Between him and me was his desk, and on it was a talus slope of papers, books, pens, pipes, unguents, a coffee mug, and, somewhere toward the base, my preliminary draft. When finally he found it he frowned, fingering a few pages with one hand and his ass with the other.

I had entered his office with high hopes, although I didn’t know at the time what had prompted the invitation. It was quite late on a soft September afternoon; we had come directly from a reception for a visiting academician who had regaled us with a wok of stammering anecdotes about his work in China, collecting material for a biography of P’u Sung-Ling (1622–1679?). Or as he put it, “Kneading the d-d-disparate conca-ca-catenations of P-P-Pu’s vitae into a workable t-tessellation.” When, mercifully, the lecture dribbled down to a flat and inconclusive finale, we all repaired with the inconspicuous speed of sleepwalkers to the revivifying buffet.

Dr. Armbruster filled his plate with a wedge of cheese, a school of anchovies, and a mound of potato salad. He pushed back his piles, poured himself about four fingers of vodka, and was interrupted, as he proceeded toward a chair, by Shelby Drake.

Shelby Drake was another graduate student under his aegis, a smarmy, prematurely balding young man with a large Phi Beta Kappa key dripping from a chain across his ample vest. His doctoral thesis, on which he had been working for five years, was entitled “Punctuation as Emotional Caesurae in Joyce’s Ulysses.”

“Dr. Armbruster,” Drake called, “I’ve just remembered the first time I heard you praised.”

“Let me tell you something, Drake,” Armbruster said. “Your overtures, despite their delicacy, are valueless. Your deference is nauseating. Your presence is dispiriting.” Without rancor he added, “Go away.”

Nicety dictated that I move out of earshot. My attempt at self-effacement failed; as I veered away from the two of them, “Breslau!” Armbruster snapped. “Come with me.”

So I dogged his footsteps (Drake the toad-eater watching me hatefully), and sat by his side, peripherally aware of his long pistonlike arms working alternately to pass food to his mouth and push back his piles, as if he were shifting the gears that made his jaws mesh.

He said nothing for a good five minutes; then: “Sorry about your little contretemps with Chatterton.”

I shrugged dismissively, careful not to agitate the meatballs on my soggy platter.

“My fault, actually,” he said, “putting you on to him.” He chomped awhile, ruthlessly, every tooth a pulverizing weapon. He said, “We share an addiction, Chatterton and I—tennis. One should have an outdoor hobby.”

I tried to contain my surprise, although I couldn’t have been more astounded if he had told me his outdoor hobby was riding a barrel over Niagara Falls.

“You look stunned,” he chuckled, enormously pleased by my reaction. “Odd, that just about everyone should think of a teacher as totally enveloped in the nimbus of his own discipline. Do you play?”