570
PARTISAN REVIEW
confided in Cecilia that it's an unsettling predicament to find oneself
posthumous while still alive- to know that one's scholarly reputa–
tion , like one's personality, is set ; that the future can be no more
than an arduous and joyless fulfillment of past expectations. Failure
is a distinct possibility, of course, but not success : he
is
a success .
"But why call yourself 'posthumous'?- I don't understand,"
Cecilia said.
"Perhaps one day you will," he said.
In late March he dropped by unexpectedly at Cecilia's rented
duplex and asked her rather awkwardly if she would like to accom–
pany him on a three-week trip to Europe. He was being sent by the
Foundation to interview prospective Fellows for one of the chairs in
history- men in France, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, and Germany ;
and he had the privilege of bringing along an assistant of sorts, a
junior colleague. Was she free? Would she come? Not as an assistant
of course but as a colleague?- a friend? "It would mean so much to
me," he said, his voice faltering.
They looked at each other in mutual dismay . For weeks Philip
had been seeking her out, telephoning her, encountering her by acci–
dent in town, for weeks he had been watching her with an unmis–
takable air of suppressed elation, but Cecilia had chosen not to see ;
after all he was a married man , the father of two college-age chil–
dren.. .. Now he had made himself supremely vulnerable: his
damp dark eyes snatched at her in a sort of drowning panic . "Of
course I can't accompany you," Cecilia heard her soft cool voice ex–
plain, but, aloud, she could bring herself to say only: "Yes , thank
you , it's very kind of you to ask, yes I suppose I would like to go ...
but as an assistant after all, if you don't mind."
He seized her hands in his and kissed her, breathless and
trembling as any young suitor. Did it matter that he was nineteen
years older than she, that his rank at the Foundation was so much
superior to hers, that his breath smelled sweetly of alcohol. .. ? Or
that he was married, and might very well break Cecilia's heart... ?
On the flight to Frankfurt Philip tells her about his family back–
ground in a low, tense, neutral voice, as if he were confessing
something shameful.
His paternal grandparents emigrated from the Rhine Valley
near Wiesbaden in the early 1900s, settling first in Pennsylvania,
and then in northern Wisconsin: they were dairy farmers, prosper–
ous, Lutheran, clannish, supremely German. Until approximately
the late thirties. Until such time as it was no longer politic in the
United States , or even safe, to proclaim the natural superiority of
