Quinn's Book

by William Kennedy

  “Maud, may I come in?”

  “Of course,” she said, and Gordon entered, smiling.

  “I have to change for this evening,” he said, “and I wondered whether we should prepare a room for Mr. Quinn. I invited him to join us at the bazaar tonight.”

  “What a good idea,” said Maud.

  “I guess it would be valuable to see it,” said Quinn.

  “It’s quite a spectacle for Albany,” said Gordon.

  “Albany has spectacles and spectacles,” said Quinn.

  “Then I’ll have them go ahead with the room.”

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” said Quinn, “I wonder could I have the one I used to sleep in. Next floor up, opposite the stairs.”

  “We have much grander rooms than that,” said Gordon.

  “There’s grandeur also in repeating history.”

  “Then you shall have it. I’ll have Cappy bring up your things and stable your horse.” Gordon looked at Maud. “You seem to be in your nightclothes.”

  “I’m about to bathe,” said Maud.

  “We’ll meet at a later hour, then,” said Quinn, moving toward the door.

  “An excellent idea,” said Gordon, standing pat.

  My dearest Daniel [Quinn read, lying in the bed he last lay in six years earlier, the careful handwriting before him composed six years earlier also], I am appalled by your unfeeling ways. You are a man of mercurial moods, and if you do not change, I shan’t promise that our love will survive, which would be lamentable. I have never ceased of loving you, but when you came into my dressing room and I hugged you as a savior, I felt something I had not felt since our kiss by the shore of Saratoga Lake (and I have known certain compelling intimacies with men in the intervening years). I conclude from this feeling that I have an enduring element in my makeup, one that, unlike most mortal characteristics of our species, resists change. Poets have talked of this but I have never credited them with propounding anything except romantic twaddle, and yet I must now confess they knew something I heretofore did not.

  But you left me in such haste that I did not even gain the moment to tell you what led to our separation in Saratoga. I saw all that happened to you on the veranda that afternoon. I did not ride off on the roan stallion, as some thought, but created the ruse of my departure by convincing a stableboy to take the horse to a neighboring farm. I then hid in the hayloft with my bag and observed all events, for I was in need of time to think what I should do. Intuitively I knew you would never accept my solution to the situation in which I found myself that afternoon after our return. I was, of a suddenness, sorely pressed to provide for Magdalena in light of John McGee’s decision to leave us and pursue a career as a prizefighter.

  Magdalena, headstrong of course, decided to depart Obadiah’s farm immediately and resume our life on the road. She thought of accepting an offer from a New York producer who wanted her to travel and dance and then meet with visitors curious to observe her beauty up close. She was to charge one dollar for each personal handshake. But I was fearful of her health, and knew it would worsen with travel. She was in a most sorry and withdrawn condition and I felt it my duty to bring her to a less grueling fate. This I achieved by shifting Obadiah’s obsession from Magdalena to myself. I discovered he was a man of peculiar predilections, obsessed by the backs of women’s knees, and so I agreed to make such parts as I owned available for his periodic scrutiny in exchange for his solace and support for the dwindling Magdalena, and a curb on his attentions to her.

  In short order Magdalena grew easeful and serene, and in time I hired a woman companion, a French immigrant girl named Cecile, and began my life as the sojourning spiritualist, which afforded me small income and much danger from malevolent Catholic Irishmen. During one visit at Troy a group of them sought my destruction, thinking me an apostle of Satan. I eluded them and struck out from those shores soon enough to become the successor of Mother and Auntie, which is to say, I became the daring danseuse, which I remained until you saw me in my triumph as Mazeppa. This, I fear, will be the bane of my days, as well as my financial salvation. A new life opens before me now, with bookings everywhere. I do loathe these particulars, but I am comforted by the memory of our last embrace, and I send you my fondest caresses.

  Until we meet again, I remain, your truest love, Maud Fallon.

  In the carriage Maud asked Quinn’s permission to practice aloud what she would be reading later in the evening: excerpts from Scott and Keats; and from her handbag she took a slim volume, Marmion and The Lay of the Last Minstrel. The reading, she explained, was her contribution to the Army Relief Bazaar. Tonight she would take no fee for her work, which, of late, she had been doing in salons and temples where the arts flourished.

  “Elocution in the salon has replaced horses in the hippodrome for Maud,” Gordon said.

  “Elocution in the salon. Exotic in the extreme,” said Quinn.

  “I needed something less convulsive than an upside-down horseback adventure every night of my life,” said Maud. “I crave tranquillity.”

  “We seem to crave that as we wind down,” said Quinn.

  “Winding down has nothing to do with it,” said Maud in miffed tones. “I’m winding neither down nor up. The problem was boredom and physical torture. I’m sure my body has suffered more than Mazeppa’s.”

  “She was a tapestry of black and blue,” said Gordon.

  “A tapestry,” said Quinn.

  “I had to wear long sleeves and high collars,” said Maud.

  “What a shame,” said Quinn.

  “It was punishment without sin,” said Gordon.

  “I hope you were well paid,” said Quinn.

  “I loathe money,” said Maud.

  “My romance with money is enough for both of us,” said Gordon. “That’s why I took her over.”

  “I hardly think I’ve been taken over,” said Maud.

  “You shall be,” Gordon said with a smile.

  Maud then decided not to practice her reading and said nothing for the rest of the ride.

  When he entered the bazaar Quinn experienced a rush of black wisdom and felt himself moving toward the crags of a new nightmare. This was irrational and he knew it. Tension rose in his throat and chest. He followed Gordon’s lead, walking beside Maud, threading himself through handsomely dressed crowds, breathing in the bright and busy oddness of this peculiar building: a sudden upthrust built in two weeks and designed in the shape of a double Grecian cross.

  They walked beneath the elevated orchestra stand, from where a waltz by Strauss energized the evening. Arches festooned with flowers and evergreens led Quinn’s eye to booths celebrating England, Ireland, Russia, Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga. Hundreds of flaming gas jets imposed brilliance on the bodies below, which exuded in their finery a light and power that for Quinn paralleled the luminous battlefield dead. Irrational. Quinn knew it.

  “It’s a veritable palace of Aladdin,” said Gordon. “And all these fair ladies, why, they seem like the nymphs and graces of mythology.”

  “By and large, dumpy and frowzy,” said Maud, who explained that one of the graces was really doing public penance by working here since her husband was in jail for selling horseshoes to the rebel army.

  Gordon ignored Maud’s remark and led the way to the Curiosity Shop, explaining that they would see Myles Standish’s pistol, carried by Myles on the Mayflower and purchased by Lyman Fitzgibbon after his genealogist discovered a link between Myles and the Fitzgibbons.

  “It’s merely on loan from Father,” said Gordon. “Not for sale, by a long shot. A curiosity of history, as they say.”

  Quinn looked at the pistol, wondered how many savage breasts its power had pierced, then moved along to the writing bureau owned by George Washington, upon which George had signed Major André’s death warrant. He saw Madison’s cane, Lafayette’s pistol, Grant’s autograph, and the Bastille model (made from the Bastille’s own stone) that Lafayette had presented to George Washington. Such l
ovely revolutions. Such a grand Civil War. We must not forget how they are done. He noted a pair of leather shoes that had been made for Union troops by prisoners at the Albany penitentiary. Five hundred and six prisoners were busy making the shoes. Half of their number were Negroes.

  Then Quinn saw and quickly found focus on handwritten words in a locked cabinet, under glass, difficult to read: “. . . gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits . . . the effort to colonize persons of African descent . . . upon this continent . . . all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state . . . shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free . . .”

  Quinn read the related sign explaining that one might, for one dollar, purchase a ticket and perhaps win, and thereby own forever, this document donated by the President to the Albany Bazaar, and described as the

  ORIGINAL DRAFT

  of the

  PRESIDENT’S FIRST

  EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

  dated September 22,1862

  Whereupon Quinn fumbled in his pocket for a dollar and purchased a ticket from one of the nymphs.

  Maud took Quinn’s arm and said, “I must show you something at the Saratoga booth,” and Gordon, noting this, followed in their wake. Crossing the transept Quinn sensed an easing of his tension at the touch of Maud the cynosure. Then he saw Will Canaday standing by the Irish booth and he felt a surge of joy at the convergence of the two people he valued most in this life, and he moved Maud toward the Irish booth. When Will saw them he grasped Maud’s hand and kissed her cheek; then he embraced Quinn, neither of them speaking.

  “You didn’t say you were coming home,” Will finally said.

  “I wasn’t sure until I actually got on the train,” said Quinn.

  Six years had passed since Quinn last saw Will, who was more stooped than Quinn had ever seen him, and walking with a limp. He had always carried a handsome walking stick but now a stout cane supported his steps.

  “What happened to your leg?” Quinn asked.

  “Aaah, they knocked me around one night and shattered a bone.”

  “Who did?”

  “A few of the boyos. I didn’t know them.”

  “The Society?”

  “It could have been. I’ve all sorts of new enemies as well, and they didn’t identify themselves.”

  Will’s reputation for being the scourge of the city had not abated since Quinn left Albany in 1858 to test out New York and expose his soul to other than clement weather. He left with an invitation from Will to write anything he pleased, and so he had, until he hired on at Greeley’s Tribune. Even then, Will reprinted all that he recognized as coming from Quinn’s pen.

  “And yourself,” said Will. “Are you well?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Quinn.

  “I’ll introduce you here tonight. You’ll say something about the war, I understand.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Quinn. “I have nothing to say.”

  “Then no one else on earth does, either. It can be brief. Everybody here knows your name.”

  “I’m not up to it, Will.”

  “You’ll do it. People need the war’s reality.”

  “They do? You can’t mean it.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I’m the wrong choice. I wouldn’t know reality if it knocked me down. And it did.”

  “Just a few minutes will do,” said Will. “And how are you, Maudie? You look thunderously beautiful.”

  “I wanted to show Daniel the Saratoga booth, and our old friend.”

  “Oh yes,” said Will, “our friend.” He looked at his pocket watch. “We’ll be ready for your reading in about five minutes. Are you doing the Keats?”

  “Yes, and I may also do Scott,” said Maud.

  “Scott is always a pleasure.”

  “Perhaps ‘Lochinvar.’ ”

  “Splendid,” said Will, and he winked at Maud.

  Will left them then, and Quinn saw what had been shielded from view by Will’s presence: a photograph of General McClellan framed in marble, and beside that a huge morocco-bound Bible donated to the booth by Mr. R. Dwyer, superintendent of the County Idiot Asylum. Quinn moved closer to a large framed photo of a military unit and saw it was the Irish brigade, led by Bart Connors from Wexford. Quinn had ridden with them for two days and told a bit of their story: wild men all, daredevil heroes their superiors thrust into lost or impossible causes. Using a steady supply of replacements off the boat, the brigade recapitulated the fate of ancient Celtic warriors: they went forth to battle but they always fell.

  At the Saratoga booth Quinn found the usual antiques and art objects, as well as photographs and sketches of the great hotels, the ballrooms, the long porches, the ladies in promenade, the parks, the springs, the pines. What was new to him was a sketch of jockeys on racehorses, and an excited throng rising in the grandstand of the new racecourse that was opening this week.

  “This is what I wanted to show you,” Maud said to Quinn. “Do you see who owns it?”

  Quinn then saw a photo of a man standing beside a chestnut filly called Blue Grass Warrior. The man was well dressed, with a full black beard.

  “That’s my horse,” said Maud.

  “Really? Well, you always loved horses.”

  “It was a gift from a suitor. Not one of the six, to anticipate your question. He’s from Kentucky. I met him at Saratoga just before the war, and he gave me a horse and a slave girl as gifts.”

  “I hope you kept the slave girl too.”

  “Of course. And I sent her to Canada in case he changed his mind about her.”

  Quinn read the printed matter explaining the photo.

  “Why that’s John,” he said. “John McGee.”

  “It took you a while to notice.”

  “It’s his beard. I never saw him with a beard.”

  He studied the most recent incarnation of John the Brawn, handsome figure of substance and money, as wealthy as he is hairy. The last Quinn had seen of him was in 1863, when, as always, John was leaping into a new future, linking his fistic notoriety to the politicians who ran New York City, using his name as a draw for gambling parlors: John the Brawn becoming John the Grand and John the Mighty, his power and his fortune as expansive as his chest.

  “He owns the track?” Quinn asked.

  “He’s one of the principals. A handful of millionaires.”

  “Our John has truly risen.”

  “He’s wonderful to Magdalena,” said Maud.

  “Isn’t she living with Obadiah?”

  “She married Obadiah five years ago. But you know Magdalena. She was never content with one man.”

  “That seems to be a family trait.”

  “It’s stupid that you’re jealous,” said Maud.

  As Quinn smiled his skepticism, it became evident to him that his possessiveness stemmed not only from desire and love but also from seeing Maud as the instrument by which he would rid himself of death and war, put life once again on horseback. He had felt such rumblings of possibility for himself on Obadiah’s veranda, anticipating Maud’s arrival after his first shave. He’d reveled merely in waiting for her there amid the architecture of dynamic serenity, that vast, sculpted lawn sloping to the lake, leading him to the edge of all that was new, centering him in a web of escalating significance. And in such privileged moments his life became a great canvas of the imagination, large enough to suggest the true magnitude of the unknown. What he saw on the canvas was a boundless freedom to do and to think and to feel all things offered to the living. In Maud’s presence, or even in waiting for her to arrive, the canvas became unbearably valuable and utterly mysterious, and he knew if he lost Maud he would explode into simplicity.

  “Ah, there you are, cousin,” came a female voice, and here toward Gordon, with hand outstretched, came a handsome woman in her thirties, artfully coiffed, regal in maroon silk dress, its hoop skirt bouncing as she came.

  Gordon took her hand, kissed her cheek
. “Phoebe,” he said.

  “We expected you for tea,” Phoebe told Gordon. “But here you are, all bound up with an entourage.”

  “Two friends,” said Gordon. “Miss Maud Fallon and the war journalist Daniel Quinn.”

  “A pleasure indeed, Mr. Quinn,” said Phoebe. “You’ve educated us all on the terrible battles you’ve seen. And how quaint to meet you with clothes on, Miss Fallon. You’re usually naked on horseback, aren’t you?”

  “I was born naked,” said Maud.

  “How charming,” said Phoebe. “We’ll look for you at tea tomorrow, Gordon. Please come alone.”

  “Excuse me, madam,” Quinn said to her, “but you have the manners of a sow,” and he took Maud’s arm and walked her away.

  Will Canaday found them browsing at the Shaker booth and led Maud to the elevated platform in front of the booth of Military Trophies. This, the focal point for the bazaar’s public moments, was crowned by Washington’s portrait, crowded with cannon, bristling with crossed rifles and muskets, and grimly but passionately brilliant with the regimental flags and the colors of the nation from before the Revolution to the present Civil War. Many of these proud silks had been reduced to gallant rags, the most notable being the flag of Albany’s Forty-fourth Regiment, shredded with eighty bullet holes, and for whose constant elevation in battle twelve standard-bearers had died and eighteen more had been wounded.

  “A peculiar place for a poetry reading,” said Quinn.

  “A perfect place for it,” said Maud.

  “Why are you doing these readings?”

  Maud cocked her head and considered a reply before ascending the stairs ahead of Will. “I suppose,” she said, “that one’s brain also craves distinction.”

  Will addressed the crowd then, explaining Maud’s international renown as an actress and how in recent years she had been a popularizer of the great poets as well as a woman asserting an intellectual stance on behalf of all womanhood. “And,” he added, “if any of you have had the pleasure of talking with our Maud, you know the keenness and originality of that mind of hers,” which, he concluded, was tonight a gift to the bazaar, and that after her reading a basket would be passed for donations.