Mudwoman. Joyce Carol Oates

after her teens she’d begun to lose this reflexive speed, the hand-eye coordination an athlete takes for granted until it begins to abandon her.

      “Ma’am? Let me help you.”

      Ma’am. What a rebuke to her foolishness!

      Carlos had approached to stand just a few feet away. M.R. didn’t want to think that her driver had been watching her, protectively, all along.

      “I’m all right, Carlos, thank you. I think….”

      But M.R. was limping, in pain. It was a quick stabbing pain she hoped would fade within a few minutes but she hadn’t much choice except to lean on Carlos’s arm as they made their way back to the car, along the faint path through the underbrush.

      Her heart was beating rapidly, strangely. The birds’ cries—the crows’ cries—were both jeering and beautiful: strange wild cries of yearning, summons.

      But what was this?—something stuck to the bottom of one of her shoes. The newly purchased Italian black-leather shoes she’d felt obliged to buy, several times more expensive than any other shoes M.R. had ever purchased.

      And on her trouser cuffs—briars, burrs.

      And what was in her hair?—she hoped it wasn’t bird droppings from the underside of that damned bridge.

      “Excuse me, ma’am …”

      “Thanks, Carlos! I’m fine.”

      “Ma’am, wait …”

      Gallant Carlos stooped to detach whatever it was stuck to M.R.’s shoe. M.R. had been trying to kick it free without exactly seeing it, and without allowing Carlos to see it; yet of course, Carlos had seen. How ridiculous this was! She was chagrined, embarrassed. The last thing she wanted was her uniformed Hispanic driver stooping at her feet but of course Carlos insisted upon doing just this, deftly he detached whatever had been stuck to the sole of her shoe and flicked it into the underbrush and when M.R. asked what it was he said quietly not meeting her eye:

      “Nothing, ma’am. It’s gone.”

      It was October 2002. In the U.S. capital, war was being readied.

      If objects pass into the space “neglected” after brain damage, they disappear. If the right brain is injured, the deficit will manifest itself in the left visual field.

      The paradox is: how do we know what we can’t know when it does not appear to us.

      How do we know what we have failed to see because we have failed to see it, thus cannot know that we have failed to see it.

      Unless—the shadow of what-is-not-seen can be seen by us.

      A wide-winged shadow swiftly passing across the surface of Earth.

      In the late night—her brain too excited for sleep—she’d been working on a philosophy paper—a problem in epistemology. How do we know what we cannot know: what are the perimeters of “knowing”…

      As a university president she’d vowed she would keep up with her field—after this first, inaugural year as president she would resume teaching a graduate seminar in philosophy/ethics each semester. All problems of philosophy seemed to her essentially problems of epistemology. But of course these were problems in perception: neuropsychology.

      The leap from a problem in epistemology/neuropsychology to politics—this was risky.

      For had not Nietzsche observed—Madness in individuals is rare but in nations, common.

      Yet she would make this leap, she thought—for this evening was her great opportunity. Her audience at the conference would be approximately fifteen hundred individuals—professors, scholars, archivists, research scientists, university and college administrators, journalists, editors of learned journals and university presses. A writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education was scheduled to interview M. R. Neukirchen the following morning, and a reporter for the New York Times Education Supplement was eager to meet with her. A shortened version of “The Role of the University in an Era of ‘Patriotism’” would be published as an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times. M. R. Neukirchen was a new president of an “historic” university that had not even admitted women until the 1970s and so boldly in her keynote address she would speak of the unspeakable: the cynical plot being contrived in the U.S. capital to authorize the president to employ “military force” against a Middle Eastern country demonized as an “enemy”—an “enemy of democracy.” She would find a way to speak of such things in her presentation—it would not be difficult—in addressing the issue of the Patriot Act, the need for vigilance against government surveillance, detention of “terrorist suspects”—the terrible example of Vietnam.

      But this was too emotional—was it? Yet she could not speak coolly, she dared not speak ironically. In her radiant Valkyrie mode, irony was not possible.

      She would call her lover in Cambridge, Massachusetts—to ask of him Should I? Dare I? Or is this a mistake?

      For she had not made any mistakes, yet. She had not made any mistakes of significance, in her role as higher educator.

      She should call him, or perhaps another friend—though it was difficult for M.R., to betray weaknesses to her friends who looked to her for—uplift, encouragement, good cheer, optimism….

      She should not behave rashly, she should not give an impression of being political, partisan. Her original intention for the address was to consider John Dewey’s classic Democracy and Education in twenty-first-century terms.

      She was an idealist. She could not take seriously any principle of moral behavior that was not a principle for all—universally. She could not believe that “relativism” was any sort of morality except the morality of expediency. But of course as an educator, she was sometimes obliged to be pragmatic: expedient.

      Education floats upon the economy, and the goodwill of the people.

      Even private institutions are hostages to the economy, and the good—enlightened—will of the people.

      She would call her (secret) lover when she arrived at the conference center hotel. Just to ask What do you advise? Do you think I am risking too much?

      Just to ask Do you love me? Do you even think of me? Do you remember me—when I am not with you?

      It was M.R.’s practice to start a project early—in this case, months early—when she’d first been invited to give the keynote address at the conference, back in April—and to write, rewrite, revise and rewrite through a succession of drafts until her words were finely honed and shimmering—invincible as a shield. A twenty-minute presentation, brilliant in concision and emphasis, would be far more effective than a fifty-minute presentation. And it would be M.R.’s strategy, too, to end early—just slightly early. She would aim for eighteen minutes. To take her audience off guard, to end on a dramatic note …

      Madness in individuals is rare but in nations, common.

      Unless: this was too dire, too smugly “prophetic”? Unless: this would strike a wrong note?

      “Carlos! Please put the radio on, will you? I think the dial is set—NPR.”

      It was noon: news. But not good news.

      In the backseat of the limousine M.R. listened. How credulous the media had become since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, how uncritical the reporting—it made her ill, it made her want to weep in frustration and anger, the callow voice of the defense secretary of the United States warning of weapons of mass destruction believed to be stored in readiness for attack by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein … Biological warfare, nuclear warfare, threat to U.S. democracy, global catastrophe.

      “What do you think, Carlos? Is this ridiculous? ‘Fanning the flames’…”

      “Don’t know, ma’am. It’s a bad thing.”

      Guardedly Carlos replied. What Carlos felt in his heart, Carlos was not likely to reveal.