Joyce Oates - I’ll Take You There

My cafeteria laughter was shrill as coins tossed against the floor, my voice strident. Yet as soon as my "friends" were gone the smile died on my lips, not a smile but a twitch; the manic spark in my eyes was extinguished like a light switched off. Alone, alone. I pushed away into the void like a solitary swimmer pushing out into freezing water; for all swimmers are solitary in such bitter regions of the soul.

Seeing something in my face, what pain what humiliation what despairing hope, one of the older girls waited for me; waited outside the cafeteria for me; hesitantly she inquired, "Is something wrong? You seem so"-tactful, kindly, not meaning to pry-"so sad, somehow." And I was astonished, so exposed. Flaring up like a struck match, "I'm not sad. I'm not sad in the slightest. What an ignorant thing to say. I've been laughing, haven't I?" I said, offended. Unless in fact I burst into tears. The girl, a tall broad-shouldered girl whose name I did not know or out of arrogance did not remember stood in such a way to shield me from the staring, curious eyes of others. My hot tears spilled out onto my cheeks; my nose ran; was this passion, was this romance, this -? Incensed as an older sister she asked, practicably, "Is it some guy?" and called me by my name, not "Anellia" but my true, ordinary name, the name by which I was commonly known. Some guy ! As if she'd reached out to tickle me with rough fingers-some guy ! The word so slangy, vulgar, commonplace- guy ! Was Vernor Matheius for all his arrogance, brilliance, power over me in essence merely a guy ? I had not time to absorb such a revolutionary thought, though such a thought might have saved me; I perceived my benefactor as my enemy, backing away in dislike, stammering, "I-resent such a question. I don't know you and you-you don't know me at all."

Following that exchange I avoided the dining hall. I ate in my room, or skipped meals altogether.

How lonely, I wanted to die. To cease to exist. For he had rejected me, repudiated me; sent me away; he had not loved me nor even "made love" to me; my anxiety had been proven causeless, and so contemptible; I was contemptible; he'd sent me away almost as soon as we'd entered his apartment. That was the secret of my hurt over some guy .

What memory of Vernor Matheius's apartment I'd seen for such a brief period of time, scarcely minutes… Shelves of neatly arranged books; a narrow cot with a thin dark corduroy bedspread pulled up in apparent haste; a flattened pillow in a white, not-very-clean case; curtainless windows, the cracked and stained blinds I'd seen from the outside, from the safety of the ground. And now I am here, now in apartment 2D with Vernor Matheius, how has such a miracle occurred? And if a "miracle" has occurred, is it a "miracle" after all ? Beneath my feet were bare, badly worn floorboards upon which a cheap, stained pile rug had been laid; the color of the rug was a vague blurred fleshy-gray of the hue of certain kinds of mold; the very floor was uneven, tilted; like the floors of my grandparents' old farmhouse beneath which the earth had shifted in a way to suggest indifference, or scorn; a child's marble, laid experimentally upon such a floor, would roll unhesitatingly until impeded by a wall. At the rear was a shadowy alcove with a single counter; a sink so small as to seem a child's sink; a dwarf refrigerator set upon the floor. The apartment was airless, smelling of cigarette smoke, coffee, grease; the yeasty odor of a man's body; soiled clothes, bedclothes. In such airlessness my nostrils widened in a kind of swoon; a wave of dizziness washed over me; perhaps I was trespassing into forbidden territory, shocked at my own audacity. This is what a "desired" girl does, this is what is done to a "desired" girl . Staring smiling at a desk which was the most premeditated and accomplished piece of furniture in the sparely furnished room; it had about it an aura of the sacred, the not-to-be-touched, like an altar, and beside it on the wall was a likeness of Socrates as a sculpted head with blind exophthalmic eyes, and another likeness of a stolid bewigged man I believed must be Descartes. The desk itself exuded stolidity and character; how wholly unlike the cramped, battered, uniform aluminum desks issued by the university; it consisted of a large piece of wood set upon filing cabinets, wonderfully expansive for any desk, measuring perhaps five feet by four and a half feet; its sectors might have been marked off by invisible grids for neat piles of books, journals, and papers were placed at intervals, the highest at the rear and the lowest at the front, spines facing outward for ready identification; there was a clay bowl crammed with pens and pencils; there were much-eroded erasers; there was an Olivetti portable typewriter pushed back to clear a space directly in front of the desk chair, grooves in the desktop marking how the typewriter was pushed back, pulled forward, pushed back and pulled forward again. Rolled into the typewriter was a sheet of paper upon which a tight little paragraph of prose had been typed:

The claim that philosophy is a battle against "the bewitchment of intelligence by language" & this very claim postulated in the syntax & content & contours of Language -

which I would identify at a later time as an argumentative allusion to the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Perhaps Vernor Matheius was speaking to me through the pulsebeat in my ears, perhaps he was not; perhaps he was indicating he would help me remove my jacket, perhaps he was not; perhaps he was fumbling with his sheepskin jacket, bulky on his tall, lanky frame like protective armature; perhaps he was not. He will touch me now. Now it will happen . Nervously he was tugging down a window shade, and the frayed material began to tear; he muttered a jokey profanity-"Shit!" And this word, this blunt mechanical brainless expletive in another man's voice: not Vernor Matheius's eloquent voice. As if another, more commonplace and thus more practicable man not Vernor Matheius stood in his place, cursing a frayed window shade. Yet I didn't hear, exactly; I heard but didn't acknowledge; my heart was beating rapidly as I stood rereading the enigmatic paragraph typed on the sheet of stark white paper as if it were a secret, coded message meant solely for me which even its author could not have fully comprehended. It was then that I realized I had been hearing Vernor Matheius's breathing. His breathing like panting. Like a dog's panting. And I smelled the alarm, the fear lifting from his body like heat. "Why'd you come here with me?"-a voice that was raw, harsh; very male; like sandpaper scraping across a splintery wooden surface; a frightened voice; a disdainful voice; not the musical, seductive voice of the lecture hall; not the voice of logic, reason, conviction, irony; not the voice of Vernor Matheius as I'd heard it in my dreams; but a stranger's voice, any-man's voice. I stared at him now, struck dumb; he was frowning, such a frown shifting the glasses on the bridge of his nose, and the lenses of his glasses were opaque with reflected light (as soon as we'd stepped inside the room Vernor had switched on an overhead light and shadows were cast downward on our faces, like appalled skulls we regarded each other out of astonished shadowed eye-sockets); he was saying: "Look, Anellia, you don't want to do this, and I don't, either." We were still in our outer clothes; I had not begun to unbutton the green suede jacket, and Vernor's bulky sheepskin jacket looked more resolutely on his body than it had been outdoors. Yet he touched me, his forefingers gently prodding me toward the door, swiftly he unlocked the door, opened it, murmuring, "-sometime, some other time, Anellia, good-bye-" his voice choked and abruptly then I stood outside the room, in a drafty hall opening onto the stairs, I was blind, blundering down the swaying wooden stairs which only a few minutes before another girl had boldly, tremblingly ascended. Not knowing where I was, or why; not knowing if I was deeply wounded or whether in fact I was relieved, I'd been saved, like one pulled from a rushing river to safety lying spent and exhausted and dazed on the river-bank but safe, saved. It hasn't happened yet .