The Red Door (19 page)

Once by accident he discovered that Carruthers had cheated. A translation which he had handed in had come from a crib. He asked Carruthers whether the translation was his own and the latter,
secure in the knowledge that the crib was not likely to be known to any but a few, denied it. For this he was given five hundred lines and a tongue-lashing in front of the class. Carruthers
regarded him with a certain smiling impudence but said nothing.

Sometime after this his phone had rung incessantly and when he picked it up, a voice at the other end said, amidst the giggling of girls,

‘I am ringing up to discover the meaning of the following words:
Pedicabo et irrumabo vos
. They occur we believe in Catullus. I am a Nigerian scholar and I have to pass an
examination and hearing that you were an authority on these matters and happening to be in town I thought I would enquire. I hope I am not discommoding you in any way.’

He could never actually prove that the voice was Carruthers’, but his hate for Carruthers dated from that night.

This hate was completely irrational, so irrational and blinding that he could hardly bear to look at Carruthers in class. If it hadn’t been for his strong sense of duty he would have got
rid of him, but he decided that he would be fair to the very end. He spoke to him more politely than to the others, but his politeness was chilly though correct. He already was convinced that
Carruthers was dangerous and that neither scholarship nor brilliance could justify evil.

Even at night in the house he could not forget him and his knuckles would whiten on the hammer or the chisel. What seemed to him to make the whole affair even more incomprehensible was that
Carruthers was the offspring of good though rather bewildered parents who had done their best, but had failed mainly because they had left him to go his own way.

Nevertheless, his work was still good. His translation showed not only accuracy but insight. He was going to be the dux of the school and he would most probably win a high place in the Bursary
Competition. Sometimes Trill would consider the rest of the scholars, how they worked hard, how they did all that could be expected of them, how their lives were models of patient virtue, and how
they would never attain a position in the world. This made him angry and confirmed him in his resolution never to go to church. He began to believe that Carruthers was simply lucky, that his gifts
were not his own to dispose of, that he had been born with them though he acted as if they belonged to him alone and by right. The other sloggers showed no envy but rather admiration for one who
was essentially inferior to themselves.

Often Mr Trill would read over the lines from Johnson’s ‘London’:

Perhaps if he had gone out more, perhaps if he had lived like some of the teachers in the outer world, or had a better sense of proportion, what did happen might never have happened. Perhaps if
he had been willing to discuss golf or the painting of houses, the fevers of other people’s children or the mowing of a lawn, perhaps if he had been capable of these things he would not have
done what he did. However, as he himself would doubtless have said, ‘In all true living there is no perhaps.’

Time and time again, Trill did in fact make an effort to forgive Carruthers. After all, hadn’t Johnson himself written at the end of one of his essays:

In spite, therefore, of his dislike of Carruthers which almost amounted to hate, he might still have succeeded in forgiving him if that had not happened which to Trill was the ultimately
unforgivable. He might have lasted out to the end of the session, hating yet controlled; he might have been constrained to admit that he had been confronted not so much by evil as by mischief
(though mischief carried to a higher degree than is usual), if that other event had not happened, which caused Trill’s soul to become as iron and his will inflexible.

One day a fifth year boy was found unconscious in the boys’ cloakroom. He had been beaten about the head with somebody’s boots and so viciously that he was nearly dead. It was Mr
Trill who had found him. That particular day he had been on duty patrolling the corridors making sure that there was no horseplay in the washrooms, and protecting cars and property from vandalism.
The incident must have happened very quickly, probably when he was over at the other end of the school, ‘mooning’ about in the sunshine. When he reached the cloakroom there was no one
there but the boy, who was lying on his back breathing stertorously, his face covered with blood. One of his eyes was black and there were studmarks on his right cheek. His tie was askew and his
jacket open; some of the buttons appeared to be missing. As he looked down at the boy, Mr Trill was at first overwhelmed by horror and then by the most terrible rage. His first reaction was to get
hold of the headmaster, which was done, and the boy was immediately taken to hospital in an ambulance. The police had also been contacted.

Mr Trill was almost sick, but he continued his work with a grim expression and an unusually grim resolve. He had never believed that he was a violent man, but he felt convinced that if he could
discover who had done that atrocious deed, he would have killed him with his bare hands. His mind was tormented by the most strange images. He imagined himself challenging the perpetrator to a duel
with guns or with swords. Later he thought he would simply fight him, and his anger would in itself be sufficient to make him prevail.

He talked to the other teachers about this, and it surprised him that, though all were disgusted with the incident, they didn’t seem to feel it at all. They all condemned the beating by
means of boots but they didn’t appear to feel the boots biting into their own flesh. Some of the younger men used phrases like ‘putting the boot in him’ which apparently was the
practice among city gangsters. None of them revealed that absolute horror and disgust which he himself felt so strongly, but he knew that they would be better at finding out the truth than he
was.

An investigation was immediately set on foot. It was discovered that the boy had owed money to another boy. At first this boy’s name could not be discovered, but eventually he turned out
to be a member of Mr Trill’s own Sixth. He, however, protested that he had not touched the victim and it could be proved that he was nowhere near the washroom at the time as he had been sent
on an errand downtown by one of the teachers.

Needless to say, Mr Trill ceased to speak to him from that time onwards, for he strongly suspected that the boy was lying. What horrified him more than anything else was that the violence had
spread to his own class. His years of teaching the Classics, his concentration on the great thoughts of the world, had failed utterly and completely. It had all ended in a furious scuffle with the
words, ‘Put the boot in him’.

As time went on, more and more facts were uncovered. The boy himself was unconscious for three days and was in no condition to be questioned. Later, however, it was discovered that he had been
attacked by another boy who was in a non-academic class, the latter being immediately expelled after a careful examination. Mr Trill saw him before he left. In fact, he deliberately went to have a
look at him to see what he was like. He had eyes like pebbles – this was the first thing he noticed – and no expression whatsoever. Apart from that, he appeared well-mannered and quiet.
Irony of ironies, he was distinguished by the fact that he wore a school uniform which was not usual in the school. Mr Trill never had occasion to come into contact with this boy and looked on him
as a being from another world, a chimpanzee with a school badge. In a sense, he felt a certain relief. After all, this boy might be the only culprit; this gave him some comfort, though it
didn’t lessen his hate. He was beginning to feel that the world of the classics – peaceful and calm, devoted to verbs and poets, the world of avenues and stoas, of learning and
scholarship – was collapsing all round him in a small vicious dust. Sometimes he would sit by the window of his classroom staring vacantly into space for long periods on end.

So the weeks passed and it appeared that nothing more could be elicited. Eventually, however, after some heart-searching and on the insistence of his parents, the victim told the whole story. He
had in fact owed money and had been threatened with a doing over. He had been frightened, but there was no way in which he could get the money. One day he had been in the washroom by himself (he
had felt rather strange and eerie at the time because it was unusual for the washroom to be so deserted) when this Fourth Former had come in, had immediately without speech or warning butted him in
the head as he was moving away from the sink with the water and soap still in his eyes, had knocked him down and then begun to kick him. The new piece of information was that Carruthers (a friend
of the creditor) had been watching all this butchery while it went on, and, with a smile on his face, had given instructions to the Fourth Former as to how he should deal with his victim.

Trill could imagine it all. He could imagine Carruthers standing there, radiant and handsome, he could imagine the delight which he took in the incident, the way in which he would savour every
single exact drop of cruelty. All this was clear to him. And it also showed Carruthers as he really was, a perverted intelligence, one to whom Virgil, Homer and the rest were merely pretexts for
getting ahead in the world, one whose smile concealed pure and utter evil.

He avoided Carruthers henceforth. The boy sickened him. As he lounged there, calm and relaxed, Trill would sometimes be seized by an almost insane desire to seize him by the throat and strangle
him to death. When he went home at night he would think of what ought to be done. He now believed that Carruthers was a dangerous being and could not understand how others could not see this as
clearly as he did. He was astonished to find that the incident had raised him in the opinions of the girls, who now idolised him more than ever, as if he knew adult secrets that they themselves
longed for but were too shy to investigate. Trill felt that at least the girls would have some veneration for human life, that they would detest one who had not done the attacking but had watched
while someone else did it. The fact that they did not appear to feel any disgust for Carruthers enraged him even more.

At night he brooded. What could he do? What he wanted was a kind of justice which would not be crude but which, on the contrary, would be refined and exact, a justice which would be Greek to its
very essence, as if scholarship itself were taking revenge on one who had violated it with such contempt.

One night between dream and waking it came to him, the perfect solution. It was as if it had been given from the depths of his subconscious, where Virgil and Homer lay together on that sea
bed.

It happened that in order to honour Mr Trill’s long service to the school, the headmaster invited him to present the prizes at the end of term. All his time in the school, Mr Trill had
never asked for anything, had been uncomplaining and dedicated, had shown loyalty far beyond the call of mere duty. The honour was not disinterested since it might show others that their way of
achieving an equal one was to show the same inhuman dedication.

Mr Trill spent the last week of the session (the nights, that is) in the workshop. Hour after hour he spent there. Sometimes he would not emerge till midnight. He was continually consulting
clocks: did he have time? His cheeks became hollow, his eyes had dark circles under them. He hardly slept and he hardly ate. He almost completely ignored his landlady as if he had forgotten about
her.

On the day of the prize-giving, which was a beautiful summer day, he dressed even more neatly than usual and ate a good breakfast. He paid his landlady for the week saying jocularly,

‘Well, I think we’re even if anything should happen to me.’ She wondered about these words afterwards and would often quote them to her friends, the ‘girls’ who
patronised bingo with her. Mr Trill tidied up his books and put them in a big case. He told her that he was going to sell them all as he didn’t need them now (of course she knew that this was
the last day of his work at school, but she was surprised just the same). As he was going out the door he turned as if he were about to say something, but he seemed to change his mind and continued
on his way. He had the silver cup with him, in order to save time, he said. She watched him walk down the road as he had done for so many years, but this time with a strange foreboding as if she
were seeing him for the last time. He did not wave up to her, since he was holding the cup.

The cameraman knelt, the minister decided that perhaps God was not in the ceiling after all, the town clerk retained his military pose, and to Carruthers, the dux of the school
(stepping smartly on to the platform, his cowlick flopping endearingly over his forehead), Mr Trill handed the cup. As Carruthers picked it up (and the organ pealed and the mothers of those who had
not received prizes gazed at him with fake geniality) a needle containing poison punctured his hand, the poison quickly made its way through the bloodstream and, in his moment of triumph, he fell
dead, Trill looking down at him with a detached Greek gaze.

The following lines from Johnson were later discovered inscribed on the cup: