The Lacuna

Pilgrims of Chapultepec (Stratford and Sons), set in Mexico before the Conquest, recounts a pilgrimage of people cast out from home, doomed to follow a neurotic leader who picks fights with his own shadow. Shepherd makes the case for those who find themselves on the ropes against bad policy, wondering what the Sam Hill their leader could be thinking. The protagonist, a boy named Poatlicue, struggles to be a model citizen but comes to view his nation’s long march as a winning game for the king, and the scourge of everyone else.

Author Shepherd combines Leatherstocking action with Chaplinesque pathos, as shown in this symbolic hunting scene: Poatlicue and his friend skin a deer, grousing about the king as they hack their kill into anatomical bits. Their leader has made another outrageous edict, reversing a treaty of friendship with a neighboring clan, deciding now it can’t be trusted. The tribe will have to move again, in a season when food is scarce. These youths are rankled. Poatlicue tosses a pair of testicles in the dust, calling them “the buck’s last big hopes in sad little bags.”

He tells his pal, “Our leader is an empty sack. You could just as well knock him over, put a head with horns on a stick, and follow that. Most of us never choose to believe in the nation, we just come up short on better ideas. It’s probably a law: the public imagination may not exceed the size of the leaders’ ballocks.”

The author may be alluding here to the testimony of Donald Benedict, the New York theological student who refused to register for the draft during the war. “We do not contend that the American people maliciously choose the vicious instrument of war,” said Benedict during trial, “but in a perplexing situation they lack the imagination and religious faith to respond in a different manner.”

Does Shepherd mean to put himself in the draft-dodger’s camp? One could ask many questions of this politically astute novelist, starting with his opinion of a leader who has just set the nation reeling with an abrupt foreign policy reversal, from friendly cooperation to Truman’s so-called “containment” of the USSR.

We can only wonder, as Shepherd declines to be interviewed. But this week as we line up behind our man in Washington, shelling up $400 million to fight our friends of yesterday because “Every nation must choose,” we might listen for a thump in the dust, and wonder whether the public’s big hopes will fit in that small, sad sack.

June 11

She has raised the subject of the memoir yet again. I thought it had died a natural death, but no, she presses. If only to put to rest the perforated eardrum question, I suspect. The first chapter was very good in her opinion, and today she confessed that since the day I gave it to her, she comes to work each morning hoping I’ll have the next part of it ready for her to type.

“It’s been near six months now since chapter one, Mr. Shepherd. If it takes that long for each, you’ll not outlive your own boyhood.”

I told her I was very sorry to crush her hopes in coming to work and so forth. But there will be no next part. It was a direly mistaken idea. And anyway, even several months ago when I was entertaining the project, I’d run across a problem, the missing notebook. The very next little diary after the first one. I hadn’t yet told her.

“I can’t recall that year without it. I should have let you know a while ago. I just hoped you’d forget about it. The memoir fell apart before I’d even gotten started.”

“What do you mean, gone?” Her eye went to the shelf. She knows where I keep them. They should all be put to the flame.

“The crucial missing piece of the manuscript. There’s a word for that, historians use. A lacuna. So blame it on fate and history, if you want.”

“Did you have it before? When you first took all of them out of the crate?”

This is not a set of keys gone missing, I informed her with some irritation. It just didn’t come with the rest, when Frida packed up the notebooks and papers. Probably it had burned at the police station, or slipped behind a cabinet. It’s small, I know exactly what it looked like—it was a little leather-bound accounts book I stole from the maid. About the size of your hand. And now it’s gone. Just forget about the memoir, I’m working on something different now. I should burn up all these notebooks so you’ll stop nagging me about it.

Mrs. Brown is no fool. “If you remember what the booklet looked like, you could remember well enough what was in it.”

June 23

It was only one letter, but she carried it up the stairs like a sack of bricks.

“I hate to disturb. But it says they need this back by return mail.”

“Who is it?”

“J. Parnell Thomas.”

“Friend or foe?”

“Chairman, House Committee on Un-American Activities, formerly known as the Dies Committee.”

“Rings a bell, Dies. Oh yes, I know these gentlemen.” Committee Diez, we’d pronounced it, like “ten” in Spanish. They arranged Lev’s trip to Washington, the visas all prepared and then canceled at the last minute.

“You do?” She seemed startled.

“I mean, I know what they do. They called up my former employer once, from Mexico. To testify on the treacheries of Stalin. They’re still in business?”

She held up the letter. “It’s just a form. They say it’s gone out to all employees of the Department of State.”

“I don’t believe I’ll be shipping any more art for the government.”

“Present or previous, it says. They need you to sign a statement saying you’re loyal to the United States government.”

“Goodness. Why wouldn’t I be?”

She moved her glasses from her head to her nose, and read: “Due to close wartime cooperation between the United States and Russia, certain strategic areas of our government may have been opened to Communist sympathizers. As of March 21, 1947, the President and Congress have undertaken to secure the loyalty of all government workers.”

“Very cloak and dagger. Where do I sign?”

She approached the bench. “Are you sure you ought, Mr. Shepherd? If you aren’t looking to work for the government again, maybe there isn’t need.”

“Are you doubting my loyalty?”

She surrendered the letter for signature.

“Mrs. Brown, I don’t hate much and I don’t love much. I’m a free man. But I love writing books for Americans. Look at those letters, all that sky-blue goodness, this country is the berries. And Joseph Stalin murdered my friend. He would have gotten me too, if I’d stood in the way.”