UNIVERSITY AT A GLANCE: A PLACE ALBERT RASKIN entered where people believed they knew exactly what must be done for the world. And much of this suited Albert. Especially the idea that the best critics of writers were sociologists, like him; since he had tried to write ten novels and failed, he realized he could slam or dismiss any novel in the world and still be accepted for his deep understanding.
Albert became a professor, and was intricately involved in all that the university now was, including the idea that books must be banned. He didn’t state this until it became quite evident that the most important of people thought this way too.
“Yes, I entirely approve,” he said in an interview on the CBC. “I do—I entirely approve. Some tomes gravely concern me—yes, some tomes do.”
Books by a journeyman writer from New Brunswick, who had had many articles written against him, about his backward regionalism (in fact Albert had written two scathing reviews about them), and other less-than-compassionate books, like Jude the Obscure, Heart of Darkness, Middlemarch and A Bend in the River as well.
“Their decommission is long coming,” Albert said.
The one man who had earlier stood against this was the poet from Nova Scotia, so Professor Raskin was forced to make a hard and difficult choice when it came to him. This was at the start of his career. “Many masterpieces now re-evaluated, considered sexist and homophobic, says new young professor.”
Therefore the Nova Scotian was let go.
However, the administration had discovered that a startlingly brilliant woman from northern England was available and had applied for the same position—a woman who had written two books, the first a discourse on the entrapment and lessening of the feminist voice in 1930s literature, and a second book stating emphatically that there was no truth—that truth was simply a male construct used to devalue women.
One would never think this, seeing her, the new professor, walk down the hall in her longish skirt toward the office on the second floor, her eyes behind thick glasses, looking neither here nor there, and smiling quickly and slightly at people she passed, that is, that she had infected people. That she had caused a young protégé of hers to attempt suicide. But that was the very strange rumour.
Her name was Faye Sackville. She had been a nun, but left all of that some thirteen years prior. She was a social activist—that is what her CV stated—had been reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement.
She deplored violence, but she used manipulation to great advantage. With manipulation there was no sin attached, no violence, and the truth was relative.
After being here two weeks, before the first departmental meeting, or the reception honouring her arrival, she berated the backwardness of the place. And too the lack of restaurants. In Where to Eat in Canada she found only one New Brunswick restaurant seemed suitable, and that was on the other side of the province.
From the moment of the reception in her honour, which both Clara and Darren attended, it was quite evident she was highly displeased and offended by many people here.
Two days later she appeared in the dean’s office and spoke about being sexually harassed.
At first there was great silence over this, until Professor Sackville threatened to go to the London Times.
Then it became a matter of some concern.
Professor Eliot Slaggy was fifty-three years old, a man who had never married, who played the piano and had taken violin lessons, who wrote poems about wildflowers, and elms, and an actual deer that he once saw in his lettuce patch. He had very few friends.
His glasses glinted under the ceiling light, and his little face beamed a sweaty welcome. He was beside the table of cold cuts and punch. He almost ran up to her, extended his hand and asked how she was.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said.
She did not answer. His glasses still glinted in their silver frames and his small mouth spoke.
“England, my God, England, I always wished to go—never got there yet—Mommie, you see—but I’ve read—I’ve read the Brontës, the lasses of the moors—the girls of Piccadilly—Virginia Woolf, that old doll, and Anaïs Nin—it’s so romantic, Byron and Shelley—Mary Shelley, now there was a lady—did my master’s on Keats, wouldn’t go to the castle—Shelley you know loved him—‘Have you ever seen someone die, Severn—then I will do it as quickly as possible to cause you the least amount of pain.’ Wisdom, wisdom.”
She glared down at him. She held her glass up as if for protection.
“Come to my house tomorrow night—I have recordings of Thomas and Yeats! And a special brandy—we can sit together and be philosophical—I’ll read you my article on Chatterton.”
She couldn’t really see his eyes, only his glasses lenses, and his small shaven face. He was speaking so quickly because he was so shy, and felt so inferior he had to try and get everything out at once. Also his breath was bad.
“Brave lady,” he said. “Brave lady—you must be a brave old girl saying what you did. Yes—no truth—just constructs—all is relative—even sin—not sure I agree—sin will be sin—boys will be boys—get my meaning—but brave—brave girl.”
He wore a bowtie and a flower in his lapel. The flower, the lapel, the corduroy jacket a bit wrinkled, a bit small, a bit old, the shoes freshly polished all except one or two small spots, the pants slightly too long so they drooped over the top of the shoes, the blond hair combed back so you could see the individual teeth marks of the comb, and one small strand of hair sticking up at the crown. The wind blew outside, all was damp and cold.
“Yes, yes, yes, delightful—I know your concern—but you girls have a secret way, don’t you. You get yours. You and I have to have a secret meeting soon. Yes, yes, yes.”
When Professor Eliot Slaggy went into the common room the next Monday, with a book of Matthew Arnold as a present for her, he found he was facing a sexual harassment charge. Filed by Faye Sackville.
Everyone knew this was nonsense, everyone knew. That is, everyone knew.
Yet her students lined up to sign a petition and had a sit-in, in the president’s front office.
They were pushed forward like a crowd trying to enter a single door. The president, smooth as a butter pat, was pugnaciously pushed forward and could not stop. No one could seem to stop.
McLeish cornered young Raskin and said: “Come with me.”
With Raskin beside him, they walked into the president’s office, and with great dignity said: “Address this! Address this immediately.”
Other girls came forward to say Eliot had winked at them. Even once asked one of them to help him pin on his flower!
Eliot Slaggy walked the hallways, and people on seeing him would go back into their office.
He had nowhere else to go. This university, like a cloister, was his refuge, the only place in the world where he could feel at home. He was frightened his eighty-two-year-old mother would hear of this.
Like a shell fired from a gun the bullet has its own trajectory, and on it went toward its destination with deft precision no one was willing to stop. In fact Faye’s student Tracy McCaustere became adamant that her research showed this had been systemic in the university for many years.
Eliot Slaggy lost the appeal because this vortex had covered him over, and he was ordered to write a letter of apology.
“Kindly go into your office and write a note of apology—a sincere one,” the vice-president told him.
But surprisingly Professor Slaggy declined to do so. He sat in the room at his desk, with the white paper before him, and the pen, a rather exclusive pen from Halifax he liked, and the wind blowing the fall leaves against the window, and suddenly he wrote: “Ms. Sackville, you can go to hell.”
It was the first time he had ever written something so harsh.
Professor Eliot Slaggy was suspended until such time as he relented and wrote the letter of apology.
“Professor must write letter of apology before being reinstated,” the local press reported.
It was a terrible incident at the university, heart-rending actually. It left an emptiness in those vague book-learned hallways.
Ms. Sackville looked quite refreshed the next day and ready to go to work.
“The highest level or the lowest, every well will sooner or later be poisoned,” Clara Bell wrote.
Raskin and Sackville became close; they remained friendly with Dykes. Young Tracy McCaustere and McLeish were often seen with them. They were the vanguard. They were called the famous five. They were called the indomitable ones. Their students gathered by them, spoke of social justice. They were the excitedly defiant.
Since they knew of all the problems of the world, they were never the ones to create any.
It was on a particular Sunday that Raskin, who had become her chaperone, was driving Ms. Sackville, who was looking for property to rent to buy. As they drove up along the Arron Brook one day, she noticed a rather disjointed house and barn. She touched his arm and smiled. He did not ever touch her—so he was suddenly inspired by this. She was older than he was by some years, but he didn’t mind that. She had convinced him that men only used fissures of truth to benefit themselves; church was a mythology whose time had come and gone. Churches would soon be burned—especially Catholic ones—and no one would complain. He complimented her on her wisdom a lot.
“A tower of wisdom—like Dykes.”
“Oh, I am much more clever than Dykes.”
“Yes, of course you are.”
“Much more clever. And you know, Dykes is yikes, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“And he smells. He does. He smells—and I as a woman have failed. I have come here to do important work and I have failed.”
“No,” said Raskin passionately, “you have not—you have not even begun to fail—you are a genius.”
“You think?”
“Absolutely.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Albert had never been so enthralled nor had he ever been so influenced. Some young women, Sackville said, should be taught some lessons. She smiled remotely at this and then continued.
She found the Committee on Peace and Equality that they had formed far too fainthearted to be much good, and she told them so. Political action was the mandate now. Tear things down, especially the patriarchy.
“Yes—you mean men?” he would ask.
“Of course, oui, oui, my little Canuck. We don’t need one more book by men—I refuse to teach them.”
“Yes,” he said.
And twice though very subtly she mentioned his uncles.
“Stop dottering and tottering! Come to grips with them, please—they’ve ruined the lives of many here. They think they are kings and we are all peasants—do you like being considered a peasant?”
“No—I do not—I do not whatsoever!”
“Oui.”
She had been in her life here two semesters.
“Oui,” he said in reply.
“Oui,” she said.
She also said that if the group on equality wanted equality they would need certain elderly men to give up their property to the cause. “Lots of old white men have money and have lived a life of indulgence,” she said. “It’s time to take back the land.”
Then she added: ‘‘Do you know, my little Canuck, how many animals have died?”
“The puffin—”
“A lot more than just the puffin.”
“Oui.”
“Revolution, my boy. Women will rise.”
“Oui.”
This particular Sunday when she noticed that particular farmhouse she said, “Now that house might be worth having—well, not the makeshift house but the property.”
“Oh, that belongs to people I know,” he said.
“Well, it’s certainly in a privileged spot on the river.”
“Yes it is.”
And suddenly they saw Eva walking along the side of the road.
“Oh—what a pretty thing,” Sackville said as they came close to her. She touched his arm. “Slow down, my dear man, and let me look at this pretty thing. A wildflower in the middle of a barren field.”
So he slowed down.
“My, she is pretty.”
“Oh—yes. Better without her top,” Albert said, passing her by in evening dust that Eva tried to swipe away. He did not know why he had said this. Perhaps it was the word pretty. Perhaps it was because she had touched his arm.
“Yes,” Sackville said completely unexpectedly, lazily looking over at him, “I really would think she must be beautiful with her clothes taken off. If you know what I mean. Oh, she would protest it happening, but if I know women like her, be in ecstasy when it did. Finally someone would have her.” And she took time to light a cigarette, and toss her head back a bit completely at sophisticated ease, then turning her head toward him as it lay on the back of the seat she added, “What do you think, my dear young Canadian man—am I right or wrong? Don’t be shy with me.”
“Yes, yes—of course—right, I would say.”
“Of course I am right.”
Then she said: “Tell me about her—if you do know her.”
He told her about the money—and he said he would be making them a business proposition.
“God, that would be something. But wouldn’t you be taking a chance?”
“Yes—but I want to help people in this backhole. I need to. You know that—”
She sighed and shrugged, told him he was being admirable, and looked back again to see if she could see Eva.
“Good God how seductive she is, without even trying; exquisite—married to some brute of a man, I suspect.”
“Yes she is—and do you know who her cousin is?”
“Who is her cousin, pray?”
“You’re right—Church Bell—Clara Bell.”
“That horrible bitch, that odious Catholic, who is on the board of governors and tried to protest the firing of Slaggy?”
“Yes.”
“God, there is no hope then, is there?”
So they spoke about Eva, not about what was true, but of what might be perceived to be true by people like themselves.
“Think of that gorgeous girl—to be used up in a hole like this.”
“Yes, I—a mental health counsellor at a drug crisis centre—know that.”
“Of course—you are at least trying to learn—but she will have no hope—until people like us intervene—”
Sackville spoke. Albert listened. All that she said proved that Torry shouldn’t be any concern of theirs.
She was quite animated. They must protect that girl—from Clara, and anyone else.
This is what she said: First one must look at the university setting as the only setting with which to exercise the rights of a broader humanity, and these two did think this. Second, one must think that young women had little chance to advance in this humanity if they were confined to rural areas, and these two did think this as well. Thirdly, it was not at all improper to influence these women away from this reality to further advance their learning and understanding of the world. Fourthly, this learning must be the kind of learning that these two believed in, and this was true also. And all of these things were discussed now as they spoke about this beautiful young woman.
The other point was this: she had been saved from drowning by her now husband—that was looked upon so often as something preordained and meant to be—but Sackville suddenly realized it was a prison sentence for this young woman, who out of simple gratitude was staying with a man who had no future. So to Faye Sackville the worst trait Eva had was loyalty.
“We have to take her under our wing,” she said.
Then as they advanced past Oscar Peterson’s trailer, Albert nodded at it and said with a deft contempt: “This is where her so-called husband comes from.”
“Oh—fuck me,” Sackville said, tossing her cigarette out the window. Then she said: “We must find a way to pluck that wildflower up, and make it ours.”
So everything was actually put into universal context that very day.
Sackville would use whatever manipulation she might to change the course of Eva Mott—and do it for Eva Mott’s benefit. To her it was simply an intellectual exercise now she was in this backward New Brunswick place. And good God it was a horrid place. The first thing she’d seen when she arrived was a dead moose in the bed of a truck.
She would begin a new challenge. It would be fun. It would be a good deal of commitment, and, she believed, fun.
However, it was Eva Mott’s life.
All wells would be poisoned.