Passion Play

by W. Edward Blain

  That sounded good to Warden. He had to respect Farnham for knowing his stuff. Here was Farnham, twenty-five years old and with less than three years of experience, giving advice to the chairman of the department. If only he didn’t wear that ridiculous little mustache. Groucho Marx had more hair in one eyebrow.

  Warden had hired Farnham last year on the strength of his resume and the quality of his instruction, which Warden had seen firsthand when Farnham had taught a sample class as a part of his interview. The man was good, and he should have been, having graduated from a strong prep school in Chattanooga, finished high in his class at Bowdoin, completed a master’s in one year at Duke, and taught for two years at the Spring Hill Day School in Montgomery. Yet Warden had a hard time warming up to Farnham. The fellow was always trying too hard to be perfect. Warden suspected that he suffered from a sense of inferiority over his lack of height; Warden, at 6'2", was eight inches taller. Farnham compensated for his shortness by lifting weights and jogging and playing squash and even basketball. He had requested an apartment in the gym, and Dr. Lane had obliged him. There was no arguing Farnham’s fitness. At a party for the faculty last fall, Warden had seen him win a bet by bare-handedly twisting a soup can into a shape like a bow tie.

  There was no question of his competence in the classroom or outside it, either. His students complained that he was tough; Warden liked that. Better to be too tough than to pander to students’ taste the way that new biology teacher, Carella, did. Farnham was professional enough to know that he wasn’t here to pal around with the students, but to guide them. His work in the theater was impressive, too. Last fall, with nearly every student who could breathe already signed up for one of the football teams, Farnham produced a clever pair of one-acts by Chekhov.

  It bothered Warden that he couldn’t like Farnham better. Farnham was reliable, intelligent, talented, good for the department and for the school. Warden knew enough about psychology to realize that what he found distasteful in others was probably a mirror of his own weaknesses. And Warden himself was susceptible to feelings of inferiority, a physical inferiority with which he had been born, this red patch on his face, but also an academic inferiority, the result of his having grown up just down the road in Charlottesville, attending Montpelier School, and then earning a B.A. from the University of the South. He had no master’s degree himself. Even as a publishing poet, he could not get away from his disdain at his own flimsy academic pedigree. When Cynthia had announced her intention to go on for a doctorate, he had been pleased, of course, but he had also recognized a slight dismay that his wife would have a degree so much higher than his own.

  He picked up a paper clip and began to straighten it. As Farnham talked about his approach to Othello, Warden wondered what he found so threatening about this earnest young man. Was it his job? Farnham was ambitious. He would make a good department head someday, Warden suspected; he was organized where Warden was haphazard, punctual where Warden was likely to forget entirely about a meeting he’d called himself. Or was it Cynthia, for whom Warden sensed Farnham had a powerful attraction? His job and his wife. How about your money or your life, Warden asked himself. He found his own behavior ridiculous.

  “You disagree?” said Farnham.

  “Not at all,” said Warden. Farnham had been talking about what, the appearance versus reality motif?

  “It’s just that you started looking disgusted.”

  Warden was embarrassed. “Not with you. I was distracted.”

  “About Cynthia? Sorry she’s ill. I was quite upset when I heard,” said Farnham.

  Warden assumed Farnham had heard from Sam Kaufman, who somehow had got wind of the news and had alarmed everyone on the campus. “We’re still hoping it’s a trivial illness,” said Warden.

  They spent a few minutes talking about the typical Elizabethan image of a Moor: lascivious, passionate, dangerous. Warden hadn’t taught Othello for years, and he’d never approached it as a play about stereotypes. But there it was: Othello defies the audience’s expectations at the beginning of the play, then confirms them when he becomes the excitable and lusty African, then recovers his dignity at the end.

  “That whole motif of expectation versus actuality runs through the whole play,” said Farnham. “We’ve got honest Iago, who turns out to be dishonest in the extreme, and Othello the Moor, who turns out to be noble, and then we’ve got the added problem of Desdemona, who turns out to be exactly what she appears to be—chaste and virtuous. Shakespeare plays around so much with his audience’s expectations that he makes it easier for us to believe Iago’s duping of Othello with a handkerchief.”

  Farnham was warmed up, and he went on. Warden found himself drifting back to Cynthia, who was so damned stubborn about insisting that he carry on with his normal routine. He should be with her now. She was having a spinal tap this morning, then X-rays and a myelogram.

  “Mr. Warden?” The voice came from the doorway. It was his advisee, Thomas Boatwright. “I was wondering if you were busy.”

  “Of course I’m busy,” said Warden. That was so typical of these boys, to interrupt an essential conference and then plead ignorance. “Mr. Farnham and I are talking.”

  “Sorry,” said Boatwright. “I just had something on my mind.”

  Terrific. It always transpired this way; when he was most pressed for time, the most interruptions occurred. Warden did not want to be a counselor this morning. He did not want to be a teacher. He wanted to flee: to exit the office, jump into his car, drive to Charlottesville, or perhaps elsewhere.

  “Wait outside,” said Warden.

  “That’s all right, Thomas,” said Farnham. “I can leave.”

  “Why should you leave?” said Warden. “Let him wait.”

  “I ought to be inspecting the dormitories anyway,” said Farnham. “We’ve covered enough for you to wing it.”

  He noted the boy’s failure to meet Farnham’s eyes as the man passed him in the doorway. Obviously there was something troubling young Boatwright. Cynthia had said he looked anxious at dinner Monday night, and Warden had never followed up. He felt vaguely ashamed and selfish.

  “Sit down, Thomas,” said Warden. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.” Boatwright was a nice boy, a little undisciplined academically, perhaps, but a right-minded person. Amazing how he had developed physically since last year: still slender, but more muscular, broader in the shoulders, taller—at least six feet tall now. He still had the freckles and the bright brown eyes; the black bangs still stopped well short of his eyebrows; the upturned nose was still a shade too large, but his face would surely grow around it; he still probably shaved only twice a week.

  It was as though Warden had not looked at him for several months. Boatwright had grown into a very nice-looking boy.

  Warden caught himself. His mind had wandered enough this morning.

  SCENE 8

  Thomas sat in the chair and looked at his advisor and wondered how to begin. Last night he hadn’t slept, hadn’t been able to concentrate, hadn’t been able to function. Every time he had seen Nathan Somerville on the dorm, he had felt his heart pound and his bladder fill. But nothing had happened. No councilman had come knocking on his door. Staines had passed by him in the hall and had acted as if he didn’t even know Thomas’s name, hadn’t even looked at him. At dorm check-in, Mr. Carella had acted normal enough. The only problem was that Thomas’s conscience was torturing him. He couldn’t stand it. He had to tell his advisor.

  All night he had rehearsed what he was going to say, how he was going to come in and ask Mr. Warden about a completely imaginary, totally hypothetical case of one student’s finding another student sniffing aerosol spray and then getting confronted by a teacher. But now that he was here, he could not get started. It didn’t feel right. Mr. Warden was tense, probably worried about his wife, and Thomas would only present another irritation to him.

  Mr. Warden spoke first. “What’s on your mind?” he asked. “Your grades?”

 
; That was a big joke between them. Mr. Warden was always kidding him about how Thomas worried over everything but academics. He made Bs and Cs and could do better if he studied the way Landon Hopkins did.

  “My grades are the same.”

  “A mother lode of mediocrity,” said Mr. Warden. Other times he had said “a cornucopia of the commonplace” or “a masterpiece of moderation.”

  They often bantered at the beginning of a conversation. “I’ll try to bring them up before you run out of alliterations,” said Thomas.

  Mr. Warden said any fourth-former who could speak intelligently about alliteration should be on the high honor roll. He broke off a piece of paper clip and let it drop to the desk. “So what’s the trouble?” he asked.

  Hell, now what? Conversations between advisors and advisees were supposed to be strictly confidential. Advisors, however, were still adults and still members of the faculty. Now that they were actually face-to-face, Thomas could not bring himself to tell Mr. Warden about last night’s episode on the dorm with Robert Staines. He knew already what the teacher would say: turn himself in to the honor council. But if he turned himself in, he might get dismissed from school. If he turned Staines in, then Thomas might get Staines kicked out of school. He would hate to be responsible for another student’s expulsion. And if he turned Staines in and Staines somehow beat the rap and remained here, then that might be the worst of all. It was so easy last night to tell Mr. Warden when Mr. Warden wasn’t really there. Today he had initiated the conversation, he had told him there was a problem, and Mr. Warden was waiting to hear what the problem was.

  “I’ve been thinking about going out for the winter play,” said Thomas. It was a legitimate concern, he supposed. “I’d like to be in a production with Nathan Somerville and Mrs. Warden, but I’m not sure I can handle it and still keep up with basketball.”

  Mr. Warden said he thought being in the play was a wonderful idea. “You aren’t going to study in your free time anyway,” he said. “Not unless you undergo a radical personality change.”

  If they were pursuing this subject, Thomas might as well speak all his worries. “The thing is,” he said, “I’m not sure I want to work with Mr. Farnham.”

  “Why not?” Mr. Warden perked up a bit.

  “It’s his temper,” said Thomas. “You never know when he’s going to spaz.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Mr. Warden knew the expression but insisted that his students use standard English.

  “I never know when he might erupt,” said Thomas. “Last Monday night I was down in the theater and saw him really go berserk.” He told Warden about Farnham’s furious pounding of the floor of the scene shop with a board. “Of course, to be fair, I guess I could understand that one.”

  Warden asked him how so.

  “Because your wife had just been down there,” said Thomas. “He was probably mad because she was going to miss rehearsals.”

  “What do mean, my wife had been down there?” asked Warden. He was perturbed. Had she been out on Monday afternoon before they went to the dining hall? If so, she had not told him. “She wasn’t at the theater Monday,” he said.

  “Yes she was,” said Thomas. “Greg saw her down there before he left rehearsal. I saw her myself. She was limping away really badly.”

  Damn it to hell, what was this all about? Warden did not like this at all. Cynthia had asked for secrecy over her hospitalization, and then she had sneaked out for a tryst with Farnham. But that was silly. She was an adult. She didn’t need to check in with Warden each time she left the house. He filed the irritation away to consider another time.

  Thomas saw no need to continue this meeting. If they weren’t going to talk about the real issue, the honor issue, he did not want to stay. Besides, he was upsetting Mr. Warden in talking about his wife. “I hope she gets well,” said Thomas. “She’s one reason I would consider the play.”

  “Go out for the play,” said Mr. Warden. “And let me know if Mr. Farnham’s temper does not improve.”

  Mr. Warden was a good advisor. Thomas left the room grateful for a friendly adult. He ought to be thinking about Christmas presents for Warden, McPhee, Carella, and the other teachers he liked.

  But then it hit him all over again that he might not be here at Christmas. And if he and Staines did get away with it and nobody found out, then Thomas would be here because of a lie. That hurt most of all.

  Warden watched his advisee leave and noted that the boy did not appear to feel relieved. Did he know more about Cynthia and Farnham? Of course not. There was nothing to know.

  The bell rang. It was time for class. Warden was supposed to be talking about Othello, and he did not have one damn thing to say. He could think only of his wife, sick in a hospital bed forty miles away, a beautiful young woman with a mind and a will and a life of her own.

  Why had she struggled down to that theater without telling him?

  SCENE 9

  Thomas would do anything to avoid being in trouble. He could not understand why Richard Blackburn would seek trouble out.

  Mr. Farnham nearly imploded in English class when he found out Richard had glued together all the pages of Landon Hopkins’s Shakespeare anthology.

  Richard had done it yesterday afternoon during play practice, when Landon was working on setting some lights. There had been a big bucket of glue in the scene shop and a paintbrush, and there had been Landon’s book, and it had been too much to resist. Landon brought the remains to class today looking like some black-and-white patio brick, every page stuck together. Farnham was short, but he had no trouble hefting that book and sticking it up into Richard’s face.

  “Do you have any idea of what such an act of vandalism signifies, Mr. Blackburn?” Richard said yes, he did.

  “Please explain.”

  Richard said he thought it signified Landon was becoming too sexually excited around Shakespeare.

  Farnham went berserk, threw him out of class and sent him to Mr. Grayson and fired him from the play crew all in about three seconds of rage.

  Grayson gave Richard twenty-five demerits—enough to keep him in Saturday night D-hall for the rest of the term—and told him to buy Landon another book. He also sent a letter home to Richard’s parents.

  Later in the day Richard appeared in the gym at the end of basketball practice. It was around 5:30, and he said he wanted to talk to McPhee about being the manager for the JV team. Thomas was getting dressed in the locker room while Richard interviewed. At first it seemed to go well.

  “I do need a manager,” McPhee said.

  “Perfect,” Richard said.

  “But why you?”

  They stood just inside the glass door of the locker room.

  “I’m the perfect man for the job,” Richard said.

  “Are you dependable?” Coach McPhee looked sweaty but relaxed as he leaned on the doorjamb and grilled Richard, who looked bouncy and confident.

  “Very dependable.”

  “Then why are you here at 5:30 instead of at 3:30, when practice began?”

  And with that McPhee put Richard through a verbal Veg-0-Matic. He accused Richard of trying to get himself a free afternoon. All the boys at Montpelier were required to participate in an afternoon activity. Richard had been fired from the play crew but hadn’t started looking for a replacement until the afternoon was over.

  “Well,” Richard said, “I did have a lot of work to do.”

  “Like gluing the pages of books together? I don’t need a manager who shows such little respect for other people’s property. Especially for a book. I am an English teacher, too, remember.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “So I think you’d better find yourself something better to do with your time this winter,” Coach McPhee said.

  “Yes sir.” Richard’s head was hanging.

  Coach McPhee excused himself and said he was going home, which for him was just down the hall through an inside door. Angus Farrier opened the door and to
ld everyone to hurry up, that he wanted to lock up the building.

  “Bunch of terrapins,” Angus said. He asked Richard to move on, then proceeded down the hall. Instead of obeying, Richard wandered over to Thomas in disgust.

  “McPhee dies,” he said to Thomas. “And so does Farnham. I am going to get both of those guys so bad that they’ll never recover.” He threatened to blow up the whole gym and all the inhabitants with it.

  Thomas didn’t know how to proceed. Richard was his friend, but the way he was acting was so childish.

  “Why not just let it go?” Thomas said.

  Richard stared at him. “You’re acting like somebody’s dad,” he said. He zipped up his ski jacket, elbowed the door open, and left.

  Thomas was glad to see him go.

  Last week Richard had been his best friend. Today he could not remember why.

  SCENE 10

  Somehow Thomas Boatwright had survived the past twenty-four hours; he was now worried that he would never make it through the next twenty-four minutes.

  It was 5:45 P.M. on Wednesday afternoon. He sat in a circle of chairs arranged in the living room of the Homestead while Mrs. Somerville, who looked really elegant with her snowy hair pulled back in a tight bun, poured tea into fragile teacups that Thomas was sure he was going to break. She asked each boy in turn whether he wanted cream or lemon, one lump of sugar or two, and she responded seriously to the boys’ self-conscious, half-mumbled replies. Mr. Somerville was talking to Greg about music stores in Charlottesville. Nobody else said anything. The students fidgeted and tried to figure out whether they should wait for everybody to be served or should go on and drink from their cups. If this was what tea at the Homestead was all about, then it must be some huge practical joke on the whole school: everybody talked about what an honor it was, but nobody really knew why.

  Thomas needed to get this business with Staines cleared up. It was interfering with everything in his life: classes, basketball practice, paying attention to his manners here at the Homestead.