PART NINE. The Human Road

"I'm not a good man," Galilee said. "I've done terrible things in my life. So many… very terrible things. But I never wanted this. Please believe me."

They were on the beach, and he was setting a light to the heap of driftwood he'd made, in the same spot where he'd lit that first, fragrant fire: the fire that had summoned Rachel out of the house. As the flames caught, she saw his face. That curious beauty of his-Cesaria's beauty, in the form of a man-was almost too much to see; the exquisite nakedness of him. Twice on the way out here she'd thought he'd lose control of himself. Once when he came down the stairs, and in stepping over Mitchell's body, set his bare foot in a rivulet of blood. And again when they found Niolopua on the veranda. Great heaving sobs had escaped him then, like the sobbing of a child almost, terrible to hear.

His grief made Rachel strong. She took him by the hand and led him down onto the lawn. Then she went back into the house to fetch a bottle of whiskey and some cigarettes. She'd expected to see the women there, but they'd gone about other business, it seemed, for which fact she was grateful. She didn't want to think about what happened to the dead right now; didn't want to imagine Mitchell's spirit, driven out of the body he'd been so proud of, lost in limbo.

By the time she got back to Galilee, she'd already planned what to tell him. Why don't we go down onto the sand, she'd said to him, taking his hand. We can build a fire. I'm cold.

Like a child, he'd obeyed. Silently gone to collect pieces of driftwood, and arranged them. Then she'd passed the matches over to him, and he'd kindled the fire. The wood was still damp from the storm; it took a little time for the larger pieces of wood to catch. They spat and sizzled as they dried out, but at last the flames swelled around them, and they burned. Only then did he start talking. Beginning with that simple, blanket confession. I'm not a good man.

"I'm not afraid of anything you've got to tell me," Rachel told him.

"You won't leave me?" he said.

"Why would I ever do that?"

"Because of the things I've done."

"Nothing's that bad," she said. He shook his head, as though he knew better. "I know you killed George Geary," she went on. "And I know Cadmus ordered you to do it."

"How did you find that out?"

"It was one of his deathbed confessions."

"My mother made him tell you."

"She made him tell Loretta. I was just a bystander." Galilee stared into the fire. "You have to help me understand," Rachel said. "That's all I want: just to understand how this ever happened."

"How I came to kill George Geary?"

"Not just that. Why you came here to be with the Geary women. Why you left your family in the first place."

"Oh…" he said softly. "You want the whole story."

"Yes," she said, "that's what I want. Please."

"May I ask you why?"

"Because I'm a part of it now. I guess I became a part of it the day Mitchell walked into the store in Boston. And I want to know how I fit."

"I'm not sure I can help you with that," Galilee said. "I'm not certain I know where I fit."

"You just tell me the whole story," Rachel said. "I'D work out the rest for myself."

He nodded, and took a deep breath. The fire had grown more confident in the last few minutes, cooking away the last of the moisture in the wood. The smoke had cleared. Now the flames were yellow and white; the fierce heat making the air between Rachel and Galilee shake.

"I think I should start with Cesaria," Galilee said; and began.

Nobody knows the whole story, of course; nobody can. Perhaps there is no thing entire; only that rubble that Hera-clitus celebrates. At the beginning of this book I boasted that I'd teD everything, and I failed. Now Galilee promises to do the same thing, and he's fated to fail the same way. But I've come to see that as nothing can be made that isn't flawed, the chaDenge is twofold: first, not to berate oneself for what is, after all, inevitable; and second, to see in our failed perfection a different thing; a truer thing, perhaps, because it contains both our ambition and the spoiling of that ambition; the exhaustion of order, and the discovery-in the midst of despair-that the beast dogging the heels of beauty has a beauty aD of its own.

So Galilee began to tell his story, and though Rachel had asked him for everything, and though he intended to teD her everything, he could give her only the parts that he could remember on that certain day at that certain hour. Not everything. Not remotely everything. Just slivers and fragments; that best universe which is rubble.

Galilee began his account, as he said he would, with Cesaria.

"You met my mother already," he said to Rachel, "so you've seen a little of what she is. I think that's aD any body's ever seen: a little. Except for my father Nicodemus-"

"And Jefferson?"

"Oh she told you about him?"

"Not in detail. She just said he'd built a house for her."

"He did. And it's one of the most beautiful houses in the world."

"Will you take me there?"

"I wouldn't be welcome."

"Maybe you would now," Rachel suggested.

He looked at her through the flames. "Is that what you want to do? Go home and meet the family?"

"Yes. I'd like that very much."

'They're all crazy," he warned.

"They can't be any worse than the Gearys,"

He shrugged, conceding the point. "Then we'll go back, if that's what you want to do," he told her.

Rachel smiled. "Well that was easy."

"You thought I'd say no?"

"I thought you'd put up a fight."

Galilee shook his head. "No," he said, "it's time I made my peace. Or at least tried to. None of us are going to be around forever. Not even Cesaria."

"She said at Cadmus's house she was feeling old and weary."

"I think there's a part of her that's always been old and weary. And another part that's born new every day." Rachel looked confounded, and Galilee said: "I can't explain it any better than that. She's as much a mystery to me as to anybody. Including herself. She's a mass of contradictions."

"You told me once, when we were out on the boat, that she doesn't have parents."

"To my knowledge, she doesn't. Nor did my father."

"How's that possible? Where did they come from?"

"Out of the earth. Out of the stars." He shrugged, the expression on his face suggesting that the question was so unanswerable that he didn't think it worth contemplating.

"But she's very old," Rachel said. "You know that much."

"She was being worshipped before Christ was born, before Rome was founded."

"So she's some kind of goddess?"

"That doesn't mean very much anymore does it? Hollywood produces goddesses these days. It's easy."

"But you said she was worshipped."

"And presumably still is, in some places. She had a lot of temples in Africa, I know. The missionaries destroyed some of her cults, but those things never die out completely. I did see a statue of her once, in Madagascar. That was strange, to see my own mother's image, and people bowing down before it. I wanted to say to them: don't waste your prayers. I know for a fact she's not listening. She's never listened to anyone in her life, except her husband. And she gave him such hell he died rather than stay with her. Or at least pretended to die. I think his death was a performance. He did it so he could slip away."

"So where is he?"

"Where he came from presumably. In the earth. In the stars." He drew a deep breath. "This is hard for you, I know. I wish I could make it easier. But I'm not a great expert on what we are as a family. We take it for granted, the way you take your humanity for granted. And day for day, we're not that different. We eat, we sleep, we get sick if we drink too much. At least, I do."