The Breast Read Online Free PDF Page B

getting my Ph.D. It was as the chairman of the newly formed comparative-literature department that Arthur brought me from Stanford to Stony Brook eight years ago. He is nearly fifty now, a wry and charming gentleman, and for an academic uncommonly, almost alarmingly, suave in manner and dress. It was his social expertise as much as our long-standing acquaintanceship that led me (and Dr. Klinger) to settle finally on Arthur as the best person with whom to make my social debut following the victory over the phallic cravings of my nipple. I also wanted Arthur to come so that I could talk to him—if not during this first visit, then the next—about how I might maintain my affiliation with the university. Back at Stanford I had been a “reader” for one of the enormous sophomore classes he lectured in “Masterpieces of Western Literature.” I had begun to wonder if I couldn’t perform some such function again. Claire could read aloud to me the student papers, I could dictate to her my comments and grades … Or was that a hopeless idea? It took Dr. Klinger several weeks to encourage me to believe that there would be no harm in asking.
    I never got the chance. Even as I was telling him, a little “tearfully”—I couldn’t help myself—how touched I was that he should be the first of my colleagues to visit, I thought I could hear giggling. “Arthur,” I asked, “are we alone—?” He said, “Yes.” Then giggled, quite distinctly. Sightless, I could still picture my former mentor: in his blue blazer with the paisley lining tailored in London for him by Kilgore, French; in his soft flannel trousers, in his gleaming Gucci loafers, the diplomatic Dean with his handsome mop of salt-and-pepper hair—giggling! And I hadn’t even made my suggestion about becoming a reader for the department. Giggling—not because of anything ludicrous I had proposed, but because he saw that it was true, I actually had turned into a breast. My graduate-school adviser, my university superior, the most courtly professor I have ever known—and yet, from the sound of it, overcome with the giggles simply at the sight of me.
    â€œI’m—I—David—” But now he was laughing so, he couldn’t even speak. Arthur Schonbrunn unable to speak. Talk about the incredible. Twenty, thirty seconds more of uproarious laughter, and then he was gone. The visit had lasted about three minutes.
    Two days later came the apology, as elegantly done as anything Arthur’s written since his little book on Robert Musil. And the following week, the package from Sam Goody’s, with a card signed, “Debbie and Arthur S.” A record album of Laurence Olivier in Hamlet.
    Arthur had written: “Your misfortune should not have had to be compounded by my feeble, unforgivable performance. I’m at a loss to explain what came over me. It would strike us both as so much cant if I even tried.”
    I worked on my reply for a week. I must have dictated easily fifty letters: gracious, eloquent, forgiving, lighthearted, grave, hangdog, businesslike, arch, vicious, wild, literary—and some even sillier than the one I dispatched. “Feeble?” I wrote Arthur. “Why, if anything it is evidence of your earthy vitality that you should have laughed yourself sick. I am the feeble one, otherwise I would have joined in. If I fail to appreciate the enormous comedy of all this, it is only because I am really more of an Arthur Schonbrunn than you are, you vain, self-loving, dandified prick!” But the one I finally settled on read simply: “Dear Debbie and Arthur S.: Thanx mucho for the groovy sides. Dave ‘The Breast’ K.” I checked twice with Claire to be sure she had spelled thanks with that x before she went ahead and mailed my little message. If she mailed it. If she even took it down.
    The second crisis that threatened to undo me and