pattern of something that resembled a “curse” through generations of the same family, no doubt it could claim some scientific validity: as genetic inheritance, not as superstitious crap. For Bromwell, clerkish and prematurely balding, even as a small child, with his delicate wire-rimmed glasses and his austere pale forehead with its armor of hard, flat bones knit worriedly together, and his small slender fingers that were always twisting about a finely sharpened pencil, had the theatrical flair of selecting the absolutely right wrong word: of awakening his listeners (whose eyes sometimes glazed over, for who can tolerate fifty-minute lectures on the improbable nature of “infinity,” or the rather monotonous mating habits of algae, or the earth’s subtle gravitational pull on the sun —as an analogue, the waspishly brilliant child would quickly make clear, to the theological notion of God’s dependence upon his only free-thinking creature Man—who, even among the hard-of-hearing, sweet-faced, pious old widows and grandmothers and aunts of the manor, could tolerate such observations from a child not yet ten years of age?) with a sudden razor-like thrust of vulgarity, which always confirmed his listeners’ uneasy judgment that he was not only brilliant (as they halfway suspected Hiram’s gangling son Vernon was, despite his eccentricity) but also correct.
So the curse was inherited in the blood; or it was breathed in with the chill, fresh, somewhat acrid piney air; or it was just a way of denying the strident rationalist claim that nothing, absolutely nothing—no God, no design, no destiny—sought to push its facial bones up hard against generations of perishable Bellefleur skin. Moving with a manicured fingernail a carved ebony draught, puckering and pursing his lips over the checkerboard, uncle Hiram liked to murmur that he, fallible as he was, blundering and groping (though in fact he was a shrewd, rather malicious checker player: he would not lose, not even to an ailing child) and half-blind in his right eye from an incident in the War which he refused to discuss (evidently he had left his tent, was sleepwalking his way toward the enemy trenches, when a great explosion of flame destroyed not only that tent and the young soldiers who slept within but some fifty-odd soldiers altogether—and Hiram Bellefleur was untouched save for a bit of fire which darted to his eye), fallible as he was and no more than a competent gamesman, he was nevertheless more astute than the God of creation, whom he contemptuously dismissed as senile: that God “existed” he had no doubt, for he was, surprisingly, one of the “religious” Bellefleurs, but this God was comically limited, and near worn-out, and hadn’t the spirit in recent centuries to meddle in the affairs of men. So the “curse” was just chance: and “chance” is just what happens.
At such times Hiram might be playing draughts with Cornelia, or Leah, or one of the children—young Raphael, perhaps, who was so quiet, so unnaturally quiet, since his near-drowning in the pond (the circumstances of which he chose not to explain completely to the family). If Hiram was playing with one of the women she was likely to wave aside his fanciful remarks, to which she had probably not listened in any case; if he was playing with Raphael the child hunched his thin shoulders over the board, shivering, as if his great-uncle’s words chilled him but could not be refuted.
Yes, Hiram said with sardonic pleasure, the famous Bellefleur curse is nothing more than chance —and chance is nothing more than what happens! So those of us who aspire to some degree of control, let alone moral intelligence, cannot be victims of absurd grotesqueries like the rest of you.
PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE family, however, even those who lived hundreds of miles away, in the flatland, and heard only the most oblique, most exaggerated rumors of the Bellefleur clan, never hesitated to speak of the
So the curse was inherited in the blood; or it was breathed in with the chill, fresh, somewhat acrid piney air; or it was just a way of denying the strident rationalist claim that nothing, absolutely nothing—no God, no design, no destiny—sought to push its facial bones up hard against generations of perishable Bellefleur skin. Moving with a manicured fingernail a carved ebony draught, puckering and pursing his lips over the checkerboard, uncle Hiram liked to murmur that he, fallible as he was, blundering and groping (though in fact he was a shrewd, rather malicious checker player: he would not lose, not even to an ailing child) and half-blind in his right eye from an incident in the War which he refused to discuss (evidently he had left his tent, was sleepwalking his way toward the enemy trenches, when a great explosion of flame destroyed not only that tent and the young soldiers who slept within but some fifty-odd soldiers altogether—and Hiram Bellefleur was untouched save for a bit of fire which darted to his eye), fallible as he was and no more than a competent gamesman, he was nevertheless more astute than the God of creation, whom he contemptuously dismissed as senile: that God “existed” he had no doubt, for he was, surprisingly, one of the “religious” Bellefleurs, but this God was comically limited, and near worn-out, and hadn’t the spirit in recent centuries to meddle in the affairs of men. So the “curse” was just chance: and “chance” is just what happens.
At such times Hiram might be playing draughts with Cornelia, or Leah, or one of the children—young Raphael, perhaps, who was so quiet, so unnaturally quiet, since his near-drowning in the pond (the circumstances of which he chose not to explain completely to the family). If Hiram was playing with one of the women she was likely to wave aside his fanciful remarks, to which she had probably not listened in any case; if he was playing with Raphael the child hunched his thin shoulders over the board, shivering, as if his great-uncle’s words chilled him but could not be refuted.
Yes, Hiram said with sardonic pleasure, the famous Bellefleur curse is nothing more than chance —and chance is nothing more than what happens! So those of us who aspire to some degree of control, let alone moral intelligence, cannot be victims of absurd grotesqueries like the rest of you.
PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE family, however, even those who lived hundreds of miles away, in the flatland, and heard only the most oblique, most exaggerated rumors of the Bellefleur clan, never hesitated to speak of the
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