Catholic atheist that he was, he half-believed in that hell; half believed he would suffer-if not eternally at least for a long, long time-in a barren spot where every comfort wealth and power could bestow was denied him. He'd never really cared about luxury so he wouldn't miss the silk pajamas and the Italian shoes and the thousand-bucks-a-bottle champagne. He'd miss control. He'd miss knowing he could get any politician, to the very highest, on the phone in five minutes, whatever their affiliations. He'd miss knowing every word he uttered was scrutinized for a clue to his desires. He'd miss being idolized. He'd miss being hated. He'd miss having a purpose. That was the real hell waiting for him: the wasteland where his will meant nothing, because he had nothing to work it upon.
Yesterday he'd cried quietly to himself at the prospect. Today, he had no tears left. His head was just a cesspool, filled with dirty little words that he had no use for now that his bitch-wife had gone. Gone to get herself fucked, no doubt; gone to spread her cunt for some stinking donkey-dick-
He was saying the words aloud, he vaguely realized; talking filth to himself while he sat in his own caked shit. And in his head there were pictures to accompany the monologue; too blurred for him to know if they were excremental or erotic.
Somewhere in the midst of all this confusion there were other concerns he knew he should address. Business unfinished, good-byes unsaid. But he couldn't pin his thoughts down long enough to name them; the dirt kept distracting him.
At one point the nurse came in and asked him how he was doing. It took the greatest effort of will not to let out a flood of filth, but he used the last remnants of his self-control to order her out of the room. She told him she'd be back in ten minutes with his noon medication, and then left.
As he listened to her footsteps receding across the hall he heard a whirring sound in his head. It seemed to be coming from the back of his skull; an irritating little din that rose in volume by degrees. He tried to shake it out-like a dog with a flea in its ear-but it wouldn't go. It simply got louder, and more shrill. He grabbed hold of the arm of the sofa so as to pull himself to his feet. He needed help. A head awash with dirty words was one thing, but this was too vile to be endured. He got to his feet, but his legs weren't strong enough to support him. His hand slipped out from under him and he fell sideways. He cried out as he went down, but he heard no sound. The whine had become so loud it overwhelmed everything else: the crack of his brittle bones as he hit the floor, the din of the table lamp as it came smashing down, caught by his out-flung hand.
For a few moments, when he hit the ground, he lost consciousness, and in a kinder world than this he might never have found it again. But fate hadn't finished with him yet. After a period of blissful darkness his eyes flickered open again. He was lying on his side where he'd fallen, the whine now so loud he felt certain it would shake his skull apart.
No; not even that excruciating luxury was granted him. He lay there alive, and deafened, until somebody came and found him.
His thoughts, if such they could be called, were chaotic. There were still fragments of filth in the stew, but they were no longer complete words. They were just syllables, thrown against the wall of his skull by the relentless whine.
When Celeste came back in, she was a model of proficiency. She cleared her patient's throat of some vestiges of vomit, ascertained that he was breathing properly, and then called for an ambulance. That done, she went back out into the hallway, alerted a member of the household staff to the crisis, and told them to find Loretta, and have her go to Mount Sinai where Cadmus would be taken. When she returned to Cadmus she found that he'd opened his eyes, just a fraction, and that his head had turned away from the door.
"Can you hear me, Mr. Geary?" she asked him gently.
He made no reply, but his eyes opened a little wider. He was trying to focus, she saw, the object of his attempted scrutiny the painting that was hung on the far wall of the room. The nurse knew nothing about art whatsoever, but this mammoth picture had slowly exercised a fascination over her, so much so that she'd asked the old man about it. He'd told her it was painted by an artist called Albert Bierstadt and that it represented his conception of a limitless American wilderness. Looking at it, he'd said, was supposed to be like taking a journey: your eye traveled from one part of the panorama to the next, always finding something new. He'd even shown her how to look at it through a rolled-up sheet of paper, as if viewing the scene through a telescope. On the left was a waterfall feeding a pool where buffalo drank; behind them, stretching across the canvas, was a rolling plain, with patches of bright sunlight and shadow, and beyond the grasslands a range of snow-capped mountains, the grandest of which had its heights wreathed in creamy cloud, except for its topmost crag, which was set against a pocket of deep blue sky. The only human presence in the picture was a solitary pioneer on a dappled horse, who was perched on a ridge to the right of the scene, studying the terrain before him.
"That man's a Geary," Cadmus had once told the nurse. She hadn't known whether the old man was joking or not, and she hadn't wanted to risk his ire by asking. But now, watching his face as he struggled to focus on the painting, she somehow knew that the pioneer was what Cadmus' eyes were straining to see. Not the buffalo, not the mountains, but the man who was surveying all of this, in readiness for conquest. At last, he gave up: the effort was too much for him. He made a tiny, frustrated sigh, and his top lip curled a little, as if in contempt at his own incapacity. "It's all right…" she said to him, smoothing a stray strand of silver-white hair back from his brow. "I can hear them coming."
This was no lie. She could indeed hear the medics outside in the hallway. A moment later, and they were tending to him, lifting Cadmus up off the floor and onto the stretcher, covering him with blankets, their gentle reassurances echoing her own.
At the last, as they picked the stretcher up to carry him out, his gaze went back in the direction of the canvas. She hoped his exhausted eyes had caught a glimpse this time, though she doubted it. The chances of his ever coming back to study the painted pioneer again were, she knew, remote.
For Rachel the house was a different place now that she knew that Galilee had built it. What a labor it must have been for a man on his own; digging and laying the foundations, raising the walls, fashioning windows and doors, roofing it, tiling it, painting it. No doubt his sweat was in its timbers, and his curses, and a kind of genius, to make a house that felt so comforting. It was no wonder Niolopua's mother had wanted to possess it. If she couldn't have its builder, then it was the next best thing.
Following the conversation on the veranda Rachel no longer doubted that Galilee would come back, but as the afternoon went on, and she turned over all she knew about the man her mood grew steadily darker. Perhaps she was deceiving herself, thinking that something rare and tender had passed between them the previous night; perhaps when he returned he'd be doing so out of some bizarre obligation. After all she was just another Geary wife as far as he was concerned; another bored bitch getting her little fix of paradise. He didn't know how much of a captive she felt: how could he? And how could he be blamed if he thought her despicable, taking up residence in his dream house, lying in the cool like some planter's wife while Niolopua trimmed the grass?
And then, as if that weren't enough, the things she'd done last night! She grew sick with embarrassment thinking about it. The way she'd displayed herself to him; what the hell had she been thinking? If she'd seen any other woman behave that way she'd have called them a slut; and she'd have had reason. She should have protested the instant she'd realized where his story was going. She should have said: I can't listen to this, and firmly told him to leave. Then maybe he would have come back because he wanted to; instead of-