Mudwoman (38 page)

The academic year was a winding mountain road that ascended to its formal, ceremonial conclusion—commencement weekend. Like the great-sailed
Cutty Sark
that has made its way through choppy seas and is headed now to port—excitedly sighted, making its ostentatious way to port!—the University presented itself, at the end of the term, as a sequence of public events resembling a quasi-religious theatrical festival in which self-advertisement was cloaked in tradition.

Some traditions were of more marketing value than others but all were crucial and none more crucial than the president’s commencement address that had been, at the start of the University’s history, unabashed Christian sermons.

It was a more recent tradition, that the University as an institution defined itself as politically neutral. The University president was not supposed to be “political”—not pointedly.

But M.R. was sure that, during war-crisis eras through the decades, for instance before the outbreak of the Civil War, her distinguished president-predecessors had not avoided political statements.

“ ‘The moral is the political—the political is the moral.’ ”

Except, those to whom M.R. had shown a draft of the address the previous October, including her provost and the University attorney, had advised M.R. against publishing it in the official journal of the American Association of Learned Societies.

Gently they’d advised her. For they had not wanted to insult her judgment.

But this was the very “talk” M.R. had been cheated of giving, in October! The keynote address to the conference!

M.R.’s heart beat quickly, almost she felt exhilarated, dangerously excited, as at the prospect of combat.

“I will not be
censored.
”

It was true—to a degree—that M.R. hadn’t been altogether well lately—in fugue-states, somehow not fully
herself.

The meeting with the trustees, for instance—M.R. had been feverish with excitement and had believed that the meeting had gone well except that reactions from University officers like Leonard Lockhardt had seemed to indicate otherwise. Then, M.R. regretted that she’d terminated the meeting so abruptly; for she had not known that it would not be resumed within a few hours. But, to her surprise, M.R. was informed by the chairman of the board of trustees that the meeting was postponed until June—after commencement.

She thought, stunned
Are they meeting without me? Will they give me a vote of no confidence?

This could not happen. Not once in two hundred years, so far as M.R. knew, had University trustees voted to impeach a president.

Her provost, her academic dean, her vice president for development—they’d begun to suggest that M.R. take a rest, a break—a leave; at the very least, M.R. might check herself into a clinic, to have a “thorough” physical checkup. Though she’d been stung by such a suggestion M.R. had managed to laugh.

“Just three more weeks! Then the term will be over. Maybe then I can rest—for a while.”

That had seemed to placate them. That had seemed to encourage them to speak further, daringly.

No reason for her to be embarrassed or ashamed, they said! She’d run herself down with overwork, this first year in office.

Embarrassed?
Ashamed?

She left them, then. She was deeply wounded.

Yet she intended to follow their advice—to see a doctor. For surely there was no harm in this.

So she’d had her secretary make an appointment for her but then—on the morning of the appointment—she’d realized what a rent the appointment would make in her afternoon schedule, a gaping hole for such an indulgence, and so she’d canceled.

The appointment had been with a doctor who wasn’t the highly regarded woman internist to whom M.R. had been going since she’d first come to the University but a new resident in the area, yet still a woman doctor, of course—for M.R. could not lately bear to be examined by anyone except a woman doctor; and then, it came over her suddenly, she could not bear to be examined by anyone, female or male, because she could not bear to be touched.

She could not bear to be
examined, diagnosed.

Mysterious bruises, welts in her flesh—allergic reactions, rashes—a kind of violently itching psoriasis across her midriff, between her shoulder blades—such symptoms M.R. could hide easily beneath her clothes—(she believed)—for she knew them to be neurotic reactions and not “real” health issues. And there was the rather bad example of Agatha—M.R. frowned to recall—who’d blithely canceled doctors’ appointments even as her blood pressure—and her blood-sugar count—were mounting.

Most doctors in the vicinity would know who M. R. Neukirchen was. And certainly any therapist, psychotherapist.

If she were prescribed sleeping pills, for instance. Or any sort of psychotropic drug.

The damned rashes were spreading, and quite painful. While the “delegates” were gazing solemnly at her the itching had escalated so she’d felt that she was going crazy. But she hadn’t succumbed.

In any case no rash is a serious symptom and M.R. self-medicated with a mild cortisone cream from the drugstore.

Insomnia, loss of appetite, “night sweats”—these clichés, symptoms of a neurasthenic female, M.R. brushed away as you’d brush away flies.

And how ridiculous, even her toenails ached! M.R.’s very toenails turning against her . . .

Formal dinners where M.R. had to impersonate herself for hours—hours!—and dared not activate any of the itching, for fear it would rush out of control. And at such occasions, and receptions where she had to stand on her feet, she could hardly avoid wearing (expensive, tight-fitting) shoes and so it had happened gradually that the toenails of the large toes of both her feet had become weirdly slanted, ingrown, and lately a dull-maroon hue as if blood had collected beneath the nail, and grown rancid.

It was difficult not to see these ailments as signs of
moral weakness.

It was difficult not to see these ailments as signs of what misogynists like G. Leddy Heidemann would deride as
female weakness.

Still, M.R. would see a podiatrist, and an intern—soon. After she’d discharged the last, the very last, of her presidential duties for the academic year 2002–2003.

T
he end. The end when she’d believed it was the beginning.

“ ‘M
.R.’! Are we alone, finally? Have your kindly visitors abandoned you?”

The voice was sneering, with a faint British intonation—G. Leddy Heidemann had degrees from Oxford.

For there the man was sprawled in one of the brown leather chairs in the library, waiting for M.R. to glance into the room, to switch off the light.

So he’d remained behind! M.R. had suspected so, though her heart was beating as quickly as if she’d been taken by surprise.

“ ‘M.R.’! I’ve always wondered if the initials were meant to suggest—inadvertently of course—‘Mr.’—‘mister.’ An awkward—unconvincing—sort of cross-dressing, eh?”

He was taunting her. He was laughing at her. In his laughter such contempt and such wish to harm M.R. felt light-headed, faint—the blunder she’d made.

Sprawled in one of the old leather chairs in the library where lamplight cast a flickering glow upon shining brass surfaces, the prim glass fronts of bookshelves and latticed windows made opaque by night. Heidemann was buffalo-shouldered, massive and sunken in the torso, with a large blunt head and features that, dim-lit, resembled fissures in rock. But no rock-ore so
alive, threatening.

M.R. felt a rush of shame. Purely shame! For she was barefoot, and disheveled; and had probably been talking or murmuring to herself, chastising herself, as she’d begun to do frequently, when she was alone.

“Mr. Heidemann—I think you should leave. Please.”

“ ‘Mister’! But
you
are ‘mister’—I thought we’d settled that.”

When M.R. stared at him in dismay Heidemann laughed, a sound as of foil being shaken, mirthless but percussive.

“We’ve never really talked, you know—‘M.R.’ Even when you’ve invited intimate friends of mine—like Oliver Kroll—to Charters House, you have conspicuously not invited G. Leddy Heidemann.”

“I think—please—you should leave. It’s late. . . .”

M.R.’s voice shook like leaves rattling on a tree—desiccated leaves, a late-autumn tree.

Slowly—belligerently—Heidemann heaved himself to his feet. He, too, was disheveled, in rumpled-looking trousers, a mismatched sport coat. He was breathing audibly, he smelled of whiskey. M.R. was surprised at the bitter reproach in his voice and wondered if he were speaking truthfully.

“I could never—in all conscience—invite to Charters House an individual who promulgates war—against a non-aggressive nation in the Middle East—as a ‘preemptive strike.’ Or one who aligns himself with ‘Holocaust deniers’—to be controversial, to gain attention.”

Heidemann stared at M.R., as if he hadn’t expected such a response.

But M.R.’s speech left her weakened, faint—like a boxer with but one powerful blow, exhausted now in the effort of that blow.

She had insulted him—had she? Now Heidemann lurched toward her, to frighten her—and M.R. shrank back, instinctively. Her skin crawled with the horror of memory—the mocking query
Did you think that you could escape—this?

The man would hurt her, she saw. He would humiliate her physically. He was fearless in the confidence that M.R. would never report him—would never dare risk such exposure, such ugly publicity for the University.

“No! Please . . .”

“ ‘Please’—what? Take pity on you?”

Heidemann was vastly amused. But he was angry, too. And he’d been drinking.

M.R. turned to run from the library and somehow the heavyset man was close behind her, seizing her in his arms—his Buddha-belly pressing against her back. She could smell the whiskey on his breath and she could smell his body. Hands crude as welders’ gloves closed over her breasts, squeezing—“What a sorry specimen of a woman! You have failed even at
that.
”

M.R. winced with pain. She opened her mouth to scream but could not scream. The man’s fingers were tightening, horribly. It was as if he wanted to destroy her, obliterate her; it wasn’t enough just to hurt her, or to humiliate her. She would have fallen to the floor except he held her erect, mocking—“You knew that I’d remained behind. You were fully aware, inviting me into your house. After what you did to that poor boy, Stirk—one of
my students
—you who have no children of your own! You deserve to be punished.”

In desperation M.R. thought
If he hurts me, maybe it will be over. He will release me.
She would have pleaded with the man except words of abnegation stuck in her throat and instead, unable to help herself, instinctively she resisted the man, and it was his maleness she outraged, fatally.

Though he outweighed her by eighty pounds and was very strong M.R. wrenched herself free of his grip and was running—barefoot, panicked. He had stepped—stomped—on her bare feet, and hurt her, yet she was able to run, limping—as behind her the man stared after her, swaying on his feet; then, he lumbered after her, cursing her. M.R. found herself at the rear of the house, in the darkened kitchen area—in the butler’s pantry—barely she was able to see the basement door, ajar—quickly she ran to it, and descended the steps in the dark. Thinking
He will never follow me here. I will escape him here.

Beneath cellar stairs long ago she’d hidden. Crouched and curled like a stepped-on little worm amid cobwebs and dustballs.

They had not found her then—had they?

But the man—Heidemann—was not to be deflected. In a whiskey-rage plunging into the dark, thunderous on the stairs, groping for a light—which by chance he switched on—seeing M.R. crouched at the foot of the stairs, white-faced and terrified, panting—almost you’d have thought the woman stripped naked, so vulnerable she seemed, hair in her face.

He cursed, and laughed, and descended the stairs to her. But clumsily, on legs that seemed bloated, and the bloated torso veering, so the man lost his balance on the narrow stairs, and fell—as M.R. lifted something, an object she’d grabbed with which to protect herself, a rod of some kind, about three feet in length and made of iron—desperately swinging as the man plunged forward, and down; and whether the iron rod struck his head a fatal blow cracking the skull, or whether, as he fell heavily, his head struck the sharp edge of a step, he shuddered and lay very still partway on the stairs and partway on the cellar floor where an inky liquid began to trickle from a head wound.

M.R. crouched beside him. The large body damp with sweat, the large head with its thinning hair and despoiled scalp, a distressingly shallow breath, the small eyes part-closed and unseeing. She was pleading with him—“No! Get up! You can’t be hurt!” She understood that Heidemann was crafty and might be playing a trick—she would not have been surprised, if the man had come to Charters House
wired.

“No. Get up. Wake up. . . .”

M.R. dared to touch Heidemann’s shoulder. She shook his shoulder. She could feel the man sinking, drifting from her—she thought
He will blame me. He will accuse me.

In desperation M.R. stumbled back upstairs. In the dim-lit kitchen she groped for the telephone, which was a wall phone—with panicked fingers she punched the numerals 911. But there was no ring—there appeared to be no dial tone. M.R. broke the connection, and tried again—and again there was no ring. Heidemann had yanked the phone out of the socket as he’d lurched past—had he?

M.R. listened—had she heard a cry? A man’s cry, from the basement?

Except for blood pulsing in her ears, nothing. She thought
There is no one there!

For it seemed to her utterly impossible, that one of her university colleagues had pursued her on the cellar steps, fallen and injured his head—this lurid incident had to be a dream, another of her dreams, for ever more frequently she was mired in dreams of surpassing ugliness like one mired in mud; her deeper, most inward life had become a concatenation of random and humiliating dreams that left her exhausted and broken. But she would not give in.