My Soul to Keep (15 page)

As if sensing his inner struggle, Kira gazed at Dawit with solemn, unblinking eyes as she watched him pour the batter into the pan. “Daddy … Why is Mommy sick?”

Dawit cursed himself, as he had many times before tonight. He’d so often wished he could relive that moment in the parking lot, at Peter’s Mustang, and let that mortal live. Killing his wife’s friend, he now realized, had been a hasty mistake. A mortal’s life was nothing to him, but everything to his mortal wife. He’d made what should have been his last resort the first.

But could he otherwise have prevented them from learning what happened to Rosalie? He’d believed killing Peter would halt Jessica’s research in Chicago, and he’d been right. But he was to blame for making it necessary. Wretched impulse! If he had let nature take Rosalie instead, their book would not have endangered him. Peter would be living still.

Dawit had wanted Jessica and Kira with him at home, away from the newspaper and her passions she wasted there—yet, this was not his wife. Her friend was two weeks dead, and so was she. As often as mortals confronted death, Dawit was intrigued by how it affected them. Any deaths they endured seemed to serve as further evidence that theirs was coming too. Now, Jessica seemed afraid to live.

“She’s not really sick, honey. She’s sad. A good friend of hers died. You remember how we felt when Princess died and you stayed home from school? That’s what’s happened to Mommy. When you’re sad, you don’t like to do the things you usually do.”

“Will she be sad forever?” Kira asked, looking alarmed.

“No. Are you still sad about Princess?”

Kira nodded emphatically.

“But not as sad as you were the very first day. Remember how you cried? And me too? We’ll always be sad inside a little, but not the same way. It gets better. Mommy will get better too.”

Kira leaned closer to Dawit, lowering her voice. “Is it Peter?” she whispered.

Dawit paused, his hands on his hips. More and more, he and Jessica had learned that it was useless to try to keep a secret from their daughter. “Now, why would you ask that?”

“I heard her talk about him on the phone. She thought I was asleep.”

Dawit sighed. He slid the cake pans into the oven, then closed the door quickly to avoid the blasting heat. He, like all his Life brothers, was sensitive to all physical sensations. The brothers in the House of Science had determined that the Living Blood’s rejuvenation process affected the body’s nerve endings, invigorating them as well. It was a small sacrifice, Dawit had decided. He could no longer remember the time when all touch had been duller, less exquisite. He had lived only thirty years as a mortal. Since then, he had lived more than a dozen times that.

“Yes, Kira,” Dawit said, “Peter is her friend who died. We didn’t tell you because we thought it would make you sad, too.”

“Peter was very nice,” Kira said. “He gave me presents.”

“He was nice to Mommy, too.”

“So, nice people go to Heaven. That’s what Mommy says.”

Heaven. Even the concept made Dawit’s lips curl with distaste, but he tried to check himself for Kira’s sake. Heaven was the only answer Khaldun did not offer, because Khaldun’s knowledge was only of the world. So, Dawit had decided, Heaven was a lie. He refused to believe he had forfeited his soul’s salvation as the price for the Living Blood. Was he expected to live in guilt, craving forgiveness? Should he cower before an invisible God like a primitive who expects lightning bolts to be flung from the skies by rain spirits? All because of a tale of Christ’s blood?

The storyteller whom Khaldun met those many centuries ago may have lied about the blood’s origin from the start. Or, perhaps Khaldun had fabricated it all. Who could prove that Khaldun himself was not the only source?

Dozens of years after joining the Life brothers, Dawit had finally sought Khaldun for an answer to his question:
Was the story you told us the truth?

This question had teased Dawit since his first reawakening. He’d waited so long to broach it only because he dreaded the answer, not because he feared Khaldun. And it was uncommon to have a private audience with Khaldun, who was usually occupied with teaching or in an unreachable meditative state. That day, however, Dawit had his teacher’s full attention. One thing Dawit admired most about Khaldun was the supreme objectivity he had gained through mastery of his emotions; he was not quick to anger nor to judgment, and he was always just. That day, Khaldun had even gazed at Dawit with what might have been a gentle smile. Dawit had not yet asked the question aloud, but Khaldun could hear even what was unspoken. That was another of his gifts.

If you believe it,
Khaldun had said,
I could never convince you otherwise. If you do not, nothing I tell you could sway you. I am the one who should be asking you: Is it the truth?

No, Dawit said, certain within himself. And Khaldun, still smiling faintly, had not addressed the subject again.

Why
should
he believe it? His brothers in the House of Science could devise a half-dozen explanations for the Living Blood’s regenerative properties. And the Khaldunites were convinced Khaldun himself was a deity, despite Khaldun’s insistence that his gifts could be attained by any of them, given enough time and study. No, Dawit had decided, he would not be a prisoner to Christ or Allah or Satan, or any other of humankind’s imaginary guardians or tormentors. He would not mourn his exclusion from a fabled Heaven. The world was all he knew and ever would know, so he would worship only worldly things.

How much breath did he waste on Adele and other slaves who traded their lives away in the hope of a redemption after death? How often did he urge them to come to his Sunday reading lessons rather than flock to church meetings where their masters would have them pray and sing? Adele tried to explain to him how it made their troubles more bearable, but it only infuriated Dawit. Had the slaves’ belief in salvation erased the misery of their lives?

Oh, sweet Adele, Dawit thought, I would build a Heaven for you if it meant you could rest there. I would gather the bricks and carry them on my shoulders, if only you could be at peace. To Adele, a slave from birth, a mother to children stolen from her breast, death was Heaven enough. Perhaps, indeed, Dawit thought, death was Heaven after all.

“Peter was a very nice person,” Dawit told Kira. “If you believe he is in Heaven, then perhaps that is where he is.”

“He is,” Kira said. “Heaven is a good place, Daddy. I think it’s a very good place. Jesus lives there.”

A Christian for a daughter, and already bent on converting him! Dawit sighed, wishing Jessica and her zealot of a mother would stop filling his child’s head with such nonsense.

The telephone rang. “Keep away from the oven, Kira,” Dawit said, rushing to pick up the living room phone so Jessica would not be disturbed. He wished they could live without a telephone altogether. The invention had brought nothing but interruptions.

Dawit recognized Uncle Billy’s breathing and the meandering of his drawl immediately. “Boy, you ain’t gon’ b’lieve the stuff I’m digging out. Some of these old records I ain’t seen since my daddy died. He’s even got photographs in here, ticket stubs from all the big shows. And we’re talking a
long
way back.”

“Like what?”

“Jelly Roll Morton, one thing. And I think my daddy must have bought every Louis Armstrong record they put out. One of ‘em got an autograph right across the label and I never even knew it. And I’ma get you that Jazz Brigade you looking for. You need to come ‘round here sometime.”

“I will. This week,” Dawit promised, “and if you find The Jazz Brigade, I’ll come right away, no matter what time of day or night. They only pressed a handful of records.”

“Damn shame …” Uncle Billy said. “Some of ‘em didn’t press no records at all. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

Dawit wished more mortals shared Uncle Billy’s sense of history. Jessica’s great-uncle had a sincere appreciation of music that made Dawit long to forge a more meaningful relationship with him, beyond casual phone calls or banter after Sunday dinner. But, then, what was the point? The old man would surely be dead soon. Dawit had learned that he might as well be a visage, like all mortals. What point was there in befriending ghosts?

“You’re all right, Uncle Billy,” was all he said.

The phone call put Dawit in a better mood. He brought his clarinet out of the cabinet and began to fit it together while Kira watched. He had denied himself this joy with his new family, but no more. He had proven his devotion.

“What’s that for?” Kira asked. Was it possible she’d never seen a clarinet?

“It makes music. I’m going to go upstairs and surprise Mommy.
Avec moi.
Come with me.”

Like bandits, they crept up the stairs. Dawit held Kira’s hand so she wouldn’t betray them and go leaping into the open bedroom doorway. Safely hidden around the corner, he brought his clarinet to his lips and began to breathe out the soulful melody of “My Funny Valentine,” one of Jessica’s favorite songs. He allowed the resonance of the deep, long notes to pierce the air, then took deep breaths to begin the next strains. The music overpowered the chatter from the news on her television set.

Jessica leaped out of bed and ran out of the room to find the source of the music. She was still in bedclothes, a faded T-shirt that reached her thighs. He could see the loose curves of her bare breasts beneath the thin material, the spread of her hips, and he longed to drop to his knees and kiss every smooth inch of her torso. Even with her hair uncombed, sticking straight up near her temples, she was impossible to resist. She stood riveted with a smile.

When the song was finished, Kira cheered and clapped. Jessica clapped too, squinting in confusion. “David … when did you …”

“My old clarinet from college. Got it from an antiques shop in Cambridge. I haven’t seen it in ages.”

“Amazing,” Jessica said, still intrigued. She touched the instrument, then drew her hand away as though she were afraid of harming it. “I mean, you sound
good.
I can’t believe you never told me you play. What else don’t I know about you?”

He winked at her and kissed her lips lightly, then whispered in her ear. “You don’t know how horny I get when I play.”

“Really?” she said, kissing his earlobe in response. Her warm breath lingered there, journeying to his loins until he squirmed. She also lowered her voice to a breath. “Well, you don’t know how horny I get when I’m serenaded.”

“I can’t hear!” Kira complained.

Jessica and Dawit ignored her, sharing a playful gaze. That night, for the first time since Peter’s death, they made love. Dawit would not let her rest until she was whimpering his name.