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Disappearance, Part II

McInerny mysteries site

Father Dowling short story

DISAPPEARANCE OF AN AUTHOR

by Ralph McInerny

When Ned Doremus cut the Gordian knot and decided to keep his engagement to speak and sign copies of his new book at Notre Dame, reactions were mixed. For two weeks campus bulletin boards had announced the triumphant return of an alumnus who had achieved literary acclaim before turning 30. His biography of Ambrose Bierce was a nominee for the National Book Award, a featured selection of the History Book Club and first alternate of the Book of the Month. Quarter page ads, underwritten by the publisher, had appeared every other day in The Observer announcing a talk on "Disappearance of an Author." A scheduling conflict and adverse local reaction gave added interest to the prospective event. Professor Petit of the English department who had notoriously been working on Ambrose Bierce for decades accused the former student of stealing his material.

"I feel that my lecture notes have been published," Petit said. He was an unkempt man whose beard seemed a sin of omission rather than a conscious decision. The hard gemlike flame of scholarship in his deep-set eyes had dimmed to pedantry and paranoia. In order to take his seminar, students had to sign a quasi-legal document promising not to steal his ideas.

Tracked down in a mall in Denver, Doremus chuckled over the phone. "I never took a class from Petit."

The irate professor dismissed this. "Doubtless he had accomplices."

Roger Knight, the Huneker Professor of Catholic Studies and a friend of both Petit and Doremus, was dismayed by the accusation.

"So why doesn't he sue him?" Philip Knight asked, his body turned toward his brother, but his eyes still on the television screen where Notre Dame was struggling against Georgetown in the Garden. Moving to Notre Dame had been nearly fatal to Phil's career as a private investigator. He had taken to Notre Dame sports like a compulsive drinker.

"It's not that simple."

His enemies accused Petit of dining out on his unwritten definitive book on Bierce throughout his academic career. He had successfully received grant after grant to work on what he promised would be the definitive critical study of the Indiana author whose literary career had begun after serving in the Civil War. The date and place of Bierce's birth were known but his life had ended mysteriously when he disappeared in Mexico, a disappearance some had thought a publicity stunt. The hostile estimate of Petit was: All windup and no delivery. Others spoke of the need for a long patience if anything worthwhile was to be produced. "Gibbon didn't write the Decline and Fall in a day."

"I thought Doremus couldn't come," Phil said.

"He had a conflict." Without checking his calendar, Doremus had agreed to speak at the library in Elkhart, the town that claimed Bierce as a native son, on the same afternoon he was scheduled to appear at the Notre Dame bookstore. His publisher had committed him to Notre Dame but Doremus felt obligated to Elkhart where he had spent some productive weeks in preparing his book. His Elkhart hosts were understandably irate when on short notice Doremus told them he could not be with them on the scheduled night. A telephone conversation had ended on an angry note and was followed by a flurry of e-mails. Elkhart was the city with a heart in it and clearly Doremus had broken it.

Roger Knight had half hoped Doremus would decide in favor of Elkhart and not stir Petit into further excessive reaction. Howard Petit's mastery of the San Francisco school was uncontested. An evening spent with him was an unequivocal delight. While speaking with Roger, Petit displayed none of the paranoia that had come to characterize his dealings with students and colleagues. At his last Modern Language Association appearance he had abandoned the podium, crying "Thief! Pirate!" when he saw that someone was taping his talk. A plurality of prima donnas is a logical impossibility, perhaps, but a plurality of rivals for the role is possible. Petit's behavior had made him a pariah among his putative peers.

"Of course I shall attend his talk," Petit said to Roger, searching his beard in a simian way. "I shall sit in the front row and shame him into silence."

"Howard, if you have influenced Doremus . . . "

"Influenced! Does a page influence a photocopying machine?"

"Are you saying his book is plagiarism?"

"It's deeper than plagiarism. He has pilfered my soul."

Letters to the editor of The Observer were divided on the matter, some siding with Doremus, others with Petit. One disgruntled and anonymous graduate student had calculated that Petit's total published output on Bierce would not amount to an eighth of Doremus's book. That summarized the dispute. On the one hand, an actual book, published, available in bookstores everywhere, on the other, a dreamt-of definitive work that had defined Petit's scholarly life for over a quarter of a century. Apples and oranges had more in common.

Bruce Turnip of the Notre Dame Bookstore in the Eck Center -- 'Eck + Eck = X' was one of Roger's less successful mots -- had been put in charge of Doremus's visit. When arrangements were first made, the biographer had promised to be only another in the stream of authors who passed through the bookstore touting their works, signing copies, speaking to a few dozen readers about their careers. But Doremus's book had suddenly become nationally famous. The local conflict seemed only a plus to Turnip.

"It's being talked about," he said to Roger, searching with his tongue for the opening in the plastic cap of his gourmet coffee. "We were holding back copies until the signing but people were buying the book at Barnes and Bubble. We can't have that. It's become a phenomenon."

Turnip finally found the aperture and burned his tongue with overheated coffee.

"It's not just being talked about, Bruce. Serious accusations have been made."

"Petit? He's crazy, isn't he?"

Roger closed his eyes in pain. "Eccentricity in a professor is to be cherished, not criticized."

"Why doesn't he write his own book?"

Perhaps when one's life is defined by a constant flow of new and ephemeral volumes, another book seems a mere bagatelle. How painful it must be to authors to see their work treated as merely one more grain in the pile left by the sands of time. But when a book has all the allure of the possible, the not-yet-written, a perfect product awaiting just around the corner of time, comparison with actual books might seem obscene. Petit was offended by the indisputable thereness of the former student's biography of Bierce. How could it compare with the scholarly grail he had been pursuing down the years?

"Howard," Roger said to Petit. "There are biographies and biographies. I have only just found Max Saunders' two volume work on Ford Madox Ford. There must have been half a dozen others published before his."

"There have been popular works on Bierce," Petit allowed. His chin rose as he sought the best lens in his poly-focal glasses. "Entertainment, not scholarship."

The solid presence of Ned Doremus' book on Petit's desk did not look dismissible.

"I believe there were several previous serious lives of Ford," Roger said.

"He has stolen my life as well as Bierce's, Roger." Petit spoke with an anguish that touched Roger Knight's heart. "He has wrested the banner from my hands."

What inflated images the scholar forms of his life's work. Did Petit fancy he was engaged in warfare, leading the forces of truth and beauty against the Philistines? Then surely he should imagine Doremus on the other side, not usurping his role as leader.

When Roger Knight had been offered the Huneker Chair of Catholic Studies at Notre Dame, he and his brother Philip had moved from Rye, New York,. to the campus in northern Indiana. Phil had cut back severely on the jobs he took as private investigator, spinning from one athletic season to another like a drunk making a tour of taverns. Roger's academic appointment enabled him to put his enormous eclectic fund of knowledge to use; he became an academic free variable, who could offer any course that came under the ample umbrella of his title.

The anonymous letter from the graduate student had suggested that there was disenchantment among Petit's current students. One afternoon, Priscilla Dexter, a doctoral candidate, came by Roger's office and asked if they could talk. She had sat in on his F. Marion Crawford seminar. Priscilla closed the door after she had entered and sat when Roger had cleared a chair of books.

"Coming along the corridor, I smelled tobacco," Priscilla said.

"Decio offices are the last redoubt of the smoker."

"Do you smoke?" She sniffed the air as she spoke.

"No."

"May I?"

"Of course."

Her hands seemed nervous as she lit her cigarette. She expelled smoke without inhaling it, as if the cigarette were a prop. "I wrote that letter to The Observer."

Roger knew at once that she meant the anonymous letter criticizing Petit for his attacks on Doremus.

"He thinks he owns the things he studies. You know he half resented your seminar on Crawford."

"I suggested to him that we do it together."

She puffed again at the cigarette and then looked around. "Can I put this out?"

Roger found an ashtray in a lower drawer and she tamped out the filter tipped cylinder. "The reason I wrote that letter? A friend of mine, my fiancé actually, is writing his dissertation under Petit." She paused and laughed joylessly. "He has been at it for 11 years. He has tentative approval of two chapters out of a projected seven. If Petit has his way, Germain will never finish."

"Germain Douceur?"

Priscilla nodded. "He sat in on your Crawford seminar too."

"A brilliant young man. I thought he was on the faculty."

"He has been teaching for years, graduate student slave labor. If it weren't for his teaching, he might have gone mad."

Roger was in a delicate position. It would not do to discuss a colleague in this way with a student. It was sometimes difficult to avoid such conversations with other professors, but the line had to be drawn with students, even graduate students as bright and talented as Priscilla.

"Germain can't bring himself to ask you, but he has talked of little else for months. He wants you to become at least the co-director of his dissertation."

"What is his topic?"

"The composition of The Devil's Dictionary."

Roger would have fallen back in his chair if he had not already completely filled it. A dissertation on Ambrose Beirce! He looked sadly at Priscilla.

"I doubt that Professor Petit would agree to that."

"But he will never let Germain finish!"

Roger acknowledged in the privacy of his own mind the seriousness of the problem. It was one thing for Howard Petit to grouse about a published book, it was quite another for him to stand athwart the academic career of a young scholar -- if that is what he was doing. Roger suggested to Priscilla that Germain should come talk about it with him.

"You mustn't tell him I spoke to you about it!"

"Can't you tell him to come see me?"

"He'd guess. Please invite him, won't you? He is such an admirer of yours."

The following day, Roger stopped at Howard Petit's office when he arrived in Decio. Petit's door was ajar and the acrid smell of tobacco seeped through the opening. There was a gorilla grunt in response to Roger's knock and Roger pushed the door open. Petit was huddled over an ancient microfilm reader, pipe clinched in his mouth, peering at the scratched and yellowing screen. Finally he looked up. At the sight of Roger, he took the pipe from his mouth.

"His last letters to his editor." Petit hunched a shoulder at the reader.

"Ah."

"Scholars have professed to find no inkling of his coming disappearance."

Thus without preamble Petit introduced the topic of Ambrose Bierce's disappearance in Mexico when he went there as a journalist to cover the uprising of Pancho Villa.

"And you disagree."

"It's as plain as a pikestaff."

One of Petit's charms was that his cliches were so passé that they had the sound of newly minted metaphors. For 15 minutes he lectured Roger. "First, you extract all the verbs from the sentences. Next the subjects. The trick is to put them together in such a way that the coded message comes through." Great wit to madness is often near allied. Roger feared for his friend.

"What's the message?"

Petit hesitated, looking closely at Roger. "I haven't complete decoded it."

Had it come to this, that Howard Petit distrusted even Roger Knight? There was nothing mysterious about why Petit was working on this now of course. Clearly he was gathering ammunition for the coming talk by Ned Doremus on Bierce's disappearance.

"Will you be ready by day after tomorrow?"

Petit looked sly. "We'll see."

"I understand Germain Douceur is writing his dissertation with you."

Petit shook his head impatiently. "Obtuse fellow. It would be quicker if I wrote the thing for him."

"How long has he been at it?"

"He'll never finish."

"Never?"

"He hasn't the knack for scholarship. He'd rather teach." Petit said this with some disdain. He seemed to have the view that the university would be a perfect place if there were no students to disturb the work of the faculty. Petit put his pipe in his mouth and blew. There was a gurgling sound and Roger half expected to see brown bubbles emerge from the bowl. Petit threw the pipe on the desk. "He actually told me he thought Doremus had written a good book."

"Howard, it is not a bad book."

"That's because it is full of stolen ideas."

"You mustn't say that unless you can prove it."

"Prove it!"

"His publisher could take you to court."

"I would welcome it!"

Roger had come to know Ned Doremus when, on one of his furtive flying visits to the campus during the composition of the Bierce biography, the author had stopped by to see the Huneker Professor of Catholic Studies. Doremus had a vast if shallow command of his subject, but his missionary zeal to make Bierce better known seemed to compensate for the lack of depth. Doremus' eventual book was good of its kind, certainly no rival to what Petit presumably had been engaged on throughout his career. Petit would have been justified in thinking that the Doremus book was feeble fanfare for his own forthcoming definitive study. But a proprietary sense had taken possession of Howard Petit as if the years he had devoted to Ambrose Bierce gave him squatter's rights to the man and his works. No wonder he saw Doremus as a usurper.

Before Roger Knight could arrange to meet with Germain Douceur, Priscilla dropped a bomb shell in the academic council of which she was an elected student member. She proposed a motion of censure of Professor Howard Petit for offenses against academic freedom and infringement of the rights of students. The motion was seconded by a philosopher motivated by the palpable resentment of the motion among the other faculty members of the Council. Priscilla explained her motion in terms of the unconscionable attacks by Petit on Ned Doremus and his biography of Ambrose Bierce. As for student rights, she was prepared to submit detailed accounts of unjust treatment of graduate students by Petit. A committee was appointed to look into the matter but soon the word was out, the representative of The Observer having wakened from her nap when Priscilla spoke. Thus it was that, on the day before Ned Doremus was to appear on campus, the front page of The Observer was taken up entirely by the charges made against Professor Petit. Students had been interviewed. Petit's eccentricities were lavishly described, there was an unfocused photograph of the professor trying unsuccessfully to close his office door on an importuning photographer. At lunch in the University Club Petit was the topic at more than one table. Perhaps even he would have been dismayed at the reputation he had acquired among his colleagues.

Roger tried unsuccessfully to reach Howard by phone. After three rings, the receiver would be lifted and immediately replaced, more noisily each time. Roger rose from his chair like the Hindenberg Zeppelin rising from the Jersey landscape and shuffled down the hall to the elevator and rose to Howard's aerie on the fourth floor. The door was not ajar. Roger tapped lightly and said, "Howard, it's Roger Knight."

Silence. Then noises within. "Who?"

"Roger Knight."

The door opened tentatively. "It is you. Come in, come in." He gripped Roger's wrist and pulled him into the room. "I'm being attacked. Accusations are made. What is the meaning of it?"

It was not the moment to tell Petit that none of what he complained of would have happened if he had not himself attacked Ned Doremus. But when the door was shut and the light turned on, it was clear that Petit was defiant still. His furtiveness had suggested fear but it turned out to be cunning.

"They are trying to smoke me out, to show my cards, before I deal with Doremus." He smiled. "I am not that easily gulled."

Roger's heart sank. The glimpse through the half opened door of the apparently beaten Petit had been a far more attractive sight than the indignant scholar buckling on the armor or righteousness.

"I will crush him, Roger. Crush him."

"You'd do better to avoid the talk. You and I could have dinner . . ."

Petit shook away the suggestion. "You must come with me to the talk. As my second."

In whatever capacity, it was clear to Roger that he could not avoid the great confrontation between Howard Petit and Ned Doremus.