Читать книгу The Committee - Sterling Watson - Страница 15

NINE

Stall arrived early for the meeting with Jack Leaf’s class in Murphree Hall armed with the copy of Leaf’s syllabus he had obtained from Helen Markham. The syllabus called for a final exam and a research paper to be turned in on the last day of class. Stall had also used the department’s passkey to unlock Jack Leaf’s office and search for his grade book. The book now lay open on the desk in front of Stall as the first students drifted into the classroom with looks of apprehension and even fear on their faces. It was just human nature, Stall supposed, that these ambitious boys (the Grinds of Summer, he called them) should worry more about their grades than about the death of a professor. There were only five of them, and when they were all seated (all on time, as he had expected), Stall called the roll.

As was his practice when he called a roll, he looked at each face as though memorizing its features. He had found that this pleased the students. He wants to know me. The roll finished, he composed his own face in sadness for Jack Leaf and concern for the apprehensions of these students. “Well, I’m pretty sure you’ve all heard about what happened to Professor Leaf.” He waited while some nodded solemnly and a few mumbled, “Yes.” A boy in the back said, “Can you tell us any more than what we’ve read in the papers?” The boy’s tone was not solemn.

Stall had come here planning to make short work of this penultimate class of a dreary summer term. To tell them how they’d finish their academic work and then get back to his own more pressing business. “Sorry, what’s your name, young man?” Stall looked down at the grade book while the boy said, “Martin Levy.” In the book, a row of As flowed from the name. Stall raised his eyes to the class again. “Thank you for the question, Mr. Levy. I don’t know any more than what has been reported in the papers. It was either an accident or it was intentional. The medical examiner will make his decision based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, all students.”

Stall thought it right to leave the best possible impression of Jack Leaf in the minds of these students. They had spent a summer with the man, and Stall assumed they liked him. Most people did. He said, “Now, let me tell you how I think we should go about finishing this term in the most efficient and equitable way. I’m going to cancel the final.” He waited for what he was sure would be expressions of approval—muted, of course, given the circumstances. Canceling the final was the efficient part of his plan. Next came the equitable part. “I will grade your research papers. I’ve taught this course a number of times, and I believe I’m qualified to evaluate them carefully and fairly. I will—”

“What about the two men who were seen leaving the building just before Professor Leaf jumped?” It was Martin Levy again.

Stall didn’t like to be interrupted by anyone and certainly not by a student. He took a long breath to master the annoyance that had lit up his chest. “I’ve told you all I know, and everything I know has been in the papers. Students reported seeing the two men. Who may or may not have had anything to do with Professor Leaf and what happened.”

“I’ve heard that the English Department knows more about this than the papers are reporting.”

Stall was angry now and sure that his face showed it. “Heard from whom? Give me a name, and I’ll speak to this person and let you know what I find out. Will that satisfy you, Mr. Levy?”

One or two students turned and peered back at Martin Levy as though they thought his questions might complicate the very good deal they were getting with a canceled final exam. Levy looked at his classmates and raised his chin an inch. The gesture said, Make something of it.

Stall said, “Mr. Levy, may I continue to explain how we will finish our work?”

“By all means, sir. Pardon my interruption.”

“As I was saying, I’ll grade your research papers, and I’ll weight them to offset the elimination of the final. I’ve checked Professor Leaf’s grade book, and it seems you’re all doing very good work, so I don’t foresee any problems . . .” Stall tried for some levity: “Unless you bomb the paper.”

A few chuckles, but mostly grim silence.

“These are unusual circumstances, so I want to know now if any of you think this arrangement is unfair.”

Stall’s authority in this matter was absolute. There was nothing any boy could do if he considered the thing unfair, but Stall thought it best to make the statement anyway. He’d have to work with these boys later on. He waited. No one spoke. “All right,” he said, “I’ll take questions about research methodologies if you have any.”

There were no questions.

“Good, then. Show up here next week with your papers in hand and we’ll consider the term finished. I’ll be available during regular office hours if you think of anything you need to discuss with me. And again, I’m very sorry about Professor Leaf, as I know you are too.”

The students filed out, more or less satisfied, Stall thought. He waited as he always did for any double-backs, students who did not want to speak to him in front of their fellows. He was putting on his new coat when Martin Levy came back into the room. Levy was tall and still had some of a boy’s adolescent looseness in his joints. His brown hair was curly and close-cropped, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses that made him look a bit like pictures Stall had seen of Leon Trotsky. He wore a white long-sleeved shirt and tan slacks, and carried books under one arm. He was a good-looking boy in an attenuated, ascetic way. His dark-brown eyes burned at Stall.

“Mr. Levy?” Stall expected the boy to apologize again. It did no student any good to get off on the wrong foot with the assistant chairman of the English Department.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Stall . . .”

“Don’t worry about—”

“. . . but I don’t think you were straight with us about what happened to Professor Leaf.”

Another interruption. And now an accusation. Are you calling me a liar? Stall started for the door. “I’m going to forget you said that, Levy, and I think before we talk again, you’d better reconsider your attitude.”

“I only meant—”

“Keep talking, and you’ll talk yourself right out of this department.”

Stall left Martin Levy standing in the classroom.

* * *

The politics of Florida were simple, as Stall understood them. The state was halved, north and south. The north was called pork chop country because the counties there were small and their populations were sparse. Pork, of course, carried additional connotations, all of them apt. The state capital was in the north, in Tallahassee, and much of the political power was concentrated among the porkchoppers. The north was conservative, often radically so, and the south was liberal. Miami, with its Jewish population, retirees from the big Northeastern cities, many of them former members of trade unions, was the center of liberal politics. To say that there was warfare between north and south was to understate the case. Unfortunately (at least from Stall’s moderately liberal point of view), the north had won elections and had controlled the governor’s mansion and the legislature for most of the twentieth century. If any group with any clout would stand against the Johns Committee and for academic freedom and letting the universities govern themselves within reasonable limits, it would be the lambchoppers, the Jewish community of Miami. They, and sometimes the Miami Herald, would be the strongest voice against Charley Johns and his porkchopping pals in the legislature. This was only one of the reasons Stall had a soft spot in his heart for the Jewish students who made the 350-mile trip up from Miami to Gainesville. Another was that his Presbyterian minister father had instilled in his son the belief that the Jews were God’s chosen people. What they had been chosen for was a matter of endless debate.

As Stall walked from Murphree Hall back to his office in Anderson, tendrils of regret crept into his mind. He’d been too hard on young Martin Levy. By Stall’s standards, the boy had been rude, but where Levy came from manners might be different. And it was entirely possible that Levy, a budding young English scholar, was steeped in the Jewish tradition of midrash, the kind of determined, even angry disputation over the finer points of biblical texts that was, arguably, the earliest form of literary criticism, predating even Aristotle and his Poetics. Stall shook his head as he walked and admonished himself: He’s just a boy. You’ll have to call him in and make this right.

A man fell into step with Stall. “Talking to yourself, professor? I guess it’s true what they say about you intellectuals. Got your head in the clouds.”

The words were mildly insulting, but they were spoken in a jovial, man-to-man tone. Stall turned to see the blond football player looming beside him, at least two inches taller than his six one. Stall stopped walking, and the big man did too. He faced Stall and extended a hand the size of baseball glove. “I’m Cy Tate. Good to meet you, Tom. Frank Vane recommends you highly.”

Recommends me for what? Stall shook the big hand. “Well,” he said, “next time you see Frank, thank him for me. I’m pleased to have his high opinion . . .” Stall got lost in the syntax, “of me.”

Cyrus Tate chuckled warmly. “You and Frank were army buddies, weren’t you?” The big man took a few steps, and when Stall didn’t follow, he stopped and turned back. His voice went low and serious like he was offering Stall a special deal on merchandise of uncertain provenance: “Let’s talk in your office. I think that’d be better, don’t you?”

Better than what? Stall was losing patience. “No, let’s talk right here. I’m sure this will be brief.”

“No, no, it won’t be.” Tate said the words thoughtfully, even kindly, again as though he were doing some kind of favor.

Stall felt the worm of fear turn over in his stomach. “All right, my office then.” He took off striding toward Anderson Hall.

Cyrus Tate caught up quickly and matched him stride for stride until they crossed the threshold of the small office. Stall sat behind his desk, trying to seem at ease. He considered putting his foot up on the lower drawer that he always pulled out for that purpose, but thought better of it.

Tate took the chair in front of the desk that students usually occupied. He moved the chair so that it blocked the doorway. “Shall I close the door? This will be confidential.”

Stall held his hands out, palms down in front of him. They were sweating. “I see no reason for that. As I said outside, this will be brief.”

Tate was well dressed for an ex-cop. His gray summer suit was cut to fit, though his arms and shoulders stretched the material in ways that left no doubt of the power of his body. His silk tie was bright but conservative and, even Stall knew, expensive. He unbuttoned his suit jacket and carefully spread it open across his broad, flat chest and crossed his legs with a masculine ease that told Stall who owned this small space.

He has the gift of ease, Stall thought. Few men have it. He’s ready for anything. And then Stall wondered if the man was carrying a weapon, if the powers conferred by the Johns Committee allowed him to strap on a gun. There were no obvious bulges, but an ex-cop would know how to wear a firearm without making it obvious.

“So, you and Frank were pals in the war. He told me about how you two almost died in that field hospital, how you went to Paris later and had yourselves the time of your lives.”

We had the time because we were alive, Stall thought, remembering how important it had seemed after he had risen from the hospital bed to do something with his youth. Hearing this man talk about that time, reducing it to the clichés a person might use to describe a vacation to the Grand Canyon, Stall felt anger light up his chest again as it had back in the classroom with the kid, Martin Levy. In the winter and spring of 1945, Stall and Frank Vane had been accidentally not killed, accidentally in beds next to each other in a field hospital, and accidentally in the same army truck that hauled fortunate men to Paris on three-day passes. They had been accidental friends for a time, and then they had lost each other. And now this—a big, powerful man named Tate with a badge and possibly a gun, telling Stall that Frank Vane recommended him highly.

Tate took an envelope from his pocket and put it on Stall’s desk. God, Stall thought, not another one. This is beyond Byzantine. His hand leaden, his anger gone, the worm of fear turning again, Stall opened the envelope and removed a photograph.

She had changed, of course, but he recognized her immediately. Brigitte. Her blue eyes seemed smaller, and there were wrinkles at their edges. Her blond hair was thinner and her cheeks were hollow under the high cheekbones that had been part of her beauty in Paris in 1945. Her lips were as wide and full as ever, and they had been what had first caught Stall’s eye, and, as he would have said then, and as he told her then, they were what had quickened his heart on a narrow street near Sacré-Cœur.

He put the picture down on his desktop and looked at Tate, gave the man his bleakest stare. “What does this have to do with me? It was a long time ago. I haven’t seen the woman since 1945. I’ve had no contact with her, not a letter, not a postcard. I don’t understand why you bother me with this. A woman I met thirteen years ago during the war.”

“Well, she wasn’t exactly a woman, for one thing,” Tate said with the look on his face of a man who is a little embarrassed to be splitting hairs. “She was only fifteen years and, let’s see, seven months old. Not even sweet sixteen, as we say here in the States. Did you know that, Mr. Stall, at the time?”

She looked a lot older, Stall’s stunned mind told him. She looked every inch a woman. And I was what, twenty-three?

“Well, you asked me what this has to do with you. Ordinarily, I’d say not much, except for this.” Tate took another photograph from the inside pocket of his tasteful suit coat and put it on the desk in front of Stall.

There was Brigitte, with whom Stall had two of the most glorious nights of his life, standing on a city street holding the hand of a little girl. Again Stall looked up at Cyrus Tate.

Tate said, “It has to do with you if she had your child.”

Stall looked back down at the picture. The little girl could have been anybody’s child, the offspring of any man in the world, but Stall knew beyond any doubt that she was his. It was as though a beam of light were fired from the innermost chamber of the heart of a Frenchwoman, now almost thirty years old, across six thousand miles of ocean, to pierce the stricken chest of Thomas Stall. To split him open. And for a few seconds it was as though Brigitte lay next to him again in the warm narrow bed in the pension with the piano and accordion music drifting through the window from the bal musette across the street, the sad, lovely notes whispering, The child is yours, Tom. She is your daughter.

Stall swallowed and put his heart back together and tried to recover his mind from the narrow bed in a small room that smelled of cabbage soup and cheap wine, and of lovely Brigitte. His voice was a croak when he said, “This is a flimsy excuse for a reason to blackmail a man.”

“I doubt your wife would say that, professor.” Tate reached down and brushed away some invisible lint from the thigh of his gray suit. “Most women would want to know if their little girl had an older sister. By the way, the girl’s name is Françoise. I think that’s how you pronounce it, but you’d know that better than I would. You speak some French, don’t you, professor?”

Cyrus Tate had pronounced the child’s name Frank-wahz, and coming from his mouth it sounded like something a man would cough up and spit out. And Stall could not help noticing the usage of Frank. Was this evangelist investigator, this blackmailer, smart enough, vile enough, to sit here suggesting that Brigitte had named the girl after Frank Vane? Tate’s intelligence was open to question: there was no doubt about his vileness.

“So,” Stall said, his voice still a croak, “what do you want?”

Cyrus Tate stood up and looked around Stall’s little office, the cramped space he hoped soon to leave for the larger domain of the chairman’s office. Tate reached over to the bookcase and pulled a volume of William Carlos Williams’s poems halfway out of the shelf, shook his head, and pushed it back in. He tapped the spine until the row of books was neat and even. “Poetry” he said, “I never did get it. I always asked myself, Cyrus, why don’t they just say what they mean? Why does everything have to mean six things rather than just one? Seemed like a waste of time to me.” He turned back to Stall. “Maybe I should give it another chance now that I’m older. What do you think?”

“What do you want?” Stall repeated.

Cyrus Tate took a long breath and squared his wide shoulders like a man who had done a good day’s work. “I want you to walk across the street to the College Inn and have a cup of coffee with Frank Vane. He’s waiting over there for you.”