She got into the car, fumbling for the ignition key. The rain was beating hard on the roof, its din drowning out the noise of the wind. As she put the car into reverse she glanced back at the ocean, and through the rain-smeared windshield saw a white shape in the dark sea. She turned on the windshield wipers, clearing the glass.
There, out in the bay, was the boat she'd seen earlier in the day; the two-masted vessel which had been the object of Niolopua's scrutiny. It was foolish to get back out of the car to look, but for some reason she felt the need to do so.
Out she got, the rain so heavy it soaked her to the skin in five seconds. But she didn't care. It was worth the soaking to see her boat braving the swell, its sails fat with wind, its bows cutting a white swath through the gray-green water. Satisfied that this was without a doubt the vessel she'd seen earlier, and that its master and crew were in no danger, she ducked back into the car, slammed the doer, and started the homeward journey.
Of late when I write I find myself gripping my pen so tightly that I can feel the tick of my pulse in my thumb and forefinger. My grip is more and more an obsessive's grip. I swear if I were to die at this moment, writing these very words, it would take several strong men to part me from my pen.
You'll remember I confessed a few chapters back that I was lost; that I didn't know how all the pieces of the story I have fitted together. In the last few nights of writing that unease is beginning to lift. Perhaps it's self-deception, but it seems to me I can see the connections more clearly than before: the grand scheme of what I'm telling is slowly becoming apparent to me. And as it comes clear I feel myself drawn deeper into the tale I'm telling, the way a worshipper is drawn to the altar steps, and-dare I venture this?-for much the same reason. I am hoping to ascend to a place of revelation.
Meanwhile, I keep the company of my characters as though they were dear friends. I have only to dose my eyes, and there they are.
Rachel, for instance? I can see her in my mind's eye right now, sipping her evening's Bloody Mary before she goes to bed; not remotely suspecting that the night of her life lies before her. I can picture Cadmus just as clearly. There he is, sitting in his wheelchair in front of his sixty-inch television, his eyes glazed as he contemplates a scene remote from him in years yet closer than the liver spots on the back of his hand. I can bring Garrison before me-poor, sick Garrison, who has such harm in his heart, and knows it-and Margie, in her cups; and Loretta, plotting successions; and my father's wife, busy with plots of her own; and Luman and Marietta and Galilee.
Oh, my Galilee. I see him more clearly tonight than ever I've seen him in my life, even when he was standing before me in the flesh. Does that sound absurd, that he should appear in my imagination more completely than he ever did before my eyes? However it sounds, it's true. Dreaming of Galilee as I do, conjuring him not as a thing of flesh and personality, but as a creature half gone into myth, I believe I am in the presence of a truer soul than that phantom man whom I lately met.
You may say: what nonsense. We live in flesh and blood, you may say. To which I reply: yes, but we die into spirit. Even divinities like Galilee give up the limitations of the flesh eventually, and unbounded swell into legend. So imagining him in his mythic form-as a wanderer, as a lover, as a brute-am I not closer to the Galilee with whom my soul will spend eternity?
I just made the mistake of proudly reading the preceding paragraphs to Marietta. She snorted at them; called them "pretentious claptrap" (that was the mildest epithet); told me I should strike all such ruminations from my text and get on with doing my job, which is-as far as she's concerned-rsimply to report what I know about the history of the Barbarossas and the Gearys in as clear and concise a fashion as I can.
So I've decided I'm not going to share any more of what I'm writing with Marietta. If she wants a book about the rise and fall of the Geary dynasty, then she can damn well write it herself. I'm making something entirely different. It'll be a ragtag thing, no question, sewn together from mismatched parts, but I find that just as beautiful in its way as a small, nicely formed tale. And, by the way, more like life.
Oh, there were two other things Marietta said that day which bear reporting here, if only because they both contain more than a measure of truth. One, she accused me of liking words because of their music. I pleaded guilty to this, which infuriated her. "You put music before meaning!" she said. (This was just spiteful; I don't. But I think meaning is always a latecomer. Beauty and music seduce us first; later, ashamed of our own sensuality, we insist on meaning.)
Which brings me to her second remark: something to the effect that I was no better than a village storyteller. I smiled from ear to ear at this, and told her that nothing would give me more pleasure than to have my book by heart, and to tell it aloud. Then she'd see how much pleasure there was to be had from my bag of tales. You don't like what I'm telling you, sir? Don't worry. It'll change in two minutes. You don't like scandal? I'll tell you something about God. You hate God? I'll recite you a love scene. You're a puritan? Have patience; the lovers will suffer. Lovers always suffer.
Marietta's response to all this was inevitably sour.
"You're no better than a crowd-pleaser then, are you?" Marietta replied. "Pandering to whatever people want to hear. Why don't you just slather the thing in sex and have done with it?"
"Have you quite finished?"
"No."
"Well I'd really like you to leave. You just came in here to have an argument, and I've got better things to be doing."
"Ha!" she said, snatching one of the sheets I'd been reading from off my desk. "This is one of your better things? We live in flesh and blood, you may say-" I retrieved the page from her hand before she could go any further. "Just… go away," I said, very firmly. "You're being a philistine."
"Oh so now I'm too stupid to appreciate your artistic ambitions, is that it?"
I contemplated this for a moment. "Well, as you put it that way…" I said. "Yes."
"Fine. Then we both know where we stand don't we? I think this work is wretched crap and you think I'm stupid."
"That seems to be a fair summary."
"No," she said, as though I was about to change my mind (which I wasn't). "You've said it now. And that's the end of it."
"I'm agreeing with you, Marietta."
"I won't be coming back in here," she warned.
"Good," I said.
"You'll get no more support from me."
"I just said: good."
She was red-faced with rage by now. "I mean it, Mad-dox," she said.
"I know you mean it. Marietta," I said, quietly. "And believe me, it's tearing me apart. It may not appear that way, but I am in agonies at the prospect." I pointed to the door. "That's the way out."
"God, Maddox," she said. "Sometimes you can be such a dickhead."
That was, as best I remember it, the entire exchange. I haven't seen her since. Of course, she'll come crawling back sooner or later, probably pretending that the conversation never happened. Meanwhile, I'm undisturbed, which suits me fine. I have to write what may be the most important passages of my story so far. The less distraction I have the better I can focus upon it.