The Syme Papers (31 page)

‘Heads as hard as chopping blocks: Bunyon, tall tales, and the question of quantum Scholastics’ was published in volume 21, spring issue of the
Harvard
Journal
of
Historical
Science.
‘He must
write
‚’
Dr Bunyon assured my wife, again and again, inviting her (I mean us) to this occasion or that at the synagogue (celebrations of spring, harvest, atonement, death, interfaith roller-hockey, etc.). So I wrote; pointing out (humbly, of course, and with great respect, in almost incomprehensible prose) that Bunyon’s ignorance of Trinitarian belief was matched only by his ignorance of quantum mechanics; that, in short, the two subjects had nothing in common except for the fact that they had managed to confuse Bunyon; and that any comparison of the cultural faith placed in each served only to reveal the
poverty
(a favourite word of mine, and somewhat familiar state) of Bunyon’s understanding, both of the distinct and unprecedented place in modern society held by scientific theory generally and quantum physics specifically and the role of sectarian religious speculation in medieval Europe. The trouble was, with all my best endeavours, my prose had not become
incomprehensible
enough. Bunyon, of course, read it; Bunyon was displeased; Bunyon reacted as a fellow might when another fellow deliberately steps upon his – but there I go again, and for once I will desist.

The curious upshot of all this, I believe, was that I attracted the notice of Dr Gerald Schulheimer, who had published my piece in the
Harvard
Journal,
and who sat, from time to time, on the Fulbright Committee – and who, moreover, was a devoted enemy of Bunyon, for both personal and scholarly reasons. (I could never determine which grievance trumped the other – that Bunyon stole his wife or that Bunyon beat him to the chair at Texas when they taught together at Occidental.)

Well, one way or another I got the Fulbright.

And now I stood at Bunyon’s broad oak door (peppered with
old
New
Yorker
cartoons, hastily taped on, next to a plastic notice-board that read, ‘Please Expound Explanations’ beside a dangling felt-tip pen), the fruits of that Fulbright – sweet neglected treasure – in my battered case, knowing full well that before I could make
good,
I would have to make
up.
Knowing full well that what mattered above all was what Bunyon thought of the greatest, almost the
only,
American geologist of the nineteenth century: Samuel Highgate Syme.

I stood, with paw raised, to the heavy oak; and waited.

I could
see
Bunyon, sitting in the green-backed rich pine swivel chair, spinning in the windowed corner. I saw his bony legs, impossibly long, propped upon the antique desk (the particular perk of the History Dean, a relic of the Civil War, reportedly used by Robert E. Lee to accept the Peace of the Union – rich oak, covered in purple leather, gilt edged, stained occasionally by the suggestion of famous cups of coffee). I saw his bony knees, impossibly sharp; the thin cheap slacks riding up them, exposing a hairy stick of ankle. The nylon sports socks rumpled above the foot, and the red ridges left behind by their too-tight tubing. I saw the outlet-mall sneakers, squeakingly brand new, bearing the proud ensign
NB
in glowing red and gold (these he dubbed his Nota Benes, or his Foot-notes). I saw the green Armani jacket, left over from a long-dead suit, hunched about his broad shoulders and rolled up at the elbows. I saw the moist brush of hair across his forehead; his mottled cheeks; the broad grin between wide, thin lips, the exposed brickwork of his teeth. I smelled the faintly boyish air of a morning squash game and a locker-room shower, the sharper, maturer pungency of Ben-Gay. (He always smelled vaguely, implausibly, of Ben-Gay.) I felt his unbreakable cheeriness, the rapid-fire jolts of his random curiosity, sensed his inexhaustible interest in a world he consistently misunderstood, and, consequently, of which he never wearied. I guessed already the condescension he would show me – the kind
concern
of a man who has got on for a man who won’t.

I saw too much.

In any case, I reflected – he might not be there.

I lifted my tender prize from my father’s briefcase. Laid it at the foot of Bunyon’s door. Plucked the felt-tip pen from the notice-board and scribbled, in all humility, under the title, these words:

(Believe me, there is a great deal of the dog in the dogged, of the fawning, the licking, even – and this I scarcely dare confess – of the easily heartbroken.) And then, in one of my characteristic evasions, equally insignificant and shameful, I left my little treasured heap at his doorstep, left
them
– Bunyon and dear, dear Syme – alone together to see how they
got
on.
While I fled, into the growing morning, while I … flinched.

Bunyon’s son, Spencer – who, to be fair, seemed an astonishingly pleasant miniature of his father, only a little hairier, slightly more gleaming in the tooth – was bar mitzvahed at the synagogue spread along the creek opposite the Safeways. A synagogue which I referred to only as Temple beth Longhorn (the bovine mascot of this wonderful state, and symbol of the great Texan religion, football), though I believe it originally had some holier association. Susie and I and the boys had … visited it, occasionally, for my part reluctantly, and for hers rather miserably indeed, for it reminded her both of the community she had given up and how odd it looked on what she considered foreign soil. She could not imagine the God of Abraham worshipped in such an accent, and spent the car rides home drawling the last ounce of smoked hickory from the ‘baruchs’, the ‘atahs’ and the ‘adonays’, in unhappy
mimicry. Miss Susie, I confess, is in her way a snob. I called these moaning sessions the ‘Jew’s Blues’, a cry I am ashamed to say my sons occasionally took up. This did not help.

The temple, which lay in a fair and shaded plot of grass between the car park and the basketball court (whose rims were rather touchingly
un
bent), had been carefully designed to resemble from the outside an airport hangar. On the inside, the architects had aimed at meticulously recreating the effect of a
basement,
and in this they had succeeded wonderfully. It was on the whole an astonishing piece of work, which managed to appear at once inhumanly large and uncomfortably cramped and gloomy. This I supposed was on account of God. I will not mention the stained glass.

Little of note passed in the service. A somewhat shabby gentleman (dressed in rumpled khakis, a denim shirt much too large and much too tucked in, and a threadbare sports jacket) had appeared, shortly before ‘the kick-off’, as he called it, to enquire (breathlessly, or rather somewhat too
rich
in breath) if indeed a bar mitzvah was ‘about to begin’. When answered in the affirmative, he said, ‘I love bar mitzvahs,’ and began to empty each of his many pockets into a nearby bin – assorted fluff, dirty pennies, sticks of gum, unrelated gum wrappers, sandwich-bag twist-ons and the like – ‘just in case’ he assured us, and then explained, ‘For afters, you know.’ We later learned that he had snuck out before the service ended, and filled his pockets from the table of eatables laid in the auditorium – napkinfuls of babka, bagels, cream cheese, watermelon, gerkins, etc. I admit that I admired him – not indeed as I admire Syme – but I admired him none the less.

The rabbi, I believe, fell asleep once, only to insist (on starting suddenly awake) that, no, not at all, he only thought he heard a gunshot in the distance. ‘You know‚’ he explained, ‘like when they score a touchdown …’ But he was gently reassured by Spencer himself, who informed him that the epic football contest (between the Sooners of Oklahoma and the Longhorns of Texas) was not scheduled to begin till later that afternoon. ‘It must have been a gunshot, then‚’ the rabbi muttered, greatly relieved, and began to chant something, which from Susie’s grimace I gathered
belonged to a different service altogether. I began to enjoy myself. Spencer acquitted himself with both grace and a certain irreverent idiocy native to the Bunyons, and he stormed through the difficult Hebrew of his Torah portion with an obvious and energetic incomprehension. His sermon, however, on the seven-year wait (which he referred to once, apparently by accident, as the seven-year
itch
)
of Abraham for Rachel, proved somewhat more difficult terrain, and he stumbled frequently over his handwritten notes, calling out, on one occasion, ‘Dad, is that supposed to be a “w”?’

We emerged from the holy gloom into the cafeterial atmosphere of the auditorium – slightly refrigerated air, broad gleaming tiles, blue plastic tables draped with crêpe, cluttered with plates, notice-boards nailed against the walls and plastered with Crayola art. The food, it should be said, looked slightly plundered, and we could trace a trail of dripping watermelon to the double doors, whence the eager gentleman had made off with pockets full. By this time I was in something of a state, and stuffed my maw with bagel and babka to stifle the nervous chatter desperate to babble out. Ben tugged my coat-tail and whispered to me once, ‘Don’t let her sign me up for dancing‚’ referring, of course, to my wife and the miniature balls the synagogue occasionally held, to allow the little Jews and Jewesses to get along. But I was too anxious on my own account to pay him any heed … Papa Bunyon, at his restless, long-armed, grinning best, bounced around the room like a ticking bomb.
Had
he read the Syme Papers, and what did he
think
?

I never got the chance to talk to him at Temple Longhorn, consoling myself – as we do, strangely, console ourselves with the inevitability of events we wish at all costs to avoid – with the thought of cornering him later, at the evening
do.
The
chosen
ones (among whom I was shamefully proud to number myself) – those invited back to the Bunyon mansion for ‘afters’, as he said – shuffled off early, jerked off ties and untucked shirts, to ease into the heat of their parked cars. Aaron stripped immediately into his altogether in the backseat of the Volvo, and sunned his upper half in the open window. Ben, for his part, was more accustomed to discomfort and seemed to take a strange pleasure in the tiny
formality of the little suit, and the way the sleeve of the blue blazer swallowed the awkwardness of his arm. He never changed for the reception, and appeared at the Bunyons’ door that evening neat, unruffled, like a miniature Bond or one of the more dapper, better-educated villains.

Bunyon’s kingdom lay on the curve of a hill in a pleasant neighbourhood of streets known as Henderson Park – named for the little green patch at its heart, decorated by a trickling creek, dead and drooping pecan trees, and, on the few occasions I had the pleasure to visit mine host and
mein
Herr,
the slowest, oldest jogger it has ever been my privilege to witness. A posh bit of town, as the Brits would say: blue and white houses, paint slightly chipped in the tireless sun; green lawns faithfully and artificially bedewed; the usual assortment of kicked-over bicycles, flattened footballs, old political declarations cluttering the front yard; hoops set up in the driveways. We pulled in (crackling over nuts, twigs, asphalt gravel) under the shade of a sycamore, and stumped out into the softened heat of early evening. Aaron stubbed his finger on the bell.

Tall Bunyon himself answered the front door, wrapped ostentatiously in a dirty apron, the tracks of his own fat, greasy paws evident on the white front. The skull beneath his pink face had begun to grin already, ear to ear, and he spoke, with characteristic peculiarity, without ever closing his lips over his tea-stained teeth – as if the skeleton inside him enjoyed itself too much not to come out of its closet. ‘Wonderful, wonderful‚’ he declared, a great word with him, used to introduce anything from national disaster to his maiden aunt. ‘Wonderful‚’ he repeated (a true Tom Jenkyns in this, hoping to convey splendour by sprinkling the thought about), guiding us through a plush hallway towards the back. ‘Excuse the art, I hope; great clutter – only, you know, I can’t help myself – love it all, just the thought of art, great believer, you know, in pure
quantity.
’

Ahead of us, the bust of a plentifully naked woman, propped between books on a shelf, seemed to emerge from a sheaf of corn and loom at us. Against the wall, a broad crimson canvas with a single shiny penny stuck in the middle threatened to topple upon
us, bearing the title: one red cent. ‘Local artist, teaches at the university. Extremely bald fellow, dry-talking – works mostly on what he calls the “mythology of money”. Recent pick-up – my wife hates it. What do you think? Terrifically ugly, I believe. Oppressive, no other word. Makes me miserable every time I see it – can’t get enough, can’t get enough, though. We mustn’t have everything in good taste, must we now?’

We emerged into an open kitchen, cluttered with beers and bottles of wine and jars of Claussen pickles, in almost equal number. (‘Marian said it was too much‚’ he whispered to me, ‘but I thought – Pickles!’)

He steered us through the clacking screen door into a deep garden slowly filling with people. They milled on the concrete patio, spread out on the stepping-stones leading through the grass, leaned against a little gazebo, sat on the edge of a flower bed overrun with weeds, stood in the shade of a heavy pecan tree leaning on its elbow. Bunyon had a way with him – I can’t deny it – at once highly plausible and quite improbable. ‘Terrible service – never met such an idiot as – my son. Practically illiterate. Only too glad you could make it. All the way from Londondinium, no? (I got your packet, Pitt – later, later.) Terrific country, England, wonderful,
educated
people. (Susie’ – another stertorous whisper – ‘great to see you, sad to have him back. My bed is always there for you, you know …) Just had a letter from Oxford myself today – remind me, Pitt, you must
remind
me to show it to you’ – as if I had forgotten these many years – ‘just your cup of tea. I maintain a loose affiliation (I believe that is the word) with Balliol College – loose enough that they can scratch my back and not get too deep in my pocket. They offered, for a certain fee, to carve my features on to a gargoyle in a new college block. Extraordinary people, the English, quite unbalanced. That’s immortality for you, hey?’