The Life of the Mind

Bayles, Martha

especially in the countryside. Mr. Fuad Serageddin, the leader of the major op- position party, the right-of-center New Wafd, called the elections "pure theatre.., the least free for the...

...Spaulding proceeded to lay out the possibilities both morbid and financial...
...Sounds mighty fine to me...
...It rubs off...
...For despite his fair hair grown long, and his aviator glasses, his face was still angular and stern as a pulpit...
...Instead of studying the board, he was looking around...
...He waited, and eventually some bright Jewish kid raised his hand, relating Felicity's comment to the metaphor of light versus darkness, and apologizing wittily for reintroducing symbolism...
...None of it made sense to Dinah, but she stood there and listened while they argued about it...
...This is my course, you know, and i teach it my way...
...instincts, human impulses...
...I don't believe in extensions," declared Dinah...
...It was mostly the embarrassment of having wept in front of Mr...
...I'm sure the young lady knows"how to take a hint...
...Walking up and down the little side streets, she saw only ice cream parlors, Chinese restaurants, ritzy clothing boutiques, and block-long walls of immaculate glass with wooden furniture on display...
...But he wasn't...
...It was a source of pride, this ability to engage Martha Bayles is TV critic for the Wall Street Journal and has recently completed a novel about basing, Boston Common...
...Wish I could figure out what these old Greek dudes were talking about...
...As she went through the Union line with Magic and Felicity, she could not even look at the food...
...Of course, what they never did was ask directly...
...But not Dinah's...
...Look," said Jonathan, "I've got a great idea...
...About what...
...So there she stood, paralyzed...
...It means be quiet...
...Like the heroine has to be a virgin, and the hero has to be tragic and bitter, and they can't get together till the end, after she changes him...
...Jonathan wanted more: rich laughter or a stream of invective as direct as a midnight freight...
...You want to play sometime...
...And this in turn was a consequence of the deeper malaise of Egyptian politics: the absence among the masses of any serious emotional commitment to the present constitutional order...
...A hand holding a fork...
...Finally Gerald reached for his books: a large brown one, The Republic of Plato...
...At last...
...Not too many whites in his position would have bothered...
...Her silence was perfect: a work of art...
...She was now about five pages ahead of the last sentence she had understood, but her bed was comfortable and her clothing was nice and loose...
...They're called Harlequin Romances...
...Well, great...
...And the only student in the history of the school to have won every one of these honors was herself, Dinah Jefferson...
...They really don't give a sweet f--- about either of us...
...Why stop there...
...Just because we're taken, doesn't mean you should all give up...
...Spaulding knew what to order, since he lunched here almost daily...
...Since I started going to Saint Joseph's, my mother, she's been telling me to quit...
...The editorial went on to take account of other legitimate reservations about the climate of opinion in Martha Bayles THE LIFE OF THE MIND A Harvard story...
...They both had a special way: he of knocking, Felicity of opening the door as though she were wearing not jeans but something sheer and lacy...
...Felicity had a computer lab--Dinah knew, after listening to her bellyache about it all morning...
...it's easy enough to look the other way...
...Definitely the wrong way to take a lucky break...
...The vote must be secret and the physical act of getting to the polling station free of intimidation...
...I do believe I've found the "He knows," said Felicity, "we were talking about it at dinner...
...Then she ventured another, surprisingly entrancing smile...
...Through the ivy crawling across the screen of the open window, Jonathan could see the venerable maples and beeches of Harvard Yard standing massively still, their September foliage as dark as cooked spinach...
...Well, whoop-tee-doo...
...The only other thing that meant as much, at Saint Joseph's, as Sister Carlotta's "N' was the Science Award...
...Spaulding...
...You couldn't mock a Bird with such sharp, all-seeing suspect they were high...
...Although Lord knows, Cheryl was good-looking enough to have two or three of the slickest guys after her all the time...
...She said nothing, which both worried and annoyed Jonathan...
...Tell me what you enjoy, when you're just reading for fun...
...A smile like the flick of a sticky tongue, and the lizard said to Jonathan, "I also need to know your present employment...
...She couldn't imagine why anybody would watch anything as boring as a chess game, even if they knew the first thing about it, which she didn't...
...Here...
...Or was it around here...
...Spaulding is good for an extension...
...But I'm not going to...
...It was the first week of the semester, but hot enough to cook a tree--thought Jonathan, pleased as usual by the private play of his imagination while standing officially before a class...
...Uh-huh...
...Dinah sat staring at her valences and bivalences, wondering whether she should make herself scarce or wait for Magic and Felicity to ask her if she wanted to walk over to lunch with them...
...It wasn't possible that they could carry on like that with somebody else in the room...
...Dinah, turning a page, began to own bed, the way Dinah was doing, and picked up her French book...
...she was starved...
...All those natives dying under the trees-remember that scene...
...Well, lookee here...
...Only here at Harvard it was easier than ever, because there were no rules, and Felicity was her roommate...
...The writers have to follow certain rules...
...The other one, slender and coppery with fashionably frizzled hair, answered to Felicity St...
...But it says on the syllabus --2'' "Written by me...
...Dead in her tracks, she returned Gerald's smile...
...Her astonished gaze, which had been fixed on his face, plunged into her lap...
...Her voice had shrunk back to a wisp...
...Jonathan was into his third martini when the lizard finally asked him if he understood the terms...
...Your roommate and I have some serious business to attend to...
...The paths in the Yard were always forking...
...But he also felt gratified to see her expressing herself...
...Uh-huh...
...Look, Dinah...
...Balls...
...The first thing he did, when confronting Dinah Jefferson's silence, was offer her an extension on her paper...
...Back to the salt mines...
...What I'm trying to say is, you should listen to me, not Harvard...
...Anybody who wanted to stay in Saint Joseph's, and get an education without endless teacher strikes, rackety classrooms, drug deals, and gang wars, had to give in, at some point, to the Bird...
...When the waxpaper wrappers were fingered clean of every grease spot and trace of frosting, and the last drops of shake sucked up through the straw, she stretched out on the bed, waistband loosened, and began to read chapter four of Ambushed by Love...
...They brought out his talkativeness, his yearning to project himself in words, because only words could distinguish his reality from his appearance...
...He decided to follow his...
...There he was, coming out of the serving alcove with his tray, head thoughtfully lowered as he listened intently to the student beside him, who was a long-haired white girl...
...Which meant blow your nose and study, whether or not you were a Catholic...
...Ooohl" said Felicity, moving so that the narrow bed squeaked...
...Balls Spaulding, and deal with it in the library...
...O.K...
...All flesh is grass, but a well-managed trust fund endureth forever...
...Then she noticed one of the players was Gerald Lopez...
...Such a big, black body should not have such a tiny, colorless voice...
...Jonathan's only regret was Dinah Jefferson...
...If you want to throw away your educational opportunities, go right ahead...
...And Dinah standing there burning, knowing that this time the burning would last...
...I wish you did...
...Here she was, about to eat chef salad with two girls who said, "Just because we're taken," at a table where three girls were eating their lunch...
...And she saw these books that all the patients liked...
...My mother, she's a nurse, and they have this library at the hospital...
...Not that he was about to reach out and grab it, only to discover that it contained five Harlequin Romances...
...Jonathan didn't blink...
...An entire vocabulary was drying up in their throats, and they had nothing to replace it with--except their own meagre allotment of heart and guts...
...She shouldn't have stopped...
...With the paper due Monday, Dinah wouldn't have time to send home for her collection of Harlequins...
...Then she wrinkled her lips, apparently tasting something sour...
...In point of fact, it was truly astounding that he had managed to grow up to become the person he was: a participant in the life of the mind, who could sit here and make a joke about the decline of English poetry after Shakespeare...
...1 don't know...
...Jonathan tried giving the guy a secret look, a high sign, to see if there was a shred of spirit behind that impeccable front lawn of a personality...
...and he did not have anything to say about these dully opulent rooms atop the new Shawmut Bank Building--at least not to Jonathan...
...Now, none of that was a problem...
...Forget about symbolism...
...da-DUM...
...This is her room, too," said Felicity, trying to be nice...
...She gave him a shy, girlish smile-which gratified him so much, being the first, that he forgot for a moment to be appalled by her answer...
...this is a cold-hearted place...
...On reflex, she jerked it away...
...The other player, a hawknosed white guy with a beard, began explaining some move to Gerald, who laughed and said it didn't make sense...
...What would happen to the trust fund if and when the various members of the family, including Jonathan and his "issue," kicked the bucket...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1985 What he usually did, while lunching with his father, was tank up...
...Mubarak scored quite well" on the following test: "The run-up to the poll must be free enough for any person or party to express a view and actively to solicit support...
...But she knew embarrassment pretty well: It was awful, but it faded...
...Twenty-five going on fifty, thought Jonathan, studying this immobile young lizard whose career Jonathan's father was "bringing along...
...Spaulding...
...I'm now asking her to leave...
...I mean, when there's a human being to be dealt with, it isn't enough to sit up there in Massachusetts Hall worrying about how much money is coming in from how many fat-cat successful alumni...
...She reacted as though he had demanded it sooner, not later...
...They put it in a bag for her, together with a wedge of apple spice cake and a vanilla shake...
...some other father's pride and joy...
...Because there's always a happy ending...
...The point of the luncheon was Jonathan's trust fund, currently being reorganized by the unnervingly calm junior trust officer...
...Then he jumped away, defending himself from Felicity...
...Felicity giggled and batted his hands away...
...And they were quiet, or sort of quiet...
...At least Felicity knew enough to make a joke about it...
...I know what you're going through...
...Dinah could stay and eat chef salad through all of that...
...Before Dinah's eyes the print turned into chemistry, an incomprehensible chain reaction...
...The point of the course is to get you thinking and writing about literature...
...It was the same old number she always used to play back in North Philly, at Saint Joseph's, and even before: attach herself to the slickest girls, so when the guys came around, they would pay some attention to her...
...But if such shrewd observers as the Wall Street Journal's Karen Elliot House and Peter R. Kann are accurate in their judgment of Mubarak, it is inconceivable that so tough and knowledgeable a leader would have allowed himself to be duped and indeed traduced by his subordinates on a matter of central importance to his plans for Egypt...
...Adenosine triphosphate is the coin of the biological realm...
...Dinah's brain was speeding up now, shouting questions in the silence...
...That stopped it, stopped it cold...
...Any fool could see that she was studying...
...6 Always...
...She bowed her head, twisting her ring...
...Um...
...Both will be fearfully difficult to achieve, but neither is impossible...
...99 "Oh, yeah...
...I'm not super good," said Gerald...
...So she borrowed a couple, and.., um, when she brought them home, I started in reading them too, and we both got hooked...
...Dinah was obviously not in on the joke...
...And I can't figure out why...
...No doubt the apple of some other lizard's eye...
...No dice...
...Not necessarily...
...Gerald didn't need to wear a Walkman...
...Mostly curious, I guess...
...I swear, I've put on five pounds in the last week...
...This one, however, just looked like a puppydog with droopy brown ears-although as they passed the Black Table, Dinah did notice she had very round buttocks...
...Pierre...
...You play...
...He surveyed the twenty freshmen wedged into the ancient, bolted-down desks and chairs of Seaver Hall--all white except the two black girls in front--and hoped for her sake that the fatter, blacker girl would not answer to the name Dinah Jefferson...
...I need a computer to learn on...
...And needless to say, the mooning female faces were forever white...
...Next to Dinah on the bed lay a yellow note pad, on which she had printed "PAPER TOPICS," followed by a single jotted phrase: "The theme of evil...
...Oh, I'm with an excellent firm...
...And of saying "hi" as though the two of them were alone--no Dinah in the corner, bending over her desk trying to memorize the Krebs cycle...
...Then he said, "So you're interested in chess...
...What's in the bag...
...Maybe that was why she felt annoyed...
...Felicity was looking straight at him, ignoring the others...
...A meek dollvoice, feathery polite...
...I know that...
...when it came to Gerald Lopez (who had disappeared into the small dining room with his round-buttocked friend), two of these three girls were "taken" in every respect: by their boyfriends of the moment...
...They had to be...
...Just try thinking about it in human terms, as though he were somebody you know...
...Not really," whispered Dinah, tongue-tied by those sinewy, ballplayer's arms and that syrupy, musky cologne...
...Maybe I am the brains in this room...
...Along with the strips of steak it had grilled peppers and onions, pepperoni and melted cheese--close enough...
...How could he coax her back out of her shell...
...Nonetheless he was one of those people who made his own way, concentrating so hard on what was going on inside his own head, it was like he was wearing a Walkmanmonly he wasn't...
...But...
...He was born in Warsaw, Teodor J6zef Konrad Korzeniowski, so he knew about oppression...
...By the time the junior trust officer joined them, Jonathan was peering through a second Beefeater martini: thrice shaken and achingly cold, with minute wormlike currents threading through the liquid which was also, from Jonathan's vantage point, the sky--the cobalt blue distances of Boston Harbor, distilled into a glass of ether, with a pearl onion floating in it like a moon...
...It was around eight when Magic and Felicity came back, full of high spirits and still working out snatches of the latest King Sunny Add and the African Beats album...
...Would I do that o to you...
...A gale of giggles, while Dinah turned another page...
...Eyes and ears...
...Yeah, sure...
...Goodness, gracious, don't tell her all the details...
...Tell me, Dinah...
...But I'm only teaching and freelance writing to support myself as a poet...
...And President Mubarak and his lieutenants must continue to use every available art and stratagem to educate the Egyptian people in the democratic values the leaders themselves undoubtedly hold...
...Oh, I'm with an excellent firm...
...You didn't miss much," said Felicity, with her usual groan...
...Harvard doesn't care about you or your education...
...Jonathan's father himself would have preferred such a son, with the hair on his head and the thoughts inside it neatly trimmed...
...Unfazed, even munching a pitted black olive, Mr...
...Dinah could not stay and eat chef salad, but she needed to eat something...
...Jonathan paused, somewhat flustered...
...That's part of the formula...
...Found out...
...I thought we were supposed to write about Heart of Darkness...
...He was a Pole, you know...
...All she had to do was make it through Harvard Square, and she could hole up till it was gone...
...Its dismal showing at the polls had a lot more to do with voter apathy --the conviction that the outcome was a foregone conclusion--than with the government's strongarm tactics...
...Acidic, prickling, it burned so painfully she might have gone crazy if she thought it would last...
...NoP' The unreadable print had become a hot, furious blur...
...Or was it the other way around, the daytime moon showing up like a garnish in his drink...
...i just don't want to lose the credit or anything...
...There are plenty of ways to do that...
...He decided to feel sorry for the lizard...
...No doubt you've heard of them: Herrick, Suckling, Marveil, and Donne...
...She tried to take it all in, with those astonishedlooking eyes, but it was obvious she had nothing to contribute, either in class or on paper...
...Treat a breakthrough like a breakthrough too fast, and you lose the ones who haven't seen it yet...
...and last but not least, by themselves...
...Then it came to him, in a sudden stroke: Forget Conrad...
...What we're talking about, Harlequin Romances...
...You heading across the Yard...
...Such a hunger, such a familiar hollowness...
...otherwise they wouldn't go on flirting, talking about computer lab being the pits, and making jokes about how much of their work was overdue as though there were nobody else in the same room trying to read Heart of Darkness...
...Dinah recognized Magic's knock over Felicity's stereo, the way he counterposed it to the beat...
...He should have expected to feel all alone up here on the thirty-ninth floor, in this tastefully appointed wax museum...
...the fantastic while executing the mundane...
...The only other explanation is that the voting irregularities were by no means as widespread and decisive as the opposition leaders claim...
...Yeah," drawled Felicity...
...Anyway, what do you think of the novel...
...She should have played it cool, said "hi," and kept on walking...
...and its allies would be well advised to do all in their power to help bring them about...
...And the lizard put down "student," even though Jonathan had not been a student for six years...
...The white man in Africa, acting like he's God...
...paper for Mr...
...Economics Minister el-Said put the point with candor and insight when he Jonathan could not believe her name was Dinah...
...Magic put both hands on Dinah's desk...
...Perhaps he was pushing too hard---she might not have read as far as the natives dying under the trees...
...Marlowe really notices them, which is kind of amazing...
...papers due Friday, in case you didn't know...
...But Felicity didn't own it and nobody had offered to play it for her yet...
...What do you make brains in this room...
...After a while Felicity sat across her "Well, iookee here...
...A mouth hanging open over a plate...
...while the major opposition parties, too weak to have any immediate prospect of forming a government, continue to be tempted by extremism...
...So for a few hours at least, Dinah could hole up...
...This school is full of foxy chicks just waiting for a brother to ask them out...
...She paid by check, trying not to worry about what this would do to her account, and started back to the dorm...
...Hey, Dinah...
...Didn't see you at supper, Dine...
...O.K.," he said, "I'll see you around...
...Why not invite him over sometime to use her private computer...
...Nothing...
...Never in her life had she seen so much wooden furniture...
...When I was your age, I thought he was just another English novelist writing about colonialism...
...An instructor who noticed such a student, let alone cared about her, could not just sit back and watch her flounder...
...The U.S...
...No doubt you've heard of them: Herrick, Suckling, Marvell, and Donne...
...Stop using those big abstractions...
...Stop thinking of me as a Harvard professor, some exalted character who's expecting you to fail...
...Well, um...
...To me, it's about racism...
...At last she circled back to a pizza shop and ordered what they called a "Steak Grinder...
...The downtown Harvard Club gave Jonathan an outraged but pleasantly giddy sensation, like the one he got whenever he went into the Yard's Memorial Church and gazed at all the Spauldings gleaming foursquare and golden on the polished granite wall...
...Picking up her slightly bent fork, Dinah stuck it into her salad, her brain working very slowly...
...She was not homely...
...The usual epithet, not applicable in this round-buttocked case...
...Felicity's "we," like a snip of tiny scissors, cutting three girls down to two...
...What would Harvard say if they found out...
...Usually the relief was enough to loosen their tongues...
...She began to burn-why not lie some more, and tell him she had been Pennsylvania state champ...
...My present employment," he said gently, "is hard to define...
...But she had never acted high-toned about it before...
...Felicity began again to speak French, which Magic always pretended to take the wrong way...
...There was nothing he could do to mitigate that, except speak eloquently, like a poet...
...In fact, however, the government's claim of free and fair elections is far closer to the truth...
...For the first time since she had been at Harvard, she was thinking of Sister Carlotta...
...and a small blue one, Greek Political Theory...
...No doubt Felicity had been feeling contemptuous of Saint Joseph's--after all, she had graduated from an all-white suburban high school in Connecticut...
...Well," said Jonathan, marshaling his tolerance, "I guess men don't read Harlequin Romances...
...Two girls for Gerald Lopez to choose from...
...She was walking carefully, concentrating only on getting there, when she saw a group of people gathered around a chess game under the trees...
...I do believe I've found the brains in this room...
...Dinah was silent again, looking down at her plump fingers with their pink-polished nails, one hand twisting the ring on the other: blue glass in a dimestore setting...
...Oh...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1985 of the fact that Marlowe cares...
...My title at Harvard is Teaching Assistant, but actually I was hired because I'm a freelance writer...
...Magic put both hands on Dinah's desk...
...her face was broadly heart-shaped, with a dignified nose and mouth, and eyes that were almost beautiful, astonishedlooking...
...You see, writing poetry is my real--e" "Put down 'student,'" said Jonathan's father...
...Not only that, but Gerald came from Cleveland, which cracked everybody up...
...Make sure you bring him to the Soul Strut Saturday night...
...That consensus will have a chance to develop only if two conditions are met: Economic improvement must be marked enough to undercut the anti-democratic opposition's appeal for a revolutionary "solution" to the nation's problems...
...Too often these family meetings, which were supposed to be held on neutral territory, ended up being held in places just like home, with one or two grandfather clocks, a dozen Oriental carpets, and a dishearteningly loyal minion at a mahogany desk keeping out people who, through no fault of their own, didn't happen to belong...
...And i think that writing about Harlequin Romances is the best project for you...
...Dinah's voice startled everybody, including herself...
...It wasn't any big deal...
...Neither of them got the joke, which Jonathan should have expected...
...said that the greatest danger to Egypt's fledgling democracy has been the government party's inability to develop the kind of deep roots in the populace that, say, India's Congress party enjoys...
...Jonathan noticed all these details because there was nothing else to go on...
...Well," said Gerald, hefting his books...
...he exclaimed, enjoying the dismay of the preppier English majors...
...Where'd you put it...
...Felicity and me both have Lit...
...Nothing more...
...He was shaking his head and smiling...
...She was joking, she had to be...
...She nodded, and above the sparkle of the ring he saw another: a drop on her cheek, which she rapidly brushed away...
...Sometimes all a teacher had were standards, its almighty academic standards...
...What would you say is the sccret of their appeal...
...How hard it was to find a good hoagie in Harvard Square...
...Jonathan had seen those pastel paperbacks with the mooning female faces on the covers, more like candy bars than books...
...And this, finally, is the key element in Egypt's slow and painful progress toward democracy...
...I think it's a fascinating topic, don't you...
...da-da-DUM...
...Escape...
...Someone else brought up the paradox of darkness within enlightenment, and the semester was off and running...
...I mean, for a person who's working all day, and dealing with other people's problems, they're like a relief...
...Oh please," he said...
...Jonathan," stated his father, as though that one word served as a complete explanation...
...Jonathan agreed, of course...
...Why don't you write your paper about this...
...But what her brain kept returning to, ever so slowly, while THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1985 her fork poked just as slowly through the chunky iceberg lettuce, was that sharp-edged little "we...
...Felicity and me, we'll find somebody nice for him...
...At my school, you had to get your work in on time...
...Jonathan was not good with silent people...
...The Bird gave only one "A" a year, to the student who had shown the most ability and achievement in English...
...It's simple...
...He decided to ease off...
...Alors, nous devons &re silent maintenant...
...For a moment she just arched those eyebrows as high as they would go, as though she disapproved of him...
...If she hadn't been so dark, her blushing might have been visible...
...Civilization,' 'barbarism'--what do these words mean...
...Maybe here...
...Harvard Club a few stories higher, so we could look down on everything-including those quaint little brick buildings across the river...
...Dinah, won't you blow, Dinah, won't you blow...
...Do you like reading fiction...
...A stop at the bookstore, where the Romance section was not that great, and she was back in her room...
...Come on, Dinah...
...Look, Dinah...
...I mean, the romance has a venerable history, and there are all sorts of issues here about popular taste, mass psychology--wow...
...Could you take your ontime Lit...
...The more I think about it, the more interesting it gets...
...In a low, humorous voice, Magic began to sing: Dum, dum, dum...
...But that isn't enough sometimes, is it...
...True enough...
...All she took was a chef salad with blue cheese dressing, and after she sat down at the Black Table, she was so intent upon looking for Gerald, she could not even touch it...
...But she didn't...
...Dinah found herself doing the same...
...Finally he appeared, big-shouldered and light-complected, with his pants cuffs so low in the back they almost edged in underneath his heels--the opposite of stone cool guys like Magic, who tucked their cuffs inside the builtup backs of their All-Stars...
...Some of the other teachers thought Sister Carlotta was a gas, although nobody at Saint Joseph's ever really mocked her...
...In her short hair she wore little barrettes, which didn't seem to serve any purpose except to add more plastic to her brightly colored plastic earrings, and the drugstore-stylish plastic eyeglass frames over which her brows arched as she gazed at him with those astonished eyes, in this and subsequent classes...
...He hasn't got the balls to say no," put in Magic...
...Magic smiled...
...She did not like the library with its shoe-squidging linoleum floors and bright lighting the color of pee~ It was going to take more than giggles to get her out of here tonight...
...Cheryl was downright embarrassing, in Dinah's opinion...
...What else could any fool see...
...Jonathan paused, considering the possibility that she was ignorant of European history...
...But that didn't stop Cheryl from using it, or from urging Magic to get on the stick and straighten Gerald out...
...just a little...
...Uh-huh," said Dinah, burning...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1985...
...After all, they're in shadow...
...I just lost," he said, waving at the board...
...You do...
...It meant even more than the Essay Award, or the National Honor Society, or even being chosen as valedictorian...
...Even the leader of the opposition bloc in parliament, Mumtaz Nassar, told the Washington Post that the corruption in last May's balloting was perpetrated by thenprime minister Fuad Mohieddin, among other government officials, without Mubarak's knowledge or consent...
...And in a lower voice: "Flat-ass honky witch...
...there was always a crowd there watching a street musician or a pantomime artist--or a chess game, if the day was particularly slow...
...You understand...
...They're the best way, because nobody but you can see your stupid mistakes...
...Then Cheryl called, loudly enough for half the Union to overhear, "Watch out, little girl...
...I'm acting on my own authority as a faculty member...
...The Wafd, in rather cynical alliance with the fundamentalist Moslem Brotherhood, was able to wage an almost wholly unfettered campaign...
...The guy was living and breathing to eat cold poached salmon and define the complex terms by which Jonathan could gain access to this or that little bit of his family money...
...The Bird, she was called, because her nose was such a beak and her habit had such broad sleeves...
...Hm...
...A friend of Felicity's named Cheryl and two of the guys began to hiss-especially loudly, because it was worse when a guy faded out...
...A lump of flesh in a chair...
...Get it...
...I'll level with you...
...And what was number three...
...Secretly, ardently, she hoped that they would ask--because that way she would have a good excuse to sit at the Black Table, where Magic's roommate, Gerald Lopez, sometimes sat...
...The way to attract guys was not to give orders--any fool could see that...
...When i come across a student who's had a different kind of experience, I encourage them to take a different approach...
...She knew what North Philly could be like, so she kept a box of Kleenex in her office desk drawer...
...She spent an hour looking for some in the library, but quit when the lady behind the counter told her sarcastically that the library didn't carry pulp novels...
...But she did...
...DUM...
...Look," he went on, not relenting...
...He hated the thought that she was intimidated by him, so he began to talk rapidly about Conrad...
...Nothing," she whispered, the smallness of her voice trying to apologize for the rudeness of her gesture...
...Fuad Serageddin, the leader of the major opposition party, the right-of-center New Wafd, called the elections "pure theatre.., the least free for the past 60 years...
...This school is full of foxy chicks just waiting for a brother to ask them out...
...One thing about liking a guy--it made her eat less...
...Don't cry...
...Yes," said Jonathan, smiling...
...They were not far into the meal when the junior trust officer produced a form and began asking questions about death...
...Compensating, at least in part, for these systemic weaknesses is President Mubarak's own determination to nurture a genuinely democratic order...
...The air in the room was suddenly so thick that even Magic sobered up...
...The heroine, a working girl unexpectedly kidnapped by the arrogant French leader of an African safari, was fending off despair--and his advances-by recalling her proud, happy girlhood in the Scottish Highlands, when Dinah suddenly closed the book...
...When the tears poured out, she would hand it across, stem the tide, and declare "we must channel our sorrows in the service of the Lord...
...What are you reading...
...Study hall...
...What are you talking about...
...Harvard has "Felicity and me, we'll find somebody nice for him...
...This guy Kurtz is in a bad way, we can all see that...
...That at any rate is the claim made by his close associates...
...But she keeps on bringing them homemso I tell her she's the one leading me astray...
...Dinah had heard a lot about that album, too...
...From behind the tasseled menu, Jonathan's father made no reply except to recommend the cold poached salmon...
...The convoluted language, the alien set!ing, the grandiose ambition of the central ideas were far too daunting for this girl...
...Something for Lit...
...Some of those white girls had such beautiful hair, like advertisements for shampoo...
...Expecting all the black folks to worship at his feet...
...So Dinah went back to the bookstore and picked out five titles she hadn't read yet...
...Uh-huh," said Magic, squeezing on next to her...
...But he had certainly never read one, not even out of morbid curiosity...
...The students had been told to read Heart of Darkness, so rather than waste the first session, Jonathan plunged right in...
...And that was it, that was the end of it: Gerald walking away with that air of listening to an invisible Walkman, down the path which for.ked away from hers...
...by the other three guys at the table, who would move in as soon as they saw a chance...
...Too bad they couldn't put the which the election was held, concluding that "it is no surprise that, after the years of repression since Nasser's revolution, Egypt has yet to acquire the cement of national consensus...
...She didn't want to leave without speaking to Gerald, but she couldn't speak to Gerald without interrupting...
...They walked a moment in silence, to a point in front of Massachusetts Hall where the paths forked...
...She said "simple" with mild disparagement, the way another person mightsay "dumb...
...He had to venture into her world a little: at least meet her halfway...
...This assessment is shared by the Economist of London, which argued in an ~editorial shortly after the election that "Mr...
...eyes...
...The word is, Mr...
...I'm glad you're here, and I want you to succeed...
...Grease and starch, h la carte...

Vol. 18 • April 1985 • No. 4


 
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