Galilee Read Free Page A

balcony.
    â€œDo you miss England?” she asked me.
    â€œThis is the most peculiar conversation . . .” I said.
    â€œIt’s a simple question. You must miss it sometimes.”
    (My mother, I should explain, was English; one of my father’s many mistresses.)
    â€œIt’s a very long time since I was in England. I only really remember it in my dreams.”
    â€œDo you write the dreams down?”
    â€œOh . . .” I said. “Now I get it. We’re back to the book.”
    â€œIt’s time, Maddox,” she said, with a greater gravity than I could recall her displaying in a long while. “We don’t have very much time left.”
    â€œAccording to whom?”
    â€œOh for God’s sake, use your eyes. Something’s changing, Eddie. It’s subtle, but it’s everywhere. It’s in the bricks. It’s in the flowers. It’s in the ground. I went walking near the stables, where we put Papa, and I swear I felt the earth shaking.”
    â€œYou’re not supposed to go there.”
    â€œDon’t change the subject. You are so good at that, especially when you’re trying to avoid your responsibility.”
    â€œSince when was it—”
    â€œYou’re the only one in the family who can write all this down, Eddie. You’ve got all the journals here, all the diaries. You still get letters from you-know-who.”
    â€œThree in the last forty years. It’s scarcely a thriving correspondence. And for God’s sake, Marietta, use his name.”
    â€œWhy should I? I hate the little bastard.”
    â€œThat’s the one thing he certainly isn’t, Marietta. Now why don’t you just drink your gin and leave me alone?”
    â€œAre you telling me no , Eddie?”
    â€œYou don’t hear that very often, do you?”
    â€œEddie . . . ” she simpered.
    â€œMarietta. Darling. I’m not going to throw my life into turmoil because you want me to write a family history.”
    She gave me a sharp little look and downed her gin in one throatful, setting the glass on the balcony railing. I could tell by the precision of this motion, and her pause before she spoke, that she had an exit line in readiness. She has a fine theatrical flair, my Marietta.
    â€œYou don’t want to throw your life into turmoil? Don’t be so perfectly pathetic. You don’t have a life, Eddie. That’s why you’ve got to write this book. If you don’t, you’re going to die without having done a damn thing.”
III
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    S he knew better of course. I’ve lived, damn her! Before my injury I had almost as great an appetite for experience as Nicodemus. I take that back. I was never as interested in the sexual opportunities afforded by my travel as he was. He knew all the great bordellos of Europe intimately; I preferred to wander the cathedrals or drink myself into a stupor in a bar. Drink is a weakness of mine, no question, and it’s got me into trouble more than once. It’s made me fat too. It’s hard, of course, to stay thin when you’re in a wheelchair. Your backside gets big, your waistline spreads; and Lord, my face, which used to be so well made I could walk into any gathering and take my pick of the female company, is now pasty and round. Only in my eyes might you glimpse the magnetism I once exercised. They are a peculiar color: mingled flecks of blue and gray. The rest of me’s just gone to hell.
    I suppose that happens to everybody sooner or later. Even Marietta, who is a pure-blooded Barbarossa, has said that over the years she’s noticed some subtle signs of aging; it’s just much, much slower than it would be for a human being. One gray hair every decade or so isn’t anything to bitch about, I remind her, especially when nature had given her so much else: she has Cesaria’s flawless skin (though neither she nor Zabrina are quite as black as their mother)