by Glenda Adams
“Sit anywhere,” said Portia, “Menfred doesn’t mind if you sit on his papers. Just don’t disturb the order, that’s all.”
Lark picked her way along one of the paths to what she guessed was a chair, on the seat of which was a stack of manila folders. Tom remained standing, having picked up one of the journals and begun leafing through it. Portia stood at the door, her hands clasped, smiling. Then she flicked on the light and the track lighting along the ceiling lit up the wall displays, the outlines of the carvings forming shadows on the wall behind. Portia flicked on another switch, and the lights within the glass cases came on.
“That’ll give you a better view. Everyone who comes wants to see Menfred’s things. They’re temperature-controlled in those cases. That basketry deteriorates so quickly in the humidity.”
What had looked like a pile of rushes, with illumination became a basket with legs and arms, mimicking a decapitated body.
“Impressive, isn’t it,” said Portia when she saw Lark looking at the bowl. “It’s made from sago spathe and was used in ceremonies that preceded headhunting raids. Menfred, my husband, who as you know is a famous anthropologist and is tenured at the university, has spent a lifetime collecting. He recognized the value of primitive art before almost anyone with the exception of Picasso and some of those Frenchmen. And he has single-handedly saved Oceanic art from destruction by time and by the natives themselves who don’t see anything in it. Menfred has some of the rarest and best specimens extant. Sit down. Please.’’
Lark sat gingerly on the pile of folders.
“Where’s everyone?” Tom asked.
“I’ve sent the boys out to play. They’re under the thrit of dith not to come beck until dark.’’ She paused, pursing her lips. “The boys bother Menfred when he’s trying to work, and they make such a mess in the house. Little sevidges. We should donate them to a museum.” Portia giggled, placing a few fingers in front of her mouth to hide the display. “They could keep them in glass cases all clean and out of mischief and tex deductible. The baby’s asleep, of course. He won’t be any trouble until he starts meddling with Menfred’s stuff.”
Tom tossed the journal back on its pile. “So, Portia, what are you working on these days?” Tom was driven to ask a question. Lark attributed his apparent discomfort and preoccupation with the journal to his awkwardness at her own presence on what he called his turf.
“You won’t believe it. I’m scrambling Menfred’s files.” She nodded at the file cabinet in the corner, draped in papers and books. “There are dozens of others in his study. I’m changing the labels. Menfred thinks there’s going to be some kind of Communist revolution soon, and they’ll seize all his stuff. So we’re subverting our own system, overturning the right classifications, before they do. I’m keeping a code, of course, so that we’ll know what’s what.”
“Do you think it’s really necessary?” Tom asked.
“Menfred thinks it is. He’s got a lot of sensitive material in the apartment and in the files.” She smiled at Lark. “And what will you work on, now that you’re here? You have no job, Tom said? It’s possible Menfred could find you a few hours’ work. He needs a girl Friday.”
A rumble and a growling reached them from several rooms away.
“That’s Menfred. I told you he’s like a wounded tiger right now.”
Along the hallway came what seemed to Lark like giant footsteps, and she was overcome with a fear and trembling, das Schaudern, the best of man, as Donna Bird would have pointed out. “He’s a pit, really,” said Portia in an aside to Lark. “I was one of his students. His bark is worse then his bite.”
“Who is it? I wasn’t expecting visitors,” growled the professor, as he made his way with delicacy past his boxes and crates.
“It’s only Tom,” called Portia. “And a friend.”
“Whenever these illiterate typesetters come across a three-letter word, they think any three-letter word will do, any word at all.” At the doorway stood a lanky white-haired man who seemed to stretch to the ceiling. He was all angles, his jaw, shoulders, elbows, knees prominent. His hair stood on end in thick spikes. In the doorway, knees slightly bent, eyes darting about, ready to spring, he looked like a piece of his own art collection. “I just got my proofs on slash-and-burn, and of course they’re atrocious,” he bellowed.
“He’s upset today,” said Portia.
“They send them to the Philippines to save money and then primitive ignorami do the typesetting. Before that it was Hong Kong, same thing.”
“The publisher says it saves an awful lot of money, but of course in the ind we pay because Menfred has to spend all his precious time correcting them and then correcting them again.”
So this was Manfred Bird, father of Donna Bird, who was stranded at this moment on a minuscule island because of Lark. And standing next to him, giving a simultaneous interpretation of his words, was Portia Bird, Donna’s stepmother.
“Sit, Tom, sit,” said Portia.
Because of the clutter in the room, no one moved. Lark sat upright on the folders opposite Manfred and Portia at the door, and on the path between them stood Tom, characters waiting to be told their next lines.
Tom looked around, chose a path, and maneuvered along it to an upright chair in front of one of the cases. He turned around and before sitting said, “This is Lark. Tell him about Donna.”
“Well, where is she?”
“On an island,” said Lark, the first words she had uttered since arriving at the Birds’. She cleared her throat. “She knew that the islanders n-needed her. She is helping them.”
“Helping? How?”
“Helping them to understand their own culture.”
“I’ve been wanting to see her,” said Manfred.
Portia patted his arm. “There, there,” she soothed. “She’ll turn up one day, when you least expect it. She’s so independent. She’s helping people. Doing worthwhile work.’’
“A one-woman Peace Corps. She should have been quadruplets,’’ said Manfred Bird. “She’s very, very intelligent, you know. An IQ off the charts. Wins all the prizes. Since she was in kindergarten.” Lark could not tell if he was mocking or serious. ‘And that rascal, the Captain? He said he had changed his plans, trouble with the ship. He didn’t come to New York.’’
“We ran aground,’’ said Lark.
“Good grief. He didn’t tell me that. No wonder he wrote and didn’t telephone me. He knew I’d murder him if I spoke to him.” Portia patted his arm again. “He could have lost all my stuff. It could have gone to the bottom. The ocean is filled with lost treasures.”
“And now that governments of these countries are making it harder for experts like Menfred to get the art out and save it, every shipment is doubly precious,” said Portia. “Luckily Menfred has ways to carry on his mission to preserve it all.”
“I didn’t know you had stuff on the Avis Maris,” said Lark.
“Of course. I’ve known the Captain since the war. He had to surrender to me. His ship was filled with tapestries he had managed to rescue from the peasants. German peasants were no different from other peasants. They were cutting up these priceless treasures for blankets. We hit it off immediately. Portia, where’s my stool?”
Manfred Bird had decided to sit, since the conversation with these visitors showed signs of going on a little longer than most conversations that took place in that apartment. Portia squeezed past him, then returned with a carved wooden stool. Manfred held it up for Lark to see. “A debating stool, from the Sepiks, New Guinea.” He placed it in the doorway and sat down, peering over the low wall of newspapers.
“Was it in boxes? Your stuff?” Lark asked. She looked at the carved pole and the log figure with the slit along the torso. “Man-sized boxes?”
“What happened to the cargo? That Captain is a coward. He’s a good fellow, but a coward.”
“Only the aluminum rods were ditched,” said Lark slowly. “How do you get your stuff, then?”
“He has chennels,” said Portia. “Contects.”
“Portia is his New Zealand connection,” said Tom, who had been uncharacteristically silent.
“I’m from New Zealand,” said Portia. “My family has always been in government, public service.”
“And the island and Mr. Weiss? Is he a connection, too? And the Avis Maris?”
“Don’t interrogate him,” Tom said quietly to her. “Here, Manfred.” He reached into the shopping bag on the pile of magazines beside him and held up the lamp and whisk. “Lark brought Donna’s stuff for you.”
Portia shuttled over to get the objects and take them back to Manfred, winking at Tom and smiling in gratitude.
“Ah-ha,” said Manfred. “That lamp, metal, must be from the East Indies somewhere, not Polynesia or Melanesia. Maybe Sumatra. Maybe Nias.”
“She got them from a man in the street on the island, who now wears her raincoat and carries her umbrella.”
“A chip off the old block. She’s devoted to me. The perfect daughter. She helps me with my work, my investigations. Now, luckily, I have Portia, while Donna goes off all the time.” Portia winked at Tom again, while Manfred, who looked as if he might cheer up a bit, examined the little lamp. “My network is getting wider and wider,” he said. “Like the old routes they used to follow in their canoes. Stuff is finding its way along the trail to me, and my trail is finding its way farther and farther to more stuff. Of course, this lamp is not strictly in my area of expertise, but I can tell it’s of interest historically and artistically. I’ll get the museum to evaluate it. It could pay for Donna’s trip.”
Portia left his side and sat on a stack of journals near Lark. “He’s such an original,” she confided. “A first-rate mind. Everyone adores him. He’s a pit. He’s courageous, too. You know what he did on his first field trip?—that was before I merried him, of course, when field work was still relatively new—he destroyed all the statues in the village he was studying.”
“What on earth for?” Lark asked.
“Well, they were all male figures with erect penises, really large, much larger than life, really quite out of proportion. So he cut them off, the penises. He told the villagers they were obscene.”
“I thought that’s what anthropology was all about, statues, rituals, perceptions of the world. I thought anthropologists were supposed to be neutral, blend in.”
“Menfred knew that it was the Westerners bringing with them their obsession with sex and power that had influenced the art of the people. The statues weren’t truly indigenous.”
“Ah-ha, you see,” said Tom. “Another example of the yearning to return to the state of unicellularity. The obsession with sex and penetration has nothing whatsoever to do with sex and penetration.”
“Now this fly whisk,” said Manfred, flicking it around. “This is the real thing. Donna certainly has an eye.”
“He believes,” said Portia, “that those who make art and by extension those who revere art and preserve it, are very far along on the road to divinity. They have a lot of mana. That’s why this shipment is so important. It contains an ancestor pole—he’s already collected one for each of the boys, like that one.” She pointed to the long carved pole resting on brackets on the wall. This new one was to be for Donna.”
“If anything happens to it,” growled Manfred. He stood up and reached across what seemed to be the whole room and seized one of his skull masks and wiggled it at Tom and Lark.
Das Schandern, das Schaudern, Lark chanted to herself, like a little Lied.
“He’s just joking,” interpreted Portia. “Ancestor poles are used in ceremonies to incite the living to avenge wrongs done to them.” She stood up. “Shell I make coffee? Wouldn’t you like a glass of water?”
Manfred looked alarmed.
Lark stood up. “Let’s just not bother. We should really be going.”
Manfred eased himself off his stool, picked it up and placed it on top of a pile of journals so that Lark and Tom could pass into the hallway and leave.
At the door Portia said, “We are very gled to meet you. Tom told us you were coming. We were rather hoping that Donna would settle down with Tom, who is like a son to Menfred already. But never mind. Donna has whims of her own, and if she chose to stay on the island, then so be it.”
Portia opened the door, and three boys, ranging in age from six to twelve or so, darted past Lark and Tom as they stepped into the corridor; they scrambled over the boxes and past Portia and disappeared into the gloom of the hall.
“Little sevidges,” said Portia. “They were in the corridor all the time, waiting.”
“It is cold outside,” said Lark.
“Boys, you promised,” Portia called after them. She turned back to Tom and Lark, smiling. “He’ll simply murder them one day.”
Tom hugged Lark to him as they staggered back up the hill in the icy wind that came off the river. “So. How’s that for your first afternoon in New York?” He smiled a little but seemed subdued. “Manfred doesn’t give just anyone an audience.”
“Do you really like him?” Lark welcomed the cold after Manfred Bird’s suffocating living room.
“He’s my mentor. I owe my career to him.”
“I think he really is mad. And he talks like a Nazi.”
“Everyone admires him,” said Tom. “No one says anything bad about him, ever.”
“How can you go along with it, that performance? That conceit?” Lark was exhilarated because Tom seemed depressed, vulnerable, and he even seemed to be about to agree with her on the subject of Manfred.
“I am like a son. He has been grooming me ever since I was his graduate student to replace him, take over the department when he retires.”
They walked for a while in silence. Lark felt she might burst from the excitement of having Tom so close.
“Say,” Tom cried suddenly, shaking Lark from his arm. “Look at that!” He went to the curb, where a padded armchair had been placed under a tree, near a trash can on the corner. It was a comfortable-looking old chair with a floral slipcover. Tom sat himself in it, crossing and recrossing his legs, then sinking down with his legs stretched out in front, like Goldilocks seeking the right position. “What people throw away in this capitalist society!”
“It must belong to someone,” said Lark.
Tom sprang up and circled the chair, giving it a little kick now and then and a slap on the arms. “Not bad for free.” He motioned to Lark to help him pick it up.
“Isn’t this stealing?”
“Trust me,” Tom said. “This is the way it’s done here. People don’t leave things on the sidewalk if they don’t intend someone to take them. The only crime is that we have constructed a society in which it’s easier for people to discard perfectly good items than to keep them.”
Lark and Tom lugged the armchair back to the apartment.
Tom placed it in a corner and sat in it, his arms and hands placed squarely on the arms. He was looking into the distance, his head on one side, as if he were listening for something, getting acquainted with the chair.
Lark ran water into the kettle to make tea. “You should stand up to him,” she said, trying to get Tom’s attention back to Manfred Bird and have him side with her against him. “You and he have nothing in common. You and he hold opposite views. You’re one of the people he would call a Communist. It’s because of people like you that he’s scrambling those files of his.” She stood at the door of the living room, measuring her effect on Tom. “And I thought you said art belonged to the people. Remember? Butter, guns, and art. Manfred doesn’t think so, stealing and hoarding all that stuff.”
“Manfred is people.” Tom shook his head and frowned. “And Manfred is the most brilliant anthropologist in the world.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t know anything about anthropology.” Tom’s voice was sharp, warning her not to press any further. Then sudden
ly he held his arms wide open. “Larkie, come here and sit on my knee.” And when she had done that, he said, “Let’s go to bed.”
“Together? Now? You really mean it?”
“Strange but true. Take me to bed,” Tom said, “and then you can stop talking about Manfred.”
And finally Lark and Tom made love in the apartment they now shared in Manhattan. The whole voyage and miseries of the past weeks now seemed worthwhile. She had reached Tom, after the vicissitudes of her journey, and he had accepted her, even needed her.
“I’ve decided to give a party in your honor, to introduce you to all my friends.”
Lark was half asleep. Tom poked her awake. He sat up and began pulling on his clothes. “A peanut party. It’s BYO.” He pronounced it to rhyme with Ohio, then leapt up. “Got to get to work. All play and no work makes Jack a dull boy.”
“Beewhyo?”
“B-Y-O. Bring your own, booze, that is. You just bring your charming self. I’ll supply the nuts.” He bent over and poked her again. “Get it? Nuts.”
“I get it.”
“We’ll invite everyone I know.”
Lark stood among Italians, Germans, Dutchmen, and Jamaicans, among Carnegie Fellows and Woodrow Wilson Fellows and Rhodes Scholars, the so-called cream of the world’s young people, who would one day be prime ministers and diplomats and publishers of influential newspapers.
Elizabeth, an old college classmate of Tom’s, was there, with her husband, Jean-Claude, a French nuclear physicist. And there was one Russian, whom everyone fussed over. It was hard to get real Russians, Russians who were not refugees or émigrés, to come to a party.
“I have fever,” said the Russian Yuri apologetically, and stayed in the old armchair in the corner all night, looking ill. “But I want to come to this American party, so I come.” He spoke English with difficulty. “Excuse, please. I do not say well. My English is very basic.” He said that he was a writer, an analyst of society, that he was interested in contemporary Western culture, and that he hoped to write a monograph. He took out a little note pad and wrote everyone’s name down. “I do not remember names well,” he said.