The hall to the left, just before the office of the admin is the conference table I shall probably have to sit at. Everyone will sit around. The prisoner will be brought before. A protective smear of glass will cloud the grain. A thin strip of duct tape will no doubt be still holding together a crack sustained quite long ago by Professors Emphasis and Anger. A voice said: Please come in. Joey wasn’t ready yet. Joseph realized that his figure could be seen through the door’s tortured window. Professor Skizzen recognized the voice. A bit stiff, it nevertheless flew through the transom. It was Palfrey’s all right, but not limp or liquid as it usually was. It was in a cast as if protecting something broken.
44
Well now, is everybody here? Dean Funk?
My God, Skizzen thought. He is calling the roll. Professor Carson?
Skizzen had entered the room with a face as frozen as custard, which meant that at any moment his nose might decide to slide toward his chin. The room was somber because the window blinds were half drawn, and shadowy because light was leaking in above the shade rolls.
Miss Hazlet.
Here. Her voice was bright and slightly metallic, as though it had been made by machine. She would be in bliss right now. She never did order that two-volume life of Berlioz. Or the Liszt Letters either.
Professor Rinse? Palfrey looked over the top of his glasses at Rinse who faced him across the table. Mort drew a tiny smile, swiftly erased it.
Professor Skizzen?
Skizzen congratulated himself on managing an almost imperceptible nod. However Palfrey didn’t look in his direction, a bad sign. Skizzen now saw that in front of all the others, who had arrived here before him (another bad sign), stood a Styrofoam cup, a small pad, and a pencil. Skizzen had not been offered either cup or pad or shorty-sized pencil (a bad sign). These utensils all stayed untouched in their place. A bad sign. He entwined his fingers.
And not least, Professor Smullion.
Why “and not least” for him? Had Smullion published another Biology for Babies book?
[……] I thereby declare this meeting of the Whittlebauer Ethics Committee to be in session. Palfrey had a manila folder that he now opened. Miss Hazlet, would you do the committee the favor of keeping its notes?
I shall be happy to, Miss Hazlet responded, but she gave her paper tablet a skeptical look.
Well you can record that our members are all present and prompt. Miss Hazlet wore a blouse covered with small green (leaping, were they?) leaflike abstractions. Her fingers scrambled for the pencil and the pad.
President Palfrey let his eyes rove, assuming the domination of the room. When this committee meets, he said, it is always a most serious occasion, since, here at Whittlebauer, ethical problems rarely arise. We have our by-laws for most issues firmly in place so that normally we have but to consult them. [……] We have, however, in my tenure here, and as well as my memory serves, never had a case like this one, and that is something we can be grateful for and proud of. When we hire new faculty our procedures are thorough and severe. Each of you, at some point in the past, has undergone them.
What about … Professor Skizzen thought, while watching Palfrey like a mouse a hawk. He once more observed that Miss Hazlet had a blouse bearing leaflike figures (on the run?). This wasn’t tracking Palfrey as a mouse does a hawk. Run, that’s what a mouse would do. Find a slice of light beneath a door and vanish with the light when the light fled.
It seems, however, that, concerning the situation before us, there has been a slipup, an instance in which we, needing help in an area, failed to meet our standards of scrutiny and care. Now this imbroglio is the result.
“Kit” Carson cleared his throat as if he were preparing to speak, but, of course, he wasn’t.
We can take our mistake to heart and learn. That’s what the college is for, isn’t it? Palfrey laughed rather openly, not, as was his custom, with one hand held girlishly in front of his face. We thought we had found what seemed to be a simple, very handy, solution. Instead we let our standards slip. So now we must decide what to do.
Smullion looked perplexed. So he wasn’t in on it. Smullion had a suspiciously fancy CV, himself.
Dean Funk opened a dossier. The color for dossiers was green. Where had that file folder come from? He hadn’t had it a moment ago. The color was an exact match for those things on Hazlet’s blouse. Now there were two folders on the table. Not a good sign. [……] The issue, in brief, is this: we hired to teach our students a man who provided us with an educational history that has proved false. We have it from Ames that no such person ever received any degrees from Iowa State let alone a doctorate. He was never even enrolled.
Good heavens, Skizzen thought, what does this have to do with him? Iowa State? Who was Ames? A secret informer? Or a city of some sort?
We felt we needed to offer geography. Kit Carson had intervened. We felt that without geography our seniors should not be released into the world. Fast trains, the superhighway, the airplane, have ruined geography. My students, Carson said, wouldn’t know where Ames was. For them, distance is minutes in the car or hours on the plane. Where is Belgrade, where is Vienna, where is Ames? They are next to their airport—two, six, seven hours from here.
Ah, now we are getting round to it. Vienna. Sneaky. Skizzen didn’t have a cup. Hazlet had picked hers up, but all of the cups were empty. Empty. What in the world?
So for them, the world is flat—car, plane, train, flat—Smullion said, not round, but flat, like the map says in the glove compartment.
We used to have a good softball team, but intramural play is too costly. We were supposed to play Rochester. As if it were another frat house, you know, next door. Mort’s pencil had been pressed, point first, through the side of his Styrofoam. Now he slowly removed it.
Had he a cup, he would have begun to crimp its rim. But no cup had been set for Skizzen. Not a good sign.
“Geography” doesn’t mean geography anymore, Carson said. It’s all about the cultural atmosphere of a place—who it is, not where. Its classes used to teach climate; they used to teach soil; they figured addresses—lat. & long.—for entire countries, on a ball made for soccer. Now the geographer doesn’t much care where rivers go or even what sort of boat sails on them. A barge of coal, salt, or ore. It cares, maybe, about how and when our rivers turned into canals, how they were made to behave—commit no floods in future. Oh, and they are interested in the people or organizations that profited from the traffic or who grew money from the former marsh that now sports corn.
Smullion wondered whether the committee was supposed to be deciding what geography ought to be.
I can tell you: it’s all about the anthropology of places, not the place of a place; not raindrop amounts but the numbers of men those drops wet. Once “location, location” referred to sunlight and water, elevation and soil, now it means subways, saloons, and schools. A verdant valley has no place until we turn it into a colony. What counts: whose colony is it, who lives there, how many miles of suburb can it boast?
So Carson, the way he was carrying on, must have been appointed to that hiring committee, Skizzen thought. But what was this all about? Flood control? That wouldn’t be a problem for Woodbine, Urichstown maybe. Ah … that’s it … that far back …
Clearly, President Palfrey said, we have someone in Professor Carson who could do the job, but he has kept his light buried beneath the basket. The president’s tone suggested that it was a little late for the history department to step in. But what happens now, when we have a fraud in the stirrups … I should say a fake in the firehouse … a cheat in the chapel … that’s it, a cheat in the chapel.
What did he do, exactly? Brave Mort asked this question.
He misrepresented his qualifications. Wildly.
Who?
Hursthouse, of course. Who else does geography?
Do we do geography?
Part-time.
Why would he want to teach geography part-time?
To wear the h
onorable colors of the school.
You joke. What a courageous fellow Mort was, Professor Skizzen decided.
Not for a moment. It is an honor, I say, to teach here. Don’t you think it is an honor?
He owns the furniture store.
That’s somebody named Leonard.
Hursthouse bought him out.
The fat guy?
Why would we hire someone so heavy he has to have help getting around?
We are an equal opportunity employer.
You are thinking about the shoe store.
Part-time is hardly opportunity.
What about the shoe store?
How long has he been on the mound?
What?
Pitch—teaching. When did he start?
Three years ago. Three years of shame. On us.
All we can do is fire him.
That damned newspaper will love this.
All the Styrofoam cups had been damaged beyond use by this time, Skizzen noticed. He’d never have one of his own. You could draw on the side with your fingernail. His blood was slowly returning to him. What a dastardly deed, he said amid the hubbub. Skizzen trusted no one, and nothing is what he should have said.
We look bad, whatever we do.
Wait a minute. The term isn’t over yet. How many are enrolled?
Four. The dean seemed flustered.
Four? Is that all? Four? Palfrey shook his wattles. I was told the course would draw dozens.
It did a bit better at the beginning.
In that case, just wait until the semester ends and tell him you have to close down the class because of too few funds, Miss Hazlet said. She seemed quite sure of herself. He won’t know he’s been found out; he’s not likely to complain; nothing scandalous has occurred; no breach of our hiring rules has been broken; the fat caucus can’t complain. A lack of students … a lack of students is a legitimate excuse. Even a tenured person can be got rid of without fuss if you eliminate their subject. And there won’t be any story.
I don’t know, Joey heard himself saying, despite his silent vow. I think we should throw the book at him, set an example, use this bad situation to reaffirm our principles, and advertise them. This guy took advantage of our goodwill—society’s, too. Who knows what guff he has been stuffing in the students’ ears. He probably doesn’t know where Ames is.
Well, there is something in what you say … Palfrey paused. [……]
Whittlebauer exposes a mountebank. That doesn’t make for an embarrassing story.
It’s still pretty hard to explain.
It might hurt his furniture business.
I was hoping he would be of assistance with our town/gown relations. And there are members of our board who thought we ought to have geography. Palfry released an unhealthy sigh.
What kind of documents did this man profess to have? It might be worthwhile taking a look at his application.
Skizzen believed that Smullion knew exactly what he was suggesting.
No need, no time, for that. It was, I assure you, in apple-pie order. Palfrey put his palm down on the papers before him. His entire weight assisted in the gesture. It fairly flattened his cup.
Who cares about his furniture business? Would you want to buy a sofa from a guy who pretended to have approval from … what was it? … Ames? There Skizzen was, participating again, inviting scrutiny. He tried to chastise himself but even the spears of fear that struck him intermittently did the trick. Like … like Saint … Saint Sebastian … A vow of silence, made silently, is not worth a librarian’s psst. Could this be the trial of someone else?
President Palfrey, Hazel Hazlet said, addressing the president directly, in forming this present committee, its balance must have slipped your mind. There are two people from music. Isn’t that a bit many for such a small group—if they are to represent the entire faculty I mean.
I formed the committee, Dean Funk said with some asperity. I deemed it a good one. After all, I appointed you to it, and you aren’t even a member of the faculty.
I might only say, Professor Smullion said, that any order an apple pie has, is not likely to be found in nature.
I chose the image because it is American. Do you, sir, have something against that? The president pushed his little pad and little pencil into the center of the table, pocketed the sorry remains of his cup, and rose. I have now been properly advised by the Ethics Committee, and I shall proceed as it has recommended.
No one asked what that was.
The president shouldered his way from the room, followed by the dean who, at this moment, did not appear to have any.
Mort said to Skizz: Boy, do I feel foolish. I was afraid I was going to be in the dock for something I did with one of our secs. A transgression just coming to light, a kind of bolt from the past. Pretty dumb, I guess.
That’s what happens when you carry around a guilty conscience. Even without reason, mind you.
Kit Carson said, to no one in particular: I thought Palfrey was going to carve me up. I was on the committee who let this guy perform his sleight of hand. He used his size like a chef with bacon. Mine was the only no vote. There was pressure on Palfrey from someone—maybe on the board or a rich alumnus—to hire this tub. Well, that’s over. What is a no vote worth around here?
Hazel sat inside her blouse. Her leaves were of the stillness one sees before storms.
Smullion was from science. He merely smiled.
And Skizzen made every elation wait till, out on the quad, he let his relief expire the way a champagne fizzes some delighted skips ahead of its wine.
45
Joey’s joy swept him up, bore him home, returned him to the nursery … the nursery he might have longed to have if he’d ever had one … A line that lived in the nursery—“Here we go round the mulberry bush”—took up an orbit about his thoughts as tunes do, penning them in the way he wanted his students to corral names for memory purposes. Mussorgsky! Ravel! Koussevitzky! But Joey had had his struggle with an obsessive sentence, and he didn’t want another tussle. He determined to play a few good old stompers, and that way drive the nonsensical strain out of hearing. He rushed about the house hunting for the place he had put Songs That Never Grow Old so he could claim the area as his territory, the way space was staked when he and Miriam, awed by the vast emptiness of the house, began playing the territorial game. He found the book resting tableside a single bed in what must have been a servant’s quarter. Then he thought: would a farmer, retiring from the fields to a tiny town, have servants? Weren’t they an urban vice? In any case, why had he wanted to mark this spot? What did former occupants store up here? If this was to be a gold claim, it looked a washout. When he gave its back a negligent push, an awkward rocker, which had come with the house, squeaked like a frightened mouse. Ah-ha. Miriam was contesting him. He saw, on a windowsill, utterly out of place, an empty clay pot sitting in sundust. “The further into the self I go, the less and less of the self I know.” What was that from?
“Never grow too old to dream …” Joey seldom sang, but his voice sounded loud and harsh in this unpleasant room. There were no panels of animal-covered paper on the walls—leaping eagles or soaring deer—no sheep, chalets, no interlacing ivy, to entice anyone to hum an old favorite or prance to a frolicsome “here-we-go” romparound. He would remove his book and cede the territory. The dining room with its many wide windows was the real nursery in the house, and there Miriam tolerated ogling only if it was directed at the plants. Large cookie-deep trays of moist peat covered in Cling-Along crowded up against the windowpanes and soon made their own atmosphere, droplets clinging to the inside of the wrap the way water is drawn to plastic. At first the soil refused to stir. He could never catch a thrusting spear. One morning, the seedlings would suddenly appear, thin-stemmed, tiny, pale green against the dark dirt, a nub of leaf beginning, imperceptibly, to unfold. His fingers were too fat to work the rows. Miriam would warn him every time that these seeds had been scattered, not planted in lines; wh
ich left each barren patch still a possibility or an empty chamber. Chance was Lord. Why was that spot unwelcoming, Joey would ask. Wait and see … delicately … it may come … wait and see. Maybe a blade will be drawn. Who knows about those fickle primula …? A few more pushes, as the nurses always say, and perhaps we can persuade a nasturtium stem to show. But don’t play lullabies for these babies. They get no sleep. They have to come up for air. They have to leave their sheath. For them this dirt is deep.
As he raised the book toward eyes that now needed a little help, it came open upon a piano score for “Good-Night, Ladies.” From that opening a scrap of paper slid its yellowing self onto the tight coverlet. Upon this single leaf was carefully inked what appeared to be a poem. Joey felt an immediate pang of recognition. He immediately denied it. He had not written these verses, nor, out of embarrassment or shyness, stuffed them away in this harmless old compendium … had he? He had never rested his eyes upon such a neat and centered sheet. Of course, in the past, he had picked about in this ancient volume like a hungry bird, without care or method, only curiosity and need. Then he wanted to know where Miss Gwynne Withers’s recital choices were. The book classified its contents for easier use under headings like HOME SONGS, LOVE SONGS, HYMNS AND SACRED SONGS. “Good-Night, Ladies” was called a College Song. Which meant it went with beer. On the folded paper, already turning color at the crease, there was a college song indeed, to be sung to the tune of “This is the way we wash our clothes …” It was titled “The Faculty Meeting.”
Admittedly, something about the paper was familiar. But the lines were too orderly for Skizzen unless he was copying a final draft onto a clean sheet. The paper was a bit brittle. Cheap. He did borrow the school’s stock. But only occasionally. The Major had warned him how readers left all sorts of things between the pages of their books. She said: Shake them. Hold them upside down and shake. A toothpick may fall out. This book, though, had an already shaken spine. Had someone hid a message or simply marked a place with whatever was handy?
Middle C Page 47
