Landscape: Memory

by Matthew Stadler

  Mother put her hand to my forehead. "Perhaps, pumpkin, you're still feverish from your little boat ride." She gave an optimistic prognosis and promised coffee after we'd procured a few bare necessities.

  She began with Cravanette pumps at Rosenthal's. I got tan Russian barefoot sandals, very airy and open and easy to slip off. I dumped my old shoes in the garbage when Mother wasn't looking. I am quite the peasant in them.

  We swung past The Owl for a pack of Tiz. Duncan was poking his nose around the Spiro Powders, sniffing through the decorative bottles to try to determine the scent most suited to him. I believe I smell best when I've sweated. The air outside is so much more pleasant. Mother called the clerk a "paranoic loon" and Duncan bought some Beachnut and Sugar Fruit Tablets to appease the management and we left.

  Hundreds of colorful shoes jumbled about in rows, filling the windows beside me from top to bottom. A disembodied hand reached in from behind them and pulled one away, leaving a gap, as in a boxer's bloody mouth. I'd never seen so many shoes.

  "Things seem so much busier than I remember them," I observed.

  "Maybe your memory's bad," Duncan suggested, peering into my ear to get a better look.

  "No, no dear," Mother said to Duncan. "I believe Maxwell is right. Things have gotten much busier over the summer. It's all the visitors and the merchandising. The New Prosperity, the papers call it."

  One advertisement fairly screamed, its loud letters leaping off the page of newsprint into my unfixed mind:

  "Your hair is calling you." The lady in the picture was standing, letting her long hair tumble down her back. "Answer 'La Toska Bang,' and hear the ring of delight!" Her face was frozen, fixed in fear, apparently, searching for the telephone. I felt as though her hair were calling me and I couldn't find the phone to answer. I ducked into the nearest doorway to find some shelter from the noise. Mother pushed me in through the double doors, into the din of The Hub.

  The Hub was packed and I was in no mood for suits, which Mother says all college boys must wear. If it's true I'd rather wear Father's baggy old suits than buy one of these trim-cut modern things.

  "Max said we'd wear shorts and sandals and bundle in big sweaters," Duncan told Mother, revealing my college plans. It's true I'd said that, though I hadn't intended to tell Mother.

  "He's mistaken, dear. College boys dress quite smartly, even here in the West." Mother picked through a rack of dark wool overcoats.

  "I'll join the army," I threatened, as she pulled a horrible black funeral garment off the rack. "I can't stand suits."

  Mother paused, then placed the suit back on the rack. "Don't be morbid, pumpkin," she said. "If you don't like a particular suit, just say so. No need for histrionics."

  "I don't like that suit," I said simply. "Or any other. Father has suits and I'll wear them, should the need arise."

  "I hate suits," Duncan echoed. "You said we wouldn't have to dress like monkeys." He stood waiting for some sort of explanation. Mother had drifted on to dress shirts, evidently figuring she'd get us into those first and work us up to suits gradually.

  "We won't," I insisted. "Mother's just being Mother. This is what she's here for. Otherwise she'd have just sent us out with the money. She's got to insist on suits, even though she knows we'll never do it."

  "What if everyone else is in suits?"

  "Then we won't make friends."

  "We'll be lepers."

  "Flora's going. She'll find friends and we'll be their friends."

  "She'll find friends who don't wear suits."

  "That's right, and who drive fast in their motorcars and dance naked in gardens."

  "In the moonlight."

  "Right. We'll live in the trees and attend class in loincloths."

  "Pumpkin?" Mother interrupted, holding up a stiff white shirt.

  I nodded my head no.

  "Let's think about suits later. Mummy. We should try Hale's for some active wear, something we can all agree on."

  (I smelled a ghost smell from the ground. Light gas and fresh dirt and the smoking engine of a jitney. We were just nine and small as ponies. Duncan was knocked over flat by a crazy man with a plank and big tattoos. Right here, when we'd gone shopping for rope licorice.)

  Next was the smell of chocolate wafting out of Borlini's as we ambled by. I needed it badly so we stopped and took a nice long rest, sipping cafe chocolatta at a little table by the window and planning the week's events.

  "Tomorrow's your matriculation exam," Mother reminded us. "I do hope you'll dress nicely." I was pleased she'd not used the word "suit."

  "Of course we will," I promised. ''We'll wear our bow ties." Even Duncan enjoyed the bow ties, especially with shorts, as that made us look so queer.

  "And registration," she added.

  "And classes," Duncan added woefully.

  "Not till Monday," I reminded him. "We'll find lodgings and move before then."

  We were all silent, thinking some about that ambiguous event. I was excited to think of moving, our few things all bundled up and gathered on the ferryboat, going across the bay. I imagined we would find some third floor in a house or maybe an attic up a few flights of narrow steep stairs. It was hard to imagine a nicer house than the one we'd had all spring or, even harder, the one we'd had all summer. No bed could be as beautiful and bouncy as our mammoth feather bed in Bolinas. No fireplace could be so warm and welcoming as ours in San Francisco. And I would miss our mysterious neighbor, her work forever in progress, perhaps until some terrible midnight fire, the little oil lamp spilled across the drapes, the dog barking madly through the flames, trying to wake his asphyxiated mistress . . .

  "Can we bring some things from our house?" Duncan asked Mother. "Carpets and lamps and things like that?"

  "Of course, dear," she assured him. "You two may take whatever you need to settle in. From either house. I don't suppose you'll be needing a lot."

  "I'm thinking of a few things," Duncan allowed. "Just things I like to have with me."

  I tried to imagine what Duncan felt about moving. He seemed to me to have given up planning, allowing everything to happen around him. I'd been the one making plans, Bolinas, Berkeley, moving across the bay.

  "What do you think about moving?" I asked him. "In general, as something we're doing."

  He looked at me, and Mother looked out the window, fiddling with her spoon. I realized this was an important question I'd never before thought to ask him. We three sat in silence for some time.

  "We can't go to school there and live here," he offered. "That's for certain, anyway."

  "No, we couldn't do that," I agreed. I pursed my lips and looked down into my coffee.

  "And that's certainly the best school for us to go to," Duncan added. He stirred the chocolate up from the bottom of his coffee and drank it down, leaving a dark mustache on his upper lip. I felt his leg bumping up against mine under the table and looked up at him, his head tilted, his mouth soft with an ambiguous smile. He looked at me easily and directly with sort of sad eyes.

  "We'll want to be getting to know a new place too," he added, "and learning how to live on our own." I just wanted to hold him, so he could stop talking and I could feel what he meant and not have to hear all those words. I looked at him dearly and nodded my head up and down yes yes yes I know how unsettling everything seems just now.

  "Well said, dearie," Mother interjected briskly. "Those goals are admirable ones for this busy year. You're very lucky to have such an opportunity." She smiled curtly at both of us. "We mustn't waste the challenges that life offers us."

  14 AUGUST 1915

  We went to Berkeley for the exams today. We were told to see a Mr. Thwing in Admissions, who looked to be nothing more than an arrangement of sticks inhabiting a suit, with thin pasty hands and a melonlike head emerging from its various openings. He clattered up from his desk and leaned gingerly against the wide counter, pointing accusingly at the clock on the wall behind him.

  "Examinations have alread
y begun, boys," he spat, drumming his cadaverous fingers on the countertop.

  "We're come from there," I explained cheerfully. "Miss Tartaine sent us to have our records checked."

  He crouched down, the top half of his melon head rising like a harvest moon from behind the wide barrier. His two black eyes darted around like little fish. "Well, well," he began, staring at me and feeling around blindly under the counter. "Under what appellations might we find these 'records,' as you call them?"

  "Kosegarten, Maxwell Field," I put in, using the order of the day.

  "Taqdir, Duncan Peivand," Duncan added.

  "One moment please, Mr. 'Kosegarten.' " Mr. Thwing flipped through a thick file of colorful papers, various greens and blues and pink, but mostly bright marigold. He pulled one out and held it up to the light, looking over at me, then back up at the sheet.

  "Maxwell Field, was it?" he asked, leaning recklessly across the counter.

  "Yes. Maxwell Field Kosegarten." I wondered what the bright blue little slip said.

  "Very good. Next I believe is Mr. Taqdir, am I right?" And he put my slip into his vest pocket.

  "Yes. Duncan Peivand," Duncan said, looking into the box.

  Mr. Thwing drew it violently away from us, almost losing it off his side of the counter. ''Just a moment, Mr. Taqdir." He fiddled about in the box for a few more moments and drew out another blue slip.

  "Bingo," he burst, tearing my blue slip from out of his pocket and holding them both above his head, pinched between thumb and forefinger like some offensive soiled undergarment. "You both win!"

  We stood in silence, waiting for Mr. Thwing to explain, but he remained motionless, frozen in his little pose.

  "I don't understand," I said. "What do we win?"

  Mr. Thwing drew his arm down carefully, as though it were a brittle limb, in danger of snapping. He slid the two blue slips onto the countertop and leaned out across them. "Why, university admission, of course. This is the Admissions Office, after all."

  "Don't we have to take exams?" Duncan asked.

  Mr. Thwing drew back from the question, looking physically wounded. "What do you suppose this is, young man, the Inquisition? We have no need to examine you.'' And here he plucked the slips from the counter and pushed them in our noses. "Mr. Morton at dear old Lowell High has approved you. He's given the A-OK. You're free to enter."

  "Mr. Morton put us on the approval list?" I asked. "When?"

  Mr. Thwing held the blue slips back up to the light.

  "July 23, Mr. Maxwell F. Kosegarten. And the same for you, Mr. Taqdir."

  "Don't we have to register?" Duncan asked.

  "It would be my pleasure," Mr. Thwing answered, holding a box of pamphlets up to our noses. "One each, please."

  I took one, expecting a course catalog.

  "Orestes," it said. "Euripides."

  "For class," Mr. Thwing explained. "Read it by Wednesday. I'll have you set in an instant," and he took our blue slips and disappeared behind a foggy glass door. The pulling and slamming of various drawers and the flipping of pages leaked out from the small enclosure.

  This registration procedure seemed most unorthodox. Mr. Thwing had not even asked after our interests.

  "How do you know which courses we're to take?" I called out loudly, throwing decorum to the wind. I heard all activity cease, and then a heavy silence.

  "This is not high school, Mr. Field," our queer helper called back finally. "Believe me, I know which courses you'll need to take." And he continued with his mysterious fiddling.

  The long silence passed slowly by, filled with thoughts of fiddlehead ferns and that strange immediacy of moments so distant flipping suddenly forward.

  (Succulent green stems, sturdy and small; that little fist of leaves so sweet and tender, balled up snug and sporting a soft red fuzz. Father played the fiddle when I was young but injured his back, leaning romantically over a drunken woman while fiddling a little to-do. We'd not even had breakfast yet.)

  "Don't ask questions," Mr. Thwing cautioned, offering up two pink index cards crowded with numbers and "Aldredge Thwing" in florid script at their bottoms. "Without my approval you'll be dropped down into useless surveys."

  "Dropped down out of what?" Duncan asked, looking at the indecipherable cards.

  "Out of the seminars I've placed you in," he explained, as though it were obvious. "I take a special interest in some of our more promising entrants." This flattery was not lost on me.

  "How do you know which seminars we'd like to be in?" Duncan asked. He seemed uncertain if Mr. Thwing's kind interest was a blessing or a curse.

  "We have information," Mr. Thwing assured us, menacingly. "Report to Miss Tartaine tomorrow. In the Grove. She'll be expecting you."

  "When?" I asked.

  "Very early. Impossibly early. Nine or ten. You give her the cards, she'll give you your schedules."

  "What if we don't like them?" Duncan pressed on fearlessly.

  Mr. Thwing kept mum, sliding his hands nervously along the smooth countertop, evidently gathering his energies to reply.

  "If you don't like them?" he asked back.

  "Right," Duncan said, nodding yes.

  "If you don't like them?"

  I feared his melon head might burst.

  "Then change them!" he thundered, spitting wildly with every consonant.

  * * *

  15 AUGUST 1915

  We were late reporting to Miss Tartaine. Very late.

  We caught a trolley train to campus and wandered a bit helpless and frazzled, everything going so terribly wrong as it was. There were all sorts of signs and directions leading all new undergraduates to a lovely grove near California Hall. There, spread out on a field of tables and charts, was the registration labyrinth.

  Miss Tartaine sat far off to the north, at a large oak table set in amongst the eucalyptus, marked by a sign which said simply "Miss Tartaine. Thwing."

  "You're late," she said. "Very late."

  "Should we get in line?" I asked, gesturing back behind us at the long snaking rows of freshmen, all clamoring up to tables in the bright sunny grove.

  "Do you have cards from Mr. Thwing?" she asked simply.

  "Yes."

  "No need, then." She took our crumpled pink cards and smiled pleasantly at the elegant script.

  "Being late, of course, you're no appeal on this," and she inscribed our class lists carefully on heavy white paper, fixing our future with bold black lines.

  "Of course," I echoed, wondering why we were the only ones in this dark dappled corner of the grove.

  "Why have our schedules been set by Mr. Thwing?" Duncan asked.

  "You're curious why this privilege is yours?" Miss Tartaine asked back, rephrasing.

  "Yes."

  She looked out into the sun and thought. "Your record in secondary school, a recommendation, some kind word. . . . Evidently something has impressed Mr. Thwing. It's a service he provides for a handful of bright young minds each year." She finished up and handed us the two carefully scripted lists. "It is one of life's mysteries," she mused.

  I looked eagerly at the form and noticed some important errors straightaway. Miss Tartaine saw me start stammering out my objections and simply raised a soft hand of warning, tapping her pen to the offending list.

  ''That,'' she intoned, poking again at the paper, "is all ye know, and all ye need to know."

  M-W-F, 8:00 a.m. Attic Tragedy, Assoc. Prof. Kurtz.

  M-W-F, 10:00 a.m. Cicero and Pliny, Asst. Prof. Deutsch.

  M-W, 11:00 a.m. Military Training, Mr. Dickie. [This was the first mistake.]

  M-W-F, 1:00 p.m. Memory and the Process of Learning, Asst. Prof. Brown.

  Tu-Th, 8:00 a.m. Principles of Hygiene and Sanitation, Prof. Legge. [This was the second mistake.]

  Tu-Th, 1:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m. Advanced Free-Hand Drawing, Asst. Prof. Judson.

  Various times. General Recreation, Mr. Wilson.

  I must admit to being excited by "Memory," of
course, and Kurtz, who taught Ruskin to the Upper Level.

  I loosened the grip of my bow tie and let some air down my front, wiggling the baggy legs of my shorts too, for added ventilation. The hills rose up abruptly behind us, thick with lovely green trees and then topped by open grasslands. There were many houses clustered in amongst the trees, all along thin winding streets, wiggling up into the highlands. I fancied we'd find some suitable lodgings in one of them, owned by some kindly professor's family willing to let out the upstairs, it long ago vacated by their rebellious, fascinating children who'd run away to join some polar expedition.

  Duncan took the piece of paper from my hands and held it up to his:

  M-W-F, 10:00 a.m. Strength of Materials, Asst. Prof. Alvarez.

  M-W, 11:00 a.m. Military Training, Mr. Dickie.

  M-W-F, 2:00 p.m. History of Western Literature, Prof. Sanford.

  Tu-Th, 9:00 a.m. Advanced Calculus, Prof. Noble.

  Tu-Th, 11:00 a.m. Principles of Hygiene and Sanitation, Prof. Legge. [This, unfortunately, was not my section.]

  Tu, 2:00 p.m. History of Architecture, Prof. Howard. Various times.

  Track, Mr. Cole. Various times. Swimming, unannounced.

  I looked up from the schedules with a bad feeling in me.

  "We don't have any classes together," Duncan said, confirming my suspicions, and sounding very mad like they'd done it to us on purpose. "Except Military Training."

  I looked again at my list. "Pm not going to attend Military Training."

  "It's required. Max. 'All able-bodied young men.' " He held the paper up to my face.

  "I'm not going to Military Training. I'll cut my leg off and send it to them."

  "You're so open-minded. Max." Duncan looked like he was about to burst. "I hate this place," and he dropped the two lists onto the dirty ground.

  We walked downhill through the cool shade of a tall stand of eucalyptus. The trees crowded round a small creek that cut a gully through the middle of campus. Some of the buildings reminded me of the Fair, huge tan stone buildings, pillared and symmetrical, sporting doors and windows far beyond human scale. A collar of decorative ornamentation ran round their tops, thick with jutting gargoyles, Greek names and pithy sayings.