Smith

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By Ken Everett

To family… without them we would have nothing.

Characters

John Smith: The main character of the novel, referred to as "Smith" throughout the book, is a farm boy-turned-English professor. He uses his love of literature to deal with his unfulfilling family life.

Sharon Bostwick Smith: Smith's wife, a neurotic woman, came from a strict and sheltered upbringing. Smith falls in love with the idea of her, but soon realizes that she is bitter and has been for so long before they were married.

Doris Smith: Smith and Sharon's only child, Doris is easily influenced by her mother. Sharon keeps Doris away from and against her father because of the couple's failed relationship as a sort of "punishment" for Smith.

George Wren: Smith's colleague and only real ally and friend, he has known Smith since her grad school and becomes the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. His affable and outgoing demeanor contrasts with Smith's.

Brian Doyon: Smith's friend from grad school, he is killed during World War I, but his words have a lasting impact on Smith's worldview.

Bowman Quinn: As Smith's teacher and mentor, he inspired Smith to leave farming and study English literature. He is old and sickly when Smith is hired at the university.

Robin Loomis: Quinn's "replacement" at the university, he and Smith started out as friends, but Smith eventually sees him as an "enemy". Smith and Loomis disagree on their working lives. He is described as a hunchback.

Colin Stander: Loomis' crippled mentee, he is an arrogant and duplicitous young man who uses rhetorical flourishes to hide his scientific ineptitude. He also becomes an enemy of Smith.

Charlotte Durbin: A younger teacher, she is having an affair with Smith. University politics and circumstances prevent her from continuing the relationship.

Summary

John Smith was born into a poor farming family in Missouri. Sent to a university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces the life of a scholar. Over the years, Smith experiences a series of disappointments: marrying a "real" family alienates him from his parents; his career is hampered; his wife and daughter coldly turn their backs on him; A transformative new love experience ends under threat of scandal. Driven deeper and deeper, Smith rediscovers the stoic stillness of his ancestors and confronts an underlying loneliness. John Smith emerges not only as an archetypal American, but also as an unlikely existential hero,

The central theme of the story is surely that of love, of love's many forms and of all the forces that oppose it. "It [love] was neither a passion of the mind nor of the heart, it was a force that encompassed them both as if they were just the matter of love, its specific substance."

Chapter 1

John Smith entered the University of Missouri that year as a freshman

1910, aged nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his doctorate in philosophy and accepted a teaching position at the same university where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few of the students remembered him clearly after attending his courses. When he died, his colleagues donated a medieval manuscript to the university library as a commemorative contribution. This manuscript is still in the Rare Books Collection and bears the inscription: "Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of John Smith, Department of English. By his members."

A casual student who comes across the name may wonder who John Smith was, but rarely pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Smith's colleagues, who did not hold him in high esteem when he was alive, rarely talk about him now; for the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and for the younger ones it's just a sound that evokes no sense of the past and no identity to connect themselves or their careers with.

He was born in 1891 on a small farm in central Missouri near the village of Booneville, about forty miles from Columbia, home of the university. Though his parents were young when he was born—his father twenty-five, his mother barely twenty—Smith considered them old even as boys. At thirty his father looked fifty; Bent over from his work, he looked hopelessly at the dry piece of land that supported the family from year to year. His mother watched her life patiently as if it were a long moment to endure. Her eyes were pale and blurry, and the tiny lines around her were accentuated by thin, graying hair that she wore straight over her head and tied in a bun at the back.

For as long as he can remember, John Smith has had his duties. By the age of six he was milking the bony cows, throwing the pigs into the pen a few yards from the house and collecting small eggs from a flock of scrawny hens. And even when he began attending country school eight miles from the farm, his day was filled with one or two jobs from before dawn until after dark. At seventeen his shoulders were already beginning to sag under the weight of his job.

It was a lonely household of which he was the only child, and it was held together by the necessity of his work. In the evening the three of them sat in the little kitchen, which was lit by a single kerosene lamp, and stared at the yellow flame; often the only sound that could be heard during the hour between supper and bed was the weary movement of a body on a straight chair and the soft creaking of a beam that was giving slightly with the age of the house.

The house was built in a rough square, and the unpainted beams hung around the porch and doors. It had taken on the colors of the dry land over the years – gray and brown, striped with white. To one side of the house was a long drawing room, sparsely furnished with straight chairs and a few carved tables, and a kitchen where the family spent most of their time together. On the other side were two bedrooms, each with a white-enameled iron bedstead, a single straight chair, and a table with a lamp and washbasin on it. The floors were unpainted planks, unevenly spaced and cracked with age, through which dust constantly seeped and was swept back by Smith's mother every day.

At school, he did his classes as if they were chores, just a little less strenuous than those on the farm. When he finished high school in the spring of 1910, he expected to do more work in the fields; it seemed to him that his father was getting slower and more tired as the months went by.

But one late spring evening, after the two men had spent a day chopping corn, his father accosted him in the kitchen after the dinner dishes had been cleared.

"County agent came by last week."

John looked up from the red and white checked oilcloth spread flat across the round kitchen table. He didn't speak.

"Says they have a new school at Columbia University. They call her a

College of Agriculture. Says he thinks you should go. It'll take four years." "Four years," John said. "Does it cost money?"

"You could work your room and board," his father said. "Your mother owns a first cousin who owns something outside of Columbia. There would be books and such. I could send you two or three dollars a month."

John spread his hands on the tablecloth, which shimmered dully in the lamplight. He had never been further from home than Booneville, fifteen miles away. He swallowed to steady his voice.

"Do you think you could manage the store yourself?" he asked.

"Your mother and I could do it. I would plant the top twenty in wheat; that would reduce manual labor."

John looked at his mother. "Mummy?" he asked. She said tonelessly, "You do what your da says."

"You really want me to go?" he asked, as if half hoping for a refusal. "Do you really want me?"

His father shifted his weight in the chair. He looked at his thick, calloused fingers, the cracks in which dirt had gotten so deep it couldn't be washed away. He interlaced his fingers and held them up from the table, almost in an attitude of prayer.

"I've never had any formal education," he said, looking down at his hands. "I started working on a farm when I finished sixth grade. When I was young, I never stuck to school. But now I don't know anymore. Seems the land is getting drier and harder to work with every year; it's not rich like it was when I was a boy. The district agent says they have new ideas, methods of doing things that they teach you at university. Maybe he's right. Sometimes when I work in the fields I have to think." He stopped. His fingers spasmed and his clasped hands fell on the table. "I'm starting to think..." He scowled at his hands and shook his head. "You're going to college in the fall.

It was the longest speech he had ever heard his father give. That fall he did not go to Columbia and enrolled as a freshman at the College of the University

Agriculture. He came to Columbia with a new black wool suit that he ordered from the Sears & Roebuck catalog and paid for with his mother's egg money, a worn coat that had belonged to his father, and blue serge pants that he wore once a month had gone to the Methodist church in Booneville, two white shirts, a change of work clothes, and twenty-five dollars in cash his father had borrowed from a neighbor for the fall wheat. He began his trek in Booneville, where his father and mother took him early that morning on the farm's flat-bottomed mule-drawn wagon.

It was a hot fall day and the road from Booneville to Columbia was dusty; He had walked for almost an hour when a boxcar pulled up next to him and the driver asked if he wanted a ride. He nodded and got up in the car seat. His serge trousers were red with dust to the knees, and his face, tanned by sun and wind, was caked with dirt where the dust of the road had mixed with his sweat. During the long drive, he smoothed his slacks with clumsy hands and ran his fingers through his straight, sandy-colored hair, which would not fall flat on his head.

They arrived in Columbia in the late afternoon. The driver dropped Smith on the outskirts of town and pointed to a cluster of buildings shaded by tall elms. "This is your university," he said. "You will go to school there."

After the man pulled away, Smith stood motionless for several minutes, staring at the building complex. He had never seen anything so posing. The red brick buildings stretched upwards from a wide green field punctuated by stone paths and small patches of garden. Beneath his awe, he suddenly felt a sense of security and serenity he had never felt before. Even though it was late, he walked around the campus for minutes only looking like he had no right to enter it.

It was almost dark when he asked a passer-by about Ashland Gravel, the road that would lead him to the farm of Jim Foote, his mother's first cousin, for whom he was to work; and it was after dark when he came to the white two-story frame house where he was to live. He had never seen the Footes before, and it seemed odd going to see them so late.

They greeted him with a nod and eyed him closely. After a moment where Smith stood awkwardly in the doorway, Jim Foote waved him into a small, gloomy drawing room crammed with overstuffed furniture and nick-knacks on matte-finished tables. He wasn't sitting.

"And dinner?" asked Foote. "No, sir," Smith replied.

Mrs. Foote pointed a finger at him and trotted off. Smith followed her through several rooms into a kitchen, where she gestured for him to sit at a table. She placed a jug of milk and several pieces of cold cornbread in front of him. He sipped the milk, but his mouth, dry with excitement, would not take the bread.

Foote came into the room and stood next to his wife. He was a small man, no more than five foot three inches tall, with a thin face and a sharp nose. His wife was four inches taller and heavy; rimless glasses hid her eyes and her thin lips were tight. The two watched hungrily as he sipped his milk.

"Feed and water the cattle, feed the pigs in the morning," Foote said quickly.

Smith looked at him blankly. "What?"

"You do that in the morning," Foote said, "before you go to school. In the evening you feed and beat again, collect the eggs, milk the cows. Chop firewood when you find time. On weekends you help me with everything I do."

"Yes sir," said Smith.

Foote studied him for a moment. "College," he said, shaking his head.

So for nine months he fed and watered the cattle, shed pigs, collected eggs, milked cows and chopped firewood. He also plowed and harrowed fields, dug tree stumps (breaking through three inches of frozen ground in the winter), and churned butter for Mrs. Foote, who watched him with a grim nod of approval as the wooden butter churn squirted milk up and down.

It was housed on an upper floor that had formerly been a storeroom; His only furniture was a black iron bedstead with sagging frames that supported a thin spring mattress, a broken table with a kerosene lamp, a straight chair that sat unevenly on the floor, and a large box that he used as a desk. In the winter, the only warmth it got seeped up through the floor from the rooms below; He wrapped himself in the tattered quilts and blankets he was allowed and blew on his hands so they could turn the pages of his books without tearing them.

He did his work at the university like he did his work on the farm—thoroughly, conscientiously, without joy or sorrow. At the end of his freshman year, his GPA was just under a B; He was pleased it wasn't lower and not worried that it wasn't higher. He was aware that he had learned things he hadn't known before, but to him that just meant he could do as well in his sophomore year as he did in his first.

In the summer after his freshman year, he returned to his father's farm and helped with the harvest. Once his father asked him how he liked school and he replied that he liked it a lot. His father nodded and didn't bring up the matter again.

It wasn't until he returned for his sophomore year that John Smith learned why he had come to college. By his sophomore year, he was a familiar figure on campus. In every season he wore the same black wool suit, white shirt, and tie; his wrists poked out of the sleeves of his jacket and his trousers hung awkwardly around his legs like it was a uniform that had once belonged to someone else.

His working hours increased with the increasing indolence of his employers, and he spent the long evenings in his room systematically doing his classwork; he had begun the course of study that would lead him to a Bachelor of Science degree from the College of Agriculture, and during that first semester of his sophomore year he had two undergraduate courses, a course from the School of Agriculture in soil chemistry, and a course that was becoming rather superficial from required of all university students – a semester overview of English literature.

After the first few weeks he had little trouble with the science subjects; there was so much to do, so many things to remember. The study of soil chemistry aroused his general interest; it had never occurred to him that the brownish nuggets he had been working with for most of his life were anything other than what they appeared to be, and he was beginning to vaguely realize that his growing knowledge of them could be useful when he returned to his farm. But the required perusal of English literature troubled and troubled him like nothing before.

The instructor was a middle-aged man in his early fifties; his name was

Bowman Quinn, and he approached his teaching with an apparent disdain and contempt, as if he perceived a chasm so wide between what he knew and what he could say that he would not bother to bridge it. He was feared and disliked by most of his students, and he responded with distant, wry amusement. He was a man of medium height, with a long, lined face, clean-shaven; he had the impatient gesture of running his fingers through his mop of gray curly hair. His voice was flat and dry, and it came without expression or intonation through barely moving lips; but his long thin fingers moved with Doris and persuasion, as if giving the words a form his voice could not.

Away from the classroom, doing his chores on the farm or squinting into the dim lamplight in his windowless attic room, Smith was often aware that the image of this man had popped up in his mind's eye. He had trouble imagining the face of another of his teachers or remembering something very specific about another of his classes; but always on the threshold of his consciousness waited the figure of Bowman Quinn, and his dry voice, and his scornful, casual words about a passage from Beowulf or a couplet from Chaucer.

He found he couldn't complete the survey like his other courses. Though he remembered the authors and their works and their dates and their influences, he nearly failed his first exam; and he did little better on his second. He read and reviewed his literature assignments so often that his work in other courses began to suffer; and still the words he read were words upon pages, and he could not see the use of what he was doing.

And he thought about the words Bowman Quinn spoke in class as if beneath their flat, dry meaning he might find some clue that would lead him where he was going; he bent over the desk in a chair too small to hold comfortably, clinging to the edges of the desk so tight his knuckles were white against his brown hard skin; he frowned and bit his bottom lip. But as Smith and his classmates' attention grew more desperate, Bowman's contempt for Quinn became irresistible. And once that contempt exploded into anger and was directed solely at John Smith.

The class had read two plays by Shakespeare and ended the week studying the sonnets. The students were nervous and confused, half-startled by the tension building between them and the hunched figure watching them from behind the lectern. Quinn had read them the seventy-third sonnet; his eyes darted around the room and his lips curled into a humorless smile.

"What does the sonnet mean?" he asked abruptly, pausing, his eyes scanning the room with a grim and almost contented hopelessness. "Mr. Wilbur?" There was no answer. "Mr. Schmidt?" Someone coughed. Quinn turned his dark, light eyes on Smith. "Mr. Smith, what does the sonnet mean?"

Smith swallowed and tried to open his mouth.

'It is a sonnet, Mr Smith,' said Quinn dryly, 'a fourteen-line poetic composition in a particular pattern which I am sure you have memorized. It's written in English, which I think you've been speaking for a number of years. Its author is John Shakespeare, a poet who is dead but who nevertheless occupies an important place in the minds of a few." He continued to stare at Smith for a moment, and then his eyes went blank as she became invisible beyond the class fixed. Without looking at his book, he recited the poem; and his voice became deeper and softer, as if the words and tones and rhythms had become himself for a moment: "You can see this time of year in me, when yellow leaves or none or few are hanging on these branches, those against it shiver the cold, mere ruin d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me you see the twilight of such a day

As the west fades after sunset;

Which gradually takes away the black night, Death's second self, which seals everything in silence.

In me you see such fire glowing that lies on the ashes of his youth,

Like the deathbed on which it must perish, consumed by what it was nourished on.

You realize what makes your love stronger

To love what you will soon have to leave." In a moment of silence, someone cleared their throat. Quinn repeated the lines, his voice flat again, his own again. "You perceive that what makes your love stronger, To love this well you must soon leave." Quinn's eyes returned to John Smith and he said dryly, "Mr. Shakespeare speaks to you for three hundred years, Mr. Smith; do you hear him?"

John Smith realized he had been holding his breath for several moments. He let it out gently, aware of the movement of his clothes on his body as his breath left his lungs. He looked away from Quinn across the room. Light fell obliquely from the windows and fell on the faces of his fellow students, so that the illumination seemed to come from them and went out against a twilight; a student blinked, and a thin shadow fell on a cheek whose down had caught the sunlight. Smith became aware of his fingers loosening their hard grip on his desktop. He turned his hands under his gaze, marveling at her tan, at the intricate way the nails fit into his blunt fingertips; he mean,

Quinn spoke again. "What is he saying to you, Mr Smith? What does his sonnet mean?"

Smith's eyes rose slowly and reluctantly. "That is," he said, raising his hands in the air with a small movement; he felt his eyes glaze over as they sought the form of Bowman Quinn. "That is," he said again, unable to finish what he had started to say.

Quinn looked at him curiously. Then he nodded abruptly and said, "Class is dismissed." Without looking at anyone, he turned and left the room.

John Smith was barely aware of the students around him, who grumbled and muttered from their seats and shuffled out of the room. After they left, he sat motionless for a few minutes, staring ahead at the narrow floorboards worn bare by the restless feet of students he would never see or know. He slid his own feet across the floor, hearing the dry rustle of wood on his soles and feeling the roughness through the leather. Then he got up and walked slowly out of the room.

The thin chill of the late autumn day cut through his clothes. He looked around, at the bare, gnarled branches of the trees that rippled and twisted against the pale sky. Students hurrying across campus to their classes brushed it; he heard the murmur of their voices and the clatter of their heels on the stone paths and saw their faces, flushed from the cold, bent down against a gentle breeze. He looked at them curiously as if he had never seen them before, feeling very far from them and very close to them. He captured the feeling that he had rushed to his next class, and held it through his soil chemistry professor's lecture, against the booming voice reciting things to be written in notebooks and remembered by a process of drudgery,

In the sophomore of that school year, John Smith dropped his foundation science courses and interrupted his Ag School sequence; he took introductory courses in philosophy and ancient history and two courses in English literature. In the summer he returned to the family farm and helped his father with the harvest and did not mention his work at the university. When he was much older, he would look back on his last two college years as if they were an unreal time belonging to someone else, a time that passed, not in the regular flow to which he was accustomed, but in fits and starts begins. One moment was contrasted with yet isolated from the other, and he felt lost in time as he watched them run like a big,

He became aware of himself in a way he hadn't before. Sometimes he looked at himself in the mirror, looked at the long face with the shock of dry brown hair and touched his sharp cheekbones; he saw the thin wrists protruding inches from the sleeves of his coat; and he wondered if he seemed as ridiculous to others as he did to himself.

He had no plans for the future, and he never shared his insecurities with anyone. He continued to work for the Footes for his room and board, but he no longer worked the long hours of his first two years at the university. He let himself be used as Jim and Serena Foote wished for three hours every afternoon and half a day on weekends; he claimed the rest of the time for himself.

He spent part of this time in his little attic room above the Foote house; but as often as he could, after his classes were finished and his work at Footes done, he returned to the university. In the evenings he sometimes wandered about the long open courtyard among couples who walked together and murmured softly; even though he didn't know any of them and even though he didn't speak to them, he felt related to them. Sometimes he would stand in the center of the courtyard and gaze at the five huge pillars in front of Jesse Hall, jutting out of the cool grass into the night; he had learned that these pillars were the remains of the original main building of the university, which had been destroyed by fire many years before. Gray-silver in the moonlight, bare and pure, they seemed to represent the way of life

In the university library, he wandered through the stacks, among the thousands of books, breathing in the musty smell of leather, cloth, and drying pages as if it were some exotic incense.

Sometimes he would pause, pick a volume off the shelf and hold it for a moment in his large hands, which tingled at the still unfamiliar feel of spine and box and unresistant page. Then he flipped through the book, reading a paragraph here and there, his stiff fingers turning the pages cautiously as if in their clumsiness they might tear and destroy what they had taken so much trouble to uncover.

He had no friends and for the first time in his life he became aware of his loneliness. Sometimes, at night in his attic room, he would look up from a book he was reading and stare into the dark corners of his room where the lamplight flickered against the shadows. If he stared long and hard, the darkness would gather into a light that took on the insubstantial shape of what he had been reading. And he would feel like he was running out of time, like he had felt that day in class when Bowman Quinn had spoken to him. The past gathered from the darkness where it stayed, and the dead rose to live before it; and the past and the dead flowed into the present among the living, so that for an intense moment he had a vision of density that he was condensed into and from which he could not and did not want to escape. Tristan, Iseult the Fair, went before him; Paolo and Francesca whirled in the glowing darkness; Helen and the radiant Paris, their faces bitter at the consequence, rose from the darkness. And he was with them in a way he could never be with his fellow students, who went from class to class, who found local abode in a great university in Columbia, Missouri, and roamed the Midwest air unconcernedly. Helen and the radiant Paris, their faces bitter at the consequence, rose from the darkness. And he was with them in a way he could never be with his fellow students, who went from class to class, who found local abode in a great university in Columbia, Missouri, and roamed the Midwest air unconcernedly. Helen and the radiant Paris, their faces bitter at the consequence, rose from the darkness. And he was with them in a way he could never be with his fellow students, who went from class to class, who found local abode in a great university in Columbia, Missouri, and roamed the Midwest air unconcernedly.

In one year he learned Greek and Latin well enough to be able to read simple texts; often his eyes were red and burning from exertion and lack of sleep. Sometimes he thought of himself as he had been a few years ago and marveled at the memory of that strange figure, brown and passive like the earth from which he had emerged. He thought of his parents, and they were almost as strange as the child they had borne; he felt a mixture of pity for her and a distant love.

One day, in the middle of his fourth year at university, Bowman stopped Quinn after class and asked him to come to his office to talk.

It was winter, and a low, humid Midwestern fog hung over campus. Even at mid-morning the slender boughs of the dogwood trees gleamed with hoarfrost, and the black tendrils that climbed the great pillars in front of Jesse Hall were fringed with iridescent crystals that sparkled against the gray. Smith's coat was so shabby and worn that he had decided not to wear it to see Quinn, even though the weather was freezing. He shivered as he hurried up the sidewalk and up the wide stone steps that led to Jesse Hall.

After the cold, the heat inside the building was intense. The gray outside seeped through the windows and glass doors on either side of the hall, making the yellow tiled floors shine brighter than the gray light on them, and the tall oak columns and worn walls gleamed in their darkness. Shuffling footsteps hissed across the floors, and a murmur of voices was muffled by the vastness of the hall; indistinct shapes moved slowly, mingling and separating; and the oppressive air gathered the smell of oiled walls and the damp smell of woolen clothes. Smith climbed the smooth marble staircase to Bowman Quinn's office on the second floor. He knocked on the closed door, heard a voice and entered.

The office was long and narrow, lit by a single window at the far end. Shelves full of books reached up to the high ceiling. A desk was wedged in near the window, and in front of that desk sat Bowman Quinn, half-turned and outlined darkly against the light.

"Mr. Smith," Quinn said dryly, half standing and gesturing toward a leather-covered chair facing him. Smith sat down.

"I've checked your papers." Quinn paused and picked up a folder from his desk, which he eyed with distant irony. "I hope you don't mind my curiosity."

Smith licked his lips and shifted in the chair. He tried to fold his big hands together so they were invisible. "No, sir," he said hoarsely.

Quinn nodded. "Good. I see that you started your studies here as an agricultural student and switched to literature sometime in your sophomore year. Is that correct?"

"Yes sir," said Smith.

Quinn leaned back in his chair and looked up at the square of light pouring in through the tall little window. He tapped his fingertips together and turned back to the young man sitting stiffly in front of him.

"The official purpose of this conference is to inform you that you need to make a formal change of major by declaring your intention to drop out of your original major and by declaring your final major. It's a matter of about five minutes to registry office. You take care of it, don't you?"

"Yes sir," said Smith.

"But as you might have guessed, that's not why I asked you to stop by.

"No, sir," Smith said. He looked down at his hands, which were tightly clasped together.

Quinn touched the briefcase he had dropped on his desk. "I assume you were a bit older than a normal student when you first came to the university. Almost twenty I think?"

"Yes sir," said Smith.

"And at that time you were planning to complete the sequence offered by agricultural school?"

"Yes indeed."

Quinn leaned back in his chair and looked at the high, gloomy ceiling. He asked abruptly, "And what are your plans now?"

Smith said nothing. He hadn't thought of that, hadn't wanted to think about it. Finally, with a touch of resentment, he said, "I don't know. I haven't thought much about it."

Quinn said, "Are you looking forward to the day you step out of these closed walls into what some call the world?"

Smith grinned at his embarrassment. "No sir."

Quinn tapped the briefcase on his desk. "I understand from these records that you come from a farming community. I assume your parents are farmers?"

Smith nodded.

"And do you plan on returning to the farm after you graduate?" "No, sir," Smith said, surprised by the determination in his voice. He should consider the decision he had suddenly made with some wonder.

Quinn nodded. "I would imagine that a serious student of literature would find his skills not exactly suited to soil persuasion."

"I'm not going back," Smith said as if Quinn hadn't said anything. "I don't know what I'm going to do exactly." He looked down at his hands and said to them, "I can't imagine finishing so quickly that I'm leaving university at the end of the year."

Quinn said casually, "There's no absolute reason for you to go, of course. Schmidt shook his head.

"You have an excellent bachelor's degree. Except for your' - he raised his eyebrows and smiled - 'except for your second survey of English literature, you get all A's in your English courses, nothing below B anywhere else. If you could last a year or so beyond graduation, you could sure to successfully complete the work for your Master of Arts, after which you could probably teach while working towards your PhD interests you at all."

Smith withdrew. "What do you mean?" he asked, hearing something like fear in his voice.

Quinn leaned forward until his face was close; Smith saw the lines on the long, thin face soften and heard the dry, mocking voice soften and guard.

"But don't you know, Mr. Smith?" asked Quinn. "Don't you understand yourself yet? You're going to be a teacher."

Suddenly Quinn seemed very distant and the walls of the office receded. Smith felt himself floating in the open air and heard his voice asking, "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Quinn said softly.

"How do you know that? How can you be sure?"

"It's love, Mr. Smith," Quinn said cheerfully. "You're in love. It's that simple."

It was that simple. He was aware that he was nodding to Quinn and saying something irrelevant. Then he left the office. His lips tingled and his fingertips were numb; He walked as if he were asleep, and yet he was intensely aware of his surroundings. He brushed against the polished wooden walls in the corridor and thought he could feel the warmth and age of the wood; He walked slowly down the stairs, wondering at the veined cold marble that seemed to slip a little under his feet. In the hallways, the students' voices rose clearly and individually from the muffled murmurs, and their faces were close and strange and familiar. He left Jesse Hall in the morning and the gray no longer seemed to oppress the campus; it turned his eyes outward and up into the sky,

In the first week of June 1914, John Smith received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Missouri along with sixty other young men and a few young women.

To attend the ceremony, his parents had left the day before—in a borrowed buggy pulled by their old dun mare—and had driven the forty or so miles from the farm overnight, arriving at the Footes' house just after sunrise, stiff from her sleepless journey. Smith met them in the yard. They stood side by side in the clear morning light and awaited his arrival.

Smith and his father shook hands in one quick pumping motion without looking each other.

"How are you?" said his father.

His mother nodded. "Your da and I are coming down to watch you graduate."

He didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, "You'd better come in and have some breakfast."

They were alone in the kitchen; since Smith had come to the farm, the Footes had taken to sleeping late. But neither then nor after his parents had finished breakfast could he bring himself to tell them about his change of plans, his decision not to return to the farm. Once or twice he began to speak; then he watched the brown faces rising naked from their new clothes and thought of the long journey they had made and the years they had waited for his return. He sat stiffly beside them until they had drunk the last of their coffee and until the Footes got up and came into the kitchen. He then told them that he had to go to the university early and that he would see them doing the exercises there later in the day.

He wandered about campus wearing the black robe and cap he had rented; they were heavy and cumbersome, but he could not find a place to put them. He thought about what he needed to say to his parents, and for the first time he realized the finality of his decision and almost wished he could remember it. He felt his inadequacy to the goal he had so recklessly chosen and felt the pull of the world he had left. He grieved for his own loss and that of his parents, and even in his grief he felt himself withdrawing from them.

He carried that sense of loss with him during final practice; when his name was called and he walked across the platform to accept a scroll from a faceless man behind a soft gray beard, he could not believe his own presence, and the scroll of parchment in his hand meant nothing. All he could think about was his mother and father, sitting stiff and uncomfortable in the crowd.

When the ceremonies were over, he drove them back to the Footes, where they were to stay the night and begin their journey home at dawn.

They sat in the Footes' parlor until late. Jim and Serena Foote stayed with them for a while. Every now and then, Jim and Smith's mother exchanged a relative's name and fell silent. His father was sitting in a straight chair, legs apart, leaning forward a little, wide hands wrapped around his kneecaps. Finally, the Footes looked at each other, yawned, and announced it was late. They went to their bedroom and the three were left alone.

Silence reigned again. His parents, looking straight ahead in the shadows of their own bodies, gave their son sidelong glances now and then, as if not wanting to disturb him in his new home.

After a few minutes, John Smith leaned forward and spoke, his voice louder and more energetic than he had intended. "I should have told you earlier. I should have told you last summer or this morning."

His parents' faces were dull and expressionless in the lamplight.

"What I'm trying to say is I'm not coming back to the farm with you."

Nobody moved. His father said, "You still have a few things to do here, we can go back in the morning and you can come home in a few days."

Smith rubbed his face with his open palm. "That's – not what I meant. I want to tell you that I will not be coming back to the farm at all."

His father's hands tightened around his kneecaps and he leaned back in the chair. He said, "Are you getting yourself into any trouble?"

Smith smiled. "It's not like that. I'll go to school for another year, maybe two or three."

His father shook his head. "I saw you come through tonight.

Smith tried to explain to his father what he was up to, trying to evoke in him his own sense of meaning and purpose. He listened to his words as if from someone else's mouth and watched his father's face absorb those words like a stone absorbs the repeated blows of a fist. When he was done, he sat with his hands clasped between his knees and his head bowed. He listened to the stillness of the room.

Eventually his father shifted in his chair. Smith looked up. His parents' faces faced him; he almost yelled for them.

"I don't know," said his father. His voice was hoarse and tired. "I didn't think it would turn out like this. I thought I would do my best for you by sending you here. Your mother and I have always done our best for you."

"I know," Smith said. He couldn't look at her any longer. "Are you going to be okay? I might come back and help out for a while this summer. I could..."

"If you think you should stay here and study your books, then you should. Your mom and I can do it."

His mother faced him, but she did not see him. Her eyes were narrowed; she was breathing heavily, her face was contorted as if in pain, and her closed fists pressed against her cheeks. With amazement, Smith realized that she was crying, deeply and quietly, with the shame and embarrassment of a person who rarely cries. He watched her for a moment; then he got up clumsily and left the drawing-room. He found his way up the narrow staircase that led to his attic room; for a long time he lay on his bed and stared with open eyes at the darkness above him.

Chapter 2

Two weeks after Smith received his Bachelor of Arts degree, Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist; and before the autumn war was common throughout Europe. It was a topic of ongoing interest among the older students; They wondered what role America would ultimately play, and they were pleasantly uncertain about their own future.

But before John Smith lay the future bright and sure and unchanging. He didn't see it as a flow of events and changes and possibilities, but as an area ahead that awaited exploration. He viewed it as the great university library, to which new wings could be built, new books added, and old ones removed, while its true nature remained essentially unchanged. He saw the future in the institution to which he was committed and which he so imperfectly understood; he envisioned himself changing in that future, but he saw the future itself as an instrument of change rather than its object.

Towards the end of that summer, just before the start of the fall semester, he visited his parents. He had intended to help with the summer harvest; but he found that his father had hired a black field hand who worked with a calm, fierce intensity, and accomplished almost as much in a day as John and his father together had once done in the same amount of time. His parents were happy to see him and didn't seem to mind his decision. But he found he had nothing to say to them; He already realized that he and his parents were becoming strangers; and he felt his love grow with the loss. He returned to Columbia a week earlier than intended.

He began to resent the time he had to spend working at Foote Farm. Being late to his studies, he felt the urgency of studying. Sometimes, when he was engrossed in his books, he became aware of all that he didn't know, that he hadn't read; and the serenity he worked for was shattered when he realized how little time in life he had to read so much to learn what he needed to know.

In the spring he completed his Master of Arts degree

1915 and spent the summer completing his doctoral thesis, a prosody study of one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Before the summer was over, the Footes told him they wouldn't need him on the farm anymore.

He had expected his release and in a way welcomed it; but for a moment after it happened, a rush of panic came over him. It was as if the last tie between him and the old life had been severed. He spent the last weeks of the semester on his father's farm, where he put the finishing touches on his thesis. By this time, Bowman Quinn had arranged for him to teach two classes of Beginner's English to incoming freshmen while he began pursuing his Ph.D. For this he was paid four hundred dollars a year. He took his things out of the Footes' tiny attic room he had occupied for five years and moved to an even smaller room near the university.

Though assigned to teach only the basics of grammar and composition to a group of unselected freshmen, he approached his task with enthusiasm and a keen sense of its importance. He planned the course the week before the fall semester began, seeing the kind of opportunities that come with struggling with the materials and subjects of an endeavor; he felt the logic of grammar and thought he could see it spreading of its own accord, permeating language and sustaining human thought. In the simple compositional exercises he did for his students, he saw the possibilities of prose and its beauties, and looked forward to enlivening his students with the sense of what he perceived.

But in the first classes he met, after the opening routines of roles and curriculum, as he began to reach out to his subject and his students, he found that his sense of wonder remained hidden within him. Sometimes when he spoke to his students it was as if he were standing outside himself, watching a stranger speak to a reluctantly assembled group; he heard his own flat voice reciting the materials he had prepared, and none of his own excitement came through that recitation.

He found salvation and fulfillment in the classes in which he was a student himself. There he could regain the sense of discovery he'd felt that first day when Bowman Quinn had spoken to him in class and he'd instantly become someone else than he had been. As his mind engaged with the subject, as he grappled with the power of the literature he studied and sought to understand its nature, he was aware of a constant shift within himself; and when he was conscious of this, he moved of himself into the world which contained him, so that he knew that the poem of Milton he was reading, or the essay of Bacon, or the drama of Ben Jonson, the world, which was his altered subject and changed it because of his dependence on him.

He began to get to know some of his fellow students who were also assistant lecturers in the department. Among these were two he befriended, Brian Doyon and George Wren.

Doyon was a small, dark youth with a sharp tongue and gentle eyes. Ace

Smith, he was just beginning his PhD program, although he was about a year younger than Smith. He was known among faculty and graduate students for his arrogance and impertinence, and it was widely acknowledged that he would have some difficulty finally graduating. Smith considered him the most brilliant man he had ever known and yielded to him without envy or resentment.

George Wren was tall and blond and began to get fat by the age of twenty-three. He had a bachelor's degree from a trade college in St. Louis and had made various attempts at advanced degrees in the business, history, and engineering departments of the university. He'd started work on his literature degree largely because he'd landed a small teaching position in English at the last minute. He quickly turned out to be the almost most indifferent student on the faculty. But he was popular with the freshmen, and he got on well with the older faculty members and with the administrative officials.

The three of them—Smith, Doyon, and Wren—had made it a habit to meet in a small saloon in downtown Columbia on Friday afternoons, drink large beer schooners, and talk late into the night. Though he found those evenings the only social pleasure he knew, Smith often marveled at their relationship. Although they got along well, they hadn't become close friends; They had no confidants and rarely saw each other outside of their weekly get-togethers.

None of them ever raised the issue of this relationship. Smith knew it hadn't occurred to George Wren, but he suspected it had happened to Brian Doyon. Once, late in the evening, as they sat at a rear table in the semi-darkness of the drawing room, Smith and Doyon spoke with the awkward jest of a very serious conversation about their classes and studies. Holding up a hard-boiled egg from the complimentary lunch as if it were a crystal ball, Doyon said, "Have you gentlemen ever considered the question of the true nature of the university? Mr Smith? Mr Wren?"

They smiled and shook their heads.

"I bet you didn't. Smith, here I imagine sees it as a big repository, like a library or a brothel, where men come of their own free will and choose what complements them, where everyone works together like little bees in an ordinary hive, the real thing, the good, the beautiful, they're right around the corner, down the next corridor, they're in the next book, the one you haven't read, or the next stack you don't have to. But one day you will get to it. And if you do-

- if you do -' He regarded the egg for a moment longer, then took a large bite of it and turned to Smith, his jaws moving and his dark eyes shining.

Smith smiled uneasily and Wren laughed out loud and banged the table. "He's got you, Bill. He's got you good."

Doyon continued chewing for a moment, swallowed, and turned his gaze to Wren. "And you, Wren. What's your idea?" He held up his hand. "You'll protest that you didn't think of it. But you did. Behind that rugged and warm exterior is a simple mind. and, incidentally, to yourself. You think of it as some kind of spiritual brimstone molasses that you administer every fall to get the little bastards through another winter, and you're the kind old doctor kindly patting them on the head and pocket their fee."

Wren laughed again and shook his head. "I swear, Dave, when you start..."

Doyon put the rest of the egg in his mouth, chewed happily for a while, and took a long gulp of beer. "But you're both wrong," he said. "It's an institution or – what do you call it now? – a convalescent home for the sick, the elderly, the malcontent and the otherwise incapable. Look at the three of us – we are the university Strangers wouldn't know we have so much in common, but we do, don't we? We know it well."

Wren laughed. "What's that Dave?"

Now interested in what he was saying, Doyon leaned across the table in concentration. "Let's take you first, Wren. As kindly as I can, I'd say you're the incompetent one. As you know yourself, you're not really very smart – although that's not all to do with it. "

"Here, now," Wren said, still laughing.

chosen; Providence, whose sense of humor has always amused me, snatched you from the mouth of the world and brought you safely here among your brethren."

Still smiling and ironically malicious, he turned to Smith. "You won't escape either, my friend. No, really not. Who are you? A simple son of the earth as you claim yourself? O no In a crazier world, our own Midwestern Don Quixote without his Sancho, prancing around under the blue sky. You're bright enough – brighter than our mutual friend, anyway. But you have the flaw, the old weakness. You think there's something here, something to find. Well in the world you would learn soon enough. You too are made to fail, not that you would fight the world. You'd let her chew you up and spit you out, and you'd lie there wondering what's going on. Because you would always expect the world to be something it isn't, something it doesn't want to be. The weevil in the cotton, the worm in the beanstalk, the borer in the corn. You couldn't face them and you couldn't fight them; because you are too weak and you are too strong. And you have no place in the world to go."

"What about you?" asked wren. "How about yourself?"

"Oh," Doyon said, leaning back, "I'm one of you. Even worse. I'm too smart for the world and I won't shut up about it; is not a cure. So I need to be locked up where I can safely be irresponsible, where I can do no harm. He leaned forward again and smiled at her. "We're all poor Toms and we're cold."

"King Lear," Smith said seriously.

"Act Three, Scene Four," Doyon said. "And so providence or society or fate or whatever you want to call it made this cabin for us to go in out of the storm. For us the university exists, for the dispossessed of the world, not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of knowledge, not for any of the reasons you hear; but that's just a protective coloring. Like the Church of the Middle Ages, which cared nothing for the laity or even God, we have our claims to survive. And we will survive – because we have to. "

Wren shook his head in admiration. "You really make us sound bad, Dave." "Maybe so," said Doyon. "But bad as we are, we're better than them out there in the dirt, the poor bastards of the world. We do no harm, we say what we want and we get paid for it, and that's a triumph of natural virtue, or damn close."

Doyon sat back from the table, indifferent, no longer concerned about what he had said.

George Wren cleared his throat. "Very well," he said seriously. "You may have something in what you say, Dave. But I think you're going too far.

Smith and Doyon smiled at each other, and they didn't discuss the question again that night. But years later, in strange moments, Smith echoed what Doyon had said; and though it gave him no idea of the university to which he was enrolled, it revealed to him something of his relationship with the two men, and gave him a glimpse of the corrosive and unspoiled bitterness of youth. On May 7, 1915, a German submarine sank the British liner Lusitania with 114 American passengers on board; By the end of 1916, German submarine warfare was unrestricted, and relations between the United States and Germany were steadily deteriorating. In February 1917, President Wilson severed diplomatic relations. At 6.

With that declaration, thousands of young men across the country, as if relieved that the tension of uncertainty had finally been broken, besieged the recruiting stations that had been hastily set up a few weeks earlier. In fact, hundreds of young men, unable to wait for American intervention, had enlisted as early as 1915 for service in the Royal Canadian Armed Forces or as ambulance drivers in one of the European Allied armies. Some of the older students at the university had done it; and though John Smith had known none of them, he heard their legendary names with increasing frequency as the months and weeks drew on toward the moment they all knew must finally come.

War was declared on a Friday, and although classes were still scheduled for the following week, few students or professors pretended to meet with them. They milled about the halls and gathered in small groups, murmuring in hushed voices. Occasionally the tense silence almost erupted into violence; twice there were general anti-German demonstrations, with students shouting incoherently and waving American flags. On one occasion there was a short-lived demonstration against one of the professors, an old and bearded teacher of German who was born in Munich and had attended the University of Berlin as a youth. But when the professor met the angry and flushed little group of students, blinking in confusion and giving them his thin,

In those first few days after the declaration of war, Smith also suffered an IV, but it was radically different from the one that gripped most others on campus. Although he had spoken to the older students and teachers about the war in Europe, he had never fully believed in it; and now that it was up to him, to all of them, he discovered in himself a huge reserve of indifference. He resented the disruption the war forced upon them

University; but he could not find in himself very strong feelings of patriotism, and he could not bring himself to hate the Germans.

But the Germans were there to be hated. Once Smith came across George

Wren speaks to a group of senior faculty members; Wren's face was contorted, and he spoke of the "Huns" as if he were spitting on the ground. Later, as he approached Smith in the large office shared by half a dozen of the younger instructors, Wren's mood had changed; Feverishly cheerful, he slapped Smith on the shoulder.

"I can't let her get away with this, Bill," he said quickly. A film of sweat slicked down his round face like oil, and his thinning blond hair lay in long strands over his skull. "No, sir. I will sign up. I already spoke to old Quinn about it and he said to move on. I'm going to St. Louis tomorrow and checking in." For a moment, he managed to gather his features into a semblance of seriousness. "We all have to do our part." Then he grinned and patted Smith on the shoulder again. "You better come with me."

"To me?" Smith said and repeated in disbelief, "Me?"

Wren laughed. "For sure. Everyone logs in. I just spoke to Dave – he's coming with me."

Smith shook his head dazedly. "Dave Doyon?"

"For sure. Old Dave talks pretty funny sometimes, but when it comes down to it, he's no different from everyone else; hell, do his part. Just like yours, Bill." Wren slapped his arm. "Just like you will do with yours."

Smith was silent for a moment. "I hadn't thought about it," he said. "It all seems to have happened so quickly. I need to talk to Quinn. I'll let you know."

"Sure," Wren said. "You will do your part." His voice thickened with emotion. "We're all in this together now, Bill; we're all in this together."

Smith then left Wren, but he did not go to Bowman Quinn. Instead, he looked around the campus and asked about Brian Doyon. He found him alone in one of the library cubicles, puffing on a pipe and staring at a bookshelf.

Smith sat across from him at the Carrel desk. When questioned about his decision to join the army, Doyon said, "Sure. Why not?"

And when Smith asked him why, Doyon said, "You know me pretty well, Bill. I suppose." He tapped his pipe ash on the floor and swept it around with his foot. "I suppose I do it because it doesn't matter if I do it or not. And it might be amusing to go through that again world before returning to the solitude and slow extinction that awaits us all."

Though he didn't understand, Smith nodded and accepted what Doyon was telling him. He said, "George wants me to recruit you."

Doon smiled. "George is feeling the first strength of virtue he's ever had the privilege of feeling, and of course he wants to get the rest of the world involved so he can keep believing. For sure. Why not? Join us. Might be enough nice to see how the world is." He paused and looked at Smith intently. "But if you do, then for heaven's sake don't do it for God, Country, and dear old U. from M. Do it for yourself."

Smith waited a few moments. Then he said, "I'll talk to Quinn and let you know."

He didn't know what he expected from Bowman Quinn's answer; yet he was surprised when he confronted him in his cramped, book-strewn office and told him what wasn't quite his decision yet.

Quinn, who had always maintained a distant and ironic attitude toward him, lost his temper. His long, thin face flushed, and the lines on either side of his mouth deepened with anger; he half rose from his chair toward Smith, fists clenched. Then he sat back and purposely unclenched his fists and spread his hands on his desk; his fingers trembled, but his voice was firm and harsh.

"I beg your pardon for my sudden display. But in the last few days I've lost almost a third of the members of the department and I see no hope of replacing them. I'm not angry with you, I'm - -' He turned away from Smith and looked up at the tall window at the far end of his office. The light hit his face sharply, accentuating the lines and deepening the shadows under his eyes, making him look old and sick for a moment. "I was born in 1860, just before the War of the Insurrection. I don't remember that, of course; i was too young I don't remember my father either; he was killed in the first year of the war, at the Battle of Shiloh." He looked quickly at Smith. "But I see what happened. A war doesn't just kill a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills something in a people that can never be brought back. And when a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that's left is the beast, the creature we—you and I and others like us—raised from the slime." He paused for a long moment, then smiled slightly. "The scholar should not be asked to destroy what he has built with his life."

Smith cleared his throat and said shyly, "Everything seems to have happened so quickly

Wren and Doyon. It still doesn't seem quite real."

"Of course it isn't," Quinn said. Then he stirred uneasily and turned away from Smith. "I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'll just say this: it's your choice. There will be conscription, but you can be exempted if you wish. You're not afraid to go, are you?"

"No, sir," Smith said. "I do not believe that."

"Then you have a choice, and you must make it for yourself. If you decide to join, you will of course be reinstated in your current position upon your return. If you decide not to join, you can stay here, but of course you will not have any special advantage; it is possible that you are at a disadvantage now or in the future.

"I see," Smith said.

There was a long silence, and Smith finally decided Quinn was done with him. But just as he got up to leave the office, Quinn spoke again.

He said slowly, "You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the importance of what you do in the annals of history." Keep this in mind as you try to decide what to do."

For two days, Smith missed his classes and didn't speak to anyone he knew. He stayed in his small room and struggled with his decision. His books and the stillness of his room surrounded him; he rarely caught sight of the world outside his room, the distant murmur of screaming students, the rapid clatter of a stroller on the brick streets, and the flat chug of one of the dozen or so cars in town. He had never taken the habit of looking inward, and he found the task of searching for his motives difficult and somewhat uncomfortable; he felt that he had little to offer himself and that there was little in him to find.

When he finally made up his mind, it seemed to him that he had known all along what it was going to be like. He met Doyon and Wren on Friday and told them he would not join them to fight the Germans.

George Wren, still supported by his access to virtue, stiffened and allowed a look of reproachful sorrow to settle on his features. "You're failing us, Bill," he said thickly. "You're failing us all."

"Shut up," said Doyon. He looked sharply at Smith. "I thought you might let it go. You always had that slender, devoted look about you. It doesn't matter, of course;

Smith didn't speak for a moment. He thought of the last two days, of the silent struggle that seemed endless and meaningless; he thought of his life at the university for the past seven years; he thought of the years before, of the distant years with his parents on the farm and of the death from which he had miraculously risen.

"I don't know," he finally said. "Everything, I guess. I can not say it."

"It's going to be hard," said Doyon, "to stay here." "I know," Smith said.

"But worth it, do you think?" Smith nodded.

Doyon grinned and said with his old irony, "You really have the skinny and hungry look. You are doomed."

Wren's sorrowful reproach had turned into a kind of tentative contempt. "You're going to regret it, Bill," he said hoarsely, his voice swinging between threat and pity.

Smith nodded. "It could be," he said.

Then he said goodbye to them and turned away. They were scheduled to go to St. Louis to enroll the next day, and Smith had classes to prepare for the following week.

He felt no guilt for his decision, and when conscription became general, he asked for its postponement without particular remorse; but he was aware of the looks he received from his older colleagues and the faint trace of disrespect that showed in his students' conventional behavior toward him. He even suspected that Bowman Quinn, who had once warmly approved of his decision to remain at the university, grew colder and more distant as the war months wore on.

He completed the requirements for his doctorate in the spring of 1918 and received his doctorate in June of the same year. A month before graduation, he received a letter from George Wren, who had gone through Officer's Training School and been assigned to a training camp outside of New York City. The letter informed him that Wren was allowed to attend Columbia University in his spare time, where he had also managed to complete the requirements for a doctorate degree, which he would take at Teachers College there that summer.

It also informed him that Dave Doyon had been sent to France and that he had been killed at Chateau-Thierry almost exactly a year after his enlistment with the first American troops to see action.

Chapter 3

A week before Smith was due to receive his PhD, Bowman Quinn offered him a full-time teaching position at the university. Quinn explained that it was not the university's policy to hire its own graduates, but because of the wartime shortage of trained and experienced college teachers, he persuaded the administration to make an exception.

Somewhat reluctantly, Smith had written a few application letters to universities and colleges in the general field, abruptly stating his qualifications; When nothing came from either of them, he felt oddly relieved. He half understood his relief; he'd learned at Columbia University the kind of security and warmth he should have felt in his home as a kid and couldn't have felt, and he wasn't sure he'd find that anywhere else. He gratefully accepted Quinn's offer.

And it occurred to him that Quinn had aged greatly in the war years. In his late fifties he looked ten years older; his hair, which had once curled in an unruly mop of iron-grey, was now white and lay flat and lifeless about his bony skull. His black eyes had become dull, as if coated with moisture; his long, wrinkled face, once tough as thin leather, now had the fragility of old drying paper; and his flat ironic voice began to tremble. Smith looked at him and thought: He's going to die - in a year or two years or ten years he's going to die. A premature sense of loss gripped him and he turned away.

In that summer of 1918 his thoughts were much on death. Doyon's death had shocked him more than he cared to admit; and the first American casualty lists from Europe began to be published. When he had thought of death before, he had thought of it either as a literary event or as time's slow, silent abrasion against imperfect flesh. He hadn't pictured it as violence on a battlefield, erupting blood from a torn throat. He wondered what the difference between the two ways of dying was and what the difference meant; and he found growing in him some of that bitterness which he had once seen in the living heart of his friend Brian Doyon.

His dissertation topic was "The Influence of the Classical Tradition on Medieval Poetry". He spent much of the summer re-reading the classical and medieval Latin poets, and particularly their death poems. He marveled again at the loose, Doris-like way in which the Roman lyric poets accepted the fact of death, as if the nothingness they faced was a homage to the riches of the years they had enjoyed; and he marveled at the bitterness, the horror, the thinly veiled hatred he found in some of the later Christian poets of the Latin tradition as they contemplated that death which, however vaguely, promised a rich and ecstatic eternity of life As if death and promise were a mockery, who soured the days of her life. When he thought of Doyon, he thought of him as Catullus, or a gentler and more lyrical Juvenal,

When the semester opened in the fall of 1918, it was clear to everyone that the war in Europe could not last much longer. The last desperate German counter-offensive had been halted just short of Paris, and Marshal Foch had ordered a general Allied counterattack that quickly pushed the Germans back to their original line. The British advanced north and the Americans passed through the Argonne, at a price largely ignored in the general enthusiasm. The newspapers predicted a collapse of the Germans before Christmas.

So the semester began in an atmosphere of tense cordiality and well-being. Students and faculty found each other smiling and nodding vigorously in the hallways; Outbursts of high spirits and petty acts of violence among the students were ignored by the faculty and administration; and an unidentified student, who became an instant local folk hero of sorts, climbed one of the huge pillars in front of Jesse Hall and hung a straw-filled effigy of the Emperor from its top.

The only person at the university who seemed unaffected by the general excitement was Bowman Quinn. From the day America entered the war it had begun to withdraw into itself, and this withdrawal became more and more evident as the war neared its end. He did not speak to his colleagues unless department business compelled him to, and it was whispered that his teaching had become so eccentric that his students came to his classes with fear; he read his notes languidly and mechanically, without looking his pupils in the eye; his voice often trailed off as he stared at his notes, and there were one, two, and sometimes up to five minutes of silence, during which he neither moved nor answered embarrassed questions from the class.

John Smith saw the last vestige of the bright, wry man he had known as a student when Bowman Quinn gave him his teaching post for the academic year. Quinn gave Smith two sections on freshman composition and a survey of the upper division of Middle English literature; and then he said, with a touch of his old irony: 'You, as well as many of our colleagues and not a few of our students, will be pleased to know that I am giving up some of my lectures, one which has been my rather unfashionable favorite, the Sophomore survey of English literature. Perhaps you remember the course?" Smith nodded, smiling.

"Yes," Quinn continued, "I rather thought you would. I ask you to take it for me. Not that it would make a great gift, but I thought it might amuse you to start your formal teaching career where you started as a student." Quinn looked at him for a moment, his eyes bright and intense as before Then a film of indifference settled over her and he turned away from Smith and shuffled some papers on his desk.

So Smith started where he had started, a tall, skinny, stooped man in the same room he'd sat as a tall, skinny, stooped boy, listening to the words that got him where he came from. He never went into that room without taking a look at the place it once occupied, and was always mildly surprised to find that he wasn't there.

On November 11 of the same year, two months after the start of the semester, the armistice was signed. The news came on a class day, and the class immediately broke up; Students ran aimlessly across campus, starting small parades that gathered, dispersed, and reassembled, winding through halls, classrooms, and offices. Half against his will, Smith was caught in one of these, which led into Jesse Hall, through corridors, up stairs, and through corridors again. He passed the open door of Bowman Quinn's office, carried away by a small crowd of students and teachers; and he caught a glimpse of Quinn sitting in his chair in front of his desk, his face uncovered and contorted, crying bitterly,

For a moment Smith continued to be carried away by the crowd, as if in shock. Then he broke free and went to his room near the campus. He sat in the darkness of his room and heard the cries of joy and relief outside and thought of Bowman Quinn weeping over a defeat that only he saw or thought he saw; and he knew that Quinn was a broken man and would never be what he had been again. In late November, many of those who had gone to war began returning to Columbia, and the university's campus was dotted with olive drab army uniforms. Among those returning on extended leave was George Wren. He had gained weight during his year and a half absence from university, and the broad open face that which had been amiably yielding now showed a friendly but sinister earnestness; he carried the batons of a captain and often spoke of "my men" with fatherly affection. He was distantly friendly to John Smith, and he was overly careful to be respectful of the older members of the department. By the fall semester it was too late to assign him any courses, so he was given a so-called temporary sinecure as administrative assistant to the Dean of Arts and Sciences for the remainder of the academic year. He was sensitive enough to be aware of the ambiguity of his new position and smart enough to see its possibilities; his relations with his colleagues were timid and politely noncommittal. In the fall semester it was too late to assign him any courses, and so he was given a so-called temporary sinecure as Administrative Assistant to the Dean of Arts and Sciences for the remainder of the academic year. He was sensitive enough to be aware of the ambiguity of his new position and smart enough to see its possibilities; his relations with his colleagues were timid and politely noncommittal. By the fall semester it was too late to assign him any courses, so he was given a so-called temporary sinecure as administrative assistant to the Dean of Arts and Sciences for the remainder of the academic year. He was sensitive enough to be aware of the ambiguity of his new position and smart enough to see its possibilities; his relations with his colleagues were timid and politely noncommittal.

The Dean of Arts and Sciences, Josiah Claremont, was a short, bearded man of advanced years, several years past the point of compulsory retirement; he had been at the university since it was converted from a regular college to a full university in the early 1970s, and his father had been one of its early presidents. He was so entrenched and so much a part of the university's history that no one had the courage to insist on his retirement despite the increasing incompetence with which he conducted his duties. His memory was almost gone; sometimes he would get lost in the corridors of Jesse Hall, where his office was located, and had to be led to his desk like a child.

So vague had he become on university affairs that most who received invitations received from his office the announcement that a reception honoring the homecoming veterans of faculty and administrative staff would be held at his home that this was an elaborate joke was being played or that a mistake was made. But it wasn't a joke and it wasn't a mistake. George Wren confirmed the invitations; and it was widely implied that it was he who instigated the reception and carried out the plans.

Josiah Claremont, widowed many years ago, lived alone with three colored servants almost his own age in one of the large pre-Civil War houses that were once widespread in Columbia but quickly disappeared before the small, independent citizens came farmer and real estate developer. The architecture of the place was pleasant but unidentifiable; Although "Southern" in its general form and extent, it had none of the neoclassical rigidity of the Virginia house. Its boards were painted white, and green moldings framed the windows and the balustrades of the little balconies that jutted out here and there from the upper floor. The grounds extended into a forest surrounding the site and tall poplars leafless on a December afternoon, lined the driveway and paths. It was the grandest house John Smith had ever been near; and that Friday afternoon, with some apprehension, he walked up the driveway and joined a group of professors he didn't know who were waiting outside the front door.

George Wren, still in his army uniform, opened the door to let them in; The group entered a small square foyer, at the end of which a steep aircase with polished oak railings led to the second floor. A small French tapestry, the blue and gold so faded that the pattern was barely visible in the dim yellow light from the small bulbs, hung on the wall of the staircase just ahead of the entering men. Smith stood looking up as those who had come in with him filed through the small foyer.

"Give me your coat, Bill." The voice near his ear startled him. He has turned. Wren smiled and reached out to take the cloak Smith hadn't removed.

"You've never been here, have you?" asked Wren, almost in a whisper. Schmidt shook his head.

Wren turned to the other men and managed to call out to them without raising his voice. "You gentlemen proceed to the main sitting room." He pointed to a door to the right of the foyer. "Everybody's in there."

He turned his attention back to Smith. "It's a nice old house," he said, hanging Smith's coat in a large closet under the stairs. "It's one of the real scenes around here."

"Yes," said Smith. "I've heard people talk about it."

"And Dean Claremont is a fine old man. He asked me to take care of things for him tonight."

Smith nodded.

Wren took his arm and guided him to the door he had pointed to earlier. "We need to meet later tonight to talk. Go in now. I'll be there in a minute.

Smith started to speak, but Wren had turned away to greet another group who had come in through the front door. Smith took a deep breath and opened the door to the main living room.

When he came into the room from the cold hall, the warmth pressed against him as if trying to push him back; the slow murmur of the people inside, triggered by his opening the door, swelled for a moment before his ears adjusted.

Maybe two dozen people were milling about the room and for a moment he didn't recognize any of them; he saw the sober black and gray and brown of men's suits, the olive green of army uniforms, and here and there the soft pink or blue of a woman's dress. The people moved lazily through the warmth and he moved with them, aware of his size among the seated figures and nodding to the faces he now recognized.

At the far end, another door led into a drawing room that adjoined the long, narrow dining room. The hall's double doors stood open, revealing a massive walnut dining table topped with yellow damask and loaded with white colanders and bowls of gleaming silver. Several people were gathered around the table, at the head of which stood a young woman, tall and slim and blond, dressed in a dress of blue-soaked silk, pouring tea into gold-rimmed china cups. Smith paused in the doorway, captivated by his vision of the young woman. Her long, finely drawn face smiled at those around her, and her slender, almost frail fingers dexterously manipulated urn and cup; As he looked at her, Smith was overcome by an awareness of his own grave clumsiness.

He didn't move from the door for a few moments; he heard the girl's soft, thin voice drown out the murmur of the assembled guests she was serving. She lifted her head and suddenly he met her eyes; they were pale and tall and seemed to glow with a light within. A little confused, he backed away from the door and went into the living room; he found an empty chair somewhere along the wall, and he sat looking at the carpet beneath his feet. He didn't look in the direction of the dining room, but every now and then he thought he felt the young woman's eyes warmly caress his face.

The guests moved around him, swapping places, changing their tone as they found new people to talk to. Smith saw her through a veil as if he were a spectator. After a while George Wren came into the room and Smith got up from his chair and walked towards him across the room. Almost rudely, he interrupted Wren's conversation with an older man. He pulled him aside without lowering his voice and asked to be introduced to the young woman who was pouring tea.

Wren looked at him for a moment, and the annoyed frown that was beginning to furrow his brow smoothed as his eyes widened. "You what?" said wren. Despite being shorter than Smith, he seemed to look down on him.

"I want you to introduce me," Smith said. He felt his face warm. "Do you know her?"

"Sure," Wren said. The hint of a grin began to tug at his mouth. "She's kind of a cousin to the Dean from St. Louis and she's visiting an aunt." The grin widened. "Old Bill. What do you know. Sure, I'll introduce you. Come on."

Her name was Sharon Elaine Bostwick and she lived with her parents in St.

Louis, where she had completed a two-year course at a private seminary for young women the previous spring; she was visiting her mother's older sister in Colombia for a few weeks, and in the spring they were supposed to do the Grand Tour of Europe – an event that was possible again now that the war was over. Her father, the president of one of the smaller banks in St. Louis, was a resettled New Englander; He had moved west in the 1970s and married the eldest daughter of a wealthy family in central Missouri. Sharon had lived in St. Louis all her life; a few years earlier she had gone east with her parents to Boston for the season; she had been to the opera in New York and visited the museums. She was twenty years old

Later, John Smith could not remember learning these things that first afternoon and early evening at Josiah Claremont's house; for the time of his meeting was hazy and formal, like the patterned tapestry on the foyer stair wall. He recalled speaking to her so that she could look at him, stay close, and give him the pleasure of hearing her soft, thin voice answer his questions and ask fleeting questions in return.

The guests began to leave. Voices called goodbye, doors slammed and rooms emptied. Smith stayed behind after most of the other guests left; and when Sharon's carriage came he followed her into the foyer and helped her with her coat. Just before she went outside, he asked her if he could visit her the next evening.

As if she hadn't heard him, she opened the door and stood motionless for a few moments: the cold air rushing through the door and touching Smith's hot face. She turned and looked at him and blinked several times; Her pale eyes were thoughtful, almost bold. Finally she nodded and said, "Yes. You can call." She didn't smile. And so he called while walking across town to her aunt's house on a very cold Midwestern winter night. No cloud was over us; the crescent moon shone on a light snow that had fallen earlier in the afternoon. The streets were deserted, and the muffled silence was broken by the dry snow that crunched under his feet as he walked. He stood for a long time in front of the big house he had come to and listened to the silence. The cold numbed his feet, but he didn't move. From the curtained windows a faint light fell like a yellow stain on the blue-white snow; he thought he saw movement inside, but he wasn't sure. Deliberately, as if committing himself to something, he stepped forward and made his way down the path to the porch and knocked on the front door.

Sharon's aunt (her name, Smith had learned earlier, was Emma Darley, and she had been widowed for a number of years) met him at the door and asked him to come in. She was a small, plump woman with fine white hair floating around her face; her dark eyes sparkled wetly, and she spoke softly and breathlessly, as if telling secrets. Smith followed her into the drawing room and sat across from her on a long walnut sofa with a thick blue velvet upholstery on the seat and back. Snow had clung to his shoes; he watched it melt and form damp patches on the thick carpet of flowers beneath his feet.

"Sharon told me you teach at the university, Mr. Smith," Mrs. Darley said. "Yes, ma'am," he said, clearing his throat.

"It's so nice to be able to talk to one of those young professors there again," said Mrs. Darley, beaming. "My late husband, Mr. Darley, was on the University Board of Trustees for a number of years – but you know that."

"No, ma'am," said Smith.

"Oh," said Mrs. Darley. "Well, we invited some of the younger professors over for tea earlier in the afternoon. But that was a few years ago, before the war. You were at war, Professor Smith?"

"No, ma'am," said Smith. "I was at university."

"Yes," said Mrs. Darley. She nodded radiantly. "And you teach -?"

"English," said Smith. "And I'm not a professor. I'm just an instructor." He knew his voice was harsh; he couldn't control it. He tried to smile.

"Oh yes," she said. "Shakespeare...Browning..."

There was silence between them. Smith clasped his hands and looked down.

Mrs Darley said, 'I'll see if Sharon is ready.

Smith nodded and stood up as she walked out. He heard heavy whispering in a back room. He stood there for a few more minutes.

Suddenly Sharon was standing in the wide doorway, pale and unsmiling. They looked at each other without recognizing each other. Sharon took a step back and then came forward, lips thin and tight. They shook hands earnestly and sat down together on the sofa. They hadn't spoken.

She was even taller than he remembered, and more fragile. Her face was long and slender, and she kept her lips closed over fairly strong teeth. Her skin had the kind of transparency that reveals hints of color and warmth at every provocation. Her hair was light auburn and she wore it in thick strands on her head. But it was her eyes that caught him and held him as they had the day before. They were very large and the palest blue he could imagine. As he looked at her, he seemed pulled out of himself into a mystery he couldn't comprehend. Thinking she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, he said impulsively, "I – I want to know about you." She pulled away from him a little. He said hastily: "I mean – yesterday, at the reception, we didn't really get a chance to talk. I wanted to talk to you but there were so many people there. Sometimes people get in your way."

"It was a very nice welcome," said Sharon softly. "I thought everyone was very nice."

"Oh yes, of course," Smith said. "I thought.. ." He didn't go any further. Sharon said nothing.

He said: "I understand that you and your aunt will be going to Europe shortly."

"Yes," she said.

"Europe..." He shook his head. "You must be very excited." She nodded reluctantly.

"Where are you going? I mean – what places?' 'England,' she said. 'France. Italy."

"And you will go – in the spring?" "April," she said.

"Five months," he said. "It's not very long. I hope that in that time we'll—" "I've only got three weeks left," she said quickly. "Then I'll go back to St.

Ludwig. For Christmas."

"That's a short time." He smiled and said awkwardly, "Then I need to see you as much as possible so we can get to know each other."

She looked at him almost in horror. "I didn't mean it like that," she said. "Please.

.."

Smith was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry, I-- But I want to visit you as often as you let me. May I?"

"Oh," she said. "Jump." Her thin fingers were laced in her lap, and her knuckles were white where the skin was stretched. She had very pale freckles on the backs of her hands.

Smith said: "This is going bad, isn't it? You must forgive me. I've never known anyone like you before, and I say awkward things. You must forgive me if I have embarrassed you."

"Oh no," she said. She turned to him and curled her lips into what he knew was a smile. "Not at all. I am having a good time. For real."

He didn't know what to say. He mentioned the weather outside and apologized for leaving snow marks on the carpet; she mumbled something. He spoke of the lectures he had to teach at the university and she nodded in confusion. Finally they sat in silence. Smith stood up; he moved slowly and heavily, as if he were tired. Sharon looked at him blankly.

"Well," he said, clearing his throat. "It's getting late and I... Wiles. I'm sorry. May I visit you again in a few days?

It was as if he hadn't spoken to her. He nodded, said "Good night" and turned to go.

Sharon Bostwick said in a high, shrill voice without intonation: "When I was a little girl, about six, I could play the piano, I liked to draw and I was very shy, so my mother sent me to Miss Thorndyke's School for Girls in St Louis. I was the youngest there but that was fine because Daddy was on the board and arranged it. I didn't like it at first, but eventually I just loved it. They were all very nice girls and wealthy, and I made some lifelong friends there, and—"

Smith had turned as she spoke and was looking at her with an astonishment that didn't show on his face. Her eyes were fixed in front of her, her face expressionless, and her lips moving as if she were reading an invisible book without understanding. He slowly walked across the room and sat down next to her. She didn't seem to notice him; her eyes stayed straight ahead and she continued to tell him about herself as he had asked her to. He wanted to tell her to stop, to comfort her, to touch her. He didn't move and didn't speak.

She went on talking, and after a while he began to hear what she was saying. Years later, it would occur to him that in that hour and a half that December evening of their first extended date together, she told him more about herself than she had ever told him again. And when it was over, he felt they were strangers in a way he didn't think was possible, and he knew he was in love. Sharon Elaine Bostwick was probably unaware of what she was saying to John Smith that night, and if she had been, she would not have been able to grasp its meaning. But Smith knew what she said and he never forgot it; What he heard was a confession of sorts, and what he thought he understood was a cry for help.

As he got to know her better, he learned more about her childhood; and he realized that it was typical of most girls of her time and circumstances. She was raised on the premise that she would be protected from the gross events that life might throw her way, and on the premise that she had no other duty than to be a dutiful and accomplished helper of that protection, since she belonged to a social and economic class for whom protection was an almost sacred duty. She attended private schools for girls, where she learned to read, write and do basic arithmetic; In her free time, she was encouraged to embroider, play the piano, paint watercolors, and discuss some of the gentler works of literature. She was also examined in matters of dress, posture,

Her moral education, both in the schools she attended and at home, was inherently categorical, forbidden in intent, and almost exclusively sexual. However, the sexuality was indirect and unrecognized; therefore it permeated every other part of their upbringing, which drew most of its energy from this recessive and unspoken moral force. She learned that she would have responsibilities to her husband and family and that she must fulfill them.

Her childhood was an extremely formal one, even in the most ordinary moments of family life. Her parents behaved with distant courtesy; Sharon never saw the spontaneous warmth of anger or love pass between them. Anger was days of polite silence, and love was a word of polite tenderness. She was an only child and loneliness was one of the earliest conditions of her life.

So she grew up with a weak talent in the finer arts, not realizing the necessity of living from day to day.

Her needlepoint was delicate and useless, she painted misty landscapes in thin watercolors, and she played the piano with a feeble but precise hand; yet she was ignorant of her own bodily functions, she had never been alone a day in her life to take care of herself, nor had it ever occurred to her that she could be responsible for the welfare of another. Her life was unchanging, like a low hum; and it was guarded by her mother, who, when Sharon was a child, would sit for hours watching her paint her pictures or play her piano, as if no other occupation were out of the question for the two of them.

At the age of thirteen, Sharon underwent the usual sexual transformation; She also underwent a physical transformation that was more unusual. Within a few months, she grew nearly 30 cm, almost the size of an adult male. And the association between her body's awkwardness and her awkward new sexual state was one she never fully recovered from. These changes reinforced a natural shyness—she was distant from her classmates at school, she had no one at home to talk to, and she was becoming more and more introverted.

John Smith now invaded this inner private sphere. And something unexpected in her, some instinct, made her call him back when he was about to walk out the door, made her speak quickly and desperately as she had never spoken before and as she would never speak again. For the next two weeks he saw her almost every night. They went to a concert sponsored by the university's new music department; in the evenings, when it was not too cold, they took slow, solemn walks through the streets of Columbia; but more often they sat in Mrs. Darley's sitting-room. Sometimes they talked and Sharon played for him while he listened and watched her hands move lifelessly over the keys. After that first night together, their conversation was oddly impersonal; he could not pull her out of her reserve, and when he saw that his efforts were embarrassing her, he stopped trying. Still, the atmosphere between them was easy, and he fancied they agreed. Less than a week before she was due to return to St. Louis, he declared his love and proposed to her.

Although he wasn't sure how she would take the explanation and the contradiction, he was surprised at her equanimity. After he spoke, she gave him a long look that was thoughtful and strangely daring; and he remembered the first afternoon after he had asked permission to visit her, when she had looked at him from the door where a cold wind was blowing on her. Then she lowered her eyes; and the surprise that came over her face seemed unreal to him. She said she never thought of him that way, she never imagined it, she didn't know.

"You must have known that I love you," he said. "I don't see how I could have hidden it."

She said, with a touch of animation, "I haven't. I do not know anything about it."

"Then I have to tell you again," he said softly. "And you have to get used to it. I have you and I can't imagine living without you."

She shook her head as if confused. "My trip to Europe," she said weakly. "Aunt Emma..."

He felt laughter rise in his throat and said with confidence, "Ah, Europe. I'm taking you to Europe.

She pulled away from him and placed her fingertips on her forehead. "You have to give me time to think. And I'd have to talk to mum and daddy before I could even think about it..."

And she would not commit herself any further. She wasn't supposed to see him again until she left for St. Louis in a few days, and from there she would write to him after talking to her parents and clearing things up in her head. As he left that evening, he bent to kiss her; she turned her head and his lips brushed her cheek. She squeezed his hand a little and let him out the front door without looking at him again.

Ten days later he got his letter from her. It was an oddly formal note, and it didn't mention anything that had happened between them; It said that she would like to introduce him to her parents and that they were all looking forward to seeing him when he came to St. Louis the following weekend, if that was possible.

Sharon's parents met him with the cool formality he had come to expect, and they immediately sought to destroy any sense of ease he might have felt. Mrs. Bostwick asked him a question, and to his answer she said, "Yes," most doubtfully, and looked at him curiously, as if his face were soiled or his nose was bleeding. She was tall and thin like Sharon, and at first Smith noticed a resemblance he hadn't expected; but Mrs. Bostwick's face was heavy and lethargic, without any strength or tenderness, and it bore the deep marks of what must have been a habitual discontent.

Horace Bostwick was tall too, but he was oddly and marginally heavy, almost portly; a fringe of gray hair curled around an otherwise bald skull, and folds of skin hung loose around his jaws. When he spoke to Smith, he looked directly over his head as if seeing something behind him, and when Smith answered, he drummed his thick fingers on the center piping of his vest.

Sharon greeted Smith as if he were a casual visitor, and then blithely departed, busying himself with trivial tasks. His eyes followed her, but he couldn't get her to look at him.

It was the largest and most elegant house Smith had ever been in. The rooms were very high and dark, and they were crammed with vases of all sizes and shapes, lustrous silver work on marble tables, dressers and chests, and plenty of tapestry furniture of the finest lines. They passed through several rooms to a large drawing-room where, murmured Mrs. Bostwick, she and her husband were in the habit of sitting with friends and chatting informally. Smith sat in a chair so fragile he was afraid to move; he felt it shift under his weight.

Sharon was gone; Smith looked around for her almost desperately. But she didn't return to the drawing room for nearly two hours until Smith and her parents had their "talk."

The "talk" was indirect and allusive, and slow, punctuated by long silences. Horace Bostwick spoke about himself in short speeches aimed several inches above Smith's head. Smith learned that Bostwick was a Bostonian whose father, late in life, had ruined his banking career and his son's future in New England through a series of ill-advised investments that closed his bank. ("Betrayed," Bostwick proclaimed to the ceiling, "by false friends") So the son had come to Missouri shortly after the Civil War to move west; but he had never gotten further than Kansas City, where he occasionally went on business trips. Remembering his father's failure or betrayal, he stuck to his first job at a small bank in St. Louis; and in his late thirties, secure in a small vice presidency, he married a local girl of good family. Only one child had come from the marriage; he had wanted a son and had a girl, and that was another disappointment he did little to hide. Like many men who consider their success incomplete, he was exceedingly vain and consumed by a sense of his own importance. Every ten or fifteen minutes he would pull a large gold watch from his vest pocket, examine it and nod to himself. which he hardly tried to hide. Like many men who consider their success incomplete, he was exceedingly vain and consumed by a sense of his own importance. Every ten or fifteen minutes he would pull a large gold watch from his vest pocket, examine it and nod to himself. which he hardly tried to hide. Like many men who consider their success incomplete, he was exceedingly vain and consumed by a sense of his own importance. Every ten or fifteen minutes he would pull a large gold watch from his vest pocket, examine it and nod to himself.

Mrs. Bostwick spoke less frequently and less directly of herself, but Smith had a poor understanding of her. She was a southern lady of a certain type. Coming from an old and slightly impoverished family, she had grown up believing that the hardships in which the family existed were not up to her quality. She had been taught to look forward to an improvement in this condition, but the improvement had never been specified very precisely. She had entered her marriage to Horace Bostwick with that dissatisfaction that was so habitual in her that it was a part of her; and as the years passed, dissatisfaction and bitterness increased, so general and pervasive that no specific remedy could appease them.

It was late afternoon when one of them mentioned the thing that had brought them together.

They told him how much they loved Sharon, how worried they were about her future happiness, about the benefits she had had. Smith sat in excruciating embarrassment, trying to give what he hoped were appropriate answers.

"An extraordinary girl," said Mrs. Bostwick. "So sensitive." The lines on her face deepened, and she said with old bitterness, "No man – no one can fully understand the delicacy of – of -."

"Yes," said Horace Bostwick curtly. And he began investigating what he called Smith's "prospects." Smith answered as best he could; He had never thought about his "prospects" before and was surprised at how tenuous they sounded.

Bostwick said, "And you have no – means – beyond your profession?" "No, sir," said Smith.

Mr. Bostwick shook his head unhappily. "Sharon had – benefits – you know. A beautiful home, servants, the best schools. that.. ." His voice disappeared.

Smith felt a surge of nausea and anger. He waited a few minutes before answering, speaking as flatly and deadpan as he could.

"I must tell you, sir, that I have not considered these material matters before. Sharon's happiness is mine, of course – if you think Sharon would be unhappy, then I must..." He paused, searching for words. He wanted to tell Sharon's father about his love for his daughter, his certainty of their happiness together, the kind of life they could have. But he didn't go any further. He noticed such a look of concern, dismay, and something akin to fear on Horace Bostwick's face that he stopped in surprise.

"No," Horace Bostwick said hastily, and his face brightened. "You misunderstand me. I was just trying to bring to your mind certain—difficulties—that might arise in the future. I'm sure you young people have discussed these things and I'm sure you know your own opinion. I respect your judgment and-"

And it was done. A few more words were said and Mrs Bostwick wondered aloud where Sharon could have been all this time. She called the name in her high, thin voice, and moments later Sharon walked into the room where they were all waiting. She didn't look at Smith.

Horace Bostwick told her that he and her "young man" had a nice chat and that they had his blessing. Sharon nodded.

"Well," her mother said, "we have to make plans. A spring wedding. June maybe."

"No," said Sharon.

"What my darling?" her mother asked kindly.

"If it's going to be done," said Sharon, "I want it done quickly."

"The impatience of youth," said Mr. Bostwick, clearing his throat. "But perhaps your mother is right, my dear. Plans must be made; it takes time."

"No," Sharon said again, and there was a firmness in her voice that made everyone look at her. "It must be soon."

There was silence. Then her father said in a surprisingly soft voice, "Very good, my dear. As you say. You young people make your plans."

Sharon nodded, mumbled something about a task she had to do, and slipped out of the room. Smith did not see her again until dinner that evening, presided over by Horace Bostwick in majestic silence. After dinner, Sharon played the piano for her, but she played stiffly and poorly, with many mistakes. She announced that she felt unwell and went to her room.

That night in the guest room, John Smith couldn't sleep. Staring into the darkness, he marveled at the strangeness that had come over his life and for the first time questioned the wisdom of what he was about to do. He thought of Sharon and felt reassured. He assumed that all people were as insecure as he had suddenly become and had the same doubts.

He had to catch an early train back to Columbia the next morning, leaving little time after breakfast. He wished to take a tram to the station, but Mr. Bostwick insisted that one of the servants should drive him at the Landau. Sharon should write to him about the wedding plans in a few days. He thanked the Bostwick's and bade them farewell; They walked to the front door with him and Sharon. He had almost reached the front gate when he heard footsteps behind him. He read. It was Sharon. She stood very stiff and tall, her face was pale and she looked straight at him.

"I'll try to be a good wife to you, John," she said. "I'll try it."

He realized it was the first time anyone had said his name since he'd come here.

Chapter 4

For reasons she wouldn't explain, Sharon didn't want to get married in St. Louis, so the wedding took place in Columbia, in Emma Darley's grand drawing room, where they had spent their first hours together. It was the first week of February, shortly after classes had been released for the semester break. The Bostwick's took the train from St. Louis and John's parents, who had not yet met Sharon, drove down from the farm and arrived on Saturday afternoon, the day before the wedding.

Smith wanted to put them up in a hotel, but they preferred to stay with the Footes, although the Footes had grown cold and distant since John left their job.

"Wouldn't know how to navigate a hotel," his father said seriously. "And the

Footes can take us one night."

That night, John rented a gig and drove his parents downtown to Emma's

Darley's house so they could meet Sharon.

They were met at the door by Mrs Darley, who gave John's parents a quick, embarrassed look and ushered them into the drawing room. His mother and father sat warily, as if afraid to move in their stiff new clothes.

"I don't know what's stopping Sharon," Mrs. Darley murmured after a while. "If you'll excuse me." She went out of the room to get her niece.

After a long time Sharon came down; she entered the salon slowly, reluctantly, with a kind of anxious defiance.

They got up and for a few moments the four stood awkwardly, not knowing what to say. Then Sharon stepped forward stiffly and offered her hand first to John's mother and then to his father.

"Hello," his father said formally, releasing her hand as if afraid it might break.

Sharon looked at him, tried to smile and backed away. "Sit down," she said. "Please sit down."

They sat. John said something. His voice sounded strained to him.

In a silence, soft and wondering, as if speaking her thoughts out loud, his mother said, "Gosh, she's a pretty thing, isn't she?"

John laughed a little and said softly, "Yes, ma'am, she is."

They could then converse more easily, though they exchanged fleeting glances and then gazed off into the distance of the room. Sharon murmured that she was glad to meet her, that she was sorry they hadn't met before.

"And once we're settled--" She paused, and John wondered if she was going to continue. "When we're settled, you must come visit us."

"Thank you," his mother said.

The conversation continued, but it was interrupted by a long silence. Sharon's nervousness was growing, becoming more evident, and once or twice she didn't answer a question someone asked her. John got up and his mother got up too, looking around nervously. But his father didn't move. He looked directly at Sharon and kept an eye on her for a long time.

Finally he said, "John was always a good boy. I'm glad he's getting a beautiful wife. A man needs a woman to care for him and comfort him. Now be good to John someone who can be good to him."

Sharon's head came back in a sort of startle reflex; Her eyes were wide and for a moment John thought she was angry. But it wasn't her. His father and Sharon looked at each other for a long time and their eyes didn't waver.

"I'll try, Mr. Smith," said Sharon. "I'll try it."

Then his father got up, bowed awkwardly and said, "It's getting late. And he walked to the door with his wife, shapeless and dark and small beside him, leaving Sharon and his son together.

Sharon didn't speak to him. But as he turned to bid her good night, John saw tears pooling in her eyes. He leaned in to kiss her, feeling the feeble strength of her slender fingers on his arms. The cold clear sunlight of February afternoon slanted through the front windows of the Darley house and was broken by the moving figures in the great drawing room. His parents stood strangely alone in a corner of the room; the Bostwick's, who had come on the morning train only an hour before, stood beside them and did not look at them; George Wren walked around sluggishly and anxiously, as if in charge of something; there were a few people, friends of Sharon or her parents, that he didn't know. He heard himself speaking to his fellow men,

George Wren was beside him; his face was sweaty and glowing over his dark suit. He grinned nervously. "Are you ready, Bill?"

Smith felt his head nod.

Wren said, "Does the doomed man have any last requests?" Smith smiled and shook his head.

Wren clapped him on the shoulder. "You just stay with me; do as I tell you; everything is under control. Sharon will be downstairs in a few minutes."

He wondered if he would remember it after it was over; everything seemed blurry, as if he were seeing through a veil. He heard himself Wren ask, "The Minister – I didn't see him. Is he here?"

Wren laughed and shook his head and said something. Then a murmur came through the room. Sharon went down the stairs.

In her white dress she was like a cold light coming into the room. Smith instinctively walked towards her and felt Wren's hand on his arm, holding him back. Sharon was pale, but she gave him a small smile. Then she was beside him and they walked together. A round-collared stranger stood in front of them; He was short and fat and had a vague face. He mumbled words and looked down at a white book in his hands. John heard his reaction to silence. He felt Sharon tremble next to him.

Then there was a long silence and more murmurs and laughter. Someone said, "Kiss the bride!" He felt turned; Wren grinned at him. He smiled down at Sharon, whose face was swimming in front of him, and kissed her; her lips were as dry as his own.

He felt his hand being pumped; people slapped him on the back and laughed; The room was full. New people came through the door. A large cut-glass bowl of punch appeared to have appeared on a long table at one end of the drawing room. There was a cake. Someone was holding his and Sharon's hands together; there was a knife; he understood that he should guide her hand while she cut the cake.

Then he got separated from Sharon and couldn't see her in the crowd. He talked and laughed, nodded, and looked around the room to see if he could find Sharon. He saw his mother and father standing in the same corner of the room from which they had not moved. His mother smiled and his father had his hand awkwardly on her shoulder. He wanted to go to them, but he couldn't break away from the one who was talking to him.

Then he saw Sharon. She was with her father and mother and aunt; her father surveyed the room with a slight frown, as if impatient; and her mother wept, her eyes red and swollen over her heavy cheekbones, and her mouth pursed like a child's. Mrs. Darley and

Sharon had her arms around her; Mrs. Darley spoke to her quickly, as if explaining something. But even across the room, John could see that Sharon was silent; her face was like a mask, expressionless and white. After a moment they led Mrs Bostwick out of the room and John did not see Sharon again until after the reception was over, until George Wren whispered something in his ear, led him to a side door that opened onto a small garden and pushed him outdoors. There Sharon waited, bundled up against the cold, collar turned up so he couldn't see. George Wren, laughing and saying words John didn't understand, hustled them down a path to the road where a covered buggy was waiting to take them to the station. It wasn't until they were on the train that would take them to St. Louis would bring. Honeymoon that John Smith realized it was all over and that he had a wife. They entered the marriage innocent, but innocent in profoundly different ways. They were both virgins, and they were aware of their inexperience; but while John, having grown up on a farm, thought the natural processes of life unremarkable, for Sharon they were deeply mysterious and unexpected. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. that it was all over and that he had a wife. They entered the marriage innocent, but innocent in profoundly different ways. They were both virgins, and they were aware of their inexperience; but while John, having grown up on a farm, thought the natural processes of life unremarkable, for Sharon they were deeply mysterious and unexpected. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. that it was all over and that he had a wife. They entered the marriage innocent, but innocent in profoundly different ways. They were both virgins, and they were aware of their inexperience; but while John, having grown up on a farm, thought the natural processes of life unremarkable, for Sharon they were deeply mysterious and unexpected. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. They were both virgins, and they were aware of their inexperience; but while John, having grown up on a farm, thought the natural processes of life unremarkable, for Sharon they were deeply mysterious and unexpected. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. They were both virgins, and they were aware of their inexperience; but while John, having grown up on a farm, thought the natural processes of life unremarkable, for Sharon they were deeply mysterious and unexpected. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them. they were deeply mysterious and unexpected to Sharon. She didn't know about them, and something inside her didn't want to know about them.

And so their honeymoon, like many others, was a failure; but they didn't want to admit it to themselves, and they didn't realize the meaning of failure until long afterwards.

They arrived in St. Louis late Sunday evening. On the train, surrounded by strangers who looked at her curiously and appreciatively, Sharon had been feisty and almost gay. They laughed and held hands and talked about the days to come. Once in town and when John found a carriage to take her to her hotel, Sharon's happiness had turned slightly hysterical.

Half laughing, he carried her through the entrance of the Ambassador Hotel,

A massive structure of brown stone. The lobby was almost deserted, dark and cavernous; As they entered, Sharon fell silent, swaying unsteadily beside him as they walked across the huge floor to the desk. When they reached her room she was almost physically ill; she was shaking feverishly and her lips were blue against her chalky skin. John wanted to find her a doctor but she insisted she was just tired and needed rest. They talked gravely about the day's rigors, and Sharon hinted at a delicacy that troubled her from time to time. She murmured, but without looking at him and without intonation in her voice, that she wanted to get her first horns together perfectly.

And John said, 'They are – they will be. You have to rest. Our wedding will start tomorrow."

And like other new husbands he had heard of and at whose expense he had occasionally cracked jokes, he spent his wedding night apart from his wife, his long body stiff and sleepless curled up on a small sofa, his eyes wide open as the night wore on.

He woke up early. Her suite, arranged and paid for by Sharon's parents as a wedding present, was on the tenth floor and overlooked the city. He called softly to Sharon, and after a few minutes she came out of the bedroom, tying the sash of her robe, yawning sleepily and smiling a little. John felt his love for her grip his throat; he took her by the hand and they stood in front of the window in her living room and looked down. Cars, pedestrians, and carriages crawled through the narrow streets below; they seemed far removed from the course of mankind and its aspirations. In the distance, visible behind the square buildings of red brick and stone, the Mississippi River meandered its bluish-brown length in the morning sun; the river boats and tugboats, those crawling up and down its stiff curves were like toys, though their chimneys belched great quantities of gray smoke into the winter air. A feeling of calm came over him; he put his arm around his wife and held her lightly, and they both looked down on a world that seemed full of promise and quiet adventure.

They had breakfast early. Sharon seemed refreshed, totally recovered from her discomfort the night before; Almost gay again, she looked at John with an intimacy and warmth that he took for gratitude and love. They didn't talk about the night before; Every now and then Sharon would glance at her new ring and adjust it on her finger. They wrapped themselves up against the cold and walked the streets of St. Louis, which were just beginning to fill with people; they looked at goods in shop windows, they talked about the future and seriously thought about how they would fill it. John was beginning to regain the ease and dexterity he had discovered during his early courtship of this woman who had become his wife;

Sharon clutched his arm and seemed to be paying attention to what he was saying like she had never done before. They drank morning coffee in a small warm shop and watched passers-by scurry through the cold. They found a carriage and drove to the art museum. They walked arm in arm through the high ceilings, through the rich light reflected from the paintings. In the stillness, in the warmth, in the air that has taken on a timelessness from the old paintings and statues, John

Smith felt a burst of affection for the tall, delicate girl walking beside him, and he felt a quiet passion welling up inside him, warm and positively sensual, like the colors emerging from the walls around him.

When they left there in the late afternoon, the sky had clouded over and a thin tremor had set in; but John Smith carried within him the warmth he had gathered in the museum. They returned to the hotel just after sunset; Sharon went into the bedroom to rest and John called down to have a light supper sent to their rooms; and on a sudden impulse he went down to the drawing-room himself and asked for a bottle of champagne to be chilled and sent up within an hour. The bartender nodded sullenly and told him it wasn't going to be a good champagne. By July 1, Prohibition would be nationwide; it was already illegal to brew or distill spirits; and there were no more than fifty bottles of champagne in the hotel's cellars. And he would have to charge more than the champagne was worth.

Although Sharon had drunk a little wine at special celebrations at her parents' house, she had never tasted champagne. As they ate their dinner at a small square table in her living room, she glanced nervously at the odd bottle in her ice bucket. Two white candles in dull brass sockets glowed unevenly against the darkness; John had turned off the other lights. The candles flickered between them as they spoke, the light catching the curves of the smooth dark bottle and glittering on the ice that surrounded it. They were nervous and cautiously cheerful.

Clumsily he pulled the cork out of the champagne; Sharon flinched at the loud bang; white foam spouted from the neck of the bottle and soaked his hand. They laughed at his clumsiness. They drank a glass of wine and Sharon acted tipsy. They drank another glass. John thought he saw a languor come over her, a stillness fell on her face, a thoughtfulness darkened her eyes. He got up and went behind her where she was sitting at the little table; he put his hands on her shoulders and marveled at the thickness and heaviness of his fingers on the tenderness of her flesh and bone. She stiffened under his touch and he let his hands slide gently to the sides of her thin neck and brush them into the fine reddish hair; her neck was stiff the cords vibrated in their tension. He put his hands on her arms and gently lifted her so that she rose from the chair; he turned her to face him. Her eyes, wide and pale and almost transparent in the candlelight, looked at him blankly. He felt a distant closeness to her and pity for her helplessness; Desire thickened in his throat so he couldn't speak. He pulled her a little in the direction of the bedroom, felt a quick, hard resistance in her body and at the same time felt the resistance drop. Desire thickened in his throat so he couldn't speak. He pulled her a little in the direction of the bedroom, felt a quick, hard resistance in her body and at the same time felt the resistance drop. Desire thickened in his throat so he couldn't speak. He pulled her a little in the direction of the bedroom, felt a quick, hard resistance in her body and at the same time felt the resistance drop.

He left the door to the unlit bedroom open; the candlelight shimmered faintly in the darkness. He murmured as if to comfort and reassure her, but his words were stifled and she couldn't hear what he was saying. He put his hands on her body and groped for the buttons they would undo for him. She pushed him away impersonally; in the darkness her eyes were closed and her lips tight. She turned away from him and in one quick movement loosened her dress so that it crumpled around her feet. Her arms and shoulders were bare; she shuddered as if from cold and said in a toneless voice: "Go into the other room. I'll be done in a minute." He touched her arms and placed his lips on her shoulder, but she didn't turn to him.

In the living room, he stared at the candles flickering over the remains of their dinner, with the bottle of champagne still more than half full in the middle. He poured a little wine into a glass and tasted it; it had become warm and sweet.

When he returned, Sharon was lying in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin, face up, eyes closed, a thin frown on her forehead. Silently, as if asleep, Smith undressed and got on the bed next to her. For a few moments he lay there with his desire, which had become an impersonal thing that belonged to him alone. He spoke to Sharon as if seeking sanctuary for what he was feeling; she did not answer. He laid his hand on her and felt the skin he had longed for beneath the thin fabric of her nightgown. He moved his hand on her; she didn't move; her frown deepened. Again he spoke and said her name to silence; then he moved his body on top of her, gentle in his clumsiness. As he touched the softness of her thighs, she turned her head away sharply and raised her arm to cover her eyes. She made no sound.

After that he lay down beside her and spoke to her in the silence of his love. Their eyes were open then, and they stared at him from the shadows; Her face was expressionless. Suddenly she threw off the covers and quickly went to the bathroom. He saw the light go on and heard her retching loudly and painfully. He called her and walked across the room; The bathroom door was locked. He called her again; she did not answer. He went back to the bed and waited for her. After a few minutes of silence, the light in the bathroom went out and the door opened. Sharon came out and walked stiffly to the bed.

"It was the champagne," she said. "I shouldn't have drunk the second glass."

She pulled the covers over her and turned away from him; in a few moments her breathing was regular and heavy in her sleep.

Chapter 5

They returned to Columbia two days ahead of schedule; Uneasy and tense from their isolation, it was like walking in a prison together. Sharon said they really should return to Columbia so John could prepare for his classes and so she could start setting them up in their new apartment. Smith immediately agreed – telling himself that things would get better once they were in their own place, among people they knew and in familiar surroundings. In the afternoon they packed up and boarded the train for Columbia that same evening.

In the hasty, vague days leading up to their wedding, Smith had found an empty second-story apartment in an old barn-like house five blocks from the university. It was dark and bare, with a small bedroom, a tiny kitchen, and a huge living room with tall windows; it had once been inhabited by an artist, a university teacher who hadn't been very neat; The dark, wide plank floors were stained with bright yellows, blues, and reds, and the walls were smeared with paint and dirt. Smith found the place romantic and comfortable, and thought it was a good place to start a new life.

Sharon moved into the apartment like she was an enemy to be defeated. Although not used to physical labor, she scraped most of the paint off the floors and walls and scrubbed the dirt she imagined everywhere; Her hands blistered and her face became tense, with dark pits under her eyes. When Smith tried to help her, she became stubborn, her lips tightened and she shook her head; he needed the time for his studies, she said; that was her job. When he forced his help on her, she became almost grumpy and thought she was humiliated. Confused and helpless, he withdrew his help and watched grimly as Sharon clumsily continued scrubbing the gleaming floors and walls, sewing curtains and hanging them unevenly from the tall windows, repaired and repainted the used furniture that they had started to accumulate. Though inept, she worked with a quiet and intense frenzy that she was exhausted by the time John got home from college that afternoon. She would trudge to make dinner, eat a few bites, then murmur and disappear into the bedroom to sleep drugged until John left for his class the next morning.

Within a month he knew his marriage had failed; within a year he hoped things would get better. He learned silence and did not insist on his love. If he spoke to her or touched her tenderly, she turned away from him inwardly and became wordless, persistent and pushed herself to new limits of exhaustion for days. Out of unspoken stubbornness, both separated, they shared the same bed; Sometimes she would unconsciously move against him at night in her sleep. And sometimes his resolve and knowledge broke before his love, and he moved toward her. When awakened sufficiently from her sleep, she would spasm and stiffen, turning her head to the side in a familiar gesture and burying it in her pillow, enduring the injury; at such times Smith carried out his love as fast as he could, hating himself for his haste and regretting his passion. More seldom did she remain half-stupefied with sleep; then she was passive, and she murmured sleepily, whether in protest or surprise he didn't know. He looked forward to those rare and unpredictable moments, because in that sleep-numbing approval he could fool himself into finding some kind of answer.

And he couldn't talk to her about what he thought was her misfortune. When he attempted this, she accepted what he said as a reflection of her appropriateness and herself, and she withdrew from him just as sullenly as she did when he made love to her. He blamed his clumsiness for her retreat and took responsibility for what she was feeling.

With a quiet ruthlessness born of desperation, he experimented with small ways to please her. He brought her gifts, which she accepted with indifference, and was sometimes mild about their expense; he took her for walks and picnics in the wooded countryside around Columbia, but she tired easily and sometimes got sick; he talked to her about his work as he had wooed her, but her interest had become superficial and indulgent.

Despite knowing that she was shy, he finally insisted, as gently as possible, that they start talking. They had an informal tea to which some of the department's younger faculty members and assistant professors were invited, and they threw several small dinner parties. Sharon did not show in any way whether she was pleased or dissatisfied; but her preparations for events were so frantic and obsessive that when the guests arrived she was half-hysterical with exertion and weariness, though no one but John was really aware of it.

She was a good hostess. She spoke to her guests with a vivacity and ease that made her seem like a stranger to John, and she spoke to him in their presence with an intimacy and affection that never ceased to surprise him. She called him Willy, which touched him oddly, and sometimes she gently laid a hand on his shoulder.

But as the guests left, the facade collapsed, revealing their breakdown. She spoke bitterly of the departed guests, imagining dark insults and insults; she related quietly and desperately what she considered to be unforgivable mistakes of her own; she sat quiet and brooding on the sedan chair that the guests had left behind, didn't let John wake her, and answered him briefly and distraughtly in a flat, monotonous voice.

Only once had the facade cracked when guests were present.

A few months after Smith and Sharon's marriage, George Wren became engaged to a girl he met while stationed in New York whose parents lived in Columbia. Wren had been given a permanent position as associate dean, and it was tacitly agreed that after the death of Josiah Claremont, Wren would be one of the first to be considered for the deanship of the college. A little belatedly, in celebration of Wren's new position and the announcement of his engagement, Smith invited him and his fiance to dinner.

They arrived just before dark on a warm late May evening in a shiny black new touring car that made a series of explosions as Wren expertly brought it to a halt on the brick street in front of Smith's house. He honked and waved happily until John and Sharon came down the stairs. Beside him sat a small, dark girl with a round, smiling face.

He introduced her as Caroline Wingate and the four of them talked for a moment while Wren helped her get out.

"Well, how do you like it?" Wren asked, slamming his closed fist on the car's front fender. "A beauty, isn't she? Belongs to Caroline's father. His voice trailed off and his eyes narrowed; he looked at the car speculatively and coolly, as if it were the future.

Then he became lively and jocular again. With a show of stealth, he put his index finger to his lips, glanced around, and picked up a large brown paper bag from the front seat of the car. "Hooch," he whispered. "Just off the boat. Cover me, mate; maybe we can make it to the house."

Dinner went well. Wren was more affable than Smith had seen him in years; Smith thought of himself and Wren and Dave Doyon on those distant Friday afternoons after class, drinking beers and talking together. The fiancee, Caroline, said little; she smiled happily as Wren joked and winked. It was an almost envious shock to Smith to realize that Wren genuinely loved this dark, pretty girl and that her silence was a result of an adoring affection for him.

Even Sharon lost some of her tension and tension; she smiled lightly and her daughter was spontaneous. Wren was playful and intimate with Sharon in a way, Smith realized, that he, her own husband, could never be; and Sharon seemed happier than she had been in months.

After dinner, Wren took the brown paper bag out of the fridge where he had previously placed it to cool down, and took out a series of dark brown bottles. It was a house brew that he made with great secrecy and ceremony in the closet of his bachelor apartment.

"No room for my clothes," he said, "but a man has to preserve his sense of values."

Carefully, with pinched eyes, the light glittered on his light skin and thin blond hair, like a chemist measuring a rare substance, he poured the beer from the bottles into glasses.

"You have to be careful with this stuff," he said. "You get a lot of sediment at the bottom, and if you pour it off too quickly, you get it in the jar."

They each drank a glass of beer and complimented Wren on his taste. It was actually surprisingly good, dry and light and of good color. Even Sharon drained her glass and took another.

They got a little drunk; they laughed vaguely and sentimentally; they saw themselves new.

Smith held his glass up to the light and said, "I wonder how Dave would have liked that beer." "Dave?" asked wren.

"Dave Doyon. Remember how he used to love beer?"

"Dave Doyon," Wren said. "Good old Dave. It's a bloody shame." "Doyon," said Sharon. She smiled vaguely. "Wasn't that our friend who died in the war?"

"Yes," said Smith. "That's the one." The old sadness came over him, but he smiled at Sharon.

"Good old Dave," Wren said. "Edie, your husband and I and Dave always rocked it - long before he knew about you, of course. Good old Dave..."

They smiled at the memory of Brian Doyon. "He was a good friend of yours?" asked Sharon. Smith nodded. "He was a good friend."

"Chateau-Thierry." Wren emptied his glass. "War is a damn thing." He shook his head. "But old Dave. He's probably laughing at us somewhere. He would not feel sorry for himself. I wonder if he ever really saw anything of France?"

"I don't know," Smith said. "He was killed so soon after he was over it."

"Too bad he didn't. I always thought that was one of the main reasons he joined. To see something of Europe."

"Europe," Sharon said clearly.

"Yes," Wren said. "Old Dave didn't want too many things, but he wanted to see Europe before he died."

"I wanted to go to Europe once," Sharon said. She smiled, and her eyes glistened helplessly. "Do you remember, Willy? I was on the road with my aunt Emma shortly before our wedding. Do you remember?"

"I remember," Smith said.

Sharon laughed crunching and shook her head as if she were confused. "It seems like a long time ago, but it wasn't. How long has it been, Willy?"

"Sharon...", Smith said.

"Let's see, we wanted to leave in April. And then a year. And now it's May. Suddenly, her eyes filled with tears, although she was still smiling with firm brightness. "I'll never be able to do it again now, I guess. Aunt Emma is going to die pretty soon, and I'll never get the chance to..."

Then, while the smile still warped her lips and her eyes poured of tears, she began to sob. Smith and Wren rose from their chairs.

"Sharon," Smith said helplessly.

"Oh, leave me alone!" With a strange rotational movement, she stood upright in front of them, her eyes firmly closed and her hands clenched on her sides. "All together! Just leave me alone!" And she turned around, stumbled into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

Nobody spoke for a moment; they listened to the muffled sound of Sharon's sobs. Then Smith said, "You'll have to excuse her. She was tired and not too good. The effort..."

"Sure, I know what it's like, Bill." Wren laughed hollowly. "Women and such. I guess I'll get used to it myself soon." He looked at Caroline, laughed again, and lowered his voice. "Well, we won't bother Edie now. You just say thank you for us, tell her it was a nice meal and you guys need to come over to our house after we're settled in."

"Thanks, George," Smith said. "I'll tell her."

"And don't worry," Wren said. He slapped Smith on the arm. "These things happen."

After George and Caroline left, after hearing the new car roar and roar off into the night, John Smith stood in the middle of the living room listening to Sharon's dry and regular sobs. It was a sound that was oddly flat and devoid of emotion, and it went on as if it would never end. He wanted to comfort her; he wanted to reassure her; but he didn't know what to say. So he stood and listened; and after a while he realized that he had never heard Sharon cry before. After the disastrous party with George Wren and Caroline Wingate, Sharon seemed almost content, calmer than she had ever been in their marriage. But she didn't want anyone and was reluctant to leave the apartment. Smith made most of his purchases from lists

Sharon wrote for him in a strangely labored and childish hand on small sheets of blue stationery. She seemed happiest when she was alone; she would sit for hours crocheting or embroidering tablecloths and napkins, with a tiny puckered smile on her lips. Her Aunt Emma Darley began to visit her more and more frequently; When John came home from university in the afternoon, he would often find the two together, drinking tea and talking at a volume so low it seemed like a whisper. They always greeted him politely, but John knew they looked upon him with regret; Mrs. Darley seldom stayed more than a few minutes after his arrival. He learned to view the world in which Sharon had begun to live in an unobtrusive and sensitive manner.

In the summer of 1920 he stayed with his parents for a week while Sharon visited relatives in St. Louis; he had not seen his mother and father since the wedding.

He worked a day or two in the fields, helping his father and the negro farmhand; but the slacking of the warm, damp clods under his feet and the smell of freshly turned earth in his nostrils evoked no sense of return or familiarity in him. He returned to Columbia and spent the rest of the summer preparing for a new class he would be teaching the following school year. He spent most of the day in the library, sometimes returning to Sharon and the apartment late at night through the heavy, sweet scent of honeysuckle stirring in the warm air and between the delicate leaves of dogwood trees rustling and turned, ghostly – as in the dark. His eyes burned from her concentration on weak lyrics,

A few new faces showed up at department meetings; some acquaintances were not there; and Bowman Quinn continued the slow decline that Smith began to notice during the war. His hands were shaking and he couldn't focus his attention on what he was saying. The department continued with the momentum it had gathered through its tradition and the mere fact of its existence.

Smith went about his teaching with an intensity and ferocity that impressed some of the newer members of the department and caused a little apprehension among colleagues who had known him longer. His face grew gaunt, he lost weight, and his shoulders slumped more. In the second semester of that year he had the opportunity to take on a teaching overload for additional payment, and he took it; also for payment he taught in the new summer school that year. He had vague notions of saving enough money to go abroad so he could show Sharon the Europe she had given up for him.

In the summer of 1921, in search of a clue to a forgotten Latin poem, he looked at his dissertation for the first time since he had submitted it for approval three years earlier; he read it through and found it valid. A little shocked by his presumptuousness, he considered adapting it into a book. Although he resumed teaching all summer, he reread most of the texts he had used and began to expand his research. In late January he decided a book was possible; in the early spring he was far enough to be able to write the first tentative pages.

It was in the spring of the same year that Sharon calmly and almost indifferently told him that she had decided she wanted a child. The decision came suddenly and for no apparent reason, so when she made the announcement one morning at breakfast, just minutes before John was due to leave for his first class, she spoke almost in surprise, as if she had made a discovery.

"What?" said John. "What did you say?"

"I want a baby," said Sharon. "I think I want to have a baby."

She nibbled on a piece of toast. She wiped her lips with the corner of a napkin and smiled stiffly.

"Don't you think we should have one?" She asked. "We've been married for almost three years."

"Of course," said John. He placed his cup on the saucer with great care. He didn't look at her. "Are you sure? We never talked about it. I don't want you to..."

"Oh yes," she said. "I'm pretty sure. I think we should have a kid."

John looked at his watch. "I'm late. I wish we had more time to talk.

A small frown appeared between her eyes. "I told you I'm sure. don't you want one Why are you asking me all the time? I do not want to talk about it anymore."

"All right," John said. He sat there for a moment and looked at her. "I have to go." But he didn't move. Then he awkwardly put his hand over her long fingers resting on the tablecloth and left them there until she pulled her hand away. He got up from the table and walked around her almost shyly, collecting his books and papers. As always, Sharon came into the living room to wait for him to leave. He kissed her on the cheek – something he hadn't done in a long time.

At the door, he turned and said, "I'm – I'm glad you want a child, Sharon. I owe you that our marriage was a disappointment in some ways. I hope it will make a difference between us. "

"Yes," said Sharon. "You'll be late for your class. You'd better hurry."

After he left, Sharon stayed in the center of the room for a few more minutes, staring at the closed door as if trying to remember something. Then she would move restlessly across the floor, going from one place to another, moving in her clothes as if she couldn't bear the rustling and moving on her skin. She unbuttoned her stiff gray taffeta dressing gown and let it fall to the floor. She crossed her arms across her breasts and hugged, kneading the flesh of her upper arms through her thin flannel nightgown. Again she paused in her movement and walked purposefully into the tiny bedroom and opened a closet door, on the inside of which hung a full-length mirror. She adjusted the mirror to the light and stepped away from it, to inspect the long thin figure in the smooth blue nightgown he was reflecting. Without taking her eyes off the mirror, she unbuttoned the bodice of her dress and pulled it up off her body and over her head, standing naked in the morning light. She balled up the nightgown and threw it in the closet. Then she turned in front of the mirror and examined the body as if it belonged to someone else. She ran her hands over her small sagging breasts and let her hands slide easily down her long waist and over her flat stomach. She balled up the nightgown and threw it in the closet. Then she turned in front of the mirror and examined the body as if it belonged to someone else. She ran her hands over her small sagging breasts and let her hands slide easily down her long waist and over her flat stomach. She balled up the nightgown and threw it in the closet. Then she turned in front of the mirror and examined the body as if it belonged to someone else. She ran her hands over her small sagging breasts and let her hands slide easily down her long waist and over her flat stomach.

She moved away from the mirror and went to the bed, which was still unmade. She took off the blankets, folded them carelessly and put them in the closet. She straightened the sheets on the bed and lay on her back, legs straight and arms at her sides. Unblinking and motionless, she stared at the ceiling, waiting out the morning and the long afternoon.

It was almost dark when John Smith got home that evening, but no light came from the second-story windows. A little anxious, he went up the stairs and turned on the light in the living room. The room was empty. He called out, "Sharon?"

There was no answer. He called again.

He looked into the kitchen; the breakfast dishes were still on the tiny table. He quickly walked across the living room and opened the bedroom door.

Sharon lay naked on the bare bed. When the door opened and the light from the living room fell on her, she turned her head towards him; but she didn't get up. Her eyes were wide and staring, and soft sounds came from her open mouth.

"Sharon!" he said and went to where she was lying and kneeling beside her. "Are you okay? What's the matter?"

She didn't answer, but the noises she'd been making grew louder and her body moved next to him. Suddenly her hands reached out for him like claws and almost flinched; but they went to his clothes and grabbed and tugged at them and pulled him onto the bed beside them. Her mouth drew near his, open and hot; her hands ran over him, tugging at his clothes, seeking him; and all the while her eyes were wide and fixed and unconcerned, as if they belonged to someone else and saw nothing. It was a new knowledge he had of Sharon, this need that was like a hunger so intense it seemed to have nothing to do with her self; and no sooner was it sated than it immediately began to grow again within her, so that they both lived in the tense anticipation of its presence.

Although the next two months were the only time of passion John and Sharon Smith ever had together, their relationship didn't really change. Very soon Smith realized that the force pulling their bodies together had little to do with love; They bonded with a fierce but distant determination, breaking apart and rebonding without the strength to meet their need.

Sometimes during the day, while John was at the university, Sharon felt the need so strong that she could not keep still; She left the apartment and quickly walked up and down the streets, aimlessly going from one place to another. And then she came back, drew the curtains on the windows, undressed, and huddled in the semidarkness for John to come home. And when he opened the door, she was on top of him, her hands wild and demanding as if they had a life of their own, pulling him into the bedroom, on the bed that was still crumpled from using it at night or in the morning before.

Sharon became pregnant in June and immediately succumbed to an illness from which she did not fully recover throughout the wait. Almost the moment she became pregnant, before the fact was confirmed by her calendar and her doctor, the hunger for John that had raged inside her for almost two months stopped. She made it clear to her husband that she could not bear the touch of his hand, and it began to seem to him that even the sight of him was some kind of injury. The hunger of their passion became a memory, and eventually Smith viewed it as a dream that had nothing to do with either of them.

Thus the bed that had been the scene of her passion became the prop of her illness. She stuck to it most of the day, only getting up in the morning to relieve her nausea and walking around the living room unsteadily for a few minutes in the afternoon. In the afternoons and evenings, after hurrying from his work at the university, John cleaned the rooms, washed the dishes, and made supper; he carried Sharon's dinner to her on a tray. Although she didn't want him to eat with her, she seemed to enjoy having a cup of weak tea with him after dinner. In the evenings they talked quietly and casually for a few moments, as if they were old friends or weary enemies. Sharon would fall asleep soon after; and John would return to the kitchen, do the chores and then set up a table in front of the sofa in the living room where he graded homework or prepared lectures. Then, after midnight, he covered himself with a blanket, which he kept neatly folded behind the couch; and with his length curled up on the couch he slept soundly until morning. The child, a girl, was born in mid-March 1923 after three days of labor. They named it Doris, after one of Sharon's aunts who had died many years earlier. was born in mid-March 1923 after three days of labor. They named it Doris, after one of Sharon's aunts who had died many years earlier. was born in mid-March 1923 after three days of labor. They named it Doris, after one of Sharon's aunts who had died many years earlier.

From birth, Doris was a beautiful child with strong features and a light mop of golden hair. Within a few days, the initial reddening of her skin turned a bright golden pink. She rarely cried and seemed almost aware of her surroundings. John fell in love with her immediately; the affection he could not give to Sharon he could give to his daughter, and he found a joy in caring for her that he did not expect.

Almost a year after Doris was born, Sharon remained partially bedridden; there was a fear that she might become a permanent invalid, although the doctor could not find any particular problems. John hired a woman to come in in the morning to look after Sharon and he arranged his classes so that he would be home by early afternoon.

So John ran the house for over a year and took care of two helpless people. He was up before sunrise, grading homework and preparing lectures; Before going to university, he fed Doris, made breakfast for himself and Sharon, and made himself lunch, which he took to school in his briefcase. After class, he came back to the apartment, which he swept, dusted, and cleaned.

And he was more of a mother than a father to his daughter. He changed the diapers and washed them; he selected their clothes and repaired them when they were torn; he fed her and bathed her and cradled her in his arms when she was distressed. Every now and then Sharon would call out for her baby angrily; John brought Doris to her and Sharon held her propped up in the bed for a few moments, silent and uneasy, as if the child belonged to someone else who was a stranger. Then she would get tired and give the baby back to John with a sigh. Moved by some obscure emotion, she cried a little, dabbed at her eyes, and turned away from him.

Thus, in the first year of her life, Doris Smith only knew her father's touch, his voice and his love.

Chapter 6

Early in the summer of 1924, on a Friday afternoon, Bowman Quinn was seen by several students walking into his office. He was spotted just after dawn the following Monday by a janitor who was going through the offices in Jesse Hall to empty the bins. Quinn sat rigidly slumped in his chair in front of his desk, head at an odd angle, eyes open and fixed in a horrible stare. The caretaker spoke to him and then ran screaming through the empty corridors. There was some delay in removing the body from the office, and a few early students wandered the corridors as the strangely hunchbacked and blanket-clad figure was carried on a gurney down the steps to the waiting ambulance. Later it was found that Quinn had died sometime late Friday evening or early Saturday morning. of obvious natural but never precisely determined causes, and had sat at his desk staring interminably all weekend. The medical examiner gave the cause of death as heart failure, but John Smith always felt that in a moment of anger and despair, Quinn had silenced his heart, as if in a last silent gesture of love and contempt for a world that had betrayed him so deep he couldn't bear it.

Smith was one of the pallbearers at the funeral. At services, he couldn't focus on the pastor's words, but he knew they were empty. He remembered Quinn when he first saw him in the classroom; he remembered their first conversations together; and he thought of the slow decline of that man who had been his distant friend. Later, after the service, as he lifted the handle of the gray box and helped carry it to the hearse, what he was carrying seemed so light that he couldn't believe there was anything in the narrow box.

Quinn had no family; only his colleagues and a few people from the town gathered around the narrow pit and listened in awe, embarrassment and respect as the minister spoke his words. And because he had no family or loved ones to mourn his death, it was Smith who wept as the coffin was lowered, as if that weeping could lessen the loneliness of the final descent. Whether he cried for himself, for that part of his history and youth that passed to earth, or whether he cried for the poor thin form that once held the man he loved, he didn't know.

George Wren drove him back into town and they didn't speak for most of the drive. Then, as they neared town, George asked about Sharon; John said something and asked about Caroline. answered George, and there was a long silence. Just before they drove to John's apartment, George Wren spoke a word.

"I don't know. Throughout the service, I kept thinking about Dave Doyon. Of Dave dying in France and old Quinn sitting at his desk there, dead two days; as if they were the same ways of dying. I never knew Quinn very well, but I guess he was a good man, at least that's what I hear he used to be. And now we have to get someone else and find a new chair for the department. It's like everything spins and turns and keeps going. One wonders."

"Yes," John said and didn't speak further. But for a moment he was very fond of George Wren; and as he got out of the car and watched George drive away, he felt the sharp knowledge that another part of himself, his past, was slowly, almost imperceptibly, pulling away from him, into the darkness. In addition to his duties as Deputy Dean, George Wren was appointed Interim Chair of the English Faculty; and it became his immediate duty to find a replacement for Bowman Quinn.

It was July before the matter was settled. Then Wren called the members of the department who had stayed in Columbia over the summer and announced the change. It was, Wren told the small group, a 19th-century specialist, Robin N. Loomis, who had recently received his PhD. from Harvard University, but had nevertheless taught for several years at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. He came with high recommendations, had already started publishing, and was hired at the assistant professor level. There are, Wren pointed out, no plans for the department chair at this time; Wren was to remain interim chairman for at least another year.

For the remainder of the summer, Loomis remained a mysterious figure and the subject of speculation among permanent faculty members. The articles he had published in the magazines were dug up, read, and passed around with careful nods. Loomis did not appear during New Student Week, nor was he present at the Friday general faculty meeting prior to Monday's student enrollment. And at registration, the members of the department, who sat in a row behind the long desks, wearily helping the students choose their courses and assisting them with the deadly routine of filling out forms, stole a glance around for a new face. Loomis still didn't show up.

He was only seen at the department meeting late Tuesday afternoon after registration was completed. By this time, stunned by the monotony of the past two days and yet tense with the excitement of beginning a new school year, the English faculty had all but forgotten about Loomis. They lounged in desk chairs in a large auditorium in the east wing of Jesse Hall and looked up with disdainful but tense anticipation to the dais where George Wren stood, eyeing them with massive benevolence. A low babble of voices filled the room; Chairs scraped the floor; every now and then someone laughed deliberately and harshly. George Wren raised his right hand and held it out to his audience, palm outward; the hum quietened a little.

It was so quiet that everyone in the room could hear the door at the back of the ll creaking open and a distinctive, slow shuffling of feet on the bare wooden floor. They turned; and the hum of their conversation died away. Someone whispered, "It's Loomis," and the sound was sharp and audible across the room.

He'd come through the door, closed it, and walked a few steps over the threshold, where he now stood. He was a man barely over five feet tall, and his body was grotesquely misshapen. A small hump raised his left shoulder to his neck, and his left arm hung limp at his side. His torso was heavy and hunched, so he always seemed to be struggling for balance; his legs were thin and he walked with a jerk in his stiff right leg. For a few moments he stood with his blond head bowed as if inspecting his highly polished black shoes and the sharp crease of his black pants. Then he lifted his head and shot out his right arm, exposing a stiff piece of white cuff with gold links; in its long pale fingers stuck out a cigarette. He took a deep drag, inhaled, and expelled the smoke in a thin stream.

It was the face of a matinee idol. Long and thin and agile, it was nonetheless strongly marked; his forehead was high and narrow, thickly veined, and his thick, flowing hair, the color of ripe wheat, was swept back from it in a somewhat theatrical pompadour. He dropped his cigarette on the floor, crushed it under the sole of his foot and spoke.

"I'm Loomis." He stopped; his voice, rich and deep, articulated his words precisely, with a dramatic resonance. "I hope I didn't disturb your meeting." The meeting went on, but no one paid much attention to what George Wren said. Loomis sat alone in the back of the room, smoking and gazing up at the high ceiling, seemingly oblivious to the heads that occasionally turned to look at him. After the meeting ended, he remained seated in his chair and allowed his colleagues to come up, introduce themselves, and say what they had to say. He greeted them briefly with a courtesy that was oddly derisive.

Over the next few weeks, it became clear that Loomis had no intention of blending into the social, cultural, and academic life of Columbia, Missouri. Though ironically friendly with his colleagues, he did not accept or attend to social gatherings; he didn't even attend the annual Dean Claremont open house, though the event was so traditional that attendance was almost mandatory; he has not been seen at any of the university concerts or lectures; it was said that his teaching was lively and his behavior in class was eccentric. He was a popular teacher; Students crowded around his desk in his spare time and followed him into the hallways. He was known to occasionally invite groups of students into his rooms,

John Smith wanted to get to know him better, but he didn't know how to go about it. He spoke to him when he had something to say and he invited him to dinner. When Loomis answered him like everyone else – ironically politely and impersonally – and when he declined the invitation to dinner, Smith couldn't think of anything else.

It took Smith some time to realize the source of his attraction to Robin Loomis. In Loomis' arrogance, dexterity, and cheerful bitterness, Smith saw a distorted but recognizable image of his friend Brian Doyon. He wanted to talk to him like he had talked to Dave; but he could not, even after acknowledging his desire. The clumsiness of his youth had not deserted him, but the zeal and straightforwardness that would have made the friendship possible had. He knew what he wanted was impossible, and the knowledge made him sad. In the evenings, after tidying up the apartment, washing the dishes and laying Doris in a cot in the corner of the living room, he worked on the revision of his book. By the end of the year it was ready;

The confirmation of his promotion came a few weeks after the acceptance of his book; On that assurance, Sharon announced that she and the baby would be spending a week in St. Louis to visit her parents.

She returned to Columbia in less than a week, harried and weary but secretly triumphant. She had broken off her visit because worrying about an infant had been too much for her mother and the trip had exhausted her so much that she could no longer look after Doris herself. But she had achieved something. She pulled a stack of papers from her bag and handed a small piece of paper to John.

It was a check for six thousand dollars made out to Mr. and Mrs. John

Smith and signed in Horace Bostwick's bold, almost illegible scrawl. "What is that?" asked Smith.

She handed him the other papers. "It's a loan," she said. "All you have to do to sign these.

"But six thousand dollars! What is it for?"

"A house," said Sharon. "A real house for us."

John Smith looked at the papers again, flipped through them quickly and said, "Sharon, we can't do this. I'm sorry, but – look, I'm only going to be sixteen hundred next year making more than sixty dollars a month – that's almost half my salary. And then there are taxes and insurance and - I just don't see how we're supposed to do that. I wish you had spoken to me."

Her face grew sad; she turned away from him. "I wanted to surprise you. I can do so little

He protested that he was grateful, but Sharon would not be comforted.

"I was thinking about you and the baby," she said. "You could study and

Doris could have a yard to play in."

"I know," John said. "Maybe in a couple of years."

"In a few years," repeated Sharon. There was silence. Then she said dully, "I can't live like this. No more. In a flat. No matter where I go, I can hear you and the baby and – the smell. -endure-the-smell! Day after day the smell of diapers and – I can't stand it and I can't get away from it. Don't you know? Don't you know? ''

In the end they took the money. Smith decided he could give up teaching the summers he had promised himself to study and write, at least for a few years.

Sharon took it upon herself to look for the house. Throughout late spring and early summer she was tireless in her quest, which seemed to bring about an immediate cure from her illness. As soon as John got home from class, she would go out and often didn't return until dusk. Sometimes she walked and sometimes she drove around with Caroline Wren, who she had casually befriended. In late June she discovered the house she wanted; She signed an option to purchase and agreed to take possession by mid-August.

It was an old two-story house a few blocks from campus; it had been let down by its evil owners, the dark green paint was peeling off the boards, and the lawn was brown and overgrown with weeds. But the yard was large and the house spacious; it had a decrepit grandeur that Sharon could imagine renewed.

She borrowed another five hundred dollars from her father for furniture between the summer session and the start of the fall semester

John repainted the house; Sharon wanted it white and he had to put on three coats to keep the dark green from showing through. Suddenly, in the first week of September, Sharon decided she wanted a party — a housewarming party, as she called it. She made the announcement with some determination, as if it were a fresh start.

They invited all the members of the department who had returned from their summer vacation, as well as some of Sharon's acquaintances from town; Robin Loomis surprised everyone by accepting the invitation, the first he had accepted since arriving in Columbia a year earlier. Smith found a bootlegger and bought several bottles of gin; George Wren promised to bring some beer; and Sharon's Aunt Emma contributed two bottles of aged sherry for those who didn't want to drink hard liquor. Sharon was reluctant to serve alcohol at all; it was technically illegal to do so. But Caroline Wren indicated that nobody at the university would think it was really inappropriate, and so she was persuaded.

Autumn came early this year. On September 10, the day before registration, light snow fell; during the night a hard frost gripped the land. By the end of the week, party time, the chill had settled down to just a chill in the air; but the trees were leafless, the grass was beginning to brown, and there was a general bareness that heralded a harsh winter. The cool weather outside, the bare poplars and elms that stood bare in their garden, and the warmth and venerable implements of the party to come inside reminded John Smith of another day. For a while he couldn't decide what he was trying to remember – then he realized that on such a day almost seven years ago he had gone to Josiah Claremont's house and seen Sharon for the first time. It seemed far away, and long ago; he could not appreciate the changes these few years had brought about.

For most of the week leading up to the party, Sharon was in a frenzy of preparation; she hired a Negro girl for a week to help with the preparations and minister, and the two scrubbed the floors and walls, waxed the wood, dusted and cleaned the furniture, arranged and rearranged it—so that the night of the party, Sharon was in a state of exhaustion. There were dark pits under her eyes and her voice was on the faint edge of hysteria. At six o'clock – the guests were supposed to arrive at seven – she counted the glasses again and found that she didn't have enough for the expected guests. She burst into tears and rushed upstairs sobbing that she didn't care what happened, she wouldn't come back down. Smith tried to calm her down but she did not answer him. He told her not to worry that he would get the glasses. He told the maid that he would be back soon and rushed out of the house. For almost an hour he searched for a shop that was still open where he could buy glasses; when he found one, selected the glasses and returned to the house, it was well after seven and the first guests had arrived. Sharon was among them in the living room, smiling and chatting as if she had no worries or apprehensions; She casually greeted John and told him to take the package to the kitchen. smiling and chatting as if she had no care or concern; She casually greeted John and told him to take the package to the kitchen. smiling and chatting as if she had no care or concern;

The party was like many others. The conversation began haphazardly, gathering a quick but feeble energy and meaninglessly merging into other conversations; the laughter was quick and nervous, bursting like tiny explosives in a continuous but disjointed barrage across the room; and the members of the party flowed casually from one place to another, as if silently occupying shifting strategic positions. A few of them wandered the house like spies, led by either Sharon or John, commenting on the superiority of older houses like this one over the newer, weaker buildings being erected here and there on the outskirts of town.

By ten o'clock most of the guests had taken plates of sliced cold turkey ham, pickled apricots and the varied garnish of tiny tomatoes, celery stalks, olives, pickles, crunchy radishes and small raw cauliflower ears; some were drunk and did not want to eat. By eleven most of the guests had gone; among those who stayed were George and Caroline Wren, some members of the department whom Smith had known for several years, and Robin Loomis. Loomis was fairly drunk, if not intrusive; he walked cautiously, as if carrying a burden over uneven ground, and his thin, pale face shone through a film of sweat. The alcohol loosened his tongue; and although he spoke precisely, his voice lost the touch of irony and he appeared without defense.

He spoke of the loneliness of his childhood in Ohio, where his father had been a fairly successful small business owner; he spoke, as if from another man, of the loneliness forced upon him by his deformity, of the early shame that had no source he could understand and no defense he could muster. And as he recounted the long days and evenings spent alone in his room, reading to escape the limitations his twisted body imposed on him, and gradually finding a sense of freedom that grew more intense than he understood the nature of liberty—as he related it, John Smith felt a kinship he had not suspected; he knew Loomis had undergone a kind of conversion, an epiphany of knowing through words, that couldn't be put into words, as Smith himself had once done in Bowman Quinn's class. Loomis had figured it out early and alone, so the knowledge was more a part of himself than a part of Smith; but what mattered most in the end, the two men were alike, though neither would admit it to the other, or even to themselves.

They talked until almost four in the morning; and though they drank more, their conversation grew fainter and fainter until finally no one spoke. They sat huddled together amidst the debris of the party like an island, huddled together for warmth and safety. After a while, George and Caroline Wren got up and offered to drive Loomis to his rooms. Loomis shook Smith's hand, asked him about his book, and wished him success with it; he walked over to Sharon, who was sitting up straight in a straight chair, and took her hand; He thanked her for the party. Then, as if on a silent impulse, he leaned forward a little and touched her lips to his; Sharon's hand stroked his hair lightly and they stayed like that for a few moments while the others watched.

Smith escorted his guests out the front door and lingered for a few moments watching them descend the steps and step out of the porch light. The cold air wrapped around him and clung to him; he took a deep breath, and the sharp cold invigorated him. Reluctantly he closed the door and turned around; the living room was empty; Sharon had already gone upstairs. He turned off the light and walked through the cluttered room to the stairs. Already the house became familiar to him; He grabbed a balustrade he couldn't see and let himself be led upstairs. When he got to the top of the stairs, he could see his way as the hallway was lit by the light from the half-open bedroom door. The boards creaked as he walked down the hall and into the bedroom.

Sharon's clothes lay tangled on the floor by the bed, whose covers had been carelessly thrown back; she lay naked and gleaming in the light on the white unfolded sheet. Her body was limp and wanton in its naked spread and it shone like pale gold. John approached the bed. She was sound asleep, but her slightly open mouth seemed to form the silent words of passion and love in a play of light. He stood there for a long time and looked at her. He felt distant pity and reluctant friendship and intimate respect; and he felt a tired sadness too, for he knew that the sight of her could no longer bring upon him the torment of desire he had once known, and he knew that he would never again be so moved as he was by hers presence had been moved.

The next morning Sharon was sick and tired and she spent the day in her room.

John cleaned the house and took care of his daughter. On Monday he saw Loomis and spoke to him with a warmth that came from the night of partying; Loomis answered him with an irony that resembled cold rage and didn't talk about the party that day or after. It was as if he had discovered an enmity that separated him from Smith and he would not let go of it. As John had feared, the house soon proved to be an almost destructive financial burden. Although he apportioned his salary with some care, he always found himself penniless at the end of the month, and each month he reduced the steadily dwindling reserve he had made from his summer classes. In the first year they owned the house, he missed two payments to Sharon's father,

Nonetheless, he began to find a joy in possession and a comfort he did not expect. His study was on the first floor, next to the living room, and had a high north-facing window; During the day the room was softly lit and the wood paneling shone with the richness of time. He found a lot of planks in the basement that matched the room's paneling under the traces of dirt and mildew. He replicated these boards and built bookshelves so that he could be surrounded by his books; At a used furniture store, he found a few beat-up chairs, a couch, and an ancient desk that he paid a few dollars for and spent many weeks repairing.

As he worked on the room and it slowly began to take shape, he realized that for many years, without knowing it, he had locked away an image somewhere inside him like a shamed secret, an image that supposedly represented a place but it was actually by himself. So it was he he was trying to define as he worked on his study. As he sanded the old planks for his bookshelves and watched the surface roughness disappear, the gray weathering flaked off to essential wood and finally a rich purity of grain and texture -

- when he repaired his furniture and set it up in the room, he slowly formed himself, it was himself that he brought into a kind of order, it was he that he made possible.

So, despite the periodic pressures of debt and hardship, the next few years were happier, and he lived much of the life he had dreamed of as a young student in grad school and when he first married. Sharon did not participate in as much of his life as he had once hoped; in fact, it appeared they had entered into a long truce that amounted to a stalemate. They spent most of their lives apart; Sharon kept the house, which rarely had visitors, in pristine condition. When she wasn't sweeping or dusting or washing or polishing, she stayed in her room and seemed content with that. She never entered John's study; it was as if it didn't exist for her.

John was still most worried about her daughter. In the afternoons, when he came home from university, he would take Doris out of the upstairs bedroom, which he had converted into a nursery, and let her play in the study while he worked. She played calmly and contentedly on the floor, content to be alone. Now and then John spoke to her and she paused to look at him with quiet and slow delight.

Sometimes he asked students to come by for conferences and talks. He brewed them tea on a small hot plate he kept by his desk and felt an uneasy affection for them as they sat sheepishly in the chairs, noting his library and complimenting him on his daughter's beauty. He apologized for his wife's absence and explained her illness, finally realizing that his repeated apologies emphasized rather than explained her absence; He said no more, hoping his silence was less compromising than his explanations.

Apart from Sharon's absence, his life was almost as he wished it would be. He studied and wrote when he wasn't preparing for class, grading homework, or reading dissertations. In time he hoped to make a name for himself both as a scholar and as a teacher. His expectations of his first book had been both cautious and modest, and they had been reasonable; One reviewer had called it a "pedestrian" and another "a competent survey." At first he had been very proud of the book; he had held it in his hands and stroked its plain cover and turned its pages. It looked delicate and alive, like a child. He had read it again in print, slightly surprised that it was neither better nor worse, than he thought. After a while he got tired of looking at it; but he never thought of it, and its authorship, without a sense of wonder and disbelief at his own boldness and the responsibility he had assumed.

Chapter 7

One evening in the spring of 1927, John Smith came home late. The scent of budding flowers mingled and hung in the warm, humid air; crickets buzzed in the shadows; in the distance, a lone car kicked up dust and sent a loud, defiant clatter into the stillness. He walked slowly, caught in the drowsiness of a new season, amused by the tiny green buds glowing in the shadows of bushes and trees.

As he entered the house, Sharon was standing at the other end of the living room, holding the phone to her ear and looking at him.

"You're late," she said.

"Yes," he said kindly. "We had an oral examination."

She handed him the phone. "It's for you, long-distance. Someone's been trying to reach you all afternoon.

John picked up the phone and spoke into the mouthpiece. Nobody answered. "Hello," he said again.

A man's thin, unfamiliar voice answered him. "That Bill Smith?"

"Yes who is that?"

"You do not know me. I stopped by and your mother asked me to call. I've been trying all afternoon."

"Yes," said Smith. His hand holding the mouthpiece was shaking. "What is wrong?"

"It's your pa," said the voice. "I don't quite know how to begin."

The dry, laconic, frightened voice continued, and John Smith listened to it dully, as if it had no existence beyond the receiver he held to his ear. What he heard concerned his father. He had been feeling bad (said the voice) for almost a week; and because his field hand could not keep up with the furrowing and planting alone, and although he had a high fever, he had left early in the morning to plant something. His field hands had found him that morning, lying face down in the shattered field, unconscious. He had carried him into the house, put him to bed, and gone to fetch a doctor; but by noon he was dead.

"Thanks for calling," Smith said mechanically. "Tell my mother I'll be there tomorrow."

He hung the receiver back on the hook and stared for a long time at the bell-shaped mouthpiece attached to the slim black cylinder. He turned and looked at the room. Sharon looked at him expectantly. "Well, what is it?" She asked.

"It's my dad," Smith said. "He is dead."

"Oh, Willie!" Said Sharon. Then she nodded. "Then you'll probably be gone for the rest of the week."

"Yes," said Smith.

"Then I'll get Aunt Emma to come over and help with Doris." "Yes," Smith said mechanically. "Yes."

He got someone to cover his classes for the rest of the week and caught the bus to Booneville early the next morning. The highway from Columbia to Kansas City that cut through Booneville was the one he had taken seventeen years ago when he first came to the university; now it was wide and paved, and neat, straight fences enclosed fields of wheat and corn that flashed past him outside the bus window.

Booneville hadn't changed much in the years he hadn't seen it. A few new buildings had sprung up, a few old ones had been demolished; but the city retained its bareness and plainness, and looked still, as if it were only a temporary institution, which could be dispensed with at any time. Though most of the streets had been paved in recent years, a thin veil of dust hung over the town and a few steel-wheeled horse-drawn carts were still around, and the wheels sometimes spat sparks as they scraped the concrete pavement of the street and curb.

The house hadn't changed much either. It was perhaps drier and grayer than before; not even a speck of paint remained on the clapboards, and the unpainted wood of the porch sagged a little closer to the bare earth.

There were some people in the house – neighbors – that Smith didn't remember; A tall, haggard man in a black suit, white shirt and tie leaned over his mother, who was sitting on a straight chair next to the narrow wooden box containing his father's body. Smith walked through the room. The great man saw him and walked towards him; the man's eyes were gray and flat like glazed pottery shards. A deep and supple baritone voice, muffled and thick, uttered a few words; the man called Smith "brother" and spoke of "bereavement" and "God who took away" and wanted to know if Smith wanted to pray with him. Smith walked past the man and stood in front of his mother; her face swam in front of him.

Through a blurry vision, he saw her nod at him and get up from the chair. She took his arm and said, "You're going to want to see your pa."

With a touch so faint he barely felt it, she led him to the side of the open coffin. He looked down. He looked until his eyes cleared, and then he flinched, startled. The body he saw seemed to be that of a stranger; it was shriveled and tiny, and its face was like a thin brown paper mask, with black deep indentations where the eyes should have been. The dark blue suit that encased the body was grotesquely large, and the hands folded out of the sleeves across the chest were like the dried claws of an animal. Smith turned to his mother and he knew the horror he felt was in his eyes.

"Your da's lost a lot of weight in the last week or two," she said. "I asked him not to go to the field but he got up before I was awake and was gone. he was crazy He was just so sick he was crazy and didn't know what he was The doctor said it must have been him or he wouldn't have made it.

As she spoke, Smith saw her clearly; it was as if she too were dead as she spoke, a part of her irretrievably disappeared into that box with her husband, never to reappear. He saw her now; her face was thin and sunken; even at rest it was so drawn that the tips of her teeth were exposed beneath her thin lips. She walked as if she had no weight or strength. He murmured a word and left the salon; he went into the room in which he had grown up and stood in his bareness. His eyes were hot and dry and he couldn't cry.

He made the arrangements that needed to be made for the funeral and signed the papers that needed to be signed. Like all country folk, his parents had a burial policy, for which they had set aside a few pennies every week for most of their lives, even in the time of greatest need. There was something pathetic about the policies his mother pulled out of an old suitcase in her bedroom; the gilding of the intricate print was beginning to peel and the cheap paper was brittle with age. He spoke to his mother about the future; he wanted her to return to Columbia with him. There was enough room, he said, and (he winced at the lie) Sharon would welcome her company.

But his mother would not return with him. "I wouldn't feel right," she said. "Your father and I - I've lived here most of my life. I just don't think I could settle down and be comfortable anywhere else. And besides, Tobe" - Smith recalled that Tobe was the field hand the Negro his father had employed many years ago - "Tobe said he would stay here as long as I needed him. He got him a nice room in the basement.

Smith argued with her, but she wouldn't budge. Finally he realized that she only wanted to die, where she had lived; and he knew she deserved what little dignity she could find in doing what she wanted to do.

They buried his father in a small plot on the outskirts of Booneville, and John returned to the farm with his mother. That night he could not sleep. He dressed and went into the field his father had tilled year after year to the finish he had now found. He tried to remember his father, but couldn't think of the face he'd known when he was young. He knelt in the field and picked up a dry clod of earth. He broke it and watched the grains, dark in the moonlight, crumble and flow through his fingers. He ran his hand down his pant leg, got up and walked back to the house. He wasn't sleeping; he lay on the bed and looked out the only window until dawn came, until there were no more shadows on the land,

After his father's death, Smith took weekend trips to the farm as often as he could; and every time he saw his mother, he saw her grow thinner and paler and quieter, until at last it seemed only her sunken, bright eyes lived. In her last days she didn't speak to him at all; Her eyes flickered faintly as she stared up from her bed, and an occasional small sigh escaped her lips.

He buried her next to her husband. After the services ended and the few mourners left, he stood alone in a cold November wind and surveyed the two graves, one open to his burden, the other on a hilltop and covered by a thin tuft of grass. He turned to the bare, treeless little lot where others like his mother and father lived, and looked across the flat country towards the farm where he had been born and where his mother and father had spent their years. He thought of the cost the soil demanded year after year; and it remained as it had been – a little more barren perhaps, a little more sparse in growth. Nothing had changed. Her life had been spent in joyless toil, her will broken, her intelligence stunned. Now they were on the earth they had given their lives to; and slowly, year by year, the earth would take them. Slowly the dampness and rot would infest the pine boxes that held their bodies, and slowly it would touch their flesh, and eventually they would consume the last traces of their substance. And they would become a meaningless part of this unruly earth they had long ago given themselves over to.

He let Tobe stay at the farm for the winter; in the spring of 1928 he offered the farm for sale. The understanding was that Tobe was to stay on the farm until it was sold and anything he raised would be his. Tobe cleaned up the apartment as best he could, repaired the house and repainted the little barn. Nevertheless, Smith did not find a suitable buyer until early spring 1929. He accepted the first offer he received of just over two thousand dollars; he gave Tobe a few hundred dollars and sent the rest to his father-in-law at the end of August to help reduce the debt on the Columbia home. In October of that year, the stock market crashed and local newspapers ran stories of Wall Street, fortunes shattered and great lives transformed. Few people in Colombia were; touched; It was a conservative community and almost none of the townsfolk had money in the form of stocks or bonds. But news of bank failures swept across the country, and the beginning uncertainty touched some of the townspeople; A few peasants withdrew their savings, and a few more (at the urging of local bankers) increased their deposits. But no one was really concerned until news broke of the collapse of a small private bank, the Merchant's Trust, in St. Louis. A few peasants withdrew their savings, and a few more (at the urging of local bankers) increased their deposits. But no one was really concerned until news broke of the collapse of a small private bank, the Merchant's Trust, in St. Louis. A few peasants withdrew their savings, and a few more (at the urging of local bankers) increased their deposits. But no one was really concerned until news broke of the collapse of a small private bank, the Merchant's Trust, in St. Louis.

Smith was having lunch in the college cafeteria when the news broke, and he immediately went home to tell Sharon. The Merchant's Trust was the bank that held the mortgage on her house and the bank of which Sharon's father was president. Sharon called St. Louis that afternoon and spoke to her mother; her mother was cheerful and she told Sharon that Mr Bostwick had reassured her not to worry that everything would be all right in a few weeks.

Three days later, Horace Bostwick was dead, a suicide. One morning he went into his office at the bank in an unusually cheerful mood; He greeted several bank employees who were still working behind the bank's closed doors, went into his office after telling his secretary he would not be receiving any calls, and locked his door. At around 10:00 am., he shot himself in the head with a revolver he'd bought the day before and brought in his briefcase. He left no note; but the papers, neatly arranged on his desk, said all he had to tell. And what he had to say was simply financial ruin. Like his Boston father, he had invested imprudently, not only his own money but the bank's as well; and its ruin was so complete that he could not imagine any relief. As it turned out, the ruin wasn't as complete as he thought at the moment of his suicide. After the estate was settled, the family home remained intact, and a few smaller properties on the outskirts of St. Louis were enough to provide his wife with a small income for the rest of her life.

But this was not immediately known. John Smith received the 11 phone informing him of Horace Bostwick's ruin and suicide, and broke the news to Sharon as gently as his estrangement from her would allow.

Sharon took the news calmly, almost as if she'd expected it. She looked at Smith wordlessly for several moments; then she shook her head and said absently, "Poor mother. what will she do There was always someone to take care of her.

Smith said, 'Tell her' - he paused, embarrassed - 'tell her that if she wants, she can come to us. She will be welcome."

Sharon smiled at him with an odd mixture of affection and contempt. "Oh, Willy. She would rather die herself. Do not you know that?"

Smith nodded. "I think so," he said.

On the evening of the day Smith received the call, Sharon left Columbia to go to St. Louis for the funeral and stay there as long as it was needed. When she was gone for a week, Smith received a brief message informing him that she would be staying with her mother for another two weeks, maybe longer. She had been gone for almost two months, and John was alone in the big house with his daughter.

For the first few days, the emptiness of the house was strange and unexpectedly unsettling. But he got used to the emptiness and began to enjoy it; within a week he knew he was happier than he had been in years, and as he thought of Sharon's inevitable return, it was with a faint regret that he no longer had to hide from himself.

Doris had celebrated her sixth birthday in the spring of that year, and in the fall she began her first year at school. Smith got her ready for school every morning, and in the afternoon he was back from the university in time to greet her when she came home.

At six, Doris was a tall, slender child with more blond than red hair; Her skin was perfectly fair and her eyes were dark blue, almost purple. She was calm and cheerful, and she took pleasure in things that made her father feel like nostalgic awe.

Sometimes Doris played with the neighbors' children, but more often she sat with her father in his large study and watched him correct his homework, read or write. She spoke to him and they talked – so softly and gravely that John Smith was touched by a tenderness he had never anticipated. Doris would draw playful and adorable pictures on yellow paper and ceremonially present them to her father or read to him from her first grader. When Smith put her to bed at night and returned to his study, he was aware of her absence in his room and comforted by the knowledge that she slept safely above him. In a way he was scarcely aware of, he began raising her and he watched with wonder and love as

Sharon didn't return to Columbia until after the first of the year, John said

Smith and his daughter spent Christmas alone. On Christmas morning they exchanged gifts; For her father, who didn't smoke, Doris had modeled a clumsy ashtray in the cautiously progressive school attached to the university. John gave her a new dress that he picked out himself at a downtown store, several books, and a paint set. They sat in front of the little tree for most of the day, rejoicing and watching the lights twinkle on the ornaments and the tinsel flashing from the dark green fir like buried fire.

During the Christmas break, that odd, soaring lull in the hectic semester, John Smith began to see two things: he began to understand how central Doris had become to his existence, and he began to understand that he could possibly be a good one Become a teacher.

He was ready to admit that he hadn't been a good teacher. Ever since he'd fumbled through his first freshman English courses, he'd been aware of the gap that existed between what he felt about his subject and what he delivered in the classroom. He had hoped that time and experience would mend the rift; but they hadn't. The things he held most deeply were betrayed most deeply when he spoke about them in front of his classes; the liveliest withered in his words; and what moved him most became cold in utterance. And the awareness of his inadequacy tormented him so much that the feeling of it became a habit, as much a part of him as the hunching of his shoulders.

But at times during the weeks Sharon was in St. Louis lecturing, he became so absorbed in his subject that he forgot his inadequacy, himself, and even the students before him. At times he would be so caught up in his enthusiasm that he would stutter, gesticulate, and ignore the lecture notes that usually guided his lectures. At first he was troubled by his outbursts, as if dealing too intimately with his subject, and he apologized to his students; but when they approached him after class and began to show in their papers hints of fantasy and manifestations of timid love, he was encouraged to do what he had never been taught. The love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and of the heart,

He was both saddened and encouraged by his discovery of what he could do; Beyond his intention, he felt he had betrayed both his students and himself. The students who had hitherto been able to drag themselves through his courses by repeating mechanical steps began to look at him with wonder and resentment; those who had not taken his courses began to attend his lectures and nod to him in the halls. He spoke more confidently and felt a warm, hard severity rise in him. He guessed he was ten years late in finding out who he was; and the form he saw was both more and less than he had once imagined. He finally felt like a teacher, I was just a man faithful to his book,

When Sharon returned from St. Louis, she found him changed in ways she couldn't understand but was immediately aware of. She returned without warning on an afternoon train and walked through the living room into the study, where her husband and daughter sat quietly. She had wanted to shock them both with her sudden presence and with her changed appearance; but when John looked up at her and she saw the surprise in his eyes, she knew at once that the real change had come upon him, and that it was so profound that the effect of her appearance was lost; and she thought to herself, a little absent and yet surprised, I know him better than I ever thought.

John was surprised at her presence and her changed appearance, but both couldn't move him now like they might have done before. He looked at her for a few moments, then got up from his desk, walked across the room and greeted her gravely.

Sharon had cut her hair short and wore one of those hats over it that hugged her head so tightly that the cropped hair was snug against her face like an irregular frame; Her lips were painted a bright orange-red, and two small smudges of blush sharpened her cheekbones. She was wearing one of those short dresses that had become fashionable among younger women in recent years; it hung straight down from her shoulders and ended just above her knees. She smiled sheepishly at her husband and walked across the room to her daughter who was sitting on the floor looking at her calmly and eagerly. She knelt awkwardly, her new dress snug around her legs.

"Gracie, honey," she said in a voice that seemed strained and brittle to John, "did you miss your mommy? Did you think she would never come back?"

Doris kissed her mother on the cheek and looked at her seriously. "You look scared," she said.

Sharon laughed and got up off the floor; She spun around and held her hands above her head. "I have a new dress and new shoes and a new hairdo. Do you like them?"

Doris nodded doubtfully. "You look different," she said again.

Sharon's smile widened; there was a pale lipstick stain on one of her teeth. She turned to John and asked, "Do I look different?"

"Yes," John said. "Very charming. Very pretty."

She laughed at him and shook her head. "Poor Willy," she said. Then she turned back to her daughter. "I'm different, I think," she told her. "I really think I am."

But John Smith knew she was talking to him. And in that moment, somehow, he also knew that, beyond her intention or understanding, Sharon was trying to announce a new declaration of war on him.

Chapter 8

The statement was part of the change Sharon began to bring about in the weeks she spent "at home" in St. Louis after her father's death. And it was intensified and finally reinforced by that other change that reached and slowly overcame John Smith after he discovered that he could be a good teacher.

Sharon had remained oddly unmoved at her father's funeral. During the elaborate ceremonies she sat erect and hard-faced, and her expression did not change as she had to pass her father's body, radiant and plump in the ornate coffin. But in the cemetery, as the coffin was lowered into the narrow hole covered by artificial turf, she lowered her expressionless face into her hands, not lifting it until someone touched her shoulder.

After the funeral, she spent several days in her old room, the room where she grew up; she only saw her mother at breakfast and dinner. Callers believed she had withdrawn in her grief. "They were very close," Sharon's mother said mysteriously. "Much closer than they looked."

But in this room, as if for the first time, Sharon roamed freely, touching walls and windows and testing their solidity. She had pulled down from the attic a suitcase full of things from her childhood; She searched the drawers of her dresser, which had been undisturbed for more than a decade. With an amused expression, as if she had all the time in the world, she went through her things, stroking them, turning them over, examining them with almost ritualistic care. When she came across a letter she had received as a child, she read it cover to cover as if for the first time; When she came across a forgotten doll, she smiled at it and stroked the painted bisque porcelain cheek of her cheek as if she were another child who had received a gift.

Eventually she arranged all her childhood things neatly into two piles. One consisted of toys and trinkets she had bought for herself, secret photographs and letters from school friends, gifts she had once received from distant relatives; the other pile consisted of the things her father had given her and things with which he was directly or indirectly connected. She turned her attention to that pile. Methodically, expressionlessly, without anger and joy, she brought the objects there piece by piece and destroyed them. She burned the letters and clothes, the stuffing of the dolls, the pincushions and pictures in the fireplace; the clay and porcelain heads, the hands and arms and feet of the dolls she pounded into fine dust on the hearth;

When the job was done – the room cleared of smoke, the chimney swept, the few remaining belongings returned to the dresser – Sharon Bostwick Smith sat at her small dressing table, looking at herself in the silver-backed mirror that was thinning and mottled, so here and there her image was reflected imperfectly or not at all, giving her face an oddly incomplete look. She was thirty years old. The youthful glow began to fall from her hair, tiny lines began to form around her eyes, and the skin on her face began to tighten around her sharp cheekbones. She nodded to the reflection in the mirror, got up abruptly and went down the stairs, where for the first time in days she spoke happily and almost intimately to her mother.

She wanted (she said) a change in herself. She was what she is for too long; she spoke of her childhood, of her marriage. And from sources she could speak of only vaguely and uncertainly, she fixed an image that she wished to fulfill; and most of the two months she stayed with her mother in St. Louis she devoted to that fulfillment.

She asked for a sum of money from her mother, which she gave enthusiastically. She bought a new wardrobe and burned all the clothes she had brought from Columbia; she had her hair cut short and styled in the fashion of the day; she bought cosmetics and perfumes, which she practiced daily in her room. She learned to smoke, and she cultivated a new way of speaking that was demure, slightly English, and a little shrill. She returned to Columbia with this outward change well controlled and with another secret and potential within her.

In the first months after her return to Columbia she was busy; she no longer felt the need to pretend to be ill or weak. She joined a small theater company and devoted herself to the work assigned to her; She designed and painted sets, raised money for the group, and even had a few small roles in the productions. When Smith came home in the afternoon, he found the sitting-room crowded with her friends, strangers who looked at him like an intruder, to whom he nodded politely and retired to his study, where he could hear their voices muffled and declaiming, beyond his walls.

Sharon bought a used piano and had it installed in the living room against the wall separating that room from John's study; she had given up making music just before her marriage and was now starting almost again, practicing scales, working through exercises too difficult for her, playing sometimes two or three hours a day, often in the evenings, after Doris had been put to bed.

The groups of students whom Smith invited to his study for talks grew larger and the meetings more frequent; and Sharon was no longer content to stay upstairs, away from the meetings. She insisted on serving them tea or coffee; and when she did, she sat down in the room. She spoke loudly and cheerfully and managed to steer the conversation to her work in the little theater, or her music, or her painting and sculpture, which (she announced) she would take up again as soon as she found time. The students, confused and embarrassed, gradually stopped coming, and Smith began meeting them for coffee in the university cafeteria or in one of the small cafes dotted around campus.

He didn't talk to Sharon about her new behavior; her activities caused him little trouble, and she seemed happy, if perhaps a little distressed. Eventually he blamed himself for the new direction her life had taken; he hadn't been able to find any meaning in their life together, in their marriage. Therefore, it was right for her to find meaning in areas unrelated to him that she could find and paths that he could not follow.

Encouraged by his renewed success as a teacher and by his growing popularity among better graduate students, he began a new book in the summer of 2017

1930. He now spent almost all his free time in his study. He and Sharon kept up the pretense of sharing the same bedroom, but he rarely entered that room and never at night. He slept on his sofa bed and even kept his clothes in a small closet he placed in a corner of the room.

He could be with Doris. As had become her habit during her mother's first long absence, she spent much of her time with her father in his study; Smith even found a small desk and chair for her to read and do her homework. They mostly ate their meals alone; Sharon was away from home a lot, and when she wasn't away, she frequently entertained her theater friends at small parties that didn't allow for the presence of a child.

Then Sharon abruptly started staying at home. The three started eating their meals together again, and Sharon even took a few steps to tend the house. The house was quiet; even the piano was unused, so dust was collecting on the keyboard.

They had reached a point in their life together where they seldom spoke of themselves or each other, lest the delicate balance that enabled their coexistence be broken. So it was only after much hesitation and consideration of the consequences that Smith asked her if anything was wrong.

They sat at the dining table; Doris had been excused and brought a book to Smith's study.

"What do you mean?" asked Sharon.

"Your friends," John said. "You've been away for a while, and you don't seem to be very involved with your theater work. I was just wondering if something was wrong."

With an almost masculine gesture, Sharon shook a cigarette from the pack by her plate, put it between her lips and lit it with the butt of another half-eaten. She took a deep breath without taking the cigarette from her lips and tilted her head back so that her eyes were narrow, questioning, calculating as she looked at John.

"Nothing is wrong," she said. "I was just bored with them and the work. Does something always have to go wrong?"

"No," said John. "I was just thinking maybe you're not feeling well or something."

He didn't think any further about the conversation and shortly afterwards left the table and went into the study, where Doris was sitting at her desk, engrossed in her book. The desk light shimmered in her hair, sharpening her small, serious face. She's grown in the past year, John thought; and a small, not unpleasant sadness rose briefly in his throat. He smiled and walked quietly to his desk.

Within moments he was immersed in his work. The night before he had caught up on the routine of his classwork; Papers were graded and lectures prepared for the whole of the following week. He envisioned the evening and several more evenings when he would be free to work on his book. What he wanted to do in this new book was not yet clear to him; in general, he wanted to expand both in time and in scope beyond his first degree. He wanted to work in the English Renaissance period and extend his study of classical and medieval Latin influences to this area. He was in the planning phase of his studies, and this was the phase he enjoyed most - choosing between alternative approaches, rejecting certain strategies, the mysteries and uncertainties that lie in unexplored possibilities, the consequences of choice... . He was so excited by the possibilities he saw that he couldn't keep still. He got up from his desk, paced a little, and spoke with a kind of frustrated glee to his daughter, who looked up from her book and answered him.

She sensed his mood and something he said made her laugh. Then the two laughed together, senseless, as if they were both children. Suddenly the door to the study swung open and the harsh light from the living room poured into the study's shadowy alcoves. Sharon stood silhouetted in that light.

"Doris," she said clearly and slowly, "your father is trying to work. You mustn't disturb him."

For a few moments, John and his daughter were so stunned by this sudden intrusion that neither of them moved or spoke. Then John managed to say, 'It's okay, Sharon.

As if he hadn't said anything, Sharon said, "Doris, did you hear me?

Confused, Doris got up from her chair and walked across the room. In the middle she stopped and looked first at her father and then at her mother. Sharon started to speak again, but John managed to cut her off.

"It's okay, Doris," he said as gently as he could. "It's okay. Go with your mother."

When Doris went through the study door into the living room, Sharon said to her husband: "The child had far too much freedom. It's not natural that she's so quiet and withdrawn. She was alone too much, should be more active, play with kids her age. Don't you see how unhappy she was?"

And she closed the door before he could answer.

He didn't move for a long time. He looked at his desk, which was littered with notes and open books; he walked slowly through the room, aimlessly rearranging the sheets of paper, the books. He stood and frowned for a few more minutes, as if trying to remember something. Then he turned around again and went to Doris' small desk; for a while he stood as he had stood at his own desk. There he turned off the lamp, leaving the desktop gray and lifeless, and walked over to the couch, where he lay with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. The monstrosity gradually came over him, and it was several weeks before he was able to acknowledge what Sharon was doing; and when he was finally able to make this admission, he did so almost without surprise. Sharon' t was a campaign conducted with such shrewdness and skill that he could find no reasonable cause for complaint. After her abrupt and almost violent entry into his study that night, an entry that in hindsight seemed like a surprise attack, Sharon's strategy became more indirect, softer and more restrained. It was a strategy masquerading as love and concern, and so he was helpless.

Sharon was at home almost all the time now. In the mornings and early afternoons, while Doris was at school, she occupied herself with renovation work

Doris' bedroom. She removed the small desk from Smith's study, re-varnished and painted it a pale pink, fastened a wide band of matching ruffled satin around the top, so that it bore no resemblance to the desk to which Doris had become accustomed; One afternoon, as Doris stood silently beside her, she went through all the clothes that John had bought for her, threw most away, and promised Doris that they would go into town this weekend and replace the thrown things with more appropriate things, anything "girly." And they did. Late in the afternoon Sharon returned tired but triumphant with a load of packages and an exhausted daughter dressed in a new dress stiff with starch and innumerable ruffles.

Sharon bought her daughter dolls and toys and hovered around her while she talked to them as if it were a chore; she began taking piano lessons and sat next to her on the bench while she practiced; at the slightest opportunity she gave them little parties, to which children from the neighborhood came, vengeful and sullen in their stiff, formal dresses; and she strictly supervised her daughter's reading and homework, not allowing her to work beyond her allotted time.

Now Sharon's visitors were neighborhood mothers. They came in the morning and drank coffee and talked while their children were at school; in the afternoons they would bring their children and watch them play in the large living room, chatting aimlessly above the noise of games and running.

Smith was usually in his study on those afternoons and could hear what the mothers were saying as they spoke loudly across the room, over the voices of their children.

Once, when the noise paused, he heard Sharon say, "Poor Doris. She loves her father so much, but he has so little time to devote to her. His job, you know, and he started a new book..."

Curiously, almost distantly, he watched as his hands, which had been holding a book, began to tremble. They trembled for a few moments before he got them under control, stuffing them deep in his pockets, squeezing them and holding them there.

He rarely saw his daughter now. The three ate their meals together, but on those occasions he scarcely dared speak to her, for if he did and Doris answered him, Sharon soon found something about Doris' table manners, or the way she sat in her chair, and she spoke so sharply that her daughter remained silent and dejected for the rest of the meal.

Doris' already slender body became thinner and thinner; Sharon laughed softly at her "growing up but not out there." Her eyes grew wary, almost wary; the expression that had once been calm and serene was now either slightly paralyzed on the one hand, or gleefully and lively on the narrow edge of hysteria on the other; she seldom smiled anymore, although she laughed a great deal. And when she smiled, it was as if a ghost flitted across her face. Once, when Sharon was upstairs, John and his daughter passed each other in the living room. Doris gave him a shy smile and involuntarily he knelt on the floor and hugged her. He felt her body stiffen and saw her face grow confused and anxious. He rose gently from her,

The next morning he stayed at the breakfast table until Doris left for school, even though he knew he would be late for his nine o'clock class. After seeing Doris out the front door, Sharon didn't return to the dining room and he knew she was avoiding him. He walked into the living room where his wife was sitting at the end of the sofa with a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Without preamble, he said, "Sharon, I don't like what's happening

Doris."

Immediately, as if picking up a cue, she said, "What do you mean?"

He sat down at the other end of the sofa, away from Sharon. A feeling of helplessness overcame him. "You know what I mean," he said tiredly. "Let her go. Don't push her so hard."

Sharon stubbed out her cigarette in her saucer. "Doris has never been happier. She has friends now, things to keep her busy. I know you're too busy to notice these things, but – surely you must realize how much more open-minded she's been lately. And she laughs. She has never laughed before. Hardly ever."

John looked at her in silent amazement. "You think so, don't you?" "Of course I do," said Sharon. "I'm her mother."

And she believed it, Smith realized. He shook his head.

"I never wanted to admit it to myself," he said with something akin to composure, "but you really hate me, don't you, Sharon?"

"What?" The surprise in her voice was real. "Oh, Willi!" She laughed clearly and uninhibitedly. "Do not be absurd. Of course not. You are my husband." "Don't use the child." He couldn't stop the tremor in his voice. "You don't have to anymore, you know that. Everything else. But if you keep consuming

Doris, I will..." He didn't finish the sentence.

After a moment, Sharon said, "You're what?" She spoke softly and without challenge. "All you could do is leave me and you would never do that.

He nodded. "I suppose you're right." He got up blindly and went into his study. He got his coat out of the closet and grabbed his briefcase by his desk. As he crossed the living room, Sharon spoke to him again.

"Willy, I wouldn't hurt Doris. You should know that. I love her. She is my own daughter."

And he knew it was true; she loved her. The truth of the knowledge almost made him cry out. He shook his head and walked out into the weather.

When he got home that evening, he found that Sharon had removed all his belongings from his study during the day with the help of a local handyman. His desk and sofa were crammed into one corner of the living room, and around them in a careless mess were his clothes, his papers, and all his books.

Being more at home now, she had (she told him) decided to take up her painting and her sculpture again; and his study with its northern lights would give her the only really decent lighting the house had. She knew he wouldn't mind moving; he could use the glazed sundeck at the back of the house; it was farther from the living room than his study, and he would have more privacy to get his work done.

But the porch was so small he couldn't organize his books, and there wasn't room for the desk or couch he'd had in the study, so he stored both in the basement. It was difficult to heat the porch in the winter, and in the summer, he knew, the sun would smash through the panes of glass that enclosed the porch, making it almost uninhabitable. Nevertheless, he worked there for several months. He got a small table and used it as a desk, and he bought a portable heater to mitigate a little of the chill that seeped through the thin clapboard siding in the evenings. At night he slept wrapped in a blanket on the sofa in the living room.

After a few months of relative if uncomfortable peace, when he returned from university that afternoon he found all sorts of discarded household items – broken lamps, rugs, small chests and boxes of nick-knacks – abandoned carelessly in the room that now served as his study.

"It's so damp in the basement," Sharon said, "they would be ruined.

One spring afternoon he came home during a heavy rainstorm to find that somehow one of the windows had broken and that the rain had damaged several of his books and made many of his notes illegible; A few weeks later he walked in to find that Doris and a few of her friends were allowed to play in the room and that more of his notes and the first few pages of the manuscript of his new book had been torn up and mutilated. "I only let her in there for a few minutes," Sharon said. "They must have a place to play. But I had no idea. You should speak to Doris. I told her how important your work is to you."

Then he gave up. He brought as many of his books as possible to his university office, which he shared with three younger professors; thereafter he spent much of the time he had formerly spent at home at the university, coming home early only when his loneliness made it impossible for him to stay away for a glimpse of his daughter or a word with her.

But he had room for only a few of his books in his office, and work on his manuscript was often interrupted for want of the necessary texts; Also, one of his office mates, an earnest young man, had a habit of setting up student conferences in the evenings, and the sibilant, tedious conversations being carried across the room distracted him, making it difficult for him to concentrate. He lost interest in his book; his work slowed and ground to a halt. Eventually he realized that it had become a haven, a haven, an excuse to come to the office at night. He read and studied, and eventually found some solace, some pleasure, and even a touch of the old joy in what he was doing, a learning with no particular aim.

And Sharon had relaxed her aspirations and obsessive concern for Doris to the point that the child occasionally began to smile and even talk to him with some ease. In this way he found it possible to live and sometimes even to be happy.

Chapter 9

The interim chairmanship of the English Department, which George Wren had assumed after the death of Bowman Quinn, was renewed year after year until all the members of the department became accustomed to a casual anarchy in which somehow classes were planned and taught in which it new staffing's were made, in which the trivial departmental details were somehow settled and in which???? year somehow a year followed. It was generally believed that a permanent chairman would be appointed as soon as it were possible to make Wren Dean of Arts and Sciences, a position he did in fact, albeit not hold, hold; Josiah Claremont threatened never to die, though he was rarely seen wandering the halls anymore.

The members of the department went their separate ways, teaching the classes they had taught the previous year and visiting each other in the offices between classes. They met formally only at the beginning of each semester, when George Wren called a perfunctory faculty meeting, and on the occasions when the dean of the graduate college sent them memos asking them to sit oral exams and theses for graduate students who were about to the conclusion was her work.

Such investigations took more and more time. To his surprise, he began to enjoy modest popularity as a teacher; he had to turn away students who wanted to be accepted into his graduate seminar on Renaissance Latin tradition and literature, and his undergraduate classes were always full. Several graduate students asked him to supervise their dissertations and more asked him to be on their dissertation committees.

In the fall of 1931, the seminar was almost fully booked even before registration was made; Many students had arranged to meet Smith at the end of the previous year or during the summer. A week into the semester and after the seminar had held a session, a student came into Smith's office and asked to be admitted to the class.

Smith sat at his desk with a list of seminar participants in front of him; he was tempted to choose seminary assignments, and it was especially difficult since many were new to him. It was a September afternoon and he had the window next to his desk open; the front of the great building was in shadow, so the green lawn in front showed the precise shape of the building, with its semicircular dome and irregular roof-line obscuring the green, stretching imperceptibly across the campus and beyond. A cool breeze streamed through the window and brought the fresh scent of autumn.

It knocked; He turned to his open door and said, "Come in."

A figure shuffled out of the darkness of the hall into the light of the room.

Smith squinted sleepily against the darkness and recognized a student he'd noticed but didn't recognize in the hallways. The young man's left arm hung stiffly at his side and his left foot dragged as he walked. His face was pale and round, his horn-rimmed glasses were round, and his thin black hair was parted straight on the side and lay close to the round skull.

"Dr Smith?" he asked his voice was thin and clipped, and he spoke clearly.

"Yes," said Smith. "Don't you want a chair?"

The young man sat down in the straight wooden chair by Smith's desk; his leg was stretched out in a straight line and his left hand, constantly twisted into a half-closed fist, rested on it. He smiled, nodded his head, and said with an odd touch of self-mockery, "Perhaps you don't know me, sir; I'm Colin Stander. I'm a second-year graduate student; I assist Dr. Loomis."

"Yes, Mr. Stander," Smith said. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, I'm here to ask a favor of you, sir." Stander smiled again. "I know your seminar is fully booked, but I really want to be there." He paused and said pointedly, "Dr. Loomis suggested I talk to you."

"I see," Smith said. "What is your specialty, Mr. Stander?"

"The romantic poets," said Stander. "Dr. Loomis will be the director of my dissertation."

Smith nodded. "How far along are you with your coursework?" "I'm hoping to be done in two years," Stander said.

"Well, that makes it easier," Smith said. "I offer the seminar every year. It's really so full now that it's hardly a seminar and one more person would just about finish the work. Why can't you wait until next year if you really want the course? "

Stander's eyes averted from him. "Well, honestly," he said, putting his smile back on, "I've been the victim of a misunderstanding. All my own fault of course. I didn't realize that every graduate student must have at least four graduate seminars to graduate, and I didn't take any at all last year. And as you know, they don't allow you to take more than one per semester. So if I'm supposed to graduate in two years, I would have to have this semester."

Smith sighed. "I see. So you have no particular interest in the influence of the Latin tradition?"

"Oh, indeed I do, sir. I actually do. "Mr. Stander, you should know that this is a fairly specialized course and I don't trust people to take it unless they have a specific interest."

"Yes sir," Stander said. "I assure you that I have a special interest."

Smith nodded. "How's your Latin?"

Stander nodded his head. "Oh, that's fine, sir. I haven't taken my Latin exam yet, but I can read it very well."

"Do you have French or German?"

"Oh yes sir. Again, I haven't taken the exams yet; I figured I'd do them all at once, by the end of this year. But I read them both very well. Stander paused, then added, "Dr. Loomis said he thought I could do the seminar work for sure."

Smith sighed. "Very good," he said. "Most of the reading will be in Latin, with a bit of French and German, although you may be able to do without those. I'll give you a reading list and we'll discuss your seminar topic next Wednesday afternoon. "

Stander thanked him profusely and got up from his chair with some difficulty.

"I'll start reading right away," he said. "I'm sure you won't regret letting me into your class, sir."

Smith looked at him in mild surprise. "The question hadn't occurred to me, Mr. Stander," he said dryly. "See you on Wednesday."

The seminar took place in a small basement room in the south wing of Jesse Hall. A damp but not unpleasant smell oozed from the cement walls and feet shuffled in hollow whispers over the bare cement floor. A single light hung from the ceiling in the center of the room and shone downward, giving those seated in desk chairs in the center of the room rested in a puff of brightness; but the walls were a dull gray and the corners almost black, as if the smooth, unpainted cement were soaking up the light streaming from the ceiling.

On that second Wednesday of the seminar, John Smith walked into the room a few minutes late; He spoke to the students and began arranging his books and papers on the small stained oak desk squat in the center of a paneled wall. He glanced at the small group scattered around the room. Some of them he knew; two of the men were Ph.D's D. candidates whose work he directed; four others were MA students from the department who had worked with him; of the remaining students, three were candidates for advanced degrees in modern language, one was a philosophy student writing his dissertation on scholasticism, one was a middle-aged woman, a high school teacher trying to get an MA during her sabbatical, and the last was a dark-haired young woman, a new instructor in the department, who had taken a job for two years while completing a dissertation she began after graduating from an Eastern university. She had asked Smith if she could attend the seminar, and he had agreed. Colin Stander was not among the group. Smith waited a few more moments, arranging his papers; Then he cleared his throat and began the lesson. Colin Stander was not among the group. Smith waited a few more moments, arranging his papers; Then he cleared his throat and began the lesson. Colin Stander was not among the group. Smith waited a few more moments, arranging his papers; Then he cleared his throat and began the lesson.

"During our first meeting we discussed the scope of this seminar and decided that we should confine our study of the medieval Latin tradition to the first three of the seven liberal arts—that is, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic." He paused and observed how faces—timid, curious, and masked—focused on him and what he was saying.

an exegesis of poetry, both in form and content, and a refined style as far as that is distinguished from rhetoric." He felt himself warming to his subject, and he noticed that several students had leaned forward and stopped, He continued: "Furthermore, if we are asked in the twentieth century which of these three arts is the most important, we will perhaps choose dialectic or rhetoric – but most likely we would not choose grammar. Still, the Roman and medieval scholars – and poets - almost certainly regard grammar as the most important. We must become members -"

A loud noise interrupted him. The door had opened and Colin Stander entered the room; As he closed the door, the books he was carrying under his crippled arm slipped and fell to the floor. He bent awkwardly, his bad leg stretched out behind him, and slowly gathered up his books and papers. Then he got up and shuffled across the room, the scrape of his foot on the bare cement making a loud and grating hiss that sounded hissing hollow in the room. He found a chair in the front row and sat down.

After Stander settled himself and arranged his papers and books on his desk chair, Smith continued: "We must remember that the medieval conception of grammar was even more general than the late Hellenistic or Roman correct language and the art of exegesis it encompassed also the modern notions of analogy, etymology, methods of representation, construction, the condition of poetic freedom and the exceptions to that condition – and even metaphorical language or Eech figures.

As he continued, working out the grammar categories he named, Smith's eyes darted over the class; he realized he had lost her when Stander moved in and knew it would be some time before he could convince her again. His eyes kept falling curiously on Stander who, after a few moments jotting notes frantically, was gradually resting his pencil on his notebook while staring at Smith with a puzzled frown. At last Stander's hand shot up; Smith finished the sentence he had started and nodded to him.

"Sir," said Stander, "I'm sorry, but I don't understand. What can" – he paused and twisted his mouth around the word – "Grammar has something to do with poetry? Basically I mean. Real poetry. "

Smith said softly, "As I explained before you came in, Mr. Stander, the term 'grammar' was, to both Roman and medieval rhetoricians, much more inclusive than it is today. To them it meant..." He paused, realizing he was about to repeat the first part of his lecture; he felt the students stir restlessly. "I think this relationship will become clearer to you as we proceed as we see to what extent the poets and playwrights of even the middle and late Renaissance were indebted to the Latin rhetoricians."

"Everyone, sir?" Stander smiled and leaned back in his chair. "Wasn't it Samuel Johnson who said of Shakespeare himself that he had little Latin and less Greek?"

As the stifled laughter rose in the room, Smith felt a kind of pity wash over him. "You mean Ben Jonson, of course."

Stander took off his glasses and polished them, blinking helplessly. "Of course," he said. "A slip of the tongue."

Despite Stander interrupting him several times, Smith managed to get through his lecture without serious difficulty and was able to assign assignments for the first reports. He finished the seminar almost half an hour early and hurried out of the classroom when he saw Stander walking towards him with a fixed grin on his face. He clattered up the wooden stairs from the basement and took the smooth marble stairs two at a time to the second floor; he had the strange feeling that Stander was scuffling doggedly behind him, trying to overtake him in his flight. Shame and guilt rushed over him.

On the third floor, he went straight to Loomis' office. Loomis was in a conference with a student. Smith stuck his head in the door and said, "Holly, can I see you when you're done?"

Loomis gave a friendly wave. "Come in. We're just breaking up."

Smith walked in and pretended to examine the rows of books in their boxes

Loomis and the student said their last words. As the student left, Smith sat down in the chair he had vacated. Loomis looked at him questioningly.

"It's about a student," Smith said. "Colin Stander. He said you sent him to me."

Loomis laced his fingertips together and studied them while nodding. "Yes. I think I suggested that from your seminar – what's that? – might benefit in the Latin tradition."

"Can you tell me something about him?"

Loomis looked up from his hands and stared at the ceiling, his bottom lip pursed cautiously. "A good student. A brilliant student, I could say. He is doing his dissertation on Shelley and the Hellenistic ideal. She promises to be brilliant, really brilliant word - "sound, but it's very imaginative. Did you have a specific reason for asking the question?"

"Yes," said Smith. "He acted pretty stupid in the seminar today. I was just wondering if I should give that any special meaning."

Loomis's early genius was gone, and the more familiar mask of irony had settled over him. "Ah, yes," he said with a frosty smile. "The Gaucherie and Stupidity of Youth. Stander is, for reasons you will understand, quite awkwardly shy and therefore defensive at times and quite assertive. Like all of us, he has his problems; but his scientific and critical skills are not. I hope to be judged in the light of his reasonably understandable mental disorders." Looking directly at Smith, he said with cheerful malice, "As you may have noticed, he is a cripple."

"That could be it," Smith said thoughtfully. He sighed and got up from the chair. "I suppose it's really too early for me to worry.

Suddenly, Loomis's voice was strained, almost shaking with suppressed anger. "You will find him to be an excellent student. I assure you, you will find him to be an excellent student."

Smith looked at him for a moment, frowning in confusion. Then he nodded and left the room.

The seminar met weekly. At the first meetings, Stander would interrupt the class with questions and comments so confusingly off the mark that Smith didn't know how to respond. Soon Stander's questions and statements were greeted with laughter or demonstratively ignored by the students themselves; and after a few weeks he wasn't speaking at all, but sat with stony indignation and an air of indignant integrity as the seminar heaved around him. It would have been amusing, Smith thought, if there hadn't been something overt in Stander's outrage and resentment.

But despite Stander, it was a successful seminar, one of the best courses Smith had ever given. Almost from the start, the implications of the subject captivated the students, and they all had that sense of discovery that comes when one feels that the subject at hand is at the center of a much larger subject, and when one intensely feels that striving of that Themes will probably lead – where we don't know. The seminar organized itself and the students got so involved that Smith himself just became one of them and searched as diligently as they did. Even the auditor—the young lecturer who was at Columbia Station while she was finishing her dissertation—asked if she could report on a seminar topic; she thought she had stumbled upon something that might be of value to others. Her name was Charlotte Durbin and she was in her late twenties. Smith had never really noticed her until after class when she spoke to him about the report and asked him if he would be willing to read her dissertation when it was finished. He told her that he welcomed the report and that he would like to read her dissertation.

The seminar reports were planned for the second half of the semester after the Christmas holidays. Stander's report on "Hellenism and the Medieval Latin Tradition" was due early in the semester, but he kept delaying it, explaining to Smith his difficulties in obtaining books he needed that were not available in the university library.

It had been agreed that Miss Durbin, as auditor, would report after the credit students had submitted their reports; but on the last day that Smith had mailed the seminar reports, two weeks before the end of the semester, Stander asked again to give him another week; he had been ill, his eyes were bothering him, and an important book had not arrived from inter library loan. So Miss Durbin gave up her job on the day Stander's defection had made free.

Her work was entitled Donatus and the Tragedy of the Renaissance. She focused on Shakespeare's use of the Donatan tradition, a tradition that survived in the grammars and handbooks of the Middle Ages. Shortly after it began, Smith knew the paper would be good, and he listened with an excitement he hadn't felt in a long time. After she finished the essay and the class discussed it, he held her back for a few moments while the other students left the room.

"Miss Durbin, I just want to say-" He paused, and for a moment a wave of embarrassment and self-confidence washed over him. She looked at him questioningly with large dark eyes; Her face was very pale against the severe black frame of her hair, which was tied tightly and tied in a small bun at the back. He continued, "I just want to say that your talk was the best discussion I've come across on the subject and I'm grateful to you for agreeing to give it."

She did not answer. Her expression didn't change, but Smith thought for a moment she was angry; something fierce glittered behind her eyes. Then she blushed furiously and bowed her head, whether in anger or approval Smith didn't know, and hurried away from him. Smith walked slowly from the room, alarmed and confused, afraid that his clumsiness might have offended her in some way.

He had warned Stander as gently as he could that he would have to turn in his assignment next Wednesday if he was going to get credit for the course; as he half-expected, Stander grew coldly and respectfully angry at the warning, reiterated the various conditions and difficulties that had delayed him, and assured Smith that he needn't worry his work was almost done.

That last Wednesday, Smith was a few minutes late in his office

a desperate student who wanted to be sure he would get a C in sophomore lest he be kicked out of his sorority. Smith hurried downstairs and, somewhat out of breath, entered the basement seminar room; he found Colin Stander seated at his desk, looking authoritatively and somberly at the small group of students. It was obvious that he was involved in a private fantasy. He turned to Smith and gave him a haughty look, as if he were a professor dumping a rowdy freshman. Then Stander's expression cracked and he said: "We were just about to start without you" - pausing at the last minute, letting a smile cross his lips, nodding his head and adding so Smith would know it was a joke acted made-- "Sir."

Smith looked at him for a moment and then turned to the class. "Sorry for the delay. As you know, Mr. Stander is holding his seminar paper today on the subject of 'Hellenism and the Medieval Latin Tradition'." And he found a seat in the front row next to Charlotte Durbin.

Colin Stander fiddled with the pile of papers on the desk in front of him for a moment, letting the isolation creep back into his face. He tapped his manuscript with the index finger of his right hand and looked into the corner of the room, away from Smith and Charlotte Durbin, as if waiting for something. Then he glanced now and then at the stack of papers on the desk and began.

"As we confront the mystery of literature and its immeasurable power, we must discover the source of power and mystery. And yet, after all, what can help? we cannot fathom. And we are only followers of it, helpless in its influence. Who would have the audacity to lift that veil, discover the discoverable, reach the unattainable? The strongest of us are only the weakest weaklings, are they just tinkling cymbals and tinkling tin before the eternal mystery."

His voice rose and fell, his right hand stretched out, fingers curled up in supplication, and his body swayed to the rhythm of his words; his eyes rolled up slightly as if making an invocation. There was something grotesquely familiar in what he said and did. And suddenly Smith knew what it was. That was Robin Loomis – or rather a broad caricature of him, which came unexpectedly from the cartoonist, a gesture not of contempt or dislike but of respect and love.

Stander's voice dropped to a conversational level, and he turned to the back wall of the room in a calm and even tone. "Recently we heard a paper which, according to science, must be considered extremely excellent. These comments that follow are comments that are not personal. I want to illustrate a point. We have heard in this treatise a presentation that purports to be an explanation of the mystery and floating lyricism of Shakespeare's art. Well, I'm telling you" - and he pointed a forefinger at his audience as if to impale them - "I'm telling you, it's not true." He leaned back in his chair and consulted the papers on the desk. " we should believe that a certain Donatus – an obscure Roman grammarian of the fourth century AD - we are to believe that such a man, a pedant, had sufficient power to define the work of one of the greatest geniuses in all of art history. Shouldn't we suspect such a theory at first glance? Shouldn't we suspect it?"

Anger, simple and dull, welled up in Smith, overcoming the complexity of his feelings he'd had at the beginning of the work. His immediate impulse was to rise up, to break off the unfolding farce; he knew that if he didn't stop Stander immediately, he would have to let him talk as long as he wanted to. His head swiveled slightly so he could see Charlotte Durbin's face; it was cheerful and without any expression save one of polite and distant interest; the dark eyes regarded Stander with an indifference that was like boredom. Smith eyed her furtively for several moments; he wondered how she felt and what she wanted from him. When he finally looked away from her, he had to realize that his decision was made.

but to a genius natural and exalted to rule and worldly law. Unlike lesser poets, Shakespeare was not born to blush unseen and waste his sweetness on the desert air; What did the immortal bard partaking of that mysterious source from which all poets draw their sustenance need such stupefying rules as are to be found in a bare grammar? What would Donatus be to him even if he had read him? Brilliance, unique and a law of its own, does not need the support of such tradition as has been described to us, be it general Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." why did the immortal bard need such stupid rules, how to find them in a mere grammar? What would Donatus be to him even if he had read him? Brilliance, unique and a law of its own, does not need the support of such tradition as has been described to us, be it general Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." why did the immortal bard need such stupefying rules as are to be found in a mere grammar? What would Donatus be to him even if he had read it? Brilliance, unique and a law unto itself, needs no support of such Tradition as it has been described to us, whether it be generally Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." even if he had read it? Brilliance, unique and a law of its own, does not need the support of such tradition as has been described to us, be it general Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." why did the immortal bard need such stupefying rules as are to be found in a mere grammar? What would Donatus be to him even if he had read it? Brilliance, unique and a law unto itself, needs no support of such Tradition as it has been described to us, whether it be generally Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." even if he had read it? Brilliance, unique and a law of its own, does not need the support of such tradition as has been described to us, be it general Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." why did the immortal bard need such stupefying rules as are to be found in a mere grammar? What would Donatus be to him even if he had read it? Brilliance, unique and a law unto itself, needs no support of such Tradition as it has been described to us, whether it be generally Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." be it general Latin or donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." why did the immortal bard need such stupefying rules as are to be found in a mere grammar? What would Donatus be to him even if he had read it? Brilliance, unique and a law unto itself, needs no support of such Tradition as it has been described to us, whether it be generally Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." be it general Latin or donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." why did the immortal bard need such stupefying rules as are to be found in a mere grammar? What would Donatus be to him even if he had read it? Brilliance, unique and a law unto itself, needs no support of such Tradition as it has been described to us, whether it be generally Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." unique and a law in itself, does not need the support of any such tradition as has been described to us, be it generally Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ." unique and a law in itself, does not need the support of any such tradition as has been described to us, be it generally Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, high-flying and free, must . . ."

Once he got used to his anger, Smith found himself overcome with a grudging and perverse admiration. However voluptuous and imprecise, the man's rhetorical and inventive abilities were terrifyingly impressive; and however grotesque, his presence was real. There was something cold, calculating and watchful in his eyes, something unnecessarily reckless and yet desperately cautious. Smith realized he was faced with a bluff so colossal and bold that he had no means of dealing with it.

Because even the most inattentive students in the class could tell that Stander was engaged in a performance that was entirely improvised. Smith doubted he'd had a clear idea of what he was going to say until he sat at the lectern before class, staring at the students in his cold, bossy way. It became clear that the stack of papers on the desk in front of him was just a stack of papers; When he got heated, he didn't even give them a fake look, and towards the end of his conversation he pushed them away in his excitement and urgency.

He spoke for almost an hour. Toward the end, the other students in the Minar looked at each other in concern, almost as if they were in danger, as if contemplating escape; she carefully avoided looking at Smith or at the young woman who sat impassively beside him. Abruptly, as if sensing the commotion, Stander finished his lecture, leaned back in his chair behind the desk, and smiled triumphantly.

The moment Stander stopped talking, Smith got up and dismissed the class; although he didn't realize it at the time, he did so out of a vague deference to Stander, so neither of them would have a chance to debate what he had said. Then Smith went to the desk where Stander had stayed and asked him to stay for a few moments. As if his mind were elsewhere, Stander nodded absently. Smith then turned and followed a few stray students out of the room and into the hall. He saw Charlotte Durbin walk away and walk down the hall alone. He called her name, and when she stopped, he walked over and stood in front of her. And as he spoke to her, he felt again the embarrassment he'd felt last week when he'd complimented her on her work.

"Miss Durbin, I'm sorry. It was really very unfair. I kind of feel responsible for it. Maybe I should have stopped doing that."

She still didn't answer, nor did any expression come to her face; she looked up at him the way she had looked at Stander across the room.

"Anyway," he continued even more awkwardly, "I'm sorry he attacked you." And then she smiled. It was a slow smile that started in her eyes and curled her lips until her face was covered with a radiant, secret, and familiar joy. Smith nearly backed away from the sudden and involuntary warmth.

"Oh, it wasn't me," she said, a faint tremor of suppressed laughter lending a certain timbre to her small voice. "It wasn't me at all. He attacked you. I was hardly involved."

Smith felt relieved of a burden of regret and worry he had not known he carried; the relief was almost physical, and he felt light on his feet and a little dizzy. He laughed.

"Of course," he said. "Of course it is."

The smile faded from her face and she looked at him seriously for a moment. Then she nodded her head, turned away from him and walked quickly down the hall. Her body was slim and straight, and she carried herself unobtrusively. After she was gone, Smith stood for a few moments, looking down the hallway. Then he sighed and went back into the room where Stander was waiting.

Stander hadn't moved from the desk. He looked at Smith and smiled, an odd mixture of obsequiousness and arrogance on his face. Smith sat in the chair he had vacated a few minutes ago and looked curiously at Stander.

"Yes indeed?" said Stander.

"Do you have an explanation?" asked Smith quietly.

A look of offended surprise crossed Stander's round face. "What do you mean?"

"Mr. Stander, please," Smith said wearily. "It's been a long day and we're both tired. Do you have an explanation for your performance this afternoon?"

"I'm sure, sir, I didn't mean to offend you." He took off his glasses and quickly polished them; Again, Smith was struck by the raw vulnerability of his face. "I said my comments were not meant to be personal. If feelings have been hurt, I'll be happy to explain to the young lady—"

"Mr. Stander," said Smith. "You know that's not the point."

"Did the young lady complain to you?" asked steer. His fingers were shaking as he put his glasses back on. With them, his face managed an annoyed frown. "Really, sir, the complaints of a student whose feelings have been hurt should not -"

"Mr. Stander!" Smith heard his voice get a little out of control. He took a deep breath. "This has nothing to do with the young lady, or with me, or with anything but your performance.

'I'm afraid I don't understand anything then, sir. Unless...' 'Unless what, Mr Stander?'

"Unless it's just a matter of disagreement," Stander said. "I realize that your ideas don't align with yours, but I've always thought that disagreement is healthy. I assumed you were tall enough to...

"I'm not going to let you evade the issue," Smith said. His voice was cold and calm. "Well. What was the seminar topic you were assigned?"

"You're angry," Stander said.

"Yes, I'm angry. What seminar topic were you assigned?"

Stander became stiffly formal and polite. "My topic was 'Hellenism and the

Medieval Latin tradition, sir."

"And when did you complete this work, Mr. Stander?"

"Two days ago. As I told you, it was almost finished a few weeks ago, but a book I had to get through inter library loan didn't come in until..."

"Mr. Stander, if your work was almost complete two weeks ago, how could you base it in its entirety on Miss Durbin's report, which was submitted only last week?"

"I've made a number of changes at the last minute, sir." His voice grew heavy with irony. "I assumed that was permissible. And I've deviated from the text now and then.

Smith fought an almost hysterical impulse to laugh. "Mr. Stander, can you explain to me what your attack on Miss Durbin's article has to do with the survival of Hellenism in the medieval Latin tradition?"

"I approached my subject indirectly, sir," said Stander. "I thought we had some leeway in developing our concepts."

Smith was silent for a moment. Then he said wearily, "Mr. Stander, I don't like failing a graduate student.

"Mr!" said Stander indignantly.

"But you make it very difficult for me not to do it. Now it seems to me that there are few alternatives to the assigned topic within the next three weeks." "But, sir," said Stander. "I've already finished my essay. If I agree to write another, I'll admit – I will admit-"

"All right," Smith said. "Then if you give me the manuscript you deviated from this afternoon, I'll see if anything can be salvaged."

"Sir," Stander called. "I would hesitate to let it out of my possession right now. The design is very rough."

With grim and restless shame, Smith continued, "That's fine. I will be able to find out what I want to know."

Stander looked at him slyly. "Tell me, sir, did you ask anyone else to end their manuscript for you?" "I haven't," Smith said.

"Then," said Stander triumphantly, almost happily, "I must fundamentally refuse to give you my manuscript as well.

Smith looked at him steadily for a moment. "Very good, Mr Stander. You have made your decision.

Stander said, "What am I supposed to understand, sir? What can I expect from this course?"

Smith laughed briefly. "Mr. Stander, you amaze me. You get an F, of course."

Stander tried to lengthen his round face. With the patient bitterness of a martyr he said, "I see. very good sir You have to be willing to suffer for your faith."

"And for your own laziness, dishonesty and ignorance," Smith said. "Mr. Stander, it seems almost redundant to say this, but I would urge you to reconsider your position here.

For the first time, Stander's feeling seemed genuine; his anger gave him something close to dignity. "Mr. Smith, you're going too far!

"I'm definitely serious," Smith said.

For a moment Stander was silent; he looked thoughtfully at Smith. Then he said, "I was ready to accept the grade you gave me. But you must realize that I cannot accept that. You are questioning my competence!"

"Yes, Mr. Stander," Smith said wearily. He rose from the chair.

"Now if you'll excuse me..." He headed for the door.

But the sound of his name being called stopped him. He has turned. Stander's face was crimson; the skin was puffy, making the eyes look like tiny dots behind thick glasses. "Mr. Smith!" he shouted again. "You haven't heard the last of these. Believe me, you haven't heard the last of these!"

Smith looked at him blankly and uninterested. He nodded absently, turned and walked out into the hall. His feet were heavy and dragged on the bare cement floor. He was numb and felt very old and tired.

Chapter 10

And he hadn't heard the last of it.

He submitted his grades on the Monday after the Friday close of the semester. This was his least favorite part of teaching, and he always got it out of the way as quickly as possible. He gave Stander his F and didn't think about it any further. He spent most of the week between the semesters reading the first drafts of two theses that were to be finally presented in the spring. They were clumsily made and required a lot of his attention. The Stander incident had been pushed out of his mind.

But two weeks into the second semester, he was reminded again. One morning he found a message in his mailbox from George Wren, inviting him to drop by the office for a chat if he wanted.

The friendship between George Wren and John Smith had reached a degree to which all such relations, sustained long enough, tend; it was casual, deep, and so understatedly intimate it was almost impersonal. They rarely socialized, although Caroline Wren occasionally paid a perfunctory visit to Sharon's. As they spoke, they recalled their youth and each thought of the other as he had been at a different time.

In his early middle age, Wren had the erect, soft demeanor of someone struggling to control his weight; his face was heavy and still unlined, though his cheeks were beginning to sag and the flesh gathered in rolls on the back of his neck. His hair was very thin and he had begun to comb it so that the baldness would not be immediately obvious.

They talked casually about their families for a few moments that afternoon when Smith stopped by his office; Wren maintained the simple convention of pretending that Smith's marriage was an ordinary one, and Smith professed his conventional disbelief that George and Caroline could be parents to two children, the younger of whom was in kindergarten.

After making their automatic gestures towards their casual intimacy,

Wren looked absently out of his window and said, "Well, what did I want to talk to you about? Oh yes. The Dean of the Graduate College – he thought since we're friends I should mention it to you. Nothing of importance." He looked at a note in his notebook. "Just an angry grad student who thinks he was screwed in one of your classes last semester."

"Standing," Smith said. "Colin Stander."

Wren nodded. "That's it. What's the story about him?"

Smith shrugged. "As far as I could tell, he didn't do any of the allotted readings – it was my seminar in the Latin tradition to produce a copy of his newspaper, he refused. I had no choice but to fail him."

Wren nodded again. "I thought it was something like that. God knows I wish they wouldn't waste my time on stuff like that; but it needs to be checked out, for your protection as well as anything else."

Smith asked, "Are there any – special difficulties here?"

"No, no," Wren said. "Not at all. Just one complaint. You know how these things go. In fact, Stander got a C in the first course he took here as a graduate student; he could be kicked out of the program immediately if we wanted to do it. But I think we've decided to let him do his preliminary orals next month and let that tell the story. I'm sorry I had to bother you with this at all.

They talked about other things for a few moments. Then, just as Smith was about to leave, Wren casually held him.

"Oh, I wanted to tell you something else. The President and Board of Directors have finally decided that something needs to be done about Claremont. So, starting next year, I'll be Dean of Arts and Sciences – officially."

"I'm glad, George," Smith said. "It's time."

"So that means we need to find a new chair of the department. Do you have any thoughts on that?"

"No," said Smith, "I really hadn't thought of that at all."

"We can either go out of the department and hire someone new, or we can make one of the men present chairman. What I'm trying to figure out is once we've picked someone out of the department – well, do you have your eyes on the job?"

Smith thought for a moment. "I hadn't thought about it, but – no. No, I don't think I would want to."

Wren's relief was so obvious that Smith smiled. "Good. I would not have thought that. It means a lot of horse shit. Entertainment and socializing and..." He looked away from Smith. 'I know you're not into that sort of thing. But since old Quinn died and Huggins and what's his name Cooper retired last year, you're the senior member of the department, so I haven't been giving me any covetous looks -"

"No," Smith said firmly. "I would probably be a lousy chairman. I don't expect or want the appointment."

"Good," Wren said. "Good. That simplifies a lot."

They said goodbye and Smith didn't think about the conversation again for a while.

Colin Stander's preliminary full oral review was scheduled for mid-March; Somewhat to Smith's surprise, he received a message from Wren informing him that he would be a member of the three-man committee that would investigate him. He reminded Wren that he had failed Stander, that Stander had taken the failure personally, and he asked to be relieved of that particular duty. "Regulations," Wren replied with a sigh. "You know how it is. The committee consists of the candidate's advisor, a professor who had him in a graduate seminar, and a professor who had him outside his area of expertise. Loomis is the advisor, you're the only one he had graduate school from, and I picked the new guy, Jim Holland, for the one which does not belong to his area of expertise. Dean Rutherford of Graduate College and I will be meeting ex officio. I'll try to make it as painless as possible."

But it was an ordeal that could not be made painless. Although Smith wanted to ask as few questions as possible, the rules for the preliminary hearing were inflexible; Each professor was given forty-five minutes to ask the candidate any questions he wished, although other professors usually joined in.

On the afternoon scheduled for the exam, Smith was purposely late for the third-floor seminar room at Jesse Hall. Stander sat at the end of a long, highly polished table; The four examiners already present – Wren, Loomis, the new man, Holland and Henry Rutherford - were ordered down the table by him. Smith slipped through the door and sat in a chair across from Stander at the end of the table. Wren and Holland nodded to him; Loomis sat slumped in his chair, staring straight ahead, tapping the mirror-smooth surface of the table with his long white fingers. Stander stared down the table, his head stiff and high in cold disdain.

Rutherford cleared his throat. "Ah, sir." - he consulted a piece of paper in front of him - "Mr. Smith." Rutherford was a slight, gray man with round shoulders; his eyes and brows drooped at the outer corners so that his expression was always one of gentle hopelessness. Although he had known Smith for many years, he never remembered his name. He cleared his throat again. "We were just about to start."

Smith nodded, resting his forearms on the table, crossing his fingers and studying them while Rutherford's voice boomed through the formal preparations for the oral exam.

Mr. Stander was examined (Rutherford's voice dropped to a steady, inflexible hum) to determine if he was fit to continue the doctoral program at the University of Missouri English Department. This was an examination that all doctoral students took and which was intended not only to assess the general aptitude of the candidate, but also to identify strengths and skills in order to make his future studies profitable. Three results were possible: pass, conditional pass and fail. Rutherford described the terms of these contingencies and, without looking up, performed the ritual presentation of the examiners and the candidate. Then he pushed the sheet of paper away from him and looked hopelessly at those around him.

'It is customary,' he said softly, 'for the candidate's supervisor to begin the questioning. Mr.' - he glanced at the paper - 'Mr. Loomis is I believe the adviser to Mr. Standers."

Loomis' head jerked back as if suddenly awakened from a slumber. He looked around the table, blinked, a small smile on his lips; but his eyes were sly and alert.

"Mr. Stander, you are planning a dissertation on Shelley and the Hellenistic ideal. It's unlikely you've already thought through your theme, but first, would you tell us a bit about the background, your reasons for choosing it, etc.?."

Stander nodded and began to speak quickly. "I intend to trace Shelley's first rejection of Godwinian necessitarism for a more or less platonic ideal

"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" through the mature use of this ideal in Prometheus Unbound as a comprehensive synthesis of its earlier atheism, radicalism, Christianity, and scientific nectarism, and ultimately to explain the decay of the ideal at such a late age work as Hellas. In my opinion it is an important subject for three reasons: First, it shows the quality of Shelley's mind and therefore leads us to a better understanding of his poetry. Second, it reveals the leading philosophical and literary conflicts of the early nineteenth century, thus expanding our understanding and appreciation of romantic poetry. And third, it is an issue that might have particular relevance to our own time, a time

Smith listened, and as he listened his astonishment increased. He couldn't believe this was the same man who had attended his seminar, whom he thought he knew. Stander's presentation was clear, direct, and intelligent; sometimes it was almost brilliant. Loomis was right; If the dissertation lived up to its promise, it would be brilliant. Hope, warm and heady, washed over him and he leaned forward intently.

Stander talked about his dissertation topic for maybe ten minutes and then stopped abruptly. Loomis quickly asked another question, and Stander answered immediately.

George Wren caught Smith's eye and gave him a mildly questioning look; Smith smiled slightly self-deprecatingly and shrugged slightly.

When Stander stopped again, Jim Holland spoke immediately. He was a thin young man, intense and pale, with slightly bulging blue eyes; he spoke with deliberate slowness, in a voice that always seemed to tremble with forced restraint. "Mr. Stander, earlier you mentioned Godwin's nectarism. I wonder if you could make a connection between that and John Locke's phenomenalism?" Smith recalled that Holland was an eighteenth-century man.

There was a moment of silence. Stander turned to Holland, removed the round glasses and polished them; his eyes blinked and stared indiscriminately. He put them back on and blinked again. "Would you please repeat the question?"

Holland started to speak, but Loomis cut him off. "Jim," he said gently, "do you mind if I expand on the question?" He quickly turned to Stander before Holland could reply. "Mr. Stander, starting from the implications of Professor Holland's question - namely, that Godwin accepted Locke's theory of the sensational nature of knowledge - the tabula rasa and all that - and that Godwin believed with Locke that judgment and knowledge are corrupted by the accidents of passion and of the inevitability of ignorance could be corrected by education - in view of these implications, would you comment on Shelley's principle of knowledge - particularly the principle of beauty - expressed in the final stanzas of 'Adonais'?"

Holland sat back in his chair with a puzzled frown. Stander nodded and said quickly, "Although the opening verses of 'Adonais,' Shelley's homage to his friend and colleague John Keats, are conventionally classical, what with their allusions to the Mother, the Hours, Urania, and so on and so on and with their repetitive invocations - the truly classic moment appears only in the final stanzas, which are indeed a sublime hymn to the eternal principle of beauty. If we may focus our attention for a moment on these famous lines:

Life, like a dome of many-hued glass, Stains the white glow of eternity, Until death tramples it into fragments.

"The symbolism contained in these lines is not clear until we consider the lines in their context. The one remains," writes Shelley a few lines earlier, "the many change and pass away". And we are reminded of Keats equally famous lines,

"Beauty is truth, truth is beauty" - that's all

You know on earth and everything you need to know.

So the principle is beauty; but beauty is also knowledge. And it's an idea that has roots..

Stander's voice continued, flowing and confident, the words almost coming out of his fast-moving mouth as if... Smith flinched, and the hope that had begun within him died as abruptly as it had been born. For a moment he felt almost physically ill. He looked down at the table and between his arms saw the image of his face reflected in the mirror finish of the walnut top. The picture was dark and he couldn't see his features; it was as if he were seeing a ghost shimmering unreal out of a hardness coming towards him.

Loomis finished his questioning and Holland began. It was, admitted Smith, a masterful performance; Loomis managed everything unobtrusively, with a lot of charm and good humor. Sometimes when Holland asked a question, Loomis would feign good-natured surprise and ask for clarification. At other times, he apologized for his own enthusiasm and followed one of Holland's questions with his own speculation, drawing Stander into the discussion so that it seemed as if he were actually a participant. He rephrased questions (always apologetically), altering them in such a way that the original intent of the explanation was lost. He engaged Stander in what appeared to be elaborate theoretical arguments, although he did most of the talking.

This time at dinner Smith didn't speak. He listened to the conversation swirling around him; he stared at Wren's face, which had become a heavy mask; he looked at Rutherford, who sat with his eyes closed and nodded his head; and he contemplated Holland's confusion, Stander's polite contempt, and Loomis' fevered animation. He waited to do what he knew he had to do, and he waited with fear, anger, and sadness that intensified with each passing minute. He was glad none of her eyes met his own as he stared at her.

Holland's interrogation period was finally over. As if he were somehow part of the fear Smith felt, Wren glanced at his watch and nodded. He didn't speak.

Smith took a deep breath. Still staring at the ghost of his face in the rough varnish of the tabletop, he said flatly, "Mr. Stander, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about English literature with detailed answers. I'll start early and will go chronologically as time permits. Will you first describe to me the principles of Anglo-Saxon versification?"

"Yes sir," Stander said. His face was frozen. "First of all, the Anglo-Saxon poets that existed in the Middle Ages did not have the advantages of sensibility that later poets in the English tradition had. In fact, I should say that her poetry was marked by primitivism. Still, within this imitivisum there is potential, though perhaps hidden to some eyes, there is potential for that subtlety of feeling that is meant to characterize—"

"Mr. Stander," Smith said, "I asked about the principles of versification. Can you give them to me?'

"Well, sir," said Stander, "it's very rough and irregular.

"Is that all you can tell me about it?"

"Mr. Stander," Loomis said quickly – a little wildly, Smith thought - "that rudeness you're talking about - can you explain it, give the -"

"No," Smith said firmly, not looking at anyone. "I want my question answered. Is that all you can tell me about Anglo-Saxon verse?"

"Well, sir," said Stander; he smiled and the smile turned into a nervous giggle. "Frankly, I have not yet completed my required course in Anglo-Saxon and I am reluctant to discuss such matters without that authority."

"Very good," said Smith. "Let's skip the Anglo-Saxon literature. Can you name a medieval drama that had an impact on the development of Renaissance drama?"

Stander nodded. "Of course, in their own way, all medieval dramas led to the high performance of the Renaissance. It is hard to see that out of the barren soil of the Middle Ages came Shakespeare's drama only a few years later. Flower and—"

"Mr. Stander, I'm asking simple questions. I must insist on simple answers. I'll put the question even simpler. Name three medieval dramas."

"Early or late, sir?" He had taken off his glasses and was polishing them frantically.

"All three, Mr. Stander."

"There are so many," Stander said. "It's difficult to... There's everyone..."

"Can you name more?"

"No, sir," Stander said. "I must confess a weakness in the areas where you -" "Can you name any other titles – just the titles - of any literary works of the Middle Ages?"

Stander's hands were shaking. "Like I said, sir, I have to admit a weakness in..."

"Then we move on to the Renaissance. Which genre do you trust the most these days, Mr. Stander?"

"The" - Stander hesitated and involuntarily looked at Loomis pleadingly -

"The poem, sir. Or – the drama. The drama maybe."

"So the drama. What is the first blank verse tragedy in English, Mr Stander?"

'"The first?" Stander licked his lips. "The scholarship is divided on this issue, sir. I should hesitate..."

"Before Shakespeare, can you name an important drama?" "Sure, sir," Stander said. "There is Marlowe – the mighty line -" "Name some pieces of Marlowe."

With an effort, Stander pulled himself together. "There is, of course, the justifiably famous Dr. Fist. And – and – the Jew from Malfi."

"Faustus and the Jew of Malta. Can you name more?"

"Honestly, sir, those are the only two plays I've reread in the last year or so. So I would prefer not..."

"All right. Tell me about the Jews of Malta."

"Mr. Stander," Loomis called. "If I may expand the question a bit. If you like..."

"No!" Smith said grimly, not looking at Loomis. "I want answers to my questions. Mr. Stander?"

Stander said desperately, "Marlowe's mighty line -"

"Let's forget the 'mighty line,'" Smith said wearily. "What happens in the play?"

"Well," said Stander, a little wildly, "Marlowe attacks the problem of anti-Semitism as it manifested itself in the early sixteenth century. The sympathy, I could even say the deep sympathy..."

'It's all right, Mr Stander. Let's continue with..."

Loomis shouted, "Let the contestant answer the question! At least give him time to reply."

"Very good," Smith said softly. "Would you like to continue with your answer, Mr. Stander?"

Stander hesitated for a moment. "No, sir," he said.

Smith continued his questioning relentlessly. What had been an anger and outrage that encompassed both Stander and Loomis became a kind of pity and sick regret that encompassed her as well. After a while it seemed to Smith that he had come out of it, and it was as if he heard an impersonal and deadly voice.

Finally he heard the voice say, "All right, Mr. Stander. Their specialization period is the nineteenth century. You seem to know little about the literature of previous centuries;

He tried not to look at Stander's face, but he couldn't keep his eyes from raising from time to time to see the round, staring mask staring back at him with cold, pale malice. Stander nodded briefly.

"You know the more important poems of Lord Byron, don't you?" "Of course," said Stander.

"Then would you say something about 'English Bards and Scottish.'

reviewers?'"

Stander looked at him suspiciously for a moment. Then he smiled triumphantly. "Ah, sir," he said, nodding his head vigorously. "I understand. Now I understand. You're trying to trick me. Naturally. 'English Bards and Scottish Reviewers' is not at all Poet by Byron, after the publication of his first poems. Very good, sir. Very..."

"All right, Mr. Stander," Smith said wearily. "I have no more questions."

Silence fell over the group for a few moments. Then Rutherford cleared his throat, placed the papers on the table in front of him, and said, "Thank you, Mr. Stander. If you go outside and wait a moment, the committee will discuss your exam and let you know their decision."

In the few moments it took Rutherford to say what he had to say, Stander composed himself. He got up and put his crippled hand on the tabletop. He smiled almost condescendingly at the group. "Thank you, gentlemen," he said. "It was an extremely rewarding experience." He hobbled out of the room and closed the door behind him.

Rutherford sighed. "Well, gentlemen, is there a discussion?" Another silence fell over the room.

Loomis said, "I thought he did pretty well on my part of the test. And he did pretty well on Holland's part. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with how the last part of the stage went, but I think he was pretty tired by that point. He's a good student, but he doesn't perform as well as he could under pressure. He gave Smith a vacant, pained smile. "And you pressured him a bit, Bill. You have to admit that.

Rutherford said, "Mr. – Holland?"

Holland looked from Loomis to Smith; he frowned in confusion and his eyes blinked. "But – well, he seemed terribly weak. He swallowed uncomfortably. "This is the first hearing I have attended here. I really don't know what the standards are, but – well, he seemed terribly weak. Let me think about that for a minute."

Rutherford nodded. "Mr. Smith?" "Failed," Smith said. "This is a clear failure."

"Oh, come on, Bill," Loomis called. "You're a bit hard on the boy, aren't you?"

"No," Smith said calmly, eyes fixed straight ahead. "You know it's not me

holly."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Loomis; it was as if he were trying to create emotion in his voice by raising his voice. "Just what do you mean?"

"Stop it, Holly," Smith said wearily. "The man is incompetent. There can be no doubt about that. The questions I asked him were what a decent student should have asked and he was unable to answer a single one satisfactorily. And he's both lazy and dishonest. In my seminar last semester—"

"Your seminar!" Loomis laughed briefly. "Well, I heard about that. And besides, that's another matter. The question is how did he fare on him today."

"I asked him questions," Smith said. "The simplest questions I could think of. I was willing to give him every chance." He paused and said carefully, "You're his supervisor for his thesis, and it's only natural that you two should have talked about his topic. So when you asked him about his thesis, he did very well. But once we got beyond that..."

"What do you mean!" shouted Loomis. "Are you suggesting that I – that there were -"

"I am making no allegations other than that, in my opinion, the candidate did not do a decent job. I cannot consent to his death."

"Look," said Loomis. His voice had dropped and he tried to smile. "I can see I have a higher opinion of his work than you do. He's been to several of my classes and – never mind. I'm willing to compromise. Although I think it's too strict, I'm willing to offer him a conditional pass. That would mean he could repeat a couple of semesters, and then—"

"Well," Holland said with some relief, "that seems better than giving him a clear pass. I don't know the man, but it's obvious he's not ready..."

"Good," Loomis said, smiling vigorously at Holland. "Then that's done.

Spring--"

"No," said Smith. "I have to vote for failure."

"Goddamn!" Loomis yelled. "Do you realize what you're doing, Smith? Do you realize what you're doing to the boy?"

"Yes," Smith said quietly, "and I'm sorry for him. I prevent him from graduating and I prevent him from teaching in a college or university. That's what I want to do, making him a teacher would be a — disaster."

Loomis was very quiet. "Is that your last word?" he asked icily.

"Yes," said Smith.

Loomis nodded. "Well, let me warn you, Professor Smith, I have no intention of dropping the matter here.

"Gentlemen, please," Rutherford said. He looked like he was about to cry. "Let's keep our perspective. As you know, there must be unanimous approval for the candidate to pass. Is there no way to resolve this difference?"

Nobody spoke.

Rutherford sighed. "Well then, I have no choice but to explain that -

-"

"Just a minute." It was George Wren; he had been so quiet throughout the examination that the others had almost forgotten he was there. Now he sat up a little in his chair and turned to the tabletop in a tired but determined voice. "As Acting Chair of the Department, I will make a recommendation. I trust that it will be followed. I recommend that we postpone the decision until the day after tomorrow.

"There's nothing to discuss," Loomis said heatedly. "If Smith wants -"

"I have made my recommendation," Wren said quietly, "and it will be followed. Dean Rutherford, I propose that we update the candidate on our resolution of this matter."

They found Stander sitting perfectly still in the corridor outside the conference room. He casually held a cigarette in his right hand and looked boredly at the ceiling.

"Mr. Stander," Loomis called, limping toward him.

Stander got up; he was a few centimeters taller than Loomis, so he had to look down on him.

"Mr. Stander, I have been instructed to inform you that the committee has been unable to reach agreement on your investigation; You will be informed the day after tomorrow. But I assure you" – his voice grew louder – "I assure you that you have nothing to worry about. Nothing at all."

Stander stood for a moment, glancing coolly from one to the other. "Thank you again, gentlemen, for your attention." He caught Smith's eye and a flicker of a smile crossed his lips.

George Wren hurried away without speaking to either of them; Smith, Rutherford, and Holland walked down the hall together; Loomis stayed behind and spoke earnestly to Stander.

"Well," said Rutherford, pacing back and forth between Smith and Holland, "it's an awkward affair. No matter how you look at it, it's an awkward affair."

"Yes, it is," Smith said, turning away from them. He went down the marble steps, his steps quickening as he got closer to the ground floor, and went outside. He took a deep breath of the smoky scent of the afternoon air and breathed again as if he were a swimmer emerging from the water. Then he slowly walked towards his house.

Early the next afternoon, before he had a chance to eat lunch, he received a call from George Wren's secretary asking him to come to the office immediately.

Wren waited impatiently as Smith entered the room. He got up and gestured for Smith to sit in the chair he had pulled up next to his desk.

"Is this about the Stander thing?" asked Smith.

"In a way," Wren replied. "Loomis has asked me to meet to try and work this out. It will probably be uncomfortable. He sat down again and rocked back and forth in the swivel chair for several minutes, looking thoughtfully at Smith. He said abruptly, "Loomis is a good man."

"I know he is," Smith said. "In a way, he's probably the best man in the department."

As if Smith hadn't spoken, Wren continued, "He has his problems, but they don't come up very often; and when they do occur, he is usually able to handle them. It is unfortunate that this matter should have arisen just now; The timing is clumsy as hell. A split in the department at the moment..." Wren shook his head.

"George," Smith said uncomfortably, "I hope you're not..."

Wren raised his hand. "Wait," he said. "I wish I had told you that earlier. But it wasn't meant to be released, and it wasn't really official. It should still be confidential, but — remember we talked about it a few weeks ago? the presidency?"

Smith nodded.

"Well, it's Loomis. He's the new leader. It's done, done.

The suggestion came from above, but I have to tell you that I accepted it." He gave a short laugh. "Not that I would have been able to do anything else. But even if it had been me, I would have participated – back then. Now I'm not so sure anymore."

"I see," Smith said thoughtfully. After a few moments, he continued, "I'm glad you didn't tell me.

"Goddamn it, Bill," Wren said. "You have to understand. Stander or Loomis or – but you're an old friend, I don't give a fuck. Wiles. I think you are right. correct. But let's be practical. Loomis takes it very seriously, and he's not going to drop it. And when it comes to a fight, it gets embarrassing as hell. Loomis can be vengeful, you know that I do. He can't fire you, but he can do almost anything else. And to a certain extent I have to go along with him." He laughed bitterly again. "Damn, I have to agree with him to a large extent. If a dean begins to reverse a department head's decisions, he must fire him from his chair. Now if Loomis steps out of line, I could remove him from the presidency; or at least I could try. I might even get away with it, or I might not. But even if I did, there would be a struggle that would tear the department, maybe even the college, wide open. And damn it..." Wren was suddenly embarrassed; he murmured, "Damn it, I've got college to think about." He looked directly at Smith. "Do you understand what i am trying to say? "

A warm feeling, love and respect for his old friend washed over him

blacksmith He said, "Of course, George. Did you think I wouldn't understand?" "All right," Wren said. "And there's something else. Somehow Loomis has his finger in the President's nose and is leading him around like a cut bull. So it can be even rougher than you think. Look, all you have to do is tell you I'd have changed my mind. You could even blame me – say I made you do it."

"It's not about saving face, George."

"I know that," Wren said. "I said it wrong. Think of it this way. What is it with Stander? Sure I know; it is the principle of the thing; but there is another principle to keep in mind."

"It's not the principle," Smith said. "It's Stander. It would be a disaster to release him in a classroom."

"Damn it," Wren said wearily. "If he doesn't make it here, he can go somewhere else and graduate; and despite everything, he might even make it here. You could lose this, you know, no matter what you do. We can't keep the stayers out."

"Maybe not," Smith said. "But we can try."

Wren was silent for a few moments. He sighed. "In order. There's no use keeping Loomis waiting any longer. He got up from his desk and went to the door that led to the small anteroom. But as he passed Smith, Smith put his hand on his arm and stopped him for a moment.

"George, do you remember something Dave Doyon once said?"

Wren raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Why are you bringing up Dave Doyon?" Smith looked across the room, out the window, trying to remember. "The three of us were together and he said – something about the university being an asylum, a refuge from the world, for the dispossessed, the crippled. But he didn't mean Stander. Dave would have thought Stander as - - like the world. And we won't let him in. Because if we do, we become like the world, just as unreal, just like... The only hope we have is to keep him away."

Wren looked at him for several moments. Then he grinned.

"You son of a bitch," he said cheerfully. "We'd better see Loomis now." He opened the door, waved, and Loomis walked into the room.

He came into the room so stiff and formal that the slight twitch in his right leg was barely felt; his thin handsome face was rigid and cold, and he held his head up so that his rather long and wavy hair almost touched the hump that disfigured his back below his left shoulder. He didn't look at either of the two men in the room with him; he took a chair across from Wren's desk and sat as upright as he could, staring at the gap between Wren and Smith. He turned his head slightly to Wren.

"I have asked that the three of us meet for a simple purpose. I want to know if Professor Smith reconsidered his unwise vote yesterday."

"Mr. Smith and I have discussed the matter," Wren said. "I'm afraid we couldn't solve it."

Loomis turned and stared at Smith; his light blue eyes were dull, as if a translucent film had fallen over them. "Then I'm afraid I'll have to make some pretty serious charges public."

"Fees?" Wren's voice was surprised, a little angry. "You never mentioned anything about..."

"I'm sorry," Loomis said. "But this is necessary." He said to Smith, 'The first time you spoke to Colin Stander was when he asked you to be admitted to your graduate school.

"That's right," Smith said.

"You were reluctant to let him in, weren't you?"

"Yes," said Smith. "The class already had twelve students."

Loomis glanced at some notes he was holding in his right hand. "And when the student told you he had to go in, you reluctantly admitted him while saying that admitting him would practically ruin the seminar. Is that right?"

"Not quite," Smith said. "As far as I remember, I said another one in class --"

Loomis waved him off. "It doesn't matter. I'm just trying to establish a connection. Didn't you question his competence for the work in the seminar in this first conversation?"

George Wren said wearily, "Holly, where is this taking us?

"Please," said Loomis. "I said I had charges to bring. You must allow me to develop them. Now. Didn't you question his competence?"

Smith said calmly, "I asked him a few questions, yes, to see if he'd be able to get the job done."

"And did you make sure it was him?"

"I wasn't sure, I think," Smith said. "It's hard to remember."

Loomis turned to Wren. "So we found, first, that Professor Smith was reluctant to admit Stander to his seminar; second, that his reluctance was so strong that he threatened Stander that his admission would ruin the seminar; third, that he at least doubted Stander was able to do the job; and fourth, that despite those doubts and those strong feelings of resentment, he let him into the class anyway.

Wren shook his head hopelessly. "Holly, this is all pointless."

"Wait," said Loomis. He glanced quickly at his notes, then looked up slyly at Wren. "I have a number of other points to make. I could develop them through 'cross-examination' - he gave the words a wry tone - 'but I'm not a lawyer. But I assure you that I am prepared to specify those charges if necessary." He paused, as if gathering his strength. "I am willing to demonstrate that Professor Smith admitted Mr. Stander to his seminar at first with prejudiced feelings against him; I am willing to show that this biased feeling was reinforced by the fact that certain temperamental and emotional conflicts arose during the course of this seminar, that the conflict was supported and amplified by Mr. Smith himself, who allowed at times encouraging other members of the class to ridicule and laugh at Mr. Stander. I am willing to show that this prejudice has been expressed more than once in statements made by Professor Smith to students and others; that he accused Mr. Stander of "attacking" a member of the class when Mr. Stander merely expressed a contrary opinion, that he admitted his anger at this so-called "attack" and that, moreover, that he behaved superficially about Mr. Stander themselves 'stupid'. I am also willing to demonstrate that Professor Smith, without provocation, out of this prejudice, accused Mr. Stander of laziness, ignorance and dishonesty. And finally, that of all thirteen members of the Mr. Stander was the only one – the only one - whom Professor Smith had suspected of asking him alone to submit the text of his seminar report. I now urge Professor Smith to either individually or categorically deny these allegations."

Smith shook his head almost in admiration. "My God," he said. "As you imagine! Sure, everything you say is fact, but none of it is true. Not like you say."

Loomis nodded as if expecting the answer. "I'm ready to demonstrate the truth of everything I've said. "No!" said Smith sharply. "That's in a way the most outrageous thing you've said all afternoon. I won't let the students get involved in this mess." "You may not have a choice, Smith," Loomis said quietly. "You may not have an office at all."

George Wren looked at Loomis and said softly, "What are you getting at?" Loomis ignored him. He said to Smith, "Mr. Stander has told me that, while opposed in principle, he is now willing to turn over to you the term paper about which you have expressed so many ugly doubts; he is willing to comply with any decision that you and two other qualified members of the department may make. If a majority of the three passed the grade, he receives a passing grade in seminary and is allowed to remain in graduate school. "

Smith shook his head; he was ashamed to look at Loomis. "You know I can't."

"Very well. I don't like doing this, but – if you don't change your vote yesterday, I'll be forced to bring formal charges against you."

George Wren's voice rose. "What will you be forced to do?"

Loomis said coolly, "The University of Missouri constitution permits any incumbent faculty member to bring charges against any other incumbent faculty member if there is compelling reason to believe that the accused faculty member is incompetent, unethical, or failing to perform their duties Obligations according to the ethical standards set out in Article 6, Section 3 of the Constitution. These charges and the evidence supporting them will be heard by the entire faculty, and at the end of the trial the faculty will either support the charges by a two-thirds majority or dismiss them by a fewer votes."

George Wren leaned back in his chair, mouth agape; he shook his head in disbelief. He said, "Look. This thing is getting out of control. You can't be serious, Holly."

"I assure you I am," Loomis said. "This is a serious matter. It is a principle of the matter; and – and my integrity was questioned. It is my right to press charges when I see fit."

Wren said, "You could never make them stick." "It's still my right to press charges."

Wren stared at Loomis for a moment. Then he said softly, almost affably, "No charges will be brought. I don't know how this thing will resolve itself, nor do I particularly care. But there will be no charges. We're all going to get out of here in a few minutes, and we're going to try and forget most of what was said this afternoon. No charges will be brought. Because," he added gently, "I promise I'll do my best to make sure you're ruined. I'll stop at nothing. I'll use every ounce of influence I'll lie if necessary, I'll pin something on you if I have to. I'm going to report to Dean Rutherford now that the vote on Mr. standing. If you still want to go through with it, you can take on him, you can take on the President, you can take on God. But this office is done with it. I don't want to hear any more about it."

After Wren's speech, Loomis' expression had turned thoughtful and cool. When Wren finished, Loomis nodded almost casually and got up from his chair. He looked at Smith once, then hobbled across the room and walked out. Wren and Smith sat in silence for a few moments. Finally, Wren said, "I wonder what's between him and Stander."

Schmidt shook his head. "It's not what you think it is," he said. "I do not know what it is. I don't think I want to know."

Ten days later, the appointment of Robin Loomis as Chair of the English Department was announced; and two weeks after that the timetable for the following year was distributed among the members of the department. Unsurprisingly, Smith discovered that for each of the two semesters that made up the academic year, he had been allotted three freshman composition courses and one sophomore study course; his upper-class readings in medieval literature and his graduate seminar had been dropped from the program. Smith realized that this was the kind of schedule a prospective instructor would expect. In some ways it was worse; for the schedule was so arranged that he taught at irregular, widely spaced hours, six days a week.

But for the first time since he had started teaching, it seemed possible that he could leave the university and teach somewhere else. He spoke to Sharon about the possibility and she looked at him as if he had hit her.

"I couldn't," she said. "Oh, I couldn't." And then, knowing that she had betrayed herself by showing her fear, she got angry. "What are you thinking?" She asked. "Our home – our beautiful home. And our friends. And Doris's school. It is not good for a child to be pushed from school to school."

"It may be necessary," he said. He hadn't told her about the incident with Colin Stander and Loomis' involvement; but it quickly became apparent that she knew all about it.

"Thoughtlessly," she said. "Absolutely thoughtless." But her anger was oddly deflected, almost superficial; her pale blue eyes wandered from her gaze and rested casually on odd objects in the living room as if to reassure her continued presence; her thin, slightly freckled fingers moved restlessly. "Oh, I know all about your problems. I've never interfered in your work, but – really, you're very stubborn. I mean, Doris and I are involved. And we certainly can't be expected to pick up and move just because you've put yourself in an awkward position."

"But for you and Doris, I think about it, at least in part.

"Oh," Sharon said absently, bringing bitterness to her voice. "That is not important. We have been poor up to now; there's no reason we can't keep going like this. You should have thought about what this might lead to beforehand. Suddenly her voice changed and she laughed indulgently, almost tenderly. "Honestly, things are so important to you. What difference could it make?"

And she wouldn't think of leaving Columbia. If it came to that, she said, she and Doris could still move in with Aunt Emma; She grew very weak and would welcome society.

So he dropped the possibility almost as soon as he brought it up. He was due to teach that summer, and two of his classes were those in which he had a particular interest; They were planned before Loomis became chairman. He decided to give them his full attention, knowing it would be some time before he had the chance to teach them again.

Chapter XI

A few weeks into the fall semester of 1932, John Smith realized that he had been unsuccessful in his fight to keep Colin Stander out of the English graduate program. After summer vacation, Stander returned to campus as if he were entering an arena in triumph; and when he saw Smith in the corridors of Jesse Hall, he bowed his head in an ironic bow and grinned wickedly at him. Smith learned from Jim Holland that Dean Rutherford had delayed last year's official vote and that it had finally been decided that Stander would be allowed to sit his preliminary orals again, with his examiners to be chosen by the department chair.

The battle was then over, and Smith was ready to concede defeat; but the fight did not end. When Smith met Loomis in the corridors or at a department meeting or college function, he spoke to him as he had spoken before, as if nothing had happened between them. But Loomis didn't answer his greeting; he stared at him coldly and averted his eyes as if to say he would not be mollified.

One day in late fall, Smith casually walked into Loomis' office and stood by his desk for a few minutes until Loomis looked up at him reluctantly, his lips tight and his eyes hard.

Realizing Loomis wasn't going to speak, Smith said awkwardly, "Listen, Holly, it's over and done. Can't we just drop it?"

Loomis looked at him steadily.

Smith continued, "We had a disagreement, but that's not uncommon. We've been friends before, and I see no reason..."

"We were never friends," Loomis said clearly.

"All right," Smith said. "But at least we understood each other. We can keep any differences we have, but for heaven's sake, there's no need to show them. Even the students are starting to notice."

"And well, the students could," said Loomis bitterly, "because the career of one of their own members was almost ruined, yes, yes, I might as well say it – an unfortunate physical affliction that would have evoked sympathy in a normal person." With his good right hand, Loomis held a pencil that trembled before him; Almost with horror, Smith realized that Loomis was terribly and irrevocably sincere. "No," Loomis continued passionately, "I can't forgive you."

Smith tried to keep his voice from getting stiff. "It's not about forgiveness. It's just that we behave towards each other in a way that doesn't cause too much inconvenience to the students and the other flatmates."

"I'll be very frank with you, Smith," Loomis said. His anger had subsided and his voice was calm, matter-of-fact. "I don't think you're fit to be a teacher; it is not a man whose prejudices overrule his talents and knowledge. I'd probably fire you if I had the power; but I don't have the power, as we both know. We are – you are protected by the ownership system. I have to accept that. But I don't have to play the hypocrite. I don't want anything to do with you. Nothing at all. And I won't pretend otherwise."

Smith looked at him steadily for a few moments. Then he shook his head. "All right, Holly," he said wearily. He started walking-

"Just a minute," Loomis called.

Smith turned. Loomis stared intently at some papers on his desk; his face was red and he seemed to be struggling with himself. Smith realized what he was seeing wasn't anger, it was shame.

Loomis said, "If you want to see me afterwards – on departmental business – make an appointment with the secretary." And though Smith stood looking at him for a few more moments, Loomis didn't raise his head. A short twitch passed over his face; then it was quiet. Smith left the room.

And for more than twenty years no man was to speak directly to another.

It was inevitable, as Smith later realized, that the students would be affected; even if he had succeeded in getting Loomis to appear, he could not have kept her from the consciousness of the struggle in the long run.

Former students of his, even students he had known fairly well, began to nod and speak to him in embarrassment, even furtively. Some were demonstratively friendly and made every effort to speak to him or be seen in the hallways with him. But he no longer had the relationship with them that he once had; he was a special character and was seen or not seen with him for special reasons.

He felt that his presence was embarrassing to both his friends and enemies, and so he kept to himself more and more.

A kind of lethargy came over him. He taught his classes as best he could, although the constant routine of the required first and second year courses sapped his enthusiasm and left him exhausted and deaf by the end of the day. As best he could, he filled the hours between his widely spaced classes with student conferences, meticulously reviewing students' work, delaying them until they became restless and impatient.

Time slowly passed around him. He tried to spend more time at home with his wife and child; but because of his odd schedule, the hours he was able to finish there were unusual and inexplicable by Sharon's strict agenda; He discovered (not to his surprise) that his wife was so agitated by his regular presence that she became jittery and silent, and at times became physically ill. And in all the time he spent at home, he rarely saw Doris. Sharon had carefully planned her daughter's days; Her only "free" time was in the evenings, and Smith was scheduled to teach a late-night class four nights a week. At the end of the lesson, Doris usually lay in bed.

So he continued to see Doris only briefly in the morning at breakfast; and he was alone with her only for the few minutes it took Sharon to clear the breakfast dishes from the table and soak them in the kitchen sink. He watched as her body lengthened, an awkward Doris grew in her limbs, and an intelligence grew in her calm eyes and watchful face. And sometimes he felt that a certain closeness remained between them, a closeness neither of them could afford to admit.

Eventually, he went back to his old habit of spending most of his time in his office at Jesse Hall. He told himself that he should be thankful for the opportunity to read alone, free from the pressures of preparing for specific classes, free from the predetermined directions of his learning. He attempted, for his own amusement and enjoyment, to read at random many of the things he had been waiting to read for years. But his thoughts would not go where he wanted; his attention wandered from the pages he held in front of him, and more and more often he found himself staring blankly into space; it was as if, in a moment, his mind was being emptied of everything he knew and his will was being drained of its power.

He had gotten to the point at his age where, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it came to his mind. He found himself wondering if his life was worth the living; if it ever had been. It was a question, he supposed, that all men were asked at some point; he wondered if it hit them with such impersonal force as it did him. There was a sadness about the question, but it was a general sadness that (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he wasn't even sure if the question arose from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what had become of his own life. He came, he believed

Once, late after his evening class, he returned to his office, sat down at his desk, and tried to read. It was winter, and snow had fallen during the day, covering the outer doors with a white softness. The office was overheating; he opened a window next to the desk to let the cool air into the nearby room. He took a deep breath and let his eyes wander over the white floor of the campus. On impulse he turned off the light on his desk and sat down in the hot darkness of his office; the cold air filled his lungs and he leaned towards the open window. He heard the stillness of the winter night, and it seemed to him that somehow he felt the sounds absorbed by the delicate and intricate cellular nature of snow. Nothing moved on the white; it was a dead scene that seemed to tug at him, sucking at his consciousness just as it pulled the sound out of the air and buried it in a cold, white softness. He felt himself drawn outward to the white that spread as far as he could see and that was part of the darkness from which it glowed, the clear and cloudless sky with no height or depth. For a moment he felt himself stepping out of the body that sat motionless in front of the window; and as he felt himself slipping away, everything vanished—the flat white, the trees, the tall pillars, the night, the distant stars—For a moment he felt himself slip out of the body that sat motionless before the window; and as he felt himself slipping away everything vanished – the flat white, the trees, the tall pillars, the night, the distant stars— For a moment he felt himself stepping out of the body that sat motionless in front of the window; and as he felt himself slipping away, everything vanished - the flat white, the trees, the tall pillars, the night, the distant stars -

- seemed incredibly tiny and distant, as if fading into nothingness. Then a radiator rattled behind him. He moved and the scene became itself. With an oddly reluctant relief, he switched on his desk lamp again. Gathering a book and some papers, he left the office, walked the dark corridors and exited through the wide double doors at the back of Jesse Hall. He walked slowly home, aware of how each step crunched in muted volume in the dry snow.

Chapter 12

More and more often that year, and especially in the winter months, he found himself drawn back into such a state of unreality; at will he seemed able to remove his consciousness from the body that contained it, and he watched himself as if he were an oddly familiar stranger doing the oddly familiar things he had to do. It was a dissociation he had never felt before; he knew that should worry him, but he was stunned and couldn't convince himself that it mattered. He was forty-two years old and he could see nothing in front of him to enjoy and little behind to remember.

At forty-three, John Smith's body was almost as thin as it had been when he first walked the campus in a dazed awe that had never quite lost its effect on him. With each year the flexion of his shoulders had increased, and he had learned to slow his movements, so that the clumsiness of his peasant hands and feet seemed more a consideration than an awkwardness cultivated in the bone. His long face had softened with time; and though the flesh was still like tanned leather, it no longer stretched so taut over the sharp cheekbones; it was relaxed by thin lines around his eyes and mouth. Still sharp and clear, his gray eyes had sunk deeper into his face, the cunning vigilance there half hidden; his hair, once light brown, had darkened, although a few strands of gray were beginning to appear around his temples. He did not often think of the years or regret their passing; but as he saw his face in a mirror, or as he approached his reflection in one of the glass doors that led into Jesse Hall, he recognized with a slight shock the changes that had come over him.

Late one spring afternoon he was sitting alone in his office. There was a stack of study books on his desk; he held one of the papers in his hand, but he didn't look at it. As he had often done lately, he looked out the window at the part of campus he could see from his office. The day was bright, and the shadow that Jesse Hall cast as he watched had crept almost to the foot of the five pillars that stood as mighty, isolated Doris in the center of the rectangular courtyard. The portion of the square in shadow was a deep brownish gray; beyond the shadow's edge the winter grass was light brown, covered with a shimmering film of the palest green. Against the spidery black tracks of the vines curling around them, the marble pillars were brilliant white; Soon the shadow would creep over them, thought Smith, and the bases would darken, and the darkness would creep up slowly, and then faster, until. . . He noticed someone standing behind him.

He turned in his chair and looked up. It was Charlotte Durbin, the young instructor who had watched his seminar last year. Though they sometimes bumped into each other in the corridors and nodded, they hadn't really spoken to each other since. Smith was aware that this confrontation annoyed him slightly; he didn't want to be reminded of the seminar and its aftermath. He pushed back his chair and stood up awkwardly.

"Miss Durbin," he said matter-of-factly, pointing to the chair next to his desk. She stared at him for a moment; her eyes were large and dark, and he found her face exceedingly pale. With a slight movement of her head, she moved away from him and took the chair he was vaguely pointing to.

Smith sat down again and stared at her for a moment without really seeing her. Then, aware that his look at her might be taken as rudeness, he tried to smile and mumbled a goofy, automatic question about her class.

She spoke abruptly. "You – you once said that if I got off to a good start on my dissertation, you would be willing to look at it."

"Yes," Smith said, nodding. "I think I did. Of course." Then he noticed for the first time that she was holding a folder of papers on her lap.

"Of course, when you're busy," she said tentatively.

"Not at all," Smith said, trying to work some enthusiasm into his voice. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound distracted."

She hesitantly lifted the folder up to him. He took it and picked it up and smiled at her. "I thought you were further along," he said.

"That was me," she said. "But I've started over. I am breaking new ground and – and I would be grateful if you would let me know what you think of it."

He smiled at her again and nodded; he didn't know what to say. They sat in awkward silence for a moment.

Finally he said, "When do you need this back?"

She shook her head. "Anytime. Whenever you have time."

"I don't want to stop you," he said. "How about this coming Friday? That should give me enough time. About three o'clock?"

She stood up as abruptly as she had sat down. "Thank you," she said. "I do not want to disturb. Thank you." And she turned and walked out of his office, slim and erect.

He held the folder in his hands for a few moments and stared at it. Then he put it on his desk and went back to his freshman topics.

That was on a Tuesday, and for the next two days the manuscript sat untouched on his desk. For reasons he didn't quite understand, he couldn't bring himself to open the folder and start reading what would have been a pleasure just a few months ago. He watched it warily, as if it were an enemy trying to lure him back into a war he had renounced.

And then it was Friday and he still hadn't read it. He saw it lying accusingly on his desk in the morning when he was collecting his books and papers for his eight o'clock class; when he got back a little after nine, he almost decided to leave a note in Miss Durbin's mailbox at the main office, asking for another week off; but he decided to look at it quickly before his eleven o'clock class and say a few cursory words to her when she came by that afternoon. But he couldn't bring himself to do it; and just before he had to leave for class, his last of the day, he snatched the folder from his desk, tucked it among his other papers, and hurried across campus to his classroom.

After class ended at noon, he was held up by several students who had to talk to him, so he was only able to free himself after one. With a kind of grim determination he walked towards the library; he intended to find an empty carrel and read the manuscript a hasty hour before his three o'clock appointment with Miss Durbin.

But even in the dim, familiar stillness of the library, in an empty cabinet he found tucked away in the lower depths of the stacks, he had trouble glimpsing the pages he was carrying. He opened other books and read paragraphs at random; he sat quietly, breathing in the musty smell that emanated from the old books. Finally he sighed; Unable to put it off any longer, he opened the folder and glanced hastily at the first few pages.

At first only a nervous edge of his mind touched what he read; but gradually the words forced themselves on him. He frowned and read more closely. And then he got caught; he went back to where he started and his attention turned to the page. Yes, he said to himself of course. Much of the material she had given in her seminar report was included here, but rearranged, rearranged, pointing in directions he himself had only vaguely glimpsed. My God, he said to himself in a sort of astonishment; and his fingers trembled with excitement as he turned the pages.

As he got to the last sheet of typewriter, he leaned back in happily exhausted and stared at the gray cement wall in front of him. Although it seemed only a few minutes had passed since he had started reading, he checked his watch. It was almost three thirty. He got to his feet, hastily collected the manuscript, and hurried out of the library; and even though he knew it was too late to make a difference, he ran halfway across campus to Jesse Hall.

As he passed the open door of the main office on his way to his own, he heard his name called. He stopped and stuck his head in the door. The secretary – a new girl Loomis had recently hired - said to him accusingly, almost impudently: 'Miss Durbin was here at three o'clock to see you. She waited almost an hour."

He nodded, thanked her and walked more slowly to his office. He told himself it didn't matter, he could give her the manuscript back on Monday and then apologize. But the excitement he had felt when he finished the manuscript did not abate, and he paced restlessly about his office; every now and then he paused and nodded to himself. Finally he went to his bookshelf, searched for a moment and pulled out a slim pamphlet with smeared black letters on the cover: Faculty and Staff Directory, University of Missouri. He found Charlotte Durbin's name; She didn't have a phone. He wrote down her address, picked up her manuscript from his desk and left his office.

About three blocks from campus, toward town, a cluster of large old houses had been converted into apartments a few years ago; These were occupied by older students, younger faculty, university staff, and a scattering of townspeople. Right in the middle was the house where Charlotte Durbin lived. It was a huge three-story building of gray stone, with a bewildering array of entrances and exits, with turrets and bay windows and balconies jutting out and up on all sides. Eventually, Smith found Charlotte Durbin's name on a mailbox on the side of the building, where a short set of concrete stairs led down to a basement door. He hesitated a moment, then knocked.

When Charlotte Durbin opened the door for him, John Smith almost didn't recognize her; she had combed her hair up and caught it carelessly high on her back, leaving her little pink-and-white ears bare; she wore dark-rimmed glasses, behind which her dark eyes were wide and frightened; she wore a man's shirt, open at the neck; and she wore dark pants that made her appear slimmer than he remembered.

"I'm sorry I missed our appointment," Smith said awkwardly. He pushed the folder towards her. "I thought you might need this over the weekend."

She didn't speak for a few moments. She looked at him blankly and bit her lower lip. She stepped back from the door. "Won't you come in?"

He followed her down a very short, narrow hallway into a tiny, low-ceilinged, dark room with a low three-quarter bed that served as a couch, a long, low table in front of it, a single upholstered chair, a small desk and chair, and one with books filled bookshelf on one wall. Several books were open on the floor and on the couch, and papers were scattered on the desk.

"It's very small," Charlotte Durbin said, bending down to pick up one of the books off the floor, "but I don't need much space."

He was sitting in the upholstered chair across from the couch. She asked him if he would like some coffee and he said he would. She went into the small kitchen off the living room and he relaxed and looked around, listening to the little noises she was making in the kitchen.

She brought the coffee in delicate white china cups on a black lacquered tray, which she placed on the table in front of the couch. They sipped the coffee and talked tensely for a few moments. Then Smith spoke of the portion of the manuscript he had read, and the excitement he had felt earlier in the library overcame him; He leaned forward and spoke intensely.

For many minutes, the two could talk to each other freely, hiding behind the cloak of their discourse. Charlotte Durbin sat on the edge of the couch, her eyes sparkling, her slender fingers closing and loosening over the coffee table. John Smith pushed his chair forward and leaned toward her intensely; they were so close he could have reached out and touched them.

They spoke of the problems raised in the early chapters of their work, of the importance of the subject before investigation could lead.

"You mustn't give it up," he said, and his voice took on an urgency he couldn't understand. "No matter how difficult it may seem to you at times, you must not give up. It's too good for you to give up. Oh, it's good, there's no doubt about it."

She was silent, and for a moment the animation left her face.

She sat back, looked away from him and said absently, "The seminar – some of the things you said – it was very helpful."

He smiled and shook his head. "You didn't need the seminar. But I'm glad you could be there. It was a good seminar I think."

"Oh, it's shameful!" she blurted out. "It's embarrassing. The seminar – you were – I had to restart it after the desk.

Smith, surprised by her outburst, didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, "You shouldn't worry. These things happen. It will all work out in time. It really doesn't matter."

And suddenly, after he said the words, it didn't matter anymore. For a moment he realized the truth of what he was saying, and for the first time in months he felt the weight of a desperation lifted from him, the depth of which he had not fully realized. Almost dizzy, almost laughing, he said again, "It really doesn't matter."

But an embarrassment had arisen between them, and they could not speak as freely as they had a few moments ago. A moment later Smith got up, thanked her for the coffee and said goodbye. She walked him to the door and looked almost brusque as she said good night to him.

It was dark outside and there was a spring chill in the evening air. He breathed in and felt his body tingle in the coolness. Beyond the jagged outlines of the apartment buildings, the city lights shone in a thin mist that hung in the air. At the corner, a street lamp snuggled faintly against the darkness that was closing in around them; from the darkness beyond, laughter suddenly broke the silence, lingered and died. The smell of smoke from rubbish being burned in backyards was held back by the fog; and as he walked slowly through the evening, inhaling the scent and tasting on his tongue the sharp night air, it seemed to him that the moment he entered was enough and that perhaps he did not need much more.

And so he had his love affair.

The knowledge of his feelings for Charlotte Durbin slowly came over him. He found excuses to go to her apartment in the afternoon; the title of a book or article occurred to him, he wrote it down and purposely avoided seeing her in the corridors of Jesse Hall so he could stop by in the afternoon to give her the title and have a cup of coffee, and speak. On one occasion he spent half a day in the library looking for a clue that might corroborate a point which he found doubtful in its second chapter; at another time he painstakingly transcribed part of a little-known Latin manuscript of which the library had a photocopy, and so was able to spend several afternoons helping her with the translation.

On the afternoons they spent together, Charlotte Durbin was polite, friendly, and reserved; She was silently grateful for the time and interest he was devoting to her work, and she hoped it wasn't keeping him from more important things. It didn't occur to him that she might see him as anything but an interested professor whom she admired and whose help, though friendly, went little beyond the call of duty. He thought of himself as a slightly ridiculous figure whom no one could care about except impersonally; and after admitting his feelings for Charlotte Durbin, he was desperately careful not to show that feeling in an easily recognizable way.

For over a month he came to her apartment two or three times a week and stayed no more than two hours at a time; he feared she would be annoyed by his repeated appearances, so he made sure to only come when he was sure he could really help her with her work. He found, with a kind of grim amusement, that he was preparing for his visits with the same care as for lectures; and he told himself that this would be enough, that he would be content just to see her and speak to her, so long as she would endure his presence.

But despite his care and effort, the afternoons they spent together grew more and more exhausting. For long moments they had nothing to say; they sipped their coffee and looked away from each other, they said "Well..." in a timid and reserved voice, and they found reasons to pace restlessly around the room, away from each other. With a sadness he hadn't expected, Smith told himself that his visits would be a nuisance and that her politeness forbade her from letting him know that. Knowing he had to do it, he made his decision; he would pull away from her gradually, so she wouldn't realize he'd noticed her unrest, as if he'd given her all the help he could.

Over the next week he came to her apartment only once, and the following week he did not visit her at all. He hadn't foreseen the struggle he would have with himself; in the afternoons, sitting in his office, he had to almost physically restrain himself from getting up from his desk, rushing outside and going to her apartment. Once or twice he saw her from afar in the hallways, hurrying to and from class; he turned and walked in a different direction so they wouldn't have to meet.

After a while a kind of numbness got over him and he told himself it would be alright, that in a few days he could see her in the hallways, nod and smile at her, maybe even stop her for a moment and ask her how their work is going.

One afternoon, as he was getting mail from his mailbox at the main office, he overheard a young teacher telling another that Charlotte Durbin was ill and had not been to her class for two days. And the deafness left him; he felt a sharp pain in his chest, and his determination and the strength of his will left him. He jerked to his own office and looked down at his bookshelf with a sort of desperation, selected a book and walked out. When he got to Charlotte Durbin's he was out of breath and had to wait outside her door for several moments. Putting a smile he hoped was casual on his face, he fixed it there and knocked on her door.

She was even paler than usual, and there were dark spots around her id; she was wearing a plain dark blue robe and her hair was combed tightly away from her face.

Smith was aware that he was speaking nervously and stupidly, but he couldn't stop the flow of his words. "Hello," he said cheerfully, "I heard you're ill, thought I'd drop by to see how you are, I have a book that might help, are you alright? -" He listened to the sounds breaking out of his stiff smile and couldn't keep his eyes from scanning her face.

When he finally fell silent, she stepped back from the door and said softly, "Come in."

Once he was in the small living room/bedroom, his nervous madness subsided. Sitting in the chair across from the bed, he felt a familiar lightness wash over him as Charlotte Durbin sat across from him. Neither of them spoke for a few moments.

Finally she asked, "Would you like some coffee?" "You can't bother," Smith said.

"It's no trouble." Her voice was gruff and had that angry edge to it that he had heard before. "I'm just going to heat it up."

She went into the kitchen. Smith, alone in the small room, stared gloomily at the coffee table and told himself he shouldn't have come. He marveled at the stupidity that drove men to do the things they did.

Charlotte Durbin returned with the coffee pot and two cups; she poured them coffee and they sat and watched the vapor rise from the black liquid. She took a cigarette from a crumpled pack, lit it and puffed nervously for a moment. Smith became aware of the book he had been carrying and which he still held in his hands. He put it on the coffee table between them.

"You may not be up to this," he said, "but I came across something that might help you, and I thought -"

"I haven't seen you for almost two weeks," she said, putting out her cigarette, rolling it vigorously in the ashtray.

He was surprised; he said absently: "I've been quite busy – so many things -"

"It doesn't matter," she said. "Really, it doesn't. I wouldn't have..." She rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand.

He looked at her worriedly; he thought she must have a fever. "I'm sorry you're sick. If there's anything I can do..."

"I'm not sick," she said. And she added, in a voice that was calm, speculative, and almost disinterested, "I'm desperate, desperately unhappy."

And he still didn't understand. The mere sharp utterance penetrated him like a blade; he turned away from her a little; he said confused, "I'm sorry. Can you tell me about it? If there's anything I can do..."

She lifted her head. Her features were stiff, but her eyes shone with tears. "I didn't mean to embarrass you. I'm sorry. You must think me very stupid."

"No," he said. He looked at her for a moment longer, at the pale face that seemed to be kept expressionless with an effort of will. Then he looked down at his large, bony hands clasped on one knee; the fingers were dull and heavy, and the knuckles were like white lumps on brown flesh.

Finally he said heavily and slowly: 'In many ways I am an ignorant man; that's it

I who am stupid, not you. I didn't come to see you because I thought – I felt like I was going to be a nuisance. Maybe that wasn't true."

"No," she said. "No, it wasn't true."

Still not looking at her, he continued, "And I didn't want to make you uncomfortable with having to deal with my feelings for you, which I knew would become apparent sooner or later if I kept watching her." "

She didn't move; two tears welled over her eyelashes and ran down her cheeks; We didn't wipe them away.

"I might have been selfish. I felt that nothing could come of it except embarrassment for you and unhappiness for me. You know my – circumstances. It seemed impossible that you - that you could feel anything else about me -"

"Shut up," she said softly, fiercely. "Oh dear, shut up and come back over here."

He found himself shaking; Awkward as a boy, he walked around the coffee table and sat down next to her. Her hands reached out hesitantly and awkwardly; they hugged each other in an awkward, tense embrace; and for a long time they sat motionless together, as if any movement might flee the strange and terrible they held between them in a single grip.

Her eyes, which he had taken to be dark brown or black, were deep purple. Sometimes they caught the faint light of a lamp in the room and glistened wetly; he could turn his head one way or the other, and the eyes beneath his gaze changed color as he moved, so it seemed they never stayed still even at rest. Her skin, which had looked so cool and pale from afar, had a warm, reddish undertone underneath, like light flowing beneath a milky transparency. And like the translucent flesh, the calm and poise and reserve he'd held for herself hid a warmth and playfulness and humor whose intensity was made possible by the appearance it cloaked.

In his forty-third year, John Smith learned what others learned before him, much younger: that the person you love first is not the person you love last, and that love is not an ending, but a process through which a person goes through trying to get to know another.

They were both very shy and slowly, tentatively, they got to know each other; they came nearer and farther away, they touched and retreated, neither wanted to impose more on the other than was welcome. Day by day the layers of reserve that protected them fell away so that finally they were like many exceedingly shy people, open to one another, exposed, totally and unselfconsciously relaxed.

Almost every afternoon, when his classes were over, he came to her apartment. They made love and talked and made love again, like children who never thought of tiring of their games. The spring days were getting longer and they were looking forward to summer.

Chapter13

In his extreme youth, Smith had viewed love as an absolute state of being that, if lucky, could be accessed; in his maturity he had decided that this was the heaven of false religion, to be looked upon with amused disbelief, gently familiar contempt, and embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he was beginning to know that it was neither a condition of Doris nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a state invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.

The hours he'd once spent in his office, gazing out the window at a landscape that shimmered and emptied before his blank stare, he now spent with Charlotte. Every morning he would go to his office early and sit restless for ten or fifteen minutes; then, unable to calm himself, he walked out of Jesse Hall and across campus to the library, where he browsed through the magazines for another ten or fifteen minutes. And finally, as if it were a game he was playing with himself, he released himself from his self-imposed tension, slipped through a side door of the library, and made his way to the house where Charlotte lived.

She often worked late into the night, and when he walked into her apartment some mornings he would find her just awake, warm and sensual in her sleep, naked under the dark blue robe she had thrown on to get to the door. Often on mornings like this they made love almost before they spoke and walked to the narrow bed, still crumpled and hot from Charlotte's sleep.

Her body was long and delicate and gently wild; and as he touched it his clumsy hand seemed to come alive over that flesh. Sometimes he looked at her body as if it were a solid treasure that he was taking care of; he let his blunt fingers play on the moist, slightly pink skin of her thighs and abdomen, marveling at the intricately simple tenderness of her small, firm breasts. He remembered that he had never known anyone's body before; and it further occurred to him that that was why he had always somehow separated the self of another from the body that carried that self around. And finally, with the finality of knowing, it occurred to him

Like all lovers, they talked a lot about themselves, as if that would help them understand the world that made them possible.

"My God, how I used to long for you," Charlotte once said. "I've often seen you standing in front of the class, so tall and lovely and awkward, and I always had something violent behind you. You never found out, did you?"

"No," Said John. "I thought you were a very decent young lady."

She laughed happily. "Right, indeed!" She became a little sober and smiled mischievously. "I think I thought I was too. Oh, how decent we seem to ourselves when we have no reason to be decent! It takes love to know something about yourself. Sometimes I feel with you like the slut of the world, the zealous, faithful slut of the world. Does that seem appropriate to you?"

"No," John said with a smile and reached out to her. "Come here."

She had had a lover, John learned; it had been during her senior year in college and had come to a bad end, with tears, reproach, and betrayal.

"Most affairs end badly," she said, and for a moment both were gloomy. John was shocked when he discovered his surprise when he learned that she had a lover before him; He realized that he had begun to think that they had never really existed before they came together.

"He was such a shy boy," she said. "Like you, I suppose, in a way; only he was bitter and anxious, and I could never know what about it. He was always waiting for me at the end of the dormitory walk under a big tree because he was too shy to come up where there were so many people. We used to walk for miles, out in the countryside, where there was no chance to see anyone. But we were never really – together. Even if we loved each other."

Smith could almost see this shadowy figure, who had no face and no name; his shock turned into sadness, and he felt a generous compassion for an unknown boy who had pushed him away from an obscure, lost bitterness that Smith now possessed.

Sometimes, in the sleepy inertia that followed their lovemaking, he lay in a seemingly slow and gentle flow of sensations and leisurely thoughts; and in this flow he hardly knew whether he was speaking out loud or whether he recognized only the words to which sensation and thought finally came.

He dreamed of perfection, of worlds in which they could always be together, and half believed in the possibility of what he dreamed. "How," he said, "would it be if," and went on to construct a possibility that was hardly more attractive than the one in which they existed. It was an unspoken knowledge they both had that the possibilities they had imagined and worked out were gestures of love and a celebration of the life they were now bringing together.

The life they had together was one that none of them had really imagined.

They grew from passion to lust to a deep sensuality that renewed itself from moment to moment.

"Pleasure and learning," Charlotte once said. "That's really all, isn't it?" And it seemed to Smith that that was exactly true, that this was one of the things he had learned.

Because their life together that summer wasn't just about love and talking. They learned to be together without speaking, and they got used to being quiet; Smith was supposed to bring books to Charlotte's apartment and leave her behind until eventually they had to put up an extra bookshelf for her. In the days they spent together, Smith returned to the studies he had all but abandoned; and Charlotte continued to work on the book that would become her dissertation. For hours she would sit at the tiny desk against the wall, her head bent over books and papers in intense concentration, her narrow pale neck arching and flowing out of the dark blue robe she usually wore; Smith lay on the chair or on the bed in equal concentration.

Sometimes they lifted their eyes from their studies, smiled at each other, and returned to their reading; sometimes Smith would look up from his book and let his gaze rest on the Dorisful curve of Charlotte's back and slender neck wherever a strand of hair fell. Then a slow, light craving came over him like a calm, and he rose and stood behind her, resting his arms lightly on her shoulders. She straightened and let her head slide back against his chest and his hands traveled forward into the loose robe and gently touched her breasts. Then they made love, lay quiet for a while, and returned to their studies as if their love and study were one process.

That was one of the oddities of what they called "given opinion" that they learned that summer. They had grown up in a tradition that in one way or another told them that the life of the spirit and the life of the senses were separate and actually hostile; they had believed, without ever really thinking, that one had to be chosen at the expense of the other. It had never occurred to them that one could reinforce the other; and since incarnation came before the knowledge of truth, it seemed a discovery belonging to them alone. They began to collect these oddities of "given opinion," and they hoarded them as if they were treasures; it helped isolate them from the world that would convey those opinions to them, and it helped

But there was another oddity that Smith noticed that he didn't share with Charlotte. It had to do with his relationship with his wife and daughter.

It was a relationship that, according to what was believed to be the case, should have steadily deteriorated while what was believed to describe his "affair" continued. But it didn't do anything like that. On the contrary, it seemed to be steadily improving. His increasing absence from what he still had to call "home" seemed to bring him closer to both Sharon and Doris than he had been in years. He began to develop an odd kindness for Sharon that bordered on affection, and occasionally they even talked about nothing in particular. That summer she'd even cleaned the glass-enclosed porch, repaired the ether damage, and set up a daybed so he wouldn't have to sleep on the living room couch.

And sometimes she would visit neighbors at the weekend, leaving Doris alone with her father. Occasionally, Sharon was gone long enough to take his daughter for walks in the country. Outside the house, Doris's hard, watchful reserve relaxed, and sometimes she smiled with a calm and charm Smith had almost forgotten. She had grown rapidly in the last year and was very thin.

Only through an effort of will could he remember that he was deceiving Sharon. The two parts of his life were as separate as the two parts of one life can be; and though he knew his powers of introspection were feeble and that he was capable of self-deception, he could not persuade himself that he was harming anyone for whom he felt responsible.

He had no talent for disguise, nor did it occur to him to disguise his affair with Charlotte Durbin; nor did it occur to him to make it visible to anyone. It didn't seem possible that anyone on the outside knew about their affair or even cared.

It was therefore a deep but impersonal shock when he discovered at the end of the summer that Sharon knew something about the affair and that she had known about it almost from the start.

She mentioned it casually one morning while he was lingering over his morning coffee and chatting with Doris. Sharon spoke a little sharply, telling Doris to stop dawdling at breakfast, that she had to practice the piano for an hour before she could waste time. John watched his daughter's thin, erect form as she left the dining room and absentmindedly waited for the first notes of resonance to come from the old piano.

"Well," Sharon said, her voice still sharp, "you're a bit late this morning, aren't you?"

John turned to her questioningly; the absent expression stayed on his face.

Sharon said, "Won't your little student be mad if you make her wait?" He felt a numbness on his lips. "What?" he asked. "What is that?"

"Oh, Willy," said Sharon, laughing indulgently. "You think I don't know about your – little flirtation? Well, I've known all along. What's your name? I heard it but I forgot what it is."

In his shock and confusion, his mind held only one word; and when he spoke his voice sounded irritated to him. "You don't understand," he said. "There is no – flirting, you call it. It is -"

"Oh, Willy," she said, laughing again. "You look so confused. Oh, I know about these things. A man your age and stuff. It's natural I suppose.

For a moment he was silent. Then he said reluctantly, "Sharon, if you want to talk about it -"

"No!" She said; there was a touch of fear in her voice. "There is nothing to discuss. Nothing at all."

And they didn't talk about it then or after. Most of the time, Sharon stuck to the convention that it was his work that kept him away from home; but occasionally, and almost absent-mindedly, she uttered the knowledge that was always somewhere within her. Sometimes she spoke playfully, with something like teasing affection; sometimes she spoke completely callously, as if it were the most casual topic of conversation she could imagine; sometimes she spoke irritably, as if a trifle had annoyed her.

She said, "Oh, I know. A man will be in his forties. But really, Willy, you're old enough to be her father, aren't you?'

It hadn't occurred to him how to appear to an outsider, to the world. For a moment he saw himself appearing like this; and what Sharon said was part of what he saw. He caught a glimpse of a figure flitting through smoking-room anecdotes and through the pages of cheap fiction -- a pathetic fellow walking into his middle age, misunderstood by his wife, trying to renew his youth and one-girl years to spend younger than himself, awkwardly and embarrassingly reaching for the youth he couldn't have, a silly, garish clown at whom the world laughed out of uneasiness, pity, and contempt. He studied this figure as closely as he could; but the longer he looked, the less familiar it became. It wasn't himself

But he knew the world was creeping up on him, on Charlotte and on the little niche of it they had thought was their own; and he watched the approach with a sadness he could not even speak of to Charlotte.

The fall semester began this September in a colorful Indian summer that came after an early frost. Smith returned to his classes with a zeal he had not felt in a long time; even the prospect of facing a hundred freshman faces didn't cloud the renewal of his energy.

His life with Charlotte largely went on as before, except that with the return of the students and many faculty members, he found it necessary to exercise prudence. During the summer the old house where Charlotte lived had been almost deserted; they had been able to be together in almost total isolation without fear of being noticed. Now John had to be careful when he came to her in the afternoon; he caught himself looking up and down the street before approaching the house and furtively walked down the stairs to the small fountain that opened into their apartment.

They thought of gestures and spoke of rebellion; They told each other that they were tempted to do something outrageous, to show themselves off. But they didn't, and they really didn't want to. They just wanted to be left alone, to be themselves; and because they wanted to, they knew they would not be left alone, and they sensed that they could not be themselves. They fancied themselves discreetly, and it hardly occurred to them that their affair would be suspected. They made it a point not to meet at the university, and when they could not avoid meeting in public, they greeted one another with a formality that they did not feel ironic.

But the affair was well known, and very quickly after the fall semester began. It was likely that the discovery resulted from the special clairvoyance that people have in such things; for none of them had given any outward sign of their private lives. Or maybe someone had made an idle speculation that had an element of truth in someone else's mind, which led to them both being looked at more closely, which in turn.... . Their speculations, they knew, were endless; but they continued to make them.

There were signs that both knew they were spotted. Once Smith was walking behind two male graduate students and heard one say, half in admiration, half in contempt, "Old Smith. By God, who would have believed that? human condition. Acquaintances of Charlotte indirectly referred to Smith and offered her confidences about her own love life, which she had not invited.

What surprised them both was that it didn't seem to matter. No one refused to speak to them; no one glared at them; They were not made to suffer from the world they feared. They began to believe that they could live in the place they thought was hostile to their love and live there with some dignity and ease.

Over the Christmas holiday, Sharon decided to take Doris to visit her in St. Louis; and for the only time in their life together John and

Charlotte could be together for a long time.

Separately and casually, both let it be known that they would be staying away from university over the Christmas holidays; Charlotte was to visit relatives in the East, and John was to work at the Kansas City Bibliographic Center and Museum. At different times they took separate buses and met at Lake Ozark, a resort village in the remote mountains of the great Ozark chain.

They were the only guests in the only hut in the village that was open all year round; and they had ten days together.

It had snowed heavily three days before their arrival, and it snowed again during their stay, leaving the rolling hills white throughout their stay.

They had a one-bedroom cabin with a living room and a small kitchen; it was set back from the other cottages and overlooked a lake that had frozen over during the winter months. In the morning they awoke to find themselves huddled together, their bodies warm and lush under the heavy blankets. They stuck their heads out of the blankets and watched their breath condense in great clouds in the cold air; they laughed like children and pulled the covers back over their heads and hugged each other tighter. Sometimes they made love and stayed in bed and talked all morning until the sun came through an east window; sometimes Smith would jump out of bed as soon as they were awake, pulling the covers off Charlotte's naked body and laughing at her screams while lighting a fire in the large fireplace.

Despite the cold, they went for a walk in the forest almost every day. The great pines, greenish-black against the snow, soared massively into the pale blue, cloudless sky; the occasional slip and slap of a mass of snow from one of the branches intensified the stillness around them, while the occasional chatter of a lone bird reinforced the isolation in which they walked. Once they saw a deer that had come down from the higher mountains in search of food. It was a deer, bright tawny against the bareness of the dark pines and white snow. Now, fifty yards away, it faced them, one forepaw raised gently over the snow, small ears pricked forward, brown eyes perfectly round and incredibly soft. Nobody moved. The deer's tender face bent, as if it looked at her with a polite question; then it turned without haste and walked away from them,

In the afternoon they went to the lodge's main office, which also served the village general store and restaurant. There they drank coffee and chatted with those who had stopped by, and perhaps picked up some things for their evening meal, which they always ate in their cabin.

In the evenings they would sometimes light the oil lamp and read; but more often they sat on folded blankets in front of the hearth and talked and were silent and watched the flames play artfully on the logs and watched the play of firelight on each other's faces.

One evening, towards the end of their time together, Charlotte said quietly, almost absent-mindedly, "Bill, if we never have anything else, we'll have had a week.

"It doesn't matter how it sounds," Smith said. He nodded. "It's true." "Then I'll say it," Charlotte said. "We will have had this week."

On her last morning, Charlotte arranged the furniture and cleaned the apartment with slow diligence. She took off the wedding ring she was wearing and wedged it in a crack between the wall and the fireplace. She smiled confidently. 'I wanted,' she said, 'to leave something of my own here; something I knew would stay here for as long as this place exists.

Smith couldn't answer her. He took her arm and they left the cabin and trudged through the snow to the lodge office where the bus would pick them up and take them back to Columbia.

One afternoon in late February, a few days into the second semester, Smith received a call from George Wren's secretary; She told him that the dean would like to speak to him and asked if he would come by this afternoon or the next morning. Smith told her he would – and sat with one hand on the phone for a few minutes after hanging up. Then he sighed and nodded to himself and went downstairs to Wren's office.

George Wren was wearing shirt sleeves, his tie loosened, and he was leaning back in his swivel chair with his hands behind his head. As Smith entered the room, he nodded politely and pointed to the leather armchair that was at an angle to his desk.

"Let yourself relax, Bill. How are you?" Smith nodded. "Good."

"The classes keep you on your toes?"

Smith said dryly, "That's right. I have a busy schedule."

"I know," Wren said, shaking his head. "I can't intervene, you know. But it's a damn shame."

"It's okay," Smith said a little impatiently.

"Jump." Wren sat up in his chair and clasped his hands on the desk in front of him. "There's nothing official about this visit, Bill. I just wanted to chat with you."

There was a long silence. Smith said softly, "What's the matter, George?"

Wren sighed, then said abruptly, "Okay. I'm speaking to you as a friend right now. There was talk. It's not something I have to watch out for anymore as Dean, but... Well, at some point I might have to watch out for it, and I thought I should talk to you – as a friend, mind you - before anything serious develops.

Smith nodded. "What kind of conversation?"

"Oh damn Bill. You and the girl from Durbin.

"Yes," said Smith. "I know. I just wanted to know how far it went." "Not far. Hints, comments, stuff like that."

"I see," Smith said. "I don't know what to do about it." Wren carefully folded a sheet of paper. "Are you serious, Bill?"

Smith nodded and looked out the window. "It's serious, I'm afraid." "What are you going to do?"

"I do not know."

With sudden violence, Wren crumpled up the paper he had folded so carefully and threw it in a wastebasket. He said: "In theory, it's your own life that you have to lead. In theory, you should be able to fuck anyone you want, do anything you want, and it shouldn't matter as long as it doesn't interfere with your teaching. But damn it, your life is not your own to lead. It's – oh damn it. You know what I mean."

Smith smiled. "I'm afraid I do."

"It's a bad deal. What about Sharon?"

"Apparently," Smith said, "she takes the whole thing a lot less seriously than everyone else. And it's a funny thing, George; I don't think we've ever gotten along better than we did last year. "

Wren laughed briefly. "You can never tell, can you? But what I meant was, will there be a divorce?

"I don't know. Possible. But Sharon would fight it. "What about Doris?"

A sudden pain gripped Smith's throat and he knew his expression reflected what he was feeling. "It's – something else. I don't know, George."

Wren said impersonally, as if they were talking about someone else: "You could survive a divorce — if it weren't too messy. It would be tough, but you'd probably survive. And if that – thing with the Durbin girls wasn't serious, if you were just making out, well, that could also be handled. But you stick your neck out, Bill; you demand it."

"I suppose I am," Smith said.

There was a pause. "That's one hell of a job I have," Wren said ponderously. "Sometimes I think I'm not the man for it at all."

Smith smiled. "Dave Doyon once said you're not big enough to be really successful."

"Maybe he was right," Wren said. "But I often feel like one."

"Don't worry, George," Smith said. "I understand your position. And if I could make it easier for you, I would..." He paused and shook his head vigorously. "But I can't do anything now. That will have to wait. Somehow..."

Wren nodded and didn't look at Smith; he stared at his desk as if it were doom approaching with slow inevitability. Smith waited a few moments, and when Wren said nothing, he got up quietly and left the office.

Smith came to Charlotte's apartment late in the afternoon because of his conversation with George Wren. Without bothering to look up or down the street, he walked down the sidewalk and got inside. Charlotte was waiting for him; she hadn't changed, and she almost waited, sitting upright and alert on the couch.

"You're late," she said flatly. "Sorry," he said. "I was stopped."

Charlotte lit a cigarette; Her hand was shaking slightly. She looked at the match for a moment and blew it out with a puff of smoke. She said, "One of my fellow teachers pretty much told me that Dean Wren called you this afternoon."

"Yes," said Smith. "That stopped me." "Was it about us?"

Smith nodded. "He had heard a few things."

"I thought that would be it," Charlotte said. "My teacher friend seemed to know something she didn't want to say. Oh god, Bill!"

"It's not like that at all," Smith said. "George is an old friend. I actually think he wants to protect us. I think he will if he can."

Charlotte didn't speak for several moments. She took off her shoes and lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling. She said calmly, "Now it begins. I suppose it was too much hoping they would leave us alone.

"If it gets too bad," Smith said, "we can go. There's something we can do." "Oh Bill!" Charlotte laughed a little, throatily and softly. She sat up on the couch. "You are the dearest love, the dearest, dearest, that one can imagine. And I won't let them bother us. I won!"

And for the next few weeks, they lived much the same as before. With a speed they couldn't have mastered a year earlier, with a power they didn't know they had, they practiced dodging and retreating, using their powers like skilled generals who must survive on meager strength . They became really circumspect and cautious and took a fierce delight in their manoeuvres. Smith did not come to her apartment until after dark, when no one could see him enter; during the day, between classes, Charlotte could be seen in cafes with younger male teachers; and the hours they spent together were intensified by their shared determination. They told themselves and each other that they were closer than ever; d to their surprise they found it true that the words they spoke to comfort themselves were more than comforting. They made closeness possible and bond inevitable.

It was a world of semi-darkness that they lived in and into which they brought the better parts of themselves – so after a while the outside world where people walked and talked, where there was change and constant movement, so it seemed false and unreal. Their lives were sharply divided between the two worlds, and it seemed natural to them that they should have to live so apart.

During the late winter and early spring months, they found a calm together that they had not previously had. As the outside world drew nearer to them, they became less aware of their presence; and their happiness was such that they did not need to speak of it to each other, or even think about it. In Charlotte's small, gloomy apartment, hidden like a cave beneath the massive old house, they seemed to move outside of time, in a timeless universe of their own discovery.

Then, one day in late April, George Wren called Smith into his office again; and Smith went down with a numbness that came from a knowledge he would not admit.

What had happened was classically simple, something Smith should have foreseen but hadn't.

"It's Loomis," Wren said. "Somehow the son of a bitch got it and doesn't want to let it go."

Smith nodded. "I should have thought of that. I should have expected that. Do you think it would do any good if I talked to him?"

Wren shook his head, walked across his office and stopped in front of the window. The early afternoon sun was streaming down his face, which was glistening with sweat. He said wearily, "You don't understand, Bill. Loomis doesn't play it that way. Your name hasn't even come up yet.

"He is what?" Smith asked blankly.

"You almost have to admire him," Wren said. "Somehow he knew damn well that I knew all about it. So he popped in yesterday, you know, and told me he had to fire the Durbin girl and warned me it might stink." "No," Smith said. His hands ached where they were gripping the leather armrests of the chair.

Wren continued, "According to Loomis, there have been complaints, mostly from college students and a few townspeople. It seems men have been in and out of her apartment 24/7 – blatant misconduct - something like that. Oh, he did wonderfully, he has no personal objections - he actually rather admires the girl - but he has the reputation of the department and the

to think university. We regretted the need to bow to the dictates of bourgeois morality, agreed that the learned community should be a haven for rebels against the Protestant ethic, and concluded that we were practically helpless. He said he hopes to let it ride by the end of the semester but doubts if he can. And all along, the son of a bitch knew we hit it off perfectly."

A tightness in his throat made it impossible for Smith to speak. He swallowed twice and tested his voice; it was stable and flat. "What he wants is of course perfectly clear."

"I'm afraid it is," Wren said.

"I knew he hated me," Smith said distantly. "But I never thought – I never thought he'd -"

"Neither do I," Wren said. He went back to his desk and sat down heavily.

"And there's nothing I can do, Bill. I'm helpless. If Loomis wants complainers, they will appear; if he wants witnesses, they will appear. He has quite a following, you know. To the President..." He shook his head.

"What do you think will happen if I refuse to quit? If we just refuse to be afraid?"

"He's going to crucify the girl," Wren said flatly. "And as if by accident you're drawn into it. It's very neat."

"Then," Smith said, "there seems nothing to do."

"Bill," Wren said, and then fell silent. He rested his head on his closed fists. He said dully, "There is a chance. There is only ONE. I think I can stop him if you – if the Durbin girl will -"

"No," said Smith. "I don't think I can do that. I literally don't think I can."

"Goddamn!" Wren's voice was tortured. 'He's counting on it! Think for a moment. What would you do? It's April, almost May.

"I don't know," Smith said. "Something. . ."

"And what about Sharon? Do you think she will give in and divorce you without a fight? And Doris? What would it do to her in this town if you just ran away? And Charlotte? What kind of life would you have? What would it do to you two?"

Smith didn't speak. An emptiness began somewhere inside him; he felt a withering, a falling off. Finally he said, "Can you give me a week? - I have to think.

Wren nodded. "I can at least hold him off for that long. But not for long. I'm sorry Bill You know that."

"Yes." He rose from the chair and stood for a moment to test the severe numbness in his legs. "I'll let you know. I'll let you know if I can."

He left the office into the darkness of the long corridor and lumbered into the sunlight, into the open world that resembled a prison, whichever way he turned.

Years later, he would look back on the days that followed his conversation with George Wren in strange moments, and he wouldn't be able to remember it clearly at all. It was as if he were a dead man animated by nothing but a habit of willful will. And yet he was strangely aware of himself and of the places, people, and events that passed before him in those few days; and he knew he was giving the public an appearance that belied his condition. He taught his classes, he greeted his colleagues, he attended the meetings he had to attend – and none of the people he met every day knew anything was wrong.

But from the moment he left George Wren's office, somewhere in the numbness growing from a small center of his being, he knew that part of his life was over, that part of him was so close to death that he it could almost calmly watch the approach. He was vaguely aware that he was walking across campus in the bright, scorching heat of an early spring afternoon; the dogwood trees along the sidewalks and in the front yards were in full bloom, and they trembled like soft clouds, translucent and delicate, before his gaze; the sweet scent of dying lilacs filled the air.

And when he got to Charlotte's apartment he was feverishly and callously gay. He brushed aside her questions about his last meeting with the Dean; he made her laugh; and he watched with immeasurable sadness her last effort of gaiety, which was like a dance that life performs upon death's body.

But eventually they had to talk, he knew that; although the words they said were like a performance of something they had rehearsed over and over in the privacy of their knowledge. They revealed this knowledge through grammatical use: they went from the perfect - "We were happy, weren't we?" - into the past - "We were happy – happier than everyone else, I think" - and finally came to the need for discourse.

A few days after speaking with Wren, in a moment of silence that broke the half-hysterical hilarity they'd chosen as the most appropriate convention to see them through their final days together, Charlotte said, "We don't have much time, do it." weather?"

"No," Smith said quietly.

"For how much longer?" asked Charlotte. "A few days, two or three."

Charlotte nodded. "I used to think I couldn't take it. But I'm just numb. I don't feel anything."

"I know," Smith said. They were silent for a moment. "You know, if there was anything – all I could do, I would -"

"Don't," she said. "Of course I know that."

He leaned back on the couch and looked at the low, somber ceiling that had been the sky of their world. He said calmly, "If I threw it all away – if I gave it up, just walked out - you would go with me, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," she said.

"But you know I won't do that, right?" "Yes I know."

"Because then," Smith explained to himself, "none of this would mean anything — nothing we've done, nothing we've been." I almost certainly wouldn't be able to teach, and you – you would become something else. We would both become something different, something different from ourselves. We would be – nothing."

"Nothing," she said.

"And we got out of it at least with ourselves. We know we are – what we are."

"Yes," said Charlotte.

"Because in the long run," Smith said, "it's not Sharon, or even Doris, or the knowledge of losing Doris, that's keeping me here; it's not scandal or hurt to you or me; It is not hardship that we would have to go through, or even loss of love that we might face. It's just the destruction of ourselves, of what we do.

"I know," Charlotte said.

"So we are of the world after all; we should have known that. We knew it, I think; but we had to back off a little, pretend a little—"

"I know," Charlotte said. "I knew it all along, I guess. Even pretending I knew we'd eventually, eventually, we... I knew." She stopped and looked at him steadily. Her eyes suddenly brightened with tears. "But damn it, Bill!

They said nothing more. They hugged each other so no one could see each other's faces and made love so they wouldn't talk. They combined with the old tender sensuality of knowing each other well and the new intense passion of loss. After that, in the black night of the small room, they lay still, their bodies touching lightly. After a while, Charlotte's breathing came evenly, as if she were sleeping. Smith got up quietly, dressed in the dark, and left the room without waking her. He walked the silent, empty streets of Columbia until the first gray light began in the east; then he made his way to the university campus. He sat on the stone steps in front of Jesse Hall and watched the light fall from the east on the great stone pillars in the center of the courtyard. He thought of the fire that had gutted and ruined the old building before his birth; and he was remotely saddened at the sight of what was left. When it was light he stepped into the hall and went to his office, where he waited for his first class to begin.

He never saw Charlotte Durbin again. After he left her, she got up that night, packed all her belongings, boxed her books, and let the apartment building manager know where to send them. She sent the English Office her grades, her instruction to cancel classes for the remaining week and a half of the semester, and her resignation. And she was on the train at two o'clock in the afternoon, heading out of Columbia.

She must have been planning her departure for some time, Smith realized; d He was grateful that he hadn't known and that she hadn't left him a final note to say what couldn't be said.

Chapter 14

He did not teach that summer; and he had the first illness of his life. It was a fever of high intensity and of unclear origin, lasting only a week; but it sapped his strength, he became very gaunt and subsequently suffered a partial hearing loss. All summer long he was so weak and listless that he could only take a few steps without tiring; he spent most of his time on the small enclosed porch at the back of the house, lying on the day bed or sitting in the old chair he'd brought up from the basement. He would stare out the windows or at the slatted ceiling, stirring now and then to go into the kitchen and eat something.

He barely had the energy to converse with Sharon, or even with Doris – although sometimes Sharon would come into the back room, talk to him absently for a few minutes, and then leave him as abruptly as she had bothered him.

Once, in the middle of summer, she spoke of Charlotte.

"I just heard it about a day ago," she said. "So your little student is gone, isn't she?"

With an effort he diverted his attention from the window and turned around

Sharon. "Yes," he said softly.

"How was her name?" asked Sharon. "I can never remember her name." "Charlotte," he said. "Charlotte Durbin."

"Oh yes," said Sharon. "Charlotte Durbin. well, see? I told you right? I told you these things don't matter."

He nodded absently. Outside, in the old elm tree that filled the backyard fence, a large black and white bird—a magpie—had begun to chatter. He listened to its call and watched with distant fascination as the open beak uttered its lonely cry.

He aged rapidly that summer, so few were unsurprised to recognize him when he returned to classes that fall. His lean and bony face was deeply lined; heavy gray spots streaked his hair; and he was heavily bent, as if he were carrying an invisible burden. His voice had gotten a little harsh and gruff, and he tended to stare at you with his head bowed, so his clear gray eyes were sharp and sullen beneath his tangled eyebrows. He seldom spoke to anyone but his students, and he always answered questions and greetings impatiently and sometimes harshly.

He went about his work with a tenacity and determination that amused his older colleagues and enraged the younger faculty who, like him, only taught composition to freshmen; He spent hours correcting and correcting freshman topics, he had student conferences every day, and he faithfully attended all faculty meetings. He did not often speak at these meetings, but when he did, he spoke of tact or diplomacy, earning a reputation among his peers for being sullen and cranky. But with his young disciples he was gentle and patient, though he asked of them more work than they were willing to give, with an impersonal firmness that many of them found difficult to understand.

It was common knowledge among his peers – especially the younger ones – that he was a "dedicated" teacher, a term they used half out of envy, contempt half, one whose dedication blinded him to everything outside the classroom was going on, at most outside the halls of the university. There were mild jokes: after a department meeting at which Smith had spoken bluntly about some recent experiments in grammar class, a young teacher remarked that "for Smith, copulation is limited to verbs," and was surprised at the quality of laughter and meaningful looks, exchanged by some of the older men. Someone else once said, "Old Smith thinks WPA stands for Wrong Pronoun Antecedent," and was pleased to learn that his joke gained some traction.

But John Smith knew the world in a way that few of his younger peers could understand. Deep within him, beneath his memory, was the knowledge of misery and hunger and endurance and pain. Although he seldom thought of his early years on the Booneville farm, he was always aware of the bloody knowledge of his heritage, given to him by ancestors whose lives were dark and hard and stoic and whose common ethic was to live in an oppressive world Showing faces that were blank and hard and somber.

And although he looked at her with seeming indifference, he was aware of the time in which he lived. During that decade, when the faces of many men took on an abiding hardness and desolation, as if looking into a precipice, John Smith, to whom that expression was as familiar as the air in which he walked, saw the signs of a general despair that he has known since he was a boy. He saw good men sinking into a slow descent of hopelessness, broken as their vision of a decent life was broken; he saw her walking aimlessly through the streets, her eyes blank as shards of broken glass; he saw them going to back doors, with the bitter pride of men going to their executions, and begging for the bread that would enable them to beg again; and he saw men who had once stood upright in their own identities Look at him with envy and hatred for the poor security he enjoyed as a tenured employee of an institution that somehow could not fail. He gave no voice to this consciousness; but the knowledge of the general misery touched him and changed him in ways deeply hidden from public view, and a quiet sadness at the general misery was never far below his life.

He also perceived the excitement in Europe as a distant nightmare; and in July 1936, when Franco was rebelling against the Spanish government and Hitler was fomenting that rebellion into a great war, Smith, like many others, was sickened by the vision of the nightmare erupting from the dream into the world. When the fall semester began that year, the younger lecturers could hardly say anything else; Some of them declared their intention to join a volunteer unit and fight for the Loyalists or drive ambulances. By the end of the first semester, some of them had actually taken the plunge and hastily resigned. Smith thought of Dave Doyon, and the old loss came back to him with new intensity; he also thought of Bowman Quinn and remembered almost twenty years ago, the slow agony that had grown on that wry face, and the erosive despair that had dispelled that tough self – and he thought he knew a little of the sense of wasting Quinn had feared. He foresaw the years to come and knew the worst was to come.

Like Bowman Quinn, he recognized the futility and waste of abandoning oneself entirely to the irrational and dark forces that were driving the world to its unknown end; as Bowman Quinn had not, Smith withdrew a little from pity and love, lest he be caught up in the roar he was watching. And as in other moments of crisis and despair, he looked again to the cautious faith embodied in the institution of the university. He told himself it wasn't much; but he knew it was all he had.

In the summer of 1937 he felt a renewed passion for study and learning; and with the scholar's inquisitive and disembodied energy, which is neither the state of youth nor old age, he returned to the one life that had not betrayed him. He discovered that even in his desperation he hadn't strayed far from this life.

His schedule this fall was particularly bad. His four freshman composition classes were spread out at widely spaced hours, six days a week. In all his years as chairman, Loomis had never failed to provide Smith with a lesson plan that even the newest instructor with bad Doris would have accepted.

On the first day of class of that school year, Smith sat in his office early in the morning and reviewed his neatly typed schedule. He'd been up late into the night reading a new study on the survival of medieval tradition in the Renaissance, and the excitement he'd felt carried over into the morning. He looked at his timetable and a dull rage rose in him. He stared at the wall in front of him for a few moments, checked his schedule again, and nodded to himself. He threw the timetable and accompanying syllabus in a wastebasket and went to his filing cabinet in the corner of the room. He pulled out the top drawer, absently eyed the brown folders there, and pulled out one.

The building was old with wooden floors and was only used as a classroom in emergencies; the room he was assigned to was too small for the number of students enrolled, so some of the boys had to sit or stand on the windowsills. When Smith came in they looked at him with the uneasiness of uncertainty; he might be friend or foe, and they didn't know which was worse.

He apologized to the students for the room, made a little joke at the registrar's expense, and assured those standing that there would be chairs for them tomorrow. Then he placed his portfolio on the battered lectern that was unevenly positioned on the desk and studied the faces before him.

He hesitated a moment. Then he said, "Those of you who bought your texts for this course can return them to the bookstore and get a refund if you signed up for the course. We will not use the syllabus either. I intend to take a different approach to the subject in this course, an approach that will require you to purchase two new texts.

He turned his back on the students and picked up a piece of chalk from the hollow under the worn blackboard; He held the chalk in his hand for a moment, listening to the muffled sighs and rustles of the students as they sat down at their desks and endured the routine that was suddenly becoming familiar to them.

Smith said: 'Our texts will' - and he spoke the words slowly as he wrote them down - 'Medieval English Verse and Prose, edited by Loomis and Willard; and English Literary Criticism: The Medieval Phase, by JWH Atkins. ' He turned to the class. 'You will find that the bookstore has not yet received these books – they may take up to two weeks to arrive. In the meantime I will give you some background on the content and purpose of this course give, and I'll do some library work to keep you busy."

He stopped. Many of the students were bent over their desks, eagerly jotting down what he said; some looked at him steadily with little smiles meant to be intelligent and understanding; and some stared at him in open amazement.

"The main content of this course," said Smith, "will be found in the

anthology by Loomis and Willard; We shall study examples of medieval verse and poses for three purposes – first, as literary works meaningful in their own right; second, as a demonstration of the beginnings of literary style and method in the English tradition; and third, as rhetorical and grammatical solutions to discourse problems that can still be of practical value and application today.

By this time almost all of the students had stopped taking notes and raised their heads; even the intelligent smile had become a little strained; and a couple of hands waved in the air. Smith pointed to one whose hand remained steady and raised, a tall young man with dark hair and glasses.

"Sir, is this General English One, Section Four?"

Smith smiled at the young man. "What's your name, please?" The boy swallowed. "Jessup, sir. Frank Jessup."

Smith nodded. "Mr. Jessup. Yes, Mr. Jessup, this is General English One, Section Four; and my name is Smith – facts which I should no doubt have mentioned at the beginning of the lesson. Do you have another question? "

The boy swallowed again. "No sir."

Smith nodded and looked around the room benevolently. "Does anyone have a question?"

The faces stared at him; there were no smiles and a few mouths were hanging open.

"Very good," said Smith. "I will continue. As I said at the beginning of this lesson, one purpose of this course is to study specific works from the period between about twelve and fifteen hundred. Certain historical coincidences will stand in our way; there will be difficulties of language, philosophical, social and religious, theoretical and practical. Indeed, all our previous education will in some way handicap us, for our habits of thinking about the nature of experience have determined our own expectations as radically as the habits of medieval man determined his. Let us first examine some of those habits of mind under which medieval man lived, thought, and wrote..."

At that first meeting, he didn't keep the students up for the entire lesson. Less than halfway through, he finished his preliminary talk and gave them a weekend assignment.

"I would like each of you to write a short essay, no more than three pages, on Aristotle's conception of the topoi – or, in its rather crude English translation, the subject. You will find an extensive discussion of the 'topic'. in Book Two of Aristotle's Rhetoric, and in Lane Cooper's edition there is an introductory essay that you will find very helpful. The essay will be published on – Monday. And that, I think, will be all for today."

After dismissing the class, he looked at the students, who didn't move, with some apprehension for a moment. Then he gave them a short nod and left the classroom, the brown folder under his arm.

On Monday, less than half of the students had finished their work; He dismissed those who had turned in their essays and spent the rest of the lesson with the rest of the students, reviewing the subject they had been given, going over it again and again until he was sure they had it and could finish the assigned essay by Wednesday.

On Tuesday, he noticed a group of students in the corridors of Jesse Hall outside Loomis' office; he recognized them as members of his first class. As he passed, the students turned away from him and looked at the floor or the ceiling or the door of Loomis' office. He smiled to himself and walked into his office and waited for the call he knew was coming.

It came at two o'clock that afternoon. He picked up the phone, picked it up, and heard Loomis's secretary's voice, icy and polite. "Professor Smith? Professor Loomis wants you to see Professor Ehrhardt as soon as possible this afternoon. Professor Ehrhardt is waiting for you."

"Will Loomis be there?" asked Smith.

There was a shocked pause. The voice said uncertainly, "I – don't think - an earlier appointment. But Professor Ehrhardt is authorized -"

"Tell Loomis to be there. Tell him I'll be in Ehrhardt's office in ten minutes."

Joel Ehrhardt was a balding young man in his early thirties. He had been brought into the department by Loomis three years earlier; and when he was found to be a pleasant and serious young man with no particular talent or gift for teaching, he was put in charge of the freshman's English program. His office was in a small enclosure at the far end of the large common room where about twenty young instructors had their desks, and Smith had to walk the length of the room to get there. As he passed between the tables, some of the instructors looked up at him, grinning openly, and watched him walk across the room. Smith opened the door without knocking, went into the office, and sat in the chair across from Ehrhardt's desk. Loomis wasn't there.

"You wanted to see me?" asked Smith.

Ehrhardt, who had very fair skin, blushed slightly. Putting a smile on his face, he said enthusiastically, "Nice of you to stop by, Bill," and fiddled with a match for a moment to light his pipe. It wouldn't draw properly. "The damn humidity," he said grumpily. "It keeps the tobacco too wet."

"Loomis won't be here, I suppose," Smith said.

"No," said Ehrhardt and put the pipe on his desk. "Actually, that was it

Professor Loomis, who asked me to speak to you, so in a way' - he laughed uproariously - 'I'm really some kind of errand boy.'

"What message have you been asked to deliver?" asked Smith dryly.

"Well, as far as I know, there have been a few complaints. He shook his head sympathetically. "Some of them seem to be thinking – well, they don't seem to really understand what's going on in your eight o'clock class freshman composition through the - the study of -

-"

"Medieval language and literature," said Smith.

"Yes," Ehrhardt said. "Actually, I think I understand what you're trying to do -

- shock them a little, shake them up, try a new approach, make them think. Right?"

Smith nodded gravely. "Lately, at our freshman meetings, there has been a lot of talk about new methods and experiments."

"Exactly," Ehrhardt said. "No one has more sympathy for experiments than I do, because – but perhaps we sometimes go too far for the very best of motives." He laughed and shook his head. "I know that for sure; I would be the first to admit it. But I - or Professor Loomis - well, maybe some kind of compromise, a partial return to the syllabus, a use of the assigned texts - you see."

Smith pursed his lips and looked at the ceiling; He rested his elbows on the armrests of the chair, laced the tips of his fingers together, and rested his chin on the tips of his thumbs. Finally, but firmly, he said, "No, I don't think the — experiment — had a fair chance. Tell Loomis I intend to do it by the end of the semester. would you do that for me "

Ehrhardt's face was red. He said firmly, "I will. But I can imagine – I'm sure

Professor Loomis will be extremely disappointed. Really very disappointed."

Smith said, "Oh, at first he might be. But he will get over it. I'm sure Professor Loomis would not want to interfere with the way a senior professor sees fit to teach one of his classes. He might disagree with that professor's judgment, but it would be highly unethical for him to try to enforce his own judgment – and a bit dangerous, by the way. Don't you agree?"

Ehrhardt took his pipe, clutched its head tightly and eyed it intensely. "I will – inform Professor Loomis of your decision."

"I would be grateful if you would do that," Smith said. He rose from his chair, walked to the door, paused as if reminded of something, and turned to Ehrhardt. He said casually, "Oh, one more thing. I've been thinking a little about next semester. If my experiment works, I might try something different next semester. I have pondered the possibility of tackling some of the problems of performance by examining the survival of the classical and medieval Latin tradition in some of Shakespeare's plays. It may sound a little specialized, but I think I can bring it down to a workable level. You could pitch my little idea to Loomis... Ask him to go over it in his mind. Maybe in a few weeks you and I can-"

Ehrhardt collapsed in his chair. He dropped his pipe on the table and said wearily, "All right, Bill. I will tell him.

Smith nodded. He opened the door and walked out, closing it carefully behind him and crossing the long room. When one of the young instructors looked at him questioningly, he winked broadly, nodded and – finally – let the smile cross his face.

He went into his office, sat at his desk and waited while looking out through the open door. After a few minutes, he heard a door slam down the hall, heard the uneven sound of footsteps, and saw Loomis walk past his office as fast as his limp would carry him.

Smith didn't move from his watch. Within half an hour, he heard Loomis's slow, shuffling climb up the stairs and saw him pass his office once more. He waited until he heard the door at the end of the hall close; then he nodded to himself, got up and went home.

A few weeks later, Smith learned from Wren himself what happened that afternoon when Loomis burst into his office. Loomis complained bitterly about Smith's behavior, describing how he was teaching his freshman class what was equivalent to his high school Middle English course, and urging Wren to take disciplinary action. There was a moment of silence. Wren started to say something, then burst out laughing. He laughed for a long time, trying to say something every now and then, which was suppressed by laughter. Eventually he calmed down, apologized to Loomis for his outburst, and said, "He's got you, Holly, don't you see? He won't let go, and there's not a damn thing you can do. You want me to do the work for you? What do you think that would look like – a dean interfering, how a high-ranking member of the faculty teaches his courses and, at the instigation of the faculty chair, interferes himself? no sir You take care of it yourself as best you can. But you really don't have much of a choice, do you?"

Two weeks after this conversation, Smith received a memo from Loomis' office informing him that his schedule had been changed for the next semester, that he would be teaching his old graduate seminar on Renaissance Latin Tradition and Literature, an advanced and graduate course in Middle English Language and Literature, a second-year literature review, and a section on freshman composition.

It was a triumph in a way, but one he always amusedly despised, as if it were a victory out of boredom and indifference.

Chapter 15

And that was one of the legends that began to be associated with his name, legends that grew more detailed and elaborate with each passing year, evolving like a myth from personal fact to ritual truth.

In his late forties he looked years older. His hair, thick and unruly as in his youth, was almost entirely white; his face was deeply furrowed and his eyes were deep in their sockets; and the deafness which had seized him the summer after his affair with Charlotte Durbin had ended had gotten a little worse from year to year, so that when he was listening to someone he would tilt his head to the side and stare intently, away He was looking at an enigmatic species he couldn't exactly identify.

This numbness was of a strange nature. Although he sometimes had difficulty understanding someone speaking directly to him, he could often hear a murmured conversation carried across a noisy room perfectly clearly. Through this deafness trick, he gradually began to know that, as was common in his own youth, he was considered a "campus character".

So he kept hearing the embellished story of his teaching Middle English to a group of freshmen and the surrender of Robin Loomis. "And when the freshman class of 37 took their junior English exams, do you know which class got the highest score?" asked a reluctant young freshman English teacher. "For sure. Old Smith's Middle English bunch. And we continue to use drills and manuals!"

Smith had to admit that he had become an almost mythical figure, with the young teachers and older students who seemed to come and go before he could stamp names firmly on their faces, variable and varied as their function might be liked figure was.

Sometimes he was a villain. In one version attempting to explain the long feud between himself and Loomis, he had seduced and then brushed aside a young graduate student for whom Loomis had felt a pure and honorable passion. Sometimes he was the fool: in another version of the same feud, he refused to speak to Loomis because Loomis had once been unwilling to write a letter of recommendation for one of Smith's graduate students. And sometimes he was a hero: in a definitive and not often accepted version, he was hated by Loomis and frozen in rank for once catching Loomis giving a favorite student a copy of a final exam in one of Smith's courses.

However, the legend was defined by his manner in the classroom. Over the years it had become increasingly absent and yet increasingly intense. He began his lectures and discussions awkwardly and awkwardly, but very quickly became so immersed in his subject that he didn't seem to notice anything or anyone around me. Once, in the conference room where Smith held his seminar in the Latin tradition, a meeting of several members of the university's board of trustees and the president was scheduled; he had been informed of the meeting but forgot about it and held his seminar at the usual time and place. In the middle of the hour there was a timid knock at the door; Smith, who was busy translating a relevant Latin passage off the top of his head, didn't notice. After a few moments, the door opened and a short, plump, middle-aged man wearing rimless glasses tiptoed in and tapped Smith lightly on the shoulder. Without looking up, Smith waved him away. The man withdrew; outside the open door there was a whispered conference with several others. Smith continued the translation. Then four men, led by the president of the university, a tall, heavy man with an imposing chest and a flushed face, came in and stood in a troop by Smith's desk. The President frowned and cleared his throat loudly. Without pausing or pausing in his impromptu translation, Smith looked up and spoke the next line of the poem softly to the President and his entourage: "'Begone, begone, you bloody whoreson Gauls!

Nurtured by such events, the legend grew to include anecdotes that lent substance to almost all of Smith's more typical activities, and grew to reach his life outside of the university. It even included Sharon, so seldom seen with him at university events that she was a slightly mysterious figure, flitting like a ghost through the collective imagination: she drank secretly, out of some dark and distant sorrow; she was slowly dying of a rare and always fatal disease; She was a brilliantly talented artist who gave up her career to devote herself to Smith. At public events, her smile flashed so quickly and nervously from her narrow face, her eyes sparkled so brightly, and she spoke so shrilly and absently,

After his illness and from an indifference that became a way of life,

John Smith was spending more and more time in the house he and Sharon bought many years ago. At first, Sharon was so disturbed by his presence that she remained silent, as if confused about something. Then, convinced that his presence would be permanent afternoon after afternoon, night after night, weekend after weekend, she fought an old battle with new intensity. At the slightest provocation she cried in despair and wandered through the rooms; Smith looked at her impassively and murmured a few absent words of sympathy. She locked herself in her room and didn't come out for hours; Smith was preparing the meals she would otherwise have prepared and didn't seem to have noticed her absence when she finally emerged from her room, pale and sunken in cheeks and eyes. She mocked him at the slightest opportunity, and he scarcely seemed to hear her; she shouted curses at him and he listened with polite interest. When he was deep in a book, she chose that moment to go into the living room and bang on the piano with fury, which she rarely played; and when he spoke softly to his daughter, Sharon would erupt in anger at one or both. And Smith watched it all—the anger, the pain, the screams, and the hateful silence—as if it were happening to two other people in whom, through an effort of will, he could evoke only the most superficial interest. she chose this moment to go into the living room and bang on the piano with fury, which she rarely played; and when he spoke softly to his daughter, Sharon erupted in anger at one or both. And Smith watched it all—the anger, the pain, the screams, and the hateful silence—as if it were happening to two other people in whom, through an effort of will, he could evoke only the most superficial interest. she chose this moment to go into the living room and bang on the piano with fury, which she rarely played; and when he spoke softly to his daughter, Sharon would erupt in anger at one or both. And Smith watched it all—the anger, the pain, the screams, and the hateful silence—as if it were happening to two other people in whom, through an effort of will, he could evoke only the most superficial interest. the screams and the hateful silences – as if it were happening to two other people in whom he could, through an effort of will, evoke only the most superficial interest. she chose this moment to go into the living room and bang on the piano with fury, which she rarely played; and when he spoke softly to his daughter, Sharon would erupt in anger at one or both. And Smith watched it all—the anger, the pain, the screams, and the hateful silence—as if it were happening to two other people in whom, through an effort of will, he could evoke only the most superficial interest. the screams and the hateful silences - as if it were happening to two other people in whom he could, through an effort of will, evoke only the most superficial interest. she chose this moment to go into the living room and bang with fury on the piano, which she seldom played otherwise; and when he spoke softly to his daughter, Sharon would erupt in anger at one or both. And Smith watched it all—the anger, the pain, the screams, and the hateful silence—as if it were happening to two other people in whom, through an effort of will, he could evoke only the most superficial interest. to go into the living room and bang in a frenzy on the piano, which she rarely played; and when he spoke softly to his daughter, Sharon would erupt in anger at one or both. And Smith watched it all—the anger, the pain, the screams, and the hateful silence—as if it were happening to two other people in whom, through an effort of will, he could evoke only the most superficial interest. to go into the living room and bang in a frenzy on the piano, which she rarely played; and when he spoke softly to his daughter, Sharon would erupt in anger at one or both. And Smith watched it all—the anger, the pain, the screams, and the hateful silence—as if it were happening to two other people in whom, through an effort of will, he could evoke only the most superficial interest.

And finally – wearily, almost gratefully – Sharon accepted her defeat. The anger diminished in intensity until it became as shallow as Smith's interest in them; and the long silence became a retreat into a privacy that no longer surprised Smith, rather than an insult to an indifferent position.

In her fortieth year, Sharon Smith was as thin as a girl, but with a hardness, a brittleness that came from an unyielding demeanor that made every movement seem reluctant and reluctant. The bones of her face had sharpened and the thin, pale skin was stretched across it like a scaffold, so the lines on the skin were taut and sharp. She was very pale and used a lot of powder and color so it seemed like she put her own facial features on a blank mask on a daily basis. Beneath the dry hard skin her hands seemed to be made entirely of bone; and they moved incessantly, twisting and plucking and clenching even in their quietest moments.

Always withdrawn, she became increasingly distant and distant during these middle years. After the brief period of her last attack on Smith, which flared up with a final, desperate intensity, she wandered like a ghost into her privacy, a place she never quite came out of. She began to talk to herself, with the kind of gentle reason one uses with a child; she did it openly and easily, as if it were the most natural thing she could do. Of the scattered artistic endeavors she had engaged in at times during her marriage, she finally settled on sculpture as the "most satisfying". She mainly modeled in clay, although she occasionally worked with the softer stones; Busts and figures and compositions of all kinds were scattered about the house. She was very modern: the busts she modeled were spheres with minimal features, the figures were blobs of clay with elongated appendages, and the compositions were random geometric assemblages of cubes, spheres, and rods. Sometimes as he passed her studio—the room that had once been his study—Smith would pause and listen to her work. She gave herself instructions like a child: "Well, you have to put this here – not too much – here, right next to little Uge. Oh, look, it's falling off that? Well, we can fix that, can't we? Just a little more water and – there. Lake?" Passing her studio—the room that had once been his study—Smith paused and listened to her work. She instructed herself like a child: "Well, you have to put that down here – not too much – here, right next to little Uge. Oh, look, it's falling off that? Well, we can fix that, can't we? Just a little more water and – there. Lake?" Passing her studio—the room that had once been his study—Smith paused and listened to her work. She gave herself instructions like a child: "Well, you have to put this here – not too much – here, right next to little Uge. Oh, look, it's falling off that? Well, we can fix that, can't we? Just a little more water and – there. Do you see?" what had once been his study—Smith stopped and listened to her work. She gave herself instructions like a child: "Well, you have to put this here – not too much – here, right next to little Uge. Oh, look, it's falling off that? Well, we can fix that, can't we? Just a little more water and – there. Do you see?" what had once been his study—Smith stopped and listened to her work. She gave herself instructions like a child: "Well, you have to put this here – not too much – here, right next to little Uge. Oh, look, it's falling off that? Well, we can fix that, can't we? Just a little more water and – there. Do you see?"

She took to speaking to her husband and daughter in the third person as if they were someone other than those she was speaking to. She would say to Smith, "Willy had better finish his coffee; it's almost nine o'clock, and he wouldn't want to be late for class." Or she said to her daughter: "Doris really practices the piano too little. At least an hour every day, it should be two. What will become of the talent? What a pity."

What this retreat meant for Doris Smith did not know; for in her own way she had become as distant and withdrawn as her mother. She had made it a habit to remain silent; and though she reserved a shy, gentle smile for her father, she did not speak to him. During the summer of his illness, when she could do it unnoticed, she had slipped into his little room and sat beside him and looked out the window with him, apparently content only to be with him; but she had been silent even then and had become restless when he tried to pull her out of himself.

She was twelve that summer of his illness, a tall, thin, delicate-faced girl with more blond than red hair. In the fall, during Sharon's final violent assault on her husband, her marriage, herself and what she thought she would become, Doris had become almost motionless, as if feeling that any movement could plunge her into an abyss from which she wouldn't be able to climb out. After the violence, Sharon decided, with the kind of sure ruthlessness she was capable of, that Doris was calm because she was unhappy and that she was unhappy because she wasn't popular with her schoolmates. She translated the waning violence of her attack on Smith into an attack on what she called Doris' "social life." Once again she showed "interest";

This attack lasted less than a month; then Sharon abandoned her campaign and began the long, slow journey to where she wanted to go in the dark. But the impact of the attack on Doris was disproportionate to its duration.

After the robbery, she spent most of her free time alone in her room, listening to the small radio her father had given her for her twelfth birthday. She would lie motionless on her unmade bed, or sit motionless at her desk, listening to the sounds thrumming thinly from the flourishes of the squat, ugly instrument on her bedside table, as if the voices, the music, and the laughter were all she heard remained of her identity, and as if even that faded away into silence beyond her memory.

And she got fat. Between that winter and her thirteenth birthday she gained nearly fifty pounds; her face grew swollen and dry as rising dough, and her limbs grew soft and slow and clumsy. She ate little more than before, although she was very fond of sweets and always kept a box of sweets in her room; it was as if something within her had loosened and softened and become hopeless, as if an amorphousness within her had finally struggled and ripped free, now persuading her flesh to specify this dark and secret existence.

Smith watched the transformation with a sadness that belied the indifferent face he presented to the world. He did not afford the comfortable luxury of guilt; Given his own nature and the circumstances of his life with Sharon, there was nothing he could have done. And that knowledge increased his sadness like no guilt could have done, and made his love for his daughter deeper and more intense.

She was, he knew-and must have known from a very young age-one of those rare and always lovable people whose moral nature was so delicate that it needed nurturing and nurturing in order to be fulfilled. Unworldly it had to live where it could not be at home; Craving tenderness and rest, it had to feed on indifference, callousness and noise. It was a nature which, even in the strange and hostile place it had to live in, did not have the ferocity to repel the brutal forces that opposed it, and could only retreat into a stillness where it was abandoned and small and was gently still.

When she was seventeen, during the first part of her senior year of high school, another transformation came over her. It was as if her nature had found its hiding place and she could finally show herself to the world. As quickly as she had gained weight, she lost the weight she had gained three years earlier; and to those who knew her she appeared as one whose transformation took part in magic, as if she had emerged from a puppet into an air for which she had been created. She was almost beautiful; Her body, which had been very thin and then suddenly very fat, was delicate and soft and walked with a slight Doris. It was a passive beauty she had, almost a calm one; her face was almost expressionless, like a mask; Her light blue eyes looked straight at you, without curiosity and without fear, one could see beyond them; her voice was very soft, a little flat, and she rarely spoke.

All of a sudden she became, in Sharon's words, "popular". The phone rang frequently for her, and she would sit in the living room, nodding now and then, and answering the voice softly and briefly; Cars would pull up on the gloomy afternoons and carry them away anonymously in shouts and laughter. Once in a while

Smith stood at the front window and watched the cars screech away in clouds of dust, and he felt a little apprehension and a little awe; He had never owned a car and never learned to drive one.

And Sharon was satisfied. "Do you see?" she said in absent-minded triumph, as if no more than three years had passed since her frantic attack on the problem of Doris' "popularity." "Do you see? I was right. All she needed was a little nudge. And Willy didn't agree. Oh I could see that.

For several years, Smith had set aside a few dollars each month so that when the time came, Doris could leave Columbia and go to a college, perhaps some distance east. Sharon had known about these plans and seemed to agree; but when the time came, she didn't want to hear about it.

"Oh no!" She said. "I could not bear it! My baby! And she did so well last year. So popular and so happy daughter - "Gracie doesn't really want to walk away from her mommy.

Doris looked at her mother in silence for a moment. She turned to her father very briefly and shook her head. She said to her mother, "If you want me to stay, of course I will."

"Doris," said Smith. "Listen to me. If you want to go – please, if you really want to go -"

She wouldn't look at him anymore. "It doesn't matter," she said.

Before Smith could say anything else, Sharon started talking about how they could spend the money her father had saved on a new wardrobe, a really nice one, maybe even a small car, so that she and her friends..... And Doris smiled her slow little smile and nodded and said a word now and then as if expected of her.

It was done; and Smith never knew how Doris felt, whether she stayed because she wanted, or because her mother wanted it, or out of great indifference to her own fate. She would enter the University of Missouri as a freshman in the fall, stay there for at least two years, and then, if she chose, leave the state to finish her college thesis. Smith told himself it was better this way, better for Doris, the prison she little knew she was, to endure two more years than to be torn apart again on the torture rack by Sharon's helpless will.

So nothing has changed. Doris got her wardrobe, turned down her mother's offer for a small car, and entered the University of Missouri as a freshman. The phone kept ringing, the same faces (or those very much like them) kept appearing at the front door laughing and screaming, and the same cars sped away in the twilight. Doris was away from home even more often than she was in high school, and Sharon was pleased with what she felt was her daughter's growing popularity. "She's like her mother," she said. "Before she was married, she was very popular. All the boys... Dad was always so mad at them but he was secretly very proud, I could see that."

"Yes, Sharon," Smith said softly and he felt his heart clench.

It was a difficult semester for Smith; It was his turn to take the university-wide junior English exam, and at the same time he was busy supervising two particularly difficult doctoral theses, both of which required a lot of extra reading on his part. He was out of the house more often than in previous years.

One evening in late November he came home even later than usual. The light was off in the living room and the house was silent; he assumed that Doris and Sharon were in bed. He took some papers he had brought with him to his small back room, intending to read a few after he went to bed. He went into the kitchen for a sandwich and a glass of milk; He had sliced the bread and opened the refrigerator door when suddenly, sharp and clean as a knife, he heard a long drawn-out scream from somewhere below. He ran into the living room; The scream came again, now brief and somehow angry in its intensity, from Sharon's studio. He quickly crossed the room and opened the door.

Sharon was stretched out on the floor as if she had fallen; Her eyes were wild and her mouth was open, ready to let out another scream. Doris sat across from her in an upholstered chair, her knees crossed, and looked at her mother almost calmly. A single desk lamp on Sharon's work table was lit, filling the room with harsh light and deep shadows.

"What is it?" asked Smith. "What's happened?"

Sharon's head swiveled towards him as if on a loose pivot; Her eyes were blank. She said with a strange irritation, "Oh, Willy. Oh, Willy." She continued to look at him, her head shaking weakly.

He turned to Doris, whose calm gaze didn't change.

She said conversationally, "I'm pregnant, father."

And the scream came again, piercing and unspeakably angry; They both turned to Sharon, who was glancing from one to the other, her eyes distant and cool over her screaming mouth. Smith crossed the room, bent behind her, and lifted her up; she was loose in his arms and he had to carry her weight.

"Sharon!" he said sharply. "Quiet."

She stiffened and pulled away from him. She strutted across the room on trembling legs and stood over Doris, who hadn't moved.

"You!" she spat. "Oh my God. Oh Grace How could you – oh my god. like your father Your father's blood.

"Sharon!" Smith sharpened his voice and walked over to her. He put his hands firmly on her upper arms and turned them away from Doris. "Go to the bathroom and throw some cold water on your face. Then go up to your room and lie down."

"Oh, Willy," Sharon said pleadingly. "My own little baby. My very own. How could that happen? How could she-"

"Continue," Smith said. "I'll call you after a while."

She staggered out of the room. Smith watched her impassively until he heard the tap water start running in the bathroom. Then he turned to Doris, who looked up at him from the chair. He gave her a quick smile, went to Sharon's work table, got a straight chair, brought it back and placed it in front of Doris's chair so he could talk to her without looking down at her upturned face.

"Well," he said, "why don't you tell me?"

She gave him her small soft smile. "There's not much to tell," she said. "I'm pregnant."

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. "I've been to a doctor. I got the report this afternoon." "Well," he said, awkwardly touching her hand. "You don't need to worry.

Everything will be fine.' 'Yes,' she said.

He asked softly, "Do you want to tell me who the father is?" "A student," she said. "At the University."

"Did you rather not tell me?"

"Oh no," she said. "It makes no difference. His name is Frie. Ed

Roast meat. He is a second year student. I think he was in your freshman comp class last year." "I don't remember him," Smith said. "I don't remember him at all."

"I'm sorry, father," said Doris. "It was stupid. He was a little drunk, and we didn't take any — precautions."

Smith looked away from her at the floor.

"I'm sorry, father. I shocked you, didn't I?"

"No," said Smith. "Maybe surprised me. We really haven't known each other very well in the past few years, have we?"

She looked away and said uneasily, "Well – I don't think so." "Do you love that boy, Doris?"

"Oh no," she said. "I really don't know him very well."

He nodded. "What do you want to do?"

"I don't know," she said. "It really doesn't matter. I don't want to disturb." They sat there without a word for a long time. Finally, Smith said, "Well, you don't have to worry. It will be alright. Whatever you decide, whatever you want, it will be fine."

"Yes," said Doris. She got up from the chair. Then she looked down at her father and said, "You and I, we can talk now."

"Yes," said Smith. "We can talk."

She left the studio and Smith waited until he heard her bedroom door close upstairs. Then, before going to his own room, he quietly went upstairs and opened the door to Sharon's bedroom. Sharon was fast asleep, fully clothed, stretched out on her bed, the night light glaring on her face. Smith turned off the light and went downstairs.

The next morning at breakfast, Sharon was almost cheerful; she didn't show her hysteria from the night before, and she spoke as if the future were a hypothetical problem to be solved. After learning the boy's name, she said cheerfully, "Very well. Do you think we should contact the parents or should we talk to the boy first? Let's see - that's the last week of November. Let's say two weeks. Until then we can make all the arrangements, maybe even a little church wedding. Gracie, what does your friend say, what's his name -?'

"Sharon," Smith said. "Wait. You take too much for granted. Maybe Doris and this young man don't want to get married.

"What is there to discuss? Of course they want to get married. Anyway, she – she - Gracie, tell your father. Explain it to him."

Doris said to him: "It doesn't matter, father.

And it didn't matter, Smith realized; Doris' eyes were fixed beyond him at a distance she could not see and surveyed without curiosity. He said nothing and let his wife and daughter make their plans.

It was decided that Doris' "young man", as Sharon called him, as if his name were somehow forbidden, would be invited to the house and that he and Sharon would "talk". She designed the afternoon like a scene in a drama, with ups and downs and even a line or two of dialogue. Smith should apologize, Doris should stay a few more moments and then excuse herself and leave Sharon and the young man alone to talk. Smith was supposed to be back in half an hour, then Doris was supposed to be back, by then all arrangements should be in place.

And it all worked out exactly as Sharon had planned. Smith later wondered with amusement what young Edward Frye was thinking as he shyly knocked on the door and was admitted into a room that appeared to be full of mortal enemies. He was a tall, rather heavy young man, with vague and slightly sullen features; he was caught in a numbing embarrassment and fear and he wasn't looking at anyone. As Smith left the room, he saw the young man slumped in a chair, forearms on his knees, staring at the floor; When he returned to the room half an hour later, the young man was in the same position as if he hadn't moved before the barrage of Sharon's birdlike merriment.

But everything was settled. In a high, artificial, but genuinely cheerful voice, Sharon informed him that "Doris' young man" came from a very good family in St. Louis, his father was a realtor and had probably done business with her own father at one point, or at least theirs Bank of her father that the "young people" had decided to marry "as soon as possible, very informally", that both would drop out of school, at least for a year or two, that they would live in St. Louis, "a change of scenery, a fresh start" that while they might not finish the semester, they would go to school until the end of term and get married that afternoon, which was a Friday. And wasn't it all sweet, really — no matter what.

The wedding took place in a cluttered office of a justice of the peace. Only John and Sharon witnessed the ceremony; The judge's wife, a crumpled gray woman with a constant frown, worked in the kitchen while the ceremony was being conducted and came out when she was over just to be a witness to sign the papers. It was a cold, gloomy afternoon; the date was December 12, 1941.

Five days before the wedding, the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor; and John Smith watched the ceremony with a mixture of feelings he had not had before. Like many others going through this period, he was gripped by what he could only think of as numbness, even though he knew it was a feeling composed of emotions so deep and intense that they could not be acknowledged , because one could not live with them. It was the force of a public tragedy he felt, a terror and woe so all-pervasive that private tragedies and personal misfortunes were cast into a different state of being, but were magnified by the vastness in which they occurred as the shock of one lonely grave might be surrounded by a great desert

After the ceremony, the two young people cheerlessly got into Frye's little roadster and drove to St. Louis, where they still had to deal with another set of parents and where they were to live. Smith watched them drive away from the house, and he could only picture his daughter as a very little girl who had once sat beside him in a distant room, looking at him with solemn delight, as a beautiful child who had been long ago time had died.

Two months after the marriage, Edward Frye enlisted; it was Doris' decision to remain in St. Louis until the birth of her child. Within six months, Frye lay dead on the shore of a small Pacific island, one of several crude recruits sent in a desperate attempt to stem the Japanese advance. In June 1942 Doris' child was born; it was a boy and she named him after the father he had never seen and would not love.

Although Sharon, when she went to St. Louis to "help out" in June, tried to persuade her daughter to return to Columbia, Doris did not; she had a small apartment, a small income from Frye's insurance, and her new in-laws, and she seemed happy.

"Kind of changed," Sharon said distractedly to Smith. "Not our little Gracie. She's been through a lot and I guess she doesn't want to be reminded of that... She sent her love to you."

Chapter 16

The years of war blurred together and Smith walked through them as he would through a violent and almost unbearable storm, head down, jaws closed, his mind fixed on the next step and the next and the next. But for all his stoic endurance and stubborn movements through the days and weeks, he was a deeply divided man. A part of him recoiled in instinctive terror at the daily waste, the tide of destruction and death that inexorably assaulted mind and heart; Once again he saw the exhausted faculties, he saw the classrooms emptied of their young men, he saw the tormented looks on those left behind and saw in those looks the slow dying of the heart, the bitter wear and tear of feelings and sorrows.

Another part of him was intensely drawn to the very holocaust he dreaded. He found within himself a capacity for violence he did not know: he craved participation, he craved the taste of death, the bitter joy of destruction, the feel of blood. He felt both shame and pride and, at the same time, a bitter disappointment at himself and at the time and circumstances that made it possible.

Week after week, month after month, the names of the dead rolled before him. Sometimes it was just names he remembered as if from the distant past; sometimes he could evoke a face to go with a name; sometimes he could remember a voice, a word.

Through it all, he continued to teach and learn, though at times he felt he was bending his back in vain against the raging storm, and uselessly curling his hands around the faint flicker of his last poor match.

Occasionally, Doris would return to Columbia to visit her parents. The first time she brought her son, barely a year old; but his presence seemed incomprehensibly disturbing to Sharon, so afterwards she left him with her paternal grandparents in St. Louis when she visited him. Smith would have liked to see more of his grandson, but he didn't mention that desire; he had realized that Doris's removal from Columbia – perhaps even her pregnancy - was really an escape from a prison to which she was now returning out of ineradicable kindness and gentle benevolence.

Though Sharon didn't know or wouldn't admit it, Smith knew Doris had begun drinking with quiet seriousness. He found out for the first time in the summer of the year after the end of the war. Doris had come to visit for a few days; she seemed particularly exhausted; Her eyes were shadowed and her face was strained and pale. One night after dinner, Sharon went to bed early and Doris and Smith sat together in the kitchen drinking coffee. Smith tried to speak to her, but she was restless and desperate. They sat in silence for many minutes; finally

Doris looked at him intently, shrugged and sighed abruptly. "Look," she said, "do you have alcohol in the house?"

"No," he said, "unfortunately not. There may be a bottle of sherry in the cupboard, but..."

"I need a drink urgently. Do you mind if I call the pharmacy and have them send me a bottle?"

"Of course not," Smith said. "It's just that your mother and I don't usually..." But she had gotten up and gone into the living room. She flipped through the phone book and dialed wildly. When she returned to the kitchen, she walked past the table to the cupboard and took out the half-full sherry bottle. She took a glass from the draining board and filled it almost to the brim with the light brown wine. Still standing, she drained the glass and wiped her lips, trembling a little. "It turned sour," she said. "And I hate sherry."

She brought the bottle and glass back to the table and sat down, placing them right in front of her. She filled the glass halfway and gave her father an odd little smile.

"I drink a little more than I should," she said. "Poor father. You didn't know that, did you?"

"No," he said.

"Every week I tell myself, next week I won't drink quite as much; but I'll drink a little more. I don't know why." "Are you sad?" asked Smith.

"No," she said. "I think I'm happy. Or at least almost happy. That's not it. It's..." She didn't finish the sentence.

When she had finished the sherry, the messenger from the drugstore had come with her whisky. She took the bottle to the kitchen, opened it with a practiced gesture and poured a stiff portion into the sherry glass.

They sat up very late, until the first gray crept on the windows. Doris drank steadily, in small sips; and as the night wore on the lines on her face faded, she grew calmer and younger, and the two talked as if they had not been able to speak for years.

"I suppose," she said, "I suppose I got pregnant on purpose, although I didn't know it at the time; I guess I didn't even know how badly I wanted, how badly I needed to get out of here. I knew enough not to get pregnant unless I wanted to, God knows. All those boys in high school and" – she smiled crookedly at her father – "you and mom didn't know, did you?"

"I don't think so," he said.

"Mom wanted me to be popular and – well, I was popular, all right.

"I knew you were unhappy," Smith said with effort. "But I never realized – I never knew -"

"I guess neither do I," she said. "I couldn't have that. Poor Ed. He's the one who made the bad deal. I used it, you know; oh, he really was the father – but I used him. He was a nice boy, and always ashamed - he couldn't take it. He joined six months early just to get away from it. I killed him I suppose. He was such a nice boy and we couldn't even like each other very much."

They talked late into the night as if they were old friends. And Smith realized that, as she had said, she was almost happy in her despair; she spent her days in peace, drinking a little more year after year and numbing herself against the nothingness her life had become. He was glad she had at least that; he was grateful that she could drink.

The years immediately after the end of World War II were the best years of his teaching; and in some ways they were the happiest years of his life. Veterans of that war came to the campus and transformed it, giving it a quality of life it didn't have before, an intensity and turmoil that amounted to transformation. He worked harder than ever; The students, strange in their maturity, were extremely serious and despised triviality. Innocent of fashion or custom, they came to their studies as Smith had dreamed for a student—as if that study were life itself and not specific means to specific ends. He knew that after those few years, the classroom would never be the same again; and he succumbed to a happy state of exhaustion that he hoped would never end. He seldom thought of the past or the future, or of the disappointments and joys of either; he focused all the energies he was capable of on the moment of his work and hoped that he would finally define himself by what he was doing.

Rarely has he strayed from this dedication to the moment of his work over the years. Sometimes, when his daughter returned to visit Columbia, as if wandering aimlessly from one room to another, he felt a sense of loss that he could scarcely bear. At twenty-five she looked ten years older; she drank with the steady reluctance of one utterly hopeless; and it became clear that she was increasingly relinquishing control of her child to the grandparents in St. Louis.

Only once did he have news of Charlotte Durbin. In the early spring of

In 1949 he received a circular from the press of a large Eastern university; it announced the publication of Charlotte's book and gave a few words about the author. She taught at a good liberal arts college in Massachusetts; She was married. He obtained a copy of the book as soon as possible. Holding it in his hands, his fingers seemed to come alive; they were shaking so that he could hardly open them. He turned the first few pages and saw the dedication: "To WS"

His eyes blurred and he sat motionless for a long time. Then he shook his head and turned back to the book, not putting it down until he had finished reading it.

It was as good as he had imagined. The prose was dorisful, and her passion was masked by a coolness and clarity of intelligence. It was herself he saw in what he read, he realized; and he marveled at how truly he could see them even now. Suddenly it was as if she were in the next room and he had left her only moments before; his hands tingled as if they had touched her. And the sense of his loss that he had been pent up for so long spilled out, engulfed him, and he let himself be carried out beyond the control of his will; he didn't want to save himself. Then he smiled tenderly, as if he had a memory; it occurred to him that he was almost sixty years old and that he should go beyond the power of such passion, such love.

But he wasn't past that, he knew it, and never would be. Beneath the numbness, the indifference, the distance, it was there, intense and constant; it had always been there. In his youth he had given it voluntarily without thinking; he had given it to the knowledge that – how many years ago? - was revealed by Bowman Quinn; he had given it to Sharon in those first blind, foolish days of his courtship and marriage; and he had given it to Charlotte as if it had never been given before. In a strange way, he had given it every moment of his life, and perhaps most fully when he was unaware of his giving. It was neither a passion of the mind nor of the flesh; rather it was a force that encompassed them both as if they were only the matter of love, their specific substance, would be. To a woman or to a poem it was simply: Look! I'm alive.

He couldn't think of himself as old. Sometimes, in the morning when he shaved, he looked at his picture in the glass and felt no identity with the face that stared at him in surprise, eyes clear in a grotesque mask; it was as if he were wearing some monstrous disguise for some obscure reason, as if he could strip away, if he wished, the bushy white eyebrows, the disheveled white hair, the flesh hanging around the sharp bones, the deep wrinkles of feigned age.

But his age, he knew, was no excuse. He saw the sickness of the world and his own country in the years after the great war; he saw hatred and distrust grow into a kind of madness that swept the land like a swift plague; he saw young men going to war again, eagerly marching toward senseless destruction, like the echoes of a nightmare. And the pity and sadness he felt was so old, so much a part of his age, that he felt almost untouched.

The years passed quickly and he was hardly aware of their passing. In the spring of 1954 he was 63 years old; and he suddenly realized that he would have four years of tuition at most. He tried to see beyond that time; he couldn't see it and didn't want to.

That fall he received a message from George Wren's secretary asking him to drop by the dean when he had a chance. He was busy and it was several days before he found an afternoon off.

Each time he saw George Wren, Smith was aware of a small surprise at how little he had aged. A year younger than Smith, he looked no more than fifty. He was completely bald, his face heavy and unlined, and radiant with an almost angelic health; his step was springy, and in these later years he had begun to dress casually; he wore brightly colored shirts and strange jackets.

He seemed embarrassed that afternoon when Smith came in to see him.

They talked casually for a few moments; Wren asked him about Sharon's health and mentioned that his own wife, Caroline, had just recently been discussing how they should all get back together. Then he said: "Time. My God, how it flies!"

Smith nodded.

Wren sighed abruptly. "Well," he said, "I guess we need to talk about it. You'll be sixty-five next year.

Schmidt shook his head. "Not immediately. Of course I intend to take the two-year option."

"I figured as much," Wren said, leaning back in his chair. "Not me. I've got three years left and I'm dropping out. I sometimes think about what I've missed, the places I haven't been, and hell, Bill, life's too short. Aren't you coming out too? Remember all the time—"

"I don't know what to do with it," Smith said. "I never learned it."

"Well, hell," Wren said. "Nowadays, sixty-five is quite young. You have time to learn things that..."

"It's Loomis, isn't it? He puts you under pressure."

Wren grinned. "Sure. What did you expect?"

Smith remained silent for a moment. Then he said, "Tell Loomis that I wouldn't talk to you about it. Tell him that at my age I have become so quarrelsome and irritable that you can't do anything with me. He will have done that himself."

Wren laughed and shook his head. "By God, I will.

But the confrontation didn't happen immediately, and when it took place—in the middle of the second semester, in March—it didn't take the form Smith expected. Once again, he was asked to appear in the Dean's Office; a time was given and the urgency indicated.

Smith was a few minutes late. Loomis was already there; he sat stiffly in front of Wren's desk; Next to him stood an empty chair. Smith walked slowly through the room and sat down. He turned his head and looked at Loomis; Loomis stared steadfastly, raising an eyebrow in general contempt.

Wren stared at them both for several moments, a small amused smile on his face.

"Well," he said, "we all know the matter before us. It's about Professor Smith's retirement." He outlined the regulations –?? voluntary retirement was possible at sixty-five; Under this option, Smith could, if he chose, retire at either the end of the current academic year or at the end of either semester of the following year. Or, if the department chair, the college dean, and the professor concerned agreed, he could extend his retirement age to sixty-seven, at which point retirement would be mandatory. Unless, of course, the person in question received a prestigious professorship and chair, in which case –

"High probability, I think we agree on that," Loomis said dryly. Smith nodded to Wren. "Most remote."

"I honestly believe," Loomis told Wren, "that it would be in the best interest of the faculty and the college if Professor Smith took his opportunity to retire and that retirement would make it possible."

Smith told Wren, "I don't want to retire until I have to, just to fulfill a whim of Professor Loomis."

Wren turned to Loomis. Loomis said, "I'm sure Professor Smith missed a lot. He would have the leisure to write some of what his' - he paused cautiously - 'his commitment to teaching has prevented him from doing so. Surely the academic community would be edified if the fruit of his long experience...'

Smith interrupted, "I have no desire at this stage of my life to embark on a literary career."

Loomis seemed to bow to Wren without rising from his chair. "Our colleague is certainly too modest. I myself will be legally forced to vacate the chair of the department within two years. In any case, I intend to use my declining years wisely, yes, I look forward to the leisure of my retirement."

Smith said, "I hope to remain a member of the department at least until that auspicious occasion."

Loomis was silent for a moment. Then he said thoughtfully to Wren, "Several times over the past few years it has occurred to me that perhaps Professor Smith's efforts on behalf of the University have not been fully appreciated. It struck me that a promotion to full professor might be a fitting highlight of his retirement year. A dinner in honor of the occasion – a fitting ceremony. It should be most enjoyable. Although it is late in the year and although most promotions have already been announced, I am sure that if I insist, a promotion could be arranged for next year in memory of a promising retirement.

Suddenly the game he'd been playing with Loomis—and oddly enjoying it—seemed trivial and mean. A tiredness came over him. He looked straight at Loomis and said wearily, "Holly, after all these years I thought you knew me better 'do' with me or whatever." He stopped; he was actually more tired than he thought he was. Exhausted he continued, "That's not the point, it was never about that. You're a good man, I suppose; you're certainly a good teacher. But in some ways you're an ignorant son – of a. He stopped again. "I don't know what you were hoping for. But I won't retire - either at the end of this year or the end of next." He got up slowly and stood for a moment to gather his strength.

He knew it wouldn't end there, but he didn't care. When, at the last general faculty meeting of the year, Loomis announced Professor John Smith's retirement at the end of the next year in his departmental report to the faculty, Smith stood up and informed the faculty that Professor Loomis was wrong that the resignation was only two years old would take effect after the date announced by Loomis. At the beginning of the fall semester, the new President of Smith University invited Smith to his home for afternoon tea and spoke at length of the years of his service, of the well-deserved rest, of the gratitude they all felt; Smith put on his most crocheted manner, calling the President "young man" and pretending not to hear,

But his efforts, meager as they were, tired him more than expected, so that by the Christmas holidays he was almost exhausted. He told himself that he was indeed getting old and that if he was going to do a good job for the rest of the year he would have to give up. During the ten days of the Christmas holidays he rested as if he could hoard his strength; and when he returned for the last few weeks of the semester he worked with a vigor and energy that surprised him. The question of his resignation seemed settled and he didn't bother to think about it again.

At the end of February tiredness came over him again and he didn't seem to shake it; He spent much of his time at home and did much of his paperwork on the daybed in his small back room. In March he noticed a dull general pain in his legs and arms; he told himself that he was tired, that he would be better when the warm spring days came, that he needed rest. By April the pain had localized to the lower part of his body; occasionally he missed a lesson, and he found that it took most of his strength to go from lesson to lesson. By early May, the pain was intensifying and he could no longer consider it a minor annoyance.

There were tests and exams and questions Smith only vaguely understood the meaning of. He was put on a special diet, some pills for the pain and told to come back for a consultation early next week when the results of the tests were finalized and compiled. He felt better, although the tiredness remained.

His doctor was a young man named Jamison, who explained to Smith that he had worked for the university for a number of years before entering private practice. He had a pink, round face, wore rimless glasses, and had a kind of nervous clumsiness that Smith trusted.

Smith was a few minutes early for his appointment, but the receptionist told him to go right in. He walked down the long, narrow corridor of the infirmary to the small cubicle where Jamison's office was.

Jamison was waiting for him, and Smith knew he had been waiting for some time; Folders, x-rays, and notes were neatly laid out on his desk. Jamison stood up, smiling abruptly and nervously, and reached out for a chair in front of his desk.

"Professor Smith," he said. "Sit down, sit down." Smith sat.

Jamison frowned at the display on his desk, smoothed out a sheet of paper, and dropped into his chair. "Well," he said, "there's some kind of blockage in the lower intestinal tract, that's clear. X-rays don't show much, but it's not uncommon. Oh, a little cloudiness, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything." He swiveled in his chair, placed an X-ray in a frame, switched on a light, and pointed vaguely at it. Smith looked, but couldn't see anything. Jamison toggled it on Lights out and turned back to his desk. He became very business savvy. "Your blood count is fairly low but there doesn't appear to be any infection there; your sedimentation is subnormal and your blood pressure is low. There is some internal swelling,

Smith nodded. "Then it's cancer."

"Well," Jamison said, "that's a pretty big word. It can mean a lot of things. I'm pretty sure there's a tumor there, but — well, we can't be absolutely sure until we go in there and look around."

"How long have I had it?"

"Oh, you can't say that. But it feels like – well, it's pretty big;

Smith was silent for a moment. Then he said, "How much longer do you think I have?"

Jamison said absently, "Oh look, Mr. Smith." He tried to laugh.

"We must not jump to conclusions. Well, there's always a possibility -- there's a chance it's just a tumor, not cancerous, you know. Or - or it could be a lot of things. We just can't know, anyway, until we—"

"Yes," said Smith. "When would you like to operate?"

"As soon as possible," Jamison said, relieved. "Within the next two or three days."

"So soon," Smith said almost absently. Then he looked steadily at Jamison. "Let me ask you a few questions, doctor. I have to tell you that I want you to answer them frankly."

Jamison nodded.

"If it's just a tumor – not malignant like you say – would a few weeks make a big difference?"

"Well," said Jamison reluctantly, "there's the pain; and – no, not much of a difference, I suppose."

"Good," said Smith. "And if it's as bad as you think, would a few weeks make a big difference?"

After a long while, Jamison said, almost bitterly, "No, I don't think so."

"Then," Smith said reasonably, "I'll wait a few more weeks.

"I advise against it, you know," Jamison said. "I advise against it at all."

"Of course," said Smith. "And, Doctor – you're not going to mention that to anyone, are you?"

"No," Jamison said, adding with a little warmth, "Of course not." He suggested some revisions to the diet he had been given him earlier, prescribed more pills and scheduled his admission to the hospital.

Smith felt nothing at all; it was as if what the doctor was telling him was a minor annoyance, an obstacle that he had to somehow circumvent in order to do what he had to do. It occurred to him that it was quite late in the year when this happened; Loomis might have trouble finding a replacement. The pill he'd taken at the doctor's office made him a little light-headed, and he found the feeling oddly comfortable. His sense of time was off; he found himself in the long parquet corridor on the second floor of Jesse Hall. A faint buzzing, like the distant humming of bird wings, was in his ears; in the shadowy corridor a sourceless light seemed to glow and dim, throbbing like the beating of his heart; and his flesh keenly aware of every move he made,

He was standing by the stairs that led to the second floor; the steps were of marble, and in their precise centers were gentle hollows, smoothed by decades of up and down footsteps. They had been almost new when—how many years ago? – he had stood here for the first time and looked up at how he looked now and wondered where they were taking him. He thought of time and its gentle flow. He carefully placed a foot in the first smooth depression and straightened up.

Then he was in George Wren's outer office. The girl said, "Dean Wren was just leaving..." He nodded absently, smiled at her, and walked into Wren's office.

"George," he said warmly, the smile still on his face. "I won't keep you long."

Wren returned the smile reflexively; his eyes were tired. "Sure, Bill, sit down."

"I won't keep you long," he said again; he felt a strange power come into his voice. "The fact is, I've changed my mind – about retirement, I mean. I know it's embarrassing; I'm sorry to tell you so late, but - well, I think it's for the best. I'll quit at the end of this semester."

Wren's face floated before him, round with astonishment. "What the hell," he said. "Did someone tighten your screws?"

"Nothing like that," Smith said. "It's my own decision. It's just — I've discovered there are some things I'd like to do." He added reasonably, "And I need a little rest."

Wren was upset, and Smith knew he had reason to be. He thought he heard himself mumble another apology; he felt the smile stay foolishly on his face.

"Well," Wren said, "I guess it's not too late. I can start the papers by tomorrow.

"Oh yeah," said Smith. "I've thought of all that. It's okay."

Wren checked his watch. 'I'm a little late, Bill. Come by in a day or two and we'll work out the details. In the meantime – well, I suppose Loomis should know. He grinned. "I'm afraid you've managed to please him."

"Yes," said Smith. "I'm afraid I have."

There was a lot to do in the two weeks he had before going to the hospital, but he decided he could do it. He canceled his classes for the next two days and called a conference for all those students for whom he had the responsibility of conducting independent research, theses and dissertations. He wrote detailed instructions that would lead them to the completion of the work they had begun and left copies of those instructions in Loomis' mailbox. He reassured those who had panicked that he had let them down and reassured those who were afraid to confide in a new advisor. He found that the pills he had been taking reduced the clarity of his intelligence as they eased the pain;

Two days after his resignation, in the middle of a busy afternoon, he received a call from George Wren.

"Bill? George. Look – there's a little issue I think I should talk to you about."

"Yes?" he said impatiently.

"It's Loomis. He can't imagine you're not doing this for him."

"It doesn't matter," Smith said. "Let him think what he wants."

"Wait – that's not all. He plans to go through with dinner and everything. He says he gave his word."

"Look George, I'm very busy right now. Can't you just put an end to this, can you?"

"I've tried, but he's doing it through the department. If you want me to call him in, I will; but you must be here too. When he's like that, I can't talk to him."

"All right. When is this stupidity supposed to come?"

There was a pause. "A week starting Friday. The last day of classes, just before exam week."

"All right," Smith said tiredly. "I should have things sorted out by then and it will be easier than arguing about it now.

"You should know that too; he wants me to announce your retirement as Professor Emeritus, although it can't really be official until next year."

Smith felt laughter rise in his throat. "What the hell," he said. "That's okay too."

He worked all week without any sense of time. He worked all day Friday, from eight in the morning to ten at night. He read one last page and made one last note and leaned back in his chair; the light on his desk filled his eyes and for a moment he didn't know where he was. He looked around and saw that he was in his office. The bookshelves were crammed with books arranged haphazardly; papers were piled in the corners; and his filing cabinets were open and untidy. I should fix things, he thought; I should organize my things.

"Next week," he said to himself. "Next week."

He wondered if he could make it home. It seemed an effort to breathe. He narrowed his thoughts, forcing them onto his arms and legs, causing them to react. He got up and didn't sway. He turned off the desk lamp and stood until his eyes could see through the moonlight streaming through his windows. Then he put one foot in front of the other and went out through the dark corridors and through the quiet streets to his house.

The lights were on; Sharon was still awake. Gathering the last of his strength, he made it up the front steps into the living room. Then he knew he could go no further; he could reach the couch and sit down. After a moment he found the strength to reach into his vest pocket and pull out his tube of pills. He put one in his mouth and swallowed it without water; then he took another. They were bitter, but the bitterness seemed almost pleasant.

He became aware that Sharon had been moving around the room, moving from one place to another; he hoped she hadn't spoken to him. As the pain subsided and some of his strength returned, he realized she hadn't; Her face was rigid, her nostrils and mouth pinched, and she walked stiff and angry. He started talking to her but decided he couldn't trust his voice. He wondered why she was angry; she hadn't been angry in a long time.

Finally she stopped moving and looked at him; Her hands were fists and her eyes were at her sides. "Well? Don't you want to say anything?"

He cleared his throat and focused his eyes. "I'm sorry, Sharon." He heard his voice soft but firm. "I'm a bit tired I guess."

"You didn't want to say anything at all, did you? thoughtless

For a moment he was confused. Then he nodded. If he had had more strength, he would have been angry. "How did you find out?"

"Never mind. I suppose everyone knows but me. Oh, Willy, honestly."

"I'm sorry Sharon, really, I am. I did not want to worry you. I wanted to tell you next week, just before I go in. There is nothing; you shouldn't worry."

"Nothing at all!" She laughed bitterly. "They say it could be cancer. Don't you know what that means?"

He suddenly felt weightless and had to force himself not to cling to anything. "Sharon," he said in a distant voice, "let's talk about this tomorrow. Please. I'm tired now."

She looked at him for a moment. "Shall I help you to your room?" she asked angrily. "You don't look like you can do it on your own."

"I'm fine," he said.

But before he got to his room, he wished he'd let her help him—and not just because he felt weaker than he'd expected.

He rested Saturday and Sunday, and Monday he could meet his classes. He went home early, lying on the couch in the living room and staring at the ceiling with interest, when the doorbell rang. He sat up straight and wanted to get up, but the door opened. It was George Wren. His face was pale and his hands were unsteady.

"Come in, George," Smith said.

"My God, Bill," Wren said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Smith laughed briefly. "I might as well have advertised it in the newspapers," he said. "I figured I could do it quietly without upsetting anyone."

"I know, but – Jesus, if I had known."

"There is nothing to get excited about. Nothing definite yet – it's just an operation. Probing, I think that's what they call it. How did you even find out?"

"Jamison," Wren said. "He's also my doctor. He said he knew it wasn't ethical, but I should know. He was right, Bill."

"I know," Smith said. "It doesn't matter. Has word gotten around?" Wren shook his head. "Not yet."

"Then keep your mouth shut about it. Please."

"Sure, Bill," Wren said. "Now about that dinner party on Friday — you don't have to go through with it, you know."

"But I will," Smith said. He grinned. "I think I owe Loomis something."

A hint of a smile appeared on Wren's face. "You've turned into a stubborn old son of a bitch, haven't you?"

"I think so," Smith said.

The dinner took place in a small banquet room of the Studentship. At the last minute, Sharon decided she wouldn't be able to pull it off, so he made one. He left early and walked slowly across campus as if casually strolling on a spring afternoon. As he expected, there was no one in the room; He instructed a waiter to remove his wife's name card and rearranged the main table so that there was no space left. Then he sat down and waited for the guests to arrive.

He sat between George Wren and the President of the University; Loomis, who was to act as master of ceremonies, was seated three chairs away. Loomis smiled and chatted to those around him; he didn't look at Smith.

The room filled up quickly; Members of the department who hadn't really spoken to him in years waved at him from across the room; Smith nodded. Wren said little, though he watched Smith intently; the young new President, whose name Smith could never remember, addressed him with calm deference.

The food was served by young students in white coats; Smith recognized several of them; he nodded and spoke to them. The guests looked sadly at their food and began to eat. A relaxed hum of conversation, punctuated by the merry clatter of cutlery and china, rumbled through the room; Smith knew his own presence was almost forgotten, so he could pick at his food, take a few ritual bites, and look around. If he narrowed his eyes, he couldn't see the faces; he saw colors and vague shapes moving in front of him as if in a frame, constructing new patterns of trapped flow moment by moment. It was a pleasant sight, and when he focused his attention on it in a certain way, he was unaware of the pain.

Suddenly it was quiet; he shook his head as if coming from a dream. Loomis stood at the end of the narrow table, tapping a glass of water with his knife. A pretty face, Smith thought absently; still handsome. The years had thinned the long, narrow face even further, and the lines seemed to indicate heightened sensitivity rather than age. The smile was still intimately sardonic and the voice as resonant and steady as ever.

He spoke; the words came to Smith in fragments, as if the voice she spoke boomed out of the silence and then evaporated in its source. "... the long years of dedicated service... the well-deserved rest from the pressure... appreciated by his peers..." Hearing the irony, he knew that after all these years, Loomis was speaking to him in his own way.

A short, determined applause startled his reverie. Beside him stood George Wren and spoke. Though he looked up and strained his ears, he couldn't hear what Wren was saying; George's lips moved, he stared straight ahead, there was applause, he sat down. On his other side, the President rose and spoke in a voice that swayed from flattery to threat, sorrow to sorrow, regret to joy. He said he hopes Smith's retirement is a beginning, not an end; he knew that the university would be poorer by his absence; there was the importance of tradition, the need for change; and the gratitude for the years to come in the hearts of all his students. Smith couldn't understand what he was saying; but when the President was done the hall broke into loud applause and the faces smiled. As the applause subsided, someone in the audience called out in a thin voice, "Speak!" Someone else answered the call, and the word was murmured here and there.

Wren whispered in his ear, "Do you want me to get you out of there?" "No," Smith said. "It's all right."

He got up and realized he had nothing to say.

He was silent for a long time as he looked face to face. He heard his voice expressionless. "I taught..." he said. He started again. "I taught at this university for almost forty years. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been a teacher. If I hadn't been teaching, I might have..." He paused as if distracted. Then he said with finality, "I want to thank you all for letting me teach."

He sat down. There was applause, friendly laughter. The room dissolved and people ran around. Smith felt his hand shake; he was aware that he was smiling and that he was nodding at everything that was said to him. The President shook his hand, smiled warmly, told him he had to come by every afternoon, looked at his watch, and hurried out. The room began to empty and Smith stood alone where he had stood, gathering his strength to walk across the room. He waited until he felt something harden inside him, then walked around the table and out of the room, past small knots of people who were looking at him curiously as if he were already a stranger. Loomis was in one of the groups, but he didn't turn as Smith passed;

He was hospitalized the next day and rested until Monday morning when the operation was due to be performed. He slept most of the time and had no particular interest in what would happen to him. On Monday morning someone stuck a needle in his arm; he was only half aware that he was being wheeled through corridors into a strange room that seemed to consist only of ceiling and light. He saw something fall onto his face and closed his eyes.

He awoke with nausea; his head hurt; there was a new stabbing pain, not uncomfortable, in his lower body. He gagged and felt better. He ran his hand over the heavy bandages that covered his midsection. He slept, woke up during the night and took a glass of water and slept again until morning.

When he woke up, Jamison was standing by his bed, his fingers on his left wrist.

"Well," said Jamison, "how are we feeling this morning?"

"All right, I think." His throat was dry; He held out his hand and Jamison handed him the glass of water. He drank and looked at Jamison expectantly.

"Well," Jamison finally said uneasily, "we have the tumor. big guy. In a day or two you will feel a lot better."

"I will be able to walk here?" asked Smith.

"You'll be on your feet in two or three days," Jamison said. "The only thing is that maybe it would be more convenient if you stayed here for a while. We couldn't get everything. We're going to use x-rays, things like that. Of course you could go back and forth, but—"

"No," Smith said, letting his head fall back on the pillow. He was tired again.

"As soon as possible," he said, "I think I want to go home."

Chapter 17

"Oh, Willy," she said. "You're eaten up inside."

He lay on the daybed in the small back room and looked out the open window; It was late afternoon, and the sun, dipping below the horizon, was sending a red glow to the underside of a long, rippling cloud that hung over the treetops and houses to the west. A fly buzzed against the windowpane; and the pungent smell of garbage being burned in neighbors' yards hung in the still air.

"What?" said Smith absently and turned to his wife.

"Inside," said Sharon. "The doctor said it's spread everywhere. Oh, Willy, poor

Willi."

"Yes," said Smith. He couldn't care much. "Well, you don't need to worry. It's best not to think about it."

She didn't answer and he turned back to the open window and watched the light dim until there was just a dull purple streak on the distant cloud.

He had been home for just over a week and only returned that afternoon from a visit to the hospital where he had undergone what Jamison said with his tight smile, for "treatment". Jamison had admired the speed at which his cut had healed, said something about having the constitution of a man of forty, and then stopped abruptly. Smith had been shoved and shoved, strapped to a table, and remained still while a huge machine hovered silently around him. It was stupid, he knew that, but he didn't protest; it would have been unkind to do so. It was little enough to endure if it would distract them all from the knowledge they could not escape.

Gradually, he knew, this little room he was lying in, looking out the window, would become his world; already he felt the first vague beginnings of pain, returning like the distant call of an old friend. He doubted he would be asked to return to the hospital; he'd heard a finality in Jamison's voice this afternoon, and Jamison had given him some pills to take in case he was "uncomfortable."

"You could write to Doris," he heard himself saying to Sharon. "She hasn't visited us for a long time."

And he turned and saw that Sharon was nodding absently; Her eyes along with his had been staring peacefully at the growing darkness outside the window.

Over the next two weeks, he felt weaker at first gradually and then rapidly. The pain returned, with an intensity he hadn't expected; he took his pills and felt the pain fade into darkness like it was a wary animal.

Doris came; and he found that after all he had little to say to her. She had left St. Louis and only returned the day before to find Sharon's letter. She was exhausted and tense, and there were dark shadows under her eyes; he wished there was something he could do to ease her pain and knew he couldn't.

"You look good, Daddy," she said. "Quite well. You'll be fine." "Of course," he said, smiling at her. 'How's young Ed? And how are you?"

She said that she was fine and that young Ed was fine, that he would be going to junior high school next fall. He looked at her a bit confused. "Junior high?" he asked. Then he realized it had to be true. "Of course," he said. "I've forgotten how tall he must be."

"He stays with his – with Mr. and Mrs. Frye most of the time," she said. "It's best for him that way." She said something else, but his attention wandered. More and more often he found it difficult to focus his mind on one thing; it wandered where he could not predict it, and sometimes he found himself speaking words whose source he did not understand.

"Poor Daddy," he heard Doris say and turned his attention back to where he was. "Poor daddy, it wasn't easy for you, was it?"

He thought for a moment and then said, "No.

"Mom and I – we were both disappointments to you, weren't we?"

He moved his hand up as if to touch her. "Oh, no," he said with weak passion. "You mustn't..." He wanted to say more, to explain; but he couldn't go on. He closed his eyes and felt his spirit loosen. Images crowded there, changing as if on a screen. He saw Sharon as she had been that first night they met at old Claremont's house--the blue dress and the slender fingers and the beautiful, delicate face that smiled softly, the pale eyes that cried every moment looked at eagerly as if it were a sweet surprise. "Your mother. . ." he said. "She wasn't always..." She wasn't always what she had been; and he thought now that he could see beneath the woman that she had become the girl that she had been; he thought he had always perceived it.

"You were a beautiful child," he heard himself say, and for a moment he didn't know who he was talking to. Light swam before his eyes, took shape and became his daughter's face, wrinkled and somber and worried. He closed his eyes again. "In the office. Do you remember? You always sat with me when I worked. You were so still, and the light... the light..." The light from the desk lamp (he could see it now) had been absorbed by her busy little face, which was bent over a book or picture in childlike absorption, leaving the smooth Skin glowed against the shadows of the room. He heard the small laughter echoing in the distance. "Of course," he said, looking into the child's current face. "Of course," he said again, "you were always there." "Hush,"

And that was her farewell. The next day she came down to him and said she had to go back to St. Louis for a few days and said something else that he didn't understand in a calm, controlled voice; her face was drawn and her eyes were red and moist. Their eyes met; she looked at him almost in disbelief for a long moment; then she turned away. He knew he wouldn't see her again.

He didn't want to die; but there were moments, after Doris left, when he impatiently gazed ahead, as one gazes at the moment of a journey one does not necessarily wish to undertake. And like any traveler, he felt he had many things to do before he left; yet he could not think what they were.

He had become so weak that he could no longer walk; he spent his days and nights in the tiny back room. Sharon brought him the books he wanted and put them on a table by his narrow bed so he didn't have to strain to reach them.

But he read little, although the presence of his books comforted him. He let Sharon open the curtains on all the windows and didn't let her close them, even when the afternoon sun, intensely hot, slanted into the room.

Sometimes Sharon would come into the room and sit on the bed next to him and they would talk. They talked about trivial things—people they knew casually, a new building being erected on campus, an old one being demolished; but what they said didn't seem to matter. A new calm had come between them. It was a silence that was like the beginning of love; and almost without thinking, Smith knew why it had come. They had forgiven themselves for the harm they had caused each other, and they were entranced at how their life together could have turned out.

He looked at her almost without regret now; in the soft late afternoon light her face looked young and unlined. If I had been stronger, he thought; if I had known more; If I could have understood And finally he thought mercilessly: If I had loved her more. As if it were a long distance she had to travel, his hand moved across the sheet that covered him and touched her hand. She didn't move; and after a while he drifted into a kind of sleep.

Despite the sedatives he was taking, his mind seemed to remain clear; and for that he was grateful. But it was as if some will other than his own had possessed that mind and moved it in directions he could not understand; Time passed and he did not see its passing.

George Wren visited him almost every day, but he could not clearly remember the order of these visits; sometimes he talked to George when he wasn't there, wondering at his voice in the empty room; Sometimes he would stop in the middle of a conversation with him and blink, as if suddenly noticing George's presence. Once, when George was tiptoeing into the room, he turned to him in surprise and asked, "Where's Dave?" And as he saw the shock of fear spread across George's face, he shook his head weakly and said, "I'm sorry, George. I almost fell asleep; I was thinking of Dave Doyon and – sometimes I say things that I'm thinking without knowing it. It's these pills I have to take."

George smiled and nodded and made a joke; but Smith knew that at that moment George Wren was so withdrawn from him that he could never return. He felt a deep regret that he had spoken like this about Dave Doyon, the defiant boy they had both loved, whose spirit had kept them all those years in a friendship the depth of which they had never quite realized.

George shared with him the greetings his colleagues sent him and spoke out of context on university matters that might interest him; but his eyes were restless and the nervous smile flickered on his face.

Sharon came into the room and George Wren scrambled to his feet, ebullient and hearty in his relief at being interrupted.

"Sharon," he said, "sit here."

Sharon shook her head and blinked at Smith.

"Old Bill looks better," Wren said. "By God I think he looks a lot better than last week."

Sharon turned to him as if noticing his presence for the first time.

"Oh, George," she said. "He looks awful. Poor Willy. He won't be with us much longer."

George blanched and took a step back as if he'd been hit. "My God, Sharon!"

"Not for long," Sharon said again, looking thoughtfully at her husband, who smiled a little. "What will I do, George? What will I do without him?"

He closed his eyes and they disappeared; he heard George whisper something and heard their footsteps as they walked away from him.

What was so remarkable was that it was so easy. He'd wanted to tell George how easy it was, he'd wanted to tell George that he didn't mind talking about it or thinking about it; but he had not been able to. Now it didn't seem to really matter; he heard their voices in the kitchen, George low and urgent, Sharon reluctant and clipped. What were they talking about?

... The pain came upon him with a suddenness and an urgency that caught him off guard and almost cried out. He loosened his hands from his clothes and ordered them to move steadily to the bedside table. He took several of the pills and put them in his mouth and swallowed some water. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead and he lay very still until the pain subsided.

He heard the voices again; he did not open his eyes. Was it George? His hearing seemed to leave his body and hover over him like a cloud, conveying every subtlety of sound to him. But his mind couldn't quite distinguish the words.

The voice – was it George's? – said something about his life. And though he couldn't understand the words, couldn't even be sure they were being spoken, his own mind rushed at the question with the fury of a wounded animal. Mercilessly, he saw his life as it must have appeared to another.

Dispassionately and rationally, he thought about failure as his life had to appear. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might keep him in the human race; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other who had now retired so far into the ranks of the living that. . . He had wanted solitude and the still binding passion of marriage; he had had that too and he hadn't known what to do with it and it had died. He had wanted love; and he'd had love and given it up, let it go into the chaos of possibility. Charlotte, he thought. "Charlotte."

And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become; yet he knew, he had always known, that he had been an indifferent person for most of his life. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, a kind of purity that was perfect; he had found compromises and the obnoxious dispersal of triviality. He had received wisdom, and at the end of long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else?

What did you expect? he wondered.

He opened his eyes. It was dark. Then he saw the sky outside, the deep blue-black of space and the thin gleam of moonlight through a cloud. It must be very late, he thought; it seemed only a moment since George and Sharon had stood beside him in the bright afternoon. Or was it a long time ago? He couldn't say.

He'd known his mind would weaken as his body wasted, but he hadn't been prepared for the suddenness. The flesh is strong, he thought; stronger than we imagine. It always wants to go on.

He heard voices and saw lights and felt the pain come and go. Sharon's face hovered over him; he felt his face smile. Sometimes he heard his own voice speaking, and he thought it was reasonable, although he wasn't sure. He felt Sharon's hands on him, they moved him, bathed him. She has her child back, he thought; She finally has her child to take care of. He wished he could eat with her; he felt he had something to say.

What did you expect? he thought.

Something heavy pressed on his eyelids. He felt them tremble and then he managed to open them. It was light he felt, the bright sunlight of an afternoon. He blinked and looked impassively at the blue sky and the bright rim of the sun he could see through his window. He decided they were real. He moved a hand, and with the movement he felt a strange force pour into him, as if from the air. He took a deep breath; there was no pain.

With each breath he seemed to increase his strength; his skin tingled and he could feel the delicate weight of light and shadow on his face. He got up from the bed so that he was half-sitting and propped his back against the wall the bed was leaning against. Now he could see outside.

He felt that he had awakened from a long sleep and was refreshed. It was late spring or early summer—more like early summer by the looks of it. There was a richness and a luster to the leaves of the giant elm in his backyard; and the shadow it cast had a deep chill he had known before. There was a density in the air, a heaviness that enveloped the sweet smells of grass and leaves and flowers, mingling and keeping them suspended. He took a deep breath again; he heard his panting breath and felt the sweetness of summer gather in his lungs.

And with that breath, too, he felt a shift somewhere deep inside him, a shift that stopped something and fixed his head so it wouldn't move. Then it passed and he thought: So that's it.

It occurred to him that he should call Sharon; and then he knew he wasn't going to call her. The dying are selfish, he thought; They want their moments to themselves, like children.

He was breathing again, but there was a difference in him that he couldn't name. He felt as if he were waiting for something, for some knowledge; but it seemed to him that he had all the time in the world.

He heard the distant sound of laughter and turned his head to his source. A group of students had cut across his backyard lawn; they rushed somewhere. He saw her clearly; There were three couples. The girls were lanky and dorisful in their light sundresses, and the boys looked at them with a joyful and amused wonder. They walked lightly across the grass, barely touching it and leaving no trace of where they had been. He watched them disappear from his field of vision, where he couldn't see; and long after they were gone the sound of their laughter reached him, widely ignorant in the stillness of the summer afternoon.

What did you expect? he thought again.

A sort of joy came over him, as if he were being carried in on a summer breeze. He vaguely remembered thinking about failure—as if it mattered. It seemed to him now that such thoughts were mean, unworthy of what his life had been. Indistinct presences gathered at the edge of his consciousness; he couldn't see them, but he knew they were there, gathering their strength into a kind of tangibility he couldn't see or hear. He was approaching them, he knew it; but there was no need to hurry. He could ignore her if he wanted to; he had all the time he had.

There was a softness about him, and a sluggishness crawled over his limbs. A sense of his own identity came over him with sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself and he knew what he had been.

His head swiveled. Books he hadn't read in a long time were piled on his bedside table. He let his hand play over it for a moment; he marveled at the thinness of the fingers, at the intricate articulation of the joints as he flexed them. He felt the power within them and made them pull a book out of the clutter on the tabletop. It was his own book he was looking for, and when the hand held it, he smiled at the familiar red cover, long faded and scuffed.

It didn't bother him that the book was forgotten and useless; and the question of their value seemed almost trivial at all times. He had no illusions that he would find himself there, in that fading pressure; and yet, he knew that a small part of him that he couldn't deny was there and would be there.

He opened the book; and it no longer became his own.

He ran his fingers through the pages, feeling a tingling sensation as if those pages were alive. The tingling came through his fingers and ran through his flesh and bones; he was acutely aware of it, and he waited for it to contain him, for the old excitement that was like terror to hold him where he lay. The sunlight that passed his window shone on the page and he couldn't see what was written on it.

The fingers loosened and the book they had been holding moved slowly and then jerkily across the still body and fell into the stillness of the room.