The Last Gentleman

fillers of time, the throat-clearings and chair-scrapings and word-mumblings, stopped and the tape ran silent?
    â€œAt any rate, your bishop is a very courageous man,” he heard himself say even more recklessly because he didn’t know her bishop from Adam.
    â€œI think he is chicken-hearted.”
    â€œWell, I’ll be going,” he said, flushing angrily. Really, he had no use for this prankish perverse manner of hers. As suggestible as ever, he began to feel it take possession of him too, a buzzing glassy-eyed inwardness.
    â€œWhy are you writing everything down?” she asked, looking at him for the first time.
    He frowned. “I may have told you before that I have a nervous condition which affects my memory. Anyhow I only wrote down your name.” And suddenly he remembered her religious name as well: Johnette Mary Vianney: remembered it precisely because it was difficult and barbarous. Taking note of her costume again, he reckoned she must be some sort of off-brand nun, perhaps not yet certified by the higher-ups. That’s why she did not like her bishop!—he hadn’t given her her license or whatever.
    â€œIf you catch up with Jamie,” she said, speaking again to the hawk, “give him a good shaking.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œHe’s feeling sorry for himself and has taken to reading Kahlil Gibran, a bad sign even in healthy people. Did you give it to him—I know Sutter wouldn’t.”
    â€œWho? No.” Ifhe needed a good shaking, Sister, you should have given it to him. But he said: “Do you like your work here?” Without knowing that he did so, he was going through his pockets. Oh my, I’m sure I had something of great value.
    â€œWe are very poor here,” she said, watching him with interest.
    He blushed. “I’m sorry to say that my wallet has been lost or stolen. I—” he began, and felt his sore occiput. “Otherwise I’d like very much to make a small contribution to your work.”
    â€œSay a prayer for us,” she said, he thought, absently.
    â€œYes. Where are they now?”
    â€œWho? Oh. The pupils don’t come on weekends.”
    â€œOf course not,” he said heartily. He wondered whether it was Saturday or Sunday. Something else came back to him. “I’ve heard the poverty here in Tyree County is abject.”
    â€œIt’s not that so much,” she said carelessly.
    â€œNot that? What then?”
    â€œThe children are dumb. They can’t speak.”
    â€œAh, they are mentally retarded—pellagra, no doubt.”
    â€œNo, I mean they’re dumb, mute. Children eleven and twelve can’t speak. It took me six months to find out why. They’re brought up in silence. Nobody at home speaks. They don’t know thirty words. They don’t know words like pencil or hawk or wallet.”
    â€œWhat a rewarding experience it must be to teach them.”
    â€œYes, very,” she said, and not ironically, he thought.
    A complex system of scoring social debts kept him from leaving. Since he couldn’t give her money, ransom himself, he had to pay her out by listening to her, since, goofy as he was, he knew two things not many people know. He knew how to listen and he knew how to get at that most secret and aggrieved enterprise upon which almost everyone is embarked. He’d give her the use of his radar.
    â€œIs that why you came here?” he asked her. “Because of the children, I mean.”
    â€œWhy I came here,” she said vaguely. “No, that wasn’t the reason. Somebody asked me.”
    â€œWho asked you?” he bent upon the hawk the same smiling unseeing gaze as she.
    â€œA woman in the library at Columbia.”
    â€œA woman in the library at Columbia asked you to come down here?”
    â€œNot directly. That is not what she asked me at first.”
    â€œWhat did she ask you at first?”
    â€œI was writing a paper on Pareto. This nun and I shared the same cubicle in the stacks. She was doing her doctorate on John Dewey, whom she admired greatly—you know how they’ve taken up with the very ones they despised a few years ago.”
    â€œNo, I don’t,” said the engineer. His head was beginning to hurt again.
    She paid no attention. “I was aware that she was eyeing me and that she had her hooks out. The strange thing was that I was not in the least surprised when she did