression had fallen upon him when he saw the coffin suspended over that narrow hole. The churchyard was a bleak, fallow place, its grounds chalky with old bones. If they had planted her in the rich soil of her garden, she would have risen in the spring, crotchety and complaining of pain in her back, and looked around for the nearest hoe—and none of them would have been surprised.

FOR THE FIRST WEEKS
of his life, he was simply the Baby. Gideon sat for hours each day with the journal on his lap, observing him as he suckled and slept and woke and fretted, diligently recording the character of each cry, taking care to distinguish what Sophy knew by instinct: a hungry sound from a tired one, a need to be held from a need for a fresh diaper. His experience with infants was scant. At times, when the phantom eyebrows drew together or the forehead wrinkled, he was sure that he was witnessing the genesis of thought. But Sophy would lift the child to her shoulder and pat its back, or write in the message book, “A colic,” and Gideon would wonder whether, at this early stage, the gut inevitably reigned over the mind. He had been terrified of holding the baby at first, but now he was quite relaxed. He loved to look into his eyes. His son seemed to recognize him, but it was possible he was only seeing his own reflection in that pure and depthless blue.

At supper one evening—a talking meal, for the little one was sleeping—Sophy said, suddenly, “We can’t call him the Baby forever. It’s time he had a name.”

It was the middle of February, the birth and Fanny’s death a little over a month behind them. Once the initial shock was absorbed, Sophy had dealt with her loss quietly, sitting with Micah when he visited, the two of them clasping hands, wordless. Caring for the child had been healing for her, that was clear; Gideon even fancied that the long stretches of silent intimacy were mending her heart. She had made no demands and voiced no protests. He was startled now to hear her speak so assertively.

“We’re just getting to know him,” he said. “He’ll tell us what his name is when he’s ready.”

“Oh, you expect him to name himself! Isn’t that asking a lot, considering we never talk to him?”

“All the more reason to wait. If the name is for our use only, I don’t see the urgency. We could call him Samuel the Third, or Francis for dear Fanny, but why impose what we’ll only discard?” He didn’t mean to be short with her, but Sophy had a way of wringing all the vision from his ideas, and hanging them up, wrinkled and flapping, in the full sun. She was a pragmatist at heart, like the Hedges who raised her.

“A child can have more than one name,” Leander said. He had seemed weary this evening, disengaged until now; Gideon wondered if the baby’s crying was keeping him up at night. “The Jews give their children two, a secular name to clothe them in the world and a Hebrew name for the temple. Some even call the little one by a false name to confuse any evil spirits lurking about the nursery. What harm would it do to give our boy a temporary name? If he has his own ideas, he will let us know.”

“I suppose you have some candidates in mind,” Gideon said sullenly.

Leander shrugged. “You are the expert with words. Sophia?”

“A first son is usually named after his father.” This offered tentatively, with none of the force Sophy had shown before. It was obvious to him that she was only saying what was expected of her.

“The last thing I want is a copy of myself,” Gideon said. “If we have to give the baby a name, let it be one that hasn’t been soiled by association. No hand-me-downs from the ancestral attic. None of your biblical names—I’m sick to death of Johns and Jacobs and Abrahams and Matthews. It was amusing to call him Prince Adam before he was born, but we must put these ancient stories aside and start telling one of our own. The first Adam named a new world. Our boy will have an even more daunting task—to name this broken old world anew.”

Sophy started to speak, but stopped herself. After a pause Leander said, “With each child the world begins fresh—or so my mother used to say. Sentimental in most cases, but with our lad only a statement of fact. So, a brave new name for the little prince. You had better get your journal and a pen. We have a job ahead of us.”

February 6, 1839

NAMING THE NAMER

L. suggests we start with function (also the matter at hand). Thus
: Name.
Heb
. Shem.
L. likes strong, solid sound, but G. feels meaning veers too close to character & reputation, inappropriate for newborn. S. has no opinion. L. persists with Lat.
Nomen,
nominated or chosen. S. says sounds like “gnome.”

G. plays variations on “youth” and “new.” Heb.
Noar, Nove.
Greek
Nearos, Neos.
Lat
. Novus.
G. partial to
Neos
or
Neo —
concise, euphonious, with unfinished sound, befitting an unformed creature. L. has no objection, but S. says more like a dog’s name.

L. pursues theme of freshness with Heb.
Nevet,
meaning sprout. S. uncooperative: “Why not call him Tansy or Bloodwort?”

Impasse. About to suggest postponing decision when baby heard to cry. All remove to bedchamber to observe as S. nurses him.

G. to L. (after infant is asleep): “He has no personality yet. It is difficult to name a creature so elemental.”

L.: Then let us go back to the elements! Instead of words, letters. Alpha and Omega.”

Discussion follows. G. & L. agree
Alpha,
arch-symbol of Beginning, eminently suitable for first child. S., dozing in chair, wakes to raise specter of one Alpha Higgins, daughter of Arthur, late of Rev. Hedge’s parish. “A girl’s name, and she was not a good girl.” All seems lost. L. intercedes: “Why not Aleph? Language of the Bible . . . Rich in meaning . . . Good, solid masculine sound.” A silent letter, breathy, signifying a beginning before the Beginning, God’s intent for the world before He spoke it into being. A humble letter: could have started the Bible but left that honor to assertive Beth, who is said to look back at Aleph in gratitude.

G (recalling first visit to Hedge’s study): “S., you remember the wooden letters. The Alphabetical Bestiary.”

S.: The ox?

L: Only one of many associations. (Requests G. inscribe an
Aleph;
G. complies.) Now, to me, the diagonal resembles the line of life on the palm of the hand, and the strokes on either side are the hands of God, always enfolding. What does it look like to you?

S. (deliberating): A man running. To me it looks like a man running.

Resolved.