Bridge of Sighs

by Richard Russo

  “Mr. Berg?” Perry repeated, still eyeing Three Mock. Noonan assumed he was going to ask why the boy hadn’t left, but he was mistaken. “How come we’re meeting in here?” Kozlowski asked instead.

  They’d all assumed the room assignment on their printed schedules was a mistake until the office secretary informed them that, no, Mr. Berg had specifically requested the stale, dusty, windowless former storage room, though why he should prefer it to the bright, airy plum of a room set aside for honors classes remained a mystery.

  Mr. Berg grinned unpleasantly at Perry Kozlowski. “Which answer would you prefer?” he said finally.

  “Which answer?” Perry repeated, glancing around to see if the question made any more sense to his companions than it did to him.

  Mr. Berg nodded. “In your other classes you’re used to getting one answer, usually a lie. In this one you’ll get two or more, depending on the question. Among these answers you will search for the truth and mostly not find it.”

  “You’re going to lie to us?”

  “For instance, I could tell you I’ve selected this room so we could listen to loud jazz without disturbing other classes, and that would be true, though it wouldn’t be the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not so help me God.” He was now fishing around in his jacket pocket, from which he extracted a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a tarnished silver lighter. “It might also be true that I selected a room far from all other classrooms because”—he lit up, inhaled deeply and exhaled into the room—“I like to smoke.” Nan Beverly wrinkled her nose.

  “That’s against the rules,” Perry pointed out.

  “Yes, it is,” Mr. Berg conceded, filling his lungs a second time, exhaling through his nose. “But I really do enjoy smoking, don’t you?”

  “If I get caught with a cigarette, I’m off the football team.”

  “And you’re afraid I’ll report you?”

  “You’re supposed to. You’re a teacher. Or somebody else could.”

  “Who do you imagine might betray you? Mr. Mock, perhaps?”

  Perry was clearly startled by this reference to Three Mock, who seemed to register that his name had been spoken, but gave no other indication of following the conversation. “Maybe.” Perry shrugged. “How do I know? Marconi, maybe.”

  “You’re suspicious of Mr. Marconi?”

  “I said maybe. I don’t know.”

  Mr. Berg turned to Noonan. “Do you like to smoke, Mr. Marconi?”

  “Yes,” said Noonan, whose repeated violations of the prohibition had often gotten him in trouble at the academy, though he saw no reason to volunteer this information. He’d also been written up for drinking and brawling with townies, where he’d again broken his wrist. No reason to volunteer any of that either.

  “Here, have one,” Mr. Berg said, tossing him the pack.

  “He’s on the team, too,” Perry said.

  Noonan surprised himself by taking out a cigarette and lighting it with the lighter Mr. Berg held out to him. He felt Lucy’s amazed eyes on him.

  “There,” Mr. Berg said, again addressing Perry. “Now you don’t have to worry about Mr. Marconi. He can’t betray you without betraying himself.”

  “Somebody else might, though.”

  Mr. Berg leaned forward, lowering his voice in mock confidentiality. “Miss Beverly, for instance?”

  Nan started at this suggestion.

  “No, not her,” Perry said quickly.

  “Why not?”

  “She just wouldn’t.”

  “She’s too blond?”

  Perry grimaced. “What?”

  “She’s very blond, isn’t she.”

  “So what?”

  “It’s dark people who do dark deeds, right?”

  Perry looked around the room for an ally. “That’s crazy.”

  “Or do you think she’s secretly fond of you?”

  Now it was Nan’s turn to grimace.

  “No.”

  Mr. Berg nodded. “You’re probably right.” Perry’s face darkened and he added, “Right to be suspicious, I mean. Most people are up to no good, isn’t that true?

  “I guess.”

  “I don’t mind telling you, I’m worried,” Mr. Berg continued in a tone that made it impossible for Noonan to take anything he said seriously, though most of his fellow students seemed to. This was a game, and the referee was crazy. Which meant there was nothing to do but relax and enjoy it. “I could be fired for giving Mr. Marconi a cigarette, and he could be kicked off the team for smoking it. As you point out, it’s against the rules, so maybe this means the end for Mr. Marconi and me. And yet the fact remains, I love to smoke and so does Mr. Marconi here, I can tell. We’re mighty glad, he and I, that the principal isn’t likely to walk in on us, not all the way over here, which may have been another reason I chose this room. Far away from prying eyes and malicious gossip. My inference is—and you may be interested to hear this, Miss Beverly—that if nobody rats out Mr. Marconi and me for smoking, maybe we’ll break some other rules, too. Does that possibility frighten you?”

  “What other rules?” Nan asked warily.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cigarette, Mr. Kozlowski?”

  That Perry would have loved one couldn’t have been more obvious as he regarded Noonan with longing and hatred. Who, in return, stretched out and smiled back, exhaling languorously out the side of his mouth.

  “I really wish you would,” Mr. Berg said. “Then I’d be less worried about losing my job and getting Mr. Marconi kicked off the football team. Both of those possibilities trouble me greatly.” In actuality, Noonan felt certain he couldn’t care less about either one, though Perry seemed not to grasp this essential fact.

  “I better not,” he said glumly.

  Mr. Berg shrugged. “Of course the real reason I selected this room may have nothing to do with cigarettes. Maybe I’ve located us all the way over here not so much because we could do things as say things. Things we might not want to say over there.” He was again talking to Nan Beverly in that same mock-confidential tone. “Things we might not want overheard.”

  “Such as?”

  “There is no God,” said Mr. Berg, then clapped his hand over his mouth. “I shouldn’t have said that. Wow. If somebody heard me say that, I could be fired. Just like for smoking.”

  “Are you saying there is no God?” Perry Kozlowski said.

  “No, that just slipped out. It was only a thought. But it’s a good thing we’re over here, isn’t it? Not the sort of thing you’d want our principal to overhear. I believe he attends the same church as Miss Beverly, and in faculty meetings I’ve heard him speak about God as if they converse regularly, so I know he’d be very displeased to hear something like I let slip. Which he might just do in that honors room, right next to his office. Have you ever noticed how sneaky he is? How he likes to loiter in the hallways and listen to what’s going on in the classrooms?”

  “He could still do that here,” Perry pointed out.

  “But he’s also fat and lazy,” Mr. Berg said. “He wouldn’t come all this way. And if he did we’d probably hear him because that’s how fat and lumbering he is, though I probably shouldn’t be saying such things. He is our principal, after all. The only reason I mention that he’s fat and lazy is because it’s true, which is different from saying something just to be unkind, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Noonan volunteered.

  “Yes,” Mr. Berg repeated. “Mr. Marconi agrees. I expected as much. But Miss Beverly, here’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. It’s about our country. People say it’s great, indeed the greatest country of all. Do you agree?”

  “Yes?” she said, herself glancing around for support.

  “Why?”

  She thought about it for a moment, then said, “Because we’re free? Because we can be whatever we want?”

  “Are those statements or questions?”

  “Statements?”

  Mr. Berg sighed. “Oh.
I thought perhaps your lilting inflection suggested a reservation. But maybe by the end of the term you’ll be able to speak in the declarative. Does that strike you as a possibility?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Marconi has his doubts,” Mr. Berg said, responding to the guffaw Noonan wasn’t able to suppress. “Are you an agnostic in general, Mr. Marconi, or only where Miss Beverly is concerned?”

  “In general,” Noonan said, careful to sound very certain.

  “Are there other agnostics in this class, or is Mr. Noonan our sole practitioner?”

  No response.

  “How about you, Miss Beverly?”

  Nan started again. Having been called on once, she clearly didn’t expect to find herself in the crosshairs again so soon. “I don’t know?”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “What an agnostic is.” She was looking more alarmed by the moment.

  “I don’t understand you at all, Miss Beverly. When you know the answer you make it sound like a question, but when you have an actual question—what is an agnostic?—you don’t ask it. Is it that you don’t want to know what an agnostic is? Or are you afraid you won’t like the answer?”

  “How come you’re picking on her?” Perry blurted.

  “Now there’s a question in its true form,” Mr. Berg replied, as if Kozlowski had offered his comment with no other purpose than to be helpful. After a beat he turned to him again and said, “Which answer would you prefer?”

  “I don’t—”

  But Mr. Berg had already redirected his attention to Nan. “A doubter, Miss Beverly. An agnostic is a doubter. Someone who questions things, especially authority.” As a visual aid, he now pointed at Noonan, in case anyone had forgotten who was being alluded to. “Mr. Marconi claims to be one, and I believe him. How about you? Is he convincing on this point, or do you think it’s merely a pose?” Again he lowered his voice and leaned forward, as if this were just between the two of them. Nan Beverly leaned back in her seat, while everyone else leaned forward. “People adopt poses, don’t they? Pretend to be what they aren’t?”

  “I don’t—”

  Then just as quickly he was done with her. “What’s the opposite of an agnostic, Mr. Lynch?”

  Noonan looked over at his friend, expecting Lucy to be paralyzed by the sudden spotlight and relieved to discover he wasn’t.

  “A believer?”

  “Another answer in the form of a question. You and Miss Beverly should marry and have children,” Mr. Berg said, a suggestion that caused Lucy to blush deeply. “And which are you, Mr. Lynch, a doubter or a believer?”

  “I guess I’m a little of both,” Lucy said.

  “An equivocation, surely,” Mr. Berg replied, then regarded Nan rather pointedly.

  It took her a moment to realize what he might be driving at. “What’s an equivocation?” she finally said.

  Mr. Berg applauded. “Bravo, Miss Beverly. I take back everything I said about you. Except the part about being blond. You’re very blond.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Perry wanted to know.

  “Which answer would you prefer?”

  “Why do you keep asking me that?”

  “Because I haven’t yet received a satisfactory answer. Or even an unsatisfactory one, come to that. The good news is that we have the whole semester, so I’m not discouraged by our lack of progress thus far, and I hope you aren’t either. Now, Mr. Lynch.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why do you suppose you’re a bit of a doubter and a bit of a believer?”

  “I’m still learning?”

  “Not a bad answer, Mr. Lynch, even if stated in the form of a question, though I don’t believe it’s true. Do you want to know why? Yes, excellent, I knew you would. You may still be learning, as you say, but you aren’t learning much. Which is to say, you aren’t learning at the rate you were when, say, you were two or three years old. That’s when the real learning takes place. By the time we’re seventeen or eighteen our characters and attitudes are mostly formed. We’re basically looking for evidence in support of conclusions we’ve already arrived at regarding the world and our place in it. We like the idea of change even though we know it’s an illusion. We keep hoping for new experiences, but we’re frightened, because the next really new experience for us will be death, and we aren’t likely to learn much from that, are we? That little item’s pretty much the end of our education, though it will answer the question whether it’s better to doubt than believe, which reminds me of my original question, Miss Beverly. You and Mr. Lynch have so much in common—I speak here temperamentally—that I wonder if you can think of any other reason why he should be a bit of a doubter and a bit of a believer?”

  “Who cares?” Perry said, hoping for a laugh but not getting it.

  “Which answer would you prefer?” Noonan said, taking one last mock-thoughtful drag on his cigarette and getting the very laugh that eluded the other boy.

  Mr. Berg turned to him, apparently delighted that Noonan had seized upon the sense of play. “You’re Mr. Lynch’s friend, are you not?”

  Noonan nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You say you are, but there was a slight hesitation to your answer. What made you hesitate?”

  “You,” said Noonan, winning another laugh.

  “Me? Good heavens. Am I making you nervous?”

  “You’re making everybody nervous. About giving the wrong answers.”

  “Oh, nonsense. I’m making Miss Beverly nervous, I admit. She’s unused to confrontation, but you, Mr. Marconi? Come now, you wouldn’t shit a shitter.”

  Everyone else in the room gasped at this.

  “I said we’re friends. I think I know if somebody’s my friend or not.”

  “I think you do, but here’s the question, Miss Beverly,” he said, turning abruptly away. “Don’t be nervous. We’d simply like to hear your opinion. Who do you think understands Mr. Lynch best, Mr. Lynch himself or his good friend Mr. Marconi?”

  Was it Noonan’s imagination, or did Mr. Berg give the word “good” an odd emphasis that cast some doubt upon whether they were friends at all?

  Perry interrupted. “How come you ask the same four people all the questions?”

  Mr. Berg raised his arms like a conductor, and the entire class responded in a chorus, led by Noonan, “Which answer would you prefer?” Perry seemed on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

  “Bobby,” Nan said, her eyes meeting Noonan’s directly. Ah, he thought. She’s caught on and is fighting back. Also, her aura was ablaze.

  “You could be right, Miss Beverly. Like you, I wouldn’t sell Mr. Marconi short. No fool, our Mr. Marconi.”

  “Are you going to play favorites?” Perry now wanted to know.

  “I’d like to say no, but that would be a lie, wouldn’t it? We all have our favorites. I’m just like you in that respect. I like some people and don’t like others. For instance, you don’t like Mr. Marconi, am I correct?” He waited now, grinning, and Noonan had a pretty good idea what for.

  So, apparently, did Lucy, who nudged Perry and whispered, “Which answer would you prefer?”

  “Ah, Mr. Lynch, welcome aboard,” Mr. Berg said, then quickly turned his attention back to Noonan. “But Mr. Marconi, I really must insist you tell us why your friend’s a bit of a doubter and a bit of a believer.”

  He shrugged. “His dad’s a believer and his mom’s a doubter.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Berg sighed theatrically. “What they call a mixed marriage. True, what your friend alleges, Mr. Lynch?”

  Lucy allowed that it was.

  “And exactly what does your father believe in?”

  “America,” Lucy said. “Our town. Our family. That people are basically good.”

  “And your mother has her doubts?”

  “Not really. She just—”

  “Has her doubts, yes, I understand. Thinks people are basically up to no good, as Miss Beverly and I agreed earlier. I hope we aren’t boring you,
Mr. Kozlowski,” he said, noting that Perry was sulking in his chair, “since we’re closing in on the subject of our seminar, and I’d hate to think you’re losing interest already, because I, for one, am very, very excited.”

  THAT EVENING Noonan’s head was still reeling. After football practice he stopped at Ikey’s, where Lucy was manning the register. They took one look at each other and burst out laughing. When Dec Lynch tripped down the back stairs from his apartment, they tried to compose themselves, but it was no use.

  “You two giggle like a couple girls,” Dec observed, his head in the meat case, from which he extracted two thick pork chops and a small boat of potato salad for his dinner. “The hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Which answer would you prefer?” they said in unison, and cracked up all over again, while he just stood there glaring at them. Finally, they became self-conscious enough to stop.

  “Just tell me one thing,” he said, fixing Noonan. “And I want the truth. Do we stand any chance against Mohawk next Saturday?”

  It was tempting to give him the Berg response all over again, but Noonan could tell the man was serious. A gambler, he wanted the inside scoop. “Hard to say,” he told him.

  “I know it’s hard to say,” Dec countered. “If it was easy, would I be asking you?”

  “I don’t think they’re any better than we are. They’re at home, though.”

  Dec Lynch snorted derisively. “Home?” he said. “Ten miles upstream, you mean. A fifteen-minute bus ride, assuming both traffic lights are red. Hell, it’s the same damn gene pool. If we were any closer there’d be nothing but harelips on both sides of the ball. Is anybody hurt, is what I’d like you to tell me.”