Читать книгу Flam Grub - Dan Dowhal - Страница 12

Chapter 8

For the rest of the week, Flam sleepwalked through his classes, avoiding contact with his classmates, rarely speaking, barely paying attention to the lectures. Despite their vow of friendship, Lucy now seemed to keep their contact outside class to a minimum, but Flam doubted it was because of guilt over his morbidly depressed state. He hypothesized she was either expressing distaste for his unmanly moodiness, or thought he might be trying to exploit her conscience. She would still come to him for homework help, and engaged him in perfunctory small talk during classes, but now always seemed to have something else to do during their spare periods.

Each night, Flam dragged himself back to his tiny apartment, where he would scrape together some half-hearted attempt at a meal, only to leave it largely uneaten. He would sit placidly in the dark, brooding, until his self-pity built up to saturation. Then he would erupt into tears. He tried unsuccessfully to study, and instead was compulsively drawn to one of the thanatological texts he had collected, which dealt extensively with suicide. Flam regularly found himself turning its pages and weighing which form of self-destruction would be easiest and least painful. During this time he slept little, as his mind wrestled with the overwhelming feelings of hopelessness that seemed worst during the smallest hours. By the end of the week, the insomnia had made itself clearly visible in his gaunt appearance, especially the dark circles that were painting themselves ever darker and deeper beneath his blood-shot eyes.

Their last class of the week was Ms. Dichter’s, just after lunch on Friday. Lucy was absent, however, having already made an early start on her weekend. She’s probably rushing off to the arms of her lover, Flam supposed, and the thought dragged him even lower into his gloominess.

On this occasion the poetry professor was in rare form, for the topic of the day was T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and she had no reservations in raving exuberantly to the class about the sheer brilliance of its language, the profundity of its imagery, and its significance in literature’s pantheon.

A short week ago, Flam, who adored the poem, would undoubtedly have been swept up in Ms. Dichter’s enthusiasm. In an attempt to impress Lucy, he would have spearheaded some participation from the students. Now, as he had done all week, he sat as mute and motionless as a cadaver through the entire lecture.

Afterwards, as he shuffled out, Ms. Dichter called after him, “Mr. Grub, I’d like a word with you if I may.” His name, especially the clearly enunciated delivery given it by the professor’s flagrantly dramatic voice, generated, as usual, a couple of titters and snickers from some of the exiting students. A blush swept across the white barrens of Flam’s cheeks as he turned to face Ms. Dichter, wondering what she could possibly want to talk to him about.

“Flam, I don’t like to poke my nose where it may not be welcome,” she began, her voice soft and intimate, “but I’ve got a lot of admiration for you and . . . and . . ..” She faltered trying to find the right words. “Oh, hell, I’ll just come right out and say it. You look dreadful. Frankly, you look like you’re about to become one of your own charges. Let me know if I’m being a big butt-insky but is everything all right with you?”

Flam was caught totally off guard. He coloured brightly and, stammering, began a couple of denials before stopping dead and blurting out, “No, actually, I’m not okay, Ms. Dichter.”

“I notice you and Miss Giles seem to have had a falling out,” Ms. Dichter offered, probing gently around the emotional wound like an experienced surgeon. Flam wondered how on earth she could have known something had changed between Lucy and him, but then realized there would obviously have been signs that any astute observer could pick up on. “Have you two broken up?” she pursued further.

“No . . . I mean, we were never together, at least not like that.” It was an unexpected comfort to be able to talk to someone about the thing that had been weighing so heavily on him, practically tearing his tortured soul apart. Still somewhat embarrassed, but feeling relieved to have landed a friendly ear, he recounted the entire tragic tale.

Ms. Dichter listened attentively, saying nothing, her only visible reaction an occasional sucking of her upper lip. When he had finished, she sighed heavily.

“Flam . . . I don’t want to belittle in any way what you’re feeling because, Lord knows, I’ve had my heart broken enough times, and in my day, destroyed at least one life in the name of love, and I’ll carry that guilt to the grave. But I survived it, and you can too, you’re so young. You’ll get over it. How cliché is that? But trust me, it’s true.”

She studied him to see if her words were having any sort of impact before continuing. “You want another truism? Here’s a little poem you’ve probably heard: ‘If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife.’ Believe me, wiser words were never spoken. I may be a traitor to my gender for saying this, but beware beautiful women. They are like great cats—powerful, striking, an exquisite joy to behold, be it stationary or in motion—but even the tame and well-trained variety can suddenly turn on a man and devour him whole. Unless you know what you’re doing, and are properly equipped, they are best appreciated from a distance.”

Flam sat motionless and crestfallen in his seat, a bent-over mirage of a man trying to digest Ms. Dichter’s meanderings. She seemed to realize she was being somewhat patronizing, or at least abstract, and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry . . . I’m probably not being much help.” A long pause told her Flam was not going to join the conversation, so she leaned over and asked, “May I see it?”

Flam blinked once, twice, confused, until he realized she was asking to see the poem he had written for Lucy. He wondered why she believed he was still carrying a copy of it a week later. Why didn’t she think he’d followed through on the urge, which he had entertained every night, to rend the rhyme into pieces, as well as purge the stored bits from his computer, thereby removing forever from his tortured life all trace of his rhyming folly?

He knew he could simply tell Ms. Dichter he didn’t have a printout of the poem with him. He certainly hadn’t intended anyone other than Lucy to ever read it—except perhaps for their future children, to whom the poem would have become the mainstay of a family legend.

In fact, Flam had been carrying the poem with him ever since Black Monday. Suddenly, he very much wanted Ms. Dichter to read it, if only to reassure him that in writing it he had done nothing wrong. Or, he hardly wanted to admit to himself, perhaps to bestow on him some magical poetic incantation that might yet bewitch Lucy’s heart.

Flam unzipped his knapsack, fished through his notes, and handed Ms. Dichter the dog-eared copy of Lucy’s love poem. The teacher took the page and, deadpan, scanned through its contents. Then, Flam noted with interest, she read it again, this time mouthing the words and tapping a cadence on the floor with her penny loafer. It was as if, on some imaginary stage, she was reciting the poem out loud.

He waited, pale-faced, lips pressed together tighter than a miser’s fist, eyes afire within the sunken shadows of their sockets, acutely aware that a literature professor and respected poet was actually reading his painstakingly crafted words. Suddenly, he wanted desperately to know her honest, critical opinion, not as love’s labour lost, but as a piece of deliberately crafted art. He felt humbled, and a little bit scared, yet hopeful. More importantly, for the first time in days, he was motivated by an emotion other than self-pity.

Ms. Dichter looked up at him and smiled. “Oh, Flam, I’ve known a lot of girls who would have been putty in your hands if this were written for them. Mind you, it’s a little syrupy for my taste, and honestly, dear, no one writes in iambic pentameter anymore, but considering, from what you’ve told me, you’ve hardly put pen to paper at all, this is really quite a remarkable effort. Some of your symbolism is first rate, and you have an amazing gift for language.”

She shook her head sadly. “I can see you’re a real romantic of the old school, which is too bad, because I guess there’s no chance in convincing you to go out tonight and find another girl to wax poetic all over. Frankly, if I were forty years younger and hadn’t permanently locked my loins out of self-defense—not to mention it being frowned upon by the college—I’d drag you back to my place to get all Flamorous with you myself, just to get your chin off the floor and your head back into the game.”

Flam recoiled at the disturbing mental image of grappling in the throes of passion with a woman old enough to be his grandmother. He wanted to protest, but all he could manage was a weak “Lucy . . ..”

“I know, dear. Lucy’s special. It’s not like that with her. There’s no one but Lucy. She’s the real deal. Yada, yada, yada.” She stood up. “Flam, I don’t normally meddle in the personal affairs of my students, especially given the vast majority are a bunch of hormone-crazed, sex-obsessed ignorami. But in the ten years I’ve been teaching here in this vocational wasteland, I’ve never had a student with your breadth and depth of understanding for poetry, even as a critic, let alone—be still, my beating old heart—as a creator. You’re an absolute rarity and a very, very sensitive individual, Flam, although believe me, that’s more a curse than a blessing if you don’t have what it takes to deal with the fallout. I’m sorry love and life have dragged you down, but hang tough, dear.”

She returned the poem and got up to go, but then turned to face him again. “I’ve probably meddled quite enough for one day, but please do me a favour. I know a few words from a cynical, one-foot-in-the-grave lunatic like me won’t change the pain you’re experiencing, but go home and try to put down in words exactly what you’re feeling. Turn that concentration of emotion that’s eating you up inside into a poetic plus, instead of a melancholy minus that will destroy you if you let it.” She gave him one last encouraging smile, and left him to his thoughts.

Back in the solitary gloom of his apartment that night, and reasoning it was far better than lying around and waiting to be overtaken again by another bout of despair, which was already descending upon him like some mental storm front, Flam did indeed take Ms. Dichter’s advice. For the second weekend in a row, he wrote a poem dedicated to Lucy. This time, the words seemed to come much more easily, as if he were lancing an inner boil and letting the pus of emotion come spewing out onto the page. The real effort came afterwards, as he wrestled with the intricacies of wordsmithing, and struggled to lay a conscious stylistic framework and form over the substance of his thoughts.

The task had a therapeutic effect, as undoubtedly Ms. Dichter had foreseen. I guess poetry has the power to move the poet as well as the audience, Flam observed, and filed that knowledge away for future use. By Saturday afternoon, Flam had turned the page on his opus and started cleaning his apartment, tackling his homework backlog, and was contemplating sending something substantive down into his gurgling stomach. He fell asleep that evening in his armchair, fully clothed, with an unopened book on his stomach, and slept for fourteen hours straight, interrupted only by a change of venue to the bedroom, via the bathroom, circa 3 a.m.

On Sunday evening, as was his custom, Flam drove downtown to visit his mother and fulfill his weekly quota of filial obligation, having to wait first for Mary to deplete herself of the host of holy activities the day always bestowed upon her. On this occasion, he shook her somewhat, for instead of offering the monosyllabic reticence Mary normally encountered from her son’s side of the dinner table (forcing her therefore to hold up both ends of the conversation by recounting in excruciating detail every bit of church news and parish gossip), Flam was uncharacteristically vocal. He showed particular interest in the details of how she and his father had met and courted. It was Mary’s turn to become uncommunicative, having long forsaken the painful memories of those sinful days and her fall from grace. She was much more eager to talk instead about her progress on the interpersonal front with Gerald Strait, her long-lost pharmacist, now widowed like herself, and back in the picture.

Flam returned to his studies on Monday morning with all of his previous sense of purpose and indefatigable thirst for knowledge. Although his in-class contacts with Lucy were, at first, still painful, he fought hard not to let himself be sent into tailspins of despondency and self-loathing at the very sight of her. Lucy made this easier by acting noticeably cooler towards Flam. Initially, he thought this had to do with him declaring his feelings for her. He soon realized she had become lackadaisical about her schoolwork in general, and was often visibly distracted with some weighty thoughts of her own during lectures. While she had never been stellar in her scholastic efforts, Lucy’s combination of raw practicality, strong will, and intuitive intelligence had previously allowed her to hold her own academically. She often needed help getting the gist of a topic, but she seized upon it like a pit bull once she understood, and never had to be shown twice. Now it seemed like she was sleepwalking through to the conclusion of the course.

Spring arrived, and the end of the school year was rapidly approaching. A spell of fair weather gave Flam an opportunity to take his books and join the migration of students outside into the fresh air. One day, he stumbled across a choice private spot at the back of the campus, right beside the student parking lot, where a square of hedges had been planted around a memorial to Prentice College’s World War I dead.

There was a small triangular strip between the original line of shrubbery and a new fence that had been built around the student parking lot. The grounds crew, at first unsure how to deal with the spatial oddity, had opted to cut a passage through the hedge at one end, just large enough for them to maintain a strip of grass inside the tiny secluded clearing. Flam found it hard to believe he was the only student who knew about the spot—certainly it was ideal for make-out sessions and dope smoking—but as he continued to frequent his secret enclave daily, he never once stumbled across another occupant, and was grateful for it. At that time of year, the sun penetrated into the little strip during most of the afternoon hours, and the now-venerable hedge was attended by a number of small birds who regularly serenaded Flam with their natural selection of songs.

So well-concealed was anyone sitting or lying down in the secret spot, that on many occasions Flam had been able to eavesdrop on private conversations emanating either from the lawn in front of him or from the parking lot behind the fence.

Most of the time, he made a concentrated effort to ignore the voices. He would roll over and focus doggedly on his studies or his newly resumed explorations into the history and philosophy of death. On one day, during the first week of exams, however, with the spring sunshine trying hard to persuade him to nap, and an exquisitely dull accounting textbook acting as co-conspirator, Flam was stirred from his semi-somnolent state by a loud, familiar voice coming from the parking lot.

“I don’t give a shit what he thinks,” the speaker protested loudly. Flam recognized him immediately as Nolan Paine . . . but the real shocker came a second later.

“I don’t want to start a fight between you and your father,” came a response, and Flam’s jaw dropped when he realized the voice was Lucy’s. He rolled over and stuck his eye to a seam in the fence boards to see if he could discern anything. There was just enough separation to allow him to make out a red BMW Boxster convertible with its top down. His two classmates were seated in the front with their foreheads almost touching. Lucy’s immaculate hair was backlit by the sun, and to Flam’s eyes she had never looked more stunning. They must have just parked here, he surmised, and his heart started to pound wildly when the pieces clicked into place, and he realized Nolan Paine must be the very boyfriend Lucy had talked about.

Flam was staggered. In his imagination, the man who had been able to steal away the heart of his precious Lucy would have to be, by definition, someone extraordinary—tall, muscular, a veritable demigod, but with charm, wit, intelligence, and sensitivity. Not that Paine was necessarily unattractive, and he was further blessed with all the benefits of the best grooming money could buy, but he was mean spirited, self-centred, not to mention a bully and a braggart. Surely Lucy, who could have practically any man she wanted, and like all the members of the class, had been subjected to daily doses of Paine, could not possibly be attracted to someone like that.

“The hell with my father,” Paine was saying. “I’m of age now, and if I want to get married, I’ll damned well get married. I say we do it right after exams.”

Lucy reached over and embraced Paine, pressing her lips against his in a prolonged kiss, then pulling his head down to allow him to explore the splendours of her neckline. As he did so, she looked right past her paramour and off into space. For a second, Flam was convinced she was staring right at him through the crack in the fence. He held his breath and contemplated bolting, but after a second or two, it became evident she was in fact lost somewhere in her own private thoughts.

“I love you so much, Lucy,” Paine was whimpering, “I don’t care if he cuts me off without a penny. You’re all I want.”

Lucy pulled up his chin and gazed into his eyes. “You know I love you too, Nolan. I’d marry you today, but let’s not be impulsive. Your father hasn’t even met me . . . I’m sure once he gets to know me he’ll see I’m perfect for you. Besides, we’ll have all summer to work on him.”

“Okay, but I’m going to buy you the biggest engagement ring Prentice College has ever seen,” Nolan asserted. “That way he’ll know we’re serious.”

That earned another passionate kiss from Lucy. “Oh, sweetheart,” she cooed, “how did I ever get so lucky?”

“Are you sure I’m the one you really want?” Nolan quipped, “I bet you Grub would walk on hot coals for you . . . and write your exam for you too.”

She feigned anger and punched him on the bicep. “Stop it,” she scolded. “I’ve told you we were just friends.”

“Are you kidding? You had him totally Flambéed. The poor guy couldn’t take his eyes off you. Of course, who can blame him?”

Her mood darkened. “I think I really hurt him, but I didn’t expect him to fall for me that hard.” She seemed to be pondering recent events for a bit, and then exclaimed, “My God! Can you imagine being called Mrs. Flam Grub?”

Paine exploded in a huge hyena laugh and Lucy, unable to resist, joined him with her own birdlike titters.

In his hidden spot, Flam was turning red with anger as their laughter seared him. He fantasized about leaping over the fence and pummelling the pair of them, but as always, he stayed meekly and mutely in hiding. He was still sitting there, shaking, after they’d raised the convertible’s top and headed off, hand in hand, into the college. It was the same old story, the same ridicule he’d always encountered, Flam fumed, and his reviled name, as always, at the core of it.

For a brief minute the old dark thoughts came flooding back: quit . . . run away . . . kill yourself! He closed his eyes and fought hard for control, and then a thought crossed his mind—a bittersweet musing with the weightless grace of a bird, and yet the crushing mass of inexorable truth.

Opening his eyes, he glanced at his watch to gauge the time left before his exam, then reached into his binder. Instead of pulling out his school notes, however, Flam tore out a blank sheet of paper. Angrily he jotted down a short, dark poem, which railed against the cruelty of the world to the misfortunate everyman. While not completely satisfying, the exercise had a sufficiently therapeutic effect to enable Flam to pick himself up and get on with life’s business.