From the Valley to the Sea

By Nina-Gai Till

More than half a century ago, in a remote Corsican village, the beautiful Margot loses her new born daughter to a tragedy that reaches beyond the disputed island. Sixty years later, Emily, an erudite and tenured professor of literature at the University of Berkeley discovers a novel that destroys her very foundations and leads her to the edge of disaster. Can Margot lead a young film director at the gates of motherhood to bring them all salvation?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nina-Gai Till
• Release date: Aug 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370565832

Nina-Gai Till

Nina-Gai Till lives between Paris, Monaco and Sydney.

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From the Valley to the Sea

A novel

Nina-Gai Till

By the same author

This is Not a Fairy Tale

Love and Otehr Maladies

Copyright © 2017 by Nina-Gai Till.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at the address below.

Nina-Gai Till

[e-mail]

www.ninagaitill.com

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout ©2017 Licarni

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the author at the address above.

From the Valley to the Sea / Nina-Gai Till. -- 1st ed.

To the women who precede me, and to those who follow, I thank you for all that you have taught and continue to teach me, by example and by reflection.

By the light of your grace, I am mother, daughter, sister, and friend.

NGT

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all of your heart.

—Marcus Aurelius

1

Au-delà du possible

Emily

University of California, Berkeley

The book was one of those novels that went viral.

I always smirk a little when I use that phrase. Viral, as if it were a legion of marauding cells ready for mayhem and the kind of mischief that ends up in morgues. Viral, like colds and cancer and the other common maladies that carry us off this mortal coil.

Pedant that I am, I maintain an active disinclination towards the peculiar permutations of language that, yes, I know, keep our voices evolving and our communication skills intact.

In principle, the family was unaware of the child - you, my dear - that we had conceived out of wedlock and consecrated with the resyoulect, the gist of which appeared to be congratulations, punctuated with questions.vealed a tiny pistol, such as a lady might keep in her reticule, but with little decoration, as if such artifice might detract from its intention.

And now his hand will be steady on the trigger.

It was only later, much later, that I understood his intent was more a rite of passage, an invitation to a way of life, rather than a mere felicitation.

The girls ran off to display their treasures to their parents, and slowly an entire tribe of adults ambled over to greet their nephew, cousin, friend, and fellow acolyte. I stumbled through the introductions with only the vaguest notions of names and faces, so overwhelming was my desire for cool water and a shower to wash away my nausea and the foreboding which clung to me along with the dust from the road.

As we all made our way to the cabana that served as an outdoor kitchen and dining room, I noticed my husband, your father, holding his eldest goddaughter Felicité, a striking girl of little more than thirteen, close to him, his hand entwined in her chestnut hair and wearing a smile that bore a striking resemblance to that with which he favored me after a special meal or a particularly successful embrace. Even at the time, something in his gestures struck me as strange, not quite inappropriate but rather the dark chill that speaks of premonition or loss, and yet I did not take heed.

And so as I sat, surrounded by the family’s women, their questions and comments rushing about like some tormented river, it did not occur to me to pose questions of my own. After the journey, I lacked the energy to even try to connect the faces to names, much less structure relationships and wonder about the strange currents which swirled beneath this eddying pool of genes and history.

Thus I was, content to rest my back, my belly and its precious contents, to observe, ever the writer, to smile and nod and sip the sweet spring water, until I once again caught the eye of the crone. She sniffed, uttered something unintelligible and barked an order at the elder girl-child. Felicité rushed to do her bidding and came back in short order with a small object, which she handed to the old woman with reverence.

May God bless you. You are one of ours now, you and your child. This belonged to Antoine’s mother, now it will belong to the one who will be born.

She spoke as if the phrase was a menace rather than a blessing. It took me a minute to figure that the old woman was addressing me in her heavily accented French. She gauged my incomprehension and gestured to the woman called Eliane, the one I supposed to be my husband’s aunt. The woman took the object from the ancient, work-worn hand and passed it to me.

A small fist carved from blood coral, the index and major fingers folded, with only the thumb and little finger raised in what I had learned to be the sign for ‘les cornes’, or the devil’s horns. Corsicans used this gesture as a superstitious Englishman might touch wood. Sometimes I would laugh quietly to myself when I saw Antoine make the sign, he so hardy and forceful that I could not imagine any devil brave enough to trouble him!

Despite the coldness with which it was bestowed, this gift touched me and I went to embrace the old woman. She stepped back and chilled me to the bone with a cutting glance, her words falling like a rain of fire.

You might be one of ours by marriage but you and your bastard will never be one of mine. You are a stranieri, a foreigner. You do not belong and like all of them, you bring evil, l’occhju, the eye. But my power is greater than yours and you will not last here!

The plump and kindly woman who had brought me water remonstrated with her, uselessly, and turned to me, whispered, You must not mind her. She’s old, and sick, and Antoine is more her child than even one of her own could ever be. I think she feels she’s lost him.

It took me a moment to digest Tata Pascaline’s vitriol and to gather that she knew I was pregnant, knew I carried his child, when no one, least of all Antoine, had mentioned it. There was a moment of silence while those around us took the news to their hearts, and then a great cacophony of congratulations and signs of the cross as the women asked questions about my state while the men offered their felicitations to your father, as if he were the only man in the world ever to have laid seed. Pascaline spat quietly on the floor at my feet, and turned to stir her pots, the gesture unnoticed in the frivolity.

Dinner arrived with little delay and I was glad of the distraction, for the women could not talk and work at the same time and work indeed they did. As we all gathered around the olive wood table and the children jostled to see who would be seated next to their cherished godfather, the large, bear-like man who had thus remained a figure so silent and in retreat that I had assumed he was senile or asleep, spoke.

Instantly everyone froze, rendered stone by the silence that only absolute fear can induce. He spoke quietly, gruffly, to Antoine and then brusquely stood and pushed Antoine into his seat at the head of the table. Antoine went to remonstrate but the man’s face was implacable and he turned to take my husband’s place. With great solemnity, he filled a glass from the large pitcher of red wine on the table, and raised it.

My nephew, you are now here before us, a married man and soon to be a father. I wish you and your family happiness and prosperity. Tomorrow we will ask Father Albertini to bless your union, as it must be in the presence of your family and your village. Tonight you will take your place as the head of this family. It is your right, your duty, and I cede it to you now. Santu!

Then everyone began to speak at once; clearly, additional felicitations were in order and Antoine received all with a humble smile while he wore his pride as a halo of gold.

The ambience at the table was one of festival and yet I sensed the powerful and foreboding energy of a great seismic shift. As I looked at my husband – the man who had barely spoken a word to me or even presented me correctly to his great aunt and uncle, those who had acted for him in the absence of his parents – I could tell that beyond the satisfaction written across his face, he was profoundly moved or even relieved by his new role as head of the family. Was it my imagination or was he taller, somehow broader and more solid with this new responsibility.

A tremor of jealousy seized me: how could a mere seat at the head of a table render my lover greater than the gift of life with which I had bestowed him? Briefly, I let the bitterness settle on me and then chased it with a sentiment of shame. This man, my veritable other half, the father of my child and my companion for life and beyond, was one and the same as his country of birth. That which I found truest in him was part and parcel of his loyalty to his family and his origins. It was not for me to be envious of that which grounded him and made him strong and pure; instead, I must embrace this dark and shadowy place as if it were mine, search out that which would lift my heart and seal it to the man I loved.

I raised my eyes and searched out his, wanting to reassure both myself, and him, that we would pave our own path through the impenetrable maquis he so cherished. Instead, my glance met that of Tata Pascaline and my blood ran to shards of ice. Her hate was palpable, and it stunned me that no one else at the table felt her fury; even more, that the one she had raised as her only son did not intercede to defend the mother of his child.

The great ogre of a man that I had been instructed to address simply and incongruously as Tonton – there was nothing diminutive about this uncle - growled a command. All the women abruptly flew from the table and so began the meal.

First off, the buglidicci, light fluffy dumplings around a savory cube of fresh salted goat’s cheese, their perfume a blessing to my now often fragile appetite. Next, a steaming plate of minusgelli, which on closer inspection turned out to be lamb tripe thinly disguised with onions and red peppers. My horror was apparent when one of Antoine’s younger aunts came to serve me and I still remember the affectionate gallantry with which your father saved me, and how I chose to ignore the faintly patronizing air with which he served the words.

Ah, Margot, my poor foreign wife, so many new and different things in one day.

He smiled indulgently and waved the woman away. I saw then that I was the only woman still seated and that apparently the other women were not to eat as they hastened to and fro, constantly bringing steaming casseroles of tagliarini swimming in a sauce of fresh brocciu and beef bouillon, a huge tianu di ravioli stuffed with a farce made from local charcuterie, I was reliably informed, for after the tripe, my husband took care to lovingly detail each meal as it was placed before me, and had I been able to ignore the vehement distaste of Tata Pascaline for my person, I might indeed have felt queen to Antoine, my king.

The men, it seemed, were to eat until the end of time and as they ate, they drank, the whole scene a mad mélange of ham-fisted men shouting and stuffing their faces, drinking in large, long gulps the rough but flavorsome local wine as if to satiate a hidden river.

Try as I might to attract again the attention of Antoine, center of this dangerously boisterous and now malodorous – the fatigue of the journey was playing havoc with my senses - ruction, I could not manage to meet his eyes. I desperately needed to go the toilet; my poor bladder, bruised by the long voyage and the indignant feet of my tiny fetus, was no longer willing to be ignored. I feared rising abruptly from the table might cause offence, although now that the meal was drawing to an end, no one seemed to be overly aware of my presence.

Finally, I caught the arm of a woman to whom I had yet to be introduced, a quiet dark-eyed girl who jumped when I touched her, and yes, there it was, that same look of terror I have seen in the eyes of the women I interviewed in the refuge for beaten women in Calais the previous year.

By now my need had become embarrassingly real, and I tried rapidly to mime my request. She nodded her comprehension once and gestured for me to follow; still, I had not heard her speak a word but figured that she had assumed her words were of no use to this foreigner.

When we arrived at the rough sanitary installation behind the house, I attempted grazie with a smile and in return, she inclined her head and hurried off. I rushed into the outhouse, not even bothering to light the candle, a sign of my great need, for back then I lived in fear of spiders and the other creepy crawlers that invest such insalubrious surrounds. Now, of course, after a lifetime in the savage climate that is my chosen home, I fear no beast though, sadly, still many a man.

The sweet burning relief issued through every one of my muscles at the same debit as the waters that rushed to leave me. I felt you, my child, turn and change position – so agile, so early - and though I was faintly shocked by the sudden agony that ripped through me, the darkness that beckoned seemed like a long lost friend.

I came to in a small dark room that smelled of damp straw and cold stone. A great clock somewhere beyond beat a metronome that resounded with only the slightest echo in my fragile mind. I made a move to sit up, but the room danced out of my grasp and I fell back onto the ticking pillow and became aware of a strange dampness between my legs.

Tata Pascaline rose out of the shadowy corner, her black garb and granite eyes making her a silhouette I struggled to identify against an unfamiliar background. As she moved closer to the bed, I could hear her crooning, almost singing although the liturgy was singularly lacking in joyful tune. She stopped suddenly and shook the heavy olive wood cross she held in her hands at me. Her French was guttural and punctuated with a grunting Mediterranean emphasis.

You have no place here and you have brought the eye with you. Perhaps you think that you might leave it here and with it all the disaster it will provoke. I say not. I have prayed and I see now that you will not stay. The child that binds mio figliu, my son, to you will not prosper and so he will abandon you as he has the others. You are not different; do not have the arrogance to think otherwise. You will not stand in his way.

As she turned and went from the room, a cramp rocked my belly. Even as I lifted the cover I could smell the animal scent of my own blood. Only when I saw it did I scream and scream and scream until no sound would come from my mouth.

The first to come running was the little dark-eyed woman who had shown me the lavatory. I croaked, first in French and then in Italian, I need a doctor, it’s urgent, please help me.

She took one look at the now darkening stain beneath the cover and ran out the door, slamming it behind her. I tried to stand, but the pain was unbearable and somewhere in my head I remembered that when miscarriage threatened, it was wise to lie down with feet up until help arrived. But who would help me here, and where was my husband, the one I needed now?

I must have passed out again, for when I came to awareness, the room was filled with the medicinal odor of camphor and another scent I could not clarify. A lest hand passed a humid cloth across my forehead and I turned to see the quiet young woman looking down at me, a mixture of fear and pity darkening her eyes. She turned roughly from my regard and passed me a mug of steaming tea. I took a sip and immediately retched, the unpalatable bitterness taking my breath away. She motioned for me to keep drinking, and as I was about to refuse, Eliane entered. The quiet girl fled. Antoine’s aunt smiled at me, although her eyes would not meet mine.

You gave us quite a fright there. Antoine has been inconsolable. He would have stayed every second here with you but we sent him out hunting.

She shook her head as if to dispel a dark cloud.

This is woman’s business. Men do not belong here.

I wanted to protest, remind her that we now lived in modern times, but the weakness overcame me. She handed me the tea again.

Drink this. I know it’s awful but it will stop the contractions and calm the baby. You nearly lost it, you know. Personally, I think the voyage was too much for you. And now you must rest. Drink, sleep, and tomorrow will be better.

Another brisk smile and away she went as I drifted into a bloodied unconsciousness where my body and soul did battle with powers I could not identify, only dread.

When I woke next, it was to the rat-a-tat-tat noise I kenned dimly as gunfire and for a moment I believed myself to be in the Somme again, as I was once a few years previously to cover the edge of the war. Then silence, broken only by the raucous call of a hawk, either a warning to its intended victim or a cry of victory.

It was only as I tried to sit and felt the thick muslin pad between my legs that I remembered where I was. I lay back and tried to will you to move, to feel the delicate butterfly movements that had so delighted us both. All of a sudden, the gunfire broke out again. Semi-automatic, but only one gun. Three shots in rapid succession, then another rapid burst of fire, each shot closely aligned with the next. It was nearby, but I could make out no voices raised in concern. Another volley, almost jubilant; in response, a terror so primal rose in my gullet, and I knew that I had to flee as far and fast from this place that seemed lit with malice and risk.

Even now I see that this was my first, true moment of clarity. In the instants that followed the gunfire, there came to me a perception, certitude that I was alone, alone with you, alone in my love, and alone in my future. If it seems unreasonable now, I would offer the stranger in a strange land defense first, and my instinct second. The initial landing of love is a downy cloud that allows comfort and ease in the notion that another will be ample to fulfill our primary needs, to provide succor and protection. Away from the tawdry but consistent rhythm of the quotidian, it is easier to believe in the myth, to have faith in human nature, to cede to the desire the live in the rusticated fairy tale of two souls against all nature.

Some are lucky; they remain in the feathered beauty of those early days but others, those who know that truth trumps always – we others know in our bones that only mortal danger lies in truly giving ourselves over. And so it was that I knew. Just as I had lost my parents, I would lose Antoine. I lay my hand across my stomach, now serene, and swore that I would not, would never lose you.

If I could not run, I could walk, and thus slowly, so slowly, I stood. There was no pain and as far as I could tell, the bleeding had stopped, so I took a small number of trembling steps towards the stairs, enough that I was so faint of head and heart that I had to sit again to catch my breath. An hour or all morning, I could not say, but I finally made it down the darkened stairs that mocked me with their stoned shine, that black virgin taunting me, another mother without husband or child. It took every last modicum of strength I had to push the heavy chestnut door open and as it slowly ground and wrenched forward, I stepped cautiously out into the violent, bright sunshine.

The village square was unusually deserted - I figured it to be mid-morning, from the sun and the quality of light and yet there was none of the normal bustle of burgher life. I walked, one step and then another, down towards the bar, opposite the church. I knew that the bar would be the heartbeat of the village and I expected to find someone, anyone there, who could help me to leave. The gunfire had ceased and now all I could hear as I walked gingerly down the road were the gleeful caws of two hawks – a couple, something I chose not to see as a sign - that haunted the valley, as they swooped down toward some unseen prey.

As I approached the bar, I could see that indeed there was a gathering - it seemed as if most of the village was there. Closer still, and I could hear male voices elevated in argument as the women stood around and debated amongst themselves. I stepped nearer, clutching to the knotted trunk of an ancient chestnut tree, unwilling to be seen and – now, with the wisdom of the years, I can understand why - desperate to know the base of the matter.

Eh alors! What would you have had him do? I would have done the same and even worse. Antoine is no longer one of ours! He and his foreign wife have no place here! He has lost his honor.

A man with a hunting rifle hooked in the crook of his arm shouted furiously, exhorting the angry crowd to concur.

A babble of voices, all disapprobation and displeasure. There was clearly tension and yet I could not discern, as I edged closer to the small crowd, the issue, only that they spoke of my husband and myself. Finally, a slight man in the black cassock of a country priest stepped into the middle of the crowd. He spoke calmly and so quietly that at once the rumble of discontent stopped. This was a man whose authority was to be respected, and his words at once lowered the tone.

What is done is done. Antoine acted for us and with the best of intentions. We have elected him to this role, and he acts in full knowledge of the results of his actions. We must wait now. God - and God alone - will tell us what to do. For the moment, he rests in the church. Toma and Pierrot will bury the other, but someone must go to inform the deceased’s family. It is only correct.

The young boy I knew as Antoine’s protégé Mickey drew up his hand.

I’ll go.

His mother raised her voice in protest but the ruddy man standing next to her brought a hand up as if to slap her and she closed her mouth, cast down her regard. The priest spoke with a tone of almost gentle reassurance.

There is no risk. They will not avenge themselves on a child. This is not our way.

He lowered his voice further still.

We have already made reparations for the... goods... that were lost. Antoine was right to destroy the black gold; this also is not our way.

There was an angry rumble from the men and the priest gestured with a barely perceptible air of impatience.

Mickey will leave after lunch. You will now return to your affairs. I will keep an eye on Antoine but the doctor is happy with his progress.

The women started out of the bar; as each passed me, they looked away or even right through me. Only Tata Pascaline stopped directly in front of me.

This is your fault. His wounds are on your head. You will pay, I will see to that.

The priest stepped away from the men with whom he had been in conference.

Pascaline, enough! She has nothing to do with this. Return home and I will come tonight to speak with you and Henri.

Eliane took her arm, which the elderly woman angrily shook off, and though she spoke no more, her very posture radiated the menace and fear I felt around me. The priest addressed himself to me.

You are Antoine’s wife. Congratulations on your marriage, Margot - I understand that the civil powers of the continent have validated your union. Later we will perform the necessary rites here, but as you can see, right now we have other affairs to handle.

The man spoke gently, a calm undertone in contrast to the tension and cordite in the air, and as I leaned in to hear him, another wave of nausea and fatigue swept through me.

Where is Antoine? Where is my husband? What has he done? I have been ill, I have to get to a doctor, I have to go away now, and I cannot find him.

The hysteria I had been pushing down rose as with the bile in my throat. The heaves of my stomach echoed the cramps of my uterus and I tried so hard to get the word ‘doctor" out of my mouth before my knees folded.

9

Deux ou trois vies

Amanda

Beverly Hills, Los Angles

A month of upping the ante later, I had the outline of a working script, written by myself. There was no way on this earth that I would give this to another pair of hands. Margot deserved my pure and single focus. Only I could draw the shattered sentiments together, only I could show Margot’s story that way it demanded to be shown. And I knew without the slightest doubt that I would give my last breath, that Margot’s love and sacrifice be shown in the brightest, truest of lights.

It wasn’t an easy script to write. Margot’s voice was strong, despite her fragile circumstances, and there were dark moments when I felt ambushed by the frustration and bitterness that raged within her. With every conversation I transcribed, with every gesture and nuance indicated for the one actress I knew capable of carrying this role, Margot’s own emotions layered themselves upon my own. Of course, there were moments of excitement and joy, so vibrant and alive that I could feel my own cells resonate in a symphony of delight and faith. I reveled in her wondrous descent into Antoine, my womb shifted in sympathy and anticipation when she revealed her pregnancy. The other voices, those lesser characters who would wreak such certain havoc – those voices haunted me, kept me from sleep. I wanted to turn back time, to pull Margot and her unborn child from the miasma of hellish agendas.

As a writer, I had to be fair, to give the voices of Tata Pascaline and the forces behind Antoine’s political aspirations their space. The story had to be told from every angle and yet each hurtful jibe from those who sought to harm Margot and her baby, I felt as a heated knife on my skin.

When the voices would overwhelm me so that I could no longer hear Margot, I would jump in my speedy little convertible – about the only Hollywood thing I possessed – and tear down the coast road towards Carmel, driving faster than sanity and allowing the sea-tinged air to dissolve the tension. And then I would drive back, faster still, as Margot called me to search for reason, to listen, to have just a little more hope for both her future and mine.

While I stripped back the layers of my soul to hear the words of others, and more than that, to bring to life each and every moment of Margot’s conversation, Tassy worked like a crazy woman. This was my wife all over – she always threw herself one hundred percent into whatever project I had before me but this time, I sensed a difference. We hadn’t talked any further about why I was so desperate to do this film – I guess she knew me better than I knew myself. This frenzy, the way she was working night and day to find exactly the right crews, the ideal casting, not to mention her mania – that was the only way to describe it – for locations scared me. This was her usual high level of focus, on speed – it was almost as if she had been taken over by the story too, and I had to stop myself from demanding that she slow down, breathe. This was her call, and I knew better than to intervene, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t terrified, because if I was running fast, this time, she was running faster. I just didn’t know from what.

On the Friday that the call came through, she was back at the film institute archives, searching for a particular reel of post-war Corsica footage, something to do with costumes and vehicles – she’d been too distracted to tell me more as she had raced out the door.

Too distracted to switch her phone over to her mobile too, I guess, because the ringing at her desk was driving me insane so I dragged myself away from my script notes and went to answer.

Miss Lineman, this is Peter Andrews from the Department of Health and Human Services, calling with regard to your adoption process.

This is where I should have hung up. Or said who I was. Or something, anything other than what I did next.

Um, hi. Thanks for calling. Where are we at?

And then I proceeded to listen while he detailed the steps that Tassy had already taken, and what she had to do next to finalize her demand to adopt a child. Without me.

I was beyond blown away. Not angry – how could I be angry when this was entirely my fault? How could I not have seen how desperate my beautiful wife was to have a child of her own, of our own? Cascades of guilt flowed over me. I knew that I was the selfish one in our couple, the one who screwed up every single day, who gave less and took more. It wasn’t for lack of love – I would give my life for Tassy and she knew it, too. But it wasn’t my life she wanted me to give – it was our life.

I couldn’t blame her – she wanted to be complete, for us to be complete. I knew with every heartbeat that telling Margot’s story, this novel on its way to becoming a magnificent film, was the one thing I had to do in my life. I felt it more than I’d ever felt anything. I had to do it for Margot, but the funny thing was, I had to do it for Tassy and for me even more. This was new: until now, the work and my love for my wife were two different needs. This time, my soul was telling me - Margot was telling me - that her story and my life were one and the same. I couldn’t put into words what I was feeling - not obsession, but something more primal. And the constant voice of Margot in my head: aspettami, aspettami, wait for me, a refrain as gentle and insistent as waves on the rocky shore, quietly shaping the stone for the next wave. She was telling me that her story was inextricably melded with mine, that our lives had something fundamental and primordially important to do with one another. Tassy needed a child like I needed to do this work, and if I knew one thing, it was that Tassy knew better than me that I needed it too.

My amazing girl had, as usual one step ahead of me, gone to bat for us. And now I had to do the same for her. Which is why I asked the gentleman on the other end of the line to send back the paperwork. It seemed we had some changes to make. And all the while I was talking, I could feel Margot smiling at me. It was pretty clear I was doing the right thing and Margot knew it too.

10

En avant

Emily

University of California, Berkeley

The wind had picked up again because all I could hear were the shutters banging insistently, shaking the walls under the frenzied call of voices from my past.

This was death, then. The song of the present, begging us to remain in the now while the future carried us forth. I felt the ebbing, the strong but tender arms around me, ready to carry me to infinity. There was something immensely soothing about being held so closely, almost lovingly. Death’s hands were cool on my forehead, damp with the tears of those I would leave behind. Death smelled of vetiver and red wine, of rain-soaked leaves and the slight tinge of the earth, as if the grim reaper himself had toiled the soil.

The darkness was heaven, and I closed my mind, willing myself to slip gently into the ether. I wanted my passing to be as my life, gentle, calm, devoid of the strum and angst that generally accompanies the departure of breath. Somewhere in the back of my head, I wanted to feel sorry for my loss, for leaving before it was my time to do so, but death was so sweetly insistent, so calm and kind, with its stroke of softness as it placed me in my eternal resting place. Only the vague clamor of lights and noise broke my focus. I tried to grip fast to death, strived to stay under in the depths of black, despite the bedlam. I wanted to be angry but there was not quite enough life in me to protest.

I did not feel the tube as it snaked its way down my esophagus. I knew it was there, but I found that I could not feel it. Maybe this was death, not being able to feel? The light was calling me; I knew it to be within my grasp, could feel its heat on my face, an ethereal beach day. Death knew my name and now its voice was speaking firmly, loudly, while the clank of metal trolleys and the scream of sirens seemed to resonate in harmony with my heart. I wanted to ask death to speak quietly, to tell death I saw the light and that I would follow it to the end, to peace or whatever came next, but my own voice was blocked, stuck where vibration turned to sound. The light came closer now, blinding me when I opened my eyes, rendering me almost typhlotic; all I could see was the outline of someone I had once known but would never know again.

Heaven smelled like lilies and sounded like a Chopin Nocturne. Or perhaps that was what heaven was – your favorite scents, the most melodious music you have ever heard. Heaven had the hands of a young man. A young man who gently raised my head and gave me cool water through a straw and then patted my face when I drooled, my mouth strangely inoperable. No wonder I had never given credence to the notion of an afterlife – if there was a God, surely he would not have me spending eternity dribbling.

It’s about time you came back to us, Professor Emily.

Surely this was not the voice of God. Or if so, he sounded rather alarmingly like one of my students. Drawing on every reserve of energy that remained to me, I painstakingly turned my head towards the voice. I saw the lilies, gorgeous lush white lilies in all of their splendor, and that was when I knew for sure that I was alive. Unless heaven was a hothouse, such beauty seemed to be the work of a highly skilled horticulturalist and according to some, God had stopped at one rather fateful garden.

Kenneth – he of the exemplary literary skills and kindly gift baskets – sat across from the bed, his prematurely receding hairline lit from beyond with the blue lights of the heart monitor. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked weary, too weary for his meager years, and yet there was a spark of humor in his voice.

I pray that it was not grading my work that caused you to, he gathered himself here, a slight hitch in his voice, at least, I genuinely hope that it is not the strain of dealing with dolts like me on a daily basis that upset you so.

I could hear him tiptoeing around the subject. Suicide. Something I had tried to do and somehow failed. And found myself now in a hospital room with a young man I barely knew at all.

Kenneth studied me for a moment and then asked with all the frankness of a youth unsullied by convention or disregard.

Why, Emily? Why would you do that?

In another life – the one I had so wished to leave behind – I would have reprimanded him for his familiarity. It had taken us four years of regular and positive contact to arrive at Professor Emily, and I would never have permitted such a trespass previously. His eyes, the lovely doe eyes of a soul whose words flowed on paper like the greats he was destined to emulate, begged me to speak. Instead, and to my great horror, I began to cry, and once I began, it seemed I might never stop.

After the nurse had been reassured that I was in no imminent danger, and after I had managed to draw myself together somewhat, I sat quietly, trying to find the words.

Kenneth leaned over and gently placed a book – the book – in my hands.

Does it have anything to do with this?

I turned it over and stared at the back cover. That woman who so resembled me, was it that she was looking at me with disappointment and a touch of fear? Was it her voice in my head, the gentle murmur in my heart that had pleaded with me to hold on, just hold on, because things would get better, they almost always did, if I could only hold on. Even now I could hear her voice, a vibrational counterpoint to my own weakened sound, and her fear and frustration were crystalline and bright with frantic energy on my limited array. Aspettami, aspettami. Wait for me. Aspettami. That touchstone from my past now a lonely foghorn, begging me to wait, to stay, to have faith in something that I could not see. Aspettami. Unfinished business. We are all unfinished business. Aspettami, now, with an aching melancholy so heart-rending that it was written in my bones, even now, in the astringent light of a new start.

Kenneth took the book from me and gazed down at it himself, looking as troubled as I felt.

I thought you had cancer, he said. That’s why I sent the basket with the... well, you know. It helped my mother when she was so ill with the chemo. I thought it might help you too and I couldn’t imagine that you knew anyone who would, who could...

He blushed, and I found myself squeezing his hand gently, in thanks. It seemed to give him courage to go on.

I actually came by to apologize. My dad was furious that I had put you in such a position, and he was right, I was completely out of line.

He closed his eyes for a minute, his cheek muscles taut with control, and I knew I would never be able to forgive myself for putting such a nice young man through such a dreadful order.

When you didn’t respond, I worried that you might not have received the basket, and I didn’t want to leave it hanging around on your doorstep in case someone else found it and got the wrong idea. So I stopped by after an errand for my dad and one of your shutters had blown off its hinges – there was a storm you know, we lost a few vines. I figured I would just try to fix it in case the storm got worse – sort of an attempt to make up for my stupidity - and that’s when I saw you.

I thought I could remember now, his voice screaming at me above the wind, the smash of the glass next to the front door, even the rush of cool air that seemed to chill me inordinately.

I’m sorry about the door. I didn’t know how else to get in.

His voice was quiet, and I wanted to tell him to be sorry that he’d saved me; instead, I squeezed his hand again and said Thank you. Because right then I knew that I needed life more than I needed death. If there were such entities as angels, the young man who sat sheepishly in front of me was surely one, and my penance would be to give him the grace of having saved me.

It took me two days to regain my voice properly, a week to convince the hospital psychologist that I was a slightly saner version of the self who had been admitted, and half an hour to persuade the Dean to allow me a year’s sabbatical. All the while, Kenneth sat quietly, never leaving the room. He seemed to be writing – the scratch of his pen to paper reminded me of waves on a sandy shore. Most of my students wrote on laptops now, the library and my tutorials punctuated by the gentle rhythmic tap of fingers on keyboards, but Kenneth wrote longhand on pale blue legal pads, an affectation I was willing to accord him on the strength of his work.

Once Kenneth had taken me home and settled me onto my couch, a fresh fire lit and no trace of the pills or other nonsense that had accompanied my almost demise, once he had stocked the fridge – and the bar – to his satisfaction, he settled himself in front of the flames and offered me a glass of something rich and earthy and burgundy.

In my family, wine is the best medicine of all.

He swirled the violet hued liquor around the vessel gently and then took a sip, rinsing his mouth before he swallowed. In any other chap of his age, it would have been pretension personified but I could see that he reveled in the wine in exactly the same way that he reveled in words.

I am not sick.

No one was more surprised than me when I spoke. It was the first even vaguely personal thing I’d said in a week; until then, I had sufficed with platitudes and genteel but genuine gratitude.

I do not have cancer. And I do not think I am quite insane, recent performances to the contrary. 

My turn to sip and gather the words to me.

So often I have spoken of the power of the written word. The depth of possibility made true by a precisely crafted phrase or carefully nuanced syntactical construction. I believe after a certain number of years auditing my classes, you might testify to this.

It was not a question but Kenneth nodded once.

The book is not especially well written. The story is not crafted with skill. With no disrespect to the author, it is not one of the great works of our times. You will concur now, that my distress is merited, for the book makes a mockery of all that I have taught and hoped to continue to teach until...

I was going to offer up the trite last breath before I noted that the poor young man in leaning on the ottoman before my fireplace had indeed almost been witness to that fateful moment.

Kenneth shifted toward me, his eyes dark in the firelight, such that I could see the individual he would become one day, when his own trials and joys had layered their weathering upon him.

The book spoke to you, didn’t it? Despite its poor construction and lack of literary merit, it spoke to you. What did it tell you? What was so terrible that you could not hear what the author wanted to tell you?

There was a curious insistence in his voice. I marveled for a moment at how quickly the student becomes the teacher, and at how the intimacy of death was vastly superior to those other intimacies of the flesh. The boy was owed something, and I, for once, wanted to speak and be heard.

As the fire grew dim and the night long, I told Kenneth of my youth, the loss of a mother I had never known. As the familiar black tide of shame washed over me, I confessed to the tragedy of my beautiful child, the tiny girl who had barely lived, and how her absence had defined me more than any orphanage ever could.

When I could speak no more, I drew back and pulled the alpaca throw closer around me, warding off the chill that comes with an empty heart. Kenneth had said little, listened intently and only rarely punctuated my tale with quiet emissions of sorrow and sympathy, nothing so uncivilized as pity. I knew he was drawing the material to him, digesting it in silence, as he often did in class, preferring all the others to speak their inanities and retaining his vision until all but the last had spoken. In the early days, I had mistaken his reticence for shyness; now I knew well that he was the rare breed of person who did indeed think before he spoke.

My confessor stood, stretched, lithe with youth as he added another log of pinyon to the fire, poured another drop of wine into my glass, refilled his own. The scent of Santa Fe rose up as the flames danced and sang in the easy quiet.

I understand now how this unusual little book must have perturbed you; after all, there is much similarity in thematic with your own path in this world. I agree with your deconstruct – the work is not extraordinary or of particular literary merit. And yet.

His smile was the wry smile of a would-be author.

And yet, I found myself to be overcome by the sheer grace of the thing. All of that love, all of that feeling. All of that hope and faith and truth and loss. To be frank, it made my heart break a little. And to not want to grow up, actually.

I had to laugh a little, because the sweetly mischievous grin that accompanied the last of his speech showed his youth, a flash of delight through the clouds of somber.

Kenneth leaned over and reached for his backpack, that ubiquitous vessel that seemed to identify students everywhere. He retrieved the book and my heart clenched, a reminder that I had not yet made my peace with that voice which had called me back from eternity, even if I had resigned myself to remain with the living.

She looks exactly like you. She could be your twin.

The quiet lay deeply between us, only the crackle and hiss of the wood as it returned to ashes.

Or my mother.

Once I’d said it, I wanted to pull the words back from the air, physically capture them with my hands and hurl them into the fire. Kenneth saw the consternation so clearly evidenced on my countenance, and gently reached over, took my hand.

Or your mother, he agreed, and as soon as he returned the words to me, I understood that perhaps they were not so foolish after all.

What would be the odds? I murmured, half to myself, half to him.

Professor Emily, are you sincerely considering odds in the face of the vagaries of the universe?

Kenneth’s admonishment so echoed my own proclamations to my students that I giggled, an incongruous sound, so very unfamiliar on my lips.

The young man gazed at me a moment, as if considering whether to confide, and I wanted to remind him that nothing he could say to me could possibly merit nervousness, given my proclivities of the previous week.

When I told my parents of my persuasion, he drew out the word as if to inflect it with an irony I immediately recognized as nervous fear, I was so very certain that they would disown me. Maybe not outright, but my father is Italian, after all. I was so sure he would take who I was as a personal insult. That he would be ashamed of me, if not for himself, then for me, in front of our family, our friends, our community.

My turn now to reach out for a young hand, to hold it with compassion, expressed through the gentle squeeze that had become our own sweet language.

As it happens, he already knew. Big surprise there: neither he nor my mother had ever mentioned a single word to me, or to anyone else. But this is what is interesting: when I told him how I felt, how happy, so very happy I was to be me, it was as if I had given him a gift. He doesn’t say much, my father. Man of few words unless it concerns grapes.

Kenneth shook his head, still bemused.

The only thing he said to me was that if I had been in any way unhappy, then he would have failed as a parent, failed me, and that would be something he could not live with. And he told me that the only duty I had to anyone, including my parents but above all, to myself, was to search for that in life which helped me to know myself. Because without that knowledge, I could never be happy and neither could those who cared for me.

Somewhere outside I could hear the neighborhood begin to stir – was it that we had talked all night? Perhaps it is only in the safety of the shadows that we can reveal our true selves, and I was grateful for the diligence with which the young man I had known and nurtured as a student had given of himself that I might understand and even, know him.

Kenneth smiled at me and I could see the fatigue around his eyes, but also a certain light I knew, that flash that meant he was coming to the crux of the matter.

Don’t you think that it might be time for you to explore yourself? And maybe one day find a way to be happy? I don’t mean to sound impertinent and certainly am not implying yoga or some of the other paths that pretend to lead to enlightenment around here.

He gestured to Berkeley, that hotbed of perpetual self-searching, and then picked up the book.

If there is the slightest chance that the author was your mother – and believe me, I’m also figuring the odds on this as being infinitesimal – then shouldn’t you at least try to find out more about her? Maybe the journey will be a source of knowledge unto itself.

The idea overwhelmed me; the upheaval of the last week had stolen my fortitude and even though I would never admit it, I was scared. Terrified to go forth alone, the mad old women with nothing, searching so desperately for something.

Right, I hear birds chirping and dawn is nigh, so time for coffee and then perhaps a rest for us both.

Kenneth pushed himself up and headed over to the kitchen, throwing me a look of pure mischief over his shoulder as he turned towards the refrigerator for the espresso beans.

And if you think you’re doing this by yourself, you might want to reflect again, Professor Emily. You’re not going to travel the road of mysteries without me. Who knows, I might end up with a novel out of this myself!

11

La promesse

Margot

Pietracorbara, Corsica

When I drew into consciousness again, it was in the clean, rough sheets of another unknown bed, and as I shifted, half-sitting, I encountered once again my silent guardian angel.

She sat on a dark-wooded chair, quiet only but for the gentle tap of an uneven chair leg as she rocked it against the cooked earth floor and gazed out of the small window. I could see the tops of trees and tried to imagine where I might be. She turned and smiled at me, a rare and sudden smile of blinding beauty that erased the usual skittish wild animal direction of her presence, and I waited for her to speak, but instead she offered me a glass of cool, tangy water from the clay jug at my bedside, and then glided out the door as if she had never been.

I drank the water and felt the baby stir, nestled and nesting within my pelvis, tiny flutterings, every minute gesture an almost imaginary truth. Despite the trials of the past few days, it seemed that he or she had grown and taken confidence in her surroundings; if only I could do the same. When my heart had settled from its sudden leap of joy, I realized that I needed to think calmly and with precision.

The decision to leave was sure; confirmation had come to me in a flash of light, almost biblical in its intensity. I had not laid eyes on my husband since the night previous to this day. Not a word, not a message; only the knowledge that he had disappeared into some unsavory world where heroin and guns were the currency and the price was death.

It seemed that love and the person I loved were no longer the same things. Now I had a responsibility to the new life within me and I could no longer afford the luxury of passion, debate or danger. And I could not, would not entrust our lives to the false hope of love, for one who loved me, us, would not have so callously abandoned us.

Perhaps you are thinking, as you read, that I was an irrational pregnant woman, far from home and filled with fear that I might lose my child. You would be right to believe this; it is unthinkable to imagine that such a great and defining love could disappear from my heart at the first sign of inattention. Surely I was not so fickle of sentiment?

Perhaps my desire to run was that womb-deep instinct of a mother to protect her child; certainly, there was a vibration of danger in the air that I could neither identify nor avoid. No, not a vibration; so much more. It may well be that despite my lifelong career as a writer, I cannot find the words to describe the inner terror that resonated with each and every breath and which was spreading inexorably throughout my body, some vile cancer, eating away at that which was my foundation and my future.

Once I had interviewed a soldier, fresh from some war or another that had cost him his brother, his comrades, and almost his life. It was an inelegant question to pose but at the time, my instinct was to liberate the man from his demons by revealing those demons in the cruel light of another day survived. This was not normally my style: a good journalist is merely witness, but something in his eyes called to me. I can remember leaning forward, wishing with every cell to convey my empathy, and asking him how he had survived where so many others had not.

He did not take offence, as some might, and he nodded once, as if he had felt my desire to free him of the weighty shadow that threatened in permanence to consign him to the same fate as his fallen comrades.

When the fighting starts, my gut speaks to me. A feeling, without words. It’s as if the danger plays hide and seek with me, running this way and that until I see it everywhere and nowhere, until I exist in a permanent state of distrust.

He closed his eyes, but I still saw the horror that was writ on him.

I think it was that ever present fear that saved me, that made me see danger, even where there was none. But it is a double edged sword, for that which saved me is now killing me as surely as a sniper’s bullet to the heart.

This was how it was for me. Every instinct I had was telling me to run, to save myself – and you – while there was still time. I did not know from what, only that to remain was to lay our lives in the palm of darkness.

I had some money of my own back in Paris. Although I had few real friends and many acquaintances, thanks to the peripatetic nature of my life until now, and a certain personality disorder that encouraged solitude, I knew that even if I would be a social pariah of sorts – Single mother! No husband in view! - I had potential employment, and that would at least see me installed in a safer life. The only thing to do now was to leave this forsaken place, with its poisonous culture and little macho wars. I would find somehow, some way to get to the promised land of all I had once known and longed to know again. And I would race like the beat of my heart from the perilous and foolhardy slope that was my marriage.

I rose tentatively and bent forward to slide my feet into my pumps that someone, perhaps the silent girl,