9

Jackson R.W. Bishop lifted the parcel that had arrived from New York. It was heavier than the others had been. He hoped Duvivier’s readers would bear with him through all those bashings and screwings. Would that his own scholarly work be so well received.

He pulled the tab and removed the page proofs. There was a letter as well, already opened, but replaced in its envelope.

“My dear Duvivier,” it began.

He looked at the letterhead. Brady State College. In smaller type, Department of English.

He had known for some time that Duvivier had become a kind of cult figure, read by certain sophisticated people as one who offered light escape while, at the same time, not harshly insulting their intelligence. He hoped that the correspondent would be one of these followers, and not the sort who took the brutality, sexual and social, to heart. He knew from experience, however, that academic connections guaranteed nothing. Brady State College.

He thought of the school where he had himself taught. It had been years since he’d conjured its image.

The roads which led to it were not unlike those that led to Pedraza, steep and twisted. Except, of course, the roads to the college had been paved. Thin black ribbons that wound through the lush green New Hampshire hills.

He had conceived the first Duvivier book in New Hampshire. Indeed, it had emerged—like an erection—almost with a will of its own.

At first there were penciled notes on the backs of the mimeographed sheets that came from the departmental office. The notes began to take form at faculty meetings, where, on the first Wednesday of every month, those mimeographed sheets were read aloud.

His scribblings, wherein he either screwed or battered one or several of his students, provided entertainment sufficient to survive the quorum counts, the testy references to Robert’s Rules of Order, the motions and countermotions.

His colleagues and the various administrators never drew attention to the fact that he wrote through every meeting. They could hardly disapprove. In fact, if the truth be told, they gloried in his eccentricities, for he had brought some measure of fame to their school.

He had published, while yet an assistant professor, a treatise on Renaissance stagecraft. It had been printed with his academic affiliation beneath his name. Many, of course, had churned out articles. This, however, was a book, hardbound and translated into seven languages. When the senior Renaissance man on the staff snubbed him at a party, he knew he would not perish except by his own design.

Later, when that chapter of his life had been brought to its end, he had rubbed salt into the man’s wound by bequeathing to the college library the working draft and all revisions of the treatise. And, as a kicker, he had left them a work in progress: Medieval Pageantry and Its Effect on the Concept of Kingship in the Elizabethan Era.

He leaned back and read Lida’s letter, laughing aloud in several spots. Then he searched for paper upon which to write his reply.