What had Lucinda gotten her into?
She had to say something.
So––
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
His voice rumbled.
“I do feel that way. We’re a major research university here at Ellerton. Our faculty is populated with top-notch scholars, people at the height of their professions and in the forefront of their fields.”
“I recognize that. In fact, a month ago when Lucinda called me and broached the idea of my coming, I said the same thing to her.”
“But she didn’t listen. She often doesn’t listen. That’s one of the president’s faults. She has many others.”
Again, Nina knew little to say.
She was sitting in an elegant, thick-carpeted office, across a mahogany table from a man who’d just told her she was not welcome, and who now was in the process of criticizing her friend from years earlier.
“I don’t claim to be a scholar. I––”
“Then you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t go into our classrooms.”
“I don’t think I can do that much harm.”
“You can’t do any harm in a public high school. At least, I assume you can’t. But we’re striving to compete with Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, for research grants, for top-notch scholars and for the best students. Not only in the state but in the country. Now I read this morning in The Gazette that we’re recruiting retired people from small-town secondary schools.”
“Again, I can only say I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“I’ve just gotten off the phone with Mr. Barnes, who wrote the story. I told him in no uncertain terms that he should have checked with me before putting this article into print. Now who knows what news service might get hold of it, and how many people might read it!”
“I suppose he thought that if Lucinda––”
A shake of that massive glistening head and the volcano that was in the middle of the man’s esophagus continued its slowly intensifying eruption.
“He didn’t think. No one in connection with this project has done much thinking, if any. If the president had to play this little game of hers, she could at least have kept it quiet.”
“I assure you, I have kept it quiet.”
“But not Mr. Barnes. His story is now out, and within the month it could make its way into The Chronicle of Higher Education, making us look like laughingstocks. Do you imagine for one minute, Ms. Bannister, that Stanford University would stock its faculty with high school teachers? High school?”
“I don’t know what Stanford does.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re not expected to. But I know. Stanford does the same thing Ellerton does. It promotes research.”
“And, I would hope, teaching.”
The man across the desk from her leaned forward, and she thought she could feel the huge piece of furniture onto which he leaned sink an inch further down into the dark green carpet.
“Teaching is happenstance. It’s one of the minor duties of our faculty.”
“I’ve always read that teaching and research go hand in hand.”
“Yes, they do. Like sumo wrestlers.”
A pause to let these words sink into Nina’s mind, much as the desk was sinking into the carpet.
Then:
“The hand in hand thing is for our publicity brochures.”
“But you don’t believe it?”
“No, and no one else at the highest levels of university administration does either. Do you know what I think when I read a glowing student evaluation about what a wonderful teacher Dr. Smith or Dr. Jones is? I think ‘Fine, there’s an effective clown who can make people laugh,’ or ‘There’s a teacher who gives away A’s instead of demanding true critical thinking. The good teachers aren’t the popular ones, Ms. Bannister.”
“So I suppose the mark of a truly great teacher is to be deeply hated.”
“The mark of an Ellerton teacher is to be published. And to be published frequently. In the most prestigious journals. Now as far as President Herndon’s play-school program is concerned––”
Nina could feel her face blushing, and she could not help whispering:
“I resent your calling it that.”
The eyes boring into her narrowed:
“I don’t care what you resent. But as far as that program is concerned, its existence makes me even more aware that Lucinda Herndon needs to be replaced. She was a popular choice to succeed a popular president. But she’s aging, and her mind is not the mind of a capable administrator.”
“You, I suppose, would be the logical one to replace her?”
“In truth, I have replaced her. Most of the latest faculty hires—the important ones—have been my doing. We’re hiring more high-level administrators because of my work, and we’re hiring more prolific faculty publishers because of my work. As for President Herndon, it’s a battle every day to get smaller teaching loads for truly exceptional scholars. And that battle takes up most of my time.”
He looked at his watch.
“Now, I’m late as it is, for a conference of college and university administrators I’ve got to fly to.”
“I’m sorry to have kept you.”
“I’m sorry too. Sorry for a lot of things. But you needed to know how I feel. And now you do.”
“Thank you for clarifying things. I can see myself out.”
And she did.
Once outside, she could think of only one thing to say to the young aide standing bravely beside her:
“I need a drink.”
A nod.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re too young to drink, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.”
“Where is the best place to get a drink at two in the afternoon?”
“Nick’s, on Franklin Avenue. That’s the main street that leads into campus, with all the restaurants and bookstores. Everybody goes there.”
“Are all those people we just talked to going to go there?”
“No, ma’am. They’re too rich.”
“Then I’m going to Nick’s.”
And she did.
By the time she reached the entrance to Nick’s Olde English Tavern (the e adding authenticity, of course) a soft early afternoon rain had begun to fall, spattering on the windows of the bookstores and hot dog joints, and making Franklin Avenue a sea of crimson and white (Ellerton’s colors) umbrellas.
She entered, wincing a bit and standing in the narrow entranceway to allow her eyes to adjust from early afternoon light to eternal cave-semi-darkness.
The long narrow tunnel that was the town’s oldest drinking establishment stretched before her.
Ellerton, in deference to its love of purely scholarly pursuits, had abolished Division One sports a decade earlier, and football, basketball, etc., were played now only at the club level, and supervised by volunteer coaches.
But memories of a storied athletic past remained and covered great areas of the dark mahogany walls now looking down at her. Autographed jerseys, helmets, footballs, baseballs, pictures of one team after another, trophies—this, the walls seemed to be saying, is what a university should be––books and professors be damned!
She made her way along, sliding her palms over the tables, approximately half of which were unoccupied in the early afternoon, but all of which, she assumed, would be filled as day wore into evening To the right of her were tables, to the left, booths.
White-shirted waiters and waitresses wearing English bowler hats wove their way through the dark, narrow aisles, expertly balancing trays of many greasy substances and pitchers of one frothing substance.
“So, the pet store owner says to the customer, ‘This frog can perform oral sex!’”
This from a prim-looking girl who, wearing a formless gray sweater and jeans, was seated at a large table just in front of her.
Somehow she felt drawn to the t
able and the—how many?—seven, no eight, scruffy academic denizens seated around it.
Was it because she was interested in frogs performing oral sex?
Well, how could one not be?
But it was more than that. It was the wry smiles in the people’s eyes.
There were older, younger, men, women, people of indeterminate sexual persuasion, bearded people, clean-shaven people—but they had all been at this table before and they would all be here again. She could tell by looking at them for no more than a second that they all knew both how to tell a story and—more importantly––how to listen to a story.
Three of them––one of each gender––saw her at the same time and said, simultaneously:
“Join us?”
She felt embarrassed.
“I don’t want to bother you.”
A fourth man, this one mammoth and wild-bearded, rose and gestured to an empty chair, saying:
“You can’t bother us, we’re adjuncts. Nothing bothers us. But you have to tell us who you are.”
“I’m Nina.”
The table exploded its response:
“Hi, Nina!”
Then the same man continued:
“Want to hear about the frog?”
There was, of course, only one answer to this:
“Yes.”
“Then—here! Here’s a chair for you.”
It was produced, wedged into place around the table, and soon was holding her.
“Hey, can we have another pound glass?”
This to a waiter who replied:
“Sure thing!”
He brought a fruit jar glass with the word Nick’s stenciled on the side. She took it from him, held it out over the table, and watched as it was filled from one of two pitchers of beer sitting on the table.
She sipped it, then said to the young woman opposite her:
“Tell about the frog.”
“Right. Everybody ready?”
Mass response:
“Tell about the frog! Tell about the frog!”
“Ok, so the pet store owner looks at the customer, and then at the frog—who’s just sitting there—and he says, ‘this frog can perform oral sex.’”
A different woman from the opposite side of the table:
“But do Derrida, the French structuralist!”
“What?”
“Tell it the way Derrida would tell it.”
The table again:
“Yes! Derrida and the frog!”
The storyteller nodded and continued:
“Uuuuhhhh––aaaaahhh zo zee customair, he buy zee frog. Two weeks, ahhh plus tard—more late, latair, he return. He say, ‘zee frog, he only sit. He do no tang. For two week.’ And zee ownair of zee store, he look hard at zee frog and say—‘Eeef I have to show you dis one more time––”
Eruption of laughter.
Finally, Nina found herself thinking, I understand something about Derrida.
The massive man:
“So, Nina, what do you do?”
“I’m teaching here this fall.”
Questions now from various people around the table, all of whom seemed to be genuinely interested in her:
“Full time or part time?”
She thought about that for a while and said:
“I’m not really sure what my position would be called.”
“Well, you either have to be a part-timer or a full-timer. Because the two groups never meet. Full-timers teach one or two courses a semester and make $80,000 to $140,000 a year. We part-timers teach two courses a semester and get $4,000 tops.”
“And, we have no office space!”
“No, no, that’s not true! We have the adjunct house!”
“So, Nina,” said the woman who’d told of the French non-doing frog, “you’re going to be teaching Monday morning?”
“Yes, I guess so. English lit survey.”
“What are you teaching?”
“Beowulf.”
The young woman beamed:
“God, I love—by the way, I’m Tyra––the scene when he cuts off the dragon’s head!”
Nina needed to think for only a second before she said:
“I think I want to be an adjunct.”
And thus the issue was decided.
She had another glass of beer, became immersed in story after story, then let herself be accompanied by the entire group to the two-story, ramshackle, adjunct house.
Which she loved.
By late afternoon, her books had been installed in a vacant cubicle.
Tyra had become a friend.
So had many more of them.
None of them were ists.
All of them taught two courses a semester and made $2,000 a course.
None of them used words she could not understand.
And she was one of them.
The sidewalks, after a late afternoon shower were glistening in the quiet woods as she made her way across campus and back to her bungalow. She was thinking about how bizarre the academic world around her really was, how different from her archaic halls of ivy perceptions, when an elfin figure of a man slipped up to her and took hold of her arm, just above the elbow. He acted as though the two of them had been long lost acquaintances finally meeting again. He looked up at her with his diamond bright little evil-ferret eyes glittering and said––or rather whispered, his voice hissing through the warm still-moist air–– “Do you want to visit a haunted house?”
She did not know what to say.
He continued to ferret watch, his neck twitching one way, then another, his perfectly triangular, perfectly white-shadow face following each movement of his neck.
She was forced to assume he had a neck because it was invisible, muffled in an impossibly-colored scarf, which, depending on where it was in relation to the blue white buzzing street lamps, was either designed by Jackson Pollack or covered with the remnants of an expensive Greek meal.
“It’s not far, you know.”
It was as though that statement had decided the matter, because he immediately ceased looking up at her inquisitively and began to gaze straight ahead, his little hands squeezing more tightly on her upper arm, the baseball-sized ball of his red toboggan hat swaying first one way, then the other.
“This is a good time of late afternoon to hear them. And the rain is good. It seems to bring them out. I’m Whittington, by the way. Classics. You’re Bannister, the woman of gold. Congratulations on your prize, on your honor.”
“Somehow,” she said, “I never thought of myself as a woman of gold.”
“Then you should begin. It has such a romantic ring to it. But at any rate, congratulations on being golden, for, of course, all superb teachers are golden, even though they are disappearing from our midst. All right; so––here we are!”
It took her a moment to realize they were standing at the back entrance to the library.
He put a hand in his pocket and pulled out a key chain. After searching for a time, he found the one he wanted.
“They gave me a key,” he whispered to the door knob, which had just begun to fog over with his breath, when he straightened and, looking triumphantly at her, turned it hard counter-clockwise.
“The last weekend before fall term, the library closes late Thursday afternoon. Apparently, the staff needs Friday, Saturday and Sunday to complete an inventory. Or some such nonsense. Ah. Here we are!”
The metal door opened.
And the darkened library stood before them, all of the desks, tables, shelves, volumes, newspapers, computers, and numberings bathed in an eerie green light.
“Come on! Down here on the ground floor there’s nothing. We must go up. We must always go up. In order to hear them.”
She followed him into the stairwell.
In the normal world, she might not have gone along with this, of course. She would have gently questioned him, and ultimately led him back to his keeper, or his aged wife, who was probably now wringing her hands wondering w
here he was.
“Oh, did he do that again?”
“Did he go there again?”
But this was not a normal course of things. This whole day had been so dreamlike, that there was little to deter her from doing a bit more dreaming. And it is, she had always felt, a funny thing with dreams. If one went along with them, simply bought into them, then, after a while, it would be like flying. But if you fought the dream and tried to run away you would fall out of the bed.
So here the two of them were, Whittington needing only a torch to complete the illusion that he was ascending to the battlements of a castle, where some creature had been cornered.
They took the elevator to the eighth floor. He pushed open the door from the stairwell, and they entered the stacks.
Which were deathly quiet, bathed in the same green glow of the first floor, and emitting nothing.
There was not the odor of musty old books.
There was not the odor of anything at all; nor perception of slight movement; nor anything else.
It was just the library, closed.
And now it was silent, motionless, smell-less, sightless (at least of anything worth seeing), tasteless, matterless, energyless, and dead.
Obviously, though, not for Whittington, who began to prowl forward, making his way through the two stacks nearest us, like a hunter through a silent forest.
“Listen,” he whispered. “Listen.”
And she followed.
Listening.
He stood stock still for an instant.
Then he whispered:
“Audesne haec amphiarae, sub terram abdite?”
She was silent.
He asked:
“Oh, you know Latin, my dear?”
“No. I never had the chance to study it.”
Whittington shook his head and said:
“Of course; it’s so problematic. It’s coming out of this volume; don’t you hear it? Don’t you hear it being whispered to us? Augustine. But Augustine has it from Cicero’s Tuscan Disputations, as a reproach to a wavering stoic. And Cicero has it from Aeschylus, who must have written it, according to all we know, in a play that is now lost. Hauntings whispered to hauntings. Ghosts echoing to ghosts.”
He shook his head.
“And when I hear it, each time I hear it, I think about all of them, all of them who are gone now. All my old colleagues at the University: Frederick Lattimore. Thomas Herndon. Ariel Polonski. Bunny Davidson. All below the earth now. And do they hear? Do they hear Augustine in their place below the earth? Do they hear Cicero? Or do they hear the clear voice of magnificent Aeschylus himself? Or is it possible that they hear nothing at all?”
Mind Change Page 3