Chapter Sixteen: The Garden
The way was familiar. The flat stones beneath his feet were warm and smooth. Myrtle and ivy drifted over the path. As he walked along he thought, stone, myrtle, ivy. To the right was a low wall of cracked and water stained stucco and beyond the wall stood an orchard of apple, pear and peach. He thought apple, pear, peach. On either side of the path were red leafed maples, weeping mulberry and cherry in bloom, the branches hanging just above his head, petals dropping like snow as they passed. The air hummed with the noise of bees, crawling in and out of flowers, dusty with pollen.
All his thoughts and senses were intent upon the path that ended at a wooden gate set in a stonewall, leading to a cobbled courtyard that seemed to be attached to a great house, though none was in sight. In the center of the courtyard was a fountain splashing down through marble basins into a black pool of water. Seated at the edge of the pool, trailing his fingers in the water and humming a simple melody was a man. Felix thought, fountain, marble, basin, man.
Veronica stood at his side and he thought, woman. Together they watched the man, who looked up and said in a melodious voice, “Hello.” He had a low forehead and a short neck, thick red hair, and sideburns that covered most of his face. His eyes were pale blue and happy. He had freckled shoulders and stubby pink fingers. The man stood and followed them out the other gate.
The garden continued in every direction without end. He could only see as far as the path was straight and all the paths meandered.
Wherever he looked there was a profusion of life. Beneath the periwinkle and sweet William, the ostrich ferns and hosta, beetles pushed up balls of dirt, ants roamed the rocks, red mites dotted banks of moss, and millipedes searched the leaf mold. Chipmunks and squirrels darted over carved gargoyles and cherubim obscured by vines, pausing to sniff the air. Slugs stretched out on tree trunks and snakes and lizards lay sunning themselves on rocks set among tufts of grass.
They passed a pair of donkeys browsing in thick clover and a small herd of black and white goats with silver bells around their necks. Whatever he saw he silently named to himself and wherever he directed his attention, for however long, more and more detail was revealed.
With every step his foot grew strong. Sinews in his legs and back stretched, filled with blood and breath. Connections within his body strengthened. Head, stomach, balls, feet functioned as one. The air entered his nose, his mouth, the pores of his skin. Mind tingled in his fingertips.
They crossed a meadow of wild flowers, pink, crimson, yellow, orange spots floating over the stalks of grass. Hawks circled overhead; larks and robins flew up out of the field. Sparrows cheeped in hedges. Butterflies and bees hovered above the blossoms and insects crawled up and down the stalks. It was hot but Felix had not yet broken a sweat.
“I’m Felix,” Felix said to the man.
The man smiled and shook his hand. “Sammael.”
Veronica crouched down and watched herself pee in the grass.
Felix pointed to the sky. “Hawk,” he said.
The man squinted up at it. “No, eagle. Too big for a hawk.”
Veronica stood and pointed to the puddle of piss. Insects swarmed over it.
“Piss beetle,” Felix said. He had never felt so at home. The sky was bright; the earth drank up the sun and sighed it back in wind and radiant color.
Sammael picked a blade of grass and said, “It’s the only place you can really feel at home.”
They walked over large glacial rocks, glittery with mica and veins of quartz and then down a bank of woodland ferns to a twisting stream. At the head of the stream was a waterfall dropping into a shadowed pool, where a white heron stood fishing.
Sammael said, “Taste.”
They dipped their hands in and drank. “Water,” Felix said. He let out a huge belly laugh and splashed in, kicking water up over his body. They bent down to drink, squatted in the cold stream and scooped it up and poured it over their heads and down their throats and then climbed the opposite bank. It grew dark. On either side rose towering pines. Big mushrooms with fleshy caps and arching stems pushed up through beds of pine needles.
“After a swim,” Sammael said, “I love to lie back on the bank and have a nap.”
“I like to eat,” Felix said. “Is there anything to eat?”
“The fruit’s quite good,” answered Sammael. “There’s wine and barley cakes soaked in honey. Some people hunt. I’ve seen them feasting on the haunch of some poor dappled fool they’ve dragged down and slaughtered. But, the problem is this: if what you eat has nerves, you feel yourself being eaten. The fruit’s much more pleasant and reliable.”
Bark magnified in his sight, the lines became like maps. He could see the brush strokes of the world, the artifice, design without purpose, all themes and all variations. Even the disposition of pine needles and mushrooms seemed intentional, each placed to form a pleasing pattern.
They came to a small cove of a large lake, bound on either end by a high granite outcrop. In the distance stood steep, snow covered mountains. The far shore of the lake was a red cliff, thickly wooded on top. Waves gently nudged the warm black sand. The indigo water ruffled with wind and sun. It was going down some and faced them directly. As it sank, it grew brighter. Gasses and heat poured down on the mountain valleys, molten light struck the water and pulsed out towards them. Kingfishers squawked and shrieked in the trees and plunged recklessly in, emerging with silver fish impaled on their beaks, which they smashed on the rocks and ate. A bear retreated from the shore and vanished through the birch and willows.
They waded out up to their knees and dove in. The water was cold, almost too cold to swim in, but his back and head were so hot it came as a relief and soon he was swimming around, feeling the water stream across his eyes, behind his ears, rushing into every fold, between toes and fingers. Each hair of his body stretched out and sparked in its follicle. A dry, mineral taste filled his mouth and nostrils. Then the warm, honey colored air. He was laughing, swimming on his back like an otter, kicking up big splashes that broke and fell in iridescent showers.
He watched Veronica plunge in and out, her strong back arched over the water, the soles of her feet and toes pointed. Kingfishers talked madly in their ears. Sammael shouted, “They’re telling us to get out of their water!” He gave a sort of whoop and splashed one maniacally insistent bird, its boxy cobalt head marked with red and green. “Go on,” he said. “Room for all here.”
Veronica swam to shore and stretched towards the sky. The water glistened on her flesh. She ran up the rocky promontory, stood on the overhang, leapt into the air, taking flight with outstretched arms and turned vertical, plunging straight down and disappearing. A moment later she popped up in the center of the lake where the sun fired up the scales of choppy water.
Felix climbed the rocks and stood at the edge. Veronica called out to him. He could barely see her in the busy refractions. He took to the air and felt for a moment like he could just fly out to her. There was an empty pause, he hung poised in mid air and then dropped in an explosion of bubbles. When he broke the surface he lay back and looked at the sky into a blue beyond all time. They swam to shore together.
Felix watched Veronica climb the rock and dive again. Then he followed her. Soon the kingfishers joined them and the whole noisy group took turns leaping and diving into the water. The sun was almost on the horizon and Veronica glowed in its light. As she leapt, a wave of energy, starting in the mountains, passed through water, sky, earth. Felix felt it disturbing his bowels, his heart, his brain. It rippled through the senses, through time. In the midst of this pulse all activity ceased, a massive punctuation. When it passed, the sun grew more intense. The water no longer reflected its light but became a blazing conflagration without heat. He could no longer look at the sun and even the water blinded him. He felt Veronica launch into the air and out over the water, felt her shadow pass, but she was engulfed in the light and all he saw was globules of color, suspended in protoplasmic goo. There was a roaring in his head. Then the world slowly reassembled. The sun was lower, half behind the mountains, scarlet, with purple clouds extending out like wings on either side. He looked up. She wasn’t on the rock. She wasn’t in the water. She was gone. Sammael was gone. The garden was silent. It didn’t matter where he was in the universe, in the end he would be totally alone.
He wasn’t afraid, he didn’t feel lost. But he felt like each thing he had named no longer had a name. Water, bird, tree, rock, snake, bear, stream, were not things at all but one continuous articulated being. He took a deep breath. The wind blew, the water rippled and glittering wavelets broke out across the surface of the lake. Veronica erupted out of its midst, flying up in a fountain of water, breathless, eyes bulging, mouth agape. She swam ashore, crawled up onto the beach and lay there panting.
He knelt down beside her and she whispered, “I was one of those birds. I flew out to the center of the lake and plunged down, flew up and plunged down.” The water beaded up on her shoulders and forehead, she was on all fours, gasping at the ground. As she caught her breath and her eyes focused Felix sank to his knees, into the warm black sand. Her eyes were like glacial lakes, mirrored ice and sky. They were crouched down, face-to-face. She smelled like raw fish. On her lips, scales flashed like opals.
