.1.

he melody floats within the darkness like fog over Lake Michigan, then fades to an echo, only to come back again with the tug of desire on flesh. Philip Reiter has heard this music before, but he cannot place who wrote it. He looks down at his violin. The polished instrument presses against his cheek. Then a voice from above says, “Come, play.”

Philip tries to play. His long, delicate fingers hover above the strings of the violin. He positions the bow, and tries to move it, but his arm freezes and then begins to twitch. He cannot set the bow against the strings.

“Come, play,” the voice says louder.

“I can’t,” Philip shouts. He is growing more frustrated. He wants to move, but he does not have the strength.

“Play,” the voice demands. “This is your song. You must play it.”

“I can’t, professor,” Philip insists. “It’s not my song.”

“Play. Play,” the voice demands again.

Philip throws his violin to the floor and tries to stand up. Instead, he wakes with a start. He is sweating. What time is it, he asks himself sitting up in bed? Philip looks at his watch. It glows the time: 4:30. He stares into the darkened dorm room and looks over to his roommate, who is sound asleep. “Why do I keep having this stupid dream?” he whispers to the darkness. He can hear from outside the muffled sounds of Chicago. An ambulance siren wines far off, and a truck grinds its gears on the way to an early morning delivery, then the rush of the L passing. The darkness seems to eat all the noise of the city, all the sounds and all the music. A black pillow presses against the mouth of the world. Philip shuts his eyes and holds himself in the darkness with his bright hands. This music must come out of him.

 

have a way of getting rid of professor Burton and the union,” dean Nathan Faber says to Margaret Browne senior trustee of Dirkson University. Dean Faber thinks he is at the top of his game. He’s been dean of the performance college at Dirkson for two years now, after spending three years at Boyd Christian University in Texas. He came to Dirkson University with the understanding he would help raise the bar and create a “new level of excellence.”

The creation of a faculty union on campus came as a surprise to dean Faber. Even though he won’t say it out loud, the faculty union is also viewed by him as a setback. Things were going along just fine, and then these organizers arrived on campus, an election was held, and now he has to face negotiations for a contract. What irks Faber even more is that professor Burton heads the faculty negotiations committee. Dean Faber is of the conviction that gay men, and especially gay professors, should not stand in the way of what he wants. What he wants now is to get rid of the union and increase his stature in the eyes of the trustees.

“Just what do you have in mind, Nathan?” Margaret asks, sitting straight in her chair. Dean Faber notices that she has not changed her hair style since she was in a sorority more than 40 years ago. Nor has she changed her fashions. The dark dress Margaret wears is from another era and in the sunlight beaming into dean Faber’s high office, the dress looks somewhat dusty. Faber would have nothing but contempt for her, if it wasn’t for the fact that she is useful to him and his dealings with the board of trustees.

Dean Faber also senses that Margaret, who is now a widow with a large inheritance, harbors a fondness for him. The dean knows this attraction can be cultivated, and once he gets what he wants, the vice presidency of the university, he will put a stop to it. He does not let the thought of physical closeness between them even enter his mind. Just a hint of it fills him revulsion.

“I have my man in the field,” dean Faber says with pride. “I have a student keeping an eye on Burton. A good boy, one of Parker’s violin students. Ironically, the boy also needs an increase in his scholarship. Who knew?”

“You are too clever,” Margaret says with admiration, moving closer to dean Faber. She is about to touch him approvingly, when the dean suddenly moves from her reach.

“Sometimes I even surprise myself,” dean Faber remarks, standing with his chair between himself and Margaret.

“And our old university president will know nothing about this until Burton is out the door?” Margaret asks.

“Not a word.”

“Good. I’d like to be away on a cruise, when it all comes down. I don’t want anyone pointing a finger at me.”

“Not to worry,” dean Faber assures her.

Margaret gets up and walks over to look out the windows of dean Faber’s 20th floor office. She delights in watching the cars and people on the street below. She knows it is commonplace to see them as toys, small and capable of manipulation, but that does not bother her. Her head is filled with many commonplace thoughts. Unlike others, however, her bank account is filled with money, so now she can afford all the toys she wants.

“Are you sure you can get at the union by getting at Burton?” Margaret asks. “I don’t think a faculty union is good for Dirkson University,” she adds.

“Wait and see,” dean Faber says, as if offering her a challenge.

“Can you trust this student?”

“Philip will do what he is told. He is very impressionable. Besides, he is hungry and needs the scholarship money.”

“What are you going to tell him to do?”

There is a pause. dean Faber picks up a pencil from many he keeps in a leather wrapped jar on his desk. He rolls the pencil between his fingers, then taps it a few times on the fresh, green blotter styled to match the pencil holder. “I am going to suggest he offer himself to Burton for a good grade,” he says quietly.

“I see,” said Margaret. “Will professor Burton take the bait?”

“He will not resist it. This kid is perfect.”

“How perfect is perfect?” Margaret asks, intrigued by the deepening conspiracy.

“Perfect, as in malleable. By the time this is over, I’ll have Philip believing that it was Burton who forced himself on him. Besides, once the kid suggests he is open to it, Burton will be the one to make the offer, anyway.”

“Then what?” Margaret wonders.

“Then we turn it around. The professor violates a trust. There are sexual harassment charges, and bingo, no more professor Burton and no more faculty union negotiations.”

Margaret remains silent and turns back to looking out the high window. She likes being a part of this little plot. She feels she now has her hand on forces that shape the world. She never felt this way when her husband was alive. Thank God he’s dead, she thinks to herself, while reaching out to measure between her thumb and index finger just how small the toy cars seem beyond the glass in the street below.

 

he menu at Gourmand's coffeehouse is written with chalk on a blackboard. It has been erased and written over so many times, it’s hard to read. Professor Michael Burton looks at it and thinks this is how the soul may look in purgatory, before its many sins have been erased, “never quite clean, never quite immaculate.”

“Go ahead,” Philip says to professor Burton.

“Are you sure? I don’t mind paying,” the professor replies.

“That’s OK,” Philip says.

Professor Burton thinks this is a good sign. Philip can take care of himself. This realization brings a sense of calm over the professor. All morning he was worried about this meeting. Philip proposed the meeting last week asking for help on the final exam that will be in a month. Professor Burton said yes because he had already realized there was something special about this young man.

It was the first day of class. Professor Burton had finished an introductory lecture on modern poetry. He was letting the students go early. He stood by the classroom windows that faced Michigan Ave. talking to a young woman, making sure he had her correct social security number on the class roster, when a student approached from behind and said in a most musical voice, “You must be the teacher.”

Professor Burton turned and look directly into Philip’s eyes. He immediately felt something pass between him and Philip like a glaze of electricity or a vibration when two notes sound in harmony. Without even knowing what he was saying, professor Burton answered, “And you must be THE student.”

Now he and Philip are sharing a table at the campus coffeehouse, at ease with one another, doing the slow dance of language, the way some birds in their rituals, circle and stretch, bend their necks and touch their beaks.

Professor Burton cannot stop looking at Philip’s face. He likes the way Philip’s locks curl and then cascade down his forehead, the way his blue eyes dance, and the way the subtle curve of Philip’s nose shows his European, Jewish heritage three generations back. Philip also has a certainess about him, a certainess that often comes from those who are young and most uncertain.

Philip’s fingers delight professor Burton as well. They are long and delicate, perfect for the violin. Even when he gestures, professor Burton can see how Philip’s fingers might hold the bow or press down on the strings. Perhaps it would be better if these hands were in gloves, professor Burton, thinks, for as they are now, naked and flesh alive, they expose the mystery that makes music.

“When is your recital?” professor Burton asks Philip. The words are said with anticipation, it is as if he were asking Philip for a kiss.

 

hilip sits almost frozen in the chair that faces dean Faber's heavy desk. He is nervous, the way he gets nervous before a recital, but he will not show it.

“The next time you have coffee with professor Burton, you have to show a little more skin,” dean Faber says. Do you have a tanktop you can wear?”

“It’s still cold out.” Philip says petulantly.

“It’ll warm up. Remember, you want this faggot to make a pass at you.”

“I don’t think he’ll do it. This is a bad idea.”

Dean Faber gets up and walks behind the chair where Philip sits. He places his hand on Philips’ left shoulder. A shock races through the young man’s body. Philip likes the approving touch of a man’s hand on his shoulder, but this is a cold touch, the way winter touches a rose. Philip turns and stands up.

“OK, I’ll wear a tanktop.”

“Good. Now, sit down.”

“When I came to you for help with my scholarship, I didn’t know things would get this complicated.”

“You're the one who wanted to play detective.”

“I thought if the violin doesn’t pan out, I’d need a second career. Law enforcement seems interesting.”

“Well, here you go, you’re an apprentice detective, now.”

“I think you have the wrong opinion of professor Burton.”

“When will you two be meeting again?”

“Tuesday. We meet on Tuesdays now for coffee.”

“In the school cafe?”

“No. We meet down the street at Gourmand’s.”

“Do you think you could go over to his apartment afterwards?” the dean asks.

“For what?”

“Don’t be coy, young man. You know what.”

“I don’t think he likes me that way.”

“Believe me, he does.”

“You seem to know a lot about faggots, dean Faber.”

“I have to. There are a lot of them in higher education.”

“Well, I’m just a sophomore,” Philip says apologetically.

“That’s all right. You have a lot to learn.” There is a silence as dean Faber thinks of changing his course. He decides to tack in a different direction.

“Just think of the service you are doing for the university,” he says, “and your scholarship. By exposing people like professor Burton everyone wins. Your parents aren’t spending their hard earned money so creeps like him can pray on their sons, are they, now?”

Philip is silent. Time seems to pause for him. He looks directly ahead and stares into an emptiness that embraces the cold office. He seems to be listening to a voice only he can hear.

“Are they?” dean Faber repeats sharply.

Snapping back to the melody of reality, Philip answers automatically, “No, sir, no they’re not.”

 

rofessor Burton likes the casual atmosphere of Gourmand's coffeehouse. Mismatched tables and chairs, old sofas that came from a resale shop, an eclectic mix of people, they all make him feel comfortable. He knows by Philip’s relaxed posture that he likes the environment, too.

“I’m surprised you didn’t know about this place last semester?” professor Burton remarks.

“Yea. I have you to thank for bringing me here. I didn’t know it even existed. It’s nice.”

“I don’t know much about music, either,” professor Burton says to Philip, hoping to establish a rapport of ignorance. About all I remember is when I was in grammar school we learned the notes and scales. I’ll never forget that. “Every Good Boy Does Fine.” That’s how to recall the names of the lines, E, G, B, D, F.”

“That’s cool,” Philip says with an air of disinterest.

“And the spaces are, F, A, C, E, right? They spell the word “face.”

“May I ask you something, professor?” Philip interrupts.

“Sure. But I want to ask you something first.”

“OK, what?”

“Aren’t you cold with that tanktop on?”

Philip laughs, and says, “No, I’m fine.”

“Now your turn,” the professor says and smiles.

“Are you gay?”

“Yes.” Michael says without even a second thought about answering. “Does it matter?” Michael adds. He wants to continue and ask the same question of Philip, but he decides now is not the time.

“No, it doesn’t matter,” Philip answers. “I had a gay English teacher in high school, too.”

“Well, then, there you are.”

“I wish I could get more into your class, but a lot of it is boring.”

“It is boring, Philip, because you are half asleep.”

“I have a lot of stress in my life, with my recital coming and all,” Philip says defensively.

“Reading is a way of dealing with stress.”

“The violin is my life,” Philip answers. “I don’t care to read much.”

“You don’t like the poems we read in class, then?”

“To be honest, they’re boring, too.”

“You don’t have to be THAT honest.”

“I’m sorry, but what can I say?” Philip adds.

“That’s all right. It’s my job to make them interesting.”

“I like your lectures, though.”

“There’s something to build on. Everything on the final is in my lectures. Listen up and you’ll do well.”

“Maybe there’s something else I can do to get a good grade?” Philip asks boldly.

“What do you mean by that?”

Philip looks the other way, out the window, at the snarled traffic on Dearborn. Professor Burton notices the young man is blushing. Then Philip turns to look at his professor. “Oh, nothing,” he says. “Forget I even said that.”

 

.2.

Somewhere between graduate school and middle age, Nathan Faber concluded he would take from life power instead of love. He is not especially evil in doing this, nor is he alone. Dean Faber’s choice has been the choice of many men before. Now, he takes delight in orchestrating the biggest scandal Dirkson University may ever know. Of course he’ll keep the student's name out of the newspaper, but professor Burton may never work as a teacher again once his abuse story breaks. That’s just fine with Faber. He believes faculty unions are bad news for administrators, especially ambitious ones.

Dean Faber rocks back in his chair. He surveys his office. It is adequately furnished, but the furniture is old. He would like a new set of chairs to fill one corner. He can’t decide if he should fix up this office to his taste, or hold off a year. By then he plans to be in the office of the vice president, and he can go all out and order leather lounge chairs. People have always said he has good taste.

Sunlight from an early May afternoon beams in through the window. From his chair dean Faber sees the wide lake, and he also has a clear view to the horizon. The pale blue of the sky forms a line against the darker blue of the lake water. When he looks out there he sees a vastness resting on the bow of the earth. The more he looks, the more he sees into his own mind and his memories of when he was a student at Augusta College in Missouri.

There was a student, then, who played on the college Lacrosse team. They shared a dorm room. He would come home from practice, and then shower off the mud with the bathroom door open as Faber tried to study. How could anyone read their books with all that steam in the room? It was in this room, too, that Faber suffered his first wound. It was the wound given to him by his roommate’s beauty.

One night, after a fraternity party where there was too much beer, Faber reached out to touch that beauty. That is how he was wounded. He vowed never again to get hurt. He vowed to show them all that he could be better than any of them. He vowed to overcome his temptation. The power to do this was in him, he knew it, and that power would grow more and more as he achieved success in the world.

Graduation, an MBA, and then a doctorate of education were all accomplishments for Faber. He kept to himself, and only made friends if he could use them to keep moving upwards. Now, he is dean at Dirkson University, poised to become the vice president. After that, well, he will show them all, especially that weak willed professor Burton.

Dean Faber does not like professor Burton because he thinks the professor is too obvious in his confessions of love. That is a sign of weakness for the dean. Faber feels the urge to put down anyone who does this. Even though dean Faber and professor Burton met socially just a few times, dean Faber sees the weakness to confess in the books Burton uses in his classes, books of poetry that claim to put love before power. Dean Faber also reads the articles professor Burton writes. He thinks they are academic justifications for moral laxity, so he keeps careful note of the rumors that circulate around Dirkson University about professor Burton’s interest in young men. Dean Faber is certain professor Burton is a scandal waiting to happen. If he didn’t have to deal with Burton in those union negotiations, then he would look right though the man if ever they were in the same room. How Burton became head of the faculty union, is beyond Faber's belief. Perhaps the faculty realized, too, things were going to become difficult with union negotiations and they had to throw a sheep to the wolves.

Dean Faber thinks that Philip Reiter is the perfect bait for his hook. The dean is proud of how brilliant his choice is to use this young man. When Philip first came to his office asking for a letter to get his scholarship increased, the plan came to him in an instant. Faber could not help but be drawn also to the young man’s eyes. They reminded him of that Lacrosse player of so many years ago. Philip was not as well built as the young many from Missouri, but he had that same raw energy, that youthful polish of arrogance that time and the friction of age so soon dulls.

Dean Faber rocks back further in his chair and puts his hands over his eyes. He blocks out the light of afternoon and returns again to that vision of beauty he saw as an undergraduate. He is surprised how vivid that emotion remains after so many years. He drifts off into the opaque air that is day dreaming. There, in the space of thought, he reaches after the perfect body, and the perfect embrace of love.

That perfection comes to him like a shape out of the fog, growing clearer as sleep advances. His strength evaporates slowly like water in a pond to show the sediment of what he always wanted. Now, he sees it, the clear eyes and the curls. Yet, to his surprise, it is an image of Philip’s face that fills his dream. He knows, too, that the music he hears is Philip’s music. What difference does it make, Faber wonders? He reaches to hold the naked vision before him, happy yet terrified.

 

hilip Reiter knows and he doesn’t know. That’s the way it is in the life of one verging on being the wise fool that is a sophomore. Philip knows what he loves, but yet he does not know the word for it. Until now, Philip’s life was made up of days doing what he was told. Now, he wants something more. He wants to be what he is, to embrace his destiny as he can figure it out. He is learning much this semester, but if he is going to learn humility any time soon, then he will have to learn about love, for the lover must do what love demands in all humility.

Philip knows what to do to make his violin sing, but he does not know yet where to find the courage to make his heart sing with another. Nor does he know what his heart wants. He had a girl friend in high school, but that was all conventional and necessary. She was beautiful in an ordinary way and she satisfied the demands of having someone near, but now, in college, and in the big city for the first time, Philip notices there are other ways to love, there are other relationships to make.

Maybe I should be a detective, Philip sometimes thinks. His brother wants to go into law enforcement, why shouldn’t he? There are afternoons when Philip has no classes and he will walk the downtown streets watching people pass by. Then, he will find a man who looks attractive and just follows him. Maybe the man gets into a cab or turns and enters an office building. On other occasions, Philip will follow a man for blocks only to see him meet another man, and then go into a bar. Philip will notice how intimate the two men are and he thinks that maybe they share a music he should listen to and learn to play. Philip realizes that professor Burton listens to this music, too.

There are rumors in the dorm about professor Burton. Philip hears them and pretends he does not. That poetry class he now takes with the professor is an elective, but he still needs a good grade to maintain his scholarship, so why not see if those rumors are true, Philip reasons. Besides, he is drawn to the professor just because professor Burton is so different. All his life Philip has been around musicians. He knows already the ins and outs of operas and string quartets. Both his parents play in the Des Moines, Iowa symphony orchestra. This man, professor Burton, however, is from another world. He can find a universe in a few lines of poetry. Philip decides he wants to follow him one day and see where he goes.

When dean Faber first approached Philip about having an affair with professor Burton, Philip was excited. He shared for a moment the joy the dean takes in using power. Philip, too, will have power now. Philip will be part of a secret and has something to gain as well. This excitement is short lived. As Philip became closer to his professor he discoveres he is growing to like him. Philip doesn’t have to follow strangers in the street anymore. He can spend time with professor Burton and get a glimpse of another world, another world he may someday want to visit. Philip begins to feel guilty about dean Faber's offer. The dean’s conspiracy against the professor does not seem right. Philip is worried and now he has bad dreams.

 

ll through Michael Burton’s life the bride of love carried in her train a shadow of death. If love means giving yourself to another, then that giving may also mean dissolving your identity. That grain of salt from which we all mature dissolves back into the sea. Death and sex sometimes go hand in hand. The metaphysical poets often spoke of dying in the arms of their beloved. Sometimes Philip thought he might have a destiny like that. To find a lover would be to find his death, especially if he searches for love in the wrong places.

Michael thinks of this when he thinks of Philip's beauty. This beauty strikes Michael sometimes as a deadly beauty. Is Philip the angel of death who comes to Michael in disguise? To kiss Philip on the mouth would be to have Michael’s breath taken away. Michael will tell you he did not seek out this dilemma. All he did was turn around, and Philip was standing there like all the loose ends of Michael’s life. Now he must speak about it, for when the knot of love in the soul is untied, language is let loose.

When you live alone, you may obsess on impossible affairs. After a while, you don’t even hear the white noise of prejudice that is broadcast throughout the world. Like background music, it is there but it is also not there. The man with a wife and children drinks his joy from the cup of life and in drinking imagines all men have an equal portion. Michael knows better. The little rivulet of love from which Michael drinks when he sees Philip’s face leads to the same river from which we all drink, but it is a different portion. From these waters, too, comes the mud of lust and the poison of scandal. Imagine, just a few months ago Michael thought he could never love again, and now he is in the thick of an impossibility. All he knows to do is weep, the way a warrior weeps after battle.

Late one afternoon, as he was leaving his office, Michael heard the sound of a violin coming from down the hall. The music students often use empty classrooms to practice, and Michael thought he would follow the sound and see who was playing. To his delight it is Philip. Just as Philip finishes the piece he is practicing, Michael sticks his head in the classroom and asks if he could watch and listen. Philip beams with a smile and encourages Michael to sit and watch him play. Philip was hoping for such an occasion. This is Philip’s way of giving a part of himself away.

Michael sits to the side as Philip plays an etude, then a piece by Bach. Philip’s fingers run over the strings like the legs of a horse running in bright water of the shoreline. The notes on the page are a foreign language to Michael, so he marvels at the way Philip reads them without stuttering. Michael is spellbound by Philip’s music. He watches the young man accept the music into his body and give it out again with his fingers. Michael does not know the name of the song, but he wishes he could play along with Philip, and how he wishes he could live with that music.

It is with that wish Michael realizes Philip may be his last student. There are only so many gifts given to us. Michael has had his share. Now, Michael only hopes that the vision of beauty and joy he see in Philip’s gestures are but a part of the beauty and joy in the world to come. It would be a shame if all our music comes to ashes, he thinks. It would be a shame if all our poems go to waste, too. Michael realizes then that he will never force Philip to give himself away. Michael will only exchange love for love. That will make an eternal difference. Every good boy does fine.

 

.3.

Life on a college campus is measured by the sacred calendar of semesters, not the secular calendar of months that runs the ordinary world. Spring semester begins when the days grow dark early and ends usually in May with a new world in bloom. After final exams, the last few days are a round of packing up, rushing to finish what should have been finished earlier, and saying good-bye. For students, life moves from one bright day to another. For their teachers there is a pause in reading, too, there is a chance to shut the covers on the book of futility. If there is a teacher in love with one who he has taught, then there is a small book of poems to read over and over again. This is the book of letting go.

Lost in the rush of packing and good-byes is the memo the administration circulated about the untimely death of trustee Margaret Browne. She was on a cruise to the Antarctic, only to be found dead in her stateroom one morning. The cause of death seemed to be a heart attack, but more information will follow in another memo. Some say her heart could not stand the cold. The present memo is printed on pink paper and seems more official than condoling. Notice is mentioned of her service to the university community, the fact that a memorial will be held at a future date and that Margaret Browne had endowed the university with even more money. There is a rumor, too, following this memo that the new performance hall the university recently acquired on north Wabash will be named after her. Michael pins the memo to the bulletin board in his office, and then leaves to meet for the last time with Philip.

After his recital on Sunday, Philip will be heading home to Iowa, and then on to a summer music camp in Colorado. Michael plans to attend Philip’s recital, but will probably not have an opportunity to talk with Philip there. Those music affairs can be so clannish, with the musicians sitting in little knots of like company. Michael also knows that Philip is made anxious by this approaching recital, so at their last meeting for coffee he wants to bring something that would be a token of good luck. When Michael saw a poster in the campus bookstore the other day, it occurred to him that it would be the right gift for Philip.

With Philip's poster rolled under his arm, Michael pass through the revolving doors of Dirkson University’s campus center and steps onto Michigan Avenue. The buzz of traffic distracts his thoughts, as he walks the few blocks to Gourmand’s. Michael wonders on the ways of the world. Truly, it is a strange place, offering us a vision of what we want, and then taking it away, Truly it is strange that each has within himself a dark place of hunger, and an empty place of loss. Does Philip know yet that he is both slayer and victim? Michael wonders, too, why language or music is the cure for all this affliction.

It is his study of poetry that in the end brings peace to Michael’s heart. He knows that what happens in a poem does not happen in the world. Instead, what happens in a poem is a window to what may happen in the world to come. This will be the same for Philip’s music, too, even though at the moment Philip is unaware of his future. It is next to impossible to hold on to beauty in this world as Michael’s aging hands and Philip’s bright profile show. What little we keep of beauty is a treasure stored in the twin chests of melody and poetry. The lightning that happened the first day Michael and Philip met is the key to unlock these treasures.

Upstairs, in dean Faber’s office, the lights of ordinary days will be burning late. The dean has been on the phone all day with the trustees. Negotiations with the faculty union are going badly, when they were not supposed to be going at all. Professor Burton seems to be getting the upper hand. Dean Faber had promised to solve this union problem for the trustees, but Philip never came back for another appointment. Philip just left a short message on dean Faber's voice mail saying he found a good summer job, and did not need an increase in his scholarship after all. The message ended with Philip saying he decided to take a pass on being a detective. I’ll have to look more closely into that boy’s scholarship, dean Faber thinks, then he paces his office angrily like a landlord whose harvest of grain was nibbled away by an army of unseen mice.

When Michael and Philip meet at Gourmand’s, they both greet one another with a reserved tone. The final grades are in. Philip will learn soon he earned an A on his poetry exam. Although it was a close call, professor Faber had to give him the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes, students get grades based not only on what they know, but also on what they will come to know. Michael believes Philip will come to know one day the mystery of a poem, and perhaps the mystery of love, too.

Now, student and teacher talk as friends, but each will not say what they can only say in a poem or a song. Philip will not mention how he tried to trick the professor and ended up admiring him. Michael will not say how Philip plays his heart strings as well as he plays the violin. There would not be poems or songs in the world if every lover found his way to say or sing it all.

“You know, Philip, teaching is not a one-way street. Teachers also learn from their students,” Michael says.

“Even after I told you I was bored with your class?”

“I learned much from you. You brought a new song into my life. So, I want you to have this.”

“What is it?” Philip asks, expectantly.

Michael passes a large brown envelope across the table to Philip. “It is a poster I saw in the bookstore,” Michael continues softly, as Philip opens the envelope. “It seemed perfect for you. The Hebrew is from the book of Isaiah the prophet. It means, ‘Sing unto the Lord a new song.’”

“It’s like you’re saying goodbye,” Philip says.

“Maybe.”

“Hey, I’ll be back in the fall.” Philip says laughing.

“I hope to be back as well,” Michael adds.

“I learned more than you think, this semester, professor.”

“I believe you,” Michael says. “Now, the next step is to be honest, to put it into words.”

 

hat Sunday afternoon, Michael puts on his blue suit, and wears a light blue, striped tie. He attends Philip’s recital. Michael sits near the back of the O’Brian Room where the recital is held. The room has been restored to its original Victorian splendor with period furniture, a massive fireplace and gilded frames around 19th century prints. This room is the perfect, intimate space to hear the voice of one violin.

Michael listens as Philip plays. Only once during the recital did their eyes meet. At that moment, as short as a flash, a recognition of truth is exchanged. Michael tells Philip by a glance that he knows how Philip would have used him. A whisper of what dean Faber planned escaped its bamboo cage, and like a little bird it darted here and there around campus, sometimes just heard but never seen. It went from ear to ear, and eventually one of Michaell’s colleagues on the unionl’s negotiating committee mentioned to him that he ought to be careful. This was confirmation of what Michael had suspected. Michael realized there would not be suspicion in his heart if there had not first been temptation.

The music Philip plays fills the air and is carried forward like time itself. Philipl’s fingers flash across the violin's strings the way fire moves to light. Then, something closes in Michael, but not before the silence that poems carry escapes like perfume. Michael knows that his heart has turned his wound into words. He shuts his eyes and listens. There is a rustle of heavy drapes from the open window as a breeze off the lake refreshes the room. Philip seems puzzled for a moment as he plays, then he looks down to the sheet music open like sails before him.

 

[END]

© 2004 Robert Klein Engler - Contributor's Bio

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