Underworld

'The rounded part at the front.'

'You're so eloquent I may have to pause to regain my composure. You've named the lace. What's the flap under the lace?'

'The tongue.'

'Well?'

'I knew the name. I just didn't see the thing.'

He made a show of draping himself across the desk, writhing slightly as if in the midst of some dire distress.

'You didn't see the thing because you don't know how to look. And you don't know how to look because you don't know the names.'

He tilted his chin in high rebuke, mostly theatrical, and withdrew his body from the surface of the desk, dropping his bottom into the swivel chair and looking at me again and then doing a decisive quarter turn and raising his right leg sufficiently so that the foot, the shoe, was posted upright at the edge of the desk.

A plain black everyday clerical shoe.

'Okay,' he said. 'We know about the sole and heel.'

'Yes.'

'And we've identified the tongue and lace.'

'Yes,' I said.

With his finger he traced a strip of leather that went across the top edge of the shoe and dipped down under the lace.

'What is it?' I said.

'You tell me. What is it?'

'I don't know.'

'It's the cuff.'

'The cuff.'

'The cuff. And this stiff section over the heel. That's the counter.'

'That's the counter.'

'And this piece amidships between the cuff and the strip above the sole. That's the quarter.'

'The quarter,' I said.

'And the strip above the sole. That's the welt. Say it, boy.'

'The welt.'

'How everyday things lie hidden. Because we don't know what they're called. What's the frontal area that covers the instep?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know. It's called the vamp.'

'The vamp.'

'Say it.'

'The vamp. The frontal area that covers the instep. I thought I wasn't supposed to memorize.'

'Don't memorize ideas. And don't take us too seriously when we turn up our noses at rote learning. Rote helps build the man. You stick the lace through the what?'

'This I should know.'

'Of course you know. The perforations at either side of, and above, the tongue.'

'I can't think of the word. Eyelet.'

'Maybe I'll let you live after all,'

'The eyelets.'

'Yes. And the metal sheath at each end of the lace.'

He flicked the thing with his middle finger.

'This I don't know in a million years.'

'The aglet.'

'Not in a million years.'

'The tag or aglet.'

'The aglet,' I said.

'And the little metal ring that reinforces the rim of the eyelet through which the aglet passes. We're doing the physics of language, Shay.'

'The little ring.'

'You see it?'

'Yes.'

'This is the grommet,' he said.

'Oh man.'

'The grommet. Learn it, know it and love it.'

'I'm going out of my mind.'

'This is the final arcane knowledge. And when I take my shoe to the shoemaker and he places it on a form to make repairs-a block shaped like a foot. This is called a what?'

'I don't know.'

'A last.'

'My head is breaking apart.'

'Everyday things represent the most overlooked knowledge. These names are vital to your progress. Quotidian things. If they weren't important, we wouldn't use such a gorgeous Latinate word. Say it,' he said.

'Quotidian.'

'An extraordinary word that suggests the depth and reach of the commonplace.'

His white collar hung loose below his adam's apple and the skin at his throat was going slack and ropy and it seemed to be catching him unprepared, old age, coming late but fast.

I put on my jacket.

'I meant to bring along a book for you,' he said.

His hands were still young, though, a soft chalky baby blush. There was a chessboard on a table in a corner, opposing pieces marshaled.

'Come to Upper Red tomorrow and I'll dig it out for you.'

Upper Red was the faculty residence. They named the buildings at Voyageur after local landmarks-lakes, towns, rivers, forests. Not after saints, theologians or Jesuit martyrs. The Jesuits, according to Paulus, had been treated so brusquely in so many places for their attempts to convert and transform, decapitated in Japan, disemboweled in the Horn of Africa, eaten alive in North America, crucified in Siam, drawn and quartered in England, thrown into the ocean off Madagascar, that the founders of our little experimental college thought they'd spare the landscape some of the bloodier emblems of the order's history.

'By the bye, Shay.'

'Yes,' I said.

'Did I see you in that little group yesterday signing a petition in support of Senator McCarthy?'

'I was there, yes, Father.'

'Signing a petition.'

'It seemed okay,' I said.

He nodded, looking past me.

'Do you know why the Senate condemned him?'

'The others were signing,' I said. 'Some of the South Americans,' I said a little desperately, knowing how stupid this sounded but thinking, somehow, this was the way to exonerate myself.

'So you signed. The others were shitting, Father. So I shat.'

He looked past me, nodding reasonably, and I turned and left.

I walked back and forth across the parade in the blowing snow. Then I went to my room and threw off my jacket. I wanted to look up words. I took off my boots and wrung out my cap over the washbasin. I wanted to look up words. I wanted to look up velleity and quotidian and memorize the fuckers for all time, spell them, learn them, pronounce them syllable by syllable-vocalize, phonate, utter the sounds, say the words for all they're worth.