Old School

by Tobias Wolff

  When they arrived, two years back, she was still in love with Mr. Ramsey. We could all see it. She hung on his voice, quoted his pronouncements. Lately this had changed. Since October I’d been assigned to their dinner table, and seen her look bored while Mr. Ramsey went on about something. On occasion she turned away while he was still talking and chatted with the boy next to her. She was easy to talk to.

  Your work, sir, Mr. Ramsey said, follows a certain tradition. Not the tradition of Whitman, that most American of poets, but a more constrained, shall we say formal tradition, as in that last poem you read, “Stopping in Woods.” I wonder—

  “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Frost said. He put both hands on the pulpit and peered at Mr. Ramsey.

  Yes, sir. Now that particular poem is not unusual in your work for being written in stanza form, with iambic lines connected by rhyme.

  Good for you, Frost said. They must be teaching you boys something here.

  There was a great eruption of laughter, more caustic than jolly. Mr. Ramsey waited it out as Frost looked slyly around the chapel, the lord of misrule. He was not displeased by the havoc his mistake had caused, you could see that, and you had to wonder if it was a mistake at all. Finally he said, You had a question?

  Yes, sir. The question is whether such a rigidly formal arrangement of language is adequate to express the modern consciousness. That is, should form give way to more spontaneous modes of expression, even at the cost of a certain disorder?

  Modern consciousness, Frost said. What’s that?

  Ah! Good question, sir. Well—very roughly speaking, I would describe it as the mind’s response to industrialization, the saturation propaganda of governments and advertisers, two world wars, the concentration camps, the dimming of faith by science, and of course the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Surely these things have had an effect on us. Surely they have changed our thinking.

  Surely nothing. Frost stared down at Mr. Ramsey.

  If this had been the Last Judgment, Mr. Ramsey and his modern consciousness would’ve been in for a hot time of it. He couldn’t have looked more alone, standing there.

  Don’t tell me about science, Frost said. I’m something of a scientist myself. Bet you didn’t know that. Botany. You boys know what tropism is, it’s what makes a plant grow toward the light. Everything aspires to the light. You don’t have to chase down a fly to get rid of it—you just darken the room, leave a crack of light in a window, and out he goes. Works every time. We all have that instinct, that aspiration. Science can’t—what was your word? dim?—science can’t dim that. All science can do is turn out the false lights so the true light can get us home.

  Mr. Ramsey began to say something, but Frost kept going.

  So don’t tell me about science, and don’t tell me about war. I lost my nearest friend in the one they call the Great War. So did Achilles lose his friend in war, and Homer did no injustice to his grief by writing about it in dactylic hexameters. There’ve always been wars, and they’ve always been as foul as we could make them. It is very fine and pleasant to think ourselves the most put-upon folk in history—but then everyone has thought that from the beginning. It makes a grand excuse for all manner of laziness. But about my friend. I wrote a poem for him. I still write poems for him. Would you honor your own friend by putting words down anyhow, just as they come to you—with no thought for the sound they make, the meaning of their sound, the sound of their meaning? Would that give a true account of the loss?

  Frost had been looking right at Mr. Ramsey as he spoke. Now he broke off and let his eyes roam over the room.

  I am thinking of Achilles’ grief, he said. That famous, terrible, grief. Let me tell you boys something. Such grief can only be told in form. Maybe it only really exists in form. Form is everything. Without it you’ve got nothing but a stubbed-toe cry—sincere, maybe, for what that’s worth, but with no depth or carry. No echo. You may have a grievance but you do not have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not poetry. Does that answer your question?

  I’m not sure—but thank you for having a go at it.

  You wouldn’t have guessed, seeing Mr. Ramsey settle back with a smile, that he’d just been stepped on by Robert Frost in front of the whole school. He had been my fifth-form English teacher and though I hadn’t liked him I did find him interesting, just as I’d found his question to Frost interesting. But many of his students thought him a pseud for his high diction and his passion for complicated European writers. They had surely enjoyed this little show.

  The headmaster led us in a last storm of applause, then we filed out of the chapel into a hard freezing wind. I asked George if he was headed to Blaine Hall, since it was rumored that Frost might drop by there for a cup of mulled cider with the English Club. No, George said—he was going back to his room.

  Why? Scared he’ll give you the business? He was just teasing you, George.

  He shook his head. Mr. Frost really thinks my poem is some kind of mockery of his work.

  He’s the one who chose it. If it bothered him, why would he do that?

  I don’t know why Mr. Frost chose my poem, he said. But he seems out of sorts about it.

  What the hell. You can clear things up with him at your audience tomorrow.

  If I have my audience.

  What, you think he’ll blow you off?

  I didn’t say that.

  George. Hold up. Hold up!

  We stopped on the path. The line of boys shuffled past us. A derelict kite flapped frantically in a tree. George looked away from me, back to the wind, tweed hat pulled low on his head. I think I’m coming down with something, he said.

  George, you can’t stand Robert Frost up.

  It wouldn’t count as standing him up if I was in the infirmary.

  You chickenshit. You big baby.

  George hunched deeper into his coat, hands jammed in the pockets.

  You can’t do this, I said. This is something special. Something to tell your kids about. Your grandkids!

  He won’t mind. He’ll be glad.

  George. George. This is really dumb. Where are you supposed to meet him, anyway?

  Headmaster’s parlor.

  When?

  After breakfast, George said, then turned and looked at me. Why?

  Just wondered. Are you really going to back out?

  I don’t know.

  What a waste.

  We walked along to where the path forked. Come over to Blaine, I told him. We can talk it over.

  He shook his head.

  It’d be a complete waste if you backed out. I mean, he’s here, George. Robert Frost. The chance of a lifetime. He’s, what? Eighty-six? Eighty-seven? It’s now or never.

  I understand that.

  So are you really backing out? Because if you are, there’s no point in letting a chance like that go to waste.

  I saw him begin to understand me. This has nothing to do with you, he said.

  I’m just saying, why throw a chance like this away? He’s willing to spend some time with one of us. If you won’t meet with him, let somebody else.

  Like you?

  Sure. Why not.

  You’d be willing to take my place?

  Yes.

  But he didn’t choose your poem. He chose mine.

  So? If you won’t meet him, why not me?

  Because you didn’t win. I won. That’s why not. Would you actually accept an honor you didn’t earn?

  Oh, like you earned it with those rhymes of yours? Please—we’re not talking about Paradise Lost here.

  George looked at me with cold curiosity. It unsettled me, but my blood was up and I couldn’t stop myself. Would I accept a meeting with Robert Frost? I said. An unearned meeting, as opposed to an earned meeting, like yours? You bet your sweet ass I would.

  George turned and started across the quad.

  I followed. Are you backing out or not?

  He didn’t answer.

  Wait’ll he gets yo
u alone, you big baby. He’ll chop you into little pieces.

  I stopped and watched him bend into the wind, coattails streaming.

  Frost didn’t turn up at Blaine Hall that night, but Mrs. Ramsey did. Her solitary entrance put everyone on alert, like a song going up an octave. Faculty wives didn’t attend such gatherings without their husbands, and as adviser to the English Club Mr. Ramsey was supposed to serve as host. Mrs. Ramsey said he had a touch of the flu, and wanted her to stand in for him, and pay his respects should Robert Frost appear. I heard her tell this to some masters and their wives as she carried a plate of cookies around the crowded room. Then she said it to Bill White and me in the same words and with the same helpless shrug, pursing her lips in sympathy for her ailing husband.

  Bill and I were standing by the fireplace. We each picked a cookie, and as she told her brave little lie Bill reached out and took the plate from her and set it on the mantel, below the picture of the Blaine Boys. She relaxed and made no move to go. I was struck by Bill’s confidence. Somehow I didn’t like it, but the result was fine—having Mrs. Ramsey linger with us.

  She said she’d heard Frost read once before, when she was a student at Foxcroft, and afterward he’d met with the girls and talked about everything under the sun. He was very funny, which surprised her, though she supposed it shouldn’t have, and a terrible flirt. Of course he got plenty of encouragement.

  The heat from the fire brought a flush to her face and made her perfume thicker, headier. She turned to Mr. Rice, an English master and a southerner himself, who was tapping the ashes from his pipe into the fireplace. Do you think he’ll come tonight? she asked.

  Frost? I doubt it. He seemed pretty well played out by the end there.

  Shoot, she said. She glanced toward the door as another group of boys came in, then turned toward Mr. Rice. Ramsey says y’all’re bringing that Ayn Rand woman here.

  Me—bringing Ayn Rand? What would Mrs. Rice say?

  You know what I mean.

  Bill and I looked at each other.

  There may’ve been some talk about it, Mr. Rice said.

  Oh, go on. It’s true and you know it.

  Roberta.

  I know, I know, she said. Boys, you didn’t hear a word. But still—Ayn Rand!

  Honestly now, Roberta, have you read anything of hers?

  Why, sure! Not a whole bunch. A little. A couple pages of one book, in a drugstore. I guess you’d have to say I haven’t, really.

  Nor have I, Mr. Rice said. And until I do I will refrain from poisoning these innocents against her.

  I’ve read her, Bill said.

  We all looked at him.

  The discerning Mr. White! I am shocked, Mrs. Ramsey said, but I could see that she was amused by the coolness with which he claimed this dubious ground.

  She has some interesting ideas, he said.

  Just then some of the boys started to sing, and others chimed in, the masters and their wives looking on tenderly. When I first arrived here I had tried not to gape whenever a bunch of boys suddenly gave voice like this, on the bus coming home from a game, in a sound-swelling stone hallway. It was like being in a movie of some Viennese operetta where everybody in the hotel lobby bursts into song, the doorman in his field marshal’s coat chiming in with a comical solo. Now I too knew the songs, and quickened to those moments when we leaned together, watching one another for cues, and joined our voices.

  The singers began to gather around the fireplace. Mr. Rice gave way and drifted back toward the other masters, but Mrs. Ramsey stayed with us and was soon surrounded by the chorus we’d become. She swayed to the music, laughing softly at a witty stanza, closing her eyes at a romantic line. She didn’t so much listen to the songs as receive them, as if we were serenading her. And indeed we were. She was a woman alone among us, eyes shining, color high, a pretty woman made beautiful by tribute of song. We could see our power to charm her and make her beautiful, and this gave boldness to our voices. All the poetry of the night, the agitating nearness of this young woman, the heat of the clove-scented room and the knowledge of the cold outside—all this was somehow to be heard in the songs we addressed to her. It was exciting and not quite proper, stirring and in some way illicit. It was a kind of ravishing. When one of the masters called a halt to it after several numbers—only as an afterthought pleading the lateness of the hour—we broke off as if coming out of a trance, hardly knowing where we were.

  Mrs. Ramsey seemed a little dazed herself, and skittish. She collected some dirty cups and wandered back to the cider bowl, where I saw her in conversation with the Greek master’s elderly wife. The next time I looked she was gone.

  It was obvious that Frost wouldn’t show. Still, I stayed until the end, even offered to help with the cleanup, but the wives stuffed my pockets with cookies and sent me packing.

  After breakfast I chanced some demerits and skipped my warm, easy chore—helping sort that morning’s mail—to join a crew of third formers who’d been assigned the job of rolling and lining the clay tennis courts overlooking the headmaster’s garden. They glanced at me curiously but said nothing, these melancholy squirts with pallid faces hunched deep in the coats they were supposed to grow into. After a brief show of helping I broke off and stood by the fence, watching the garden. I kept my vigil for half an hour or so. No one came. I figured George had chickened out after all, the big baby.

  But I was wrong. We walked to our dorm together after dinner that night—George couldn’t hold a grudge—and he told me he’d spent over an hour alone with Frost in the headmaster’s parlor. They’d started talking and never made it outside. Frost hadn’t said much about George’s poem, not in so many words, anyway, but he recited a few of his own and gave George some pointers. He also gave him an inscribed copy of his Complete Poems, and an invitation to drop by for a visit should he ever find himself in the neighborhood.

  Ah, I said. Great.

  We walked along. Then George said that Frost had left him with some advice.

  What was that?

  Do you know where Kamchatka is?

  Not exactly. Alaska? Somewhere up there.

  Mr. Frost told me I was wasting my time in school. He said I should go to Kamchatka. Or Brazil.

  Kamchatka? Why Kamchatka? Why Brazil?

  He didn’t explain. He was going to, but then he had to leave.

  Jesus. Kamchatka. Kamchatka.

  Later that night I went to the library and looked it up. A peninsula in the remote far east of the Soviet Union, on the Bering Sea. Very few people lived there. It was dark half the year. They lived on the salted meat of salmon and also of bears, which greatly outnumbered the people and proved a sorrow to the unwary. When the taiga wasn’t frozen over, it swarmed with biting insects. There were many volcanos and they were still active. The only picture in the Kamchatka entry showed two figures in parkas watching the top of a mountain being carried skyward on a fist of flame.

  I closed the encyclopedia and sat listening to the wind rattle the mullioned panes behind me. What was it about Kamchatka, that a young writer should forsake his schooling to go there? Spectacle, maybe. The drama of strange people living strangely. Danger. All this could be good matter for stories and poems. But Frost himself had lived in New England all his life at no cost to his art, and I wondered if he’d ever even been there. I guessed not. But it meant something to him, Kamchatka, something to do with the writer’s life, and what else could it mean but hardship? Solitude, darkness, and hardship. But he had also mentioned Brazil. I rose from my deep chair and crossed the room past boys dozing over books and exchanged the K volume for B.

  ÜBERMENSCH

  The rumor was true—Ayn Rand would be our next visiting writer. Some of the masters were sore enough about this to let the story of their failed protest sift down to steerage. It seemed that the chairman of the board of trustees, Hiram Dufresne, an admirer of Rand’s novels, had insisted on the invitation. Mr. Dufresne was also very rich and rained money on the school—
most recently the new science building and the Wardell Memorial Hockey Rink, named in honor of his roommate here, who’d been killed in the war. He visited often and liked to give the blessing before meals, serving up plenty of Thees and Thous and Thines; and afterward he would join us in Blaine Hall and lend his surprisingly high voice to the singing—a big, happy-looking man with an obvious orange hairpiece and a shiny round face and little square teeth like a baby’s. He once stopped me on the quad to ask where I hailed from and how I liked the school, and as I gave my gushing answers he smiled and closed his eyes like a purring cat.

  The headmaster invited Ayn Rand—so the story went—only because he was about to start a drive for scholarship funds and needed Mr. Dufresne’s support. A small party of masters came to object, and Mr. Ramsey used an impertinent metaphor, at which point the headmaster blew up and sent them home with hard feelings against both him and Dean Makepeace, who’d taken his side. It was a measure of their resentment that these masters let us hear so much about this dispute.

  Ayn Rand would visit in early February. By the time the announcement went out, just before Christmas break, I’d already heard the story behind it and was trying to figure out who held the high ground. Was the headmaster selling out, or were these masters indulging a mandarin snobbery regardless of the result? As a scholarship boy, I knew how I’d feel about losing my shot because some pedant wanted to show off his exquisite taste; but I was also affected by the masters’ conviction that Ayn Rand simply did not belong in the company of Robert Frost or Katherine Anne Porter or Edmund Wilson or Edna St. Vincent Millay or any of the other visitors whose photographs hung in the foyer of Blaine Hall. The school, they believed, would lose no less than part of its soul by playing host to her, and to them the money made it even worse—whoring after strange gods, as Mr. Ramsey supposedly had put it.