The Kingdom of Ohio (8 page)

 

 

This is what I've pieced together concerning the early years of the Kingdom of Ohio. This is where (if beginnings ever really exist) all of this began. But still I find myself at a loss, thinking about how to put the jigsaw pieces of history together: how these events came to echo through the lives of two young people walking along a riverbank in New York. A man and woman, as they enter a nondescript German restaurant and seat themselves beneath the heavy beams of the low ceiling.

 

 

 

 

I CAN PICTURE the moment so vividly that it feels, sometimes, closer than the roar of traffic outside my window. How she leans across the table and says:

“Cheri-Anne Toledo.”

There is sawdust on the floor of the restaurant, the air is dense with the smell of sweat and hops. Thick-ankled waitresses wrangle tankards of beer between the tables. The introductions now completed, they sit silently for a moment, regarding each other. Studying the awkward, angular beauty of her features Peter decides that she must be around twenty years old.

“So you wanted to talk?” he asks finally.

She nods and sips the red wine that the waitress brought out, along with a plate of dark bread and pickles, which she has been visibly restraining herself from devouring.

“I have a tale,” she says, “that defies common sense and perhaps even belief. In fact, I considered inventing some other story to explain the favor I will ask.”

It takes Peter some time to untangle this statement. He nods and she closes her eyes, swaying slightly in her seat.

“But listen,” she continues, “and I will tell you the truth, as simply as I can.

“For all my life, I have been fascinated by theories of science. In the laboratories of Europe I spent years studying physics and mathematics, hoping to glimpse the shape of the universe and its laws. Some years ago, working with a man named Tesla, I undertook a project—”

“Nikola Tesla?” Although Peter had decided to just hear her story without commenting or getting involved, he can't stop himself at this point. “You know Tesla?”

“I did.” She hesitates. “Perhaps he would not know me now.” An uncomfortable expression crosses her face and she looks down at the table. “Our goal was the construction of a device to transport men instantaneously from one place to another. I—”

“Wait—” Peter finds himself interrupting again. “I'm a mechanic”—he is startled to hear himself say these words, by the loftiness of his new title—“and I can tell you that's impossible.”

“Impossible?” She smiles humorlessly. “Of course. But would not electricity have seemed like an impossibility a hundred years ago? The idea of harnessed lightning?”

“Maybe so.” He nods. But the fact is, he thinks, she's obviously lying, or maybe just plain crazy. “Then tell me how it's done.”

She looks down at the half-eaten plate of food between them. “You are a mechanic?”

He nods.

“Perhaps you have heard of Leibniz's concept of the monad?”

Peter shrugs noncommittally.

“Well, from there it is a simple enough idea, at least in principle. If the world is composed of unitary particles, and if one of these particles were somehow split, then the two halves, however far separated, might still resonate together, being fundamentally entwined. Given this fact—”

To Peter, her words quickly become a maze of bewildering detail and technical speculation that extends in every direction, seemingly without end. The few questions that he manages to ask lead only to more questions, more complexity that makes his head spin. And soon, he stops really listening: she rests her elbows on the table, cupping her chin, her face close to his. Her eyes are bright and flickering and he can smell her breath, sweet and heavy with wine. She sketches rapid diagrams on the dirty surface of the table between them, lines crisscrossing into nonsense.

“—existence of diallel gravitational-field lines,” she is saying, “that emanate from every entity. In the case of the Earth, they emanate radially from its center, providing a conduit for combined particle and vibratory flow beyond the speed of light—”

Finally, he raises his hands. “Stop. Stop, please.”

She takes a deep breath and falls silent, leaning back in her chair. Her face is drawn and even paler than before, the light in her eyes unsteady. She takes a sip of her wine and passes a hand across her forehead.

“You've lost me,” Peter admits. “But you were telling that story . . . ?”

She nods. “I was. And pardon if I am unclear.” She sips the wine again, then continues in a rush. “Although I told you that the device we were building was a means of instantaneous transportation, the truth is that Mr. Tesla and I never completed the work. We were close—very close, perhaps. But when I finally did attempt its practical use, before all the necessary tests had been performed, an accident happened.

“To put it succinctly—have you heard of the Royal House of Toledo?”

He shakes his head, and she nods, looking away, her eyes abruptly wet. She angrily wipes the almost-tears away, and Peter experiences a brief moment of admiration—her performance is as good as anything he's seen in a penny theater, he thinks.

“Suffice to say, my family and I were under attack. It was my intention to use the device to remove our attackers. But somehow I miscalculated. The machine exploded, destroying my home and family.”

“But you escaped?” Peter prompts, momentarily caught up in the strangeness of the situation and of her tale.

“I escaped. At first, when I awoke in a park, I did not know where I was or what had happened. But finally it became clear to me.”

She leans forward conspiratorially, gesturing for Peter to do the same—and as she does, knocks over his glass of wine, the ruby liquid flooding the tabletop and dripping into his lap. Flushing with embarrassment, she leaps to her feet, the motion toppling her own wineglass. An awkward interval of stammered apologies and clumsy mopping ensues, which Peter watches with mingled confusion and disbelief. When the mess has finally been cleared away and a surly waitress has replaced the drinks, they lean together again, the drama of the moment somewhat diminished.

“I was saying,” she whispers, “I believe that the explosion somehow hurled me through time itself, so that I awoke seven years after the night my family perished.”

She falls silent and they lean apart. Neither says anything for a moment. Around them the hubbub of the restaurant, a burst of laughter from a nearby table.

Wondering how to respond, Peter is at a loss. Her story is easily within the bounds of raving-lunatic territory, but, seated across the little table, she doesn't look deranged. In fact, she seems nervous but alert and clear-eyed, waiting for his answer.

“Guess I don't know what to say.” He shrugs helplessly.

She nods, as if accepting a sentence. “You do not believe me.”

“Would you?”

“Perhaps not. And what proof can I possibly offer that would convince you? My story, I know, offends common sense—but look.” From her pocket she carefully withdraws a battered scrap of newsprint. Smoothing it on the table, she pushes it toward Peter—who suddenly recalls Neumann making this same gesture. Unfolding the brittle page, torn from the
Boston Post-Intelligencer
of August 26, 1894, he reads:

Here the article ends abruptly in a torn edge. But the text is almost beside—or rather, below—the point: above the article is a small line drawing captioned “Louis Toledo & His Daughter,” depicting an ugly man with a distracted look on his face, and a young woman. Peter looks up at the girl seated across from him, then down at the scrap again. And, yes, he thinks, it could be her: the same sharp, delicate features, the same dark curls.

“This you?”

“Yes.”

“This is from seven years ago.”

She doesn't say anything.

Peter hands back the article and she tucks it into her pocket—this best, and only, real evidence that she has been able to find during her days of research in the newly built public library. Days during which she learned how dramatically the world had changed over the last seven years, an industrial revolution transfiguring open countryside into metropolises overnight—or would it be metropoli? she wonders. For a split second, the image of a gigantic beehive flashes in front of her: a ceaseless, bustling insect activity, multiplying wax hexagons toward the heavens, self-important top hatted drones stopping mid-flight to confer—Pollen up ten percent last month, old chap, have you heard?—Yes, magnificent outlay from the daffodils, give my regards to the queen—

She closes her eyes, wondering what is wrong with her, thinking things like this.

Peter leans away from her, rubbing his hands over his face.

He knows this is the point when he should make his excuses, slip her a nickel, and escape. He wants to be practical, to hold true to the rational commandments of his new profession. But for no good reason, and against his better judgment, he finds himself also wanting to hear more of her story.

“Supposing all of this is true. You said you needed something from me?”

With an effort she brings herself back to the present, making her eyes soft and looking up at him through lowered lashes. “I am a stranger here,” she murmurs, “I know no one. Walking today, I became faint and fell. And when you were kind enough to help me . . .”

In fact, for a dizzying moment, she cannot remember why she is here, in this seedy restaurant, confessing herself to this shabbily dressed, unshaven stranger. It was only something in his expression, as he watched the birds wing upward over the river, as if transfixed by the physics of their flight, that made her imagine she might—

“You need a place to stay, then?” he asks roughly.

She nods and gazes at him—like a moonstruck cow, she thinks, hoping she doesn't look as ridiculous as she feels.

“And you have no money? Nothing?”

She nods again.

The thought occurs to him that this all might be an elaborate hoax: that if he agrees to help her, he'll wake up in the hands of her accomplices—thickset men with low brows who might already be lurking outside. He glances around, knowing that he'll see nothing, and sees nothing. Only the low ceiling of unfinished beams, the crowded tables, and, beyond the thick windowpanes, the smudged silhouette of the city. Dark columns of smoke rising toward the darkening winter sky—the faintest suggestion of shape and order in the mass of buildings and boulevards that fuse together, tilting downward into night.

For a long moment, the demands of reason and faith crowd together inside him. Then abruptly he reaches a decision. Not because he believes her story—but maybe because there's something in her face that intrigues him. Maybe because he is lonely. Or maybe, most simply of all, because he has been waiting for something, and suddenly something has arrived.

“Can't take you to my rooms,” he tells her. “I don't live alone, and no guests allowed. But if a roof is what you're looking for, you can stay in the mechanics' garage tonight.” He stares at her, afraid to hear her say no, hoping that she will.

“Thank you,” she says. And gives him a look of gratitude that—for a moment—makes him feel, despite his misgivings, that maybe he has made the right decision after all.

 

 

 

 

I PICTURE the two of them rising to leave the German restaurant—but however much I want to follow, I realize that I'll have to leave them there. Because writing these last few pages, I've been plagued by the sense that I'm forgetting something. I've tried to ignore the feeling—because really, I tell myself, it doesn't matter. The important thing here isn't the distant past, or my present: the important thing is what happened in New York. Still, I can't shake the idea that I'll be missing a crucial piece if I don't finish telling the history of the Kingdom of Ohio.

Because although it's not the story I sat down to write, I can't seem to get around the idea that it needs to be told, even if you already know all of this. Because, if nothing else, it seems to me that these things should be recorded somewhere. So that someone besides you and I might read this and remember.

 

 

In 1785, the Northwest Territory was divided into separate regions
¹⁵
that were eligible for eventual statehood. With this news, the value of land on the frontier doubled overnight. Taking advantage of this development, in a remarkably circular turn of events, Mathieu Latoledan (now head of the family) reached an agreement with two land speculators—Joel Barlow, an ex-minister, and his partner William Playfair, the former manager of a vaudeville show and convicted horse-thief—to lease small farmsteads in the Kingdom of Ohio on the markets of Europe.

In 1789, when the farms went on sale, it was a good time to advertise American real estate in France—for this was the summer when, as M. Fénelon, archbishop of the church, informed the king, all of France was “simply a great hospital, full of woe and empty of bread,”
¹⁶
and on July 14 a mob streamed through the streets and razed the Bastille. For the fearful Parisians, America represented growth, profits, and security. Barlow and Playfair did a brisk business, selling farmsteads for 1,000 livres each. Their brochures described the tracts of land, claiming that no other territory in the United States