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

his hunchbacked, gray-bearded chairman, above his head the fake rough-cut beams of his kitchen. As always, he was flashing his crazy, twitching grin, his two knuckly hands reaching out toward Mickelsson as if to persuade him that he, Tillson, was the soul of reasonableness. It was the first and last party at Tillson’s that Mickelsson had attended. “But Greek!” Tillson wailed, and let out his skinny, nervous laugh. “We’re not Harvard, you know!” He switched his eyes to the others, all facing him, tentative antagonists, then looked back at Mickelsson, and his tic-ridden face came forward farther, even with the hump. He blinked rapidly and strained his smile wider, as if Mickelsson’s dullness of comprehension might perhaps be overcome by sheer energy and good will. “What use is it? That’s the question! Let us say just for the sake of argument that our students actually learn the stuff, which I’ll tell you in all honesty I never did, not that I didn’t pass the tests, you understand, just as I passed the courses where presumably you couldn’t get by without Greek—and this was at Princeton, which was supposed to be ‘boss,’ as the kids say, ha!—but believe me I wouldn’t know an aorist tense if it ran up and bit me; in fact to tell you the truth I’m not sure I ever really got the letters straight, though believe me I was good enough at other things—logic, for instance, all the intricacies of math, linguistics—” He swung his eyes from Mickelsson to the others, laughing but not joking, then hurried on, almost stammering in his eagerness to retain the floor: “But say for the sake of argument they actually master the stuff. What good is it? If we’ve learned anything at all in the last fifty years of philosophy, it’s that even in English practically nothing we say makes sense. So why Greek? Why not talk gibberish in the language we were born to? You trying to make them root-and-berry Heideggerians—‘dis-close,’ ‘com-pre-hend’?” He laughed wildly, perhaps delighted by his rhetoric, and looked around again. “It’ll kill us!” He pointed at Mickelsson’s chest. “It’ll kill our F.T.E., drive students away. And it won’t do much for the society either. What’s a philosopher for if it’s not to help people, in his clumsy way—help society clean up its act? Your book, now, Survival and Medical Ethics—ha ha! Thought I didn’t read it, didn’t you! Your book—that’s philosophy for our time! Pop-philosophy, you may say—ha ha! nonetheless—”

“But I do read Greek,” Mickelsson said, reserved. Pop-philosophy, you little fucker? Then he remembered that he himself had called it that.

“All right, so you’re one up on me, I readily concede it. Actually, I manage to stumble through the stuff myself. But we’re talking practicalities—shrinking enrollments, pressure from the state. We’re talking head-count, dollars and s-e-n-s-e. And the tyranny of the Christian theological tradition.” Suddenly an edge of pious anger was in his voice. “That’s what it all comes down to, I’m sure you realize.”

Tom Garret said, standing in the wings of the conversation, “What about discipline? I always liked the argument ‘The study of Greek is good discipline for the mind’?”

“You’re kidding!” Tillson said.

Garret shrugged, grinning, his glasses blanking out his eyes. “I never know until I see if people laugh.”

Old man Meyerson shook his head, too deaf to hear more than every fifteenth word. “Greek tought iss the foundation,” he said. He raised his long, crooked finger.

“Long before the Greeks there was algae,” Tillson said, “but nobody makes us start with algae.”

Mickelsson raised his martini and gazed down into it, looking for water separation. “Are you seriously proposing,” he asked, “that we stop encouraging our majors to take Greek—for fear we might lose a couple?”

“God save me from people with standards,” Tillson said. “Better dead than ill-read, right?” His eyes widened. “Listen, don’t get me wrong! I have a personal fondness for Greek. Heck—”

“So long as I’m advising, I’ll keep pushing Greek,” Mickelsson said. “Harder than before, since my view’s in the minority.” He raised his glass to drink.

“I hope when it comes right down to it you’ll ease up,” Tillson said, tipping his head, weakly smiling. “Some students, sure. But a lot of these kids—” He put his hand on Mickelsson’s arm. “I realize you’re bull-headed. I like that about you, up to a point.”

Rage moved up through Mickelsson, starting under the tips of Geoffrey Tillson’s fingers. “I’ll push. Count on it,” he said. Quickly he turned and left the kitchen.

Stupid, Mickelsson whispered now, meaning himself, not Tillson. Dr. Rifkin would no doubt be interested in that rage. “What,” he would say, “does Greek have to do with the Great Cryptogram? Is it possible that God still speaks Greek?”

It was true that that night, more than a year ago now, he had begun to hate Tillson, or perhaps, more precisely, that night he’d found a hook for the hatred that had risen in him spontaneously, right from the beginning.

It was true that his anger made no sense. One could always tell one’s students, “Learn Greek,” and the best of them would do it. Why should he be threatened by a timid little hunchback who controlled nothing, commanded no one, hardly even published? What could it mean, this animal fury that rose up at sight of the man? He thought of the Marxists in Jessica’s department, real nuisances, simultaneously dolts and maniacs, programmed, it seemed, to fly into rages at the mention of certain words. “Feminist!” one of them had suddenly shouted at a party last year at the Bryants’, bursting like a whale out of a serene, pale sea. “If she’s a feminist, I’m Napoleon!” Everyone had looked at the man, or at the envelope of space around him, their eyes dulled, expressions patient. Only Mickelsson, the newcomer, had been surprised.

Was it true that in the plays of Shakespeare, Seneca rumbled down underneath, and beneath that Aeschylus? And beneath that the creature who once slept, restless and brooding, in the Giant Bed