The Rake (12 page)

South Bend, May 1991

Days before final exams, Justin got word that Professor Lejeune wanted to see him. About what? Justin had submitted a junior thesis on three major philological events in the French language in the twentieth century, a subject to which his grandfather had devoted a substantial part of his academic life. Justin was pleased with his work and sent a Xerox copy to his mother, who would read it with professional care. He could not imagine that the reclusive M. Lejeune would call him in to chat about Justin Durban's ideas on French word changes. He was keenly curious when he stepped into the crowded but orderly little office in the Decio building.

Armand Lejeune was a scholar of solitary, even antisocial, habits (“Professor of Aloofness,” one graduate student had labeled him). His interests were in the great, mesmerizing language he taught and reveled in. Lejeune had been born in France and raised there, until midway through World War II. In 1942 his father was martyred when the Nazis got onto the code by which he was transmitting information to the British. No one had ever communicated to his widow the details of his last days. Four weeks after she and twelve-year-old Armand were smuggled out to safety in England, a letter arrived from her husband
via Sweden, carefully composed to avoid attracting the attention of the censors. There was a frugal reference to a local celebration of the French national holiday, so he was certainly alive on July 14. But nothing more was ever heard from him, or about him. Madame Lejeune, teaching French and working nights in the French army hospital, raised her boy in London.

Justin had had an earlier experience of the Professor of Aloofness. As a competitor for a place on
The Observer
, he had been randomly assigned to write a profile of the august new chairman of the French department, hired away from Cornell. Justin called on M. Lejeune, hoping for a conversation that would yield readable copy. Lejeune wasn't mute, but he didn't divulge any features of his personal life that might have made Justin's story more interesting. Personal details occasionally emerged, but mostly they served simply as background for the academic accomplishments noted in his curriculum vitae, which the department had sent out.

Lejeune had been hired to head up Notre Dame's French department and hold the Masterson Chair. The French department had been deemed laggard by the proud standards of the humanities division. The dean had available, for distribution to the alumni magazine and to the student and local papers, only the barest curriculum vitae for the bachelor newcomer, which included excerpts from reviews of Lejeune's acclaimed work on French drama. The two volumes on Molière and Corneille were already published. The third, on Racine, was scheduled for 1990. The press release told of the author's six years of schooling in Great Britain, of the master's degree in French literature
from Cambridge, followed by eight years as an instructor at the London School of Economics. After that, associate professor at Cambridge, then full professor at Cornell, where he had written his academic volumes on the French dramatists. It surprised some of his colleagues at Cornell that, given his known aversion to social intercourse, Armand Lejeune had accepted the job of department chairman at Notre Dame. “He's going to have to talk to
somebody
,” one colleague remarked at coffee after a faculty meeting.

“Yes. Though maybe Armand will figure out a way to do it by mail.”

But he had become the active head of a department that offered no fewer than twenty-four courses. A half dozen of these were what Lejeune had been heard to refer to as “delicatessen courses in instrumental French.” And in fact they were attended by almost 200 students, many of them bent only on satisfying the undergraduate foreign-language requirements of Notre Dame. These academic conscripts had signed up for first-year and second-year French and would be satisfied if, later in life, they could negotiate a French menu or direct a Paris taxi. That was not the case with Justin Durban and Allard de Minveille. They were both taking courses in French literature, and Allard was especially attracted to French poetry.

What the harried department chairman wanted from young Justin that May afternoon came as an awesome and flattering surprise. He asked Justin to take on, in senior year, the teaching of one section of the first-year course in the French language, French 10ab.

Lejeune spoke to Justin in French, confirming what he had observed upon arriving in South Bend and being pressed for an
interview, in fluent French, by the freshman student. Justin's knowledge of the language was that of a native, as one would expect. But the young man had a manner of speaking that attracted attention and conveyed authority.

Justin was eager to answer any questions put to him, but there weren't many. Lejeune was struggling with a very tight budget and an unanticipated student demand for beginning French. He had been left hard up for qualified teachers. Yes, it was unusual to hire an undergraduate as a member of the faculty, but the circumstances were unusual, and here he found himself with access to a twenty-one-year-old with native schooling in the language. Lejeune had established that Durban was a serious student, and that he had earned the esteem of faculty members who had taught and dealt with him.

After a half hour's conversation, Lejeune gave Justin the details: fifty-minute classes, five times a week, fourteen students.

Faculty rank: assistant in instruction. Compensation: $4,200 for the academic year. Justin left Lejeune's office wild with anticipation and delight.

En route to Tallahassee, Florida, January 1991

“Have you evah met this…mayah?” Priscilla Castle still had in her voice the light southern lilt acquired during her Alabama childhood.

“No. I haven't actually met him,” Reuben said. “But in that line of work—I mean, being a mayor—he is in category number one, and the award he's giving us is much sought after.”

“By whom?”

“Well, by whom do you think, Priscilla? Not by people who want to start animal hospitals.”

“Are you against animals today, Reuben? What happened? You discovered they don' vote?”

“Oh, come on, Priscilla.” He beckoned to the stewardess for more coffee.

“And I'll have more wine,” Priscilla said, motioning with her empty glass.

“So, at the big banquet we are hailed by the mayah as Couple of the Year, and he makes a speech about us. What are
we
supposed to do? Fuck for him? What happened to the other competitors for Couple of the Year? The losers? Didn' fuck to the satisfaction of the mayah?”

“Priscilla, for God's sake. And…keep your voice down. Four
jet engines can't compete when you get riled up.” The wine and coffee were served.

“Well, okay.” She stretched out her legs and tilted back her head, a head that was once famously beautiful. “So I was exaggerating.”

“So you were just exercising your dirty little mind.”

“So—I had to come along because Couple of the Year is one more step toward the golden prize.” She drank her wine. “You might at least bring along some decent wine when you drag me around on these chickenshit missions.”

“You don't care if they're chickenshit as long as you have enough booze—”

“Whaddaya mean
enough
?” She laughed. “There isn't enough in the province of Bordeaux—that's Bordeaux, France—to anaesthetize me on one of your Celebrate Reuben trips.” Without turning her head to the attendant she extended her hand with the empty glass, as if placing it under a beer tap.

“Well now, Miss America, you had to flit around the country a little in 1973 when you were doing your own campaign. Wherever there was a judge or a likely judge, Miss Colorado was there with her manager—what was his name?”

“You talkin' about Amos?”

“Yes. I'll have to ring him up, ask him how he managed to keep you sober.”

But she had begun to cry. Reuben, in the aisle seat as always, tried to calm her. He spoke soothingly. “You were very beautiful, Priscilla.”

“
Were
very beautiful?” She sobbed some more, and brought a handkerchief to her face. “
Were
very beautiful! What am I now?
Very
ugly?”

“Oh, come on. You are still very beautiful.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know so. Did you see the picture of Miss Florida? It was with the packet sent up by the mayor's office. Anyway, she couldn't hold a candle up against you.”

“But she is
seventeen
years youngah. Are you sayin' that makes no difference?”

Reuben considered just giving up. He adjusted first her seat belt and then his own against the turbulence. He smoothed out her pillow. Her left hand went under the tray to his groin. He gave her a sign of life, and then, happily, she was asleep.

Washington, February 1991

Susan Oakeshott got the hot new polling figures. She studied them as an astronomer might study galactic oscillations. Squinting her eyes she could discern little reconfigurations not noticeable to the lay community. She resisted any temptation she might have had, after these deliberations, to act impulsively. To pick up her candidate from the polling floor, or let him down tenderly with a new speech in his mouth or a revised position for, or against, a pending measure. She didn't do that mostly because her candidate was Reuben Castle, and she thought him the smartest man in town on the political beat, capable of picking up his own signals if they were of true consequence.

The question was whether even to let him in on her thinking, when she felt she had identified something worth noting—a discerned weakness, perhaps, that might hamper him in the months ahead. She was keenly conscious that what might strike her as distasteful, or disagreeable, or even offensive, might not strike others in the same way. When she served Adam Benjamin, during his five years in the House of Representatives, she noticed, as he headed into his fourth election campaign, a creeping stiffness of manner. Could it have been that she, Susan, had become more aloof? No no no no. The thing about Susan Oake-
shott was that she
never
changed. The skies and the forests and the oceans might change, but not Susan Oakeshott; that was why politicians called on her when the Bureau of Weights and Measures was equivocal. She was as feminine as required indisputably to establish her gender and draw on its attributes. But nothing distracting was added to get in Susan's way, nothing in her dress, nothing in her manner, nothing in her expressions.

On the matter of the stiffness of Congressman Benjamin…It had to be he who for some reason had changed. She wondered whether the change reflected his military background. He had, after all, spent four years at West Point, followed by three years in the U.S. Infantry, rising to first lieutenant. He had gone back to civilian life, studying law, and when Susan went to him, in 1975, he was competent as a lawyer and agreeable enough as a citizen, making pleasant way with his constituents in Gary, Indiana. But he was easily intimidated by rank. When the horrible news reached him that the candidate he would be facing in 1980 was a retired general—
a fucking general
, as anyone other than Benjamin would have greeted this development—he visibly lost heart, especially at the prospect of two debates at the University of Indiana. Susan never intimated to anyone her suspicion that Mr. Benjamin's sudden death at forty-four, three months before the election, might have been precipitated by the press conference at which the general had said he proposed to teach “Lieutenant Benjamin” that there was rank to be observed not merely in military but also in civilian life.

Reuben Castle, she often reminded herself, was in many ways the ideal political figure. He was intelligent—not learned, but quick as a light hare—and renowned for his good looks. The earnestness on his face when he was arguing a political position
was followed so quickly, so disarmingly, by an affability nearly aggressive, first appeasing, then disarming his critics.

The one problem that now concerned Susan had to do with the merging of Castle's ambition and his self-esteem. The Reuben Castle of 1991 was just about ready to conclude that it was not only conceivable but altogether likely that he would do well in the forthcoming campaign, win the critical primaries, and emerge as the Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

This turn in his thinking was readable, however faintly, in his manner. It's one thing, Susan thought to herself, to exhibit self-confidence of the kind that tells the listener you know you are fighting for a cause that is just. It becomes a little more than that—actually, quite another thing—to give the impression that your cause is just because it is your cause.

How to say that to him? How even to…describe the problem? It had briefly crossed her mind to discuss the matter with Harold Kaltenbach in one of his increasingly frequent telephone calls, but no. Hal had no patience with any talk about his candidate's manner. He wanted to talk about where the candidate should appear, what issues he should stress, whom he should endorse, whose financial aid he should solicit, whose he should grandly—or discreetly—decline. Hal had no time to reflect on, let alone adjudicate, questions that had to do with human temperament. Those matters, if relevant, had been weighed by Kaltenbach before he took a candidate on. They were yesterday's questions, and mustn't interfere with today's priorities.

So, on the phone, Hal moved down his own list of questions for the day. Susan could tell that he was feeling a quiet optimism about the candidacy of Reuben Hardwick Castle.

It was February, and the invitations to give commencement speeches had begun coming in. Susan was accustomed to these, after ten years of service with Senator Castle. She knew that the issuance of these invitations was governed by three considerations.

(1) Could the sponsoring college, without depreciating the tradition, grant an honorary doctorate to this particular invitee? If the proposed honoree had given a great deal of money to the college, that was always qualifying. Graduating students could understand an honorary degree for the gentleman who had come up with a few million dollars for a new physics lab. But other candidates were judged by other criteria.

(2) Would the proposed honoree do a creditable job delivering the commencement address? There was no question here about Castle's competence. But did he have sufficient status as a figure in public life? Reuben Castle had so far accumulated four doctorates of law (LLD) and four of letters (LittD) during his time in the Senate, but had only twice been asked to be the commencement speaker. However, he was steadily rising to national prominence, his growing reputation fueled by performances like the Westmoreland debate.

(3) Could the college reasonably expect that the honoree would not ask a heavy speaker's fee? That he would settle for expenses, generously conceived? No problem here with Castle. Under Senate rules, senators were not permitted to receive any speaking fees, let alone exorbitant ones.

Susan expected invitations to come in from about a dozen
campuses. The trick was to delay accepting an invitation from lesser folk, pending a crystallization of the larger picture. Two came early: little Haverford, in Pennsylvania, and another small campus nearby, Lafayette. Both were distinguished old colleges, but not front-page news. Susan bought two weeks of time by doing nothing. The invitations just lay there.

Then she would wangle a little more time by asking for precise schedules, “because the senator's agenda is very full this year.” Back-and-forth on that could get you another two weeks' delay. By then any heavier hitters should have rolled in.

In the third week of March, the senator received invitations to give commencement talks at the University of North Carolina, the University of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins. Not quite the same as Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia, but pretty good. Have to act now. Time to call Hal.

“Tell you what, Susan. Have one of the people on the staff—Bill Rode would do this okay—write to them and say the senator has been asked by the president to hold a couple of dates (don't say which) to handle West Point or the Naval Academy or the Air Force Academy in case the president can't make it on account of Iraq. He wants a Democrat to make an appearance for bipartisan reasons. So the whole schedule will need to be frozen until—oh, March 24. That way we can give the big-timers one more week. Susan?”

“Yes, Hal?”

“If things go right, in a few years Reuben will be telling
them
when to hold their commencement exercises!”

The strategy worked, and the last-minute invitation from the University of Pennsylvania was accepted. That monopolized
one Saturday, and left the senator free to accept a lesser academic patron the Saturday before Philadelphia, and another the Saturday after.

It was always a happy development when Priscilla gave word that she did not wish to go along on a particular speaking trip. But the office could never count on that. Sometimes she insisted on going. And then what? The University of Pennsylvania had expressed itself as hoping very much that Mrs. Castle would accompany the senator and perhaps even say a few words at the banquet the night before the commencement exercises. There was nothing to be done when that happened; no interposition was thinkable. “It's always possible, Bill,” Susan offered hope to the nervous Bill Rode, “that Priscilla won't feel up to it.”

“Sure. That can happen. I remember the University of Texas last year, no problem.”

“Yes. No problem. The problem comes if she
does
feel like going.”

“We'll just have to hope and pray. How did she react when you told her they wanted her to say something at the banquet?”

“She said that would be good. She'd been used to giving little speeches going back to when she was nineteen years old.”

“And now she's running for Miss First Lady.”

“Quiet. We don't allow those words to be spoken. The main event is Senator Castle, receiving an honorary degree and giving a nonpartisan talk on the Gulf War and the need to contain Saddam Hussein.”

“Yes. Contain Saddam and contain Priscilla.”