The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (18 page)

The night follows, sleep, nocturnal turbulence. It comes again and again, the dawn, you wake up an elephant, unprepared for the day’s little tumbling routines.

He’d learned recently from the papers that Oliver the circus elephant was having a harder and harder time memorizing his tricks. One evening he simply abandoned the arena, completely disoriented. Initially prepared to punish him, the trainer found himself behind the scenes of an even more powerful show; defeated and collapsing on his four giant legs, Oliver sighed and sighed heartrending sighs. Tears poured down his ashen and wrinkled face. Peter gazed at him, troubled, in the mirror.

Another day, a new week under Dalí’s cupola, Dali the ringmaster.

He keeps reading books, magazines, letters. They accumulate, a year’s worth, collecting since the day he plunged into the college in the woods, books, letters from students and professors and the administration, scholarly journals and political appeals and juvenile announcements. Tara’s letter. He didn’t forget where he’d put it, this he didn’t forget. Any indictment should be preserved.

Dear Professor,

My mother called me with my midterm grades …

Why didn’t you give me a “Fail,” or at least an “Incomplete”??? I never handed in the final. Another professor treated me much better-he failed me! I respect him. It’s the first time that someone proved himself honest with me, in terms I’ve established. That’s a relief. Freedom. I was hoping for at least two shameful marks. So I can finally break down. You’ve deceived me.

The prologue described the tone of the rest.

I had even prepared my mother, warning her that I didn’t have much to show for this semester. In response, she sent me lingerie. I wrote to my brother. He responded with a confession: he’s gay. As in, what the hell do I know about depression?! He sent me a box of cookies and my stuffed rabbit from childhood.

Tell me honestly, do you ever fail anyone? Am I too vain to imagine this possibility?

“Careful, my dear vagabond,” says President Larry, “these days the universities are run by the students, their parents, their money,
and their lawyers. Professors are just part of the decor. You wake up, when you least expect it, in a mess you couldn’t have imagined in that sweet penal colony that you escaped.” And if Larry One says this, it must be true.

The extempore professor should inform the dean of any studentrelation problems. That’s what President Larry advises.

Dear Rosemarie,

As I’ve mentioned, Tara Nelson was one of the best students in my class that semester, but she never handed in the final. I gave her a good mark anyway. She’d done extremely well on previous assignments and her oral presentation was very strong. The same with class discussion; she frequently gave a perfect performance.

She has just sent me her final. It’s very good. I am attaching her letter, as promised. Very unsettling! Just like the short telephone conversation I had with her yesterday, just like our short meeting last Tuesday, when she came to apologize for the letter. It is possible she is going through some kind of depression and may need help.

Tara didn’t drop out of college, as she’d planned, nor did she go home for summer vacation. She found a job in the library archives. He ran into her one evening, walking alone along the campus alleys. Then, another time, having a coffee, in the library hall. Then, more regularly.

The yellow envelope appeared one morning in May. Here it was again, even more yellow, on the dawn of a March morning, after almost a year! In the mess that consisted of his papers and memories, the student’s letter could have gotten lost. But it wasn’t lost.

I am sending the final late. The product of an obligation, not of thinking. Does it stink, or does it merely have an odor? It’s not a pedantic difference. A stink is repulsive, an odor merely unpleasant. Dirty lingerie stinks. Old food has an odor. Now that I really think about it, this paper is an inoffensive combination. A faint odor.

Five typed pages, in small font.

In his first year of teaching, Ga
par failed six students in a class of fourteen. After another year, he learned generosity, tolerance, the
humor of the multicultural. The marks varied among sufficient, good, very good, with a plus or minus here and there.

Here’s the final, rambling, banal, redundant. The final itself might not be insipid, but I am furious. And it’s clear with whom I’m furious. I was determined to obtain a beautiful bouquet of bad marks, a real cry for help. And then you come along and decided to be the Lord of Goodwill. A benevolent Hardnose. A kind man. “I’ll give the poor girl a very good, no matter what. She has nice legs, she shows potential, and I have no idea, in fact, where I misplaced her final. In any case, good marks all around.”

Freedom’s spoiled brats! They ask for understanding, politeness, and sympathy, and you get a kick in the ass in return.

I’m in a downward spiral of wretchedness and you offer me sympathy! “Sweet,” would be the right word. You’re sweet, and I hate you for this.

I don’t hate you, I detest you. I detest your sufficiency. You offer an undeserved mark, why? To command respect? Though you seem to be a distracted, absent dreamer, you have an unexpectedly profound relationship to yourself. You seem to be elsewhere, waiting, ready to intersect with the unexpected. Your adroitness and unhappiness seem precious to you. You flaunt your isolation, and that drives me crazy. The only conversation we could ever have would be on terms proposed by you. If those terms are violated, you become eloquent. In fact, the only thing I know about you is that you should shave more often.

What had remained with him from last year’s epistle?
Nice legs.
Yes, those legs are the same.
You should shave more often.
Yes, this is still valid.

The only way to explain the mark you gave me, and the reaction it produced, is to call it ridiculous. Have you ever imagined something like this? Do you care?

What does the beauty from the American woods know about the refugee who doesn’t shave regularly? And what does the wandering elephant know about the grief of the new generation in the New World?

My mother asked me to see a shrink. I slammed the phone in her
ear; I cried, then I laughed. “How can you say you’re afraid of air?” Of air! Air! Yes, of nothing, of nothingness. Next week when she calls me, she’ll have forgotten what she said. I don’t want pity, or empathy, or to be evaluated, as you did. Who do you think you are, to be nice to me? You passed me one morning on the way to the library. You mumbled who knows what. I mumbled something, too. I swore at you! Who gives you the right to be kind to me? I hope it rains on your entire vacation!

Ga
par folds the letter back up and puts it in its yellow envelope, on top of the paper pile. He retreats. The all-forgiving bed. A long and gentle sleep. Saturday, even the Great Anonymous One rests.

P.O. Box 1079. You open it by turning the little disk on the little window, forming the code. If you forget or mess up the code, you can’t open it. You take the little pink card out of your wallet, and you read the instructions. Did you forget or lose the card? The clerk behind the counter looks in her database, finds your name, you receive a new pink card, with instructions. Once, twice, three times. More than that would be too much.

In the end, Tara offered to manage Professor Gaspar’s mail. She was no longer his student, but they were seeing each other frequently. He’d entrusted her with the little card with the number and code, asked her to bring him his mail once a week, on Saturdays, after sorting it. Appeals from philanthropic institutions and commercial companies, invitations to conferences, shows, lectures, political demonstrations for a better world, the colloquium on terrorism, editorial catalogues, the new gym schedule, the list of student drivers, typists, gardeners, painters, IT instructors. The recipient is addressed by his first name, as among old friends. The lack of protocol reminds you that you are counted among the earth-bound, and that they, just like you, receive messages from the terrestrial family.

He wasn’t interested in the ads, and there was no one to send him personal letters. Tara would throw out the useless letters and keep
the useful ones. It was the simple maintenance of junk. The final triage belonged to the addressee.

Saturday, at twilight, Tara knocks on the door. The door opens, Professor Ga
par stands on the threshold and looks out at the snowy wood. He closes the door, turns on the radio. Mozart. Crystalline, like the winter.

Tara takes in the room with a single look, as she usually does, as if seeing it for the first time. A way of entering an event rather than a house. A couch, two armchairs. Bookshelves, folders. The calendar near the telephone. The curtain. The heap of old letters strewn on the table. Where is the imminent event hiding, waiting? The old yellow envelope is sleeping in the nightstand drawer.

Tara approaches the table, unloads the new pile on top of the old pile, throws her jacket on the couch.

Supple, pale, smiling. The youthful mane of her hair gathered into a tail hangs on her shoulder, over her sweater, which is as white as snow. Tight black pants, long legs, in boots. The red painted nail on the index finger points at the table full of papers.

“You didn’t sort anything. Everything I did last week and two weeks ago and this week was for nothing. Better to just throw everything out. We’ll tell Pegg at the post office to give your P.O. Box to someone else.”

“You’re right,” smiled Peter Ga
par. “Done; we’ll decide together! It won’t take long. If I keep putting it off, this garbage will suffocate me.”

He lengthens himself out in the armchair. Props his legs up on the table, the way Americans do. Tara in the other armchair. Between them, the mail of the last two, three weeks.

Tara hands the professor an envelope. If it looks like garbage, he tears it and throws it on the ground, to the left. If it seems useful, he keeps it and throws it on the ground, to the right.

Through the window, the sleepy forest. On the radio, the crystalline child, Mozart. In the facing armchair, the young woman of the New World. The present’s tenant doesn’t quite feel up to the level of the surreal that is being offered him.