Hunger's Brides (160 page)

On my first day in court it did not take long to understand what I was about to face. I'd left the cabin out in Cochrane two hours early, thinking to avoid the press. A courthouse of limestone and marble. Dun, four-columned porch. A few frieze-bound heroes robed and muscled. Inside, courtroom carpet the rich blue of open sea. A hush. Close enough to what I'd imagined. I was pleased to have come early. The judge now in session delighted me. Cranky lion—aging, preening despot in his den. I thought I matched up well against him.

An hour later, my lion limped out to be replaced by Madame Justice Clements, an animal of a different stripe. Auburn hair, closely pinned in a tight bun. My contemporary. Nuanced, keen, the face of modern righteousness. The eyes of my community, without the blindfold.

You have sinned against the colony
. Ridiculous, a puritanical huddle.
You have turned your back on the city
. A palisade, a prairie fort, a pile of sticks.
You have strayed beyond the pale, you are made a thing of scorn
. I return yours richly multiplied.
We speak with your father's voice
. This should be good, he barely used it.
You have made his name a laughingstock—
his clotted clan? They were one long before me.
The rotten apple doesn't fall so far after all
. From the split and blasted tree.
You're one of us, we knew it all along
. I'm not like you, I'm not like you at all.
Up above us all like some kind of eagle. Now the chicken's come home to roost. Chicken
.

We will see you broken and spiked out in the grass
.

What I saw in those first twenty seconds was still not what I'd done but what
I faced
. Prairie opprobrium—knowing, nodding, sage and gloating.

Return her manuscripts? I would have done anything to escape the
indignity of their contempt, their round-mouthed satisfaction. Run anywhere. Sold Beulah down the river a hundred times.

I am not that breed of martyr.

But I will answer them in my fashion. A fashion I have learned. Charges are brought, learned counsel is instructed. Show us what you've learned. Address the charges, the faceless mass of their derision.

A higher court is now in session.

Behind the departing heart surgeon and his lawyer the scrolled brass doors swung quietly to, the scent of sandalwood cologne wafting in the aisle. My lawyer put a hand out to restrain me as I made to get up from the table. “Let's stalk.”

“Don't we have to leave?”

“You in such a hurry to go out and meet your public?” He studied me for a moment.“I know it's a nightmare. But I'm telling you the worst is behind you. Do you sleep at all?”

“Some nights are better.”

“Well, sleep tonight. They've dropped the suit as promised. This civil action had me much more worried than anything the cops might have. You've done the right thing here.”

I felt an urge to smile. But he was right. It would have been stupid to provoke the judge further. I had other charges of contempt to face.

For days, the way out had been stupidly obvious, though I hadn't seen it.
Make copies
. I was not thinking straight.

“If we avoid mistakes,” he assured, “this whole thing goes away, like I told you.”

“How?”

“We've got a pretty solid police force. Experienced people are working your case. The more they turn up, the less attractive charging you becomes.”

“Why?”

“One, she left the sliding door open that night.”

“For me.”

“No idea. But no sign of forced entry. Plus, even if they could prove the papers in your possession were at her place that night—”

“The neighbour saw me taking them.”

“Taking what? Maybe it was your own box of papers, or a toaster oven. You'd brought it in with you. You see what I mean. Forensics
now concurs the wounds were very likely self-inflicted. Meanwhile counselling to commit suicide is exceptionally difficult to prove—impossible here. Then there's her psychiatric history …”

“What about leaving the scene?”

“Can't be leaving the scene of a crime if no crime's been proved. Or the scene of a police investigation, since the police weren't on it yet. Arguably there's something under the Good Samaritan laws, like breaking off a resuscitation. But no real proof you'd ever started first aid. She might've dressed those wounds herself, right?”

He was watching me carefully now.

“Of course you might've
forced her
to swallow all that stuff they pumped out of her guts….” When I didn't take the bait he went on. “So you see why they're reluctant. Obstructing a police investigation was probably their best shot. But you've just turned everything over to the judge—all of it, right?

“Yes.”

“Presto, obstruction unblocked. So I guess their main problem, and ours, is waiting out there right now.”

“The press.”

“Beautiful young girl from a good family, a distinguished immigrant family. Desperate call to a news desk implicating unnamed university professor—oh and some day, Professor, when this is done, maybe you can explain to me why she did that. Thought they had a juicy society scandal, did our journalistic friends. Grad photo of victim now lying near death.

“A picture like that in the paper touches a nerve. It gives the body politic a toothache. The people want an accounting. But how is it possible, they ask, that there's been no crime? The cops are already in a tight spot. Even before they maybe turn up rumours about the father they don't want to follow up on.”

“You've heard something.”

“Nothing I'd want you to know.”

“He's asked the police to drop the investigation.”

“No need. That's what I'm telling you—nothing but bloody noses—”

“And bad press.”

“There'll be a column or two about lax enforcement, slippery lawyers, liberal laws. But what more can they do? Stir up the local hard-line-on-crime zealots, I guess. Take some tougher angles on
crime stories for a while.” Eric Heffner shrugged and spread his hands complacently. “Basically, they're out of angles.”

“It just blows over.”

“On one condition—she recovers. A coma's a precarious thing.” He looked apologetic. To this point I'd done everything he'd asked of me, if reluctantly. He rose and started shuffling files into his briefcase. “So, let's go meet our friends in the media.” I hadn't moved. He shot a glance in my direction.“I'll do what I can to snub their leash.”

“The Foothills Hospital called yesterday.”

He eyed me warily. “Why the hell would they call you?”

“Her doctor.”

“The girl's? We agreed you were not to
go
there.”

“A Dr. Elsa Aspen. Beautiful voice.”

“Did we have an agreement or not?”

“I haven't gone since we talked.”

“Then how?”

“A nurse was there when they brought her in. Brought Beulah….”

“Go on.”

“She mentioned me to Dr. Aspen for some reason.”

“What did they want?”

“The doctor's been following things in the papers.”

His left hand made a cycling gesture: speed up the reel. “Make this simple for me, will you Professor?” His head jutted forward, mouth slightly open, a frown directed at my lips.

“She thought I might have some familiarity with Beulah's diaries.”

“A
shrink?
No!—you
see
, this's exactly the kind of thing—”

“Would I be willing to get together for a few minutes?”

“As your lawyer I am advising you against this.”

“In complete privacy.”

“Formally advising you.”

“A chat.”

“Emphatically no.”

“Away from the hospital.”

“I'm telling you. Listen to me.” He shifted as though to block my exit.

“They need my help.”

C
ODEX
: T
EMPTATION
2
        

W
HAT MORE CAN I FIND TO SAY TO SOMEONE
who doesn't want to go on speaking?
Find something!

What can I bring to bring her back to me? Dreams, memories, news of the world—echoes from the streets.

Check the cellars. Make a list.

A scrap of paper on the floor by a shelf—whatever it says, it's in Nahuatl … Carlos has suggested I ask her to read it for me. Another of our pathetic temptations.

So, a scrap of verses in her handwriting. When was it written, hours ago or months?

Her stained fingers. There are a hundred and eighty-nine books and manuscripts hidden in the archives. I wonder for the thousandth time, is she writing again—or still? And in the language of her girlhood? Is there ink concealed beneath the dirt? Is she working in the gardens to conceal it? Again no answers.

Eyes enormous now, luminous, whites stark in their sockets. Glossy ridge of cheekbone, drawn thin, like her clavicles, her sickle-boned hips—skin stretched tight like a canvas before the brush's first shy kiss. Keyed in ivory and bone like a clavichord too delicate to play.

Cheekbone ridge drawing down to tanned hollows. Her jaws' muscular swell. Curved, cracked lips. Hairshirt fustian like a tamarind pod. She looks each day more like an Indian, a gaunt fieldhand.

Strong still, I thought. Only an occasional unsteadiness after climbing stairs.

I told myself.

This morning she has trouble getting out of bed.

Asunción is bringing the poultices. I will spread them out like grape leaves across her cicatrices.

Dreams. I can tell that she really is listening to me whenever I tell her my dreams.

Dreams must seem as real to her as anything in this nightmare.

Through dreams I will reach you then. First telling you mine, then
making mine yours. I will reach you, I will fight through to you. I will make you see me, hear me.

Hunger scrimshaws your ivory form. Some long-dead navigator's graven altar—a map, some enchanted isle, its rough topography in bone.
⁵

Not a good day. She cannot get up at all. Feverish, she asks to hear me play. Sweating and cursing our weakness, refusing help, Vanessa and I drag the clavichord all the way from the locutory across the convent up to her.

From now on I will play every night, as she lies down to sleep. Whether she's listening or not.

But she always seems to be listening to something—a voice, a melody?—if almost never to me….

Today much better. Everything back to normal, if that's what this can be called. Only the slightest unsteadiness in her hands.