Grades

The cross was on the edge of the hill, and he could not remember what it was for.

It was the fourth question on the Statistics final, at eight on Monday morning in a room under the library with no windows, and the tiny woman who said Variance is your friend had drawn it herself on the paper, in the plain grey type the university used for everything: a curve like a hill, and out on the far edge of it, at the bottom, nearly off the page, a small cross.

4. A researcher believes the mean is 50. She observes the value marked. What should she conclude? Show your working. (25 marks.)

He looked at it for a long time.

He could see Sam drawing it, at six in the morning in 316, under the tax brackets, with Rhys asleep under a pillow. He could hear Sam saying it’s for how surprised you should be. He could remember that he had understood it, for about four hours, a week ago, and that it had been a good four hours. He could not remember anything else.

He wrote: She should be very surprised.

Then he looked at it, and crossed it out, because it was not working; and then he wrote it again, lower down, because it was the only true thing he knew about the question, and under it he wrote what he could, which was not much, and handed it in at ten with twenty minutes left, which he had never done in his life.

---

Dr Pike’s examination was on Wednesday at eight, in the music room, and there were two candidates.

It was not, Pike said, an examination. She said it twice, at the piano, in her cardigan, at seventy-six, with the score open in front of her and her glasses on top of her head, where she had forgotten them. It was a hearing. She would play, and they would sing the parts they had learned, and she would listen, and that would be the term’s work, and she had been doing it for twenty years and had never yet failed anybody who had come at eight in the morning, on the grounds that coming at eight in the morning to sing was a moral achievement in itself.

Frederick sang the tenor, which was the part he had, and which was adequate.

Then Pike played the first bars of the bass line, and stopped, and looked over the top of the piano at Kessler.

Kessler stood by the window in the dark suit, with his hands at his sides, and sang.

It came up out of him the way it had in September, and at Tucson, low and enormous, filling the room from the floor upwards until the windows seemed to hold it in; and Pike did not play. She sat at the piano with her hands in her lap and listened to the whole of it unaccompanied, all four verses, with her eyes shut, and when it was finished she did not say anything for some time.

“Thank you, Mr Kessler,” said Pike, at last.

“Dr Pike.”

Pike took her glasses down off her head, and looked at them, and put them back.

“Twenty years,” she said, to the piano.

Walking back across the mall in the cold, Frederick said, “She’s going to give you an A.”

“Sir,” said Kessler. “She is going to give you an A also.”

“She gives everybody who comes at eight an A.”

“Yes,” said Kessler. “There have been two.”

---

He did not see Alexander sit the Charter.

He heard about it, on Wednesday afternoon, from Rhys, who had not sat it either, being a second-year, but who had heard about it from a freshman on the fourth floor who had been in the room. The Charter’s sections had sat the final together in the big lecture theatre on the north side of the mall, three hundred and sixty of them in coats, and Brennan had walked the aisles with the paper rolled into a tube in one hand, slowly, with his hands behind his back.

“He didn’t stop,” said Rhys.

“Brennan always stops.”

“He stopped behind everybody. The freshman said he stopped behind her for a full minute and she thinks she’s aged.” Rhys looked at the floor of the corridor. “He walked past Alex four times. Up the aisle and back. And he didn’t stop once.” He went pink. “She said it was like watching somebody walk past a window they wanted to look in.”

---

The marks came on Friday.

Alexander’s came first. It came at fourteen minutes past nine, on the laptop on the desk by the door, in an email to Hohenzollern, A., from H. Brennan, with no greeting.

He read it at the desk with his hands flat on either side of the laptop. Then he turned the laptop round, a quarter turn, so that Frederick at the window could see it, which was a thing he had never done with anything.

Mr Hohenzollern. C. Your examination was excellent, and your essay cited its author, which I have ruled against in this room, as you know, Mr Hohenzollern, and as you also know I am bound by my own rules. It was otherwise the best essay in the section. H. Brennan.

Frederick read it twice.

“He gave me a C,” said Frederick. “Last year.”

“I know. You wrote to me.” Alexander looked at the screen. “You wrote I was there, and put a footnote on it, and in the footnote you wrote The author. You knew what it would cost and you decided it was worth a grade.” He was quite still. “I did not notice.”

“That’s not worse.”

“It is worse,” said Alexander. “It is the part that is worse. I wrote six pages on whether a man can be a citizen and a sovereign at once and I cited the sovereign, as an authority, in a footnote, and I did not notice, and I read it three times before I handed it in.” He looked at the footnote in his mind, which Frederick could see him looking at. “I read every line. I did not read that one.”

He sat for a while.

“I mind it,” he said. “I mind it very much.”

That was all. He said it once, plainly, the way he said everything, looking at the screen; and Frederick, by the window, did not say it’s only a C, or it doesn’t matter, or you’ll get an A in the spring, or any of the other things that came up into his mouth in a row like people at a door, because he could see that every one of them was true and that none of them was any use.

Then Alexander stood up and went down to the lounge, to the printer by the noticeboard, and came back with the email on a single sheet, and took down from the shelf over the desk by the door a plain grey folder, new, with nothing on it, and wrote on the front of it, in pencil, in his exact hand, Charter; and put the sheet inside; and closed the folder and stood it back on the shelf between the little blue Charter and the dictionary, with its spine square to the edge.

“There,” he said.

---

Frederick’s came at noon. Four of them, in four small grey boxes.

The Realm to 1865: B+.

Spanish (Intermediate): B.

Introduction to Music II: A.

Introduction to Statistics: D.

He looked at the D for a while.

He had never had a D. He had never had anything below the C in the Charter, and that had been on purpose, and his father had put it at the front of the folder. He looked at the D and tried to think what his father would do with it, and found that he had no idea, and that this was in its own way interesting.

Under the B plus there was a comment, typed, from Dr Ashby, which was two lines long and seemed to have been rewritten several times.

Excellent use of sources, Mr Hanover. In the spring, if you could, um, would you mind citing slightly fewer of them from your family. N. Ashby.

---

He took the D to 316.

He did not mean to. He meant to go to the window at the end of the corridor and look at it there, by himself; but the door of 316 was open, as it always was, and Sam was at the desk under the tax brackets with the notebook, and Sam looked up, and looked at his face, and put the pencil down.

“What did you get?”

“D.”

Sam did not say anything for some time.

He sat at the desk under the federal tax brackets with his hands on either side of the notebook, and looked at Frederick in the doorway with the expression of a man who has been told by an auditor that an account he personally reconciled at six every morning for eleven weeks does not balance.

“That’s my D,” said Sam.

“It’s my D.”

“I taught it. Eleven weeks. Six in the morning.” Sam picked up the pencil and put it down again. “What did you put for question four?”

“That she should be very surprised.”

Sam closed his eyes.

“That’s right,” said Sam, with his eyes closed. “That’s exactly right. That’s the whole of it.” He opened them. “What did you put after that?”

“Not much.”

“No.” Sam opened the notebook at a clean page, and wrote at the top of it, in pencil, Spring, and underlined it twice. “You’re not taking statistics in the spring.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to teach you anyway,” said Sam, and wrote under Spring, 06.00, and underlined that too.

From under the pillow on the bed by the window, where he had been asleep since nine, after his last final, Rhys said, “Pike gave you an A.”

“Pike gives everybody an A who comes at eight.”

“There’s only ever been two of you.”

“So it’s a hundred per cent,” said Sam, without looking up.

---

He sent the four to Gloucestershire and New Westminster.

Jack replied in four minutes, from behind the bar of the New Inn at five past seven in the evening, in capitals.

D FOR DONT CARE. B FOR BLOODY GOOD. A FOR THE OTHER ONE. SAM WILL BE DEVASTATED, TELL HIM I SAID ITS NOT HIS FAULT, THE BLOKE KICKED IT

Theo replied an hour later, from somewhere with a lot of noise behind it.

Ds are also a doctor’s grade. Ask me about my first anatomy practical sometime. How’s Alex?

He looked at the last three words for a while, and then wrote back the truth, which was He got a C. He minds. He said so once and put it in a folder.

Good, wrote Theo. That’s the right amount of minding. Ring me Sunday.

---

The Executive came at two.

Frederick heard about it in two halves, as he heard most things about The Executive, which he did not take and which he now knew more about than any course he did.

He heard the first half from Rhys, at half past two, in the corridor, outside 316, where Rhys was standing with his telephone in one hand and five highlighters in his top pocket in order, with his ears red from the top down.

“Ninety-four,” said Rhys.

“That’s good.”

“He got ninety-four.”

“Alexander?”

“Identical.” Rhys looked at the telephone as though it had betrayed a confidence. “To the point. Again. Every quiz since September, and the midterm, and now the final paper, and it’s the same.” He put the telephone in his pocket. “It’s not right. His third section was better than mine. On the emergency powers. It was better than anything I wrote all term.”

“So?”

“So I’m going to Mercer’s office hour,” said Rhys, with the face of a man setting out to report a crime. “At three. To tell him.”

“To tell him what?”

“That he’s marked Alex down,” said Rhys, and went.

---

He heard the second half from Alexander, at four, at the desk by the door, with the programme.

“I have been to Professor Mercer’s office hour,” said Alexander.

“So has Rhys.”

“I know. I passed him on the stairs. He was coming down. He was very red.” Alexander ticked 15.30. “I went at half past three, because Mr Whitfield had the three o’clock. I told Professor Mercer that Mr Whitfield’s paper was better than mine. His footnotes are better than my argument. That is not a small thing in a paper. I have read his footnotes. There are forty-one of them and every one of them is correct and three of them are interesting.” He paused. “I asked him to mark Mr Whitfield up.”

“And Rhys asked him to mark you up.”

“Yes. Professor Mercer told me.” Alexander laid the pencil down. “He said that it was the first time in nineteen years that two students had come to his office hour in one afternoon to ask him to give the other a higher grade, and that he would treasure it. And that the marks would stand.”

“Both ninety-four.”

“Both ninety-four.” Alexander looked at the programme. “And then he thanked me again for my European perspective.”

Frederick began to laugh.

He could not help it. He sat on the bed by the window and laughed, and Alexander looked at him across the room with great dignity, and did not laugh, and then, quite suddenly, at the corner of his mouth, nearly did.

“It is not funny,” said Alexander.

“It’s very funny.”

“Mr Whitfield and I are going to write to him,” said Alexander. “Jointly. We have agreed it on the stairs. One letter, on the subject of the European perspective, with footnotes.” He picked up the pencil. “Mr Whitfield is going to do the footnotes.”

---

Doug came at one, before any of that, with a clipboard, as he had the year before.

He was the same Doug, large and slow and patient, in a polo shirt with the lanyard that said DOUG, and he came along the third floor knocking on the doors that were open and reading the closing checklist off the sheet, and he stopped in the doorway of 312 and looked at the two of them, at the desk and the window, for a while, with no expression at all.

“Sorry, folks,” said Doug. “Closing checklist.”

He read it. Fridge unplugged. Door propped. Trash out. Blinds down. Thermostat, leave it, it’s on a schedule, sixty-two at night.

Then he turned the sheet over, to the shorter list on the back with a signature at the bottom.

“Rooms 312 and 316 to remain occupied, per arrangement,” read Doug. “314 vacated. Heating as building. Desk staffed nights.” He lowered the sheet. “In situ. Two years running.” He considered it. “Never had a two years running.”

“Sorry,” said Frederick.

“Don’t be.” Doug folded the sheet. “Somebody across the road wrote half of it again. It’s got the paragraph about the fire door.” He looked at Alexander. “And a new one. About a courier. Seven a.m. daily, Christmas Day included, signed for at the desk by the officer from across the road.” He put the clipboard under his arm. “Never had a courier on Christmas Day, either.”

“It has never been late,” said Alexander.

Doug looked at him for a moment.

“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose it has.”

He knocked twice on the frame of the door, the way some people touch wood, and went on along the corridor, knocking.

---

Tyler came at three, from Ironwood, in the coat.

It was the vast black quilted thing with the grey fur round the hood, and he had it on already, at sixty-five degrees, zipped to the chin, with his bag on one shoulder, because his car to the airport was at half past and he had come the long way round across campus to stop at 312 on the way, which nobody had asked him to do.

“Fourteen,” said Tyler, and held up his telephone.

It was the driveway in Parma, and the white hump, and the small figure in the pink hat with the yardstick.

“Again?”

“She says it’s the same storm as last year. Like, personally. She says it remembers me.” Tyler looked at the photograph. “My grandma’s already got the plate out.”

He stood in the middle of the room in the coat, sweating, and looked round it, at the two beds and the two desks, and the window, and the butte in it, the way he had looked round it a year ago; and then he went to the fridge and opened it, and put into it, carefully, at the back, one bottle of Glacier Freeze, and closed it.

“For emergencies,” said Tyler.

“What kind of emergencies?”

Tyler thought about it.

“Blue ones,” he said.

He went to the door, and stopped, and turned round, enormous and pink in the coat.

“Merry Christmas, man,” he said to Frederick. Then to Alexander, at the desk: “Merry Christmas, dude.” He thought about something. “Brayden’s going to call you. He got your number off the floor list. He’s going to call you on Christmas Day and talk about Mesa.”

“Thank you for the warning,” said Alexander.

“You don’t have to pick up,” said Tyler. “I never pick up.” And went.

---

Felix and Lena went at four, in a taxi from the arcade, to Sky Harbor and Frankfurt and home, Felix to Kiel and Lena to Leipzig, with one bag each.

Before she went Lena went into the kitchen behind the lounge, where the two rings were, both working, and taped to the wall above them, at eye level, two typed pages.

The first was headed 16.12 to 31.12 and the second 01.01 to 06.01, and each had a day on every line, and on every line a dish, in English, with its ingredients and its time on which ring, and at the bottom of the second page, in capitals, underlined: NO PUDDINGS ON FIRE. I HAVE READ ABOUT LAST YEAR. L.V.

Sam read both pages through, slowly, standing in front of them, and then took out his notebook and copied them.

“She’s very thorough,” said Sam.

“She’s a nutritionist.”

“She’s a police officer,” said Sam. “That’s why she’s thorough.” He wrote the last line down, the one in capitals. “The nutritionist is the cover.”

Makayla went at five, with her parents, to Kingman. She stopped in the corridor by the door of 308, with a bag in each hand, and looked at it, and at the sun on it that said LENA, and at Frederick, who happened to be going past.

“She’s gone home?”

“To Germany.”

“Right.” Makayla considered it. “Is that where exchange students go? For Christmas?”

“Yes,” said Frederick.

Makayla looked at him with deep and final suspicion, and went.

---

Kessler went across the road at half past five, with one bag.

They watched him from the window at the end of the corridor, between the concrete fins: a large man in a dark suit crossing the dark road under the one street lamp with a black holdall in his hand, the kind that is packed with things in exactly the right order, going up the outside stair beside the dentist’s, and knocking.

The door opened about a foot. The light came out. Kessler went into it.

Nobody said anything. Rhys opened his mouth, and Sam looked at him, and Rhys shut it again; and across the road, over the dentist’s, in the one window with its light on, the blind moved an inch, and was still.

---

At six the lights went.

They went the way they had gone a year ago, on a schedule, from the top down, the fourth floor first through the ceiling in a long row of soft heavy clicks, and then their own corridor from the fire-door end, the long tubes going out one after another towards them over the lino, until the one above their heads went too, and they stood in the dark, the four of them, in a row outside 312 and 316, with only the green of the exit sign; and then, with a hum, a single light came back on at each end of the corridor, dim, the night setting, the one the building kept for the people it knew were there.

“Well,” said Rhys.

Sam took out his notebook and wrote something, and Frederick did not need to look to know that it was 6.00: closed.

Alexander stood beside him in the half dark and looked along the corridor at the doors, all of them shut, with their paper suns on them in silver pen, FELIX and K. on 314, LENA and MAKAYLA on 308, RHYS and SAM, and on 312 the sun that said ALEX, still there, and beside it the small rectangle of old tape where FRED had been, which had gone again in the night, as it went.

“It has gone again,” said Alexander.

“It always goes.”

“Mine never goes.”

“No,” said Frederick. “Nobody takes yours.”

Alexander considered the rectangle of tape for some time, in the dim light, with his hands at his sides.

“I would mind that also,” he said, “if I were you,” and went in, and turned on the lamp by the door; and below them, floor by floor, they heard the rest of the hall go out.