Looking for Class

by Bruce Feiler

  Day Two began with a vengeance. I woke up early, threw my curtains open, and staring at the surprisingly sun-drenched U.L., dashed off a rapid two thousand words on “To what extent did the war in Korea mark a turning point in the Cold War?” Heeding the advice of our course director, who suggested in a preparatory session that the biggest mistake one could make on an essay was not to answer the question, I dropped the following sentence at the top of a paragraph about a thousand words into the paper: “Although the outbreak of the Korean War did not in itself mark a significant turning point in the Cold War, the conduct of the conflict did in fact have long-term significance.” I was feeling so confident at the end of that essay that I went to the Buttery for a plateful of sausage and beans and late that afternoon sat down in my rooms to a screenful of “Strategic Studies,” specifically “What are the main military problems for NATO presented by European unity?”

  Day Three began slowly. In the field the deadline for escalation was rapidly drawing nigh and again the news from the real world seemed to encroach on the course. I opened my Compulsory Essay Question Paper to Section B, Theory of International Relations. I was frustrated. Some of the choices seemed too anachronistic: “What do you consider to be the major intellectual contributions to the idea of the balance of power prior to 1914?” Others too abstract: “To what extent are the differences between theories of decision-making really arguments about levels of analysis?” In my mind I was still struggling with the same issues that had emerged that night around the fruit bowl—namely, what was the relation between the outside world and what we learned in our Cambridge monastery? I chose Number 5: “Is realism right to deny the possibility of a harmony of interest among states?”

  I began with a statement: “In international relations, war is considered the ultimate clash of interests. It is not surprising, therefore, that theory regarding the role of state interests in international affairs has undergone dramatic changes in the last century in response to major wars.” Moving with a certain deliberation, I examined the changes in academic thinking in response to major wars. The First World War had spawned a generation of idealists who believed in the harmony of states; the Second World War had created a generation of realists who denied the existence of harmony. In recent years, however, realists have begun to admit that a harmony does at times exist. By the middle of the afternoon I had managed to turn the question on its head (not something the course director had advised) and was nearing the point at which I had to draw together the two worlds that had been haunting me for several months—the actual and the academic, the real and the theoretical. In a rush of adrenaline near the final deadline, I reached for a reconciliation. Since wars had in fact influenced academic thinking, then perhaps the lesson of the most recent war was that different states could at times act in harmony. “All states want to survive in a nuclear world,” I wrote, “and all states need each other for economic development. These two concerns—survival and independence—are the only tenuous and common threads in international affairs. To achieve these communal ends, realists and idealists alike [NARGs and Yahs, perhaps?] must decide when to act in harmony with others and when to act alone. The need at times to harmonize with others can no longer be in doubt.”

  For a moment I felt wise.

  “The children…haunt me most…at twilight…”

  A single flame stepped along the white fence of candles illuminating the whispering mouths.

  “Twilight…now turned…to blood seeping…”

  The mouths lifted upward in a pleading song that touched the row of faces on the platform above.

  “Through bandages…of cloud…wrapped tight…”

  The faces breathed the shadows of the candles below and joined them in a human chandelier.

  “Round…the earth’s brow…as another…”

  The chandelier floated within the dark chapel like a constellation of song and light.

  “Wounded day…dies away…into the night.”

  The constellation disappeared in a gust of wind as the singers in unison blew out their candles.

  It was ten thirty-five on Thursday night, hours before the end of Lent, and 150 students were gathered along the two-tiered mahogany pews that line the sides of Clare Chapel. The occasion was a student-led service, “Twilight (for the Children of War): A Lenten Compline for Peace and Reconciliation.”

  “Listen, listen,” sounded a woman’s voice. “I journey from the other side with a burden of chill truths. Why are you so afraid?”

  The Chapel was the largest building in college. It protruded from Old Court in the direction of Trinity in a manner that left little doubt about its importance to the life of the college. Other clues reinforced the message. The chaplain of Clare was also its dean. The multipipe organ was its loudest voice. And just in case anyone missed the association, The Clare College Student’s Guide made it manifest: “Clare is in origin a Christian foundation and the Chapel has always played a vital part in its corporate life.” The connection between Cambridge and the Church of England goes back, literally, to the origins of both. In the 1530s, Henry VIII turned to the university to get scholarly approval to divorce his wife. Later, a Clare fellow, Hugh Latimer, was martyred by Henry’s daughter Queen Mary for refusing to renounce his break from Rome. And by the nineteenth century, when both institutions were thriving, there were more churches per square mile in Cambridge than anywhere north of Rome, and a staggering two thirds of Cambridge graduates became clergymen.

  This sense of allegiance continues today, albeit in a slightly altered form. Students may not go to chapel as often as they did in the past; other religions may now be tolerated; but the Church still plays a dominant role in setting the moral tenor of college life. Just as the chaplain held the only public discussion at the start of the war, so the students turned to the Church as soon as the war ended to contemplate its meaning. Ironically, in a community otherwise divided by language, the only true sense of community all year was provided by a conversation in church, on the subject of war.

  After telling a story of a child haunted by dreams of bombers and death, the woman lit a candle in front of her face and walked from the antechamber to the center of the room. As she did, the guests passed candles through the pews and the choir began to sing.

  “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day. Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee….”

  When the music stopped, a male voice called out: “In our time we need to hear within us the sounds of the earth crying.”

  And the voices of the chapel responded, “We confess:

  “That we prostitute our science and knowledge in the cause of war,

  “That we say ‘Peace, peace’ but do not make peace,

  “That we have made this planet perilous for our children,

  “That we have turned away our face from the face of the Lord,

  “Lord, have mercy upon us.”

  When the recitation was done, the woman’s voice returned, and with it a sense of eerie reflection. My exam had been an intellectual catharsis—a private consummation—but the service, in the communal tradition of Cambridge, proved to be a public confession.

  “The old order of making war has gone,” the woman said, “and the new order of making peace has begun. Fear not, go in peace into the world: you are reconciled with God and with one another: be the fellowship of reconciliation.”

  The choir and the congregants extinguished their candles and streamed together out of the Chapel and into the chill of the night.

  She needed to see me.

  In the days before the exam I had stayed close to home, calling Rachel to update her on my progress, writing her to keep me alert, but missing the opportunity to traverse the country for a rendezvous. Now she wanted to meet me, and she didn’t want to wait. So on that Frid
ay after Lenten Compline, I rode my bike to the train, took a train to the bus, and rode a bus to Parliament Square, where I met Rachel at the same café where we had ordered sandwiches and soup at the end of Michaelmas Term.

  She looked beautiful. Her hair was straight black; she was letting it grow. Her shirt was pure white; she was hoping for spring. Her beret was so purple she looked like a sundae with a plum on top. My exams were over, my vacation time was free, and when she sat down across from me and laid her cheek on my hand, I had never felt more in love. We ordered salads. Rachel was bursting with a story to tell. Over the weekend her ex-boyfriend had come to see her in Oxford. He asked her to forgive him; she told him she wouldn’t. He asked her to come back; she steadfastly refused. For the first time in over a year, she said, she felt strong enough to stand up to him. “I will never forget what you did for me,” she said. “You taught me to love myself.”

  I tried to smile. She sounded grave. Her story wasn’t finished. Over the previous months, Rachel said, while she had grown more sure of herself, she had also grown less sure of me. When she saw me, she no longer smiled to herself. When we talked, she no longer felt warm. As she ticked off her list of grievances, an audible grumble built up in my stomach and I braced for the inevitable—“You’re not a creative thinker.” Other than her friend Melinda, I said when she had finished her speech, I’d never met anyone else who made me feel so inadequate. “Bruce,” she responded, “I’m afraid to say it, but you are inadequate.”

  The last ball fell. Our salads arrived. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I thought back to our late-night trek and all my high-minded expectations: sure Rachel had branded Heathcliff a lout, sure Moby-Dick had dragged Ishmael halfway around the world, but somehow this scene hardly seemed the preferred outcome of a successful shark. I pulled back my hand. For several minutes we went back and forth in a sort of reverse endgame to our postcard romance: am not, are too; did not, did too; couldn’t have, could’ve; shouldn’t have, should’ve. I uttered something about acting on hope. She stated something about living with fear. I felt myself growing more agitated until I tried to claim the last word. “I’m not inadequate,” I finally protested, “and it pisses me off that you think I am.”

  She sat back in silence. I huffed to myself. For a moment neither one of us spoke, until she started to smile. You know, you’re really bad on the telephone, she said. You’re much more candid in person. I took a bite of cucumber. Would you still read my essay? she asked. Rachel retrieved the paper on Virginia Woolf she had been writing since I had known her. She gripped her cheeks and held her breath. I began to read. The essay was about feelings—fearing the memories and remembering the fears that are buried deep within our bodies and deeper within our hearts. It was about time—thoughts in the present, hopes for the future—all of which seem to hide a past we unknowingly want to forget. The essay was brilliant. It made her cry. Like the characters she so adored, Rachel could not forget her past.

  It was time to go. We got up to leave. Rachel clasped her arm in mine as we walked toward the Circle Line underneath Westminster Bridge. Once on the Tube we didn’t speak. The train eventually came to a stop and Rachel stepped out, at which point she realized it was the wrong station and jumped back into the car. We started giggling. She held my hand. At the next stop—the right stop—I touched my finger to my lips and then touched it to hers. She walked out backward through the closing doors and watched as the train left Paddington Station, taking me to King’s Cross. Rachel and I never saw Wales together. We were never together again.

  EASTER TERM

  XVI

  READING

  The Writing on the Wall

  Of all those arts in which the wise

  excel,

  Nature’s chief masterpiece is writing

  well.

  —Duke of Buckingham

  Essay on Poetry, 1682

  The road was a jet stream, swirling with wind. The jet stream was smoldering, choking with fumes. From the Channel, the Atlantic, and across the Irish Sea, planes were pouring into Stansted Airport and smothering the lowlands with clouds of smoke. Feeling lonely as a chimney in a burning wooden house, I sat in the smoking section of British Airways’ coach class and stared out the window at the M-11. At the end of Lent I had gone on a class field trip to NATO headquarters in Brussels, then stayed over to eat chocolates and waffles in Bruges before heading back to the Easter treats of the Clare Buttery: pork vol-au-vents, beef-and-kidney Stroganoff, and my favorite cross-cultural delicacy, chicken tikka pizza. All around me the papers were crying that Britain was in decline. CHILDREN DEPRIVED OF CULTURAL HERITAGE, wailed The Telegraph. INSPECTORS ATTACK ENGLISH TEACHING, echoed The Guardian. The previous day, on Shakespeare’s birthday, the Prince of Wales had delivered a cri de coeur attacking British schools for failing to teach basic literacy. “I am no orator, as Brutus is,” he quoted. “But as you know me all, a plain blunt man.” The country was moving from bright to dim, he said, and the dimmer it got, the darker it seemed.

  “Excuse me,” said a young lady in a blue bow tie as I stood moments later in the Baggage Claim Lounge and waited for my luggage to disembark. “My name is Debbie. I’m from British Airways, and I wonder if I might ask you a few questions.”

  “Sure,” I said, looking over her shoulder at one of those ads, called adverts, that strike the new returnee as emblematic of the place: TRY THE NEW MID CLASS FROM VIRGIN AIRWAYS. UPPER CLASS SERVICE AT ECONOMY CLASS PRICE.

  She looked down at her clipboard and began to read. “British Airways are taking a survey of our most-valued customers in order that we may determine how better to serve you in the future. I am going to ask you several questions. First, would you say that your flight with us today was a) extremely satisfactory, b) satisfactory, or c) not satisfactory at all?”

  I thought for a moment, then answered, “C) not satisfactory at all.”

  She looked up at me, hurt. “Really?” she said. Catching herself, she fumbled through several sheets of paper before finding the appropriate page and slipping it underneath the clip of her board. “You have said that your flight today was ‘not satisfactory.’ I would like to ask you several more questions that will help us understand your dissatisfaction. Is that acceptable?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “First, were you greeted at the airport today by a British Airways uniformed representative?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Would you say that representative conducted himself in a manner that was a) extremely helpful, b) helpful, or c) not helpful at all?”

  “A) extremely helpful.”

  “Number two, were you met at the ticket counter by a British Airways ticket agent?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Would you say that ticket agent served you in a manner that was a) extremely courteous, b) courteous, or c) not courteous at all?”

  “A) extremely courteous.”

  “Number three, were you welcomed on board the aeroplane by a smiling British Airways flight attendant?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Would you say that the flight attendant’s smile was a) extremely genuine, b) genuine, or c) not genuine at all?”

  I couldn’t resist chuckling at this one. “A),” I said, “extremely genuine.”

  “Sir,” the lady said after half a dozen more questions all of which I answered to the “extremely” degree. “You said that your flight was not satisfactory, but all of your answers indicate that you were extremely pleased with the service you received. What, may I ask, was unsatisfactory about your experience with British Airways today?”

  “Only one thing was unsatisfactory,” I said. “I am a nonsmoker, and I was forced to fly all the way from Brussels in the middle of a smoking section. That made my flight extremely unpleasant—”

  “Are you American?” she said.

  I dropped my arms in disbelief.

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Well,” she said
, “in this country smoking is still considered acceptable in public. I’ll just change your answer to ‘satisfactory’ and we’ll disregard your results.”

  She thanked me, smiled, and handed over a brochure: “British Airways: The World’s Favourite Airline.”

  “Where have you been, young man?”

  Terry stood up in the Porters’ Lodge when I came through the door and pounded his fist into his hand.

  “Term started several days ago,” he said, “and you’ve been letting the post gather in your pigeonhole.”

  “I’ve been to Waterloo,” I said.

  He perked up his slumping shoulders. “Aah, Waterloo,” he swooned with suddenly misty eyes. “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”

  “Terry, Waterloo’s in Belgium now. The capital of Europe. Surely you’ve heard—”

  “I know, but it’s all because of Merry Olde England. Just remember, son. We saved their tails in two world wars—”

  “And then we saved yours.”

  I stepped behind the counter to collect my mail, as Terry, well plucked, sat down at his desk and picked up his copy of the Cambridge Evening News.

  “So, do you have a date for the ball?” he asked when I returned to my side of the desk. “You must be going with that fair young lass from Oxford?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said.

  “You’re not?” he gasped. “What happened? Did she give you what we British gents call the old elbow?”

  “An elbow, a shoulder, or something like that. I guess it’s—how do you say?—back on the pull for me.”

  He let out a smoky laugh. “You’re becoming quite proficient in our language,” he said. “Did you see what Prince Charles had to say yesterday about young people not speaking English properly? He said most children in this country leave school without ever reading Shakespeare.”