The Lacuna (31 page)

June 30, 1944

Dear Frida,

Thank you for the name of your friend in New York. Mr. Morrison will someday regret your indiscretion, as he is sure to hear from me. Diego’s miseries are worrisome; the struggle to build his rock temple-museum in the Pedregal sounds more surreal than anything in your French exhibit. Nothing he does will ever be small. Your failure to mention your own health I will take as good news, and assume the surgeries in California were successful. I’m sorry Natalya hasn’t communicated, but there could be many reasons for it, given the wrecked state of everything in France, and no direct post between France and Mexico. But even so, the movement for socialist democracy seems to be rising from the ashes, with labor now on the march against Vichy in Paris, if the news of this can be trusted. Lev would find some way to be hopeful, even for poor France.

The time with Lev and Natalya seems so distant, I’m startled when any traces of it surface. In the magazine photograph enclosed, look and you’ll see two of the New York boys who worked as guards for Lev. Charlie and Jake, you remember them. I practically jumped when I spotted them, right across the page from Mary Martin holding her Calox tooth powder. The picture is a peace meeting at the Carnegie Music Hall where a few hundred gathered to demand armistice. The article I haven’t enclosed, but you know the kind of thing: “in attendance were Trotskyites, Teamsters, Socialist professors and old-line Quakers, the crackpot fringes of public opinion, hoping to arouse draft resistance while praying for an easy way out.” In other words, the kind of thing you and your friends do on a normal Friday noon, without the praying. People here are the same as in Mexico, their passions bristle in every direction. And the presses are the same also. No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.

The newsreels that frightened you in California were of the same ilk, I’m sure. The aim is to terrify us. Not to be outdone by a giant ape climbing a skyscraper, they’ll have the quiet Japanese fellow next door harboring clandestine treachery. If you saw a movie star telling about the gardener putting poison on her vegetables, it was only an entertainment set ahead of the main feature. Like Diego eating flesh. You know these howlers. You’ve had their noise in your ears since the day you married a famous man, and still you do as you please. Don’t listen to nonsense, Frida. The idea of putting American Japanese in concentration camps is fantastical. You shouldn’t worry so much.

Have faith in our Mr. Roosevelt, who has everyone bucked up. People here salute him as the flag, since most have only ever seen the one flag, or the one president. He came to office when I was only a boy at the Academy, imagine it. In those days his
name was a schoolboy joke, scented with roses, but now he is our own kind of Lenin, charting the new American Revolution. Even the Communists here supported him in the last election. No one can argue against guarantees of useful work and protection from old-age hardship. Now he has even imposed a tax on businesses so they can’t profit from the war, and he regulates food prices so everyone gets a fair share. We subordinate ourselves to the national good!

Your old friend,

INSÓLITO

Special to Hearst News

Former fruit-and-vegetable stands sit empty, their piles rotted away, but a contamination is not yet scoured from our city. The Dies Committee today released a report noting 40,000 dangerous persons are still at large, more than a year after Order 9066 of the Western Defense Command routed foreign-and American-born Japs to detention centers in the central states. The report contains evidence of espionage rings in which many, if not all, Japanese “fishermen” and “truck farmers” used their merchant status in our country as a cloak for approaching strategic facilities.

Military command keeps watch on more than 100,000 evacuees now residing in detention camps, where observers have noted the detainees care little whether this country or Japan wins the war. Yet the Justice Department is still considering an appeal to release certain detainees professing “loyalty” into non-war jobs. Our Western States oppose the move with a single voice. Senator Hiram Johnson vowed yesterday the
War Department will not allow resettlement of one single Jap in coastal states, pointing out that most residents here would have them shipped to Tojo after the war ends.

No Californian need be reminded of the incendiary bombs dropped on Ft. Stevens and the Pacific forests last year, or the shelling of the Goleta refinery whose flames engulfed our city in terror. The warships of Dai Nippon lurk in plain view off our coast, with pilots ready to fly on the “kamikaze wind” to meet their targets, heinously exchanging life itself for a promise of immortality. But few realize the number of such inimical persons still hiding in the Pacific states under civilian guise.

In a statement to Hearst News today, General John L. DeWitt declared, “We ignore the Dies Committee report at our peril.” Describing the adversary’s nefarious character he said, “Racial affinities are not severed by migration. The Japanese are an enemy race, and while many of those born on U.S. soil have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted.” In a recent conference with the Secretary of War, DeWitt cited undisclosed indications of a Nip conspiracy prepared for action. The fact that no violent outburst has yet taken place, he explained, is a confirming indication of such actions soon to be taken.

Whether of alien or American birth, Japs remain banned from our coast until the final surrender. The rightful place of all such persons is detention in the desolate interior. Responding to rumors of release, the Governor’s office promised full security for our citizens. “We afford no quarter to those whose presence is inimical to the public safety. Our tolerance of their kind is revoked. Their property has been dispensed, their business contracts cancelled and bank accounts forfeited. FBI agents stand ready to conduct search and seizure raids on homes or businesses suspected of harboring aliens.”

To US citizens this comes as welcome news. While Americans face death from fascist bullets overseas, the Justice Department has leaned over backward to preserve the right of free speech in wartime, opening the gates to those who would spread lies and propaganda behind the lines at home.

This report has been submitted for clearance by the Army and Navy.

Special to
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12—Up to Thursday night the Justice Department had arrested 2,541 German, Japanese and Italian citizens in the roundup of dangerous aliens which got under way with the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States, Attorney General Francis Biddle said tonight. Of these 1,002 are Germans, 1,370 Japanese, and 169 Italians.

Mr. Biddle emphasized that although they were regarded as “dangerous to the peace and safety of the nation,” Axis subjects under arrest “represented only a small fraction of the more than 1,100,000 Axis nationals residing in the United States.”

“Arrests were limited to persons whose activities have been under investigation by the FBI for some time,” said Mr. Biddle.

Aides declared that none of the prisoners would be interned throughout the war except where there is “strong reason to fear for the internal security of the United States.”

The Justice Department issued a warning that any Japanese, German or Italian citizen found in possession of a camera, regardless of the use to which it was put, faced loss of his equipment and possible detention. Axis citizens already had been ordered not to make airplane flights of any kind.

The round-up of potential saboteurs, spies and enemy aliens here brought in twenty-six more prisoners yesterday. Sixteen
were German, six Japanese and five Italian. Those arrested yesterday also were taken to Ellis Island and turned over to agents of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. As usual, Federal Bureau of Investigation officials refused to comment.

William H. Marshall, assistant director of emigration and naturalization, said that 553 enemy aliens have been rounded up since Sunday. The figures included those seized in places adjacent to New York City. All enemy aliens were barred by the Civil Aeronautics Authority from riding in commercial, government or private airplanes.

The State Labor Department pointed out that enemy aliens were not entitled to receive unemployment insurance, as the law provides that the payments can be made only to persons “available for work.”

The large plaque in front of the Italian Building, 626 Fifth Avenue, was covered yesterday.

September 12, 1944

Dear Frida,

Thank you for sending the clippings. Forgive me for doubting you, this is terrifying news and not well known in these parts. If nothing on earth is new, these howlers are the proof. People will be made afraid at any cost.

Your Insólito remains a muddled assembly of two nations, settled for now in the house of his father, puzzling over its construction. By day we whistle “The Internationale” and reach right across the world to our comrades. My neighbor knits stockings for the orphans of Moscow. But by night the neighborhood bolts its doors and looks beneath the beds for an alien menace. Yet I stake a claim, I am here, for I must be somewhere. But only as a child it seems, struggling to understand
what every wife and gentleman passing on the street seems to know by rote. Whom to love, whom to castigate.

The only certainty in my own household is: the novel is finished. I feel a peculiar sadness, like missing a lively, quarrelsome friend who has ended his long visit. These days I purse my lips at the mirror and wonder how it is that other men find first-class reasons to shave, change out of pajamas, and leave the house, practically every day.

Your friend Mr. Morrison recommended an editor who sheds a glimmer of interest in looking at the thing. His response has forced me outdoors three days in a row, blinking like an owl, in search of an envelope or packaging to carry the manuscript to New York. This effort may take longer than writing the book. Stationer’s stores no longer have even enough paper for the standard sign declaring their product has gone to the front. The editor may be spared his trouble, due to the paper shortage. Probably the manuscript itself should be heaved over in the next paper drive, as ballast for a warship.

I send you two clippings in return, from earlier in the summer. Our town’s newspaper is rationed to twice-weekly editions, but this article merited precious fiber—note the date, our shared birthday. You’ll remember I wrote you about this beetle. The other page I tore from a respectable magazine (
Life
, how comprehensive!), enclosed mainly for its spectacular photograph. Like Cortés, I report back to my Queen on a new world wondrous strange.
Feliz cumpleaños
, my friend, from America where we make do with nothing new.

Abrazos
,

SÓLI

by Anthony Standen

Japanese beetles, unlike the Japanese, are without guile. There are, however, many parallels between the two. Both are small but very numerous and prolific, as well as voracious, greedy and devouring. Both have single-track minds. Both are inscrutable, the beetles particularly, for no one can say why they should be attracted by yellow when most of their food is green, nor why they rush avidly to geraniums—the smell of geraniums is used to bait the traps—when geraniums are poisonous to them. The beetles, however, are firmly settled on our middle Atlantic coast, where they chew up apples, peaches, grapes, roses, pasture grass and other useful or agreeable vegetable matter to the tune of $7,000,000 every year, and threaten to become rampant over the greater part of the entire country. Long ago we declared war on them, and though we have little chance of total victory—which would mean exterminating every single beetle on our shores—we may hope to achieve a more limited success, with the insects so harassed and persecuted that their numbers would be kept within decency’s limit, although their character would never be changed.

by Carl Nicholas

They are small, crafty, and breed unceasingly. They are driven to fly viciously into their targets, creating immense destruction. The Japanese Beetle has moved down our coast and arrived at our very door. These odd-looking green insects pose a threat to plant life and domestic tranquility alike.

“They fly all over my washing,” said Mrs. Jimmy Hyder, a housewife recently sighted on Charlotte Street mounting her offensive. Sons Harold and Alter led the infantry with badminton rackets, and Mrs. Hyder followed with the pump-atomizer, dousing the battlefield with insecticide. Weekly sprayings may tip the balance against the enemy, but Mrs. Hyder complains, “They’ll keep on flying into you for no good reason, down to the last one.” She warned other Victory Gardeners to expect heavy losses from the enemy this year, especially in the tomatoes and runner beans.

Scientists call the greedy beast “Popillia japonica.” The Agriculture Department believes they first sneaked into the country near New Jersey, some years prior to Pearl Harbor, concealed in a crate of fruit. The sly grubs hide under ground in winter, emerging famished and keen to ply their destruction in the warmer months. Their fiendish campaign has now reached the Western Carolinas, spoiling orchards worth many thousand dollars.

Wives and gardeners beware. Though badminton rackets fly on Charlotte Street, Mr. Wick Bentsen of the County Extension Service says no weapons yet devised have been found to stop this Japanese invasion.

Mr. Lincoln Barnes, Editor
Stratford and Sons Publishers, New York
December 11, 1944

Dear Mr. Barnes,

The sum you have proposed is overwhelmingly generous.

The changes you suggest in the story will render it much improved. However, I’m not able to consult the pages you mentioned, as the book rests entirely in your hands. You have the only copy. (The envelope also may be the sole issue of its litter.) Paper remains scarce here. Any shortages in supply lines at the
German Bulge were not due to failure of enthusiasm for the paper and scrap drives in Asheville, North Carolina. Thus, it would be useful to have the manuscript returned for corrections, at your convenience.

Your letter made reference to my secretary-typist, to whom you plan to forward more notations. Be assured, the secretary-typist will be in intimate contact with the author, the telephone receptionist, cook, and housekeeper, as we all presently inhabit the same four-dollar shoes. With clothing-ration coupons as they are, it’s a useful arrangement.

Gratefully,

HARRISON W. SHEPHERD

April 5, 1945

Dear Frida,

Your letter was welcome, even if it didn’t carry much good news. It is so much better to think of you stomping down the street with skirts roiling, not in a wheelchair. This is a hateful revision. You and Diego should be marching with banners in Paseo de la Reforma this week, protesting the compromises of the Chapultepec Conference.

We are much less in the news here than Mexico City, but our headlines may entertain: Production lines at Asheville Casket Company have gone idle today (dead silent!) as workers go on strike, flouting their war duties, pending negotiations between management and the Upholsterers Union.

Next: the writer William Sidney Porter, or what is left of him, may be dug up from the cemetery in this very neighborhood, for relocation to Greensboro. The city of Asheville has leveled a protest, believing Mr. Porter to be comfortable where he is. The courts will decide. One hopes that no reupholstering will be required at this time.

Admiral Halsey came to the Grove Park for some sport-hunting: finally, a story involving no death. And fashion is alive: Lilly Daché has worked out how to make civilian Easter bonnets from 76,000 WAC hats discarded by the army in favor of the cloth overseas cap. Much on display here last Sunday. You would like gringo Easter: every woman, even the grayest little pigeon, finds the courage to be a Frida for the day.

Not much personal news. The wisteria vines that climb the sides of my house and twine from the eaves are in full purple bloom, the color of jacaranda. Do you ever hear from Van? A question asked, but truly no answer is wanted. A French instructor here at the Teachers College, a particular Miss Attwood, has lately kept up a long campaign to be taken to the movies. With all presentable men at the front, she feels that a fellow should accept his duty to take a girl to see
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. The idea of a crowded theater makes me shudder. Sometimes leaving the house at all becomes a frightful thing, I carry an inexplicable dread inside that never completely abates. But Miss Attwood would not be refused. Hurd Hatfield made a gratifying Dorian, despite his treachery toward Sibyl Vane and Gladys Hallward. Duty seems fulfilled, all quiet on the Attwood front this week.

At the end of term the Teachers College will close. Your language will cease to be maligned by the Carolina tongue. Its only advocate in Asheville will happily stay home in his vine-covered cottage, as his former pupils turn to parachute-packing and the like. These girls are so much like Mother, with their gum-cracking confidence and feral vocabularies.
Holy Joe! Oh nausea! He’s oolie droolie!
But Mother would be old by now, nearly fifty. How she would wail over that, if she were still here. Probably it’s a charity that she is not.

Last item: the book is to be published late this year by Stratford and Sons Publishers, New York. The editor, Mr. Barnes,
confirmed it today. He wants it titled
Vassals of Majesty
, which is silly, as the characters are vassals of cupiditas and greed. The original title was meant to be
Ten Leagues from Where We Sleep
, as it’s about men who find themselves always marching short of their own and everyone else’s expectation, including the reader’s. But Mr. Barnes says that title has too many words in it. No matter. Stratford has mailed a check for two hundred dollars, an advance payment upon royalties to be received, and if they can find the paper they mean to print up copies by the thousand. A terrifying miracle. These words were all written in dark, quiet rooms. How can they face the bright, noisy world?

You must know. You open your skin and pour yourself on a canvas. And then let the curators drape your intestines all around the halls, for the ruckus of society gossips. Can it be survived?

Your friend,

SÓLI