Wait a minute. The term isn’t over yet. How many are enrolled?
Four. The dean seemed flustered.
Four? Is that all? Four? Palfrey shook his wattles. I was told the course would draw dozens.
It did a bit better at the beginning.
In that case, just wait until the semester ends and tell him you have to close down the class because of too few funds, Miss Hazlet said. She seemed quite sure of herself. He won’t know he’s been found out; he’s not likely to complain; nothing scandalous has occurred; no breach of our hiring rules has been broken; the fat caucus can’t complain. A lack of students … a lack of students is a legitimate excuse. Even a tenured person can be got rid of without fuss if you eliminate their subject. And there won’t be any story.
I don’t know, Joey heard himself saying, despite his silent vow. I think we should throw the book at him, set an example, use this bad situation to reaffirm our principles, and advertise them. This guy took advantage of our goodwill — society’s, too. Who knows what guff he has been stuffing in the students’ ears. He probably doesn’t know where Ames is.
Well, there is something in what you say … Palfrey paused. [……]
Whittlebauer exposes a mountebank. That doesn’t make for an embarrassing story.
It’s still pretty hard to explain.
It might hurt his furniture business.
I was hoping he would be of assistance with our town/gown relations. And there are members of our board who thought we ought to have geography. Palfry released an unhealthy sigh.
What kind of documents did this man profess to have? It might be worthwhile taking a look at his application.
Skizzen believed that Smullion knew exactly what he was suggesting.
No need, no time, for that. It was, I assure you, in apple-pie order. Palfrey put his palm down on the papers before him. His entire weight assisted in the gesture. It fairly flattened his cup.
Who cares about his furniture business? Would you want to buy a sofa from a guy who pretended to have approval from … what was it? … Ames? There Skizzen was, participating again, inviting scrutiny. He tried to chastise himself but even the spears of fear that struck him intermittently did the trick. Like … like Saint … Saint Sebastian … A vow of silence, made silently, is not worth a librarian’s psst. Could this be the trial of someone else?
President Palfrey, Hazel Hazlet said, addressing the president directly, in forming this present committee, its balance must have slipped your mind. There are two people from music. Isn’t that a bit many for such a small group — if they are to represent the entire faculty I mean.
I formed the committee, Dean Funk said with some asperity. I deemed it a good one. After all, I appointed you to it, and you aren’t even a member of the faculty.
I might only say, Professor Smullion said, that any order an apple pie has, is not likely to be found in nature.
I chose the image because it is American. Do you, sir, have something against that? The president pushed his little pad and little pencil into the center of the table, pocketed the sorry remains of his cup, and rose. I have now been properly advised by the Ethics Committee, and I shall proceed as it has recommended.
No one asked what that was.
The president shouldered his way from the room, followed by the dean who, at this moment, did not appear to have any.
Mort said to Skizz: Boy, do I feel foolish. I was afraid I was going to be in the dock for something I did with one of our secs. A transgression just coming to light, a kind of bolt from the past. Pretty dumb, I guess.
That’s what happens when you carry around a guilty conscience. Even without reason, mind you.
Kit Carson said, to no one in particular: I thought Palfrey was going to carve me up. I was on the committee who let this guy perform his sleight of hand. He used his size like a chef with bacon. Mine was the only no vote. There was pressure on Palfrey from someone — maybe on the board or a rich alumnus — to hire this tub. Well, that’s over. What is a no vote worth around here?
Hazel sat inside her blouse. Her leaves were of the stillness one sees before storms.
Smullion was from science. He merely smiled.
And Skizzen made every elation wait till, out on the quad, he let his relief expire the way a champagne fizzes some delighted skips ahead of its wine.
45
Joey’s joy swept him up, bore him home, returned him to the nursery … the nursery he might have longed to have if he’d ever had one … A line that lived in the nursery—“Here we go round the mulberry bush”—took up an orbit about his thoughts as tunes do, penning them in the way he wanted his students to corral names for memory purposes. Mussorgsky! Ravel! Koussevitzky! But Joey had had his struggle with an obsessive sentence, and he didn’t want another tussle. He determined to play a few good old stompers, and that way drive the nonsensical strain out of hearing. He rushed about the house hunting for the place he had put Songs That Never Grow Old so he could claim the area as his territory, the way space was staked when he and Miriam, awed by the vast emptiness of the house, began playing the territorial game. He found the book resting tableside a single bed in what must have been a servant’s quarter. Then he thought: would a farmer, retiring from the fields to a tiny town, have servants? Weren’t they an urban vice? In any case, why had he wanted to mark this spot? What did former occupants store up here? If this was to be a gold claim, it looked a washout. When he gave its back a negligent push, an awkward rocker, which had come with the house, squeaked like a frightened mouse. Ah-ha. Miriam was contesting him. He saw, on a windowsill, utterly out of place, an empty clay pot sitting in sundust. “The further into the self I go, the less and less of the self I know.” What was that from?
“Never grow too old to dream …” Joey seldom sang, but his voice sounded loud and harsh in this unpleasant room. There were no panels of animal-covered paper on the walls — leaping eagles or soaring deer — no sheep, chalets, no interlacing ivy, to entice anyone to hum an old favorite or prance to a frolicsome “here-we-go” romparound. He would remove his book and cede the territory. The dining room with its many wide windows was the real nursery in the house, and there Miriam tolerated ogling only if it was directed at the plants. Large cookie-deep trays of moist peat covered in Cling-Along crowded up against the windowpanes and soon made their own atmosphere, droplets clinging to the inside of the wrap the way water is drawn to plastic. At first the soil refused to stir. He could never catch a thrusting spear. One morning, the seedlings would suddenly appear, thin-stemmed, tiny, pale green against the dark dirt, a nub of leaf beginning, imperceptibly, to unfold. His fingers were too fat to work the rows. Miriam would warn him every time that these seeds had been scattered, not planted in lines; which left each barren patch still a possibility or an empty chamber. Chance was Lord. Why was that spot unwelcoming, Joey would ask. Wait and see … delicately … it may come … wait and see. Maybe a blade will be drawn. Who knows about those fickle primula …? A few more pushes, as the nurses always say, and perhaps we can persuade a nasturtium stem to show. But don’t play lullabies for these babies. They get no sleep. They have to come up for air. They have to leave their sheath. For them this dirt is deep.
As he raised the book toward eyes that now needed a little help, it came open upon a piano score for “Good-Night, Ladies.” From that opening a scrap of paper slid its yellowing self onto the tight coverlet. Upon this single leaf was carefully inked what appeared to be a poem. Joey felt an immediate pang of recognition. He immediately denied it. He had not written these verses, nor, out of embarrassment or shyness, stuffed them away in this harmless old compendium … had he? He had never rested his eyes upon such a neat and centered sheet. Of course, in the past, he had picked about in this ancient volume like a hungry bird, without care or method, only curiosity and need. Then he wanted to know where Miss Gwynne Withers’s recital choices were. The book classified its contents for easier use under headings like HOME SONGS, LOVE SONGS, HYMNS AND SACRED SONGS. “Good-Night, Ladies” was called a College Song. Which meant it went with beer. On the folded paper, already turning color at the crease, there was a college song indeed, to be sung to the tune of “This is the way we wash our clothes …” It was titled “The Faculty Meeting.”