Oh, birth! Oh, pain! Oh, nightmare, oh, terror! But on the shifting sands of destruction still the life of the time must go on and trapped in every heart is a flow of circumstances which will reveal it.
A twig, a branch, a locked-up entrance. Oh, lost and by the thunder soothed, father, father, father, come back again!
The guide folds the paper and puts it back into the desk with a satisfied expression. “This appears to be the first chapter of a novel,” he says, “apparently unfinished since, in any event, we are unable to locate further writings. It appears to be an autobiographical novel, and in the way in which it attacks the question of irretrievable loss and in certain evidences of the rhetoric, it seems to be derived from the talkings of Mr. Westfield and the writings of a minor American writer of the 1930s named Thomas Wolfe. The tensions are interesting and characteristic and, as I say, it is suggested that this material is indeed authentic. Well, that concludes Michael’s room, ladies and gentlemen.” The guide rubs his hands together with some high enthusiasm. “We will be going to the courtesy shop shortly. Any questions? We’ve covered these two rooms more quickly than I expected, so if you have anything to ask, go ahead.”
“That’s awful,” the heavy man says. “I mean, the writing there sounds really dreadful.”
“Indeed it does,” the guide says, “but on the other hand the sources are clear. We are not interested in taking this as a piece of literary interest, but seek its merit in the sociological, and as such, although the document is questionable, it is extremely interesting.”
“He must have had some difficulties with his father.”
“Some difficulties!” the guide says loudly. “Indeed he did have some difficulties; if the net total effect of this tour has been to leave you in some doubt as to the nature of the problems which anyone would have in relation to Mr. Westfield, much less his son, then I have been a poor guide and this is no museum. Mr. Westfield combined great sensitivity and insularity with almost total inarticulacy on crucial emotional issues and virtually seethed with small resentments and old griefs—as all of us do—but was unable, as most people are, to find any metaphors for them, any question of extrinsic capitulation. He had, in short, no feeling of control over these problems since he was not able to externalize and hence manipulate them. The only activity which could be considered recreational was the ice-skating, and he did this only during the season once a week.”
“I don’t want to hear any more about that ice-skating,” the scholar says.
“And neither do I,” says the guide cheerfully. Now that he has at last reached the end of his assigned duties he seems to have relaxed, to have become, perhaps, the Guide That He Really Is, and it shows in the ease of his demeanor, an almost friendly smile with which he says, “I know there’s a lot of controversy here. There are no easy explanations.”
“The ice-skating was purely recreational!” the scholar says, and the albino’s father says on the heels of this, quietly and with some malice, “But what if it wasn’t? What if we read the obvious things into it?” and the scholar turns with a cry and raises a distinctly wavering fist.
“Oh, come, come, gentlemen,” the guide says. “This is really ridiculous, to feel these passions and torment over such trivial issues. As I think any consideration of this exhibit will make clear, there are no easy answers either and no sense in this polarization. Let us relax; let us truly be with one another! You’re one of the most consistently involved and discriminating group of people that I’ve ever had the pleasure of directing through these effects and I would like to feel that you can get along with one another. Any questions? Any more questions?”
“What did Michael Westfield look like?” Joanne says. “Do we know?”
“Now that,” the guide says, “is an interesting point and I will answer it in a level, straightway fashion. We do not have photographs of either of the Westfield children. For some reason never clearly explained there were in the ruins absolutely no pictures of them. In fact, there were only two pictures available of the senior Westfields, quite muddied and both taken on their honeymoon, which would give no indication, of course, as to how they looked in later years. Both of the honeymoon pictures are blurred, revealing them on what seems to be a beach of some sort, probably on the East Coast. Because the faces are obscured and the outlines vague we have decided not to authenticate them. Instead, in the courtesy shop, you will find what we consider to be excellent simulated photographs and artistic impressions of what the Westfields might have looked like, posed by professional models selected for internal consistency or drawn by artists of high caliber, all of whom are employees of the project. We have aspired for a higher truth rather than a lesser veracity, in short, and we believe that these pictures give the sense of their subjects if not actually corresponding to them physically. Available in the courtesy shop are a fine variety of these drawings and photographs, ranging in sizes from 3 x 5 wallet-size inserts to full-scale 20 x 24 framed pictures suitable for display. The prices are quite moderate and the workmanship of the highest. Shall we adjourn there now? There is, incidentally, absolutely no compulsion for any of you to buy anything although I must remind you that the foundation is nonprofit and is always in need of funds to continue its fine work, and the courtesy shop is an important source of income. While we ask you to buy nothing, we do then hope that you will give the items on sale your highest consideration and will feel that you’ll want to leave Westfield with a memento or two or three. Are we all ready then?”
“So, there really is no way of knowing what he looked like,” Joanne says, and the albino’s mother purses her lips in infuriation as the albino begins to squall with restlessness. For the instant I share her rage with Joanne, who is, after all, not being very reasonable now about many things.
“No,” the guide says, “there is no way of knowing. We cannot be sure. He could even be among us for all we know. All we can do is suggest and infer. But one can imagine what he must have looked like in his mind’s eye and that, for the moment, is enough. No more questions?”
There are no more questions. The guide comes from behind the gate, walks us to the door, points vaguely upward at the ceiling. “I mentioned the attic, of course,” he said, “but we won’t be visiting there today. There really isn’t that much to see in there and the memorabilia are dusty and almost worthless, not having yet been covered by the restoration project. You will find excellent simulations of most of the objects in the courtesy shop. Let us go,” and he retreats down the hall. With some eagerness my companions follow him, only Joanne lingering at the end. I wait for her and then take her hand.
“What was that meaning?” I say. “Why did you have to ask those questions?”
She shakes her head and continues walking quickly, so quickly that I can barely keep up with her, which is a very unusual thing indeed. “Never mind,” she says. “I have a right to ask, don’t I?”
“But why?”
“Look, Michael, you want it this way, then let it be this way,” she says rather mysteriously and yanks her hand from my tentative grasp. “If you can’t find any answers, why do you expect to find them here or from me? I just don’t feel like talking now; I want to look through the shop and later on maybe we can go and settle this. But not now,” and with a bound I find almost surreal she leaps through a doorway and patters down the steps leading toward the shop. I follow at some distance, musing. It is apparent that something of considerable dimension has occurred which I will need to think about in solitude later, as is my wont, but at the present time I simply have no taste for it, for as I go down the stairs at a quicker pace the sound and smells of the courtesy shop overwhelm me and I can barely restrain my eagerness. It is, after all, my first trip there. I almost stumble on the bottom step, then right myself and come into a large, airy, well-equipped souvenir shop with a series of counters, all of them attended by women in period dress who bear a vague resemblance to my mother. The place is so large that it instantly swallows up our small group and I succumb to a feeling of fine, high isolation, noticing vaguely that Joanne has gone over to the dress section while the guide has retired to busy himself in intense conversation with one of the counter girls in the postcard section. A huge portrait of a man who seems to look something like my father is on the opposite wall, and the walls are otherwise littered with photographs of the house, the grounds, the neighborhood, and a series of drawings which look like the scribbles that my sister brought home from public school up to her thirteenth year. “This is a chair,” she would say, and, “This is a flower and a cow,” and indeed they were all of that although her talent for illustration quickly withered, and it was obvious by mid-adolescence that she had only a small knack, no real creative predilection at all. I cannot think of it; I am going over to a counter which has a sign saying “MEMORABILIA” and look with fascination at the objects displayed, all of them that cheap mass-produced kind which I am so familiar with in other places but which looks quite strange in the present context. One thing I did believe in, until this moment, was my life’s singularity and its unreproducability; this is apparently something which is going to have to be held up to further investigation.
Underneath me, in the front counter, are miniatures of the sex manual in my father’s bottom drawer, the cardboard sign above them says “AS SEEN IN THE WESTFIELD RESTORATION, BOUND IN GENUINE IMITATION LEATHERETTE” and I pick one up curiously to find that it is indeed a one-tenth reproduction of the sex manual, bound in a peculiar, cheap gold-colored substance and containing not only all of the words and diagrams but a facsimile of the inscription from my father on the flyleaf: “To Josephine and to Our Marriage,” which I find curiously affecting in this reproduction. Next to it are imitation cigarette holders and cartons of cigarettes, probably in tribute to my own habit which I picked up somewhere during my eighteenth year and which has now been memorialized by the statement “AS SMOKED BY MICHAEL WESTFIELD.” And then, burrowing down to the next container of objects, I see reproductions of my mother’s kitchen calendar with its cover picture of a cheerful frying pan standing hands on hips with a balloon of dialogue stating “Things to do, things to remember.” Inside are jottings in my mother’s handwriting which are unquestionably authentic:
Get the garbage ready.
Check movies.
See if dresses are there.
Find out about PS 111.
Gloria on Tuesday.
Michael’s doctor appointment.
Katherine’s teeth.
and so on, a banality which I find curiously moving since I had forgotten, until this moment, the woman’s curious attempts to create precision where there was none; a certain grace, felicity and felicitousness of the spirit which was devoured constantly and almost whole by the events of the household, and which yet would strangely assert itself at odd moments and never be forgotten, even though a vagrant tantrum or disorder would cause it to vanish. Once, for instance, I found my mother up very early on a Sunday morning while my father had gone ice-skating and my sister to a sleep-in party somewhere and, showing her the book review section of a local newspaper containing an advertisement, told her that I wanted to join a book club. “Science-fiction book club,” I said to her. “They’ll send you three books for a dollar and the only obligation is to continue for four more at a dollar each. And if you don’t like the first three you can return them right away.”
“Yes,” she said, actually leaning over to inspect the ad as she sipped her coffee, and for no clear reason she gave me an affectionate pat on the knee. “Yes, but I don’t understand why you’re so interested in science-fiction. Isn’t it only an escape kind of literature? It really isn’t anything I’ve ever been able to understand.”
This was one of the rare times my mother had ever asked me the kind of question which could be given a sensible reply, and I said with delight, “But it isn’t escape literature. Not necessarily. Not all of it. It is an attempt to make a serious statement in serious terms about a serious society.” I was, at that time, very concerned with issues such as this, having read certain books of literary criticism. “It’s satirical and symbolic.”
“Yes, but does it say anything?”
“Some of it. Some of it is very good. I wouldn’t mind writing some of it myself some day if I was ever able to do it.”
“But then,” she said, “who would pay for these books? Can you cover them from your allowance?”
“Yes. I just won’t go to the movies on Saturday for a month and right there I’ll have the dollar saved.”
“Well,” she said, finishing off her coffee, “well, then, if you feel that way about it, Michael, then you just do it,” and it was a nice moment but then something fell from my pocket to the floor with a clatter—some change as a matter of fact—and she wanted to know how I could wear clothing that was in such obvious disrepair and didn’t I take any pride and what was the meaning of it anyway and why didn’t I take those pants off right this minute so she could do something about them, and the moment went away, passed into the noisome accumulation of incident which is mostly what I remember about my early adolescence, and it was many, many years before I discussed science-fiction with either of my parents again, and then only as an attempt to give an illustration of what I took to be the diminished nature of our reality. “We live as if we’re in a spaceship!” I screamed in my sixteen-year-old metaphysic, “and the goddamned spaceship is full of machines and it isn’t going anywhere!” But of course I was really not talking about science-fiction at all when I said this and I never got around to writing it. Not just quite.
The calendar then is a reminder of grace, and for that reason alone not to be taken without a certain amount of seriousness but, as is so often the case in relation to my family, I find myself diverted by articles in the next section; there are a collection of miniature ice skates also finished in black leatherette which are noted as being “as worn by Jonathan Westfield” and in an adjoining cubicle are good-sized miniatures of my sister’s collection of animals. In all ways, it is apparent that the courtesy shop has provided well for the restoration.
“And let me remind you!” I hear the guide saying, as though seized again by a certain sense of propriety, a need to show that he is still doing his job. “Let me remind you that the shop is open until 5 p.m. or even a little later, depending upon your convenience, and that this is not all there is to it; next door there is a fine restaurant serving many interesting specialties. So take your time, ladies and gentlemen; do take your time and let me now, on behalf of the restoration committee and the museum, bid you a good day and express my pleasure at having you come along with me; you’re one of the most genuinely responsive and intelligent audiences I’ve ever had.”
The guide, apparently determined to make some kind of an exiting speech, moves away from the counter and comes to the center of the room, but unfortunately there appears to be very little interest in what he is saying; the tourists are poking interestedly around the various counters and the albino, having found a replica of a watering can which was used in our garden during one fateful summer, is running around the open spaces of the shop, screaming in a rather shrill voice. Nevertheless, the guide persists. “The purposes of this project are educational,” he is saying, “and have nothing to do with fantasy or the sensational; I hope that all of you will feel somewhat enlarged by what we have learned today and will carry the message forth to your friends and relatives. The restoration is open three seasons of the year for public viewing all days except Friday, and you may, in addition, give it a grant which is of course fully tax-deductible. Stamped, self-addressed envelopes to the foundation are available in most of the boxes next to the exit and your thoughtfulness will be most appreciated. So thank you again, thank you, thank you,” but instead of ending on an enthusiastic finishing note, the guide’s voice seems to waver uncertainly and it is more of a retreat than a procession as he moves from the center of the floor and back to the woman behind the counter. He appears to grasp her hand with a kind of dependency and leans toward her; she strokes his cheek and shoulder and his face relaxes somewhat. “Thank you again,” he mumbles.
Seized by an impulse which I do not quite understand, I go over to the guide and tell him I want to pay my respects. The counter at which he is standing contains a number of photographs of common local scenes, as well as those simulations of my parents, and they are indeed distinguished by their workmanship if not their authenticity. The people in the photographs look like nothing in my family and I am particularly bemused by one beach shot which shows four attractive people posing in a rather ungainly posture near some blank seascape; there is a look of communion in their eyes which is most unusual and almost amusing, considering the circumstances. “It was very interesting,” I say to the guide.
