Ten Ways of Disappearing

Abstract

I. Manners In 1326: Cambridge scholars were forbidden to frequent taverns, introduce dogs within college precincts, wear short swords with peaked shoes, play flutes, or use catapults. --The Story of Cambridge, Dr. Charles Stubbs, Dean of Ely, 1905 I'm going running again, even though I despise the awkward gym-class feel of sweaty clothes and ragged breaths. In my college room, sturdy wood beams arc through the afternoon glow of my attic window; bars of light and shadow cage me as I dress in a gray jogging outfit, bright new shoes, and a rain slicker. Downstairs, I burst into the musty air at a trot that carries me past lawns that each day a troupe of funereal gardeners comb into squares, like checkerboards. Occasionally another runner, usually a rower or rugby player, passes me with a furtive nod to indicate that we both belong to a secret society here: The Club of People Who Sweat. It's March in Cambridgeshire, and I'm running exactly at sea level. I should be sinking, mired in spongy earth and inland fjords. This ear-shaped bit of England, long famous for flooding and eels, protrudes into the Atlantic due northeast from London. Once part of the Kingdom of East Anglia, into the Middle Ages it afford[ed] only deep mud, with sedge and reeds, and possessed of birds, yea, much more by devils. But a series of conquerors, starting with the Romans, dredged and drained these fenlands long ago. Reeds, sedges, devils--all have vanished. Now the land grows aubergines, tulips, culture, onions, and scholars. It also breeds a certain madness, a polite malaria: sherry at five; at eight, port darker than blood drained into crystal; brandy before bed; Paternoster to the sound of a dinner gong as we undergraduates stand stiff-necked over stewed prunes, waiting for the old dons at high table to settle onto ornate chairs long on intimate terms with the backsides of lords. I arrived here in September from America very sincere, very scholarly, armed with certain beliefs. I knew that the rich noblewoman Elizabeth de Clare established Clare College in 1338 to replace the number of [educated] men having been taken away by the fangs of pestilence--the bubonic plague. And I believed I would join a hallowed group of scholars who read by lamplight in stone garrets. Now, seven months later, I imagine myself as Alice, long since passed through the silver membrane of looking glass, cataloging the rules of this odd world: Don't set one foot upon the grass. Drop the eyes when speaking. Dress by day in the colors of weathered stones. Never admit ignorance. Only prostitutes wear beads, and black stockings are questionable. Don't cook garlic, nor eat it, nor--especially--breathe it upon others. Mention weather. Don't mention family. Never say suspenders in mixed company, although swat is perfectly all right. Never discuss love except as a literary construct. Apologize a great deal very insincerely for tiny infractions. Ignore the big crimes. Never lay a hand on a friend's shoulder. Don't, for God's sake, cry. Don't don't never never: When the refrain grows too loud I put on my gray sweat-quit and pound the ground with the balls of my feet. In the pasture to my left, the Kings College cows low softly while men in blue caps buff them to a perfect black-and-white gloss. This path runs nearly as straight as a survey line along the channeled stream of the Cam, three miles to the little village of Grantchester. I struggle along, my lungs a slow burn, watching the unswollen river. Among the stately trees along its banks, the leaves have started; my favorite copper beech will soon drop red tendrils into the water, and the willows will weep and weep. Before long I arrive, soaked, at the end of the line--the lone Grantchester pub with its white chickens pecking at the ground and its bitter beer and meat pasties under glass cases. A woman, fortyish, dressed in a charcoal wool sweater, tends bar. …