No one warned us of the dangers of secondhand smoke in those fearless years—least of all our imbecilic school physician. I don’t recall a single morning meeting that addressed the affliction of smoking! Dr. Harlow had devoted his time and talents to the treatment of excessive crying in boys—in the doctor’s stalwart belief that there was a cure for homosexual tendencies in the young men we were becoming.
I was fifteen minutes early for check-in; when I walked into the familiar blue-gray haze of smoke in the Bancroft butt room, Kittredge accosted me. I don’t know what wrestling hold it was. I would later try to describe it to Delacorte—who I heard didn’t do a bad job as Lear’s Fool, by the way. Between rinsing and spitting, Delacorte said: “It sounds like an arm-bar. Kittredge arm-bars the shit out of everyone.”
Whatever the name of the wrestling hold is, it didn’t hurt. I just knew I couldn’t get away from him, and I didn’t try. It was frankly overwhelming to be held so tightly by Kittredge, when I had just been held by Miss Frost.
“Hi, Nymph,” Kittredge said. “Where have you been?”
“The library,” I answered.
“I heard you left the library a while ago,” Kittredge said.
“I went to the other library,” I told him. “There’s a public library, the town library.”
“I suppose one library isn’t enough for a busy boy like you, Nymph. Herr Steiner is hitting us with a quiz tomorrow—I’m guessing more Rilke than Goethe, but what do you think?”
I’d had Herr Steiner in German II—he was one of the Austrian skiers. He wasn’t a bad teacher, or a bad guy, but he was pretty predictable. Kittredge was right that there would be more Rilke than Goethe on the quiz; Steiner liked Rilke, but who didn’t? Herr Steiner also liked big words, and so did Goethe. Kittredge got in trouble in German because he was always guessing. You can’t guess in a foreign language, especially not in a language as precise as German. Either you know it or you don’t.
“You’ve got to know the big words in Goethe, Kittredge. The quiz won’t be all Rilke,” I told him.
“The phrases Steiner likes in Rilke are all the long ones,” Kittredge complained. “They’re hard to remember.”
“There are some short phrases in Rilke, too. Everyone likes them—not just Steiner,” I warned him. “‘Musik: Atem der Statuen.’”
“Shit!” Kittredge cried. “I know that—what is that?”
“‘Music: breathing of statues,’” I translated for him, but I was thinking about the arm-bar, if that was the wrestling hold; I was hoping he would hold me forever. “And there’s this one: ‘Du, fast noch Kind’—do you know that one?”
“All the childhood shit!” Kittredge cried. “Did fucking Rilke never get over his childhood, or something?”
“‘You, almost still a child’—I guarantee that’ll be on the quiz, Kittredge.”
“And ‘reine Übersteigung’! The ‘pure transcendence’ bullshit!” Kittredge cried, holding me tighter. “That one will be there!”
“With Rilke, you can count on the childhood thing—it’ll be there,” I warned him.
“‘Lange Nachmittage der Kindheit,’” Kittredge sang in my ear. “‘Long afternoons of childhood.’ Aren’t you impressed that I know that one, Nymph?”
“If it’s the long phrases you’re worried about, don’t forget this one: ‘Weder Kindheit noch Zukunft werden weniger—neither childhood nor future grows any smaller.’ Remember that one?” I asked him.
“Fuck!” Kittredge cried. “I thought that was Goethe!”
“It’s about childhood, right? It’s Rilke,” I told him. Dass ich dich fassen möcht—If only I could clasp you! I was thinking. (That was Goethe.) But all I said was “‘Schöpfungskraft.’”
“Double-fuck!” Kittredge said. “I know that’s Goethe.”
“It doesn’t mean ‘double-fuck,’ though,” I told him. I don’t know what he did with the arm-bar, but it started hurting. “It means ‘creative power,’ or something like that,” I said, and the pain stopped; I had almost liked it. “I’ll bet you don’t know ‘Stossgebet’—you missed it last year,” I reminded him. The pain was back in the arm-bar; it felt pretty good.
“You’re feeling dauntless tonight, aren’t you, Nymph? The two libraries must have boosted your confidence,” Kittredge told me.
“How’s Delacorte doing with ‘Lear’s shadow’—and all the rest of it?” I asked him.
He let up on the arm-bar; he seemed to hold me almost soothingly. “What’s a fucking ‘Stossgebet,’ Nymph?” he asked me.
“An ‘ejaculatory prayer,’” I told him.
“Triple-fuck,” he said, with uncharacteristic resignation. “Fucking Goethe.”
“You had trouble with ‘überschlechter’ last year, too—if Steiner gets sneaky and throws an adjective in. I’m just trying to help you,” I told him.
Kittredge released me from the arm-bar. “I think I know this one—it means ‘really bad,’ right?” he asked me. (You must understand that the entire time we were not exactly wrestling—and not exactly conversing, either—the denizens of the Bancroft butt room were enthralled. Kittredge was ever the eye magnet, in any crowd, and here I was—at least appearing to hold my own with him.)
“Don’t get fooled by ‘Demut,’ will you?” I asked him. “It’s a short word, but it’s still Goethe.”
“I know that one, Nymph,” Kittredge said, smiling. “It’s ‘humility,’ isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said; I was surprised he knew the word, even in English. “Just remember: If it sounds like a homily or a proverb, it’s probably Goethe,” I told him.
“‘Old age is a polite gentleman’—you mean that sort of bullshit.” To my further surprise, Kittredge even knew the German, which he then recited: “‘Das Alter ist ein höflich’ Mann.’”
“There’s one that sounds like Rilke, but it’s Goethe,” I warned him.
“It’s the one about the fucking kiss,” Kittredge said. “Say it in German, Nymph,” he commanded me.
“‘Der Kuss, der letzte, grausam süss,’” I said to him, thinking of Miss Frost’s frank kisses. I couldn’t help but think of kissing Kittredge, too; I was starting to shake again.
“‘The kiss, the last one, cruelly sweet,’” Kittredge translated.
“That’s right, or you could say ‘the last kiss of all,’ if you wanted to,” I told him. “‘Die Leidenschaft bringt Leiden!’” I then said to him, taking every word to heart.
“Fucking Goethe!” Kittredge cried. I could tell he didn’t know it—there was no guessing it, either.
“‘Passion brings pain,’” I translated for him.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Lots of pain.”
“You guys,” one of the smokers said. “It’s almost check-in time.”
“Quadruple-fuck,” Kittredge said. I knew he could sprint across the quadrangle of dorms to Tilley, or—if he was late—Kittredge could be counted on to make up a brilliant excuse.
“‘Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich,’” I said to Kittredge, as he was leaving the butt room.
“Rilke, right?” he asked me.
“It’s Rilke, all right. It’s a famous one,” I told him. “‘Every angel is terrifying.’”
That stopped Kittredge in the doorway to the butt room. He looked at me before he ran on; it was a look that frightened me, because I thought I saw both complete understanding and total contempt in his handsome face. It was as if Kittredge suddenly knew everything about me—not only who I was, and what I was hiding, but everything that awaited me in my future. (My menacing Zukunft, as Rilke would have called it.)