As for Gregory Hemstock—his academic qualifications were probably stronger than Marya’s, in Marya’s opinion; in any case they were more solidly professional. He had published a book at Oxford University Press on Yeats’ visionary poetry and plays; he was completing a study of Pound’s Cantos; he had served admirably—stoically—on several key committees outside the department; his students liked him immensely—his great fear, an entirely justified one, was that he might be judged by his older colleagues as too popular with undergraduates. (Marya Knauer, whose severe grading, and whose penchant now and then for the quick, ironic, brittle remark, earned her at best a middling popularity with the masses of students, hadn’t at least that to worry about; she joked that she could relax and make friends with her students only after her career had settled in.)

Eight assistant professors competing for a single position, eleven assistant professors competing for two positions. . . . Interviews by the departmental committee and the Dean’s committee and the Provost’s committee. . . . Endless bibliographic lists, and excerpts from work-in-progress, and embarrassed requests for letters of recommendation from scholars at other colleges. . . . Isn’t it all degrading, Marya and Gregory and the others in their position were always saying to one another, isn’t it humiliating, numbing, banal and tedious and as real as, what?—death?—or merely a protracted debilitating illness? Difficult not to resent and eventually despise those who are sitting in judgment on you, Marya thought. She wondered if the bitterness was primarily because all her judges were men; or simply because the situation was intolerable.

(Gregory said dryly that he was a man, wasn’t he; and he had come to loathe the whole bunch of them by this time—even those who meant well, who were really very nice men. Perhaps his situation was more intolerable than Marya’s because he was a man. “Consider our raging insatiable egos, our famous need to fight,” he said. “All my brute’s adrenaline rushing about to no purpose.”)

From time to time Marya noted the irony, even the humor, of her situation; tried to view it in mature perspective. After all, even if she failed at this crucial point in her career (which is to say, her life) she had in any case come a remarkable distance from the Canal Road.

AT LUNCH IN the sunny walled garden of a pre-Revolutionary inn, Marya and Gregory were each ravenous with hunger. They ate heartily, greedily, unapologetically. Marya saw that eating was a serious business—food was a great deal more than an idea or a metaphor. “Isn’t this black bread delicious? Maybe we could steal some of it to take with us,” Marya said, taking yet another piece and tearing it in two; and Gregory, chewing, his mouth full, said, “At this point everything is delicious, my love—don’t distract us.”