Wildalone (38 page)

I realized that the cultural gap between me and my friends had just taken on an entirely new dimension. They would continue their unaffected lives, shocked when someone quit a job in finance to pursue a hobby. Whereas my own life had now veered into off-the-charts crazy. The kind of crazy where I should have looked Ben in the eyes, smiled casually, and said: “I know exactly what you mean. A few years back, my sister announced she was quitting her human life to go tear men to pieces in the Balkan mountains.”

The next day was even worse. I went to class but couldn't focus. Was I missing any clues? Any leads I had failed to follow? Ferry and Giles had already admitted they used to know Elza, giving me their (supposedly complete) account of events. But what about Silen? He was the oddest of the three. And evasive. And mysteriously absent.

I looked for him that afternoon, on my way to work at the Graduate College. But the courtyard by Cleveland Tower was empty—no one was pruning trees anywhere in sight—so I went into the Porter's Lodge and asked for the janitor.

The woman behind the desk looked at me over her glasses. “Pardon me, who?”

“The janitor. I'm not sure about his exact job title. Keykeeper, maybe?”

This threw her off completely. “Key . . .
keeper
?”

“His name is Silen; I've seen him prune the trees outside. I believe he also keeps the keys to Cleveland Tower and Procter Hall.”

“Sweetie, who told you all of this?” She said it slowly, the way one talks to a mental patient. “We keep the key to Cleveland Tower here, in this office. And the only ones who have a key to Procter Hall are the dining hall managers,
but I am quite certain none of them work as janitors. Or tree pruners.”

“You don't have anyone by that name on staff? Early fifties, always wears black overalls?”

She shook her head but typed something into the computer. “
S-I-L-E-N
, right? I'm afraid there is no such person. We should notify security immediately.”

“No, please don't bother. I must have misunderstood.” I also must have been out of my mind, to alarm this woman so much she was now on the verge of calling campus police. “It was probably one of the golf course maintenance guys; I often see them around.”

“Pruning our trees?”

“Well, I may have been wrong about that. I assumed he was in charge of landscaping because of . . .”
(yeah, right, just try mentioning the shears!)
“. . . because he was dressed that way.”

I could already picture the front page of the
Princetonian:
SISTER OF MYSTERIOUSLY ABDUCTED STUDENT HARASSED BY UNIDENTIFIED IMPOSTOR
. I would be questioned by the police. By all kinds of school officials. Not to mention my parents, who would become sick with worry.

The woman was already reaching for the phone. “I doubt that this man you describe is golf personnel. They don't come on our premises.”

“Then he must be working at Forbes.”

“Either way, we should check with both places.”

She swiveled in her chair for a list of phone numbers posted on the wall. It was my last chance to stop her.

“Actually, I was just heading to Forbes myself. And, if you don't mind, I prefer to talk to someone there in person.”

“In that case . . . yes, of course. It is ultimately up to you.” The chair swiveled back and I sensed a subtle annoyance from behind those glasses. “But I strongly recommend reporting this as soon as you arrive in Forbes. We are fortunate not to have had any incidents of crime around here, yet one can never be too careful.”

I said I would follow through, even though I had no intention of asking around for a janitor who wasn't a janitor at all. Everything he had said
in my presence was now coming back to me, each line whose poetic beauty I had taken for the wisdom of a man who read a lot in his spare time. And the phrases began to take on a different meaning:
Nymph's music. Job ritual. Ungodly hour. Underworld
. Then there was also his version of my name:
Theia
. The Greek Titan who just happened to be mother of the moon . . .

Tucked in the opposite corner of the courtyard like a minichapel of its own, a library held, among other things, the Graduate College yearbooks. The one I needed was easy to spot—all class years were printed on the spines. While pulling the volume out, I told myself that my suspicions were exaggerated and I wouldn't find proof between those covers. Yet it was right there: a group photograph of the Graduate College staff from 1992.

Silen stood on the side, holding a rake, leaning on the handle with vague detachment. He looked exactly the same as when I had seen him in person: the black mess of hair just as untamed; the wrinkles as deep, framing a pair of eyes that revealed ungraspable wisdom. I could tell that, back when the picture was taken, he had already reached middle age. Fifteen years had passed since then. And for reasons I was scared to even begin to guess, this man—the same man who had called me
ethereal
only days earlier—hadn't aged at all.

“I WILL NOT TAKE A
poll as to how many of you have experienced true sadness”—Giles scanned the auditorium, taking an extra second on my face—“because I assume the answer is all of you. Or at least I hope it is.”

In my case his hopes were justified. It was already Wednesday, and not a word from Rhys. Not even the courtesy of a good-bye. When Jake and the butler had tried to keep me at the house that night, both had assumed he would want to talk to me. Clearly, they didn't know him at all.

As if to sync the lecture with my mood, Giles turned to the blackboard and wrote that day's topic: Ancient Greeks and the Art of Tragedy.

“Athenian tragedy is often viewed as the highest art form of ancient Greece, surpassing the vases and the sculptures and the magnificent temples. Any guesses as to why?”

The classroom remained quiet.

“A paradox, isn't it? By definition, tragedy is an art based on human suffering but also one designed to give its audiences pleasure.”

Someone raised a hand. “Because we can't resist watching the suffering of others? Sort of like the impulse to watch when you're driving past an accident site.”

“To some degree—yes. The Greeks, however, were much more interested in their own encounters with misfortune. Every person's individual, visceral experience of it. So, still no guesses?”

None.

“Let me give you a hint, then. In
The Birth of Tragedy
, Nietzsche wrote: ‘ . . . Greeks and the art work of pessimism? The most successful, most beautiful, most envied people . . . Did they really need tragedy? . . . Is pessimism necessarily the sign of collapse . . . ? Is there a pessimism of the strong?'”

He closed the book, signaling our final chance to impress him with an answer. The accident watcher gave it another shot:

“Maybe they figured that by bringing tragedy onstage, they were deflecting it from real life?”

“A clever gimmick. But one can't deflect life, and the Greeks were well aware of it. To
understand
life, on the other hand, was achievable—if done right. To discern the essence of things and live in harmony with them. Which meant accepting also the most terrible, evil, cryptic, destructive, and deadly sides of human existence. You can think of it as a healthy impulse for pessimism. Or, to use Nietzsche's term, a ‘craving for ugliness.' This is where tragedy steps in.”

I saw the last few days through that prism—predestined, compelled by a cosmic fascination with pain. Suffering as something to look forward to. As the key to understanding life. Maybe instead of Rhys apologizing to me, I was the one who should have written him a thank-you note. For bringing me in touch with the essence of things. With the evil, cryptic, and destructive sides of human existence.

“The question is, how exactly did the ancients do it?” Giles continued his probing. “A pair of opposing forces pulled at the core of Greek tragedy. The
first was the world of dreams. Think of an artwork: Isn't it just an expression of something the artist first saw in a dream? The painter, the sculptor, the architect—they dream up beauty and then give it shape. Or voice, because the poet is a dreamer too.”

He drew two circles with arrows pointing at each other, and the letter
A
in one of them.

“Apollo. The ‘shining one.' God of the sun, of light, and the inner fantasy world. There is so much of him in Athenian tragedy, all his arts gathered into one. Even the Greek amphitheater itself—”

A loud click projected a slide on the screen in front of us: receding ripples of stone under a blindingly blue sky. We were sitting in a diminutive replica. Rows of desks converging toward the center, where a lonely, white-haired actor in a tweed jacket did his best to imbue in us the wisdom of the ancients.

“Imagine coming here for a night of theater, two thousand years ago. Vast open space, descending on a hill. Overflowing with human noise. Vibrant like a fresh canvas. Far down—the stage is set against a backdrop of marble columns, as if a temple has just risen in tribute to the gods. Suddenly sculptures begin to breathe, reliefs come to life: the actors have stepped out. Then poetry begins . . .”

Nothing in the room stirred. I could almost feel a breeze on my face, spilled over from the Aegean Sea or from nearby olive groves.

“And so tell me, which force is opposite to all this?”

Silence again.

“Anyone? Miss Slavin?”

“Opposite to . . . what? To dreams?”

“To dreams, yes. Or let me rephrase: Which art is still missing?”

I realized why he had picked me, out of the entire class. “Music?”

“Exactly! Unique among the arts, music relies on the nonvisual, the nonverbal. Nietzsche defined it as
intoxication
. For the Greeks, however, music was more than a fleeting state of rapture. It offered direct access to the gods, and to the mysteries that we now call rituals. Can you guess whose initial goes in the second circle?”

He looked at me again and I had no choice but to say it: “Dionysus?”

The
D
took its place on the board. I wished Giles and I could switch roles, for once, so that I would be the one asking questions. Right here, in front of the entire class:

“Professor Giles, do you think those rituals still exist?”

Stares at me. Clears throat. “I beg your pardon?”

“Those same rituals which intoxicated the ancient Greeks (and, apparently, modern German philosophers). Do you think they are practiced to this day?”

“Any answer I could give, Miss Slavin, would be . . .”—his eyes shoot me a warning—“it would be, by all means, only pure conjecture.”

“Not really, though, given what has happened in the past on this campus.”

He coughs, uncomfortably. “Are you implying there could be student practices that I . . . that the school is unaware of?”

“I don't know, I was asking you. Or let me rephrase: Given what you saw in a funeral home years back, do you think Dionysus might be residing at Princeton?”

I had to cut our imaginary interlude, because he was giving out the next homework assignment: “. . . and as I mentioned, this is how music became inseparable from tragedy. The Greek chorus has no equivalent in modern theater: a group of performers whose sole purpose is to comment on the play, directly from the stage and often in song, showing the audience how to react to it. For Friday, I want you to write an imaginary dialogue with Nietzsche about—”

He stopped in front of my desk, staring down at the sheet of paper that had kept me distracted during class: a copy of Silen's yearbook picture. I had no idea what to do—drop it in my bag? apologize? stare back at him and say nothing?—but he continued, his expression unchanged:

“On second thought, why not make that a dialogue with the Greek chorus itself? The creature who made up the chorus was admittedly odd. Fantastic and repellent at the same time. Humanlike but not human. Read
The Birth of Tragedy
to find out who that creature is, then pose questions to him—a Q&A about anything that troubles you in real life.”

Except you already know what troubles me
, I thought, as he resumed walking.
It's the same question that has haunted you for fifteen years. And if the mystery
chorus creature has left you without an answer all this time, why do you think he might now start telling me?

MY OWN REAL-LIFE VERSION OF
the Greek chorus—Rita—had decided not to comment on the latest events. Her only remark came up in the context of Ben:

“Maybe the two of you should hook up,” she had said, matter-of-factly. “He really likes you. And you need a rebound, ASAP.”

I told her that I liked Ben too—as a friend.

“Too bad, he would have been perfect. I just hope you get over that other tandem quickly.”

“Tandem?”

“Mr. Dance Floor King and his rose-dispensing brother. What was the name?”

“Jake.”

“Right. He pulls a hell of a smooth act, that one. Just please don't go running to him now, Tesh, okay? From what I saw, he'd be thrilled to have you crying on his shoulder.”

“And if I need to cry on it, so what?”

“If you need to cry on it, I'll keep you under house arrest until we find you someone normal, for a change.”

Yet finding me someone seemed to have dropped from her to-do list, because when the RCA group went to the Street on Thursday night, the only one conspicuously missing was Rita.

“She's supposed to worry about us, not the other way around,” one of the guys told me after I tried her cell phone and it went to voice mail.

Maybe he had a point. It was hard to picture Rita having personal problems after watching her fix everyone else's. But when, later that night, a drunk Dev stormed into the club with his friends and practically looked through me, I knew that something wasn't right. Without a word to the others, I sneaked out and headed back to Forbes.