Pamela Dean

by Tam Lin (pdf)

  "But why better?" said Janet. "That's how I feel, too, but it's not reasonable. What are we here for, anyway?"

  Tina burst out laughing, and Molly said solemnly, "'It is co ncerned with facilitating the continuous self-development and self-fulfillment of each individual, as well as with the natural and social environment in which the individual must live and work.'"

  "What?"

  "That's what it says in the catalog about a liberal education."

  "You have got to be kidding."

  Molly tossed her the 1973-74 catalog, bound in royal-blue paper and checkered with pictures of college life. Medeous stood in front of a blackboard looking quizzical; Anne Beauvais slept in a library chair with Pride and Prejudice open facedown on her stomach, Kit Lane sat in a larch tree, holding a paper airplane and grinning like a maniac; the rest of the pictures were of strangers.

  "Page six," Molly said. "It's been in all the catalogs, we just never bothered to read it."

  "Jesus Christ," said Janet, reading. This was worse than the anthropologists. "It gets worse, too. 'To develop an appreciation—often by doing—of the creative arts and literature.' Who wrote this—President Phelps? I don't believe it."

  "Have a heart," said Tina. "He's an administrator, not a writer."

  "Well, my God, couldn't he have asked his own English Department for advice? A freshman turning in prose like this would get blasted clear to Wisconsin."

  "Oh, come on—it's grammatical, at least."

  "So what? My gosh, what does the stuff at the beginning of the English section look like—no, that's okay. I bet Evans wrote it; there's something about the parallelism of the advice to majors."

  "Anyway," said Tina, "romance is part of your natural and social environment, isn't it?"

  "How should I know? What is my natural environment? Is he talking about the Arboretum, or what?"

  "You know perfectly well what he means," said Tina.

  "Well, if I do, I shouldn't. If I do, it just means my mind is every bit as murky as his."

  "You are mad at Nick, aren't you?"

  "I'd hate bad prose whether I was mad at Nick or about to marry him," snapped Janet.

  Tina looked at her.

  "All right, all right, I might hate it but I wouldn't yell at you about it."

  "You'll feel better without him," said Tina. "You'll have time to yourself."

  "That reminds me," said Janet, giving up on the whole discussion. "I want to keep a watch for the Fourth Ericson ghost this Hallowe'en."

  She had photocopied and brought along her father's notes and chapters on Victoria Thompson's manifestations. Tina and Molly, who were already worried about taking Microbiology and Biochemistry in the same term, repudiated the documents with cries of dismay, but consented to be told all about them. They then wandered off on a discussion of how to make a really scientific study of a ghostly apparition. Janet wished them well of it, but there was something about Victoria Thompson's ghost that she was trying to remember.

  She had still not remembered it when they went to bed.

  She missed Nick acutely at times: when somebody came whistling up the stairs and turned out to be Tina; when the Old Theater put on Richard III and even Molly had no time to go see it with her; when she walked along the river or through the autumn wildflowers by herself, or with Molly and Robin or Peg or Sharon and Kevin or Tina and Susan or Diane Zimmerman who had taken up with Jack Nikopoulos but complained about not seeing him either; and when she watched the yellow leaves sweep the bright air clean and carpet the woods with gold.

  The Friday once-a-month dates with Nick were very pleasant, but they could barely keep one another up-to-date on their mundane doings, let alone engage in anything like intimate confidences.

  She could not fret for long over these problems, being engaged in a very busy term herself. Evans could have filled an entire term all on his own, especially with Boswell and Johnson. Diane Zimmerman was taking that class with her, and they gossiped about Boswell's youthful excesses as if he lived down the hall from them. Janet hoped Hesiod's strictures did not apply to historical characters.

  New Testament Greek, though linguistically maddening in the way it collapsed its vowels together and slurred its endings, was taught by Mr. Fields, who was even-tempered, energetic, and fond of Hebrew poetry; and Sociology 11, while all its textbooks had obviously been written by the star graduates of the Mangled-English School that had taught all the anthropologists, at least had an articulate teacher. Hallowe'en came along with astonishing rapidity.

  Molly had borrowed a Polaroid camera from a boy in her American history class. Tina had wanted to bring a thermometer, but since nobody had reported a sudden drop in temperature before the appearance of the ghost—or rather, of the ghost's books—this was deemed unnecessary. After being questioned, the afternoon of Hallowe'en, for half an hour by Molly and Tina, who seemed to feel that one Polaroid camera did not a collection of scientific apparatus make, Janet finally said, "You know what it is. Whenever I've seen the ghost, somebody always comes and takes the books away. Peg did it; and then Melinda Wolfe did it."

  "All right," said Molly. "Books to be retained at all costs. Did you talk to those girls on Fourth Ericson?"

  "They obviously thought I was crazy, but they said two of them will be in studying, and they'll keep an eye out for books flying around."

  "Well, I guess that will have to do."

  "Did you enlist Robin?" asked Janet.

  "Nope—he's got to play the bagpipes for Medeous's party."

  "It sounds as if we should have assigned somebody to keep an eye on Peg and Melinda Wolfe," said Tina.

  "We're not being very efficient, are we?" said Janet. "I can ask Sharon to deal with Peg. I don't see how anybody's to do anything about Melinda Wolfe."

  She went and called Sharon, who first laughed, and then allowed as how Peg did often sleepwalk on Hallowe'en. "You want me to keep her awake," she said, probably with some humorous intention, "or just follow her around if she sleepwalks?"

  "Whichever is more convenient," said Janet.

  She went back to the room.

  "Look," said Molly the moment she got in the door, "what time on Hallowe'en does this poor girl throw books?"

  Janet dragged her photocopies from under her bed and skimmed through them. "It was eleven forty-five the first time," she said, "and midnight the second. Dr. Bishop was assaulted much earlier in the evening, but that might have been real students."

  "It would explain why we missed her the first Hallowe'en when we lived in Ericson,"

  said Molly. "We were chasing pipers after our party, between eleven and midnight."

  "We should start at ten or so, just to be safe," said Tina.

  They accordingly betook themselves, a couple of blankets, some flashlights, the camera, a thermos of tea, and an empty knapsack to put the books in, out to the grassy space between Forbes and Ericson, and sat down far enough from Ericson to be out of the range of flying books. The windows of their old room were lit; the present occupants had bright red curtains with white lace around the bottom.

  At eleven-fifteen, the mournful noise of the bagpipes swam over the roof of Forbes, from the direction of Dunbar and the lilac maze. "Do you want to go find Robin?" Janet asked Molly. "I can work the camera."

  "No, not particularly. You can go if you want a glimpse of Nick."

  "I think I do," said Janet, slowly. "I think—" Yes. The last time anybody had thrown books out of Ericson, they had been thrown at Medeous and her riders. So if she just waited, they might show up here, but the last Hallowe'en she had seen them, they had not come this way.

  "Yes, I'm going," said Janet, dropped her empty tea mug onto the blanket, and took off down the hill, over the wooden bridge, up past Dunbar, down and up and down again, to the highway. She crossed it in a hurry and dropped into the bushes beside the gravel path that led down to the bridge over the stream.

  She had just managed to quiet her breathing when she heard t
he sedate tock, tock of horses crossing the bridge. It felt for some reason far more frightening to be noticed when she was the only spectator than it would have been when she was accompanied by her entire Hallowe'en party; she lay flat and pulled her turtleneck over her nose and mouth and her green beret of Scottish wool, a belated birthday present from Nick, over her forehead It was not a very useful angle, unless you wanted to study the undersides of horses.

  But she was able to see that all their trappings were jeweled and glowing right around and under, and by twisting her neck very uncomfortably, she was able to distinguish Medeous, and Melinda Wolfe, and the Beauvais sisters, as well as the usual remote and foreign-looking people one never seemed to see around campus. There were more brown horses this time; and surely that was Nick on one of them—yes. Nick, and Jack Nikopoulos, and Rob Benfield, when the hell had he come back? And two other Classics majors who had graduated last year; and Kit Lane and bad-tempered John. Here came the white horses, just two—one of them ridden by Professor Ferris, who looked ghastly in the greeny light—unless it was just the angle she was viewing him from—and the other one, which Ferris was leading, with an empty saddle. Who was playing hooky this year, then?

  Nobody Janet knew.

  They walked gently over the bridge, and up the path, and gathered on the highway.

  Medeous said something in her lovely voice. Janet almost jumped out of her skin; she knew what that word meant. It was Greek. It was one of the interrogatives—damn, which one?

  No, not that—whither, that was it. There was a chorus of answers, which might or might not have been Greek; and then they let out that same horrendous yell, and took off down the highway straight for the center of town.

  Janet scrambled up and watched them around the corner. They could still, if they wanted to stay on the pavement rather than ride over the outlying fields of the campus, come back upon Ericson by taking the service road behind Sterne Hall. If they did, Molly and Tina would see them, and perhaps somebody would throw books at them again; fine.

  The bagpipes were still wailing and complaining in the woods. She would wait for Robin.

  He was playing the Ceol Mohr again; no doubt about it. Tom, Tom the piper's son had been far more reassuring. Janet walked onto the bridge to meet him, and thought for a moment he was going to walk right into her. Then the pipes stopped with a wheeze, and Robin peered around them and said, "What are you doing here?" He was wearing a doublet of dark red with braid on it that glimmered, and high boots. Janet thought it might be a costume from The Revenger's Tragedy. It was nervewracking for other reasons entirely: Robin had a figure that was unprepossessing in jeans but suited these outlandish garments all too well. As Lussurioso he had made you feel he lived up to his name; as Robin, he was alarming.

  She said, "I'm catching a glimpse of Nick. I don't get to see him for another two weeks, you know."

  "I think it's a very foolish arrangement," said Robin. "You haven't brought Molly, have you?"

  "No; she and Tina are lying in wait for the Fourth Ericson ghost."

  Robin said nothing. Janet felt unwelcome. The stream gurgled below them, and a few leaves drifted down onto the boards of the bridge. "Do you have to follow the riders?" she said.

  "No," said Robin. "They'll be racketing up and down for a bit, and then we all meet at Medeous's house and carouse until dawn."

  "You sound tired of it."

  "It doesn't suit an academic schedule so well. Walk back to Holmes with me, why don't you, and we'll see if Thomas is moping at home instead of going to the party."

  "I didn't see him with the riders. Doesn't he like horses?"

  Robin made a noncommittal noise, and then said, "May I go on playing, if it's melodious?"

  "Certainly; just let me fall behind a bit so I'm not deafened."

  She did so, and Robin began another of his unsuitable tunes; he seemed to play either the very esoteric and unbearable bagpipe music, or else things that would have been far better on a guitar or a piano. This was one that he and Nick and Anne sang. Janet found herself mouthing the words with the sound of the pipes: "Seven days are in the week, in almost every circumstance; And there's four seasons in the year, or so we learn in school; But never count your chickens when you're dealing with the women, For many a wise man fell asleep and wakened up a fool."

  Hah, thought Janet, following the incongruous noise down the hill to Dunbar, you think it's any better dealing with men?

  Eliot, when they got to it, was lively with parties, many of which had spilled out into

  the halls. The costumed and celebrating students had a number of things to say about Robin and the bagpipes, but he only smiled in his beard and refused to stop and play for them. He and Thomas lived in one of the big and much-coveted two-room doubles, with a bay window to it. There was a light under the door when they got there; Robin knocked, and was answered with a querulous, "What?"

  "I've brought Janet," called Robin, and flung the door open.

  Thomas was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the clean blue carpet of the main room, completely surrounded by Tinker Toys.

  "What on earth are you doing?" said Janet.

  "That's a fine greeting," said Thomas, smiling up at her. She was almost used to the shock of his appearance. The eyes and mouth and face were merely familiar now, for the most part; but the hair, its mixture of rich and subdued yellows all shining in the light, was still alarming. She suffered an acute wave of longing for Nick's pleasant, normal face. "It's all right," said Thomas; her face must have mirrored her thoughts. "I'm just trying to make a model of a molecule of muscarine—good Lord, that sounds just like Gilbert and Sullivan—for this goddamned physics course."

  "Fucking," said Janet. "That is the proper adjective for physics courses."

  "I beg your pardon," said Thomas. "Well, Robin, did you wake the dead?"

  Robin, putting his bagpipes away in the closet, did not reply; nor did Thomas seem to expect it.

  "Are you coming along?" Robin said to Thomas, slinging a red cloak lined with gold, no doubt also from The Revenger's Tragedy, over his doublet. In the cold fluorescent light of Thomas's desk lamp, the colors were as rich as on stage; but Robin's face, what you could see between the thick fringe of brown hair and the beard, looked rather sharp and pale.

  "No," said Thomas, without looking at him.

  "It would be better if you did."

  "If it be now," said Thomas, still not looking at him, "it is not to come. If it be not to come, then it will be—"

  "Oh, for Christ's sake!" said Robin, and left, slamming the door with a violence that shook the windowpanes.

  "Does he always get that way when you quote Hamlet? " said Janet. "And what are you talking about? Is Medeous going to kick you out again if you don't go to her party?"

  "Robin is like that no matter what I quote. I suppose Nick's gone to this party like the good child he is?"

  "I guess. I only see him once a month."

  "Well, stay and have some coffee with me, then. I have a lot of real cream to put in it, frozen on the windowsill; and I've got a box of chocolate-mint cookies I've been saving for some great occasion. Help me pick up these damnable toys, and we'll have a mild sort of orgy."

  They used up the entire pint of cream and ate the entire box of cookies. They discussed Keats, Shakespeare, the diabolical nature of all physics classes, how many times in a row it was possible to watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid before the mind rebelled, whether Tina had actually slept with Jack before hurling her pills into the stream, why Peg Powell never went out with anybody, and just how guilty President Nixon might be in the matter of Watergate.

  In a daze of sugar and caffeine, Janet told Thomas all about the Fourth Ericson ghost.

  Thomas seemed vaguely horrified by the whole business. "I wonder why she threw A Midsummer Night's Dream? " he said.

  "Well, I've been thinking about that, and it was Midsummer's Eve."

  "Because all the other books are eith
er connected with Classics, or else they're about women who get pregnant out of wedlock and suffer for it."

  "McGuffey's Reader?"

  "I've never read them, who knows what's in there?"

  "Maybe she threw the Shakespeare because somebody says in it, 'Lord, what fools these mortals be.'"

  "Maybe," said Thomas.

  "Do you actually believe in ghosts?"

  Thomas smiled a very unpleasant smile. "No," he said. "But then, I don't want to."

  "But you'll discuss them?"

  "In my present disgusting state, yes. As if they were characters in a poem."

  "That's what I've been doing, too. And all the reports of what she actually said are interpolations by an inept editor."

  Thomas smiled, less unpleasantly.

  "Dr. Johnson thought there must be ghosts, because he felt disparate human cultures could not independently evolve similar ideas unless they were true."

  Thomas snorted.

  "But he could never find any actual evidence that satisfied him."

  "No fool he."

  "Nick believes in them, too. It turned out to be one of those things you can't talk about, because it never occurred to him to think they might not exist."

  "Has he got any evidence that satisfies him?" said Thomas, almost angrily.

  "I didn't think to ask. It would be like asking me if I had any evidence that satisfies me about supernovae."

  "And have you?"

  "Yes—but it wouldn't come to much under determined examination. I don't mean I think there isn't any, I mean I don't know enough to satisfy a real skeptic."