Absolutely every member of the class swivelled to observe the back row, up in the gods, where the tall student seemed almost to butt his head against the ceiling.
‘You have touched the nerve centre of the issue,’ the professor said. ‘Intentions are liberal, I think we all believe that. We all ascribe to that. And yet this overwhelmingly white class, without exception, is looking at you as though you had huge batwings and were covered in scales.’
‘I’m glad you noticed that, sir,’ the black student said. ‘Your honesty is very refreshing. I’m from Atlanta, Morehouse College, a black college as you are all well aware. In Georgia, we’re never in any doubt about our status. White folks don’t like black folks and they’ll tell you straight to your face. They’ll keep us out of white colleges if they can. When they can’t, when it takes federal troops to get us enrolled, they’ll do their best to make us regret being uppity. Here everyone at Summer School makes nice, but with the whole class still staring up at me I can hear what they’re thinking. Oh, he can talk! Oh, he can think!’
The only other black student in the class, several rows further forward, now felt empowered to speak up. ‘White students are polite to me on campus,’ he said, ‘but not off campus. In the subway, they look the other way. It’s Harvard and privilege, not me, that gets the respect.’
‘I cannot dispute that,’ the professor said. ‘The problem is – and this problem is the gorilla in the room – the problem is that knowledge itself is never innocent. It expresses the interests of those who own it and make you pay for it. Harvard, for instance. The fact that we have only two black students in this class, for instance. Your professors, for instance. Me, for instance. I have tenure. I can risk speaking out. Think about it. Argue about it. May it cause you insomniac nights for the next seven weeks and many hours of arguments in the watering holes of Harvard Square.’
‘Want to join us for lunch?’ Lilith asked.
‘Depends,’ Rumpelstiltskin said. ‘Depends on McVie here. Are we in a state of war or a state of truce?’
‘As the professor said, Knowledge itself is never innocent,’ McVie responded. ‘It expresses the interests of those who own it. I’m more than willing to discuss that.’ He looked Rumpelstiltskin in the eye. ‘You’re an arrogant asshole with a razor-blade mind. I want to hear you on knowledge and power. And on “romantic agrarianism”.’
‘That hit home, didn’t it? I could see you were stung.’
‘Whose book were you parroting?’
Rumpelstiltskin smiled like a cat gentling the mouse between its paws. ‘We can discuss this all afternoon.’
‘No we can’t,’ McVie said. ‘I’ve got an afternoon course.’
‘Ah.’ Rumpelstiltskin seemed to stretch out comfortably into a notional space. ‘Lilith,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re free for the whole afternoon. To extend the discussion, I mean.’
‘Afraid not. I have an internship at the Fogg. I’m due there from two until five.’
‘Damn. I’ve struck out. I’m desolate. But I know the perfect place for a quick lunch and political fistfight. And we’ll just have to meet there again at six to continue debate. It’s a basement pub on Dunster Street. I hope that won’t be stooping too low for you, McVie?’
All three were seated on high bar stools watching the feet that passed the basement windows of the Dunster Street pub.
‘So, McTolstoy, why do I have the feeling I’ve seen you before?’ Rumpelstiltskin asked.
‘I have no idea,’ McVie said. ‘I know I’ve never seen you before today. Different worlds.’
‘Is your name really McVie?’
‘Is yours really Rumpelstiltskin?’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘Somerville, Mass. Boston Irish. I work as a butcher.’
‘Why do I find that unlikely?’ Rumpelstiltskin demanded.
‘Perhaps because you have a very ignorant notion of the Boston Irish and of butchers. To quote our black fellow student, Oh, he talks, he can think! I’m not the only butcher to get into Harvard. What about you?’
‘Oh, I’m from all over. Father in the military, always on the move. What are your views on Vietnam?’
‘What are you? CIA?’
‘Hah! Just curious, given we are taking the same course. I’m assuming we both think Vietnam was a mistake. First Kennedy’s mistake and now Johnson’s. You can take it from me I’m against the draft.’
‘I don’t know if it was a mistake or not,’ McVie said. ‘But I do know the burden is not equally shared, and nor are the deaths, but they should be.’
‘In that case, why don’t you enlist?’
‘I’ve been asking myself that same question. Why don’t you?’
‘For sound historical reasons,’ Rumpelstiltskin said. ‘Allow me to cite the Hundred Flowers Rebellion, 1956, Mao Tse-Tung spouting classical Qin dynasty precepts, Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought contend. You have to hand it to Mao, he was a genius, a devious and diabolically clever Machiavelli, Asian version. Understood the Mandarin intelligentsia and their soft Achilles heel. So he invites them, welcomes them, bowing low and sounding the gongs. Come to the banquet prepared in your honour. Share your critical views of the party regime. And they did, poor suckers, after which he promptly shovelled them off by the thousands to labour camps. I have enticed the snakes out of their caves, he said. And that’s why I won’t enlist, and nor should you. There are better uses for people with brains than having their brains blown out by the Viet Cong.’
‘A provocative argument,’ McVie admitted. ‘I need to think about my answer.’
Lilith was studying Rumpelstiltskin’s hands. They had a life of their own, the fingers playing silent jazz perhaps, touching flatware, balancing a teaspoon on one thumb. His eyes, however, did not shift focus and she herself was the scrutinised object. She sensed this and refused to acknowledge the fact until she observed an awkward self-consciousness in his fingers. They stilled themselves. The watcher realised he was being watched, being monitored closely. Only then did she raise her eyes to meet his. She returned his stare levelly. She would not blink. This seemed to excite him. She could see the slow lazy curve of his smile, a shark’s smile.
‘You have an encyclopaedic range of knowledge,’ she said. ‘It’s quite impressive.’
‘I read avidly,’ he shrugged. ‘Anything that takes my fancy, really, and a wide range of subjects do take my fancy. Also, pure genetic good luck; I happen to have a photographic memory.’ He leaned towards her in a way that implied established intimacy. ‘I’m attracted to others who read a lot and think in unconventional ways.’ His hand brushed hers and Lilith leaned slightly away. ‘Like McTolstoy here. I want to hear more of his views on equitable combat deaths and on wider democratic enlistment.’
Lilith telegraphed caution to McVie. He thinks he has enticed the snakes out of their caves, her eyes warned.
‘So, McTolstoy, how about some mental chess on the pros and cons of the draft?’
‘I’ll take you on, but not right now. I have to get to my afternoon class.’ McVie kissed Lilith on the lips and gathered up his green bag and books. ‘I’m not sure where you stand, Mr Rumpelstiltskin, or even if you know or care where you stand, or if you just like holding court and playing games, but even so you are a formidable thinker and worth a duel.’
‘What’s his afternoon class?’ Rumpelstiltskin asked Lilith.
‘St Augustine, the Just War and Liberation Theology.’
‘Jesus! The Latin American guerrilla priests, Hélder Câmara and all that? A genuine imitation Tolstoy!’
‘You’re well informed on Latin America. Are you an imitation cynic or a real one?’ Lilith wanted to know.
‘Hey, Lucifer!’ someone called. Two young men, beer tankards in hand, stopped by. ‘Saw you in class today,’ one of them said to Lilith. ‘Watch out for Lucifer here. He’s slippery. Some of us think he’s CIA.’
‘Nah. Thinks he’s Don Juan,’ the oth
er student warned. ‘Keeps notches on his bedpost. Watch that he doesn’t slip something into your drink.’
Rumpelstiltskin waved them off. ‘I hope you two don’t have an afternoon class. You’re drunk already. Shoo!’ To Lilith he said, ‘Private game. We swore to augment each other’s sexual reputation. Means nothing, alas.’ He summoned the bartender. ‘Don’t serve them again. They’ve had enough.’
‘So,’ Lilith said. ‘Your name is Lucifer. It suits you. You owe me dinner at the Ritz but I’m not interested in claiming the prize.’
‘Lucifer’s not my real name. Just my nom de guerre. I’ve got a small business on the side to pay for grad school and I run my business under that name.’
‘McVie and I don’t usually socialise with business types. But if their minds are sufficiently interesting, we make exceptions.’
‘Ah. So I have a sufficiently interesting mind.’
‘Let’s just say you make the first cut. You get to try out.’
When Lilith left the pub on Dunster Street and entered the courtyard of the Fogg Art Museum off Harvard Yard, she passed under the elaborate carved architrave on Quincy Street and stepped back four centuries in time. She entered hush. She entered an Italian Renaissance courtyard with travertine arches, replica of the facade of a sixteenth-century church in Montepulciano. She might have been entering the central court of a Tuscan palazzo. She could imagine Baldassare Castiglioni himself stepping out of a gallery, out of one of the galleries, The Book of the Courtier under his arm. Nothing of the din of Harvard Square traffic could be heard. The Fogg was a wonder.
Lilith paused in front of the polychrome wooden statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, twelfth century, in the courtyard. The Virgin was missing one forearm and one foot and much of the blue of her gown had faded or peeled away, but her gilded coronet was in place and her face was still flesh-toned and gentle, her eyes sad. This was not the Virgin with squirming infant but a mother whose son had been taken and brutally killed.
Lilith inclined her head and touched in respect the iron rod where a left foot had once been attached. She was due to report to the curator’s office for the kind of drudge work required of an intern, but first she had to yield to temptation and give herself to Poussin’s The Holy Family, early seventeenth century, French. This was a compulsion. This was why she would have been happy to kiss the feet of Mrs Cabot, who had arranged the magical connection with the Fogg.
If you gaze at Poussin too long, Lilith thought, you could drown in primary colour, especially his yellows and his reds.
‘He painted for Richelieu and the Pope and the Barberini,’ someone said. His lips were touching her ear. ‘What does that tell you?’
‘Are you stalking me, Lucifer?’ Lilith asked, startled.
‘What do his patrons tell you about the sociology of power?’
Lilith stared at the painting again. ‘I would say that colour mattered more to him than politics. But of course you are right. Knowledge is never innocent and nor is art. Painters paint what their patrons pay them for. What are you doing here?’
‘I followed you.’
‘I don’t like to be tailed. What are you? Who are you? Are you CIA? Did your friends hit the nail on the head?’
‘I’m afraid my two drunken friends were nearer the mark when they mentioned Don Juan but I’m impeccably well behaved on all occasions, a consummate gentleman, strict Southern training. You won’t ever have to fear unwanted advances. I’m a true romantic. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O! that I were a glove upon that hand.’
‘Oh please!’ Lilith said.
‘You look superb when you’re angry.’
‘If you ever follow me again, you can forget lunches or dinners or anything else on Dunster Street.’
‘I thought I made the first cut on account of my interesting mind.’
‘You did. But you just got dropped.’
‘I’ll back off,’ Lucifer said. ‘I promise. Just don’t cut me from the tryouts. It would break my heart.’
Lilith said scornfully, ‘A lot of people have to live with broken hearts.’
Lilith’s internship duties were somewhat less thrilling than she had hoped, though she was nevertheless profoundly grateful to be able to linger in the courtyard every day and to sit and be absorbed by the colours of Poussin. Her duties involved mailing letters to potential donors, answering mail from existing donors and members, sending out press releases, coordinating with other Harvard fundraising activities, sending out brochures of upcoming exhibitions to alumni, typing, checking files, licking stamps. That was the dull mechanical part. On the other hand, she was required to keep up with any new scholarly findings on the provenance of the permanent collection. That was pure enjoyment. That was when Lucifer’s comment about Cardinal Richelieu as one of Poussin’s patrons sparked a research route. That was how she discovered that Richelieu had tastes that were less than devout. In 1635, when Poussin had already ensconced himself in Rome, he was summoned back to Paris by the French king’s cardinal to paint a series of scenes devoted to Bacchus, Pan and Silenus. These were not for Notre Dame or the king or the Louvre. They were for Richelieu’s private chateau in Poitou. The paintings were bawdy. They were high-class porn, as dense with naked bodies and breasts and thighs and buttocks as with Poussin’s gorgeous reds and yellows and cobalt blues.
‘Simon!’ Lilith was in the Fogg, lost in Poussin. ‘Do you have to shock me like this?’
‘Only way I can be sure you won’t disappear before I track you down. How come you’ve been avoiding me since you moved up here from New York?’
‘I haven’t been avoiding you. There’s been no time. I have a class, I have library time, I have this internship, I have another internship at the MFA.’
‘Not convincing. Why haven’t you called? Has this got something to do with Vanderbilt?’
‘Sort of. We’re taking the same course so we work on assignments together.’
‘And then there’s the fact,’ Cabot said, ‘that apparently you are no longer Lilith Goldberg. Don’t you think some explanation is in order?’
‘Yes,’ Lilith said. ‘It is. I’ve behaved badly. I should have called you. The Goldbergs are my adoptive parents. With their blessing, I’ve reverted to my French name. Not sure your family will find a Catholic any less disturbing than a Jew.’
‘My parents don’t care what you are but they do care about you. And about us. You could move into my apartment, you know. I want you to.’
‘That’s … that’s a lovely invitation, Simon.’
‘But?’
‘Hard to explain to someone who’s generations deep in belonging. Moving in, moving out, changing worlds … it takes more energy than you could know.’ How was it possible to explain? From gardener’s cottage to chateau, from France to New York, from New York to Boston, from Jesuit tutor and convent and nuns to NYU and Harvard … ‘I feel I need time to settle in.’
‘At least I know I’ll always be able to find you here,’ Cabot said. ‘What’s the painting you’ve been staring at?’
‘Poussin’s Holy Family. Isn’t it amazing?’
‘Hmm. If you say so. What am I supposed to be seeing?’
‘Look at the incredible red of the Virgin’s gown. A century earlier, and he could have been burned at the stake for that colour. The Virgin as scarlet woman? Colour was everything to Poussin. Pigment was God, God was in paint.’
‘Actually,’ Cabot said, ‘if God exists, he exists as an elegant equation. I’m going to require my mother to send a formal written dinner invitation to you and Vanderbilt both. As long as he’s there too, he can’t get jealous. You can discuss God and Poussin with my parents. They’ll love it.’
14.
The day was full of light and lilacs and Cap brushed the soft-petalled cones with her fingers as she passed. The bushes were heavy with the pale purple fragrance that tossed itself across garden walls. Summer in Cambridge was glorious and she expected the afternoon’s mass march to Fe
nway Park to be as festive as revelries at village weddings in St Gilles. Perhaps dancing would break out. Perhaps the police would accept flowers in their lapels. The sun was shining, the war would end, swords would be beaten into ploughshares. It was the dawning of the age of enlightenment.
‘I feel so happy to be alive,’ she told Ti-Loup exuberantly, and then checked herself. It seemed to her that Ti-Loup carried McVie on his back like a dark weight that he could not set down. He moved inside a rain cloud that would not lift. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That was flippant. But we are marching for him. For McVie. In memoriam. And for his younger brothers. We can go direct to the Common from class.’
Ti-Loup kept his eyes on the sidewalk. ‘I won’t be in class today.’
‘What? Why not?’
‘Tutoring. For Brother Damian.’
Cap placed her hand on his arm. ‘You’re not dropping the course, are you?’
‘No. Just have a conflict for this morning.’
‘So can we meet after? The gathering point is Cambridge Common.’
‘I’m not sure I’ll go on the march.’
‘Why not?’
‘There’ll be police barricades. Television cameras. I don’t want to show up on the evening news.’
‘What does it matter? We’ll be two little dots in the crowd.’
‘Not if they zoom in for close-ups. I don’t want to have to deal with my father’s disdain and outrage. Or with my mother’s sense of being shamed.’
‘Why would you have to deal with it when you refuse even to see either one?’
‘I’d know what they were thinking.’
Cap was startled. On some level, she thought, he is still the boy from the chateau (fearful) and the boy from Dryden (a snob). Certain social codes still constrain him. She said tartly: ‘You mean you can’t see yourself as part of the huddled masses. It’s not something a Vanderbilt or a Dryden grad would do.’
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