Private Life

by Jane Smiley

  It took her a while to find that letter in the New York Times. He had not saved it, either in his study or at the observatory, and that edition of the Times turned out to be missing from the library in Vallejo.

  It was not easy to get to San Francisco—even in his unhappiness, they maintained his schedule of book composition and journalism, along with a talk in Santa Rosa (a long trip) and another in Sacramento.

  But at last she told him she had been invited to a luncheon in San Francisco by the wife of the Base Commandant, and, flattered, he let her go—Margaret had heard about this luncheon by eavesdropping. Now she was in a library in San Francisco. Outside, it was raining. Her umbrella shed water next to the leg of the table. The room was quiet. The librarian left the room, and she couldn’t help looking around once and over her shoulder for a large presence, but he truly was not there. It was one o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon. She laid the paper on the table.

  The letter wasn’t terribly long. Mr. “W. M. Malisoff” was no one she had heard of—not one of Andrew’s old familiar enemies, or one of the obstreperous youths who occasionally cropped up in his conversation. Malisoff was no one, but he refuted Andrew’s article point by point. Centrifugal force, he said, was merely a concept like any other; it was not five million million steel cables a foot thick pulling something toward it, it was a couple of words. Of the Aether, he said it doesn’t exist. No purpose in contorting one’s understanding of the universe to say that it does when it doesn’t. She thought of Andrew’s careful, starlike drawings of the Aether. She read the letter twice. It was not, properly, an attack but, rather, a dismissal. And although she would not have said that the principles in the letter were clear enough in her mind that she could have repeated them or defended them, they nevertheless seemed true to her, instinctively, exactly true. As she read Mr. Malisoff’s words, she knew what had motivated him to write—Andrew’s blustering, grandiose claims, his circular reasoning. She knew that as well as if God himself had whispered it in her ear. Just then, she saw Andrew as the world saw him, and she did it all at once, as if he had turned into a brick and fallen into her lap—who he was was that solid and permanent for her—he was a fool.

  As she returned from San Francisco to Vallejo on the ferry, Margaret thought that if someone had asked her five days ago, or ten years ago, whether she “believed in” Andrew’s work, she would have said, “Of course,” without even thinking about it, but now she saw that “belief” was a kind of parasite that she had taken on by typing, by listening, by worrying about his reactions to the name “Einstein.” She was infected with the “Aether” and with a vision of the universe that not only was alien to her, but was suddenly (in the middle of San Pablo Bay) terrifying in its vastness. Nothing worked as a charm against it, or a corrective, or a remedy. The book she had brought along to read dropped from her hands, ineffective against the images.

  A few days later, she went to her knitting group. As she was taking off her overshoes and shaking out her umbrella in the front hall at Mrs. Tillotson’s (Mrs. Tillotson, who still bore her married name, had returned to the knitting group bolder and more self-confident than ever), she heard the words “She is a saint!” When they stopped talking as soon as she entered the parlor (living room, Mrs. Tillotson called it), and everyone smiled at her, she knew that the saint was herself, and that they had been talking about her with some animation—their eyes were bright when they looked up to greet her. Lucy May had said the same thing. It was peculiarly painful all of a sudden to know that her friends and relatives valued her life not for anything she had done, but for what she had put up with. It was like being told she was a dolt, only in nicer language. The next week, she didn’t go back, and when she saw Mrs. Tillotson on Marin Street one day a while later, she turned away from her, even though she knew Mrs. Tillotson had seen her.

  But there was no defense against the typing. He was into volume two now. He projected another four years of hard work before he could even think about publication. He would not make the same mistake twice.

  Except that, Margaret knew, he would.

  1923

  PART FOUR

  1928

  THE ISLAND GOT QUIET, since everyone in the world agreed that there would be no more wars—civilization had learned its lesson. The navy made up its mind not to build many ships, and especially not large, expensive ones. The mishap with the California, a huge cruiser that upon launching had broken away from its restraints and skidded all the way across the strait, only to get stuck in the mud off Vallejo, was perhaps the reason that the island had begun to look awfully small and old-fashioned to a lot of people. Would it become an airfield? Would they build submarines? Was the future in airplanes landing on the decks of ships? Was Oakland more convenient for all of these operations? Why was the shipyard on the island, anyway? Why had anything happened the way it had? No one could remember, and starting anew seemed altogether more possible than sorting it all out. Andrew’s job changed, too. Whereas he had once overseen the dropping of the time ball, now he sent out a set of time clicks by radio transmission. And time itself was different now, more a matter of counting something than observing the heavens. The navy kept asking Andrew when he thought he might retire. He kept not saying. He knew that when he was gone they would tear down the observatory, his nest and mole hole.

  One day, Andrew brought Pete home for supper. Was it really ten years and more since they’d heard from him? But there he was, walking down Marin Street, in Vallejo, not dead after all. He looked down-and-out, but in his characteristic way—his clothes were classic and a little well taken care of, rather than flashy and new. Margaret put the short ribs on the table. Andrew said, “When you say that you lost all your money, do you really mean all?”

  “My pockets were empty. But they aren’t quite empty now. I have a job training horses.” His travels had smoothed his accent still further—or else he wasn’t bothering to maintain it. It was now unidentifiable.

  She said, “What kind of horses?”

  “Racehorses. At Tanforan.” Tanforan was a racetrack somewhere south of San Francisco. Margaret had heard of it, but never been there. She said, “Racing is illegal in California, I thought.”

  “Betting is illegal, but not for long. Training isn’t illegal. We just send them down to Caliente on the train when they’re ready.”

  Andrew pressed him. “On your way to another fortune?”

  He shrugged. But he grinned, too. “I’m living in a stall at the racetrack for the moment.”

  Andrew said, “How is that?”

  “Fragrant.”

  They laughed. Andrew really laughed. Perhaps, Margaret thought, Andrew considered Pete his best friend.

  “No, truly. It’s a fragrance I’m quite familiar with, and one that is very consoling to me. But I had to change my name to get a job as an assistant trainer.”

  “What’s your name now?” said Andrew.

  “Pete Moran. Irish is good at the racetrack—not so traceable as English, though I considered Peter Charles Cecil. I put on a bit of the Irish when I talk, and wrap those horses as if I larned the trick as a lad in Tipperary, and it works well enough. My chief is a fellow from Australia. Whatever I do is fine with him, as he’s crooked as an elbow.” Pete laughed this time.

  Margaret said, “I think you’ve been Irish all along. Tipperary by way of Chicago.”

  Pete grinned.

  Margaret said, “What have you seen of Dora? We’ve lost track since she quit the paper. Andrew’s editor says she’s writing a book.”

  “I did see her, twice. Just after the war, I saw her in Paris. I was walking down the Boulevard des Capucines, and there she was, dressed to go to the Opéra. She had on a nice hat with a peacock feather, and she was with a very famous man named Henri Bergson, who has made a whole career of books about laughing. They were laughing.” Now Pete laughed. “It was contagious just to see them, even though I had been mooning about the city, wondering what was to become of me.”

/>   She waited for him to go on, and made herself not prompt him.

  “The next day, I took her to lunch. She had spent all night interviewing prostitutes and hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours.”

  “Interviewing prostitutes!”

  “Yes, indeed. She interviewed them concerning their political opinions. She told me that no one ever asked them about those sorts of things, but they were happy to talk, because they had decided views and good ideas.”

  “For her book?”

  Pete nodded.

  “Then I saw her three or four years ago in Menton, each day for six days or a week. I’m telling you, she is the toast of the Riviera. She knows everyone, and wealthy American visitors go first to Dora to be spruced up. To have a few ruffles removed and a few pleats added, you might say.”

  “She was always very well dressed, even when she was sixteen and she looked a fright,” Margaret said.

  “Practicing,” said Pete.

  There was a pause, and then she said, “Were you ever going to marry her, Pete?”

  “Dear Margaret,” he said, “you were the only person in the world who considered it at all desirable.”

  The look he gave when he said this, though, told Margaret that there was one other person.

  “How did you lose the last fortune, then?” Andrew insisted.

  “I can barely remember, it was so long ago. Let me see. Of course, when I left here, I had a satchel full of dollars with me, which I should have left behind in a bank. My fatal mistake was that I thought I could do some good with it. I must have been thinking like an American! I thought I would help this friend in Petrograd and that relative in Moscow or Kiev. I should have remembered that what seems like a fortune when you embark here turns to nothing in Russia. My friends who were still in Petrograd were very deluded. They didn’t want to flee in a third-class coach from St. Petersburg as they still called it, and find themselves a room in an outer arrondissement in Paris. The fellows who were prepared for that had already done so. These friends who had shilly-shallied, some of them very dear, I must say, could only abide first-class carriages, and porters to carry their bags, large apartments, and much idle time for grieving, helped by enormous portions of champagne.” He smiled. “How could I deny them? And so I did not.”

  “But what about those Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and the Tsarists and all?” said Andrew.

  “They stole my money, too, but I expected them to. My old pal Joffe went so far as to have me beaten, so I gave him a thousand. ‘My last thousand!’ I kept saying, and perhaps he believed me, or perhaps he only told Lenin he did. Then there was my cousin, who when I last was in Russia was only a boy, and had since served in a Cossack regiment in the Tsar’s army, and when I saw him in 1918 was back in their town. He swore up and down to me that he only wanted an up-to-date rifle, and he would then set about making his living off the land. He would kill birds for food, and he knew where all the best furs for trapping could be found. He showed me a list of his contacts—he was going to smuggle sables and ermines to the West. I procured the rifle for him, and the stock of ammunition, but the first thing he did was shoot his wife and her lover, and then himself. That had been his plan all along. And then the rifle was stolen by the police and disappeared, though I would not have wanted it back.”

  Andrew looked a bit shocked. Pete smiled and went on: “Who’s to say that the three of them didn’t get the best of it? They would have impressed him into the Red Army. Personal troubles, no matter how deadly they are, were small beer in Russia those days.”

  “You gave your fortune away,” declared Andrew.

  “Did I? When I left, I was thinking of something else entirely. Buying wheat or lamp oil. Wartime speculation can be very lucrative. Oats? I can barely remember. Something scruffy and venal. I recognized my mistake at once—contacting old friends! But it’s hard on your pride to return from America with nothing to show for it, and so I did not. I returned from Russia with nothing to show for it!”

  Margaret asked, “Did you starve?” She was conscious of the dishes of food on the table.

  “Everyone starved. Starvation is a potent weapon, and the Bolsheviks are happy to wield it. The cheapest way to get rid of the opposition is to starve them. Lenin did it the expensive way, shooting them, but the Soviets can no longer afford that.”

  “Starving them on purpose?”

  “Why not? Why not?” He shook his head, then said, “Americans will never understand Russians. Perhaps I don’t understand them myself anymore.”

  There was a long silence while Margaret cleared the table. Really, she still didn’t know what to make of Pete. Andrew said, “We looked at those things of yours while you were away. Didn’t know what we would do with them.”

  They all understood that the end of this sentence was “if you died.”

  Margaret said, “We had one fright, when the powder magazine exploded at the beginning of our war. But I have to admit, I only thought of the screens after I’d already wondered if we were all going to be blown to bits.”

  “May I look at them?” said Pete.

  He and Andrew carried them in, then unwrapped them.

  Andrew said, “Mightn’t you sell these, then? I mean, for funds.”

  Pete didn’t answer.

  First the gold one, then the man in the boat. She glanced at Pete. His face had a look she had never seen on it before—no skepticism, no bemusement, simply a smile of unconscious delight. He looked handsome for once. Margaret carried the platter into the kitchen.

  When she came back, Andrew had started hmphing and knocking about. But Pete was still silent, entranced. “Well, you know, you did inspire someone,” said Andrew. “My dear, you must show Pete what you’ve acquired.”

  She was instantly embarrassed, but said, “I’ve bought a few of my own now. Mrs. Kimura sometimes goes with me to Japantown. We got to be friends when she taught me to drive an automobile.”

  She brought them out and set them on the dining-room table. There were three of them. Pete looked at them for a long time without saying anything. Andrew had barely glanced at the prints, and was now marching about the room. Margaret knew he was tempted to go into his study and get to work, and she wished he would—his steps seemed to shake the house.

  Pete pointed to a nighttime scene framed by a window. “See the lights of the boats on the river? The artist drew these boats one by one, just as they would look in daylight, then he printed on the pale yellow for the lights, and after that the black, for night. My guess is that this went through eighteen printings or more, and that was after the artist carved the block. They print books in the same way, carving each page by hand.”

  He went back to the snake. “This is very good. Though the horse, in this other one, is a very exuberant horse, and the fetlocks and hooves are correct. Very difficult to do. But the snake, the snake is a most discomforting one. The snake is almost lost in the wealth of detail, but then it asserts itself and cannot be wished away.”

  Andrew stopped stamping about, harrumphed, and said, “Are they valuable?”

  Pete glanced at Margaret, caught her eye, and then said, “They are well chosen.”

  He left that night for the San Francisco ferry, and disappeared again. It was Margaret who wrapped the screens and the scroll and put them away. Of course he could not have them in a horse stall, but surely, she thought, he had other, closer friends who might take care of them.

  ONE DAY, a young man showed up at the door. It was foggy, which made the man seem rather mysterious. The house was quiet—Andrew was at the observatory, and she had been putting off her typing. The fellow was almost inside the house as soon as she opened the door. Bespectacled. A black-and-white tweed suit, a vest, a pince-nez, and a nervous manner. He asked for “the captain.”

  “Captain Early is out. He should be back in half an hour.”

  “I’m Scanlan.”

  “Scanlan?”

  “Len Scanlan? You were expecting me? Dr. Len Scanla
n?” His valise was on the porch.

  She shook her head. She had never heard of Dr. Scanlan, but when Andrew walked in, he was perfectly acquainted with him. Dr. Scanlan—or Len, as they called him thereafter—was writing a book entitled The Amazing Discoveries of Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. Dr. Scanlan was a graduate of the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (though in veterinary medicine, not physics or astronomy).

  Len stayed with them, sleeping on the sofa, for two days, and he had a disturbing way about him—he was the sort of young man who always stood too close, always peered over her shoulder to see what she was doing, always seemed to have closed one of her drawers just before she entered the room. His fawning manner was meant to be reassuring and achieved the opposite. On the first morning, Len declared that he would do his own typing, which should have relieved her, but offended her instead. When he said, “I know shorthand. The Gregg system. Do you know it? I expect to get down everything Captain Early says, word for word,” she felt an unreasoning dislike of the Gregg system and vowed never to learn it. He told her about himself. He was from Mankato, Minnesota. He had two sisters. His mother and father had passed. His father had been a pastor at the First Congregational Church of Mankato. His older brother had died in the influenza, over in Germany, after the war. His mother had never gotten over that, because his brother was the favorite, “tall, like my father, and very prepossessing.” One of his sisters was married to a man who owned a dry-goods store, and one of his sisters taught in a girls’ school. He was a great admirer of Captain Early, and read everything he wrote. He had a special subscription to the Examiner, which was delivered all the way to Minnesota, and plenty late, but always “fascinating.” He had copies of both Captain Early’s books, and strongly disagreed with what Andrew now said about any failures of style and effectiveness; Len had been struck by both of them on the very first readings—“so lucid and self-evident; classics.” He had then investigated Andrew’s other writings, and had decided, as a hobby, to organize them chonologically, which, of course, had opened his eyes to the truth as well as the beauty of Andrew’s system. He had humbly written to Andrew, to broach the topic of a few interviews by mail, and here he was. The project had mushroomed, and taken over his life. But he hated veterinary medicine, anyway. “A farmer might pay a man to save a cow, he might, but a pig, he’ll give you a buck or two to slaughter the beast and haul it away—if you can persuade him not to throw it in the farm dump, which is always, believe me, right above the crick.” He shook his head.