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Chapters
The Fortune Teller
"Well, what do you think of New Orleans?" Adam asked his bride. He patted Zoe's small, gloved hand as she held onto his arm.
"It's like another world," she said as they walked through the streets of the Vieux Carré. The gas streetlamps had just been lit and the evening sky was clear, the stars just beginning to glisten overhead. The moon was cut in half and Zoe had made a joke that their honeymoon was half over already. "Oh, Adam, I love New Orleans. This city is unlike anywhere else in the world with fantastical plants and enchanted buildings. Thank you, my darling, for bringing me here." Zoe leaned her head on Adam's arm and he almost groaned from the pain of his intense love for her.
Adam had never been happier in his life; never. No longer did he ache from a loneliness that often forced him to go numb to avoid feeling it. He had his wife now, his life—Zoe. Her name in Greek meant life and she had given him a new existence in a world filled with laughter and joy and a sublime contentment that up till now had been a mere ignis fatuus, a foolish hope, a delusion. When he would wake suddenly in the middle of the night in their hotel and she would be so still that he feared she was dead, Adam was afraid that he had lost after all-that his small joy would be ripped away. But he would watch her, barely breathing himself until he saw her breast almost imperceptibly rise and then his own breathing would settle down and his panic recede. He told himself he was foolish—he was being irrational and emotional-but he couldn't help himself. The gods were often so perverse as Hop Sing had once said.
"Look, Adam, a fortune teller." Zoe stopped and a dark-skinned woman, a Creole, was sitting at a table under a canopy, and she was calling out her service. She said that she could read palms and tell a person their future. She saw the young couple, so handsome together and the old Creole woman smiled.
"Come and sit and let me tell your future, a happy future I'm sure. Ah, what do I see? A beauty for a beauty—two joined as one. A life anew for you, sir, correct?"
"Yes," Zoe said with an eager smile. "for both of us. We're on our honeymoon. Can you tell just by looking at my palm if we'll be happy?" Zoe started to pull off her glove to put out her hand but Adam roughly snatched her away.
"That's enough, Zoe," Adam said. Then he turned on the woman. "No, we're not interested. I don't believe in such things." Zoe watched him; Adam was behaving strangely, stiffly, almost as if he was afraid of the woman and he had a cruel grip on her wrist.
"Don't you want to know?" the woman asked. "I know what is before you because your future is written in the palms of your hands—what is and what will be. From your birth your whole life has been plotted by the lines and cross lines on your palm and I, only I can decipher them. For a mere donation, whatever you want to give, I will tell you, whether you will live long or not, be prosperous or not, find love or not, be kind or be cruel—I can tell you." She was hypnotic with her sing-song voice and Adam felt the temptation to have her read his palm. But then he felt Zoe move beside him and she asked if she could please have her palm read. But Adam was too afraid to know the future, didn't want to know.
"No, Zoe. It's foolish," Adam said sternly. Zoe looked crushed. Adam reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out some coins which he threw on the woman's table. She looked up at him.
"I don't take money without giving something in return—that is bad luck. But without even looking at your palm but only at your face, I can see a great happiness for you, a joyous state greater than the divine ecstasy of the saints. But yours will not last. Take it while you can—swallow it whole, revel in it-time kills all things and all beautiful things have their season and then are gone."
Adam paused for a moment; his heart racing the same way it did when he awoke in the middle of the dark nights. Then he released Zoe's wrist and slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her away. He walked rapidly and she stepped quickly to keep up or he would drag her along.
"What is it, Adam? Are you angry with me?" Zoe was near to tears; Adam had never shown any displeasure with her before but then she always tried to please him.
Adam was afraid to speak; he would give himself away if he did so he just shook his head. They continued down the streets until they arrived at the opera house. He bought their tickets and his mind was racing. He should have hired the hack but Zoe wanted to walk to the theater; it was such a beautiful evening, she said and so Adam indulged her. But had they ridden in the hackney cab, they never would have come across the fortune teller and he wouldn't have had to face his biggest fear.
They sat in the dark theater and watched the singers on the stage. Zoe looked at the libretto Adam had bought in the lobby but she didn't speak or ask him any questions about the story as she usually did. His posture was stiff and he stared fixedly at the stage. But he wasn't paying attention; his mind was racing. He didn't believe in fortune tellers and such, they were foolish and superstitious. And yet, he also knew that he did believe—a small part of his atavistic brain, the part that reached into the past of all mankind and believed in shamen and omens and runes and I Ching and the throwing of bones, the magic of witches and all the many ways that men had sought to be guided and to know the future were alive and well in his pagan soul. And Hop Sing had his household gods to which he lit incense and gave offerings so that they would protect him and the Cartwrights and give the family prosperity. And Adam had scoffed at Hop Sing through the years but somehow, knowing that Hop Sing was praying for him and his family was a comfort and that his ancient gods were protecting them.
After the opera and the cab ride home, when Adam and Zoe were back in their hotel and lying in the dark, entangled in each other's arms despite the heat and humidity of the New Orleans night, Adam brought Zoe's palm to his lips and gently kissed it.
"Adam," she said quietly, "why were you so afraid?"
He knew what she was asking. "I don't want to know the future, Zoe."
Zoe raised her head to look down on him and Adam looked up at the face he had come to treasure. Surely, he thought, angels in heaven weren't as lovely as his wife. "I don't believe in such things, Adam. I just thought it would be fun."
"I think people make things come true—both bad and good. If she had told you anything bad, you might have made it come about because she planted the seed."
"Oh, Adam, I'm not a child." Zoe smiled at him; he looked so worried that she wanted to soothe his fears. "No one can tell our future except for me and I say…" Zoe picked up his hand and looked at his palm in the streetlight's glow. "I say that you have a beautiful, loving wife and that you and she will be happy for many, many years to come and will grow old together and have a slew of children." The she kissed his palm.
Adam smiled up at her. "Better?" she asked him.
"Zoe, I don't believe in fortune telling but what I do mean is that you're open to things. Now I don't want to discuss it anymore. Don't bring it up again…please. Let's go to sleep." Adam pulled her closer and Zoe laid her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat; it pounded faster and harder than usual.
"Don't be afraid for me, Adam, and don't be afraid of the future. After all, you have me to go through it with you. And I'll hold your hand the whole way. What's that poem you read to me by Browning? The one about growing old together."
"Rabbi Ben Ezra. 'Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be'."
"Yes, Adam. That's us. The best is ahead for us." Zoe sighed deeply and nestled even closer to her husband.
Adam stared into the abyss of the future and his eyes felt hot. He remembered another line from the poem: "Be our joys three-parts pain." And Zoe slept, the soft sip of her breath comforting him. Adam was glad she was oblivious of his amorphous fear that even he couldn't name but it had been with him since he was a child like a black shadow that walked closely behind him, breathing on his neck and always threatening to overtake him.
TBC
