Mudwoman Read online

  And there was Kroll. Of course, Kroll.

  (Had it happened, M.R. had lost her friends? One by one, lost her friends? Like a sack of gold-dust, and there’s a small hole in the sack, and the gold-dust trails away, and is lost, at last and finally, terribly lost.)

  M.R. was concerned: she hadn’t asked the University’s chief legal counsel if she should see these people. And now, too late!

  Surely Lockhardt would have advised against this late-night meeting with its disarming air of ex officio. He’d have pointed out to M.R. that most of these self-styled “delegates” were the usual conservative faculty members of long standing and thus her opponents and not as they’d described themselves as your loyal opposition—to inveigle her into meeting with them, politely listening to them, and not rather telling them bluntly—as M. R. Neukirchen never would, of course—to go away, to go to Hell.

  At least, not one of them had brought up the issue of Alexander Stirk. M.R. wanted to think that it was beginning to be accepted, in the University community, that she had behaved responsibly and that it had not been her fault that the undergraduate had been more emotionally unstable than anyone had suspected.

  But Leonard Lockhardt was no longer M.R.’s friend. Amid the vast University network of trustees, billionaire donors, prestigious and influential alums that constituted the true University, as distinct from the public’s awareness of the University, Lockhardt was conspiring against her—she knew.

  He’d wanted to be president, himself! Of course.

  Everyone must have known this. Except naïve “M.R.”

  Whatever they were asking her—asking of her—whatever “appeal” making of her in this unconvincing display of collegiality—M.R. had no need to listen, as she’d blundered listening to, for instance, the undergraduate Stirk who’d come into her Salvager Hall office wired.

  Instigated by Heidemann, very likely. And Heidemann’s willing crony Kroll.

  “You know—you can leave now. This insulting ‘confrontation’ is over.”

  Delicious little poison toads, leaping from M.R.’s mouth! But M.R. had not uttered them really for her throat was too dry.

  Or if she had, no one heard. No one would acknowledge.

  “Well—thank you! All of you! It’s late, I have to get up early, you’ve made your point—points—thank you for your ‘concern’ for my ‘well-being’—but—”

  Maybe these harsh-rasping words, M.R. was speaking aloud. And altogether reasonably for the hour was late: near midnight.

  Several of her visitors were women and these women smiled at M.R.—wanting M.R. to know Please listen! We are your friends Meredith.

  And there was Kroll in their midst. Kroll who stalked and plagued M.R. with unwanted e-mails You are making mistakes, Meredith! Please listen to me please may I see you, I am your friend.

  She’d taken the measure of blocking Kroll’s e-mails. If his e-mail server registered such rebuffs, he would know.

  She hated his politics. She was morally repelled by his politics.

  Most of these “delegates” had political beliefs that were offensive to her—she’d gone beyond arguing with them as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were escalating—these defenders of the war against terror.

  She wondered what cruel tales Kroll told of her, when she’d been emotionally vulnerable to him, foolishly involved with him in another lifetime it seemed—in M.R.’s youth.

  Kroll and his older and yet more infamous colleague—Heidemann.

  It was terrible, intolerable to her—G. Leddy Heidemann had entered her house. Beside Heidemann, Oliver Kroll was a political centrist.

  But where—where was Heidemann? M.R. looked for him, alarmed.

  She was certain she’d seen Heidemann enter Charters House with the others. He would be the eldest amid the contingent, as he was the most “renowned.”

  The University’s most conspicuous right-wing faculty member—the “architect”/“moral conscience” of the misbegotten wars against “terror”—adviser to the secretary of defense and, it was boasted, or anyway rumored, now an intimate friend of the vice president.

  A burly barrel-chested man of over six feet, now in his late sixties beginning to collapse like a balloon that is slowly deflating, yet vigorous still, tireless; consumed by a taste for fame, M.R. thought must be akin to a taste for blood—once acquired, it becomes an obsession.

  She thought Heidemann will use me to catapult himself yet higher. He will persecute me, he will make a shambles of a great university.

  And yet—was Heidemann here? With the others? Unless he was seated in such a way that M.R. couldn’t see him—and considering Heidemann’s heft, this was unlikely—he didn’t appear to be in the room.

  Yet: she was sure she’d shaken the man’s big, bruising, somehow mocking hand—unavoidably.

  “M.R.”! How very kind of you to invite us. How very—liberal-minded.

  Her brain worked like flashing blades. But the flashing was dazzling, blinding. Even as she was remembering that Heidemann had come with the others, but was not now visible to her, she was forgetting that Heidemann had come with the others, but was not now visible to her.

  “I think—you’ve all been very kind, thoughtful—except that you’re really not qualified to comment on these issues since they are confidential—only the board of trustees and a very few others—in the administration—are aware of . . . what you are suggesting. And so—I think—I think our meeting is over—thank you so very much.”

  These coolly poised words M.R. did speak aloud. She was certain!

  Webs of fiery itching across her midriff, her back—between her shoulder blades—she wanted so very badly to tear at with her nails, but could not. For the loyal opposition stared at her like an audience dumbly transfixed by a reckless high-wire performer.

  Walking with them—you might almost say, herding them—in the direction of the front foyer, and the door.

  “Good night! Good-bye!”

  She did not slam the door behind them. Quietly and calmly she shut the door behind them, and turned the bolt.

  Vast waves of relief flooding over her, she’d gotten rid of her unwanted visitors who had stared at her so rudely, and had insulted her with their ignorant remarks.

  Belatedly realizing—she was only partly dressed, and she was barefoot!

  How silent the house was! The mausoleum—the museum.

  It is an error to live alone. And to travel through the nebulae, alone.

  For the heart hardens, like volcanic ore. So hard, so brittle and dry, the merest breath will crumple it to dust.

  She was breathing quickly. Her hair was in her face, her eyelashes stuck together like glue. And the itching, now her nails could scratch, scratch and scratch, and what relief—to draw blood.

  Yet—was she alone? She had an uneasy sense that she was not alone in Charters House.

  The instinct to survive is the most basic of instincts and so she was thinking I am in danger—I think. Someone is here.

  She’d counted twelve, thirteen people—at least. Uninvited and unwanted intruders of whom only eleven had left.

  Heidemann had come with the others! G. Leddy Heidemann, she remembered now.

  It seemed evident to M.R. that Heidemann had manipulated the others into forming this “delegation” to speak with her. In secret they had wanted to speak with M.R., in confidence, to “respect her privacy,” and so they had not made an appointment to see M.R. during her office hours at Salvager Hall.

  No one so hateful as Heidemann! From the first he’d disliked M. R. Neukirchen for being, it seemed, a woman; a woman on the University faculty, with a Harvard Ph.D.; a woman whose lecture course in the history of philosophy became unexpectedly popular, and drew students who might otherwise—(so Heidemann believed)—have enrolled in his (notoriously flamboyant, “popular”) lecture course
in the history of political philosophy. When Heidemann had been appointed to the University faculty in the early 1960s he’d been a liberal—an activist supporter of the Great Society—but after the tumultuous year 1968 he’d reacted against all civil disobedience, civil unrest—the “Greening of America.” Generations of University undergraduates had passed through Heidemann’s infamous lecture course extolling the wisdom of the “three Thomases”—Hobbes, Malthus, (Saint) Aquinas—as well as William Buckley and the late “martyred” senator Joseph McCarthy; for years he’d maintained an Internet site called MYTHBREAKERS, INC. with links to Holocaust-denial sites. Like a fat spider the man had sucked at the life’s-blood of the young and naïve and in the process he’d become a University “character”—perversely admired even by students who thought his politics were fascistic and his moral absolutism quaintly irrelevant.

  Since the early 1970s Heidemann had opposed every effort of the University to hire women, minority faculty, gay faculty. He’d opposed any extension of “University government”—psychological counseling, student aid and loans, free birth control, summer internship programs. He’d opposed smoking bans in public places on campus, he’d opposed the (anti-rape) Take Back the Night rallies, he’d opposed day care centers, he’d opposed even handicapped parking in University lots, that was mandated by New Jersey state law. He refused to define himself as a conservative, still less a reactionary—he was a civil libertarian.

  Much of Heidemann’s public behavior, M.R. thought, was flamboyant and exhibitionist—he couldn’t believe most of the outlandish things he said, she was sure. In this, he resembled his alleged hero Joseph McCarthy. He had a wife—whom no one ever saw. He’d had children—who’d grown up, and moved away, and were rumored rarely to return. He was sixty-nine and had vowed never to retire—for, under federal law, there was no longer mandatory retirement at the University. In the chaotic and poisonous aftermath of 9/11 he’d leapt into the fray, with his Ivy League credentials, to publish Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and articles in prominent journals arguing that the war against “Terrorist Islam” was a more urgent war than World War II had been because the Nazis were not in opposition to Christianity as the Muslims were. Heidemann’s vision of a “Christian-crusader-nation” had been immensely appealing to conservatives in the Republican Party. He’d made himself famous on right-wing cable channels by translating the most extreme terms of the Cold War to contemporary times—as the “demonic” Soviet Union had plotted to destroy the Free Christian World, so the “demonic” Muslim world plotted to destroy the Free Christian World, beginning with the United States.

  Heidemann’s views on abortion, birth control, “sexual promiscuity” and the dangers of “secular progressivism” had surely had an injurious effect upon the impressionable Alexander Stirk.

  M.R. thought But I must not think of him. I must not make myself sick.

  “But I will. I will do this.”

  Just before her unwanted visitors had come to the house, intermittently through much of that very busy day at Salvager Hall, M.R. had been revising “The Role of the University in an Era of ‘Patriotism.’ ”

  This impassioned speech would be M.R.’s cri de coeur. She would not be prevented from giving it—she would not be censored.

  Two hundred years of tradition! The University president delivers the commencement address, not an invited speaker, certainly not a celebrity.

  The academic year was a winding mountain road that ascended to its formal, ceremonial conclusion—commencement weekend. Like the great-sailed Cutty Sark that has made its way through choppy seas and is headed now to port—excitedly sighted, making its ostentatious way to port!—the University presented itself, at the end of the term, as a sequence of public events resembling a quasi-religious theatrical festival in which self-advertisement was cloaked in tradition.

  Some traditions were of more marketing value than others but all were crucial and none more crucial than the president’s commencement address that had been, at the start of the University’s history, unabashed Christian sermons.

  It was a more recent tradition, that the University as an institution defined itself as politically neutral. The University president was not supposed to be “political”—not pointedly.

  But M.R. was sure that, during war-crisis eras through the decades, for instance before the outbreak of the Civil War, her distinguished president-predecessors had not avoided political statements.

  “ ‘The moral is the political—the political is the moral.’ ”

  Except, those to whom M.R. had shown a draft of the address the previous October, including her provost and the University attorney, had advised M.R. against publishing it in the official journal of the American Association of Learned Societies.

  Gently they’d advised her. For they had not wanted to insult her judgment.

  But this was the very “talk” M.R. had been cheated of giving, in October! The keynote address to the conference!

  M.R.’s heart beat quickly, almost she felt exhilarated, dangerously excited, as at the prospect of combat.

  “I will not be censored.”

  It was true—to a degree—that M.R. hadn’t been altogether well lately—in fugue-states, somehow not fully herself.

  The meeting with the trustees, for instance—M.R. had been feverish with excitement and had believed that the meeting had gone well except that reactions from University officers like Leonard Lockhardt had seemed to indicate otherwise. Then, M.R. regretted that she’d terminated the meeting so abruptly; for she had not known that it would not be resumed within a few hours. But, to her surprise, M.R. was informed by the chairman of the board of trustees that the meeting was postponed until June—after commencement.

  She thought, stunned Are they meeting without me? Will they give me a vote of no confidence?

  This could not happen. Not once in two hundred years, so far as M.R. knew, had University trustees voted to impeach a president.

  Her provost, her academic dean, her vice president for development—they’d begun to suggest that M.R. take a rest, a break—a leave; at the very least, M.R. might check herself into a clinic, to have a “thorough” physical checkup. Though she’d been stung by such a suggestion M.R. had managed to laugh.

  “Just three more weeks! Then the term will be over. Maybe then I can rest—for a while.”

  That had seemed to placate them. That had seemed to encourage them to speak further, daringly.

  No reason for her to be embarrassed or ashamed, they said! She’d run herself down with overwork, this first year in office.

  Embarrassed? Ashamed?

  She left them, then. She was deeply wounded.

  Yet she intended to follow their advice—to see a doctor. For surely there was no harm in this.

  So she’d had her secretary make an appointment for her but then—on the morning of the appointment—she’d realized what a rent the appointment would make in her afternoon schedule, a gaping hole for such an indulgence, and so she’d canceled.

  The appointment had been with a doctor who wasn’t the highly regarded woman internist to whom M.R. had been going since she’d first come to the University but a new resident in the area, yet still a woman doctor, of course—for M.R. could not lately bear to be examined by anyone except a woman doctor; and then, it came over her suddenly, she could not bear to be examined by anyone, female or male, because she could not bear to be touched.

  She could not bear to be examined, diagnosed.

  Mysterious bruises, welts in her flesh—allergic reactions, rashes—a kind of violently itching psoriasis across her midriff, between her shoulder blades—such symptoms M.R. could hide easily beneath her clothes—(she believed)—for she knew them to be neurotic reactions and not “real” health issues. And there was the rather bad example of Agatha—M.R. frowned to recall—who’d blithely canceled doctors’ appointments even as h
er blood pressure—and her blood-sugar count—were mounting.

  Most doctors in the vicinity would know who M. R. Neukirchen was. And certainly any therapist, psychotherapist.

  If she were prescribed sleeping pills, for instance. Or any sort of psychotropic drug.

  The damned rashes were spreading, and quite painful. While the “delegates” were gazing solemnly at her the itching had escalated so she’d felt that she was going crazy. But she hadn’t succumbed.

  In any case no rash is a serious symptom and M.R. self-medicated with a mild cortisone cream from the drugstore.

  Insomnia, loss of appetite, “night sweats”—these clichés, symptoms of a neurasthenic female, M.R. brushed away as you’d brush away flies.

  And how ridiculous, even her toenails ached! M.R.’s very toenails turning against her . . .

  Formal dinners where M.R. had to impersonate herself for hours—hours!—and dared not activate any of the itching, for fear it would rush out of control. And at such occasions, and receptions where she had to stand on her feet, she could hardly avoid wearing (expensive, tight-fitting) shoes and so it had happened gradually that the toenails of the large toes of both her feet had become weirdly slanted, ingrown, and lately a dull-maroon hue as if blood had collected beneath the nail, and grown rancid.

  It was difficult not to see these ailments as signs of moral weakness.

  It was difficult not to see these ailments as signs of what misogynists like G. Leddy Heidemann would deride as female weakness.

  Still, M.R. would see a podiatrist, and an intern—soon. After she’d discharged the last, the very last, of her presidential duties for the academic year 2002–2003.

  The end. The end when she’d believed it was the beginning.

  “ ‘M.R.’! Are we alone, finally? Have your kindly visitors abandoned you?”

  The voice was sneering, with a faint British intonation—G. Leddy Heidemann had degrees from Oxford.

  For there the man was sprawled in one of the brown leather chairs in the library, waiting for M.R. to glance into the room, to switch off the light.