Private Life

by Jane Smiley

  She heard Andrew stirring in his room and, after that, in the hallway, and she was seized with such fear and revulsion that she put her head under the covers and waited and waited for him first to go downstairs, and then to leave the house. She knew now that there was no telling what he was doing or where he was going, and that the least of her worries was that he would annoy someone and be brought home by the local police. She also realized that he wanted to talk to her about what he had written.

  She did not want to talk to him about anything. She was a coward, and avoided him.

  When the house was quiet, she got dressed and went to the police. She told the sergeant on duty that she had once been visited by an Agent Keene, from the FBI, and that she wanted to talk to him again. They gave her a telephone number in San Francisco. There had been a drunken brawl in downtown Vallejo the night before, and the police were too busy to ask her any questions, for which she was grateful.

  But there was no Agent Keene. Agent Keene had been transferred to parts unknown (or, at least, parts not to be known by her), and she was eventually connected with Agent Greengrass, who was not familiar with Andrew and had never seen his “reports,” although, he said, they sounded “interesting.”

  She said, “Well, Agent Greengrass, I don’t think they are interesting. That’s why I’m calling you. Captain Early’s reports are a mishmash of crazy ideas, and I wanted to make sure that the people in your office understood that.”

  “Why did you want to make sure of that?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  Agent Greengrass was silent, then said, “Tell me your name again.”

  “Margaret Mayfield Early.”

  “And to whom did your husband send these reports?”

  She thought of saying that she didn’t know, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie. She said, “Roosevelt, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Commandant of the Naval Base.”

  “Ma’am,” said Agent Greengrass, “you wouldn’t believe the pile of stuff that goes to the White House, for the eyes of the President only, that reports secret air attacks and webs of underground tunnels. But I will take down your name and address and let you know if I hear anything.”

  She thanked him and gave him the information, grateful that he seemed to think Andrew was simply a crackpot. It was only after they hung up that she began to wonder about that phrase “if I hear anything.”

  Andrew came in in the early afternoon, and she served him an apple and a liverwurst sandwich. He seemed a little abashed. Margaret knew she had to think carefully and move slowly in order not to waste her opportunity. She felt a wisp of that old temptation—curtain rising, play commencing—but she put it away and said, “I read the papers, Andrew, and put them back on your desk. Why did you show them to me?”

  “Well, of course, I wondered what you think.”

  “What I think?”

  “If you agree with me.”

  “About whether I am the unwitting center of a nest of spies who are using me to get to you?”

  “Why, yes. I wanted to get your opinion.”

  “You say you’ve already sent everything in.”

  “I have.”

  “So what does my opinion matter?”

  “Well, my dear, who else have I got to ask?”

  She couldn’t help acknowledging that, in other circumstances, this remark might strike her as poignant, or even funny, but now she said, soberly, “I do not think that I am the unwitting victim of a nest of spies.”

  “Well, of course, they would be sure to solicit your affections.” He seemed to have no idea of how insulting this remark was. He finished his sandwich and picked up the apple.

  She made her voice very firm. “My relationship with the Kimuras is almost purely a formal one. I’ve visited them a handful of times, and Naoko has come to the knitting circle. Did you also turn in reports on the other members of the knitting circle?”

  He said, “Do you remember the party for Mr. Kimura?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I saw Pete back there, behind the garden, in the alley.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “I only saw him from the back. He was taking things away, a box of things, like papers. When he saw me, he hurried away.”

  “I thought you only saw him from the back.”

  “But he saw me out of the corner of his eye. He took a large box out of the alley and turned left; then, moments later, a car drove away.”

  “Was he in it?”

  “I couldn’t tell. The man died two days later. I think Pete was taking his papers. I wonder what you think. You have good instincts. You could be unwitting but still have a sense that something is going on, and then, when someone suggests what it might be, it sounds right to you. It clicks.”

  “So—you’re hoping that your theory will click with me?”

  “I think it will, yes.”

  “You’ve already sent it in.”

  “I haven’t said anything about Mr. Kimura’s papers, or Pete carrying them off, but at least we know where they were last seen, and they could be picked up and perused.”

  “This is nonsense, Andrew.” But she wanted to say “insanity.” She should have started with the word “insanity,” but she had done her usual thing, which was to be wifely and reasonable, which allowed him to weave a net of plausibility around her, and now they were discussing a piece of insanity as if it might be true.

  “Then, my dear, I will just have to use my own judgment and draw my own conclusions. That boy went to Japan.”

  “He wanted to get married and live a normal life, which he couldn’t live here!”

  “That was a plausible excuse.”

  “It’s a reason! I believe it.”

  He sat for a long time, looking first at his shoes and then at her. Stella jumped into his lap, received no attention, and jumped down again. Finally, he said, “My dear, perhaps it is that I can’t get over your betrayal of me.”

  The guilty, Margaret thought, are always undone by the accusation. In her chest, the reaction began instantly, before she even pictured Pete, or their tryst in Atherton—it was a sense of being paralyzed and set on fire at the same time, accompanied by a casting about for evidence as to where the deception went wrong, and indecision as to whether to confess or to brazen it out. But it was not that she kept silent. It was that she couldn’t speak.

  Andrew took a very deep breath and smoothed down his mustache. At last, he said, “It was Len Scanlan who told me.”

  “Len Scanlan! Why would you believe a thing he said?”

  “Because I sensed it was true. My own instincts were confirmed.”

  “Are you—”

  But he didn’t even seem to notice that her voice was strangled. He went on in an injured tone: “It was when we went to Saratoga. We were driving along, and he said—I’ll never forget it—‘I’m sure it’s difficult for you, Captain Early, when even your wife doesn’t believe you. When even your wife finds you a shade ridiculous.’ And I saw at once it was true. The little secret smiles. The way you had about the typing. As if you were humoring me, or dandling me along like a child. As if my ideas were ridiculous to you.”

  There was a long pause, which felt like the insensate pause of lifting a heavy weight, as Margaret came to understand that he and she were not thinking of the same betrayal at all.

  She finally said, “And, by contrast, of course, Leonard Scanlan believed every word you wrote and every word you uttered?”

  “He did then. Not later, of course. Though I feel that he has always understood and appreciated my theories. Two scientists often agree on basics, and then fall out over details. The coming of his wife was not good for our partnership.”

  She exclaimed, “It was an evil thing, and entirely typical of Len Scanlan, that he should whisper such things in your ear. He was a flatterer and a sneak.” Andrew seemed taken aback by the sharpness of her words, and did not meet her gaze. She took a deep breath and managed to say
in a calmer tone, “I was not indulging myself in secret smiles.”

  “Perhaps not, my dear. But even so, you don’t believe in my work, and you haven’t for many years.” He got up from the table and went into his study. Margaret sat looking at the apple core sitting on the plate and petting Stella. When she felt herself more composed, she got up, went to his study door, and knocked. He answered. She opened the door and said, quite smoothly, she thought, “Have you confronted Pete with your suspicions?”

  “I don’t think that’s my job. I wouldn’t know how. Others do that who are trained to read facial expressions and that sort of thing.”

  “You’re afraid of him!”

  Andrew said nothing to this for a moment, then, “I like Pete. I’ve always liked Pete.”

  “Why would you denounce him as a spy, then?”

  “That has nothing to do with liking or disliking. He is or he is not.”

  “What would he be spying on?”

  Now he sounded relieved as he entered upon this topic. “Well, my dear, I’ve turned that over in my mind. He was a man with many friends. When he left Russia, they stayed behind and were drawn into different camps. When he went back, in 1917, which camp did he enter and which camp did he betray, and how did those camps themselves betray one another? The ins and outs of this are perhaps imponderable for a Westerner. He spent several years in Japan, and he came to the U.S. with his tastes formed, in part by that experience. We don’t know what he left behind in Japan, who claimed his loyalties there. He’s been very quiet on that subject. And then he came here. Is his loyalty to this country? To our aims in the Pacific or elsewhere? Or is he tainted with that distrust of Western imperialism that seems to be motivating the Japanese and the Russians? Perhaps he thinks that those countries should throw off their chains. It could be as simple as that. You don’t have to hate your tormentor in order to operate on the principle that the torment is unjust and must be rectified.”

  She leaned against the doorjamb and stared at him. Once again, as so often before, it all sounded so plausible that it seemed easy to be convinced. She could give in to Pete as a spy, and to the Aether, and to Einstein’s investigations on the West Coast. Who was she to tell the difference between those things and the impact craters on the moon being like gunshots in the mud and the Panay incident and the Spanish flu turning up in Kansas? Who was she to say yes to one thing and no to another? That seemed to be the kernel of their conflict—if he couldn’t convince her, his own wife, then who could he convince? If he couldn’t convince her, then he was all the more at the mercy of people like Len Scanlan and, what was his name, his enemy in Michigan, and even strangers, like that fellow Malisoff. As she stared at him staring at her, she thought, What is at stake, really? What do I have to lose?

  Andrew said, in his pushing, eager tone, “And then there is this. He has shown a suspicious degree of interest in my theories. He has questioned and probed me.”

  It popped out: “He was flattering you.”

  He looked hurt.

  She felt her assurance enlarge, and said, “Aren’t you afraid that you will be viewed by the—the—President as a crackpot?”

  “No, my dear. I am not.”

  He spoke with such self-confidence that she said, “I have to tell you, Andrew, that what you’ve done is … breathtakingly irresponsible, given the atmosphere we are living in. I cannot go along with this, or allow it to continue. Unless you write to your contacts and renounce these claims, I’ll have to do something myself. I’ll have to. It will be embarrassing for you, whatever I do, but I will do it anyway. Do you understand me?”

  He was intimidated, at least for now. At least for now, he said, “Then what Len said …”

  “It doesn’t matter what Len said about how I view your ideas. That is beside the point.” The snake picture was hanging on the wall, behind him and slightly to the left. She went on, “Andrew. Look at that picture. It’s called The Gift. Look at it. It’s a beautiful picture. It’s a picture of Len Scanlan.”

  He turned around and looked at the picture. She walked out.

  BUT she was not uninfected; her forceful denial gave way to uncertainty. She did not press him the next day or the day after that about withdrawing his reports. She told herself that she didn’t press him because she had that same feeling that she’d had with Agent Greengrass—all references of any kind to these matters were damaging, and possibly denials were more damaging than assertions. What one wanted above all was to be forgotten. But she made an early date with Pete, with whom she lunched at the Palace Hotel with some frequency now. And the first thing she asked, almost before they sat down, was how Mrs. Kimura and Naoko, who had moved to Japantown after Mr. Kimura’s death, were doing.

  “They don’t like it,” said Pete.

  “Why is that? I thought it would be a cocoon for them, with Vallejo so crowded. Down by their old shop, there’s a racket night and day, with all the new workers and their saloons.”

  “Cocoons can be very constricting, and anyway, Japantown is not an enclave of kindly and well-meaning families going out for church picnics every chance they get. There are drunks everywhere, Margaret. Unhappy and nervous men make angry drunks.”

  “Surely they haven’t been threatened.”

  “Surely everyone has been threatened, if only by roaming hoodlums. And Lester is hardly ever at home, and, of course, what he does during the day, on his job, is impossible to know.”

  “He’s a bookkeeper. That should be quiet enough.”

  “It should be, but although Lester has a bookkeeper’s skills, he doesn’t have a bookkeeper’s character. He’s a little bit too inquisitive.” He shook his head.

  They picked off some of the leaves of the artichoke they were sharing, and Pete took a sip of his wine.

  She spoke as if idly. “Of course, Andrew is sure he’s a Japanese spy.” How ridiculous it was to say this! Her pulse quickened.

  Pete didn’t smile. “Lester’s not canny enough for that. He’s more the patsy that spies buy drinks for and then get information out of. Naoko is sure he’s involved with gangs or smuggling. He may be.”

  “You seem to know what you’re talking about.”

  “Do I? I must have read The Thirty-nine Steps.” Now he smiled.

  “Andrew saw that movie.”

  “You see, then. Anyway, no American would tell a Japanese man anything, even a tall Japanese man with an American accent. They’d be more likely to beat him up, and Lester knows that. And discretion, thy name is not Lester Kimura. People who talk all the time have a much harder time being spies.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, if you are a quiet, nondescript sort of person, pleasant in your way, but bland, and, say, a little plump, people talk in front of you, because they don’t attribute any keenness to you. And if you seem a bit thick, they dismiss you out of hand. You find that, with plenty of application, you can introduce yourself almost anywhere, gather information, and disappear. Your life as a spy is a long and productive one.” He smiled and added, “It especially helps to be an Englishman and have superior manners, but not everyone can manage that.”

  She wiped her fingers on her napkin and said, “You’re teasing.”

  “I know what I’m talking about.” He picked up the artichoke heart and scraped away the fibers, then cut it into four neat pieces.

  “Are you a spy, then?” This was very bold, she thought.

  “I’ve known a spy or two. But look at me.”

  She did. He was wearing a yellow tie, had a yellow square in his pocket, and his hat, she had seen when he checked it, had a yellow band.

  “No one ever forgets me.”

  “Surely there are flamboyant spies.”

  “There are, but it’s much more difficult for them. They have to keep so many things straight—not only separate things but the separate stories that make up their roles. Their lives are short.”

  “As spies?”

  “That, too. Anyway, I’m t
oo lazy to be a spy. And so I am not a spy.”

  “Now.”

  “Now.”

  “But.”

  “But, as I told you, when I was a young man in Petersburg, I did romantic spying for my friend Bibikova, and it was an invigorating exercise for a young man with an overabundance of daring. Spies, Margaret, are like all other sorts of criminals. They are either too smart for the job or too stupid for the job. I’m sure the Germans and the Japanese looking for American spies are gnashing their teeth in frustration at the poor material they have to work with.” He laughed.

  Then the wave came, the wave she thought she had worked herself away from, or talked herself out of, the wave of feeling toward him that was so painful and inconvenient. It was the stories, of course, that did it, himself as the foolish protagonist, making his merry way through a colorful landscape, always discovering too late where he had gone wrong. In his stories, suffering and death were hardly worth remembering—what was important were the telling details. The tiniest, most fleeting thing was preserved, while routine disaster was forgotten. The effect was to bathe him in a golden light—a light that shone from her eyes, a light that shone brightly and steadily even though she knew he was untrustworthy, mysterious, old, full of vanity, a failure in the larger scheme of respectable success. The golden light made him look utterly unique and therefore precious. She closed her eyes and felt the wave pass through her and, with a few breaths, ebb again. She said, “You’ll never guess what Andrew has been doing all these years when I thought he was making himself an expert on the pictures.”

  “He has been guarding our shores.”

  “How did you know?”