Louise Erdrich: Four Souls

And to the north, near yet another lake and to the edge of it, grew oak trees. On the whole continent and to each direction these were judged the finest that could be obtained. In addition, it proved easy and profitable to deal with the Indian agent Tatro, who won a personal commission for discovering that due to a recent government decision the land upon which those trees grew was tax forfeit from one Indian, just a woman — she could go elsewhere and, anyway, she was a troublemaker. There was no problem about moving the lumber crews right in and so the cut was accomplished speedily. Half was sold. The other, and the soundest of the wood, was processed right at the edge of the city to the specifications of the architect.

Watching the oak grain emerge in warm swirls of umber, the architect thought of several gestures he could make — the sleek entrance, the complicated stairwell, the curves. He saw the wood accomplishing a series of glowing movements in grand proportions. He pointed out the height of imposing windows to Miss Polly Elizabeth, the sister-in-law of his client and now his self-appointed decorating assistant. She took detailed notes and dispatched a servant to the Indian missions to procure fine lace produced by young women whose mothers had once worked the quills of porcupines and dyed hairs of moose together into intricate clawed flowers and strict emblems before they died of measles, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, and left their daughters dexterous and lonely to the talents of nuns.

Copper. Miskwaabik. Soapstone. Slate for the roof shingles. A strange, tremendous crystal of pyrite traded from a destitute family in the autumn of no rice. The walls were raised and fast against them a tawny insulation of woven lake reeds was pressed tight and thickened by three layers, and then four, so that no stray breeze could enter. The chimneys were constructed of a type of brick requiring the addition of blood, and so, baked in the vicinity of a slaughterhouse, they would exude when there was fire lighted a scorched, physical odor. Iron for the many skeleton keys the house would take, for the griddles, the handles of the mangle, for the locks themselves, the Moorish-inspired turned railings of the entrance and the staircase, was mined on the Mesabi Range by Norwegians and Sammi so gut-shot with hunger they didn’t care if they were trespassing on anybody’s hunting ground or not and just kept on digging deeper, deeper into the earth.

Water from the generous river. Fire trembling in beehive kilns. And sweat, most of all sweat from the bodies of men and women made the house. Sweating men climbed the hill and set the blocks and beveled the glass and carved the details and set down floors of wood, parquet, concrete, and alabaster. Women coughed in the dim basements of a fabric warehouse sewing drapes and dishcloths and hemming fine linen. One day overhead a flight of sandhill cranes passed low enough to shoot and the men on the crew brought down nearly a hundred to pluck and roast, eat, digest, and use up making more sweat, laying bricks. A lynx was killed near the building site. One claw was set in gold and hung off the watch fob of John James Mauser, who presented his wife with a thick spotted muff made to the mold of her tender hands. She referred to it ever after as “our first housecat,” and meowed at him a little, when they were alone, but she was much too well brought up to do more than that and stiffened harder than the iron banisters when she was touched. Trying to make love to her was for young Mr. Mauser like touching the frozen body of a window mannequin whose temples, only, whitened and throbbing, showed the strain. One night, he looked down at Placide Armstrong Gheen, Placide Mauser. Her arms were stiffly cocked and raised, her legs sprawled, her face as he formed an apology in panic was lean and mournful and suddenly gopherlike. When she curled her upper lip her long front teeth showed, she was like a meek animal mad with fear. He fell back, turned away. He’d married Placide for money, maybe worse, and now they had this house.

They had this house of chimneys whose bricks contained the blood of pigs and calves so that a greasy sadness drifted in the festive rooms. They had this house of tears of lace constructed of a million tiny knots of useless knowledge. This house of windows hung with the desperations of dark virgins. They had this house of stacked sandstone colored the richest clay-red and lavender hue. Once this stone had formed the live heart of sacred islands. Now it was a fashionable backdrop to their ambitions. They had this house of crushed hands and horses dropping in padded collars and this house of the shame of Miss Polly Elizabeth Gheen’s inability to sexually attract the architect and the architect’s obsession with doorways curving in and curving out and how to get them just exactly so, eminently right. They had this house of railroad and then lumber money and the sucking grind of eastern mills. This house under which there might as well have been a child sacrificed, to lie underneath the corner beam’s sunk sill, for money that remained unpaid for years to masons and to drivers was simple as food snatched outright. In fact, there is no question that a number of people of all ages lost their lives on account of this house.

That is the case, always, with great buildings and large doings. Placide knew this better than her husband, but both were nonplussed, and felt it simply was their fate to have this house of German silver sinks and a botanical nursery, of palm leaf moldings and foyers that led into foyers of pale stained glass, this house of bathrooms floored with quiet marble, gray and finely veined. This house of lead plumbing that eroded minds. This house of beeswaxed mantels and carved paneling, of wooden benches set into the entryway wall and cornices and scrolls and heavy doors hung skillfully to swing shut without a sound — all this made of wood, fine-grained, very old-grown, quartersawn oak that still in its season and for many years after would exude beads of thin sap — as though recalling growth and life on the land belonging to Fleur Pillager and the shores of Matchimanito, beyond.

O N THE MOST exclusive ridge of the city, our pure white house was set, pristine as a cake in the window of a bakery shop. High on sloped and snowy grounds, it was unshadowed yet by trees. The roof, gables, porch, all chiseled and bored in fantastic shapes, were frosted with an overnight fall of gleaming snow. Clipped in cones and cubes, the shrubs were coated with the same lacquer, as was the fountain, frozen, and the white cast-iron lacework of the benches and the tea tables in the yard. The white deer at the gate, dusted with a sugar powder, pawed delicately at its pedestal and nosed the glittering air. The sun was high, small, its brilliance concentrated on this patch of royal blankness, which is why I imagine her arrival from an outside vantage, although I was within.

I see her walking up the pale drive constructed for the approach of a carriage (but what would she know of formal conveyance?). I see the negative of her as she stooped to her dark bundle, the image of a question mark set on a page, alone. Or like a keyhole, you could say, sunk into a door locked and painted shut, the deep black figure layered in shawls was more an absence, a slot for a coin, an invitation for the curious, than a woman come to plead for menial work.

If only I’d had the sense to understand the lay of the situation, instead of the appearance of her — closed, shabby, clean, dark, and dull — I would have noticed we’d met, because of her stubborn and shuttered incomprehension, in the parlor, where social equals gather. We should have conducted our very first conference in one of the rooms out back of the house, reserved for utilities and duty. Instead, Fleur Pillager stood with head bowed before me, dripping on the interlocked figures of the Persian carpet. Azure and indigo, rose-brick and barley pale. I cared for that carpet with a mother’s tenderness. A damp cloth to sponge the mud up would be required, I thought, and asked her to discard her boots.