Moral Fabrications

Originally written Saturday, December 10, 2005

The day was fairly ordinary when it began. I received word that I have a new niece in Vancouver. Or, to be more accurate, a grand-niece with around seventeen greats in front. I made friends with her parents—that is to say, my sixteen-times-great grand-nephew and his wife—when I was visiting their fine city several years ago. I just happened to be behind them in line for a movie, during which I just happened to pick up the umbrella left by the young lady, whom we’ll call Ms. Gordon, when she just happened to leave it behind. I just happened to have parked next to them in the lot, which made it easy to return the umbrella and ask them to share a cup of coffee. Although we don’t have any professional interests in common, he being an accountant and she a paralegal, one has a tendency to accumulate a useful range of trivial knowledge over a great number of years so that it’s rarely difficult to find common ground of some sort. In this case, they also turned out to be dog show people with a small bevy of Yorkies at home. Thus, it was not terribly difficult to invent a childhood replete with beloved Yorkies as an inroad to deeper discussion. I don’t particularly enjoy being someone I’m not, not because I’m morally above a harmless fabrication but because the emotional investment one must pretend to place in the fabrication can be rather draining (especially when those asked to accept the fabrication are as lacking in charisma as Mr. and Ms. Gordon’s job titles would accurately suggest they are). However, I wasn’t trying to become the best of friends with the pair; I only wished to initiate an acquaintanceship that would justify an annual (or so) phone call or email to learn of the latest births, deaths, and marriages. I succeeded. And so I was able to stencil “Andrea Star Gordon, Dec. 1, 2005-” at the bottom of my ongoing genealogy this morning. She and her parents will probably never know.

Tracing my brother Paul’s direct lineage has been a hobby of mine since I first returned to Europe from the School many years ago. I had a few generations to catch up with, and I’ve never been sure I found everyone. It has hardly mattered, as the family tree is now so extensive that the missing will never be missed. Fortunately, means of travel and communication have developed along with population growth, so that tracking little Andrea Star and her other middle-class relations is easier than surveying the elders of a Polish farming village. Some—specifically, those living off both the books and the beaten path—still fall through the cracks, but few can boast the virtual family forest I’ve been able to record. I like to impress those who know my historic origins by allowing them to flip through the pages of the hefty bound volume, as they inevitably skim for familiar names. Old souls look for people they might have known; mortals look for the famous ones (there are some, mostly in the last century, during which minor notoriety was much more forthcoming than was once the case). Trudy once found someone she went to high school with in St. Louis in the early 1980s. The boys were excited to find several reality TV show contestants (as I said, notoriety has become much easier to come by in recent years).

Thus, as I said, the addition of a new name to the register is an ordinary and regular affair. The rest of the day’s events were not.

Richard emailed to tell me that Moshe had made another appearance at the museum Thursday night, shortly before closing. Thursdays are the one evening in the week on which the museum stays open until 8:30. (It occurred to me as an aside that it must be convenient for him that the days are so short this time of year; he wouldn’t be able to come to the museum during the summer early enough to see very much, at least not while it’s open.) “I found him in the nineteenth-century oil gallery looking at paintings,” Richard wrote. “I came up to him to talk to him. I think I wanted to talk to him about what he said to you last Saturday at the dance, but as soon as he looked at me I forgot it. It was like you said, we talked about art and stuff but not what I was trying to talk to him about. He left like normal but by the time I remembered what I wanted to say he was out the door. I followed him out and chased him to the parking lot. When I caught up with him he slugged me in the nose and broke it! He jumped in a car and drove off. I just got home from the emergency room.”

“And another thing,” he continued. “I figured out that one of the missing journals from last week was Victor Harrigan’s.” The name chilled me. He was the Louisiana planter who, for a time, considered my erstwhile traveling companion and entruster of a certain trinket to be his property. I tried to think of all he might have known about his slaves’ extracurriculars. It had been a small farm with an unpaid staff of only about half a dozen. Could he have known about Bella’s charm? Its purpose? How it worked?

Richard suggested a time, day, and place to meet so we can discuss the issue further, and he said to bring the voodoo charm. Finally, he noted, “I think your [sic] right, his distraction spells are getting better.” I don’t remember saying such a thing, but from my encounter last weekend and Richard’s in the meantime, it does sound as if Moshe’s ability to cloud his companion’s attention span is indeed growing more sophisticated. Rather than merely sending us into a foggy haze, he’s been permitting us the dignity of a seemingly natural conversation designed to divert us from the issue at hand, namely himself. There had been prior encounters during which conversations were held while under the influence, so to speak, but not when we knew we had something else we should be bringing up. And for him to be growing violent on top of it all…. This new pattern of influence had me considerably perturbed about Trudy’s experience at the mall. She seemed to be swallowing his hook—line, sinker, and all. Our most recent meetings with him (Trudy’s and mine, anyway) had seemed congenial and at times positive, but there was every reason to doubt that either of us had been in full command of our faculties when they took place. I decided I couldn’t rely on her to come to me with her assessment of old pasty face on her own and planned to pay her a visit that evening.

This day's events to be continued...