But he did love her. With all his heart he loved her.
All his heart?
All of it he knew about. And yet when his deepest secrets were revealed in that first voyage Outside, it was not Novinha that his heart conjured there. So apparently there was someone who mattered even more to him.
Well, he couldn’t help what went on in his unconscious mind, any more than Novinha could. All he could control was what he actually did, and what he was doing now was showing Novinha that regardless of how she tried to drive him away, he would not be driven. That no matter how much she imagined that he loved Jane and his involvement in the great affairs of the human race more than he loved her, it was not true, she was more important to him than any of it. He would give it all up for her. He would disappear behind monastery walls for her. He would weed rows of unidentified plant life in the hot sun. For her.
But even that was not enough. She insisted that he do it, not for her, but for Christ. Well, too bad. He wasn’t married to Christ, and neither was she. Still, it couldn’t be displeasing to God when a husband and wife gave all to each other. Surely that was part of what God expected of human beings.
“You know I don’t blame you for the death of Quim,” she said, using the old family nickname for Estevгo.
“I didn’t know that,” he said, “but I’m glad to find it out.”
“I did at first, but I knew all along that it was irrational,” she said. “He went because he wanted to, and he was much too old for some interfering parent to stop him. If I couldn’t, how could you?”
“I didn’t even want to,” said Ender. “I wanted him to go. It was the fulfillment of his life’s ambition.”
“I even know that now. It’s right. It was right for him to go, and it was even right for him to die, because his death meant something. Didn’t it?”
“It saved Lusitania from a holocaust.”
“And brought many to Christ.” She laughed, the old laugh, the rich ironic laugh that he had come to treasure if only because it was so rare. “Trees for Jesus,” she said. “Who could have guessed?”
“They’re already calling him St. Stephen of the Trees.”
“That’s quite premature. It takes time. He must first be beatified. Miracles of healing must take place at his tomb. Believe me, I know the process.”
“Martyrs are thin on the ground these days,” said Ender. “He will be beatified. He will be canonized. People will pray for him to intercede with Jesus for them, and it will work, because if anyone has earned the right to have Christ hear him, it’s your son Estevгo.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks, even as she laughed again. “My parents were martyrs and will be saints; my son, also. Piety skipped a generation.”
“Oh, yes. Yours was the generation of selfish hedonism.”
She finally turned to face him, tear-streaked dirty cheeks, smiling face, twinkling eyes that saw through into his heart. The woman he loved.
“I don’t regret my adultery,” she said. “How can Christ forgive me when I don’t even repent? If I hadn’t slept with Libo, my children would not have existed. Surely God does not disapprove of that?”
“I believe what Jesus said was, ‘I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive. But of you it is required that you forgive all men.'”
“More or less,” she said. “I’m not a scriptorian.” She reached out and touched his cheek. “You’re so strong, Ender. But you seem tired. How can you be tired? The universe of human beings still depends on you. Or if not the whole of humankind, then certainly you belong to this world. To save this world. But you’re tired.”
“Deep inside my bones I am,” he said. “And you have taken my last lifeblood away from me.”
“How odd,” she said. “I thought what I removed from you was the cancer in your life.”
“You aren’t very good at determining what other people want and need from you, Novinha. No one is. We’re all as likely to hurt as help.”