Private Life (29 page)

square of paper. She wrote her note. Mrs. Kimura held out her hand, and Margaret folded

the note twice and gave it to her. Then there was the smiling and bowing, and Margaret

set down the chopsticks and the noodles and the paper. Later, she thought she might have

liked to buy the noodles. After that, she realized that in the shop she hadn't thought of

Alexander. Pete did not answer her note.

In fact, Margaret was thankful for his silence, because it was impossible--you

could not broach such a subject as marriage, and then, if you did, you were bound to say

something rude or inappropriate, since you knew nothing other than what Dora had

revealed, and all those revelations were jokes or half-truths. Pete himself was such a

suspicious character that if you did promote something, and then that something came to

pass, it would be on your conscience, whatever the outcome, and the outcome was so

much more likely to be unfortunate than it was to be happy. Certainly he was married

already--hadn't Dora hinted as much? There could be more wives than one, couldn't

there? And children, too. What had been easy in Missouri--introducing a name into the

conversation, walking past the family home, running into this friend or that friend,

wondering aloud about an incident from years gone by, even looking in the newspaper, or

watching a person from afar--was impossible here. But then she thought of what was now

in the papers about Ypres again, about the unspeakable horrors that would draw Dora and

her little pistol and her lovely shoes. Ypres was not far from Paris--Margaret didn't know

the exact distance, but it was easy to imagine the rumbling boom of distant cannon. And

no one guaranteed that Dora would stay in Paris once she was on her own.

Dora herself said nothing about going to Europe. Then she came for a weekend

visit to Mrs. Wareham's. She had infiltrated a Wobbly meeting dressed as a young man

and was very pleased with herself. She had worn canvas pants and broken shoes and used

a string as a belt and spoken in "low, resentful monosyllables," saying that she was up

from San Jose looking for a job. "But really," she told Margaret, "I'd heard that Lucy

Parsons might be there, and I was hoping to get a word with her."

The Bells would have shivered in horror at the thought of Dora consorting with

International Workers of the World and swooned at the thought of her sitting down with

such a famous socialist and strike organizer as Lucy Parsons, but Margaret said, "You

might write a book about her." Lucy Parsons was an old woman and would not be going

to Europe.

"Too much time in Chicago," said Dora. She sighed. "The meeting was all Italian

bakery-workers. And I could only understand about half of what they were saying. I was

embarrassed at myself."

Nevertheless, she had written it up for the paper, and the article was appearing

Sunday, which was why she was at Mrs. Wareham's for the weekend.

Margaret said, "I don't--"

"It's not as daring as it appears."

"How do you know?"

"Nothing ever happens, does it? I should have taken you to the meeting. It was all

a lot of shouting. Nothing to be afraid of. No one was drunk, so it was safer than a saloon.

They want to complain. They should complain."

"They work themselves up."

"Or they blow off steam. That's what I say in my little piece. They're happier

afterward."

Dora was pleased with everything about her prank, from the way she learned

about the meeting (eavesdropping) to her costume and her "acting" to her well-developed

memory (she wrote the quotes down afterward, back at her apartment). The indignation

about the article would come not from the Wobblies but from the industrialists, who

would be upset that she had "defanged" their enemies, made them seem merely rowdy,

almost good-natured.

Margaret stayed at Mrs. Wareham's most of the afternoon, even hauling out her

knitting for a bit while Dora read, but she could not think of a way to broach the topic of

marriage. It occurred to her that she might enlist Mrs. Wareham, but she knew full well

that Mrs. Wareham's own marriage had not been a happy one, and as much as she loved

her son, Angus, she pitied the girl he had married in Hawaii, and now there was a child,

and Mrs. Wareham had sent the girl clothes and money. And Mrs. Wareham was not as

set in her isolationist opinions as most people were.

Then Pete Krizenko appeared, when she had almost abandoned her plan,

knocking at the front door of Quarters P while she was washing up after Andrew's dinner.

The moment she opened the door, she knew that she had no idea how to ascertain his

"intentions" or to suggest some "intentions" if he hadn't conceived any on his own. Dora

was thirty-two. Pete was not as old as Andrew, but even by the way he walked into the

room with his hat pushed back on his head and his hands in his pockets, she could tell he

was long habituated to doing just as he pleased. Her project, she thought right then, was

akin to harnessing cats. So what she said was "I'm so glad you've come! How can we

prevent Dora from going to Europe?" And then she backed away from the door and let

him in. Andrew was in his study, but the door stayed closed, because there was always so

much uproar from the ship factories at this time of day; he would not know of Pete's

coming unless she summoned him.

Pete sat down. He said, "Do we want her not to go to Europe? Not even to Spain?

Things in Spain have never been better." Again, she noted, his accent could be from

anywhere. She wondered if he had practiced it as he was standing outside the door, but

then, remembering her purpose, she banished that thought. She said, "She wouldn't stay

in Spain."

Pete settled back and crossed his legs at the ankles. He was holding his hat in his

lap, and now he smoothed the brim. When he smiled, Margaret saw that he was amused

at her. Normally, she didn't mind anyone's being amused at her, but now she felt a sense

of offense take hold. He said, "Perhaps she needs a husband."

"I thought of that."

"I thought of that," said Pete.

"Did you really?"

"Indeed,

I

did."

He didn't add anything. The outcome of that thought was self-evident, wasn't it?

Margaret tried to gauge from Pete's demeanor how he felt about what appeared to

be the failure of his hopes, then said, "Perhaps you could be more persistent."

He said, "What about my manly self-regard? Russian men especially--"

"It didn't seem to me from your stories that you have much manly self-regard."

She shocked herself by saying this, but then said, "I mean to be giving you a compliment,

you know." And she did.

He dipped his head. Compliment accepted, she decided. And then she felt herself

relax a bit--not her distrust, but her discomfort. She asked him if he cared for any tea. The

stove was still hot. He said, "May I prepare it?"

Margaret pointed to the kitchen.

Pete seemed perfectly at home in her kitchen, and perfectly at home making the

tea, but he did it in a way she had not seen before--he boiled the water until it was rolling,

then poured some into the teapot. After he had swirled it around inside the pot, he poured

it out, and then added loose tea to the empty pot, and let it sit for some seconds. He

invited her to look into the pot. She saw the tea leaves relax in the damp warmth into a

dark, fragrant pile. Only then did he pour in the water, which, in the meantime, he had

brought back to the boil. He looked around, picked up a shawl she had left hanging over

the back of a chair, bunched it around the teapot, and cut a lemon into wedges. "Now," he

said, "we have Russian tea. When I visit again, I will bring some salka pastries. They are

good with tea and jam. Little buns."

He handed her the cups and saucers, and himself carried the teapot wrapped in her

shawl into the front room.

The tea was dark and strong, and she liked the lemon. But they were no closer to

securing Dora's presence in San Francisco. Margaret's task, she knew, was to extract

information and then promises. Finally, she said, "Did Dora tell you my sister is married

to her brother?"

"It is my impression that they have twelve or thirteen children."

"They have four children. Four boys."

"Dora does always seem to overestimate the negative effects of any number of

children."

"Beatrice's boys are quite well behaved for Missouri boys. Not so"--she thought

for a moment--"well armed as most."

Pete

laughed.

"It's my other sister, Elizabeth, who has produced the prodigies." It was pleasant,

after all, Margaret thought, the way Pete's willingness to be amused had infused her.

The door to Andrew's study opened, and Andrew came out, papers in one hand

and a book in the other. He said, "My dear--" But then he saw Pete, tossed aside the book,

and crossed the room in two strides. Pete stood up. They shook hands in a hearty way,

and Andrew declared, "The thing is finished!"

He was talking about his manuscript.

Dora was forgotten, because the book he had tossed aside, which he now retrieved

from the chair where it had landed, was a sample volume from a printer Andrew had

unearthed in Oakland. The binding, green, was an excellent possibility. The title could,

for only a small extra payment, be embossed in silver, and the front edge--Andrew

stepped to the table and pushed the tea things aside. Margaret picked up her shawl and

wrapped it around her shoulders. Later, she took the tea things back to the kitchen.

AFTER all, he chose deep ("navy") blue embossed covers with a silver title
(The

Universe Explained
, by Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early, Ph.D., United States

Navy). The frontispiece was a picture of Andrew taken some years before, when his hair

and his mustache were still dark. As Margaret held it in her hands, it seemed to her that it

had arisen quite suddenly, popping into her presence as if from another world. The paper

was glossy and the front edge gilded. The typeface, which Andrew chose on his own, was

surprisingly appealing--upright and uncompromising, but friendly, just the way Andrew

fancied himself to be. The pages of text were interspersed with ink drawings that Andrew

had made. He had an elegant hand, as when he drew the impact craters from the shotgun

experiment he had done with Hubert Lear. The endpapers were especially rich--swirls of

blue and yellow that reminded her of the sky.

A thousand copies were printed. Andrew rented a room to store them, and paid a

young man to send them out to every astronomical journal, geological journal, and

physics journal in the world, also to twenty-five or so newspapers, from the
Times
of

London to the
Sacramento Bee
. They were also sent to heads of observatories, and one,

of course, to Mr. Akenbourn, in South Africa. One was sent, with Andrew's compliments,

to Oliver Lodge in England, another to Professor Russell at Princeton, another to Lord

Rutherford at the University of Manchester. He sent them only to English speakers, and

he sent these volumes as gifts, not as supplications. The rest he expected to sell to

interested parties.

And that is that, thought Margaret with relief. He had gotten it off his chest.

"I have nothing to prove," he said to her one day at breakfast.

"Except your theory." She laughed, though he did not, so she added, "A man who

is proposing a whole new way of looking at the universe has something to prove."

But he shook his head. "My task is to think through my theory as carefully as

possible, working it out so that it is complete and self-contained. How can I prove it, with

a five-inch telescope? Only those astronomers with expensive equipment can prove it,

with mathematicians to back them up."

It was then that she saw how much he had to prove.

The first response was from Mr. Akenbourn, who congratulated Andrew on the

"scope and depth of your analysis, and the pioneering genius of your ideas." But this

letter was enclosed in the same envelope with another in a different handwriting, that of

Mr. Akenbourn's daughter, who said that Mr. Akenbourn had died, but that he had been

reading Andrew's book on his deathbed "and it seemed like he found it enjoyable,

Captain Early, though his strength was waning very quickly. But he wanted to write you,

and so he did. Yours in memory, Clara Akenbourn Maldon."

Oliver Lodge sent a card--"Many thanks. Very busy, all best, Lodge"--and

Science
noted it in the "Books Received" column. Andrew took this as a semi-promise

that someone was even then busy reviewing it. It did receive an actual review from the
St.

Louis Post-Dispatch
("Missourian Sees the Big Picture") and the
Des Moines Register

("Universe Like a Giant Net, Says Scientist"), and a few other, smaller papers, one in

Australia. The editor of
Observatory
, which had published Andrew's letter on Einstein,

sent a note--"Thanks for this, looks good." These acknowledgments dribbled in over the

summer, to the swelling tune of Andrew's regrets.

Pete sent him a note asking for a copy of the book and offering to pay for it