Stoner

by John Williams

  A loud noise interrupted him. The door had opened and Charles Walker entered the room; as he closed the door the books he carried under his crippled arm slipped and crashed to the floor. He bent awkwardly, his bad leg extended behind him, and slowly gathered his books and papers. Then he drew himself erect and shuffled across the room, the scrape of his foot across the bare cement raising a loud and grating hiss that sounded sibilantly hollow in the room. He found a chair in the front row and sat down.

  After Walker had settled himself and got his papers and books in order around his desk chair, Stoner continued: “We must remember that the medieval conception of grammar was even more general than the late Hellenistic or Roman. Not only did it include the science of correct speech and the art of exegesis, it included as well the modern conceptions of analogy, etymology, methods of presentation, construction, the condition of poetic license and the exceptions to that condition—and even metaphorical language or figures of speech.”

  As he continued, elaborating upon the categories of grammar he had named, Stoner’s eyes flitted over the class; he realized that he had lost them during Walker’s entrance and knew that it would be some time before he could once more persuade them out of themselves. Again and again his glance fell curiously upon Walker, who, after having taken notes furiously for a few moments, gradually let his pencil rest on his notebook, while he gazed at Stoner with a puzzled frown. Finally Walker’s hand shot up; Stoner finished the sentence he had begun and nodded to him.

  “Sir,” Walker said, “pardon me, but I don’t understand. What can”—he paused and let his mouth curl around the word—” grammar have to do with poetry? Fundamentally I mean. Real poetry.”

  Stoner said gently, “As I was explaining before you came in, Mr. Walker, the term ‘grammar’ to both the Roman and medieval rhetoricians was a great deal more comprehensive than it is today. To them, it meant—” He paused, realizing that he was about to repeat the early part of his lecture; he sensed the students stirring restlessly. “I think this relationship will become clearer to you as we go on, as we see the extent to which the poets and dramatists even of the middle and late Renaissance were indebted to the Latin rhetoricians.”

  “All of them, sir?” Walker smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Wasn’t it Samuel Johnson who said of Shakespeare himself that he had little Latin and less Greek?”

  As the repressed laughter stirred in the room Stoner felt a kind of pity come over him. “You mean Ben Jonson, of course.”

  Walker took off his glasses and polished them, blinking helplessly. “Of course,” he said. “A slip of the tongue.”

  Though Walker interrupted him several times, Stoner managed to get through his lecture without serious difficulty, and he was able to make assignments for the first reports. He let the seminar out nearly half an hour early, and hurried away from the classroom when he saw Walker shuffling toward him with a fixed grin on his face. He clattered up the wooden stairs from the basement and took two at a time the smooth marble stairs that led to the second floor; he had the curious feeling that Walker was doggedly shuffling behind him, trying to overtake him in his flight. A hasty wash of shame and guilt came over him.

  On the third floor he went directly to Lomax’s office. Lomax was in conference with a student. Stoner stuck his head in the door and said, “Holly, can I see you for a minute after you’re through?”

  Lomax waved genially. “Come on in. We’re just breaking up.”

  Stoner came in and pretended to examine the rows of books in their cases as Lomax and the student said their last words. When the student left, Stoner sat in the chair that he had vacated. Lomax looked at him inquiringly.

  “It’s about a student,” Stoner said. “Charles Walker. He said you sent him around to me.”

  Lomax placed the tips of his fingers together and contemplated them as he nodded. “Yes. I believe I did suggest that he might profit from your seminar—what is it?—in the Latin tradition.”

  “Can you tell me something about him?”

  Lomax looked up from his hands and gazed at the ceiling, his lower lip thrust out judiciously. “A good student. A superior student, I might say. He is doing his dissertation on Shelley and the Hellenistic Ideal. It promises to be brilliant, really brilliant. It will not be what some would call”—he hestitated delicately over the word—” sound, but it is most imaginative. Did you have a particular reason for asking?”

  “Yes,” Stoner said. “He behaved rather foolishly in the seminar today. I was just wondering if I should attach any special significance to it.”

  Lomax’s early geniality had disappeared, and the more familiar mask of irony had slipped over him. “Ah, yes,” he said with a frosty smile. “The gaucherie and foolishness of the young. Walker is, for reasons you may understand, rather awkwardly shy and therefore at times defensive and rather too assertive. As do we all, he has his problems; but his scholarly and critical abilities are not, I hope, to be judged in the light of his rather understandable psychic disturbances.” He looked directly at Stoner and said with cheerful malevolence, “As you may have noticed, he is a cripple.”

  “It may be that,” Stoner said thoughtfully. He sighed and got up from the chair. “I suppose it’s really too soon for me to be concerned. I just wanted to check with you.”

  Suddenly Lomax’s voice was tight and near trembling with suppressed anger. “You will find him to be a superior student. I assure you, you will find him to be an excellent student.”

  Stoner looked at him for a moment, frowning perplexedly. Then he nodded and went out of the room.

  The seminar met weekly. For the first several meetings Walker interrupted the class with questions and comments that were so bewilderingly far off the mark that Stoner was at a loss as to how to meet them. Soon Walker’s questions and statements were greeted with laughter or pointedly disregarded by the students themselves; and after a few weeks he spoke not at all but sat with a stony indignation and an air of outraged integrity as the seminar surged around him. It would, Stoner thought, have been amusing had there not been something so naked in Walker’s outrage and resentment.

  But despite Walker it was a successful seminar, one of the best classes Stoner had ever taught. Almost from the first, the implications of the subject caught the students, and they all had that sense of discovery that comes when one feels that the subject at hand lies at the center of a much larger subject, and when one feels intensely that a pursuit of the subject is likely to lead—where, one does not know. The seminar organized itself, and the students so involved themselves that Stoner himself became simply one of them, searching as diligently as they. Even the auditor—the young instructor who was stopping over at Columbia while finishing her dissertation—asked if she might report on a seminar topic; she thought that she had come upon something that might be of value to the others. Her name was Katherine Driscoll, and she was in her late twenties. Stoner had never really noticed her until she talked to him after class about the report and asked him if he would be willing to read her dissertation when she got it finished. He told her that he welcomed the report and that he would be glad to read her dissertation.

  The seminar reports were scheduled for the second half of the semester, after the Christmas vacation. Walker’s report on “Hellenism and the Medieval Latin Tradition” was due early in the term, but he kept delaying it, explaining to Stoner his difficulty in obtaining books he needed, which were not available in the University library.

  It had been understood that Miss Driscoll, being an auditor, would give her report after the credit students had given theirs; but on the last day Stoner had allowed for the seminar reports, two weeks before the end of the semester, Walker again begged that he be allowed one more week; he had been ill, his eyes had been troubling him, and a crucial book had not arrived from inter-library loan. So Miss Driscoll gave her paper on the day vacated by Walker’s defection.

  Her paper was entitled “Donatus and Renaissance Tragedy.” He
r concentration was upon Shakespeare’s use of the Donatan tradition, a tradition that had persisted in the grammars and handbooks of the Middle Ages. A few moments after she began, Stoner knew that the paper would be good, and he listened with an excitement that he had not felt for a long time. After she had finished the paper, and the class had discussed it, he detained her for a few moments while the other students went out of the room.

  “Miss Driscoll, I just want to say—” He paused, and for an instant a wave of awkwardness and self-consciousness came over him. She was looking at him inquiringly with large dark eyes; her face was very white against the severe black frame of her hair, drawn tight and caught in a small bun at the back. He continued, “I just want to say that your paper was the best discussion I know of the subject, and I’m grateful that you volunteered to give it.”

  She did not reply. Her expression did not change, but Stoner thought for a moment that she was angry; something fierce glinted behind her eyes. Then she blushed furiously and ducked her head, whether in anger or acknowledgment Stoner did not know, and hurried away from him. Stoner walked slowly out of the room, disquieted and puzzled, fearful that in his clumsiness he might somehow have offended her.

  He had warned Walker as gently as he could that it would be necessary for him to deliver his paper the next Wednesday if he was to receive credit for the course; as he half expected, Walker became coldly and respectfully angry at the warning, repeated the various conditions and difficulties that had delayed him, and assured Stoner that there was no need to worry, that his paper was nearly completed.

  On that last Wednesday, Stoner was delayed several minutes in his office by a desperate undergraduate who wished to be assured that he would receive a C in the sophomore survey course, so that he would not be kicked out of his fraternity. Stoner hurried downstairs and entered the basement seminar room a little out of breath; he found Charles Walker seated at his desk, looking imperiously and somberly at the small group of students. It was apparent that he was engaged in some private fantasy. He turned to Stoner and gazed at him haughtily, as if he were a professor putting down a rowdy freshman. Then Walker’s expression broke and he said, “We were just about to start without you”—he paused at the last minute, let a smile through his lips, bobbed his head, and added, so that Stoner would know a joke was being made—”sir.”

  Stoner looked at him for a moment and then turned to the class. “I’m sorry I’m late. As you know, Mr. Walker is to deliver his seminar paper today upon the topic of ‘Hellenism and the Medieval Latin Tradition.”’ And he found a seat in the first row, next to Katherine Driscoll.

  Charles Walker fiddled for a moment with the sheaf of papers on the desk before him and allowed the remoteness to creep back into his face. He tapped the forefinger of his right hand on his manuscript and looked toward the corner of the room away from where Stoner and Katherine Driscoll sat, as if he were waiting for something. Then, glancing every now and then at the sheaf of papers on the desk, he began.

  “Confronted as we are by the mystery of literature, and by its inenarrable power, we are behooved to discover the source of the power and mystery. And yet, finally, what can avail? The work of literature throws before us a profound veil which we cannot plumb. And we are but votaries before it, helpless in its sway. Who would have the temerity to lift that veil aside, to discover the undiscoverable, to reach the unreachable? The strongest of us are but the puniest weaklings, are but tinkling cymbals and sounding brass, before the eternal mystery.”

  His voice rose and fell, his right hand went out with its fingers curled supplicatingly upward, and his body swayed to the rhythm of his words; his eyes rolled slightly upward, as if he were making an invocation. There was something grotesquely familiar in what he said and did. And suddenly Stoner knew what it was. This was Hollis Lomax—or, rather, a broad caricature of him, which came unsuspected from the caricaturer, a gesture not of contempt or dislike, but of respect and love.

  Walker’s voice dropped to a conversational level, and he addressed the back wall of the room in a tone that was calm and equable with reason. “Recently we have heard a paper that, to the mind of academe, must be accounted most excellent. These remarks that follow are remarks that are not personal. I wish to exemplify a point. We have heard, in this paper, an account that purports to be an explanation of the mystery and soaring lyricism of Shakespeare’s art. Well, I say to you”—and he thrust a forefinger at his audience as if he would impale them—”I say to you, it is not true.” He leaned back in his chair and consulted the papers on the desk. “We are asked to believe that one Donatus—an obscure Roman grammarian of the fourth century A.D.—we are asked to believe that such a man, a pedant, had sufficient power to determine the work of one of the greatest geniuses in all of the history of art. May we not suspect, on the face of it, such a theory? Must we not suspect it?”

  Anger, simple and dull, rose within Stoner, overwhelming the complexity of feeling he had had at the beginning of the paper. His immediate impulse was to rise, to cut short the farce that was developing; he knew that if he did not stop Walker at once he would have to let him go on for as long as he wanted to talk. His head turned slightly so that he could see Katherine Driscoll’s face; it was serene and without any expression, save one of polite and detached interest; the dark eyes regarded Walker with an unconcern that was like boredom. Covertly, Stoner looked at her for several moments; he found himself wondering what she was feeling and what she wished him to do. When he finally shifted his gaze away from her he had to realize that his decision was made. He had waited too long to interrupt, and Walker was rushing impetuously through what he had to say.

  “ ... the monumental edifice that is Renaissance literature, that edifice which is the cornerstone of the great poetry of the nineteenth century. The question of proof, endemic to the dull course of scholarship as distinguished from criticism, is also sadly at lack. What proof is offered that Shakespeare even read this obscure Roman grammarian? We must remember it was Ben Jonson”—he hesitated for a brief moment—”it was Ben Jonson himself, Shakespeare’s friend and contemporary, who said he had little Latin and less Greek. And certainly Jonson, who idolized Shakespeare this side of idolatry, did not impute to his great friend any lack. On the contrary, he wished to suggest, as do I, that the soaring lyricism of Shakespeare was not attributable to the burning of the midnight oil, but to a genius natural and supreme to rule and mundane law. Unlike lesser poets, Shakespeare was not born to blush unseen and waste his sweetness on the desert air; partaking of that mysterious source to whence all poets go for their sustenance, what need had the immortal bard of such stultifying rules as are to be found in a mere grammar? What would Donatus be to him, even if he had read him? Genius, unique and a law unto itself, needs not the support of such a ‘tradition’ as has been described to us, whether it be generically Latin or Donatan or whatever. Genius, soaring and free, must ...”

  After he became used to his anger Stoner found a reluctant and perverse admiration stealing over him. However florid and imprecise, the man’s powers of rhetoric and invention were dismayingly impressive; and however grotesque, his presence was real. There was something cold and calculating and watchful in his eyes, something needlessly reckless and yet desperately cautious. Stoner became aware that he was in the presence of a bluff so colossal and bold that he had no ready means of dealing with it.

  For it was clear even to the most inattentive students in the class that Walker was engaged in a performance that was entirely impromptu. Stoner doubted that he had had any very clear idea of what he was going to say until he had sat at the desk before the class and looked at the students in his cold, imperious way. It became clear that the sheaf of papers on the desk before him was only a sheaf of papers; as he became heated, he did not even glance at them in pretense, and toward the end of his talk, in his excitement and urgency he shoved them away from him.

  He talked for nearly an hour. Toward the end the other students in the se
minar were glancing worriedly at one another, almost as if they were in some danger, as if they were contemplating escape; they carefully avoided looking at either Stoner or the young woman who sat impassively beside him. Abruptly, as if sensing the unrest, Walker brought his talk to a close, leaned back in the chair behind the desk, and smiled triumphantly.

  The moment Walker stopped talking Stoner got to his feet and dismissed the class; though he did not realize it at the time, he did so out of a vague consideration for Walker, so that none of them might have the chance to discuss what he had said. Then Stoner went to the desk where Walker remained and asked him if he would stay for a few moments. As if his mind were somewhere else, Walker nodded distantly. Stoner then turned and followed a few straggling students out of the room into the hall. He saw Katherine Driscoll starting away, walking alone down the hall. He called her name, and when she stopped he walked up and stood in front of her. And as he spoke to her he felt again the awkwardness that had come over him when, last week, he had complimented her on her paper.

  “Miss Driscoll, I—I’m sorry. It was really most unfair. I feel that somehow I am responsible. Perhaps I should have stopped it.”

  Still she did not reply, nor did any expression come on her face; she looked up at him as she had looked across the room at Walker.

  “Anyhow,” he continued, still more awkwardly, “I’m sorry he attacked you.”

  And then she smiled. It was a slow smile that started in her eyes and pulled at her lips until her face was wreathed in radiant, secret, and intimate delight. Stoner almost pulled back from the sudden and involuntary warmth.

  “Oh, it wasn’t me,” she said, a tiny tremor of suppressed laughter giving timbre to her low voice. “It wasn’t me at all. It was you he was attacking. I was hardly even involved.”