The Secret History - Donna Tartt [5]
Those first days before classes started I spent alone in my whitewashed room, in the bright meadows of Hampden. And I was happy in those first days as really I’d never been before, roaming like a sleepwalker, stunned and drunk with beauty. A group of red-cheeked girls playing soccer, ponytails flying, their shouts and laughter carrying faintly over the velvety, twilit field. Trees creaking with apples, fallen apples red on the grass beneath, the heavy sweet smell of apples rotting on the ground and the steady thrumming of wasps around them. Commons clock tower: ivied brick, white spire, spellbound in the hazy distance. The shock of first seeing a birch tree at night, rising up in the dark as cool and slim as a ghost. And the nights, bigger than imagining: black and gusty and enormous, disordered and wild with stars.
I was planning to sign up for Greek again, as it was the only language at which I was at all proficient. But when I told this to the academic counselor to whom I had been assigned—a French teacher named Georges Laforgue, with olive skin and a pinched, long-nostriled nose like a turtle’s—he only smiled, and pressed the tips of his fingers together. “I am afraid there may be a problem,” he said, in accented English.
“Why?”
“There is only one teacher of ancient Greek here and he is very particular about his students.”
“I’ve studied Greek for two years.”
“That probably will not make any difference. Besides, if you are going to major in English literature you will need a modern language. There is still space left in my Elementary French class and some room in German and Italian. The Spanish—” he consulted his list—“the Spanish classes are for the most part filled but if you like I will have a word with Mr. Delgado.”
“Maybe you could speak to the Greek teacher instead.”
“I don’t know if it would do any good. He accepts only a limited number of students. A very limited number. Besides, in my opinion, he conducts the selection on a personal rather than academic basis.”
His voice bore a hint of sarcasm; also a suggestion that, if it was all the same to me, he would prefer not to continue this particular conversation.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
Actually, I thought I did know. Laforgue’s answer surprised me. “It’s nothing like that,” he said. “Of course he is a distinguished scholar. He happens to be quite charming as well. But he has what I think are some very odd ideas about teaching. He and his students have virtually no contact with the rest of the division. I don’t know why they continue to list his courses in the general catalogue—it’s misleading, every year there is confusion about it—because, practically speaking, the classes are closed. I am told that to study with him one must have read the right things, hold similar views. It has happened repeatedly that he has turned away students such as yourself who have done prior work in classics. With me”—he lifted an eyebrow—“if the student wants to learn what I teach and is qualified, I allow him in my classes. Very democratic, no? It is the best way.”
“Does that sort of thing happen often here?”
“Of course. There are difficult teachers at every school. And plenty—” to my surprise, he lowered his voice—“and plenty here who are far more difficult than him. Though I must ask that you do not quote me on that.”
“I won’t,” I said, a bit startled by this sudden confidential manner.
“Really, it is quite essential that you don’t.” He was leaning forward, whispering,