Visiting Professor (12 page)

“In the end he ran away to die in a train station in the middle of nowhere.”

Rain’s voice is pitched higher than usual; she is conscious of having the first intellectual discussion of her life. “From
what D.J. says, this Tolstoy dude was a phony, he liked to play at poverty, he liked wearing peasant shirts but he changed
them every day, the ones he’d worn were washed and ironed by servants. You’re no phony, L. Falk. A girl’d be auspicious to
latch onto someone as straight as you.”

“You do not know me,” Lemuel groans. “What you see is not what you get. There are parts of me you have not been to yet. …
There are parts of me I have not been to yet.”

“Hey, I have nothing against the occasional side trip.”

“Everyone likes the going,” Lemuel shoots back angrily, though the person he is annoyed with is himself. He discovers that
his thumb and middle finger are massaging his eyes again. “It is the getting there that gives you migraines.”

Lemuel, insomniac, is
too distracted to use the night. Dark shapes stir restlessly on the mattresses, reminding him of the reformatory he was sent
to after his parents ran afoul of the KGB. He wishes he could remember where and when he lost his
Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Manual
. He wishes he could remember why he cannot remember something as simple as the fate of a book. If only he could, a weight
might lift from his shoulders. …”

If …

If … His entire life seems to be constructed on pilings of ifs that have been driven into a quicksand of shifting memories.

His thoughts drift to the girl Rain. Trying to reconstruct the love-making, to figure out what came before what, he feels
himself being sucked into an erotic fiction. A hand slips under the blanket, discovers his hand and begins stroking his thumb
as if it is something that can be coaxed into becoming longer, thicker.

A voice breathes into his ear. “Yo! You were totally hype this morning. Lying down on the ramp. … You could have been killed.
… Now you’re going to get your just desserts.”

Lemuel, talking food, not sex, hears himself say, “I have not yet had the main course.”

The voice, talking sex, not food, murmurs, “We’ll begin the meal with the dessert anyhow. Think of it as the foreplay that
comes after.”

Lemuel hears someone fumbling with a thermos. He hears herb tea spilling into a cup. He hears someone drink. Then a body leans
against him, a hand finds his hand, a warmed mouth closes over his thumb and begins to caress it with tongue and lips.

After what seems like a lifetime the warmth wanes, the mouth pulls back. More herb tea is poured into a cup and drunk. In
the still darkness Lemuel thinks he can hear the liquid being rolled around in a mouth. A hand slips down to his fly and works
the zipper. A voice breathes into his ear. “Like here comes the main course,” it says.

It dawns on Lemuel, as the warmed mouth closes over a part of him it has not been to yet, that he is not in a fiction after
all.

The court clerk
is calling the roll and checking off the names on his clipboard.

“Starbuck, D. J.”

“Present.”

“Perkins, Word.”

“Present, huh?”

“Holloway, Lawrence R.”

“Present.”

On a wooden bench in the back row of the county court, Rain inches closer to Lemuel, who is thumbing through file folders
in a plastic shopping bag. Fondling the dog on her lap, she talks to him without looking at him. “Sometimes I think, Why bother?”
she says
out of the corner of her mouth. “With wheeling and dealing, I mean. With safe sex, I mean. Sometimes I think I ought to buy
a boat and sail off to the goddamn horizon.”

“When you reach the horizon,” Lemuel tells her, “there is another horizon on the horizon.”

“Fargo, Elliott.”

“Present.”

“Afshar, Izzat.”

“Present.”

“Hey, it’s a lousy idea. Anyhow, boats make me nervous. They’re usually on water. I can’t swim.”

“Woodbridge, Warren.”

“Present.”

‘Jedzhorskinski, Zbigniew.”

“Present.”

“About last night.” Lemuel broaches the subject warily. “Where did you learn that trick?”

Rain, coy, scratches Mayday’s ear. “You mean drinking tea to warm my mouth?”

Lemuel, embarrassed, grunts.

“Nachman, Asher ben.”

“Present.”

“Macy, Jedediah.”

“Present.”

“Dearborn, Dwayne.”

“Present.”

“Stifter, Shirley.”

“Also present.”

The court clerk removes his eyeglasses, breathes onto the lenses and starts to clean them with his handkerchief.

“I learned it in junior high school,” Rain says. “I must have been twelve going on thirteen. They caught me in the boys’ locker
room sucking face with my cousin Bobby, the basketball player I told you about? and packed me off to the school shrink, who
packed me off to my mother, who packed me off to the parish priest. The priest must have suspected I was holding out on him
because he asked if Bobby had touched my tits. He asked if Bobby had slipped a hand inside my underwear. He asked if I had
touched Bobby’s pecker. He asked if I had indulged in oral intercourse. Later I found a dictionary and
looked up
indulged
and
oral
and
intercourse
. Which was when the priest’s next question started to make sense. He was leaning right up against the grille, I could hear
him inhaling and exhaling to beat the band when he asked me if I went and warmed my mouth beforehand. Here I was, right behind
the Virgin Mary in the innocence department, right? exploring the frontiers of forbidden sex. I got the message. Thanks to
the priest, I understood there was more to sex than kissing my first cousin Bobby on the lips.”

“Morgan, Rain.”

Rain looks up. “Yo.”

The court clerk peers over the tops of his reading glasses. “The traditional response is Present.’ ”

Rain flashes a defiant smile. “Yo,” she says again fiercely.

The football players and cheerleaders snicker at Rain’s insolence. Dwayne whispers encouragement. “Right on, babe.”

The court clerk sucks in his cheeks.

“Falk, Lemuel.”

Lemuel raises a paw. “Yo.”

This time there is a wild burst of applause from everyone on the benches.

“Darling, Christine,” the bailiff calls over the noise.

One of the cheerleaders leaps into the aisle. “Give me a yo!” she yells.

All sixty-eight defendants respond in joyous chorus, “YO!”

“I can’t hear you,” the cheerleader calls.

The defendants crank the decibel count up a notch. “YOOO!”

“I still can’t hear you.”

“YOOOOOOOO!”

Rain leans toward Lemuel again. “When I was twelve going on thirteen, I was thin as a nail file and flat as an ironing board.
I had buck teeth and knobby knees. For a while I stuffed cotton into my bra to break even. I was all arms and legs, I used
to trip over myself getting out of bed. I even came down with terminal acne, I thought I’d caught it from my cousin Bobby.
You can bet I was depressed, right? That’s when I decided to give myself ten years to become beautiful.” With a nervous toss
of her head, she flicks her hair away from her eye. “This is my first year of being beautiful. I am enjoying it. A lot.”

Lemuel turns to look at her. “I can say you, me too, I am enjoying it. A lot.”

A door at the back of the court opens. “Everyone rise,” the bailiff cries as a lady judge makes her way, heels tapping on
the wooden floor, to the high bench. “County court is convened,” the bailiff announces. “Honorable Henrietta Parslow presiding.”

Settling into a leather swivel chair, the judge fixes her eyeglasses on her nose and summons the lawyers and prosecutors with
a curt wave. Four men dressed in three-piece suits step forward. There is a whispered conference. One of the lawyers raises
his voice.

“Trespassing is the most my people will plead to.”

The judge taps her gavel once. The lawyers return to their seats. The judge, mumbling, starts to read the charge sheet: “…
on or about … did knowingly … county trespass ordinance …” She looks up. “I’ll take the defendants’ pleas now.”

The bailiff calls the roll again.

“Starbuck, D.J.”

“Guilty.”

“Perkins, Word.”

“Guilty, huh?”

“Holloway, Lawrence R.”

“Guilty.”

Lemuel turns to Rain in panic. “Why is everyone admitting guilty?” he whispers.

“Our lawyers got them to reduce the charge to simple trespass in return for a guilty plea,” Rain whispers back.

On the high bench, the lady judge is touching up her lipstick.

“Nachman, Asher ben.”

“Guilty.”

“Macy, Jedediah.”

“Guilty.”

“Dearborn, Dwayne.”

“Guilty.”

“Stifter, Shirley.”

“Also guilty.”

“Morgan, Rain.”

“Yo. Guilty.”

“Falk, Lemuel.”

The judge stops applying lipstick and surveys the courtroom. The bailiff, the lawyers, the court stenographer twist in their
seats to get a good look at the man who answers to the name of Falk, Lemuel.

“Falk, Lemuel,” the bailiff calls again.

Rain elbows Lemuel in the ribs. “The fix is in,” she whispers. “You cough up thirty dollars for the fine and you’ll be out
of here like Vladimir.”

Lemuel climbs to his feet. He clears his throat. He raises his chin. “In a civilized country the man driving the tractor would
be on trial,” he tells the court. “He almost killed me.”

The judge handles Falk with kid gloves. “The court notes you signed a charge sheet acknowledging trespass.”

Lemuel shakes his head. “That is not my signature.”

“He signed it in front of me, Your Honor,” the bailiff asserts.

“I saw you sign too,” Rain whispers. “How’d you pull it off?”

“I wrote it from right to left,” Lemuel whispers back. “ ‘klaF leumeL.’ It still says Lemuel Falk, but the handwriting comes
out different.”

The judge addresses the county prosecutor. “Does the defendant have a prior record?”

The prosecutor, a nearsighted political appointee sporting a bow tie, holds a yellow file card up in front of his nose. “When
he was booked, Your Honor, he admitted to a previous arrest, but he claimed there was no conviction.”

“I had tribulation but no trial,” Lemuel says.

“As this allegedly occurred in the former Soviet Union,” the prosecutor continues, casting dark looks in Lemuel’s direction,
“we are unable to verify the facts in the case at this moment in time.”

The judge speaks directly to Lemuel. “What were you arrested for, Mr. Falk?”

“The Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti discovered that someone named Falk, L. had signed a petition criticizing Soviet
imperialism in Afghanistan.”

“What is this Komitet whatever?”

“It was the official name of the KGB.”

“And did you sign the said petition?”

“My name was on it, but I was able to convince them it was not me who did the signing. I had two signatures, one for my internal
passport or my pay book or my applications for exit visas. The other signature I used to sign documents I might want to deny
I signed.”

“And which of these two signatures is on the charge sheet admitting trespass?” the judge wants to know.

“The one that a handwriting expert will swear you is not mine.”

Somewhat testily, the judge turns to the two defense attorneys. “I don’t see how I can accept guilty pleas from sixty-seven
defendants if the sixty-eighth pleads not guilty. If he is found not guilty of trespass, which we have to treat as a theoretic
possibility, it would mean the other sixty-seven were likewise not guilty.”

The defendants in the front rows hold a hasty conference with their two lawyers, then break out of the huddle and try to talk
Lemuel into pleading guilty.

“If you don’t cop a plea, there’ll be a trial,” D.J. warns. “Who’s going to feed my pussycats?”

“Another trial maybe means another night or two in jail,” the Rebbe adds. “And I’m not even sure which way’s Jerusalem.”

“How am I gonna pay the rent on Tender To if I don’t cut hair?” Rain asks.

“I’ve already missed two graduate seminars,” Professor Holloway complains.

“I’ve already missed two gridiron scrimmages,” one of the football players says. “Hobart is gonna swamp us Saturday night
if we don’t come up with a credible zone defense.”

“That’s Zbig,” Rain informs Lemuel in a whisper. “He’s a Polish-origin nose tackle with an unpronounceable last name.”

“We’ll have to rent lawyers,” Word Perkins says, angrily eyeing the three-piece suits. “They make more an hour than I make
a week.”

“Does the defendant wish to enter a plea?” the lady judge prompts from the bench.

“You
were
trespassing,” Rain whispers.

“Who gets to decide which side is up?” Lemuel asks Rain.

“Hey, they own the dump site,” Rain says quietly. “They own the state police. They own the courthouse.
They
get to decide.”

“Falk, Lemuel?” calls the bailiff.

Lemuel shrugs. “Guilty,” he mumbles.

The judge brings down her gavel as if an item has been sold at auction. When the last guilty plea has been recorded, she sentences
everyone to thirty dollars or thirty days, gathers her papers and scuttles like a crab from the courtroom before anyone can
change his mind.

Spilling out of
the county courthouse, the defendants, each thirty dollars lighter, are momentarily blinded by the dazzling sunlight. Flanked
by Rain and the Rebbe, Lemuel—carrying the plastic shopping bag filled with the sheriff’s file folders—hears a shy cheer float
up from the street. Shading his eyes with one of the file folders, squinting, he makes out a hundred or so students milling
behind police barriers in a small park across the street. An enormous spinnakerlike banner, billowing in the sunlight, floats
over their heads. Printed in large letters across it is