Quoth the Raven(33)

“Donegal Steele. Isn’t he the one who wrote The Literacy Enigma?”

“Yes,” Tibor said. “He did write that.”

“Good Lord. I had no idea he taught at Independence College. In fact, I’m sure I saw somewhere that he was at Berkeley.”

“He was at Berkeley. Then, at the beginning of this term, he came here.”

“As a visiting professor?”

“No, Bennis. As a permanent appointment, with tenure and without a probationary period. This would not be unusual in Europe, but Dr. Elkinson tells me it is very unusual here.”

“Yes,” Bennis said, “it is.”

“And then there are all the rumors about the money,” Tibor said. “I try not to listen to rumors, you know how I am, but this rumor is in so many places, it is impossible not to hear. There are people who say the college is paying him in excess of one hundred thousand dollars a year.”

“A college this size?” Bennis was shocked. “But that’s absurd.”

“It may not be true,” Tibor said.

Bennis blew a raspberry. “If it is true, I’d say the college got held up. I mean, The Literacy Enigma was a hardcover best-seller for forty weeks. The man has to be a millionaire by now. He can’t need the money.”

“I’d say that all depends on what you mean by need,” Gregor said. “In my experience, people can think of reasons to need as much money as there is. And more.”

“Yes,” Tibor said sadly. “I have heard that, too, Krekor. I think it is true.”

While they had been talking, Tibor had sat down on the couch, wedging his small compact body in between the literary Leaning Towers of Pisa, resting one arm on The Truth about Lorin Jones and the other on Thomas More’s Utopia. Now Gregor watched him get up and pace abstractedly to the window, his hands clasped behind his back in the classically stereotypical pose of a schoolmaster. He stopped when he got to the window and looked out on the quad. Then he leaned forward and pulled up the sash.

“Here,” he said, “here is something much more pleasant to talk about.” He formed his lips into a fish-circle and brought up a noise from the back of his throat, loud and raucous, that made Gregor jump.

“Here,” Tibor said again. “Here she is, Krekor, as I have told you. Lenore.”

What came through the open window was the largest raven Gregor had ever seen, so black and glossy its beak looked almost canary yellow. It hopped onto Tibor’s arm and then began to climb up his shoulder, moving carefully, as if it knew its talons could hurt and it was taking care not to hurt Tibor. It came to rest on Tibor’s shoulder.

“You look like Edgar Allan Poe,” Bennis said.

Tibor had been hunting around in his pockets. He came up with something small and round, put it in the center of his palm, and offered it to Lenore. The bird looked at it for a moment and then ate it.

“Hamburger,” Tibor said. “I feed her pastry, sometimes, but it is not right. Ravens are carnivores.”

“You carry hamburger around in your pockets for a bird?” Bennis said.

“I change it every day.”

Gregor thought the more proper question to ask in this case would have been: Why would anyone want to cultivate the friendship of something that looked so much like a harbinger of death? He wouldn’t have asked it, because he knew it was just one more manifestation of his skewed feelings about Halloween. As it turned out, he wouldn’t have had a chance to ask it even if he’d wanted to.

“Say ‘hello’ to Gregor and Bennis,” Tibor commanded the bird.

Lenore hopped off Tibor’s shoulder, flew into the room, and came to rest on the back of the empty wing chair. She stared first at Gregor, then at Bennis, then at Tibor. Then she opened her mouth and let out the most bloodcurdling scream Gregor had ever heard.

“I don’t understand,” Tibor said, “what’s that?”

Lenore jumped onto Tibor’s hand and said very clearly: “Bastard. Bastard, bastard, bastard.”





2


“THE REAL PROBLEM WITH Mattengill’s analysis of the sociocultural parameters of evidentiary psychosis,” the man ahead of them in line was saying, “is that it doesn’t take into account the essential functions of spatiotemporality.”

The college dining hall was a cafeteria—inevitable, Gregor would have realized, if he’d thought about it—and Tibor was leading their way down the line past the plates of Swedish meatballs and roast beef au jus. Beyond the line was a large, unusually graceful room, high ceilinged and marble floored, furnished with sturdy Shaker tables and high-backed chairs. Gregor had been under the impression that every college in the country had given up that sort of thing in favor of painted steel and laminated wood. The line itself, though, was the epitome of the twentieth-century American college dining hall aesthetic. It had stacks of rectangular plastic trays with rounded corners. It had heavy stainless steel tableware devoid of any ornament. It had a long tray-rest made of stainless steel tubes. Most of all, it had food: starchy, gelatinous, and colorless. It was food that promised fervently to be bland.