The House Of Mr Christus

Chapter Five - Samuel

She emptied out her pain in a tirade of never-ending lullabies that woke Angelita every morning at six. Without her husband's reprimanding looks to hold her in check, reminding her not to expose herself, Mrs Christus gave full vent to the words, piled up to overflowing, inside her breast.

"Aye, yay, yay mi niño," Mrs Christus sang, "Aye, yay, yay mi pajarito."

The language and the words connected her to her mother, her mother's mother and a long chain of women who had once toiled at fire hearths. The hearth had been the center, the axis mundi, of family life, and Angelita, still deeply connected to this place, understood what Mrs Christus was feeling. Angelita's mother had buried her umbilical below the kitchen hearth and told her daughter that it was her center, her place to return to in time of need. Mrs Christus, in her search for the elusive path back to this center, was still far, far away, and the words broke away from her like the croaks of a crow, bringing no solace to little Samuel. He accompanied her lullaby with a piercing wail, and the terrible noise could be heard by the neighbors echoing through the house, out the doors, and carried by the wind down the street. Mrs Christus, sure that the child had colic, instructed Angelita to boil a sickly smelling brew of herbs which was administered morning and night.

After six months of force feeding, the child suddenly stopped his crying. Angelita thought Samuel's silence uncanny and reasoned that it was more a case of resignation to life than a remedy brought about by the brew. The child gave himself up to the two women, offering no resistance to Angelita's tight hold or Mrs Christus's tirade of lullabies.

He grew, an indisputably beautiful, baby boy with large eyes that seemed to be in a perpetual state of surprise. With his father's head of tight curls and rich, reddish, mahogany skin, he seemed to glow; a precious, dark, topaz gem on the white sheets where he lay beside Mrs Christus. She talked to him incessantly showing him the ruins of the wall, the animals, the street outside, the birds, the clouds and whatever else happened to pass her vision. In her self-absorption, she did not notice that the child did not himself make any noises, did not show signs of wanting to speak.

He saw the wall and the monsters guarding it; heard the never ending words, stories falling from the mouth of the woman who held him, and, instinctively, he learned to fear all that he saw. The house and every dark corner were reflected in the glass globes of his eyes countless times over. The darkness and Mrs Christus's words were one. The words, which he did not understand, were never the less trying to convey to him that he was a part of a living story whose perimeters stretched to the wall and fence about the house. The words also told him that there were more characters involved than could be seen.

With his first steps, he kept close to Mrs Christus's skirts, and, at the age of three, he spoke his first word. That it was unintelligible did not matter to Mrs Christus. What mattered was that he had called to her, with widespread fingers and a weeping face, because she had momentarily left him alone. It was the first show of emotion and being the cause of that emotion gladdened Mrs Christus. She could not see that his tears were not because he wanted to be with her but because he was afraid of being without her. The vague fear that had surrounded his earliest memories had, at the age of three, with Mrs Christus's help, assumed the shape of an old man. Samuel was sure that in the darkness, around the house, the old man was hiding. And he was not wrong.

In fact, Mrs Christus had been unwittingly tying her deceased husband to the house by the threads of her tales. Her tales had so precisely captured him that he remained clearly in mind; not only of the child but of Angelita and Mrs Christus, herself. Her husband was never, even for a moment, out of her thoughts. It was not Mrs Christus's intention to frighten the child by calling up the memory of her dead husband, it was only a precaution against the child growing up fatherless. She had had photographs of her husband reproduced and placed about the rooms. A comprehensive range of photographs capturing her husband from boyhood to manhood graced the house so that in death Mr Christus was closer to everyone in the house than he had been in life. His image was talked to, dusted, arranged and rearranged.