again.”
I understood such a process would necessarily be lengthy, but as time passed I saw no indication he was reaching her at all, much less that he was getting any results. One of the Spanish-speaking fellows, a botanist who came and went from the Haven at erratic intervals, translated my account of our meeting and read parts of it to the recumbent girl, following Midbin's excited stage directions and interpolations. Nothing happened.
Outside the futile duty of coaxing the girl to participate in Midbin's sessions I had no obligations except those I took upon myself or could persuade others to delegate to me. Hiro Agati declared me hopelessly incompetent to help him in the kiln he had set up to make “hard glass,” a thick substance he hoped might take the place of cast iron in such things as woodstoves, or clay tile in flues. He conceded I was not entirely useless in the small garden surrounding their cottage where he, Mrs. Agati—an architect, much younger than her husband and extremely diminutive—and their three children spent their spare time transplanting, rearranging, or preparing for the following season.
Dr. Agati was not only the first American Japanese I had ever met; his was the first family I had known who broke the unwritten rule of having only one child. Both he and Kimi Agati seemed unaware of the stern injunctions by Whigs and Populists alike that disaster would follow if the population of the country increased too fast. Fumio and Eiko didn't care, while Yoshio, at two, was just not interested.
The Agatis represented for me one more pang at the thought of banishment from the Haven. Since I knew neither chemistry nor architecture, our conversation had limits, but this was no drawback to the pleasure I took in their company. Often, after I was assured I was welcome there, I sat reading or simply silent while Hiro worked, the children ran in and out, and Kimi, who was conservative and didn't care for chairs, sat comfortably on the floor and sketched or calculated stresses.
Gradually I progressed from the stage where I wanted decision on my application postponed as long as possible to one where I was impatient to have it over and done with. “Why?” asked Hiro. “Suspense is the condition we live in all our lives.”
“Well, but there are degrees. You know about what you will be doing next year.”
“Do I? What guarantees have I? The future is happily veiled. When I was your age I despaired because no one would accept the indenture of a Japanese. (We are still called Japanese even though our ancestors migrated at the time of the abortive attempt to overthrow the Shogunate and restore the Mikado in 1868.) Suspense instead of certainty would have been a pleasure.”
“Anyway,” said Kimi practically, “it may be months before the next meeting.”
“What do you mean? Isn't there a set time for such business?” Sure there must be, I had never dared ask the exact date.
Hiro shook his head. “Why should there be? The next time the fellows pass on an appropriation or a project, we'll decide whether there's room for a historian.”
“But… as Kimi says, it might not be for months.”
“Or it might be tomorrow,” replied Hiro.
“Don't worry, Hodge,” said Fumio, “Papa will vote for you, and Mother, too.”
Hiro grunted.
When it did come it was anticlimactic. Hiro, Midbin, and several others with whom I'd scarcely exchanged a word recommended me, and Barbara simply ignored my existence. I was a full fellow of Haggershaven, with all the duties and privileges appertaining. I was also securely at home for the first time since I left Wappinger Falls more than six years before. I knew that in all its history few had ever cut themselves off from the Haven, still fewer had ever been asked to resign.
At a modest celebration in the big kitchen that night, the Haven revealed more of the talents it harbored. Hiro produced a gallon of liquor he had distilled from sawdust and called cellusaki. Mr. Haggerwells pronounced it fit for a cultivated palate, following with an impromptu discourse on drinking through the ages. Midbin sampled enough of it to imitate Mr. Haggerwells's lecture and then, as an inspired afterthought, to demonstrate how Mr. Haggerwells might mimic Midbin's parody. Ace and three others sang ballads; even the dumb girl, persuaded to sip a little of the cellusaki under the disapproving eyes of her self-appointed guardians, seemed to become faintly animated. If anyone noted the absence of Barbara Haggerwells, no one commented on it.
Fall became winter. Surplus timber was hauled in from the woodlots and the lignin extracted by compressed air, a method perfected by one of the fellows. Lignin was the fuel used in our hot water furnaces, and it provided the gas for the reflecting jets which magnified a tiny flame into strong illumination. All of us took part in this work, but just as I had not been able to help Hiro to his satisfaction in the laboratory, so here too my ineptness with things mechanical soon caused me to be set to more congenial tasks in the stables.
I did not repine at this, for though I was delighted with the society of the others, I found it pleasurable to be alone, to sort out my thoughts, to slow down to the rhythm of the heavy Percherons or enjoy the antics of the two young foals. The world and time were somewhere shut outside; I felt contentment so strong as to be beyond satisfaction or any active emotion.
I was currying a dappled mare one afternoon and reflecting how the steam plow used on the great wheat ranches of British America deprived the farmers not merely of fertilizer but also of companionship, when Barbara, her breath still cloudy from the cold outside, came in and stood behind me. I made an artificial cowlick on the mare's flank, then brushed it glossy smooth again.
“Hello,” she said.
“Uh… Hello, Miss Haggerwells.”
“Must you, Hodge?”
I roughed up the mare's flank once more. “Must I what? I'm afraid I don't understand.”
She came close, as close as she had in the bookstore, and I felt my breath quicken. “I think you do. Why do you avoid me? And call me 'Miss Haggerwells' in that prim tone? Do I look so old and ugly and forbidding?”
This, I thought, is going to hurt Ace. Poor Ace, befuddled by a Jezebel; why can't he attach himself to a nice quiet girl who won't tear him in pieces every time she follows her inclinations?
I smoothed the mare's side for the last time and put down the currycomb.
“I think you are the most exciting woman I've ever met, Barbara,” I said.
XIII. TIME
“Hodge.”
“Barbara?”
“Is it really true you've never written your mother since you left home?”
“Why should I write her? What could I say? Perhaps if my first plans had come to something, I might have. But to tell her I worked for six years for nothing would only confirm her opinion of my lack of gumption.”
“I wonder if your ambitions in the end don't amount to a wish to prove her wrong.”
“Now you sound like Midbin,” I said, but I wasn't annoyed. I much preferred her present questions to those I'd heard from her in the past weeks: Do you love me? Are you sure? Really love, I mean; more than any other woman? Why?
“Oliver has had accidental flashes of insight.”
“Aren't you substituting your own for what you think might be my motives?”
“My mother hated me,” she stated flatly.
“Well, it isn't a world where love is abundant; substitutes are cheap and available. But hate—that's a strong word. How do you know?”
“I know. What does it matter how? I'm not unfeeling, like you.”
“Me? Now what have I done?”
“You don't care about anyone. Not me or anyone else. You don't want me; just any woman would do.”
I considered this. “I don't think so, Barbara—”
“See! You don't think so. You're not sure, and anyway you wouldn't hurt my feelings needlessly. Why don't you be honest and tell the truth. You'd just as soon it was that streetwalker in New York. Maybe you'd rather. You miss her, don't you?”
