Gods of Aberdeen

by Micah Nathan

  “I had some trouble with mine,” he said.

  “This is a particularly hard section,” Art said. “I’m sure everyone found it difficult.”

  Arnold sighed and shifted in his seat. Someone snapped their gum.

  “Okay, starting with line one?”

  Art nodded.

  Arnold struggled through the section. At the end he slumped in his chair, the back of his shirt darkened with sweat.

  Art looked at me, and, giving no sign of recognition, asked me to pick up where Arnold had left off.

  I pulled myself closer to the desk and opened my notebook:

  Those you see here are pauper souls,

  The souls of unburied men.

  Charon takes the buried across these dark waters

  While all others remain until their bones find the grave

  Or til they fret and wander this shore a hundred years.

  It was, in my opinion, an excellent translation, one I had worked at especially hard. Art looked unimpressed.

  We moved onto Aeneas’s emotional meeting with Dido, Art asking me again to read.

  I left your land against my will.

  The gods commanded me to their bidding,

  As they now spur me through this world of darkness and shadow,

  These rotting lands and their endless nights.

  “Eric’s passage is a good place for us to start,” Art said. “Here we have Aeneas pleading his case to Dido. Aeneas with such pleas tried to placate / The burning soul, Virgil writes. Our hero has learned—too late, it seems—that his duty is the calling to end all callings. It demands much from him at the expense of everything else: his happiness, his love, his hope for free will. Dido knows she cannot stand in his way, that his obligation to the empire of Rome is far greater than his love for her, or for anyone. Drop a few lines down, where it reads At length she flung away from him and fled / His enemy still, into the shadowy grove. Dido leaves him, her heart broken, and even though Aeneas is visibly moved…Aeneas still gazed after her in tears…look what the next line says: Shaken by her ill fate and pitying her.”

  Art nodded, his eyes wide with excitement. He jabbed his finger against the open book lying before him on the podium. “Read that again. Shaken by her ill fate and pitying her. It’s not that he simply feels guilt. He’s actually shaken. Aeneas sees his actions as coming from somewhere outside himself, and of course he’s upset that Dido’s been hurt, but this doesn’t weaken his resolve. In fact, he doesn’t even see himself as directly causing her pain. She’s caught in the path of his unyielding destiny, which is why Aeneas pities Dido. There’s the dichotomy—her loss is emotionally devastating, and yet in the midst of his terrible sorrow Aeneas has no doubts, no regrets. He’s prepared to sacrifice anything for the greater good, even the ideal that we, in our modern times, hold so sacred: Love. With this sacrifice, Aeneas becomes one of the great heroes in literature. And what is Aeneas’s reward for his unfailing pursuit of destiny?”

  I looked around the class. No one appeared the least bit interested. Someone snapped their gum again. I heard a kid chuckling in the back of the class.

  “Aeneas’s reward is a life of misery,” Art said, clearly exasperated. “Now if that isn’t heroic, I don’t know what is.”

  Art approached me after class, as I packed my books. Up close he was taller than I first thought, a few inches above six feet, and his light brown hair was slicked back behind his ears. He had small features: a short nose, small chin, small mouth, but large blue eyes that were bright and intense, even behind his glasses. The mouthpiece of a pipe stuck out from his jacket pocket.

  “Your translation was excellent,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I really liked your lecture.”

  “I think you were the only one.” He looked at his watch. “Do you have a class after this?”

  I shook my head.

  “Great,” he said, and he flashed a smile. “Would you mind joining me for a quick coffee at Campus Bean?”

  The Campus Bean coffee shop was in the student union basement, which had been expanded to also include the campus bookstore and the Commons—Aberdeen’s all-purpose eatery. Art and I sat at a small table in the corner. He drank an espresso, I ordered nothing. He asked me how I was enjoying school.

  “I love it,” I said. “I feel like I’ve been here my whole life.”

  Art sipped from the tiny white cup. “You think you’re among the elite, is that it?” He smiled. “I’d be wary of confusing your surroundings with the inhabitants. Half these kids are here because their parents didn’t know what else to do with them. They just want their sons and daughters going to a college where the brick is covered in ivy and the dorms all have leaded windows. Take that kid in our class, Arnold Ewen. He’s a miserable student, and he’s been on behavioral probation since day one.”

  “What for?”

  “A prank his freshman year. They decided to run a kid up the flagpole, some poor little fellow who got stuck with Arnold and his cohorts in their dorm suite. Halfway up the flagpole the rope snaps and the kid falls. Busts his head wide open on the pavement.”

  “That’s horrible,” I said.

  “No kidding. But do you think Arnold got punished? His dad is some big-time international lawyer, paid for Aberdeen’s new boathouse. He bought off the kid’s family, got the school to give Arnold a slap on the wrist, and that’s all.”

  The boathouse was a monstrous wooden structure sitting on the edge of campus, jutting out into the Quinnipiac, with the legend FRANCIS J. EWEN BOATHOUSE emblazoned in white block letters on its face.

  “Of course not everyone here comes from money,” said Arthur. “Take me, for example. My family’s not starving, mind you, but no summer homes in Ibiza. And then there’s you,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “Oh, yeah. One glance tells me what I need to know. Your shoes, your clothes. Hand-me-downs, am I right?”

  I was mortified. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Of course, but that’s not the point. Don’t think for a second that half the rich sots strutting about don’t look at you and think: ‘There’s a kid who doesn’t want his father’s damn money. Good for him. Wish I had the courage to tell the old man to piss off.’ The funny thing is that you’re obviously on scholarship, so they don’t know the half of it. You know how people say the rich can afford to be charitable? Well, the poor can afford to be noble.”

  Art stuck his pipe in his mouth, and then struck a match and sucked in his cheeks, puffing out a sweet-smelling plume of milky smoke that floated above our table. He sat back and rocked on the rear two legs of his chair, and looked around, watching students pass by.

  “Tell me more,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know…anything. Where you’re from, what your folks do. The usual.”

  I gave him my story in brief—both parents gone, relocation to Stulton, the cramped tenement apartment, and my fight for survival.

  “How did your mom die?” he said.

  “Ovarian cancer,” I said.

  Art whistled, impressed. He set his pipe down and pulled his chair in, facing me with both hands on the table. “What are you doing for money?”

  “I’m working at the library,” I said. “And Professor Lang offered me a position in his office.”

  “What do you think about that crazy old bird?” Art said.

  “Dr. Lang?”

  “No. Cornelius Graves.”

  I lowered my voice. “I heard he was a devil-worshipper,” I said. “Did you hear about the pigeons he kills?”

  “Pigeons?”

  I nodded. “I saw where he dumps the bodies.”

  “Where?”

  “In the woods behind Kellner,” I said.

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “A bunch. In a shallow grave.”

  Art looked skeptical. “Did you see anything else? Any black candles at this supposed grave?”

 
“No, but—”

  “Makeshift altar? Defiled crucifix? Maybe a ceremonial knife?”

  “I don’t know what a defiled crucifix looks like,” I said.

  Art sighed. “My point is, the woods around here are filled with coyote and fox. Maybe you saw a coyote den. Like the scorched bones marking the entrance to the dragon in Beowulf.” He smiled. “Dr. Lang on the other hand…now there’s a world-class prick. If anyone worships the Devil it’s that pompous bastard. I did a translation and analysis of the 16th-century Benedictine poet Teofilo Folengo’s work for Dr. Lang’s historiography course last year, and he gave me a C. I protested to the board but they protect their own so I was just wasting my time…”

  He faded off. He looked like he was getting mad. He rubbed his pipe and the anger slipped off his face.

  “Have you met Dr. Cade yet?” he said.

  I hadn’t, but I’d heard about Dr. Cade—he was conducting a lecture series on the Crusades for the history honors students. Posters were stapled onto the corkboards in the Paderborne lobby, flyers had been taped to the hallway walls in Thorren. Dr. Cade was reputedly a scholar of international renown, and his classes were always filled to capacity after only the first day of preregistration. He had invited Professor Randolph M. Cavendish, professor emeritus from Oxford and host of his own PBS show The Wonders of Antiquity, to deliver a guest lecture during the series, which had become a big deal within Aberdeen’s academic circles. One afternoon at work I overheard Professor Lang and Professor Grunebaum engaging in an excited, hushed discussion about arranging accommodations for Professor Cavendish. They had all offered their homes for use during his stay, and there was a certain cattiness to their tones when they discussed how he was, in fact, staying with Dr. Cade.

  Thorren’s freshman library (a small room in the basement with outdated, used copies of classroom texts filling its shelves) had a copy of Dr. Cade’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, This Too Must Pass, encased in a glass box atop a marble pillar, displayed prominently in the middle of the library. Below the book there was a quote, etched into the marble: If there is one thing to dread, let it not be death, let it be stagnation of the mind. The first time I saw Dr. Cade was from afar. I had watched him walk from Thorren across the Quad, carrying a small briefcase and wearing a dark, well-fitted suit. He was smaller than I had imagined he’d be, about my height and slimly built, but his form cut an impressive spectacle, confident and serene, a monk striding placidly across the lawn while all around undergraduates bustled and fumbled, sometimes stopping to stare and point at the dark susurrus in their midst.

  Art relit his pipe. The coal flared and oozed smoke. “Dr. Cade recently secured a hefty advance for a three-book series on the Middle Ages,” he said. “It’s still in the developmental stage, outlining the chapters and such, but he already has some idea of where he wants to go with it, what sections to focus on, et cetera. A majority of the prewrite process is research, and tons of it, but Dr. Cade doesn’t have the time to spend his days in the library. So I’ve been working as his research assistant for the past two years, myself and two others. He provides us with room and board, and a pretty nice monthly stipend—”

  “He pays for your apartment?” I said.

  “We live in his home. It may sound strange, but logistically it makes sense. We’re a team, and being able to share and compare notes is crucial. Researching enough material for three volumes requires a lot of work, especially a work that’s going to be competing for the Pendleton. Are you familiar with the Pendleton Prize? It’s academia’s most coveted honor. Judged by a secret panel, awarded once every ten years at some exotic location, and never in the same place twice. I think last time they held the award ceremony in Khartoum…”

  One of the students at a nearby table—a thick-necked kid with a crew cut, dressed in jeans, work boots, and a sweatshirt—leaned back in his chair and stared at Art, but Art ignored him. “Anyway, I’m the project coordinator,” Art continued, “and as you can imagine I’m under the gun. I’m always looking for additional help. Especially with translations and some of the prewrites. Your translations have a nice rhythm. I’m certain you could—”

  The thick-necked kid cleared his throat. He was built like a bear. His green sweatshirt had ABERDEEN RUGBY stenciled across the front.

  “You’re not allowed to smoke in here,” he said.

  Art puffed away. The rugby player cocked his head to the side. He looked at Art’s pipe, then at Art.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “I heard you,” Art said.

  “Then put the pipe out.”

  “I will when I’m finished.”

  The rugby player sighed. “Don’t be an asshole,” he said.

  Art turned back to me. The rugby player stared a moment longer, then returned to his lunch.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Art said, and he drew on his pipe and blew a smoke ring. “Rich kids. No mettle.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Art tapped the pipe tobacco onto the floor and crushed it with his shoe. “It must be liberating, knowing you’re the last one,” Arthur said to me, tucking his pipe away.

  I smiled, confused.

  “The orphan thing,” he said. “You’re all that’s left. No siblings, I gather.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Educated guess. You like Chaucer?”

  “I don’t dislike him,” I said. To this day I’ve never read anything by Chaucer.

  Art laughed. “Chaucer said it best: Over grete homlynesse engendreth dispreisynge. Familiarity breeds contempt. Spend enough time around death and it stops being scary, and becomes something you hate. Know what I mean?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. I wasn’t really scared of death until my mom died.”

  Arthur shrugged and looked at me sympathetically. “You should go see Dr. Cade and tell him I spoke with you. Tell him I think you’d be a good addition to our little club.”

  He gave me a quick salute and then walked away, briefcase in hand, while I remained at the table wondering why he had any interest in me at all.

  Chapter 2

  Friday morning I found Dr. Cade’s office in Thorren Hall. The corridors were silent, with just my footsteps breaking the solemness of the hallowed sixth floor, which held all the offices of Aberdeen’s most senior professors. Dr. Cade’s office was the last room at the end of the hallway. I quickly walked by it, hoping to hear a voice from within, but there was nothing.

  Under his nameplate a cartoon was taped to the door, its edges crinkled and yellowed. It was a black-and-white drawing of a man sitting on a couch in a living room, face buried in his hands. A woman wearing an apron, her hair in curlers, was standing over him, pointing a finger in his face, her mouth open in mid-yell. A poodle was at his feet, lifting its leg and urinating on him, and through the living room window you could see a policeman knocking on the door, holding a boy by the collar. The caption below the comic had been cut out, and written in its place was a single sentence in red ink:

  Quos deus vult perdere prius dementat. Those whom a god wishes to destroy he first drives mad.

  I knocked gently. Moments later the door opened, and an eye stared out at me.

  “Can I help you?” The eye blinked.

  “Dr. Cade?”

  The eye closed, slowly, as if tired. “Yes?”

  “I’m Eric Dunne. Arthur Fitch spoke with me yesterday.”

  The eye remained shut.

  “He mentioned something about your project needing help…” My voice trailed off.

  The eye opened. “And?”

  “Art said I’d be a good addition.”

  The eye looked down. “Is there anything else I can help you with, Eric?”

  It was strange, to hear him use my first name. It had a contrary effect, sounding even more formal and distant than if he had addressed me as “Mr. Dunne.”

  “No…I just wanted to see if—”

  “I’m terribly busy,” the eye
said. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  Click. The door shut, and I turned and walked away, angry at myself for having gone there in the first place.

  Art wasn’t in Dr. Tindley’s class, and so I sat distracted, unable to concentrate on the lecture. Cornelius’s little story kept repeating in my mind. His mother had dined with a contemporary of General Lafayette. Impossible. I thought back to the open book I had seen on Cornelius’s desk, with the entangled, blissful man, holding a golden stone, drawn as if light glowed from within.

  “Mr. Dunne?”

  I looked up, and Dr. Tindley was staring at me from behind his podium, his long nose pointed down and his lips pursed. He tapped his index finger on the wooden lectern like a metronome.

  “Book Six of Aeneid? Shall I translate for you or just say the page number?”

  I turned to my text and began to read aloud of Aeneas’s descent into the underworld.

  That evening at dinner I sat with Nicole Jennings. She was an art major from New York, the kind of girl who laughed at sitcoms and liked to wear hot-pink nail polish and little-boy T-shirts, showing off her taut, tanned stomach. She had changed her hair color at least three times since school started, wearing outfits to match, and most recently she had chosen blond, which went with the ivory-colored sweater she now wore. Its bottom hem stopped just short of her pant line and her navel peeked out. We had very little in common, our friendship one of those sociological phenomena exclusive to college and small office settings—enough exposure and you can befriend nearly anyone.

  We were eating grapes and talking nonsense—dorm drama, how the semester was going. She asked me about my job, and I told her about Cornelius, and what Josh and Kenny had shown me in the woods.

  “I heard,” she said, plucking a grape from my plate, and holding it between her blood-red nails. “That devil-worshipping shit freaks me out…” She shuddered dramatically. “Did you know last year they found some girl’s bones in those woods? You know what I think, I think that Cornelius guy is a sicko.”