The Headmasters Papers (23 page)

I am honored that you thought of me in connection with the June program, but, again, I have only the stodgiest sort of things to say.

My good wishes,

John Greeve

8 March

Mrs. Faye Dougan

President, PARENT' VIGIL

1995 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

Dear Mrs. Dougan,

Your letter was upsetting, but I thank you very much for sending it. In a few weeks you have been able to come up with more than my brother and I did working fairly diligently for over a year.

I have contacted the parties you indicated in Washington, and I have written the consulate in Tangier for the wallet. I understand the passport should remain there in case he shows up to claim it. I cannot understand how a lost passport and wallet could be kept by the police for the better part of a year without somebody trying to get in touch with American authorities, family, etc.

It is hard to feel encouraged by your find. If Brian is alive, I suppose he must, without passport and wallet, be in the vicinity of Tangier. Yet, as you point out, he could not work, bank, even check into a hotel without a passport and identification. If he is alive, he must be living the most marginal sort of existence, begging, even, if that is allowed. I should know more about that possibility before long.

I must also, as you cautioned, be prepared for the possibility that he is dead. If that has happened, why would there be no body? If he was killed by someone and disposed of, why would wallet and passport turn up? I am afraid I find all of the possibilities depressing. As is your disclosure that quite a few American and European kids pass into North Africa and are not heard from again.

I will, as you counsel, prepare for the worst. I thought I was prepared for the worst, but it keeps worsening. Again, thank you.

Faithfully,

John Greeve

9 March

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Greeve

14 Bingham Drive

Tarrytown, New York

Dear Val and Frank,

More grim news. I received a letter from the Parents' Vigil people in Washington. They have had confirmed that about a 
year
ago Brian's wallet and passport were turned in to the Tangier police. Thanks to Parents' Vigil, both are now in the American consulate there. The implications of this are mostly bad. The best is that, if he is alive, he should be findable, in or around Tangier. How he could be alive, how he could manage for so long without identification or passport is hard to imagine. A few American and British contacts who have been given photos have agreed to comb the seamier quarters of the city for Brian, and if they don't come up with something in a week or so, I've got the names of some people I can pay to look properly. Whatever they do or don't come up with, short of Brian, I'll go myself when school breaks in June. I should probably go next week. I'm afraid he's gone.

Spring Recess begins Friday, and I have decided to give Little House another try. I have a feeling it will turn off the noise I have been living with lately, or at least will replace it with other noise. At any rate, I'm going there. There will be a phone, maybe, by the 25th or so. I'm going to ask Jenkins to turn on the water and the gas, but he will probably refuse. If so, I'll live on raw shellfish, bathe and poop in the sea.

With that vivid picture, I shall leave you.

Best to Hugh.

Love,

John

12 March

Mr. William Truax

President, The Fiduciary

Trust P.O. Box 121

New Haven, Connecticut

Dear Bill,

Well!

Out to pasture, is it? Why do you say until September? Do you think I'll improve over the interim? Why do you say “rest and refreshment”? If you look closely at the period during which you find me “not myself,” you will see that it follows on the heels of the longest period of “rest and refreshment” I have ever had during a school year. I came back to Wells in February, Bill, because rest and refreshment was about to open its roaring jaws and swallow me up. I 
am
 myself. The petulant child, the erratic performer up north is I, Greeve. What you are finding fault with is not Greeve redux, but Greeve full throttle, prime Greeve, Greeve as he is.

I hope you know that I am more than able to throw up justifiable defenses to all your claims. For one thing, I never pledged, nor would I ever pledge, to refrain from discussing disciplinary actions before the school. Moreover, you never insisted that I do so, you just asked. I'll have to hand it to you, though, Truax, you do have your antennae up. The reason I will not throw up my (formidable) defenses is that I frankly did defy you.

I wrestled quite consciously with the issue of discussing the Weisman boy before the school; it would have been relatively easy not to. At one point I almost phoned you to get an opinion. Then I decided I wouldn't. I knew what you'd say (and see, you've said it), and I knew what I would do. I just went ahead—same sort of jaw I've been giving for twenty years. I fully expected the stink. Just wanted you to know.

The Seven Schools business is both crucial to the coming year and not important at all. At its nub it's just like the drugs/legal business. We're either going to stand by what we've always said is important about Wells, or we're going to be convenient. Convenience is easy and safe in these two instances, and evidently this appeals to you and to whomever you are talking to here.

You are right that there is something wrong with the tone of the place. This may be my fault. I'm not sure.

You are also right that I am behind in my board work. Contracts are late, budget is late, “Wells: Ten Years and After” is only embryonic. This is poor form. No excuses.

So out to pasture I go. Who knows about this? Everybody? Let's by all means get together first week in April, in New Haven. The finance committee should meet there, too, while we're at it.

By the way, please do 
not
 get an outside man to prevail over my Rest and Refreshment—unless you really want a new head. It would take him till September to find the xerox paper. Let Phil Upjohn do it. He's not terribly good “up front”, as you business fellows like to say, but he's very savvy about Wells, and the faculty trust him. He can do everything, even the diplomatic stuff, if he's told what's expected.

So it's bugger off, Greeve, it is? I feel like Willie Loman: really liked, really well liked.

Faithfully,

John

14 March

MEMO

To: All Faculty

Colleagues:

Before we all depart for warmer climes, I want to thank you for your extra effort in bringing this term to a tidy conclusion. As I keep saying, it has not been an easy term. I will not now catalogue my woes, except to acknowledge that there were woes. You, too, have had woes. I hope each of you enjoys the break, enjoyment richly deserved. Contracts will be awaiting you on your return. Sorry for the delay. As I said, woes.

Adios,

J.O.G.

15 March

R
EMARKS
T
O
T
HE
S
CHOOL

It strikes me that the next time you all assemble here many of you will be burnt brown, and all of you will be refreshed. It is easy to forget how important refreshment is: the break in the routine, the sudden change in plans, the surprise. I hope you find it a little refreshing that I am not bawling you out for something this morning. Various people have pointed out to me recently that I seem to be stuck in that groove. My apologies.

This morning I am not going to warn or denounce or complain. Rather, I would like to reflect for a moment on what is an important coming together in the year's religious calendar: Easter and Passover. It is a shame this year that the school's vacation rhythm scatters us all for these sacred holidays. The two events may have more to tell us than all of our other holidays combined.

Friday, April second, will be both Good Friday and Passover, key moments in Easter and Passover weeks, respectively. The two events falling on that Friday are not a coincidence; they are, at their heart, the same event. As Western Studies students will so vividly recall, in mid-thirteenth century B.C., a reluctant upper-class Hebrew named Moses began a series of demonstrations to convince the Egyptian pharaoh to free the enslaved Hebrews from bondage and to allow them to seek their ancestral homelands. Pharaoh refused, and in response Moses was able either to visit a series of disasters upon Egypt or, as some historians think, to convince Pharaoh that a series of natural disasters was brought about by the Hebrew's god. At any rate, boils, locusts, frogs, foul water, and other harassments befell Egypt until finally a curse was placed upon first-born sons. Whether through disease or by the hand of the Angel of Death, Egyptian youths perished. Hebrew sons were saved, they believed, because they had dabbed the lintels of their doorways with the blood of sacrificial lambs. The Angel of Death therefore passed over their households. In a fit of depression, Pharaoh, grieving the loss of his own son, let the Jews go.

You know the rest of the story. The Jews fled in a hurry, narrowly escaping, doubting bitterly that they would survive another generation. Yet through their struggle, they would develop what has been the most enduring religious code in the Western world.

A dozen centuries later another committed Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, would come to Jerusalem, as he and his family had done every year of his life, to celebrate Passover. Like Moses, he came to liberate his fellow Jews from bondage, but not bondage to the state; from, rather, bondage to selfish, shallow living. Like Moses, Jesus had a dramatic effect on people 
at first,
 but was doubted and betrayed by them later. Like Moses, Jesus would not live to see the fruits of his labors. In fact, Jesus had so offended the Hebrew establishment during his last Passover week, that, sensing trouble, he was forced to celebrate his Passover meal—his last supper—a day early and in secret.

This was Thursday. He seemed to know that the next day he would be lost to his friends and followers. The Angel of Death would 
not
 pass over him, he told them, but he would be the sacrificial lamb whose blood would allow them to live. No one understood any of this, and Jesus was arrested, tried hastily, and killed in the most brutal manner the state could devise.

At this, Jesus's followers scattered or went underground. Three days later, in many different reports, they claim to have seen him again, resurrected and alive. Convinced of this miracle, they spread the word that their leader and teacher had conquered death. This was the message that began the early church.

In a way, the Exodus of Moses and the Resurrection of Jesus are both great triumphs—without them there would be no Judaism or Christianity. Yet they are odd triumphs. Both events required great suffering and the loss of their respective heroes. That suffering and loss are essential to life is still a great mystery; for both Jews and Christians it is the mystery at the very center of life.

At one point during Passover week Jesus tries to explain the mystery to his disciples. These are his words:

Verily, verily, I say unto you. Except

a corn of wheat fall into the ground and

die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it

brings forth much fruit. He that loves his

life shall lose it; and he that hates his life

in this world shall keep it unto eternal life.

That is what Jews and Christians celebrate in Passover and Easter. Have a joyful holiday. Good morning.

17 March

Little House

Mr. Jake Levin

R.D. 3

Petersfield, New Hampshire

Dear Jake,

I am writing in trying circumstances, like Chatterton. I am huddled in the parlor of Little House before a blazing fire that is miraculously radiating no heat at all. I have been told knowingly that insulation makes a difference and that summer houses are strictly summer houses, but I had, until this evening, an elemental faith in fire. I'm going to sit here like this for about ten more minutes and the I'm going to get into the fire.

Strangest thing has happened, Jake. I've been relieved of command. Not quite sacked, because I'm supposed to be able to come back in September, but asked with consummate graciousness to get out of the way while some messes I made get cleaned up. In my defense I would say that a few of the messes are the kind you can be proud of. But that sort of thing doesn't carry much weight with the school's trustees. They are practical men of affairs and see in messes only mess. Out, gently, goes Chips. Everybody's very nice, really. The truth of the matter is that a few of the messes are going to rouse a fight and nobody wants to fight 
me
 because I'm bereft, etc.

I think people hope that I'll pull myself together. That's the problem, the point I can't get anybody to see. Except that I am bereft and rather a bag of bones to look at, I 
am
 pulled together. This is it. I won't think or behave better under other circumstances. Without Meg, I am less, but I always was, and there is never going to be more, not in September, not in purgatory. That is the unsettling thing, not the enforced rustication. There were days I would have treasured a paid leave from March till Labor Day.