The Ruined House

by Ruby Namdar

  It took Andrew a while to get over his childish disappointment. The sharp pang of it put him to shame. Returning to his desk, he picked up the little book—this time, not so debonairly—and opened it as if looking for an oracle. Still standing, he read:

  It is impossible to write without labeling oneself. . . . Literature must signify something other than its content and its individual form . . . whence a set of signs unrelated to the ideas, the language, or the style, and setting out to give definition, within the body of every possible mode of expression, to the utter separateness of a ritual language.

  What the hell did that mean? What was there besides content and form? How could a set of signs unrelated to anything define something? He shut the little book and threw it disgustedly on his desk. Once so wonderfully friendly, it, too, had turned its back on him and disowned him. What was it about, for God’s sake? Could someone please explain to him what it was saying?

  His anger died as quickly as it had flared, yielding to an almost peaceful sense of emptiness. All those concepts that described nothing that actually existed, no outer or inner reality! Signifiers signifying nothing, floating in space until they vanished from one’s field of vision like helium balloons slipped from one’s grasp, magnificent birds beating their way toward a horizon never to be seen again. Reality was not so complex that it needed rarefied concepts to do it justice. It was what it was. The fluted cornice of a building rising against the blue sky. Birds hopping in the branches of a tree. Children playing baseball. Straight lines. Crooked lines. Love. Hate. Life. Death. If only he could get away from it all! If only he could leave it all behind and go with them to the Cape.

  Andrew sank into a chair, overwhelmed by the knowledge that nothing would get written today, either, that nothing would ever get written. Writing and reading called for euphoric, if not manic states of consciousness—and he was so far from euphoria. He thought of the cartoons from his childhood with their comic-book villains dashing over the edge of a cliff in mad pursuit of their victim, still running without knowing they were in the air. There was always that cruel, hilarious moment when they realized it and stopped pumping their terrified legs, beneath which was a yawning abyss. Their eyes bulged ludicrously as they hovered in midair for a second before plunging with a long, dismal cry that trailed off and ended with a thud. I’m over the edge. I’m falling. I should turn off the computer.

  8

  A delivery truck stood outside the black gate, forcing Andrew to walk around it and onto the Columbia campus. Since when were trucks allowed to park here in the middle of the day? He looked back at it disapprovingly. Half a dozen burly men in undershirts were unloading white garden chairs and folding tables for some event. A fund-raiser? Maybe a wedding? It wouldn’t surprise him if universities started renting out their lawns for private events. Why not? It would be a nice source of income, wouldn’t it? Isn’t it all about income nowadays? Andrew brushed the thought aside, embarrassed by his own open bitterness. The men were too hard at work to notice his disgruntled stare. Just one of them, a tall, rude-looking fellow, put down the stack of chairs he was carrying, placed his hands on his hips, and stared back at him scornfully. Andrew instinctively glanced away and walked off, his heart racing irrationally as if he had been caught doing something wrong.

  The summer sun beat down brutally, baking his surroundings and dazing him. Although he knew the campus well, it hardly seemed recognizable. The steaming lawns fidgeted in the muggy air. The metal cornices of the buildings were on fire. Even the statue of Alma Mater in front of Low Library, depicting the university as a wise goddess seated on a high throne with an open book in her lap. Nearby, twenty or thirty shockingly young-looking women lay on the lawn, their slim, sun-drugged, half-naked bodies a jumble of long legs, bare arms, and flat stomachs. One, lying with her mane of copper curls like a mermaid, wore a ring in her bare navel. Andrew regarded the scene in bewilderment, unable to make sense of its contrasts. What was going on? Who would have imagined the Low Library lawn turning into a nudist beach? Nothing was the same anymore. Things were falling apart, the center didn’t hold. What was he doing here? What had he come for? Ah, yes: to sit in a library. Perhaps, in its grand space, he could finally get some work done. Turning his back to the ornate, ancient shrine–like building of the Low Library, he now faced the majestic, geometrically perfect facade of Butler Library.

  Butler, the newer and bigger of Columbia’s two libraries, was not so new anymore. It was one of Andrew’s favorite buildings, an imposing neoclassical structure whose portico of heavy columns, each proudly bearing the name of a great figure of Western civilization, had unfailingly conveyed a sense of stability, grandeur, and intellectual responsibility. Today, though, Butler Library did not seem at all welcoming. He felt intimidated by it. Its large columns formed a barrier that couldn’t be crossed, their tops a peak that couldn’t be scaled. The names of Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Virgil were like the hostile parapets of an impregnable enemy castle. Going any farther in their direction struck him as impossible. They were surrounded by a magnetic field antithetical to his own, which would send him reeling backward if he had to approach.

  He turned back toward Alma Mater. Her black metal eyes rested on him with a dark indifference. Outstared too many times today, he returned her gaze, unwilling to submit without a fight. Approaching her more closely, he examined her for the first time. The black folds of her gown draped her proud figure like actual fabric. The noble leaves of her laurel wreath stood stiff and somber against the hazy summer sky, her royal scepter formidably piercing its faded blue. Was this she, the Nourishing Mother of All Wisdom? Was it at the foot of her unsparing, pitiless tyranny that he had sat these thirty years? He had been young, so very young, when first enthralled by the romantic pursuit of knowledge. There had not been a hint of cynicism in him. He wasn’t really cynical even now. Bitter? Yes, that might be. Disillusioned? He wasn’t sure. “Illusionless” might be a better word. Academic life was good to us, it let us be who we wanted to be and do what we wanted to do. We never let its careerism affect us—or so we thought. But something was lost along the way. Something wore thin. We let the magic of it dull. We learned to play it safe after all, became intellectual mediocrities without knowing it. . . . Why do I keep saying “we” and “us”? I don’t know. Probably a defense mechanism.

  Where now? Home? To the gym? No, he couldn’t work out now. Maybe later that afternoon. Should he have something to eat? Who could even think of eating in such heat! The sun was like an inferno. Didn’t these young women sprawled on the lawn know it caused cancer? Hadn’t they heard about the hole in the ozone layer? He was beginning to sound like a grumpy old man. Andrew dragged his legs up the stone steps of Low Library, trying to overlook the sea of nudity that spread around him like a brightly colored fan. What were they doing here? Weren’t they supposed to be on summer vacation? Reaching the broad landing at the top of the steps, he peered into the dusky interior of the grand building that had once housed all the university’s books and now called to mind the temple of an ancient god or the secret headquarters of a Masonic lodge conspiring to rule the world. He turned to his right, roaming aimlessly under the ruthless sun that seemed so close it was practically touching him. Anything for some shade! A handsome, semicircular stone bench with the inscription FOR FELLOWSHIP AND LOVE OF ALMA MATER, DONATED IN 1911 BY THE YOUNG GENTLEMEN OF THE CLASS OF 1886 awaited him around a corner and welcomed him to its white lap. He leaned his head against its carved backrest, shut his eyes, and lifted them toward the orb of the sun. The insides of his eyelids were bright orange. He felt a childish, almost infantile comfort. She was an unattainable lover, Alma Mater, a jealous mother who cast her betrayers far beyond her black gates, but her lovers rested in her bosom forever as new babes laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all slander, nursing her white stone milk that they may grow thereby.

  Andrew opened his eyes, blin
king like a cat in the strong light. Around him were beds of anemically pale, long-stemmed irises, their powder blue the color of the university’s flag that drooped with an aristocratic nonchalance from a white flagpole, its symbol a crown topped by a square cross. How nice it was here, how regal and peaceful! He felt cradled in the warm white bosom of Alma Mater. This was how it should be: bright, clean, and monastic. The colored posters, the art festivals, the baby carriages, the naked women on the lawn—all were distractions from the scholarly life. They created an illusion of freedom, of an easy flow between town and gown. But the true ideal of the Academy was different, severely insular, its beauty spiritual and abstract. Try as they might, its trustees could not conceal the signs of it; the black gates with their javelin-headed, heaven-thrust bars; the mysterious dome of Low Library; the well-tended lawns guarded by black iron chains as heavy as the anchor chains of ships; the peacefulness. The peacefulness most of all. It was the peace in the eye of the storm, brewed in mysterious alchemical laboratories in the library’s basement. The noises of the metropolis, the dull, never-ending, all-penetrating roar of the great city, broke against it and was repulsed by the iron gates that marked where the world ended and the redbrick walls of academe began.

  Such odd clarity. He couldn’t say if it was acceptance or despair. This wasn’t his territory. He didn’t belong to Columbia. He came from the other end of the academic spectrum, from popular, progressive, culture-light NYU. He hadn’t come to this place looking for an alternative. He had wandered into it, a lost vagabond in search of shade and somewhere to lay his fever-hot head. And his writing? All those years of prolific, creative, cutting-edge research? None of it had what it took. His articles wouldn’t change the world. That wasn’t going to happen. They wouldn’t even change the world of scholarship, not even of the disciplines he had chosen for his own. It wasn’t that he hadn’t worked hard, had wasted his life, or sold out his dreams. He had had a good run for his money, grown intellectually and personally. In the end, though, he had not made the slightest difference. He hadn’t rewritten the rules of the game, hadn’t pushed back the frontiers or even the discourse defining the frontiers. All the omnipotent fantasies of youth—the wild optimism that believed the world lay before one, just waiting for a new god or Übermensch whose wisdom, courage, and intellectual integrity knew no bounds—his passionate infatuation with Alma Mater: All that had died within him today, buried with him under the white stone bench, surrounded by the beautiful light-blue irises that feed off the milk of words.

  Andrew awoke with a start, his face sunburned. His hair was mussed and sweat drenched his neck. Had he fallen asleep? How long had he been sitting in the burning sun? He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t there. Alarm ran through him: he had been robbed! For a moment, he let the thought get the better of him, even though he knew it was ridiculous. Who would rob him in the middle of the Columbia campus? A half-naked sunbather? A mad librarian? The university president? He had a sour feeling in his stomach, which felt empty although he wasn’t hungry. He rose with an effort, stretching his stiff limbs and looking worriedly about, hoping no one he knew had seen him sleeping like a vagrant on a bench. The pleasurable, liberating clarity was gone. He felt wooden. It’s all over. There’s nothing for me here anymore.

  Andrew brushed imaginary dust from his pants, glanced back at the bench to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, and headed home. The scantily clothed bodies no longer commanded his attention. They were sunbathing—so what? He descended the steps, passing to one side of Alma Mater, and leaving by a side exit to avoid the unpleasant deliveryman. With a glance at Butler Library, the familiar names on whose columns evoked no emotion good or bad, he limply followed the walkway to the street. The unseeing iron eyes of Alma Mater stared at him with indifference as he grew smaller and vanished in the distance.

  9

  Accursed city! All boundaries are blurred here. The border among science, art, and pop culture, between truth and public relations, no longer exists. There are too many beautiful people, too many brilliant, ambitious, successful ones. They rub against one another, desire one another, exchange innuendos, smiles, and inner jokes. How can anyone stay sane? It simply can’t be done. All the openings: of museum shows, of galleries relocated from SoHo to Chelsea, of fashionable restaurants, of artsy fringe theaters, all trapped in the bear hug of the city’s cultural establishment. Exorbitantly priced French wines and unpasteurized cheeses outlawed by the Health Department. Artists, academics, models, and billionaires sit knee-to-knee in a dimly lit proximity that you would say was filled with cigarette smoke if only anyone still smoked. Pink cosmopolitans in martini glasses, you couldn’t ask for a more diabolical drink! It’s one big mental jumble. That stunning model over there, the one with the white, transfixing thigh showing through the long slit in her black dress, is a head taller than any man in the room. The head of the arts faculty, in a conservative, tailor-made suit, is chatting her up. What about? Neo-Marxist interpretations of Jackson Pollock? The inevitability of Roy Lichtenstein? And that dot-com millionaire with the three-hundred-dollar T-shirt, the black Hugo Boss jacket, and the wife, a well-preserved ex–beauty queen in a Ralph Lauren morning suit—what can they be discussing so passionately with the drunk, scruffily dressed off-off-Broadway playwright, the current enfant terrible of the theater world, and his girlfriend, or whoever she is, though whoever she is, she’s completely stoned? The Enron scandal? The crazy real estate prices in Southampton? How did we learn the body language? Who taught us to feign three minutes of interest in what someone we’ve never seen before and will never see again has to say? How did we acquire the art of tilting our bodies at impossible angles as we go from person to person at cocktail parties, maneuvering ourselves between our hostess’s silicone breasts and her teenage daughter’s real ones without touching either while flashing each a polite smile to let her know she means nothing to us? And there’s still more! What about the restaurants, the museums, the Madison Avenue boutiques? And those sexy bakeries that have been opening all over (à la Provence, à la Tuscany, à la English countryside, à la American colonial, all indistinguishably alike) with their brick walls, their thick wooden tables, their little jars of mass-produced, absolutely authentic jams! European-style, New England–style, Mediterranean-style, fig, citrus, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry! How expansive they make us feel! There must be something in the light, in the air, to make us so young and attractive. And then there are the liquor stores with their dizzying arrays of labels and differently shaped, colored, and textured bottles, each wine and spirit a window into a distinct terroir with its own sun, water, and air! Dozens if not hundreds of brands of different whiskeys, cognacs, premixed cocktails for the sophisticated palate! The extra-virgin olive oils from hundreds, no, thousands of artisanal presses in Italy, Spain, California, and the Middle East! And bread, every possible variety of bread! Coarse, rustic pumpernickels, gourmet loaves, whole-wheat, sour rye, five-grain, seven-grain, ten-grain breads! You could spend a lifetime sampling the delights of the great city, drunk with pleasure like love-sated Ulysses in Calypso’s arms, the road home to Ithaca lost, forgotten.

  10

  June 26, 2001

  The 5th of Tammuz, 5761

  Three thirty p.m. Half an hour of cardio, now?! Although Andrew had somehow managed to survive forty-five minutes with his personal trainer, he didn’t know where he would find the energy for half an hour on the elliptical, maintaining a heartbeat of no less than 139. Not that his session with his trainer had been particularly difficult today. Sergeant Andrew (who, finally realizing that the joke had gotten stale, no longer called himself that) had sensed Andrew’s condition and behaved more like an occupational therapist or male nurse than like a martinet. After putting Andrew through some light drills, he had laid him down on a cot half-hidden behind a column in a corner of the room and stretched his limbs one by one, relaxing his cramped muscles and releasing the toxins that had built up in them. He had ended the session
early, cutting it short by several minutes and intimately wrapping a warm, comforting white towel around Andrew’s neck while imparting a few tips for staying in shape. It was as if they had decided that this was to be their final meeting. Even the jesting “And now half an hour of cardio and no goofing off—you know I always can see you!” sounded hollower than usual.

  Andrew took hold of the machine and pulled himself into position, settling his feet in its broad, boat-shaped pedals. Taking longer than usual to enter his weight and set the resistance and incline, he stifled an unbecoming sigh and began, slowly and reluctantly, to pedal his way through the damned half hour. He hardly bothered to look at the screen; he would forget about working up to 139 today. What was on TV? The news? No, not for him. A cooking show? Not today, either. Music . . . another news channel . . . a talk show . . . stop! It couldn’t be, not after such a long time. The twins, “his” twins, the hideous-looking Jason and Aaron, the Jewish twins who wanted to look like Brad Pitt, they were back again! Where had they turned up from? The channel must be rebroadcasting the series; it was a way of filling screen time. The two of them were lying in a room crammed with gadgets and electronic equipment, the dream room of a Jewish American Prince. Though their heads were swaddled in bandages that made them look like mummies or creatures from a horror movie, Andrew recognized them at once. By now they were almost like family. The surgeons had broken every one of their aching facial bones so as to put them together in conformity with the white American male beauty ideal. You couldn’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, could you? Nor chop down a tree without the chips flying: everyone knew that. The two weren’t their old teasing selves. Their optimistic smiles were gone, too. All that remained was pure misery, naked pain. Andrew’s heart went out to the pair, who seemed oddly orphaned. Aaron was crying. His tearful voice came through the bloodstained bandages: “It hurts. It hurts so bad.” Jason groped for his brother’s hand and gave it a tender, wordless squeeze. The camera lingered on them for an obscenely long moment, focusing on their two hands joined together. The MTV crew was nothing if not professional. It wasn’t about to let a visual gold mine like that slip away unexploited. And now a short break for a commercial.