The Lacuna

by Barbara Kingsolver

  Later,

  TOM CUDDY

  April 23

  Dear Mr. Shepherd,

  Your news is extremely welcome. All of us at Stratford and Sons are pleased to know your novel is moving forward at a clip. I've read the chapters you sent, and find them in every way up to the standard we expect from our boy Shepherd. This may be your best to date. This contract explains the terms we discussed by telephone. The late summer completion date you suggest will be very suitable. You'll hear soon from our sales department to discuss the title, dust jacket, and so forth. They are determined to include an author photograph this time, so please give the request a fair consideration. I'm afraid your title, The Name of This Place, does not strike us as quite the ticket. I believe Cataclysm of the Empire has a good ring. But we have time to sort that out.

  Enclosed herein you will find two copies of the contract for your signature. Attached to last page please note the affidavit of antiCommunism, also for signature before a notary public. As you may know, this formality is now requisite in all moving-picture contracts, and is expected soon to be mandatory in publishing, so we are working to get the necessary papers on file.

  I send greetings from my Miss Daley, who enjoys her chats with your Mrs. Brown. And cheers from Miss James in the mailing room who says your letters mount up there as always, fragrant with perfume, despite rumors of your engagement. Many will be gratified to know another of your books will soon be available.

  Yours sincerely,

  LINCOLN BARNES

  May 4

  Artie proposed breakfast at the Swiss Kitchen, one of his haunts. It seemed to be a tourist place, they had a giant sign out front with a boy in lederhosen (Food Worth Yodeling About!) and waitresses dressed as milkmaids. Artie, in his ancient cuffed trousers and faint old-man smell, was unembarrassed by any of it.

  "What makes it Swiss food?" I asked, studying the menu.

  "A lot of grease. Bratwurst, only here they are going to call it sausage. German food with a strict doctrine of neutrality."

  With Artie, irony carries the mailbag right to the door of nonchalance. Nothing seems to excite him. Short of a revelation that one has worked for Lev Trotsky. Through a haze of burning cigarettes he studied the new book contract. "These terms are basically good. I'm sorry about the anticommunism business."

  "I'll sign it. I just hope they won't ask me to disavow anything more difficult."

  "Such as?"

  "Coffee with too much sugar. Mad irritation. Plotting murders I could never go through with. That sort of thing."

  "These crimes are very difficult to prosecute. Otherwise, all of us except Eleanor Roosevelt would be in the pokey."

  One of the waitresses in blond plaits was making her way toward us, a twin to the one who'd seated us at our window table. "The pokey," I repeated.

  "A technical legal term, meaning the hoosegow. You're not much of one for American slang, are you? For a young man of words."

  "It has never come naturally to me, no. You must hear a lot of it in your business. Actors and musicians."

  "Oh yes. From those clients I hear 'Artie, where is the cabbage?' Clams, dough, moolah, many words for the one thing they don't have these days."

  Our milkmaid slipped a pad and pencil from her apron pocket, then dropped the pencil. Deliberately, I could vouch. She knelt to retrieve it, all lowered lashes and ruffled decolletage, the cup runneth over. My stars, as Mrs. Brown would put it. Where do these precious creatures come from, is it Artie who draws them?

  "Doll face, tell us your specials. And promise we will see your face again in thirty seconds when you return with coffee. Extra sugar for my friend." Yes, it's Artie.

  "You have a manner of speaking," he said when she had gone. "The first time we spoke on the phone, I heard it. Every word is perfect, but there is an accent. Like Gary Cooper. Not quite the regular apple pie."

  "They tell me the same thing in Mexico--my Spanish has a faint accent. I am the permanent foreigner."

  "Well, don't cure it. Your way with words, I mean. We need the income."

  "It's not my mother's fault, she was an ace at slang. Flapper first-class. Today is her birthday, by the way. I always took her to lunch."

  "Happy birthday, Mrs. Shepherd. How old?"

  "Forever young. She died in '38."

  "Condolences. How did it happen?"

  "A car accident in Mexico City. She was dating a news correspondent, they were racing to the airport to get a look at Howard Hughes."

  "Now that is going out with a bang. I mean no disrespect."

  "No, you're right, she was all bang. In death as in life. I miss her."

  "Now, you mention plotting murders that you cannot find the heart to execute. Is this anything I ought to know about, as your legal representative?"

  "Just the usual. Newspapermen. The rumors have upset my stenographer this spring. People are treating her badly. Even some of her friends have been callous."

  "Now that is a subject. Freedom of the presses to destroy a person's life for no good reason." He studied the menu with the same concentration he'd given the book contract, reading all the fine print. When he'd finished he closed it.

  "Congratulations on the new book, by the way. As I said, these are excellent terms. A pretty penny. Now, let me ask you something, a little personal. But I ask in a professional capacity, as the guy whose job is to look out for you and promote the general welfare."

  "All right, fire away."

  "I know that Mrs. Brown is not your type, categorically speaking. You once mentioned I am one of a few who knows about this. The Selective Service being another. What I am asking, and I hope the answer is yes, isn't there somebody else who knows?"

  "Somebody. No, not for quite a while. An offer does seem to be on the table right now, but. It's not very easy to discuss this, Artie."

  He held up a hand, took a sip of his coffee. "My intention is not to make you uncomfortable."

  "You're concerned for my safety?"

  "That you could be put at risk of, shall we say, exposure. Blackmail can arrive from unexpected quarters. I am not speaking in this case of Aware, Incorporated. I have had clients in your situation."

  "Oh. Well, no, I don't think that's a worry. This particular friend would have a great deal to lose. From exposure, as you say."

  "Not another Bolshevik? Never mind, pretend I didn't ask."

  I laughed. "No, don't worry, this one is all stars and stripes. We worked together in Civilian Services during the war, moving paintings into safe storage here from the National Gallery. There were quite a few of us in that corps, you'd be amazed. The art world may never be the same."

  "Really."

  "He's working for a museum these days, in New York. Out of touch for years, and suddenly now he's coming to town. It's not easy to contemplate, I'll tell you the truth. I'd settled pretty well on living as a monk."

  Artie waved away a cloud of smoke. "Yeah, me too. I would say, 'Since my wife died,' but under oath I would have to say since long before that. Who has the energy?"

  "You might be surprised, Artie. Cocktail waitresses seem to hum around you like little bees."

  "Entertainment, my friend. Sweet music. In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune. Not a bad arrangement."

  "So it seems."

  He carefully lit a new cigarette from the old one. "Now love."

  "Yes. Love is another story."

  "And this you have in spades, my friend. You are loved by the multitudes. Ladies and gents standing in line down the block, waiting for your every word."

  Their opinion of me is approximately the same as for a talking pony. Frida said that. "Yes, I'm very lucky. Employed by the American imagination, as you put it."

  "Long may it wave."

  "Now I have a question for you, Artie."

  "Personal?"

  "No. This friend in New York tells me fore
igners are being deported there, for suspicion of just about anything. Working for Negro rights and so forth. My friend is dramatic, he can exaggerate."

  "Your friend in this case does not exaggerate."

  "That's diabolical. To bolster support by deporting the opposition."

  "Diabolical is a polite term for this behavior."

  "Are they setting their caps mostly for noncitizens?"

  "Mr. Hoover and Mr. Watkins at the INS are becoming very enthusiastic with their housecleaning. Some of the deportees have been living in this country since Homer was a pup. A fellow I know of, Williamson, labor secretary of the Communist Party, currently held without bond on Ellis Island. Accused of being an immigrant. He says he was born in San Francisco. Forty-five years of age, he has family, witnesses. But all the birth certificates in that city were lost in the earthquake and fire of '06."

  "Goodness."

  "Shepherd, you have a birth certificate, do you not?"

  "I do. It was some trouble with both parents dead, but I located the hospital. I have both passports, U.S. and Mexican. I had to sort it out during the war, as you'd guess. Called up to work for the Department of State, they like to see credentials."

  "Keep that U.S. passport with your guns and liquor. That is my advice."

  Breakfast was biscuits and gravy, sausages, and eggs on many heavy white plates. Artie rearranged it all to make room for his ashtray, and continued smoking right through the meal. With so much grease everywhere, I wondered about spontaneous combustion.

  "Mrs. Brown does her best to keep me out of trouble," I said. "She claims my ideology is transparent. But no criminal record as yet."

  "Who needs crimes? The INS has a stable of witnesses, professionals. Very well paid, very talented, they can produce a testimony for any occasion. If a man is not a Communist, they'll prove he is. If he is, they can get him booked for 'creating confusion and hysteria,' to hold him until CP membership becomes illegal."

  "Outlaw a political party? What kind of country does that?"

  "The kind in which you reside. The party has disavowed violence, as you know. Last year they also severed all ties with the Information Bureau of the Soviet Union, to be on the safe side. Turns out, there is no safe side. A federal grand jury just declared that Communist Party membership is a threat to the civilian defense. Now Congress is working on the Mundt-Nixon bill, requiring members to enter their names in a registry. So denying CP membership will soon be a crime also. These people are damned if they do, and damned if they do not."

  Outside in the parking lot under the restaurant's jolly billboard, that yodeling boy in his lederhosen, a dark-colored auto pulled in and a couple emerged from it, in the throes of a terrible argument. The plate glass window shut out any sound, but their rage was visible. The man kept circling the woman to shout at her face, and she kept turning away, her loose raincoat swinging like a bell, her flat shoes stepping side to side. A child peered from the oval of the auto's rear window, the small doomed fish in the bowl.

  "Well. At least I'm no party member."

  "Mr. Shepherd, you have a colorful past. Your Mexican friends, do they stay in touch?"

  "Frida does. Mrs. Kahlo. Intermittently. She's just joined up again with the Communist Party, after a lapse. She says it's all going strong there."

  "So it may be, and legal also, in her locale. But I suggest discretion."

  "You're not saying I should simply cut off old friends, for fear of association?"

  "No, I am not, and I recognize you, sir, as a man with a spinal column. But you would be amazed at the number of people who do exactly what you've just said."

  "I see. My stenographer would say, 'Fairly warned is fair afeared.'"

  "That is about the sum of what I can offer you, yes."

  "So, keeping old letters and so forth in the house. Maybe not a good idea."

  "A man with a spinal column, and a brain. Bravo. Now, what about our friend Agent X, who came calling last October. Does he also keep in touch?"

  "Not another peep. He must have discovered what a lackluster stiff I am."

  "Maybe. We should all be so lucky. But these men don't care who you are. Not even what you're planning to do, despite what they may say. They're like bloodhounds. What gets them baying is the whiff of where you have already been."

  "Well, that can't change. I spent years around Communists, cleaning their dishes while they deliberated the transitional program and formalized party directives. You know something, Artie? They eat what people eat. They paint the dining room yellow, and love their children. I keep wondering, what have people got against Communists?"

  "I told you. 'Anticommunism' is not very much concerned with 'communism.'"

  "So you said. Tuna fish, and the Spanish influenza. It's hard to believe."

  "Think of religion. A virgin birth. Likewise hard to believe. Yet taken by many as evidence that purveyors of indecency are everywhere."

  The arguing couple outside got back in their car and drove away. A stop on their journey.

  "Communism? Most people have no idea what it is," Artie said. "I do not exaggerate. Look around this restaurant, ask any of these fine citizens. 'Excuse me, sir, I've been thinking of an idea, a bunch of working people owning the means of their own production. What do you make of that?' You know, he might be all for it."

  "Communism is the same as Stalin, that's what he thinks."

  "Correct. And baseball is nine white men and a stick. Seeing is believing. For years the president told us we had no fear. They put up signs to that effect in every post office. 'Tojo doesn't scare us.' Now we have a change of program, they're plastering up a new slogan: 'Run like hell.'"

  "I see what you mean."

  "According to Elmo Roper's last poll, forty percent of Americans believe the Jews have too much power in this country. Tell me, we have how many Jewish men in the Congress?"

  "Not many, I shouldn't think. Maybe none at all?"

  "So what is the problem? Foreign-sounding people, not Christian, and not apologetic about it. They may have their own ideas. It suggests a challenge to our hard-earned peace and bounty. Making a fuss over Negro segregation would be another example."

  "I see that. The issue is not Communism per se."

  He leaned forward, his blue eyes watery, feverish looking. He held up both hands as if he meant to clasp my face between them. "You know what the issue is? Do you want to know? It's what these guys have decided to call America. They have the audacity to say, 'There, you sons of bitches, don't lay a finger on it. That is a finished product!'"

  "But any country is still in the making. Always. That's just history, people have to see that."

  He dropped his hands, sat back against the booth. "Pardon my French, but tell it to the goddamn Marines."

  "My stenographer said the same thing, more or less. Minus the French."

  Artie had finished his breakfast and now stacked up plates, ashtray on top, recovering himself. "Your Mrs. Brown, a very astute lady. How is she?"

  "Astute, as you say. And not mine, for the record. She's all right, I think."

  "Good." He ground out his cigarette, smoothed the contract on the table, and folded it into its envelope. "You can sign this. Affidavit and all, if that's what you want. I can't say yes or no. But I'm going to tell you something about history in the making. Remember you heard this first from Artie Gold, over a plate of ground hog and cackle. This is going to get serious. What these men are doing could become permanent."

  "What do you mean?"

  Suddenly he looked weary. "You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified."

  "Surely that's overstating it," I said. "America runs on extremes. The latest craze and a tank of gas will get you about anywhere. Today the Kremlin is a messianic movement and you're better de
ad than red. Tomorrow they'll decide the real mischief is cigarettes and sugar in your coffee. The culture is built on hyperbole." I wanted to see him smile. "Or maybe you really do think this food is worth yodeling about."

  He didn't smile. "I'm an old man, I've seen a lot. But what these men are doing is putting poison on the lawn. It kills your crabgrass all right, and then you have a lot of dead stuff out there for a very long time. Maybe forever."

  The Asheville Trumpet, June 18, 1948

  City Slams Doors on Polio Menace

  by Carl Nicholas

  The City Health Commission this week banned all public gatherings, to stem the tide of infantile paralysis sweeping our state. The quarantine began at 1 am Monday, closing movie houses, skating parlors, swimming pools, and other public sites of infestation. All city churches except the Roman Catholic have sensibly urged their flocks to pray from the safety of home. This city of 50,000 souls is quiet as a grave, as housewives stay home from shopping and our businesses and resorts see profits stolen by the epidemic.

  Dr. Ken Malusa, interviewed at the Health Department by telephone, reminded us that even the wisest of medical men can offer no chemical cure for polio. "This germ is crafty, you won't see him with the human eye or even the best microscopes. Many have given it a try, but the sneaky fellow won't show his face. Penicillin doesn't scare him, it's no use at all. My advice is, keep the kiddies away from the crowds where he travels."

  That goes for men and ladies too, no one's in the clear. Seven percent of hapless victims die, says Dr. Malusa, and nearly all are crippled. The good doctor said no explanation accounts for the epidemics each year, which occur in summer only. Asheville is presently suffering the worst rate of epidemic in our nation, in a state that already this year has seen more than one thousand victims fall to the polio menace. The national total is nearly six thousand.

  The town fathers have composed a letter to Bishop Vernon Reynolds in Raleigh urging him to grant permission to Roman Catholics here to remain away from their rites.

  July 6

  Dear Frida,

  It's two in the morning, and bright as day outside. The paved street has a watery shine, with the trees lined up along both banks like the canals of Xochimilco. The moon is not quite full: perfect down the left side but a little ragged on the right, so waning. C for Cristo means it is dying away. I couldn't sleep tonight so sat up to meet our birthday. But I must have fallen into a dream for a few seconds, because you were here in my room just now, in your wheelchair, your hair all done up. Working at an easel with your back to me. I said, "Frida, look, the streets have turned to rivers. Let's take a boat somewhere." You turned to me with empty eye sockets and said, "You go on, Soli. I have to stay."