The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [80]
She came out of their bedroom with the red 1904 edition of The Tragedy of Arthur and started to compare the two texts. They weren’t perfectly matched. They weren’t so far apart as to be significant, but here and there a word was changed, a line was changed, even some sequences of four or six lines were in the 1597 quarto but weren’t in the 1904 hardcover.
“It has Shakespeare’s name on it,” Dana kept saying. “I knew it. I did. I always knew it. Pet, Dad used to ask me if I thought it was Shakespeare, and I did, and now this has his name on it! This is so huge. I’ve never seen anything on this anywhere. Lost Arthur plays, you hear about, but this—so huge.”
“It doesn’t settle it,” I said. “There were cases of printers using his name to sell books he hadn’t written.”
“It settles it for me,” Dana announced.
She sighed and made me take it with me after dinner, packed it in its bag and case and canvas and crate. “I wish I could keep it,” she said.
“So keep it.”
“No. I can’t. He wants you to do something with it. So. Please take it now and tell me as soon as you hear from him, please.”
“Okay.” I kissed her cheek.
“Bye, Arthur,” Petra called from across the room.
27
THE NEXT DAY WAS EMAIL DAY at the big house, and I read my father’s long letter on my laptop at the hotel. The job he had in mind for me was larger than anything I had fantasized, and my predominant emotion was pride—he wanted me and only me to do this for him, with him, because he loved me and my abilities. And we would be partners in something unprecedented, earthshaking.
That pride, in turn, triggered some guilt. He was trusting me, and I still sometimes felt I was partially to blame for his lengthy term, and that old daft desire to make everything right rushed through me. By helping him, I would fix what I could of all that I had broken.
And guilt, in turn, triggered resentment, the nibbling feeling that if I was going to help, then I was also owed, or would be rewarded by some universal system we wishfully call karma or God’s bounty or whatever, but is really just the little child in us expecting a prize. And I thought of Petra.
And then came the scheming: this project would require me to stay in Minneapolis for quite a while. I shook that off, scolded myself, sent Dana and Petra my silent blessings.
DATE: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 15:05:02 -0600
You went to Bert? You found it OK.? It was there? You have it somewhere safe? So now you have seen it. Do you need to put your finger in my wound? Fine. Do what you need to be sure. Be careful with it Itis old. And it cannot be out of your sight with another person. They cannot copy it. That is important. This is the most important, No copies. It iss complicated. Do your worst. Be skeptical. I am counting on you for that now too because I do not have any doubts anymore and that is surely not helpful. Microscope it or x-ray it or bombard it with lasers. I do not know what they do nowadays. My residence here would imply that I never really did. Ask experts to read it and judge the words and style. I could recommend people for some of this, but you would not trust them if I do, so do your way. When you are done you will know what I already kno. Which means whatever you are doing now is a delay for us, so go fast. But do what you need to do to believe. Catch up with me. That is not fair, because I have a fifty year lead. But catch up. And when we are together, and you know you are holding a play written by William Shakespeare, then you and I will be partners, though you, my son, will be the senior partner (not including Shakespeare).
“The senior partner (not including Shakespeare).” That line still affects me strangely. I feel it like one of these twinges in my lower back that make me compensate immediately. The surge of pleasure (then the parenthesis with a counteracting dose of resentment). I am his favorite (except for others). I am necessary