Pamela Dean

by Tam Lin (pdf)

  Janet dodged out of the chilly shadow of the decaying Student Union and went along past the chapel and the Music and Drama Center, trying to walk briskly and feeling like a film that somebody had slowed down. She turned her head away from the reflecting glass of the M&D Center, and looked across the little natural amphitheater in which, next week, the Classics Department would be staging

  Lysistrata. They would do so in the shadow of Olin Hall, a nondescript brick building trimmed with metal strips that made it look like a radiator.

  That was where Molly and Christina would be spending most of their time for the next four years. Janet turned away from that, too, wandered down the middle of the asphalt road between the M&D Center and the north end of Ericson, and moved a little more quickly for the Women's Phys Ed Center. There were enough people heading for it that the time must be close to nine-thirty.

  Somewhere to her right, a husky tenor sang, "'I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing for me.'"

  Janet stopped short. She was, just for a moment, annoyed. Like to see you do that with Murder in the Cathedral, she thought grumpily. Then, as the voice performed a great leap into some other tune entirely and sang, "'I have lingered in the chambers of the sea,'" she became wildly intrigued. Why shouldn't he sing T. S. Eliot? And where, oh, where, had he gotten the music?

  She stood waiting, and though the song stopped, a small and wiry young man with wild curly hair emerged suddenly from the shrubbery, his arms full of books that looked as if they had already seen four years' use, and plunged past her in the direction of the Women's Center.

  "Excuse me," called Janet, sprinting after him. He turned, looking alarmed. He had huge blue eyes, behind a lopsided and dilapidated pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and a blunt face decorated with mild acne. "Hello?" he said.

  "You were singing 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,'" said Janet, falling into step beside him. He had begun walking again as soon as she caught up to him.

  "A point for you, lady," he said.

  "Where'd you get the music?"

  "I wrote it."

  Janet experienced a treacherous upwelling of instant adoration, and quashed it violently. "May I hear it sometime?"

  "When it's done," he said.

  "Have you put a lot of poetry to music?"

  "Not really—look, I have to go in here—what's your name?"

  "I have to go in here, too. Janet Carter."

  "Are you taking Fencing?"

  "Yes."

  "Thank God. If I finish the song soon, will you be my partner? Everybody else in this class is six feet tall."

  "Yes, of course, if you tell me your name."

  "Nick Tooley," said the dark-haired boy, and smiled as, propping his huge load precariously in one arm, he held open the door of the building for her. He was one of the Classics majors Peg had pointed out in Taylor dining hall, the one that Molly thought too skinny and Tina had not taken note of because he was short.

  Everybody else in the fencing class was not six feet tall, but certainly they all exceeded five feet eight, except for the instructor. She was shorter than Janet, but very sturdy, with gray hair in two braids, a sharp chin and nose looking incongruous in her round, wrinkled face, and a crisp voice.

  She sat them all down on the polished gym floor and treated them to a half-hour lecture on fencing, its history and nature, followed by a half hour's demonstration of stretching exercises that, she intimated, if performed faithfully everyday, would, by the time she actually let any of them have a foil, prevent undue injury. Next time, she finished, they would be allowed to put on masks and protective jackets.

  Janet, accustomed to high-school physical education classes wherein it was tacitly assumed that everybody already knew how to do everything and was simply panting to start doing it right now, was extremely pleased. As they finished their prescribed stretches and got up, she looked sideways at Nick Tooley and caught him shutting the notebook he had been scribbling in during the lecture. He had not been taking notes, unless he always took them in sonnet form. He not only put poetry to music, he wrote it.

  He caught her eye. "This will never do," he said. "I'm going to ask her if she'll give me an accelerated program."

  "And what about your partner?" said Janet.

  "Oh, I'll still come to class. I just need a foil this weekend. Where do you live?"

  Janet just managed not to give her parents' address. "Fourth Ericson."

  "I'll call you if I finish the music before Monday,"

  he said, and marched

  determinedly across the floor to the fencing instructor.

  Janet thought she knew a dismissal when she heard one. She went outside. The Women's Center stood on the top of a steep hill overlooking a vast playing field, the stream that fed the lakes, and, on the stream's far side, the tamer part of the Arboretum attached to Blackstock. The willow trees along the banks of the stream were bright yellow. The woods were still mostly green, with here and there a tinge of yellow. All the sumac had turned red. It might be a good autumn after all.

  Janet had an hour for lunch, after which she would get a solid block of Philosophy and Anthropology; her English class would reign in lonely splendor on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. She had half promised to meet Christina and Peg in Taylor. She watched the wind ruffle the smooth-cut grass of the playing field, and considered the ducks sailing on the stream, and turned abruptly into Eliot Hall, where one could dine in a building set into the hill, and watch the ducks while one did it.

  She found Nora and Sharon occupying a round table for eight in the spot with the best view, and decided they were unlikely to be having a private conversation. She managed to catch Sharon's eye while she was still several tables away. Sharon didn't smile, not a muscle moved in her dark face; but she did wave and pat the back of the chair next to her. Janet carried her tray over there and took the seat offered her.

  "I was beginning to think you never ate," said Nora, who did smile. Janet wondered if they had chosen her to be an RA because she looked so wholesome and ordinary, with her round face and straight brown hair and glasses. "Or Molly or Christina, either," added Nora.

  "Peg's got 'em used to Taylor already," said Sharon.

  Nora rolled her eyes. Janet spread the paper napkin on her lap, picked up her dish of stewed tomatoes, and said, "Now don't look. I'm going to mush these into the macaroni and cheese."

  Sharon covered her face with her hands. Nora said, "I've already watched Sharon pepper her cottage cheese until it turned gray; what's a few tomatoes to that?"

  "How are you and your roommates getting along?" she added.

  "Molly's great," said Janet. This was not tactful, but she knew what Nora was probably wanting to say, and they might as well shorten the process.

  "Tina feels left out, you know," said Nora, apparently agreeing with this desire.

  "She is left out," said Janet. "It's not our fault."

  "She expected better, from your letters."

  "It's the Admissions Office," said Janet. "I said I liked folk music and Molly said she went to rock concerts and Christina said she liked Bach, so they said, oh, look, three people who listen to music, and stuck us in the same room."

  "Same thing happened to Peg and me," said Sharon. "She used to make jewelry and I had a rock collection. Bingo. We had to put a clothesline up in the middle of our room fall term, with sheets hanging from it; and Peg climbed in and out the window 'cause I had the door in my half."

  "So why did you room together again?"

  "That's what I'm saying," said Sharon. "Give Tina a chance."

  "She may be athletic," said Nora, "but that doesn't mean she's stupid."

  "I'm athletic," said Janet.

  "Well, go play tennis with her, then."

  "I hate tennis. And she hates Ping-Pong, because I asked her."

  Nora sighed, and to Janet's considerable relief appeared to relinquish her post as lecturer. "Just think about it, o
kay?"

  "Sure," said Janet. If Christina had complained to Nora, she probably did feel unhappy; unlike Molly, Tina did not favor you with any details at all of her history, her private life, or her opinions. "I know she can't be stupid if she's here," said Janet, "but I don't think she has any sense of humor."

  "She has so," said Sharon.

  "It's just not verbal," said Nora.

  Janet, her mouth mercifully full of macaroni and tomato, gazed at them with what she hoped was an enlightened and tolerant expression, while wondering how in the world you could possibly have a nonverbal sense of humor if you were over the age of two. She hoped they didn't mean Christina was a practical joker. There hadn't been any sign of it so far.

  "That reminds me," she said, having swallowed, "can we store the top part of Christina's bunk bed in the basement?"

  Sharon chortled and Nora looked horrified. "Don't tell me another thing," Nora said.

  "You want to get pregnant, you want to get arrested for selling dope, you want to fail all your courses because you've been playing poker for six weeks straight, you want to go broke on the pinball machines in the Student Union—fine, I'm your man, I'll help you out. But don't you talk to me about College property and especially don't you talk to me about removing it from the rooms it's supposed to be in."

  "Gosh," said Janet, "thanks, Nora, I'll remember that."

  "And don't talk to Melinda Wolfe about it, either," said Nora, unsmiling.

  "I wouldn't have thought of her," said Janet, reflectively. "I know she's the Resident Advisor for Ericson, but she's not the kind of person you run to if you're in trouble."

  "Too shiny," said Sharon.

  Janet grinned. "Polished," she agreed.

  "She'll eat you alive," said Nora.

  "Not me," said Sharon. "I'd choke her."

  Nora laughed. Janet wanted to ask a number of questions, but all of them were indicative of an unhealthy and inappropriate curiosity.

  Melinda Wolfe had advised her not to take the philosophy section she attended after lunch, but Melinda Wolfe had been wrong. Professor Soukup did indeed have a very heavy accent that made Janet think, the first time she heard it and always, of spy movies. But he could, it appeared, see very well, through his thick bifocal glasses, the particular kind of puzzled expression generated by an inability to understand what he was saying, as opposed to what he meant by it. When he detected this expression on any of the twenty-two students in the class, he would first repeat what he had said and then paraphrase it. This was not nearly so wearying as Janet had been afraid it might become after she had heard him do it once or twice. Partly t his was because, if you were not the one puzzled, you could make a game out of how exactly he would choose to rephrase himself. And partly it was because the material he was offering in his slow, blinking, bald way was both complex and fascinating.

  Janet emerged from her first seventy minutes of him with a heavily scribbled syllabus—because of course the list posted in the bookstore was quite wrong, it always was; Professor Soukup supposed it must be his handwriting. She felt the same kind of euphoria she had experienced when she opened The Worm Ourobouros at random and read, "O Queen, somewhat I know of grammarie and divine philosophy, yet must I bow to thee for such learning, that dwellest here from generation to generation and dost commune with the dead."

  Anthropology 10, in the uncertain grasp of one Mr. King, boded no such delights.

  If Janet had met Mr. King as a fellow student, she would have liked him. He was tall and thin, with unruly brown hair, a long nose, glasses almost as ramshackle as Nick Tooley's, and the nervous, earnest air of somebody who knows a great deal but is at a loss as to how to impart it.

  He did not look old enough to be teaching; and in fact taught nothing, taking instead half an hour of his seventy minutes to go over the syllabus with the class, and to explain how many papers they would be expected to write and when said papers would be due. Nor did it seem that he communed with the dead—the dates on all the books except one showed that the authors were either still alive or but recently dead, and their titles did not make communion sound worth the trouble anyway. The exception, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, did have an intriguing title. Janet hoped she could make the best of it all.

  She had forty extra minutes to make the best of right now, emerging from the dim hall of the old library into the sunlight. She could go to the bookstore, which had been a palace of wild delight to her from the age of seven; except that her checkbook was in her room. She could go for a walk.

  She marched along the campus's central sidewalk, under the huge yellowing elms, past the pale chapel with its spiked tower, past the Music and Drama Center, its sides full of Olin Hall and little fluttering trees. She dodged around Forbes Hall's uninspiring square, skidded down the dusty gully in the steep hill that both Forbes and Eliot sat on, and arrived in a flurry of dead leaves at the point where the lower of Blackstock's two small lakes met the stream that she had watched the ducks sail on at lunch. There was a weathered wooden bridge here, with a pleasing arch to it, and on its right on the near bank of the stream an enormous half-dead willow in whose hollow trunk a duck would usually lay her eggs in the spring. Janet peered into the hollow, out of habit; and four ducks that had been diving desultorily in the middle of the stream righted themselves and sped in her direction, making mild and hopeful comment.

  When they arrived in the shadow of the willow and she still had not thrown anything into the water, their remarks became ruder. Janet felt in the pockets of her pants and discovered the last of her stolen apples. She bit a few pieces from it, spat them into her hand, and flung them onto the green, moving water. The ducks billed them morosely and went back to their diving.

  Janet took a bite for herself and crossed the bridge. She could now turn right and follow the stream through the Upper Arboretum, emerging eventually in her own neighborhood; or she could follow the sidewalk between the lower lake and Dunbar Hall, climb a hill, scramble through the lilac maze, cross a highway, and plunge into the Lower Arboretum, from which, if one did not eventually retrace one's steps, one would not emerge for three days.

  A squirrel streaked down the lawn of Dunbar Hall, stopped in the middle of the sidewalk just in front of her, and looked hopeful.

  "You'll be sorry," said Janet, biting off a chunk of apple and dropping it onto the sidewalk. The squirrel snatched it up, took it into the long grass on the shore of the lake, dropped it, sniffed it, ran up a tree, and regarded Janet upside-down with a cold rodent stare that made her rather uneasy. She had been feeding animals on Blackstock's campus for eleven years, and although always impudent, the squirrels had never behaved quite like this.

  "I had no idea you guys were so fussy," she said to it.

  "Are you addressing us?" said a nice southern voice.

  Janet jumped a little and looked back at the sidewalk, where an entwined couple stood smiling at her. The boy was stocky and brown-haired and burned red by the sun; he suited his voice. The girl was a head taller, as blond as Christina but ethereally built. She was probably from California.

  "No, to the squirrel," said Janet; the truth was easier. "I bit it off a piece of apple with my own teeth, and you'd think its mother told it never to eat after anybody."

  "They're all spoiled," said the boy. "They like godawful things—that pasty bread the Food Service gives you, or I saw some dumb freshman feeding one of them a Twinkie the other day, and the little bugger just gobbled it down."

  "The ducks wouldn't touch the apple either," said Janet.

  "Well, that's more reasonable," said the girl. "Apples don't grow in the water.

  There's a couple of swans down on the river that eat anything, if you want to try them."

  "Thanks," said Janet, "but I don't mind eating it myself, it's just they all expect to be fed."

  "Spoiled rotten," said the boy. "Make stew out of them, that's what I say"

  "He's a Physics major," said the girl pityingly to Janet; "he gets th
ese notions."

  She propelled the boy on down the sidewalk, where he seemed perfectly pleased to go.

  Janet looked after them, and the squirrel began to scold her. The girl had the kind of shining charisma that the boys Peg had pointed out in Taylor had; but she talked like a Bio major. Well, it was silly to generalize on the basis of what people were majoring in, anyway. She went on past Dunbar toward the Upper Arboretum, past several students sprawled on beach towels, reading Paradise Lost, Ulysses, and Volume I of the Norton Anthology of English Literature. English majors studying for their comprehensive examinations, probably; it was really to o early to be doing mere

  classwork so assiduously. None of them looked up as she went by.

  She had forgotten what a mistake it was to come to the lilac maze in the autumn.

  The twenty-foot-high tangles of unpruned bushes, glazed with powdery mildew and hung about with dead blossoms, enclosed her in a cheerless world of trampled grass, unfruitful brambles, and seeding dandelions. Janet moved faster, but the ground was lumpy and the bent-over grasses like snares. In the center of the maze she came across another couple, flat on the grass and oblivious. Both of them were tall, with long dark hair. Janet backed quietly away and became entangled in the byways of the maze, which the College never seemed to prune the same way two years in a row. By the time she burst out onto the mowed slope that separated the maze from the highway, she was breathless and sweaty and more than half inclined to go back.

  She could at least have brought a book with her. Just across the highway was a clearing with flat rocks in it; she could have sat there. Janet untucked the tails of her blouse, tied them around her waist, and marched down the hill; the walk had become a duty rather than a pleasure; but having decided to do it, she would. She waited for two pickup trucks to go by, and then darted across the highway. There was a square gravelly space for visitors to park their cars in; a narrow, dusty path that plunged steeply down between rows of spirea bushes gone wild, a wide rocky space scattered with burdock; and a minor branch of the river, with another weathered wooden bridge over it.