The Lacuna
Page 77Your friend Mr. Morrison recommended an editor who sheds a glimmer of interest in looking at the thing. His response has forced me outdoors three days in a row, blinking like an owl, in search of an envelope or packaging to carry the manuscript to New York. This effort may take longer than writing the book. Stationer’s stores no longer have even enough paper for the standard sign declaring their product has gone to the front. The editor may be spared his trouble, due to the paper shortage. Probably the manuscript itself should be heaved over in the next paper drive, as ballast for a warship.
I send you two clippings in return, from earlier in the summer. Our town’s newspaper is rationed to twice-weekly editions, but this article merited precious fiber—note the date, our shared birthday. You’ll remember I wrote you about this beetle. The other page I tore from a respectable magazine (Life, how comprehensive!), enclosed mainly for its spectacular photograph. Like Cortés, I report back to my Queen on a new world wondrous strange. Feliz cumpleaños, my friend, from America where we make do with nothing new.
Abrazos,
SÓLI
Life Magazine, July 17, 1944
Japanese Beetle:
Voracious, Libidinous, Prolific
by Anthony Standen
Japanese beetles, unlike the Japanese, are without guile. There are, however, many parallels between the two. Both are small but very numerous and prolific, as well as voracious, greedy and devouring. Both have single-track minds. Both are inscrutable, the beetles particularly, for no one can say why they should be attracted by yellow when most of their food is green, nor why they rush avidly to geraniums—the smell of geraniums is used to bait the traps—when geraniums are poisonous to them. The beetles, however, are firmly settled on our middle Atlantic coast, where they chew up apples, peaches, grapes, roses, pasture grass and other useful or agreeable vegetable matter to the tune of $7,000,000 every year, and threaten to become rampant over the greater part of the entire country. Long ago we declared war on them, and though we have little chance of total victory—which would mean exterminating every single beetle on our shores—we may hope to achieve a more limited success, with the insects so harassed and persecuted that their numbers would be kept within decency’s limit, although their character would never be changed.
Kamikaze Peril Reaches Asheville
by Carl Nicholas
They are small, crafty, and breed unceasingly. They are driven to fly viciously into their targets, creating immense destruction. The Japanese Beetle has moved down our coast and arrived at our very door. These odd-looking green insects pose a threat to plant life and domestic tranquility alike.
“They fly all over my washing,” said Mrs. Jimmy Hyder, a housewife recently sighted on Charlotte Street mounting her offensive. Sons Harold and Alter led the infantry with badminton rackets, and Mrs. Hyder followed with the pump-atomizer, dousing the battlefield with insecticide. Weekly sprayings may tip the balance against the enemy, but Mrs. Hyder complains, “They’ll keep on flying into you for no good reason, down to the last one.” She warned other Victory Gardeners to expect heavy losses from the enemy this year, especially in the tomatoes and runner beans.
Scientists call the greedy beast “Popillia japonica.” The Agriculture Department believes they first sneaked into the country near New Jersey, some years prior to Pearl Harbor, concealed in a crate of fruit. The sly grubs hide under ground in winter, emerging famished and keen to ply their destruction in the warmer months. Their fiendish campaign has now reached the Western Carolinas, spoiling orchards worth many thousand dollars.
Wives and gardeners beware. Though badminton rackets fly on Charlotte Street, Mr. Wick Bentsen of the County Extension Service says no weapons yet devised have been found to stop this Japanese invasion.
Mr. Lincoln Barnes, Editor
Stratford and Sons Publishers, New York
December 11, 1944
The sum you have proposed is overwhelmingly generous.
The changes you suggest in the story will render it much improved. However, I’m not able to consult the pages you mentioned, as the book rests entirely in your hands. You have the only copy. (The envelope also may be the sole issue of its litter.) Paper remains scarce here. Any shortages in supply lines at the German Bulge were not due to failure of enthusiasm for the paper and scrap drives in Asheville, North Carolina. Thus, it would be useful to have the manuscript returned for corrections, at your convenience.
Your letter made reference to my secretary-typist, to whom you plan to forward more notations. Be assured, the secretary-typist will be in intimate contact with the author, the telephone receptionist, cook, and housekeeper, as we all presently inhabit the same four-dollar shoes. With clothing-ration coupons as they are, it’s a useful arrangement.
Gratefully,
HARRISON W. SHEPHERD
December 21
Stalin sixty-five years old today. A panting reporter on the radio said he is the Russian Tom Paine rolled together with Paul Bunyan. Lev would now be sixty-four, but isn’t. Revolutions are constantly reborn, he used to say, and men like Stalin never die.
Tonight’s news: the Allies broke open the dikes along the Netherlands coast, letting in the sea and drowning thousands of German soldiers in the flood. Like the Azteca opening dikes to drown Cortés and his men on the shores of Lake Tenochtitlan. But fiction is nonsense, the war is real. Tomorrow the farmers of Walcheren will wake to see a tide standing over their crops, the floating corpses of their cattle, every tree in the land scalded dead by the salt on its roots. The glory of war is so frequently disappointing.
Too much solitude here, pent up with ghosts, and nowhere to go to escape them. The man in the street selling ice from a truck today had a pick, nearly like the one that murdered Lev. This was the month he dreaded most. Its visitations.
February 10
A better day, the manuscript set aside awhile in favor of honest work, as Lev would call it. Painted the dining room, the wainscot between the battens, war surplus paint but a decent color, flannel gray. The neighbor kindly donated an old dining table she doesn’t use, and a son’s Saturday help for the painting. A regular Tom Sawyer. Paid him two bits, but suspect he’d rather have had the dead rat and string to swing it with.
April 5, 1945
Dear Frida,
Your letter was welcome, even if it didn’t carry much good news. It is so much better to think of you stomping down the street with skirts roiling, not in a wheelchair. This is a hateful revision. You and Diego should be marching with banners in Paseo de la Reforma this week, protesting the compromises of the Chapultepec Conference.