So he took shelter in Puerto Bueno-which at that time was a quarter of its present size, or less, its harbor newly built, and almost entirely unused. The man who'd founded the construction was one Arturo Higgins, a man of English descent who had lost all his money in the endeavor, and had taken his own life the year before. His house stood unoccupied at the top of the hill, and Galilee, out of some perverse desire to see the place of suicide, had gone up the hill and entered. Nobody had visited the house since the body had been removed: gulls had come to roost in its bedrooms, and there were rats' nests in the fireplace, but its desolation suited the trespasser mightily. He purchased the house the next day, from Higgins's daughter, and moved a few belongings in. The view, on dear days, was peaceful, and he came to think of it as his second home; his first, of course, being the vessel moored in the harbor.
After a couple of weeks he'd departed, locking the house up behind him and making it quietly known that anyone who ventured over the threshold would regret it.
He'd not come back for thirteen months, but come back he did, sometimes three or four times in a single year, sometimes with several years intervening. He became a mystery of some note, and there's force to the argument that the felons and the fugitives who came to the town thereafter did so because they'd heard of him. If this is so, you may ask, then why did the tale of the voyager, a man with divine blood running in his veins, not also attract a few finer spirits? It's a reasonable question. Why didn't saints come to Puerto Bueno, and Galilee's presence turn it into a town where the lame skipped and the dumb sang patter songs?
I have only this answer: he was too crippled. How could his legend inspire healing saints when he was incapable of healing himself?
So there you have the way things were, until a week or so before Rachel departed for Hawaii.
It happened that Galilee was not out at sea at that time, but resident in the house on the hill. He'd brought The Samarkand into Puerto Bueno because it was in need of repairs, and for the last few weeks he'd been back and forth between the harbor and the house daily, laboring from dawn to dusk on repairing the boat, and spending the hours of darkness sitting at the window of the Higgins house looking out over the Pacific. He would not let anybody set foot on The Samarkand to help him. He was a perfectionist: no other hand but his could be put to the tasks of nailing and planing and staining. Occasionally some inquisitive soul would idle along the quayside and watch him at work, but his glare was enough to drive them away after a little while. Only once did he engage in any social activity in the town, and that was one windy night-just a few days before his departure-when he appeared at the little bar on the hill where it seemed half of Puerto Bueno's citizens came to drink on any given evening, and downed enough brandy to have poleaxed any man in the bar. All it did was make Galilee a little merry, and he became quite loquacious-at least by previous standards. Those who talked with him came away with the flattering impression that he'd opened up to them: shared a few intimacies. The following morning, however, when they came to repeat what he'd said, they could recall very little that had pertained to Galilee himself. His conversation, it seemed, had been a form of listening; and when he had chimed in with something it had invariably been a fragment of somebody else's life he'd been recounting.
Two days later, his work on The Samarkand seemed suddenly to become much more intensive. He worked the next seventy-two hours without a break, his nightly labors lit by hurricane lamps set all about the boat. It was as though he'd suddenly been given sailing orders, and was obliged to depart sooner than he'd expected.
Sure enough, he was at the general store in the late afternoon of the third day of his labors, ordering supplies. His manner was brusque, his expression thunderous: nobody dared ask him where he was headed this time. The supplies were delivered to the boat by Hernandez, the son of the owner of the store; Galilee paid him extravagantly for his efforts, and asked the young man if he'd apologize to Hernandez Sr. on Galilee's behalf; that he knew he'd been less than civil earlier in the day, and he'd meant to cause no offense by it.
That was the last conversation anyone in Puerto Bueno had with their fellow citizen during his visit. Galilee weighed anchor as the night fell, and The Samarkand slipped out of the tiny harbor on the evening tide, to destinations much speculated upon, but unknown.
Nicodemus, as I've already indicated, was a man of prodigious sexual energies. He loved all things erotic (except books, of course): I doubt more than two consecutive minutes ever passed without his thinking some sexual thought. Nor was his interest limited to human, or superhuman, congress. He enjoyed the spectacle of an unleashed libido in whatever skin it showed itself. His horses especially, of course. He loved to watch his horses fuck. Many times he'd be right there with them, in a fine old sweat himself, whispering now to the stallion, now to the mare, encouraging them in the act. And if things weren't going well, he'd have his hands in the heat of things, helping it all along. Masturbating the stallion if need be, and guiding him home if he was clumsy; touching the mare with such tenderness she'd be calmed and accepting.
I remember one such incident with particular clarity; it happened perhaps two years before his death. He had a horse called Dumuzzi, of which he was particularly proud. And with reason. This was a stallion in the genes of which I'm certain my father had divinely meddled, for I never saw, nor expect to ever see again, so remarkable a horse. Forget all you've heard of Arabian stallions, or of the warrior steeds of the Kazak. Dumuzzi was another order of animal, preternaturally intelligent, exquisitely proportioned and magnificently formed. His bloodline, if it had survived, would have redefined what we understand by the word "horse." I've sometimes wondered if my father hadn't been sculpting this splendor as a kind of inspiration to the human world; a species of such perfection it would make all who witnessed its strength and beauty meditate on the sublimity of creation. (Then again: perhaps it was merely a selfish indulgence and he intended to keep Dumuzzi's son and daughters at L'Enfant; I will probably never know.)
The point is: the night of which I speak there was a thunderstorm of majestic scale, which had been moving in since the late afternoon. Darkness had fallen prematurely, as great bruise-and-iron clouds covered the last of the sun. Even at several miles distance the thunder was so deep it made the ground shake.
The horses were panicky, of course; in no mood to be fucking. Especially Dumuzzi, whose only real frailty was temperamentaclass="underline" he seemed to know he was a special creature and was wont to behave operatically. That night he was feeling particularly difficult: when my father came to the stable to prepare him Dumuzzi stamped and kicked and refused every calming word. I remember suggesting to Nicodemus that we try again the following morning, when the storm had passed, but there was a battle of wills here that no suggestion of mine was going to pacify. Nicodemus addressed Dumuzzi as he might have spoken to an inebriated and volatile friend; told him that he was in no mood for this drama, and the sooner Dumuzzi calmed down and began to behave sensibly, the better for all concerned. Dumuzzi ignored the warning; if anything his shenanigans escalated. He kicked his trough to splinters, and then kicked a hole in the stable wall-just punched out a dozen bricks as though they were so much papier-mache'. I wasn't afraid for my father-at that time I believed him immune from harm-but I was certainly anxious for my own safety. In my various travels on behalf of Nicodemus, in search of great horses, I'd seen what harm they could do. I'd visited the grave of a breeder in Limoges who'd had his brain kicked to mush two days before I arrived (by the very horse I'd come to view); I'd seen another fellow, in the Tian Shan mountains, who'd lost his hands to an irate mare, just had them bitten off: one! two! And I'd seen horses fight among themselves until there was more blood on their flanks and the ground beneath their hooves than in their veins. So there I was, afraid for my limbs and my life, but unable to take my eyes off the spectacle before me. The storm was almost overhead by now, and Dumuzzi was in an eye-rolling frenzy. Sparks of static electricity ran up and down his mane, and leapt between his hooves and the ground; his complaints were so loud they cut through the thunder.