The Music School by John Updike Read Free Book Online Page B

Oxford made an art,’ ” a familiar voice sweetly insisted behind us, “ ‘in London only is a trade.’ Dryden.
Not
a true Oxonian, but an excellent poet and amateur scholar nevertheless. If you enjoy his jingling style. Mr. Pott. Can that egg be mine?” He sat down and smashed it neatly with his spoon and turned to us jubilantly. Perhaps the delay in his appearance had been caused by an effort of grooming, for he looked remarkably spruce, his long hair brushed to a tallowish luster, his tie knotted tightly, his denture snug under his lips, and a plaid scarf draped around his shoulders. “Today,” he said, “I will devote myself to your cause wholeheartedly, without intermissions, interruptions, or intercessions. I have spent the last hour preparing a wonderful surprise,
mirabile dictu
, as faithful Aeneas said to his natural mother, Aphrodite.”
    “I think,” I said, in a voice constrained by the presence of others around the table, “we really must do other things today. Mr. Pott says that Karam—”
    “Wait,
wait
,” he cried, becoming agitated and rising in his chair. “You do not understand. You are
innocents
—charming, yes, vastly potential, yes, but innocents, you see. You must know the
way
, the ins, the outs—”
    “No, honestly—”
    “
Wait
. Come with me now. I will show you my surprise
instanter
, if you insist.” And he bustled up from the table, the egg uneaten, and back up the stairs toward his room. My wife and I followed, relieved that what must be done could now be done unwitnessed.
    Mr. Robinson was already coming out of his room as we met him on the second-floor landing. In his haste he had left the door open behind him. Over his shoulder I glimpsed a chaos of tumbled books and old magazines and worn clothes. He held in his hands a sheet of paper on which he had made a list. “I have spent the last hour preparing,” he said, “with a care not incomparable to that of—
ih-ih-humm
—St. Jerome transcribing the Vulgate, a list; these are the people that today we will
see
.” I read the list he held up. The offices and titles and names at the top meant nothing to me, but halfway down, where the handwriting began to get big and its slant to become inconstant, there was the word “Chancellor” followed by a huge colon and the name “Lord Halifax.”
    Something in my face made the paper begin to tremble. Mr. Robinson took it away and held it at his side. With the other hand he fumbled with his lapel. “You’re terribly kind,” I said. “You’ve given us a
won
derful introduction to Oxford. But today, really, we must go out on our own. Absolutely.”
    “No, no, you don’t seem to comprehend; the
circum—
”
    “
Please
,” my wife said sharply.
    He looked at her, then at me, and an unexpected calm entered his features. The twinkle faded, the jaw relaxed, and his face might have been that of any tired old man as he sighed. “Very well, very well. No shame.”
    “Thank you so much,” my wife said, and made to touch,but did not quite touch, the limp hand that had curled defensively against the breast of his coat.
    Knees bent, he stood apparently immobilized on the landing before the door of his room. Yet, as we went down the stairs, he did one more gratuitous thing; he came to the banister, lifted his hand, and pronounced, as we quickened our steps to dodge his words, “God bless. God bless.”

 
Leaves
    T HE GRAPE LEAVES outside my window are curiously beautiful. “Curiously” because it comes upon me as strange, after the long darkness of self-absorption and fear and shame in which I have been living, that things are beautiful, that independent of our catastrophes they continue to maintain the casual precision, the effortless abundance of inventive “effect,” which are the hallmark and specialty of Nature. Nature: this morning it seems to me very clear that Nature may be defined as that which exists without guilt. Our bodies are in Nature; our shoes, their