The Language of Paradise: A Novel (3 page)

Gideon began his labor in the middle of a snow-bound February, working late into the night after completing his regular assignments. The room was so cold that his fingers cramped as he wrote. His chamber-mate, a surveyor’s son from Billerica, snored all night, then complained in the mornings that Gideon’s candle had kept him awake. But no adversity could quench the revelations he was drawing from the text. His earlier exercises had been shallow compared to this: simple surface transactions, an English word supplied for a Hebrew one. Never before had the Hebrew pulled him in and under, made him swim in the depths beneath the familiar verses. Often he was flailing like a drowning man, grasping at the ready word from the text he knew by rote. But once in a while he would plunge deep enough to glimpse a sunken city: the crystal walls of the New Jerusalem. And beneath this, a place simpler and more brilliant still, a clarity so dazzling that he was filled with awe.

He remembered sitting in his mother’s lap when he was very small, staring at the page as she read to him. The lines of letters were as stiff and straight as soldiers, but the story his mother enticed out of them was all movement and color, brighter than the world he walked through every day. It seemed to him then that the elves and giants and dragons must be trapped in the white space behind the letters, waiting to be released, just as the sleeping princess behind the briar hedge waited to be awakened by a kiss. He would have liked to set them free himself, if only he were clever enough, if only he knew the way in.

His expectations diminished when he learned to read. It was too easy for him, his brain effortlessly converting the symbols on the page to meaning. Before Gideon quite knew what was happening, his early wonder had ebbed to a fascination with words: the shape and sound of them, their feel on the tongue. Reading was to him what running or leaping was to other children—a release of energy that was physical, the encounter on the page so vital that he sometimes had to put a book aside to catch his breath. But once he closed the book, the world was what it had always been. The tale that had transported him would live in his mind for a few days and then fade, like a hothouse plant exposed to harsh weather. Not until he was older and beginning to study the classical languages did the magic return. His tutor had given him a Greek Alphabet to master, along with a worn copy of Plato’s
Republic
in the original tongue. The letters stirred his sense of mystery: some were close to the ones he knew, but others were tantalizingly strange, as cryptic as hieroglyphs cut in stone. He had an idea that if he discovered their secrets, he would be admitted to the land of gods and heroes. He took to studying them at night, the light of his candle making eerie patterns across the ancient script. Athens eluded him, but one evening, very late, Gideon blinked his weary eyes and saw white marble pillars sprouting like cornstalks from a field of rocks.

SPRING WAS IN FULL BLOOM
by the time he finally finished; the term was nearly over. Gideon put down his pen at three in the morning, and heaved himself from his desk to his bed as Handel oratorios resounded from the hills and the campus elms rustled their new leaves in discreet applause. He slept until the middle of the afternoon, missing two of his classes; Osgood, perhaps in revenge, had not bothered to wake him, or had tried and failed. Gideon splashed water on his face and raked his hair back with damp fingers. He stared in the little mirror above the basin, shocked at how pale and thin he’d grown. He had been so absorbed in his work that he’d neglected himself. But at the thought of his accomplishment, the triumph of the night before came back to him, and he turned again to his desk.

His small store of rapture drained out of him as he read. He was struck first by the crudity of his translation. The prophet’s words, cadenced and elegant in the King James, had been reduced to lumps that weighed on his tongue like chunks of mutton. All the poetry was gone. There would never be a Birdsall Version of the Scriptures, but perhaps his clumsy efforts would be of use in the mission field. He saw himself capering before a tribe of squatting New Guineans, fleshing out his tortured locutions with pantomime. Had he really been so vain, so foolish, as to think Reverend Hedge might look kindly on this monstrous hybrid?

Self-disgust made his head spin; he’d tumbled too quickly from the heights. He tried to open a window, but the old frame refused to budge. He flung open the door instead, and ran headlong down the stairs and out of the dormitory. The sweetness of the air was a shock to him. He had ignored his surroundings for so many weeks that spring had advanced without his noticing. Gideon stood for a moment taking in the different shades of green, the flowering bushes that softened the gray stone of the chapel like lace trim on a mourning dress. It was a privilege just to breathe, he thought. From now on, he would renounce ambition and seek to live a life of simple purity. He would forsake the seductions of the mind and find his nourishment in Holy Scripture. But even as he imagined feeding his soul on the plain brown bread of the Word, he realized that he was fiercely hungry; he had scarcely eaten these last two days. He headed for the kitchen to beg alms from the cook.

That evening, having dined well and lingered at the table for the first time in weeks (“Now that Lazarus has risen, I might even get some sleep,” Osgood had said), Gideon forced himself to look at the translation again. For whatever it was worth, he had completed the task he’d undertaken. It would be an act of cowardice not to submit the result to Reverend Hedge. He was here to learn, not to display his plumage and wait for praise. If the professor chastised him, he would take his stripes like a man, and strive to do better next time. And it was just possible that Hedge might find one or two things of interest: neat little solutions that shone like crystals in a mud puddle. The King James translators, divinely inspired though they were, were only men, and not in possession of the full mind of God. Was it unthinkable that a humble student, made of the same clay, might be granted an insight that eluded others? The light of truth, it was said, could penetrate the densest substance. Gideon sat back, his hands folded over his full stomach, feeling pleasantly dense himself. Now that the decision had been made, the only question was how to approach the professor.

AFTER CLASS THE NEXT DAY
, Gideon lingered as Reverend Hedge attended to papers on his desk. Gideon had memorized a graceful little speech, deferential without groveling, but his mouth was so dry that the words stuck in his craw. He cleared his throat. “Sir, you are very busy!” he pronounced, plunging in headfirst when he had meant to tread water. “I mean, I believe—I know—that you have no time. Even so, I’ve been bold to make this unworthy attempt—” He staggered to a halt, clutching the pages he had inscribed with such care the night before.

The professor regarded him with a long look, fixed and all-seeing like the framed Eye of God that haunted Gideon’s bedroom. “You appear to know a great deal about me, Mr. Birdsall,” he said. “Since we only meet in class, I wonder how you come by your knowledge. I have the same ration of time allotted to every other creature in our limited sphere, but I don’t hoard my hours like miser’s gold. I
spend
them, and I hope you do the same, young man, for none of us knows the measure of his days. Now, what have you brought me? The fruit of some precious minutes, I hope.” Without waiting for an answer, he snatched the pages from Gideon’s hand. “Isaiah! I admire your ambition. The prophets are not easy, I find; they are not straightforward like the Gospel accounts. One doesn’t translate prophecy; one
strives
with it. I myself have recently attempted the Lamentations with limited success, but I’ll wrestle on. I won’t let it go until it blesses me.”

“There were moments when I did feel blessed,” Gideon ventured, gaining courage. “I struggled, just as you said, and then a word would . . . reveal itself, and it seemed to me that I saw something wonderful. A glimpse of another world.” He was certain that he’d gone too far. “It was late. I was probably dreaming.”

To his astonishment, the stern features softened. “It is wrong to diminish these experiences. Very likely, what you saw was no shadow, but a greater solidity. Minds more distinguished than my own are persuaded that Hebrew is the language our first parents spoke in the Garden. When we disturb the topsoil, who knows what fragment of the sacred turf we might unearth? I’ve followed in the footsteps of my betters and done some small research on the subject. A few essays—trivial things from my etymological cabinet of curiosities—and the work that has an enduring claim on my heart, a Philosophical Lexicon of the Hebrew Bible.”

“I-I’m not acquainted with
philosophical
lexicons,” Gideon stumbled. “I know Gesenius’s, of course—”

“And you are wondering how anyone could improve on that great scholar’s work. I confess, when my colleague Gibbs produced his translation from the German, I put my own efforts aside. I made a fine copy of the pages I’d completed and laid them in a drawer, feeling—do not judge me, Mr. Birdsall—that I’d buried one of my children.” Reverend Hedge bowed his head in brief homage, cocking a watchful eye at Gideon, who might, after all, be caught judging.

“I humbled my ambitions. Went about my duties with a chastened spirit. When I was all but quenched, the Lord gave my vision back to me—doublefold, as He restored Job. It is one thing to anatomize the body of a language—the grammar, the logic of its structure—quite another to apprehend its soul. Yet both make the man, isn’t it so? I resolved to compose a monograph on each of the Hebrew letters, drawing out its essential character—its nature, if you will. The purpose that God infused at the dawn of Creation—so far as a mortal mind can discern—with disquisitions on relevant words, by way of illustration.”

Hedge leaned across the desk, his dark eyes gleaming. “An enormous undertaking—yet one to which I am called. Our good Mr. Gibbs is a diligent scholar whose modest manner is a credit to him. Perhaps also a limitation. He is not, how shall I say, an
architect
, he does not see the whole. He chisels each stone with a master hand, but the Temple, Mr. Birdsall—the Temple remains unbuilt!”

In the silence that followed this effusion, Gideon realized that the professor was waiting for a response. “It’s the work of a lifetime,” he said. “Several lifetimes.”

The Reverend nodded soberly. “I pray I may be granted the time to pursue it. If not in this world, then the next—though why we will need dictionaries there I cannot imagine. I’ve sometimes fancied that our Heavenly Father might place those of us who are philologically inclined at tall desks, like the monks of old—purely to keep a record of earthly speech, you see. But it is useless to speculate. We look through a dark glass, and our own selfish needs look back at us.” He sighed, looking so wistful that Gideon was alarmed by the unguarded display of emotion, as though a statue had begun to weep. “You have some affinity for Hebrew. Perhaps my jottings would interest you.”

“I would be honored to see anything you’re willing to show me.”

“Then come to our service at Ormsby on Sunday and stay for dinner. You look as if you could do with a good meal. I’ll get to your translation on Friday evening. It’s my habit to reserve the Jewish Sabbath for the tongue of the Patriarchs.”

Gideon stammered his thanks, but the professor had already turned away, busy with the papers on his desk.

CHAPTER 2

____

HOYDEN

W
OODEN TEETH SLICE DOWN THE CENTER OF HER SCALP
. In her mind’s eye, a ribbon of blood, a furrow of fire. A yank to the left, a yank to the right. Mama anchors the comb in Sophy’s hair as she assesses.

“Crooked! If you weren’t such a fidget, I could part it straight the first time. Do you want Papa to look down from the pulpit and see you all askew?”

“Oh, can he see through my bonnet?”

“That’s enough sauce from you, miss. And on a Sunday, too—if Papa doesn’t see, you know who will.” Mama takes her revenge with the comb, this time to her satisfaction. She pulls the hair tight on either side, pasting Sophy’s ears to her skull, and twists it into a knot behind. “There!” she says, putting in the pins. “Don’t go galloping about now. Try and act as if . . . ”

As if you were the Reverend’s true daughter and not his niece, an errant shoot grafted onto the family tree. No need to finish the sentence when they live out its substance daily. Mama is too kind to say so, and too stoical to complain, but Sophy suspects that she besieges Heaven at times, demanding to know why the Lord took the daughters of her own robust flesh if his only intention was to put such a flimsy excuse of a girl in their place. An alien creature, another woman’s blood and bone. There is a baffled affection in her eyes as she looks Sophy over one last time, fluffing the skirt of the blue Sunday dress she stitched with care, flicking a bit of dust off the white stocking. “We’ll make a proper lady of you yet,” she says.

Vain hope. Sophy has lately discovered that being the family misfit confers a certain freedom. Folks expect more of her than, say, a half-wit, but they make allowances. These last couple of years, as she turned from girl to woman, she has begun to wear her difference as an ornament, a badge of pride. Let her brothers tease and mock her, let Papa frown or Mama despair aloud. A person Sophy has never met lives in her: an animating presence, sometimes quiet, sometimes active, always there.