‘But what does that mean to us?’
‘You’ll have exactly the same chance of landing a contract with Kinetic as you do now—for those same three months. Then they’ll start cutting back on scholarly books like the kind you would probably want to write. With the new owners, your chances diminish, because all they’ll be looking at is the bottom line.’
‘Will they edit books toward a pro-German slant?’
‘Heavens, no! They wouldn’t be so stupid. You must remember, they’ll also own firms in England and France. They couldn’t afford to imperil their own business.’
Mrs. Yoder, who had accompanied her husband, astonished us by the depth of her business knowledge: ‘Most of my husband’s royalties are in escrow. Will they be safe under foreign ownership?’
‘Your money is safe, but I must confess my job isn’t.’
‘Why not?’ Emma asked, and Ms. Marmelle replied with a low chuckle: ‘If the new owner has a lady friend who’s always wanted to be an editor, I become expendable.’
‘I would not be happy writing for a foreign company,’ Yoder said, and the rest of us agreed.
I had now spent five full academic years at the college, and had published a second book of literary criticism. I continued to labor on a short novel. And during each of the previous summer vacations I had sped to Greece, two days after turning in my last grades. There, at the same congenial hotel in Athens, I would find F.X.M. Devlan waiting to resume our interminable discussions as we motored through the mountains of that endlessly fascinating country. One summer we had concentrated on the Peloponnesus, that forbidding land containing Corinth, Sparta and Patras; it had many sites associated with pre-Roman days and I delighted in old inns and mountain villages that rarely saw foreigners. We always felt vibrant in Greece, for it had been during our first visit here that we had realized that our mutual affection was more than a passing fancy nurtured by the magic of Venice, that we spoke and lived the same language, and that one was as concerned about the nature of writing as the other. To return to Greece was to return to first principles.
In the summer of 1983 Devlan surprised me on the afternoon we met in Athens by suggesting that we first go not to our familiar hotel but to an olive grove beyond the edge of the city. There he took out a paperback collection of Henry James’s short novels and turned to the page on which the narrator, a stuffy young scholar, is trying with every ugly device to gain possession of the love letters of the dead American poet Jeffrey Aspern. Since they are being guarded by an old woman in Venice, he realizes that he can gain access to them only if he marries her pitiful, ungainly niece. The impasse is hammered home when the awkward niece proposes to him. Devlan, in the same low voice he had used in Venice when we first shared the ending together, said:
‘Miss Tina, not knowing how one proposes marriage to a man, blurts out that if he were to become part of the family, he could gain access to the letters: “You could see the things—you could use them.” Then comes the terrible confusion, which she worsens by bursting into a flood of tears and pressing her proposal: “I’d give you everything, and she’d understand, where she is—she’d forgive me.” ’
Devlan’s voice broke and he indicated that I should complete the story, so I took the book and read how the man rejected her:
‘ “I didn’t know what to do, as I say, but at a venture I made a wild vague movement in consequence of which I found myself at the door. I remember standing there and saying, ‘It wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do!’—saying it pensively, awkwardly, grotesquely.… The next thing I remember is that I was downstairs and out of the house.” ’
Devlan, once more in control of himself, took back the book, and holding it in his lap to consult now and then, said: ‘I have so wanted to make a point, Karl, to you and to everyone. This is what we struggle for when we write.’ And he told of the young American’s return next day with the tentative thought that he might indeed wed the spinster in order to obtain the precious letters. Skipping through the tense, beautifully written pages, he read aloud, in a voice trembling with emotion, the telling passage:
‘ “She stood in the middle of the room with a face of mildness, and her look of forgiveness, of absolution, made her angelic. It beautified her; she was younger; she was not a ridiculous old woman … this magic of her spirit transfigured her, and while I still noted it I heard a whisper somewhere in the depths of my conscience: ‘Why not, after all—why not?’ It seemed to me I could pay the price.” ’
Looking away from the book, he said with a powerful sense of self-identification: ‘So he decides that he can marry her. The letters are worth it. And now, Karl, I want you to see with what exquisite skill James ends his story.’ And he resumed reading:
‘ “Are you going today?” she asked. “But it doesn’t matter, for wherever you go I shall not see you again. I don’t want to.” …
‘ “What shall you do—where shall you go?” I asked.
‘ “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve done the great thing. I’ve destroyed the papers.”
‘ “Destroyed them?” I wailed.
‘ “Yes; what was I to keep them for? I burnt them last night, one by one, in the kitchen.”
‘ “One by one?” I coldly echoed it.
‘ “It took a long time—there were so many.” The room seemed to go round me as she said this and a real darkness for a moment descended on my eyes. When it passed, Miss Tina … said: “I can’t stay with you longer, I can’t,” and … she turned her back upon me, as I had turned mine upon her twenty-four hours before.…
‘I wrote her that I had sold the picture, but I admitted to Mrs Prest … that it hangs above my writing table. When I look at it I can scarcely bear my loss—I mean of the precious papers.’
Devlan closed the book gently, but with such finality, as if a decision of great moment had been reached, one that tore at his heart, the way Miss Tina’s heart must have been wounded when the young man fled in horror from her proposal of marriage, that I had to ask: ‘Devlan, what is it?’
‘The end of the story.’
‘But why did you read it? What does it signify?’
‘I wanted to remind you, Karl, that the ending of Aspern is what we seek when we write. To fill a throbbing moment with revelation, with meaning, human passion.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because your second book of criticism was shockingly mechanical. It had none of the flashes of insight that the first book had. You praised only works of competent organization and the marshaling of ideas, never those that are sharply perceptive or lay bare the seeds of passion.’ Before I could interrupt, he walked away, then looked back like a playful leprechaun: ‘You can accuse us Irish of many faults, but never a lack of passion. A wind off the sea, it can drive a homebound man crazy, or the memory of a beautiful child lost on the edge of a moor.’
‘Devlan!’ I said harshly, ‘you didn’t bring me to this olive grove to lecture me on Irish sensibilities. What is it, dear friend?’
Taken aback by the directness of my question, Devlan tried to form a reply, failed, and reached out curiously with his right hand as if to grab a pillar for support. While he continued to mouth unspoken words, he looked at me so pathetically that I cried: ‘Michael! Are you having an attack?’
Shaking his head, he whispered as he sought a wayside stone on which to sit: ‘I am indeed having an attack, my dearest friend, an attack of the worst sorrow a man can know.’
‘What is it?’ The fearful question betrayed the intense love I felt for one who had unlocked both my mind and my heart.
Suddenly Devlan, fifty-one years old that summer, looked up as if stricken, and said: ‘The great pain assailed me before I ever left Oxford, for I realized that I was coming to Greece to say farewell to the most precious thing in my life … to the one who gave me new vitality … and inspiration.’
‘Michael!’ Never before had I used Devlan’s third name, and now I had spoken it twice within the minute.
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Neither of us spoke for some moments, then Devlan reached out and drew me down onto the rock beside him. Pushing the hair back from my forehead, he said: ‘Dearest friend, we must no longer see each other in Greece during the summer, when olives are ripe and ouzo flows. A terrible thing has happened that brings an end to Aeschylus under the stars.’
‘What?’ My voice was dry.
‘A young man, as brilliant at Oxford as you were at Columbia, went at my urging for a year at Harvard. While there he excelled, of course, for I have always been able to spot true talent, you remember. But he also fell carelessly into contact with an assistant professor on leave from California—his teacher … you know how those things can happen.’
‘And?’
‘The Californian had the new disease, he had AIDS.’
‘And?’
‘He gave it to my prize scholar. We’d never heard of a case at Oxford, but here it was. The doctors were positive, experts came distances to study his condition.’
‘Did he die?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were so attached to him that you were desolate … still are?’
‘I was, but no longer. While he knew damned well that he was afflicted, he continued to live with me on long weekends, and it was not until four days before he died that he told me.’
‘And you …’ I could not frame the words.
‘Yes. The same great experts tried to track down everyone Peter might have contaminated. Karl, there were nearly a dozen, proof positive that he had been with them. When they found me, through reports of his landlady and two of the young men to whom he had mentioned my name …’ He winced: ‘I believe he told shameful jokes about me.’ He shrugged: ‘Well, these great experts who had proved to their satisfaction what had killed Peter looked at me with scorn and loathing. My age, my reputation, but most of all my position teaching the young. I think they were pleased to find me infected. And to inform me—a group of three staring at me with repugnance—that I would probably soon be dead, and for God’s sake infect no one further in this daisy chain, as they termed it.…’
We two scholars, there in the countryside of Greece, sat silent among the olive trees watching peasants tilling a distant field. Then Devlan asked: ‘Didn’t you think it strange, Karl, that I was reserved when we met?’
‘Yes.’
‘When I saw you, my heart shattered. Finest student I ever had, England or America, my dearest companion, and I must never lie with him, for if I did, I would bring him certain death.’
‘And you? What timetable?’
‘Who knows? You must have noticed that I’ve lost weight. They tell me it’ll go down, down, until the day when I’ll look my very best, what I ought to weigh. However, that’s the critical point, because I’ll keep going down until I grow so weak that even a bad cold could be so perilous that it could sweep me away. And if it doesn’t, something else …’
‘Oh, my God!’ I whispered.
‘And that’s why this has to be our farewell summer. I won’t be able to travel next year, and when I think of the cruel thing Peter did to me, I could not conceivably do it to someone else—above all, not to you.’
‘I want to go back to our hotel, Michael. To where we knew such happiness. I want to take you to some play that will be as profound an experience as Agamemnon was, to see those silver temples once more in the moonlight. But most of all, I want to talk with you. I’ve always valued your advice so, and now I need you to help me find out what’s wrong with the novel I’m trying to write. You’re a precious man, Michael, and I cannot let you go before you’ve shared more of your secrets.’
When we reached our hotel, Devlan slept for two days, for although travel had been relatively easy, he was exhausted, debilitated by his nagging illness. He was afraid to consult a doctor lest he be deported from Greece as a health hazard, a decision he said he would approve were he a Greek official; but with rest he did recover almost normal strength and was eager for the regimen I proposed. We took short trips out into the countryside and enjoyed picnics on historic sites six days out of seven. A Greek company was performing Antigone, which gave me an opportunity to compare Aeschylus and Sophocles. Having seen the monumental greatness of the former, I was at first disappointed in Sophocles, but as the torment of Antigone intensified under her uncle Creon’s persecution the multiple glories of the Greek stage became manifest: the variety, the sweep, the power, and always the magnificence of the language. It was enormously moving—and a humbling experience for anyone presuming to create a world of the imagination, as I was.
My novel had not been going well, a disappointment I discussed with Devlan when the commanding preoccupation with death had receded: ‘I didn’t want to tell you sooner—didn’t think it proper to bother you, but that novel I spoke about last summer, it’s not doing what I’d hoped. I have such a clear vision of the end, but only a muddy concept of how to get there.’ Before Devlan could respond, I added: ‘Oh, I’ve got the characters—rather good ones, I must say—but how to present them and allow them to disclose their purposes seems quite beyond my powers. What to do?’
‘When we last spoke you were undecided on the main thrust. Is that settled?’
‘I’ve had in mind an American equivalent of Marius the Epicurean. I’ve wanted to do for contemporary America what Pater did for the age of Marcus Aurelius.’
‘Isn’t Pater a bit ethereal for raw American tastes?’
‘In the original, yes, and in the Roman setting, but I’m placing mine in a big private university in New York City, something like N.Y.U., not Columbia. It gives me a fine setting, Edith Wharton’s Washington Square, and some very real professors of strong character.’
‘Got a title?’
‘Working title, The Empty Cistern, basically your idea that popular art inevitably sinks to the lowest common denominator, leaving an empty cistern from which society tries in vain to draw its life-sustaining water. And a very strong support for your idea that the novel must become a dialogue between peers. My heroine could be Virginia Woolf, one of my principal movers Thomas Pynchon. But all very American, very contemporary.’
After contemplating what I had said, Devlan mused out loud: ‘The basic image, not bad at all. Ideas that need to be ventilated. Yes, yes. But how do you objectify abstractions? Very dangerous terrain. One in a thousand is able to do it, and failures invariably read like Charles Morgan’s The Fountain, impressive at first for their tenuous gentility, but in the end quite boring. The Irish had the right idea, even Bernard Shaw. Not lords and ladies but men and women who had to work for a living. I’d be more at ease, Karl, if it weren’t N.Y.U. professors but farmers and small tradesmen in your own Dutch background, that splendid country you showed me on our two trips inland from New York.’
‘Lukas Yoder has preempted my Dutch heritage. Writes his silly, empty books glorifying the Mennonites, offering hardly one word of truth about them. I’m very tired of that fellow but I’m afraid to show it at home lest I be accused of envy—that he’s done it and I haven’t.’
‘Are you envious?’
‘Of his success, yes. Of how he earned it, no—no. He’s an empty windbag, and besides, you and I are talking about the elite, those capable of sustaining the life-giving dialogue.’
‘I’d correct that, Karl. We’re thinking about the elite, but we’re writing about ordinary people whose native intelligence makes them the elite. There’s a vast difference, which the best of the Irish playwrights always understood.’
We spent days dissecting my proposed novel—I did not confess that it was three-fourths finished and not at all what I had hoped for—and Devlan returned constantly to his warning to all would-be novelists: ‘Get the characters lined up first, and make them real. Then have them move through the intricacies of plot and idea. Allow people to uncover the great truths upon which fiction rests, and from what you’ve been telling me, Karl, you’re not doing that. You’re putting your ideas, your message, first.’
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After I had done my best to reassure him, as if I were again his student, he said: ‘I’m not entirely secure about you, as a very fine critic, trying to write a novel. Requirements for the two tasks are quite different, you know, maybe incompatible.’
I argued back, as if defending my thesis before a doctoral panel: ‘What about the two men you so frequently cite? Forster and James? Excellent novelists and quite acceptable critics, don’t you agree?’
‘Ah, but what a significant difference! Each of them proved first that he was a damned good novelist, then reflected later in life on what had made him good. Highly personal criticism, not at all the kind that I desire to specialize in. Quite unformed and undisciplined, really. Little more than ruminations beside a tankard of ale toward midnight.’
Devlan suggested many devices whereby my Pater-like novel could be made acceptable, if indeed it had gotten off the track, which he suspected mine had. But everything he said had greater relevance to my literary criticism than to my novel. In other words, Devlan the critic could speak directly to me the critic, but he was powerless to communicate with me the novelist or perhaps I was unable to listen. And after our last prolonged talk I heard him muttering to himself: ‘I’m afraid he won’t make it. Didn’t take in a word I said.’
One night after Devlan’s revelations about AIDS, he had said as we ascended to our hotel room: ‘I could take another room, you know, if you have fears.’
‘Oh, Michael! I think God must have sent me here to care for you. I had thought there for a while, that I should miss Greece this year. Stay home and polish off my novel. But something dragged me, some arcane force that I didn’t fully understand. Now I do.’ When we reached our room I cried impulsively: ‘Michael, always remember that you found me a green boy in New York and by force of your personality and wisdom alone you converted me into a man in Athens. American Fiction is your book, as transcribed by a dutiful amanuensis.’ After we had unpacked our traveling gear, never to be used again in companionship, I said: ‘If you were to quit this room tonight, my heart would cry out with anguish,’ and the subject was not mentioned again.