Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

  When M.R. had first known Oliver Kroll, when she’d first come to teach moral philosophy at the University, Kroll had been less passionately involved in the conservative movement; M.R. had read Kroll’s essays on the history of American libertarianism, published in such prestigious journals as American Political Philosophy, and been impressed. For here was a perspective very different from her own, intelligently if not persuasively argued. M.R. had never felt comfortable with Kroll—for both political and personal reasons—but she’d admired his work and, to a degree, painful now to recall, they’d been friends—or more than friends, for a brief while; since that time, Kroll had become a (well-paid) consultant for the Republican administration in Washington and had become closely aligned with the University’s most famous—or notorious—conservative spokesman, G. Leddy Heidemann, an authority on “fundamentalist Islam” who was rumored to be intimately involved with (secret) preparations for the Iraqi invasion, a confidant of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Both Kroll and Heidemann were much disliked at the University by a majority of their colleagues but they had a following among a number of students, primarily undergraduates.

  M.R. found all this disturbing, and distasteful—like any administrator she feared for her authority even as she believed herself the very sort of administrator who cared little for “authority”—it was M. R. Neukirchen’s specialness that made her an effective president, an air of open-minded friendliness to all.

  Yet it was upsetting to her that in growing quarters in the public media as on her very campus, the word liberal had become a sort of comic obscenity, not to be murmured without a smirk.

  Like “pointy-headed intellectual”—the crude, coarse smear-phrase that had been used to discredit Adlai Stevenson in the ill-fated 1956 presidential election. How to defend oneself against such a—charge? Even to attempt to refute it was to be sullied by it, an object of ridicule.

  “So, President Neukirchen—”

  In his mock-reproachful pious-accusing voice Stirk continued his account of the assault and its aftermath. For twenty minutes he’d been speaking virtually nonstop as if declaiming his plight to a vast TV audience among which M.R. was a single listener. With remarkable brazenness—as if he understood how he was intimidating the president of the University—he paused to touch a forefinger to his lips.

  “I wonder, President Neukirchen—have you ever listened to my radio broadcast—Headshots?”

  “I’m afraid I have not.”

  “But I think—I hope—you’ve seen my column in the campus paper—‘Stirk Strikes’?”

  “Yes. I’ve seen that.”

  “The columns are posted online, too. So my ‘kingdom’ is not just of this campus.”

  Stirk was speaking in his radio voice, M.R. supposed—a forced-baritone that belied the small-boned and seemingly muscleless body. How small. How easily he could be hurt.

  Stirk’s bandaged head—the markedly narrow forehead that looked as if it had been pinched together in a vise, and the weak, melted-away chin . . . The eyes were Stirk’s most attractive feature despite being blackened and bruised and M.R. saw in them both insolence and yearning, desperation.

  Love me! Love me and help me please God.

  The plea that would never be voiced.

  Without his pose of arrogance, as without his clothes, how defenseless Stirk would be! A sexless little figure, utterly vulnerable. M.R. imagined him as a young adolescent, or as a child—intimidated by bigger boys, made to feel inferior, contemptible. In the world in which she’d grown up, in upstate New York south of the Adirondacks, a boy like Alexander Stirk wouldn’t have had a chance.

  It seemed touching to her, a gesture of sheer courage, or bravado—to have proclaimed himself so openly “gay.” Except Stirk’s “gayness” seemed also a kind of guise, or ruse; a provocation and a mask to hide behind.

  Stirk was revealing now to M.R. that he had a list of names which he hadn’t yet given to the police—a list that Professor Kroll had helped him prepare—“Not just students but faculty, too. Some surprising names.” He intended to give this list to the University committee investigating the assault—but he wasn’t sure “just yet” about giving the list to the police.

  What was wonderful about the assault—ironically!—was that he’d been receiving so much support from people “all over the country”—“an outpouring of sympathy and outrage.” Within the past day or so he’d had offers from “world-class” attorneys offering to represent him in lawsuits against his assailants and against the University for having failed to protect him. . . . The Washington Times, the Young America Foundation, the cable Fox News had contacted him requesting interviews. . . .

  M.R. winced to hear this. Of course—the conservative media would leap at the opportunity to interview one of their martyred own.

  Sobering to consider how an incident on the University campus so very quickly made its way into a global consciousness—“cyberspace”—to be replicated—amplified—thousands of times! M.R. was beginning to feel faint. For this was shaping up to be the sort of campus controversy, swirling out of control like sewage rising in a flash flood, M.R. knew she must avoid; M.R. had assumed she could, with goodwill, common sense, hard work and sincerity avoid. Hadn’t she assumed that, if she met with the stricken boy personally, and alone—that would make a difference?

  Leonard Lockhardt and other staffers had strongly suggested to M.R. that she not meet with Alexander Stirk alone—but M.R. had insisted: she wasn’t the sort of university president to distance herself from individual students, she was precisely the sort of administrator known to care for individuals. She’d expected that speaking with Stirk calmly, in private, she could reach out to him, and understand him; she could—oh, was this mere vanity?—naïveté?—impress him with her sincerity, and win his trust.

  Make her his friend.

  The call had come late the other night—very late—2 A.M.—when M.R. had only just gone to bed and lay sleepless amid the thrumming of her brain like a hive of bees—sleepless alone in the president’s bed in the president’s bedroom in the president’s house which was an “historic” building in the older, “historic” part of the University campus—she had only just left her home office, only just shut down her computer for the night and hoped to sleep a few hours at least before waking at 7 A.M. for a long day—all weekdays were long days—to be navigated with zest, with optimism, with hope—like a ski slope, a very long ski slope, the bottom of which wasn’t in sight from the top.

  Nothing so beautiful and so thrilling as downhill skiing—if you have the skill.

  The ringing phone, at 2 A.M.—precisely, 2:04 A.M.—and M.R. had answered it with apprehension, for of course it could be only bad news at such an hour—a call to the president’s unlisted, private line—a number which few individuals knew—the urgent voice of the University’s head of security informing her of this shocking news. . . .

  Oh God! Is he—how badly is he hurt?

  Is it known who attacked him? Were they—students?

  It would seem to M.R. that a bright, blinding light had suffused the room, and the nighttime landscape outside the window. Immediately she’d been wide awake—hyper-awake. She would be on, or near, the phone for hours.

  Thinking What folly this is! I am not prepared for this.

  Yet she would persevere. She would do what she could. Vastly relieved that the boy wasn’t critically—seriously—injured; impulsively deciding to drive to the hospital, to see him, at 6:20 A.M. in a wet wind-driven snow.

  The hospital was a little more than a mile away from the president’s house. The last time M.R. had driven there, she’d visited an older colleague, a woman who’d had breast cancer surgery.

  Before that, a male colleague, not older, who’d had prostate cancer surgery.

  Both individuals had recovered, or so M.R. was given to believe.

  She woul
d tell no one at the University about this reckless pre-dawn act—no one on her staff, no confidante or friend. Certainly not the University counsel who urged caution in all matters that might involve publicity. And certainly not her (secret) lover for whom the entire adventure of M.R.’s University presidency was an improbable phantasmagoria, tinged with folly, vanity, naïveté.

  Why this was, M.R. wasn’t so sure. Maybe because the presidency, beyond even M. R. Neukirchen’s brilliant academic career, was so very alien to him and so excluded him.

  In a haze of excitement fueled by the insomniac stress of the past several hours M.R. drove to the hospital and parked at the brightly lighted emergency room at the rear and hurried inside breathless and apprehensive—a tall anxious-eyed woman asking if a young University student named Alexander Stirk was still there, and could she see him . . .

  By this time, Stirk had been discharged. He’d left the hospital in the company of an individual M.R. had to assume was Oliver Kroll.

  “Oh, I see! And is he—how is he?”

  A young Indian doctor regarded M.R. with quizzical eyes. Who was this woman? What relationship to Stirk?

  M.R. introduced herself. Seeing in the doctor’s startled gaze that yes, it was something of an incident in itself, something to be remarked upon, spoken of, that the president of the University had hurried to the ER before dawn to see the badly beaten undergraduate.

  With a polite smile the doctor told M.R. that Alexander Stirk had been considered well enough to leave the ER and he would tell her what he wanted her to know of his medical condition—best to inquire of him.

  M.R. went away rebuked. M.R. went away relieved.

  For it had been a rash act, to drive to the hospital. She wondered if it had been a foolish act.

  The University counsel Leonard Lockhardt would have disapproved. This canny individual whom President Neukirchen had inherited from her canny predecessor and whose general advice to the new University president was caution.

  These are litigious times, keep in mind! And this University is known to be very wealthy.

  But Leonard Lockhardt would never know that M.R. had driven to the hospital before dawn. No one would ever know, including Alexander Stirk.

  Naturally Lockhardt advised M.R. not to meet with the excitable young man in private. M.R. insisted she would meet with Stirk in private. Lockhardt had cautioned M.R. not to “seem to be taking sides—prematurely”—and M.R. said that of course she would be very careful about what she said. Most of all she wanted simply to speak to the boy, to console him. For he’d suffered a terrible shock—whether his account of the assault was entirely true, he had been injured. It was M.R.’s wish to console him and she believed it was her duty to console him—as a University student, Stirk was her student.

  And so M.R. took care not to suggest that she didn’t believe Stirk’s story or that in any way she wished to defend the University that had, by his account, failed to protect him.

  Grimly Stirk was saying that his enemies would be accusing him of fabricating the very attack they’d made on him. They’d threatened him, with worse harm.

  “—think that they can intimidate me—silence me. But they will be very surprised when—”

  M.R. perceived a deep hurt in the stricken boy—a woundedness like spiritual anguish. For he’d been insulted, and the insult wasn’t recent.

  Difficult to believe that this was a twenty-year-old and not a boy of fifteen, or younger; seen from a short distance, Stirk more resembled a girl than a boy. He could have been no more than five feet two inches tall and could not have weighed more than 110 pounds. How painful to have made his way in school, being so very bright—aggressively bright—and in so undersized a body; how painful his early years must have been, in grade school, and middle school. Even at the University, with its rigorous academic standards, sports were a passion in some quarters; the old eating clubs and “secret societies” still dominated undergraduate social life. . . . And there was the sexual element: in adolescence, the predominant element.

  Though it hadn’t been in M. R. Neukirchen at that age! And so perhaps sexual longing was not so predominant in this boy, either.

  Sexual feeling—“desire”—had not seemed nearly so natural in M.R. as in an adolescent, as other sorts of desire.

  It did seem that Stirk’s grievances against the University were long-standing—since his arrival as a freshman. What had “come to a head” the other night had been “long building, like an abscess”—the “hostility, hatred” of his enemies—their “jealousy” of his position on campus and “leftist-liberal resentment” of the conservative coalition on campus, which was gaining in numbers steadily. M.R. was determined to listen to Stirk without interrupting him or challenging him but was having a difficult time following his reasoning, or his charges—the connection between the undergraduate woman who’d (allegedly) arranged for a late-term abortion and other (alleged) incidents at the University and the local chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom—and Alexander Stirk—wasn’t clear; very likely, there were relationships among certain of these undergraduates of which no one had spoken yet, that hadn’t only to do with their contrasting politics.

  Stirk said he was seriously considering “granting” interviews, and of course he intended to write about the incident, not just for the campus newspaper but also on the Internet and elsewhere—even against the advice of Professor Kroll. It seemed crucial to him—before it was “too late” and “something worse” happened to him—to “expose to the media” the “hostile leftist environment” of the University. . . .

  Now M.R. did interrupt. Though she tried to speak evenly.

  Saying she didn’t think it was a very good idea to go to the media so quickly, while the assault was being investigated by the police and the University committee—

  “Are you threatening to censor me, President Neukirchen? Shut me up?—so that I don’t embarrass you?”

  Eagerly Stirk spoke, as if he’d been waiting for M.R.’s objection. His good eye shone with a sort of sick, thrilled elation and his knees trembled and quaked in sideways movements like those of a hyperkinetic child who has been sitting restrained for too long.

  “Alexander, of course not. You are free to write about this—to write about anything—of course—but—”

  “But—what?”

  Calmly M.R. continued. Calmly if a bit tightly she smiled. In the Quaker Meeting the ideal is clearness—clarity—out of confusion and dissension an infusion of the Light will prevail. Without ever having quite examined her beliefs M.R. seemed to believe this, or wished to believe it.

  Not in her analytical/skeptical mode as an academic philosopher but in her mode as professor/president, she wished to believe in a vision of humankind as evolving toward light, truth, compassion like a gigantic flower opening—otherwise, one’s compassion, like one’s naïveté, was an embarrassment.

  “—for the present time, while the investigations are going on—isn’t it wiser just to wait? It really isn’t a good idea, as you must know—to write something prematurely. Especially if you don’t want to tell your family—they would surely discover it, and be upset. . . .”

  Stirk shifted excitedly in his chair. As if M.R. had tossed a lighted match onto flammable material, immediately Stirk began speaking in a rapid stammer. “So this meeting is about—censorship! Censoring me! Threatening me with telling my family—worrying my family! Like—like this is—blackmail! Trying to censor the voice of the conservative movement on this campus! Already the leftist-liberals control the media—already you control the majority of universities—now, you are putting pressure to silence—censor—a victim— Trying to censor me—with the pretense of ‘helping’ me. . . .”

  “Alexander, please! There’s no need to raise your voice. I am just pointing out that—”

  “ ‘Pointing out that’—vicious, immoral behavior is condoned
on this campus—sexual promiscuity, drunkenness—infanticide—but revealing to the media what has happened to me—is ‘not a good idea’?”

  Stirk’s voice was raised. Stirk was both incensed and gloating. M.R. was stunned by the sudden outburst.

  “Are you—recording this? Our conversation? Is that what you are doing?” Suddenly M.R. knew this must be so.

  But Stirk shook his head quickly—no. As if M.R. had leaned across the desk to touch him—to touch him improperly—he recoiled in his seat with a look of childish guilt, insolence. “No, I am not. I am—not—‘recording’—our conversation, President Neukirchen. Maybe you’d like to—frisk me? Call in your security cops—maybe a—strip search?”

  Laughing Stirk lurched to his feet. In the commotion the aluminum crutch clattered to the floor and Stirk snatched it up as if in fear it might be taken from him. Astonished and mortified M.R. understood that, of course, this devious young man had been recording their conversation. Some sort of recording device was in a pocket of that bulky corduroy jacket.

  Probably, Oliver Kroll had encouraged him. For this was our war, an early skirmish.

  M.R.’s face flushed with heat. She hoped she had not spoken recklessly—said something incriminating—during the course of their conversation. In a mild panic she wondered—could her remarks to Alexander Stirk be broadcast, posted on the Web? Without her permission? Weren’t there laws regulating unauthorized tapings of private conversations? Was this in fact a private conversation? Had the University president a reasonable expectation of privacy, in such an exchange with a student? Her heart was beating painfully and her face throbbed with heat as if she’d been slapped.

  Stirk said impudently, “And what if it is being recorded, President Neukirchen? I’m only trying to protect myself—no one can expect fair treatment—‘justice’—from their enemies. I will have to build my case using the weapons I can.”