A lesser light, p.20
A Lesser Light, page 20
He must have sensed her uneasiness, because he stood upright and straightened his waistcoat, affecting an air of indifference as he did. “Your uncle, I’ve not seen him all day?”
“He’s here,” she lied.
“Is he?” Again, the contrived aloofness. And yet more bluster, “You’d make an excellent subject, do you know that? I’m a portraitist as well as an apothecary. I take photographs, you see? Some might even call me an artist. Some do. I’ve made my daughter nigh famous the world over!”
“Famous?” It was a word she didn’t exactly know. Many of his words baffled her.
Now he locked his hands behind his back and straightened like Silje so often saw Frog do. He nodded vehemently, as though that one-word question gave him a new kind of access to her naïveté. “She’s a beautiful young woman, my daughter. You’ve seen her. American ladies are much revered for their shadow selves, and in Paris, where most of my work is traded, Rebekah is as renowned as Sarah Bernhardt.” He lifted his nose and smiled. “At least her pictures are as ubiquitous!”
The thought of his daughter’s portraits in Paris must have delighted him, for the smile that seeped across his buttery face told Silje to run. Everything about this man suggested impurity. She’d sooner be in Fenrir’s company.
As though thinking of the wolf alone might summon him, something like his bellows boomed through the air, its source so near and loud as to injure her ears, which she covered with her hands as she knelt for fear.
Hosea Grimm merely turned to the noise. Three times the cannonades roared, then a rueful silence. She watched him gaze back upon the lighthouse, a reverent look on his face. He began to speak, but she leapt from her crouch and flew up the trail with the cleverness of a hare outfoxing the wolf.
* * *
Only a hundred strides had separated her from the crowd, but for the relief she felt being back in their comfort, it could have been a hundred miles. The priest stood on a dais, blessing the gathering and commending the Lighthouse Service while the officers looked approvingly at each other. Silje slipped into the throng, weaving a path among them meant to make her invisible, searching for no one.
How had that man done this? Made her want to disappear? Fold herself a thousand times until she fit into her uncle’s pocket?
“Consider the foghorn you just heard a call from on high! His glory is everywhere for us to see! Look! Look!”
How could his voice carry across the grounds like that? She was back at the barn wall, sitting in the grass. From there, she could see his garb. The cassock and collar, the wooden cross hanging from a cord around his fat neck.
“Rejoice!”
She put her head between her knees and pressed against her ears. The better to be alone. She put her hand in her own pocket. There was Odd. Where had he gone? Where was Willa? Or her uncle?
One of the officers now commanded the crowd. He was less vociferous than the priest, and Silje could hardly hear his speech, though his solemn intentions were clear from the cast of his eye. Better company was the boy in her pocket, which she removed and set upon her knee. Next she removed the telescope from her belt and placed it to the boy’s tunneled eye so he was staring back at her. She couldn’t imagine what he saw.
When next she looked up there were her uncle and Willa, smiling down upon her, their conspiratorial humors plain as the late afternoon sun now righteous in the western sky.
“Your friend, what does he see?” Uncle asked.
She handed the telescope back to Willa, who said to Mats, “That’s a girl scared witless by something.” She squatted beside Silje. “Whatever it was, whoever it was, you’re okay now. Your uncle’s here. He’s found you.”
“It took you long enough getting the nets out.” Silje feathered his hair back.
“Wasn’t getting the nets out that stole my day, but the breeze that came up to thwart my getting back. What say we find your tired old uncle a piece of cake before we head home?”
Silje risked a glance. His hair was plastered to his head as though he’d rowed home in a downpour. “There’s probably none left,” Silje said. “But we can look.” She rose, whispered something into the boy’s wooden ear, then took her uncle’s hand.
The warmth of his calloused flesh as they wound back through the dwindling crowd gave her to song. Before they’d taken ten steps across the lawn, she was drumming a new beat on the palm of his hand. The rhymes came easily: Some cake he’ll eat, and then we’ll meet, Fenrir my friend, upon the peat. He’ll growl and howl and then he’ll wink, and be gone in the dark, he’ll take his stink.
* * *
There was indeed still cake. What’s more, Odd was sneaking another piece himself. “There you are,” he said, offering his spoils without guile.
“I can get my own,” Silje said. Where was the boy’s keeper? That cad?
“Are you angry?”
“I think she’s tired out. What with all the fun,” Mats said.
“I’m not tired.” She scooped a piece of cake onto a napkin and wrapped it like a gift to herself. “And this party’s for creeps.”
Merely saying the word summoned the worst of them, for no sooner did she utter it than Hosea appeared on the edge of the straggling crowd, his bent leer settled on her like a January midnight. A chill ran down her arms and through her hands and fingers. Willa put a comforting hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“I’m not a creep,” Odd said.
Rather than respond, she stepped away from Willa and turned her whole attention to Hosea. When she did, Odd and her uncle did, too. Hosea waved, as though he were a sought friend.
It was Willa who spoke next: “Silje Lindvik, I have another thing to show you. Would you like to see?”
“Yes,” Silje said, keeping her gaze on Hosea.
Willa started to usher her away, but Silje again dodged her hold. This time she stepped to Odd, who appeared flummoxed by the turn in her mood.
“You’re not a creep. I didn’t mean it like that.” She removed from her pocket the boy she’d carved. “Here.” She handed it to him. “I carved this. You should have it.”
He held it before him. A mirror likeness. A birch boy.
* * *
SHE HELD THE TELESCOPE up to her knee, as if that knobby thing had sight, the lens pointed toward her. He thought, How like a child. He thought, How like a nincompoop.
If he held the telescope, he’d search for Mr. Grimm, whose company had evaded Theodulf all day. Apparently his counsel was much sought. More even than his own, which among this crowd made little sense at all, and filled Theodulf with a tempestuous jealousy.
Ah! There he was now, standing on the edge of the gathering, adjusting his waistcoat as though he’d just rolled down a hill. He had a queer look about him. Flushed and excited and guilty. Mr. Grimm ran a hand across his face and surveyed the yard. In profile, Theodulf recognized something he hadn’t at first. Something frightening.
How could a man so worldly as Hosea Grimm, a man who’d strode among Parisian belles, who’d likely even cavorted with them, a man who knew the world’s great scientists and philosophers, who corresponded with them, if what he said was true, look upon that Lindvik girl with such depravity? He’d no need of a telescope, that much was certain. Even from across the grounds Theodulf witnessed a gaze that beheld not God’s creation but Mr. Grimm’s own lecherous intentions. A bogresse. That word he’d heard twice in his life. Once from his father the morning he collected Theodulf at the Duluth city jail. And then again when Paul whispered it to him on the balcony in Val-de-Grâce.
Now was not the time for such a visitation. To dispel it, Theodulf looked back at the Lindvik girl. She handed Willa the telescope. A moment later, the four of them—Willa and Mats and the Lindvik girl and Hosea Grimm’s boy—looked in unison at Grimm, who waved at them. Now Willa took the girl’s hand, and they walked down the path toward his house.
If the fate of these souls were as decided as his letter implied, why did Grimm wear that expression of felicity upon his smiling face? Why had he wandered among the assembled as though it were a right cause for celebration, not a wake for all the living? Why—and this question settled on Theodulf with the weight of an anvil—had his prayers gone unanswered? Why had God not smiled upon him?
Theodulf crossed the hundred paces between him and Mr. Grimm. As he stepped before him, Hosea Grimm swiped his hand across his face again.
“Mr. Sauer! I doubted I’d get an audience with you, sir!”
“I’ve—”
“You’re in much demand. Much demand. And I understand why. This kingdom”—he made a broad gesture at the lighthouse and grounds—“why, it’s a proper testament to American industry. You must feel a grave and great responsibility.”
“Indeed,” Theodulf nearly whispered. In fact, he wanted to scream. He wanted to take this man by his lapels and ask him how these platitudes weren’t condolences.
“And this soiree! Why, I’ve not had such a lovely time since I can’t remember when!”
“Sir, if I may, I’m only just in receipt of your letter.”
“My letter?”
“Sir, your letter dated April the twenty-eighth.”
Mr. Grimm stuck out his lower lip and tilted his head like a dupe.
“Regarding the comet. And your antidote?”
Now he smacked his forehead. “Of course,” he said, glancing around like a thief. “My colloidal silver concoction.” He patted his breast pocket. “I never received your reply.”
“As I say, I’ve only just this day received yours.”
“That’s peculiar. I sent it promptly. I wonder what accounts for its delay?”
“I wonder the same.”
“Well, wonders never do cease, as they say. But the good news is, I had the foresight to bring along doses aplenty.” He reached into the breast pocket he’d earlier touched and removed a bottle of white pills. He presented the bottle on the palm of his hand.
“It says aspirin, sir.”
Mr. Grimm made a show of inspecting the label. He smiled. “As I said in my letter, this is an invention of my own device. I simply used the aspirin bottle as a vessel. I assure you this is the remedy for you.”
Theodulf lifted the bottle from Hosea Grimm’s hand. He turned his back to the crowd and inspected it.
“We’re a mere week and a day from our fate, Keeper Sauer. So the scientific authorities insist. What’s in that bottle is your salvation.”
Theodulf glanced at him.
“I grant you the cost is prohibitive for many, but surely a man of your employ, well . . .”
“I’d like to buy one dose,” Theodulf whispered.
“I beg your pardon, you said one dose?”
Theodulf nodded.
“But what about your wife?”
Theodulf removed from his pocket a two-dollar note. He handed it to Hosea Grimm. “I presume you can make change for this?”
Grimm took a step back, and a knowing, deviant smile crept across his face. Without saying anything, he removed four quarters from his trouser pocket and handed them to Theodulf. Then he took the bottle, uncapped it, and let one pill fall onto his own palm. “Take it immediately. Drink as much water as your stomach will allow, then drink more.” He capped the bottle, put it back in his breast pocket, and concluded, “There’s no such thing as too much water, do you understand, Keeper Sauer? You could drink the lake, and it wouldn’t hurt you.” Now he handed Theodulf the single, chalky placebo. “Godspeed. For you and for all of us. May the good Lord have mercy on us all.”
“Bless you,” Theodulf said as he walked away.
* * *
SHE’D FELT IT BEFORE, sitting in front of certain pianos—the Mason & Hamlin at Fay House in Cambridge, the Steinway grand in the lobby of the Thibert Hotel. A volcanic urgency; the need to make sound. So it was with her hand on Silje’s shoulder, ushering her up to the second floor.
As they passed the landing window, Willa noted a string of guests marching back down to the dock. She could still hear the brass band playing a waltz, but it was melancholy and distant. Their final song of the afternoon. She hadn’t been revived by the party, as she thought she might. Rather, it felt like the rest of her summer would suffer for the absence of these guests.
The girl stomped a gauntlet. A rousing of anger and fear and fortitude. The lithe but firm muscles under her dress quivered as they entered Willa’s room. Silje immediately went to the window and cast the curtain aside.
“Looking for Mr. Grimm?” Willa said.
Though she couldn’t see Silje’s face, she did notice the way her shoulders hunched and flexed. She might even have heard a hiss.
“Men like him, they’re under every stone. You’ve got an instinct for detecting them. That’s the good news.”
Silje spun around to face her. “Frog’s just like him.”
“Frog acts like he has the world on a string, but that string is just the tightrope he walks. Mr. Sauer is nothing at all like Hosea Grimm, who would use my husband’s string to strangle you.”
This assessment did nothing to ease Silje’s ire. She crossed her arms and could hardly gain control of her breath.
Her posture gave Willa courage. “What I say’s true, but I’m glad you won’t hear it. I’m glad you know better.”
She opened her closet and pulled out the steamer trunk and glanced at her small friend, whose interest was piqued, no doubt recalling the music box she’d been introduced to last time the trunk appeared in her life.
“I see you’re embroiled in your own mulligrubs, but I want to tell you a few things.”
“What’re mulligrubs?”
“My father loved that word. It means you’re in a foul mood.” She slid the trunk around and unlatched the top. “He was a very good man, my father was. The best. He taught me a few lessons I’ll never forget,” Willa said. She knelt by the trunk. “You already know most of what he taught me, that much is clear. But on one subject I want to make sure you’ve heard it plainly, and from a friend.” She got to the false bottom and removed the Smith & Wesson, rising and holding it behind her back before Silje might see.
“My father told me there are three types of men in this world. First, the good-hearted. People like your uncle. Like my father himself. Though of course he’d never have classified himself so. These are the folks who put the welfare of others above their own. Folks whose first instinct is to goodness and kindness. There aren’t many men like this, and fewer all the time. Their rarity is a consequence of this nation. So my father always said.”
Silje must have recognized something in Willa’s speech, because she took a few tentative steps across room and sat down on the edge of the bed. She clenched her hands before her as if she had a miracle to pray for.
“The majority of men, he thought, are weak-hearted. These folks suffer for want of conviction, but not because they lack morality and not because they’re cruel. They’re wayward, is all.”
Now Willa swung the pistol from behind her back and sighted it on the wall sconce. “The worst are the rotten-hearted,” she continued, closing one eye and resting the heel of her right hand in the palm of her left. She took two deep breaths and then feigned a shot. “These are corrupted men like Hosea Grimm. They’re without morals or scruples, they abhor weakness and see it as something to conquer. Which is why that man made you feel corruptible.” She lowered the gun and looked thoughtfully at Silje, whose attention was whole now. “He plays the learned citizen. Probably he goes to church and attends town meetings. He can’t fathom a world that doesn’t orbit around him. Often the world does. And yet, in his soul is a vile impulse. One that commands his true nature. He is depraved and libidinous. Naturally he is. But he’s also charitable, though when he gives alms or offers shelter, it’s never without thought of remuneration. All of this is bad enough, but worst still—worst of all—is that he doesn’t see any of this. He truly believes his position is ordained. He believes God chose him. Even if he doesn’t actually believe in God himself.”
Silje unclenched her hands and turned them palms up and gazed upon them as if written there was further explanation.
Willa crossed to her, stood just out of reach.
“That’s your Mr. Grimm. To be sure, there are others like him. Many others. But of all the rotten-hearted men I’ve met, he’s the most warped and the most malignant.”
“Why?”
“He will risk everything, that’s why. He will risk everything and not believe he’s risking anything at all.”
Silje shifted, gave Willa her full attention. “How do you know about Hosea Grimm? Have you met him before?”
“He’s the sort of man who thinks he’s above judgment, so he knows no bounds.”
“What should I do the next time someone like Hosea Grimm stalks me?”
Willa stepped across the room and handed her the pistol, mother-of-pearl stock first. “Do you know how to use one of these?” she asked.
Seventh Sunday
May 15, 1900
At the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, one of the preeminent attractions was the great telescope. Dreamed up by François Deloncle, a diplomat whose vision was inspired by fame, to be sure, but also, as was then reported, by a desire to “Bring the celestial bodies almost to our doors.”
The telescope was built by the L’Optique Company over the span of some eight years, and, when finished, was housed in the Palais de l’Optique on the Champ de Mars. The interchangeable lenses were more than four feet in diameter, the scope itself some 190 feet long and encased in a two-hundred-foot steel tube. The greatest and most famous glassmaker in all the world performed the nine-months-long task of creating the mirror. It would be two meters wide, by far the largest of its sort ever constructed. It was said of such a grand telescope that it would capture la lune à un mètre.
