Nickelberry kept urging me away, and finally I went with him. But before I left I said I wanted to go out into the garden. He begged me not to; said he had come to like my company on the road and was fearful for my sanity. But I would not be persuaded to depart until I had seen the place where I had sat in the years before the war, and taken such joy. Somehow I knew that the worst would be there; and I would not be finished with this business until I had laid eyes upon that worst, whatever it was.
I know of no place that proffered such fragrances as that little plot of ground: jasmine and magnolia, tea olive and banana shrub; all lent the air a sweetness that could make my head swim on summer nights. And now, despite the harms all around, nature was still doing its best to grace the air. Some of the smaller trees and shrubs had survived the destruction, and their branches were budding. There were even a few flowers underfoot.
But these little victories could not compete with the terrible sight that lay in the middle of the garden. The surgeons' accomplices had dug holes there, to bury the gangrenous parts hacked from the wounded. They had done their job poorly. Upon their departure dogs had come and dug up this horrid meat, and picked it clean. Here, where my children had played, and my darling Adina walked in love, were human bones in their many dozens. I think my coming out had disturbed some of the animals, because in places the dirt was freshly turned, and as yet undevoured trophies lay. A leg, its foot still booted. An arm, severed at midbicep. Much else I could not make sense of, nor wanted to.
have seen every kind of misery in these three years, and endured everything as best a man may be expected to endure such horrors. But to find sights that rank with the worst I have witnessed in this place, where my children played,
where I spoke words of devotion to my wife, where-in short-I made my heaven, is nearly more than I can bear.
Were it not for Nub, I should now surely be dead by my own hand.
He says we should leave the city tomorrow. I have agreed. For tonight, we are sleeping on the steps of St. Michael's Church, where I am presently writing this. Nub has gone off to beg or steal some food (which he's very good at doing) but the thought of what I saw this evening makes me so sick to my stomach I doubt I shall eat.
The little club where Danny had arranged to meet Rachel was thronged with the late-night crowd, and she had to search it for several minutes before she located him. She felt strangely dislocated, as though she'd left some part of herself behind her in the pages of Captain Holt's journal. There was nothing in her experience that remotely approached the horrors he had described, but the fact that she was holding in her hands the book which he'd had in his pocket when he'd walked into his house on Tradd Street made the vision he was evoking all the more immediate. It was the crowd before her which seemed unreal; their alcohol-flushed features smeared in the murk.
Even Danny, when she finally located him, seemed remote from her, viewed through smoke-thickened gloom.
"I was beginning to think you weren't going to come," he said. His voice was a little slurred with drink. "You want one?"
"I'll have a brandy," Rachel said. "Make it a double, will you?"
"Why don't you go sit down? I'm sorry about the crowd. I guess somebody's having a birthday party. Do you want to go somewhere else?"
"No, I'll just have a drink, and give you the stuff, then-"
"-you don't have to lay eyes on me again," Danny said. "That's a promise." He didn't wait for Rachel to protest, which she would have done out of politeness, but headed off into the midst of the birthday celebrants.
Rachel went to an empty table at the back of the room, and sat down. She was sorely tempted to take out the journal again, though this was scarcely an ideal place to be reading it. The lights were so dim she probably wouldn't be able to make sense of it, she told herself. To distract herself she looked for Danny. He was still at the bar, waving a bill to attract somebody's attention.
Without consciously planning to do so, she reached into the envelope and pulled out the journal again. At a nearby table a group of drunken partiers had started to sing a birthday song. Several of them attempting vainly to harmonize. The cacophony troubled her as far as the end of the first sentence. Then she was back with the deserters, in the silent city.
I am writing this two days after we came into Charleston, and I am not certain 1 know how to describe what has taken place since my last entry.
Best to keep it plain, I think. Nub came back to St. Michael's a little before dawn, and he not only brought food, good food, the best I'd seen in many months, he also came with news of a strange encounter he'd had.
It seemed he'd met a woman whom he'd first taken to be some kind of apparition, she was, he said, so perfect in this ghostly place, so beautiful, so graceful. Her name was Olivia, and she was apparently so charmed by Nickel-berry, and he so enamored of her, that when she invited him halfway across the city to meet a friend of hers, he went.
By the time he came back to see me he had not only met this friend, who goes by the strange name of Galilee-
Rachel stopped reading, as though struck. She looked up. The crowd was wild around her. The singers were up from their table, reeling around, the unlucky focus of their attentions still sitting, dumbfounded by drink. Danny had secured a glass of brandy, along with something for himself, and was working his way back towards Rachel's table, but he was having difficulty weaving between the partiers. Before he could catch Rachel's eye, she looked back at the journal, half expecting the words she'd seen there to have disappeared.
But no. They were there:
-this friend, who goes by the strange name of Galilee-
It couldn't be the same man, of course. This Galilee had lived and died in an earlier age; long before the Galilee she knew had been born.
She had a few seconds before Danny reached her. Long enough to quickly scan the next few lines:
-but had tasted some generosity of his which had changed him in a fashion I cannot quite describe. He said to me that we had to go together to meet this man, and that when we 'd met I would feel to some measure the hurts I had suffered in this city undone-
"What are you reading?"
Danny was setting the drinks down on the table. Holt's words were still in Rachel's eyes-
-the hurts I had suffered in this city-
"Oh it's just an old diary."
"Family heirloom?"
"No."
-undone-
Danny sat down. "Your brandy," he said, pushing the glass in Rachel's direction.
"Thank you." She picked up the brandy and sipped. It burned a little against her lips and on her tongue. "Are you all right?" Danny said.
"Yes, I'm fine."
"You look a little shaken up."
"No… I'm just… these last few days…" She could barely put a coherent sentence together, she was so distracted by what she'd just read. "I don't want to seem rude-" she said, making a concerted effort to be articulate. The sooner this conversation was over, the sooner she'd be back with the journal, finding out what awaited the captain. "I've just got a lot on my mind right now. This is what I found at the apartment." She handed Danny the envelope containing letters and the photographs. He glanced around to see if anybody was looking his way, and then, a little tentatively, reached into the envelope and slid out the contents.