The Wolves of Midwinter

3

TIRED AS HE WAS, Reuben was game for a trip to the cellars, and followed Felix willingly down the steps. They passed quickly through the old furnace room and into the first of the many passages that made up a labyrinth before the final tunnel to the outside world.

In the last week electricians had been rewiring these low-roofed hallways, and some of the mysterious chambers, but much remained to be done and Felix explained that some of the rooms could never be opened for electrical light.

There were oil lamps and flashlights in cabinets here and there, between locked doors, and Reuben realized as he followed Felix under the dim overhead bulbs that he had no idea as to the extent of the construction under the house. These crudely plastered walls glistened with moisture in places, and as he followed Felix now into completely foreign territory, he glimpsed at least ten doors on either side of the cramped hall.

Felix had a large flashlight in hand, and stopped before a door with a combination lock.

“What is it? What’s troubling you?” Felix asked. He laid a firm hand on Reuben’s shoulder. “You came in miserable. What’s happened?”

“Well, nothing’s happened,” said Reuben, partly relieved to be talking about it, and partly ashamed. “It’s just that Laura has decided, as I’m sure you know. And I didn’t know. I was with Laura this afternoon. I miss her and I don’t understand how I can want her to come home so much and be so afraid of what’s happening to her. I wanted to carry her back here by force and I wanted to flee.”

“You really don’t understand?” Felix asked. His dark eyes were filled with a protective concern. “It’s easy enough for me to understand,” he said. “And you mustn’t condemn yourself for it, not at all.”

“You’re always kind, Felix, always kind,” Reuben said, “and there are so many questions on the tip of my tongue about who you are and what you know.…”

“I realize that,” said Felix. “But in a very real way, who we are now is what counts. Listen, I’ve loved you as if you were a son to me from the first moment I met you. And if I thought it would help to tell you all the stories of my life, I’d do it. But it won’t help at all. This you must live through on your own.”

“Why am I not happy for her,” Reuben asked, “happy to share this power, these secrets, what’s wrong with me? From the first moment I knew I loved her, I wanted to give her the Chrism. I didn’t even know the name of it. But I knew that if it could be passed, given, and I wanted to …”

“Of course you did,” said Felix. “But she’s not simply a person in your mind, she’s a lover.” He hesitated. “A woman.” He turned to the small combination lock and, shifting the flashlight under his arm, worked the dial quickly. “You’re possessive of her, you have to be,” Felix went on. He cracked the door but didn’t enter. “And now she’s one of us, and it’s out of your hands.”

“That’s exactly what she said,” Reuben answered. “And I know I should be happy that it’s out of my hands, that she’s been accepted without conditions, that she’s seen as whole and entire and her own person.…”

“Yes, of course you should, but she’s your spouse!”

Reuben didn’t respond. He was seeing Laura again, by the creek, holding that small wooden flute, and then playing it, tentatively, making that melody that rose mournfully, as if it were a little prayer.

“I know this,” said Felix. “You have an exceptional capacity to love. I’ve seen it, felt it, knew it when we first talked to each other in the lawyer’s office. You love your family. You love Stuart. And you love Laura deeply, and if for any reason you cannot bear to be around her anymore, well, you will deal with it with love.”

Reuben wasn’t so sure of that, and suddenly the difficulties, the potential for difficulties, overwhelmed him. He thought of Thibault under the tree outside of her house, waiting there so quietly in the darkness, and a raging jealousy took hold of him, jealousy that Thibault had given her the Chrism, jealousy that Thibault, who’d warmed to her from the beginning, might be far closer to her now than Reuben was.…

“Come,” said Felix. “I want you to see the statues.”

The flashlight threw a large yellow beam before them as they entered a cold white-tiled room. Even the ceiling was tiled. And at once Reuben’s eyes made out a great cluster of white-marble crèche figures, finely carved, robust, and baroque in proportions and costume, as rich as any Italian statues he had ever seen. Surely these had come from some sixteenth-century palazzo or church across the sea.

They took his breath away. Felix held the flashlight as Reuben examined them, wiping the dust from the Virgin’s downcast eyes, her cheek. Not even in the famous Villa Borghese had he ever seen anything more plastic or lifelike rendered in stone. The tall figure of the bearded Joseph loomed over him, or was it one of the shepherds? Well, here was the lamb, and the ox, yes, finely detailed, and there suddenly as Felix moved the flashlight were revealed the opulent and splendid Three Kings.

“Felix, these are treasures,” he whispered. How pathetic had been Reuben’s imaginings of a Christmas crib.

“Well, they haven’t been on the terrace at Yuletide for almost a hundred years. My beloved Marchent never laid eyes on them. Her father detested such entertainments, and I spent too many winters in other parts of the world. It wore me out, pretending to be my own mortal descendant. But they’ll be displayed this Yuletide, and with all the proper accoutrements. I have carpenters all ready to build a stable enclosure. Oh, you’ll see.” He sighed.

He let the flashlight pass over the huge figure of the richly adorned camel, and the donkey with his large tender eyes … so like the eyes of the beasts that Reuben had encountered, the soft open unquestioning eyes of the animals he’d killed. A shock passed through him as he looked at it, thinking of Laura again, and the scent of the deer outside her house.

He reached out to touch the Virgin’s perfect fingers. Then the light settled on the Christ Child, a smiling and beaming figure with flowing hair and bright joyful eyes, lying on the bed of marble hay with his arms outstretched.

He felt a pain looking at this, a terrible pain. There had been a time long, long ago when some belief in these things had galvanized him, hadn’t there? When as a little boy he’d looked at such a figure and felt the deep consummate recognition that it meant unconditional love.

“Such a story,” Felix said in a low whisper, “that the Maker of the Universe would descend to us in this humble form, come all the way down and down and down from the far reaches of his creation to be born amongst us. Was there ever a more beautiful symbol for our desperate hope at Midwinter that the world will be born anew?”

Reuben couldn’t speak. For so long, he’d bought all the flippant dismissals … a pagan feast with a Christian story grafted to it. Was it not something for the devout and the godless to both reject? No wonder Stuart was so suspicious. The world today was suspicious of such things.

How many times had he sat there silently in church watching his beloved brother, Jim, celebrate the Mass and thought, Meaningless, all of it, meaningless. He’d long to be released from the church into the bright, open world again, to be looking simply at a starry sky or listening to the sound of the birds that sing even in the darkness, to be alone with his deepest convictions, simple as they were.

But some other deeper and finer feeling was dawning in him now, that it was not all “either-or.” A magnificent possibility was occurring to him, that disparate things might in some way be united in ways we had to come to understand.

He wished he could talk to Jim just now, but then Jim would come to this Christmas fete and they would stand before this crèche, and they could talk together as they always had. And Stuart, Stuart would come to understand, to see.

He felt a great relief that Felix was here, with his resolve and his vision, to make something like this grand Yuletide party truly work.

“Margon’s not tired of Stuart, is he?” he asked suddenly. “He understands, doesn’t he, that Stuart is just so damned exuberant!”

“Are you serious?” Felix laughed softly. “Margon loves Stuart.” He dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. “You must be a very sound sleeper, Reuben Golding. Why, it’s Zeus carrying off Ganymede just about every night.”

Reuben laughed in spite of himself. Actually he was not much of a sound sleeper, or certainly not every night.

“And we’ll have the finest musicians,” Felix resumed as if talking to himself. “I’ve already made calls to San Francisco, and found inns along the coast where they can be put up. Operatic voices, that’s what I want for the adult choir. And I’ll bring the boys’ choir from Europe if I have to. I have a young conductor who understands. I want the old carols, the traditional carols, the ones that capture something of the irresistible depth of it all.”

Reuben was quiet. He was looking at Felix, stealing a long slow look at him as Felix looked lovingly on this family of marble sentinels. And Reuben was thinking, Everlasting life, and I do not begin to know.… But he knew that he loved Felix, that Felix was the light shining on his path now, that Felix was the teacher in this new school in which he found himself.

“Long ago,” Felix said, “I had a splendid home in Europe—.” He went quiet, and his usually cheerful and animated face was shadowy and almost grim. “You know what kills us, don’t you, Reuben? Not wounds, or pestilence, but immortality itself.” He paused. “You are living in a blessed time now, Reuben, and you will be until all those you love here are gone, until your generation is in the earth. Then immortality will begin for you. And someday centuries from now, you will remember this Yuletide and your beloved family—and all of us together in this house.” He drew himself up, impatiently, before Reuben had a chance to respond, and he gestured for them to leave.

“Is this the easiest time, Felix?” he asked.

“No. Not always. Not everyone has the remarkable family you have.” He paused. “You’ve confided in your brother, Jim, haven’t you? I mean he knows what you are and what we are.”

“In Confession, Felix,” said Reuben. “Yes, I thought I’d told you. Perhaps I didn’t. But it was in Confession and my brother is the kind of Catholic priest who will die before he breaks the seal of the Confessional. But yes, he knows.”

“I sensed as much from the very start,” Felix said. “The others sensed it, of course. We know when people know. You will find this out in time. I think it’s rather marvelous that you had such an opportunity.” He was musing. “My life was so very different. But this is not the time for that tale.”

“You must trust, all of you,” said Reuben, “that Jim would never—.”

“Dear boy, do you think any of us would ever harm your brother?”

When they reached the stairs, he put his arm around Reuben again, and paused, his head down.

“What is it, Felix?” Reuben asked. He wanted somehow to tell Felix how much he cared for him, reciprocate the warm words Felix had spoken to him.

“You mustn’t fear what’s to come with Laura,” Felix said. “Nothing is forever with us; it only seems so. And when it stops seeming so, well, that is when we begin to die.” He frowned. “I didn’t mean to say that. I meant to say …”

“I know,” said Reuben. “You meant one thing and something else came out.”

Felix nodded.

Reuben looked into his eyes. “I think I know what you’re saying. You’re saying ‘treasure the pain.’ ”

“Yes, why maybe that is what I’m saying,” said Felix. “Treasure the pain; treasure what you have with her, including the fear. Treasure what you may have, including the failure. Treasure it because if we don’t live this life, if we don’t live it to the fullest year after year and century after century, well, then, we die.”

Reuben nodded.

“That’s why the statues are still there, in the cellar, after all these years. That’s why I brought them here from my homeland. That’s why I built this house. That’s why I am back under this roof, and you and Laura are an essential flame! You and Laura and the promise of what you are. Hmmm. I don’t have your gift for words, Reuben. I make it sound as if I need you to love one another. That’s not right. That’s not what I meant to say at all. I come to warm my hands at a blaze and to marvel at it. That’s all.”

Reuben smiled. “I love you, Felix,” he said. There was not a lot of emotion in his voice or in his eyes, only a deep and comfortable conviction, and the conviction that he was understood, and that no more words really were necessary.

Their eyes met, and neither needed to say a word.

They went on up the stairs.

In the dining room, Margon and Stuart were still at work. Stuart was going on about the stupidity and vapidity of rituals, and Margon was protesting softly that Stuart was being an incorrigible nuisance on purpose, as if he were arguing with his mother or his old teachers at school. Stuart was laughing impishly and Margon was smiling in spite of himself.

Sergei wandered in, the great blond-haired giant with the blazing blue eyes. His clothes were streaked with rain and dirt, his hair full of dust and bits of broken leaf. He looked ruddy and dazed. A curious silent exchange passed between Sergei and Felix, and a strange prickling feeling came over Reuben. Sergei had been out hunting; Sergei had been the Man Wolf tonight; the blood was pounding in him. And Reuben’s blood knew it and Felix knew it. Stuart too sensed it, eyeing him with fascination and resentment, it seemed, and then glancing at Margon.

But Margon and Felix simply went back to work.

Sergei drifted off to the kitchen.

And Reuben went up to get snug with his laptop by the fire and research Christmas customs and the pagan customs of Midwinter, and maybe begin an essay for the Observer. Billie, his editor, was calling just about every second day. She wanted more material from him. So did the readers, she said. And he liked the idea of penetrating the different attitudes, positive and negative, towards Christmas, of probing why we were so ambivalent about it, why the ancient traditions often disturbed us as much as the spending and shopping, and how we might start thinking about Christmas in a fresh and committed way. It felt good to think of something other than the old cynical cliches.

Something occurred to him. He realized he was trying to figure a way to express what he was learning now without revealing the secret of how he was learning it, and how learning itself for him had so totally changed. “This is the way it will be,” he whispered. “I’ll pour out what I know, yes, but there will always be a holding back.” Even so, he wanted to get busy. Christmas customs, Christmas spirit, echoes of Midwinter, yes.