A Mature Student

COMBAT TEACHES YOU WHAT A CLASSROOM CAN'T

Theresa left the library for a cigarette and came upon Professor Landsman in the smokers' corner under the overhang. Professor Landsman taught the art history survey course Theresa was taking. She was alone, leaning back in one of the two plastic chairs they'd set out for incorrigibles, eyes half closed against the afternoon sun. It was late March and the day was warm; snow had fallen a few nights earlier, and patches still remained here and there in deep shade, but the rest had melted. A glaring sheet of water covered the courtyard below. Theresa slid her book bag under the other chair and lit up. jz

Professor Landsman didn't appear to notice her. The pro^p fessor had her long legs stretched straight out, high-heeled" boots crossed at the ankle. She was a tall woman with unruly red hair and a harsh accent of some kind. She did not wear glasses but was obviously nearsighted; whenever she bent over her notes during lectures her hair swung forward into her eyes, and she pushed it back with an exasperated gesture that dra­matized the unveiling of her face—the sharp cheekbones and wide, heavily lipsticked mouth. Today she wore a black coat draped over her shoulders and another of her long beautiful scarves; in class she restlessly tugged and rearranged them as she sDoke. She was not beautiful but she had a certain Elarn-

our, vivid on this large urban campus where the women faculty 1 dressed as sensibly as the men—as Theresa herself. ™

They had never spoken. Between Professor Landsman's lectures Theresa attended a discussion section led by a boy­ish graduate student from New Zealand who also graded her papers. In class Professor Landsman asked questions rarely, grudgingly. A good answer earned a curt nod; anything less and she responded with impatience, mockery or despair. Only the boldest took the bait, Theresa not among them.

She had almost finished her cigarette when Professor Lands­man said, "You're in my class."

"Yes, ma'am."

Professor Landsman turned and looked her up and down. "So. You are auditing, I suppose?"

Theresa understood the question. She had a good 20 years on the other students in the lecture hall, and knew that she looked it. "No," she said. "I'm a regular student. Hotel management."

"Hotel management! And this is a degree? Extraordinary. Such a country. One is found criminal for smoking, but one may become a scholar of bed and breakfast."

"Yeah, well, I'm taking your class just for interest. I've always loved art, not that I know jack about it." Theresa

flicked the ember off her cigarette and fieldstripped the butt and scattered the grains of tobacco with her toe. When she looked up Professor Landsman was watching her intently.

"How very odd," Professor Lands­man said.

"Old habit," Theresa said. "I really like your class, by the way."

"Do you? Why?"

"Probably for the same reasons you liked the first art history class you ever took."

"And what do you suppose those were?"

"Jesus. Okay, you want to know why I like your class. Well, big surprise, the art. Especially the paintings. Caravaggio! I really love Caravaggio. And quite the char­acter, eh? So, yeah, learning about the paintings and the painters, all the history. You seem to know your stuff. And I get a kick out of how bitchy you are, Professor." This was true. Theresa didn't care for the chummy, ingratiating atmosphere she'd found in other of her courses.

"Ah. And you are from...."

"California. Mostly. You?"

Professor Landsman examined her with­out answering. Theresa knew what she was seeing: the sun-weathered face, one eyelid drooping a little from a childhood case of Bell's palsy. Finally Professor Landsman said, "How did you form such a habit?"

"Excuse me?"

"The cigarette. This business with the cigarette."

"Oh, it's something you pick up in the service."

"You were a soldier?"

"A Marine. Twenty-two years."

Theresa was ready for the next question. No, she answered, she hadn't been to Iraq. She did not say that she had served two tours in Saudi Arabia helping manage an R&R center; that during the second tour her Marine husband, who'd rotated home from Iraq just before she left, had fallen in love with the widow of a friend; that her son had graduated from high school without Theresa there to see it, then bro­ken his promise to go on to college and enlisted in the Marines himself.

At 41 Theresa was living alone for the first time in her life. It suited her. She went out to dinner now and then with the manager of the local Sheraton, who'd met her after a presentation he'd given to one of her classes, but for now—to his evident impatience—she wasn't interested in anything more than some appreciative company and a chance to dress up a little. She woke early without an alarm and made coffee and turned on the classical music station and slipped back under the covers with a book. On weekdays she sampled lunch specials

at the cheap foreign restaurants around the university. Every other night, some­times more, she swam at the university pool; she hadn't taken a run since get­ting her discharge and intended never to run again. She was glad for her new life here in Illinois, almost a continent away from Camp Pendleton—a gladness that still surprised her, as she was surprised by her own freedom from regret. The sudden, breathless fear she sometimes felt was only for her son. He was out of boot camp now and in desert training at Twentynine Palms.

"So you love art." Professor Landsman said. "Let me guess. You paint in your free time, scenes from Western life. The bleached skulls of cows on the pioneer trail. Pacific seascapes—the lonely light­house, the storm-tossed waves breaking on the rocks below."

"You must be kidding. I can't even draw a circle."

"Nor can I. Few can, actually. So—this is correct?" She tore her cigarette open and spilled the tobacco out at her feet.

"Close enough."

"Now the enemy will never know I was here."

"Except for the filter you dropped."

"What did you do with yours?"

"I don't use filtered smokes. I should. But I'm quitting—this summer for sure."

"Such cowardice! You, a Marine, deserting the field."

"I wouldn't put it that way." Theresa heard the coldness in her own voice and only mildly regretted it.

"Oh, I have made a gaffe," Professor Landsman said. "It was a joke."

"I know."

"A stupid joke." She tugged on the ends of her scarf. "The way one uses words here, among one's clever colleagues, like a game, one grows careless. Of course such words have meaning." She took a pack­age of cigarettes from her coat pocket and shook one out and lit it.

"You don't talk carelessly in class," Theresa said.

"No, that's true. I am serious. Perhaps I am too serious?" Professor Landsman leaned her head back and closed her eyes and blew out a stream of smoke, exposing a splotchy purple birthmark on her neck. Almost in the same moment, eyes still closed, she twitched the scarf and the birthmark vanished.

"Sure, you're serious," Theresa said. "You should be, you're the professor."

"For you the word cowardice must be the worst of insults."

"I don't know. I can think of a few others."

"But certainly you would hold courage at a premium, and despise cowardice.

Such would be the very fundamentals of your existence."

"I'm just a student, remember? Bed and breakfast."

"Please don't condescend. You under­stand me."

"Look. Professor Landsman." Theresa meant to say that all this was behind her and that in any case she knew no more about courage than the next person, but at her name Professor Landsman shifted and looked at Theresa, so seri­ously, so gravely, that Theresa found her­self unable to speak. Instead she turned away and pretended to take an interest in the students crossing the courtyard. Two laughing boys sped by on bicycles, snowmelt hissing under their tires, tails of spray arcing up behind. Theresa watched them pass out of sight. A long cigar-shaped cloud drifted in front of the sun, and just like that the courtyard was in twilight. Theresa crossed her arms against the sudden coolness.

"For some of us," Professor Landsman said, "courage does not come so easily."

"I think maybe you have the wrong idea," Theresa said. "I've never been in combat. I'm not sure what I would do. Nobody is."

"Oh, I am," Professor Landsman said. "I wither under fire. I leave my comrades to their fate."

"Maybe. People surprise themselves. You just don't know until you've been there."

"But I have been there."

"In Iraq?"

"No, not in Iraq! Not combat with a gun—I've never so much as touched a gun—but combat nevertheless."

"Well. then...you don't need my opin­ion." Theresa picked up her book bag from under the chair and prepared to take her leave.

"I was 19, like one of these." Profes­sor Landsman nodded at the students walking by. "At university, a happy fugi­tive from a boring little town known for its sausage. I had friends and I was in love. With art, with the city, with a man, a married man, so sophisticated I was—in love even with myself. Imag­ine! I had many friends and many dar­ing ideas that must be shared. Talk talk talk, and of course they followed this river of brave words right to my door. An old story, to be sure. But I think you will find it interesting."

This sounded strangely like a warning. Certainly Theresa was left feeling more awkward than curious. She was getting cold and wanted to leave but didn't see how she could, not now. and of course she was flattered that her attention seemed important to this forceful, vivid woman, her professor. But she kept her bag in her (continued on page 134)

MATURE STUDENT

(continued from page 68)

lap, holding the straps with both hands.

"So, the approach. Just one of them, the first time. A young man, quite hand­some, well-spoken, you would take him for a student or a young lecturer. But he knew about me. That is, he knew about my friends, and my lover, and my interest in politics—my interest in change, as he put it. He too was inter­ested in change, he said. So were others whom I might imagine to be unfriendly. They could offer us certain protections. Some clarifications would be necessary from time to time, only to help them understand our ideas for the future, so thai they might better protect us from less sympathetic elements. He was very smooth—too smooth for his own pur­pose. Simple naif that I was, I could hardly understand what he was pro­posing. Then I was shocked. Indeed, I made a fine show of my indignation and nobly sent him on his way.

"More fool me. 1 should have made my pact with this devil. My Clod, the two who finally got their hooks in me! The man a licensed paranoiac, an accountant of meaningless facts all ren­dered sinister by the infinite connec­tions he saw between them. Everything had meaning. A student goes home for a visit with her sick mama, meatpack-ers in the same town protest unsanitary conditions—hah! Clandestine meet­ings! Agitation! Case closed! And he smelled like a closet. You know—what's the word?—naphtha.

"But the woman, the woman was worse. He at least aspired to rationality. She was free of such bourgeois affecta­tions. She required no theory and no evi­dence. She knew who the enemy was and what was to be done. Yes, and to do it, to frighten and compel, to put you on your knees where you belonged—that was her vocation and her pleasure."

"Where was this?"

"What?" Professor Landsman looked at Theresa as if the question were stupid or, w:orse, a breach of trust.

"Where did all this happen?" Theresa was caught up now, lost in what Profes­sor Landsman was telling her. Partly it was a habit formed in the lecture hall; she was used to surrendering to Profes­sor Landsman's voice. But in her lectures Professor Landsman was lively, even passionate, and highly particular. Her manner now was different, and this cool formality of expression, the absence of names, the featureless ground on which the story proceeded, had all somehow delivered Theresa into a fog of abstrac­tion. She was feeling the cold as an ema­nation of her uncertainty. She needed to know where she was.

"What dilference does it make?" Pro-lessor Landsman said. She pursed her lips. "Prague," she said in a low voice.

Prague. Okay. Theresa read history, she knew about Prague. The Russian tanks coming in, security police beating on kids, hauling them off to prison. The president of the country kidnapped and taken to Russia. "Prague," she said. "This was 1968, right?"

"No," Professor Landsman said. "Later. It doesn't matter, it was hap­pening all the time, and not only in Prague. This is an old story, as 1 say. One believes the enemy is at one's back, somewhere—perhaps closing in. Therefore one must find the enemy at any cost, and hurt him. So. The man. At first I thought I could match him at his game, using facts of my own as counters to his. But always, always, he surprised me. No sane person could have imag­ined what was perfectly obvious to him. His theories, expounded over hours in that horrid little room, dumbfounded

me—quite literally. He rendered me speechless. But he didn't break me. It was the woman who broke inc."

"What was her name?"

"Her name? Do you think they offered their names? Even a false name would have given me some way of imagining them, addressing them. Some admission of likeness."

"You were what, 19?" Theresa said. "Just a kid."

"Save your pity for my friends," Pro­fessor Landsman said. "1 sold them all out in the end. My friends, my lover, two of my professors."

At that moment the sun broke clear and thick low slants of light Hooded the wet courtyard and caught both women full in the face. Professor Landsman shielded her eyes. The timing of this sunburst struck Theresa as absurdly dis­sonant, even mischievous. It made her a

little giddy, and then contrite to have had these feelings as Professor Landsman was telling such a sad story.

"What did she do to you. this woman?" Theresa asked, carefully shading her voice.

"Nothing. She did nothing to me." Professor Landsman sounded cross, as if she too were conscious of some disrespect in this last bright flourish of the day.

"But you said that she was the one...."

"Yes. She was the one. But really, she did nothing to me but recognize me, and reveal myself to me as I was. Do you understand? 1 could see it in how she looked at me, always that look of recognition, of knowing that I was a coward and would soon become her creature and that everything leading up to that point—the endless meet­ings, the harangues and accusations, the threats to my family, the prom­ises—how can I describe it? As if these were rites that must be observed, hon­ored to the full for all the pleasure and pain they could afford, but that the end was inevitable and already known to us both by the plain fact of my cow­ardice. That was her power, and how it reduced me! How it made me squirm! I needed only to look at her, that smile always in her eyes. She knew me. She simply made me know myself. So you see, here is one soldier you do not want in the trench with you."

"Come on," Theresa said. "It was just a technique, the way she treated you, how she made you feel—like a coward. They trained her to do that."

"No. You give them too much credit. But what if they had? It was still true."

"What happened to your friends?"

"I don't know. Doubtless they were watched. Perhaps some of them were turned. But nothing obvious—noth­ing I could see before I left. They like to let these things ripen." She pushed her hair back roughly with both hands and smiled. "You are thinking. Irksome woman! Why must I hear all this?"

"Don't say that." Theresa leaned toward her. The books in her bag pressed up against her belly. "Listen. Professor Landsman."

Professor Landsman held up her palm in warning. "Please, I am allergic to commiseration."

"Just listen. People can be trained to build you up, make you feel brave so you act brave. It's a regular science. Don't you think it works the other way around?"

"No matter. What happened, hap­pened." She pushed her chair back and stood, squinting in the light. "How I've gone on! You are too patient."

Theresa stood with her. "You were 19. Now you're in your 5()s, right? Do you think a person your age, with all your education, all the places you've been and the people you've known— wait, now, hear me out—do you think you should pass sentence on some kid who's scared hall to death, and

all alone, and getting pushed around by creeps who really know how to do it? Would you judge your own child that way?"

"I have no child. More cowardice."

"I'm sorry. You know what I mean."

"Americans!" Professor Landsman was fumbling with the buttons of her coat. "Such faith in the future, where all shall be reconciled. Such compas­sion toward the past, where all may be forgiven, once understood. Really, you have no comprehension of his­tory. Of how done it is, how historical. One may not redeem a day of it, not a moment of it, with all these empa­thies and tender discernments. One may only visit it as one visits a grave­yard, hat in hand. One may read the inscriptions on the stones. One may not rewrite them."

Theresa shouldered her bag. "Got it. Thanks for straightening me out."

"Oh, now I've abused your kind­ness. I had no right to burden you with my useless old stories. You must forgive me."

"Am I allowed to?"

"Ha!" she said, and looked down, and nodded. "I would ask," she began.

"Sure," Theresa said. "Naturally. Not a word."

"Thank you."

That was when Theresa knew she would have to drop the course.

When she got home from her swim that night she made herself a tuna salad and studied her notes for an econ exam. Then, wistfully, she leafed through her art history textbook, Gardner's Art Through the Ages, lin­gering over Fra Angelico's Annuncia­tion. At first her eyes were drawn to the angel, thai radiance, that almost wild look of joy and promise, but it was Mary's expression that held her— accepting, yes, but sorrowful too, as if she already knew what was to befall her child in this world.

Theresa's son was good about writing, but tonight there had been nothing. She went back to the computer—still nothing. She opened his last two e-mails and read and reread them. Here, running through the joking, witty accounts of his days and tasks, of chal­lenges overcome, were the names of his new friends, fondly repeated, and the

modest pride he took in their respect. A bookish, reticent boy in high school, he was discovering that he could be tough and competent. A man others could rely on—even look up to. The­resa was glad for all that, though she knew none of it would necessarily save him in the end. The big thing was to be lucky. Most were, after all: most came home alive—almost everyone. The odds were on his side, and so on hers. She kept this thought close by. She often had need of it.

But tonight she felt another fear, worse in its way, because there were no odds to set against it. Not what might happen to him, but what he might become. Soon enough he would be among strange people who would hate him on sight. Any of them might be meaning to kill him. In the face of so much hatred and danger, how could he escape feeling hatred himself? For all of them? Theresa had seen how the young men looked after a lew months in that place; she knew how they talked, and the silences that opened up between them.

Her son was already learning the pleasure of being strong, and the spe­cial pleasure of being stronger than others. He'd been skinny and shy when young, and from sixth grade to sev­enth the bullying had gotten so nasty that she'd had to go to the principal of his school. She hadn't thought of it for some time, but tonight Theresa remembered the look on his face after one of the bad days—the blackness of his bitterness and shame. When he came into power now over those who hated him and frightened him. how would he resist putting them on their knees, making them squirm? And then what? What would happen in some little room where hatred and power and fear came together, and there was nobody to say no? Her boy had a good heart. He had a soul. For the first time, she feared that he might lose it.

Theresa wanted to warn him, but the light, merry tone of their correspon­dence had become a sort of rule between them. She would have to break it, to tres­pass. She didn't have the words now, but she would find them. He wouldn't like it. He'd be insulted. Good—then he might remember, when that day came.

She looked again at the F'ra Angelico before getting up from her desk. No, by God, she would not drop the class. She would sit toward the front of the lecture hall as she always did, and if it bothered Professor Landsman to have Theresa there, watching her. listening to her pronouncements, all the while know­ing what she knew, whose fault was that? Professor Landsman had a job to do. If she was uneasy, she would just have to find a way through her unease, or get used to it, like everyone else.

"For some of us courage does not come so easily. I wither under fire. I leave my comrades to their fate. I have been there."