Mr. X. Peter Straub

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘Count of three, remember? One.’

      ‘Ned, please, you don’t own a knife. In fact, you are about as dangerous as a bunny rabbit.’ Smiling, he lowered his hands. ‘Let me buy you a cup of coffee. You could tell your problems to me, after which I will explain how to fix them, after which I will bore you with mine, after which we will drink a beer and decide our problems are not so serious after all.’

      ‘After which we will go back to your room and fix your boring problems by taking off our clothes.’

      ‘I’m not talking about that,’ Horst said. ‘Honestly. I am simply offering to be of help.’

      ‘Then simply get out of my way.’ I walked straight toward him, and he got out of my way.

      Later that afternoon, I sat frozen at the base of a giant oak and attended to the deep, nearly inaudible sound, as of powerful machinery at work, filtering up through the snowpack. Snatches of high-pitched music resounded either from the air itself or from the movement of the air through the branches. The music-laden air filled with grains of darkness, the grains coalesced, and the darkness blotted out the light.

      Wednesday morning, I saw my guitar case propped beside the door. The sight immediately suggested the inspiration of adding to the music of Jones’s Woods. I jumped out of bed.

      Having breakfasted on sour milk and Cape Cod potato chips, I edged into the quad, keeping a weather eye out for Horst. He did not show himself. Neither did my chemistry results, although Professor Medley’s conclusions had been posted on the board. While the names of everyone else in my section were followed by letters indicating their grades, after ‘Dunstan, Ned’ appeared only the nongrade ‘Inc,’ abbreviation-speak for ‘Incomplete.’ I stumbled back to my room and rammed the day’s nourishment into my coat pockets, remembering as I did so the summons from On High. Once again I entered the glum post office and found an official envelope pressed against the glass window of my box. Clive Macanudo: The Sequel. This time, he spelled my name right.

      Dear Mr Dunstan,

      I apologize for the secretarial error which resulted in the misspelling of your name throughout my letter of yesterday.

      This morning, Professor Arnold Medley of our Chemistry Department spoke to me concerning your performance in his Chemistry I course. Professor Medley greeted your results on his final examination with a great deal of surprise. As you submitted the only perfect examination of the Professor’s long experience and went on to solve several extra-credit questions, your numerical grade on the examination was 127 out of 100, or A++.

      Professor Medley is of the opinion that no student with grades consistently at or below the C level could have so greatly improved his grasp of the material as to earn an A++ on the final examination without unlawful assistance. I spoke on your behalf. Professor Medley agreed that at no time had he observed you cheating in any way and could offer no proof that you had not earned your result honestly. However, he found the result so anomalous as to justify his suspicions.

      We have reached the following accommodation. You shall retake the Chemistry I final examination under conditions of the strictest security and at your earliest convenience. I suggest 7:45 A.M. on this coming Friday, should you be present on campus, and if not, at 6:30 A.M. on January 20, immediately prior to our meeting concerning Mr Polk’s allegations. The retesting shall take place in my office, with Professor Medley and myself present. I take the liberty of recommending that you spend the intervening days in preparation.

      Sincerely yours,

      Clive Macanudo

      Dean of Student Affairs

      The usual sense of being home settled my nerves as soon as I entered the woods. The rushing in my ears yielded to the creaking of laden branches, the territorial chatter of birds, the clicks and taps made by squirrels in the course of their missions. Eventually I began to hear the trebles chiming from glittering icicles and soon after, the deep bass humming beneath the icepack. I opened the guitar case, took out my instrument, and reverently settled it into the hollow between my hunched shoulders and the tops of my thighs.

      Shortly before noon the next day, I awoke with no memory of having returned to the campus. I stumbled out of bed, sneezed thunderously, and thrust myself into the most convenient clothing. By force of habit I stopped into the mail-jail on the way out of the dormitory complex. Another official envelope had been jammed against the rectangular glass window. ‘Clive, baby,’ I said and tugged out the enclosed letter with great curiosity.

      Mr Dunstan,

      Once again the morning has been disrupted by a visit from one of your Professors. Your position here at Middlemount is in grave peril.

      Professor Roger Flagship demanded that I inspect the three blue books which you submitted to him upon conclusion of the final examination in Introductory Calculus. Professor Flagship informed me the examination was of the multiple-choice variety and that blue books were to be used for computation. He further informed me that he intended to take the steps necessary to effect your expulsion from Middlemount College. Not only had you failed the exam by correctly answering only twelve out of one hundred questions, you had subjected both his course and himself to mockery. Professor Flagship drew my attention to several obscene caricatures of himself contained within the blue books.

      Furthermore, Professor Flagship states that on the evening of the examination you appeared in his office to beg for the return of your blue books, a grade of Incomplete in Introductory Calculus, and an opportunity to repeat the course. Following his refusal of these extraordinary requests, you responded to his efforts to secure the blue books, which he had as yet not read, by pushing him back into his chair and then fleeing. He attributed your behavior to hysterical panic and chose not to bring it to my attention. The contents of the blue books decided him otherwise.

      After thoughtful consideration, also after factoring in the other matters before us, I ask you to report to our January 20 meeting at the originally designated time of 7:30 A.M. with any records, along with evidence of previous psychiatric treatment, which might assist me in protecting your position here at Middlemount College.

      To facilitate the search for your records, I am sending a copy of this letter to your guardians, Mr and Mrs Philip Grant of Naperville, Illinois.

      Sincerely yours,

      Clive Macanudo

      Dean of Student Affairs

      I blew my nose on Clive’s letter and pitched it into the waste-basket, more disturbed by his sending it to the Grants than by my imminent expulsion. Phil and Laura would understand that what I was doing was vastly more important than the pablum dished out in my classes.

      On my way back to the center of the universe I thought I caught a glimpse of a green loden coat and a flash of bright hair in the midst of the row of trees bordering the western end of the campus. The lovesick stalker vanished the instant I looked again, and I put him out of my mind.

      After an hour’s silent meditation had permitted me to hear the music in the air, after another hour of adding my part to it, a gathering sense of being as yet not absolutely in the right place caused me to get back on my feet and move deeper into the woods until I came upon the ruins of a cottage. I creaked open the door and beheld the rotted wooden walls, the single broken window, the litter of feathers, tiny skeletons, and dried animal feces on the dirty floor, and knew that here it was at last, the right place. It, too, was an instrument. Steady music flowed through the cottage, produced by the wind hissing through the gaps in the timbers and the patter of squirrels in the СКАЧАТЬ