The Rebel Angels

Identifying classics may be considered outside my capacity, but several fund-granting bodies are prepared to take my word about the abilities of students who want money to continue their studies, and after Parlabane had left I settled to the job of filling in several of the forms such bodies provide for the people they call referees, and the students refer to as "resource persons". So I turned off whatever part of me was Parlabane's confidant, and the part which was the compiler of The New Aubrey, and the part – the demanding, aching part – that yearned for Maria-Sophia, and set to work on a pile of such forms, all of which had been brought to me at the last moment by anxious but ill-organized students, all of which had to be sent to the grantors immediately, and upon which it was apparently my task to affix the necessary postage; the students had not done so.

Outside my window lay the quadrangle of Ploughwright and although it was still too early to be called Spring, the fountains which never quite froze were making gentle music below their crowns of ice. How peaceful it looked, even at this ruinous time of the year. 'A garden enclosed is my sister; my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.' How I loved her! Was it not strange that a man of my age should feel it so painfully? Get to work, Simon. Work, supposed anodyne of all pain.

As I bent over my desk, my mood sank towards misanthropy. What would happen, I wondered, if I filled out these forms honestly? First: Say how long you have known the applicant. There were few whom I could claim to know at all, in any serious sense of the word, for I saw them only in seminars. In what capacity do you know him/her? As a teacher; why else would I be filling in this form? Of the students you have known in this way, would you rank the applicant in the first five per cent – ten per cent – twenty-five per cent? Well, my dear grantor, it depends on your standards; most of them are all right, in a general way. Aha, but here we get down to cases; Make any personal comment you consider relevant. This is where a referee or resource person is expected to pour on the oil. But I am sick of lying.

So, after an hour and half of soul-searching, I found that I had said of one young fellow, "He is a good-natured slob, and there is no particular harm in him, but he simply doesn't know what work means." Of another: "Treacherous; never turn your back on him." Of a third: "Is living on a woman who thinks he is a genius; perhaps any grant you give him ought to be based on her earning capacity; she is quite a good stenographer, with a B.A. of her own, but she is plain and I suspect that once he has his doctorate he will discover that his affections lie elsewhere. This is a common pattern, and probably doesn't concern you, but it grieves me." Of a young woman: "Her mind is as flat as Holland – the salt-marshes, not the tulip fields – stretching towards the horizon in all directions and covered by a leaden sky. But unquestionably she will make a Ph.D. – of a kind."

Having completed this Slaughter of the Innocents – innocent in their belief that I would do anything I could to get them money – I hastily closed the envelopes, lest some weak remorse overtake me. What will the Canada Council make of that, I wondered, and was cheered by the hope that I had caused that body a lot of puzzlement and confusion. Tohubohu and brouhaha, as Maria loved to say. Ah, Maria!

Next day at lunch in the Hall of Spook I saw Hollier sitting alone at a table which is used for the overflow from the principal dons' table, and I joined him.

"About this book of Parlabane's," I said; "is it really something extraordinary?"

"I've no idea. I haven't time to read it. I've given it to Maria to read. She'll tell me."

"Given it to Maria! Won't he be furious?"

"I don't know and I don't much care. I think she has a right to read it, if she wants to; she seems to be putting up the money to have it professionally typed."

"He's touched me substantially for money to have that done."

"Are you surprised? He touches everybody. I'm sick of his cadging."

"Has she said anything?"

"She hasn't got far with it. Has to read it on the QT because he's always bouncing in and out of my rooms. But I've seen her puzzling over it, and she sighs a lot."

"That's what it made me do."

But a few days later the situation was reversed, for Hollier joined me at lunch.

"I met Carpenter the other day; the publisher, you know. He has Parlabane's book, or part of it, and I asked him what he thought."

"And –?"