Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

Naomi was doing a good act of mystification.

You’ve got nothing to be grateful for, Naomi said. My God, you should see how you look, Sal—like the starveling coming home. Please eat that. You’re scarecrow thin.

What does that matter? The thing is, I love you and I hate you for taking up the burden. For doing it.

Hold hard there, Sally. Doing what ?

Sally lowered her voice. Killing her! Killing her . I know you found my little treasure of morphine. You knew what I meant to do. You took it on yourself to do it and you ground up or poured out what was left. That’s a reason I started behaving as if I couldn’t decide whether I should love you or hate you—be near you or stay clear.

Just wait a second, murmured Naomi. And by the way, the Canadians are staring at us a bit.

Do you care about that? asked Sally in a whisper—though a fierce one. And bile did rise now. Such a stupid small thing? You and I killed our mother, and you’re worried about bloody Canadians!

There was a demonic fury in Sally because all Naomi did was lower her face. No sudden rising from the table. None of the outrage Sally had foreseen and now wanted.

I did nothing, said Naomi calmly. She had taken Sally’s hand again. Our mother just died. That’s all. I don’t know why it was that night of all possible nights. But—pure and simple—she died.

That can’t be true. You took the weight of it off me.

No. I came on your secret supply amongst the linen—it was exactly where I’d hide such a thing. And I could have used it if I had your bravery. And your love—let’s not deny that. But she just died. And when I made my fire that morning, I ground in the morphine with the rest—with the rhubarb tonic and the bromide and every other bottle and useless cure.

At this claim Sally covered her face with her free hand. Naomi said with a sort of unanswerable emphasis, Listen to me. I told you the way she died and that I was there. I’ll tell you again. Mama died, pure and simple.

Sally began shuddering. It was like the shaking out of devils in camp meetings.

My God, I should have told you, Naomi admitted. I didn’t know how it weighed on you. I could tell you stories… a kid who collided with a tram… The thing is, they insist in certain cases we maintain life whatever the pain—as if that isn’t a sin and taking action is.

If their mother died—just expired of her own free right, the organism itself renouncing further pain—Sally was not an accomplice except by desire. That awareness—if Naomi could be trusted, of course—shrank the tumor. It did not excise it though.

Have you ever thought of doing something like that here in France? asked Naomi.

But these men are strangers.

One of your closest friends—I won’t say who—told me when I was at my lowest on the Archimedes that she solved a fatal hemorrhage on the operating table with a lethal chloroform dosage. It’s easier to do than with ether. I’ve often thought of doing something like that here. But amongst all the damaged boys we’re faced with, I’ve never had that certainty I had back then with that case involving the tram…

Further down the room the Canadians had got up from the table. They called a cheery good-night. They realized, of course, that something of moment had been argued between the sisters. They wanted to let them know it didn’t matter to them and also to reassure them falsely that it hadn’t been noticeable. When they left, the Durance sisters also got up and clung to each other. They grabbed each other’s shoulders with the pressure of crimes committed or projected and now confessed.

Later—when they were going upstairs themselves—Naomi helped Sally along and held her by the shoulder as if she were an invalid.

Now, Naomi ordered her, put your mind on the normal things. Go round town with Charlie Condon, have a meal, have a drink. Would you like to sleep in my room tonight?

No, Sally told her. She could think of nothing worse than fitting her new set of confusions and certainties into the one bed with her sister. They stopped in front of Sally’s door.

Sally said, I think I believe you.

Naomi took her by the chin. Have no doubt about it, she commanded in a lowered voice. There are only two choices, you know. Either die or live well. We live on behalf of thousands who don’t. Millions. So let’s not mope about it, eh?

In the end Naomi went in and sat with Sally until she was asleep.

Yet when Sally woke in the morning and found herself alone and weighed whether she would flee from the capital, she found that even more she wanted to meet up with Charlie on any terms. The things Naomi had told her altered to a near-tolerable level her own truth and her accepted version. There was no doubt that something had healed in her during her profound night’s sleep, as she lay deeper than the Archimedes for hours on end—looking up to a descending hull and horses and bandaged men from her finally ascendant angle. As she washed herself that morning she felt that she was simply one more woman of distinct crimes and valors. She thought, Yes, I shall have breakfast with my sister.

Charlie Condon—arriving from the Métro and presenting himself at the front desk in his trench coat—was much enthused to meet Naomi when Sally introduced her. He still had that look of unbreakability and had taken on the same kind of agelessness as Naomi.

I remember you, he said, when you seemed so much older and grander at school.

Again, plain conversation shone in the air. Charlie asked if Naomi and Ian—who had not yet arrived—would like to come with them to the galleries. First stop, the Louvre, he said, and then a few other places after lunch. We’ll have buckets of fun.

Naomi explained that there was an appointment they had to get to. Charlie said then he had made a dinner reservation at a restaurant another officer had recommended to him.

He’s good at reservations, said Sally.

Charlie thought he and Sally might go there and dine in the officer’s honor, for the poor fellow had “taken a knock,” as soldiers said—had been lethally wounded. Charlie sat down at a table just inside the door of the nurses’ hostel, pulled out his fountain pen and wrote the name of the restaurant. L’Arlésienne.

Within walking distance, he said, scrawling the address.

He and Sally emerged into the street now. On the walk towards the Palais Royal and on to the Louvre, he told her, We’re going to see the old rebels before lunch. After lunch we’ll see the young rebels.

He hoped aloud that it was possible to get at least a sense of the place in three hours or so. Fra Filippo Lippi first. Titian and El Greco—Titian born earlier and a breaker of the mold. In this place Condon reduced them to something like acquaintances who happened to dispense their thunderbolts of color and light. And that was it, as he pointed out. Yet he had read a tract about art being tone and said he’d been annoyed by it and felt that if he’d followed it he would be hamstrung. But light. To transform color into light—that remained the chief doctrine.

They went to Velásquez and Goya. There was one more recent artist he loved—Delacroix. Sally did not tell him that—with other nurses—she had once walked past Delacroix with barely a glance. She wondered if she would ever get sick of his discourses. Why would she when she wanted him to have the chance to continue them for a lifetime? He didn’t preach or lecture though. He carried his knowledge with a sort of boyish excitement instead of with vanity. He was an enthusiast. His eyes shone. If there was a percentage of vanity it was the appropriate one. The major percentage was of delight.