This End Up, 2046, cutout paper collage
Polly Baker
Jeanette hung Johnny’s cutout paper collage on the wall opposite the closet in the Gallery.
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Arts:
Mother let me stay awake New Year’s Eve in 2046 to watch the PMA report. I vividly remember the news that the Mediterranean had risen more than a foot in the last ten years. Mother told me about the cloned Capablanca metamorph, Ishtar Teratol, who was growing up there in an underwater keep with her mother.
It was a watery New Year’s Eve. At midnight EST, I watched the ball of light drop from the top of the brand-new Manhattan Tower towards its shimmering reflection in the brand-new Broadway Canal. I swore to myself, “One of these days, I’m gonna live in New York.”
That spring I got interested in 19th-century American cut-paper silhouettes. I loved how a black shape defined the white space surrounding it. Mother’s Day was coming up. I decided to do Mother’s portrait in secret and surprise her with it as a gift.
The first step was drawing her profile in pencil on black paper. I drew her from a hologram. I captured her likeness with ease, but sweated for days over the outline of her hair, which was done up in the popular Greek goddess style.
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, May 10, 2047:
Mother’s Day. Johnny gave me a gift of a cut-paper silhouette of my portrait in profile—double chin and all. It’s a good likeness. Too good! I look more and more like Momma.
Silhouette of Jeanette, 2047, paper cutout on paper
Polly Baker
Jeanette hung the silhouette in the Gallery, next to the drawing by Shubha Roy. I think Johnny sensed the portrait made Jeanette uneasy because it reminded her of her mother. Johnny never gave Jeanette another gift on Mother’s Day.
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
As I kid I learned about drawing from Walt Disney and Shubha Roy.
I grew up with Shubha Roy’s framed scratchboard drawing of the Hindu goddess Parvati on the wall over my bed. It was given to me at birth by Indira Rabindra, a neighbor and family friend.
Indira Rabindra
I taught Johnny that Parvati is one name for the Divine Mother, who rules—and is—the world. She’s the Radiant White One, and the Black One, too. Both life and death! We call Her “Wisdom,” as well as “the Blind Demon.” We know Her body only by the many forms She takes, which is the stuff of the universe—including ourselves.
From John Firth Baker’s Interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
Mother got me thinking early on about Shubha Roy’s style of scratchboard drawing. Again and again, she was like, “Look at how much Roy accomplishes with just a few lines!”
Those words changed my life.
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, June 4, 2047:
Today, at Johnny’s request, I bought him two etching needles, a large whetstone, 1 oz. India ink, and ten inked scratchboards for $348.50. Also one pad (fifty sheets) of 18" × 24" translucent drafting vellum for $135.
At this moment he’s watching The Manualist’s Guide to Cutting Drawings on Scratchboard (scratchdraw.com)
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
I taught myself the fundamental technique of scratchboard drawing. I learned that there are two ways to cut a drawing into an inked scratchboard. You can take a steel etching needle and scratch a freehand drawing directly onto the board. Or—Roy’s method—you first make a pencil drawing and transfer that to the board.
I made three or four copies of Roy’s drawing using her technique, but couldn’t get it right.
Polly Baker
The summer of ’47 Jeanette took up softball again. Every Sunday afternoon she played left field in Lake Twilight Park for a Cather Keep pickup team called the Pioneers.
Magdalena Ramirez
In September 2047, I was a seventeen-year-old cocaptain of the wimin’s softball team at Cather Keep High and also pitched Sundays for the Pioneers. I dated Jeanette because she struck me as being an experienced older womin.
Up to then, I’d never been able to come, except on my own or with Orgazaid. I was too worried about giving my partner pleasure to let myself go.
My lack of emotional involvement with Jeanette freed me from that responsibility. I came without drugs the first time we made love. My nickname for her was Thunder Tongue. Twice a week, for a month, we made love at her place after Johnny fell asleep.
One Tuesday night, Jeanette forgot to lock her bedroom door. Johnny woke up around eleven and walked in on us naked in bed together. I can still see him standing in the doorway rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
I was never so embarrassed in my life. Right there and then, I swore off lovers with kids. Needless to say, I never slept with Jeanette again.
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
Mother gave me a tenth-birthday party at school. My fifth-grade classmates and I finished off a banana cake with chocolate icing and watched the old movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
That night, I had a nightmare. A witch grinned at me. I woke in a sweat and was scared to go back to sleep. The next night the witch’s grinning face woke me again. And again I stayed awake for the rest of the night. In the morning I told Mother what had happened.
She was like, “Draw me this witch.”
I spent the rest of the day at home making a scratchboard drawing of the witch’s grinning face in the style of Shubha Roy. Mother watched me work.
When I finished, she said, “Good job! The witch is now in your power. Go to sleep and have pleasant dreams.”
And I did.
Witch, 2047, scratchboard drawing
Jeanette Baker to Cressanthia Thomas, November 3, 2047:
Johnny’s Witch now hangs on the wall to the right of Shubha Roy’s Parvati. His style owes a good deal to both Roy and Walt Disney. But the drawing conveys the feelings his subject evoked in him, which is what I tell him all his work must do.
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, November 18, 2047:
In the evenings I call up art I love and share it with Johnny. Tonight we looked at my two favorite paintings by Albert Pinkham Ryder: The Race Track and Jonah. I read to Johnny Ryder’s explanation of why he became an artist:
“When my father placed a box of colors and brushes in my hands, and I stood before my easel with its square of stretched canvas, I realized that I had in my possession the wherewithal to create a masterpiece that would live through the coming ages. The great masters had no more. I at once proceeded to study the works of the great to discover how best to achieve immortality with a square of canvas and a box of colors.”15
Johnny: “What’s ‘immortality’ mean?”
“Life everlasting.”
Johnny: “Sounds good to me!”
From John Firth Baker’s interview with The International Review of Manual Art:
I asked Mother, “How come I draw better than anyone else in my whole school?”
She said, “I bought you your gift. It cost me an arm and a leg, but was worth it. You’re an artist!”
I took Mother’s words literally: I thought my gift for drawing had cost her an arm and a leg. Who cut them off? Did the amputations hurt? How did her limbs grow back? I remembered this kid in Omaha who blew off his finger with a cherry bomb at a July Fourth picnic. The finger was regenerated in a Chicago hospital. I figured the same for Mother’s arm and leg. I thought about them day and night.
Then one evening after supper, Mother called up some Australian Aboriginal paintings done on rocks and bark and wood. She pointed out that Aboriginal artists reordered humin anatomy; a naked woman on a cliff wall was portrayed frontally, but with her head and breasts in profile and her drawn-up legs splayed.
Mother said, “Look at her hands and feet. They’re drawn as if from above.”
Her words, “hands and feet,” made me think of “arms and legs” and then her phrase, “your gift cost me an arm and a leg,” popped back into my head. I saw an image in my mind’s eye. I turned it into a scratchboard drawing in the style of an Aboriginal rock painting, which I called The Gift that Cost Mother an Arm and a Leg.
When I gave it to Mother for Christmas, she said, “You know me inside out.”
The Gift that Cost Mother an Arm and a Leg, 2047, paper cutout and ink on scratchboard
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, December 25, 2047:
Explained to Johnny what the expression “it cost an arm and a leg” means. He was visibly relieved. I told him he was an arsogenic metamorph and how he was conceived. Said what I did was against the law, which I broke because, more than anything else, I wanted an artist for a son. Told him that Polly knows the truth, which we’d best keep concealed till the Created Equal Act is repealed.
Johnny: “What’s for lunch?”
Alex Thomas jr.
When I was around ten and a half, my folks told me I’m a musical arsogenic metamorph. My first thought: What they gave me, they can take back!
Dad went, “This is between us, boy. Let’s keep it that way.”
Mama said, “Johnny Baker’s also an arsogenic metamorph. But hush up! It’s a secret!”
I called Johnny that afternoon and said, “We got lots in common—only I can’t say what.”
He was like, “You’re gay! Are you gay?”
“Hell no,” I said. “Not that! I’m an arsogenic metamorph.”
And he said, “A freak, like me.”
I said, “Yeah.”
And he said, “Let’s be freaks together.”
After that we spoke with each other once or twice a month. The Kammerovska case brought us even closer.
Wakinoya Yoshiharu
Anya Kammerovska, you may remember, was one of “The Three Fates.” She and her husband, Oleg, came to Fritz at the Institute in August 2036, because they wanted an artistically talented daughter they could raise to become a great Russian painter—a femayle Rublev. Anya was an architect who collected 20th-century manual architectural drawings. Oleg taught Japanese at Moscow University; he had no talent as a calligrapher but he made kites, in the Japanese style, out of paper and bamboo. Both were humorless Manualists—very Russian, very ideological. They believed that skilled manual work purifies the soul.
Fritz chose Anya for Ozaki’s Project primarily because her MPP was normal; she showed good potential as a nurturing mother—the exact opposite of Jeanette Baker. Fritz wanted to know how Anya’s maternal behavior would influence her daughter’s postnatal neurological development. He told her, “In the first six months while you’re nursing, make constant eye contact with your daughter. Stimulate her visually as much as you can.”
Anya’s daughter, Nadia—which means “hope” in Russian—was born in Moscow on January 3, 2038, the Russian New Year. Fritz sent Nadia a birth tree, and Anya sent Fritz Nadia’s postpartum MRI. Six months later, she sent another one. It revealed that the synaptic connections of the neurons in Nadia’s prefrontal cortices had increased 54%—the greatest increase in the three subjects of Ozaki’s Project.
Fritz said, “I’ve got great hopes for Nadia.”
Four and a half years later, the Russian Duma elected Patriarch Kiril of Moscow to be the Supreme Holy Father and absolute ruler of Russia for life. The first week in office, he denounced humin genetic engineering as an international Jewish plot, the work of the devil.
Fritz said, “Abandon all hope.”
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, February 14, 2048:
SEXUALLY SUGGESTIVE MANUAL DRAWING FINGERS PRECOCIOUS
RUSSIAN CHILD ARTIST AS ARSOGENIC METAMORPH
Parents Confess; Family Under House Arrest, Await Judgment
At Next Session Of Holy Synod
By Lily Hochman
Special to IN-News
MOSCOW, Feb. 14. Ten-year-old Nadia Kammerovska was bored in her fifth-grade collaborative digital imaging class last Monday and made a pen-and-ink drawing by hand, which was confiscated by her teacher, the Orthodox priest Father Tihon Yefimyev.
In a statement issued today Father Yefimyev, 53, recalled that his eye was first caught by the manual drawing’s “lascivious subject matter—unfortunately not unexpected in the work of a ten-year-old girl. Then I realized that Nadia’s drawing is a sophisticated takeoff on Japanese kanji, a very precocious stylistic achievement for someone her age. Now, I knew Nadia’s father taught Japanese at Moscow University, so it wasn’t surprising that the girl was familiar with kanji. But her precocious use of it indicated to me the girl just might be an arsogenic metamorph.”
Nadia Kammerovska, 2048, pen and ink on paper
Nadia said she was a natural-born artist. “I love to draw,” the ten-year-old told the priest. “I draw all the time.”
Father Yefimyev checked up on the Kammerovsky family. He discovered that Nadia’s mother, Anya, 46, had conceived her daughter in Japan, which Yefimyev termed “a heathen nation that encourages metamorphic research.” Said Father Yefimyev, “I smelled a rat.”
On Thursday morning, Father Yefimyev confronted Nadia’s parents in their Moscow apartment. He said that the couple immediately confessed that Nadia was an arsogenic metamorph whose genome had been enhanced with artistic potential at the Ozaki Institute of Metamorphic Genetics in Kyoto.
Yefimyev quoted Nadia’s father, Oleg, 46, as saying, “We repent our sin, beg forgiveness and throw ourselves on the Christian mercy of the Holy Synod of our Mother Church.”
Under Article 58 of the New Criminal Code, Russian metamorphic children under eighteen years of age are liable to be removed from the custody of their parents and raised in ecclesiastical orphanages, where they are dedicated to a life of service in the Church as monks or nuns. Their parents are liable to twenty-five years’ imprisonment in one of the theocratic state’s Redemption Through Suffering Centers.
A spokesman for Father Mikhail Magnitsky, 94, the Procurator of the Holy Synod, said today that the Holy Synod will render its judgment in the Kammerovsky case during its next session on February 20. In the meantime, according to the same spokesman, the Kammerovsky family will be permitted to remain in their Moscow apartment, where they could not be reached for comment today.
Johnny: “If they took me away from you, Mommy, I’ll die.”
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Arts:
I was jealous of Nadia’s originality; it killed me that she’d already invented a style of her own. At the same time, I felt very close to her. I wanted to reach out and let her know that another one of her kind existed in the world.
I copied Nadia’s drawing till I got the hang of her style. Then, using her idiom, I made her a scratchboard drawing and wrote her a note—neither of which my mother let me send.
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, February 19, 2048:
Johnny to Nadia Kammerovska (unsent):
Hi! My name is Johnny Baker. I’m a ten-year-old American arsogenic metamorph. Mother bought me my gift the same place your parents bought you yours. I admire your kanji-type drawing. It inspired me to make a scratchboard drawing in your style. I hope you like it.
Good luck to you and your folks.
P.S. Do you have a birth tree? Mine died.
Untitled drawing for Nadia Kammerovska, 2048, scratchboard drawing
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, February 20, 2048:
TOP IN-NEWS STORY:
OLEG KAMMEROVSKY KILLS KIN AND SELF
MOSCOW, February 20. Apparently victims of a double murder and suicide, Oleg and Anya Kammerovsky, both 46, and their 10-year-old daughter Nadia were found shot to death today in their Moscow apartment only hours before they were scheduled to appear at the Holy Synod in a case brought against the two adults by the Procurator’s Office under Article 58 of the Russian New Criminal Code.
According to Moscow eccle
siastical authorities, Kammerovsky first shot his wife and daughter and then himself in the head with a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol.
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
After Nadia’s death, I didn’t draw for nearly two years. I took up ballet at the Cather Keep Y on Laker Street.
There, in the spring of ’50, I fell in love with a tall sixteen-year-old who was the star backstroker of the Swimming Club.
The Rev. Theodore Petrakis
After practice one afternoon, Johnny followed me into the shower, where we introduced ourselves.
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
“Petrakis,” I said. “What kind of a name is Petrakis?”
“Greek,” he said. “We Greeks were once famous for loving pretty boys like you.”
The Rev. Theodore Petrakis
Johnny blushed.
That evening I sent him one long-stemmed white rose and Pierre Minuit’s recording of a verse by Richard Barnefield:
If thou wilt love me, thou shalt be my Boy,
My sweet Delight, the Comfort of my mind,
My love, my Dove, my Solace and my Joy.16
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, April 14, 2050:
Johnny, who’s let his hair grow long, asked me to give him a pageboy cut. He’s dating a freshman at Cather Keep High named Teddy Petrakis, whose mother, Frances, is a very successful landscape gardener; both are Christians. Johnny accompanied mother and son to services last Sunday at St. Fiacre’s, the Gardener’s Guild Episcopal Church on Van Dorn Street in Lincoln.
Sat Johnny down with Mentor for a lecture on sex hygiene. He’s been vaccinated against HIV 1, 2, and 3 and the run-of-the-mill venereal diseases. Mentor stressed the necessity of protecting himself against the new strain of syphilis that attacks and rots the cerebellum within ten days of infection. Twelve new cases were recently reported in Hawaii.
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