Pamela Dean (50 page)

Medeous said something in her lovely voice. Janet almost jumped out of her skin; she knew what that word meant. It was Greek. It was one of the interrogatives—damn, which one?

No, not that—whither, that was it. There was a chorus of answers, which might or might not have been Greek; and then they let out that same horrendous yell, and took off down the highway straight for the center of town.

Janet scrambled up and watched them around the corner. They could still, if they wanted to stay on the pavement rather than ride over the outlying fields of the campus, come back upon Ericson by taking the service road behind Sterne Hall. If they did, Molly and Tina would see them, and perhaps somebody would throw books at them again; fine.

The bagpipes were still wailing and complaining in the woods. She would wait for Robin.

He was playing the Ceol Mohr again; no doubt about it. Tom, Tom the piper's son had been far more reassuring. Janet walked onto the bridge to meet him, and thought for a moment he was going to walk right into her. Then the pipes stopped with a wheeze, and Robin peered around them and said, "What are you doing here?" He was wearing a doublet of dark red with braid on it that glimmered, and high boots. Janet thought it might be a costume from
The Revenger's Tragedy.
It was nervewracking for other reasons entirely: Robin had a figure that was unprepossessing in jeans but suited these outlandish garments all too well. As Lussurioso he had made you feel he lived up to his name; as Robin, he was alarming.

She said, "I'm catching a glimpse of Nick. I don't get to see him for another two weeks, you know."

"I think it's a very foolish arrangement," said Robin. "You haven't brought Molly, have you?"

"No; she and Tina are lying in wait for the Fourth Ericson ghost."

Robin said nothing. Janet felt unwelcome. The stream gurgled below them, and a few leaves drifted down onto the boards of the bridge. "Do you have to follow the riders?" she said.

"No," said Robin. "They'll be racketing up and down for a bit, and then we all meet at Medeous's house and carouse until dawn."

"You sound tired of it."

"It doesn't suit an academic schedule so well. Walk back to Holmes with me, why don't you, and we'll see if Thomas is moping at home instead of going to the party."

"I didn't see him with the riders. Doesn't he like horses?"

Robin made a noncommittal noise, and then said, "May I go on playing, if it's melodious?"

"Certainly; just let me fall behind a bit so I'm not deafened."

She did so, and Robin began another of his unsuitable tunes; he seemed to play either the very esoteric and unbearable bagpipe music, or else things that would have been far better on a guitar or a piano. This was one that he and Nick and Anne sang. Janet found herself mouthing the words with the sound of the pipes: "Seven days are in the week, in almost every circumstance; And there's four seasons in the year, or so we learn in school; But never count your chickens when you're dealing with the women, For many a wise man fell asleep and wakened up a fool."

Hah, thought Janet, following the incongruous noise down the hill to Dunbar, you think it's any better dealing with men?

Eliot, when they got to it, was lively with parties, many of which had spilled out into

the halls. The costumed and celebrating students had a number of things to say about Robin and the bagpipes, but he only smiled in his beard and refused to stop and play for them. He and Thomas lived in one of the big and much-coveted two-room doubles, with a bay window to it. There was a light under the door when they got there; Robin knocked, and was answered with a querulous, "What?"

"I've brought Janet," called Robin, and flung the door open.

Thomas was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the clean blue carpet of the main room, completely surrounded by Tinker Toys.

"What on earth are you doing?" said Janet.

"That's a fine greeting," said Thomas, smiling up at her. She was almost used to the shock of his appearance. The eyes and mouth and face were merely familiar now, for the most part; but the hair, its mixture of rich and subdued yellows all shining in the light, was still alarming. She suffered an acute wave of longing for Nick's pleasant, normal face. "It's all right," said Thomas; her face must have mirrored her thoughts. "I'm just trying to make a model of a molecule of muscarine—good Lord, that sounds just like Gilbert and Sullivan—for this goddamned physics course."

"Fucking," said Janet. "That is the proper adjective for physics courses."

"I beg your pardon," said Thomas. "Well, Robin, did you wake the dead?"

Robin, putting his bagpipes away in the closet, did not reply; nor did Thomas seem to expect it.

"Are you coming along?" Robin said to Thomas, slinging a red cloak lined with gold, no doubt also from
The Revenger's Tragedy,
over his doublet. In the cold fluorescent light of Thomas's desk lamp, the colors were as rich as on stage; but Robin's face, what you could see between the thick fringe of brown hair and the beard, looked rather sharp and pale.

"No," said Thomas, without looking at him.

"It would be better if you did."

"If it be now," said Thomas, still not looking at him, "it is not to come. If it be not to come, then it will be—"

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" said Robin, and left, slamming the door with a violence that shook the windowpanes.

"Does he always get that way when you quote
Hamlet?
" said Janet. "And what are you talking about? Is Medeous going to kick you out again if you don't go to her party?"

"Robin is like that no matter what I quote. I suppose Nick's gone to this party like the good child he is?"

"I guess. I only see him once a month."

"Well, stay and have some coffee with me, then. I have a lot of real cream to put in it, frozen on the windowsill; and I've got a box of chocolate-mint cookies I've been saving for some great occasion. Help me pick up these damnable toys, and we'll have a mild sort of orgy."

They used up the entire pint of cream and ate the entire box of cookies. They discussed Keats, Shakespeare, the diabolical nature of all physics classes, how many times in a row it was possible to watch
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
before the mind rebelled, whether Tina had actually slept with Jack before hurling her pills into the stream, why Peg Powell never went out with anybody, and just how guilty President Nixon might be in the matter of Watergate.

In a daze of sugar and caffeine, Janet told Thomas all about the Fourth Ericson ghost.

Thomas seemed vaguely horrified by the whole business. "I wonder why she threw
A
Midsummer Night's Dream?
" he said.

"Well, I've been thinking about that, and it was Midsummer's Eve."

"Because all the other books are either connected with Classics, or else they're about women who get pregnant out of wedlock and suffer for it."

"McGuffey's
Reader?"

"I've never read them, who knows what's in there?"

"Maybe she threw the Shakespeare because somebody says in it, 'Lord, what fools these mortals be.'"

"Maybe," said Thomas.

"Do you actually believe in ghosts?"

Thomas smiled a very unpleasant smile. "No," he said. "But then, I don't want to."

"But you'll discuss them?"

"In my present disgusting state, yes. As if they were characters in a poem."

"That's what I've been doing, too. And all the reports of what she actually said are interpolations by an inept editor."

Thomas smiled, less unpleasantly.

"Dr. Johnson thought there must be ghosts, because he felt disparate human cultures could not independently evolve similar ideas unless they were true."

Thomas snorted.

"But he could never find any actual evidence that satisfied him."

"No fool he."

"Nick believes in them, too. It turned out to be one of those things you can't talk about, because it never occurred to him to think they might not exist."

"Has
he
got any evidence that satisfies him?" said Thomas, almost angrily.

"I didn't think to ask. It would be like asking me if I had any evidence that satisfies me about supernovae."

"And have you?"

"Yes—but it wouldn't come to much under determined examination. I don't mean I think there isn't any, I mean I don't know enough to satisfy a real skeptic."

* * *

Janet overslept the next morning, and got up feeling as if she had a hangover. She had to skip her shower, and she was too late for breakfast at either Eliot or Dunbar. Taylor was still serving toast, juice, coffee, and cold cereal. She did not feel capable of facing Boswell and Johnson—let alone Professor Evans—without any breakfast. She flung on the first clothing that came to hand, and rushed over to Taylor.

She had forgotten how very depressing it was. She piled a few items of alleged food onto her tray and walked along the wall, trying to find a table under a window. It was a bright November day out there; surely a little sun must be co ming in even to Taylor's

basement.

Yes, it was. It fell, dim and dusty but dazzling in the murk of Taylor, on a scratched table for two, and on Peg Powell's shining light brown hair and white ruffled blouse, where she sat smiling like Patience on a monument and holding hands with Nick. Janet stopped dead, spilling half her orange juice into her glazed doughnuts. Then she backed slowly away until she was safely behind one of Taylor's massive pillars, after which she put the tray down carefully on an empty table and bolted out of the building.

She arrived in her classroom fifteen minutes early, and sat staring at somebody's metrical analysis of Wordsworth's "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour" on the blackboard. The class gathered. Evans came in, brisk and a little sardonic; he had not found their last batch of papers inspiring, and set himself to explain how they might do better next time. Janet wrote down everything he said. She never felt quite the same again about the excellent advice not to generalize from fewer than three examples; she thought that another two examples of what she was generalizing about at the moment would probably kill her.

Then they discussed the entry in Boswell's
Life
for 22 March 1776, in which Johnson, encountering many years after their first meeting the first woman he had been in love with, laughed at the notion that a man never can be really in love but once, and said furthermore,

"I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter."

The problem with literature, thought Janet crossly, while Evans delivered one of his more sardonic speeches relating these opinions to Johnson's actual behavior and then to the profound foolishness of students, the twentieth century, and humanity in general, was that either it applied not at all to your private concerns, or else you wished it wouldn't.

When she went back to Ericson, she found both Molly and Tina rather cross in their turn, on account of having been abandoned the night before in the midst of their ghostly researches—fruitless researches, as it turned out. They had sat out in the grass until twelve-thirty, unmolested by flying books or reckless equestrians, and then given up and gone home. Sharon had called at one o'clock and said Peg was sleeping like a log and could Sharon also go to bed, please? Janet apologized abjectly; Molly asked her if anything was the matter; Janet opened her mouth and surprised everybody, herself most of all, by bursting into tears. They patted her on the back and gave her Kleenex.

When she had explained the cause, both Tina and Molly looked relieved. "That doesn't mean anything at all," said Molly. "Peg's always melancholy; he was probably just cheering her up."

"If he's got time to cheer Peg up, why hasn't he got any time for me?"

"I think that's the problem," said Tina. "You wouldn't be so upset and suspicious if you guys were having a normal relationship. Maybe after he has the Listening Test—"

"Then he has to study for the written exam and practice for his recital. It's hopeless."

"Well, if he has time to comfort Peg, it can't be too hopeless," said Molly.

Janet perceived that she had failed to convey some element of what she had seen, and decided it was probably not communicable anyway. She blew her nose and consented to go to lunch, since this was not a day on which they would see Peg.

She found herself looking forward to seeing Nick with a feverish impatience; but when she knocked on his door on the appointed date and heard him call, "Come in," she felt suddenly incapable of either ignoring the matter or dealing with it. She went in. Nick had ordered a pizza, and was trying to cut it with a Swiss Army knife that had seen better days.

"Hello, my lass," he said. "Sit down and put on a bib, if you can find such a thing. This pizza would suit somebody on a liquid diet, but it smells all right."

"Nicholas, I can't stand this anymore."

Nick looked up, wide-eyed. "Do you want to go eat soggy sandwiches at Sheila's? I don't mind." He started to get up.

"No, I mean this. Seeing you once a month. Can't we do something?"

"I don't see what, until I've got these exams out of the way."

"Well, I can't stand it, that's all."

"Would you rather not see me at all?"

"Yes," said Janet, "I think I would."

Nick put the knife down, very carefully, on his purple-flowered pillow, and stood looking at her. Janet, advising anybody else in such a situation, would have told her to go ahead and confront him with Peg; it could not do any more harm than she had done already.

But she could not do it. There was, after last spring and this summer and fall, so huge a collection of unspoken thoughts between them that no single one could fight its way out of the tangle. And what had he been thinking and not saying all that time? She blinked, hard.

He would not begin; if there was anything to be said, she had say it. She opened her mouth, but her throat had closed. She refused to break down crying on his bed. Nothing in all their relations had made that a possibility.