Private Life

by Jane Smiley

  “I imagined I would find a nice Cossack town and buy a horse or two, but the streets were crawling, yes, Dora always says this, the streets were crawling with Europeans, real Europeans, from Germany and Holland and France, which was good for me, because I spoke better French than English at that time. If you had a bit of capital, Omsk was the place to be. Those French fellows did. We bought some plots and built some elegant houses and named them ‘Les Milandes’ and ‘Les Domes.’” Margaret passed him the platter. “White façades, you know, with mansard roofs and a dome every little bit. It will be a great city, Omsk. Up until the railway, it was an outpost, and Dostoevsky was there, did you know that? That’s where he was sent to the prison camp after they didn’t execute him. He wouldn’t mind it there now. That railway is a great accomplishment, I am telling you.”

  Margaret passed him the bread and asked, “Is it finished?”

  “The main lines have been finished for eight or ten years. As soon as I heard that the two ends had met, I got on it. It took me four months to get from St. Petersburg to Sinkiang, and three weeks to get from Sinkiang to Omsk, but only four days to get from Omsk to Vladivostok.”

  Andrew beamed as if he had built the railroad himself.

  Over breakfast the following morning, Margaret said, “Did you believe all of that? I must say, he hardly has an accent.”

  Andrew shook his head. “Some people are naturally fluent, my dear. I do believe any native I might have known in Berlin would have mistaken me for a German.”

  “But there’s something about him—”

  “He’s a brilliant fellow,” said Andrew. “That’s all. He’s such a rare bird that we don’t recognize his rarity.”

  Margaret turned this over in her mind, then said, “I asked Dora if he had ever been married.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said, ‘I don’t know, really. But if so, I’m sure the wife regretted it.’”

  Andrew laughed outright for the first time in weeks.

  Margaret would have said that Dora could not be duped, so she didn’t understand her friend’s delight in this Pete Krizenko. For herself, she didn’t believe a word he said. He told his stories as if he had gotten them out of books, and she thought that it was perfectly possible that he was a small-time crook from Seattle, up to no good—Dora was something of an heiress, after all, and acted like one. But, of course, now Margaret sounded, even to herself, exactly like the Bells. It was also true that the man had had a magical effect on Andrew, and for the first time since his “denunciation,” as he called it, Andrew seemed relaxed and even personable. Once when she was in San Francisco, Pete Krizenko appeared at the observatory and asked to be shown about the place. Andrew reported, with delight, that the fellow had looked through the telescope and listened to Andrew’s theories. And Mrs. Wareham seemed to know him as well, and to like him—she complimented his manners. But Margaret remained suspicious.

  ONE rainy day, Margaret and Dora were walking from Mrs. Wareham’s house to the ferry when a horse-drawn cart passed them, then slowed and stopped. The cart was small, two wheels, freshly painted black with yellow trim. It had a bellows top, which had been pulled up against the weather. The horse was more of a pony—probably a pony crossed with a heavier, more lethargic breed, since it had a Roman nose—but it had an intelligent expression, and its ear tips pointed delicately at each other. A lady leaned forward and put her head around the top. Margaret recognized her instantly and with a start. Dora said, “Mrs. Kimura! How do you do, ma’am?” The midwife, wearing a brown wool coat and a man’s trilby against the weather, smiled brightly and nodded. She said, “Miss Dora, you kind ladies must come out of bad weather!”

  Dora was in the seat in a moment; Margaret clambered up more hesitantly. She could hardly stand to look at Mrs. Kimura, so strongly did her face remind Margaret of Alexander—but not of Alexander himself, more of that feeling she had had, horror and suspense that could not be acted on or even reacted to, only waited out. Once they had settled themselves, Mrs. Kimura stirred up the pony with the whip, and he trotted briskly away. As they bowled along, Mrs. Kimura put her shoulders back and held the reins in her gloved hands with a sense of dash, as if she had been born to do it. Margaret made herself look at the woman and think shallow thoughts about, for example, the distinct family resemblance between her and Naoko, so that that old feeling would be overlaid by something. Fortunately, they were going rather fast; Margaret had to grip the side railing with both hands. Mrs. Kimura said, all at once, “I have had successful delivery this morring!”

  Dora shouted into the wind, “Boy or girl?”

  “Oh, boy! And after three girl. Now mother no need bear any more baby!” She flicked the pony with the whip again. He freshened his trot. Soon they were out of town and in the countryside. A buggy ride was a rare treat. The rain on the bellows top was just a freshness, fragrant now with the scent of the spring grasses and the earth. In front of them, the hills (rough and ridged, not smooth like hills in Missouri) rose up east of the city. Even at this distance, Margaret could see a few human figures in the orchards that spread in a ragged, flowering cloud across their lower contours. She sensed her breathing evening out; she was not gasping any longer.

  At the next turn back toward town, the pony went left. Soon he was walking along, calm, but with his ears pricked. When they arrived at the stable, a boy of about twelve greeted Mrs. Kimura and took the pony and the buggy. She patted the boy on the head and bowed to him, and he bowed to her, exactly imitating her. Then she put something in his hand. Dora said, “May we go to the shop, Mrs. Kimura? I’m sure my friend and cousin Mrs. Andrew Early would be honored to make the acquaintance of your husband.”

  “Please come,” said Mrs. Kimura. Dora and Mrs. Kimura were the same height and looked, Margaret thought, like intimate friends, leaning toward each other and chatting with perfect familiarity about Naoko—was she accompanying Mrs. Kimura to births now? And Joe and Lester (who, Margaret thought, must be the two sons)—how were they doing in school? The midwife was of course polite to Margaret, asking her about fog on the island. She gave no indication that she remembered that visit to Alexander. By the time she opened the door of the shop and invited them in, the upright laughing driver of the pony cart had vanished, replaced by someone softer and more self-effacing. She was, Margaret thought, Japanese again.

  It was late morning, and the room was light. Mr. Kimura was seated behind the counter with paper and brushes, and he and Mrs. Kimura greeted each other, then he greeted Margaret and Dora. He did not get up. On the counter were some stalks of bamboo growing in a tall green pot. He resumed stroking with the brush while Mrs. Kimura went through to the back, and Dora nudged Margaret over to a spot where they could see his paper.

  The clump of bamboo on the page was thicker than the clump in the pot. He rendered each stalk with one stroke of the brush, tilting or pressing it here and there. After adding each stalk to the thicket on the page, he stippled in the leaves, youthful and transparent, seeming to glow in the sunlight that filtered through the stalks. As they continued to stand there, he finished with the bamboo, paused, laid down his brush and picked up another one. This he dipped into a different pot, and then he applied a nibbling rabbit to the lower third of the page. Without seeming to lift his brush, he shaded in what looked like fur. Only now did he glance at them.

  When he stood up to assist them, his movement made Margaret feel a bit tall for the shop, so she backed awkwardly toward the door, but Dora happily pointed at some cups and a teapot in white porcelain. They were not in the Japanese style—they looked more as if a potter had used Japanese techniques to make an English tea set. Dora nodded, and he took the set off the shelf. He wrapped it and offered it to Dora, who counted out the money and laid it on the counter. They bowed. They shook hands. This exchange was accompanied by a lot of smiling. Dora began to put the teacups in her bag. Margaret divined that Mr. Kimura did not speak English, and covertly looked around the shop. F
or a moment, Mr. Kimura paused in front of her, and seemed to be waiting to serve her. She shook her head just the barest bit, and then he did a surprising thing—he went to the paper he had been working on, took it off his table, rolled it up, and offered it to her, Margaret, where she was standing beside the door. She must have looked startled, because he nodded. Dora muttered, “Darling, you must accept,” and so Margaret smiled and held out her hands. He put the roll into them.

  Just then, Mrs. Kimura emerged from the back, this time dressed in a gray kimono and looking entirely Japanese. Mr. Kimura resumed his seat, and Mrs. Kimura seemed to herd them toward the door, where she shook Dora’s hand, then Margaret’s, and bowed to them, saying, “Please, Miss Dora and Mrs. Margaret, you must come again.” She held Margaret’s gaze only a moment longer than she held Dora’s, but that was enough.

  “Oh, darling, of course we shall,” said Dora, comfortable as always.

  When Margaret got home and unrolled the picture, she saw how charming it was, as soft as the mist of the day, and as sweet, in its way, as the view she’d had of frothy, blossoming trees against the green hillsides. A dragonfly, which she hadn’t noticed, drifted above the nibbling rabbit. Somehow this detail gave her special pleasure.

  • • •

  ANDREW and Dora had differing views of the war in Europe. Andrew was grateful for the pall that the war could, should, cast over silly European ideas about the universe. If cosmology was a race, then his rivals were suffering an inevitable and well-deserved setback, while American astronomers, equipped with the best telescopes in the world, were marshaling their observations and organizing them into worthwhile theories. “I have been in Berlin,” he informed Dora. “I saw how they think. They are not pragmatists like we are, or, indeed, like the English and the Scots. The theoretical cart always before the empirical horse, always! It’s an easy way of doing things. Well, now, just because they and their countrymen are so belligerent, they are discovering that the easy way is the hard way. I can’t say that I feel sorry for them, really.”

  Few on the island did. The island had always been a place where ships were not only built, but repaired or refurbished and refitted, and if Margaret had thought that things were busy and noisy and crowded before, she soon learned what those terms actually meant. Dora was in favor of the war, too, because Dora considered any war a font of interesting stories.

  As for Margaret, she was not at all sure how to pronounce “Ypres” when she saw it in the Call. When she read about the Christmas Truce, she fully believed that the truce could and would stretch into something more permanent. From California, the war seemed pointless except as a spur to economic activity. No one in California thought the U.S. would enter the war. If the Germans said that the English were shipping armaments on European passenger ships, the wisdom among the navy men was that they would be fools not to; that was why the Lusitania went down so quickly.

  Stimulated by the war, Andrew’s book was practically writing itself. Dr. Einstein’s pre-war fame was a perfect example, Andrew claimed, of cronyism in science. Someone, a very young man, in fact, came up with some crazy ideas (“the younger the better, the crazier the better”), ideas that sounded plausible to those who didn’t actually know anything. These ideas were picked up by a few dupes outside of the scientific world—industrious amateurs, society matrons, university students—and publicized around the world (an unfortunate effect of wireless and radio, though in principle, of course, Andrew was in favor of every invention), and then real scientists had to answer questions about these theories (a waste of time, really). Real scientists must talk in equivocal terms about everything, so the newspaper people didn’t see the underlying disagreement in the remarks those scientists made. The ideas in his own book, he told Margaret, were much more systematic, better worked out, and they would be rapidly demonstrated soon after they were laid before the astronomical community, even if he had to bypass The Astronomical Journal to make his case. The crazy theory got a headline, and then the truth got nothing. Andrew wrote the New York Times a letter—not for the letters column, but privately, pointing out that their coverage of astronomy and physics was at best patchy and at worst “a scandal.” He offered to serve as an independent expert for them, entirely free of charge. The New York Times did not respond. Even so, he maintained hope. “Soon,” he said once, triumphantly, “they will agree with me.”

  Dora teased Andrew with some new theory of Einstein’s that she had heard about, but he was so close to finishing his book that he didn’t even get irritable, just waved his hand mildly. “Einstein is wrong, my dear. Obvious to anyone with the least astronomical training.”

  “Why is he wrong?” asked Dora.

  Andrew leaned forward. Margaret could see that he was speaking to the San Francisco Examiner, not to their friend and relation Dora Bell. “The simplest thing to tell you is that what he says is the way the universe is can’t be the way it is. Or, rather, it can’t be shown to be that way. If it can’t be shown to be that way, then it isn’t that way—it is not the universe, but just a thought. Einstein’s so-called theory takes something that we have measured, a force, and interprets it as something that is geographical—a slope, let’s say. In his view, a ball runs down a slope because it is sloped, not because there is a force pulling it down. He ignores completely that the force has been measured and that the measurements show the force to be a powerful one. This thing is no different from any other story about the beginning of the universe. You know that myth, the myth of Ptah? It’s the Egyptian myth. Ptah spoke, and as he spoke, everything he said was created. Who’s to say that story isn’t true? Except for the fact that it can’t happen. Observations at Mount Wilson and the Lick will soon show that it can’t happen.”

  “Einstein is a flash in the pan, then?” said Dora.

  “A comet across the cosmological heavens, my dear.” Margaret saw that Andrew had made a joke. And a few days after this conversation, he took time away from his book to write a letter to a journal in England, out of Oxford, in which he said more or less what he had said to Dora, though without the illustrative references to Egyptian myth, and they published it in the winter.

  It was Leonora Eliot who told Margaret that Dora was lobbying her editor to be sent back to Europe—didn’t she know? Everyone at the paper knew. It was almost a joke, the idea of little Dora wandering about the war zone with her pistol and her hat and her stylish shoes, scribbling about how to grow potatoes in the trenches.

  Margaret said, “Dora’s never written about potatoes.”

  “Survival is her subject,” said Leonora.

  Pete Krizenko was Margaret’s only recourse. In the months since their supper, Margaret had seen Pete once, when he came upon Dora and her having tea in the Garden Court, and Dora, in spite of always pooh-poohing her affection for him, had outdone herself in smiles just to see him. At the time, Margaret had been both skeptical and disapproving. But as she lay awake in her bed the night after Leonora’s remarks and imagined her life without Dora’s vivaciousness (and money and shoals of friends), she decided that Pete was preferable, if the war in Europe was the alternative. The next day, she walked to Mrs. Wareham’s, but when she turned into that block she hesitated—were she to ask Mrs. Wareham about Pete, Mrs. Wareham would certainly tell Dora, and Dora would laugh and tease, deftly turn her aside, and end up in Europe just out of pure contrariness—and so she directed her steps to the Kimuras’ shop. She had no idea of the nature of the Kimuras’ friendship with Dora, but she felt she could rely on their secretiveness, or perhaps upon what was merely an appropriate sense of discretion.

  A customer came out as Margaret went in. She found Mrs. Kimura behind the counter, putting some things away, and although Mrs. Kimura gave her a friendly smile and a small bow, Margaret suddenly quailed at her errand and, instead of asking after Pete Krizenko, picked up first a packet of noodles, and then a pair of chopsticks, and then a newspaper with Japanese writing on it. While she was holding these things, he
r eye was caught by a picture—a heron, it was, standing beside a stone near some sort of overhanging tree, one leg bent—and she gazed at the picture without taking it in, but pretended to take it in. Another customer came through the door, bought something, went out again. Margaret continued to stare at the picture. Mrs. Kimura walked around the counter and stood beside her. The top of her head came to Margaret’s chin. Mrs. Kimura said, “This painting from Japan. Mr. Pete gave to Mr. Kimura.” She pointed to the red seal on the upper left corner. “Famous painter.”

  Margaret said, “I haven’t seen Pete in a while.”

  “He come. He go.”

  “How do you contact him?”

  “Mrs. Margaret send note?”

  Margaret saw that she was being understood perhaps better than she wished to be. She said, “Yes.” She turned away from the picture. Mrs. Kimura was looking up at her. She seemed amused, and so Margaret nodded. Mrs. Kimura handed her a pen and a small square of paper. She wrote her note. Mrs. Kimura held out her hand, and Margaret folded the note twice and gave it to her. Then there was the smiling and bowing, and Margaret set down the chopsticks and the noodles and the paper. Later, she thought she might have liked to buy the noodles. After that, she realized that in the shop she hadn’t thought of Alexander. Pete did not answer her note.

  In fact, Margaret was thankful for his silence, because it was impossible—you could not broach such a subject as marriage, and then, if you did, you were bound to say something rude or inappropriate, since you knew nothing other than what Dora had revealed, and all those revelations were jokes or half-truths. Pete himself was such a suspicious character that if you did promote something, and then that something came to pass, it would be on your conscience, whatever the outcome, and the outcome was so much more likely to be unfortunate than it was to be happy. Certainly he was married already—hadn’t Dora hinted as much? There could be more wives than one, couldn’t there? And children, too. What had been easy in Missouri—introducing a name into the conversation, walking past the family home, running into this friend or that friend, wondering aloud about an incident from years gone by, even looking in the newspaper, or watching a person from afar—was impossible here. But then she thought of what was now in the papers about Ypres again, about the unspeakable horrors that would draw Dora and her little pistol and her lovely shoes. Ypres was not far from Paris—Margaret didn’t know the exact distance, but it was easy to imagine the rumbling boom of distant cannon. And no one guaranteed that Dora would stay in Paris once she was on her own.