Pamela Dean

by Tam Lin (pdf)

  Janet made a ceremonial stop in the middle of the bridge. She knew this stream in all its manifestations, from cracked mud set about with slimy green rocks to the foaming mass that covered the knees of the trees and lapped at the concrete wall that separated the parking area from the woods. Today it was about midway between those two. All the rocks were covered, and the grass that overhung the banks like combed hair drifted sideways in a mild brown current. The air was full of dusty sunlight and a slow fall of yellow elm leaves. The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, thought Janet, recalling favorite poems with a pleasurable melancholy. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. When icicles hang by the wall.

  No, thought Janet, not just yet. She pushed herself away from the railing and went on across the bridge. She hesitated between the sandy path that plunged aimlessly about in the evergreen plantation and the gravel road that led to the river, and chose the latter.

  The river was full too, and much more violently so. It raged between the tree roots that snaked down its banks, and hurled sticks and dead leaves up and down. A few ducks huddled in the backwaters and made noises at Janet that seemed to expect the answer no. She offered them the apple core, but they billed it aside. She threw it into the nearest foaming circle the river offered, climbed along the muddy banks for a short time, found another gray wooden bridge, a much larger version of the previous two, and walked across it to Forbes Island.

  Nobody had been pruning out here, either, and the entire place was overgrown with wild raspberries. Janet edged along the shores of the island, which was shaped like a capital L drawn by a kindergartner, until she found one narrow path. This led to the island's center, where there were a number of flat rocks, a tumbledown stone fireplace, well blackened, and a wobbly picnic table, gray grown over with green lichen. Janet lay on her back on the largest rock and watched the oak and willow branches scouring out the bowl of the sky. The wind had risen while she toiled about in the woods. It was probably going to rain again. Janet said over to herself as much as she could remember—which was most, but not all—of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," trying to extrapolate from the fragments of music she had heard the sound of the finished piece. She knew nothing about music, but it was a pleasant exercise.

  When she had gone right through to "human voices wake us, and we drown," a shiver overtook her; the sort of feeling people must mean when they said that somebody had walked over their graves. The sky was darkening rapidly. Janet got up and went back to campus.

  She climbed the long hill to Forbes and, sneering automatically at its shoe-box shape, turned her back on it and went into Ericson.

  The door to their room was open, and voices and laughter came from it. Janet walked in, calling, "Hello!"

  "There you are!" said Molly, as Janet came around the corner. "We've been waiting and waiting."

  One of the Roberts—Armin, Janet thought, of the straight blond hair and reddish-blond beard—was sitting on the floor with his back to Molly's bed. Nicholas Tooley was sitting on the end of Christina's bed. They both looked perfectly at home.

  Christina, also sitting on her own bed, was the one who looked nervous.

  "This is Janet," said Molly. "Jan, this is Robin Armin, and that's Nick Tooley."

  "How do you do?" said Janet to Robin.

  "Very well," he said gravely. He had a beautiful voice and a mouth that looked as if it were on the verge of making a joke, or had perhaps already made one nobody had noticed.

  "And we've met," said Nick, grinning at her. He got up and walked over to her bookshelves. "Tina says all these are yours."

  "I'm afraid so," said Janet. She was peripherally aware that Tina was less than pleased. That Nick Tooley was six inches too short for Tina was no excuse for not feeling guilty, let alone for feeling smug. "Do you read children's books?"

  "I'm afraid so," said Nick. "I started when I was young, you know, and never got out of the habit." He touched the black spine of The Worm Ourobouros. "How's this?"

  "Gorgeous," said Janet. "Eddison wrote at the beginning of this century, but my father says it's written in something very like genuine Elizabethan English. The beginning is a little distracting, but the main story is just like the language."

  "Elizabethan English, hmmm?" said Nick. "Think I could manage that, Robin?"

  "Not a chance," said Robin, still gravely. "You can't even manage Samuel Johnson."

  "Give it a try," said Janet, pulling the book out and handing it to him. He flinched a little, probably at the garish cover, but took it and opened it at random.

  "What," said Janet to Molly, "were you waiting for me for?"

  "Robin and Nick want our bunk beds," said Molly, "and t hey'll give us two single beds in exchange."

  "Listen to this," said Nick. When he began to read, his voice altered and grew stronger. The broad vowels of his Iowan accent moved a little sideways into something half-Southern and half-British in sound. Christina, who had been fidgeting, stopped. "'O Queen,' said Juss, '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. How shall we find this steed? Few they be, and high they fly above the world, and come to birth but one in three hundred years.'" His glasses had slipped down his nose, but the gaze he bent on Robin when he finished reading was not vague or myopic. "How's that, then?" he said.

  "Well spoken," said Robin, as gravely as ever, "with good accent and good discretion."

  "May I?" said Nick to Janet.

  She nodded, and he fetched a brand-new blue knapsack from Christina's bed and tucked the book into it. Human voices wake us, she thought. Do we always drown?

  "Let's go, then," said Christina, standing up, "and get this over with."

  "This" turned out to be the dismantling of Janet and Molly's bunk bed; the carrying of it down four flights of steps, all the way across campus to Taylor; the carrying of it up three flights of steps; and its bestowal in Robin and Nick's room. This was one of the odder rooms in Taylor, being L-shaped. Robin, apparently at his own request, was crammed back in the bottom of the L, with hardly enough space between his bed and his desk to fit the chair in. He did have a nice view, out the narrow window, of Blackstock's few remaining elms and the delicate tower of the chapel. He had no discernible possessions, unlike Nick, who had piles of books, sweaters, socks, and magazines all over the place, not to mention a guitar case, a banjo case, and a welter of broken strings hanging off various convenient doorknobs and picture hooks.

  After a brief rest and a drink of water, it was of course necessary to take the box springs, mattresses, and metal frames of the single beds back along the same route.

  Then they finished taking apart Christina's bed and lugged it up to the fifth floor of Taylor, where Robert Benfield wanted it. He did help them carry his two single beds back to Ericson, where they bestowed one in their own room and the other in the basement storage room, the piece that said FIFTH TAYLOR in black marker carefully turned to the wall.

  Everything was just barely not too heavy. Janet was hungry and already tired from her walk. She remembered the entire experience for years as extremely unpleasant. But what she noticed more than her sore back, her aching legs, or the creases made in her hands by the metal frames of all the beds was how everybody was acting.

  Christina had clearly set her sights on Nick, who had no notion of what to do with her. Robin seemed to be taking much more notice of her than Nick did, but she was oblivious to this. Molly had on a sardonic look, which made Janet wonder how she herself was behaving. Having considered it on their second trip past the Music and Drama Center, the chapel, and the Student Union, she decided that if she stopped giggling quite so much she would make a creditable account of herself. Since Nick reacted to Christina's attempts at conversation largely by making puns at her, this was difficult. Christina obviously thought that Janet was laughing only to be ingratiating.

  When they had carried the last metal f
rame up the four flights of steps in Ericson and collapsed on the floor, the sky was the color of pewter and the wind was what Janet's family called a wolf wind—it would huff and puff and blow your house down.

  "I'm starving," she said. "Let's go to supper."

  "Taylor's closed," said Robin, mournfully.

  "Good; I don't want to eat in a dungeon with a storm coming on. Let's go to Dunbar. We can look at the lake."

  A vast spattering outside proclaimed the arrival of rain.

  "Eliot," said Molly, firmly. "We can take the tunnel."

  They went, not very quickly, down five flights of steps and into the basement of Ericson, past the recalcitrant soda machines and the steel racks, painted with the Civil Defense symbol and filled with empty barrels marked, "Water." "Dehydrated water,"

  Janet's mother always remarked. "Just add water." Janet's father said the remark lacked symmetry, but the children always laughed.

  They passed the door of the laundry room, whence came a noise like somebody taking apart a bunk bed with a hockey stick underwater; went down a short flight of steps, and entered the system of steam tunnels that underlay the whole east side of campus. On the bright red covering of the steam pipe at eye level, somebody had spray-painted in white, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

  It always irritated Janet. "All hope abandon," she muttered.

  "Why is it always the people who use paint that get their quotations wrong?" said Nick Tooley, bounding up on her right. "Last year somebody wrote out the whole of

  'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' in Holmes Tunnel in water-soluble marker ink, not a mistake in it, down to the very commas—and when a pipe burst and flooded the tunnel it was all washed out."

  "I thought you were a freshman," said Janet.

  "My brother attended Blackstock too."

  "Does he make puns?" said Christina, edging up on Nick's other side.

  "No," said Nick gravely. "He goes in for more practical jokes."

  Christina looked sidelong at him and said nothing. They rounded a corner and walked past the entrance to Holmes Tunnel, which was much newer and glared with fluorescent light. They passed the entrance to Forbes Tunnel on their left. Ahead on the same side was a very old block of Greek that had puzzled Janet for years. "Robin,"

  she said, "what's this?"

  Robin squinted at the faded blue letters, which looked as if they had been put on with a fine paintbrush. "First ten lines of The Iliad, " he said. "That's been there long and long. Somebody ought to touch it up."

  "What does it say?" asked Christina. "Translate it for us."

  "No, read it first," said Janet.

  Robin cleared his throat, opened his eyes wide upon the peeling wall of the tunnel, and rolled out of his tidy beard huge assonant syllables in a rocky rhythm, punctuated with thumps where he came down hard on two s

  yllables in a row. Janet,

  having seen that his expression was going to remain blank, looked at Molly. He's got her, she thought; I'm enchanted by Eliot, and Molly's done in by Homer. Or maybe just by that voice. I wonder what would get to Christina. Christina was looking bored.

  Robin finished, and after a small silence Nick began to applaud. "Shall I change my major?" he said.

  "What does it mean?" said Christina.

  Nick said, "'Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing.'"

  "Don't give me these newfangled translations," said Robin. He closed his eyes.

  He said what came next in a much quieter voice than he had given to the Greek, but it made Janet's spine creep.

  "Achilles' baneful wrath resound, O Goddess, that imposed Infinite sorrows on the Greeks, and many brave souls losed From breasts heroic; sent them far to that invisible cave That no light comforts, and their limbs to dogs and vultures gave: To all which Jove's will gave effect, from whom first strife begun Betwixt Atrides, king of men, and Thetis' godlike son."

  Like Nick's, his vowels changed when he recited. Whoever taught them theater must have had an accent. "What was that?" said Janet.

  Nick gave her a crooked and charming smile. "'Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,'" he said, '"and many goodly states and kingdoms seen. '"

  His tone was rather sardonic; but it hardly mattered. Lost, thought Janet. He quotes Keats, too. Well, let's enjoy it, then. She said, "'Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.'"

  Robin rattled, "'But never did I breathe its pure serene Til I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold,'" and began walking again. "We'll miss dinner," he added.

  " That was Chapman's Homer?" said Janet, moving after him but keeping her eyes on Nick, who came along too. "The translation Robin said?"

  "Will you guys stop babbling and tell me what the damn Greek means?" said Christina.

  They turned into Eliot Tunnel and passed an awe-inspiring array of vending machines full of every vile concoction anybody studying at three in the morning could ever hope for, and moved a little faster for the other end of the hall the tunnel would become, where the entrance to the dining hall was. A faint smell of tomato and frying came down it damply.

  Robin said, "'Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus' son Achilles—baneful wrath, that brought woes unnumbered upon the Greeks, and sent many strong souls of heroes to Hades, to be the prey of dogs and the feast of birds, for thus the will of Zeus was accomplished, since there first stood apart in division of conflict Atreus' son Agamemnon, lord of men, and brilliant Achilles.'"

  He made the everyday English roll almost as well as the Greek. They all stopped in a clump at the double glass doors of the dining hall. The bulb above the doors was burned out. In the gray light coming down the stairs that led less subterranean diners to their meals, Robin's face was as stern as a statue's. Janet shivered, and looked for comfort at Molly, who was digging in the back pocket of her jeans for her ID card with a remote expression almost as unsettling as Robin's.

  " The Odyssey is happier," said Nick's husky voice.

  Robin did not exactly start, but his face softened a little, and showing his card to the drowsy student worker behind the table, he said quietly, "'Sing in me, Muse, that man of many turnings, who very many wanderings made, after he sacked the holy city of Troy.'"

  "Oh, sure," said Molly, presenting a card already as scarred and bent as any senior's. "That's really cheerful, Nick."

  "But he got home in the end," said Nick.

  "I hope they fed him better than this," said Molly, gazing with large eyes and wrinkled brow at the limp and unidentifiable masses, one red, one brown, one green and white, and one all white, that offered themselves at the steam table. The girl behind it grinned at them. "Veal parmesan, hamburger casserole, vegetarian casserole, potatoes au gratin."

  "Sorry," said Nick, "I don't eat vegetarians."

  "The veal parmesan is the red stuff?" said Christina.

  "The parmesan sinks to the bottom," said the girl cheerfully.

  They made their choices and moved on. Janet, balancing a plate of potatoes au gratin and several bowls of canned grapefruit, caught up with Nick where he was waiting for somebody to refill the canister of chocolate milk. Everybody else had sat down. "What do you need a foil this weekend for? " she said.

  "Shhh," said Nick. "Schiller."

  "You've got him?"

  "Shush. Rob Benfield has him right now, and I'm going to get him. You want to watch?"

  "Yes," said Janet. Two Chemistry majors in the class of 1910 had stolen a bust of Schiller from the library and insinuated it into their graduation ceremony. A Classics major and an English major had stolen it from them, kept it all summer, and brought it to Convocation the following autumn. From that time on, there were always students for whom the possession of the bust, and its showing at college events, concerned them more than their studies. Janet had never known anybody who had Schiller, and had seen him only once, at a concert of Renaissance music. She schooled her face: Christina was looking at
them.

  "All right. He's got him in Chester Hall, in one of the practice rooms. I'm going to meet him tomorrow afternoon to practice a duet."

  "Where does the foil come in?"

  "To keep him at bay."

  "You're going to back down four flights of steps with a plaster bust under your arm and a foil in the other hand?"

  "Benfield doesn't fence," said Nick, filling his glass.

  Janet got some chocolate milk too, to add verisimilitude to an otherwise compromising position. "Well, neither do you."

  There was a brief pause. "Well," said Nick, "Benfield doesn't know that."

  "What time?" said Janet, following him to the table the others had taken.

  "Five or so."

  "Five or so what?" said Christina.

  "Classes per term, to do a double major," Nick improvised and sat down next to her.

  "Don't be an idiot," said Robin.

  "Full of sound and fury," said Nick, reflectively. "Anybody taking Shakespeare this term?"

  "Molly and I are taking it in the winter," said Janet, sitting down between Molly and Christina.

  "Robin flunked it last year," said Nick.

  Robin, looking unperturbed, lobbed a roll at him. "Too modern," he said.

  "Shakespeare?" said Christina.

  "The professor," said Nick.

  "Who'd you take it from?" Janet asked Robin.

  "Tyler."

  "Well, then. I'm surprised they let him teach it."

  "He's read it a million times," said Robin, fielding the returning roll, tearing it open, and buttering it lavishly. "If you hate Shakespeare, he's a fine one to take it from. Just like Tolstoy."

  "Tolstoy taught Shakespeare?" said Christina.

  Janet looked quickly at her. She might have been making a joke. Nick was looking at her, too, with his ingenuous eyes wide open. Put him and Molly together, thought Janet, and you could persuade anybody of anything.