by Greg Fields
As the weeks passed her curiosities predominated. She paid little attention to his quiet intellectualism. That, in fact, came to bore her, especially in contrast to Conor’s boyish constructs which continued to charm her. The activism in Conor’s intellect made it more complete. Not that she ever found Michael shallow. Rather, she tired of probing his constant reserve, the conclusions and convictions he only reluctantly shared. Conversations with Michael usually gravitated to the mundane simply because of the energy required to bring them further. Occasionally Glynnis discoursed on some point, some issue which excited her, in which case Michael remained passive and noncommittal. Glynnis enjoyed Michael’s proximity for the unspoken act of rebellion it represented. She enjoyed the potential for a mysteriously wicked physical experience, although in spite of all fantasy she feared it coming about. Nonetheless, Michael Halcón—quiet, simmering, uncommonly and disturbingly sensual—flamed her blood.
In short, she had no idea what to do with him. She was certain, though, that until she resolved her intentions toward Conor Finnegan which, she presumed, would be accomplished when she finally developed the strength to honor her emotions and answer his call, she wanted to maintain her convenient relationship with Michael Halcón.
CHAPTER XVII
The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life. Then, at the rim of vision, it gathered itself, and in one sweeping tide, rushed me to sleep.
—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Tom McIlweath absently fingered a paper clip while staring out the narrow, grimy window of his new apartment. The street below lay fetid and dark, intimating evil or, at best, cold indifference. It had snowed that day. Slush lined the sidewalks; a horrid black mire rose up against the curbing. The stores, shops and dusty cafes stood hollow. Above them, in the cramped ancient flats not unlike his own, lights shone sporadically to punctuate the vacuity. McIlweath saw no one on the street. It was late and cold; all sensible life was home now, in bed or reading, sipping hot chocolate. McIlweath sat at his desk fingering the smoothly symmetrical, cool metal of his paper clip. He started at the rounded end and ran its length, then spun it over to repeat the process again and again. He looked at nothing. Insofar as the conscious workings of his tired mind focused on anything at all, they lit on his paper clip. Whatever might wait beyond that remained unnoticed, merely part of the cold, heavy blackness that seeped in from all corners.
McIlweath had grown horribly bored, not with the transient boredom of circumstance that besets all individuals of thought and conscience, but with a boredom more profound, more pervasive than anything he had previously experienced. It confused and disoriented him. He did not know in any sense what to make of his disillusion. He had not had the time or opportunity to examine it, the demands of graduate study and Anne Newbury being what they were. For weeks (longer?) he had stumbled through his responsibilities, meeting them because he had to, because an innate sense of duty underscored by more than two decades of ’proper behavior,’ of doing ’the right thing,’ of doing what was expected from one in his position, had propelled him along this course. Yet he had fulfilled those responsibilities—he had gone to class, he had completed his translations, he had doggedly pursued his research, and, in the intervening moments, he had kept company with Anne—without excitement, without satisfaction, without the supreme sense of wonder that youth in a great city should assume.
The classics still intrigued him. He still reveled in his ability to read Latin and Greek, and, in so doing, to share in the ideas, the esthetics and the glories of antiquity. Had he been left alone to study those books he preferred and to push his research in directions entirely of his own choosing, his growing discontent might have lessened. No, the classics were still fine; it was their context which now seemed off. A miasma had settled upon his discipline, and it needed fresh air. This environment which he had pictured as intellectually pure and stimulating had, in fact, been stultifying. In this of all places, this oldest of cities, he had become bored. His work conjured images of dusty, frail, forgotten books hidden in the back rooms of decaying, mildewed libraries.
Environment had dictated all this. His studies had become a scapegoat for the general dissatisfaction whose long growing seeds had pushed through the surface of his loamy psyche. McIlweath had few friends here—he had no friends, really, in the true sense of the word. Among his fellow graduate students in the Classics Department, or those whom he might encounter in the library or student center, there was not one with whom he felt he could enter into a personal conversation. Nor was he the type of person to make friends easily outside the university community. His lifestyle was subdued and his natural reticence made it impossible for him to warm to another individual without a hook to draw him on. He had come to Boston assuming that those with whom he would share time and space would be similar to those he had lived with as an undergraduate. Instead, he found a group of students whom he saw to be aloof, elitist and so absorbed in their peculiar specialties that they could not readily step outside themselves, or let someone new enter. All of McIlweath’s halting efforts to draw these people outside their stark, self-obsessed intellectualism and into areas of shared response were coldly met. They did not want friendship, he concluded, not on these terms, and his perception of their incredibly narrow personalities made him, too, shy away from any relationship outside classroom and library.
It alarmed him that he should now be surrounded by individuals intent upon keeping a discipline alive only for the sake of its perpetuation, rather than for the richness, the wisdom and the human understanding they could derive from it. To his fellow graduate students, the classics existed apart from all other human endeavor. McIlweath had always viewed it as intrinsically linked to what man had become, to the best of his thoughts, beliefs and emotions. But this sense now had little place in a discipline made competitive. His colleagues devised self-worth and evaluated others on the basis of grades won, of papers accepted for publication, of addresses delivered before professional societies. They resented accomplishments that outstripped their own, and those who authored them. McIlweath had overheard their resentments in cloistered conversations before departmental meetings, or in the few minutes prior to the beginning of a seminar, and they left him cold.
When he encountered his fellows separately in the student center and circumstance forced the awkward sharing of coffee or lunch, they would never speak of anything current—unemployment, the latest war, the latest murder, even a movie or a television show—and whenever McIlweath raised such a topic it either changed quickly or died from inattention. They would not speak of such things, he thought, because they could not. Their limited outlooks prohibited it. Instead they would raise a discussion of Moses Hadas’s translation of Aristophanes or Gregorovius’s interpretation of the Roman system of law enforcement. In time, McIlweath avoided altogether sitting down with other classics students. When he met them in the student center or on the T, he would exchange a brief greeting and go his way by himself. The result, particularly in contrast to the warmth he had shared the past few years, made his heart ache. He passed most days in abject loneliness.
It fell upon Tom’s relationship with Anne Newbury to define the young man’s existence in this strange and glorious city, but that too had grown bitter. It was Anne who had drawn McIlweath this way. Her presence here, her unswerving resolve that this would be the best course for him and her stubbornly self-righteous conviction that she could provide the proper guidance—all that had forced him here. In light of the power of Anne’s personality juxtaposed with McIlweath’s fragile emotional insecurities, there had been little leeway when it came time to decide what to do next.
But while Anne seemed satisfied with the scope of their relationship under these new circumstances, McIlweath felt increasingly frustrated, and thus increasingly lost. He saw her rarely: the demands of medical school were extreme. Occasionally they met during the day to share a quick lunch, and once or twice a week th
ey could get together for an equally quick dinner before retiring to their separate ways to study away the evening. Anne had prohibited studying together—distractions might come too easily. On weekends they might spend an afternoon walking along the Charles or dining in a cheap restaurant. But even on those weekends their time was measured, the twin specters of their individual academic demands looming above and behind them. Anne for her part took her studies far more seriously than did Tom.
By the end of that gray, lonely autumn it had become apparent to McIlweath that he was expected to fill in the gaps in Anne’s busy and well programmed days, and no more than that. He saw her only when she had the time, and then on her terms. He had become a companion of shallow substance and shallower expectations. When he called her, she put him off. When she called, he hopped to meet her. Now their time together lacked the unarticulated quality that, even at its most strained, their relationship had always had before.
Discussions of frustrations, annoyances, challenges, success, dreams and discouragements became less frequent and ever more brief. Anne’s implications that she was too tired, too preoccupied, rang clearly. She preferred their time to be light and quiet, an interlude of mindless distraction from the pressing concerns at hand, concerns which McIlweath could neither alleviate nor understand, and so left unspoken. McIlweath perceived their worlds increasingly separating, joined only by proximity, and he was left stranded in a bland, lonely, uninteresting sphere that he had not chosen freely. They shared nothing but their time.
So then, he concluded, it had come to this. In spite of all his proud intentions to forge something for himself apart from any preconceptions, to produce a sophisticated thinking and feeling character that was above all else pure, unsullied by false motivations of conformity, prestige or convenience, he had ultimately bowed to his insecurities. His life had become no more than an outgrowth of someone else, one whose personality was stronger, more clearly defined, and unyielding. He had become a satellite, a shadow, an oblique reflection. Were his life to end this evening, he would have to consider it a failure, a waste of space and time.
Amid his growing depression, a thin vapor of resentment crept into his lungs. He breathed it imperceptibly, and it deepened his breathing and quickened his pulse. He must, he thought, resolve all this, resolve this failure while there was still time to extricate himself. For this was not right. This was not right at all.
Late that evening the phone rang. McIlweath, who had not moved from his desk all night, jerked back with a start. The ringing snapped him back from his dank musings. It was, of course, Anne.
“What’ve you been doing all night? Studying, I presume.”
“Presume nothing. Actually I’ve taken the evening off. I’ve watched the street and looked at all the unhappy people going by. Have you been a good girl?” Conversation was an exertion. McIlweath went through the motions hoping that this call would end quickly, and the effort made him tired.
“I’m always a good girl, you know that,” Anne said brightly. “I’ve been at anatomy laboratory poking around some grotesque body parts—I’ll have to tell you about them. Be glad you’re healthy.”
McIlweath chuckled softly to himself as Anne continued, “After lab I stopped at the student center for a snack. I was hoping you might be there to surprise me, but there was nobody I knew, so I got a big dish of Swiss chocolate almond ice dream and ate it with a physiology textbook. Fascinating company, no?”
“You’re getting to be on intimate terms with your little hard-bound friends.”
“I’m getting to know them inside and out, front to back,” giggled Anne. For some reason her girlish giggle annoyed McIlweath greatly. Fingernails on a blackboard.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I can only take so much of this medical stuff. Do you want to offer me a diversion and go out to dinner Saturday night? Dutch treat, of course.”
“Of course. Are you certain you can spare the time? And I’m not certain Dutch treat is quite fair. Your earning potential is about five times greater than mine. I think you should buy.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m in debt up to my eyelashes. We go Dutch. And it’ll have to be late, say around 10:30. There are some things I need to get done that night. I have a huge physiology project that’s due next week and I want to work all day on it. But by 10:30 or so I should be done, and my mind will be complete mush. Come by around then, okay? We can go to that cheap seafood place by the Charles that’s open all night and eat crab legs until we can’t move.”
“Can’t you make it any earlier? It’s Saturday night. Can’t you ease up a little bit?”
“I told you, I want to get this done. Once I start something I want to work all the way through it. Maybe if you’re nice to me Saturday night we can spend some time together Sunday.”
“I detect a touch of emotional blackmail. What if I don’t treat you nice on Saturday night? What if I was a total brute?”
“Will you be throwing books again?” asked Anne, who knew how to press an advantage. From time to time she would wield that isolated and complex incident like a mace. McIlweath this time ducked the blow.
“I don’t want to see any books on Saturday. I don’t want to see them Sunday or Friday or Thursday, either. I’m tired of books. I’m tired of mildew and dust and boring, pointless books written in dead languages. If I could, I’d throw them all into the river.”
“A bit disenchanted tonight, are we? I’ll cure you Saturday. I promise.”
’Ironic,’ thought McIlweath, ’that the poisoner herself promises a cure.’ He was silently glad that he would not see Anne for three more days. There was still much to work out.
“I’ll give you every opportunity. But Anne, don’t call me until then, all right? I plan on working each night. I’ve got to catch up on some things that are falling behind.”
“The price you pay for squandering an evening or two, my friend. That’s probably just as well. I’ll be busy myself, as always. But I will look forward to Saturday night.”
“So will I. See you then.”
“Good night, Tom.”
Back into silence; back into the interminable gloom.
***
The next day, one which assumed its usual pattern albeit viewed through a darker lens than usual, Tom McIlweath rose early and went to class, an excruciatingly dull seminar on Roman comedy. The professor had been at the university for nearly four decades, long enough for whatever enthusiasm he once had for his subject to be extinguished by repetition to the blank stares and stifled yawns of young people whose passions ran in different directions. He had become a brittle man—gray hair, gray face, faded coats and ties—yet it was clear that the university would allow him to remain on campus for as long as he wished, answerable to no one’s evaluations, tucked away in its farthest and dustiest corner, free to follow any and all pursuits of his rapidly aging intellect. He had become as archaic as his subject.
McIlweath sat through the old professor’s droning on Apuleus. He caught occasional bits of interpretation but knew that little of value would be said here. McIlweath froze a practiced look of interest on his face and daydreamed behind it.
For once he did not think of Anne Newbury. That would have been too much effort. He recollected instead his swimming victories as an undergraduate. He thought of the cool water flowing under his churning body and his arms pulling his form away from his competitors. He thought of the solidity of the wall when he touched, the draught of air he sucked into his lungs as his head shot up at the finish, and the blurred images of the other swimmers still struggling down the lanes beside him. He remembered the cheers of the crowd, the first sound to penetrate after the watery rasp of his desperate breathing and the lapping of the pool. The air so cold as he climbed out of the water, so harshly cold.
“And so, in The Golden Ass, we see one of the first uses of exaggeration in support of satire, here not of national or international political attitudes, but of the common human condition. It is a much subtl
er form and is given to very discreet nuances. Even today, after two thousand years of study, we still might argue about the devices Apuleus used, and what he intended in the particular.”
McIlweath wished he were back in the pool, pulling ahead with the crowd cheering him on. How richly satisfying it had been to beat the elite swimmers from Princeton and Columbia and Penn. How surprised and dismayed the boys from the ivies had been to be out-matched by the scrawny, squinting kid from Rutgers. He had caught them unaware a good deal of the time. Even as a senior, well after his reputation had been established, he thought he saw some skepticism in his rivals, looks that said, ’How could this guy be so good? Are those times accurate? We’ll see in the pool.’ But time after time, he, slight, unassuming Tom McIlweath, had proven himself the faster swimmer.