book.'
'I could help you.'
'I don't want you to help me.' She raised her head and looked at me: her gaze hit me hard and sweet as a shot of morphine.
Till get down on my knees if you want me to,' I said. 'Really, I will.'
She closed her eyes, dark-lidded, dark shadows beneath them; she really was older, not the glancing-eyed girl I had fallen in love with but no less beautiful for that; beautiful now in a way that less excited my senses than tore at my very heart.
'I can't marry you,' she said.
'Why not?'
I thought she was going to say, Because I don't love you, which probably would have been more or less the truth, but instead, to my surprise, she said: 'Because I love Henry.'
'Henry's dead.'
'I can't help it. I still love him.'
'I loved him, too,' I said.
For just a moment, I thought I felt her waver. But then she looked away.
'I know you did,' she said. 'But it's not enough.'
The rain stayed with me all the way back to California. An abrupt departure, I knew, would be too much; if I was to leave the East at all, I could do so only gradually and so I rented a car, and drove and drove until finally the landscape changed, and I was in the Midwest, and the rain was all I had left of Camilla's goodbye kiss. Raindrops on the windshield, radio stations fading in and out. Cornfields bleak in all those gray, wide-open reaches. I had said goodbye to her once before, but it took everything I had to say goodbye to her then, again, for the last time, like poor Orpheus turning for a last backwards glance at the ghost of his only love and in the same heartbeat losing her forever: hinc iliac lacrimae, hence those tears.
I suppose nothing remains now but to tell you what happened, as far as I know, to the rest of the players in our story.
Cloke Rayburn, amazingly, ended up going to law school. He is now an associate in mergers and acquisitions at Milbank Tweed in New York, where, interestingly, Hugh Corcoran was just made partner. Word is Hugh got him the job. This might or might not be true, but I tend to think it is, as Cloke almost certainly did not distinguish himself wherever it was that he happened to matriculate. He lives not far from Francis and Priscilla, on Lexington and Eighty-first (Francis, by the way, is supposed to have an incredible apartment; Priscilla's dad, who's in real estate, gave it to them for a wedding present) and Francis, who still has trouble sleeping, says he runs into him every now and then in the wee hours of the morning at the Korean deli where they both buy their cigarettes.
Judy Poovey is now something of a minor celebrity. A certified Aerobics instructor, she appears regularly – with a bevy of other muscle-toned beauties – on an exercise program, 'Power Moves!' on cable TV.
After school, Frank and Jud went in together and bought the Farmer's Inn, which has become the preferred Hampden hangout. Supposedly they're doing a great business. They have a lot of old Hampdenians working for them, including Jack Teitelbaum and Rooney Wynne, according to a feature article not long ago in the alumni magazine.
Somebody told me that Bram Guernsey was in the Green Berets, though I tend to think this is untrue.
Georges Laforgue is still on the Literature and Languages faculty at Hampden, where his enemies have still not managed to supplant him.
Dr Roland is retired from active teaching. He lives in Hampden town, and has published a book of photographs of the college through the years, which has made him much sought-after as an after-dinner speaker at the various clubs in town. He was almost the cause of my not being admitted to graduate school by writing me a recommendation which – though it was a glowing one repeatedly referred to me as 'Jerry.'
The feral cat that Charles found turned out, surprisingly, to be a rather good pet. He took up with Francis's cousin Mildred over the summer and in the fall made the move with her to Boston, where he now lives, quite contentedly, in a ten-room apartment on Exeter Street under the name of Princess.'
Marion is married now, to Brady Corcoran. They live in Tarrytown, New York – an easy commute for Brady into the city – and the two of them have a baby now, a girl. She has the distinction of being the first female born into the Corcoran clan for no one even knows how many generations. According to Francis, Mr Corcoran is absolutely wild about her, to the exclusion of all his other children, grandchildren, and pets. She was christened Mary Katherine, a name which has fallen more and more into disuse, as – for reasons best known to themselves – the Corcorans have chosen to give her the nickname 'Bunny.'
Sophie I hear from now and again. She injured her leg and was out of commission with the dance company for a while, but recently she was given a big role in a new piece. We go out to dinner sometimes. Mostly when she calls it's late at night, and she wants to talk about her boyfriend problems. I like Sophie. I guess you could say she's my best friend here. But somehow I never really forgave her for making me move back to this godforsaken place.
I have not laid eyes on Julian since that last afternoon with Henry, in his office. Francis – with extraordinary difficulty managed to get in touch with him a couple of days before Henry's funeral. He said that Julian greeted him cordially; listened politely to the news of Henry's demise; then said: 'I appreciate it, Francis.
But I'm afraid there's really nothing more that I can do.'
About a year ago Francis repeated to me a rumor – which we subsequently found was complete romance – that Julian had been appointed royal tutor to the little crown prince of Suaoriland, somewhere in East Africa. But this story, though false, took on a curious life in my imagination. What better fate for Julian than someday being the power behind the Suaori throne, than transforming his pupil into a philosopher-king? (The prince in the fiction was only eight.1 wonder what I should be now if Julian had got hold of me when I was only eight years old.) 1 like to think that maybe he – as Aristotle did – would bring up a man who would conquer the world.
But then, as Francis said, maybe not.
I don't know what happened to Agent Davenport – I expect he's still living in Nashua, New Hampshire – but Detective Sciola is dead. He died of lung cancer maybe three years ago. I discovered this from a public service announcement that I saw late one night on television. It shows Sciola standing, gaunt and Dantesque, against a black backdrop. 'By the time you see this announcement,' he says, 'I will be dead.' He goes on to say that it wasn't a career in law enforcement that killed him but two packs of cigarettes a day. I saw this at about three o'clock in the morning, alone in my apartment, on a black-and-white set with lots of interference. White noise and snow. He seemed to be speaking directly at me, right out of the television set. For a moment I was disoriented, seized by panic; could a ghost embody itself through wavelengths, electronic dots, a picture tube? What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?
That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of hxis on the Iliad., when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…
Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.
I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.
I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors. There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below.
I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon.
History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.
