The Novel Read online

  With Ms. Marmelle’s critical calls an agreement was reached: ‘I want to speak to her as soon as she calls,’ and Emma nodded, but even under that arrangement she managed to ask the editor two or three short questions before she alerted me.

  After lunch each workday I read The Philadelphia Inquirer, and three days a week, more or less, Emma when shopping would purchase The New York Times and I would enjoy it, especially the column that reported news and gossip relating to publishing: ‘I learn a lot more about Kinetic from the Times than I do from Ms. Marmelle.’ Recent news had not been reassuring; whispered rumors continued that Rockland Oil, the huge conglomerate that owned Kinetic as a kind of bizarre appendage to its other interests in petroleum, wood pulp and paper mills, was eager to off-load it, because its profit yield was so modest it was out of place in what was known as ‘a go-go outfit.’ Who might be interested in buying was unspecified: ‘But among those known to have been nibbling are at least two overseas consortiums, attracted by a bargain when the dollar is so low in comparison to their currencies.’ That news was not reassuring.

  About an hour after lunch I took a short nap, a habit I had acquired in my mid-fifties when I found myself tiring at three each afternoon. My doctor at the time, an older man, had said: ‘Even a short nap relaxes the tension, restores the zip,’ and that proved true in my case. ‘Strange,’ I told Emma, ‘on Monday and Tuesday I had no rest of any kind in New York, all excitement and lunches with lots of talk and big ideas, but I didn’t feel a bit tired.’

  ‘You sure look it now.’

  ‘I feel it. If the phone rings, you handle it. I need a rest.’

  When I woke I could not remember where I was, and for just a moment I thought it was morning and that I was late rising. Jumping out of bed, I hurried to the bathroom, then saw the sunlight outside and realized where I was and what time it was.

  Slipping into old work clothes, I went not to my upstairs study but to the ground-level workshop attached to our main house, a self-indulgent convenience I had added when royalties from Hex came tumbling in. It contained a long workbench backed by a Masonite pegboard with stainless-steel hooks for my various tools. In heavy black paint, carefully applied, I had drawn the outline of each major tool so that I could assure myself at a glance when I finished work that everything was in its place. The bench had not only a vise powerful enough to handle an airplane wing but also a small drill press and a power saw. A reasonably good workman, I had constructed many of the small gadgets that made our farmhouse a place of convenience and comfort.

  But now my interest focused on the three hex signs I had acquired from the Fenstermacher barn, and as I inspected each I was satisfied that they were going to yield three exceptionally good paintings. Each was about four feet square, large enough to have been seen by the driver of a distant wagon in the early 1900s, and each had enough of the original paint to convey both the design and the color, yet not too much to kill the effect of a mysterious symbol from another day. The designs varied, each intended for a different compass direction on the barn, each qualified to ward off a specific danger.

  I used extreme care in dealing with the signs once the excess wood had been removed from around them. My job was threefold: to strengthen the old wood by a judicious injection of special epoxies applied deep in the exposed seams with a hypodermic needle; to preserve the original colors in their weatherbeaten condition so as to create the appearance of age; and to enhance the colors, but so delicately that the result was not conspicuous. When these processes were completed properly, the ancient hex seemed to leap off the restored wood, and then came the segment of my artistic effort that I enjoyed most.

  Selecting a big slab of Masonite that had been laminated with a veneer of some lightly veined and softly colored wood like bleached oak, I affixed my hex with a powerful epoxy so that it filled the middle of the slab with about six to eight inches of blank wood exposed as a margin in each direction. Then with a set of fine brushes and the bright colors the Pennsylvania Dutch preferred—scarlet, cerulean blue, a vivid green, a sparkling yellow—I began to decorate the exposed margins with fraktur, that curious mix of alphabetical letters, designs from nature and geometric framework that had originally been used to decorate precious family documents. As drawn and painted by traveling artists in the eighteenth century, the frakturs were folk art of the highest quality, and I believed that I was reviving its best elements in my paintings.

  My specialty was big Gothic letters highly ornamented with examples of wildlife, such as tulips and goldfinches, or with sparsely used geometric patterns. With a restraint that the old-time artists never practiced, I kept my fraktur spare and neatly distributed about the edges of my central hex, but on days when I felt especially happy with my work I would finish a painting with unusual care, drawing and then painting seven or eight specimens of wildlife, nicely scattered and in brilliant colors, and label each with its name in old German script, using stencils I’d cut years ago, which enabled me to letter the flowers and birds in exquisitely spaced and inked names: distelfink for the finches, dullaboona for the tulips, hertz for the hearts. Those were the prized paintings.

  At the start of this year, 1991, I had completed twenty-one of my big hexes, and if I could complete the three Fenstermachers, XXII through XXIV, I’d have two dozen in circulation. I kept none at home, but I always promised Emma: ‘Next time, a special one for you.’ I gave them to friends, sold a few at the Rostock post office, and donated four of the best to museums in the area, including the great concrete castle in Doylestown, where the crafts of the German region were housed in grand profusion. Two museums far from the Dutch region had expressed an interest in my work, but I had not built up a surplus from which I could supply them. I refused to sell a painting for personal gain on the grounds that to do so would put me in competition with real artists who might need the money. I made my living from my books, so I gave whatever money I did occasionally make from the post office sales to the Dresden library for the purchase of books on Mennonite and Amish history.

  About five in the afternoon I would leave the shop, return upstairs to the study and work for an hour and a half on a manuscript, stopping well before seven so that I could join Emma at that hour for supper. I ate sparingly, listened to the news, took a short walk with the dog along the darkened road leading to Rostock, and was in bed before ten.

  I cherished this regimen of a man who loved to write books but who also wanted to preserve the art of his people, and I told Emma: ‘When I come down from writing at noon I think: This is the best job in the world, but when I come in from working on the hexes I think: I’m happier doing this than anything else.’

  She said: ‘I often feel the same way when I’ve baked an especially good pie,’ and I said: ‘I don’t catch the analogy,’ and she became angry.

  ‘A good pie is just as important as a good hex,’ she snapped, and I apologized: ‘Emma, I didn’t mean that. I meant I was giving an alternative, writing as opposed to painting, but you didn’t give any second choice.’

  ‘Go to bed,’ she said.

  When I was deep into my corrections on the manuscript and receiving regular calls from my Ministering Angels, I was shown an unexpected word portrait of myself. Emma returned with the morning mail and burst into my study flourishing a magazine and crying: ‘Hey, Mr. Celebrity! Here’s a story about you, photograph and all,’ and she thrust before me the magazine, opened at the appropriate page. There I was, looking up at myself in color, surrounded by glossy type.

  The story was not about me. I had merely served as what some editors call a frinstance: ‘Your article is about authors who’ve done well on the contemporary scene. Give us a for instance.’ The report was a thoughtful account of the radical change in New York publishing, written by a clever freelance, a young woman who had followed the rumors. At some point she must have interviewed either Ms. Marmelle or Miss Crane, who had cited me as a typical older writer who had kept his head above water. Intrigued by what
she heard, she must have gone to the other woman to verify what the first had said and decided that I was a good choice for a frinstance. Thus I was permitted to see what my two associates thought of me; quite properly in our business, they had not informed me that they were giving the interview.

  Ms. Marmelle had said: ‘Sometimes the little Dutchman’s an iceberg. Gives the impression of being indifferent, no matter what’s happening to him or his books. But he does reveal a passionate interest whenever the actual publication of his book is involved. He wants to see the typeface, check the length of the line, satisfy himself that the paper’s opaque, verify the mapwork. He also wants to see the jacket, the artwork, the blurb. But even if he’s disappointed he never makes waves. “Does this look right to you?” is about as far as he’ll go.

  ‘I thought of him last week when one of our authors—he works with another editor, let’s call him Renford—blustered in here raising hell about everything. I overheard him delivering ultimatums, threatening to take his immortal work to Simon and Schuster, and when I was finished eavesdropping I burst out laughing because he’s six foot three, dumb as an ox, and I compared him with my little Dutchman, five five and never raises his voice. The goon’s last book sold eighteen hundred copies, the Dutchman’s a million one, and I wanted to butt in and tell the ranter: “You ain’t earned the right to throw your weight around. Tell me in a quiet voice what it is we can do for you.”

  ‘But I kept my mouth shut. And do you know why? My Yoder gets a year older every January and the other editor’s goon may become our next hot item. In this business you never know.’

  She gave another portrait of me: ‘I think Yoder acts a lot, parades the indifferent bit. When I told him at lunch the other day that maybe a Japanese-Israeli film company might want to make an artistic picture of his old novel The Shunning, his eyes lit up like Hallowe’en lanterns and I was so relieved to see him show emotion that I instinctively shouted “Whee!” and people in the restaurant stared at us. He didn’t care. Raised his glass to everyone who offered us a toast and continued smiling the rest of the meal.

  ‘Later he told me: “Shunning’s important to me. If the team you mentioned wants to do a real film, honest in all details, no cheap shots at the Amish, let them get the rights for bottom dollar. We’ll defer our take until it proves itself at the box office.” Publishing profits from producing guys like my little Dutchman.’

  When the freelance interviewed Miss Crane, my agent provided another view: ‘Lukas Yoder’s a special case. We never address him by his first name. When I did at first, he winced. I think it was because as a Mennonite he was uneasy about having a strange woman be so familiar. And he never calls me Hilda, always Miss Crane. Very disconcerting, sits in that chair and listens to a dozen things I’ve done for his books and all he does is nod. But once, when I showed him the jacket for the Berlin edition of Hex, he cried: “Now, that’s a jacket!” and when I asked why, he said: “Their modified Gothic lettering makes it look Pennsylvania Dutch.” He constantly amazes me. Won’t allow publication parties and refuses to go on the road to publicize his books. Yet he answers his mail, every piece, no matter how inane. When I chided him about the waste of time and money he looked surprised: “Miss Crane, so far as I know, everyone who sends me a letter has bought one of my books or checked it out from the local library. My job is to encourage him or her to read the next one.”

  ‘You may be interested in how I acquired him as a client. When his first books did poorly, two agents in this town dumped him and now shudder with regret when one of his big books comes out. I found him huddled under a rock, his ego shattered. But I’d read The Shunning and thought it magnificent. I’d always wanted to represent writers like that, and so help me, a week later I heard that he’d been dropped by his agent. No, I won’t give the name. Within the minute, I telephoned him and said cold turkey: “Mr. Yoder, you can write. Shunning was magnificent and I want to be your agent. I see great years ahead for you.” ’

  The young woman writing the article took responsibility for the next quote: ‘Neither his editor nor his agent was willing to talk about Yoder’s financial success with his recent blockbusters, but others familiar with the industry assured me that Yoder alone probably accounts for 60 percent of the Crane office’s yearly take. Miss Crane did say: ‘When I call him on a business deal, he agrees to everything in about two minutes. But he’s not stupid. He then turns me over to his wife, Emma, and she hammers at me for an hour. I can tell you that she runs everything—the farm, the book contracts, the bank account, and Yoder too, for that matter. The other day I told my assistant: “Your job is to keep Lukas Yoder happy—even more important, keep Emma happy.” ’

  I was not displeased with what my Ministering Angels said about me, but since they both described me as little, I must point out that I am taller than Miss Crane and almost as tall as Ms. Marmelle.

  The work continued unabated through the rest of the winter, week after week, and as I reminded Emma several times: ‘The thing’s not even in print yet. We have to read galleys and I don’t see how they can deliver copy to the German publisher on schedule.’ She said: ‘They have a building full of bright people in that office on Madison Avenue, it’s their problem,’ and in late April she brought home from the post office a large flat package that contained the first visible proof that a book by me might truly be appearing in the fall. It was a rough of the proposed jacket showing a green meadowland with lettering that carried a hint of German Gothic, and it seemed to both of us about as clean and appropriate a cover, with just the right intimations, as one could have wished to devise.

  ‘They’ve got it right,’ Emma said, ‘and on the first try. Miraculous.’

  Telephone calls from my two Angels continued on a regular basis, Ms. Marmelle keeping me informed on the progress of the manuscript and its appendages through the publishing process, and Miss Crane telling Emma about some minor financial coup. The former reported that the maps of the Dutch country that would form the endpapers were being worked on by the highly regarded Jean-Paul Tremblay, who would be sending preliminary drafts within a week. She said also: ‘We’ve sent out feelers to the stores as to how many specially autographed editions at fifty dollars each they think they can handle, and the response is surprising. Looks as if the final estimates will run to nearly two thousand.’

  When I heard this I warned: ‘I told you I’d do only one thousand. Do you know how much work that is? Murderous. I could never handle two,’ and Ms. Marmelle said: ‘We’ll accept your thousand and prorate them.’ Some days later she called with alarming news: ‘Somebody in our Midwest shop, without consulting me, promised that big bookstore in St. Louis that you’d be glad to sign a special gift edition for them, boxed, seventy-five dollars, and they’ve mailed out a lot of brochures. Present estimates indicate that this may involve another thousand.’

  ‘Tell them to rescind the offer. I can’t sign that many.’

  ‘Mr. Yoder, I don’t know how this snafu was allowed to happen, but it has. The letters are out and the orders are flooding back in.’

  ‘That’ll be your problem,’ I said sternly. ‘I’m beating my brains out down here trying to make this manuscript letter-perfect. Rewriting whole passages. Corrections on every page. And I don’t want to be heckled because of an error that one of your people made.’

  In a quiet, conciliatory voice, she reminded me: ‘Through the years Inglenook has been one of your strongest supporters. Thousands upon thousands of copies. Don’t dismiss them out of hand. We’ll work something out.’

  ‘I’ll do five hundred, but that’s tops.’

  ‘Thanks, that may satisfy them.’

  Miss Crane’s calls were of a quite different character, for the people she dealt with spoke as if the book were already in print, and when Emma gave me summaries of her calls, I shivered: ‘They think that when I submit my manuscript in October 1990, things mysteriously jump ahead to October 1991 and Voilà! There’s the finished book! Does
she have any idea that I’m working my tail off in the interim?’

  The idiom was not irrelevant, for day after day I sat at my typewriter in the greatest discomfort. I had tried a soft cushion, but although it helped, I had the frightening feeling that it was eating me up, that the chair was in command, not I, and I discarded it. I liked the stiffer seat, even though it did require frequent moving about to relieve my numbed bottom.

  When my Ministering Angels telephoned with the latest news, they avoided any reference to the fact that rumors were circulating through the industry that my latest novel was such a severe disappointment that the initial print run had again been reduced. But apparently this information was widely known, for one of Emma’s casual Bryn Mawr acquaintances with affiliations in the book business called to say that it was too bad about my novel but that my regular readers would probably find it interesting. So we lived with a Damoclean sword over our heads, and one day Emma snapped: ‘A nasty way to end a writing career, but we did have those great years. Who can complain?’ and I grinned: ‘Not I.’

  One of Miss Crane’s calls was a welcome interruption: ‘Exciting news! Argosy Films has paid the money on the option we talked about regarding Shunning. Their top people want to fly in to A.B.E. and talk over their plans to do a really fine film. Can I tell them to come?’

  There was really no time in the year that I welcomed interruptions; either I was writing a book, which was murderous work, or I was editing one, which demanded all my attention and energy. So I routinely turned down suggestions that interested people fly in to consult with me. I was always glad to see my two Angels in New York, but they had become members of our family; the rest Emma fended off. However, I did want to encourage these men who might convert my best novel into a respectable film: ‘Arrange it. And tell them not to rent a car. We’ll pick them up.’