The Puzzled Heart (13 page)

Nodding, Kate followed him, wondering if she was about to be accused of anti-Semitism. These days, students complained about the slightest remark that
could possibly be interpreted as an affront. On the whole, Kate understood the sensitivity of students from backgrounds unfamiliar to her, and was patient in trying to understand the cause of such sensitivity. But she had known Jews all her life, and certainly had never before been accused of insulting them. She felt herself growing angry even as Nathan opened the door to his office, walked in, and pointed to a chair. Kate sat.

“The student I mentioned said that you were patience personified with students of color, but that you were rude to him.”

“Am I to know his name, or do you want me to answer anonymous charges?”

“His name is Krasner—Saul Krasner.”

“Ah, yes,” Kate said. “I know him.”

“And, am I to assume, don’t like him?”

“Well, he does seem to think he’s God’s gift to the world. I may have been impatient with him. Does that have to be because he’s Jewish? I admit to not liking arrogance in students, particularly when it is allied with ignorance. To say nothing of the fact that he seems to assume that women ought not—how shall I put it?—be in any position to have authority over him. Perhaps you agree with that sentiment.” It was not exactly a question, and Professor Rosen left it unanswered.

“I wasn’t talking about women,” he said. “I was talking about blacks. According to Mr. Krasner, you
listened endlessly to some black man expounding on something, but had no time for him.”

“Mr. Krasner does tend to interrupt other students and me; courtesy is not his most evident characteristic. But I’m sorry if I hurt his feelings, and I would certainly like to talk it over with him.”

“The real question, Kate, is why are you, and so many others, patient with blacks and impatient with Jews and other white people?”

“I may have to plead guilty to being patient with those who are dealing with unfamiliar literature in an unfamiliar place, and who have the advantage of being able to give the rest of us, the other students and me, another point of view from which to consider the works we are studying.”

“You’re an advocate of multiculturalism.”

“Nathan, I don’t want to have a name-slinging argument with you. As I said, I’ll be glad to talk over any offense I may have given with Mr. Krasner.”

“And what do you think of Orthodox Jews, just for starters?”

“I don’t know why I should answer that question, but assuming it to have been sincerely asked, I don’t, personally, admire any fundamentalist religion. Every war that has ever been fought—well, certainly any war being fought today—is over religion. As a woman, I don’t like the way women are viewed by fundamentalist religions of any kind. Also—”

“Let me ask you something?” Interrupting her answer to his question, Nathan leaned forward and
pointed a fìnger at her. “You’re sitting in the subway, not at rush hour. A group of adolescent black males gets on the train, talking loudly and jeering. Next stop, a group of guys from a yeshiva gets on, with yarmulkes and payes. Which group do you fear?”

“Good question,” Kate said, wondering how often he had asked it. “My answer is, do you mean fear immediately or eventually?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s supposed to mean that, right at that moment, the group of black males is likelier than the group of Orthodox Jewish males to frighten or even molest me. But in the long run, I fear the boys from the yeshiva more.”

“You’re kidding!” And indeed, Nathan looked astonished.

“The young black males will go their separate ways. Perhaps, if as the richest country in the world we offer them and their families some support, they may even achieve something interesting. I can’t guess what.”

“I can,” Nathan inserted.

“But,” Kate continued, ignoring this, “I know exactly what the yeshiva males will be thinking for the rest of their lives, and maybe for the rest of their children’s lives, and it’s not a philosophy that I as a woman and a liberal find at all comforting. In fact, I fear it. Does that answer your question?”

“You’re a bleeding do-gooder.”

“Probably,” Kate said, rising. “I’ve never understood
why being called a do-gooder should be an insult. Your faith says somewhere that you may hate your neighbor, but if his cart is stuck in the road, you must help him to get it out. That’s an approximate, not an exact, quote.”

“Where did you pick that up?”

“Probably from all the humanist, do-gooder, liberal Jews I know. So long, Nathan.” And Kate departed quickly, leaving Nathan Rosen still sitting there with his mouth open, his reply ready.

Kate was mixing martinis when Reed came home. He raised an interrogative eyebrow at her, and went to get the martini glasses.

“Don’t tell me you’ve met a right-winger already, with murder and kidnapping in his or her eye?”

“Not exactly. I’ve been accused of anti-Semitism because I didn’t respond with sufficient sympathy to an arrogant student who hadn’t even read the assignment.”

“He complained to you?”

“No. A Jewish colleague, by which I mean Orthodox Jewish. He seemed to think I was as bad as Hitler, except that I was nice to blacks.”

“I don’t blame Jews all that much,” Reed said, tasting the drink. “Many blacks are openly anti-Semitic today, as is the radical right. It can’t be easy.”

“No, it can’t,” Kate said. “But do I really have to pretend to admire fundamentalist Jews any more than fundamentalist Muslims or the Christian right?”

“Well, how many Muslims and members of the Christian right do you have in your classes?”

“Enough of them to have managed to kidnap you. Oh, never mind, Reed. I get your point.”

“The question is, would you prefer it as it was fifty years ago, with only WASP males, gentlemen all, of course, teaching in college, always supposing you were a WASP male too?”

“No, damn it, I wouldn’t. Well, at least I may have eliminated one colleague from my roster. Thank heaven for that, anyway.”

Nine

A
s Kate found the horrors of the previous days receding, she was pleased to discover herself capable of a return to her former personality, a return marked by a meeting with Leslie in the loft into which she had burst with the news of Reed’s kidnapping. Only extreme panic had then allowed Kate so nonurban an indiscretion as “dropping in.” Today’s meeting had, as in ordinary times, been arranged in advance to take place after Leslie had completed her work for the day.

When Kate arrived, Leslie was still sitting in her studio, gazing at her unfinished work. It was an enormous canvas, and Kate admired it silently for some time. A mark of their friendship was that Kate
was allowed to see work in progress although not to comment unless asked.

“I think I’ve followed this whole sorry business from the beginning,” Leslie said. “But just to clear my mind, tell me where you are at this very moment.”

“Nowhere,” Kate said. “That is, I’ve about decided that I agree with Emma Wentworth—that the right wing is not responsible for what happened, at least not alone responsible. I’ve been sifting through the list of the professors in my department, trying to decide which one would be likely to hatch this juvenile plot.”

“Which
male
professor, I presume.”

“Yes. I honestly can’t see one of the women doing it. None of them particularly hates me, and since they’re all, to a woman, married with children—that is, busy—I don’t think they’d have either the time or the inclination for so extended and nasty a prank.”

“That’s probably right,” Leslie said. “But I don’t think you should eliminate women altogether. My guess is that the guilty one is not a professor. In fact, the whole point may be that she is not. I know you are convinced it’s one of your male colleagues, driven to distraction by these changing times, but I’ve got other ideas. Want to hear them?”

Kate nodded. “That’s why I’m here, among other reasons,” she said.

Leslie had wandered about, gazing at her canvas
from various angles as she talked, but now she abandoned this and sat down on a stool opposite Kate. “I think you’ve got it all wrong,” Leslie said.

“How?”

“The whole thing smacks to me of an envious woman, one who’s known you a long time, or at least known about you for a long time, and is furious at your success, relative to her self-perceived failure, or lack of success.”

“What makes you think so?” Kate asked.

“Personal experience, my dear—suffering and tumult, and the residue of a lonely life.”

Kate stared at her friend. Leslie’s was not a life Kate would have suspected of proffering loneliness. She had married young and stayed married for years; she had borne children, had painted when she could—which, lately, was most of the time—and had found in Jane a partner who offered her both a separate life and companionship. How little we know one another, Kate thought, and this is my best friend.

“Oh, not to look at,” Leslie said, referring to her lonely life. “To look at it was crowded. Do you know, I’ve never lived alone. I even went right from marriage to life with Jane. But the loneliness stopped the moment I got out of the marriage.”

“And how has that experience given you insight into Reed’s kidnapping?” Kate asked. “It doesn’t seem connected, not on the face of it, at least.”

“Well, it’s not as odd a connection as you think. I’m
one of those who’s spent her life looking for a friend and for some success at my chosen calling. Let’s say I look at you, and lo and behold, you’ve got a good relationship and you’re good at your calling, and I don’t have Jane or anyone else, and instead of painting, I’ve had to get a job illustrating greeting cards to support myself. You see what I mean?”

“Well,” Kate said, “not exactly. I do think I’m getting there, but I’m not there yet.”

“Okay. Let’s forget art, which is not your field. Let’s take up writing and teaching—that is, being a professor at a prestigious university and publishing well-received books.”

“I’m not sure about the various adjectives,” Kate said, “but I’m following. Go on.”

“Look, nine-tenths of criticism, or reviewing, or whatever you want to call it, is, as you well know, composed largely of envy, rancor, and defense of one’s own established ideas. But whether you’re attacked or praised, you’re taken seriously. Are you with me?”

“With you.”

“Good. Now let’s surmise a woman something like me, no real friends—which may be her fault or not—anyway, real loneliness, and no particular success in her profession, which I know you have assumed is academic, but just suppose it isn’t. Suppose she didn’t make it in academia, or only taught writing courses as an adjunct—whatever, I’m making this up. But the point is that she’s now earning whatever
living she can doing something she doesn’t really respect and doesn’t really respect herself for doing.”

“Like what, for example?”

“How the hell do I know? That’s what I’m suggesting you find out. Look into your past. Maybe she knew you. In fact, if you’re the object of her revenge plan, her hatred, you must have known her at one time or another. The point is, Kate, I’m suggesting you forget the right wing and your colleagues in all this, and look for someone who may well be right-wing, may well be associated with the right wing, but whose animus is personal and personally directed.”

“How do we know it isn’t directed against Reed? He was the one kidnapped. He was the one grabbed off the streets and incarcerated and threatened with sexual exposure.”

“True. But you were the one who was supposed publicly to condemn feminism, and you would have been the one held up to mockery if you had had to do that, and if they had got the pictures they were after, the ones of Reed with a nymphette. No, dear, shaming you was the object. The rest was fun and games, at least for those carrying it all out.”

“And why get the right wing involved? I mean the whole tone was right-wing; they must have been a part of it.”

“Obviously the right wing was glad to be used. It was carrying out their agenda. The question is, did they think it up? I know you have plenty of evidence of right-wing activities in the academic world, so
that you’re quite willing to believe they could have thought this up. I don’t blame you for coming to the conclusion you did. I’m just offering a different conclusion. I’m suggesting a personal animus directed against you as the originating source of all that happened.”