Asia
v
Asia is half mad with love for Edwin, who is taking her on a trip to Niagara Falls. She’s never been on such an adventure before. Later she will remember this golden interlude as the last and maybe the best of her girlhood.
It’s summertime, the theaters closed due to the heat. John has arrived unexpectedly home from Philadelphia and will join them. Since poor Rosalie is obviously not up to the journey, Edwin has suggested that Asia invite her best friend, Jean. It couldn’t be more perfect and every bit of it Edwin’s idea. He has a sudden need for great, gushing amounts of water, he says.
In a secret drawer in a secret cupboard in her secret heart, Asia has long wished that one of her brothers—Edwin or John, it makes no difference which—would marry Jean. Asia and Jean are already as close as any sisters, much closer than Asia is to Rosalie.
Jean’s a petite, bosomy young woman. Not striking the way Asia is; you have to look twice at Jean, but when you do, you see that she has a face worth spending time on. Doll-like eyes, curling hair, a cleft chin. Of course, Asia is prejudiced, but that doesn’t make her wrong.
* * *
—
There are reasons, just now, why romance is unlikely. John’s precipitous return is connected to rumors that, back in Philadelphia, he’s left a girl pregnant. He himself thinks he’s probably not responsible, but a considerable sum of money was required to persuade the girl to share his doubts.
Edwin is suffering from the clap.
Of course, Asia knows none of that. She has the most wonderful brothers!
* * *
—
One train ride and another and then they board the trim little steamer Our Lady of the Lake. Asia and Jean see their luggage into their stateroom before joining the boys at the railing. A small gull lands briefly near them, looks at them with one red eye, turns its head to see if they improve from that perspective. There are several passengers on the deck, but Asia is determined to pretend that it’s only the four of them and she mostly gets her wish. She cordons off their little party with a barricade of icy politeness. She’s gifted at icy politeness.
The boat moves like a dream over the calm waters of Lake Ontario while the sun sets and the stars rise. Asia feels as if she’s suspended in place, floating in air as well as on water, as if she’s the one still object in a spinning world. She can’t remember ever being happier.
She moves closer to Edwin, tucks one hand under his arm. Her fingers are warm; the air is cool. The sky glitters above and also on the lake, the points of light reflecting on the black water in streaks like comets. She’s left her hat in the stateroom and talked Jean into doing the same. Her bare head makes her feel girlish, and Jean’s brown hair is escaping her knot in fetching curls.
“What a sky,” Jean says. “Stars thick as bees.”
John looks upward. “？‘Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my deep and black desires,’？” he says. Is he flirting? Asia can’t be sure. Probably she’s letting her hopes overrule her good sense. Even John wouldn’t use Macbeth for a flirt.
“Black and deep,” Edwin corrects him. “My black and deep desires.” John says nothing. Edwin clears his throat. “？‘It is the stars. The stars above us govern our conditions.’？” This is a game Edwin and John play, dueling Shakespeare.
“？‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings,’？” John says. And before Edwin can riposte, “？‘I deny you, stars.’？”
Asia closes her eyes and she can see again black words on a yellowed page. Once when she was very young, she stood in the branches of the cherry tree with Edwin below her and what she said was: “？‘Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night.’？”
“Well done,” says Edwin. “The cup to Asia.”
She lets go of Edwin’s arm and drops a curtsey that sends the hoop of her skirt swinging like a bell. She takes Jean’s soft hand in her own. “？‘There was a star danced, and under that were you born,’？” she tells Jean. She looks from John to Edwin. Both have ceased to pay attention. Both are staring out over the water toward the dark shore. “Don’t you think so?” she asks them insistently. “Isn’t that our Jean to a turn?”
vi
Edwin has booked them into rooms in Cataract House, an enormous, elegant five-story hotel, which, had they only known it, is one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad. There is no sign of this.
They breakfast in a dining hall with high ceilings and tall windows. Asia’s chair gives her a view of the green-and-white rapids rushing past. While they wait for their food, John tells a story about an addlepated actor in the Philadelphia company.
“The play was Lucretia Borgia,” John says, “and the scene the one in which the four soldiers find her on the street to enact their revenge. So the line is supposed to be ‘I am Ascanio Petrucci, madame, cousin of Pandolfo Petrucci, Lord of Sienna, who was assassinated by your order . . .’ But this foozler can’t come up with it to save his life. He bumbles and stumbles about and finally he just up and says, ‘Damn it all, who am I again?’ There’s old Lucretia on her knees, begging for her life, and everything has to stop, the audience is laughing so hard.”
Of course, the addlepate in John’s story is John himself. Asia wonders if he really thinks they don’t all know this. It was a blunder heard round the world, this son of Junius Booth who turned the tragedy of Lucretia Borgia into farce. The actress playing Lucretia will never forgive him for destroying her big scene.
Their guide comes to fetch them, an Irishman named Patrick Burke. Mr. Burke looks to be in his early fifties, with hardened skin like a sailor. He takes them to the top of the American Falls, then down Biddle’s staircase to the base. Great clouds are gathered above the water. Asia counts nine rainbows, some bright and in complete rings, some faint and fragmented. Her face is dewy with mist.
Mr. Burke tells them, shouting to be heard, that a few years back an enormous boulder detached from the cliffs and fell into the gorge, narrowly missing the staircase while he himself was inside. A few feet closer and neither he nor the staircase would be standing today. “I felt the careless finger of God,” Mr. Burke says, “just scratching an itch.”
The splendor of the sun on the crashing water leaves Asia nearly faint with awe, all her senses full to the brim. God the careless? No! God the creator, God the artist wielding his brush of light and liquid.
* * *
—
From the divine to the petty. They ride to the Canadian side through streets lined with tawdry curiosity shops, peep shows, and saloons. They pass by insistent pitches for tours, refreshment, pictures, pamphlets, bits of congealed mist, which Mr. Burke tells them not to buy as they are really just white stones. How is it possible that so many people can gaze on the face of God and see only a place where pigeons might be plucked? Asia watches a workman tip a wheelbarrow full of trash into the translucent green waters.
At John’s insistence, they stop on the field where the Battle of Lundy’s Lane was fought. Here Winfield Scott commanded the American troops, Gordon Drummond, the British. The fighting was close, more bayonets than rifles, and when it all ended some nine hundred men had died. It was the bloodiest battle of the War of 1812, Mr. Burke says. Every time they put a foot down, they are stepping on some soldier’s grave.