The Novel by James A. Michener
‘I’ve checked the local school, the one in Reading, The Hill in Pottstown, the college. Not a clue. No bad companions, no boys hated him, no girls wanted to get even. No family enemies at the steel company, no records of any kind in Allentown, and we don’t even have a reckless driving charge against him in our files at Dresden.’
‘What do you have?’ I asked, and he said: ‘Nothing, except a powerful determination to solve what looks right now to be a mystery, but can’t remain one, considering the brutality, the amount of blood spilled, and the exposed place of the killing. Somebody had to have seen something.’
It was something of a study in contrasts that Captain Stumpf blusteringly dispatched his men on investigations that accomplished nothing, while Ms. Marmelle quietly and efficiently directed Streibert, Jenny, Ms. Benelli and me in our task of assembling materials for ‘Tull at Mecklenberg,’ and then saw to it that we did our jobs. Streibert immediately attacked his assignment, the thirty-two-page essay. Jenny began transcribing her memories of Timothy. Ms. Benelli helped with reference books and literary data, and Ms. Marmelle herself sat in the Dresden China checking the accuracy of her very full memorandum, from which I quoted. I spent my time verifying data.
This evening Yvonne assured me: ‘We’re producing a book that will be read by everyone who loves literature. A cult book, if you will, but of the highest authenticity.’ With that benediction she boarded the bus back to New York.
At the end of his three exhausting days Captain Stumpf could merely repeat his stolid promise: ‘We’ll find out who did it.’
WEDNESDAY, 13 NOVEMBER: While watching the energetic but fruitless efforts of Captain Stumpf, his force and the several state police who cooperated with him, I became aware that two private citizens were also preoccupied with this case. Knowledge of their activity reached me when the college held a planning session regarding the fund Lukas Yoder had given, and he pushed his way forward with uncharacteristic vigor to express his condolences: ‘Everyone who knew Timothy shares your sorrow. He was a rare lad and we shall find the criminal who did it. Mrs. Garland, we shall find him.’ He seemed so personally distraught that I quietly sought Emma: ‘Is anything wrong with Lukas? He seems so unnerved,’ and she gave a doleful answer: ‘Everything seems to be going poorly for him. The murder has affected him far more profoundly than I would have expected. He’s told me several times: “A thing like that oughtn’t to happen in Grenzler,” and he’s developed a bitter hatred for the murderer, as if the savage had attacked him personally. And to top it all, his painting, Hex XXIV, isn’t going well and he was psychologically bruised by the fracas he got himself involved in over Ezra Pound.’
‘Watch over him, Emma. Good men are precious in this world.’
‘In times of depression like this, he’s always found consolation in his evening visits with Herman Zollicoffer. He says: “Herman is of the earth, and his sensible attitudes bring me back to earth.” But now even that friendship fails to solve the problem, because when Lukas visits him, all Zollicoffer wants to talk about is the murder. They’re a pair of fanatics.’
When I heard that my two Dutchmen, Yoder and Zollicoffer, were struggling to identify my grandson’s murderer, I became hungry to know what they had learned, so I asked Emma: ‘Could I come by tomorrow to speak with you?’ and when I reached their farm she and Lukas, as well as Zollicoffer, were waiting for me. Lukas spoke first: ‘I was very fond of Timothy and I respected what he was writing. We had our differences of opinion, as when he spoke rather harshly against me in the Pound affair, but at his age he should have.’
When I nodded my approval of his reaction, he told me: ‘The two sources I visit for my news about the murder produce two radically different types of information. At the post office I get sporadic gossip, one item rarely relating to the next, guesswork at best. At Zollicoffer’s I get the patient, shrewd deduction of a longtime Dresden man who has seen crimes that seemed completely insolvable at first yield to either analysis or inspired intellectual police work. As a result of watching numerous such performances in surrounding communities, from Bethlehem on the north to Lancaster on the south, Zollicoffer has deduced certain immutables: “Lukas, the two rules still hold. If it ain’t sex, it’s got to be money.” You’d be surprised how often that rule has helped the old fellow to deduce the specific motives that ultimately identified the criminal.’
I did not know Zollicoffer well, had spoken with him at length only twice—when the Yoders brought him and his wife to my cocktail party and when we had dinner at the 7&7—but what I now heard him say made me appreciate his robust common sense. ‘Any girls involved that we know of?’ he asked.
‘None,’ Yoder said, ‘except a responsible young writer named Jenny Sorkin … if the police are telling us what they know.’
‘They’re not obligated to, but I haven’t heard of any others, have you?’
‘Not a whisper,’ Lukas said, ‘and college kids do like to whisper.’
‘It’s got to be money.’
I was impressed with Zollicoffer’s common sense and asked: ‘Have you anything else? Even something that seems unimportant?’ and Zollicoffer said: ‘There was that story in the Philadelphia newspaper, remember, about your boy. Maybe—’
I stopped him: ‘Lukas, may I use your phone?’
When Stumpf came on the wire, I asked: ‘Are you aware that some years ago The Philadelphia Inquirer carried a story about Timothy’s upside-down book and it informed the public that my grandson was a millionaire, or words to that effect? Couldn’t that story have triggered some sick mind?’
I could tell from his reaction that Stumpf was irritated by my intrusion: ‘Mrs. Garland, we had a copy of that paper by three o’clock on the day of the murder.’
‘Good police work,’ I said, and he added: ‘The story did carry your boy’s picture and it did suggest that he was very rich. So your hunch was a good one. We’re going to find the killer.’
When I reported Stumpf’s words, Zollicoffer nodded: ‘He’s right, you know. We will find him,’ and I was gratified that this stubborn neighbor was on the trail.
SATURDAY, 16 NOVEMBER: The fact that Yoder and I have had to meet with the college authorities on various issues has been rewarding in two respects. It’s kept me from brooding on my terrible loss, and it’s given me a rich opportunity to know a man whom so many Americans love. But recently there has been a third boon: a chance to watch intimately how the concept of a novel arises in the mind of the writer. To an inveterate reader this has been a privilege.
It came about by accident. At the end of one of our meetings at the college I realized that I had not instructed Oscar about when he should return for me. I was left without a car, and Lukas suggested that he drive me home. We left the college and instead of heading directly west toward Windsong, we wandered the lovely back roads, which showed our area in its finest dress, and as we went he mused: ‘If I were forty again I could perform an important public service,’ and when I asked him what that might be, he said as if talking with a stranger who had no emotional involvement with my grandson’s murder: ‘I’d start to build a novel on this tragedy. The Grenzler setting. My familiar characters. The peaceful countryside and then smash! The intrusion of this horrible murder.’ He paused to consider how he might handle it: ‘I’d not have the courage to depict what you saw when you went down the slope. Too awful. But the setting, the values involved, and the ultimate meaning, I could use them to great purpose.’ And he seemed to dismiss the concept.
But then he started running through a list of other potential writers of such a novel, for I could see that when he visualized a work of fiction it became a precious object, worthy of reverence: ‘Streibert couldn’t do it. Jenny Sorkin might, but she’s too personally involved, and a stranger to our local ways and history. There’s that promising young fellow in Reading, he could do it if he were old enough, and I have great respect for that teacher of writing at Lafayette College in Easton, but he’s following his
We had become more or less lost, and when we discovered where we were it was clear that a sharp turn to the right would land us close to the Zollicoffers’: ‘We’ll drop in and see if he has any news,’ and when we entered the kitchen we found Frieda and Herman preparing for supper. The cooking odors were seductive, and Frieda cried in her loud voice: ‘We’ll chust call Emma and make a feast already.’
Herman took Yoder and me aside: ‘I been thinking; about what I said relatin’ to the newspaper article concernin’ Tull and his millions. Who in this area would see a paper like that from out of town? Not the ordinary scoundrels in Neumunster or Dresden, the ones the police already know. More likely college students, they have the papers in their library. My guess, you’re goin’ to find the murderer among his college friends.’
Lukas was interested in an entirely different approach: ‘I thought as I drove home by the back route, daydreaming maybe, of the great job Timothy Tull might have done with this story, a writer who understood the area and its Dutchmen. My question for him, if he were still alive, would be this: “Knowing us Dutch as you do, what kind of man or woman among us, no outsiders, would be likely to do such a thing?” Now imagine yourself as young Timothy. Same question: “What kind of Dutchman, Herman?” ’
Zollicoffer leaned back in his kitchen chair, his suspenders and belt showing, and reflected upon his neighbors: ‘Good question, Lukas. Let’s suppose it was one of us.’ Slowly he began to draw a portrait, composed of elements from people he had known. ‘Not our age. We’re too old to risk a deal like that, too weak to act in a rage of such power. Aindt easy to break heavy bones.’
‘They were broken?’
‘Didn’t you study the coroner’s report? Right arm, left shinbone. Powerful blows.’ I shuddered, but Zollicoffer plunged ahead: ‘Lukas, it’s got to be a man. Even strong women don’t have the power. Under forty-five, I’d think. Hotheaded, because he must have continued hittin’ the boy even after the worst had been done.’
‘You’re leading toward a monster.’
‘Oh, no! A lawyer, a minister, they can do dreadful things if they’re taken by surprise, can’t they, Mrs. Garland? Or if they’re—scared. There was a dog at the scene, right?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A handsome Labrador named Xerxes.’
‘But kept inside?’
‘Yes. When Timothy stayed with me, Xerxes slept on his bed.’
‘So what we’re left with, hidin’ among us Germans, is a man between the ages of, say, eighteen, strong enough to do the damage, and forty-five, still crazy enough to do it. Probably a farmer, with those muscles. Heard about Tull bein’ a millionaire. Brooded three full years before he had the guts to do it.’ He stopped: ‘Let’s say he read the paper or heard about it when he was nineteen or twenty. Hadn’t the courage then. Now he’s twenty-two, twenty-three. Think along those lines.’ But as soon as he said the words, he modified them: ‘No, I still think that kind would never have seen the newspaper article. It’s got to be a college boy—maybe a football player. With that steroid thing they can become pretty powerful. Remember, Lukas, the killer has to be nearly a gorilla. Hang on to that.’
Hoping to bring realism to the discussion, I pointed out: ‘Whoever the killer was, he stood to make no money from Timothy’s death. Was it to be a kidnapping?’
Zollicoffer, amazed at what he considered a ridiculous question, said patiently: ‘Mrs. Garland, never in a hundred years did he intend to kill your grandson. And a kidnapping was physically impossible, Tim was a big, strong boy. The killer was taken by surprise. Tim and the dog coming at him, he just lashed out. Automatic, you could say.’
‘What did he intend?’
‘Robbery. It was supposed to be a simple robbery. He carried some tool to break into your house. All he wanted to steal was some money if he found it lying around, maybe a TV or a VCR. A robbery that turned sour.’
Before I could say how horrible it was to think that Timothy might have been killed protecting his belongings, we heard Emma bringing her small car off the main road and into the Zollicoffers’ driveway. When she entered the kitchen she rebuked her husband: ‘I had supper waiting. Where’ve you been?’ and he pointed at me: ‘At the college.’ She embraced me and said: ‘You’re wise to keep busy,’ and I watched with awe as the four energetically dug into Frieda Zollicoffer’s good food.
‘You eat like a bird!’ Frieda clucked at me, but I thought I’d been eating like a proper pig.
FRIDAY, 29 NOVEMBER: I noticed that in my bereavement two factors seemed to dominate. As in every previous crisis I found positive relief in reading, and I chose to revisit old favorites that had charmed me at various times in my life: Green Mansions when a girl, Precious Bane when older, The Constant Nymph when a young married woman, and Anna Karenina from the dark days following the death of my daughter. But, if I may say so, they were all more or less in the same mold, storytelling in the great tradition and language used in traditional ways, and each was by a European writer. With them I mixed the latest well-reviewed novels by young American writers, and some of them were so fresh and delightful, and even daring, that I lived a spiritually satisfying life. I did not require how-to books on living with pain or surviving the loss of a loved one. My therapy came from great thoughts and adventures related in great languages.
The second factor that helped me to retain my sanity was a surprise. I had been reared in a proper family, had married a proper man who worked in a proper corporation in a proper American city. You might say that I was socially deprived, for my circle of friends comprised no blacks, no Jews and very few Catholics. My family had no prejudice against such people, nor the Slavs and Czechs and Poles that made up the work force in a steel mill; my parents simply taught me to ignore them. I did not even appreciate the rather amusing Pennsylvania Dutch who lived at the edges of our society.
But now, left alone with my books, I found myself with two wonderful Jewish women as my close friends and two quintessentially Dutch families as the ones who gave me the greatest solace. In these tortured weeks of November I realized that I loved Yvonne Marmelle and Jenny Sorkin for their vibrant attack on life, and I treasured the Yoders and Zollicoffers for their solid attachment to the land and the ancient rules of thumb by which good men and women have lived through the millennia. These six were harbors along a tempestuous shore, lighthouses marking the dangerous headlands.
In these days I was thrown increasingly within the orbit of Ms. Marmelle, and she helped keep my mind away from the tragedy in an unexpected way. Although I had always loved books, to me they had been mysterious entities, finished products I found on library shelves, as if they had sprung from some magic source without human assistance. But now, in overhearing her telephone calls to her office, I caught stray information about how books are made. One day I heard her say on a telephone call to New York: ‘I asked that all widows be killed,’ and since I was one—and I believed her to be, too—I thought this order strange if not inhuman. When I protested she explained: ‘In making a book we look at how the lines of text connect from the bottom of one page to the top of the next. We try to avoid having the bottom of a page end with a single line from a new paragraph. We abhor having the top line of any new page contain only a few words as a continuation from the preceding page. We call such
In return for her kindness in explaining the workaday aspects of her profession, I was helping her in establishing her new home. I was working with her on the presentation of my grandson’s unfinished novel, and I was taking vicarious pleasure in her successes as an editor. She was adjusting comfortably to her German superiors, which was not surprising, for Yoder’s novel led the lists, one of her other books had been taken by the Literary Guild, another had been picked up by a Hollywood independent for a TV miniseries, and Jenny Sorkin’s rewrite incorporating the abortion affair at the imaginary university turned out to be not just satisfactory but positively brilliant and the manuscript was already being prepared by the copy editor for setting into galleys. Publishing friends said of Yvonne: ‘She’s on a roll.’
But I saw that her greatest satisfaction came from her acceptance by Dresden. An able carpenter had required only two weeks to dispose of Emma’s list of defects in the new house. With considerable help from Streibert, she had her house in condition for occupancy, three-quarters ready, by the fourth week in November and, to her amazement, had celebrated Thanksgiving there with the Yoders and Zollicoffers, who had provided such a plethora of typical Pennsylvania Dutch dishes for her holiday feast that her new refrigerator now contained enough deep-frozen food to last till Christmas. Thanksgiving Day dinner in itself was somewhat spoiled by the two Dutchmen arguing about who might have murdered Timothy, a topic that continued to obsess them.
Another source of satisfaction, she told me, was the mature manner in which Professor Streibert had responded to her call for help: ‘It couldn’t have been easy for him to come back to Mecklenberg after such a tempestuous departure. Or to work with me again after having dismissed me.’
‘I still can’t justify the unfeeling things he said about you. He owes you everything and he shouldn’t sully that debt.’
‘When an ambitious man struggles to rise in his profession, or to stand up for what he believes in, he often must step on a few toes.’ Then, deeming this an unworthy characterization of Karl, she offered excuses for his behavior: ‘He may have felt forced to leave Kinetic—he didn’t find the German management congenial, and our steady drift away from the kind of literature he espouses may have seemed to prevent him from uttering the critical judgments he feels compelled to make.’