Free The Book of Heaven: A Novel by Patricia Storace Page A

translated her approach to him from independence into obedience. Now he ordered her to tell him what she had previously volunteered. Now, with luck, her initiative would be invisible, her action would be lost in his. She might find a chance to submit to the freedom he imposed on her.
    “The customs of your people may be different than our own. So I must ask you, sir, would you have taken me if I had been a widow?”
    “There is no certain answer, except perhaps, and not for myself. A widow has been a bringer of bad fortune.”
    “And if I were a wife?”
    “Under no circumstances but war. A woman with a living husband is a house where a snake waits hidden in a crevice, a danger even in repose.”
    “Sir, then I am obliged to tell you. The flaw I have is marriage.”
    She watched his impulse to strike her, the thwarted reversal of his wish to touch her, and steeled herself. But he was so confused that his movements were indecisive, and in that physical indecision, a question about the justice of his wish to harm her surfaced on his face, which took on the hardworking innocence of a student unable to solve a problem. A face working with a question is a youthful face. His practiced courtesy faltered. “This is not what I was told,” he said.
    Softly, carefully, she echoed him, giving him the sound of his own words in a muse’s voice. “There is much I, too, was not told.”
    More calmly, having heard his voice again in the world, he seated himself again, facing her. “Is this some scheme of your brother’s?” he asked, gazing at her with a judge’s intensity. For her child’s sake, she wanted to survive both men. So she answered him, “Sir, there is neither scheme nor brother.”
    “I find myself in possession of a bride who is the wife of another man, after a purchase I made in good faith. Only your brother can have plotted this.”
    “Sir, there is no brother. The man is my husband. And there is no plot. In a moment of panic, he sold me to you, afraid in your wish to have me in your household you might choose to make me a widow.”
    He flinched and recoiled. “This is an extraordinary violation of both custom and trade. And having done this, is he planning instead to make my wives widows?”
    “Sir, he had no plan beyond saving his life, which he imagined at risk. I do not know what he thought beyond fearing you, leaving your city, and in security, seeking some resolution.”
    “He has shown no scruple in the beginning, why should he be any more trustworthy now? This is what I see: he sells a woman he claims to be his sister, but she privately claims to be his wife. I return her. He repudiates her claim to be his wife, and then justifies his attack on his host for the insult to his honor. Then the matter is settled in violence. Or that threat is averted through payment. Isn’t that the plan?” He moved toward her, so rent by his own impulses, and by outrage that another man had taken the privilege of making him afraid, that she could not accurately estimate what he might do.
    “Sir, there was no plan. Sir, there was no plan,” she hoped he would hear her words through his storm. She cowered instinctively to shield herself from the whiplash of his slap, ashamed that defending herself necessarily conflicted with her pride. There were moments when she valued the enforced diplomacies imposed on her sex by physical defenselessness, but she hated her endangerment at the hands of both this stranger and her husband. She crouched with her hands cupping the back of her head and neck, tearing from her hair the jeweled ornament he had given her; the heavy gems would intensify the blow and cut into her scalp.
    She became a sculpture of fear; the sculptor paused before her to contemplate the work of his hands. She felt from her crouch a new quality in his breathing; the power to attend to someone else had returned to him. She ventured a look at him. The salt sovereign motioned her to sit up. “Sir, may I speak?”