Enjoying the sunshine,¨ I said.
She believed me. She sat down next to me. She was already wearing her academic gown for the faculty parade to graduation. Her cowl identified her as a graduate of the Sorbonne in Paris, France. In addition to her duties as Dean, dealing with unwanted pregnancies and drug addiction and the like, she also taught French and Italian and oil painting. She was from a genuinely distinguished old Philadelphia family, which had given civilization a remarkable number of educators and lawyers and physicians and artists. She actually may have been what Jason Wilder and several of Tarkingtons Trustees
believed themselves to be, obviously the most highly evolved creatures on the planet.
She was a lot smarter than her husband.
I always meant to ask her how a Quaker came to marry a professional soldier, but I never did.
Too late now.
Even at her age then, which was about 60, 10 years older than me, Andrea was the best figure skater on the faculty. I think figure skating, if Andrea Wakefield could find the right partner, was eroticism enough for her. General Wakefield couldnt skate for sour apples. The best partner she had on ice at Tarkington, probably, was Bruce BergeronXthe boy who was trapped in an elevator at Bloomingdales, who became the youth who couldnt get into any college but Tarkington, who became the man who joined the chorus of an ice show and then was murdered by somebody who presumably hated homosexuals, or loved one too much.
Andrea and I had never been lovers. She was too contented and old for me.
I want you to know I think youre a Saint,¨ said Andrea.
How so?¨ I said.
Youre so nice to your wife and motherin-law.¨
Its easier than what I did for Presidents and Generals and Henry Kissinger,¨ I said.
But this is voluntary,¨ she said.
So was that,¨ I said. I was real gung-ho.¨
When you realize how many men nowadays dissolve their marriages when they become the least little bit
inconvenient or uncomfortable,¨ she said, all I can think is that youre a Saint.¨
They didnt want to come up here, you know,¨ I said. They were very happy in Baltimore, and Margaret would have become a physical therapist.¨
It isnt this valley that made them sick, is it?¨ she said. It isnt this valley that made my husband sick.¨
Its a clock that made them sick,¨ I said. It would have struck midnight for both of them, no matter where they were.¨
Thats how I feel about Sam,¨ she said. I cant feel guilty.¨
Shouldnt,¨ I said.
When he resigned from the Army and went over to the peace movement,¨ she said, I think he was trying to stop the clock. Didnt work.¨
I miss him,¨ I said.
Dont let the war kill you, too,¨ she said.
Dont worry,¨ I said.
You still havent found the money?¨ she said. She was talking about the money Mildred had gotten for the house in Baltimore. While Mildred was still fairly sane, she deposited it in the Scipio branch of the First National Bank of Rochester. But then she withdrew it in cash when the bank was bought by the Sultan of Brunei, without telling me or Margaret that she had done so. Then she hid it somewhere, but she couldnt remember where.
I dont even think about it anymore,¨ I said. The most likely thing is that somebody else found it. It could have been a bunch of kids. It could have been somebody
? working on the house. Whoever it was sure isnt going to say so.¨
We were talking about $45,000 and change.
I know I should give a darn, but somehow I cant give a darn,¨ I said.
The war did that to you,¨ she said.
Who knows?¨ I said.
As we chatted in the sunshine, a powerful motorcycle came to life with a roar in the valley, in the region of the Black Cat Caf?. Then another one spoke, and yet another.
Hells Angels?¨ she said. You mean its really going to happen?¨
The joke was that Tex Johnson, the College President, having seen one too many motorcycle movies, believed that the campus might actually be assaulted by Hells Angels someday. This fantasy was so real to him that he had bought an Israeli snipers rifle, complete with a telescopic sight, and ammunition for it from a drugstore in Portland, Oregon. He and Zuzu were visiting Zuzus half sister. That was the same weapon which would eventually get him crucified.
But now Texs anticipation of an assault by Hells Angels didnt seem so comical after all. A mighty doomsday chorus of basso profundo 2-wheelers was growing louder and louder and coming closer and closer. There could be no doubt about it! Whoever it was, whatever it was, its destination could only be Tarkington!
23
I
t wasnt Hells Angels.
It wasnt lower-class people of any kind.
It was a motorcade of highly successful Americans, most on motorcycles, but some in limousines, led by Arthur Clarke, the fun-loving billionaire. He himself was on a motorcycle, and on the saddle behind him, holding on for dear life, her skirt hiked up to her crotch, was Gloria White, the 60-year-old lifelong movie star!
Bringing up the rear were a sound truck and a flatbed carrying a deflated hot-air balloon. When the balloon was inflated at the center of the Quadrangle it would turn out to be shaped like a castle Clarke owned in Ireland!
Cough, cough. Silence. Two more: Cough, cough. There, Im OK now. Cough. Thats it. I really am OK now. Peace.
This wasnt Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer who wrote all the books about humanitys destiny in other parts of the Universe. This was Arthur K. Clarke, the billionaire speculator and publisher of magazines and books about high finance.
Cough. I beg your pardon. A little blood this time. In the immortal words of the Bard of Avon:
Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two: why, then, Ľtis time to dot. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fle! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?¨
Amen. And especial thanks to Bartletts Familiar Quotations.
I read a lot of science fiction when I was in the Army, including Arthur C. Clarkes Childhoods End, which I thought was a masterpiece. He was best known for the movie 2001, the very year in which I am writing and coughing now.
I saw 2001 twice in Vietnam. I remember 2 wounded soldiers in wheelchairs in the front row at 1 of those showings. The whole front row was wheelchairs. The 2 soldiers had had their feet wrecked some way, but seemed to be OK from the knees on up, and they werent in any pain. They were awaiting transportation back to the States, I guess, where they could be fitted with prostheses. I dont think either of them was older than 18. One was black and 1 was white.
After the lights went up, I heard the black one say to the white one, You tell me: What was that all about?¨
The white one said, I dunno, I dunno. Ill be happy if I can just get back to Cairo, Illinois.¨
He didnt pronounce it ky-roe.¨ He pronounced it kay-roe.¨
My motherin-law from Peru, Indiana, pronounces the name of her hometown pee-roo,¨ not puh-roo.¨
Old Mildred pronounces the name of another Indiana town, Brazil, as brazzle.¨
Arthur K. Clarke was coming to Tarkington to get an honorary Grand Contributor to the Arts and Sciences Degree.
The College was prevented by law from awarding any sort of degree which sounded as though the recipient had done serious work to get it. Paul Slazinger, the former Writer in Residence, I remember, objected to real institutions of higher learning giving honorary degrees with the word Doctor¨ in them anywhere. He wanted them to use Panjandrum¨ instead.
When the Vietnam War was going on, though, a kid could stay out of it by enrolling at Tarkington. As far as Draft Boards were concerned, Tarkington was as real a college as MIT. This could have been politics.
It must have been politics.
Everybody knew Arthur Clarke was going to get a meaningless certificate. But only Tex Johnson and the campus cops and the Provost had advance warning of the spectacular entrance he planned to make. It was a regular military operation. The motorcycles, and there were about 30 of them, and the balloon had been trucked into the parking lot behind the Black Cat Caf? at dawn.
And then Clarke and Gloria White and the rest of them, including Henry Kissinger, had been brought down from the Rochester airport in limousines, fol
lowed by the sound truck. Kissinger wouldnt ride a motorcycle. Neither would some others, who came all the way to the Quadrangle by limousine.