Declined, John! Oh, that I were after all a writer, or had had Reggie Prinz’s cameras, to catch forever Harry Carter’s crestfall when I read that letter aloud! Which he must then inspect with his own eyes, hold to the light, examine the blank verso of, the signature, the return address, the postmark and cancelled stamp on the envelope (CHAUTAUGUA MD, spelled with a g where yours is q’d; and an American Legion commemorative), as if looking for some clue that the laureate’s no was a cyphered yes, or that I’d forged the letter. Ms Wright at last crisply opined that, given the lateness of the season, we had better propose Mr Mensch’s name at once to President Schott, and hope our colleague would not follow your and Cook’s example.
A fortnight earlier, at the crest of our “Second Stage,” I’d have blushed, if not dismissed the idea outright. But Ambrose and I had been that fortnight sexless, as you know, and while my heart had in large measure taken over from my orifices the labour of his admission and receipt, so that now I loved where then I’d merely lusted, the complete propriety of this “Third Stage” lent me sufficient “cool,” as the students say, to pretend to consider the matter for some moments before seconding his nomination. Ambrose had been of considerable assistance in containing the late demonstrations, and his presence on the platform might just discourage the activists’ turning our commencement exercises into yet another, as has been happening elsewhere. The modesty of his literary credentials is attributable in some part to his avant-gardism: “concrete narrative” is not poured out ready-mixed by the cubic yard! And if I myself remain less than utterly convinced that such desperate innovation as his is “the last, radical hope for the profession of letters,” I can in good conscience at least honour that apocalyptic argument.
I called for the question: two-nothing in Ambrose’s favour, Harry Carter abstaining in the spirit of a diplomatic emissary awaiting instructions from his government. Considering the date, I proposed we ring up at once both Mensch and Schott to insure their informal agreement before sending our formal invitations. Carter telephoned our acting president (to whom, a subscript apprised us, Cook had sent a copy of his letter); I telephoned Ambrose at the Lighthouse — a.k.a. Mensch’s Castle, his brother’s house — and heard for the first time, with a proper pang of jealousy, the voice of Magda Giulianova Mensch. Did it catch at the accent of my own, which she too was hearing for the first time and must surely recognise?
“I’ll call him,” she huskily intoned. What a vulnerable, what a stirring, what a sexual voice! Which then called, “Ambrose? Telephone,” up some nearby flight of stairs which I had yet myself to see, but which l’Abruzzesa had doubtless many times ascended, crooning Ambrose? in even sultrier tone. I heard children’s voices in the background — no, one child’s voice, his backward daughter’s, to be sure; her normal twins would be at school, or at work. I was smitten with envy, jealousy, rekindled desire — the objective, no doubt, of our Third Stage abstinence. When she said, “He’s coming”—her voice as throaty as if she were — my “Thank you” was gruff and mannish as John Bull. And when Ambrose, fetched from his writing desk, dully hello’d me, I found myself declaring despite myself, for the first time to him, and in a lump-throated whisper, not “acting Provost Pitt here,” but “I love you.”
! (As my lover would put it in his own style of dialogue.) Fortunately I had withdrawn from the conference room to my inner office to make the call; Carter to Ms Wright’s, hard by, to make his (Miss Stickles, who would normally have placed both, was out to lunch). When we reconvened, we were both somewhat disappointed: Carter because Schott now warmly ratified our nomination, hoping only that, in reciprocation of the honour and in gratitude for Cook’s gracious deferral thereof, Ambrose would consider the incorporation into his screenplay of some Splendid Ideas that Cook had proposed to Schott in a handwritten postscript to his copy of the letter to our committee: ideas concerning not only the Tower of Truth, but the burning of Washington and the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812… and I because Ambrose, so far from immediately accepting, in whatever spirit, our nomination (for first proposing which, sir, I am as grateful to you now as my thanks are belated), was stipulating that the honorary doctorate be awarded to his nom de plume “Arthur Morton King”! I could not imagine Schott’s welcoming so irregular a proviso, any more than Ambrose would welcome those “splendid ideas” of A. B. Cook’s (There is nothing in your fiction, is there, of Admiral Cockburn’s Chesapeake expedition in 1812?). Where would we turn next with our wretched degree? Finally, some intuition told me that Mrs Peter Mensch had forgiven her intermittent lover his affair with me. Ambrose was telephoning Schott directly and promptly, at his own insistence, to spare me the brokering of their respective stipulations and to expedite, on the committee’s behalf, his decision. He would ring back promptly. I was relieved but pessimistic — and disappointed yet further, I realised as we adjourned, that he had not accepted the bloody distinction simply as a loving favour to yours truly.
The good news came, however, from Schott himself, not a quarter hour after we’d glumly gone our professorial ways: Great guy, this Mensch! Had welcomed Cook’s suggestions, ever’ doggone one! Thought he might even find a part for Mr Cook himself in the movie, how ’bout that! As for the pen-name business, damn good idea! Gave the whole show more class, if you asked him; made it more what you might call literary? And that was the name of the old ball game, right?
Thus our ad hoc committee came at last ad hoc, and is no more: on 21 June our friend “Arthur Morton King” becomes Marshyhope U’s first Doctor of Letters! How came this miracle to pass? Wherefore this sudden deference of A. B. Cook’s, this sweet rage for accommodation of John Schott’s and Ambrose’s? I burned to know; but my curiosity must itself needs be deferred when Miracle One was yesterday eclipsed by
2. A warm mid-May evening: Friday, thank God, and the last day of classes for the spring semester. A week-long “reading period” has begun (Is there a research library on the boardwalk at Ocean City? For thither have flown the student body), to be followed by final examinations and, three weeks after that—when nine-tenths of our students and staff will surely have scattered for the summer — our belated commencement ceremonies. The official reason for this delay is to combine the awarding of degrees with the cornerstone laying of Schott’s Tower of Truth, far behind the schedule of its construction. It is an open secret among us administrators, however, that the real reason is Schott’s fear of activist disruption: he has anxiously enquired of Ambrose whether “the right camera angles” can make his minions into a multitude. But I digress, savouring the anticipation of what’s next to write as I savoured the anticipation of my lover’s visit, who had rung back after all in the evening of that eventful Wednesday to invite me to cocktails aboard Todd Andrews’s ancient sailboat, moored in the municipal harbour, and dinner afterwards somewhere across the river. We were, he felt, at the end of our Third Stage and the commencement of our Fourth: he much wanted to talk to me on that mysterious head, bring me up to date too on his adventures with Prinz and Co., and speak of Other Things — his past and our future — which his preoccupation with movie making had kept him from communicating to me till now. Have I mentioned that in the six weeks since he mailed me that abortive confession of “Arthur Morton King’s,” ostensibly addressed to an anonymous Yours Truly and sent floating down the tide, I’ve received no further “love letters” from him? And that with the close of our seminiferous Second Stage he ceased reading these weekly letters to you?