In Eliza Factor’s novel The
Mercury Fountain, Owen Scraperton founds a utopian society in West Texas at
the very beginning of the 20th century, to be supported by mercury
mining and the ideals of reason and enlightenment. Unfortunately, events and the resulting family
conflict overtake and consume the lofty ideals as well as the solvency of the mercury
operation. The eponymous fountain refers
not only to a display in the town to commemorate the all-important mercury
mine, but also to the creeping madness of prejudice and totalitarianism the
town suffers from.
All goes swimmingly for a time, as the Scrapertons bring
forth their precocious daughter Victoria and the price of mercury ratchets
upward. But problems creep in to this idyll: soldiers occupy the town because
of a perceived Mexican threat in the wake of the Spanish-American War, and
unrest grows between Mexican peons
with their superstitions, and the “forward-looking” Anglo counterparts. A young
and upstanding Mexican man is nearly beaten to death, but is held for the death
of an Anglo whom he clearly killed in self defense. Into this injustice
Victoria the young woman insinuates herself as rescuer and foil to her father.
The daughter Victoria is the most perplexing conundrum in
this unusual and arresting book. She suffers a ghastly injury as a young child
when a couple of privileged toughs use a scalpel to cut her tongue nearly in
two longitudinally. Her tongue is repaired, but not completely, so that it is
forever forked. In one of the principal events of the book, she trains a snake
to take a key to the Mexican man being wrongfully held in prison, so that he
can free himself.
After this, madness progresses on center stage. Scraperton
suffers from it, as does the town’s doctor, and various others. This madness
has a parallel in the societal madness whereby riches are taken from the earth
by the most polluting methods possible, whites can persecute brown-skinned and
natives with impunity, and all factions profess the superstitions of their
choice.
Characters spring into prominence a little haphazardly here,
most notably Ysidro, the young Mexican folk hero. The progress of individuals,
with the possible exception of Owen’s wife Delores, lurches along in fits and
starts. I could wish for something a little more cohesive than this, with maybe
more focus on Victoria, leading with her forked tongue the downtrodden in
pitched battle against her father and his perceived abandonment of his ideals. We
glimpse influences of the outside world – industrial strife, with goons and
strike breakers – and World War I, in a very oblique way too. Ms. Factor has an undeniable force and
passion, and her focus on the international and intellectual milieu of the time
gives the story some depth, but overall I was struck by the herky-jerky nature
of the narrative, and the oddly unfulfilling final disposition of the story’s
chief protagonist, the idealistic but inconsistent Scraperton. We are left with
only the most discouraging answers to some exceedingly important questions.
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