Pamela Dean (11 page)

"I'm a student," said Janet, sweetly. "Do you want to see my ID card?"

"Go find one of the nice translations, there's a good girl."

You keep a civil tongue in your head, there's a good boy, thought Janet. She took a deep breath. "Are you going to check it out?"

"Of course not."

Lovely voice, dreadful temperament. Any rational person would walk away from him and go reserve one of the nice translations for later this afternoon. But why should he get away with being so rude? Because he had gorgeous gray eyes and yellow hair and a thin, thoughtful face? Nonsense.

"How long will you be using it, then?"

He rolled the gorgeous gray eyes at the ceiling and said through his white, white teeth,

"What fucking difference does it make to you? I've got it; go away."

"Is this a nasty translation?"

"What?"

"As opposed to the nice ones?"

The young man made a noise in his throat that was just short of a growl. "How old are you?"

"Eighteen," said Janet, startled into the simple truth.

"If you want to live to be nineteen," said her antagonist, "go away."

Janet burst out laughing; this was really too much; neither of them was acting a day over twelve. From a little distance away, where the carrels were ranged under the windows, a harried voice hissed, "Shut up!" Janet could not stop laughing, and did not, in fact, greatly want to. She leaned on the cold metal shelf and chortled until the young man, who had turned very red, held the book out at arm's length, opened his long brown hands, and strode around the end of the stack before the book hit the floor. It did so with a resounding flat smack, like a car backfiring. The harried voice, now much louder and clearly female, burst into furious expostulation. The young man's voice, answering it in standard college terminology, echoed like that of somebody playing a madman in the theater.

Janet snatched up the book and ran for the stairs. When she returned the book to its place at four o'clock, there was nobody on the lowest level of the library at all. Janet had a headache, partly from the poem, which she devoutly hoped Evans was going to explain to them, or she was doomed from the start, and partly from the fact that she had had no lunch.

Nick's abduction by sword of the bust of Schiller was scheduled for five. Janet crept up the broad, well-lit stairways of the library as if she expected people to materialize out of the cinder-block walls at her, scooted through the deserted lobby, and emerged blinking into a much stronger sunlight than the earlier part of the day had suggested. She lingered on the sidewalk that led to the library, checking for the presence of tall, beautiful young men with foul tempers.

She wished she had not forced the encounter with the mad Theater major. He had been rude, and had deserved some rudeness in return; but she was not pleased with her own part in the conversation, which felt in retrospect more like flirtation than reprimand. What had been the matter with him, though? It was much too early for people to be burning out on their studies and turning obstreperous. Of course, if he'd been standing there for some time, trying to read that damn poem, then almost any wild behavior could probably be excused.

As she crossed the campus, the figures of the poem were still in her mind—the precise walled garden; the red roses; the one half-open flower that the poet had, God knew why, set his heart on; the flat, formal characters with their peculiar names: Jalosie, Amis, Biautez, Reason, Bialacoil, Franchise, Pite. All harping on the rose, one rosebud in a garden full of the flowers. Janet's mind's ear presented to her her mother's voice, in the Scottish accent she remembered from Janet's great-grandmother, reading Burns on a winter's evening when the power was out.

"My luve is like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June."

"Oh," said Janet, stopping short under one of the remaining elm trees. "It's inside out, that's what it is." Those weren't characters at all, they were attributes of the heroine; the rosebud was, not her sled, but her love, or maybe something a little more specific than that. It would be interesting to see how Evans dealt with that, given a

classroom full of adolescents whose instinctive dimwitted responses to the mention of sex did not seem to have been altered in the least by the sexual revolution, their own intelligence, or anything else.

Janet started walking again, more slowly. The entire elegant intent of the poem unfolded itself in her mind like—well, like a flower. It wasn't what she would call fiction at all; it wasn't what she would call poetry, either, exhibiting, even in the lively Medeous translation, a dampening inclination to get on with the story—which wasn't a story, really, but the inside occurrences for which, in most love stories, you would see only the outside manifestations. Was
that
what they meant by allegory? It was going to be a long time until Evans's lecture on this poem, she could see that already.

She wondered how much of it Nick might make pass quickly.

There was a little clump of students loitering outside the main doors to Chester Hall, including Robin Armin and the young man from behind the Reserve Desk. An ethereal blonde who might have been the one Janet had discussed squirrels with was hanging around Robin's neck. Janet marched up to them anyway.

Mercifully, Robin grinned and said, "Nick let you in on it, too, did he?"

"Foolish boy," said Janet, rather put out. "Doesn't he know how news spreads around here? He's probably got at least two Benfield adherents in with his loyalists."

"Well, and where would be the fun if he hadn't?" said the girl.

"Oh," said Robin. "Janet Carter, this is Anne Beauvais. Freshman undecided, junior Classics."

The tall girl unwound her arms from around Robin and said to Janet, "What are you hesitating among?"

"English, English, and English," said Janet. Anne Beauvais raised an eyebrow.

"Well," said Janet, "I did vaguely consider a special major with a lot of different languages in it, but it takes four terms before you get to the interesting literature, and I haven't read most of what's been written in my own language, so I'll probably just stick to that."

"Not in Classics," said Anne, coming around Robin. She was wearing a short green dress in crinkle gauze that, most unlike that material's usual behavior, clung to her and revealed that, without much doubt, she was very muscular and had no use for underwear. Janet feared for Molly's chances.

"In Classics," said Anne, fixing Janet with a stern, pale eye, "you read Xenophon in Greek I and Herodotus in Greek II, and you read Cicero in Latin I and Virgil in Latin II. It's the immersion method they used to try with the modern languages, except the students rebelled."

"And Classics students don't?"

"Have you met Medeous yet?"

"Not in person," said Janet, considerably startled. "I've read her translation of

The Romance of the Rose.
"

Anne and Robin looked at each other. There was a moment of sudden and curious tension; then, as if he were offering a theory for examination, Robin said, "That must have been her grandmother."

"Yes, of course, how stupid of me," said Janet, laughing. "The date on that book was 1887."

"You don't rebel against Medeous," said Anne, grimly, "you suffer her, or you flee into exile."

"Melinda Wolfe didn't tell me about her," said Janet.

"She tried to sell you on Greek Lit in Translation, right?" Janet nodded; Anne went on, "That's the usual strategy. Soften the students up with Ferris, who's a perfect doll, and then smack them with Medeous when they're not looking."

The young man from the Reserve Desk loomed over Robin's shoulder and said,

"That's not fair, Beau. She's a brilliant scholar."

"She's a bitch," said Anne, without any particular heat.

"This is Kit Lane," said Robin, "who always stands up for the downtrodden."

"Why is he defending Medeous instead of me?" said Anne.

"Excuse me," said Janet, having considered carefully Kit's long hands and slightly hollow face, and the charming way his dark hair grew away from his forehead, "do you have a brother here?"

"He's got two," said Anne, "but you mean the rude one, don't you?"

"What's Johnny done now?" said Kit.

"Flung the 1887 edition of the Medeous translation to the floor because I asked him how long he'd be using it. Oh, and used opprobrious epithets at the top of his voice in the library."

"How curious," said Kit. "He usually goes in for sarcasm."

"It couldn't have been Thomas, could it?" said Robin to Anne.

"Not a chance," said Kit.

Robin still held Anne's eyes. Janet wondered irritably if they thought they were communicating telepathically. Then a couple of students who had been swinging the main doors of the building open and shut called, "It's five of!"

Everybody moved in a rush for the doors. Inside was a short paneled corridor with the Music Library on one side of it and the offices of the Music Department on the other. At the end of this passage was a set of glass doors that led into a domed hall set with six skylights. Its plaster effusions were painted institutional green, but the marble floor still impressed Janet mightily. She and Danny Chin had once sneaked in here after dark to try roller-skating on it, and Danny had broken his arm.

Two marble staircases endowed with vehemently carved wooden balustrades led to the two branches of the second floor, where the practice rooms were. It was deathly quiet; the soundproofing up there was excellent.

Then the sounds of everybody else coming in after Janet set up echoes. The group collected in the middle of the hall, under the skylight, not speaking. There were nine of them, all very much in the theatrical mold except for, of all things, Miss Zimmerman, who might not be statuesque but was certainly as cute as a button and knew it. She was the only person present wearing red; more oddly, she was the only female not wearing green. It didn't seem to bother her; she was happily making eyes at Kit Lane. Kit, having considered her for a moment, introduced her to another of the beautiful young men, this one very dark, with features lik e a statue, named Jack Nikopoulos. Miss Zimmerman greeted him brightly and then fell silent.

It grew quiet again, except for the shuffle of feet. Robin, standing between Janet and Anne, breathed, "Shall we go up?"

"He says if we do he'll kill us," said Miss Zimmerman.

Everybody except Robin and the other short boy present looked at her. They looked as Janet looked, except that as far as she knew none of the rest of them had any right to look at Miss Zimmerman so, as if she had usurped their prerogatives, as if she had information appropriate only to somebody on closer terms with Nick Tooley than she appeared to be. Maybe he's kissed every last one of them in the Arboretum, thought Janet madly.

"Well," said Robin, after a long pause, "we can't have that, can we?"

Both the previous scrutiny and Robin's tone would have made Janet furious, but Miss Zimmerman smiled serenely and leaned her shoulders against the wall.

Silence descended again. The light coming through the skylight dwindled. Shafts of sun still came in the doors, but they only made a few lines of dazzle in a huge space increasingly dark. Janet went and leaned next to Miss Zimmerman, because after some consideration, Miss Zimmerman made her less uncomfortable than the rest of them. Except for Robin and the other short boy, a thin black one who looked too young to be in college and was dressed rather like Christina, everybody else was at least six feet tall, and slender, and dressed in either green or white, and possessed of interesting bones.

As the light lessened, their pale faces took on strange lines and the modern outlines of their dress—jeans, a wrap skirt, sneakers, Anne's crinkle gauze—blurred into strangeness. They looked dressed for a play. Robin and the black boy did not partake of this transformation, but neither did it seem to bother them. Miss Zimmerman was the only person who looked nervous.

Janet said quietly, "You're in Evans's English 10, aren't you?"

Miss Zimmerman jumped slightly and said, "Yes. I can't remember your first name."

"Janet."

"I'm Diane."

"Hi."

Upstairs there was a hollow boom underlaid with a crunch, as if somebody had flung a heavy wooden door back against a plaster wall and done in the doorstop. The lights in the southern half of the second floor went on. There was a scurry of feet and some breathless laughter, and suddenly two ghostly insectlike figures came clanging onto the landing. Nick had managed not only two foils—why in the world would he give Benfield a foil?—but the white jackets and screened masks as well. He had the bust tucked under his left arm, and looked, in the strange light, like a man who had taken off his head for safekeeping and was using the mask to fight with.

They fought at the top of the stairs for what seemed like forever. Nick beat Benfield back into the hallway twice, but whatever advantage he hoped for from this never materialized. They were both incredibly fast. You could hear the foils better than you could see them.

What the hell's he doing in a beginning fencing course? thought Janet; and Nick jumped backward down three steps. Thank God they were broad ones, and carpeted wood, not slippery marble. Nick made another leap; he was going to break his neck.

Anne and Kit raised a cheer. Nick lunged at Rob Benfield with a force that bent his foil into half a circle, and as Benfield sat down suddenly on a step, Nick turned and hurled the bust of Schiller straight at Janet.

Even as she shoved Anne and Kit out of the way, backing rapidly across the marble floor, trying to gauge where the wobbly thing would end up—it was a lot less stable in its flight than any ball she had ever dealt with—she thought, so clearly that it seemed for a moment she had said it, I'm going to kill you. The bust was going to go over her head and smash itself into a marble bust of Bach in the wall.

Janet made one last desperate leap backward, and hit the dip in the floor where Danny Chin had lost his footing. She fell flat on her back, arms outstretched, and caught the bust in both hands. Both her wrists felt sprained, but she had not jammed a finger.