The Book of Knowledge

by Doris Grumbach

  ‘The one who swears,’ she had said.

  Jean said to Cindy: ‘She said tomorrow morning. I just thought I’d try to see if it was open. Maybe we’d better come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said shit.’

  Jean was frightened. She thought a moment and then she said:

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ve got to get started on my trunk. Then I have to finish my test at the lake.’

  Cindy waited until Jean was out of sight. Then, taking careful aim, she spat on the middle windowpane, and moved her finger through the saliva. She wrote:

  MUGGS THE BITCH

  The afternoon moved slowly. Tired, sweaty seniors returned from their hike, mosquito-bitten and thirsty. The water in their canteens had been used up in the second hour of their hike. They lined up at the water cooler on the porch of the Amusement Hall. After they had drunk their fill, they poured water over their heads.

  The juniors swam, celebrating their luck at having a cool, wet double period at the lake, all except a few wearers of red beginner’s caps who were still confined to the crib. Their feet were planted nervously on the wooden floor, water to their waists and their terrified hearts pounding in their chests when they lowered themselves into the water to try the dead man’s float.

  Jean swam toward the middle of the lake with her friend Sally, both wearing their newly earned white caps. When Hozzle blew the whistle to check on the whereabouts of the swimmers, the two clasped hands and raised them ostentatiously into the air to demonstrate their obedience to the buddy system and their proud distance from the shore.

  Will sat in the high chair at the tennis net refereeing the final match between a Blue and a Gray mediate. Both girls were grimly determined to win. Will, distracted from the furious play by thoughts of Rae, made two miscalls in a row. There were loud protests from the players. Will realized her mistakes almost at once. Her eyes filled with tears, affecting her vision and her judgment. She knew well she had been wrong, but she refused to change the calls. She ordered the girls to get on with the game.

  Rae crossed PERIOD 3-4 and PERIOD 5-6 from her schedule sheet. Her heart ached, an unusual pain for her. She was one of the few persons who was not glad that camp was ending. Summer had always been a long, sun-filled, orderly idyll. She was happy when the campers seemed content, the counselors relaxed, Mrs. Ehrlich pleased, and all minor crises, if they had to arise, resolved quickly. This summer one small difficulty still remained, she reminded herself, but Muggs, usually a reliable problem-solver, had been assigned to locate the missing stuff, so all would be well.

  ‘Then why do I feel so rotten?’ she asked herself, and then she remembered. Willie. …

  And Roslyn: unaware of the currents of emotion, the wounded sensibilities, small passions, and large indignations, raging among some of the campers and counselors, she sat on the edge of her cot, bent over at an angle, thinking about her pain. Her stomach hurt, as it always did when she felt life was going badly for her. She was exhausted by the handball game, by her large lunch and long nap, by her distaste for the prospective awards banquet. She was in despair about everything, she told herself: going home to Brooklyn, school in two weeks, leaving Fritzie.

  She decided to write her beloved a letter to leave on Fritzie’s bed, a final declaration of love, proving her undying fidelity and illustrating her new, elaborate, grown-up prose style. Everyone else had left the bungalow for a swim. Blessed quiet filled the room, even the empty space under the rafters. She found her Linen Weave Writing Pad under her cot, put the lined blotting sheet under the first sheet, and wrote:

  DEAR FRITZIE—

  Not quite right, she thought.

  She crossed it out neatly and wrote under it:

  DEAREST FRITZIE.

  The progress from the positive to the superlative seemed an important step to her. Perhaps Fritzie would notice it.

  In her complex and involuted new style, she put down what she most admired about her counselor: her cheerfulness, her fairness, the way she seemed to like everyone (she did not write that, privately, she would have preferred less equality and a stronger affection for her). She listed her virtues, avoiding the true reasons for her love: her bright, charming face, her smooth womanly voice, her lavish grin, the tight curl of her black hair at her neck and around her perfect ears, her black-as-night eyes that shone like polished coal. Most of all, the way her starched middy blouse pulled across her lavish bosom.

  Now that she thought about it, it was Fritzie’s person that she loved, not her character. But she could not bring herself to write that. She ended the list with ‘your lovely personality.’ It occurred to her she might use the popular idiom for ‘sexy.’ She would tell her she had ‘it,’ but she refrained for fear it would sound too, well, forward.

  Then, wishing to appear literary and learned, Roslyn thought of complimenting her on not having ‘a superiority complex’ like some others she was prepared to name. It was a phrase she had heard applied to Aggie, only in reverse: ‘Aggie has an inferiority complex,’ someone had said. Roslyn had only a dim idea of what that meant. It was clearly an affliction as widespread as influenza and polio. She decided the whole thing was too uncertain, so she omitted its opposite in her catalogue of Fritzie’s assets. She signed the letter with three X’s to signify kisses and then wrote, “Your bunkie, Roslyn Hellman.”

  She looked under her bed. Finding no envelopes in the dust, she folded the letter in thirds, clipped it shut with a rusty bobby pin, and laid it on Fritzie’s pillow.

  On every field and court, games came to an end. By five o’clock, Will and the other referees had assembled in Rae’s bungalow to report the results. Hozzle brought her list of names of those who had passed their lifesaving tests. Points were awarded for this feat and added to the team scores. Muggs told Rae she had inspected trunks in seven of the sixteen bungalows and found nothing.

  ‘Oh my. Well, keep looking,’ she said. Everyone filed out to prepare for supper. Rae totaled the last points. Once again the Blue team had won.

  ‘Five times in five years,’ she told herself cheerlessly. ‘Hurrah for the Union Army.’ Thinking that Mrs. Ehrlich would not approve of this inequity, she went into the bathroom to run a bath.

  Wearing a clean blouse and her somewhat worn blazer with its tarnished CCL insignia on the pocket, Rae walked to the directors’ bungalow. She wanted to ask about borrowing a camp car to go to Liberty tomorrow evening after the banquet.

  The Ehrlichs were having their early-evening Scotch and sodas in their living room. Oscar was drinking a milk shake. The Ehrlichs did not offer her a drink.

  ‘Of course you’ll all wait until lights out before you take off?’

  Rae felt her carefully maintained patience with Mrs. Ehrlich wearing thin. Never in all her years at the camp had she left the camp, or allowed any other counselor to leave, before she was certain every camper was in bed and the under-cover readers had been warned to put out their flashlights.

  She stared at Mrs. Ehrlich, who sensed danger in Rae’s silence and said quickly:

  ‘Of course I know you won’t. That goes without saying.’

  Oscar met Rae at the door. ‘Can I come with you? I’ve never been to Liberty at night.’

  ‘I wish you could. But there are five others I’ve promised already, so the car is full.’

  In her soft, consoling voice, Mrs. Ehrlich said: ‘Anyway, dear, they stay out until midnight. That’s too late for you.’

  Oscar glared at his mother and left the room. Rae watched him leave, noting his large behind and thinking that he could not squeeze into the backseat even if Mrs. Ehrlich had insisted they take him. Rae took the key from Mr. Ehrlich and thanked them both. She closed the screen door quietly behind her.

  Halfway up the line she met Muggs. Rae sighed and stopped to listen as Muggs complained about Cindy Maggio’s vulgarity in vivid detail, and about the defiled windowpane.

  ‘Oh my,’ sa
id Rae.

  ‘What will you do? That girl ought to be spanked and have her mouth washed out with soap.’

  ‘We’ll let her parents do that when she gets home.’

  ‘Oh, sure. I can just see that. Where do you think she gets it from?’

  ‘No idea. From them, do you mean? Well, maybe. Yes. Well, how is the search going?’

  ‘Found nothing.’

  ‘Lordy lord.’

  ‘I’ll keep looking.’

  ‘Good. Thank you.’

  Muggs saw the keys in Rae’s hand.

  ‘Going to Liberty tomorrow night?’

  ‘I think we might, yes.’

  ‘Would there be room for me?’

  ‘I wish there were, but five others have asked to go.’

  Muggs said nothing. The wings of her long, sad nose reddened. Rae’s heart melted.

  ‘But if you don’t mind driving, you can have my place. I’ve plenty to do here.’

  ‘No. No thank you. I really don’t want to go that much. Besides, I don’t drive.’

  Rae felt sorry for her, but relieved. The Hewitt College group—Hozzle, Will, Rae, Tori (a motherly freshman counselor), and Fritzie, the one favored outsider—traditionally spent one of their last nights of camp together in the village, toasting the prospect of payday. Mr. Ehrlich would distribute the checks at the station, thus ensuring that everyone’s contractual duty was fulfilled until the last moment. They would all drink to the end of eight weeks of arduous camper care, and to each other.

  At the steps of her bungalow, Rae tried to think of some way to make up to Muggs for her exclusion. Nothing occurred to her.

  ‘See you later,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Muggs and walked on. She thought about the unjust rule against counselors bringing their own cars to camp. Her navy-blue Marmon roadster, old but still elegant and serviceable, had been stored in the New York City garage on Eighth Street all summer. The car had been her dearest companion ever since her father had taught her to drive it on her sixteenth birthday.

  Having eaten an early supper in the Ehrlichs’ kitchen, a meal of leftovers from lunch, Grete went to her room. Ib was not there. She went down the hall to Carmen’s room. He was in his upper-deck bed reading the Police Gazette.

  ‘Did you see Ib?’

  ‘Not since morning. Why? Is the old goat missing?’

  ‘Not missing. But not in our room, where he usually goes to drink after the bakery.’

  ‘Any booze missing? Find it and you’ll probably find him.’

  Grete drew herself up. She resented other people’s referring to Ib’s drinking, regarding it as an insult, somehow, to her and to her union with him.

  ‘Not your business, dago.’

  ‘Then why ask me where he is?’ Carmen went back to his paper.

  Grete decided she would look no further. She went back to her room, thinking: ‘He is asleep somewhere, like always, whenever the ale comes over him. Let me hope, someday he falls asleep with his head in the big oven and I will be free.’

  She settled into the chair to read her book, Elements of Good Cooking. Grete had decided to go to a cooking school this winter. A good occupation, she thought, in this country of big appetites and much money. She was studying a recipe for chicken fricassee when Mr. Ehrlich knocked on the door and then opened it.

  ‘I have your check.’

  ‘Very good.’

  Mr. Ehrlich stood in the doorway and handed her a sealed envelope. Grete opened it, read the figures, and smiled at the director. After eight weeks she had earned two hundred and ninety dollars, more money than she had seen in one sum since last summer.

  ‘Thank you, sir. Very much.’

  ‘Don’t spend it all in one place,’ he said and laughed at the cleverness of his admonition. So inconceivable was the thought of doing such a thing that Grete stared at him, unable to understand what he was laughing at.

  Mr. Ehrlich held out another envelope.

  ‘This is for Ib. Where can I find him?’

  ‘He is away a minute. I will give it to him.’

  Mr. Ehrlich hesitated. Once he had overheard a nasty exchange between the two in the bakery. Embarrassed by what his reluctance might mean to Ib’s wife, he handed her the envelope.

  ‘Be sure to remember to give it to him.’

  Grete was indignant. ‘Of course, sir. Why would I not?’

  He could think of no reason. He nodded vaguely.

  ‘Goodbye, Grete. If I don’t see you tomorrow, thank you for all your good work. And thank Ib. I hope we will see you both next summer.’

  ‘Thank you, for these.’ She waved the two envelopes and granted him one of her rare, tight smiles.

  Mr. Ehrlich remained in the doorway. ‘Do you happen to know where Carmen is?’

  ‘In his room. There I saw him just now.’

  ‘Okay. Well, again, goodbye.’

  ‘Also.’

  Left alone, Grete opened the second envelope and saw it was for the same amount as hers. She rolled the two checks into a tight ball, put them into the crease between her breasts, and buried the envelopes in the trash basket. She intended to forge his signature, and deposit them both in her account: Ib would only squander his. She would tell him Mr. Ehrlich was sending their checks in the mail to the City.

  All summer long, Oscar’s secret sport had been spying on the seniors. They were all about his age and seemed to him to be uniformly beautiful. In the late afternoon of this day he saw them returning from their hike, looking overheated, as his mother always said when he was flushed. Still angry at his rejection by Rae, he decided to follow them up the line for a last look at their wonderful bodies. He took his usual path through the grass behind the bungalows, where, he thought, he could not be seen by anyone.

  He often looked into the rear windows to see the seniors in their baths. His penis stiffened and moved upward at the sight of their white bottoms and their black or gold triangles of hair in their crotches as they stooped to test the water and then stepped over the high side of the bathtub. He stood still, watching through the edge of the curtain until they came out, rosy from the heat of the water, their breasts like oranges, sometimes held in their hands, sometimes falling in lovely large circles on their chests.

  Some mornings (if he got up in time) he spent a satisfying hour behind the bungalows, taking up his peeping post when the girls were using the toilet. He watched them seated, enjoying, he could tell, the pleasant sensations of defecation. Everything about the camp he had hated—sullen foreign help, officious counselors, the nasty, suspicious doctor and the nastier nurse who gossiped to his mother, campers who called him Fatto behind his back and even, sometimes, to his face, the heavy, constant presence in his life of his parents—was compensated for by the wonders of these visions, by his chance to spy on the mysteries of the female sex he so desired to understand.

  Lying on her cot, staring out of the window behind her bed, Roslyn saw Oscar’s fat shape disappear behind the back of the bungalow. She had seen him there before and had a pretty clear idea of what he was doing. Waiting her turn for a bath, she thought he might look in to watch her when it was her turn.

  ‘So what? The jerk. He can look. I’m nothing to see, anyhow,’ she said to herself.

  Everyone in camp had saved one clean middy blouse and one pair of relatively unsoiled bloomers for tomorrow night’s banquet. Roslyn’s last blouse was creased but unspotted. She put on her blouse and then lay back on her cot, feeling very good because, wonder of wonders, there had been hot water left for her bath even after that hog Loo had her turn. She thought about the City, the wonderful, crowded, smelly-with-bus-exhaust City … maybe she would get a ticket next week to see that play Room Service at the Cort Theater that got a good review in the Times. Her mother had sent her a roll of newspapers containing the theater and financial sections of the Herald Tribune. Here, even though it bored her, she read about the effect on consumer purchases of the recent and terrible stock market collapse.
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  ‘Don’t I know,’ she said to herself. ‘Not even a decent tennis racket this year.’

  But there was still the theater. ‘Maybe I’ll get a standing-room ticket over Labor Day. Most New Yorkers will be in Connecticut or at Jones Beach. The theaters won’t be crowded.’ She had read that Gertrude Lawrence was opening in September in a Noel Coward play. Roslyn’s need to be always the star of all the activities in her own life had fallen off inexplicably. Now she worshiped the stardom of others, especially people on the stage. Gertrude Lawrence! She had read that Noel Coward was acting in it too.

  In the winter of the Crash, when her days had taken on a Brooklyn grayness, and when she had the requisite two nickels for round-trip fare, she would leave school at noon on Wednesday, matinee day, without permission, ride the subway to Times Square, and look about for a theater, any theater, with a large first-act crowd on the sidewalk under its marquee. Often she was able to get into the theater with patrons returning from their smokes. She stood at the rear of the orchestra behind the last seats, or found an empty seat as the lights went down, and watched the rest of the play.

  School seemed far away, seven or eight days, she thought. Meanwhile there were a few good things to go home to: the wonderful, palatial movie houses that she loved, her bicycle, the Automat, WQXR on the radio, the public library, and the Capehart phonograph which had somehow survived the things her family had sold after the Crash (like the De Soto) and their awful exile to Brooklyn.

  Her heart sank when she remembered the problem of having no place to keep her records, housed as they were in their ‘unsightly’ brown albums (her mother’s word for them), and the loss of Central Park and Riverside Drive to ride in. Now her beloved bicycle could take her only through Prospect Park, she thought, that flat, barren stretch of grass and trees not even near a river, and what was worse, full of lounging hobos.

  But first she had to get through the next night’s banquet in her wrinkled blouse, spotted green tie, and torn sneakers. Half awake, Roslyn foresaw it all, a fantasy re-created on what she remembered from two years ago: