The Language of Paradise: A Novel (30 page)

Leander stepped aside, but only enough to let her by. As she passed him, their arms brushed. Her flesh shrank from the slight contact. That was when he said, “You don’t take to me, I see. You and I will have to try harder, Sophia.”

SHE OPENS HER EYES
, certain she’d just closed them. The noise that woke her persists softly like the draggled hem of a dream, a slicing, sliding sound followed by a muffled thump. Gideon’s eyelids quiver; he groans and turns over, burying his face in the pillow. This confirmation that the noise is real fills her at first with fear—how could she have relaxed her vigilance? —then with puzzled relief. Shoveling. Someone is shoveling snow in the middle of the night.

She slips out of bed, and plants her feet on the cold floor. The chill travels quickly to her legs. She steps lightly to the window, feeling her way with the smoke of her breath to guide her. The curtain stymies her, but just for a second; rather than risk pulling it aside, she ducks underneath it and wipes one frosted pane with the sleeve of her nightgown.

The sky is black and clear. It has stopped snowing. The moon has turned one cheek to the darkness, reluctant to flaunt itself on such a frigid night, but the stars are brazen and fresh snow casts its own light. She has no trouble making out the shawl-wrapped figure wielding the shovel with a flowing rhythm like a rower crossing a broad, still lake. The path he is carving is shallow but remarkably straight, and it will end at the study.

Sophy is mesmerized, after all. She watches him, transfixed by her vantage: exposed to the night through her little porthole, a silent observer like the moon and stars. She has no fear of being seen. Not a soul knows where she is. So she believes until Leander sinks the shovel into a mound of snow and spins around. Looks right at her.

CHAPTER 25

____

INSIDE

G
IDEON SAT OPPOSITE LEANDER ON THE FLOOR OF THE
study, cross-legged, his upraised palms resting on his knees and his eyes shut. They had chosen the Hebrew letter
Daleth
for its simple shape, an upside-down
L
, and because it was said to represent a door. “We will contemplate the letter with the eye of our minds until we see it hovering between us like a visitor from another world,” Leander had instructed, “and then we will ask its permission to come through.” He had learned the technique from a Jewish shoemaker in Safed: a humble man, Leander said, a disciple of the mystic Abulafia, whose knowledge lifted him far above his dingy hole of a shop.

On this cold, sunny morning in early March, the door would not open for Gideon. He tried to spread a white sheet over his scattered thoughts and draw two black strokes upon it. But his eyes fluttered open with a will of their own. Instead of
Daleth
treading air—he imagined the fragile configuration trembling in place like a moth that turns to ash at a touch—he saw Leander, at ease in his pose. His back was straight, his breathing deep and even; his large hands were cupped to catch the overflow of bliss.
His
half of the letter must surely be manifest, Gideon thought pettishly. Would it appear transparent like a gauze curtain, Gideon having failed to do his part?

He paid for this lapse into cynicism with a sudden cramp in one leg, and staggered to his feet clutching his calf.

Leander opened his eyes—slowly, Gideon noted—seeming to glide into wakefulness as smoothly as he had drifted into meditation. “What is it, friend? Are we moving too fast? I should have known better than to impose such an advanced practice on you. Shall we return to our desks?”

For the past two weeks they had done trials on paper, combining and recombining Hebrew characters into arbitrary groups. The object was to banish meaning altogether, until, after long contemplation, the letters would release their potency and sing out the higher music of pure thought. Leander had thrown himself into the exercise, experimenting with the Roman and Greek alphabets as well, for, he told Gideon, “Hebrew may have been the mother tongue, but the others are her beloved children, and no doubt God speaks them all.” Gideon dutifully shuffled letters as if they were playing cards, and stared at them until their contours blurred, but never came close to replicating his experience with
Beth
. His mind played tricks on him, turning the chance conjunctions into nonsense words that gabbled in his head like an idiot’s talk. He railed silently against the obscure Abulafia—no doubt one of those difficult Jews of whom Reverend Hedge would have despaired. Too soon, the letters receded to the background as one worry or another nosed up to torment him.

Today, a Saturday, he was preoccupied with his situation at the church. The elders had told him they were bringing in a guest preacher to conduct tomorrow’s service. The man had been one of the candidates for Gideon’s pastorate: a nephew of Mendham’s wife, well educated by local standards but—as the deacon pointed out when informing Gideon of his day of rest—gifted with the common touch.

“It’s no use,” he said to Leander, dropping into a chair, his cramp finally releasing its grip. “I can’t concentrate, and even if I could, I don’t believe it’s possible to
stalk
revelation this way. The few glimpses I’ve been granted were gifts, freely given to a young man who never anticipated such wonders and scarcely knew what he’d received. I’m a different person now. My cares overwhelm me.”

Leander gazed up at him. “Do you think I’m not aware of your burdens?” he said calmly. “I want only to alleviate them. If I’ve rushed you, it’s because I was seeking a more direct route to that place we both long for. I confess, I saw us walking together through those green bowers—maybe even attempting that elusive hill. Will you forgive me for my presumption? I’ve driven you deeper into yourself when what you need is a dose of sun and air.”

He rose in one fluent motion to his feet—Gideon marveled at how liquidly his long legs unfolded—and strode to the window, pulling open the curtain they had drawn for privacy’s sake. Light, harsh and bright, cut through the room’s sepia, and Gideon thought of Sophy’s words at breakfast, an eerie echo of his question to his mother all those years ago: “What do you
do
in there all day?” “Carry on the Reverend’s work,” he’d mumbled, catching in her pinched expression the reflection of his own dissimulation. The hurt in her eyes came back to him now. His head drooped, and he rested his brow in his hands.

Leander came up behind him and clasped his shoulders. “I’ve never seen you so cast down. Is it Mendham and his merry men? Let them bring one of their own to preach! What is the worst that can happen? That they liberate you to pursue your own path?”

“It’s everything at once,” Gideon said. “The church. The Hedges’ dour looks, and their infernal stoicism—as though I’m teetering on the edge of the Pit and about to drag the lot of them in with me. Sophy. Poor Sophy. She breaks my heart.” At the mention of her name, his voice went ragged; he took a deep breath to steady himself. “All my life I’ve stood alone. No father, no siblings, no real friends. My mother raised me to be accountable to no one but myself. I thought I wanted what other men have, but now that I possess it, I find I can’t bear the weight.” He laughed bitterly. “It’s no wonder the Lord has denied us a child. Can you imagine the kind of father I would make?”

“An extraordinary one, I think.” Leander spoke quietly, but his grip on Gideon’s shoulders tightened. “You and I have known each other for two months, have we not? It is no accident that we met when we did. I cannot express how it wounds me to hear you speak of yourself as alone in the world. From now on, let me be all that life has denied you. Father. Brother. Friend.”

Gideon felt some vital force flow from Leander’s hands through his body; he could not tell whether it was Leander’s will streaming in or his own seeping out. His limbs were as weak as a child’s. He tried to shift in his seat, but the long fingers dug deeper, sharpening the ache in his shoulders to separate points of pain. He remembered how Leander had described the wrestling match with his student—words he had taken lightly at the time, in the affectionate spirit in which they’d been offered. Sensing Sophy nearby, a nervous, vigilant presence, Gideon repressed the urge to cry out. Instead, he sent her silent reassurance:
Don’t worry. He will only hurt me as much as he has to.

Hours after, reviewing the events of the day in the shelter of his bed, Sophy breathing quietly beside him, he would conclude that he had not been mesmerized: a man in a trance would hardly have considered what his wife would think if she were watching. Captivation was the state he settled on. Imprisoned by fascination—and the merest touch of brute force. He could not recall what he’d said to Leander, or if he’d spoken at all. But he must have grimaced, or nodded, or given some token of assent, for the pressure had suddenly eased. Leander was beaming at him, sunny and boyish. “Shall we go for a walk, my friend? You will tell me your troubles, and I will bear them with you.”

ONCE EN ROUTE
, they had no choice but to move quickly. The wind lashed them and they bent to its will. Though hard snow still coated the ground, the sun was showing its strength, venturing an assault on the frozen earth. Gideon was content to let Leander do the talking. It was all he could do to match his companion’s long stride. His eyes and nose leaked, and each breath of air carved a fresh pathway to his lungs, but he felt clearer than he had in weeks. The farther they walked from the village, the more manageable his troubles appeared; even so, he indulged a superstitious dread of looking over his shoulder for fear that his spirit might turn to stone again. He was relieved that his companion seemed disposed to chat about Cambridge instead of extracting confidences about problems that Gideon had, for the moment, put behind him.

“Did you ever hear Mr. Emerson preach when you were at Harvard?” Leander asked. “I happened to be in Boston when he lectured to the Natural History Society, and was mightily impressed. A humble presence, but what a fountain of profundity! Phrase after phrase lodged in my mind.
The grammar of botany
.
The natural alphabet
. I had half a mind to seek him out and become to that wise and gentle man what young Lem is to me.” He glanced at Gideon. “It’s struck me more than once how closely his thought hews to your own.”

“He had his followers, who’d flock to the North End every Sunday,” Gideon said. “I suppose I might have been attracted if I’d traveled in those circles, but . . . I went my own way. And once I was at Andover, it was unthinkable. My professors had no tolerance for high-minded musings on matters of the spirit. They saw Emerson and his kind as deceivers, seducing the weak with their anemic philosophy. ‘Satan’s wraiths,’ the Reverend used to call them.” Gideon hesitated, unwilling to offend Leander. “I don’t question the man’s gifts, or his goodness. Still, I always felt there was something finicky about the fellows who aped him—forever doting on their precious souls, pillaging the forest to build their airy castles. They don’t go deep enough, these philosophical types. They only dream as far as they can see. It’s all well and good to find Heaven in a sunset, but why stop at that? I can almost sympathize with my father-in-law’s demands for a more rigorous faith.”

Leander halted in mid-stride. “I never did make my pilgrimage, and until this moment I never asked myself why. My scruples were not quite the same as yours. I feared to get too near to Emerson’s airy castle, and discover it was made of bricks and mortar after all. Our heroes don’t always stand up to close observation—nor do their beautiful ideas.”

“Ideas are only semblances,” Gideon said. “When I think back on my visions—if I may call them that—it’s their solidity that haunts me. I try to convey that quality to my congregation, but what proof can I offer them? I can’t blame them for their lack of enthusiasm.”

They walked on in silence. Gideon was beginning to feel weary, and the astringent air made him thirsty; he scooped up a handful of snow and dissolved some in his mouth, ignoring the pain in his teeth. It seemed to him that they must be miles beyond the bounds of Ormsby. His pastoral visits had never taken him in this direction. The land had been partially cleared, but nature was holding its own: scraggy pine trees blocked their path every few feet, like fugitives from an upstart army. Gideon felt a twinge of misgiving when he calculated how long it had been since he’d seen smoke curling from a chimney.

“I wonder if we should head home,” he said. “Otherwise, we may have to spend the night in a snow cave like the Esquimaux.”

“Oh, I doubt that will be necessary,” Leander said. “Look where the wind has blown us.” He pointed at a structure atop a nearby rise. It appeared to be unfinished, the wood unpainted and the windows boarded over. Even in this rough state it was imposing: two stories and an attic, with a pillared entryway, peaked like a temple, flanked on either side by wings. Stark against the cloudless sky, the house had none of the aqueous ephemerality of a mirage, but Gideon was too fatigued to trust its reality. He would gladly have retraced his steps if Leander weren’t already bounding toward the incline.