When we returned four days later, Daisy was nowhere to be found.
At first I didn"t understand-I went straight to her room, bursting with news of the trip, but no one answered my knock. Pushing the door open, I thrust my head in the room and saw, with a shock, that it had been stripped bare. Her books, her watercolors and hangings, her cosmetics, shoes, magazines and newspapers were gone-even the covers from her bed. Dumbfounded, I went to the wardrobe. There was nothing there but for one crumpled woolen sock in the back corner-and yes, I s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and held it to my nose, desperate suddenly for the scent of her, thinking all the while that there must be some simple explanation, that she"d switched rooms, perhaps over to Hillside or even upstairs, where the views were more amenable. For all her cigarette smoking and urban tastes, Daisy loved the views down the long valley at Taliesin and on more than one occasion she"d told me how jealous she was of Gwendolyn because Gwendolyn had been a.s.signed the room above hers, on the second floor.
I took the stairs two at time. It was late in the afternoon, windows open wide, ladybugs floating randomly up the stairwell, the sound of someone"s gramophone running a naked wire through the atmosphere (Borodin"s Second String Quartet, and I can never hear its sobbing strains without thinking of her, of Daisy, my Daisy, and the infinite sadness of that day). Gwendolyn was sprawled across her bed, still sweating from her exertions in the fields, and though I was so worked up I didn"t think to knock, she didn"t seem at all surprised to find me standing there in the doorway. "It was her father," she said, without bothering to get up. "Mrs. Wright called him-that"s what everybody"s saying-and he showed up in some sort of fancy car, maybe a Duesenberg or something like that. I barely got to say two words to her, let alone goodbye."
She was studying the look on my face as if she were a student of the human physiognomy, as if she were mentally measuring me for a marble bust. She"d never much liked me because I"d never much liked her. I tried to say something, but couldn"t seem to get the words out. "What," she said, all innocence, "didn"t she tell you?"
I skipped dinner that night and hiked out to Stuffy"s to use the pay telephone there. I lost a pocketful of change before I finally got through to her, at her father"s house in Pittsburgh. When she answered, her voice was dead and all I could think was that she"d been drugged. "It"s me," I said. "I"m coming to you."
"No," she said, far away from me, very far, farther than I could have imagined. "You can"t. My father-"
"To h.e.l.l with your father." (I wasn"t given to foul language, but I was beside myself.) "He won"t let me-and my mother either. They"re threatening Mr. Wright with a lawsuit."
"A lawsuit? For what? Because we love each other?" I looked away absently as a man in overalls and a cloven hat swung through the door and into the tavern. The sun spread yolk over the gla.s.s of the phonebooth. It was so hot I felt like a candle burned down to the wick. "You"re twenty years old. They can"t stop us. n.o.body can."
I listened to her breathing over the line. "Tadashi," she said finally, "you don"t understand. I can"t see you anymore. They"re sending me to London, to stay with my Uncle Peter and Aunt Margaret-I"m going to study design at the Royal Academy. Or at least that"s the idea."
"London?" I pictured a d.i.c.kensian scene, Daisy selling matchsticks on the street, huddled in a garret. My mind was racing. "When?" I said, and I was begging now, stalling for time, trying to calculate the distance from Taliesin to Pittsburgh, a place I"d never been to and of which I had only the vaguest geographic notion.
"Day after tomorrow."
"But why?" I demanded, yet I already knew the answer to that question, just as I"d known with the girl in college, just as I"d known from the minute Daisy and I laid eyes on each other. j.a.panese were personae non gratae in this country, the Issei forever barred from attaining citizenship on racial grounds alone, whereas Swedes, Germans, even Italians and Greeks were welcome. "Is it because I"m not white? Is that it?"
She was a long time answering, and all the while a hurricane of pops, scratches and whistles howled through the line, and when she did answer her voice was so reduced I scarcely knew she was speaking. She said, "Yes," in the way she might have dropped a pebble in the ocean. "Yes," she said. "Yes."
Of course, all this happened a very long time ago and I"m aware that it is peripheral to the task at hand, which is to give as full a portrait of Wrieto-San as I can, and I don"t wish to dwell on the negative, not at all. Suffice to say that I stayed on at Taliesin, grudgingly at first (and perhaps I should have defied Wrieto-San and Daisy"s father and all the rest of the world and driven through the night to Pittsburgh and held her to me so tightly no one could ever have torn us apart, but that sort of demonstrative behavior, is, I"m afraid, alien to me), and then, as the weeks, months and years wore on, in the way of humility and acceptance. Increasingly I came to an ever deeper understanding of the true meaning of apprenticeship and the sacrifice required in service of a great master, and I salved my wounds in the a.n.a.lgesic of work.
Which is precisely why I"d like to relate a happier experience from this period, one in which Wrieto-San again called on me to travel with him on business. It must have been in 1937 or 1938-my memory and the notes I"ve saved from that time are in conflict here-but it was certainly before the great gulf of the war came between us. Wrieto-San, as it happened, was in need of a new automobile-or to be more precise, two new automobiles. We were by then caravanning annually to Taliesin West, which tended to take a toll on our vehicles, and this was the ostensible rationale for our trip to the automobile dealer"s showroom in Chicago, but, in fact, as has been indicated above, Wrieto-San didn"t concern himself so much with needs as he did with wants. He wanted the newest model of Lincoln automobile, the Lincoln Zephyr, and when Wrieto-San wanted something, he always-always, without fail-got it.
I suppose he brought me along that day as a sort of foil, a strange face to put the salesman off his guard, but of course I saw nothing of that-I was simply pleased and honored to be at his side, no matter my function. In any case, he strutted grandly through the door of the showroom, tricked out in all his Beaux Arts finery, the ends of his senatorial tie flowing and his cane tapping at the gleaming tiles of the floor, while I brought up the rear. The salesman-a sort of Babbitt-type, portly, glowing, pleased with himself-came sailing out of the office and across the floor like a liner out on the sea, his hand outstretched in greeting. He could see in a moment that Wrieto-San was someone great, a dynamo, a prince among men, but I"m not sure if he recognized him at first.
"Yes," Wrieto-San said, studying the man"s hand a moment before clenching it in his own, "I"ve come for this car." He used his cane as a pointer. The Zephyr stood there in all its aerodynamic beauty, with its grill of chrome shining like the teeth of some fierce predatory animal, the skirts that extended the sculpted cha.s.sis and the long tapering wonder of the cab. It was a magnificent thing, elegant and brutal at the same time, its hood concealing the peerless V-12 engine that would tear up the road and transform its compet.i.tors into tiny gleams in the rearview mirror. I saw it and wanted it myself. Anyone would have. It was the pinnacle of automotive perfection.
"Good," the salesman said, rubbing his hands together in antic.i.p.ation of his commission, and then he launched into a fulsome speech about the car"s features and reliability, going on at such length that Wrieto-San, exasperated, finally cut him off.
"Can it be that you don"t recognize me?" he said.
"Why, yes"-the salesman faltered-"of course I do."
I heard my own voice then, though I"d intended to remain silent-and watchful. "Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright," I said, and I had to restrain myself from bowing.
The man slapped his forehead. "Mr. Wright," he intoned, as if he were offering up a prayer, "of course, of course. It"s an honor, sir, a great honor." And then he was pumping Wrieto-San"s hand all over again.
When he was finished, when he got done wriggling and grinning and running a hand through his hair and straightening his tie, he stared expectantly at Wrieto-San, who gave me one of his patented looks (we apprentices liked to call it the boa-constrictor-swallowing-the-rat look), then turned back to the salesman. "I"ll want two of them," he p.r.o.nounced. "And I"ll want them cut off here"-an abrupt slashing movement of the cane that sliced an imaginary line from the windshield to the rear window-"so that convertible tops can be installed." He paused. "They"ll need to be painted, of course, in Cherokee red," he added, turning to me. "Tadashi, you have the color sample, do you not?"
"Yes, Wrieto-San," I said, and this time I did bow as I handed over the sheet of paper decorated with the red square.
And then, as that seemed to have concluded the business, Wrieto-San turned to leave, but stopped before he"d gone five steps. "Oh, yes," he said, his voice as self-a.s.sured as any senator"s on the stump, "I"ll want delivery within the month. And I won"t be paying. You do understand that, don"t you?"
We got a great deal of use out of those cars. They were every bit as powerful and rugged-not to mention elegant-as advertised. And they were especially useful for longer treks-to Arizona, to visit clients and construction sites in the late thirties and early forties, when we were busily engaged with the building of Florida Southern College, the Community Church in Kansas City, the Sturges House in California and any number of other far-flung projects. And, of course, their performance was all the more satisfying because Wrieto-San did not pay a nickel for them, nor was he expected to. Just as he"d calculated, the Lincoln Automotive Company was delighted to advertise just what make and model the world"s greatest architect chose to drive.
This anecdote, ill.u.s.trative as it is both of Wrieto-San"s magnetism and his audacity, brings me to the darkest period of my time with him, if you except the contretemps over Daisy. I"m referring now to events that went far beyond the scale of what any of us at Taliesin or anywhere else in America could have imagined or foreseen-that is, the bombing of Pearl Harbor by my native people, and the consequences it had for me, a j.a.panese national living by dint of a student visa in the trammeled hills of Wisconsin. Nothing could have protected me from the backlash, not even the power and influence of Wrieto-San himself. Looking back on it, I don"t know that any of us could have done anything differently.
The year prior to the "sneak attack," as the press liked to call it, I"d gone down to the local police department to register and have my fingerprints taken as required by Section 31 of the Alien Registration Act, but I really hadn"t thought much about it. The militarists in my country had been rattling their sabers, as had their counterparts in Germany and Italy, and it seemed a reasonable precaution on the part of the U.S. government to attempt to keep an eye on citizens of the belligerent countries despite the fact that war had not yet been declared. I suppose I did feel a degree of shame over the posturing of my countrymen (not to mention the savage and dehumanizing way they were depicted in the American press, which, of course, lumped all j.a.panese in the same barbarian"s boat regardless of outlook or cultural attainments), and yet the experience of registering alongside a dozen or so local Italians and Germans wasn"t particularly troublesome or traumatic in any way. In fact, on that wintry afternoon nearly a year and a half later-December seventh, that is-I"d forgotten entirely about it.
I remember coming in to lunch just after the bell had rung, only to find the dining room deserted. Puzzled, I poked my head in the kitchen. No one was there, not even Mabel, who was as much a fixture of the place as its furniture. The stove was hot, a cauldron of soup steaming atop it, the room warm and redolent. Coffee was brewing. There was half a sliced ham on the countertop and several loaves of bread cooling beside it. Dishcloths, vegetable peels, ladles, knives and all the rest of the culinary appurtenances were scattered about in evidence of recent activity. But no Mabel. And no sign of the apprentice who was to serve as sous-chef and plongeur-or any of my colleagues, who should by that time have been bellying up to the counter with their plates in hand. I went to the window to peer out into the yard (this was at Hillside, where most of the apprentices were now living and working) to see if some disaster had struck in the time it had taken me to leave the drafting room, cross the property to the main house to fetch the set of plans Wrieto-San had sent me for and make my way back again.
It was then that the sound of the radio came to me across the intervening s.p.a.ces of the building. Herbert"s radio. He had a new Zenith in his room, a very powerful receiver with terrific sound quality and an extended aerial he"d fashioned himself, and we often gathered there to listen to programs at night, but here it was the middle of the day-lunchtime-and I could only wonder at that. I moved toward the sound as if in a trance. The sound grew louder. I heard voices raised in excitement and someone crying "Shush!" as the announcer thundered out the news and then I was there, framed in the doorway in astonishment: Herbert"s room was a scrum of humanity, everyone-even Mabel, even Wrieto-San-wedged in as tightly as commuters on the subway.
The radio crackled ominously. Someone glanced up at me-Wes. "Did you hear?" he said, and they all looked up now, no trace of irony or even awareness in his voice-he was delivering information, that was all: Did you hear?
"Hear what?" I said. "What is it?"
"The j.a.ps bombed Pearl Harbor."
Wrieto-San, as I"m sure so many readers are aware, was a pacifist. During the war years he advised his apprentices to declare themselves conscientious objectors and at least two of them that I know of-John Howe and Herbert Mohl-were imprisoned as a result. Wrieto-San stuck by them. He visited them in jail, sent them foodstuffs, letters, books and other amus.e.m.e.nts. So it was with me as well. Within an hour of the initial broadcasts, after we"d dined and got back to work in the drafting room, he took me aside. "Tadashi," he said, "I"m very sorry about all this, this-unfortunate-business." And he was sorry indeed, not only for the madness that was to come, the loss of life and destruction, but because he so genuinely admired the cultures of the powers the United States and its allies had aligned against. Certainly if the war had been with Australia or Indonesia or the Belgian Congo he would have opposed it, but this went even deeper, this saddened him so that his voice shook and lost its timbre. He looked up at me. We were standing just beyond the doorway to the drafting room, out of sight of the others. "You know what this means, don"t you? "
I wasn"t thinking. Call me naive, but I never dreamed that the Americans among whom I"d lived and worked for so long now would see me as a threat to the national security. Or-more significantly-that I would be forced to leave Taliesin, the only sanctuary I"d fully embraced in all my life, the place that was more a home to me than Tokyo itself, and the man who was, at this juncture, as much my father as the man who"d sired me. I was about to slip the question back to him like the baton in a relay race, to say, No, what does it mean?, when his face told me. I was going into exile. Going to prison.
"They"ll be coming for you," he said. "And by G.o.d"-his eyes flared-"I"ll do everything in my power to keep them off of this property, but I"m afraid it"s not going to do much good. Not in the end."
"But isn"t it possible-?" I protested. I let my arm sweep forward to suggest all that was or should have been included in that realm of possibility, that they would see me as the harmless architectural apprentice I was, as a devotee of Taliesin and a follower of one Master only, and that against all reason or expectation I would be allowed to stay on and a.s.sist in the great work of Wrieto-San and humanity itself.
He took a moment. I could hear my fellow apprentices chattering away excitedly, war in the air, this place Pearl Harbor stamped suddenly in all our minds though none of us could have pinpointed it on a map the day before. "You might want to think about Canada."
A picture of that vast polar country came to me-a place I"d never been to, but which seemed an eternal wintry Wisconsin spread from one sea to the other-and my dubiety must have shown on my face.
Wrieto-San reached out his hand then and laid it on my shoulder, a gesture I will always remember for the spontaneous warmth of it, as Wrieto-San was never physical with anyone, always standing erect and proper and respecting what today would be called one"s personal s.p.a.ce. "Whatever you need," he said. "Anything. Just ask." He dropped his hand and shoved it deep into his pocket, then turned and strode back into the drafting room, crying out, "Good G.o.d, it"s like a meat locker in here! Can"t any of you keep up a fire?"
The next day, though it was snowing and Taliesin loomed amidst the frozen landscape like an ark locked in the fastness of an unreachable sea, they came for me. Two men from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, showing badges and faces as grim as boot heels. I"d thought of hiding in the stables, of asking Herbert or Wes to lie for me and say I"d fled to Canada, but that was the way of cowardice, not honor. That was the way that would have implicated them-and Wrieto-San-and I couldn"t take it. Instead, though I was as close to tears as I"ve ever been in my adult life, I came forward, striding purposefully through that miracle of organic architecture and aesthetic purity, and bowed to the two men in the heavy twill suits and tan overcoats. Shikata ga nai, is what I said to myself-it can"t be helped. And then I bowed to Wrieto-San, to Mrs. Wright and my fellow apprentices who"d gathered there in the living room as if for a Sat.u.r.day night"s entertainment, and gave myself up to the snow and my innocence and the two steely representatives of the country my country had wronged.
But I see, once again, that I"ve gone on too long here. Suffice to say that I experienced the usual abuses and deprivations, the local jail (or should I say hoosegow?) at first, then, after President Roosevelt issued his infamous executive order 9066, removal to a relocation center in Arkansas and finally to the Tule Lake camp in the north of California, where the most radical and suspect aliens were interned. I won"t take time here to describe the appalling conditions of the uninsulated tarpaper barracks into which we were crowded, the lack of cooking facilities or waste and sewage disposal, the threats and insults of the guards or the anomalous and quite mad fact that hundreds of South American j.a.panese, many of whom no longer even spoke the language of Dai Nippon, were extradited and interned with us. Nor will I say anything about the national administrator of the internment program, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, except to repeat his rationale for all this suffering, humiliation and deprivation of basic human rights not only for resident aliens like myself but for the Nisei who were born in America-that is, "A j.a.p"s a j.a.p."
Wrieto-San wrote me from time to time. My fellow apprentices, many of whom enlisted and went off to fight despite Wrieto-San"s disapproval, sent me books and foodstuffs and for Christmas that first year a quart bottle of Canadian Club reserve whiskey that smelled, tasted and went down like the pure distillate of freedom itself. Still, for long stretches of time that seemed as vast as the desert scrub that fell away from the two k.n.o.bs of desiccated rock that were all we had to stare at, I didn"t care what became of me. I"d lost Taliesin. Lost Wrieto-San. Lost my dignity and status as a human being. If I"d known then how long the war would go on or that the scene in the courtyard would be the last time I"d lay eyes on Wrieto-San till after it was over, I don"t think I would have been able to endure.
But of course I did endure-that is what we are put on this earth to do. We j.a.panese have a saying, Ame futte ji katamaru: the ground that is rained upon hardens. Or, if you like, adversity builds character. So it was with me. I read, learned to cook, worked the vegetable patches we planted that first spring, helped to insulate and fortify the barracks, putting to use everything I"d learned at Taliesin, from my farming skills to the hands-on construction techniques that Wrieto-San, in his casual way, expected us to develop sui generis. And I drew-drew a whole lifetime"s worth of work. Plans for houses, industrial buildings, imaginary cities every bit as bold as Wrieto-San"s Broadacre City (the model of which I had the honor and privilege of working on at Taliesin), anything to bank the fires of creation against the bleakness and destruction that was my life during those years.
After the war, radicalized by my treatment and fearful of the raw acc.u.mulation of racial hatred blistering the heartland, I didn"t return to Taliesin as I"d initially hoped, but instead went back home from California to the devastation of my own country. There I met my wife, Setsuko, and worked on various projects-imagine an ancient and venerable civilization in ruins so hopeless and extensive they swallow the horizons like some nightmare vision out of the Book of Revelation-until the acc.u.mulated sorrow became too much to bear (Hiroshima! Nagasaki!) and my father arranged for me to go to Paris, where I spent ten productive years with the firm of Borchardt et fils, rehabilitating structures damaged during the war and designing a whole array of apartments, town houses and maisons du pays.
I mention my Parisian sojourn only as it relates to the story of Wrieto-San, which, I must keep reminding myself, is the object of these prefatory remarks. The connection resides in tragedy, a shared experience of a great and inconsolable loss, because here, I confess, O"Flaherty-San and I are somewhat out of our depth. Wrieto-San"s first encounter with Mamah Borthwick Cheney occurred before I was born, and I was just seven years old when the cataclysm to which it ultimately gave rise occurred. And while this is hardly the place for apologies of any sort, I should say that O"Flaherty-San knows the material solely in an abstract way, though he is a marvel of imaginative re-creation-I can only thank the G.o.ds or the fates or whatever you want to call them that he has never had to experience a loss of this magnitude, and I hope, for his sake and my granddaughter"s, that he never does.
But Wrieto-San did, and I believe it was the formative experience of his life, the deep well of sadness out of which all his later triumphs had to be drawn, and thus I warn you that the tone of the ensuing pages must necessarily grow more somber and reflective. I wasn"t there. I didn"t meet him until eighteen years after the murders at Taliesin. And yet, strangely, terribly, his tragedy echoed down the years in the sudden unfolding of my own, in the hammer blow of fate that struck me down as surely as any madman"s axe, and my heart and spirit are with him, even now, two long decades after he has pa.s.sed from this world.
Picture a rainy November evening, the streets gray against the acc.u.mulation of darkness and the thousand honeyed lights of the shops and cafes along the rue du Montparna.s.se, the soft hiss of the automobile tires, the sadness of the skies. I am at work still, head bent over a tricolored rendering and the graceful flowing lines of my soft pencils, thinking of dinner, Setsuko, my infant daughter asleep in the next room and my son, Seiji, a quiet night at home, agedashi tofu, soba, a cup of sake. Seiji is four years old. He wants a cat-a kitten-but the proprietaire will not allow it. Unless I make it worth her while. And I will-I will make it worth her while. This is what I am thinking as my hands and eyes work independently of my brain, bringing three dimensions to life in two-until the phone rings, that is. And the picture darkens: a young wife in kimono and clogs, one hand gripped tightly to her son"s and an umbrella thrust over her head, running in the rain to catch her bus, and the taximan, whose breath reeks of vin rouge, and who is late in applying the brake of his automobile. Late. Very late. Too late.
Will you forgive me if I find my fingers trembling over these pages as I struggle to close out this scene once and for all? I merely want to communicate something, some deep knowledge that twists in my hara with an edge as sharp as any sword"s, and, in a way, to present my bona fides, as morbid as that may sound. I"ve suffered. Wrieto-San suffered. We all have suffered. Even O"Flaherty-San, in his own way. But I simply cannot leave Wrieto-San here as if on some charnel heap of memory-I still hear his voice in my dreams, I continue to revere him and the recollection of him and all that he gave me in his supreme mathematics of addition, only addition. And so I present one final moment, my last memory of him.
It was in the late forties, after the war at any rate, and I was on my way to Paris. I got it in my head that I should show my wife the country where I"d spent so many years, the invincible land of the two-fisted giants who"d conquered us with their can-do spirit, their hot dogs and baseball, and the grand cities arising out of the plains and the factories that were like cities in themselves and all the wide-open untenanted reach of the lone prairie that could have swallowed our humble island country ten times over. And Taliesin, of course. Taliesin, above all. If I was honest with myself (and I was, or began to be, somewhere between Utah and Wyoming, as the night closed down over the lunar crags of the Uinta Mountains and Setsuko huddled beside me in terror of the gaijin porters and for the first and last time in my life I hoped people would take me for a Chinaman), I would have admitted that it was Wrieto-San and Wrieto-San alone who was drawing me all the way across the Pacific to his side as if he were the magnet and I the needle. I had to see him. Had to show him that I"d survived Tule Lake and the grisly business of rebuilding j.a.pan. And more: I wanted him to admire Setsuko, wanted to trumpet my connection with Borchardt et fils, wanted him to pat me on the back and rea.s.sure me and tell me what a fine figure I"d made of myself.
I remember feeling overwhelmed as the train began to brake for the station at Spring Green, the hills dipping away to release us to the flatland where the town presented its forlorn cl.u.s.ter of buildings, everything different and somehow the same. My wife was watching me, her shoulders pressed so close to mine we might have been one flesh, though we had the entire compartment to ourselves. "Are you all right?" she asked, tilting her head to study me all the more closely. Were there tears in my eyes? Tears of joy, recollection, nostalgia, pain? I don"t know. I suppose there were. And when the platform hove into view and I saw him standing there-Wrieto-San, come to greet us in person, in the midst of a knot of fresh-faced apprentices-I could barely hold myself back. I"d been half-afraid he would forget me or send an apprentice in his stead. But here he was, in the flesh, honoring me with his presence, reminding me of the indissoluble bond between Master and apprentice. "Yes," I said, struggling for control. "Yes, I"m fine."
The train lurched. There was the metallic wheeze of the brakes. My wife looked away from me to the platform and back again. "Is that him?"
"Yes," I said, and I could see that he was holding forth on one subject or another, his chin c.o.c.ked back, the cane in motion, his cape fluttering with the quick chop of his advancing steps and the beret adhering to his brow as if by some force of its own. People gave way to him. Pigeons erupted. The apprentices scurried to keep up.
The moment we emerged from the train he came striding up the platform, barking out commands to the apprentices in his wake, his face easing into his open natural emollient smile, the smile that had beguiled a legion of reluctant clients round the world and every woman he"d ever met. My first impression? That he looked old, reduced, the hair gone white against the great riven monument of his head. But he was old, in his eighties now, as best I could calculate. "Tadashi," he called out when he was still ten feet from me, his voice as effervescent and youthful as ever, "you"ve gone gray!"
And then he was there and we were bowing, Setsuko and I, and he bowed first to me and then to her, a dip of his head only, and repeated the greeting I"d given him the first time we met all those years ago beside the still-hissing frame of my Bearcat: "Hajimemas.h.i.te."
"And you, Wrieto-San," I said, feeling as light as if I were filled with helium-"you"ve gone white." (I meant no disrespect, of course, but was simply playing off his mood, injecting a bit of the banter he was so fond of, though I could imagine his terrorizing the household staff all morning over the arrangements at Taliesin.) Despite the tidal wash of emotion I was experiencing-or perhaps because of it-I found that I was grinning.
"Ah, so you"ve noticed? Well, this is the color of venerability, Sato-San." His eyes were coruscating, flecks of gla.s.s incinerated under the sun. "No matter how soft your pencils nor how often you add tired to tired, that gray I see at your temples will fade on you so that you"ll wake up one morning, look into the mirror and see an Oriental sage staring back at you." He seized a lock of his hair in one hand and laughed aloud.
On the way out to Taliesin, he hardly had a word for me-it was my wife to whom he devoted himself, Wrieto-San at his most impish and charming. She was young and pretty and she was an angel on the violin, a combination that must have proved irresistible to him. Though my wife"s English was limited, Wrieto-San was very gentle with her, bathing her in the full glow of his charm, as I imagine he must have done with n.o.bu Tsuchiura and Takako Hayashi before her.
I stared out the window of the car, filled with such longing and nostalgia I thought my heart would break, a hundred questions for Wrieto-San on my lips-How was Wes? Had he heard from Yen? And Herbert was married, could that be true?-and then Taliesin separated itself from the hillside before us, as golden and sustaining as the picture I"d held of it in my mind"s eye through the gray acc.u.mulation of weeks, months and years in the camps. Or no, deeper, richer even. The effect it had on me is hard to explain. It was, I suppose, like the feeling of wonder and revelation most people experienced when they first saw the images of the earth from the terra incognita of the moon"s surface-only this wasn"t terra incognita. Not for me. This was my home, my ideal home, if the world were a holier place and aesthetics ruled rather than necessity. And cruelty.
Wrieto-San was going on about the violin and music in general, how Iovanna had mastered that most subtle of instruments, the harp, and wondering if Setsuko would be so kind-so exquisitely thoughtful and indulgent-as to give him and Olgivanna a sample of her skills later on that evening, when we pulled into the courtyard and my wife turned to me, looking utterly bewildered, for a translation. I"m afraid I failed her there, at least for the moment, because suddenly a melange of all-but-forgotten odors washed over me and triggered my olfactory memory-the cold ashes of the fire, the farthest corner of the hogpen, cabbage soup, sweet Wisconsin air and a trace of the poison bait the cook sprinkled round for the rats-and I was overcome all over again.
There followed a long and loving tour of the house, the late-afternoon sun awakening all its sacral nooks and corners, its dramatic dialogue of light and texture, the magical confluence of the horizontal and vertical, Wrieto-San reminding us of Lao-Tse"s observation that architecture exists not for the sake of the structure but for the s.p.a.ce it encloses, among other echoes of the past, and pausing to lecture most charmingly over each of his new acquisitions of Asian art. Then there was tea with Mrs. Wright, who perched formally on the edge of a chair and regarded me out of her Gurdjieffian eyes as if she couldn"t quite place me, her face as drawn and mournful as these eight or nine acc.u.mulated years could make it. She was in the midst of grilling Setsuko over her musical tastes-were there j.a.panese composers she was interested in or was she strictly attuned to the Western canon?-when Wrieto-San set down his cup and clapped his hands like an impresario hovering over his audience. "Well, what do you think about taking in a little of the outdoors, Tadashi?" he said, rising to his feet. "It"s a beautiful day, isn"t it?" And he paused to give me a wink. "Just about perfect for a picnic, wouldn"t you say?"
"A picnic?" I echoed, rising in concert with the Master, as if it were a tic.
"Yes, like in the old days."
I bowed by way of hiding my emotions. I was deeply moved. Not only had Wrieto-San come to the station for me and taken the time to show off the house and its treasures for my bride, but here he"d arranged a picnic in our honor as well. And of course Wrieto-San was a great champion of the outdoors, as sensitive to nature and its changes as the hermetic monks of my country who sit for days in contemplation of the cherry blossoms or the winged seeds of the maples, which made the gesture even more special and exquisite. In my years at Taliesin we"d picnicked up and down the fields and hillsides on dozens of occasions and in far-flung locations too, a group of apprentices going on ahead to make arrangements and the rest of us piling into the Taliesin cars and heading off to some locale Wrieto-San had chosen in advance for its beauty and serenity, a joy to us all-and now he was offering to rekindle the spirit. For me.
We were all on our feet now, apprentices darting about, the cars standing in the courtyard and Setsuko looking to me for a.s.surance. I went to her, took her by the arm. Embraced the warmth of her.
"Oh, Tadashi," Wrieto-San said, as if the thought had just occurred to him, "you do remember Stuffy"s Tavern"-and here a hint of slyness invaded his voice-"don"t you?"
"Yes, Wrieto-San," I said, bowing again. "How could I forget it?"
"You might not know that Stuffy Vale is no longer involved in that particular establishment. It seems I"m the proprietor there now." He gave me a knowing look. "I seem to recall a certain adventure you had there in your first year-or was it the second? Excessive consumption of alcohol, eh? You"ve conquered that tendency, I can see." He glanced at Setsuko. "Well, bully for you. And for all my apprentices who"ve been tempted by the Demon Rum. But today"s a special day. And this is to be a very special picnic indeed, as you"ll see."
And so it was. In the intervening years, Wrieto-San had resolutely gone about buying up all the surrounding property, as I"ve indicated, and he was in the habit of removing any structures that impeded the view from his windows or preyed on his mind in any way, however insignificant, rather like the warlords of the Shgunate or the hermit heiress in the American poem who "buys up all / the eyesores facing her sh.o.r.e, / and lets them fall." Many have criticized him for this, as if wanting to live in purity were some sort of sin, but I"ve always defended him. Still, even I was taken aback by what ensued.
It was a fine summer evening, the air soft on our faces as we rode in a caravan over the short distance to where the tavern stood in its lot of weed and gently nodding trees. The apprentices had set out blankets and pillows for us and there was a table laden with salads and sliced meats, beans and bread and corn on the cob and great green bellies of watermelon, even as smoke rose from the fire of the barbecue pit. Wes was there-he"d suffered his own tragedy three years earlier when Svetlana and their young son were killed in an auto accident not five miles from Taliesin-and we embraced like brothers, no bows, no handshakes, but a kind of American bear hug that spoke volumes for what we"d meant to each other. I introduced Setsuko all round in a flurry of smiles and bows. When the spareribs, hot dogs and hamburgers were cooked through and piled high as a sacrificial offering on the table, we were led to a seat on the dais, in the place of honor beside Wrieto-San and Mrs. Wright. The sun made a painting of the clouds and settled in the treetops. We ate. I was as happy as I"d ever been in my life.
And then, at Wrieto-San"s signal, one of the apprentices rose and began playing a jig on his violin, even as Wes and some of the others burst through the door of the tavern, great jerry cans of liquid clutched in their arms, and for a moment-naive, forgetful, thirsty-I thought they were bringing beer. But it wasn"t beer. It was kerosene. And I watched in astonishment as they tipped the cans and pooled the shimmering liquid round the foundation, the work already finished inside. We all caught the scent of it then, noxious, chemical, antic.i.p.atory.
The violin keened, every note singing at the high end of the frets. People had begun to tap their feet, a knee bouncing here, fingers tapping there, but no one rose till Wrieto-San did. Very slowly, with a nod to Mrs. Wright, he got to his feet and made his way to the barbecue pit. He bent for a moment to extract a flaming brand, then, in the most leisurely way, as if he were heading off for a stroll through the knee-high gra.s.s, he crossed the yard and dropped the brand where the kerosene had pooled on the front steps.
It was remarkable how quickly that wooden structure went up, the flames climbing the walls to the roof like pent-up things given their heads all in a moment, a swarm of gnawing animals with irradiated teeth. Within minutes the frantic leapings of the violin (or fiddle, I suppose) were lost to the clamor of the fire, the hiss and the roar, struts collapsing, bottles of liquor exploding in the depths like the bombs of war-and this was a war, Wrieto-San"s war on the topers and wastrels and b.u.mpkins who"d turned out to stand idle as Taliesin burned and burned again, cycling from renewal to ash, and here they were, sprinting through the weeds and jumping from automobiles with their features distorted and their shouts rising on the air. The fiddle skreeled. The fire raged.
Soon there was no roof to that place, and soon after, the skeleton of it, the frame that gave it life, was a fiery X-ray of the interior. The skies darkened, the flames leapt and fell, and Wrieto-San, his face illuminated and his cane pumping, stood there and watched till it was full night and the stars shone and what had been erected and joined and carpentered fell away to coals.
CHAPTER 1: LADIES" MAN.
Kitty was seated on the familiar hard-backed sofa before the Roman brick fireplace in the living room of the house that was so familiar it might have been her own, but of course it wasn"t. It was Mamah"s.138 And Edwin"s. Or perhaps she should call it Frank"s, since all his interiors reflected one another as if he were simultaneously living in a hundred rooms, rooms scattered across the countryside but somehow, in the architecture of his mind, continuous. It was Frank"s house, sure it was, just as the house they shared was his. Everything was his. He"d put his stamp on inanimate things and people alike-on her, his own wife, just as surely as he"d put it on Mamah and Mrs. Darwin Martin and all the rest of the women who came under his purview. He"d even gone so far as to design their clothes, as he"d designed hers, and until this moment, in this room, on an oppressive iron-clad Oak Park winter"s afternoon, she"d never felt it strange or out of the way or even remarkable. That was just the way it was. The way Frank was.
And now she sat here watching the fire wrap its volatile fingers round the log set on the andirons, hearing it, hearing the sleet shush the neighborhood and the faintest murmur from little Martha in her crib in the bedroom below. It was very still. There were tea things on a low table before the fire, but no one had touched them. Mamah was perched on the edge of the seat opposite, trying not to look at her. Edwin-as mild and soft-voiced as a rector transported from the pages of an English novel-stood silently behind his wife, his eyes downcast, the broad bald stripe of his head glowing in the light of Frank"s art-gla.s.s lamps. And Frank-he was hateful to her in that moment, execrable, hideous, an icon crushed beneath the wheel of a tractor-Frank had backed up against the mantel decorated with the Oriental statuary he"d bought with the Cheneys" money, the bra.s.s Buddhas and carved ivory figurines no civilized household should be deprived of. His arms were folded across his chest, his feet planted, his eyes hard and metallic, two darts pinning first Edwin and then her to the heavy fabric of the stiffened air. And what had he just said, what had he said? Mamah and I are in love.
In love. As if he would know anything of love. As if he hadn"t trampled all over the memory of what they"d had together these past twenty years and pulled it up by the roots, so absorbed in his work-in his self-he hardly gave her a glance anymore, treating her like a servant and the children like strangers, a collective irritant and nothing more.139 Love? She was the one who knew love and she loved him still, loved him in spite of herself, loved him so fiercely she wanted to leap to her feet and tear his hair out, gouge his eyes, batter him. And her. Her too, the vampire.
He was in love. Her husband was in love. And with someone other than his wife, with a woman she"d always considered her special friend. Was it a revelation? Did he expect her to fall to her knees, beat her breast and rend her clothes? Or was she supposed to make the sign of the cross and bless them? This wasn"t news-it wasn"t even a surprise. He and Mamah had been skulking around for months now, wearing artificial smiles, ever discreet in public, except when he was squiring her about in the glaring yellow automobile that might as well have had a sign that screamed LOOK AT ME! pinned to the hood. But then her husband was a ladies" man, always was and always would be, and he even had a rationale to excuse it-he had to work his charms on the women of the neighborhood because the women were the ones who held the purse strings, the women were the ones who would nag their husbands into taking the leap and how else did she imagine he earned a living to keep her and her six children clothed and fed and housed, and yes, yes, so there was the grocery bill and the livery bill and all the rest, which just went to prove how necessary it was to court these women, these clients. She"d accepted that. She"d believed him. Trusted him. Hoped he would get over his infatuation, as he"d gotten over infatuations in the past. But now it was too late. Now he"d spoken the words aloud and there was no going back.
"We didn"t mean for it to happen," he said, breaking the silence. "And we don"t mean to hurt anyone, least of all you, Kitty-and you, Edwin. That"s not what this concerns. Not at all."
Mamah-with her cat"s eyes and showy movements-rose suddenly and crossed the room to stand beside him like some sort of ornament. Edwin glanced up sharply. "Then what does it concern?" he asked, his voice barely rising to a whisper.
Mamah"s high fluting tones came back at him. "Freedom," she said.
"Freedom? To do what?" Edwin"s eyes went to Frank. "To break up two households-and for him? For this architect? This sawed-off genius? "
All Kitty could think was that she wanted to be out of this, out in the cold, on the familiar streets, and she thought of Llewellyn, just five years old and in want of her, in want of his father, and dinner, his playthings and his coloring books. What about Llewellyn? What about the house? And Frank"s mother, installed in the cottage out back? What of her? Was it all going to come crashing down?
Mamah stiffened. "There"s no need to be uncivil, Edwin."
"Please," Frank was saying, and he actually took Mamah"s hand in his own as if they were two children lining up for a school trip, "you have to understand how difficult this is for us, but there is no higher law than the freedom to love-"
"Ellen Key,"140 Edwin said acidly. He hadn"t moved save to clamp his hands together as if he were praying. Or crushing something.
"That"s right," Mamah snapped. "Ellen Key. "Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love." " She delivered the line like an actress, as if it had been rehea.r.s.ed, and it came to Kitty then that it had, the whole scene, the two of them-she and Frank-iterating their lines in some back parlor or bedroom against the hour of performance. "I never loved you, Edwin, you should know that, and I never pretended to. Not in the way of a true and deep and binding love"-and here she gave Frank a fawning treacly look-"not in the way of soul mates. Or destiny."
There was nastiness on the air, a thrusting and parrying, cruelty suppurating out of an ordinary afternoon here in the teetotal suburb of Chicago known as Saints" Rest for its profusion of churches, its conventionalism and placidity-its normalcy and decency-and Kitty wanted no part of it. She was too humiliated even to speak. Without thinking, she rose to her feet and they all three gave her a look of astonishment, as if they"d forgotten she was there, one more wife and mother sacrificed on the altar of free love.
"Kitty," she heard Frank say. And Mamah, Mamah too: "Kitty." That was the extent of it, that was all they could summon, two worn syllables, as if by naming her they could bring her back to what she was when she came up the walk fifteen minutes ago.
She didn"t answer. She went directly to the closet for her coat and shrugged away from Frank as he tried to help her on with it and in the next moment she was out in the stinging air, fighting her way round the maze of walls and turnings Frank had put up to protect the Cheneys from the life of the street out front. She heard him call after her, but she didn"t turn. And when she got to the motorcar-the chromatic advertis.e.m.e.nt of self and self-love, because that was the only kind of love Frank was capable of, and she knew that now, would always know it-she kept on going.
Weeks went by, months, and nothing changed. Except that she couldn"t see the Cheneys again-wouldn"t-despite the fact that they lived just blocks away and the social fabric of Oak Park was woven so tightly any loose thread would be sure to show. Had there been a rift? Her friends, perfectly respectable women she"d been acquainted with for years wanted to know, all of them sniffing round after the scent of scandal like vultures circling a corpse. No, she said, no, not at all-it was just that she was so busy with the children. Oh, she really had her hands full there, especially with Catherine a young lady now and Frances not far behind. Her smile was tired. And they knew, they all knew. Or guessed.
She kept up appearances as best she could, regularly attending the meetings of the Nineteenth Century Woman"s Club as she always had, though with a wary eye out for Mamah-and she still couldn"t believe it was she who"d befriended her and she who"d introduced her to her husband, the architect, thinking to do her part to drum up business. The irony of it, as grim as anything in a French novel. Did she hate Mamah, with her French and German and her college degrees and knowing air and the way she bossed everyone-or seduced them-and always got what she wanted, whether it was as trivial as the date of a card party or as momentous as choosing an architect to build her a house? Yes, yes, she did hate her, though she tried to put it out of her mind as much as possible. And she kept on washing and sewing and cooking and overseeing the servants and giving her every ounce of energy to the children, who seemed more needy than ever, as if they divined what was going on behind the scenes. She never could tell just how much they knew and so she couldn"t help quizzing them in a roundabout way-especially the little ones, Llewellyn and Frances-but she wasn"t very good at subterfuge. And Frances was smart, clever beyond her years-she was coming up on eleven in the fall-and Kitty had to be careful when she asked, as casually as she could, about John Cheney, if she"d seen him at school because it had been such a long while since the Cheneys were over, and how was he, a good boy, took after his father, didn"t he? But yes, of course, he was only seven, just a baby. Llewellyn"s age. Or no: a year and a half older. And why would such a big girl want to play with a baby-or even notice him?
It was all tentative, her life an unspooling string waiting for the blade to sever it, and each night when Frank came in from the studio he"d walled off from the house as if it were a bunker she felt a rush of relief and grat.i.tude-and yes, love. True love. Not love of an object or love out of a book, but the deepest ache of wanting that had been there since she was sixteen years old and she"d collided with him at the costume party in his Uncle Jenkin"s church, everyone in character from Victor Hugo"s Les Miserables , she dressed as Cosette and he as Marius, and their two heads coming together so hard she wore the bruise for a week. You"re too young to marry, they told her, everyone did, but he came for her with all his irresistible force and though her parents held back and his mother rose up like a harpy with her wings spread in opposition, she was Catherine Lee Tobin with the flaming hair and rocketing eyes and nothing could stop her. She wasn"t yet eighteen when she was married. And now, two years short of forty, she was a castoff.
Spring that year-1909-brought a succession of cloudless days that stretched through late May and into the middle of June. Out in the countryside the farmers might have been scratching their heads, but in Oak Park, with its shade trees and enveloping lawns dotted with birdbaths and recliners, people welcomed the dry spell. The pace of things seemed to slow. Shopkeepers took the odd afternoon off, the children swam or played ball when school let out, flowers bloomed, cicadas sent up their soporific buzz from the dense nests of leaves. There were picnics, cookouts, horseshoe matches. Hammocks swung indolently in the backyards and the birds held their collective breath through the somnolence of the noon hour. One afternoon, when the boys were off somewhere and Catherine and Frances occupied with a play they were rehearsing, Kitty decided to get out of the house and take advantage of the weather-she needed a few things at the grocery and that was excuse enough. She made Llewellyn change his shirt and combed his hair for him, then put on a straw bonnet, gathered up her purse and parasol, and went down Forest, past all the grand houses Frank had designed and worked on there till it might have been his own private development, and out onto Lake, where the shops were.
The grocer wasn"t rude, but he did mention the bill outstanding in the amount of some nine hundred dollars,141 even as he toted up her purchases and she a.s.sured him Frank would be in that very night to pay on account, but the experience made her feel cheap, as if she were a shirker or a thief. She tried to put it out of her head, tried to enjoy the sunshine and the sustaining warmth of the day-it must have been eighty degrees, with the gentlest breeze off the lake, just perfect-and she looked at dresses, bought Llewellyn an ice cream and then started for home. She"d just turned the corner at Kenilworth, thinking to go home the back way if only to refresh the view, when the Cheneys" maid came down the walk opposite, both children in tow.