Old School (13 page)

It took a long time. The typewriter kept inching back, and as it retreated I leaned farther and farther over the desk until the discomfort broke my trance. Then I’d have to return the machine to the starting line and get up and pace the room a while to ease my back before bending once again to the work.

I finished the story just before the bell rang for breakfast. I read it through and fixed a few typos, but otherwise it needed no correction. It was done. Anyone who read this story would know who I was.

WHEN IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE

As I left the dining hall one morning Mr. Ramsey took my elbow and asked if he might have a word with me. He guided me in the direction of the headmaster’s garden, away from the stream of boys going to their rooms or their chores. He kept his hold on me as we walked, in what I took to be a confidential English way, so I bowed my head and looked grave. It puzzled me to be singled out like this. Though I had done well in Mr. Ramsey’s class the year before, I’d kept my distance and so had he.

You’ve not wasted your time here, he said.

I knew that Mr. Ramsey had been on the Cassidy Prize committee, so I thought he was referring to my Shakespeare essay; but when I thanked him he looked annoyed and waved it off.

We’re not here to talk about essays, he said. One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without . . . chess, but one could live in it. Mr. Ramsey let go of my elbow and stopped beside the low stone wall that ran around the garden. A skinny black squirrel with tufted ears scrambled up the wall and began chattering at us.

Stories, though—one could not live in a world without stories.

No. No, sir.

Without stories one would hardly know what world one was
in.
But I’m not saying this very well. Mr. Ramsey stared out over the garden. It has to do with self-consciousness, he said. Though I’m no believer, I find it interesting that self-consciousness is associated with the Fall. Nakedness and shame. Knowledge of ourselves as a thing apart, and bound to die.
Exile.
We speak of self-consciousness as a burden or a problem, and so it is—the problem being how to use it to bring ourselves
out
of exile. Whereas our tendency is to lose ourselves in the distance, wouldn’t you say?

The squirrel approached to within a foot of us and reared up, obviously expecting a handout. Someone had been sneaking him scraps, probably a younger boy, homesick, missing his dog.

That squirrel looks about ready to take us down, I said.

Lost in the distance, Mr. Ramsey said again. It’s a wonder we’re not all barking. And of course we would be if we hadn’t any way to use self-consciousness against itself, or rather against its worst inclinations—morbidity, narcissism, paranoia, grandiosity, that lot. We have
somehow
to turn a profit on it. Which is, I must say, exactly what that story of yours does. “Summer Dance.” A marvelous story! Pure magic. No—no—not magic.
Alchemy.
The dross of self-consciousness transformed into the gold of self-knowledge. Enough. I see I’m embarrassing you. But I had to tell you, for my own sake if not yours, what a superior piece of writing that is.

I thanked Mr. Ramsey for his kind words and asked how he’d happened to read my story. I had dropped my only copy in the submission box, from which I assumed it had been forwarded to Idaho with the others.

I chose the final entries, he said. Seeing my surprise, he said, Really, now, you didn’t suppose we sent Mr. Ernest Hemingway every story you fellows came up with,
did
you? All thirty-four of them? Oh no. I skimmed off the three best and sent him those, though I knew it was strictly pro forma after I’d read the first page of “Summer Dance.” And I was right, wasn’t I?

Sir?

Ernest Hemingway chose your story. Hadn’t any choice, really. I’m no believer, as I say, but I do believe in the existence of what one can only call gifts—gifts without a giver, if you will, but gifts all the same. That which cannot be earned or deserved. Rewards for nothing. A scandal to the virtuous and hardworking, but there you are. I’ll admit to some envy here.

Ernest Hemingway chose my story?

We’re asking you not to say anything until it’s announced in the school paper tomorrow. Didn’t want to spring it on you all at once like that—out of the blue. Wanted to give you a chance to draw breath, and of course add a personal note of congratulations. Your story will run with my interview.

I was glad for the day of grace I’d been given. After my last class that afternoon I went AWOL across the river and mucked through freshly ploughed fields to the tallest of the neighboring hills, Mount Winston as we called it. Mount Winston had been a smoker’s roost when I served with that band of incorrigibles; to judge from all the butts moldering up here in the dimples and clefts of exposed shale, it still was.

I paced the hilltop, exhausted but too nervous to sit. In my classes the blood-roar in my head had rendered me nearly deaf. Most of this was explosive relief and exhilaration, yet with a thumping underpulse of dread. It was one thing to confide your hidden life to a piece of paper in an empty room, quite another to have it broadcast.

A warm wind blew across the hilltop, and with it the faint cries of boys chasing balls. The school lawns and fields were a rich, unreal green against the muddy brown expanse of surrounding farmland. Between the wooded banks of the river two shells raced upstream, oars flashing. The chapel with its tall crenellated bell tower and streaming pennant looked like an engraving in a child’s book. From this height it was possible to see into the dream that produced the school, not mere English-envy but the yearning for a chivalric world apart from the din of scandal and cheap dispute, the hustles and schemes of modernity itself. As I recognized this dream I also sensed its futility, but so what? I loved my school no less for being gallantly unequal to our appetites—more, if anything. With still a month to graduation I was already damp with nostalgia. I stretched out on a slab of rock. The sun in my face and radiant warmth on my back lulled me to sleep. Then the wind cooled and I woke with a wolfish hunger and started back.

The school newspaper came out twice a month. They left it in the foyer of the dining hall so we could pick it up going into breakfast, and on these mornings we were allowed to read at the table—our faces obscured by the open wings of the plainly named
News,
or bent over pages folded neatly beside high-piled plates, which most boys, perhaps from long study of their commuting fathers, could empty without a glance. The thought of sitting there while everyone read my story gave me the creeps, but I had to go. I had to see what Ernest Hemingway thought of my work.

The kitchen sounds and chink of crockery gave depth to the quiet of the hall. Boys glanced up from their papers to sneak looks in my direction. I couldn’t eat, but I poured myself a cup of coffee and spread the front page over my empty plate. The opening of “Summer Dance” ran down three columns on the left, to be continued inside; the fourth and last column contained the telephone interview with Hemingway, surmounted by our art master’s caricature. Mr. Ramsey had left out his own questions, so Hemingway seemed to be speaking in monologue.

You can tell your boy there that this is pretty good work. Pretty damned good work, considering. He knows what he’s writing about, more than he’s telling, and that’s good. That’s always good. He is writing cleanly and well about what he knows and he’s writing from his conscience and that always raises the stakes. This is the story of a conscience and that kind of story if it’s honest always has something for another conscience to learn from, even an old wreck like mine. These are true human beings here, I mean true on the page, though I’m guessing they are true in other ways. If they are, they will never forgive him. This I can promise. If your boy had asked me, I would have told him to wait till they were all dead.

Am I kidding? Sure. Sure I am. The stories you have to write will always make someone hate your guts. If they don’t you’re just producing words.

Advice . . . Don’t take advice, I never did. And don’t get swell-headed. Writers are just like everyone else, only worse. Did he rewrite the story forty times? He could throw away some stuff, I’ve thrown away enough in my time. The kid knows what he’s writing about and that’s good, now he should go out and know some other things to write about.

But I don’t mean wars, not the way you probably think I mean. You don’t go to war as a tourist. War’ll get you killed and dead men don’t write books. Same with hunting. Same with the sauce. Take Joyce. A rummy. Chained to his desk. Liked to read his work out loud, pretty tenor voice. Blind as a bat. You know what his wife told me? Said he ought to go lion hunting, that it would be good for his work and I should take him lion hunting. Can you imagine that? James Joyce lion hunting, with those eyes? Maybe I should have, come to think of it.

Watch the sauce. The sauce kills more writers than war, just takes longer. If you’re going up against the giant killer you’d better be damned sure you can win. Some of us can, some can’t. Scott never had a chance, poor soft [———]. Mouth like a girl’s. Between the rum and that pretty mouth and that wife of his he never had a chance. But he didn’t write drunk, not like Bill Faulkner. With Bill Faulkner you can tell, right in the middle of a sentence, where the mash kicked in. Called me a coward once. A coward. I had to have Buck Lanham set him straight.

Watch the sauce. And don’t pay any attention to what the [———] say about you. They’ve said everything about me. What the hell. They’ll die and then they’ll be dead.

What else? Don’t talk about your writing. If you talk about your writing you will touch something you shouldn’t touch and it will fall apart and you will have nothing. Get up at first light and work like hell. Let your wife sleep in, it’ll pay off later. Watch your blood pressure. Read. Read James Joyce and Bill Faulkner and Isak Dinesen, that beautiful writer. Read Scott Fitzgerald. Hold on to your friends. Work like hell and make enough money to go someplace else, some other country where the [———] Feds can’t get at you.

Did I say keep your friends? Keep your friends, hold on to your friends. Don’t lose your friends.

I don’t know. I guess that’s it. That’s the sermon for today.

In another week I would meet Ernest Hemingway, and walk alone with him in the headmaster’s garden. He had chosen my story and made special mention of it for everyone to read. There was no excuse for me to feel anything but joy. I knew this, sure, but what did his blood pressure or James Joyce’s wife or Fitzgerald’s pretty mouth or sleeping late or getting up early have to do with my story? I didn’t want Ernest Hemingway’s advice, I wanted his attention.

True, he said I was doing pretty damned good work, but his
considering
sort of canceled that out. The part where he said I knew what I wrote about, that was good, that was true—so why did he have to spoil it with that business about knowing something else? Did
this
story need me to know something else? And what, exactly, should I have thrown away? An example would’ve been nice, if he could actually find one.

The best part was about “Summer Dance” being a story of conscience, giving other consciences something to learn from. But why not take the obvious next step and mention the courage this kind of story required? He knew, he had to know from writing “Soldier’s Home” and “The End of Something” how it felt to expose yourself like this for the sake of a story, to make it living and true. Why didn’t he say so?

The answer came to me as I studied the shape of the interview. Hemingway had begun by talking about my story and surely would’ve gone on talking about it if he hadn’t been derailed into all this trivia by Mr. Ramsey’s questions, now cleverly removed to make Hemingway sound like a maundering, self-important old bore with his beard in a drink. It was an injustice both to him and to me, and I resented it, as I resented the prissy editing of the interview. I had a vision of Mr. Ramsey,
Lolita
’s Paladin, sworn enemy of censors everywhere, hunched over the typescript like some lip-reading Soviet goon as he cut the guts out of Ernest Hemingway’s language.

Hemingway had been ill-served and so had I. But he’d be here soon, and free to talk about my story without interruption. I could wait.

A hand gripped my shoulder. It was Mr. Rice. Looking thoughtfully down at me, he squeezed until it almost hurt, then he gave a little nod and let go. Well done, sir, he said. A commendable effusion. And because your Mr. Hemingway had the sense to recognize it, I will try—I will
try
—to forgive his boorish traducement of his betters. But I must warn you I shall probably fail.

Nice job, a boy across the table said.

Yeah, it’s okay, another boy said. I read the whole thing.

George Kellogg fell in with me on my way to class. At first he said nothing. We walked together, hands in our pockets, shoes scuffing on the brick walkway. I’m disappointed, naturally, he said. But I’m glad for you, for writing that story. To tell the truth, if I hadn’t seen your name on it I wouldn’t have thought it was yours. Which goes to show what a big step you took. It’s a good story, a really good story, and you should be proud of it.

I thanked him and said I’d like to read his sometime.

No you wouldn’t.

Oh, come on.

No, he said, and that was all.

With only weeks to go until graduation, my class was drawing close. You could see the change—our studied nonchalance cracking and falling away like the shell of an egg. Even boys who had lived almost in exile, either by their choice or ours, were led inward by the tribal feeling that had come upon us. This was both urgent and ordinary. We had seen it happen to other classes, and been told that it would happen to ours with such tedious frequency that we became knowing and wary; but despite our knowingness, it happened anyway. I didn’t want to lose my place in the circle, so of course I was afraid of what my schoolmates would think after reading “Summer Dance.”

My fears came to nothing. Masters and boys alike told me pretty much what George had said—with plain goodwill and something else, something like relief, as if they’d felt all along that I was holding back, and could breathe easier now that I’d spoken up.

A manila envelope was leaning against the door of my room. I hefted it—a book—and carried it inside. A note scrawled on the envelope said:
You should have this. P.