Free Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

though she cut classes to the legal limit. She sang in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. She wrote for the school paper. The year she did theatre reviews she asked friends along on her pair of press seats. I got to see The Threepenny Opera and studied the musicians while Steffie took notes with a little pen that had a flashlight on top. She tried to organize a tutoring program for children in the slums bordering the college, and when her recruiting failed, since it was hardly an era of activism, she tutored on her own. And yet with all this, she managed to tiptoe down the corridors long after signing in for the night. In sneakers and ponytail she looked like a runaway child, a bag over her shoulder containing a toothbrush and comb, the next morning’s books, and a nightgown—she didn’t wear pajamas like the rest of us. Some boy had taught her how to unlock the door to the emergency exit with a pair of pliers so the bell wouldn’t ring. We shook our heads with worry. She was never caught, though, and for that we called her lucky.
    She might have been one of us, but we kept her just outside our inner circle. That world would claim us all too soon. We deferred it. It was not an era of voluptuousness, either; it was the late fifties, a quiescent time. Except when Steffie appeared mornings after, unchanged, efficient and alert in class, I felt a bit of a fool. I was always competitive, and the sight of her gave me a vague physical unrest.
    “Aha! So there is change after all! Everything is not so static. I knew it. I knew it,” Esther cried in triumph. It was nearing Thanksgiving and fittingly, we had reached the Pluralists: Empedocles, mystical poet, Professor Boles announced, as if he were about to enter from the wings. And Anaxagoras, prosaic man of science. Thank goodness they happened along—Parmenides had brought matters to a dead end with his fixed and eternal universe. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing can come of nothing, she quoted. Speak again. And these two spoke, clearing a middle path. All was not constant change, they concurred. But nor was all immutable. Beneath the undeniable evidence of change was something enduring, something that abided. No power could take it all away. A vast relief eased through me as Professor Boles unraveled the plot, grinning like a master detective, her wild gray hair afloat.
    Back to the beginnings again: earth, water, air, fire. But not as simply as before. The four elements are the roots—and how we loved that word, roots; it gave us a sense of getting intimate with truth. Every mortal thing is made of the immortal elements in diverse combinations. An intricate dance, the four roots forever mingling and separating, cleaving and riving, world without end. And what propels this fantastic parade? Ah, Empedocles, what a romantic. Love and Strife. Love joins together, Strife axes apart. “And I shall tell you something more.” Oh yes, Empedocles, by all means speak again. “There is no birth in mortal things, and no end in ruinous death. There is only mingling and interchange of parts, and it is this that we call ‘nature.’”
    And as if this were not enough, Anaxagoras, prosaic man of science though he was, went him one better. Not Love and Strife, but Mind “took charge of the cosmic situation. ... Mind set in order all that was to be, all that ever was but no longer is, and all that is now or ever will be.” That suited me fine. No death, and Mind in charge.
    Nina did not share my relief. “It’s not any ultimate truth. It’s only part of an ideological sequence, and naturally it gets a little more sophisticated as it goes along.” She paused to light her weekly cigarette. “All of this has been completely superseded by modern science, of course. It’s only of interest historically, and maybe poetically.”
    I wanted to protest but I didn’t know how. Nina was admittedly the smart one, and already she was stammering less.
    “I’m not so sure they’ve been