The Poison Tree (25 page)

I replace the telephone in its cradle.

For the first week, I was terrified of the bone-biting cold of a Wisconsin winter. But after a few weeks, I enjoyed it. I loved walking along the Lakeshore Path. Walking along Lake Mendota, the wind whipping me in the face so hard I couldn't breathe. I bought a thick blue turtleneck sweater and a pea coat at the Army-Navy store, and as I walked back along the lake at night I flipped the collar of my pea coat up, channeling Raskolnikov tramping across the Nevsky Bridge in Petersburg. I took out a quarter from my pants pocket and sent it skimming across the frozen lake, imagining I had just tossed my last roubel into the Neva. I prowled Madison's streets, but screened off the reality of a college town with its bars and Brat Haus; instead, I imagined myself swept up in the mystery and romance of a Russian winter at the end of the nineteenth century.

I was walking to the library, preparing to meet with the Director of Freshman Composition. He told me to meet him because I was flunking English I: Expository Writing. On my fall midterm exam I had left my bluebook blank—not one word, except for a strange, hallucinatory poem, that even I could not understand when the exams were returned. The graduate assistant who taught the class, Mr. Palven, told me I should immediately report to the Health Center for counseling. Furthermore, he informed Dr. Skinner that I wasn't welcome in his class anymore. Now I had to explain to Skinner why I should be allowed to finish the course—a flashback to high school. The funny thing was, I read everything in sight—I just wouldn't read anything required for my classes.

On my way to meet Dr. Skinner, I thought how poorly I was doing, not only in English Composition, but also in Chemistry, Geology, and Ancient Greek. Why had I taken Greek? Mr. Herman once remarked that every truly educated person needed to be able to read Sophocles in the original. The rest of the class assumed this was one of his typical allusions to our insufficiency,
but I took it seriously. So, I signed up for Ancient Greek at 8:50 a.m., Monday through Thursday in my first semester. Unfortunately, I had neither the discipline nor the concentration to succeed. I sat in the back row of Greek class with Dostoevsky's “White Nights” tucked inside my Greek grammar, like some pervert hiding a dirty magazine on the subway.

Dr. Skinner was tall and morose, and had an Adam's apple like Ichabod Crane in
The Headless Horseman
. He took out my bluebook, and began to click his tongue and make tsking sounds. He must have sat there silently holding the exam for about five long minutes, with only the sounds of his clicking tongue to distract me. Then he asked if I was seeing a psychiatrist; if not, he knew a good one at the Health Service. When I refused, he said that if I ever turned in another exam like that (with or without a poem), I wouldn't be allowed back, and would receive an F. Because Mr. Palven refused to take me back, he was doing me the favor of transferring me into a different section.

My life at school wasn't entirely confined to Dostoevsky and skipping class, however. My friend during that first semester was Dwayne Pfefferkorn. Wearing his white-blond hair in a crew cut, Dwayne had the misfortune of being born in Brillion, Wisconsin, population 800 and something. Dwayne desperately wanted to live this down and keep his origins a secret. At our first meeting during orientation, I casually asked him where he was from, and Dwayne flushed and put his index finger to his lips.

“I'll tell you later, in private,” he said. I raised my eyebrows, but let it go. Later that night, over several Old Styles obtained with his fake I.D., Dwayne informed me about his origins. He whispered that nobody knew how Brillion had received its name. Prevailing wisdom was that when the town was founded in 1855, Postmaster T.K. West proposed the name Pilleola, an acronym based on the letters in the names of his two daughters. I wondered what those two daughters' names might have been—Pilly? Leola?—but Pilleola was rejected by Mr. West's post office colleagues, and the name was changed to Brillion. Some said it was named for a town in Prussia; others after someone named Brill. No one knew for sure. But for Dwayne, this uncertainty about his hometown made him feel like a bastard and an outcast—forever insecure about his origins.

Dwayne's embarrassment about his birthplace made him feel disproportionate
excitement when he discovered his roommate was from New York City. Earlier in the summer, when he received word we were going to be roommates, he wrote me a letter asking all about New York and saying how excited he was to make friends with a New York Jew. He was crushed when, after my registration fiasco, he was assigned a different roommate, and I was given a rare single room, probably in compensation for the school's embarrassment surrounding my registration. Dwayne was even more “ticked,” he said, when they gave my place to some kid from Manitowac who wasn't “Jewish, Negro, or anything.” Dwayne decided he and I had a special bond, and he came into my room at all hours to “kvetch” (as he put it), about Greg, his Manitowac roommate, who also had white-blond hair and looked like he might have been Dwayne's twin. Dwayne loved saying the word “kvetch” and used it as often as possible. He knocked on my door when he came back after his morning lab to see how I was doing. I was still in my pajamas, having overslept and missed Greek again. I believe Dwayne saw himself as my responsible elder brother. He worried about my being sequestered in a single—and was especially concerned about my penchant for cutting classes.

“Missed Greek again, dincha? Hey—it stinks in here! What's going on? You smokin' somethin'?”

“No, Dwayne, I don't do that stuff. Anyway, that's not what marijuana smells like.”

“So what's that stink from anyway? I tole ya you're not supposed to have a hot plate in here!”

“I wasn't cooking. I was burning something.”

“Whatcha been burning?”

“Nothing.”

“You gonna flunk it? Greek, I mean.”

“Probably.”

“Then why did you take it?”

“I thought it would be more interesting than it is.”

“Ancient Greek? First thing in the morning?”

“Yes, Dwayne, you're right. I was wrong.”

“I really don't mind waking you for Greek class. I have Chem Lab at the same exact time. If we were roommates like we were supposed to be, I wouldn't let you sleep through classes.”

“That's really nice of you, Dwayne. I can get up on my own.”

“I just don't want you flunking out, okay?”

“Thanks, Dwayne. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, okay, then.” Exasperated, he brushed his hand through his white blond crew cut.

Dwayne walked over to my desk, and picked up the envelope lying beside the smoldering ashtray. “Hey, this is from the Selective Service! Is that what you just burnt—your draft card?”

“No,” I lied. Actually, it was more misdirection than lie. What I had burnt was a letter from the Selective Service asking to verify my student deferment, prior to sending me my draft card. Instead of sending the information back, I burnt the notice.

“Damn, why'd you do that?”

“I don't know.”

“You're gonna get in some serious trouble. There's a draft on, ya know. Vietnam War and all,” Dwayne said proudly.

“I've heard about it, Dwayne,” I said.

“Henry?” he asked. “Are you what my dad calls a subversive?”

“I don't know, Dwayne. Do I look like a subversive?”

Dwayne eyeballed me.

“I don't know. Could be. But if you're not, why'd you burn that thing?”

“I don't know.” And it was the truth. It had nothing to do with opposition to the war or even the draft. It was my way of expressing my indifference toward real life in all its manifestations.

“Wow,” he said, “this is big. Can I tell Greg?”

“No, Dwayne. I'd prefer it stayed just between us. Kind of like Brillion.”

“Okay, I get it,” he said, all cheery acceptance. “You wanna go to Hillel Friday? You guys have services every Friday night, dontcha? Candles, wine, egg bread?”

“You mean challah.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

I liked Dwayne a lot. His curiosity made me feel sophisticated and important. Like there was something incredibly fascinating about me having grown up in New York, even if I knew there wasn't.

“Yeah, I'd really like to.”

“All right—we'll go,” I said.

“Cool.” Dwayne was satisfied, but he still didn't leave my room. He was waiting for something.

“So, I'll see you at dinner?” I said, opening the door, hoping he would take the hint.

Friday night came and I made some excuse so I wouldn't have to go to Hillel or take him along. I liked Dwayne, but I just didn't want him (or anyone else) getting too close to me. I still felt Adar's influence when I spoke to other people, and I knew he wouldn't approve my socializing with others. And other than Dwayne, I hadn't met anyone I'd felt even a little comfortable with during my first semester.

There were more than 30,000 students at the University of Wisconsin, but every one I met seemed to fall into one of three distinct groups, none of which I connected with. First, there were the angry young men and women violently opposed to the Vietnam War. Their world was a black-and-white struggle against the Military Industrial Complex, and any dissent from “Truth” as they saw it was further proof of your cowardice and acquiescence to governmental conspiracy.

The second group was much larger, but far less visible: fraternity kids who got drunk on State Street every weekend. Unlike the anti-military group, which was largely comprised of East coast kids with backgrounds more or less similar to mine, this second group was mostly made up of in-staters from Wisconsin. They were throwbacks to a more innocent time before there was a war, and seemed confused or dismayed by all the fuss on campus. If they thought about the war at all, they probably supported it, parroting their parents' views. I was much too apathetic to join the first group. I found this second group oblivious. I wanted nothing to do with them either.

The third group was comprised of artist and hippie types. The girls wore their hair long, and favored tie-dyed shirts and Indian fabrics. With flowers in their hair, they looked like characters from a children's book; the guys had beards and jeans. I should have been happy to join this group, since like me, they were indifferent to radical politics. However, their philosophy of “Peace and Love” was diametrically opposed to my own. This third group,
too, was into drugs, casual sex, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and The Beatles. They believed in Happenings, improvisation, and collective genius. I felt art was a pure, solitary, and above all, a deeply serious calling. I wouldn't have minded the free love part, but I was too shy and afraid to mingle or even talk to anyone.

So, instead of spreading love for everyone and everything, I idealized my isolation, and, although Adar and I were no longer one, I still tried to live according to our philosophy. An artist, I felt, could not embrace a collective mind-set. So, even though there was no dress code, and I hated everything that reminded me of high school, I still wore a dark suit and tie every day to my classes, just as I did at Horace Mann. Dressing like this was a private gesture of aloof non-conformity in the face of naïve benevolence. My odd attire even raised me to the level of a kind of campus oddity amid the vast sea of hippie non-conformity.

In classes, anti-war kids raised the ubiquitous cry of “What's the relevance?” for every possible occasion. Life was boiled down to that one issue of what was happening in the war in Southeast Asia. However, instead of leading to real debate, the issue of relevance led to simplistic connections tying everything to the Vietnam War. It also led to a perverse relationship between students and their professors, in which the latter opted not to lead, but follow the prevailing political wisdom. When the teachers couldn't make simplistic connections between their subjects and the war, many abdicated responsibility, with lame apologies for the “irrelevance” of the very subjects they had earned their doctorates in. I longed to be exposed to new ideas and discuss great works of literature—to find the next incarnation of Mr. Herman—not talk about whether the university should stop teaching Shakespeare because he had nothing to say about the Vietnam War.

Everybody was so caught up in the circus of pot smoking, protesting Vietnam, banning napalm, or revealing how the C.I.A. had secretly poisoned our water, that there was no appetite for any other ideas on campus. Nobody seemed passionate about works of literature, only politics and pot—especially our professors. In Wayne's class, he told me they were discussing John Donne's poem “The Flea” when someone hurled the familiar “What's the relevance?” at the young teaching assistant for the class. He apologized for the frivolousness of the poem, and told the class he agreed with them; he
was truly sorry he couldn't justify teaching the poem while Americans were murdering Vietnamese and burning villages with napalm. The class erupted in applause, and was adjourned for further discussion. When I asked Wayne what happened next, he shrugged. “We went to the Brat Haus and had a few cold ones.” A few weeks later, Dwayne told me that the teaching assistant had quit the PhD program in English.

Slender, with large eyes, full lips, and a waterfall of black hair, Laura, my new English teacher was quite an improvement over Mr. Palven. She taught class perched cross-legged on top of the desk, legs encased in black, fishnet tights. Her walk—proud, athletic—with shoulders pulled back, breasts thrust forward, made her appear like a miniature lioness. I couldn't stop staring at her, and her blunt sexuality terrified me. I was not merely frightened about her somehow witnessing my excitement at looking at her; I feared the repercussions to myself. Even though I hadn't seen him for months, Adar and the Life of the Spirit were still alive inside me. He was still there reminding me of what I should think or do, scolding me when I let myself be distracted by “lesser” things like Laura's breasts, swaying bra-less underneath her sheer blouse.