The Natural Order of Things (14 page)

Despite the journal’s repetitive themes, the small but loyal readership remains strong, even passionate, and Edmund Campion invariably picks up the latest edition. Copies are scattered around campus like stale breadcrumbs left for the screeching grackles that swoop from their roosts high on the gothic bell tower. Glancing left and right to make sure no one sees him, Edmund stashes the journal in his book bag and then scampers off to the palatial library where he passes through untold numbers of hexagonal galleries until he finds a cozy alcove behind a shelf of neglected books. Safe from the ridicule of his philistine friends, he holds the magazine close to his nose, takes in the heady perfume of glue and ink, strokes the glossy cover page, and for an entire hour, he immerses himself in the stories, his eyes growing misty at the splendor of the imagery and the slightly discombobulating effect of the parataxis style of the prose, the journal’s trademark.

As he races through the final pages, his admiration turns to envy. They make it seem so easy, these writers. They possess an uncommon ability to translate their experiences into words that continue to confound and evade him, and he finds it hard to believe that those same blundering boys who walk the halls with him are capable of such sophisticated insights. How do his classmates intimate suffering without sounding puerile and self-serving? How do they describe the mystical without coming across as lunatics and zealots?

Ever since his sophomore year, when he discovered the dazzling wordplay of Vladmir Nabokov, Edmund has had ambitions to become a serious writer, a member of
The Millstone
’s revered pantheon, but his fiction is consistently rejected, the manuscripts often returned without comment and accompanied by a terse form letter printed on thick gray paper. The words look like they’ve been etched with hammer and chisel into a heavy stone tablet; there is a kind of finality about them, but to question the judgment of the editor would be more than merely impertinent, it would be tantamount to blasphemy, and Edmund knows better than to provoke the wrath of a redoubtable god like Batya Pinter.

He settles for working on the school newspaper as a sports photojournalist, an unremarkable position that comes with a number of mundane responsibilities: he dashes off puff pieces about the refulgent reign of the mighty football team, conducts long interviews with the forever fuming head coach, and photographs the dimwitted and narcissistic quarterback. In this new Dark Age of short attention spans and almost total disdain for the printed word, Edmund suppresses his imagination and uses raw, whittled-down prose to grab his readers, but he assures himself that he can rise above the mediocrity of reporting and craft a story so beautiful, so subtle, so profound in its unflinching examination of the human heart that the editor of
The Millstone
will surely read it with bated breath and regret over having declined his previous submissions.

Greatness is close at hand—he can sense it—but lately, whenever he stares into the void of a blank piece of paper, he finds himself reeling from a lack of inspiration, and though he is reluctant to admit this to anyone, even to himself, it has been months since he has set pen to paper. No matter. The life of any young writer is essentially one of self-deception, and the tenacious few who persist in their aspirations have simply learned to make their delusions work for them rather than against them.

Even though he is unable to gain a foothold on the trackless slopes of creative enterprise, Edmund has no problem turning out enthusiastic term papers for English class, detailed fifteen-page analyses of
The Catcher in the Rye
and
Lord of the Flies
that he hopes will impress his teacher, but whenever he tries to engage her in a conversation before class begins, he cannot summon the right words to describe his love for literature. He rambles from one topic to the next, his arms swinging erratically like a marionette jerked around by an amateur puppeteer. He forgets to pause for breath and feels his face turn bright pink, then dark purple. His lips start to twitch. He’s making a fool of himself, he’s aware of this, but he can’t help it—his adoration for his teacher isn’t something he can easily disguise.

As is the case with the other instructors at this august prep school, Batya Pinter has mastered the indispensable arts of insouciance and Schadenfreude and can wield them about with great cunning. She never attempts to conceal her boredom with teaching or contempt for her pupils, doesn’t lift a hand to cover her mouth as she lets out a long leisurely yawn; she merely points to his desk and asks him to take a seat. Most disturbing of all, however, are her cold blue eyes, which have a supernatural power that trumps that of the conjuring priests with their tiresome trick of transubstantiation.

Edmund submits his essay and then slinks to the back of the classroom.

The Minotaur, who sits next to him, shakes his head and laughs. “Shit, man, you actually get a hard-on for that crusty, old cougar?”

Edmund is genuinely puzzled by this remark. Old? It’s impossible to determine her age. She might be thirty-five or forty. She looks youthful, and it’s obvious, to him at least, that she spends as much time working on her appearance as she does editing the award-winning journal. She primps and preens, plucks and polishes. She selects her outfits with utmost care, tight skirts that accentuate her muscular thighs, scandalous button-down blouses that reveal far too much of her supple, honey-hued cleavage, but if her sex appeal is hard to mistake, so is her aura of inquisitorial wrath. With her hands clasped behind her back and chin thrust forward to slice through the rumbling heat of adolescent desire, she paces up and down the rows of desks in her shiny black boots and demands that her slouching students sit up straight and pay attention. Hypnotized by the rhythm of her sashaying hips, Edmund squirms in his chair, crosses his legs, and uses the fig leaf of his notebook to hide the embarrassing bulge in his pants.

Only the Minotaur dares to ignore her. He falls asleep with his textbook propped open under one shaggy elbow, drool trickling from the corner of his mouth, forming a shallow pool around his chiseled jaw. He farts and belches and picks his nose. Sometimes he scribbles football plays in his notebook—a sweep pass roll out, a trick split end pitch. Edmund observes him as a primatologist might observe the behavior of a Bonobo chimp in the wild while it scratches in the dirt with a pointed stick to capture termites. To his amazement, Batya Pinter doesn’t reprimand the Minotaur for this crude and disruptive behavior. Instead, she treats him like an adorable circus bear, gently taps his head, yearns to smooch his enormous muzzle, deliberately drops pens and pencils beside his desk and then bends over to retrieve them, giving him a tantalizing flash of her sequined-studded bras and a better vantage point of her cloven ass.

Though he knows it’s an absurd idea, Edmund becomes more and more convinced that Batya Pinter is smitten with the Minotaur, but if she has feelings for that doltish, drawling meathead, it isn’t because of his imposing physique or devastating good looks or incontestable virility; no, it’s because she is impressed by his
mind
, his
intellect
, his surprising ability to write exceptionally erudite essays. Little does she know that Edmund, for a modest but non-negotiable fee, has been composing all of the Minotaur’s term papers, a morally dubious enterprise, true, but one he is able to justify since he uses the cash to buy paperback editions of the classics he admires.

A magician with words, Edmund is able to take the Minotaur’s violent jumble of declarative sentences and transform them into miniature masterpieces on
Pnin
and
Pale Fire
and
Lolita
. These papers are so insightful that it almost seems a pity to give a cretin like the Minotaur any credit, and Edmund can’t help but drop subtle hints and clues about their true authorship. He cites Charles Kinbote and Claire Quilty in the footnotes, quotes Vivian Darkbloom at length.

Edmund prides himself on his clever deception until, as class ends and the bell rings, a suddenly cantankerous Batya Pinter turns her eyes to the back of the classroom and shouts, “Remain seated, gentlemen! I have an important announcement to make.”

Edmund turns white with fear. Even the Minotaur seems nervous and slides a little lower in his seat. The two boys exchange worried glances. Their teacher marches across the room and stands at the lectern, her mouth tightening into a severe smile, her long nails tap-tap-tapping against the burnished wood. Has she discovered their crime? If so, the consequences will be dire. Not only will it result in Edmund being permanently blacklisted from
The Millstone
, it will mean automatic failure in the class and almost
certain expulsion from the school. Edmund cannot understand academia’s peculiar obsession with plagiarism. All of existence is a form of plagiarism; everyone is more or less a fraud, stealing thoughts and ideas and identities. Why, even the Bard himself is said to have—

“Your attention please! I wish to inform you that
The Millstone
is holding its first annual fiction contest. The winner will receive one hundred dollars and have his work showcased in the next issue of the magazine. I will personally judge the finalists. The deadline? October thirty-first. Season of the witch.”

No one has the nerve to laugh at this joke except, of course, the Minotaur who slaps Edmund hard on the back. “Holy shit, man,” he whispers. “I thought we were caught for sure. Turns out to be good news, huh? Here’s your big opportunity, your one shot at fame and fortune.”

But Edmund feels no sense of relief at all. In fact, he begins to tremble even more violently. His heart palpitates. Sweat trickles down his spine. Competition is something he abhors. There are too many cutthroats at this school, too many cheats, too many unscrupulous, blue-blooded boys willing to do just about anything to pad their resumes so they can get into the best universities. The contest won’t be fair, that’s a given, but at this stage in the game, he has no other options. He is a senior now; time is running out. Action must be taken. No sense dreaming about things. Sooner or later he must find out if he is to be one of the chosen, the anointed, or if he is to be dismissed, forgotten, tossed aside, just another anonymous loser destined to live out his best years in an office cubicle while editing copy for a small town newspaper.

If he wants to make a name for himself, he must learn the secrets of narrative, the techniques of plot and pacing, and somehow, someway, he must get an acceptance letter from Batya Pinter before he graduates.

Traditionally the newspaper has always appealed to the less promising students, the ones of middling intellect who have yet to prove themselves worthy of ascending the treacherous steps of the extracurricular hierarchy. Serious writers, those whose philosophical meditations and deft, ironic tales of middle-class despair are featured in
The Millstone
, shun the paper for the derisive tone of its editorials, a critique not without justification. Since truly compelling stories are so scarce at a boy’s prep school, Edmund Campion and his colleagues resort to writing cruel reviews—of the annual musical, of the garish décor at the homecoming dance, and especially of the foppish and effete authors who contribute to the literary magazine, but if these budding reporters and columnists succumb to the temptation of leaden sarcasm, it’s only because sarcasm is cheap and easy, an indispensable tool for a writer with a limited palette of ideas and a strict deadline.

Each Friday afternoon, when school lets out for the day, the boys promptly gather for a weekly editorial meeting, but Edmund Campion, hard at work on his short story for the fiction contest, plods into the office nearly one hour late. His friends glower at him. By nature they are a peevish and inquisitive lot; they’re journalists after all, and Edmund must remember that no question they ever ask is innocent.

“We have to go over the layout tonight,” they say. “Did you forget?”

“No, I didn’t forget. I was … busy.”

“Sure you were. Pulling your pud.”

“I was writing a term paper. For you know who.”

Yes, they know, they are in on the secret, but Edmund hopes they don’t notice the way he shifts his eyes and fidgets with the pens in his shirt pocket. They are experts at detecting a lie and are ready to exploit it to their advantage. If they uncover the truth, they will mock him without mercy; they’ll call him a fool, a dreamer, a turncoat. Though most of them are only seventeen, they already know something about professional jealousy and long to see him fail. When the results of the fiction contest are announced and his name is not among the list of honorees, they will be waiting for him, unforgiving tormentors eager to apply the screws to his inflated ego. They will publish the names of the finalists and make a special point of mentioning how Edmund Campion submitted a story but failed to garner any recognition. Never again will he be allowed to set foot in this office. He must watch his step. Without the newspaper, he would have no social life at all.

Grudgingly, they make room for Edmund at the table and tell him the Jesuits want another full-page feature about the Minotaur for the next issue.

“You must be joking,” he says in exasperation.

His friends laugh. “Yes, this will be the sixth story you’ve written about that animal. Oh, the cruel reality of crass commercialism!”

For the first time since taking the job as sports journalist, Edmund feels a real sense of helplessness and despair. It’s like the priests have condemned him to a semester-long detention and have cast him into a kind of intellectual purgatory. He has grown to hate the sewage-y smell of the newspaper office, located in the dank sub-basement of the main building, “The Bunker” as his fellow reporters fondly call it. Mayhem lurks at the fringes of this reinforced concrete vault. Duplicity and paranoia lurk in the eyes of its surly, sallow-faced inhabitants. A firestorm of death metal opera thunders from the portable stereo—
Die Walkure
,
Siegfried
,
Gotterdammerung
. The heavy crash of cymbals drowns out the constant whistle of the radiator and loosens the cracked paint from the ceiling and cinderblock walls.