Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

“Now listen! Take it easy!” Tillson said, surprised, reaching out to touch Mickelsson’s forearm. “It’s not a question of state hospitals!” He peered into Mickelsson’s eyes as if trying to read his peculiar, twisted mind. “I must say,” he said—the smile twitched, then vanished—“I have no idea whether or not he belongs in school—”

“Yes, I see,” Mickelsson broke in. “I’m sorry.” Before he could stop himself, he wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. “You’re right, I’m probably the one who should advise him.” He forced a laugh.

“You’ve been under a strain,” Tillson said, somewhat questioningly, as if to see if that were it.

“It’s that God damned apartment,” Mickelsson said, and laughed again.

“You ought to get out of there,” Tillson said. For an instant he looked much older, distinctly smaller. “You oughtta get a really good lawyer, Pete. It’s just not right.”

Mickelsson looked down, abruptly formal. “We’ll see,” he said. “Right now I’d better go deal with our angry young friend.”

Nugent sat rigid, as if straining every muscle to appear relaxed, nothing moving but his rapidly blinking red eyelids. His red-knuckled hands lay loosely folded, and his knees hung far apart, the outsides of his upper legs jammed against the fronts of the chair-arms. He sat to Mickelsson’s right, in the wooden chair Mickelsson privately called his learner’s seat. He had a disconcerting way of staring straight at you, or into you, his childish, vulnerable-looking lips slightly parted. His eyelashes were colorless, almost invisible.

He said nothing as Mickelsson—puffing from time to time at his pipe, making furtive, tight gestures—explained the content of the philosophy courses available during the coming semester, the general requirements for the B.A. degree, and, in joking, careful fashion, something of the character of the teachers Nugent would run into. He recommended Garret’s survey of modern philosophers, Lawler’s Aquinas—“more for Lawler than for Aquinas,” he said, and laughed—then, grudgingly, mentioned Tillson’s logic course. Almost without knowing he was doing it he avoided mention of the lower-level Plato and Aristotle course he himself would be teaching, nor did he mention the pop courses thrown in to attract non-majors and swell the F.T.E.—The Philosophy of Death and Dying, Human Sexuality, The Essential Karl Marx. As he spoke he made notes for the boy to take with him—carefully pencilled, succinct phrases that cut deep into the yellow, legal-sized pad he wrote on. Though the world was muggily baking, out beyond the partly drawn Venetian blinds, the office was cool, all shade, almost tomblike. A flat smoke-cloud hung above their heads. On most of three sides the room was walled by books.

The boy asked, breaking in on him, “What about the Plato and Aristotle course?”

“Hmm,” Mickelsson said, looking down at the schedule, leaning his forehead onto the fingertips of his left hand, elbow on the desk. He laid the pipe on his growing stack of unopened mail. (It could wait. He wasn’t supposed to come in to his office anyway during the summer.) “Well, yes, that’s open,” he said. “Of course the Plato-Aristotle course is basically for freshmen. I’m afraid you might find it—”

“It’s unusual, isn’t it?” Nugent asked. “Senior professors teaching freshmen? Most departments I don’t think they do that. They throw the freshmen to the grad students.”

“Well, actually,” Mickelsson said, then stalled. The young man’s stare was unnerving. At last, heartily, cocking his eyebrow, he said, “Never underestimate the power of conviction, Mr. Nugent! No matter how good he is—no matter how mightily he believed in the beginning—when a man’s taught for fifteen, twenty years, he can begin to leak steam at the joints. These graduate students … The biggest problem we have with our grad students is they put too much time into their teaching and not enough into their coursework.” He grinned.

Nugent raised his arm for a quick, impatient wave, then returned it to artificial rest. An extremely odd gesture, Mickelsson thought, dropping the grin and staring hard at the computer-printed words PLATO/ARISTOTLE, 10 A.M., M.W., RM. 27 F.A. BLDC. (MICKELSSON), NO PREREQ. Before he could make out what to think of Nugent’s fierce little wave, the boy was saying, “A friend of mine told me that most of this department does ‘analytic,’ you’re practically the only one that does real philosophy.”

“Well, ‘real,’ ” Mickelsson said, picking up the pipe again, allowing himself an ironic half-smile. He glanced at the middle of Nugent’s forehead and let the sentence trail off.

“I’m after the real thing, whatever level it is.” Something faintly distressing had entered the boy’s voice, a sort of catch, as if he were fighting strong emotion.

Mickelsson sat very still for an instant, then put his pencil down, slowly leaned back in his chair, lowered his chin to his chest, and, holding the pipe, interlaced his fingers over his paunch, avoiding the young man’s eyes. After a long moment’s thought he said, more weary than ironic this time: “ ‘The real thing.’ ” He stole a furtive glance at his watch: 2 p.m. Again he raised one eyebrow, sliding his eyes toward the boy. “Mr. Nugent, let me tell you something. If I were you, I wouldn’t pin my life’s highest hopes on philosophy. It’s all right as entertainment—keeps you off the streets—but it’s always been better at framing questions that have a chance of making sense than at figuring out answers. In fact there are some philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein, for instance, who claim that getting the question right is the answer.” He’d meant to smile as he said it, but no smile came. He glanced down at his watch again. The hairs curling over the leather strap were silver. “Believe me, I can tell you from bitter experience—” he began soberly.

“Philosophy’s the only discipline there is that even cares about figuring things out,” Nugent said. He seemed to grow more pale by the minute. “All the others, except maybe chemistry, are just tinkering. History, mathematics, English lit, poly sci—” The very names seemed to stir his indignation. “Don’t