Leslie A. Fiedler
THE GIRL IN THE BLACK RAINCOAT
FOUR ACADEMIC PARABLES
I
It
was only with the Negro janitor, Vernon, that Professor
Snow ever talked about the girl in the black raincoat.
In
fact, it
was only with Vern-late at night, after eleven, when all the other
offices in the Humanities Building had been swept and it was the
turn of 1OI-that he ever talked about
anything
that mattered to
him.
With his wife he had long since forgotten how to talk; with
his two sons he had never learned; and he had not trusted him–
self as his own interlocutor ever since
it
had become clear that
his book on Spinoza would never be finished.
Vern laughed a good deal, sometimes sighed, often touched
Professor Snow on the shoulder or upper arm; and when deeply
moved would say, "You the
original
mothah, Doel" or "Doc, baby,
you a niggah, too." Both epithets pleased Professor Snow at a level
he was loathe to examine; and the way Vern looked pleased him,
too: lithe and large-eyed, almost tiny, almost delicate. "One thing
you can say about Vern," he liked to repeat to his friends, "no–
body would ever worry about
him
raping his daughter!" And when
he said daughter, he would think of the girl in the black raincoat,
whose name he did not permit himself to remember. She could
have been no more than eighteen;
his
older son was twenty-three.
"I don't believe she wears
anything
under that black rain–
coat," he would say. "She sits in the front seat and crosses and un–
crosses her legs and they're bare as far as I can see them, and I
can see a damn sight farther than is good for a man my age."
"You ain' old, Prof," Vern would say. "You in youah previ–
ous prime."
