Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

For Brian too was in pain. It had been hard for him from the start, and soon became horrible to have to act the part of a cruel, heartless person; to see Wendy look every day more like a child who is beaten every day; to sit in his office and know that this child is waiting outside his door or somewhere else in the building.

And not in vain: because when Brian did leave the office and found Wendy still there he could hardly refuse to speak to her. Struggling to contain emotion, she would present her excuse, ask her question, and Brian would answer it. Then, “How is your book coming?” she would ask breathlessly, looking up at him, reminding him that she believed its completion would mark the end of her banishment. He would make some noncommittal reply. To say that the book was going well would have implied that reprieve was at hand; to admit that it was going badly would have implied that her self-sacrifice (and his own) had been useless. For two or three days thereafter Wendy would not appear.

This last time five days had passed. Wendy did not knock on his door; she was not waiting for him when he came in to work, or on the stairs when he went to lunch. Brian began to wonder why the siege had been lifted; what had happened to her. He began to feel worried; guilty; finally even frightened.

Then yesterday, the sixth day, as he was leaving the office he happened to glance outside and saw her standing in the quadrangle below, a yellow spot off-center on a triangle of green grass, looking up to his window. He felt relief, or something like it.

As he left the building, she approached.

“I have to see you.”

“Yes?” Brian stopped walking and stood holding his briefcase, looking at Wendy. She had apparently spent time outdoors since their last meeting, her bare round arms, her round face, were reddened and freckled. Large pale ovals around her eyes, where sunglasses must have been, gave her a pathetic, lemurlike appearance.

“I have something to tell you. Good news.” Wendy smiled wistfully. “Could we like sit down somewhere?”

Feeling both generous and curious, Brian suggested the student-union cafeteria. At this time of the afternoon and year, no one he knew was likely to be there.

“I won’t be coming around to hassle you any more,” Wendy announced, sitting down opposite him with her plastic glass of 7-Up.

“No?” Brian set down his plastic glass of iced tea, anticipating the news that Wendy was finally about to leave town. He felt relief and regret.

“You know I’ve been going down to the Krishna Bookshop.” Wendy leaned forward; her jumbled silver beads and spiral silver wires swung out over the table.

“Yes, you told me.” Brian ceased smiling. In any university town there are many forces operating against education: forces social, political and moral (to be more accurate, immoral). Brian, like other professors, has had for years to contend for his students’ time and interest against beer parties, political meetings, film series, theater rehearsals, poetry readings, athletic practice and games, good swimming or skiing weather, and sex. He is tolerant of all these activities in moderation, recognizing that they are part of a liberal education. Recently, however, a new counterforce has sprung up, one which he cannot tolerate, since it refuses to present itself as an addition to, or relaxation from, the business of getting a college degree, but sets itself up instead as a rival.

The appearance in town earlier this year of the Krishna Bookshop—an outlet for texts on Eastern religion, a center for lectures on astrology and yoga—was at first a matter for academic curiosity and amusement. The thing could hardly be expected to last long, to survive financially, even in its obscure downtown location. But it did survive; it prospered. It expanded its shelves to include works on organic gardening and primitive music; it gave courses on a variety of dubious subjects from astral projection to Zen Buddhism—assigning homework and papers in competition with the university. Too many students began spending too much time there; sitting about for hours drinking herbal tea and wasting their limited funds on intellectual trash; encouraging each other in escapism and fuzzy thinking; absorbing bogus ideas and bringing them back to clutter up Brian’s and other professors’ seminars. By now, the Krishna Bookshop has become a matter for serious annoyance.

“I know you don’t groove very much on it, Wendy added.

“Mrm.” Brian dislikes the idea of Wendy’s hanging around the bookshop, and had often said so. But it was summer, and most of her friends were away. Having denied her his companionship, he had no right to deny her that of others. He therefore made a neutral noise, the auditory equivalent of a shrug.

“I went to a lecture there last night, on meditation. Did you ever try meditation?”

“Not in the sense you mean,” Brian said.

“I don’t dig the theory much; maybe it’s just over my head. But the exercises are really fine. Especially if you’re hung up on some intellectual problem, or obsessive emotion—well, like I am.” Wendy grinned ruefully, and leaned her face on her hand, pushing aside her long, limp hair. “For instance there’s this one exercise. You sit on the floor, cross your legs—yoga position if you can, only I can’t manage that yet—and put your hands on your knees so you’re in perfect physical balance. Then you close your eyes and visualize a white circle against a dark background. You don’t think of anything else, just concentrate on that one spot.” Wendy had shut her eyes in demonstration; now she opened them and looked at Brian. “Yeah, well, I was skeptical too. But it really works. I forgot everything that was ripping me: I forgot you, and me, and where I was—I felt very calm, very together ...You know, I figure if I do it regularly, I might get over wanting you.”

Brian hesitated. He was acutely aware that all his efforts over the past two months had failed to cure Wendy of her attachment; they had only caused pain. If she could cure herself by sitting cross-legged and visualizing a white spot, or indeed by standing on her head and visualizing white elephants, he ought to be delighted. “Yes,” he said judiciously. “I think you might get over it anyhow, in time.”

Wendy shook her head. “That’s not how I am,” she said. “I never get over anything. I had this cat when I was a kid, maybe I told you, a big white tom named Crisco. He used to sleep on my bed. But when we moved into the apartment in Queens my folks had to give him away to the SPCA. I cried for that cat at night for years. Sometimes I cry for him even now.” Her pale-blue eyes brimmed with shiny tears—for Brian, for Crisco, or possibly both.

Hastily, he changed the subject. “Are there many people there, at those lectures on meditation?”

“Not too many now, in the summer. Maybe ten, twelve. I’ve only been this once. And I’ve been talking to Zed some more. You know, he’s amazing. He’s read like everything. Philosophy, psychology, history, poetry, metaphysics—”

“Is that so.” Brian had never seen the proprietor of, the Krishna, Bookshop, who (according to Wendy) chose to be known only by this syllable. He apparently declined to reveal his actual name, origins, education or history; he had renounced them all for religious reasons, along with his former job, friends, family if any, home and possessions. He lived in his bookstore, sleeping on a cot in the back room and cooking his vegetarian meals on a hot plate.

“He’s really a beautiful person,” Wendy said, leaning forward even further. “You ought to meet him, honestly.”

“Mrm.” Brian leaned back. According to reports, Zed was not in either sense a beautiful person. Students, even admiring students, described him as tall, skinny, and sort of funny-looking. His clothes, acquired at charity sales, seldom fit well, they said, and he was going bald. His age was uncertain. (“Man, he could be anything; he could be maybe thirty, or he could be really old, like even sixty.”) Whatever the truth, Zed was obviously old enough to have known better, and Brian had no desire to meet him.