The God in Flight

by Laura Argiri

  “They may not have uttered all their threats,” said Doriskos. “They may have something nasty up their sleeves. I’m almost sure of it.”

  “Of course they have something nasty up their sleeves. Regardless, you go tell them the answer is no and you don’t need me to say it for you. Tell them I spit on them for trying to turn us on each other and for their ham-handed manipulation. Tell them the world would be safe from crime if criminals had their kind of finesse! Tell them they don’t have a shred of fact except those postcards, and you know and I know that there’s nothing in either the law or their rules about posing for statues! Tell them I said bugger off!”

  Doriskos opened the door and nodded to the gentlemen, who had heard every word of that.

  “The answer is no.”

  “You decline?”

  “We both decline,” Doriskos told him. “When you hire a faculty member or admit a student, you don’t buy a slave.”

  Porter stroked his chin, then drew his hard jaw wire-tight and spoke to Van Rakle. “Tell Mr. Satterwhite to come in.”

  Simion, who’d had his ear to the door, sprang back and positioned himself on the sofa before Van Rakle summoned him.

  “Simion, this is monstrous!” said Porter without preamble. “Don’t you appreciate that I just gave you a chance to extricate yourself from your most untenable position? And have this scandal put down and graduate, for your benefit and that of the university? This is idiotic!”

  “What’s idiotic is the tactic I chose in trying to defend myself and my friend from Peter Geoffrey,” Simion said. “I grant you, that was hysterical and idiotic. I’m ashamed of myself for acting hysterical and idiotic. You should be even more ashamed of yourself for the deviousness you used against us just now. And if I’d let you coerce me into consenting to these conditions of yours, that would be beyond contempt.”

  “But your degree—”

  “So it comes down to my degree. I won’t sacrifice The God in Flight to my degree. The world is full of schools that give diplomas. There’s only one Doriskos Klionarios. There is only one God.”

  “And you, Professor Klionarios?”

  “We both have said it, we decline,” said Dori.

  “You have gone out of your ways, both of you, to force my hand, and now you have forced it,” said Porter in that terrible tone of clerical regret that Simion remembered from his last three Easter sermons. “Because you have taken this course, I shall proceed against you with full weight and summon Mrs. Geoffrey and Reverend Satterwhite. For the sort of disciplinary hearing that usually ends in disgrace and departure. I must say that you’ve done everything possible to make a bad matter worse—I don’t know that I ever remember another Yale valedictorian getting expelled two weeks before graduation for some pathetic act of hooliganism against a nonentity. Your father has written to me quite often, Simion, and I have done what I could to assure him that you were progressing well and to protect you from his anger. You shall deal with it on your own from here on out.”

  Simion felt a visceral chill then, despite all the intervening time since John Ezra had been a physical threat to him. However, he was in the grip of courage as one might be in the grip of fear. It had become a kind of chemical reaction, unstoppable. “That’s nice! A pretty ally you choose for yourself.”

  “Well, he shall be summoned posthaste unless you persuade Professor Klionarios to have someone take that statue and put it in storage until such time that it will not disgrace this institution. Perhaps 1995 or therearounds?”

  Simion took a look at Doriskos, steeling himself. “I won’t. I won’t do that.”

  “In that case, I shall summon your father,” said Porter, watching the boy flinch but hold his ground as he received that news. “I will do anything legal to see that a creature like yourself doesn’t lead the class of 1882 as its valedictorian. I am weary of regarding you as a sort of misguided innocent, you have made a very nasty mess, and I’ll do my duty to see that it gets cleaned up before it becomes a matter of public knowledge. And what I’m willing to do is probably nothing to what your father will contemplate. Have you any idea how you’ll pay for these wretched follies of yours?”

  “Oh, like everything I’ve ever had and paid for, I suppose,” said Simion. “I’ve paid for everything I am heavily, many times over, Dr. Porter, up in the mountains at the hands of the sainted Reverend. I’ve paid in pain and danger to my life just for being born myself, and a minor, and unable to fight back in any way that counted. And now I suppose I’m about to pay for being who I am again, now that I’m grown and know my own mind. Only in the case of Mr. Klionarios, I’m finally paying for something that’s worth its price. As for my degree, I’ve already paid for that too, and if you don’t give it to me, you’ll be accountable to me. You’ll be accountable for what you do to me, how you bar me from my aspirations, and what the Reverend does to me when you call him here. And you may have more than you can manage if you get him here—you’ll be like Faust, you won’t be able to control the devil you call up.”

  “Simion, I promise you, that ordained lunatic shan’t hurt you,” said Doriskos again. “Nor will this one, either, in any way I can prevent.”

  “You don’t know Father—”

  “No, but I know I won’t let him do that. Come,” said Dori, “let’s go home.”

  XV. The Book of Revelation

  Perhaps understanding all the horrible potential in suspense, Noah Porter left Simion to welter through this season of intemperate May heat while getting intimate with the possibility of expulsion. This possibility caused Simion spasms of private panic in which he lay z-folded on his bed, muffling his sounds in his pillow. It made him approach the mailbox every morning with his breath short and tight and his stomach full of razors until he’d opened it and found no communication from the college. He smoked until his lungs ached, his agitation far beyond the reach of that noxious calmative tobacco, and yet the craving reached absurd heights. He woke up in the night to smoke. He and Andrew argued in a tired and tiresome way that made all the pleasures of their friendship seem far-gone and unreal; evenings were given over to quiet frantic conclaves with Helmut and Moses. Moses was too alarmed for anger, too preoccupied for scolding; he did not even bother to berate Simion about his incessant smoking and the frequent doses of brandy he snitched.

  Amidst all this, Simion wrote his exams, feeling somehow punished for how he had walked into finals in the past—formidably organized, long-prepared, well-rested, with no slight disdain for the haggard faces around him. At the same time, the pressure for perfection had never been greater. He had to do so well that Porter would hate to waste him and the luster he cast on his class by throwing him out. So he finally tasted the experience of writing exams while sick with nerves and fatigue and dire fear of what Pride Goeth Before.

  When he had finished the last one, as a gesture of stubborn hope, he paid his graduation fees. He paid his fees in cash, as if that way they couldn’t be returned to him—as if it would do any good to say, “But you took my money! Now give me my degree!” he thought as he put his receipt in his pocket. Even the clerk who wrote it out for him seemed, faintly, to sneer. In a similarly talismanic spirit, he bought his graduation robe and mortarboard and collected his Phi Beta Kappa stole. When he came home after this errand, the mailbox did not disappoint him with yet another day of suspenseful relief; it contained the summons. Addressed, one might add, to both him and Doriskos.

  In the same spirit in which the Queen of Scots had chosen a gown of red taffeta to catch the blood of her departure, he and Doriskos both wore their graduation suits to this hearing. Red for martyrdom, white for innocence—that color of bridal virginity all too ironically appropriate in Dori’s case. Simion’s suit was new, fresh out of its tissue-wrappings and the sprigs of English lavender folded into the linen to scent it. Doriskos’s, made by the same tailor fifteen years ago, still fit. Two suits of oyster-white linen, two pairs of white buck shoes. Thus attired, they reported at the appoi
nted time and were obliged to wait interminably in Porter’s parlor until the onerous Van Rakle presented himself and said that the hearing would convene immediately: Mrs. Geoffrey was due to arrive presently. Simion and Doriskos followed Van Rakle into the conference room off Porter’s office, where waited seven pillars of the faculty, attired in their academic gowns despite the heat, ready to perform the function of jury. There also they found Andy, along with Moses, who had included himself as character witness and advocate—and Peter.

  It was Simion’s first encounter with Peter since the night of the ragging. How dreadful each of them looked was not lost on either. Neither imagined it would take anything heroic to push the other over the edge good and proper. Peter had gone from dreading Araminta’s wrath to wanting to put his head in her lap, even if she spat on him.

  But she didn’t come on time.

  As the horrid afternoon wore on and she still didn’t come—late train—Porter insisted on starting the hearing without her, saying they could recapitulate what was said for her when she arrived. Simion was encouraged that Dr. Porter said nothing about the arrival of Reverend Satterwhite, as he preferred to call him. However, he was not encouraged that the talk turned so soon to explicitly-designated crimes.

  “If we’re talking about crimes, this discussion should be suspended until the accused have had a chance to consult their lawyers,” Moses interrupted.

  “This is not a court of law, Dr. Karseth,” said Dr. Porter.

  “Well, if it’s going to do the same thing that a court of law does—”

  “What crimes?” asked Doriskos.

  “Doriskos, leave it alone!” Moses cried.

  “What crimes?”

  “A…bominations…against nature…with this boy.”

  “I suppose you mean the classical vices, all two of them?—they’re always referred to as if there were dozens, but I know of only two. Fellatio and sodomy. I can reassure you on that point. I have never done either thing with Simion or with anyone,” said Doriskos. He turned a slow sick red, but made a point of meeting every pair of eyes across the table from him, including Peter’s.

  “His fancy foster father carries around a naked picture of him in his pocket!” blurted Peter.

  “Young man, you are almost as imperiled as he is. Hold your profane tongue!”

  “I can’t help what my foster father carries around in his pockets,” said Doriskos. “Still, having these pictures taken was the worst he ever did, and I reiterate my previous point.”

  “But how does a decent man know of such things?” asked the oldest of the clergyman-jury.

  “How do you know of them? You must, if you’re making accusations against me. I’d have to be illiterate in both Greek and Latin not to have heard of them. I’ve never done them, though.”

  “Simion,” said Porter, “is this true?”

  “That you’d have to be illiterate in Greek and Latin to be ignorant of such things? Yes.”

  “Do you solemnly affirm that you have never—”

  “Oh. Yes, I solemnly affirm that Professor Klionarios has never laid an improper finger on me,” Simion said, hating this discussion even more than when it began, if such a thing was possible. “Nor has he ever laid an improper finger on Peter Geoffrey.” Just as he was wondering if his denial would injure further the most delicate thing between himself and Doriskos, he jumped at an extraordinary sound—a yell, a roar of rage, and Peter Geoffrey rising out of his chair.

  “Improper fingers! IMPROPER FINGERS! He doesn’t have to lay an improper finger on anyone to ruin him! Look at me! Well, LOOK AT ME! I’m a ruin! An ugly mess! A drunk and a clown! When I came here, I was talented! I had promise! I was handsome, even. And now I look like goddamned Atlanta after Sherman, and it’s because of that man!” He glared through his tears at Doriskos: “I loved you! I did everything for you! I would’ve shot anybody but my mother for you, and you treated me like something nasty you’d stepped in on the street! Oh, God damn you to torment right here and now!”

  “In my professional opinion,” Moses put in, “this young man is deranged, and this affair is a matter for treatment, not adjudication.”

  “Oh, hold your noise, you sheeny, you up-jumped Jew!” Peter snarled. The blunt ugliness shocked the assembly in spite of itself. They were all as silent as if they’d been slapped.

  “I rest my case,” said Moses mildly.

  “Yes, well, rest your jaws too. Nobody who matters asked you here!”

  “Peter, you are eroding that part of my sympathy that you still possess,” Porter warned him.

  “I did nothing to encourage this boy in his delusions,” said Doriskos. “Nothing of any kind.”

  That bland statement, which Doriskos made while looking eye-to-eye with Peter, turned Peter violently red and snapped him back into his tantrum. “Oh, isn’t that always his story!” Peter bawled. “The eternal innocent, the sweet unworldly faunlike critter! If you ask him, he’ll say that he didn’t do a thing, and I guess that’s true in the courtroom sense—but he’s got black magic, all he has to do is look at you! He’s some kind of sorcerer! I’ve felt as if I were staring into a fire from the minute I met him! He’s ruined my life! I’d laugh if I could see him taken out and shot! If you want evidence, just look at me!”

  Porter pounded his gavel to no avail. The session was temporarily adjourned; Peter sagged, emitting loud, braying sobs—crying almost as an enraged small child will—and was forcibly given some brandy. For once, he didn’t want it; he smacked the glass out of the hand of the flunky coaxing him with it at Porter’s behest. Then there seemed some abrupt change of pressure in the room, and indeed the door had opened.

  “Bosh. That’s the biggest bunch of fiddlesticks I’ve ever heard from anyone but this boy’s father,” said a cool female voice, falling like winter water on the growls and huffings of the men.

  They all turned. If Peter was Young Nero, this was Young Agrippina, an Agrippina of pastel porcelain, and a disarming one. Simion and Doriskos both were distracted from their pressing concerns to notice how patrician a creature she was. The features that were soft and corrupt on Peter were incisive in his mother’s face. Even that pale rosebud mouth expressed an imperial will. Araminta, in cool lavender poplin from Worth, added herself and her Italian cavalier to the assembly. Piero looked very young and very confused, as well as quite stunning in a dark, fine-featured Verrocchio fashion.

  “Peter,” said Araminta, “shut up that blubbering.”

  Peter quit. In the dissonant midst of this Dance of the Furies, he still felt his familiar pride in her. “Mother ought to be president,” he thought. “We’d have won the Wah Between the States if she had been.” Not that either alteration of history would have changed Peter one jot or tittle, but he felt that she deserved it. Even as disgusted with him as she appeared, some part of her calm calmed him, cooled his mouth like mint.

  “Mrs. Geoffrey,” blundered Porter, stepping forward.

  “Dr. Porter. Well met in ill circumstances, sir. This is my secretary, Piero Allegri. Unfortunately, you already know my son.”

  “Madame…I trust…I hope you have had as pleasant a journey as possible under the circumstances.”

  “In fact, we had a perfectly vile trip. We were harassed by a lunatic evangelist all the way from New York. It is incredible, the people one meets on trains. If your wire had come a day later, I should have been on the boat to Italy. Indeed, I almost wish it had. I would gladly let my son sort out his own calamities but for the trouble he may inflict upon others.”

  Shocked into action, Simion got to his feet and caught her eye. “Excuse me, ma’am, did you say a preacher?”

  “A big, dirty man trying to hand out tracts,” said Araminta, with an elegant shrug. “We couldn’t persuade him that we didn’t want any, but he wouldn’t leave off pestering us. We summoned the police directly once we got off the train.”

  Tracts. The police. There is a god, Simion thought. Maybe several. He considered the
idea of John Ezra bellowing in police custody, trying to hit someone, being locked up for drunk and disorderly conduct, spontaneous assault, spitting on a police officer, public mayhem, or some other fine breach of decency.

  “My apologies,” Porter began, but Araminta cut him off.

  “No, Dr. Porter, mine. For my tardiness, and for your trials on account of this appalling son of mine. And to you, Professor Klionarios, for that wretched disgrace over there. You see, I know you by Peter’s drawings, and I know what Peter’s been about. It’s why I kept him home last year. Apparently I should have kept him longer. As it is, if the college doesn’t propose to toss him out on his ear forthwith, I’ll stay in town and keep my eye on him until he finishes his exams and gets his diploma, then take him promptly home.”

  “Mrs. Geoffrey, I fear there’s been a misunderstanding,” Noah Porter tried to say. “Your son is the complainant in this case. He has been cruelly mishandled by four of his peers.”

  “Oh, never mind about that. I fear he’s made a gross nuisance of himself. If he got cuffed about the ears a little, it won’t do him any harm.”

  “Really, Mother, how could you?”

  “Really, Peter, how dare you? I could just snatch you bald-headed. If you ever force me to interrupt my plans like this again, I’ll use my crop on you!”

  “That’s what he did,” Peter said, indicating Simion. “A riding crop. After stuffing a pair of dirty underdrawers into my mouth so I couldn’t yell.”

  “Bully for him.”

  “Your loyalty, Mother, is truly disarming,” Peter told her, pleased with simple Piero’s upset expression and whispered bids for translation. Porter and the other puritan divines, meanwhile, stood open-mouthed at this display of naked excess: this entwined Southern love and hate, inseparable as summer and hornets. A thing too complex, too full of rapture and rottenness, to be comprehensible above the Mason-Dixon line, even if it had been unmingled with the fragrant taint of Oedipus.