Annie Proulx - Barkskins

• • •

Charley had had enough of Dieter’s hopeless American forest projects and almost enough of the slippery Caroline. She enjoyed teasing him and that, he promised himself, would be the key to getting her. He would make one more effort and then leave. He telephoned.

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” he said.

“Oh, Charley, where are you going? To the terrible fires in Idaho and Montana?”

“No. The fires are ended. My interests pull me to the tropics. Let me see you one last time. Will you not walk in the garden with me for half an hour this evening?”

“I might if you are very, very good. None of your naughty ways.” She laughed, an often-rehearsed laugh that an earlier swain had told her was like the music of a babbling brook.

“But you are so beautiful that I cannot make a promise. You have a powerful effect on me. As a last favor please wear your exquisite green dress.”

“Oh, my Poiret. You have an eye for fashion. That is the most expensive dress I own.”

“The most beautiful,” he murmured gallantly. He knew well that it was a dress famously designed to be worn without a corset.

• • •

He came to the dark garden deliberately a little late, just as the moon was rising, and saw her standing beside the redbud tree, the faded heart-shaped leaves catching the lunar glow as did her pale dress. She resembled the chrysalis of a luna moth. The watery moonlight seemed to solidify their bodies, to render shadows corporeal, as intense as stones.

“Here you are,” she said and produced her rippling laugh. He seized her at once and lightly bit her neck.

“Oh don’t! It will show!”

He bit again, harder.

“Stop, Charley. What has got into you?” She tried to push him away, but he was not having it and he was not playing her flirting game tonight. He pulled her to the garden bench. It took a few moments of sweet flattery and blandishment to ease her into position and gradually ruck high the green dress. He did this almost stealthily, not roughly, eased into her hot and responsive flesh and at the moment of discharge heard James Bardawulf’s voice say, “Why, Charley, how thoughtful of you to drop in,” and there was a tremendous concussive sound that his damaged brain told him was a moon bolt, very like being struck full force with a Zulu knobkerrie.

Caroline’s shrieks brought servants from the house who pulled the club away from James Bardawulf, who then tore a rosebush out of the ground and began flailing the insensible form on the ground. Young Raphael, in his pajamas, ran for Dieter, who arrived still clutching his meeting notes.

“James Bardawulf, anhalten, anhalten sofort ! Stop halt this stupidity! Was ist los? Anhalten! You will kill him!”

“I want to kill him! Let me go!”

• • •

The servants carried Charley to his room and two doctors came within the hour. Dr. Plate examined the unconscious Charley and said it was a grave injury. He might remain unconscious for some time — forever, even — might die without waking up. But he cleaned the wound, bandaged it and left the first of three nurses to watch over the wounded man. Dr. Scotbull examined the sobbing Caroline, who had been roughly used and violated but was otherwise unhurt. The moon-green dress was torn and dirty. “A few days in bed to rest and become calm. You must put the experience out of your mind and divert yourself with books or needlework,” said the doctor, shooting sidelong glances at James Bardawulf, whose red eyes glared. The doctor steered him downstairs and poured him a glass of whiskey — watched him swallow it in a single glugging bolt. Within the half hour James Bardawulf went up to Caroline, hissing that if she liked rape so much that is what she would get, slapped her hard and mounted her.

The next day James Bardawulf was discovered in Dieter’s house going up the stairs with the retrieved knobkerrie, and once again the servants disarmed him. Dieter had Charley moved to the hospital with a guard at the door. One son had tried to kill the other and it was clear he was going to keep trying until he was successful. James Bardawulf, now sexually excited, kept Caroline in bed for a week.

• • •

Dieter went to his younger son. “James Bardawulf, I know he wronged your wife, insulted your honor. If he recovers he will leave the family and live abroad. But I beg you to swallow your rage. You are young, and anger and desire to kill can sour you from the heart outward all the days of your life. I have lost one son — I cannot bear to lose you as well. I care for you deeply, James Bardawulf. And you must not blame Caroline. You must forgive.” He embraced the rigid man, tears splashing on the younger son’s shoulder. But James Bardawulf was anxious to get back to Caroline and go where his older half brother had been, and he pulled away from his father.

• • •

Remembrance began to seep in, fleet distorted images of falling, the smell of earth. Moonlight. The day came when Charley could get up and walk to the window. In early dusk he looked out. Soon, he thought, soon rather than late. The nights were chill, leafless trees disclosed their angular frames. When the bandage came off, by manipulating two mirrors he could see thick bristles of hair growing on each side of a furious dark scar.

“Father,” he said to Dieter, whom he knew again, “what happened to me?”

“Something heavy fell on you in James Bardawulf’s garden.” A glass with a residue of sleeping powder stood on the night table.

“In James Bardawulf’s garden? Why!” He turned the glass in his fingers.

“I see no point in keeping the information from you. You did something schlecht. You tried to — you ravished Caroline in the garden and James Bardawulf discovered you in the act. Your own brother’s wife! He struck you.”

“This is extremely painful to hear. I do not remember this. I think you must be mistaken.”

Dieter looked at him. Was he willfully lying or did he truly not remember? He was lying. Worse, Dieter believed Charley’s mind was unsound. And he must go.

Through intermediaries Dieter arranged the purchase of a small house for him in Lugar da Barra do Rio Negro, or Manaós, the city of the forest, where the wild tropical trees would be waiting for him. The house and a modest monthly sum of money were all he could do for this child he had long ago foretold, under the silver maple in Lavinia’s park, would be a man of the trees.

• • •

In Amazonia, Charley discovered himself as nothing. What he did was nothing. He saw the rampant growth of vine, shoot, sprout, seedling, moist and dripping, swollen and bursting with vigor. He vividly, and without regret, remembered raping Caroline. The forest sounded with the constant patter and thump as leaves, twigs, petals and fruits, branches and weak old trees succumbed to gravity. When the storm wind called friagem generated by the Antarctic came, the noise increased, a bombardment of tree parts and fruits mixed with the hissing of the wind in the canopy.

Decomposition seemed as violent — the collapse of leaf structures, cells breaking down, liquefaction of solid wood into a mold squirming with lively bacteria and animalcula seething and transforming into energy. Yes, and insects and larvae, worms and rodents and everywhere the famous ants who ruled the tropics. He almost understood how the incomprehensible richness of Amazonia made humans clutch and rend in maenadic frenzies of destruction. Such a forest was an affront, standing there smirking, aloof from its destiny of improving men’s lives.

Charley was slow in learning Portuguese. His first sentence was “ Você fala inglês? — do you speak English?” But the answer was so often “I don’t understand— não compreendo ” that he struggled to master some useful words. In his first week in Manaós, making long walks around and through the town, he discovered a Portuguese paper goods shop, a livraria, that sold imported notebooks with fine French paper. He bought several.