Читать книгу Montesereno - Benjamin W. Farley - Страница 17

Whatever free time Darby thought he had, evaporated the next morning.

“You’re in for a shock this time,” Linda greeted him at breakfast. “A lady’s book club has booked the Inn for the evening. They plan to stay overnight. You’re going to have to be on your toes as well as on your best behavior,” she teased. “Better have something up your sleeve to say! They’re a sharp group, and the liberal warden among them will go for your jugular! She’s something! Let me tell you. You could opt out, except Garnett told them that you’d be here, and what a wonderful conversationalist you are. How’s that for friendship?”

“I can think of several words to say,” he smiled. “Tell me more.”

“Well, they like politics and social issues. They love to travel. Bore one another with pictures of children and grandchildren. They talk about where their kids are going to school, where they’ve vacationed last. Where to find great jewelry at bargain prices, antiques. Who’s divorcing whom! Other than that, they chat about their favorite menus, authors, and always exchange books,” she hummed with good humor. “You’ll survive it, I assure you. They’re just girls, doing what girls do. And don’t get that look in your eye! They’re well heeled, but ladies! There’ll be no Celeste in this crowd. She was a temptress, wasn’t she?”

“You know too much!”

“No! You can always spot a woman on the hunt. They’re eyes and lips give them away, even when they’re only studying you. You’ll be safe.”

“You had me hopeful there for a minute.”

“Just be prepared. I wouldn’t come in for dinner until you have to,” she gave him a knowing look. She smiled before filling his cup with more coffee. “Seriously, Darby, just be your charming self, that’s all.”

Being one’s charming self was hardly a reassuring thought. Darby wandered back to the cottage to peruse its bookshelves. His two favorite women philosophers were Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir. He’d often incorporated their concepts into his lectures and had urged his conservative female students to read them. So, also, some of the guys. He began scanning the bookcase. Huh! There was Arendt’s The Human Condition and The Life of the Mind shelved right alongside Plato’s Complete Works and Heidegger’s Being and Time. He looked for de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, but it wasn’t to be found. Maybe Garnett had it in his office, or in the living room. But whether the erstwhile book club’s appetite cared for such fare, would remain to be seen.

More to his sorrow was Dominetti’s conundrum about good and evil. Why do good people do bad things? Simply writing it off as a facet of inordinate pride or lustful concupiscence missed the point. Nietzsche was closer to the truth with his doctrine of resentment, or Dostoevsky with his horror of humankind’s perversity. Then, of course, there was Arendt herself, who, after the Eichmann trial, stunned the world with her catch phrase: “the banality of evil.” He shook his head. Why do good people do bad things? Out of perversity for certain, yet out of mindless indifference, too. Still, the most disgusting explanation was the one scientists labeled: “the absence of serotonin uptake inhibitors in one’s brain.” But what if closer to the truth people err and make mistakes just because they’re human? Just because “we’re mammals,” he told himself, Homo sapiens with egos and libidos?

Toward five o’clock, a Lincoln Continental, followed by a sleek black sedan, pulled up in front of the Villa and disgorged its cargo of book club members. Darby watched from the Garden as a group of four emerged from the Continental and three from the sedan. Amid laughter and shivers of cold, the women made their way good-naturedly to the entrance. A part of him wanted to assist carrying in their bags, but another voice advised leaving well enough alone. What if the warden resented the offer of a “gallant male” to assist them? Of course there’d be others who’d be grateful. The male in him wanted to help. But his Socratic muse urged caution! Better to walk back to the cottage and read before dinner.

As the hour arrived, Darby entered through the rear hallway door to reach the dining room. On a stand near the stairwell, he noticed a stack of new, glossy covered, hardbacks. He paused to read the covers of several: Goddesses in Everywoman, its tenth anniversary printing; Betty Frieden’s The Feminine Mystique; a collection of essays entitled: Women’s Ways of Knowing; and Susan Douglas’s best-seller: The Mommy Myth. In a separate pile on the floor lay more stacks: bestsellers by Baldacci, Greg Isles, Nora Roberts, Dorothea Benton Frank, Jan Karon, Sandra Brown, and others. A nice mix, he thought. Maybe it would be a pleasant evening after all!

As he entered the dining room, he was surprised to find the table surrounded by the club’s members, all standing as he walked in. “Good evening, Professor!” they chimed, as if on cue. They laughed and watched while he slipped between their chairs and the breakfront to take his seat at the head of the table. Darby lifted his hands, palms up, in gratitude of their respect. “I hate to think what might be coming!” he smiled. “But I approve of the start. Please, be seated!”

All took their seats amidst an immediate outbreak of amiable chatter and glances toward him. Then all grew silent.

He noticed that the woman on his right had remained standing. Quickly he acted to rise, but she placed her left hand on his shoulder. “Please don’t!” she insisted in a firm voice. She was tall, with neck-length black hair, tiny pearl earrings, and a minimum of face powder on her cheeks. Only the thinnest line of red lipstick glistened on her mouth. A rouge patch of fine crowfeet etched the corners of her eyes. With a casual, yet all-knowing glance, she looked about the table and then down at Darby. “Dr. Peterson, Mr. Nelson has told us so much about you. We trust he’s well, and we’re honored to be with you tonight. If our views seem a bit abrupt, please don’t be offended. As you know, times have changed, and, we of the Ernestine Lucie Marie Book Club—as we call ourselves—have dared to change with them. Honestly, we’re looking forward to this, as we’ve only had a few sociologists and psychologists meet with us before, and, of course, one or two writers. We love intense discussions,” she emphasized. “Incidentally, I’m Beverly Wallace Hutchinson, our club’s president.” With something of an awkward gesture, she seated herself.

“I love good stories and novels!” a friendlier voice spoke up to his left, near the end of the table. A younger woman, perhaps in her mid-forties, had leaned forward, just past the woman on her right, to bathe Darby in a warm, trusting smile. Her eyes twinkled in the chandelier’s light. “My name’s Dianne—Dianne Riley. The warden there,” she nodded toward Hutchinson, “doesn’t speak for us all the time. But we do like sincere discussion.”

“That’s right!” added several voices concomitantly.

A slender woman seated immediately to Darby’s left extended her right hand. As he shook it, he noted how long and thin her fingers were. “Anna Pelson,” she smiled. Dark pouches sagged beneath her green eyes. Worry lines furrowed her powdered brow. She noticed that he had observed them. “Two daughters will do that to you,” she smiled with a mother’s wounds in her eyes. “Not even good men can prevent some things,” she stated, as Linda entered with a tray of salads to place around.

“My favorite!” the youngest of the seven piped up. She was seated opposite Dianne. An air of innocence defined her entire countenance. “Waldorf! With raisins and apples!” She looked straight down the table at Darby. “My name’s Amanda. Beverly tells us you’re a retired philosophy professor. I took one course at State and hated it. The professor never got past Plato. ‘By knowing all about Plato,’ he boasted, ‘you’ll know the essence of philosophy.’ All I got out of it was headaches. I made a B+ but had no idea what he was talking about half the time. I majored in biology after that. I’m a lab tech now, and love it. And my favorite author is Anita Shreve. That’s probably more than you want to know.”

“No! Not at all! Plato’s a good place to begin.”

“Well, I wish I knew why?” the young woman responded.

“He had a hunger for something his world didn’t have. Stability, you might call it. Its gods were too fickle.”

“Like today’s men!” someone laughed mid-table.

“No, really, he wanted to believe in something higher, in something reliable in a world that was violent and changing.”

“Keep going!” Hutchinson inserted, with a teasing leer. “You’ve not convinced us yet.”

“Seriously!” Darby replied good-naturedly. “What would life be like without the Good, the True, and the Beautiful? I can see why your professor chose Plato,” Darby smiled toward Amanda. “I wish I had had you as a student. I would have welcomed your dismay. That’s the whole point of philosophy.”

“Well, I never took philosophy or aspired to it,” a fourth woman stated. Her smile seemed genuine and so too her swollen eyes. A bit on the corpulent side, she adjusted her weight in the spindle-back chair. She bent over her salad, obviously hungry. Bangs of dyed blonde hair dangled in her face. “Oh, I’m Mildred Devon!” she paused, while still chewing on apples and raisins. “Incidentally, what’s your view on ‘eugenics’? Does it really go back to Plato?”

“Let me take that!” Hutchinson interrupted. “It has to do with pairing people with compatible partners, based on their genes, especially if their families have had problems with Down-Syndrome offspring, or children with genetic disorders.” Then with something of a smug air, she continued. “Plato based his theory on social classifications. You know, the poor being forced to marry the poor, the brightest the bright, the dumbest the dumb, while the wise, the rich, and the aristocratic to whomever they wished. It was meant to keep women in their place,” she pronounced with emphatic displeasure. “It’s a form of androcracy. Every society has its caste system,” she glanced toward Darby. “Ours is no different. I like de Beauvoir, because she reminds us of how the French bourgeois males deliberately exercised their masculine prerogative to despoil young girls of the lower classes. Of course, the nonsense lives on, like in the case of the Duke of Windsor, or the Prince of Wales, who must, God-forbid, never marry a Commoner!”

“Perhaps we need more wine!” Darby suggested, as he rose politely to pour a glass for whomever wished it. Only the woman with bangs turned him down. “I don’t drink!” she whispered quietly. “But thanks.”

“Her husband’s an alcoholic!” Hutchinson said. “A curse that affects us as much as men, I regret to admit.”

Darby reseated himself, picked up his fork and began reworking his salad. What to say? What not to say? “Whatever brought you together, if I may ask?” he addressed Hutchinson and the fairer pair at the end of the table. “Are you members of the same country club or church?”

“Most definitely not!” Hutchinson replied. “That’s a typical male judgment that feminists reject,” she said with open relish. “To assume that our aspirations are limited to our husband’s social clubs or assemblies is really demeaning. I should have thought that by now any astute male would have grasped that,” she glanced with triumphant gleam about the table. “Well? Isn’t that right?”

You miserable bitch! He bit his tongue. “So there are higher reasons that brought you together? My apologies for being an old-fashioned male.”

“Dr. Peterson,” Dianne interjected. “Personally, I love old-fashioned males. My father was one, and especially my grandfather. They remained clueless about the National Organization of Women or women’s movements in general. But they were loving—blusterous at times—but there when I needed them. However, I know the type Beverly means. I’m an attorney and have to face them down every day: arrogant, self-serving, bullying their staffs around, goading clients to file suits, knowing their cases are unwinnable, but glad to collect retainer fees. We don’t have to be that way, nor do men. That’s part of our mission.”

“Well said!” the women about the table attested.

“I don’t disagree,” muttered Darby. “But as a male,” he smiled with a twinkle in his eye, “you realize, I hate to give up my bourgeois sentiments about women, or their role in society as child-bearers and icons of amorous pleasures!”