"You'll never guess where I've been," Margie said.

"Where?"

"With Cadmus."

"Loretta had a dinner party?"

"No, just the two of us."

"What did he want?"

"It was weird. He swore me to secrecy. But I'll tell you when you get back." She laughed. "I don't know," she said. "This family."

"What about it?"

"All the men are crazy," Margie said. "And I think we must be even crazier, because we fell in love with the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I've got to go, honey. I hear Garrison.

Love you."

Without waiting for a reply, she put down the phone.

The call unsettled Rachel slightly, putting back into her head a notion she didn't want there: that until she divorced Mitch.e.l.l she was a part of the Geary story.

She was too tired for the uneasiness to keep her from sleep, however. The bed was a joy to lie in,when she got there; the pillows deep, the sheets fragrant. She had scarcely pulled the cover up over her body then she was gone into a place where the Gearys-their crazy men, their sad women, their secrets and all-could not come after her.

XIII.

i She woke at first light, got up, went to the window, admired the way the world was looking, and went straight back to bed for another three blissful hours. Only then did she clamber out of bed and go down to brew herself some coffee. The feeling of rediscovery she'd experienced the night before-dead senses awakened, the wildling Rachel in the mirror-had not deserted her; nor did the morning light diminish the charms of the house. She was as happy wandering around as she'd been the afternoon before; every shelf and nook carried some new interesting item. She'd even missed a couple of rooms in her previous explorations: one a little writing room facing out to a side yard, with a desk, some old, comfortable chairs and several shelves of well-thumbed books, the other a much smaller room, which seemed to have been used as a depository for items found on the beach: pieces of sea-smoothed timber, sh.e.l.ls, fragments of coral, lengths of unraveling rope, even a cardboard box filled with stones that had caught some beachcomber's eye. The most promising discovery however was in a cupboard in the living room: a collection of old phonograph records, still neatly sleeved; and on the shelf above a player. The last time she'd seen either was at the house in Caleb's Creek, although these recordings looked to be much older than anything in George's treasured collection. Later, she promised herself, she'd select a few tunes and see if she could get the phonograph up and running. That would be her one and only project for the day.

Toward noon, having made herself some brunch (and devoured it; she was surprised at how hungry she was, given how little she'd done) she went back down to the beach, this time intending to take a walk along its entire length. Halfway along the path a brown hen suddenly darted in front of her, panicking to join her three chicks, who were waiting for her on the other side. Clucking to them, the mother led them away through the debris of dead palm fronds and rotting coconut husks.

This time the beach was completely deserted. The waves were smaller than they'd been the night before; too small to tempt even the most cautious surfer. She wandered down the beach as she'd planned-wishing after a few minutes she'd had the forethought to look for a wider-brimmed hat in the house; the sun was fierce-until she came to the place where the waters that cascaded from the crag emptied themselves into the sea. Red-brown with the freight of silt they had picked up on their way, they spread once they reached the beach, and though the waters didn't look treacherous, she didn't want to risk wading the fifty yards to get to the other side, so she turned back. On the return journey she kept her eyes on the horizon. Jimmy had said this was whale- spotting season; if she was lucky perhaps she'd see one of the humpbacks breaching. She was out of luck however; there were no whales to be seen. Just a couple of small fishing boats bobbing around not far from the sh.o.r.e, and much, much further off, a white sail. She paused to watch it for a minute or two as it flickered there at the limit of her gaze, bright against the sky one moment, gone the next. At last she tired of watching and headed back to the house, parched and alittle sunburned.

There was a visitor waiting at the front door. A dark-skinned, broad-shouldered man of perhaps thirty-five, who introduced himself as Niolopua.

"I'm here to take care of some stuff around the house," he said.

"Like what?" Rachel said. She didn't remember Jimmy mentioning this man, and despite his open expression and his easy manner, she'd brought her New, York suspicion of strangers with her.

"The lawn," he said, nodding towards the back of the house. "The plants."

"Oh... you mean outside the house?"

"Yeah."

"No problem," she said, stepping aside to let him in.

"I'll go around the side," he said, looking at her more intensely now. "I just wanted to introduce myself."

"Well thank you," she said. There was something about the way he looked at her that made Rachel think maybe there was some subtext to this; but then his body language contradicted the suspicion. He stood a respectful distance from her, his hands behind his back, simply looking.

She returned his gaze, fully expecting him to look away, but he didn't. He kept staring, with almost childlike frankness until she said: "Is there anything else?"

"No," he said. "It's fine. Everything's fine." He spoke as though to rea.s.sure her.

"Good," she said. "Then I'll let you go." With that she turned from him and closed the door.

Later, she heard the drone of the lawnmower, and went to the living room window to glance out at him. He was shirtless now, his back the color of the silted river. If this were one of the trashy novels Margie so adored, Rachel thought, then all she'd have to do was invite him in for a gla.s.s of ice water and a minute later she'd be backed up against the door with his tongue down her throat. She smiled to herself, feeling wicked. Maybe she'd try it, in a couple of days; see how reality matched up to the fantasy.

A little later, as she was attempting to get the phono graph to work, she realized the sound of the mower had ceased, and glanced up to see that Niolopua had left off his labors and had wandered down to the bottom of the lawn. There he was standing, staring out to sea, one hand shading his eyes from the blaze of the sky.

There was no doubt as to what he was watching. The boat with the white sail had come closer tosh.o.r.e, close enough for her to see that it had not one sail, but at least two. She watched for a little time as the vessel rose and fell against the dark blue waters. It was mesmeric; like watching the hands of a clock, the motion so subtle it was impossible to catch. Yet there was no doubt that even as she watched the boat, it had come a little closer to the sh.o.r.e.

There was a sudden eruption of squawking in the palms off to the right of the house, which drew her gaze. Several house finches were involved in a bitter dispute among the fronds; feathers drifted down. By the time the argument had been settled, and she again looked toward the lawn, Niolopua had forsaken his watch and returned to his lawn-mower. The boat had meanwhile pa.s.sed out of sight, the wind or the currents or both carrying it down the coast, and she felt mildly disappointed. She'd been looking forward to watching the boat's progress while she sipped her c.o.c.ktail. No matter, she said to herself. There'd surely be plenty of other vessels plying their way between the islands in the next few days.

ii The wind rose in strength as the day progressed, shaking the palms around the house and whipping the ocean, which had looked so benign at daybreak, into a white-headed frenzy. It made her uneasy; it always had. Even as a child she'd become fractious when the wind blew; heard voices in it, sometimes, crying and sobbing. Lost souls, her grandmother had explained, which had of course done nothing to soothe her unease.

She decided not to stay in the house but to take the jeep and drive along the coast. It turned out to be a fine idea. After driving around for a while she found herself on a narrow spit of land, at the end of which sat a tiny white church, with thirty or so graves around it. The building itself was only partially intact: a victim, perhaps, of the hurricane Jimmy Hornbeck had mentioned. Its roof tiles had been entirely stripped away, as had many of the ceiling timbers. Only three of the four walls were still standing; the seaward wall was missing. So was the altar. All that remained inside were a few plain wooden chairs, which for some reason n.o.body had claimed.

She wandered among the graves, most of which were at least thirty or forty years old, and some, to judge by their eroded and sunken state, considerably older. A few of those buried here had names she could p.r.o.nounce-a Robertson, a Montgomery, even a Schmutz-but several were beyond her. How was Kaohelaulii said aloud she wondered; or Hokunohoaupuni?

After spending maybe ten minutes examining the names she started to realize she'd come out underdressed for the elements. Though the sun still appeared now and then between the speeding clouds, the wind was chilling her to the bone. She was reluctant to get back into the jeep and drive home, however, so she took refuge in what remained of the church. The wooden walls creaked whenever a strong gust of wind came along. It would only take one more heavy storm, she thought, and the whole structure would come crashing down. In the meantime it provided her with exactly what she needed; protection from the worst of the bl.u.s.ter, while still offering her a clear view of both sky and sea.

She sat in one of the battered chairs and listened to the changing notes of the wind as it whistled between the boards. Perhaps her grandmother had been right after all.It certainly wasn't hard to imagine, in such a place as this, that the departed were indeed voicing their grief in the wind. Perhaps the souls of men and women buried on this headland- Montgomerys and Kaohelauliis-came back off the sea to the spot where their bones lay. It was a melancholy thought; but it didn't unsettle her. Perhaps they'd see her sitting calmly here, unafraid of their voices, and when they returned to the wastes be comforted by the memory.

She felt a spatter of rain on her face. Getting up out of her chair she stepped back out onto the headland and saw that a great ma.s.s of dark cloud was moving toward the island, its gloomy offspring driven ahead to sprinkle a warning shower or two. It was time to go. She pulled up the collar of her blouse and started to pick her way through the graves back to the jeep. The rain was coming quickly; before she was halfway to the vehicle it was coming down hard, and getting harder. It was cold; cold enough to take her breath away.

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 gla.s.s.

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.

XIV.

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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 d.a.m.n 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 G.o.d. You hate G.o.d? I'llrecite 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 s.e.x 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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 c.r.a.p 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.""G.o.d, Maddox," she said. "Sometimes you can be such a d.i.c.khead."

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 pa.s.sages of my story so far. The less distraction I have the better I can focus upon it.

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

I.

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 Sh.o.r.e, 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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 infatuatedwith 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? G.o.d Mitch.e.l.l, 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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 n.o.body came, n.o.body mourned, n.o.body 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 n.o.body. 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 gra.s.s, 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 ofits 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.