Walking Into the Night Read Free

half-darkness with slow steps.

4
    High up in the oak by the walkway outside my window bluebirds have made their nest. I watch their comings and goings through a pair of binoculars whenever I have time; there are four chicks in the nest. Yesterday the male made eighteen journeys in just half an hour for food. He never seemed to come home empty-handed, if you can say that of a bird. I’ve been trying to draw them but have lost some of my old skill through lack of practice. I always thought the drawing I did of the black-tailed godwit— the one we hung in the study—was best. I remember how hard it was to capture the shadings of its chestnut breast; it’s as though I was working on it only yesterday. It was around noon on a Saturday. The sound of hammering drifted in through the window, the smell of pancakes carried from the kitchen, and I looked up to see Maria closing the gate to the street and strolling up the path to the house. She looked dreamy, and paused on the way; I seem to remember she was holding a buttercup in her hand . . .
    But now I’m out of practice and can’t capture the blue sheen on the birds’ backs and wings, even though I can picture it and know it from the sea and the sky. In fact, I came across a dead bird down on the hillside the other day and brought it home so I wouldn’t have to rely on my faulty memory. But it didn’t work—there was no way I could find the right shade, even with my new watercolors.
    The steamer I wrote you about will leave tomorrow morning. The warehouses are now packed with iron and cement for the Chief’s endless building projects here on the hill. I dreamed last night that I sailed away with the ship; I was wearing the blue hat I bought in Copenhagen, waving from the deck. I’ve dreamed this dream before but this time I woke up disoriented because it’s years since I’ve seen that hat or even thought about it. Could I have left it behind?
    He folded the letter carefully; five densely written sheets, a polished, almost feminine hand, in blue ink. He didn’t date it and wrote nothing on the envelope but her name. He didn’t seal it but opened the bottom drawer of the desk and laid it on top of the other two letters, next to a small boat whittled from a piece of wood that bore the name
Einar RE 1
and a pebble from home. He laid it carefully on top of the other two letters and decided not to wonder if he would ever send them.

5
    Beneath the peaks of the Santa Lucia range, a few miles inland from the coast, rises the castle built by William Randolph Hearst. Seventeen years ago, before Hearst arrived with his plans, there was nothing on these hills but sunbaked gravel, the odd oak that had managed to put down roots, laurel and sage, and, on the lower slopes, winding, rutted cattle tracks and dry creek beds which ran out in the middle of the plain, having abandoned the attempt to reach the sea. During winter and spring the low-lying land is green, but the grass bleaches during the summer and turns yellow by fall. The shore is lined with sandy beaches, rocks, dunes, and bluffs. The village of San Simeon, with its fish-drying frames, boats, and fishermen’s shacks, so empty and silent it seems even the Almighty has overlooked it, lies a stone’s throw to the north.
    The summer heat can become unbearable down on the plain, but up in the hills the air is cooler. In the spring the wind sweeps like a white wing over the sand and flats, but in the winter it howls and rages. Sometimes when he can’t sleep he remembers the nights when Einar crawled into his bed, afraid that a ghost was blowing on a blade of grass outside his window.
    The Chief had printed a leaflet containing information he wanted the staff to tell guests about the place. He calls it the Ranch, and the hill the Enchanted Hill. The staff are never allowed to use the word
castle
to refer to the place. The information sheet notes that first to be built were the three guesthouses, the Casas del Mar, del Sol, and