Lacond, for all of his faults, understood this about Duncan. (After all, he, like me, had been underground at least once or twice, and came away from it having paid a physical price.) In one issue of the newsletter, Lacond wrote:
When Duncan Shriek writes about the Silence—as he has been known to do within these very pages—he quite literally, in my opinion, writes also of his personal silences over the years, the way in which he has been silenced—by others, by his own mistakes—and all the similar silences, suffered by us all. In a sense, he has made Ambergris’s history personal. He may be too good a historian to invade his text, but certain parallels emerge again and again—allusions to Tonsure’s descent into silence and despair and subsequent reemergence in the form of a book being especially prevalent.
Those experts who bothered to refute Duncan’s theories—mostly Sabon—pointed to the dangers of the personal history approach. Sabon wrote an essay for the H&S collection Impersonal Perspectives: Objectivity in Ambergrisian History (which probably sold about five copies):
The irrefutable fissure in any theory of “personal history” lies in the impulse to find a plateau far above sheer fact, to reveal a lesson or universal “truth” that can be mapped to an individual life and intertwined with a complicated intellectual disdain: contempt for accuracy, rejection of contradictory evidence, confusion of conjecture with truth, resistance to correction.
Sabon had a point, of sorts. Not that Duncan’s theories were flawed—no one ever dared to test their veracity through underground research. But when Duncan began, a few years later, to write his Early History, he looked to what he was writing for some indication of how to live his life, so that instead of finding what in history could become personal, he let the personal become history. (You might be right, but the reading public never had a chance to discover the truth or falsehood of it, either in the book or in reality.)
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the parallels that Duncan sought did not always exist. As I told him once, “Nothing in your studies will ever explain the death of our father.” I don’t think he believed me. He would have believed me even less if I had told him Bonmot and Truffidianism might be able to help him with that mystery. (Of all your incarnations, your transformation to the cause of organized religion baffled me the most. I certainly didn’t begrudge you your conversion, though—all I envied was the time you spent with Bonmot.)
* * *
I’ve finally found something personal of Dad’s in among all the dry discourse—tucked away inside a box inside another box. A canvas sculpture of a mushroom, about twelve inches tall. Part of his personal history, you might call it, and the symbol of a rare hiccup in the respect my parents showed each other.
That respect manifested itself in the way our father avoided invading Mom’s space. Our parents were as separate and yet together as any two people could be, and I’ve often thought that when Dad died, the reason it took Mom so long to create again is that Dad created the space for her to be able to make her art.
Dad did not enter some rooms of our house in Stockton—in particular, Mom’s studio. There, she would relax and sketch, paint, or even work on sculptures, her studio window providing a magnificent view of the forest. She knew that Dad would never enter, not even for a quick visit or to remind her of some dinner party they had to attend, not even when she was out of the house. And she did the same for him—his office formed a country forbidden to all of us.
Some days, they would be in their separate spaces and the house would seem quiet, but Duncan and I could sense a kind of tingle or hum in the silence, a potent energy. Because we knew that, in their separate spaces, in their own different yet specific ways, both of our parents were creating. That feeling of applied industry, of work, permeated our awareness in those years before Dad’s death.
Which is not to say that our parents didn’t take joy in their creations, or want to share them. But there was a space to work and a space to share their work. The living room served as that latter area. If either wanted to share in the flush of post-inspiration, out the pages or painting would come to the living room. On that neutral ground, they would present their findings and receive their praise. Dad would read from the loose-leaf pages crumpled in his hand while Mom would murmur, “Lovely. Inspired. Very original.” Or Mom would unveil a sketch or study or painting and discuss the spark that made it coalesce into being, while Dad would say, “Wonderful use of color. I love the way you’ve drawn that figure. Beautiful.” (Such compliments would be tenfold in intensity, Janice, should you or I share our early experiments. I can still remember how much praise they lavished on you for your first paintings. They loved your work unconditionally.)
In that separate space and that shared space, I think I can see the secret of their happiness. Each could feel the other’s presence in their separate spaces as powerfully as in their shared space.
But the living room also served as a place to seek assistance. If stuck, if faced with conundrum or puzzle, dead words or dead paint, one would stomp out into that middle ground and, by certain signals, make it clear the other was needed to brainstorm possible solutions.
On our dad’s part, the signal involved much crinkling of papers and long, deep sighs (I perfected my own sigh listening to his), perhaps even an artificial propensity to make noise by banging into furniture. On Mom’s part it was more direct, because to get to the living room she had to pass Dad’s office. A quick slap of the palm against his door on the way to common ground usually got his attention.
What always surprised me is how quickly the other parent would halt in his or her own labors and come out to the living room. Sometimes it was just to listen to the other vent, sometimes to offer practical suggestions.
Only once, to my knowledge, did one or the other cross a boundary. Our dad one day decided to try his hand at sculpture, but not just any sculpture. He wanted to use wire and canvas, to combine sculpture and painting, in a sense. I could see from the expression on Mom’s face what she thought of this idea, but she loaned him the supplies and for a week he worked on his own New Art. You could hear him bumping into things in his office, cursing sometimes, coming out to beg more supplies from Mom. Duncan and I both expected great things. (Or, at least, something—or, as Janice put it at the time, some thing.)
Finally, Dad had finished, and we all gathered in the living room for the unveiling. The sculpture stood on a table near the couch, covered by a bedsheet. Mom stood to the side, arms crossed, while Dad explained the concept.
“I wanted to reveal the true shape of everyday things. This is the first of a series of studies that combine painting and sculpture into a new hybrid,” he said.
With those words, he pulled the sheet away, to reveal … a canvas mushroom, wires under the canvas giving it a shape.
“A mushroom. Made of canvas,” Mom said.
“Well,” Dad said, “I haven’t painted it yet.”
Mom went back into her studio.
I went back to reading.
Only Duncan had the decency to walk up to our dad and tell him how much he liked it.
Dad never crossed the line into the arts again.
* * *
I don’t think I was fated to be granted the kind of connection our parents often had, and I don’t know if I learned enough from our parents’ example. The dynamic changed too much after Dad’s death, and our careers took us too far apart to allow it, but I imagine this connection, this understanding, is something that Mary and Duncan shared before they grew apart. (All too briefly, I’m afraid. Some months it was there, some months it wasn’t. You need to know a person for a long time to develop that kind of trust. We didn’t have enough time.)