by Smiley, Jane
4:02. What if he did stay up all night? He hadn’t stayed awake in exhilaration for decades—it was something to offer up, a new vision to set against all the disappointments over the years, all the fallings-short, all the almosts-but-not-quites of his marriage and his career and his life, since conception, with Ivar. Because of course those heady days of the sixties had proved hollow and illusory. World hunger had gotten away from all of them—mostly, Nils thought, due to unfortunate weather—as his enigmatic wife had gotten away from him. It was all very well to tell yourself, as he had been doing for years, that all you could do was give it your best shot. He did not feel blameworthy—that was the point—he felt disappointed. But maybe Heaven, of which he also had no doubt, at least as far as he was concerned, was where this delightful sense of rightness and goodness and perfection that you always had with a good idea lasted forever, as it of course could not with others working against you, and your own failures of judgment and energy and will letting you down as well.
Ah, thought Nils, and he reached into his pajamas and took hold of his member. It was firm and hand-filling. He brought to bear upon it the image of Marly Hellmich’s plain, trustful face, her likely virginity, what he imagined as her quiet history of faith, frugality, devotion to others (he saw her in a long dress and a bonnet), and it expressed to him no doubts.
12
A Rule Broken
MRS. LORAINE WALKER KNEW where all the bodies were buried, including the ones in the university graveyard between the baseball practice field and the Clemson School of Art and Design. She knew that a ball hit into the graveyard was known as “the ultimate home-run,” and left to lie, in accordance with traditional campus superstition, until the following Halloween, when new recruits to the baseball team were deployed to find them, with flashlights, in the dark. As she thought this was a harmless and rather charming tradition, she allowed it to continue, and instructed the grounds crew who mowed the graveyard to leave the balls there.
On the other hand, the determination of some art and design students to erect objets among the stones she met with absolute resistance, largely because she found the taste of the students offensive and un-beautiful. No matter who called her from the college, if it was the dean or even the dean’s secretary herself, Mrs. Walker told her that the university had rules. It was true that the university did have rules, but the university’s rules were a subset of Mrs. Walker’s rules. Her set included rules that the university would have had if the university had known that it needed them, so she felt justified in terming those “university rules,” too.
Mrs. Walker had been secretary in the provost’s office for twenty-two years, through the terms of three provosts. She found Ivar, with whom she had worked since his ascension to the post, compliant and industrious. He generally fulfilled the tasks assigned to him on his own initiative, with minimal help from her. He sought advice readily, always a good quality in an administrator, and did his own Xeroxing. He dressed appropriately for the office in dark suits and white, long-sleeved shirts. Nothing mint green, which highly offensive fashion choice seemed to be a favorite of the president of the university, whose secretary had always been overindulgent and, in Mrs. Walker’s opinion, always would be. Ivar was respectful without fawning and only occasionally needed personal encouragement. He was, she often reflected, markedly better than Jacob Grunwald would have been, and she was glad to have chosen him. He had worked out well.
Mrs. Walker espied the messenger from the mail room in the hall. She looked at her watch. 9:32. Four minutes early. This improved her mood. He brought the mail in on a dolly, and set it where he knew he was supposed to—campus mail on her right hand, U.S. mail on her left. She spoke pleasantly to him, and he replied in kind. One of her rules was always to be pleasant, no matter how trying the circumstances. He was gone by 9:38. She reached for the U.S. mail. There were fifteen first-class pieces addressed to Ivar. After reading them all, she put fourteen in her reply basket and one in his. It was from the president of the TransNationalAmerica Corporation (“TNA—We’re in all you do”; the corporate symbol was a tasteless circle of stars, thirteen, she counted them, on a dark blue field). In fact, the president’s name rang a bell, but the TNA Corporation did not.
It took her longer to process the campus mail, because the envelopes had to be saved for reuse (an idea and policy of hers long before the days of recycling). Gray university memo forms she stacked together and read through. It was then that she saw Associate Vice-President Robert William Brown, or, as he called himself with a smile, “Just Plain Brown,” outside the door to her office. He was standing close enough to be looking at her, but she saw very clearly that it was not until she and he made eye contact that his hand went to the doorknob. He entered on a snail’s trail of congeniality. “Mrs. Walker,” he said, with a practiced nod.
“Associate Vice-President Brown.”
“Marvelous day for this time of year, don’t you think?”
“The end of September frequently offers superior weather in this climate. Sir.”
“Oh, goodness, no need for that. You know, minimizing the expressions of hierarchy within the organization seems actually to mitigate its negative effects and to draw all the employees at every level into a more profound dialogue with one another. Some of the best ideas come from staff and even blue-collar employees.”
“May I help you, Associate Vice-President Brown?”
He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped it over his forehead. He said, “I’ll just wait over here,” and he went to a chair beside the door into the Xeroxing room and sat down. He occupied himself by gazing out at the brilliant morning and humming tunelessly under his breath.
Later on, she did piece together exactly what happened. After reading a number of the memos, ten or fewer, she noticed that it was time for her break, 10:00, and she set the rest of the memos on the right side of her desk. She stood up, picked up her handbag, and went into the bathroom. As she did so, Eileen, a secretarial assistant, remarked that the office seemed warm, and Mrs. Walker gave her permission to open a window. While Mrs. Walker was in the bathroom, Eileen opened the second window, the window across from Mrs. Walker’s desk, rather than the more customary first window. A breeze from that window must have lifted the top memo off the stack and floated it across the small space between Mrs. Walker’s desk and the radiator, where it slid up and under, beyond the view of the janitor, who otherwise would have found it that night. When Mrs. Walker returned to her desk, of course, she had Eileen correct her mistake, but the lost memo, about unauthorized use of Old Meats from that funny little man who ran the horticulture department and wouldn’t allow anyone to call him by his name, had evaded her.
Just Plain Brown had left.
Had his presence disconcerted Mrs. Walker just a bit? A grain more than she suspected? Whatever the cause, she noticed the TNA letter in Ivar’s basket again and picked it up. Arlen Martin. Ah, yes. She remembered him clearly now, and not fondly. Mrs. Walker tapped the corner of the letter lightly on her desk while she made up her mind, and then, with her usual dispatch, she threw the letter away.
That was what started it all.
13
The Keynote
DR. LIONEL GIFT’S LECTURE, entitled “Costa Rica: The Lessons of Development,” was packed to the walls. Dr. Gift estimated an audience of 740 or 50, and he was practiced at estimating audiences. It did not matter to him that nearly the entire audience was composed of students (“customers,” he reminded himself) required to attend and looking forward to quizzes (to prove attendance, if not comprehension), nor that most of the economics department was conspicuous for their absence (while he made it a principle to go to every lecture presented by an econ faculty member and to ask at least one searching question). An audience was an audience, and, as he often quoted himself, “Ears cannot be closed.” Something would get through, and something was a beginning.
As Ivar had persuaded him to give this lecture without an honorarium, Dr. Gift
was using a paper he had given twice before, once for ten thousand dollars, to a group of corporate executives interested in investing in Latin America, and once, for twenty-five hundred dollars, to an Ivy League university that had been courting him. That university had been somewhat surprised at the fee he charged them for what was, essentially, the presentation of his credentials for their consideration, but he had pointed out the unwisdom of services and knowledge given gratis (which devalued them in the marketplace and persuaded buyers that they were of little worth). Afterward, they had made a nice offer, but not nice enough.
Nevertheless, Dr. Gift now felt that the price of the lecture had depreciated into the “pro bono” category, and furthermore, it was good business to keep Ivar Harstad happy, so he agreed to having his name plastered all over the campus (“World-renowned economist, advisor to presidents” was the phrase he had suggested when the publicity office had called him), and to put on a blue suit, and to display himself to and for the university—to the customers and for the benefit of the eight potential corporate donors he had greeted when he entered. The provost sat to their left, the president sat to their right, Bob Brown behind them, beaming his perennial, and to Dr. Lionel Gift, ever-approving smile. The corporate executives all sat in a row, leaning back, each one’s ankle resting arrogantly on each one’s opposite knee, each one fancying himself a Hollywood producer about to make or break a star. Dr. Gift gave this row the sort of knowing, collusive, and self-confident twinkle they always fell for, and began.
As he began, Cecelia, who had required the lecture of her classes just to give them some sense of the lives of some of the people who spoke the language they were learning (though these people rarely said, as her students often did, “I have the ball and Juan has the stick,” or “Please tell me whether the toilet is in the next street”), felt the man sitting next to her jump in his seat. She shifted away from him. Then he said, in a low voice, “What shit!” and then he actually spit on the floor between his shoes. Cecelia looked around for another seat, or even a place to stand, but the room was amazingly crowded. She should have given the campus more credit for interest in the outside world, that was clear. Perhaps the insulated blankness she thought she perceived was simply a manner that hid untold depths of curiosity.
The man next to her exclaimed, “Oh my God!” and four or five people turned and looked at him. Cecelia said, “Please be quiet! You’re acting very rude!”
He said, “Are you listening to this bullshit?”
She said, “Yes, I am!” and the four or five starers chorused, “Shhhhh!”
It was only then, when he had to be quiet, but also to do something that would distract him from the torrent of drivel that was pouring off the podium, that Chairman X noticed Cecelia. He noticed that she was wearing dazzling silver earrings made of the beaten bowls of old spoons, and these made him notice the definition of her neck as it dovetailed into her throat, and this made him notice her remarkable full, wide, and sharply cut lips, and after that, he turned away because he was afraid to notice anything more.
Giving his lecture for the third time freed Dr. Lionel Gift from paying much attention to it. He had a naturally expressive style of delivery, honed over the years in elementary-econ lecture halls. He knew, without even thinking, to address the middle rows of the hall, but to occasionally “shoot” the listeners in the back corners. He knew how to make eye contact and solicit the attention of those who were thinking of other things. He knew that that little shit from horticulture was making his usual fuss and would later ask his usual pugnacious question. He listened with appreciation to the wise words of his lecture rolling out of him, as he depicted, for these customers, the beauty that Costa Rica had become in the last ten years—how nicely tied into the world market it was now, how its GDP had risen and risen, how, while some economic sectors had shown surprising declines, such as fisheries, others had flowed into the gap, such as export of tropical hardwoods and beef. New roads, new schools, new public works, a successful restructuring of debt, stable cash cropping on newly opened agricultural land. Dr. Gift smiled and smiled, showing charts of GDP (which, he explained, was enough like GNP for his audience to think of it as the same thing) where the line rose and rose without faltering; no lurches, no dips, no hesitations.
Upon Chairman X certain words and phrases had a noticeable electrifying effect: “world market”—he writhed; “surprising decline”—his mouth gaped in a silent scream; “export of tropical hardwoods”—his feet began a tattoo on the hardwood floor. At “cash crop” he leaned over so far toward Cecelia that he nearly fell out of his chair. Cecelia heaved him upright. He muttered, “Sorry,” and subsided until the chart came out, when Cecelia began to feel his chair rock against hers. By this time, however, she had decided that he must be the unfortunate victim of some sort of illness, possibly Tourette’s syndrome. One cousin of her former husband had been thus afflicted, and Cecelia had come to like him very much, and hardly notice the outbursts. And so it was that the more explosive Chairman X became, the more sympathetic Cecelia became, thinking of that cousin, and how she had lost touch with him since her divorce.
In spite of this distraction, Cecelia was enjoying the lecture. Although she hadn’t actually been to Costa Rica since before she could remember, a trip there, an extended visit, was one of her happiest plans, a delicious present for herself and her mother, as certain as if it had already been bought and put away. It would be no hasty sojourn or ill-thought-out vacation, but a progress of delight and enlightenment, the fabled tropical sights alternating with invigorating visits to relatives. Cecelia was confident both that she would come up with the money before too long and that her mother would let go of her strange reluctance to make the trip (“Of course I want to see them,” she always said, “but it’s so far away. There’s so much to do here. Your father—”). Dr. Gift’s words were very dry, not at all evocative of the deep green cloud forest Cecelia could not remember, or the fragrances of the hillsides she knew she would recognize when she made her return. Dr. Gift didn’t make it sound like what it was, which was a place much more splendid than anywhere else. It was hard to believe what the program said, that he visited there regularly.
Irritated, Cecelia looked around. Most of the students sat upright but removed, like horses asleep on their feet in a field. Their pencils had fallen out of their hands, and their notes drifted to an end about a quarter of the way down the first page. It was always true, Cecelia thought, that ignorance was the prime element of boredom. She sighed. The lecture also made her think of her mother in Los Angeles, the way, over the years, the extra effort of living there seemed to have taxed every part of her—her spirits, her temper, her warmth, her looks. Dora Sanchez did not thrive in L.A. Cecelia thought her habitual thought about the calming and rejuvenating effect of the trip. She would bring it up at Christmas. This time she would really—
AND WHAT WERE the lessons of development in Costa Rica? Dr. Gift swelled his oratory to a preacherly roundness. First and foremost, RATIONAL coordination of a nation’s local market mechanisms with world market mechanisms worked to the mutual satisfaction of everyone’s demands—which in theoretical terms were, of course, insatiable—and the local officials were capable of acting RATIONALLY once principles were explained to them. Second, the control of the international monetary community reenforced the RATIONALIZATION of an individual nation’s choices, working to bring it into the fold. Third (and here he looked to the eight-man gallery seated between the provost and the president), the greatest single component in the growth of any small nation was the RATIONAL investment of well-run corporations. As one man, the gallery nodded with measured agreement. Fourth (and here he looked at the assembled customers), there was a world of opportunity out there for an enterprising young American man (he looked at the customers again and made a quick recount) or young American woman. He quoted one of their songs: “The future’s so bright, I’ve got to wear shades,” thus startling the students into embarrassed la
ughter. Thank you.
Chairman X shot like a rocket out of his seat, not just to ask a question, but also to relieve the buildup of frustration. He had not actually formulated his question beyond “What kind of ignorant asshole are you?” but Gift’s gaze turned his way, and he knew he would be called upon as soon as the applause died down. The room was warm. He tugged at the collar of his shirt. He knew he was going to sound shrill and IRRATIONAL, that he was going to fail in speaking for his cause and in fact speak against his cause, because even if his words came out ordered and reasonable, his face would be red, the emotion in his voice would be readily apparent, and anyway, he was so well known around the campus as a crackpot that his opinions would be discounted as soon as he opened his mouth. Gift said, “There. In the middle,” and Chairman X knew that was him. He opened his mouth, curious to see what would come out. He heard himself say, mildly, “What have been the effects of this development on Costa Rica’s natural biological systems?”