We arrived in San Francisco yesterday to much more fanfare than I’d expected, though the celebrations may have been partly coincidental. Yesterday marked the opening of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal - which I’ve been told is quite a sight - and is serving as the 1915 World’s Fair. This could not have been more perfectly timed. The Hugos, Deschampses, and my father have all joined me on my journey, and I’m glad they did, even more so now that the children have something to look forward to. If San Francisco is this extraordinary to me, I can’t imagine the wonder they must feel here, in the city of the world!
Our first instinct on hearing the news was to find any trace of French influence. Before the war came there must have been plans, plans which must at least partly survive here. This guess swiftly proved correct when, as the morning’s parade began to wind down, I was able to catch a bit of conversation through the crowd, spoken in my native French.
“We’ve managed to get no less than four Duchamps,” one man beyond my view said haughtily. “That includes a few of his most spectacular sculptures and his masterpiece, the Staircase. I spoke with him myself, as an officiator of the French partition, of course, and he told me his attendance was as miraculous as one gets, what with the poor situation in France considered.”
Poor situation, indeed. Despite the aloofness of the man, I couldn’t help but wonder at his enticing words, and the nature of this masterpiece, Staircase. I had never heard of the man, much less his work, but what better time to become acquainted? I excused myself from the group, taking heed to be sure they would be alright without me (they assured me they could manage) and made my way through the thick crowds of the World’s Fair.
I’ve seen my fair share of cities in my time, but it is the designed purpose of the Fair to toss their memories from my mind at the mere sight of it. The architecture, all built to be temporary, resembles my grandest imaginings of Athens in far-off days of yore. The buildings, topped in orange and teal, match in marble the pillars and colonnades of antiquity in the same fashion as New York, though the Fair is somehow even greater in scale and vision. Standing high in the courtyard, overlooking perhaps a full million passersby, is a fountain unlike any I’d ever seen. Admiring it, I turned to a woman to my right, who looked to be doing the same.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said, in a higher pitch than I’d have liked, “but would you happen to know anything about that fountain there? I’ve just come in and I seem to have missed the opening ceremony.”
She stood facing toward it, arms crossed over a smart looking navy blue blouse of taffeta silk, squinting slightly at the statue in the center, a sphere the height of three men, and atop it a man on horseback, arms raised aside, with two horn-toting angels upon his shoulders. To describe it as opulent would be bordering on insult. She had a look on her face that told me she felt the same.
“Eye-catching, isn’t it?” she asked in an American accent, finally meeting my gaze. I realized as she came out from behind her tumbles of auburn hair that she was uncommonly, achingly pretty. “I can’t blame you, you know. Such a thing must have a fantastic name to match it. You won’t be disappointed to hear its name is the Fountain of Energy.”
I looked back at the thing, tilting my head to make sense of it. “Fountain of Energy,” I said, trying to hold back how ridiculous I thought it sounded. “I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.” I turned back to her, and her brow scrunched slightly in response.
“I’m not sure either,” she said. I tried to stop myself, but I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Luckily she did, too. After catching our breath we smiled for a moment.
“And what’s that called?” I asked, pointing to an archway behind the fountain, the top rising with terraces of pillars up to a bulbed point fifty meters in the air, all sparkling with lights like thousands of tiny stars covering its surface.
“It’s called the Tower of Jewels,” she said, her arms resting akimbo. “The whole tower’s covered with cut glass, you see, so the sunlight catches in it, like a prism.”
“Like a million little prisms,” I said, entranced.
“I think the Tower of Jewels is a much better name.”
“I couldn’t have come up with a better name myself.”
Flanking the Fountain were two massive pools with statues of their own, and beyond them stretched the main avenue, along which my eyes traced, lost in wonder.
“What’s your name, miss?”
“Mary Coen.”
“My name is Charles Blake, how do you do? Would you ever mind walking with me down that way?” I put out my hand for a handshake. At this point I had lost all control of my body and mind, but she took it anyway.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Blake. Yes, let’s go, let’s go right away!”
I couldn’t believe my luck! The fair organizers must put some kind of relaxant in the air to make me act this way, but who am I to complain?
I found myself strolling along the avenue, unable to contain a sense of whimsy. There is no war here in San Francisco. There is no sorrow. This is, as of yesterday, the capital of the world. When a place is able to so easily inspire such joy, there is no denying it. Even the most ignorant fool, the strictest curmudgeon couldn’t help the feeling felt when walking down that road, the unspoken truth that this, one's very surroundings, are a proof of concept, and that concept is hope. Hope for the future. This is what I fight for, and exactly what Ashcroft opposes. I feel sorry for him, that he has never and will never know it, for if he ever did, he wouldn’t have done what he has. We must strive to create a stage upon which greatness can be built, and the World’s Fair is the greatest example of this principle’s success.
It occurred to me, walking alongside the immaculately dressed Miss Coen, that I must get some new clothes, and fast. I feel so out of place among this menagerie. Imagine, if you will, walking down this boulevard, between rows of marble and glass, while all around you swirls a blur of morning coats with silk lapels, sheath dresses of the brightest eastern indigos. Even the corduroy is as finely tailored as anything made in Paris. Would you feel comfortable walking in this crowd wearing farmhand’s clothes, khaki vest over white collar, suspenders holding up patched breeches, Tulle dirt still clinging to the knees? I think not! Surely there must be work here for me, an authentic Frenchman in these trying times. Perhaps a place in a freakshow: The Last Frenchman!
No, there is no work yet, only play for Charles Blake, and well-earned play at that.
“You’re French, aren’t you, Charles?”
“Why, what gave it away?” I said, exaggerating my accent as best I could. She laughed.
“You know you’re not the only Frenchman here, right? This is a World’s Fair, after all, sir. If you think I’m impressed with your European ways you’ve come to the wrong woman at the wrong time.” Now it was my turn to laugh.
“It wasn’t my intent, Miss Coen, to dazzle your American sensibilities with my Frenchness.” In truth, I would’ve torn the Eiffel Tower itself from its foundations if I thought for a moment it would impress her, but that’s besides the point. “I do, coincidentally, wonder if you know where the French pavilion would be.”
“Ah, coincidentally, of course.” Miss Coen winked at me and the road underfoot seemed to give way. “As it happens I do know where the French Pavilion is, and we’re already going the right way. Isn’t that lucky?”
It was lucky, I couldn’t deny it.
“I hear there’s a few Duchamps there I was hoping to see,” I said, trying to sound as distinguished as possible. Again, I had never heard the man’s name before, let alone be acquainted enough to actively seek out his work, but as a Frenchman I thought I’d play the part of cultured Parisian so as to not seem so farmhandish. By this point I began silently hoping Duchamp’s work wasn’t anything too strange. If only I knew.
“Duchamp,” Miss Coen said, thinking through her brow. “I think I’ve heard that name before. Is he the one who made a sculpture out of a bike wheel on a wooden stool?”
My heart dropped. She’s pulling my leg now; she knows I’m making it up, and if she doesn’t already, she’s about to.
“I have no idea. I have absolutely no idea.”
She raised her eyebrow at that. The jig’s up, I thought. My luck’s run dry. Yet, she kept on walking, not saying a word about it. I didn’t know what that meant, and I still don’t. Sometimes a man has to take a lucky break when he gets it, even when it doesn’t make any sense. Maybe Adam was looking over my shoulder after all. Who knows?
After wandering the courtyards and pools for many untold hours with Miss Coen - and enjoying every second of it - we, by pure chance it seemed to me, stumbled upon a familiar looking building, one I was certain I’d never see again. There, in the streets of San Francisco and half the world away, stood a three quarters replica of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur (the Palace of the Legion of Honor, from Paris) whose Athenian pillars and high arch fit perfectly in with the rest of the fair. To see such a thing, this palace transplanted so exactly into this new world of mine, it threatened to make me a bit weaker of knee, and a bit softer of heart. A tear may have fallen, but who’s to say? I knew then that there was only one candidate for the French Pavilion, so I stopped and waited for Miss Coen to take notice of it and direct me in.
“Why have you stopped, Charles?” She stood in the street, pulling a part of her dress down when she finally saw it, eyes widening. “That must be it!”
“That must be it? Didn’t you know it was?”
“Oh, yes, of course! The French Pavilion, I told it was down this way!”
We had changed course a dozen times since starting out, including doubling back and walking the opposite direction past the Fountain of Energy where we started. To say it was “down this way” couldn’t have been farther from the truth. I sent a coyly suspicious side eye at her, to which she threw her head down theatrically and smiled.
“I thought I did know the way, honest,” she said, laughing. I thought I could see a bit of color in her cheeks then, though I wouldn’t have told her so. “It wasn’t too horrible of a walk, was it?” I couldn’t remember any moment of my life more magical than walking down, back and around these streets that day, losing the hours and the daylight without a thought.
“Not too horrible, no.” I couldn’t keep down a smile of my own; I could feel my cheeks burning as I did.
“Well, come on, Mr. Blake! We’ve already lost so much time!” She, to my surprise, ran under the magnificent arch, and stood there waiting for me. I ran after her, took her arm in mine, and walked into the inner courtyard, humming La Marseillaise all the way.
The high vaulted ceilings of the replica Palace greeted me with a sudden, humbling realization: I had never been inside the original. This was - in a strange way - my first time inside. Before me laid a century’s worth of French art, some of which I am proud to have recognized. In the entrance room there was, to my shock and delight, a set of four Renoirs, including an extraordinary picture entitled Le Pout du Chemin de Fer á Chatou, The Railway Bridge at Chatou. I cannot forget the feeling it gave me, for I’ve felt it many times before, at our home in Tulle. I’ve been to Chatou, in Paris, though I never saw that particular railway bridge. Still, I knew from the moment I saw it that I’d felt it before. The way the trees and flowers come alive, how the sky shines cerulean between big, fluffy white clouds high up in the ether, it all reminds me exactly of early spring in Tulle. I can almost feel the wind falling, soft as cotton, upon my arms, giving me goosebumps to warm in the gentle sun. Among the extravagance of San Francisco, in the magnitude of America, here lies a window back into a world of my own, a world where a little waist-high wooden fence is all the architecture one needs. Oh, to hear the whining of a squeaky gate hinge, to catch my mother’s voice calling from a far-off window again, what I wouldn’t give. She would have loved this place, and that picture. She was a painter herself, and she was counted among the impressionists as well. Hung up on our walls were dozens of little scenes, all of all-powerful nature put up against little man-made constructions. Barns, stone bridges, even fences. Yes, I have no doubt she would’ve been there yesterday with me, and she might’ve even tried to convince me that it was her idea! “Charles, did you hear that man? He’s from the French Pavilion, and they have Duchamps! Let’s go, Charlots, we might miss it!” Funny how I can still hear her, as if she were here beside me, clear as a spring day. Do you remember spring, Otto? Do you remember the rain? I do.
Miss Coen and I turned our attention to finding the Duchamp I had heard about, this Staircase. We ambled through many rooms and corridors, stopping momentarily at sculptures that caught our interest, reading any plaque we could get close enough to. I found great joy in the hunt, and resolved to discover my prize without the help of a guide. I caught glimpses of masterpieces, too many to count, and catalogued each in my mind as to remember their spot, so I could come back to see them, but presently I was on a mission. Mission. I’ve just thought of something.
My original mission here, to find where Adam had bought this diary last year, I have just found a clue to solving it. He mentioned his bag’s new name - back pack - which was foreign to him. Now, the Fair wasn’t yet complete last August, but surely there must have been some shop near the grounds selling newly named pieces of the modern world, in accordance with the Fair’s philosophy. Adam must have anticipated the influx of people coming for the Exposition, gone to gawk at it, and found a place nearby selling worldly amenities for travelers, including journals and back packs. There can’t be many of those, can there? Ha! What a rousing thought! I’ll send my father and Jean-Pierre out across the Fair’s borders tomorrow morning looking for such a place, and between the three of us I wager we’ll find it! I feel like Sherlock Holmes! Well then, there’s an adventure for tomorrow set in the works. Back to the story at hand.
In our quest for Duchamp, we passed a display I won’t soon forget, and judging by the crowd across it I don’t believe San Francisco will either. These I couldn’t possibly pass without admiring, for they were two pictures from the great Claude Monet, one of a series of Cathedrals, as we were told, and one of the Church at Vétheuil. I’ve only seen this one Cathedral, but I can’t imagine any of the others could surpass it. Monet, there are no words for Monet. His pictures feel like the aftershadow of a dream flashing over your eyes as you walk the waking world, weeks after you’d first dreamt it. He captures that feeling of being perfectly returned to it, when the barrier between dream and reality is at its weakest. I don’t understand it, but I know some fundamental truth lives within this feeling, the borderline of fantasy and life, and the point at which the two cease to be apart. Monet, if he has not found the answer, is certainly the conduit through which the answer is revealing itself.
Past the room with the Monets I found a sparse hallway. The ceiling was low and the walls were inset with glass cases containing many medals, which I gave little more than a glance to. At the end of the hall was a small room that acted primarily as an expanded corner to the hallway, and was ornamented with two sculptures and two paintings, the former of which I recognized by reputation. Yes, only one man could have a bicycle wheel sat on a stool be brought into the French Pavilion and persuade them to rightfully name it a sculpture. This, dear friends, was the Duchamp room; I knew it the moment we entered it.
The other piece was another common object masquerading as sculpture - masquerading as art, if you’re on the wrong side - the Bottle Rack, a set of nested metal rings connected by metal strips, each spiked, presumably for the holding of bottles. I’ve never seen a bottle rack in the wild, so to speak, but I have to imagine they look a lot like this one. It must be a funny thing for an art exhibition, if one is familiar with the object, in the same way the bicycle wheel is to me. I can’t pretend I’m not intrigued by it, but it’s not what I came to see.
One of the paintings, the one not named Staircase, was of a group of ghostly women playing music, and was entitled Sonata. By ghostly, I’m referring only to a particular way Duchamp has painted these women, such that they fade into the walls behind them, as if transparent, and not at all to their complexion or disposition, at least any I can read. Despite their fadedness, the atmosphere is very warm, the way a room gets when music is played well in it, and it is apparent Duchamp knew these women well, and so is able to give me the impression that I do, too.
The last piece, which I kept poking at out of the corner of my eye, was the one I’d been looking for, and was truly the star of the room. This picture - the full name is Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 - at first glance confused me. I find that some of my very favorite art, this includes music and literature as well, takes me longer to understand, and certainly longer to appreciate. I’ll admit there was a moment when I was nothing but disappointed at this one, this reason for my coming. Yet, and surely because I’d come all that way and would be damned if I didn’t give it a real shot, I stared at it, and something slowly started to come to me.
Strangely enough, I had learned something from my travels with the army that has informed my understanding of this picture in the unlikely form of a scientific theory, one at the bleeding edge of physics: the fourth dimension. The fourth dimension had become quite the phenomenon in the cities of Europe as a topic of incredibly interesting dinner table discussion, and so by extension in the mess halls of the standing French army. As I understand it, there is such a thing - at least mathematically speaking - as a fourth spatial dimension, the other three of course being length, width and height, though how it came to be discovered and how it functions are beyond my understanding. We did a lot of drinking in the army, you must understand. There is, however, another dimension, which I can more easily explain, that being time. Time can be viewed as another dimension, same as the others, and though we cannot view it this way - that is, being able to see and move through all time with relative ease, both forward and backward at any speed - it is possible that there exists other living beings that can. Try to imagine how this being would see us and each other, as gapless lines of person-ness stretching across time from birth to death. I myself find it difficult to picture. Duchamp has, in a tiny, slivered way, put it to canvas. An infinite number of momentary slices, which we third dimensionals view one at a time, all stacked on top of one another, creating a continuous woman walking down a staircase, just as a fourth dimensional being would see her. It’s confounding. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen its equal.
What an enlightening, invigorating trip! Miss Coen and I parted ways soon after the Duchamp room, though she gave me her family’s address on a slip of paper, asking me to come visit in a few days once I’m settled. I write now from a hotel near the fairground - the name slips my mind - where I share a room with my father. We were able to exchange our francs for dollars on Ellis Island, so getting rooms for us all was as easy as putting money on the counter. Tomorrow we’ll go looking for apartments, then our search for the traveler’s shop begins. For now we rest. It’s only mid-day now, and that means a few more hours of lazing about, then when the Fair’s evening lights turn on, off walking I go! If fortune sees it fit I’ll run into Miss Coen again, and we’ll go for a complete tour of the French Pavilion, or even another pavilion altogether. Only time will tell. Life is good.