Mother clutched at Father’s arm to keep from fainting.
“You saw him, didn’t you? Oh—you saw—didn’t you?”
“Y-Yes. I think—yes. I saw our—son . . .”
We must have caused a commotion since security officers arrived, to escort us from the San Diego Zoo. Mother was so agitated she had to be driven in a motorized cart with Father seated despondently beside her.
“Oh what have they done to him, those terrible apes,” Mother lamented. “How have we failed him, our son . . .”
Grimly Father said, “It’s our son who has betrayed us. He has gone over to the animals.”
THE SAN DIEGO ZOO has refused to cooperate. No one in authority will take our allegations seriously nor even speak with us any longer. Through an attorney the zoo has issued a statement that our claims (of “abduction,” “seduction,” “coercion” of our son) are totally unsubstantiated.
The head of the great apes department has insisted to us, on the phone and through his attorney, that it is impossible that our son has in some way “disappeared” into the bonobo clan. There are just thirty-seven bonobos at the zoo, including newborns, and each is, of course, documented; approximately one-half of the bonobos were born in Africa and the rest had been born in the zoo. Certainly there was no possible “human male” who had hidden among the bonobos and dwelled with them—this was the height of absurdity.
Father agreed that what Rickie had done was absurd. That would be between Rickie and his family, someday soon. For the time being, we are convinced that Rickie is living in the San Diego Zoo bonobo enclosure in his new, bonobo form; he has, as Father charges, gone over to the animals.
This document is a preliminary draft of our prospective lawyer’s brief. It is not intended as a legal paper and it is not (yet) in a state to be submitted to the San Diego County Courthouse.
Each Sunday we return to see Rickie. Clean-shaven now, our son has become lighter on his feet; his arms have grown longer, in proportion to his torso and legs. His toes are large and distinct and appear to be prehensile. His face is boyish yet wizened and quizzical, as with an ancient sort of wisdom; like his lively bonobo brothers he is shameless in his sexual proclivities with both young males as well as females of all ages. At our most recent visit last Sunday for the first time Mother said, with a sharp sigh of despair, “Oh maybe—it isn’t our son. Maybe what we are looking at is—just an animal.”
We gripped each other’s hands staring into the enclosure. Mother was quietly weeping and Father stood tall, brave, and dry-eyed. We were gazing into what might have been a wilderness setting—somewhere in the depths of Africa—where amid a pack of bonobos, across a hilly distance of about thirty feet, the lanky-limbed bonobo with a curious ring of hair at the nape of his neck like the remnants of a collar observed us with an inscrutable expression—regret, exasperation, embarrassment, defiance? We saw as he turned away a just-perceptible wave of his furry hand as he trotted off with his brothers and sisters into a shadowy cave at the rear of the enclosure.
LOVELY, DARK, DEEP*
BREAD LOAF WRITERS’ CONFERENCE, BREAD LOAF, VERMONT. 18 August 1951.
HERE WAS THE FIRST SURPRISE: the great man was much heavier, much more solid-bodied, than I’d anticipated. You would not have called him fat—that would have been insulting, and inaccurate; but his torso sagged against his shirt like a great udder, and his thighs in summer trousers were a middle-aged woman’s fleshy thighs. The sensitive-young-poet face of the photos—(at least, the photos I’d affixed to my bedroom wall)—had coarsened, and thickened; deep lines now bracketed the eyes, as if the poet had too often scowled, or squinted, or winked to suggest the (secret) wickedness of the words he was uttering. The snowy-white hair so often captured in photographs like ectoplasm lifting from the poet’s head was thinner than any photograph had suggested, and not so snowy-white, disheveled as if the poet had only just arisen dazed from sleep. The entire face looked large—larger than you expect a poet’s face to be—and the thick jaws were covered in glittering little hairs as if the poet hadn’t shaved for a day or two. The eyelids were drooping, near-shut.
“Excuse me—Mr. Frost?”
My voice was tentative, apologetic. My heart had begun to beat erratically as some small, perishable creature—butterfly, moth—might beat against its confinement.
For here was the great man—so suddenly. In my nervous excitement I’d anticipated walking much farther along the path to the poet’s cabin in the woods—the “Poet’s Cabin” as it was called. I’d anticipated knocking at a door, and waiting for the door to be opened. (Surely not by the legendary Robert Frost himself but by an assistant or secretary? Widowed since 1938, as I’d made it a point to know, the poet would not have been protected by a wary wife, at least.) Instead, Mr. Frost was awaiting his interviewer outside the cabin on a small porch, slouched in a swing, seemingly dozing; slack-jawed, and a scribble of saliva on his mouth. In the bunched crotch of his baggy old-man trousers was an opened notebook and on the floor of the plank porch was the poet’s pencil.
Mr. Frost seemed to have drifted into a trance-like sleep in the midst of writing a poem. I felt a stab of excitement at such unexpected intimacy—Gazing upon Robert Frost asleep! And no one knows.
On a table beside the porch swing was a pitcher of what appeared to be lemonade and two glasses, of which one was a quarter-filled; a strangely loud-ticking alarm clock; and a dingy red flyswatter.
Quickly I glanced about: no one appeared to be watching. The receptionist whom I’d met in the Bread Loaf Conference Center at the foot of the drive had sent me unaccompanied to Mr. Frost—“You’re expected, Miss Fife. Just go on up to the Poet’s Cabin. And remember, you must not stay more than an hour, even if Mr. Frost is generous with his time and invites you.”
Primly this middle-aged woman smiled at me, and primly Evangeline Fife smiled back. Of course! Certainly ma’am.
The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, as it was called, was a very busy place at this time of year; there were hundreds of visiting writers, poets, and students of all ages (with a preponderance of well-to-do middle-aged women). But this part of the grounds, behind the administrative offices and the white clapboard residences of the chief administrators, was cordoned off as PRIVATE.
Like an earnest schoolgirl I was carrying a large straw satchel weighted down with books, tape recorder, notebook, wallet. Out of this straw satchel came, now, quick into my hands, my newly purchased Kodak Hawkeye.
For it seemed that Mr. Frost hadn’t heard my faltering voice—hadn’t opened his eyes. In my shaky hands I positioned the camera—peered through the viewfinder at the shadowy figure within with its ghostly-white hair—dared to press the shutter. Very carefully then I wound the film to the next picture.
Like stopping to reload a shotgun, such photography was. You did not simply “take pictures” in rapid succession—each act of picture-taking was deliberate and premeditated.
How strangely vulnerable Mr. Frost looked to me, like an older relative, a father, a grandfather, whom you might glimpse lying about the house carelessly groomed and only partly dressed; it was said that the poet was vain of his appearance, and insisted upon exerting veto power over most photographs of himself, and so it was by chance I’d come upon him in this slovenly state between sleep and wakefulness, as in a hypnotic trance. On his bare feet, well-worn leather house slippers.
I smiled to think Maybe he is dreaming of—an interview? An interviewer who has come to him, in stealth?
In all, I took seven surreptitious pictures that afternoon of Mr. Frost slack-jawed and dozing on a porch swing. Sold to a private collector, resold to another collector, and one day to be placed in the Robert Frost Special Collections in the Middlebury College Library, discreetly catalogued Bread Loaf August 1951 (photographer unknown).
Taking Mr. Frost’s picture without permission was a brazen act, I know. I had never done anything remotely like this before in my life—at least, I didn’t recall havi
ng done anything like this: appropriated something not mine, that I believed to be mine; that I believed I deserved. Yet all this while I was trembling in dread of Mr. Frost waking and discovering me. Exhilaration coursed through my body like a swift, sexual shock—I will steal the poet’s soul! It is what I deserve.
IT WAS IN THE LATE SUMMER of 1951, when I was thirty-one years old and a candidate for a master’s degree in English at Middlebury College, that I drove to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference to interview Robert Frost for a special issue of Poetry Parnassus.
At this time, “Evangeline Fife” was a promising poet as well as an English instructor at the Privet Academy for Girls in Marblehood, Massachusetts, from which I’d graduated in 1938; since the fall of 1950, I’d been accepted into the rigorous master’s program at Middlebury College. It was my hope to advance myself in some way, if only by improving my teaching credentials that I might apply for a position at a four-year college or university. (Of course, it was clear to me that few women were hired for such positions, except at women’s colleges; and even there, men were favored. Still, I wished to think that I’d been encouraged by my professors in the Middlebury program; for I’d published poetry in several well-regarded literary magazines including Poetry Parnassus, whose editors I’d convinced to empower me to interview the seventy-seven-year-old Robert Frost.) My thesis advisor at Middlebury happened to be, not entirely coincidentally, the director of the summer Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and he’d encouraged me in both my poetry and my academic studies; kindly Professor Diggs had intervened on my behalf with the famous poet who declined most requests for interviews—at least interviews with “unknown” parties and for little-known publications like Poetry Parnassus.
I was conscious of the great honor of being allowed to interview Robert Frost, the preeminent American poet of the era, and I prepared with more than my usual assiduousness. This meant reading, and rereading, virtually all of Frost’s poems, many of which, without having intended to, I’d memorized as a schoolgirl. As early as middle school my grandmother had read to me such Frost poems as “The Road Not Taken”—“The Death of the Hired Man”—“Birches”—“Mending Wall”—“Stopping by Woods” (Grandmother’s personal favorite). My English instructors at the Privet Academy had reinforced my admiration for Frost, and for poetry in general; at Berkshire College for Women, I majored in English, and published poetry in Berkshire Blossoms, which I edited in my senior year. As a junior instructor in English at Privet, I taught Robert Frost’s poetry alongside the poetry of Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, and Byron. Of course, I’d heard Mr. Frost read his poetry several times in Massachusetts and Vermont, always to large, rapturous and uncritical audiences. The atmosphere at these celebrated readings was reverential yet festive, for Robert Frost had become known as a Yankee sage who was also a Yankee wit—a “homespun” American who was also a seer.
Are you wondering what I looked like? No observer would have been surprised to learn that Evangeline Fife was a “poetess”—(as women poets were known at this time)—but it should certainly be noted that I was a pretty—quite pretty—young woman who’d always looked younger than her age which is, for women, the most satisfying sort of deception.
A man might enjoy being mistaken for being more sexually aggressive than he is, and richer. But for women, age is paramount.
It is true, I was not a strikingly beautiful woman, which would have involved an entirely different sort of strategy in confronting the (male) world—one far more cautious and circuitous—but my sort of wan delicate blond prettiness seemed preferable than beauty to many men. The striking beauty is the female a man can’t control in the way he might imagine he could control the delicately blond merely pretty woman who at thirty-one can still pass for a girl of eighteen.
Also, I was petite. Men imagine that they can more readily intimidate a petite female.
“Evangeline Fife” was not married, nor even engaged. This you would note immediately by glancing at the third finger of her left hand—which was bare. Like most girls and young women of her sort, of the era, Miss Fife was certainly a virgin.
By virgin is meant not simply, or merely, a physiological state but a spiritual state as well. Pure, innocent, unsullied, artless—these were adjectives that might have described me, and would have been flattering to me, as to any young unmarried girl of the time.
Though at thirty-one, and still unmarried, Evangeline Fife wasn’t exactly young any longer, I hoped that Mr. Frost, at seventy-seven, would see me differently.
“EXCUSE ME, MR. FROST? I am—Evangeline Fife? I have a—an appointment with you at one o’clock . . .”
Thrillingly my voice quavered. If you’d placed your forefinger against my throat, as the dozing poet might have been imagining he did, you would feel a sensuous vibratory hum.
The elderly poet’s eyelids fluttered and blinked open. For a startled moment Mr. Frost didn’t seem to know where he was—outside? On a porch swing? Had he been sleeping? And what time was this?
His first, fearful glance was at the alarm clock on the table beside the swing. From where I stood, I could not see the clock-face clearly but had an impression that the glass was glaring with reflected light. The clock was of slightly larger than ordinary size, trimmed in brass, with a look of a nautical instrument; its ticking was unusually loud, and seemed quickened.
The poet then saw me—blinking again, and even rubbing at his eyes. Ah, an attractive young stranger!—standing some ten feet in front of him in the grass, with fine-brushed pale-blond hair and widened “periwinkle-blue” worshipful eyes like a poetry-loving schoolgirl. As a portly peacock might do, quickly the poet took measure of himself, glancing down at his bulky body. His large hands lifted to pat down his disheveled hair, stroke his unshaven jaws, adjust his shirt where it swelled over his belt buckle. He frowned at me, and smiled, as a cunning look came into the faded-icy-blue eyes, and there emerged as through parted curtains on a brightly lit stage the New England sage “Robert Frost” of the famed poetry readings.
“Yes! Of course. I’ve been awaiting you, my dear. You are prompt—one o’clock. But I am prompter, you see, for I am already here.”
Unfortunately the notebook precariously balanced in the poet’s lap fell to the ground. Clumsy, flummoxed, and sensing himself not so nimble, Mr. Frost seemed disinclined to stoop over and pick up the notebook—so, with a little curtsey, I did.
(It was an ordinary spiral notebook, with a black marbleized cover. What I could see of the pages, they were covered in pencil scrawls.)
Mr. Frost seemed embarrassed, taking the notebook from my fingers. “Thank you, my dear.”
Very like a schoolgirl I stood before the poet whose gaze moved up and down my body with the finesse of a practiced gem-appraiser. It is always an anxious moment before a woman understands the male judgment—Yes! You will do.
(After much deliberation that morning, before setting off on my pilgrimage, I’d selected a pink-floral-print cotton “shirtwaist” with a flared skirt that fell below the knee. On my slender feet were black patent-leather “ballerina flats.” My pale-blond hair was brushed and gleaming and tied back with a pink velvet ribbon. Of course, the Kodak Hawkeye had vanished into my straw bag as if it had never been.)
Mr. Frost was murmuring what a lovely surprise this was, that the interviewer for Poetry was—me.
“So often the interviewer is beetle-browed and grim—if a young man; and thick-waisted and plain as suet—if female.” The poet chuckled mischievously, rubbing his hands together.
There was the Yankee sage. Yet more beloved, the mischievous Yankee sage.
A blush rose into my face. Being so complimented, at the expense of other, less fortunate interviewers was an ambiguous gift: to accept would be vain, to seem to decline would be rude. A young female soon learns the slitheringness of accommodation to her (male) elders, by a faint frown of a smile.
Yet I had no choice but to murmur an apology: “Except, Mr. Frost, it isn’t Poe
try—but Poetry Parnassus.”
Mr. Frost grunted, he wasn’t sure he’d heard of Poetry Parnassus.
“You will be featured on the cover, Mr. Frost. As I’d explained in my letter.”
Still, Mr. Frost frowned. A sort of thundery malevolence gathered in his brow.
Quickly I said, “I mean—the entire October issue will be devoted to ‘Robert Frost.’”
This placated the poet, to a degree. He’d recovered something of his composure, placing the notebook on the table beside the swing, and taking up, in a playful manner, the red plastic flyswatter.
“And what did you say your name is, dear?”
“My name is—‘Evangeline Fife.’”
Mr. Frost gazed at me with mirthful eyes. “‘Evangeline Fife’—a truly inspired name. Is it authentic, or shrewdly invented on the spot, to prick the poet’s curiosity?”
What a strange question! My thin-skinned face, already blushing, grew warmer still. My reply was a stammer: “I—I am—my name is ‘authentic,’ Mr. Frost.”
“As authentic as ‘Robert Frost,’ eh?”
This was very clever! Or so it seemed to me. For Robert Frost was the ideal name for the individual who’d created the poetry of Robert Frost.
“Please have a seat, dear Miss Fife. Forgive an old man’s rudeness, for not rising with alacrity at your approach . . .”
Mr. Frost made a courteous little gesture, simulating the action of rising to his feet, without actually moving; and extending a hand to me in a gentlemanly manner, though it was imperative for me to come to him, to allow my hand to be gripped in his plump-dimpled hand, and shaken briskly.
With a little grunt Mr. Frost tugged me up onto the porch to sit beside him on the swing—but discreetly I took another seat in a rattan chair.
“I think, my dear, the cushion on that chair is damp?”
Belatedly, I realized that this was so. But I only just laughed airily and insisted that the chair was fine, for I did not wish to sit close beside the elderly poet on the swing.
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