The Lacuna

by Barbara Kingsolver

  "I don't think the reporters really want to know the first thing about me. They fancy themselves artists. They'd rather draw freehand."

  "They do have questions."

  "I know. The one fellow wanted to ask me about Truman and the Soviet containment policy, remember? Collier's, I think."

  "New York Times. Collier's said they wouldn't even run a review unless you spoke to them."

  "And did they?"

  "A little one. It wasn't very good."

  "If I talked, I would only end up giving them more blanks to fill in. 'How do you feel about Truman's new anti-Soviet position, Mr. Shepherd?' No comment. 'That Bette Davis is quite a looker, isn't she, Mr. Shepherd?' No comment."

  "So, the punctured eardrum. No comment."

  "Correct."

  "Next they'll be reporting you died."

  "Imagine the peace and quiet."

  The telephone rang, and she ran to get it. Her stockings had seams down the backs. I tried out a wolf-whistle--a feeble one, but I heard her pause on the stairs.

  A sample of the mail received May 15, 1947, seventy-five letters in all. After publication of Pilgrims of Chapultepec, Stratford and Sons posted the mail forward in boxes once or twice weekly.--VB

  Dear Mr. Shepherd,

  At the youthful age of seventy here is one codger who tips my hat to you. For years I have re-read the favorites because the new authors are not up to snuff. But some weeks ago I ran short and went to my corner bookstore for a suggestion. The fellow handed me two by Harrison W. Shepherd, a name unknown to me. I read both without a pause. Of course I blush at scenes of copulation and revelry. But you show that modern times are no different from the old, and people the same everywhere. I was stationed overseas in the first war and never learned to like it, but it did teach me a thing or two. Thank you for adding spunk to my life. I look forward to your other books.

  Sincerely,

  COLLIN THOMAS

  Dear Mr. Shepherd,

  Although we have never met I consider you a friend. You touch and inspire me. I read Vassals of Majesty twice and now the new one. Thank you for putting my own heart into words. I have wanted to show courage the way your characters do. You show that men at the top don't always have any more smarts than the rest of us. I have been thinking of telling my boss to jump in the lake and look for better. (Secretary.) Now I just might achieve my goal.

  With admiration,

  LYNNE HILL

  Dear Mr. Shepherd,

  I had to read your book in history at Lancaster Valley High. I don't read too many books but yours is okay. It gave me a lot to ponder about Poatlicue wanting to be a good citizen, and then ending up wanting to kill the King. Our teacher said to ask you three questions about ancient times of Mexico, for our report. My questions:

  1. Is it true the Eagle gave the people their first weapon.

  2. What kind of government did they have, Democracy or Dictator?

  3. Did you ever really shoot a dear?

  Thank you. My report is due May 12.

  Yours truly,

  WENDELL DIXON

  One of 19 letters enclosed in a single packet from Lancaster Valley High School, California.--VB

  Dear Mr. Harrison Shepherd

  My heart is full of happiness, just knowing you are holding this letter in your hand. Thank you for being an author. You have gotten me through a lot of sad times, when my mother died especially. Sometimes I do everything I can just to get through the day, so I can curl up at night with my favorite book. When life is humdrum or just plain old sad I know you will take me away to the place where troubles are forgotten. When I get a letter back from you my life will be complete. Thank you, thank you.

  Yours,

  ROXANNE WILLS

  All correspondence answered in the same week received, insofar as possible. No photographs or inclusions.--VB

  June 6, 1947

  Dear Frida,

  Diego's telegram has terrified me not a little. He seems to believe the doctors nearly killed you, so I fear for all concerned. But for you, above all. I'm determined today to send a cheerful letter, to give you a little picknick from your worries, as you have done often for me. You'll find in this package your birthday present. Don't be too disappointed: it's only another book, which I hope will amuse you. If not, blame yourself, you should have left me a cook.

  I am trying to begin a new story that will be about the Mayans, I think, and the fall of civilizations. Everyone wants a happy ending this time, so this should be just the ticket. But the writing proceeds slowly, when life is filled with such thrilling distractions. Only last week I purchased a packet of clothespins, and a new billfold. (The shopgirl informed me it has a secret pouch.) The Roadster and I "Make a Date to Lubricate" every 30 days at the garage on Coxe Avenue. A new appliance shop has opened down the street! And right now I am spying out my study window into the treetops where a gigantic bird is pecking a hole. I wish you could see the creature: its red hair stands straight up, as mine does on Mondays. Goodness, the wood chips fly, this thing is the size of an ox. And you were worried my life was dull.

  I never want for company. The neighbor boy Romulus seems to prefer my house to his own, now that summer is here and he is paroled from Grade Six. With hands shoved deep in overall pockets he wanders around the house coveting things, but is not a thief. He asks. He particularly wants the little carved idol from Teotihuacan. I haven't told him it's a stolen object. Instead I gave him a fountain pen and an old fedora and he pretends to be Edward Murrow, using a Doomsday voice to interview the cats. I also offered to give him a cat, the useless black one I call Chisme, but he won't take it.

  My stenographer comes Monday through Friday to answer mail and telephone, for over a year now. My wonderful amanuensis. She works at the dining room table. With each fresh day's mail piled high there, we pray: "For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful." She is a whiz, I have known her sometimes to get through nearly a hundred letters from readers in a day, typing up a kind little note in answer to each. She hauls it all to the post office in a gigantic leather satchel she found somewhere, such as might have been used by the Pony Express: over her shoulder she slings it, and off she goes, does Violet Brown. I can't help thinking you would appreciate the irony of her name, for she is a dove-gray little bird. And something like the mother I need, commanding me to leave the house for fresh air at least once daily, if only to the corner for cigarettes. Lately she has stepped up the program: I am to undertake some level of social adventure each week. Going to the movies by myself is acceptable (Mrs. Brown is lenient), and not too bad if I slip in after the house has gone dark. The purpose of the outings is to overcome my dread of the world and all things in it. Now the magazines are saying I have a punctured eardrum, which is helpful. If the world howls too loudly, I can pretend I don't hear.

  Please send word you are recovering. Diego's telegram was a shocker. He seems extremely angry, not only with your doctors but also the world and Every Damn Gringo in it, myself included. You might let him know, Truman did not consult me before committing to defeat the Communists in Greece and Turkey. Secretary of State Marshall has announced a new plan for European assistance that won't thrill your husband either. Frida, you understand men. How are these leaders different from the boys I used to watch at school, trying to make up their teams for football? Before this war we had six great players on the grass. Now only two are left standing. Naturally those two will be rivals, and try to get the rest to line up on their side. Dimes and candy will help, sure.

  I struggle to understand why Diego supports Stalin now, after working so closely with Lev, and even seeing him murdered. What rational motives could cause Diego to make this change? "It's a revolutionary necessity," he said, but how am I to know what that means? Betrayal, as the means to an end? Nearly every day I wake up shocked at how little in this world I comprehend. Perhaps Diego is right, and despite all my years of serving brilliant men I am only a dumb gringo. I shall tr
y to keep to the task I seem to know: writing stories for people who believe if you throw a rock, it could roll uphill. If your husband says I am an idiot on the subject of politics, certainly he should know. So don't ask me about the peaceful atom, or how to raise the birth rate in France.

  For your amusement I enclose a newspaper review, a favorite from the last round. I take it as proof I am no literary great, but Mrs. Brown says it proves my books are about Important Things. Diego may take it as written proof that someone here besides myself opposes Truman's shocking turn against the rising proletariat. But mostly it proves nothing. You know reviewers, they are the wind in their own sails. I should like to write my books only for the dear person who lies awake reading in bed until page last, then lets the open book fall gently on her face, to touch her smile or drink her tears.

  I'm not brave, as you are. However badly broken, you still stand up. In your Tehuana dresses, in your garden, with the pomegranate trees bending toward you to open their red flowers. No matter what happens, you will still be at the center of the world. Your friend,

  INSOLITO

  The New York Weekly Review, April 26, 1947

  Author's Second Strike Hits the Mark

  by Donald Brewer

  Do not mistake Harrison Shepherd for a literary great. His stories are full-to-brimming with lusty, bare-chested youths. The settings are glamorous, the plots chest-heavers. You may not admit it to your friends, but somehow you can't put them down.

  Pilgrims of Chapultepec (Stratford and Sons), set in Mexico before the Conquest, recounts a pilgrimage of people cast out from home, doomed to follow a neurotic leader who picks fights with his own shadow. Shepherd makes the case for those who find themselves on the ropes against bad policy, wondering what the Sam Hill their leader could be thinking. The protagonist, a boy named Poatlicue, struggles to be a model citizen but comes to view his nation's long march as a winning game for the king, and the scourge of everyone else.

  Author Shepherd combines Leatherstocking action with Chaplinesque pathos, as shown in this symbolic hunting scene: Poatlicue and his friend skin a deer, grousing about the king as they hack their kill into anatomical bits. Their leader has made another outrageous edict, reversing a treaty of friendship with a neighboring clan, deciding now it can't be trusted. The tribe will have to move again, in a season when food is scarce. These youths are rankled. Poatlicue tosses a pair of testicles in the dust, calling them "the buck's last big hopes in sad little bags."

  He tells his pal, "Our leader is an empty sack. You could just as well knock him over, put a head with horns on a stick, and follow that. Most of us never choose to believe in the nation, we just come up short on better ideas. It's probably a law: the public imagination may not exceed the size of the leaders' ballocks."

  The author may be alluding here to the testimony of Donald Benedict, the New York theological student who refused to register for the draft during the war. "We do not contend that the American people maliciously choose the vicious instrument of war," said Benedict during trial, "but in a perplexing situation they lack the imagination and religious faith to respond in a different manner."

  Does Shepherd mean to put himself in the draft-dodger's camp? One could ask many questions of this politically astute novelist, starting with his opinion of a leader who has just set the nation reeling with an abrupt foreign policy reversal, from friendly cooperation to Truman's so-called "containment" of the USSR.

  We can only wonder, as Shepherd declines to be interviewed. But this week as we line up behind our man in Washington, shelling up $400 million to fight our friends of yesterday because "Every nation must choose," we might listen for a thump in the dust, and wonder whether the public's big hopes will fit in that small, sad sack.

  June 11

  She has raised the subject of the memoir yet again. I thought it had died a natural death, but no, she presses. If only to put to rest the perforated eardrum question, I suspect. The first chapter was very good in her opinion, and today she confessed that since the day I gave it to her, she comes to work each morning hoping I'll have the next part of it ready for her to type.

  "It's been near six months now since chapter one, Mr. Shepherd. If it takes that long for each, you'll not outlive your own boyhood."

  I told her I was very sorry to crush her hopes in coming to work and so forth. But there will be no next part. It was a direly mistaken idea. And anyway, even several months ago when I was entertaining the project, I'd run across a problem, the missing notebook. The very next little diary after the first one. I hadn't yet told her.

  "I can't recall that year without it. I should have let you know a while ago. I just hoped you'd forget about it. The memoir fell apart before I'd even gotten started."

  "What do you mean, gone?" Her eye went to the shelf. She knows where I keep them. They should all be put to the flame.

  "The crucial missing piece of the manuscript. There's a word for that, historians use. A lacuna. So blame it on fate and history, if you want."

  "Did you have it before? When you first took all of them out of the crate?"

  This is not a set of keys gone missing, I informed her with some irritation. It just didn't come with the rest, when Frida packed up the notebooks and papers. Probably it had burned at the police station, or slipped behind a cabinet. It's small, I know exactly what it looked like--it was a little leather-bound accounts book I stole from the maid. About the size of your hand. And now it's gone. Just forget about the memoir, I'm working on something different now. I should burn up all these notebooks so you'll stop nagging me about it.

  Mrs. Brown is no fool. "If you remember what the booklet looked like, you could remember well enough what was in it."

  June 23

  It was only one letter, but she carried it up the stairs like a sack of bricks.

  "I hate to disturb. But it says they need this back by return mail."

  "Who is it?"

  "J. Parnell Thomas."

  "Friend or foe?"

  "Chairman, House Committee on Un-American Activities, formerly known as the Dies Committee."

  "Rings a bell, Dies. Oh yes, I know these gentlemen." Committee Diez, we'd pronounced it, like "ten" in Spanish. They arranged Lev's trip to Washington, the visas all prepared and then canceled at the last minute.

  "You do?" She seemed startled.

  "I mean, I know what they do. They called up my former employer once, from Mexico. To testify on the treacheries of Stalin. They're still in business?"

  She held up the letter. "It's just a form. They say it's gone out to all employees of the Department of State."

  "I don't believe I'll be shipping any more art for the government."

  "Present or previous, it says. They need you to sign a statement saying you're loyal to the United States government."

  "Goodness. Why wouldn't I be?"

  She moved her glasses from her head to her nose, and read: "Due to close wartime cooperation between the United States and Russia, certain strategic areas of our government may have been opened to Communist sympathizers. As of March 21, 1947, the President and Congress have undertaken to secure the loyalty of all government workers."

  "Very cloak and dagger. Where do I sign?"

  She approached the bench. "Are you sure you ought, Mr. Shepherd? If you aren't looking to work for the government again, maybe there isn't need."

  "Are you doubting my loyalty?"

  She surrendered the letter for signature.

  "Mrs. Brown, I don't hate much and I don't love much. I'm a free man. But I love writing books for Americans. Look at those letters, all that sky-blue goodness, this country is the berries. And Joseph Stalin murdered my friend. He would have gotten me too, if I'd stood in the way."

  "So you've said, Mr. Shepherd. I know it sets a haint upon you, especially of an August, and no wonder. It's no small thing to see bloody murder."

  I signed the letter and handed it back. "I'm inclined in this case to stand out of the way. I
f I ever had to choose, I might just be a coward and save my own skin."

  "That's people," she said. "That's how the Good Lord made us to be."

  "No, I've known brave men. Lev saw his children murdered, and never gave in. Even young boys, like Sheldon Harte. I'm told they loved life even more than I do, it's why they became revolutionaries. And ended up bludgeoned, or dead in a lime pit."

  She stood waiting. For a happier ending, I suppose.

  "What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything."

  "You do, though. Look here, I've got boxes of letters downstairs, as you said yourself. People telling how you've saved their day. Do ye think that's ordinary?"

  "I give them a lark. A few hours to forget about a disappointing family, or a boss who's a tyrant. But all that mess is still there, when the book ends. I don't save people."

  The corners of her mouth turned down. "Mr. Shepherd, here's your trouble. You don't know your own strength."

  July 3

  The Pack Square Soda Shoppe could not have been decked out with more flag bunting if it were the president's train car. Romulus was dazzled, mostly by his buffalo-like ice cream sundae. Mrs. Brown was rosy-cheeked, sipping cola through a straw. "You ought be thrilled," she said. "A Hollywood movie."

  "You keep saying that. I am thrilled."

  "Well, ye barely look it," she said. She had on the blue Kerrybrooke beret (wear it many ways!), identifying this as a Social Adventure of the highest order.

  "You don't," Romulus agreed.

  "You pipe down. We men have to stick together. We don't wear our hearts on our sleeves the way women do."

  He glanced at his shoulder, then took a whitecap of cream off his cheek with the back of a hand.

  "It's not really settled yet, for one thing. Where am I going to find an agent?"

  "Did Mr. Lincoln say you have to get one? Or just that it would be helpful? What did he say about that exactly?"

  "Find someone to negotiate the contract, for the motion-picture option. He can't do it, this is between Hollywood and me. An agent is customary. Or a lawyer."