The Poison Tree

by Henry I. Schvey

  “You’re gonna get in some serious trouble. There’s a draft on, ya know. Vietnam War and all,” Dwayne said proudly.

  “I’ve heard about it, Dwayne,” I said.

  “Henry?” he asked. “Are you what my dad calls a subversive?”

  “I don’t know, Dwayne. Do I look like a subversive?”

  Dwayne eyeballed me.

  “I don’t know. Could be. But if you’re not, why’d you burn that thing?”

  “I don’t know.” And it was the truth. It had nothing to do with opposition to the war or even the draft. It was my way of expressing my indifference toward real life in all its manifestations.

  “Wow,” he said, “this is big. Can I tell Greg?”

  “No, Dwayne. I’d prefer it stayed just between us. Kind of like Brillion.”

  “Okay, I get it,” he said, all cheery acceptance. “You wanna go to Hillel Friday? You guys have services every Friday night, dontcha? Candles, wine, egg bread?”

  “You mean challah.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  I liked Dwayne a lot. His curiosity made me feel sophisticated and important. Like there was something incredibly fascinating about me having grown up in New York, even if I knew there wasn’t.

  “Yeah, I’d really like to.”

  “All right—we’ll go,” I said.

  “Cool.” Dwayne was satisfied, but he still didn’t leave my room. He was waiting for something.

  “So, I’ll see you at dinner?” I said, opening the door, hoping he would take the hint.

  Friday night came and I made some excuse so I wouldn’t have to go to Hillel or take him along. I liked Dwayne, but I just didn’t want him (or anyone else) getting too close to me. I still felt Adar’s influence when I spoke to other people, and I knew he wouldn’t approve my socializing with others. And other than Dwayne, I hadn’t met anyone I’d felt even a little comfortable with during my first semester.

  There were more than 30,000 students at the University of Wisconsin, but every one I met seemed to fall into one of three distinct groups, none of which I connected with. First, there were the angry young men and women violently opposed to the Vietnam War. Their world was a black-and-white struggle against the Military Industrial Complex, and any dissent from “Truth” as they saw it was further proof of your cowardice and acquiescence to governmental conspiracy.

  The second group was much larger, but far less visible: fraternity kids who got drunk on State Street every weekend. Unlike the anti-military group, which was largely comprised of East coast kids with backgrounds more or less similar to mine, this second group was mostly made up of in-staters from Wisconsin. They were throwbacks to a more innocent time before there was a war, and seemed confused or dismayed by all the fuss on campus. If they thought about the war at all, they probably supported it, parroting their parents’ views. I was much too apathetic to join the first group. I found this second group oblivious. I wanted nothing to do with them either.

  The third group was comprised of artist and hippie types. The girls wore their hair long, and favored tie-dyed shirts and Indian fabrics. With flowers in their hair, they looked like characters from a children’s book; the guys had beards and jeans. I should have been happy to join this group, since like me, they were indifferent to radical politics. However, their philosophy of “Peace and Love” was diametrically opposed to my own. This third group, too, was into drugs, casual sex, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and The Beatles. They believed in Happenings, improvisation, and collective genius. I felt art was a pure, solitary, and above all, a deeply serious calling. I wouldn’t have minded the free love part, but I was too shy and afraid to mingle or even talk to anyone.

  So, instead of spreading love for everyone and everything, I idealized my isolation, and, although Adar and I were no longer one, I still tried to live according to our philosophy. An artist, I felt, could not embrace a collective mind-set. So, even though there was no dress code, and I hated everything that reminded me of high school, I still wore a dark suit and tie every day to my classes, just as I did at Horace Mann. Dressing like this was a private gesture of aloof non-conformity in the face of naïve benevolence. My odd attire even raised me to the level of a kind of campus oddity amid the vast sea of hippie non-conformity.

  In classes, anti-war kids raised the ubiquitous cry of “What’s the relevance?” for every possible occasion. Life was boiled down to that one issue of what was happening in the war in Southeast Asia. However, instead of leading to real debate, the issue of relevance led to simplistic connections tying everything to the Vietnam War. It also led to a perverse relationship between students and their professors, in which the latter opted not to lead, but follow the prevailing political wisdom. When the teachers couldn’t make simplistic connections between their subjects and the war, many abdicated responsibility, with lame apologies for the “irrelevance” of the very subjects they had earned their doctorates in. I longed to be exposed to new ideas and discuss great works of literature—to find the next incarnation of Mr. Herman—not talk about whether the university should stop teaching Shakespeare because he had nothing to say about the Vietnam War.

  Everybody was so caught up in the circus of pot smoking, protesting Vietnam, banning napalm, or revealing how the C.I.A. had secretly poisoned our water, that there was no appetite for any other ideas on campus. Nobody seemed passionate about works of literature, only politics and pot—especially our professors. In Wayne’s class, he told me they were discussing John Donne’s poem “The Flea” when someone hurled the familiar “What’s the relevance?” at the young teaching assistant for the class. He apologized for the frivolousness of the poem, and told the class he agreed with them; he was truly sorry he couldn’t justify teaching the poem while Americans were murdering Vietnamese and burning villages with napalm. The class erupted in applause, and was adjourned for further discussion. When I asked Wayne what happened next, he shrugged. “We went to the Brat Haus and had a few cold ones.” A few weeks later, Dwayne told me that the teaching assistant had quit the PhD program in English.

  Slender, with large eyes, full lips, and a waterfall of black hair, Laura, my new English teacher was quite an improvement over Mr. Palven. She taught class perched cross-legged on top of the desk, legs encased in black, fishnet tights. Her walk—proud, athletic—with shoulders pulled back, breasts thrust forward, made her appear like a miniature lioness. I couldn’t stop staring at her, and her blunt sexuality terrified me. I was not merely frightened about her somehow witnessing my excitement at looking at her; I feared the repercussions to myself. Even though I hadn’t seen him for months, Adar and the Life of the Spirit were still alive inside me. He was still there reminding me of what I should think or do, scolding me when I let myself be distracted by “lesser” things like Laura’s breasts, swaying bra-less underneath her sheer blouse.

  A week after I transferred into Laura’s section, she told me to meet her at the campus Rathskeller. I wondered what she wanted to see me about, and was both thrilled and frightened. I decided to cut my last class before our meeting so I could rush back to my room and change. I removed my dark jacket and tie, and put on instead the navy turtleneck sweater I bought from the Army-Navy store after seeing Doctor Zhivago. I hadn’t spoken in her class yet, but I had managed to alienate the other students by my sullen silence and repeated belligerent stares when they uttered comments I condescendingly dismissed as stupid. I was more than an oddity now; I was on my way to becoming downright weird, even on a campus full of hippies and potheads.

  On my way across campus to our meeting, I saw a group of students milling around the Sociology building. They chanted and cursed, holding signs and banners of protest against Dow Chemical Company, the firm that manufactured napalm. Nearby, men in suits handed leaflets to a small group of demure, in-state students proclaiming all the good things Dow Chemical was engaged in. While this was happening, protesters chanted that the Dow recruiters were murderers. Their placa
rds depicted burned, horribly deformed Vietnamese babies who had been disfigured by napalm. I found the surreal atmosphere as mesmerizing and disturbing as a play.

  When I reached the Rathskeller, I saw Laura perched in a small booth, sitting cross-legged as usual, sipping coffee. I couldn’t take my eyes away from her—she was so beautiful—so I simply turned around and left! After walking away, I berated myself. This is only a meeting with a teacher, not a date. I forced myself to walk back inside. She was reading a copy of Madame Bovary and probably hadn’t seen my flight. I stood there a few seconds and then she turned her brown eyes up towards me. Her purple top with long, flowing sleeves suggested wings; her black hair hung loose about her shoulders.

  “I’m here,” I said. Although I had never been, I felt drunk as I said the words. “I hope I’m on time.” I never wore a watch on principle, because Adar decided neither of us needed to know what time it was. “Time is only for those who need it,” he intoned. Unlike the benighted watch-wearing people of the world, we could control time by our wills. Adar was always on time; unfortunately, for me, abiding by this philosophy simply meant that I was nearly always late.

  She cocked her head and studied me. “What is it? Oh—I know! You’re not wearing a jacket and tie. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you without that uniform on.”

  “I-I-I thought I’d give it a rest.”

  “Good,” she said. “You almost look like a college student. Maybe a poet, rather than a businessman.”

  “We had to wear a jacket and tie in high school,” I said.

  “You’re not in high school anymore.”

  “No.”

  “In college you can discover who you are. You might even be surprised at what you find.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  I wondered how many jackets and ties I had packed with me, and how long it would take me to cut up and burn them all behind Adams House.

  “Let’s get down to business. I finished reading your essay on Oedipus.”

  “Yes?” Damn it, why did I say that? Of course she had read it—she just said she had read it.

  “And, I must say, it surprised me,” Laura continued.

  “Oh?” Again—stupid! Why was I such an ass?

  “I was surprised because you obviously have real insight into what makes good literature. You were the only one in our class who seems to have understood why that play is still so profoundly important today. I want you to do something for me.”

  I thought about jumping up on the wooden bench and screaming, “ANYTHING! I’LL DO ANYTHING FOR YOU!” But of course I said, “Sure.” Cool as ice.

  “I want you to sit at the front of our classroom, not way in the back, glaring at the other students. And stop wearing those funereal outfits. I know you’ve got something to offer in class. Speaking up will help you express your own ideas. Right now, it feels like you’re just sitting there in judgment of everyone.” She toyed with the handle of her coffee mug with her fingers.

  She was right. That was exactly what I was doing—sitting in judgment of others. I realized that was what I had learned from Mr. Herman and Adar. Perhaps my father as well. An imagined sense of my own superiority as a strategy to avoid feeling like a failure. Laura’s eyes locked into my own. “You’ll do that, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said, quietly. My voice was calm, but my body trembled with sexual excitement. The combination of her face, voice, even the sight of her fingers touching the handle of her cup was giving me an erection. She was talking to me about my performance in English, and I was becoming aroused.

  “That was what I wanted to talk about.”

  I wondered whether this meant I was supposed to go? I rose, instantly embarrassed and wondering if she would see it, the bulge in my pants. I yanked my Raskolnikov sweater down so that it covered the compromised area.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, looking at me, pinning me to the spot.

  “I thought that … our conference was over.”

  “If you want it to be. I’m having another coffee. Would you like some?” She smiled. Was she really inviting me to stay there? “I’ll get us coffee. How do you take it?”

  I never drank coffee. Adar’s black coffee tasted like ashes. My father took his with cream and sugar; it tasted like Schrafft’s coffee ice cream.

  “I always take it black.”

  “Interesting. So do I,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” After she got the coffees, we talked about everything—I don’t remember too many details, because I was too focused on the purple butterflies fluttering on her blouse.

  “You remember Dr. Skinner, the head of English Composition? He told me you handed in some crazy poem and left your midterm exam completely blank. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  She burst out laughing.

  “I can’t believe it! I wish I had been there! He’s from Georgia, you know. You blew his mind. When he handed you off to me, he said, ‘I have a mentally unbalanced student. I was going to fail him, but I decided to offer him one more chance. Will you take him on?’”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him I would.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Skinner’s an asshole, and you sounded different from the Cheeseheads. We get a lot of them here. Pretty much all the same. I’ve been teaching English Comp here for three years, and you’re the first to hand in a blank midterm with some crazy shit. Congratulations. But … don’t do it again. Also the fact that Skinner said you were mentally unbalanced was a kind of turn-on. I liked that.”

  “Really? Thank you. I guess.”

  Laura laughed.

  We left the Memorial Union, and it was dark and nobody saw us part. I took the lakeshore path, and there in the dark I danced for the first time. It was not dancing like we did at the Viola Wolff School wearing white gloves; this was jumping and whooping and yelping in the freezing Wisconsin air—waving my arms and trying to touch the moon. It was like those happy times when I was with Uncle Lee, reaching for the real brass rings on the carousel before they stopped using them.

  I danced there in the dark to express the pure, unqualified joy I felt for this woman. The lake was frozen, but my body was pulsing and warm.

  “Where have you been all this time? I’ve been waiting for you!”

  Dwayne was in a panic when I returned to Adams House. I saw his tiny shape at the end of the hallway waving at me like a maniac, but by the time I got close he only whispered to come inside his room. He closed the door and told me to sit down while he stood, rattling his keys with the huge silver keychain. “Have you heard what happened? I mean the latest?”

  I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted to get into my room, close the door, and lie down and think about Laura. “No, what happened?”

  “They burned down Krogers! Krogers!” he said, incredulously. “Do you realize what this means? It’s all over.”

  “What’s all over?”

  “My education. If my parents hear about this, they’ll make me go home. To Brillion. Geez!” Geez was the closest thing to a curse I ever heard him utter.

  The police were called in to break up the riot outside Sociology. They broke it up with billy clubs and tear gas. Some students fled, but most just lay down and refused to move. They told the cops that they were political prisoners. Then the police dragged them off, and they more or less were. That’s when Dwayne figured that a bunch of the other subversives must have gone to Krogers and started the fire.

  “Are you sure? Krogers? I mean, it’s a grocery store. It can’t be a high priority target for the SDS.”

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “They want to start a revolution. What better way to make people afraid than to threaten their food supply. Geez!” Dwayne was studying Dairy Science; I supposed he knew what he was talking about.

  When the phone rang, sure enough, it was Dwayne’s parents from Brillion, right on cue.
They had seen the riots at the Sociology building on television. I tried to sneak back to my room, but he barred the door.

  After he got off the phone, Dwayne broke down. His father wanted him to come home immediately. His mom was terrified; sending him off to college in Madison had been a terrible mistake. I felt terrible for Dwayne, and put my arm around his shoulder. I knew that now it would be impossible to convince his parents that Wisconsin was anything other than a hotbed of subversive radicals. We walked morosely over to the Brat Haus and had a pitcher of beer with Dwayne’s fake I.D. Then another. The great Pfefferkorn experiment in liberal education had come to an end.

  I fell asleep in my clothes. Next morning, I noticed a yellow slip under the door informing me that there was a package waiting for me at the post office. It was a large box, wrapped in thick twine, with the sides battered in. I saw the handwriting and knew who had sent it. Since I had come to campus, every week Grandma sent me a Care Package. She wanted to make sure I didn’t waste away. This time she’d sent several boxes of kosher Tam Tam crackers, completely crushed, along with tins of Portuguese sardines, two dented cans of Campbell’s tomato juice and Gruyere cheese. Only Grandma would anticipate that I might run out of cheese in the Dairy State! There were other necessaries like Man Size Kleenex, and rolls of Charmin toilet paper, which Grandma either assumed would be unobtainable, or (more plausibly) that I would neglect to buy for myself. At the bottom of the box there was something else, something to take care of another of my needs: a two volume copy of the The Brothers Karamazov with my name printed in bold black lettering. The letters of my name were much larger than Dostoevsky’s. I still have it.

  I opened the package of Tam Tams and held a few pieces of cracker in my palm. I opened the Gruyere, sardines, and tomato juice and ate there in my dorm room. Following the incident with Dwayne’s parents, I felt grateful that there was at least one person in the world who cared for me, body and soul. Even if she didn’t trust me to supply myself with toilet paper.