Outside my window lay the quadrangle of Ploughwright and although it was still too early to be called Spring, the fountains which never quite froze were making gentle music below their crowns of ice. How peaceful it looked, even at this ruinous time of the year. 'A garden enclosed is my sister; my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.' How I loved her! Was it not strange that a man of my age should feel it so painfully? Get to work, Simon. Work, supposed anodyne of all pain.
As I bent over my desk, my mood sank towards misanthropy. What would happen, I wondered, if I filled out these forms honestly? First: Say how long you have known the applicant. There were few whom I could claim to know at all, in any serious sense of the word, for I saw them only in seminars. In what capacity do you know him/her? As a teacher; why else would I be filling in this form? Of the students you have known in this way, would you rank the applicant in the first five per cent – ten per cent – twenty-five per cent? Well, my dear grantor, it depends on your standards; most of them are all right, in a general way. Aha, but here we get down to cases; Make any personal comment you consider relevant. This is where a referee or resource person is expected to pour on the oil. But I am sick of lying.
So, after an hour and half of soul-searching, I found that I had said of one young fellow, "He is a good-natured slob, and there is no particular harm in him, but he simply doesn't know what work means." Of another: "Treacherous; never turn your back on him." Of a third: "Is living on a woman who thinks he is a genius; perhaps any grant you give him ought to be based on her earning capacity; she is quite a good stenographer, with a B.A. of her own, but she is plain and I suspect that once he has his doctorate he will discover that his affections lie elsewhere. This is a common pattern, and probably doesn't concern you, but it grieves me." Of a young woman: "Her mind is as flat as Holland – the salt-marshes, not the tulip fields – stretching towards the horizon in all directions and covered by a leaden sky. But unquestionably she will make a Ph.D. – of a kind."
Having completed this Slaughter of the Innocents – innocent in their belief that I would do anything I could to get them money – I hastily closed the envelopes, lest some weak remorse overtake me. What will the Canada Council make of that, I wondered, and was cheered by the hope that I had caused that body a lot of puzzlement and confusion. Tohubohu and brouhaha, as Maria loved to say. Ah, Maria!
Next day at lunch in the Hall of Spook I saw Hollier sitting alone at a table which is used for the overflow from the principal dons' table, and I joined him.
"About this book of Parlabane's," I said; "is it really something extraordinary?"
"I've no idea. I haven't time to read it. I've given it to Maria to read. She'll tell me."
"Given it to Maria! Won't he be furious?"
"I don't know and I don't much care. I think she has a right to read it, if she wants to; she seems to be putting up the money to have it professionally typed."
"He's touched me substantially for money to have that done."
"Are you surprised? He touches everybody. I'm sick of his cadging."
"Has she said anything?"
"She hasn't got far with it. Has to read it on the QT because he's always bouncing in and out of my rooms. But I've seen her puzzling over it, and she sighs a lot."
"That's what it made me do."
But a few days later the situation was reversed, for Hollier joined me at lunch.
"I met Carpenter the other day; the publisher, you know. He has Parlabane's book, or part of it, and I asked him what he thought."
"And –?"
"He hasn't read it. Publishers have no time to read books, as I suppose you know. He handed it on to a professional reader and appraiser. The report, based on a description and a sample chapter, isn't encouraging."
"Really?"
"Carpenter says they get two or three such books every year – long, wandering, many-layered things with an elaborate structure, and a heavy freight of philosophy, but really self-justifying autobiographies. He's sending it back."
"Parlabane will be disappointed."
"Perhaps not. Carpenter says he always sends a personal letter to ease the blow, suggesting that the book be sent to somebody else, who does more in that line. You know: the old down-ready-pass."
"Has Maria got on any farther with it?"
"She's beavering away at it. Chiefly because of the title, I think."
"I didn't know it had a title."
"Yes indeed, and just as tricky as the rest of the thing. It's called Be Not Another."
"Hm. I'm not sure that I would snatch for a book called Be Not Another. Why does Maria like it?"
"It's a quotation from one of her favourite writers. Paracelsus. She persuaded Parlabane to read some of Paracelsus and Johnny stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum. Paracelsus said, Alterins non sit, qui suus esse potest; Be not another if thou canst be thyself."
"I know Latin too, Clem."
"I suppose you must. Well, that's what it comes from. Rotten, if you ask me, but he thinks it will look well on the title-page, in italic. A hint to the reader that something fine is in store."
"I suppose it is a good title, if you look at it understandingly. Certainly Parlabane is very much himself."
"I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard. I'm surer than ever that McVarish has that manuscript you didn't dig out of him. I can't get it out of my mind. It's becoming an obsession. Have you any idea what an obsession is?"
Yes, I had a very good idea what an obsession is. Maria.
Sophia.
3
"I've been seeing something of that girl who was here last time you visited me," said Ozy Froats. "You know the one – Maria."
Indeed I know the one. And what was she doing in Ozy's lab? Not bringing him a daily bucket for analysis, surely?
"She's been introducing me to Paracelsus. He's a lot more interesting than I would have suspected. Some extraordinary insights, but of course without any way of verifying them. Still, it's amazing how far he got by guesswork."
"You won't yield an inch to the intuition of a great man, will you Ozy?"
"Not a millimetre. No, I guess I have to hedge on that. Every scientist has intuitions and they scare the hell out of him till he can test them. Great men are rare, you see."
"But you're one. This award has lifted you right above the clutch of Murray Brown, hasn't it?"
"The Kober Medal, you mean? Not bad. Not bad at all."
"Puts you in the Nobel class, they tell me."
"Oh, these awards – I'm very pleased, of course – but you have to be careful not to mistake them for real achievement. I'm glad to be noticed. I have to give a lecture when I get it, you know. That's when I'll find out what the boys really think, by the way they take it. But I haven't shown all I want to show, by any means."
"Ozy, the modesty of you great men is sickening to those of us who just plug along, doing the best we can and knowing it isn't very much. The American College of Physicians gives you the best thing they have, and you demur and grovel. It isn't modesty; it's masochism. You like suffering and running yourself down. You make me sick. I suppose it's your Sheldonian type."