letters from barabbas

A chapter from Lilian's Story, an excellent novel:

I had looked forward to reading all the wisdom ever written and to thinking deeply about important things. I had planned serene hours with fearless minds who would help me resolve problems of good and evil, and what everything might mean. I had been excited about my future.
In the lecture hall, I watched the men in tweed mouthing, smothering a yawn before turning to the next page in their notes. F.J. Stroud and I stared down at so many heads bowed over tricky considerations of philosophy, so many pens flying across lined paper. In the first row, right in front of the man in tweed, was the deaf boy who was going to go far in philosophy in spite of his handicap, and the pretty girl who did not know that she did not have to work so hard at understanding. She pressed hard, putting words into her book, pressing each word into the paper as if otherwise it might run away.
But what did any of it have to do with me? Did any of it have to do with the stars that hung low near dawn, or the way the sun came up dripping out of the sea? The notes I took meant nothing: a few facts about enclosure laws, a list of the dates of battles. My notebook did not fill like other people's, and what was in it was largely illegible. Even when it could be read, there did not seem to be much sense in these lists of denuded facts, dates, names. Descartes was a man with a ball of wax, I knew that much, and Philip of Spain had died an unmentionable death, but what else? Even Napoleon seemed boring.
Here up at the back of the hall, where the hot air gathered, and the smells of ink and feet, the fat girl with the red cheeks sat beside the thin ugly boy in black. The man in tweed had not wondered for many years what all this had to do with God, but he was annoyed by so much whispering in the back row. He that has ears, let him hear, he boomed out suddenly, to his suprise as much as his students. The pretty girl dropped her pencil, the deaf boy showed his teeth with the pleasure of having heard for once, and the thin boy and the fat girl stopped their whispering to stare.
I often wanted to stand and yell down into the ring. Where is size? I would have liked to shout. What have you done with the grand and ineffable? Where is the life all around us? I stood in my place, balancing against vertigo with a hand on the bench. The men in tweed stopped what they were saying and stared up, waiting. There would be a long silence which gradually filled up with shuffles, titters, things dropped with a bang or tinkle, during which I struggled to formulate one of my questions. The men in tweed became embarrassed. My formulations evaporated as I stood with my mouth trying to open on words, and watched them toss chalk from hand to hand. One pushed a long hand into his trouser pocket and drew out a gold watch on a chain. He laid it in front of him on the lectern as gently as a souffle. Yes? They would ask, their faces turned up to me in a moonlike way. Yes? The silence would deepen and finally splinter with a snicker from somewhere. The men in tweed prided themselves on their poise and silver temples, and smoothly turned to the board when they had waited long enough.
On the board they enumerated a few more facts about the movements of centuries or battles or philosophies, and when they turned back to the class they continued speaking as if the tall girl was not still standing, her mouth ajar, blocking the view of those behind, but still full of undelivered questions. They would learn to expect her and would finally look around at the beginning of the lecture to see from which bench she would rise, and would recognise her in the quadrangle, and nod, and smile a watchful smile to show they knew but that they would not be impressed.
It is a shock to me, I confessed to F. J. Stroud, who continued to be willing to be made conspicuous as the boy in black beside the standing girl. I expected something else. F. J. Stroud sneered, but did not intend cruelty. What did you expect? he wanted to know. Wisdom? The bedlam of the lunchtime bells strained after a melody--it might have been "Greensleeves" or just as well "Ye Banks and Braes"--but could only produce clamour. Wisdom, he said when we had passed out of the quadrangle. You will not find it here.
I was not sure that anything as complete as wisdom, or an answer, was what I was after. Even one satisfying question would have done me.