Willow Locke - Anarchist Detective

Elizabeth Whitcomb

Willow made sure her outfit looked immaculate.  Ayala and Eitan had already gone long before sunrise. She had filled the gigantic steel washtub on the roof with cold water from the condenser in the middle of the night in order to take a bath. The water was ice cold, but Mrs. Abramczik had given her a stub of oatmeal soap and she had finally gotten cleaned up.  She looked at herself in the cracked, spotted mirror and could not see disheveled, dusty Talia, but this new creature, Willow, that had taken her place.  She felt a new articulation, a bright precision flowing into her spirit.  Where Talia had sought to minimize her own presence, to make herself invisible, Willow expanded, she constructed herself to engage in the world around her.   Was Willow Locke really a disguise, or a revelation of her true personality?  She practiced softening her consonants in the mirror, transmuting the hard Czech R's and K's into the soft lilting tones of American patois. She tried imitating Eitan again:
"I've gotta go hawk the morning paper, mom!"
It seemed so easy to change.  She had brushed her hair until it shone and tied it back with a red ribbon.  She wore the white blouse Ayala had stolen, and the embroidered skirt they had made over night. She looked like an ambitious young scholar.  She knew that there were only a few female students at NYU- she would be highly scrutinized even if her identity was flawless.  She laced up the boots Ayala had given her. 
"Be careful," said Reuven as he slipped out the door to go to work, "Head straight for the administrative wing and speak only to Elizabeth Whitcomb."
"Thanks dad." Willow embraced Reuven.
She walked out past the Abramczik's, where the children were carousing and chasing each other into the dim claustrophobic stairwell.  She walked carefully down the dark stairwell holding the rail. She stepped through the double doors of the tenement and stepped out into the Bowery.  She felt elated as she glided through the soft blue morning light.  She passed under the Washington Square Arch and through the gardens.  She saw a drunk and destitute young man roused from a bench by a police officer.  He fixed her with his pitiful stare for a moment and she saw that he was blind in one eye.  There were white mushrooms growing in the Washington Square flower beds, pushing through the soil after the rain. Willow looked up toward the Asch building, where she knew Ayala had already been at work for four hours.
Willow scanned the sidewalk as she approached the administrative building.  She knew some wealthy student would toss away a pencil after it was only a little shorter.  Sure enough she found a Dixon Ticonderoga on the steps that had been barely used at all.  She scooped it off the ground as she walked and tucked it into her leather backpack.  Maybe this Mrs. Whitcomb would give her some paper.
She walked up the stairs and through the oaken double doors.  There was a receptionist guarding the entryway. 
"May I help you young lady?"
"Yes," said Willow, "My name is Willow Locke, I'm a new student and I was sent here to matriculate.  I was told to speak with Mrs. Whitcomb."   She was proud of herself, although she spoke slowly, only the word "matriculate" caught in the back of her throat in the Czech way.  It was not a mistake the receptionist would have noticed.  Otherwise she sounded smooth and mellifluous, the entire sentence pronounced in the American way, as though it were a single euphonious word.
"Oh, right this way Miss Locke.  There aren't many women enrolled here, you must be quite the scholar to have been accepted."
Willow didn't answer, but followed the receptionist down the hall to a private office with a brass plate on the door. 
It read, "Elizabeth Whitcomb: Administrative Secretary"
The receptionist knocked and pried open the door. "Willow Locke is here to enroll, Mrs. Whitcomb," she said.
"Ah Miss Locke, do come in, I've been expecting you!" Mrs. Whitcomb threw the door open.  She was middle-aged and extremely beautiful.  She had long blonde hair worn in a half twist and a quick smile. She had bright blue eyes.  She wore a perfectly tailored black dress and a black jacket with a fancy ruffled silk blouse.  She wore a silver Waterman ring top fountain pen on a long silver chain.  Willow saw a thick silver men's watch chain hanging from her pocket.  She wore men's glasses with thick tortoise shell frames.  They were perfectly round and as she shook hands with Willow she pushed them up on her nose.
"I hate those stupid pince-nez spectacles women are supposed to wear." She said when she noticed Willow looking at her glasses, "They hurt like the dickens."
"That will be all Anne," she said to the receptionist, who quietly ducked out, easing the door closed behind her.
Willow and Mrs. Whitcomb listened as Anne's steps receded back down the marble hallway.  Then Mrs. Whitcomb laughed.
"Willow Locke.  Look at you.  Absolutely perfect. I want to show you something," she said.
Then she turned to her bookshelf for a moment and brought something down for Willow to see, a brass starling.  Willow recognized it at once-it was one of Reuven's automata, one she had never seen.  Mrs. Whitcomb wound the spring and Willow watched as the starling turned its head, looking this way and that.  It seemed to look at Mrs. Whitcomb, then at Willow. Then it hopped about on Mrs. Whitcomb's desk and stretched its wings. Every feather was articulate.  Willow knew it was hard, cold brass,  but it looked soft.  It looked alive. 
"A marvel," said Mrs. Whitcomb "A masterpiece.  Your father's work is unlike anything on earth. He is one of the greatest artists who ever lived.  This nation blasphemes against God in exploiting its poor, its immigrants.  It's very creed calls it hypocrite, 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness'."
The starling began preening its feathers.
"I bought this in Prague from your family's shop in 1898," she continued.  "I paid a fortune for it, and it was well worth it.  I saw you working in the shop, right alongside your father.  I suppose you were only three years old then. Little Talia. You were filing a delicate part for one of his machines."
Mrs. Whitcomb sat on her desk and gripped the edge.  The starling was winding down, its movements becoming sluggish. 
"When Mr. Cenek saw this in my office he knew that I knew Reuven. He had just started as a professor here and he was merely dropping off a form- but he stayed for hours and we formed our conspiracy. We learned from his old teacher where you lived, how you had fared since - since coming to America." she trailed off and looked earnestly at Willow.  Willow picked up the starling and wound it up again.
"Are you really-," Willow hesitated. "Are you really an anarchist, Mrs. Whitcomb?"
"Well yes I am, actually!" She laughed "but not a violent one like that dreadful Emma Goldman.  The Greek word Anarkhos means 'without rule.' Just because a power structure exists, doesn't mean it should exist.  Small cohorts of individuals can wield control over large groups against their interests.  In these corrupt systems, some degree of opposition, of Anarkhos, is necessary. These structures, if left unchecked–incubating within their own miasma of power– will grow unabated, consuming their environment, until nothing remains.  A corporation was once thought of as a collection of individuals, but it has become something more.  When the workers suffer, when their life is drained by this new vampiric something, who benefits?  Not the workers.  Not even the owners, who have become transformed by their immorality.  Both are enslaved to the corporation.  It has become an independent entity, a massive psychic organism. It is Mammon.  It has stolen the personhood of its workers and owners and makes its own decisions."
The starling had perched on Mrs. Whitcomb's lap and began to sing. 
"Oh, isn't it lovely!" Mrs. Whitcomb exclaimed. "It rarely does that."
She moved the automaton back to the desk and continued.
"All of this is merely a natural process of communication twisted back upon itself.  A network of human energy, corrupt but voluntarily joined.  Well, we have our own network. We do not ask for others to change things.  We change them.  Every law, every power structure should be able to withstand scrutiny.  If it cannot, it is corrupt and must be dismantled. We are the ones who scrutinize.  We are the Anarkhos."
"Mrs. Whitcomb-," said Willow, "did you- did you pay my tuition?"
"Oh no darling," Mrs. Whitcomb responded, "You have a financier, a benefactor.  A wealthy suffragette who works in our network but fears exposure.  She must remain nameless, I'm afraid."
There was a knock at the door in a peculiar rhythm- three short taps, a pause, one tap, then another group of three.
"Use that knock whenever you visit me, and it can't be too often."  She opened the door and a boy a little older than Willow came into the office.  He was wearing a linen suit and a crisp white shirt with a red bow tie. He had disheveled blonde hair and blue eyes and wore the same round tortoise shell glasses as Mrs. Whitcomb.
"This is my son James.  James, this is Miss Willow Locke." She tousled his hair affectionately.
"Hello, pleased to meet you" said James.  Willow found him oddly bashful for an anarchist.
"I have enrolled both of you in the same classes.  You should never be out of one another's sight. James will speak for you if someone begins to pry. James, you musn't let anyone isolate Willow."
"I understand," said James.
"Willow, your outfit is perfect today, but I'm sure you don't have anything else."  
She stepped over to a tall oak cabinet and unlocked it with a silver key.  Inside the cabinet hung several dresses that looked like they were Willow's size.  Mrs. Whitcomb pulled a dark brown dress from the cabinet and turned it around.
"We'll keep these here for you, but you should take some home when you can." Mrs. Whitcomb said.
"I will," said Willow. She took the brown dress from Mrs. Whitcomb and carefully folded it into her backpack.

Mrs. Whitcomb locked the cabinet and crossed back to the desk.   She pulled two forms out of a drawer.  She handed a form to each of them. The forms were embossed in the corner with the NYU torch emblem.
"These are your certificates of matriculation. Take them to identification services down the hall.  They will photograph you and process your id's.  You should have just enough time, general assembly begins in half an hour and you'll have a full day of classes together."
She looked carefully at each of them.
"Be careful.  Willow, your facade must be perfect. When in doubt let James do the talking."
"Yes Mrs. Whitcomb." Willow replied.
"Take care of her James, don't leave her side."
"Yes, mom, I won't," James said.
"Thank you-  Thank you Mrs. Whitcomb, for everything.  I am going to make the most of the opportunity you've given me and my family," said Willow.
"I know you will, darling." Mrs. Whitcomb replied.