Blue Angel

by Francine Prose

  The film keeps running. Professor Rath, in his clown suit, has returned to play his hometown. There, he’s beaten by an outraged mob for assaulting Lola Lola after he catches her in the embrace of that oily, faux-continental slime, Mazeppa the Strong Man. Bruised and humiliated, Rath staggers off to his former place of work and past glory, sneaks into his classroom in the middle of the night, and slumps over, dead at his desk. Swenson certainly hopes that’s not going to happen to him.

  His life is not Professor Rath’s life. The story of a teacher who throws everything away for some heartless low-life slut is not his story. Rath’s death will not be his death. We already know how Rath’s story ends. The jury’s still out on Swenson’s. At least he’ll see Angela, once more, at the hearing….

  With those final words, The End, still lingering on screen, the blanket of the film is rudely pulled from Swenson, and the chill of his situation rushes in and makes him decide to watch it all over again, this time keeping in mind that Angela watched it, not so long ago. He met her bringing back the tape, in that lost, sweet, other lifetime.

  On the night before the hearing, Sherrie calls and says, “This is not a real conversation. This is to wish you good luck.” This is to prove that Sherrie is, after all, a good person, a generous, large-souled woman who phones her husband on the eve of his public mortification. It only makes him feel worse to know that he has done something so awful that someone with such an excellent character is still so angry at him. Lots of guys have done worse, they’ve been doing it for years. Swenson didn’t start early enough. Maybe that was his big mistake.

  He goes to bed hoping that sleep will replace these cynical grumblings with pure bright thoughts of misguided but genuine love, with the hope of being forgiven for what was just a misunderstanding. If it was a misunderstanding, which is not his real opinion. He believes that it all meant something, that Lola Lola loved her professor, that Angela loved him. Once. Even if Angela, unlike Lola, came wired to see her beloved.

  It’s too big a task for sleep to take on, and sleep eludes him, hour after hour, while he lies in the dark orating to the committee, composing and revising speeches about what he thought he was doing, about his respect for Angela’s novel, about the erotics of teaching, and the dangers of starting to see one’s student as a real person. Seeing her as a real person—surely that will win the hearts of the women on the committee, and might even make Angela think twice about what she had and lost. But after he falls asleep around five and wakes at seven, exhausted, he can’t remember a word.

  He puts on his dark suit. Defendant clothes. Get real. This is a trial, not Joe College Professor chilling with his academic homies. Not some panel, some interdisciplinary brunch dreamed up by an ambitious chair. This is his future. Why not preempt the inevitable, dress early for the grave? The closet has left a chalky stripe on both shoulders. Swenson rubs at them. The stripe widens. Tough. Who will see the tops of his shoulders—unless he gets down on his knees?

  Swenson pulls out of the driveway without looking back, Lot’s wife, forbidden the briefest glance in the rearview mirror. He knows it’s pointless to see himself as a biblical figure when in fact he’s just an English teacher about to be tried and found guilty by a jury of his peers. He’d much rather feel like a tragic martyr, shedding the chrysalis of his old life as he prepares to stand trial, emerging so pure, so righteous—he could be Joan of Arc.

  In the car, halfway to the college, he realizes that he forgot to shave. Why not give them the grizzled old pedophile, the child-rapist they’re expecting? If Sherrie were here, she would tell him: Breathe deeply. One step after another. As if his private tragedy were some yuppie Lamaze class. Terror and panic, at least, seem like honest instincts.

  But what does instinct have to do with what’s about to happen to him in Cabot Hall, which has been, from its inception, a monument to anti-instinct, a grim multipurpose Puritan hell, sometime chapel, lecture forum, torture chamber, and now in its latest guise, courtroom? There will be more and more of this. Better get used to it now. Though maybe Cabot’s already hosted a witch-burning event, the incineration of a Puritan teaching assistant caught reading Shakespeare on Sunday.

  He can’t believe they’re holding the hearing in Cabot. It’s so theatrical, so excessive. Why do they need a small amphitheater better suited for corpse dissection than for a civilized inquiry into Swenson’s professional conduct? Not for Swenson the clubby warmth of Bentham’s office, with its collegial promise that matters can be peaceably settled in the judge’s chambers. They’ve gone for the chilly public space, the full-scale Kafka blowout. How many people are coming to this? For all he knows, the entire school. Why not hold it in the gym?

  Such is the power and the mercy of denial that it’s not until Swenson gets out of the car in the parking lot near Cabot that it finally occurs to him how little he does know. How many people will there be? Who is on the committee? How long will this last? Could he have brought a lawyer? Anyone would have asked that, but not Swenson, apparently, whose bid for taking control of his life went as far as returning Angela’s dirty poems and watching some pompous old geezer’s romantic problems turned into a German film classic. He could have asked the dean’s secretary for more information when she called, but he didn’t want to, he couldn’t, and she was glad. All he asked was when and where the hearing would be held. He should have done his homework, researched in detail the biography and personal quirks of each committee member as he calculated his chances, readied his defense. And what defense would he have made? The tape was edited. Slightly.

  Swenson arrives exactly as the college bells ring ten and carefully picks his way over the path booby-trapped with patches of ice that could send this sinner straight to hell. He imagines falling, hitting his head, lying dead on the walkway while the committee waits inside, assuming he is late. Then they’d hear the tragic news. How could they live with themselves, knowing they had convened to ruin a dead man’s life?

  He’s got to try and think of this as a long dentist appointment. It can’t last forever. At some point it has to end. Which naturally reminds him: He should have gone to the dentist and gotten his tooth fixed while he still had dental insurance. Is he holding onto his broken tooth as a sentimental souvenir, as proof that something happened between him and Angela Argo? That is what he wants to prove and yet another reason, he suspects, for why he’s going through this—this inquiry into the mystery of what did happen, and why. If he just resigns and leaves town, as any adult would, his infantile need to know what Angela felt will never be satisfied. Obviously, his agenda could hardly be more different from the committee’s….

  He reaches the tastefully faded brick building, half expecting a mob. But no one’s around as he goes inside, pausing to admire the spare austerity that makes the hall seem almost intimate despite its cavernous dimensions and the long flight of stairs leading down to a small proscenium, like some sort of Puritan bullring. The steam that rises off the snow behind the wavy old glass fills the lecture hall with powdery white light.

  At a long wooden table at the bottom of the amphitheater, the committee—six of them—fills every seat but one. A few spectators, witnesses maybe, occupy the first row.

  Swenson makes his way down the stairs, then stops, three rows from the bottom. The ever-gracious Bentham rises from the table and bounds up to shake Swenson’s hand, then—always the good host—motions for him to be seated, right there, three rows up, on the aisle.

  Don’t the others want to shake his hand? Who are they, by the way? Three women and three men. Francis Bentham. And isn’t that…Lauren Healy? One-third of the committee despises him already. Isn’t it jury-rigging, a major conflict of interest to include among its members the first person to have heard the incriminating tape as well as faculty chairperson of the Faculty-Student Women’s Alliance?

  He supposes it could be claimed that Bentham’s especially well informed. And it makes sense that Lauren’s here. It’s her gang of thugs that must be a
ppeased. The hearing might not count without Lauren present to witness that justice has been done. Still, doesn’t it matter that one of the judges saw him in a car with Angela on the fateful day that marked the beginning and the end of their affair? The innocent trip to Burlington, just before it all fell apart. He could have been Adam, absentmindedly turning the apple in his hand.

  And could that other woman at the committee table really be Magda Moynahan? Is Magda here to represent his side? To balance out Francis and Lauren? So what if she doesn’t have tenure? So what if he lied to her, his so-called best friend on campus—and hand-carried Angela’s book to the editor to whom he refused to show Magda’s poems?

  And there’s Amelia Rodriguez, the tight-lipped, beautiful head of the Hispanic Studies Department. Maybe that’s a good sign. At least she’s Puerto Rican and might have, he hopes, a laissez-faire Latin anti-Puritan attitude toward relations between the sexes. Swenson remembers wishing she’d been invited to that dinner at Bentham’s, speaking of which: one half of the committee was present at a social occasion on which the accused disgraced himself and ruined the entire evening. Too bad you couldn’t make it that evening, Amelia, glad you can be with us now, in your austere black suit, your black hair slicked back so tight your eyes looked yanked, your neat hands patiently folded, stern, graceful, inquisitorial, like some judge from the court of Philip II in sleek Armani drag, the evil spinster sister in a García Lorca tragedy. What’s Amelia doing in this New England interior designed by and for dead white males, John Winthrop and Cotton Mather?

  So who are Bentham’s male buddies? How typical that Swenson should know all of the women and hardly recognize the two men besides Bentham. That’s been Swenson’s whole problem here—not enough male bonding. Okay, that’s…Bill, Bill Grissom, from the anthro department, a pleasant, wonky guy still capitalizing on the few years he spent in the early seventies on a Navajo reservation. Level-headed, just goofy enough not to be cowed or swayed by the current mood on campus. And the other is—this takes another minute—Carl Fenley, from chemistry. Both are reasonable, rational men, a little on the nerdy side. Fair-minded, rule-abiding. Swenson might be better off with the football coach up there.

  The six of them have his fate in their hands, so why can’t Swenson focus, or pretend that he has any real interest in them—or in anyone here, except Angela Argo?

  She’s sitting in the front row. That is, he assumes it’s her. It’s Angela. But different. She’s dyed her hair, replaced the squid-ink black with a shiny, authentic-looking auburn. How vulnerable her head looks, egglike and terribly fragile. And how bizarrely she’s dressed—bizarre, that is, for Angela. Neat khakis, a red velour sweater, ordinary college-girl “good” clothes. For all he knows, the piercing and the black leather were always the costume, and this is the real Angela, restored to her true self. For all he knows. He doesn’t know. All right. He gets that now.

  Even her body is different. She’s sitting up straight in her chair, a well-behaved girl turned expectantly toward the kindly parental committee. Her mother and father surround her. The balding head, the platinum head lean tenderly toward Angela’s, two pale bulbs hovering over her, wary and protective. They’ve learned how to do this, how this should look, on the news, on Court TV.

  Swenson wishes they’d turn and look at him. Their faces would have to betray some sign that they remember the conference in which they told him that Angela talked about him all the time, that she adored him, that she thought he was the greatest writer who ever lived. But what if they’ve successfully erased it from their minds, and Swenson, alone in all the world, knows what really happened? He can’t take the risk of meeting their eyes. Swenson’s heart is thrumming. Chest pains. Shortness of breath. The embarrassment, the chaos, the rush to the college infirmary, and that’s how Sherrie, who’s working today, will see him for the last time….

  Francis Bentham smiles and says, “Hi. Ted. Thanks for coming in.”

  “Hi, Ted,” chorus the others. Hi, Ted. Hi, Ted. Hi, Ted. Thanks. What’s Swenson supposed to say? Don’t mention it? I’m delighted? As if he were gracing their party with his optional presence. There’s nothing he can say. He nods but doesn’t speak. Will that be interpreted as a hostile act?

  Francis Bentham glances at Lauren, the same look Swenson’s seen him shoot at Marjorie. Let the hostess do the honors, try and remember the names.

  Lauren says, “Thanks for coming in. You know Magda, Amelia, Francis and myself, Bill, and Carl. Thank you all for coming. And thank you, Angela. And Mr. and Mrs. Argo. Well, I guess everyone knows the drill. The committee will call the slate of agreed-upon witnesses.” Who agreed? Swenson would like to know. Who is lining up to take turns slandering him? “Cross-examination is not allowed. This is not, after all, a trial.” So they don’t have to worry about bothersome sticking points like due process.

  Angela nods vigorously. Overacting, thinks Swenson, who looks over just in time to see Angela’s father put his hand over hers and to feel jealous of this guy who can touch her whenever he wants. If he is her father. How could Swenson have been inside a woman he knew—and trusted—so little? And does her “father” know he’s the subject of a poem cycle about a daughter he molested and hurt so badly she wound up pursuing a promising career as a phone-sex worker?

  Swenson nods weakly, playing his role: the sullen guilty lecher. Let’s get this over with. He can’t wait to see who has volunteered to come forward and get him fired.

  When Bentham’s secretary telephoned, she’d asked if he had a list of witnesses he would like to appear in support of his case. What case? Whom could he enlist to convince a faculty committee that tape or no tape, he was such a great teacher that they should overlook the misleading evidence suggesting that he’d pressured a student into trading sexual favors in return for his pimping her novel? Maybe he should have subpoenaed Govind, the salesman from Computer City, to ask him if Angela seemed like Swenson’s cowering sex slave. The fact is: Swenson prefers the committee’s version—its image of him as the predatory harasser—to the truer story of obsession and degradation, the humiliating real-life update of The Blue Angel.

  “All right, then,” says Lauren. “Probably we should begin. Ted, we need to find out what exactly has gone on here. And we’re sure you want that, too.”

  Already it feels less like a trial than like the boilerplate adolescent primal scene: Mom and Dad confronting you with the drugs or bad report card. Swenson never experienced that. His father was way too crazy, more likely to be ranting than reading his school reports. It’s taken this long for Swenson to turn into the misbehaving teen, facing Bentham and Lauren, the steely punitive parents.

  “Fine, then,” says Bentham. “Let’s begin. We all know why we’re here, to investigate the charges of…er…sexual harassment”—he speaks rapidly, somehow communicating both his Old World sophistication and his willingness to take this seriously enough to throw Swenson out of Euston—“brought by Miss Angela Argo against Professor Theodore Swenson.”

  So now it’s Theodore. After all these years of Ted.

  “The committee has already taken a number of depositions under advisement.” What number? And where has Swenson been while all this was going on? Oh, right, watching German videos, returning Angela’s poems, drinking eggnog, and somehow forgetting to find one single person willing to vouch for his character.

  “Do you have any questions, Ted?”

  “No,” says Swenson. In fact, he has plenty of questions, none of which, he’s quite certain, the committee plans to ask.

  “And you, Miss Argo?”

  Angela turns to scan the room. The pivoting beacon of her pale scrubbed face sweeps right over Swenson. “I’m fine with it,” she says.

  “Well, good,” says Lauren. “Is Dave ready?”

  “I believe so,” Bentham says.

  Bentham gives a tiny nod, and everyone looks up as the door opens and Dave Sterret walks purposefully downstairs. In his neat chinos and sneakers, his sligh
tly too small navy blazer, Dave’s the very model of a certain kind of gay man, circa 1960: a guy you could imagine as a friend of Frank O’Hara’s. What is Dave here to say about him? And who is Dave to say it? Dave, who used to have affairs with every handsome kid in the Gay Students Alliance, has come to testify against Swenson for making a pass at Angela Argo. But Dave did all that before it was wrong, before anyone thought twice about it. Bentham shakes Dave Sterret’s hand and ushers him to the empty seat at the end of the committee table.

  Lauren says, “Thanks for coming in, Dave. We appreciate your time.”

  “That’s okay,” says Dave. “Though I can’t say I’m glad to be here.”

  Lauren bites her lip and nods. Amelia and the two men grimace mournfully. Magda leafs through her papers. Why won’t she look at Swenson? Where’s the wave, the wink?

  “Dave,” says Lauren, “why don’t you tell us in your own words what happened at Dean Bentham’s house on the evening of October eighteenth?”

  “Well, it was a perfectly normal evening,” says Dave. “A perfectly pleasant dinner. Most of the evening was flawless. There’d been a little accident with the dean’s new stove—”

  “Oh, my good man,” says Bentham flirtatiously. “Don’t tell them that, please—”

  Dave smiles. “And Marjorie performed the most marvelous rescue, some kind of shepherd’s pie with mashed potatoes, pure British-nanny comfort food, if one had a British nanny…and then this extravagant dessert, positively Dickensian, flat-out British sugar with all the bells and whistles.” Dave forgot to mention the Marmite!