The Lacuna (36 page)

“Not according to Mr. Rankin and the Congress.”

Or Truman:
If that’s art, then I’m a Hottentot
. Others said
vulgar, obscene, insane, namby-pamby pacifism
. Or
Stalinist
, a perfect irony, from these congressmen who seem as determined as Stalin to suppress creativity among artists. The show scared them out of their wits. The Special Session was a thrashing.

“We should have taken Tom out of that hearing. It was humiliating.”

“Your poor friend, he’d worked so. He’ll take it hard, will he not?”

“Oh, believe me. Tom Cuddy feels for those paintings about the way you do for your nieces and nephews. He’d knit socks for Winslow Homer, if he knew how. I’ve seen that in him ever since the civilian services. Moving paintings and sculptures to safekeeping, that was America the Beautiful, for Tom. That was patriotism.”

“Bless his heart.”

Bless it indeed. Now he’s had to hear Congress declare the whole Western world threatened by some paint and canvas. Our finest painters, a menace. One was specifically damned for having urged Roosevelt to come to the aid of the Soviet Union and Britain, after Hitler attacked Russia. Which in fact, Roosevelt did.

The click of knitting needles, the shush of tires through leafy muck. The lozenge of space inside the automobile felt surprisingly safe, like a small home moving through a tunnel of darkness. Mrs. Brown finished off a sock before speaking again.

“Not all the pictures were hard to cipher. Some were plain. The ones with cemeteries and tenement houses got people the most riled, if you ask me. More than the ones that looked like dribble-drabble.”

“The Guglielmi and those.”

“Why do you think?”

“Congress has to keep up appearances. The paintings were going around the world. We can’t let them know we have racial strife and tenement houses.”

“My stars, Mr. Shepherd. Europe is lying in a pile. On the news they said Berlin city just dug two thousand graves for the ones that aim to starve to death before spring.”

A car blazed by, two bright eyes in the dark.

“They had to dig the graves before the ground froze,” she added.

“I understand.”

“And London, no better. I read they’re allowed nought but four ounces of knitting wool for the year and two yards of material, to cover each person in a family. They must be about naked. What’s the harm in those folks seeing some of our troubles?”

“Well, five years of wartime censorship. Old habits die hard. We’ve gotten very good at pretending everything is shipshape here. Don’t you feel that way?”

“What way?”

“That it’s a little dangerous to advertise our weak points. Jerry and Tokyo Rose might be listening. Loose lips sink ships.”

“They
were
listening. But the war’s ended.”

“True. But if it keeps the paintings pretty and all people’s whining buttoned up, maybe they’ll want a new war every five years.”

“Mr. Shepherd, for shame. That is no subject for jest. We can’t keep on forever saying the nation entire is perfect. Because between you and me, sir, it is not.” The needles clicked in the dark. She must have read the pattern with her fingertips.

“Do you remember the first advice you ever gave me?”

She seemed to think it over. “The pot roast at Mrs. Bittle’s?”

“Advice about writing.”

“I never.”

“Oh, you did. In that first letter. You said Tom Wolfe got himself in hot water exposing the scandals of Asheville, and I was wise to keep my story in Mexico. Here was your advice: people love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.”

She considered this. “That’s different from putting sins and errors off the map entire. How can it be un-American to paint a picture of sadness?”

“I don’t know. But they did not want to see any waves on the domestic waters.”

For several minutes she knitted at her sock, evidently struggling not to say any more. At length she lost the battle. “If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink. Those congressmen are saying we have to call it a meadow of buttercups instead of a cesspool. Even the artists have to.”

“Well, but suppose the artist’s job is just to keep everyone amused? Maybe get their minds off the stink, by calling it a meadow. Where’s the harm?”

“Nobody will climb out of the pile. There’s the harm. They’ll keep where they are, deep to the knees in dung, trying to outdo each other remarking on the buttercups.”

“Well, I write historical romance. I’m sorry to let you down, but any time you’re looking for the meadow and buttercups, I’m your man.”

“Fiddlesticks, Mr. Shepherd. Do ye think I ken ye not?”

“Do you know me? I suppose you do. Well enough.”

“Well enough. You are good to children whose parents are not. You take in the straggliest cats. You are dismayed by the treatment of the Negro. You read more newspapers than Mr. Hearst himself, though it aggravates you to no end. Shiffling through all that claptrap hunting a day’s one glory. The rise of the little man somewhere, or the fall of a tyrant.”

“Is that everything?”

“About. I believe you stand on the side of the union of labor.”

“Well done, Mrs. Brown. You can read me like a book.”

Even in the full darkness I could feel her glare, the dangerous force of her. She had those needles.

“Set your photograph on the dustcover, or not, it makes no difference. You are still there, Mr. Shepherd, plain to see. Your first one was about the hatefulness of war, everyone said so. How it fills up the rich men’s pockets and grieves the poor ones.”

“I see.”

“You needn’t squirm, Mr. Shepherd. Your words are your own wee bairns. You need not leave them orphaned. You should stand up proud and say, ‘Those are mine!’”

Soon we passed through the long tunnel at Little Switzerland, a deeper darkness within the night’s blue darkness, like a cave in the sea. Mrs. Brown’s knitting stayed in her lap, the strange blue bundle with its armature of needles, like a peculiar pet she could no longer bear to touch. When we reached Mrs. Bittle’s she said good-bye, but until then we hardly spoke any more. Both driver and passenger seemed to need all our energies to find the way ahead, staring at the bleakness and the rain.

November 15

A letter from Frida after all this time, opened with trembling hands. Thrill and fear are really the same, inside a body. Her operation a
partial success, good news, though she still suffers. The handsome Spaniard she met in New York seems to be good medicine, a sturdy platform from which to forgive. Her grammar was so odd though, barely coherent. The date on the letter was Lev’s birthday and the day of the October Revolution, but no mention of either. No more red carnations on the table for old loves, the
viejo
and democratic socialism. Diego has gone over completely to the side of the Stalinists now. And she, perhaps to the side of morphine.

December 24

A gift: knitted gloves of soft gray wool. What a remarkable sensation, to slide them on and feel each finger fit perfectly in its allotted space. “I noticed you have none,” she said. “Or wear none. I thought maybe they didn’t use them in Mexico.”

“I’ve bought three pair since I moved here and they’re all too short in the fingers. I wind up with webbed hands like a duck.”

“Well, see, I wondered. Your fingers are about twice what God gave the rest of us.”

I held out both gloved hands, stunned by the sight of perfection. “How did you do this? Did you measure me in my sleep?”

She grinned. “A grease stain on one of your letters. You must have leaned on the table to stand up, after eating a bacon sandwich.”

“Very impressive.”

“I brought in a rule and measured all the fingers.”

I turned my hands over, admiring the row of slant stitches across each thumb gusset. “Not blue, though. I thought you specialized in indigo.”

“Oh, those socks you mean, out of that cheap handspun. Those were for the children. This is pure merino from Belk’s. I can use quality on you, because you’re not planning to outgrow these in a year or run holes in them on purpose.”

“I’ll try not to let you down.”

A memory of snow. A hill striped sideways with blue shadows
of trees. Screaming, the thrill of pursuit, some adult lobbing white balls, making the sound of a cannon blast with every volley. Cupping up hard snow that leaves pills of ice clinging to the fuzzy palms. Mittens, red with a snowflake pattern across the knuckles, made by someone. Father’s mother? No contact was allowed later on, it was Mother’s choice to leave everything: grandmothers, snow. All water-ice returns to the breath of the world. But those cast-off mittens might still be somewhere. Evidence of a boy’s existence.

I told Mrs. Brown she’d given me my first Christmas gift in over ten years. In our many days together, she has not betrayed such emotion as that confession invoked. “Ten year! And not one soul to give you a measly giftie?”

“My family is all gone.”

“But
people
. In Mexico you worked in homes, did ye not?”

“The last ones were Russian, they didn’t pay Christmas any notice. Mr. Trotsky had us work through like any other day.”

“He didn’t hold with our Lord Jesus?”

“He was a good man. But no, he didn’t. He was Jewish, his background.”

“He’s the one that got killed.”

“Yes.”

“And the ones before that, all Jews?”

“No. Mrs. Rivera was crazy for Christmas, she always organized feasts. I was the cook.”

“So you had to work straight through.”

“I did.”

“Mr. Shepherd, it pains me to be gone away next week.”

“Honestly, I’m glad you asked. You need to go see your family, and I need to be reminded what regular people do at holiday times.”

“Well, regular, I wouldn’t know. But you. You’ll have nought here to tell you it’s Christmas. What will you do?”

What will an acorn do when it has lain awhile in the ground and the rain swells its husk? Become a fig? “I have the galley proofs to finish,” I said.

“Now Mr. Shepherd, that is a fib. You finished those, and I know it.”

“I wanted to have one more look. And then I’ll start writing something new.”

The eyebrows soared. “What about?”

“I’m not sure.”

She gathered up her purse and gloves, preparing to go. A light snow had been falling all day. “All work and no play, Mr. Shepherd. Makes the meat go to gristle.”

“Does it? I thought it made Jack a dull boy.”

“It would do that as well.”

“I’ll probably get nothing done at all, thanks to the pile of books you brought from the library. I’ll poke up the fire and have Christmas with Mr. Hardy and Mr. Dickens. What could be better? And Tristram Shandy. The cats are hinting that I should cook a leg of lamb, so maybe I will. And I’m sure Eddie Cantor and Nora Martin will sing some carols for me on Wednesday night.”

“I hate to tell you, but they’re singing for their sponsor. I think it’s Sal Hepatica.”

“You are cruel, Mrs. Brown. Next you’ll tell me all those girls on the Lucky Strike Hit Parade are crooning for Lucky Strike cigarettes, and not me.”

She sat with her hands on her pocketbook, waiting.

“You want to say something. Go ahead.”

“None of my business, Mr. Shepherd. But a man would have a girl usually. Or attachments. That aren’t cats or books.”

I took off the gloves and folded them carefully. “Now this is really a case of the skillet calling the kettle black. Thirty years is a long time to stay a widow.”

“I did have a runny-go at marriage. The one time.”

“Well, don’t worry. I’ve had my runny-goes. Attachments, as you say.”

“If you say so. And no Christmas present for ten years. If you get attached to something, seems like it wouldn’t come all that far loose.”

“No, wait, I forgot. Last Christmas Romulus brought over a jam cake from his mother. Half the cake, actually. He said they’d had enough of it.”

“Blessed are the grateful, Mr. Shepherd, but that is no account as a real present. Half a jam cake showing signs of prior use.”

Chispa slipped into the room, around the edge of the door and along the wall, flattened to it, as if pulled sideways by a separate order of gravity. Slowly she crossed the bottom of the bookcase in similar manner, into the inglenook by the fireplace. I unfolded the gloves. It was tempting to put them on, wear them until Whitsuntide. “I’m not the sort of person who attracts gifts.”

“Mr. Shepherd, do ye think I believe it? I open the mail, with all such things in it as people can let sail. Even little embroidered things.”

“Then I should say I’m not a good recipient. When people are no good at relationships, I’ve noticed they often blame the other people. But I don’t.”

“I’ve never heard you blame a soul for anything, Mr. Shepherd. It’s one of your qualities. To the extent I sometimes wonder if your mother dropped you on your head.”

“No, she probably carried me in a suitcase—she was eternally on the move. Anyone I especially liked was soon gone, household people or friends. It’s been like that. Or they’ve left me on their own initiative. Mostly by dying.”

“Well. I am not a one to argue with mortal demise.”

“Well said, Mrs. Brown.”

“You ought to write it down. About yourself and all those that went away.”

“What, write about my life? Like poor old Tristram Shandy trying to remember his whole story helter-skelter?”

“You’d get further,” she said. “You’ve been keeping good notes all along.”

“Who would want to read such trivial stuff?”

“Well, why write it down in the first place, then? Because you do. I’m not putting my nose into anything, you do it plain in the open, Mr. Shepherd. Seems to me, if you really wanted shed of your own days, you’d not take such care to put them all down on a page. I see you go so deep in it, you forget day or night and have breakfast at supper.”

“I’m just a writer. It’s my way of thinking.”

“It’s your attachments. That’s what it looks like to me. You might do as well to attach to your own self, alongside all these story people you dream up from nowhere.”