Now Schott’s tone grew solemn. It was no secret that he and “Joe” had differed on many issues. But no one had regretted more than himself his worthy adversary’s departure from MSUC, on the very eve of its becoming MSU! It was a tragedy that the final year in the life of his protégé, as one might well call Morgan, had been as cloaked in obscurity as Bishop Pike’s: both of them, in Schott’s view, Casualties of Our Times! But whatever the contents of that tragic last chapter, it was ended: Joe was with his beloved wife now, on the Eastern Shore he cared so much for; and Schott knew in his heart that whatever his predecessor’s reservations about the Tower of Truth, there was no better loser than Joseph Patterson Morgan! He Schott had wanted him with us at the tower’s dedication, three weeks hence; he knew that Joe would give that edifice and Marshyhope his blessing, from Heaven!
He closed with an equally exclamatory and unbecoming pitch for his own administration: skyrocketing enrollment figures, the massive building program, the great news (which he had been saving for the first university convocation on Monday the 15th, but could not resist leaking to us now) that approval was “all but finalized” in Annapolis for a seven-year plan to make MSU a proper City of Learning by 1976, perhaps even larger than the state’s current main campus at College Park! Morgan had hoped for 7,000 students: how gratified he would be at the prospect of 17,000, 27,000, eventually perhaps twice that number!
On this exquisite perversion of the verb to hope, and as Shirley Stickles sighed orgasmically in her seat, Schott turned the mike over to One Far More Eloquent Than Himself. A. B. Cook ascended the podium. There was a pause to adjust the P.A., which had been squealing as if in protest. Student ushers, deputized from the Freshman Orientation Committee, took the opportunity to seat latecomers, including, to my surprise, Ambrose. His attendance on Magda had been relieved by the twins and their girl- and boyfriends; she had insisted he join me. Looking about the room for me in vain, he was led to a seat just behind the Jacob Horners. Marsha glared and froze; Ambrose likewise, and desperately surveyed the audience again. Appalled, I pushed through to the empty seat next to him. Marsha’s expression could kill an unborn child; A. and I whispered accord on the matter of retreat to a rear seat. But Cook had launched into his versified eulogy and benediction.
Our situation was too off-putting for me to be able now to reconstruct those verses. In his well-amplified baritone Cook made the same connexion (but unrelated to ourselves) that I’d made earlier, between the funeral of Marshyhope’s founder in February and its first president’s now: the predictable September/remember/glowing-ember rhymes. Observing that John Schott’s Fallen Forerunner had been “an historian” (rhymed with “not boring one”!), Cook invoked “what might be called the Anniversary View of History”: surely it was Significant that 7 September Was the birthday of that other J. P. Morgan, as well as of Queen Elizabeth I: wouldn’t our late founder have approved! (Unaware of our presence behind him, or of much else, Jacob Horner added sotto voce “the Comte de Buffon, Taylor Caldwell, Elia Kazan, Peter Lawford”; Marsha poked him.) Surely it was Significant, given Joseph Morgan’s professional interests, that today marked the anniversary of the launching in Baltimore, in 1797, of the frigate Constellation, soon to play a rôle in the cinematical reenactment of our history; that on this date in 1812 Napoleon defeated the Russian army at Borodino, and in 1822 Brazil’s claim of independence began the Portuguese Revolution. (“Right on!” I was surprised to hear Drew Mack say; the morning paper had reported release of fifteen Brazilian leftist political prisoners as ransom for the kidnapped U.S. ambassador.) And 7 September 1940 had marked the peak of the German air war against Great Britain, rhymes with fittin’. Horner nodded vigorously.
None of us, the laureate concluded, is immortaclass="underline"
The stoutest fort’ll
Fall; the final portal
Open. Death’s the key
Of keys, the cure of cures.
All passes. Art alone endures.
Horner applauded. Marsha whacked him. People shushed. Muttered Ambrose (as the chaplain rose to give a final benediction): “Art passes too.”
Outside there were brief unavoidable stiff encounters; I was relieved not to have to deal with them alone. John Schott harrumphingly gave me to know that other pressing commitments of Mr Cook’s might make it impossible for him to ornament the English faculty after all, and that he Schott, among others, was pressing for my immediate reappointment. That matter would be brought before the provostial Appointments and Tenure Committee at once if I was agreeable; bygones be bygones, etc. Perhaps for the fall semester, I replied, if the university dropped their action to rescind Ambrose’s honorary degree. But never mind the spring: we were expecting a baby in March or April.
The man was satisfactorily taken aback; his fink of a secretary as well. Ambrose squeezed my arm approvingly. But Marsha was all ears behind us, with her husband in tow. She too, she announced with saurian satisfaction, was expecting a child — with, given her relative youth, better odds than some on a normal delivery. Let us charitably suppose that Marsha had not yet heard of Peter’s death and was simply reconnoitering the effects of her Bombshell Letter. I feared for Ambrose’s temper; was tempted myself to reply that Marsha’s own track record in the delivery of normal children was not impressive. But our grief (and love) detached us; put things in right and wry perspective. You’re married, then, Ambrose remarks to the pair of them, with a great no-alimony smile. Certainly not, snaps Marsha. Well, opines Horner, in point of fact we are, though Marsha is retaining her maiden name. Shut up, Mrs H. commands him. And while their new baby is of course not his, Horner bravely persists, he hopes his wife will permit him to name it, if a boy, Joseph Morgan Horner; if a girl, Josephine. Oh, you jerk, says Marsha; I’ll Josephine you.
Ambrose expansively congratulated them and invited them to our own wedding on the Saturday next, at Fort McHenry (we had of course decided earlier to postpone it, but Magda was insisting that we proceed; this was my first and happy notice that we were going forward as scheduled). Marsha flounced and sniffed away as satisfyingly as a comeuppanced Rival at the end of a Smollett novel. Her husband shifted about, thanked us gravely for the invitation, but declined on the grounds that that date (Rosh Hashanah and birthday of Sherwood Anderson, Claudette Colbert, J. B. Priestley, Walter Reed, and Arnold Schoenberg, we might be interested to know) marked Marsha’s debut as admissions secretary at Wicomico State College, where he himself hoped soon to return to the teaching of remedial English. Hers was not normally a six-day job, we were to understand; but the coming week and weekend were busy at Wicomico, as at Marshyhope, with the orientation and registration of incoming students.
Ambrose fairly clapped him on the shoulder. Bravo, old chap, and so long! Have a good life, etc.! We were both grinning through our grief: poor bastards all! I’d not have minded a clarifying word with A. B. Cook, whom I espied in deep conversation with Todd Andrews; but we were anxious lest Marsha disturb our household with a visit to Angela. Our walk to the car took us past the Tower of Truth, the last of its scaffolding cleared and its landscaping in progress. Drew Mack, in clean blue denims, and those same three who had helped in the search for Merope Bernstein — the black girl Thelma, a good-looking Chicano or Puerto Rican boy, and a fuzzy gringo — were regarding the structure and pointing things out to one another. Drew had the good manners to offer his condolences for Peter’s death and his regrets that the rifling of Mensch Masonry’s files was being regarded in some quarters as an “inside job” to cover our legal tracks. As if the state General Services Department didn’t have copies of everything stolen! He himself thought the tower an architectural abomination, a rape of the environment, and a symbol of the American university’s corruption by the capitalist-imperialist society which sustained it. That there was literal falsehood in its construction he did not doubt; the building’s infamous flaws, with their attendant litigation, attested that. But he knew Peter Mensch to have been an honest man and an able stonemason, happier in blue collar than white.