St. Louis May 1899
The first signs that something was wrong with me had emerged that Christmas. Because I tend to eschew meat—a habit forged in a childhood where meat was rarely on our table—I assumed my sudden bout of indigestion was the result of holiday overindulgence.
However, the dyspepsia persisted; not at every meal, and not always so severe, but there were days when I could keep no food down save tea and toast. I hid the degree of my discomfort from Adolphe, but he was an observant husband and I knew he worried.
Eventually I decided I could not wish the problem away and sought a physician on another side of town, one who did not know us. I did not want to cause alarm, so on the day of my appointment I closed my bedroom door, as if napping, and left via the back stairs.
At the doctor’s office, the physician half-listened to my complaints and then felt around my abdomen. He said he detected a mass of some kind, and warned that I should be prepared for my condition to worsen. “There is not much I can prescribe. Gastritis such as this, in a woman your age, often progresses to cancer,” he said. The word rang in my head like a bell, and I struggled to hear what followed.
“Surgeons cannot safely remove such a mass from the stomach,” he said. “If it becomes malignant, there is no cure.”
When I only stared at him, still in shock, he chided me: “You should have come here with your husband.” I left, fearful, with some prescriptions for tonics which did nothing. I was infuriated by the doctor’s way of speaking to me, as if I of all people did not comprehend death.
Too shaken to negotiate the long streetcar route home, I began to walk. It was a warm spring day, teasing of summer to come. I traveled north, through Tower Grove Park, which had been a clearing of bare dirt when I arrived in St. Louis and was now a sculptured woodland. My head was down; I saw few of its mulberries and graceful stone spires. Through the north gate I passed into Shaw’s Garden, where Adolphe and I had begun our lives together, and still I walked as if in a dark tunnel, oblivious to the nodding buds of daffodils which made a carpet of green and gold and white.
At last I heard the sound of organ music, and found myself in front of a cathedral whose doors were thrown open. I drifted in, following others attracted to the call. “Today is the Flower Sermon,” a clergyman whispered to us as we entered. The nave and sanctuary and pulpit were all bedecked with garlands of roses and carnations, and their scent was so overpowering they were surely picked that morning. Around me were adults and children in church finery, more than the pews could hold, so we newcomers had no recourse but to stand.
The service had already begun. I do not know what denomination the preacher represented, for he barely spoke of God at all.
“There is a progression of order and symmetry in the natural world,” he said. “From the time when all the universe was mist and vapor, to the present day of matter and solidity, we have reached for ever greater harmony.”
The nave was packed full now, every face turned up towards the preacher, but I raised my eyes further, looking into the vault of the ceiling and the intricate geometric pattern of its ribs, hewed out of limestone. The panels between were painted in deep celestial blue and adorned with gold leaf stars like Oina̤, the lamps of the gods which illuminate the face of a young farm girl gazing up into the night.
“Every flower is the universe in miniature, bending towards the sun, growing in radial symmetry. But only in the bloom’s decay and death are seeds formed, so that fresh blossoms may flourish in its stead. This is the lesson flowers teach us: they offer up their fairest hues and richest scents to minister to us while they flourish, and end their service with a sacrifice.”
I thought: I do not have to leave my husband alone. I can promise that I will walk beside him through oifen tsû—endless time—and conjure for him a vision of infinite worlds in harmony. I will write of intelligences who watch over us always, from the light of the skies and not the darkness of the seance. I can add one more white lie to my tally, and if there is a judgment from heaven after all, I may be forgiven, for I will do this out of love.
“We of the latter centuries live too fast. We spend too little time among the blue hills and beside the singing streams; they have a magic in them to heal our hearts. Is there any one of us who has been to the wild places and does not hear sometimes, from the hot and roaring streets, the whisper of nature inviting them to come to Her, to cleanse their heart with beauty, and rest?”
I gently threaded my way out through the crowd. Few people had visited the arboretum on this beautiful day. I followed the sinuous paths to the floretum and its Moorish tower, and walked further to the lagoons, and knelt beside a small stream, and when no one was looking save a family of ducks, I scooped up a flower that bobbed in their wake.
When I arrived home, I tiptoed up the back stairs. Adolphe and Vena were downstairs in the parlor. I crept into my room and changed into a comfortable tea gown, and mussed my hair a bit, as if I had only just awoken. Then I sat and sketched the white water-lily that I had taken from the garden—the flower my mother and I had once dreaded.
I drew a dense-petalled inflorescence, brilliant white with a yellow hearth-glow at its center, and thin tendril stems with heart-shaped leaves like welcoming lily pads. Underneath I wrote: The Rodel is the holiest of flowers. Each day it opens its golden heart to the sun, and sleeps peacefully at night. It is a symbol of rebirth and renewal. Then I descended, and told my husband, “I have been to Mars.”
Dear me, what a wonderfully strange scene. Those Air Transports hover over the lake like great birds, and the rising and falling tones of their whirring climbers are really musical. I wish I were clever enough to understand how they are constructed and controlled in their movements, and how—oh, De L'Ester, George, Bernard, see, see, yonder in the west is a fleet of large vessels and numerous smaller ones coming toward Etzoina̤. How swiftly the great vessels are advancing, leaving in their wake tumultuous billows of snowy foam. The foremost vessel is quite covered with rodels, and there are ropes of rodels, wreaths of rodels, banners of rodels, and around the entire deck is a fringe of rodels trailing their creamy beauty quite to the surface of the foaming water. Surely it has taken all the rodels on the planet to so bedeck the great vessel.Page 533
The day I completed the book was a long one. I told Adolphe and Vena that I expected a grueling psychic journey, and to not wait up for me. I no longer needed to lock the door; by now they knew to leave me to myself. I wrote for hours, uninterrupted without pauses, as if I were performing automatic writing in truth.
I settled my stub of a pencil on the desk and stood up. It was well past dark. I opened the door to my study and the hallway was empty, and all the doors to the bedrooms were closed. Evidently, my household had retired while I wrote.
I was ravenously hungry. I picked my way downstairs to the kitchen, retrieved some bread and cheese from the larder, and ate standing up in my stocking feet while listening to the sounds of the city. I heard streetcar bells recede into the distance. The young couple in the adjacent apartment engaged in a minor disagreement over a menu. A deliveryman’s horse whinnied streetside, impatient to move on into the night.
These days I try to eat in small portions, to spare myself discomfort, so after only a few bites I put my cold supper away. Despite sitting for hours, I felt remarkably lithe and even a little breathless, like I did as a girl when I’d just come back after a ramble across the countryside.
I crept back upstairs and into our bedroom. My husband likes fresh air and keeps the window open year-round. Adolphe was abed but awake, the duvet pulled up past his neck and his moustache just peeking over the top. Even in the cool gloom I could see how his hair was becoming flecked with grey. He said nothing, only watched me, his eyes soft and kind. He did not demand that I come to bed, nor had he forgotten me and taken his own rest. He is always waiting for me to return to him.
“My mission is finished,” I said, and joined the warmth of his body.