newyorker--2020-06-22--What Fiona Hill Learned in the White House

The Brookings Institution is one of many think tanks in Washington , D.C. , where scholars and bureaucrats sit in quiet offices and wait by the phone .
They write op-eds and books , give talks and convene seminars , hoping that , when reputations falter or Administrations shift , they will be rescued from the life of opining and contemplation and return to the adrenaline rush and consequence of government .
Nearly always , the yearning is to be inside .
Strobe Talbott , who became the president of Brookings in 2002 , served in Bill Clinton ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and he was rumored to be on the shortlist for Hillary Clinton ’ s Secretary of State .
Others , too , may have expected a call .
But , after Donald Trump was elected , only one prominent Brookings stalwart was summoned , and her story became emblematic of all those in Washington who entered the Administration full of trepidation but hoping to be a “ normalizing ” influence on a distinctly abnormal President .
Fiona Hill , a leading expert on Russia and its modern leadership , had a reputation as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and analyst .
The daughter of a miner and a midwife , she grew up in Bishop Auckland , in northern England , and has a strong northern accent .
She described herself to me as “ politically engaged but antipartisan.
” She has a distaste for the kind of ideological standoff that she observed in the eighties between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the president of the National Union of Mineworkers , Arthur Scargill , which was , as she put it , “ a clash of titans with regular people smashed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ born in 1965 , is a senior fellow at Brookings , and a denizen of the Eurasia Foundation , the Council on Foreign Relations , and Harvard University , where she got her doctorate in history .
She was a national intelligence officer in the Administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama .
In 2013 , she and Clifford Gaddy , an economic specialist at Brookings , published “ Mr .
Putin : Operative in the Kremlin , ” which traces Vladimir Putin ’ s path from his hardscrabble upbringing in Leningrad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She was wary of Obama ’ s efforts to downplay Russia ’ s importance in the world—he called the country a “ regional power ” —convinced that doing so only provoked Putin to assert himself more forcefully .
In an updated edition of the book , published in 2015 , Hill and Gaddy described Putin as “ arguably the most powerful individual in the world.
” Hill ’ s friend Nina Khrushcheva , the granddaughter of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev , said that Putin was “ secretly flattered ” by the portrayal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emerged that Russia ’ s military intelligence agency , the G.R.U.
, had penetrated the Democratic National Committee ’ s computer servers and begun spreading derogatory information about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats .
Many of Hill ’ s colleagues were disturbed that Trump had praised Putin as a “ strong leader ” and took seriously the growing speculation that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians to sway the election .
Hill was skeptical of this theory , thinking it more likely that the campaign and Russia were working in parallel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certain than her colleagues that Clinton would win the election , especially after the outcome of the Brexit referendum , that same month .
Several of her family members had voted to leave the E.U.
, and in Bishop Auckland sixty-one per cent were in favor .
She saw why Trump appealed to voters who felt that their concerns had long been ignored .
After Trump ’ s victory , the mood at Brookings was funereal .
But , as Hill told K. T. McFarland , a former speechwriter in the Reagan Administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ November 15th , the President-elect ’ s overtures to Putin presented an opportunity : “ Trump has certainly laid the ground for saying , ‘ O.K.
, I ’ m going to give you a chance to explain yourself.
’ ” After the interview , Hill joked that Trump might appoint McFarland to be his national-security adviser .
Two days later , Trump named Michael Flynn to that post , and , the following week , chose McFarland to be his deputy .
In one of more than two dozen conversations that I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told me that she had not been seeking a position in the new Administration , but that she was “ open to advising whoever came along and offering my two cents ’ worth.
” McFarland called Hill on the afternoon of December 29 , 2016 , asking what she thought about the sanctions that the Obama Administration had just imposed on Russia in retaliation for Putin ’ s election interference .
Hill urged McFarland to avoid thinking about them as a “ political issue ” ; they were , she said , simply @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month , Trump had rejected the C.I.A.
’ s assessment that Russia had sought to help his campaign .
“ They have no idea if it ’ s Russia or China or somebody , ” he told Fox News .
“ It could be somebody sitting in bed someplace .
I mean , they have no idea.
” Hill respected the analysts who evaluated Russia ’ s activities , and she was alarmed by Trump ’ s denigration of their work .
She was also troubled when , in January , 2017 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the former British spy Christopher Steele , that was circulating among journalists and experts in D.C. Hill had known Steele since 2006 , when she was an intelligence officer and he worked for M.I.6 , Britain ’ s foreign-intelligence service .
Steele had been hired by Fusion G.P.S.
, a small American investigative firm that initially worked on behalf of a conservative client and later the Clinton campaign , to gather reports about Trump ’ s ties to Russia .
One of Steele ’ s more salacious findings alleged that the Russians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump .
The level of detail made Hill suspect that Steele ’ s sources had slipped him bits of misinformation to discredit the rest of his research .
The dossier , she felt , would “ pour gasoline on a raging fire.
” BuzzFeed published the documents , and Trump denounced them as a fabrication by “ sick people.
” Hill told McFarland about her relationship with Steele , and conveyed her doubts about the dossier .
On January 25th , David Cattler , the deputy assistant to the President for regional affairs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Flynn was offering her the position of senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council .
Unsure whether to take the job , she sought Strobe Talbott ’ s advice .
Talbott was a tough Trump critic , but he told her she should do it—she would be “ one of the adults in the room.
” Graham Allison , Hill ’ s mentor at Harvard ’ s Kennedy School of Government , also approved .
“ You ’ ve spent your whole life on this , and if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relationship , it could be catastrophic for everybody , ” he said .
The next day , she accepted the job offer , telling Cattler , with whom she had worked on the National Intelligence Council , in the two-thousands , that she felt “ more comfortable ” knowing that he would be at the White House .
Two weeks later , Trump dismissed Flynn , after it was reported that , in January , he had lied to Mike Pence , the incoming Vice-President , about a phone call he ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. , Sergey Kislyak .
Obama Administration officials believed that the call had undermined their efforts to hold Russia accountable and to deter future election meddling , but McFarland assured Hill that nothing improper had occurred .
( Transcripts of several calls between Flynn and Kislyak that were released in May made it clear that Hill ’ s advice to show a united front with Obama ’ s Administration had been ignored . )
In February , 2017 , Hill attended a dinner hosted by Eliot Cohen , a professor of strategic studies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leader of the conservative “ Never Trump ” movement .
On January 29th , Cohen had published a piece in The Atlantic warning “ friends still thinking of serving as political appointees in this administration ” that , as he put it , “ when you sell your soul to the Devil , he prefers to collect his purchase on the installment plan.
” Working for a xenophobic and divisive government , he argued , gave that government legitimacy .
At the dinner , he told Hill that she was putting her reputation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hill had read Cohen ’ s article , and she told me that she considered it a “ powerful warning.
” Still , she said , “ because of strange quirks of fate , I was the one they asked to step into the fray .
What was I going to do ?
Walk away ?
”

Two weeks later, Putin easily won another term as President, in an election that was widely condemned as fraudulent. As Hill’s staff assembled the briefing materials for a call between Trump and Putin to discuss Syria and North Korea, the State Department requested that McMaster instruct Trump not to congratulate Putin. Hill and McMaster did not pass the request on to Trump. “It would just make him do it even more adamantly, because he’s reflexively contrarian,” a former official told me. Later, the Washington Post reported that Trump had not followed “specific warnings from his national security advisers,” including “a section in his briefing materials in all-capital letters stating ‘DO NOT CONGRATULATE.’ ” Predictably, Trump was furious with McMaster, and Hill surmised that an official with access to the briefing materials had set him up. “We were all being used again, us and you guys in the press, by those who wanted H.R. to be fired,” she told me. Hill offered to quit in solidarity if he was let go, but he said that she should stay in the job to insure a smooth transition. A few days later, Trump fired McMaster and hired John Bolton, a foreign-policy hawk, as national-security adviser.
On July 15th, Bolton, Kelly, and Hill flew to Helsinki on Air Force One, for an arms-control summit between Trump and Putin. Hill knew that Trump wouldn’t read the materials she had prepared, but she hoped that he might sit through an oral briefing. Trump wasn’t interested. He, Putin, and the translators met in the Finnish Presidential palace. Putin, familiar with U.S. policy and with Trump’s habits, brought notes on topics to address. Notes had been prepared for Trump, but they were of limited use. After the two Presidents met, a group of senior officials asked Trump to tell them about the conversation. “He didn’t want to share,” the former White House official said. “His mind-set was: This is between me and my friend.”
Later, at a lunch, Trump invited Putin to share what he’d said in their private meeting. Putin referred to a proposal he’d made, to use an existing mutual-legal-assistance treaty that would allow American law-enforcement officials to be present for interviews with the Russian intelligence officers who had been charged with election interference. At a post-summit press conference, Putin elaborated: he would make the indicted officers available if Trump allowed Russian law-enforcement officers to be present during the questioning of American officials in cases of interest to Putin.
Hill was again struck by Putin’s craftiness and gall. “My head was full of expletives,” she said. “Putin was setting us all up.” He knew that the U.S. would never allow the Russians to question American officials. “It was a distraction. He’s shouting, ‘Fire! Look over there!,’ deflecting from what Russia had done in 2016.” At the press conference, Trump made it clear that he believed Putin’s denials of election meddling, and called his proposal “an incredible offer.” Hill recalled, “I just sat there and thought, Maybe I should just fall over backwards onto the media behind me and fake a medical emergency just to stop this agony.”
State Department officials immediately rejected the proposal, but, on July 17th, Russia’s prosecutor general’s office announced that it was seeking to interview eleven U.S. intelligence officers, businessmen, and diplomats, including Michael McFaul, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia. McFaul, an outspoken critic of Trump, had recently published a memoir, “From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia.” Apparently seeking reassurance that he wasn’t in jeopardy, he asked to talk to Hill, and she agreed to see him. He told the Washington Post about the planned meeting, and one of Bolton’s deputies at the N.S.C. accused her of disloyalty.
Critics of Trump’s behavior at Helsinki were unhappy with Hill, too. Some members of the Obama Administration thought that she had become little more than a “beard” for the President. One of them told a member of Hill’s team that she thought that Hill and her staff had become “collaborators” and “would end up going to jail for aiding and abetting a criminal.” Hill told me, “Everybody thought that there was this deep, satisfying conspiracy in Helsinki.” The press conference had been embarrassing, but she didn’t think she needed to resign over it. “There were no secret deals. This is not ‘The Manchurian Candidate.’ If there was something that I felt was really egregious, I would have quit.”
Bolton and Hill developed a close working relationship. He respected her opinions and trusted her to carry out his instructions. But he never included her or her colleagues in meetings with Trump, and Hill generally attended Oval Office meetings on Russia only when Jon Huntsman, the U.S. Ambassador, was visiting. In those sessions, Trump had little interest in hearing the Ambassador’s thoughts about Putin, preferring to talk about Huntsman’s daughter, Abby, who was then the co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend.” “Let’s call Abby!” Trump said on one occasion. “Get her on the phone!”
Difficult conversations with Putin were left to the President’s advisers, including Bolton and Hill. This was less than ideal, since Putin understood that they did not necessarily have the backing of the President. As the 2018 midterm elections approached, Hill accompanied Bolton to a meeting in Moscow at which Bolton warned Putin that meddling would not be tolerated. Putin, according to someone at the meeting, responded, “We understand that there are all sorts of people who interfere in elections, such as George Soros.” As Putin said the name Soros, he looked at Hill. She recalled, “I just returned the gaze, and I may have slightly raised an eyebrow to make it a hard stare back.” It was Hill’s fifty-third birthday, and on the flight home Bolton and other officials gathered for a toast and laughed about the Soros moment.
On September 5th, the Times published an Op-Ed by an anonymous senior official who claimed to be a member of a group “working diligently from within” Trump’s Administration “to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” Hill told me that several U.S. ambassadors warned her that Rick Grenell, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, who was a Trump favorite, was “gunning for her” and spreading a rumor that she was the Op-Ed’s author. The former national-security official told me, “Fiona was one of the top people on Grenell’s hit list.” On one phone call, Hill said, Grenell told her that she was “not part of the team.” (Grenell disputes this version of events.) In fact, Hill told me, she had been angered by the Op-Ed, which exacerbated distrust within the government. “I thought it was meant to make the author feel better to themselves about what they were doing,” she said. Hill believed that her role was to insure that decisions by policymakers were evaluated through the appropriate channels. She promised herself that if she ever learned of something improper or illegal she would alert Bolton and the Administration’s lawyers. “I would never have done anything anonymously,” she said.
Hill sometimes suggested to me that her time in the White House might have gone differently had she understood that her real challenge was in dealing not with Putin but with the Americans who sought to influence Trump. “There’s the irony,” she said. “I know the intrigue in Russia better than the intrigue at home.” In early 2019, she learned that the Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, who was worried that Volodymyr Zelensky was surging in the polls, was passing messages to American officials, asking what it would take to get Trump’s support in the Ukrainian election. U.S. officials told Poroshenko that the Administration would not get involved. Hill had no idea that Rudolph Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, was conducting his own private diplomatic schemes on behalf of the President.
Hill had planned to return to Brookings by April, 2019, but, at Bolton’s request, she agreed to stay through mid-July, when Tim Morrison, who oversaw arms control at the N.S.C., would succeed her. In April, Hill met with Ukrainian energy officials, including Andriy Kobolyev, the C.E.O. of Naftogaz, Ukraine’s national gas-and-oil company, and his deputy, Andrew Favorov, to discuss a plan to buy from the U.S. large quantities of liquefied natural gas to tide the country over in the event that Russia cut off its supply. The Ukrainian delegation did not mention that they were about to meet with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Ukrainian-American business associates of Giuliani, and Tommy Hicks, a wealthy private investor and a close friend of Donald Trump, Jr. Favorov told me that Hill “just knew her shit.” By contrast, the meeting with Giuliani’s associates, which took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, was “dark and shady, like we were in some movie about corruption in D.C.”
In April, Zelensky won the election in a landslide. Hill heard that Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, had been asked to return to Washington. On May 1st, she met Yovanovitch at Greenberry’s Coffee, near the State Department. Yovanovitch, one of the most respected and experienced ambassadors in the department, was clearly “rattled.” She told Hill that she didn’t know why she had been recalled. Hill, increasingly aware that she herself was being sidelined, soon discovered that Gordon Sondland, an ambitious hotel magnate who, in 2018, became the U.S. Ambassador to the E.U., had begun to insert himself into discussions about Ukraine, even though it isn’t part of the bloc. Later that month, when the White House compiled a guest list of U.S. officials who would attend Zelensky’s inauguration, in Kyiv, Sondland successfully lobbied to have his name added, according to officials. (Sondland denies having lobbied for the invitation.) Alexander Vindman, the Ukraine specialist in Hill’s directorate, attended on behalf of the N.S.C. According to a former Obama Administration official, Hill saw “that she was being swindled, managed, handled, and ignored. She thought she was at the center of the Ukraine policy and realized that she wasn’t.”
“How much longer before you act?” Cartoon by Frank Cotham Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
On May 22nd, two days after the inauguration, Hill met with Amos Hochstein, a former Obama Administration official who was working closely with Kobolyev. Hochstein told Hill that he had recently met with Zelensky and other officials in Kyiv. Giuliani, he said, was pressuring the Ukrainians to launch an investigation into Joe Biden. Giuliani and his business associates were pushing a spurious narrative about Biden, claiming that he had engineered the firing of Ukraine’s prosecutor general to protect his son Hunter, who was on the board of the gas company Burisma. It was Giuliani, Hill later learned, who had orchestrated Yovanovitch’s dismissal. “Amos knew so much more than I did,” Hill recalled. “He kept talking—‘Burisma, Burisma.’ I was, like, ‘What? Burisma?’ He was, like, ‘The Hunter thing.’ ”
Later that month, Hill discovered that she had been excluded from another set of communications, about Viktor Orbán’s long-hoped-for meeting with Trump. Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, had known Orbán for several years, and had advocated for the two to meet. A former U.S. diplomat said that, in the meeting, Orbán had reinforced Trump’s negative views about Ukraine. Trump told reporters, “Viktor Orbán has done a tremendous job in so many different ways. Highly respected. Respected all over Europe.”
On July 10th, two of Zelensky’s top advisers were in Washington, trying to schedule a meeting with Trump. Bolton did not want to commit, but Sondland, who was still injecting himself into conversations about Ukraine, told Bolton that Mulvaney had already arranged it. Bolton asked Hill to attend a discussion between Sondland and the Ukrainian delegation. Hill told Bolton that she learned, in the discussion, that Sondland and Mulvaney had made Zelensky’s visit to the White House contingent upon Ukraine’s agreement to pursue investigations. She later informed the N.S.C.’s legal adviser that Sondland and Mulvaney had bypassed the N.S.C. (Under oath, Sondland said that he had no recollection of such an agreement. Mulvaney has denied pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.) When Hill learned that the group was considering a phone call between Trump and Zelensky, she cautioned Bolton and his deputies against it.
As planned, Hill ended her tenure at the White House on July 15th. Two days later, in her farewell toast, she referred to J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy; her “band of brothers” at the N.S.C. was now passing “the ring” to the next group. Shortly before leaving, she encountered Sondland, who told her that he was coördinating with Trump and Mulvaney, and gave her a friendly farewell hug. “Gordon, I think this is all going to blow up,” she recalls saying. (Sondland denies that this conversation took place.)
Hill, who remained on the payroll through August, continued to receive unclassified e-mails, including ones about the Trump-Zelensky phone call, which took place on July 25th. As she put it, “I had gleaned from a couple of these exchanges that maybe the call hadn’t been great.” In September, she visited her mother in Bishop Auckland, and so did not learn the details of the phone call until September 24th, when the White House released a summary of the call. It revealed that Zelensky had asked Trump for “more Javelins” and that Trump had asked Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden. Later that day, Nancy Pelosi announced that the House of Representatives would launch a formal impeachment inquiry.
The House Intelligence Committee, led by Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, drew up a list of witnesses that included Bolton, Hill, Mulvaney, Sondland, Yovanovitch, and Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine. Volker, the first witness, appeared voluntarily before the committee less than a week after resigning. The White House had told Bolton that he could not testify, and the Democrats on the committee, aware that a court fight over a subpoena would drag on for months, dropped efforts to compel him to appear. Hill insisted on being subpoenaed, and delivered her private deposition on October 14th. Before her closed-door appearance, she again began receiving death threats. An F.B.I. officer who had worked with her recommended that she tape shut her mail slot and put security cameras around her house. Still, Hill welcomed the chance to testify. “I was given my opportunity for a clarifying moment,” she said.
The dynamics during Hill’s private deposition, she said, reminded her of high school. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, showed up uninvited at the hearing as a kind of protest against the impeachment inquiry, and engaged in “some absurd staring contest” with her. She was disturbed that her Republican questioners insisted on repeating the false theory that Ukraine had interfered in the election. She also sensed that they were trying to link her to Christopher Steele and his dossier. Hill told them that the dossier was a “rabbit hole”—which upset Steele, who had considered Hill a friend. Derek Harvey, who had been made an adviser to the House Intelligence Committee’s ranking Republican, Devin Nunes, passed notes to the Republican questioner Stephen Castor, whom Hill heard laughing while she described the lies that had been spread about her. (When Castor was called out during the deposition, he insisted that he had not laughed.) During a break, Harvey told Hill that he’d heard that the “trolls” were coming after her again.
Hill’s public testimony took place on November 21st. Congressional hearings are typically dry affairs, followed mostly by lobbyists, political junkies, and retirees addicted to C-SPAN. But, when Washington is in the throes of a political scandal, a hearing can be riveting. In 1973, John Dean, Richard Nixon’s former White House counsel, testified for five days before the Watergate committee. He surmised that he had been recorded in the Oval Office, a statement that led to revelations that Nixon had secret tapes of his meetings. In June, 2017, James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Trump had asked him “what we could do to ‘lift the cloud’ ” of the Russia investigation. Trump had implied on Twitter that he had tapes of at least one of his encounters with Comey, prompting Comey to say, “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.”
Hill, conveying a clear sense of the absurdity of the events she had witnessed, gave a brief opening statement, in which she pledged her loyalty to a country that had afforded her opportunities that would not have been available to her in the U.K., given her background and accent. Sondland had testified the previous day that he, Volker, and Rick Perry, the former Energy Secretary, had not wanted to deal with Giuliani but were “playing the hand we were dealt.” Hill described Sondland and his associates as having been involved in a “domestic political errand.”
Kelly, who had left the Administration at the end of 2018, and McMaster, who had taken a position at Stanford, had said little publicly about Trump, and they told Hill they admired her fortitude. Bolton, who was fired in September, 2019, had decided to save his revelations for a memoir. After Hill’s testimony, he asked Sarah Tinsley, a longtime aide, to relay a personal message: “You did the right thing.” On March 1st, Hill received an e-mail from James Mattis, the former Secretary of Defense: “I’ve wanted to drop you a note paying my respects but hesitated in the immediate aftermath of your testimony to ask around for your email address. Had word leaked out that I wanted to be in touch I imagined it could/would have been misconstrued and add to the challenges you were dealing with.” He went on, “I doubt that I’ve ever felt the combination of pride, anger and contempt as I watched you testify and what followed. I was enormously proud of your demonstrated courage and poise as you stood tall; angry at those who chose to try to defame you (they failed); and contemptuous of what we witnessed in those weeks by supposed political leaders whose hear no evil, see no evil stance revealed profiles in non-courage.”


newyorker--2020-06-22--The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time

The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time

A legend is an attempt to explain the inexplicable ; emerging as it does from a basis of truth , it is bound to end in the inexplicable .
We have four legends concerning Prometheus .
According to the first of them , for betraying the gods to mankind he was shackled to a peak in the Caucasus , and the gods sent eagles that ate at his liver as it kept growing back .
According to the second , the pain of the jabbing beaks drove Prometheus ever deeper into the rocks until he became one with them .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ was forgotten in the course of millennia : the gods forgot , the eagles forgot , he himself forgot .
According to the fourth , everyone grew tired of the procedure , which had lost its raison d ’ être .
The gods grew tired , the eagles , too .
Even the wound grew tired and closed .
The real riddle was the mountains .
A large loaf of bread lay on the table .
Father came in with a knife to cut it in half .
But even though the knife @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bread neither too soft nor too hard , the knife could not cut into it .
We children looked up at Father in surprise .
He said , “ Why should you be surprised ?
Isn ’ t it more surprising if something succeeds than if it fails ?
Go to bed , perhaps I ’ ll manage it later.
” We went to bed , but every now and again , at all hours of the night , one or another of us got up and craned his neck to look at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ big man in his long coat , his right leg braced behind him , seeking to drive the knife into the bread .
When we woke up early in the morning , Father was just laying the knife aside , and said , “ You see , I haven ’ t managed yet , that ’ s how hard it is.
” We wanted to distinguish ourselves , and he gave us permission to try , but we could hardly lift the knife , whose handle was still almost glowing from Father ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up out of our grasp .
Father laughed and said , “ Let it go .
I ’ m going out now .
I ’ ll try again tonight .
I won ’ t let a loaf of bread make a monkey out of me .
It ’ s bound to let itself be cut in the end ; of course it ’ s allowed to resist , so it ’ s resisting.
” But even as he said that the bread seemed to shrivel up , like the mouth of a grimly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a very small loaf indeed .
A farmer stopped me on the highway and begged me to come back to his house with him .
Perhaps I could help—he ’ d had a falling out with his wife , and their argument was wrecking his life .
He also had some simple-minded children who hadn ’ t turned out well ; they just stood around or got up to mischief .
I said I would be happy to go with him , but it was doubtful whether I , a stranger , would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way ; I might be able to put the children to some useful task , but I ’ d probably be helpless with respect to his wife , because quarrelsomeness in a wife usually has its origin in some quality in the husband , and since he was unhappy with the situation , he had probably already taken pains to change himself but hadn ’ t succeeded , so how could I possibly have more success ?
At the most , what I could do was divert the ire of the wife to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was speaking more to myself than to him , but then I asked him what he would pay me for my trouble .
He said we would rapidly come to some agreement ; if I turned out to be of use , I could help myself to whatever I wanted .
At that , I stopped and said that this sort of vague promise was not going to satisfy me—I wanted a precise agreement as to what he would give me per month .
He was astonished that I ’ d demanded anything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I in turn was astonished that he was astonished .
Did he suppose I could fix in a couple of hours what two people had done wrong over the course of their entire lives , and did he expect me at the end of those two hours to take a sack of dried peas , kiss his hand in gratitude , bundle myself up in my rags , and carry on down the icy road ?
Absolutely not .
The farmer listened in silence , with head lowered but tense .
The way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I would have to stay with him for a long time to first become familiar with the situation and think about possible improvements , and then I would have to stay even longer to create proper order , if such a thing was even possible , and by then I would be old and tired and would not be going anywhere but would rest and enjoy the thanks of the parties involved .
“ That won ’ t be possible , ” the farmer said .
“ Here you are wanting to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even drive me out of it in the end .
Then I would be in even more trouble than I am already.
” “ Unless we trust each other we won ’ t come to an agreement , ” I said .
“ Have I not shown I have trust in you ?
All I have is your word , and couldn ’ t you break that ?
After I ’ d arranged everything in accordance with your wishes , couldn ’ t you send me packing , for all your promises ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , “ You would never let that happen.
” “ Do what you want , ” I said , “ and think of me as you please , but don ’ t forget—I ’ m saying this to you in friendship , as one man to another—that if you don ’ t take me with you , you won ’ t be able to stand it for much longer in your house .
How are you going to go on living with your wife and those children ?
And , if you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take me home with you , then why not drop everything and all the trouble you ’ ll go on having at home and come with me .
We ’ ll go on the road together , and I won ’ t hold your suspicions against you.
” “ I ’ m not at liberty to do that , ” the farmer said .
“ I ’ ve been living with my wife now for fifteen years ; it ’ s been difficult , I don ’ t even understand how I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of that I can ’ t just abandon her without having tried everything that might make her bearable .
Then I saw you on the road , and I thought I might make one final effort , with you .
Come with me , and I ’ ll give you whatever you want .
What do you want ?
” “ I don ’ t want much , ” I said .
“ I ’ m not out to exploit your predicament .
I want you to take me on as your laborer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sorts of work and will be very useful to you .
But I don ’ t want to be treated like other laborers—you ’ re not to give me orders , I have to be allowed to do what work I please , now this , now that , now nothing at all , just as I please .
You can ask me to do something as long as you ’ re very gentle about it , and , if you see that I don ’ t want to do it , then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact .
I won ’ t require money , but clothes , linens , and boots up to present standards , and replaced when necessary ; if such things are unobtainable in your village , then you ’ ll have to go into town to buy them .
But don ’ t worry about that , my present clothes should last me for years .
I ’ ll be happy with standard laborers ’ fare , only I do insist on having meat every day .
”

A legend is an attempt to explain the inexplicable; emerging as it does from a basis of truth, it is bound to end in the inexplicable.
We have four legends concerning Prometheus. According to the first of them, for betraying the gods to mankind he was shackled to a peak in the Caucasus, and the gods sent eagles that ate at his liver as it kept growing back.
According to the second, the pain of the jabbing beaks drove Prometheus ever deeper into the rocks until he became one with them.
According to the third, his betrayal was forgotten in the course of millennia: the gods forgot, the eagles forgot, he himself forgot.
According to the fourth, everyone grew tired of the procedure, which had lost its raison d’être. The gods grew tired, the eagles, too. Even the wound grew tired and closed.
The real riddle was the mountains.
•
A large loaf of bread lay on the table. Father came in with a knife to cut it in half. But even though the knife was big and sharp, and the bread neither too soft nor too hard, the knife could not cut into it. We children looked up at Father in surprise. He said, “Why should you be surprised? Isn’t it more surprising if something succeeds than if it fails? Go to bed, perhaps I’ll manage it later.” We went to bed, but every now and again, at all hours of the night, one or another of us got up and craned his neck to look at Father, who stood there, a big man in his long coat, his right leg braced behind him, seeking to drive the knife into the bread. When we woke up early in the morning, Father was just laying the knife aside, and said, “You see, I haven’t managed yet, that’s how hard it is.” We wanted to distinguish ourselves, and he gave us permission to try, but we could hardly lift the knife, whose handle was still almost glowing from Father’s efforts; it seemed to rear up out of our grasp. Father laughed and said, “Let it go. I’m going out now. I’ll try again tonight. I won’t let a loaf of bread make a monkey out of me. It’s bound to let itself be cut in the end; of course it’s allowed to resist, so it’s resisting.” But even as he said that the bread seemed to shrivel up, like the mouth of a grimly determined person, and now it was a very small loaf indeed.
•
A farmer stopped me on the highway and begged me to come back to his house with him. Perhaps I could help—he’d had a falling out with his wife, and their argument was wrecking his life. He also had some simple-minded children who hadn’t turned out well; they just stood around or got up to mischief. I said I would be happy to go with him, but it was doubtful whether I, a stranger, would be able to help him in any way; I might be able to put the children to some useful task, but I’d probably be helpless with respect to his wife, because quarrelsomeness in a wife usually has its origin in some quality in the husband, and since he was unhappy with the situation, he had probably already taken pains to change himself but hadn’t succeeded, so how could I possibly have more success? At the most, what I could do was divert the ire of the wife to myself. At the beginning, I was speaking more to myself than to him, but then I asked him what he would pay me for my trouble. He said we would rapidly come to some agreement; if I turned out to be of use, I could help myself to whatever I wanted. At that, I stopped and said that this sort of vague promise was not going to satisfy me—I wanted a precise agreement as to what he would give me per month. He was astonished that I’d demanded anything like a monthly wage from him. I in turn was astonished that he was astonished. Did he suppose I could fix in a couple of hours what two people had done wrong over the course of their entire lives, and did he expect me at the end of those two hours to take a sack of dried peas, kiss his hand in gratitude, bundle myself up in my rags, and carry on down the icy road? Absolutely not. The farmer listened in silence, with head lowered but tense. The way I saw it, I told him, I would have to stay with him for a long time to first become familiar with the situation and think about possible improvements, and then I would have to stay even longer to create proper order, if such a thing was even possible, and by then I would be old and tired and would not be going anywhere but would rest and enjoy the thanks of the parties involved.
“That won’t be possible,” the farmer said. “Here you are wanting to install yourself in my house and maybe even drive me out of it in the end. Then I would be in even more trouble than I am already.”
“Unless we trust each other we won’t come to an agreement,” I said. “Have I not shown I have trust in you? All I have is your word, and couldn’t you break that? After I’d arranged everything in accordance with your wishes, couldn’t you send me packing, for all your promises?”
The farmer looked at me and said, “You would never let that happen.”
“Do what you want,” I said, “and think of me as you please, but don’t forget—I’m saying this to you in friendship, as one man to another—that if you don’t take me with you, you won’t be able to stand it for much longer in your house. How are you going to go on living with your wife and those children? And, if you don’t take a chance and take me home with you, then why not drop everything and all the trouble you’ll go on having at home and come with me. We’ll go on the road together, and I won’t hold your suspicions against you.”
“I’m not at liberty to do that,” the farmer said. “I’ve been living with my wife now for fifteen years; it’s been difficult, I don’t even understand how I’ve done it, but in spite of that I can’t just abandon her without having tried everything that might make her bearable. Then I saw you on the road, and I thought I might make one final effort, with you. Come with me, and I’ll give you whatever you want. What do you want?”
“I don’t want much,” I said. “I’m not out to exploit your predicament. I want you to take me on as your laborer for life. I can do all sorts of work and will be very useful to you. But I don’t want to be treated like other laborers—you’re not to give me orders, I have to be allowed to do what work I please, now this, now that, now nothing at all, just as I please. You can ask me to do something as long as you’re very gentle about it, and, if you see that I don’t want to do it, then you’ll have to accept the fact. I won’t require money, but clothes, linens, and boots up to present standards, and replaced when necessary; if such things are unobtainable in your village, then you’ll have to go into town to buy them. But don’t worry about that, my present clothes should last me for years. I’ll be happy with standard laborers’ fare, only I do insist on having meat every day.”
“Every day?” he interjected, as though satisfied with all the other conditions.
“Every day,” I said.
“I note your teeth are unusual,” he said, trying to excuse my unusual stipulation, and he even reached into my mouth to feel them. “Very sharp,” he said, “like a dog’s.”
“Well, anyway, meat every day,” I said. “And as much in the way of beer and spirits as you.”
“That’s a lot,” he said. “I drink a lot.”
“So much the better,” I said. “Then if you tighten your belt, I’ll tighten mine. Probably you only drink like that because of your unhappy home life.”
“No,” he said, “why should that be connected? But you shall have as much as me, we’ll drink together.”
“No,” I said. “I refuse to eat or drink in company. I insist on eating and drinking alone.”
“Alone?” the farmer asked in astonishment. “All these wishes are making my head spin.”
“There’s not so much,” I said, “and I’ve almost got to the end. I want oil for a lamp that is to be kept burning at my side all night. I have the lamp here, just a very little one that runs on next to nothing. It’s really hardly worth mentioning, and I just mentioned it for the sake of completeness, lest there be some subsequent dispute between us; I dislike such things when it comes to being paid. At all other times I am the mildest of men, but if terms once agreed upon are violated I cut up rough, remember that. If I am not given everything I have earned, down to the last detail, I am capable of setting fire to your house while you’re asleep. But you have no need to deny what we have clearly agreed upon, and then, especially if you make me the occasional present out of affection—it doesn’t have to be worth much, just the odd little trifle—I will be loyal and hardy and very useful to you in all manner of ways. And I shall want nothing beyond what I have told you just now, except on August 24th, my name day, a little barrel of two gallons of rum.”
“Two gallons!” the farmer exclaimed, clapping his hands together.
“Yes, two gallons,” I said. “It’s not so much. You probably think you can beat me down. But I’ve already reduced my requirements to the bare bones, out of regard for you, of course; I would be ashamed if some stranger were to hear us. I couldn’t possibly speak as we just now have in front of a stranger. So no one is to hear of our agreement. Well, who would believe it in any case?”
But the farmer said, “It’s better that you go your own way. I will go on home and try to make things up with the wife. It’s true, I have beaten her a lot of late—I think I’ll let up a little, perhaps she’ll be grateful to me—and I’ve beaten the children a lot as well; I always get the whip out of the stables and beat them. I’ll ease up on that a bit, and maybe things will improve. Admittedly, I’ve tried it in the past without the least improvement. But your demands are too much, and even if they weren’t—but no, it’s more than the business will bear, not possible, meat every day, two gallons of rum, and even if it were possible my wife would never allow it, and if she doesn’t allow it then I can’t do it.”
“So why the long negotiations,” I said.
•
To be perfectly honest, I am not very interested in the whole matter. I am lying in a corner, watching, inasmuch as you can see anything from a recumbent position, listening, inasmuch as I am able to understand anything, other than that I have been living in a sort of twilight for months, waiting for night to fall. My cellmate is in a different situation, an adamantine character, a captain. I can imagine his situation. He is of the view that his predicament is like that of a polar explorer who is frozen in some bleak waste but who will surely be rescued, or, rather, has already been rescued, as one will be able to read in some account of polar exploration. And now there is the following schism: the fact that he will be rescued is for him beyond doubt, irrespective of his will, simply by virtue of the weight of his victor’s personality. Now, should he wish for it? His wishing or not-wishing will affect nothing, he will be rescued, but the question—of whether he ought to wish for it as well—remains. It is with this seemingly abstruse question that he is engaged: he thinks it through, he lays it out before me, we discuss it together. We don’t talk about his rescue. For the rescue, he is apparently content to pin all his hopes on a little hammer he has somehow obtained, the sort of little hammer you use to drive thumbtacks into a drawing board; he cannot afford anything more, but he doesn’t use it, either—its mere possession delights him. Sometimes he kneels beside me and holds the hammer I’ve seen thousands of times in front of my face, or he takes my hand, spreads it out on the floor, and hammers all my fingers in turn. He knows that this hammer is not enough to knock the least splinter out of the wall, and he doesn’t seek to do so, either. Sometimes he runs his hammer along the walls, as though to give the signal to the great waiting machinery of rescue to swing into operation. It will not happen exactly in this way—the rescue will begin in its own time, irrespective of the hammer—but it remains something, something palpable and graspable, a token, something one can kiss, as one cannot kiss rescue.
Of course, one might say that the captain has been driven mad by captivity. The circle of his thinking is so diminished that it barely has room for a single thought. ♦
The four stories from “The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time” were translated, from the German, by Michael Hofmann. A previous English translation of the first story appears in “The Complete Stories,” and translations of all four were published in the out-of-print “Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings,” from 1954.


newyorker--2020-06-22--Diana Ejaita’s “A Family Blooms”

Diana Ejaita’s “A Family Blooms”

For the Nigerian-Italian artist Diana Ejaita , family time is very important .
This is Ejaita ’ s third cover for the magazine—she did one for Mother ’ s Day last year—and she recently spoke to us about her influences , the art scene in Lagos , and the anti-racism protests sweeping the globe .
This is a lovely portrait of a family together .
Was reading a big part of your childhood ?
Yes , reading was a big part of our growing up .
We spent time reading together and were always encouraged to choose new books .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ have is when I was about seven .
My siblings and I were listening to my mother read “ The Odyssey.
” I remember being astonished that there could be so many exciting stories .
Toward the end of 2019 , you spent time in Lagos .
Did you find new sources of inspiration in the country ’ s art scene ?
Yes , especially because , artistically speaking , I was in Lagos during the most exciting time of the year .
I was lucky enough to attend Lagos Biennial , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an international art fair .
The city has very active underground scenes in the theatre and performing arts .
Nigerian artists have a lot to say , and it was exciting to see the enormous international interest in their work .
It felt like the city doubled in size !
A lot is happening in Lagos right now .
It ’ s a good place to reinvent yourself .
You ’ ve told us that , while in Berlin , you participated in protests against police brutality in America .
Can you speak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Institutionalized racism is a global issue .
Whether in Berlin or in Italy , where I grew up , the discrimination often isn ’ t even hidden .
In the past few years , many people of color have been killed by police or civilians .
As black Europeans , we always have to be ready and armored , and the protests in America have provided us with a very special key .
Hopefully , it can open the doors to a more just future .
And hopefully it will not just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ artists who have helped you find your voice , and who still influence you ?
There are so many—it ’ s hard to make a list !
The photography of J. D. ’ Okhai Ojeikere , who often shot Nigerian hair , is very precious to me .
The art of Njideka Akunyili Crosby .
And one of the best films I ’ ve seen recently is “ Eyimofe ( This Is My Desire ) , ” which was directed by the twin brothers Chuko Esiri and Arie Esiri .
You work in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ large-format printmaking .
What do you think is the common denominator in the projects you take on ?
See below for more covers depicting families :

For the Nigerian-Italian artist Diana Ejaita, family time is very important. This is Ejaita’s third cover for the magazine—she did one for Mother’s Day last year—and she recently spoke to us about her influences, the art scene in Lagos, and the anti-racism protests sweeping the globe.
This is a lovely portrait of a family together. Was reading a big part of your childhood?
Yes, reading was a big part of our growing up. We spent time reading together and were always encouraged to choose new books. I think the most vivid memory I have is when I was about seven. My siblings and I were listening to my mother read “The Odyssey.” I remember being astonished that there could be so many exciting stories.
Toward the end of 2019, you spent time in Lagos. Did you find new sources of inspiration in the country’s art scene?
Yes, especially because, artistically speaking, I was in Lagos during the most exciting time of the year. I was lucky enough to attend Lagos Biennial, the LagosPhoto festival, and Art X, an international art fair. The city has very active underground scenes in the theatre and performing arts. Nigerian artists have a lot to say, and it was exciting to see the enormous international interest in their work. It felt like the city doubled in size! A lot is happening in Lagos right now. It’s a good place to reinvent yourself.
Ejaita and her father, Bright, in 1985. Anna Mori
You’ve told us that, while in Berlin, you participated in protests against police brutality in America. Can you speak to how racism is a global issue?
Institutionalized racism is a global issue. Whether in Berlin or in Italy, where I grew up, the discrimination often isn’t even hidden. In the past few years, many people of color have been killed by police or civilians. As black Europeans, we always have to be ready and armored, and the protests in America have provided us with a very special key. Hopefully, it can open the doors to a more just future. And hopefully it will not just be a trend.
Who are the artists who have helped you find your voice, and who still influence you?
There are so many—it’s hard to make a list! The photography of J. D. ’Okhai Ojeikere, who often shot Nigerian hair, is very precious to me. The art of Njideka Akunyili Crosby. And one of the best films I’ve seen recently is “Eyimofe (This Is My Desire),” which was directed by the twin brothers Chuko Esiri and Arie Esiri.
You work in many different forms, from clothing to large-format printmaking. What do you think is the common denominator in the projects you take on?
I thrive on black pride.
See below for more covers depicting families:


newyorker--2020-06-22--Shirley Jackson’s Son Talks to His Fictional Mom, Elisabeth Moss

At a Sundance Film Festival party in January—back when there were film festivals , and parties—the actress Elisabeth Moss felt a tap on her shoulder .
She spun around , and a man in his seventies said , “ Hi , Mom !
” It was Laurence Jackson Hyman , the oldest son of the author Shirley Jackson .
In “ Shirley , ” a new film directed by Josephine Decker , Moss plays a fictionalized version of Jackson , who died in 1965 and was known for her dark tales , such as “ The Haunting of Hill House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Lottery.
” At the Sundance première , Moss asked Hyman what he thought of the movie .
“ I ’ m digesting it , ” he said , hedging .
“ Shirley ” is now out on demand , and Hyman is still digesting .
“ If someone comes to the movie not knowing anything about my parents , they will certainly leave thinking that my mother was a crazy alcoholic and my father was a mean critic , ” he said the other day .
He and Moss were reconnecting on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in Northern California , and Moss was on the Upper West Side , curled up in a floral hoodie .
Hyman handles his mother ’ s estate , but he wasn ’ t involved with “ Shirley , ” which is based on a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell .
It imagines Jackson and her husband , the New Yorker critic Stanley Edgar Hyman ( played by Michael Stuhlbarg ) , taking in and terrorizing a young couple at their home , in Vermont , while Jackson works on her 1951 novel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when “ Hangsaman ” came out , but the Shirley and Stanley of the movie are childless .
“ She cooked three meals a day , and she drove us to dentist appointments and Cub Scout meetings , ” he said .
He objected to the film ’ s bleak depiction of his mother—in one scene , she goes to a party and douses the sofa with red wine—which he said did not “ fairly portray her humor.
” Moss nodded diplomatically .
“ It was a challenging experience for Michael and me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ love with them and their work , and we did all this research , ” she said .
“ We had to agree to let it go .
I ’ m still so haunted by her—in a good way !
” To prepare , Moss had read Jackson ’ s books and listened to a tape of her reading “ The Lottery.
” “ I think I recorded that , ” Hyman said .
“ My mother was terrified of , among other things , recording studios , so I recorded her on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recorder .
She ’ s got a drink with her , and you can hear , occasionally , the rattling of the ice when she takes a pause.
” Moss brought out her copy of Ruth Franklin ’ s biography of Jackson and read something she had underlined : “ The demon in the mind , Jackson wrote , exploits one ’ s bad conscience , spinning ordinary worries and grievances into destructive obsession.
” Hyman said , “ She understood that human nature is flawed , and that underneath even the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for evil.
” When he was a teen-ager , he recalled , “ she would ask me to drive her around in her Morris Minor convertible , and we would go look for haunted houses.
” Jackson was fascinated by the Salem witch trials , and was said to practice witchcraft herself .
But Hyman insisted that this was more of her unsung humor : his father had been fighting with Alfred A. Knopf over a manuscript when the publisher broke his leg on a skiing trip , “ and Shirley and Stanley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it by black magic.
” In the film , Jackson gives one of her house guests a tarot-card reading—a detail based in fact .
“ She very deliberately wrote ‘ Hangsaman ’ around the structure of the Major Arcana , ” Hyman said .
On a nearby table , he had his mother ’ s old tarot deck , along with other mementos , including her pewter mask of Pan and a few ceramic cat figurines .
“ She loved cats , ” Hyman said .
“ She usually collected black cats , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many as a dozen .
But she ’ d tell our father that we only had one or two , and he couldn ’ t tell the difference.
” Moss smiled .
She has two cats , Lucy and Ethel , one of which was slinking in and out of the frame .
“ We ’ re talking about Shirley , ” Moss whispered in its ear .
“ She also liked cats , Ethel.
” “ You know , Desi Arnaz asked Shirley if she would write an episode for them , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but one imagines a vial of poisoned Vitameatavegamin . )
Behind him was his mother ’ s haunted music box , from her great-grandmother ’ s trousseau .
“ It would turn itself on at odd times , ” he recalled .
“ It always favored ‘ The Carnival of Venice.
’ ” He played the ancient zinc record , and a spectral , circuslike tune emanated : definitely haunted .
Moss covered her face with her hands .
“ That ’ s terrifying , ” she said .
“ I mean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ♦

Elisabeth Moss Illustration by João Fazenda
At a Sundance Film Festival party in January—back when there were film festivals, and parties—the actress Elisabeth Moss felt a tap on her shoulder. She spun around, and a man in his seventies said, “Hi, Mom!” It was Laurence Jackson Hyman, the oldest son of the author Shirley Jackson. In “Shirley,” a new film directed by Josephine Decker, Moss plays a fictionalized version of Jackson, who died in 1965 and was known for her dark tales, such as “The Haunting of Hill House” and the New Yorker story “The Lottery.” At the Sundance première, Moss asked Hyman what he thought of the movie. “I’m digesting it,” he said, hedging.
“Shirley” is now out on demand, and Hyman is still digesting. “If someone comes to the movie not knowing anything about my parents, they will certainly leave thinking that my mother was a crazy alcoholic and my father was a mean critic,” he said the other day. He and Moss were reconnecting on Zoom; he was at his home, in Northern California, and Moss was on the Upper West Side, curled up in a floral hoodie. Hyman handles his mother’s estate, but he wasn’t involved with “Shirley,” which is based on a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell. It imagines Jackson and her husband, the New Yorker critic Stanley Edgar Hyman (played by Michael Stuhlbarg), taking in and terrorizing a young couple at their home, in Vermont, while Jackson works on her 1951 novel, “Hangsaman.”
Hyman was eight when “Hangsaman” came out, but the Shirley and Stanley of the movie are childless. “She cooked three meals a day, and she drove us to dentist appointments and Cub Scout meetings,” he said. He objected to the film’s bleak depiction of his mother—in one scene, she goes to a party and douses the sofa with red wine—which he said did not “fairly portray her humor.” Moss nodded diplomatically. “It was a challenging experience for Michael and me, because we sort of fell in love with them and their work, and we did all this research,” she said. “We had to agree to let it go. I’m still so haunted by her—in a good way!” To prepare, Moss had read Jackson’s books and listened to a tape of her reading “The Lottery.” “I think I recorded that,” Hyman said. “My mother was terrified of, among other things, recording studios, so I recorded her on my father’s Revere reel-to-reel tape recorder. She’s got a drink with her, and you can hear, occasionally, the rattling of the ice when she takes a pause.”
Moss brought out her copy of Ruth Franklin’s biography of Jackson and read something she had underlined: “The demon in the mind, Jackson wrote, exploits one’s bad conscience, spinning ordinary worries and grievances into destructive obsession.” Hyman said, “She understood that human nature is flawed, and that underneath even the most benign of circumstances there lurks this potential for evil.” When he was a teen-ager, he recalled, “she would ask me to drive her around in her Morris Minor convertible, and we would go look for haunted houses.” Jackson was fascinated by the Salem witch trials, and was said to practice witchcraft herself. But Hyman insisted that this was more of her unsung humor: his father had been fighting with Alfred A. Knopf over a manuscript when the publisher broke his leg on a skiing trip, “and Shirley and Stanley circulated the rumor that Shirley had done it by black magic.”
In the film, Jackson gives one of her house guests a tarot-card reading—a detail based in fact. “She very deliberately wrote ‘Hangsaman’ around the structure of the Major Arcana,” Hyman said. On a nearby table, he had his mother’s old tarot deck, along with other mementos, including her pewter mask of Pan and a few ceramic cat figurines. “She loved cats,” Hyman said. “She usually collected black cats, and sometimes we’d have as many as a dozen. But she’d tell our father that we only had one or two, and he couldn’t tell the difference.”
Moss smiled. She has two cats, Lucy and Ethel, one of which was slinking in and out of the frame. “We’re talking about Shirley,” Moss whispered in its ear. “She also liked cats, Ethel.”
“You know, Desi Arnaz asked Shirley if she would write an episode for them,” Hyman said. (Jackson declined, but one imagines a vial of poisoned Vitameatavegamin.) Behind him was his mother’s haunted music box, from her great-grandmother’s trousseau. “It would turn itself on at odd times,” he recalled. “It always favored ‘The Carnival of Venice.’ ” He played the ancient zinc record, and a spectral, circuslike tune emanated: definitely haunted. Moss covered her face with her hands. “That’s terrifying,” she said. “I mean, in the most wonderful way.” ♦


newyorker--2020-06-22--“Flame in the Cloud at Midnight,” by Yi Lei

Flame in the cloud at midnight Blankets my bed with light .
The scent of winter jasmine Rises from a @ @ @ @ @ .
I watch you as if from my girlhood .
I watch as if from @ @ @ @ @ dim sky , holding aloft The burden of my body .
Death , Bloodless and @ @ @ @ @ But what if we could live that way , too ?
At the moment , @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m a woman without lust .
Moonlight , like new snow , Covers @ @ @ @ @ night .
Huge strange faces Fade from my windows and doors .

Audio: Read by Tracy K. Smith
Flame in the cloud at midnight
Blankets my bed with light.
The scent of winter jasmine
Rises from a tomb to meet my eyes.
I watch you as if from my girlhood.
I watch as if from death, anonymous
Beneath a dim sky, holding aloft
The burden of my body. Death,
Bloodless and unfeeling, is familiar.
But what if we could live that way, too?
At the moment, darling,
At the moment I’m a woman without lust.
Moonlight, like new snow,
Covers the hands and feet of night.
Huge strange faces
Fade from my windows and doors.


newyorker--2020-06-22--In Search of King David’s Lost Empire

In Search of King David’s Lost Empire

Jerusalem , in the tenth century B.C.
, is an inhospitable place for farmers but a strategic location for men on the run .
Human settlement in the Judean highlands is sparse : five thousand people , spread out in hamlets of about fifty families each .
The landscape is rugged , veined with ravines and thicketed with oaks .
Rain is unpredictable .
To the east lies the desert , hushed and empty .
To the west—teasingly close—are the lush lowlands of the Philistine city-states , with their seaside trade routes and their princely homes .
Cut off from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hill country is severe .
Homes are made of unworked stone ; sheep and goats are quartered indoors .
There are no public buildings , no ornate furnishings in the shrines .
Bands of fugitives , landless laborers , and tax evaders rove the Judean wilderness .
These rebel gangs—viewed by the neighboring Egyptians as both a nuisance and a threat—maraud the nearby villages .
They collect protection money and pillage the locals , making off with their women and their cattle .
They terrorize the Philistines , and then , in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Philistine king in exchange for shelter .
Their leader is a wily , resourceful man from Bethlehem , who decides that his people are meant for more than lightning raids and mercenary stints .
He sends his men to rout an advancing force , then shares the loot with the highland elders .
This wins over the highlanders , and , in time , they make him chieftain of the southern hill area .
He takes over the tribal center of Hebron , and later captures Jerusalem , another hilltop stronghold .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the main homes of the Jerusalem village , and settles in one himself—a palace , some might call it , though there is nothing extravagant about it .
He rules over a neglected chiefdom of pastoralists and outlaws .
His name is David .
Israel Finkelstein ’ s vision of King David—the vagabond , the racketeer—helped make his career as an eminent Biblical archeologist .
But , when he began his research in the area , he was interested less in the Bible than in migration patterns .
In 1993 , Finkelstein was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ University , forty-four years old and known as something of an iconoclast .
He was working on a book called “ Living on the Fringe , ” which took up questions of human habitation in the ancient southern Levant—particularly Canaan , the site of what is now Israel .
Finkelstein argued that the first settlers came there as a result of internal changes in the region ; nomadic societies became sedentary for a few generations during periods of successful trade , then uprooted themselves , then settled again .
The Israelites , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” —that is , Bedouin nomads .
The Bible , of course , tells it differently .
In the Old Testament story , Canaan is where the Hebrews ended their exodus , and where David secured for his people a glorious kingdom .
From about 1,000 B.C.
, he and his son Solomon ruled over a vast monarchy that encompassed four defeated kingdoms , stretching as far north as the Euphrates River and as far south as the Negev Desert .
( Archeologists derive the date from an inscription on a portal gate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which lists the military conquests of King Shoshenq—thought to be the same king mentioned in the Bible as Shishak . )
The United Monarchy , as it is known , represented the golden age of ancient Israel ; though it probably lasted no more than a generation or two , its legacy has persisted for thousands of years .
For Jews , Finkelstein told me , David “ represents territorial sovereignty , the legend of the empire.
” For Christians , he is “ directly related to Jesus and the birth of Christianity.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ righteous prophet who preceded Muhammad .
The story of David , Finkelstein added , “ is the most central thing in the Bible , and in our culture.
” The Bible depicts David as a brilliant but flawed figure , capable of unspeakable violence but also of remorse and tenderness—perhaps humanity ’ s first antihero .
He is anointed by God to replace Saul , the first king of Israel , whose short rule was marked by bouts of rebellion .
David is a handsome shepherd ; he has a way with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he slings a fatal stone at a giant .
So far , these are the familiar tropes of the ancient hero .
But David is also said to have impregnated Bathsheba—a married woman—and sent her husband off to die in battle .
Nadav Na ’ aman , an authority on Jewish history and a colleague of Finkelstein ’ s at Tel Aviv University , describes David ’ s story as “ extraordinary fiction.
” But he believes that it contains kernels of truth , preserved as the tale was passed down by oral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , frequently mentions the Philistine city of Gath , which was destroyed in the late ninth century B.C.—a clue to its origins .
In the long war over how to reconcile the Bible with historical fact , the story of David stands at ground zero .
There is no archeological record of Abraham , or Isaac , or Jacob .
There is no Noah ’ s Ark , nothing from Moses .
Joshua did not bring down the walls of Jericho : they collapsed centuries earlier , perhaps in an earthquake .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ working near the Syrian border found a fragment of basalt from the ninth century B.C.
, with an Aramaic inscription that mentioned the “ House of David ” —the first known reference to one of the Bible ’ s foundational figures .
So David is not just a central ancestor in the Old Testament .
He may also be the only one that we can prove existed .
Yet to prove it definitively would be exceptionally difficult ; Jerusalem of the tenth century B.C .
is an archeological void .
“ I can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we have from that period , ” Yuval Gadot , an archeologist from Tel Aviv University , said .
Finkelstein has pushed Israeli research to the forefront of science , employing precision radiocarbon dating , DNA analysis , and image processing that can examine a three-thousand-year-old potsherd and determine how many ancient scribes were involved in its making .
An archeology lab run by Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science has employed the chief forensic investigator of the Israel Police .
Despite their advanced technology , these researchers are still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than a century .
From where did the early Israelites emerge ?
When do we first see signs of a centralized cult with a single deity ?
More prosaically , but no less crucially , who was David ?
Was he the all-powerful king described in the Bible ?
Or was he , as some archeologists believe , no more than a small-time Bedouin sheikh ?
William Albright , the father of Biblical archeology , seemed ill-suited to field work .
Born in 1891 , to Methodist missionaries from Iowa , Albright @ @ @ @ @ @ @ typhoid fever in infancy—and a left hand that had been mangled in a farming accident .
At ten , though , he cobbled together enough money to buy a two-volume history of Babylon and Assyria .
By sixteen , he was teaching himself Hebrew .
In college , he studied Greek , Latin , Akkadian , Ancient Ethiopian , Syriac , and Arabic , with breaks to travel to New York for meetings of the American Oriental Society .
Albright was a faithful Christian , and the inerrancy of the Bible was then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Europe , argued that the first five books of the Old Testament were written not at the time of Moses , as the Scriptures claim , but by authors working centuries apart , weaving a patchwork of tales from early Judeans and later priests , and even from Babylonian myths .
For Albright , the Bible was nevertheless a compendium of verifiable fact .
In 1919 , he arrived in Palestine , and began scouring the land of ancient Israel for findings that would illustrate and historicize the Scriptures .

Jerusalem, in the tenth century B.C., is an inhospitable place for farmers but a strategic location for men on the run. Human settlement in the Judean highlands is sparse: five thousand people, spread out in hamlets of about fifty families each. The landscape is rugged, veined with ravines and thicketed with oaks. Rain is unpredictable. To the east lies the desert, hushed and empty. To the west—teasingly close—are the lush lowlands of the Philistine city-states, with their seaside trade routes and their princely homes. Cut off from these coastal plains, life in the hill country is severe. Homes are made of unworked stone; sheep and goats are quartered indoors. There are no public buildings, no ornate furnishings in the shrines. Bands of fugitives, landless laborers, and tax evaders rove the Judean wilderness. These rebel gangs—viewed by the neighboring Egyptians as both a nuisance and a threat—maraud the nearby villages. They collect protection money and pillage the locals, making off with their women and their cattle. They terrorize the Philistines, and then, in a sudden turnaround, offer their services to a Philistine king in exchange for shelter.
Their leader is a wily, resourceful man from Bethlehem, who decides that his people are meant for more than lightning raids and mercenary stints. He sends his men to rout an advancing force, then shares the loot with the highland elders. This wins over the highlanders, and, in time, they make him chieftain of the southern hill area. He takes over the tribal center of Hebron, and later captures Jerusalem, another hilltop stronghold. The chieftain moves his extended family to the main homes of the Jerusalem village, and settles in one himself—a palace, some might call it, though there is nothing extravagant about it. He rules over a neglected chiefdom of pastoralists and outlaws. His name is David.
Israel Finkelstein’s vision of King David—the vagabond, the racketeer—helped make his career as an eminent Biblical archeologist. But, when he began his research in the area, he was interested less in the Bible than in migration patterns. In 1993, Finkelstein was a newly tenured professor at Tel Aviv University, forty-four years old and known as something of an iconoclast. He was working on a book called “Living on the Fringe,” which took up questions of human habitation in the ancient southern Levant—particularly Canaan, the site of what is now Israel. Finkelstein argued that the first settlers came there as a result of internal changes in the region; nomadic societies became sedentary for a few generations during periods of successful trade, then uprooted themselves, then settled again. The Israelites, he claimed, were “of local stock”—that is, Bedouin nomads.
The Bible, of course, tells it differently. In the Old Testament story, Canaan is where the Hebrews ended their exodus, and where David secured for his people a glorious kingdom. From about 1,000 B.C., he and his son Solomon ruled over a vast monarchy that encompassed four defeated kingdoms, stretching as far north as the Euphrates River and as far south as the Negev Desert. (Archeologists derive the date from an inscription on a portal gate in the Egyptian city of Karnak, which lists the military conquests of King Shoshenq—thought to be the same king mentioned in the Bible as Shishak.) The United Monarchy, as it is known, represented the golden age of ancient Israel; though it probably lasted no more than a generation or two, its legacy has persisted for thousands of years. For Jews, Finkelstein told me, David “represents territorial sovereignty, the legend of the empire.” For Christians, he is “directly related to Jesus and the birth of Christianity.” For Muslims, he is a righteous prophet who preceded Muhammad. The story of David, Finkelstein added, “is the most central thing in the Bible, and in our culture.”
The Bible depicts David as a brilliant but flawed figure, capable of unspeakable violence but also of remorse and tenderness—perhaps humanity’s first antihero. He is anointed by God to replace Saul, the first king of Israel, whose short rule was marked by bouts of rebellion. David is a handsome shepherd; he has a way with the lyre and a way with women; he slings a fatal stone at a giant. So far, these are the familiar tropes of the ancient hero. But David is also said to have impregnated Bathsheba—a married woman—and sent her husband off to die in battle.
Nadav Na’aman, an authority on Jewish history and a colleague of Finkelstein’s at Tel Aviv University, describes David’s story as “extraordinary fiction.” But he believes that it contains kernels of truth, preserved as the tale was passed down by oral tradition. The story, for instance, frequently mentions the Philistine city of Gath, which was destroyed in the late ninth century B.C.—a clue to its origins.
In the long war over how to reconcile the Bible with historical fact, the story of David stands at ground zero. There is no archeological record of Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob. There is no Noah’s Ark, nothing from Moses. Joshua did not bring down the walls of Jericho: they collapsed centuries earlier, perhaps in an earthquake. But, in 1993, an Israeli archeologist working near the Syrian border found a fragment of basalt from the ninth century B.C., with an Aramaic inscription that mentioned the “House of David”—the first known reference to one of the Bible’s foundational figures. So David is not just a central ancestor in the Old Testament. He may also be the only one that we can prove existed. Yet to prove it definitively would be exceptionally difficult; Jerusalem of the tenth century B.C. is an archeological void. “I can take a shoebox and put inside everything we have from that period,” Yuval Gadot, an archeologist from Tel Aviv University, said.
Finkelstein has pushed Israeli research to the forefront of science, employing precision radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis, and image processing that can examine a three-thousand-year-old potsherd and determine how many ancient scribes were involved in its making. An archeology lab run by Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science has employed the chief forensic investigator of the Israel Police. Despite their advanced technology, these researchers are still engaged in questions that have persisted for more than a century. From where did the early Israelites emerge? When do we first see signs of a centralized cult with a single deity? More prosaically, but no less crucially, who was David? Was he the all-powerful king described in the Bible? Or was he, as some archeologists believe, no more than a small-time Bedouin sheikh?
William Albright, the father of Biblical archeology, seemed ill-suited to field work. Born in 1891, to Methodist missionaries from Iowa, Albright suffered from extreme myopia—likely the result of typhoid fever in infancy—and a left hand that had been mangled in a farming accident. At ten, though, he cobbled together enough money to buy a two-volume history of Babylon and Assyria. By sixteen, he was teaching himself Hebrew. In college, he studied Greek, Latin, Akkadian, Ancient Ethiopian, Syriac, and Arabic, with breaks to travel to New York for meetings of the American Oriental Society.
“For next Father’s Day, we’ll get you a tie clip.” Cartoon by Tom Toro Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Albright was a faithful Christian, and the inerrancy of the Bible was then under attack. Critics, mostly in Europe, argued that the first five books of the Old Testament were written not at the time of Moses, as the Scriptures claim, but by authors working centuries apart, weaving a patchwork of tales from early Judeans and later priests, and even from Babylonian myths. For Albright, the Bible was nevertheless a compendium of verifiable fact. In 1919, he arrived in Palestine, and began scouring the land of ancient Israel for findings that would illustrate and historicize the Scriptures.
In 1936, Albright named a successor in Palestine: Nelson Glueck, an American who is said to have boasted of digging “with a Bible in one hand and a trowel in the other.” He surveyed hundreds of sites in Transjordan, and found evidence of an ancient copper industry so extensive that he nicknamed the area “the Pittsburgh of Palestine.” By comparing potsherds he found there with those from other sites, Glueck grew convinced that the mines dated to the tenth century B.C. For Biblical archeologists, this was akin to striking gold—“the ultimate fantasy,” one told me.
In the nascent State of Israel, there was real currency to research that could demonstrate the Jewish people’s connection to their ancestral land—especially if it ignored the other people living there. David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister, said, “Jewish archeology present-tenses our past and shows our historic continuity in the country.” His Army’s legendary chief of staff, Yigael Yadin, became the country’s leading archeologist. In 1955, Yadin began an epochal excavation of the ancient city of Hazor, which, in the Bible, is destroyed by Joshua during his conquest of Canaan, and later rebuilt and fortified by Solomon. Yadin approached the dig like a military operation. He employed two hundred diggers, mostly immigrants from North Africa, and installed a network of field telephones and a miniature railway for transferring dirt. His men unearthed a six-chambered gate made of ashlar stones, which looked identical to a gate that Yadin had previously discovered in Megiddo—another city thought to have been built by Solomon. Here was evidence of a grand design, Yadin concluded. “Both gates were built by the same royal architect,” he wrote in 1958.
Finkelstein was nine years old at the time, and the romance of such finds was helping to inspire what one historian described as a “popular national cult” of archeology. The cult didn’t extend to Finkelstein’s house. He was raised outside Tel Aviv, in a family of citrus farmers. His father was a talented athlete and, he says, a “big macho,” who emigrated from Ukraine, joined his in-laws’ orchard business, and went on to become a successful sports executive. At age four, Finkelstein was considered a math prodigy. But, he said, “my parents did what you’re not supposed to do, which is to show off my skills with a slide rule in front of guests.” His father wanted him to be a nuclear physicist, and was baffled by his decision to go into archeology: “Until his last day, he couldn’t understand why someone would pay me a salary—‘Who cares? What good does it do?’ ”
After serving in the Israeli Air Force, Finkelstein landed, in 1970, in the archeology department at Tel Aviv. The field was embroiled in debate. “There was a world war going on over whether Abraham was historical,” he said. “Then there was a big debate over the conquest of Canaan. Today, there isn’t. We know these things didn’t happen. But that’s how it all went—the salami method.” The most momentous events in the Scriptures were being pared away, one after another. Finkelstein found it easy to wonder whether any of the Biblical narrative was based on historical fact.
Thomas Römer, the head of the Collège de France, told me that Finkelstein developed “a reputation as one of the young generation who were about to challenge the traditional way of how Israel was doing archeology.” He also developed a reputation as a playboy. “I needed to calm down in every respect” is how he puts it. He was married when he accepted a two-year teaching position in Chicago, in the mid-eighties, but the marriage collapsed soon after his return home. He met his second wife, Joëlle Cohen, a Parisian émigrée, on a dig in southern Israel. By then, he was forty—and calmer.
After years of researching the highlands, Finkelstein wanted to take on a site in the lowlands, to see whether social structures emerged differently there. He chose Megiddo, Yadin’s old territory. It was the “switchboard of the Levant,” Finkelstein told me one afternoon a few months ago. We were in his office in the Tel Aviv University humanities building. He had settled in a lime-green armchair, and gestured for me to sit on a wooden daybed. An electric bicycle, which he calls his “Mercedes,” was parked in a corner. At seventy-one, Finkelstein is six feet two, bearded, with a deep baritone and elegant hands that always seem to be conducting an invisible orchestra. (I heard a janitor on campus address him as “Sean Connery.”) He is generous, witty, courtly, overwhelmingly charming—and he knows it. “Israel Finkelstein is Israel Finkelstein’s greatest fan,” one scholar told me. More than once, when we spoke, he compared himself to Baruch Spinoza, “a great Jew,” who, in 1656, was excommunicated for challenging Biblical orthodoxy. In conversation, Finkelstein often refers to himself as “your slave,” “your loyal slave,” or “your wretched slave,” which has the strange effect of further elevating his self-image.