promise. That was as upbeat an assessment of my life as I’d heard in a long time.
“I’m glad you thought so. Not a promise kept, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Promises sometimes get fulfilled in unexpected ways.”
I want to get off my life and onto Pratt’s death, so I abandon transitions and make a leap.
“As I explained on the phone, Professor Abramson, Mrs. Pratt has asked me to talk to people here at the university to see if anyone might know something that would be helpful to the police in solving Dr. Pratt’s death.”
“His murder.”
“Well, yes, his murder.”
“One doesn’t solve death, does one? One solves a mystery or a crime.”
“Right. I guess no one has solved death, have they? Sorry.”
Abramson smiles faintly. I already regret accepting this job. When you’re looking into the popping rates of popcorn, no one looks through your eyes into the hollowness of your soul. You just deal with information, not motivation, not implication—not, for heaven’s sake, murder.
As is his custom, Professor Abramson senses my discomfort and tries to relieve it.
“Please forgive me for being pedantic, Mr. Mote. You can appreciate that we are still upset here about what happened. We not only lost a valued colleague in a terrible way, we are also a little worried for ourselves.”
“Why is that?”
“Until they know who killed Dr. Pratt, we can’t be sure it isn’t someone who would like to do the same thing to the rest of us.”
“The rest of who?” (Or should it be whom?)
“The English faculty. Or anyone here at the university for that matter. Things have changed since I began in the profession. It’s a much more … contentious place, as perhaps you noticed even when you were here.”
He is being careful. He is by nature reticent and doesn’t know how open to be with me, neither a student nor a colleague.
“How so?”
“It used to be you could argue about whether Milton ruined English poetry and then walk across the street and have a beer together. It was a difference of ideas, not of a clash of worldviews. Now everyone has an enemies list.”
“Enemies list?”
You can tell he wishes he hadn’t said it.
“Well, that’s too strong of course. It’s just that we used to divide ourselves by specialty or even century—Victorians, medievalists, Shakespearians—and we could talk to each other. Now we divide by ideology and politics and causes and we are infused with suspicion. It’s ironic, Mr. Mote. We have never been so opposed to talking about the moral dimension of literature, and yet we have never been more moralistic and judgmental. And whom do we judge most harshly? The great writers and thinkers of the past. They were, we convince ourselves, little more than imperialists, abusers of women, exploiters of the poor, defenders of a corrupt status quo. Their poems and novels and plays, once thought to be works of genius and insight and wisdom, are now paraded about like handcuffed prisoners being carted to the guillotine. And we, the teachers and scholars, lead the young in howling our abuse.”
Professor Abramson has picked up a small bust of Bartók from his desk and is rotating it in his hands. He is conducting, for the thousandth time, a painful conversation within himself, and the outcome can only be sorrowful.
“Not, of course, that any of this leads to murder. But combine an atmosphere of accusation and suspicion with a student who is running up huge tuition bills and has been abandoned by his girlfriend and who believes all the latest conspiracy theories and has just had his dissertation rejected and … .”
Abramson stops abruptly, as though suddenly aware of my presence.
“I apologize. I’m getting carried away. As I said, we are all upset at Dr. Pratt’s death, and maybe a bit paranoid.”
“I understand completely. It has to be a difficult time for everyone. If I may, I’d like to talk a bit more about this idea of an ‘enemies list.’”
“I’ve exaggerated that. It’s really very civil around here most of the time. Everyone acts correctly. We smile at each other in the hallways. The academy gets attacked enough from outsiders, and I don’t want to contribute to that.”
“What kind of relationship did you have with Dr. Pratt?”
There it is—out on the table, a little too bluntly I fear, but no taking it back. I hate that I used the word “relationship” with Professor Abramson. It is a squishy, abstract, shop-worn word from our pop psych culture, and it comes out on its own.
“Our relationship, as you call it, was as it should be. He was chair of the department and I respect that position—a position I once held myself, by the way. Most people here do not recall that I was chair when Dr. Pratt was first hired. In fact, I cast the deciding vote in his favor. He was young and inventive and energetic, and we needed all those things at the time.
“And his career subsequently has proven that we made the right choice. He published three widely acclaimed books. He made himself a recognized force among the guerilla avant-garde of the profession, and he brought a lot of grants and attention to a somewhat tired English department, which in recent years he had almost entirely reshaped.”
That is a fine summary of Dr. Pratt’s career for a speaker’s introduction, but it evades the thrust of my question. How do you get a naturally reserved Hungarian-born, war-seared, library-dusty scholar of Eastern European literature to talk to someone like me about his re-la-tion-ship with a dead colleague with whom he was, apparently, in conflict?
That’s easy—you keep asking transparently stupid questions in transparently awkward ways.
“Did you and Dr. Pratt get along?”
Abramson shifts in his chair and pauses a long time before answering.
“I would like to be helpful, Mr. Mote, but I am not one to analyze professional relationships in the terms you are suggesting. As I said, I helped hire Dr. Pratt, I watched with some amazement the unfolding of his highly visible career, and I lament very much and very sincerely the ending of his life. It was no secret in the department that he and I had very different understandings of literature and life and of the direction of our profession. But that is, as I said earlier, the nature of academic life today. I may wish things were otherwise, but I do not find many allies in the academy, and I am too old to tilt at windmills. Nevertheless, and this is the point most relevant for your purposes, I most certainly have never wished any of my colleagues ill.”
He starts gathering some papers on his desk and putting them into his briefcase.
I want to assure him that I know, of course, that he himself has never wished any harm on Dr. Pratt. I want to say that I am only wondering if he knows of anyone else, student or colleague or janitor, who might have been upset with Pratt. But I know the interview is over even before he stands up and holds out his hand.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mote. Even though my teaching
