“When we left Williamstown and went to India [Mr. Gaudino] maintained a formality that I think really spoke to his commitment to teaching. It was very uncomfortable. Many of us had physical illnesses of some kind, in the case of Bruce and I bitten by rabid dogs. And he would be there as a man, as an adult, but he always was taking this Socratic Method into the far corners of the unforeseen. You know, bringing some portion of that classroom relationship into what became in fact some of the most uncomfortable, demeaning and impersonal parts of our life. India did not homogenize or melt down the Socratic formality. I can just say as a punk in India I often wondered how he could be asking me questions in some of the most personal parts of my life up to that point. Not that he was disinterested, but that formality between him being the teacher and me being someone literally painfully involved in uncomfortable learning, he never let that melt. He never gave in to a kind of free for all.
Bruce and Steve Kendrick and I were in Goa, in Panjim, and for some reason we wanted to go to a Portuguese church that was literally on the beach. We walked up there and there was this river coming out into the sea and Steve declined and we took our jeans off and we waded across the river. The church was on the other side with large rocks, sort of breakwater type and I didn’t have my pants back on and all of a sudden these two rabid dogs come bounding down and all we could do is kind of protect ourselves by using our Levis to ward them off and I was bitten several times. It was a frenzy. It was a melee. I mean it happened in a flash and seemingly there was a man screaming up above and Bruce and I finally got back in the river and we went through a complete Fellini thing where we had to go to the police station and all the policeman were at a soccer game. So finally we ended up hiring a taxi and going out to the church and the villagers gathered round and said, “Don’t go there, these dogs are dangerous,” and they gave us a story about a child dying.
Well, they didn’t have any rabies serum in Panjim and so we had to get to Bombay [Mumbai] and you have to start it in 72 hours we were told. And the boats were all full and the planes were full and so we started off by bus and we went over the mountains to the east to a town called Belgaum and just in a way I will never forget there was a man a small conductor, a platform conductor, “I’m sorry to say there will be no tickets for you.” I remember picking this little man up, he had epaulettes, they loved to have accoutrements of the British Raj, he had these epaulettes and a little cap, I picked him up and I put him against the wall, “If we don’t get on this train, we’re going to die and then it’ll be your last train.” And somehow he figured out I was pretty serious so he took us out to a rail car, “Get in this car.” It was not attached and I don’t know why we believed him. He said “Don’t sit in the seats. All the seats have been sold, get up in the luggage rack.” So we got up in the luggage rack, and we went to sleep and I was awakened when this car went “CRRR” and it hooked up with another train.
The American embassy didn’t have the serum. We had to go into the Canadian embassy. There was duck embryo which is kind of a prophylactic sleeve they put with the rabies serum and they had these very dull needles and it was very thick. People always say, “Oh it must have been so painful to get these rabies injections in your stomach.” Actually it might save your life. It wasn’t too much of a burden to finally be getting those shots.
One way he would establish formality was by starting the sentence “Well” or “So, Mr. Mathieu, do you recommend these shots to anyone who’s been bitten by a rabid dog?”
“I would recommend these to anyone who’s been bitten.”
–James Mathieu '72
