Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [17]
“My son, I know you as no one else does,” said my mother. “When Avigail's with you, you're faint with love.”
I couldn't answer. I couldn't command my voice. I couldn't command my heart. I remained still. Then very slowly I made my voice regular and quiet and I did speak.
“Mother,” I said, “that love will go with me wherever I must go, but Avigail will not go with me. No wife will go with me—no wife, no child. Mother, you and I have never needed to talk of this. But if we must talk of it now, well then, you must know: I will not change my mind.”
She nodded as I knew she would. She kissed my cheek. I held my hands out to the fire again, and she took my right hand and rubbed it with her own small warm hand.
I thought my heart would stop.
She let me go.
Avigail. This is worse than the dreams. No images to banish. Simply all I knew of her and had ever known, Avigail. This is almost more than a man can endure.
Again, I made my voice regular and small. I made it soft and without concern.
“Mother,” I asked. “Was Jason really intolerable to her?”
“Jason?”
“When he asked for Avigail, Mother, was he intolerable to her? Our Jason? Do you know?”
She thought for a long moment. “My son, I don't even think Avigail ever knew that Jason asked for her,” she said. “Everyone else knew. But I think Avigail was here that day playing with the children. I'm not sure Avigail ever said a word about it. Now Shemayah came in that night, and sat here and said the most dreadful scornful things about Jason. But Avigail wasn't here then. Avigail was home, asleep. I don't know whether Avigail found Jason intolerable. No. I don't think she ever knew.”
The pain had crested sometime while she was speaking. It was sharp and deep. My thoughts drifted. What a great thing it would have been to be able to cry—to be alone, and to cry, unwatched and unheard.
Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. I kept my face placid and my hands still. Male and female He created them. I had to hide this from my mother and I had to hide it from myself.
“Mother,” I said, “you might mention to her—that Jason asked for her. Perhaps you can, somehow, let her know.”
The pain was suddenly so bad I did not want to speak another word. I couldn't trust myself to say another word.
I felt her lips against my cheek. Her hand was on my shoulder.
After a long time, she asked, “Are you sure that's what you want me to do?”
I nodded.
“Yeshua, are you certain that it's God's will?”
I waited until the pain had backed away, and my voice would be my own again. Then I looked at her. At once her calm expression created a new calm in me.
“Mother,” I said. “There are things I know, and things I don't know. Sometimes knowledge comes to me unexpectedly—in moments of surprise. Sometimes it comes when I'm pressed, and in my sudden answers to those who press me. Sometimes, this knowledge comes in pain. Always, there's the certainty that the knowledge is more than I will let myself know. It's just beyond where I choose to reach, just beyond what I choose to ask. I know it will come when I have need of it. I know it may come, as I said, on its own. But some things I know certainly and have always known. There's no surprise. There's no doubt.”
She was quiet again for a while, and then she said, “This has made you miserable. I've seen this before, but never as bad as it is now.”
“Is it so bad?” I whispered. I looked away, as men do when they only want to see their thoughts. “I don't know that it's been bad for me, Mother. What is bad for me? To love as I love Avigail—it has a luster, a great and beautiful luster.”
She waited.
“There come these moments,” I said. “These heartbreaking moments—the moments when we first feel joy and sadness intertwined. Such a discovery that is, when grief becomes sweet. I remember feeling this perhaps for the very first time when we came to this place, all of us together, and I walked up the hill above Nazareth and saw the green grass alive with flowers, the tiniest flowers—so many flowers, and all of it, grass