“Yes, but he was the authority, at least in that room at that time.”
“Sure.”
“And you have to open your mouth, full of all your extracurricular reading, and disagree with him. You have to draw attention to yourself—”
“You know it wasn’t like that.”
“Not to you, Simon. You didn’t see it like that.”
“Oh, and you’re saying that’s how Anna saw it?”
“Everything had been just as it was meant to be. People were politely taking notes and then looking up, taking notes, then looking up, asking the occasional almost rhetorical question. He was pretending to teach, they were pretending to learn, until suddenly you can’t take it anymore. You can’t bear not being noticed—”
“Alex, she didn’t say that.”
“Okay, let’s say she didn’t think that. Let’s say she gave you the benefit of the doubt, that this wasn’t about your need to show off. Still, you have to confront this guy—”
“Hey, Alex, he was the one who was shouting.”
“He was the one shouting but not until you told him, in front of everyone, that it wasn’t Orwell who was wrong; it was him. What did you think would happen when you did this? It was unequivocally confrontational.”
“Hey, he was the one who chose the Socratic method, questions and answers back and forth until he’d led us to a conclusion, his conclusion. Were we meant to just go along with him, nodding like mindless puppets?”
“Anna thought so, didn’t she?”
“No.”
“What did she say when the pompous professor with the cravat started tearing strips off you? What did she say, Simon?”
“How can I . . . I don’t remember exactly what she said.”
“You do remember. She didn’t say anything, did she? . . . Did she?”
“She was afraid.”
“Really? I thought you said she was embarrassed.”
“She was probably both.”
“You’re saying she was afraid lest a visiting professor somehow negatively affect her academic results?”
“He was made permanent.”
“Yes, but she wouldn’t have known that then.”
“You had to be careful. Everybody did.”
“You didn’t though, did you? Simon, listen to yourself. She didn’t come to your defense, and you’re still defending her. Was it reasonable for her to be so fearful? And what was it that so embarrassed her?”
“Me. You’re saying it was me. You’re wrong, Alex. She saw everything for what it was.”
“She did when you explained it all, put it in context.” “She’s not stupid, Alex.”
“No, she’s not. She just wasn’t that motivated to stand up for the Enlightenment, for Western civilization . . . for you. She wasn’t that motivated, and she wasn’t that brave. But she was bright enough, shrewd enough to know which way the wind was blowing. You said she was appalled by everything that appalled you?”
“Yes.”
“And you would have read her essays?”
“Yes.”
“And you would have argued with her about them?”
“No, why would I have?”
“Because she found a way to come to terms with any intellectual fad, any passing ‘ism,’ any doctrine or dogma she perceived to be in vogue.”
“You make her sound like an intellectual whore.”
“Then tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong. She wasn’t an intellectual whore.”
“Tell me you never argued with her about her apparent accommodation with the school of thought that prevailed in the department.”
“We never argued about it.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“And you’re telling me the truth. You did read all her essays?”
“All of them.”
“Well, then, you’ve got me. Maybe she deserves more credit than I’ve given her.”
“No . . . no, no. No, Alex. . . . She doesn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“We didn’t argue about her toeing the line in her essays because . . . because I wrote them.”
“You wrote them? All of them?”
“There wasn’t an essay of hers in that course that I didn’t write, plan, or at least edit. Her father had health problems. She was distracted, needed at home, and—”
“Didn’t she complain when she got the essays back and the marks were bad?”
“Well, they were never all that bad. In fact, initially they were very good. I wasn’t always controversial and even later on, they didn’t want to make her grades so bad that she might be tempted to go outside the department and complain. And anyway, they knew who she was . . .”
“They knew who she was?”
“They knew . . . what she looked like. It didn’t hurt.”
“You think she was marked up because of her appearance?”
“Oh, come on, Alex. Don’t be so naïve. Even deconstructionists have hormones. They just don’t have intellects.”
“And she was willing to let you do this?”
“It’s not how it sounds. She wasn’t lazy. She passed the exams under her own steam. Her father had had a heart attack. She wasn’t stupid, either. She completely understood my problems with deconstruction. She agreed with me.”
“Let me tell you how it sounds to someone who hasn’t spent the last ten years mourning her absence. She was willing to learn without understanding, and she would learn whatever was necessary to get by. No heroics for her. She didn’t need them and, more than that, she didn’t appreciate them. She privately deprecated them. Until one day—and didn’t it seem sudden?—it wasn’t private anymore. She was gone, gone with a pragmatist’s alacrity. She was always a pragmatist. That’s why she married—”
“No, Alex, you’ve got her wrong.”
“Simon, you must know, at least at one level, that your defense of Orwell that day, your virtual crusade against the intellectual tyranny of the department, your passion for literature, maybe even your passion for her—it embarrassed her.”
“No, Alex, you’re wrong. She really agreed with me. And she did love me.”
“She really agreed with you? And she was faithful to your beliefs, all the way to the barricades? As for loving you, you were a young handsome aesthete worth killing time with while she was an undergraduate. But when the academic year ended and graduation approached, it was time to get real. There were no more essays to hand in. Her father had recovered. There was one more trip to the Mornington Peninsula, to Sorrento, and then she was gone. And you were left with Seven Types of Ambiguity, all the crossword puzzles she didn’t finish, didn’t even start, a box of unfinished compilation tapes meant for her, and a need, born way before Anna, a need to exalt an undergraduate relationship to within an inch of your life.”
“Alex, the sequence of events might be right, but your interpretation is all wrong.”
“Simon, will you concede that it’s at least possible that you’re so emotionally involved that your interpretation of what happened might not be entirely trustworthy?”
“Memory of an intense emotional involvement need not be untrustworthy just because it was an intense emotional involvement.”
“But, Simon, you have clung to that relationship even though it ended many years ago. Why? Don’t you ever wonder why? Anna predates Anna.”
“What does that mean?”
“If it was a special relationship, the most special thing about it was you. You’re the one who was so . . . what are the clues? Rare. Ewes at 1, 3, and 5. Seven letters . . . unusual. Your passion, your morality, your intellect, even your coping mechanisms right up to now are exceptional. You read voraciously, you analyze, and you recite Shakespeare, Eliot, Swinburne, and that Turkish—”
“Nazim Hikmet.”
“You memorize them. You are able to remember each of Empson’s seven types of ambiguity. You can, can’t you?”
“I don
’t know.”
“Tell me them.”
“This is pointless. Anyway, you only want an excuse to launch into your spiel on the ambiguity of relationships.”
“I won’t, I promise. Just tell me what Empson’s seven types of ambiguity are—now—in this prison.”
“Alex, what does it prove if I—?”
“What are Empson’s seven types of ambiguity?”
“Okay . . . Ambiguity exists when . . . This is stupid. I don’t feel like indulging my pedantic obsessions right now.”
“Tell me, Simon. Wipe your eyes and tell me. Type one, the first type . . . go on.”
“The first type . . . exists when a word or grammatical arrangement of words is effective in several ways at once . . .”
“Go on.”
“The second type exists when two or more meanings constitute the single meaning of the writer. The third type exists . . . when two ideas are given simultaneously in a pun. The fourth type exists when different meanings combine to make clear a complicated state of mind in the writer . . . Alex, this is—”
“Go on. You’re up to five. The fifth type of ambiguity . . .”
“Alex. I can’t get . . . through this.”
“You can. Take a breath. You’re a remarkable man. But okay, leave the fifth and sixth types. What about the seventh type of ambiguity?”
“The seventh type of ambiguity exists . . . when two meanings are mutually contradictory for the specific purpose of illustrating a fundamental division in the author’s mind . . . Alex, what did you mean when you talked about the need that was born before Anna, to exalt my relationship with Anna?”
“Were you . . . What was it? Were you six years old—?”
“Once, yes, for about a year. What are you talking about?”
“You must have been older than four, surely. Maybe not. Your brothers were outside playing cricket on the beach. Maybe you watched them for a while or maybe you were already old enough to have given that up. They probably had friends with them or perhaps some kids from neighboring beach houses. You weren’t with them. That’s the important point. You were already in prison.”
“Alex, what are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t.”
“You went there voluntarily, a four-, five-, or six-year-old boy, wanting it to be more like a womb than a prison. But in birth as in prison, it’s not uncommon to experience arbitrary violence and be slapped without explanation into a new awareness of some darker reality.”
“This is great, Alex, this stream of consciousness. You’re riffing on my life. That’s what they call it in jazz, you know, riffing. I’m in there somewhere, in the chord progression, perhaps? But the more you improvise, the more I lose the original melody . . . You’re making this up as you go along. I’m impressed, but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Do you?”
“William and May—”
“My parents?”
“Your parents had been arguing fiercely. The older boys were on the beach, playing cricket. Your father had stormed out. You had earlier slunk away from the screaming to shelter in your parents’ bedroom closet. You had fallen asleep there only to be awakened sometime later by the sound of your mother’s sobbing and heavy staccato breathing. You peeked through the crack in the door and saw her lying on the bed in her half-opened robe, her face and hair being caressed by Diane Osborne, the wife in the couple who, in your parents’ mythology, are their closest friends. You were frightened but nonetheless unable to take your eyes off the two women. It was rare enough to see your mother naked, and now here she was physically and emotionally involved with the half-naked Diane Osborne.
“After a while you can hear your father coming down the hall. Something beyond pure cognition, something pre-thought, tips you off that the apparently inexplicable is about to become catastrophic. Should you warn them? There isn’t time and, anyway, what are you warning them of? You don’t even know what they’re doing. You’re not even supposed to be there. You can’t speak. Your breathing quickens, and you watch as your father comes in. You see another example of that which had sent you hiding in the first place. You see that we are not all friends. Your father catches the two women together. He grabs Diane by the hair and pulls her off the bed. You see him hit your mother in the mouth and Diane in the stomach, knocking her to the floor. Then he picks her up as though she were a piece of furniture and places her back on top of your frightened mother who is trying to get off the bed. He shouts at the women, exhorting them to continue what they were doing when he came in. This is where you faint, your little boy’s body spilling out of your parents’ closet and crashing to the floor.
“You remember it, Simon. So do they, all of them—William, May, Diane Osborne—but they don’t ever speak of it. Never. And how you wish they would because until they do there will always be a part of you that thinks it’s your fault. Had you not fallen asleep in the closet you wouldn’t have been there to see it, and if you hadn’t seen it, then it would never have happened. It is as if, like Bishop Berkeley’s God, looking at the tree in the quad when there’s no one about, your looking caused it to be. But if they were to mention it, it would mean that they saw it and then you’d be off the hook.
“That little boy still thinks he caused it all. His brothers knew to play outside. That was the right thing for young boys to be doing, not listening to their parents argue, not listening to all that dissatisfaction pour out of their mouths like water from a fire hydrant that cannot be turned off. And even when he sought to hide in the dark where he would never be found, to hide inside a closet in a room with the shades drawn, in a room meant for sleeping, a room where the grown-ups always went when it was time to be quiet—even then he couldn’t escape from hearing and seeing it all. He was a witness, a witness who knew instinctively to keep his mouth shut. We don’t talk about these sorts of things. We don’t talk about our mother being with other women. We don’t talk about our father’s anger or the strength in his arms and his hands. But even at a tender age we sense the flimsiness of the line separating a witness who doesn’t tell anyone what he saw and an accomplice. When your mother gets quiet each time, when she withdraws to her room, takes to her bed for a day or two or three or four, the boy thinks he knows why. But no one ever says anything, and he just misses her. He wants her. She should have been his ally. She should have understood why he went to hide inside the closet in the first place. But instead, she is either absent in bed in a dark room or absent in all but an impersonation of a mother who is like the other mothers. Not only is she absent but she conspires with her oppressor to be silent about the pain and to reject you, a leaf sensitive to the slightest breath of wind, the slightest drop in temperature, to the briefest look of bitterness across the kitchen table.
“None of this is fair and while you’ve always suspected the unfairness of it, the older you got the more apparent it became. But even the little boy who awoke from a faint to find that his fainting itself had become the drama, even he saw the criticism implicit in the simulated solicitude behind which they all hid, and the injustice outraged him. Always too perceptive to be completely deceived, he wanted someone to tell the truth, someone to show genuine concern for his welfare. But no one did, so you took it upon yourself to expose their hypocrisy, their dissimulation; you took it upon yourself to protect that child. You would arm yourself with books, fortify yourself with knowledge. You would know so much more than them that they would have to admire you, respect you, even fear you, to make up for the love they were never going to give you. And it wasn’t enough to save just that little boy; you were going to save as many children as you possibly could. You were going to save all the children you taught, all of them—the noisy ones, the naughty ones, the scraggly ones with one sweater and two shirts, the fast ones in sneakers and no socks even in winter, the pretty ones with skinny legs who followed you everywhere, and the very quiet ones who still were not used to havi
ng been born. You were in the process of saving the shy little Carlo when someone took him, stole him. And you were devastated, gutted.”
“And, Anna, where is Anna in all this?”
“She was the proof you needed.”
“Proof of what?”
“Proof that you had been saved, that you had grown up and were ready to succeed where your parents had manifestly failed.”
“Alex, sometimes . . . in here . . . I think of my mother now.” “It’s all right. Go on . . . Simon?”
My parents were united mostly by their mutual disappointment. Outside they put on a show for the few petit-bourgeois friends they had, but at home my father would lash out at my mother and she would withdraw into herself, emerging very occasionally to gnaw on her regrets. But the aspirations she had allowed him to thwart were never articulated. To mitigate the loneliness and frustration of her life with my father, she sought solace when she could in the company of another woman. Now, my generation combines its ignorance and its arrogance to conclude that she was ahead of her time. But it is still her time and she has never been ahead, ever. And she never visits me.
13. “Alex, did you tell her he was drowning?”
“Who?”
“Anna. Did you tell Anna that I saved her son from drowning?”
“Yes, I told her.”
“When?”
“When I told her everything, right after you were arrested.”
“Did she believe you?”
“I don’t know. There was so much for her to take in.”
“She can’t have believed you.”
“Why not?”
“I wouldn’t be here now if she’d believed you.”
“You’re still imputing feelings to her that she almost certainly doesn’t have anymore, if she ever did.”
“Tell her again, Alex. Can you tell her again before the committal hearing starts? Tell her to come and see me . . . I’m drowning.”
But he couldn’t. He was not to try to contact her in any way. Gina absolutely forbade it. I think they argued about it. How close they had become. Gina said it could be interpreted as an attempt to interfere with a witness. She said it could leave Alex liable to a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice.