The Land Of Laughs

"I've never even heard of this. What… when was it done?"

"You didn't? Really? You've never… ?" She gently pulled it out of my greedy hands and brushed her fingers across the cover, as if reading braille. "It was the novel he was working on when he died. Isn't that incredible? A novel by Marshall France! He even supposedly finished it, but his daughter, A

I slid it back out of her hand and opened it gently.

"It's only the first chapter, you see, but even so, it's really long – almost forty pages."

"Do you, uh, do you mind if I sort of look at it alone for a minute?"

She smiled nicely and nodded. When I looked up again, she was coming into the room with a tray loaded down with cups, my brass tea kettle puffing steam, and all of the English muffins I'd pla

She put the tray on the floor. "Do you mind ahout these? I haven't eaten anything all day, and I'm starved. I saw them in there…."

I closed the book and sat back in my chair. I watched her devour my muffins. I couldn't help smiling. Then without knowing how or why, I blurted out my plan about the France biography.

I knew that if I talked to anyone before I began this book it should be her, but when I finished I was embarrassed by all of my enthusiasm. I got up and walked to the mask wall and pretended to straighten the Marquesa.

She didn't say anything and she didn't say anything, and finally I turned from the wall and looked at her. But her eyes slid away from mine, and for the first time since we met, she spoke without looking at me. "Could I help you? I could do your research for you. I did it for one of my professors in college, but this would be so much better, because it'd he looking into his life. Marshall France's. I'd do it really cheaply. Really. Minimum wage – what is it now, two dollars an hour?"

Uh-oh. A very nice girl, as my mother used to say when she introduced me to another of her "finds," but I didn't need or want anybody helping me on this, even if she knew a lot more about France than I did. If I was really going to go through with it, then I didn't want to have to worry about someone else, especially a woman who struck me as potentially bossy or selfish or, worst of all, moody. Yes, she had her good points, but it was just the wrong place at the wrong time. Sooo, I hmmm'd and haaa'd and nibbled around the edges, and it wasn't long before she got the point, thank God.

"You're basically saying no."

"I… basically… You're right."

She looked at the floor and crossed her arms over her chest. "I see."

She stayed there for a minute, then turned on her heel, and picking up the France book, made for the front door.

"Hey, look, you don't have to go." I had this terrible picture in my mind of her slipping that book back up under her sweater. The thought of that woolen bulge broke my heart.

Her arms were spread high to let the still-wet poncho slide down onto them. For a moment she looked like a rubber Bela Lugosi. In fact, she kept her arms up like that when she spoke.

"I think you're making a really big mistake if you're serious about doing this book. I truly think that I could help you."

"I know what… uh, I…"

"I mean, I could really help you. I don't see at all… Oh, forget it." She opened the door and closed it very quietly behind her.

A couple of days later I came back to my place after a class and found a note stuck to the door. The writing was in thick Magic Marker, and I didn't recognize it at all.

I'M GOING TO DO THIS ANYWAY. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. CALL ME WHEN YOU GET IN#####I'VE FOUND SOME GOOD STUFF. SAXONY GARDNER.

All I needed was for one of my goody students to read that note and instantly interpret "stuff" as "dope" and start to spread the word about old Mr. Abbey's behind-the-closed-door follies. I didn't even know Saxony's telephone number and I wasn't about to look it up. But she called me that night and sounded angry the whole time we talked.

"I know you don't want me in on this, Thomas, but you should have called anyway. I was in the library a long time getting all of this for you."

"Really? Well, I really appreciate that. I mean, I do!"

"Then you'd better get a pencil and paper for this, because there's quite a lot."

"Go ahead. I have one here." Whatever her reasons for doing it, I had no intention of turning off Radio Free Information.

"Okay. First of all, his name wasn't really France – it was Frank. He was born Martin Emil Frank in Rattenberg, Austria, in 1922. Rattenberg is a little town about forty miles from I

"Wait a minute. Go ahead."

"He had an older brother, Isaac, who died at Dachau in 1944."

"They were Jewish?"

"There's no question about it. France arrived in America in 1938 and moved to Galen, Missouri, sometime after that."

"Why Galen? Did you find out?"

"No, but I'm still looking. I like this stuff. It's fun working in the library and trying to pull out things on someone you love."

After she hung up I stood there holding the receiver and then scratched my head with it. I didn't know whether I felt good or bad about the fact that she'd call again when she found out more.

According to her (a couple of days later), France went to Galen because his Uncle Otto owned a little printing business out there. But before he went west, our man lived in New York for a year and a half. For some reason she couldn't discover what he did there. She got a little nutty about it, and her calls got angrier and angrier.

"I can't find it. Ooo, it drives me crazy!"

"Take it easy, Sax. The way you've been digging around, you will."

"Oh, don't patronize me, Thomas. You sound just like your father in that movie I saw last night. Old James Vandenberg, good-hearted farmer."

My eyes narrowed and I tightened my grip on the phone. "Look, Saxony, you don't have to be insulting."

"I'm not… I'm sorry." She hung up. I called her right back but she didn't answer. I wondered if she'd called from some little phone booth out in the middle of nowhere. That thought made me feel so sorry for her that I went down to a florist and bought her a Japanese bonsai tree. I made sure that she wasn't home before I left it in front of her apartment door.

I thought that it was time I did something for a change instead of letting her do all the chasing around, so when the school had a long weekend at the end of April, I decided to go down to New York to talk to France's publisher about doing the biography. I didn't tell her that I was going until the night before I left, and then she was the one who called, all aglow.

"Thomas? I found it! I found out what he did in New York when he lived there!"

"Great! What?"

"Are you ready for this? He worked for an Italian undertaker named Lucente. He was his assistant or something. It didn't say what he did for him, though."

"That's pleasant. But do you remember that scene in Land of Laughs when the Moon Jester and Lady Oil die? He'd have to know something about death to have written that part."