The Life of Hope (26 page)

“Paul …”

“They got some secret out here. There is a mystery! And I think it’s got something to do with Joseph Benton Hope. And they don’t want me to find out what it is.”

“Who’s they?”

“Mona and Jonathon and the Bernies and the Kims and even Edgar the axe-murderer!”

“Edgar the axe-murderer?”

“What they don’t know is, I signed them
out
.”

“What?”

“I have the books. And the magazines. And the newspapers. Deedee let me sign them out.”

“Who’s Deedee?”

“You care for a sip of this here scootch? Irish scotch, my fave, yummy-yum-yum.”

“We’re on the telephone, dickhead.”

“Too bad for you. So, are you getting fucked regular or what?”

“Paul, do you want to tell me what’s the matter, or do I have to hang up?”

“Sheesh, what a grouch.”

“Are you crying?”

“No way, Jose! The whiskey is leaking out my eyes, that’s all.”

“Who’s Deedee?”

“Ellie, I’m fucked up. I can’t talk now.”

“What did you phone for?”

“I dunno.”

“Okay. I’ll say goodnight.”

“Can you come and tuck me in?”

“Afraid not.”

“It’ll probably be in the papers. About the library.”

“The library out there?”

“Yeah. The Hope Public Library.”

“What about it?”

“Exploded. Burned down. Kablooey!”

“Oh.”

“The, um, head librarian …”

“That whiskey’s really leaking a lot now.”

“Yeah, well, the thing of it is, is, the head librarian …”

“Deedee?”

“That’s right. Deedee. Short for Dierdra. She was in there.”

“In the library.”

“Yeah.”

“Was she a friend of yours?”

“Well, I didn’t hardly know her, Elspeth, I just met her, but she was a really sweet old lady, and she knew everything, I mean, she was as smart as God, she could answer every question on every game show. And we had a few brew together. And she called me ‘Phillip’ and ‘Patrick’ and ‘Peter’ and I carried her around.”

“It’s sad.”

“But what’s worse is … maybe it was my fault, because I was snooping around, and they decided they had to get rid of the Hope Room. But what they don’t know is …”

“You signed them out.”

“I have them right here!”

“Maybe you should come back to Toronto.”

“Back home?”

“I—I don’t think we should live together anymore. But maybe you should come back from out there. It sounds like you’re deteriorating.”

“What kind of fucking word is that? Deteriorating.”

“Getting worse.”

“I know what it goddam means, Elspeth! What I don’t know is why you have to use it! You sound like a fucking nurse or a social worker or a clinical psychologist or some fucking thing.”

“All right.”

“What do you mean, ‘all right’?”

“I just mean, I have nothing further to say. I’m sorry, that’s all. Sorry about your friend Deedee. Sorry about everything.”

“I didn’t phone for sympathy.”

“What did you phone for?”

“I am your husband, for Christ’s sake. I don’t need a reason.”

“Okay.”

“Anyways, I got work to do out here. Research. On the life of Hope.”

“The life of Hope.”

“Right.”

“When you find out about it, you let me know.”

“Okay. Goodbye, Elspeth.”

“Goodbye, Paul.”

“I love you.”

“Goodbye, Paul.”

“So this, John, is our Phalanstery!” Adam De-la-Noy gesticulated proudly at the building. It was peculiar-looking at best, humpbacked and deformed. It had been designed by Abram Skinner, so its plan was simplistic and practical, long rows of bedchambers surplanting the various dining/work areas. The actual construction had been carried out almost singlehandedly by George Quinton, which accounted for the awkwardness of the angles and joinings.

Adam’s friend John seemed troubled by something. “That window,” he pointed out, “is the wrong way ’round.”

Adam De-la-Noy chuckled lightly. Mr. Opdycke had provided, somehow, from somewhere, an ornate stained glass depicting the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus. George Quinton had inserted it wrongly, topsy-turvy, recognizing it only as a window.

Samuel and Lemuel, Cairine’s twins, suddenly rushed up to the men. They were, at six-and-a-half years, the oldest of the Perfectionist children (Ephraim Davies was older, nine, but not born of their philosophy) and certainly the biggest, an enormous pair, especially given the diminutive stature of the woman who’d produced them.

“Stammed am delibber!” shrieked Lemuel.

“Your mommy or your libe!” added Samuel.

Both boys held wooden guns, ornately carved with rococo handles and long, thin barrels.

“Oh!” Adam’s hand clutched at his heart melodramatically. “It is Ben Turpin and his fearsome Henchman!”

The twins grinned evilly. Sam waved his pistol in the air and hollered, “Stan am belibber!”

Adam’s friend John was taken with the boys’ toys. “How beautiful they are!” he said to Adam. “So lifelike! They look as real as real can be.”

Samuel and Lemuel scowled at this.

“John, do you have a copper or two?” Adam pulled at his pockets. “We have no truck with currency here, but we are, you know, being robbed.”

John took a coin out of his waistcoat (John was fashionably dressed, but probably boiling to death, given the heat of the day) and handed it to Lemuel. “May I see your pistol?” he asked.

Sam and Lem communicated through a series of shifting glances; finally, and reluctantly, Lemuel handed over the wooden gun.

John took the toy and fired off a number of imaginary shots, aiming with great care and precision. Lemuel looked disgusted; the man was wasting a lot of valuable ammunition.

At long last John handed the toy pistol back to Lem. The boys darted away.

“If you have no truck with currency,” wondered John, “why did the lads want money?”

Adam De-la-Noy laughed. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“What wonderful toys.”

“Yes, well, that’s one of the things we do, you know, wood carving. Each Phalanstery, Fourier said, should concentrate on particular crafts.”

“Fourier?” questioned John.

“Charles Fourier. He was a wonderful man, a Frenchman. He himself was aristocratic, but he gave it all up for the sake of communal living. According to Fourier, all of the great nations should be subdivided into little communities, and they should each live and work in separate phalansteries.”

“I see.”

George Quinton walked out of the Fourieristic Phalanstery carrying a mop and a pail of water. “Hello,” he said merrily. “Adam, I’ve just done the floah in the dining womb, so please don’t walk on it foh a while.”

“All right, George. George, this is my friend John.”

“Pleased to make yoh acquaintance.” George more-or-less curtseyed.

“We were on the stage together,” continued Adam. “Where was that, John?”

“Washington, I think.”

“Ay, yes.” Adam turned back to George. “I played Don Juan to his Don Pedro.”

George nodded uncertainly. “Don’t walk on the floah,” he reminded them.

The men continued on their tour of the little community. The community consisted mostly of the Phalanstery, but there were a few smaller buildings nearby. One housed the presses that weekly printed
The Theocratic Watchman
, another was a small nursery for the children where they could play without disturbing the adults. There were stables, workhouses and outbuildings.

“How many people live here, De-la-Noy?”

“We are now …” Adam had to think “… seventeen adults, and, um, eleven children.”

“And is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“What one reads. That you and other men’s wives …?” John let the sentence dangle.

Adam shrugged. “Oh, well, I suppose it’s true enough. I imagine it’s also greatly exaggerated.”

“And other men sleep with your wife?”

They do indeed, thought Adam. “None of that is of any importance,” explained De-la-Noy. “What is important is our experiments in societal cohabitation. For instance, the children are raised by all of us, regardless of who the actual parents may be, and child-rearing is as much a man’s function as a woman’s.”

“If I lived here,” asked John, “could I sleep with other men’s wives? With Mary?”

Adam looked at his old friend with a measure of distaste. John had certainly changed. Years ago, when they had appeared together in Shakespeare’s
Much Ado About Nothing
, John had been a witty and articulate young man, a trifle on the introspective side but very pleasant and congenial. He had also been critically praised as one of the finest young Shakespearians in the Americas —but that was to be expected, coming as he did
from an illustrious family, his father and brother perhaps the finest actors in the nation.

Cairine McDiarmid passed by them with a smile and an Irish, “Top o’ the marning.” Cairine had the new-born Louisa at her breast, and to facilitate nursing was wearing only her skirts. Adam watched John’s little eyes bulge. Adam was thankful that Cairine had been wearing clothes at all; on hot days most of the Perfectionists went naked. Adam had long grown used to it —even the most beautiful human bodies (his wife’s, for example) were after all a fairly standardized collection of muscle and pockets of fat.

Then Ephraim Drinkwater Davies appeared almost out of nowhere, no mean feat considering that at four feet and some inches he weighed almost 210 pounds. Ephraim was naked; Adam involuntarily shuddered at the sight. The little fat boy said, “ ‘Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let me not be confounded. Let them be dismayed, but let me not be dismayed. Bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction!’ ”

“Hello, Ehpraim,” said Adam wearily.

“Fare well, De-la-Noy!” returned the boy, and then he passed wind in a vicious and arrogant manner. Ephraim D. Davies wandered away.

Adam decided to change the subject. “Do you know how our Phalanstery supports itself?”

“No.” John’s answer was quick and blunt, as if to suggest that he was not at all interested.

Adam continued anyway. “We make angling equipment. We manufacture two- and three-part poles with brass ferrules. It’s very handy for putting them together. They’ve become quite fashionable, I gather, now that fishing is so popular. And we also make plugs. Imitation minnows, you see. The fish mistakes them for real, and …”

Polyphilia Drinkwater came up to them, smiling shyly. She was, needless to say, naked as a baby, a state in which she existed almost perpetually. “Hello, Adam,” she said, then turned. “And you are John. I’m so pleased to meet you. I’ve always been a great admirer.” Polly had, in fact, clipped out a drawing of the man from a magazine and nailed it to the wall of her room.

John’s eyes, little and bulging, were a vivid shade of red, fastened relentlessly to Polyphilia’s pale-nippled breasts. After many long moments there his eyes stumbled downward, latching on to her pudenda. Polyphilia was accustomed to having her nakedness devoured lustily, but even she found this a bit much. She turned to Adam so that John would at least not be afforded a full-frontal view. “Have you seen Mr. Opdycke?”

“Probably napping somewhere,” said Adam sarcastically, and he felt instantly remorseful. Mr. Opdycke may be a little on the slothful side, Adam reminded himself, but were it not for Opdycke it’s unlikely that the Fourieristic Phalanstery would be able to exist at all. It was Opdycke who had invented the ferruled fishing poles and the plugs.

One of the first people they’d met in Upper Canada had been an Indian, a tall, gaunt Bigfoot with raven-black hair and very singular eyes, eyes that somehow shone silver and black. This man spoke to them in the Queen’s English, informing them that his name was Jonathon Whitecrow, welcoming them to their new home, and then presenting them all with gifts. He’d given Mary and himself bead necklaces, Adam recalled; he’d given Abram Skinner some seeds and Abigal some flowers. The Indian had presented George and Martha with axes, Joseph Hope with a well-fashioned cane fishing pole, and he’d given Mr. Opdycke a long, razor-sharp carving knife. Opdycke had forthwith taken to whittling almost constantly (especially when there was work to be done, which was all of the time) and evidenced innate skill and talent. Opdycke made toys for the children, he made handles for the gardening tools and then, on a whim, he’d carved a little fish. Something occurred to Opdycke; he’d cunningly tied a hook along the thing’s back and tossed his creation into the nearby lake. He’d caught a fish with his first toss. Mr. Opdycke had made more, simplifying the design so that in time all of the other Perfectionists could whittle them as well. They found that these “plugs” worked so well that they could be sold elsewhere—in the stores of Milverton, Fredericksburg and Trenton, their closest neighbors. It was a meager income, but a steady one.

“That was …?” asked John. The pale, blond nymph had skipped away.

“Polyphilia.”

“And if I lived here …?” John let the sentence hang and waved his long, carefully manicured hands in the air.

“Yes, John. You could have amorous congress with her.” Adam sighed.

They continued walking and came upon Abram Skinner in his small field of vegetables. Farming the land in any real way was out of the question, the soil being both fussy and stingy, but Abram had torn two or three acres out of the hills and raised up corn and mixed vegetables.

Adam was happy to see Abram. Abram Skinner, Adam felt, was a deep man, dark and poetic. Abram stood beneath the sun, stripped to the waist; he was crudely muscled, tiny knots and veins buckling across his chest. Skinner settled on to his haunches and lit a pipe—he placed his hand over his eyes for shade and took a long, hard look at the earth.

“Some problem, Abram?” called Adam.