John Wray - Canaan's Tongue

Kennedy gets to his feet and curses each of us and walks out with his bag of tricks wide open in the middle of the floor. Oliver trails out after him. The Colonel looks so old and dried-up on his stool that I expect him to blow away like dandelion-seed. He looks at Parson, then at Foster. He bows his head and shuts his eyes.

Parson rolls up to the settee. The hem of his skirt scrapes stiff as a tea-cup across the parquet. He lays a hand on the Colonel’s shoulder as he passes. “Why didn’t you wake me, Erratus?”

“Let me stay with this boy,” the Colonel says. “Let me stay with you and this boy, Parson.” His voice is as thin as an onion-skin.

Virgil helps the Colonel to his feet. “Come along, old smoke,” he says. “This boy’s no boy of yours.”

“Let the old donkey stay,” Foster says. “I don’t mind.” His upcountry drawl has been neatly put aside.

Parson lifts his skirts like a lady climbing into a coach and sets himself down next to Foster. Foster’s nape bunches up like a kitten’s.

I hang back in the room a moment, watching him. If he’s a spy, then he must know something about us already. And if he knows something about us already, then he must be wishing to saints above that Parson hadn’t woken from his nap.

I turn to leave. “Miss!” Foster calls out. “Would you be so kind as to get me a cup of water from that pail in the kitchen?”

I stop and squint at him. The air in the parlor is close and still. “When did you happen to be in the kitchen, Mr. Foster?” I say.

“Get me some god-damned water, ” Foster squeaks. His face is grayer than his coat. I smile. The wish of a man who expects the life to be sucked out of him drop by drop for a cup of water seems a funny one to me.

“Go on, Miss Gilchrist,” Parson says. “Get our prisoner his drink.” Parson has always preferred a drop of water in his soup.

I’m away perhaps two minutes. When I come back they’re both exactly as they were. Not a word has passed between them, by the look of it. Dew has begun to form on Foster’s temples. I set the jar of water at his feet. He takes no notice. Parson is looking up at the ceiling like a spinster thinking of a dirty story.

“By-the-bye, Miss Gilchrist,” he says. “Have you seen little Asa Trist?”

I think a moment. “This morning I did, by the orchard fence. Jabbering away at Virgil.”

His eyes come down at once. “Talking to Virgil?” he says.

I nod. “It looked to be quite an epic.”

His face gives a flutter. “How do you mean, ‘an epic’?”

“Just that,” I say. “There looked to be no end of poetry in it.”

Parson says nothing.

“I was watching from my window,” I say. “I couldn’t hear them, Parson.”

“From your window. Yes. I have no doubt that you were.” Parson looks me over. “But then, you hear all sorts of things through that window of yours—; don’t you, Miss Gilchrist.”

I keep my face shut to him. “Have you and Asa had a fight?”

Parson sits back with a sigh. “You might say that we’ve had a parting of the waters,” he says.

“A religious matter, was it?”

His eyes go cloudy. “You might call it that.”

Foster lets out a choked-sounding breath and reaches for the jar. He moves his arms as though they were borrowed from some other. He takes hold of the jar and lifts it to his mouth. He hasn’t once looked at Parson or at me.

“I’ve always considered you and Asa birds of a feather,” I say to Parson. “You both make me want to run screaming for the hills.”

“Asa Trist is a bird,” Foster announces, setting down the jar.

It takes me a moment to recover my voice. “What did you say, Mr. Foster?”

Foster’s mouth shuts. His face is like the weather-side of an old frame house.

Parson gathers up the hem of his gown and studies it. He moves his thumb back and forth across a stain. He purses his lips. “Go on, Mr. Foster,” he says.

“Asa Trist is a bird,” Foster says again. His voice is as unlike the voice that asked me to fetch the water as my own voice is to Parson’s.

“A plucked pigeon,” Foster says. “A fallen snipe.”

I turn stone-faced to Parson. “I’ve seen this trick before,” I say. “It holds no charm for me.” But even as I say so a faintness gathers against my skin and I understand he’ll do exactly what he likes. He’ll do exactly what he likes with me.

Parson sits forward with a yawn. Foster crumples like a cast-off glove.

“Let’s chat a bit, Clementine,” he says. He pats the empty stool beside him.

This in the language of Christ’s murderers is hokmah nistarah, the clandestine wisdom, passed from one generation to the next since the death of Abraham, to whom it was revealed by G*d. The sin which sequesters us from His boundaryless glory is not that of vice, but of ignorance. Our eyes were given us to see.

The link between G*d and the world is indirect. G*d is a pier-glass from which pours forth a bountiful light. The light is reflected in a second glass, from which it passes to a third, a fourth, and so on until the mortal coil is reached. With each reflection the light loses something of its strength, till at last it falls dimly onto the floor of this our earth, finite and desecrated, that we may look upon ourselves and weep.

At the beginning all that existed was G*d and nothing. G*d sent out into the nothing an emanation of Itself, and from this came a great tumult of emanations, forming a cradle for the emptiness, a quickening grid of light. The ten emanations are called the sephiroth, and their splendid lights, properlyread, yield up the most secret name of G*d. The universe that grew up in this cradle was made out of G*d, and the sephiroth are no less than the ten facets of Its nature. They are the path by which the soul journeys downward to the world at birth, and the points by which it navigates its return to Heaven.

Death, however, is not a necessary precondition to this journey. The spirit can climb the ladder of the sephiroth while yet in the flesh, and likewise can a man descend the ladder a second time and make himself as a god on earth. Whosoever has ears to hear, let him hear, etc.

Virgil Ball has ears.

I WAS BORN WHITE, Asa says. Shall I tell it?

Under oath, Asa Trist, genuine land-owner’s son, learned to brake, cut, card, spin flax, all genuine farming work well learned, mashing potatoes for the horses, pigs, well-watering and slopping cows, milking cows, pulling the legs at birthing, pulling calves, milking goats, separating milk from cream, setting milk to stand in a cool, dry place, making white-curd cheese from butter-milk, from bitches’-milk, making cheese, making a good side of smooth, oval cheese, good God, dousing it with cream, turning over, standing straight, lying bent, for hours good God learning words, boiling sugar-beet, then pressing, boiling the juice, preparing for the making of the sweet sugar-beet syrup, giving it out on Sundays to the niggers, letting twenty niggers in to wash, taking twenty cuts, smelling the butter off the skin, early hot milk skimmed, little tear-drops, big pot full of boiled potatoes, watching father hand out the plates, watching mother, one plate sugar-beet syrup, one plate white-curd cheese, one plate bread, planting rice, laying it out in neat white lines on the ground, cutting up the meat, hunks of ham or fat drippings or scrapple, greetings to all honorable childs of niggers

I SEE VIRGIL ALONE, by the orchard fence. Write my biography, Virgil! I call out to him. And I’ll write one for you.