“Dulce et Decorum Est”
Short Story - For Rose d'Alesandro
1
“s'avea messi dinanzi da la fronte.
In picciol corso mi parieno stanchi
lo padre e ' figli, e con l'agute scane
mi parea lor veder fender li fianchi.”
Dante Inferno XXXIII: 33-36
Dim through the misty panes, the scribbling continued to scribble among the rows of Linsly-Chittenden Hall. This was English and Professor Minerva Kline stretched out to the podium beseeching the students to awaken from their slumber of childhood rather than the burial of the dead. Whoever said April was the cruellest month did not reckon on Oktober.
Minerva looked out upon the assemblage of bodies as if on a path to rupture. Lord knows the need to splay was visible to her eye. Kline sometimes thought of herself as a Troubadour, a singer that follows the Army and spins tales of woe whose shoulders sway antiphonal carillons launched before the stars are caught and hived in the sun's ray?
But she reaches too far because her one limb that touches the floor becomes unbalanced because the prostatic implant did wobble and gyre. There was no second limb. But with a grace that would not have been imagined by some onlooker, she righted herself and simply continued the taciturn example which she had chosen for the lecture in this vast hall where the knowledge came to be implanted in the greedy minds of the uneducated. Most, however, were on the march, asleep.
“So now we turn to Eliot, an American poet who dreamed of being British, and became so as quickly as was humanly possible. In particular, I wish to speak of the difference between translation, as was Pound’s way, and ambiguous quotation which was the method of Eliot. It starts with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, An Observation it quotes Dante 27 lines 61-66 and a soul says: ‘This is to myself, even if in tongues.’ What does that mean?” It takes long minutes for hands to pull up and down in hesitation. A metaphysical and disquieting conversation ensues in this haven of thought.
When the students looked at Doctor Kline, it seemed that there was a contraction and contradiction imbued in every detail: she held a cold hard face with loving eyes, a taught figure with a smooth embroidery of lacened damasked Victorian that was décolletaged almost to her naval. Her stance was almost dictated by the fact that she had only one leg and one and a half arms. But a number of students knew that she could recite almost anything within her purview. They knew because at tea times while the soma was clothed in tweed the mental fangs slobbered blood. If one so much missed the exact quote that one was meant to offer as a defense all the professors would pounce. She was drunk with fatigue from standing at the podium, but still, she came to tea, punctually. So, if her body plan was deficient her mind was not.
It was at this point that the yellow sphere came breaking through the clouds and peeking through deciduous blades which made many of the listeners distract from their listening to the viewing that was etched in the romantic lines in the window iron-edged glass.
She did not notice it, but it was because she remembered a different time in a different place that haunted her from morning until the evening when all is spread out against the sky with the last glimpse of the glitter of sun rays.
So, there she talked at the podium, on Pound and Joyce. Pound was of her past, the joyous ruckus that follows Odysseus to the end, but Eliot was definitely her present. And her secret that J. Prufrock also held.
Then she caught the time, and a face peered into the lecture hall. The wrapped-up had begun. The whole lecture vanished with an analogy about quotation vs. translation.
The commotion of wrapping up one lecture and immediately going on to the next was a blur of questions, most of which could be boiled down to: “Can I get an extension?” Of course, yes, this is Yale, and we actually want you to think. Deeply. Intensely. Specifically. But one young woman wanted some time during her office hours to which Minerva happily agreed.
Then she slipped-out and conversed with her female professor on the way to the next class.
“Hello.” It was Minerva but uttered nervously. A Professor.
“Did I catch you at a bad moment?” Black wavy hair flowed without a hint of self-consciousness. Kline smiled in that way. The figure who stood before her had a proper name, but all called her ‘Rose’ with affection. She was sturdy and strong with a peasant vernacular of stance. And always young in her visage.
“I did not sleep well last night.” Kline stared off into the distance.
“Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh?” Rose was concerned, faintly.
2
“e se la fama tua dopo te luca
cortesia e valor dì se dimora
ne la nostra città sì come suole,
o se del tutto se n'è gita for a…”
Dante Inferno XVI:66-69
At the appointed time, her door to her office echoed with an indistinct knock, as if the person knocking did not know if she should disturb the Professor of English. Minerva looked up from her desk.
“The door is open, it always is.”
Around the opening door came a Chinese American face. “I am in your 20th-century English poetry class.”
“And your name is?” Minerva peered at the face, trying to recognize the details in its luster.
“Everyone calls me HD.” And that HD entered the room and shut the door. The first impression of HD was that her height was only 5 feet, but somehow it did not make her seem short but everyone else seem ungainly.
“What can I do for you, HD?”
“I was wondering why there were so few women as subjects in the class?”
“You have the syllabus, there is Lowell, and Plath, and your namesake, among others. The 20th Century was still an unfriendly place to members of our sex. It is as obscene as cancer. Do you want to explore more fully several women poets?”
“Sometimes I wish that men were not present.”
“You are not the first person to express that desire.” Minerva dropped the pen and was engaged.
“I know it means seem like I am ardent for some desperate glory.”
“You will have to talk to other departments for guidance about the structure of evolution, it is not my field.” She pick-up the pen again. There was in Minerva’s mind a delicate balance to maintain. She knew that for some there was a gawking spy in some who wanted time to look at her disfigured body and pinkish skin along the tears but clearly, that was not the case presently.
Eagerly her student begins again: “It seems so untranslatable and worthless. Perhaps I want some guidance because you have walked across the sand and have some knowledge about the world outside, that until I entered Yale I did not know of.”
“Everyone grows up.”
“When did you grow up?”
“Very late in my life and then devoted my mental energies into expression.”
“What happened?”
“A deception which was practiced upon us.”
“It sounds as if you understand more than I do.”
“You will learn the lesson that time has in store for you. Do not rush the finale when the introduction sounds its first notes.”
She dismissed the student and looked at the time until tea. Then she wrapped up her notetaking and braced herself for invigoration from her - friend. She took off her shoe. And she imagined starting a scene or two in the swell of progress. Dante was not her preference in full.
It was several days later when the next class convened, and Minerva did not see HD in her class. She was left to wonder. Of course, Minerva wondered whether she had done the right thing, the correct pedagogy because she did not wonder about moral virtue, it was no longer.
At the podium again, upon a different author, she took a moment to ponder a point of some significance. Proclaiming from the pulpit: “The world of thought is very small in a radical way. Consider that Qian Zhongshu, in Fortress Besieged, made reference to Russell by having a fool inflate his importance to ‘Bertie’ while T.S. Eliot studied philosophy with Russell. Almost, at times, the Fool tries to announce his importance by exaggeration. Fools always find other fools.”
“Thus, the great often associate with other greats, such as Eliot with Frost, because they know that there is a relatively thin bubble at work in only certain places and thus, they meet each other out of happenstance in their true vocation.” Empty faces, and some wrote. With that, Kline continued: “This is true even if they are not known to the future, yet. So, all four sides will be bathed by sunlight which has not happened, yet. After more to have’s piled on as if to say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,’” She looked out.
There was silence. Because none had had anything like it happen to them. At times she wished it had not happened to her.
It was then several hours when she was in her condo, which would be sold to the next professor of something or other, with no children to lug around, and she is luxuriating with Hayden White (page turn) when a knock on the door happened. This was unusual because for someone can knock at her condo’s door, they had to get through the concierge desk. Minerva’s ears pricked up. There was a long pause where she ruminated on whether to answer and bear the consequences of company. Finally, the words came out:
“Who is it?” There was a tremolo that actually said that there was hesitation.
“It is HD.”
It was only at that point that Minerva roused herself and opened the door. If you had been at the door, you would have seen that the entire place was neat, with orderly cubicle bookshelves, in white, of course, filled with books on poetry, and critiques on the poetry, and critiques on the critiques. Once an idea is accepted by a few, there is a flood of replies even if they are flawed. The table was mahogany (with one small pile of references), and the chairs held that kind of stiffness that only the most the fastidious enjoyed. The rug was Bourka, which would surprise no one who knew her taste in oriental carpets. There were a many-a-much antiques most of them from the Middle East. Every nook enjoined at least one. Minerva slunk into the crutches and moved to behind the table, gesturing for HD to follow, which HD did with no complaint.
“So, what do I have to thank for this entrance?”
“They just let me out of the hospital, and I decided it was you that I wanted to talk to. I manage to finagle a way in past the boy who tended to the trash.”
“We have not had a conversation, an sich. Why me?”
“My parents are engineers, that is often the way of immigrants. I am an ABC, and thus want to study the humanities.”
“It is in your nature. I assume that HD covers over your real name?”
“Hongwen Dun. Dun was originally ‘yellow.’ When I read the poems which the real HD composed it was like a flash of light peering into the darkness. I wanted my professor to understand. Or perhaps wished and will.”
“You felt that I had some secret?”
“Your disfigurement told me that you did.”
“The way my body was treated is no secret to the administration. In fact, I spoke of it when I was hired.”
“Among undergraduates, it is still a mystery.”
“In my past life, I was a reporter. It was a way to rebel by conforming. It did not end well.”
“Were you parodying the past? Is that all?”
“Let me ask you a question in return. Why were you let out of the hospital?” Minerva looked to check whether there was anything damaged on HD. She did not see anything untoward.
“I received an email from my father, and the tone was not good. I went to pieces when another person told them something untoward.”
“What was it in reference to?”
“I can’t believe I am finally admitting this in person...” A pause as squalor spread its hideous length. “My living situation.”
“Tell me more.”
“In high school, I never had a date in my life, because there was too much studying to make and too many checks to mark.”
“This is not unusual.”
“My problem is that my first love was with a girl.”
An interjection occurred: “You mean a woman.
“Yes, a woman. I moved in with her … and my parents did not know. Then someone told them. It was at that point they told me that they were going first, cut me off without a cent, and second, disinherit me and leaving everything to my two dìdìmen – younger brothers.”
“There are resources for such emergencies.”
“I am sure that the finances can be negotiated but what I am interested in is to be understood.”
“Which is not part of the bursar’s mandate.”
“I was hoping it would be you.”
“Why is this?”
“You have only female friends.”
“Sexuality is a personal decision and only you can make it for yourself.” Kline looked at HD and saw her problem was normal but present in its graft – parents who did not approve of the choices that everyone must make, alone. “We will meet again. A speech that is recomposed.”
HD opened her mouth, but Kline moved her hand to signal ‘Enough.’
That day would be soon. But first, a nightmare would intrude.
3
“Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco;
non rami schietti, ma nodosi e 'nvolti;
non pomi v'eran, ma stecchi con tòsco.”
Dante Inferno XIII:4-6
It was day then too, but of another land, with the littered dead who die as cattle. Mostly they were of the enemy, whatever name you called them. There was also a heat, that was unquenchable in its illiquid form. The unit was out on patrol here in the desert with dust obscuring their vision and shrouding the uniforms in sand. She was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division. Roger that. This was only a patrol, to scout out if the flank was absolutely secure. It was assumed by the military commanders that nothing truly terrible could happen. They were wrong but then no plan of action survives first contact with the enemy. Often the briefing does not mention all the suffering that is faced on the ground.
This was one of those cases.
This was the last instant where she would be described as beautiful, or at least somewhat attractive to the male eye. She was in a loosely fitting uniform with a tag showing that she was a reporter and her name was distantly reported by the stitching. Her face was still taught but in that kind of way where it at least seems to be attractive. There was a jouissance in her banter with the three men who were assigned to watch over her but of course, they had other things in mind. This she knew and played it for all it was worth: there were too many good stories that relied on her making a man think that she might somehow be attracted to him. And then he would do anything that she asked for. The shamal blew in mussing her radiant blonde hair from the north-west. Her eyes were not visible underneath the enormous shades that were draped a bit askew which meant that the men could wish them to desire the cock that each one dangled. These were young men and thought with the down-there rather than the up-here.
An omnipresence narrator could describe how a RAMP grenade launcher could fire high into the air spiraling down to it a random point that just happened to have a hummer loitering about the premises on the hard land. This omnipresent narrator might talk about how the people in that Hummer were joking and kvetching without a care in the world right up until the impact. But then the omnipresent narrator would move his attention to the F-16 up in flight which rained down tactical explosive weapons galore killing every enemy soldier within range without a care in the world: press a button and move on to your next targeting assignment. What the omnipresent narrator would not explore was the fire that burned incessantly on the close and melted the seats. The omnipresent narrator would not take into account was the searing torture of having flesh upon flesh ripped out and feeling the agony that only the absence of what was-once-there-and-is-not-anymore conveys to a brain that wants desperately to live.
The Hummer flipped. Bodies turned to mannequins. Wheels contorted rapaciously. All fabric was ripped beyond shreds. There was noise over the radio, calling calling calling for help, and almost immediately a chopper was routed to their last known location and picked up four for surgery – stat. Until the helicopter arrived there was the scent of fresh fallen meat hanging in the air. All would make it, but none would see another day’s combat from the scars, internal and external. All went lame; some blind.
At this point, a stirring moved, and the awakening began of Minerva’s consciousness began. This altered her perception of Iraq - because no one thinks that they will be harmed in combat. Until “they” becomes “I.”
The sun came through the sand. She was barely conscious of this, but as soon as a medic looked at her, he put her out. Under ice and snow. Then she awoke but would not realize for some time that her left leg and much of her left arm had disappeared in the blast. But she somehow remembered the glass over her bed making the makeshift sign of a cross in the sand. No mockeries now, nor any voice of mourning.
She would recover, sat in a wheelchair, waiting for dark. The nurses touch her like some clear disease. They know the symptoms and spasms but not the misery within. And they know this, intensely. They would rather talk of Michelangelo.
But not to dream.
4
lo lo seguiva, e poco eravam iti,
che 'l suon de l'acqua n'era sì vicino,
che per parlar saremmo a pena uditi.
Dante Inferno XVI:91-93
It was a picture of “Falling Water,” astonishing in its treatment of color; Minerva spent innumerable minutes washing herself in its rainbow.
Rose looked at her: “Is it not sumptuous?”
“I did not think you liked anything so modern.”
“But you do. Therefore, I love the messenger even if I hate the message.”
“Can one do the reverse?”
“I don’t practice an ounce of faith but know the rituals...”
“And what of my faith?”
“In your high school yearbook, you had a quote from Eliot.”
“So? How do I separate the man from his art?”
“Literature and philosophy are the rage in even fashionable circles, the man and his words are different things.”
“But how do you divorce the love that you feel?”
“The same way I do with Dante – let each person sit in their own time. Dante is dead.”
“But Love is in the present tense…”
“Time present and time past.”
“Protect the good and preserve it? It seems to me that we hold on and we drown.”
“To rebel by conforming. Call it the Richard Wagner Principle.”
Allow but little consciousness and Minerva understood.
5
Fuor de la bocca a ciascun soperchiava
d'un peccator li piedi e de le gambe
infino al grosso, e l'altro dentro stava.
Dante Inferno XIX:22-24
The day came but by telephone - there was the interminable wait for an answer.
Then from the other end: “Hi?”
“This is Professor Kline; however, Minerva is fine.”
“Yes?” There was more than a hint of excitement.
“Can we have tea this afternoon at my place? I will tell you my story and the lesson I learned from it.”
And so, tea was preformed and performed some hours later in Kline’s condo. A version of Minerva’s story was retold.
“Sure I am glad you are talking to me.” HD smiled.
“I am not so much talking to you, but to myself. Living, again, the day I grew up. To be reassembled, in whole.”
“I thought that by the time you were a professor, it might be clear.”
“Everything is a rough draft for a sight unseen. Writing is nothing like the sun: it must be worked o’er and o’er.”
“That is depressing and wonderous.”
A wait and then Minerva began: “First, to your unasked question: yes.”
“What was my unasked question?”
“Whether I am a lesbian. Now I must ask you to confirm a guess of mine: were you admitted to the hospital after trying to kill yourself?”
“I know it was a mistake.”
“It would have been a crime. I reread your last paper and while it shows that you need a greater degree of study, it definitely shows progress. It may seem a trifle obvious, but your parents are not the end of the world.”
“It seems obvious now, doesn’t it? But why if you are a lesbian do you study men?”
Minerva straight up her spine. “Expression does not rely on genitalia. You can check that in the biology department though we do have a slight edge sometimes. But there is a deeper problem that has been which has been troubling me for a long time.”
“What is it?”
“There are many examples of people, most especially men, whose words have a great deal of power, but whose personality is reprehensible.”
“Such as T.S. Eliot?”
“And Pound.”
“That is why I suggested that we not study men at all.”
“Unfortunately, that would leave us bereft of the words they left us. Remember, both the living and the dead have problems, but the dead no longer worry about the problems. That is the lesson for the living to relearn.”
“So, what do we do?”
Tall decorum of that sky unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower. Minerva gazed outside her window, at the glint of reflection off the Lilacs out of the dead land whence at all the colors that the leaves had turned into. Vermilion and burnt Siena and even some whisps of yellow, blazing gloriously in the autumn air to the light that made the sun and other stars. “You must whisper, in tongues, to yourself. Whoever the words came from. In all my dreams before my helpless sight, the communication sets the orb free. Dulce et decorum est.”
Fin.