Gods of Aberdeen

by Micah Nathan

  Questions and questions, so many of the same, voiced as gently as possible, but always sharp and double-edged, more probing than campus security’s had been, and I remember one of the officers asking Dr. Cade why, if his student hadn’t been seen for a week, didn’t anyone do anything sooner. Dr. Cade said that Professor Junta thought he’d seen Dan in Wednesday’s class.

  “So he saw him a few days ago, correct?” one of the officers said.

  “I believe so, yes. But Dr. Junta is one of our older—let’s just say he’s not what I would deem a reliable witness.”

  “But when you spoke to him, he clearly stated he had seen Daniel Higgins in class, on Wednesday.”

  “Correct.”

  The officers exchanged glances. The shorter, stockier of the two, Officer Bellis, asked the questions—And there is no history of depression, as far as you know?—while his taller, leaner partner, Officer Inman, stayed in the background, jotting down notes, wandering casually about the first floor. No to everything, we’d all said, Howie and Art and myself, while Dr. Cade made phone calls and talked with Officer Bellis about what I can’t remember, though I recall some conversation about runaways and high IQs. No, there wasn’t any drug use in Dan’s life. No, he was an excellent student and felt little anxiety about schoolwork. No, his relationships all seemed healthy and prospering. Howie had switched to coffee, and he was sweating with the effort of trying to maintain a sober façade while a grim-faced policeman asked a seemingly endless stream of morbid questions. There was no mystery—I could have taken them to the exact spot in the pond, like Poe’s madman in “Tell-Tale Heart,” and dropped a stone into the water and screamed Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Here! Here lies his body!

  Officer Bellis looked at the note again and shook his head. This doesn’t look like much of a suicide note to me, he said to Dr. Cade. How can you be sure?

  Dr. Cade translated the note for them, and sighed. “It is a message that does not bode well,” Dr. Cade said, with tired patience, as if weary of dealing with what he no doubt viewed as two well-intentioned ignoramuses. They, in turn, merely nodded solemnly, though I could see in their expressions they thought the whole matter was being blown out of proportion.

  They asked us if we’d searched the surrounding woods, and Art said we’d walked nearly a mile back, all the way to the end of Dr. Cade’s property line where a big ravine cut him off from Troyer Nursery. And of course we hadn’t yet spoken with all of Dan’s friends, although we didn’t think he had that many, and certainly none he’d be staying with without letting us know. We were his closest friends, I told them.

  “So all of you live here, is that it?” Officer Inman spoke up from the background.

  “They are in my employment,” said Dr. Cade proudly. “In exchange for which I provide room and board.”

  “Nice setup,” Officer Inman said, and he flashed a strictly professional smile and went back to his clipboard.

  We stayed up until two in the morning, the fire again a small mound of sparks and embers, stoked recently by Art, the police having left with Dan’s note and his wallet, on their way to Aberdeen to meet with campus security. Officer Inman, in a routine sweep of Dan’s room, had found the wallet under Dan’s bed, and when he brought it downstairs everything changed. Officer Bellis turned to a new page in his notebook and silently scribbled something; Officer Inman asked if he could use the phone. Howie paced across the room until Art asked him to stop, and Dr. Cade asked if anyone wanted some tea. An announcement would be made tomorrow morning, the police assured us—all students and professors would know “to keep an eye out” for Dan. Dan’s relative would be called, Dan’s file would be pulled, and the whole situation would work itself out. But it was obvious, judging by the now serious looks on the policemen’s faces, that having found Dan’s wallet was a bad sign.

  Dr. Cade called Mrs. Higgins and left a message on her machine, something about a problem with her son and could she please call immediately. And when the police left and Dr. Cade went upstairs to bed, Art, Howie, and I remained in the living room, each of us wallowing in guilt, whether deserved or not. And the only image I can think of, no matter how outlandish, is from something out of the Inferno: Art and I on Geryon’s back, clutching its reeking fur, spiraling down to the circle of the deceivers, while Howie looked out over the desert sands under the fury of raining fire, searching for his lost friend.

  It was all a grim mess, and I think I might have done something drastic had I not ripped free from my bedroom the next morning and made my way to campus. I was insanely tired but that was a good thing, because it allowed me to amble without much thought, heavy-lidded and dazed. Art had kept me up the previous night, stealing into my room around four in the morning to talk about Origen’s three-fold interpretation of literature. Snippets floated up from my subconscious…Somatic, psychic, pneumatic…Saint Augustine’s four-fold interpretation…Littera gesta docet quid credas allegoria; moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.

  Word had gotten out about Dan’s disappearance and spread among the halls and eateries and faculty lounges like fire across a dry plain. I heard Dan’s name mentioned in every conversation, from the steps of Thorren to the first-floor men’s room in Garringer to the coffee line at Campus Bean. Missing was the mantra, whispered in melodramatic breaths. Prayer groups formed and dissolved, impromptu search parties set out into the woods surrounding campus, shouting excitedly, their voices ringing off the snowy hills. Photocopies of a picture of Dan had been stapled to every corkboard in every hallway, but the print had been too dark and the quality was poor, making Dan look like an aborigine in shirt and tie.

  It was a very clear day, crisp and windy, the sky a cradle of blue, the distant ridges of Stanton Valley like a row of storm clouds set on the horizon. I wandered from building to building, unseen, clutching a cup of hot chocolate. I saw Howie walking briskly across the Quad, underdressed for the weather as usual, hands stuffed in his pockets, head down. For a moment I wanted to call out, but then I realized there was nothing to say.

  Around mid-afternoon I found myself in the H. F. Mores for the first time in weeks, reading some book on Mesopotamia. I’d been scanning the same sentence over and over, finding comfort in the repetition. Flat was the land between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, but here and there mysterious mounds rose out of the plain.

  The door swung open and Art walked in, black greatcoat flapping behind him like the wings of a giant crow, curly hair slicked back and the smoking bowl of his pipe jutting from his mouth. His face was red from the cold and he was dressed in what looked like a new suit, dark navy blue with a maroon tie. He didn’t seem to notice me at first, his gaze sweeping from side to side and then peering ahead into the recesses of the dusty bookshelves. I closed my book and sat back, while Art stopped at the edge of the massive Oriental rug and looked at me. He loomed tall and silent in the dim light of the room.

  He remained at bay, on the edge of the rug, taking the pipe out of his mouth. “Have you seen Cornelius?” he said.

  Not for a while, I told him. I hadn’t been going to work, and I didn’t care if I got in trouble.

  “He’s sick,” Art said. “He’s been getting chemotherapy at St. Michael’s. Stomach cancer, I think. I thought maybe he’d been released…” Art puffed his pipe, despite the library’s no-smoking policy.

  Cornelius had stomach cancer. He wasn’t immortal. It was all crazy, just like I’d suspected. The maps with dragons and his dumb old books and his pigeons…all of it, completely crazy.

  “How bad is it?” I said.

  “The cancer?” Art shrugged. “I visited him last week. He didn’t look too good.”

  “He’s never looked good,” I said. I wanted to shout It’s a dead end! Cornelius is dying! There is no Philosopher’s Stone!

  “I saw Howie earlier,” I said. “What’s he doing on campus?”

  “Organizing a search party,” Art said. “Couldn’t have picked a colder day.”

 
; We fell silent for a few moments.

  “Dan’s mom is flying in tonight,” Art said. “She’s staying at the Riverside.” The Riverside was Fairwich’s only four-star hotel, a renovated Victorian resting on the banks of the Quinnipiac.

  “And I saw your friend Nicole at Campus Bean. She asked about you, how you were holding up. I told her you were doing as well as could be expected.”

  “I’m worried about Dr. Cade,” I said, wanting to say much more, but there were a few students scattered about, wandering the aisles or seated at study carrels with bowed heads and bent backs. The truth is I wasn’t worried about Dr. Cade at all—I’m sure he was concerned, but he was handling Dan’s disappearance in classic fashion, neither too upset nor too calm, comfortably straddling the medium without settling on any particular emotion. I imagined he was philosophical about the whole thing, fearing Dan had killed himself, yet believing there were far worse fates, and I just couldn’t see Dr. Cade joining in the mass hysteria. Even if Dr. Cade himself were to discover Dan’s body, I couldn’t envision it in anything other than Apollonian terms: a brief surprise, a moment of sadness, and then solemn reflection upon the excesses of youth’s emotion and the quiet tragedy of a fine life lost.

  Art puffed twice. “I wouldn’t be too concerned with Dr. Cade. I think in some ways he’s rather enjoying this…assuming the outcome is as positive as we all hope. There’s a certain epic quality to it all, you know? Like those sweeping tragedies…something out of Wuthering Heights.”

  I agreed, actually, in a cynical way, as much as my guilt would allow.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Art said, pausing with the pipe in his mouth. “Dan attempted suicide about three years ago.” One of the students in the study carrels stiffened noticeably, and turned his head. “When he was about fourteen,” Art continued. “After his father died. He took a bunch of his mother’s Valium. Dan told us about it a while ago, and it wasn’t that big of a deal, we all understood.” Art shook his head. He was either a superb actor or being honest, because he looked truly dismayed.

  “So you think it’s happened again,” I said, trying to contain my sarcasm. “Another suicide attempt, is that it?”

  “Who’s to say. We won’t know until we find him.” Art puffed again. “Which reminds me—tomorrow morning Howie and I are taking a drive to Wiktor’s Orchard. I think you should join us. We can cover more area with another person helping out.”

  He released a cloud of smoke, and then turned on his heels and left, the tail of his coat licking the edge of the door as it shut, snapping in the wind like a tongue of black flame. He’s working on something, I thought. This is all going according to his plans.

  I stayed in the library until dark, and as I walked down its front steps it started snowing, flakes materializing from the night sky reflected off the lamppost lights lining the main path through the Quad. Over the previous four hours I’d made many resolutions and broken them all; I decided to tell the police the truth, I decided to show Dr. Cade the letter under my dorm-room mattress, I decided to confront Art about the suicide note and ask why he’d had the same poem on his desk, weeks earlier.

  Instead I walked to Paderborne, hurrying through the lobby with my head down, hoping to pass unnoticed into my room, where I could crawl into bed until the next phone call or startling revelation. Maybe Howie had gone missing, or Dr. Cade, or even Art. It was all beginning to feel preposterous, as if I’d walked onto the set of a play and slipped into a role as one of the extras. I was fairly certain I’d been a central character, at one point, but somewhere in the production my name had fallen off the marquee, and its block letters were now trampled underfoot by the hordes of people crowding into the theater to get a look at the next scene. Maybe I’m invisible, I thought, or maybe I’m giving off some sort of macabre scent that keeps everyone away, the rank odor of anguish that ghouls are said to emit while skulking around graveyards and charnel houses.

  I passed by a couple of freshmen in the stairwell, and caught a fragment of their conversation. Dean Richardson was giving a speech tomorrow, in the former chancel of Garringer, some sort of public service announcement offering counseling services for any students who feel overwhelming academic pressure. This, I’m sure, was a back-handed way of stating a reason for Dan’s disappearance. Crisis management at its finest, corking the hole after the leak.

  I saw Nicole leaving her room, dressed in her favorite tight black pants and mint-green turtleneck sweater. She immediately rushed up and gave me a full-frontal hug and then assaulted me with sympathetic questions and fawning looks.

  “So is everyone in the house going crazy or what?”

  “It’s very hard for all of us,” I said. There’s that phrase again. Like some line in a soap opera, with the pretty heroine in a coma and her family and friends surrounding her hospital bed.

  “This is so weird,” Nicole said. “I remember talking to him like it was yesterday, that day in the Quad, remember? He was such a cutie. Do you think he’s okay? Someone told me there was a suicide note, but I told them they were fucking nuts because I served on the peer helpers board last semester, and Dan exhibited none of the suicidal behaviors we learned about. I didn’t know him that well, of course, but you can tell the minute you meet someone…”

  She looked down at her nails, eyes narrowed in ruthless inspection, and picked at a cuticle. “By the way, I’ve got some very good smoke,” she said. “Do you want some? To help you relax?”

  “Do you think it’d help?” I said.

  Nicole nodded emphatically and grabbed my arm. “Oh, most definitely. When my mom was being a total bitch after the divorce, I smoked just about every day for a month. It’s so much better than drinking, which depresses the shit out of you, and on top of that, did you know pot isn’t even addictive? It’s true—you can smoke it for thirty days straight and quit whenever you want. Try that with coke; you’d be running around like a chicken with its head chopped off.”

  I finally returned to Professor Cade’s late that night, my head muddy from the aftereffects of an evening spent at Nicole’s. She’d been a good sport, making apple-cinnamon tea on her hot plate and feeding me little powdered doughnuts. People came and went, faces I’d seen during the previous months, kind, inquisitive faces that talked in hushed, respectful tones while Nicole watched over me and ensured no one asked about Dan or mentioned anything “inappropriate.” I remained on her bed the entire time, bong on the nightstand, book of matches nearby, open box of doughnuts close at hand and a mug of steaming tea sitting on a black lacquer Oriental tray at the end of the bed. I felt like some Persian king, with Nicole as my courtesan, receiving guests who spoke in strange tongues that I didn’t care to understand. When I decided it was time to leave, I had her call me a cab and I floated back out into the cold winter night, clinging tightly to the cocoon I’d spent the last four hours weaving around myself.

  A single light shone from the living room window of Dr. Cade’s house. I saw a tall shadow flash across the living room followed by another shadow, this one smaller and feminine. It’s Ellen, I thought.

  The inside of the house smelled like spring. There were fresh flowers everywhere, bundles of jonquils and daffodils and tulips and long-stemmed red roses with stems thick as my fingers. A ceramic white bowl held pennyroyal and spikenard in a thick tuft of purple and white. A spray of mums sat atop the dining room table, russet orange and almond brown and soft bronze. Someone had sent a massive bushel of lilac and damask rose that remained in its clear plastic delivery box by the bottom of the stairs.

  Dr. Cade walked into the dining room from the kitchen, holding a bottle of dark wine and wearing one of his signature cable-knit sweaters. “Eric,” he said, approaching me with a kind smile. “How are you?”

  I told him I was okay, a little tired, that’s all. He nodded and beckoned me into the living room. There’s someone I want you to meet, he said.

  It was Dan’s mother of course, Mrs. Elizabeth Higgins, looking ex
actly as I’d imagined, with jet-black hair pulled painfully tight into a bun that stuck out from the back of her head like it had been glued on. She was a tiny woman, shorter than Ellen and about fifteen pounds lighter, all sun-freckled skin and tendon and bone. Her eyes were beautiful—deep-set, teardrop-shaped, and creamy brown like chocolate, offset by a glittering diamond chain wound tightly around her willowy neck. She looked as though a strong wind could sweep her away, or even a mean glance, and her ivory-colored silk blouse clung gently to her delicate frame, above a pair of slender chestnut-brown pants. When Professor Cade introduced me she allowed herself a brief smile, flashing a row of miniature, straight white teeth, before closing that diminutive mouth in a tight clamp of worry surrounded by wrinkles and creases that suggested worry was as familiar as an old scar that had marked its territory upon her face.

  I sat across from her, on the couch facing the study, Nilus at my feet and a scatter of papers lying on the coffee table. A wallet-sized photo of Dan was paper-clipped to one of the sheets, showing his head and upper torso in a gray suit with a light blue background; it looked like a high school senior portait.

  “We missed you at Christmas,” Mrs. Higgins said, staring at the fire for a moment before turning to me. Her voice was clear and measured.

  “I’m sorry?” I said, then I remembered Dan’s letter. But, hopefully, you’ll receive this on time and accept my invitation to join mother and me for Christmas dinner in good old Boston.

  I’m so sorry, I thought. Dan, I’m so sorry.

  Mrs. Higgins uncrossed her legs and set them side by side, hands resting in her lap. “You look exactly as Daniel described. Very young. Like him—two peas in a pod, I suppose you are. Daniel is quite fond of you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and for a moment I thought I would cry.