that he was pipe-dreaming, that "coincidences" like that happen to everybody a hundred times a day, that Roland Fuqua, Ph.D., would never, at forty-five, move from the quality-control lab to the glittering world of sales?
He stalled for time by stamping and addressing the envelope first, then hung over the typewriter for five minutes of misery. It was Wednesday night; Foster was due for the twelfth and last of his Enrichment sessions. Mr. Edel tried not to cause Fuqua pain by dwelling on the world of teaching he had lost—but what else was there to write about?
I'm sure you remember Foster—the fly boy? I've been taking him, on one of those Enrichment things, through Henry V. This is supposed to win him .001 of a place higher on the graduating-class list and get him into the Academy, and I suppose it will. Things are very simple for Foster, enviably so. He has a titan of engineering for a father who appears to commute between the Minas Gerais power station in Brazil, his consulting service in the city and trouble spots in the I. T. and T.
network—maybe I should say commutate. I honestly do not believe that Foster has to lie his way through the personality profiles like the rest of us mortals—
Now, there was a hell of a thing to put down. He was going to rip the page out and start again, then angrily changed his mind. Fuqua wasn't a cripple; it wasn't Bad Form to mention his folly; it would be merely stupid to pretend that nothing had happened. He finished out the page with a gush of trivia. Sexy little Mrs. Dickman who taught Spanish was very visibly expecting. New dietician in the cafeteria, food cheaper but worse than ever. Rumored retirement of Old Man Thelusson again and one step up for history teachers if true. Best wishes good luck regards to Beth and the youngster, Dave. He whipped the page into folds, slipped it into the envelope and sealed the flap fast, before he could change his mind again. It was time to stop treating Fuqua like a basket case; if convalescence had not begun by now it never would.
His bell rang: Foster was on time, to the minute.
They shook hands rather formally. "Like a cup of coffee, Foster?" Mr.
Edel asked.
"No thank you, sir."
"I'll make one for myself, then. Brought your paper? Good. Read it to me."
While he compounded coffee Foster began to read. After much discussion they had settled on "Propaganda and Reality in Henry V" as his topic. The boy had read Holinshed where relevant, articles in The Dictionary of National Biography and appropriate history texts. Beyond suggesting these, Mr. Edel had left him alone in the actual treatment of his paper. He did not quite know what to expect from Foster beyond careful organization and an absence of gross blunders; he waited with interest.
The paper was a short one—fifteen hundred words, by request.
Nevertheless it gave Mr. Edel a few painful shocks. There were two sneers at "deluded groundlings," much reveling in the irony of the fictional Henry's affection for his Welsh captain as against the real Henry who had helped to crush Glendower and extinguish the Welsh as a nation, and fun with the Irishman Macmorris who came loyally from Shakespeare's pen in 1599 while "the general of our gracious empress"
was doing his best to extinguish the Irish as a nation. Henry's "we have now no thoughts in us but France (save those to God)" was evaluated as
"the poet's afterthought." The massacre of the French prisoners at Agincourt, Henry's brutal practical joke with the pretended glove of a French nobleman, his impossibly compressed and eloquent courtship of Katharine, were all somehow made to testify to a cynical Shakespeare manipulating his audience's passions.
The great shock was that Foster approved of all this. "It was a time of troubles and England was besieged from without and threatened from within. The need of the time was a call to unity, and this Shakespeare provided in good measure. The London mob and the brotherhood of apprentices, always a potential danger to the Peace, no doubt were inspired and pacified for a time by the Shakespearean version of a successful aggressor's early career."
Modestly Foster folded his typescript.
It was ground into Mr. Edel that you start by saying whatever words of praise are possible and then go on to criticize. Mechanically he said warm things about the paper's organization, its style, its scholarly apparatus. "But—aren't you taking a rather too utilitarian view of the play? It is propaganda to some extent, but should you stop short with the propaganda function of the play? I'm aware that you're limited by your topic and length, but I wish there had been some recognition of the play's existence as a work of art."
Foster said, smiling, "Well, I'm new at this, Mr. Edel. I didn't know I was supposed to stray. Should I revise it?"
"Oh, no," Mr. Edel said quickly. "I didn't mean to imply that you're unarguably mistaken in anything you said. I don't know why I'm fussing at you about it at all. I suppose you've taken a sort of engineering approach to literature, which is natural enough. Did you ever succeed in engaging your father in the project?"
"I'm afraid not, Mr. Edel. You can imagine."
"He's been away?"
"Why, no." Foster was surprised. But didn't his father go away now and then? He thought Foster had said—or almost said—He took the paper from him and leafed through it. "This is quite good enough for a pass, Foster. It'll be read by somebody in the English chairman's office, but that's a formality. Let's say you've completed your Enrichment Option."
He stuck out his hand and Foster took it warmly. "That, then, is that. Do you have to run now?"
"With all rods out," Foster said. "I've got to prepare for the Math Team meet, a hundred things. Can I mail that for you?"
It was the letter to Fuqua on his desk. "Why, thanks."
"Thank you, Mr. Edel, for the time you've taken with me."
Well worth it, son, Mr. Edel thought after the door closed. There aren't many like you. The paper was a little cold and cynical, but you'll learn.
Criticism's heady stuff. Speaking quite objectively, you've done a piece thoroughly consistent with College Freshman English work, and that's what you were supposed to do. If it helps get you into Colorado Springs, I've done my job.
He turned in the paper the next day to the English chairman's office and the assistant chairman read it while he waited, mumbled "Seems quite competent" and entered a "Completed" on Foster's grade card.
He let his eyes run over the other grades and whistled. "A beaver," he said.
"All rods out," Mr. Edel smugly corrected him, and went to the door. A freshman girl who knew him, on messenger duty with the principal's office, intercepted him in the corridor. The message: he would please report at once to the principal; Mrs. Giovino would be advised to take such classes as he might be obliged to miss.
"Classes?" he asked the girl, unbelievingly.
She knew nothing.
The assistant principal for teaching personnel received him at once, alone in his two-window office. He was a gray man named Sturgis whose pride was getting to the point. "Edel," he asked, "are you sure you're happy here?"
Mr. Edel said, recognizing a sheet of typing on Sturgis' desk, "May I ask how you got that letter of mine?"
"Surely. Your young friend Foster turned it in."
"But why? Why?"
"I shall quote: 'I honestly do not believe that Foster has to lie his way through the personality profiles like the rest of us mortals.' If you believed this, Edel, why did you counsel him to lie? Why did you show him this letter as proof that you lied yourself?"
"Counsel him to lie? I never. I never."
His stammering was guilt; his sweating was guilt. Sturgis pitied him and shook his head. "He kept a little record," Sturgis said. "Ha, a 'log' he called it—he's quite space-minded; did you know?"
"I know. I demand a hearing, goddammit!"
Sturgis was surprised. "Oh, you'll get a hearing, Edel. We always give hearings; you know that."
"I know that. Can I get back to my classes now?"