Twice Gilley came over to lend a hand; and Avis, now wearing bangs, although still cold to Levin—he had heard from Gerald the poor breast had been successfully operated on-pitched in for a full evening, together with Dr. Kuck. Though there were occasions they all felt they were approaching a definitive find, nothing came of it. One night after closing, as Levin was going down the stone steps of the library, Albert, a few steps behind, made a noise that even in Cascadia sounded like a Bronx cheer. Levin ground his teeth.
He extended his efforts, despite papers to grade and his own
reading piling up; giving every spare minute to the hunt, and some not so spare, devouring volumes of up to fifteen years ago. He read with murderous intent, to ensnare and expunge Albert O. Birdless. Levin saw himself as a man-eating shark cleaving with the speed of a locomotive through a thick sea of words, Albert, a tricky fat eel hidden among them, only his boiling blue eyes visible through the alphabet soup. Levin, in fast pursuit, caught nothing in his toothy mouth and began to doubt he would catch anything. But Gilley cheered him on, though by now Levin was playing with the idea that Albert’s theme had been the work of a talented friend, although how he would rate such a friend was a question. Gerald pooh-poohed the possibility.
In class Levin had given up calling on Albert, even avoided looking in his direction. Then one morning, about ten days after Levin had read the allegedly plagiarized theme, happening to meet the boy’s eyes, the instructor saw they were soiled with worry, and his face had taken on a yellowish cast. Levin felt bad: he had created a victim. Albert might be guilty; if so he had got to where his guilt, by some trick of human drama, rubbed off on his prosecutor. Levin hadn’t the heart to go to the library that day.
He sat in his office trying to decide what to do. If Albert was guilty he ought to be punished, but Levin, though almost positive he hadn’t written the theme, couldn’t prove it. Not having been able to prove it in a reasonable time—reasonable defined by the state of Albert’s sagging nervous system, not to mention ten wasted days for Levin—wasn’t it better to drop the whole business? He could forever go on investigating and finding nothing, creating a perpetual indictment. I’ve got to be quick with a reasonable doubt. He wasn’t excusing Albert but had to stop torturing him.
Levin decided to call it quits. He considered reducing the theme grade to C but couldn’t logically. It was, as a paper, worth A, and once he dropped the matter, A is what it would
get. Albert would recover his contentment, but it was his contentment.
Levin made up his mind over the weekend. On Monday he called the boy to his desk after class. Albert popped on his lid as he approached. He stood near the desk, dully, swaying the slightest bit, not looking at Levin. His breathing was heavy, his breath bad.
Levin spoke through a constricted throat. “Albert, I haven’t been able to prove your composition was copied so I have to assume you’re innocent. Still, if you’re really not, maybe you ought to say so? If you admit it, I’ll drop you from the course without a grade. If you don’t I’m forgetting the matter anyway, and you can stay on in the class without prejudice. The theme will go down for an A.”
Albert’s eyes were lusterless, as a smirk, a skull and crossbones rising on a tugboat’s halyard, by degrees took possession of his face.
“I have no confession at all to make,” he said in a quavering voice. “You tried to make a damn fool out of me and made one out of yourself instead.”
He was about to cry and turned not to be seen, but Levin, unable to confront his image in Albert’s eyes, had turned from him.
That ended it, he thought, until Gilley, seeing him in the hall, called Levin into his office.
“How’s it going, Sy?”
“What?”
“The paper Birdless cribbed. How are you coming along on that?”
“Oh that,” Levin said, scratching his cheek through his whiskers, “I couldn’t prove anything so I dropped it.”
“What!” said Gilley. “Dropped it?”
“I couldn’t prove anything,” Levin explained. “The boy was punch-drunk and turning yellow—his skin, I mean. I thought I’d better drop it.”
“If he looked guilty,” Gilley fidgeted, “that’s because he was. He should have been tracked down and exposed.”
“I tried, you know I did. I neglected everything else.”
“In that case, why don’t you leave his paper with me and I’ll give it some more attention in a day or two?”
“Thanks, Gerald,” Levin said, “but the case is closed.”
“What grade did you give him?”
“An A.”
“Are you crazy?” Gilley stared at him sternly.
Levin was startled. Yet when he looked again, the director of composition was smiling.
“Sy, do you remember what Professor Fairchild told us all in the last monthly meeting? About the procedure to be followed in a case of this kind?”
“Wasn’t it in a different context,” Levin asked, “referring to what to do after guilt was proved? I didn’t prove anything.”
“He said to avoid false pity and stamp this thing out. You and I know that boy is guilty. He should have been nailed or he’ll do it again. I wonder if you have any idea what we’re up against in cheating these days? Not only cribbed papers but all kinds of cheating. Students break into offices for exams. They steal Milly’s wastebasket regularly to see if there are any copies of tests she might have mimeographed; I’ve had to change her lock twice this year. They cheat by every means you can think of. Girls pin notes under their skirts which they modestly lower when a proctor comes along. They hide answers in their brassieres. Some of the boys come with sentences diagrammed on their palms and definitions printed all the way up their arms. They keep notes in their cuffs and socks. One kid even had a kind of invisible ink he used to write with on his shirt cuffs, and a pair of dark glasses he could see the writing with. It’s a regular industry and the only way to lick it is to stamp it out without mercy wherever we find it.”
Levin agreed. “Still, if you’ll pardon my saying this, Gerald, isn’t it—er—partly our fault? I’ve never heard so much talk about grades as I have around here—including the coffee room.
It’s as though grades is what everybody graduates to after batting averages.”
“Oh, come off it, Sy. Let’s not get into complaining about the grading system. We have to have standards. And I’ll bet you’ll find just as much cheating in the liberal arts colleges as we have here. Let’s stick to Birdless’ paper.”
“When I saw how he was beginning to look,” Levin said, “I said to myself a good teacher is a liberator.”
“Sure, but let’s be relevant. You can’t liberate a thief. Once you do he’ll steal again. That was pretty clear from the story Orville told us. That boy cribbed three times in a row. If they didn’t throw him out he’d still be doing it.”
“I said to myself, You can’t indict without evidence, and you can’t indict in perpetuity.”
“You could have got the evidence.”
“I tried very hard.”
“All this disturbs me.”
“It disturbs me too.”
“Then why don’t you let me take the paper over for a couple-three days and ask Avis to finish the job?”
“No, I couldn’t do that.” Levin excused himself and left. An hour later he met Gilley, in good humor, in the men’s room. “Sy,” he said, “something a lot more pleasant. Pauline asked me to invite you to dinner for Friday night. Can you make it?”
Levin tried to think of a way out but couldn’t and accepted.
“Fine, I’ll tell her. By the way, I’ve transferred Birdless out of your class. Avis agreed to take him. You’ll get the drop notice in a day or so.”
Levin, shaking in his clothes, tried to steady his voice. “Did you—ah—transfer him to get at his theme?”
“No,” said Gilley, rubbing his hands with a paper towel, “he came in and asked to be taken out of your class. I did it because, as I said before, there’s no point in perpetuating bad feelings between students and instructors.”
“Don’t you see,” Levin said, “you are destroying my author-city?”
“Now take it easy, Sy. I’ve done nothing of the kind. I respect your point of view but it’s psychologically a bad thing to have a kid in the class of an instructor he says he hates. The student shows his disrespect in his attitude. He might spread all kinds of rumors or lies about you and it would be bad for class morale. You’re well rid of a troublemaker.”
This man is my enemy, Levin thought.
He laughed brokenly.
At the Bullocks’ for cocktails Levin wandered restlessly from one group to another. He listened for a minute with half an ear, then moved on, wondering what he thought he might find in one bunch that he wouldn’t in the next. The house was a stylish split-level on a fashionable western hill, whose large wood-paneled living room could hold thirty without trying and did this Sunday evening in the middle of January. Despite the crowd, with the exception of Avis there wasn’t an unmarried woman around, and Levin thought that grim fact accounted for his dullish mood. People were pairing him off with her, he had noticed, and this explained, he thought, his recent popularity, if not with Avis. The beard seemed to help, making him in some people’s eyes a person he wasn’t. They could have it.
After a short stretch in the garden at sunset, Levin, a mouthful of martini held aimlessly in his hand, sat on the sofa
between Alma Kuck and Jeannette Bullock, Alma again going on about the British Isles, and Jeannette deathlessly attentive, that rare thing, a beautiful woman who managed to be uninteresting. Pauline said she had never got over the fact she hadn’t been to college. Levin noticed that although her legs attracted wherever she sat, she spent five minutes trying to hide them under her skirts, a pity. But she had constructed a lovely garden amid the oaks and fir trees on their property and was said to send everyone a birthday card on his birthday. As Alma talked and Jeannette listened, Levin, escaping from a yawn, had both eyes on Pauline Gilley across the room, standing partly turned from him amid some of the younger wives. She was attractive in a tight black dress. A small veil floating before her eyes from a wisp of hat created a mystery where none had been before. Who was the masked lady? Amazing what entices, Levin thought. Yet when she happened to glance in his direction, her thin-stemmed martini glass like a flower in her fingers, he pretended to be inspecting his new brown shoes. Secretly he continued to watch her. Alma diverted him with a question, and when he got up a minute later and went to Pauline she was gone.
Bullock appeared with his flowing pitcher, dispensing a boffo with every shot. The contents looked like innocent water but packed a hard wallop. People at the party were gay, they enjoyed Bullock’s daring pitcher, a departure from the town’s mores. Some were beginning to dance, a rarity in faculty houses. To dance, Levin had been told, one usually joined a social dancing club. There were dances the last Friday of each month, with extras for holidays. If Professor Fairchild or ex-Dean Feeney was present at a party, soft drinks and sweet green punch prevailed, but none of the older people having been invited, the host freely poured firewater, an empty glass seeming to threaten his security. Surprising the instructor without a glass, Bullock handed him one and aimed the spout, but Levin, worried by the man’s unthinking prodigality, said he had had enough.
“I thought this was a party,” George said. When he was drinking he breathed through a half-open mouth, both eyes verging on vacant. But a sweetness descended on him, and he loved on Sundays those he tolerated weekdays. Levin felt that neither of them took to the other. Bullock invited him because he sensed Levin disliked him, and he came because he couldn’t afford to turn down an invitation. He got none from Bucket or Fabrikant, whom he liked, nor were they ever present at Bullock’s.
“It is,” answered Levin, “but I’ve already had two.”
“That was my last batch. This will dissolve the rust on your gonads, if not the gonads. Have three.”
Figuring he would abandon the glass, Levin let him fill it.
“Nice party.”
George blinked. “Think so? We were late getting off the ground this fall. By now we’ve usually had three or four big blasts, but Jeannette hasn’t been up to it lately—flu plus miscarriage (keep it quiet) et cetera. I also blame the late godawful football season, let it rest. There’s nothing like a consistently losing team to put a damper on your entertaining instinct. It depressed Gerald too.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep. Everybody expected a bang-up season.
Look
predicted a possible Rose Bowl for us, then the roof caved in. We won three out of ten with some of the best material on the coast. The alumni are sore as hell at Lon Lewis, the head coach, and he’ll probably be traded for somebody with a T-formation. I know most of the boys on the squad and I’ll tell you it was no inspiration to see their hangdog pusses in class on Monday mornings.”
“They’re all in your classes?”
“Some are. They have their free choice of instructors.”
“I didn’t mean they didn’t—”
“Anyway,” Bullock said, “exit football, enter basketball. We’ve copped the first four games and look like a shoo-in to take the coast conference. Bought your season ticket?”
“No,” said Levin.
“Tough titty. Keep it in mind for next year. Saves you thirty percent. To the future champs.” He raised his right hand, crossing fingers.
Levin lifted his glass. Remembering the red bumper-strip on Bullock’s station wagon: “Keep Basketball King at Cascadia College,” he drank to a better world.
Like raw gin. He had visions of being picked up drunk in town and fined a hundred dollars and costs.
“Gerald is also affected by a losing team?” Levin asked.
“After some of the rough ones he can’t talk for an hour.”
“Really? Pauline too?”
“She has her moments. Jeannette gets listless.”
“Is that why the Gilleys didn’t entertain much this fall?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me. They like to have people in after a game but didn’t do any of that after the shellacking we got from Cal, right off. He’s the fan, though she keeps him pretty steady company at the big games. Both she and Jeannette say sports take their minds off their worries, whatever the hell they are. Pauline can be a moody dame, and I suppose having two kids all of a sudden is no picnic. Gerald did some lousy duck shooting in December. I’ve never seen him so bad. He’s been worn out.”
“She wears him out?”
Bullock winked. “I didn’t say so but she helps, though last year the kids’ colds knocked them both for a loop. Erik gets everything in the book plus some unidentified bugs. That was on top of the fact that Gerald hadn’t recovered from L’affaire Duffy, the year before.”
“It was that bad?”
“He bore the brunt for more than one reason, one being that Orville folds up his tent and goes home at the first sniff of scandal.”
“It was really a scandal?”
“It amounted to one. Excuse me,” George said, “the place is going dry.” He lifted the spout but Levin withdrew his glass.
“Before you go,” he said to Bullock, “have you seen where Pauline went?”
George looked vacantly around. “Try the upstairs bedroom. When she gets high she sometimes lies down.”
Levin searched the bedrooms and daylight basement but she wasn’t there. Back in the party he saw Avis eyeing him. He headed for the kitchen, slipped behind some people, and sliding open the opaque glass door, walked down six steps to the patio.
Levin sighed at the stars and was at once unexpectedly emotional. An odor of flowers assailed him. Because of the season he thought it was pure imagination, the result of more liquor than he should have had. I’m back in summer, Levin thought, or that far forward, why nobody knows. But he knew that even if he were living in another time he would be wishing for another time. The view in the dark, stars through bare-branched oaks, and the lights of the town below affected him as though he were listening to music. For the first time in years he thirsted for a butt.
Smelling smoke, he looked abruptly around.
In the dim light reflected from the interior of the house he made out Pauline Gilley standing between fir trees with a cigarette in her hand.
“Did I frighten you, Mr. Levin?” She had been watching him.
He went across the lawn to her. “I was looking for you, Mrs. Gilley.”
He told her he felt bad about that time she had come to see him. “Excuse me, I was sick.”
“Don’t you like me?” Pauline asked. Her scent in the cool air was warm. He wished he could see her eyes through the veil.
“On the contrary—”
She waited.
“—I like you,” Levin said.
“Then why didn’t you come to dinner Friday night?”
He nervously fingered his beard. “Would you—er—keep it confidential?”
“I’m awfully good at that.”
“Gerald and I had a disagreement and, frankly, I didn’t feel like accepting his hospitality just then.”
“It was my hospitality too.”
He admitted it.
“What were you annoyed with Gerald about?”
“I would rather not say, some department thing.”
She dropped her cigarette in the grass, stepping on it. “That was a mistake. Now I’m dizzy again.”
He was eager to help. “Can I do something for you?”
She said in a throaty voice, “I should never let George get near me when he’s loose with that pitcher. I can’t keep track of how many I’ve had because he refills after every mouthful.”
“For the sport?”
She gazed at the house. “Doesn’t it look like a ship from here, and here we are, you and I, on an island in the middle of the sea? Or am I high? Are you?”
“I’m not.”
“Excuse me for mentioning it but have you graduated to cocktails? The night we met, you wouldn’t have one.”
“Just a sip or two for sociability. I’m always saying no.”
“Why?”
“Habit.”
“What do you do for sin, Mr. Levin?”
Levin guffawed but came to quickly.
Hugging her arms, Pauline looked down at the lights of Easchester. “I should be home now, little Mary was running a temperature when we left, and I know Erik will have something by tomorrow. Have you seen Gerald?”
“No,” said Levin. “Why don’t you stay a little longer?”
“Should I?”
“There’s a bench in the rock garden.”
“Just for a short while, I have to get back to my children. I
told Zenamae to have them tucked in by seven-thirty but I know they won’t be. Erik gets up after he’s been put down and goes exploring.”
He was surprised, as he followed her across the patio, at her figure from the rear, so much better than he had noticed. The tight dress helped. Her shoulders, long waist and can were very good. Although a bit unsteady she walked with grace.
Where were my eyes? Levin thought.
“Don’t be surprised if I fall,” said Pauline.
“Let me help you.” Levin took her arm and led her to the wooden bench in the rock garden. They sat in the dark, tall trees behind them.
“You look cold.” He offered his jacket.
“I’ll get my coat.”
“I’ll get it,” Levin said. “You stay here.”
“You won’t know where it is. I’ll be right back, you won’t lose me, Mr. Levin,” Pauline laughed.
She walked across the grass as though concentrating on not falling.
Five minutes later Levin was certain she wouldn’t return. He was staring glumly at the stars as she came across the lawn with a coat over her shoulders.
“I’d’ve brought yours if I knew where it was,” she said.
“Why don’t you go in and get it? I wouldn’t want you to catch another cold.”
“I’ve had this winter’s cold.”
“Do you plan everything, Mr. Levin?”
“What I can, I plan.”
“My plans come to not much.”
“Is that so?”
She touched his beard. “Does it keep you warm?”
She’s high for sure, Levin thought. The veil irritated him. It hid as much as it revealed.
“I did have another drink,” Pauline said. “George sneaked up on me when I was inside. I was feeling better and my defenses were down. I hope I’m not really drunk, Mr. Levin,
because when I am I get sick. I don’t want to be sick, please.”
“Sit here till you feel better.”
“My impression of your whiskers that day we met—it was my fault we were late, I was trying to get up my nerve to meet somebody new, would you guess that?—was they were coal black. But they’re really a dark shade of brown. Do you know that beards bring out the quality of a man’s lips and eyes? You have sensitive lips and kind eyes, Mr. Levin.”
“I grew it in a time of doubt,” confessed Levin. “When I couldn’t look myself in the face.”
“Should I become a bearded lady? Unless this veil does the trick. Does it hide me? At least my beastly nose?”
“Ah, but you’re a lovely woman.”
“How sweet of you. I’m not really lovely but I grow on people. I’d be nicer if I were less superficial and more accomplished. Oh, there’s Gerald.”
The glass door had opened and Gilley appeared on the veranda above the patio. He stood there for a wavering minute, a red-headed owl peering into the dark.