For a fearful moment, Kit wondered if she herself knew more than the dean did. “Professor Falin was really afraid of him,” she said, which wasn’t exactly true. “He was.”
“How did Professor Falin know about Mr. Bluhdorn?”
“I told him.” The dean seemed to be twisted inside by feelings she wanted not to show; she held herself erect as for a formal photograph, hand on the back of her big chair, but her white fingers pressed deeply into the leather. “You knew I would.”
“I know you are a very reckless young lady.”
“Why did you let him come here? Mr Bluhdorn. Why did you let him come in here and ask me those things?”
“These aren’t matters I can fully explain. Not to you. Mr. Bluhdorn represents our government. There was no reason at all to question his motives or his, his.”
“Well can you help me reach him? Please.”
“You are not going to see him again. His work here is done.” She clasped her hands behind her and lifted her chin, as though trying to grow taller. “I want you to understand me,” she said. “Everything that was said in this room between you and me and Mr. Bluhdorn was said in the utmost confidence. You are to say nothing at all about anything that took place here, or anything that was asked of you. That’s required, Christa.”
“You shouldn’t have let him come here,” Kit said.
“If you do say anything, anything at all, then what you say will be denied,” the dean said. “You can see why that would be necessary. I’m afraid that no one would believe you in any case.”
Kit turned away, stricken, and went to the door.
“Where are you going?” the dean asked.
Kit stopped but didn’t answer.
“You should know,” the dean said, “that the police will be at Professor Falin’s house this morning. They are going to be making a thorough search; they have told me so. I would think they would be there already.”
She had left her desk and come close to Kit, who backed away; she took Kit’s arm in a red-nailed hand. Kit couldn’t look away; she felt her lower lip tremble, as though she were a child caught in the sudden grip of a hostile adult, knowing nothing but fear and baseless guilt. “Now listen to me carefully, Christa. Your years here at the University could be the best years of your life. Don’t, don’t put them in jeopardy. Do you understand me? I want you to tell me that you understand me.”
Kit held still, refusing assent.
“I will tell you something else,” she said. “And I mean this in the sincerest way. You should break off with your left-wing friends. They’ll do you no good. You can blight your life by whom you associate with. I know this. No matter how smart and capable you are. They’ll always have that on you, a connection like that. And when they have need of you they’ll use it.”
Something had happened to her face, something subtle and terrible. Kit shrank away, extracting herself, in fear and pity.
“You don’t understand,” the dean said. “And maybe you won’t for a long time. But I’ll tell you this. I wish that someone had told me what I’m telling you, when I was young. I wish that very much.”
Outside Kit stood for a moment on the step. She had lost the power to look back or ahead, Epimetheus and Prometheus, she had strength only to act. She started across campus walking fast until the breath stung in her throat, then slowed until her heart ceased to pound, then ran again. At the campus gate where the cars went in and out she stopped again and leaned on the rough stone pillar. College Street ran down from here to town, down to the square and the courthouse, the Woolworth’s and the big hotel. From the drugstore on the corner the Greyhound buses departed. It seemed far away, as though it would recede from her if she tried to reach it.
She did reach it, and at the soda counter asked for a ticket to the capital, the next bus, when would that be? Her fingers trembled as she unfolded crumpled bills from her purse and sought for change to make up the difference. The big freckled woman looked on her with interest, wondering maybe what Kit was running from.
“There. That’s right. Right?”
“Yep. Bout nour.”
“What? Oh. Yes. Thanks. Okay.”
In the drugstore’s phone booth were two phone books, a slim battered one for the college town, a fat one for the capital. The Case Columbia Foundation was listed, and its address; she wrote it on her palm with a ballpoint.
She had watched him on that night, speaking on the Princess phone, putting it down. Would he have done that or had she only dreamed it? He’d put on his coat then and picked up his briefcase; and into it had put all the poems in Russian that he had typed on the Undervud. When they found that briefcase it was empty, they said. And once before she had seen him put his papers into that case, his poems, readying himself for a journey to the capital, and she had wondered why.
One hour. Her heart still thudded as though she had not stopped running. She sat on the last stool of the soda fountain and looked out the window; she had spent all her money on the ticket, she could buy nothing.
It was where he had gone, or where he had been going. If it had not been, maybe they would know, they would know something. She would make them tell her what they knew: what had been done to him, what had been planned for him, what had gone wrong.
A front, Max had said; a shell, just a conduit for funds. She could see it, a blank granite building like a bank, closed dark doors, a brass plaque that said nothing but its name. A front. She would have to pierce it. She would have to believe it could be pierced. And then.
And then beyond it lay another front. Beyond those doors. If she had the courage to do this, now, to go as far as she could, she would only reach a point beyond which she couldn’t go, beyond which she failed.
Beyond the dean of students and beyond Milton Bluhdorn and beyond the Case Columbia Foundation there were other fronts, for powers that went on without an end. And that’s where Falin had gone, where he was able to go, where he had been summoned or had chosen to go. To find them or defy them or to bargain with them. The behind-the-mirror world he had come from was not a place on this earth, and the place to which he had gone, gone back or gone on, it wasn’t either. We have kissed at that frontier he wrote to her. She would never find him or see him again, he would traverse that distance until he was too small to see any longer or even to remember.
She knew then what world she lived in. As though one of the missiles that had not fallen the day before now fell into her depths and there went off, she understood what world she lived in, what sky she lived beneath. They didn’t know it, the colored cars passing and the sham courthouse and the helpless people on the street; Milton Bluhdorn might know it, and Jackie Norden might not, but she knew it, she knew it in her heart’s root and could never unknow it. If she cried out in this world her cry would make no echo.
“You okay, miss?”
“Yes. Yes. I’m okay. I.”
“Need a glass of water?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Kit said. “I’m not going.” She slid from the stool, pulling her jacket around her.
“Well hold on a second. Hey. Don’t go till I give you your money back.”
“Oh. Oh right. Thanks.”
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent. And if it really was omnipotent, what then? What if it didn’t seem to be but was? What kind of being was he, that he could dare to challenge it? He had asked her to let him go and she had, and she felt his leaving as though the vast implosion within her went on and would go on without an end.
It took her a long time to reach Tower 3 again. In the lounge the television was on; and before the single watcher changed the channel, Kit saw again the convertible, the river. Then a scene of divers in black rubber, frogmen, letting themselves down backwards into the opaque waters where he was not.