Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

“People like what’s-his-name, the kid in our class—the pretty one—”

“Alan Blassenheim,” Mickelsson said, reserved.

“Well, anyway,” Nugent said, “anyway, it’s easy to say we’d have been happy if we’d lived fifty years ago, or in ancient Judah, whatever—try to resuscitate a bunch of dead ideas—”

He felt a queer, sentimental urge to touch the boy’s arm, say something like “Listen, take it easy!” Instead, he looked thoughtfully at the cover of the book.

“It’s all about heart attacks, and the reason why they happen,” Nugent explained. “Most people don’t realize how important it is, for our very survival—”

“I’ll be interested to read it,” Mickelsson said.

The boy went white, as if slaughtered by some thought, and his red, seemingly lashless eyes blinked rapidly again. “It was good, the way you handled that, that shit-ass crap—”

Mickelsson went on looking at the cover of the book. “Come on now,” he said (he heard in his own voice Rifkin’s whine), “I was equally hard on you.”

“That’s true, but I don’t think you understood what I was saying. I mean, I didn’t make it clear.”

He stood in calculated silence. Then he cocked his eye at the boy. “You can’t blame me if I’m a little confused, Mr. Nugent.” He allowed a little gentleness into his voice. “You give me this book about loneliness and, I take it, heart disease, and at the very same time you ask me to squash a fellow student like an insect. What will it lead to, such scorn of one’s fellow human beings?”

The white face went red, and the girlish mouth came open. “I didn’t mean—” he began. It was the start of a lie, but he quickly caught it. Anger replaced fear, but then he caught that too. Of their own will, his shoulders heaved in a monstrous, meek shrug. He had large, shining tears in his eyes. “I just thought you’d like to read—” he said, and indicated the book in Mickelsson’s hands.

“Mmm,” Mickelsson said, “yes I would.” He nodded. In fact, it was true.

The black boy, Mickelsson noticed now, was watching them, eavesdropping. Into Mickelsson’s mind, against his will, came an image of the two of them going at each other, naked in some foggy green meadow—spectacular cinema in the style of Barry Lyndon, done on cheap Kodak celluloid that would fade in a couple of years, as Barry Lyndon had done (so he’d read in some newspaper) to pink or violet. He felt a great, depressing rush of guilt. Nugent was no dolt. If by some miracle they could get on the same wave-length, he thought—then cringed in disgust at the word wave-length, then frowned at his snobbishness.

“All I meant,” Nugent said, watching his face, “is, everybody hates it that the modern world’s so civilized and boring and generally safe, so crushing to the human soul and imagination. Everybody wants to get back to simplicity. Windmills, tide-power, little communes in Vermont. Nobody has the faintest understanding of, well, you know, the awful part, the perdurable evils.” The catch came to his voice. Mickelsson squinted at him, thinking about the word perdurable. Nugent waved, almost gasping with frustration. “When I hear that business about how everything’s evolving toward Wonderful, and things—”

“I know how you feel,” Mickelsson said. He looked down at his mail.

Nugent stepped back from him, almost military. “Right,” he said, as if in answer to some remark of Mickelsson’s. “I realize you do. I know what you’ve been through. I know everything about you.” He looked away, embarrassed. “OK! You’ve got a lot to do, I know. …” He half turned to leave, his eyes hanging back. “By the way,” he said, “you never answered that note I left you, at your apartment.”

“Note?” Mickelsson said. Though he flushed with guilt, the truth was that he did not remember, that instant, Nugent’s note under his door.

“Well,” Nugent said, and bowed, formal again, preparing to go. He suddenly waved, nearly a salute, and—flashing his unnaturally small, white teeth—smiled. Mickelsson watched him retreat, followed by the black boy, down the hall.

As he was unlocking the door to his office, the feeling came over him that someone—some further nuisance—was waiting inside. The feeling was so strong, however irrational, that he hesitated before turning the knob. The phrase perdurable evils drifted into his mind, and he shook his head. Then he remembered, and for the first time really noticed, that even stranger phrase: I know everything about you.

The office, when at last he opened the door, was empty. Sudden depression flooded through him. He looked again at the letters in his hand. In the left-hand corner of one of the envelopes he found the name “Bauer” and a Florida address. No doubt because his mind was fixed on his university context, not the house in the Endless Mountains, he could think of no one he knew named Bauer and dropped the envelope, along with the others, into the chaos of papers and unopened envelopes on his desk.

7

It was the dean himself who opened the door for him, grinning, his muscular, round face tipped sideways, chin neatly cleft, his right hand reaching up to seize Mickelsson’s upper arm. “Come in! Come in!”

Blickstein’s suit was tight at the shoulders, his neck thick as a boar’s. He’d been a wrestling coach and professor of phys ed, some years ago, before he’d gone into full-time administration. Not that Sheldon Blickstein was your common jock. He had a sharp, crafty mind and seemed to read everything, though he was shy about his knowledge and had cranky spots. (He believed and for some reason often insisted that Homer, the epic poet, was a woman.) His Ph.D. in education was from Columbia. As a student, people said, he’d been an activist, helping to seize buildings, shouting about peace and justice. Nonetheless he’d been a champion wrestler and had a tendency even now to put his hand on the back of your neck or on your shoulder in a way that suggested