The Vanished Child
Page 36
The late Carroll Williams, whose lectures long ago started me wondering “Why does it move?”, pointed me toward the best people to look at in early twentieth-century biochemistry. James Novick and Steve Popkes also gave extremely valuable suggestions.
Dr. Kenneth P. Stuckey, director of the S. P. Hayes Reference Library at the Perkins School for the Blind, and Diane Morreo, volunteer at the Hayes Library, introduced me to “doing things blindly,” from the social history of blindness to how to organize a plate and a closet.
Christopher Schwabacher, Marion Fremont-Smith, and David Alexander Smith (thank you again, David!) consulted on the legal aspects of Bucky’s dilemma. The way Bucky solved them is all his.
Peter G. Dowd explained the workings of Colt percussion revolvers and shared with me some lovely anecdotes about black powder.
Harley Holden, Director of the Harvard University Archives, and the Archives staff gave help on the calendar of 1906 Harvard. For the sake of the story I bent the chronology, for which they are not to blame.
William Alfred, whose own writing and wise humanity are a continuing inspiration, helped me fill in the background of nineteenth-century Catholicism. Thanks also to F.P. for priestly advice on how a confessor might approach murder.
Mary Jackson and the late Robert Lee Wolff helped point me toward the right Victorian children’s reading—I wish Robert Wolff had been here to take pleasure in this work, as I did in his. Thanks as well to Mary Wolff and Raymond and Mary Harriet Jackson, for civilized tea times in Cambridge and New York.
The scholarly work of James Reed, Dorothy Needham, Norah Waugh, John Rowe Townsend, Keith Lucas, and Bela Siki has been particularly useful to me; Siki’s Piano Repertoire is paraphrased in Perdita’s piano-playing scenes. To understand what the ATP reaction is really about, I used Isaac Asimov’s very clear introduction, Life and Energy.
Thanks also to the staff of Widener Library, Harvard University, the Boston Public Library, the New York Public Library, and the Brookline, Mass., Public Library, as well as to the staff of the Victorian Society.
Richard Knight’s story owes something to that of Charley Ross, with its extraordinary epilogue over fifty years later. Five other victims of Victorian tragedies contributed their deaths: W.E.B.; W.E.B., Jr., disappeared; C.E.B. and C.E.B., Jr.; and James Cutler Doane Lawrence. S.M.B., beloved storyteller, told their histories and let the Knights be murdered in her house.
F.S.P. lll, July 15-17, 1982, taught me all I need to know of grief and of a child’s death. Little boy, you are remembered.
Dear Fred, my beloved husband and partner, noodged me and got the kids to school for six months; Mariah was proud of me (as I am of her); and Justus kindly helped with occasional typing and sticky kisses.
THE KNOWLEDGE OF WATER
Paris 1910. Pleasure is all-consuming, art is an obsession, and the water is rising.
Three years ago, Alexander von Reisden proposed to young and beautiful Perdita Halley. Though she loves him, Perdita refused, fearing that marriage would end her dream of becoming a concert pianist. Now Perdita has come to study at the famous Conservatoire in Paris, the romantic city where Reisden heads an institute that specializes in diagnosis of the insane.
Little suspecting the depths of each other's desires, and defying social convention, Perdita and Alexander plunge into an erotic, all-consuming affair that seems destined for tragedy. For Perdita cannot marry and attend the Conservatoire; and Alexander remains haunted by guilt and a dark secret from the past.
As incessant rain pours down on the City of light, an intricate network of plots and counterplots swirl around the couple. The eccentric writer Milly Xico plots sweet revenge against her ex-husband. Poets and artists scheme to destroy the Mona Lisa. A devastating flood is heading toward Paris. And a deliciously elegant game of art and life turns deadly serious as a madman stalks Alexander and Perdita, threatening to destroy them both in retribution for a murder they know nothing about--or do they?
“Lushly erotic…The centerpiece of Sarah Smith’s elegant period novel is the torrential flood that nearly swept Paris away in 1910…. She observes her characters in the most intimate detail, defining them with witty precision and placing them in a rain-drenched portrait of Edwardian Paris that could hang in the Louvre.”
The New York Times (Notable Book of the Year)
“As satisfying a mystery as the Mona Lisa’s smile”—USA Today
“[The book’s] themes come together during the magnificent flood that Smith evokes in thrilling detail and sweep….This splendid book centers on earning the right to see—and to express what one sees, feels, knows.” – The San Francisco Chronicle
Table of Contents
A madman in Switzerland
The story of Richard Knight
Harry Boulding’s birthday; an engagement
A madman in Boston
Only if Richard’s dead
“Intellectual, immoral, and unstable”
Reisden and Harry meet
Gilbert meets Richard
Perdita decides what to do
Reisden and Perdita meet
“If we never talked about the past?”
“Someone killed Richard….”
Reisden and Charlie Adair meet
Gilbert’s fears; Harry and Perdita
Restaurant lessons
Louis Dalloz
The car
To Lake Matatonic
Anna Fen; the murder house
Lodgings; more of Anna Fen
Looking for Richard
Perdita gains a teacher
The fourth of July; Votes for Women
The fire
Noticing Perdita; talking with Mrs. Fen
What do men and women do?
Perdita asks questions
Music or marriage?
Last words from Victor; a picture
Richard’s books; a dance lesson and a discovery
Is it Richard?
Gilbert and Reisden smash glasses
Charlie Adair; Jay French; Washington, a dog
Sanity
Perdita tries on a dress
A dance
Anna Fen; Perdita breaks a promise
Charlie goes to church
Among the loosestrife; Gilbert’s dream
How Richard disappeared; Reisden and Charlie
“All for my own, forever”
A fight
A revolver
Perdita’s birthday
Where’s Richard?
Anna Fen’s evidence
Perdita won’t tell
The play’s the thing
“Let her have her goodness still”
“Get him away from her”
Gilbert reads Dante; Reisden makes a discovery
Beginning of the play
Acting murder
Richard, Charlie, Perdita
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
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