Autumn was wet in Boston that year.
The rain began in mid-September and continued for three weeks without surcease—or so it seemed to Linneth Stone, who had spent most of that time cloistered in the humanities wing of Sethian College, correcting page proofs and double-checking footnotes, pausing at odd moments to watch the rain sluice down the high windows and cascade from the rain gutters and over the casements of the library across the square.
Pagan Cults of Meso-America was the first tangible fruit of her long struggle for tenure. It both consolidated and justified her career. She was proud of the book. She loved the solid look of the typeset words, invested with an authority the manuscript had lacked. But she had been struggling with the book for half a decade, and what she didn’t like to admit was that the work—her life—had begun to border on tedium. Hours of minutiae, days of solitary page-turning, relieved by . . . nothing much. And the rain went on and on.
It was, in its way, not a bad kind of tedium. Her chamber was cozy enough. She was warm against the weather, and there was coffee from the hallway urn, and the periodic clanking of the radiator, like the complaining of some gruff but dependable old friend. The time passed in neat packets of hours and days. But it was repetitious time, and it was often lonely. Few of the senior academics in her department knew what to make of a woman with tenure, especially a relatively young woman: she had turned thirty-four in August. Young, at least, compared to those bearded venerables who had been haunting the stacks and carrels since the Titans walked the earth. They stared at her the way they might stare at a talking dung beetle, or a chimp that had been trained to smoke cigars.
And each night she hurried home to her tiny apartment on Theodotus Street, through the leaf-tumble and autumn air, past rattling motorcarriages and bored dray horses, from warmth to warmth: the warmth of her hot plate and her quilted blankets. This is success, she told herself. This is my career. This is how I mean to spend the rest of my life.
But each night the memory came of her field expedition three summers ago in the Sierra Mazateca with her guides and two graduate students: a time when she had often been frightened for her life, when she had been dirty, uncomfortable, and too often helpless in the arms of fate. Now she would lie in bed reliving those months. And as terrifying as that time had often been, Linneth thought . . . it had not been tedious.
Certainly she didn’t want to go back to New Spain. That part of her research was finished. In any case, the entire area was a war zone. But she wondered if the trip had not changed something inside her, had not ignited an unsuspected appetite for—what? Adventure? Surely not. But for something to happen. Another milestone. Something that would matter in her life.
Some nights it was almost a prayer. She remembered her mother murmuring prayers at night: ostensibly to Apollo, since Daddy was a paidonomos in that cult, but more likely to the land around their house in rural New York, away from city lights, where the stars were vivid on summer nights and the forest hummed with life. A prayer to the local gods, who went nameless in the New World, at least since the aboriginals had been exterminated or driven west; whose sybils had fallen silent or never spoken from their meadows. “We live in a breathless place,” Linneth’s mother had once told her. “Without pneuma. No inspiration. No wonder the hierarchs are so powerful here.”
More powerful than she had guessed, Linneth thought. For her mother, the bad times had come all too soon.
Still, she allowed herself a small heretical prayer. Deliver me from this lonely sameness, she thought. And this damned rain!
But the gods, her mother would have reminded her, are capricious. Linneth’s deliverance came in an abrupt and unpleasant form. And the rain went on for days.
She shook her raincoat off in the chipped tile lobby of her walk-up building, carried it dripping upstairs past two landings decorated with circular framed mirrors, the bane of her life, always giving back reflections at the least flattering hours: dawn or dusk. Her hair was wet despite the rain cap and she looked small in the glare of the incandescent lamps. Small nose, small round face, compressed pale lips reluctant to offer a smile. When she first moved in, she had always smiled at herself in these mirrors. She no longer bothered. “Wet mouse,” she whispered. “Linneth, you are a wet mouse.”
Her wardrobe was conventionally black, a black blouse and black floorsweeper, buttonhooks tarnished with wear; underneath she wore a modest bustle and corset that contorted her into the shape of, she supposed, an acceptable female don, though there were not many guiding examples.
Linneth took a longer look at herself in the mirror at the second-floor landing. Women with careers were supposed to be hard. She didn’t look hard. Only weary. There were smudges under her eyes. She had stayed up late last night listening to the radio, a program of war songs, lonesome songs about separated lovers. She tried to imagine what it must be like to have a lover at the front—in Cuernavaca, say, where all those lovely white adobe buildings were being shelled. She thought it must be terrible.
She walked down the hallway to her door, which was ajar.
She stopped and looked at it.
Had she left it open? Impossible. She was compulsive about locking her door. There had been robberies in the neighborhood.
Perhaps she had been robbed. The thought of it made her sick with apprehension. She pushed on the door and it glided open. There was a light on inside. She was suddenly aware of the sound of her breathing and the rattle of rain on the frame of this old building. She stepped through the tiny entranceway, past the coat closet and into the sitting room.
There was a man inside. He sat calmly in her large chair with one long leg cocked over the other. He seemed to expect her.
He wore the brown uniform of a senior Proctor. He was a middle-aged man, but trim. His hair was thick and black; his eyes were pale and patient. He smiled at her.
Linneth was numb with fright.
He said, “Come in, Miss Stone. Though you hardly need an invitation into your own home. I know this is unexpected. I apologize.”
She didn’t want to come in. She wanted to bolt. She wanted to run back out into the rainy dark. But she drew a ragged breath and put her raincoat in the closet and stepped into the light of her floor lamp, a sculptured wooden electric lamp which was the nicest of her meager furnishings, but which she hated now, because this man had touched it.
“Don’t be afraid,” the Proctor said.
She almost laughed.
He said, “You are Linneth Stone—are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Then sit down. I haven’t come to arrest you.”
She sat on the edge of her reading chair, as far from the Proctor as possible. Her racing heart had begun to recover its pace, but her body was on full alert. She felt keenly attentive. The room seemed terribly bright, wholly electric.
“My name is Demarch.” She looked at his pips. He added, “Lieutenant,” pronouncing it the European way, as Proctors did. “Please relax, Miss Stone. I’m here for a consultation. Your department head said you were the person to speak to.”
So the Bureau had already talked to faculty. This was serious. Demarch wasn’t here to arrest her, he claimed, but who could believe a Proctor?
She remembered the last time the Proctors had come to her door. Her mother had answered. Linneth had not seen her mother again.
And there were other stories, always new stories, the knock at the door, the disappeared colleague. Academics had been under scrutiny ever since the Alien and Sedition laws were enacted. With her family background, she could hardly be an exception.
Demarch hadn’t paid her the courtesy of knocking. He could have come to see her at her office if it was a consultation he wanted. But she supposed a Proctor wouldn’t do that. They were too accustomed to intimidation. It was their way of life, so familiar as to be invisible.
She said, “Is this about my book?”
“Pagan Cults of Middle America?”
“Meso,” she said. “Meso-America. Not ‘middle.’ ”
The Proctor smiled again. “You’ve spent too much time proofreading. Meso-America. I’ve read the manuscript. Your publishers have been cooperative. It’s a fine scholarly work, insofar as I can judge. The Ideological Branch gave it careful attention, of course. Disseminating falsehoods anti-religio is still a felony. But we do try to be reasonable. Science is science. You don’t strike me as a subversive.”
“Thank you. Comparative ethnology isn’t advocative. There have been court cases—”
“I know. This isn’t about your book, in any case, though the book is what qualifies you. We want you to do some work for the Bureau de la Convenance Religieuse.”
“I have my own work.”
“Nothing that can’t wait. We’ve arranged a sabbatical—if you choose to take it.”
“My book—”
“You must be nearly finished with the proofs.”
She didn’t deny it. Demarch would know all this. There was a saying: God sees the sparrow fall. The Bureau takes notes.
He said, “We’ll need you for six months—possibly as much as a year.”
She was aghast. It was too big an idea to swallow: the Bureau wanted her to work for them, to go away for six months, interrupt her life, such as it was. . . . “For what?”
“To practice the science of ethnology,” Demarch said. “The thing you’re good at.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It isn’t simple to explain.”
“I’m not sure I want an explanation. You said I had a choice? I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“I understand. I sympathize, Miss Stone, believe it or not. If it were up to me, I would leave it at that. But I don’t think the Bureau as a whole would be happy with your decision.”
“But if I have a choice—”
“You do. So do my superiors. They have the choice of putting in a word with your publishers, say, or talking to the chancellor about your academic qualifications in light of your family history.” He saw her expression and held up his hands. “I won’t say any of this is inevitable. Only that you run a risk if you refuse to cooperate.”
She didn’t answer, couldn’t find words to answer.
He added, “We’re not talking about manual labor on some penal farm. This is the work you’re trained to do, after all, and only six months out of a long career. It’s much less than some people have been asked to give up for their country.”
Please, Linneth thought, don’t start talking about the war, the noble dead. It would be too much. But Demarch seemed to sense her reaction. He fell silent, his eyes fixed on her.
She said, “What would the Bureau want with an ethnologist?” A woman, at that, she did not add. It seemed out of character.
“Basically, we want you to write an analysis of a foreign village—its mores and taboos, something of its history.”
“In six months?”
“A sketch, not a thesis.”
“Isn’t that the kind of thing you can look up in a book?”
“Not in this case, no.”
“I would be working from the field?”
“Yes.”
“Where?” It was something to do with the war, she guessed. New Spain, almost certainly.
Demarch said, “You agree to cooperate?”
“Rather than losing tenure? Facing a felony charge or some secret trial?”
“You know better than that.”
“Under the circumstances, what can I say?”
Demarch had stopped smiling. “You can say, ‘I agree.’ ”
The words. He actually wanted the words.
Linneth gave him a long, defiant look. Demarch didn’t acknowledge it, only gazed passively back. His uniform was crisp and neat and somehow more intimidating because of it. Her own rain-wet clothing smelled of damp wool and defeat.
She lowered her head. “I agree,” she whispered.
“Pardon me?” His voice was neutral.
“I agree.”
“Yes.” He reached for his attaché case. “Then let me show you some extraordinary photographs.”
She was allowed three days to finish her corrections to the page proofs. Linneth paid scrupulous attention to the work, using it to blot out of her mind the story Lieutenant Demarch had told her. Even after she had seen the photos (the strange town so seemingly real, the shopfronts displaying impossible goods, the signs in a language only approximately English), she still half-believed that it was a hoax, some elaborate ruse the Bureau had devised to trick her into confessing—well, something, anything; that she would end up in prison after all.
In the hallway she passed the department head, Abraham Valcour, who returned her cold stare with an aloof little smile. There were rumors that Valcour had contacts in the War Department, that some of his field expeditions had carried Commissariat spies as part of their luggage. Linneth had reserved judgment, but not any longer; it was Valcour, she was certain, who had sent the Proctors to her door. She imagined the conversation. Speak to this one. She’s intelligent and malleable, wrote a decent book. He could be maddeningly plausible when he wanted to lie. He had never cared for the idea of a woman in his department, though her academic bona fides had been inarguable. Certainly he had never passed up an opportunity to slight her. This was merely the logical next step, giving her to the Proctors like a choice bone to a kennel full of dogs. No doubt he hoped she wouldn’t be back. Linneth vowed that she would be back, if only to erase his maddening smile.
Two Rivers, she thought. The name of the town that had appeared in the deep forest of northern Mille Lacs was Two Rivers.
The page proofs went to her publisher bound in brown waxed paper and tied with string.
Home, she packed her heaviest clothes. Autumn came early in the northern Near West. Winters, she had heard, could be very cruel.
She said good-bye to her secretary and to a few graduate students. There was no one else.