Girl in Landscape

by Jonathan Lethem

  “Step away from that girl,” he said.

  Truth Renowned stood beside Martha Kincaid, fuzzy limbs folded together like braids, fronds wavering. No one spoke.

  “You heard me,” said Efram, the three words strung out like gunshots in the distance.

  Household deer scooted through the doorway past Efram’s feet and made for the dusty shadows.

  Efram’s presence was irrevocable. The day was smashed into another shape by his arrival, the air itself made watery. Pella felt a treacherous thrill seeing him wreck the classroom with his insinuations.

  Truth Renowned, of course, couldn’t look less dangerous.

  “What is this?” said Clement. “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve been looking for this one,” said Efram. “Should have figured it would take a chance like this to hide. Play school.”

  He moved into the room. Behind him, revealed in the doorway, stood Ben Barth and Doug Grant.

  Now Clement stepped forward, out of the double row of study partners that stood frozen in the middle of the room.

  “What are you talking about?” he said, his voice rising. Pella heard the tone that had cost him the election, the tone of the lost cause.

  “It’s not a thing that we’d want to talk about in front of all these kids,” said Ben Barth. “Has to do with this Archbuilder, though, and Hugh Merrow. Not a pretty thing, Mr. Marsh.”

  Efram stared at the alien, ignoring Clement. “Truth Renowned knows what we’re talking about—don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Truth Renowned, revealing a voice at last: a warble, a quaver. “Hugh Merrow preferred that I not speak about these matters.”

  “Well I prefer that you do speak,” said Efram, adding only after a pause, “about these matters.”

  “Evidently conflictual!” said Hiding Kneel.

  “Oh, oh—,” said Truth Renowned.

  “Not here, Truth,” said Efram. “Outside.” He pointed at the door.

  “Truth Renowned is a guest in my house,” said Clement, stammering. “He—it, I mean, can stay as long as it likes.”

  “I wish to depart,” said Truth Renowned.

  “You mean you want to go with them?” said Clement.

  “I think I would prefer not to do that,” said Truth Renowned weakly.

  “Enough,” said Efram. “Let’s go.” He pushed Truth Renowned roughly on the shoulder, and the Archbuilder stumbled to the door. Doug Grant moved out of the doorway, a twisted expression on his face, and grabbed Truth Renowned’s arm as the Archbuilder passed.

  Efram took Truth Renowned’s other arm, and together they steered the alien across the porch and down the steps. Clement rushed after them, but Ben Barth put his hand out and caught Clement’s shoulder. “Slow down, Mr. Marsh. Efram knows what he’s doing.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Clement.

  “Be patient, Clement,” said Ben Barth. “Let Efram get his information straight, so we’ll know what’s called for.”

  Clement lifted Ben Barth’s hand and went past. Joe Kincaid followed, and so did Hiding Kneel. The children trailed after them, onto the porch, into the sun. Pella was grateful to Efram for dragging them out of the cloistered schoolroom, into the day. No matter how he had to do it.

  Her fear of the sky was gone. Now she only wanted to be a thing out in the valley, running.

  Efram and Doug Grant pushed Truth Renowned ahead of them on the path from Pella’s house, in the direction of Hugh Merrow’s. They let go of the alien’s arms and the Archbuilder trudged along, acquiescent.

  Clement rushed after. “What are you doing?” he demanded again.

  “I want Merrow to look his friend here in the face,” said Efram. “See what they have to say when they’re both at the scene of the crime.” He turned back to Clement, putting his hands on his hips. “Come ahead if you want,” he said, and grinned to mark the challenge. “You probably ought to be there.” He gave Truth Renowned another shove, just for show.

  Clement was defeated. If he followed it was as if he’d taken part in the posse. He followed anyway. Joe Kincaid jogged along sheepishly behind him.

  Morris Grant jumped down off the porch, ran out and fell into step beside his brother, as the captive Archbuilder was led over the ridge.

  Ben Barth turned to Hiding Kneel. “C’mon, Kneel,” he said. “You can help your friend find his tongue. Figure talking’s the one thing you know something about.”

  Hiding Kneel shuffled down the porch steps after him, silent for the moment.

  “Let’s go,” whispered Bruce to Pella.

  Pella couldn’t think. The men and Archbuilders were disappearing into the valley, behind the cloud of dust raised by their scuffing steps. Rushing off to make their disaster. Pella felt she had to witness it. But not with Bruce. She would have preferred to follow invisible, as a household deer.

  “Someone has to take care of Martha,” she pointed out.

  “She can stay here with Ray and Dave,” said Bruce.

  “I want to go,” said Raymond.

  “You have to watch David,” said Pella to her brother. “And Martha too. Get her a snack.”

  Eleven

  Hugh Merrow had been drinking. His house was like a tableau arranged to produce that impression, littered with bottles and glasses and laundry, shades pulled down against the light, a twice-bitten sandwich rotting on a plate, and the artist himself slumped in a chair in the center of the room, his forehead braced against his palms. The easel was empty, the sketch for the portrait of Truth Renowned down, facing the wall. The self-portraits on the walls glared into the middle of the room accusingly now, and the rosy landscapes seemed to mock the sealed windows.

  The painter barely looked up as they came in. First Truth Renowned, pushed ahead roughly by Efram and Doug Grant, then Clement and Joe Kincaid. Next, trickling in silently, came Ben Barth, Hiding Kneel, Morris Grant, Bruce and Pella. Jammed into Hugh Merrow’s cluttered, solitary space they seemed an invasion, an explosion of bodies, though the studio was no smaller than the cleared-out schoolroom they’d been in a few minutes before.

  The fading daylight shone too harshly on this scene. Pella closed the door behind her, and it seemed a small act of mercy.

  “Here you go, Merrow, here’s your beautiful Archbuilder,” said Efram, thrusting Truth Renowned into the middle of the room. The Archbuilder stumbled, righted itself, a distant look in its eyes.

  “What’s that supposed to prove?” said Hugh Merrow in a soft voice. He didn’t lift his head from its crutch of hands. “Truth is my model. Bringing—it—back here to me doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You didn’t say it last night.”

  “What’s this all about?” said Clement.

  “Linguistic dissension—” began Hiding Kneel from behind Clement.

  “Wait, Kneel,” said Clement, waving his hand. “I’m asking Efram.”

  “We were at Wa’s, last night,” said Efram. “Me, and Ben, and Merrow here. Having a drink. Wa’s little general store turns into a place for drinking, after hours.” He spread his hands to indicate the counter in Wa’s shop. “I don’t know if he’d let you family men in on it. Can’t imagine you’d bother with it if he did. It’s for us lonely types. But after Merrow got in his cups last night he started talking like he wasn’t really all that lonely.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Merrow burst out, looking up angrily at Efram.

  “Going on about how beautiful she was, tearing his hair about it—”

  “I was talking about my painting, the difficulty of capturing in a portrait—”

  “You were talking about a hell of a lot more than that and you know it. And so does the native beauty here.”

  The accused Archbuilder stood helplessly between them, fronds depressed against its head.

  “He was baiting me,” said Hugh Merrow, turning to Clement. “He was feeding me drinks, first of all, and planting this idea, this thing he wanted to think—”

&
nbsp; “Baiting and planting, now debating,” said Hiding Kneel.

  “Yeah, and next comes mass debating,” whispered Morris Grant to Bruce and Pella. Bruce shoved him, so hard that he stumbled forward and jarred a palette-table. Several thin tubes of paint fell and scattered on the floor.

  “Morris,” said Joe Kincaid.

  “It was Bruce!” Morris said plaintively.

  Joe Kincaid put a hand heavily on the shoulder of each boy.

  “Let’s get the kids out of here,” said Ben Barth. “Seems like keeping them away from all this is the whole point.”

  “I’m not convinced there is a point,” said Clement evenly. “Apart from spreading innuendo.”

  “Well, they don’t have to sit through this, whatever it is,” said Joe Kincaid, guiding the boys to the door. “Bruce, Morris, Pella, why don’t you—”

  “Pella can stay,” said Clement.

  “Okay,” said Joe, a little awkwardly. “You boys clear out, Pella can do what she wants—”

  “I’d prefer it if she stayed,” said Clement. “If that’s all right with you, Pella.”

  Pella shrugged.

  Efram watched, a hand on one hip, his mouth set into something like a grin, his eyebrows raised. The very image of smoldering patience. “Let her stay,” he said. “Maybe she can help us sort this out.”

  Hugh Merrow let his head sink back into his hands.

  Then Bruce and Morris were gone, and the room was all men and Archbuilders, the men tense, crushed, proud, the Archbuilders impossible to fathom. Men and Archbuilders and Pella. Only Doug Grant was near her age, and he burned with an aggrieved hostility that made him distant, unreachable. More alien than the Archbuilders.

  Pella knew she stood as a marker of Clement’s resistance to Efram. As with the pills, she’d become their battleground. She knew too that she counted as older because her mother was dead.

  She fought not to think of what she’d seen at Merrow’s studio. A deer saw it, she decided. Not me.

  “Let’s get to the bottom of this thing,” said Efram. He pointed lackadaisically at Hugh Merrow. “I’d like you to tell the rest of these people what you told me at Wa’s.”

  “I didn’t tell you anything,” said Merrow, his breath ragged.

  “This isn’t a tribunal,” said Clement.

  “I didn’t, say it was,” said Efram. “I just want to ask the man some questions.”

  “Perhaps a reenactment—” suggested Hiding Kneel.

  “Shut up, Kneel,” said Ben Barth.

  “Maybe it’s time for your Archbuilder to talk,” said Efram, pointing his thumb at Truth Renowned, “since you already did. Just give it permission, Merrow—it’ll do what you tell it. Just like when you two are alone.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hugh Merrow, finding his courage so suddenly he seemed startled by it. “The conversation you’re referring to didn’t happen. Nothing happened.” He turned to Clement, an appeal in his eyes. “I paint Archbuilders, Mr. Marsh. Along with a lot of other things. And last night I had a drink with Efram Nugent. He was drunk, I was drunk, we talked about a lot of things.”

  Merrow leaned back in his chair now, eyes hollow, and stroked his yellow beard absently. He didn’t look at Truth Renowned. “Efram talked about some things that were on his mind,” he went on. “Things that maybe excited his imagination, I don’t know. I humored him. I allowed him to make certain insinuations. I laughed along. That was a mistake, I see now. But I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Truth Renowned just stood, arms braided, looking at the floor.

  “There’s at least one of us here who knows you’re lying,” said Efram. “Besides me, that is.”

  He turned, met Pella’s eyes, seemed to look through them. She froze.

  “How long do you think before your Archbuilder blurts something out, Merrow?” said Efram, still looking at Pella. “Or worse, does like Kneel here says and provides somebody with a reenactment?”

  Pella breathed again. Efram meant it was the Archbuilder who knew. Though he’d said at least.

  “You don’t have any evidence,” said Clement. He moved closer to Truth Renowned, perhaps hoping the alien would speak, defend itself. But no. And Hugh Merrow was less than useless again, huddled in his chair. “It’s not enough to bully an Archbuilder into some confession,” Clement went on. “You need proof of harm.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” said Efram.

  “Show not just that something happened, but that anyone was hurt by it if it did happen. That anyone cares, Efram.”

  “You don’t grasp what’s at stake here, Marsh. How do you know your proof won’t come when an Archbuilder leads a kid off into the hills for some more of what Hugh Merrow’s been teaching them? That’s the kind of reenactment I’m talking about.”

  “That’s a bit far-fetched—”

  “You assume they make the same distinction between kids and adults that we do. Well, think again. Talk to the Archbuilders and you’ll find they consider themselves children.”

  Clement said nothing.

  Pella wanted Efram to be wrong, wanted that slow malevolent voice to stumble and fall instead of endlessly rolling forward. But hadn’t Hiding Kneel said the same thing in Clement’s classroom—when?

  The class was a distant memory now.

  “Watch them with your kids,” said Efram. “You’ll see. They respond to children more than to you or me. Children and portrait painters.”

  “I respond excellently to you, Efram Nugent,” said Hiding Kneel eagerly. “But then I had not gathered that you were not a child—”

  “Don’t clutter this up with your claptrap, Kneel,” said Ben Barth.

  “Yeah, quiet,” said Doug Grant gratuitously.

  “Regarding another Archbuilder, my claptrap might be deemed vital,” said Hiding Kneel. “A necessary prerequisite to your own claptrap.”

  “Be vital if you got Truth Renowned talking,” said Efram. “Otherwise—”

  There Efram broke off. Pella thought he’d left his sentence unfinished. Then she heard the unintelligible bubbling noise that followed his words. She came slowly to the realization that he was speaking another language.

  The string of sounds issuing from Efram’s mouth was broken into the same laconic measures as his English. It was like nothing Pella had ever heard and at the same time seemed the absolute distillation of Efram, as if his persona had been converted out of language into pure and utterly revealing music, a song of lazy menace.

  That much was revealed. But the meaning was hidden.

  • • •

  “What was that?” said Clement warily.

  “Hey,” said Joe Kincaid. “You speak pretty good Archbuilder.”

  “I thought nobody—” started Clement.

  He stopped because Truth Renowned was bubbling back at Efram, offering its own quavering, high-pitched version of the same noises.

  “Not Archbuilder,” said Ben Barth quietly, chidingly, to Clement and Joe. “They call that stuff Table Talk.”

  Truth Renowned paused, fronds rustling, then bubbled on, unstoppable now. The word Merrow jumped out, obvious like an off-note in a familiar melody.

  Hugh Merrow stared at Truth Renowned, plainly as baffled as Clement.

  “Efram just told Kneel to shut the hell up,” whispered Ben Barth. “To let Truth do the talking.”

  At last the Archbuilder fell silent. Efram nodded, apparently satisfied.

  Doug Grant said, “What, Efram? You find anything out?” His eyes darted wildly from Efram to Clement to the Archbuilders.

  “Tell us, Efram,” said Clement. “What did Truth Renowned say to you?”

  “This meeting is over,” said Efram, turning away.

  “That’s what it said?” said Clement. “That the meeting is over?”

  “That’s what I said,” said Efram. “I’m calling it done.”

  It was ludicrous. Had a meeting even begun?

  With Efra
m, talk was all interruptions. He was like the Archbuilder landscape, a series of things broken off.

  Pella herself felt broken off.

  “I’ve learned all I need to,” said Efram. “Unless somebody else wants to add something.” He looked at Pella and she felt the blood steam in her cheeks.

  She hated him.

  “I’ll let you worry about your own kids from here on,” he said. “Someone’s lying, but let the lie stand.”

  “You didn’t get what you were after,” said Clement. “You’re afraid you’re wrong. Admit it.”

  “The one who can back me up isn’t talking,” said Efram. “Let’s leave it at that.”

  He didn’t stare at her this time, but he didn’t have to. She was like a wound, stinging freshly in the open air.

  “In the meantime,” he went on, “Truth Renowned isn’t going to hang around Merrow anymore. To get its portrait painted, or anything else.” Efram’s hand rose, to draw invisible pictures of all his words left unsaid. “That’s its own decision, and it’s good enough for me. Whatever happened, it’s stopping here.”

  “We’ll make sure of it, too,” said Doug Grant, glaring at the Archbuilder.

  Merrow slumped down in his chair again, hair in his twisted fingers, back bent like it bore a world.

  “Is that what you said?” Clement asked Truth Renowned. “Why not tell the rest of us? There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Truth Renowned didn’t speak.

  “The question relevant to me is whether Hugh Merrow might relinquish the incomplete portrait,” said Hiding Kneel. “In that eventuality I might complete the work—”

  Merrow got out of his chair and moved in a frenzy to the painting turned against the wall. He thrust the stretched canvas roughly at Hiding Kneel. “Take it, and get out. Get out of my house, all of you!”

  Hiding Kneel accepted the painting gracefully and bowed its head, tendrils tumbling forward.

  And then Kneel and Truth Renowned swayed smoothly and wordlessly to the door. As though all along they’d only awaited Merrow’s command, as though for them this was a meeting Merrow had called. But as Hugh Merrow stood, empty-handed now, his shrill outburst ringing in their ears, his moment of authority leaked away. Back to Efram. Merrow sank into his chair.