The Theban Mysteries (3 page)

“I wonder,” Miss Tyringham said, “if our whole definition of the word ‘teach’ does not need to be reconsidered. Have we perhaps for too long supposed teaching to be a ritual in which I, the elder and supposedly wiser, hand on to you, the younger and more
innocent, the fruits of my learning and experience? Perhaps teaching is really a mutual experience between the younger and older, perhaps all there is to be learned is what they can discover between them. I don’t of course mean, as so many of the girls here clearly do, endless bull sessions where everyone talks and no one listens, let alone learns. I mean a disciplined sort of seminar in which one person, you for example, moderates, schedules, and referees, always in the expectation that you, like the students, will emerge with new insights into the
Antigone
none of you might ever have achieved alone.”

“Well,” Kate said, admiring the way her instructions had been so painlessly imparted, “there’s certainly no danger of my posing as an authority on the life and habits of the Greeks—but you know, even were I an authority, most of the fruits of my learning would be readily available in paperback. I’ve become convinced that our old ideas of teaching date back to the days when there were so few books that only some priest had read them; he then passed on the information to the others, thirsting for knowledge but bookless. Which, no doubt, is why they are called lectures—now as applicable to our life as those hot academic gowns, designed for wear in drafty monasteries, in which we parade beneath a hot June sun. All the same, I hope you don’t regret having asked me. I’m afraid of performing like a wallflower who, when asked to dance, can’t think of a word to say to the man.”

“You are hardly a wallflower in the academic world.”

“In
this
academic world I am; they are so young, so certain, so self-absorbed. No doubt they must be, to survive adolescence. But I’m not sure that I understand
their language, any more than I understand their dances.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Miss Tyringham said, “you still have the weapons of marks and reports which go on their school records; anyway, all the old habits of diffidence have not wholly gone. But I do think there are new forms of dialogue, even within education. Hopeful speech for today.”

“I’m glad you can still make hopeful speeches. Reed and I have been afflicted with a nephew—in fact, he and you entered our lives, so to speak, if not hand in hand, ring by ring. I had the delightful task of talking to Harvard, an institution whose reasons for continuing existence he seems to find remarkably scarce, apart, of course, from serving the military-industrial complex. Well, it turned out, as you no doubt can guess, that Harvard like every other college has had so many flights from the nest that they now have a code for unofficial leaves in their computers. Jack is to be allowed back with lots of concessions on
both
sides. Colleges may be hell to get into now, but apparently once they take you in they are admirably reluctant about pushing you out, or even letting you leave slamming the door behind you. Whether that’s nobility or guilty conscience I’m quite unable to decide.”

“
You
seem to have decided the main things, you, rather than the boy’s parents. Usual, I’m afraid. Will he stay at Harvard?”

“Temporarily. What is troubling, Miss Tyringham, is that he is rude, unwashed, inconsiderate, filled to the brim with slogans, and outrageously simplistic. Alas, he is also right.”

“About everything?”

“Hardly that. But he is right about my brother, right about this terrible war, and wonderfully courageous in a maddening way. I mean, we are all for principles in the abstract, but most of us will not turn down a perfectly good cop-out if it is ready to hand.”

“That’s called compromise.”

“What the young will never do. Brave them. Well, brave me too. Do you mind if I look around? I may even sneak up to one of the gyms and swing from a rope.”

“Mrs. Copland is waiting to show you around. I’m sure you would have liked Julia as tour guide, but she’s at a meeting with some woman who comes once a week and lectures us all on computers—then I
do
long for the simpler days. You’ll like Mrs. Copland, I think. She teaches literature to the elevens and is home-room teacher to the sixes. We’re grooming her for the head of the English Department when she gets through having babies, but don’t tell her because we don’t want to scare her off. I’ve so much enjoyed talking with you,” Miss Tyringham concluded, rising in her chair and vigorously shaking Kate’s hand. “Remember, we don’t have to wait for an emergency to have another chat.”

Which God knows was true, they didn’t have to wait for an emergency. Before too long they were overtaken by an emergency no one would have dreamed of waiting for.

K
ATE
, having declined the help of Miss Tyringham’s secretary in finding Mrs. Copland, went in search of the room which held the sixes. The school, largely unchanged since Kate’s day, was spacious enough, but dated. Nothing ages more quickly than the absolutely up-to-date. All new school buildings, boasting the latest in everything, age like a woman who has had her face lifted: there is not even character to set off the ravages of time. Still, one could scarcely set out to build oneself Winchester in New York City, could one?

Not liking to knock on a classroom door—as unsuitable as the knock of a trained British servant in the days of the Empire—Kate opened the door slowly.

“Ah,” Mrs. Copland called from the front of the room. “Come in. We have just finished.” Kate pushed the door all the way open and was greeted by the raucous
sound of thirty chairs being pushed back and thirty twelve-year-olds rising to their feet. Kate looked horrified. “Sit down, ladies,” Mrs. Copland said. “Let us see if you can stay in the study hall three minutes alone without tearing down the walls. The bell is about to ring.” She followed Kate from the room, firmly closing the door behind her.

“Will there be an explosion?” Kate nervously asked.

“Not in three minutes. Welcome to the Theban. It’s welcome back, isn’t it?”

“I too rose to my feet in just that same way. Has anyone ever considered the effect it has on the unprepared adult who enters?”

“Only these days, because it’s so unexpected. Twenty years ago, I understand,” Mrs. Copland said, leading the way down the hall, “any adult not greeted by the sound of humble youth rising to its feet would have expired on the spot and had to be revived with sal volatile or whatever it was in the nurse’s office. Shall we begin the tour on the top floor? I know you must remember everything, but Miss Tyringham felt that refreshment was in order. We are to discuss the problems of teaching literature on the way. Ah,” she concluded as the elevator opened, “ten please. My name’s Anne. I don’t leap to the use of first names immediately as a rule, but I discovered that if one is going to discuss senior seminars and disaffected youth, one had better skip the usual steps to familiarity. Here we are.” They stepped out into the auditorium, at the moment occupied only in the farthest corner by a group involved either in dramatics or an encounter session; which was not immediately clear.

The tenth and top floor of the Theban was given over
entirely to the huge auditorium, which was able to seat the entire school. There was a stage at one end which, while scarcely the miracle of theatrical devices that even small theaters have subsequently become, served very well for Theban performances, which tended, as in Greek and Shakespearean times, to emphasize the language and costumes rather than the scenery and lights. In front of the stage, at the moment, stood music stands, indicating to Kate that musical activities had not abated since her day, she having played the viola in a rather frantic string ensemble which was wont to present musical offerings from time to time.

The dramatic or encounter group now in session was in one of the corners of the auditorium farthest from the stage, no doubt to emphasize the spontaneity of their undertaking. Kate looked at them inquiringly.

“Something new,” Anne Copland said. “A combination of dramatics, playwriting, and self-expression. I believe Mrs. Banister is new since your time; she’s extremely popular with the girls, who no longer feel properly purged if they have merely acted Hedda Gabler with all the necessary passion. Those who take dramatics as an activity now write their own plays, or spontaneously allow them to erupt. Most interesting, really—sort of a combination of Samuel Beckett and group therapy. Perhaps we’ll see Mrs. Banister at lunch—she’s really most enthusiastic. With all the seats set up in here we’re rather crowded now, since the school is at least two hundred girls larger than this building was intended for. But there’s the most terrible need for schools, and Miss Tyringham and the trustees felt that we should meet our obligations.”

Kate could see the seats piled up at the sides of the
stage; supposedly, there were more in some storage area beyond. She noticed two elevator doors, several doors marked
STAIRS
with red
EXIT
signs above them, and two small doors to the side of the stage.

“Were those always there?” Kate asked.

“Oh yes, I think so. One notices different things as an adult. One leads backstage to the storage rooms and the places where you work the lights—all that; the other leads to the caretaker’s apartment.”

“Surely that’s new.”

“Like so much else these tumultuous days. Twenty years ago, and all the years before for that matter, you closed the school, locked the door, and didn’t give the place another thought till morning. That was in the dear, dead days. We had a lot of people breaking in, to steal expensive equipment and so on, but the coup de grâce came when a group of unruly boys—tautology, I know, but these were especially unruly—broke in and apparently pranced about with spiked boots on the gymnasium floors. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone with any care into the economics of gym floors—well, neither have I, but I gather they did enough damage to cost ten thousand dollars in repairs. Ergo, Mr. O’Hara. He’s got a great view, an extremely fashionable address, and a great taste for solitude, which is just as well since the problems of entertaining on the roof of an empty school building would seem to me to be insurmountable. Everyone was quite impressed when we first heard about Mr. O’Hara, but we all take him for granted now. He’s a retired army man and therefore used to doing for himself.”

“ ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ ” Kate hummed to herself,
“ ‘Lord God Almighty! Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee.’ No doubt we each have our favorite hymn. Is it still sung at every opening assembly the first day of school?”

“As long as I’ve been here. Though I believe that a year or two ago there was a suggestion, freely translated as a demand, that we sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ instead.”

“What did Miss Tyringham do?”

“Sang them both. After all, Martin Luther King was a minister, so she didn’t have much trouble talking everybody into
that
.”

“Do you find her as extraordinary as I do?” Kate asked, wondering if this was an impolitic question on such short acquaintance.

“Absolutely marvelous. As though she had done it all, and been it all, and somehow understood everything. People of that quality have always been rare, but these days she seems, I sometimes think, unique. Do you want to examine the murky backstage depths, or shall we descend? And, if we descend, shall we take the elevator in a fast plunge, or do you want to take the stairs, peering your way down one floor at a time?”

“Let’s walk if you don’t mind,” Kate said. “Not that I want to examine the place as though I were going to buy it. You know, a sort of casual once-over.”

As they walked toward the doors marked
STAIRS
Kate eavesdropped a bit on the drama group, not too difficult since the young ladies had apparently reached a highly emotional point and their voices were raised either in argument or animated discussion, depending
on how you cared to look at it. The stricture from Kate’s day and earlier that no lady raised her voice except in song had gone, and a damn good thing too, Kate thought. My brothers and I might have something to say to each other now, if we hadn’t been terrified of family arguments.

“What do you really want?” one actor declaimed. “What do you wish for yourself; if you had one wish, what would it be? Can you even say?” Her hand came forward in a questioning, demanding gesture.

“Mrs. Banister likes them to use their whole bodies,” Anne Copland whispered. “
And
their whole voices, more’s the pity. Still, no doubt it does them good.”

“I wish to return to the fundamental elements of life. I wish to live in a small community, where we are not dependent on technology and packaging, but can feel our closeness to the earth. I wish …” The door closed behind Kate and Anne Copland, leaving the unexpressed wish hanging in the air where, Kate could not help feeling, it rightfully belonged.

Their descent was rapid and for Kate full of reminiscences which she did not trouble to express. What is more trying than other people’s memories, unless it is other people’s dreams? Little had changed. Lockers still lined the halls. The classrooms, such empty ones as they examined, bore evidence that this was the age of posters. “Make love not war” and “War is dangerous to children and other living things” were the most frequently seen. Kate was interested in one poster which showed a coffin, with a flag draped over it, and underneath the caption: The Silent Majority.

“That’s righter than you might suppose,” Kate said.
“Homer used the phrase ‘the silent majority,’ referring to the dead.”

“The most extraordinary change here is never talked about at all,” Anne Copland said. “Since your time, or long, long before that, I’m certain this school has always been largely Republican in sentiment; not reactionary, you understand, but sound and vaguely right wing. It astounds me how little real support there is for President Nixon, his policies, and particularly his Vice President, not only among the students but among their parents. And these girls represent some of the most prominent families in the country. Of course, the staff isn’t supposed to argue politics with the students, but that’s easier said than done, these days.”