"Anyone called for a pulmonary consult?" one of those in the room asked.
"They're all up on pedi, one of the hearts went bad on them. We're next on the list."
I looked around, back along the corridor. There were windows far away, at its end. Lots of windows. Rain washed down them all.
2
That was Tuesday. The day before, our tenth straight day of rain, I made it to Modern European Novel almost on time and, standing in the doorway soaked and adrip, was surprised to find the room filled with students.
Water boiled up everywhere out of the canals and drainage system, streetcars and buses ran irregularly if at all past businesses closed down from flooding, large animals, small cars and children were being swept away, and still these kids showed up to talk about literature.
My childhood bends beside me, too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly: Stephen Daedalus at his teaching. But these (as I kept reminding myself) weren't kids, and comparing our childhoods didn't even make it to apples and oranges.
I remember a musician friend, a guitarist, telling me he got gigs mostly just because he made them, because he always showed up. That was pretty much how I'd wound up teaching English Lit Who's taking Modern European Novel this semester, with Adams off in Berlin? the chair asks at a department curriculum meeting. And someone says how about Griffin over in Romance Languages, fee'sa novelist Does a great job with Modern French Novel. Next thing I know, I find myself on temporary trade, like a ballplayer.
How much of our life occurs simply because we don't step backwards fast enough?
So I find myself quoting, instead of Queneau or Cendrars or Gide, feeling an impostor the whole time, Conrad, Beckett or Joyce. Surely they'll find me out.
I added my own to the line of half-furled umbrellas aslant against the back wall. Likefirearmson a stockade wall, strange trees growing upside down out of pools of water.
"Last class, we were talking about Ellman's biography of Joyce." I pulled out my folder of notes. Water dripped along my sleeve into the satchel's interior. Three spots fell onto the folder itself, raising small blisters.
"In another context, and of another writer, Ellman remarks: 'If we must suffer, it is better to create the world in which we suffer. And this, he says, this is what heroes do spontaneously, artists do consciously, and all men do in their degree.'
"Never has there been, I think, a more determined world-creator than Joyce."
Today we were discussing the Nighttown sequence from Ulysses. In past weeks I had sketched out for them the basic structure of the novel and stood by (I hoped) as they discovered that not only was the book fun to read, it was actually funny: No one ever told us that before, Mr. Griffin. Probably not. Ulysses was offered up to them, to us all, as some kind of intimidating monolith, like those giant gates in King Kong. You had to beat on the drums and chant the right formulas before you'd dare let the beast of Literature loose.
Hosie Straughter had told me about the book years ago. When Hosie died of cancer in '89, body withering down in a matter of months to a dry brown twig, I couldn't think of a more appropriate tribute than to sit that whole weekend rereading Ulysses. Literature was only one of the things Hosie had given me. 1 had my own beasts. Hosie showed me how to contain them.
"The sequence is phantasmagoric, equal parts dream or nightmare and drunken carousing, Freud, E. T. A. Hoffman and vaudeville all whipped up together in the blender. Here, more than anything else, it resembles Beckett's work. Like Beckett's, it's about nothing-and at the same time about everything.
"All the novel's characters and relationships, all the novel's figures, one might even say the whole of civilization-"
"Prefiguring Finnegans Wake." Mrs. Mara. In the front row and a denim miniskirt today.
"Exactly. In the Nighttown sequence all these characters and relationships-real, mythic, imaginary-reappear, maybe resurface is the best way to put it, in various transfigurations."
"Even historical figures like Edward the Seventh," Kyle Skillman said. Limp blond hair, face forever red as though recently scrubbed. A yoke of dandruff when he wore dark clothes.
"Or Reuben J Antichrist the wandering jew." What was this one's name? Taylor, Tyler, something like that. Couldn't remember his ever speaking up in class before.
"But why?" Skillman finished. His aching for a world where everything could break your heart. I found myself wondering, not for the first time, if he might be in some kind of emotional trouble.
"Anyone want to answer Mr. Skillman's question?" I looked around the room. Eyes sank to the floor as though on counterweights. "Mrs. Mara?"
"Obviously dreams are a kind of art, our most personal expression. One of the ways we make sense of our world."
"Or, in a sense at least, re-create it: yes."
Mrs. Mara swung her leg at all of us in approval.
I, for one, beamed at our collective brilliance. But Skillman still looked worried. Loose pieces everywhere.
"Let's look, then, at this most telling of resurfacings from the Night-town sequence: the sudden appearance of Bloom's dead son, which ends it.
" 'Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book in his hand. He reads fromrightto left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.' "
And so our discussion continued for most of the hour, rain slamming down outside, pools of water from umbrellas flowing into one another, Sally Mara helping urge reluctant students from point to point like some fine intellectual sheepdog.
Near the end, Kyle Skillman put down a well-mashed, half-eaten tuna sandwich to raise his hand.
"Sir, you haven't told us when the firsttest will be."
"I wouldn't worry about that just now, Mr. Skillman. There will be a final, at least; perhaps a midterm. Let's just wait and see how things shape up. I'm sure you'll all do fine, whatever.
"Next week, we'll look briefly at Joyce's Wake -no, you're not expected to read it-and segue towards Beckett's Molloy -which you are.
"If there are no further questions, I'll see you all on Wednesday."
I replaced my notes in the satchel. Their own went into briefcases, book bags, folders and accordion files, backpacks.
One by one, umbrellas left their posts at the back wall.
"Mr. Griffin?" someone said as I stepped into the hall. "You have a minute?"
Older than most of them, hair cut close, black suit giving him a vaguely Muslim look. Collarless white shirt buttoned to his neck. Left hand curved around a history text. He held out the right one.
"Sam Delany."
"You're not one of my students."
"No, sir. Though I would be, if my schedule weren't so tight."
"Walk with me? I'm heading for my office. Russian history, huh?"
"I needed another history elective. It fit between Theories of Modern Economy and Dynamics of the Body Social IV. I'm pre-law."
We went down the stairs and into a storage room the school insisted upon calling my office. I shared it with another part-timer who fortunately never used it You got both of us lodged in there, and a student by the door, I don't know how any of us would ever have gotten out "So what can I do for you, Mr. Delany?" I waved him into the chair across from the desk. He was thin enough that he almost fit there. Idly clicked on the computer to see if it might be working today. Nope.
"I've heard a lot about you, Mr. Griffin. You're kind of a hero to some of the students, you know. They look up to you."
I had no idea what to say to that, so I kept quiet.
"I was born across from the Desire projects. First sixteen years of my life, I looked out the window, that's all I saw. Never guessed the world could be any different. Hard to relate to professors with their tenure and Volvos and their nice, safe homes out in Metairie. But you're not like them. You're still out there. Always have been."