"And the bodies?"

"I left them in the yard. I didn't want to bring them back here. G.o.dless sons of b.i.t.c.hes. I hope they rotted where they sat, though I doubt they did. Somebody probably smelled them the next day, once the sun got up."

A hundred thousand words ago, I thought, I'd wondered in these pages if the family of Dwight Huddie ever wondered about their missing son. Now I had the answer."Did you tell Dwight what you did?"

"No," Zabrina said. "I never did. I never told anybody until now."

"And did you really enjoy it?" I asked her.

She thought on this a moment. Finally, she said: "Yes I did. I suppose I got that from Mama. But I remember distinctly looking at those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds dead, and thinking: I have a talent for this. And you know there's nothing in the world more fun than doing something you're good at."

She seemed to realize that she wasn't going to be able to improve on this as a departure line, because she gave me a crooked little smile, and without another word, she headed for the door, and was gone.

II.

Astonishment upon astonishment. I would never have believed Zabrina would be capable of such a thing. And the way it just came out like that, in the most matter-of-fact way; amazing. The truth is, it gives me hope. It makes me think I've maybe underestimated our ability as a family to oppose the powers that are going to come our way. At the very least we'll take a few of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds with us when we go. Zabrina can get Mitch.e.l.l Geary into bed, and when she's had her wicked way, poison him.

Anyway, I went to see Cesaria.

It wasn't as oppressive up there as it had been the last time I'd entered her chambers, nor was Cesaria lying inert on her bed. She was sitting in the Jefferson room, which Zabrina told me was an extremely rare thing for her to do. It was a little before dawn; there were candles lit around the room, which flattered it considerably. Their light mellowed Cesaria too. She sat at the table, sipping hot tea and looking resplendent. There was no trace of the vengeful creature I'd seen unleashed in the Geary house. She invited me to sit down, and offered me some tea, which Zelim brought and set before me. Zabrina had already gone. There was just the two of us; and I will admit I was a little nervous. Not that I feared she was going to fly into an uncontrollable fury and tear the house apart. It simply made me anxious to be in the company of someone who contained such power, but who was displaying not a mote of it. It was like taking tea with a man-eating tiger; I couldn't help but wonder when she was going to show her claws.

"I'm leaving again, very soon," she explained. "And this time-just so you know-I may not come back. If I don't return, then the control of this house falls to you." I asked her where she was off to. "To find Galilee," she said.

"I see."

"And if I can, to save him from himself.""You know he's out at sea?" I said.

"Yes, I know."

"I wish I could tell you where. But you probably already know."

"No. I don't. That's one of the reasons why I'm putting you on notice that I may not return. There was a time when I'd have visions of him almost every day, but I put them out of my head-I didn't want to deal with him-and now he's invisible to me. I'm sure he worked to make it so."

"So why do you want to find him now?"

"To persuade him that he's loved."

"So you want him to come home?"

Cesaria shook her head. "It's not me who loves him..." she said.

"It's Rachel."

"Yes. It's Rachel." Cesaria set down her teacup and took out one of her little Egyptian cigarettes.

She pa.s.sed the packet over to me. I took one, and lit up. It was the foulest tasting thing I've ever smoked.

"I never thought I'd hear myself say this but what that woman feels for Galilee may be the saving of us all. Do you not like the cigarette?"

"No, it's fine."

"I think they taste like camel dung personally, but they have sentimental a.s.sociations."

"Yes?"

"Your father and I spent some blissful weeks in Cairo together, just before he met your mother..."

"So when you smoke them you remember him?"

"No, when I smoke them I remember an Egyptian boy called Muhammed, who f.u.c.ked me among the crocodiles on the banks of the Nile."

I coughed so hard tears came to my eyes, which amused her mightily.

"Oh poor Maddox," she said when I'd recovered myself somewhat, "you've never really known what to make of me, have you?""Frankly, no."

"I suppose I've kept you at a distance because you're not mine. I look at you and you remind me of what a philanderer your father was. That hurts. After all these years, that still hurts. You know, you look very like your mother. Around the mouth, especially."

"How can you say that it hurts you to be reminded that he was a philanderer when you were just telling me about f.u.c.king with some Egyptian?"

"I did it to spite your father. My heart was never really in it. No, I take that back. There were occasions when I was in love. Jefferson of course. I was completely besotted with Jefferson. But doing the deed among the crocodiles? That was for spite. I did a lot of things for spite."

"And he did the same?"

"Of course. Spite begets spite. He used to have women morning, noon and night."

"And he loved none of them?"

"Are you asking me whether he truly loved your mother?"

I drew a bitter lungful of the cigarette. Of course that was what I wanted to know. But now it came time to ask the question, I was tongue-tied, even a little emotional. And even as I felt the tears p.r.i.c.king my eyes another part of me-the part that's dispa.s.sionately setting this account on the page-was thinking: what's all the drama about? Why the h.e.l.l should it matter, after all these years, what your father felt for your mother the day they conceived you? Would you really feel better about yourself if you knew they'd been in love?

"Listen carefully," Cesaria said. "I'm going to tell you something that may make you a little happier. Or at least, let you understand better how it was between your parents.

"Your mother was illiterate when Nicodemus met her. She was really a sweet woman, I have to say, a very sweet woman, but she couldn't .even write her name. I think your father rather liked her that way, frankly, but she was ambitious for herself, and who can blame her? They were hard times for men and women, but for a woman like her, her beauty was her only advantage, and she knew that wasn't going to last forever.

"She wanted to be able to read and write-more than anything in the world-and she begged your father to teach her. Over and over she begged him. It was like an obsession with her-"

"So you knew her?"

"I met her a few times only. At the beginning, when he was showing her off to me, and at the very end, I'll come to that in a moment.

"Anyway, she tormented your father night and day about teaching her to read-teach me, teach me,teach me-until eventually he consented. Of course he didn't have the patience to do it the way ordinary folks would do it. He didn't want to waste his precious time with A B Cs. He just put his will into her and the knowledge flowed. She learned to read and write overnight. Not just English. Greek, Hebrew, Italian, French, Sanskrit-"

"What a gift."

"So she believed.

"You were about three weeks old when this happened. Such a quiet little baby; with that same frown you have on your face right now. One day you had a mother who couldn't read a word, and the next day the woman could have made intelligent conversation with Socrates. Let me tell you, it was quite a transformation. And of course she wanted to use what she'd learned. She started to read, anything your father could bring her. She'd be sitting there with you suckling, and a dozen books open on the table, going from one to the other, holding all these ideas in her head at the same time. She kept demanding books and he kept bringing them. Plutarch, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Ptolemy, Virgil, Herodotus-there was no end to her appet.i.te.

"Nicodemus was proud as a peac.o.c.k. 'Look at my genius girlfriend. She talks dirty in Greek!' He didn't know what he'd done. He didn't have the first clue. Her poor brain, it was cooking in her skull. And all the while she was suckling you..."

It was quite an image. My mother, surrounded by books, with me pressed against her breast, and her head so filled with words and ideas her brain was frying in its pan.

"That's horrible..." I murmured.

"It gets worse, so prepare yourself. Word started to spread, and in a couple of weeks she'd become a celebrity. Do you have any recollection of this? Of the crowds?" I shook my head.

"People started to come from all over England, eventually all over Europe, to see your mother."

"And what did father do?"

"Oh he got tired of the hoopla very quickly. I'm sure he regretted what he'd done, because he asked me if maybe he should take back what he'd given. I told him I didn't care what he did. She was his problem, not mine. I regret that now. I should have said something. I could have saved her life. And when I think back, I knew..."

"You knew what-?"

"-what it was doing to her. I could see it in her eyes. It was more than her poor, human brain could take.

"Then, one night, she apparently asked your father to bring her pen and paper. He refused her. He said he wasn't going to let her waste time writing while she should be tending to you. Your mother threw a fit, and she just took herself off, leaving you behind."Of course, your father had no idea how to deal with a tiny child, so he handed you over to me."

"You looked after me?"

"For a little while."

"And he went to find my mother?"

"That's right. It took him a few days, but he found her. She'd gone to the house of a man in Blackheath, and exchanged her s.e.xual favors for an endless supply of what Nicodemus had refused her: pen and paper."

"What did she write?"

"I don't know. Your father never showed it to me. He said it was incomprehensible. Whatever it was, it must have been very important to your mother, because she'd worked night and day on it, scarcely stopping to eat or sleep. When he brought her back to the house she was a shadow of herself: thin as a stick, her hands and face all stained with ink. She didn't make any sense when she talked. It was a crazy mixture of all the languages she knew, and all the things she'd read.

Listening to her was enough to make you crazy yourself: the way she spewed out all these bits and pieces that had nothing to do with one another, all the time looking at you as if to say: please understand me, please, please- "I thought maybe she'd feel better if she had you back in her arms, so I brought her to the crib, and I gently told her you needed to be fed. She seemed to know what I was saying to her. She picked you up and rocked you for a little while, then she went to sit down by the fire where she always fed you. And she'd no sooner sat down then she gave a little sigh, and died."

"Oh my G.o.d..."

"You rolled out of her arms and fell to the floor. And you began to cry. For the first time, you began to cry, and from then on-having been the quietest, most gentle little baby-from then on you were a monster. You wept and you screamed and I don't think I saw you smile again, oh for years."

"What did my father do?"

"About you or her?"

"Her."

"He took her body and he buried her somewhere in Kent. Dug the grave himself, and stayed with her, mourning her for weeks on end. Leaving me to take care of you, I may add, which I didn't thank him for."

"But you didn't stay with me," I said. "Gisela...""Yes, Gisela came to take care of you. She looked after you for the next six or seven years. So now you know," Cesaria said. "I don't know what good it does. It's all so long ago..."

A long silence hung between us; each of us, I suppose, in our own thoughts. I was remembering Gisela, or at least the Gisela I imagine in my dreams. First I hear her voice-she had a thin, reedy voice-singing some lilting song. Then I see the sky; small white clouds pa.s.sing over. And finally her face comes into view, smiling as she sings, and I realize I'm lying on the gra.s.s-it must be the first summer of my life; I'm too little to do anything but lie there-and she lifts me up into her arms and puts me to her breast.

Perhaps I bawled and complained when I was with Cesaria, but I think I was happy with Gisela.

At least I remember it that way. I don't know what Cesaria was remembering, but I think it was probably my father. Quietly cursing him, most likely. And who could blame her?

*"I'd like you to go now," she said.

I got up from the table, and thanked her again, but it seemed to me I'd already lost her attention.

She was gazing into middle distance, remote from me. Was it the past or the future that had her attention? The husband who'd been lost to her, or the son she was going to find? I didn't have the courage to ask.

Very quietly, I made my exit, a little part of me hoping she'd call after me, tell me to take care of myself; but a greater part preferring to go unnoticed.

III.

Rachel needed help to get out of the city. The death of Cadmus Geary-and the bizarre circ.u.mstances of that death-were headline news the following morning, and the journalists who'd appeared after Margie's murder were back in force, gathered around the entrance of her apartment building, photographing just about everyone who came and went. Determined to slip away quickly, without being quizzed by the police (what was she going to tell them anyway?) or worse still detained by Mitch.e.l.l and Garrison, Rachel turned to Danny, who was happy to return a favor and a.s.sist in her escape. He went to her apartment, packed a suitcase for her, picked up some money, credit cards and the like, and met her at Kennedy Airport, where he bought her a ticket to Honolulu. By noon, she was off on her way back to Kaua'i.

As she and Danny parted, he said: "You're not planning to come back are you?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"Something about the way you were looking at things as we drove. As if you thought you'd never see them again."

"Well, if I'm lucky I won't.""Can I ask...?"

"What's going on? I can't tell you, Danny. It's not that I don't trust you. It would just take too long to explain. And even if I had all the time in the world I'm not certain I could make sense of it all."

"Just tell me one thing: is it Garrison? Are you running away from that b.a.s.t.a.r.d? Because if you are-"

"No, I'm not running away from anything," Rachel said. "I'm going to go meet the man I love."

By a curious coincidence she'd been allocated the same seat in first cla.s.s as she'd had on her first flight out to Kaua'i, so there was an odd moment of deja vu as she accepted a gla.s.s of champagne and settled back. Only once it had pa.s.sed did she allow herself the luxury of indulging her memories of the island. The conversations she'd had with Jimmy Hornbeck as they drove to Anahola, talking about mystery and Mammon; then the house, and the lawn and the beach, and Niolopua; later, the church on the bluff the day she'd been caught in the rainstorm; her first sighting of the sails of what she'd later know to be The Samarkand, and the fire on the beach, and finally Galilee's appearance at the house. It was just a few weeks since all this had taken place, but so much had happened to her since then-so many things she wanted to put out of her head forever-that it felt like a memory of a dream. She would only believe it all completely when she was back there, in the house. No, when she saw the sails of The Samarkand, that's when she'd believe it; when she saw the sails.

ii Out in the unforgiving waters of the South Pacific, the boat Rachel longed to see was a pitiful sight. It had been uncaptained for eleven days now, its sole occupant allowing it to take the brunt of whatever the waves and the wind brought along. Most of the equipment on deck, which in normal circ.u.mstances Galilee would have stowed or lashed down, had been washed away; the main mast was cracked, and the sails tattered. The wheelhouse was chaotic; and the scene below deck was even less pretty.

The Samarkand knew she was doomed. Galilee could hear the sound in her boards; the way they moaned and shuddered when she was struck on broadside by a wave. She'd never made noises quite like this before. Sometimes he thought he could almost hear her speaking to him; begging him to stir himself from his stupor and take charge of her again. But the last four days had seen such a vertiginous descent into frailty that he had no reserves of energy left. Even if he'd wanted to save himself and his vessel now, it was too late. He'd let go of his desire to live, and his body- which had survived so many excesses-quickly fell into a state of decay. He wasn't even visited by deliriums now, though he was still drinking two bottles of brandy a day. His mind was too exhausted to hallucinate; just as his limbs were too weary to bear him up. He lay on the pitching deck, staring up at the sky, and waited.

Toward dusk, he thought the moment had come; the moment of his death that is. He'd been watching the sun drop into the ocean, the clouds it burned through as molten as the water below, when The Samarkand suddenly fell absolutely silent around him. The boards gave up theircomplaints, the tattered canvas was stilled.

He raised his head off the deck a few inches. The sun was still falling, but its descent had slowed.

So had his pulse, as though his body-knowing it was close to the end-had become covetous of every sensation, and was turning down its flame so that it could burn just a little longer. Just until the sun disappeared; until the sky lost the last of its color; until he could see the Southern Cross, bright above.

What a mess his life had been, what an ungainly performance. There was scarcely a part of it he didn't have reason to regret. Nor did he have any excuses for what he'd done. He'd come into the world with all the blessings of divinity, and he was leaving it empty-handed, every gift he'd been given wasted. Worse than wasted: turned to cruel purposes. He'd hurt so many people (few of them true innocents, of course, but that was no comfort now); he'd allowed himself to be reduced to a common a.s.sa.s.sin, in service of mere ambition. Human ambition; Geary ambition; the hunger to own stockyards and railroads and plains and forests, to govern people and states; to be little kings.

They'd almost all of them pa.s.sed away, of course, and many times he'd been there to witness their last moments: their tears, their pathetic prayers, their desperate hope for redemption. Why hadn't he learned the lessons of those departures? Why hadn't he changed his life, seeing what death was like? Defied his masters, and dared go home to look for forgiveness?

Why, in the end, was he alone, and frightened, when he'd been born into certainties the faiths of the world would have given all their dogmas and their holy books to taste?

There was only one face he could bring to mind without agony; only one soul he hadn't betrayed.