The Lacuna (2009) is set in America and Mexico from 1929 to 1951. It is a
fictional compilation of Harrison William Shepherd’s writings, letters,
newspaper clippings, and diary entries by his secretary Violet Brown.
Harrison (known as Harry, Will, or Shep) is a tall, 6 foot-5 inch, blue-eyed
half-American (through his father) and half-Mexican (through his mother) growing
up in Isla Pixol in Mexico. His mother Salome Huerta ran away to America,
changed her name to Sally, and married an American from Washington DC. That
didn’t last long and she returned home with her son, 13-year-old Harry.
Harry begins his writings at the lacuna – his visits to the cliff, the sea,
the cave, the ‘dark mouth in the rock.’ He learns to swim, dive, and hold his
breath underwater for long periods. ‘At the end of the tunnel the cave opens up
to light, a small saltwater pool in the jungle.’ It took hours to explore, but
when the tide comes in, the cave is underwater. The bones of the dead who
didn’t make it out in time are still in the cave. The lacuna means the gap or
hole – the missing part of the cliff-face.
In 1932, at 16 Harry goes to Washington DC to attend military school, but
he is kicked out and returns to Mexico in 1934 and works with Mexico’s most
famous artist Diego Rivera (whom he calls The Painter), in the home of Rivera
and Frida Kahlo (whom he calls The Queen). He writes of their tempestuous
relationship, her pet monkey, her pain after her car accident (‘she’s
twenty-five with the ailments of ninety’), and her art.
Exiled Soviet politician Lev (Leon) Trotsky lives in the Rivera household. Harry
then works for Trotsky. Harry writes of the Commission Inquiry into Stalin’s
charges against Trotsky, known as the Moscow Trials. He mentions the painting
that Kahlo gave Trotsky – a self-portrait. He writes of his mother’s death in
1938 when he is 22 years old.
The first half of the book is both political and artistic as Harry
struggles with his own identity.
The second half of the book is about America. Harry returns to Washington
DC to look for his father, but ends up in Ashville, North Carolina. He starts
to write about Mexico, and has his books published. This is the time Violet
Brown works as his secretary. She writes too in the book, in order to tie his
diary events together, because there are missing parts – ‘something in his
nature just did not expect good things in store.’
Harry continues contact with Frida Kahlo through letters. The head of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is J.Edgar Hoover and it is the time of
the fears of communist infiltration, particularly through the works and
associations of artists and writers. Harry’s third book, The Unforetold, is not
published. He is on trial for being a communist. Before his trial in 1950 he
writes in his diary, ‘There are only two choices: read, or dead.’
Violet Brown ends the book with her recollections of Harry’s return to
Mexico and to the lacuna – the gap, the missing space, the sea, the cliff, the
cave.
The beginning and the end, and the
Rivera/Kahlo years, are the best sections of this lengthy novel. However, it is
more than diary notes about politics, history, and art. Although Harry writes
about other people and not himself, he nevertheless slowly reveals his own
truth, his own personality, and his own secrets. It takes perseverance to
finish the novel, but if readers do, they will find that it is about identity,
self-expression, the hidden aspects of personalities – what they reveal and
what they hide – and what Harry wanted to keep secret.
Frida Kahlo: Self Portrait dedicated
to Leon Trotsky - 'Between the Curtain' (Photograph taken during my
visit to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, 2013)
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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