Exiles in America(16)

was stifling their expressiveness. They didn’t realize they had nothing to ex-

press yet.

His favorite student last year had been Maureen Clark, a tough little red-

head from Goochland County with a good eye and a nice, dry sense of humor.

Maureen was not in any of his classes this semester, but he ran into her one af-

ternoon smoking a cigarette on the wide steps of Andrews Hall, the home of

the Fine Arts Department. Girls were the only ones who smoked anymore,

their way of keeping thin.

“How’s the semester look?” he asked. “Aren’t you doing the workshop

with the artist in residence?” Daniel hadn’t seen Rohani since the dinner. He

lowered his voice. “What’s he like?”

Maureen shrugged. “Good looking. And weird. He stood in front of us

the first day and went, ‘You must forgive my bluntness’ ”—she took on a

gruff, foreign voice—“ ‘but English is not my first or second language. Paint

is my first language, Farsi my second, French my third. So if I am rude in En-

glish, you must cut me the slack.’ ”

Her impersonation was good. It was interesting to learn that “English is

not my first or second language” was part of his schtick. And why not? It was

a good line.

“I’ve met his wife, and she’s weird, too,” Maureen continued. “And they

got two kids, and the kids are weird. But sweet. I’ve babysat for them twice.”

“You’re the student they roped into babysitting? I should’ve known.” Un-

like most undergraduates, who stuck to their peers, Maureen spent as much

time as she could with teachers. She enjoyed being around grown-ups.

“Hey, we never got any Persian painters or Russian poets back in

Goochland,” she said. “I’m making up for lost time.”

Departmental silliness resumed with the school year. Rohani did not at-

tend the first faculty meeting, but everyone else was there.

3 8

C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m

“My students attack me because I’m not part of this net thing,” grumbled

Samuel Clay Brooke, a tall, elderly bachelor with the dotty grandeur and

rolling baritone of an Anglican minister. He taught British art history and

wrote about Hogarth, Fuseli, and Rowlandson; he could have modeled for all

three. “I refuse to be treated as a woolly mammoth.”

“Nobody’s attacking you, Samuel,” said Jane Morrison. “The students are

just used to doing things a certain way.”

“I can show you how to get online,” Daniel offered again.

“You’ll love it,” said Warren Bates, who taught American twentieth-

century art; he’d been working on a biography of Thomas Hart Benton for the

past thirty years. “My wife uses it for shopping, and I use it to download

music. It’s better than TV.”

“I don’t own a TV,” Samuel said proudly.

This was a small department, divided equally between teachers of art his-

tory and teachers of studio art. The art history people tended to be older, but

nobody new had been added since Daniel arrived ten years ago. He had heard

about the job from Jane, who had known him since grad school at Penn. Jane

was a graphic artist and printmaker, a stocky, down-to-earth woman with

enormous forearms. She was assumed to be lesbian until people met her

stocky, down-to-earth cabinetmaker husband, John, whose forearms were

even bigger. The joke among students was that they’d met at a national arm-

wrestling championship.

“Samuel, it’ll save you time,” said Jane. “Think of all the hours you waste

sitting in your office on the chance that a student might drop by. This way

they can make appointments.”

“No!” said Brooke. “In our inhuman age of cold technology, I will con-

tinue to offer my students a warm island of humanity.”

What sometimes sounded like dry wit from Brooke was almost always sin-

cere. The man had a mad, sweet, exasperating innocence.

The meeting ended without any mention of Rohani, but an artist in resi-

dence was not part of their routine. The residency program cycled through

the school from department to department—English, music, theater, and fine

arts—so all could benefit from the presence of a living genius every four or

five years. The last resident in fine arts had been Lucinda Johnson, a sculptor

E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a

3 9

whose hammered copper abstraction Somalia still lurked in the garden be-

tween Andrews and Swem Library like a tall, sinister bird.

The following week Daniel and Zack walked down to Merchants Square

to see Double Indemnity. Ross was running a Monday night film noir series for