"You cannot come there," he said.
If she answered, I could not hear her.
"When the roof leaks there," he said, "it leaks. We nail old shingles over the hole. It takes money to roof a house like that. I have no money. I have no profession. I was brought up not to have a profession. My kind of people have land, not money. I don't have land. I have an empty house. And it's where I live, it's what I am, Pomona. I can't leave it. But you can't live there. There is nothing there. Nothing."
"There's yourself," she said, or I think that's what she said; she spoke very low.
"It comes to the same thing."
"Why?"
There was a long pause. "I don't know," he said. "I started out all right. It was coming back, maybe. Bringing her back to that house. I tried it, I tried to give He to her. It is what I am. But it wasn't any good, it isn't any good, it's no use, Pomona!" That was said in anguish, and she answered only with his name. After that I couldn't hear what they said, only the murmur of their voices, unnerved and tender. Even in the shame of listening it was a wonderful thing to hear, that tenderness. And still I was afraid, I felt the sickness, the weariness I had felt that afternoon bringing the dead to birth. It was impossible that my sister should love Galven Ileskar. It wasn't that he was poor, it wasn't that he chose to live in a half-ruined house at the end of nowhere; that was his heritage, that was his right. Singular men lead singular lives. And Poma had the right to choose all that, if she loved him. It wasn't that that made it impossible. It was the missing step. It was something more profoundly lacking, lacking in Galven. There was a gap, a forgotten place, a break in his humanity. He was not quite my brother, as I had thought all men were. He was a stranger, from a different land.
That night I kept looking at Poma; she was a beautiful girl, as soft as sunlight. I damned myself for not ever having looked at her, for not having been a decent brother to her, taking her somewhere, anywhere, into company, where she'd have found a dozen men ready to love her and marry her. Instead, I had taken her to Ile.
"I've been thinking," I said next morning at breakfast. "I'm fed up with this place. I'm ready to try Brailava." I thought I was being subtle, till I saw the terror in her eyes.
"Are you?" she said weakly.
"All we'll ever do here is scrape by. It's not fair to you, Poma. I'm writing Cohen to ask him to look out for a partnership for me in the city."
"Shouldn't you wait a while longer?"
"Not here. It gets us nowhere."
She nodded, and left me as soon as she could. She didn't leave a scarf or handkerchief behind, not a trace. She hid in her room all day. I had only a couple of calls to make. God, that was a long day!
I was watering the roses after supper, and she came to me there, where she and Galven had talked the night before. "Gil," she said, "I want to talk with you."
"Your skirt's caught on the rose bush."
"Unhook me, I can't reach it."
I broke the thorn and freed her.
"I'm in love with Galven," she said.
"Oh I see," said I.
"We talked it over. He feels we can't marry; he's too poor. I wanted you to know about it, though. So you'd understand why I don't want to leave the Valone."
I was wordless, or rather words strangled me. Finally I got some out – "You mean you want to stay here, even though – ?"
"Yes. At least I can see him."
She was awake, my sleeping beauty. He had waked her; he had given her what she lacked, and what few men could have given her: the sense of peril, which is the root of love. Now she needed what she had always had and never needed, her serenity, her strength. I stared at her and finally said, "You mean to live with him?"
She turned white, dead white. "I would if he asked me," she said. "Do you think he'd do that?" She was furious, and I was floored. I stood there with the watering can and apologised – "Poma, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – But what are you going to do?"
"I don't know," she said, still angry.
"You mean you just intend to go on living here, and he there, and – " She already had me at the point of telling her to marry him. I got angry in my turn. "All right," I said, "I'll go speak to him."
"What about?" she said, defensive of him at once.
"About what he intends to do! If he wants to marry you, surely he can find some kind of work?"
"He has tried," she said. "He wasn't brought up to work. And he has been ill, you know."
Her dignity, her vulnerable dignity, went to my heart. "Oh Poma, I know that! And you know that I respect him, that I love him; he was my friend first, wasn't he? But the illness – what kind of illness? – There are times I don't think I've ever really known him at all – " I could not say any more, for she did not understand me. She was blind to the dark places in the forest, or they were all bright to her. She feared for him; but she did not fear him at all.
And so I rode off that evening to Ile.
Galven was not there. Martin said he had taken out the mare to exercise her. Martin was cleaning a harness in the stable by lanternlight and moonlight, and I talked with him there while I waited for Galven to come back. Moonlight enlarged the woods of Ile; the birches and the house looked silver, the oaks were a wall of black. Martin came to the stable door with me for a smoke. I looked at his face in the moonlight, and I thought I could trust him, if only he'd trust me.
"Martin, I want to ask you something. I have good reason for asking it." He sucked at his pipe, and waited. "Do you consider Galven to be sane?" He was silent; sucked at his pipe; grinned a little. "Sane?" he said. "I'm not one to judge. I chose to live here too."
"Listen, Martin, you know that I'm his friend. But he and my sister, they're in love, they talk of marrying. I'm the only one to look after her. I want to know more about – " I hesitated and finally said, "About his first marriage."
Martin was looking out into the yard, his light eyes full of moonlight. "No need to stir that up, doctor. But you ought to take your sister away." "Why?" No answer.
"I have a right to know."
"Look at him!" Martin broke out, fierce, turning on me. "Look at him! You know him well enough, though you'll never know what he was, what he should have been. What's done is done, there's no mending it, let him be. What would she do, here, when he went into his black mood? I've lived day after day in this house with him when he never spoke a word, and there was nothing you could do for him, nothing. Is that for a young girl to live with? He's not fit to live with people. He's not sane, if you want Take her away from here!" It was not wholly jealousy, but it was not logic, either, that led his argument. Galven had argued against himself in the same way last night. I was sure Galven had had no "black mood" since he had known Poma. The blackness lay further behind.
"Did he divorce his wife, Martin?"
"She's dead."
"You know that for a fact?"
Martin nodded.
"All right; if she's dead, that story's closed. All I can do is speak to him."
"You won't do that!"
It wasn't either question or threat so much as it was terror, real terror in his voice. I was clinging to common sense by now desperately, clutching at the straw. "Somebody's got to face reality," I said angrily. "If they marry they've got to have something to live on – "
"To live on, to live on, that's not what it's about! He can't marry anybody. Get her out of here!"