John Gardner - Freddy's Book

I WAS IN Madison, Wisconsin, on a lecture tour, when I first met Professor Agaard and his son. I was there to read a paper, brand new at the time (since then, as you may know, widely anthologized), “The Psycho-politics of the Late Welsh Fairytale: Fee, Fie, Foe — Revolution!” The lecture was behind me, a thoroughly pleasant event, as usual, at least for me — a responsive audience that had laughed at the right places, perhaps here and there shed a tear or two, asked the kinds of questions that let a speaker show his wide-ranging knowledge and wit, and applauded with generous gusto when it was over. Now I was deep into one of those long, intense celebrations that put the cap on such affairs, making the guest feel gloriously welcome and the audience (those who make the party) seem a host of old friends. The whole first floor of the house was crowded; a few may have drifted to the second floor as well; and from the sound of things, there was another party roaring in the basement I think I never knew whose house it was; probably the elderly professor of antiquities who’d met me at the door, one of those bright-faced, bearded fellows with a great, hearty handshake, a thundering laugh, and a pretty, younger wife. I don’t mean I was indifferent to who my host was; not at all. I have been, from childhood upward, a gregarious, infinitely curious being, quick to strike up friendships wherever I travel, always more than willing to hear the other person’s side. It was no doubt those qualities that led me to my profession, history — or more precisely, psycho-history. In any event, as I was saying, the night was hectic, as these things always are, and the party was already under way when, trailing associate professors and graduate students — my face bright red, I imagine, from my long climb up the icy flagstone steps (I’m a heavy person, I ought to mention, both tall and generous of girth) — I arrived, divested myself of hat and coat, and began my usual fumbling with my pipe. Crowded as the house was, I couldn’t catch more than a smattering of the hurried introductions.

Whomever it belonged to, I remember thinking it a splendid house, elegant and fashionable: vaguely Tudor but exceptionally airy and, with its wide arches, its crystal chandeliers — a thousand reflections in the walnut panelling — a place wonderfully aglitter with cheerful light. Except for the kitchen and numerous brick islands of thriving plants, the whole first floor was carpeted in oystery light gray. Talk rumbled, oceanic; silverware clinked around the white buffet tables. I’d moved to my usual theater of action, backed against the drainboard in the large, bright kitchen, where I could be close to the ice in its plastic bag and, thanks to my height, could command every corner of the room. On every side of me, guests with their glasses were packed in so tightly that only by daring and ingenuity could one raise one’s own and drink. There were the usual smiling students, heads tilted with interest, eyes slightly glazed, possibly from drink but more likely from mid-term pressure and lack of sleep. Heaven knows it’s not easy for our graduate students — the competition, the scarcity of jobs; one’s heart goes out to them!

So I was holding forth, enjoying myself. It may be true, as occasionally someone will point out to me, treating the thing as an established fact, that for the most part the students and professors pressed around me are interested only as one is in, say, lions at the zoo; but I would stubbornly insist that there are always exceptions, even the possibility of some signal exception: some young Gibbon or Macaulay not yet conscious of how good he is, who hangs on every word of the sparkling-eyed, silver-haired visitor from Olympus (the lower slopes), hunting with ferocious concentration for what, in time, he’ll find he has inside him. One is always a little checked by that not-too-remote possibility — one tries not to speak too rashly, give bad advice — but I, at least, am never utterly checked. One plays the game, follows wherever drink and inspiration lead; what harm? I was the guest celebrity, every word worth gold; but I was only one in, excuse the expression, a galaxy of stars. Everything I said was sure to be contradicted next week when some other famous scholar zoomed in; and everything I said — no question about it — I emphatically believed for that moment. “You have such confidence, Mr. Winesap!” people tell me. Shamelessly I reveal to them my secret. On paper I say anything that enters my head, then revise till I believe it; but in conversation I count on others for revision. I rather enjoy being proved — conclusively and cleanly — to be mistaken. It’s Nature’s way, I like to think: the Devonian fish corrected little by little through the ages into the milkcow, the gazelle, the princess with golden tresses who refills my glass. Young professors poke my chest with their index fingers, their faces pocked and sweating, their bright eyes bulging. “Nonsense!” I sing out, or “Interesting! Good point!” Behind them, men my own age, with trim gray moustaches, smile knowingly at the floor. I can guess what they’re thinking. They’d like to know how I, a mere poet of a historian, have become what I’ve become, while they, so responsible and reasonable, so well-armed with evidence and fit to be trusted to the last jot, tittle, iota, and scintilla, are only what they are. I could tell them the answer: “You inspire no confidence, my learned friends! You don’t eat enough! You’re skinny!” No doubt in their heart of hearts they know it. “Never mind,” I could tell them in a gentler mood, “in a thousand years we’ll all be suppressed events in a Chinese history book.”

We were discussing monsters. I’d written a trifling, amusing little piece on the roots and rise of the American big-foot legend, and the people around me were asking me now, though it had nothing much to do with the article I’d written, to explain my ideas on the popular appeal of monstrosity (“from monstrum: a showing forth,” as a wiry little graduate student pointed out — a young man worth watching, as I mentioned at the time). I was carrying on in the highest spirits — needless to say, I’d had a good deal to drink — and just as I was making a particularly interesting point (I felt), a bespectacled, doll-like professor at my left broke in loudly, peering with fierce attention at the sherry in his glass, the corners of his mouth twitching nervously outward, “I have a son who’s a monster.”

I smiled, quite thrown, glancing at the faces around me to see what response I ought to make. The man was either mad or in deadly earnest, and in his presence my casual spinning of theories seemed indelicate to say the least. No doubt those around me felt the same embarrassment, but from their looks one would have thought they hadn’t heard him. I stroked my moustache and looked back at the professor just in time to see him roll up his large, glinting eyes at me — fierce blue pupils trapped in red and white webbing — then look back as if in terror at his sherry. He raised his hand, not looking up, timidly inviting a handshake. “We haven’t met,” he said. He had, like so many university people, the queer habit of making his words just a touch ironic, and sometimes, as now, he would close off his phrase with a curious little baa of a laugh, a sort of vocal tic. “I’m Professor Agaard,” he said. “Baa.”

It was an odd introduction. Among other things, one rarely hears anyone at these gatherings call himself “Professor.” I studied the top of his head with admiration: a large, pale, liverspotted dome; frail wisps of hair. He was older than most of us, surely past retirement; probably professor emeritus, I thought.