The School of Night by Louis Bayard Page B

want.”
    I picked up a stick, swung it lightly at a red mulberry.
    â€œThe problem wasn’t who I was, it was who I wasn’t .”
    â€œWho were you not ?”
    Something quite impudent about her tone. But when I looked into the bitter-chocolate layers of her eyes, I found … no, better to say I was lost. For a second or two.
    â€œOh, you know. I wasn’t the guy with the brilliant—you know, blazing, unassailable future . I used to think I was, but I wasn’t. And unfortunately, I wasn’t an artist, either.”
    â€œNot even with the love of a good woman?”
    I paused to consider the implications of that question.
    â€œTruthfully, no. That was the lesson of my second marriage.”
    â€œWell, never mind. I’m guessing you’re a good teacher.”
    â€œIt would depend on your definition.”
    â€œGive me one.”
    â€œUm … I’ve never missed a class?”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œI’ve never slept with any of my students?”
    â€œNot yet you haven’t.”
    And with that, I found myself suddenly paralyzed by the vision of Clarissa Dale, wild-haired, raspberry-lipped, in a pleated tartan skirt, craning her head around my office door.
    Professor Cavendish?
    The effect was so erotic and so unlikely that the only possible response was to laugh. A minute later, I was still laughing.
    â€œSo,” she said. “You do know.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe way to happy.”
    â€œWell, yeah,” I said. “In sprints I get there.”
    I thought then of asking Clarissa for her own history, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Or, rather, it wasn’t clear to me that knowing would be better than not knowing.
    We walked on. And as we went, the path began to decant, and the air between the cedars and oaks whitened and deepened, and suddenly there were no trees, and we were standing on a margin of sand, staring out across a gray seethe of water.
    Roanoke Sound.
    I’d first seen it as a child, but I couldn’t remember it being so turbulent. Scalloped and dimpled and threshed by wind. No more than a few feet at its deepest point, but only a local would know that. An outsider … well, hadn’t Thomas Harriot run aground in this very channel?
    â€œHarriot never married,” I said.
    â€œWell,” said Clarissa, “just because he didn’t marry doesn’t mean he didn’t love someone.”
    â€œNo historical record of it.”
    â€œYou said there’s no record of his birthday, either. But he was born.”
    We stood there for some time, a couple of yards separating us. The wind blew in hard from the south, and a pair of seagulls blew in just as hard toward the east, flinging their cries over their shoulders.
    â€œLook,” said Clarissa, “I never told you this.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œThis guy … whoever he is.”
    â€œThe one in your head.”
    â€œIn my visions , not my head. Okay, I’m trying to find some way of saying this that doesn’t make me sound crazier than you already think I am.”
    â€œGo on,” I said.
    â€œHe’s in some truly—some unimaginable, unholy kind of pain . It’s there in his face, it’s in his body. It’s … it’s entire.”
    â€œSo.” I was taking special care not to look at her. “He’s trying to heal himself, is that it? All that stuff with the stones?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    She picked up a pinecone. Tossed it into the sound.
    â€œHow did Thomas Harriot die?” she asked.
    â€œCancer. Believe me, you would have noticed. It started in his nose, spread to his mouth. He was pretty disfigured by the time he was done.”
    Retribution, I used to think (back when I believed in retribution). Not so much for using tobacco as for pushing it on his fellow countrymen. Between them, Harriot and Ralegh helped make England a nation of