Barker, Clive - Galilee

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Galilee

Clive Barker was born in Liverpool in 1952. He is the worldwide bestselling author of numerous

novels including Weaveworld, The Great and Secret Show, Sacrament and Galilee. In addition to

his work as a novelist and short story writer he also illustrates, writes, directs and produces for

stage and screen. Clive Barker lives in Los Angeles.

By Clive Barker

Short Stories The Books of Blood, Volumes I-VI

Novels

The Damnation Game Weaveworld

Cabal

The Great and Secret Show

The Hellhound Heart

Imajica

Everville

Sacrament

Galilee

For Children The Thief of Always

Plays

Incarnations Forms of Heaven

Clive Barker

GALILEE

HarperCollinsPublishers

85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

Special overseas edition 1999 This paperback edition

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPHW/s/iers

Clive Barker asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

ISBN 0 00 617805 7 Set in Meridien

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Caledonian International Book Manufacturing Ltd,

Glasgow

transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of

binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including

this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

For Emilian David Armstrong

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thankfully, I did not take this voyage alone. I'd like to offer here a few words of appreciation to

those who have accompanied me.

To Vann Sauls, of McGee's Crossroads, North Carolina, for his friendship, his wit, and for the

insights he imparted as we explored the Carolinas together. Without our conversations wandering

the midnight streets of Charleston, and the woods at Bentonville, where the armies of North and

South clashed so calamitously, this book would be much impoverished.

To Robb Humphreys and Joe Daley, who assisted me in my more obscure researches, never

failing to find on the library shelves books that contained some vital nugget of information.

To my dear Anna Miller, who along with Robb and Joe runs our film production company here in

LA. While I've been at sea with Galilee, ^he's kept the seductions and the insanities of this town

at bay with chair .and whip.

To Don Mackay, who did me the great honor of making the typing of this manuscript his only

distraction from his true vocation, which is that of actor.

And finally, to David John Dodds, who makes the world in which I live and work run like

clockwork, a far from easy task. He has been my friend and guardian spirit for thirteen years.

None of this would be possible without his love and faith in me.

C.B.

CONTENTS

PART ONE

The Time Remaining

PART TWO

The Holy Family

PART THREE

An Expensive Life

PART FOUR

The Prodigal's Tide

PART FIVE

The Act of Love

PART SIX

Ink and Water

PART SEVEN

The Wheel of the Stars

PART EIGHT

A House of Women

PART NINE

The Human Road

PART ONE

The Time Remaining

A the insistence of my stepmother Cesaria Barbarossa he house in which I presently sit was built

so that it faces southeast. The architect-who was no lesser man than the third President of the

United States, Thomas Jefferson-protested her desire repeatedly and eloquently. I have the letters

in which he did so here on my desk. But she would not be moved on the subject. The house was

to look back towards her homeland, towards Africa, and he, as her employee, was to do as he was

instructed.

It's very plain, however, reading between the lines of her missives (I have those too; or at least

copies of them) that he is far more than an architect for hire; and she to him more than a

headstrong woman with a perverse desire to build a house in a swamp, in North Carolina, facing

southeast. They write to one another like people who know a secret.

I know a few myself; and luckily for the thoroughness of what follows I have no intention of

keeping them.

The time has come to tell everything I know. Failing that, everything I can detect or surmise.

Failing that, everything I can invent. If I do my job properly it won't even matter to you which is

which. What will appear on these pages will be, I hope, a seamless history, describing deeds and

destinies that will range across the world. Some of them will be, to say the least, strange events,

enacted by troubled and unpalatable souls. But as a general rule, you should assume that the more

unlikely the action I lay upon this stage for you, the more likely it is that I have evidence of its

having happened. The things I will invent will be, I suspect, mundane by comparison with the

truth. And as I said, it's my intention that you should not know the difference. I plan to

interweave the elements of my story so cunningly that you'll cease to even care whether an event

happened out there in the same world where you walk, or in here, in the head of a crippled man

who will never again move from his stepmother's house.

This house, this glorious house!

When Jefferson labored on its designs he was still some distance from Pennsylvania Avenue, but

he was by no means an unknown. The year was 1790. He had already penned the Declaration of

Independence, and served in France as the US Minister to the French government. Great words

had flowed from his pen. Yet here he is taking time from his duties in Washington, and from

work in his own house, to write long letters to my father's wife, in which the business of

constructing this house and the nuances of his heart are exquisitely interlaced.

If that is not extraordinary enough, consider this: Cesaria is a black woman; Jefferson, for all his

democratic protestations, was the owner of some two hundred slaves. So how much authority

must she have had over him, to be able to persuade him to labor for her as he did? It's a testament

to her powers of enchantment-powers which in this case she exercised, as she was fond of saying,

"without the juju." In other words: in her dealings with Jefferson she was simply, sweetly, even

innocently, human. Whatever capacities she possesses to supematurally beguile a human soul-and

she possesses many-she liked his clear-sightedness too well- to blind him that way. If he was

devoted to her, it was because she was worthy of his devotion.

* * *

They called the house he built for her L'Enfant. Actually, I believe the full name was L'Enfant

des Carolinas. I can only speculate as to why they so named it.

That the name of the house is in French is no big surprise: they met in the gilded salons of Paris.

But the name itself? I have two theories. The first, and the most obvious, is that the house was in

a sense the product of their romance, their child if you will, and they named it accordingly. The

second, that it was the infant of an architectural parent, the progenitor being Jefferson's own

house at Monticello, into which he poured his genius for most of his life. It's bigger than

Monticello by a rough measure of three (Monticello is eleven thousand square feet; I estimate

L'Enfant to be a little over thirty-four thousand) and has a number of smaller service buildings in

its vicinity, whereas Jefferson's house is a single structure, incorporating the slave and servant

quarters, the kitchen and toilet facilities, under one roof. But in other regards the houses are very

similar. They're both Jeffersonian reworkings of Palladian models; both have double porticoes,

both have octagonal domes, both have capacious high-ceilinged rooms and plenty of windows,

both are practical rather than glamorous houses; both, I'd say, are structures that bespeak great

confidence and great love.

Of course their settings are radically different. Monti-cello, as its name suggests, is set on a

mountain. L'Enfant sits on a plot of low-lying ground forty-seven acres in size, the southeastern

end of which is unredeemable swamp, and the northern perimeter wooded, primarily with pine.

The house itself is raised up on a modest ridge, which protects it a little from the creeping damps

and rots of this region, but not enough to stop the cellar from flooding during heavy rain, and the

rooms getting damnably cold in winter and humid as hell in summer. Not that I'm complaining.

L'Enfant is an extraordinary house. Sometimes I think it has a soul all of its own. Certainly it

seems to know the moods of its occupants, and accommodates them.

There have been times, sitting in my study, when a black thought has crept into my psyche for

some reason, and I swear I can feel the room darken in sympathy with me. Nothing changes

physically-the drapes don't dose, the stains don't spread-but I nevertheless sense a subtle

transformation in the chamber; as if it wishes to fall in rhythm with my mood. The same is true

on days when I'm blithe, or haunted by doubts, or merely feeling lazy. Maybe if s Jefferson's

genius that creates the illusion of empathy. Or perhaps it's Cesaria's work: her own genius,

wedded with his. Whatever the reason, L'Bnfant knows us. Better, I sometimes think, than we

know ourselves.

I share this house with three women, two men, and a number of indeterminates.

The women are of course Cesaria and her daughters, my two half-sisters, Marietta and Zabrina.

The men? One is my half-brother Luman (who doesn't actually live in the house, but outside, in a

shack on the grounds) and Dwight Huddie, who serves as majordomo, as cook and as general

handyman: I'll tell you more about him later. Then, as I said, there's the indeterminates, whose

number is, not surprisingly, indeterminate.

How shall I best describe these presences to you? Not as spirits; that evokes something altogether

too fanciful. They are simply nameless laborers, in Cesaria's exclusive control, who see to the

general upkeep of the house. They do their job well. I wonder sometimes if Cesaria didn't first

conjure them when Jefferson was still at work here, so that he could give them all a practical

education in the strengths and liabilities of his masterpiece. If so, it would have been a scene to

cherish: Jefferson the great rationalist, the numbers man, obliged to believe the evidence of his

own eyes, though his common sense revolted at the idea that creatures such as these-brought out

of the ether at the command of the mistress of L'Enfant-could exist. As I said, I don't know how

many of them there are (six, perhaps; perhaps less); nor whether they're in fact projections of

Cesaria's will or things once possessed of souls and volition. I only know that they tirelessly

perform the task of keeping this vast house and its grounds in a reasonable condition, but-like

stagehands in a theater-do so only when our gaze is averted. If this sounds a little eerie, maybe it

is: I've simply become used to it. I no longer think about who it is who changes my bed every

morning while I'm brushing my teeth, or who sews the buttons back on my shirt when they come

loose, or fixes the cracks in the plaster or trims the magnolias. I take it for granted that the work

will be done, and that whoever the laborers are, they have no more desire to exchange

pleasantries with me than I do with them.

There's one other occupant of the place that I think I should mention, and that's Cesaria's personal

servant. How she came to have him as her bosom companion will be the subject of a later

passage, so I'll leave the details until then. Let me say only this: he is, in my opinion, the saddest

soul in the house. And when you consider the sum of sorrow under this roof, that's no little claim.

Anyway, I don't want to get mired in melancholy. Let's move on.

Having listed the human, or almost human, occupants of L'Enfant, I should make mention

perhaps of the animals. An estate of this size is of course home to innumerable wild species.

There are foxes, skunks and possums, there are feral cats (escapees from domestic servitude

somewhere in Rollins County), and a number of dogs who make their home in the thicket. The

trees are busy with birds night and day, and every now and then an alligator wanders up from the

swamp and suns itself on the lawn.

All this is predictable enough. But there are two species whose presence here is rather less likely.

The first was imported by Marietta, who took it into her head some years back to raise three

hyena pups. How she came by them I don't recall (if she ever told me); I only know she wearied

of surrogate motherhood quickly enough, and turned them loose. They bred, mcestuously of

course, and now there's quite a pack of them out there. The other oddities here are my

stepmother's pride and joy: the porcupines. She's kept them as pets since first occupying the

house, and they've prospered. They live inside, where they roam unfettered and unchallenged,

though they prefer on the whole to stay upstairs, close to their mistress.

We had horses, of course, in my father's day-the stables were palatially appointed-but none of

them survived an hour beyond his passing. Even if they'd had choice in the matter (which they

didn't), they were too loyal to live once he'd gone; too noble. I doubt the same could be said of

any of the other species. They grudgingly coexist with us while we're here, but I doubt there

would be much grieving among them if we all departed. Nor do I imagine they'd long respect the

sanctity of the house. In a week or two they'd have taken up residence: hyenas in the library,

alligators in the cellar, foxes running riot under the great dome. Sometimes I wonder if they're not

eyeing it already; planning for the day when it's theirs to shit on from roof to foundations.

My suite of rooms is at the back of the house, four rooms in all, none of which were designed for

their present purpose. What is now my bedroom-and the chamber I consider the most charming in

the house-was originally a dining room used by my late father, Hursek Nicodemus Barbarossa,

who did not once sit at the same table as Cesaria all the time I lived here. Such is marriage.

Adjacent to the study where I am sitting now, Nicodemus put his collection of keepsakes, a

goodly portion of which was-at his request-buried with him when he died. There he kept the skull

of the first horse he ever owned, along with a comprehensive and outlandish collection of sexual

devices fashioned over the ages to increase the pleasure of connoisseurs. (He had a tale for every

one of them: invariably hilarious.) This was not all he kept here. There was a gauntlet that had

belonged to Saladin, the Moslem lover of Richard the Lionheart. There was a scroll, painted for

him in China, which depicted, he once told me, the history of the world (though it seemed to my

uneducated eyes simply a landscape with a serpentine river winding through it); there were

dozens of representations of the male genitals-the lingam, the jade flute, Aaron's rod (or my

father's favorite term: Il Santo Membra, the holy cock)-some of which I believe were carved or

sculpted by his own priests, and therefore represent the sex that spurted me into being. Some of

those objects are still here on the shelves. You may think that odd; even a little distasteful. I'm not

certain I would even argue with that opinion. But he was a sexual man, and these statues, for all

their crudity, embody him better than a book of his life, or a thousand photographs.

And it's not as if they're the only things on the shelves.

Over the decades I've assembled here a vast library.

Though I speak only English, French and a halting Italian,

I read Hebrew, Latin and Greek, so my books are often antiquated, their subjects arcane. When

you've had as much time on your hands as I've had, your curiosity takes obscure turns. In learned

circles I'd probably be counted a world expert in a variety of subjects that no person with a real

life to live-children, taxes, love-would give a fig about.

My father, were he here, would not approve of my books. He didn't like me to read. It reminded

him, he would tell me, of how he'd lost my mother. A remark, by the way, which I do not

understand to this day. The only volume he encouraged me to study was the two-leaved book that

opens between a woman's legs. He kept ink, pen and paper from me when I was a child; though

of course I wanted them all the more because they were forbidden me. He was determined that

my real schooling be in the art and craft of horse breeding, which, after sex, was his great

passion.

As a young man I traveled the world on his behalf, buying and selling horses, organizing their

transportation to the stables here at L'Enfant, learning how to understand their natures as he

understood them. I was good at what I did; and I enjoyed my travels. Indeed I met my late wife,

Chiyojo, on one of those trips; and brought her back here to the house, intending to start a family.

Those sweet ambitions were unfortunately denied me, however, by a sequence of tragedies that

ended with the death of both my wife and that of Nicodemus.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I was talking about this room, and what it housed during my

father's occupancy: the phalli, the scroll, the horse's skull. What else? Let me think. There was a

bell which Nicodemus claimed had been rung by a leper healed at the Crucifixion (he took the

bell to his grave), and a device, no bigger than the humidor in which I keep my havanas, which

plays a curious, whining music if touched, its sound so close to the human voice that it's possible

to believe, as my father insisted, that its sealed interior contains a living mechanism.

Please feel free to make of these claims what you will, by the way. Though my father has been

dead almost a hundred and forty years, I'm not about to call him a liar in print. Such men as my

father do not take kindly to having their stories questioned, and though he is deceased I do not

entirely believe I am beyond his reach.

Anyway, it is a fine room. Obliged as I am to sit here most of the day I have become familiar

with every nuance of its form and volume, and were Jefferson standing before me now I would

tell him: sir, I can think of no happier prison than this; nor any more likely to inspire my slovenly

mind to fly.

If I am so very happy here, sitting with a book in my hands, why, you may ask, have I decided to

put pen to paper and write what will be inevitably a tragic history? Why torment myself this way,

when I could wheel myself out onto the balcony and sit with a copy of St. Thomas Aquinas in my

lap and watch life in the mimosas?

There are two reasons. The first is my half-sister Marietta.

It happened like this. About two weeks ago she came into my room (without knocking, as usual),

partook of a glass of gin, without asking, as usual, and sitting down without invitation in what

used to be my father's chair said: "Eddie…"

She knows I hate to be called Eddie. My full name's Edmund Maddox Barbarossa. Edmund is

fine; Maddox is fine; I was even called The Ox in my younger day, and didn't find it offensive.

But Eddie? An Eddie can walk. An Eddie can make love. I'm no Eddie.

"Why do you always do that?" I asked her.

She sat back in the creaking chair and smiled mischievously, "Because it annoys you," she

replied. A typically Mariettaesque response, I may say. She can be the very soul of perversity,

though to look at her you'd never think it. I won't dote on her here (she gets far too much of that

from her girlfriends), but she is a beautiful woman, by any measure. When she smiles, it's my

father's smile; the sheer appetite in it, that's an echo of him. In repose, she's Cesaria's daughter;

lazy-lidded and full of quiet certitude, her gaze, if it rests on you for more than a moment, like a

physical thing. She's not a tall creature, my Marietta-a little over five feet without her boots-and

now the immensity of chair she was sitting in, and the silly-sweet smile on her face, diminished

her almost to a child. It wasn't hard to imagine my father behind her, his huge arms wrapped

around her, rocking her. Perhaps she imagined it too, sitting there. Perhaps it was that memory

that made her say:

"Do you feel sad these days? I mean, especially sad?"

"What do you mean: especially sad?"

"Well I know how you brood in here-"

"I don't brood."

"You shut yourself away."

"It's by choice. I'm not unhappy."

"Honestly?"

"I've got all I need here. My books. My music. Even if I'm desperate, I've got a television. I even

know how to switch it on."

"So you don't feel sad? Ever?"

As she was pressing me so hard on the subject, I gave it a few more moments of thought.

"Actually, I suppose I have had one or two bouts of melancholy recently," I conceded. "Nothing I

couldn't shake off, but-"

"I hate this gin."

"It's English."

"It's bitter. Why do you have to have English gin? The sun went down on the Empire a long time

ago."

"I like the bitterness."

She pulled a face. "Next time I'm in Charleston I'm going to bring you some really nice brandy,"

she said.

"Brandy's overrated," I remarked.

"It's good if you dissolve a little cocaine in it. Have you ever tried that? That gives it a nice kick."

"Cocaine dissolved in brandy?"

"It goes down so smoothly, and you don't get a nose filled with grey boogers the next morning."

"I don't have any need for cocaine. Marietta. I get along quite well with my gin."

"But liquor makes you sleepy."

"So?"

"So you won't be able to afford so much sleepiness, once you get to work."

"Am I missing something here?" I asked her.

She got up, and despite her contempt for my English gin, refilled her glass and came to stand

behind my chair. "May I wheel you out onto the balcony?"

"I wish you'd get to the point."

"I thought you Englishmen liked prevarication?" she said, easing me out from in front of my desk

and taking me around it to the french windows. They were already wide open-I'd been sitting

enjoying the fragrance of the evening air when Marietta entered. She took me out onto the

balcony.

"Do you miss England?" she asked me.

"This is the most peculiar conversation…" I said.

"It's a simple question. You must miss it sometimes."

(My mother, I should explain, was English; one of my father's many mistresses.)

"It's a very long time since I was in England. I only really remember it in my dreams."

"Do you write the dreams down?"

"Oh…" I said. "Now I get it. We're back to the book."

"It's time, Maddox," she said, with a greater gravity than

I could recall her displaying in a long while. "We don't have very much time left."

"According to whom?"

"Oh for God's sake, use your eyes. Something's changing, Eddie. It's subtle, but it's everywhere.

It's in the bricks. It's in the flowers. It's in the ground. I went walking near the stables, where we

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摘要：

GalileeCliveBarkerwasborninLiverpoolin1952.HeistheworldwidebestsellingauthorofnumerousnovelsincludingWeaveworld,TheGreatandSecretShow,SacramentandGalilee.Inadditiontohisworkasanovelistandshortstorywriterhealsoillustrates,writes,directsandproducesforstageandscreen.CliveBarkerlivesinLosAngeles.ByClive...

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Barker, Clive - Galilee

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