The Secret History - Donna Tartt [20]
After class, I wandered downstairs in a dream, my head spinning, but acutely, achingly conscious that I was alive and young on a beautiful day; the sky a deep deep painful blue, wind scattering the red and yellow leaves in a whirlwind of confetti.
Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
That night I wrote in my journal: “Trees are schizophrenic now and beginning to lose control, enraged with the shock of their fiery new colors. Someone—was it van Gogh?—said that orange is the color of insanity. Beauty is terror. We want to be devoured by it, to hide ourselves in that fire which refines us.”
I went into the post office (blasé students, business as usual) and, still preposterously lightheaded, scribbled a picture postcard to my mother—fiery maples, a mountain stream. A sentence on the back advised: Plan to see Vermont’s fall foliage between Sept. 25 and Oct. 15th when it is at its vivid best.
As I was putting it in the out-of-town mail slot, I saw Bunny across the room, his back to me, scanning the row of numbered boxes. He stopped at what was apparently my own box and bent to stick something in it. Then he straightened surreptitiously and walked out quickly, his hands in his pockets and his hair flopping everywhere.
I waited until he was gone, then went to my mailbox. Inside, I found a cream-colored envelope—thick paper, crisp and very formal—but the handwriting was crabbed and childish as a fifth-grader’s, in pencil. The note within was in pencil, too, tiny and uneven and hard to read:
Richard old Man
What do you Say we have Lunch on Saturday, maybe about 1? I know this Great little place. Cocktails, the business. My treat. Please come.
Yours,
Bun
p.s. wear a Tie. I am Sure you would have anyway but they will drag some godawful one out of the back and meke (s.p.) you Wear it if you Dont.
I examined the note, put it in my pocket, and was walking out when I almost bumped into Dr. Roland coming in the door. At first he didn’t seem to know who I was. But just when I thought I was going to get away, the creaky machinery of his face began to grind and a cardboard dawn of recognition was lowered, with jerks, from the dusty proscenium.
“Hello, Doctor Roland,” I said, abandoning hope.
“How’s she running, boy?”
He meant my imaginary car. Christine. Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. “Fine,” I said.
“Take it to Redeemed Repair?”
“Yes.”
“Manifold trouble.”
“Yes,” I said, and then realized I’d told him earlier it was the transmission. But Dr. Roland had now begun an informative lecture concerning the care and function of the manifold gasket.
“And that,” he concluded, “is one of your major problems with a foreign automobile. You can waste a lot of oil that way. Those cans of Penn State will add up. And Penn State doesn’t grow on trees.”
He gave me a significant look.
“Who was it sold you the gasket?” he asked.
“I can’t remember,” I said, swaying in a trance of boredom but edging imperceptibly towards the door.
“Was it Bud?”
“I think so.”
“Or Bill. Bill Hundy is good.”
“I believe it was Bud,” I said.
“What did you think about that old blue jay?”
I was uncertain if this referred to Bud or to a literal blue jay, or if, perhaps, we were heading into the territory of senile dementia. It was sometimes difficult to believe that Dr. Roland was a tenured professor in the Social Science Department of this, a distinguished college. He was more like some gabby old codger who would sit next to you on a bus and try to show you bits of paper he kept folded in his wallet.
He was reviewing some of the information he had previously given me on the manifold gaskets and I was waiting for a good moment to remember, suddenly, that I was late for an appointment, when Dr. Roland’s friend Dr. Blind struggled up, beaming, leaning on his walker. Dr. Blind (pronounced “Blend”) was about ninety years old and had taught, for the past fifty years, a course called “Invariant Subspaces” which was noted for its monotony and virtually absolute unintelligibility, as well as for the fact that the final exam, as long as