Morris Melville Tipstein would gladly eat Oreanna Arrugar with a spoon, so delectable is she, velvet as the white chocolate the local yogurt palace dispenses on Sunday, silky as the mandarin orange they serve in honor of Halloween—they tried licorice once, but the college crowd prefers its licorice real, in strings or not at all. All the old songs his father used to play on the piano burst into his head when he enters Latin 26 and he beholds Oreanna arranging her long black hair into a bun and chewing madly on a piece of apple-flavored bubble gum; songs like “Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh—You’re Driving Me Crazy,” or “The Breeze Runs After You.” He does not remember the words, naturally, for he is a classics scholar, not a student of the songs of the 30’s and 40’s. In fact, he has no ear for music, and yet words take on a sort of music in his head. Catullus always sings to him: “Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus . . . ,” let us live and love, my Lesbia. And Tipstein responds with “Vivamus, Oreanna.” Is it lust? No! Oreanna is too smart to warrant lust. If only she were not on this women’s-lib kick. Sometimes she is actually hostile to him, or is it men in general? Has he not seen her give the finger to the retired classics chair, a really harmless old chap unfailingly courtly to the ladies—he doffs his cap to them? Even then, Oreanna is pert and graceful, delivering the finger.
Now he must look to her midterm exam. It is sunset on the Bay when he begins. From the deck of his tiny chalet, the sky is awash with color, courtesy of smog. Even though Tipstein knows the air is polluted, the sunset is voluptuous to behold, especially as he awaits his English grill sizzling on the hibachi, and the glass of stout, slightly warm, tempting him with its foam. He enjoys his exams, preparing them, reading them, grading them. There is a passage from Ovid, sure to infuriate Oreanna. It may even bring on the cry of “pig.” And then Tipstein can wax avuncular, although he is only twenty-eight himself and only an assistant. He can caution the ladies in his class to be culturally rational—he doesn’t have to caution the men, they cry out only against grades—by which he means that one cannot rightfully pin a pig on the Romans of antiquity, when all men were pigs, having no option.
And what of Catullus? What about Catullus? The passage from Catullus must surely move the heart of Oreanna, for how can she not be moved—she who is only nineteen and has already completed all of her language requirements for the graduate program in Comparative Literature, all except Latin. Oreanna, despite her feminism, is sweet. Witness her devotion to Binky, the abominable, geriatric Binky, née Bianca Minkowitz, Tipstein’s very own heart’s abhorrence. Witness Oreanna’s solicitous attention to Binky. Ah, if loathing could annihilate Binky. Everywhere that Oreanna is, Binky is sure to be, or sure to follow. Even into Latin 26. What is Binky doing in Latin 26? She is in a graduate program, somewhere. She is also seventy-five years old if she is a day, and has a voice like a stalled engine and a mind, in Tipstein’s opinion, that also coughs and sputters. But Oreanna fusses with her, holds her hand during exams, and eats lunch with her. Once he actually saw her fanning the old goat. Twice he has taken up the matter of senior citizens on campus with the acting head of the classics department, Ludmilla Witcofsky-Jones.
“I’m really concerned about Mrs. Minkowitz.”
“Really. Is she the old broad?”
“She’s eighty, if she’s a day.”
“What seems to be the trouble?” Professor Witcofsky-Jones has a way of peering over her bifocals. She likes Tipstein. It isn’t like him to be fussy. “She’s the darling of the French department, you know, this Binky person.”
“I can’t think why. She seems to me incapable of making any generalizations about language. Her questions are stupid.”
Tipstein is trying to disguise from himself and others the fact that he finds Binky physically loathsome, especially as she appears so bonded to Oreanna. Binky’s questions are actually irritating, not stupid.
“Is she gonna fail or something?”
“No,” he reflects, “she manages her exams all right, but she makes it impossible for me to get through a lesson. ‘What poisons did the Romans use to kill one another?’ Stuff like that. She doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, but I think I see signs of senile dementia.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m exaggerating a little, but I’m worried. She may fall down and hurt herself.”
“Or get run over by a skateboard, you should be so lucky.”
“A bicycle, more likely. But should she be here at all? She’s eighty-five, if she’s a day.”
“She keeps getting older by the minute,” says Witcofsky-Jones. “Be nice to her, Morris. She’s probably one of the reentry people. We don’t want the department to be accused of ageism. We have enough trouble already.”
Tipstein is fairly certain he has a clean bill of health; he is free, he believes, of assorted prejudice. But even after his talk with Witcofsky-Jones, he is uncomfortable. Should he report for the record a concern that Binky Minkowitz might conceivably drop dead in his classroom? If he does he will no doubt be told to take a class in CPR or learn to dial the campus police. Nobody is going to admit that it is dangerous to have these old bats flying around. But wait until one of them does get run over by a bicycle, and then the university will have a lawsuit on its hands. But he knows better than to carry his complaints beyond Witcofsky-Jones, for example to the women who run the reentry program. Binky is probably their brightest star, too. As Oreanna is his. Would that she were steadfast to her professor, as he is to her. Or less steadfast to Binky. Would that he might recline on Oreanna’s bosom. He reaches for the stout and her paper.
Oreanna comes through Ovid correctly and remarks in the margin that Ovid is a pig. Tipstein responds lovingly, also in the margin. He adores writing those private notes to her. It is his way of caressing her; and having responded to her Ovid, he now awaits her kinder response to the lyric cry from Catullus 58:
O Caelius! our Lesbia, that Lesbia,
whom your Catullus once above his eyes
and friends loved dearly, now in shameless
fashion
throughout the city streets and alley plies
her trade—and strives each son of Rome to
strip
of pride and self-respect with loin and lip.
Catullus 58 is full of adjectives and pronouns, but it is more than a lesson in parts of speech. Catullus 58 is a way for Tipstein to test carnal knowledge among the young, who, God knows, have experienced more active sex than he; but will they recognize the real thing if they encounter it in Latin 26? And will the velvet Oreanna perform in novel ways? How will she fare, the fair? Above all, will she be fair to Catullus? Tipstein’s own translation follows closely the above, rendered by Professor Aiken, who taught classics to Tipstein’s own Latin teacher. The key word in the original Latin verse is an antique verb “glubit,” third conjugation, third person singular, meaning “to peel, or to skin, as in the bark of a tree”; and Tipstein admires in Aiken’s translation the expansion of the conventional meaning of the verb. Nonetheless, the last two lines are a tad ambiguous: whose pride is being stripped? And how is it being stripped? And yet the more modern translators of Catullus, Garrison for example, are also ambiguous. Besides, Tipstein is loyal to his professor’s professor.
Thus far, the papers have been bland or wildly off the mark. Several of the class have accused Lesbia of ripping off rich Romans as if she were a pickpocket. Some have seen her forcing the men of Rome to do a striptease for her—male stripping is still the fun thing to do at some of the sorority houses. Some see Lesbia as performing a striptease herself. Some of the papers do mad things with the phrase “se atque suos,” which Aiken gives as “his eyes” but which roughly means “himself and his own family.” Oreanna’s translation is lifeless, but technically correct. She does nothing original or strange with the “glubit.” She certainly does not register for her palpitating prof anywhere in her translation Catullus’s rage, loathing, despair.
Binky’s paper is at the bottom of the pile. What possesses him to go for it now? He always reads her paper last, when he is jaded and can comment perfunctorily. But the old bag reads Catullus’s passion well. She calls Lesbia harlot. She cries to Caelius, “Remember how much I loved her. I placed her above everyone—my friends—you included, my Caelius.” And she translates “glubit” as “sucking off.” Tipstein looks up at the sunset. It has turned purple.
_____________
The campus is full of color the following morning, and it is not the sky which provides the drama. The sky is in fact modestly blue. The sun, to be sure, is out; the air is crisp: a silent backdrop for the scenes of campus life which now unfold as the traveler, an academic new to the campus, as is Morris Tipstein—this is his second year—is drawn like a magnet to the street theater at the South Gate. For here is carnival—mimes, acrobats, activists, musicians, food vendors, and crazies. They have all staked out their territories and hold court . . . Saturday Night Live every single day from 11 A.M. to 1 P.M. The fun begins at noon, when everybody is eating lunch. Nobody gets taken for a ride, except a few innocents who have never left home, although they attend the university.
Most of the campus comes to the carnival to relax, to eat, to be titillated, even by the passionately committed activists like the Animal Rights Group of the Third World Coalition of the Whole Earth. The administration is not unresponsive to the activists. It no longer wants to burn or be burned, and now heeds the solons among the faculty who, for the most part, are liberals, people of conscience. They side with the less extreme of the activists, although they no longer march en masse with the students as they did in the 60’s. And that is why part of the street theater is the occupation of administrative buildings without too much police action following, just a lot of yelling. Which is not to say justice and peace reign on the campus. Tipstein is, in fact, going to attend an informal meeting called by his department at 3 P.M. to address one of the matters currently jangling administrative nerves, although at this moment he is on his way to a private interview with Professor Witcofsky-Jones concerning the matter of Binky’s midterm exam. There is still time—it is only 12:30—for Tipstein’s Gypsy blood, supposedly authentic, a great-grandmother having gone astray in Bucharest, to warm to the scenes before him.
Oreanna is in the crowd. She is listening to a fully bearded man in black leotards, ruffled skirt, and garden hat adorned with flowers and feathers excoriate a fundamentalist preacher; and she is eating a pizza. Tipstein’s stomach flips out and over. A blush floods his cheeks. Helpless, he moves in her direction until he is right behind her, smelling the oregano and the cheese.
“Hi,” he says.
“Oh hi,” big lovely smile today from Oreanna. “How’s my paper?”
“Not bad. Not bad.”
“Wanna bite?” She offers him her pizza.
“No thanks.” But yes he would. He would like a bite. “I’m having my daily yogurt, shortly,” he says.
“How’s Binky’s paper?”
“Where is Binky?” he asks.
“She’s coming shortly.” Oreanna has a way of mincing her speech and mimicking his. She’s adorable.
“Well let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment,” he says, “I’ll see you in class. Shortly.”
_____________
At the very least she has been friendly. Tipstein crosses the street to reach the yogurt palace but has a hard time wondering if he should not first indulge in a pizza. But he will have to brush his teeth if he does, especially as he has the meeting with Witcofsky-Jones. He has a horror of bad breath, even from several feet away. His father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, never brushes his teeth and is very hard to embrace. Tipstein decides he will have his yogurt and then go to the meeting with Witcofsky-Jones concerning Binky’s paper, about which he has some very mixed-up feelings. He settles for papaya pineapple and arrives five minutes early.
Witcofsky-Jones is always happy to see Tipstein. He wears his hair Buster Brown style and he draws large sections of undergraduates from all the disciplines. He’s cute.
“Hello, Morris Melville,” she greets him.
“Ave.”
“Oh, you can do better than that.”
He smiles sheepishly
“So what’s up?” she asks.
He hands her Binky’s paper. She reads, she snorts, she smiles.
“The kid’s got it.”
“The point is, is it her own?”
“You mean the ‘glubit’?”
“Yes.”
“I would say she knows Catullus’s other songs of love, wouldn’t you?”
“She’s not that strong in Latin.”
“How about English? She may know the poems in English. Who is it?”
“Bianca Minkowitz.”
“The geriatrics case?”
“Yes.”
“Well good for her. Good for her.”
“The reason I came to see you. . . .” He pauses. He stalls. “I mean. . . .” He doesn’t know precisely what he means.
“You mean she may have had advance information on the test? How can that be? ‘Aber wie ist das möglich?’” she asks.
“I don’t know. None of the other students has come even close, and I have one or two very sharp ones, I assure you. They can even get through Cicero without my help.”
“Experience, Morris,” says Witcofsky-Jones, biting her lip but looking at Tipstein with tenderness. “Experience.”
“Experience?”
“Experience, my boy. The facts of sex and all that. She may have remembered.”
“Binky?” he asks with disbelief.
“The kids can’t imagine life or sex in ancient Rome. Oh, they can answer the specific questions you put to them, but the Romans are dead, really dead. They’re alive to Mrs. Binky, or whatever you call her. She is alive to them, you see? Or let’s say Catullus is alive for her.”
Tipstein nods. He appears to be drinking in her wisdom. She continues: “Be nice to the old lady, Morris. Give her an A. Make her day.”
Tipstein nods. He has already stuck his foot in it. He gets up to leave.
“Thanks,” he says. “I will certainly think about it. And what’s our meeting about this afternoon?”
“Cultural diversity. We are very badly underrepresented. Even me. I mean women. We’re in very bad shape. All white guys.”
“Is it the truth?” he asks. He feels stupid and out of sorts.
“Sure, but what do we do, blow ourselves up?”
“On second thought,” he says, rousing himself, “half my class is truly culturally diverse.”
“So bring your class lists and numbers, will you?”
“I will,” he says.
_____________
It is 2 P.M. Latin 26 is assembled. The students are breathless, awaiting the return of the midterm exam. Binky arrives breathless, too, from running. She has been attending to her weak bladder. She flops into the chair next to Oreanna, who is chewing strawberry bubble gum after pizza. She smiles at Binky and blows a small bubble at her. Binky smiles at Tipstein. She likes him; she really does. She also fans herself with a bonnet she uses against sunstroke and skin cancer.
“Wow,” she says.
The class is indifferent to her exclamations, except for Oreanna.
“Now, my beauties,” says Tipstein, waving their papers before their eyes. The class moans in unison. He smiles at them. He reviews first the passage from Ovid. He explains the constructions they have misconstrued. But he assures them they have done a respectable job on Ovid, and he singles out Oreanna’s paper for praise, even as he pauses to make his sermon of the margin. He quotes from his letter to Oreanna. Of course, the class has reason to be annoyed with Ovid, the women anyway. But they must remember the times, must they not? They listen downcast.
“And now to Catullus, a man for all seasons.” Tipstein’s voice rises to the occasion. He has been about to say for all genders, too, but a wicked whisper suddenly turns his heart to dust. The class is looking up from its former position at halfmast. Most of them are women. Of the men only one is not a “white guy.” But Pablo Henrique-Verde, although he may be designated Hispanic, has never been culturally disadvantaged, unless one considers it a disadvantage to have a father in the Colombian embassy in Washington.
Of the women two are of Hispanic descent, but, alas, the first is not from the barrios of Los Angeles or even Mexico City. She is Cuban and anti-Castro. Then there is Oreanna, right out of East Los Angeles and possibly on financial aid but so elegantly attired in royal blues and magenta, even unto her backpack, one cannot imagine her hurting for money. One simply cannot generalize. In addition there are three undeniable Asian-American women, one of them a recent immigrant to the U.S. but supplied with a fairly decent background in the classics, her father having been a merchant in Hong Kong, and she a student at one of the British schools. Tipstein does not have to reflect too much on her socioeconomic status. Six out of a class of fifteen. Not bad for upper-division Latin. He hopes. He hopes, too, that there is going to be no trouble regarding Catullus.
His slight ethnic fugue is a momentary break, from what he isn’t sure. That wicked whisper. Tipstein draws in a deep breath and delivers his sermon on Catullus, and then turns to poem 58 and targets first the phrase which Aiken translated “above his eyes.” He reads some of their wilder excursions on the subject of where Catullus is positioned with respect to “se” and “suos.”
“One of you had ‘his and hers’ for ‘se and suos’?” he asks rather than declares.
“They’re pronouns, aren’t they?”
“Which one?” he asks.
_____________
Tipstein is patient with the students, although when he offers Aiken’s translation of the first four lines—he is saving the “glubit”—the class is baffled. The presence of “eyes” in the translation still upsets them. Tipstein explains that the translator, in order to do justice to the passion of the lover, has taken some liberties with the original.
“And we’re not supposed to!”
Tipstein fears he is about to be accused of some new ism, possibly phallocentrism . . . or is that what he might be accused of? Oreanna would know.
“Hold on,” he says. “I’ll show you an excellent translation—by one of you—and you’ll see what liberties I permit. Good old Catullus.”
“He’s a pig,” from Oreanna, who shrugs her shoulders and tosses her lovely head.
“Oh, come, Oreanna,” he caresses her with his eyes, though his voice chides a little. “Even after this poem? No sympathy, not one bit?”
Oreanna bristles, and Binky, resembling more and more in Tipstein’s eyes a film star from the movie classics, a fey lady with the improbable name of ZaSu Pitts, looks around the class flutteringly. Tipstein until this moment has not been certain he will read Binky’s paper. Now he knows he must. It is a flash of genius.
“Listen to this.” He goes to the bottom of the pile. He sweeps the paper through the air with a flourish and holding it out before him, proceeds to read from Binky’s paper. Lovingly, he dwells on the word “harlot.” Carefully, he pauses before he utters “sucking off.” There is a slight murmur, but only Oreanna turns pink grapefruit. Binky turns strawberry. Aha! Tipstein has them both by the balls. He has never applied the cliché precisely.
“What do you think, Oreanna?” he asks with an obvious look of glee. The translation has taken most of the class by surprise.
“It stinks,” she replies.
“It stinks? This translation stinks?”
“It’s correct, I suppose, but it’s sexist and disgusting.”
“This translation?”
Tipstein is not really surprised. What else should Oreanna say? The inspiration, that flash of genius, is working. Isn’t it? But if not, Tipstein has crossed his Rubicon. The die is cast.
Oreanna’s voice now rises almost to a shriek. “How can you—even you—but how can we blame Lesbia? She was doing what all men in Rome were doing. Why was it more disgusting or lecherous or whatever for a woman to do what the men were doing?”
“Times were different, Oreanna.”
“That’s my point. Times were different, and we’re supposed to feel sorry for Catullus. I won’t, and I don’t.”
“That’s not logical, Oreanna.” This comment comes from Bradley Smith, one of the white guys. “If times were different, they were different.”
Oreanna’s breathing is becoming labored. “When I think how we have been programmed to hate Lesbia, hate poor old Cressida . . . you know, Chaucer. . . .”
The class doesn’t know, not even Tipstein—he is a classics man—but Binky knows. She puts her head down and holds a handkerchief to her forehead.
Tipstein persists. “Doesn’t this translation move you a little? Aren’t you impressed?”
“You mean by the sucking off?” Oreanna sneers. “It’s just the sort of thing a guy would say. It’s loathsome. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. But the translation makes Lesbia the guilty party, and that’s not right. It’s judgmental.”
“But it’s Catullus speaking. One has to be faithful to his tone.”
“Fuck him,” says Oreanna breathlessly. Tipstein is not quite sure what his next move should be. “I’ve given this paper an A. An A+.”
“Congratulations,” says Oreanna.
_____________
Binky speaks, but first raises her hand. “I don’t accept the grade, Professor Tipstein.” She doesn’t look at Oreanna. “I don’t accept the grade. I have been cruel to Lesbia.”
“What about being cruel to Catullus?” Bradley Smith is outraged. “How can anyone refuse a grade of A+ for such a dumb reason?”
“I think Catullus has had our hearts for too long. It’s time we had another look at Lesbia.” Now she looks at Oreanna. “I’m very sorry, my little darling.”
Oreanna looks fondly at Binky. “Binky, honey, did you really do that translation?”
“Yes, I did, but I don’t mind telling you that I’ve always been uncomfortable about poor misunderstood Cressida, much as I love Troilus. I’m ashamed, Oreanna.”
“Did you do the sucking off part, too?”
“It seemed to me faithful. It was my third choice.” She falters. “It seemed to me quite right.”
“Well, if it’s right, it’s right. What are you ashamed of?” asks Bradley Smith. “How can you be ashamed of being right? I don’t get it.”
“I’m ashamed of the way I’ve been conditioned to accept the male point of view,” says Binky with bowed head.
“Jesus, it’s only a translation.” says Bradley Smith.
“I should not have been taken in. I should have written a disclaimer in the margin,” says Binky, crestfallen.
Tipstein, possessed by an irrational force, turns on her.
“Bianca Minkowitz,” he cries, “I accuse you of intellectual dishonesty.”
Binky looks as if she is going to faint. She looks stricken and feeble. “Oh my God.” she cries, “what have I done?”
“There’s emotional honesty, too,” cries Oreanna. “You have no right to do this to Binky.”
“That’s age discrimination,” shouts Bradley Smith.
“Oh, shut your face,” says Oreanna. “Come on, Binky, let’s go.”
Binky gathers her books into her backpack, Oreanna helping with the zipper.
“Just a minute,” cries Tipstein. “Class isn’t over yet.”
Oreanna gives him the finger. She leads Binky by the hand. But before they reach the door, Binky, her voice trembling, her fingers twisting a kleenex, turns and says:
Professor Tipstein, I think I have broken a sacred law of literary criticism. The author of the poem should not usually be confused with the speaker. If that is what you mean by intellectual dishonesty. . . .
“I don’t follow you,” says Tipstein.
“I mean,” says Binky, “that Catullus was a satirist, and he may be wearing a mask, a persona. You know. He may be criticizing the sort of man who could tear a passion to tatters. He may be criticizing the kind of lover he once was.”
“Not a chance,” says Tipstein. No wonder he loathes Binky. The old baggage has been waiting to show him up. He knew it would happen.
“But isn’t it possible,” asks Binky, still conciliatory, “that the text deconstructs itself? Then we do not have to see Catullus as a pig.”
“Absolutely not,” says Tipstein.
You mean he is a pig?
“I mean you are misinterpreting the poem . . . and me,” cries Tipstein.
Binky turns. “I’m sorry,” she says to Oreanna. “I tried to see both sides.”
“Come on,” says Oreanna. Together they leave the classroom. Oreanna slams the door. With the exception of Bradley Smith, the class has maintained a stoic silence. Or is it stone? Tipstein is clearly upset. Somehow he has played his cards wrong.
“What do you make of them?” he asks nobody in particular.
“Oreanna wants to run for student body prez. She’s into every cause. She’s a real loudmouth.” Smith has taken up the cudgels. “I don’t think they’re that way, though.”
“What way?” Tipstein asks.
“Lesbians,” says Smith.
“Pendejo,” cries the lady from Cuba.
“Horse’s ass,” cries Nadia Kawasake.
“Well, what if they are?” Brad is being nonjudgmental.
“You’re really stupid,” says Nadia, and then she turns to Tipstein. “I want to know one thing. Why did you make such a big deal about ‘sucking off’ for ‘glubit,’ because I think my translation was equally graphic, if you must know.”
“I forget what exactly you said,” says Tipstein, still tremulous.
“Lube job. I said she was giving the guys a lube job.”
“I guess I missed the metaphor,” says Tipstein.
Tipstein fends off further assaults by promising to change her grade. He answers one or two more questions and then, mirabile dictu, dismisses the class. Early. Alas! This is what comes of playing games with people. This is what comes of trying to cause a rift between Oreanna and Binky and not being able to go about it scientifically because one is a humanist.
_____________
Tipstein arrives at the meeting of the classics department in a daze. Professor Witcofsky-Jones addresses the problems they are facing. Latin and Greek are coming under attack for being elitist, even though archeology majors come from a variety of ethnic groups. The Latin proficiency examinations in some departments are coming under scrutiny for being too difficult. Several departments are even considering giving up the second language requirement, the third having already fallen by the wayside. But, most important, classics is under attack because the staff, except for the teaching assistants and the present acting head, are mostly white males. And enrollment is dropping. The usual declarations of woe and regret follow, that the university is now a place where young people come only to learn how to make money. Professor Witcofsky-Jones takes issue.
“Stop it,” she says. “What do you think the university is about, anyway? What do you think grants are all about? What we want to do is encourage the idea that a knowledge of Latin and Greek also brings in money.”
“Oy vey!” The cry comes from the retired head, who is unable to tear himself away from meetings. He is not Jewish.
“How, pray?” from another voice, more scornful, less dismayed.
“Computers. I am going to ask several of you to serve on a committee. If we can computerize our instruction, we can guarantee that anyone can learn Latin and Greek. You know what our passing rate is, if the kids haven’t been spoonfed with four years of the stuff in high school. They can’t get through two pages of Cicero. And they’re mostly middle-class Caucasian. Our Asian kids are smarter.”
Somebody brings up elitism. Will computers solve elitism? Witcofsky-Jones thinks they will. Latin and Greek can learn from Nintiendo.
“It’s Nintendo.”
Tipstein takes no part in the discussion. He is thinking of Oreanna, walking out. No one has ever done that before. He has never before dismissed his class early. It will get all over campus. What else? Oreanna will go with Binky to the reentry program and report him to the formidable woman who runs it. Even though he has just rewarded Binky, he has been cruel to Binky. And who will report his cruelty better than Oreanna? And the head of the reentry program will call up Witcofsky-Jones and then, in the light of all the present difficulties, the department will be accused of ageism. Can he be accused of sexism, too? Not with Binky. He should speak to Witcofsky-Jones again, but she is talking up this computer thing, madly. Macintosh or Apple must have her under contract. They are very aggressive. Tipstein leaves the meeting when his colleagues begin sipping herbal tea and decaf.
It is 4:30 P.M. The campus is calm except for the Animal Rights people who are unrelenting in their rage against white males. Or so Tipstein believes. They surround the Life Sciences building carrying really pitiable pictures of animals in torment. Tipstein’s stomach is sour. He feels terribly vulnerable. He lowers his head all the way to the building that houses the reentry program.
Romola Archer is free to talk to him. The reception person—he is a man—tells Tipstein how lucky he is. People see Ms. Archer only by appointment, though she tries never to turn anyone away. Ms. Archer occupies an office full of wicker chairs and lavender. Even the walls are lavender. The office smells of herbal incense. Ms. Archer is a handsome woman in her forties, elegantly attired in green sweat pants and shirt to match. She has just returned from jogging, but she has washed her face and looks refreshed.
“I needed it,” she says.
“Yes,” says Tipstein. They have already introduced themselves. She offers him something to drink—apple juice, herbal tea, Calistoga water. He declines. He thanks her.
“What can I do for you?” Ms. Archer breaks the ice which has already formed.
“I don’t know how to begin,” he says.
“Just begin. It’s easier that way.”
“Do you know Bianca Minkowitz?” he asks.
“No, I can’t say that I do.” Her look is firm but sympathetic.
“You don’t?” Tipstein is amazed. “You don’t know Bianca Minkowitz? You don’t know Binky?”
“Oh, Binky,” she says. “Yes, I know Binky.” She is about to say more, but she waits for Tipstein who has drawn in a deep breath.
Oddly, she seems to show no enthusiasm for Binky. She is not crowing or glowing or clucking. She is just sitting, waiting. It is disconcerting.
“Isn’t she one of your reentry stars?” he asks.
“Heavens, no. She doesn’t come near us.”
“But she’s so old. How did she get into the university without your assistance?” Tipstein is confused.
“It can be done, you know.”
“But how?”
“A number of ways. The Graduate Record Exam. Binky must have done well on the GRE. But I think she arrived with a published honors thesis, something about Baudelaire and Magritte. The French department was very eager to receive her.”
“She isn’t one of your people?” Tipstein shakes his handsome head. He is apprehensive.
“No, she’s a snob.”
“Oh,” he says, “oh.” The color leaves his face. He asks if she perhaps knows Oreanna. Now Ms. Archer’s face is kinder.
“Yes, I do.” Tipstein’s color returns.
“She’s part of our tutoring program.”
“They’re friends,” he says from a haze.
“Yes, I know. Oreanna is trying to raise Binky’s consciousness.”
“I’m afraid it’s working,” he says, and then he catches himself. “It’s working very nicely.”
_____________
Ms. Archer’s brow is now furrowed, especially since Tipstein suddenly gets to his feet and announces his departure. “Thank you,” he says.
“But how can I help you?” Ms. Archer asks, looking at him with suspicion.
“I really came by because I thought. . . .”
But Tipstein doesn’t really know what he thought or what to say next. And then a divinity, a white fudge divinity, inspires him. He stands tall.
“I came by because I thought Binky. . . Bianca . . . I think Bianca is . . . was . . . a handicapped person because of her age. Obviously she is not. But she is old, and yet she is doing very well in classics. Very well indeed. And what I want to say is that . . . I’d like you to encourage your reentry people to study classics, to study classical languages, especially because we’re going to be doing marvelous things with computers, and they can kill two birds with one stone.”
“What birds?” Ms. Archer asks.
“Your reentry students may have to think of getting a job as well as an education. Classics may be a luxury for some, but not if they are also learning a new technique and all that.”
Ms. Archer is about to ask “all what,” but thinks better of it.
“And what about Oreanna?” she asks intuitively.
“She can help. You see, if the ladies are Binky’s age, I mean the women are . . . even a little younger, they may have missed the new way to read classics, and here is an opportunity to make up for what they’ve lost. Oreanna can give them insights into the authors of classical antiquity, new insights, she really can. She can raise their consciousnesses in unexpected ways. She can make them think young, young, not like sticks in the mud. So even if they have no place to go, we can rescue them from elitist and sexist thinking. And they can rescue us by their experience. Whatever we may be, we are not ageists. So send us your old, Ms. Archer, send us your tired but inspired, send us your refugees and your hostages. Send us your strugglers. Send us those whose grasps exceed their reach. Send us your Binkys.”
“She’s not ours to send,” says Ms. Archer.
But Tipstein has already bowed to her and even clicked his heels. He turns and leaves her office in an absolute epiphany of love. Ms. Archer leaves her seat to gaze after him as he strides across campus. She thinks he’s crazy, but Tipstein knows where he is going. The velvet face of Oreanna has risen before him and calls: “Come to the Bouche Fermée, where I take a latte every afternoon at four.” Tipstein, possessed, follows, who knows how. He is certain he has done the right thing. He will sit beside her, tell her what a pig he’s been. He will confess his jealousy of Binky. He will offer to be good to Binky, as if she were Lesbia’s sparrow. He will love Oreanna as no woman was ever loved, or girl. He will put away childish things like phallocentrism. He will love, he will cherish. His head is filled with song.
