Miranda and Caliban(54)
I nod again. “Yes, Papa.”
It is a lie.
It suffices to fan the spark of resentment and rebellion that yet lingers in me, and for the first time in many years, I should like to shout and rage to the heavens, to ask Papa what and how and why?
But I do not.
I have grown circumspect. Quietly, I excuse myself to venture afield where I might seek to study the visage of a hawk.
It is the sort of quest in which Caliban would have delighted to accompany me not so very long ago, but when I attempt to entice him into joining me, he declines in an ungracious manner. Since I began assisting Papa with his work, Caliban’s sullenness toward me has continued unabated, and I am none the wiser as to the cause of it.
“Why are you being so churlish?” I cry. “Have I not apologized many times over for my bad behavior?”
Caliban hunches his shoulders, looks away, and mutters, “It is no fault of yours, Miranda.”
“Then why?” I grasp his arm and tug it, trying to make him turn to face me. “Tell me! Will you not even look at me?”
He shakes off my grip with unexpected force, then doubles over in pain as Papa’s binding takes effect.
Filled with remorse, I crouch beside him. “Oh, Caliban! I’m sorry.”
Caliban staggers away from me with a grunt of pain, bracing his hands on his bent knees. “It is no fault of yours, Miranda!” he says again, and then he straightens and lopes for the doorway, one arm pressed against his belly. I watch him go, tears of frustration stinging my eyes.
When I am not immersed in the wonder of painting, this divide between us troubles me more than I can say.
We had grown so very close, Caliban and I. During the seemingly endless months when I was recovering from my affliction, he showed me such tenderness and patience. As I healed and we grew and learned together in those months, and indeed the years that followed, it seemed almost that we were two parts of a whole, each of us reflecting the other’s strengths and weaknesses. We were two souls who found each other in our times of need, providing companionship and solace. So long as the distance between us persists, there is an emptiness inside me.
For the first time in long years, I remember what it is to be lonely.
TWENTY-EIGHT
CALIBAN
Oh, Miranda!
I do not wish to be unkind to you; never. Never in the everest ever!
But it is best that I am, because you are good and innocent and everything that I am not.
One day you will understand.
One day you will hate me for what I am, as I have learned to hate myself for it.
TWENTY-NINE
MIRANDA
To my dismay, I am unable to finish the image of the second face of Gemini before Luna, the Lady Moon herself, waxes full and bright in the night sky, and I feel the heaviness and the dull ache that I now know portend the start of my woman’s courses. Papa is pleased that my flow arrives in a timely manner, but of course I am banished from his sanctum until it ends.
The anniversary of my birth arrives and Papa entrusts me with his Bible that I might read it for myself now that I am fourteen years of age and a woman grown, which is a mercy; still, it is a hardship to be forbidden the labor I have come to love, and all the more so for Caliban’s strange and enduring coldness toward me.
“Is it because I have been spending so many hours aiding Papa in his sanctum?” I ask him, still seeking to make sense of his behavior. “So many hours painting? Are you angry at me for it?”
“No.”
I press him. “Are you quite certain?”
Caliban gives a sharp bark of laughter in response. He glances at me, a quick, furtive, and darting glance, and there is a misery I do not understand in his dark eyes. “Yes, Miranda.”
He leaves.
He has grown skilled at leaving, grown skilled at ensuring that our paths cross as little as possible.
I only would that I knew why.
I think of the monstrous thing he showed me with such pride so long ago, the great bony brown rock of a skull that perches atop the high crag with its maw agape as if to devour the sky, that thing that he called Setebos. Since first Caliban showed it to me, I have never returned, but I suspect he takes refuge there often. It has been the only point of contention between us in the years since my affliction, for I have no love for the gruesome thing, and yet Caliban clings stubbornly to a belief that it is a manifestation of the foul spirit his mother worshipped; and moreover, that it is his prayers to Setebos that restored me to wakefulness.
I have said naught of this to Papa, for he is quick to anger where Caliban is concerned and I have no wish to rouse his wrath, but when I think on it, worry gnaws at me like a maggot in an acorn. I have long excused this fancy of Caliban’s, supposing it is a mere holdover from his savage, abandoned childhood that causes him to hold fast to this belief and take comfort in the monstrous figure he imagines to be Setebos.
What if I am wrong? Caliban said more than once that his cruelty was no fault of mine. What if there is power in the hideous formation, and it exerts a subtle, malign influence over Caliban, rendering his once tender and gentle heart dark and hateful toward me?
Such are the matters that occupy my mind as I go about the lonely business of tending to my courses. I am grateful to have Papa’s Bible to distract me, though I will own that there are many passages in it I do not understand, and others that stir a queer yearning inside me.