The Ghost Apple (14 page)

• At a banquet honoring scholarship recipients, she reportedly offered students handfuls of dried ants, spirulina loaves, mosquito larvae, and tamales made from red worms, adding that the last-named were “good enough for Huitzilopochtli.”

• Another creature she has threatened to eat is Lucien, Professor Amundsen’s King Charles spaniel.

• She opposed Tripoli’s partnership agreement with Big Anna® Brands.

Undercover Dean: Blog Post #4

I spent Thanksgiving by myself, just puttering around the empty dorm. My daughters were celebrating the holiday with their in-laws, and I wanted a bit of solitude after the long, crowded months. There were a few international students around, but I didn’t talk to anyone. I did my laundry, read a book or two, listened to the Pixies and the Kinks on my iPod, and took long walks in the cold. In the knock and clamor of the breathless year, this was a nice moment of calm.

Then everyone came back to wait out this strange intoxicating moment between Thanksgiving and Christmas. In some ways I’ve settled back into the old routine—I fool around on the Internet, go to parties, and eat slab after slab of
Bacon Blast Pizza
—but I’m afraid I’m just whistling in the dark. Things are not the same and they won’t be the same. In early December, I ran into President Richmond in the science library. She was wearing sweatpants and eating ice cream with a fork. I thought, This is a woman who has given up. She hasn’t even bothered to deny any of the wild stories that people are telling about her. I have no doubt that she’ll announce her resignation soon and that William Beckford will be named her successor. This is particularly troubling because, as I have already hinted, Professor Beckford is a shareholder in the Big Anna® corporation (though I should say I have trouble believing that he’s motivated by anything so simple as financial considerations).

The students don’t care who the president is, and why should they? But they notice other changes. One day Burke came home and told me a bizarre story. A football player named Jamari Hall had been sitting in on his “Colonial America” lecture. Everyone knows that football players aren’t supposed to take classes—they are “academic exempt”—and apparently someone had called the Athletic Association to complain. In the middle of class, two men in Tyrants polo shirts crept in and tried to get Mr. Hall to leave.

“So then he started to shout,” Burke told me. “He’s like, ‘I’m just sitting here! I’m just listening!’ Professor Coleman stops talking. We’re all just sitting there watching this thing. So now Hall is shouting, and one of the men is telling us that everything’s under control, they’ll be out of our hair in just a second, and the other guy is taking something out of his pocket and fiddling around with it. I couldn’t see what happened, but I heard a click or like a thunk, almost, and Hall goes quiet and sort of sits back. Then both guys take him under the arms and help him walk out, and all the time we’re just watching this terrible thing happen and no one does anything.”

The football team has been a sensitive subject this fall. First there was the trumped-up and now mostly forgotten Pinkman Scandal. Then they lost four straight games. Now two of their kickers are said to be in locked wards at Tripoli Regional Hospital. The Athletic Association has adopted a “no tolerance” policy with respect to its players.

“What I’m saying,” Burke said, “is I think this guy shot Jamari Hall with a
tranquilizer dart
.”

What about Mr. Pinkman himself? He is supposed to have taken a leave of absence, but I saw him standing in a dark seminar room in Ulster Hall. He was dressed in a lab coat and he didn’t have any shoes on. He tried to get my attention when he saw me peeping in at him, but I pretended not to notice. The door was padlocked from the outside.

So that’s the world we’re living in here at Tripoli. It’s the end of an era. But my own mood is in the toilet for another reason: Megan recently told me that she’s going to enroll in the Field Studies Program on St. Renard next semester.

“Actually,” she said, “I don’t really know why I want to go. To fight against neoliberalism? I’m not sure what neoliberalism is. Maybe I’m chasing after Professor Kabaka? I think it’s mostly just that I need a change. And maybe I can also exorcise some guilt by helping the Renardennes in a small way. I can say, ‘Hey, Big Anna® will nail your ears to the doorpost, but use a condom and you won’t get AIDS.’ ”

My stated mission, at the beginning of this semester, was to discover what student life was really like. I had been a little concerned that my personal feelings and relationships had come to interfere with that mission, but now, as I reflected on the surprise and unhappiness that Megan’s announcement had caused me, I realized that I was simply experiencing the great truth of student life: Student life is about personal relationships. Student life is about other students. I don’t know why I never understood it before.

As for Megan herself, I still haven’t told her how I feel about her, and in some respects I find my feelings hard to put into words. Sometimes I think I’ve fallen in love with her, but at other times I’m concerned about her as any responsible adult is concerned for a young person in distress. In any case, she has come to mean a great deal to me, and I don’t like to think of life without her. I don’t think I could bear any more loss.

I told her that she would have a wonderful time on St. Renard, but I didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, I felt desolate. I especially didn’t want to talk about Professor Kabaka. His name was enough to give me a queasy feeling. It was like all those years ago when I’d first met my wife and she was still engaged to Tom Hassock. She used to complain about him to me, Tom this and Tom that, and I’d feel like throwing up. In addition, I was a little uneasy about Professor Kabaka. I worried that his allegiance was ultimately to ideas and not to human beings.

I went back to the dorm and stood peering out the window into the icy black night. I could smell heating oil in the air. It had been fifty years since I graduated from college and I felt like I still didn’t know who I was or what I wanted. I thought about calling one of my daughters, but I didn’t want to bother my children with these concerns. In the end I called Richard Carlyle, but he was having problems of his own. He said he’d realized that he was an “Ezra Pound fascist lunatic” and now he was trying to atone for this crime of outlook. He was concerned to distance himself from Beckford, whose own fascist ideas, Carlyle said, were procedural and not simply aesthetic.

Meanwhile, Burke was trying his hand at a new poem in the common room. Both he and Lehman had gained weight this semester, and Burke’s whole head seemed to have gotten larger and softer. I knew he was self-conscious about it, so I never gave him a hard time, like Lehman did, but it was true: His forehead was enormous, like the forehead of a sperm whale. It seemed to press down on his tiny eyes and give him a peevish look.

“She’s in love with Professor Kabaka!” I said, although I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“Yeah,” he said. “Jeez, man. Who is?”

I said, “Maybe I’ll go to St. Renard myself.”

“Sure, man. Yeah. You owe that much to yourself.”

I was practically muttering. I said, “What’s stopping me?”

He nodded vigorously, although he had no idea what I was talking about. Then he and I had a shot of white rum. The lights seemed to flicker and I had to sit down. Students always want to take shots. I can hardly stand it.

“Want to hear some of my new poem?” he said. And he began to recite:

My ancestors fought for freedom,

On distant shores, in unfamiliar climes

The bondsman’s chains were strong,

But stronger was his heart and mind.

And all so that one day, in lecture class,

They shoot you with a tranquilizing dart.

My lips of steel between your ribs,

My poison in your heart . . .

“Has anyone explained to you about perspective or point of view?” I said.

“It’s like Carlyle says: My poetry is to be a poetry of revolt. I mean to leave the old devices behind.”

“It’s just that the point of view shifts a few times. You have to think about what’s happening in your poem. There are rules you have to follow or the reader gets confused.”

“It’s called ‘The Dart of History.’ ”

“Sure. That’s a pretty good title.”

“I always start with the title and go from there. Want to take another shot?”

Then it occurred to me that there was no reason I couldn’t go to St. Renard. I had plenty of money. I’d all but quit my job. I could do whatever I wanted. How had I managed to forget these things? And suddenly I was very excited. I could go there to be on hand in case Megan needed help. I could prove to her that I was a man of action like Professor Kabaka.

“I feel like I’m really coming into my own as a poet,” Burke said.

“But you have to think about who the speaker is. Is it the man or the dart? Is it an omniscient third person?”

He shook his head and smiled. “It’s art, man. You’ve got to leave these preconceptions behind.” Then he pointed to the window and said in astonishment, “It’s snowing!”

And it was. A few dusty flakes of snow came wheeling out of the dark sky. We had another shot, and then another.

Maybe it was the time of year or the time of night, but I found myself thinking of my wife. I remembered how she used to make up funny songs when she was doing housework. She used to walk around the house singing in a high piping voice about watering the plants or rearranging the books. Sometimes she sang about me. She sang with great feeling. I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world.

Rather than filling me with longing and sadness, this memory brought me a deep sense of calm. I had lived a rich, full life with someone whom I had loved and who had loved me. Of course I missed her, but as long as I had those memories of her, it seemed like nothing could touch me. I was safe. And I thought maybe this was what revolutionaries like Professor Kabaka must feel like: so solid in their hearts that they were untouchable.

I cast my mind back over the events of the last few months. Undergraduate life can be so innocent and beautiful! Everything happens now and now and now, but at the same time there’s a poignant quality, a sense of time passing, and a sort of nostalgia for things that haven’t even happened yet. When I thought of all the things that added up to that incredible fall—the wine and the music, the sight of Lehman drinking mouthwash, the young man in the toreador’s blouse, the yellow leaves, the smell of an old fireplace, a hustle across wet cobblestones in a dark rain—they all added up to a uniform thing. They were all part of the beautiful idea of that time and that place. Maybe my feelings for Megan were just part of a desire to experience it all more intensely, but who cared if they were?

From: “William Beckford”

To: [email protected]

Date: December 15, 2009, at 3:50 AM

Subject: Memo to Tripoli Community

 

“Everything in the College, Nothing Outside the College, Nothing Against the College.”

Students and faculty of Tripoli College, brothers and sisters of St. Renard, generous benefactors, executives of the Big Anna® corporation, alumni all over the world—beyond the mountains, beyond the seas—listen!

For many months, the wheel of destiny has moved toward the goal. In these last hours, the rhythm has increased and nothing can stop it now. A solemn hour is about to strike.

I have been asked today to serve as acting president of Tripoli College. My name has been put forward by students, by faculty, by alumni, by trustees.

Comrades, I accept.

The enemies of progress oppose my candidacy, but developments in academia, which sometimes are speeded up, cannot be halted any more than the fleeting moment of Faust could be halted. History takes one by the throat and forces a decision. This is not the first time this has occurred in the history of Tripoli!

If this institution does not wish to die—or, worse still, commit suicide—it must provide itself with a new doctrine. This shall not and must not be a robe of Nessus, clinging to us for all eternity, for tomorrow is something mysterious and unforeseen. Nor shall the new course taken by Tripoli in any way diminish the fighting spirit of this institution. To furnish the college with doctrines and creeds does not mean to disarm; rather, it means to strengthen our power of action and make us ever more conscious of our work. Tripoli shall take for its own the twofold device of Mazzini: Thought and Action.

But we stand today at a great moment in our history, and with great moments come great challenges and responsibilities.

For some time, the attention of our administration has been focused on St. Renard. All the work of the program directors who succeeded each other on St. Renard was aimed at strengthening, economically and academically, and always in coordination with Big Anna® Brands, that tiny island—transforming the virgin forest and beaches into fecund land and a beautiful campus for our Proxy College.

Miracles! This word describes what has been done down there.

But liberalism, democracy, and plutocracy have declared and waged war against us and condemned our venture on St. Renard, spreading libelous reports and accusations of gross misconduct even when we were intent upon the work of national renovation which is, and will remain for centuries, the indestructible documentation of our creative will. These accusations must only accentuate that cold, conscious, implacable hate, hate in every dormitory and classroom, which is indispensable for our ultimate victory. But it is because we are certain regarding the grade of moral and intellectual maturity reached by the Tripoli community that we continue to follow the cult of truth and repudiate all falsification.