Presence

by Arthur Miller

  Vincent tugged at the steering wheel around turns. “English steering,” he laughed, “tight but accurate. This thing is built to improve character—I think I’ve pushed it more than I’ve driven it. If there’s a rumor of a distant mist the thing won’t start.”

  The town thinned out and the surprisingly good blacktop road wound through clusters of shacks and tiny gardens, almost always worked by a woman while the man sat nearby talking to her or a friend. “The men don’t seem to do anything much,” Levin observed.

  “Africa,” Vincent said. “The man hunted and the woman did the house and the planting. Of course, there’s nothing here left to hunt. Some of them do work hard, but they need education. It’s desperate. This country is waiting to start existing.”

  “What can they export?” Levin asked. Every cluster of shacks seemed to have a hand-lettered sign advertising reparations pneu. “Aside from repairs?”

  “Bauxite. The ore to make aluminum. There used to be gold. Not much, but it’s long gone.”

  Levin found himself trying to imagine improving things. “And what could they do with more education? Aside from emigrating?”

  “Get a decent government, to start with. That would be a great thing.” Vincent’s grave intensity deepened his voice. He had suddenly stopped kidding; Levin was surprised. It reminded him of his own frantic political arguments in college, so long ago.

  The car had been climbing for half an hour past deepening pine growth, and the air smelled cool and fresh now. “Who owns all this?”

  “The State. But the politicians are stealing it away.”

  “How?”

  “Fiddling the books.”

  “Is it being replanted?”

  “No. That’s what I’m trying to get done. It’s doomed, the whole forest, but public office is a license to steal,” Vincent said.

  Levin’s body tightened with a kind of combativeness that he instantly recognized as absurd—it wasn’t his forest, and anyway, what could he do about it?

  A lone woman suddenly appeared out of the forest leading a stubborn goat by a rope. Her long body moved like an effortless dream figure that hardly touched the earth, and the tail of a long crimson bandanna was wound around her head and streamed over her breast like a wound. She held out one gracefully waving arm for balance, like a dancer.

  “A lot of them are very beautiful,” Levin said.

  “That’s the pity of it, yes.”

  The road leveled out and, in a clearing, Levin saw an Alpine-style log cabin with a steeply pitched roof and deep eaves, here where it never snowed.

  “I have to pay respects to the manager,” Vincent said as he got out and disappeared into the building. Levin got out of the car and stretched, going up on his toes. The silence was like a soft stroke on his flesh. At that moment, his standing on this particular spot on the earth was somehow miraculous. What was he doing here? In the car Vincent had mentioned a man he would have to talk to today. He had laughed about the fellow, a onetime Madison Avenue ad executive who had gone native up here. He had said more but the noise from the transmission had garbled it. Now he emerged from the building, laughing along with a black man who hung back and was waving goodbye.

  “One of the lesser crooks,” Vincent said as he drove away. In a few minutes, they were off the road altogether, following an earthen trail through the woods. Trees were much larger here, harder to get at and fell than the ones at the periphery of the forest. Presently they came to a simple log bungalow. Newspaper was stuffed into a broken window and a spavined red Ford pickup sat alongside it. Metal parts of some machine were scattered over the weedy clearing, along with bald tires, a large awning, window frames, a rusted hand pump, and a forlorn outhouse leaning against a tree. Everything seemed to be leaning. The porch steps were warped. A clothesline stretched between two trees with a single bra hanging from it. Vincent turned off the engine but remained behind the wheel. His chuckling ironies had disappeared, and Levin thought he saw some tension around his eyes.

  “Who’s this again? I didn’t quite catch . . .”

  “Douglas. It’s a ticklish problem,” he said, for the first time looking uncertain. “I shouldn’t have allowed myself to get into it, but at the time I didn’t think he’d ever get this far.”

  “You’ve lost me. What are you talking about?” Vincent had evidently forgotten that not everyone was up on this situation.

  He settled back in his seat, his eyes on the house with only an occasional glance toward Levin. “I like the man but he’s very odd. Good-hearted, you know, but . . . well, I guess you could call him silly. Quit an important job a couple of years ago with BBD&O on Madison Avenue to cruise around with his family on a surplus Navy boat, showing films to people on the various islands.” Now he laughed, but the tension stayed in his face. “Actually thought he could make a living selling tickets to the natives! And of course there weren’t enough customers with a quarter in their pockets, not in the Caribbean. So he arrived here, probably looking for something he could do with his boat, I think. And—God knows where the idea came from, I’ve never understood that part of it—but I think it was when he saw this gigantic tank near the dock he’d tied up at. It may have come off some large wreck. It could hold, I don’t know, probably a few thousand gallons. And there it lay doing nothing. He hung around, living on the boat with his family, filling himself up with frustration about the tank.”

  “Because it wasn’t doing anything.”

  “Of course! Yes!” He laughed again. “We’re all forever saving Haiti. You seem to have some of that feeling yourself.”

  “Well, not really, although I guess I can understand it. Maybe it’s the people; they seem so . . .”

  “Sweet, yes. And so full of imagination,” he gave the word a celebratory Jamaican lilt. “Anyway, he heard of the forest and came up here one day, and the thought hit him that with all this pine he could harvest the resin for turpentine and set up a distillation process. Turpentine’s a big thing in Haiti; they use it for everything from rheumatism to chest and sex problems and a dozen other things. So he had the tank and suddenly here was a terrific use for it.” He burst out laughing, but the concern was still there in his eyes. “Not only have a use for the tank but help protect the forest, and create maybe a couple of dozen good jobs for people. It had a lot of different virtues, like turpentine itself.”

  He paused, still staring at the house. His lips had dried, and he wet them with his tongue. “I really didn’t mean to, but I guess I inadvertently encouraged him. I was the only one around with some scientific background, although what he really needed was engineering advice. He had some friends at the ad agency send him literature about distillation technology, and he pumped me for the chemistry I barely remembered, and he was off. First thing, he’d learned that the tank had to lie at a specific angle—I’ve forgotten exactly what degree that was—but he got hold of some surveyor’s stuff and went about up here until he’d found a grade with precisely the incline he needed, and hired a couple of men to set up concrete pillows to support the tank. Of course the thing was far too large to be trucked up here so I unfortunately found him a welder I knew down in the port, and he had the thing cut into sections, brought it up piece by piece in his pickup and welded it back into shape again. The whole thing was so absurd that I . . .” He broke off, dead serious now. “I guess I feel somewhat responsible, although I tried to discourage him. Even so . . .” He paused again, confused. “I don’t know, maybe I encouraged him too, in the sense that I was glad that somebody was enthusiastic about this country’s possibilities. I simply—I don’t know, I think I should have taken it more seriously. The danger, I mean.”

  “How long has he been at this?”

  “It must be at least eight months, maybe a year. It’s crazy—if you need a nail there’s nothing between here and the port, so he or his wife had to be running up and down the mountain to fetc
h the least little thing.”

  “But what’s worrying you? It all seems harmless enough,” Levin said.

  “He’s ready to light the fire.”

  “And?”

  “That tank will fill with vapor. He’s got some kind of relief valve on the top, but Christ, I don’t know if it’s the right one; it’s just some damned thing he picked up in the port. Valves like this have different capacities and I know nothing about them, any more than he does.” A nervous high-pitched laugh escaped him now: “The steam pressure has to be around a hundred seventy pounds per square inch and all his equipment is secondhand or improvised. That’s a lot of pressure for equipment that’s been rewelded, with welds on top of welds, and fiddled around with. God knows, he could blow off the top of this mountain or set fire to the forest and kill himself in the bargain!”

  “When is this supposed to happen?”

  “Today.”

  “You’d better steal his matches and get us the hell out of here.” Both men burst out laughing. “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I’m certainly going to try to talk him out of it. He’s got to get some professional engineering advice.”

  “You’d think he’d have done that a long time ago.”

  Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Levin saw a face looking in at his window, but the instant he turned it was gone. It had seemed the face of a child.

  “That’s Catty,” Vincent said, slipping out of his seat. As they walked up to the house he continued, “There’s also Richard, who’s seven, I think, and she’s about nine. Listen.” He halted, facing Levin. “I wish you’d ask him where the kids go to school. Because I don’t think they have in all the time they’ve been up here, they’re just running wild with the local kids. He won’t listen to me, thinks I’m one of these over-conventional niggers. Could you do that?”

  A woman appeared on the narrow porch, her arm in a white sling. “Vincent! How nice!” With a careful glance down at a broken step, she hurried across the weeds to them with her good hand extended like a hostess at some elegant lunch. Denise was small and vivacious, in her mid-forties. A wild distraction flared in her eager eyes, and her fair hair was twisted and knotted, probably, Levin thought, because she couldn’t wash it with one hand. She never ceased to smile, but “Please rescue” was like a lit sign hanging over her head.

  “What happened?” Vincent asked, indicating the sling.

  “Oh Vincent,” she began, and grasped his upper arm for more than physical support, a wan look on her face now. “I was unloading one of the fifty-five-gallon drums, and it slipped and hit me. I’m healing but it was awful for a while, the truck wouldn’t start and the children were off somewhere and Douglas was over at the tanks. So I had to walk holding it together . . .”

  Vincent, Levin saw, was clearly her savior, her one hope of escaping whatever it was that had an obviously upper-class woman grappling fifty-five-gallon drums. She must have felt she was dreaming until it cracked her bone. “Come, come inside, he’ll be so glad to see you.” Levin was only now introduced as they entered the house, but she hardly glanced at him, her whole attention fixed on Vincent.

  The room they entered had a dank smell. In one wall was an immense fireplace made of round boulders with a mantel on which four or five tattered books stood. There were no chairs or tables, only a few scattered wooden boxes, on one of which lay the unwashed dishes of a recent meal. A dusty filigreed pump organ stood against one wall, and on one of the boxes sat a perspiring man in work boots, torn jeans and T-shirt, and an oil-stained Yankees cap, studying blueprints spread out on his lap and around the floor, his tongue sticking out between his lips. One lens of his small wire-rimmed glasses was cracked, and the misshapen frame had a temple piece missing, replaced by a white string looped around his ear. Several days’ growth of beard had been shaved in spots, as though absentmindedly, leaving graying tufts. There was a darkness in the room despite the sunny day; the windows set high in the walls under the broad eaves of the roof seemed to admit shadow rather than light.

  “Vincent’s here, darling!” the woman fairly shrieked as they entered.

  It took Douglas a good half minute to come out of his rapt concentration. Then he sprang up and threw his arms around Vincent, still clutching the blueprint, and quickly shook hands with Levin without looking at him. His oil-stained hand was rough as sandpaper. Douglas was tall and politely stooped, and Levin recognized the Ivy League as soon as he began to speak.

  “Son of a gun, where’ve you been, I’ve been waiting for you all week!” Three children—two white, one black—flicked past the screen door and disappeared as quick as deer.

  “Would you like a tea before we go?” he asked, his arm lingering on Vincent’s shoulder, a comradely gesture from which Vincent seemed to shrink. “I think we have tea, don’t we, darling?” He looked around for his wife but she had vanished, and he called toward the back of the house, “Is there tea, darling?”

  When no answer came back Vincent suggested, “Why don’t we sit down for a minute first, Doug?”

  “Of course, yes, sorry.” Douglas leaped up and pulled another box over, his gait rocking, bear-like. At this point Vincent, aware that Douglas had not really taken in Levin’s presence, introduced him again; Douglas turned to him with surprise, as though he had dropped through the ceiling. “Yes! Very nice to meet you. Sorry for the accommodations,” he chuckled and turned back to Vincent, who had sat down facing him. His wife reappeared and sat on a box, her good hand resting protectively on the cast. She had managed to brush out her hair and change into fresh jeans and a peach blouse which sketched out her breasts, and this attempt at renewal touched Levin. He sensed in her high nervousness the culmination of some struggle which had determined her to enlist Vincent on her side.

  But Douglas seemed oblivious. “I’ve been ready to go since last weekend.” Despite his smile a touch of complaint was in his tone. “What’s happened? Where have you been?”

  Vincent set himself for a second or two and began, “I’ve been busy. But I really have to remind you, Doug, that I’ve never set myself up as . . . I mean I don’t feel I have a particular responsibility for this.”

  “Of course not. I never expected that. But I did think you had an interest.”

  “I do, but I may as well be candid with you, Doug, I don’t really feel confident in the whole process. As far as I can understand it anyway. As I told you last time I was here—I’ve asked around concerning the type of tree we have up here—”

  “I’m aware of that,” Douglas interrupted.

  “Pinus sylvestris is the right kind—”

  “Well, it’s the best kind, yes, but there’s plenty of resin in these too.”

  “Doug, I have to ask you to listen to me.” Vincent’s voice had risen and the hard core in it struck Levin for the first time. Douglas kept quiet but the effort showed. “They apparently call for a live steam temperature of around a hundred degrees centigrade in the melter—”

  “Eighty-five to a hundred.”

  “Apparently that depends on the quality of the resin, and the kind you have here is poor. My point, Doug, is this: you’ve got rewelded tanks, and I’ve noticed some rust—”

  “That’s entirely superficial.”

  “But how sure are you of that? The pressure can go to 150 psi and the temperature to 170. All I’m trying to tell you, Doug, is that—”

  “The thing is perfectly safe!” Douglas stood up. “Where did you get your information?”

  “I talked to Commander Banz.”

  “Off that battleship? What could he possibly know about turpentine?”

  “He comes from Alabama. They do a lot of it there and his family was involved—”

  “Gawwd!” Douglas turned his face toward a deaf heaven, “a Navy guy spouting off about turpentine!” He tramped around snapping his cap on his thigh like a thwa
rted boy. “I’ve been in command, Vincent, you know that. Sixteen months on a fucking tin-can destroyer, and I’m here to tell you that no Navy guy knows piss about turpentine. He’s thinking of his goddamn boilers, which are a whole different story.”

  Levin had a hard time keeping a serious look on his face. But a certain genuineness nevertheless reached him in Douglas’s anguish, an authentic outcry such as he had never met with, at least not in a cultivated man. Neither he nor anyone he knew, he suddenly realized, had ever cared this much and this openly. But all for the sake of turpentine? Levin doubted that money lay behind it all—turpentine was too inexpensive, he reasoned. What was it then?

  “Darling, you really need to at least listen to Vincent,” Denise said.

  “Well, are you proposing something?” Douglas asked.

  Vincent paused for a moment, then spoke: “I have nothing but respect, Doug, for what you’ve been trying to accomplish up here—”

  “God’s sake, Vince, you’d have jobs up here, you’d have self-respect for once, there’d be people working and preventing all this theft. This country is dying, Vincent!”

  His eyes were filled with pain, the sight of which repelled Levin, who promptly damned himself for insensitivity. A kind of undirected disgust lingered around the edges of his mind as the two men and Denise agreed to drive over to the still and have a look at things. Levin found it incredible that despite all the uncertainty Douglas was apparently still determined to start up the process.