Now I Walk in Beauty—
More than a voice it seemed an act of radical purification.
Beauty is Before Me—
Beauty is Behind Me—
Above and Below Me. .
There, at the end of the hall, in the predawn, the mother stood. She was making a fire.
If in the frenzy of embers the child turned her head, the flames appeared to consume the mother entirely. She stared at the mother encased in light. The mother smiled now when she saw the child, wiping cinders from her brow.
She remembered the light that day was mesmerizing and though it was necessary to look away in order to survive, her entire being was drawn back to that place and there was nothing she could do — thousands of bright souls rushed from the wounded site.
An enormous heat was being generated by the fire and the child knew not to step too close to the flames. It was not yet time for her to become a child of glass, or a child of wax; she had barely begun her life.
The child struggled to speak above the wind and the branches breaking on their heads. Mother, I have a question, the child implored.
The mother looked up. Yes, she called from across the abyss. She handed the child a small flame in a cup.
How old were you, the child asked, when you transformed?
OVERNIGHT THE HOUSE had changed shape. It was now a marvel of transparency. The walls seemed to disappear, and all around them the green world pulsed. Light spilled onto their nightgowns and sap poured down on them. The child knelt and put her head to it. The mother lay next to her, and together they marveled at the dappled light, and the boughs of the tree, and the way it cradled them.
In the night the Great Wind had pollinated the tree’s small, inconspicuous flowers, and they knew that soon the flowers would turn into small fruit that would in turn change into seeds with wings. Wings abounded now, in the tree, in the birds, in the small of the girl’s back. The world is resonant with patterns and repetition. In the mother’s dream, the descending flame reminded her of another flame, and that flame, another, and if she followed the flames back far enough, she might get back to the first flame, she thought, the one that haunted her — but always she lost her way, or got sleepy or distracted and was left in the end only with an inkling, an intimation, and she walked through the world bearing something inside she could not entirely remember or entirely forget, and she was always pulled in two directions.
She sunk for a moment into the lull of moss and loam — the house had become a lair, and it brought her rest. In a way, the mother loved this new house of leaves. She wanted to stay as inconspicuous as possible, as near to invisible as possible, so she might not be sought out, so that she and the child might be forgotten. She wished to be assumed, taken into its shade and be made a shadow for a while. She wished for an aloof god, a distracted one, not a god that sent wind and animated the night. A serene and patient one — one that did not summon or issue edicts. She wanted only peace. A crib or a husk.
As leaf subsides to leaf. . She remembered the old poem, and Eden sinks to grief. . Yes, that was it. There was a part of her that wanted to crawl into the hollow of the tree, into its wound, and sleep. She might succumb here in this leafy sepulcher. She might find herself lost in leafstorm or swarm.
The mother clung to the darkly lit hallway where the child once had sung.
The soul seeks solace. The child, who did not care about the soul, pulled at the mother’s gown. The mother was large and beautiful even with the tree in the room. That is what struck the child.
WHAT IF THEY fell deep into a tree trance and forgot to leave? How long had they been there anyway? The child grew frightened — she longed to see the world again, and the mother too longed for the spaciousness of day: the sun as it began, the field where corn would one day grow, the animals blooming beautiful and slow, and of course, the bells. They loved the way the bells held the day and marked time and kept things in place, but when the mother and child at last left the house, it was still dark and no bells could be heard.
Now they walk. The wind had awakened a place that had remained remote and nearly dormant in the mother and suddenly awakened to it, she felt dizzy. She looked at the recumbent figures in the distance, the men asleep in the slopes, the city far off in flames. The child ran ahead — how lovely is the laughing and singing child! The wind, which had diminished, picked up a little, and in the distance the mountains seemed to smoke.
She thought of the tree of light, without top or bottom, without beginning or end, endlessly falling in them. In a few days when the tree men come and hoist the great pillar away from the house, something will exit their bodies and a dark shape — a permanence — will take its place.
INFINITE GRACE WAS available to them, that is what the mother wanted the child to know. On a milkweed pod in the meadow, a crowned chrysalis hung serenely in wait.
The morning creatures were at last awakening in the Valley. Even though the mother had lived in nearness to the animals her whole childhood, every time she was surprised and filled with awe at their appearance. They were as astonishing to her now as when she was a small girl. Just the other day she had woken to a deer wading knee-deep in the pond through the water lilies, its haunches blazing red.
She could see still the white of its tail, its leap away inducing a hazy afterimage. Next to it, a slate blue heron.
The gigantic heads of the horses leaned over the fence. In the pasture, a cadence of sheep. A large, long-legged cat without a tail in shadow, hung back. Somewhere, the wolves traveling in silver packs. .
IT HAD COME with the Great Wind, under the cover of night, while the Valley had been anesthetized, and now that morning had arrived, and the mist was beginning to lift, and the wind had at last departed, it could be seen quite clearly in the distance. Look! White sails could be discerned in the distance and a faint music — an accordion, cowbells, a most charming sound, and so inviting, as if conjured not played, could be heard wafting across the meadow.
There it stood, shimmering, next to the river. The mother and child walked toward it and stared, intent on memorizing it, for who knew how long this vision would hold? After all it was the Time of Disappearance, and all across the Valley the men had begun to vanish. As much as it was possible, the mother had grown accustomed to the subtractions and the diminishments, but with the appearance of this extraordinary shape before them — so unexpected, so compelling in the ever-emptying landscape — they were filled with longing.
People had begun to gather. Where had it come from? What was its country of origin? Some conjectured, Belgium. The mother did not know. Estonia.
Germany.
The Caspian Sea.
Arabia.
The Black Forest.
Perhaps Armenia. .
Or Finland!
Now the child spoke. It says something! As they watched, red letters were hoisted one by one into the air on poles with streamers. It said — but it was hard to decipher. One of the elders took out her binoculars: S-P-I-E-G-E-
Spiegel, it says Spiegel! I told you it was from Germany, one of the Palatines of the Valley said. Spiegel is mirror in German. Spiegel — P-A-L. . What is a Spiegelpal?
Spiegelpalais, it says Spiegelpalais. It’s some sort of tent, someone said finally, and the Spiegelpalais made the meadow new and strange to them.
With spiegels, someone sighed, and at night, white lights.
And a tightrope!
Perhaps it’s a kind of circus from Germany.
The sun made its slow passage across the sky. The onlookers increased. It was the Age of Wonders. No one moved.