John Gardner - Freddy's Book

The cat looked coolly from the professor to me, then stirred, stretching, and moved away, over toward the side of the fireplace.

While the old man polished and inspected his glasses, stiffly holding them up and looking through them at the fire, then giving them another clumsy wipe with his hankie, I listened to the creaks and groans of the house, the crackling of firelogs and ticking of distant clocks, wondering where — above me or in some grim chamber farther in — Professor Agaard kept his son.

“Well, well,” the professor said when his ritual was over, the glasses back in place, “let’s see about that tea!” He bowed from the waist, turning as he did so, then scooted toward another door, perhaps one that led into the kitchen. His head, I noticed for the first time now, had at some time been mashed deep into his shoulders, possibly by arthritis, so that it would no longer turn from side to side. When he paused at the door, it was his whole upper body that cocked around to say, “Make yourself at home, Winesap! Posey, won’t you show our nice visitor a chair?” He made his baa-ing noise, laughing at the joke, then left.

I looked at the cat as if inviting conversation — she seemed at least as ordinarily human as the professor — but the cat had lain down on her side, half closing her eyes, dismissing me. I set down my bag and rubbed my hands together, as if for warmth “What a wonderful house!” I called, loudly enough to be heard in the kitchen.

The cat shrank as if she thought I meant to harm her, then relaxed, not quite forgiving. From the kitchen came no answer, silence like a judgment of Brahma. I sighed, picked up my bag, and drifted to the nearest of the bookshelves to look at the tides.

So I occupied myself for a good ten minutes. It was pleasant enough business, since I’d written my dissertation on medieval Scandinavia — a subject I’ve rarely thought about since — virtually the only subject in Agaard’s library. He had all the books I knew, which was hardly surprising, and a great many more I’d never heard of. Other than those he had only a few old novels, Tolstoy and the like, and an occasional book of verse. Outside the tall, round-topped windows I could see nothing but blowing snow and darkness, though it was still mid-afternoon. There were vertical shadows, puzzling for a moment, until at last I realized they were bars to keep out burglars — or to hold something in. Finally the old man returned, pushing an elegant teacart, dark walnut — perhaps I was seeing here the hand of the long-vanished mistress of the house. On top of the teacart he had a tarnished silver tray. The cat raised her head, alert.

“Ah!” I said, “wonderful!”

“The tea’s old and stale, I’m afraid,” he said loudly. “I’m sure you’re used to better.”

I recognized or imagined something snide in his tone, but having no idea what it meant or what to do with it, I said with a broad wave, “I’m not fussy. I wouldn’t know stale from fresh.”

Though his mouth smiled, I saw when he rolled up his eyes that I’d said the wrong thing. It was the duty of a man of my good fortune to know the difference, he seemed to say. He, if he’d been blessed with opportunities like mine … I was beginning to see my situation here with Agaard as hopeless.

As the old man poured the tea his thin hands shook and he muttered to himself, a habit I was glad to see in him, since I share it. Yet if he hadn’t been muttering — cursing, perhaps or expressing astonishment at some remembered or legendary outrage — I would of course have mentioned my admiration for his work. I couldn’t help but wonder if he blocked me on purpose, not that the performance wasn’t convincing. When he’d filled my cup, over on the cart, he started toward me, walking carefully, looking hard at the cup and saucer, still muttering, now and then crunching his dentures. A few feet from me he stopped, turned at the waist to look around to his left, then looked back at me over his spectacles, raising his eyebrows.

“Don’t you want to sit down?” he asked

“Thank you,” I said, blushing no doubt, and stepped over, still carrying my bag, to the chair nearest the fire. He followed with the tea, muttering again and when I’d put my bag down and carefully lowered my bulk onto the seat, mindful of the bowed-out, fragile legs, the plush-covered arms held upright by a charm — the chair so narrow that the arms lightly brushed my body on each side — he placed the cup and saucer not on the table between the two chairs but in my hands, as carefully as he’d have done for a child, steadying them a moment, making sure I had them balanced, then raising his hands from them slowly. Though there was sugar on the teacart, he did not think to offer it or place the dim cut-glass sugar bowl on the table. I decided to do without. He returned to the cart and poured a saucer of milk; stiffly, carefully carried it around behind the farther chair over toward the fireplace to set it on the scuffed black tiles for the cat, who came over to it at once, then finally poured tea for himself. When he too was seated with his cup, the three of us forming a little circle in the light — high, flitting shadows on the bindings of books and the lumpy, dark wallpaper — Professor Agaard said, “ Well now.”

I waited. He said nothing more, only stared into his lap. Perhaps half a minute passed. I sipped my tea.

At last I said, “I must say, Professor Agaard, you’re a great hero of mine. One of the most important books—”

“That was a long time ago,” he said. He spoke with finality, like a man clapping a box shut.

“All the same,” I began.

“It’s a painful subject,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

We drank our tea in silence. He sat with his toes pointed inward, his face turned away from me.

An agonizing two or three minutes passed. The cat watched us with the innocent malevolence of her carnivore nature; indistinct shadows craftily began inching across the ceiling and floor. The silence stretched on, acutely embarrassing for both of us, surely; I must think of a way to break it, I kept thinking. I cleared my throat, a time or two, little half-involuntary growls like a sleeping dog’s, but nothing came. I hadn’t felt so self-conscious and uncomfortable since the days old Slash Potter, my thesis director, would require me to sit waiting in his high marble office while he thumbed through my latest revisions. Not that it was all Agaard’s fault, it struck me. It was I who, hoping to flatter him, had demoted myself. As I suspect may be clear already, I did not actually like old Agaard’s book, though I’d been vastly impressed when I was younger. I still respected it, of course. It was, and is, the work of a mind I do not hesitate to call far superior to my own. His gift for languages, his absolute originality, his uncanny intuition, all these were awesome; indeed, I wouldn’t be disposed to quarrel with the widespread though hardly universal opinion that the fellow is without parallel. Nevertheless, I don’t care much for the book.

Be all that as it may, the fact was, I could see now, that I had lied to him, in effect. Perhaps it was from the falsehood itself that he cringed, verbally slapping my hand away, refusing a charity that had in it no true caritas. Time grew heavier second by second. Then by lucky chance I thought of Jack Jr. — how we, two intellectuals (perhaps not in the sense that Sven Agaard was, but by no means fools), could sit smiling with affection, serenely silent in one another’s company for hours at a time. At once, as if the thought of my son had released me, I found myself saying — leaning forward, trying to sound at once concerned and hearty—“It must be difficult, living here alone, having to take care of your son. He does live here with you, I presume?”