With Osmon at hand, I was able to feel as content as possible in my life at Valley View. Even Jonas seemed more at ease, usually joining Osmon and me in the evenings on the veranda. Though he said little, I know he also felt a kind of peace settling down into Valley View. “I was skeptical about your bringing on this green hand, but he is doing well,” he told me after a few weeks. “Things could not be smoother, and of that I am abundantly glad.”
Chapter 10
Some months after Daniels left and just before harvest, Jonas passed. It was a quiet death: he rose as usual, early in the morning, had some breakfast, but complained nearly right away of indigestion. I suggested he lie down for a while, and as he was making his way back toward his room, his legs suddenly gave way under him and he fell. I rushed to help him up and found his face gray and his body nearly limp, and it was all I could do to prop him up against me on the floor. I called out for help, and his walking boy came in. He took one look and ran back for damp towels with which to swab Jonas’ face. He was nearly gone by the time the boy returned to place a cool cloth on his forehead. Jonas’ eyes opened and he tried to speak, but he seemed not to have the strength even for a word. “I have sent for the physician,” I said, nodding at the boy to go immediately. “Relax, you will be fine,” I added. “It’s just a little something.”
But he and I both knew better. His hand raised slightly and clutched at my shirt, and his mouth moved urgently. I leaned closer to make out his guttural whispering, and at first I could make no sense of it, but then I heard the word, “Promise…promise.”
“Yes, yes,” I said, imagining his concerns for Valley View in his absence.
“Promise me…,” he murmured again.
“Yes,” I said soothingly.
He must have known I didn’t understand. Summoning the last of his strength, he pulled me closer, and he said, “Promise…you will never…never…abandon my daughter.”
These last words were barely more than a sigh, but they ran through me like a jolt. At the same time, I saw the light begin to fade from his eyes. “Yes,” I said, “of course.”
As if I had given him permission to pass, his hand released my shirt, his head slumped, and he was gone.
I held him in silence, feeling, somehow, as if the floor had given way beneath me. I could not imagine him gone. I stayed with him until the physician arrived, but finally I rose and left the house. There was nowhere to go, but I walked anyway, into a cane field, the stalks rising above my head, leaves brushing against my face, losing myself, losing for a while all sense of time and place.
***
We debated whether Bertha should be told, Osmon and I. Bertha now led a life quite opposite from that of the rest of us, rising at dusk, pacing through her little apartment, sometimes talking or even shouting at imagined beings, and sometimes playing childish games with Molly and Tiso while the rest of the world slept. She still had her fits of anger and attempted destruction, but she had ceased demanding my attention as a price for her imprisonment. Indeed, I didn’t believe she saw it as such. When she wasn’t at the center of a ballroom, she had always preferred dark, inclosed places, and now she lived a dark, inclosed life, which seemed to comfort her as little else could.
I was wary of disrupting her precious equilibrium with this tragic news, for I had no idea how she would react, nor if she would even be able to comprehend it. But Osmon thought that she should come to the burial as any daughter would. When we retired that night, the issue was still undecided.
In the morning, with great trepidation, I went to Bertha’s apartment. Molly let me in, and I crept into the little bedchamber, where I sat down on the bed beside my sleeping wife. As always, the shutters were closed, yet even in the gloom, relaxed in sleep, she was nearly as beautiful as ever. I did not then fully understand the weight of Jonas’ last words, for Bertha was content in her rooms, or as content as she could ever be. Surely, I thought, we could continue our life at Valley View and go on as we had.
I touched her cheek lightly, running my finger along it from her temple to her chin. I felt her stirring, and then Molly was there with a lamp so that Bertha could see me and I her.
“You came,” Bertha said, a slight smile on her lips.
“Yes,” I responded, not knowing how to tell her.
“Is this a dream?” she asked.
“No, it is not a dream. I must tell you something.” I leaned closer, smoothing her hair away from her face. “Your father…passed.”
She shook her head slowly. “It is a dream,” she said.
“No, I am afraid it is not.”
“My father?”
“Yes. I’m sorry to have to tell you.”
“But he is a young man.”
“Not so very young, Bertha.”
“Call me Antoinetta.”
“Antoinetta.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “That is my true name.” Then she smiled even more widely. “And you have come to me for love.”
“I think this is not a good time,” I said, starting to move away from her.
