All He Ever Wanted (3 page)

It was immediately obvious that the students’ attentions were not on their lessons either. The talk was all of the fire, during
which I attained some slight celebrity as a result of having actually been present in that ill-fated dining room; and like
all good tellers of tales, I perhaps embellished some incidents and details to improve the narrative. I described the ball
of fire and the melee that followed.

“Many persons were in need of assistance,” I said, adopting an uncharacteristically casual pose by sitting on the edge of
my desk. I removed a piece of lint from my trousers.

“And what were the injuries, sir?”

This from Edward Ferald, a slack-jawed boy with narrow eyes, who was always currying favor, but behind my back, I knew, referred
to me, as did some of the other students, as “Scrofulous,” which is taken, of course, from the Latin,
sus scrofa,
for pig. Well, not pig exactly, but boar. Wild boar, to be precise. Why, I do not know, since I don’t think I resembled a
boar, but no matter. Almost all the faculty had unflattering nicknames then: John Runciel was “Rancid”; Benjamin Little, as
I recall, was “Little Man”; Jonathan Whitley was “Witless.” (Surely “Rancid” is worse than “Scrofulous”?) Ferald’s pleasure
came not from learning but from provoking an unattractive earnestness in his tutors that he blandly pretended not to understand.
Thus a tutorial with Ferald could prove to be a wretched exercise. On the few occasions I had tried to resort to cunning to
outwit him, I had failed dismally, verbal agility not being my strong suit.

“Many cuts and bruises and broken bones,” I said. “And smoke inhalation. Twenty perished.”

“And yourself, sir?” Ferald asked unctuously. “I hope you yourself were not harmed.”

“No damage to myself, I am happy to report.”

“Happy indeed,” said Ferald, blinking lazily.

“Twenty burned to death, sir?” asked Nathan Foote, a fair-haired young man who wore on his face an expression of genuine horror,
though this cannot have been news. The college had been abuzz with the statistic since the night before.

“One hopes …” I began. But in that instant, time slowed and came altogether to a stop, and I saw, through the window, a woman
with a child, a vision so vivid and visceral that I feared I was hallucinating. I put my hand to my forehead, which was clammy
despite the frigid air of the classroom.

“Sir?” asked Foote, alarmed not only by my truncated sentence, but by my appearance.

I forced my eyes to focus on his face.

“One hopes the unfortunate victims perished as a result of smoke inhalation and not of the flames themselves,” I said, struggling
to regain my composure.

There was a long moment of silence in the classroom.

“I have suddenly realized,” I said quickly, “that it is inappropriate to be having class on a day when we should, in fact,
be honoring those wretched persons who perished — and, indeed, for whom our college flag is this morning at half-mast. And
so I have determined that we shall have no more lessons now. You are dismissed to your rooms and to the chapel for contemplation
upon the brevity of life, the capricious hand of fate, and the necessity to remain continually in a state of grace.”

Some of the more alert students, Ferald for one, were on their feet at once, sensing the unexpected opportunity for an hour
of leisure, while the others sat stunned for a moment before gathering notebooks and texts. How soon the classroom emptied
I do not know, for by then I was briskly on my way to Wheelock Street.

(I did sometimes wonder if my Latin nickname wasn’t, after all, a mistranslation, or an attempt at homonymic wit. Had the
student who had invented the name meant
bore?
Wild bore?)

The ice ruin of the hotel was now beginning to melt in the bright sun of mid-morning, and as I passed that godforsaken structure,
the continuous sound of dripping from a thousand icicles, a rain that glistened and sparkled as it fell, tinkled like fine
crystals. I saw two young boys, clearly truant from the local grammar school, poking at the rubble, possibly for valuables
that had survived the fire. I barked at them to leave the area at once, as any fool could see that the entire edifice was
in danger of toppling (and would, in fact, collapse three weeks later during a particularly wet and heavy snowfall).

The sense of urgency within me to see the woman who had captured my thoughts was such that I had to force myself to walk at
a normal gait so as not to attract undue attention. I wanted to reach the beeswax-colored colonial as soon as possible, for
I had an apprehension (as it happened, unwarranted) that Etna Bliss had already left the residence to return to wherever she
had come from. I didn’t think she lived with Professor Bliss. If she did, I reasoned, I surely would have heard of this person
in their household, or, more likely, have encountered her at a college function. Thrupp had approximately fifty faculty, most
of whom lived as if in glass boxes, subject to the keenest scrutiny on the part of students and fellow faculty alike; so much
so that it often seemed as though one knew everything there was to know about another in that college and in that village,
when, of course, one did not, secrets being the most zealously guarded of possessions.

My gait slowed somewhat as I approached the Bliss residence, naked in December without its canopy of elms. Such a spontaneous
decision as I had made to visit this house was quite out of keeping with my habits, and I felt, as a result, uncomfortably
rattled and incautious. But with a momentum for which I could not easily account, I was propelled to William Bliss’s front
door. Thus I lifted the door knocker and tipped the hand of fate.

It was some moments before my summons was acknowledged, and when the door was opened, it was by Etna Bliss herself.

Had I had any doubts, in the intervening hours since I had last seen her, about the reality of the thrall in which this woman
held me, such uncertainty vanished in her presence. Though she must have moved, to open the door and so forth, there was again
such a quality of stillness that one felt recklessly drawn to her as one who traverses a cliff occasionally feels perilously
like throwing oneself over the edge. She wore a black-and-bronze-striped dress with bronze lace at the collar and cuffs, a
dress that was cut in such a way as to present her bosom as upon a sort of shelf, the effect of which was to make my breath
tight within my own chest. Her face shone in the snow-reflected sunlight, and one could see that her hair had been freshly
washed and refashioned into coiled plaits that one longed (I longed) to unravel. I was unraveling in her presence.

“Miss Bliss,” I said, removing my hat.

“Professor Van Tassel,” she said, gazing at me and failing to add the expected pleasantries.

And I felt then — what? — that already she could see through my fragile carapace? That she understood all there was to know
of me? That she knew why I had come and what I would do even before I did?

“Forgive the intrusion,” I said, “but I was passing, and I could not help but wonder if your aunt has recovered from her ordeal.
I hope I’m not disturbing you, but I was thinking this morning about the shock of the event and how it must have affected
her.” I paused. “And you as well, of course.”

“Thank you for asking,” she said. “My aunt has had the doctor,” she added, and oddly it was not she who invited me to step
inside, as good manners surely required, but rather Bliss himself, who moved into the vestibule, half spectacles perched at
the end of his nose, and said, “I thought I heard a familiar voice. Van Tassel, come in, come in, so that I may properly thank
you for so safely conveying my wife and granddaughter and niece out of harm’s way last night. What a fright my wife has had.
And you, too, of course.”

“No fright at all,” I said, “though others certainly did and rightfully so.”

I stepped over the threshold.

“You must stay for a hot drink,” Bliss said, removing his glasses and folding the newspaper he held in his hands. “I should
like an account of the event, if you feel up to it.”

“Of course,” I said.

Did Etna Bliss hesitate just the one second before accepting my hat and gloves? Yes, I am sure she did. I remember distinctly
the sensation of holding out my things and for a moment having no taker. What did she see in me that made her pause? The vast
hunger that had shaken me to the bone? And would she have recognized this hunger for having seen it before on the faces of
other men, or was she merely prescient, already intuitive about human want and greed?

(And why,
why,
I have often asked myself, was it that woman and not another? Why the curve of that particular cheek and not another? Why
the gold of those eyes and not the blue of others? I have in my lifetime seen a hundred, no a thousand, beautiful women —
lifting skirts to step over piles of snow, fanning long necks in restaurants, undressing in the dim electric lights of rented
rooms — but none has ever had upon me the effect that Etna Bliss had: a sensation quite beyond that which can be explained
by science.)

She took my coat then and hung it on a hat rack in the corner. She turned slightly toward me.

“Etna, I wonder if you would …” William Bliss began, not unkindly but perhaps suggesting the nature of Etna’s place within
the household. There was no further need to elaborate, for already she had turned toward the kitchen to tell the cook that
tea was needed.

What relief it was for me to see her retreating form! The respite allowed me some moments to collect my wits and speak to
Bliss in the manner to which we were accustomed, the manner of men who do not know each other well but are regarded as colleagues
and thus have immediately a common vocabulary that must be respected before any dislike or love can form.

I did not often encounter William Bliss at school, since he was married and therefore did not reside in college rooms; nor
did we ever have occasion to work together, coming as we did from separate disciplines. Also, Bliss was older than I by a
good twenty years, and thus I regarded him as from a different generation. He directed me to the front parlor.

I cannot exaggerate the feeling of claustrophobia that room produced, the claustrophobia of months spent indoors, of oxygen
seemingly sucked from the air by the plethora of ornate pieces and dozens of objets, each demanding the eye’s attention, so
that one felt not only breathless and oppressed, but also as though a migraine were imminent. It was a room that with its
rosewood spool turnings and carved oak trefoils, its gilded mirrors and marble-topped tables, its serpentine tendrils of overgrown
plants and cast-iron lanterns, its stenciled stripes and floral motifs, its flocked wallpaper and glass curtains, its oriental
rugs and Chinese vases and fringed tablecloths and its iron clock — not to mention the dozens of daguerreotypes in silver
and wood and marquetry frames that seemed to cover every available surface — leached the vitality from the body. (A man’s
body, at least, for one deduced immediately that the room reflected a woman’s taste; even Moxon’s rooms, at their very worst,
might have been considered spare by comparison.) Because of all the plants in the windows, only the dimmest light entered
the room, and how Bliss had been able to read a newspaper there, I do not know, though perhaps he had been reading in his
study. It was evidence at the very least that William Bliss must have loved his wife very much to put up with so much excess.

“Van Tassel, do sit down.”

“Thank you.”

“There might be good. Oh, let me move that for you.”

“No, I can do it.”

“You know, I cannot thank you enough. My wife says you were a hero.”

“Nonsense, it was no more than any man would have done.”

“You are too modest. Is the college abuzz?”

“I daresay. I have canceled my classes.”

“Have you indeed? What a splendid idea.”

Sometimes it seems to me that all of life is a struggle to contain the natural impulses of the body and spirit, and that what
we call character represents only the degree to which we are successful in this endeavor. At that time in my life, when I
was a younger man, it was often a desperate struggle — to take exercise when one did not want to, to refrain from striking
a student who much deserved the blow, to put aside one’s naked ambition in the service of others, to conquer rampant desires
that if left unchecked might manifest themselves in shocking behaviors — and as with all struggles, I was occasionally not
victorious in these battles. Thus, I fear there were disturbing ruptures in my composure, as when I lost my temper and berated
a student most harshly, satisfying the anger in myself but leaving the student trembling; or as when I was unable to refrain
from speaking badly of a colleague to gain the favor of another; or as when the mask of impeccable deportment dropped for
a moment and revealed the depth of want beneath, as must have happened, however briefly, in the silence that followed Etna’s
entry into the room in which her uncle and I were sitting.

Bliss and I stood politely, and already I was anxious lest the color I could feel rising at the sides of my neck and into
my face (a further legacy of the Dutch blood of my ancestors) betray me. My mouth trembled, a twitch I sought to hide by pressing
a knuckle to my upper lip; and thus I discovered, to my deep chagrin, the blush rising all the while like a flood tide on
the night of a full moon, that I had not shaved that morning and a coarse stubble covered my cheek and jaw.

(I was never well — though often joyous, never well — in Etna’s presence.)

She set the tray down and gestured for us to sit.

“Professor Van Tassel. I hope you did not suffer as a result of your service to our family,” she said.

“Van Tassel tells me that twenty perished in the fire,” Bliss said to his niece.

Etna accepted this news with remarkable equanimity, unlike so many of her sex who might have felt it necessary to exclaim
at the announcement of ill fortune.