Rameau's Niece (8 page)

"I have no longer any scruple," she said when he came in looking for a pencil, "of opening to you the greatest mysteries of all."

"Reading that smut again, eh? That's a good girl."

So that our thoughtful discussions should be neither hindered by inclement weather nor interrupted by other, less philosophical members of the household, we began to meet indoors and at night, and in our search for privacy decided on my bedroom as the best location.

Philosophy was a pursuit that came naturally to her. Having taught herself Latin at a tender age, she was knowledgeable of the classics and eager to learn more. I was eager to teach her.

MYSELF:
Take nothing on trust. That is the first lesson. Seek whatever instruction is to be obtained from observation and experience.

SHE:
Let me begin, then, to observe and to experience. I long to begin, for all have an equal right to be enlightened respecting their interests, to share in the acquisition of truth.

My pupil, seeing no other piece of furniture on which to rest her charming figure, had sat upon the bed and, then, recognizing how unnatural was that position in that place and seeking, as always, to achieve the harmony and balance necessary to beauty, she lay down.

Seeing her thus attending to the laws of aesthetics so dutifully, it occurred to me that I could do nothing less than join her in order to help her to acquire whatever understanding she sought in any way I was able to. I began to contemplate those various ways, thoroughly enjoying the exquisite anticipation of the intellectual exchange I foresaw. For it is often true that foresight of an approaching pleasure is in itself an actual pleasure, and I was soon transported by my imagination.

But presently, as I stood and pondered these lovely issues, I noticed that she, on the bed, seemed to become what I can describe only as agitated, her cheeks taking on an unnatural but nonetheless delightful flush, her breathing quick and strained, so that I feared she might faint and quickly bent over her reclining figure and loosened her garments, whereupon she gratefully pulled me to her and expressed again her impatient desire to begin her lesson.

This without further mental preparation I therefore commenced.

MYSELF:
I will begin with the senses. I must, naturally, consider the objects of my sensations. Recognizing the necessity of experience for understanding and hoping to impart this important value to you, my pupil, I will now consider the particular objects before me with great attention.

As I began carefully to investigate the immediate objects of my sensations, that is the ravishing graces and delights of a young girl reclining upon my bed, this activity seemed to stir her intellectual faculties in a highly agreeable manner, just as I had hoped and anticipated. Our lesson had at last begun in earnest.

MYSELF:
There are two kinds of perception. First, I will demonstrate to you the meaning of 'impressions.' Impressions are perceptions that are forceful and violent, external objects pressing in upon you.

SHE:
At this moment, not only do I sense a glorious external object forcefully pressing in upon me, but in truth I feel myself to be nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions...

MYSELF:
...which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity?

SHE:
Yes! Exactly! They are in perpetual flux and movement!

After some time, during which we continued our investigation into the nature of perception with a mutual interest and single-minded devotion to experience which precluded for the time being any discussion other than the occasional cry that signified the perception of a particularly forceful impression, I felt true friendship to be within our grasp, and I experienced a flash of understanding, of sublime illumination (a flash, I concluded from various observations, that I thoroughly shared with my pupil), and in my sudden enlightenment, I cried out these words:

MYSELF:
The end of the social art is to secure and extend for all the enjoyment of the common rights which impartial nature has bequeathed to us all!

She answered in a voice thick with understanding.

SHE:
Your logic, sir, is rigorous, your assertions sublime.

D
ON'T YOU GET TIRED
of all the stuffy academics you hang around with?" Margaret asked Edward one morning. She lay in bed, turned on her side, looking at him.

"Are
you
tired of them?"

"No. But I like stuffy academics. That's why I married you."

Edward smiled.

"But what about the trendy ones?" Margaret went on. "Like my friends? Like Lily? Imagine Lily as a colleague. She's bad enough as a friend, but at least I don't have to take her seriously. I don't have to argue with her at department meetings. Your department is crawling with Lilys. How can you stand it?"

Margaret was actually envious of Edward, envious of the regular, comfortable world of academia. If only one didn't have to teach! She too could be a professor with a little office, with rumpled colleagues and spiteful intrigues and adoring students. But one did have to teach, and Margaret preferred to live in unstructured solitude rather than face a sea of students, arrogant and needy.

"Stand it? I live for it!" Edward said. "'All men by nature desire to know,' said Aristotle. And I am in a place dedicated to the desire to know. I fulfill the desire to know, I satisfy it. Even Lily, the eminently silly Lily, desires to know. She's wrong about everything, isn't she, but on she rushes, determined, lusty, indomitable in her quest, a creature of desire, of the desire to know. Ah, Lily. How many of her students desire to know little Lily, I wonder."

"Oh, please," Margaret said, and then she cupped her chin in her hand.

Sometimes she felt as small and aloof as a spider, hanging by its thread. No ground beneath its several feet, nor water. But at least a spider could spin a web, a frail sticky gathering place for stray passersby. Till had spun a web, drawing people to her simply by the strength of her desire, her desire to have them there. Edward had spun a web of enthusiasm and pleasure for all around him. Of course, this was a perverse and counterproductive way of viewing friendship: as a trap for struggling, buzzing prey. Still, Margaret thought, shall I spin a web? Isn't that better than being the struggling, buzzing prey in the nets of others?

"Margaret, you're so competitive," Edward said when she voiced these ideas on the nature of sociability. "And you're so serious. You're even more earnest than I am, and no one is more earnest than I. Friendship! It's not a commandment, my darling."

"Yes, but you hear people talking of falling in love, don't you? When you talk of friends, though, you don't fall at all. You make friends."

"Well then! To work!"

Margaret sighed.

"Anyway, I'm your friend, aren't I?" Edward said.

"That's just the trouble, Edward." She looked at him and thought how large he loomed in her life, filling it with interesting talk and real understanding and tender exchanges and good sex and irritating habits and jokes and obscure quotations. He helped her in her work and liked her and cherished her. She wanted nothing else. It didn't seem right. "It doesn't seem right. To be satisfied. Don't you want more?"

"'I exist as I am—that is enough; if no other in the world be aware, I sit content; and if each and all be aware, I sit content.'"

"Oh, Edward, for heaven's sake. You go ahead and sit content. And get obscenely fat on oysters like Walt Whitman. Is that who you quoted? Well, he's dead now. And I'm not."

"Margaret, bless you, you've gone mad at last. How I've longed for this moment. A mad wife! Lock her in the attic. Chain her! Feed her oysters—
against her will.
Ravage her till dawn. Till noon! Quite my ideal, a mad wife."

Oh well, Margaret thought, as Edward pulled her to him. Dissatisfaction can wait.

Edward sometimes brought students home for dinner, and Margaret had always welcomed these gatherings, for they pitted her against amateurs only, an enemy far more frightened of her than she was of them. At one of these pleasant, unthreatening dinners, Margaret listened with some interest as a student of Edward's, a boy from Oregon, described his father's mink farm, and as she listened she watched the other student guest. She was from some suburb of Boston, pretty, a little shy, and she had not taken her eyes off Edward all evening.

I used to be a girl from some suburb of Boston, pretty, a little shy, and I used to gaze with longing at my professors, Margaret thought. Have you come here to haunt me?

Edward smiled indulgently at the girl, but then Edward smiled indulgently at the world. Still, Margaret thought. And she turned away from the girl with a sinking feeling, as a man turns hopelessly from his fate, and then stared at Edward without realizing it, until he turned and smiled at her and reached for her hand and squeezed it.

M
ARGARET HAD BEEN
talking to Till for almost forty minutes, which for her pretty much obviated any need to see Till for at least two months, when it occurred to her that people like Till and Edward didn't let that happen. They never allowed the comfort of the telephone to overwhelm the pleasure of companionship, never let the phone keep them from their duty to appreciate all around them, to celebrate the existence of their friends by glorying in their company, never sunk to that enervated state in which one wondered if going out to keep a date might horribly disturb the aimless tranquillity of one's day.

"Have you and Lily gotten together again?" Till asked.

"No."

"Oh. You seemed to hit it off. Are you planning to see her soon?" Till said.

"I don't know," Margaret said. "What about you? Do you want to have lunch again? I think I'm becoming an eccentric. I think I have to become a better socialized person."

"No, no," Till said in a determined voice. "You and Lily have lunch without me. That will be better."

"Ah. You think I should strike out on my own, blaze new trails. But I never know what Lily is talking about. Still, there's something sweet about her, don't you think?"

Till said, "Like fruit."

"Fruit?" Margaret had not thought of fruit. But there was something so charming about Lily, an utterly benign person chattering happily about the oppressive, phallocentric monstrosity that was modern existence. What a mess, she seemed to be saying. Isn't it grand?

"So you like Lily?" Till said.

"Don't you? She's your friend."

"You know that Lily and I lived together for four years?"

Margaret was puzzled. Of course she knew that. They had been roommates after she and Till had been roommates, and had shared an apartment for one year after school.

"Anyway," Till went on, "when will you two get together? I think this week would be fine. Do you want me to call her for you? I have to call her anyway. If you like her, and she likes you, I think this is a good thing. This friendship."

"Well, I don't know. I can call her, I guess. If I want to. Thank you for taking such an interest in me and my socialization."

Margaret did meet Lily that week, at the same coffee shop. Why not? Lily blew in wearing a short swirling coat held closed by one large button and black spandex leggings, her complexion tinted by the cold, fresh air. Margaret noticed her teeth, which were small, all the same size, and white, like little tiles.

"Hello, doll," Lily said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling a cloud of smoke straight up into the air, 1930s style. "Have you read your Ovid, yet, Margaret?" She reached for a menu. "The menu!"

"The menu."

Lily was smiling, smoking, and thoughtfully examining the daily specials inserted in a special narrow plastic page. Was she pondering the menu as a reification of woman's role, a paradigm of organized control over woman's life, the repressive figuration of woman's qualities and skills?

"I think I'll have a bacon cheeseburger," Lily said. She took off her swirly coat with its big round button to reveal a tight suede tunic laced up the front in medieval peasant fashion, her breasts spilling over the top. She ran her hands through her short hair, fluffing it.

"Funny," she said, tilting her head and staring at Margaret. "Funny we didn't really know each other at school." Her whispery voice gave way to a little sigh. She put her hand under her chin and pouted slightly.

"Well, I guess I didn't see too much of Till or her friends after the first year. I retreated to the library."

"The library," Lily said softly, "is one of the mechanisms of discipline, capturing the individual in a system of registration and accumulation of documents."

The way she said it, Margaret thought, in her throaty whisper, sucking on one dainty finger, she made the library sound like soft-core bondage. Oh! Discipline me with your mechanism! More, oh, more!

"So what are you working on?" Margaret asked, not sure how else to respond to Dewey Decimal de Sade.

"I'm thinking of writing something about music, for a change. Rachmaninoff," Lily said.

Margaret sighed. Poor Rachmaninoff. What crime had he committed to cause him to fall prey to this pretentious sexpot fraud?

"He's not a woman," Margaret said. "Is he?"

"Ah, but he might just as well have been a woman," Lily said tenderly. "Poor Rachmaninoff."

"You
like
Rachmaninoff?" She herself loved Rachmaninoff but saw no reason to tell anyone about it.

"Look," Lily said, "a case must be made for the second tier. Genius is an oppressive male construct. Genius, genius, genius. Enough with the genius."

"You like Rachmaninoff because he's
second-rate?
"

Lily smiled and began to hum loudly a particularly lush passage from the Symphonic Dances.

Margaret, though sorely tempted, forced herself not to hum along. One had one's pride. But she did regard Lily with a new respect and with a growing warmth.

"Do you like Trollope, too?" she asked hopefully.

Inspired by Lily's description, Margaret went to the mechanism of discipline the next morning, but it failed to live up to its reputation, and she felt restless after only an hour and began to stare into space. The anonymous author of
Rameau's Niece
had lifted passages from so many philosophers, and with such abandon, that Margaret knew she would be spending months tracking down sources. The author was well versed in the literature of the age. Was he some provincial boy who had come to the glamorous big city to be a philosophe? There were plenty of them in Paris during the Enlightenment, failed intellectuals writing smut and peddling it to get by. Or perhaps he was a bored clergyman passing the time between nones and matins. And why "he"? Couldn't the author have been a woman like Madame de Montigny? Margaret sometimes wondered if
Rameau's Niece
was written as a hoax, like Diderot's
La Religieuse,
which Diderot and a friend began as a series of letters to another friend, signing them with the name of a fictitious nun. Or it could have been meant as a vehicle for edification, like classic comics. She had once read a fanciful description of the living quarters of Crébillon
père
and
fils
which had the two of them in a garret filled with large dogs drooling and shedding immoderately, and it was thus that Margaret liked to imagine her own author, pen in hand, animals sprawled and snoring on the Louis Quinze chaise.