Moo (30 page)

Martha read on.

She said, “This guy goes on the assassination list.”

Mrs. Walker said, “It isn’t his idea. It’s Arlen Martin’s idea. Gift is just fleshing it out for him.”

Martha read on.

She said, “I can’t read any more. It’s giving me a stroke.”

Mrs. Walker took the report out of her hands. She turned to the last page. She said, “Well, just listen to this. ‘Gold, even more than petroleum, holds a hallowed place in the human psyche. It is both useful and beautiful. It could perhaps be said that the search for new sources of this precious life substance has fueled human history and the rise of civilization itself. As the old sources are played out, few new ones have been found. Does this eventuality define the end of human civilization, perhaps the end of human history? While such speculations may seem far-fetched at this point, it is well to weigh in the balance the meaning of this ever-precious, ever-vanishing source of human wealth against the readily renewable, not to say relentlessly burgeoning, natural abundance of the forest.

“ ‘One could also speculate that now that gold has been found in the forest, the SAFEST thing to do is to remove it with the best possible methods, thus forestalling future uncontrolled depredations. It would perhaps have been better that the gold deposits had not been found, but now that they have, it is the opinion of this writer that the findings are best acted upon.’ ”

Martha fell back on the couch.

“And listen to this,” said Loraine. “I called a guy in the geology department, and said, ‘What’s the latest, most state-of-the-art way of extracting gold from ore?’ and he said, ‘There is no state-of-the-art way. You dig it out, crush it to powder, treat it chemically so that the invisible flecks of gold concentrate into a solution and run out of the ore, then you neutralize the solvent. Of course, a fraction of the solvent always escapes. That can be a problem.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Well, you know, the solvent is a cyanide compound. You don’t want that to get in the groundwater, but of course it does. And then there are these enormous mounds of powdered ore, because the highest-grade ore still only carries one ounce of gold per one ton of ore. Then the ore oxidizes and sulfur compounds dissolve into sulfuric acid, and THAT runs into the groundwater. Very problematic.’ ”

“Lord, I guess.”

“I said, ‘What would be state-of-the-art?’ and he said, ‘Well, maybe to stuff that powdered ore back down the mine shaft to keep it from collapsing. Some states require that. That’s why a lot of mining companies are moving to the Third World. They don’t have to adhere to so many environmental regulations.’ ”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘I’m sending you a document through campus mail that I think you’ll find very interesting.’ ”

Martha smiled. Alone of all their acquaintances, she found Loraine hilarious.

The next day, Mrs. Walker called Ivar into her office when the rest of the staff was on break, and she said, “Did you read that document I gave you?”

“Mrs. Walker, I am not going to ask you how you came to have that document.”

“But did you read it?”

“I did.”

“It is my personal opinion that something should be done about the contents of that document.”

“Dr. Gift was consulted as to his views on the project. If those are his views, then there’s nothing the university can do about them.”

They looked at each other. Ivar saw Mrs. Walker’s face settle into her most disapproving and impenetrable Menominee visage, and he wondered if she would actually quit over a matter of extremely, in his view, abstract principle. It made him nervous. Mrs. Walker saw Ivar’s countenance turn pale and stubborn, a mask of apparent blandness that deflected her most resolute determination. Simultaneously, they said, “Academic freedom.” Ivar then said, “Well, yes. It would be very dangerous for the university to act. Or,” he pressed on, in the teeth of his growing nervousness, “for anyone in this office to act. No one in this office acts solely in his or her own behalf, but always as a representative of this office.” Now he could barely utter the words, but he forced out, “I do hope you understand that, Mrs. Walker.”

She didn’t say anything.

He knew she understood.

He also knew that wouldn’t necessarily make any difference.

He should have taken control years ago.

She had her hands on the keys of her, their, computer. He would never have control now. He went back into his office and sat down in the desk chair.

As the door to his office closed, the door to the hallway opened, and Just Plain Brown glided in on a smear of eternal congeniality. “Ah, Mrs. Walker,” he said. “Just who I’m looking for!” He glanced down at the “UARCO Trimedge@” box with evident delight. “Here they are! May I?”

He bent down just a fraction of a second before she nodded, and lifted up one of the reports with apparent reverence. Their eyes met. He leaned over the desk, turning the full force of his good will upon her, and said, “Thank you for this!” A second later he was gone.

In his office, reading reports from the promotion and tenure committee, Ivar noticed when Mrs. Walker’s extension lit up. Very carefully, he picked up the receiver. She was saying, “Hello, Dorothy. This is Mrs. Walker. Would you transfer me to Professor Levy, please?” Moments later, Helen’s warm, loved tones announced, “This is Helen Levy, hello?” Ivar carefully replaced the phone, and smiled.

T
HANKSGIVING WAS
Helen’s favorite holiday, and for at least five years Nils and Ivar had spent Thanksgiving with her, along with an assortment of lonely, overworked, or impecunious faculty members who she happened to run across in the course of the fall. She tried to seat twelve or fourteen. This year, however, the lonely, overworked, and impecunious were out of luck, and she was preparing a rather small dinner for Ivar, Nils, Marly, and Father.

Small didn’t mean that she couldn’t go all out, but it did mean that most of her kitchen equipment, from her Bosch food processor to her Calphalon turkey roaster to her Viking oven, was just too big. The ingredients she measured out seemed to sit in little puddles at the bottom of large vessels, and there were things she would never use again that she actually had to go out and buy—an eight-inch pie plate, a three-quart casserole.

Ah, but her yard, her root cellar, and her freezer were abundant with provisions.

For Thanksgiving, Helen liked to pursue a western hemispherical theme. Banished from the table were some of the Italian and French flavors she loved—truffles and tarragon and crusty bread, lamb and pork roast, olive oil, lemons, oranges with cloves, pears poached in wine—but for Christmas, she always put on a large buffet with an Old World, semi-Mediterranean theme.

Everything about the preparations pleased her—the setting out of ingredients, the measuring and mixing, the trips to the root cellar and the freezer, the view out the window of her frosted garden under its winter mulch and all of chill nature alive in the wind, the darkness that because of thick November clouds never really lifted. Around her, in the kitchen, the bowls and pans glowed and auspicious fragrances rose and mingled. Dinner was scheduled late, at six-thirty, so that Helen could savor as much of the day as possible.

At noon, just as she was setting the cranberry mousse in the refrigerator to cool, Ivar showed up, and he followed her around the kitchen
with a spoon, tasting a bit of everything. “Mmmm,” he said, “Mmmm,” in a reflective way that showed he would have said the same thing if she weren’t in the room. After he had savored all, he sighed and said, “Mind if I watch a little of the football game over here?”

“Of course not.”

“Did you hear from Tia?”

Tia Mathilde was Helen’s twenty-six-year-old daughter with her former husband. She was an archaeologist working in Greece. “She called. She’s spending the day with an American couple in Delphi.”

“Good. I should have stopped for a six-pack of beer.”

“You left two Heinekens in the refrigerator.”

“That’s a bonus.” He put his arm around her and pulled her solidly to him. She had pinned up her hair, but it was coming down, and she smelled spicy and delicious. She had a big French vegetable knife in one hand and a head of garlic in the other. He kissed her hungrily on the lips and let his hand drop to her large, firm buttocks, which he could feel in delightful detail through her silk slacks and her silk underwear. All the silk she wore was another thing he liked about her. Really, in fact, there was nothing about her that he didn’t like, including the innate independence that prevented him from ever approaching the marriage question, even the living-together question. Where would they live? He was a welcome guest in this world, but always a guest. It reminded him of the old saying “Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints.” He sighed.

“Nils?”

“Oh, I suppose.”

“Frankly, Ivar, I don’t think it’s going to work out the way he thinks it is.” She said this mildly.

“Well, since his heart is set on the marriage, one’ll be as bad as the other.”

“For him, maybe, but not necessarily for you.” She said this even more mildly. She always tried to uphold the fiction that Ivar and Nils really were two separate individuals, since she didn’t know, even now, how deeply the identification between them ran. Nils had always resisted any closeness to her, and that had been fine with her, since some instinct made her distrust him—his very good will and desire to do the right thing at all times seemed dangerous. He was a classic example of aggressive beneficence, which meant, in her opinion, that he often interfered when he might have more productively left things,
or people, alone. And she had been around when he found religion and gave up all doubts (to be honest, he had had few enough to give up). She had, in fact, once known his Ceylonese wife, who had always seemed to be carrying the doubt load, who had, in fact, died of doubt. Her appendix burst because she doubted whether it was important enough to bother either Nils or the hospital emergency room about the severe pain in her side. Nils (this was when Helen was still married and didn’t care one way or the other, really) had hardly seemed to grieve, the woman seemed for him just another Third World development project that didn’t work out owing to the inherent frailty of the native stock. Not caring for Nils was just like not caring for your best friend’s husband—Helen was careful never to criticize Nils, never even to listen to Ivar’s occasional complaints with a sympathetic ear. When pressed, she defended Nils. That seemed to be fine with Ivar.

She began to feel a kind of fleshly eagerness for Ivar to leave her kitchen domain, and stepped out of his embrace. She turned and brought the handle of the knife down sharply on the head of garlic. It fell apart into cloves. “Would you like a sandwich?” she said.

“No, not right now.” He slapped her gently on the buttocks and strode into the living room invigorated. When he turned on the TV, the football game was just beginning. His beer opened with a satisfyingly effervescent crack. He settled into one of Helen’s leather recliners. It was easy, when he was with her, just to sink into the present moment, the physical moment. When he was not with her, it was nearly impossible.

As soon as they walked into Helen’s house, Marly could tell that Father was offended. She could see his eyes flick from chair to painting to flower arrangement to oriental rug and stamp each, “Worldly pride, worldly pride, worldly pride, worldly pride.” Almost immediately, he sat down in the plain wooden chair beside the front door and reached into his pocket for his worn Bible. Marly said, “Please don’t embarrass me,” but he just let the Book flop open and then began moving his lips. She said, “I know you can read without moving your lips, so please stop making this fuss.” He didn’t look at her.

Nils walked right in, past Father as if he weren’t there. This seemed to be Nils’ strategy for dealing with Father, and Marly rather admired it, or at least envied it. She herself thought the house was beautiful.

That didn’t mean that it didn’t make her mad. Almost everything
did, these days, starting with Father, going directly to Nils, and then expanding outward to encompass family, church, work, her car, the weather, passersby, everything on television, including the Christian Broadcasting Network, and nearly every encounter that involved the smallest amount of money. It was as if, for the past decade, she had been storing her anger rather than, as she thought, disposing of it, and now the storage tank had sprung a leak and turning away with a soft answer just didn’t cut it anymore.

The beautiful house made her mad because she hadn’t ever been anywhere like it before, hadn’t even imagined that houses like this existed. It was not ornate and enormous and movie-like, the sort of house anyone could buy with enough money, it was the sort of house that you loved to be in, but could never have or reproduce, unless you were Helen herself, and since you would never be Helen herself, you were cut off forever from inhabiting this house, and from feeling, moment to moment, the pleasures of these colors and shapes and aromas. She said to Father, “Oh, for goodness’ sake. Get up and be polite.” He threw her a warning look, but he got up and moved to an unpleasantly comfortable sofa near the fireplace.

She sat next to him, entertaining herself with the idea, which of course she would never act upon, of pinching him hard in the leg the first time he annoyed her. She stared across the room out the big back windows overlooking Helen’s yard.

Except that it was hardly what you would call a yard. The thick hedge enclosed a deep double lot. To the left, the black leafless limbs of neatly pruned fruit trees twisted in a sort of Japanese-type sculpture, like those little bitty trees in dishes, only full-size. To the right was the garden, but it wasn’t square like most people’s—it ran here and there in curves. Right now it looked from the house like a big mound of leaves and dead grass. In the middle of it was a little screened building, and she could also see, near the building, a little bridge. In back of the garden and the fruit trees was a wilder-seeming spot, with some dark evergreens and the white trunks of birches curving gracefully against them. This was not a yard with some tomato plants and a deck like most people had, it was an outdoor extension of the house, as if the house represented the world that people made, and the yard represented the world of nature, and with windows and doors and terra-cotta patios and paths and stepping-stones, you could easily move between them.