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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

NARRATIVE POINT OF VIEW:

A STUDY IN TECHNIQUE

AND

YOSEMITE: AN ORIGINAL STORY

WRITTEN FROM THREE POINTS OF VIEW

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

English

Ralph James Edsell, III

May, 1982 The Thesis of Ralph James Edsell, III is approved:

Dr. Robert /Reid '

Dr. Arthur Lane

Dr. :,iLictry :u--t Gibson, Chairman i j 'v'

California State University, Northridge

ii l •

For Lary, who helped me on the long, arduous road of learning how to write.

iii p •

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DEDICATION iii

ABSTRACT . v

NARRATIVE POINT OF VIEW: A STUDY IN TECHNIQUE . 1

NOTES 31

BIBLIOGRAPHY . 34

YOSEMITE: AN ORIGINAL STORY WRITTEN FROM THREE POINTS OF VIEW . . . 35

I 35

II . 50

III 84

iv ABSTRACT

NARRATIVE POINT OF VIEW:

A STUDY IN TECHNIQUE

AND

YOSEMITE: AN ORIGINAL STORY

WRITTEN FROM THREE POINTS OF VIEW

Ralph James Edsell, III

Master of Arts in English

The fiction writer's choice of a particular point of view must reflect the needs of the plot. Just as the poet has various forms to work in, so does the prose writer.

For example, just as there are certain thoughts and feelings perhaps better suited for expression in free verse rather than the sonnet, so with prose--each of the different forms of point of view has particular functions it can serve.

In the critical part of my thesis I have examined these functions and illustrated them through a discussion of narrative technique in three modern short stories.

v In the creative part of my thesis I have written a short story from three separate points of view. Set in

Yosemite National Park, the story concerns itself with a man's obsessive love for a woman. Both are teachers in a private secondary school and have gone to Yosemite along with several other teachers and a group of students for a long weekend. The first story is told from the point of view of one of the students, a teenage girl. The second story, rendered through the narrative technique of central intelligence, revolves around the man's point of view. The final version is presented in full omniscience.

vi NARRATIVE POINT OF VIEW:

A STUDY IN TECHNIQUE

The whole intricate question of method, in the craft of fiction, I take ~o be governed by the question of the point of view--the question of the relation in which the narrator stands to the story.l

What a story is about is inextricably related to how it is told. The writer's choice of a particular point of view must reflect the needs of the plot: "the subject dictates 2 the method." Just as with poetry, there are certain thoughts and feelings better suited for expression in free verse, for instance, rather than the sonnet, so_with prose-- each of the different angles of vision: omniscience, first person, central intelligence, and the dramatic mode, has a

"probable range of functions it can perform within its 3 limits."

Considered the most versatile and unrestricted of all the methods, full omniscience allows the author to assume a

"godlike" vantage point in relation to his subject. He can enter the minds of any of his characters at will, free not only to inform the reader of their ideas and emotions, but of his own as well. He has the flexibility to shift back and forth from the mind and outlook of one character to the all-seeing, impersonal, "panoramic" vision, and back again to the limited sight of yet a different character. The

1 2 central characteristic of omniscience is the author's power 4 "to intervene himself between the reader and the story,"

either directly or indirectly. Direct authorial intrusion

(and from here on in, we must keep in mind Booth's distinc tion between the "implied author" and the "real man" 5 ) has been termed appropriately, "editorial omniscience." Here, the author not only reports what goes on in the minds of his characters, he comments on it, analytically and critically.

"Neutral omniscience," however, implies the absence of direct authorial intrusion: the author speaks impersonally in the third person, still "godlike" but seemingly more removed.

Perhaps the greatest danger facing the writer who turns to the omniscient form lies with its very advantages.

Maugham expresses it clearly in the following passage from

The Art of Fiction:

The method makes demands on the author which he cannot always meet. He has to get into the skin of every one of his characters, feel his feelings, think his thoughts; but he has his limitations and he can only do this when there is in himself something of the character he has created. When there isn't, he can only see him from the outside, and then the character lacks the persuasiveness which causes the reader to believe in him.6

In changing from omniscience to first-person narration, the narrator becomes a character within the story itself.

All that the reader now has available to him are the thoughts, perceptions, and feelings of the narrator; anything learned about other characters and events will, for 3 the most part, be shaped and interpreted according to the dictates of the narrator's personality. Of course, dialogue may reveal the thoughts and feelings of other characters, and the narrator may have access to such things as letters and diaries which could provide the reader with further information about other characters, but it is still deliv- ered "second-hand" by the narrator. The reader knows only what the narrator knows, or has chosen to tell. This raises the whole question of reliability. How is the reader to be certain that what the narrator is saying is the truth? In

The Rhetoric of Fiction, Booth distinguishes between the fallible or unreliable narrator who departs from the "norms" of the implied author, and the reliable narrator who "speaks for or acts in accordance with" 7 those norms. An unreliable narrator, Booth explains, either is "mistaken, or he believes himself to have qualities which the author denies . h lm. ..a

When considering first-person narration, the author has three possible types--that of the narrator as "observer," the narrator as "participant," and the "protagonist narrator." The ''I" as observer plays a purely secondary role; his function is to tell the story with a relative degree of objectivity. The "I" as participant, however, has some effect on the course of events in the story, ranging from minor involvement to extensive participation. The "I" as protagonist is centrally involved in the action and, 4 ' . therefore, even more limited to his own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings.

The ''I" as observer and/or participant (these cate- gories may or may not overlap) is effective with stories of mystery and suspense, particularly "if a situation is to be gradually built up and revealed piecemeal." 9 However, if the author desires to trace the growth of a persona~ity as it reacts to and reflects upon experience, the protagonist- narrator can bring an intimacy and involvement to the reader which the omniscient form could not. Yet if, as Lubbock says, "the matter to be represented is the experience of a s1mp' 1 e sou 1 or a d u 11' 1nte' 11' 1gence, "lQ then th e s t ory, unless underscored by irony, will run into problems.

When the author shares the point of view of his narrator without setting up a separate one of his own, when he objectifies his narrator's point of view by looking over his shoulder, so to speak, seeing from the same angle, but seeing ~' he has moved from first-person narration to limited omniscience or "central intelligence." This technique is rendered grammatically in the third person, past tense, with the mental state of the central character usually rendered as if in the first person, present tense, thereby dramatizing his thoughts and feelings as a kind of action. A segment of the dinner scene from Virginia Woolf's

To the Lighthouse, in which the reader has a look inside the thoughts and feelings of Mrs. Ramsay, best illustrates this technique: 5

It partook, she felt, carefully helping Mr. Bankes to a specially tender piece, of eternity; as she had already felt about something different once before that afternoon; there is a coherence in things, a stability, something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out (she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected light) in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spec tral, like a ruby [ ... ] Of such moments, she, thought, the thing is made that endures.lr--

The references to helping Mr. Bankes to a slice of meat and to her glancing out the window are, coupled with the words

I have underscored, comparable to stage directions. The rest of the lines in the passage, rendered primarily in the present tense, are direct representations of Mrs. Ramsay's thought. There is no detached angle of vision "above" her, as in full omniscience, but rather two minds behind her eyes.

Thus, through the technique of central intelligence, the mind of the narrator is seen as the story unfolds, giving the reader a closer, more in-depth look at "some aspects of the 'he' that are difficult or impossible for the 12 'I' to recognize about itself." Taken a step further, central intelligence, sustained and allowed to enter the unconscious mind of the character, becomes the technique known as "stream-of-consciousness." Both techniques can be categorized as limited omniscience; the former remains primarily in the conscious mind of the character (James' The

Ambassadors, for example), whereas the latter drops below the rational, conscious mind into the unconscious (Joyce's

Ulysses) . 6

With the dramatic mode, one finds no visible author, no narrator, and no mental states. Apart from the charac ters' appearances and the setting, which are given to the reader like stage directions, a story rendered in this way

is limited primarily to what the characters do and say.

Never is there a reflective summary of events nor a direct

indication of what a character perceives, thinks, or feels; all of this must be inferred by the reader from the action and dialogue.

The dramatic mode is most effective when used in the

short story, but difficult to sustain throughout a longer work. With the novel, narrative summary is usually neces sary to place the specific scene in a larger context.

Modern writers and critics, beginning with Henry James, developed a fixed attitude against the traditional technique of editorial omniscience, used commonly by eighteenth and nineteenth century writers, such as Trollope, Thackeray, and

Fielding. James and his followers (known as the "New Cri tics") were particularly opposed to authorial intrusions.

This habit, whereby the author sets aside his story and

"drops in for a chat with the reader,••13 according to the

New Critics, destroyed whatever illusion of real experience the author was trying to create and often proved him a hope less moralizer or simply a bore. Their belief eventually evolved into modern critical dogma--a true work of art had 7 to be objective and impersonal. This, in turn, gave birth to the more specific debate between "showing" and "telling," the former being objective detail and immediate scene rendered impersonally, and the latter, subjective narrative summary. The New Critics leaned heavily toward "showing" as an inherently better method, and it wasn't until the publi- cation of Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961) that their technical dogmatism was so thoroughly challenged.

Basically, Booth tried to show that one method is not inherently better than another: narrative intrusions executed skillfully can be dramatic, while even the most "objective" method cannot completely escape authorial influence.

"Telling" may even be rendered more successfully as drama than certain examples of "showing": ·

[ ... ] the quality of being "scenic" suggests very little about literary effect. And compare the delightful summary of twelve years given in two pages of Torn Jones (Book III, chap. i) with the tedious showing of even ten minutes of uncur tailed conversation in the hands of a Sartre when he allows his passion for "durational realism" to dictate a scene when summary is called for.l4

Furthermore, an author cannot turn to general critical classifications or rules concerning point of view to solve the highly individual problems presented by his work:

He simply cannot find answers to his immedi ate, precise, practical problems by referring to statements such as that the "omniscient is the most flexible method," or that "the objective is the most rapid or vivid." Even the soundest of generalizations at this level will be of little use to him in his page-by-page progress through his novel.l5 8

Thus, the majority of the author's choices are ones of 16 "degree, not kind":

To decide that your narrator shall not be omniscient decides practically nothing. The hard question is: Just how inconscient shall he be? Again, to decide on first-person narration settles only a part of one's problems, perhaps the easiest part. What kind of first person? How fully char acterized? How much aware of himself as narrator? How reliable?l7

Booth's challenge to the technical dogmatism of the

New Critics succeeded in substituting "a pluralistic

approach t o th e probl em f or the t h en re1gn1ng. . mon1sm. . "18 A

successful work will transcend the New Critics' abstract criteria, such as the problems posed by the talkative

"intruding" narrator or the debate over showing and telling.

Unfortunately, however, Booth ends his work by setting up abstract criteria of his own! He proposes that novels "fail 19 to the extent that they are morally ambivalent."

In his book, Form and Meaning in Fiction, Norman

Friedman takes Booth's work to what should have been its

logical conclusion. He stresses that a novel or short story can, in fact, be morally ambiguous without detracting from

its overall excellence. His is more of a technical perspec- tive, yet far more flexible than the New Critics--is the end effect best achieved by the particular technique chosen? To quote Lubbock once again, "the subject dictates the method," or as Friedman states, "plot supplies the context for analy 20 sis of technique." Moreover, is the author's point of 21 view "adequately established and coherently maintained?" 9

Consistency, control, unity--these qualities imply an overriding question, not of morality but of technique. Have the parts contributed effectively to the whole, or, put another way, have the means worked sufficiently to the end?

These questions constitute the "criteria" which Friedman believes best judge the success or failure of a given work.

A discussion of the following short stories by modern authors will serve to illustrate three types of narrative point of view: the omniscient form in James Joyce's "The

Boarding House," central intelligence in F. Sbott Fitz gerald's "Babylon Revisited," and the unreliable observer narrator in Ring Lardner's "Haircut."

Joyce's "The Boarding House" is primarily a psychologi cal story in which characterization dominates; thus the 22 "nuances of consciousness" we (the readers) are shown war- rant the omniscient point of view. The story line, simply put, is about how a young man becomes forced into marrying a girl with whom he's had an affair, but the theme is really that of hypocrisy revealed in the unspoken collaboration between the girl and her mother.

"The Boarding House" can be broken down roughly into four main parts. In the first part, the omniscient narrator provides us with several preparatory pages of narrative background. We are presented with a full characterization of the mother, Mrs. Mooney. We are told she is a 10

23 "determined woman," "big and imposing" (p. 75) who, after separating from her alcoholic husband, "set up a boarding house in Hardwicke Street 11 (pp. 74-5), Dublin. We are also informed that Mrs. Mooney "governed the house cunningly and firmly" (p. 75), knowing "when to give credit, when to be stern and when to let things pass" (p. 75).

We are also introduced in the opening narrative to Mrs.

Mooney's son and daughter--Jack, who "had the reputation of being a hard case" and "handy with the mits" (p. 75), in other words, a tough, pugnacious Irishman, and Polly, "a slim girl of nineteen" (p. 76), pretty and "very lively"

(p. 76) who did housework for her mother.

It is made clear in this first section that Mrs. Mooney allows Polly's flirting with the young men who board there;

"As Polly was very lively the intention was to give her the run of the young men" (p. 76) . However, Mrs. Mooney is a

"shrewd judge" (p. 76) who "knew that the young men were only passing the time away: none of them meant business"

(p. 76). Things go on like this for a long time, we are told, until Mrs. Mooney notices that "something was going on" (p. 76) between Polly and a young man named Mr. Doran.

The mother doesn't intervene but simply watches the pair, keeping "her own counsel" (p. 76). And, the narrator tells us that Polly "knew she was being watched, but still, her mother's persistent silence could not be misunderstood"

(p. 76). There was "no open complicity between mother and 11 daughter, no open understanding" (p. 76) even though other people in the house had begun to talk of the affair. It is only when Mrs. Mooney finally "judged it to be the right moment" (p. 77) , we are told, that she intervenes.

Through the summary narrative presented in the first few pages, we have learned two important things. For one, we know that Mrs. Mooney is a strong-minded, determined woman who, as regards her daughter, "allows that degree of laxity which will best forward her designs while least endangering the appearance of respectability."24 And, although there has been no "open complicity nor open understanding" between mother and daughter, clearly some communication exists between them on an unspoken, covert, perhaps even instinctually feminine level.

Joyce then shifts his story to a particular scene, a

"bright Sunday morning" (p. 77) after breakfast. Mrs.

Mooney is seated in a straw armchair watching the servant,

Mary, clear the table and thinking about the "interview"

(p. 77) she had with her daughter the night before:

Things were as she had suspected; she had been frank in her questions and Polly had been frank in her answers. Both had been somewhat awkward, of course. She had been made awkward by her not wishing to receive the news in too cavalier a fashion or to seem to have connived and Polly had been made awkward not merely because allusions of that kind always made her awkward, but also because she did not wish it to be thought that in her wise innocence she had divined the intention behind her mother's tolerance. (pp. 77-78) 12

This passage so humorously reveals how both women, having

the same goal in mind, that of trapping Mr. Doran into

marriage with Polly, had each "preserved the special pro

prieties of this situation as they saw it." 25 In other

words, both the mother and daughter have been "properly 26 hypocritical" with one another and will be even more so with their victim, Mr. Doran.

"She was sure she would win" (p. 78) Mrs. Mooney thinks

to herself, as the narrator continues to give us an inside

account of her thoughts. Mr. Doran will have to make

"reparation" (p. 78) , for "he had simply taken advantage of

Polly's youth and experience" (p. 78) . Moreover, she thinks

to herself, "she had all the weight of social opinion on her

side: she was an outraged mother" (p. 78). For Mrs.

Mooney, there can be only one reparation to "make up for the

loss of her daughter's honour: marriage" (p. 79).

Before we come to the close of the second part, Mrs.

Mooney stands up and looks at herself in the mirror, and

Joyce openly reveals what her real intention had been all

along:

The decisive expression of her great florid face satisfied her and she thought of some mothers she knew who could not get their daughters off their hands. (p. 79)

In the third part of the story, Joyce shifts to Mr.

Doran up in his room. He is described as "very anxious"

(p. 79), so much so that he has been unable to steady his

hand enough to shave. What follows this brief physical 13 description is an inside look at Mr. Doran's thoughts and

feelings regarding the affair and subsequent mess he pre

sently finds himself in. His thoughts "flop about like a 27 landed fish" --recollecting first, his confession to a priest the night before; then the two choices he feels limited to: either to marry Polly or run away; his anxiety over what his employer would think if he didn't marry her

(he might be fired) ; his fear of what his family and friends would think of her--"First of all there was her disreputable father and then her mother's boarding house was beginning to get a certain fame" (pp. 80-81), "He could imagine his friends talking of the affair and laughing" (p. 81); and finally, his own doubts about her: "She was a little vulgar; sometimes she said 'I seen' and 'If I had've known.'

But what would grammar matter if he really loved her?"

(p. 81).

While sitting "helplessly on the side of the bed"

(p. 81), he continues to worry, unable to make up his mind

"whether to like her or despise her" (p. 81), his instinct urging him "to remain free, not to marry" (p. 81). Then

Polly enters the room. As she tells him that she has con fessed all to her mother and that Mrs. Mooney will be calling for him that morning, she throws her arms around his neck, saying: "0 Bob! 0 Bob! What am I to do?" (p. 81).

And then, with the age-old pose, she tells him that the only 14

way for her to hide her shame is to die. At this point

Polly's hypocrisy is raised to the level of farce.

After this brief scene with Polly, Joyce shifts back

inside Doran's mind, and we are presented with a detailed

chronological flashback of the affair, a memory triggered by

"the agitation of her bosom" (p. 81) against his shirt as

Doran continues to hold Polly in his arms and comfort her.

He remembers the "delirium" (p. 82) of its incipience--the warmed-over dinners when he came home late at night, the

"little tumbler of punch ready for him" on those "cold or wet or windy" nights, and the "reluctant good-nights" on the third landing where they "used to kiss." And he remembers the consummation of the affair--that fated tap at his door

late one night, Polly, of course, a paradigm of sensuality: wearing a "loose open combing jacket of printed flannel," her blood "glowing warmly behind her perfumed skin" (p. 82), needing, she says, "to relight her candle at his, for hers had been blown out by a gust" (p. 81).

11 But delirium passes" (p. 82), he thinks to himself,

and ends the recollection echoing her own words--"What am I

to do?" (p. 82). At this point Mary, the servant, knocks at

the door to tell him that Mrs. Mooney wishes to see him in the parlour.

Joyce chooses wisely to omit the interview between Mrs.

Mooney and Bob Doran; what we have received up to this point

in the story is enough to sufficiently imply the outcome of 15 their meeting. Instead, Joyce keeps his focus on Doran as he leaves his room and descends the stairway. We are shown an extremely agitated young man whose "glasses became so dimmed with moisture that he had to take them off and polish them" (p. 83) . But equally important, Joyce keeps the focus on the psychological level by revealing Doran's final thoughts and feelings as he walks down the stairs:

He longed to ascend through the roof and fly away to another country where he would never hear again of his trouble, and yet a force pushed him downstairs step by step. The implacable faces of his employer and of the Madam [Mrs. Mooney] stared upon his discomfiture. (p. 83)

And, as a final blow, who should he pass on the last flight of stairs? Polly's brother, Jack, replete with his "thick bulldog face and a pair of thick short arms" (p. 83), nursing a couple bottles of beer. Jack salutes him coldly and then regards him from the top of the stairs. The third part closes with Doran, having reached the foot of the staircase, suddenly remembering an incident between Jack and another border who had "made a rather free allusion" (p. 83) to his sister. Jack kept threatening to punch the other man's teeth "down his throat'' (p. 83); the evening, Doran remembers vividly, "had been almost broken up on account of

Jack's violence" (p. 83). Thus, Doran finds himself before the meeting with Mrs. Mooney quite irrevocably surrounded by

"stern presences," 28 physically as well as mentally.

The fourth and final part of the story shifts back to

Polly alone in Doran's room while he is downstairs talking 16

to Mrs. Mooney. After sitting on the bed "for a little

time'' (p. 83) crying~ Polly dries her eyes and gets up to

have a look at herself in the mirror. She wipes her eyes with a towel and then looks "at herself in profile," readjusting "a hairpin above her ear'' (p. 84) . She then goes back over to the bed and sits at the foot of it,

clearly waiting, we now begin to infer, to be called down

stairs by her mother.

As she sits there waiting, she stares at the pillows, the sight of which "awakened in her mind secret, amiable memories" (p. 84), i.e. her and Doran's night of lovemaking.

Then, resting her neck against the bed-rail, she falls "into a revery," and, we are told, "there was no longer any per turbation visible on her face" (p. 84). Her memories of

sexual pleasure gradually give way to "hope and visions of the future," thoughts "so intricate that she no longer saw the white pillows on which her gaze was fixed" (p. 84). As she waits "patiently, almost cheerfully" (p. 84), invision ing, most likely, her impending state of conjugal bliss with

Doran, we look back to her tears, her shame, and her resolu tion to "put an end to herself" (p. 81), and conclude what a truly fine performance Polly gave poor old Bob only a short time before.

Her revery becomes so involved that she forgets she is even waiting for anything. At last she hears her mother calling for her: 17

"Polly! Polly!"

"Yes, mamma?"

"Come down, dear. Mr. Doran wants to speak to you"·

(p. 84).

Immediately following this brief exchange, Joyce ends the story with the line, "then she remembered what she had been waiting for" (p. 84), and with it confirms what we had suspected--Polly has been waiting to be called downstairs to accept a reluctant proposal of marriage from Bob Doran.

Thus, in the final section, through the scenic rendering of Polly's behavior and thoughts and the simple exchange of a few words with her mother, Joyce clearly underscores the central point of his story--that of a mother and daughter's covert complicity and histrionic dissimula 29 tion "distilled into fairly high comedy."

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited" is rendered in the third person through the eyes of predominantly one character; thus, what we now turn to is an example of the technique called central intelligence.

The central character, Charlie Wales, described as 30 "thirty-five, and good to look at," an American, has returned to Paris, having left two years before. Formerly, for him Paris was the equivalent of the morally corrupt

Babylon of Old Testament times, thus the title. The stock market crash of '29, coupled with his own excessive 18 squandering, and alcoholism had reduced Charlie to poverty and ill health. His wife, Helen, had died at that time as well, and he had relinquished custody of his daughter,

Honoria, to his wife's sister, Marion. He had then moved to Prague, where he learned to control his drinking, never more than one drink a day taken deliberately "so that the idea of alcohol [wouldn't] get too big in [his] imagina tion" (p. 123) . He also reestablished himself as a suc cessful businessman in Prague and has returned to Paris to try to regain custody of his daughter.

The Charlie that returns to Paris is indeed consider ably different than the one who left it two years before.

We learn through the story that he has clearly made ter rible mistakes in his past, but has also worked very hard to redeem himself and live a new life. The most obvious sign of his redemption is his wanting Honoria back. How ever, standing between him and his nine year old daughter is Marion who has never liked Charlie, particularly since her sister Helen's death, which she blames on him. In fact, Helen had died of heart trouble, but Marion has con nected her death with the time late one night during a snowstorm when Charlie, after a quarrel with Helen, had locked her out of the apartment. Apparently she escaped pneumonia "by a miracle" (p. 126).

Marion reluctantly consents to Charlie's wish to have

Honoria, only to withdraw it after the unexpected arrival 19

at her apartment of two of Charlie's former cronies, Duncan

Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles, both blatantly drunk.

Their unwelcome appearance confirms Marion's previous sus picions about Charlie's "changed ways"; as a result, the story ends with his being told by Marion's husband that he

is going to have to wait another six months for· his daughter.

Clearly, Fitzgerald wants the reader to sympathize with

Charlie Wales, and the choice of limited omniscience works well in rendering this effect. In The Rhetoric of Fiction, under the section entitled, "Sympathy through Control of

Inside Views," Booth states: "[ ... ] the sustained inside view leads the reader to hope for good fortune for the char acter with whom he travels, quite independently of the qual 31 ities revealed." Without this "sustained inside view"

Charlie Wales might not appear convincing enough to deserve custody of his daughter. However, in adopting the technique of central intelligence, Fitzgerald opens us up to Charlie's inner thoughts and feelings, revealing not only an intelli gent man, but a sensitive one as well who, although he had at one period in his life, for various reasons, lived a dissipate, irresponsible life, can by no means be judged solely by his past. It is the pain and guilt associated with his past, coupled with lingering memories of pleasure and even a residual desire, withstood, to fall back into his 20 old habits, which make Charlie so very human, someone with whom we can easily sympathize, perhaps even identify.

In his Form and Meaning in Fiction, Norman Friedman states that when an author uses the limited omniscient form,

"the tendency is almost wholly in the direction of scene, both inside the mind and externally with speech and 32 action." This certainly applies to "Babylon Revisited" which Fitzgerald divided into five parts. Each section is rendered "scenically," both internally and externally. Part

One opens in the Ritz Bar, one of Charlie's former watering holes. Charlie is engaged in a conversation with the bar tender who tells him that only two familiar people from his past are in town. Charlie observes the bar, thinking how it has changed: it is no longer the "American bar" (p. 116) that he knew prior to his leaving Paris. In fact, "The place oppressed him" (p. 117). When offered a second drink,

Charlie declines, remarking to the bartender, "I'm going slow these days" (p. 117). Yet, he leaves his sister-in law's address with him in case his old drinking companion

Duncan Schaeffer should stop by. This is the first of sev eral hints in the story that "Charlie is not completely exorcised of his old life."33 Nevertheless, on his way over to his sister-in-law's, reminiscing upon his past days in

Paris, he thinks, "I spoiled this city for myself" (p. 118).

And, in the second scene of the first part, at Lincoln and

Marion Peters' apartment, nervous about having to face 21

Marion, Charlie is revealed as an extremely sensitive man yearning for a home of his own with his daughter:

The room was warm and comfortably American. The three children moved intimately about, playing through the yellow oblongs that led to other rooms; the cheer of six o'clock spoke in the eager smacks of the fire and the sounds of French activity in the kitchen. But Charlie did not relax; his heart sat up rigidly in his body and he drew confidence from his daughter, who from time to time came close to him, holding in her arms the doll he had brought. (p. 118)

Fitzgerald continues to show the very human contradic- tions in his central character's personality when, in conversation with Marion and her husband, Charlie says of his former dissipate life, "But it was nice while it lasted"

(p. 119). Part One closes with Charlie revisiting Paris by night, still curious, but observing it all now "with clearer and more judicious eyes than those of other days" (p. 119).

Reflecting upon the way he used to squander his money,

"thousand-franc notes given to an orchestra for playing a single number, hundred-franc notes tossed to a doorman for calling a cab" (p. 120), he thinks to himself penitently:

But it hadn't been given for nothing. It had been given, even the most wildly squandered sum, as an offering to destiny that he might not remem ber the things most worth remembering, the things that now he would always remember--his child taken from his control, his wife escaped to a grave in Vermont. (p. 120)

Part Two focuses on a scene with Charlie and Honoria in a restaurant having lunch. The sensitive rendering of the conversation between father and daughter reinforces our sympathy for Charlie. Not only does he show an affectionate 22 humor with his child, he reveals genuine love and concern for her as well:

When there had been her mother and a French nurse he had been inclined to be strict; now he extended himself, reached out for a new tolerance; he must be both parents to her and not shut any of her out of communication.

"I want to get to know you," he said gravely. "First let me introduce myself. My name is Charles J. Wales, of Prague."

"Oh, daddy!" her voice cracked with laughter.

"And who are you, please?" he persisted, and she accepted a role immediately: "Honoria Wales, Rue Palatine, Paris." (p. 121)

During their lunch two "ghosts out of the past"

(p. 121) appear, Duncan Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles.

Charlie immediately feels "Lorraine's passionate, provoca- tive attraction," but at the same time knows that "his own rhythm was different now" (p. 121) . When asked to give them his address, Charlie hesitates and tells them, "I'm not settled yet" (p. 121). After they leave, he concludes that seeing them again was "somehow an unwelcome encounter"

(p. 122). The ghost metaphor for his two former drinking 3 4 compan1ons. 1s . ex t en d e d a l mos t t o one o f vamp1r1sm . . 1n. the following lines:

They liked him because he was functioning, because he was serious; they wanted to see him, because he was stronger than they were now, because they wanted to draw a certain sustenance from his strength. (p. 122)

Clearly, Charlie's priorities are with his daughter, not the "ghosts" of his former life. Part Two ends with father 23 and daughter heading back to the Peters' apartment in a cab.

Again we are reassured that Charlie yearns solely to have his daughter: "'Daddy, I want to come and live with you,' she said suddenly. His heart leaped; he had wanted it to come like this" (p. 122).

In Part Three, Charlie asks Marion and Lincoln Peters for Honoria. In this particular scene, however, the focus is on Marion, equally if not more so than on Charlie. By moving away briefly in this scene from strict central intel ligence, Fitzgerald provides us with just enough of a glimpse of Marion's inner thoughts and feelings to explain her overt cruelty toward Charlie. Not only does she "frown"

(p. 123) at him when he poses the question of wanting

Honoria back, looking at him with "hard eyes" (p. 123), she interrupts him during an explanation of how he's changed, saying, "How long are you going to stay sober, Charlie?"

(p. 123). He replies, "Permanently, I hope," and she retorts, "How can anybody count on that?" (p. 123). Then, referring to the night he locked Helen out in the snow, she tells him, "from the night you did that terrible thing you haven't really existed for me" (p. 124). She even goes so far as to snap, "Please don't swear at me" (p~ 124) after

Charlie has innocently remarked that he's been behaving

"damn well" (p. 124) lately.

Immediately before Marion accuses Charlie of being responsible for Helen's death, her thoughts and feelings 24 are revealed to us with a shift from Charlie's viewpoint to hers:

Marion shuddered suddenly; part of her saw that Charlie's feet were planted on the earth now, and her own maternal feeling recognized the natur alness of his desire; but she had lived for a long time with a prejudice--a prejudice founded on a disbelief in her sister's happiness, and which, in the shock of one terrible night, had turned to hatred for him. It had all happened at a point in her life where the discouragement of ill health and adverse circumstances made it necessary for her to believe in tangible villainy and a tangible villain. (p. 125)

Whatever light of reason and compassion Marion possesses has clearly been obfuscated by her hatred of Charlie, an enmity which sterns from "her invidious resentment of Charlie's 35 wealth." The "adverse circumstances" mentioned in the preceding quote refer to Marion and Lincoln's tight economic situation, particularly during the period when Charlie was rich and spending his money freely.

Fitzgerald's focusing on Marion in this scene adds weight to the obstacles facing Charlie in his efforts to regain his daughter and, in turn, intensifies the pain and frustration he feels in having to deal with Marion.

Finally, however, she "concedes," springing from her chair screaming, "Do what you like!" (p. 125).

In Part Four, before Charlie goes back to the Peters' the following evening, he receives a note at his hotel. It is from Lorraine Quarrles, asking him to meet her at the

Ritz around five. The note alludes to an episode two years before when she and Charlie had stolen a tricycle late one 25 night and pedaled around the Etoile. After reading through the note, he thinks back to that particular incident:

His first feeling was one of awe that he had actually, in his mature years, stolen a tricycle and pedaled Lorraine all over the Etoile between the small hours and dawn. In retrospect it was a nightmare. (p. 127)

"How many weeks or months of dissipation," he reflects shamefully, "to arrive at that condition of utter irrespon- sibility?" (p. 127). And then he thinks about Lorraine:

Yesterday, in the restaurant, Lorraine had seemed trite, blurred, worn away. He emphatically did not want to see her, and he was glad Alix had not given away his hotel address. (p. 127)

Although this contradicts his initial perception of Lorraine upon seeing her in the restaurant the day before, the next thought seems to confirm that his present evaluation of her is the dominant one. He turns in revery away from Lorraine to Honoria: "It was a relief to think, instead, of Honoria, to think of Sundays spent with her and of saying good morning to her and of knowing she was there in his home at night, drawing her breath in the darkness" (p. 127) .

Fitzgerald's juxtaposition of scenes works perfectly to exacerbate the frustration and pain we feel along with Char- lie; for, after being almost wholly convinced of his transformation in the previous scene, the following one at the

Peters' apartment provides the tragically ironic climax to the story. Who should barge into the quiet domestic scene there but Duncan and Lorraine, both very drunk. What probably had been no more than a passing whim to see an old 26

friend, Charlie's leaving the Peters' address for Duncan at

the Ritz, has now resulted in destroying his immediate

chance for getting his daughter back. Upon encountering

these two drunks in her home, Marion becomes furious and

leaves the room.

Part Five ends the story with Charlie back at the

Ritz. It will be at least six months, Lincoln tells him over the phone, before Marion can reconsider giving up

Honoria to him. The bartender says to him, "I heard that you lost a lot in the crash" (p. 130). Charlie replies

that he had, adding grimly, "but I lost everything I wanted

in the boom" (p. 130). This would be the most likely time

for Charlie to start drinking again, but he still adheres to his one-drink commitment. We are told in the final paragraph, by now completely sympathetic for him: "He would come back someday; they couldn't make him pay forever.

But he wanted his child, and nothing was much good now, beside that fact" (p. 130).

Ring Lardner's "Haircut" is narrated in the first per-

son by a small-town barber named Whitey. While cutting a

stranger's hair, Whitey recounts the days when Jim Kendall was alive. The town, he says, hasn't been the same since his death, for according to Whitey, Jim was the funniest man in town: "I bet they was more laughin' done here than ...... 36 any town 1ts s1ze 1n Amer1ca. 27

But what exactly made Jim such a funny man? Whitey

reflects upon those Saturday nights when a group of men

from town would congregate in the barber shop around six

and listen to Jim, who was always the center of attraction.

Jim "used to travel for a canned goods concern" (p. 100) ,

Whitey says, but he was fired for paying more attention "to

playin' jokes than makin' sales" (p. 100). One of Jim's

favorite gags while on the road, Whitey remembers as a

"great trick":

[ ... ] he'd be ridin' on a train and they'd come to some little town like, well, like, we'll say, like Benton. Jim would look out the train window and read the signs on the stores.

For instance, they'd be a sign, "Henry Smith, Dry Goods." Well, Jim would write down the name and the name of the town and when he got to wher ever he was goin' he'd mail back a postal card to Henry Smith at Benton and not sign no name to it, but he'd write on the card, well, somethin' like "Ask your wife about that book agent that spent the afternoon last week," or "Ask your Missus who kept her from gettin' lonesome the last time you was in Canterville." And he'd sign the card, "A Friend."

Of course, he never knew what really came of none of these jokes, but he could picture what probably happened and that was enough. (p. 100)

Along with this traveling gag, we learn other things about

Jim Kendall which quickly begin to form for us a very dif-

ferent attitude toward Jim than the one Whitey has of him.

We learn that not only were he and his wife on bad terms,

but after being fired from his job, Jim only worked odd jobs

around town and "spent pretty near all of [his money] on

gin" (p. 100). His family "might of starved if the stores 28 hadn't of carried them along" (p. 100). Whitey says that

Jim's wife would have divorced him "only they wasn't no chance to get alimony and she didn't have no way to take care of herself and the kids" (p. 99).

It is clear by the second page of the story that the author's opinion of Jim, as well as our own, is radically different from Whitey's. Thus, what we have here is a good example of an unreliable narrator. The author never has to tell us directly that Whitey's norms are different than his and our own; he communicates this through implication and irony.

At the end of the story we have the satisfaction of hearing about how Jim got what was coming to him. Whitey recounts that he had taken a young man named Paul duck· shooting. Previous to this, however, we have learned from

Whitey that Paul never was quite "right" (p. 101) after falling out of a tree when he was younger. Jim had per sisted in being cruel to the boy and agreed to take him duck shooting, Whitey figures, just to "play some joke on him, like pushin' him in the water" (p. 105). Furthermore,

Whitey has mentioned that Paul "was crazy about" (p. 102) a young woman in town named Julie, another victim of one of

Jim's cruel tricks. (She had snubbed him so he decided to get back at her by embarrassing her in front of several of his drinking buddies.) 29

Now, in an ironic twist of fate, we learn that the young doctor in town, Doc Stair, had mentioned to Paul previous to his duck shooting experience with Jim that, regarding the trick played on Julie, "anybody that would do a thing like that ought not to be let live" (p. 105). Thus, what Whitey recounts as an "accident" (p. 105), Paul's

shooting Jim out in the boat while hunting for ducks, we

safely infer as murder from the information he has given us.

Unbeknownst to Whitey, Doc has covered up for Paul:

Doc examined the body and said they might as well fetch it back to town. They was no use leavin' it there or callin' a jury, as it was a plain case of accidental shootin'.

Personally I wouldn't never leave a person shoot a gun in the same boat I was in unless I was sure they knew somethin' about guns. Jim was a sucker to leave a new beginner have his gun, let alone a half-wit. (p. 106)

If Whitey had found Jim's actions reprehensible, and if he had known, without our having to interpret it from the information he gives us, that Jim's death was not an accident, he would have been a reliable narrator recounting the archetypal story of the bully getting what he deserves. By making him unreliable, however, Lardner adds interest and depth to an otherwise simplistic theme.

It is evident that each author's choice of point of view clearly reflects the particular needs of the individual plot. Joyce's choice of omniscient narration in "The

Boarding House" gave him the versatility and lack of 30 restriction to develop a story which centers on the ren dering of several different characters' thoughts and feelings. Fitzgerald's choice of central intelligence in

"Babylon Revisited," on the other hand, provided him with a more focused point of view centered on the thoughts and feelings of one character around whom the story revolves.

Lardner's purpose in "Haircut," however, was to show a limited viewpoint subject to the reader's suspicions, and his choice of first-person unreliable narrator undoubtedly was the most suitable one.

Thus, the writer's choice of narrative point of view cannot be something considered apart from his story. He must be fully aware and appreciative of this intrinsic relationship between form and content; indeed "the subject 37 dictates the method." NOTES

1 Percy Lubbock, The Craft of Fiction (New York: Viking Press, 1957), p. 251.

2 Lubbock, p. 253.

3Norman Friedman, Form and Meaning in Fiction (Athens: The University Press, 1975), p. 157.

4 Fr1e . d man, p. 149.

5 Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 151. 6 william Somerset Maugham, The Art of Fiction (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1955), p. 21.

7Booth, pp. 158-9.

8 Booth, p. 159. 9 Friedman, p. 158. 10 Lubbock, p. 87.

11virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (New York: Har court, Brace & World, Inc., 1927), p. 158.

12 George Lanning and Robie Macanley, Technique in Fiction (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1964), p. 110. 13 Lanning, Macanley, p. 103. 14 Booth, p. 154. 15 Booth, pp. 164-5. 16 Booth, p. 165. 17 Booth, p. 165.

18F r1e. d man, p. 141.

31 32

19 Alan Warren Friedman, "The Modern Multivalent Novel: Form and Fiction" in The Theory of the Novel, Ed. John Halperin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 127. 20 Norman Friedman, p. 165. 21 Norman Friedman, pp. 157-8. 22 Warren Beck, Joyce's Dubliners: Substance, Vision, and Art (Durham: Duke University Press, 1969), p. 157. 23 James Joyce, "The Boarding House" in Dubliners (New York: Random House, The Modern Library Series, 1926), p. 75. All subsequent references in the text will refer to this edition. 24 Beck, p. 151. 25 Beck, p. 152. 26 Beck, p. 152. 27 Beck, pp. 154-5. 28 Beck, p. 150. 29 Beck, p. 157.

3°F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Babylon Revisited" in The Prac tical Imagination, Ed. Sheridan Baker, Northrop Frye, and George Perkins (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1980), p. 118. All subsequent references in the text will refer to this edition.

31 Booth, p. 2 4 6. 32 Norman Friedman, p. 153.

33Rose Adrienne Gallo, F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1978), p. 103.

34James B. Twitchell, "'Babylon Revisited': Chronology and Characters" in Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual, 1978, Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Richard Layman (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1979), p. 157.

35 Gallo, pp. 103-4.

36Ring Lardner, "Haircut" in The Practical Imagination, Ed. Sheridan Baker, Northrop Frye, and George Perkins (New 33

York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1980), p. 99. All sub sequent references in the text will refer to this edition. 37 Lubbock, p. 253. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beck, Warren. Joyce's Dubliners: Substance, Vision, and Art. Durham: Duke University Press, 1969. Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: Uni versity of Chicago Press, 1968. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "Babylon Revisited" in The Practical Imagination. Ed. Sheridan Baker, Northrop Frye, and George Perkins. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1980. Friedman, Alan Warren. "The Modern Multivalent Novel: Form and Function" in The Theory of the Novel. Ed. John Halperin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Friedman, Norman. Form and Meaning in Fiction. Athens: The University Press, 1975. Gallo, Rose Adrienne. F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1978. Joyce, James. "The Boarding House" in Dubliners. New York: Random House, The Modern Library Series, 1926.

Lanning, George and Macanley, Robie. Technique in Fiction. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1964. Lardner, Ring. "Haircut" in The Practical Imagination. Ed. Sheridan Baker, Northrop Frye, and George Perkins. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1980. Lubbock, Percy. The Craft of Fiction. New York: Viking Press, 1957. Maugham, William Somerset. The Art of Fiction. Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1955. Twitchell, James B. "'Babylon Revisited': Chronology and Characters" in Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual, 1978. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Richard Layman. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1979. Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1927.

34 YOSEMITE: AN ORIGINAL STORY

WRITTEN FROM THREE POINTS OF VIEW

I'm not crazy about snowcamping, but anything's better than being in school. We arrived here Thursday night.

Tomorrow, Monday, we have to return to school. My name's

Beth, by the way, and I'm a junior at Pleasant Valley, better known to most of us as Pleasant Valley Funny Farm.

It's a private secondary school, mostly boarders, about ninety miles north of L.A., in a little town called Ojai.

I'm from the city myself; so are most of the other American kids. We also have a lot of foreign students at our school--Japanese, a couple of Chinese, but mostly Persians.

The Japanese and Chinese kids are really nice, but the Per sians are strange. They. all stick together, and you always get the feeling they're talking about you behind your back.

And they don't even make the effort to speak English.

They're always babbling in Farsi. It gets really obnoxious after awhile.

Shit, back to classes Tuesday! Not that I haven't been any less lonely up here than I normally am, but the beauty of this place has really gotten to me, I must admit. It kills me how most of the students couldn't care less about the natural beauty surrounding them here in Yosemite. Nope,

35 36 it's just another party for them, especially the American kids. To give you a good example, everyone piled into

Spaceman's cabin Friday night and got really fucked up.

You see, a few of the kids paid extra money for cabins while the rest of us were supposed to undergo an "educa tional experience" by freezing our asses off sleeping out side in tents. That was Dr. Hunt's big plan--snowcamping, an educational experience. What a joke! The very first night in the park practically everyone snuck over to the cabins and packed themselves in. You should have seen it- wall to wall sleeping bags. And the cabins aren't very big either, just one square room with a couple of beds and a bathroom off to the side. I don't know about the educa tional value of it, but as it's turned out, I've enjoyed sleeping outdoors. I'm the only older student here at the campsite tonight.

Anyway, about the party Friday night. I couldn't believe it when one of the girls asked me to come. They usually always exclude me from whatever they're doing. So

I went just for the hell of it and because there wasn't anything else to do. I positioned myself in a corner of the room, smoked a little dope, and watched the show.

There were about twelve people there and several bottles of

Jack Daniels, some vodka, and lots of dope. We've got some real degenerates at our school. There's the "Spaceman,''

Bobbie, who I already mentioned. He's a junior, also. You 37 couldn't miss Bobbie--he's got this thick, long red hair and wears round tinted glasses. He's a twenty-four hour stoner, thus the nickname. I mean this guy lives in a different world. I doubt he remembers what it's like to be straight.

Being high is his way of being straight.

And then there's "Stringbean." That's Kirk. He's a tall, skinny senior who drinks about as much as Spaceman smokes. J.D.'s his favorite booze. He even brings a small flask with him to school and hits on it between classes.

But he's very cool about it, unlike Farzad who was also at the party. Farzad's one of the few Persians who hangs out with the American students. Well, he does and he doesn't.

Let's put it this way--when there's free dope and booze around, Farzad's around. Last fall he was caught in the upper dorm totally drunk. Around two in the morning he was found in one of the other kid's rooms puking into a waste paper basket. But nothing happened to him. In a normal school, he would have. been given a one-way ticket back to

Iran. But Pleasant Valley is far from normal. Most of the students have been booted out of two or three schools before they end up here. That is, most of the American students.

As far as the foreign students are concerned, I don't think their parents know what they're getting their kids into.

The "administration" at Pleasant Valley only gave Farzad a warning. And by the "administration," I'm talking primarily about Dr. James Hunt. 38

When I first met Dr. Hunt, I thought I was being introduced to the school janitor. I'm serious. He dresses just like you'd expect a janitor to dress. He wears green work pants, workboots, those cheap plaid shirts, and a dingy old green windbreaker-type jacket. He's a weird-looking guy, too. First of all, he's short and slightly hunchbacked, and his head looks like ~t's too big for his body. His hair is greyish brown, cut really short, and he has big ears. When you look at his face, the lower half seems bigger than the upper half. His forehead is small and so are his blue beady eyes. He's got a long ski-slope nose, just like Richard

Nixon's, and a big mouth, big at least when he smiles. But the most amazing thing about our fearless leader is his laugh. He inhales, he doesn't exhale, so that it sounds like he's gasping for air instead of laughing.

Getting back to the party, I wanted to mention that the girls at Pleasant Valley are just as much into partying as the boys. Take Ginny, for example, a cute but pudgy sopho more. She drinks like a fish! I bet she could drink any of the boys (with the exception of Stringbean) under the table.

I've seen her hitting the bottle right when she gets up in the morning. She was there Friday night and so was Janice who's even more self-destructive than Ginny. Janice has got a lot of problems at home. Her father's a total weirdo. To give you an example, he'll beat Janice up, and then the next day, feeling guilty about it, he'll try to buy back her love 39 by giving her some really expensive gift. Last summer, after he nearly killed her by beating her so bad, he went out and bought her a brand new Porsche. Shit, she doesn't even have her license yeti Even though she always says how much she hates schpol, I bet she's much happier living away from home. She's really pretty, with long blonde hair, light blue eyes, a beautiful smile, and a great body.

"Janice, do you remember the night we got Dr. Hunt high?" Ginny said to her after the party had been underway for awhile. Ginny was sitting on the bed closest to the door, with Janice and a few other people.

"How could I forget?" Janice told her.

"What? You got Hunt high?" Yosuke, one of the Japanese students asked, looking very surprised.

"Didn't you hear about that, Yosuke?" Janice said, taking a hit off one of the joints going around the room.

"Shit, what a trip," Stringbean said, smiling. He was sitting next to Yosuke on the far bed with Bobbie, Farzad, and Ann, a pretty senior with long brown hair and freckles.

"Tell Yosuke the story, Ginny. He's got to hear this one."

Everyone else in the room wanted to hear it, too, even though most of them knew about it already. But this was the kind of story that's fun to hear more than once.

"Hunt came by the upper dorm last Saturday night to check up on us," Ginny said, pouring a strong shot of J.D. 40

into her sierra cup and taking a drag on her cigarette.

"Well, it was perfect timing, because Janice and I had just

finished making some hash brownies. We'd baked them in

O'Henessey's oven."

Mrs. O'Henessey was the dorm mother. She thought it was sweet that the girls were baking brownies. She never would have guessed in a million years that they were made with good Columbian weed!

"So anyway, Janice offers one to Hunt and he says

sure."

"He actchary ate it?" Yosuke asked.

"Why wouldn't he? To him, they were just plain old

fudge brownies. He liked it so much he had two more."

"Shit, three of those were enough to get anyone com pletely fucked up," Janice added.

"Hunt left before we really had a chance to see the brownies take effect, but then the funniest thing happened.

Janice and I decided to get some fresh air. We walked up to the top of the hill where you can see the road below. All of a sudden we spotted Hunt's car. He was driving back up to the dorm. " "We thought we were screwed for sure," Janice said.

"We figured that he knew we'd put something in the brownies and that he was coming back to talk to us."

"But he never stopped. We saw his car go back down the hill away from the dorm." 41

"But then it came up the hill again!"

"Yeah, it did. He was so stoned, he was driving in circles around the dormitory!"

Everyone in the room laughed.

"How many times was it that he circled the dorm?"

Stringbean asked.

"About seven or eight times," Ginny said, laughing.

"And he never did say anything to us about it," Janice said.

"Amazing!" Yosuke responded.

After awhile we all got pretty noisy. There was a knock at the door. It was John, one of the teachers who was supposed to be supervising us. Janice got up off the bed and stood at the door.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"It's John, open up."

"Why?" she said loudly, because "Aerosmith" was blasting from Yosuke's tapedeck.

Meanwhile, everyone else was in a mad scramble trying to stash their booze under the beds and put out their joints and cigarettes.

Janice finally opened the door and it was a good thing she did, because John looked pissed. Yosuke turned the music down.

"Why all the sleeping bags in here, Bobbie?" John asked. His face looked tired as well as angry. He walked '42

over to Spaceman, bent down, and picked his sierra cup up

off the floor. Spaceman had probably forgotten to hide it.

"I don't know," Spaceman told John in that slow stoned way of his. Then he just sat there with his mouth hanging

open, looking up at John. What a zombie! I almost couldn't

keep myself from laughing.

Everyone else was really quiet, wondering what was

going to happen next. But I doubt anyone was really worried

about getting busted. As I already told you, it's very hard

to get kicked out of Pleasant Valley. You'd practically

have to smoke a jay right in front of Dr. Hunt and even

then, you might not necessarily be booted. Hunt's so out of

it, he thought that Spaceman's room back at school smelled

like dirty socks. Since when does dope smell like dirty

socks?

Anyway, I figured I'd come to Spaceman's rescue.

"Look, John," I said. "Snowcamping's a bummer. It's

crazy trying to sleep outside in a tent in sub-zero tempera

tures. What's the harm if we put our sleeping bags on the

floor in here for the night? Bobbie and Yosuke don't mind."

"Yeah, John, it's a drag snowcamping," Janice butted

in, putting her hand on his shoulder. "Can't we stay, please?"

It really turned me off whenever Janice used her looks

to get her own way. As if she could get anything she wanted

just by having a pretty face and a nice body. But this time 43

John wasn't responding to her, although he had in the past.

A couple times I'd seen him blush and smile at Janice when she pulled her "sexy-please" crap with him. But that night he wasn't into it. He looked really tired and angry.

Basically, he told us to keep the noise down, and th~n left.

Janice slammed the door after him, which I thought was a real bitchy thing to do, but it got a big laugh, especially from Farzad. Earlier, he'd bragged about how he'd almost kicked the shit out of John the first night. They'd had an argument over the price of the cabins or something.

The party lasted until midnight or so. Then everyone crashed. There were no more visits from John or any other teacher for that matter. Janice went off with David, the best looking guy in the senior class. They both left the party earlier than the rest of us. I didn't really want to sleep outside that night, but the idea of sleeping in the cabin with everyone didn't thrill me very much either, so I ended up walking back to the campsite. It's a long walk, too, easily over a mile, but I didn't really care. The cold air felt good, and the stars overhead were so big and bright, really beautiful. When I finally got back, no one was up. Dr. Hunt and the other teachers staying at the camp were all long asleep by then. All in all, the party was pretty much a drag. Getting fucked up and listening to music is all anyone ever seems to want to do. It gets depressing after awhile. 44

You know, when I was little, I thought that becoming an

adult somehow meant the end of one's problems. The adults

were the ones who had the answers, who could make anything

right. They didn't have problems; problems were things you

had to face as a child and teenager, but you'd "graduate"

into a problem-free adult sooner or later. I know this was

a really dumb fantasy, but we all have stupid fantasies of

one sort or another. Mine's what you could call very ironic

though, because things obviously don't get easier, the prob

lems increase and everything gets harder. And the same dumb

games continue from childhood into adulthood. The boy-girl

game is the best example of this. It's a total bummer dis-

covering when you're young that Mommy and Daddy don't love

each other. "But what do you mean they don't love each

other? They have to love each other!" we protest. But the

fact is, marriages aren't made in heaven and no one lives

happily ever after. How can anyone grow up happily when we're told to believe all that romantic crap, only to find

out it's a bunch of lies? I'll tell you, thinking about all

this stuff scares the shit out of me. It's all assback wards! Men and women are supposed to make life easier for

one another. That's what they fed us in Sunday school, and

that's what TV, movies, and music keep telling us. But

actually, men and women make life hell for one another. My

parents, for example. They fought all the time during the

last couple of years before their divorce. My bedroom at 45 home was right next to theirs. I would wake up to the sounds of Dad's angry voice, and his open hand slapping

Mom's face over and over. But the worst sound was my mother's crying. (Luckily, my older brother would get up and pound on their door whenever he heard them fighting.) I could only lie in bed and cry.

Janice and David seem happy together, but I doubt it· will last. It's a record for Janice to still be with the same guy this long. She'll dump him eventually and break his heart, or vice-versa. There's even some heartbreaking going on between the teachers, Connie and John. Connie's the French teacher at school, and John teaches English.

He's the one that checked in on us at the party Friday night. They're both pretty young, in their late twenties.

I figured for a long time that John really liked Connie, but

I wasn't sure where she stood. She plays it ultra-cool, you never know what she's thinking or feeling.

Anyway, tonight I was over at the skating rink around ten. I was just leaning against the wall, killing time watching the skaters go round in circles. At one point I happened to look over to my right and saw Connie hurrying along the path from the parking lot in front of the cabins toward the rink. She came up to the wall just a little way's down from where I stood. She seemed nervous. Then, all of a sudden John comes up the path looking like he's lost his dog or something. This was beginning to get very 46 intriguing. When he spotted Connie, he walked right up behind her. I wanted to get a little closer for this, so I inched my way toward them along the wall. Luckily, there were a few other people in between them and me. When I was only a matter of yards away, I noticed Connie was crying.

John was mumbling a lot of things to her, but he was talking too low for me to make anything out. I was just dying to hear what they were saying to each other, so I decided to walk past them real slow and nonchalant-like, as if I hadn't the faintest idea they were there.

I started to walk. When I was right in front of them,

I heard Connie say, "You're trying to know everything about mel Just please leave me alone!"

11 What?" John said, in a louder tone of voice now.

"What'd you mean I'm trying to know everything about you? 11

And then Connie saw me. I felt really weird, like a damn spy or something. I had to say something.

"Hello," I said. Real original of me, right? I paused for a moment and then kept walking.

I'll tell you, for as long as I live, I'll never forget the expressions on their faces. Connie was already facing me, John had his back to me, but then turned around, and there they were, the most perfect freeze frame--the two of them standing there totally still with their mouths open, not blinking, not moving a muscle. The only thing moving, beside the skaters behind them, was Connie's tears. I'll 47 never forget how those tears kept rolling down her cheeks, one after the other, as though they were rolling down the face of a statue or something.

It's damn ironic, you know, because even though I figure the bottom line between men and women comes to one thing, and one thing only--pain, failure, no-good, whatever word you want to use to describe it--I still spend one hell of a lot of time wishing I had a boyfriend! I've never had one. Why? There's an easy answer for that. I'm fat and not very pretty. I don't have what it takes to play the game. Connie and Janice do. They're both very pretty and both have nice bodies. When you come right down to it, intelligence, a great personality, even a loving heart aren't enough if you're female. Men are into beauty, they practically worship beautiful women, it's as simple and depressing as that. If you don't have what it takes, baby, a great face and bod, don't expect to be a big time player in the boy-girl game. Oh sure, you can make it as a big executive in the man's world of business today, thanks to women's lib, but if you're homely-looking, what fucking good will it do you in the long run? You're still going to be miserable, deep down. It's a shitty world we live in, for sure.

Well, enough of all this heavy talk. It's been nice up here. I've really enjoyed the walks I've taken during the last couple of days. Nature seems to mellow me out, 48 somehow. When I'm alone in the woods or standing on a ridge overlooking miles and miles of unspoiled wilderness- unspoiled, that is, by man, us--then somehow, all of my problems don't seem very important, or as intense as they usually do. Like today, for example. I took a walk over to the clearing where you can see Half-Dome. That's that beau tiful smooth slab of rock on one side of this mountain. Dr.

Richards said it got that way during the Ice Age or some thing. Apparently, tons of moving ice just leveled that side of the mountain. It's a trippy sight. So anyway, I walked out to this clearing today to look at it. Between me and Half-Dome there was this huge open field completely covered with snow. All that white made a beautiful contrast with the mountains and their dark-green pine trees and blotches of snow. And above it all stood old Half-Dome with nothing but clear blue sky all around it. I don't know why, but for some reason I started to walk across the field toward the mountain. The field's really big, and I wasn't planning on actually walking all the way across it. But Dr.

Richards had lent me his snowshoes, and I just felt like walking out into that wide open field toward Half-Dome. I'd say I snowshoed a good two miles. If anyone could have seen me out there all alone on that white open field, with Half

Dome towering over me, I bet they would have been amazed at how small I looked. And I felt that way, too. Tiny, puny, totally insignificant, but yet, somehow part of it all. For 49 one thing, my mind wasn't noisy, it was real quiet, and as

I walked along, I felt smaller and smaller, but really good, happy actually, because somehow I felt like I was part of the white field and the mountains with the green trees and

Half-Dome and the clear, blue sky. I wasn't separate any- more. Do you get what I mean? I don't know, it's really a hard thing to describe. But I can tell you this: the feeling that I had out there was about as close to a religious feeling that I've ever had, or probably ever will have, for that matter. Later on, as I was walking back to camp around dusk, I remembered something this American writer had written. I'm not big on school, like I told you, but every once in awhile, something pops up in class that's really interesting. Well, this was in John's American Lit class. We were reading this guy Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote:

Standing on the bare ground my head bathed by the air, and uplifted into infinite space, I am part of God.

These aren't his exact words, but they're close enough.

It's the only thing I've ever bothered to memorize. The point is, out there in that open field, looking up at Half-

Dome, that's exactly how I felt. 50

Turning the key in the lock, John stepped inside the

small square room of the cabin assigned to him. The lamp on

the wooden night table between the two twin beds was already on. The bathroom was off to the right; he checked it ...

good, he thought, it has a shower, and, best of all, heat.

He noticed the square vent on the wall adjacent to the bath room door. Choosing the far bed, he placed his small duffel bag on the brown blanket and sat down. He took a deep breath and looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty; he

felt exhausted and terribly depressed. The trip to Yosemite had been long and tiring, over eight hours driving a van full of students, who were quiet as long as the radio was on. Which it was for practically the entire trip. The night before he'd celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday drinking shots of tequila with beer chasers. The hangover he'd had to endure the entire day had made the trip even more difficult.

And look at my life now, he thought, sitting on the bed. Twenty-nine, and rejected by the--

There was a knock at the door. Yosuke, the Japanese boy staying in the next cabin, still needed a key. Annoyed at the inconvenience, John slowly got up off the bed and stepped outside. Walking across the parking lot in front of the cabins, they headed for the main desk at the infor mation center. 51

Halfway there, two Persian boys approached them.

David, the tall, bearded ESL teacher, was a few yards

behind.

"I going to sue this fucking school!" Farzad, the big-

ger of the two boys shouted.

Shit, here we go again, John thought to himself.

"What's the matter now, Farzad."

"Carl supposed to be business manager. Shit! He lied

to me, that mother fuckair!"

"Calm down, Farzad. What did Carl lie to you about?"

"The cost of the fucking room!"

"Farzad's angry because he thinks he's paying too much

for his cabin, 11 David said, walking up to John and the three boys.

11 How much did the man at the desk say the room costs

per night, Farzad? 11 John asked.

11 Eleven dollar per person, and Carl charging me one hundred dollars. 11

11 Yes, Carl's charging you one hundred dollars because what the man didn't tell you is that you're not paying for

just the room but for the ski package, which includes your

room, your lift-tickets, two sessions of ski instruction,

plus your meals and transportation. 11

11 Bullshit. Dr. Hunt and Carl are fucking liars! I sue

this fucking school, I swear! 11 52

"Look, Farzad, get it through your thick skull that you're not paying for just the room; you're paying for what they call the weekend downhill ski package, plus the cost of transportation and food."

"Fuck you, mother fuckair!"

"Wh-what did you say to me?" John moved closer to the boy, and stood face to face with him. "Do you talk to your father like that back horne? Listen, buddy, just keep it up and I'll have your ass out of this school."

"If I get kicked out, I beat the shit out of you and

Carl and Hunt!"

"Oh, I see. Christ, do you hear this kid threatening me, Dave?"

"Come on, John. Let's let him cool off a bit. Farzad, you can gripe to Dr. Hunt in the morning."

"No, not so fast, Dave. I'm damn sick and tired of all the crap I've been getting from this kid. Tell you what, Farzad, why don't you just go ahead and hit me now.

Come on, punch me."

John tapped the side of his jaw, inviting the angry boy to strike him. Although they were both the same height,

John was heavier and stronger than the seventeen-year-old, but not by much.

Farzad's face was contorted in a barely controlled rage, his dark eyes staring like a wild animal directly into John's. 53

Nader, the smaller Persian boy, stood close to Farzad's right. John noticed that he was holding back Farzad's wrist, whose clenched fist was visibly trembling.

"Farzad, please, let's go," Nader said quietly, but

Farzad didn't speak or move.

"Come on, tough guy, hit me," John taunted him.

But then Dave stepped in between the two of them, facing John. "Come on, John, let's go, leave him alone now."

Dave put his arm around John's shoulders and led him across the snow to the parking lot in front of the cabins where he'd left his car.

Oh shit, Yosuke's key, John thought to himself as he approached Dave's car. Turning around he yelled, "You still need your key, don't you, Yosuke?"

"No," Nader replied. "Bobbie has the key to Yosuke's cabin."

"O.K." John said, feeling relieved, getting into the passenger side of Dave's Volkswagen. Shutting the door and rolling down the window, John saw Yosuke and the two Persian boys walking towards the car on their way to the cabins. As

Farzad came closer, John could hear him mumbling profanities and still complaining about the price of the room.

"It's the package deal, asshole," John yelled at him through the open window. "Understand, shithead?"

Dave started up the car and drove off, laughing. 54

"Here, have some of this," he said, passing John a pint of Jack Daniels.

"Great, just what I need," John said as he put the bottle to his lips.

"You're so damned funny when you get mad," Dave said, still laughing. "It's the package deal, asshole, under stand, shithead. God, that was great."

"Christ, I'm supposed to be an educator and here I am, on the verge of kicking the shit out of one of my students.

I'll apologize to him later. Well, we're off to a great start. Just another relaxing weekend in Yosemite."

"Listen, Connie and I are going over to the bar at the visitor's center for a drink. Want to join us?"

John felt a disturbing twinge of emotion at just the sound of her name.

"No thanks, Dave. I'm really tired tonight. I think

I'll just take a little walk and then head back to the cabins. Besides, someone has to be there to supervise the kids. I wonder if Connie realizes that?"

"I think she said Dorothy would be there."

"Dorothy's not up here as a supervisor; she's up here solely as a cook. Tell you what, just let me off up here."

Dave pulled over to the side of the road and dropped

John off. He was about half a mile from the cabins.

Standing in the darkness, he watched the tail lights of

Dave's car grow smaller and smaller. Tall fir pines stood 55 silently on either side of the road. The pine smell, mingled with a faint odor of burning wood in the cold clean air, was no longer a sensual delight, but a painful reminder of the ultimate sensual delight which he didn't have.

And he thought to himself, this is her world, her domain; she rules these redwoods and pines, this snow covered earth. I can't enjoy this without her.

As he looked at the stars overhead, a sense of total isolation came over him. He felt alone, terribly alone, completely cut off from everything. Even the teachers and students seemed like complete strangers. Not just this place and the people he was with, but the world, the entire universe suddenly seemed cold, unfriendly, and alien to him.

He grew deeply afraid, terrified by the realization of his ultimate aloneness and isolation; even the bright stars seemed to glisten with an icy indifference. In his fear and dread only one thought consoled him, the slight chance that she still might come to him. But no, she would never come to him and he knew it, and the cruel truth bullied his pathetic little hope.

I will not associate with her. I'll be polite, I'll smile and say hello, but nothing more, he told himself, feeling a faint surge of pride. But then waves of loneli ness washed over the small breakwater of his will, and, as with so many times during the past several months, he became 56 aware of the little boy, the lonely frightened little boy crying inside him.

That night he dreamed about an incident which had actu ally occurred when he was eight-years-old in the second grade.

It was on a Friday. The busride home on Fridays was usually the most boisterous, because school let out at noon.

Andrea and John were sitting together towards the back of the bus. Their four shoes, about a foot short of the floor, were receiving considerable attention from him, in between shy smiles at her and brief exchanges with some of the other children. Andrea had golden-brown hair parted on one side and dark brown eyes.

She was so pretty. She was wearing a white turtleneck.

She was always wearing white turtlenecks. But the best thing about Andrea was her smile. She wasn't always gig gling like the other girls. Well~ maybe she giggled with her girlfriends~ but she always smiled at me.

Lucky for me Tony was driving the bus. Tony was short and fat and really nice. He never shaved. We were friends~ so I knew he wouldn't get all mad if I asked him to wait at my stop for a minute.

"O.K. Johnny-boy~" he shouted~ smiling at me in the big rear-view mirror. We were in front of my house.

I sprang out of my seat and ran up to the front of the bus. "Tony~ Tony~ listen~ can you hold the bus for just a second?" 57

"Sure~ Johnny-boy~" he said to me smiling~ with his fat cheeks all covered with whiskers.

"I'll be right back."

I jumped from the top step of the bus and ran as fast as I could down the driveway around the corner of my house to the backdoor. Mom was standing in front of the stove stirring some soup for my lunch. She was wearing Dad's

Japanese bathrobe~ the blue one with white polka dots all over it. It was big and baggy and looked funny on her. But it always made me happy to see her in it.

"Mom~ do you have the ring?" I asked her~ very excited. I'd given it to Mom to watch over because I knew it would be safe with her.

She rested the long wooden spoon against the side of the pot and dug down into the big side pocket of Dad's robe.

"There you go~" she said smiling and handed me the diamond ring that I bought in the five and ten cent store.

The plastic crystal glistened~ just like the real thing. I was so excited!

I ran as fast as I could back to the bus. To my relief it was still there waiting for me. I jumped up the steps and looked for Andrea. The kids were all going crazy standing in the aisle and on top of the seats.

"Andrea!" I said and somehow the jumble of kids cleared and she was standing in front of me. 58

"This is for you 3 " I told her 3 and I took her left hand

in mine and put the ring on her finger. All the kids were

real quiet watching me. I smiled at her. Then a couple

girls giggled and the kids were all noisy again. I turned

around and headed for the front of the bus as fast as I

could. I shouted "Thanks 3 Tony 3 " jumped off the top step 3 and made a bee-line for the backdoor.

It takes about twenty minutes by car to get from Curry

Village campground to Badger Pass. Driving out of the val

ley and up a winding road banked on either side by tall walls of icy snow, the first thing you notice when you arrive is the redwood ski chalet. There's a restaurant on the first floor of the chalet and a lounge on the second.

The view of the mountain with its various runs is particu

larly good from the large picture window in the lounge on the second floor. All the runs are named after animals.

At the far right is Bruin, an intermediate run, and to its

left Badger, which, with its ample moguls and steep descent

from the top is considered the most advanced. Chipmunk, the beginner's slope, is next to Badger; then Wildcat, Red Fox,

Eagle, and finally Rabbit on the far left, the former two being more advanced runs, the latter two for intermediates.

Friday morning John and several of his students were

standing in a long row of skiers at the top of Chipmunk,

listening to a handsome young ski instructor dressed in a 59 bright red sweater and navy blue ski pants. John was having a hard time turning right. He could turn left easily enough, but not right. His trail leg just wouldn't follow his lead. Down again he went for another try.

"Turn now, turn, turn!" the ski instructor yelled.

"Shut up, asshole," John said to himself as he realized he was picking up greater speed and heading straight for a group of people standing near the bottom of the slope.

Quickly he remembered to snowplow and was able to stop before crashing into the apprehensive onlookers.

Working his way back over to the ropetow, he went back up to the top of the slope where the ski instructor stood flirting with a couple of the better looking young women in the group. He slowly sidestepped over to them and noticed the instructor's face change from a smile to a frown.

"You blew it, you didn't do what I told you to."

"Look, this is my first day skiing. You were a begin ner once, weren't you, or did you just snap into a pair of skis your first time and head for the slalom course?"

The instructor backed off a little. John started down the slope again, thinking to himself--typical, the jerk off's so patient with the good-looking girls, but impatient with everyone else. Well, they can keep swallowing his prima donna act but I've had it.

The instructor didn't yell anything this time as John, trying to turn right, his skis crossing, fell down and 60 tumbled a few yards down the slope. Embarrassed and angry, knowing that everyone at the top had witnessed his clumsi ness, and thinking that the instructor and those two girls were probably having themselves a good laugh, he decided to call it quits for awhile.

Connie, the French teacher, was also at Badger Pass that day. She and John had driven up from the campground in two separate vans. The ski area wasn't that large, but it was large enough for John to successfully avoid her.

That night after dinner, Dave again asked John if he wanted to go over to the visitor's center.' A park ranger would be giving a talk and showing slides that evening and all of the ieachers were going. But John declined, solely because he didn't want to be in Connie's presence.

Dr. Hunt, the director of Pleasant Valley School, wanted to get as many students as possible to go to the ranger's talk, but as it turned out, only three or four of the younger ones went. The director wasn't very happy about this, but, after all, he couldn't make them go. At least he knew they'd be supervised by John. But the extent of John's supervision was that of his physical presence, nothing more.

He stayed in his cabin with the door closed, well aware that to either side of him the majority of the students were crammed into two cabins, mostly Persians in one and Ameri cans in the other. And, John knew very well what was 61 happening in the cabin full of American students. No one had to tell him. After all, it had been going on prac tically every weekend all fall semester. The drinking and cigarettes and marijuana, all strictly forbidden in the school rules. But nothing had ever been done about it. In the beginning of the fall semester John had worked hard at being the conscientious dorm parent. He reported several incidents of alcohol and marijuana use to Dr. Hunt, but the director never did anything about it. Too much of the absent-minded professor, Dr. Hunt wasn't cut out to be an administrator; he would have been better off remaining in his previous position as a science teacher.

So, having become indifferent, even cynical about the way the school was run, John stopped trying to enforce the rules. In fact he'd become indifferent to the school in general. He felt that most of the students were wise-ass kids who held no respect for him or any of the other teachers. In short, by the end of fall semester John's first year as a teacher had so far proved to be a very depressing experience.

Happy now to have the room to himself for a few hours before the boys would come in to sleep, he just stayed in his cabin and read. At one point in the evening, however, the students became a little too loud in the cabin next door, and he felt obligated to quiet them down. Stepping out into the cold evening air, he walked over and knocked 62 on the door. Between the shouting and the grating sounds of rock music coming from a portable cassette player, one of the girls screamed, "Who is it?"

"It's John, open up a minute." "Why?" came the girl's voice again as the music sud denly went low and several other voices inside the cabin spoke rapidly back and forth.

"Come on, open up."

Finally the door opened, and John stepped into a haze of tobacco smoke and marijuana. Among the throng of bodies all staring silently at him, he spotted several sierra cups.

Walking over to the nearest one, he picked it up and smelled it. Whiskey. But he said nothing and put the cup back down.

"Why all the sleeping bags in here, Bobbie?" he asked the boy who was sharing the room with Yosuke. "Are you planning on having some guests tonight?"

"Oh John, it's a drag snow camping," Janice said, a blonde haired girl who was rather high.

"Yeah, yeah," several other students chipped in.

"I imagine it is, but after all, most of you didn't pay for cabins."

"I know, but can't we stay anyway? Please?"

"Dr. Hunt has to give the O.K.; it's not up to me.

Look, do me all a favor. Keep the noise down. Otherwise we'll all get thrown out of here." 63

Having said that, he stepped back outside, and someone slammed the door after him. The rock music grew louder, the noise increased.

"Fuck it," he said to himself walking back into his cabin. He shut the door and locked it. Then, unzipping his duffel bag, he reached under a bunch of clothes and pulled out a fifth of Canadian Club and his sierra cup. He filled the cup with the smooth blended whiskey, drank it down, refilled the cup, and placed it on the night table.

He then put the bottle on the floor between the night table and his bed and stretched out, propping his head up with a couple of pillows. He continued with his reading. In

Chapter Eight of The Rainbow, where Lawrence describes Will

Brangwen's obsessive lust for Anna, John took his pen and drew stars and checks beside the following paragraphs:

This was what their love had become, a sensu ality violent and extreme as death. They had no conscious intimacy, no tenderness of love. It was all the lust and the infinite, maddening intoxica tion of the sense, a passion of death.

He had always, all his life, had a secret dread of Absolute Beauty. It had always been like a fetish to him, something to fear, really. For it was immoral and against mankind. So he had turned to the Gothic form, which always asserted the broken desire of mankind in its pointed arches, escaping the rolling absolute beauty of the round arch.

But now he had given way, and with infinite sensual violence gave himself to the realization of this supreme, immoral, Absolute Beauty, in the body of women. 64

Saturday evening repeated the same pattern as Friday.

Again John was the only teacher supervising the students at the cabins, while the rest of the faculty and a handful of younger students were at the visitor's center for another ranger's talk.

He'd had a very successful day at Badger Pass. He'd overcome the difficulty with his right turn, had skied down

Bruin several times displaying a decent stem-christie, and had avoided Connie, who'd again spent the entire day at

Badger as well.

Only once, in fact, did he actually see her. Standing over by the ski-racks in front of the chalet, he noticed her a few hundred yards to his right, sidestepping very slowly up the rather steep incline leading to the Bruin t-bar. She was wearing a navy-blue parka and bluejeans, and a white wool cap. Her long brown hair partly covered her face as it fell past her shoulders down to her waist. She looked ter ribly awkward, bent forward in a strained, slightly con torted position, the weight of her twisted torso resting against the two ski poles, almost as though she were carrying an unwieldy burden on her back and shoulders.

John thought that she looked old, somehow very old, and solitary, so helplessly alone yet struggling along in her characteristically proud determination, a will of steel, so rigid, so stern, so completely unyielding. And for a moment he felt sorry for her, but that quickly passed. 65

p '

Yes, he had avoided her, but it wasn't easy. All day long he'd had to resist the desire to make contact with her.

But he figured if he could continue to avoid her, it would be the least painful way to get through the weekend.

By nine o'clock that night, having finished off the first bottle of Canadian Club and well into a fresh one, he was drunk and very depressed. He could hear the music from the cabin full of students next door. They're at it again, he thought. Good, let them get drunk and stoned, as long as they leave me alone.

He continued with his reading, trying to repress his desire to see her. Besides The Rainbow he'd also brought along two other books, one by a female Jungian analyst entitled Understanding Woman, and another by the philoso pher-religious teacher Krishnamurti.

Ever since college, reading had assumed tremendous importance in John's life. Above all he took comfort in being able to identify with the problems and sorrows of characters in books, which he was inclined to feel were the writers' problems and sorrows. As a freshman in college, for instance, he felt less alone and unhappy by being able to identify with Hesse's character, the Steppenwolf. Now, almost a decade later, he was still doing the same thing, only the character had changed--now it was Will Brangwen or, as John believed, a projection of D. H. Lawrence. 66

But his believing that he could find answers to his suffering through reading was a terrible illusion, one in which he and countless other intellectual people were trapped. No matter how much reading he did, he would never find a solution to his pain through thinking. A deeper non-verbal aspect of his being knew this to be true. There were no answers, to anything. But still he tried to con vince himself that if he could just identify the source of his pain, then his problem or problems might be solved.

For the past year he'd been reading Jung and his school, and as a result of this influence now believed that the answers were all there but locked away in the unconscious.

He figured if he could only tap the reservoir of that dark archetypal world, he'd find the answers he was looking for.

Around ten-thirty, his mind tight and constrained, overloaded as it usually was after too much reading, he decided to take a walk and clear his head with some fresh air. Walking around the corner of the cabin and out into the parking lot, across the road to the left he could see the lights of the skating rink and hear the muffled voices of people. He started to walk in the direction of the rink, but halfway there turned around. He didn't really want to be with anybody. His mind was still cramped with a myriad of ideas:

It's not Connie I'm obsessed with really~ but my own anima. If I could just see that it's the feminine principle 67

within me that's projecting itself onto her~ if only I could realize that~ actuaZZy~ then I wouldn't feel this terrible need for her--my own femininity would be consciously acti vated~ no Zanger unconscious. But what about her body? I'm obsessed with her physical body--that's not part of the anima projection~ is it? Maybe I'm just in Zove with her because she's unobtainable~ maybe if I actuaZZy had her~ I'd

Zose interest ... WeZZ~ I couldn't see myself losing interest in that body for at Zeast several months. Krishnamurti says~ "You are the suffering--you are the pain.n Not to run from it~ not to run~ to remain with one's sorrow~ then some thing different takes place~ a transformation. But how Zong must I remain with it? I have remained with it~ and aZl I stiZZ feel is pain ...

Lost in his thoughts, like a sleepwalker oblivious to his surroundings, John found himself approaching a small circle of people standing in a clearing between two rows of cabins. It wasn't until he was actually standing in the circle with them that he realized, as if awakening from a dream, that he stood face to face with some of the other faculty members, Dave, Steve, Dr. Richards, and ... Connie.

"Hey, John, you look like you're lost," Dave said, laughing.

"I guess I was there for a moment," John replied, feeling an acute sense of self-consciousness and pain in

Connie's presence. The contrast between his inner mental 68 world and this outer reality was extremely disorienting to him. He felt like a new-born baby just pushed from the warmth and security of the womb into the harsh bright light of the world. For this was really her, standing a few feet away from him. The thin arched eyebrows, those eyes, an enchanting mixture of green and lightest blue, the prominent cheekbones, the fine straight nose and full, sensual lips.

This was the living, breathing Connie, not the image inhab iting his mind.

She was smiling and swayed a little. He figured she was probably high. And he thought--she's indifferent to me, totally indifferent.

"How was the ranger's talk tonight? 11

"Very interesting, John, very interesting indeed," Dr.

Richards, the Biology teacher, replied, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "It's a shame so few of the students are

interested, however."

"Connie, you still want a lift over to the camp?"

Steve, the young math teacher said.

"Yes, let's go."

John ached with jealousy as he watched the two of them walk away. He remembered the rumor going around among the

students after the October trip to Sequoia. Some of them

said that they had seen Connie sneak into Steve's tent late at night. He refused to believe it. He'd never accept it, 69 even if it were true, even though his insanely jealous emo tions kept insisting that it was.

As Dave and Dr. Richards bid John good night, leaving . I him there alone in the light snow which had just begun to fall, he realized that he was standing only two cabins away from his own; in fact, he was directly in front of Connie's cabin!

Why is she going over to the camp with Steve? he thought to himself as he walked back to his cabin, deter mined to get thoroughly drunk before the boys came in to sleep.

John awoke late that night with his face wet with sweat and his heart pounding. He had dreamed that his mother had died, and he was at the funeral home standing in front of her coffin looking down at the one person he so dearly loved, now mysteriously devoid of life.

Getting up to go to the bathroom, he realized that he was still fully clothed and had a pounding headache. It was three-thirty. Looking around the room, he was surprised to see at least six boys in sleeping bags on the floor. So much for the snow camping, he thought, smiling.

The cold water from the bathroom sink tasted good, but his body felt as though it were on fire. He needed to get some fresh air.

Outside it was still snowing. The freshly fallen snow and the absolute stillness of the early morning touched John 70 with its tranquil loveliness. He walked out into the middle of the courtyard between the two rows of cabins. Standing there, aware of the stark contrast between his ugly chaotic life and the harmonious, ordered beauty all around him, he felt an overwhelming sense of self hatred and despair. How he hated himself for getting drunk and passing out! The boys surely must have smelled the liquor in the room when they came in. The thought that he'd failed all of those young people tortured him. Yes, it was his fault, not theirs. He'd failed them. Ideally he wanted to be an exem plary role model, to care for them, to help them with their lives. But the fact was that he was too wrapped up in his own little miseries to be of any help to anyone else. And, ideally he wanted to treat Connie as a friend, just like any of the other teachers; that's what she had wanted from him, not all this foolish emotion. But again the fact didn't follow the ideal. Ever since the beginning of the school year when they had first met, she had very clearly let him know that she was deeply involved with the man with whom she lived and had no interest whatsoever in getting involved with anyone else. Yet, he simply couldn't free himself from this tyranny of sexual desire; he burned with desire for her and all his sound, logical reasons against wanting her didn't change a thing. They only helped to torture him more by creating inner contradiction and conflict. 71

Ideally he didn't want to drink at all, but the fact

was, he turned to liquor to escape the constant feelings of

frustration, rejection, loneliness, and pain which plagued

him day in and day out.

As he stood there in the early morning with the tender

flakes of snow falling on his feverish ears, forehead, and

cheeks, he looked over towards her cabin, imagining her

fast asleep, without the slightest concern whether he lived or died. With a barely audible whimpering sound, he

lowered himself slowly to the snow covered ground, first resting on his knees, then actually falling face forward in the snow, feeling the wet cold sting against his face.

The following morning John and Connie again took two

separate vehicles full of.students up to Badger Pass for their last day of skiing. It was Sunday. He hadn't spoken to her since the school's arrival in the park Thursday evening.

Dressed in her white wool cap, navy-blue parka, and bluejeans, Connie stood waiting in line for the Eagle chair

lift as John approached her.

"Going up top?" he said, addressing her from behind.

She turned around and for a moment didn't say anything., then replied, "Yes."

"Which run are you going to ski down?" he asked, tucking the tan L. L. Bean chamois shirt he was wearing over 72 a red turtleneck into his bluejeans and then pushing his sunglasses up on his nose.

"Rabbit first and then Eagle."

"I think I'll join you."

"Are you good enough already?"

"I went down Eagle yesterday with Tom."

"That was quick."

"I picked it up quickly."

Together they moved over in position for the chairlift, and when their turn came, hurried in place, Connie on the right side, John on the-left.

"This is fun, isn't it?" he said as they were suddenly high off the ground.

"It's so beautiful here," she said absently.

"Yes it is. (pause) So you've been enjoying yourself so far?"

"Oh yes, very much."

"No problems with the kids?"

"No, not so far."

"Well, of course, you haven't had to deal with them either. You, Steve, and Dave have been off at the rangers' talks and the cocktail lounge every night."

"Well you could have gone, too, if you'd wanted."

"Then who would have supervised the kids?"

"Dorothy's there." 73

"I hate to inform you, but that's not part of Dorothy's job. It's yours and mine."

They were halfway to the top of the mountain when the chairlift stopped. John looked down at the skiers coming down Red Fox.

"Red Fox looks like a tough run, 11 he said.

"I think I may try it today," she said.

Her unemotional, matter-of-fact manner infuriated him.

"What level are you, anyway?"

"Intermediate."

(pause)

11 Beatrice."

"What? 11

"I called you Beatrice. Do you know who she was?

Dante's muse. Do you believe that poets are inspried by an actual living muse, or do you think it's just a literary tradition?"

"I don't know, 11 she said, laughing nervously. "I sup pose certain women have inspried poets to write about them."

"Do you know that you have the honor of being a muse? 11

Connie just stared at him, her eyes widening. John knew he was entering dangerous waters, but he was feeling very reckless.

"To the neglect of my English classes, I've written a great deal of poetry this fall, all inspried by your beauty.

What do you think about that?" 74

She didn't say anything for several moments.

"It's very flattering, I suppose, 11 she said, again letting out a short nervous laugh. "I've never been a poet's muse before."

"Seriously. I mean it. Your loveliness has driven me to write poem after poem. (pause) Just as long as I don't watch you dance, I'm O.K."

"What?"

"You've been teaching dance all fall, right?"

"Yes, but--"

"All I'm saying is that I don't like to watch you dance."

"Why?"

"Because you turn me on so much."

Connie's eyes grew even wider. Her lips trembled slightly.

"As a matter of fact, your loveliness seems to be com pelling me this very moment to lean over and kiss you," he said, smiling nonchalantly, but feeling his heart pounding in his chest.

"John, I've told you before that I don't like you talking to me like that."

"But who's to prevent me, stranded up here as we are?"

Connie was looking away from John, but he knew that she was very afraid.

The lift started up again. 75

"It will never last," he said, looking straight ahead, no longer smiling.

"What?" Connie exclaimed, reeling on him.

"Your very special relationship," he said sarcas tically, referring to her relationship with her boyfriend.

"It won't last. None of them do."

"How dare you say such a thing to me! You know nothing about my relationship with Doug. You can't even begin to understand how important that relationship is to my life.

It's more important than anything else! (pause) I carne out here today to enjoy myself, not to be upset by you. When we get to the top, just leave me alone."

"I know this is going to sound terribly clichg, but you're beautiful when you're angry," he said to her, smiling again, but knowing how hopeless it all was, well aware that he was acting like an ass and should shut up.

But he kept on, feeling deeply sad, especially from her saying how important her relationship was with her boy friend. If she only knew how desperately he wanted her to feel that way about him. He'd do anything to have her dedi cation focused on him.

When they had reached the top, they jumped off the lift and skied down the small incline which fed into the main area before the runs.

Connie skied ahead of John towards Wildcat run. 76

"Hey, Connie, you're not ready for Wildcat, are you?

That's an advanced run," John shouted at her from behind.

She didn't answer him.

"Connie, wait up!"

"Leave me alone!"

"Look, I'm sorry; I acted like an ass, let's forget about it and enjoy the skiing."

But Connie wasn't listening to him. She started down the steep slope with John not far behind. Moving too fast, she lost control and fell. Out of control himself, John crashed into her, his left ski running between her sprawled, open legs and up over her thigh.

Freeing himself from the entanglement of skis and poles, ·John smiled at her, shook his head, and laughed.

"Are you O.K.?"

"Yes," she said, but she wasn't smiling.

That evening John went to the ranger talk with the other teachers. Dorothy, the cook, had agreed to watch over the students back at the cabins.

Connie completely ignored him all evening. Even while sitting directly across from him at a small table in the cocktail lounge. She talked and joked with the other teachers at the table, but never once looked John in the eyes. Her ignoring him only strengthened his desire to get her attention. 77

Which he did after the group returned to the camp ground. Having left the bar by ten-thirty, a little earlier than the rest of them, he waited for Connie in the parking lot in front of the cabins. Dave dropped her off there around eleven.

"Connie, I need to talk to you," John addressed her, walking towards her out of the darkness.

"Jesus, do you always sneak up on people like that!" she said, clearly startled by him. "There's nothing more to say. Please leave me alone."

She then turned around and started walking away from the cabins towards the lights of the skating rink.

"Connie, Connie, wait a minute! Corne back!"

She walked across the parking lot and onto a narrow path in the snow which led to the skating rink. She walked very quickly, looking straight ahead. Reaching the low wooden wall around the rink, she tried to hide herself among a group of spectators. But John wasn't going to let her get away. Very shortly he was standing beside her. He noticed she was crying.

"That's just what you wanted, wasn't it, to make me cry. Well, congratulations," she said to him with tears running down her cheeks.

There was a faint smile on John's lips, but inwardly he ached with sadness and compassion for her. To see her crying, with all her defenses down, so tender, so 78

vulnerable, so very feminine, the little girl in her

exposed; he knew at that moment, by the very intensity of

his feelings for her, that he loved her. He was about to

beg her forgiveness when the tears gave way to vengeance--

"You terrified me this afternoon."

"What?"

"You terrified me with your threats and your talk about

how you get so turned on when you watch me dance. You just

don't understand who you're dealing with. You don't know what I've been through."

"No, you're.right," John said, wondering what she meant

by her last remark. Had she been raped once? It wouldn't

have surprised him. For whether she realized it or not, she

put out very strong sexual energy, the kind that draws men,

entices them.

"I know very little about you, because you've spent the

entire fall semester evading me," John continued. "You just won't open up, to anybody."

"Im a very private person, and you're trying to know

everything about me!" she said in a slightly hysterical tone

of voice.

"What? I'm trying to know everything about you?"

Just then Beth, a short, overweight student with frizzy

brown hair, walked by the two of them and said hello.

"Great. Beth probably heard us," Connie said.

"So what?" 79

"So what! Do you know there's already talk among the

students about us?"

"That's a laugh. Oh well, they're going to make up things, there's nothing we can do about that. Besides, you know it's all lies, so why should you care? Let's get away from here. Come on."

They walked away from the skating rink onto the main road. Connie had stopped crying and was more relaxed.

"Do you feel better now?" John asked her tenderly.

"Yes," she said softly. Her soft tone of voice made

John ache with love for her.

"Connie, will you let me hold your hand?"

"0 .K. II

John took her hand in his. She still had her glove on. He wanted to ask her to take it off, but decided it would be better not to. He'd settle for her gloved hand.

The main road running through the park was very quiet now. Tall fir pines stood to either side of the road where they walked and the banks of snow sparkled under the street light. They walked in silence for several minutes. Then

Connie spoke.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm walking a tightrope over a dark abyss."

John was touched by her remark. He thought to himself, my God, she's opened up a little bit of herself to me. He 80

felt ecstatically happy, and now, more than ever, madly, desperately in love with her.

But just as he was about to ask her to go on, they approached a long dark section in the road where there wasn't a street light, and she stopped abruptly.

"I want to go back now. I'm tired, and we've got a

long drive back to school tomorrow."

John complied with her, and they turned around and headed back towards the cabins. On the way back she went from hot to cold, a contradictoriness about her that per plexed and frustrated John. For she had just begun to open up to him, but just as quickly she shut him out.

"I need privacy. That's just the way I am," she said, withdrawing her hand from his. "So please stop trying to know me."

"Christ, Connie, you're impossible, you really are!

What's your Goddamn problem anyway? I don't believe you.

What in the hell is all this crap about trying to know you?

Christ, I've hardly ever talked to you! You haven't given me the chance!"

"And you'll never get the chance," she said angrily.

"I told you the second week of school that I had a boy friend, but that didn't stop you. You kept pestering me to go out with you."

"I asked you twice, twice, that was all." 81

11 Look, John, all I wanted was to do my job during the

day and then be able to go home in the evening and relax.

I wanted my life to be simple, but you had to go wreck

everything. You've disturbed my life! 11

11 Disturbed your life, have I? What, by being

attracted to you? Please accept my deepest apologies.

Shit, I guess it never occurred to you that you might have

disturbed !!!Y. life a little! You've never been on the other

end of the stick, have you? You don't have any idea what

it's like to want someone when they don't want you. Hell,

bothered you! I've hardly ever talked with you! 11

11 That's just the problem. You act differently towards me than you do towards Dave and the other teachers, you-- 11

11 Shit, you're incredible, you know it? First you tell me that you want me to leave you alone; then when I do, you

say it's just another form of bothering you! Do you think

it's as easy as deciding that when I get up tomorrow I'll

no longer have any physical attraction to you? ShouJJd I write myself a little note tonight before bed, reminding me

to treat you exactly like all the other teachers in the morning? 11

11 Look, 11 Connie said, stopping in the middle of the

road. 11 Do you want me to be very honest with you? 11

11 Yes, go ahead ...

11 Even if I wasn't involved with Doug, Id neyer go out with you. You're just not my type ... 82

"Do you mean you're not physically attracted to me?"

he asked, fearing her answer.

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean."

"I don't believe that," he said, feeling sick to his

stomach and numb with pain.

Up until this moment he had placed all of his hope on

the very slight chance that perhaps Connie wasn't that

serious about this other man, Doug. Even though she lived

with him, she still hadn't married him, and she had once

said that marriage was important to her. How couldn't it

be? She'd been raised in a strict Catholic family~ So,

perhaps because she still hadn't married him after five or

six years of living together, perhaps there were reserva

tions on her part. And hadn't one of the students mentioned

to him that she was thinking of moving to Ojai so she wouldn't have such a long commute to school? Sure, she would see Doug on the weekends, but how much could she

really love him if she was willing to be away from him all week? And then there was that time in the library when

she'd said, "Sometimes I wonder about my relationship with

Doug. I wonder if I'm living with him just becaise I'm

afraid of being alone?"

And then she'd given me that long look. How was I sup-

posed to take that comment and that look? Wasn't she giving me some kind of chance then? Wasn't that something to hang

my hope on? 83

"Don't believe it if you don't want to, but it's true,"

Connie said.

"What?" John said, awakened from his momentary reverie by the sound of her voice.

"I said don't believe it if you don't want to, but it's true."

"Yeah, that's right, you like tall skinny guys, like that goon you go out with."

Connie shook her head and laughed bitterly, offended by his last remark.

John was well aware of the immaturity of his remark, but it had come instinctively, an echo from the last vestige of a shattered dream tumbling down, down into an infinite inner emptiness, a dark nothingness. And one final feeling, distilled from the ubiquity of his pain, clung to the sur face before dropping into the void, a feeling similar, per haps, to that of a soldier in battle, when the enemy stands over him victorious, pushing a bayonet through his chest ... pure impotent rage.

Never again will I allow myself to become this vulner able to a woman. Never again will they wield this kind of power over me~ never~ a voice deep inside him swore. And then there was nothing.

"You've washed me out," he said to her, words spoken from nothingness. He then started to walk towards his cabin, leaving her there under the street light. 84

"Well, you wanted the truth, didn't you," she said.

But he didn't look back.

III

Farzad came into the cabin, hesitated upon seeing John,

and then sat down in the chair to the side of the door.

John felt both angry and apprehensive. Earlier that

evening, he and the young Persian boy had had a heated argu ment over the price of the cabins. Farzad had accused the

school's business manager of charging him too much. John had tried to explain to the student that the fee included not only the price for the room, but for skiing, meals, and transportation as well. But the boy wouldn't listen to reason, John had soon lost his, and the two had nearly resorted to fists. What the teacher had over his student

in strength and weight, the latter made up for with an unusual propensity for violence. I better get this over with, John thought to himself.

''I'm sorry about what happened earlier, Farzad," John

said, getting up off the bed and walking over toward the boy.

"It's O.K.," Farzad said, looking down at his shoes.

John knelt down on one knee in front of him. He then placed one hand on the boy's knee. The boy looked sur prised; John looked tired and distraught. 85

"Will you forgive me? I've been under a lot of stress lately. I really didn't mean to fly off the handle like that. I'm sorry I swore at you. 11 John's eyes were watery and his upper lip quivered as he spoke.

"It's O.K., man, really.n Farzad was surprised that

John, of all his teachers, would humiliate himself like this. He felt slightly victorious with John being the first to apologize, but this kneeling down business seemed weak.

He couldn't respect John for apologizing to him in this way.

Similar thoughts had passed through John's mind as he started to kneel. It was a weak gesture, especially when he knew he hadn't been in the wrong. Farzad was always being difficult, often violently so; he didn't deserve this apol ogy. Nevertheless, John felt he needed to clear the air of this problem, totally, because a far more serious one was causing him enough pain already. He couldn't cope with an additional conflict, no matter how small; it would be too much. He'd do anything to make sure there were no more con flicts, even if it meant humiliating himself.

Six teachers and twenty-five students from Pleasant

Valley private school had arrived in Yosemite this Thursday evening in January for their Winter Camping Trip--a long weekend of skiing and snowshoeing during the day, with rangers' talks and ice-skating at night. Part of their edu cational experience in Yosemite entailed snowcamping. Meals would be cooked outdoors, and the majority of students were 86

to sleep outside in tents. A few students with various

excuses, medical or otherwise, who could afford the added

expense, were permitted to sleep in heated cabins. However,

by the second night, having disobeyed the Director's

instructions to remain at the campsite, the majority of the

students had all piled into two of the four cabins reserved

by the school. The other two were occupied by the three

adults assigned as cabin supervisors--Connie, the French

teacher, shared one with Dorothy, an older woman who had

come along to help cook, and John shared the other with two

Persian students.

For the school's first day in Yosemite, John and Con

nie were assigned to take two vans full of students up to

Badger Pass for skiing. Two other teachers, Dave and Steve, were to lead a group in cross-country skiing, while the

Director, Dr. Hunt, along with the Biology teacher, Dr.

Richards, took a smaller group snowshoeing.

Dr. Hunt's group ended up with only three students,

all eighth-graders. Around two o'clock that afternoon, the

Director and a little girl with red hair and freckles could

be seen ascending a small snow-covered hill about a mile

from the camp. Dr. Richards and the two other students were following closely behind.

"'Pseudotsuga Menziesii,'" Dr. Hunt said, speaking to himself. He and the girl had reached the top of the hill 87 and were now standing together, overlooking an endless stretch of dark-green pine trees.

11 What did you say, Dr. Hunt? 11 Mary asked.

11 0h, 'Pseudotsuga Menziesii,' the Douglas Fir. Those pines are primarily Douglas Firs, 11 he said, smiling at the little girl.

She looked up at the Director~ It was true, she thought, he was kind of funny looking, with that long nose and his big ears, but the older kids didn't have to be so cruel about it. Maybe he was a little weird, but she figured that's because he was so smart. But weird or not, he was nice to her and she liked him.

11 Do you know all the scientific names for things in nature? 11 she asked. 11 Gosh, everytime you find a spider or some sort of bug back at school, you know the long name for it, and now the trees, too. 11

11 Yes, well, it's what I enjoy, studying the-- 11

11 This is wonderful, isn't it, Jim? 11 Dr. Richards said, coming up alongside Dr. Hunt.

~well, there you are. 11

Dr. Richards, also a middle-aged man, had a habit of sniffing perpetually, even when he didn't have a cold. The students had been quick to observe this and made fun of him for it.

11 I hope some of our older students take the time to appreciate their natural environment. 11 88

11 You can appreciate the environment while skiing, can't you, Dr. Richards? 11 Timmy asked, one of the two other children.

11 0h well, yes, Timothy, I suppose so, 11 Dr. Richards replied, pushing his glasses up on his nose and sniffling.

He then moved closer to Dr. Hunt and spoke in a lower tone of voice. 11 You're aware that most of the students left the campsite last night and slept in the cabins. The Iranians apparently in Mojgan's cabin, and the American kids in with

Yosuke."

11 0h? 11 Dr. Hunt said, unaware until now that this had happened.

11 I knew we shouldn't have allowed them to bring those portable cassette players up here. John told me this morning that they all sat around the cabins listening to rock music last night. Maybe we should make the ranger talks mandatory ...

"Hmmm ••• "

"To tell you the truth, I don't give a hoot what they do, but this is supposed to be a learning experience, not a time for goofing off," Dr. Richards continued, in between sniffles.

"Hmm, well, I'll have a little talk with John and see if he can 'rouse some interest in them." 89

Saturday afternoon John was standing at the bar in the

lounge of the ski chalet at Badger Pass. He was drinking

hot-mulled wine and looking over his shoulder across the

room. His gaze fell on the large picture window diagonally

across from him. For several minutes he stared abstractedly

out the window at the skiers coming down the slope and going

up the chairlift.

Put it on the younger teacher, he thought to himself

bitterly. Hunt's always putting it on me. Get the students

to go over to the ranger talks. Hell, all they want to do

is hang out in the cabins and get high! They did it last

night, and sure as shit they'll be doing it again tonight.

If Hunt only knew. Hell, I've told him before, but it never

does any good.

John finished his wine and ordered another. He looked

at himself in the mirror behind the bar. His brown hair wasn't combed, and his eyes looked tired and bloodshot. He

thought he looked like hell. Too much booze last night, he

thought to himself. So what else is new? He then looked

away from the mirror and saw Connie, the French teacher,

enter the room. A young man with blond hair was with her.

They sat down at a small table to the right of the door.

Removing her blue parka and placing it on the back of the

chair, she sat down, shook her long brown hair over her

shoulder and, folding her arms in front of her on the table,

smiled at her companion. 90

That same wrenching ache was there in his chest and

stomach. He felt it every time he saw her, each morning

back at school he felt it when he'd see her driving into the parking lot or walking into Assembly. He'd been hopelessly

in love with her ever since the second week of school when they'd taken a walk together along a mountain road and talked~ little about their lives and backgrounds. She'd been wearing white jogging shorts and a tight, light-blue t-shirt. Her long brown hair fell in luxuriant waves past her small delicate shoulders down to the middle of her back.

"It's so lovely here in Ojai, isn't it?" she said in a dreamy manner as they stood together overlooking the Valley.

"Yes," he said, staring into her sparkling blue-green eyes, thinking, My God, this is the most beautiful woman

I've ever met! and feeling a mixture of adoration, joy, and fear.

And now, several months later, even after her telling him that she lived with another man and would not get involved with anyone else, he still loved her. He loved her, in spite of his being able to intellectually realize the utter foolishness of his feelings, in spite of her obvious lack of interest in him, in spite of everything.

His third hot-mulled wine was put in front of him. It wasn't hot enough, however, to prevent him from drinking it all at once. He paid the bartender and walked over to

Connie. 91

11 Keeping an eye on your kids? 11 he asked her, brusquely.

11 0h hi, John. John, this is Mark, 11 Connie said.

11 Hello, 11 John said, barely looking at the man roughly his own age sitting beside her.

11 Your kids ...

11 What? 11

11 Are they all accounted for? 11

11 I don't know, I suppose so ...

11 You suppose so, do you ...

11 Well, they're on their own; I'm not keeping tabs on them, .. she said.

Through the corner of his eye to his right, John was aware that Mark was beginning to get irritated by his abrupt, obnoxious manner with Connie.- This pleased him.

So, he thought, this jerk's getting pissed off because I've invaded his cozy little tete a tete. Well, come on, fella, do something about it.

But he didn't.

11 It's getting late. I'm gonna round up my kids and head back to camp. Take Stacey, will you? 11 John said to her and then started for the door.

11 But wait a minute, John. Why should I take her? You brought her up here ...

11 What does that have to do with anything? .. John said.

He knew he'd irritated her. Stacey was a partially blind 92

girl who could be very difficult to deal with, and John knew Connie didn't enjoy being responsible for her.

"You're a big girl, you can handle it," he said to her,

and before she had time to protest, he was out the door.

John's aggressive behavior had frightened Connie. He hadn't said a word to her since their arrival in Yosemite,

and now this. What would he do next? It worried her.

He's just never been able to accept the fact that I'm committed to another man, she thought to herself. I thor oughly explained my situation to him last fall when he asked me out. He knows I'm living with Doug~ Why does he carry on like this? God knows I don't encourage him. He couldn't really think that walk we took together last fall that he's always mentioning had any significance other than a friendly gesture on my part. And I was only trying to be nice to him at the Thanksgiving party. He looked like such a lovesick puppy dog. The fool! I wish he'd stop all of this nonsense and treat me like any of the other teachers!

But I don't know; now he's stopped ignoring me. That was bearable. At least I didn't have to deal with him. But what is he up to now?

By twelve that night, most of the students in the cabins had quieted down. Only four or five were sleeping at the campsite. Earlier that evening, all of the faculty, except for John, had gone to the ranger talk, and again, as with the night before, only a handful of students had 93

joined them. So John once again had been the only super visor of close to twenty students. He held vigil with a

fresh bottle of Canadian Club as one group of students, mostly Persians, congregated in a cabin fifty yards away

and the other group, primarily American students, gathered

in the cabin next door to his. By and large, the Persian

students behaved themselves. Some smoked cigarettes, and a

few of the boys had liquor, but they weren't noisy. The

American students, however, were smoking marijuana, drink

ing, screaming, yelling, and playing their music too loudly.

As with the night before, John once again felt obli gated to go over to their cabin and tell them to be quiet.

Less patient with them by now, he kicked the door hard

several times and screamed, "Open up!" The music and voices died down simultaneously, and the door was opened by an attractive teenage girl with red, sleepy-looking eyes.

"At it again, are you, Janice?" h~ said to her. Then he stepped in the room and addressed the whole group, sprawled out on the beds and the floor.

"Im going to tell you once and once only. Keep it down in here; otherwise the people running this park are going to have you all arrested!"

One boy nicknamed "Spaceman" was mumbling something to the girl next to him on the bed.

"Spaceman, did you hear what I said!"

"Yeah." 94 ~

"You better have! Now, to all of you, again--keep the racket down! And, Yosuke, keep that tape player of yours low!" he told a Japanese boy sitting on the floor.

As he turned to leave, John spotted a half-empty fifth of Jack Daniels on the bureau.

"Your private stock, Kirk?" he said, addressing a tall thin boy with long blond hair who was sibting on the floor by the bureau, a cigarette still burning in his hand.

"Oh, man ... " he mumbled, never looking up at John.

John stood there for a moment, the room very quiet.

Then he left, shutting the door behind him.

Around one in the morning, Kirk came stumbling into

John's cabin and tripped over several bodies in sleeping bags lined up side by side on the small floor.

"Shit man, where's my fuckin' bag?" he said loudly.

"John, you awake, man? Hey John!"

!'No asshole, he' s not awake. He passed out long ago,"

Farzad said, lying on the other single bed parallel to

John's.

"Ha, ha, he passed out, did he? Hittin' the bottle again, was he? And he has the balls to give me shit about drinkin'. Wow, that's too much, too much ... "

"You're drunk. Go to sleep."

"That's just what I intend to do, Mr. Farzad, sir, as soon as I can find my frigging bag. Oh, shit, here it comes, puke-city." 95

Kirk lunged for the door but tripped and fell over one of the boys asleep on the floor. Luckily, however, there was a small wastepaper basket in reach, which he grabbed

just in time.

Sunday evening, the night before the school's return home, John went to the ranger talk with the other teachers.

Dorothy, the cook, had agreed to watch over the students back at the cabins.

Afterward, he joined Connie and two other teachers,

Dave and Steve, for a nightcap in the bar at the lodge. The light from a quietly burning fire in the fireplace next to their table cast a warm glow on Connie's face, softening the prominent angles of her cheekbones and jawline, and illumin ating her fine straight nose and full sensual mouth. Her eyes, a mixture of green and lightest blue, glistened under provocatively arched eyebrows. Like a beautiful picture set in a perfectly matched frame, her face was highlighted by lovely long hair, golden brown in the firelight, tumbling down in soft waves past her shoulders.

Both Dave and Steve clearly acknowledged Connie's physical beauty and because of it, treated her with a defer ence paid by most men to beautiful women. John was aware of this in the other two men and felt a mixture of jealousy and scorn toward them. What fools men are to worship women like they do, he thought to himself. 96

"How was your last day of skiing today, Connie?" Steve, the young math teacher, asked.

"Oh, it was fun," Connie said, looking up from her glass of Chablis, "but I'm glad we're returning to school tomorrow. I've had enough."

She looked slightly distraught as she reached for her glass of wine. Thoughts of the incident with John in the chalet the day before, mingled with thoughts of an even more disturbing encounter with him while skiing that day, floated, as if from an unfathomable darkness, up and through her mind, driving little rivets of fear through her stomach and chest. All the trouble had begun when he cornered her in the line for the chairlift. All of that strange talk about her being his poetic muse, and then ... together on the chairlift which stopped halfway to the top ... and that remark he'd made about her dancing--

"Just as long as I don't watch you dance, I'm O.K."

"What?"

"You've been teaching dance all fall, right?"

"Yes, but--"

"I don't like to watch you dance."

"Why?"

Because you turn me on so much, he had said. She also remembered the malicious grin on his face as he had spoken, and was once again overwhelmed with fear.

"Connie, you O.K.?" Dave asked her. 97

"What? Oh, yes, I'm fine," she said looking up at

Dave. She never once looked at John.

Leaving the bar a little earlier than the other three,

John waited for Connie in the parking lot in front of the

cabins.

Dave dropped her off around eleven. As she was

walking toward her cabin, John approached her out of the

darkness.

"Connie, I need to talk to you."

"Jesus, do you always sneak up on people like that!"

she said, startled by his sudden appearance. "There's

nothing more to say. Please leave me alone."

She turned around and started walking away from the

cabins toward the lights of the skating rink. She walked

quickly, looking straight ahead. Reaching the low wooden wall around the rink, she stood motionless and stared at

the skaters.

Very shortly John was standing beside her. He noticed

she was crying.

"That's just what you wanted, wasn't it, to make me

cry. Well, congratulations," she said to him with tears

running down her cheeks.

Upset by her tears, John gently took her by the arm

and moved her away from the people standing near them. He was about to apologize when the tears gave way to ven

geance-- 98

"I'm a very private person, and you're trying to know

everything about me!"

"What? I'm trying to know everything about you?"

Just then, one of the students walked by the two of

them and said hello.

"Great. Beth probably heard us," Connie said.

"So what?" John said.

"So what! Don't you know there's already talk going

around the students about us?"

"That's a laugh. Oh well, they're going ·to make up

stories; there's nothing we can do about that."

"I need privacy!" she said almost hysterically.

"That's just the way I am. So please stop trying to pry

into my life."

"Oh, so I'm prying into your life, am I? Christ,

you've hardly ever given me a chance to talk to you!"

"And you never will get it! I told you the second week of-school that I lived with a man, but that didn't stop you.

You kept pestering me to go out with you."

"I asked you twice, that was all!"

"All I wanted was to do my job well each day and then

leave it behind me each night, but you had to wreck every thing. You've disturbed my life!"

"Disturbed your life, have I? Shit, I guess it never

occurred to you that you might have disturbed ~ life a

little!" 99

"Do you want the truth from me?"

"Yeah."

"Even if I wasn't involved with Doug, I'd never go out with you. You're not my type."

"Is that supposed to mean you're not physically attracted to me?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean."

"I don't believe that."

"Well, you wanted the truth, didn't you?"

"Yeah, you like tall skinny guys like that goon you live with."

Connie uttered a short rueful laugh. John was no longer looking at her.

"You-'ve washed me out. I guess there's nothing more to say."

God, maybe now he'll leave me alone! Connie thought to herself as she watched John walk away, past the lights leading up to the skating rink, into the darkness.