Perhaps, in reflection, that's true of all wars. The war between the states for instance, from the furnace of which the Gearys rose to such wealth and power-when did that begin? Was it the moment that the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter? That's certainly a convenient choice for historians: they can pinpoint the day, the date and even the man-a trigger-happy civilian called Edmund Ruf-fin-who did the firing. But of course by the time this even takes place the grinding work of war had been under way for many years. The enmities which fueled that work in fact go back generations, nurtured and mythologized in the hearts of the people who will bankrupt their economies and sacrifice their sons for that enmity.
So it is with the war between the Gearys and the Barba-rossas: though its first casualty, Margie, may only just be in the ground and the knives have only lately been sharpened, the plots and counterplots that have brought us to this moment go back a long, long way. Back to Charleston, in the early spring of 1865: Charles Holt and Nub Nickelberry stepping into Galilee's strange boudoir in the ruins of the East Battery, and giving themselves over to pleasure. Had they known what they were initiating would they have done otherwise? I suspect not. They were living in the moment of their hunger and their despair; if they'd been told, as they consoled themselves with cake and meat and the comfort of kisses, that the consequences of their sensuality would be very terrible, a hundred and some years hence, they would have said: so what? And who would have blamed them? I would have done the same, in their boots. You can't go through life worrying about what the echoes of the echoes of the echoes of your deeds will be; you have to do what you can with the moment, and let others take care of their moment when it comes.
So I lay no blame with Charles and Nub. They lived their lives, and moved on into the hereafter. Now we have our lives to live, and they will be marked by a period of war that may undo us all. It will be, I suspect, a subtle war, at least at the beginning, its significance calculated not in the number of coffins it fills, but in the scale of the structures it finally brings to ruin.-1 don't simply speak of physical structures (though those too will inevitably come down); I speak of the elaborate edifices of influence and power and ambition that both our families have constructed over the years. When this war is over, I doubt any of them will still be standing. There will be no victor: that's my prediction. The two dans will simply cancel one another out.
No great loss, you may say, knowing what you now know about us. There's a certain pettiness in the best of us, and such malice in the worst that their passing will probably be something to be celebrated.
My only hope as we move into these darker times is that the war will uncover some quality in one or other of us (I dare not hope all) that will disprove my pessimism. I don't wish to say that war is ennobling, you understand; I don't believe that for a moment. But I do believe it may strip us of some of the pretensions that are the dubious profits of peace-the airs and graces that we've all put on-and return us to our truer selves. To our humanity or our divinity; or both.
So, I'm ready. The pistol lies on one side of my desk, and my pen lies beside it. I intend to sit here and go on writing until the very last, but I can no longer promise you that I'll finish this story before I have to put my pen aside and arm myself. That only everything of mine now seems like the remotest of dreams: one of those pretensions of peace that I was talking about a few paragraphs back.
I will promise you this: that in the chapters to come I won't toy with your affections, as though we had a lifetime together. I'll be as plain as I know how, doing what I can to furnish you with the means to finish this history in your own head should I be stopped by a bullet.
And-while I'm thinking of that-maybe this isn't an inappropriate place to beg mercy from those I've neglected or misrepresented here. You've been reading the work of a man learning his craft word by word, sentence by sentence; I've often stumbled, I've often failed.
Forgive me my frailties. And if I am deserving of that forgiveness, let it be because I am not my father's son, but only human. And let the future be such a time as this is reason enough to be loved.
PART EIGHT. A House of Women
I was in a fine, maudlin mood when I wrote the last portion of the preceding chapter; with hindsight it seems somewhat premature. The barbarians aren't here yet, after all. Not even a whiff of their cologne. Perhaps I'll never need the gun Luman gave me. Wouldn't that be a fine old ending to my epic? After hundreds of pages of expectation, nothing. The Gearys decide they've had enough; Galilee stays out at sea; Rachel waits on the beach but never sees him again. The din of war drums dwindles, and they finally fall silent.
Clearly Luman doesn't believe there's much likelihood of this happening. A little while ago he brought me two more weapons; one of them a fine cavalry saber, which he'd polished up until it gleamed, the other a short stabbing sword which was owned, and presumably used, by a Confederate artilleryman. He'd worked to polish this also, he told me, but it hadn't been a very rewarding labor: the metal refused to gleam. That said, the weapon possesses a brutal simplicity. Unlike the sword, which has a patrician elegance, this is a gutting weapon; you can feel its purpose in its heft. It fairly begs to be used.
He stayed an hour or two, chatting about things, and by the time I got back to writing it was dark. I was making notes toward the scene in which Garrison Geary visits the room where Cadmus died-and was thoroughly immersed in the details-when there was a knock on the door and Zabrina presented herself. She had a summons for me, from Cesaria.
"So Mama's home?" I said.
"Are you being sarcastic?" she said.
"No," I protested. "It was a simple observation. Mama's home. That's good. You should be happy."
"I am," she said, still suspicious that I was mocking her earlier dramas.
"Well I'm happy that you're happy. There. Happy?"
"Not really," she said.
"Why the hell not?"
"She's different, Maddox. She's not the woman she was before she left."
"Maybe that's all to the good," I said. Zabrina didn't remark on this; she just tightened her lips. "Anyway, why are you so surprised? Of course she's different. She's lost one of her enemies." Zabrina looked at me blankly. "She didn't tell you?"
"No."
"She killed Cadmus Geary. Or at least she was there when he died. It's hard to know which is true."
"So what does that mean for us?" Zabrina said.
"I've been trying to figure that out myself."
She eyed the three weapons on my desk. "You're ready for the worst," she said.
"They were a gift from Luman. Do you want one?"
"No thank you," she said. "I've got my own ways of dealing with these people if they come here. Is it going to be Garrison Geary, or the good-looking brother?"
"I didn't realize you were following all this," I said. "It could be both."
"I hope it's the good-looking one," Zabrina said. "I could put him to good use."
"Doing what?"
"You know very well," she said. I was astonished that she was being so forthright, but then why shouldn't she be? Everybody else was showing their true colors. Why not Zabrina?
"I could happily have that man in my bed," she went on. "He has a wonderful head of hair."
"Unlike your Dwight."
"Dwight and I still enjoy one another when the mood takes us," she said.
"So it's true," I said, "you did seduce him when he first came here."
"Of course I seduced him, Maddox," she said. "You think I kept him in my room all that time because I was teaching him the alphabet? Marietta's not the only one in the family with a sex drive, you know." She crossed to the desk and picked up the saber. "Are you really going to use this?"