Daniyal Mueenuddin Reads Peter Taylor

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month we're going to hear two pilgrims by Peter Taylor, which appeared in The New Yorker in September of 1963. Then I heard Mr. Louder and my uncle opened the back doors of the car.

While the car was still moving, they leaped out onto the ground. They both were big men, more than six feet tall and with sizable stomachs that began just below the breastbone. But they sprinted off in the direction of the house like two boys. The story was chosen by Daniel Moina de, who is the author of the story collection in other

rooms other wonders, a winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. In the novel, this is where the serpent lives, which came out earlier this year. Hi, Daniel. Hello. How are you?

Good. You mentioned to me when we were discussing this podcast that your mother, new Peter Taylor and interviewed him for the Paris Review, can you tell me a bit about that connection? Yeah.

I'm not sure exactly how she came to know him first, but I know many years ago back

in the '60s, she'd done the interview of Catherine and Porter.

“And so I think that's how she got plugged in with Paris Review folks.”

And then I think she met him somewhere around and about in New York. She'd moved back to New York and was living there. And it met him and thought that this would be an interesting conversation. She admired his stories a great deal. And I think that there was something about the stories that reminded her of Pakistan, where

she'd spent all her time in about which she was writing. She was also a writer and is concerned with some of the same themes I think that he is. And does that interest transfer to you who you have also spent a lot of time on the farm in Pakistan? Yeah.

No, it's all very familiar isn't it? The way in which he comes at his stories is familiar to anybody who's been in a place like Pakistan where some of the same sorts of hierarchies and class issues and race issues even of a certain kind. We're dealing with the same material, some extent.

Yeah.

How did you first start reading Peter Taylor's work?

I think I would have read it because she turned me on to it, probably quite early. My mother used to sort of feed me things that she thought would be useful to me or interesting to me. So quite early on probably when I was going off to college around in my early 20s. She would give me armfuls of books and that was probably among them.

I don't remember exactly which book she gave me but I do remember at some point he glided into my horizons.

“How do you remember what you thought of him on first reading?”

Yeah. I remember initially I think a lot of readers will find he seems a little sort of dry almost. It's a little bit very manored and then as one gets further into it the richness of an also this sort of the bloodiness that becomes more and more evident.

At first it might seem not very very controlled and I think underneath the control

it's so often with fiction there's in a lot of much more violent and emotional movement than initially evident. And this story two pilgrims is one of more than 20 stories that Peter Taylor published in the New Yorker between 1948 and 1981. Why did you choose this one to read and talk about today?

I know you had initially wanted one that was much longer which we couldn't do but what made this the second choice. Yeah this story I think has a lot of this I've been as my book has just come out so I've been dealing with themes of class and of manners in that way that I think that is very well represented in this story.

These two men who are sort of very controlled in their storytelling and it's very sort of practiced and then they encountered this wild scene of this fire and the ways in which they both do and don't confront the violence of the scene they come upon. It's felt very familiar to me as somebody who writes about Pakistan and it's just published a book with some of the same sort of conflicts in it between sort of the way these men

present themselves and the experience that described in this story there's a tension between the two which I thought found really interesting. It is funny to hear Pakistan repeatedly compared to the American South because it's not a natural parallel one makes.

“Yeah that's right but yet I think there is some I mean I think part of the”

as I said before I think the stories of the American South have a lot of similarity or commonalities with the stories that come out of Pakistan I think particularly the ones that are having to do with you know farming and feudal structures because the South is sort of feudal in a quite different way externally and then there are structural similarities which

Yeah I just introduced a story a little it was published in 1963

“I'm guessing that the narrator of the story who's a 17 year old was probably 17 around”

the same time that Peter Taylor was 17 so in the in the 1930s do you think that's when it's set? Yeah I was thinking about this I had settled on sort of the mid-30s because actually it's before the war and sort of after the depression I was there. Well we'll talk some more after the story and now here's Daniel moving it in reading two

pilgrims by Peter Taylor. Two pilgrims. We were on our way from Memphis to a small town in northern Alabama where my uncle who was a cotton broker had a lawsuit that he hoped could be settled out of court. Mr. Louder my uncle's old friend and lawyer was traveling with him.

I had just turned 17 and I had been engaged to come along in the capacity of chauffeur. I sat alone in the front seat of the car.

“The two men didn't discuss the lawsuit along the way as I would have expected them to do.”

I don't know to this day exactly what was involved or even whether or not Mr. Louder managed to settle the matter on that trip. From the time we left the outskirts of Memphis the two men talked instead about how good the bird hunting used to be there in our section of the country. During the two hours while we were riding through the big cotton counties of West Tennessee

they talked of almost nothing but bird dogs and field trials interrupting themselves only when we passed through some little town or settlement to speak of the fine people they knew who had once lived there. We went through Collierville, Lagrange, Grand Junction, Solsbury. At Lagrange my uncle pointed out a house with a neoclassic portico and said he had once

had a breakfast there that lasted three hours. At Solsbury, Mr. Louder commented that it somehow did his soul good to see the name spelled that way. There was even some color still, dull pinks and yellows mixed with reddish browns and under a bright limitless sky the trees and the broad fields of grayish cotton stalks looking

almost lavender in places gave a kind of faded tapestry effect. After we crossed the Tennessee River at Savannah the country changed and it was as if the new kind of country we had got into depressed the two men but it may then only the weather because the weather changed too after we crossed the river. The sky became overcast and everything seemed rather closed in.

Soon there was intermittent rain of a light misty sort. I kept switching my windshield wiper on and off until presently my uncle asked me an acquire less tone why I didn't just let the thing run. For 30 or 40 miles the two men had little to say to each other.

Finally as we were passing through a place called Wainsbro, a hard looking hill town with

a cement block jail house dominating the public square. My uncle said that this town was where general windfield Scott had made one of his halls and the notorious trail of tears when he was rounding up the Cherokees to move them west in 1838. The two men spoke of what a cruel thing that had been but they agreed that one must not judge

the persons responsible too harshly that one must judge them by the light of their times

“and remember what the earliest settlers had suffered at the hands of the Indians.”

Not very long after we had left Wainsbro, Mr. Louder remarked that we were approaching the old notches trace section and that the original settlers there had been a mighty rough lot of people. My uncle added that from the very earliest days the whole area had been infested with outlaws and robbers and that even now it was said to be a pretty tough section.

They sounded as though they were off to a good start. I thought the subject might last them at least into lunchtime but just as this thought occurred to me they were interrupted. We came over the brow of one of the low-lying hills in that country of scrubberks and pinewoods and there before us in a clearing down in the hollow ahead was a house with smoke issuing

from one window toward the rear and with little grey geysers rising at a half dozen points on the black shingle roof. It was an unpainted one-story house set close to the ground and with two big stone and chimneys. All across the front was a kind of lean to porch.

There was an old log barn beyond the house. Despite my uncle's criticism I'd switched off the windshield wiper a mile or so up the road and then I'd had to switch it on again just as we came over the hill.

Even with the wiper going visibility was not very good and my first thought was that only

Mr. Louder and my uncle were so engrossed in their talk that I think it was my switching

“the wiper on again that first attracted their attention.”

But instantly upon seeing the smoke my uncle said turning down there but be careful all you slow down Mr. Louder warned this black top slick. Already he and my uncle were perched on the edge of the back seat and one of them had put a hand on my shoulder as if to steady me. The little house was in such a clearing as must have been familiar to travelers in pioneer

days. There were stumps everywhere even in the barn lot and among the cabbages in the garden. I suppose I particularly noticed the stumps because a good number were themselves smoldering and sending up occasional whispers of smoke. Apparently the farmer had been trying to rid himself of the stumps in the old fashioned way.

There was no connection between these fires and the one at the house but the infernal effect of the whole scene was inescapable. One felt that the entire area within the dark ring of pinewoods might at any moment burst into flame.

“I turned the car off the Macadam pavement and we bumped along some 200 feet following”

wagon ruts that led more toward the barn than toward the house. The wide barn doors stood open and I could see the figure of a man inside hurting a couple of animals through a door at the other end where the barn lot was. Then I heard Mr. Louder and my uncle opened the back doors of the car. While the car was still moving they leaped out onto the ground.

They both were big men more than six feet tall and with sizable stomachs that began just below the breastbone but they sprinted off in the direction of the house like two boys. As they ran I saw them hurriedly putting on their black gloves. Next they began stripping off their top coats. But the time I'd stopped the car and got out they'd pulled their coats over their heads

and I realized then that each had tossed his hat onto the back seat before leaping from the car. Looking like a couple of hooded nightwriters they were now mounting the shallow porch steps. It was just as they gained the porch that I saw the woman appear from around the far side of the house.

At the sight of the hooded and big-loved men on her porch the porch of her burning house. The woman threw one hand to her forehead and gave such an alarmed and alarming cry that I felt something turned over inside me. Even the two intruders halted for an instant on the porch and looked at her.

I thought it first glance that she was an old woman she was so stooped.

“Then something told me I think was the plaintive sounds she was making that she was”

more young than old. After her first outcry she continued a kind of girlish wailing which it seemed to me expressed a good deal more than mere emotional shock. The noises she made seemed to say that this all couldn't be happening to her. Not hooded bandits added to a house burning.

It wasn't right, life couldn't be so hard, couldn't be as evil as this. It was more than she should be asked to bear. Anybody inside miss my uncle called out to the girl? She began shaking her head frantically. "Well, we'll fetch out whatever we can," he called.

Glancing back at me I was trying to make a hood of my own top coat and preparing to join them. My uncle shouted "Don't you come inside, stay with that girl and call her down." That he followed Mr. Lauder through the doorway and into the house. Presently they were hurling bedclothes and homemade looking stools and chairs through the

side windows. Then one or the other of them would come dashing out across the porch and into the yard deposit on the ground a big picture and a wash basin or a blurry old mirror with a carved wooden frame and then dash back inside again. Now and then when one of them brought something out he would pause for just the briefest

moment, not to rest but to examine the rescued object before he put it down. It was comical to see the interest they took in the old things they brought out of that burning house. When I came up to where the woman was standing, she seemed to have recovered completely from her first fright.

She looked at me a little shame facedly I thought. Her deep-socketed eyes were almost freakishly large and I noticed at once that they were of two different colors, one was a mottled brown, the other a gray green.

When finally she spoke she turned her eyes away and toward the house.

"Who are you all?" she asked. We were just passing by I said. She looked at me and then turned away again. I felt she was skeptical that she suspected we had been sent by someone. Each time she directed her eyes at me I read the seat or guilt or suspicion in them.

When you come and from she asked in an idle tone, craning her neck to see what some object was that it come flying out the window. She seemed abundantly calm now.

My uncle met me on the porch steps.

He handed me a dresser drawer he was carrying, not failing to give the contents a quick inventory. Then he gave me a rather heavy punch on the chest.

“"Who stay out there and keep that girl calm," he said. "You hear what I say?”

She's apt to go to pieces any minute." The woman was taking a live-lear interest in matters now. I set the drawer on the stump and when I looked up she peered over me to see which drawer it was hide brought and what extra odds and ends my uncle might have swept into it. On top layer rusty fire poker and a couple of small picture frames with a glass so smashed

up you couldn't make out the pictures. Underneath there was a jumble of old cloth scraps and paper dress patterns and packages of garden seeds.

Seeing all this the woman opened her mouth and smiled vacantly, perhaps a little contemptuously.

She was so close to me that I became aware of the sweetness of her breath. I could not have imagined that her breath would be sweet, though the skin on her forehead and on her high cheekbones was clear and very fair. There were ugly pimples on her chin and at the corners of her mouth. The dark hair was wet from the drizzle of rain and was pushed behind her ears and hung

in clumps over the collar of her soiled denim jacket.

“She was breathing heavily through her parted lips.”

Presently when our eyes met, I thought I detected a certain momentary, gleefulness in her expression but her glance darted back toward the house at once. The two men had pressed on beyond the front rooms and into the air of the house. Now the woman took a couple of steps in order to look through one of the front windows and perhaps catch a glimpse of them back there.

We were coming from Memphis, I said, but from Memphis, but she seemed no longer interested in that subject. It's no use what they're doing, she said, unless they like it. It's all right, I said, still hoping to distract her. We're on our way to a place in Alabama.

They're your bosses, yes? She couldn't take her eyes off the window. No, it's my uncle and his lawyer. Well, they're right active, she commented, but there ain't nothing in there worth their bustling bother, yet some folks likes to take chances.

“It's just the worst lot of junk in there.”

We aired this place from my grandma when she passed on last spring. The junk was all her own. Just then, Mr. Lauder and my uncle came running from the house. Each of them was carrying a colloy lamp, his right hand supporting the base of the lamp and his left, clamped, protectively on the fragile chimney.

I almost burst out laughing. It's gotten too hot in there, Mr. Lauder said, we'll have to stop. When they had set down their lamps, they began examining each other's coats, making sure they weren't on fire. Next, they tossed their coats on the bare ground and set about pulling some of the rescued

articles farther from the house. I went forward to help, and the woman followed. She didn't follow to help, however. Apparently, she was only curious to see which of her possessions these men had deemed worth saving.

She looked at everything she came to with almost a disappointed expression. Then Mr. Lauder picked up an enamel object, and I noticed that as he inspected it, a deep frown appeared on his brow. He held the thing up from my uncle's sea, and I imagined for a moment that he was trying to draw laughter from all of us.

It was a child's chamber pot, not much larger than a beer mug. Did you bring this out, Mr. Lauder asked uncle?

My uncle nodded, and still bending over, he studied the pot for a second, showing that

he had not really identified it before, then he looked at the woman. "Where's your child, ma'am?" he asked in a quiet voice. The woman gaped at him, as though she didn't understand what he was talking about. She shifted her eyes to the tiny pot that Mr. Lauder was still holding a loft. Now her mouth dropped wide open, and at the same time her lips drew back in such a way

that her bad teeth were exposed for the first time. It was impossible not to think of a death's head. At that instant, the whole surface of the shingled roof on the side of the house, where we were standing burst into flames. A few minutes before this, the rain had seized altogether, and now it was as though someone

had suddenly doused the roof with carousine. My back was to the house, but I heard a loud swish, and I spun around in that direction. Then I heard the woman cry out, and I spun back again. Mr. Lauder set the chamber pot on the ground, and began moving rather cautiously toward her.

My uncle stood motionless, watching her as though she was an animal that might bolt. As Mr. Lauder came toward her, she took a step backward, and then she wailed. My baby, oh Lord, my baby, he's in there. Mr. Lauder seized her by the wrist, and simultaneously gave us a quick glance over his shoulder.

head.

“I seized a patchwork quilt that had been underneath the blanket, and this time I followed”

him inside the house. Even in the two front rooms, it was like a blast furnace, and I felt I might faint. The smoke was so dense that you couldn't see anything, an arms length away. But my uncle had been in those two front rooms, and he knew there was no baby there.

With me at his heels, he ran right on through, and into the first room in the L, where

there wasn't so much smoke, only raw flames eating away at the wall toward the rear. The window lights had burst from the heat in there, and there was a hole in the ceiling, so that you could look right up through the flames to the sky. But my eyes were smarting, so that I couldn't really see anything in the room, and I was coughing so hard that I couldn't stand up straight.

My uncle was coughing too, but he could still manage to look about.

“He made two complete turns around the room, and then he headed us on into the kitchen.”

There wasn't anything recognizable to me in the kitchen, except the black range. One of the two window frames fell in as we ran through.

The next instant, after we had leaped across the burning floorboards, and had jumped off

the backstoop of the house, the rafters and the whole roof above the kitchen came down. He must have been a tremendous crash, though I hardly heard it. Even before my uncle and I could shed our small drink blankets, we saw the man coming toward us from the barn. You're a fire he called out to us, but we had already dropped the blankets before I understood what he was saying. He was jogging along toward us.

One of his legs was shorter than the other, and he couldn't move very fast. Under one army was carrying a little toe headed child, of not more than two years, he held it exactly as though it might be a sack of cornmeal who was bringing up from the barn. Do you have another baby? My uncle shouted at him. "No, marry other, the man replied. My uncle looked at me. He was coughing still, but at

the same time he was smiling and shaking his head. You all right he asked me? He gave my clothes a quick once over, and I did the same for him. We had somehow got through the house without any damage, even to our shoes or our trouser legs. By the time the man came up to the house, my uncle had dashed off to tell the woman her baby was safe. I tried to explain to the man about the mistake his wife had made. Your wife thought your baby

was in the house, I said. He was a stocky, black-haired man wearing overalls and a long sleeved undershirt. She what, he said, looking at me darkly. He glanced up briefly at the flames, which were now leaping 20 or 30 feet above the framework of the kitchen. Then he set out again in the same jogging pace toward the front of the house. I caught a glimpse of the baby's intense blue eyes, gazing up at the smoke and flames. She thought

the baby was inside the house, I said, following the man at a truck. Like hell she did, he said, under his breath, but loud enough for me to hear. As we rounded the corner of the house, I heard my uncle call out to the woman that her baby was safe. She was seated on a stump with her face hidden in her hands. My uncle and Mr. Louder once again began pulling rescued objects further away from the house. As the man passed him, Mr. Louder looked

up and said, did you get all the stock out? Yep, said the man. I guess you're lucky there's no wind, Mr. Louder said. And my uncle said, it must have started in the kitchen

and spread through the attic. You didn't have any water drawn? The man stopped for a second

and looked at my uncle. He shifted the baby from one hip to the other. The pumps broke he said. It was about wore out and she broke it for good this morning. Isn't that the way it goes? My uncle said sympathetically, shaking his head. Then, still carrying the baby, the man shuffled on toward his wife. The woman kept her face hidden in her hands, but I think she heard him coming. Neither of them seemed to have any awareness that their

house and most of their possessions were at that moment going up in flames. I was watching the man when he got to her. He still had the baby under his arm. I saw him draw back his freehand and saw the hand come down in a resounding slap on the back of her head. It knocked her right off the stump. She hit the ground in a sitting position and still she didn't look up at her husband. Do you aim to get them fellows burnt alive? He thundered? Mr. Lauder and

my uncle must have been watching too, because we all three ran forward at the same moment. Lay off that Mr. Lauder, bellowed. Just lay off now. She know this here, young and weren't in no house the man said, twisting the baby to his shoulder. I reckon she'd like

“his not loser head. That's how come I carried him with me and I told her plane is daylight. I was”

going to. Now you look here Mr. My uncle said. The girl was just scared. She didn't know what she was

down at his wife. She's feared of her own shadow and that's how come I carried him to the barn.

“Well, you're not going to beat her with us here Mr. Lauder said firmly. She was scared out of her”

wits. That's all. Who sent you all out here? The man asked my uncle, turning his back and Mr. Lauder. Ain't they gone send no fire engine? It was as he spoke the word that we heard the

fire truck coming. The wine of the siren must have first reached us from a point three or four miles

distant because at least five minutes elapsed before the fire truck and the two car loads of volunteers arrived. It turned out that somebody else had stopped by before we did and had hurried on to the next town to give the alarm. I thought it's strange that the woman hadn't told us earlier that they were expecting help from town. But of course there was little about the woman's behavior that didn't seem passing strange to me. As soon as we heard the siren she began pushing herself

up from the ground. Without a glance at any of the rest of us she went directly to her husband

“and snatched the baby from him. The baby's little face was dirty and there were wide streaks on it”

where some while earlier there must have been a flow of tears. But his eyes were dry now and wore a glazed look. He seemed to stare up at the flaming house with total indifference. Almost as soon as he was in his mother's arms he placed his chin on the shoulder of her denim jacket and quietly closed his eyes. He seemed to have fallen asleep at once. With her baby in her arms the woman strode away into the adjoining field among the smoking stumps and toward the edge of the

pine woods. There she stopped at the edge of the woods and there she remained standing with her back turn toward the house and toward us and toward all the activity that ensued after the fire truck and the other cars arrived. She was still standing there with the baby on her shoulder when we left the scene. We stayed on for only a few minutes after the local fire brigade arrived.

“Mr. Louder in my uncle could see that their work here was done and they were mindful of”

the pressing business that they hoped to transact in Alabama that afternoon. We lingered just long enough to see most of the articles that they had rescued from the flames thoroughly soaked with water. The site must have been disheartening to them but they didn't speak of it. The in-expert fireman couldn't control the pressure from their tank and whenever they came a great spurred of water they lost their grip on the hose. They seemed bound to spray everything but the burning house.

We withdrew a little way in the direction of our car and joined a small group of spectators who would now come on the scene. I didn't tell my uncle or Mr. Louder what I was thinking during the time that we stood there with the local people who had gathered. I could still see the woman down in the field and I wondered if my uncle or Mr. Louder were not going to tell some local person how suspicious or behavior had been and her husband's too for that matter. Surely there

was some mystery I said to myself some question that ought to be answered or asked but no questions of any kind seem to rise in the minds of my two companions. It was as if such a fire were in every

day occurrence in their lives and as if they lived always among such queer people as that afflicted

poor white farmer and his simple wife. Once we had got back into the car and were on our way again I was baffled by the quiet good humor and even serenity of those two men I was travelling with. The moment they had resettled themselves on the backseat of the car after giving their top coats a few final brushings and after placing their wide brimped fedoras firmly on their heads again they began chatting together with the greatest ease in nonchalance. I could not see their faces,

I had to keep my eyes on the road but I listened and presently I heard my uncle launch upon a reminiscence. I did the damnedest thing once he said it was when I was a boy of just eight or nine a family of kidded me about it all my life. One morning after I had been up to mischief of some kind father took me into the kitchen and gave me a switching on my legs with a little shoot he had broken off the pivot hedge. When I came outside again I was still yowling and the other children

who were playing there in the house slot commenced gying me about it. All it once I burst out at them you'd cried too if he beat you with a shovel handle. I hadn't aimed to say it, I just said it. My brothers kid me about it to this day. Yes said Mr. Lauder, it's like that the things a person will say he liked my uncle's story immensely, he said it sounded so true. As he spoke I could hear one of

them striking a match. It wasn't long before I caught the first whiff of cigar smoke. Then another

match was struck. They were both smoking now. Pretty soon their conversation moved on to other random

and entered the rich and beautiful section to the east of it near the final towns of Pulaski

“and Fayetteville. I could not help remarking on the change to my uncle. Seems good to finally”

God out of that God for a second looking stretch back there I said over my shoulder. How do you mean God

for a second my uncle replied? I recognized that testiness in his tone in his reply had come so quickly that I felt he had been waiting for me to say exactly what I had said. It's just ugly that's all. I mumbled hoping that would be the end of it. But Mr. Lauder joined in the attack using my uncle's tone. I wouldn't say one kind of country is any better looking than another not really and then my uncle again. To someone your age it just depends on what kind of country if any you happen to be used to.

Maybe so said I not wanting to say more but unable to stop myself. Maybe so but I could live for 100 years in that scrubby looking country without ever getting used to it.

“No doubt the rolling past your land on both sides of the highway now. Still green in”

November and looking especially green after recent rain caused me to put more feeling into my

state and then I might otherwise have done and it may also have had its effect on the two men in the back seat. There was a brief pause and then my uncle fired away again. Every countryside has its own kind of beauty. It's up to you to learn to see it that's all. Then Mr. Lauder and if you don't see it it's just your loss because it's there. Besides a lot you know about that country, my uncle went on and what seemed to me and even more capture spirit than before and how could you

how could you judge flying along the highway at 50 miles north, flapping that damned whiper off and on. More than that said Mr. Lauder with renewed energy you would have to have seen that country 30 years ago to understand why it looks the way it does now. That was when they cut out the last

of the old timber. I've heard it said that when the first white man came through that section

it had the prettiest stand of timber on the continent. Suddenly I blurred it out but what's that got to do with it? I was so irritated that I could feel the blood rising in my cheeks and I knew that the back of my neck was already crimson. It's how the country looks now I'm talking about.

“Anyway I'm only here as your driver. I don't have to like the scenery do I?”

Both men broke into laughter. It was a kind of laughter that expressed both apology and relief. My uncle bent forward, thump me on the shoulder with his knuckle and said don't be so touchy boy. Almost at once they resumed their earlier dialogue. One of them lowered a window a little way to let out some of the smoke but the aroma of their cigars continued to fill the car and they spoke in the same slow cadenses as before and in the same tranquil tone. We reached the town in Alabama

toward the middle of the afternoon and we spent the night in an old clabbered hotel on the courthouse square. After dinner that night the two men sat in the lobby and talked to other men who were staying there in the hotel. I found myself a place near the stove and sat there with my feet on the fender sometimes dosing off. But even when I was half asleep I was still listening to see weather in their talk either Mr. Louder or my uncle would make any reference to our adventure

that morning. Neither did. Instead as the evening wore on and they got separated and were sitting with two different groups of men I heard them both repeating the very stories they had told in the car before we crossed the Tennessee River. Stories about bird hunting and field trials and about my uncle's three-hour breakfast in the old house with a neoclassic protocol. That was Dania Moeniden reading two pilgrims by Peter Taylor. The story appeared in the New Yorker

in September of 1963 and was included in his story collection, Miss Leonora when last scene and 15 other stories the following year. It appears also in Taylor's The Complete Stories published in 2017. Hi I'm David Remnick editor of the New Yorker. At this year's Academy Awards Timothy Shalame and Tiana Taylor aren't the only major nominees the New Yorker will be there too with two nominated short films which you can watch at New Yorker.com/video. Two people exchanging Saliva was executive

produced by Julian Moore and Isabelle O'Pare and it's set in a dystopian Paris where kissing is illegal. Our animated short film retirement plan follows a man as he dreams about all the things he's going

claims short films at New Yorker.com/video. So Dania this story starts very much in media race. It starts with we were on our way from Memphis to a small town in northern Alabama where my uncle who was a cotton broker had a lawsuit he hoped could be settled out of court. There's so much

packed into that first sentence and not a lot of time for us to absorb it because we were already on

our way and it's very immediate and then we're almost immediately thrown off because there's no talk of the lawsuit on the way. The narrator doesn't know what it was about. It doesn't know what happened in Alabama. He doesn't know if the suit was settled. So suddenly we're adrift again and we realize the story is going to be about something else entirely so that first paragraph is kind of disorienting. Why do you think Taylor chose to start that way? It's such a strange story isn't

it there but I mean as you say you sort of fall right into it and then there's a media there's you know the story keeps starting several times until finally we encountered the burning house. But I mean the point is I clearly he's embedding the violence of the fire into the sort of

“sedateness and the manneredness of their lives of these two men and part of I think is what's going”

on is he's sort of he's setting us up for the fire that's going to come with this sort of slow movement forward and sort of aimlessness that I think puts us off our guard in a kind of useful way. Yeah and so we have the strive which does feel sort of like it's going on a long time and they're repeating the same stories about you know bird hunting and so on again and again as they pass through this landscape. And Deborah they're passing through this landscape which is full of

stories you know they talk about the trail of tears and the notches trace and you know this this

is a very inscribed landscape and you sort of feel is that when we do finally get the violence of

the fire you feel that for them those other stories the stories that they've imposed on the landscape and on the place are much more important than anything that could happen to them in the present

“which I think is exactly one of the points that Taylor is making. I mean it's about storytelling”

partly the story is yeah yeah and the story that they're telling on the way there is is very much about history right they're not exactly seeing the landscape there they're saying these people used to live here I you know in the past had a very long breakfast in this you know neoclassic house and this town is was a stop on the trail of tears and then they're coming to terms with you know well that was that was a bad thing it was a tragic thing but Scott was trying to do the the

decent thing when fields got so in a way I think their observations they don't seem to be actually seeing yeah and also there's a kind of gentleness and a refusal to judge about the ways in which they move through the landscape which I found really interesting and which of course will become important later when we get to the story of the fire but even you know the trail of tears and the violence done to the Cherokee and the moon you know moving the Cherokee off the land

and all that which was you know obviously a crime a great crime and yet even there these men insist upon giving the general who is in charge of moving the Cherokee off the land giving you know giving him them do and saying it you know for a man of the time it would not appear as it does to us

“now yeah so there's a kind of generosity and also a refusal to judge which I think would be really”

interesting as we go forward and then come to the the central event of the story where they again I think refuse to draw any inferences from what they see in a really interesting way yeah they're really determined to sort of see the best in everything yeah and I found that really interesting what I mean it's so it's done so again and so so many times there's so many points at which Taylor underlines that and I found it really interesting that that should be a

point that he wanted to make so empirically yeah why do you think that is well clearly it's a very strangely shaped story right and he's setting us up for the story within the story and and

part of what's going to trouble us throughout we never find out what actually happened at the fire

did the wife set the fire the husband of course it made sense which it might not to a modern reader that he was off in the barn setting freeing the cattle because the most important thing they own the most valuable thing these people own would be the cattle so of course the man's first concerned would be to rush off to the barn and get them out but still it's a little strange that here he is off you know far away the house on fire he's released the cattle it couldn't have that

many of them so he's released the cattle and he hasn't sort of come rushing back to save the house nor has his wife really making any effort to rescue any of her stuff and so that's all this

been broken and that sort of is mentioned by the husband and so we have to ask you know did the the wife set the fire is this something that's going on between them and yet you know we don't

find out they just move on the story moves on and we never really get to any sort of conclusion about

what actually happened at the fire other than the fact that what we saw which is that the two men save some of the furniture which then gets destroyed by the firemen yeah I mean I suppose that's that's a touch of realism in the story because you know this narrator's not going to find out there's no way he would find it and so Taylor sort of avoids giving us an answer that's not inherent in the story and also I suppose if the narrator found out you know he's telling this

retroactively it would be a different story if he knew the answer to those questions yeah but it's an odd choice to give us so little information about what I mean you know of course when when you

hear a story you always want to know what happened you know and it is very strange to as a story writer

to tell a story in which we never find out it's an odd little question mark that's at the center of

“this story and that you know of course there's intentional and I think that tells at what he's talking”

about is about different ways in which these people these people who are so concerned the uncle and Mr. Louder who are so concerned with stories and yet this story doesn't concern them which is such a fascinating observation and also reflection upon what this I mean it says something very profound about southern storytelling and also about southern culture yes and about these men and and what story they want to walk away with and and it seems the story that's important to them is simply

the story of their own heroism yeah but they don't even make a point of that you see I mean they don't tell it that night that's true not only they did not tell it they don't even tell it when they're they've gotten back into the car and are driving off they light their cigars and immediately turn to their old stories of dogs and dogs and field trials for them it's an important part of their attitude to about what they just did which was very heroic as soon as they see the fire

they immediately go they tear their clothes off and go flying into the fire and try to save whatever they can and then when they find they think they may be a child and they show real profound

“heroism and yet they're completely uninterested in it and I think that it's they're not just pretending”

to be modest this is truly who they are they do not question the fact that of course when they solve fire they rushed in and tried to save what they could and yet they don't think that's an important story is it that or is it that it's not a satisfying story because it was all sort of ambiguous right you know this the man who's house they're trying to save hits his wife and knocks her over the wife is kind of crazy and lies to them that the babies in the house and

sense them into danger I mean it doesn't add up to the story they want it to be well their stories are all sort of rich in and several senses you know field trials and the house where they ate the three hour breakfast these are sort of easy gentlemanly stories that you could sort of laugh about them over a whiskey and as they do that night and you know nobody gets harmed it's the best of all possible worlds in which these things happen it's definitely not the best of all

possible worlds in which this poor you know half crazed woman has her house burned down while

her husband and her husband then hits her overhead and clearly it's not the first time he's done

that it's so it's in a way it's a world that they don't want to engage with they're willing to engage with it in a very dramatic way and when they you know affect this rescue or an attempted rescue but they're not willing to engage with it in any larger sense they don't bring this into their world yeah they live in a much more ordered and peaceful and gentlemanly world in which you know these things sort of don't happen and it's it's what's interesting is that just the strangeness

of this whole event is fascinating to the nephew to the narrator right he's completely bewildered and curious and so on and he so he has none of what the the uncle and and the you know aptly named Mr. louder have he doesn't have that sense of sort of decorum and keeping up appearances and falling back on the the sort of manners of a gentleman he really wants to know what's going on he's modern use I mean he's modern in a way that they're not and that again

“I think is one of the questions that Taylor is querying here that clearly there have been sort”

changes in the culture partly this is about southern culture and about the way southern culture is changing has changed the boy is much more sort of a northern on the way he's sort of he wants to know

pretty until he notices that she's not and so on the uncle and Mr. louder would never notice I think

“like that yeah so the clearly this it's part of what's we're being shown here is the way in which”

the culture is changing and it's changed but these are people from different generations were radically different coming to the notion of class you know they don't think twice the uncle and Mr. louder right they say pull in they're already putting their gloves on and pulling their coats over their heads they jump out of a moving car to dash into this house obviously as the narrator says this is a poor white couple not from the same world as these two men and they don't you know

there's no sense of that in the way that they behave yeah what's interesting Deborah here is that there's almost a kind of rudeness and these are men who are supremely not rude and yet

there's a kind of rudeness in the fact that they completely do not engage with either the woman

or the husband that they treat them as if they're they're only part of a problem which they had to solve and the problem they come there they see a problem and they solve it to the extent they can and then they go away and they don't think about it again and there's a kind of contempt in that which I found surprising that it seemed to me really good manners would require them to engage with the people who are you know lost their house you know there's a tragedy there and yet

their southern good manners in a way almost required them not to engage and I found that very interesting and an aspect of their manners that I didn't quite understand yeah there's a lack of

“sympathy or empathy there that is quite striking though in a way that I think they're they're also”

staying on the side of being respectful right you know that they take care of this woman you know they're telling the the nephew to take care of her they're really even quite mild when the man hits the wife which is like no no no more of that we're not doing that my sense is they're trying not to be nosy hmm yeah they are so nosy I mean the interest with which they look at all the stuff they pull out of the house I know I know it's all that junk which which you know

belong to her grandmother anyway and she's got no interest in it she's sort of curious as to what was in those drawers but she may not have known yeah and then what do you think is going on with the woman well I I couldn't figure I mean I read the story a number of times and I mean clearly I mean I don't think we're supposed to know and I don't you know I don't think we've been given enough information that was clearly intentional but from just from the way in which the wife and

the husband engage with each other clearly there is some sort of trouble and he certainly thinks that the fact that the water pump was broken so that the fire couldn't be put out he seems to find some sort of significance in that either just it was you know classic bad luck of this woman or something more but certainly the narrator doesn't seem to think so he seems to think there is more to it yeah and it's possible that if she did set the fire then it's possible that her sort of

crying and bearing her teeth and yelling about her baby is it is a performance yeah right in a way of deflecting any suspicion that she said it I love the way that Mr. Louter and the uncle you know explained away the whole matter with the child because you know that's very strange to put two strangers lives at risk by telling them there's a baby in the house and yet he manages to explain it away quite perfectly easily with that story of the

having been beaten and having lied about it and saying that he was beaten with a shovel instead which is the little twig yeah and so that's supposed to cover that up for themselves that's their answer to the question of why they held it this woman to this but that's a reach right he's the trying quite hard to cover up yeah there's no direct parallel there and and really they I feel that they just want it to be a story in which they did the right thing for some poor people

yeah they don't want it complicated yeah and yet he's a he's a there in a Mr. Louter is a lawyer and that he's clearly used to examining problems like this and a more thorough way than what they do it's a very strange response that they have and not very human either I mean people that we're

“people are so curious and in a way you have to get civilized that curiosity would have to be”

brushed out by your manners your manners would be worrying with your curiosity but it's quite

low-red what's going on here and they're interested we never see any indication of it

yeah I feel like they just want to they just want to straight forward clean narrative in which they're heroes racing into the burning house and saving what they can and they they just don't want that complication of course we did the right thing you know that's what they would like to mean the story that they would tell which they wouldn't even tell is we saw the fire we did but

dramatically heroic thing to do to you know go running into a fire like that I mean very few people would do that yes there's a there's an interesting sentence in that moment where the the nephew looking at them says they look like a couple of hooded nightwriters yeah I love them which is just the opposite yeah they're intending to be you know the nightwriters were terrorists and in fact

“kidnapped Peter Taylor's grandfather I believe he managed to escape but the person who was”

kidnapped with him was hanging so there's a family history there so throwing that throwing that illusion at these two men who were engaged in an act of heroism is a very strange moment yeah well that was his own little footnote for his own private meditation so I just like to do this to put in little pieces that nobody will know about he can be when we study it afterward yeah it's such a strange story and in terms of the shape of it it's so strange I mean it's not really got a it doesn't you

know have their classic development of being towards a you know crescendo and then dropping off it's sort of it's sort of a trundled long and it has this blob in the middle and then trundled long again it's it's a very odd shape and and the first time I read it I found it strangely unsatisfying it was only as I got deeper into it it's it's very hidden this story the one doesn't initially see how much is going on it's it's it's put so mechanically and partly but as you get deeper into

“it the richness of it emerges it's it's a it's a very rewarding story I think yeah and you know”

we're not the only people with questions right the narrator has he's saying surely there was some mystery some questions that ought to be answered or asked that Mr. Latter in the uncle as we've said are not asking or answering and the nephew you know the nephew is the one telling this story right within it the uncle and Mr. Latter tell stories but the nephew is telling this story so

it's something that stays with him over time where he he never gets answers but perhaps through

telling telling it perhaps gives him some answers I mean as you were saying before this is also a story about telling stories I'd be very curious to know where this came from for Taylor how he came to write this story I suspect what happened is that he was driving along one day and saw a burning house with a wife you know and sort of the tenant font you know poor white farmers like this I bet it the grain of the story is something like that it's possible you know I saw that you know the

type script the original type script of the story is in an archive and there's a handwritten note on it in Peter Taylor's handwriting that says trip to Alabama with uncle okay so that doesn't necessarily imply that this happened or that's you know drawn from his life but it could be yeah I bet that makes sense then so he was 70 for then he probably put together two things one would be this trip that he took with his uncle in which this particular thing probably didn't happen um because then he would have

been writing a story about the trip of the uncle and then he needed then it it wasn't deep enough and

then you would into it put the second story I suppose I don't know we'll never know probably unless

there there notes are very complete it's fun to speculate on how the devil chose this strange strange shape for the story is it's an odd one yeah yeah what what do you think happens in the the second part of the drive when the narrator doesn't like the landscape and says it's ugly and

“and they get really angry with him yeah what do you think so and on there well I think that there's”

all these points at which you think that the story that he's gotten the story deep as deep as he's going to get it he I tell her and then you've he manages to go deeper yet and I find that's really wonderfully done and I think that's sort of the final point of which he does that they don't want the boy to make judgments about who the this the farmer is who the wife is I think they're almost like refusing judgment that you know there's no such thing as better or worse and it's all part

of I think they they would think that it's being part of their own being gentleman that we don't think we're better than anybody else you know there's no such thing as absolutes and because we do come from you know from wealthier and more cultured place therefore we have to be even more careful to not make judgments about places and people in situations that are you know ones in which people less fortunate than us are moving about there's the kind of there's again I think it's

about manners right we're the kind of people who don't draw these judgments we do there's nothing

we don't like we do we never say a country is ugly there's no such things ugly country is only

upon not allowing judgment I'm allowing these these people even the strangers they are to be

“in doubt with some form of dignity yeah exactly it's very generous right I mean there is a real”

generosity there yeah I suppose it's it's hard to say if it's the kind of generosity where these men are saying to themselves all we're all equal you know it doesn't matter some people have money and others don't or if it's more you know what you were saying earlier about there's still being a kind of feudal system in the south and you know in a sense they're the lords who are who are watching over the peasants and making sure that their houses don't burn down I mean

I guess if these were people of their own class and you know people in town say who you know their own friends and they encountered this kind of strange situation there'd be much more likely to to analyze it I should think in a way that they're refusal to analyze exactly what happened is is proof of that they are looking at it from a certain height looking down upon it despite the refusal to judge and to analyze yeah I was reading a review of the collection that the

story appeared in from 1964 in the New Yorkerview of books and the the critic talked specifically about this story and the end of it at that moment where you know they they say to the to the narrator every countryside has its own kind of beauty it's up to you to see it that's all and the critics said well what the men pretend to see is what used to be there years ago the prettiest stand of timber on the continent and the boy is left to learn to see what is not there

and to learn man's business of saving the non-existent inhabitants of worthless houses

“so in this person's interpretation I suppose the story is about how life is just a”

charade and the heroism is a sham because there was nothing we're saving that seems maybe a more cynical I don't write that you were I have yeah I don't but and that's not very much

like Taylor I mean whatever he is he's never cynical right he's he's always generous and gives every

I mean what's wonderful about him I'm among other things is he's he gives each person his due which of course is you know essential to writing well I think yeah let's talk about the title two pilgrims so obviously I think the two pilgrims are the uncle and Mr. louder but why are they called pilgrims you know they're not really on a very sacred journey yeah I mean I found that I thought about a lot because I couldn't figure it out

I suppose they're sort of they're there as observers in a certain way right I mean they're they're there and they you come to a place and then you you know they find something there I don't know I wasn't able to come to terms with exactly why what what he meant by that what do you think yeah I'm with I'm with you I don't really know but pilgrims are usually on a sort of a holy journey right and perhaps perhaps it's this idea that they're sort of saintly by running into this burning

house and and doing good deeds perhaps you know it's it's intended slightly ironically yeah I wondered about that I wondered how much iron he was intended I mean I guess if you were being fancy will you would say there's something you know the family you know the you know the the the child and the mother and the father is something this sort of the holy family but there's

they're not very holy certainly yeah exactly and never it's it's an interesting title

and yeah one that certainly had me thinking and you know there there are on this journey but they're on journey to go to sort of go to Memphis to settle a law case I love that they're not there they're they're trying to have it mediated so they don't have to be a conflict so even the whole purpose of the journey is to avoid conflict it's so avoid going to court yeah avoid going to court exactly so there are pilgrims in that sense to that they're on their way towards that outcome

but yeah I found it I wasn't quite sure for it to work I think they would have to have some revelation on the way after this after this fire and when in fact they have the opposite

“yeah that's what's so wonderful refuse the revelation but maybe that is the revelation right”

that nothing can shake these men out there not complacency but out of there absolutely rigid adherence to the manners that they were born to right to the code to the code I guess that's right this is there's so much code in this right these are the kinds of guys A who when they see a

it again that's all part of the code yes and and and it's quite funny that when the fire brigade

actually gets there they're completely incompetent the people who actually should know how to put out a fire and rescue people or you know it's just spraying everywhere above the house

“well that's why you need fancy pants like these guys come and do the real work”

busy so do you learn anything from this story as a writer yourself yeah I mean it's such a one-off that it's you know you wouldn't want to draw too much from it in that way but I mean yeah certainly there's a it's wonderful how much he's willing to leave unsaid and unexplained there's just there's a lot of question marks in there and that at it left such a odd taste in my mouth that I'm not sure I would emulate it that you wouldn't want to write more than one

story like this I think or even this isn't this isn't a template by any stretch but yeah just in terms of leaving things unsaid and leaving things unexplained and letting that the fact

“that things are unexplained and unsaid letting that be part of the meaning of the story that”

certainly very useful as something to think about when writing it's definitely not a trick but it's a it's a tactic that makes people feel implicated in the story because we are we're struggling to make sense of it we're struggling to feel what the narrator is feeling or to ask ourselves the same questions so we're very deep in the story there's no way not to be yeah and because it's not tied up it sticks with us so that's very useful as you know

as you say a technique not a trick but yeah the the story did stay with me again and again

and for a long time because I kept trying to understand it you never you'll never get to make

“make perfect sense as you can with so many stories we're at the end user they okay that's”

what happened here we just don't know yeah we're like the narrator still thinking about it years later yeah well thank you so much Daniel yeah thank you David that was really nice Peter Taylor who died in 1994 published 11 books of fiction in his lifetime including the story collections Missley and Nora when last seen and 15 other stories in the old forest and other stories and the novel Assamance to Memphis which was awarded the

1987 Pulitzer Prize for fiction the complete stories of Peter Taylor was published by Library of America in 2017 Daniel Moenodin's collection in other rooms other wonders which has been translated into 16 languages one the story prize and the commonwealth writer's prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize his novel this is where the serpent lives was published earlier this year you can download more than 220 previous episodes

of the New Yorker fiction podcast including episodes in which Marisa Silver reads stories by Peter Taylor and Daniel Moenodin or subscribe to the podcast for free in Apple podcasts on the writer's voice podcast you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors you can find the writer's voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page or rate and review us in Apple podcasts this episode of the New York

fiction podcast was produced by John Lumay I'm Deborah Treesman thanks for listening the Jevere Wonder would have liked to live alone hidden in the woods not speaking to a single soul for 30 years or wonder the desert on cover a hidden well and die to the bottom

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