Fool's Journey

by Comstock, Mary Chase

  “Vibert died quite young,” Deirdre went on, "but she was one of our own. She was a writer in residence here at this University.” She glanced up at Freemont. “I believe you knew her, Professor Willard?”

  He nodded, still smiling, but said nothing.

  Deirdre turned her attention back to the class. “The poem is called ‘Revenge,’” she continued. “I think you’ll find it powerful.”

  I will haunt him down the back roads of his soul,

  I will turn his days of flesh to nights of fear,

  I will hack his little joys to bleeding sorrow,

  And feed his heart to dogs without a tear.

  Ghosts and vengeful angels rend his soul!

  Leave no moist, hateful scraps for Hell to cherish!

  Wither, wane, decay and crumble,

  Void, erase, unmake, purge and perish!

  Deirdre let the silence hover for a moment after she had finished. No one said a word. Freemont Willard shifted in his seat.

  “Comments, anyone?” she asked quietly.

  When Adam Watts raised a tentative hand, she nodded.

  “It’s really different from the other poems you’ve given us to read,” he began. “I mean the emotion comes through. It really comes through, but . . .”

  “Yes?” she prompted.

  “But, I don’t think it’s very good poetry.” He shrugged, and added lamely, “Just my opinion.”

  “You’re entitled,” she responded briefly. “Anyone else?”

  A girl raised her hand. “I agree with Adam,” she said. “It’s angry, but it isn’t polished. Too much rhyme. Not enough weight. Why would it change anyone’s life?”

  Deirdre felt herself smile. “You’re right. It’s not a good poem. It’s raw. In fact, Vibert never finished it. It’s never even been published.” She looked at the faces before her, and forced herself to hold Freemont’s eyes for a moment. He licked his lips and grinned. Deirdre felt a wave of triumph wash over her, because she knew her next words would wipe the expression from his face.

  “This poem was Diana Vibert’s suicide note.”

  The reaction from the class was what she had hoped for. They leaned forward in their chairs, almost as one. Freemont’s expression froze. Now she felt the sweet taste of revenge for herself and for Diana Vibert. It might prove fleeting, but for the moment, it was enough.

  “The poem was clutched in her hand when they found her,” Deirdre continued. “At the bottom, she had written, I have not the strength to pursue him here. But I will haunt him and hunt him in spirit.”

  Lisa raised her hand. “Who was he?” she asked.

  Deirdre shrugged. “It’s difficult to say. Vibert lived alone at this point in her life. There seems to have been no one she shared her thoughts with. There are a number of clues, though. There’s a journal that’s revealing in many ways.”

  “Whoever she’s talking about made her kill herself then,” Lisa said grimly. “Someone should find out. He’s a murderer.”

  Deirdre nodded. “Thank you, Lisa. Now you’ve brought us to how this poem has changed my life. I’m going to put my current projects on hold for awhile and study the last years of Vibert’s life. I’m going to find out who did this to her, and publish the ending to this particular murder mystery.”

  Freemont Willard shifted his weight in his chair.

  “Do you need help?” Adam asked. “It could be like a class project or something.” Several other students nodded in agreement.

  Todd glanced derisively at Adam and snorted. “Don’t you think you’re carrying this whole thing too far? Poets off themselves all the time. So what? This chick was following the stereotype. She probably just got dumped and couldn’t take it. What do you think, Professor Willard?”

  Willard glanced briefly at Todd, then met Deirdre’s gaze. “I think it would be an extremely poor scholarly choice,” he said evenly. “Speculation of that sort is anti-intellectual at best, and criminally stupid in terms of promotion and tenure at a university of this standing, even for one so honored as you, Professor. I would advise you against such a pursuit most strongly.”

  “Your advice is noted,” Deirdre returned with a smile. “I may even be able to include it in the introduction –”

  Before she could continue, Todd broke in again. “Can we look at the other poem? The one that Professor Willard put on the board?”

  “Why not?” Her mission for the day had been accomplished. Her heart was pounding the rhythm of revenge. “I’ll be curious to see what he has to share with us today. Would you like to take over for a bit, Freemont?”

  He rose slowly from his chair and slouched toward the front of the room, as she took a seat next to Adam. An echo rang in her ears as the blood rushed through her veins. The feeling was far too close to fear and she was too close to trembling. As she settled herself, she pulled a sheaf of papers from the manila envelope that held Vibert’s last journal entries and scanned them again. She had almost memorized them by now, but seeing the words again would strengthen her resolve.

  He has taken that part of me I love and made it into his own creature, Vibert had written. It lives in me now and feeds on my heart, my soul, until there is nothing left. I am already dead, so what is there left to do? A simple a decision and a great relief now that I have arrived at it. Poor Bess – I have no heart left to love her with. She will hear of it in some casual way, will appear untouched perhaps. But she will die a little too, I fear. So . . .

  Deirdre bit her lip as she read, the sound of Freemont’s voice droning in the background. Such a wrong, such a needless end to a beautiful soul. The idea to pursue a study of Diana Vibert’s last years had occurred to her only moments ago, and the words had formed without consideration, but it felt right. She would be an avenging angel for the dead poet.

  Suddenly she felt a light touch on her shoulder and she looked up to see Adam gazing at her with the beginnings of tears in his eyes. It was clear he had been reading over her shoulder. In her surprise, the papers dropped from her hands and fell to the floor. Immediately he stooped to retrieve them for her and shuffled them into an unwieldy pile.

  “I really want to help on this,” he whispered fiercely. “Okay?”

  What a great kid, she thought. He felt the wrongness of Vibert’s end, too. She nodded mutely as she took the pages from him.

  Freemont’s voice droned on from the front of the room. Then she realized he was addressing her. “And the image, ‘Dolls in the trees,’ don’t you find that unusual, Professor Kildeer?”

  At the sound of the words, she felt her heart sink to her stomach like a lump of lead. Her mouth went dry. The poem on the board was one of her own from many years ago. From the time when she was known as Katie McClellan. She had expected it, but the sense of invasion she felt was still shocking.

  “Wool-gathering, Professor Kildeer?” Freemont chortled. “Perhaps I should read it to you?”

  Her students looked at her expectantly. Oddly enough, the world did not spin about her. She was grounded in memory, in the childish tragedy the poem had grown from.

  “Go ahead,” she said quietly. There was no going back now. What would happen, would happen. Freemont grinned at her and turned to recite from the board.

  Suntime and moontime

  Oh lyricsome sweet!

  Through the pages we danced never fast enough

  Make a wish—hold your breath

  Always

  Suntime and moontime

  Dolls safe in the trees remembering always

  The multi-told stories

  As in poems we curled up as the old moon smiled down

  And lyricsome sweet

  Spun our destitute dreams.

  As the words spilled from his mouth, the years slipped away. She saw herself as a gangly adolescent, reading aloud the poem she had written for her mother. In the interior life they had shared amid the hell her father had created, poetry was the sustenance that fed their souls.

  It had not been e
nough, of course. In the end, it was pain and anger that transformed them. All of them had been caught in the vortex of hatred, and only Deirdre still walked among the living.

  “So, Professor Kildeer?” Freemont prodded when he was done. “The imagery?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of interfering, Professor Willard. You chose this poem.”

  The students turned expectantly to the front of the room. Freemont cleared his throat.

  “I appreciate your deference, Professor Kildeer,” Freemont began. “Shall we begin with the line I cited earlier? ‘Dolls safe in the trees...’ What do you make of it, class?”

  Why was he so interested in that particular line? It was fraught with meaning for her, but no one else could possibly guess what it meant. It reflected one distant pain, a small one compared with all the others. It was one of her first rebellions against her father’s cruelty. He had caught her in a tiny transgression and had told her he would burn her dolls that night. He had told her to have them waiting when he came home from the office.

  Small Russian Lena, Violet the ballerina, round-cheeked Bobbin. All their bright eyes and sweet faces begged her for rescue and she had hidden them in the branches of a holly bush, had scratched herself bloody in doing so. He had not found them, and she had not been starved or ostracized into submission either. Those were the days when his experiments were still carried out tentatively, with an eye toward the school and neighbors.

  “It sounds familiar to me.” Todd’s voice broke through the rush of memory.

  She glanced in his direction. He was tilted back in his chair, looking smug, as ever, but he and Freemont exchanged glances as if they were in collusion.

  "I think I've read that line in some other poem," Todd mused. "It wasn't this one, though."

  Freemont emitted a brief, dry chuckle. "That sort of thing happens in poetry. The literary term is allusion, but, of course, Professor Kildeer will have discussed the basic vocabulary with you already. In allusion, you recall, the poet alludes to, refers to another work. Can anyone give me an example?"

  Adam raised his hand tentatively. "The opening of The Wasteland is an allusion to The Canterbury Tales, right?"

  "Quite right," Freemont nodded.

  "But the reference isn’t supposed to be exact," Lisa said. "It's more like an echo than a quote."

  "Nicely put," Freemont nodded. "It shouldn't be an exact quote."

  Deirdre frowned. Where was he going with this? He had succeeded in getting her attention, showing for certain he knew what she feared. But there was something else going on. What was it?

  "Does anyone else find the line familiar?" Freemont prompted. "An allusion should always be clear to a well-read audience, after all."

  Lisa started to say something, then looked over at Deirdre as if puzzled.

  Freemont waited a moment, then said, “Perhaps it will come to you eventually. If anyone remembers, let me know. I’d be curious to see how broad your knowledge of modern poets is.”

  So he wasn’t going to leave this battle between the two of them. He was attacking on all sides. His speed surprised her. He seemed more like the sort who would draw out the pain with small threats. Instead, he was going for it all at once. An amateur sadist. Well, she had overcome a virtuoso. Her father had reeled out the painful path of their lives like a roll of barbed wired. But he, too, had underestimated her. He thought she was as passive and compliant as her mother. He had been very wrong.

  The act of murder had taken its toll on her life, but it was nothing compared to living with the devil. Whatever happened next, she was equal to it.

  XXIII.

  In her cramped office, Deirdre waited for Freemont. If a confrontation were going to take place, she would rather maintain the slight security of her own territory than chance unequal footing elsewhere. Still, as the hours plodded by, she grew less certain. From time to time, she heard his voice in the passage, speaking to students and other faculty. Once, he even stood right outside the partially open office door, even put his hand on the doorknob, then went away. He was playing with her, trying to draw out her anxiety as long as he could, just as her father had done.

  Deirdre dug her nails into the palms of her hands to dispel the memory, but the images reappeared anyway, as red with blood as if it were today. There was so very little difference: a man who hated women had found her.

  Freemont was a fool, though, if he thought she would balk at defending herself. How could he possibly think she would hesitate? He knew who and what she was. Did reputation mean so much to him that he assumed she would sell her soul for its safety?

  She glanced at the clock. It was after five p.m. If Freemont were waiting to confront her after the staff had left, he would be disappointed. She swept up her keys, crammed a pile of papers into her satchel and left the office.

  The corridor was deserted, one flickering fluorescent bulb lighting a surreal path past the line of closed doors. Freemont’s door was shut and the light was off. Deirdre felt a wave of sickness wash away from her. Their confrontation was merely delayed, but knowing that the day held nothing more of him lifted her spirits. She would sleep tonight and face tomorrow when it came.

  Even though a light rain was falling, Deirdre got off the bus a few stops before her home. Several of the stores at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill beckoned to her with their bright windows and foolish extravagance. It felt so good to be an ordinary shopper, buying pretty greeting cards, stationery for letters she would never mail. It felt so good to blend with the normal.

  Too quickly, though, the clerks began to close out their tills and glance meaningfully at their watches. Unwillingly, she stepped out into the rain once more and looked up the street. The long slope of the hill glowered down. Five minutes would take her home, but the thought merely intensified the coldness she felt at her center. Damn. She didn’t want to go back and sit through the evening alone.

  Across the street, the flashing red neon of Nick’s beckoned comfortingly. Dinner at the smoke-filled Lebanese restaurant sounded comfortable and anonymous, and the service had a euphemistic reputation for being leisurely. She was in no hurry. Taking advantage of a gap in the traffic, she ran across the glittering street and into the restaurant. The low wail of Middle Eastern music greeted her, snaking its way around the tables and into the corners. The air was redolent of garlic and lemon and edged with cigarette smoke.

  “Table for two?” a dark-eyed hostess asked.

  “Just one,” Deirdre replied, feeling ambivalent about dining alone. A companion might provide a wall of conversation, keep her inner eye from returning to the scenes of the day. Panda was still out of town, though, and Manny Ruiz, for all his distracting dark intensity would only focus on her problems.

  As the hostess led her to a small round table lit with a lurid red candle she knew that, if she had sought out this place as a means of avoiding her problems, she had failed. The restaurant reminded her of Dmitri’s where she had eaten with Bess Seymour just yesterday.

  As one who knew what exposure meant, she’d lay odds Bess had spent a good deal of time second guessing herself, wondering if her confiding the tale of Diana Vibert was more an act of betrayal than a path to revenge. The nights would have been full of ghosts, more full than usual. What did Bess do to escape? Work, of course, was always an answer. Deirdre glanced at the folders of student papers peeking out the top of her satchel. She’d brought class papers home as usual, and the light was just strong enough here to read a few and write comments. It would keep her from staring into the shadows of this dark restaurant and turning them into shades of memory.

  Over a cup of coffee, so thick it could have been syrup, she read through the last of the poems. She was avoiding going home, but she granted herself permission to relax. She had saved Adam’s and Mattie’s poems for last, not because they were so much better or worse than anyone else’s, but she felt a bond with them. They were the two students she'd connected with this term and she found herself always giving their wor
k more attention than the others.

  She smiled when she saw that Adam had used a gothic script on his poem:

  The troll has found his princess fair

  and locked her far away

  from princes brave where never may

  their derring do have aught to play.

  She weeps to see her hair grow gray

  as time surrounds her day by day:

  a prison strong that none may storm

  embraces now her withered form.

  Predictable in form, but a nice little creepiness in the imagery. Getting a response from a reader was a good thing. It would be better though, if he could strip away the verbiage of old structure and make every word count. Strip away conventional symbolism and bring his own meaning closer to the surface. They’d be having one-on-one conferences next week, so she’d help him hammer through it then. She made a few notes on the page and went on to Mattie’s.

  The hand that moves by night

  is here again, leading me to nightmare land

  My mother moon weeps softly

  as she hides behind a cloud

  Hope is an annoying mime I cannot understand

  It will not go away.

  Deirdre frowned. Exactly the opposite of Adam’s, it was almost too personal to make sense of. All the symbols were private. There was little a reader could hang onto to create their own meaning. Despite that, though, it was fresh and keen and full of sorrow. Lots of work to do, but if Mattie could face whatever demon triggered it, the poem would be a good one. This conference would probably be much more difficult than Adam’s.

  Sometimes she felt more like a counselor than a writing teacher. There were places she didn’t want to go with students, wounds their writing opened that were too painful for exploration, but if all she did was write her own cryptic notes in the margins with that infernal red pen, what good did it do? Good writing didn’t take place in a vacuum, and it wasn’t right to teach as if it did.