Freddy's Book

by John Gardner

  These last few words I spoke aloud, a thing I sometimes do when I’m reasoning with myself, and, realizing that I’d done so, I glanced around at my fellow diners. Only a head or two had turned; otherwise, no one had heard or cared, all happily occupied with their own affairs. I stoked up and lit my pipe to ponder the matter further, think it out properly, fair-mindedly. After all, my lecture had in some way touched the old man, I thought, or he’d never have written such a letter. For my conscience’s sake, if nothing else, I must decide this matter on some basis more solid than whim.

  I sat for several minutes, smoking and drinking tea, weighing the matter on this side and that. If Professor Agaard really was in need of advice, as he’d suggested—if he really had made, as he’d said, “grave mistakes”—it seemed unlikely that he’d get help from the colleagues who’d responded to him with such indifference, if not hostility, at the party. Considering all the trouble I’d put him through—his embarrassment last night, his labor over the letter—perhaps refusing him would be the worst thing I could do. I could hardly deny that I was curious, in a way; not wildly curious, but curious enough to take some risks, no question about it.

  Then another thought struck me: Had the old man approached me and spoken to me, and then afterward written, because in fact—or partly—he disliked me, despised, as some people do, my rather hopeful view of things? Was he one of those too numerous so-called “hard” historians who seethe at the very mention of psycho-history? In my irrational bones I had a feeling it was so. The idea, naturally, made me cross for an instant. I have always tried to be, so far as I know how, a just man, not needlessly unkind. Life itself may be unfair—I’ve never denied it—but how odd that I, a stranger just passing through, as the folk songs say, should be held responsible! Very well, I thought, no reason to go see him. Sorry, Iago, I’m dining with my wife.

  On the other hand, of course, he was, or had been once, a superb historian in the high, thin-aired field I myself did my earliest work in, thirty-some years ago—a man I’d have been honored to serve, if I could. … Abruptly, rising to pay my check, I decided to postpone my trip to Chicago and go see him, possibly meet his son.

  I made some phone calls—one to my wife, one to Jack Jr. (who teaches English at Whittier), one to the airport, several to friends, and one, finally, to Agaard to say that I was happy to accept. He suggested—a certain odd distance in his voice, a sound like sea-roar or wind behind him—that I come at about three.

  Around noon, a heavy snowfall began, so heavy that by eight that evening, though of course I didn’t know it at the time, the whole country would be transformed, the Madison airport socked in. At 2:15 I checked out of my room and, carrying the only bag I had with me—a small, old-fashioned one, the kind one associates with the visits of country doctors—hailed a cab. All through the city and out into the suburbs the driver grumbled about the weather, the inefficiency of the snow-removal people, the self-interest and stupidity of politicians. “One of these days,” he said again and again, hunched like a wrestler over the steeringwheel, speaking so grimly you’d have thought he was referring to some definite group and plan; then he’d clamp his mouth shut, letting the matter drop. The motor pinged and clattered, the fenders rattled, the broken shock absorbers banged with every bump as we flew up toward Agaard’s. I sat forward, smiling and nodding with interest, elbows on my knees, straining to hear above the noise of the cab as if the driver’s anger might give me some clue to what awaited me at the professor’s. Absurd, of course. The driver was a thoroughly socialized, perfectly normal human being. Every word he spoke he’d said hundreds of times before to his hard-up, slow-witted family and friends, who agreed with him completely.

  We came to a sparsely wooded area, a section with which the driver was unfamiliar. Every few blocks—or rather, every few crossroads—he would pull off the road, roll down his window, and lean out, squinting, trying to see what the sign said. It was clear that he resented being out here in the country. Every vehicle we passed was a Jeep or a pickup truck, and in every driveway, or so it seemed, some dog raged, mad-eyed and snarling, feinting at our tires. At last he found the road sign he was after and, since he’d slightly passed it, angrily hit the steeringwheel, then backed up, spinning as if punishing the car for its stupidity, and we made our turn. We ascended a knoll—the woods were thicker here; dark, still pines, all strangely tall—and made out, on our right, a few lighted windows pale as fog, and a huge, vague outline like the prow of a ship—Professor Agaard’s house.

  The driver stopped the cab. “What is it,” he said, “insane asylum?”

  “It belongs to a university professor,” I told him.

  The driver scowled up at it, taking a cigarette from the pack on the dashboard. “I thought so,” he said. He glanced at me, appraising, then back at the house. “Damn if I’m going up the driveway. No way.”

  “Why not?” I asked a little sharply.

  “Ice. Never make it.”

  I studied him, perhaps making sure he wasn’t hiding some darker reason, and just that instant his match flared, lighting up the stripped-down, shabby interior of the cab. He leaned close, cocking the cigarette toward the flame with his stubbly lips and squinting like a man with one eye. “Eight dollars,” he said.

  It was an outrage, heaven knew; but the driver so obviously knew it himself, even giving me a squint-eyed, stub-toothed smile, that I accepted my luck as if Providence had sent it—I was on expenses anyway—paid him, got out (there were no dogs in sight, though those we’d passed on the road were still barking), and, carrying my bag, made my way through the needle-fine, blowing snow up the hill. Behind and below me, I heard the cab pull away, heading back down toward the lights of the city, leaving me in heavier darkness.

  It was a gloomy old place, chilling as a barrow—not at all my kind of thing—and the closer I got to it, the gloomier it became, also the quieter. I arrived at a kind of graveyard gate, writing over the top, formed of rusty iron letters, too many of them missing for the name of the place to be readable. I thought, inevitably, of creaky old allegories, demented gothic tales—a thought that began in amused detachment but ended somewhere else, so that a shiver went up my spine. The place really did give off the smell, or rather the idea, of death.Who would have chosen such a house, coming to Madison as a young professor, except for the reason that once it had been a splendid residence—wide porches, sunken gardens—and even now might be brought back, as he must have thought, might be made a grand place in which to raise a large family, give parties? It hardly took second sight to make out that the young woman who’d dreamed of playing hostess here was no longer among the living, or that the young professor who had proudly, somewhat fearfully taken the deed and mortgage had been changed, by various accidents, to another man entirely.

  The gate stood partway open, just a narrow gap. I held my bag in front of me and, pushing against wind, went through. I was in among the pines now. It was as if I’d all at once lost my hearing.

  Before I had my glove off to grope for and ring the bell, Professor Agaard was at the door. “Come in!” he shouted. His voice cracked out like a trumpet, belligerent and fearful. The door he held open, just a foot or so, was huge; he clutched the edge with both hands. It had heavy locks on it. He was smiling as if in panic, dressed as he’d been last night, rumpled suit, dark, frayed silk tie. “Terrible out,” he said loudly, somewhat accusingly, “I’m surprised you bothered.”

  “It’s not as bad, down in the city,” I said.

  “No, I don’t suppose so. It never is.”

  After I’d stepped in, slipping my hat off and stamping to knock off snow, he pushed the door shut, leaning against it with his back like a child—and no wonder: the man was even smaller, more doll-like than I’d remembered; the top of his head came no higher than the middle of my chest. He drew off his spectacles to wipe away steam and grinned, looking at me up-from-under like a ram, his pupils almost hidden by his eyebrows. His dentures were overlarge and gra
y.

  “Come in and have a nice cup of tea,” he said. He half turned, then turned back for a moment and shot me a look, his eyes frankly boring into me like a child’s, then put the glasses back on; also the grin. “I see you came by taxi.” He seemed to disapprove, maybe thinking it would be hard to get rid of me.

  I shrugged, apologetic. It wasn’t easy to tell what emotion I ought to feel. The old man was at once deferential and, it seemed to me, crabby; perhaps he himself wasn’t certain what he felt. He was avoiding my eyes now, that much was clear; but whether from shyness or from a wish to hide his dislike for me I couldn’t make out.

  “I hope you weren’t too badly cheated,” he said. His expression suddenly became prissy, struggling to be a smile. It was a look I’d see on him again and again, as if, though he tried to see the humor in things, all this world were distasteful to him, sadly disappointing to a spirit of his antique refinement and sensibility. He shot me another little look, eyebrows sharply draw inward, at once stern and baffled. What I’d wrung my fingers over now seemed obvious: he’d been hoping I’d turn him down.

  Since I’d come, however, he decided to make the best of it. He seized my elbow and began to steer me through the gloom of the hallway toward the tall, closed door at the farther end. The hallway was like an ice-box, the air was cold in here as outside and not much less drafty, stirred as if by cave winds. When he opened the inner door, heat poured over us as from a furnace. “These old houses!” he said, with a bark-like laugh, waving me through the door, wincing as if the house were a punishment he’d been sent—unjustly—for the crimes of someone else.

  We were in a cavernous livingroom with a threadbare Persian rug, an unlighted chandelier, here and there a lamp among the frail, spindly pieces of furniture. Most of the light in the room was thrown by a great, rolling fire in the fireplace. It glowed dully on the wainscoting, the backs of books. (Surely he’d made the fire for my visit, I thought, and for the same reason moved the two chairs up close to it, between them a low antique table with brass-ball clawfeet and a black-glass top. Perhaps the old man was even now of two minds.) His books were everywhere, shelved crammed, stacked on all sides of us, some in English, others in foreign languages, mainly German and Scandinavian. Here and there one could make out dark paintings, framed documents. I’d been looking around for several seconds, giving up my hat, coat, scarf, and gloves, and nodding absently to his stream of complaints—irritable little shouts—when I noticed, with a start, an enormous black cat sitting prim and motionless near the fireplace, watching me with round yellow eyes. I must have jumped.

  “Oh,” said the professor, his face falling as if the day were now spoiled, “that’s Posey.”

  I bowed to the cat, then after an instants hesitation—still carrying my bag, which the professor had neglected to take from me—moved nearer, rather formally, as if to show them both that I’m a lover of cats, as usually I am. (My wife keeps four of them.) The cat remained motionless; not a whisker stirred. The odd thought struck me—strictly a passing fancy, but for a split-second one that made my neck hairs tingle—that perhaps this was the professor’s son. The ridiculous thought came and went almost too fast to register. One knew by her name and could see by the grace of her neck and shoulders that the cat was female; and anyway, of course … I glanced at the professor. He stood bent forward, as still as the cat, his fingertips together, just touching his chin, his loose, webbed eyes looking up at me through slightly fogged lenses.

  “What a beautiful cat!” I said. She was, in fact, with firelight edging her like a halo.

  He seemed to consider it, his white lips stretched toward a tentative smile, as if he’d like to think it true; then he jerked his head, clenching his jaw so that his dentures clicked. “Eats us out of house and home,” he said, and, turning to the cat, pretending to speak fondly but in fact showing something more like hatred, I thought, or anyway fiercely controlled impatience—“Isn’t that true now, Posey?”

  The cat looked coolly from the professor to me, then stirred, stretching, and moved away, over toward the side of the fireplace.

  While the old man polished and inspected his glasses, stiffly holding them up and looking through them at the fire, then giving them another clumsy wipe with his hankie, I listened to the creaks and groans of the house, the crackling of firelogs and ticking of distant clocks, wondering where—above me or in some grim chamber farther in—Professor Agaard kept his son.

  “Well, well,” the professor said when his ritual was over, the glasses back in place, “let’s see about that tea!” He bowed from the waist, turning as he did so, then scooted toward another door, perhaps one that led into the kitchen. His head, I noticed for the first time now, had at some time been mashed deep into his shoulders, possibly by arthritis, so that it would no longer turn from side to side. When he paused at the door, it was his whole upper body that cocked around to say, “Make yourself at home, Winesap! Posey, won’t you show our nice visitor a chair?” He made his baa-ing noise, laughing at the joke, then left.

  I looked at the cat as if inviting conversation—she seemed at least as ordinarily human as the professor—but the cat had lain down on her side, half closing her eyes, dismissing me. I set down my bag and rubbed my hands together, as if for warmth “What a wonderful house!” I called, loudly enough to be heard in the kitchen.

  The cat shrank as if she thought I meant to harm her, then relaxed, not quite forgiving. From the kitchen came no answer, silence like a judgment of Brahma. I sighed, picked up my bag, and drifted to the nearest of the bookshelves to look at the tides.

  So I occupied myself for a good ten minutes. It was pleasant enough business, since I’d written my dissertation on medieval Scandinavia—a subject I’ve rarely thought about since—virtually the only subject in Agaard’s library. He had all the books I knew, which was hardly surprising, and a great many more I’d never heard of. Other than those he had only a few old novels, Tolstoy and the like, and an occasional book of verse. Outside the tall, round-topped windows I could see nothing but blowing snow and darkness, though it was still mid-afternoon. There were vertical shadows, puzzling for a moment, until at last I realized they were bars to keep out burglars—or to hold something in. Finally the old man returned, pushing an elegant teacart, dark walnut—perhaps I was seeing here the hand of the long-vanished mistress of the house. On top of the teacart he had a tarnished silver tray. The cat raised her head, alert.

  “Ah!” I said, “wonderful!”

  “The tea’s old and stale, I’m afraid,” he said loudly. “I’m sure you’re used to better.”

  I recognized or imagined something snide in his tone, but having no idea what it meant or what to do with it, I said with a broad wave, “I’m not fussy. I wouldn’t know stale from fresh.”

  Though his mouth smiled, I saw when he rolled up his eyes that I’d said the wrong thing. It was the duty of a man of my good fortune to know the difference, he seemed to say. He, if he’d been blessed with opportunities like mine … I was beginning to see my situation here with Agaard as hopeless.

  As the old man poured the tea his thin hands shook and he muttered to himself, a habit I was glad to see in him, since I share it. Yet if he hadn’t been muttering—cursing, perhaps or expressing astonishment at some remembered or legendary outrage—I would of course have mentioned my admiration for his work. I couldn’t help but wonder if he blocked me on purpose, not that the performance wasn’t convincing. When he’d filled my cup, over on the cart, he started toward me, walking carefully, looking hard at the cup and saucer, still muttering, now and then crunching his dentures. A few feet from me he stopped, turned at the waist to look around to his left, then looked back at me over his spectacles, raising his eyebrows.

  “Don’t you want to sit down?” he asked

  “Thank you,” I said, blushing no doubt, and stepped over, still carrying my bag, to the chair nearest the fire. He followed with the tea, muttering again and when I’d put my bag down a
nd carefully lowered my bulk onto the seat, mindful of the bowed-out, fragile legs, the plush-covered arms held upright by a charm—the chair so narrow that the arms lightly brushed my body on each side—he placed the cup and saucer not on the table between the two chairs but in my hands, as carefully as he’d have done for a child, steadying them a moment, making sure I had them balanced, then raising his hands from them slowly. Though there was sugar on the teacart, he did not think to offer it or place the dim cut-glass sugar bowl on the table. I decided to do without. He returned to the cart and poured a saucer of milk; stiffly, carefully carried it around behind the farther chair over toward the fireplace to set it on the scuffed black tiles for the cat, who came over to it at once, then finally poured tea for himself. When he too was seated with his cup, the three of us forming a little circle in the light—high, flitting shadows on the bindings of books and the lumpy, dark wallpaper—Professor Agaard said, “Well now.”

  I waited. He said nothing more, only stared into his lap. Perhaps half a minute passed. I sipped my tea.

  At last I said, “I must say, Professor Agaard, you’re a great hero of mine. One of the most important books—”

  “That was a long time ago,” he said. He spoke with finality, like a man clapping a box shut.

  “All the same,” I began.

  “It’s a painful subject,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  We drank our tea in silence. He sat with his toes pointed inward, his face turned away from me.