Deadly Pedigree

3



“Nick,” Una said, after one of those long, observant, nearly telepathic lulls in the conversation that characterize the meetings of longtime friends. They were sitting around a shellacked salvaged cable reel that served as a table at the Folio, a favorite hangout of diverse groups from the adjacent Freret University campus.

At the Folio there was a boozy truce between highbrow and lowbrow, professors and students, art and science, social dissidents and frat members, aesthetes and athletes.

Nick’s earlier plan to jog had lost out to an invitation from Professors Una Kern and Dion Rambus to meet here.

“Dion and I have a proposition for you,” Una said and waited. She adjusted her glasses, leaning forward on the table in earnestness, her blue eyes daring him to take the challenge.

Nick raised an eyebrow in suspicion. He put down his beer mug with a thud. “Hey, I was just sitting here, tending my own psychic garden, enjoying the music, and the whole time you two have been laying a trap for me…oh yeah, I definitely smell a conspiracy. What is it this time? An office job in the geology department? Somebody at the library on maternity leave? Assisting a Ph.D. candidate in his research? Hey, friends, please: you don’t have to throw me scraps anymore. In fact, I like my work. I haven’t been able to say that in a long, long time, have I?”

They nodded in unison.

“Look, I know it must be unnerving for pampered, tenured, grant-rich scholars like you to acknowledge that; it does violence to your self-image; but I am actual proof that there is life outside the shaded groves of academe.”

Always focused on the higher motivations, like one of her long-suffering Victorian literary heroines, Una ignored his self-defensive outburst: “We’ve noticed that you’re overworked. The rat race doesn’t agree with you. You’re too thin…those circles under your eyes.”

“Just allergies, that’s all,” Nick replied.

“For a minute there, when I came in, I thought Una was sitting with Keith Richards,” Dion Rambus said. “He’s coming to town for a performance, as the posters stuck all over campus proclaim.”

“Ouch! That hurt,” said Nick, wincing in feigned discomfort.

“‘O how full of briers is this working-day world!’” Dion continued.

“As You Like It, act 1, scene three,” Nick said between sips.

“Very good. Listen to Una, Nick. You need our help. I remember the days when you would outpace me, in spite of my longer legs, on our brisk walks across campus. And outtalk me! Now, you’re stooped and brooding like a medieval monk in a scriptorium. What a horrible yoke it must be to have to work twelve months a year.” Dion shook his head and tsk-tsked.

“I remember a time when I thought you were somewhat handsome, in a tragic-hero way,” Una said.

“‘Somewhat’!?” Nick echoed as if hurt to his core.

“You miss appointments, you don’t even answer the phone most of the time.”

“It’s positively infuriating that you refuse to hook up that answering machine we bought you for Christmas,” Dion complained.

“I mean, really, Nick,” Una said, “you’re living in the past, yours and mankind’s. It’s 1993, not 1893 or 1793. It’s a new world out there, full of possibility, and you’re stagnating, cutting yourself off! You need an infusion of fresh ideas.”

“Hamlet asked Horatio to absent himself from felicity,” said Dion, “but only for a while. Haven’t you done enough penance?”

Una continued the verbal assault: “You probably aren’t even aware we have a dynamic new president–”

“You mean that guy”–Nick snapped his fingers–“what’s his name…Grover Cleveland?” Una was an earnest liberal, like most of his other former colleagues; he couldn’t resist teasing her for what he now saw as good-hearted naivety. He’d come to believe that we were all “useful idiots” to self-dealing narcissists in power, on either side of the left-right line.

“That’s rich!” Dion shouted through the music. “But your cynicism has proved our point precisely. You’ve become a card-carrying member of the Party of Yourself–apologies to Walt Whitman.”

“Okay, okay, I give in. What’s going on?” Nick asked. He had in fact tried to hook up the answering machine but had given up in frustration. They didn’t need to know that. Technically inclined he was not.

“Dion and I have come up with a solution to your dilemma.”

“A dilemma you’ve conveniently manufactured.”

“Her name is Hawty Latimer.” Una let the name sink in a few seconds and sipped her daiquiri–her first drink to the men’s fourth. “She’s a junior, with a double major, English and computer science.”

“I don’t like her already,” Nick said. “Computers?” He contorted his face into a grimace. “I hate computers.”

“A Blakean nightmare vision, eh, Nick?” Dion asked through a mouthful of pretzels. “Our invention has made us its slaves.”

“Be nice, now, Nick. Don’t be so quick to judge. She had a two-year scholarship, and now she’s exhausted her family’s ability to help her. What talent! Quite an overachiever.”

“Una’s right, Nick. Seriously, I’ve read her stuff. Her papers are so well reasoned and innovative she could replace any one of about half our staff. For instance, that incompetent philistine–”

“Dion, shhhhh! Someone could overhear,” Una cautioned.

Dion bit his lower lip in suppressed rage. “Yes, yes, I’ll muzzle myself. Anyway, Hawty’s poetry is damn good, too. She’s an exceptional lass…and, uh, spirited.”

“Spirited? What’s that supposed to mean?” Nick demanded, suddenly wary.

“Her true intellectual loves are literature and history,” Una said, avoiding his question. “Good fit for you, right? And I’m certain she has a vocation for teaching. This past semester she taught an introductory English course. The kids loved her. The faculty review group gave her high marks, too. She had some, oh, slight medical problem, and missed out for a summer course. Nick, I’m afraid that this time, if she goes home–a tiny town in north Louisiana–she won’t be able to return. We’ll lose a fine future teacher. What you’re doing will mesh very well with her developing abilities and interests; and she could really, really use whatever small salary you could pay. By the time fall gets here, I should have some funding lined up for her.” Una held up crossed fingers.

“Pay! You got to be kidding,” Nick protested with a laugh. “Most months I can’t handle my rent. Or as President Cleveland’s advisors would say, it’s about the economy, you well-intentioned dolts–mine!”

Smirking in disappointment, Una looked at Dion, as if to confirm their suspicion that Nick had turned into a hardhearted capitalist swine. They contemplated their drinks while Nick fidgeted, and the loud, eclectic, alternative-alternative music of the Folio swirled around them.

“Just think about it, okay?” Una urged before lapsing into a pout.



How could he refuse? Nick asked the dregs of his beer, as Dion launched into a particularly inspired diatribe against their perennial archfoe, Frederick “the Usurper” Tawpie, currently the assistant department head of the Freret University English department.

He owed these friends so much. And for a time twelve years before, he and Una had been much closer than friends–lovers, in fact.

She had just joined the department then, a rosy-faced, diminutively sexy, enthusiastic young professor, who frolicked like a nymph through the wordy marshes of Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, Meredith, and Trollope. There had been three, four years of passion and cozy togetherness, many late nights of nakedness and laughter and wine and both Brownings aloud by candlelight. A lifetime of love seemed the logical outcome–at least in her mind.

And Nick? Well, he merely let things go on their course, feeling cocky and smiled upon by the universe, feeling the very focus of creation in his unvanquished young man’s egoism.

But the happier he told himself he was, the more dissatisfied he became. He changed, became moody, solitary; life lost its savor. He turned into a cad, though his students continued to crowd into his classes. Everybody who cared said it was too much Shelley and Byron, the subjects of his graduate seminar that fateful semester. Just an affectation, a Romantic pose he would grow out of. Now, looking back, Nick supposed it was nothing more unusual than a normal professional burnout, which would have been temporary had malice not worsened his circumstances, had Tawpie and computers not given his wheel of fortune a gratuitous damaging turn.

He had enemies he never suspected, who resented his youth, his good looks, his popularity with the students, his relationship with Una–who knows what. Does jealousy really need a good reason? One thing he did know: jealousy takes more insidious form in the minds of highly educated people.

There was a charge of plagiarism. He wasn’t sure to this day who first made it; it permeated the department, as if someone had broken wind. He had always suspected that Tawpie at least had something to do with not letting the matter drop, as some of the school’s heavyweights, on and off the faculty, wanted to do.

An article Nick had published in a literary journal seemed to echo too closely an obscure article by a long-dead critic. Nick was no paragon, but he did have a deep respect for words in the service of art and knowledge; that’s what had drawn him to the study of literature as a profession in the first place. He had never even read the earlier article and maintained that fact through it all.

They sicced the new department workstation on him. The computer found an unacceptable number of similarities of phrasing. Today, Nick would tell them how dangerous it could be to trust coincidences, especially in the field of genealogy.

His depressed mood undermined his defense. It was his word against a growing prejudice, until he grew disgusted with the whole thing. He wanted them to can him, to give him his freedom at the cost of his former identity and livelihood.

The judgment was rendered. Thumbs down.

Una and Dion defended him to the last. They lobbied successfully for the dropping of charges without comment in exchange for Nick’s quiet departure. Quiet, that is, if not for the unkind, self-serving mouth of then-Assistant Professor Frederick Tawpie. Because he was chairing the departmental affairs committee at the time, and willing to speak for attribution, reporters sought him out. In his statements to the school paper and the Times-Picayune, Tawpie was mostly concerned with parading his own righteousness, though he was supposed to be protecting the honor of the school. It was chiefly because of his high profile in Nick’s case that, later, some gullible but powerful alumni pushed for his promotion to the position most department staffers thought Una had earned.

And it was Una who sailed him into the calm cove of genealogy after the storm of disgrace. He had never given the subject a minute’s thought, wasn’t even sure what it was. It just so happened that a cousin of hers had contacted her about their family origins, and Una rashly volunteered Nick as an experienced genealogical researcher–which, of course, he wasn’t. The new challenge was just what he needed. Two published family histories were the result in the following year and a half; these initial works of scholarship kindled his interest in the subject, and cinched his genealogical certification.

But after that promising initial splash, Nick now found himself floundering. He had lately begun to wonder if he could stick with anything–or anyone–long enough to find fulfillment.



“Hawty Latimer, huh?” Nick said, rubbing his chin as if deciding, trying not to appear to surrender too easily. “Fine. You win. Send her over. But I can only give her minimum wage.”

Victorious at last, Una raised her glass for a toast; Dion and Nick did likewise.

“She may turn out to be very helpful, if she’s as sharp as you say. I’ve got this big project for a little old guy who wants me to track down an ancestor he knows hardly anything about. I might have to do some traveling on this one. I’ve rushed through my most urgent current projects and lied to the clients who–”

“Zounds! You, lie?” exclaimed Dion, with counterfeit surprise on his expressive face.

“You heard right. Hey, by common consent I’m already a scoundrel, so what do I have to lose? My conscience and I have come to an amicable arrangement: we look the other way when necessary. So, there’s a lot someone with a little intelligence could do for me while I’m tied up with my new client.”

“If only Messieurs Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, and Tawpie–he doesn’t deserve to be in that august company–would allow me some leisure for such fascinating pursuits! Maybe I’m the one who needs Hawty.”

“Dion means that we spend quite a lot of time reading incessant inane memos from the Usurper,” Una said.

“What an intellectual titan!” Dion declared. “He concerns himself with things like the price of Twinkies in our snack machine. Sends out polls craving our opinions on parking arrangements. A bad teacher makes a worse bureaucrat. Ah, Nick, in a way I’m glad you aren’t soldiering on with us under the new regime, forced to endure the mindless pettiness to which we have descended!”

Dion twirled his flamboyant mustache as he spoke. His bony limbs were splayed across his chair. Beneath his frizzy black-and-gray hair, his thin bearded face had the jaded look of a Renaissance rake in a London strumpet shop. A face from a sixteenth-century miniature. The substantial gap in his front teeth served to enhance the eccentricity of his appearance and gave his speech an engaging sibilance. He was immensely popular with most of his students for his ice-breaking histrionics and brilliant presentation in his difficult classes; others, less interested in the substance of the course, liked the ease with which he could be reduced to caricature in their notebooks.

“Well, we do have our little weapons to fight back, don’t we, Dion?”

As Una described the latest guerrilla tactics of their band of departmental subversives, Nick listened with divided attention. Their concern for his state of mind touched him, as usual, and he wanted to put them at ease, convince them he wasn’t going to swan dive off the Huey P. Long Bridge. Yet, he didn’t want to let on how much he had begun to love genealogy; he still couldn’t shake a certain feeling of inferiority–even here, among his best friends; a deeply ingrained idea that genealogy was pap for the masses, junk food for the mind, on a par with astrology.

Yes, he wanted to tell them that genealogy was a synthesis of history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, even literature. That, long before language, there were the rudiments of an appreciation of genealogy in the behavior of proto-humans. It was the mother of biography, the father of heraldry, the thinking ape’s response to the genetic imperative to love one’s own kind. Religions and dynasties have risen and fallen on the real or faked facts of genealogy. Billions have perished over slight differences in armorial bearings. Nick wanted to say that genealogy should be considered the original social science, the flesh and bone of myths and sagas, perhaps the first application of that uniquely human faculty, memory.

He’d lounged back in his chair, in his typical posture of contemplation: hands locked behind his head, eyes staring at an idea floating somewhere in the music and smoke and dimness.

Una watched him a moment and then said, “Nick, you’re…all right, then? Really?”

The d-word, depression, was unspoken among them, but on their minds. A mutual friend who’d moved on to another university had recently committed suicide.

“Yeah. Really,” Nick assured her, “I’m fine.”

“This genealogy stuff,” Dion said, “he’s into it, Una, bastard discipline that it is. That’s a sign of emotional health.”

“It has its moments,” Nick said. “You have been secretly reading up on the subject. Bastardy is certainly a frequent topic in genealogy.”

“I wish I had the time, as I said. But, my friend, one of these days I’ll ask you to address my classes. The synergies could be absolutely mind-blowing. For instance, imagine definitively identifying Will Shakespeare’s grandfather, or finding a direct descendant of the Bard after 1670. You would join the ranks of the very greatest Shakespearean scholars. I’ll personally write the foreword to your book.”

Nick knew he meant it. He was drawn to people like Dion and Una precisely because of their intellectual curiosity, which allowed them to ridicule dogma and cheer originality.

“By the way, here are two tickets to our production of As You Like It, week after next. I play Jaques and a couple of other knavish extras. You would have made an excellent Jaques, misanthrope that you are. Anyway, I expect you to be there. Bring someone you wish to impress to our Forest of Arden.” He looked at Una with meaning. “It’s going to be an excellent effort. Waiter…say, I know you. You were in my Tuesday-and-Thursday class last semester. Bring me another Guinness. Make sure it’s a cold one, too, none of this room-temperature crap. This is New Orleans not Stratford-on-Avon! And stop by my office the next chance you get. I still have a paper of yours…. Frat brat,” Dion confided as the young man left. “Wants to ‘go into the media,’ whatever that means. Everything he knows comes from Cliff Notes and CNN, so I suppose he’ll make a good television bubblehead. I’m still trying to hammer the soft metal of his soul into a shape more useful to society. Turn him from the Dark Side,” he intoned in his best James Earl Jones. “But, alas, some of these children are such difficult cases.”

Una’s one drink had done its work. “Let’s all celebrate the expansion of Nick’s business,” she said brightly. “I volunteer him as chef for the evening. If he can clear out enough room for us among his priceless collection of genealogical junk. We’ll stop off at a grocery store on the way. Agreed?”

“Oh, I have…to rehearse my lines. Yes,” Dion stammered, “very difficult part, you know. Afraid you’ll have to count me out.”

“That was just slightly obvious,” Una said. She smiled anyway and glanced at Nick, the old amorous question in her eyes.

Nick noticed the stronger glasses Una wore; the new depths of wisdom and disappointment her lively and intelligent blue eyes showed; the vocational paleness and mid-life aridness that had replaced the ruddiness and ripe plumpness of her younger days; the wild gray strands that rebelled against every part and wave, where once there had been luxuriant dark honey hair. He wished he had been with her during all the changes he now saw in her, during all of his own changes, too.

He felt the hot closeness of the futile desire to alter the past. This consciousness of irrevocable mistakes was not new to him. He wasn’t the first to have made bad decisions: it seemed to be a peculiar talent of mankind. There had been countless precedents, and he saw some of them every day in his genealogical work. He’d learned to live with his own portion of guilt in part through the solace of his new studies, by imagining the sighs of regret in the frozen spaces among the records he researched.

Genealogist becomes artist, transforming family history into a kind of poetry, when he can give voice to the hope and sadness fossilized in mute statistics of migrations, disappearances, feuds, bankruptcies, births, deaths–the mere punctuation of existences otherwise forgotten; when he can convey some sense of the glory and misery that once filled each unchronicled moment between two heartbeats, those “impossible gaps” as short as a thought, as long as decades, that no one can ever fully know second hand, though the best genealogists never give up trying.

“Nick, we almost forgot to tell you,” Una said. “Have you heard that Frederick is doing television commercials, now?”

“Figures.” Nick relished more proof of the Usurper’s despicable power-hunger. “He’s utterly sold out, hasn’t he? Tell me all. I want the gory details.”

“‘I invest with Artemis Funds. Words are my business, but Artemis knows the language of capital growth. Blah-blah-blah-blah.’” Dion said, doing a remarkably accurate imitation of Tawpie at his most pompous. “I wanted to puke the first time I saw it.”

“What’s Artemis?” asked Nick.

“Oh, you are out of the loop, aren’t you?” Una said, patting his hand. “He can’t help it, poor boy. Artemis Holdings, Nick. Ring a bell, now? You can hardly go down a New Orleans street, open the local newspaper, or turn on the television without seeing some reference to Artemis. Real estate, stocks and bonds, shipping…and he’s wheedled this huge grant from Artemis for a new edition of Pound, poetry and prose. Heaven help us!”

Dion suddenly became a fast-talking television pitchman: “‘Order now and receive at no extra cost the complete Italian Rantos, those infamous World War II radio addresses in which the poet proved himself a traitor and a quack. Yes, the loopy, anti-Semitic bombast that even Mussolini turned off…delivered to your home! Call 1-555-T-A-W-P-I-E for your own no-risk copy.’”

They all had a good laugh.

Una said, “Frederick has made a name for himself as one of old Ezra’s foremost modern apologists.”

“Beshrew me if that isn’t Malvolio himself fouling our happy refuge with his vainglory,” Dion said bitterly, having spotted Tawpie. “No more cakes and ale here, my boon companions, I’m afraid. Excuse me. I’m going to play some music. I’d probably say something actionable were I to stay. The fiery Tybalt always was one of my favorite roles.” He unfolded himself to his considerable lean height and strode off into the smoky shadows of the bar toward the jukebox, parting the crowd as he brandished an imaginary rapier.

Tawpie, in an ugly lime green blazer, stood just inside the doorway, letting his rabbity eyes adjust to the darker interior of the Folio. It was after seven, and outside the air had taken on a lazy lavender summer glow. He took off his sunglasses, put them in a case and the case in his coat, and then donned a pair of untinted glasses. His hair was an unusual orange color, thick as a mass of snakes. Lighting a cigarette and exhaling voluptuously, he seemed an overgrown, freckled, pudgy kid.

“There’s a boy like him in most neighborhoods,” Una said staring with distaste at Tawpie. “He’s the one who throws rocks at small animals and younger kids, denies it, and gets away with it, thanks to his hoodwinked mother’s intervention.”

Tawpie stumbled down the steps that tripped up everyone who wasn’t a regular, and searched in vain for a certain face.

His eyes found Nick and Una instead. He made a barely perceptible movement, as if to turn away. But then he swaggered up to their table, a false smile on his face.

“Una, Nick. How are you?” Tawpie said. “Surprised to see me? Well, this isn’t exactly my choice of drinking establishments, you know. I’m supposed to meet someone here, for…thesis coaching…but she doesn’t seem to…“ Tawpie scanned the crowd, no doubt hoping his friend would rescue him.

“Probably told you the wrong bar on purpose. I sure would,” Nick mumbled. Una kicked him under the table. “Probably they moved on to another bar,” Nick said louder, in atonement.

Nick, enjoying the awkwardness of the moment, didn’t invite his former colleague and probable betrayer to join them.

“Well, Nick,” Tawpie said challengingly, seeming to have given up on any invitation to sit down, “I haven’t seen you in a long time. What are you doing these days?”

“I don’t suppose you really care,” Nick said, matching Tawpie’s feistiness, “but I’ll tell you anyway. Got nothing to hide. I’ve started a genealogical research firm. Quite successful, several employees.”

Una cleared her throat and swirled the melted remains of her drink with her straw.

“I’m so happy for you! It’s wonderful when someone can pick up the pieces of a broken life like that. Genealogy. Hmmmm. Somehow, the image in my mind is of a group of blue-haired ladies drinking weak tea and discussing the exploits of their common ancestor, a shopkeeper who once sold General Washington some denture adhesive.” Tawpie laughed heartily, lolling his head back on his soft, sloping shoulders. “Oh, I’m sure it’s more significant than that. I certainly hope so. You know, I always thought you might seek another teaching position, somewhere out of town, out of the South, of course, where no one would know of the whole sordid mess. But I can see that you might feel uncomfortable in the fold of real scholarship again, with such a disgrace hanging over your head.”

“Bad news travels fast along the academic grapevine, Frederick, especially with a little help from back-stabbers.”

“I hope you’re not implying that I have been anything but professionally neutral in the…affair of your departure. You don’t seem to need any help destroying your own career.”

Nick stood up. He was slightly taller than Tawpie, but the shorter, stockier man was far from backing off; he was as aggressive as a hungry pig, red faced and scowling. Nick had wanted to punch the jerk for a long time, and now seemed just about right.

“There’s one thing I really hate, Frederick: a phony who hides behind innuendo and sarcasm.”

Una stood up hurriedly and pulled Nick to her. “Take our table, Frederick,” she said. “We were just leaving. Don’t stay out too late tonight. We need you sharp for our departmental meeting tomorrow at 7:30.”

The situation thus defused, Tawpie returned to his disgusting urbanity. “Thank you, no, Una. But I’ll have the coffee waiting for you tomorrow morning, my dear, in the conference room. We have quite a full agenda.”

A waitress struggled by under a full tray. Tawpie grabbed her shirtsleeve, almost upsetting the tray; he ordered a Virgin Mary and slipped the waitress a couple of dollars to find a back-corner table.

“Goodbye, Nick. No hard feelings?” Tawpie then turned his back on them and walked away.

Una tugged Nick toward the door. “My job, Nick!” she whispered desperately. “Swallow your anger, for me and Dion. Please.”

Nick glanced back over his shoulder. “Hard feelings?” he snarled, too low for Tawpie to hear in the tumult of the bar. “Oh, yeah, Frederick, there certainly are. Lots of them.”

At that moment, a loud whistle pierced the lull between songs, and the bar grew momentarily hushed. It was Dion, who had a remarkable facility for whistling through the gap in his teeth, signaling across the room that his selection was coming up.

The bell-like revival-organ chords of Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” filled the cavernous barroom, the words bristling with scorn for yesterday’s enemies turned fair-weather friends.

Nick hoped that Tawpie, though famously devoted to Wagner, would pay enough attention to catch the insult in the Dylan song.

They waved to Dion as they left the Folio and stepped onto the quieter sidewalk in the humid evening.

“Virgin Mary. Perfect,” Nick said. “He thrives on the blood of innocents.”

“That certainly describes his marriage, as everyone knows,” answered Una.

“I guess I shouldn’t let him get to me like that. Hey, people lose their jobs all the time, and the powerful have stomped on the little guy from time immemorial.”

“You’re only human. That’s why I still love you.”



She was late for the meeting the next morning, and hung-over. Ignoring the terrible throbbing in her head and the indignant stare of the Usurper, she smiled with a private joy and inhaled the invigorating aroma of her coffee.





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