There's only one portion of the conversation that I have returned to muse over: and that's the part about being a village storyteller. I realize she meant it as a form of condemnation, but in truth I can see nothing undesirable about being thus employed. Indeed I have imagined myself many, many times sitting beneath an ancient tree in some dusty square-in Samarkand, perhaps; yes! in Samarkand-telling my epic in pieces, for the price of bread and opium. I would have had a fine time doing that: get myself fat and flying by parceling my tale out, day after day. I would have had my audience wrapped around my little finger; coming back every afternoon to visit me in the blue shadows, and asking me to sell them another piece of the family saga.
My father was a great improviser of stories. In fact, it's one of the few truly fond memories I have of him. My sitting at his feet when I was a child, while he wove wonderful fictions for me. There were often malevolent stories, by the way: violent, blood-thirsty tales about the way the world was in some uncalendared time. When he was young, perhaps; if indeed he ever was.
A lot later, when I was approaching adulthood and about ready to go out looking for female company, he told me that I shouldn't underestimate the potency of stories in the art of seduction. He had not seduced my mother with kisses or compliments, he said (and he certainly hadn't got her drunk and raped her, as Cesaria had told me); he'd brought her to his lap, and thence to his bed, with a story.
Which brings us back (though you do not yet see why, you will) to that night on Kaua'i, and to Rachel.
PART FIVE. The Act of Love
The wind had carried the rain clouds off toward Mount Waialeale by early evening, where they'd shed the bulk of their freight. The skies cleared over the North Shore, and about seven-fifteen the gusts died to nothing with uncanny suddenness. Rachel was eating at the time-a plate of baked chicken, prepared by Heidi, who'd come in, cooked, and departed. She looked up from her meal to see that the palms were no longer churning, and the sea was quite placid.
The silence unnerved her a little, so she put on some music: a big-band melody. It was a mistake; it reminded her of a night early in her courtship with Mitchell when they'd gone out dancing, and he'd chosen a very exclusive place uptown where a small band played forties tunes, and everyone danced cheek to cheek. Oh but she'd been in love that night; like a fifteen-year-old infatuated with the school quarterback. He'd plied her with champagne, and told her that he was devoted to her, and always would be. "Liar…" she murmured as she stared out at the sea. Sometimes, when she remembered things he'd said-sweet things that he'd betrayed, hard things that he'd known he would hurt her by saying-she wanted him right there in front of her, to point an accusing finger and say: why did you say that? God Mitchell, you were such a liar, such a miserable liar…
Rather than turn the music off, however, she sat it out, determined to endure every last, melancholy note. The only way to get past the hurt was to face it. If this trip to
Eden did nothing else, she thought, it would at least give her an opportunity to leaf through her memories, and look at them dearly. Then, and only then, could she move on. Put Mitchell and all he'd been to her in the past, where he belonged, and start a new life.
A new life. There was a daunting thought. It wasn't the first time she'd wondered what would become of her now, but the question had a new pertinence on this island, where she knew others had come before her, and begun again. Jimmy Hornbeck, for one. And what of the Mont-gomerys and the Robertsons and Schmutzes buried on the cliff? They too had been emigrants, presumably. Fugitives perhaps, like her: running from lives that had hurt and disappointed them. It wouldn't be so bad at that, she thought, to disappear from the world and live and die in this paradise; to be buried on a cliff where nobody came, nobody mourned, nobody remembered.
She went to bed at ten, or thereabouts, and fell asleep as quickly as she had the night before. But this time she didn't sleep through till daybreak. Instead she stirred from a dream some while after midnight. She had the impression that she'd been woken by something, but she wasn't sure what it was. All she could hear was the rhythmic rasp of crickets, and the soft croaking of frogs. There was a little moonlight coming between the drapes, but there was nothing disturbing enough to have roused her.
Then she realized: it was a smell that had woken her. The sharp-sweet scent of something burning. Her mind reluctantly formed the thought that she'd better get up and check that the source of the smell wasn't somewhere in the house. Her body still heavy with sleep she pulled back the sheet and climbed out of bed. Then she slipped into a T-shirt and knickers and went downstairs to investigate. As soon as she readied the living room she spotted the fire: it was burning brightly at the top of the beach. Had the three surfers she'd seen the first day come back in the middle of the night to make a bonfire, and maybe smoke a little pot? If so, they'd built a much bigger fire than last time. It was a steep pyramid of timbers, from the flanks and apex of which bright yellow flames sprang. The smell however, wasn't just that of burning wood. There was an aromatic pungency about it, which lent it a pleasing exoticism.
She slid open the French doors and stepped outside, thinking she would see the fire-tenders better. But she could see nobody. There were stars, a great array of them bright overhead, but no moon. She went back into the house, located a pack of cigarettes she'd bought in Honolulu Airport, lit one, and wandered back out again, this time stepping off the veranda onto the chilly grass, and on down the lawn to the path.
Though she was now no more than ten or twelve yards from the fire, she could still see no sign of its architects. But she could smell the fragrance more strongly than ever, rising out of the pyramid like incense from a mountainous censer. The smell pleased her even more than it had at first. It was sweet yet sharp, like the honey from ancient hives.
She wandered through the shrubs and over the sand toward the fire, enjoying its warmth on her face and bare legs. Obviously the fire-makers had departed, leaving their handiwork to blaze away through the night. Not the cleverest thing to do, she thought. If the wind were to rise again it could easily blow splinters of fiery wood into the bushes, and, worse still, toward the house.
What should she do, she wondered? Wait here until the fire burned itself out or attempt to smother the flames with sand? The second option was beyond her, she decided. The fire was simply too big, and too well made. And as to waiting here; well, it would be a long, long wait.
Perhaps for once she was just going to have to have a little faith that the worst would not happen.
She should just go back to bed and sleep. By morning the fire would be a blackened, smoky pit in the sand, and her fears of cataclysm would seem ridiculous. Still, she might tell the surfers next time she saw them not to build their fires so big, or so close to the tree line. So thinking, she walked once around the fire, and started back to the house.
The scent came with her. It was in her clothes, in her hair, on her skin, in her mouth even. And it seemed-though this was plainly nonsensical-that the further she got from its source the more powerful it became, as though cooler air was refining it. By the time she got into the house it was so strong it might have been oozing out of her pores.
She was of half a mind to shower before she climbed back into bed, but she decided against it, persuaded less by fatigue as by the subtle sense of intoxication the fragrance had induced. Her head felt feathery, her perceptions a little awry (when she reached to turn off the bedside lamp she missed it by a couple of inches, which amused her). When she'd finally found the switch, and lay her head down in darkness, there were colors billowing behind her lids, intense as the hues crawling on a soap bubble. She watched them entranced, vaguely wondering if they'd been burned onto her retina from staring at the fire. The thought came into her head that they were with her for ever now-the colors, the aroma-and that she was therefore their captive: bounded by them, shaped by them. She would never see the world without it being colored for her; never draw breath but that she'd smell the fragrance of the fire.