Marry Libby? I asked myself, while across the table it seemed as though her husband had just launched a campaign to lose his job. It was at this point that Peggy Moberly had nervously raised her hand and said that perhaps Paul and John were both right; she proposed that the student be given two grades, one for content, another for form. Victor Honingfeld instantly rose in his chair to say that he did not see how anybody could fail to understand that content-and-form, like good-and-evil, were one. Mona Meyerling, mother and father to us all, said that she for one did value liveliness, and felt it should influence the grade, but that she was not really certain that this particular paper was that lively — to give the student an A would perhaps only encourage him in his grammatical abuses. Most everyone had a go at the paper by then — as the tension in the room decreased — except Bill Lake, whose temperament and history made him a kind of open city in our midst, someone who need enter no battles. And except for me.
Sam McDougall, who had come out strongly for Spigliano — and had that personal interest in my grammatical education — now turned in his seat and looked in my direction. Paul was looking at me too; so was John. I opened my mouth, and after making a rather long-winded and dull introductory statement, I wound up hearing myself say that though I had originally given the paper a C, I thought that what Paul had said made a good deal of sense. I said I didn’t mind a dozen misspellings (“Thirteen,” Sam whispered to me, as he watched my ship drift out to sea) or that the dash was overused. I reminded everyone of Tristram Shandy. I said I disagreed with John in not finding the structure quite so primitive as he had argued it to be. I wanted to change my mark, I added, pointing to the board where the grades were tallied; I would come up to a B or a B-plus. “Actually,” I heard Charleen Carlisle say, a moment later, “I’d come up to a B.” And Swanson, with a look of great seriousness on his face, said he might see his way clear to a B-minus. At this point John stepped in to quiet the revolt, while beside me, his face drained of blood, Sam McDougall was suffering one of the crises of his life. Shortly thereafter — John having made his final reference to Paul as a creative writer — the meeting disbanded.
In my office, a few minutes later, while snow fell outside the window, I sat down at the desk with my coat on and removed the paper from my briefcase. Mona Meyerling poked her head into my cubicle to ask if my car was stuck. I said no, and she went off, leaving me to read the essay a second time. When I had finished it I knew it was no better than a C, just as I had known it at the meeting.
As I moved off the steps of Cobb and onto the snow-covered walk, I saw a man, bareheaded and bundled up, sitting on a wooden bench some twenty feet along the path. I was feeling limp — as a result of feeling misguided once again — and I was anxious now to get home and change and be off to Martha Reganhart’s; then I saw that it was Paul Herz. I wondered if he had been watching me as I stood, thinking, on the steps of Cobb Hall. It made me feel vulnerable, as though just from seeing me there without my knowing, he could have divined the secrets of my life. I could not convince myself that he did not somehow know it was I who had called in the morning and hung up. Nor could I logically explain why I had not at least answered him after he had picked up the phone and said hello.
“How are you?” I asked, walking up to him. “Enjoying the night air? It’s a relief, isn’t it — after that?”
Paul removed one hand from his pocket and looked at his watch. “It’s a relief,” he said.
“Spigliano’s mission in life is to burn out the guts of better people than himself. Don’t take him to heart. I once overheard him say to someone on the phone, ‘Gabe is probably a nice fellow, but I wouldn’t say he has too many ideas.’ ” Snowflakes fell onto Paul’s thinning hair, and I had the urge — the kind of silly urge one can so easily give in to — to brush them loose. “You made perfect sense,” I said. “But he’s unbeatable. He doesn’t believe he can rise in the world unless everyone else falls.”
He nodded his head, then checked the time again.
“Well, I won’t keep you …” I said, though he hadn’t moved.
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper.” He looked up at me, speaking in a very soft voice. “It was a bad outburst to show those pricks.” The light from a nearby lamp revealed the creases in his thin face; at that moment he looked nothing at all like the boy in the picture with Maury Horvitz. “Don’t you think so?”
I sat down next to him. “I don’t think much of some of them,” I said. “Do you mind if I sit down? I’ve got a few minutes before dinner.”
“You liked that paper — it had a little something, didn’t it?”
“I thought it was pretty good,” I said. “It was lively, you were right.”
A girl emerged from Goodspeed Hall, and Paul leaned forward and looked her way; then he leaned back again, saying nothing.
“Do you know the student who wrote the paper?” I asked.
“No. But that’s the point …” he said.
I wondered if perhaps he had planned some elaborate hoax; I really didn’t know very much about Paul Herz, and so it was possible to think any number of things. “You didn’t write it, did you?” I asked, kiddingly.
“Who do you think — a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve been thinking a boy. A kid I’ve seen in the halls.”
“A student of yours?”
“No,” he said, “I just picked him out. I saw him whining one day in the halls to a friend of his. He’s got an awful face. He was making a terrible scene. Bad posture. Picking at his shorts all the time. He probably has some nasty habit like not flushing after himself.”
The clock in Mitchell Tower struck six gongs, and I realized that I might be late for dinner. Still, across from me Paul Herz had smiled. He was talking, no small thing.
“Why this paper?” I asked. “Why this kid?”
“Just a joke. I’m reasoning after the fact,” he said gloomily. “I don’t know who wrote it.”
“Oh,” I said, mystified.
“Look, what is Spigliano?”
“What?”
“Spigliano. Harvard too?”
“Harvard too,” I said.
“Who fires people around here?” he asked, after a moment.
“There’s a committee. Spigliano’s one. So is Sam, and the Dean — I don’t know, three or four others. It’s depressing, I know. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t go downtown and get a job pushing toothpaste for five times the salary.” I hadn’t meant, of course, to indicate that I was in any need of cash; nevertheless, Paul sensed an irony I didn’t intend, and gave me a fishy look. “But in the end,” I said, meaning it, “it’s a healthier life, this one. You go into class and you can do as you please. It’s not a bad life.”
Solemnly, suddenly, he said to me, “I appreciate, of course, what you were able to do …”