The Puzzled Heart Page 9

  “All right, I’ll give you that for the moment,” Kate said. “Where does that leave us?”

  Emma smiled. “I see you want me to skip the explanations and the political analysis and cut to the chase, as they say.”

  “Well,” Kate said, “I suppose that’s true, though I do find all you have to say intensely interesting. I hope you’ll give us a chance in the future to learn more about your work; I mean that. It’s just that, at the moment, I’m rather egotistically tense about our own situation. I don’t want to think of Reed’s being kidnapped all over again.”

  Reed took Kate’s hand and spoke to Emma: “I suspect we’re overeager to get to the bottom of this mess and clear it up, if we can. I’m sure Kate didn’t mean to sound ungrateful to you for helping us, and I assure you that if she says she’s interested in what you have learned and that she wants to know more about it, that is the simple truth.”

  “Point taken,” Emma said. “No offense in the world. On to the chase.” She put her notebook back into her bag, and seemed to pause a moment to collect her thoughts.

  “Here’s how I see it,” she said. “You have two groups of people involved in the kidnapping. The lesser in importance are the students, both the boys who carried out the kidnapping of Reed, and the girls who kept him in their apartment and played their sexual games.”

  “But what about the boy who wrote the antifeminist letter to the college newspaper, and whose mother is a right-wing leader?” Reed asked.

  “That’s probably how the student group got involved. I rather doubt the mother of this boy had much to do with it. I could be wrong—keep in mind that mine are only guesses, though educated guesses—but I’ll wager the mother, however intolerant of your sort of person, did not know of this plan.”

  “Harriet has been getting acquainted with her,” Kate said. “She’ll probably be able to find out if you are right. I’m pretty sure Harriet wouldn’t have mentioned the whole kidnapping bit to the mother because she, Harriet, was pretending to be right-wing herself, and wouldn’t have had any way to know about it.”

  “I’ll be interested to hear her report,” Emma said.

  “And the second group?” Reed asked.

  “Right-wing,” Emma said, “but in my opinion, not a group of right-wingers, but an ultraconservative academic who has it in for Kate—therefore in all likelihood a member of Kate’s English department. It could be someone in another department or in the administration, but I consider that unlikely. Whoever was behind this had to be near enough to Kate on a more or less daily basis to monitor her.”

  “Are you sure?” Kate said. “I mean—”

  “No, I’m not sure. I may be miles off the mark, and this whole thing may have been planned by a militia group that has set up quarters in Central Park, or in some New York apartment. But none of this smells like right-wing group activity, except for the students—and they only in their motives, not in their actions, which were, I think, directed by someone else, and that someone a professor. After all, the boys and girls involved are all students.”

  Reed and Kate looked as though they might need a week at the very least to digest this.

  “And if you’re right, how do we find out which professor it is?” Reed asked.

  “Ah,” said Emma, “there you are on your own. I’m willing to bet a goodly sum that whoever he or she is is in Kate’s department. But I don’t know the cast of characters well enough, indeed at all, to even hazard a guess—except for this. Whoever it is dislikes Kate intensely, and probably not for personal reasons, not, that is, because you’ve done him or her some direct personal damage, but because by your presence in the department and your teaching of literature, you profoundly threaten what this individual holds dear, just as you threaten Bill Buckley and William Bennett and their political think-alikes. I’d suggest you begin by getting a list of the tenured members of your department—it may be someone without tenure, but I doubt such a person would take the risk, and anyway, we have to narrow the field at first. It can always be enlarged if necessary.”

  “Ours is a large department,” Kate muttered in the tones of one announcing that Texas was a large state. “There must be at least thirty tenured professors. How do we know it wasn’t a lawyer colleague of Reed’s?”

  “We don’t.” Emma was clearly trying to be patient. “If everything I’ve suggested turns out to be wrong, we start over. As I say, we have to start somewhere. And absent some vital bit of information that might result from your widespread storytelling, all my experience tells me to start with the English department.”

  The three of them sat in silence. After a few minutes, when neither Kate nor Reed spoke, Emma rose to her feet: “I’ll be off then. Think about what I’ve said. It won’t hurt to make a list of the tenured professors in the English department, and add a few details: who’s on leave, is a known left-winger, was having a baby or an operation in the past weeks or months—all that sort of thing. Then, if you know anything of their ideas from their books, you might consider those with care. Do you happen to have an ardent Freudian among your colleagues?”

  Kate stared at her. “Yes, we do. But why on earth …?”

  “I’m just being silly now,” Emma said. “Pay no attention.”

  “I used to be silly,” Kate remarked. “It’s amazing how these Christian bigots can knock the silliness out of you. Why a Freudian?”

  “Well, he went after Reed, didn’t he? The woman, even if she is the enemy, isn’t worthy of combat because she hasn’t got a you-know-what, which is the absolute signifier.”

  If she had meant to make them laugh, she succeeded. Still chuckling, they walked her to the door. “Keep in touch,” Emma said.

  “By now I’m ready to suspect everybody,” Kate said to Reed as they went back to the living room and poured themselves another drink. “For starters, what do you really know about Emma Wentworth?”

  “I didn’t just meet her today, you know,” Reed said. “I’m on the committee that voted to invite her for a visiting professorship, so while I haven’t known her personally for long, I certainly know her record and her reputation. Both are mighty impressive. She’s known as an authority on right-wing groups, the organizations and funding that support them, and the legal possibilities of preventing some of their effects. Not,” Reed added, “that there are many of those.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Kate said, “I’ve always wondered why no one stops all those church groups, who do not pay taxes because they are religious, from busing their people to take part in political actions. Why doesn’t someone stop that? If you’re tax exempt, you can’t be political, no?”

  “Yes. But even the more liberal churches would fight any such action. They don’t want their tax exempt status even to come up for questioning.”

  “I might have known. But Reed, do you really think it’s likely to be a member of the English department? I know some of them are a little autocratic, and some of them are conservative to a degree, but I didn’t think any of them were committed to the religious right. After all, this isn’t South Carolina.”

  “You may find that some of your colleagues wish it were.”

  Kate was still uncertain about how to discover the political views of her colleagues, something she had never thought to question, at least not lately. She remembered that most of them, at least those who had touched on the matter at all, loathed Nixon and thought Ronald Reagan was a joke, a man who thought he had fought in World War II because he had made movies about it. Lately, however, politics within the department had been so fraught that national politics didn’t seem to come up. At least, whenever she had lunch with a colleague, it was always gossip—about their department or people at other universities. Kate was continually astonished at how much some of her male colleagues knew about the personal lives of English professors from distant departments, and she had to admit she found the gossip amusing. But politics? They never seemed to gossip about that.

  But then, the ver
y next day, as she was leaving the campus, a professor she had never known well accosted her and demanded conversation. Nathan Rosen mainly taught undergraduates, at which he was reputed to be highly successful, particularly in survey courses, a realm of teaching Kate found, after her apprentice years, to be superficial and maddeningly repetitive. Her guilty dislike of these courses caused her to have great respect for those who agreed to undertake them year after year and did them well.

  “Shall we get a cup of coffee?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t much like the restaurants around here,” Nathan said. “I’m kosher.” Almost inadvertently Kate looked up at his head. He was not wearing a yarmulke. He intercepted her glance. “I only wear it when I eat, and at certain other times,” he said. “Not here. But I wanted to talk to you about a student who does wear his all the time. Could we go to my office?”

  Nodding, Kate followed him, wondering if she was about to be accused of anti-Semitism. These days, students complained about the slightest remark that could possibly be interpreted as an affront. On the whole, Kate understood the sensitivity of students from backgrounds unfamiliar to her, and was patient in trying to understand the cause of such sensitivity. But she had known Jews all her life, and certainly had never before been accused of insulting them. She felt herself growing angry even as Nathan opened the door to his office, walked in, and pointed to a chair. Kate sat.

  “The student I mentioned said that you were patience personified with students of color, but that you were rude to him.”

  “Am I to know his name, or do you want me to answer anonymous charges?”

  “His name is Krasner—Saul Krasner.”

  “Ah, yes,” Kate said. “I know him.”

  “And, am I to assume, don’t like him?”

  “Well, he does seem to think he’s God’s gift to the world. I may have been impatient with him. Does that have to be because he’s Jewish? I admit to not liking arrogance in students, particularly when it is allied with ignorance. To say nothing of the fact that he seems to assume that women ought not—how shall I put it?—be in any position to have authority over him. Perhaps you agree with that sentiment.” It was not exactly a question, and Professor Rosen left it unanswered.

  “I wasn’t talking about women,” he said. “I was talking about blacks. According to Mr. Krasner, you listened endlessly to some black man expounding on something, but had no time for him.”

  “Mr. Krasner does tend to interrupt other students and me; courtesy is not his most evident characteristic. But I’m sorry if I hurt his feelings, and I would certainly like to talk it over with him.”

  “The real question, Kate, is why are you, and so many others, patient with blacks and impatient with Jews and other white people?”

  “I may have to plead guilty to being patient with those who are dealing with unfamiliar literature in an unfamiliar place, and who have the advantage of being able to give the rest of us, the other students and me, another point of view from which to consider the works we are studying.”

  “You’re an advocate of multiculturalism.”

  “Nathan, I don’t want to have a name-slinging argument with you. As I said, I’ll be glad to talk over any offense I may have given with Mr. Krasner.”

  “And what do you think of Orthodox Jews, just for starters?”

  “I don’t know why I should answer that question, but assuming it to have been sincerely asked, I don’t, personally, admire any fundamentalist religion. Every war that has ever been fought—well, certainly any war being fought today—is over religion. As a woman, I don’t like the way women are viewed by fundamentalist religions of any kind. Also—”

  “Let me ask you something?” Interrupting her answer to his question, Nathan leaned forward and pointed a fìnger at her. “You’re sitting in the subway, not at rush hour. A group of adolescent black males gets on the train, talking loudly and jeering. Next stop, a group of guys from a yeshiva gets on, with yarmulkes and payes. Which group do you fear?”

  “Good question,” Kate said, wondering how often he had asked it. “My answer is, do you mean fear immediately or eventually?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s supposed to mean that, right at that moment, the group of black males is likelier than the group of Orthodox Jewish males to frighten or even molest me. But in the long run, I fear the boys from the yeshiva more.”

  “You’re kidding!” And indeed, Nathan looked astonished.

  “The young black males will go their separate ways. Perhaps, if as the richest country in the world we offer them and their families some support, they may even achieve something interesting. I can’t guess what.”

  “I can,” Nathan inserted.

  “But,” Kate continued, ignoring this, “I know exactly what the yeshiva males will be thinking for the rest of their lives, and maybe for the rest of their children’s lives, and it’s not a philosophy that I as a woman and a liberal find at all comforting. In fact, I fear it. Does that answer your question?”

  “You’re a bleeding do-gooder.”

  “Probably,” Kate said, rising. “I’ve never understood why being called a do-gooder should be an insult. Your faith says somewhere that you may hate your neighbor, but if his cart is stuck in the road, you must help him to get it out. That’s an approximate, not an exact, quote.”

  “Where did you pick that up?”

  “Probably from all the humanist, do-gooder, liberal Jews I know. So long, Nathan.” And Kate departed quickly, leaving Nathan Rosen still sitting there with his mouth open, his reply ready.

  Kate was mixing martinis when Reed came home. He raised an interrogative eyebrow at her, and went to get the martini glasses.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve met a right-winger already, with murder and kidnapping in his or her eye?”

  “Not exactly. I’ve been accused of anti-Semitism because I didn’t respond with sufficient sympathy to an arrogant student who hadn’t even read the assignment.”

  “He complained to you?”

  “No. A Jewish colleague, by which I mean Orthodox Jewish. He seemed to think I was as bad as Hitler, except that I was nice to blacks.”

  “I don’t blame Jews all that much,” Reed said, tasting the drink. “Many blacks are openly anti-Semitic today, as is the radical right. It can’t be easy.”

  “No, it can’t,” Kate said. “But do I really have to pretend to admire fundamentalist Jews any more than fundamentalist Muslims or the Christian right?”

  “Well, how many Muslims and members of the Christian right do you have in your classes?”

  “Enough of them to have managed to kidnap you. Oh, never mind, Reed. I get your point.”

  “The question is, would you prefer it as it was fifty years ago, with only WASP males, gentlemen all, of course, teaching in college, always supposing you were a WASP male too?”

  “No, damn it, I wouldn’t. Well, at least I may have eliminated one colleague from my roster. Thank heaven for that, anyway.”

  *Wendy Steiner, The Scandal of Pleasure: Art in an Age of Fundamentalism, University of Chicago Press, 1995.

  Nine

  As Kate found the horrors of the previous days receding, she was pleased to discover herself capable of a return to her former personality, a return marked by a meeting with Leslie in the loft into which she had burst with the news of Reed’s kidnapping. Only extreme panic had then allowed Kate so nonurban an indiscretion as “dropping in.” Today’s meeting had, as in ordinary times, been arranged in advance to take place after Leslie had completed her work for the day.

  When Kate arrived, Leslie was still sitting in her studio, gazing at her unfinished work. It was an enormous canvas, and Kate admired it silently for some time. A mark of their friendship was that Kate was allowed to see work in progress although not to comment unless asked.

  “I think I’ve followed this whole sorry business from the beginning,” Leslie said. “But just to clear my mind, tell me where you
are at this very moment.”

  “Nowhere,” Kate said. “That is, I’ve about decided that I agree with Emma Wentworth—that the right wing is not responsible for what happened, at least not alone responsible. I’ve been sifting through the list of the professors in my department, trying to decide which one would be likely to hatch this juvenile plot.”

  “Which male professor, I presume.”

  “Yes. I honestly can’t see one of the women doing it. None of them particularly hates me, and since they’re all, to a woman, married with children—that is, busy—I don’t think they’d have either the time or the inclination for so extended and nasty a prank.”

  “That’s probably right,” Leslie said. “But I don’t think you should eliminate women altogether. My guess is that the guilty one is not a professor. In fact, the whole point may be that she is not. I know you are convinced it’s one of your male colleagues, driven to distraction by these changing times, but I’ve got other ideas. Want to hear them?”

  Kate nodded. “That’s why I’m here, among other reasons,” she said.

  Leslie had wandered about, gazing at her canvas from various angles as she talked, but now she abandoned this and sat down on a stool opposite Kate. “I think you’ve got it all wrong,” Leslie said.

  “How?”

  “The whole thing smacks to me of an envious woman, one who’s known you a long time, or at least known about you for a long time, and is furious at your success, relative to her self-perceived failure, or lack of success.”

  “What makes you think so?” Kate asked.