newyorker--2020-08-10--Wayne Thiebaud’s “Double Scoop”

Wayne Thiebaud’s “Double Scoop”

Wayne Thiebaud is nearly a hundred years old , and he has spent the majority of those years painting .
Those paintings—with their thick pigments , bright colors , and obsession with food—have become part of the American canon , and Thiebaud ’ s latest cover is a treat to be cherished in the heat of summer .
Thiebaud is a lively presence , even on the phone , and he recently spoke to us about his influences , his love of cartoons , and how unfunny the New Yorker cartoonists he met were .
It ’ s wonderful to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ice cream that contain so much story .
Tell me a little about how a boy who wanted to be a cartoonist became a painter .
Well , I still do cartoons for myself .
I love cartoons—they are so much a part of caricature , and caricature is useful in terms of style .
When you think like a cartoonist , it makes possible the idea of diminishment , of exaggeration .
It lets you play with all kinds of wonderful things , whether it ’ s color , or space , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Your image can depend on a kind of exaggeration or reduction .
I feel very privileged to be interested in that .
Which artists or cartoonists most inspire you ?
I love George Herriman .
He ’ s a master for me .
“ Krazy Kat ” is more than a comic strip ; it ’ s an inquiry into the idea of humanness , vulnerability , love .
But there are a lot of others—all those old characters with the big feet and big smiles .
Do you mean comic strips @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Theatre ” ?
Popeye ?
[ Popeye first appeared in “ Thimble Theatre.
” ] That was the first thing that I copied !
I was born in 1920 , so I ’ m an old guy .
When I was a kid , I looked forward to the Sunday funnies so much .
And I had an uncle who was a cartoonist—he worked on a strip called “ Happy Hooligan ” —and he would show me how to do them .
Back then , every kid read the funny pages .
Yes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Depression , in the thirties , everyone read them .
I once had a good talk with [ the late artist ] Philip Guston about “ Mutt and Jeff , ” Bud Fisher ’ s strip .
Guston was very much influenced by cartoons .
Many American painters from my generation loved that tradition .
Often , they first fell in love with the visual arts because of cartoons .
And you tried to make it as a professional cartoonist ?
Yes , when I went to New York in 1946 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was why I went .
And I got to meet a lot of those wonderful cartoonists : George Price , Reamer Keller , Helen Hokinson , Peter Arno .
But I found them somewhat lacking in humor .
[ Laughs . ]
They were kind of angry all the time .
Some of them were pretty cynical .
This is your second ice-cream cover—do you feel like your representational paintings are also telling stories ?
Yes , I ’ m very interested in my images being seen or read .
I don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an élitist .
People and love of people is a great part of my life .
I ’ m very interested in the human condition , and that means we have to correct how we live with one other .
That theme was influential on my latest series of paintings , a series of clowns .
I just had an exhibition in my gallery in San Francisco , and they ’ re going to a museum in Laguna Beach .
For more covers by Thiebaud , see below :

Wayne Thiebaud is nearly a hundred years old, and he has spent the majority of those years painting. Those paintings—with their thick pigments, bright colors, and obsession with food—have become part of the American canon, and Thiebaud’s latest cover is a treat to be cherished in the heat of summer. Thiebaud is a lively presence, even on the phone, and he recently spoke to us about his influences, his love of cartoons, and how unfunny the New Yorker cartoonists he met were.
It’s wonderful to see this painting: two scoops of ice cream that contain so much story. Tell me a little about how a boy who wanted to be a cartoonist became a painter.
Well, I still do cartoons for myself. I love cartoons—they are so much a part of caricature, and caricature is useful in terms of style. When you think like a cartoonist, it makes possible the idea of diminishment, of exaggeration. It lets you play with all kinds of wonderful things, whether it’s color, or space, or whatever elements are in a picture. Your image can depend on a kind of exaggeration or reduction. I feel very privileged to be interested in that.
Two cartoons sketched out by the artist.
Which artists or cartoonists most inspire you?
I love George Herriman. He’s a master for me. “Krazy Kat” is more than a comic strip; it’s an inquiry into the idea of humanness, vulnerability, love. But there are a lot of others—all those old characters with the big feet and big smiles.
Do you mean comic strips like Elzie Segar’s “Thimble Theatre”?
Popeye? [Popeye first appeared in “Thimble Theatre.”] That was the first thing that I copied! I was born in 1920, so I’m an old guy. When I was a kid, I looked forward to the Sunday funnies so much. And I had an uncle who was a cartoonist—he worked on a strip called “Happy Hooligan”—and he would show me how to do them.
Back then, every kid read the funny pages.
Yes, very much so. Especially during the Depression, in the thirties, everyone read them. I once had a good talk with [the late artist] Philip Guston about “Mutt and Jeff,” Bud Fisher’s strip. Guston was very much influenced by cartoons. Many American painters from my generation loved that tradition. Often, they first fell in love with the visual arts because of cartoons.
And you tried to make it as a professional cartoonist?
Yes, when I went to New York in 1946, I tried to sell cartoons. That was why I went. And I got to meet a lot of those wonderful cartoonists: George Price, Reamer Keller, Helen Hokinson, Peter Arno. But I found them somewhat lacking in humor. [Laughs.] They were kind of angry all the time. Some of them were pretty cynical.
This is your second ice-cream cover—do you feel like your representational paintings are also telling stories?
Yes, I’m very interested in my images being seen or read. I don’t see myself as an avant-gardist or an élitist. People and love of people is a great part of my life. I’m very interested in the human condition, and that means we have to correct how we live with one other. That theme was influential on my latest series of paintings, a series of clowns. I just had an exhibition in my gallery in San Francisco, and they’re going to a museum in Laguna Beach.
For more covers by Thiebaud, see below:


newyorker--2020-08-10--Slide Show: New Yorker Cartoons August 17, 2020

“ And , in one of life ’ s cruel twists , you ’ ll eventually be able to stay @ @ @ @ @ ll no longer want to .
”

“And, in one of life’s cruel twists, you’ll eventually be able to stay out late but you’ll no longer want to.”
Cartoon by Kendra Allenby


newyorker--2020-08-10--“You Are My Dear Friend,” by Madhuri Vijay

“ She ’ s too much for you , ” he said .
His breath smelled of onions and filter coffee .
“ Admit it , ” he pressed her .
“ You can ’ t do this .
You are not capable .
Look at you .
Your hair is a mess .
You don ’ t take care of the house anymore .
You hardly look at me .
You only think of her.
” A month ago , she might have protested , but it no longer mattered what was and wasn ’ t true .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nebulous .
Later , she would think of this as her final failure .
The first and the last , the only two clear in her mind .
“ You may have been an au pair , ” he said , drawing himself up , “ but I am the one who has actually raised a child.
” Rani was in her room , where Geeta had instructed her to stay .
She had not told Srikanth what had happened after she screamed at the young man : the way Rani had attacked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on her neck , the girl ’ s terrible moans .
Rani was , Geeta noticed with a pang , sitting by the window , on the chair Geeta had placed there months before , looking at the garden .
She did not turn around when they came in .
“ Young lady , you are not allowed to go near the gate again , do you understand ?
” Srikanth said in a sonorous voice , and Geeta wondered for whom he was performing .
Partly for her , but partly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wife .
“ I give you the money for your food .
I paid for that chair you ’ re sitting on .
As long as you are under my roof , you will listen to me .
And you are not allowed to speak to strangers.
” It was a smile that Geeta had never seen before .
Beautiful and powerless , it robbed Geeta of breath .
She wanted to run over and hug the girl , but she could feel Srikanth puffing up beside her , working himself into a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the clock in the hall .
“ Are you laughing at me ?
” he asked softly .
At that , the girl ’ s smile became even more helpless .
Geeta closed her eyes , and at the moment she opened them she saw a strange thing—a gray-green blur shooting down outside the window .
It took her a moment to realize that it was a jackfruit .
“ You think you can disrespect me ?
” Srikanth was saying .
“ Just because my wife lets you disrespect her , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you can disrespect me ?
Eh ?
I know how girls like you think .
Sly , that ’ s what you are , sly .
Fine , if my wife can ’ t do it , I ’ ll teach you to behave .
I ’ ll teach you to be scared.
” Father , mother , child , suitcase .
It was a parody of the family trip Geeta had suggested months ago .
Srikanth , still swept up in his own theatre of punishment , carried Rani ’ s battered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then set it down in the dust .
Rani and Geeta followed , walking a foot apart , not touching .
“ Go , ” he told Rani , holding the gate open .
“ Pick it up and go.
” Rani picked up the bag .
She slipped under his outstretched arm and past the gate .
On the other side , she rolled her shoulders back , as if warming up for a marathon .
She was much healthier than when she had first arrived , her face and figure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long enough now to touch her neck .
“ You want to find your father and mother ?
” Srikanth demanded .
“ Go find them and don ’ t come back here.
” Rani began to walk .
She walked in the direction the young man had taken earlier .
Srikanth stepped out onto the pavement and Geeta followed .
Now they could see Rani ’ s back , her shuffle more pronounced because of the weight of the suitcase .
But Rani did not falter .
She passed under a street @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ She ’ ll turn around , ” Srikanth said .
“ She ’ ll turn and start crying at any moment.
” The girl walked .
On and on and on , without the slightest shift in her stride .
Unaccountably , Geeta felt laughter bubbling from inside her .
Rani had arrived at the last street lamp .
She passed under it only as a shadow , and then she was out of sight .
Geeta could not tell which way she had gone .
She turned to Srikanth , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For a moment , they looked at each other , and she saw what ugliness could be released when the bloated complacence of a man like him was ruptured .
“ She ’ s playing with us , ” he said .
“ She won ’ t really leave .
Where can she go ?
” “ Why doesn ’ t your daughter call you ?
” Geeta asked suddenly , speaking in her normal voice .
“ In a whole year , she hasn ’ t called you .
And you haven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slowly to face her .
“ You know what I think ?
” Geeta continued .
“ I think you don ’ t know where she is.
” He froze .
Then , as if it were intolerable to remain even a moment longer with her , he took off running in the direction that Rani had gone .
Geeta stayed where she was .
A young couple came past , walking their small dog , and she smiled at them .
A breeze picked up , bringing the smell of grilled chicken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she felt a quick pang of hunger for meat .
After a long while , she saw two figures coming back up the road .
Rani was still carrying her own suitcase , her walk as unhurried as ever .
The girl did not look at Geeta as she stood holding the gate open .
Srikanth , too , avoided looking at her .
He was huffing , his face shining with sweat .
Geeta waited a moment longer , then padlocked the gate and followed them in .
That night , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way , the two of them on their sides , his chin at her shoulder .
Her eyes were closed , but she could see clearly enough .
Their strange bodies , made stranger together , perched on the raft of the mattress .
“ We can ’ t do anything for her , ” he was saying , his voice a murmur , as dry as paper at her collarbone .
The girl was damaged , he said , had been damaged from the day she was born .
They would never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would never be able to love her enough ; the older she grew , the more uncontrollable she would become , and who knew how she might hurt them , which shady characters from the streets she would invite inside the house .
And once they were inside they would rape Rani , they would steal , they would murder Srikanth and Geeta in bed .
And suppose Rani did manage to track down her father and mother , or they managed to find her ?
They might hold the child as ransom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money .
Perhaps this had been the idea all along .
Softly , he whispered his insinuations into Geeta ’ s shoulder , her ear , as tender as a man making love .
It would be better for the girl to be with people who understood her , he said , people used to dealing with girls like her .
It would be better for everybody , Geeta included , Geeta especially , to let her go .
Wasn ’ t Geeta tired ?
Wasn ’ t she ready to go back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wandering in the market , to things as they had been before ?
Why take on the extra burden ?
The girl would be fine .
She had lived in their house for less than six months .
She would forget soon enough .
If they saw her again , she would barely remember them .

Audio available Listen to this story Audio: Madhuri Vijay reads.
The Bakers held a party in their flat, and Mrs. Baker told Geeta that she was to bring the children in to say good night to the guests. So just before eight-thirty she made the girls undress and pulled their purple nightgowns down over their heads. Sally, nine years old, stretched her chubby fingers skyward. Emma, seven, was less coöperative, but together they managed it. The girls smiled sleepily at Geeta through veils of blond hair. Holding each by the hand, she walked them up the corridor toward the smell of rum and cigarettes.
The guests were scattered across the living room, most of them reclining on the Bakers’ couches with the spent aspect of runners at the end of a race. Geeta paused with the girls at the entrance.
From an armchair by the window, Mrs. Baker surfaced. Tall and thin, she wore her yellow hair in a plumb-line ponytail down her black turtleneck sweater.
“There they are,” she said. “Come here, my bumblebees.”
Two small hands left Geeta’s, and then the girls were in their mother’s arms. She heard Mr. Baker’s voice from over by the bar, “Geeta has saved our lives, ladies and gentlemen. Take my advice. Don’t try to go it alone in this country. Get an au pair.” Now she could see him, one elbow on the bar’s burnished surface. He raised his glass in her direction. “Just don’t steal ours, because you’ll have to fight us to the bloody death.”
Laughter dribbled its way across the room. Mrs. Baker was crouching between her daughters, arms around their shoulders. She was drunk, but Geeta knew that those gray-green eyes could snap to attention at any moment. She was not afraid of Mrs. Baker, because she knew that Mrs. Baker liked her. She was not afraid of Mr. Baker, either, because in matters of child rearing, as in most others, he deferred to his wife.
“All right, little misses, say good night to this debauched lot,” Mrs. Baker said. Emma giggled and said, “G’night.” Sally stared at the lounging figures, something imperious in her expression. But when she spoke it was a plaintive whisper. “Good night.”
“And good night to you, Geeta,” Mrs. Baker said. “We’ll try to be quiet, but if we disturb you—”
“I will call the police. Good night, Mrs. Baker,” Geeta said.
There was more laughter. The girls’ mother gave them one last squeeze and then stood, looking wistful. As the children were walking toward her, Geeta glanced around. Most of the Bakers’ guests were British expatriates like them, but there were a few Indians, one of whom was sitting in a chair at her elbow, away from the rest. There wasn’t supposed to be a chair in that corner. He must have dragged it over. He had his forearms on his knees and was watching her. She glanced away immediately but retained the impression of a puffy face, tired eyes behind glasses.
Then she felt the children tugging at her hands, and she marched them back to their bedroom, where she locked the windows, turned down their beds, pushed their dolls to the side, switched on the frog-shaped night-light, and stroked their foreheads before leaving them to sleep.
Her own bedroom was small but well appointed. The Bakers had told her that they were aware of how domestic help was treated in India, and that they would sooner drown themselves than treat another human being that way. So Geeta had sheets and pillows from England and a cupboard that was much too large for her few clothes. She had her own bathroom, and a cell phone, whose bill, for the past eighteen months, the Bakers had paid.
On weekdays, her mornings were hers. The children went to an international school, and as long as she was at the gate by one-fifteen the Bakers didn’t care what she did. Besides Geeta, they employed a maidservant, a cook, and two drivers. The cook was old and beyond the nip of jealousy, and Geeta barely saw the drivers, but it was possible that the maidservant resented her for her relative freedom. To ward off any ill feeling, every so often Geeta brought home a trinket for the girl, who was a chatty, dimpled creature from Jharkhand. Geeta was from Odisha and had nothing in common with her, except the fact that people in Bangalore knew almost nothing about where either of them came from.
At various times, Geeta had bought the girl an alarm clock, a pair of leaf-shaped earrings, and a fake-silver pendant engraved with the words “You Are My Dear Friend.” She worried that she might have overdone it a bit with the pendant, but the girl loved it and loved Geeta for it.
A few days after the party, Geeta was walking in the Shivajinagar market. She needed nothing but enjoyed the hustle and the abundance of the place, the carts of folded handkerchiefs with crimped edges, the stacks of unbranded jeans, the enormous steel cooking pots meant for weddings. She’d paused at a stationery stall and was examining a fake-gold-nib pen when she heard her name.
Looking up, she saw a vaguely familiar man approaching her with a smile. She did not smile back but waited for him to clarify in her memory.
The Bakers’, the smoke, the chair by the corner.
“You walk fast,” he said. He wore a polyester checkered shirt over his trousers, and on his feet were rubber chappals. He didn’t, in this outfit, look like someone the Bakers would know.
“You don’t remember me,” he said, sounding disappointed.
“You were in Mr. and Mrs. Baker’s house on”—she paused to count back—“Saturday.”
“That’s right,” he said. His face was less puffy than she remembered, but his eyes were just as tired. His name, he told her, was Srikanth. “How long have you been working for those people?” he asked. “What did they call you—an au pair?”
Sensing the delicate contempt behind the question, she answered, “For some time.”
“And before that?”
“I was working somewhere else.”
Srikanth eyed her with amusement. “Are all au pairs as talkative as you?”
By now she was thoroughly wary, which, paradoxically, made her appear serene. When he told her that he was looking for a new frying pan, she nodded. When he asked if she wanted to help him choose one, she looked him full in the face and lied, “Sorry, they will be angry with me if I don’t go home.”
But, just before she was out of earshot, some instinct made her turn back and say, “Frying pans are this way. I can show you if you want.”
During one of their walks in the market, which became routine over the next several months, Srikanth told Geeta that a colleague had invited him to the Bakers’ party, and that he had hated it. “Not one person said anything interesting,” he said. “Except for you. My little au pair.”
He spoke English, Tamil, and atrocious Hindi. She spoke Hindi, Odia, and passable English. So they made English their language, though she learned a few Tamil words, flattening her tongue in her mouth to speak them. Veetu, house. Mazhai, rain. Ponnu, girl.
When she told the Bakers that she was leaving to get married, they did not try to dissuade her.
“I don’t remember him,” Mrs. Baker said. “Do you, Charlie?”
“Not well. Someone brought him along, I think. How old are you, Geeta?”
“Twenty-nine,” she said.
He nodded. “Older than I thought. But he’s quite a bit older than that?”
“He is fifty-three years old,” she said.
“Not a child,” Mrs. Baker said, and there was a warning there, but whether it was addressed to Geeta or to Mr. Baker was unclear, as was whether it was meant to refer to Srikanth or to Geeta herself. “Emma and Sally are going to hate this, you know,” she added.
Mr. Baker said, “Are we at least invited to the wedding, then?”
Geeta smiled. He sighed a little sadly, as if he’d never expected that they would be.
She called to tell Sister Stella, who took some time to remember her. Geeta could see the wide rosewood desk in the dark-panelled office. Three ballpoint pens: red, green, black. The old Bible bound in brown leather, as big as a briefcase. The wooden cross on its stand. The ruler that stretched the breadth of the desk. Sister Stella said, “And he is a Christian?”
“No,” Geeta said. “But he is willing to convert.”
“Oh? In that case,” Sister Stella said, “this is a joyful day indeed.”
They got married in March. Srikanth left for the office around nine o’clock, and Geeta spent most mornings wandering around the large house. She loved to sit in the vast garden at noon, when trees throttled the sunlight and she could hear the hectic buzzing of heat above the canopy. The house had belonged to Srikanth’s father, who had, of all things, won the lottery and bought this fan-shaped slice of land in the heart of Bangalore. Now it was worth a fortune.
“He was a miser,” Srikanth told her. “If he could have taken this house with him when he died, he would have. Nothing made him suffer more than giving it to me. But the only other option was Swati, and he would have burned it down before giving it to a girl.”
She had met Srikanth’s sister, Swati, a tall, officious woman, who arrived on the express from Chennai for the wedding. It was a registry wedding and was over before Geeta knew it. She heard Srikanth say, “Geeta, you have to sign,” and she blushed, knowing that Swati was watching.
There had been a brother, too, but he had died in childhood.
The morning after the wedding, before taking the express back to Chennai, Swati invited them to visit her. She made the offer with cool professionalism, and her eyes betrayed no emotion.
“She is not married?” Geeta asked, after Swati left in a taxi, refusing to allow them to drive her to Cantonment Station.
“Why would you think that?” Srikanth asked. “She’s got two children, a boy and a girl.” He touched her lower back. “Not everyone stays alone for as long as you.”
She knew that he had been married before, that his first wife was still alive. She knew that he had a daughter, who was grown. She did not ask for pictures or details, because early on in their meetings he had joked that he was an old man, and that by the time he’d told her everything about himself she, too, would be old. She sensed the warning and was discreet. She thought of the word “divorce,” mentally pronouncing it DIE‑vorce, but the one time he said it he bit off the first syllable like a hiccup: di‑VORCE. And somehow that dampened her desire to hear more, as if it could only be further proof of her ignorance. Srikanth had a commerce degree; she had her tenth-standard pass certificate, which Sister Stella had handed over as dispassionately as if it were a ration card.
They had sex the night Swati left. After he climaxed, he hovered above her for another second, before letting himself drop onto her body. Then he rolled off and flipped her on her side and drew her back against him. The bed they lay on was his parents’, a high, antique frame with carved posts and a thin, pitiless mattress. Part of her longed for her room at the Bakers’, her foreign sheets, and her too soft pillows.
“And what about you?” he asked in a drowsy voice, after they’d lain in silence for a while.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. My little au pair from Odisha. You’re not going to tell me more about yourself? Where you went to school, what you were like as a child?”
“It is boring,” she said.
“The phrase ‘how interesting’ was not meant to encourage you.” Cartoon by Tom Chitty Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
“No,” he said. “You’re not boring.”
It was not what she meant, and she began to correct him, but his hand twitched, and she knew he was asleep. She knew, too, that he had been relieved by her non-answer. It was natural, she told herself. No man at his stage in life could possibly be interested in childhood stories.
In July, it started to rain. Like clockwork, for two hours each afternoon. The ground in the garden turned swampy. Sitting beneath the terra-cotta overhang of the roof, she watched the toads with their lustrous jumping throats, and the fat brown sparrows that sat impassive and then quaked themselves dry.
She heard Srikanth come back from work, calling her name. She lifted her body and brought herself inside. The house was full of dark, heavy furniture, his parents’ furniture.
“You haven’t started making dinner,” he said.
“I’ll start now,” she said, moving toward the kitchen.
“It’s almost eight.”
There was a grandfather clock next to a hatstand whose arms were antlers. She blinked.
“You’ve been dreaming all day?”
“Maybe we can go out?”
“I have been out. I just want to stay quietly at home.”
She went into the kitchen to start dinner. He followed her.
He said, “What did you do today?”
She poured a cup of rice into a pot and ran her fingers through it, feeling for stones.
“Nothing.”
“Did you read?”
There was a library, full of stiff-spined books he claimed his father had bought to make himself appear more intimidating to visitors.
“A little,” she said. She had taken down one of the books, but its leather binding had reminded her of Sister Stella’s Bible, and she had spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about the hot convent-school courtyard and the dreary, soothing presence of the nuns.
“I don’t understand,” he said finally.
“Understand what?”
“You! What is it that you want? In this world?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?” he echoed. “Not even a child?”
She looked up at him. He was smiling in a way that made her, for a moment, furious. Then the fury was gone. She picked out a stone from the rice, flicking it away.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” he pressed. “You want to have a child?”
She didn’t answer. He took the pot from her hands and set it down.
He said, “I’m not a young man anymore.”
“I know.”
“You know everything,” he said, teasing her now. “My genius little au pair.”
And he led her by the hand to the antique bed with the four carved posters and that punishing mattress.
Five months later, on Christmas Eve, they went to midnight Mass. Srikanth had still not converted, but he promised to do it soon. He fell asleep during the hymns, and Geeta had to wake him when the choir began to file out. He drove them home and fell asleep again right away, while she lay awake, trying to think of how to phrase what she had to say to him.
The next morning, she said, “I think we should go to a doctor.”
He frowned at her. “I’ve already had a child, remember.”
“I know,” she said. “It is me.”
The doctor at Baptist Hospital confirmed this. That week, Geeta caught a bus and rang the bell at the Bakers’ door. The maidservant answered and hugged Geeta.
They discussed her problem. The maidservant was of the opinion that Geeta’s sterility was a good thing, but when she saw Geeta’s expression she leaned in conspiratorially.
“You can do adoption, you know,” she whispered.
Geeta shook her head. “It takes many years, and it is very expensive. And those adoption people will see how old Srikanth is, and they will say no.”
“But that’s only if you do it here. In Jharkhand, babies are being adopted all the time. I know a place where no one checks. You can do it fast, and they will give you any baby you want. Old, young, boy, girl.” She sat back and scrutinized Geeta’s face. “You should get an older child. Otherwise your husband will be dead before it has started walking.”
The first thing that surprised Geeta was the girl’s height. Rani was eight but nearly as tall as she was. Her brown eyes took in the house with a single glance. On the train, she had been silent, eating very little but doing it obediently. Now she stood still, staring at the mossy steps leading to the veranda and the flowerpots that held only ancient gray dirt. Srikanth had already gone inside with Rani’s bag.
In Ranchi, the orphanage director, a scraggy woman with a coal miner’s cough, had given them Rani’s background, which amounted to no more than a blur of prejudices. She was supposedly from a tribal village deep in the forests of eastern Jharkhand. She had come to the orphanage a year before, deposited by an older girl who claimed to be her sister but could as easily have been her mother. The father was not in the picture, and everyone was almost certainly better off that way; there was the lurking stink of criminality, possibly even Naxalism, around him. Rani was not intelligent, the orphanage director went on, tribal girls rarely were, but she was strong and could help with the house. While all this was being conveyed to them, Geeta glanced at Srikanth, who was nodding seriously, as though he’d expected no less. With a chill, she wondered if he was listening to anything the orphanage director was saying. At the end, when he turned to her and asked, “Are you sure you’re ready?,” she was tempted to shake her head, but then she thought of the empty house waiting for her and said, “Yes.”


newyorker--2020-08-10--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

The Beauty in Breaking , by Michele Harper ( Riverhead ) .
This memoir by an E.R .
doctor suggests that emergency medicine can heal its practitioners as well as its patients .
As a teen-ager , growing up among the Black élite of Washington , D.C. , the author drives her brother to the hospital one day after their father bites him .
The emergency room , “ throbbing with life , ” presents an escape from her family ’ s cycle of abuse , and Harper becomes a determined careerist .
Acutely aware that Black women rarely achieve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climbs the ladder at hospitals in the Bronx and Philadelphia , before switching to an under-resourced V.A .
hospital .
A witness to “ tortured flesh , ” she finds that her patients ’ injuries often refract her own trauma , and she attempts to treat with empathy rather than judgment .
Desert Notebooks , by Ben Ehrenreich ( Counterpoint ) .
Cataclysmic climate and cultural changes underpin this essay on ecological destruction , which seeks to explain how we reached a “ too-warm abyss.
” According to Ehrenreich , a climate journalist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have brought our planet to this point .
Writing from deserts across the Southwest—whose tenacious landscape is dotted with Army bases and urban outposts—he draws on Mayan creation myths , anthropological accounts of the decimated Sioux , and Presidential tweets to chronicle humankind ’ s destructive nature .
The breadth of reference lends perspective to our continuing struggle to achieve sustainability : as Ehrenreich writes , “ We are not the first people to believe we are living at the end of time.
” Heaven and Earth , by Paolo Giordano , translated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Pamela Dorman Books ) .
In this charged novel , Teresa , an Italian adolescent visiting her grandmother in Puglia , befriends three strange boys from a neighboring farmhouse , who are being raised by an enigmatic religious man .
She becomes involved with one of the boys , but her family suppresses the relationship .
Years later , the two reconnect and begin living together at the old farmhouse , among a group of environmental activists , whose radical actions lead to tragedy .
What begins as a story of summer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of eco-terrorism—while also posing questions about the nature of passionate attachment .
Love After Love , by Ingrid Persaud ( One World ) .
This conversational novel , set in Trinidad , explores the intricacies of domestic bonds .
After Betty Ramdin ’ s abusive husband dies in an accident , Betty is left alone with her young son .
To make ends meet , she rents her guesthouse to Mr. Chetan , an unassuming , reserved teacher—and a closeted gay man struggling with their society ’ s pervasive homophobia .
A makeshift @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a simple , heartwarming tale , and there are many dramatic twists .
Most memorable , though , are quieter moments , such as when Mr. Chetan cooks roti or Betty avoids an annoying suitor .

The Beauty in Breaking, by Michele Harper (Riverhead). This memoir by an E.R. doctor suggests that emergency medicine can heal its practitioners as well as its patients. As a teen-ager, growing up among the Black élite of Washington, D.C., the author drives her brother to the hospital one day after their father bites him. The emergency room, “throbbing with life,” presents an escape from her family’s cycle of abuse, and Harper becomes a determined careerist. Acutely aware that Black women rarely achieve powerful positions in her field, she climbs the ladder at hospitals in the Bronx and Philadelphia, before switching to an under-resourced V.A. hospital. A witness to “tortured flesh,” she finds that her patients’ injuries often refract her own trauma, and she attempts to treat with empathy rather than judgment.
Desert Notebooks, by Ben Ehrenreich (Counterpoint). Cataclysmic climate and cultural changes underpin this essay on ecological destruction, which seeks to explain how we reached a “too-warm abyss.” According to Ehrenreich, a climate journalist, human delusions of purpose and exceptionalism have brought our planet to this point. Writing from deserts across the Southwest—whose tenacious landscape is dotted with Army bases and urban outposts—he draws on Mayan creation myths, anthropological accounts of the decimated Sioux, and Presidential tweets to chronicle humankind’s destructive nature. The breadth of reference lends perspective to our continuing struggle to achieve sustainability: as Ehrenreich writes, “We are not the first people to believe we are living at the end of time.”
Heaven and Earth, by Paolo Giordano, translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel (Pamela Dorman Books). In this charged novel, Teresa, an Italian adolescent visiting her grandmother in Puglia, befriends three strange boys from a neighboring farmhouse, who are being raised by an enigmatic religious man. She becomes involved with one of the boys, but her family suppresses the relationship. Years later, the two reconnect and begin living together at the old farmhouse, among a group of environmental activists, whose radical actions lead to tragedy. What begins as a story of summer romance transforms into something more ambitious—an account of eco-terrorism—while also posing questions about the nature of passionate attachment.
Love After Love, by Ingrid Persaud (One World). This conversational novel, set in Trinidad, explores the intricacies of domestic bonds. After Betty Ramdin’s abusive husband dies in an accident, Betty is left alone with her young son. To make ends meet, she rents her guesthouse to Mr. Chetan, an unassuming, reserved teacher—and a closeted gay man struggling with their society’s pervasive homophobia. A makeshift family forms, but this is not a simple, heartwarming tale, and there are many dramatic twists. Most memorable, though, are quieter moments, such as when Mr. Chetan cooks roti or Betty avoids an annoying suitor.


newyorker--2020-08-10--Can Designer Mice Save Us from COVID-19?

Imagine , for a moment , a time when the coronavirus is eradicated .
There are therapies and a vaccine .
Lives are spared .
People will ask , How did we get here ?
The answer may turn on a decision , made early this year , to send sixteen vials of mouse sperm to Mount Desert Island , Maine .
Much of the island is a national park , with granite peaks and rocky beaches .
Tucked into the landscape is the Jackson Laboratory , a nonprofit founded , in 1929 , to conduct biomedical research .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laboratory mice in the country , with a mouse repository that contains more than eleven thousand specimens .
On February 3rd , COVID-19 was not yet officially a pandemic .
There were three hundred and sixty-two reported deaths—all but one of them in China—when Cat Lutz , the director of the mouse repository , got an e-mail from a colleague who works at another Jackson facility , in Shanghai , and lives in Wuhan , the outbreak ’ s epicenter .
When the authorities locked down his city , he was stuck at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Lutz recalled .
“ He said , ‘ I am thinking about what we can do.
’ He had started combing through the literature.
” Both scientists knew that the novel coronavirus would not make a conventional lab mouse ill—a severe obstacle to the development of a treatment .
The medical community needed a mouse that was genetically modified with a human feature added to its lung cells , so that the virus would affect it .
Years earlier , three American research teams had engineered such a mouse in response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , co-led by Stanley Perlman , a virologist at the University of Iowa , had published a paper about its animal in 2007 .
SARS had receded , the authors noted , but the need to study coronaviruses had not .
“ It still remains a potential threat , ” they warned .
“ That day , we called Stan Perlman to see if he would donate his mice , and he said yes , ” Lutz recalled .
Those animals were no longer living , but Perlman ’ s team had frozen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days , followed by fourteen more .
“ We basically decided to use every last drop , ” Lutz said .
At Jackson , the sperm was rushed to a “ dirty room , ” where it was washed of potential contaminants .
Then , using I.V.F.
, the laboratory began the process of generating twelve hundred transgenic mouse pups .
With each passing week , the coronavirus crisis became more acute .
Lutz ’ s daughter fled Manhattan for Maine .
As cities shut down , Jackson technicians were not only racing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ swamped with requests to cryopreserve genetically modified mice used to study other diseases .
Universities were shuttering labs whose work was not related to the pandemic , and research animals were poised to die by the thousands .
“ We sent trucks around the country , ” Lutz said .
She was standing in Jackson ’ s cryopreservation room , beside twelve large steel vats .
As she looked into one of the open containers , cold mist floated upward from inside it .
“ It ’ s like a Halloween lab , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nitrogen , ” she said .
A technician was extracting vials of sperm from the vat .
“ She is wearing a lot of protective gear , because liquid nitrogen can burn you , ” Lutz explained .
“ She is going to transfer those into this larger vat.
” Lutz headed to an office where a computer displayed a video feed of a breeding room—a super-secure sterile environment with racks of mouse cages and an “ air shower , ” to wash particles from clothing before entry .
After the twelve hundred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were bred to produce more , with the expectation that demand would be enormous .
Mice reproduce quickly , but the months required to build up a large enough colony were agonizing , as scientists barraged Lutz with impatient pleas .
“ People were calling , saying , ‘ I knew your father , I knew your brother , we went to graduate school together , don ’ t you remember me ?
’ ” she recalled .
“ They would pull out any relationship.
” By mid-June , Lutz was finally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mount Desert Island every week , and travelling to medical researchers around the world .
She stopped at a loading dock to oversee a shipment for Boston .
Technicians in protective gear were standing at a conveyor belt , ferrying rows of semi-opaque plastic boxes—each housing mice designed for COVID-19—out of the building .
They were transferring them into an eighteen-wheeler .
As they worked , it was possible to see outlines of the mice scurrying around inside .
Lutz headed out , and the truck departed .
“ We all recognize the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ If you work here long enough , you develop a sense of gratitude.
” ♦

Illustration by João Fazenda
Imagine, for a moment, a time when the coronavirus is eradicated. There are therapies and a vaccine. Lives are spared. People will ask, How did we get here? The answer may turn on a decision, made early this year, to send sixteen vials of mouse sperm to Mount Desert Island, Maine. Much of the island is a national park, with granite peaks and rocky beaches. Tucked into the landscape is the Jackson Laboratory, a nonprofit founded, in 1929, to conduct biomedical research. It is the largest distributor of genetically engineered laboratory mice in the country, with a mouse repository that contains more than eleven thousand specimens.
On February 3rd, COVID-19 was not yet officially a pandemic. There were three hundred and sixty-two reported deaths—all but one of them in China—when Cat Lutz, the director of the mouse repository, got an e-mail from a colleague who works at another Jackson facility, in Shanghai, and lives in Wuhan, the outbreak’s epicenter. When the authorities locked down his city, he was stuck at home. “It was just terrifying,” Lutz recalled. “He said, ‘I am thinking about what we can do.’ He had started combing through the literature.”
Both scientists knew that the novel coronavirus would not make a conventional lab mouse ill—a severe obstacle to the development of a treatment. The medical community needed a mouse that was genetically modified with a human feature added to its lung cells, so that the virus would affect it. Years earlier, three American research teams had engineered such a mouse in response to SARS. One of the teams, co-led by Stanley Perlman, a virologist at the University of Iowa, had published a paper about its animal in 2007. SARS had receded, the authors noted, but the need to study coronaviruses had not. “It still remains a potential threat,” they warned.
“That day, we called Stan Perlman to see if he would donate his mice, and he said yes,” Lutz recalled. Those animals were no longer living, but Perlman’s team had frozen their sperm. Two vials arrived within days, followed by fourteen more. “We basically decided to use every last drop,” Lutz said. At Jackson, the sperm was rushed to a “dirty room,” where it was washed of potential contaminants. Then, using I.V.F., the laboratory began the process of generating twelve hundred transgenic mouse pups.
With each passing week, the coronavirus crisis became more acute. Lutz’s daughter fled Manhattan for Maine. As cities shut down, Jackson technicians were not only racing to produce mice for COVID-19—they were also swamped with requests to cryopreserve genetically modified mice used to study other diseases. Universities were shuttering labs whose work was not related to the pandemic, and research animals were poised to die by the thousands.
“We sent trucks around the country,” Lutz said. She was standing in Jackson’s cryopreservation room, beside twelve large steel vats. As she looked into one of the open containers, cold mist floated upward from inside it. “It’s like a Halloween lab, because there is a lot of liquid nitrogen,” she said. A technician was extracting vials of sperm from the vat. “She is wearing a lot of protective gear, because liquid nitrogen can burn you,” Lutz explained. “She is going to transfer those into this larger vat.”
Lutz headed to an office where a computer displayed a video feed of a breeding room—a super-secure sterile environment with racks of mouse cages and an “air shower,” to wash particles from clothing before entry. After the twelve hundred I.V.F. mouse pups were created, they were bred to produce more, with the expectation that demand would be enormous. Mice reproduce quickly, but the months required to build up a large enough colony were agonizing, as scientists barraged Lutz with impatient pleas. “People were calling, saying, ‘I knew your father, I knew your brother, we went to graduate school together, don’t you remember me?’ ” she recalled. “They would pull out any relationship.”
By mid-June, Lutz was finally ready to ship. Trucks were leaving Mount Desert Island every week, and travelling to medical researchers around the world. She stopped at a loading dock to oversee a shipment for Boston. Technicians in protective gear were standing at a conveyor belt, ferrying rows of semi-opaque plastic boxes—each housing mice designed for COVID-19—out of the building. They were transferring them into an eighteen-wheeler. As they worked, it was possible to see outlines of the mice scurrying around inside. Lutz headed out, and the truck departed. “We all recognize the sacrifice of these animals,” she said. “If you work here long enough, you develop a sense of gratitude.” ♦
More on the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-08-10--Francis Poulenc’s Drunken Angels

Francis Poulenc’s Drunken Angels

At the end of 1940 , after Paris had fallen under German occupation , the spectacularly refined French composer Francis Poulenc made a musical setting of Guillaume Apollinaire ’ s poem “ Sanglots , ” or “ Sobs.
” Poulenc was in no way a political artist : although he steered clear of collaboration with the Nazis , he also held back from an active role in the Resistance .
Still , it is difficult not to hear the song in the context of the time , particularly when it arrives at its wrenching conclusion : “ Sanglots ” is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cycle deceptively titled “ Banalités.
” In a demonstration of the stealthy power of Poulenc ’ s art , the grouping swerves from merry , irreverent vignettes to a near-fathomless sorrow .
In “ Sanglots , ” the words “ Et rien ” ( “ And nothing ” ) are set to a plunging F-sharp octave , with “ Et ” emphasized to the point that it becomes a cry from the heart .
With the next words , “ ne sera libre , ” the vocal line leaps back up the octave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the major seventh , landing on G-natural , which clashes against the F-sharp-minor tonality .
The harmony then softens from minor to major , with a D-sharp adding an almost sentimental sweetness .
Poulenc makes the prospect of apocalypse seem like a respite , a moment of grace .
The sobs of the title hardly register , vanishing into a melancholy haze .
“ Sanglots ” emerged during a season of doom-laden music : in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany , Olivier Messiaen was writing the “ Quartet for the End of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a state of ethereal bliss .
But Poulenc may not have been thinking solely about the war : he had , after all , been waiting to set “ Sanglots ” for some time .
Rather , the song evokes a consuming descent into an inner world of memory and regret .
Earlier in the poem , Apollinaire writes , “ This is the song of the dreamers / Who tore out their heart / And held it in their right hand.
” Then : “ Here are our hands that life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , cloistered feelings been captured in music of such gasping beauty .
With Poulenc , these wonders of compression are almost routine .
I ’ ve been holed up in Poulenc ’ s world on account of two absorbing new books : Roger Nichols ’ s “ Poulenc : A Biography ” ( Yale ) and Graham Johnson ’ s “ Poulenc : The Life in the Songs ” ( Liveright ) .
Both do justice to a composer who has often been overshadowed by the giants with whom he shared the early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ originator , like Schoenberg or Stravinsky , nor did he possess Britten ’ s or Shostakovich ’ s command of manifold genres .
He was , however , a composer of rare gifts , particularly in the setting of sacred and secular texts .
As the decades pass , he grows in stature , and his aloofness from musical party politics matters less .
Nichols , a British scholar who has written about Debussy , Ravel , and Messiaen , gives an assured overview of Poulenc ’ s life and work , applying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the subject ’ s man-about-town façade .
Poulenc was born in 1899 , into upper-middle-class comfort ; his father was the co-owner of a family chemical company that eventually morphed into the giant firm of Rhône-Poulenc .
When the composer was in his teens , he fell into the eccentric orbit of Erik Satie , who had a great influence on his early style .
Poulenc was a core member of the enfant-terrible collective promoted by Jean Cocteau as Les Six .
His first triumph was the explosively tuneful ballet “ Les Biches @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1924 .
Poulenc ’ s life story is customarily organized around a central epiphanic event : his visit , in 1936 , to the shrine of the Black Virgin , in Rocamadour , in the South of France .
The composer seems to have experienced that pilgrimage as the beginning of a spiritual awakening , one that led to an extraordinary series of religious and religiously themed works : the “ Litanies of the Black Virgin , ” the Stabat Mater , the Gloria , two sets of motets , and his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Carmelites.
” These scores rank with the most formidable religious music of the twentieth century , on a par with that of Stravinsky , Messiaen , Ustvolskaya , and Pärt , although their intimate , confiding mode of address occupies a category of its own .
While Nichols , in his retelling of the Rocamadour episode , does not deny its significance , he qualifies it a bit .
Poulenc had been raised a Catholic , and religiosity had been smoldering in his work all along .
Therefore , Nichols writes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something long hidden beneath worldly cares.
” Complicating the picture is Poulenc ’ s disorderly love life , which consisted of many fleeting gay encounters , a few longer-lasting attachments with men , and a mysterious assignation with a woman that yielded a daughter .
This activity may only have intensified after the religious turn , leading to psychological conflicts .
Johnson , in his study of the songs , speculates that the composer suffered from sexual addiction , and that an inability to see his partners as social equals consigned him to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ image of Poulenc—carefully cultivated by the man himself—as the epitome of Parisian suavity and ebullience .
He was , in fact , a turbulent , even tortured character : sometimes arrogant , sometimes self-castigating , sometimes lovable , sometimes impossible .
That complexity only adds to the interest of the music .
The critic Claude Rostand famously commented that Poulenc was a combination of “ moine et voyou ” —monk and rogue .
Many of the composer ’ s works fall cleanly into one category or the other , but some of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Organ Concerto ( 1938 ) interlaces brimstone dissonances with rollicking fairground strains .
The Gloria ( 1959-60 ) exudes an almost scandalous joy , as if a crowd of drunken angels were dancing down the boulevards .
Graham Johnson is a veteran British pianist and accompanist who has made himself indispensable to the art of the song .
His most significant achievement is a forty-disk recorded survey , with more than sixty singers , of Schubert ’ s complete Lieder , for the Hyperion label .
He has also published a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousand pages .
Johnson ’ s devotion to Poulenc is scarcely less intense .
In the nineteen-seventies , he worked closely with the French baritone Pierre Bernac , Poulenc ’ s favorite collaborator , and acquired an encyclopedic knowledge not only of the songs but also of the milieu from which they sprang .
In 2013 , Hyperion released Johnson ’ s complete survey of the Poulenc songs .
His new Poulenc book is a greatly expanded version of the already lavish and lively program notes that accompanied the recordings .
Johnson is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ premier French songwriter of his time—a claim that few would dispute—but also a crucial figure in the international vocal canon .
I listened to the songs in the company of Johnson ’ s book , and came away fully persuaded by his argument .
He makes clear that Poulenc had a deep grasp of the often challenging twentieth-century poets he set to music—Apollinaire , Paul Éluard , Max Jacob , Louise de Vilmorin , Louis Aragon—and that he illuminated their work as startlingly as Schubert and Schumann lit up Heinrich Heine .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Johnson points out that Poulenc finds musical analogies for Apollinaire ’ s singular structure , in which two distinct poems seem to be interwoven .

At the end of 1940, after Paris had fallen under German occupation, the spectacularly refined French composer Francis Poulenc made a musical setting of Guillaume Apollinaire’s poem “Sanglots,” or “Sobs.” Poulenc was in no way a political artist: although he steered clear of collaboration with the Nazis, he also held back from an active role in the Resistance. Still, it is difficult not to hear the song in the context of the time, particularly when it arrives at its wrenching conclusion:
And nothing will be free until the end of time Let us leave all to the dead And hide our sobs
“Sanglots” is the last of five songs in a cycle deceptively titled “Banalités.” In a demonstration of the stealthy power of Poulenc’s art, the grouping swerves from merry, irreverent vignettes to a near-fathomless sorrow. In “Sanglots,” the words “Et rien” (“And nothing”) are set to a plunging F-sharp octave, with “Et” emphasized to the point that it becomes a cry from the heart. With the next words, “ne sera libre,” the vocal line leaps back up the octave and then descends the slightly narrower interval of the major seventh, landing on G-natural, which clashes against the F-sharp-minor tonality. The harmony then softens from minor to major, with a D-sharp adding an almost sentimental sweetness. Poulenc makes the prospect of apocalypse seem like a respite, a moment of grace. The sobs of the title hardly register, vanishing into a melancholy haze.
“Sanglots” emerged during a season of doom-laden music: in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, Olivier Messiaen was writing the “Quartet for the End of Time,” which finds its way to a state of ethereal bliss. But Poulenc may not have been thinking solely about the war: he had, after all, been waiting to set “Sanglots” for some time. Rather, the song evokes a consuming descent into an inner world of memory and regret. Earlier in the poem, Apollinaire writes, “This is the song of the dreamers / Who tore out their heart / And held it in their right hand.” Then: “Here are our hands that life has enslaved.” Seldom have such complex, cloistered feelings been captured in music of such gasping beauty. With Poulenc, these wonders of compression are almost routine.
I’ve been holed up in Poulenc’s world on account of two absorbing new books: Roger Nichols’s “Poulenc: A Biography” (Yale) and Graham Johnson’s “Poulenc: The Life in the Songs” (Liveright). Both do justice to a composer who has often been overshadowed by the giants with whom he shared the early and mid-twentieth century. He was no originator, like Schoenberg or Stravinsky, nor did he possess Britten’s or Shostakovich’s command of manifold genres. He was, however, a composer of rare gifts, particularly in the setting of sacred and secular texts. As the decades pass, he grows in stature, and his aloofness from musical party politics matters less.
Nichols, a British scholar who has written about Debussy, Ravel, and Messiaen, gives an assured overview of Poulenc’s life and work, applying a light touch that is appropriate to the subject’s man-about-town façade. Poulenc was born in 1899, into upper-middle-class comfort; his father was the co-owner of a family chemical company that eventually morphed into the giant firm of Rhône-Poulenc. When the composer was in his teens, he fell into the eccentric orbit of Erik Satie, who had a great influence on his early style. Poulenc was a core member of the enfant-terrible collective promoted by Jean Cocteau as Les Six. His first triumph was the explosively tuneful ballet “Les Biches,” which the Ballets Russes premièred in 1924.
Poulenc’s life story is customarily organized around a central epiphanic event: his visit, in 1936, to the shrine of the Black Virgin, in Rocamadour, in the South of France. The composer seems to have experienced that pilgrimage as the beginning of a spiritual awakening, one that led to an extraordinary series of religious and religiously themed works: the “Litanies of the Black Virgin,” the Stabat Mater, the Gloria, two sets of motets, and his only large-scale opera, “Dialogues of the Carmelites.” These scores rank with the most formidable religious music of the twentieth century, on a par with that of Stravinsky, Messiaen, Ustvolskaya, and Pärt, although their intimate, confiding mode of address occupies a category of its own.
While Nichols, in his retelling of the Rocamadour episode, does not deny its significance, he qualifies it a bit. Poulenc had been raised a Catholic, and religiosity had been smoldering in his work all along. Therefore, Nichols writes, the experience marked “the reappearance of something long hidden beneath worldly cares.” Complicating the picture is Poulenc’s disorderly love life, which consisted of many fleeting gay encounters, a few longer-lasting attachments with men, and a mysterious assignation with a woman that yielded a daughter. This activity may only have intensified after the religious turn, leading to psychological conflicts. Johnson, in his study of the songs, speculates that the composer suffered from sexual addiction, and that an inability to see his partners as social equals consigned him to loneliness.
Both accounts undermine the popular image of Poulenc—carefully cultivated by the man himself—as the epitome of Parisian suavity and ebullience. He was, in fact, a turbulent, even tortured character: sometimes arrogant, sometimes self-castigating, sometimes lovable, sometimes impossible. That complexity only adds to the interest of the music. The critic Claude Rostand famously commented that Poulenc was a combination of “moine et voyou”—monk and rogue. Many of the composer’s works fall cleanly into one category or the other, but some of the strongest fuse the two personalities in one. The Organ Concerto (1938) interlaces brimstone dissonances with rollicking fairground strains. The Gloria (1959-60) exudes an almost scandalous joy, as if a crowd of drunken angels were dancing down the boulevards.
Graham Johnson is a veteran British pianist and accompanist who has made himself indispensable to the art of the song. His most significant achievement is a forty-disk recorded survey, with more than sixty singers, of Schubert’s complete Lieder, for the Hyperion label. He has also published a Schubert-song companion, which runs to three thousand pages. Johnson’s devotion to Poulenc is scarcely less intense. In the nineteen-seventies, he worked closely with the French baritone Pierre Bernac, Poulenc’s favorite collaborator, and acquired an encyclopedic knowledge not only of the songs but also of the milieu from which they sprang. In 2013, Hyperion released Johnson’s complete survey of the Poulenc songs. His new Poulenc book is a greatly expanded version of the already lavish and lively program notes that accompanied the recordings.
Johnson is convinced that Poulenc was not only the premier French songwriter of his time—a claim that few would dispute—but also a crucial figure in the international vocal canon. I listened to the songs in the company of Johnson’s book, and came away fully persuaded by his argument. He makes clear that Poulenc had a deep grasp of the often challenging twentieth-century poets he set to music—Apollinaire, Paul Éluard, Max Jacob, Louise de Vilmorin, Louis Aragon—and that he illuminated their work as startlingly as Schubert and Schumann lit up Heinrich Heine. In a discussion of “Sanglots,” Johnson points out that Poulenc finds musical analogies for Apollinaire’s singular structure, in which two distinct poems seem to be interwoven.
The songs encompass a huge range of moods: silly, solemn, naughty, austere, agitated, serene, joyous, desolate. When Poulenc puts his mind to it, he can knock out an indelible tune fit for Edith Piaf or Maurice Chevalier. The gloriously hummable waltz in the 1940 song “Les Chemins de l’Amour” (“The Paths of Love”) is one that you will swear you’ve heard before—and, in fact, you have, in “Der Rosenkavalier.” But, Johnson notes, Poulenc changes the melody enough to make it his own: “So like, and yet suddenly so unlike: this is musical legerdemain of an extraordinarily audacious order.” The composer’s inclination toward seedier environments is evident in his knowing treatment of Apollinaire’s “Allons Plus Vite” (“Get a Move On”), which evokes prostitutes, pimps, and johns circulating on the Boulevard de Grenelle. The song begins in a wistful evening mood and ends with a dark, driving pattern in the bass—an image of frustrated sexual compulsion, Johnson plausibly suggests.
The songs I treasure most are those in which a finespun theme runs through a cool, airy harmonic field, like a sliver of cloud hanging against red twilight. “Sanglots” is a supreme example; my favorite recording, which can be found in Erato’s survey of Poulenc’s complete works, is by the heartbreakingly expressive American baritone William Parker, who died, of AIDS, in 1993. Parker also gives a potent rendition of the setting of Éluard’s “Tu Vois le Feu du Soir” (“You See the Fire of Evening”), which is itself couched in a sunset world, with warmth and chill intermingled. The final chord of C-sharp minor glides into a misty, fragrant atmosphere, like Death in evening wear. Throughout his career, Poulenc was a master of endings: in place of the musical clichés of wrapping up and taking leave, he often deploys quiet shocks, which send the mind spinning through the silence that follows. Such moments confirm Poulenc’s affable boast: “In the field of song I fear no one, and being the best is always very pleasant.” ♦


newyorker--2020-08-10--Madhuri Vijay on the Cultural Complexity of Identity

Your story in this week ’ s issue , “ You Are My Dear Friend , ” revolves around the life of a young Indian woman who leaves her job as an au pair in Bangalore to marry a wealthier , much older man .
What makes Geeta want to marry Srikanth , whom she doesn ’ t seem to like all that much and with whom she shares very little of herself ?
I suppose it is , on some level , a calculated decision for Geeta .
She is perfectly aware that her background and her education limit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the choice between marrying a man she doesn ’ t know very well and spending the rest of her life employed as an au pair , she chooses the former .
What does it mean for Geeta , culturally , to be a Catholic woman marrying a Brahmin ?
This is a hugely complicated question , and my answer is in no way intended to be comprehensive .
India , despite the increasingly rabid attempts to make it otherwise , is a country inclined toward syncretism .
Indian Christianity , in particular , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hinduism .
There is also a long history of marginalized groups converting to Christianity ( as well as Buddhism and Islam ) to escape the oppressive Hindu caste system , but caste is tenacious and has seeped into certain Christian communities , despite its being in opposition to the teachings of Jesus .
Geeta—whose name is Hindu—may have been born into a Christian household or may have converted to Christianity at the convent school where she grew up after the death of her parents .
Either way , Hinduism is not alien to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ means that she is not immune to the hierarchy of the Hindu caste system .
When Srikanth guesses that what ’ s missing from Geeta ’ s life is a child , she doesn ’ t contradict him , but is he correct ?
I ’ m not sure that the idea of a child would have taken hold in Geeta ’ s mind if Srikanth hadn ’ t suggested it .
The early death of her parents destabilized Geeta and left her with a sense of impermanence .
She floats from convent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quite willing these things to happen but accepting them easily when they do .
The notion of a child is another such thing , and she moves toward it with the hazy conviction that it will turn out all right in the end .
And , where children are concerned , I don ’ t think she is at all unusual .
Most people , I believe , make the decision to have a child without being able to articulate even a moderately good reason for doing so ( and I say this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As you said above , Geeta was orphaned as a girl and grew up at a convent school .
Do you think that is part of what appeals to her about the idea of adopting a child from an orphanage ?
Yes , and there is also the fact that Geeta has made children her profession .
She is very good with the young daughters of her British employers , and the girls are clearly fond of her .
Geeta finds it easy to envision herself as a mother , but what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , is that there is a vast difference between caring for a well-adjusted child and caring for Rani , whose life has consisted of one harrowing event after another .
When Geeta learns that Rani is not actually an orphan , does it change how she sees or feels about her ?
Geeta knows from the beginning that Rani isn ’ t an orphan in the strictest sense—i.e.
, she knows Rani ’ s parents are probably still alive , even if they are unable to care for their daughter .
However @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to fully consider the implications of this fact .
She herself has become so used to forgetting , to locking away the events of her life , that she assumes Rani can and will do the same .
But Rani isn ’ t like Geeta in this regard ; she has no interest in forgetting what has happened to her .
Such an attitude is difficult for Geeta to comprehend .
She tries to make a connection with Rani by talking to her about Srikanth ’ s family history , but the sad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more successful if she had been willing to reveal her own .
Geeta , it seems , wants a child to love and wants someone to genuinely love her .
When she understands that she won ’ t get that from Rani , why does she stand by her for so long ?
Geeta stands by Rani because she doesn ’ t want to be the latest in a long line of adults to betray her , because she can ’ t stomach the idea of failing as a parent in Srikanth ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some part of herself in Rani , but , most simply , because this is the first relationship Geeta has had that she can not walk out of without causing great harm to another human being .
You were born and grew up in Bangalore .
You did an M.F.A .
in Iowa , and you now live in Hawaii .
Your novel , “ The Far Field , ” is set in Bangalore and Kashmir .
Do you think of yourself as an Indian writer ?
My first impulse is to say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that I must define exactly what it means to be an “ Indian writer , ” and when I begin to consider the complexity of the country I come from , the term itself starts to feel a bit hollow .
I am , among other things , South Indian , Tamilian , Bangalorean , Hindu , English-speaking , foreign-educated , and female .
Where should I place these identities in relation to my nationality ?
I am not being flippant by asking this question .
More and more , it seems to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to nationality , race , gender , or some other equally vague category .
And , while I certainly understand the impulse to stand beneath one flag or another , I have tried not to do so myself , at least not without being aware that it obscures more than it illuminates .
Perhaps I ’ m a romantic , but the only identity I feel entirely comfortable claiming is that of a writer .

Photograph by Manvi Rao
Your story in this week’s issue, “You Are My Dear Friend,” revolves around the life of a young Indian woman who leaves her job as an au pair in Bangalore to marry a wealthier, much older man. What makes Geeta want to marry Srikanth, whom she doesn’t seem to like all that much and with whom she shares very little of herself?
I suppose it is, on some level, a calculated decision for Geeta. She is perfectly aware that her background and her education limit the opportunities available to her. Given the choice between marrying a man she doesn’t know very well and spending the rest of her life employed as an au pair, she chooses the former.
What does it mean for Geeta, culturally, to be a Catholic woman marrying a Brahmin?
This is a hugely complicated question, and my answer is in no way intended to be comprehensive. India, despite the increasingly rabid attempts to make it otherwise, is a country inclined toward syncretism. Indian Christianity, in particular, derives many of its cultural rituals from Hinduism. There is also a long history of marginalized groups converting to Christianity (as well as Buddhism and Islam) to escape the oppressive Hindu caste system, but caste is tenacious and has seeped into certain Christian communities, despite its being in opposition to the teachings of Jesus.
Geeta—whose name is Hindu—may have been born into a Christian household or may have converted to Christianity at the convent school where she grew up after the death of her parents. Either way, Hinduism is not alien to her, which, unfortunately, also means that she is not immune to the hierarchy of the Hindu caste system.
When Srikanth guesses that what’s missing from Geeta’s life is a child, she doesn’t contradict him, but is he correct?
I’m not sure that the idea of a child would have taken hold in Geeta’s mind if Srikanth hadn’t suggested it. The early death of her parents destabilized Geeta and left her with a sense of impermanence. She floats from convent school to work to marriage, never quite willing these things to happen but accepting them easily when they do. The notion of a child is another such thing, and she moves toward it with the hazy conviction that it will turn out all right in the end. And, where children are concerned, I don’t think she is at all unusual. Most people, I believe, make the decision to have a child without being able to articulate even a moderately good reason for doing so (and I say this as someone who recently gave birth).
As you said above, Geeta was orphaned as a girl and grew up at a convent school. Do you think that is part of what appeals to her about the idea of adopting a child from an orphanage?
Yes, and there is also the fact that Geeta has made children her profession. She is very good with the young daughters of her British employers, and the girls are clearly fond of her. Geeta finds it easy to envision herself as a mother, but what she doesn’t realize, of course, is that there is a vast difference between caring for a well-adjusted child and caring for Rani, whose life has consisted of one harrowing event after another.
When Geeta learns that Rani is not actually an orphan, does it change how she sees or feels about her?
Geeta knows from the beginning that Rani isn’t an orphan in the strictest sense—i.e., she knows Rani’s parents are probably still alive, even if they are unable to care for their daughter. However, she doesn’t allow herself to fully consider the implications of this fact. She herself has become so used to forgetting, to locking away the events of her life, that she assumes Rani can and will do the same. But Rani isn’t like Geeta in this regard; she has no interest in forgetting what has happened to her. Such an attitude is difficult for Geeta to comprehend. She tries to make a connection with Rani by talking to her about Srikanth’s family history, but the sad irony is that she might have been more successful if she had been willing to reveal her own.
Geeta, it seems, wants a child to love and wants someone to genuinely love her. When she understands that she won’t get that from Rani, why does she stand by her for so long?
Geeta stands by Rani because she doesn’t want to be the latest in a long line of adults to betray her, because she can’t stomach the idea of failing as a parent in Srikanth’s eyes, and because she sees some part of herself in Rani, but, most simply, because this is the first relationship Geeta has had that she cannot walk out of without causing great harm to another human being.
You were born and grew up in Bangalore. You did an M.F.A. in Iowa, and you now live in Hawaii. Your novel, “The Far Field,” is set in Bangalore and Kashmir. Do you think of yourself as an Indian writer?
My first impulse is to say yes. But the trouble then is that I must define exactly what it means to be an “Indian writer,” and when I begin to consider the complexity of the country I come from, the term itself starts to feel a bit hollow. I am, among other things, South Indian, Tamilian, Bangalorean, Hindu, English-speaking, foreign-educated, and female. Where should I place these identities in relation to my nationality? I am not being flippant by asking this question. More and more, it seems to me that writers are comfortable arranging themselves according to nationality, race, gender, or some other equally vague category. And, while I certainly understand the impulse to stand beneath one flag or another, I have tried not to do so myself, at least not without being aware that it obscures more than it illuminates. Perhaps I’m a romantic, but the only identity I feel entirely comfortable claiming is that of a writer.


newyorker--2020-08-10--The Musk Ox and Me

The Musk Ox and Me

Last year , I took more than a hundred flights , travelling to twenty-three countries on four continents .
From my home , in an old town on the English coast , I went east to Switzerland and Greece , and south to Mexico , El Salvador , Venezuela , Bolivia , and Chile .
There were trips into the Kenyan bush , across Siberia , and to remote settlements in the Brazilian Amazon .
I wasn ’ t home for more than a few weeks at a time—my habit since I started working as a foreign correspondent , almost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I ’ ve spent five long months at home .
My office here is festooned with mementos of reporting trips : a rug from one of Saddam ’ s palaces , a gilded leather box that belonged to Muammar Qaddafi , a piece of a Bosnian tombstone .
On a wall are two nudes , painted in oil by one of Che Guevara ’ s guerrillas ; on another is a silk heraldic flag used at the coronation of King Faisal I .
In one of my early jobs , a bureau @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a “ fire-eater ” —to go where other reporters wouldn ’ t .
I didn ’ t need any encouragement to get myself in trouble .
Among the artifacts in my office are a pile of journals , which I began keeping in my early teens .
One of them contains the record of a formative trip that I took in 1978 , when I was twenty-one .
That summer , I travelled to Alaska to make my fortune from musk-ox wool .
I hadn ’ t planned on it , exactly .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and uncle Warren ’ s house in Woodside , a village tucked into live oaks and redwoods , about an hour south of San Francisco .
For two months , Doris had been teaching me how to cook .
I wasn ’ t hoping to become a chef ; she had assured me that if I acquired some basic kitchen skills I might be hired to join a U.S. Geological Survey expedition to the Alaskan wilderness .
Warren , my mother ’ s older brother , was a geologist who had worked for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Mojave Desert , Liberia .
He was now posted at the U.S.G.S .
office in Menlo Park , but he spent summers mapping the Alaskan backcountry with a team of geologists .
Like Warren , most of them were hardy , deeply tanned men of few words .
I met a colleague of his at a U.S.G.S .
picnic one weekend : a young woman with prosthetic arms , to replace the ones she ’ d lost when a bear mauled her .
Warren noted laconically that she was lucky to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with my mother , on a ranch in the San Gabriel Mountains , roaming the countryside and hunting in the woods .
My mother told me that he had kept bobcats as pets , and at twelve survived a winter alone in a cabin in the High Sierras , tending traplines for food .
During the Second World War , he had spent two years on a desert island in the South Pacific , manning a radio outpost for the Navy .
Family photographs show him stark naked in a lagoon , hunting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ child , I dreamed of having a life like Warren ’ s , and my parents did their best to mollify me .
My mother , who wrote children ’ s books , plied me and my siblings with stories about the wild world .
On my bookshelf , Thor Heyerdahl ’ s “ Kon-Tiki ” sat not far from “ Birds of the Gambia.
” My father was an official in the U.S. Foreign Service , and we moved often , from Korea to Colombia to Taiwan .
My family arranged wilderness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of feral pets : an alligator , an owl , a parrot , two mongooses , a civet cat , a pangolin .
For my eighth-grade year , my parents sent me to Liberia to live with Warren and Doris .
The highlight of my time there was a three-week trip around East Africa , hosted by family friends—foreign-service types who were meant to keep an eye on me .
Instead , I went off the grid for nearly two months .
I hunted elephants in Uganda , climbed Kilimanjaro , camped alone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ancient Ethiopian city of Harar .
I had never been happier .
My family worried , but when I finally reappeared they forgave me , mostly out of relief that I hadn ’ t died .
My teen-age years were largely defined by outward momentum .
I worked as a machetero in Honduras , learning Spanish but also nearly losing a leg to blood poisoning ; I spent six months living on a wharf in Las Palmas , Spain .
I went to college for a year , then dropped out to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a New York-based alternative school that operated out of a tall ship at sea .
For seven months , I guided scientists and students through the rain forests , deserts , and mountains of South America .
Afterward , I was uncertain about returning to college ; most of all , I wanted to journey deeper into the Amazon .
But Aunt Doris suggested Alaska , and it seemed as good a destination as any .
Uncle Warren had gone there with a buddy after the war , and built a log cabin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ d grown up hearing my cousins ’ stories about their Alaskan adventures , and had read and reread “ White Fang ” and “ The Call of the Wild.
” And so I went to Woodside to train in Doris ’ s kitchen .
After a month of baking bread and cooking omelettes , I was deemed ready .
But , when I applied to the U.S.G.S .
to work as a summer cook , a local got the job instead .
Resolved to get to Alaska , I made a list @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fish Canneries , laborer ; Alaska Fish & Game , fish counter ; Alaska Forestry Service , firefighter.
” Leaving nothing to chance , I ’ d also written to the National Geographic Institute , asking for funding to search the Honduran jungle for the ancient lost city of Ciudad Blanca .
I wrote in my journal , “ Can ’ t wait for the reply !
” It didn ’ t come .
My dilemma was unexpectedly resolved when I met Mick Hoare , the son of a friend of Uncle Warren @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years older than I was—a rangy guy , with black hair and startlingly blue eyes , who had served in the Special Forces and was studying geophysics at Stanford .
He was planning to drive to Anchorage for the summer .
Did I want to come along , in exchange for chipping in gas money ?
On June 21st , we left Woodside in Mick ’ s Datsun pickup truck .
Two days later , at a campsite in McLeese Lake , British Columbia , I wrote in my journal , “ A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Many lakes and meadows that look like good moose haunts .
Our journey began on the Solstice , so it seems full of portents .
Good ones , I hope .
Maybe I ’ ll make my fortune in Alaska.
” The Alaskan economy was booming , but the commodity was oil , not fur ; the Trans-Alaska Pipeline had been finished the year before .
When we reached Anchorage , after a week on the road , it looked like any other small American city : drab modern buildings that clashed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suburbs spreading to accommodate newcomers .
“ The town is raw , ” I wrote .
“ Go-go girls and furriers .
Gold plated prospecting pans and gold nugget jewelry.
” A statewide fund had been established to use oil revenues to benefit locals—a kind of payoff for the environmental destruction—but it didn ’ t stop them from resenting the oilmen and the culture they had brought .
A bumper sticker on cars around town read “ Happiness is a Texan leaving with an Okie on his back.
” Even so , wages @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was thriving , and that was what had attracted Mick , who was looking to earn money to pay for college .
He also had a place to stay , a wooden shack that his older brother owned in Girdwood , a township forty miles south of Anchorage , at the edge of the Kenai Peninsula .

That fall, my father moved the family to Indonesia, and Handley encouraged me to collect specimens for the Smithsonian. I began to fantasize about expeditions into the jungle. The year in the States had been traumatizing, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Their deaths had been deeply felt in my family, and I could not understand the killers’ hatred. The United States seemed like a violent and evil place, and I was happy to leave, especially to explore one of the last great tropical wildernesses.
Our stay lasted only six months; a bout of dysentery nearly killed me and my younger sister, and we were evacuated to Singapore. Then my brother fell ill, too, and my father quit his post and moved us back to Washington. When our flight stopped for a layover in California, I ran away. I set off from the Bay Area with the intention of hiking into the Sierras and living off the land, as Uncle Warren had once done. State troopers stopped me at the edge of national-park land, sternly informed me that I was the subject of an all-points bulletin, and drove me back to my furious parents.
I was deeply disappointed to be back in the United States. Not only was it an unhappy and divided society but its natural environment was being rapidly subdued. In the U.S., with its freeways and subdivisions and shopping centers, nature had been made frivolous, turned into roadside scenery. My parents took me to talks about the end of the wild, the end of the indigenous peoples and their ways of life. I felt that if I didn’t hurry up I would miss knowing the natural world altogether.
I was fascinated by men like Geronimo, Richard Francis Burton, and Shackleton. They were dead, but there was always Warren, who was said to be able to catch trout with his fingers, “like an Indian.” Being “like an Indian,” to my childhood understanding, meant casting off the demeaning absurdities of American life, finding ways to encounter nature without fear.
At camp that night, I thought about Tom’s uncle, a trusted elder, living on his own in nature—not unlike Uncle Warren, in a way. For weeks, he stayed on the beach in complete isolation, netting salmon from the ocean and drying them in the sun on wooden racks. I worried that he might resent my intrusion, so I mulled how to present myself. What could I say to demonstrate respect?
“Later, son—right now Daddy is busy sowing disinformation.” Cartoon by Edward Koren Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
The next morning, energized by my haul of qiviut, I followed the river, skirting its bends to save time. An hour into the hike, I paused to scan the horizon and noticed a shape against the green tundra in the distance. Through my binoculars, I could see that it was an animal, on its side, its belly distended, two legs in the air. It wasn’t a musk ox, but it was big.
I took off my backpack, propped up my rifle as a signpost, and walked closer. The animal was a reindeer doe. She was in labor, and she looked terrified, legs swaying, eyes bloodshot and grotesquely wide, ears twitching. I retreated to about fifty feet away and sat for half an hour, trying to soothe her. I told her that everything was O.K., that I wasn’t going to hurt her, and that she was beautiful. I sang the first song that came to mind: “Barnacle Bill the Sailor,” a sea chantey that I’d learned from my grandfather as a boy. (“It’s only me, from over the sea!”) But there was nothing I could do to help her, and I worried that my presence would only make her more upset. Finally, as I wrote in my journal, “I left her to her natural fate.” Walking on toward the southern coast, I felt that I was abandoning an intimate. It was the closest thing I’d had to a conversation since leaving Nash Harbor, three days earlier.
After a few more ridges, I reached Dahloongamiut, a treeless stretch of lichen-covered rock at the edge of the open sea. On the beach was a sod hut, dug halfway into the earth—Tom’s uncle’s shelter. But there were no racks of drying fish outside, no boat pulled up on the shore. Inside the hut, it was dank and deserted. I had come too late.
Overwhelmed with loneliness, I pitched my tent on the beach. Better to be outside than to be sheltered in a place that reminded me of other human beings. Looking south across the water, I knew that there was no one between me and the Aleutian Islands, four hundred miles away. Beyond that lay the entire Pacific Ocean.
There was no qiviut at Dahloongamiut—there was nothing there at all. I resolved to make it back to Mekoryuk as fast as I could, a forty-seven-mile hike across the heart of the island. I had no written accounts to guide me. Matthiessen had tracked his musk oxen by helicopter, or in boat landings on the coasts. The Cup’ig did not often venture into the interior, either. The seals and walruses they hunted were on the coast, or out at sea; the salmon could be caught near the mouths of the rivers.
Hiking to Musk Ox Hill, I’d spent hours navigating around bogs. Now they were unavoidable; the terrain was almost all muskeg. By the afternoon, I was plagued by mosquitoes; at one point, I hurled down my pack and began cursing at them, only to realize, in shocked embarrassment, that I was yelling at insects. The water in the bogs was nearly freezing. Once, I stumbled in up to my knees, and, with a fright, recalled Jackie Williams’s warnings about the risk of drowning. After that, I started carrying my pack over my head. Later, I saw musk oxen far in the distance, and spent an hour approaching them, but when I got to the spot there was no qiviut to be found.
Toward sundown on the second night, I could see the northern coast, the valley lakes to the east giving off eerie mist. By then, I was hungry and cold enough to try Tom Nortuk’s seal oil. When I took the cap off the bottle and sniffed, I nearly gagged—it gave off a stench like vomit. But I squirted it on a piece of dried fish, and ate it holding my nose. Before long, my body felt warmer, just as Tom had said it would.
On the third day, exhausted but determined to make it back to Mekoryuk, I hiked eighteen miles under a threatening gray sky. I arrived in darkness. “A killer, an absolute killer of a day,” I wrote in my journal. “I was within sight of the northern coast all day, crossing swampy tundra and over two hills then tundra and then tundra again to reach the goddamn airstrip.” But I’d been lucky, too. The grasslands were covered with wildflowers and will-o’-the-wisps, and I had picked wild celery and small, sweet nagoonberries. And I’d found a few more swatches of qiviut: the most I’d encountered since the cliff tops at Nash Harbor. By then I must have collected two or three pounds.
In quiet moments, something had been nagging at me. Before leaving the mainland, I’d received a telegram from the director of the Oceanics school, my old employer, asking me to get in touch with her. As I slogged through miles of frigid bog water on Nunivak, I found myself seized by the idea of returning to Peru. In my journal, I recorded a vivid fantasy of a seaside table, laden with “ceviche, stuffed avocados, shrimp and beer.” Back in Mekoryuk, I went to the post office to call the director. She had an offer: if I could get to Lima, she’d hire me to guide an American teen-ager into the backcountry. I was free to go into the jungle, but I should keep him, and myself, out of trouble. I told her I would be there in a few days. “Is it my wisest move? I dunno. It’s certainly the most appealing,” I wrote. “Always dying to see the landmark, the destination, beyond the next tussock, river, or hill.”
I booked a seat on the next mail plane, then ran around saying goodbyes and thanking people for their help. I returned Jobe Weston’s rifle, along with some extra ammo, and retrieved my qiviut and my Cup’ig artifacts from Tom Nortuk. Back in Girdwood, I left the qiviut and the horns with Mick. If there were to be any financial rewards, they lay in his hands. I was already sketching out an itinerary: south from Lima via Nazca, then across the desert by burro and over the Andes toward the Madre de Dios.
My time in Peru was eventful, if not quite as I’d planned it. We climbed the peak above Machu Picchu, a kind of pilgrimage site for me. (On my previous trip, I had travelled with a titi monkey, who liked to curl up inside my shirt as we walked. She had died on the journey, and I buried her near the peak.) We made it to the Madre de Dios, and camped near an indigenous Amarakaeri community, but couldn’t enter: they had closed themselves off to outsiders, because of a flu outbreak. Downriver, prospectors had set up pumps and sluices along the banks, the pioneers of a gold boom that would ravage the area in the coming years.
In the jungle, I forgot about the qiviut and my dreams of riches. But, this spring, as I was held in place by quarantine, it occurred to me to wonder what had happened. I tracked down Mick, whom I’d lost touch with decades before. It turned out that he’d stayed in Alaska, and had a rough-and-tumble life. For a while, we told stories and caught up. When I asked about the qiviut I’d left with him, he said that he’d given it to a friend in Girdwood. Had the friend got rich? Built himself a wilderness compound? No, Mick said: he had knitted himself a hat. “A hat?” I said. “That’s all it came to?” “Well,” he replied, “it was only one small bag.” ♦