Free The Green Revolution by Ralph McInerny Page B

should bring us into contact with distinguished members of the faculty.”
    Genoux thought of the mopey poet and failed novelist who had been trundled out to the board as a fair sample of the faculty. Dear God!
    â€œHow long will you be here?”
    â€œFrancis is flying off at the crack of dawn.”
    â€œAnd you?”
    â€œArrange a meeting with Roger Knight and I will stay forever.”
    The woman began to dilate on Baron Corvo, a depraved and fascinating figure of whom she was dying to learn.
    â€œDone,” said Neil Genoux. “You’re in the Morris Inn? I will notify you of arrangements.” Baron Corvo seemed an infinitely more attractive topic than whether or not another quarterback could have reversed the team’s dismal showing and filled the hearts of students, alumni, and some faculty with the sweet taste of victory. “Tell me about Corvo.”
    â€œI know next to nothing about him. That’s why I want to meet Professor Knight.”
    Genoux found the subject soporific but preferable to talking about who should be quarterback. He assured Mimi that he would arrange a meeting with Professor Roger Knight, and then, the moment seeming propitious, he escaped.
    Descending in the elevator and emerging into the great out-of-doors, Genoux stopped and filled his lungs with the tonic air of autumn. The dim now-odious hulk of the stadium was visible to the south, but he ignored it. It had had its moment and failed. He went around the pond, where in spring ducklings floated, and found a bench, on which he collapsed. The great mural at the front of the library was illumined, Christ, the teacher. The suggestion seemed to be that Jesus was a professor manqué. Dear God.
    Into each soul must creep temptations to think that everything that has guided one’s life hitherto, unquestioned certitudes, is a packet of lies. So it was that, to Neil Genoux, all the unexamined axioms that guided his days seemed suddenly in the dock. He did not know whether to weep or cry. What is he to Hecuba or Hecuba to him? A host of dubiously relevant quotes drifted across his mind.
    And who in hell was Baron Corvo?
    The bench on which he sat faced east. Somewhere in the gloaming was graduate student housing and the apartment where Roger Knight dwelt with his brother. Genoux knew these things as a bombardier knows the terrain of his target. He rose, steadied himself, and plunged eastward, Knightward, Rogerward. A discerning ear might have descried an off-key rendition of the fight song issuing from his smiling lips.
    *   *   *
    The gathering at the Knight apartment could not have been more happenstance, or, perhaps in a better interpretation, providential. Genoux’s knock had not been acknowledged, but as he stood waiting the door burst open and a figure reeled into the night, took up his stance on the lawn, and, addressing the night sky, bellowed, “ Quousque tandem abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra? ” After throwing up, he returned through the door from which he had exited. Genoux followed him in. Clearly this was not a time when the niceties of visitation were observed.
    The scene he came upon might have been the incarnation of all his nightmares. Genoux was a willing agent of the administration. Whatever his wavering private views, he had endeavored to be a conscientious representative of those who had plucked him from the supposed obscurity of nineteenth-century literature and put him down at the alleged pinnacle of power. Like the good steward of the gospel, he had learned to lie and cheat for his masters. Now, here, in the Knight apartment, he found himself surrounded by the enemies of the administration. Never had anonymity felt so desirable, and indeed he seemed to have twisted the ring of Gyges on his finger and become invisible to the enemies of the administration for whom he toiled.
    In one corner of the room, a man sipping a soft drink was listening to an enormous