'My daughter: said Howard, without meaning to.

'Zora? She coming today?'

'Oh, yes -yes, I believe so.'

'She's such a satisfYing student, rilly she is.'

'She works terribly hard: agreed Howard. He saw Zora stop by the comer of the Greenman to speak with another girl. Even from here Howard could see she was standing much too close to trus other person, closing in on her personal space in a way Americans do not enjoy. Why was she wearing his old hat?

'Oh, ah know it. Ah was supervising her Joyce class and her Eliot class last semester. Compared to the other freshmen, she was lahk a text-eating machine -ah mean, she strips the area of sentiment and goes to work. Ah'm dealing with these kids who are still saying Ah really like the part when and Ah love the way -you know, that's their high-school-analysis level. But 20ra ...' Smith whistled again. 'She's awl business. Whatever she gits in front of her she rips apart to see how it works. She's gonna go a long way.'

Howard thumped the window lightly and then a little harder. He was having an odd parental rush, a blood surge that was also about blood and was presently hunting through Howard's expansive intelligence to find words that would more effectively express something like don't walk in front ofcars take care and be good and don't hurt or be hurt and don't live in a way that makes you foel dead and don't betray anybody or yourself and take care ofwhat matters and please don 't and please remember and make sure 'Hey, Howard? Those windows open only at the very top. Student precaution, ah guess. Suicide proof.'

'BaSically, I'm concerned that I'm being unfairly prevented from taking this class due to circumstances beyond my control: said Zora firmly, to which Dean French could offer no more than the merest preamble to a murmur, 'namely, the fact of my father's relationship with Professor Malcolm.'

Jack French clutched the sides of his chair and leaned back into it. This was not the way things went in rus office. In a semicircle on the wall berund !tim portraits of great men hung, men who were careful with their words, who weighed them cautiously and considered their consequences, men whom Jack French admired and had learned fram: Jaseph Addisan, Bertrand Russell, Oliver Wendell HaImes, Thamas Carlyle and Henry Watsan Fawler, the author .of the Dictionary ofModem English Usage, an wham French had written a calassal, almast painfully detailed biagraphy. But nathing in French's armaury afbaraque sentences seemed sufficient far dealing with a girl wha used language like an autamatic weapan.

'Zara, If I understand yau carrectly .. : began Jack, maving dannishly farward acrass the desk to speak -nat quickly enaugh.

'Dean French, I just dan't see why my .opportunity for advancement in the creative fields shauld be stymied' -French raised his eyebraws at 'stymied' -'by a vendetta that a prafessar appears to have against me far reasans that are .outside the praper context .of academic assessment.' She paused. She sat very straight in her chair. 'I think it's inapprapriate: she said.

They had been skirting around this far ten minutes. Naw the ward had been used.

'Inappropriate: repeated French. All he cauld da at this paint was ta aim far damage limitatian. The ward had been used. 'Yau are referring: he said, hapelessly, 'to the relatianship to which yau referred, which was, indeed, inapprapriate. But what I da nat as yet see is haw the relatianship to which yau referred -'

'Na, yau misunderstand me. What happened between Professar Malcalm and my father daesn't interest me: Zara cut in. 'What interests me is my academic career in this institutian: 'Well, naturally, that wauld be uppermast in 'all af-'

'And as far the situatian between Prafessar Malcalm and my father, . : Jack wished very much she wauld stop using that vialent phrase, It was drilling into his brain: Professor Malcolm and myfather, Professor Malcolm and my father. The very thing that was nat ta be spaken .of this fall semester, in .order ta pratect bath the participants and the families .of the participants, was naw being batted around his .office like a pigskin filled with blaad . , . 'as the situatian is na longer a situatian and has nat been far same time, I dan't see why Professar Malcalm shauld be allawed to continue ta discriminate against me in this blatantly persanal fashian: Jack gazed tragically over her head to the clock on the far wall.

There was a pecan muffin with his name on it in the cafeteria, but it would be too late for all that by the time he was through here.

'And you feel certain, do you, that this is, as you say, a personal discriminationr 'I really don't know what else it can be, Dean French, I don't know what else to call it. I am in the top three percentile of this college, my academic record is pretty spotless -I think we can both agree on that.'

'Ah!' said French, grabbing at a thin rod of light in this murky discussion. 'But we must also consider, Zora, that this class is a creative-writing class. It is not purely, therefore, an academic question, and when we approach questions of the creative, we must, to a certain extent, adapt our -'

'I have a record of publication: said Zora, scrabbling around in her tote bag, 'canigetmyballback.com, Salon, eyeshot, unpleasanteventschedule. com, and, as far as print journals go, I'm waiting on a reply from Open City.' She thrust a crumpled bundle of sheets across the desk that seemed to be prints ofthings from websites -beyond that Jack did not wish to conjecrure without his glasses.

'I see. And you have submitted this ... work, narurally, as material to be considered by Professor Malcolm. Yes, of course you have.'

'And at this point: said Zora, 'I'm having to consider how the stress and adverse emotions attached to taking a matter like this to the advisory board would be likely to impact on me. I'm really worried about that impaction. I just think it's inappropriate for a srudent to feel victimized in this way, and I wouldn't want it to happen to anybody else.'

So now all the cards were laid out. Jack took a moment to examine them. Twenty years of playing this game left him in no doubt that Zora Belsey had a full hand. Just for the hell of it, he played his own.

'And have you expressed these feelings to your father?' 'Not yet. But I know he will support me in whatever I choose to do.' So it was time, after all, to stand up and walk slowly around the '47 table, and then to perch on the front ofit, folding one long leg over the other. Jack did this.

'I want to thank you for coming here this morning, Zora, and for speaking so honestly and eloquently about your feelings in this matter.'

'Thank you!' said Zora, colour rising proud in her face.

'And I want you to understand that I take what you say very seriously indeed -you're a great asset to this institution, as I think you know.'

'I want to be... I try to be.'

'Zora, I want you to leave this with me. I don't think, at the present time, that we need to think about the advisory board. I think we can straighten this thing out on a human scale that we can all comprehend and appreciate.'

'Are you going to -'

'Let me speak to Professor Malcolm about your concerns: said Jack, succeeding at last at winning that little contest. 'And the moment I feel we're making a progression, I'll have you in here and we'll settle things to everybody's satisfaction. Is that answering your concernsr Zora stood up and held her bag to her chest. 'Thank you so much.' 'I saw that you got into Professor PUman's class -now that is wonderful. And what else will you be -l'

'I'm doing a Plato course and Jamie Penfruck's Adorno halfcourse and I'm definitely going to Monty Kipps's lectures. I read his piece Sunday in the Herald about taking the "liberal" out of the Liberal Arts ... you know, so it's like now they're trying to tell us that conservatives are an endangered species -like they need protecting on campuses or something.' Here Zora took the time to roll her eyes and shake her head and sigh all at the same time. 'Apparently everybody gets special treatment -blacks, gays, liberals, women -everybody except poor white males. It's too crazy. But I definitely want to hear what he's got to say. Know thy enemy. That's my motto.'

Jack French smiled weakly at this, opened the door for her and closed it again when she was gone. He hurried back to his chair and drew the N-Z Shorter Oxford English out of his bookshelf. He had an idea that 'stymie' might possibly have a more involved Middle English etymology than the usual MI9th-centuty golfing term popularly ascribed to it. Maybe issuing from styme, meaning a glimpse, a glimmer; or possibly from the dangerous bird that Hercules killed, the Stymphalian, or ... It did not. Jack closed the great book and returned it respectfully to its partner on the shelf. Sometimes these two might not give you what you hoped for, but in a deeper sense they never let you down. He picked up the phone and called Lydia, his Department Administrator.

'Liddy?'

'Here, Jack.'

'And how are you, my dear?'

'I'm dandy, Jack. Busy, you know. First day of the semester's always nuts.' 'Well, you do a remarkable job of making it look otherwise. Does it appear that every soul knows what he's doing?' 'Not every soul. We got kids wandering around who couldn't find their own ass in their pants, ifyou'll pardon my French, Jack.'

Jack did pardon it, and also the unconscious pun. There's a time for careful speech and then there's a time for straight talking, and, although Jack French was incapable of the latter, he appreciated Lydia's salty Boston tongue and the 'enforcing' job it did around the department. Unruly students, difficult UP S men, inexpressive computer technicians, Haitian cleaning staff caught smoking dope in the bathrooms -Lydia dealt with them all. The only reason Jack was able to rise above the fray was because Lydia was right there in the fray, toughing it out.

'Now, Liddy, have you any idea where I could get hold of Claire Malcolm this morning?'

'How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand,' mused Lydia, fond as she was of quoting musicals that Jack had never seen. 'I know she has a class in five minutes ... but that doesn't mean she's on her way to it. You know Claire.'

Lydia laughed sardonically. Jack didn't encourage administrative staff discussing faculty in a sardonic manner, but there was no question of calling her up on it. Lydia was her own authority. Without her, jack's whole department would simply fall into chaos and misery.

'[ don't think: considered Lydia, 'that I've ever seen Claire Malcolm set foot in this department before noon ... but maybe that's just me. I'm so busy in the mornings [ don't see the latte sitting in front of me till it's as cold as ice, you know?'

To women like Lydia, women like Claire made no sense at all. Everything Lydia had achieved in her life had come as a result of her prodigious organizational abilities and profeSSionalism. There wasn't any institution in the country that Lydia couldn't reorganize and make more efficient, and in a few years, when she was done with Wellington, she knew in her heart of hearts that she would go on to Harvard and from there to anywhere she liked, maybe even the Pentagon. She had the sltills, and sltills took you places in Lydia's America. You started out with something as lowly as creating a filing system for a Back Bay drycleaning finn, and you ended with organizing and managing one of the most complex databases in the country for the President himself, Lydia knew how she'd got where she was today, and also where she was going. What she didn't get was how Claire Malcolm had got where she was today. How was it possible that a woman who lost her own office keys sometimes three times in a week and did not know where the supplies cupboard was after five years at the college could yet hold a title as grandiose as Downing Professor of Comparative Literature and be paid what Lydia knew she was paid because it was Lydia who sent out the pay stubs? And then, on top ofit all, have an inappropriate workplace affair. Lydia knew it had something to do with art, but, personally, she didn't buy it. Academic degrees she understood -jack's rwo Ph.D.s, in Lydia's mind, made up for the all times he tipped coffee into his own filing cabinet. But poetry?

'Now, would you have any idea which classroom she's assigned to, Liddy?' 'jack -give me a minute on that. [ got it on the computer somewhere... Remember that time she took a class on a bench by the river? She gets some crazy ideas sometimes.,Is it an emergency?'

'No ...' murmured Jack, 'Not an emergency... as such.'

'It's the Chapman block, Jack, Room 34C. You want that I get a message to her? I can send one of the kids.'

'No, no ... I'll go and ...' said Jack, lost for a minute in pressing the tip of a ballpoint into the soft, giving blackness at the centre of his desk.

'Jack, I got a kid just come in my office looking like someone killed his dog -you OK, honey? Jack, call me later if you need anything.'

'Will do, Liddy.' Jack eased his blazer off the back of his chair and put it on. His hand was on the doorknob when the phone rang.

'Jack? Liddy. Claire Malcolm just ran by my office faster than Carl Lewis. She'll be in front of yours in about three seconds. I'll send someone over to her class and tell them she's going to be late.'

Jack opened his door and not for the first time marvelled at Lydia's precision.

'Ah, Claire.'

'Hey, Jack. I'm just rushing to class.'

'How are you?'

'Well!' said Claire, pushing the sunglasses she had taken to wearing up on to her head. She was never too late to talk a little of how she was. 'The war continues, the President's an ass, our poets are failing to legislate, the world's going to hell and I want to move to New Zealand -you know? And I've got a class in five. The usual!'

'These are dark times,' said Jack solemnly, threading his fingers through each other like a parson. 'And yet what can the university do, Claire, but continue its work? Doesn't one have to believe that at times like these the university joins arms with the fourth estate, exercising our capacity for advocacy... helping frame political issues ... that we too sit in that "reporters' gallety yonder" ...'

Even by Jack's standards this was a circuitous route to get to what he intended to say. He seemed a little surprised himself by the development, and stood opposite Claire, with a face suggestive of a continuation of this thought which never materialized.

'Jack, I wish I had your confidence. We had an anti-war rally last Tuesday in Frost Hall? A hundred kids. Ellie Reinhold told me the Wellington anti-Vietnam rally in '67 brought three thousand people to the yard, and Allen Ginsberg. I'm kind of in despair at the moment. People round here act more like the first estate than the fourth if you ask me. God, Jack -I'm late, I gotta run. But maybe lunch?'

She turned to go butJack couldn't let her. 'What's on the menu, creatively speaking, this morning?' he said, nodding at the book she held to her chest.

'Oh! You mean what are we reading? As it happens -me! '

She flipped the thin book over to its cover, a large photo of Claire, circa 1972. Jack, who had some taste in women, admired once again the Claire Malcolm he had first met, all those years ago. Awful pretty with those provocative schoolgirl'S bangs running into light brown waves of sumptuous hair, which curved over her left eye like Veronica Lake's and continued all the way down to her miniature hips. For the life of himJack could never figure out why women of a certain age cut off all their hair like that.

'God, I look so ridiculous! But I just wanted to copy a poem for class, just an example of something. A pantoum.'

Jack brought his hand to his chin. 'I'm afraid you'll have to freshen my memory as to the precise nature of a pantoum... I'm rather rusty on my Old French verse forms...'

'It's Malay originally.'

'Malay!'

'It travelled. Victor Hugo did use it, but it's Malay originally. It's basically interlinked quatrains, usually rhyming a-b-a-b, and the second and fourth line ofeach stanza go on to be the first and third ... is that right? So long since I ... no, that's right -the first and third lines of the next stanza -mine's a broken pantoum, anyway. It's kind of hard to explain... it's better just to look at one,' she said and opened the book to the relevant page, handing it to Jack.

On Beauty No, we could not itemize the list ofsins they can't forgive us, The beautiful don't lack the wound. It is always beginning to snow.

Of sins they can't forgive us speech is beautifully useless.

It is always beginning to snow.

The beautiful know this.

Speech is beautifully useless.

They are the damned.

The beautiful know this.

They stand around unnatural as statuary.

They are the damned and so their sadness is perfect, delicate as an egg placed in your palm. Hard, it is decorated with their face and so their sadness is perfect. The beautiful don't lack the wound. Hard, it is decorated with their face.

No, we could not itemize the list.

Cape Cod, May 1974 Jack was now faced with a task he dreaded: saying something after reading a poem. Saying something to the poet. It was a strange fact of his tenure as Dean of the Humanities Faculry that Jack himself was not overly enamoured of either poetry or fictional prose; his great love was the essay. and. ifhe were really honest with himself. beyond essays themselves. the tools of the essayist: dictionaries. It was in the shady groves of dictionaries that Jack fell in love. bowed his head in awe and thrilled at an unlikely tale. for example. the bizarre erymology of the intransitive verb 'ramble'.

'Beautiful,' said Jack at last. 'Oh. it's just old crap -but a useful illustration. Anyway -Jack. I really have to run -' 'rve sent someone over to your classroom. Claire. they know you're going to be late: 'You have? Is something wrong. Jack?'

'] do actually need a quick word with you: said Jack. oxymoronically. Just in my office if that's possible: Here they all were. Howard's imaginary class. Howard indulged in a quick visual catalogue of their interesting bits. knowing that this would very likely be the last time he saw them. The punk boy with black-painted fingernails. the Indian girl with the disproportionate eyes of a Disney character. another girl who looked no older than fourteen with a railroad on her teeth. And then. spread across this room: big nose, small ears, obese, on crutches. hair red as rust, wheelchair. six foot five. short skirt, poinry breasts. iPod still on. anorexic with that light downy hair on her cheeks. bow-tie. another bow-tie. football hero. white boy with dreads. long fingernails like a New Jersey housewife. already losing his hair. striped tights there were so many of them that Smith couldn't close the door without squashing somebody. So they had come, and they had heard. Howard had pitched his tent and made his case. He had offered them a Rembrandt who was neither a rule breaker nor an original but rather a conformist; he had asked them to ask themselves what they meant by 'genius' and, in the perplexed silence, replaced the familiar rebel master of historical fame with Howard's own vision ofa merely competent artisan who painted whatever his wealthy patrons requested. Howard asked his students to imagine prettiness as the mask that power wears. To recast Aesthetics as a rarefied language ofexclusion. He promised them a class that would challenge their own beliefs abour the redemptive humanity ofwhat is commonly called 'Art'. 'Art is the Western myth,' announced Howard, for the sixth year in a row, 'with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.' Everybody wrote that down.

'Any questions?' asked Howard.

The answer to this never changed. Silence. But it was an interesting breed of silence particular to upscale liberal arts colleges. It was not silent because nobody had anything to say -quite the oppOSite. You could feel it, Howard could feel it, millions of things to say brewing in this room, so strong sometimes that they seemed to shoot from the students telepathically and bounce off the furniture. Kids looked down at the table top, or out of the window, or at Howard with great longing; some of the weaker ones blushed and pretended to take notes. Bur not one of them would speak. They had an intense fear of their peers. And, more than that, of Howard himself. When he first began teaching he had tried, stupidly, to coax them out of this fear -now he positively relished it. The fear was respect, the respect, fear. Ifyou didn't have the fear you had nothing.

'Nothing? Have I really been so very thorough? Not a single question?'

A carefully preserved English accent also upped the fear factor. Howard let the silence stretch a little. He turned to the board and slowly unpeeled the photocopy, letting tongueless questions pelt his back. His own questions kept him mentally occupied as he rolled Rembrandt into a tight white stick. How much longer on the divan? Why does the sex have to mean everything? 0 K, it can mean something, bur why everything? Why do thirty years have to ISS.

go down the toilet because I wanted to touch somebody else? Am I missing something? Is this what it comes down to? Why does the sex have to mean everything?

'I have a question.'

The voice, an English voice like his own, came from his left. He turned -she had been hidden by a taller boy sitting right in front of her. The first thing to note were two spots of radiant highlights on her face -maybe the result of the same cocoa butter Kiki used in the winter. A pool of moonlight on her smooth forehead, and another on the tip of her nose; the kind of highlights, it occurred to Howard, that would be impossible to paint without distorting, without misrepresenting, the solid darkness ofher true complexion. And her hair had changed again: now it was wormy dreadlocks going every which way, although none was longer than two inches. The tips of each were coloured a sensational orange, as if she had dipped her head into a bucket of sunshine. Because he was not drunk this time he knew now for certain that her breasts were indeed a phenomenon of nature and not of his imagination, for here were the spirited nipples again, working their way through a thick green ribbed woollen jumper. It had a stiff polo neck, several inches from her own skin, through which her neck and head emerged like a plant from its pot.

'Victoria, yes. I mean -is it Vee? Victoria? Co on.'

'It's Vee.'

Howard could feel the class thrill to this new piece ofinformation -a freshman who was already known to the professor! Of course, the more committed Cooglers in this class probably already knew the deal between Howard and the celebrity Kipps, and maybe had gone further and knew that this girl was Kipps's daughter, and that girl over there, Howard's. Maybe they even knew something ofthe culture war shaping up on the campus. Two days ago Kipps had argued strongly against Howard's Affirmative Action committee in the Wellington Herald. He had criticized not only its aims but challenged its very right to existence. He accused Howard and 'his supporters' of privileging liberal perspectives over conservative ones; of suppressing right-wing discussion and debate on campus.

The article had been a sensation, as such things are in college towns.

Howard's e-mail in-box this morning was full of missives from outraged colleagues and students pledging their support. An army rushing to fight behind a general who could barely get on his horse.

'It's just a small question: said Victoria, shrinking a little from all the student eyes upon her. 'I was just -' 'No, go on, go on: said Howard, over her attempts to speak. 'Just ... what time is the class?' Howard sensed the relief in the room. At least she hadn't asked anything clever. He could tell that the class as a whole could not abide pretriness and cleverness. But she had not tried to be clever. And now they approved of her practicality. Every pen was poised. This was all they really wanted to know, after all. The facts, the time, the place. Vee too had her pen on the page and her head low, and now she flicked her eyes up to meet Howard's, a glance somewhere between flirtation and expectancy. Lucky for Jerome, thought Howard, that he had finally agreed to go back to Brown. This girl was a dangerous. commodity. And now Howard realized that he'd been looking at her so absorbedly he'd neglected to answer her question.

'It's three 0'clock, Tuesday, in this room: said Smith from behind Howard. 'The reading list is on the website, or you can find a copy of it in the cubbyhole outside Dr Belsey's office. Anybody needs their study cards signed, bring ' em to me and ah'll sign ' em. Thank you for coming, people.'

'Please: said Howard above the noise of scraping chairs and the packing ofbags, 'please only -only -put your names down if you're seriously intending to take this class.'

'Jack, darling: said Claire, shaking her head, 'you send these websites your shopping lists and they put them up. They'll take anything.'

Jack retrieved the printouts from Claire and slipped them back into his drawer. He had tried reason and plea and rhetoric, and now he must introduce reality into the conversation. It was time, once again, to walk round the desk, perch on the end and cross one leg over the other.

'Claire...'

'My God, what a piece of work that girl is!'

'Claire, I really can't have you making those kind of...'

'Well, she is.'

'That's as may be, but...'