The Novel by James A. Michener
‘Sit down.’
‘You could be edging into dangerous waters if you persist in seeing Jenny Sorkin socially. This is a conservative school, and the slightest breath of scandal, bang! The grenade of propriety explodes.’
‘I went here, Mr. Streibert, remember?’
‘But not as a young professor—teaching women students.’ In the pause he glared at me but I did not back down: ‘American colleges recently, especially those with graduate schools, have been plagued by scandals in which male professors have been charged, sometimes in court, with molesting women students.’
Tull broke into laughter: ‘I’m not the type, Mr. Streibert. You know that. I date Jenny now and then, discussing her work. I’m twenty-two. I know what I’m doing.’
‘And she’s twenty-four. When the woman is older than the man, bizarre things can happen. Such women often start lawsuits just for revenge, if they fear the man is moving off to someone younger.’
‘I’ll take that risk.’
‘But we don’t know who she is—her hang-ups. I have grave doubts that she’s a proper person for you to be affiliated with. It can lead only to trouble, Timothy, and you know I’m concerned only with your own good.’
Suddenly his eyes blazed, he leaped to his feet, and for the first time in our relationship he raised his voice in anger: ‘This is crazy,’ he shouted. ‘Damn it, Mr. Streibert, you’re way out of line.’ I did my best to calm him, but he rushed on: ‘I’m a college instructor with a good track record and a strong book behind me. Lots of people would want me if you care to give me the boot because I’m dating a grown woman just about my own age.’
‘Timothy,’ I said almost pleadingly, ‘you refuse to listen. I’m warning you that a dozen universities have been scandalized recently by—’
‘You already said that,’ he snapped. ‘And in many cases the women were justified and the professors were fired.’
‘Teacher and student,’ I said soothingly. ‘A dangerous mix. And in your case you’d be a prime target, what with your family wealth and all.’
‘You sound like something out of Kafka. A trial with no accusation, no evidence, no jury. I’m going to assume that this conversation never took place.’ And when I sought to continue my warning he became so furious that he responded in a way I believe he must later have regretted: ‘If I understand correctly, Mr. Streibert,’ he said, spitting out my name, ‘you weren’t so meticulous in your small-town morality when you were a student at Columbia and your professor was nearly two decades older than you—and a man.’
It was brutal of him to sneer at my hallowed relationship with Devlan and of course it cut off any further discourse. But before I could rush from the room, a mist covered my eyes and I felt faint. Bumping into the doorjamb as I went I whispered: ‘Professor Devlan died last week. Of AIDS,’ and I left the room. During the next two weeks we did not speak.
* * *
I could not allow our relationship to end in such an ugly way, but I could think of no face-saving way of reinstituting it. Then, one day as we passed in the hall I stopped in front of him and offered congratulations on his able use of my diagram of the House of Atreus. Then I asked: ‘And how’s the new novel going?’ and he said: ‘Painfully. It’s a protracted dialogue, the kind I believe you’d approve.’ I said: ‘I’ll be eager to see it,’ and he said: ‘You’ll be the first.’
One evening about nine, after a meeting with some students, I dropped by Timothy’s room to find the door closed and to hear emanating from behind it the voice of a remarkable woman singer backed up by an orchestra playing music of extreme lushness. The voice was incredible, for it hovered between a deep-throated mezzo and a lighter soprano, rising to lyric heights, then falling away like a golden leaf drifting down or a silvery cascade. I could not determine what language was being sung, but it was clear that Timothy had acquired a compact disk of some remarkable music. Wanting to know more, I pushed open his door and found myself staring at Jenny Sorkin, stretched out on his bed, face down with chin propped on her clasped hands. Timothy was seated in the opposite corner in a chair beside his reading lamp, the disk player at his elbow, the two loudspeakers ranged against the opposite wall. He and Jenny were obviously listening to the song and were in no way embarrassed by my entrance.
‘What’s that music?’ I asked, remaining in the doorway.
‘Songs of the Auvergne,’ Timothy said. ‘A collection of folk songs from Southern France.’
Jenny looked up from the bed: ‘A peasant maid, afraid of growing old without a man, stands on one side of a river and sings to a young shepherd on the other side.’ As we listened to the incredibly beautiful rise and fall of the woman’s full-throated voice shivers ran down my spine; then I heard Jenny saying: ‘That was the voice Ulysses heard when he was lashed to the mast, determined to resist the temptations of the Sirens, who turned men into swine.’
‘With that wonderful deep voice, more like the Rhine maidens luring men to their destruction on the rocks,’ I suggested.
‘Let’s not make it too arcane,’ Timothy said. ‘It’s a woman in love with an abstraction and longing for the real man she sees on the opposite shore of the sea.’
‘I thought you said it was a river,’ I pointed out and Jenny smiled at me in her provocative way: ‘When you’re separated from your man a rill becomes a river, the river an ocean.’
The music so captivated me that the next day I looked into the background of the Auvergne songs and learned that this one, with the curious title ‘Bailero,’ was judged best of the lot; singers loved it and had recorded it in many countries, and how I had missed it perplexed me. But now as I listened to it in my own room on a record made by a French contralto, I realized that it bespoke a passion alien to my experience: the longing of a young woman for a man. Some nights later I went back to Timothy’s room intending to speak with him, but as I approached his door I heard the enchanting music, the same murmur of voices, and I accepted the painful fact that I could not enter that room again.
In this dark period I tormented myself unnecessarily by remaining in my room after my evening sessions with students, listening to Songs of the Auvergne on my record player and imagining Jenny Sorkin singing those enchanting notes that rose and fell like the beating of the human heart while Timothy tended his flock on the other side of the stream. And the tremendous longing of which the human heart is capable overwhelmed me. As midnight approached I experienced a loneliness I had never known before.
It was at this low moment in my life that I began to doubt my usefulness at Mecklenberg, and then Lukas Yoder delivered one more body blow. But to give him credit I’m sure he wasn’t aware that he was doing so. I learned about it accidentally.
One morning as Jenny Sorkin left my class she stopped to say breathlessly: ‘At last I’m beginning to feel like a professional writer.’
‘And what’s happened in our class that occasions that feeling?’ and she said: ‘It’s not your class. Lukas Yoder is taking Timothy and me into New York to meet with his agent, a Miss Crane, best in the business, they say. Believe it or not, she may want to sign me on as a client. Timothy she’s sure to take, but Mr. Yoder has recommended me, too.’ And off she ran, to find Timothy.
I was watching when Yoder drove up in his old Buick, picked up my two students and headed for New York. As I saw them disappear I felt devalued. I had been concerned with two major things: teaching them what good writing is and seeing that they fell into the hands of a strong editor. I’d accomplished both, and now to see them scurrying off with Yoder to attend to a problem on which I might have helped was galling.
During spring break, when the students were gone and I had the college to myself except for secretaries who remained to mail out grades, I enjoyed a string of uninterrupted days in which to assess my bewildering situation. I had fallen upon bad times. Nothing seemed to be going right in either my personal or my professional life. Devlan was dead, leaving me without an anchor. Cistern was also dead, lea
I was walking in the evening dusk beside the Wannsee when I asked myself that question, and I reacted to it as if to a physical blow. In my confusion I sought one of the benches under the trees that lined the lake, and sat there with my head bowed and my hands motionless in my lap. I conducted a brutal self-analysis and came to the conclusion that I’d been afraid to formulate because of its frightening consequences: That’s it, you’re tired of teaching, and you’re merely marking time here at Mecklenberg. I was terrified by what those words signified, for this college had been my home. Unlike other unmarried teachers, I had no house in Dresden or Bethlehem; I’d always lived in one of the dormitories—in a fine suite, to be sure—but I was a prisoner within the cocoon I’d spun for myself. Had I the courage to leave it?
Shaking my head as if to erase that option, I turned to the other damaging weakness I’d been unable to face and said to myself: You’re a critic, Streibert, and you had the possibility of being a powerful one, but you’ve lost your hard focus. I think it started when you were so eager to gain a book contract with Kinetic that you allowed them to talk you into killing your criticism of Yoder. That started the corruption, and what was worse, you stifled your criticism because Yoder had donated so much to your writing program. You’ve preached that the obligation of the writer or the critic is to stand in opposition to society, to help keep everybody honest. But when you faced the pressures of society you crumpled.
I rose, put my hands to my head and cried aloud: ‘The dominoes are falling and I can’t stop them!’
Professor Harkness of the chemistry department came by at this point, and while he did not hear my exact words he could see that I was in distress: ‘Are you all right, Streibert? Your face is gray.’
‘Wrestling with abstractions,’ I lied, and when he asked if he could see me to my quarters I lied again: ‘No, thanks. Too much work. I’m steady.’ And I proved that I was by walking with him a short distance. He was unwilling to abandon me, but I insisted, and when he was gone I flopped onto another bench, and there I painfully drove myself to probe the basic truths about myself.
‘No one’s to blame but me. Not Devlan for having contracted AIDS. Not Timothy for having outgrown me. Not Yoder for having stolen Grenzler before I could get to it. And not the college for having failed to provide me with more challenging students. I’ve failed, and because of a weakness that is unforgivable in would-be critics or leaders of others: I’ve lost forward motion. I’m fighting for nothing. I’m lost in a terrible, deep rut whose sides are caving in on me.
I have never been especially courageous, but I do believe that I’m not afraid to confront the inevitable, so at this low point in my fortunes I sat staring at the lake and, while gritting my teeth, resolved to pull myself out of the rut I was trapped in. Mercifully, words spoken in the past came to console and guide me. The speaker had been Iscovich at Temple: ‘You have a quarter of a century left before retirement. Make those years count.’ On this troubled evening the invitation he had given that I had so cavalierly scorned now seemed alive with promise: It’s a miraculous opportunity to escape the complacency I’ve been lulled into and to stretch myself toward momentous achievements.
Jumping from the bench with newborn enthusiasm, I hurried toward my room to telephone Dean Iscovich to report my decision, but there was one more hurdle to pass before I could claim my freedom. As I ran past the library I suddenly stopped and entered the nearly empty main room from which students had fled for their term break. Nodding to Jenny Sorkin, who labored in a corner, I asked the librarian for the Temple catalog. Tucking it under my arm, I went to my quarters to study the maps showing how the buildings at Temple were distributed haphazardly through North Philadelphia. When I realized that within this confined ghetto there would be no Wannsee, no gardened paths, no rooming houses with spacious quarters, my courage failed: ‘God, Streibert! You must be insane! Such an unfair exchange!’ But then came a voice as clear as if the speaker were at my elbow: ‘Take the first step of your upward climb or forever lag behind.’ Before I could waver again I called Temple and told the dean: ‘Sorry to bother you at home, but I want to join your program. It sounds better and better,’ and he, appreciating how difficult that decision must have been, said quietly: ‘You’ll never regret it.’ But when I hung up and looked out my window to that glorious Wannsee, I knew that in some part of my being I would regret my decision every day of my life. But the real world was calling, and I could hardly wait to direct some Philadelphia sign painter in placing my DOOMED HOUSE OF ATREUS on a Temple wall, The confusions were past. I would be an honest teacher again, an honest critic.
My first task as a free man was not easy, but it could not in decency be evaded. Walking briskly across the campus to President Rossiter’s home, I banged on the door and said: ‘Please excuse this rudeness, but I had to tell you before I lost courage. I’ve decided, sir, that it’s time I moved on. I’ll be leaving at the end of term.’
Having conducted many such interviews, often at his instigation when firing someone, he showed no surprise. Instead he asked me to step inside, then retreated to the hackneyed statements required in such situations: ‘I knew we wouldn’t be able to hold on to a luminary like you forever, Karl. We wish you a world of good luck in your promotion. Where is it?’
‘Temple. New program. Solid funding.’ He was decent enough not to gasp at hearing that he was losing one of his stars not to Princeton or Stanford but to Temple, but his eyebrows did shoot up. ‘Well,’ he said, recovering nicely, ‘big, stable institution. Doing fine work with inner-city young people, we hear. You’ll have a notable opportunity. Our best wishes go with you,’ and four minutes later he ushered me out. But as I left the porch he called after me: ‘Karl, we’ll keep this out of the papers, won’t we? Student outcries when we lose a popular professor can become embarrassing, can’t they?’ and I agreed, for I was happy to be leaving on any terms.
It was in these moments of rebirth that I swore: ‘At Temple, I’ll allow nothing to divert me from trying to steer American writing on an honest course. The two seminars Iscovich has me scheduled to conduct, especially Deconstructionism, the Pathway to Meaning, will be a dialogue with my peers,’ and I returned to my quarters elated.
For some years I’d been in the habit of reading the media pages of the Times, finding bits of inside information that made me feel as if I were a participant in the big games being played in the publishing community. One morning I found more than I bargained for:
Rumors from top sources hint that the proposed marriage of New York’s Kinetic Press to Hamburg’s Kastle has collapsed. Blame is equally allocated, Kinetic wanting more assurances on policy continuation than the Germans were prepared to give, Kastle asking for more business concessions than the Americans could grant. Experts believe that both parties have moved back to square one, with every probability that an American white knight will rescue Kinetic, a house which in the past has published famous native writers and today boasts a list which is so diverse it contains both the elderly best-seller Lukas Yoder and the young iconoclast Timothy Tull. One competitor said: ‘It would be salutary if ownership were kept in this country.’
Before finishing the article, I put in a call for Yvonne, but had no opportunity to convey my anxiety, for she cried in a voice of real agitation: ‘Karl, thank God you called. Can I come down and talk with you?’
‘How soon can you get to the inn?’ When she said she thought she could make it by eleven, I said: ‘Good. Do you want me to assemble Yoder and Tull and maybe Sorkin?’ And she said firmly: ‘Only you. And come with all decks cleared. Military action.’
When she arrived she was more nervous than I had ever seen her and sought to calm herself by ordering an atypical drink: ‘Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.’ When it came she took a
‘What’s happened? You quit? Fired?’
Laughing nervously, she squeezed my hand: ‘No. I’m fine. Just waking up, as a matter of fact. These are days that send one back to fundamentals, and I realize that with both my parents dead and no siblings I’m really alone in this world. I have no real home. And I do not relish the New York I’m seeing. So much of my life centers on this village these days, it’s become my home. I want to live where there are fields, and village policemen, and a corner store whose clerks know who you are.’ She slumped, averted her eyes, blew her nose vigorously. ‘I’m so glad you called when you did. I need judicious counsel and could think of no one in New York to give it.’ She was so distraught, I decided that this was no time to tell her about my decision to leave Mecklenberg.
She launched into a detailed unraveling of the intricate corporate moves that had led to the breakup of the proposed Kinetic-Kastle union. But she had barely begun when she said abruptly: ‘There’s a tape recorder in the trunk of my car. Please fetch it. Here are my keys. I want you to get every word of this—and accurately.’
When I had the machine propped close to us, tape running, she said: ‘You can turn it off for the moment. This next is very confidential,’ so I flipped the switch: ‘I understand that your short book on the younger writers is almost finished?’
‘Yes, and I believe it’s good.’
‘I’m sure it is.’ She tossed off this judgment in her anxiety to get to the real topic: ‘Karl, a fine American publishing house is going down the drain. It’s nobody’s fault, and everybody’s fault. What I want you to do, starting right now—put aside your other work—is to start researching and writing a really strong account of the assassination. I’ll tell you all I know. I’ll arrange for colleagues we can trust to give you long interviews. Get them on tape, and this new material, plus what you already know, which is substantial because you’re more interested in publishing than any of my other writers, can be the backbone of a powerful article. I want you to call it Murder of a Publisher. And I know an editor at The New York Review of Books who is sure to like it. Like many people involved with books, he wants the story out in the open. Now, start the tape.’