The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World (23 page)

A
MEDEO
M
ODIGLIANI

1884-1920

The Moon Lady

Crayon on Paper

G
IFT OF
J
OHN AND
L
ELANI
V
ANDERWAAL

I
N MEMORY OF
P
IETER VAN DER
W
AAL

The other brass plate said:

H
ENRI
M
ATISSE

1869-1954

Paysage è L'Estaque

Oil on Canvas

M
USEUM PURCHASE

A
NONYMOUS DONOR

Peter served his impatience by mentally writing his opening statement for the speech he would give at the paintings' unveiling. Matisse's
Landscape at L'Estaque
had a sky that was green and a pasture that was blue, so he could very well begin his remarks by saying, “Works by Amedeo Modigliani and Henri Matisse were once forbidden.” No, he thought, these works deserve a different beginning.

As the truck backed up, Amedeo watched the three women: Mrs. Zender, Mrs. Vanderwaal, and Mrs. Wilcox. And he thought about the ten percent and the ninety percent.

And he thought: Suppose you find a tusk and have a woolly mammoth named after you, or you find America and have the capital of Ohio named after you, or you invent a process and have pasteurization named after you;
you have to give up some part of that invisible ninety percent. And suppose you find a friend, a real friend; then, too, you have to give up some of that ninety percent.

William was standing on the loading platform with his hands deep inside his pockets.

Amedeo watched as he tipped the hood of his anorak to the angel on his shoulder. And even though William was his best friend in the world, and even if he was William's best friend as well, he would never know what thoughts William sent to that angel on his shoulder, because that angel was part of his ninety percent that had to stay anonymous.

Then he thought about Pieter and Peter and Johannes and John. And he thought about the three words
Aida Lily Tull.

And he thought about the edge between the ninety percent and the ten percent.

Sometimes that edge was cunning, and sometimes it was kind. Sometimes it was shabby. And sometimes it was heroic.

But it was always mysterious.

Definitely.

to my
friends
and
colleagues
—

at
simon & schuster:
beth sue
rose,
emma
dryden,
rubin
pfeffer,
and rick
richter
for their enthusiasm;

at
aladdin:
ellen
krieger
for always making it a special
pleasure to meet with her approval;

at
home:
theresa
dinuzzo
for her italian lyricism;

at
atheneum:
jeannie
ng
for her scrutiny and patience
with missed deadlines; jordan
brown
for his
heroic keyboarding;
&
russell
gordon
for his
panache and his energy and for making this book
the focus of both;
&
ginee
seo
for the joy of
sharing her luminous mind and hard black pencils

you
are/have become/will always be
the home team

and have my
thanks forever.

Read on for a special preview of OUTCASTS OF 19 SCHUYLER PLACE, another page-turning, thought-provoking novel by E.L. Konigsburg.

Bartleby at Talequa

U
ncle Alex was sweating when he arrived at Camp Talequa. No wonder. The Greyhound bus had left him off at the point where the camp road meets the highway, and it was all uphill from there. The camp road was not paved but laid with rough gravel. It was July, and it had not rained for three weeks. Uncle walked those three dusty miles wearing wing-tip, leather-soled oxfords; a long-sleeved, buttoned-up shirt; suit jacket; necktie; and a Borsalino hat. Tartufo, his dog, walked at his side. He had bought his hat, his shoes, and his dog in Italy. His hat was tan, his shoes brown, and his dog was white with brown spots, but by the time they arrived at the office, all were gray with gravel dust.

Not until he was standing in front of the camp office did Uncle remove his Borsalino or put a leash on Tartufo. He stood on the bottom of the three steps leading to the office door and flicked the dust from his hat and, as much as he could, from Tartufo's paws. With his handkerchief, he wiped first his forehead and then his shoes. Having a shine on his shoes was an Old World point of pride.

Holding his hat against his chest and Tartufo's leash with one hand, he knocked on the office door with the other.

Mrs. Kaplan, the camp director, called, “Who is it?” and Uncle stepped inside. He told her that he was Alexander Rose and that he had come to take Margaret home.

For the best part of a minute, Mrs. Kaplan was speechless. At last she said, “And just
who
are you?”

“I am Margaret's uncle, Alexander Rose. Don't you remember? We spoke on the phone last night.”

• • •

Mrs. Kaplan had called shortly before nine. After introducing herself she had said, “We are calling, Mr. Rose, because Margaret seems to be having a bit of a problem adjusting to camp life.”

“What have you done?” he had asked.

“Everything,” she replied. “We have done everything we know how to do, but she is totally unresponsive. When we ask her to do something—anything—she says, ‘I prefer not to.'”

“Let me talk to her.”

“We can't do that, Mr. Rose. Campers are to have no contact with their caregivers until the two-week adjustment period is over. We cannot make exceptions.”

“Then how can I possibly help?”

“We would like your input on how we can help her
want
to participate. We do not like to force our campers to participate.”

“I suggest you change your activities.”

“We can't do that, Mr. Rose. We cannot tailor our activities to every single child in this camp. As a matter of fact, it is the very nature of the activities we offer that sets Talequa apart from all the other camps. We want Margaret to fit in, Mr. Rose.”

“Let me think about this,” he said. “I'll be in touch.”

Uncle had thought about it and decided that the best thing he could do would be to go directly to Camp Talequa and bring me back with him.

• • •

Staying with my uncles—Alex, who was an old bachelor, and Morris, his brother, a widower—had been one of my two first choices of “What to do with Margaret” while my parents were in Peru. The Uncles lived in an old house on Schuyler Place. I loved them, their house, and their garden.

—
them

I loved their Old World habits. Like wearing a Borsalino hat from Italy instead of a baseball cap. Neither one of them owned a baseball cap. Or blue jeans. Or sneakers. Or a sports shirt. They never watched sports on TV and had never been to a football game, even when the home team, Clarion State University, was playing. They could speak three languages besides English. They had wine with dinner every night and ate so late that sometimes it was midnight when they finished. They served coffee with real cream and lump sugar that they dropped into the cup with a tiny pair of tongs. They had never eaten at a McDonald's or standing up. Even in the summer when they ate in their garden, they still covered their table with a white linen cloth, served their wine in crystal goblets, and their food on china dishes. And they never hurried through dinner. If it got to be too late when they finished eating, they would leave unwashed dishes in the sink and go to bed.

—
their house

I loved 19 Schuyler Place. It was within walking distance of Town Square, a city bus stop, the main library, and the pedestrian mall downtown. I loved sleeping over. Two years before, when I was only ten, they had allowed me to pick out the furniture for the bedroom that they told me would be mine whenever I came to visit. They took me to Sears in the Fivemile Creek Mall and let me choose. I chose a bedroom
suite
with only one twin bed (the room was small) in genuine French provincial style, white with gold-tone accents. When it was delivered, Uncle Morris had said, “Very distinguished,” and Uncle Alex proclaimed it, “Quite elegant.” I was so convinced that they approved of everything I did that I believed them.

—
their garden

Their garden was unlike any other in the neighbor-hood—or the world. Like all the others nearby, theirs had started out as a long, narrow yard that stretched from the service porch in back of the house to the alley, but the resemblance stopped where it started.

The Uncles had unevenly divided their backyard space lengthwise into two thirds and one third. They further divided the narrower, one-third section, in half, crosswise. In the narrow third closest to the house, Uncle Morris raised peppers. They grew in shapes from bell to cornucopia and in flavors from sweet to jalapeno. Their colors were red, yellow, purple, and every shade of green from lime to pine. The other half of the narrow third was planted with roses. Entirely with roses. Some were trained to grow along the iron pipe fence that separated their yard from their neighbor's at number 17. Others grew in their own hoed crater of earth. Some blossoms were quiet and tiny as a bud; others were loud and six inches wide. There were many varieties, many sizes, but they were a symphony of a single chord, for all of them were rose colored—blooming in every shade from delicate to brazen, from blush to Pepto-Bismol.

In the larger section, the two-thirds, wider strip, were the towers. There were three of them. They zigged and zagged along the perimeter of the fence that separated my uncles' yard from their neighbor's at number 21. They soared over the rooftop of their house and every other house in the neighborhood. The tallest was Tower Two, so called because it was the second one built, and it was closest to the house. Tower Three was in the slant middle.

My uncles had been building them for the past forty-five years.

Even though all of the towers were taller than any of the two-story houses in the neighborhood, even though they were made of steel, they did not darken the space around them. They were built of a network of ribs and struts that cast more light than shadow. Like a spider-web, they were strong but delicate. From each of the rungs, from each section of each of the rungs, dangled thousands—
thousands
—of chips of glass and shards of porcelain and the inner workings of old clocks. Some of the pendants were short and hugged the horizontal ribs, while others dangled on long threads of copper. In some places, a single wire held two drops of glass, one under the other; in other places, there were three—dangling consecutively, one beneath the other. Some of the pendants were evenly spaced in groups of three or four. Some were bunched together like the sixteenth notes on a musical staff followed by a single large porcelain bob—a whole note rest. On another rung, or perhaps at a distance on the same rung, a series of evenly spaced glass drops dangled in a rainbow of colors.

Like gypsy music (my uncles were Hungarian), the pendants hung in a rhythm that is learned but cannot be taught.

The towers were painted. Not solemnly but astonishingly. Astoundingly. There were carnival shades of mauve and violet, ochre and rose, bright pink and orange sherbet, and all the colors were stop-and-go, mottled into a camouflage pattern. Lavender pink met lime green in the middle of a rung, or cerulean blue climbed only halfway up a vertical axis until it met aquamarine.

On top of the tallest tower, fixed in place, were four clock faces, none of which were alike. Atop the other two towers was a single clock face on a swivel that rotated with the wind. The clock faces had no hands.