Rebecca Makkai - The Hundred-Year House

through 9/2

Moore, Marlon (M)

Writer

Lake Bluff, Ill.

St/R: Northeast

through 9/5

Osin, Viktor (M)

Maître de ballet

Chicago

St/R: Longhouse Cent.

through 9/16 (extended)

Parfitt, Edwin (M)

Poet

Phil, Pa.

St/R: Flower

through 9/27

Silverman, Zilla (F)

Painter

Madison, Wis.

St/R: Longhouse W

through 10/12

Von Hornig (Horn), Marcelina (Marceline) (F)

Screenwriter

Beverly Hills, Calif.

St/R: Yellow

through 9/20

Beatrice, please note:

Miss Silverman has asked use of attic in addition to Longhouse W.

Miss Lizer and Miss Cadfael are in fact sharing Green bedroom; trunks of both are stored in Blue; Miss Cadfael has that key.

Garden studio is empty if Miss Horn prefers it to working in her room.

Please remember Mr. Abbaticchio not to be listed on public documents.

Marlon Moore claims to know a woman who knows the Devohrs. It’s impossible, Samantha insists, because no one “knows the Devohrs.” You might know one Devohr, or another Devohr, but they aren’t an entity. It’s like saying you know all the feral cats in the woods. You’ve probably just seen the same one five times. Marlon counters that his friend knows the important Devohrs, the ones who’ve stayed sane, the ones with the houses.

—

Marlon has heard testimony, from some of the greatest living writers, that the best way to induce strange and inspiring dreams is to eat very strong cheese before bed. He himself keeps a crock of Roquefort on the windowsill in his room. He doesn’t see the problem. It has a lid! “Yes,” Josephine mutters, “but your mouth does not.”

—

Marlon knows with great certainty that back home, Ludo, our own Italian fixture, became unnecessarily political for a composer. It seems Ludo was a great friend of the Communist leader Bordiga, and wrote a song lampooning Bordiga’s rival, Gramsci, and (worse) Mussolini himself. Marlon believes he rhymed “Benito” with “finito.” (“Let’s ask if it’s true!” says Armand. “I wouldn’t,” says Viktor.) And so (Marlon fingers his moustache, adopts a tone of epic narration), by 1926, both Bordiga and Gramsci were in jail, and Ludo was on a boat to New York under an assumed name, quotas and papers be damned. How he landed at Laurelfield, where he’s stayed the past three years, is no great mystery. Bordiga probably phoned Samantha himself. Is Ludo sleeping with Samantha? Oh, everyone assumes so. Certainly. But that’s beside the point. And now Ludo has a bit of a career stateside as well, writing show tunes. “Our gain,” Fannie adds emphatically. Fannie is our greatest optimist.

—

Marlon can tell astrological signs with great accuracy. He pegs Zilla as an Aquarius, and she nods. We are duly impressed.

—

Late one night, Marlon starts giggling about Viktor Osin and his ballerinas. “They’re all French,” he says, “or Russian. Nineteen years old, eighty pounds each. Let me tell you: a line of twelve swans? He’s been under every tutu.” His giggling turns shrill. “Not a single bosom between them, but can you imagine the ways they stretch?” Zilla leaves the room.

—

Marlon wears a silk burgundy smoking jacket over his clothes. He is poised for great things.

—

Marlon has heard a rumor: Mr. Devohr is already on his way.

Mary Garden, Director

430 South Michigan Avenue

Chicago

Aug. 28

Dearest Samantha—

Dashing this off to say Gamby Devohr has written to all the board. Received my letter this a.m.

Samantha, what’s happened? Wishing I could zip up but all is chaos here, moving to the new space, Aida, etc. Tell me if I should come, though. Do.

Devohr is requesting ad hoc meeting Sept. 3rd for what I fear are apocalyptic purposes.

Do advise if I can help, but as you know I haven’t much clout with the other boardsters, I’m the artistic quack not the purse strings.

I’m worried, Sam. Tell me you’re fine. Tell me Laurelfield’s fine.

Oh dear lord,

Mary

The hour before dinner, normally restrained — stretching writers, artists just scrubbed up, a shared bottle of gin — turned into an all-out soirée in everyone’s effort to meet and impress Marceline Horn. The party continued after the meal, the artists reconvening to the library where Viktor mixed an enormous vat of orange blossoms and Ludo played the piano. It was fortunate Ludo was kept busy. Having seen Marceline as Scheherezade (“Just scarves! No other clothings!”), he couldn’t speak to her without leering.

Viktor ladled a drink into a smudged glass for Eddie, slopping some down the side. Viktor was all arms and legs. A dancer and dance maker with hair of the most rebellious kind, each strand hating its neighbors with such static ferocity that his head achieved a perfect geometry of divergence.

Eddie sipped and tried to listen to the music, but it didn’t help. He felt sick again: a chill that had vanished a few hours the night of the Indian raid, that the August sun baked away whenever he took lunch outdoors, but that returned the moment he reentered the house. Now the dizziness was back, the feeling that he needed to leave the house soon, or else he would fall into his bed and freeze to the mattress and never rise again. Fannie and Josephine had told him, his first night, to watch for the ghost, for the long white nightgown in the upstairs hall. They had giggled and shivered, and expected him to do likewise. But the chill, he knew, was not something he’d encounter in the corridor. It had already gotten deep in his bloodstream.

There was something wrong with the house. The windows gazed in on you instead of out at the world.

And now the White Rabbits had cornered Marceline on the davenport behind Eddie, and leaned in eagerly to tell the story of Violet Devohr. “She locked herself in the attic,” Fannie said. “It’s unclear why.”

“Well, she was mad!” Josephine cried. “Why else does a woman lock herself in an attic?”

“And the old man, Augustus, the one who built the place for her, begged her to let him in, but he didn’t go so far as to kick down the door. He was too genteel. And he didn’t want the servants hearing.”

“Scandal, you know.”

“He figured she’d come out eventually. Every day he knocked, three times a day, and she told him to go away. And then he realized—”

“No, you forgot to say, it was five days! Five days she was up there. She had taken in the key. Did you say that part?”

“Yes, five days. And only then did he realize that she had no food or water.”

“And so he broke down the door. Or he called a locksmith, I’m not sure. But it was too late. She wasn’t dead yet, but she couldn’t survive.”

Zilla rejoined them in time to hear the end. “Are you trying to make her leave ? She’ll run off in the night!” But her voice was so soft and rolling that it was only a joke.

“Anyway,” Fanny said, “that was Gamby’s mother. Gamby is Gamaliel, the one who’s coming to get us all in trouble. The poor dear, he was just two years old. It’s no wonder he’s always begrudged Laurelfield.”

Over at the piano, Ludo had started one of his new songs, a bouncy thing with a chorus designed to be joined by the flappers who, under more urban circumstances, would no doubt surround his piano. It had become a great joke to all of them in the past weeks that Ludo’s English could be so tortured in conversation but so smooth in lyric. He sang with tremendous verve:

Columbus spied the ocean shore