Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

  In the Journal of Philosophical Inquiry M. R. Neukirchen had published an article provocatively titled “ ‘I Have Lost My Soul’: Possible Ontological Meanings” and this Oliver Kroll singled out for particular admiration.

  “We think alike—to a degree. I mean—our mode of inquiry.”

  Kroll gazed at M.R. with unexpected warmth. His eyes were dark, rather small—he had a habit of squinting. Except for the crease between his eyebrows, the severe blade-face relaxed just slightly.

  “Of course, I’m not a philosopher—‘M.R.’ I’m not trained in ‘theory of mind.’ But I appreciated the subtlety of your argument. You seem to me quite right—there is no ‘I’ in consciousness—only just consciousness. And so—no ‘I’ can possess a ‘soul’—even if there were a ‘soul.’ ” Kroll frowned thoughtfully. He did seem to be pressing close to M.R. and in the exigency of the moment she felt confused, off balance—it wasn’t that often that a man looked at her in such a way. “The entire concept of ‘soul’—that’s another category of, what d’you call it—‘ontological being.’ ”

  “ ‘Ontological actuality.’ ”

  So solemnly M.R. spoke, both she and Kroll laughed.

  Of course, these terms were ridiculous—M.R. understood. She was trained in a certain Anglo-subspecies of contemporary philosophy which meant that she’d acquired a particular, highly specialized vocabulary—like learning a language to which virtually no one else had access. Professors in other fields, including more traditional fields of philosophy, could not know what M.R. meant—the very concept “meant” was believed to be ambiguous.

  “I don’t always write in an analytical mode,” M.R. said. “That was really just for the Journal of Philosophical Inquiry.”

  Almost, she had to force herself to recall what she’d said. For each of her essays she had cultivated a voice distinct and appropriate to the subject of the piece, as to the publication and its (presumed) audience. Like an actor who expresses herself exclusively through scripts—in the “voices” of others—M.R. had no “voice” of her own—or so she believed.

  It was philosophical truth M.R. pursued, not an expression of self—“truth” elusive as a butterfly blown and tattered in the wind.

  Kroll was saying, in that self-critical tone that suggests a childlike pleasure in the very flaws of the self, that everything he wrote was recognizably his. He could not vary his writing style, no more than he could vary his speaking style. He could not vary his fundamental, unshakable, and to him self-evident beliefs. Of course, as an intellectual, as a professor of political theory who might lecture on the Enlightenment and the anti-Enlightenment within the space of a few hours, or on such disparate figures as Plato and Machiavelli, Descartes and Hobbes, Malthus and Hume and Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill—“Even the Nazi apologist Heidegger”—he was trained to present differing points of view but he could hardly take these viewpoints seriously; especially among his colleagues and contemporaries he couldn’t but think that people whose opinions differed from his own were being dishonest, hypocritical: “What they say is for saying’s sake. What they do is for their own sake.” Kroll had been involved in the Libertarian Party, for instance, in the 1980s, but he’d soon dropped out. He hated it that in recent decades libertarianism had become fragmented, contentious, anarchic—his was a specific sort of economic-philosophical libertarianism, in opposition to “conservatism.”

  Kroll uttered the word conservatism with such disdain, M.R. had to smile. She asked what was libertarianism—for very likely, in Kroll’s specific terms, she had no idea.

  “ ‘Libertarianism’—‘liberty.’ It’s the belief that the highest value is ‘liberty’—the most that the state should do for its citizens is to assure their liberty. All the rest is—detritus.”

  Kroll spoke passionately. M.R. had the idea that he’d said these words, biting, succinct, provoking, many times.

  She had the idea that Kroll expected her to react, to protest. Oh but what of—the poor, the ill, the disenfranchised . . . What of taxes for education, highways, water purification, health care . . .

  Kroll was standing close, as M.R. tried unobtrusively to step back.

  A faint scent as of something sulfurous and mint-y lifted from the man’s heated skin. M.R. saw others in the room glancing at Kroll, and at her. She understood that Oliver Kroll had a certain reputation at the University—he was combative, contentious, admired but not well liked. In any faculty gathering there are sharp glittery swords, kitchen knives, a preponderance of bread knives—dull, dutiful, inclined to envy. Kroll was one of the sharp glittery swords you could cut your fingers on, if you came too near.

  Except, strangely and unexpectedly, Kroll seemed to like M. R. Neukirchen. He seemed to like her very much. He was saying, “ ‘M.R.’—what I find fascinating in your work—the work of yours I’ve read—is that no one would know, or guess, that you are a woman. Your perspective is—wholly objective.”

  M.R. said that that was her intention, her hope—“That’s why I use just initials—‘M.R.’ ”

  Had she explained this to anyone else, except Andre? Or—had Andre been the one to suggest it, somewhat playfully?

  She said, “I don’t see what sex—gender—has to do with writing, or teaching.”

  “Of course! Of course not. You’re absolutely right.”

  Kroll spoke adamantly, like one conferring a blessing. M.R. felt how such words would dazzle students who would both fear and adore him.

  “Ideally, we might all wear masks. Those large masks Greek actors used. We might walk on stilts—to give ourselves height.”

  M.R. laughed. He was teasing her, was he—it was good for M.R. to be teased, who took herself too seriously.

  When you are alone, you take yourself too seriously. That is the terrible risk of alone.

  “And what does ‘M.R.’ stand for?”

  Reluctantly M.R. told Kroll: “ ‘Meredith Ruth.’ ”

  “ ‘Meredith Ruth’—Neukirchen.” Kroll pronounced the names carefully. “And what were you called as a girl?”

  “I was called—‘Meredith.’ ”

  “Not ‘Merry’?”

  “Yes, in fact—my mother called me ‘Merry.’ Some of my high school friends—‘Merry.’ ” M.R. spoke slowly. Until this moment, she had not remembered “Merry.”

  “ ‘Merry’! That would be a sort of burden, I suppose. ‘Merry’—unless it was mistaken for ‘Mary’—yes?”

  M.R. could not think of a reply. Was any of this true? Or did it simply seem plausible as truth?

  She was finding it difficult to breathe. This man—she’d forgotten his name, for the moment—seemed to be sucking away her breath.

  She could not bear another intrusion in her life. Another change in her life.

  She’d begun to perspire, Kroll’s attention felt hot to her like a light shining into her face, onto her exposed skin. Her armpits itched, miserably.

  Go away. Let me go. Leave me alone please.

  Yet it flattered M.R., that the glaring expression Kroll had turned upon the lecturer only a short while ago seemed to have vanished. Like a belligerent dog that has ceased barking, Kroll seemed transformed, even charming.

  To his students, charismatic. Perhaps. The force of one who believes passionately in something and with yet more passion can denounce other points of view.

  If Kroll sensed M.R.’s discomfort, he gave no sign. It was like an aggressive male to not-see, or to ignore, discomfort in another. M.R. was reminded of how Andre too frequently questioned her—almost, interrogated her. It was Andre Litovik’s professorial style—the Socratic method. Yet it was Andre’s intimate style as well for he insisted that his close questioning of M.R. was a sign of respect—most people, Andre hadn’t the slightest interest in questioning—but M.R. found such attention exhausting; she couldn’t but think that there was an air of mockery
in it. How much more productive, the Quaker method of silence—silence among individuals—until one is moved to speak; but Andre wouldn’t have had the patience for it.

  Against the grain of her temperament, M.R. had become something of a public speaker. Unexpectedly in her early twenties she’d discovered that she was a natural teacher—she felt an ease at the front of a classroom not unlike the ease of slipping into a warm bath. Yet more comfortable she felt at the front of a lecture hall, or on a stage, with space between herself and an audience. When scrutiny is abstract, anonymous!

  Not one of you knows who I am. But what I will tell you, you will believe.

  “ ‘Meredith’—or should I say ‘M.R.’?—would you like to have dinner sometime?”

  “Dinner? I—”

  “Tonight? Now?”

  “I don’t think—this isn’t—”

  “Tomorrow night? Or—when?”

  Kroll had followed M.R. out of the reception room, and into a high-ceilinged front foyer. And from the foyer, down the steps of the building which was one of the old historic buildings on the University campus, originally designed to resemble a Greek temple.

  She’d meant to discreetly retreat—escape. But he’d followed her of course. Spangled late-afternoon sunshine and dappled light filtered through the leaves of those tall thick-trunked trees with peeling bark—sycamores?—the season was early autumn. And a sound of fevered adolescent shouts, careening Frisbees on the green. How easy the lives of others appear, seen from a little distance! There was no reason that her own life could not be easy as well, seen from a little distance.

  Though she was eager to escape from the aggressive man with the spade-shaped beard—eager to return to her refuge overlooking the glassy lake—she was thinking—conceding—that Kroll’s presence did excite her, in a way; his attention, like a beacon of light shone in her startled face, was both disconcerting and flattering. And she was lonely—beyond the protective boundaries of her work: her work that was words; walls, barriers, concentric circles of words like the rings of Saturn.

  Thinking—conceding—that Andre wasn’t likely to telephone her that evening.

  Nor would Andre e-mail M.R.: fearing an e-mail trail his suspicious wife might discover.

  Kroll had called her Merry. No one had called her Merry in decades. She felt a thrill of—was it hope? Reckless hope? Thinking I must make my own life, apart from Andre. I know this.

  Kroll told M.R. that they’d met before—in fact, several times at the University.

  “Not very flattering, ‘M.R.’—you don’t remember me.” Kroll’s smile was tight with an expression M.R. could not have named and his eyes were narrowed as if he too were staring into a bright blinding light.

  And so M.R. had to protest of course she remembered him—she thought. And she’d had to say yes. She would like to have dinner with Oliver Kroll—sometime.

  “Tomorrow?”

  This was the fall of 1990. They would see each other for no more than six weeks but these were intense weeks for M.R. Initially Kroll was warmly friendly, or gave that impression—he took M.R. to dinner, to movies and University events and art museums—when M.R. offered to pay for her ticket to a Cézanne exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art to which Kroll drove them on Sunday afternoon in October—(in a sleek low-slung vehicle M.R. discovered was a Jaguar XK coupe, cobalt-blue, with a speedometer astonishingly equipped to measure 250 mph)—Kroll brushed aside the suggestion with a brusque sweep of his hand and a tight little smile. Was this a rebuke? Had she offended him? Or had her offer been too hesitant, and seemingly insincere? M.R.’s (secret) lover was the sort of man to fling down bills and loose change—bills of all denominations, change that included pennies—onto tables and counters with the lavish air of a king; no one dared defy Andre Litovik and offer to pay instead, or as well as Andre; no one who wanted to be his friend dared resist Andre’s promiscuous generosity which M.R. had come to assume was a quintessentially masculine trait. Kroll too exhibited an adversarial air when taking out his wallet, bills or credit cards—the knife-crease between his eyebrows deepened. In a restaurant near the University where they’d met another couple for dinner, when M.R. offered to pay for her meal Kroll had said to her in an undertone, rather sharply, “Another time, thank you.”

  She saw that she’d wounded Kroll, in the presence of the other couple who were old friends of his, from the University. He would not glance at her and for some minutes would not speak to her, as if she’d ceased to exist though seated close beside him in a booth.

  That Kroll was proud, and vain—so easily wounded—was touching to M.R. For Kroll was an attractive man, or nearly—except for his sharp-chiseled features that seemed always about to stiffen guardedly and the fleeting quasi-smile on his lips that seemed always about to turn downward, in irony.

  And M.R. began to see too that, in the eyes of Kroll’s friends, a middle-aged couple named Steigman, she and Kroll were a couple of some undefined sort—friends? companions? Lovers? The possibility was unnerving to M.R., like staring at an object rolling to the edge of a precipice—and over.

  In a mirror against a farther wall in the candlelit restaurant, M.R. saw their booth—two couples, four glimmering pale faces—you could just barely distinguish Kroll from his colleague-friend and you could just barely distinguish M.R. from the other woman. The thought came to her But why not? A couple like any other.

  At this time M.R. was still a very young-looking woman—in her thirtieth year, with the ruddy cheeks of a girl hockey player, a flushed and breathless look, very appealing; her hair was a fair, burnished brown, with streaks of silver, a thick mane she’d tamed and braided into a single plait that fell between her shoulder blades. She had so little sense of herself as a physical being—let alone an aesthetic object in another’s eyes—she’d been deeply embarrassed when Kroll told her that he’d been initially drawn to her not just because of her “exemplary” written work but because she reminded him of a portrait by Joshua Reynolds—“Jane, Countess of Harrington—I saw it in an exhibit at the British Museum, I think. Years ago when I was a post-doc at Oxford but I still remember it—the effect of the portrait—her . . .” Squinty-eyed Kroll was smiling at M.R. in a way to make her uneasy. Her face warmed with blood—she blushed so readily!

  How Andre Litovik would have laughed at this. How droll and foolish, like one of those mawkishly tender scenes in a Chekhov play that take on a bitter irony, as the play evolves.

  Of course, M.R. sought out the Reynolds portrait in a book of color plates in the University art library—she was stunned to see that yes, the young woman so lovingly painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1775 did bear some slight resemblance to M. R. Neukirchen—except the woman in the painting was far more beautiful than M.R., her skin creamy-pale, flawless. What was most striking about the portrait of Jane, Countess of Harrington was the aura of confidence it exuded—not merely the figure of the beautifully composed young noblewoman, her slender face seen just slightly in profile so that her elegantly long nose was outlined, but an air of ontological entitlement as different from M.R.’s sense of being in the world as if she and “Jane, Countess of Harrington” were of two distinct species.

  Being in the world. Either you believed that you were entitled, or you were not.

  Between one and none there gapes an infinity. How alone Friedrich Nietzsche had to be, to know this!

  M.R. laughed—did Oliver Kroll see her this way? Or was this the man’s fantasy, impressed upon M. R. Neukirchen from Carthage, New York?

  This season in M.R.’s life before she lost faith in herself as a woman.

  This season when M.R. approached the edge of the precipice, in fascinated dread.

  They were not lovers—exactly. But they were rapidly becoming more than friends.

  There was this—unexpected!—romantic side to Kroll.

  He brought her flowers: a large pale
-blue hydrangea in a clay pot. Then, each time he visited her, he looked for the hydrangea—he examined the soil with a forefinger, to see if it was damp—that is, if M.R. had remembered to water it.

  “So beautiful!”—M.R. stared at the flowers that looked strangely artificial as if they’d been dyed, or were made of a crinkly sort of paper.

  He brought her a glossy reproduction of Joshua Reynolds’s Jane, Countess of Harrington—poster-sized. He expected M.R. to have it framed and hung on a wall in her house and when M.R. didn’t have the poster framed within a week or two he became angry with her—“If you don’t want the portrait, give it back. You aren’t obliged to keep it.” M.R. was stunned by his reaction and quickly apologized—her Quaker instincts led her to apologize for wrongs not her own, to minimize conflict; she had the poster framed, at some expense, and she hung it prominently on a wall in her small living room, displacing other, smaller works of art which she preferred.

  (She couldn’t bring herself to look often at the portrait—Jane, Countess of Harrington was too coolly beautiful and so extravagantly dressed, her mere image on the wall was a rebuke to earthly/fleshy/damp-eyed M.R.) And each time Kroll came to the house he gazed at the portrait on the wall as at an old friend; M.R. had placed the poster just slightly high, so that you looked up at the Countess’s creamy-pale face.

  “It’s a beautiful poster,” M.R. said, awkwardly. “I mean—the portrait is beautiful. Reynolds painted so many—masterpieces. . . .”

  Staring at the countess on the wall, Kroll seemed scarcely to hear M.R.

  Kroll swam several times a week—early—in the University pool.

  Kroll invited M.R. to come with him—he’d been inviting her for weeks—and at last M.R. said yes, yes she would join him; she had not wanted to say yes yet she’d heard herself say yes, she heard the eagerness in her voice for it was distressing—shameful—how M.R. was beginning to fear being alone, now that Oliver Kroll had intruded into her life.