The Book of Knowledge

by Doris Grumbach

  Fritzie wrote: ‘Can’t wait to see you again.’ She informed him, as an afterthought, of the time and place of her arrival in Hoboken. But she had little real hope that he would be there to welcome her back ‘to the land of the living,’ as she wrote.

  Oblivious to their counselor’s yearnings, her bunkies lolled on their cots. Muriel daydreamed about seeing Ruth the day after tomorrow and the resumption of their close, warm confidences, about the reunion with the part of herself she felt had been missing since Ruth went home. Loo lay with her eyes shut, her feet dangling over the edge of her cot, anticipating tomorrow night with pleasure when, she was sure, her gold medal would be awarded. It would be the one time all summer when glory would replace her constant embarrassment at being too tall.

  Jo lay prone, stretching her completed lariat, using it as an exerciser to strengthen her arm muscles and wondering how she would attach a policeman’s whistle to it. Before rest hour was over, she would have strained the thin leather to the point where the lariat would snap in the middle, reducing her to tears. Her sadness brought her thoughts to Ellie, the counselor on whom she had decided, just yesterday, that she had a crush.

  Aggie, having nothing to do or think about, watched Jo, and thought she should have taken some arts and crafts periods this summer so she would have something to give her parents. But her regret was brief. She felt better almost at once when she remembered that they would still be in Europe when she got home tomorrow, so there was no point in worrying about presents. Jo began a series of exercising leg movements. Aggie imitated her, one beat behind.

  And Roslyn? She came out of the bathroom, where she had been fulfilling her duty, too late to record her success on the chart. Fritzie had already taken it down. Roslyn remembered her German Fräulein, who made her call out, after she finished evacuating: ‘Ich bin fertig.’ She resisted the temptation to shout the words over the partition to Fritzie.

  Roslyn lay down on her side, her eyes fixed on Fritzie’s door, and pulled her Indian blanket over her. She considered whether she could safely give herself pleasure, but decided against it: she would be noticed. Instead, she reached under her cot to find the pile of newspapers. Riffling the pages made noise. Jo, who was loudly slapping her legs with two pieces of her lariat, said piously: ‘Shhh.’

  Roslyn leafed through a number of pages, enough to ensure the crackling noise would further annoy Jo. Then she put them back under the bed, sighed heavily, and fell asleep.

  Rae and Will were on Rae’s bed in the tiny bungalow, far up the line, reserved for the head counselor. It was the only bungalow without resident campers. They lay on their backs, their eyes on the rough ceiling beams, their hands clasped. Heavy despair had settled over them both. For the first time in many years they were about to live apart. Will’s new teaching appointment was in northern Vermont. Rae was to stay on in her secure job as head of the physical education department at Hewitt College in Maryland.

  The summer had been a long, loving, painful preparation for their separation. But now they found they still were not ready for it. They were beset by worries about the future. Rae thought Will would surely find a more proximate friend, and forget her. Will thought of the young, ambitious students who would admire pretty, amiable Rae, and seek her company, for whatever reason. They moved their heads to look at each other, their eyes filled with their troubling questions. But they said nothing.

  Then they turned on their sides, facing each other as though they were about to make love. But they made no moves to do so, so great was their mutual anguish at the thought of the future. After years of passionate lovemaking, they had arrived at the realization that their bond was more than physical. They knew that, in a way they did not quite understand, they belonged together. They considered themselves to be found persons among the many lonely, lost people they knew. For them, the usual isolation that accompanies sexual deviation had not existed, or, at least, they were aware of it only as a couple. But now they were afraid that it would afflict them when they were separated and alone.

  ‘It’s all too much,’ Will said. Tears came to her eyes.

  ‘It is. It is,’ Rae said, smiled at her friend, and then put her hands up to cover her own face.

  They lay still, filled with the anguish of threatened, requited love.

  Dolly and Dr. Amiel locked the costume-room door behind them. She stretched out on a wide, flat pile of pirate costumes. He took off his shorts and climbed on top of her, smiling down at her closed eyes and expectant mouth.

  ‘Glad to have you aboard, Doc,’ she said in her low stage voice.

  ‘Glad to be aboard, Sarah Bernhardt,’ he said.

  He teased her with slow, soft movements. She motioned that she wished greater speed.

  ‘It’s probably the last time,’ he thought. ‘I’ll do what she wants.’ As he moved, he closed his eyes and considered how he would say goodbye to her.

  She was too caught up in the rising action within her to think about what she would say to him when they were finished. The moment came, too fast, too acute to bear or to last, a point of pure joy for them both at once. Tired, surfeited, they rested a few minutes and then were ready to return to themselves.

  The doctor thought: ‘Curious, isn’t it? My need for someone is over so fast, and then I go back to needing only myself.’

  He slipped down onto his side to avoid falling off the platform of costumes, resolved to get what he was planning to say over with.

  ‘Dolly, it’s been swell. Really, really great. I’m sorry it’s over.’

  She said nothing.

  He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you.’

  She waited. Then she said: ‘What?’

  ‘That I’m married. My wife’s name is Ann. She’s coming to New York from St. Paul, our hometown. On the third.’

  ‘Her name is of no interest to me whatsoever. Or where she’s from.’

  ‘Oh, I know. That was stupid of me. I didn’t know what else to say. But I wanted to tell you … about being married.’

  Dolly smiled. ‘Nice of you.’

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’ve been dishonest, or led you on, or anything like that.’

  ‘Not at all. Why would I think that?’

  ‘Well, why are you smiling like that?’

  Dolly sat up. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. It’s somewhat of a coincidence. I’m married too. I was going to tell you today.’

  Suddenly, the doctor felt offended. For a moment he had had the edge, the higher road of bravely confessed guilt, and then he had lost it, too fast. Now he resented what he considered her dishonesty, oblivious to his own silence on the subject. She had practiced a deception upon him. The thought clouded his mind.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. Then he asked what he realized as he said it was a foolish question:

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘An actor. Name of Eliot. Lives in New York. With me.’

  Then she laughed and added:

  ‘He’s from Connecticut.’

  ‘His name and place of origin are of no interest to me. Whatsoever.’

  Their sparring struck them as silly. They laughed, hard, then harder, until they lost control and rolled off to each side of the pile onto the floor. When the doctor was able to speak, he said in a voice that cracked:

  ‘So what? So we’re married. So what?’

  ‘As long as it’s not to each other,’ said Dolly.

  As though stirred by the same wind, they pushed themselves back onto the makeshift bed and began, slowly, to demonstrate their disdain for their histories by making love again.

  Early in the summer, the senior campers had carved out for themselves a secret place in the woods behind Bungalow Twelve. There they went to gossip and to smoke. A narrow footpath, which they had attempted to obscure with broken branches and packets of old, wet leaves, led to it. It was about forty yards into the woods, a distance the senior captain, Leona, described as one City block when she gave directions to new seniors at the start of
the summer.

  Following the partially blocked path, one came upon a hollowed-out spot surrounded by close, tall pines. Seniors of years past (some were now stern parents who forbade their offspring every secret girlhood pleasure, especially cigarettes) had furnished the place with upturned small barrels and boards set upon stumps, created seats elevated from the always-wet ground. Smokers crowded together, inhaling with obvious relish the fragrant smoke of their Lucky Strikes and Murads, and exhaling proud smoke rings from their mouths, taking pleasure in the act of smoking itself but even more in the delicious secrecy in which it had to be performed.

  Roslyn had found out about the place. One late afternoon, as she was drying after her bath, she had watched a thin line of seniors make their way back there. The next day, when she was quite sure they were occupied elsewhere and no one could see her, she went to the spot, telling herself she was desperately in need of a quiet place in which to think. It was in that little hideaway in the pine woods that she discovered the wonderful quality of stillness.

  Sometimes she took a book with her, as protection against the predictable boredom of her own thoughts. But she rarely read. She became absorbed in nothingness, the absence of unnatural sound that filled the place. A few birds were there; they came to seem part of the silence. No silly camper voices, no bugle to get her up or make her go to bed, no whistles, no counselor orders, nothing that required obedience or evoked rebellion. Small animals seemed to stay away from the place. For the first time in her life she knew what it was to hear silence, to be able to feel herself sinking soundlessly down under her skin to a hidden core where she felt free to imagine things, to envision herself as an adult. Often it was a long time before a senior came to interrupt her creative inactivity and chased her away.

  Life in a city or at a beach (as she had discovered last summer with Lion and those crazy Flowers kids) or in a crowded camp was never quiet, not for a second. Some people seemed to flourish under distracting roars and cheers and clatters. But, sitting in the hole in the woods, Roslyn came to realize the great power of silence. At times she tried to stop breathing or thinking, to experience the purity of silence without interruption, without the clash of ideas in her head.

  When this was not possible, she would sit erect on a barrel, the seam of her serge bloomers caught in the place from which she kept expecting the show of blood that she planned to refuse. She would move slowly, rocking back and forth, to bring about the wonderful flashes of pleasure she had long ago discovered that area of her body could yield.

  This was her unique, blissful secret. For she was certain she was the only girl in the world capable of producing, by herself, this exquisite sensation. It was her private discovery, one she added to her store of hidden knowledge, together with finding out about forbidden books. In her mother’s bureau drawer, under her crepe de Chine underwear, Roslyn found a book called The Rise and Fall of Susan Lenox. She ‘borrowed’ it, put the cover from one of her old Nancy Drew books over its seductive jacket, and read it at night in place of The Mill on the Floss, which was assigned reading for English class.

  On this last day of regular activities, the seniors having gone on their hike, Roslyn decided to go to what she called, with a literary reference that pleased her, the secret garden. She was trying to store up the protection of silence against the noisy banquet of tomorrow evening and the loud, insincere (she believed) farewells, the clatter of the train, the parental screams, the omnipresent uproar of the City. She wanted to say goodbye to this best of all camp places, and a permanent farewell, she hoped, to the camp. She vowed not to allow her parents ever to persuade her to come back, even if her aunt did pay for it.

  This time she carried no reading matter with her, planning to have a dramatic little ceremony; she wanted to thank the place for its hospitality in her times of need, for her education in the joys of quiet. She wanted the place to know that she believed she would never again have to suffer from loneliness if she could find a quiet spot like this to be alone.

  Pretending she was Natty Bumppo, she tried to walk the narrow path silently, one foot directly in front of the other, avoiding any twigs that might snap. Suddenly she stopped at the edge of the clearing: Fat Oscar’s rump loomed up ahead of her.

  Trying not to breathe audibly, Roslyn watched him replace a barrel and then stamp wet leaves around its bottom. He turned to leave, and caught sight of her watching him from the path. His face reddened, he rushed past her, not looking at her, saying nothing. She thought she heard him make a sound, like a grunt or a sob. She waited until she thought he must have reached the rear of the bungalows and then started down the line, but she made no move to leave the place. She was too curious and too angry. She sat down on the bench, furious that her holy space had been violated by that piggy boy. Then she reminded herself that all this property belonged to his family. So how could he violate it?

  With her foot she pushed over the barrel Fatto had moved. A cascade of belts, compacts, lariats, purses, pocket knives, whistles, scarves, and dollar bills poured onto the packed leaves. Roslyn sat still, stunned. Her sacred grove had turned into a terrible cache of crime. Purloined objects had invaded the moral purity of a place that before had been polluted only by smoke. Her plan for a final, mystical rite, a requiem and a benediction, was wrecked, her peace of mind gone. And what was worse: she knew that if she reported her discovery the last hours of camp would be even noisier, full of accusatory voices, vengeful tones, blubbering confession.

  ‘Jeepers,’ she thought. ‘I won’t say anything to anybody. What do I care? I didn’t lose anything. And all this is junk. What does that dumb fat boy want it for?’

  She stuffed Fatto’s loot back under the barrel, replaced his leafy camouflage, and walked back along the path, Natty Bumppo style, to her bungalow to wait for her turn in the bathtub.

  But it was hot, too hot to hang around in the bungalow. Roslyn went down to the lake and stood on the dock. She heard Hozzle tell her assistant, Ellie, to give surface-diving tests to two campers who were trying, for the third time, she said, to earn their junior lifesaving badges. Roslyn understood their difficulty, because she had the same problem; clearly, they both disliked holding their breath underwater. But there was another thing, she noticed. They were girls with big hips, so it was hard to pull themselves down with their weak arms. And then, with all that fat, how could they ever hoist those weights up from the bottom of the lake?

  Hozzle looked as if she had given up on them. But Ellie seemed patient, more patient than she would have been in July, Roslyn surmised, when she’d overheard Fritzie say Ellie was waiting to hear if she had been moved off the waiting list and accepted into the freshman class at Sweet Briar College. Yesterday Roslyn had heard Ellie yelling all over the place:

  ‘I’m in! I’m accepted!’

  Roslyn envisioned Ellie going home, celebrating with her parents, and then going hog-wild at Peck & Peck buying cashmere sweater sets and tweed skirts.

  Roslyn saw Ellie wave the dopey girls out of her way. She surface-dived to move the window-sash weight, a white towel tied around it, closer to the shore.

  ‘Eight feet,’ she said.

  One girl dove down, pulled hard, and came up, red-faced, gasping, and empty-handed. The other tried, with no success. Ellie moved the weight again.

  ‘Seven feet.’ She told them to try again.

  Ellie watched them closely as if she expected them to drown. To Roslyn they looked more frightened than determined.

  She looked away to see Hozzle standing at the edge of the ‘crib,’ a floored area where beginners could put their feet down. The swimming counselor seemed to be surveying the lake as if she really loved its clear green water, the surrounding hills, the oversized blue bowl of sky. Roslyn knew that Hozzle taught water sports and lifesaving in a pool at her college. She wondered if she had ever felt smothered there by the enclosed, wet, chlorinated heat.

  Hozzle stood unmoving at the edge of the crib as if she were in command of the
almost round lake—the one imperfection the small cove at the end, like a blowout place on an inner tube. Standing as still, Roslyn watched someone far away paddle out toward the cove. Birds, whose names she did not know, flew low over the water. She saw the two surface divers disappear again, only to come up too fast to have reached the bottom.

  Hozzle looked disgusted. ‘Jesus, they feed kids too much these days. They’re bottom-heavy. They probably have too much air in their buttocks,’ she said to herself.

  She walked over to where Ellie and the two girls were drying off.

  ‘Who’s out there canoeing? I thought all the boats were in.’

  ‘No idea,’ Ellie said, anxious to be away from the waterfront. ‘What’ll I do about these two blimps?’

  ‘Pass ’em,’ Hozzle said. ‘What the heck. God forbid they should ever have to save anyone’s life.’

  Muggs stopped a junior counselor who was patrolling the line to make sure every camper was lying down on her bed.

  ‘Any of the bunks started packing yet?’

  ‘Yes. Number Four. You know those freshman counselors. They had their kids packing last week, I think. They can’t wait to get home.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll take a look in there while they’re resting.’

  The A&C bungalow was locked when Cindy came back after rest period.

  ‘That bitch,’ she said aloud to no one. She tried to kick the door in, but it did not move. Jean came up behind her. Cindy was peering in the window.

  ‘Anybody there?’

  Cindy turned around. ‘Who’re you?’

  ‘Jean.’

  ‘Well, Jean, no one’s in there. And I’ll tell you what. No one’ll be in there today and I’ll lose my goddam belt again and that bitch Muggs is so rotten she’ll never open the damn place again. Ever.’

  Jean stood open-mouthed, amazed at this outpouring of forbidden words. She decided this must be the girl from Brooklyn, the one Roslyn had told her about,