It was raining heavily as she walked up from the station to the squat wooden inn on the hillside, preceded by a porter carrying her suitcases. Her shoes were all but ruined in the rutted dirt street that resembled nothing so much as a streambed at this juncture, everything dripping and sizzling with the rain, but it didn"t really matter-they could toss them on the ash pit for all she cared. She was going native. Throwing off worldly things. Dwelling within herself. And to h.e.l.l with Frank. She concentrated on the porter"s back as the planes of his muscles clenched and shifted under the weight of the suitcases, the water streaming from his straw hat that was like an inverted funnel, the hill rising ever more sharply. She put one foot in front of the other, trying her best to avoid the deeper puddles and thinking only of a bed and a hot bath. There was no one in the street. Nothing stirred. Just the rain.
She came up the single step into the anteroom, furled her umbrella and perched herself on the edge of a bamboo bench to ease into a pair of the slippers lined up on a rack for just that purpose. There was the smell of the charcoal and of o-cha, the acrid vinegary tea the j.a.panese seemed to put away by the gallon, and she had a moment"s peace before an old woman in a robe and two bowing maids rushed out to greet her, their thin fixed smiles doing little to disguise their horror at encountering a white woman, a gaijin, soaked through and unaccompanied, washed up on their doorstep. They didn"t speak English. No one in the entire village did, as she was soon to discover, but she could have been a deaf mute and got what she wanted nonetheless. She used a kind of pantomime to enlarge on her few disconnected phrases-Dzo, heya arimasu-ka, nemuri, yoku?132-showed the old woman a folded wad of yen and within minutes found herself barefoot in a tiny Spartan room, drying her hair in a towel while one of the maids served her tea.
Of course, she was wrought up, the scene in the apartment repeating itself over and over in her mind like a moving picture caught in a loop, but the pravaz calmed her and she took rice wine with her dinner-a kaiseki of twelve courses, faultlessly prepared, and was she beginning to appreciate the cuisine after all, or was she just starved?-and let the sound of the rain infiltrate her senses. Once the maid had cleared away the tray, she went into the little bamboo cubicle outside the bath and scrubbed herself all over, recording the process in the full-length mirror there, rubbing both hands slowly over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, between her legs, into the small of her back, even lifting her feet one after the other to run the cloth over her soles and between her toes with the slow languorous ease of a bootblack, so that when she stepped through the door and onto the flagstones of the bath she felt as pure and regal as the empress herself.
Two old men and what appeared to be a woman bobbed in the steaming water, only their heads and bony slick shoulders visible. There were flowers, ferns. Paper lanterns. She shivered, wondering if it was as chilly at the Imperial Palace as it was here on these wintry flagstones, and then she slipped into the water, the old men and the woman studiously averting their eyes, and it was heaven. The next thing she knew the place was deserted, the lanterns burned low, and the maid was there with her robe, murmuring something in her own language that sounded as lovely as the whisper of cherry blossoms in the breeze, and then she was in her room, on the futon, beneath the blankets, and the rain ran a thousand fingers across the roof.
There followed a succession of days during which she saw no one but the maid and the shocked and silent cohabitants of the bath-and oh, they looked at her, stealing a pinched sideways glance as she strode naked across the flagstones, and let them, let them see her as she was in her skin: she had nothing to hide. The bath was a miracle. She lay in the water for hours at a time, dreaming, till her body felt as limp as if the flesh had fallen from the bone. It rained constantly, day and night. She kept her pravaz close at hand. She ate fried rice, boiled rice, rice with salmon and cod roe, udon noodles, skewered tofu. She drank black tea. Sake. And, finally, a bottle of good scotch whiskey the maid brought her. And was there a pharmacy in town? There was. She sent the maid out with an empty tube of the morphine sulfate tablets and the maid came back with it full.
All the while, when she could summon the energy, the desire, she sat at the low mahogany table in her room and wrote letters to Frank on the thin rippled rice paper the maid left for her on the tansu in the closet. They were angry letters, letters that dredged up all the sourness and hate of the past and the present too-Krynska, how could he?-and yet they were sentimental at the same time, rising on the wings of poetry to illumine for him the reclamatory power of her love and the hallowed bond they shared that no amount of perfidy or venality or stinking filthy philandering on his part could ever break. The letters drained her. Crushed her. The rain fell. And the maid-pretty, perfect, a bowing kimono-clad extension of her will-took the letters to the post office and sent them away.
Within the week, Frank had written back. She came in from the bath and there the letter was, laid out on the mahogany table beside a finger bowl and a single lily in the slim white vessel of a ceramic vase. The first thing she noticed was the artistry with which he"d addressed the envelope-he"d used a brush rather than a pen, his kanji as pristine and elegant as any Buddhist master"s or Shinto priest"s-and that touched her. She pictured him sitting over his drafting table with his finest brush, a look of utter absorption on his face as he dipped the tip of it in the well of the ink stone, funneling his genius into it, creating something beautiful. For her. Even before she read through the letter inside, the nine pages of apologies, pleas and regrets-he was the one at fault, a selfish unthinking lowly impostor of a man who saw what he wanted and took it, and d.a.m.n the consequences, and could she ever forgive him because Krynska was nothing to him and he"d never so much as kissed her, he swore-her heart went out to him. She read through the letter a second time, then a third, every nerve and fiber of her stirring with the highest regard for the n.o.bility of this man, for his grace, his beauty, his truth and wisdom, and she immediately wrote back, and what she wrote was so deep and so true she might as well have opened a vein and written him in blood.
But she wasn"t coming back to him. Ever. Or at least not until he made her his equal, not until the day he threw off the yoke of his prior attachment-his p.u.s.s.y or Kitty or whatever she called herself-and pledged his troth before G.o.d and man alike so that no Krynska or Takako-San could ever threaten her again. That much she made clear. She had to. Just to preserve her own sanity.
His reply-more apologies, more pleas, more regrets-came by return mail, and the minute she"d read it through she clapped her hands and sent the maid for pen, paper and sake and wrote him back on the spot. Within the hour her letter was on the way to him and the following day another of his came to her, letters overlapping, reaching out, antic.i.p.ating one another, so that over the course of the next two months they were able to hold an ongoing conversation through the slow but estimable j.a.panese mails, their pens a.s.sessing even the minutiae of their attachment, their love and esteem and mutual complaints-his snoring, eating habits, the way he sniffed his socks on removing them, his bossiness, his rusticity, and her faults too, though of course they were minor compared to his-and to branch out in the fullness of that conversation to easy companionable accounts of their day-to-day activities while they were apart.
His life was a frenzy of activity, of course. He was on the job site day and night, battling Hayashi-San and the Baron over every change and cost overrun, struggling with the permeability of the oya stone they"d quarried outside the city (it would forever leak, he feared, but it was beautiful beyond compare) and seeing to his mother"s needs. Yes, she was there. Still. She"d come all the way across the board-flat plains and jagged mountains of the West, endured the two weeks at sea and rushed to her (formerly) ailing son"s side only to come down with the very same complaint that had stricken him. It was low comedy, that was what it was, and Miriam, cleansed in the crucible of the bath and replete with the utter calm the pravaz gave her, laughed aloud at the thought of that gangling old lady-and how old was she, eighty, eight-five?-towering over the j.a.panese like a freak of nature only to be stretched out on a too-short futon and fed rice b.a.l.l.s and water till she could only wish she"d stayed in Wisconsin where she belonged.133 And for her part? She told him of the sound of the rain, of the emerald beauty of the stands of bamboo that cl.u.s.tered on the hillside like queues of silent people waiting for something that would never come and the strange tiny birds that visited them. Of her daily rituals, her reading and writing and the solace of the baths. Of the shaven-headed monks in the temple with its painted dragons and graceful torii and the way it made her feel as if she could touch the spirits with the pointed finger of her mind when they chanted, all in unison, and let the charred spice of their incense rise round them in empurpled clouds. She was at peace, that was what she told him, and she never mentioned the pravaz or the pharmacy or the adept maid who would lay down her life for her if she but asked. All she could want, she wrote, was for him to take her in his arms. That was all. That would make her world complete. But she wasn"t holding her breath. And she wasn"t coming back.
Two months. A gap in the calendar. Slow minutes, slower hours.
Each day was a replica of the last, but she was never bored. The everlasting tranquility of the saints came to dwell in her and she lived as if she were floating free out over the earth in some aeroplane or dirigible-or no, on her own fledged wings. Still, there was the impenetrability of the language, the harshness and abruptness of it, nothing at all like the silken play of French. And the fish, the eternal fish, their opaque eyes staring up at her out of the multiplicity of the days, their sliced flesh raw as a wound, their tails, their lips, their appendages. And the mud. And the rain. Two months. She was ready for a change.
And so when, one evening after her bath, the maid"s soft swishing footsteps stirred on the wooden planks of the anteroom, followed by a heavier tread, a man"s tread, she sat up, fully alert. And when the shoji slid back with a soft click and he stood there grinning in the doorway, she was already on her feet, already moving across the tatami to him, her arms rising of their own volition to pull him to her. "Miriam," he said, as the maid ducked away like the shadow of a bird and she fell into his arms, her blood surging so violently she was afraid she was going to crush him. But oh, the smell of him! The touch of his lips at her throat! "Frank," she cried. "Oh, Frank, Frank, Frank."
They stayed on there together for five days. She showed him the trails on the hillside, the temple, the shops, pointed out the little yellow birds and the funny old man at the tobacconist"s who"d cut a perfect pie slice out of his conical hat so he could see the sky above him. Frank found a trove of prints in an out-of-the-way shop even the Tokyo dealers didn"t seem to know about, haggling over a dozen rare specimens, including at least one he immediately inaugurated into the pantheon of his favorites-it was a Shunsh, very colorful, dating from 1777, of the actor Ichikawa Danjr V in a red robe. When the money changed hands, he looked as if he wanted to get up and caper round the room, but she held him back because he had to save face for the dealer and his children and everyone else who came out to stare as they all but minced up the street, arm in arm.
They bathed together. Sat out in their kosode in the evening and watched the sun plunge into the hills. They ate and laughed and made the futon rock on the tatami as if it were a creaking four-poster under the weight of the newest newlyweds in the oldest inn in Wisconsin. And when they left to go back to Tokyo-together-she had a shining promise to hold out before her, rarer and more beautiful than all the prints in the world: Kitty had relented after all these years and they were going to be married.
Just as soon as possible.
Three years later, as she sat fanning herself in the shade of an avocado tree in the back garden of Leora"s little Spanish villa in Santa Monica, she was still waiting. Frank had been true to his word, she couldn"t fault him there-or yes, she could, because he"d dragged his feet through every conceivable delay and evasion till she thought she was going to die unwed like some sad deluded cast-off little strumpet in a morality play. But at least he was free now, at least he"d seen to that. The divorce had been granted back in November and all that remained was to wait out the twelve-month probationary period before Frank could remarry, and the clock was ticking down on that too-in just over two and a half months she would be Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright.
"What are you going to wear? For the wedding, I mean?" Leora tipped the ash from her cigarette against the lip of the urn Miriam had brought her from j.a.pan and then looked away, as if they"d been discussing the length of the gra.s.s or the color of the drapes in the guesthouse. She was in her bathing costume, a blue woolen suit with a ruffled white skirt, her wet hair bound up in a towel, and she idly stretched her legs and flexed her toes to admire her pretty feet and freshly painted toenails. "You don"t still have-? "
Miriam let out a laugh. "Lord, no. G.o.d, it"s been so long. I was just a girl then. A child." She smiled at the memory. "No, I envision a small private ceremony, something unconventional, spiritual-midnight, maybe."
"Midnight? Well, I guess that would be unconventional. People will think-"
"That"s just it-we don"t care what people think. And I don"t want the press there. You know what a nuisance the newspapers have been."
Leora didn"t have anything to say to that. She set her legs back down on the wooden slats of the chaise, lifted her drink from the table. The wind-some sort of Californian sirocco, dry as dust-chased a scatter of spade-shaped avocado leaves across the patio and into the pool. She let out a sigh. "At least you don"t have to worry about the mother," she said.
The old dragon"s face rose up briefly in Miriam"s consciousness-Don"t you dare call me by my given name: I"m Mrs. Wright to you and don"t you ever forget it-like a lump of driftwood bobbing in the murk of the Wolf River. "Yes," she said, "and thank G.o.d for small mercies."
Of course, now that the war had been won, she could be facetious about it, not that she"d ever disrespect the dead. But there was a time when it was no laughing matter. Taliesin had always been a trial to her, but when they came home from j.a.pan for good134 and Frank insisted on dragging her all the way across America to play at being the country grandee, his mother was entrenched there, undisputed mistress of the house, and she wasn"t about to give an inch. From the minute they arrived, the old lady had started in, carping about her accent, her mannerisms, her dress, contradicting everything she said out of pure spite. If she said she"d like to open the windows to get a breath of air, the old dragon practically nailed them shut. Mention the menu-hadn"t anyone ever heard of a salad?-and she"d have the cook boil the lettuce. If Miriam wanted Frank to take her to Chicago or out to a restaurant or even into Spring Green to watch the dust settle in the street, the old lady suddenly developed the flu or her sciatica flared up and if her boy wasn"t there to cluck his tongue over her she"d just about curl up and die. It was as if they"d never left. It was 1916 all over again.
And Miriam wouldn"t tolerate it. She told Frank that point-blank. But this time she wasn"t going to lie up in her room like some dog he"d abused-oh, no, she"d had enough. She directed Billy Weston to bring the car around and take her into Spring Green, where she was going to put up at the hotel until Frank could give her an answer to the question she"d put to him back then-"Who"s it going to be: her or me?"-and hang the expense, because hitting him in the pocketbook was the only thing he could seem to understand. The mama"s boy. The waffler. And before she left, with the car standing in the drive and the motor running and Frank wringing his hands in the studio or out in the stable or wherever he was, she marched right into the old lady"s room to give her a piece of her mind.
It was mid-afternoon, hotter than the front porch of the devil"s place down in Hades, and she took her by surprise, startling Anna up out of a nap in the armchair next to the bed. There were flies at the windows. A smell of camphor, ointment. Medicine bottles crowded the table beside her. Two of Frank"s prints were propped up on the bureau, gifts he"d brought back for her. The old lady"s head snapped up. "You get out of here," she growled, her voice caught low in her throat.
Miriam dispensed with the preliminaries, because this was it, the battle joined at long last. "You know you"re destroying your son"s last chance for happiness, don"t you?" she demanded.
Anna made a shooing motion with the back of her hand and tried to push herself up out of the chair but fell back again. "I won"t talk to you. You"re a cheap woman. A tramp."
"You will. You will talk to me. Because Frank is going to marry me whether you like it or not."
A glare. A tightening of the mouth, as if a noose had been pulled tight. "Not while I"m alive."
She loomed over the woman, so full of hate and rage and frustration it was all she could do to stop from s.n.a.t.c.hing her up out of the chair and shaking her like a bundle of rags. The tremor ran up her spine and shivered the back of her neck. She felt as if she were going to faint but she fought it. She had to. Had to have this out once and for all. "Then you"ll just have to die," she said. "Frank and I are engaged, do you understand that? Engaged to be married. As soon as the divorce is final-the very day, I promise you-I"ll be Mrs. Wright and I"ll be giving the orders around here. And I won"t let you or anyone else stand in my way."
There was more. The old lady crying out like a parched peahen, struggling to get up out of the chair and n.o.body there to hear or help her either and Miriam acquainting her with the truth in all its unvarnished detail. Then it was the hotel and Frank running back and forth between the two of them, the biggest crisis of his life, the days burning into the sweated nights, and within the month Anna was gone and Miriam had Taliesin all to herself, triumphant at last.135 And now, sitting beneath the avocado tree in Leora"s garden while Frank oversaw the construction of his block houses in Pasadena and Hollywood and Leora"s husband slapped a little white ball around a golf course, she took a moment to let the weight of it sink in. Her nemesis was dead. And she wouldn"t speak ill of the dead-or think ill of her either. All that was behind her, a bad dream dispelled in the light of day. "Yes," she said finally, "there"s that, at least. And I was thinking of designing my own gown, something-oh, I don"t know, artistic, Grecian, a simple little thing. Not satin. Crepe de chine maybe. And not white. White"s for the first time around." She paused to lift her eyes to the rich foliate canopy above her, the leaves dancing on the breeze. "Something in taupe maybe. Or pearl. And my furs, of course."
Leora let out a little hoot of a laugh and treated her to her half smile, the one she used for intimacies, ironic or otherwise. "Amen," she said. "Outdoors, at night, in Wisconsin? In November, no less?"
Miriam was feeling insuperable, at peace with herself and Frank and the specter of his dead mother too. All the stars were aligned. Everything was in place. She could indulge in the luxury of antic.i.p.ation. "Yes," she said, returning the smile, and she was almost giddy with the joy bubbling up in her, "it"s not exactly Palm Beach, is it?"
Later, after a light luncheon and a girlish frolic in the pool, they sent the Chinese houseboy in to mix another round of c.o.c.ktails and had separately turned back to the magazines they"d been flipping through off and on all afternoon, when the gate from the drive swung open and Leora"s husband appeared in his golfing togs and crisp white cap, a bag of clubs slung over one shoulder. "Dwight!" Miriam sang out. "Come join us-we"re just about to have c.o.c.ktails." "Yes, do!" Leora called. "It"s that kind of day, don"t you think?" And for some reason, they both broke out in giggles.
Miriam watched him set down his clubs, prop them carefully against the fence and start across the lawn in his loose easy strides, his shoulders slumped in the conciliatory way of very tall men. She"d always liked Dwight. He was uncomplicated, stalwart, mild without being wishy-washy, and he treated Leora as if she were the only woman on earth.
"Don"t mind if I do," he said, ducking in out of the sun. "Hot out there on the course, what with this devil"s wind . . ." He stood a moment, arms akimbo, grinning down at them, and if Miriam had the sense that he was looking down the front of her bathing costume and admiring her bare legs, well, so much the better. He was a sweet man. And appreciative.
The conversation ran off on its own, light and amusing, the banter of three old friends united under an avocado tree on a late summer afternoon within sight of the distant sun-coppered crescent of the Santa Monica Bay, and the Chinese brought the beaded c.o.c.ktails on a lacquered tray and Miriam felt her mood lift to yet a higher plane. They were midway through their second c.o.c.ktail when Dwight suddenly leaned back in his chair and slapped his forehead. "Jeez," he said, letting out a hiss of air, "I nearly forgot-did you hear the news? Because I thought of you right away, and Frank, because you were over there-"
"News?" Leora"s smile expanded till her lips drew tight. "How could we hear any news"-and she giggled again, this time in a thicker, throatier way, the gin at work-"when we"ve hardly moved between the chair and the pool all day?"
"The earthquake. In Tokyo. Everybody in the clubhouse was talking about it."
Miriam felt her own smile fade. Frank had been obsessed with earthquakes the whole time they were in j.a.pan, and there was the one that struck when they were in their rooms at the hotel, terrifying in its suddenness, as if a freight train had come right on through the door and out the window all in a minute"s time. "Was it-is it serious? I mean, do they know if there"s been damage-?"
Dwight turned to her, the wind rattling the stiff leathery leaves overhead. His eyes faded a moment and then flickered back to life. "Oh, yeah," he said, "yeah. They"re saying it"s bad. Buildings down, fires, the whole works."
"And the hotel? Did they say about the hotel?"
In the next moment she was up out of her chair, the suit clinging damply to her as she hurried barefoot across the yard and into the house to call Frank. Her heart was pounding as she stood dripping on Leora"s carpet in the dim hush of the front hallway and waited for the operator to connect her-she was imagining the worst, the Imperial in ruins, Frank"s reputation destroyed, the Baron and the Ablomovs and Tscheremissinoff transformed into refugees, or worse, injured, killed-when Frank came on the line. "h.e.l.lo? Miriam, is that you?"
She didn"t have to ask if he"d heard-his voice betrayed him. "Yes," she said, and a calm came over her because she was going to stand by him no matter what, prove herself, defend him in the face of the whole world, "it"s me. I"ve just heard the news."
There was a crackle of static. "They"re saying"-his voice sank so low she could barely hear him-"that it"s the worst earthquake in the history of j.a.pan. And that Tokyo took the brunt of it."136 "Any word of the hotel?"
"No. Nothing."
She couldn"t seem to catch her breath. The receiver of the phone was dead weight in her hand-it took an effort of will just to hold it to her ear. "I don"t care," she said, the words coming so fast she could scarcely get them out, "because I can see it standing there now, not a window shattered, a testament to you, to you, Frank, even if the whole city"s destroyed around it, and I don"t care what they say, I don"t-"
They were in limbo for twelve interminable days.
The papers were full of the story, headlines trumpeting disaster, the least detail pried from the wreckage by the ghouls of the press, but nothing was certain, no one could be trusted till the full accounting was in. Frank was so distracted he couldn"t seem to sit in a chair for more than two minutes at a time. He paced endlessly. Lost his appet.i.te. Let his work lag while he twisted the radio dial and worried the newspapers. The cruelest moment was when they were awakened by the phone ringing in the middle of the night only to have a reporter from the Examiner, full of himself, full of the joy of Schadenfreude, crow over the line that the Imperial had been destroyed and wondering if Frank had a statement to make. Miriam came up out of the mora.s.s of sleep, groggy, drugged, buried in a river of oneiric mud, saying, "What? What?" And his voice was there, in the dark, crackling with outrage, truth against the world: "On what authority? How do you know? Have you been there and back on a magic carpet? No, no: you listen to me. The Imperial Theater might have gone down, the Imperial Hospital, the Imperial University and all the thousand other buildings that trumpet the Emperor"s connection, but if there"s a structure standing in all that torn country it will be my hotel. And you can print it!"
How she loved him for that-for his fierceness and certainty. Get his back up against the wall and he"d fight like a lion. She lay there that night listening to his breathing decelerate, declining through the layers of consciousness till he was asleep beside her, her man, her fiance, her very own personal genius, Frank Lloyd Wright, creator of the Imperial Hotel, may it stand ten thousand years. And even as she drifted off she heard the workers chanting all the way across the spill and tumult of the waves, Wrieto-San, Wrieto-San, banzai!
The telegram finally reached them on the evening of September 13. It had been forwarded through the Spring Green office to their apartment in Hollywood just as they were sitting down to dinner. Frank"s hands quivered as he tore it open. And then his face flushed and he was reading it aloud: FOLLOWING WIRELESS RECEIVED FROM TOKIO TODAY.
HOTEL STANDS UNDAMAGED AS MONUMENT OF YOUR.
GENIUS HUNDREDS OF HOMELESS PROVIDED BY PERFECTLY.
MAINTAINED SERVICE SIGNED OKURA IMPEHO137.
And now the press could feed on him to its heart"s content. Now she and Frank could open the doors and stand there arm in arm for the photographer"s flash and Frank could prance and crow and sermonize and she, in the shadows no longer, could stand at his side and broadcast his genius to the wide world. She was so proud of him. And he-beaming, glowing like a one-hundred-watt bulb and offering up his grandest smile-he was proud of her.
In the wake of that-the tumult of the press and the international outpouring of awe and grat.i.tude and congratulation that rocketed Frank so far ahead of his compet.i.tors and critics that he became, in a single heroic stroke, the most famous architect in the world and no one even to raise a whisper to deny it-the next two months slipped by so quickly she scarcely knew where they went. She kissed Leora on both cheeks, in the French way, her eyes full and her heart luminous, and then she and Frank returned to Wisconsin to make themselves ready, one more shriving of the soul and the flesh too. She was a new person altogether, newborn, and she stood at the tall living room windows looking down the long avenues of light and felt herself open up inside, lifting higher and higher till she was a bright fluttering pennant on a breeze that could never chill her again. The trees gave up their leaves. The weather turned bitter. The lake froze so hard it could have supported the weight of every automobile and tractor in the county. And the night sky was clear all the way to the rooftop of the universe, the stars strung from its beams in a cool white shatter of bliss. For her. For her and Frank.
They could have been married in Los Angeles or even Chicago (quietly, quietly, because whether they bowed to convention and he legitimated her with his ring and a kiss as if they were just any common Joe and Jane was n.o.body"s business), but the symbolism of Taliesin was irresistible and when he proposed it she didn"t demur or even hesitate. "Yes," she said, "there"s no place I"d rather be," and for once she meant it. This was where his heart was, this was where his mother lay buried and the ghost woman too, Mamah, the phantasm she"d had to compete with through all these gratuitous years at his side. It was perfect. She"d have it no other way. And if the wind screamed down out of Canada and the hogs threw up their stink and the rubes sat stupefied in their parlors while her light shone out over the ice-bound river in the witching hour of the night, then so much the better.
But now it was a question of shoes. Of her dress. Flowers. A midnight supper. The cake. Would there even be a cake? Did it make any sense? Who was going to eat it? If it were up to Frank they"d dine on cheese sandwiches and apple cider, but she would have champagne, crepes, caviar, and she wouldn"t discuss it, not for a minute. If he thought she was going to get married without a champagne toast and at least the semblance of real cuisine, then he"d gone mad. Clear out of his mind. Cuckoo. She fought to stay calm as the day approached, though she wanted to fly out at the maid, the cook, at Billy Weston and anyone else who crossed her path, and she could see that Frank was wrought up too. More than once she heard his enraged voice echoing through the caverns of the house like the report of distant thunder, but he put on a face for her-and she for him. In fact-and it moved her so deeply she found herself dabbing her eyes to realize it-they were tenderer with each other than they"d been since that fraught and glorious week when they first met, when she was his ideal made flesh and her every movement bewitched him.
She hid herself away on the night of the wedding, bathing and dressing and making herself up with a precise measured care that took her through each step of the way as if she were rehearsing her catechism, and no, she didn"t need the maid"s help or the pravaz"s either. She was purposeful, calm, utterly absorbed in the moment. On her lips was the poem she"d committed to memory for him, the best translation she could make of the scroll that had hung in her tatami room in the green fastness of the mountains above the Kant Plain when he came to take her away. It was from the hand of a woman who"d lived a thousand years ago at the court of the Empress, in a time devoted to the fulfillment of the senses, to beauty, poetry, art and love, and she would give it up to him there, in the cold of the primeval night as the stars wheeled overhead and the judge intoned the immemorial phrases and the ring slipped over her finger.
She spoke it aloud one final time, lingering over the rhythms and the aching sweet release of its sentiment. " "The memories of long love, / gather like drifting snow," " she murmured, watching herself in the mirror-beautiful still, still unspoiled, still capable of ascending to the very highest plateau of love and grace abounding-even as her voice dropped to a whisper, " "poignant as the Mandarin ducks / who float side by side in sleep." "
She held her own eyes a moment, looking as deeply into herself as she dared, and then she went out to marry him.
PART III.
MAMAH.
INTRODUCTION TO PART III.
Wrieto-San liked soft pencils. In his paternal-some would say tyrannical-way he banned hard pencils from the drafting room, but there were many among us who preferred them for the crispness and authority of the lines they produced, Herbert Mohl in particular. Herbert was sensitive to criticism, as we all were, but he"d been around Taliesin longer than any of us and we deferred to him, so that there was a period there during which people began to use hard 4H pencils for their drawings in defiance of Wrieto-San"s dictates. (And he preferred soft pencils because their lines were easier to erase, as he was continually erasing while he drew and thought and revised and drew and revised again-"The eraser is the most important instrument of the architectural design," he used to say, making it one of his mantras.) One afternoon-it was cold, winter shrouding the windows, a certain post-luncheon lethargy casting a pall over the drafting room-he emerged suddenly from his office to stroll amongst us, as he did twenty times a day, and we all rose to our feet in deference. "Good G.o.d, it"s like a meat locker in here!" he cried. "Can"t any of you keep up the fire?"
We all looked to the fireplace. There was a fairly good blaze going, three tiers of logs stacked up and the flames licking upward from a healthy bed of coals-in fact, Wes had laid on another log not five minutes before-but of course all that mattered was the Master"s perception, not ours. Dutifully, I left my desk and bent to the fire with the poker in hand so as to settle the logs, then laid on another neatly split length. "Ah-ha!" I heard Wrieto-San call out behind me even as the Lucullan heat scorched my face and hands. "Hard pencils! You, you"re guilty, aren"t you, Herbert? And you, Marian. And, Wes-not you, Wes, tell me it isn"t true!"
He was being facetious, of course-you could hear the lilt in his voice and know he was in a capital mood-but there was a treacherous undercurrent here as well. By the time I"d swung round (I used soft pencils only, incidentally, both as a matter of preference and in homage to the Master) he"d s.n.a.t.c.hed up all the hard pencils he could find, darting round the room like a leprechaun or whatever the Welsh equivalent might be, and tossed them into the heart of the blaze. Then he sprang up on a drafting stool and spread his arms wide. "I"ve just s.n.a.t.c.hed victory from the jaws of defeat!" he sang (a phrase he usually reserved for the occasion of making alterations to our drawings), and we all, but for Herbert, laughed aloud.
I tell this story because it ill.u.s.trates the kind of hold Wrieto-San exerted over us all whether we rebelled in an attempt to define our individual selves or not. Herbert continued to use hard pencils on the sly, just as I used soft ones-as I still do today-but the point is, every time we put pencil to paper Wrieto-San was in our thoughts. And, of course, as I"ve indicated, it wasn"t just architectural matters over which he held sway, but everything else as well, from our diets to the clothes we wore and the automobiles we drove to whom we chose to date or marry.
Perhaps I did subvert his wishes here, on this last point, but I feel to this day that I was justified-I didn"t need to be treated like a child, nor did Daisy. If we came together in love and affection and a mutuality of taste and interest and outlook, that was n.o.body"s business but our own. Or so I thought. Until Wrieto-San-and Mrs. Wright, who was equally culpable-disabused me of that notion.
I could see it coming, of course, from that very first day after Daisy"s arrival when both the Wrights gave me a good dressing-down, but when the boom finally fell, I was unprepared for it nonetheless. Or, no (and why, at this distant remove, must I be so ridiculously proper?)-I was stunned. Heartbroken. Scalded by the sheer audacity and treachery of it. Still, I don"t think it would have happened in quite the way it did-or perhaps at all-if they hadn"t been hyper-sensitized around that time by Svetlana"s elopement with Wes.
Of all the apprentices-and we each curried favor in his own way, even Herbert, who was the best draftsman amongst us-Wes was clearly the anointed one. If any job needed doing, Wes was there, always the first to antic.i.p.ate the Master"s needs, wants and moods (and this was a real trick-we had to be vigilant at all times, so that if, for instance, we spied Wrieto-San strolling off in the direction of the vegetable garden or the stables, we had to get there ahead of him and know what it was he wanted done before he did). And when Wrieto-San called out a name for preferment, consultation, companionship, it was nearly always Wes". It hurts me to say it, but Wes was more a son to him than his own sons, and the affection he had for Wes was as easy to read as his body language and the quick sharp snap of his eyes when Wes entered the room. It hurts me to say it because I wanted to be that son with all my heart and soul-we all did.
Svet and Wes were thrown together at the outset, almost in the way of brother and sister, and yet they were anything but. Wes was in his early twenties when he appeared at Taliesin, the first member of the Fellowship (if you exclude Herbert Mohl, who"d begun as a paid draftsman and stayed on, with no more salary than the rest of us, during the tenuous years of the Depression), and Svet was just shy of sixteen. She"d grown up with a love of the outdoors and partic.i.p.ated fully in the Taliesin life, taking her turn in the stables or the kitchen or out in the fields like any of us. Early on, she learned to drive, both the automobiles and the tractor, and she was especially adept on horseback. She was musical, and, as I"ve said, she was pretty, more often than not dressing in blue jeans and a simple blouse, with her hair in pigtails, and managing to look as captivating as any sophisticate out of Chicago or New York. Wes fell for her, just as I fell for Daisy, and who could blame him?
I don"t know how Wrieto-San found out about it. He was so enveloped in his cloud of genius-and I wouldn"t want to call it solipsism or privilege or droit du roi-that he didn"t necessarily see the needs and emotions of others. My guess is that Mrs. Wright, constantly manipulating each of the threads of her web like a great painted spider, if you"ll forgive the image, alerted him to what was going on under his very nose. At any rate, Wes was exiled to his parents" place in Evansville, Indiana, and Svetlana was sent to Winnetka, Illinois, to keep house for the family of the concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in exchange for musical instruction. They continued seeing each other during this period, however, and they were married two years later, after which Wrieto-San put out overtures and they returned to Taliesin. Shortly thereafter, Wes, having come into his inheritance on the death of his father, was able to rescue Taliesin from yet another attempt at foreclosure due to habitual non-payment of mortgage, taxes and fees accruing. He proved to be a boon as a son-in-law, enabling Wrieto-San to get back on his feet financially and begin to acquire a great deal of the surrounding acreage, including the parcels on which Reider"s pig farm and Stuffy"s Tavern stood, at fire-sale prices.
But the point of all this is Daisy. Daisy and me. We stole what time we could, so eager for the touch of each other"s bodies that we engaged in the kind of reckless s.e.xual behavior-the aforementioned trysts in the fields and at the top of Romeo and Juliet, slipping in and out of rooms and automobiles in the dark of night-that could have got us exiled as well, and of course there was always the risk of pregnancy. Which would have meant the intercession of her parents, frantic cables to my father in Tokyo, perhaps even arrest and prosecution for fornicating, miscegenating and G.o.d knew what else. Disgrace, certainly. The wrath of Wrieto-San. We had little choice but to lie low, and yet what we longed for was some time to ourselves, independent of Taliesin and the Wrights in loco parentis, and finally we got the opportunity. Wrieto-San and Mrs. Wright went off to Chicago for a week on business-this was at the height of summer, the year after Svet and Wes had left Taliesin-and Daisy and I counted off the minutes of one breathless hour, then threw a suitcase in the Bearcat and took off down the same road to the Windy City.
We could have gone to Milwaukee or Madison, I suppose, but we wanted a taste of the real thing, of jazz music, eclectic cuisine, the crush of people, and we never thought twice about it-Chicago was the only place to go. No one would recognize us there, and if we kept our displays of affection private, there was no reason to think that anyone would notice us either-or take exception to what we represented as a couple. They might think that I was a foreign exchange student (which, in a sense, I was) and Daisy the daughter of the family that had sponsored me (which, in a sense, she was) or perhaps a sister of mercy, an interpreter of Asiatic languages, a sightseeing guide with a soft spot for handsome, cultivated j.a.panese men.
"I want a beer-and a whiskey-in one of those speakeasies Al Capone shot up," was the first thing she said to me after we"d checked into our very modest hotel, separately, in our separate rooms, though it sickened me to have to pay double for the sake of appearances. "I want to see the holes in the walls. I want to run this little finger"-she held up her index finger-"round one of those holes. Just for the thrill of it."
"Sure," I said, "me too. I can be a gangster and you can be my moll-do you want to be my moll?"
We were waiting for the elevator. There was no one around. I leaned in close and kissed her even before she slid her skirt up one leg to expose an imaginary garter and said "Si, certo, of course I"ll be your moll, signore," because we were like two kids playacting and I loved the way her eyes widened and her lips parted in expectation. We were in Chicago. We were free. And we had the whole afternoon and evening ahead of us, and two heady days beyond that.
I somehow got the notion that we should at least drive past the scene of the St. Valentine"s Day ma.s.sacre, which was on the north side, in the Lincoln Park area, and at that moment, truthfully, I"d forgotten all about Wrieto-San. Deep down, buried in some back room of my consciousness, I knew that he was somewhere out there in the confusion of pedestrians, streetcars, towering buildings and sun-striped boulevards, that he was very likely stopping at the Congress Hotel or paying a surprise visit to the Robie house or taking the air on Michigan Avenue, but I left the knowledge there. We climbed into the Cherokee-red Bearcat in the warm atomized sweetness of the late afternoon and let the breeze wash over us as I fought my way through the welter of cars and did my best to ignore the hooting horns and the double takes of one driver or another. The top was down. Of course it was down. It was summer. In Chicago. And we were out in the thick of it.
As I"ve said, I wasn"t much of a driver, and though I"d gained confidence on the backroads of Wisconsin, negotiating big-city traffic was another thing altogether. We were lost almost immediately-we never did find the St. Valentine"s garage or a tavern with holes in the walls, but we did manage a few beers in a bar and grill so murky and grime-encrusted it could have been the real thing. There were discolored flecks of some glutinous substance decorating the wall behind the table, which Daisy, lighting a cigarette in perfect nonchalance, claimed was blood but was more likely just catsup. Or marinara sauce, in keeping with the clientele. We ordered sandwiches, listened to the jukebox, kept our hands to ourselves. Nonetheless-I think we were on our third beer at the time-one of the patrons at the bar, who"d been speaking an animated Italian with his cronies, lurched over to our table and accused me of being a Chinaman, which I hotly denied. I didn"t like his face. I didn"t like his eyes. And things could have gotten violent very quickly if Daisy hadn"t taken hold of my arm and jerked me through the door and out onto the street as if I were a limp fish she"d caught on the end of a very taut line.
At any rate, the beers didn"t improve my sense of direction-or my sense of coordination with respect to gear shift, clutch and steering wheel, those essential tools of the road master-and we were lost on the way back too. I did manage to locate Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive and found a street heading west off of it that looked vaguely familiar even as Daisy insisted she"d never seen it before. It was then-and we weren"t quarreling, not really, though we were both, I think, frustrated by the endless detouring, backtracking, lurching and bucking, and eager to get back to the hotel-that I spotted Wrieto-San. We were stuck in a line of cars at a stoplight, the fall of day thickening the shadows in the alleyways, exhaust rising h.e.l.lishly round us, and he was on the far side of the street, swaggering along in his usual way, twirling his walking stick, chatting with Mrs. Wright and a round-shouldered man in a gray suit who followed half a step behind. In that moment, Daisy saw him too. She let out an expostulation-or more of a squeak, actually-then ducked her head down beneath the dash, compressing her shoulders and pinching her knees together so tightly I was afraid she was going to burrow down through the floorboards and into the pavement beneath.
I held absolutely rigid, as if by freezing myself in s.p.a.ce and time I could render myself invisible or at least inconspicuous-daylight was closing down and there were cars and people everywhere to provide cover-but then how inconspicuous could the only j.a.panese on the street hope to be? Especially as he was presented centerstage in a Stutz Bearcat automobile in the one shade of color most likely to attract the Master"s eye? Don"t ask. Because I wouldn"t want to have to answer the question myself. At any rate, the denouement had Wrieto-San and his party pa.s.sing by, apparently oblivious, till he turned the corner and was gone.
I never had the courage to ask him if he"d seen me that day-seen us-even after the war when I came back to visit at Taliesin. He gave no sign of it when he and Mrs. Wright returned at the end of the week (and Daisy and I were hard at work on the upkeep of the place, taking our turns with the dishes and the hogs and all the other tasks the apprentices were a.s.signed on a rotating schedule), but it was shortly thereafter that he strode into the drafting room one morning in his full regalia, beret, cape, jodhpurs and elevated shoes, and announced that he was leaving to inspect a building site in Wichita. "Wes," he called out, "and, uh, Tadashi-I"ll need you to come along. Pack some things. We leave in five minutes."