by Mark Helprin
Praise for Mark Helprin and
The Pacific and Other Stories
“Long before J.K. Rowling or Susanna Clarke wrote their big books of magic, readers were being awed by Mark Helprin’s unique brand of enchantment and exotic atmospheres. He established his reputation in the early 1980s and 1990s with Winter’s Tale and A Soldier of the Great War, huge novels of vibrant décor and imagination. The Pacific and Other Stories is a worthy descendant of these, for there is plenty of magic here, though it isn’t produced from the tip of a wand. Helprin’s magic is earthly, human.”
—Los Angeles Times
“It’s been a great run so far this autumn for lovers of the short story … but none of it would matter much if Helprin’s prose weren’t so exquisite … ‘a brave and wonderful thing.’”
—NPR’s All Things Considered
“As ambitious and imaginative as any of Helprin’s past works (Memoir from Antproof Case; Winter’s Tale; etc.), the sixteen stories collected in the author’s first book in nearly a decade are gloriously rich and varied … each demonstrating immense faith in the power of love. These are sturdy, rewarding stories from a master of the form.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“God is in Helprin’s details. … He is a master at precise and lucid explanations; in his hands a manual for a toaster oven might read like a prose poem. [His] descriptions … are small masterpieces, testaments to the perfectibility of explaining the minutiae of life, if not life itself.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Writers like Mark Helprin are a vanishing breed on the American literary scene. … He writes without irony, without the wink of postmodernist qualification about age-old themes of beauty, truth and honor. These are the great qualities he has championed in such majestic novels as Winter’s Tale and A Soldier of the Great War. … These stories sail across the page on a tide of precise observation and deft lyricism.”
—Newsday
“At times heart-wrenching and at times humorous, Helprin’s stories are about living lives of integrity and the rewards of doing so. … Helprin is a master of the genre, and he writes of people, places, and ideals with a superb simplicity that is at the same time realistically complex.”
—The Miami Herald
“Contemporary fiction is awash in self-serving characters happy to parade their weaknesses as badges of honor. So it’s especially satisfying to read this collection from Helprin (A Soldier of the Great War). … [His] characters act with almost old-fashioned moral rectitude, and Helprin is gifted enough to make them seem real … Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal (Fall Editor’s Pick)
“Helprin is a gorgeous writer, at once lush and disciplined. … His eye for small moments is the stuff poems are made of. … This collection glows with an ethereal beauty that I found bewitching.”
—Elle (Reader’s Pick)
“Helprin’s short stories should not be consumed in one sitting. … That these characters’ losses hit us in our gut is a testament to Helprin’s special genius—his ability to evoke a time and place so authentically, it is hard to imagine that he didn’t live through the Second World War or visit a newly liberated Paris.”
—Esquire (Big Important Book)
“Few contemporary writers display Helprin’s knack for creating mesmerizing and memorable characters. His stories about people’s ability to adapt reflect a certain wisdom and grace, and I was totally immersed in each character and the drama of their lives. This is a fantastic collection of short stories.”
—Book Sense (2004 Highlights)
“In The Pacific, Helprin reaffirms his place as our most elegant moralist. … [His] range is staggering, but no more so than the convincing, unsentimental case he makes for the importance of honor. Even in this day and age.”
—Entertainment Weekly (Editor’s Choice)
“Sixteen tales of war, love, the achingly beautiful and the fallen present. It’s been about a decade since his last novel … so Helprin tosses out a story collection, as if that will be enough. And it almost is. … Even in these short bursts, he often accomplishes what others take hundreds of pages to achieve.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Mark Helprin … returns with a collection every bit as strong as his first. The Pacific and Other Stories opens with pieces in an almost classical mode and then cycles from fabulist yarn spinning to roman á clef style intimacies. … As in [Hemingway’s] best works, the characters here do not so much quest after grace as encounter opportunities to achieve it.”
—The Seattle Times
“Incomparable prose … the work of a master … rhythmic and magisterial and ornate … a remarkable, stunning, overwhelming collection.”
—Bookreporter.com
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE PACIFIC AND OTHER STORIES
Born in 1947 and educated at Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford, Mark Helprin served in the Israeli army, Israeli Air Force, and British Merchant Navy. He is the author of, among other titles, A Dove of the East and Other Stories, Refiner’s Fire, Ellis Island and Other Stories, Winter’s Tale, A Soldier of the Great War, and Memoir from Antproof Case.
THE
PACIFIC
and Other Stories
MARK HELPRIN
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2004
Published in Penguin Books 2005
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Mark Helprin, 1982, 1986, 1988, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2004
All rights reserved
“Passchendaele” and “Mar Nueva” first appeared in The New Yorker; “The Pacific” in The Atlantic; “Last Tea with the Armorers” in Esquire; “Jacob Bayer and the Telephone” and “Vandevere’s House” in Forbes ASAP; “Reconstruction” in The Wall Street Journal; and “Perfection” in Commentary.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
These selections are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Helprin, Mark.
The Pacific and other stories / Mark Helprin.
p. cm.
Contents: Il colore ritrovato—Reconstruction—Monday—A brilliant idea and his own—Vandevere’s house—Prelude—Perfection—Sidney Balbion—Mar nueva—Rain—Passchendaele—Jacob Bayer and the telephone—Sail shining in white—Charlotte of the Utrechtseweg—Last tea with
the armorers—The Pacific.
ISBN: 978-1-101-64433-1
I. Title.
PS3558.E4775P33 2004
813’.54—dc22 2004050505
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Stephanie Huntwork
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
FOR PETER JOVANOVICH
Intelligence, Compassion, Integrity, Courage
Contents
IL COLORE RITROVATO
RECONSTRUCTION
MONDAY
A BRILLIANT IDEA AND HIS OWN
VANDEVERE’S HOUSE
PRELUDE
PERFECTION
SIDNEY BALBION
MAR NUEVA
RAIN
PASSCHENDAELE
JACOB BAYER AND THE TELEPHONE
SAIL SHINING IN WHITE
CHARLOTTE OF THE UTRECHTSEWEG
LAST TEA WITH THE ARMORERS
THE PACIFIC
The Pacific and Other Stories
Il Colore Ritrovato
I DIDN’T GO TO VENICE of my own accord. I was sent there, forced to go, by that … that woman, she who has worshippers throughout the world, she who, despite a corrupt and failing body, limitless greed, and the personality of a broom, has—still, after all these years—the voice of an angel. It isn’t surprising that she has power over me. Why shouldn’t she? Even after a big meal, and I mean a big meal, she can walk onto a floodlit stage, stare into darkness and blinding glare, and then, with inimitable self-possession, make thousands weep. That all her gifts have been so concentrated is a miracle, and though she has no talent or virtue but this, it’s more than enough.
I’ve represented her since 1962, when neither of us was known and we both were unrecognizably young. She was almost beautiful then, and almost innocent. Everyone assumes that I had an office, and, one day, she, a professional singer, walked into it. I have an office now, but I didn’t then. I was a bookkeeper in a dark little factory that made gears for motor scooters. Everything there had oil on it, even my ledgers, which were so splotched that sometimes you couldn’t read the numbers. And when it rained, the floor was covered with ankle-deep water.
Naturally, I didn’t want to stay in such a place for the rest of my life, and I believed that unless I did something impulsive and courageous, and unless I had a great deal of luck, I would. So I waited for my luck, and it came one day as I was walking home, not five minutes from the factory, in front of an industrial laundry. The doors were open, and, inside, one of the laundresses was lifting heavy wet sheets onto a cable that took them into a dryer. As she clipped them to the line, she sang. Working with arms raised is so difficult that most people would not have been able even to talk. But she was singing, and the singing, as she has proved many times since, was worthy of La Scala.
“Who the hell is that?” I asked one of her colleagues, a woman who looked distressingly not so much like a Picasso as like Picasso himself. It was a question that was to shape not only my life, but that of a substantial part of the world if art is to be accounted, even if these days art hardly is.
“Oh, she’s always singing. Everyone says how good she is.”
“Does she sing professionally?” I asked.
“No, she’s a laundress.”
“I see that, but, perhaps, on the side?”
“Her boyfriend won’t let her.”
“Why not?”
“He’s jealous.”
“Is he a soprano, too?”
“He’s in the army.”
“The army.”
Not wanting to be killed, I was going to leave right then, but then she said, “Yes, he’s in New Zealand, at the embassy, for two years. It has something to do with ostriches, I think. When he gets back, they’ll be married.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, please tell your friend. …” I reached into my pocket and pretended to be surprised. “I seem to have left my cards in the office. Tell your friend that I’m an impresario, and that I’ll come tomorrow after work—which is?”
“Which is what?”
“What time does she finish work?”
“Six. We all do,” she said, looking at me as if I were an idiot.
“At six, then,” I said. “She should sing at La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden.”
“Why don’t you tell her? We can stop the line, it’s just sheets, or you could wait ten minutes. People fall in love with her because of her voice.” Suspicion crossed her face like a cloud. “You don’t look like an impresario.”
I laughed artificially. “I have an appointment,” I said, “for a contract signing with Lucida Lamorella. I’ll be here tomorrow. Tell her.” All the while she was singing so beautifully that I could see why people fell in love with her even if I did not, because I could tell from a distance and despite a voice that one could love forever that she was—how shall I say it—spiritually blank. I don’t know how I was able to tell. Certain things are more or less self-evident.
That night I pressed my shirt and thought of a plan, and the next day I put on my suit, quit my job, and made a reservation at a restaurant. I paid the headwaiter to say, “Signor Cassati, how are things at La Scala?” I bought contract papers and stamps, and an impresario’s hat, a Borsalino. By the time I went to the laundry, I had become an impresario, for, after all, what is an impresario but someone who in less than a day can transform himself from a bookkeeper in a motor-scooter-gear factory into an impresario? Having convinced myself of my transformation, it was easy to convince her.
She was really something. She ate like a hippopotamus. God intended for one to be able to see the beauty and soul of nearly all women. And there I was, twenty-seven years of age, in a restaurant with a girl of twenty-one, who was really quite pretty, and, if not slim, possibly svelte. She could not have helped but have some of the charm of youth, and her voice must have meant something in respect to her soul, but I felt no attraction to her whatsoever. She ate olives so fast that many of them fell from her mouth and rolled across the tablecloth and onto the floor. She kept a wad of bread in each cheek pouch—just in case—while she shoveled food in through the main mouth part. It’s always good to have a reserve: her smock had pockets and she used them. She never stopped eating. I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough money left from my small savings to get us to Pflanzenberg, where solely by the balls of my feet I had tentatively booked her to sing the part of Norma with the opera club of one of the Volkswagen subcontractors that made windshield wipers. I could do this because I knew them through the gear factory, and had gotten their president tickets for La Scala.
“Do you know Norma?” I asked.
A black olive fell from her mouth. “Norma who?”
“Bellini’s Norma?”
“Of course. Mama made me memorize it. She made me memorize everything—before she died.” She went back to eating.
“What do you mean, ‘everything’?”
“Operas.”
“How many operas?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Sixty or seventy.”
My eyebrows went up and my face jerked forward. “Sixty or seventy?”
“Yes, what’s so strange about that?”
“What’s so strange about that?” I repeated in astonishment.
“Nothing,” she said, as if I had really asked her. “Do they have
any nuts?”
“Who?” I asked.
Before I could even think, she said, in her very powerful soprano, “Waiter, do you have nuts?”
Soon she was cracking nuts as she ate, as she spoke, and as she drank. “I know them perfectly.” She closed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, which, in those days, was how she emphasized a point.
“Perfectly?”
“The whole thing, all the parts. It just comes to me after I’ve seen it once, and then I don’t forget. It all makes sense, and flows naturally from one thing to another, so it’s no big fuckin’ deal.”
“That’s good,” I said, “because, with your permission, I’ve booked you to sing Norma in the opera house at Pflanzenberg.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You know you’re good.”
“But Quagliagliarello won’t let me.”
“Who’s Quagliagliarello?”
“My boyfriend.”
“Where is he?” Of course, I already knew, but I made myself look curious.
“In New Zealand.”
I said nothing, letting it dawn on her. It took a while, but then she asked, “Where’s Pflanzenberg?”
“In Germany, nowhere near New Zealand.”
“Germany! What would Quagliagliarello think?”
“He would fly back and kill me, that’s what he would think.”
“He would.”
“So don’t tell him. Why does he have to know? By the time he gets back, you’ll be singing in La Scala, and it will be a fait accompli. In fact, it will be a fait accompli when, in New Zealand, he sees your picture on the cover of an LP. You know, in a gown, getting out of a carriage and alighting onto a red carpet, fountain in the background, nice shoes, glowing complexion, happiness. He won’t even place you, because he won’t expect to see you on the jacket of a Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft recording, but then he’ll see your name, but it won’t matter, because he’ll be so shocked he won’t be able to kill me. What is your name? Here we are having dinner, and I don’t even know.”