On Thanksgiving, Emil drank and turned the turkey to leather. The potatoes had raw bits, the scalloped oysters were dotted with shell and sand, and the pumpkin pie was stringy and vegetal. Victor sent word to fire him, but a maid said that Emil had found out that morning that his brother was dying, crushed in a logging accident.
Walton wondered if the falling tree had been a sequoia, and had perhaps been weakened by an earthquake. Could Emil afford a hearse, would Hearst write this up, was it all hearsay?
Henning walked up to the market and returned with fresh Olympias and spot prawns. Dulcy found butter, and a wizened lemon, but there was no bread in the kitchen, no greens, no fruit. They all drank too much, even Victor, who headed into his office to have a fuddled, screaming telephone call with his parents in New York before he set off to charm his fiancée Verity and her family at dinner. Dulcy and Henning heard parts of the conversation while they leaned out the window, sharing another cigarette in the sleet.
“Have you seen some of the crabs in the market?” asked Henning. “Three feet across, still moving. Sea spiders; nothing like this at home.”
She shivered. Cigarettes made her feel terrible after the first puff or two. Walton had tried to tell her once that some of Henning’s side of the family had been wreckers who lured ships to the shoals, salvaged the cargo, and stripped passengers’ bodies of belongings.
“And flat fish as big as Walton’s fattest nurse, with larger eyes.”
He’d bought some herring, too, and they waited until Victor slammed off, then found another bottle of wine and tiptoed around the kitchen. She dusted the herring with flour and fried them and dressed them with raisins and sweet vinaigrette, as if they were sardines. Pickled herring by way of Sicily, she told Henning, who ate twice as much as she did while they drank brandy. They were playing gin at the kitchen table, dirty plates pushed to one side, when Victor returned, complaining of the alien smell.
“I didn’t expect you to be here to be bothered,” said Dulcy. “I’ll rinse the plates when I’m done with this hand. Why was your dinner so short?”
“I do not enjoy those people,” said Victor. He picked up Henning’s empty plate and smashed it on the floor.
Dulcy fled to her room and turned her key in the door, wedged the chair, and then knelt next to it, listening, listing. The room spun from too much brandy, and she finally gave up the fight for balance and lay flat on her back on the carpet, listening to the footsteps in the hall. Pace, pace: she admired the dangling crystals of the light fixture above her, the novel nature of the bulb and its soft, yellow, fascinating glow—where had Victor gotten such a thing? She turned and watched the shadow of his steps pause near the doorsill.
A second set of footsteps approached, Henning trying to fix the problem. “I know what I want,” said Victor.
Well, no, thought Dulcy. No you don’t, not at all, no matter how often you say it.
The key turned, a push against the chair. “You’re a fucking fool,” said Henning. “Go to sleep.”
Winter (December 21 to March 20)
December 22, 856, Persia, 200,000 dead.
December 23 and 24, 1854, Honshu, 10,000.
December 25, 1899, Palm Springs, 6.
December 28, 893, Dvin, Armenia, 30,000.
January 1, 1837, Galilee, 7,000.
January 11, 1693, Catania, 60,000.
January 14 and 16, and February 2, 1703, Apennines, 10,000. A southern progression!
January 19, 749, The Levant. Complete destruction.
January 23, 1556, Shansi, China, 800,000.
January 25, 1348, Friuli, 10,000. Plague followed.
January 26, 1531, Lisbon, 30,000.
January 28, 1872, Shemakha, Caucasia (see 1667 and 1902). Large toll.
February 2, 1428, Catalonia, 10,000.
February 4, 1169, Sicily, 15,000.
February 4, 1797, Quito, 40,000. Humboldt’s notes.
February 4 to 7, and March 1 and March 28, 1783, Calabria, 50,000. I can discern no directional pattern.
February 16, 1810, Crete, 2,000. Accompanied by a wave.
February 20, 1835, Concepción, 50. See CD’s notes.
February 28, 1780, Persia, 200,000.
March 3, 1901, Parkfield, California,?
—from Walton Remfrey ’s red notebook
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