Chivalry

We live in perilous times--or at least splayed ones. It's not so much that things are going to hell in a handbasket; it's more that they're meandering about sniffing in garbage cans. Paulene Kael came up with at least eight great lines during the 1970s, and one of them was: "Unless you're feeble minded, as you get older you can see that the odds get worse."

The Intern had already read the Sunday Times, the Sunday Globe and the Phoenix, which didn't leave him much more to do on a sunny Sunday morning. The Intern and his companion were sitting in a cafe where everybody was unnaturally quiet. It was an outdoor cafe and there were tiny birds in the plants. The Intern scanned the stack of papers at his feet and thought about doing the crossword puzzle. Eugene T. Maleska wanted him to guess what one-sixth of a drachma was in Roman numerals, but the Intern had little desire to. The Intern ordered another croissant from a waitress who told him to cut the crappy insincere panderings when he asked if she was having a nice morning. The Intern's companion looked up from a movie review by Stephen Schiff that he'd been reading for the last hour and a half. Schiff had come up with some good lines during the 1970s, too, but a lot of them sounded like Pauline Kael. His review of Blow Out had already hit the two-mile mark and showed no signs of flagging.

"Chivalry is dead," signed the Intern.

"No it's not," said his companion, trying to cheer him up.

"Well, it's not exactly thriving," said the Intern.

"His companion nodded. "Still, why don't we just say that it's in remission."

"What ever happened to extra-filial piety?" asked the Intern.

"This is the Northeast," said his companion. "Cold winters lead to cold manner."

"I suppose."

The Intern was unconvinced, for he was from the Northwest where the winters are also cold, but, as he was quick to point out, there still remained vestiges of an art to living. Maybe it was the pioneer spirit, he thought. Or maybe it was something in the croissants on the East Coast. Whatever it was, he didn't like it.

"Nice day for reading," said the Intern with his best rugged smile.

"Go to hell," said the waitress.

The Intern signed again.

Here, read some Stephen Schiff," said his companion. "It'll take you mind of things for a couple of hours."

Later that day, the Intern and his companion were spinning their way down Memorial Drive headed for Boston. The Intern was apprenticing at Boston's great metropolitan daily, and so had access to a great many free tickets. He often took his companion along when he went out. His companion had gone by many different poses over the years, but during the summer, due to an extraordinary stroke of luck, he was a Foreign Car Driver. Although he couldn't really afford a foreign car, he'd banged on the thing long enough to make it run in a Continental fashion. There were still four or five parts of the carburetor on the living room table, but they didn't fit anyway, and their absence didn't seem to make much difference.

"Our cities are in decay," said the Intern.

"You're overreacting," came the word from the driver's seat.

"No. Really. Take a look."

All along Mem Drive, MIT was sprawling in every direction in a fit of architectural schizophrenia. They were building something that looked like Megatron's garage right next to what looked like a mock-Loire castle.

"There are still some nice buildings going up," the Foreign Car Driver said, trying to hop from first to third since second didn't work on Sundays. "Take a look at the Waterfront, and down around South Station."

"I guess," said the Intern. "But they all look like condominiums at Vail or something."

"Still..."

"And everything else is falling apart," said the Intern. They wheeled down Huntington Ave. and there was a beating happening in front of the Opera House.

"Take a look at that," said the Intern.

"That's got nothing to do with architecture," said the Foreign Car Driver.

"Still... If God had wanted men to live in condominiums, he would have given them maitre d's."

"Righto, Champ," said the Driver as the last remaining hubcap spun down Newbury Street and hit an antique clothing store with a clang.

"Or he might have at least issued everybody mirrored sunglasses."

The press junket was for the opening of the new wing of the Museum of Fine Arts and it was being held for members, sustaining members, contributing members, patrons, benefactors, papal nuncios, photographers, brie-eaters, and people from Weston. The Intern and the Foreign Car Driver had to come in early through a back door and were talking to some models from Filene's who were hired, to stand perfectly still, like mannequins, throughout the new wing to advertise the latest fashions. One woman was wearing the latest in sweatsuit technology, complete with gamma ray sunglasses. The rest were attired in the new "peasant look," which seemed suspiciously out of place.

"I though peasants wore skins and hardy cloths," said the Intern.

The Filene's woman assured him that these were very faithful replicas. Probably from the Ukraine. The Intern and the Foreign Car Driver had never been to the Ukraine, and hence took it on faith. One of the models was beautiful enough to build one's life around, but the two figured there was no way to talk to her without lust implications, and it was too early for crudity. Instead they sat in the foyer, and watched the mob gather outside, waiting for the doors to open. The receiving committee was already inside, and they surveyed the mob with looks of pleased smugness--they were official. At first they had looked at the Intern and the Foreign Car Driver with mistrust, but then they became chummy. "We're all insiders here," winked one man. He looked as if he'd seen one too many Jimmy Stewart movies.

Out on Huntington Avenue, many imported cars were in evidence. As were many loafers from Gucci's. The brue blazer index had sky rocketed.

"The only thing standing between us and being trampled to death," said the Foreign Car Driver. "Is a sheet of plate glass and some was bucking at the front of the line.

The Intern looked again at the crowd, which was bucking at the front of the line.

"I suppose we should be thankful, though," the Driver said. "Usually, you don't even have the plate glass."

"Still, it gives me the creeps," said the Intern.

"Why don't we get some coffee, then, and try to stay out of the stampede," said the Driver.

"You bet," said the Intern.

They retreated to one of the buffet tables, but the waitress there told them to go to hell.

"Here," said the Foreign Car Driver, pulling a ream of paper from his pocket. "Read some Stephen Schiff. It'll keep you busy."

They opened the doors to the new wing at five o'clock and the crowd tumbled in cooing at the new building. The models stood perfectly still in the foyers. The building was extraordinarily hospitable, even to a crowd such as this. It made no judgements. Even if you can't believe in God, you could do worse than to put your faith in I.M. Pei. He builds friendly, inspiring places for stockholders and streetcleaners alike.

"We should have become architects," said the Intern. "Journalists are leeches."

"Scribes."

"Whatever."

"Maybe we should go to Div School," said the Driver.

The Intern thought about that for a minute, but their musings were suddenly cut off by a vision.

"My God," said the Foreign Car Driver. "Look over there. Do you see what I see?"

The Intern look around, a bit confused.

"What are you talking about?"

"Coming up the escalator."

"Oh my God," said the Intern.

Pei's glass and steel machine ascended slowly to the second level, and on its polished chrome steps, it carried the Colonel.

Most people equate Colonels with the Air Force or truckstop chicken, but in reality, a Colonel is something far more intangible. As he came gliding up the escalator in a blue suit and a string tie, his white hair and goatee perfectly groomed, you realized that no interplay of advertising could create something like this. There was something magnanimous in his eyes, and yet something discriminating. He walked with a timeless dignity that made you feel just too post-modern for words. He smiled and mused over the building. He was alone, but everyone here seemed to be his responsibility.

The Foreign Car Driver had seen the Colonel once before, but he had passed it off as a apparition. He had been walking one night in Savannah, Georgia in the midsts of a raging black mood, and the Colonel had suddenly appeared, as if by magic, on the porch of an old brownstone. He had looked at the driver and said, "Good Evening." There was something in the way he said it that made you feel as if he knew the drear shit and persiflage and yet could still be amiable. He wasn't one of those hereditary Kentucky Colonels who, in reality, are just civic club boosters. No, he was a Colonel who probably lived in Vicksburg. He probably living in an old tumble-down mansion that he had farmed scientifically in his youth. He was an excellent marksman, though he only killed what was necessary. His study was full of timeless books. He had seen the horrors of the twentieth century and yet remained devout. His hand was firm and when he slowly walked through the chemical smells of Savannah, he still took careful note of everything. Life for him was a matter of honor.

"Jesus," said the Intern. "I didn't know they still existed."

The Driver smiled. The yachters leaned on glass cases filled with bronzes from the Sung Dynasty. They were talking about options and Parents' Day at Groton. The Colonel smiled at them and moved on

"What's he doing here?" asked the Intern.

The Driver didn't know. In J.T. Trowbrige's 1866 book The South, A Tour of its Battle-Fields and Ruined Cities, a Journey Through the Desolate States, and Talks with the People, of which there was still one copy in Lamont Library--though it hadn't been checked out since 1978--the author had talked about the remnants of gentlemen soldiers, and mused that they had all but disappeared and that the region was full of the worse kinds of blackguards and hucksters and promoters. If there was anything good about the Confederacy, he said, it was an old ethos, which, though mired in the horrors of the mid nineteenth-century South, had at least bothered to aspire to something while in the North industrialization ran amok. After the Civil War, the North took up the ideal of the gentleman planter for a while, and the legend of Lee--a fundamentally Northern myth--was born in cities full of coal and smoke. But the North was never serious about it. They took it up for fun. They took it up as a style. They took it up as a style. They took it up because they hadn't heard of Ukrania yet.

"What do we do?" asked the Intern.

"Nothing," said the Driver. "He'll find us if he wants to."

The pair wandered around the new light and steel building and drank gin. They got enmeshed in countless conversations about generalities, and small-talked with a vengeance. They chatted with the models and they chatted about the Vineyard. They admitted that Chinese bronzes had changed their young lives so as not to appear boorish. The Driver told someone at the buffet that only cars and art made life worth living, and on the whole he thought that art was probably easier to take care of. As the sun set over Pei's masterpiece, they walked out to the car in the company of a young couple from Brookline all maligned Pissarro, though none of them had ever held a brush. When they got to the car there was a notice on it that said the convertible was being converted to a condominium and they had the option to buy. From Huntington Avenue came the sounds of turbo-powered portable stereos and the roar of Trans-Ams. The name of such cars was not lost on them. Suddenly, the Colonel was at their elbows.

"Gentlemen," he said. "What is the news."

"Well frankly, Colonel," said the Driver. "Pauline Kael says the odds are getting worse, and she's a silly optimist compared to most of them."

The Colonel nodded.

"Somebody told me yesterday that if North Dakota seceded from the Union, it would be the third ranking nuclear power in the world, and things generally do not bode well."

"I see," said the Colonel.

"To say nothing of the rest of the mess."

The Colonel smiled. He looked around him at Huntington Avenue and tapped his cane on the ground. In the night air you could smell a bit of the sea from the Harbor.

"Well, son," said the Colonel. "Don't worry. It's been like this before."

The Colonel moved slowly down Huntington Avenue, surrounded by women who looked like pre-revolutionary Russian peasants. The Intern and the Driver watched him go. They could have sworn they heard hoofbeats and the sounds of polished steel.

Sabres, Gentlemen, Sabres.