The Human Stain

Farley's is the world that Faunia only barely managed to survive and that she can't help but bring with her when she comes through your door. Lester Farley works on the road crew, right? We get a restraining order on Farley and your secret is all over your quiet little backwoods town. Soon it's all over this town, it's all over the college, and what you started out with is going to bear no resemblance to the malevolent puritanism with which you will be tarred and feathered.

I remember the precision with which the local comic weekly failed to understand the ridiculous charge against you and the meaning of your resignation. 'Ex-Dean Leaves College under Racist Cloud.' I remember the caption below your photograph. 'A denigrating epithet used in class forces Professor Silk into retirement.' I remember what it was like for you then, I think I know what it's like now, and I believe I know what it will be like in the future, when the whole county is privy to the sexcapades of the guy who left the college under the racist cloud. I don't mean to imply that what goes on behind your bedroom door is anybody's business but yours. I know it should not be like this. It's 1998. It's years now since Janis Joplin and Norman O. Brown changed everything for the better. But we've got people here in the Berkshires, hicks and college professors alike, who just won't bring their values into line and politely give way to the sexual revolution. Narrow-minded churchgoers, sticklers for propriety, all sorts of retrograde folks eager to expose and punish guys like you. They can heat things up for you, Coleman—and not the way your Viagra does."

Clever boy to come up with the Viagra all on his own. Showing off, but he's helped before, thought Coleman, so don't interrupt, don't put him down, however irritating his being so with-it is.

There are no compassionate chinks in his armor? Fine with me. You asked his advice, so hear him out. You don't want to make a mistake for lack of being warned.

"Sure I can get you a restraining order," Primus told him. "But is that going to restrain him? A restraining order is going to inflame him. I got you a handwriting expert, I can get you your restraining order, I can get you a bulletproof vest. But what I can't provide is what you're never going to know as long as you're involved with this woman: a scandal-free, censure-free, Farley-free life. The peace of mind that comes of not being stalked. Or caricatured. Or snubbed. Or misjudged. Is she HIV negative, by the way? Did you have her tested, Coleman? Do you use a condom, Coleman?"

Hip as he imagines himself, he really can't get this old man and sex, can he? Seems utterly anomalous to him. But who can grasp at thirty-two that at seventy-one it's exactly the same? He thinks, How and why does he do this? My old-fart virility and the trouble it causes. At thirty-two, thought Coleman, I couldn't have understood it either. Otherwise, however, he speaks with the authority of someone ten or twenty years his senior about the way the world works. And how much experience can he have had, how much exposure to life's difficulties, to speak in such a patronizing manner to a man more than twice his age? Very, very little, if not none.

"Coleman, if you don't," Primus was saying, "does she use some-thing? And if she says she does, can you be sure it's so? Even downand-out cleaning women have been known to shade the truth from time to time, and sometimes even to seek remedy for all the shit they've taken. What happens when Faunia Farley gets pregnant?

She may think the way a lot of women have been thinking ever since the act of begetting a bastard was destigmatized by Jim Morrison and The Doors. Faunia might very well want to go ahead and become the mother of a distinguished retired professor's child despite all your patient reasoning to the contrary. Becoming the mother of a distinguished professor's child might be an uplifting change after having been the mother of the children of a deranged total failure. And, once she's pregnant, if she decides that she doesn't want to be a menial anymore, that she wishes never again to work at anything, an enlightened court will not hesitate to direct you to support the child and the single mother. Now, I can represent you in the paternity suit, and if and when I have to, I will fight to keep your liability down to half your pension. I will do everything in my power to see that something is left in your bank account as you advance into your eighties. Coleman, listen to me: this is a bad deal. In every possible way, it is a bad deal. If you go to your hedonist counselor, he's going to tell you something else, but I am your counselor at law, and I'm going to tell you that it's a terrible deal. If I were you, I would not put myself in the path of Lester Farley's wild grievance. If I were you, I would rip up the Faunia contract and get out."