And then, at Wrieto-San’s signal, one of the apprentices rose and began playing a jig on his violin, even as Wes and some of the others burst through the door of the tavern, great jerry cans of liquid clutched in their arms, and for a moment — naïve, forgetful, thirsty—I thought they were bringing beer. But it wasn’t beer. It was kerosene. And I watched in astonishment as they tipped the cans and pooled the shimmering liquid round the foundation, the work already finished inside. We all caught the scent of it then, noxious, chemical, anticipatory.
The violin keened, every note singing at the high end of the frets. People had begun to tap their feet, a knee bouncing here, fingers tapping there, but no one rose till Wrieto-San did. Very slowly, with a nod to Mrs. Wright, he got to his feet and made his way to the barbecue pit. He bent for a moment to extract a flaming brand, then, in the most leisurely way, as if he were heading off for a stroll through the knee-high grass, he crossed the yard and dropped the brand where the kerosene had pooled on the front steps.
It was remarkable how quickly that wooden structure went up, the flames climbing the walls to the roof like pent-up things given their heads all in a moment, a swarm of gnawing animals with irradiated teeth. Within minutes the frantic leapings of the violin (or fiddle, I suppose) were lost to the clamor of the fire, the hiss and the roar, struts collapsing, bottles of liquor exploding in the depths like the bombs of war — and this was a war, Wrieto-San’s war on the topers and wastrels and bumpkins who’d turned out to stand idle as Taliesin burned and burned again, cycling from renewal to ash, and here they were, sprinting through the weeds and jumping from automobiles with their features distorted and their shouts rising on the air. The fiddle skreeled. The fire raged.
Soon there was no roof to that place, and soon after, the skeleton of it, the frame that gave it life, was a fiery X-ray of the interior. The skies darkened, the flames leapt and fell, and Wrieto-San, his face illuminated and his cane pumping, stood there and watched till it was full night and the stars shone and what had been erected and joined and carpentered fell away to coals.
CHAPTER 1: LADIES’ MAN
Kitty was seated on the familiar hard-backed sofa before the Roman brick fireplace in the living room of the house that was so familiar it might have been her own, but of course it wasn’t. It was Mamah’s.138 And Edwin’s. Or perhaps she should call it Frank’s, since all his interiors reflected one another as if he were simultaneously living in a hundred rooms, rooms scattered across the countryside but somehow, in the architecture of his mind, continuous. It was Frank’s house, sure it was, just as the house they shared was his. Everything was his. He’d put his stamp on inanimate things and people alike — on her, his own wife, just as surely as he’d put it on Mamah and Mrs. Darwin Martin and all the rest of the women who came under his purview. He’d even gone so far as to design their clothes, as he’d designed hers, and until this moment, in this room, on an oppressive iron-clad Oak Park winter’s afternoon, she’d never felt it strange or out of the way or even remarkable. That was just the way it was. The way Frank was.
And now she sat here watching the fire wrap its volatile fingers round the log set on the andirons, hearing it, hearing the sleet shush the neighborhood and the faintest murmur from little Martha in her crib in the bedroom below. It was very still. There were tea things on a low table before the fire, but no one had touched them. Mamah was perched on the edge of the seat opposite, trying not to look at her. Edwin — as mild and soft-voiced as a rector transported from the pages of an English novel — stood silently behind his wife, his eyes downcast, the broad bald stripe of his head glowing in the light of Frank’s art-glass lamps. And Frank — he was hateful to her in that moment, execrable, hideous, an icon crushed beneath the wheel of a tractor — Frank had backed up against the mantel decorated with the Oriental statuary he’d bought with the Cheneys’ money, the brass Buddhas and carved ivory figurines no civilized household should be deprived of. His arms were folded across his chest, his feet planted, his eyes hard and metallic, two darts pinning first Edwin and then her to the heavy fabric of the stiffened air. And what had he just said, what had he said? Mamah and I are in love.
In love. As if he would know anything of love. As if he hadn’t trampled all over the memory of what they’d had together these past twenty years and pulled it up by the roots, so absorbed in his work — in his self — he hardly gave her a glance anymore, treating her like a servant and the children like strangers, a collective irritant and nothing more.139 Love? She was the one who knew love and she loved him still, loved him in spite of herself, loved him so fiercely she wanted to leap to her feet and tear his hair out, gouge his eyes, batter him. And her. Her too, the vampire.
He was in love. Her husband was in love. And with someone other than his wife, with a woman she’d always considered her special friend. Was it a revelation? Did he expect her to fall to her knees, beat her breast and rend her clothes? Or was she supposed to make the sign of the cross and bless them? This wasn’t news — it wasn’t even a surprise. He and Mamah had been skulking around for months now, wearing artificial smiles, ever discreet in public, except when he was squiring her about in the glaring yellow automobile that might as well have had a sign that screamed LOOK AT ME! pinned to the hood. But then her husband was a ladies’ man, always was and always would be, and he even had a rationale to excuse it — he had to work his charms on the women of the neighborhood because the women were the ones who held the purse strings, the women were the ones who would nag their husbands into taking the leap and how else did she imagine he earned a living to keep her and her six children clothed and fed and housed, and yes, yes, so there was the grocery bill and the livery bill and all the rest, which just went to prove how necessary it was to court these women, these clients. She’d accepted that. She’d believed him. Trusted him. Hoped he would get over his infatuation, as he’d gotten over infatuations in the past. But now it was too late. Now he’d spoken the words aloud and there was no going back.
“We didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said, breaking the silence. “And we don’t mean to hurt anyone, least of all you, Kitty — and you, Edwin. That’s not what this concerns. Not at all.”
Mamah — with her cat’s eyes and showy movements — rose suddenly and crossed the room to stand beside him like some sort of ornament. Edwin glanced up sharply. “Then what does it concern?” he asked, his voice barely rising to a whisper.
Mamah’s high fluting tones came back at him. “Freedom,” she said.