Flynn's World

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “Let’s hope nothing happens.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you know where the Professor is now?”

  “He’s in his office. But at six o’clock he’s due at a departmental cocktail party at his dean’s house. The address is on that paper. I’ve urged him not to attend such functions, but he insists. He now attends more such things than he ever has in his life. He’s a stubborn old man, Mr. Flynn.”

  “Good for him.”

  “Good as long as he’s safe,” the President said. “I, personally, don’t want an incident. Obviously, the university does not want an incident. I would like Professor Loveson to have the peace and respect he deserves in his later years. Don’t you agree?”

  “Whatever that means. In this case.”

  SIX

  Inside the front door of Dean Wincomb’s small Victorian home on a Cambridge side street was a stuffed umbrella stand. Bicycles were on each side of the hall.

  After puzzling the dean’s wife by introducing himself, explaining his presence only by saying he was there to meet Professor Louis Loveson, Flynn stepped into the living room. He stood to one side.

  And was ignored.

  Again he had left the silently obedient Grover in the car.

  Flynn considered the subtle changes in the academics in the room from those he had known of a previous generation. For the most part, they were physically more trim. A few looked as if they spent more time jogging and lifting weights than in the library stacks.

  There were more women, of course.

  The room also seemed curiously partitioned. In the center of the room, five women talked together. A group of four comprised only Asians. Three blacks, two men and a woman, stood separately. One man and the woman affected something resembling African garb. Groups of white males were segregated by age, from roughly twentyfive to forty and from forty to sixty-five.

  And these groups seemed to be ignoring each other.

  Even the dean did not appear to be circulating among his guests.

  Were the eyes of all these people more intense because their ideas were more intense, or because they spent so much time concentrating on computer screens?

  Did they all speak more loudly because of their strong convictions, or because their hearing had been impaired by years of overamplified music as students?

  Or did they speak more loudly competitively?

  The few who looked his way did not seem to see him, really. If they were seeing him, they were dismissing him not as an unknown but as an irrelevancy.

  Flynn was entertaining himself with these observations when Professor Louis Loveson entered the room. Flynn remained standing aside, watching silently.

  The professor was a great deal thinner than the photo of him Flynn had just seen on the President’s desk. The joyful twinkle of wisdom in the professor’s eyes had been replaced by sadness.

  The sound level lowered when the professor entered the room. People only glanced at him. They did not smile. No one greeted him.

  It seemed to Flynn as if no one in the room wanted to be overheard by Professor Loveson.

  As the professor moved slowly to the bar table and made himself a whiskey and ginger ale, people, even with their backs to him, moved just a step or two away from him.

  The professor then moved away from the bar table. He turned his face toward the room. Clearly he was willing to be engaged in conversation.

  Still no one approached him.

  Flynn watched only a moment longer.

  “Professor Loveson . . .”

  “I was told someone would speak to me this evening, by the name of Flynn.” The professor sipped his drink. “Are you that Flynn?”

  “I am.”

  “You are here to befriend me.”

  “Something of the sort.”

  Loveson appeared to be measuring the relative smallness of Flynn’s head versus the hugeness of his shoulders and chest. “Stand with me, as it were, against the vestiges of what appears to be my fate?”

  Flynn said, “Simply, you have a friend who cares a great deal about you. He would like to be here, standing with you, but he cannot be. He doesn’t understand what is happening to you. Around you.”

  “Whoever really understands what is happening to him, while it is happening? Our best choice is to remain open, available, observant, and surmise what we can as we go along. Don’t you agree?”

  “You also have the choice to turn your back to those who turn their backs to you . . .”

  “Have I? Some of the people in this room were my students, Mr. Flynn. They came from near and far, mostly with all the strange bricks, family, church, community, a certain education, if I may make a pun, arrogance, materialism, prejudice, racism, sexism, anti-intellectualism, even anti-culturalism in their ill-built foundations. Everyone in this room has studied my works. Including you, I understand.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to know what it is I have done to them—or not done for them. Surely you can understand that?”

  “After spending ten minutes in this room,” Flynn said, “I can say you care more for these people than perhaps they deserve. I have always understood Harvards have manners.”

  “No, no. I care for myself. My work. How would you feel, Mr. Flynn, if, at the age of seventy-six, you could not draw up a list of people willing to be your pallbearers?”

  “Good God, man. What a way to think.”

  “Yes,” Loveson looked at the floor. “What a thing to think. How have I dug my own grave? Now must I crawl to it, and fall into it unattended?”

  Flynn looked at all the backs in the room. “Have you accomplished what you came here to accomplish?”

  “Oh, yes.” Loveson put his half-empty glass neatly on a coaster. “We’ll go now. But first I must thank our hostess for having me. Some of us Harvards still pretend to manners. Just habit, really.”

  “Is this a police car?” Professor Loveson looked around the backseat and at equipment strange to him in the front of the car.

  Flynn said, “Yes. Driven by Police Sergeant Richard T. Whelan. This is Professor Louis Loveson, Grover. You have his address.”

  Grover sighed.

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t talk while the sergeant is driving,” Loveson said. “These Cambridge streets are so dangerous.”

  “Especially when Grover is driving.”

  “I’ve never been in a police car before.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I’ve ridden donkeys, elephants, troop carriers, of course, but I’ve never been in a police car before.” He patted the backseat. “Have real criminals sat here on this seat, do you suppose? Murderers, rapists, plagiarists?”

  “I suppose so. More forgers, I suspect, than plagiarists.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “We’re better at catching forgers, aren’t we, Grover?”

  Loveson said, “This rather brings home to me the reality of my situation. How ashamed my father would be to know I had ever ridden in a police car. Under any circumstances.”

  To Flynn the professor seemed exceedingly small, sitting next to him on the backseat. Flynn’s fifteen-year-old sons were bigger. Even Winny, at nine, had more substance, more presence than him. As the car went under streetlights, nothing but bone outlined the knees of the professor’s gray trousers.

  “Tell me, Professor,” Flynn said. “What would you think if you came across a young man, sixteen years old, to be exact, standing tall against a tree in a foggy wood at night, with his ear nailed close to the tree?”

  Wide-eyed, Grover turned around and looked at Flynn.

  “Have you ever?” Loveson asked.

  “Last night.”

  “Really! How very interesting. You see, that’s what I mean. André Gide once wrote, ‘When all else is forgotten, what remains is culture.’ Core culture, I call it. Of what ethnic is this boy?”

  “Italian American.”

  “Yes. European, surely. And this happened locally?”r />
  “Yes.”

  “A strange and simple act of that sort, nailing a boy’s ear to a tree, quite common in fifteenth-century Europe, for example, suddenly turns up last night in the Boston area. Probably there has been no such incident on these shores, well, ever before.”

  “Someone could have just made it up, invented it for himself, thought it an amusing thing to do.”

  “The idea, possibly,” Loveson said. “But not the attitude behind the idea.”

  “And how do you describe that attitude?” Flynn asked. “The attitude that makes nailing a boy’s ear to a tree seem a good idea?”

  “Punitive, of course. More than that. To mortify him. Wouldn’t you say?”

  In the front seat, Grover banged the steering wheel with the butt of his hand.

  “Did you help the boy get free of the tree, Flynn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I might not have, if I knew who had nailed him to the tree and why.”

  “He wouldn’t tell you?”

  “He would not. Once he understood something of the history of his situation, that he had been left there to rip his own ear from the tree, he assured me he would do so immediately after I left. I believed him.”

  “Saying is quite else from doing.”

  “Also, my daughter is fond of him. I think she prefers him with two flappy ears, instead of one.”

  “Ah, daughters! I remember. I had one once. She could get me to do, or not do, anything. Sergeant Whelan, I live in this block. Halfway down on the right.” To Flynn, Loveson said, “Your daughter’s young friend displeased someone, or some persons, in a very particular way.”

  “What way?” Flynn asked. “What would be the nature of his crime to cause someone to nail his ear to a tree?”

  Loveson said, “I suspect he did something unmanly.”

  “‘Unmanly’!”

  “Sorry I can’t invite you in, Flynn—”

  Flynn had gotten out of the car first. “You are inviting me in, Professor. I need to see where and how you live, for security reasons, if for none other. And to talk with you further.”

  On the curb, he took Loveson’s elbow in hand.

  The professor looked up to read Flynn’s eyes. Suddenly, he regained the wise twinkle in his own. “It’s either that or you’ll take me downtown to Headquarters, is that it? Do you still use a rubber hose?”

  “Of course,” Flynn said. “How else do you make the daisies grow?”

  “Well, all right.” Loveson began to step across the sidewalk. “Don’t blame me for anything you see. Or hear. Or think. Or smell.”

  The apartment did smell.

  Flynn didn’t know what to think.

  It was a small apartment, third-floor front in a building overlooking the Charles River across Storrow Drive. It looked as if it had been furnished all at once about forty years before and unchanged since then.

  The heavy woman already dressed in an overcoat and clearly waiting to leave stood up from a chair in the living room and headed for the front door as soon as Professor Loveson and Flynn entered.

  “All right, Mrs. McElroy.” Loveson held the door open for her. “A little late tonight. Had a meeting to attend. Everything went well?”

  Flynn stepped out of her path.

  “As well as can be expected.”

  She smelled of gin.

  Loveson closed the door behind her. “Dear Mrs. McElroy,” Loveson said. “Don’t know what we’d do without her.”

  In the living room an obese woman with huge eyes sat in a chair under a blanket.

  “Hello, old dear.” Loveson kissed her on the cheek. “This is my wife, Mr. Flynn. She hasn’t been as well as she might be lately; have you, old dear?”

  Her huge eyes seemed to be consuming Flynn like something edible.

  “I’ve brought you Mr. Flynn.”

  “Where do you live, Mr. Flynn?”

  “Winthrop.”

  “Winthrop House?”

  “No, my dear. He’s not associated with Harvard. Mr. Flynn works with the Boston Police Department. I’ll get you your dinner as soon as I have my own.”

  “That’s all right,” she said.

  The kitchenette was separated from a dining area, a living area by only a counter.

  Loveson poured cereal into two bowls. “I don’t suppose you want any of this?”

  “Is that your supper?”

  “I was never strong in the domestic department. I have a good, albeit solitary lunch, at the Faculty Club each day. Mrs. McElroy provides Callie with a good hot dinner at midday.”

  “I’ll bet she does.”

  “Bathes her. Cleans up.”

  Flynn looked around the apartment. Nothing was clean. There were stacks of old magazines surrounding Callie Loveson’s chair. The kitchen counter was grimy.

  Flynn wondered how much per hour Mrs. McElroy was being paid to sip gin and watch the wallpaper.

  Loveson poured milk into his cereal bowl. “Forgive me.” He sat at a small kitchen table to eat. “Callie expects me to keep to a schedule, at least until I put her to bed.”

  “Louie?” Callie called from the living area. “Will we be moving to Boston soon?”

  “Yes, old dear. Soon.”

  “But have you arranged for an apartment there for us yet?”

  “Yes, old dear. I did that last weekend while I was up having my final interviews at Harvard. A nice, bright apartment. Two bedrooms. It overlooks the Charles River.”

  “That’s nice,” she said.

  “You’ll have to furnish it, of course.”

  “Have we the money? I mean, to furnish it?”

  “Enough. From the advance on my Ontologic book.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “You told me that.”

  “Now, Mr. Flynn.” Loveson looked at his guest as if he were shifting languages instead of eras. “Where do we start?”

  “You are being threatened?”

  “No.”

  “You have not received threatening notes? Phone calls?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t seem surprised by my question.”

  “I forgot to.” Loveson smiled. “Act surprised, that is. I should have, shouldn’t’ve I?”

  “You’re not a practiced liar.”

  “No. I am not a practiced liar.”

  “How can we help you, if you are not honest with us?”

  “There’s nothing you can do. I’m an old man. I suppose I wouldn’t be a problem at all, if I didn’t care about what happens to the world in this and future generations; if I turned my back on all and sundry, which you mentioned as something I might do. But I do care. Enormously. Just part of my habit, I suppose. Like manners.”

  “We need to know if you are in physical danger. If so, we need to find out the source of that danger.”

  “And do what? Change everyone’s mind? That’s a teacher’s job. Not a policeman’s.”

  “Would it mean anything to you if I said the university does not want an incident?”

  “The university is having plenty of incidents.”

  “I mean a violent incident. Concerning you.”

  “I would welcome it. Knocking me off—is that proper police parlance?—might clarify things considerably.”

  “Not for you.”

  Loveson poured a little more milk into his cereal bowl. “In your study of history, Flynn, have you ever known a people to—what’s the word the young people use these days?—trash their own culture so rapidly?”

  “Do you think that is what is happening?”

  “We’re dazzled by nonlinear toys, the television-computer thing, to which we are relegating our intellectualism, even our spirituality. To say nothing of our basic knowledge, information. Momentarily, time has become rather a jumble. Our sense of synapse is breaking down utterly. Do you see this?”

  Flynn said nothing.

  “You just said to yourself, ‘Louie Loveson is a reactionary. A Luddite.’ Am I
correct?”

  Still, Flynn said nothing.

  “Through any era of transition, there must be navigators, as I call them, people who know where we’re going based on an understanding of where we’ve been, and where we are. I’m not against transition, change; quite the contrary.”

  “You once wrote, ‘From conflict comes growth.’”

  “I did, yes. Even violent conflict.” Loveson continued to spoon the cereal and milk into his mouth. “I believe the natural habitat for these navigators is the university. Yet it seems the university people are those most dazzled by the electronic toy. So where are the navigators?”

  “Louie?” Callie Loveson called from the living area. “Have the tickets for the ship arrived yet?”

  “Yes, old dear. They were brought to my desk this noon.”

  “Are they all right? Did you check them?”

  “They seem fine. Exactly as we discussed. Starboard side of C Deck.”

  “I forget what we decided. Are we stopping at Gibraltar or Tangiers?”

  “Gibraltar. Then straight on to Alexandria.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. The weather will be lovely there.”

  “It always is.”

  Loveson asked Flynn, “Wouldn’t you like to look forward, again, to something you did thirty-six years ago?”

  Flynn frowned. “I’m not sure.”

  “That’s the point, isn’t it?” Loveson grinned. “Selective memory.”

  Mentally, Flynn was scanning what he remembered of Loveson’s Usable Past.

  He considered the irony of Loveson’s work and life.

  The telephone rang.

  “A good navigator knows,” Loveson said, “that everything on a trip depends upon from where you start. And none of that can be forgotten, however things change. Note, for example: last night you came across a young man with his ear nailed to a tree . . .”

  Standing, Loveson answered the wall phone. “Yes?”

  He said no more.

  His face flushed. He hung up.

  Flynn said, “You just received a threatening phone call, didn’t you?”

  “It must have been a wrong number.”

  “We can have your phone tapped, you know.”

  “Without my permission?”