though his jaw trembled faintly and his eyes filled with moisture that was not tears he was drunk with exhilaration, and could not stop grinning.
“Bellefleur,” he whispered, wiping his nose with the side of his hand, and giggling softly. “You see what we can do!”
The Bellefleur Curse
A ccording to mountain legend there was a curse on Germaine’s family. (But it wasn’t merely a local legend: it was freely alluded to in the state capital five hundred miles away, and in Washington, D.C.; and when Bellefleur men fought in the Great War they claimed to encounter soldiers who knew them by name, by reputation, and who shrank away in superstitious dread—You’ll bring misfortune on all of us, they were told.)
But no one knew what the curse was.
Or why it was, or who—or what—had pronounced it.
THERE’S A CURSE on us, Yolande said listlessly on the eve of her running away. There’s a curse on us and now I know what it is, she said. But it was to Germaine she spoke, and Germaine was at that time only one year old.
There is no such thing as a curse, Leah said. If we want to hold onto our sanity we have to cleanse ourselves of these ridiculous old superstitions . . . . Don’t ever say such things in my presence! (But this was much later. After her pregnancy with Germaine, after the birth of Germaine. As a young girl and even as a married woman Leah had frequently behaved in a superstitious manner, though she would have been angry if anyone in the family had taken note.)
The older Bellefleurs—grandfather Noel, grandmother Cornelia, great-grandmother Elvira, aunt Veronica, uncle Hiram, aunt Matilde, Leah’s mother Della, Jean-Pierre, and the rest—and of course all the dead—knew very well that there was a curse; and though as younger men and women they might have excited themselves speculating on the nature of the curse, at the present time they were silent on the subject. You can embody a curse without being able to articulate it, uncle Hiram said not long before his death. Like a silver-haired bat carries the distinguishing marks of his species on his back.
Gideon once said, with a thoughtfulness uncharacteristic of him, that the curse was a terribly simple one: Bellefleur men die interesting deaths. They rarely die in bed.
They never die in bed! Ewan said with a boastful laugh. (For he planned not to die—however and whenever he died—in any sort of bed.)
Bellefleur men die absurd deaths, grandmother Della said flatly. (She was thinking, perhaps, of her husband Stanton’s death, one Christmas Eve long ago: and of her own father’s death; and there was great-grandfather Raphael, who died of natural causes, but had determined by the terms of his will that his body be grotesquely mutilated after his death.) The men die absurd deaths, Della said, and the women are fated to survive them and mourn them.
They don’t die absurd deaths, they die necessary deaths, uncle Hiram said pedantically. (For he himself had escaped death innumerable times—in the Great War, and in countless accidents over the years, suffered as a consequence of his sleepwalking affliction, which no physician could cure.) Everything that transpires in this universe transpires out of necessity, however brutal.
It was pointed out that great-great-great-grandfather Jedediah, whom everyone considered a saint, died an extraordinarily peaceful death within a few years of his wife Germaine: he simply dropped off to sleep on the eve of his 101st birthday, in the simple bed with the pine posts and the old horsehair mattress he insisted upon, in the servants’ wing (his narrow, rather dark room had been intended as a valet’s room, but he insisted upon having it—the handsomer, more pretentious rooms made him uneasy); his last words, though cryptic, The jaws devour, the jaws are devoured, were nevertheless uttered with a beatific smile. And there was a Bellefleur named Samuel, a son of Raphael’s, who disappeared in one of the
“Bellefleur,” he whispered, wiping his nose with the side of his hand, and giggling softly. “You see what we can do!”
The Bellefleur Curse
A ccording to mountain legend there was a curse on Germaine’s family. (But it wasn’t merely a local legend: it was freely alluded to in the state capital five hundred miles away, and in Washington, D.C.; and when Bellefleur men fought in the Great War they claimed to encounter soldiers who knew them by name, by reputation, and who shrank away in superstitious dread—You’ll bring misfortune on all of us, they were told.)
But no one knew what the curse was.
Or why it was, or who—or what—had pronounced it.
THERE’S A CURSE on us, Yolande said listlessly on the eve of her running away. There’s a curse on us and now I know what it is, she said. But it was to Germaine she spoke, and Germaine was at that time only one year old.
There is no such thing as a curse, Leah said. If we want to hold onto our sanity we have to cleanse ourselves of these ridiculous old superstitions . . . . Don’t ever say such things in my presence! (But this was much later. After her pregnancy with Germaine, after the birth of Germaine. As a young girl and even as a married woman Leah had frequently behaved in a superstitious manner, though she would have been angry if anyone in the family had taken note.)
The older Bellefleurs—grandfather Noel, grandmother Cornelia, great-grandmother Elvira, aunt Veronica, uncle Hiram, aunt Matilde, Leah’s mother Della, Jean-Pierre, and the rest—and of course all the dead—knew very well that there was a curse; and though as younger men and women they might have excited themselves speculating on the nature of the curse, at the present time they were silent on the subject. You can embody a curse without being able to articulate it, uncle Hiram said not long before his death. Like a silver-haired bat carries the distinguishing marks of his species on his back.
Gideon once said, with a thoughtfulness uncharacteristic of him, that the curse was a terribly simple one: Bellefleur men die interesting deaths. They rarely die in bed.
They never die in bed! Ewan said with a boastful laugh. (For he planned not to die—however and whenever he died—in any sort of bed.)
Bellefleur men die absurd deaths, grandmother Della said flatly. (She was thinking, perhaps, of her husband Stanton’s death, one Christmas Eve long ago: and of her own father’s death; and there was great-grandfather Raphael, who died of natural causes, but had determined by the terms of his will that his body be grotesquely mutilated after his death.) The men die absurd deaths, Della said, and the women are fated to survive them and mourn them.
They don’t die absurd deaths, they die necessary deaths, uncle Hiram said pedantically. (For he himself had escaped death innumerable times—in the Great War, and in countless accidents over the years, suffered as a consequence of his sleepwalking affliction, which no physician could cure.) Everything that transpires in this universe transpires out of necessity, however brutal.
It was pointed out that great-great-great-grandfather Jedediah, whom everyone considered a saint, died an extraordinarily peaceful death within a few years of his wife Germaine: he simply dropped off to sleep on the eve of his 101st birthday, in the simple bed with the pine posts and the old horsehair mattress he insisted upon, in the servants’ wing (his narrow, rather dark room had been intended as a valet’s room, but he insisted upon having it—the handsomer, more pretentious rooms made him uneasy); his last words, though cryptic, The jaws devour, the jaws are devoured, were nevertheless uttered with a beatific smile. And there was a Bellefleur named Samuel, a son of Raphael’s, who disappeared in one of the
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