Darconville's Cat (28 page)

  On the other hand, it was Isabel’s first.

  XXXVI

  The Deipnosophists

  What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things.

        —ALEXANDER POPE,
The Rape of the Lock

  THE INCIDENT was memorable. It fell out this way. A
party, thrown annually, was always held in late May—a retrospective
at end of term—and the faculty, every year, generally took it to be
the party “to end all parties,” a mode of expression, of course,
that had to be taken—along with so much else at Quinsy College,
especially in matters of education—figuratively. Traditionally, it
was held at the home of one of the faculty members, some professor
or other chosen for it, one customarily hot for advancement in the
royal court of deipotent Greatracks
le roi
who, let it be
said, never disallowed his subjects any chance to screw themselves
into whatever new little dignities they coveted and his
grace-and-favor might allow. All vied for his wink, the mere wave
of his sceptre, and a subsequent ho-ho-ho raised, it was common
knowledge, many a low academic from vassal to knight to baronet to
lord to viscount to earl and, with luck, even put him right next to
the Higher Who.

  College presidents love meacocks. So everyone tried
to please President Greatracks in every way he could. He was wined
and dined at every turn by little jellybones and psychobiological
suckeggs who, never missing a chance, scraped, climbed, snatched,
glozed, cozened, and collogued. Inside every faculty member beats
the heart of a merry andrew. The word of kings is the queen of
words. The ambitious there were captives.

  The hosts were chosen. The many-called who were
overlooked, disgruntled, nevertheless appeared on Friday night and
found that no expense had been spared. There was music, dancing,
and no end of delicious food. As darkness fell, long white candles
were set out in every room, while in the capacious gardens out back
a string of paper-lanterns rattled in the warm wind, to which later
in the evening, if things went as usual, a good deal of caution
would be thrown—at least so the bets went, for this particular year
the host-couple, from the psychology department, was a stylish and
exciting coprolaliac-écouterist two who’d come in September with
Darconville named Felix and Felice Culpa.

        ”When I take the
plunge

        I drink like a
sponge,

        No bladder holds
liquor like mine—”

  sang irrepressible Felice Culpa, flinging the door
open, standing there in purple slacks and gold shoes, her wig
ablaze with jewels, and continuing, much to the shock of the guests
behind her, to round off in near-perfect numbers her romantic
roulade:

        ”So would you
get hot

        For my sweet
little twat

        If I peed the
most excellent wine?”

  It was Darconville, surprised, at the doorstep, and
Felice, laughing mightily thereat, stroked down her thighs in a
parody of mock-preparation, mock-lust, and yanked him in with a big
and most felicitous kiss of welcome. Where was Isabel? she asked,
taking his coat. He promised she would come.

  Darconville rather liked the Culpas who, few among
many, certainly could not be numbered at Quinsy in the taxonomy of
academic mumpers, wirepullers, and bootlickers. The two of them,
independent and carefree, were simply a
commedia dell’arte
of pranks, bog-jokes, and liberal thought, the kind of
free-spirited teachers who for no particular reason came to these
small towns, taught a spell, and then dropped out of sight for
good. They were certainly not long for Quinsy College, less for
holding spécule views on the equality of races than teaching the
virtue thereof. It didn’t go down, and with it they were humming
their recessional. President Greatracks, nevertheless, had once
been a guest at one of their famous dinners, a copious and
mouthwatering manicotti imbottiti à la Culpa, with homemade bread,
cannoli, and bottles of sparkling asti spumante, a celebration, in
fact, for Isabel’s birthday (Dec. 30). They were both wonderful
cooks, and lavish, and so on that occasion, though unbeknownst to
them, they were earmarked as the host designate for the May bash.
Pushing himself away from the table that particular evening,
Greatracks had belched and with perfect seriousness declared,
“Lordy, I love Hawaiian food!”

  *  *  *  *  *

  
Friday
12:30 P.M.: The
débouchement
from the Quinsy dining hall is loud. “O, I
knew
there was something else. I won’t be going up with
you to Charlottesville,” exclaims Isabel with a secret smile to her
tablemate, Annabel Lee Jenks, who’d given her open invitations for
weekend rides. In her excitement, she forgoes dessert: snowcones.
She doesn’t lag but scooping up a fardel of books rounds out of the
doors (thewm, thewm) on a zip to the library: not, however, before
dancing up the stairway to Darconville’s office to try to catch
him—catch? kiss!—and assure him that she will (a) hurry to finish
her termpaper, (b) call for Miss Trappe who, as understood, would
go with her, and (c) meet him, according to plan, at the Culpas’
party the minute ev-erything was done. Drat, the office is empty
and—but, wait, what is here? How often the slip between objective
cup and subjective lip! But what does it matter? Isabel’s face
drops, almost as if she had never in her life seen a letter, or at
least one colored lavender.

  *  *  *  *  *

  Pouring a drink, Darconville shoehorned himself into
a noisily buzzing crowd that reached to several rooms. It was a
large omnium gatherum composed for the most part of the Quinsy
administration, faculty, and staff, along with a handful of other
Lumpengesindel
from downtown Quinsyburg: town officials,
local voivodes, and influential porkers from the mayoralty, all
grouped together—hale-heartedly chattering, jingling the ice-cubes
in their glasses, blinking at each other through a vast
smokering—to concelebrate the end of the school year. People
embraced each other like orchestra conductors. Allocutive
Jill-tipplers and firedrakes with tight permanents hissed salutes
of sudden recognition, while gorbellied husbands-in-tow, wearing
bright red faces and outlandish sport jackets, barrellassed across
the room, napping their hands, to announce themselves and yawp out
greetings. A few businessmen in sudoriferous shoes snuffled and
snorted, while their pert wives, all bowlegged, stood around with
menacing smiles pricing the furniture. Jackdaw perched beside
jackdaw. It was not unexpected, for this was not an age for the
piety of hesitation, the which, alas, in Quinsyburg at least would
have to wait another century or two to come from its ossuary and be
recognized. It was the Age of Smirk. It was the Age of
Intrusion.

  “Hah, har
yew
!”

  Good grief, thought Darconville, what language was
that? Pushtu? Wolof? Gic-Goc? He turned.

  “Over here.”

  Darconville turned again.

  “
Dang it, son, over here
!”

  It was President Greatracks, shinyjowled, hunkering
low on his elbows and snickering through the funkhole of the bar.
His face ballooned out comically. He stuffed a roll-mop herring
into his mouth, then another, and another, and then with a loud
thoop sucked a huge gobbet of sour cream from the fat of his wrist.
“I saw y’all—” He swallowed hard and wiped his chin. “I say, I saw
ya’ll day or two ago, you ol’ coon hunter, with just the prettiest
little ol’ gal
ever
, steppin’ out of that big au-to of
yours, huh?” He winked a wink of fat-bound comprehension, eased
back, and swung his rumbling, drumbling body around the side of the
nook. His tie was stuffed into his trousers, the belt of which,
tight, squeezed him just above mid-point like a trans-vected sugar
bag. “A mighty tall drink of water, and cute as pie. Mm, mmm, cute
as
pah
!”

  “Yes,” said Darconville.

  “Beautiful as a o-riole.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Shoot, you was grinnin’“ he wheezed, “like a
unwarshed mule eatin’ briars—and then some.” He fished for a crumb
in his teeth. “Well, good. Longhair or no longhair, you still ain’t
one of them sad little bumboxes around here about to drive me crazy
with damfool requests and extracurricular thises and thats, no you
ain’t, son, and I’ll give you that!” Ironically enough, Greatracks
liked his people soaped and regimented, a tour years back in the
navy having taught him, he repeatedly pointed out, not only
spiffiness—here, he always raised his voice in contribution to the
betterment of the proximate world—but
discipline
! “These
touchholes,” said Greatracks, gloomily looking around, “they’re all
arse and pockets! Some of these bastards have been on their knees
so long, they’ve forgot what it’s like to have feet!”

  He grabbed a bottle of bourbon, filled Darconville’s
glass, and tapping a toast hausted right from the bottle in one
long suck. “We right in hopin’ you find Quinsy here to your
likin’?” He burped. “Hell, sure you do, we all do, right?” His
tongue was resting on his lower lip in half-witted expectation.
“Right?”

  For confirmation, President Greatracks leaned over
to grab Qwert Yui Op, but he was explaining to Miss Porchmouth and
Dr. Excipuliform—unfortunately, in Tibetan-Chinese—about the method
used for sowing soybeans in his country: they stored seeds in their
ears, if his charade meant anything, and hopped through the fields
at a 30° angle. So, reaching out, Greatracks hooped in the then
passing Dodypols to reassure Darconville how happy they all were.
Dr. Dodypol, a friend of Darconville’s, was a short little fellow
from the English department with a sad starched pallor and
bloodless, nickel-sized ears and, upon seeing him, always waved at
pocket level with a little flap and said, “Hello, Darconville. Fair
grow the lilies on the riverbanks?” But on this occasion he said
nothing, nothing at all. Twice his height, Mrs. Dodypol carelessly
pushed her husband aside and, holding with exaggerated care a
fuel-smelling drink at arm’s length to protect a dress the color of
winter cabbage, on long morbid feet moved leering up to President
Greatracks with a face salacious and rouged to a Grock-like mask,
her eyes smiling like moonfish. She playfully squibbled his
cheek.

  It was a blatant rudeness, not to Greatracks, of
course, who loved it, but to her husband, for common report had it
that she was Greatracks’s mistress, that
he
had finagled
her the managership of the Piggly Wiggly, and that on more than one
Saturday night their twin, fully unambiguous shadows had been seen
thrown against the indiscreet shades of the otherwise
irreproachable Timberlake Hotel.

  “Honey,” exclaimed Mrs. Dodypol, slightly inebriated
and turning to Darconville the countenance of a bummish
down-and-out clown, the umbo of her nose scarlet and her general
features flaking like an old moist Roman fresco, “think. No crime.
Country air. Plup-plup-pl,” she hiccuped, “plain folks.” Her eyes
swam, crossed, reddened. She was all mops and brooms, and as the
heat rose to her face, frazzling her hair, she seemed to reinforce
Casanova’s theory that any woman over fifty-six need no longer be
considered among the living. “And then what about that shweet
child,” her tongue thickened, “you take out walkin’?” She tapped
his heart. “Solid. Loyal. Faithful.” It was the common, amplified
anti-rhetoric of the drunk: brief, non-discursive, laconic.

  “And cute as
pah
,” pitched in Greatracks,
putting her drink vertical.

  “You stay on,” breathed the Dodypol Better Half
through her powder and fucus. “That right?”

  “Sunshine,” said Greatracks, beaming, “you as right
as rain!”

  Lowering her mottled face, Mrs. Dodypol took a
thriftless slug of fruity domestic. “And so,” she hiccuped, “will
you will or won’t you won’t?” She waited with the drunk’s fussy
care, the ungainsayable doggedness. “Yes, sugar pie?”

  “Now don’t go crowdin’ him, dumperling,” said
Greatracks, jogging Darconville in the ribs. “He be back, shinin’
like a nigger’s heel. Right?”

  Deliberating, Darconville thought:
yes, I will
be back
. It was suddenly strange, for of the many times he had
heard the question this was the first time he had heard the answer.
Was to agree to yield? he wondered. He didn’t know. He had been
fearful for so long that if he came to like Quinsyburg he might not
hate it anymore, the fear faded: the act committed by not acting.
He thought of a related question: precisely what of that freedom
which, exercised, relinquished itself? And that led to still
another: may one be consoled in the absolute that everything is
relative? It immediately occurred to Darconville, then, that to
allow for the absence of danger was somehow to acknowledge the
possibility of slavery. And yet he was in love! He had opted
forever, and for something to be entirely romantic, he thought, it
had to be irrevocable. So choice itself had been made irrelevant.
His freedom, paradoxically, was the deliverance from it: the
choice, chosen, never to choose again.

  Darconville, nodding, said he would be back.

  “That is a
joy
,” brayed Mrs. Dodypol,
almost bleaching Darconville’s hair in a spatter-spray of drunken
yux and wet-cupping her mouth. She turned merrily and pronged
President Greatracks in the bullseye of his navel with a fingernail
the color of potassium permanganate. “Isn’t it, skeezix? Just a ol’
joy?” There was no response, however, other than that of a great
dopplerian whoop of laughter, for having caught sight of a tray of
ham slabs and a mess of wallop-sized buns Greatracks was now more
than halfway across the room and moving fast. Without a pause, Mrs.
Dodypol, part-time
grisette
and supremo of the Piggly
Wiggly—spilling her drink—bounced into the air and sprang after him
through the room with a scream like that of a crazed woodfreak.