Chapter 2
Professor Mephesto was a pacifist, and today's lecture had been about War. Since he did not have a regular question-and-answer period in his lectures, he very often posed knotty problems to himself and then answered them, as he was doing today in his closing remarks.
"I spent last summer in Stillwater, Maine, with a friend of mine, Tab Hutchins... it's a place of incredible beauty, Stillwater, you'll want to go there sometime... well, Tab isn't, by our pompous standards, an 'educated' man... I mean he doesn't have the robes and the scrolls, and he doesn't speak in polysyllables, but I can tell you this: Tab Hutchins has one of the finest minds of our time. An auto-mechanic by trade, a positivist-humanist by choice, and a scholar of the classics by inclination. I always get a little thrill somehow to see old Tab crawling under one of the dilapidated trucks that the farmers around Stillwater bring for him to fix-crawling under, a volume of Plato sticking out of one pocket, a volume of Aristotle out of the other.
"Well, one day Tab and I were talking and he said to me, in that serious way of his: 'Meph, you say you're against War. You say that War never accomplished anything.'
"I said, 'That's what I say, Tab.'
"He drew on his old briar, thoughtful for a moment, and then he said:
"'Will you answer me one question, Meph?'
"'I'll answer it if I can, Tab,' I said.
"Tab said, 'Then what about the American Revolution? Do you mean to say that didn't accomplish anything?'
"I said, 'Do you know who it was we fought that war against, Tab?'
"'Of course, I do,' he said, 'the British.'
"Well, I didn't say anything more for a while, and I think Tab felt that he had me all right, the way he was watching me out of the corner of his eye, and drawing on his old briar. I was looking at the truck he had been working on all morning.
"'How's that truck running now, Tab?' I asked him.
"'She's running fine now, Meph,' he said, 'had to tear down the differential a little, and clean a few cogs: and now she's running fine-but I don't believe that answers my question.'
"'I'll answer your question, Tab,' I said, 'but let's take a drive first. I think we ought to give that truck a pragmatic test before returning it to its owner. I'll drive," I said.
"Well, we got in and pretty soon I had the feel of the old bus, and we were going along at a great rate, down country roads, and across, and back, along the highway for a while. It's beautiful countryside around there, and I remarked on it to Tab.
"He said, 'Yes, it is.'
"I said, 'Do you know where we are, Tab?'
"He said, 'Sure I do.'
"I said, 'All right,' and we drove on for a while, and pretty soon I asked him again, 'How do things look out there now, Tab?'
"'Pretty much the same as they did when you asked before,' he said.
"I said, 'Do you know where we are?'
"Tab said, 'Yes, I do.'
"I said, 'Where are we, Tab?'
"He said, 'Do you want a technical answer?'
"I said, 'Yes, I do.'
"He said, 'We're on the planet World, of Solar System number one, Western Hemisphere, North American Continent, U.S.A., and I should say about seven miles northeast of Stillwater, Maine.'
"I said, 'You're wrong, Tab. We're not in the U.S.A. now; we crossed the border into Canada about ten minutes ago. Canada is still a British protectorate, Tab, and it's exactly what we didn't accomplish by the American Revolution-and yet you can't tell the difference! I guess that answers your question, doesn't it, Tab?' "
Clang
went the bell as, with the last word, Professor Mephesto gathered up his papers and started for the door.
In the fifth row center, Candy had just written, 'What about the American Revolution?' and was drawing a very heavy line under 'about', when she looked up to see the young boy she had seen with the professor yesterday, coming down the aisle, unmistakably towards her.
"Are you Candy Christian?" he asked when he reached her.
"Yes."
"Meph wants to see you," he said, with a disgruntled look about him, "in his office."
"What? Professor Mephesto?"
"Yes," said the boy almost with a sneer, "Professor Mephesto." Then he turned abruptly and left.
"What on earth-" Candy began, but the boy was gone.
She gathered her things and left in a hurry and, at the doorway, looked up and down the hall, trying to catch sight of him again, but he was not to be seen.
"Good Grief," said Candy, and walked rapidly to the girl's lounge, where she put down her books and got out her comb and makeup. "What on earth-" she kept saying, combing her hair briskly, and finally spending an unusual amount of time putting on lipstick. She was very cross now about not having gone to the library yesterday. "Darn Daddy!" she said, and she decided to put on a bit of eyeshadow to make her look older, more mature. Since she hadn't been able to read, or learn anything yesterday, she reasoned, the least she could do would be to try to look a little more intelligent. So she decided to darken her lashes a bit too-just for balance-pinched a little more color into her cheeks, and tucked her blouse in tightly. Thank
goodness for that at least, that she was wearing one of her smartest blouses, fresh and sweet, with her most lavishly embroidered slip peeking over the top through the v-neck, or v-breast, one might say, it being rather low.
At last she was ready and left the lounge, and walked primly down the hall to the professor's office. At the door, she knocked very lightly, and heard almost at once the voice which she so admired.
"Come in, come in," it said grandly.
Candy pushed open the door slowly, as though she thought there might be so many books in the room it would be partially blocked.
"Come in, my dear, come in," said Professor Mephesto, standing and ushering her in with a flourish. "I was just having my afternoon drop of sherry. I hope you'll join me."
He looked at her, expectantly, his round, somewhat red face overflowing with the joy of his full, rich life.
"Well, I-" Candy began, but the professor was already pouring her out a small glass.
"Yes, I always have some sherry and a bit of cheese about this time of day. Some people prefer tea, but I find it lacking-a habit, I suppose, acquired during my student days at Heidelberg, and at Oxford, no doubt-still I do find a good sherry has body and edge, while tea is such a messy affair at best, don't you agree?"
"Well-" said Candy, taking the chair indicated by the professor. The girl was quite flushed for the moment-she had never had sherry in the afternoon, though she had read of such practices in the fashionable novels and knew it to be quite proper. Also, she had heard, of course, of certain students being occasionally invited to Professor Mephesto's office and 'having a drop,' as it was expressed; naturally, it was mostly confined to senior and graduate students, and, even among them, it was considered a signal honor to have done so.
"This sherry was sent to me by Lucci Locco, the Portuguese humanist-symbolist poet-now living in Paris, of course-I think you'll find it rather good."
He took a swig himself, then encouraged the girl to do so, by raising his glass.
"A la tienne," he said, "to the soul of our childhood and its sinful joys-lost forever, alas! To youth then! And to beauty!"
He allowed the last of the toast to linger on his tongue, and he gave Candy a piercing look. The girl flushed terribly and sipped in obedience.
"It's about your thesis, my dear," said Professor Mephesto, turning to his paper-strewn desk, and drawing off one of those on top, "the one on 'Contemporary Human Love'," and he leafed through two or three pages to a place where the margin was marked with a large red X.
"Good Grief," said Candy to herself, preparing for the worst, and she started to blurt out some foolish defense in advance, but Professor Mephesto quickly went on, clearing his throat, and shaking the papers once or twice:
"Here we are. Here, you say: 'To give of oneself-fully-is not merely a duty prescribed by an outmoded superstition, it is a beautiful and thrilling privilege.' "
He put down the paper and looked at the girl expectantly, raising his glass of sherry again.
"Just what did you mean there, my dear?"
Candy squirmed a bit in her chair.
"But-but," she stammered. "Isn't it right? Isn't that what you said? I was almost sure that-"
Professor Mephesto rose from his seat, clasping his hands together and looking at the ceiling.
"Isn't it right?" he marveled. "Oh my dear! My dear precious girl-of course, it's right! So very right!"
He paced about the office, intoning:
"'To give of oneself-fully-is not merely a duty prescribed by an outmoded superstition, it is a beautiful and thrilling privilege!'"
He sat down again, and put a hand out to the girl, as though in an effort to express some very deep abstract feeling, but then, finding it ineffable, let it drop, as though it were useless to try, on to her knee.
"And the burdens-the needs of man," he said with soft directness to her, "are so deep and so-aching."
Candy involuntarily shuddered just slightly and looked down at the big fat hand on her leg-though, of course, she did not see it as that, but as the great, expressive hand of the Master-the hand she had seen so often raised from the podium in the beautiful extolling gestures to human worth and dignity, which did, of course, include her; and she was very ashamed of having shuddered. Professor Mephisto gave her knee a little squeeze, before he withdrew it.
"It's an 'A' paper, my dear, an 'A-plus' paper. Absolutely top-drawer!"
Candy's heart gave a little leap. It was certainly a well known fact that Professor Mephesto never allowed more than one 'A-plus' paper to his entire class for any particular thesis.
"Thank you," she managed to breathe.
"I've no doubt," said Professor Mephesto gently, rising from his chair again, "that you are sincere." He frowned before continuing. "There are so many who profess noble beliefs and insights, without really feeling them."
He walked about the office as he spoke, pausing here and there, to touch in reverence, a book, or to raise a hand to emphasize his meaning.
"Very few people are capable of feeling things today-I suppose it is our commercial way of life; it has destroyed the capacity to feel... the art to feel-for it requires an artist... to truly feel. Yet talk is cheap. And that is, of course, what accounts for the pathetic failure of organized religion... the mere lip-service to the eternal values. Insincerity! A greater disservice to humankind could not be imagined!"
He stopped near the back of Candy's chair, where the girl sat, quite stiffly, staring ahead; she recalled seeing him with the other students, how relaxed and informal they had seemed together, and she made a tremendous effort to emulate their behavior by leaning back now in the chair, and having another sip of the sherry, her mind meanwhile racing desperately through the pages she had read this term, trying to find something smart and appropriate to say. She could think of nothing, hower, for her mind was filled with the recurrent thought, 'A truly great man. I'm in the presence of a truly great man.' And, as she heard behind her now the heavy breathing of the professor, she imagined that the sounds were just the same as those of a man in a story of long ago, after he had carried his burden up Calvary Hill. And she
managed to subdue her impulse to flinch this time, when the professor laid his hand on her shoulder, and moved it then to the back of her neck.
"I really believe," he said gently, "that you have the... true insight, the true wisdom, the true feeling," pausing before he added... in a whisper, "... and I believe you know my great need of you!"
As he spoke he gradually slipped his hand around her neck, along her throat and toward her breast, and Candy dropped her glass of sherry.
"Oh, my goodness," she wailed, going forward at once from her chair to pick the pieces off the floor, for the glass had broken and scattered. She was so embarrassed she could scarcely speak for the moment.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I-"
"Never mind about that," said Professor Mephesto huskily, coming down beside her, "it's nothing, only a material object-the merest chimera of existence!"
On the floor next to her, he put his face to the back of her neck and one hand under her sweater.
"You won't deny me," he pleaded, "I know you are too wise and too good to be selfish... 'the beautiful, thrilling privilege of'..."
He came forward with his hands and body, but as he did, Candy struggled to her feet again and the professor fell half forward and sideways, rolling in the spilled sherry, trying to soften his fall with one hand and to pull the girl down with the other, but he failed to pull the girl down and now, having taken a nasty bump in the fall and, perhaps too, because of his unwieldy bulk, he merely lay for the moment in the pool of sherry, wallowing and groaning.
Candy was startled almost to alarm, standing now, one hand to her mouth.
"Oh, Professor Mephesto, I-"
"Comfort those whose needs are greatest, my dear," he implored her from where he lay, arms outstretched to take her fully would she but come to him. "Remember the 'thrilling privilege'!"
But the poor girl was too frightened, and still terribly upset about having broken the glass.
"Oh, I don't know-" she stammered, almost tearfully, "I-I'm so afraid-I only wish-"
She stopped short as the door burst open and in came the young sullen-face boy who had so begrudgingly conveyed the invitation to her. His eyes went wild and his face pale as he looked from one to the other of them.
"Excuse me!" he said then haughtily and turned on his heel to leave.
"Wait, Holly!" cried the professor, struggling to his feet, "wait... it's only-" He got up, brushing himself awkwardly; he was clearly embarrassed, and the boy meanwhile had stopped in the half-open door, waiting, indeed.
"I'd better be going," said the boy, when no further explanation came.
"No, no, Holly," said Professor Mephesto, collecting himself and coming to the boy. "Go into the inner office," he said firmly.
The boy looked at him, no longer pale now, sulky and dark.
"Go, now," repeated the professor; then he laid a hand on the boy's arm. "I'll go with you," he said gently, "come."
He turned to Candy just before closing the inner-office door. "Excuse us for a minute, please," he said.
"Yes, of course," said the bewildered girl, and she sat down again in the chair. For a moment she could hear the murmur of their voices, then something like a door slamming and she knew the young man had left. She waited a minute but the professor did not return. 'Selfish! Selfish!' she was thinking of herself. 'To be needed by this great man! And to be only concerned with my material self!' She was horribly ashamed. 'How he needs me! And I deny him! I deny him! Oh, how did I dare?'
She listened, and her heart grew swollen and soft within her as she heard what was unmistakably a sob. 'Oh Prof-' she could not bear it; he was alone, weeping in his need for her-'Oh, Meph, Meph,' she started up, and toward the door. She would go to him, give herself to him-fully. She recalled the image of her nakedness in the glass as she had stepped from the bath this morning. Yes, she was lovely; she would give him that-fully. She wished wistfully as she put her hand on the knob of the inner-office door that she had worn her finest underthings, but she knew with satisfaction that these were fresh and sweet. And then she heard another sob, a moan. "I'm coming, Meph," she whispered and opened the door softly.
But the young man had not left, and Candy was confronted with an extraordinary scene. The two of them were dancing about the clothes-strewn room, stark naked, flailing each other wildly with wet hand towels, moaning and sobbing, their bodies reddened and welted.
They didn't see her, or if they did, were not distracted, so intense their engagement as they lashed out in great frenzy. Candy closed the door quickly and rushed out of the office and down the long quiet hall, finally bursting into tears, only conscious now of her swift little footsteps, and of her terrible selfishness, how it had driven Professor Mephesto, in his frustration, to... goodness knows what! 'Oh, how could I?' she kep demanding of herself, 'how could I?'
By the time she reached home, however, she was more composed; at least she was eager to tell her father about the 'A-plus' thesis she had done.
Mr. Christian was sitting in his armchair, reading the paper.
"Hi!" he said, glancing at his watch, as she came in. "Have a nice day?" He knew enough to alternate his salutation from 'Learn anything?' to 'Have a nice day?' and he did this quite regularly.
"Well," said Candy, coming forward to give him a kiss on the forehead, which he received with a grunt. "An A-plus on my last philosophy thesis! From Professor Mephesto! He never gives more than one for the whole class! Isn't it wonderful?"
Mr. Christian's questions were, of course, rhetorical, but so was his interest, so he could sustain it easily enough.
"Oh," he said, in a slightly rising inflection, continuing to look at his paper, though with a frown which showed he was just scanning, and was, certainly, listening to his daughter too, "what was the subject of the thesis?"
"'Contemporary Human Love'," said Candy, putting her things away.
Mr. Christian shook his paper, clearing his throat.
"That sounds practical," he said. He tried to force a little laugh to show that philosophy courses weren't serious, but he was too basically ill-tempered to manage it, so he shook his paper again, clearing his throat and frowning a bit more darkly than before.
Candy ignored it; she was determined to salvage something of her triumph, and she wasn't going to let him spoil it.
"And-" she said, coming over to sit down near him, "I was invited to conference with Professor Mephesto! To 'have a drop'."
The name of Professor Mephesto had come up previously, and Mr. Christian loathed it with the most simple-minded unrestrained jealousy. He took his pipe and began to empty it vigorously against the nearest ashtray.
"What did he want?" he asked, in frank contempt.
"Oh, Daddy! Really! It's the greatest honor to be invited to Professor Mephesto's office, and have a drop! I've told you that a dozen times! Good Grief!"
"Have-a-drop-of-what?" asked Mr. Christian slowly, feigning the patience of a saint.
"Of sherry, of course! I told you that a hundred times!"
"Sherry-wine?" asked her father, making his frown one great black hole.
"No, sherry-banana-split! Silly! Of course, sherry-wine! He has a glass of sherry and a bit of cheese in the afternoon-some people prefer tea, but others find tea 'lacking'. Whereas sherry has body and edge, and tea is so messy at best, don't you... well, good grief, I mean it's a taste he acquired in the best possible circles!"
"And he gives this wine to students?" That was the big point with Mr. Christian.
"Oh, Daddy!"
Candy got up and walked over to the window. Where she had begun by feeling just slightly ambiguous about the interview, now she felt in it the strength and rightness of the world itself.
Mr. Christian puffed on his pipe.
"I simply want to know-"
"I don't wish to discuss it," said Candy, primly.
What was going on in her father's mind, behind that impossibly dark brow, it is difficult to fully know. He was furious with her, strove to dominate her, would argue, sulk and yet not raise a hand against her. Did he know he was playing a losing game? And is it, moreover, too much to believe that he enjoyed, not simply losing the game, but being a bad loser as well? In any event, he immediately lunged upon another very sore point between them.
"Then perhaps you will discuss this," he said, tight-lipped, "Mrs. Harris said you were talking to Emmanuel again yesterday."
Emmanuel was the Mexican boy who came to mow the lawn. Mr. Christian had strictly forbidden Candy to talk to him as she had shown, on a number of occasions, an inclination to do. Mr. Christian had said that he, personally, was broad-minded enough not to mind, but that it 'looked funny' to the neighbors. He somehow associated the event with Professor Mephesto.
But for Candy this was the last straw.
"And I certainly won't discuss that!" she said. "I'm so ashamed of that I could die. Why, if Professor Mephesto knew that you had said that, I would never have been invited to his office! Not in a million years!"
Her father felt a severe, delicious pain in his head. It was with the greatest effort that he kept from blacking out, as he controlled his voice, and said:
"I don't like to have to cut down on your allowance, Candy, but-"
"My allowance!"
Candy stamped her foot in pique.
"Good Grief, is that all you can ever think of? Material things? Good Grief!"
With a toss of her pretty head, she turned abruptly, marched out of the room and up the stairs to her bed.
In the living room behind her, Mr. Christian looked back down at his paper, puffed on his pipe, and slowly shook his head, his lips and knuckles now the color of snow.
And that night Candy went to sleep trying to decide which she should do: give herself to the Mexican gardener, or run away to New York City.