Was Voltaire right in saying that the adjective is the enemy of the noun? Properly to understand Hank’s inability to make deed jibe with word, we must leave him for the moment struggling to extricate himself from the Kappa Nu guest bedclothes, gazing with wild surmise at the declared sweetheart of wicked Alexandria. Let us go back in time only a few hours, and in space to the bus traversing its customary route between the metropolis (train going no farther) and College Hill.
Here, then, slumped on the seat directly over the rear wheel is Hank Gordon, cynic, iconoclast, freshman-designate. He is no great spectacle—young, callow (see above), as tall as he will ever be, though by no means yet fully formed; dishwater-blond hair, a wide mouth quick to smile, eager, fearful, hopeful, lustful. His clothes? Altogether the wrong sort of clothes. Enough about his clothes.
In short, a young man with all his parts, though as yet some of them, etcetera, etcetera; and full of what are often called “juices.”
Note that we are calling him Hank. He had left “Henry” at home, along with six suits of ankle-length underwear. In the unlikely circumstance of a fellow bus rider’s asking of him if he still held forth against the frats, he would have stammered a stout affirmative. Most of his mind, however, was engaged in rueing the previous evening: a date with a hometown cocktail waitress whose pelvic structure had long enchanted him. But all the waitress had wanted was to sample the charcoal broil at a different bar.
But, now, frats . . . Hank’s position would have not surprised Professor Eamon De V. Mulcahy of the Psych Department (he of the full-grown taste for full-blown women, who was in the near future to trade a more than passing grade for an introduction to Catherine, she of All the Russias.) Unhesitatingly, E. D. V. Mulcahy would have pronounced Hank’s attitude to be a simple defense mechanism: the young man feared he might not be asked to join a fraternity, and in this not very brave manner he thought to defend himself. It may be. Let us not be quick to criticize him. He was very young. We have never been as young as he was.
Then, too, we might with profit turn to the opinions of Professor C. B. Yelg of the Anthro Department on the subject of secret societies (ancient, modern, and primitive) and initiation rites. His rollicking accounts of circum- and sub-incision techniques would alone repay us. But time and space, alas, do not permit. To Hank, again.
Into the town bus station, already half-sunk in the torpors of the night, the dirty floors flecked with cigarette butts and scraps of newspapers, the peeling walls engraved with coarse graffiti, steps our man, laden with suitcases. In his mind at this moment are two hopes: secondly, that he find a beautiful female freshman (preferably a sex-fiend) who will give him a lift in her automobile; and firstly, that the men’s room in the station will be plainly marked, thus saving him the agony of inquiry.
While these two thoughts, each a messy mixture of spiritual and physical, danced in his head like visions of, shall we say, sugar plums, he became cognizant of a figure standing in front of him and saying something or other with every appearance of affability.
This was the almost life-sized Thorwald (“Swede”) Thorwaldson, deputed by the brethren of Kappa Nu to go down to the depot and not return without a cargo of human flesh. Recruiting had been bad, had been bad for years and years, and although, the Kappa Nu interpretation of what constituted fraternity material was pathetically liberal, this had nothing helped. (The cleverness of the gambit was something less than needle-sharp. It is hardly necessary to point out that neither Rho Gamma nor Beta Tau, nor yet Lambda Mu, ever posted scouts at the bus station—and for the late bus, no less—to greet likely freshmen. No man who didn’t drive up in his own car was a likely freshman in the eyes of the Big Three.)
But now something like a fresh wind was beginning to blow through the becobwebbed halls of Kappa Nu. One suspects the fine Italian hand of Pietro Di Guglielmo, this year’s president.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Hank, introducing dialogue into these pages as he peered at the figure out of travel-gummed eyes, and let his suitcases find their own way to the floor.
“Said, I was wondering if you’d seen Bill Northrup on the bus?”—Thorwald knowing damned well he hadn’t, there being no such person.
“Well, I don’t—”
“Tall, good-looking fellow, probably with a letter-sweater,” said canny Thorwald.
“Gee, I don’t think—but—”
“You must know him: Big Man On Campus,” Thorwald proceeded, cunningly.
“Well, um, I’ve never even seen the campus. I’m uh freshman,” admitted Hank, producing before the last word in his embarrassment, a glottal stop of a richness which would have delighted Courtney T. Armbruster, sometime Professer of Chaditic, Cushitic, and Hamito-Semitic Languages. (Here let us interrupt the silken-swift flow of our narrative for a respectful pause in memory of Professor Armbruster. A man may depart this mortal vale in many ways, few of them pleasant. For Courtney T. Armbruster, Kismet decreed that he was to be discovered by a highly volatile wife whilst in flagrant delight with Salome daughter to Herodias; and how can man die better?) But we are peeping into Volume II again. Our concern should be in Volume I with Thorwald’s magnificently simulated astonishment)
“Really?” the sly Swede exclaimed. “You—a freshman? Why, I certainly would have thought you were an upperclassman!” And to the blushing Gordon he offered his hand and declaimed the Runic syllables of his own name.
This young man, Thor thought, promised well: he had only one head, no visible jerks or twitches, one could gaze at his face without shuddering, and his voice gave no indication of palatal cleavage. In all, superior grist for the decrepit Kappa Nu mill.
“He’s not on this bus, he won’t be in tonight,” said the wily soul-snatcher of the mythical Northrup. “Fixed up a room for him at the Kappa Nu House . . . all for nothing . . .” he mused aloud “Shame . . . Say!” A thought struck him, he struck his forehead, and almost staggered. “If you’re not expected anywhere else, and this late at night it’d be kind of hard for you to find a place—”
“Meant to take an earlier bus,” mumbled Gordon.
“—I mean, kind of irregular, but I can fix it up with the guys, I guess.” And so he rattled on, securing one of Hank’s suitcases and moving toward the door.
“Well, uh, yuh,” said Hank, pleased no end at this totally unexpected offer. “Thanks, I mean.” Kappa Nu, he was beginning to suspect, gave indication of being so delightfully democratic that he might needs release himself of all rash vows never to join a fraternity.
His victim safely in the car—a stripped-down, souped up Tortoni-Thung belonging to Tom Schmertz, frat brother and idiot scion of Schmertz’s Cheese, who could be bullied with only moderate difficulty into make the rod available for lodge business—his victim safely in the car, to repeat and the car on its way, Thor confided a bit of news. “Had a little fire at the frat house last week. Staying now in temporary quarters. Just until.”
Such deceit, in the face of the dark-rushing, sweet-scented night, was regrettable, and may now be exposed. The chances of Kappa Nu’s then rebuilding any structure larger than a three-hole privy were slightly less than those of the Canarsie Indians getting back Manhattan Island.
“Naming no names,” Thor observed, in tones hard and putative, “but it wouldn’t surprise me . . . certain elements . . . jealous of Kappa Nu. Of course,” hastily, “no danger now. But when we move back in—You know how to use a gun?” he shot at Hank.
“Gosh!” breathed Hank, delightedly. “I mean, well, I used to have this Daisy—”
“Good man!” Thorwald gripped his knee. Then he chuckled. “Of course—I know we can trust you—fact is, the liquor fed the flames! Damn, but those bottles were well hid! And not just bottles, haw, the Dean raided us twice, but couldn’t find a drop—or a dame!”
Note well our dispassionate fairness. In making this last comment Kappa Nu’s enterprising representative was not entirely untruthful. He neglected only to mention that the Dean in question
had died still deploring the loss to the nation occasioned by the departure from the political scene of the Whig Party, for which he had regularly voted with youthful enthusiasm. Ah, yes! Though currently devoid of so much as a single lizard, not to speak of lions, Kappa Nu, too, had known a time when Jamshyd gloried and drank deep. The cow in the belfry, the skeleton in the chapel, cane rush, pear-shaped tennis rackets, fringe-topped surreys; and the frat as a body rushing to join the Cadet Corps, hastily formed in ’98 to repel the Royal Spanish Fleet from sailing up the Wabash and glutting their vile Iberic lusts upon the local virgins—Ichabod, Ichabod (or—for we wish to keep nothing from our readers—The glory hath departed).
Exactly why the glory had departed, it would be difficult now to say. Thirty years ago Kappa Nu was still, if not top banana on the Grecian tree, at least respectable. Fifteen years ago, however, saw the damage already done, and its so-called house parties were a scorn and a laughter in every sorority (the College itself being non-co-ed) between Marietta, Ohio, and Muscadine, Iowa . . . But of all of this. Hank knew but nothing.
Au contraire. Guns . . . liquor . . . dean-led raids . . . woman . . . women! Hank was all of a delighted tremble.
“Here we are,” said Bring-’Em-Back-Alive Thorwaldson as the Tortoni-Thung snarled to a halt in the weed-choked front yard of the pro tern, frat-house. He intercepted young Gordon’s gaze of dismayed shock and almost fumbled. “You understand this is not permanent. It’s just until—Only just until.”
Thus, the background. And now we return to Hank, enmeshed in the patched sheets of the bed in what he still thought of, innocently, as “Bill Northrup’s room.” (Unbeknownst to our man, B. Northrup, mythical busrider, was presently the subject of impassioned debate in the Kappa Nu conference room on the floor below. President Di Guglielmo proposed that the inconvenient Northrup be disposed of through a sudden onset of Hodgkin’s Disease—which he vaguely thought of as being amorous in origin—whereas Thor Thorwaldson, having developed an affection for this creature of his invention, insisted that Northrup be permitted to run off and join the Foreign Legion.) We are now at the very moment when Thais makes her entrance, so let us rummage a bit in Hank Gordon’s mind.
It had been quite an evening, Hank was telling himself. All the leading figures of Kappa Nu had shaken him by the hand and assured him that they Had A Great Little Fraternity Here, videlicet Sam Swack the Baseball Player (not delineated in his precise position as utility outfielder on the third scrub), Prexy Di Guglielmo as chairman and ranking player of the Checkers Club (“Really creamed the Sarah Stillwell Junior College Team!”), the Tom Schmertz of Schmertz’s Cheese aforementioned, and other, lesser, luminaries. They had discussed Sports, Liquor, and Women—though not in that order.
Innocent Hank was not, of course, aware that the less presentable members of Kappa Nu (i.e., most of the members) were being carefully screened from his view. As for the fire which burned out the old frat hutch having been of incendiary origin, ha! a likely story. The antique pile, unpainted since the days when Cactus Jack Gamer presided over the U. S. Senate, had gone up like a matchhead as a result of defective wiring. The new (or Just Until) long-house was some distance from the campus, and had been obtained through shenanigans with a local realestatenik which would not bear close scrutiny. Though it had supposedly not been dwelt in for years, the manselike mass was in a rather good shape. Its exterior flaunted the scars inflicted long years ago by a carpenter who had run amuck with a scroll-saw, and its interior was clean enough (though not so clean as it had been before the blood brothers moved in.)
Necessary paint, plaster, and wallpaper were far beyond the slender resources of the local’s treasury; national, appealed to for aid, indicated that only the high cost of postage prevented revocation of the local’s charter. But a sufficiency of the heads of antlered ungulates, splintered oars, triangular banners bearing strange devices, tarnished loving-cups, genuine imitation Heidelberg beer steins, and notices of athletic victories some ten college generations old, plus group photos of turtle-necked young men, and brightly colored pictures of well endowed young women who—if they existed at all and were not mere lensmen’s tricks—ought to have been working for Borden’s; a sufficiency of such equipment, we say, had been disposed about the place to give it an air which satisfied Hank’s imaginings of what a well-furnished frat house ought to be.
And now the action begins. Thais (dark, she was, and looked delicious), you may remember, was smiling lewdly at Hank, Hank was garroting himself with his blanket by way of response. Both we and Hank appear to have too long delayed: the door closes softly behind Thais’s utterly enchanting haunches.
For yet another moment Hank remained horizontal, reflecting (as it might be academically) that the vision had patently stood in need of neither falsies nor uplifts, nor indeed any such foolish fictions. Then, after first thrashing about and then flinging away blanket and sheet like a finally triumphant Laocoon, he jumped out of bed and in two great leaps bounded to the door. He threw it open and gazed wildly about him.
The hall was empty, unless one be picayune enough to count two frat brothers engaged in conversation on the rickety stair landing down the hall. Sam Swack bad just finished doing one of Tom Schmertz’s papers, overdue from the previous term, for him; and Tom was laboriously expressing his gratitude and the hope that no suspicion as to authorship would be aroused by the paper’s earning more than a C. Sam assured him, heartily, that there was no chance of this.
Both young men looked up as the pajama’d Gordon emerged from the guest room (soon to be his and his alone—well, almost alone—that is, by no means alone, but . . . ).
“Did you guys see—?” Hank paused in mid-question. Even in his present fevered state he was capable of a certain minimal amount of ratiocination. An Einstein he was not, but against the Tom Schmertz’s of the world Hank Gordon at least flickered if he did not shine. It now occurred to him that if they had seen Thais they would scarcely be sitting there discussing grades, and if they had not seen her, no matter how carefully he construed his question it stood a good chance of getting a bad response.
“Uh, yuk,” he concluded, with an involuntary and rather nicely Hottentotish click, and withdrew into his bedroom. He closed the door, though not swiftly enough to avoid hearing Sam Swacks exasperated: “One guy, only, to rush—and he turns out to be a sleepwalker! Whatta creepjoint!”
Blushing quietly, Hank walked back to his bed, slowly and automatically wiped off the sole of each foot against the opposite pajama leg, and pensively clambered in.
In a second he was out again. Had he been Lars Porsena, by the nine gods he would have sworn that he had seen an attractive and underdressed young woman saunter out of his closet and through his bedroom door. Being Hank, however, and not Clusium’s leading warlord, he could only burble inarticulately, but the point was still the same. In the air of his room there seemed to linger a scent which he thought might be musk. The word patchouli glided into Hank’s mind, banked, and was gone as he was in the very act of asking himself whether it weren’t a game one played with dice.
Walking, oh, ever so cautiously to the closet, he paused, then threw wide the door. Darkness there, and nothing more. He pulled the light cord and was rewarded by the sight of a cross-bar holding four wire-hangers, on one of which was draped his favorite and only drip-dry shirt Crumpled and forgotten in the comer lay an athletic supporter from which the bloom had long since departed.
Hank reached up and moved a hand around the surface of the closet shelf. He harvested two dead cockroaches and a splinter, but not the slightest trace of a large name-pin carrying the word Thais.
He tapped the walls, pulled the cross-bar, examined the floor for signs of a trapdoor. He backed out, closing the door, and sat heavily on the bed.
“She must be one of those ‘dames’ Thorwald was talking about: hidden so the Dean couldn’t find her,” himself told himself, but not with what you could call real confidence.
Bing! the cl
oset door, and out came another member of the female persuasion to meet without flinching Hank’s instant exhibition of exophthalmia, or popeyes. She was perhaps a trifle more mature than the first visitor, but undeniably unstaled and distinctly unwithered. Her eyelids were painted blue and her palms were tinted with henna. Upon the bit of flimsy fabric which emphasized, rather than concealed, her bosom, was a large name-pin reading Cleopatra. This she removed, the action revealing to astonished Hank two small but distinct areas on which he had never till this moment realized that rouge might be applied, and—an imitation of her predecessor—tossed the button back on the closet shelf.
“Heyyyyy!” cried our eager, impetuous Hank Gordon, leaping still again to his feet and so blundering forward like a dim-sighted giraffe that he bumped boorishly into the lady as she paced her stately way across the floor on tiny, perfectly formed feet.
“Podden me!” said she, with a regal hauteur that became her well, and pattered away and out the door with all the imperiousness of a true daughter of a hundred belted Ptolemies.
This time Hank knew better than to follow. He ran to attack the closet instead, but once again it yielded nothing “It could be part of the fraternity initiation,” he whispered, awed at the thought as even Professor Yelg might be.
Hank sat on the by now well-warmed side of the bed. And as he stared into the open closet he saw, to his infinite consternation, the figure of another woman materialize therein, her charms, alas! to an extent covered by a dress of antique cut; our man was already becoming a connoisseur of appartitions (which was only fair, since he had already done more business in this field than the average member of the Psychic Research Society). Haply and happily, however, the newcomer found it necessary to bend over to adjust her garter, thus revealing the advantages inherent in a neckline so low as to be only a moderately high waistline. What red-blooded American boy would have had the ingratitude to avert his eyes? Just so. Not Hank, either.
13 Above the Night Page 23