The first days of autumn brought to the campus of Christiania College a wave of rejuvenation and cheer. Its dormer windows, both literal and figurative, were thrown open and an embracing gale of fresh wind flushed out its musty old corners. In the cafeteria, around the registration desks, in fact just about anywhere you looked there were long lines or little clusters of self-conscious blushing freshman women floating about seemingly unattached. And wherever this was the case, it was a safe bet that there would be loose groups of upperclassmen, at first backed off surveying the new crop as a whole, then cautiously moving in for a closer look at the most attractive flowers among them.
An air of expectation, bustling activity in preparation for the days ahead, animated every nook and cranny on campus. As yet the trees and the grass were green, but crisp fall breezes were even now stirring playfully through them, chasing away the stifling idleness left behind by the hot days of summer. It was the time of year when old people begin to wonder whether they will be able to “weather out another one” and young people can hardly wait for ice to form on the rinks and snow to blanket the toboggan runs. Scholars are anticipating the delights of leaning back in an easy chair before an open hearth and savoring a good briar pipe and the likes of Soren Kierkegaard, while the sound of the winter wind whistles harmlessly through the eaves. And since the young people on campus greatly outnumbered the elderly and the scholarly, anticipation of happy days ahead was written all over their faces and gave bounce to their step.
It was the time of year when the attention required of you to look after the endless details of registration, settling into your dorm room, and meeting your roommate and a lot of other totally new people kept you excited and on your toes.
Almost everyone was in an upbeat mood.
Even Stephen Pearson was being drawn back to Christiania, but it was by the same forces that had driven him out of the hollow back into the world. He had spent three days at home before setting off for St. Mark on his motorcycle. The long hours on the road were giving his mind and his imagination plenty of opportunity to take off in almost any direction and to pursue it to the very end.
Some of his time on the road his thoughts were darkened by his rational disenchantment with himself and his hopes. What had gone wrong? Surely not his basic logic! He was just as convinced as ever that choosing a life of meaningless and disagreeable toil was pure idiocy. He also knew that almost everyone expected you to do exactly that, and that if you did cave in to them and do it their way, you were doomed to a life of slavery and perpetual discontent. The secret was never let yourself get trapped in a situation that prevented you from doing what you wanted to do. If you got caught in that trap, your life would turn into one endless grind of drudgery. That’s exactly what it had become for his parents.
Perhaps, he mused, this explained why the summer had gone sour on him! Let us assume that on the first of June he really wanted to be in just the right “spot” in the wilderness. What guarantee was there that he would want the same thing on the first of August? Give him one good reason why he should feel obligated to be tied to June’s dream in August? A person had to reckon with the likelihood of a change in desires! It was wrong to assume that his desire to live in the wilderness, no matter how strong it may have been, was a permanent desire. He wasn’t built like the motorcycle which burned only one kind of fuel. His engine burned many kinds of fuel, today this, tomorrow that. A person had to do what appealed to him when it appealed to him and not feel obliged to stick with it when something else appealed to him more. You had to move on! That was the secret. There was a lot of truth to Tom Mahler’s belief, which he had probably picked up in Europe, that “the most important things in life are just a matter of taste.”
“All right, then!” he concluded dozens of time as he rolled along the highway, salvaging what he could from his experiences of the summer. “I will NEVER AGAIN chain my tomorrow to today’s desires.”
Thus hardened and resolved he raced along the gravel highways, vexed with himself for having failed to recognize this obvious principle from the start, but equally determined to hang on to it from now on. This meant that he had to view with great suspicion that inner force that had drawn him out of the hollow and was continuing to draw him on now completely independent of his will. But a traveler has many unguarded moments in which things can sneak up on you unnoticed until it’s too late. The steady drone of his engine would gradually wear down his hard-won resolve, to be replaced effortlessly time and again by those warm and increasingly familiar sensations of “her.” Sometimes King and sometimes the warring ants also appeared out of nowhere in his mind’s eye, all mixed up with bits and fragments of his freshly articulated principle for a happy life. All of this tumbled around in his mind like garments in a revolving clothes dryer, contradictory thoughts and images endlessly colliding with one another and going nowhere. And hovering over him, and even beside him, the mysterious presence of his Spectre Maiden, intangible but more real than all of the rest of it put together.
When Steve pulled up at Christiania just in time to register for his classes and receive his room assignment, a shudder of excitement surprised him. He had no idea what to expect, but something was going to happen. He could feel it in his bones no matter what his head told him.
Three days later he was sitting at a corner table in the cafeteria with his three friends—Tom, Lute, and Ted. They had acted glad to see him again. Just now the three of them were surveying the new “crop” of freshman women in the supper line as it inched its way through the door.
“Hey Ted!” Lute Odegaard nudged his big friend. “Get a load of that doll just coming through the door. Remind you of somebody?”
“Yeah. Geraldine Simpson from Sioux City,” he replied in his deep deliberate tone of voice. “Boy, oh boy!”
“Yup. That’s who I was thinking of. I’ll bet she’s got legs like Geraldine’s too.”
“You would know?”
“She don’t remind me of anyone or anything I ever saw before,” injected Tom. “And I’ve seen a lot. That gal’s in a class by herself.”
“Look at that figure, would you!” marveled Lute. “All the clothes in the world can’t hide what she’s got.”
The flaxen-haired beauty in question now looked straight at their table. Ted turned red, Tom politely tipped his invisible hat, and Lute waved at her and mouthed the words, “Hi, honey!” She flustered an instant, smiled back at him, and pretended to be distracted by something behind her.
Lute turned around and with a broad grin said, “Well, Steve? Don’t tell me that one didn’t do something to you!”
“Sure did. Made me spill my soup when you waved at her,” he replied dryly, dabbing his lap with a napkin.
In fact, Steve had not been paying much attention to what was going on around him. As usual, he had been lost in thought.
The line at the door inched on, providing a continuous source of material for conversation for the three more vocal friends. For this one it was the face, for that one it was the figure, for the next one perhaps the smile, and on and on. Lute was getting so worked up that he declared his serious intention to date them all during the year so as to “savor each one’s special charms.”
Sure! reacted Steve bitterly within himself. And someday you’ll latch on to one of them who will latch on to you, and it will be downhill all the way from there.
The talk was beginning to disgust him.
“Hey, Steve! There’s a cute little number just your size!” Lute blurted out, nodding at a six-foot-plus Amazon ducking in the doorway.
“Looks to me like she has enough upfront for a half a dozen ordinary girls,” Ted observed with his usual candor.
“Yeah, Steve’d get lost just trying to…….”
Suddenly Steve’s ears began to ring. Instantly the crude comments of his friends faded away. Every muscle in his body seized up. The cause of this was the young woman who was just seating herself at the table directly in front of him. His face flushed beet red. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. For him there was suddenly no one else in the room but her.
“O my God!” he gasped.