The Book of Knowledge

by Doris Grumbach

  ‘My future practice should be this easy,’ thought the doctor, knowing the impossibility of this wish but still grateful to the Gods of Summer for their forbearance in not putting his ignorance to a test.

  At the end of the summer his record was clear, thanks to his one fortunately prescient action. In late July, Ruth Kress, one of the twins, developed a persistent fever. When it did not respond to aspirin and rest in her bungalow and when, on the fourth day of her fever, she complained of arm and leg pains and a stiff neck, Dr. Amiel suggested that she be sent home, ‘as a precaution.’

  Mrs. Ehrlich agreed, having been assured by Mr. Ehrlich that Ruth’s parents would not be due any refund, since the first three weeks of the season had passed. At August’s end, with camp about to close, no word had reached the directors about Ruth’s state of health. Muriel was told by her parents that her twin was all right. Everyone else knew only that she had not returned.

  The silence made good, self-serving sense for everyone. The Kresses did not wish Muriel sent home to a polio-infested City. So they did not alert the camp to its danger. The Ehrlichs and the doctor had been blessed with luck—no fevers or other suspicious symptoms developed among Ruth’s bunkmates. The fearful disease had departed from CCL with Ruth, leaving none of the dread viruses behind. They had concentrated themselves in the twin, who was taken from the train to the Lenox Hill Hospital in the City, where she fought hard for life and, in mid-August, breathed her last in an iron lung.

  Seated on camp chairs in a semicircle at the front of the Amusement Hall, Rae and the upper-group counselors held their final meeting for the season. While they waited for Mrs. Ehrlich and the doctor to arrive, they planned their private celebratory outing into Liberty (a town well named, Fritzie thought) tomorrow evening after the banquet. Then, when Muggs arrived, they changed the subject and began to decide about the medals and pins to be bestowed upon their thirty campers tomorrow night. Loo would receive the ‘gold’ for general athletic prowess. Another gold would go to Frannie in Bungalow Fourteen for being the most improved camper.

  ‘That’s an easy one,’ said Hozzle. ‘Last year she couldn’t learn to do the dead man’s float. Now she can paddle on the top of the water pretty well.’

  Will said: ‘Yep. She used to get so tangled up with the hockey stick I had to take her out of every game. Last week she played wing. It’s true she never managed to hit the puck, but at least she stayed on her feet.’

  Rae said: ‘I recall an inning of softball I watched last year. She beaned one hitter and struck another in the chest while she was running to first base. Then Will retired her to the bench. But fine. Most improved camper she is.’ She wrote Frannie’s name on her clipboard.

  Viwie, in Bungalow Twelve (there was no Thirteen, for superstitious reasons), would be given the medal for best swimmer. Jo would be rewarded with a gold for her skill in arts and crafts. The other twenty-six mediates were to receive copper-colored pins, in recognition of their ‘efforts’: Mrs. Ehrlich was always firm in her view that not a single camper should return home undecorated. She wished to guard against resentments that might fester during the winter, adversely affecting the decision of parents to re-enroll their offspring in February.

  Rae went to the porch to look down the line, as the road between the directors’ cottage and the farthest bungalow was called, to see if Mrs. Ehrlich was on her way. They’d all been waiting more than an hour for her, and there was a great deal to do now that the end, thank God, was almost upon them. When Rae saw her approaching, as wide as a sail in her white dress, teetering over the rough path on her tiny white high-heeled pumps, Rae waved, and waited. She helped her up the uneven wooden steps and linked her arm with hers as they walked to the circle of counselors. Mrs. Ehrlich was fond of Rae, because she had run the camp without any help from her for fifteen years. If she ever failed to return, the directress thought, the whole efficient and profitable enterprise might be threatened.

  Rae was aware of this. But she was a gentle, kindly, unassuming woman who used her power discreetly to benefit her friends, many of whom she hired regularly from the faculty of an athletic college in Maryland where she had taught for many years. She took care to remain in Mrs. Ehrlich’s good graces, enjoying her right to hire congenial athletic counselors who happened to be of her own sexual persuasion.

  It was left to Mrs. Ehrlich to hire three counselors, for nature, arts and crafts, and dramatics. Unlike Rae, she had a poor eye for capable and amiable teachers. Muggs, hired to do arts and crafts, had disappointed her with her continued cantankerousness through three summers. She had decided she would look elsewhere next year. The new nature counselor, Amanda, called, inevitably, Manny, had developed a repugnance for snakes, bugs, and salamanders and had to be replaced in mid-season by a more intrepid camper-counselor. And Dolly, the longtime dramatics counselor, who was responsible for providing the Saturday-night entertainments, grew less ambitious each week, doing revues and ‘an evening of skits’ through most of the summer until the last Saturday night, when she mounted an elaborate Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. She believed this last effort would leave the Ehrlichs with an impression that the whole theatrical season had been an unvarying success, a notion, she hoped, that would carry over to the next hiring period.

  The directress searched in Greenwich Village for these teachers. But her choices usually ran counter to Rae’s, creating a subtle division in the staff between her artsy choices (as Rae’s friends called them) and Rae’s sturdier, more athletic types. Other, more subtle splits often occurred. This year Dolly, a good-looking unemployed actress, had become close friends with the camp doctor, thus alienating herself from the teachers of sports by what seemed to them to be a perverse interest in men.

  The subsidiary member of the medical staff, Nurse Jody, as Mrs. Ehrlich insisted on calling her, had been badly disappointed in her hopes for a summer romance by the doctor’s choice of another partner. She then developed a noticeable disaffection with camp life. She had ‘turned odd,’ Mrs. Ehrlich told Mr. Ehrlich in mid-July. Any day they had expected to hear that she was leaving. Indeed, she had threatened the doctor with premature departure, hoping to redirect his interest to her. She did not succeed, but she stayed on, secretly enjoying her displays of bad humor and her status as one of the upper people, above the rank of counselor, almost on a par with the directors, the doctor, the visiting parents. Having little to do in this healthy place, and no opportunity for dalliance, she made herself useful as the camp spy, Mrs. Ehrlich’s secret agent. She sought out instances of malfeasance and reported them promptly when she could get the directress’s ear. If she could not, she went to Rae.

  Thus, the good-natured head counselor became the reluctant recipient of steamy summer secrets. Nurse Jody saw who failed to fulfill her duty policing the line during rest hour and, most urgently now, what camper or counselor seemed a likely suspect for the rash of missing objects people had reported all summer: scarves, compacts, pocket knives, small sums of money. But her gossip rarely led to action by camp officials. Harmony and a peaceful surface of life were too highly prized.

  By summer’s end, Nurse Jody’s avidity in her role of reporter of small thieveries led to a gauze of suspicion falling upon almost everyone. Mr. Ehrlich was immune: he was absent from the camp grounds most of the day. Dr. Amiel too was safe, by virtue of the elevated nature of his profession protected against evil reports and immune to denigration.

  As usual, the doctor was the last to arrive at the meeting in the Amusement Hall, followed closely by the nurse. Mrs. Ehrlich called for order.

  ‘We need to talk about the search,’ she said. ‘Before everything is packed away.’

  Rae nodded. ‘I think it might be a good idea to allocate a few hours tomorrow just for packing. Then one of us can walk around and inspect trunks for the missing stuff.’ Rae’s solution to a problem always involved allocation of ‘space’ on her schedule chart. Results were achieved, she thought, in blocks of time in the present, tod
ay, not be vague projections into an unscheduled future.

  ‘Good idea. Yes,’ said Mrs. Ehrlich.

  Everybody nodded in agreement.

  ‘Second thing,’ said Mrs. Ehrlich. ‘The banquet. The awards. Have you thought about them?’

  Fritzie said: ‘We’ve settled on a few, the mediate ones. Loo. Frannie. Vivian. The gilt medals.’

  ‘Gold, not gilt,’ Mrs. Ehrlich said testily. ‘And of course, the bronze pins for everyone else. You haven’t forgotten the names of all of those?’ Fritzie grinned broadly but said nothing, suggesting that once again she was willing to overlook the foolishness of indiscriminate pinning.

  Rae noticed and said quickly: ‘No indeed, we haven’t. Although we haven’t decided what we will give them for this year.’

  ‘Good sportsmanship,’ said Muggs glumly.

  ‘That was two years ago,’ said Rae. She had total recall of camp events as far back as her first summer fifteen years ago.

  ‘What about “participation”?’ said Will, the stern, broad-shouldered young woman who was a no-nonsense authority on field sports. She had introduced the newly laid down rules for girls’ softball to the camp, and she captained one of the warring counselor teams that gave exhibitions after services on Saturday. Her name was Millicent Williams: since grade school she had demanded that everyone call her by the abbreviation of her last name.

  ‘Very good,’ said Mrs. Ehrlich. ‘I like that.’

  Rae smiled at Will. ‘Leave it to you to think of that. All those team members and all those substitutes did participate.’

  Will smiled back. Her smile was rare, although she always felt comfortable at camp, relaxing every summer into the precise daily routine because she helped Rae with the scheduling. It was a favorable spot for her, since she was firmly on the side of land games and felt no sympathy for water sports. She was deathly afraid of the water.

  The usual scheduling argument began. Hozzle wanted extra periods today at the waterfront to complete junior lifesaving tests. Will made her customary protest against them, appealing on theoretical grounds.

  ‘Human beings were meant to walk on land,’ she said in her low, flinty voice. ‘Not to move by thrashing around in water.’

  ‘Water was first, I believe,’ said Hozzle happily. She had spent the warm, sunny summer in perfect contentment at the waterfront. Eight hours of the day she wore her yellow, belted tank bathing suit, her flat bare feet always wet, her short blond hair plastered behind her ears, her bloodshot eyes glued to the lake where pairs of little swimmers—‘buddies,’ she called them—paddled about. She took swimming and diving very seriously. In her zeal, she wanted to convert everyone at the camp to exercising in aquatic ways.

  ‘Only for the lowest forms of life,’ said Will. ‘The higher ones showed their superiority by crawling out of the muck, standing up, and entering civilization. They never went back.’

  ‘Nuts,’ said Hozzle. It was her most daring public expletive.

  Rae assumed her concilatory role. ‘Why don’t we divide the time equally? That’s what the juniors are going to do. And the seniors are off on their hike. And all the little kids can have free time to finish their lariats and belts.’

  ‘Oh let’s.’ Mrs. Ehrlich was always in favor of activities that called for safe, sedentary effort.

  ‘I do like “participation,” Will,’ said Rae. She wrote the word on top of her schedule form. ‘It makes it sound like everyone has been included in everything, all summer.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said the directress.

  Fritzie decided not to let the matter pass that easily. ‘Or it could mean we are rewarding everyone, even those who thought about participating but didn’t. Or Roz, who probably should have a pin for steadfastly not thinking about it, and not participating.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Mrs. Ehrlich, who was, at season’s end, quick to agree. Her flabby powers of comprehension continually rode piggyback on the definitions and distinctions others made, making her seem amiable by nature. In reality she could not distinguish between ideas, precise meanings escaped her entirely, and implication was too subtle for her ever to catch. Without Rae at her side, the loose material of her mind never hardened into understanding.

  ‘Now about the medical reports for parents …’ Rae looked at Dr. Amiel, who was occupied in tying his overlong sneaker laces into triple knots. ‘We need a slip for each camper. General health, weight, that kind of thing. Can you get those ready quickly so I can hand them out at the depot when we deliver the little darlings to their eager folks?’

  The doctor looked up, startled. For the first time all summer he had been awakened from his Eden of idleness.

  ‘Guess so. Send them to be weighed this afternoon and tomorrow. But general health? Wow. Do they all have to be different?’

  ‘I should hope so,’ said Mrs. Ehrlich primly. ‘They’re all separate persons, aren’t they? We pride ourselves on developing their individuality.’

  ‘No, Doctor,’ said Rae softly, over Mrs. Ehrlich’s voice. ‘Just three categories. Good. Excellent. And Improving. That sort of thing.’

  In a loud whisper, Fritzie said to the doctor: ‘How about a fourth? Participating in health?’

  ‘Okay,’ said the doctor, and laughed. He stood up to indicate that his part of the meeting was over, afraid that someone would suggest another terminal activity that would occupy the time he was planning to spend with Dolly. Nurse Jody stood up.

  ‘Okay,’ he said again. ‘I can do that.’

  Rae said: ‘Fine. I’ll schedule the girls to come to the Infirmary.’

  Mrs. Ehrlich said to the doctor: ‘I’ll go down the line with you. I want you to take a peek at Oscar’s sty.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘Yes. This one looks very angry to me.’

  Mrs. Ehrlich went down the steps, her tiny hand on Dr. Amiel’s arm. Her feet looked inappropriately small under the vast, starched canopy of her white dress and her thick, tubular, white-stockinged legs.

  The counselors pushed back their chairs.

  Rae said, ‘And, oh yes, one other thing. About the trunk inspection. Who’ll volunteer to do it?’

  ‘I will,’ said Muggs.

  Born Margaret Stewart, Muggs was the only wealthy counselor on the staff, a fact unknown to all the others. She had grown up in a brownstone house near Washington Square in New York City with her father, her mother having died at her birth. Peter Stewart was a corporation lawyer who, as a desirable bachelor, dined out a great deal. He attended a great many conventions and professional meetings and sat on a number of corporation boards which met in various parts of the country.

  People told Margaret that her life history was somewhat comparable to that of the heroine in a famous Henry James novel. She made it a point not to look it up. An only child of a single parent, she wanted to feel the uniqueness of her lonely state, only dimly connected to a series of distant aunts, indifferent housekeepers, and cooks.

  So she had relished the idea of going to a camp, a community in which her usual state of isolation and her solitary habits could be suspended for the summer. She had grown weary of walking the small, crooked streets of Greenwich Village and studying American Indian Arts at dingy nearby New York University. During her junior year in college, she answered a newspaper ad and was offered a job as arts and crafts counselor at Camp Clear Lake. She was pleased.

  Once there she made no friends. It was her conviction that her appearance was her trouble. Her long, forbidding nose seemed to point far out into the space before her. Then her face fell away precipitously to her neck, her thin mouth having, it seemed to her, too little force to command a chin. This combination of too much nose and too little chin made her appear stupid and vulnerable.

  She was, of course, neither. Her dearest wish was to convince others that she was worthy of their interest and affection, but she had never succeeded. For three years now, as a junior counselor who taught crafts, she was not able to acquire even a
small following of admirers among the campers, unlike the other counselors. She mourned her inability to rise above the misfortune of her looks.

  One thing about her physical self was interesting: she was the proud possessor of a distinguishing feature, the high arch of her feet. Fritzie once said to her, watching her pose her feet at the dock: ‘You ought to be a ballet dancer.’ Muggs stretched again and waited for notice to be taken of her even, unmarked toes and the exalted span of her arches. But after the first admiring remarks, her feet came to be accepted as the normal, if curious, appendages to an unusually homely woman, an odd inclusion rather than an ameliorating fact.

  Muggs had hoped to shed her ugly nickname. In a weak moment she once suggested to Fritzie that if she had to have a nickname, she be called Archie. Agreeably, Fritzie tried this moniker a number of times within earshot of campers. But it did not stick. Muggs she remained, homely bearer of what sounded to its victim like the name of a comic strip character.

  At the arts and crafts bungalow a diverse gathering of campers—freshmen, juniors, and mediates—waited for Muggs to unlock the door. They were unaccustomed to her being late. Indeed, some of the younger freshmen thought the dour, funny-looking counselor lived in the A&C building: she seemed always to be there. The campers stamped around the front door, trying it again and again and finding it closed against them as if it were protecting their precious half-finished presents.

  ‘She’s late,’ whispered Muriel to the absent Ruth, the one person to whom she always spoke these days. Ruth’s departure from camp had never stopped Muriel from communicating with her. She believed that she and Ruth were combining their efforts to finish the purse for their mother, having caught, skinned, tanned, and sewn the skin of a large garter snake. As the purse neared completion, it had become smaller and smaller, until now even coins as small as dimes might turn out to be too great a burden for it.