Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross Read Free Book Online Page B

outraged to the last degree that a bunch of unwashed radicals could be allowed to wield such powers, could never understand that there was any fault at work but that of the students and perhaps their overindulgent parents. They could not understand that a fumbling, withdrawn administration and a self-indulged, indifferent faculty were as much to blame as a youthful generation’s failure to observe ‘law and order.’ There were students in those buildings, students I had known in class, who were no more Maoist than I was, who said that the communal life inside the buildings was the first vital experience they had had since they entered theUniversity. We let it all go dead on us, Reed. Whatever may have happened in other universities, whatever may have been the destructive glee of radical groups at other places—Berkeley, Columbia, or wherever—the blame for what happened to my university was mine—mine and my associates.’ ”
    “Those kids were an outrageous group—the radical core.”
    “They were. But to blame them for everything that followed is to blame the First World War on the assassin at Sarajevo. I am not, of course, very good at historical analogies. Auden says that:
          at any hour from some point else
    May come another tribal outcry
 Of a new generation of birds who chirp
    Not for effect but because chirping
        
Is the thing to do.
    I know all that; I know it is true of student rebellions at other universities now. But not of my university.”
    “Are you going ahead with the University College crusade then in an attempt to grab some stones from the wreckage and build them into a more lasting edifice?”
    “Sorry if I’ve been going on. All the same, it does intrigue me that the University College was the single unit in the University where the students, faculty, and administration did not automatically, or even eventually, assume they were working at cross purposes. The faculty at
The
College went about either in open disgust or like fathers who have done everything for theirsons only to be sneered at, treated with disdain and ingratitude. The graduate students revealed that they had long suffered agony from the outworn structures and grading systems of their schools. But Frogmore’s little domain held off chaos and went on with its work. That interests me.”
    They stopped by the lake to watch the rowing. “Shall we rent a boat?” Reed asked. Kate shook her head.
    “Sorry to run on so,” she said. “I keep trying to put it all into place. All right, I want to say, we were wrong; O.K., we were wrong, we will rebuild. But what a job! All the easy relations of the faculty, one with the other, gone. People have each other tagged now: radical, conservative, untrustworthy. Reed, I wanted to ask you something.”
    “I know.”
    “You do? How do you know?”
    “Talented me, from the District Attorney’s Office. I’ve known you awhile, Kate. I always know when you have a speech ready, and I know that you do not proceed through martinis and champagne to Cherry Heering because Auden did. You couldn’t make the speech sober or, we now know, drunk. How about on a lovely fall morning? Shall we rent bicycles?”
    “You have suggested everything but horses. And I haven’t ridden in—oh, since another lifetime. We could of course take one of those horse-drawn carriages.”
    “Shall we?”
    “Let’s walk. We can get a beer at the boathouse.”
    They got the beers, walking in silence, and took them to a spot on a hill where they could watch the bicyclists,most of them pushing the bikes but a few riding, straining to reach the top. Kate liked to watch the moment when those who had struggled up on their bicycles let the wind catch them, going down.
    We may someday need very much to
Remember when we were happy.
    The life before last spring seems to have been a time of innocence. I am no longer certain of anything, Reed, but I think that in my uncertainty, I would like to