Rodin's Debutante (14 page)

Bert was in his empty LaSalle Street office, his feet up, the time late afternoon, Saturday. He often spent Saturdays at the office, a quiet time to think and plan the week ahead. That meant worrying about Ogden Hall, which was slipping slowly out of control. Once or twice a week Bert had cause to wonder how different his life would have been had Tommy Ogden not stepped into it. An unlikely alliance surely, Bert an orphan boy deposited on the steps of Hull House when he was five years old, a note pinned to his jacket pocket written in Polish:
This is a Jewish child. Take care of him.
In due course Bert was placed in a home with other Jewish children and began to make his way in the world, finding himself at twenty a law clerk in a small West Side firm. At thirty he was managing partner. LaSalle Street was years away.

Of his origins Bert had no clue. He had the orphan's natural interest in the identity of his parents but was unable to learn anything about them. His past was a blank slate, even his name a gift from one of the jokers at Hull House: Marks, as in Karl. He never knew where the "Bert" came from. His life began at Hull House and when he thought of those who could trace their families back three generations and more, he was amused. He believed himself lucky to be alive, luckier still to have been able to read law and become a lawyer. In those days you didn't need a degree. Bert considered himself self-made, but even so he was happy to make a substantial contribution to Hull House each Thanksgiving Day.

He would never have met Tommy Ogden had he not gone to a smoker at a West Side athletic club on a Friday evening in June 1903. Two middleweights from the neighborhood, a bare-knuckle affair, no referee. One of the middleweights was a friend from high school who, Bert knew from experience, had a glass jaw and so he wagered twenty dollars with confidence. The smokers were raucous and there were always a few sports from the Gold Coast who showed up, drinking heavily and gambling recklessly. The sports lost money which was why they were welcomed, supplied with a white-aproned personal waiter, offered places at ringside. Bert collected his winnings and turned to the big man standing next to him, saying something sarcastic. The line, whatever it was, must have been funny, for the big man laughed and laughed, and he did not give the appearance of one who laughed often. They met again at the next smoker and the smoker after that, finding some weird, inexplicable affinity. They had nothing whatever in common, and whether for that reason or some other reason found each other companionable, one might almost say trustworthy. Soon enough, Tommy Ogden gave Bert legal business, mostly real estate transactions, adding to his spread at Jesper, a town Bert had never heard of. One night after listening to another shooting adventure and how content Tommy was at Ogden Hall, living alone without encumbrance, Bert mentioned a place he knew about, a place Tommy might find agreeable on those nights when living alone was itself an encumbrance. Villa Siracusa. Bert wrote the address and a name on his business card and a week after that he found himself on retainer and discovered that Tommy Ogden was not an ordinary Gold Coast swell but rich, with interests all over Illinois and the Midwest. He also discovered that these interests bored Tommy, who had a lust only for shooting and, it had to be supposed, the girls at Villa Siracusa. He needed someone to look after the interests and that was a full-time job, better exercised on LaSalle Street rather than in the corner office above a hardware store on Milwaukee Avenue.

Bert moved his family from an apartment way out Division Street to a maisonette on Pearson. He never mistook his arrangement with Tommy as anything but business, so in the evenings when he was invited to dinner at Ogden Hall he went alone, explaining to his wife, Minna, that he had a business meeting. She was happy not to be included. Minna was religious, and devoted to their son and two daughters. Every other weekend she visited her parents in Indiana, a faithful daughter. Tommy's language would have appalled her. She would not have understood his devotion to firearms. And later, when Marie came along, she would not have understood Marie. Bert's Saturday ruminations never came to a satisfactory conclusion. He never knew whether he had beaten the system or whether the system had beaten him. The conundrum was not cause for anxiety since the world was as it was. Instead, Bert Marks was amused. It did pain him to realize how much time had gone into Tommy Ogden's interests, among them his fantasy school, the endless recruitment of boys and men to teach them. His life would have been much, much different had he not spent so much of it on Tommy Ogden. But how different, in which way different, he was unable to say.

So four years ago Bert had told his son, Do something about Ogden Hall. And the something turned out to be Augustus Allprice, and he had worked out well. He was an adult, he listened to advice, and he worked hard. Ogden Hall regained full accreditation. The enrollment slowly grew to the point where there were even a few boarders from out of state and one forlorn lad from Canada. The faculty was still not sound but it was improving. Morale seemed on an upswing. The draft-card-supplying English instructor was denounced by a colleague, confronted, and forced to resign. This was a moment of high peril but Gus Allprice managed it all without a single line of publicity, a miracle in the circumstances, because the word had gotten out. Publicity would have killed the school—and Bert was obliged to reflect again on his ambiguous situation. The school dead, he would be a free man. But that was not the way he was raised or taught and so he took a deep breath and soldiered on, things on an even keel at last.

Then Allprice announced his resignation and Bert was besieged by parents, including that arrogant shyster George Berry, who, sensing vulnerability, was threatening a lawsuit. Bert had never heard of such a thing, litigation because your indolent offspring refused to do his lessons. Refused to open a schoolbook. Routinely missed examinations. Was abusive to his instructors, a sarcastic little bastard with a sneer to match. A meeting with lawyer Berry in Berry's office proved to be unproductive, and in due course the suit was filed and within weeks was dismissed, summary judgment. Plaintiff to pay all costs.

BERT MOTORED TO
Ogden Hall for a final effort to salvage Gus Allprice, disappointed that Bert Jr. had failed to solve the problem and now had washed his hands of anything to do with Ogden Hall. Bert and Allprice had always gotten on, two adults trying to make the best of things, and the offer was most generous—an increase in salary, a four-figure bonus, an enhanced pension, reduced responsibilities. And it went nowhere. The headmaster was interested only in his forthcoming voyage to Patagonia.

He did have a few words to say concerning divisions among the student body. In the future it would be wise not to have quite so many boys who had so conspicuously and spectacularly failed elsewhere and looked on Ogden Hall as a seaman might look on Singapore or Papeete, whores and rum, agreeable shore leave following a punishing voyage, something they were entitled to, a reward for mischief. I'm afraid many of these boys are brighter than our instructors. But they are ignorant. They are undisciplined. They are agents provocateurs. They are bad influences on the school because their every action implies that the world is their oyster and proles will always be on hand to do the shucking. But some of them are worth saving, Mr. Marks. Worth trying to turn around because a few of them might actually amount to something beyond the possession of an English sports car and a willing debutante. They are of the ancien régime, yet we will have to bear with them for a time. The headmaster paused there, considering what he had said. He wasn't sure that Bert Marks was listening carefully, although that was what lawyers were trained to do. He said, These boys are resistant to learning. The unknown frightens them. They believe they are men of the world in training, but they are as sheltered as nuns. They have not learned or even thought about the thin line that divides pleasure from pain. They don't know it yet but they are standing on a beach that is eroding beneath their feet. Not soon enough in my view.

Bert Marks nodded thoughtfully. He had no idea what the headmaster was driving at. But he did know that it was often helpful to remain silent, as if he understood the situation, each nuance. However, not in this case.

Bert said, What?

The rich are always with us, the headmaster said.

Yes, but so what? They are what we have. They are what we have been given and so we must do what we can. We've undertaken a charge. We take their money, we agree to educate them. That's the contract, and while we know, you and I, that some of these boys are foolish and arrogant and therefore unteachable—we must try. Why can't you shape them up?

We are not taken seriously, the headmaster said.

It is your job to be taken seriously.

The headmaster smiled broadly. Yes, it is. And it is in that connection that I often think of Mr. Ogden.

That's not the point, Bert said.

So there we are, the headmaster said.

So it's a failure, Bert said.

Many of our instructors are old. They are disappointed with life. They have not aged gracefully.

That's not convincing, Bert said.

Nevertheless, the headmaster said.

You are not old. From my perspective you are in the prime of life.

It is time for me to move on.

But the job's not finished. You undertook to do a job. Signed a contract. And you have not finished the job.

The headmaster laughed. That's why, Mr. Marks.

All right. Listening to you now, I'm inclined to agree.

You should come teach here for a semester, Mr. Marks. Introduction to the Common Law, something like that. That would be an enlightening course, the rule of law as the foundation of a society. All citizens equal before the law. The headmaster watched the lawyer stir uncomfortably in his chair, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. You are well placed to conduct such a course, experienced, a man of the world. Our students would interest you. They have seen nothing of life. It is hard for many of them to see beyond the boundaries of this region. Your Middle West is a closed place. No visible horizon. I am not sure they understand the meaning of the law. The headmaster paused once more, trying to formulate one last thought. Also, this house and the grounds surrounding it are not suitable for a school. The aura's unfortunate.

Nonsense, Bert Marks said.

Live here a while, the headmaster said. You'll see.

I spent many hours in this house, Bert said, many, many strange hours. He remembered Marie Ogden's laugh, a kind of shriek. Tommy at the opposite end of the table pouring whiskey as the candles guttered. The servants, Francesca and the other one, parked along the walls as the conversation droned on. More monologue than conversation, now that he thought about it. Still, the evenings did have their moments. He remembered very well the night the Great War began, Tommy Ogden holding his information until the party broke up. Late summer 1914. They said the war was the beginning of the modern world. The nineteenth century died that summer. Not that it made much difference in Chicago, boom times once again, until the casualty reports came in from Belleau Wood and Second Marne ... Bert looked up when Gus Allprice cleared his throat.

The headmaster had one last thought, this one concerning Herman Melville, his seamanship, his endless curiosity, his sympathy, his mastery of the English language, his profound understanding of the black heart, his exemplary life with its inevitable disappointments at the end. More than anything, the great writer was drawn to the unknown. The unknown was never to be feared or despised but embraced. The unknown was life itself. The unknown made men of boys. A noble soul, Gus Allprice concluded.

Bert quickly made his farewells, wishing the headmaster good luck in Patagonia and wherever else life took him. These sentiments were sincerely meant, but the lawyer was not certain the headmaster was all there. He had a dreamy look in his eyes, the sort of look Bert had long identified as anarchic. It was the look of a man who did not understand the world as it was. For God's sake, if what the boys and their parents wanted out of life was Yale, then get them into Yale. As for the rule of law, all men equal before the bar and so forth and so on, apparently this Allprice believed in a child's history of the world. Herman Melville might well have been a noble soul aboard his sailing vessel but this was Chicago, nobility measured in the length and width of a dollar bill.

In his car once again, returning to his LaSalle Street office, Bert had the idea that if worst came to worst the whole shooting match—as Tommy Ogden would put it—could be sold to the University of Illinois or Northwestern as a faculty conference center or secondary campus or retreat of some kind. Perhaps the State of Illinois would consider Ogden Hall an appropriate venue for a minimum-security prison or a mental hospital—and he would be rid of it. He knew whom to talk to and what to say and how much to promise and what would be returned to him, and at the end of the discussion the state would have a fine facility. He was too old to be chairman of the board of trustees of a damned school. Bert Marks believed he was a modern Sisyphus and Ogden Hall his stone. He had no understanding of schools or the people who ran them, Gus Allprice a case in point. Allprice was the man for the job until suddenly he wasn't, dreaming of a season in Patagonia. What was the point of it? What came after Patagonia? The man was a loon, and from the sound of him a left-wing loon, a crank. All his life Bert had sought clarity, and there was no clarity at Ogden Hall, merely an academic fog. Of course Tommy Ogden couldn't be bothered, Tommy away again shooting animals in East Africa, a cable the other day announcing that he had shot a bull elephant that his hunter had identified as a man-killer, nearly eighty years old, twelve-foot tusks. Tommy was living in a tent in the bush but from his description of the amenities it had more in common with the Ritz in Paris. He was eternally out of touch. Not that he would care if he were in touch. Tommy supplied the cash, someone else picked up the pieces.