Pamela Dean (15 page)

Janet's father put up a mild protest, which Janet overrode with, "Which book?"

"Babel-17
," said her mother. "Your father really ought to read it, if only to tell me what's wrong with the linguistics; but I think he'd only throw it across the room."

"Like the ghost," said Andrew, and giggled.

"Yes, the ghost," said their father. "Jan, if you can get those books away from the mysterious and suspicious Peg, I really would like to take a look at them."

"Okay," said Janet. "I assume I could get her to lend me the Arnold or the McGuffey.

I don't have any excuse to borrow the Liddell. So where is
Babel-17
rough?" she asked her mother.

"I'll show you after dessert," said her mother. "Your father hasn't told his news yet."

"One good, one bad," said her father. "The level of idiocy of our entering freshmen is

considerably
down this year—I'm much encouraged. Even the premeds seem to have some glimmerings of grammar in their fuzzy little heads."

"Thanks, Dad," said Janet.

"You're privileged; of course your level of idiocy is less than the average. Now, the bad news. Tyler's got pneumonia and is going to miss most of the term recovering from it; I have the joyful choice of taking his Modern Poetry course or taking over for Davison as chairman so
she
can take his Modern Poetry course. She says the misery of the one is about equal to the misery of the other, so I can choose."

"I think he should take the poetry course," said Janet's mother. "He's
been
chairman; let's have some different misery, at least."

"Sure, take the poetry course," said Janet. "You can have a wonderful time telling them how awful all the moderns are, and comparing them to real poets."

"That, my child, would require first that I read the moderns, second that I have a grasp of what they are attempting, and third that I be able, ideally, to demonstrate both that it is not worth doing and that they are doing it very badly."

Janet's mother began to laugh; Janet stared at her father with a sinking and peculiar feeling. "But you've got a Ph.D.," she said.

"Take it from me," said her father, "it is possible to get a Ph.D. in English while ignoring no less than three literary periods. You must have read
something
in all of them, so as to fling their names about; but you can be quite ignorant of at least three and still do very nicely."

"Which three are you ignorant of?" said Janet.

"The moderns, the whole of the twelfth century, and the Jacobeans," said her father.

"You should have waited until she went to graduate school to tell her," said Janet's mother. "Here, have some pie to soothe your disillusionment."

"I'm not disillusioned," said Janet, accepting the pie just the same, because the lemon meringue pie in the dining halls tasted like lemon Jell-O with chalk in it. "I'm just mad. I thought you knew what you were talking about."

"With regard to what?" said her father.

"Free verse."

"I took three undergraduate courses in it and gave up," said her father. "I've given it a fair try, if you like; but I'm not really qualified to teach it."

"You could tell the students that," said Janet. "Ask them to help out. Ask them to formulate a theory on the spot—well, by the end of the class, anyway."

"Dear Lord, please don't do anything of the sort," said her mother. "It's bad enough when you're suffering from students' theories about poetry you understand. Duncan," she added, very sharply. "You'll hate it."

Janet's father had a glazed look in his eye, and had not yet tasted his pie. Janet felt simultaneously guilty and triumphant. Her father was going to be difficult no matter what he was doing; he might as well spend his time redeeming his faults. She looked at him intently, and after a few moments, during which Andrew bolted his pie, clamored for more, was called a disgusting pig by Lily, stole the crust she had left behind, and, when she accused him, said the dog had taken it, their father stopped staring out the window and looked at Janet again.

"I'll make a deal with you," he said.

Janet eyed him warily.

"I'll teach Tyler's course this term if you'll take it before you graduate."

"Uh," said Janet.

"Maybe he'll die," said Lily cheerfully.

"Lilian,"
said their mother.

"It's a thought I've had myself," said their father, "but it's unworthy. He's a very nice man, Lily-Milly; his taste is warped, that's all."

"Should he take some zinc?" said Andrew.

"Not that sort of taste," said his father. "The literary equivalent of zinc supplements is a very interesting notion, though. Well, Jan, what about it?"

"Okay," said Janet, heavily, "but you have to listen to me complain every single Sunday evening."

"I thought you only wanted to come home every other Sunday," said her mother.

"For that term," said Janet, "I'll make an exception."

She and Lily cleared the table; her mother washed the dishes and Andrew and her father dried them; then she played a game of Snakes and Ladders with Andrew and read him a chapter of
Kim
. When she came out of his room, she looked across the hall to the door of her own room, which still bore in wobbly Elvish letters the adjuration, "Say 'Friend'

and Enter." Janet looked at it for some time. All the rest of her books were in there, and a few garments she was inordinately fond of that she had not thought suitable for college.

"Mellon," she said softly, obeying its command in Elvish, to the closed door. She had painted it pale blue three years ago, and done a good job. It looked blandly back at her, like a summer sky in the early morning. Janet shook her head at it, and marched into the bathroom instead. Lily, who suffered from nightmares and was an early riser, had gone to bed by the time she came downstairs again. It was nine-thirty.

"I think I'd probably better go now," she said. "I've still got some reading to do."

Her parents got up and accompanied her outside, examined the tires on her bicycle, made sure the light worked, hugged her, and waved her off. Back to summer camp, thought Janet.

The yellow leaves still fluttered down in the light of the street lamps. The old, sad, spicy smell of autumn was beginning to overtake late summer's baked scents. A light wind blew from the north with the promise of cold. Maybe she should have cadged another wool blanket; her bedspread wasn't very heavy, and Tina always wanted the windows open at night.

She had never asked Peg or Sharon about those bunk beds. Well, she thought, pedaling faster, I will. I'll make sure Peg and Sharon know that Peg sleepwalks, and I'll ask about the bunks, and I'll ask to borrow those books.

She wrestled her bicycle into the basement of Ericson and went slowly up all the stairs. The first floor smelled of popcorn, the second of cider, the third of some sweet and vaguely sickly thing she did not recognize, and the fourth of pizza. Janet went along to the lounge, and found Nick and Tina and Robin and Molly sitting around in a litter of soda bottles and white cardboard boxes spotted with tomato and bits of cheese. They hailed her enthusiastically and offered her the last limp slice and a bottle of orange soda. Janet accepted the soda, and watched with amusement as Tina moved to the middle of the sofa she was sharing with Nick so that Janet could sit on the end.

"So how's your family?" said Molly.

"Very much themselves," said Janet. She grinned. "My father's got to teach Modern Poetry this term, because Tyler's sick; I wish there were some way I could add it."

"I thought you hated the moderns."

"So does my father."

"What period?" said Nick, confusing Janet momentarily. Oh. He meant the time the class met. "I don't know," she said.

"I'll look into it," said Nick, "and give you a report."

"I told him about the piper," said Janet, "and he said they used to be chosen by committee."

"Oh, they still are," said Robin, "and a very select one it is, too."

Molly rolled her eyes at him; he looked first puzzled, and then a little affronted.

"That reminds me," said Janet, getting up again, "I want to ask Peg and Sharon something before they go to bed. I'll be right back."

She walked down the hall, turned into the bathroom, and rescued her lakey clothes from the sink, wringing them out and hanging them over the walls of the shower cubicle nobody liked because it had a draft. She washed her hands and went along to her own room. Tina and Molly weren't there. Janet sat down on her bed, and hoped the spread would be warm enough. She shook her head suddenly. My mind
is
going, she thought. She got up and went back down the hall. Halfway down the stairs, s he thought, I forgot to take

the clothes out of the bathroom, so why am I going down to the laundry room?

Or was she going to wash the bedspread?

"Hell,"
said Janet, setting up a mild echo, and sat down hard on a terrazzo step. She fixed her goal firmly in her mind and stood up again. With her hand on the door to the fourth floor, she stopped. She had
had
her mind on her goal before. Suppose she tried not thinking about what she was doing? Considering the peculiar physics of Aristotle, she marched along the red-carpeted hall for the third time, and stopped outside Peg and Sharon's door. She knocked, rather harder than she had intended.

Sharon, unsmiling, opened the door. She was wearing a very short red dress and a necklace of shells. Janet wondered if she were going out at this hour, or if she had come back from a date rather early. Nobody had yet set eyes on Sharon's boyfriend.

"Hi," said Janet. "Is Peg there?"

"Library," said Sharon.

"Well, maybe that's just as well. Did you know she walks in her sleep?"

"Sure," said Sharon. She looked hard at Janet. "She doing it recently?"

"Last night," said Janet. "She was wandering around outside our windows picking up books."

"Huh," said Sharon. "I thought I had that fixed. Okay, I'll take care of it."

"I also wanted to borrow one of the books," said Janet.

As before, Sharon stood aside and waved at Peg's shelves. "Take a look," she said, and sat back down at her own desk, where a fat book of dense print was open next to a notebook full of tiny, neat writing.

Janet knelt on Peg's blue-and-purple Indian bedspread and inspected the books. There was Liddell and Scott, crisp and blue and small. She opened it to the title page. Just the same. She turned to the next pages. The Advertisement was the same, too; but the copyright page said, "Impression of 1970." She looked for the Arnold and the McGuffey, but they were not there. She checked all four shelves again, running her finger along the spines of the books to prevent missing a title or two. Nothing.

"The ones I want aren't here," said Janet, climbing off the bed. "Thanks anyway, Sharon."

"Probably got them at the library," said Sharon, not looking up.

Janet went out and shut the door quietly.

Janet slept badly, dreaming of heavenly spheres that were like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh, with consequent unpleasant reverberations in the lower world. She overslept (if Tina whistled, it did not disturb her), and awoke with a tremendous start with fifteen minutes to get to her fencing class. She arrived just in time, hungry, disheveled, and reeking of deodorant, since there was some chance they might actually get some exercise this time. The students were arranged in two lines, and at the end of one line was an extra figure. Nick. Of course; she was his partner. She hurried into place just as Miss Swifte emerged from her office with the attendance sheet in her hand.

Nick, in a pair of brand-new, stiff-looking jeans and a maroon sweater that was too big for him, winked at her. He looked freshly scrubbed, and had even combed his hair. Janet scowled at him, a forgotten question making her even more irritable than she had been.

"What's the matter?" said Nick.

"What are you doing here, after that exhibition on Saturday? You don't need this class."

"Ah, but that was stage fencing," said Nick. "All style and no substance. This probably won't help you kill somebody in fair fight—but it's a little more solid than Benfield's and my little game."

"It
looked
real," said Janet.

"Well, that's its job, isn't it?"

That was a neat answer; Janet was too irate to consider its actual merits. Arguing with him was not going to accomplish anything. Maybe she could beat him in their first fencing match instead.

They spent half an hour in stretching exercises and then in practicing the lunge without the foil. Then they were taught how to hold the foil, and spent considerable time choosing grips that suited them. Miss Swifte had some undersized and some oversized grips, and a few that were exotic; Janet chose an odd but comfortable one called a Belgian, which felt as if it gave more support to the wrist. Then they practiced thrusting at the uninspiring concrete block wall; and finally, with five minutes of the class period to go, they lined up facing their partners again and learned how to parry. Janet knew perfectly well that being angry would not do her any good; nor would a burning desire to impress Nick. What was required was a burning desire to make her foil do a particular thing at a particular moment; who was standing in its way was irrelevant.

Nick didn't have much reach on her, but he was very fast. Miss Swifte came along and corrected his grip, which was a comfort; but then she corrected Janet's, which, with the Belgian sword, should have been rather more difficult to get wrong. Janet vowed to practice for an hour a day. Stage fencing, indeed.

Nick came up behind her as she was hanging up her jacket, and said, "Have you got time for lunch before your next class?"

"Sure," said Janet, rather ungraciously.

"Where should you like to go?"

"Well—I said I'd meet Peg and Molly in Taylor, but it's suc h a gloomy day, I'd rather

eat in Eliot. They'll forgive me. We can probably sit with Nora and Sharon."

"Let's make it Dunbar," said Nick. "I'd like to eat with you without a crowd of my friends or yours; I don't know so many people in Dunbar."