I'll Take You There

by Joyce Carol Oates

  12

  He called me Anellia, he'd remembered that name.

  Driven from Vernor Matheius's door like a stray dog yet I had not the moral strength to keep away from him. The more he cast me from him with disdain—You don't want to do this!—the more I was drawn to him. I could think of no one else. I wished to think of no one else. In a delirium of yearning feeling the angry impress of his fingers against my arm; seeing his blood-darkened face, that look of exasperation and alarm. Don't, you don't want, Anellia you don't want to do this.

  He was begging me. He was commanding me. He was instructing himself as well as me. And this not out of principle but instinctively.

  I began to reason then, with a logician's certainty: it was possible, in the sense that it was not impossible, that Vernor Matheius might love me someday.

  Or, allow me to love him.

  "Anellia"—a name, a riddlesome sound, that had leapt to my lips as if it were Vernor Matheius who'd named me and not myself.

  For each of our lovers invents us anew. Names us anew. The old is erased utterly. Struck dumb.

  My own name was so common, ordinary, I'd begun to detect irony in its sound when it was spoken aloud. Since childhood I'd told myself Differently named, you'd be a different person.

  Yet I worried that, repudiating my baptismal name at the age of nineteen, I was inadvertently repudiating my mother Ida. For Ida had named me.

  "Anellia"—strange name. Never heard it before.

  Well. You've never met me before.

  I did not return to 1183 Chambers Street. More shrewdly I returned to the coffeehouse. In that grungy-romantic interior amid clouds of smoke and black-coffee fumes I wore the green suede jacket with its air of bygone, frenetic glamor; I wore the gauzy scarf that was the color of opalescent pearl; my hair had been shampooed, and was glossily combed; my thin chapped lips were transformed by crimson grease; I was not I but Anellia, drawing glances of interest from strangers. Anellia appeared to be a pretty undergraduate girl with a flattering curiosity about chess—"Oh no, I don't play! Just like to watch good players." It happened that Vernor Matheius was playing chess with a Dutch chemist with whom (I gathered) he often played in the coffeehouse, and so he could ignore me if he wished as I could ignore him. A young man befriended me; bought me coffee, offered me a cigarette; we murmured together in admiration of certain of the chess players; when he mentioned Vernor Matheius's name, innocently I inquired, "Who is he?" and my new friend said, "A philosophy Ph.D. student, supposed to be brilliant, but—" making a vague bemused gesture with his fingers, meant to indicate—what? That Vernor was too brilliant, or only just supposed to be brilliant? That Vernor was in some way eccentric? To be the only dark-skinned individual in most settings in which he found himself, to behave as if this were not a fact visible to all, requires a certain degree of self-definition, which might be mistaken for eccentricity. To my new acquaintance I said, as Anellia might have said, innocently ironic, playful, "Whoever he is, he's beautiful."

  Nearly everyone in the coffeehouse was smoking. This was an era of smoking. An era permeated by the haze-dreams of smoking. Blown-up photographs of the heroic, heraldic figures of "French existentialism"—our secular saints—Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir gazed down upon us from the hammered-tin walls of the coffeehouse through romantically drifting clouds of smoke, cigarettes in their hands, or drooping from their lips. I could not smoke: I hated tobacco: the thought of defiling my lungs, that I knew with my fatalist's certainty would be more vulnerable than the leathery lungs of others, filled me with revulsion. Yet I felt the erotic undertow of smoking. I conceded its cheap movie-screen glamor. There was Vernor Matheius lighting a cigarette distracted by a move of his opponent on the chessboard, I saw the forehead creased in concentration, the squinting eyes, the way in which, negligently, the burning match is shaken out, and tossed toward an ashtray. I saw again my father smoking his endless cigarettes; my doomed, drunken father squinting upward at a light fixture in the ceiling of the old farmhouse, and grinning foolishly; he'd managed to take a snapshot of himself in this strange pose, timing the shutter of the old Brownie Hawkeye camera to click after a count of three; why such a comical pose, for "whom was it taken? Was this evidence of a man I'd never known? Before I'd left for college I had looked in secret through my grandmother's few mementos, searching for further evidence of my lost father, but I'd found nothing that I had not already seen many times. I would wonder if Vernor Matheius was right: we have no personal identities because we have no personal histories, all that is "personal" must be lost, repudiated. Watching Vernor covertly I saw that his facial bones were sharper, crueller than I recalled.

  The schoolboy glasses flashed with malevolent intelligence. I felt again, in a sudden faint swoon, the impress of his fingers on my arm. I alone of these people have been touched by him. I alone, intimately touched by him. Naively I prayed for Vernor to win his chess game for If he wins he will glance up elated and pleased with himself and he'll see me and smile, in that instant Anellia will be invited to join that happiness; if he lost, I seemed to know that with a sullen smile he'd mutter a few words to his Dutch companion, praise for the other's game, an expletive of disgust for his own, and avoiding all eyes he'd simply walk out. He would take no notice of Anellia at all and if he did, Anellia would be one more reason for his self-disgust, and for his escape. But Vernor and his heavyset opponent were so evenly matched that their game seemed never to be ending; though each had few pieces remaining, their brooding moves required many minutes' concentration, and I was forced to leave the coffeehouse at a quarter to eleven. I would not believe afterward that I'd squandered two and a half hours of my life; desperately, recklessly I'd hung around the coffeehouse like a small thin candle burning wanly, unseen and unknown; if proof of my rational deterioration was required, this was it; yet I felt disappointment only that the game would end, and it might end happily for Vernor Matheius, without me to witness.

  "Vernor, good night."

  These words I dared whisper, only just loud enough for Vernor Matheius to hear if he wished to hear, or to ignore if he wished to ignore, and leaving the coffeehouse I saw him glance up in my wake frowning, unsmiling, without recognition, yet without an expression of annoyance or rejection either.

  I ran back to my residence hall, breathless and elated.

  He doesn't hate me. One day, he will love me.

  The drama of such sightings. Where panels in the world's opacity slide open unexpectedly, a brilliant blinding sunshine floods us with warmth. Often in the university library I observed Vernor Matheius at a discreet distance. In so busy a place, the observation of another isn't at all difficult; isn't risky, or not very risky; there were very good reasons for me to prowl about the library's third level which was the domain of philosophy, religion, and theology; before I'd come to know Vernor Matheius, I'd spent hours reading philosophy journals in a cramped little lounge with a single long smudged table and a half-dozen chairs usually occupied by graduate students in philosophy (you could recognize them instantly: many were older, worn, bewhiskered, graying as if they'd been questing truth for a long time, decades and centuries and their faces had grown parched as soil in a time of drought); nothing excited me more than to open the pages of such publications as Ethics, The Journal of Metaphysics, Philosophical Review, even Thomist intrigued me; though after I'd fallen in love with Vernor Matheius, the periodicals room held less of an enchantment. Of course it was in exciting proximity to Vernor Matheius himself. Of course I knew exactly where Vernor Matheius's carrel was, amid a row of fifteen carrels assigned to advanced graduate students; on this crucial evening I was wearing a pale yellow angora sweater and a pleated tartan plaid skirt that swung at my hips, it was so large for me, and yet (I reasoned) so very classy; what others might call preppy; I believed that I looked attractive; mirrors assured me, my somewhat feverish face had been made into an attractive female face; my hair had not been shampooed for several days perhaps but I'd taken care to comb it
in a provocative style as my Kappa sisters had once taught me; my facial expression, too, was subtly calibrated, a thoughtful look neither piously somber nor annoyingly cheerful. As if a comforting voice had assured me You are worthy of being loved, you are not a clown and a fool and a garbage-digger and shameless offering yourself to this man like a whore not knowing how even to offer herself. It had been thirteen days since Vernor Matheius had brought me to his apartment, and within five crushing minutes sent me away again. Thirteen days of shame, remorse, mortification, and hope: hope craven as a kicked dog who whimpers with pleasure at the mere presence of his master. Thirteen days of waking in a coffin-sized bed too exhausted and heavy-hearted to push myself out of bed, unless I woke exhilarated and manic, my pulses racing. He has made me so happy. By existing he has allowed me to exist. In such a nerved-up state I was inspired to write: the outermost layer of my skin had been peeled away, now the very air hurt me, and wakened me.

  One day, fever dreams of this time would be transcribed into the formalist prose pieces of what would be my "first book" unknown and unguessed-at, as a galaxy many light-years distant, in this fevered time.

  Making my way along the row of carrels. There, Vernor Matheius's carrel! Yet when Vernor glanced up at me, I seemed not to have expected to see him; in my preppy clothes and pink lip gloss, I didn't smile at him until he smiled at me; a smile leapt instantaneously between us, like a lighted match.

  His voice was low, gravelly—"You. 'Anellia.' What the hell are you doing here, this time of night?"

  His eyes frankly stared; beautiful lashed eyes of an unnatural size, strained and glaring behind the schoolboy glasses, as if the eyeballs were pushing through the sockets. Obviously he knew (did he?) that I was seeking him out and yet he didn't send me away, he didn't express displeasure; eagerly I thought He has taken pity on me, my very need of him. As a master about to kick his dog pauses, seeing in the dog's shimmering eyes a capacity for love, and for hurt, that exceeds the master's wish to give pain. I saw how Vernor took in the pleated tartan skirt that had once been the possession of an American girl whose parents had so loved her, they'd lavished her with expensive clothes; I saw how Vernor took in the angora sweater, which fitted my small chest snug as a child's sweater, which perhaps it had once been. My happy smile Here I am! let me love you! don't deny me! I will cease to exist! as in an even voice I told Vernor Matheius that I often worked up here, this was my favorite place in the library, I'd discovered it early in my freshman year.

  "Especially the periodicals room. As soon as I first stepped inside, and saw, I think it was the Journal of Metaphysics—I knew this was where I belonged."

  Vernor laughed. He had no reason to doubt me, yet he was behaving as if he doubted me. Shutting the heavy book he'd been reading, a commentary on Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and shoving it away.

  13

  "It's late. I better walk you home." Adding, as a point of information, "Your home."

  "But it isn't a 'home,' it's just a place I stay." "Any 'home' is 'just a place I stay.' That's its essence." We were leaving the library together. A leeching-wet wind shoved against us. Not a sentimental wind. Not a wind of romance. I loved this wind, it made Vernor Matheius feel protective of me. Sidelong he regarded me quizzically, with a kind of interest. Though not touching me. Propositions came to me, skeins of words. Remarks to make Vernor smile, or laugh. But I couldn't speak. My heart was pounding as rapidly as it pounded sometimes in my sleep.

  I had been reading Wittgenstein. There are no philosophical problems, only linguistic misunderstandings. Was this so? If so, -why write at such length about it? I could understand Vernor's attraction to such a philosophy. Spartan, rigorous. Surpassingly skeptical. Well, good: philosophers should be skeptical. (No one else is: the mass of mankind is credulous as a gigantic infant, willing to suck any teat.) In the presence of a man like Vernor Matheius it was wisest to say very little. You could see, Vernor could love only a woman who said very little, for speech makes us vulnerable, exposes us. What Vernor liked about silence was that he could break it when he wished. Saying, after a long pause, "You are a strange girl, Anellia. But you know that. Tell me this one thing: what d' you want?"

  "—what do I want from—life? Or—"

  "No, girl. From me."

  There. It was said.

  No playfulness between us. No sexual banter. Though there was (I saw, helpless) the swagger of the man's body, the ease of his knifeblade-body, the incline of his head. He began to whistle in his thin tuneless way; you could see it must've been a terrific way of provoking his elders. And maybe rolling his eyes. Big white-orbed Negro eyes. There was the hand-knitted cap pulled low on his forehead, crinkling his skin. A caption beneath this face might read WANTED.

  I was taken by surprise. Yet I could not show it. I would examine my obsession with this man as if it was a problem: an intellectual puzzle intriguing to us both. For we were students of philosophy, engaged in a common quest for truth; for paring back myths and subterfuge in the pursuit of truth; and what is philosophy but the ceaseless and indefatigable invention of and "solving" of problems? I understood that Vernor Matheius was asking frankly What do you want from me that you imagine I can provide you? And what would you presume to provide me, in return?

  By the calendar it was early April. Yet snow remained on the ground like strips of grimy Styrofoam. We walked with our heads ducked against the wind in our common effort; we walked without speaking; Vernor Matheius had posed a question to me which I would not answer glibly; I was in fact stymied by how to answer it at all; his whistling was both companionable and meant to distance him from me; air gusted about us like roiling thoughts. I thought with a smile If the would-be assailant should see me, he would be forced to re-define me. And if my Kappa ex-sisters should see me?

  Without asking me, without a word of explanation, Vernor Matheius steered me to Allen Street, to a pub called Downy's. Was he really taking me here? Would we be entering this noisy, crowded campus pub together, like a couple? Vernor Matheius a head taller than the diminutive white girl at his side? In the smoky interior, eyes moved upon us; there was an unmistakable shifting of attention, on the part of a number of individuals; a reflexive instinct, and nothing personal. Of course, Vernor Matheius took not the slightest notice. He was accustomed to being looked-at, and maybe stared-at. He was accustomed to being visible.

  Vernor Matheius nudged me toward the rear of the pub. Into a small booth in a corner. On the old-wood walls were orange Syracuse pennants; laminated newspaper pages, SYRACUSE WARRIORS TROUNCE CORNELL. I had never been in Downy's before but it was a place much liked by Kappas, and when Vernor went to the bar to get drinks I saw that I was being observed, eyes shifting on me and away, by several Kappas, in the company of their fraternity boyfriends. Oh my God. Look. And who she's with. I felt a thrill of defiance, vindication. They had known I was a bad girl, and this was the proof.

  Vernor Matheius returned finally with two tall glasses of beer. He'd had to wait at the bar, but you could see the bartenders were busy. And finally he was served. And made his way back to the booth. My first taste of beer, and it seemed to scald my mouth. The bitter dank smell. I thought of my vanished father. The delicious poison he'd been able to extract from alcohol. Vernor Matheius drank, and laughed, his chunky white teeth laughing, not at me but—"This place, know what it makes me think of?" I shook my head, leaning forward to hear. The table beneath my elbows was made of old timber, two crude planks varnished to a dark sheen, covered in carved initials, inked phrases, cigarette burns. "Schopenhauer. The Will. The triumph of the Will." He gestured at the crowd, the smoky haze penetrated by shrill voices and laughter. I said, with an air of contrition, that I didn't know much about Schopenhauer; Vernor Matheius shrugged as if he'd have been surprised, if I had; he was a natural teacher, or preacher; hadn't he said, he'd studied in a seminary, he began to speak of Schopenhauer and his "quarrel" with the philosopher who believed that the individual is but the
phenomenon and not the thing-in-itself; though he had to concur with Schopenhauer that in strife, sex, reproduction the individual is the dupe of the species—"The unenlightened individual, that is." When he'd been twenty-four, it was philosophy that had opened his eyes; philosophy that was "an ice pick, a scalpel"; philosophy that was a surgical instrument for analysis, dissection, debridement, and comprehension. I listened fascinated. I had never heard anyone speak so passionately. And to me. If I hadn't already been in love with Vernor Matheius I would have fallen in love with him now, within the space of a few minutes; I was lost to him; mesmerized by his voice; his intelligence; the purity of his conviction, and its impersonality. Vernor Matheius's voice amid the drunken clamor of the pub at this, its most crowded hour. How he yearned, he said, for a "life of the mind"; for the clarity of "pure, blazing, fearless thought" to illuminate the murk of history and of time. " 'Better that the world should perish than that I, or any other human being, should believe a lie'—as Bertrand Russell said. Wittgenstein's mentor at first, and then his rival and enemy." When he fell silent, I could not think of a worthy reply; I tried to smile, and didn't succeed; I was overwhelmed by him, like a swimmer who has ventured into a river not knowing how quickly the land falls away, how powerful the undertow. Vernor Matheius saw my perplexity and said it was an irony, wasn't it, he was being trained to teach, yet he hadn't the patience for teaching, at least not undergraduates; probably he wouldn't wind up teaching if he could survive somehow else, there was the example of Wittgenstein who'd been a gardener, for a while; working with your hands is a good antidote for too much thinking; anyway, it wouldn't matter how poor he was; he, Vernor Matheius, was used to being poor; his parents were both dead, long ago; his family was scattered; he himself had no intention of ever marrying, and still less would he sire offspring; he declared he had no interest in perpetuating his precious genes, or the very species Homo sapiens—"They can get along without this fellow's contribution."