Back in my study I picked up the manuscript and flicked through it, deliberately letting my eye go where it would, to see how the thing sounded when sampled arbitrarily. There were plenty of stylistic infelicities which I promised myself I'd fix later; but the matter seemed to walk the line I'd intended it walk, between this world and that other, out there beyond the perimeters of L'Enfant. Perhaps I could have been less gossipy in my accounts of the daily business of this house, but there's honesty in that gossip. Whatever the mythic roots of this family may be, we've dwindled into pettiness and domesticity. We're not the first gods to have done so, of course. The occupants of Olympus bickered and bed-hopped; we're no better nor worse. But they were inventions, we're not. (I suspect, by the way, that in the creation of divinities we see the most revealing work of the human imagination. And of course in the life of that imagination, the most compelling evidence of the divine in man. Each is the other's most illuminating labor.)
Where does that leave me? I, who sit in the middle of a house of divinities talking about invented gods. It leaves me in confusion, as always; set against myself, as though my heart were divided, and each half beat to a different drummer.
The hashish put an appetite on me, and after a couple of hours of skipping through my text I went to the kitchen and made myself a sandwich of rare roast beef on black bread, which I ate sitting on the back door step, feeding the crumbs to the peacocks.
Then I slept for a while, thinking I would get up in the middle of the evening and continue to tinker with the text. Those few blissful hours of sleep were, I suspect, the last easy slumbers I will enjoy; for when I woke (or rather, was woken) it was not only with visions of the Geary house in New York filling my head, and my right hand twitching as if it were warming up for the challenge of setting down all I was about to see, but also with the uncanny sense that any last vestige of calm had gone from the places I was witnessing.
The final sequence of cataclysms was about to begin. I drew breath and ink; waited, watched, and then began to write.
When Rachel got to the mansion to see Cadmus she was told by one of the staff, a pleasant woman called Jocelyn, that she couldn't see Loretta tonight. The old man had been very sick since noon, and Loretta had sent the nurse away, saying she wanted to look after Cadmus herself, which she was doing. Her instructions were that they were not to be disturbed.
Rachel was insistent: this wasn't business that could be put off until tomorrow. If Jocelyn wouldn't go up and get Loretta, Rachel said, then she'd be obliged to do so herself. Reluctantly, Jocelyn went up; and after ten minutes or so Loretta came downstairs. It was the first time Rachel had ever seen her look less than perfect. She looked like a painting that had been slightly smeared; her hair, which was usually immaculate, a little out of place, one of her drawn brows a little smudged.
She instructed Jocelyn to make some tea, and took Rachel into the dining room.
"This is a bad time, Rachel," she said.
"Yes, I know."
"Cadmus is very weak, and I may need to go up to him, so please, say whatever you have to say."
"We had a conversation in this room, just after Margie's death."
"I remember it, of course."
"Well, you were right. Mitch was at my apartment a little while ago, and I don't think he's entirely sane."
"What did he do?"
"You want the short version and I'm not sure there is one," Rachel explained. "Margie had a book-I don't know the full story, but it was a kind of journal-and it came into my hands. It doesn't matter how. The point is, it did; and contains information about the Barbarossas."
Loretta showed no sign of response to any of this, until she spoke. When she did, her voice betrayed her. It trembled.
"You have Holt's journal?" she said.
"No. Mitchell does."
"Oh Jesus," she said quietly. "Why didn't you come to me with it?"
"I didn't know it was so important."
"Why do you think I've been sitting upstairs with Cadmus, listening to him ramble for hours on end?"
"You wanted the journal?"
"Of course. I knew he had it because he'd told me, years ago. Never let me see it-"
"Why not?"
"I guess he didn't want me to know anything more about Galilee than I already knew."
"It's not very flattering. What Holt says about him."
"So you've read it?"
"Not all of it. But a lot. And the way Holt describes him… oh Lord, how's it even possible?"
"How's what possible?"
"How could Galilee have been alive in 1865?"
"You're asking the wrong person," Loretta said. "Because I'm just as much in the dark as you about how and why. And I gave up asking a long time ago."
"If you gave up asking, why do you want the journal so badly?"
"Don't come here looking for my help and then start needling me, girl," Loretta replied. She looked away from Rachel for a moment, expelling a long, soft sigh. "Would you fetch me a cigarette?" she said finally. "They're on the sideboard over there."
Rachel got up and brought the silver cigarette case, along with the lighter, back to the table. While Loretta was lighting up Jocelyn came in with the tea. "Just set it down," Loretta said. "We'll serve ourselves. Oh, and Jocelyn? Would you go upstairs and check on Mr. Geary?"
"I just did," Jocelyn said. "He's sleeping."
"Keep looking in on him will you?"
"Of course."
"She's been a godsend," Loretta observed when Jocelyn had gone. "Never a complaint. What were we talking about?"
"Galilee."
"Forget about Galilee."
"You once told me that he was at the heart of everything."
"Did I now?" Loretta said. She drew deeply on her cigarette. "Well I was probably feeling sorry for myself." She exhaled the blue-gray smoke. Then she said: "You're not the only one who's been in love with him, you know. If you really want to understand what's happening to us you have to stop thinking from a selfish point of view. Everybody's had their disappointments, Rachel. Everybody's had their lost loves and their broken hearts. Even the old man."
"Louise Brooks."
"Yes. The exquisite Louise. That was in Kitty's time, of course. I didn't have to endure his mooning over the woman. Though she was lovely. I will say that. She was lovely." She poured herself a cup of tea as she spoke. "Do you want some tea?"
"No. Thank you."
"He's going to die in the next twenty-four hours," Loretta went on, matter-of-factly. "And when he's gone, I intend to take charge of this family and its assets. That's what's in his will."
"You've seen the will?"
"No. But he's promised me. If the will says what he swears it says then I'll be in a position to make some kind of deal with Garrison and Mitchell."
"And if it doesn't?"
"If it doesn't?" Loretta sipped her tea before replying. "Then maybe we'll need Galilee after all," she said quietly. "Both of us."
In his bedroom on the floor above, Cadmus woke. He was cold, and there was an emptiness at the pit of his stomach which was not hunger. He turned his face toward the dimmed lamp on the bedside table, hoping its light would drive from his head the shadowy forms that had accompanied him from sleep. He didn't want them with him in the real world. They'd have him soon enough.
The door opened. He raised his head from the pillow.
"Loretta?"
"No, sir. It's Jocelyn."
"Where's Loretta? She said she was going to stay with me."