The Rebel Angels

by Robertson Davies

  “Yes, but he is a Renaissance historian, and this was apparently a significant bit of Renaissance history. In Urky’s field, and not really in your field. Sorry, but that’s the way it looks.”

  “I wish people wouldn’t talk about fields as if we were all a bunch of wretched prospectors and gold-panners, ready to shoot anybody who steps on our claim.”

  “Well, isn’t that what we are?”

  “I suppose I’ve got to tell you the whole thing.”

  “I wish you would. What have you been holding back?”

  “There was the MS of the Stratagems, as I’ve told you. About forty pages, closely written. Not a good hand and no signature, except the signature that was written all over it—the lost Rabelais book. But in another little bundle in the back of the leather portfolio, in a sort of pocket, were the scripts of three letters.”

  “From Rabelais?”

  “Yes, from Rabelais. They were drafts of three letters written to Paracelsus. His rough copies. But not so rough he hadn’t signed them. Perhaps he enjoyed writing his name: lots of people do. It jumped at me off the page—that big ornate signature, not really the Chancery Hand, but a Mannerist style of his own—”

  “Yes, Urky always insists that Rabelais was a Mannerist author.”

  “Urky be damned; he picked that up from me. He wouldn’t know Mannerism in any art; he has no eye. But Rabelais is a Mannerist poet who happened to write in prose; he achieves in prose what Giuseppe Arcimboldo achieves in painting—fruitiness, nuttiness, leafiness, dunginess, and the wildest kind of grotesque invention. But there were the letters, and there was the unmistakable, great signature. I had to take hold of myself not to fall on my knees. Think of it! Just think of it!”

  “Very nice.”

  “Nice, you call it! Nice! Stupendous! I had a peep—the merest peep—and they contained passages in Greek (quotations, obviously) and here and there a few words in Hebrew, and half a dozen wholly revealing symbols.”

  “Wholly revealing what?”

  “Revealing that Rabelais was in correspondence with the greatest natural scientist of his day, which nobody knew before. Revealing that Rabelais, who was suspected of being a Protestant, was something at least equally reprehensible for a man of the Church—even a nuisance and a renegade—he was, if not a Cabbalist at least a student of Cabbala, and if not an alchemist at least a student of alchemy! And that is bloody well my field, and it could be the making of any scholar who got hold of it, and I’ll be damned if I want that bogus sniggering son of a whore McVarish to get his hands on it!”

  “Spoken like a true scholar!”

  “And I think he has got his hands on it! I think that bugger has pinched it!”

  “My dear man, calm down! If it did turn up it would have to go to the University Library, you know. I couldn’t simply hand it over to you.”

  “You know how those things are done; a word to the Chief Librarian would be all that is necessary, and I wouldn’t ask you to do it. I could do it myself. First crack at that MS—that’s what I want!”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. But I’ve got bad news for you. In one of Cornish’s notebooks there’s an entry that says ‘Lend McV. Rab. MS April 16’. What do you suppose that tells us?”

  “Lend. Lend—does that mean he meant to lend it or that he did lend it?”

  “How do I know? But I’m afraid you’re grasping at a straw. I suspect Urky has it.”

  “Pinched it! I knew it! The thief!”

  “No, wait a minute—we can’t jump to conclusions.”

  “I’m not jumping to anything. I know McVarish. You know McVarish. He winkled it out of Cornish and now he has it! The sodding crook!”

  “Please, don’t assume anything. It’s simple; I have that entry, and I show it to McVarish and ask him for the MS back.”

  “Do you think you’ll get it? He’ll deny everything. I’ve got to have that MS, Darcourt. I might as well tell you, I’ve promised it to someone.”

  “Wasn’t that premature?”

  “Special circumstances.”

  “Now look here, Clem, I’m not being stuffy, I hope, but the books and manuscripts in Cornish’s collection are my charge, and the circumstances have to be very special for you to talk about anything in that collection to anybody else until all the legal business has been completed and the stuff is safely lodged in the Library. What are these special circumstances?”

  “Rather not say.”

  “I’m sure you’d rather not. But I think you should.”

  Hollier squirmed in his chair. There is no other word for his uneasy twisting, as if he thought that a change of posture would help his inner unease. To my astonishment he was blushing. I didn’t like it at all. His embarrassment was embarrassing me. When he spoke his manner was hangdog. The great Hollier, whom the President had described not long ago—to impress the government who were nagging about cutting our grants—as one of the ornaments of the University, was blushing before me. I’m not one of the ornaments myself (just a useful table-leg) and I am too loyal to the University to like watching an ornament squirm.

  “A particularly able student—it would be the foundation of an academic career—I would supervise, of course—”

  I have a measure of the intuition which common belief regards, quite unfairly, as being an attribute of women. I was ahead of him.

  “Miss Theotoky, do you mean?”

  “How on earth did you know?”

  “Your research assistant, a student of mine, working at least in part on Rabelais, a girl of uncommon promise—it’s not really second sight, you know.”

  “Well—you’re right.”

  “What have you said?”

  “Spoke of it once, in general terms. Later, when she asked me, I said a little more. But not much, you understand.”

  “Then it’s easy. You explain to her that there will be a delay. It could take a year to get the MS from McVarish, and wind up the Cornish business, and have the MS properly vetted and catalogued by the Library.”

  “If you can get it away from McVarish.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “But then he may want it for himself, or for some pet of his.”

  “That’s not my affair. You want it for a pet of yours.”

  “Precisely what do you imply by pet?”

  “Nothing much. A favoured pupil. Why?”

  “I don’t have pets.”

  “Then you’re a teacher in a thousand. We all have pets. How can we avoid it? Some students are better and more appealing than others.”

  “Appealing?”

  “Clem, you’re very hot under the collar. Have another drink.”

  To my astonishment he seized the whisky bottle and poured himself three fingers and gulped it off in two swallows.

  “Clem, what’s chewing you? You’d better tell me.”

  “I suppose it’s part of your job to hear confessions?”

  “I haven’t done much of that since I left parish work. Never did much there, in fact. But I know how it’s done. And I know it’s not good practice to hear confessions from people you know socially. But if you want to tell me something informally, go ahead. And mum’s the word, of course.”

  “I was afraid of this when I came here.”

  “I’m not forcing you. Do as you please. But if I’m not your confessor I am your fellow-executor and I have a right to know what’s been going on with things I’m responsible for.”

  “I have something to make up to Miss Theotoky. I’ve wronged her, gravely.”

  “How?”

  “Took advantage of her.”

  “Pinched some of her good work? That sounds more like McVarish than you, Clem.”

  “No, no; something even more personal. I—I’ve had carnal knowledge of her.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! You sound like the Old Testament. You mean you’ve screwed her?”

  “That is a distasteful expression.”

  “I know, but how many tasteful expressions
are there? I can’t say you’ve lain with her; maybe you didn’t. I can’t say you’ve had her, because she is still clearly in full possession of herself. ‘Had intercourse with her’ sounds like the police-court—or do they still say that ‘intimacy occurred’? What really happened?”

  “It was last April—”

  “A month crammed with incident, apparently.”

  “Shut up and don’t be facetious. Simon, can’t you see how serious this is for me? I’ve behaved very wrongly The relationship between master and pupil is a special one, a responsible one—you could say, a sacred one.”

  “You could say that, right enough. But we all know what happens in universities. Nice girls turn up, professors are human, and bingo! Sometimes it’s rough on the girl; sometimes it may be destructive to the professor, if some scheming little broad throws herself at him. You must make allowance for the Fall of Man, Clem. I doubt if Maria seduced you; she’s far too much in awe of you. So you must have seduced her. How?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. But what happened was that I was telling her about my work on the Filth Therapy of the Middle Ages, which had been going particularly well, and suddenly she told me something—something about her mother—that added another huge piece to the jigsaw puzzle of what I had been doing, and I was so excited by it—there was such an upsurge of splendid feeling, that before I knew what was happening, there we were, you see—”

  “And Abelard and Heloise lived again for approximately ninety seconds. Or have you persisted?”

  “No, certainly not. I’ve never spoken to her about it since.”

  “Once. I see.”

  “You can imagine how I felt at McVarish’s party when he was plaguing her about being a virgin.”

  “But she handled that brilliantly, I thought. Was she a virgin?”

  “Good God, how would I know?”

  “There are sometimes indications. You’re a medievalist. You must know what they looked for.”

  “You don’t suppose I looked, do you! Do you take me for a Peeping Tom?”

  “I’m beginning to take you for a fool, Clem. Have you never had any experience of this sort of thing before?”

  “Well, of course. One can hardly avoid it. The commercial thing, you know, twice when travelling. Years ago. And on a conference, once, a female colleague, for a couple of days. She talked incessantly. But this was a sort of daemonic seizure—I wasn’t myself.”

  “Oh, yes you were; these daemonic seizures are the unadmitted elements in a lopsided life. So you’ve promised Maria the Rabelais manuscript to make it up to her? Is that it?”

  “I must make reparation.”

  “I don’t want to talk too much like a priest, Clem, but you really can’t do it like that. You think you’ve wronged a girl, and a handsome gift—in terms you both value greatly—will make everything right. But it won’t. The reparation must be on the same footing as the wrong.”

  “You mean I ought to marry her?”

  “I don’t imagine for a minute she’d have you.”

  “I’m not so sure. She looks at me sometimes, in a certain way. I’m not a vain man, but you can’t mistake certain looks.”

  “I suppose she’s fallen for you. Girls do fall for professors; I’ve been telling you about it. But don’t marry her; even if she is enough of a sap to say Yes; it would never work. You’d both be sick to death of it in two years. No, you stop fretting about Maria; she knows how to manage her life, and she’ll get over you. It’s yourself you need to put back on the rails. If there is any reparation, it must be made there.”

  “But how? Oh, I suppose you mean a penance?”

  “Good medieval thinking.”

  “But what? I suppose I could give the College chapel a piece of silver.”

  “Bad medieval thinking. A penance must cost you something that hurts.”

  “Then what?”

  “You really want it?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll give you some tried and true penitential advice. Whom do you hate most in the world? If you had to name an enemy, who would it be?”

  “McVarish!”

  “I thought so. Then for your penitence go to McVarish and tell him what you have just told me.”

  “You’re out of your mind!”

  “No.”

  “It would kill me!”

  “No, it wouldn’t.”

  “He’d blat it all over.”

  “Very likely.”

  “I’d have to leave the University!”

  “Hardly that. But you could wear a big red ‘A’ on the back of your raincoat for a year or so.”

  “You’re not being serious!”

  “Neither are you. Look here, Clem: you come to me and expect me to play the priest and coax me into prescribing a penance for you, and then you refuse it because it would hurt. You’re a real Protestant; your prayer is ‘O God, forgive me, but for God’s sake keep this under Your hat.’ You need a softer priest. Why don’t you try Parlabane; you’re keeping him, so he’s safely in your pocket. Go and confess to him.”

  Hollier rose. “Good night,” he said. “I see I made a great mistake in coming here.”

  “Don’t be a goat, Clem. Sit down and have another drink.”

  He did—another great belt of Scotch. “Do you know Parlabane?” he said.

  “Not as well as you do. But when we were undergraduates I saw quite a bit of him. An attractive fellow, very funny. Then I lost track of him, but I thought we were still friends. I’ve been wondering when he would come to see me. I didn’t want to invite him; under the circumstances it might embarrass him.”

  “Under what circumstances?”

  “When we knew one another at Spook he made great fun of me for wanting to go into the Church. He was the Great Sceptic, you remember, and he couldn’t understand me believing in Christianity in the face of all reason, or what he would call reason. So I nearly fell out of my chair when I had a letter from him a few months ago, telling me that he was a monk in the Society of the Sacred Mission. Such turn-abouts are common enough, especially with people in middle age, but I would never have expected it of Parlabane.”

  “And he wanted to leave the Brotherhood.”

  “Yes, that’s what he told me. Needed help, which I provided.”

  “You mean you sent him money?”

  “Yes. Five hundred dollars. I thought I’d better send it. If it did him any good it was charity toward him; if it didn’t it was a charity to the Sacred Mission. He wanted to get out.”

  “That cost me five hundred, too.”

  “I wonder if he sent out a circular letter. Anyhow I don’t want to seem to gloat over him, or to be asking about repayment.”

  “Simon, that fellow is no damned good.”

  “What’s he been up to?”

  “Leeching and bumming and cornering. And wearing that monk’s outfit. And getting Maria into bad ways.”

  “Is he pestering Maria? I thought he was a homo?”

  “Nothing so simple. A homo is just unusual; I’ve known some who are unusually good people. Parlabane is a wicked man. That’s an old-fashioned term, but it fits.”

  “But what’s he been doing to Maria?”

  “They were thrown out of a students’ restaurant a few nights ago for shouting filthy songs, and they were seen fighting in the street afterward. I’ve found him a job—a fill-in in Extension. I’ve told him he must find another place to live, but he just yields as if I were punching a half-filled balloon, and continues to hang around my rooms and make claims on Maria.”

  “What kind of claims?”

  “Insinuating claims. I think he knows about us. About Maria and me.”

  “Do you think she told him?”

  “Unthinkable. But he smells things. And I find now that he’s seeing McVarish.”

  I sighed. “It’s as true as it’s horrible: one never regrets anything so profoundly as a kind action. We should have left him in the Society; they know a few
things about penances that might have sorted him out.”

  “What I can’t understand or forgive is the way he seems to be turning on me.”

  “That’s his nature, Clem; he can’t bear to be under an obligation. He was always proud as Lucifer. When I think back to our student days, I’d say he was as Luciferian as a not very tall fellow with a messed-up face could be; we tend to think of Lucifer as tall, dark, and handsome—fallen angel, you know. But if Parlabane was ever an angel it’s a kind unknown to me; just a very good student of philosophy with a special talent for the sceptical hypotyposis.”

  “Mmmm …?”

  “The brainy over-view or the chilling put-down or whatever you like. If you said something you thought was fine, and that meant a lot to you, he would immediately put it in a context that showed you up as a credulous boob, or a limited fellow who hadn’t read enough or thought enough. But he did it with such a grand sweep and such a light touch that you felt you had been illuminated.”

  “Until you got sick of it.”

  “Yes, until you gained enough self-confidence to know you couldn’t be completely wrong all of the time and that exposing things as cheats and shams or follies couldn’t do much for you. Scepticism ran wild in Parlabane.”

  “Odd about scepticism, you know, Simon. I’ve known a few sceptical philosophers and with the exception of Parlabane they have all been quite ordinary people in the normal dealings of life. They pay their debts, have mortgages, educate their kids, goggle over their grandchildren, try to scrape together a competence precisely like the rest of the middle class. They come to terms with life. How do they square it with what they profess?”

  “Horse sense, Clem, horse sense. It’s the saving of us all who live by the mind. We make a deal between what we can comprehend intellectually and what we are in the world as we encounter it. Only the geniuses and people with a kink try to escape, and even the geniuses often live by a thoroughly bourgeois morality. Why? Because it simplifies all the unessential things. One can’t always be improvising and seeing every triviality afresh. But Parlabane is a man with a kink.”

  “Years ago plenty of people thought he was a genius.”

  “I remember being one of them.”

  “Do you think it was that wretched accident to his face that kinked him? Or his family? His mother, do you suppose?”