Daniel Friedman - Riot Most Uncouth

That’s why I don’t ask myself how Mad Jack knew that William’s heirs would predecease him. I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to examine the lie too closely. My rise was no accident; it was all designed, by Providence and by Mad Jack, my ever-vigilant benefactor.

To write a poem, it is said, is to tell the truth; poetry is worthless dross if it is not true. But the truth of poetry isn’t the truth of the world observed. Poetic truth is the truth of the world imagined; a truth made true by artistry and artifice and the sheer certainty of the writer and his reader that the world can be this way, and that, if it can be this way, it must be this way.

So I sit in front of the mirror.

My hand is steady. My eye is steady.

My cup is full, and then empty, and then full again.

And I say to myself: “Your father is not dead. He cannot be dead.

“He searches, in the East, for the secret of eternal persistence.

“You are loved.

“Your father loves you. Your mother loves you. Your friends love you.

“You will never be alone.

“You are a special boy, meant for a special destiny.

“Death is not an inevitability. Where others falter and cease, you will endure.

“Empires will rise and fall, and cities will crumble to dust, and you will persist, unchanging, drinking and dancing and making love.

“Forever.”

My hand is steady. My eyes do not falter. I sit in front of the mirror and I lie to myself.

My cup is full, and then empty, and then full again.

And I believe every word I say.

Upon my return to the campus, I found the lawn at the center of the Great Court crowded with students. Old Beardy, the professor who was so concerned with my growth as a man, was speaking from a makeshift dais.

“The College has been beset by senseless tragedy,” he was saying. “We have lost two beloved members of our faculty. This happened without warning, for no very good reason.”

Of course, if there had been any response from the College to the murder of Felicity Whippleby, perhaps these killings might have been avoided. Perhaps, had Cambridge been alarmed after the first murder, volunteers could have patrolled the streets and kept the killer at bay. Violet Tower’s maid might have been properly warned of the danger, and she would not have opened the door when the killer knocked.

But warnings probably would have done no good; Joe Murray had admitted three strangers to my quarters since Felicity’s death; Frederick Burke, Archibald Knifing, and Fielding Dingle. He also let Leif Sedgewyck into the party. I would have to give him a stern lecture and, perhaps, dock his wages. I could not have him subjecting me to unreasonable risks as a result of his genial and trusting nature. But even I had not previously thought to warn him of this.

“It is the role of the academy to serve as a beacon of civilization in a world predominated by cruelty and brutishness, so this kind of disruption cuts to the quick in a place like Cambridge,” Beardy said. He was impressive as a speaker. His voice swelled to a volume that overwhelmed the noise coming from the restive and nervous crowd, and his even, commanding tone seemed to calm the students. Though his esteemed colleagues were being torn to pieces in the streets, the men of Cambridge could not imagine a world where Beardy’s authority was anything but absolute.

“We live in a nation in which there are vast inequalities of means among the elites and ordinary folk. All of us are the beneficiaries of these imbalances, at least to some extent, and in many cases, to a great extent.” Here, he paused. Nobody laughed, so he continued: “But the desperation of the underclass produces ill effects that will bring sorrow and suffering to the more fortunate. A man who cannot buy bread will kill a well-dressed stranger for the coins in his purse. Every day, men and boys die in coal mines, crushed beneath the earth or asphyxiated by toxic fumes. Every day, women and children are mangled in textile factories. If the poor are desperate enough to do these things to themselves, think of what they’d do to us, given a chance. As long as we live in close proximity to the hungry and the hopeless, as long as we allow untreated lunatics to roam the streets, our walls will never be high enough, our locks will never be sturdy enough, and our guns will never have enough bullets to keep us safe.”

The crowd grew noisier, and the students’ collective murmur managed to drown out Beardy’s stentorian oration. Someone jeered loudly. This kind of disrespect was not often shown to the faculty at Trinity, except by me. Knifing had been right when he told me that people crave certainty and normality. The students had come to hear the faculty’s plan for rectifying the killer’s intrusion into the College’s bubble of safety. They did not want to hear that the entire social order that served as their lives’ foundation was unstable, or perhaps illusory.

Beardy quelled the uproar with a wave of his hand and smoothly redirected his speech to address their concern: “The twin losses of Professor Cyrus Pendleton and Senior Fellow Jerome Tower are grievous and deeply felt injuries to this institution. Both these men were beloved here, and relied upon. They can never be fully replaced, and I fear the effort to find appropriate candidates to fill their professional capacities will be difficult as well.”

Archibald Knifing had said that the killing of the Towers might have been some message to me. My affair with Violet had been sufficiently discreet to conceal our dalliances from her trusting husband, but it would not have been difficult to uncover. Anyone following me or watching her home could easily have noticed my arrivals and departures.

I considered what Knifing had said to me at the murder scene, tried to remember any revealing flickers of expression that might have crossed his nearly inscrutable features. He might have known of the affair, or he might have only suspected. Or he might have perfected the art of seeming to know things he didn’t even suspect, as a technique for eliciting spontaneous confessions.

Whether he knew or not was less important than the possibility that he could have known, for if he might have known, the killer might also have known. I thought of Professor Tower, dead and faceless, sitting at his dinner table, which was so similar to my own.

“Students who were taking courses with Professors Pendleton and Tower will be able to finish their work under different instructors. I will be taking over Professor Pendleton’s literature course; as some of you know, I taught that course until two years ago, and Professor Pendleton was using a modified version of my own syllabus, so we can resume without disruption. Similarly, since Professor Pendleton was to succeed me as faculty chair at the close of the calendar year, I have volunteered to stay on in my current capacity until such time as a qualified replacement can be identified. Professor Sharp and several of the other fellows will be taking charge of the remaining classes. I can assure each of you that, while our departed friends and colleagues will be sorely missed, the progress of your education will be unaffected, and the operation of the College will face no long-term interruption.”

This was met with several angry shouts from the crowd, but Beardy raised his hand again to silence the students. It was amazing how much deference and respect he was afforded by this mob of tense and frightened young men.