Lincoln's Briefs

by Wayne, Michael

  My Dear Mother,

  I feel it is my duty to tell you that I am now sharing my apartment with a young lady. I realize that this news must perforce come as something of a shock to you. It will perhaps shock you even more when I relate that the young lady in question is an American. Please do not be alarmed. She is in no way at all like the representatives of her nation and her sex that you warned me about when I was a boy. Indeed, it is striking how much she reminds me of you.

  With filial devotion,

  Y.

  P.S. You will already have seen the young lady to whom I am referring, as she is standing astride me in the pictures that I sent to you some weeks ago.

  Richard Hakluyt took the letter, read it through very carefully three times, then nodded to himself.

  “I confess, Your Majestie, this communication doth serve to confirme one of the conclusions I had heretofore reached.”

  “Indeed?” She was quite taken aback, although she did her best to conceal it. “And what, pray tell, may that be?”

  “That there was but a single female in the pictures, not two as we did originally surmise.”

  “A single female? But I quite distinctly recall that in some of the images there was an American Savage, and in others an African. Perhaps one of the Symerones, you said.”

  “Soe I did think at the time. But on closer examination, it doth appere that the female we beleved to be an African is, in fact, the Savage, albeit in disguise.”

  She gave him a doubtful look.

  “I would be most pleased to showe Your Majestie,” he continued, removing the photographs from among the papers he had brought and placing them on the writing desk.

  “By all means.”

  “Notice here,” he said, and he pointed toward the likenesses of Bobbi Jo Jackson in the two different sets of pictures, “that the female we took to be an African is possessed of a nose every bit as straighte as that of the Savage.”

  Yale Templeton’s mother looked from one set of pictures to the other but without changing expression.

  “And here shal thou see that the eyes of the two females are identicall, the colour of sapphire. I consulted with severall reliable traders, and they did assure me that blue eyes be unknown among peoples founde on the coast of Africa.”

  She scrutinized the photographs carefully, although still keeping her thoughts to herself.

  “And the hair,” Richard Hakluyt went on. “The hair of bothe is of a truly remarkable colour, the purest of golde perhaps. Golde hair, soe the traders tell me, is as rare among the Africans as blue eyes.”

  “All that you say has a ring of truth to it,” she conceded.

  “And, finally, save for her face, the skin of the female we took to be an African is as faire as the skin of the Savage.” (“More faire than thine own skin,” he thought, though it was scarcely an observation to be repeated out loud.)

  She studied the photographs in which Bobbi Jo Jackson had her face smeared with shoe polish. “You are quite right, of course,” she agreed. “It is surpassingly strange that you did not notice about the skin colour previously.”

  “It is, in deede,” he admitted, and his face flushed pink with embarrassment.

  “But there is something I do not understand,” she continued. “Why should the Savage have blackened her face?”

  “Ah, yes. A riddle, truly. Howbeit, I beleve I may have founde the answer in an account by the French explorer Cartier describing the second of his three voyages to Canada.” And here he placed a manuscript on the desk and turned the pages until he located a passage that he had earlier marked.

  “Cartier here doth refer to the Savages in the harbour at Ste. Croix. I quote his remarks exactly: ‘Despuis que le mari est mort, jamais les femmes ne se remarient; ainsi font le deuil de la dicte mort toute leur vie, et se taignent le visage de charbon pillé et de graisse, espetz comme l’espesseur d’un couteau, et à cela congnoiston qu’elles sont veuves.’”

  “The widows colour their faces with charcoal?”

  “Yes, Your Majestie, and with grease thicke as the back of a knife-blade.”

  “The Savage was a widow, then.”

  “’Twoulde appere soe, yes.”

  “But what would cause an English subject of noble birth to take up with an American Savage, widow or otherwise?” (“And not just any peer of the realm, but one who enjoys a uniquely close relationship with the queen,” she reminded herself with a mixture of perplexity and exasperation.)

  “That is, in deede, a question that hath kept me awake these past severall nights. It is very troubling, to be sure. Very troubling. However, I do beleve that the experience of les truchements may offer us some guidance in this matter.”

  “Les truchements?”

  “French traders in Brasill who have abandoned the wayes of their countrymen to live among the Indians. They marry Indian women and adopt Indian customs.”

  “Is it your intention to suggest that one of my loyal subjects—a man, I must remind you, whom I have known and to whom I have given my affection since he was a child—may have descended to such depths as to have fallen under the spell of a Savage?” The question was tinged with anger.

  He lowered his eyes to the ground, unable to voice what he believed to be an inescapable truth.

  “I did gather one item of information,” he said at last, “that shoulde provide Your Majestie with a mesure of comfort.”

  Her look softened.

  “It comes from the papers of the French cosmographer Andre Thevet. I have but recently begun translating his Cosmographie Universelle, a worke much derided but very valuable when approched with caution. Thevet writeth that the Savages founde in the northern parte of the Americas, in Canada, are assuredly not Cannibals. They do not partake of human flesh.”

  “They are friendly, then?”

  “Yes. Or quite possibly soe, albeit Thevet doth mention that when Canadian warriors capture an enemie, they kill him, then throw his body to the animalls. They remove the skin from his face and head, which they lay in a circle on the grounde to dry, then carry it to their houses to showe to the olde men, women, children, and girls, who honour them with chanting and dance.”

  Upon hearing this, Yale Templeton’s mother fainted dead away.

  “Blessed Lorde!” Richard Hakluyt exclaimed in alarm, then raced around the cottage looking for spirits of hartshorn. Finding none, he began to fan her furiously—to salutary effect, it would seem, since she came to in a matter of seconds. “I beg thy forgiveness, Your Majestie. Let me assure thee that I do not beleve Y. hath suffered such cruele debasement. Thevet reporteth that, although the Canadian Savages are greate fighting men, they do not attack their enemies for sport alone, as forsooth do the Indians of Peru and Brasill. The Canadians only make warre to avenge a wronge. Is Y. of such a temperament that mayhaps he did commit a violent misdeede against the Savages?”

  “Most assuredly not! He is an English gentlemen of the highest breeding.” She was indignant.

  “And for that very reason, because a true and honourable servant of Your Majestie is he, the bonds he hath formed with the Savages yet may prove of greate advantage to us.”

  She visibly brightened.

  He continued: “Y., thou hast told me, did crosse the seas for the purpose of educating the Savages. I beleve that once he hath freed him selfe from his bewitchment, he shalbe in a position to fulfill that destynie.”

  “I pray that you are right.”

  “The blessed Apostle Paul, the converter of the Gentiles, writeth in this manner: ‘Whosoever shal call on the Lorde shalbe saved.’ The Spaniardes have builte above hundreds of houses of Relligion in the space of fiftie yeares or thereaboutes: Nowe if they, in their superstition, by meanes of their planting in those partes, have done soe greate thinges in soe shorte space, what may we hope for in our true and syncere Relligion, proposing unto our selves in this action not filthie lucre nor vaine ostentation as they in deede did, but principally the gayninge of the soules o
f millions of those wretched people, the reducinge of them from dombe Idolls to the lyvinge God, from the depe pitt of Hell to the highest Heavens.”

  “It is a worthy vision.”

  “It is not my vision, Your Majestie, but the vision of our Lorde. He hath chosen this moment to bringe the dark corners of the worlde into Lighte. And thou, Your Majestie, as all right thinking men acknowledge, have been ordained by the Lorde to see that His will shalbe done.”

  She gave a solemn nod.

  “Y. is destined, I beleve, to serve as thine agent in Canada. He shal plant colonies where English men and women may remaine in safetie, learne the language of the Savages, by little and little acquainte them selves with their manner, and soe with discrecion and mildeness distill into their purged mindes the swete and lively liquor of the gospell.”

  “But do not the French also have designs on Canada?”

  “Yes. Yes, in deede. But our wayes be much more enlightened than theirs. Once they finde them selves on Canadian soil, the French shal, with no less satisfaction than the Savages, come to recognize the superioritie of gentle and courteous English governance.”

  “I had much hope for the French,” she sighed. “But it alarmed me sorely when Henri declared his allegiance to the Pope. And now he has come to terms with the Spanish.”

  “The conversion and peace were mere matters of convenience, Your Majestie, to allow him to protecte his borders. Remember, he did also proclaim the Edict of Nantes.”

  “’Tis true. The French have not yet entirely surrendered to the preachers of untruth.”

  “Those French men and women who traveil westward across the seas, they shal sing praises unto Your Majestie, for freeing them from the corrupting and tyrannous Spaniarde.”

  She reflected on his words, on the promise of glory to come: a new world on the northern frontier of the Americas where all peoples would live in harmony under the gentle governance of the benevolent monarch chosen by God to advance His cause on Earth. A worthy vision, to be sure.

  “And how shall we now proceed?” she asked at length.

  “Inasmuch as it is through Y. that thy dictates shalbe made known, our first task, of necessitie, must be to mount an expedition whereby he shalbe freed from his enchantment.”

  “Then it is well that we proceed with due haste.” And she went to her desk, where she wrote out a commission granting Richard Hakluyt the younger authority to raise a company of men. He accepted the document with conspicuous pride, then after making a display of his gratitude with an extravagant, sweeping bow, left the cottage, mounted his horse, and rode off to begin his new mission.

  In May the rhythm of university life eases to a comforting lull.

  XXVII

  In May the rhythm of university life eases to a comforting lull. While it is true that many institutions now schedule courses during the summer months, instructors are mostly graduate students who need money and experience, and nomadic junior faculty who also need money and are hopeful that an enhanced teaching portfolio will increase their chances of securing a tenure-track appointment. Should a member of the regular faculty be found offering a summer course, his colleagues will amuse themselves over lunch debating whether his aberrant behaviour is due to crushing alimony payments or his ineptness at negotiating a mortgage.

  For the majority of faculty, summer is a time for forgetting. Forgetting lectures that got sidetracked by daydreams. Forgetting undergraduates and their indecipherable lab reports and incomprehensible book reviews. Forgetting the essays they surely, but unprovably, purchased over the Internet. Above all, forgetting the Sisyphean agony of grading. Summer is the time for travel and rest and the rewards of pursuing research into some esoteric subject that is of interest, at best, to a negligible fraction of that tiny subset of humans who have been privileged to devote the better part of their lives to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

  Not that this is my view necessarily. But it was the view of H. Avery Duck, president of the Faculty Union. He lived in anticipation of summer from the day he gave his first lecture in the early fall until the moment he turned in his final set of grades in the spring. For one thing, during the summer he was spared the unpleasantness of having to talk to undergraduates. And not being obliged to waste his time in the classroom, he had more opportunity for reading the surviving texts of obscure medieval Russian monastic orders which remained his primary academic interest, and above all, for writing those policy papers on behalf of the Faculty Union which he always managed to convince himself were so penetrating, so brilliantly argued that they could not help but win him the admiration and respect of all who read them (assuming, of course, anyone did read them).

  He was not, as you might have suspected, demoralized by his humiliating confrontation with Felicia Butterworth over her suspension of Yale Templeton or by his subsequent arrest during the chaotic conclusion to the demonstration at Graves Hall. Quite the contrary. In the police van on the way to the Don Jail his spirits lifted when he discovered himself seated next to a woman who, despite the fact that she was an undergraduate and entirely naked, appeared to share his belief that the university administration was sadly lacking in principle. Then he spent the night in a holding cell, where his only companion was an Ojibwa restaurant reviewer who, as it happened, carried with him a collection of poems he had written to recite at the protest. The restaurant reviewer read aloud an ode about the wanderings of a white moose—an allegory, as he explained it, about the dearth of reason, order, and ethical behaviour in contemporary society. The two men spent the rest of the night in discussion, finding themselves to be entirely of one mind on every point. The restaurant reviewer was so affected by their conversation that he agreed to sell H. Avery Duck his poems at slightly above cost, magnanimously throwing in his last remaining copy of a guide to dining in the vicinity of the campus (for which he waived GST).

  H. Avery Duck came home exhilarated. He proudly showed his wife his new set of Ojibwa clothes made of genuine imitation moosehide. He also informed her of the momentous decision he had reached during his night in jail.

  “There is a cause on campus that requires my attention even more urgently than getting orthodontia for pets added to the faculty dental plan, my dear,” he explained. “I am referring, of course, to freedom of speech!” By which he meant freedom of speech for the president of the Faculty Union. “I will write a statement outlining the relevant legal and philosophical issues. It may well be necessary for me to invent another language. Perhaps something using the Mongolian alphabet, since that worked well for the manifesto on squirrels.”

  “If only more professors shared your fearless devotion to principle, H. Avery Duck,” sighed his wife.

  “I quite agree,” he replied, and with that went off to the kitchen to confront the weighty question of whether to have scrambled or poached eggs for breakfast.

  XXVIII

  Those who made it a practice to observe the comings and goings of Felicia Butterworth knew that she, too, lived for much of the year in anticipation of the summer. From September through May she was burdened with constant meetings: meetings with the university’s Governing Council, with the provost, with deans and department heads, with past and potential donors, with politicians, and (when it could no longer possibly be avoided) with the president of the Faculty Union. She had to give final approval to regulations on hiring practices and qualifications for tenure, oversee the budget, monitor the operation of the physical plant, and participate in national and international conferences on higher education—in short she had to deal with a diversity of issues from the most mundane to the truly consequential. Of course this spring there had been, in addition, the mountainous and infuriating distraction of the Templeton affair.

  But during the summer months the meetings and conferences dwindled. The president of the Faculty Union was, mercifully, sequestered in his office, no doubt writing one of those interminable reports in a language only he could understand. Even the controversy surroun
ding her peremptory suspension of Yale Templeton could be expected to recede into the background.

  And so it was with a mixture of relief and expectation that she welcomed the arrival of summer. It meant time for devoting herself unreservedly to what she called her “grand vision.” The public face of that vision was seen on banners hanging from lampposts all over the downtown, each carrying the picture of a university graduate who had earned distinction in some or other walk of life. On the back of the banners was the slogan of the fundraising campaign: “A University Education: There Can Be No Better Investment.” A metaphor, according to promotional literature released by the public relations department, for her efforts to turn the university into “the preeminent institution of higher learning on the continent.” Not that everyone saw her actions in quite the same light. Critics accused her of harbouring a hidden and decidedly sinister agenda. Here, however, it would be useful to separate known facts from unsubstantiated rumours.

  The known facts were these:

  She had continued the profitable practice of allowing corporations to purchase the naming rights to university property. And so the historic Bell Tower erected in honour of graduates who had given their lives during the two world wars became the Bell Mobility Tower. (An earlier attempt by Hostess to have it named the Ding Dong Bell Tower was scuttled by Frito-Lay.) The new Imperial Tobacco Archives at the Medical School library secured the university a collection, unmatched outside North Carolina, of scientific papers relating to the neglected benefits of tobacco consumption for weight reduction.

  She had also sought to strengthen the financial position of the university by aggressively acquiring real estate in downtown Toronto. On the northern edge of the campus was a building that had been occupied for years by a private high school at once both respected and derided across the city for its rigorous academic program and its impossibly high admission standards. She managed to induce the English headmaster to vacate the property by helping him secure title to a coveted lot in the Annex and having the Dean Responsible for Relations with Filthy Rich Parents of Appallingly Stupid Children show him how, through the drastic upward adjustment of tuition fees, he could fulfill his lifelong dream of building a facility that was an exact replica of the venerable public school in East Anglia where he had been beaten and sexually abused as a young boy.