The study in his house on Francis Avenue where Ivan Goldberg sat was so immaculate that it looked like a stage set. Even his desk was empty except for the leather-bound notebook in which he was now writing something. Even the books had no informality about them; they were bound in sets, the English and American classics, the French classics, the great Russian novelists. He could have walked out of this room and left no trace of himself, unless, as gossip had it, it was true that he kept a day-to-day journal in the manner of Gide.

As chairman of the department, he had been on the phone all morning trying to arrange for various people to take over Cavan’s seminar and the three graduate students whose adviser he was. Fortunately, Edward had been on half time this term in order to work at his book. Nevertheless, it was a delicate business. His colleagues were all busy at work of their own and did not enjoy the idea of taking on additional tasks in the middle of the first semester, a low ebb in everyone’s energy, as Goldberg well knew. On a pad before him were five telephone numbers written in the hieroglyphic hand which so irritated students. He had called them all, but had found no one ready to take on the seminar. So he would have to manage that himself. But this was not as simple a decision as it appeared while he re-arranged his schedule in the notebook. He would, in taking over Cavan’s seminar, be walking into hostile territory with his hands more or less tied. Very quietly then, he laid the book in which he had written down his new schedule into the right-hand drawer of his desk, closed it, and took out a cigarette. The geometries and abstractions of organization which were his private game against the demons were all very well, but the moment came when they no longer helped.