numbers—only as an afterthought pleading the lateness of the hour—we broke off as if coming out of a trance, hardly knowing where we were.
Mrs. Ramsey seemed a little dazed herself, and skittish. She collected some dirty cups and wandered back to the cider bowl, where I saw her in conversation with the Greek master’s elderly wife. The next time I looked she was gone.
It was obvious that Frost wouldn’t show. Still, I stayed until the end, even offered to help with the cleanup, but the wives stuffed my pockets with cookies and sent me packing.
After breakfast I chanced some demerits and skipped my warm, easy chore—helping sort that morning’s mail—to join a crew of third formers who’d been assigned the job of rolling and lining the clay tennis courts overlooking the headmaster’s garden. They glanced at me curiously but said nothing, these melancholy squirts with pallid faces hunched deep in the coats they were supposed to grow into. After a brief show of helping I broke off and stood by the fence, watching the garden. I kept my vigil for half an hour or so. No one came. I figured George had chickened out after all, the big baby.
But I was wrong. We walked to our dorm together after dinner that night—George couldn’t hold a grudge—and he told me he’d spent over an hour alone with Frost in the headmaster’s parlor. They’d started talking and never made it outside. Frost hadn’t said much about George’s poem, not in so many words, anyway, but he recited a few of his own and gave George some pointers. He also gave him an inscribed copy of his
Complete Poems,
and an invitation to drop by for a visit should he ever find himself in the neighborhood.
Ah, I said. Great.
We walked along. Then George said that Frost had left him with some advice.
What was that?
Do you know where Kamchatka is?
Not exactly. Alaska? Somewhere up there.
Mr. Frost told me I was wasting my time in school. He said I should go to Kamchatka. Or Brazil.
Kamchatka? Why Kamchatka? Why Brazil?
He didn’t explain. He was going to, but then he had to leave.
Jesus. Kamchatka.
Kamchatka.
Later that night I went to the library and looked it up. A peninsula in the remote far east of the Soviet Union, on the Bering Sea. Very few people lived there. It was dark half the year. They lived on the salted meat of salmon and also of bears, which greatly outnumbered the people and proved a sorrow to the unwary. When the taiga wasn’t frozen over, it swarmed with biting insects. There were many volcanos and they were still active. The only picture in the Kamchatka entry showed two figures in parkas watching the top of a mountain being carried skyward on a fist of flame.
I closed the encyclopedia and sat listening to the wind rattle the mullioned panes behind me. What was it about Kamchatka, that a young writer should forsake his schooling to go there? Spectacle, maybe. The drama of strange people living strangely. Danger. All this could be good matter for stories and poems. But Frost himself had lived in New England all his life at no cost to his art, and I wondered if he’d ever even been there. I guessed not. But it meant something to him, Kamchatka, something to do with the writer’s life, and what else could it mean but hardship? Solitude, darkness, and hardship. But he had also mentioned Brazil. I rose from my deep chair and crossed the room past boys dozing over books and exchanged the
K
volume for
B.
ÜBERMENSCH
The rumor was true—Ayn Rand would be our next visiting writer. Some of the masters were sore enough about this to let the story of their failed protest sift down to steerage. It seemed that the chairman of the board of trustees, Hiram Dufresne, an admirer of Rand’s novels, had insisted on the invitation. Mr. Dufresne was also very rich and rained money on the school—most recently the new science building and the Wardell Memorial Hockey Rink, named in honor of his roommate here, who’d been killed in the war.
Mrs. Ramsey seemed a little dazed herself, and skittish. She collected some dirty cups and wandered back to the cider bowl, where I saw her in conversation with the Greek master’s elderly wife. The next time I looked she was gone.
It was obvious that Frost wouldn’t show. Still, I stayed until the end, even offered to help with the cleanup, but the wives stuffed my pockets with cookies and sent me packing.
After breakfast I chanced some demerits and skipped my warm, easy chore—helping sort that morning’s mail—to join a crew of third formers who’d been assigned the job of rolling and lining the clay tennis courts overlooking the headmaster’s garden. They glanced at me curiously but said nothing, these melancholy squirts with pallid faces hunched deep in the coats they were supposed to grow into. After a brief show of helping I broke off and stood by the fence, watching the garden. I kept my vigil for half an hour or so. No one came. I figured George had chickened out after all, the big baby.
But I was wrong. We walked to our dorm together after dinner that night—George couldn’t hold a grudge—and he told me he’d spent over an hour alone with Frost in the headmaster’s parlor. They’d started talking and never made it outside. Frost hadn’t said much about George’s poem, not in so many words, anyway, but he recited a few of his own and gave George some pointers. He also gave him an inscribed copy of his
Complete Poems,
and an invitation to drop by for a visit should he ever find himself in the neighborhood.
Ah, I said. Great.
We walked along. Then George said that Frost had left him with some advice.
What was that?
Do you know where Kamchatka is?
Not exactly. Alaska? Somewhere up there.
Mr. Frost told me I was wasting my time in school. He said I should go to Kamchatka. Or Brazil.
Kamchatka? Why Kamchatka? Why Brazil?
He didn’t explain. He was going to, but then he had to leave.
Jesus. Kamchatka.
Kamchatka.
Later that night I went to the library and looked it up. A peninsula in the remote far east of the Soviet Union, on the Bering Sea. Very few people lived there. It was dark half the year. They lived on the salted meat of salmon and also of bears, which greatly outnumbered the people and proved a sorrow to the unwary. When the taiga wasn’t frozen over, it swarmed with biting insects. There were many volcanos and they were still active. The only picture in the Kamchatka entry showed two figures in parkas watching the top of a mountain being carried skyward on a fist of flame.
I closed the encyclopedia and sat listening to the wind rattle the mullioned panes behind me. What was it about Kamchatka, that a young writer should forsake his schooling to go there? Spectacle, maybe. The drama of strange people living strangely. Danger. All this could be good matter for stories and poems. But Frost himself had lived in New England all his life at no cost to his art, and I wondered if he’d ever even been there. I guessed not. But it meant something to him, Kamchatka, something to do with the writer’s life, and what else could it mean but hardship? Solitude, darkness, and hardship. But he had also mentioned Brazil. I rose from my deep chair and crossed the room past boys dozing over books and exchanged the
K
volume for
B.
ÜBERMENSCH
The rumor was true—Ayn Rand would be our next visiting writer. Some of the masters were sore enough about this to let the story of their failed protest sift down to steerage. It seemed that the chairman of the board of trustees, Hiram Dufresne, an admirer of Rand’s novels, had insisted on the invitation. Mr. Dufresne was also very rich and rained money on the school—most recently the new science building and the Wardell Memorial Hockey Rink, named in honor of his roommate here, who’d been killed in the war.
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