Barbara Michaels - The Dark on the Other Side

Michael laughed. He got up to go a little reluctantly; Buchsbaum was a pleasant change from the Vice-Chancellor.

“Stick around,” Buchsbaum suggested. “A man who knows his Fry is a man worth knowing. Or, better still, come home, meet the wife, have a beer. I’ll try you on the more obscure metaphysical poets.”

“If I didn’t have eight more people to track down today, I’d accept with pleasure. I used to enjoy this sort of thing, in my younger days. You ivory-tower boys have a nice life.”

“You are viewing it with the rosy glow of old age remembering lost youth. Don’t kid yourself. Why do you think I skulk around the halls with my collar turned up like James Bond? Students, committees, secretaries wanting lists of things, parents, students…”

“Without the students you wouldn’t have a job.”

“Don’t give me that; I’ve quit being a liberal.” Buchsbaum put his feet up on the desk and adjusted them so that he could look between them at Michael. “We all hate students. Most of my peers aren’t that blunt about it; they blather on about the book they haven’t been able to finish and the vital research they can’t carry out because of their onerous teaching load. The majority of them couldn’t write a book if you dictated it to them. What they mean is, they hate students. Like me.”

“What about Linda Randolph? Did you know her?”

Later, Michael was to wonder what made him ask the question. He had meant to throw out some feelers about Linda; this was where Randolph had met her. But she was not his main interest.

“I knew her,” Buchsbaum said.

“That romance must have caused a lot of comment.”

“You could say that.”

“I’ve met her. She’s charming, isn’t she?”

“Is she?” The feet were still on the desk, the stout body as relaxed; but the pink face wasn’t friendly any longer. Feeling idiotically rebuffed, Michael turned toward the door. Buchsbaum said suddenly,

“Sit down, Collins. Don’t go away mad. I’m sorry if I sounded…Hell, I was in love with the girl, of course.”

“Of course?”

“Most of her teachers were.”

“Not the students?”

“Oddly enough, no. Caviar to the general, you know.”

“Cut that out.”

“Sorry, it’s a bad habit. No; I think she put the kids off a bit-the callow youth. She was bright as they come, and the juvenile male doesn’t care for that kind of challenge. But…”

He was silent for a time, staring reflectively at the tip of his left shoe; and Michael was reminded of Gordon, groping in the same way for words to describe his wife. When Buchsbaum began to speak, his voice was soft and abstracted, as if he were talking to himself.

“We make cynical remarks about the lousy students. Most of the mare, you know. They don’t give a damn-they lack motivation, in the current jargon-and even if they have motivation, they don’t have the intelligence of a medium-bright porpoise. Day after day you stand up there on your podium and you strip your brain and throw it out, into a sea of dead faces, and it falls flat on the floor and dies there. But now and then-once a year, once out of a thousand students, if you’re lucky-you look around and see a face that isn’t a flat doughy mass with the right number of holes in it for eyes and nose and mouth. It’s a face, a real face. The eyes are alive, the mouth responds to the things you say. When you make a joke, the eyes shine. When you throw out an idea that takes a little cogitation, the forehead actually wrinkles-something is going on behind it, some gears are really meshing. When you say something that-that moves her, the mouth curves at the corners, not much, just a little, up or down depending on whether she’s moved to laughter or to tenderness…”

The pronoun had slipped out, but Buchsbaum didn’t try to retract it. His eyes moved from his shoe to Michael’s face, and he smiled.

“The Reminiscences of a Middle-Aged Loser,” he said wryly. “It’s true, though; every teacher knows about it. The quality of the response differs. Hers was unique. I won’t say that I wasn’t affected by the fact that she was also a gorgeous dish.”

“I’m sorry,” Michael said, realizing that the revelations were finished. “I didn’t mean to probe into your private affairs.”

“Sure you did.” Buchsbaum took his feet off the desk and stood up. It was dismissal. He was friendly, but guarded, now. “Only you wanted me to talk about Gordon, not his wife. Sorry I can’t help you.”

“Have you read his book?”

“Naturally. It’s brilliant. Like everything else the man has done.” Buchsbaum beamed at his visitor. “I hate his bloody guts. You noticed that.”

“I hate his bloody guts.”

“If it hadn’t been for him, I’d have killed myself that night.”

“A desperately unhappy man.”

Three interviews, three different comments.

Pacing the dark streets of the town in search of a restaurant that promised something more suited to an over-thirty stomach than pizza or oliveburgers, Michael pondered the results of his day. He had located one other teacher, and one student. The latter, Tommy Scarinski, was on the last leg of his doctorate, having taken off several years because of illness. Michael was fairly sure that the illness had been what is referred to as a nervous breakdown. The boy still twitched. He was a pale, very fair youth, slender as a girl, looking much younger than his twenty-four years. He had idolized Randolph -canonized him, in fact. Michael didn’t doubt that he had contemplated suicide. The impulse was far more common in this age group than most people realized. With the majority of the kids it was only an impulse. Some of them liked to believe that the influence of a friend or lover had been the catalytic agent that deterred them from that most final of all gestures of protest. In this case, though, Michael rather thought that Tommy-it was a mark of his immaturity that he still called himself by the diminutive-did owe his life to Randolph. He had been at the age, and at the stage of mental deterioration, when the influence of an idol could make or break his mind. But-my God, what a responsibility. What a delicate, damnable job. Chalk one up for Randolph.

There was a sign, down the block, that said “Restaurant.” Michael opened the door and saw a dim interior, not too crowded. A waiter appeared promptly. He ordered a drink and a steak and let himself relax against the imitation leather of the booth.

Buchsbaum’s comment wasn’t really a mark against Gordon. It was another example of the man’s sophomoric attempt at wry humor, with strong touches of masochism. Buchsbaum had never been Gordon’s rival, in the ordinary sense of the word; he was the sort of man who would always prefer a romantic illusion to a possible rejection. Most probably he didn’t even dislike Gordon.

And why, Michael wondered irritably, should he be thinking in terms of pluses and minuses? He wasn’t trying to defend Gordon or play the part of Devil’s Advocate; that wasn’t the way he worked. He wanted the truth-and he knew it was never a single isolated fact, but a patchwork of differing, sometimes contradictory, views.

The waiter arrived with the drink, and Michael took a hearty swig of it. He made a wry face. Should have specified the brand; this tasted like something out of a still. But it was better than nothing.

The third interview had been the least productive, for all its verbiage. Professor Seldon was almost at the compulsory retirement age of sixty-five: a diminutive, dapper old man with a mop of white hair and a goatee and beard of the same silky hue. He talked fluently; God, Michael thought with an inner grin, how he did talk! He had been dependent on clichés for so long that he couldn’t have said “Good morning” if Shakespeare or Milton hadn’t happened to say it first. And he was Chairman of the English Department.