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

know which one—had listened to his miserable whimperings and pleadings and would go out and tell all Susquehanna. Better to kick the door in than be a farmboys’ joke and never even know whom to thank. She might admire him for it. He was not quite the crawling slave he seemed!

But it wasn’t quite positive that someone was with her, and not positive that Donnie, if he kicked her door in, would ever let him visit her again. He turned, blushing, his right hand clenched tight on the handle of his cane, and, when he was sure he had his voice in control, said, “OK, then, tomorrow night. Good.”

“Bring cash,” she said, but the teasing voice was sweet.

“Don’t worry,” Mickelsson said.

At the third-floor landing he stopped without knowing why. Though it was bright daylight outside, one could hardly tell here whether it was day or night. He glanced down the hall into increasing dimness, then realized with a start what it was that had made him pause. The fat man, still in his police hat, was bending over at his door, trying to reach something on the carpet, apparently a pamphlet. There was no one in sight, and the fat man, caught up in the labor of bending, appeared unaware of Mickelsson’s existence. In the dingy corridor the man seemed even more immense than he’d seemed in his room, but also more vulnerable. His face shone with sweat, and as he bent his knees a little, snatching at the pamphlet, breathing in gasps, he seemed about as dangerous as a beached whale. Upright, he’d be six feet tall, maybe more.

“Let me help you with that,” Mickelsson said, taking a step in the fat man’s direction.

The fat man jerked his head up, cheeks gray as ashes, flapped both arms wildly, and almost fell. Mickelsson froze, the fat man’s steel-rimmed glasses aiming at him. By the time his heart had ka-thumped three times, Mickelsson understood that the man could not see him at all.

For two or three hours he tried to work on his book, but nothing came. He kept looking at his watch, as if tonight were the night he would be seeing Donnie; then he would remember that it was not, and would remember that somewhere—in some bar, in some store, in some sooty, run-down factory—some countrified oaf knew fat, middle-aged Professor Mickelsson’s doting shamelessness. Some goaty-smelling cow-herd or plumber or electrician, young or old, fat or thin, bare-chinned or whiskery—some preacher, garbage-man, schoolteacher, lawyer—maybe the very man who’d murdered Professor What’s-his-name, or the man who had torn apart Mickelsson’s house—somebody, somewhere, had the word on him. For a minute the thought enraged him; then suddenly, as if some blockage in his brain had broken open, he was serene. Her naked image rose before his eyes, and he no more cared about the impression he made on the people of Susquehanna—or Binghamton itself—than Boethius cared for his prison bars, or some silver-eyed saint of the thirteenth century for his grotto’s stench of piss.

Again—thesis-antithesis—in came the thought of his grandfather, his own tight-sphinctered, abandoned self (thus Rifkin, once), dryly correct and reasonable as clockparts. Abruptly, Mickelsson got up from his desk, got out his dropcloths, roller, and paint, and, every aching muscle crying protest, set to work. When he was able to write he would write.

His lunacy would wane, this preposterous, self-destructive business with Donnie Matthews. When he imagined himself married to her he almost might have laughed—would have, except for the sudden, sharp chest-pain he felt at the thought of losing her. Biological programming, he knew; nothing more. The older male turning to the potential child-bearer. God did not demand that one approve of being born a primate; He demanded only—and exacted—obedience. Ah, for a little common dignity, Mickelsson thought. He shook his head, ironic, lest some well-intentioned angel mistake his meaning.

Jessica Stark’s late husband, in the photograph she’d one night shown him at her house, was young, almost comically clean-jawed, like Dudley Do-Right. He had smiling, slightly impish eyes, crooked teeth. Though he was a treeman—“forestry,” she’d said with a tone of respect that struck Mickelsson as odd—he had a classy look suited to her own. He looked English, though he wasn’t. An American from Michigan. But one could imagine him speaking with an Oxford accent, talking about cricket or Rugby with the Queen. Not that that was fair. He had one of those boyish, forestry-people names: “Buzzy.” He did not look like a young man who’d played football, though perhaps, somewhere like Yale, he’d been on the rowing team. Shadowy and unreal as he seemed, now that he was dead, he had left, scattered here and there throughout the house, bold signs of his existence: African drums, long spears, painted masks. Much of his work, Jessica had told him, he’d done in Africa. “He wasn’t exactly political,” she said, “but of course because of the nature of his work he knew everyone.”

One of her colleagues in sociology had been listening—it was a large party; otherwise, Mickelsson knew now, the man wouldn’t have been there. “How could a man work in Africa and not be political?” he asked. He had a blunt, gar-nosed, tough New York face, a curiously arrogant way of lifting his pock-marked chin.

“I don’t know,” Jessica said. “Somehow he managed.”

The man leered, smug, and in what appeared to be a rare burst of politeness decided to drop it. He let his hooded eyes drift over paintings, furniture, the drapes on the windows; then he floated away to find more lively conversation.

“Who the hell was that?” Mickelsson had asked. He felt again now the protectiveness—the witless leap of anguish like a dog’s—that had stirred in him then.

Jessica said, watching her departing colleague, “Him? I’m not quite sure what his name is. Danytz, I think. One of the Marx brothers.” She smiled, momentarily wicked, her dimple flashing, then put back her studiously fair look. Except for Jessica, the whole Sociology Department was Marxist. It was not a subject