The Best American Mystery Stories 2005
- Автор: Хиггинс Джордж, Камински Стюарт Мелвин
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51744-2
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2005». Краткое содержание книги:
The president believed in being proactive, and the university had subsequently established regulations that, for the time, were relatively strict regarding sexual activity between faculty and students. Not that the new rules deterred many people.
Although the war was the formative experience of my life, I came to an early understanding of academe, because my father was rector of the University of Erfurt. He had lost a leg and won the Iron Cross in the First War. I remember him as a remote and austere figure, who demanded the same standards of achievement from his family as he did from his staff. In my first year as an undergraduate, before the interruption of military service, I stood top of my class, despite the severity with which professors assessed my work on account of my father’s position.
I had invited Nick Jonas to borrow my copy of a new book by Habermas, one of his favorite authors, and he came by my office the day before Anna Scheinberg’s presentation to the Search Committee. Jonas was halfway through his second two-year term as lecturer, and he was desperate to get a tenure-track appointment. He hadn’t yet accepted that no one at O’Connell State was going to let any kind of Marxist get a permanent foothold in the faculty. But he did know that his chances would further diminish if Anna became department head.
I was the nearest Jonas had to a confidant. Like myself, his background was in history; the Department of German Studies encompassed history, culture, and politics, as well as language and literature. I was no Marxist, but I knew the jargon. I’d made it my business to grasp the abstruse doctrines and the convoluted terminology of the Freiburg and Frankfort Schools. Jonas was in his early thirties, with prematurely thinning hair and a prominent Adam’s apple. I never saw him smile, but his eyes would warm a little whenever I dropped the names of any of his heroes: “Marcuse used to say,” or “I asked Adorno that question once.”
I had been expecting him, and I waited for him to bring up the issue of the headship. “I’m concerned about the future of this department,” he said.
“Got time for coffee, Nick?” I asked. “Why don’t you close the door?” I kept a small fridge and a coffeemaker in my office.
“A lot of us are worried about the prospect of Anna Scheinberg heading the department,” he said. “We’d much prefer you as head.”
We didn’t speak for a moment as I ground coffee beans, filling the room with their rich aroma. “That’s kind of you, Nick, but I have no administrative ambitions. And Anna’s much the best person for the job. Nobody else has thrown his hat in the ring. The only thing that would prevent her appointment would be if some impediment came up. And I can’t see any way that could happen.”
“So the department will just continue its reactionary drift for another five years?”
“Anna’s no reactionary,” I said. “Her liberal credentials are impeccable.”
“Liberals! Democracy in retreat. At this of all times.” The protests against the war in Vietnam were just beginning.
“She’ll be good for the department’s teaching side,” I commented.
“Sure. Holds her graduate seminars at her house. False consciousness served up with wine and pizza. All the students on the Search Committee are in her pocket.” Jonas very much resented not being appointed to the committee.
“Well, Nick,” I said, “Anna’s really a different generation. She left Germany soon after Hitler came to power, and she missed what some of the rest of us lived through — and people like yourself, who’ve made a conscientious effort to understand that experience.”
“It was her generation that elected Hitler,’’ Jonas said.
“But did they know what they were doing, Nick? Many who voted for Hitler in the early thirties were naive, even idealistic. Even Anna has commented how naive she was when she was young. She shared the ethos of most people in her part of Germany.” The coffee was ready, and I handed Nick a mug.
A light had begun to come into his eyes. “How old is Anna?” he asked.
“Late fifties, I believe.”
I watched him jot down a couple of figures on his yellow notepad. “So she’d be in her twenties at the time of the 1932 election.”
“I’m not sure that’s a fruitful line of inquiry, Nick,” I remarked. “Some things are best left unsaid, best forgotten and forgiven.” Forgetting and forgiving were not part of Jonas’s personal equipment. “Tell me now, how are our two master’s students coming along?”
I let Jonas work with the master’s students. I supervised three doctoral candidates, and was about to add a fourth.
“We need people to look after my students,” Dr. Schofield, the outgoing department head told me. “And Doug Wisnesky’s, while he’s on sabbatical. Any preferences?”
“Thought I might be able to help one of Dr. Wisnesky’s,” I offered. “Belinda Segal. She was in my class last semester.” Doug Wisnesky, satisfied that I was not running for the headship, had left the previous day for Heidleberg.
“She’s working on Schiller,” Schofield said. “Bit out of your field, isn’t it?”
“Won’t hurt me to expand a little. She’s a good student.”
There was a very good reason why I wanted to adopt Belinda Segal as my student. We met in my office the following day. She was dark-haired and soulful. She wrote poetry in both English and German. I gave her coffee, told her I’d been assigned as her supervisor, and asked if she was comfortable with that arrangement. I flattered her on her thesis proposal, on “moral idealism in the early poetry of Friedrich von Schiller.” Today she looked more than usually tragic.
There was no desk between us; I kept a couple of comfortable chairs in my office for conversation. While we talked, I began to synchronize my breathing with her own, and to copy her gestures and body posture. I kept eye contact while she was speaking. Her defenses began to soften. Eventually she indicated her feelings about Doug Wisnesky.
“You’re fond of him?” I asked.
Belinda looked at me, and tears came into her eyes. “He promised he’d take me with him. To Heidelberg.”
I passed her the box of Kleenex from my desk. “You were intimate friends?” She nodded. “Please excuse me asking this, Belinda,” I said gently. “I don’t want to be intrusive. But I do want us to have a trusting as well as a productive relationship, and I can assure you that I will respect your confidence. Do you mean you were sexually intimate with him?”
“Yes,” she replied.
I expressed my sympathy for her distress, and assured her that we would work together successfully and professionally. After she left, I closed the door, opened my desk drawer, and switched off the tape recorder.
The open meeting of the Search Committee was well attended. Anna Scheinberg had taught modern German literature for more than twenty years, and was regarded affectionately in and beyond the Department of German Studies. The nine members of the committee were seated round the long table in the boardroom, and visitors sat in chairs against the paneled walls under the oil paintings of previous deans. Several of Anna’s students were present, as were almost all members of the department, and half a dozen other faculty. Jonas and his two acolytes sat at the back, together with a graduate student who worked as a stringer for the local newspaper.
Anna’s was the only application for the position. Everyone recognized that this meeting was a formality, an opportunity to honor Anna and launch her as the new department head.
She came into the room accompanied by the dean. She was wearing a blue dress with a darker blue scarf round her neck. Her short hair was still golden, skillfully blended with lighter streaks. She wore her years gracefully, her face rather full and not deeply lined, her manner combining dignity and friendliness.