Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘Yeoman Finnerty (That’s me). “Do you intend to take on the whole Japanese fleet?”

  ‘Captain Grant (That’s him): “I do.” ’

  Cleverly the young Irishman broke the tension: ‘In this world a lot of men say “I do,” but no matter how badly the marriage works out, it never involves the consequences that hit us that morning.’ When the listeners stopped laughing, he fumbled with the notebook again, confiding details of overpowering effectiveness:

  ‘Immediately after the battle ended, I wrote in my log as required a report of what I had seen that morning. Later, when Captain Grant had a chance to see it, and read how I had praised him, with his customary modesty he tore the page out and threw it away. I should now like to read you my report as I reconstructed it later, when the United States Government wanted to give him the highest medals this nation can give: “Against odds that would have terrified the ordinary captain, he took his DE right at the heart of the Jap battleships and cruisers, and even when he had no more torpedoes or ammunition, he maintained position in order to confuse the enemy. In our life rafts his courage continued, for he voluntarily placed himself in waters which only a few minutes before had contained sharks in order to save others.” ’

  Here he pointed with his left hand at Gawain Butler; with his right hand he closed the notebook, returning it to his pocket.

  A political reporter from the Chicago Tribune, eager to see Fremont get itself organized in preparation for the Dewey victory in 1948, wired an enthusiastic account to his paper:

  Four days ago this reporter was satisfied that the aging warhorse Ulysses Gantling was a shoo-in for a sixth term as senator from Fremont. Even the challenger’s father-in-law was supporting the tested old warrior.

  But in Webster and again last night in Benton, Norman Grant disclosed a strategy that gained him frenzied, hand-clapping, soul-wrenching, throat-choking support, and since it seems likely that he can repeat this act throughout the state, I now predict that he will sweep Fremont in a landslide.

  What is his trickery? Simple. He telephoned three young heroes who had served with him on the destroyer escort Lucas Dean in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and these simple men, without coaching of any kind or prompting from Grant, narrated scenes of his heroism. Especially effective was a tall Negro from Detroit, a cook with one leg missing, who told the voters how Captain Grant had pulled him from the water after a shark had chopped off his foot. Many heroes have done things like that, but what Grant did next, in the cook’s own words, established a new criterion for heroism: ‘To make place for me on the raft, he quietly jumped down into the water himself, even though he knew sharks had just been there.’

  One minute after Gawain Butler of Detroit finished telling his story, the people of Webster were willing to elect Norman Grant President of the United States. That they will elect him senator seems assured.

  It was not until the fifth repeat of the heroism act that Elinor Grant saw it. The three sailors had motored from the northwest corner of the state to Clay, and at a huge rally in the university auditorium, with no mention of Grant’s football prowess, and certainly no pompon girls, the three men stepped forward to relate their experiences during the Battle for Leyte Gulf. When they were finished, and the roaring cheers had died away, Elinor told her husband, ‘Revolting. How in God’s name could you allow that miserable Finnerty to arrange such a travesty?’

  ‘I didn’t allow him,’ Norman said. ‘I encouraged him.’

  ‘Did you summon those three men? Those exhibitionists?’

  ‘I was too dumb to think of it. It was Finnerty’s idea.’

  ‘And you don’t feel ashamed? Humiliated?’

  ‘Elinor, an election between honest men is like a battle between sovereign nations. You better win.’

  ‘You’d do anything to win, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Only if it’s honest. Only if it’s necessary.’

  ‘You think an obscenity like that fake patriotism is necessary?’

  ‘Last week I was losing. Thanks to Finnerty’s brilliant idea, this week I’m winning. And I will encourage Gawain Butler to tell his story across this entire state. Because it’s good for Fremont to hear a black man speak. It’s good for them to hear someone from Alabama. Or an Irish Catholic from Boston.’

  ‘You feel no shame?’

  ‘There’s something you will never be able to comprehend, Elinor. When we finally crawled out of that raft … Hundreds of men needlessly dead because no one at headquarters had remembered to send out rescue teams … I told those three men that the world was a shitty place …’

  ‘I don’t want to hear such language.’

  She fled to her father’s house and asked him what he thought of Norman’s blatant flag-waving, and he had to reflect some moments before answering: ‘America has an enormous propensity for electing military heroes to offices they’re not capable of filling. William Henry Harrison, Ulysses Grant, William McKinley. I have no doubt that Dwight Eisenhower will be laureled with the Presidency any time he wants it, on either ticket.

  ‘But you must remember that we also got a couple of rather good men this way. Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt among others. And best of all, George Washington, whom we so desperately needed. Every one of those men was elected not for his capacity, but because the public perceived him as a military hero. This nation will always be eager to believe that a military man is more intelligent than he really is. Now it’s your husband’s turn.’

  ‘Is he a bright, good man? I no longer know how to judge.’

  ‘He’s a football player,’ Stidham said. ‘A fine, strong, honest football player. And if he had been something different, we might have lost the Battle of Leyte Gulf and sacrificed an additional half a million young men.’

  ‘Will he be a decent senator? After such a despicable start?’

  ‘Norman has a fighting chance to be a fine senator, but I expect he’ll turn out to be only average. Never a distinction, never a scandal. That was the best I could get out of Ulysses Gantling. I’ll be satisfied if we do as well with Norman.’ He hesitated, trying to strike a balance concerning his fragile daughter. ‘It’s you I’m afraid of, Elinor. I suspect you’ll make a very poor senator’s wife.’

  ‘So do I,’ she cried, running to her father’s chair, and kneeling beside him. When her convulsive sobs quieted, she whispered, ‘It’s never been Norman I’ve been afraid of. It’s always been me. I’m not suited for this job. I simply am not.’

  ‘What makes you think I was suited to be an officer in France? A pathetic farce, really. Or Gantling’s campaign manager? I very nearly lost him that first election. We do what we have to do, Elinor. And now I think it’s time for you to appear on the podium with your husband. He’s fighting for one of the premier jobs in the world and he deserves your help.’

  At the climactic rally in Benton, five nights before the primary, she sat on the stage beside her husband and, at Finnerty’s insistence, even said a few words. But when the three sailors appeared in their freshly pressed uniforms, with ribbons neat and medals polished, she wanted to throw up.

  Rachel Lindquist believed that one test of a woman was how she organized space: ‘Whether it controls you, or you control it.’

  When her roommate at Wellesley had asked what she meant by this, she had said forthrightly, ‘A kitchen at home. Do the plates and forks command it in disarray, or do you instruct the ugly things where they belong and see to it that they keep their place?’

  ‘What’s the great virtue in that?’ asked her roomie, a slovenly girl from Virginia, pouting.

  ‘Because it establishes who’s boss, that’s why. Because when the space is ordered, you’re free to live creatively.’

  ‘Are you lecturing me?’ the fluffy girl asked.

  ‘This room proves to me that you allow space to dominate you. Everything is in chaos. Your clothes spread everywhere.’

  In the weeping spell that followed, the roommate announced her intention of quittin
g the room and finding another girl to bunk with, and Rachel encouraged her to do so. The upshot was a visit to the dean, who listened to the roommate’s weepy recitation of accusations, smiled and said consolingly, ‘Betty-Anne, I agree with you. You’ll be much happier with a girl more like yourself.’

  The change was approved and each girl was happier. Rachel, of course, had to room alone for several months, but in that time she instituted a system of beautiful orderliness, so that later, when a Jewish girl from Scarsdale moved in with her own neat clothes, things progressed with no strain.

  Rachel Lindquist’s father was a member of one of those hard-working, gifted Swedish families that settled in Worcester, west of Boston, in the late years of the past century. Her grandfather had invented a process whereby Carborundum particles could be attached to fabric, producing an excellent abrasive for use in manufacturing, but since he was unusually cautious in financial affairs, he missed his opportunity to convert his small operation into a massive corporation the way some of the other Worcester Swedes did, but his four patents were so original and so carefully protected that he and his descendants did collect gratifying royalties from the big combines.

  Rachel was carefully educated in a private school near Worcester and then at Wellesley, where, after her unfortunate experience with her first roommate, she had an unbroken chain of successes. Her parents expected their only daughter to excel in her classes, which she did, and the friends who had known her in the lower schools were sure that her lovely blond hair and elegant figure would ensure a good marriage.

  She was repeatedly invited to dances at Harvard and Amherst, and in her junior year, 1941, she met a senior at Yale named Stuart. A graduate of Groton, he represented one of the fine milling families of New Hampshire, and it was assumed by everyone, especially her parents, ‘that Rachel was safely settled.’

  That was before Pearl Harbor. Toward the middle of December, when the world seemed to be falling apart, she attended a political seminar at MIT and there met Stanley Mott, a young professor from Georgia Tech. He was so alert, so vividly interested in what aviation could do for the world that she was immediately attracted to him, and at the end of the three-day session, with Hitler and Tojo and Mussolini on the agenda daily, she realized that she was intended for something in life more exciting than young Mr. Stuart of Groton and Yale, and New Hampshire milling.

  Her parents were distraught: ‘Who is this Professor Nobody?’

  ‘He teaches at Georgia Tech.’ She might as well have said that he came from Arkansas.

  ‘An illiterate plantation owner, I suppose,’ Mrs. Lindquist said. Although she belonged to only a minor branch of Boston’s great Saltonstall family, she felt a burning obligation to protect the superiority of that revered name.

  ‘He’s the son of the Methodist minister in Newton.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were Methodist ministers in New England … in the better suburbs, that is.’

  ‘Graduated with honors from the local high school, one of the best in the country, and he won a science foundation something or other. A full scholarship.’

  ‘If he’s as good as you say, why in the world would he have elected Georgia? If he was really first class, that is?’

  ‘I wondered about that, too,’ Rachel confessed. ‘If he’s as bright as he seems … I mean, the men with him said he was a genius in aviation. Why wouldn’t he have gone to a real university? Like Harvard or MIT?’

  The question was so perplexing that Mr. Lindquist launched a chain of telephone calls, to bankers, lawyers, educators, and the police of Newton. He learned that Stanley Mott came from a standard lower-class family of good reputation, that he had been a wizard in science at Newton and had ranked high in all national test scores. He had gone to Georgia Tech because he was interested in engineering as a practical science and had done at least as well in his classes as Rachel had done in hers, but as Mr. Lindquist observed: ‘No one in his right mind would equate Georgia Tech marks with those from Wellesley.’

  ‘How did he ever become a professor?’ Mrs. Lindquist asked, and her husband explained that he wasn’t a real professor, only an assistant: ‘He has no more than a master’s degree, you know. Something to do with aviation.’

  ‘Did he get his master’s at MIT?’ his wife asked.

  ‘Louisiana State, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He seems always to shy away from the first-class schools.’

  The Lindquists were displeased when their daughter wanted to invite Professor Mott to Worcester, and were relieved when he reported that he could not come: ‘I’ve got to give and grade my exams. And the Army Air Corps has been talking with me.’

  They did not see him until May of 1942, for he was kept busy teaching crash courses for the military, and when he did come north he was ten pounds underweight and rather haggard. He did not create a good impression, for he was distressingly nervous: ‘The Air Corps has been badgering me.’

  ‘Are you to be a pilot?’ Mr. Lindquist asked.

  ‘No. I can’t fathom what it is they’re after.’

  ‘Would you prefer the Air Corps to the Navy?’ Mr. Lindquist, as a courtesy to his daughter, felt obliged to keep the conversation moving, even though he understood few of the answers. This Mott was a rather tedious young man, not at all like that Stuart chap from Yale, but he could talk coherently, which was more than some of Rachel’s young callers were able to do.

  ‘You must be proud to know the Air Corps wants you,’ he said.

  ‘That signifies little, Mr. Lindquist. There are so few of us trained in aviation engineering.’

  Rachel was obviously attracted to him, and when she insisted upon taking the train all the way to Atlanta to see the Georgia Tech graduation, her parents awakened with a shock to the fact she intended to marry him.

  ‘At least bring him back to Worcester for a proper wedding,’ Mrs. Lindquist pleaded.

  ‘It’s only reasonable,’ Mr. Lindquist added. ‘His people would be just as eager as we are.’

  ‘He doesn’t have people,’ Rachel said. ‘Only his mother.’

  ‘Was she deserted?’

  ‘Widowed.’

  Under pressure, the young people consented to a formal wedding in Worcester, but it was a rather drab wartime affair. Mrs. Mott came out from Boston, ill-at-ease and barely presentable. Two of the real Saltonstalls graced the party and many of the Swedish establishment, but the bright young men and women who would normally have added radiance to such a wedding were absent, the men in training camps, the women dashing about the country to keep up with them. And as soon as the Motts were married, Stanley had to report to Wright Field in Ohio—attached to the Air Force, but with civilian status.

  In true military fashion, he was assigned not to aviation work but to an advanced study group endeavoring to deduce what the German scientists at the secret Baltic base of Peenemünde were up to. His work was classified top secret, which meant that he could tell his wife nothing.

  Rachel understood. She had been attracted to Stanley by his obvious brilliance, and the more she saw of him during their catch-as-catch-can courtship and marriage, the more she appreciated the solid qualities of his mind. Whatever he was free to tell her, she understood, and sometimes his silences were more instructive than what he said.

  She had one more year to go on her Wellesley degree and was reassured when he encouraged her to complete it, no matter what the hardships. Like him, she rushed normal procedures, taking a criminally heavy program right through the academic year and into the summer as well. As soon as she graduated, she hurried to Dayton, where she took a job helping in a day nursery filled with children whose mothers were doing manual labor at the air base. When the older woman who attempted to run the vastly enlarged nursery collapsed from overwork, Rachel took complete charge, and even when she informed Stanley that she was pregnant, they both agreed that she should continue her work.

  It was now that she exhibited her devotion to the principle she had expounded at
college: The test of a woman is how she organizes space. In the Mott rooms at the motel she established a place for everything and rigorously discarded any object that was not essential; as a consequence, the Motts lived in constructive order, whereas most of the other young couples, many from places like Vassar and Harvard, lived in chaos.

  She applied the same rule to her personal appearance. She had thick blond hair which she wore drawn back in a severe Grecian style. She was pleased with the effect this created, for it framed her placid Swedish beauty handsomely and worked well with the simple clothes she preferred. She brought with her four conservative suits, all light in color to match her complexion, and four blouses with no frills.

  She felt it indecent ever to live without art; at college she had had an expensive record player but no stacks of popular single records, like the other girls. She told Stanley: ‘I’ve always felt that eight or ten really good complete albums were enough.’ She abhorred anything later than Beethoven and would allow him only his Seventh Symphony and Razumovsky quartets: ‘There’s great vulgarity in Beethoven.’ She had a gorgeous piano concerto by Mozart and one of his lilting violin concertos. But mostly she liked Bach and Vivaldi, holding that composers like Schubert, Schumann and Stravinsky were violent exhibitionists. When she found a composition she liked, she played it constantly, but it was always something like the Brandenburg Concertos.

  In their early marriage, when her records all sounded alike to Stanley, he said, ‘One of the fellows in graduate school had a marvelous record. Ravel’s Bolero.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ she said.

  In art it was also less-equals-more. Stanley, having had several good civilization courses at Georgia, wanted to spend part of his first paycheck for a nicely colored photograph of the Cumaean Sibyl by Michelangelo: ‘The professor explained how elegantly it fitted the architecture of the Sistine Chapel.’ He drew an illustration of the converging areas.