When The Bough Breaks

"I'm sure Mr. Roberts knows who Clark Kent is, Professor."

"Then let him come back when he looks more like him and I'll talk to him," the old man snapped.

Margaret and I exchanged helpless looks. She started to say something and Van der Graaf threw back his head and let out an arid crackle.

"April Fool!" He laughed lustily at his own wit, the merriment dissolving into a phlegmy fit of coughing.

"Oh, Professor!" Margaret scolded.

They went at each other again, verbally jousting. I began to suspect that their relationship was well established. I stood on the sidelines feeling like an unwilling spectator at a freak show.

"Admit it, dear," he was saying, "I had you fooled!" He stamped his foot with glee. "You thought I'd gone totally senile!"

"You're no more senile than I," she replied. "You're simply a naughty boy!"

My hopes of getting reliable information from the shrunken hunchback were diminishing by the moment. I cleared my throat.

They stopped and stared at me. A bubble of saliva had collected in the corner of Van der Graaf's puckered mouth. His hands vibrated with a faint palsy. Margaret towered over him, legs akimbo.

"Now I want you to cooperate with Mr. Roberts," she said sternly.

Van der Graaf gave me a dirty look.

"Oh, all right," he whined. "But only if you drive me around the lake in my Doosie."

"I said I would."

"I have a thirty - seven Duesenberg," he explained to me. "Magnificent chariot. Four hundred snorting stallions under a gleaming ruby bonnet. Chromium pipes. Consumes petroleum with ravenous abandon. I can no longer drive it. Maggie, here, is a large wench. Under my tutelage she could handle it. But she refuses."

"Professor Van der Graaf, there was a good reason why I turned you down. It was raining and I didn't want to get behind the wheel of a car worth two hundred thousand dollars in hazardous weather."

"Pshaw. I took that baby from here to Sonoma in forty - four. It thrives on meteorological adversity."

"All right. I'll drive you. Tomorrow, if I get a good report on your behavior from Mr. Roberts."

"I'm the professor. I do the grading."

She ignored him.

"I have to go to the library, Mr. Roberts. Can you find your way back to my office?"

"Certainly."

"I'll see you when you're through, then. Goodbye, Professor."

"Tomorrow at one. Rain or shine," he called after her.

When the door had closed he invited me to sit.

"I'll stand, myself. Can't find a chair that fits me. When I was a boy Father called in carpenters and woodcarvers, trying to come up with some way to seat me comfortably. To no avail. They did produce some fascinating abstract sculpture, however." He laughed, and held on to the trestle table for support. "I've stood most of my life. In the end it probably was beneficial. I've got legs like pig iron. My circulation's as good as that of a man half my age."

I sat in a leather armchair. We were at eye level.

"That Maggie," he said. "Such a sad girl. I flirt with her, try to cheer her up. She seems so lonely most of the time." He rummaged among the papers and pulled out a flask.

"Irish Whiskey. You'll find two glasses in the top right drawer of the desk. Kindly retrieve them and give them to me."

I found the glasses, which looked none too clean.

Van der Graaf filled them each with an inch of whiskey, without spilling a drop.

"Here."

I watched him sip his drink and followed suit.

"Do you think she could be a virgin? Is such a thing possible in this day and age?" He approached the question as if it were an epistemological puzzle.

"I really couldn't say, Professor. I only just met her an hour ago."

"I can't conceive of it, virginity in a woman her age. Yet the notion of those milkmaid's thighs wrapped around a pair of rutting buttocks is equally preposterous." He drank more whiskey, contemplated Margaret Dopplemeier's sex life in silence, and stared off into space.

Finally he said: "You're a patient young man. A rare quality."

I nodded.

"I figure you'll come around when you're ready, Professor."

"Yes, I do confess to a fair amount of childish behavior. It's a perquisite of my age and station. Do you know how long it's been since I taught a class or wrote a scholarly paper?"

"Quite a while, I imagine."

"Over two decades. Since then I've been up here engaged in long solitary stretches of allegedly deep thought - actually I loaf. And yet, I'm an honored Professor Emeritus. Don't you think it's an absurd system that tolerates such nonsense?"

"Perhaps there's a feeling that you've earned the right to retirement with honor."

"Bah!" He waved his hand. "That sounds too much like death. Retirement with honor and maggots gnawing at one's toes. I'll confess to you, young man, that I never earned anything. I wrote sixty - seven papers in learned journals, all but five utter garbage. I co edited three books that no one ever read, and, in general, pursued a life of a spoiled wastrel. It's been wonderful."

He finished his whiskey and put the glass down on the table with a thump.