27 August, 1924 1 страница

For various reasons the Carson School is now no longer the school it was, and it has a new name. Carson was a boys' school, old-fashioned and quirky and sometimes so stern it could turn your bowels to ice water. Later we who had been students there understood that all of the rather menacing discipline was meant to disguise the fact that Carson was at best second-rate. Only a school of that kind would have hired Laker Broome as headmaster; perhaps only a third-rate school would have kept him.

Years ago, when John Kennedy was still a senator from Massachusetts and Steve McQueen was Josh Randall on television and McDonald's had sold only two million hamburgers and narrow ties and tab collars were coming in for the first time, Carson was Spartan and tweedy and a bit desperate and selfconscious about its status; now it is a place where rich boys and girls go if they have trouble in the public schools. Tuition was seven hundred and fifty dollars a year; now it is just under four thousand.

It has even changed sites. When I was there with Tom Flanagan and Del Nightingale and the others, the school was chiefly situated in an old Gothic mansion on the top of a hill, to which had been added a modern wing-steel beams and big plates of glass. The old section of the school somehow shrank the modern addition, subsumed it into itself, and all of it looked cold and haunting.

This original building, along with the vast old gymnasium (the field house) behind it, was built mainly of wood. Parts of the original building — the headmaster's office, the library, the corridors and staircases — resembled the Garrick Club. Old wood polished and gleaming, oak bookshelves and handrails, beautiful slippery wooden floors. This part of the school always seduced prospective parents, who had the closet anglophilia of their class. Some of the rooms were jewel-box tiny, with mullioned windows, paneled walls, and ugly radiators that gave off little heat. If Carson had been the manor house some of its aspects suggested, it would have been not only haunting but also haunted.

Once every two or three years when I go back and drive past the school's new Quantum Hills site, I see a long neo-Georgian facade of reddish brick, long green lawns, and a soccer field far off — all of it fresh green and warm brick, so like a campus, so generalized that it seems a mirage. This cozy imitation of a university seems distant, remote, sealed within its illusions about itself. I know looking at it that the lives of its students are less driven than ours were, softer. Is there, I wonder, a voice still in the school which whispers: I am your salvation, squirt: I am the way, the truth, and the light?

I am your salvation — the sound of evil, of that flabby jealous devil of the second-rate, proclaiming itself.

Registration Day: 1958

A dark corridor, a staircase with an abrupt line of light bisecting it at one end, desks with candles dripping wax into saucers lined along a wall. A fuse had blown or a wire had died, and the janitor did not come until the next morning, when the rest of the school registered. Twenty new freshmen milled directionlessly in the long corridor, even the exceptionally suntanned faces looking pale and frightened in the candlelight.

'Welcome to the school, ' one of the four or five teachers present joked. They stood in a group at the entrance to the even darker corridor which led to the administration offices. 'It isn't always this inefficient. Sometimes it's a lot worse. '

Some of the boys laughed — they were new only to the Upper School, and had been at Carson, down the street in the mansard-roofed Junior School, all their lives.

'We can begin in a moment, ' another, older teacher said flatly, cutting off the meek laughter. He was taller than the others, with a narrow head and a pursy snapping turtle's face moored by a long nose. His rimless spectacles shone as he whipped his narrow head back and forth in the murk to see who had laughed. He wore the center-parted curling hair of a caricatured eighteen-nineties bartender. 'Some of you boys are going to have to discover that the fun and games are over. This isn't the Junior School anymore. You're at the bottom of the pile now, you're the lowest of the low, but you'll be expected to act like men. Got that? '

None of the boys responded, and he gave a high-pitched whinnying snort down his long nose. This was obviously the characteristic sound of his anger. 'Got that? Don't you donkeys have ears? '

'Yes, sir. '

'That was you, Flanagan? ' '.

'Yes, sir. ' The speaker was a wiry-looking boy whose red-blond hair was combed in the 'Princeton' manner, flat and loose over the skull. In the moving dim light from the candles, his face was attentive and friendly.

'You coming out for JV football this fall? '

'Yes, sir. '

All the new boys felt a fresh nervousness.

'Good. End? '

'Yes, sir. '

'Good. If you grow a foot, you'll be varsity material in two years. We could use a good end. ' The teacher coughed into his hand, looked behind him down the black administration corridor, and grimaced. 'I should explain. This incredible. . . situation has come about because School Secretary can't find her key to this door. ' He banged a heavy arched wooden door behind him with his knuckles. 'Tony could open it if he were here, but he doesn't report until tomorrow. Be that as it may. We can all function by candlelight, I suppose. ' He surveyed us as if it were a challenge, and I noticed that his head was as narrow as the side of a plank. His eyes were so close together they all but touched.

'By the way, you'll all be on the junior-varsity football team, ' he said. 'This is a small class-twenty. One of the smallest in the whole school. We need all of you out on the gridiron. Not all of you will make it through this. . . crucial year, but we have to try to make football players out of you somehow. '

Some of the other teachers began to look restive, but he ignored them. 'Now, I know some of you boys from the good work you did with Coach Ellinghausen in the eighth grade, but some of you are new. You. ' He pointed at a tall fat boy near me. 'Your name. '

'Dave Brick. '

'Dave Brick, what? '

'Sir. '

'You look like a center to me. '

Brick showed consternation, but nodded his head.

'You. ' He pointed at a small olive-skinned boy with dark liquid eyes.

The boy squeaked.

'Name. '

'Nightingale, sir. '

'We'll have to put some meat on you, won't we, Nightingale? '

Nightingale nodded, and I could see his legs trembling in his trousers.

'Speak in sentences, boy. Yes, sir. That is a sentence. A nod is not a sentence. '

'Yes, sir. '

'Tackle? '

'I guess so, sir. '

The teacher snorted, surveyed us all again. The waxy smell from the candles was beginning to build up, hot and greasy, in the corridor. Suddenly he snaked out one thick hand and grabbed Dave Brick's hair, which was combed into two small curling waves meeting in the center of his forehead. 'Brick! Cut that disgusting hair! Or I'll do it for you! '

Brick quailed and jerked back his head. His throat convulsed, and I thought he was choking back vomit.

The narrow-faced man snapped his hand back and wiped it on his baggy trousers. 'School Secretary is sorting out some papers you will need, forms for you to fill out and things like that, but since we. . . seem to have some time, I'll introduce you to the masters who are here today. I am Mr. Ridpath. My subject is world history. I am also the football coach. I will not have any of you in class for two years, but I will see you on the field. Now. ' He took a step to the side and turned so that his face was in darkness. Oily tendrils of hair above his ears shone in the candlelight. 'These men are most of the masters you'll have this year. You will have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Thorpe, your Latin master, the day after tomorrow. Latin is a compulsory subject. Like football. Like English. Like Mathematics. Mr. Thorpe is as tough as I am. He is a great teacher. He was a pilot in World War One. It is an honor to be in Mr. Thorpe's Latin I. Now, here is Mr. Weatherbee — he will be your Mathematics I teacher, and he is your form tutor. You can go to him with your problems. He comes to us from Harvard, so he probably won't listen to them. '

A small man with horn-rimmed glasses and a rumpled jacket over shoulders set in a permanent slouch lifted his head and grinned at us.

'Next to Mr. Weatherbee is Mr. Fitz-Hallan. He teaches English. Amherst. ' A rather languid-looking man with a handsome boyish face lifted a hand in a half-wave. He had made the joke about efficiency, and he looked bored enough to fall asleep standing up.

'Mr. Whipple, American history. ' This was a rotund, bald, cherub-faced man in a stained blazer to which the school crest had been affixed with a safety pin. He put his hands together and shook them before his face. 'University of New Hampshire. '

Mr. Ridpath glanced back down the black corridor now to his left, where a single dim light wavered behind flat glass. 'See if you can help her, hey? ' Whipple/New Hampshire padded off into the dark. 'We'll have those papers in a minute. Okay. Talk among yourselves. '

Of course none of us did, but just jittered in the dark corridor until Mr. Ridpath thought of something else to say. 'Where are the two scholarship boys? Let's see some hands. '

Chip Hogan and I raised our hands. Chip was already standing with Tom Flanagan and the others from the Junior School. Everybody looked curiously at the two of us. Compared to us, all the others, even Dave Brick, looked rich.

'Good. Good. Call out your names. '

We did.

'You're the Hogan who ran seventy-five yards last year in the eighth-grade championship against St. Matthew's? '

'Yeah, ' Hogan said, but Mr. Ridpath did not seem to mind.

'You two boys know the great opportunity you're getting? '

We said 'Yes, sir' in unison.

'All of you new boys? '

There was a general sibilant mutter.

'You'll have to work, you know. Work like you never have in your lives. We'll make you break your backs, and then we'll expect you to play harder than you ever have in your lives. And we'll make men out of you. Carson men. And that's something to be proud of. ' He looked around scornfully. 'I don't think some of you are gonna cut the mustard. Wait till Mr. Thorpe gets his hands on you. '

A large old woman in a brown cardigan shuffled out of the corridor, followed by Mr. Whipple, who carried a flashlight. She too wore rimless glasses, and toted a large bundle of papers sorted so that they were stacked crosswise, in different sections. 'Behind the duplicator, wouldn't you know? Frenchy never washes his cups, either. He couldn't put these on the counter like anyone else. ' While she spoke, she dumped the stack of papers on the first desk. 'Help me distribute these — different piles on different desks. '

The knot of teachers dissolved, each of the men picking up a separate stack of papers and moving to a different desk. Mr. Ridpath announced, 'Mrs. Olinger, school secretary, ' in a parade-ground voice, and the old woman nodded, snatched her flashlight back from Mr. Whipple, and marched up the stairs into the light.

'Single file, ' Ridpath ordered, and we clumsily jostled into each line and went down the desks, picking up sheets from each.

A boy behind me mumbled something, and Mr. Ridpath bellowed, 'No pencil? No pencil? First day of school and you don't have a pencil? What's your name again, boy? '

'Nightingale, sir. '

'Nightingale, ' Ridpath said scornfully. 'Where are you from, anyway? What sort of school did you go to before you came here? '

'This sort of school, sir, ' came Nightingale's girlish voice.

'What? '

'Andover, sir. I was at Andover last year. '

'I'll loan him a pen, sir, ' said Tom Flanagan, and we passed down the line of desks without any more bellowing. At the far end of the corridor, we stood and waited in the darkness to be told what to do.

'Upstairs, single line, library, ' Ridpath said wearily.

We went, like Mrs. Olinger, up the stairs into sunlight, which fell and sparkled through the mullioned glass set beside the high, thick scarred front door. The light was already dim and gray up here, but across the hall was the library, which had rows of big windows set between bookshelves on either side. If the library had not been so naturally dark, it would have shone. Cordovan-colored wood and unjacketed spines of books blotted up the available light, and on normal schooldays the big chandeliers overhead burned whenever the library was in use. Without this light, the library was oddly tenebrous.

Two rows of long flat desks, also of the cordovan-colored wood, filled the center of the front main section of the room, and we took our papers to them. Across the room ahead of us was a waist-high shelf of reference books behind which sat the librarian's desk and file cabinets in a kind of well with clear sight lines to all the tables. Mrs. Olinger watched us file into the library and take our seats, standing beside a thin woman with tightly penned white hair and gold-rimmed glasses. She wore a black dress and a strand of pearls. The teachers came in last and sat all at one table behind us. They immediately began to mutter to each other.

'Masters? ' Mrs. Olinger queried, and the teachers quietened. One of them drummed a pencil in a triplet pattern, and continued to do so as long as we were in the library.

'This is Mrs. Tute, ' said Mrs. Olinger, and the thin woman wearing the pearls gave a nervous nod like a tremor of the head. 'Mrs. Tute is our librarian, and this is her domain. She will be present while you fill out the registration forms and digest some of the information on the other sheets, after which she will provide you with an orientation to the library. If you have any questions, raise your hand and one of the masters will help you. '

The pencil continued to rattle against the master's table.

When I had finished, I looked up and saw one or two other boys gazing idly around the murky room. Most of the others were still writing. Dave Brick's two curls had fallen over his forehead, and he looked red and sweaty and confused. He held up a hand, and Mr. Fitz-Hallan slowly lounged up toward his table.

'He's cool, ' Bob Sherman whispered to me, and both of us watched Fitz-Hallan idly lean over Brick's paper, hands thrust in his pockets holding out at an elegant angle the bottom of his well-cut jacket. Fitz-Hallan was a stylish figure whose elegance seemed so deeply ingrained as to be unconscious, but it was not merely that to which Sherman had referred. He was one of the younger teachers, perhaps not quite thirty, and even his languor was youthful: it seemed detached and kindly at the same time, and separated him from the other teachers as surely as we were separated from them. Fitz-Hallan straightened up, strolled to the librarian's desk, and returned with a ballpoint pen. This he presented to Brick with an abrupt gesture which somehow conveyed both sympathy and amusement. The perfection of this little charade mysteriously contained in it the information that Fitz-Hallan had once been a student at the school, and that he was a kind of living exhibit, a model of what we should try to become.

And that is the first of the three images I retain from the school, less remarkable than the two which followed but which in its way also led inexorably to all that happened. With hindsight I can see that here too was betrayal, delicately implied by the teacher's elegant clothing and manner, his amused sympathy: the way he thrust a cheap ballpoint pen toward sweaty, doomed Dave Brick. We were so raw that we could be seduced by civility.

The half-dozen other sheets before the boys contained mimeographed data. The words to the school song (Arise and sing the praises/Of the school upon the hill) and the fight song (Green and gold, gold and green! ), the school motto, Alis volat propriis. A translation thoughtfully followed: He flies by his own wings. 'He' may have been B. Thurman Banter, who had founded the school's first incarnation, the Lodestar Academy, in 1901; Carson began flying under its present name in 1914, under the headmastership of Thomas A. Rowan. 'Of Irish extraction and English birth, ' read the sheet. There followed a list of all headmasters from Rowan to the present, ending with Laker Broome; a list of present faculty, some thirty names, of which the last, Alexander Weatherbee, had been added in ink; the number of books in the library, twenty thousand; of pupils in the Upper School, one hundred and twelve; of football fields and baseball diamonds, two. Another sheet gave the names of all the boys in the senior class, with stars by the names of the prefects. A commotion at the back of the library made me turn suddenly about. Mr. Ridpath was on his feet behind one of the tables, shouting, 'What? What? ' His narrow face flamed. With his left hand he gripped Nightingale's collar; with his right he groped beneath the table, trying to capture something which panicked Nightingale was attempting to pass to his table-partner, Tom Flanagan. Both boys looked frightened, Flanagan slightly less so than Nightingale. Mr. Ridpath's question had deteriorated into a series of animal grunts. When his right hand closed over the infuriating object, he withdrew it and held It up, giving his high-pitched snort. It was a pack of Bicycle playing cards. 'Cards? Cards? ' The flap of the box was still open, suggesting that the cards within had been replaced only a moment before. The three other teachers seated behind Mr. Ridpath looked as startled as the boys, all of whom had by now turned around on their seats. Mr. Ridpath snorted down his nose again. His face was still very red. 'Who brought these here? Whose are they? Talk! '

'Mine, ' Nightingale uttered. He looked like a drowning mouse in Ridpath's grip.

'Well, I'm. . . ' The teacher jerked harder on the boy's collar and looked around the room in angry disbelief. 'I can't understand this. You. Flanagan. Explain. '

'He was going to show me a new card trick, sir. '

'A. New. Card. Trick. ' He tightened his grip on the mouse's collar, twisting it so that Nightingale's necktie slid up toward his ear. 'A new card trick. ' Then he released both the Bicycle cards and the boy. When the pack struck the table, he slammed his hand down over it. 'I'll dispose of these. Mrs. Olinger? '

She strode down between the tables, Ridpath lifted his hand, she walked back up to her desk. The metal wastebasket rang. She had never even glanced at the deck.

'You jokers, ' Mr. Ridpath said. 'First day. You get away with it this time. ' He was leaning on the table, glaring at each boy in turn. 'But no more. This is the last time we see cards in any room in this school. Hear me? ' Nightingale and Flanagan nodded. 'Jokers. You'd better stop wasting your time and start memorizing what's on those sheets. You'll need to know it, or you'll be doing card tricks, all right. ' He had one final threat. 'Your Upper School career is getting off to a bad start, Flanagan. ' He returned to the teacher's table and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

'Pass the registration forms to the ends of your rows, boys, ' said Mr. Fitz-Hallan. I saw that little olive-skinned Nightingale's face was gray with shock.

A few minutes later we were snaking down the dark hall toward a small wooden staircase, on our way to our first glimpse of Laker Broome. The headmaster's office was at the bottom of the original manor, at the heart of the old building. Mrs. Olinger went before, illuminating her way down the black staircase with her big flashlight. She was mumbling to herself. The other teachers followed her, followed in turn by Mr. Whipple with a wavering candle for the boys' benefit. Whipple's candle was momentarily paled by the light from a window in a door on a small square landing. The light endured until another right-angled bend in the staircase, and after that we followed Whipple's bobbing candle down into an antechamber.

Not a true antechamber, it was formed by the end of the black corridor housing the school offices, from which Mrs. Olinger had first appeared. At that end, a curved wooden arch created the illusion that we were in a room. An oriental carpet lay on the floor. An antique table held a library lamp and a Persian bowl. Opposite the arch was a vast wooden door like the entrance to a medieval church, cross-braced with long iron flanges.

We stood silent in the flickering light of the candle. Mr. Fitz-Hallan knocked once at the big door. Mrs. Olinger said, 'Farewell, boys, ' and took off down the corridor with her characteristic air of irritated urgency, lighting her way with the flashlight. Fitz-Hallan swung open the door, and we jostled into Mr. Broome's office.

Sudden brightness and the smell of wax: on every surface sat at least two candles. The sense of being in a church was much stronger. The headmaster sat behind his desk, his coat off and his hands laced together behind his head. His elbows were sharply pointed triangular wings. He was smiling. 'Well, ' he said. 'Step forward, boys. Let me get a good look at you. '

When we were ranked in two rough rows before the desk, he lowered his arms and stood up. 'Whatever you do, don't knock over a candle. They're pretty, but dangerous. ' He laughed, a short thin man with gray hair cut down to a bristly cap. Deep grooves beside his mouth cut into the flesh. 'Even when school is not in session, the headmaster must slave away at his desk. This means that you will almost always find me here. My name is Mr. Broome. Don't be shy. If you have a problem you want to discuss with me, just make an appointment with Mrs. Olinger. ' He stepped backward and leaned against a dark wooden bookshelf, his arms crossed over his chest. The headmaster wore horn-rimmed glasses the color of a marmalade cat. His shirt was very crisp. I see now that he was perfect — the 'final detail in his whole paneled, oriental-carpeted, book-filled office, the detail around which the delicate, deliberate, old-fashioned good taste of the office cohered.

'Of course, ' he said, 'it is rather more likely that your visits here will be in the service of a less pleasant function. '

His mouth twitched.

'But that should concern only a small portion of you. Our boys are generally worked pretty hard, and they don't have the time to find trouble. One word of warning. Those who do find it don't last long here. If you want to enjoy the benefits of being a student at this school, work hard, be obedient and respectful, and play hard. Considering the advantages, it is not too much to ask. ' Again, his taut, measured replica of a smile. 'Just what we have the right, not to mention the duty, to ask of you, I should say. It is my intention, it is the school's intention, to leave our mark upon you. Wherever you go in later life, people will be able to say, 'There is a Carson man. ' Well. '

He looked over our heads at the teachers; most of us too swiveled our heads to look back. Mr. Whipple was leafing through the forms we had filled out. Mr. Ridpath stood at a sort of soldierly ease, his feet spread and his hands behind his back. The other two stared at the floor, as if putting themselves at a private distance from the headmaster.

'You have them, Mr. Whipple? Then please bring them here. '

Whipple moved quickly around us to the desk and laid the pile of forms immediately before the headmaster's leather chair. 'The two on top, sir, ' he muttered, and vanished backward..

'Ah? Yes, I see. ' He uncoiled, the frames of his glasses glowed red for a moment as he passed before a stand of candles, and he lifted the top two forms. 'Messrs. Nightingale and Sherman will stay behind a moment. The rest of you may return to the library to pick up your textbooks and schedule cards. Lead them away, Mr. Ridpath. '

Fifteen minutes later Nightingale and Sherman appeared in the door of the library and moved aimlessly toward the now book-covered tables. Sherman's cheekbones were very red.

'Well, ' I whispered to him, 'What'd he say? ' Sherman tried to grin. 'He's a frosty old shit, isn't he? ' We compared our schedule cards before our lockers in the second-floor front corridor of the modern addition, where the inner walls were tall panes of glass looking out onto a gravel-filled court with a single lime tree.

I heard weeks later from Tom Flanagan why Bob Sherman and Del Nightingale had been kept behind by Mr. Broome. Nightingale had not filled in the blanks for parents' names. He had not done so because his parents were dead. Nightingale lived with his godparents, who had just moved from Boston into a house on Sunset Lane, four or five long blocks from the school. Sherman had been dressed down.

New York, August, 1969: Bob Sherman

'Why am I here? ' Sherman asked. 'Can you answer that? What the fuck am I doing here when I could be out on the Island sipping a Coors and looking at the ocean? ' We were in his office, and he was speaking loudly to be heard over the rock music pumping put of the stereo system. The office was a suite of rooms in the old German embassy, and all of the rooms had twelve-foot ceilings decorated with plaster molding. Leather couches sat before his long desk and against the wall. A big green Boston fern beside the Bose speakers looked as though it had just taken a vitamin pill. Records were stacked carelessly on the floor, flattening out the deep pile of the carpet.

'You usually have an answer. Why am I in this shithole? You're here because I'm here, but why am I here? It's just another one of those eternal questions. Do you want to take that record off? I'm sick of it. '

His telephone rang for the sixth time since I had been in his office. He said, 'Christ, ' picked up the phone, and said 'Yeah, ' and motioned me to put the new record on the turntable.

I tuned out and relaxed into the couch. Sherman ranted. He was a very skillful ranter. He had a law degree. Also he had an ulcer, the nerves of a neurotic cat, and what I assumed was the highest income of anyone from our class. In these days his wardrobe was always very studied, and today he wore a tan bush jacket, aviator glasses tinted yellow, and soft knee-high yellow boots. He clamped the phone under his chin, crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the window, and gave me a sour grin.

'I'll tell you something, ' he said when he had put the phone down. 'Fielding should bless his soul that he never decided to go into the music business. And he had more talent than most of these bozos we manage. Is he still trying to get his Ph. D.? '

I nodded. 'This will sound funny, but when you were leaning against the window like that just now, you reminded me of Lake the Snake. '

'Now I really wish I was out on the Island. Lake the Snake. ' He laughed out loud. 'Laker Broome. I better clean up my act. What made you think of that? '

'Just the way you were standing. '

He sat down and put his boots on the long desk. 'That guy should have been locked up. He's not still there, is he? '

'He retired years ago — forced out, really. I wouldn't have worked for him. ' I had just quit the school myself, after three years of teaching English there. 'I never asked you this before, or if I did, I forgot the answer. What did Lake the Snake say to you, that first day? When he kept you and Nightingale in his office. '

'The day we registered? ' He grinned at me. 'I told you, but you forgot, you asshole. That's one of my favorite party bits. Ask me again after dinner on Saturday night, if you're still coming. '

Then I did remember — we had been in his father's 'den' one warm day in late fall, drinking iced tea from tall glasses with Party Time! embossed on their sides. 'I'd come just to hear it, ' I said. I was in New York on my way to Europe, and Sherman and Fielding were the only people there I cared to visit. And Sherman was a good cook whose dinner parties had a bachelor's haphazard lavishness.