A World Elsewhere

by Wayne Johnston

  “If you are going to Vanderland, Vanderluyden must be starting up a circus,” said the man beneath the clock.

  “May I have your name,” said Landish, “so that I may tell Van that you said so?”

  Deacon felt again what he had felt on board the ship when the roar that Landish let out shook the chandeliers until they made a sound like distant chimes. There was the same silence.

  He drained the glass until the ice cubes rattled on the bottom and the straw made a shrieking sound. There was nothing coming up the straw but water now, the frost was gone, the straw was soggy and the outside of the glass was almost dry. Landish gave him the sugar-dusted cherries. He ate them straight from his palm, pushing them into his mouth. The man beneath the clock drew on his just-lit cigar, blew smoke in their direction, then looked away.

  Deacon dozed off and dreamt that he was riding in a subsea train among whose passengers was Landish, who was sitting rows ahead of him, an unapproachable stranger.

  That night, on the train, the lights of houses that Landish and the boy would never see again went flashing past. He read in the paper of an all-purpose elixir called “remedaid,” and of one that would help you tell the future, called “premonaid.” Obliterature. Americal. Chimerica. He knew the boy had never imagined there could be this much of anything, that anywhere could take up so much space that it could not be crossed by a man with a boy astride his shoulders, not by anything except a train whose rampage must continue unresisted to the end.

  On and on they went when the sun came up, past things for which he didn’t know the words or was too slow to think of. He saw it all come rushing at him, as if the earth were moving and the train were standing still, saw it sometimes from miles away, seeming to grow larger and move faster as the train approached, all things stretching out from him in descending size but at the same time drawing closer, getting larger, until they reared up at his window and were gone.

  He thought of the steaming mass of the locomotive that had pulled them such a distance without breaking down or getting stuck and went even faster when it was dark and late. It sounded as if the engineer was barely in control, putting through its nightly paces the one such vehicle in all the world.

  They climbed a ridge flanked by valleys that looked like once-great harbours that had shrivelled up to river-parted plains. They saw a succession of such valleys on the far sides of which were other mountains whose ridges were like wrinkled blankets overhung by haze into which the most distant of them blended with the sky.

  For most of those who lived in cities, America did not exist except as they imagined it from how it was described in books or looked in photographs, as wondrous to them as to their ancestors who had never crossed the sea or even left the towns where they were born.

  But then, he had never seen his country, and it seemed likely that he never would.

  It was Deacon’s first time on a train, his second boarding of a manner of conveyance that wasn’t Landish.

  The train went through a narrow cut and it looked on either side as if they were bearing head-on through an avalanche of rock.

  Landish had marked out on the map for Deacon the route the train would take, one the boy fancied would be downslope all the way. A southward plunge on which the locomotive would slide like a wheel-borne anvil, plowing through the air, a hull on wheels, hauling a hundred cars through the vacuum that it made, funnelling in front of it a wall of wind that would be felt trackside long before those who were keeping watch could even hear the train.

  Landish talked about the Mason-Dixon Line and Deacon pictured a line of Mason jars. He talked a bit about the Civil War, a state named after a pencil and one named Maryland but not after Holy Mary Mother of God but after a queen, which made Deacon think of the golden one in New York. There was Virginia and West Virginia, and Virginia came from “virgin,” but again, not Holy Mary but yet another queen.

  “Van’s family owns this train,” Landish said. “They own the waiting room and all but own the men who waited there. They own the ship, and other ships and other trains, and the tracks and all the land that you can see on either side.”

  Vanderland

  LANDISH HAD HEARD on the train that the approach road to Vanderland was designed so that the house came into view all at once, winding through a dense but landscaped forest in which grew trees and plants not native to the continent, let alone the South.

  In the back seat of a horseless carriage that met them at the Vanderluyden private railway station, Landish waited for it to loom up in front of him, the Carolina mirage that his one-time friend had said he first conceived of in a dream. Late afternoon sun slanted through the trees beside the road that alternated between light and shade in what he had no doubt were precisely calculated intervals. There was no telling what the original terrain had been. Now the road wound up and down an obviously man-made hill, then turned almost directly around as if to circle an obstacle though there was only a gully of many-coloured shrubs that could easily have been removed. The hill became so steep that Landish, who held the sleeping boy in his arms, was flattened back against the seat and saw nothing through the windshield but the sky. The car turned sharply right as the grade of the road decreased, and as it tipped forward his angle of vision increased until he saw, obscured by blue haze, what he guessed was the westernmost ridge of the Appalachians.

  About three miles after it passed beneath the arch of the main gate lodge, the car turned sharply again on to a cinder driveway. The great house appeared as suddenly as if it had erupted from the earth.

  Landish shook his head and tried to focus on the wrought iron–tipped spire of Vanderland’s principal tower. But he could make out no single detail in the full facade of Vanderland, which, though still a mile away, towered so high it blocked the sun, casting the entire forecourt into shadow. As more of the house came into view, he saw it had the look of a French château, such as he’d seen depicted in paintings—a frieze-like jumble of triangle-topped towers, chimneys, parapets, arched doorways and dormer windows.

  The car pulled up at the entrance, whose drawbridge-sized doors opened inward. Deacon in his arms, Landish stepped down from the car towards an elderly man who introduced himself as Mr. Henley. He followed the elderly butler across the marble floor of a giant vestibule in which their footsteps echoed as they had in the concourse of the station in New York.

  “We can take the lift, sir,” the butler said.

  “He’s never been in a lift,” Landish said. “Nor have I. It might scare him to wake up in one.”

  On a wide and winding set of stone stairs, they climbed three flights. In the well of each flight hung one of the many wheels of an iron chandelier that hung from a single column fastened to the central concave of the tower, each wheel seeming to be all that held up the ones beneath it, each decorated with dozens of electric candles whose unlit “flames” were made of crystal, their “wicks” of wire filament.

  Even in the as-yet-unlit tower, everything shone and gleamed, as if the great house had just that day been deemed ready to be occupied. On the third landing, the butler went right and opened for Landish the interlocking doors. He looked into what might have been a tapestry museum. Banks of wide fireplaces blazed along the walls to his right and left, all of them piled high with cedar logs, and on the walls between the fireplaces hung floor-to-ceiling tapestries that depicted scenes, some of which he recognized from Shakespeare, Goethe, Wagner and others. In front of the fireplaces were scattered large sofas and chairs upholstered in green velvet.

  “Mr. Druken, sir,” the butler said, pulling the doors shut as he backed out of the room.

  He was just able to see the familiar top of Van’s head above the back of the nearest sofa, the hair swept sleekly back towards the nape of his neck.

  “Welcome to Vanderland,” Van said. He didn’t stand or even turn around.

  Landish, the boy still in his arms, walked around the sofa. Van had a pencil-thin moustache. He was staring into the fire, his e
lbow on the arm of the sofa, face cupped in the palm of his hand, as if lacking all interest in their arrival, a pose deliberately chosen, Landish thought, as the best one to present on the occasion of their first meeting after many years.

  “I had no idea,” Landish said, standing in front of him and looking about.

  Van surveyed the room as well. “No one has ‘any idea’ until they come here. The house was designed by Richard Hunt, the grounds by Frederick Olmsted, whom we have to thank for Central Park, the only part of Manhattan that I can bear to visit.”

  At last he looked at Landish, looked him up and down, then turned his head and smiled as if at someone on the sofa beside him.

  Deacon stirred but did not wake up.

  “So this is the boy you rescued from the orphanage only to find that you were yourself in need of rescuing.”

  Landish put Deacon gently down on one of the chairs. “He’s not been well on the journey and the heat inside the car made him drowsy. Why are all these fireplaces blazing on such a warm evening?”

  “The spring air cools quickly at night. Anyway, the heat won’t be a problem for the boy indoors. By a process I can’t understand no matter how often Hunt’s son explains it to me, we keep the air in many parts of Vanderland at sixty-eight degrees all year long—even cooler in rooms like this one, where I like to keep the fireplaces lit. There are no windows in the gallery. Sunlight fades the tapestries. Sit down.”

  Landish sat in the upholstered chair nearest Van’s sofa.

  “You’re a sight, Landish. Good Lord. Those are the clothes you wore at Princeton. What’s left of them.”

  “I must be one of those rare people with whom penury does not agree.”

  “Landish, having some marred version of you at Vanderland seemed preferable to having none at all, but that could change if I grow tired of you. It won’t be like it was at Princeton. Or like I promised you it would be at Vanderland if you had come here with me years ago.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it. The latter part at least.”

  “You may not leave Vanderland for any reason without my permission, Landish. That rule applies to all the tutors, governesses, staff and servants. And to the boy. I don’t want you going into Ashton and then returning to Vanderland still reeking of the place. I devised the rule for my daughter’s sake. She has lived all her life at Vanderland and will not leave it, not even for a minute, until she is twenty-one, when she will go out into the world wearing Vanderland as a shield. That is my proposed arrangement. You may decline it and leave if you wish.”

  “I’m in no position to object to any terms.”

  There was no sign of the flinching, wincing expression that Van had often worn at Princeton. His hands did not shake as he lit a cigarette.

  “So what about the book? Do you still immolate every word you write?”

  “I have written and burned many unsatisfactory beginnings.”

  “So you were wrong. You didn’t need to live among the people that you write about. You could just as easily have burned your book here. Or maybe you’d have finished it by now.”

  Deacon opened his eyes. He saw a picture of a woman on the wall, but it wasn’t Gen of Eve. There were rugs on the floor. And bigger ones on the walls. Maybe they were wet and someone hung them up to dry. A lot of people could live in this place, but here you wouldn’t just hear your neighbours, like at home, you would see them all the time.

  “Where?” he said. “Are we in Second Class?”

  “Vanderland,” Landish said.

  A man he hadn’t noticed who was sitting on one of the green sofas laughed. He got up. He was tall and very thin. He stood with one hand in his pocket, his body bent out like a bow as, with his other hand, he held a cigarette. He tipped his head back and blew smoke towards the ceiling.

  “This is the tapestry gallery,” he said.

  Now it all makes sense to him, Landish thought better of saying out loud: we have many fond memories of hours spent admiring our tapestries at home.

  Landish sat beside Deacon on the edge of the sofa and brushed his hair back from his forehead with his hand. “This is Mr. Vanderluyden,” he said.

  “Hello, Deacon,” Van said.

  “Hello,” Deacon said.

  “Too tired to sit up?”

  Deacon nodded.

  Van smiled. “We’ll have a proper meeting later, then. It will be at least a few weeks, I’m afraid. I’m off to New York in the morning. Henley will show you to the Bachelors’ Wing. You are still a bachelor, aren’t you, Deacon?”

  Deacon looked at Landish, who nodded. Van smiled at him, his mouth closed in a tight line that curled up at the ends.

  “Good night, Van,” Landish said, lifting Deacon from the sofa.

  In the Bachelors’ Wing Landish joined “the Blokes,” as they called themselves, who tutored Van’s daughter, Godwin. They would, in the same room, at the same time, also tutor Deacon, who was Godwin’s age, but school was on Easter break so Landish told Deacon he would not meet Godwin for a month.

  And so Godwin, as Deacon called her at first, was to be Deacon’s one and only classmate.

  The Blokes. There was Gough, an Englishman who wore a paunch-disguising waistcoat and frequently consulted a watch that dangled like a golden apple from his pocket. Sedgewick, also an Englishman, who was in his mid-forties, with a red, almost scarlet complexion that reminded Deacon of Nun Too Soon, and whom Landish told Deacon that first night he deemed “abhorrent” though gave him no explanation for it. Stavely, the music tutor, a small-statured man with long white hair that Deacon thought made him look like a woman. And finally, there was Palmer—the “tutor emeritutus,” Landish called him—who was retired and quite deaf. He had been a tutor with the Vanderluydens for forty years, the last of his pupils having been Van. He was very pale and had liver spots on his face and throat and hands.

  “What are liver spots?” Deacon asked.

  “Everyone who lives is a liver,” Landish said. “If you live long enough, you get liver spots.”

  Gough and Palmer slept in the same room, in separate, narrow beds.

  “Palmer isn’t just deaf and old,” Landish told Deacon. “He needs help moving about and taking care of himself. His memory is very poor. He couldn’t get by if not for Gough.”

  The Bachelors’ Wing was also known as “The Blokes.” All the Blokes were single, either bachelors who never planned to marry, or widowers. Women and children could not even visit, with the exception of the Bruces, a widow and her daughter, a Mrs. and a Miss. They lived somewhere in another part of Vanderland, but they cooked and cleaned for the Blokes.

  They learned that the school for the children of the servants was about two hundred yards from the main house, obsured by a thick grove of poplar trees, and they were not taught by the Blokes but by governesses who also lived in the Bachelors’ Wing but in a tower that shared no doors or walls with The Blokes. The women had no nickname until Landish called them the Loverlesses.

  In the empty days that followed, Landish found he could at least entertain the Blokes, much as he had entertained Deacon on Dark Marsh Road. He told them of Plato’s younger brother, Ditto, who followed Plato around, repeating, word for word, everything that Plato said. Socrates was exasperated with him, denouncing as unteachable by the Socratic method a student who merely repeated the questions that were put to him, and saying he would rather drink hemlock than spend another day being parroted by Ditto. He told them of an English writer who decided to call himself Charles Dickens, having previously submitted his novels under his real name, Chuck Dick. And then, one night, having still toiled for years without success, he reflected on the titles he had chosen for his books: Great Expectorations, a picaresque tale that followed from cradle to grave the successive owners of a brass spittoon; a book that would become Bleak House he had submitted to publishers as Unbearable Abode; Pick Wick by Chuck Dick; The Chuck Dick Papers; The Twist Twins—Olive and Oliver. Chuck Dick laboured tirelessly over a book he calle
d A Tale of Two Municipalities; he considered calling his greatest novel David Copperfield, but changed his mind and called it That Pennymeadow Chap.

  Some of the Blokes were pleased by their arrival. Gough gave Deacon a number of dime novels. The heroes Deacon liked were Jesse James, Doughnut Jack, the hero of The Awful Atonement, and Deadwood Dick, at the very mention of whose name the Blokes would start laughing.

  “Perhaps if you spent your entire life on it, Landish,” Sedgewick said, “you might be able to finish a chapter of a dime novel.”

  “The Smoker” was the largest room in the Bachelors’ Wing, about the size of the attic. The rules of the Smoker were that you weren’t allowed entrance without a smoking jacket—an exception was made for Deacon—and everyone was required to chip in on the brandy “pot.”

  Deacon sat up with the Blokes in the Smoker every night, watched them smoke and drink and listened to them talk. Sometimes he would fall asleep in his chair by the fire.

  “It’s as though,” Landish said one evening, “I woke one morning to find myself in the middle of another life, someone else’s whose past I can’t recall and whose future I can’t imagine.”

  From time to time, Palmer and Gough would communicate by an exchange of notes, which they would write while the others watched. Palmer’s notebook was small and leather-bound, with a gold-coloured ribbon to mark his place. Most of the time Palmer simply sat there with the notebook on his lap and the stub of a yellow pencil tucked behind his ear.

  It was on the second night that Palmer, when he noticed Deacon watching him, nodded and smiled at him and began to write very slowly in his notebook, which he then handed to Gough. Gough read aloud: “How are you this evening, young man?”

  “I’m fine, Mr. Palmer. How are you?” Deacon said aloud. Gough swiftly wrote his response and handed the notebook back to Palmer, who read what Gough had written. The old man looked at Gough, then at Deacon and nodded and smiled again.