"Good Lord, it,s getting colder by the second," she said as they hurried. "I forget the way the temperature drops on the coast here. I grew up with it, but I,m always taken by surprise." Yet she stopped once more and looked up at the towering fa?ade of the house as though she was searching for someone, and then she shaded her eyes and looked out into the advancing mist.
Yes, she may come to regret selling this place terribly, he thought. But then again, she may have to. And who was he to make her feel the pain of that if she didn,t want to address it herself?
For a moment, he was keenly ashamed that he himself had the money to buy the property and he felt he should make some disclaimer, but that would have been unspeakably rude. Nevertheless, he was calculating and dreaming.
The clouds were darkening, lowering. And the air was very damp. He followed her gaze again to the great shadowy fa?ade of the house, with those diamond-pane windows twinkling dimly, and at the masses of redwood trees that rose behind it and to the east, a monstrous soaring forest of coastal sequoia out of proportion with all else.
"Tell me," she said. "What are your thoughts right now?"
"Oh, nothing, really. I was thinking about the redwoods and the way they always make me feel. They,re so out of proportion to everything around them. It,s as if they,re always saying, ,We were here before your kind ever visited these shores, and we will be here when you and your houses are no more., "
There was something unmistakably tragic in her eyes as she smiled at him. "That,s so true. How my uncle Felix loved them," she said. "They,re protected, you know, those trees. They can,t be logged. Uncle Felix saw to that."
"Thank heavens," he whispered. "I shudder when I see all those old photographs of the loggers up here in the old days, chopping down redwoods that had been alive for a thousand years. Think of it, a thousand years."
"That,s precisely what Uncle Felix said once, damn near word for word."
"He wouldn,t want to see this house torn down, would he?" He was immediately ashamed. "I,m sorry. I shouldn,t have said that."
"Oh, but you,re absolutely right. He wouldn,t have wanted it, no, never. He loved this house. He was in the process of restoring it when he disappeared."
She looked off again, wistfully, longingly.
"And we,ll never know, I don,t suppose," she said, sighing.
"What is that, Marchent?"
"Oh, you know, how my great-uncle actually disappeared." She made a soft derisive sound. "We are all such superstitious creatures, really. Disappeared! Well, I suppose he is as dead in real life as he is legally. But it seems I,m giving up on him now in selling the old place, that I,m saying, ,Well, we will never know and he will never come through that door there again., "
"I understand," he whispered. The fact was he knew absolutely nothing about death. His mother and father and brother and girlfriend told him that in one way or another just about every day. His mother lived and breathed the Trauma Center at San Francisco General. His girlfriend knew absolutely the worst side of human nature from the cases she handled in the D.A.,s office every day. As for his father, he saw death in the falling leaves.
Reuben had written six articles and covered two murders in his time at the San Francisco Observer. And both the women in his life had praised his writing to the skies, and lectured him at length on what he failed to grasp.
Something his father said came back to him. "You,re innocent, Reuben, yes, but life will teach you what you need to know soon enough." Phil was always making rather unusual pronouncements. He said at dinner last night, "Not a day goes by, when I don,t ask a cosmic question. Does life have meaning? Or is this all smoke and mirrors? Are we all doomed?"
"You know, Sunshine Boy, I know why nothing really penetrates with you," Celeste had said later. "Your mother talks in detail about her surgeries over shrimp cocktail, and your father will only talk about what absolutely does not matter at all. I,ll take your easy brand of optimism any day. The fact is, you make me feel good."
Had that made him feel good? No. Not at all. But the strange thing about Celeste was that she was far more affectionate and kindly than her words ever indicated. She was a killer of an attorney, a five-foot-two firebrand on the job, but with him, she was cuddly and downright sweet. She fussed over his clothes, and always answered her phone. She had lawyer friends on speed dial to answer any questions he encountered in his reporting. But her tongue? Her tongue was a little sharp.
The fact is, Reuben thought suddenly, secretively, there is something dark and tragic about this house that I want to know. The house made him think of cello music, deep, rich, a little rough, and uncompromising The house was talking to him, or maybe it would talk to him if he,d stop listening to the voices of home.
He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. Without taking his eyes off the house, he turned it off.
"Oh good gracious, look at you," said Marchent. "You,re freezing, dear boy. How utterly thoughtless of me. Come, we must get you inside."
"I,m a San Francisco kid," he muttered. "I,ve slept all my life on Russian Hill with the window wide open. I should have been prepared."
He followed her up the stone steps, and through the massive arched front door.
The warmth of the room was immediate and delicious, even though it was a vast space, under a high beamed ceiling, its dark oak floors stretching on forever in a kind of airy gloom.
The blazing fireplace was distant but cavernous, facing them directly from across a dark expanse of rather shapeless old couches and chairs.
He,d smelled the oak logs burning earlier, just a whiff here and there as they,d walked on the hillside, and he,d loved that.
She led him to the velvet couch right beside the hearth. There was a silver coffee service on the large marble coffee table.
"You get warm," she said. And she stood there herself before the flames warming her hands.
There were huge old brass andirons and a fender, and the bricks on the back of the fireplace were black.
She turned and moved about almost silently on the old worn Oriental carpets, turning on the many scattered lamps.
Slowly the room took on a cheerful glow.
The furniture was immense, but comfortable, with worn but serviceable slipcovers and occasional caramel-colored leather chairs. There were a few hulking bronze sculptures, all of predictable mythological figures, very old-fashioned. And a number of dark landscapes in heavy gilt frames hanging here and there.
The warmth was now relentless. In a few minutes he would be taking off his scarf and his coat.