In his childhood, fueled by a comfortable confidence and a zealous imagination, Land had invented a hundred heroic aspirations for himself. Some involved travel. Others were focused on the variety of unformed talents that he was beginning to find inside himself. These--gifts and hobbies--were becoming essential to him; Land was already investing these attributes with the power of his identity.
The cello has an aching voice in the fragile hands of a child. As Land practiced (in a room his father had cleaned out in the basement, door closed) the squeaking of the strings were singing him into reveries about a command performance at the White House or Carnegie Hall. When his teacher gave back the story he had written for extra credit (that he did not need), the prodigious lad saw the large foil star and Miss Albinger's enthusiastic felt-tipped scribble. He smiled. He thought of the golden seal of the Mayberry Award, and later the Pulitzer, and finally (by the time he was a teenager reading Joyce and Hesse, Steinbeck and Gide) the Nobel Prize. In football, he was the future Fran Tarkington or a very different future for O.J. Simpson. As an archaeologist, he would discover a lost tribe in the depths of the Amazon. As a politician, he would navigate the complexities of geopolitics to create a world cooperation and a lasting peace.
These grandiose versions of himself were plausible in the world of Land's childhood. For Land was born into the middle of the 20th Century when the stability of these institutions could not be questioned. These were the years that each house was an oasis with lush green lawns. Summer was eternal. Hope was the sheen of the sprinkler's spray in the long July light. Laying in bed long before the sun had set, even at the age of three Land knew possibility to permeate everything.
But in 2020, when at the end of his various careers, Land was living in the wondrous house he himself had designed. One of his two sons had recently been signed with the Kansas City Chiefs and was instrumental in this past season's rise of the franchise back into the highest echelon of American sport. The other boy had moved to Latvia to study with a renown violinist. The girl was a research neurologist at John Hopkins on the verge of a cure for MS. Land lived alone, his wife (twice crowned Miss America even though she was from Brazil, a supermodel) having passed away of complications brought on by the disease when his daughter was still in high school.
One afternoon, as he sat at his desk wrestling with a particularly difficult passage in his next--that is to say his 15th--novel, Land received word that he had been selected the Nobel laureate in literature. He laughed a little. It was funny how awkward reality was when compared to the daydreams of his childhood. The news had come matter-of-factly, after lunch, and Land had fallen into the hands of his post-food coma before he had a chance to tell anyone (what would have been for the young Land Matthews) the most exciting news ever. But as it was, the news was at odds with the day's other headlines: Second Nuclear Exchange in the Balkans, Strange Wasting Disease Jumps Hemispheres, Hundreds of Children Found Dead in Canadian "Killing Fields". Napping in his window seat with the rain muddying his view of the grey city, Land was quickly under assault by the dark anxieties of a planet on the brink.
No comments:
Post a Comment