by Mark Helprin
She spoke to Freddy of these things philosophically, as he had so often spoken to her. He didn’t know quite what to make of it. For example, as they were settling in during the bleak period after Christmas, when the cold seemed to be accelerating toward absolute zero, she had been asked to find someone to help her on Martin Luther King Day, when traffic was heavy because of school holidays and the parade. Freddy had the day off, so he joined her. Slowly but certainly as they worked they were pulled into the trance of steam, plates tumbling into the sea, and hands revolving around the clock.
“Freddy,” Fredericka said after hours of silence and a perfect work flow in which they could have passed the plates even had they been blind, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Yes?”
“Should one live, or should one die? That’s the question.”
“In some senses, I suppose, it is.”
“Is it better in your opinion to suffer outrageously, or to stand up to all one’s troubles and just end it? I mean, what if dying were like sleep, and just by going to sleep you could end all the thousands of pains and heartaches you otherwise would feel? It seems attractive. Maybe dying is like sleep, and maybe you dream.”
She thought on, and her face lit up. “Ah, but there’s the catch, because who knows what dreams you may have when finally you’ve checked out? You have to wonder. Maybe that’s why people are willing to grow old and get fat and ugly, and suffer awful people, and snobs, and disappointment in love, and a rotten inefficient judicial system . . .”
Freddy looked at her in wonder.
“. . . and stupid bureaucrats, and all that and such, when all you have to do is stab yourself with a fish knife. Why would anyone go through all these things and work and sweat day after day except that they were frightened that in death, from which no one has ever returned, it might actually be worse! Better a bird in hand than hell knows what in the bush. We’re just afraid, I guess, and whenever you think that it’s time to end it, your fear turns your resolution to mush. Oh, be quiet now. Here comes Louella, and she’s in a bad temper because they made her work on Martin Luther King Day.”
Freddy was stupefied, because she didn’t stop there. In the weeks and months that followed, she slept-walked through many a choice passage, all as if by magic, not only from Hamlet but from everything from Timon of Athens, Lear, and The Tempest, to Richard III, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Troilus and Cressida, and Titus Andronicus. Freddy’s eyes bulged when suddenly, on the El, she began an idiosyncratic paraphrasing of Henry V: “It’s just us that will be happy by doing this, while all the toffs in England lie around in their beds.” Freddy had a good knowledge of Shakespeare, but because he was weak on Cymbeline and had never read The Rape of Lucrece or Love’s Labour’s Won, he feared that he might be missing a great deal when she spoke.
She didn’t do it like someone with a Ouija board, or like a medium or a mystic. She chirped it out in her normal voice like a salesgirl at Marks and Spencer. Whence did it come? Was it the conscience of their race, that had hitherto been sleeping in her well known breast and only now, by stress and strain of seas colliding, erupted from her with the power and surprise of a volcano and the innocence of a schoolgirl? He never told her what she was doing, because he didn’t want to shock it to a stop. And for the rest of their lives together she would speak this way now and then, especially when she was moved or tired, and he never ceased to be amazed, for he knew that she had not studied Shakespeare for even a minute in the finishing school to which she had been committed, for in that place Shakespeare had been deemed far beyond the reach of all the girls who, nonetheless, had come up like flowers in the spring rain from the very loam in which the man himself had risen and was buried.
ALTHOUGH when they had arrived in Chicago they went every day to swim in the lake, October got them walking. They would use Michigan Avenue like the barrel of a cannon to launch themselves northward into various city neighbourhoods, suburbs, and towns that took their elegance from the lake as if with a pump. They hardly ever went inland, preferring to stay by the fresh and curious sea strangely devoid of ships.
Then Freddy’s demanding work and the winter put an end to these walks. Although to stay fit Fredericka did ballet exercises for an hour each day, Freddy had more than his share of exertion on the railroad. On weekends they followed the pattern they had established in Washington of going to a modest restaurant after a day in museums and libraries. Though Chicago’s museums and libraries were neither as varied nor as rich as those of the capital, they were more than enough.
Fredericka now took notice of Freddy’s vast knowledge of history, science, and art. “How do you know all these things?” she asked as they were walking through a museum, having just entered a room of pre-impressionist landscape painters.
“I read. The more you read, the more the world opens up to you in a place like this, and the happier you are and more comforted you feel. It’s up to you. No one is educated who cannot educate himself.”
“Could I educate myself, then?”
“Certainly you can.”
“How would I start?”
“In the library.”
“It has millions of books,” she protested. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Start in the reference collection. I did.”
“Reading encyclopaedias?”
“Read what you find interesting, and then follow your interests. You’ll find that in doing so you always generate enough to illuminate the next step. On Saturday, while I’m checking our press—after all, it doesn’t take two—you stay in the reference room and I’ll join you when I’ve got a good selection.”
“That’s fair,” she said. “You get to read She, and I read the Dutch Encyclopaedia.”
“I’ve already read that,” said Freddy. “Besides, I find no pleasure in reading She.”
Saturday, in the library. Outside it was insanely cold and the wind made buses sway like metronomes. Inside, the lamps glowed and chairs made wood squeals and scuff sounds as only library chairs can. Freddy took a few hours to collect their press on a library cart, and when he wheeled it to Fredericka’s side, she hardly noticed. Semi-enclosed within a rampart of books, she was reading intensely, oblivious of everything except the volumes she had gathered around her.
Freddy tilted his head and read the titles on the bindings, whispering them as he read. He had assumed that her selection would be heavy on fashion, makeup, and “celebrities,” but he was wrong. With her left hand resting possessively on Who’s Who in Zimbabwe, she was deep in Sources and Methods of Hiccup Diagnosis. She had also chosen the Directory of Polish Hydraulic Fluid Wholesalers; the Encyclopaedia of Angels; the Catalogue of Chuvash Books in German Libraries; Aboriginal Science Fiction; The Register of Non-Existent Churches; A Bibliography of Indonesian Military Poetry; Orators Who Possessed Horses; Lloyds’ Survey of Failed Board Games; A Dictionary of the Efik Language; The Picture Book of Albanian Idioms—a list in her handwriting lay next to the latter, beginning with the entry, “I ka duart të prera, ‘to have one’s hands cut off,’ ”—The Language of the French & Indian War, Vol. I, Obscene Expressions; Glossary of Dead Architects (Freddy couldn’t wait to read the latest entries); and, finally, though not least, Nicknames of Popular Fish.
“You see,” he told her, “it’s fascinating.”
“Yes, I love it. Now go away.”
“I have our press.”
“I couldn’t care less about our press.” She held up Who’s Who in Zimbabwe. “There’s a whole world out there, Freddy, that has nothing to do with us.”
“You didn’t know that? I’ve been telling you so for years. Nonetheless, reading about oneself is addictive. You’ll be amazed at what they think we’re doing.” He spread out half a dozen glossy magazines and another half dozen newspapers. “It must have taken some time to ramp up, because when we looked in Washington they really hadn’t got going, but now it’s Bob’s uncle.”
“That’s us in Turkey, two ye
ars ago, on the yacht of Sir Archibald Spoo,” she said of a brilliant She cover photograph in which she and Freddy were backlit by the glowing azure of the Aegean. “How can they do that?”
“How do you know where it is?” Freddy asked. The only background was blue water.
“Because I’m in my safari-cloth bathing costume. I wore it only on that trip, on account of your mother’s complaint that when it’s wet you can practically see through it and it sets revealingly around the nipples. Right there,” she said, pointing, “and there.”
“Right. That’s why She ran it, and that’s how you know and no one else does. Everything’s cropped out. Even Sir Archibald Spoo wouldn’t be able to tell just from the picture. No one would. There are dozens of articles about us, all completely fraudulent, with pictures, quotes from non-existent people, precise times, reports of what we ate and accounts of our minor spats.”
“That’s a popular fish.”
“Sprat.”
“We could be dead and no one would know,” Fredericka said.
“Exactly. Are you aware that we went skiing in January and stayed at the chalet of Blavica Chelinsky in Gloom-Bierbat?”
“Who the hell is she? And we’ve never been to Gloom-Bierbat. It’s too dark there and they’re always drinking and hitting each other with bottles.”
“She’s a Bulgarian countess who’s like an older sister to you.”
“I’ve never heard of her.”
“Here she is.” Freddy held up a picture of Fredericka with her arm around a deeply tanned matronly woman loaded down with so much gold jewellery that she looked like a fat Sammy Davis Jr.
“She smokes,” said Fredericka in disgust, “and she’s got a tattoo.”
“She looks to me,” Freddy said, “like someone Psnake got from a hotel pool in Beirut. The rest is computerized manipulation.”
In quiet astonishment, Fredericka read the text out loud: “ ‘Blavica has for many months now been Fredericka’s closest confidante, and is credited with substantially repairing her relations with the prince. Fredericka wept as she told Blavica of the strains of public life, and Blavica sang six Bulgarian folk songs that the princess claims have won Freddy’s heart anew. The one Fredericka sings to him the most is entitled “Brajfila Konyaffa,” or “The Little Grey Goat.” Its first verse goes as follows:
Papoola konyaffa, Brajfila trazhits,
Blagomir setaslava da sborniki pazhoy,
Brajfila konyaffa armanda sofaht,
Obonya fulina ingrappia coleh,
Brajfila konyaffa, prazhymsky klashitz.
or,
My little kind goat once ate fish oil and trash,
I sold him to the butcher for handfuls of cash,
Now I regret deeply all that I’ve done,
As I sit drinking grappa and stare at the sun.
My little grey goat is my teacher and cousin.’ ”
Fredericka was stunned. “What cheek!” she commented.
“It’s not Bulgarian,” Freddy added. “It’s not anything. But, you see, we’re not anything either. We were always, to some extent, a fictional construct. Now we are entirely a fictional construct. That’s what happens when you live in the press, and it is why, sort of, Bedouin are enraged when you take their photographs.”
“Isn’t Bedouin the king of France, and why would he not like to be photographed? I’ll tell you,” Fredericka said proudly, “because he’s not! He’s a college in Maine.”
“Let’s not even try to answer that one.”
“Freddy, why don’t we just stay here?”
“In Chicago?”
She nodded.
“I admit, it is my kind of town, and it was lovely in those weeks when we swam in the lake, bobbing up and down in the wind and the sun, with an immense and vibrant city just beyond the beach.”
“Everyone went by on their roller skates and no one bothered us except those old men who wanted to sell us worms,” Fredericka said.
“They didn’t bother me,” Freddy asserted. “That is, after all, how I got my job. But what would we do if we stayed?”
“We could improve our lot. We could find more prestigious employment, make more money, and buy a semi-detached house in a Polish or Irish neighbourhood.”
“It would have to be Polish.”
“Then we could be Polish, or Ukrainian. No one would know. I look Scandinavian. We’d have a little car and go to dinner theatre once a month. We could buy some simple furniture and a little sailboat. We’d have one another. What else would we need?”
“I don’t know,” said Freddy, “but because it won’t be warm enough anyway to strike out for the West until May, perhaps we can see about better jobs. I like what I’m doing, but it’s trying to body and soul. Let’s get the classifieds and peruse them in our hovel.”
“If we buy the Sunday paper,” said Fredericka, keeper of the household, “you do realise that we shan’t have enough money for octopus sandwiches.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Freddy told her. “We’re going to dip into principal and get double octopus sandwiches to celebrate our new jobs.”
“What new jobs?”
“Anyone can get a job, Fredericka. There are millions of them.”
AFTER DOUBLE OCTOPUS SANDWICHES and several decanters of hot sake, they decided not to get new jobs but to start a business. When Freddy had begun his biscuit business at home it seemed that everyone in the world had wanted to be in on it, and it was very easy to hire staff and get things rolling. True, various stuffed shirts had stopped him from implementing some of his best ideas, such as the meat and fowl colas—“Straight-up Chicken Soda,” “Pheasant Cooler,” and “Liver and Lime”—but the Chocolate Cherry Biscuits, the Royal Scotch Caramel Cookies, and the Princess of Wales’ Staffordshire Double Lemon Bristols were a huge hit.
While reading the want-ads, Freddy had come up with a brilliant idea. They had considered answering the call for Federal Express drivers, be-cause, among other things, Fredericka would look smashing in the uniform, especially the summer shorts. But why work for Federal Express rather than compete with it? Freddy was easily able to get an appointment with a venture capital specialist at Grabben DeKessef. His phone manner and eloquence put them right through. So on a bleak Tuesday they found themselves on the eighty-ninth floor of one of the glass towers that Freddy so hated, face to face with a man whose temples were silvered and whose self-assurance was imperious.
Freddy got right to it. “We need several million pounds to start a business that I’m sure will grow like wild licorice.”
“You want to grow wild licorice?”
“No no. We’re sure the business will grow with great fecundity.”
“How much money do you want?”
“A few million dollars, let’s say four or five. I’ve started a successful business before.”
“What was that?”
“I baked cookies, and everyone loved them. I didn’t actually bake them myself.”
“A factory baked them.”
“Certainly not. They were baked in a castle, by footmen and pages.”
The banker stared at them intently. “Now you want a different kind of challenge.”
“Exactly. You are familiar,” Freddy asked, “with the great success of Federal Express?”
“Yes.”
“Which is, essentially, based on three principles: competition with a hitherto frightfully inefficient monopoly; the idea of a hub-based delivery system; and crisp, fast, guaranteed service. A splendid success,” Freddy said, pausing dramatically, “except locally. It would be too expensive. So, what I’ve come up with is fast, same-day, hub-based, guaranteed delivery for localities. We’ll start in Chicago and eventually cover every major city in this country and in the world.”
“But who would spend nine dollars to deliver a letter locally?”
“It wouldn’t cost nine dollars. It would cost just a dollar, and it would be based on the courier principle. In Victorian times, the
post was delivered several times daily. We could return to that. Our couriers would bring packets to a central hub and deliver in reverse. They would have routes to walk, or, in some cases, drive, four times daily. The first trip would be solely to pick up, the second and third to pick up and deliver, and the fourth solely to deliver. Each customer would have three pickups and three deliveries daily. At a dollar per envelope—I’ve made estimates—a courier could easily produce five hundred dollars a day.
“Whereas Federal Express is a long-distance service and its colours are red, white, and blue, we would stress the local and medieval quality of what we offer—you know, making a great city as intimate as a village—and our colours would be brown, tan, and black. The couriers of our service, which we would call Feudal Express, would be dressed like medieval varlets and serfs, in linsey-woolsey jerkins and hose, codpieces, and leafed hoods. They would carry their loads in muslin sacks, and always plod about with staffs.”
The Grabben DeKessef specialist was paralysed in place.
“The couriers would be very poor people with bad teeth—illiterates and fools, cloddish peasants, semi-criminals, torturers, dungeon-keepers, et cetera—and their supervisors would be burghers. The executives would ascend in rank from squires and knights through a peerage of various marquises, viscounts, and dukes, and, of course, I would be king.”
“You would be king.”
“Popeel would be my queen. That unusual business structure in itself would be revolutionary, or perhaps anti-revolutionary.”
The specialist smiled. “Don’t you think,” he asked, “that you should look into the feasibility of actually running a medievally based business?”
“Oh, I know all about that. My family has been doing that in England for a thousand years.”
“What about America?”
“It broke away.”
“I mean, shouldn’t you see how a medievally based business runs in America?”
“How can we? None such exists.”