He took special note of the lack of records of childhood—none before age fifteen. Goldsmith as adolescent does not resemble father or mother in family videos, father portly middle class jovial, mother thin and serious determined to give this child a good literary upbringing, books no vids: Kazantzakis Cavafi in original Greek Joyce Burroughs both Edgar Rice and William and Shakespeare Goldstern Remick Randall Burgess, the new century poets and novelists from the American Midwest where Goldsmith spent his teens and early twenties before his first book acquiring that mixed accent. No evident difficulties with racism in his youth; well liked by his classmates, fitting in to a middle class existence.
List upon list. Favorite foods at fifteen as recorded by Goldsmith: panfried farmfish and synthetic spiced steak and tomatoes and apples
moving on skimming
high school third ranked student sciences math first lit second and third in drama production second history social sciences; his first love affair senior year (ref.: autobiography 2044 Bright Star House, Albigoni’s company) normal normal all normal but for the brilliance of his work, which did not manifest itself until he was twenty writing plays early drafts of the Moses plays (fax texts available)
First book of poems and then the second book and success and a stable career for ten years marriage no children early divorce mutual no contesting; ten books of poetry during this period and seven plays all mature and produced three off-Broadway successes and also successes in London and Paris and Beijing, Beijing inviting him for cultural exchange then Japan then United Korea and finally the Commonwealth Southeast Asia Economic Community where he is published in four editions (three pirated) in 2031-32 and where his plays are produced riding a wave of Western and especially North American popularity in the period of economic revitalization; returning in triumph after this tour to several destructive love affairs detailed in numerous LitVid society bits; one affair ending in the suicide of a woman 2034.
Goldsmith in hiding two years. In reality staying in Idaho with friends undergoing a year-long rite of purification.
Martin stopped, frowning. Recognizing a possible entry point he asked for details of this rite.
Followed an interview with Reginald and Francine Killian founders of the Pure Land Spirit Purification Center twenty miles north of Boise on the Oregon border. Reginald tall and lanky, dressed in overalls, hair string straggled black, eyes wicked wise, long face accustomed to smiling: “We’ve had a number of intellectuals and celebrities come through our center. They come to purge themselves with balanced natural vegetarian diet, mineral water. They come to listen to music, all preclassical, all played on period instruments. They come for the big sky and the stars at night. And we counsel them. We help them fit into the twenty first century, not an easy thing to do, everything is so antihuman, unnatural, technological. Emanuel Goldsmith came here and stayed for a year. We became very good friends. He made love to Francine.” Francine on screen, thin and deerlike, long straight red hair, smiling wistfully: “He was a very fine considerate lover, although violent. He had a lot of anger and sadness in him. He had something to work out, and I helped him work it out. He had a bitter hard core of hatred because he didn’t know who he was. When he left here he was calm and he was writing poetry again.”
Indeed four books published in the next five years, including a rewrite of the early African poems. In 2042 Goldsmith made his first contact with yet another admirer, Colonel Sir John Yardley, self proclaimed benevolent tyrant (“in the Greek sense”) of Hispaniola. Yardley invited him to visit Port-au-Prince which he did in 2043. Details on the visit were not available but they apparently got along famously and Goldsmith expressed admiration for Yardley’s forthrightness and cleverness in the face of the complexity and confusion of the twenty first century. A news commentator on a cable vid said of this, “Goldsmith’s praise of Colonel Sir John Yardley is fulsome and shows all the political awareness usually reserved for poets alone: that is, zip, nil, none. Yardley has made his nation prosper on the unwillingness of the great modern nations to do their own dirty work. He has turned his crack army of mercenaries into a worldwide scourge, hired by the Big Boys, their targets carefully chosen, their means subtle and precise. Furthermore, Yardley has been accused of manufacturing and exporting insidious torture devices, mind invading pain machines used by, among others, the Selectors that haunt us all. Never mind that our own President Raphkind has established open links with Hispaniola and Yardley; never mind that ours is an age of ‘correction’ and ‘maturation,’ and that many admire the actions of both the Selectors and Colonel Sir John Yardley…Goldsmith’s admiration proves him to be a traitor among humane intellectuals, a turncoat, a poetaster friend of fiends.”
Elegantly phrased; but more extreme connections than this had been sought out by poets without their last resort to multiple murders of acolytes and students. No straight arrow pointed the way.
Goldsmith like Ezra Pound in an earlier age had established by being a Yardley apologist a reputation for inept and perhaps dangerous political dabbling that had made secure his literary standing. Perhaps that was why he had done it. Martin looked at this act as a cold scheme or posture; that at least made some sense. Yet limited press publication of phone calls shared vids letters Yardley/Goldsmith revealed no obvious posture; the poet was indeed truly an admirer. “Would that you could have united Africa three hundred years ago against Portuguese and English: I might be there now, a whole man in the warm uncreamed coffee heart of Blackness.”
That came close to jingle. Martin shook his head and read on. A letter from Yardley to Goldsmith:
“Your poetry shows you divided in culture and mind against your surroundings. You are successful, yet you say you are decaying; you are not abhorred, yet you feel out of place. Your people had their homes and families and languages and religions, all the poetry of a people, ripped from them and replaced by foreign domination and brutality. Your people were brought to the New World, and many were dropped off in Hispaniola, where the cruelty was beyond belief long into the twenty first century…No wonder you feel disjointed! When I first came to Haiti, I was made dizzy by the easy joy of a people who had known so much pain, whose history was an agony of betrayal and death. Pain soaks in to the germ plasm, passes from mother to son. So unfortunate that so many of the oppressors died before I could avenge their brutality.”
Obvious injustices made for easy history. And Yardley did not disguise his island’s present economy and nature too thickly, not then when the United States of America gave him dollars and assignments worldwide.
Goldsmith’s poem at the end of the letters: “With magic/I would kill many raping cream fathers/Justified murder in time/History cannot eRace.” Applause from USA ever willing to self flagellate. Fame and more fortune. In some ways perhaps Colonel Sir John Yardley owed something to Goldsmith, a champion in well arranged words. A correspondence and mutual admiration bordering on love certainly from Goldsmith’s point of view.
Was Yardley Goldsmith’s vision of the avenging angel come to scourge the world for sins of the long dead? Come to legitimate offspring of raping cream fathers? And what was Goldsmith to Yardley: apologist justifier or amanuensis, servus a manu?
Were all the dead white?
Martin looked up the LitVid reports and cross referenced. No. Among the identified were one fourth generation mixed oriental and one black as Goldsmith, his godson. Perhaps a blind and indiscriminate killing rage.
Martin finished his exploration and extricated himself from the chair. A brass arbeiter awaited his instructions. “Bring me an iced tea, please,” he said. “And tell Mr. Lascal I’m ready to view Goldsmith.” Not interview, but view. Goldsmith must not recognize Burke or Neuman or anyone else investigating his Country; that might be awkward.