“I hope you are wrong. Dear father, can you understand that I must go back to Brazil? What little I learned of the flowering and fruiting habits of the trees filled me with curiosity. Some seem to follow the rules of invisible seasons, but others flower from the time they sprout until they die. I want to learn why things happen as they do in that place.” He looked at Dieter and said, “Tropical forest soil is rather poor — all the forest’s richness is encased in its living trees. Is that not interesting?”
Dieter shook his head, asked, “Is such a thing possible?”
“It is. And in the level above the soil are shrubs and ferns, young trees, all dependent on shafts of light reaching them. They are not plants in their own right but the slaves of the large trees. Even stranger are the epiphytes, an entire world of parasitic plants that grow on the trees. That forest calls to me.”
Dieter listened with consternation. Charley’s preference for wild forests was disturbing. It was a proof that his older son was a sinking man, fated to be a loser. How to jolt him loose? How to involve him in the company’s work?
“I’ll do what I personally can to help you,” said Dieter, “but you seem destined to observe, perhaps write a book — I do not see you holding a regular job or making a business success.”
“There is no job that I have ever heard of that would be as honorable and interesting as going about and observing the lives of the trees and noting their peculiarities.”
“Still, men must work — even you.” The words came out so mournfully they both laughed.
“I need a real cause, Father, if I am to work at anything. I am no businessman. And I may indeed write a book. Although I know pitifully little and one lifetime is not enough to study even a single tropical forest tree. I want — how can I describe it? I want to discover the dynamo, the central force of the wild forest — all my interest lies in searching out that vital force.”
But Dieter thought dynamo and force sounded too much like a romantic “meaning of life” quest. He had a painful thought — did he not scent the bitter fragrance of madness in Charley? “Why not think about all this over the winter? Stay here to get your bearings, do some reading and meet others interested in trees. We can talk again in a few months. And of course we want you here for the holidays.” He was determined to understand and help this first son, but it seemed a heavy task; Dieter felt himself too old, lost in the forest of his own experience.
So Charley stayed the winter and spring to play a game of seduction with Mrs. James Bardawulf — Caroline — alternately beckoning and evasive; he was determined to get her, to spite his half brother, whom his father favored.
• • •
He was still trying in August, when the great 1910 fires in Montana, Idaho and eastern Washington burned more than three million acres of prime timber and settlements in two days, a raging blowup crown fire jumping and leapfrogging over hundreds of miles, a fire such as no human had ever seen. The country was shocked by headlines describing how the remote heart of America had been destroyed in forty-eight hours, for people believed that the wild essence of the country existed in its great forests somewhere out west. And now they had burned.
Dieter pled with pea-brained politicians and barely literate congressmen for more money and authority for the Forest Service. He spoke out against that governor who said forest fires were a good thing because they opened new country for settlers, and he cursed the congressman from a fire-plagued state who bellowed, “Not one cent for scenery!” He began a regimen of letter writing, wire sending and telephone calls; he volunteered to start new pine and fir seedling nurseries to replant the hideous blackened mountains and stem the landslides of burned soils. He tried to interest his older son.
“Charley, here’s a cause for you — help rejuvenate the spoiled lands. I am meeting this evening at the house with James Bardawulf and Andrew to discuss possible salvage of some of the burned timber. I hope you will join us.” He did not think Charley could resist the battle to heal the wrecked forest.
“It will just happen again,” said Charley in a dismissive tone, “until the yahoos have burned the country clear. You are pleading with men who just don’t care. As for salvage, it seems a bit like rifling the pockets of a corpse.” He left the door ajar as he went out.
• • •
Charley had had enough of Dieter’s hopeless American forest projects and almost enough of the slippery Caroline. She enjoyed teasing him and that, he promised himself, would be the key to getting her. He would make one more effort and then leave. He telephoned.
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” he said.
“Oh, Charley, where are you going? To the terrible fires in Idaho and Montana?”
“No. The fires are ended. My interests pull me to the tropics. Let me see you one last time. Will you not walk in the garden with me for half an hour this evening?”
“I might if you are very, very good. None of your naughty ways.” She laughed, an often-rehearsed laugh that an earlier swain had told her was like the music of a babbling brook.
“But you are so beautiful that I cannot make a promise. You have a powerful effect on me. As a last favor please wear your exquisite green dress.”
“Oh, my Poiret. You have an eye for fashion. That is the most expensive dress I own.”
“The most beautiful,” he murmured gallantly. He knew well that it was a dress famously designed to be worn without a corset.
• • •
He came to the dark garden deliberately a little late, just as the moon was rising, and saw her standing beside the redbud tree, the faded heart-shaped leaves catching the lunar glow as did her pale dress. She resembled the chrysalis of a luna moth. The watery moonlight seemed to solidify their bodies, to render shadows corporeal, as intense as stones.
“Here you are,” she said and produced her rippling laugh. He seized her at once and lightly bit her neck.
“Oh don’t! It will show!”
He bit again, harder.
“Stop, Charley. What has got into you?” She tried to push him away, but he was not having it and he was not playing her flirting game tonight. He pulled her to the garden bench. It took a few moments of sweet flattery and blandishment to ease her into position and gradually ruck high the green dress. He did this almost stealthily, not roughly, eased into her hot and responsive flesh and at the moment of discharge heard James Bardawulf’s voice say, “Why, Charley, how thoughtful of you to drop in,” and there was a tremendous concussive sound that his damaged brain told him was a moon bolt, very like being struck full force with a Zulu knobkerrie.
Caroline’s shrieks brought servants from the house who pulled the club away from James Bardawulf, who then tore a rosebush out of the ground and began flailing the insensible form on the ground. Young Raphael, in his pajamas, ran for Dieter, who arrived still clutching his meeting notes.
“James Bardawulf, anhalten, anhalten sofort! Stop halt this stupidity! Was ist los? Anhalten! You will kill him!”
“I want to kill him! Let me go!”
• • •
The servants carried Charley to his room and two doctors came within the hour. Dr. Plate examined the unconscious Charley and said it was a grave injury. He might remain unconscious for some time — forever, even — might die without waking up. But he cleaned the wound, bandaged it and left the first of three nurses to watch over the wounded man. Dr. Scotbull examined the sobbing Caroline, who had been roughly used and violated but was otherwise unhurt. The moon-green dress was torn and dirty. “A few days in bed to rest and become calm. You must put the experience out of your mind and divert yourself with books or needlework,” said the doctor, shooting sidelong glances at James Bardawulf, whose red eyes glared. The doctor steered him downstairs and poured him a glass of whiskey — watched him swallow it in a single glugging bolt. Within the half hour James Bardawulf went up to Caroline, hissing that if she liked rape so much that is what she would get, slapped her hard and mounted her.