In One Person

that the entire time we were not exactly wrestling—and not exactly
conversing
, either—the denizens of the Bancroft butt room were enthralled. Kittredge was ever the eye magnet, in any crowd, and here I was—at least appearing to hold my own with him.)
    “Don’t get fooled by ‘
Demut
,’ will you?” I asked him. “It’s a short word, but it’s still Goethe.”
    “I know that one, Nymph,” Kittredge said, smiling. “It’s ‘humility,’ isn’t it?”
    “Yes,” I said; I was surprised he knew the word, even in English. “Just remember: If it sounds like a homily or a proverb, it’s probably Goethe,” I told him.
    “‘Old age is a polite gentleman’—you mean that sort of bullshit.” To my further surprise, Kittredge even knew the German, which he then recited: “‘
Das Alter ist ein höflich’ Mann
.’”
    “There’s one that sounds like Rilke, but it’s Goethe,” I warned him.
    “It’s the one about the fucking kiss,” Kittredge said. “Say it in German, Nymph,” he commanded me.
    “‘
Der Kuss, der letzte, grausam süss
,’” I said to him, thinking of Miss Frost’s frank kisses. I couldn’t help but think of kissing Kittredge, too; I was starting to shake again.
    “‘The kiss, the last one, cruelly sweet,’” Kittredge translated.
    “That’s right, or you could say ‘the last kiss of all,’ if you wanted to,” I told him. “‘
Die Leidenschaft bringt Leiden!
’” I then said to him, taking every word to heart.
    “Fucking Goethe!” Kittredge cried. I could tell he didn’t know it—there was no
guessing
it, either.
    “‘Passion brings pain,’” I translated for him.
    “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Lots of pain.”
    “You guys,” one of the smokers said. “It’s almost check-in time.”
    “Quadruple-fuck,” Kittredge said. I knew he could sprint across the quadrangle of dorms to Tilley, or—if he was late—Kittredge could be counted on to make up a brilliant excuse.
    “‘
Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich
,’ ” I said to Kittredge, as he was leaving the butt room.
    “Rilke, right?” he asked me.
    “It’s Rilke, all right. It’s a famous one,” I told him. “‘Every angel is terrifying.’ ”
    That stopped Kittredge in the doorway to the butt room. He looked at me before he ran on; it was a look that frightened me, because I thought I saw both complete understanding and total contempt in his handsome face. It was as if Kittredge suddenly knew everything about me—not only who I was, and what I was hiding, but everything that awaited me in my future. (My menacing
Zukunft
, as Rilke would have called it.)
    “You’re a special boy, aren’t you, Nymph?” Kittredge quickly asked me. But he ran on, not expecting an answer; he just called to me as he ran. “I’ll bet every fucking one of
your
angels is going to be terrifying!”
    I know it isn’t what Rilke meant by “every angel,” but I was thinking of Kittredge and Miss Frost, and maybe poor Tom Atkins—and who knew who
else
there would be in my future?—as
my
terrifying angels.
    And what was it Miss Frost had said, when she advised me to wait before reading
Madame Bovary
? What if my terrifying angels, beginning with Miss Frost and Jacques Kittredge (my “future relationships,” was what Miss Frost had said),
all
had “disappointing—even devastating—consequences,” as she’d also put it?
    “What’s wrong, Bill?” Richard Abbott asked, when I came into our dormitory apartment. (My mother had already gone to bed; at least their bedroom door was closed, as it often was.) “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!” Richard said.
    “Not a ghost,” I told him. “Just my future, maybe,” I said. I chose to leave him with the mystery of my remark; I went straight to my bedroom, and closed the door.
    There was Elaine’s padded bra, where it nearly always was—under my pillow. I lay looking at it for a long time, seeing little of my future—or my terrifying angels—in it.

Chapter
8
    B IG A L
    “It is Kittredge’s cruelty that I chiefly dislike,” I wrote to Elaine that fall.
    “He came by it genetically,” she wrote me back. Of course I couldn’t dispute Elaine’s superior knowledge of Mrs. Kittredge. Elaine and “that awful woman” had been intimate enough for Elaine to become assertive on the matter of those mother-to-son genes that were passed. “Kittredge can deny she’s his mom till the cows come home, Billy, but I’m telling you she’s one of