Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

There were some preliminary matters, first. President Greatracks, sitting up front like Buddha in a bad mood with his hands clasped in front of his belly as indifferently as tweezers, was being presented a gift (an unidentifiable rhomboid of pewter) — for his “unswerving leadership”—in the name of the senior class whose metonym, Miss Xystine Chappelle, student body president and sweetheart-of-the-school, after tweaking the tips of an organdy the color of an orange fruit-jumble, curtseying, and delivering her message with cute little eye-rolls, breathlessly concluded:

“. . as a class we really couldn’t think of a more deserving leader. The real meaning of college, hopefully, will remain with us even when we have to face the reality of the world after graduation, the realization of which, I realize, is not very realistic now. Anyway, I’m really proud to bestow this gift in behalf of all of us who can never thank you enough for helping us reach our realizable goals.” [ Applause ]

The agenda was full: it was the first such meeting of the year, and there was a great deal to do. Swinging his nose, President Greatracks motioned to her feet his secretary, a blinking anablept with mis-mated eyes and slingback shoes who read the minutes from the previous spring and then handed out the updated “Faculty Profile” booklets, after which Greatracks, his cheeks puffed out like a Switzer’s breeches, stepped forward on his huge drawbridge feet and said he wasn’t going to be wordy because where was the damfool percentage in it? No, his only grouse, he said, was about the budget. Money, he pointed out, didn’t grow on trees, was the root of all evil, lost one friends, and talked ! — too damned much, he said. This year, he continued — it was prolegomenon to every faculty meeting — money was going to keep its little mouth shut, and they could all paste that in their hats, OK? Mr. Schrecklichkeit, an assistant biology professor with a white squill of a nose, leaned over to Darconville and snapped, “There goes my course in Vegetable Staticks, that son of a bitch!”

The meeting, then, was called to order — with several raps of the gavel by President Greatracks, appearing rather like the Turk of legend who, ready to drink a bottle of wine, first made loud noises and screwed out filthy faces to warn his soul of the foul anti-Koranic act he was about to commit. First, Dean Barathrum, a born remittance man and author of several out-of-date arithmetics, introduced the newest members of the faculty. They were received, Darconville and several others, with eye-watering yawns. One man was continuously tracing the sweephand of his watch with his fingers. Another, staring out a window, was actually sucking his thumb.

Darconville’s attention, however, had been drawn to the shiny-paged faculty booklet, alphabetically listing everyone with photo and credentials. It looked like a medieval bestiary: skipjacks, groutnolls, hysterical-looking circumferentors, frumps and filiopietistic longheads, micelings, whipsnades, and many another whose eyes showed a very short limit of accommodation. Several had actually taken no college degrees. Others were part-time evangelists, ex-army colonels, and car salesmen. And the various titles of their scholarly publications — books, articles, monographs, etc. — were scarcely believable: “English Nose Literature”; Stephen Duck: More Rhyme Than Reason ; “The American Disgrace: Overabuse of the Verb ‘To Get’“; “Fundavit Stones in Crozet, Va.”; Much Ado About Mothing ; “The Psychopathological Connection Between Liquid Natural Gas and Agraphia”; The Story of Windmill Technology ; “The Significance of Head Motions in Peking Ducks”; “Infusions as Drinks”; “Abraham Lincoln, Quadroon?” and several other inventions, thought Darconville, of which necessity was hardly the mother.

Finally, the Great Consult began. They discussed tenure procedure. They revised policy on sabbaticals. They rehearsed, to palsied lengths, curriculum changes, cross-registration, crises in enrollment. It suddenly became a great din of objections, fierce denials, and loud peevishness all expressed in noises like the farting of laurel in flames with everybody going at it head to head as if they were all trying right then and there to solve the problem of circular shot, perpetual motion, and abiogenesis!

Staring in disbelief, Darconville looked on in a kind of autoscopic hallucination as each of the faculty members rose in turn to make a point that never seemed to have an acute end. It was all queer, makeshift, and unpindownable, for all the cube-duplicators, angle-trisectors, and circle-squarers seemed to keep busy avoiding any question that hadn’t sufficient strength to throw doubt on whatever answer couldn’t have been offered anyway lest an inefficacious solution only prove to muddle a problem that couldn’t be raised in the first place. The discussion, rarely deviating into sense, grew round with resolutions and amendments as they sacrificed the necessary to acquire the superfluous and did everything twice by halves, for, like Noah, they had two of everything — two, it might be said, they didn’t need so much as one of: two policies, two excuses, two faces and, always, forty-eleven reasons to prop up both.

There was, for instance, Miss Shepe the witty, Miss Ghote the wise — educatresses both, departments sociology and art education respectively — who fell swiftly to reviewing the college motto: should it be “We Preach to Teach” or “We Teach to Preach”?—a rabid grace/ free-will discussion growing out of their sudden but sustained failure to settle on the primacy of one over the other. They squared off, adjusting their plackets and glaring into each other’s pinched and penny-saving faces. “I’m for less grapes and more fox,” exclaimed Miss Shepe, confusing everybody. Furious, Miss Ghote— brekekekekek ! — snapped her pencil in two.

“So much for your deduction,” said Miss Ghote.

“I deduce nothing,” sniffed Miss Shepe. “You’ve simply induced that yourself.”

“Induced, yes, what you’d implied.”

“You dare,” snapped Miss Shepe, twisting her cramp-ring, “you dare infer I’ve implied what you yourself have induced, Miss Ghote?”

“Put it this way,” replied Miss Ghote with an icy-sweet smile, “you’ve only surmised I infer what you’ve implied I induced — and I do believe your bra strap’s showing.”

Miss Shepe banged down her heel. “Then you conclude wrongly, Miss Nothing-in-the-World-Could-Make-Me-Care-Less, that I surmised you infer what you think I’ve implied you’ve induced!”

“But you only assume that I conclude wrongly that you’ve surmised what—”

“ Elephant balls !” howled President Greatracks, the fat in his eyeballs quivering. A group of old fishfags from the home economics department, dosed to sleep by their own heavy perfume, immediately woke to clap their mouths in horror.

“I’m not certain I heard what he said,” whispered Miss Swint to someone behind her. It was a faint voice, some staring ghost suddenly exclaiming upon Rhadamanth. The world to Miss Swint, piano teacher, her face two subtle shades of oatmeal, backlit both by a monocle, consisted merely of music, her collection of wheat-sheaf pennies, and the responsibility of playing the organ every Sunday at the Presbyterian church, the very place in which, years ago, she’d long since become convinced that maidenhead and godhead were indivisible.

There were soon other matters on the docket: dining-hall duty, election to committees, chaperon assignments. And some few raised questions about general reform, and yet while only a mere fraction of the lot were actually concerned with change — it was a subject met by children, with reform as the wicked uncle — they all jumped up like minorités, jurisprudentes, and tub-thumping Sorbonnists to debate it, all reinforcing the “yo-he-ho” protoglottological theory that words initially began as shouts. No aspect was overlooked, no fine point ignored, no issue diminished. It was complete havoc once again as they stood in coalition or squatted in caucus, breaking down every proposition like reformational hairsplitters into partitions, sections, members, subsections, submembral sections, submembral subsections and denouncing each other with mouthfuls of rhetoric warped by quiddling, diddling, and undistributed middling. One third believed what another third invented what the other third laughed at. Quid the Cynic argued with Suction the Epicurean, Suction the Epicurean argued with Sipsop the Pythagorean, Sipsop the Pythagorean argued with Quid the Cynic, and the whole afternoon dwindled away with one saving at the spigot and another letting out at the bunghole.