The Season of Migration (10 page)

I encouraged them to speak, to ask questions, though I felt unsure I would give the right answer. The truth is, I felt nervous and full of doubt every time I gave a class like that, as I admit I also did in every sermon I gave, mostly in the moments where my voice trailed away and I was left with a group of silent people who looked back at me with eyes darkened from years underground. What were they trained to see in the dark? These were not average people, understand; they could see in the dark, as I could not. Theo, do you suppose that eyes that live in the dark can see souls, or the shape of souls? What did they see when they looked at me sitting there—could they see the shape of my soul?

Angeline, finally, after a few minutes of silence, raised her head to ask what had happened to the Macedonian man. It was a question I hadn't anticipated, but perhaps should have, for it was practical, as these people most often are. “What happened to him?” she asked, her voice very quiet at first. “The Macedonian man? Did he get help?”

It was the first time she had asked a question. I wanted to have an answer, for I understood the need to find out how a story ended, frequently having stayed up late into the night to finish a book. But the Bible is often not this kind of a book. “Well,” I told her, “we know that Paul and the other disciples did indeed go to Macedonia, and we can only assume that the man found in their teachings the word of God that he was seeking. Most important, however, was not the outcome of the search, but the search itself.” In many ways, I said, searching was the most important aspect of finding. Reaching for the Gospel may be the most important part of the Gospel there is.

As I said this, meeting her questioning eyes across the table, I felt the deep tendrils of doubt sweep through me, as seaweed moves from a strong current at the bottom of the sea.

October 22

Cuesmes, the Borinage

Dear Theo,

I want to tell you more about Alard, whose room I shared at the Denis house, and who remains my greatest friend in mining country. He is nine years old. He is the first boy I shared a room with since I shared one with you. You saw a drawing of him when you were here, but I'm not sure you will remember that, or if my sketch did him any justice.

Alard is thin and quiet, with sunken eyes and a head of dark and tousled hair. He is always listening, standing in the back of rooms or in doorways, and he is never afraid to ask questions when he doesn't understand. The other day, we walked in the nearby woods and looked at birds' nests in the trees, even came across one nestled in the ground. “What happens to the birds in the winter?” he asked me, genuinely concerned. I explained that the birds often left their nests for the winter, moving off to warmer climates, and would come back again when it was safe for them. He seemed satisfied with that, but he asked again, “What happens to their nests?” I told him they would remain, but he needed my assurance that we would come back to the woods in the winter to find them there.

He is a special boy, thoughtful for his age. He impressed me from the first day as a boy destined to grow to be just like his father, prosperous and smart, with his hands ever kneading fresh quantities of delicious dough. In my first few weeks in the Denis house, I was often up late studying my Bible, reading a book, or sketching an image of the miners that would not leave my mind. Alard, who knew how to read, sat up in his bed and read his Bible, too, though most often when I looked over at him I saw his head drooping, the book propped on his knees and his chin to his chest. The sight always warmed me, for it was the vision of a boy who so dearly wanted to be a man, a human spirit trapped in time.

There are boys who want to grow up faster and boys who don't want to ever be men; in the Borinage, the boys don't usually get the chance to learn the difference. I am grateful to Alard for reminding me of what it is to be a boy; he is a boy much like I was, struggling with adult questions long before it is required of him. Many nights before I moved from the Denis house, I turned Alard's lamp down and coaxed his knees straight, taking the book from him and easing him back onto his pillow. Most nights Alard was too asleep even to mutter a response, but occasionally he whispered a good night that made a knot come into my throat. Theo, not since the two of us shared that bed in the room with the flag in the window have I felt that kind of fellowship with anyone.

One day at the Denis house, I watched from an upstairs window as Alard and his brother Nathen played a game in the front yard. Nathen is four years older than Alard, and while I watched them I saw you and me. They were playing an imagination game, lining up rocks on the grass and moving them around, taking branches from a nearby tree to place in the path of the stones. I couldn't hear them from where I was, but felt as if I could.

I was telling you to move the branch just so, and you were doing what you were told, but I could see on your face that you saw something I didn't see. I told you to put four rocks on top of the branch—the front line of the advancing army—and you did so. I watched your face; what did you see?

“They're swimmers,” you said.

“Swimmers?”

“Swimmers. See? This is the front line; they're about to jump off the dock and into the water. It's a competition! They're nervous.”

And so they were. I saw them clearly then, the swimmers, wearing trunks and with their arms up, preparing to dive. “They're swimmers!” I said.

You grinned. You lifted the rocks up one by one and dropped them off the branch and onto the grass. I moved them through the water and you cheered for the one in blue, who beat the others by a healthy margin. You lined up the next group of swimmers for the next race. Your face was radiant, and the lake stretched out before us.

Nathen laughed at something Alard said; I saw him throw back his head and fall to the grass, his mouth open with glee. The look on Alard's face was pure surprise for a moment—he was amazed that he amused his brother enough for such a response—and then pure joy. They were two brothers, laughing.

I thought of you while I watched the two boys, thought of you embarked on a career at Goupil's selling art, just as I once did; you now treading the same floors and galleries, but getting commendations, raises, and promotions rather than scoldings, rebukes, and transfers from one place to another.

Do you remember when Mother used to paint those canvases in the garden in the back of the parsonage, canvas after canvas of blooming flowers, never anything else? So many afternoons the group of us would sit back there with her, sitting or playing quietly lest we disturb her. And when her mood turned dark, as it inevitably did, and she set aside her painting and went inside, she closed her bedroom door behind her and we could all hear her cries through the wood. None of us knew what to do, not even Father, to comfort her, except for you. Knocking gently, you let yourself in and after a few minutes the crying always ceased. It was the same if you were ever upset—you were the one she thought worthy of comforting. She never once held me the way she did you.

I punished you more than you deserved for this, for being my brother, for being younger and more at ease, for being the one with father's name, rather than the name of Uncle Cent and of that baby in the cemetery out back. I made you sleep on the floor, when I was angry and feeling spiteful; I made you do things that I wouldn't dare to do: sneak coins from Pa's coat pockets, steal milk from farmers' pails, or just-sheared wool from local barns. And you did these things for me, bringing me your loot like a dog bringing his master a bone, and I turned on you, showing the proof to our parents, standing before you like an accuser, like a man who knew righteousness. And though both of us were punished, you never turned on me as I did on you.

I can easily conjure up the strange pleasure that came from punishing you: peering down at you from the bed while you slept on the floor, feeling a curious mixture of guilt and pride and rage.

I repent for all of this, now. I think of it and I don't understand it. I wish to tell you I am sorry for it, but then I think of what you said to me when you came to visit, that all I've been doing in the Borinage is “idling,” and I fear I would do it all over again.

And do you remember this? One day when we were boys, maybe eleven and seven, we were playing by a canal somewhere near home. I had stolen Pa's pocketknife and showed you how to whittle small branches torn off elm trees into little spears; we were using the spears to fish in the canal. Lying on our stomachs on the bank, leaning out as far as we could over the water, peering into the darkness to see a fish swim by. I thought I saw one—a shadow turned in the water, something dark turned darker, and I thrust my spear as fast as I could into the depths. Nothing. The spear floated back to the surface and I had to reach quickly to stop it from drifting away. It happened like that over and over again: nothing, nothing, nothing, the fish effortlessly slipping away.

I looked up at you, whom I had forgotten in my concentration. You had your face in the water, your spear poised above your head. Why hadn't I thought of that? All of a sudden your spear went down, you were lightning fast, and you sat up with a fish. Your face and arm dripping, you grinned at me and held it up. It was a little fish, not as big as your forearm. “I did it!” you squealed.

Anger and jealousy flooded me; the sight of your grinning face was a taunt. You were always better than I was, always. I reached for the fish and yanked it off of the spear and threw it; it cleared the canal and landed on the other side, where it flopped helplessly. You watched it in horror, and looked at me with confusion. “Why did you do that?” you wailed, your voice quickly turning to tears. The fish flopped and jumped. You got up and ran along the canal, trying to find a way across to help it. “Why did you do that, Vincent?” I could hear you crying, your voice high-pitched and desperate as you ran. I sat on the bank and watched the fish slowly suffocate.

October 28

Petit Wasmes, the Borinage

Dear Theo,

A month into my stay in the Borinage, in mid-January, a letter arrived at the Denis house; the committee had granted me a temporary salary and a six-month appointment, to begin on February first. If, after six months' time, they were happy with my work, they would make the appointment permanent.

When I told Madame Denis, who watched me with a grin of anticipation while I read the letter, she cooed and sat me at the table to eat a piece of bread spread with homemade apple jam. I forced myself to eat it, not wanting to disappoint her, but the happiness about being able to finally support myself, after three years of relying on Father for everything, and the eagerness to get to work made the food dry up in my mouth.

Soon after the letter came, I set out with enthusiasm to start a school for the children of Petit Wasmes. I had learned from Alard that for the children of the town there was little schooling save what their parents might teach them, and that only in rare exceptions did this mean learning to read. I decided I wanted to give the children a sense of school, maybe a better sense than I had ever had.

Paul told me he thought he might know just the place to hold the school; we walked together through winding paths past the main part of the village to the outskirts of where the houses began. Nestled in a thicket of pine trees there was a large wooden building, overrun on all sides by thorny bushes and dried-up ferns. Strange to think of this now! I am writing to you now from inside this same building, which has grown to be a home of sorts to me. “It used to be a dance hall,” said Paul as we approached that day. “Many years back, there was a group of miners who loved to play music, and all the people from the village came on Friday nights for dancing.” He stopped on the path to the front door and gazed at the building. “They called it the Salon de Bébé. There was a lot of carousing and carrying on,” he said, “a few fistfights and someone's broken arm before the management shut the place down.” He smiled vaguely and then shook his head. “Things did get out of hand, but generally the village was a happier place back then. I heard that a few of those musicians sold their instruments during a strike a few years ago.”

We went in. The door swung open easily, sweeping over a mat of pine needles and revealing a cavernous empty room. A couple of mice scampered out of sight with a panicked squeak and then it was quiet. Our footsteps echoed over the floorboards. The room was designed as a simple barn, with thick rafters overhead but no loft. Two windows along each wall let in the winter sun, but the windows were dirty and the light in the room was muted and dim. There was a low wooden bench and a stove on the far end, a number of chairs lined up along the sides, and a general musty smell. On the floor in one corner were a few discarded bottles. “I'm sure the young people come here to be alone,” Paul said.

I moved slowly into the room, my footsteps echoing. “It's like the whale,” I said out loud as I stared with awe up at the rafters. Paul looked at me with a puzzled expression. “The whale,” I repeated. “The whale that swallows Jonah. It's like we're inside the giant fish.”

Paul uttered a noise of surprise and looked around him, apparently trying to envision this. He smiled at me. “Does that mean you like it?”

“Oh, yes. It's perfect. It brings to mind Delaroche's
Good Friday
, an image I used to keep on my wall wherever I went.” Do you know that picture, Theo? They have prints of it at Goupil's. A group of people huddle in a dark room, all of them turned toward the window, where bright light pours through. The women are bowed, praying, and the men are bracing themselves for what they see out the window—the whole picture is composed for that window, really, where the light comes in, though it is not large and it exists at the far left of the frame. In the salon, light poured similarly through the dusty windows, though the inside of the room was dark. I said to Paul, “It is like we are in the manger where Jesus was born. It will be the perfect place to teach the children.”