The Pagan House Read online

Electa yawned quite lavishly. She batted the O her mouth made with the palm of one hand. Her fingers were long. Her skin was sallow, with thin lines of red by the corners of her mouth and eyes. She was, Edgar thought, exotic. Electa reached to remove the hairband twist that tied her ponytail. She shook her head and black hair tumbled down. Behind the bar, a big, bearish boy in a white T-shirt muttered something and laughed, and Electa snapped something angry back. They fought in grunts in this place, bullet shots of consonants, with Electa clearly an unbeatable adversary. The boy, whom Edgar presumed to be an older brother, stomped away into the kitchen, beaten.

  She raised one eyebrow. Edgar was further impressed.

  ‘Did anyone notice that I wasn’t at soccer?’

  ‘Oh sure, that’s all we talked about. In fact, we didn’t play any soccer at all. Spiro stopped the play so we could form little discussion groups and talk about you, so we could speculate where you were. And then we pooled our speculations. I said you were tracking the progress of your portfolio. And I’m pleased to say I got it right. How was it on the markets today?’

  ‘Yeah right,’ said Edgar, impressed again by her ability to belittle any male within speaking range.

  ‘You don’t live round here, do you? You live up in Vail?’

  ‘Sort’ve.’

  ‘What’s that mean, “sort’ve”?’

  ‘It’s my grandmother’s house, where I’m staying. You could come see it if you liked?’

  Edgar was pleased at his own craftiness. He liked the image of the two of them arriving at the house together. It would prove to Warren and Fay that he had been at soccer camp, after all. He had no picture of what he and Electa might do once they got there. The prospect panicked him. Might he tell her about Dr X? Would it entice her to kiss him?

  ‘It’s a really interesting house,’ Edgar said.

  ‘It’s a really interesting house,’ Electa said, mimicking him.

  ‘That sounds kind of lame, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Kinda,’ agreed Electa.

  ‘There’s something else though. I could do with some help with.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a mystery.’

  Perhaps it was because she was so at home in the material world that the possibility of mystery seemed to exert fascination. ‘What kind of mystery?’

  ‘I can’t really tell you here,’ Edgar said decisively.

  Electa considered. The passing attention of her brother returning and saying something mocking might have swung the situation Edgar’s way. She was the sort of girl who could achieve most things, especially if someone stood in her way of attempting them. Edgar was in awe.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let me just go tell my mom.’

  He had not expected it to be this easy. He was proud to have her walking beside him but his panic had not died. He tried whistling. He tried walking more slowly. He tried to bring Lucy to his mind but he couldn’t remember what she was meant to look like.

  ‘Do you ever think what it must’ve been like to live here, olden times?’

  ‘All the time,’ Edgar lied.

  She inspected him for obvious signs of deceit or facetiousness and, finding none, continued.

  ‘Must of been wild. For the white folks at least.’

  ‘I guess,’ said Edgar.

  He had no idea what she was talking about but he was far too preoccupied with hoping Fay and Warren weren’t back yet, but assuming they would be: neither seemed to like to be away from the house for long. How could he possibly manage the introductions? This is Electa. She’s my friend from soccer camp. Or: Hi, everybody. This is Electa. Or: Hello. Let me make some introductions … But he didn’t know what Electa’s last name was or how to ask her without clumsiness. Nor did he know Warren’s last name. A formal introduction was out. Dr X.

  ‘Your grandmother descended from them? You descended from them? Most everybody of the old people in Vail is.’

  ‘Yes, I think I am. Here we are. This is the house.’

  ‘I like it. It’s one of the old ones.’

  Hoping he was exuding old-world charm, Edgar held the screen door open for her. Warren was in the kitchen.

  ‘Hey Eddie! How was practice?’

  ‘This is Electa. She’s my friend from soccer camp,’ Edgar said gruffly.

  He tried to take her up to his room but Warren detained them. He mixed up a batch of his famous fruit smoothies in the blender.

  The situation felt agreeably sophisticated. Edgar could just sit and smile and worry about what was going to come next and let the conversation about the people who lived in this house, about the community in the Mansion House, glide over him.

  Walking uncomfortably slowly into the kitchen, Fay took an age to focus on Electa, and brighten. ‘You’re the lovely girl from the restaurant.’

  Edgar had stood when his grandmother came into the room, and he forgot to sit down again. He was concerned that his grandmother might need protection from Electa’s sharpness. But Electa was respectful, almost demure. She had been trained in ancestral respect.

  ‘Why don’t you play?’

  Yes indeed, why didn’t they?

  They sat in the music room, and Edgar played some of his father’s records at a discreet volume, choosing only the tracks that faded out.

  ‘Was she born here?’ Electa asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I think so. Probably.’

  ‘What about your grandfather?’

  ‘Uh. I don’t know. Probably.’

  ‘You’re weird,’ Electa amiably said to Edgar. ‘Living here—’

  ‘I don’t live here. I’m only—’

  ‘Staying. Right. But doesn’t it do something? All those people who sat down here, right here, all that time ago. Doesn’t that make you feel …?’

  ‘Feel what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Electa shivered and became businesslike again. ‘What’s the mystery you wanted to tell me about?’

  Edgar began by reporting, and embellishing, the fact of Tom the missing cat. ‘Someone’s stolen him, no one knows why.’

  The subject interested her as he had dared to hope it would. They built a list of suspects together. At the top of the list were Jerome and the Indian Fighters but Edgar insisted they had to be scrupulous about suspecting everyone. He was more tireless in the task than Electa, whose interest waned and she took to looking at the door and the window, so Edgar told her about Dr X.

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  ‘No really. It’s true. I’ve got his telephone number.’

  She did not kiss him and Edgar could hardly blame her. He had to admit that there was nothing conclusive or even impressive in the sight of a telephone number written in the hand of a nearly thirteen-year-old boy.

  ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

  He used to get asked this quite regularly, but always by men. His father would ask him, and Jeffrey, leering, vulpine, offering bogus fraternity. It was to Warren’s credit that he never had. Edgar’s answers had always been unsatisfactory, even to him, the apologetic shake of the head, a hunched rise of the shoulders. This time he was equal to it. ‘Yes. She’s called Lucy. She lives on a Caribbean island. By the sea.’

  Electa shrugged. Edgar wondered if he had made a mistake. Maybe a road had offered itself here, a journey into something bewilderingly wanted and grand, that he had carelessly closed again.

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

  Electa shrugged again. She lay back on the daybed. ‘That’s a beautiful ceiling,’ she said.

  Edgar lay beside her. He tried to look how she was looking, to find the detail or the totality she saw that made her describe it as beautiful.

  ‘I’m glad you have a girlfriend,’ she said, as she got back to her feet and went to the door. ‘It means we can be friends without any of that other stuff getting in the way.’

  ‘Yes,’ said disconsolate Edgar.

  Edgar ate dinner with Fay and Warren at the kitchen table. Jerome came fr
om across the way to join them for coffee, and Edgar failed to avoid Jerome’s winks and twitches of complicity. Warren, who noticed most things, didn’t notice them, but then Warren was distracted.

  ‘You seem jumpy,’ Jerome said, not without malice, to Warren.

  ‘Warren always gets nervous the night before an opera rehearsal,’ Fay said.

  ‘It’s dignifying it, calling it an opera. Company Bob’s probably right.’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Fay. ‘It’s a wonderful piece of work. And since when has Bob been right about anything?’

  ‘A lot of people here don’t want this thing put on at all. Maybe I should listen to them.’

  ‘No you shouldn’t. They’re a lot of nervous old ninnies,’ Fay said.

  ‘And I still haven’t found my John Prindle Stone. Someone with a voice. A proper male voice.’

  ‘There’s a boy, I think his name’s Marvin,’ Edgar said.

  ‘Husky Marvin? We know Marvin,’ Warren said.

  ‘He’s a cousin of yours,’ Jerome said.

  ‘Can he sing?’ Warren said.

  ‘He sings very well,’ Edgar said vindictively. ‘I’ve heard him.’

  ‘He’s very young,’ Warren said.

  ‘He’s older than me,’ Edgar said.

  ‘This coffee’s very good,’ said Fay, carefully moving away her untouched cup. She reached for her water glass and swallowed her yellow pills and shut her eyes. Her energy levels would suddenly drop, usually in the middle of the afternoon and after she had eaten her evening meal.

  Jerome gathered up his bag. ‘I’ll be making my excuses,’ he said.

  ‘Mind how you go,’ Warren said.

  When the telephone rang, Fay slowly opened her eyes. She looked for a moment as if she had no idea where or who she was.

  ‘Should I leave it?’ Warren said.

  Edgar, panicking that his father would be ringing unanswered, got out of his chair. Fay shook her head. Warren reached for the phone ahead of Edgar.

  ‘She’s a little sleepy right now. Maybe I could ask her to call you back.’

  –

  Reluctantly, maybe angrily, but it was always hard to tell with Warren—he kept his emotions out of his face—he passed the telephone to Fay.

  ‘Hello, my dear,’ said Fay, in a voice that was too diminished for the comfort of anyone who had the kindness to pay attention. Warren gathered up the tray and tidied the things away and made almost as much noise as he could doing so.

  ‘Yes. We’re expecting him by the end of the week.’

  –

  —

  ‘No. Nobody’s shutting you out of anything.’

  —

  ‘How is Lucille?’

  –

  –

  ‘My splendid grandson Edward is here. From London. He—’

  —

  —

  ‘How are the kids doing? Did Paul get that camp thing he was after?’

  –

  —

  —

  ——

  ‘Well, that’s terrific news. We’d love you to visit—’

  Fay hung up the phone.

  ‘Some things are better left unsaid,’ Fay said.

  ‘I can’t agree. You know I can’t,’ Warren said.

  12

  It is evident that no one should attempt to revolutionize sexual morality before settlement with God. Holiness, communism of love, association in labor, and immortality must come in their true order.

  We can now see our way to victory over death. First we abolish sin, then shame, then the curse on woman of exhausting childbearing, then the curse on man of exhausting labor, and so we arrive regularly at the tree of life.

  from the First Annual Report of the

  Onyataka Association, 1849

  A session of Free and Mutual Criticism begins with the atmosphere of a family excursion to the circus. Entertainment will be had, and blood might be spilled, and anyone may be picked out, the victim pulling himself into a cautious smile, Yes, I’m ready for this, it is right practice, we shall all be improved. And when the show is over the family returns from hall to bed or parlour or workplace, for prayer and further fellowship, the bonds of love all the stronger—and there has been no victim, it is no circus; any pain felt is only the pang of the perpetual rebirth into sinlessness.

  Squeaks of chairs attend the first remarks, a hitching of skirts—all the women now wear the uniform of pantalets and overskirts that Mary Pagan devised for work on building the Children’s House. It is Mr Hamilton who is the first subject of Criticism, and George Pagan relaxes a little in his chair, listens to Mr Fletcher criticize Mr Hamilton for his want of humility, his Special Love for ornamentation, as displayed in his architecture and verse and costume, and Mrs Pagan lightly remarks it a very wonder that the Mansion House they sit in has not toppled down under the ornate weight of its weathervane. Mr Hamilton blushes, bridles, submits. He bows his head. He takes the remarks in the spirit of humility and sincere desire for self-improvement.

  Unusually, Mrs Pagan is criticized, by Mrs Skinner, for excessive vitality, for always doing rather than being, for raising the temperature of any room, or individual, she visits. Mr Pagan joins in with the criticism of Mrs Pagan before it is required of him. He suggests that she holds herself apart too often—although he does not tell of the occasions he has watched her doing so. Mary’s head bows as he talks and her colour rises and she looks at him, not without coquetry, as if to say, ‘You can do better than that, George!’

  And unusually, Mrs Stone is criticized, for her very tenderness to Criticism. Mr Stone agrees that if he criticizes her it flings her into self-condemnation; he wishes Mrs Pagan would put some of her courage and self-respect into her. Mr Pagan, dissenting, applauds Mrs Stone’s courage and self-respect, its quiet, unshowy strength, the true humility of a character that does not look for praise—and the attention of the meeting turns to him.

  Mrs Stone and Mr and Mrs Pagan are seldom criticized; John Prindle never (there was an imputation at one of the earliest such meetings, from Mr Hamilton, of the Moses-Spirit, but that was met with a general silence that accorded all privilege to the subject rather than the speaker).

  It was Mary who first referred to them as a quartette. The Mansion House was filling with new-born adherents of the Primitive Church—each gesture an expression of the new dispensation, every moment a divine service. The community is growing, purses are shared, and labour and hearts, a perfect Bible Communism, with John Prindle its understood head, but all in equal, sincere fellowship; but there was an inner group, Mr Stone, Mrs Stone, Mr Pagan and Mrs Pagan, whom Mary named the quartette.

  They have been five months together in the second temple of their marriage. Both have grown immeasurably. It was Mary who adapted from Wesley to produce community hymns. It was George, discovering in himself unexpected capacities of acumen, who had become the community’s business manager and has remained so, as has Mary remained at her occupation in this world of constant flux and Stirring-Up, in charge of the Children’s House that she had helped build, raising the roof beams sitting high astride, angelic. She is loved by all the children and loves them all, her natural child no less than the others. As John Prindle reminds us, ‘All here are cousins.’

  When Mary referred to George as being ‘A Very Marvel of the Machine Age!’ she was not praising his amative technique. The Locomotive George Pagan, steaming ahead with his pregnant wife below, could not change gear, forswear, forestall—abrading on his run, chugging, his corporeal body and eternal soul were never so painfully extwined.

  Like the locomotive at Onyataka Depot, his arrival may always be predicted from its signals. We see the steam here, we note the grinding of metal wheel and rail here, we espy the doors opening here, and we wait, here, on the platform in this regular scuffed spot, and know the moment of cessation, of power spent, is now.

  ‘Must it always be done with effort?’ she asked him, as if suggesting a text for one of John Prindle�
�s Home Talks, but for one whose ear for heart music is so exquisitely tuned as hers, this was a disappointed chiding.

  Not only has he never stopped loving her, not only can he not imagine or remember a time before he loved her, not only does he experience his love for her as being without limits, his love has, it seems to him, and he is not of a poetical burst of mind, so this perception is all the more troublesome yet irresistible to him, continued to grow. The conclusion to be drawn from this is as weird and unfixed as its premise: for how can something that is without limits become larger?

  And yet he had found himself more in the company of Mrs Stone. There was, is, a heart’s ease in their fellowship. He does not stutter or dote or become foolish with Mrs Stone. Mrs Stone is doughty, solid and wise, promising the comfort of her husband, if not his majesty. George seeks her out, engineers tasks to share in office or kitchen or printing works or storehouse.

  He sits beside her now, taking comfort in her presence, as it is his turn to be criticized, as he has been before, for his display of the Killjoy-Spirit, his excessive sombreness when not at music-making. ‘I feel awkward and judged in your presence,’ Mr Hamilton says. Mr Pagan accepts the Criticism and resolves to evince more sincerity and candour. And the attention moves on. Mr Fletcher criticizes Mr Skinner, and Mr Miller criticizes one of their latest arrivals, Mr Carter (no longer a captain, there are no ranks here), for his display of the Rooster-Spirit, and is the humility, George wonders, that Mr Carter shows in response a true mark of his sincerity or just the proof of his improved theatrical skills?

  Mr Newhouse is criticized for his independence of heart and mind. While praising him for the efficacy of his animal traps, and their economic value for the family, Mr Hamilton suggests that they show a Special Love. Mr Newhouse answers that without his animal traps the Association would have foundered. He then makes some remarks about ‘gentleman farmers’ tilling unforgiving soil. This is not a ripe subject for Criticism. Mr Stone watches over them all, stroking his beard, seldom intervening except to bring the conversation back to good practice. He draws a close to this session of Criticism with a reminder that all shall produce all. The farmer shall become an actuary, the slaughterman a teacher. ‘There must be constant flux,’ he says, ‘and music.’