“But it’s like—I still don’t know what to do next.”
“Maybe we should avoid him,” Nix said.
“He’s not dangerous,” Davis said. “Just weird and sort of amoral. Just find him and talk to him.”
“He broke into our apartment,” Nix said.
“My apartment,” Taer said.
“And he hurt Cait’s forehead,” Nix said.
“The break-in, that’s something he would do. But he doesn’t hurt people,” Davis said.
“I hit his head with a dictionary,” Taer said. “He hit me back in self-defense.”
“Don’t defend him,” Nix said.
“But this argument doesn’t matter because I don’t know where to find him,” Taer said. “Where’s his apartment?”
“I can’t tell you,” Davis said.
“You can’t or you won’t?” Nix asked.
“I won’t,” Davis said, giving Nix a taste of the medicine Berliner would later feed me. “He won’t be there anyway. He doesn’t live there.”
“Where does he live?”
“I don’t know.”
“We could go ask Marie-Hélène,” Taer said.
“She won’t see you,” Davis said.
“Well, then, what are we supposed to do?” Nix asked.
“Look, I’ll give it to you that something is going on here, with Molly’s disappearance and Nick,” Davis said. “But I don’t know why you two in particular feel like you have to take it on.”
“It’s her,” Nix said, meaning Taer.
“Molly,” Taer said, thinking she was agreeing with Nix.
“Okay, then. My guess is that hunting down Nick is the right thing for you to do,” Davis said. “He knows way more than I do. He’ll be able to help you out. I’m just not sure how to find him.”
Taer pulled Berliner’s sketchpad out of her bag. She held it out of Davis’s reach. “We have this,” she said.
Davis held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
Taer didn’t want to, but handed it over anyway. Davis flipped through the sketchpad, stopping at some pages, running her fingers along the middle binding.
“I can’t decipher it fully. But I know what it is. He’d draw a map of wherever he went during the day. You see these arrows here? That’s his path.”
Davis flipped to the last map in the sketchpad. In the margins, she wrote a key to the map. She defined some of Berliner’s personal annotations, like the arrows she had mentioned, labeled a prominent diagonal street “North Clybourn Avenue,” and made a few guesses of the names of some smaller streets branching off North Clybourn. She pointed out all the maps that were a similar shape to the last map, as if Nick was revisiting the same places.
“What does this mean? This name here?” Taer asked.
“Antoine Monson?” Davis asked. “It was Nick’s assumed name, I think, kind of a code name. I don’t know where it came from, but some of the screen prints in Nick’s apartment were signed Antoine Monson.”
“Molly sometimes had me sign her into hotels as Antoinette Monson,” Nix said. “I didn’t think it was that weird, just some fake name to hide her.”
“Huh,” Taer said. “Maybe it was some way they communicated with each other.”
“Whatever,” Davis said. “I’m glad to be done with the stress of dealing with both of them, to be honest.”
Nix and Taer left Davis cigaretteless, drunk, and wallowing in her own emotional filth. Davis gave the distinct impression that she wouldn’t be seeing or speaking to them again. The way she closed the door seemed aggressively final. They went back to the Ramada Romulus; the lobby bar was still open. They installed themselves in a booth, ordered two Martinis, and gossiped about Berliner and Davis’s sex life. After the bar closed, Nix and Taer went up to their room. They danced together to music from Nix’s favorite band at the time, Sleigh Bells.
Very late that night, or very early the next morning, when the music had switched to Taer’s favorite band, The National, they argued again about whether they should continue their search for Molly Metropolis. Nix half-heartedly suggested giving up. Taer refused. She would go on by herself if she had to. For the first time in her life, she felt important; she thought that she and Nix were looking for Molly in a place that no one else—not the police, not the record company—could see. Taer promised, sweetly, to protect Nix, but she wouldn’t be able to save Nix from the danger ahead of them.
They slept and in the morning, hungover, they took the train back to Chicago and began to retrace Berliner’s steps.
* * *
* From a feminist perspective, Taer writes she was bothered by Davis’s characterization of her life finding meaning only externally, through her boyfriend.
† The story of Berliner’s life is culled from Taer’s recording of her and Nix’s conversation with Davis, as well as from interviews Cyrus conducted with Berliner and his family. —CD
‡ Probably Rohypnol.
§ Actually, that idea is a slight bastardization of Debord’s ideas, but the 1990s weren’t like the 1960s and certain aspects of Situationist ideas had to be altered to fit a new group of people who were acutely aware they were on the cusp of a new millennium. David Wilson’s toast at the New Situationists’ New Years Party in 1999 was: “Not just a new year, not just a new decade, not just a new century, a New Situation!” Kraus was the party’s DJ; she played Prince.
ǁ The episode aired on September 7, 2009. The entire interview is a fascinating watch—Kraus appears to be half-joking, half-serious at all times. Kirkpatrick can keep up, and she continues to push Kraus to say something substantive about the New Situationists, while fully aware Kraus is using her as the unwilling partner in a piece of Live News Theater.
a From the confessional note they sent to the Chicago Tribune the night of the subway bombings, signed “The New Situationists (25 concerned parties).” Because of the New Situationists’ pattern of secrecy and promoting confusion about the group, it is likely that twenty-five doesn’t reflect the group’s actual numbers.
b From “The New Situationists (25 concerned parties).”
c According to Cyrus’s notes, Berliner invited Cyrus to visit the apartment in late 2011. The amount of access Berliner allowed Cyrus seems complicated, with a lot of push and pull. —CD
Taer and Nix made the somewhat desperate decision to search for Berliner by walking around Chicago with a half-labeled map as their only guide. They spent many fruitless days trudging in the snow; they thought they had no other choice.
They would’ve had an easier time finding answers to all their questions if they had researched another mystery in their midst, the mystery of Antoine Monson. Monson wasn’t an important person, or a famous one, or someone who became a darling to historians. As such, he isn’t an easy man to know. His name occasionally comes up in newspaper articles and crime reports printed during his life, but only a small number of articles and two books have been written about him. One of them is a short, out of print, and hard to find biography, written in 1892 by a French historian and philosopher named Jacques-Jerome de Poisson (second cousin to the Madame de Pompadour, on her father’s side). The name of the biography has been lost. In 1916, a student pursuing an advanced degree in French history at the University of Westminster found a single copy, broken at the binding and missing an index. He copied the book and sent it to one hundred or so friends and colleagues in the field, but no press ever officially reprinted de Poisson’s text. If the book ever included an index or bibliography, it’s been lost (or it resides alone in a library or archive), providing reference to nothing. Without a bibliography to give the reader a guide to his sources, it’s impossible to imagine where de Poisson could’ve found any information on Monson at all.*a The following is a summation of de Poisson’s exploration of Monson’s life:
Born in 1470, Monson grew up with four brothers—Freddie, Gerard, Thomas, and Raphael—two of whom died in childhood.† The details of Monson’s upbringing are fuzzy at b
est, but he appears to have been a farmer who taught himself, without attending a university, to be a navigator, geographer, and cartographer.
De Poisson relays certain events in Monson’s life with the disclaimer that the stories “may have been altered by popular fable and rumor,”‡ including the story of how Monson became an apprentice navigator on Christopher Columbus’s second voyage to America by poisoning the intended assistant cartographer, Lucas Wadsworth.
That particular episode began on October 12, 1493, in a rough port on a rain-soaked Canary Island, the evening before Columbus’s second fleet set sail for the New World. Wadsworth went to a pub in the port town Palos de la Frontera for a last hurrah before months of toil and exhaustion. He drank heavily and bragged loudly about his imminent voyage, especially to a baby-faced, red-cheeked boy, about twenty-two years old, who bought him drinks and begged to hear all the details of his upcoming trip. After a few hours of drinking, Wadsworth keeled over, foaming at the mouth. The baby-faced boy told the owner of the pub that he would carry Wadsworth to the docks, where he could pass out near his ship and stumble aboard in the morning. Instead of taking him to the docks, the boy put Wadsworth in a wheelbarrow and pushed him to the local general practitioner, who immediately recognized that Wads-worth had been poisoned. The boy told the doctor that he found Wadsworth in that condition on the side of the road and picked him up; the doctor tipped the boy for his trouble.
The next morning, “Luke Wadsworth” reported for duty on Columbus’s flagship vessel, the Marigalante. Columbus noted in his captain’s log: “The assistant cartographer, while a man of twenty-two, has the face of a child. He insists he is up for the task and indeed carries his own equipment, which he has himself constructed.”§ While the real Wadsworth struggled to stay alive in a nearby hospital (he eventually pulled through), Monson sailed toward America under his name.
Columbus’s primary cartographer, Juan de la Cosa, suffered from terrible seasickness. Constantly nauseated, he spent most of his time in his quarters with a compress on his forehead. He passed his duties off to “Wadsworth.” Columbus and Monson quickly became close. Monson confessed his secret to Columbus, who took the revelation well: “Young Wadsworth actually called Monson. Will never remember to use new name.”ǁ Columbus was true to his word; in later entries in his Captain’s Log, Columbus continued to call Monson “Wadsworth.”
Columbus’s fleet made excellent time. Seventeen ships and approximately one thousand men reached what are now known as the Caribbean Islands on November 3, 1493. While Columbus explored the islands, searching in vain for the mainland of either China or Japan, Monson stayed at a settlement called Isabella, working on his maps with de la Cosa, who had recovered as soon as his feet touched land. Monson, still working under the name Wadsworth, then served as a deputy to Columbus during the disastrous year and a half when Columbus was Governor of the settlements on the newly discovered islands. In April of 1497, Columbus decided to return to Spain on the Marigalante to beg for more supplies to help the struggling colonies. Monson accompanied him on his voyage; de la Cosa stayed behind to work on a series of maps of the islands.
On the voyage home, Columbus and Monson grew even closer. The two often dined together, discussing mapmaking, the period’s equivalent of deep-sea fishing, and the relative importance of Greek philosophy. Columbus asked Monson to proofread an account of his second trip, which he submitted to various newspapers in Europe. Monson advised him to gloss over a few of the hardships of the colonies, specifically the difficulties of living without access to medical technicians. On March 26, the Marigalante anchored in Lisbon to pick up supplies before continuing on to Spain. Monson chose to leave the ship rather than accompany Columbus on the last leg of the journey. Records indicate the two never reunited. Monson traveled home to France on horseback, arriving just in time to see his father die.
After burying his father, Monson started publishing his maps. As Columbus’s secondary cartographer, and with the primary cartographer still abroad, Monson’s maps were in high demand, considered by shipmen and collectors to be the most accurate trans-Atlantic maps on the market. Monson made enough money selling maps to purchase a farm large enough to support himself, his wife, and his two living brothers. He also bought a coach and stabled four horses.
For two years, Monson lived well. Then his maps reached Spain. Columbus was appalled. Every single map (except one, the very first topographical map of Sable Island, then called Fagunda) had huge flaws; mistakes so large Columbus believed they had to have been made intentionally. Existing islands were left off the maps. Open stretches of ocean were decorated with nonexistent archipelagos. Shorelines were distorted. Columbus immediately denounced the maps and sent word to his royal patrons, the Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, as well as King Charles VIII of France, explaining that Monson’s maps were riddled with falsities—“errors,” Columbus insisted, “which have no other explanation than to have been intentionally made. I have shared many meals with Monson and reviewed his drawings and notes extensively. What I saw then were accurate depictions. What he has now produced don’t reflect the notes I examined. His published maps are distortions.”a Monson was discredited, his work was thrown out, and for his affront to the good name of French cartography, King Charles exiled him. Monson didn’t appear in court to hear his short trial, but he must’ve gotten word of the verdict, because he was never seen again in France. De Poisson’s biography ends with Monson’s disappearance. For centuries, that was the last word on Antoine Monson.
Although de Poisson’s text reads like a rigorously researched account, there’s a very real possibility that he was wrong. According to public record, no one named Antoine Monson was born or lived in France during the Exploratory Age. It is simple, however, to find the birth records of an Antoinette Monson.
In 1921, a Harvard-educated historian named Simon Charles published a response to de Poisson’s work, a detailed counter-biography of Monson called History’s Most Hated Cartographer: The New Biography of Antoine/Antoinette Monson.b Charles explains in the introduction to his book that he decided to do his own search for Monson’s birth records and “discovered the secret identity of Antoine Monson—‘history’s most hated cartographer.’ ”c
According to Charles, Antoinette’s upbringing differed dramatically from de Poisson’s description of Antoine’s simple farmer’s life. Charles wrote that Antoinette’s parents died a few years after she was born. Her uncle, a French lord named Philippe Monson, and his wife Charlotte, the daughter of a duke, raised Antoinette alongside their three sons. Charlotte had always wanted a daughter and favored Antoinette over her own children. Philippe, while closer with his sons, also had a soft spot for Antoinette and agreed to buy her a title so that she could marry their youngest son, Aimé. The marriage was a good one for Antoinette. She and her cousin had been close since childhood. Aimé never got along with his studious older brothers; he preferred to play with Antoinette. The two of them frequently ran away from their tutors to swim at a nearby lake. They preferred card games to reading, and when they got older they made up little word puzzles, trying to outwit each other. According to letters between Philippe and Charlotte, which Charles relied on heavily for his account of Antoinette’s childhood, Aimé and Antoinette’s relationship might’ve remained platonic even after their marriage, when Antoinette was sixteen and Aimé was eighteen. Charles believes Aimé was gay and Philippe was aware of his youngest son’s preferences and allowed him to marry Antoinette, despite her common birth, to spare himself the indignity of dealing with the social ramifications of a son who refused to copulate with a wife.
Recently married, and with the new title of “Lady,” Antoinette was allowed to appear at Charles VIII’s court. She became a fixture there: her bright smile, loud laugh, and red cheeks (she probably suffered from acne rosacea) were so recognizable that when she spent two years out of society, in bed with tuberculosis (from which she eventually recovered), her absence was noted in the
Queen’s own diary. Antoinette’s bedridden years coincide almost exactly with the dates of Columbus’s second voyage.
Charles’s account of Antoinette’s years with Columbus mirrors de Poisson’s biography, with some cross-dressing thrown in. Charles believed that Antoinette disguised herself as a boy and named herself Luke Wadsworth—he discounts the poisoning tale—because she was desperate to live like a man. Charles thought her “gender frustrations,” in his words, later prompted her to create the false maps.
Despite the allowances she had in her personal life, due to her permissive guardian and the scarlet fever–induced sterility that kept her from bearing children, Antoinette was emotionally dissatisfied and craved power.d When she returned from her ocean-crossing and gender-crossing adventure, and had to put dresses on and go about as a lady again, she was so frustrated by polite society that she started producing her maps with rampant falsities as a way to get revenge on the society she resented. She tricked the explorers and map collectors, firstly to be cruel, and secondly to frustrate them as they did her.e
Charles and de Poisson’s biographies were largely forgotten by academia. Only a few responses popped up over the years. As an undergraduate at the University of Paris in Sorbonne, a young Simone de Beauvoir wrote a scathing feminist critique of Charles’s theories of Antoinette’s “gender frustration.”
In 1989, a group of PhD students from Berkeley College’s history department published a paper on Monson in the Journal of American History, describing the Charles and de Poisson versions of Monson’s biography. They came up with a new theory, that de Poisson’s Monson died when he returned to Nuremberg after Columbus’s voyage and his wife, poor and starving, had to finish and publish his maps herself to survive. The falsities on the maps, in their estimation, came from her lack of knowledge, not any intentional attempt to mislead the public. They criticized Charles for not acknowledging the fact that the births of lower class farmers, like de Poisson’s Monson, were sometimes not recorded by the state. Also, when men were exiled, sometimes their birth certificates, and those of their family, were burned. Either of those customs could account for Antoine’s lack of documentation.
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