fiction | Laurie Clancy

DEATH THE LEVELLER

THERE WAS A MEMO waiting for Dr Ben Johnson in his eagle hole, as he liked to call it, when he came in to work at Blamey University. It was marked ‘Confidential’ and was from the Boss, as the departmental head Professor Armitage liked to be called. It was a harmless vanity and Ben didn’t mind pandering to it. Professor Armitage was keen on confidentiality, so much so that he had once sent out a memo in a sealed envelope with ‘Not to be opened’ stamped on it. Ben ripped open the letter and read:

Dear Ben,

I’ve had an unusual request from a former student of ours, Alex Goddar (Class of ’95). He’s a decent fellow, quite bright, I remember him well. The poor unfortunate chap has contracted AIDS, maybe fatally. He wonders if he can sit in on some of the classes, sort of therapy thing I suppose. I thought that he might start with your fourth year Renaissance seminar.
Do you have any objections?

Yours,
Kim

Ben stared at the note for a few seconds, then went and knocked on Professor Armitage’s door. He heard the sound of a radio broadcasting the one-day cricket being turned off.
    Armitage was in his mid-forties, of medium height, medium build, medium in just about every respect, Ben used to think to himself from time to time, but an essentially decent, moderate man. He liked to call himself a refugee from England, seduced by Australia. Seduced by its wines, by its weather, and eventually by one of his brightest students whom he subsequently married and who had two children with him. It was not uncommon at Blamey for academics to marry their students, partly because there were quite a few older ones. If the university authorities ever brought in that law they were always talking about, prohibiting sexual relations between academics and students, Ben reflected, half the staff on the department would have to file for divorce.
    “I received your memo, Kim,” Ben said, waving it. “I even opened it. That’s fine by me.”
    “It’s a sad case,” said Armitage. “He was quite a nice chap.”
    “I thought they could do things for AIDS victims now.”
    “Apparently not for this one. He sounded in very bad shape over the phone.”
    Ben stood up. “I’ll have to clear it with Maggie, of course, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ll go and see her now.”
    Maggie was the staff member with whom he took the honours seminar. The Cultural Studies Department at Blamey University had relatively few honours and graduate students so in order to satisfy the demands of the staff to teach at a senior level two members shared each seminar. Ben got along with Maggie fairly well. She was a small, large-bosomed woman in her late thirties, dark-haired (at least at the moment, since it changed often) and still very attractive. She had a lively, engaging manner and was very popular with the students.
    Because of the way they exchanged pleasantries in class – half-barbed, half-amicable – most of the students assumed they were married, or at least having an affair, but that wasn’t the case. Her current consort was a Greek man some years her junior. His name was Socrates but Maggie always referred to him as ‘Socks’. He was one of the most stunning looking men Ben had ever seen but hardly lived up to his name. He knew little English and at staff meetings would merely stand around smiling while all the women on the staff and three of the men would gape longingly at his beauty.
    Now as Ben knocked on her door a high, pleasantly fluted voice called, “Come in.”
    “Ben,” she said. “You look tired. Have you been talking to Jan again?”
    He blinked. How did she know that? Jan was his ex-wife. “Sons and sums,” he said. “That’s all I ever talk about with her. But I’ve come to check something out with you.”
    As briefly as he could, Ben explained the situation of Alex Goddar to her and his request to attend class and concluded, “That’ll be all right, won’t it?”
    But he had noticed Maggie’s face growing steadily paler as she stared at him in disbelief. “You want someone with a highly infectious disease, one you’ve admitted could be fatal, to be allowed into class? That hardly seems fair to the students – let alone ourselves.”
    Ben felt uncomfortable. As far as he knew the disease could only be communicated through saliva or blood and this student hardly seemed the type who would suddenly stand up and begin biting the other people in the room.
    “I tell you what,” he suggested. “I’ve got a friend who’s a doctor and who specialises in these things. If he says it’s quite safe will you agree?”
    Maggie looked uncomfortable but there didn’t seem to be very much choice. “I suppose so,” she said with obvious reluctance.
    When Ben rang his medical friend Don Lucas and explained his problem he heard a deep sigh at the other end of the line and then there was a long pause. “You expect the general public to be fairly ignorant of the HIV virus,” he said finally, “but not university lecturers.”
    “Tell your colleague,” he went on, “that she and the students are at no risk from this chap. On the contrary, he’s at risk from them. If one of them has a cold he’s putting his life on the line because his immune system is so vulnerable. He must know that, but I suppose he thinks that at this stage it doesn’t matter.”
    That should do it, thought Ben, as he put the phone down. Now it remained only to ring the student as Armitage had asked him to do and inform him he was admitted. He was already becoming a little tired of this business.
    “Mr Goddar?”
    There was another long pause. The voice came weakly over the line. “Yes?”
    “It’s Ben Johnson here, from Blamey University. Just to let you know that we’re more than happy to have you sit in on the Renaissance lit class. It’s on Wednesday at 4.30, room 509 in Humanities 3. We’ll be handing out poems in class, so there’s no need for any preparation.”
    “Th-, thank you.”
    There was another long pause. Feeling the need to fill the abyss of silence, Ben said, “I’m sorry to hear of your illness. I hope it’s not too serious.”
    The voice came slowly but distinctly over the line. “The doctors have given me six to eight weeks.”
    “My God,” said Ben. “You poor bugger.”
    “Bugger indeed.”
Ben winced. He could hardly have expressed himself in a more tactless way. Again he felt it was impossible to put the phone down on such a note and began to talk frantically.
    “I think you’ll enjoy the seminar. The seventeenth century is my particular passion. I don’t know how I got into it in the first place. Maybe it’s because of my name. Though the spelling’s different, of course. When I was a teenager I read a story in a boys’ magazine that worked on the assumption that a student named Sherlock Holmes could not resist the temptation of doing some detective work if it were offered to him. So maybe it’s the same with me.”
    Ben paused and waited. There was a long silence. Then Mr Goddar said, “How interesting.”
    “We’ll see you on Wednesday then. I’ll look forward to it.”
    Ben put down the phone. He remained seated in his chair for a few moments, looking out the window. His office was on the fifth floor and he could see the tops of the trees waving back and forth. Down below was the lawn, leading to the moat. Students necked there in the open or on some days played a game of football.
    It was a windy day, unusually warm and sultry for April, with occasional brief, spasmodic gusts of rain. He wondered what he would do if he knew he had only six to eight weeks to live. Probably not attend a seminar on seventeenth-century literature. Even his own.

THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY morning, when Ben arrived at work he found a note from Maggie waiting for him. It said that she had a migraine and would not be attending the seminar that afternoon. The photocopies of the poems she had selected were enclosed. He was not surprised and in fact felt a sense of relief. It would be one less complication. He unlocked his door, threw the sheets into his ‘Out’ tray without looking at them, and sat down at his desk. He opened the window and felt the still unseasonably warm air wash over him. He wondered whether he should tell the students why Alex Goddar was auditing the class. He decided he wouldn’t. He sat at his desk and marked essays.
    About four o’clock there was a timid knock at the door.
    “Come in,” he called, but there was no response. After a few moments he swivelled his chair around, strode to the door and flung it open. Before him stood a tall, gaunt young man of almost cadaverous appearance. He wore a huge, ex-army greatcoat and was breathing heavily.
    “Dr Johnson?”
    “Mr Goddar. Please come in.”
    Ben had never seen anyone so thin. He moved slowly, with a kind of deliberation, as if each step taken were a conscious decision. He lowered himself into an easy chair in the corner, still without taking his overcoat off.
    “I arrived early because I . . . didn’t know how long it would take me to walk across campus.”
    This almost amounted to eloquence.
    “They allowed me into the distinguished visitors’ car park” – here his lip curled slightly – “but it’s still something of a walk for someone in my condition.”
    Ben didn’t know whether to make a reference to his ‘condition’ or not. He handed over a copy of the poems that Maggie had chosen. “You could have a look at these while you’re waiting.”
    As the students filed in one by one they glanced with curiosity at the silent, immobile figure hunched in the corner. When they were all present, Ben said merely, “This is Alex Goddar, who’s sitting in on class today.” Alex inclined his head slightly but said nothing.
    “We’ll look at the first poem on the sheets,” Ben said. The linking theme Maggie had chosen for this week was listed in bold type on the opening page: Death the Leveller. “The theme of death and the necessity of submitting to its inevitability is a common one in seventeenth-century and renaissance poetry,” he read. “The margin between grace and fatalism is narrow and ambiguous.” The first poem was a Song by Thomas Nashe. Ben read it out loud:

Adieu, farewell earths bliss,
This world uncertaine is,
Fond are lifes lustfull joyes,
Death proves them all but toyes,
None from his darts can flye;
I am sick, I must dye:
        Lord, have mercy on us.

As he read he felt an increasing sense of discomfort. Maggie would not have meant it, he was quite sure, but she could hardly have chosen a less appropriate theme. He tried not to look at Alex and to make his own voice as impersonal as possible but he could sense the mouth curling in an ironical smile, just as it must have done when he had said ‘poor bugger’ over the telephone. As he read automatically he looked down the list at the poems Maggie had chosen to represent her theme. Webster’s ‘Call for the Robin-Red-Brest’. James Shirley’s ‘Dirge’. John Ford’s ‘Oh no more, no more, too late’. His heart sank. The two hours of the seminar stretched before him like an endless journey. Why had he not thought to look at the selection of poems before admitting Goddar into the class?
    The comments of the students came to him as if in a haze.
    “‘Heaven is our heritage’ suggests some kind of faith in divine solace.”
    “There’s a heavy emphasis on fate in the poetry, sir, which could be construed as either acceptance of defeat or Christian resignation.”
    Earnest, intelligent, the students’ words sounded in his ears like a horrible parody of human discourse. Ben was filled with a profound sense of unreality. What did these lines of verse mean? What significance could they have when written by someone who was not himself dying? From time to time, through the mental fog in which he now found himself floundering, Ben could sense the students stealing curious glances at the silent Goddar. Were they wondering why Ben had invited him into the class? Did they imagine he might be some kind of exemplar of the theme, their own memento mori?
At six o’clock Ben put a mercifully early end to the proceedings and the puzzled students packed up their bags and left, casting last glances back at the motionless Goddar. Outside in the corridor he heard one girl say, “He lacks a bit of spark without Maggie, doesn’t he?”
    Goddar sat on without moving. Then, as if gathering all his energies for one concerted movement, he hauled himself laboriously to his feet. “Thank you, Doctor Johnson. It has been most rewarding.” There was no smile around the edge of his mouth this time. He spoke without apparent irony. Ben had no idea what was in his mind. As he shuffled out the door Ben knew that he would never see him again.
    He sat at his desk, his head in his hands, filled with an almost illimitable sense of futility. He knew that he could not go home to the present Mrs Johnson and their 6-year-old daughter yet. His mood would infect them like a virus. He would be unable to conceal anything from them. He had up to twenty-two years of teaching in front of him if he wished, before he retired, and the prospect filled him with a kind of metaphysical terror. He had no wish any more to peddle truth. He would rather sell real estate or used cars, some activity that had no pretensions to offering meaning or understanding of life.
    He poured himself a glass of dry sherry and took it with him over to the window. Three floors down below a group of students were playing a vigorous game of football. Two girls sat on a bench at the side of the lawn, watching them with amusement. Their shouts of jubilation and ridicule and the occasional thump of the football being kicked came to him dimly through the closed glass. They breathed animal, uncaring life.
    A deep, involuntary groan came from Doctor Johnson as he returned to the desk and slumped over it. He read the sheet in front of him.

Wit with his wantonesse
Tasteth deaths bitternesse:
Hels executioner
Hath no eares for to heare
What vaine art can reply.
I am sick, I must dye:
        Lord, have mercy on us.

Overland 183–winter 2006, pp.39–42

183 Contents

editorial

reportage | KATHERINE WILSON

literature | IAN SYSON

review | JEFF SPARROW

fiction | LAURIE CLANCY

profile | HAZEL LANG

poem | KATHERINE GALLAGHER

poem | BRENDAN McCALLUM

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