Let the Dark Flower Blossom (3 page)

S. Z. Schell:

I know who killed Roman Stone
.

If you want to know about his death, answer three questions about his life
.

I will come to collect
.

And here he had signed his name.

The way that my cat will present me with a mouse whose neck he has just snapped.

Benjamin Salt
—

His name should have meant something.

And, of course; it did. It does.

No one could have expected this turn of events.

Roman Stone is dead.

And I am living on an island.

Benjamin Salt is coming to visit.

He has questions. He wants a story.

I must ready the guest room.

Mrs. Sarasine found herself, on a Sunday morning in November, entirely alone. If it had not happened by plan or design, this solitude was still not unwanted. Quiet hushed throughout her elegantly appointed rooms. The early snow had brought about the cancellation of this month's meeting of her baking club; and now the ingredient evidence of the proposed chess tartlets: the organic buckwheat flour and free-range eggs, the brown sugar, the bourbon vanilla, the hand-ground China cinnamon, the fat golden raisins and blanched pecans, the butter and fleur de sel, the slivered almonds, pistachios, and walnuts occupied her kitchen. Her husband's return home from that interminable murder trial (where Louis Sarasine, counsel for the defense, had entered a plea of
not guilty
and had gone on to destroy the lone witness with a charge of false memory syndrome) had been delayed. The jury was—indecipherable, he said. Or was it enigmatic? It was hard to read a jury. They might be kind; they could be cruel, but Louis said that in the end they would follow the rules. He believed this: in the innate
logic of an argument. Or rather, in the innate logic of his own arguments. She had a brief image, an idea: a bird flying, an airplane crashing. She saw herself a widow in a black dress; she knew just the one—and then, no, no. Don't think it. Don't dream it. Don't imagine it, and it won't happen. What one dreams is always possible. Louis was an expert in possibility. He called every day to tell her stories of dead girls. He wouldn't be in to O'Hare until who knows when. And her daughter was traveling abroad: vaguely and euphemistically abroad; and not due back anytime soon; so had said the scrawled hand on a postcard of a ruined amphora dated five months ago. Even the French bulldog, Zola, was spending the day at the groomer's being shampooed, clipped, and—oh, undergoing some new eucalyptus aromatherapy treatment meant to alleviate canine ennui. All the girls in her book club were raving about it. Snow was falling over Lake Michigan. And Mrs. Sarasine, a woman who never let a moment idle by, who kept herself from certain dark thoughts and uncertain realities by keeping busy, sat before the window, staring out at wintry Chicago, still in her silk-trimmed cashmere robe. There were any number of ways that she could have put her time to use. At her escritoire (oh
Moth-er
, her daughter used to say,
call it a desk for Christ's sake
) a stack of cards awaited her, with thank-yous, and how-are-yous, with regrets to extend and envelopes to address; there were phone calls to return. She could have gone to the gym (forty laps four times a week in the heated Olympic-size pool); she could have attempted a batch of those chess tartlets. There was that black dress (hadn't it looked good in the mirror?) to return to the store. No, no: even if the snow would let up, she didn't feel like braving the first rush of the season downtown; though, usually the holiday shoppers, the displays in the windows, the Salvation Army kettle ringers, put her in a pleasant frame of mind. It made her think that perhaps there was hope for civilization.
Should she go to the bookstore and find a new pick for the book club? It was again her turn to choose. The telephone rang, but she did not answer. She studied her fingernail polish. The color was called Shell. And this, whether the delicacy of the pale lacquer or the recollection of the word, caused her almost but not quite beautiful face to soften.

My island is called on old maps—
L'Île-du-Père
, but that name has long since fallen away and now it is known as Pear Island. French missionaries settled here three hundred years ago. They brought evangelical dreams. They wanted to speak the word; but, instead of divinity, they spread disease: smallpox, typhus, plague, influenza, measles. And then having thusly conquered the New World, the missionaries themselves were beset with a mystery ailment. Some died of fevers; others went mad. Those who survived the illness were left lunatics—lunar antic—; they wandered at night along the shore searching for the lost father for whom they had come so far, to such a strange place. Or so goes the legend that the tour guides tell to summer visitors as they show the old houses, the town square, library, the inn, the haunted woods, sandstone bluffs, and spare beaches. In the summer the ferry runs round-trip twice a day—to and from the island to the mainland. Now it is November. The last blackthorn apples have been collected from the trees. The roses have gone to ruin. The days are short and dark. There are few year-round residents. Soon the ferry will cease for the season. This is my world: an island in Lake Superior off Wisconsin's northern peninsula. This is my island—or at least I imagine it as such—. I call my island
Perdu;
I came here a widower wanting to lose my memory, wanting only to forget.

Pear Island is a sanctuary for wild birds.

And there is no small amount of either irony or symbolism in such a statement of fact.

My house is a gateman's cottage. It has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a cellar, and a study that looks out upon the lake. The furnishings were left here, and I have kept them. The walnut chairs are battered but solid. The kitchen table isn't too bad, with a volume of Poe set under the wobbly leg. It is in an aged armchair in the book-cluttered study, that I spend—or waste, that I ravage or run out the clock on—my time.

The walls are covered in faded floral paper. There is a flowery scent, as well, vague—an odor of desire or sickness—. My bed holds the shape of some ghost body. The previous owner was an old man; he died and was buried on the mainland. The cemetery here is full up with the crooked crosses of missionaries and lunatics.

Once on a beach—as a child—I saw a hermit crab take up residence in a tin can.

The old man died and I moved into his shell.

I live alone here.

I fell into habit, in the early years: I woke late in the afternoon; idled over coffee through the pages of Bulfinch's
Mythology;
through Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Eliot. I mourned
Les Fleurs du Mal;
or lingered on
Adonais
' last triumphant stanzas. Maximus of Gloucester longed for blood, jewels, and miracles. Prometheus bound upon the rocks cried out:
I yet have no device / By which to free myself from this my woe
. Oedipus followed the trail of his own footsteps. The mysteries of Eleusis remained so. Have you seen the eternal footman take your coat and snicker? In the margins of every page I found recrimination, accusation. In short: I was afraid. I read until the light waned. And then, as evening fell, I made my way on foot to my nearest neighbor's house. Dr. Lemon is a retired psychiatrist, and we had a standing appointment for dinner and a game of chess. I say
had
—because he is in failing health. Our evenings are abbreviated of argument now. I talk, and he listens. He lives with his daughter, Beatrice. The doctor suffers from a disease that is—in inverse chronological order—destroying his memory. He remembers the far off, but recent events elude him.

He recommended books. He lent me volumes from his library. I was studious. He was sage. And we moved—slowly—our rooks and knights across the black-and-white squares; our games carried on for days.

Dr. Lemon would sigh and announce his move:
Queen takes pawn, my friend. And this is as it should be; all is right in the universe
. And he would offer me, poured out with his trembling hands, a glass of plum brandy.

I would walk home late in the darkness.

The first year passed into the second; the second into the third.

Twelve years on an island.

When first I began to visit the doctor, his daughter was no more than a girl.

Beatrice was born on the island. She never went to school. She ran wild through the raspberry brambles. She read every book in her father's library. Her mother died in childbirth. Her mother was a descendent of the original mad settlers.

Beatrice knows the plants and trees. Knows her birds by genus and species; by habit and habitat; and has given names to her favorites. She can find her way by the stars. Her dogs follow her through the woods. Her father taught her French and Latin. Her father taught her all that he imagined she would need to know. Lately, Beatrice has been concerned with survival in case of nuclear attack, avian flu, or any otherwise doomsday scenario. She has been ordering gear from catalogs: hurricane lanterns, a camp stove, water purification tablets, and paraffin candles. She cares for her father
through his illness. She visits me in the afternoon, after she has given her father a medicine that lets him sleep. She likes to sit at my kitchen table, watching
Tomorrow's Edge
on the little black-and-white
TV
.

I told Beatrice that I was expecting a guest.

“What kind of cake would he like?” she asked.

She was hoping to bake a Santa Fe sugar cake. She said that she had never tried to make one before. But she had read about it in a story. And then she was silent. And her gray eyes darkened—so like her father's—and I knew just what she was thinking. She was wondering:—what would happen if she baked this Santa Fe sugar cake and the real, that is, the actual cake, did not please her quite so much as the idea of the cake?

Beatrice has short dark hair. She is slight and slim. This description does not tell too much about her. It would be better to say: Beatrice Lemon likes it when late at night the radio picks up faraway stations. Or: she has always wanted to bake a Santa Fe sugar cake, but she has been awaiting the opportunity that has now presented itself in the imminent arrival of Benjamin Salt to do so.

Yes, I am awaiting Salt.

He knows who killed Stone.

It was Roman who told me about Salt.

Benjamin Salt published, at the tender age of twenty-six, his first novel, a tome, a Herculean hurly-burly of literary ephemera called,
Here Comes Everyone
.

There was a photo of a typewriter on the jacket.

And the title was spelled out across the keys.

Critics doted on him. His success was swift and astonishing, though not absolute. As it always goes: a few reviews were less than good. Not bad—worse than bad—they were indifferent. They were tepid. This tepidity—this lukewarmedness—affronted Salt. He was
outraged. Never one to sit back, he acted. He started his own literary magazine,
Cogito
. He wrote a manifesto. He opposed irony. He decried criticism. He cried out for miracles. He demanded symbolism over subtext. He put a voluptuous young starlet—wearing only eyeglasses and a strategically placed dictionary—on the cover of the premier issue. He championed passion. He called for an end to
the pervading pessimism of our time
. He sparked debate. In cafés and chat-rooms people were discussing important issues; thanks be to Benjamin Salt. He had an office full of unshaven men in flip-flops and straight-haired serious Scandinavian-seeming girls who wrote upbeat articles and relentlessly positive plot summaries. He had apostles and disciples. Their office motto was:
Be positive or get the fuck out of here
.

He hit the college lecture-hall circuit. He packed auditoriums. He told stories. He preached from his podium a message of obliterating hope. He was mobbed by autograph seekers. Kids crushed to get seats up front. Girls fainted and boys raised fists. It was pandemonium when Salt pounded the dais and proclaimed—
We are history! We are everyone!

And in Hollywood the book was already being made into a film.

Of course, you could see why this was interesting to Roman. Ro was reputedly clean, sidesplittingly sober; he had settled down into domesticity, into lo-cal and low-impact adulthood. He and his wife Dibby, the beauty queen, had two young sons; and they were living on a horse farm in Connecticut. Ro didn't begrudge Salt his newfound fame. He only wondered—as we all do at the beginning of a story—what would happen next?

I couldn't open a newspaper without reading about Salt.

And so I learned about Benjamin Salt; he collected antique keys, postcards, wristwatches, and typewriters; his Brooklyn brownstone was haunted; his wife was a novelist named Elizabeth
Weiss; he had a son, Bruno; his dog was a long-haired dachshund called Kafka.

Salt believed in the principles of a cruelty-free existence.

The absurdity of such a belief had not yet occurred to him.

In photographs—I saw Ben and Liz at a cocktail party fundraiser with the lit it crowd; she in a black dress leaning full cleavage-wise toward Ben; he whispering in her ear.

Here they are strolling down the street on a lazy Saturday: Ben in his peacoat side by side with Liz, in high boots and a newsboy cap, pushing Bruno in the baby carriage.