Old School

by Tobias Wolff

  So he took trips. He passed part of the fall at Saranac Lake, not far from the sanitorium where his father had died. He drove up to Toronto and Montreal and down to New York, and that winter he spent some time with a Cornell classmate in Phoenix. The day after he arrived Arch visited the columbarium where Helen’s ashes were buried. Columbarium was the word the funeral home had used in its letter, but it was no more than a small cinderblock courtyard in a windblown cemetery where the city gave out into hardpan and scrub.

  Arch found the granite plaque with Helen’s name on it and laid some flowers across it and stood there a while. They had met when he rented horses at the stable she ran in Brooklyn. She started riding with him, and invited him along on a few jaunts with the Lower Hudson Hunt Club. Arch had taken up riding only after his leg got bunged up, but he cut a fine figure on a horse and drove at a fence as hard as she did, and maybe this had misled her, because off a horse he was not the same man. On the ground he could neither lead nor follow her.

  He wandered the cemetery, reading inscriptions. On his way back to the parking lot he saw a coyote trot across the grounds, and felt better about leaving Helen there.

  He lived with Margaret, took his trips, and checked the mail for an expression of interest from one of the many schools he’d written to. He didn’t really expect any result. As dean he had vetted such inquiries himself and shaken his head at their implausibility. Why would a man with thirty years and a position of respect in a good school suddenly throw it over to start again? He was too old. It didn’t make sense. You just knew there was a story behind it, and one best not repeated in your own school.

  Arch knew all the arguments against him, but he’d sent the letters anyway. He regretted quitting his job. He had regretted it that very morning, but didn’t know how to undo what he’d done. Up to the moment he resigned he must have imagined that teaching was a distraction from some greater destiny still his for the taking. Of course he hadn’t said this to himself, but he’d surely felt it, he later decided, because how else could he not have known how useless he would be thereafter? For thirty years he had lived in conversation with boys, answerable to their own sense of how things worked, to their skepticism, and, most gravely, to their trust. Even when alone he had read and thought in their imagined presence, made responsible by it, enlivened and honed by it. Now he read in solitude and thought in solitude and hardly felt himself to be alive.

  But toward the end of winter Arch was invited to discuss an opening at St. John’s Military Academy in Manlius, just a few miles up the road from Syracuse. He knew this had been arranged at the urging of Cal Meigs, a former student who now taught at St. John’s, because Cal had called a few days before the official letter arrived to ask if Arch was still looking. Cal said that he’d become an English teacher because of Arch and couldn’t imagine anything better than being on the same faculty with him.

  I’m sure you had a good reason for leaving the sacred grove, Cal said.

  I thought so, Arch said.

  He drove to Manlius on a day of rare brilliant light and found Cal waiting at the gate, stamping his feet against the cold. Arch had no clear memory of him as a boy and certainly did not recognize this hollow-cheeked, mournful-looking man with the droopy red moustache, though he pretended to. Cal led him up a path between stone buildings barricaded by high walls of snow. Icicles glittered along the eaves. He slowed his pace for Arch and pointed things out, but Arch was watching the boys walk past him on their way to class. They wore handsome military greatcoats and caps with gleaming bills, and their breath came out in white puffs as they talked and laughed.

  The interview didn’t last long. After a few questions about Arch’s availability and what courses he might teach, the department chairman asked him why he’d left his old school.

  That’s a private matter, Arch said. He saw Cal look down at the table and was sorry to have put him in this spot.

  We’re going to need something more than that, the chairman said. He gazed around the table at his four colleagues, all of them looking anywhere but at Arch. Frankly, Mr. Makepeace, some of us have questions about your application. I have questions.

  Certainly, Arch said, but it was a private decision and it will remain private.

  The chairman looked around the table. That’s it for me, he said. Any other questions? There were no other questions. Then he pushed his chair back and everyone stood. He shook hands with Arch. I understand you were a friend of Ernest Hemingway. My condolences, sir. And thank you for coming out today, he said. Thank you for your interest in St. John’s.

  Margaret had been sure Arch would get the job, and did not hide her bitter suspicion that he had spoiled the interview deliberately. I thought you wanted to teach, she said.

  Yes, he wanted to teach, but that wasn’t all Arch wanted, as he’d understood when the boys he’d seen that morning gazed past him without a flicker of interest. What more could he expect? Nothing, of course, yet his disappointment told him that he had expected more, being among schoolboys again, as if they would recognize him just because they were schoolboys. But if they saw anything at all it was just a standard-issue old fart tapping along the path, watching out for ice.

  In former times Arch had supposed that his sense of being a distinctive and valuable man proceeded from his own qualities, and that they would sustain him in that confidence wherever he happened to be. He’d never imagined that this surety was conferred on him by others, by their knowing and cherishing him. But so it was. Unrecognized, he had become a ghost, even to himself.

  He distilled no general rule from this understanding. Maybe a man of lordly self-conviction and detachment could forsake the place that knew him and not become a ghost. Arch could say only that he was not that man. He was attached. How could he have thought that he was free to leave his school?

  At breakfast the boys were dull and bleary, and he missed the pleasure of needling them with his own morning crispness and cheer, asking bright questions, urging prunes on picky fellows who could barely stomach a piece of dry toast. The dorms gave forth a singular din at night—fifty different records playing at once, doors slamming, loud voices in long hallways, the faint hiss of many showers all running together. Arch always stopped to listen when he crossed the quad, as another man might linger on the call of a distant owl. He missed the tumult in the hallways between classes, and how the boys parted to make a path for him. He missed their noise and their woolly smell and their deep silence in chapel. He missed their good manners. He missed bucking them up when they got homesick or discouraged, and surprising them with his forbearance when they ran aground—hadn’t they figured him out yet, after all these years? He missed how the boys went crazy in the first snowfall, and broke into song at any excuse, and forgot themselves in the excitement of finding something interesting in a poem, especially if Arch hadn’t seen it. He missed all of that, and knowing the people around him, and being known. He missed a certain shy glance in which he saw respect and warmth and even some wonder. Arch wanted that back, as much as the rest. He wanted it all back.

  In his next letter to his friend Ramsey, he said that he’d made a terrible mistake in leaving and would come back if given the chance. Ramsey would understand that this message was intended for the headmaster, to whom Arch could not write directly for fear of official rejection and the loss of all hope of return. Neither could he play the beggar after the noble pose he’d struck during their last meeting, when he’d brushed aside the headmaster’s attempts to rethink the problem as if his old friend were trying to steal his soul, like some phantasm of moral paranoia in a Hawthorne story.

  And as for that, had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he’d led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity—its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering in condemnation and violence against others and oneself. For years Arch had traced this vision of the evil done through intolerance of the flawed and ambiguous, but he had not taken the les
son to heart. He had given up the good in his life because a fault ran through it. He was no better than Aylmer, murdering his beautiful wife to rid her of a birthmark.

  Ramsey wrote back to say the headmaster would not respond unless he heard from Arch himself, and that it was impossible to know just what his thoughts were. He’d given nothing away. Write to him, please, Ramsey said. What can you lose?

  Before he could stop himself Arch took a sheet of stationery from the drawer and drafted his plea. He apologized to the headmaster for deserting his post and asked to be taken back on whatever terms were possible. He knew that a man had been hired to replace him, so he did not expect to resume his former schedule of classes or to reoccupy his old digs. He would be happy to teach remedial classes and do some tutoring. As for lodgings, he could take a room in the village. He would certainly understand if nothing could be found for him, and sent his best wishes to everyone.

  The headmaster replied by registered mail. He’d hoped Arch would decide to come back, he said, and for that reason had carried him as absent-on-leave. The new man had been hired for the year only. Arch would teach his usual classes and the apartment would be available on his return.

  He did have two provisions for Arch to consider. The first was that he would no longer serve as dean. The second, that he would let sleeping dogs lie where Hemingway was concerned and make no attempt to set the record straight. At this late date it would only confuse the boys, to no purpose. If Arch was in accord, the headmaster, along with the masters and boys of the school, looked forward with enthusiasm to his return. He’d sent two copies of the letter. In earnest of his agreement, Arch was to sign and mail back the original in the enclosed envelope. The other he should keep for his own records.

  Arch wouldn’t have expected to go back as dean, or to use the boys as his confessors, but that there should be conditions of any kind, and stipulated in so cool a tone, made him know how far he had fallen in his friend’s regard. The headmaster could not feign warmth when he didn’t feel it, and Arch had watched other men writhe under that stony gaze for months and even years. Now it would be his turn. This was the only condition he hesitated to accept, but he accepted it.

  Margaret gave him the silent treatment for a while when she heard the news, then relented and coddled him like a child about to leave home for the first time. They drove over to Saratoga for a weekend at the races and won almost three hundred dollars, which they parlayed into a series of long, sodden dinners at the only French restaurant in town. One night Margaret let it drop that Hermann von Ranke had been their mother’s lover. Arch stared down at his plate.

  You really didn’t know? Margaret said. Well, what did you think? Lonely, foolish woman. Stupid. She was, Arch, she was! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Margaret burst into tears, and he had to take her hand and soothe her while the people around them tried to carry on as if nothing had happened.

  In early August Arch got a letter from the headmaster’s secretary saying that his apartment was ready. He’d had enough of Margaret and Syracuse, but the thought of returning to the school made him skittish. He put it off until the last possible day, when the faculty was due to assemble for their traditional pre-term conference at the headmaster’s house. Though he’d given himself enough time for the drive, he took a wrong turn outside Worcester on a route he’d travelled for years, then got lost again while backtracking and arrived at the school nearly an hour late. No time for a change of clothes, let alone a shower and shave. He fished a tie from one of the boxes on the backseat, but his fingers were stiff and he kept flubbing the knot. Finally he stopped and looked down the tunnel of leafy trees overhanging the lane. He did not drive away. He adjusted the rearview mirror and coaxed his tie into a perfect knot, then eased himself out of the car. Standing up after all these hours of driving made him lightheaded, and he steadied himself against the roof of the car. It was late afternoon, the air heavy and fragrant with the smell of cut grass. He took his stick out of the back and started up the lane.

  Arch heard them well before he got to the house. They were in the headmaster’s garden. Of course—they always gathered for drinks there before getting down to business. It sounded as if they’d been drinking, their voices loud, hilarious. A blue haze of smoke hung over the garden. As he came in under the rose-covered trellis someone yelled Arch! Ecce homo! and every head turned.

  Arch stopped and looked down the garden to where the headmaster stood by the drinks table with another master. The headmaster said, Late for his own funeral! and everyone laughed, then he put his glass down and came toward Arch with both hands outstretched. Though the headmaster was the younger man, and much shorter, and though Arch was lame and had white hairs coming out of his ears and white stubble all over his face, he felt no more than a boy again—but a very well-versed boy who couldn’t help thinking of the scene described by these old words, surely the most beautiful words ever written or said: His father, when he saw him coming, ran to meet him.

  I cannot begin to thank Catherine Wolff and Gary Fisketjon for the incalculable help they gave me in their many readings of this book; my particular thanks as well to Amanda Urban for her help, and for all her encouragement and support over the years.

  Tobias Wolff

  OLD SCHOOL

  Tobias Wolff lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University. He has received the Rea Award for excellence in the short story, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/ Faulkner Award.

  His memoir In Pharaoh’s Army and his story collections Back in the World and The Night in Question are available in Vintage paperback, as is The Vintage Book of American Short Stories, which he edited.

  ALSO BY TOBIAS WOLFF

  The Night in Question

  In Pharaoh’s Army

  This Boy’s Life

  Back in the World

  The Barracks Thief

  In the Garden of the North American Martyrs

  ACCLAIM FOR TOBIAS WOLFF’S

  OLD SCHOOL

  Winner of the Northern California Book Award in Fiction

  “Bottomlessly provocative. . . . Wolff has been writing so well for so long that, in a single paragraph, he’ll toss off sketches that a less gifted storyteller might prefer to husband against a rainy day.” —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Wolff’s new novel [is] a compact, beguiling meditation on lost youth and artistic aspiration. . . . His prose, as usual, is beautifully restrained, allowing the narrative to glide along as it celebrates the art of storytelling.” —The Miami Herald

  “It is interesting that so modest, so resolutely un-self-aggrandizing a writer as Wolff should be so adept at capturing the nuances of authorial vanity. . . . [The novel’s] point, which is that telling the truth in fiction—or, more generally, in writing—is both logically impossible and morally essential . . . mirrors Wolff’s own passionate ambivalence about the craft he has practiced so long and so well.” —The New York Times Book Review

  “An elegant ode to writers, and to writing, from one of our most exquisite storytellers.” —Esquire

  “A compact marvel of a book, with its tale of a paradise gained and lost, its study of a young man’s emerging character and mind, and its look at the subtlest workings of class-consciousness and prejudice in an idyllic, ideal-driven setting. . . . Old School . . . takes as its subject the slippery nature of truth and fiction, honesty and seductive delusion. As such, it couldn’t be bettered.” —The Seattle Times

  “Tobias Wolff has made this story about shame and self-discovery come so potently alive on the page; here is writing of the highest caliber, and it fairly takes the breath away.” —The Sunday Telegraph

  “Acute, graceful. . . . Writing, Wolff suggests, can teach you not only a measure of self-knowledge but also the ability to open yourself to an imperfect world.” —Time

  “This slender, exquisitely written novel marries the virtues of the two genres for which Wolff has become famous: Old School boasts both the economy and intensity of a g
reat short story and the strong point of view of a memoir. . . . In this stylistically restrained but emotionally devastating book, every sentence is nailed down with rare and terrific precision.” —Entertainment Weekly

  “If you’re a lover of literature and dedicated to the principle of ‘know thyself,’ you cannot help but be changed by this book.” —Santa Cruz Sentinel

  “Rendered with vivid sympathy . . . charm and astuteness. . . . Wolff displays exceptional skill in capturing the small sights and sensations that evoke the whole rarefied world he’s taking us back to.” —The Atlantic Monthly

  “Engrossing and enjoyable from the first page. . . . A complex masterpiece.” —LA Weekly

  “Excellent. . . . Wolff masterfully exhibits not only the literary but also the political atmosphere of the early ’60s through the eyes of a boy who is isolated from it but whose generation will soon inherit it.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “A swift and tender novel.” —Newsday

  “Old School has the sweet intricacy of short fiction at the same time that it reads like a memoir. . . . It’s a novel whose brevity is deceptive. It has more thematic richness and emotional complexity than many big fat novels.” —San Jose Mercury News

  “Wolff’s writing is carefully weighted and sparely vivid. . . . [A] superb novel.” —Financial Times

  “Wolff has deftly created a treasure trove of self-reflexive insight about creativity, wrapped into a lyrical, humorous story.” —The Christian Science Monitor