Chapter 45
And so a period of days ensued in which little of note seemed to happen, as is often the case when the most potent of life's forces are at work, though beneath the surface and not yet brought to fruition. William became a more frequent visitor, and often took long walks with Sylviana. Kalus, feeling a genuine desire to work and do his share, as well as needing something to distract him, began to work the fields with Jim Smith, the botanist, his only real friend among the colonists. He still spoke to Kataya, but had told her that for a time it was best they keep some distance between them, and she had not objected. She understood, and kept a warm secret of the fact that her menstrual cycle was now a week overdue.
Under other circumstances, Kalus might have fallen in love with the rigors and lessons of farming, which taught patience and perseverance, and returned the most beautiful and honest of rewards: Life itself. When Smith told him that by the year 2000 the smaller, family farms of America were largely a thing of the past, he thought it a greater tragedy than almost any he had heard of. And unknowingly, as Smith continued to tell him of his own childhood on the Indiana farm, of his family's hardships and eventual ruin, Kalus weaved the themes of the story in and out of his own.
Because as he toiled, he too felt the creeping sense of fatalism that told him all was lost, and the meaning gone out of his life. He too felt events pushing toward some dark and bitter climax over which he seemed to have little control. All this though he raged, and cursed, and worked harder still. Because Sylviana would not let him near her, and heeded none of his warnings.
So he worked, and waited, and prayed to the wind which knew could not hear. While the woman-child, oblivious, pursued the treacherous shadow of revenge.
It should be said in her defense that Sylviana had not stopped loving him. Hers, rather, was a classic case of one who has struggled with the help of another to achieve some desperate goal, but whom, upon attaining it, felt that he or she no longer needed the life partner who had been a pillar of love and support throughout: that she was now free to choose a more appropriate mate for her elevated status, and leave the other to get on as they would. As if that made it any better. Lastly, that if she had been herself she would have wished him no harm, whatever he had done to hurt her.
But her emotions, too (or so she told herself), were in a violent state of flux. She felt as if she had been the one struck across the face, betrayed and unjustly punished for simply following the inevitable course of events. She had never been an evil person, and was not now.
But a sin of omission can be every bit as deadly, and the venomous spider does not stop to ask the nature of its victim before it bites, a soft sting that is hardly felt, until the poison starts to work. Neither of them had realized the gift their isolation and struggle had been, or how much more complicated love becomes when lives are sheltered, and hearts confronted by a baffling array of choices. Perhaps that was why, as Smith had remarked to Kalus, the well-off never seemed to be much in love, but only to play at life. His love with Sylviana had been simple and direct, a beautiful and necessary outgrowth of their world. Now their reality had been altered, and something precious lost.
It should also be said that in dealing with a dark, embittered soul like William's (and to a lesser degree, her own), Sylviana was every bit as naive as she had been about the primal, life and death existence of the Valley. Had she known for one minute the vicious hatred that he held for her, or the imminent danger of the course she was now pursuing, she would have fled from him and never looked back.
Because to William she had become a symbol of all the protected, thoughtless sheep whose blind acceptance of personal comfort and political ruthlessness had made the destruction of the Earth and the murder of his love possible, even inevitable. He would listen as she spoke of her days at Ithaca, and of her soft and sheltered childhood, with apparent interest and appreciation, all the while choking back his passion, and plotting her destruction. In his mind she was the pretty little college whore', and the very strength of his desire for her only intensified his wish to wound her, as he had been wounded, to punish and destroy her, as his love had been destroyed. He hated her with a malice so deep it could fain love without detection, and wallow in thoughts of sexual violence without remorse. The spirit had been charred to ash inside him, leaving only the bestial desires of the twisted animal: lust and hate and vengeance.
But his plans were not yet ripe, and like the cat, he would play with his victim before killing it. And perhaps too, though the chance was faint, the smallest part of his conscience remained, and needed further goading before ceasing to rebel.
For her own part, though she might have wished it otherwise, Sylviana could feel nothing for him but pity and a kind of awe. At times the obsidian hardness of his eyes would push her senses toward the protective realm of fear; but always his words, and her own twisted purpose called them back. She was neither attracted nor repulsed, only determined.
In truth she thought little during those final days, following out the treadmill of her plan in a kind of dull stupor, unable, for the pain it cost her, to listen to her heart and turn aside. Her scheme, if such a name can be given to walking wide-eyed into a trap, was to sleep with him at a time and place where Kalus would either witness it directly, or hear of it straight away. She meant only to raise the horrible specter of betrayal before him, to hurt him as he had done to her. Beyond that she saw nothing, knew nothing, though some half thought out rationale told her than then, perhaps, she could forgive him.
She wanted, in short, to summon the demon of Vengeance—-to do her bidding, then be gone. But Hell, if it has a master, is no woman's slave, and once raised, follows its own path of wanton destruction. And it found in William a willing conspirator, and favorite target of seduction: a man who no longer cared.
Kalus had spoken of a benevolent current to which, along with his own free will, he would entrust his life. But there is also a malevolent, just as real, and Sylviana was being carried along by it without resistance, and without awareness.
As William plotted, and Kalus burned.