"How I came to kill George Geary?"
"Not just that. Why you came here to be with the Geary women. Why you left your family in the first place."
"Oh…" he said softly. "You want the whole story."
"Yes," she said, "that's what I want. Please."
"May I ask you why?"
"Because I'm a part of it now. I guess I became a part of it the day Mitchell walked into the store in Boston. And I want to know how I fit."
"I'm not sure I can help you with that," Galilee said. "I'm not certain I know where I fit."
"You just tell me the whole story," Rachel said. "I'D work out the rest for myself."
He nodded, and took a deep breath. The fire had grown more confident in the last few minutes, cooking away the last of the moisture in the wood. The smoke had cleared. Now the flames were yellow and white; the fierce heat making the air between Rachel and Galilee shake.
"I think I should start with Cesaria," Galilee said; and began.
Nobody knows the whole story, of course; nobody can. Perhaps there is no thing entire; only that rubble that Hera-clitus celebrates. At the beginning of this book I boasted that I'd teD everything, and I failed. Now Galilee promises to do the same thing, and he's fated to fail the same way. But I've come to see that as nothing can be made that isn't flawed, the chaDenge is twofold: first, not to berate oneself for what is, after all, inevitable; and second, to see in our failed perfection a different thing; a truer thing, perhaps, because it contains both our ambition and the spoiling of that ambition; the exhaustion of order, and the discovery-in the midst of despair-that the beast dogging the heels of beauty has a beauty aD of its own.
So Galilee began to tell his story, and though Rachel had asked him for everything, and though he intended to teD her everything, he could give her only the parts that he could remember on that certain day at that certain hour. Not everything. Not remotely everything. Just slivers and fragments; that best universe which is rubble.
Galilee began his account, as he said he would, with Cesaria.
"You met my mother already," he said to Rachel, "so you've seen a little of what she is. I think that's aD any body's ever seen: a little. Except for my father Nicodemus-"
"And Jefferson?"
"Oh she told you about him?"
"Not in detail. She just said he'd built a house for her."
"He did. And it's one of the most beautiful houses in the world."
"Will you take me there?"
"I wouldn't be welcome."
"Maybe you would now," Rachel suggested.
He looked at her through the flames. "Is that what you want to do? Go home and meet the family?"
"Yes. I'd like that very much."
'They're all crazy," he warned.
"They can't be any worse than the Gearys,"
He shrugged, conceding the point. "Then we'll go back, if that's what you want to do," he told her.
Rachel smiled. "Well that was easy."
"You thought I'd say no?"
"I thought you'd put up a fight."
Galilee shook his head. "No," he said, "it's time I made my peace. Or at least tried to. None of us are going to be around forever. Not even Cesaria."
"She said at Cadmus's house she was feeling old and weary."
"I think there's a part of her that's always been old and weary. And another part that's born new every day." Rachel looked confounded, and Galilee said: "I can't explain it any better than that. She's as much a mystery to me as to anybody. Including herself. She's a mass of contradictions."
"You told me once, when we were out on the boat, that she doesn't have parents."
"To my knowledge, she doesn't. Nor did my father."
"How's that possible? Where did they come from?"
"Out of the earth. Out of the stars." He shrugged, the expression on his face suggesting that the question was so unanswerable that he didn't think it worth contemplating.
"But she's very old," Rachel said. "You know that much."
"She was being worshipped before Christ was born, before Rome was founded."
"So she's some kind of goddess?"
"That doesn't mean very much anymore does it? Hollywood produces goddesses these days. It's easy."
"But you said she was worshipped."
"And presumably still is, in some places. She had a lot of temples in Africa, I know. The missionaries destroyed some of her cults, but those things never die out completely. I did see a statue of her once, in Madagascar. That was strange, to see my own mother's image, and people bowing down before it. I wanted to say to them: don't waste your prayers. I know for a fact she's not listening. She's never listened to anyone in her life, except her husband. And she gave him such hell he died rather than stay with her. Or at least pretended to die. I think his death was a performance. He did it so he could slip away."
"So where is he?"
"Where he came from presumably. In the earth. In the stars." He drew a deep breath. "This is hard for you, I know. I wish I could make it easier. But I'm not a great expert on what we are as a family. We take it for granted, the way you take your humanity for granted. And day for day, we're not that different. We eat, we sleep, we get sick if we drink too much. At least, I do."
"But you're able to do things the rest of us can't," Rachel replied.
"Not much," Galilee said lightly.
He lifted his hand, and the flames of the fire seemed to leap like an eager dog. "Of course we have more power together-you and I-than either of us had apart. But maybe that's always true of lovers."
Rachel said nothing; she just watched Galilee's face through the fire.
"What else can I tell you?" he went on. "Well… my mother can raise storms. She raised the storm that brought me back here. And she can send her image wherever she wants to. I guess she could go sit on the moon if she was in the mood. She can take life like that-" he snapped his fingers "-and I think she can probably give it, though that's not her nature. She's been a very violent woman in her time. She finds killing easy."
"You don't."
"No, I don't. I'll do it, if I have to, if I've agreed to, but no I don't like it. My father was the same. He liked sex. That was his grand obsession. Not even love. Sex. Fucking. I saw a few of his temples in my time, and let me tell you they were quite a sight. Statues of my father, displaying himself. Sometimes not even him, just a carving of his dick."
"So you got that from him," Rachel said.
"The dick?"
"The love of sex."
Galilee shook his head. "I'm not a great Jover," he said. "Not like him. I could go for months out at sea, not thinking about it." He smiled. "Of course, when I'm with someone, it's a different story."
"No," Rachel said, with a smile of her own. "It's the same story." He frowned, not understanding. "You always tell the same story," she said, "about your invented country…"
"How do you know?"
"Because I recognized it when I heard it again."
"Who from? Loretta?"
"No."
"Who, then?"
"One of your older conquests," Rachel said. "Captain Holt."
"Oh…" Galilee said softly. "Where did you find out about Charles?"
"From bis journal."
"It still exists, after all these years?"
"Yes. Mitchell took it from me. I think his brother's got it now."
"That's a pity."
"Why?"
"Because I think it probably contains the way into L'Enf-ant. I told it all to Charles when we were going in there together, and he wrote it down."
"Why did you do that?"
"Because I was sick and afraid I'd lose consciousness before we got there. They would have been killed trying to find their way in without my help."
"So now Garrison knows how to get to your mother's house?" Rachel said.