The Women (49 page)
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 fiancé, 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!
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 IMPEHO
137
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 gratitude and congratulation that rocketed Frank so far ahead of his competitors 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 nobody’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 Kantō 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.
tatami
room in the green fastness of the mountains above the Kantō 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
W
rieto-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 God, it’s like a meat locker in here!” he cried. “Can’t any of you keep up the fire?”
rieto-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 God, 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 snatched 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 snatched 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 illustrates 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 nobody’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 anticipate 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 participated 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.
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 sexual 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 God 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.
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.
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