Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The only child is more likely to be gifted than a child with numerous siblings. Obviously, the only child is likely to be lonely.

  Self-reliant, self-sufficient. “Creative.”

  Did M.R. believe in such theories? Or did she believe, for this was closer to her personal experience, that personalities are distinct, individual and unique, and unfathomable—in terms of influences and causality, inexplicable?

  She’d been trained as a philosopher, she had a Ph.D. in European philosophy from one of the great philosophy departments in the English-speaking world. Yet she’d taken graduate courses in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, international law. She’d participated in bioethics colloquia. She’d published a frequently anthologized essay titled “How Do You Know What You ‘Know’: Skepticism as Moral Imperative.” As the president of a distinguished research university in which theories of every sort were devised, debated, maintained, and defended—an abundance like a spring field blooming and buzzing with a profusion of life—M.R. wasn’t obliged to believe but she was obliged to take seriously, to respect.

  My dream is to be—of service! I want to do good.

  She was quite serious. She was wholly without irony.

  The Convent Street bridge, in Carthage. Of course, that was the bridge she was trying to recall.

  And other bridges, other waterways, streams—M.R. couldn’t quite recall.

  In a kind of trance she was staring, smiling. As a child, she’d learned quickly. Of all human reflexes, the most valuable.

  The river was a fast shallow stream on which boulders emerged like bleached bone. Fallen tree limbs lay in the water sunken and rotted and on these mud turtles basked in the October sun, motionless as creatures carved of stone. M.R. knew from her rural childhood that if you approached these turtles, even at a distance they would arouse themselves, waken and slip into the water; seemingly asleep, in reptilian stillness, they were yet highly alert, vigilant.

  A memory came to her of boys who’d caught a mud turtle, shouting and flinging the poor creature down onto the rocks, dropping rocks on it, cracking its shell. . . .

  Why would you do such a thing? Why kill . . . ?

  It was a question no one asked. You would not ask. You would be ridiculed, if you asked.

  She had failed to defend the poor turtle against the boys. She’d been too young—very young. The boys had been older. Always there were too many of them—the enemy.

  These small failures, long ago. No one knew now. No one who knew her now. If she’d tried to tell them they would stare at her, uncomprehending. Are you serious? You can’t be serious.

  Certainly she was serious: a serious woman. The first female president of the University.

  Not that femaleness was an issue, it was not.

  Without hesitation M.R. would claim, and in interviews would elaborate, that not once in her professional career, nor in her years as a student, had she been discriminated against, as a woman.

  It was the truth, as M.R. knew it. She was not one to lodge complaints or to speak in disdain, hurt, or reproach.

  What was that—something moving upstream? A child wading? But the air was too cold for wading and the figure too white: a snowy egret.

  Beautiful long-legged bird searching for fish in the swift shallow water. M.R. watched it for several seconds—such stillness! Such patience.

  At last, as if uneasy with M.R.’s presence, the egret seemed to shake itself, lifted its wide wings, and flew away.

  Nearby but invisible were birds—jays, crows. Raucous cries of crows.

  Quickly M.R. turned away. The harsh-clawing sound of a crow’s cry was disturbing to her.

  “Oh!”—in her eagerness to leave this place she’d turned her ankle, or nearly.

  She should not have stopped to walk here, Carlos was right to disapprove. Now her heels sank in the soft mucky earth. So clumsy!

  As a young athlete M.R. had been quick on her feet for a girl of her height and (“Amazonian”) body-type but soon after her teens she’d begun to lose this reflexive speed, the hand-eye coordination an athlete takes for granted until it begins to abandon her.

  “Ma’am? Let me help you.”

  Ma’am. What a rebuke to her foolishness!

  Carlos had approached to stand just a few feet away. M.R. didn’t want to think that her driver had been watching her, protectively, all along.

  “I’m all right, Carlos, thank you. I think. . . .”

  But M.R. was limping, in pain. It was a quick stabbing pain she hoped would fade within a few minutes but she hadn’t much choice except to lean on Carlos’s arm as they made their way back to the car, along the faint path through the underbrush.

  Her heart was beating rapidly, strangely. The birds’ cries—the crows’ cries—were both jeering and beautiful: strange wild cries of yearning, summons.

  But what was this?—something stuck to the bottom of one of her shoes. The newly purchased Italian black-leather shoes she’d felt obliged to buy, several times more expensive than any other shoes M.R. had ever purchased.

  And on her trouser cuffs—briars, burrs.

  And what was in her hair?—she hoped it wasn’t bird droppings from the underside of that damned bridge.

  “Excuse me, ma’am . . .”

  “Thanks, Carlos! I’m fine.”

  “Ma’am, wait . . .”

  Gallant Carlos stooped to detach whatever it was stuck to M.R.’s shoe. M.R. had been trying to kick it free without exactly seeing it, and without allowing Carlos to see it; yet of course, Carlos had seen. How ridiculous this was! She was chagrined, embarrassed. The last thing she wanted was her uniformed Hispanic driver stooping at her feet but of course Carlos insisted upon doing just this, deftly he detached whatever had been stuck to the sole of her shoe and flicked it into the underbrush and when M.R. asked what it was he said quietly not meeting her eye:

  “Nothing, ma’am. It’s gone.”

  It was October 2002. In the U.S. capital, war was being readied.

  If objects pass into the space “neglected” after brain damage, they disappear. If the right brain is injured, the deficit will manifest itself in the left visual field.

  The paradox is: how do we know what we can’t know when it does not appear to us.

  How do we know what we have failed to see because we have failed to see it, thus cannot know that we have failed to see it.

  Unless—the shadow of what-is-not-seen can be seen by us.

  A wide-winged shadow swiftly passing across the surface of Earth.

  In the late night—her brain too excited for sleep—she’d been working on a philosophy paper—a problem in epistemology. How do we know what we cannot know: what are the perimeters of “knowing”. . .

  As a university president she’d vowed she would keep up with her field—after this first, inaugural year as president she would resume teaching a graduate seminar in philosophy/ethics each semester. All problems of philosophy seemed to her essentially problems of epistemology. But of course these were problems in perception: neuropsychology.

  The leap from a problem in epistemology/neuropsychology to politics—this was risky.

  For had not Nietzsche observed—Madness in individuals is rare but in nations, common.

  Yet she would make this leap, she thought—for this evening was her great opportunity. Her audience at the conference would be approximately fifteen hundred individuals—professors, scholars, archivists, research scientists, university and college administrators, journalists, editors of learned journals and university presses. A writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education was scheduled to interview M. R. Neukirchen the following morning, and a reporter for the New York Times Education Supplement was eager to meet with her. A shortened version of “The Role of the University in an Era of ‘Patriotism’ ” would be published as an Op-Ed piece in the N
ew York Times. M. R. Neukirchen was a new president of an “historic” university that had not even admitted women until the 1970s and so boldly in her keynote address she would speak of the unspeakable: the cynical plot being contrived in the U.S. capital to authorize the president to employ “military force” against a Middle Eastern country demonized as an “enemy”—an “enemy of democracy.” She would find a way to speak of such things in her presentation—it would not be difficult—in addressing the issue of the Patriot Act, the need for vigilance against government surveillance, detention of “terrorist suspects”—the terrible example of Vietnam.

  But this was too emotional—was it? Yet she could not speak coolly, she dared not speak ironically. In her radiant Valkyrie mode, irony was not possible.

  She would call her lover in Cambridge, Massachusetts—to ask of him Should I? Dare I? Or is this a mistake?

  For she had not made any mistakes, yet. She had not made any mistakes of significance, in her role as higher educator.

  She should call him, or perhaps another friend—though it was difficult for M.R., to betray weaknesses to her friends who looked to her for—uplift, encouragement, good cheer, optimism. . . .

  She should not behave rashly, she should not give an impression of being political, partisan. Her original intention for the address was to consider John Dewey’s classic Democracy and Education in twenty-first-century terms.

  She was an idealist. She could not take seriously any principle of moral behavior that was not a principle for all—universally. She could not believe that “relativism” was any sort of morality except the morality of expediency. But of course as an educator, she was sometimes obliged to be pragmatic: expedient.

  Education floats upon the economy, and the goodwill of the people.

  Even private institutions are hostages to the economy, and the good—enlightened—will of the people.

  She would call her (secret) lover when she arrived at the conference center hotel. Just to ask What do you advise? Do you think I am risking too much?

  Just to ask Do you love me? Do you even think of me? Do you remember me—when I am not with you?

  It was M.R.’s practice to start a project early—in this case, months early—when she’d first been invited to give the keynote address at the conference, back in April—and to write, rewrite, revise and rewrite through a succession of drafts until her words were finely honed and shimmering—invincible as a shield. A twenty-minute presentation, brilliant in concision and emphasis, would be far more effective than a fifty-minute presentation. And it would be M.R.’s strategy, too, to end early—just slightly early. She would aim for eighteen minutes. To take her audience off guard, to end on a dramatic note . . .

  Madness in individuals is rare but in nations, common.

  Unless: this was too dire, too smugly “prophetic”? Unless: this would strike a wrong note?

  “Carlos! Please put the radio on, will you? I think the dial is set—NPR.”

  It was noon: news. But not good news.

  In the backseat of the limousine M.R. listened. How credulous the media had become since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, how uncritical the reporting—it made her ill, it made her want to weep in frustration and anger, the callow voice of the defense secretary of the United States warning of weapons of mass destruction believed to be stored in readiness for attack by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein . . . Biological warfare, nuclear warfare, threat to U.S. democracy, global catastrophe.

  “What do you think, Carlos? Is this ridiculous? ‘Fanning the flames’ . . .”

  “Don’t know, ma’am. It’s a bad thing.”

  Guardedly Carlos replied. What Carlos felt in his heart, Carlos was not likely to reveal.

  “I think you said—you served in Vietnam. . . .”

  Fanning the flames. Served in Vietnam. How clumsy her stock phrases, like ill-fitting prostheses.

  It hadn’t been Carlos, but one of her assistants who’d mentioned to M.R. that Carlos had been in the Vietnam War and had “some sort of medal—‘Purple Heart’ ”—of which he never spoke. And reluctantly now Carlos responded:

  “Ma’am, yes.”

  In the rearview mirror she saw his forehead crease. He was a handsome man, or had been—olive-dark skin, a swath of silver hair at his forehead. His lips moved but all she could really hear was ma’am.

  She was feeling edgy, agitated. They were nearing Ithaca—at last.

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘ma’am,’ Carlos! It makes me feel—like a spinster of a bygone era.”

  She’d meant to change the subject and to change the tone of their exchange but the humor in her remark seemed to be lost as often, when she spoke to Carlos, and others on her staff, the good humor for which M. R. Neukirchen was known among her colleagues seemed to be lost and she drew blank expressions from them.

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  Carlos stiffened, realizing what he’d said. Surely his face went hot with embarrassment.

  Yet—she knew!—it wasn’t reasonable for M.R. to expect her driver to address her in some other way—as President Neukirchen for instance. If he did he stumbled over the awkward words—Pres’dent New-kirtch-n.

  She’d asked Carlos to call her “M.R.”—as most of her University colleagues did—but he had not, ever. Nor had anyone on her staff. This was strange to her, disconcerting, for M.R. prided herself on her lack of pretension, her friendliness.

  Her predecessor had insisted that everyone call him by his first name—“Leander.” He’d been an enormously popular president though not, in his final years, a very productive or even a very attentive president; like a grandfather clock winding down, M.R. had thought. He’d spent most of his time away from campus and among wealthy donors—as house guest, traveling companion, speaker to alumni groups. As a once-noted historian he’d seen his prize territory—Civil War and Reconstruction—so transformed by the inroads of feminist, African American studies, and Marxist scholarship as to be unrecognizable to him, and impossible for him to re-enter, like a door that has locked behind you, once you have stepped through. An individual of such absolute vanity, he wished to be perceived as totally without vanity—just a “common man.” Though Leander Huddle had accumulated a small fortune—reputedly, somewhere near ten million dollars—by way of his University salary and its perquisites and investments in his trustee-friends’ businesses.

  M.R.’s presidency would be very different!

  Of course, M.R. was not going to invest money in any businesses owned by trustees. M.R. was not going to accumulate a small fortune through her University connections. M.R. would establish a scholarship financed—(secretly)—by her own salary. . . .

  It will be change—radical change!—that works through me.

  Neukirchen will be but the agent. Invisible!

  She did have radical ideas for the University. She did want to reform its “historic” (i.e., Caucasian-patriarchal/hierarchical) structure and she did want to hire more women and minority faculty, and above all, she wanted to implement a new tuition/scholarship policy that would transform the student body within a few years. At the present time an uncomfortably high percentage of undergraduates were the sons and daughters of the most wealthy economic class, as well as University “legacies”—(that is, the children of alumni); there were scholarships for “poor” students, that constituted a small percentage; but the children of middle-income parents constituted a precarious 5 percent of admissions . . . M.R. intended to increase these, considerably.

  For M. R. Neukirchen was herself the daughter of “middle-income” parents, who could never have afforded to send her to this Ivy League university.

  Of course, M. R. Neukirchen would not appear radical, but rather sensible, pragmatic and timely.

  She’d assembled an excellent team of assistants and aides. And an excellent staff. Immediately when she’d been nam
ed president, she’d begun recruiting the very best people she could; she’d kept on only a few key individuals on Leander’s staff.

  At all public occasions, in all her public pronouncements, M. R. Neukirchen stressed that the presidency of the University was a “team effort”—publicly she thanked her team, and she thanked individuals. She was the most generous of presidents—she would take blame for mistakes but share credit for successes. (Of course, no mistakes of any consequence had yet been made since M.R. had taken over the office.) To all whom she met in her official capacity she appealed in her eager earnest somewhat breathless manner that masked her intelligence—as it masked her willfulness; sometimes, in an excess of feeling, this new president of the University was known to clasp hands in hers, that were unusually large strong warm hands.

  It was the influence of her mother Agatha. As Agatha had also influenced M.R. to keep a cheerful heart, and keep busy.

  As both Agatha and Konrad were likely to say, as Quakers—I hope.

  For it was Quaker custom to say, not I think or I know or This is the way it must be but more provisionally, and more tenderly—I hope.

  “Yes. I hope.”

  In the front seat the radio voice was loud enough to obscure whatever it was M.R. had said. And Carlos was just slightly hard of hearing.

  “You can turn off the radio, please, Carlos. Thanks.”

  Since the incident at the bridge there was a palpable stiffness between them. No one has more of a sense of propriety than an older staffer, or a servant—one who has been in the employ of a predecessor, and can’t help but compare his present employer with this predecessor. And M.R. was only just acquiring a way of talking to subordinates that wasn’t formal yet wasn’t inappropriately informal; a way of giving orders that didn’t sound aggressive, coercive. Even the word Please felt coercive to her. When you said Please to those who, like Carlos, had no option but to obey, what were you really saying?

  And she wondered was the driver thinking now It isn’t the same, driving for a woman. Not this woman.

  She wondered was he thinking She is alone too much. You begin to behave strangely when you are alone too much—your brain never clicks off.