The Fall of Rome: A Novel - Softcover

Southgate, Martha

 
9780743227216: The Fall of Rome: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0743227212 ISBN 13: 9780743227216
Verlag: Scribner, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

Latin instructor Jerome Washington is a man out of place. The lone African-American teacher at the Chelsea School, an elite all-boys boarding school in Connecticut, he has spent nearly two decades trying not to appear too "racial." So he is unnerved when Rashid Bryson, a promising black inner-city student who is new to the school, seeks Washington as a potential ally against Chelsea's citadel of white privilege. Preferring not to align himself with Bryson, Washington rejects the boy's friendship. Surprised and dismayed by Washington's response, Bryson turns instead to Jana Hansen, a middle-aged white divorcée who is also new to the school -- and who has her own reasons for becoming involved in the lives of both Bryson and Washington.
Southgate makes her debut as a writer to watch in this compelling, provocative tale of how race and class ensnare Hansen, Washington, and Bryson as they journey toward an inevitable and ultimately tragic confrontation.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Martha Southgate is a graduate of Smith College, with an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. She has had fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was books editor at Essence and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, and Rosie, among other publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is at work on her next novel. You can visit her Web site at www.marthasouthgate.com

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Chapter One: The Roman Way

The Chelsea School is in the middle of a field so lush and vivid as to make the eyes water and shine with its light. There's grass everywhere, acres and acres of it, green and falling away, rolling. Up on the hill, a grand red barn sits, incongruous, bright, the biggest in three counties. Black cows dot the hillside. Sometimes you can see boys in orange down jackets walking among them, slapping the rumps of the cows to get them to shift and calling to each other in raucous, sarcastic voices. But the barn serves no real purpose here. It was built by the school's founder in the belief that manual labor in the open air would make stalwart men out of callow boys. The boys can take a class called Animal Husbandry, playing at being the farmers they will never be. The small amount of milk that the cows produce is donated to a nearby bottler and sold in greenish glass bottles for more than three times its value.

I have served this school since 1974. For most of that time, I have been the only Negro on the faculty. (A note: I am fully aware that Negro is no longer the fashionable term. It is, however, the term I prefer to use.) I have always been, and remain, the only Negro in the Classics Department. Given the waning interest in the classics manifested by today's young men, the fathers of the school have seen fit to render me the only classics teacher. It could be worse, I suppose. When I first arrived here, there was some serious talk of eliminating the entire department in the name of "relevance." Only an impassioned plea by the then-department head and some grumbling from our more conservative alumni preserved the few classes that are left. Fortunately, I have enough students to fill them, but there is not much demand for my knowledge of Greco-Roman culture outside of those classes. The vigorous and lengthy discussions that I imagine used to take place regarding matters of the classical mind are all in the past now.

When I was hired, John Hays, who was headmaster at the time, said that I was exactly the person they were looking for. I remember his words from my hiring interview quite distinctly. "It's time that the Chelsea School took note of the advances your people have made," he said, rearing back on the legs of his wooden chair. "Our boys will benefit from your fine example." He paused. "I know you'll take this in the spirit in which it's intended -- you're truly a credit to your race." I smiled briefly. I did take Hays's comment as the compliment he meant it to be -- though I suppose many would not have.

So it is that in more than twenty years of faculty pictures here, you see me -- or rather, you don't see me, a quiet, dark space among all the bright, pale faces, my heavy-rimmed glasses catching the light. There was a time when I was not alone. I was hired to teach here along with two other Negro men. Dexter Johnson was one. The other was Hugh Davenport. They had stellar credentials -- Amherst and Yale -- as did I, with my degree from Harvard. We spent time in one another's cramped apartments, discussing this or that student or, more often, the issues of the day. However, a few months into our acquaintance, I began to feel a rift growing between us. More and more, I had become convinced that the way to effect the greatest good was to toil within the system that Chelsea had long had in place. I believed our very presence could begin to create change as long as we behaved honorably. My colleagues did not. While they started out full of hope, as soon as one or two of their proposals were dismissed out of hand -- such as the one about having every Chelsea student take one course of Negro history -- they began to complain about "the Man" and about how "a black man would never get a break" at this school. One day, after yet another litany of unhappiness, I said to them, "Some would say that we got a break by being invited to teach here. It is up to us to make of the opportunity what we will."

My colleagues stared at me, then looked quickly at each other. "So it's like that, huh?" said one. "I thought you were slipping over to their side."

We completed our meal but never spoke again about anything but class schedules. Within a year, they had both left the faculty. I have no idea what became of them.

The conviction that I began to form in those earliest days has only strengthened and taken root with the passage of years -- it is up to us to make of opportunities what we will. I believe that I can affect the hearts and minds of boys who might never have seen an educated Negro before -- boys who knew only the women who cleaned their floors and the men who trimmed their lawns and, maybe later, Bill Cosby from the flickering television screen -- simply by my presence and skill as a teacher. More important, my presence stands as a testament to the notion that we are not all cut from the same cloth, that individual effort and rigor will ultimately win out over all.

I have seen some of my charges go on to run large companies. One is a United States senator, one a popular and well-respected writer. All of my most successful students have been white. But that doesn't trouble me a great deal. I know that I have opened their minds somewhat; that they see that there are some Negroes who value the things a Chelsea man values: order, decorum, rectitude. I have given my life over to passing on these ideals at Chelsea. I would gladly do it again.

The other thing I love about teaching here is the constant promise of renewal. Every fall, one gets the chance to begin again. Perhaps that is why the school is at its best in the fall. The grass has not yet lost its startling greenness, but the leaves are aflame with color, brilliant orange and deep red. The young men who are our students greet each other with loud shouts of pleasure. The faculty is full of resolve. It is a lovely time. It is unfortunate that it is so brief.

The moments before the first class of the year hum with a particular tension, one I have never entirely gotten used to. I start by standing quietly in front of the class, my back to them, writing out my name and some simple cases and conjugations. Behind me, the freshmen enter, some boisterously, as if to show that they are not intimidated, some so shyly that I hear only the clatter of their shoes and the shifting of desks and chairs as they find seats. I do not turn around until they begin to quiet and look at me, expectant and nervous. Even then, I let the silence linger a fraction of a minute longer. I wait until every eye is upon me.

"My name is Mr. Washington, and this is Latin One," I say, my voice pitched slightly louder to carry to the back of the room. "Latin is considered by many to be a dead language. In this room, it is not. While here, we can revel in the clarity of thought that produced it and the glory of the civilization that once used it. Much of the world we know rests on the foundation created by the Romans. It is a language to be treasured and respected. I assume that your presence here means that you feel as I do."

Those students who were pretending not to be intimidated before are generally stunned into silence by this speech. I know perfectly well that most of them are there because their fathers insisted or because fewer years of Latin are necessary to fulfill the language requirement than of French or Spanish. But I want them to understand the seriousness with which I regard what they are about to undertake. I know they have never seen anyone like me before.

They, on the other hand, tend to have a very similar look. I have grown used to it over my years of teaching. The well-cut blond or brown hair, the smooth boyish skin, the perfect teeth (or teeth on their way to being made perfect by means of expensively glittering orthodontia). They look lush, if I may use such a term, as though great effort has...

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Verlag
Scribner
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0743227212
ISBN 13 
9780743227216
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande

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