A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall

by Will Chancellor

  Compiling a scholarly itinerary worthy of presenting to President Gaskin had taken two months of back-and-forth with universities and generated dozens of auto-reply e-mails that whomever he was trying to contact was on vacation until September.

  Compiling an itinerary qua theorist had taken all of three hours. The crucial first step was getting to Athens.

  “Athens” was a poor filter for Burr’s in-box, but he could think of no alternative. He entered the term and narrowed it down to a few hundred messages. He began with a recent e-mail from a Greek activist group. He opened it with caution, sure that he had animated some god-awful virus that would result in the collapse of the entire Mission University computer network. After finding that the electronic infrastructure appeared to be intact, he had replied that he was considering the invitation to talk and included a link to Ž_______’s response in the New Left Review.

  Burr had his response from the Greek activists within the hour. He would be opening for the theorist whose ideas had spawned a billion-dollar film franchise: Jean Baudrillard. Once he confirmed, they would begin printing the posters. Needless to say, he had never seen his name on a poster.

  He tsk-tsked his imagination at once for reverting to Classical when the sign would be Modern. Nevertheless.

  They offered him 500-point font and an opportunity to mingle with an icon. No airline ticket, but still. He added a few provisional speaking engagements to his itinerary—he would send off the e-mails later, on the off chance Owen wasn’t in Athens—Prague, Budapest, Paris, Barcelona, London, and Tokyo.

  Professor Burr unlaced his Alden boots and buffed them with the elbow of his corduroy coat. After relacing the boots, he smoothed his wavy hair, realizing he might have done that in the wrong order again. When he looked soberly at the two proposals, he realized the Hapax talks were blanks; they would never garner real attention. Only a bold talk would bring out Owen. He stuffed the dissident proposal into a manila folder and transferred the prudent course to the credenza.

  This talk would be a flare fired into the night, which would surely cause Owen to seek him out or at least reply to any one of the weekly e-mails Burr had sent.

  His heels clacked down the still-empty sandstone arches. He was a tenured professor; his heels should clack. Sure, Mission University was a few tiers from the top, but Gaskin was here too, and he always seemed pleased with himself. Burr removed his coat and switched the folder to his left hand, trying to stem the torrent of perspiration at the thought of his meeting. He was never sure if he was going to be meeting Gerry, his friend and former colleague, or Gerard, his employer. Whichever one he found in the office, there were going to be handshakes. President Gaskin had a politician’s grip, which was hell on Burr’s right hand, poorly healed from punching a wall in the fall of ’82 and connecting with a wooden stud. There are two ways to hold anything: with an open hand or with a closed fist. He had no business making fists, it was Iliadic; he held things with open, Odyssean hands. The orthopedist, a George Hamilton doppelganger, had laughed at him, even though he was affiliated with the university and had to have heard about Caroline. “These hurt them,” he said, pointing to Burr’s first two knuckles. “And these”—he pointed to the knuckles of Burr’s ring finger and pinkie—“these hurt you. Don’t hit any more walls, no matter what they say to provoke you.”

  The door opened too quickly, and he stumbled into the president’s office. After she recovered from the brief shock, the administrative aide offered him coffee and ducked in to see the president.

  —He’s on a call, but he said to show you in.

  President Gaskin made a scene of trying to disengage from the phone as Professor Burr stood before a wingback chair. The bookshelf behind the president was the perfect resting place for Hapax. None of these books looked like they had ever been cracked. He could sneak fifty copies in here, and no one would be the wiser. A framed picture of President Gaskin and Clint Eastwood rested on top of a mahogany humidor so that it would have to be moved when Gaskin was entertaining a dignitary: “Do you like Cubans? Here, hold this.” On the ledge near Burr was a photograph of Bill Murray leaning heavily into a fairway wood and edging away from Gaskin’s embrace.

  The goldfish had been here during his father-in-law’s administration. Ten years ago, he and Caroline’s father would have been drinking rotgut whisky in silence and chain-smoking over the pedestal ashtray between the two chairs. Now the metal tray had been removed and the goldfish bowl fitted to the top of the pedestal. This goldfish bowl, certainly not the actual fish inside, was the third provision that Bill made before driving off that cliff. He wanted his grandson to be safe and had given Burr a job, a home, and a fish. There was some odd poetry to those three nouns that Burr could never get to the heart of. He thought about the words as the goldfish swam in and out of the sunken wreck on the gravel bottom. Plastic seaweed waved with an unseen current.

  —Joe, how’s Owen holding up? It’s got to be tough on the kid to watch the team in Athens.

  The president breathed through his teeth and shook his head as he settled in the opposite chair. He crushed Burr’s hand and then threw himself into the wing of the wingback.

  —I think he’s doing what he wants to be doing.

  —Bullshit. What kid doesn’t want a gold medal? Like Knute Rockne said, “The next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing.” Don’t give me the speech about how the Olympics would be a distraction. It’s a crock of shit, and you know it. But I do applaud your efforts to get him back on his horse. Maybe it’s different at Stanford, but only twenty percent of our kids who take a semester off end up with a diploma. He’s working hard to finish a triple major this fall, I’m sure. Or what, you’ve got him doing a coterm?

  —I don’t have that much pull with him, I’m afraid. I had to call the registrar to find out what he studies.

  —I see. I see.

  Gaskin scratched at the burgundy leather with a fingernail, legs still crossed at the knee.

  —So what are we talking about?

  Professor Burr sat on the edge of his chair with an elbow patch on each thigh. After a few false starts he managed to spit something out:

  —You see . . .

  He stammered, he sputtered, he froze—none of which upset Gaskin’s crossed-leg recline. Burr could see the safety of his tenure rolled up with the rugs and carried out the front door by a team of movers. No, this was too great a chance to take with a twenty-five-year career.

  —I’d like to take a few weeks to speak at a conference on the use and abuse of the schwa in Proto-Indo-European languages.

  —Impossible. Next.

  Burr clapped his hands together and gritted his teeth. He wanted to be looking out the window with gravitas, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the picture of Bill Murray.

  The president leaned forward to give his next question a conspiratorial air:

  —Is there anything else we need to discuss? What’s in the folder?

  —I’ve taken a few liberties with my position at Mission University that will most likely be brought to your attention before long.

  —Sounds serious. Are you cooking drugs or selling off ancient pottery? Neither? Then why the long face, my friend? Listen, I won’t say this on the record, but as a tenured professor you’re allowed to be in any sort of consensual relationship with an adult so long as no one gets his or her feelings hurt. When feelings get hurt, these kind of things inevitably go public, and then I am forced to do something. You know that I don’t like being forced to do anything. Listen. Because what I’m going to tell you now, I tell you as a friend. There’s only one rule: Keep whoever you’re seeing very happy. Congratulations, by the way. It’s been a while. Why don’t the two of you swing by for dinner? It will put your mind at ease as well as . . . hers?

  —It’s nothing like that. I have compromised my standing in the classics community by seeking a more popular audience.

  —Go on.

  —I have this . . . gro
wing following on these Internet message boards. Some of them espouse anarchy, nearly all of them are anticapitalist. Do you remember what happened when Noam Chomsky spoke three years ago? I’m no Chomsky, but I do get the sense that my extracurricular writing has outpaced my scholarship. I never planned for this to happen. But these things snowball.

  Gaskin laughed.

  —Tell me, Joe, what percentage of these invitations do you suppose make it directly to your personal e-mail account? How many thousands of petitions addressed to you do you think my office received in the past year? Can’t guess? Neither can I. But I can tell you I got a professor in CS to fix my e-mail account so that every message with your name in it goes straight to my spam folder. And I still didn’t think this was serious enough to have you sweating. You really imagined this was a secret?

  —I suppose I thought you would have said something if you knew.

  —What’s there to say? Hell, there’s a copy of the New Left Review article in here somewhere. That little shit from the Federalist Society brought it over and demanded your tenure be revoked. I’ll tell you what I told him: there’s nothing wrong with being popular. To be honest, Joe, I’m glad a professor finally got the memo. The trustees are berating me to get you guys on talk shows or CNN or something. Here’s a phrase that will keep you up at night: post-tenure review. It’s coming. I’m fighting for you guys, but it’s coming. Look, Joe, my default assumption is that everyone here is a goddamn Marxist; that’s the only explanation I’ve got as to why none of you realize that Mission is a business. If you ever figure that out, god help us all, I’ll make you dean of faculty.

  —Well, I don’t know the first thing about business, so you’re going to have to find another reason to promote me. I’ve tried speculation, which ended . . . poorly. I’ve tried pure scholarship, but you’ve already highlighted the limits of that approach. Maybe provocation is the way to get a bigger paycheck. Just this morning I received an invitation to speak with Jean Baudrillard in Athens.

  —Fantastic! But all kidding aside, there’s no way we can renegotiate your salary this year. The endowment hasn’t recovered from its Pets.com position.

  —Pets? No. Gerard, what I’m saying is that I can’t keep turning down these speaking engagements. These are huge audiences, thousands. Here, have a look at this.

  He took the itinerary from the folder and placed it on the president’s desk.

  —Art galleries in London? A stadium in Spain? This is great news, my friend. You’re definitely not going to have a problem getting this sabbatical past the provost’s office. You represent a clear value to the university. These stadium talks may well be the most significant academic development of the fall semester. The alumni magazine hasn’t gone to press yet; we should be able to get you on next month’s cover. Or should we wait? Either way, you have my full support for sabbatical leave.

  —Well, there’s more to it than that. As you may remember, I took leave three years ago to finish my book.

  The president looked at the shelf behind him and then looked over the other shoulder. Neither finding the book, nor recalling so much as the title, he responded:

  —Fine piece of scholarship. Testament to the university. People will be reading that book for the next hundred years. But forget all that, Joe. Our course catalogue for fall is already printed, but we need to get you in the Philosophy Department as soon as possible.

  —I’m a classicist, Gerard. This isn’t some hobby I can just drop. I’ve built my life around my work, and if that work is not appreciated, then I can—

  —Jesus, Joe. Slow down. No one is suggesting you abandon your career. I’m just saying you need to augment it. Like it or not, classics is dead.

  —That’s neither fair nor funny.

  —The storm’s coming, Joe. Whether you like it or not. You have what, twenty-five seniors majoring in classics? There are three times as many Portuguese majors. Portuguese, Joe. Granted, they all figured out early on that there hasn’t been a grade lower than a B in that department in a decade. But, hey, I applaud that sort of initiative. They found a way to become the third biggest language department at the university. Keep the customer satisfied, ibid. Find a way to attract more students, or your department will be absorbed by History in the next four years.

  —Technically this new work is theory, not philosophy.

  President Gaskin looked close to throwing the paperweight he had been gripping through the bay windows overlooking the quad. Then he saw that Burr wasn’t being his usual pedantic self; he was smiling.

  —Look at you. Hmph. Mission University may be yours in a few years’ time. But while it’s still mine, let’s have a glass of the 18-year. Neat’s fine?

  —Please.

  —You’ll have to accept half pay unless you want me to start a war with the provost.

  —I’m sorry, but I can’t. Owen forfeited his scholarship in light of his recent injury. He’s two quarters shy of his diploma, and it’s too late to apply for loans.

  —How about we make up the difference by paying you to lodge visiting scholars, of which I’m sure there will be none? Classes start next Wednesday—can you find a replacement?

  —Already done.

  The president looked at the itinerary again.

  —Jesus! You’re speaking in Athens in four days.

  —Nothing has been confirmed yet.

  —Should I know who this Baudrillard guy is?

  —Oh yes. He’s a very big deal.

  —Do you have anything to promote other than yourself and the university?

  —No.

  —This could be big, Joe. I’ll authorize the leave under the auspices of serving as a university liaison to the Olympics. We have a young man on the kayak team, and it’s not entirely far-fetched to think that you and Owen would be well suited to the role of ambassadors. I assume Owen is going with you. You’ll barely get there for the closing ceremony, but I’m sure I can make something up. It would be a great help if you could get back here before midterms—or at least Thanksgiving.

  —I’ll see what I can do.

  President Gaskin refilled Burr’s drink and handed him a picture frame so that he could grab a cigar to chew on.

  Before he’d had time to finish his drink, Burr was shooed out of the office because of a pressing call from the athletics director. Mission University, he learned, was in the running for a top basketball prospect.

  At first Burr was relieved to be dismissed from the principal’s office. Then he grew indignant, refusing to accept that he was less important to the university’s future than a sixteen-year-old phenom. Burr clacked his heels as loud as they could clack down the sandstone archway from the president’s office to the humanities library.

  Gaskin would never have pressed him on it, but he hadn’t the foggiest what Baudrillard had written. Had he actually written anything, or was he just a figurehead? After the computer terminal confirmed that, yes, he had published a dozen books in the three years it took Burr to write Hapax, Burr grabbed the stub of a wooden pencil and wrote Baudrillard’s name on the Author line of several call slips.

  The librarian returned with Simulacrum and Simulation crowning a two-foot stack of hardcovers. Burr could feel eyes on him. Turning, he found one of his most talented students of the past few years, who had, regrettably, veered toward Sanskrit and chosen a different adviser. The student wasn’t hiding his inspection of the titles. Burr coughed.

  —Have to reread some of these French thinkers to stay in shape, you know.

  —I know what you mean. You have to constantly refresh to keep Badiou distinct from Bourdieu, Bataille from Baudrillard from Barthes from Blanchot. To be fair, it seems like Baudrillard confuses himself with Bataille, and Blanchot. But Bataille exudes a primality, “a communion with the spirit of language” as you once said in lecture, that makes me think he read his Greek.

  Burr was drowning. At first he was thrilled to think of himself in that tangle of B’s. But there was a name in there
that he hadn’t heard since grad school. He began to sweat. The poor lighting of the atrium hid his discomfort. The student stood by silently, waiting to record whatever Burr said. He had to say something.

  —To be sure. The Gauls’ historical role has been to remind the Germanic hordes of one thing: the lyre is every bit as primitive as the drum.

  —Peace is just as primal as violence?

  —I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  Face saved, he noted that it was quite late and walked briskly to the door. With a student like that, you have to keep conversation as pithy as possible.

  The US water polo match began in an hour, and it just so happened he was desperately in need of a drink. He drove home and then walked to his local.

  The Tilted Wig had screened every minute of the Olympics. The Wig wasn’t a bar with TV screens at the everglowing ready. It was a thick-lacquered place for conversation whose owner cared enough to hang his collection of maritime lanterns and light them every night. During the day, the head of your pint could be cobalt blue, cranberry red, or topaz, depending on which glaze of the stained glass window the sun was shining through.

  In the month leading up to the Games, Burr had reiterated to Sonny, the bartender/proprietor, that they would need a television these last weeks of August. It was like a doctor telling a patient that he needs to start smoking; the message was jarring enough to get Sonny’s attention. Sonny ran his bar on a cash-only basis and used a brass till, even though he had to thump the side every time he wanted it to open. He’d rather burn down the bar than mount a flat-screen TV, but a projector seemed innocuous enough. Sonny’s big summer project had been mounting a projector to the ceiling and then camouflaging the box and wires with metallic paint.

  On August 13, 2004, Sonny and Burr clinked pint glasses to a parade of Olympians waving mini flags and summer hats on the back wall of the Wig. Burr squinted and pointed to the projection as the US delegation marched toward the dartboards, but never convinced himself that it was Owen in the infield, watching fireworks bloom behind the Olympic flame.