The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [91]
“‘I think he’s out there,’” Faith said. “‘I think he sees us.’”
Wolf lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply from it, then held it in his hand and looked at it thoughtfully.
“In Europe she talked a lot about Gene,” he said, breathing smoke with each word, “saying to people out of the blue, ‘You know, my father died,’ which didn’t generate much interest. Then in London a bunch of us were sitting in Green Park and this girl had a copy of Howl, and Faith said how her dad knew Ginsberg and Michael McClure, Ferlinghetti, and man, you should’ve seen the faces—complete fascination. Really, your dad knew them? Knew as in knew? But how? Like, who was your dad?”
Wolf had listened as their questions shaped Faith’s answers, in that conversation and later ones, until the understanding became that Gene had been one of the original Beats, doing whiskey shots with Neal Cassady, showing his paintings in the galleries where Ginsberg and Kerouac read. It was a strange thing to watch, this myth about Gene taking shape, what he could have been, should have been. Wolf knew perfectly well it was bullshit. But he went along. Why not? he figured. It was only a goof, and it made Faith so happy. And when he overheard people repeating the story—that chick from San Francisco, you hear about her dad?—it took on a strange kind of truth.
“We’d show off for him,” Wolf said. “I found myself doing it, too. At wild times I’d look at Faith and say, ‘Gene approves,’ or, ‘I think we got his attention.’ Whether or not he was her original dad, this guy had come into existence, this Beat painter, and he was like our partner in crime.”
Phoebe sat up, trying to imagine their father watching her, too, poised to scoop her up as when she’d fallen down as a child, lifting her into the air so swiftly she’d forgotten to cry. But she couldn’t feel him. If she fell, she fell.
“All through the travel we kept feeling this restlessness,” Wolf said. “London, Amsterdam and Belgium, then Paris. I mean, Paris, Christ! But everyone there was still fixated on ’68, the general strike. You couldn’t make anything build, it was all aftermath.
“It affected us different ways, the restlessness,” he remembered. “I’d kind of hang back, looking for a next move, and Faith would start spending money hand over fist trying to make something happen, you know, find the one thing that would bring everything else to a halt.
“Once, she bought fifteen feather pillows. ‘White feathers,’ she kept insisting at the shop, ‘blanches, blanches.’ I’m rolling my eyes—the saleswoman thought she was nuts. A bunch of us carried them up the Eiffel Tower, and at the top we cut them open. It was dusk, this electric blue in the air, the feathers gushed out of the sacks, then floated almost level with us, glowing like bees or something, fireflies. Jesus, what a moment. Someone must have reported back down to the guys below because the elevator door popped open and this guard in uniform came charging out. Faith just pointed over the railing at the feathers, saying ‘Look!’ like we’d only just noticed them ourselves, and the guard looks out, kind of taken aback, these feathers hanging there like big snow-flakes on this summer night, and he stands there blinking like he’s forgotten what he came for. After a minute he smiles, this tight little smile under his mustache, shy, like it’s not used to coming out when he’s on duty. ‘Peace,’ we kept telling him. ‘Peace, brother,’ flashing the V, waving as he got back on the elevator. Faith and I just looked at each other, we didn’t even have to speak. We knew Gene was loving this.”
“Feathers,” Phoebe said. “That sounds incredible.”
“It was,” Wolf said. “It absolutely was. I’ll never forget it.”
They sat in silence. Feathers, Phoebe thought, searching in vain for some moment of her