A World Elsewhere

by Wayne Johnston

  My father is a body of water, he told Landish.

  Landish told Deacon that Vanderluyden engineers had made Lake Loom, but he couldn’t think how a lake could be made. And his father was of a body of water much larger than Lake Loom. He was “of” all bodies of water. One morning in late spring, Deacon looked down from the rear court at the frozen, snow-covered surface of Lake Loom and pictured the Gilbert hemmed in by ice. His father jumped over the gunnels first, followed by his watch of men, all of them trudging round the point until they passed from sight. And then he pictured the watch returning to the ship without his father, the last of the leaderless, slump-shouldered men pausing to look back, trudging on. Landish would lie awake or lightly asleep, waiting to hear the boy struggle to wake from one of his dreams, talking to himself in the other bed. When he screamed, Landish would hurry to wake him. Often, by the time he got there, Deacon had thrown himself on the floor, where he lay tangled in blankets.

  If Landish had had a lot to drink, Gough got to Deacon first. He would lift Deacon under the arms and take him out to the hall, where the light was always on. “There you go,” Gough would say as Stavely, wearing his dressing gown, his long white hair in tangles, tried to assure him that “it” had only been a dream. Sometimes Gough would sit on the floor beside Deacon’s bed, take him in his arms, press his small head against his chest and rock him slowly back and forth as Stavely, in the doorway, his white hair adrift, stood and watched as Landish went on sleeping.

  If Landish woke, he would take Deacon from Gough, who would give him a look that made him wince.

  “I’ve never known a child to have such dreams,” Gough said.

  “You should know better than to say some things out loud in front of him,” Landish said.

  “There is much that I could say out loud in front of him,” Gough said, “but I don’t think you’d like it if I did.”

  “Such as?”

  “You have another work-in-progress in your life,” Gough said. “Your book may still be a tabula rasa, but what’s written now on that other slate can never be erased. Ten years from now, you won’t be able to revise his past to make it better.”

  “So you’re saying I should give up on the book?” Landish demanded.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Gough said. “Better you merely cut back on some other things. He models himself after you.”

  “And I’m an unsuitable model?”

  “Yes. As are we all. As will be everyone he ever meets.”

  “You and Palmer—you fill notebook after notebook with a shorthand language you invented and I can’t even fill one page with English. Sunday after Sunday goes by and I write nothing worthwhile. I see them stretching out in front of me, an endless succession of afternoons of Sabbatical futility.”

  “Don’t worry,” Deacon said.

  “I’m sorry,” Landish said. “I’m sorry I didn’t wake up when I should have, Deacon.”

  One night as they lay in their beds, Landish told him they could leave Vanderland if they wanted to.

  “Where would we go?”

  Landish said he wasn’t sure. He felt sure of almost nothing. He wasn’t sure that Vanderland was causing Deacon’s dreams. The boy might have such dreams no matter where he lived. Or it might be that one year could make that much difference in the working of a boy’s mind. He wondered if Deacon was having bad dreams because he doubted that Landish would be there to comfort him when he woke from them.

  “We’ll stay a while longer, all right?” Landish said. “We’ll see how things go. They might get better.”

  “We can’t leave without the hat,” Deacon said. “We can’t leave before the hat gets here. If we’re gone when it gets here—”

  “Let’s forget about the hat.”

  “I think the wealth inspector hasn’t sent it yet,” Deacon said.

  “What’s he waiting for? He hasn’t answered even one of my letters.”

  “Maybe if we had the hat, I wouldn’t have bad dreams.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I don’t know. I never had bad dreams before.”

  “If anyone should have bad dreams about that thing, it should be me. But I’ve never dreamt about it. Not even when I had the fever in the attic.”

  “Maybe you did but don’t remember.”

  The school days were done till the fall. Summer lay ahead. Gertrude had come to the Academy to collect Goddie. Deacon had gone back to The Blokes. There were just the two of them, Landish and the governess who was called Miss Esse, who taught the drawing class.

  She had been encouraging Goddie to paint a portrait of herself using her reflection in a free-standing mirror as her model.

  “You can’t stay still and paint your reflection,” Goddie had said repeatedly. “And I don’t like staring at myself. I’ll stay still and you paint me.”

  As Goddie and Deacon left, Miss Esse sat side on to one of the tables and rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “It’s meant to be an exercise in self-awareness,” she said, sighing and laughing. “Perhaps you should have her write about herself, Mr. Druken.”

  Except to say hello or goodbye, they had never really spoken to each other.

  Landish gathered his lesson books from another table. “That would be unfair,” he said. “I can’t write about myself. Why should she have to?”

  “You burn it all,” Esse said. “As a person, at the end of a day, might burn the memory of that day. No clemency as yet for a single moment or a single word. You sentence your sentences to death the instant they’re born.”

  “I’m more of a startist than an artist. I was once a starving artist but am now a raving startist.”

  Esse smiled. “Why do you burn your book?”

  “Because it all too closely resembles me,” Landish said.

  “By that reasoning,” Esse said, “you should set yourself on fire.”

  Landish drew a chair to the side of her table, laid down his books and sat facing her, their knees a foot apart. Her eyes were dark blue, her face pale and faintly freckled.

  “Who’s been telling you about my writing?” he asked.

  “Everyone knows about it. Why do you do it? Given the brief lives of your mistakes, you’ll never learn from them.”

  “I have to forget what I’ve written. If I didn’t, I’d be too discouraged to continue.”

  “So many burned beginnings. It seems sad. I can’t help picturing whole books, never read, going up in flames. If you’re not generally compelled to destroy what you create, why not try something else?”

  Landish stood and picked up his books.

  “I’m sorry,” Esse said. “I spoke out of nervousness. Please, sit down.”

  Landish sat, hoping he didn’t look as sulky as he felt.

  “Why Esse?” he said. “What does it stand for?”

  “Siobhan.” She spelled it for him before he could tell her that he knew the name, so familiar in Newfoundland, its origin and meaning.

  “It’s often mispronounced and misspelled, especially by children. Mrs. Vanderluyden suggested that Godwin call me Miss Esse. It caught on. Even informally. All my friends here call me Esse. The governesses, the Blokes. I’ve been here since Godwin was born. I can see myself doddering round Vanderland when I’m eighty. A family fixture. Good old Esse.” She smiled, averted her eyes from his and wound a lock of her hair around her finger. “Regarded as if I predate Creation.”

  Esse removed her bonnet. Hair of a shade of red Landish had seen before, but not in Newfoundland.

  He saw that she was wearing a hairnet.

  She began to remove the net slowly from the front, peeling it back and wincing when it became caught in her hair.

  “I only wear it out of necessity,” she said, her words broken by little sighs of pain.

  As if she had freed it from the last obstacle, the net snapped back and Landish was startled to see a mass of near-shoulder-length hair come tumbling out.

  Her eyes looked as if, though she ha
d taken his measure in a second and already knew him better than he ever would, she might forever keep that knowledge to herself.

  “I would like to have met your father,” she said.

  “No one who met him ever said afterwards that they were glad they did.”

  “And your mother.”

  Her collarbone was so prominent yet fragile-looking that he fancied if he pressed her shoulders together, it would fold perfectly in half.

  He wondered what she would do if he reached out and took her hands.

  “I’ve kept a journal for years,” she said.

  “Then you’re a real writer,” he said.

  “I’ve never thought that way about writing, as something I could make a career of or satisfy my ambition with. It seems that all I ever do is put things into words. I’m trying to make a record of a largely uneventful life.”

  “Whereas I am burning the record of a very eventful life.”

  “You know,” she said, “sometimes, when I look at a person, it is as if I am not with them but remembering being with them, remembering from a time so far removed that the memory seems to have no context and I see the person as they are, free of all connection with time and place and circumstance. Have you ever felt that way?”

  The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. And he was suddenly looking back at both of them from a time when not only this moment, but all the moments of their lives, had passed. She looked at him. He was filled with a piteous tenderness and love for the soul he saw, knowing that this might be as clear a glimpse of it as he would ever have. His eyes welled up with tears. He reached out, pushed her hair back behind her ear and drew the tips of his fingers across her cheek. She edged forward in her chair, took his face in both her hands and kissed him.

  Gaelic. “God is gracious.”

  “Sedgewick told Mother you’re having nightmares,” Goddie said.

  Deacon nodded. He glanced at Miss Esse, who seemed lost in thought.

  “So am I.”

  “No, you’re not,” Deacon said.

  “Everyone has nightmares, not just you.”

  Deacon shrugged.

  “Have you ever seen a dead person?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “No. What about your parents?”

  “I know where my mother is. Her remains.”

  “Mother says it’s just as well she’s gone, poor thing. She says she was probably more dead than alive.”

  “You don’t even know what that means.”

  Goddie began to cry. “I know. I’m sorry. Mother says Father’s the reason I can’t help saying things. I get mean when I’m afraid or when I’m sad. I don’t know why. I’m sorry you’re so sad.”

  “Does your mother ever say nice things?”

  Goddie opened her mouth as if she might scream.

  “Mother is nicer than anyone. She sits with me when I can’t sleep. Or she lets me sleep with her. And she gives me hugs and kisses all the time and calls me her one and only darling child. She lets me brush her hair and she brushes mine and she says that we’re best friends and that she doesn’t love anyone as much as she loves me. I’d rather have her than Landish. Mother says there’s not a drop of his blood in your veins so Mother says almost anyone could mean as much to Landish as you do. She says one day Landish will just up and leave. You’ll wake up in the morning and he won’t be there and that’s the last you’ll see of Landish Druken.”

  Miss Esse slapped the table. “Goddie! You really mustn’t say such things!”

  Deacon began to cry. Goddie pushed back her chair, stared at him, then ran to him and put her arms around his neck and her cheek against his head. “Please forgive me, Deacon,” she said. “Please, please, please. I wish you had good dreams.” She kissed him repeatedly on top of his head, which soon felt wet. Then she let him go and ran, still streaming tears, from the dining room, barely dodging a servant who was entering, tray-encumbered, from the other side.

  Van had told him that two famous writers had been guests at Vanderland for the past few months and were soon to leave. In the Smoker that evening, Landish, standing and staring into the leaping fire, hoped that Deacon and the Blokes didn’t notice his flushed complexion or the trembling of his hands, in which he held a glass of brandy and a cigar.

  “Henry James and Edith Wharton,” he said. “I’ve never heard of Edith Wharton.”

  “Henry James?” Gough said, looking about at the others. “Can you imagine, gentlemen? To think that we are sleeping under the same roof as such a great writer. Large though the roof might be.”

  “In fact, Van has invited me to meet both Mr. James and Mrs. Wharton in the salon after dinner tomorrow evening. Deacon is invited as well.”

  Gough’s face broke into a wide smile.

  “I take it that the rest of us are not invited,” Sedgewick said. “What’s the point of inviting the boy? I dare say I’ve read more Henry James than he has.”

  “Henry James is perhaps the greatest living writer, Deacon,” Gough said. “Some think perhaps the greatest novelist who ever lived. How lucky, Landish. The first fellow writer you meet will be Henry James.”

  “We’re fellow bi-peds,” Landish said. “That’s about as much as we have in common. Perhaps as much as we’ll ever have in common.”

  “We’ll have to wear our best clothes, Deacon.” Landish grinned at him. But Deacon, sitting on the sofa, did not look particularly happy, especially since Landish by this time most nights was decks awash.

  Landish took Deacon’s hand as the butler led them from The Blokes to the salon. Deacon stood as straight as the butler and tried to walk like him but Landish pulled his hand to make him stop.

  The two house guests were seated flanking the fire, Gertrude on Edith Wharton’s left and Van to the right of Henry James who was sitting with one foot, its shoe removed and wearing what looked to be several heavy socks, resting on a cushioned stool beside the fire.

  “A bout of gout,” Henry James said, glancing at them over his upraised glass of brandy. Deacon was surprised to see Goddie sitting beside her mother. She smiled at him as if to promise she would later share a joke with him about the foolishness of the evening.

  “Mr. Landish Druken,” Van said. “And his charge, Deacon Carson Druken. Mrs. Edith Wharton and Mr. Henry James.” Edith Wharton, who wore a dress of such dark blue that Landish at first took it to be black and her to be a widow, gave him her hand when he extended his with a quick half bow that he was certain looked ridiculous, and said that he was pleased to meet her. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Druken,” she said. Henry James kept both hands closed about his glass.

  “It’s an honour to meet you both,” Landish said, awkwardly aware of his bulk.

  The first thing Deacon noticed about Mr. Henry James was that he had a bushy beard that was all of one piece with long, wide sideburns. Then Edith Wharton, her dress rustling, rose and crouched down to his height, taking both his hands. “Hello, Deacon Carson Druken,” she said, and Deacon suppressed an urge to throw his arms around her neck. “Come sit by me”—standing up, she guided him towards the fire, her hand on his back—“Mr. Vanderluyden tells me that you’re a very, very bright boy.”

  “I suppose he has derived some benefit from his proximity to Godwin,” said Mrs. Vanderluyden.

  “You read a lot don’t you, Deacon?” Mrs. Wharton said.

  “I’m going to read every book in the library.”

  “All twenty-five thousand of them?” She laughed and cupped his face with both her hands. Deacon nodded. “I still read a lot,” she said, “but oddly I don’t enjoy it quite as much as I did before I became a writer.”

  “Godwin reads voraciously,” said Mrs. Vanderluyden.

  “So you tutor Godwin?” Henry James addressed Landish.

  “I am one of several who do.” Landish took a brandy from a tray extended to him by the servant.

  “Landish is an aspiring writer,” Van said.

  “One either is or is not
a writer,” Henry James said. “You can aspire until you expire, it won’t make any difference. Tutors should toot and writers should write. I had many tutors as a child. Torturers I called them. But I managed to endure them. And succeed in spite of them. As did my dear friend, Mrs. Wharton. I had so many I can’t remember most of them. My family travelled a lot—London, Paris, Geneva, Bonn—as did yours, Edith. You too have been everywhere. Were you tutored, Mr. Druken?”

  “No,” Landish said. “Not in the way that you mean.”

  James gave him such a frankly appraising look that Landish felt himself blush. He remembered Van’s dream at Princeton of inviting world-famous writers to his great house among whom Landish, he had promised, would hold court.

  “You’re a man of few words, Mr. Druken. In every sense of the expression it would seem.”

  Van laughed and turned to Landish. “I told Henry that you burn everything you write.”

  “Yes, it’s true. I’ve so far burned every word of the book I’m writing.”

  “In London,” Van said, “Henry was invited to dinner at a different house every night for a year. His reputation preceded him.”

  “I find that I get invited to dinner parties more often when my reputation has not preceded me,” Landish said.

  “Interesting. Among whom do you believe yourself to have a reputation?” James asked.