The Women: A Novel Part 23

When I first acquired this term, I kept p.r.o.nouncing it with an extra syllable, voicing the intercalary e, all but certain it must have been of Norwegian derivation. It is, in fact, a corruption of the Spanish: juzgado, sentenced, from the verb juzgar, to judge. In attempting to make light of what must have been among the most painful periods of his life, Wrieto-San had this to say of his decline and fall: he had gone "From Who's Who to the Hoosegow."

65.

For five hours, according to the Chicago Tribune. One would like to have been privy to that meeting.

66.

Carl Sandburg prominent among them. But perhaps the "kicker" with regard to public sympathy was his first wife's unflagging defense of him-astonis.h.i.+ngly, Kitty announced to the press that she was prepared to come up to Minneapolis and stand by him in his time of need. Now, I never met her and cannot speak either to her motives or her mental state at this juncture, but one has to marvel at Wrieto-San's magnetism and his ability to have such a lasting effect on a woman he'd turned his back on. Twice.

67.

Miss Tillie Cecille Levin. Presumably, at this juncture, Miss Levin was more attentive to her needs, both real and imagined, than Mr. Fake.

68.

Wrieto-San valued the collection at $100,000, and though, as I say, he continually over-valued practically everything he owned, he was perhaps at least somewhat accurate here, as the government of my country, alarmed at the way in which foreign collectors were depleting the stock of indigenous art, had strictly limited the export of these prints, thus driving up the price of those already in private collections. Hiros.h.i.+ge's masterwork, Monkey Bridge in Kai Province (Ky Saruhas.h.i.+ no zu), an exquisite double vertical ban, was among the rare pieces up for auction, but Wrieto-San, because this was in effect a fire sale, actually received less for it than he'd paid some years earlier.

69.

And how, one asks, did Wrieto-San expect to pay out this amount in cash? Ingeniously, and with the cunning that characterized his financial dealings throughout his life, he persuaded a group of friends to incorporate him-as Frank Lloyd Wright, Inc.-against future earnings, at a cost to each of $7,500. Which, needless to say, none of them ever saw again.

70.

Wisconsin law at the time prescribed a one-year waiting period before remarrying.

71.

Actually, at this point the bank still owned Taliesin, though Wrieto-San's friends were negotiating for a grace period with regard to the outstanding debt. He was living with his sister Jennie in her house (Tan-y-deri) on the Taliesin grounds, however, and doing his best to repair damage from yet another fire that had occurred in his absence. (And what is it with this man and fire?)

72.

This would have been at the instigation of Albert Chase McArthur, who hired Wrieto-San as consulting architect for the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix for the sum of $1,000 a month, which monies Wrieto-San must sorely have needed at this juncture. It should be said in this connection that while McArthur is officially credited for the design, which makes use of the textile-block construction Wrieto-San pioneered in the Los Angeles houses, anyone with the least sensitivity to architecture can see that this is quite clearly one of Wrieto-San's buildings in all but name.

73.

Niijima, possibly, popular these days with surfers.

74.

She was fifty-nine at the time.

75.

ARCHITECT WRIGHT MARRIES DANCER, the headlines read.

76.

By the corporation, which was soon to go bankrupt.

77.

Within three months of their arrival in the fall of 1928, they were off to Arizona (with a party of fifteen, including draftsmen, the cook and Billy Weston and the pie-in-the-sky prospect of a hotel, San Marcos in the Desert, which would, alas, never be built).

78.

I wouldn't want to indulge in amateur Freudianism, but perhaps the trials of these years were what molded her into the unsmiling and unyielding taskmaster of Taliesin, known universally among the apprentices as the Dragon Lady.

79.

Woe betide the apprentice who let even one of them go dead on his s.h.i.+ft.

80.

Including Billy's son, Marcus, who was born three months after the murder of his elder brother, Ernest, at Taliesin in 1914.

81.

This adventure, of course, was to provide the seed for Taliesin West. I have concentrated memories of making the pilgrimage to Arizona each winter, Wrieto-San out front of a procession swollen to seven or eight vehicles and some twenty-seven people, his hair flowing like the fur of a pinniped in a heavy sea, going, as the expression has it, h.e.l.lbent for leather. He always seemed genuinely surprised, if not shocked, by the presence of other drivers, as if the national matrix of lanes, cart-paths, thoroughfares, boulevards and interstate highways had been created for his use and pleasure alone.

82.

1929, that is.

83.

Welsh for father. Richard Lloyd Jones, Wrieto-San's maternal grandfather-father, that is, of the clan-took the fortieth chapter of Isaiah as his personal testament and had Wrieto-San and his sisters memorize it. Its view of human life and endeavor is, I think, especially bleak. There is nothing like it in the s.h.i.+nto tradition.

84.