The Lacuna
Page 81
Soon my shanks may get to visit an authentic Philco. The publisher’s accountants are preparing a royalty check for the first 50,000 copies of the book. You can’t imagine what you set loose on the world, with one quick job of paper-smuggling. I have to run a gauntlet when leaving the house. Two young ladies are out there now, lollygagging on the front walk in saddle shoes and rolled-up dungarees. Reporters for a school newspaper from the look of them, or just autograph hounds, sucked in by the bizarre and rampant rumors that I am a person of interest. Even my neighbors brought over a book for autograph—it was wrapped up as if they meant to give it a state burial, or else cure it for a ham. Romulus says he spotted some girls slipping around to the back to steal my shirts off the clothesline, and chased them off by “whooping and hollowing.”
I am abashed by this admiration, for it seems directed at some other person. How these girls would hoot if they saw me as I really am, cowering indoors on washdays, festooning the bathroom with my damp balbriggans so they won’t be stolen or made the subject of a theme paper in Senior English. My new life. No one has said I eat human flesh in a tortilla, but I’m getting an idea how your lives have been disfigured all these years by gossip. I can’t answer the telephone, for it’s sure to be a newspaper man asking questions: place of birth, status of bowels. I don’t know what to do with this havoc.
I learned today by mail about the publisher’s check. Mr. Barnes tried all week to reach me, unaware I was hiding from the telephone. Soon I’ll have to do something about the mail; the box fills daily with notes from readers. Seven proposals of marriage, so far. Such a query requires a gentle response, but I’ll confess I’m flummoxed. I’ve had no practice in the skills of being admired. Frida, sometimes an acid panic rises in my throat; people want something, and I am not the thing at all. As I’ve mentioned, girls are desperate, with the fellows still over there patching up the potholes in France. Poor England and France. Their great kingdoms nothing now but fairy tales.
Did El Diario mention Churchill’s speech last week in Missouri? The European leaders seem terrified by the new landscape, flattened at the middle with Truman still on his feet at one end, and Stalin at the other. You could see why Mr. Churchill wants to keep them from shaking hands—if Harry and Comrade Joe reach across that mess, these two could make a new empire on which the sun never sets. Mr. Churchill sounded like a child goading his parents into an argument, he was absurdly dramatic: “A shadow has fallen upon the scene…. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia intends to do,” etcetera. Next he will probably go to Moscow and say the same about us.
How strange, that this is the wide-open moment Lev spent his life hoping for. With America brimming with brotherly love for the Soviets, our own laborers on the march, and Russia with everything to gain, it seems the right time to support them in tossing out Stalin’s bureaucrats and finishing the democratic socialist revolution as Lenin intended. Or, it could go the other way, our two nations falling apart like split kindling. Mr. Churchill seems to want that. “From the Baltic to the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” He sweetened the pot later with goodwill for the valiant Russians and comrade Stalin. But the howlers went right to work as soon as they heard of this strange new curtain of metal. They are thrilled with the image. The cartoonists draw the poor Russians slamming their heads against an anvil. Probably in a fortnight they’ll have forgotten it, but for now it’s a sensation. Two words put together, curtain and iron, have worked alchemy on a kettle of tepid minds and anxious hearts.
The power of words is awful, Frida. Sometimes I want to bury my typewriter in a box of quilts. The radio makes everything worse, because of the knack for amplifying dull sounds. Any two words spoken in haste might become law of the land. But you never know which two. You see why I won’t talk to the newsmen.
My dread is sometimes inexplicable. How do you bear up under so many eyes? And what ludicrous worries I have, compared with yours. I hope the bone-graft operation you mention will make your life worth living again. I worry for your weariness, but trust in your strength, and often see your paintings in my dreams. Your friend,
H. W. SHEPHERD
P.S. I enclose a review, to clear up any mistaken notions you may have about my novel.
The Echo, February 28, 1946
This one is flying off the bookstore shelves from coast to coast: Vassals of Majesty by Harrison W. Shepherd, with 50,000 sold the first month after publication. Its pageant of noble heroes and dastardly villains plays out on the golden shores of ancient Rome. When you’ve had enough of the “heart and soul of the common man” exalted by the late FDR, here are uncommon men with derring-do, sweeping the reader into the Success Dream that drives them. Ladies and gentlemen, but definitely. Harry Shepherd cranks out a darn good read. And watch out, girls: he’s single!
March 13, 1946
Dear Shepherd,
What’s steamin, demon? Remember me, from civilian service? (Nobody forgets this Tom-cat.) Hope you’re all the aces since last we soldiered together for Art and Country. Everywhere I go now, some guy is just home from Europe telling how he dodged the lead pill or brought in his bomber on a wing and a prayer. Does anybody want to hear a hair-raising tale of Army SNAFU in the National Gallery? You and me buddy, a couple of Civvy cream puffs, it’s a void coupon ain’t it? If only my old chum Shepherd were here, we could tell some war stories, sure. How you and I drank so much joe on the train, we almost dropped a marble Rodin on its head in the Asheville station.
Man, you could have had me for soup when I saw your name in the Book Review. Is that you, or some other Harrison Shepherd? I didn’t have you figured for the Shakespeare type. But who knows? If it’s really you, drop a line.
Plant you now, dig you later,
TOM CUDDY
March 29, 1946
Dear Shepherd,
Holy Joe, it’s really you. Thanks for the buzz. Cat, you know how to percolate.
With everything you are currently hipped to, this will probably sound like cake and coffee, but a proposition has come up and I figure I’ll give it a sock. The Department of State is getting into the art business. It’s not enough that chumps like us packed off America’s treasures to the Vanderbilt Mansion and back, to keep them safe from Tojo. Now the idea is to pack up a fresh load of paintings on Uncle Sam’s ticket, and parade them around the museums of Europe. A special show of American painters to send overseas, to show those Parisians we’re not a bunch of rubes. Somebody spilled the beans to the Department of State that the Europeans hate us. Surprise, Jean-Pierre thinks GI Joe is a slob with chocolate on his face! Between you and me, I doubt the Parisians care, as long as we keep putting the bricks back in their castles. But the Congress cares, they are convoying this ship and aim to blitz it.
I am abashed by this admiration, for it seems directed at some other person. How these girls would hoot if they saw me as I really am, cowering indoors on washdays, festooning the bathroom with my damp balbriggans so they won’t be stolen or made the subject of a theme paper in Senior English. My new life. No one has said I eat human flesh in a tortilla, but I’m getting an idea how your lives have been disfigured all these years by gossip. I can’t answer the telephone, for it’s sure to be a newspaper man asking questions: place of birth, status of bowels. I don’t know what to do with this havoc.
I learned today by mail about the publisher’s check. Mr. Barnes tried all week to reach me, unaware I was hiding from the telephone. Soon I’ll have to do something about the mail; the box fills daily with notes from readers. Seven proposals of marriage, so far. Such a query requires a gentle response, but I’ll confess I’m flummoxed. I’ve had no practice in the skills of being admired. Frida, sometimes an acid panic rises in my throat; people want something, and I am not the thing at all. As I’ve mentioned, girls are desperate, with the fellows still over there patching up the potholes in France. Poor England and France. Their great kingdoms nothing now but fairy tales.
Did El Diario mention Churchill’s speech last week in Missouri? The European leaders seem terrified by the new landscape, flattened at the middle with Truman still on his feet at one end, and Stalin at the other. You could see why Mr. Churchill wants to keep them from shaking hands—if Harry and Comrade Joe reach across that mess, these two could make a new empire on which the sun never sets. Mr. Churchill sounded like a child goading his parents into an argument, he was absurdly dramatic: “A shadow has fallen upon the scene…. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia intends to do,” etcetera. Next he will probably go to Moscow and say the same about us.
How strange, that this is the wide-open moment Lev spent his life hoping for. With America brimming with brotherly love for the Soviets, our own laborers on the march, and Russia with everything to gain, it seems the right time to support them in tossing out Stalin’s bureaucrats and finishing the democratic socialist revolution as Lenin intended. Or, it could go the other way, our two nations falling apart like split kindling. Mr. Churchill seems to want that. “From the Baltic to the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” He sweetened the pot later with goodwill for the valiant Russians and comrade Stalin. But the howlers went right to work as soon as they heard of this strange new curtain of metal. They are thrilled with the image. The cartoonists draw the poor Russians slamming their heads against an anvil. Probably in a fortnight they’ll have forgotten it, but for now it’s a sensation. Two words put together, curtain and iron, have worked alchemy on a kettle of tepid minds and anxious hearts.
The power of words is awful, Frida. Sometimes I want to bury my typewriter in a box of quilts. The radio makes everything worse, because of the knack for amplifying dull sounds. Any two words spoken in haste might become law of the land. But you never know which two. You see why I won’t talk to the newsmen.
My dread is sometimes inexplicable. How do you bear up under so many eyes? And what ludicrous worries I have, compared with yours. I hope the bone-graft operation you mention will make your life worth living again. I worry for your weariness, but trust in your strength, and often see your paintings in my dreams. Your friend,
H. W. SHEPHERD
P.S. I enclose a review, to clear up any mistaken notions you may have about my novel.
The Echo, February 28, 1946
This one is flying off the bookstore shelves from coast to coast: Vassals of Majesty by Harrison W. Shepherd, with 50,000 sold the first month after publication. Its pageant of noble heroes and dastardly villains plays out on the golden shores of ancient Rome. When you’ve had enough of the “heart and soul of the common man” exalted by the late FDR, here are uncommon men with derring-do, sweeping the reader into the Success Dream that drives them. Ladies and gentlemen, but definitely. Harry Shepherd cranks out a darn good read. And watch out, girls: he’s single!
March 13, 1946
Dear Shepherd,
What’s steamin, demon? Remember me, from civilian service? (Nobody forgets this Tom-cat.) Hope you’re all the aces since last we soldiered together for Art and Country. Everywhere I go now, some guy is just home from Europe telling how he dodged the lead pill or brought in his bomber on a wing and a prayer. Does anybody want to hear a hair-raising tale of Army SNAFU in the National Gallery? You and me buddy, a couple of Civvy cream puffs, it’s a void coupon ain’t it? If only my old chum Shepherd were here, we could tell some war stories, sure. How you and I drank so much joe on the train, we almost dropped a marble Rodin on its head in the Asheville station.
Man, you could have had me for soup when I saw your name in the Book Review. Is that you, or some other Harrison Shepherd? I didn’t have you figured for the Shakespeare type. But who knows? If it’s really you, drop a line.
Plant you now, dig you later,
TOM CUDDY
March 29, 1946
Dear Shepherd,
Holy Joe, it’s really you. Thanks for the buzz. Cat, you know how to percolate.
With everything you are currently hipped to, this will probably sound like cake and coffee, but a proposition has come up and I figure I’ll give it a sock. The Department of State is getting into the art business. It’s not enough that chumps like us packed off America’s treasures to the Vanderbilt Mansion and back, to keep them safe from Tojo. Now the idea is to pack up a fresh load of paintings on Uncle Sam’s ticket, and parade them around the museums of Europe. A special show of American painters to send overseas, to show those Parisians we’re not a bunch of rubes. Somebody spilled the beans to the Department of State that the Europeans hate us. Surprise, Jean-Pierre thinks GI Joe is a slob with chocolate on his face! Between you and me, I doubt the Parisians care, as long as we keep putting the bricks back in their castles. But the Congress cares, they are convoying this ship and aim to blitz it.
