“Up where?”
“To the dome, of course. But once I’ve done that, buddy, you’re on your own. I ain’t staying with you. Not in that place.”
I began to see that one of the curses of the Barbarossa family is self-pity. There’s Luman in his Smoke House, plotting his revenge against dead men; me in my library, determined that life had done me a terrible disservice; Zabrina in her own loneliness, fat with candy. Even Galilee—out there under a limitless sky—writing me melancholy letters about the aimlessness of his life. It was pathetic. We, who were the blessed fruit of such an extraordinary tree. How did we all end up bemoaning the fact of living, instead of finding purpose in that fact? We didn’t deserve what we’d been given: our glamours, our skills, our visions. We’d frittered them all away while we bemoaned our lot.
Was it too late to change all of that, I wondered? Was there still a chance for four ungrateful children to rediscover why we’d been created?
Only Marietta, it seemed to me, had escaped the curse, and she’d done so by reinventing herself. I saw her often, coming back from her visits to the world, dressed like a trucker sometimes in low-slung jeans and a dirty shirt, sometimes like a torch-song singer in a slinky dress; sometimes barely dressed at all, running across the lawn as the sun came up, her skin as dewy as the grass.
Oh Lord, what am I admitting to? Well, it’s said; for better or worse. To my list of sins (which isn’t as long as I’d like it to be) I must now append incestuous desires.
Luman had arranged to come and fetch me at ten. He was late, of course. When he finally turned up, he had the last inch of his havana between his teeth, and the last inch of gin left in the bottle. I suspect he didn’t indulge himself with hard liquor very often, because he was much the worse for wear.
“Are you ready?” he slurred.
“More than ready.”
“Did you bring something to eat and drink?”
“What do I need food for?”
“You’re going to be in there a long time. That’s why.”
“You make it sound like I’m being locked up.”
Luman leered at me, as though he was making up his mind whether to be cruel or not. “Don’t be shittin’ yourself,” he said finally. “The door’ll be open all the time, you just won’t feel like leaving. It’s very addictive once you get going.” With that he started off down the passageway, leaving me to trundle behind him.
“Don’t go too fast,” I told him.
“Afraid of gettin’ lost in the dark?” he said, “Brother, you are one nervous son of a bitch.”
I wasn’t afraid of the dark, but there was good reason to be concerned about getting lost. We turned a couple of comers and I was in a passageway I was pretty certain I’d never visited before, though I’d thought myself familiar with the entire house, barring Cesaria’s chambers. Another corner, and another, and a passageway, and a small empty room, and another, and another, and now I knew this was unknown terrain. If Luman decided to play the mischief maker and leave me here, I doubted I could find my way back to anywhere familiar.
“You smell the air here?”
“Stale.”
“Dead. Nobody comes here, you see. Not even her.”
“Why not?”
“Because it fucks with your head,” he said, casting a glance back in my direction. I could barely see his expression in the murk, but I’m certain he had that yellow-toothed leer back on his face. “Of course, you’re a saner man than I ever was, so maybe it won’t bother you so much ‘cause you got better control of your wits. On the other hand…maybe you’ll crack, and I’ll have to put you in my li’l crib for the night, so’s you don’t do yourself harm.”
I brought the chair to a halt. “You know what?” I said. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“You can’t do that,” Luman said.
“I’m telling you I don’t want to go in there.”
“Well ain’t this a flip-flop, huh? First I don’t want to take you, and now I brought you here, you don’t want to go. Make up your fuckin’ mind.”
“I’m not going to risk my sanity,” I said.
Luman drained the gin bottle. “I can see that,” he said. “I mean, a man in your condition ain’t got but his mind, right? You lose that you ain’t got nothin’.” He came a step or two toward me. “On the other hand,” he said, “if you don’t go in, you ain’t got no book, so it’s a kind of toss-up.” He lobbed the gin bottle from hand to hand, and back again, to illustrate his point. “Book. Mind. Book. Mind. It’s up to you.”
I hated him at that moment; simply because what he said was true. If he left me under the dome and I lost my sanity, I wouldn’t be capable of putting words in any sensible order. On the other hand, if I didn’t risk the lunacy, and I simply wrote from what I already knew, wouldn’t I always wonder how much richer, how much truer, my work would have been if I’d had the courage to see what the room had to show me?
“It’s your choice,” he said.
“What would you do?”
“You’re asking me?” Luman said, sounding genuinely surprised at my interest in his opinion. “Well it ain’t pretty being mad,” he said. “It ain’t pretty at all. But the way I see it, we don’t have a lot of time left. This house ain’t goin’ to stand forever, an’ when it comes down, whatever you might see in there…” he pointed along the passageway ahead of me, towards the stairs that led up to the dome “…is going to be lost. You won’t be seeing no more visions when this house falls. None of us will.”
I stared at the passageway.
“I guess that’s my answer then,” I said.
“So you’re goin’ to go in?”
“I’m goin’ to go in.”
Luman smiled. “Hold on,” he said. Then he did a remarkable thing. He picked up the wheelchair, with me in it, and carried us both up the stairs. I held my breath, afraid he was either going to drop me, or topple back down the flight. But we reached the top without incident. There was a narrow landing, and a single door.
“I’m goin’ to leave you here,” Luman said.
“This is as far as you go?”
“You know how to open a door,” he said.
“What happens when I get inside?”
“You’ll find you know that too.” He laid his hand on my shoulder. “If you need anything, just call.”
“You’ll be here?”
“It depends how the mood takes me,” he said, and sauntered off down the stairs. I wanted to call him back; but I was out of delaying tactics. Time to do this, if I was going to do it.
I wheeled my way to the door, glancing back once to see if Luman was still in sight. He’d gone. I was on my own. I took a deep breath, and grasped the door handle. There was still a corner of me that hoped the door was locked and I’d be denied entry. But the handle turned, and the door opened—almost too readily, I thought, as though some overeager host stood on the other side, ready to usher me in.
I had some idea of what I thought lay on the other side, at least architecturally speaking. The dome room—or “sky room” as Jefferson had dubbed his version at Monticello—was, I’d been