106
PHILIP
L.
GREENE
graceful and the grotesque. Deliver yourself out of bondage to Egypt
in you. Restore yourself to the terrible freedom of the
self.
Tear
down the walls of the temple.
Rollie put his head down on the desk over his folded anns
and waited for the burning hum in his eyes to stop. Buckley would
bury him. He was the spokesman for the ethical headhunters, those
cannibals of heart who cowered behind their forms, as
if
they had
no secret life. Had he not told them all that man trembles at the
abyss of freedom when he discovers the body is not a cage for the
spirittLet the bird of joy and love out and plunge full-plumed into
the dark, liberating waters below. The smirky smiles, the frozen
pieties carved in their cheeks, the drip and dribble of their rational
sensibilities were everywhere. Even poor, sweet Malcolm minced
along, delivering his tepid bromides, tuning in surreptitiously to
Rollie's conferences, licking his thin, vicarious lips with salacious
hunger.
Rollie rose and went to Malcolm's desk and file cabinet. Hidden
somewhere in the years of departmental espionage was a secret hoard,
Rollie didn't know what, some evidence perhaps of a former col–
league's demise, and ugly truth scavenged on the endless hunt for
the enemy. He tried Malcolm's closet, and pulled out several cartons
of old texts, term papers, departmental memos, flyers from book
companies, notes and plans and pamphlets - a junk yard of educa–
tional debris, stored and treasured, a legacy of a lifetime of service
to the institution. Methodically, Rollie stripped each carton, bOok
by book, paper by paper, until, at last, in a sturdy carton marked
Seagram's V-O he came upon a bulky manila envelope tied with
string. He untied the string carefully and slipped out the contents
onto th,e desk. Eight-by-ten photographs, two or three dozen, sparkled
in the reflected light of his desk lamp. Oiled young gods in loin
cloths with pouting stoic faces glared up at him, flexing bulging
biceps and staunch thighs, swarthy Latin Adonises and sunburned
Teutons, fIrm-jawed sculptures
in
flesh, mindless beauty fixed in time
and space, a small army of heroes
of
the body poised in triumphant
vanity. Malcolm's lovers cached away in the bottom of a whiskey
carton. How many times had Malcolm tied and untied that string?
How many times had he run his puffy, docile hands over the glossy
bodies? How many times had he dreamed of being locked in
lubricous arms?
