Wyndam-Matson
Wyndam-Matson, the owner of W-M Corporation, is a powerful but unassuming figure in the Pacific States of America. He is described as looking like a Tenderloin bum given a bath and new clothes, with a weak, shifty, nervous manner that suggests he regards everyone as a potential enemy. Despite this unprepossessing appearance, he holds controlling interests in a variety of enterprises, speculations, and real estate, and his factory on Gough Street is the source of his true wealth. His physical description—a dished-in face with a Socrates-type nose, a diamond ring, and a gold fly zipper—marks him as a man of crude power, a 'throne' in the eyes of his former employee Frank Frink.
The Forgery Business and the Philosophy of Historicity
W-M Corporation's stated legal business is turning out wrought-iron staircases, railings, fireplaces, and ornaments for new apartment buildings. But its real profits derive from a secret second business: the production of forgeries of pre-war American artifacts. Using an elaborate variety of tools, materials, and machines, the factory turns out a constant flow of fake Colt revolvers, Civil War side arms, and other historic objects, which are cautiously fed into the wholesale art object market. Frank Frink, before his firing, was a specialist in this trade, making molds, doing the casting, and hand-smoothing pieces like the Colt revolver of the Frontier period that lay half-finished on his bench. Wyndam-Matson's operation thrives because the Japanese collectors, who are the primary buyers, have no standards or tests by which to judge authenticity, and no one—dealers, collectors, or the forgers themselves—wants to investigate, for fear the bubble will burst.
Wyndam-Matson's personal philosophy, articulated to his young mistress Rita, is a cynical deconstruction of the very concept of historicity. He demonstrates with two Zippo lighters, one supposedly carried by Franklin D. Roosevelt when he was assassinated and one not, that there is no 'mystical plasmic presence' or 'aura' around an object. 'It's all a big racket,' he tells her, 'they're playing it on themselves.' The value of an object, he insists, is not in the thing itself but in the mind, and it is proven only by a paper of authenticity, like the Smithsonian Institution's framed certificate he keeps in his study. This philosophy justifies his own forgery business: a Colt .44 is a Colt .44, having to do with bore and design, not when it was made. His argument, however, fails to convince Rita, who is disturbed by the implications and leaves his apartment, and it stands in stark contrast to the novel's other explorations of authenticity, such as Paul Kasoura's later meditation on the Edfrank jewelry's 'wu'.
The Blackmail and the Two Thousand Dollars
When Robert Childan discovers that a Colt .44 he sold was a fake and traces it back to his wholesaler Ray Calvin, Calvin in turn confronts Wyndam-Matson, returning the entire last shipment and calling the items 'lousy fakes.' Wyndam-Matson is dumbfounded, not because the guns are fake—he always knew that—but because Calvin is complaining about their quality. He immediately suspects Frink and McCarthy, who had threatened him, and a kind of superstitious fright fills him. He cannot figure out how they could have doctored an item made last February. Rita advises him to call the police, but Wyndam-Matson, accustomed to paying people as part of his overhead, decides instead to offer them two thousand dollars. He also plans to have a police inspector look into both Frink and McCarthy, and he notes that Frink is a Jew who changed his name, thinking he could notify the German consul and have him extradited and gassed. The certified check for two thousand dollars is delivered to Frink and McCarthy, financing their new jewelry business, Edfrank Custom Jewelry, but it also binds them to the corrupt world of W-M Corporation, a fact that weighs on Frink.
The Historicity Demonstration and Its Aftermath
The scene with Rita and the two lighters is Wyndam-Matson's most extended moment in the novel, revealing both his cynicism and his inability to grasp the emotional weight of history. He is surprised that Rita, so young, would know the name of Franklin Roosevelt, and he is disappointed when she wants to leave. His attempt to prove that authenticity is meaningless backfires, as Rita is moved not by his logic but by the sadness of the past. The scene also introduces the novel-within-the-novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, when Rita picks up a copy from his bookshelf and explains its premise: that if Roosevelt had survived, the Allies would have won the war. Wyndam-Matson dismisses the book and its author, Hawthorne Abendsen, as popular fiction, and he argues that no strategy could have defeated Erwin Rommel, whom he claims to have met in New York in 1948, though he had only seen the Military Governor at a distance. His conversation with Rita reveals his admiration for the Nazi economic revival under Albert Speer and his contempt for economic competition, reflecting the novel's broader critique of the German and Japanese empires.
Significance and Legacy
Wyndam-Matson's role in the novel is largely catalytic. His forgery business creates the crisis that drives Robert Childan's story, as the fake Colt .44 shatters Childan's confidence in his stock and leads him to seek authenticity tests on his merchandise. His payment to Frink and McCarthy inadvertently launches the Edfrank jewelry venture, which becomes a symbol of genuine, contemporary American creativity—a stark contrast to the forgeries he produces. His philosophy of historicity, while cynical, is a central thematic statement of the novel, questioning the very nature of value and authenticity in a world where history itself has been rewritten by the Axis victory. He is a man who profits from the Japanese obsession with American artifacts while privately despising the 'bats' who buy them, and his actions set in motion the events that lead to Frank Frink's arrest and eventual release, and to Robert Childan's discovery of a new kind of American art.
