by Belva Plain
“I don’t know what it is. I can’t put my finger on it, but Victor Jordaine just looked out of place, didn’t he, Paul?”
Roused, Paul murmured, “Yes, I thought so too.”
He was to have good reason to remember that.
7
At the very top of the sloping rows, from the farthest rear of the lecture theater, Steve looked down at a hundred unmoving heads. These, like his own, were turned directly toward the man on the podium.
The man was young, perhaps thirty or thirty-five. He had pink skin and a full, very blond head of hair. His features were long and Lincolnesque; his was a face that, once seen, would be hard to forget. Up until this day, the first of a new semester, Steve had seen Professor Powers only two or three times and only while hurrying across the campus. But he had not forgotten him, and had heard so much about him that he had made sure to enroll in one of his classes as soon as possible.
There was almost no sound in the hall now other than Powers’s full, pleasing voice, none of the customary accompaniment of coughs, squeaking chairs, and rattling papers.
“I was in Hanoi only a couple of months ago, and I can tell you that the spirit there is incredibly high. The courage of simple people! I was humbled by it, especially by the young. Look at your hands,” Powers cried suddenly. “Yes, turn them over and look at them.”
Puzzled, not understanding, but obedient, every student looked at his hands.
“In young hands like yours, in Vietnam and all over the world, the future is being formed.” Powers leaned forward as though he would speak to, perhaps actually touch, everyone in the hall. “Well, so, you will say,” he went on earnestly, “I’m young, I feel, I see what’s wrong, but what can I really do about it? Johnson decides to bomb North Vietnam and kill a million innocent peasants, and what can I do about it except talk? But, ah, if enough people talk, if enough people change their way of thinking and their selfish values, they will ultimately change the world! Never doubt it. Never.”
An unusual excitement was taking hold of Steve. Who could have thought there would be so much vitality in a course entitled “Contemporary Topics in American Literature”? It had been one thing to hear about this man Powers and quite another to hear him in person.
It was plain why he had such a following! He had warmth and energy and conviction. They shone through every word he had been speaking this morning. In a way, he could remind you of John F. Kennedy, although the resemblance was only external, for Kennedy had been basically just another American politician, while this man was enlightened. Even if Professor Powers were not famous, Steve reflected, one would know that he was a “kindred soul”; people carried certain airs about themselves that told you what they were, even without words. And this man—this man was real.
“It’s a people’s revolution in Vietnam,” he was saying, “not a contest between rich world powers. If we would only leave them alone to make their own decisions, they’d build justice, economic, social, and—”
The buzzer sounded. Powers glanced at the clock and grinned. “Behind my schedule, as usual. I wanted to tell you about my study groups, but it’s late, so I’ll just say quickly that I like to keep an extra hour open on Tuesdays for in-depth discussion with any students who may be interested in extra reading, and so forth. It’s totally unrelated to course credit, just pure pleasure. If any of you want to know more, drop by my office.”
Steve made his way through the shuffle and bustle in the corridor and went outdoors. Avoiding the group of friends with whom he usually walked to the next class, he struck off by himself on a roundabout route to the science building. The midwestern winter, which had astonished him by its ferocious cold, had softened toward a January thaw this morning; a large drop quivered at the tip of each long icicle on the eaves and the sun was hot on his upturned face. Briskly, and yet removed in thought, he moved on the shoveled pathway between high banks of blue-white snow.
Round and round went his thoughts as he trudged. He was filled with an awareness of well-being that, during the past hour, had merged into exhilaration. In these few months at college he had been happy, anyway; the campus had become home. He had easily made new friends, male and female. They slept in their cubicles all down the hall, and whenever he had need to talk he had only to walk down the hall for the most intelligent conversation anyone could want. Or if he needed sex, there was always someone there for that. Here he was the freest he had ever been. Of course, if once the university should ever become truly free, people were saying—and Professor Powers had mentioned that too—and the political systems of the world rebuilt, ah, then! Then …
I’d like to talk to him, he said to himself. You don’t find people like him every day. Not where I come from, either in school or at home, that’s for sure. And not even here, among all these brains. Not like him.
Professor Powers was alone in his office when Steve knocked and entered. From his desk he gave a cheerful greeting.
“Come in, sit down. Should I know you? Am I failing to recognize you? It’s one of my shameful failings.”
“I only had my first class with you this morning. Contemporary American Lit. I wanted to take it last semester but it was already filled.” In his eagerness Steve’s words tumbled over each other. Then he stuck out his hand. “My name’s Steve Stern.”
“Glad to know you, Steve.”
Overcome with a need to show his admiration, he said shyly, “The main reason I chose my college was that I heard you were here.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I was still in high school when I first read about you, how you were attacked for saying you hoped the Viet Cong would win. I know a lot of other people were shocked that you said that, but I thought you were right.”
“That shows you were thinking more clearly than a lot of other people were.”
Steve flushed with pleasure. “I like to read history and it makes you think about”—he wanted so much to say something impressive!—“about the future, I mean. And some of the things you said this morning—well, I’ve been thinking about them too, and I came to say I’d like to join your discussion group, and read some more and—and all that.”
“Would you? Why, that’s wonderful!” Pure pleasure shone in the professor’s eyes, which were of a remarkable, blazing blue. “Well, then, tell me something about yourself. Steve Stern. Where are you from, Steve?”
“Westchester. That’s just outside New York City.”
“I know the area.”
As it seemed necessary to keep the dialogue going, Steve added, “Then you know what it is. Just typical suburbia.”
“Meaning?”
“Oh, you know.”
“I know what I know, but I’m interested in hearing your thoughts about it.”
He wanted to hear Steve’s thoughts!
Encouraged, Steve set forth with a more natural ease. “Well, my last time home, for instance, I had to go to my grandfather’s funeral. Just being there, watching the people, sort of crystallized things for me. Summed things up. You’d have thought it was an auto show. A line of Cadillacs and Mercedes and what-have-you all the way down the road. And the house filled with Republican types: Go in and bomb the hell out of Vietnam. I got fed up hanging around listening to them. Came to pay condolences, but couldn’t shut up about their houses and stocks. Suburbia! Make money, spend money, that’s what life’s all about. It was a pleasure to get back to school.” And Steve grinned, satisfied to see that his words were being well received.
“I know what you mean. I grew up the same way. My father was a self-made millionaire, and he never let you forget it.”
“Well, my grandfather hasn’t left millions, I’m sure, though by his standards he did all right.”
All he did was make money and observe his obsolete religious rituals. There couldn’t have been much else in his head. Mom must have known that. She’s too intelligent not to know it. Yet—her tears. Real ones, too, no fake about them, like so many tears at funerals. Sh
e must really have loved him. Honor thy father and thy mother as the Lord thy God commanded thee that thy days may be long.… He smiled to himself. So well had he drilled for his Bar Mitzvah that the stuff would probably stick in his head for the rest of his life, and he’d never be rid of it.
Professor Powers said abruptly, “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Steve acknowledged. He hated being labeled; labels were not relevant to the new world, the new way of life that was bound to come.
“I could have been mistaken, of course, but most people named Stern are Jewish. I’ve been in Israel,” he added.
“You’ve been everywhere, I guess.”
“Hardly everywhere.”
“You were in the South, I read. On the Freedom Ballot campaign.”
“That was before your time. You must have been in junior high about then. Yes, we gathered together from all over the north. I lived with a black family, which infuriated the town. They put gravel in my engine and punctured my tires. One day a string of cars pursued me out of town. I was almost driven off the road going ninety miles an hour. I was shot at too. It was a bloody business. Murderous. I guess you might call it a small version of Vietnam.”
These words took vivid shape in Steve’s imagination. He had a sickening vision of a car skidding and reeling through the southern flatlands on a melting tar highway; men and guns followed. A head was blown away, and the gray, wet brains oozed. At the movies he dreaded scenes like those and always closed his eyes. He shuddered.
“Violence! In Mississippi or Vietnam, it’s all horrible.”
“Yes, but sometimes it’s necessary,” Powers answered soberly.
“I guess I have a special feeling about it from hearing so much about the concentration camps. My father’s from Vienna.”
“I understand. But it took violence to free the camps, you must remember.”
“I guess that’s so.”
“Have you got a big family?” Powers inquired gently.
“A sister starting high school, a kid brother, and another brother only eleven months younger than I. He expects to come here next year because I’m here. Only, he wants to be a doctor. They’re all strictly apolitical in my family.”
Except Mom, maybe, he thought as he spoke. Mom was a liberal, which made her harder to deal with than his father was. With him you knew where you stood: nowhere. With her, the trouble was that she meant well; she would sympathize with your point of view and then suddenly jump away. Class interests influenced her, although she didn’t know it and would deny it. People like her prided themselves on seeing both sides of a question fairly, but they always ended up by defending their own interests.
“Families!” he said aloud.
“I know what you mean. I have a brother with the State Department. He’s at the embassy in Saigon. Real gung-ho on the war too. My father was a bootlegger; that’s how he could afford to become respectable. He would have approved of my brother. He never approved of me or of my sister Agnes, because she’s an artist and a lesbian. And I’ve got twin sisters too, a couple of clotheshorses. Them, he liked. Funny, isn’t it?”
Steve was moved by the unexpected confidences. He was being treated like an equal, an adult equal, perhaps even a special adult. A person wouldn’t talk this way to just anybody. You would have to feel some sort of a pull, an affinity.
And he said, “I know what you mean, Professor Powers. Though I can’t say my parents don’t like me—in their way they love me very much. But we don’t speak the same language. And I can’t say they’ve ever really taught me anything.”
“Not uncommon. My most powerful influence came from a teacher I met in summer school when I was fourteen. He taught me more about the world in that one short summer than any ten other human beings have done in all the rest of my life, most certainly including my parents. By the way, I like to be called ‘Tim.’ No hierarchy, just pure democracy in my classes. Yes, one great teacher, that’s all you need. Incidentally, you must have met some good ones. Whose classes are you taking?”
Steve enumerated. “Mr. Hodges for Soc. One, Mrs. McCarthy in chemistry, LaFarge for French. They’re all great. Then Remington for ancient history. He—well.” Feeling confident now, he said boldly, “Decidedly not great.”
Powers laughed. With laughter his face became radiant. “Oh, the patrician! Brooks Brothers or J. Press. Old, old family. They haven’t had a new idea in five generations. Don’t let him influence you!”
Steve joined the laughter. “Not a chance, Tim!”
“He’s a big promoter for ROTC. God, we have to stop military recruiting on this campus! It’s an obscenity. Business and industry. What the hell, industry lives on war.”
They talked. An hour passed before Steve became aware of the time and stood up.
“Golly, I’ve taken up your afternoon. I’m sorry.”
“Nonsense! I’ve enjoyed it. I don’t know about you, but I have a feeling that this has been a fortuitous meeting, and I’d like to see you again. You are coming, aren’t you?”
“I surely am,” Steve answered gratefully. “And thank you. Thanks a million.”
“I can put you in touch with some of the brightest minds on the campus, people you’ll learn from. They’re graduate students, most of them, people with tremendous experience. One of the women, for instance, a sociology major, is just back from her senior year in the Soviet Union. They’ll make you productive, and I sense that’s what you want to be, a doer. Not just a talker, but an organizer, one who leads the way.”
“Oh, yes! Oh, yes!”
The winter sun was tipping the horizon, its pale afterglow seeping pink through the gray sky, when Steve walked back to his room. He stood a moment to gaze at the splendor.
“A beautiful world,” he said aloud. He was filled with a wonderful new fervor. This man, so admired, so brilliant, this leader, wanted him! He had treated him like an equal. He had been simple and forthright about himself. Yes, this was the new man, free of middle-class inhibitions, free and honest. To someone like him you could confide anything, and he would accept you.
Yes, it was wonderful.…
He paced his room, glancing every few minutes at the alarm clock. From the window he could see the square where people were sitting on the base of the Civil War statue, the crouching soldier with the forage cap and the bayonet at the ready. There was a Friday-afternoon letdown on the campus. You could see it in people’s posture.
He lit a cigarette, a Lucky Strike. It tasted like hay, like nothing, but he wasn’t about to smoke pot in his dormitory room. Timothy had warned his people not to look for trouble, so the floating ease of pot was kept for Lydia’s place, which was off campus. Lydia’s place and other places. His hand was trembling.
Across the hall someone opened a door and music blared, Bob Dylan concluding “Like a Rolling Stone,” followed by “Eve of Destruction,” which was a bitter song that made you sad, made you angry, and made you determined.
The clock clicked past the hour. Any minute his friends would be here, and he would be swept along with them in comradeship. He thought of the fighting priests, the Berrigan brothers; men like them to be locked up in a federal penitentiary! Three years behind bars in maximum security! And they had known what they were risking when they raided the draft board that first time, they had known and done it anyway. Courage. By now Steve’s hands were trembling so much that he had to stub out the cigarette, but all the time his eyes were on the statue below, where someone would be appearing to signal readiness.
Timothy was to provide the borrowed car. He had friends everywhere. An underground network, you might call it, and Steve had been astonished when he learned how many so-called respectable people, doctors, professors, and lawyers who were the bulwark of the middle class, were already so deeply involved and ready to risk so much to give shelter and money wherever these were needed. Timothy knew people like those from coast to coast. For that matter, he knew people in Hanoi and Palestine and in Cuba
, where he had taken a group to go with the Vinceremos to work in the countryside and learn about the new society. Next summer, without fail, he, too, would go.
Presently, he saw Lydia rounding the corner of the science building. Even at this distance there was no mistaking her abundant, frizzy dark hair. It fanned out from her thin face, making the face look even smaller. He wished, as he grabbed his heavy jacket, that he could say she belonged to him. But he must correct such thinking, for, as she reminded him even when they had sex together—and it was very good sex—nobody here belonged to anyone else. Nobody in this world ought to belong to anyone else. Sex was to be free, spontaneous, unashamed, and publicly acknowledged. It was simply a need, like the need for food. And so, since Lydia had been sleeping with Benjie and Mark, and probably, he surmised, with Leo too, he had felt almost obliged to do the same sort of thing. During the last semester he had spent nights with Jennifer and Lori and would probably have to do it with Ellen, although he didn’t want to, for her pendulous, elderly breasts and the remains of acne on her face repelled him. But she wanted to, that was plain. Maybe it was her eagerness, too, that turned him off. Yet it was wrong of him, wrong and typically bourgeois, to judge a human being by physical appearance. He was reminded of his sister Laura’s overheard telephone conversations with her friends, such superficial conversations about who was good-looking and who had worn what outfit where. And he resolved while galloping down the stairs to satisfy Ellen. They were comrades, and they would share. Who was he, who was anyone, to scorn another human being for not being beautiful?
“Hurry,” said Lydia. “They’re around the corner. Tim’s got a station wagon, so we can all fit into one car.”
There were seven of them. Lydia was the only woman. She was to be a backup driver for Tim, and besides, she, along with Tim, was the organizer of this undertaking.
No one spoke very much. They were all tense. The car left the campus and swept through the suburbs, past streets labeled “Churchill Circle” and developments called “Kensington Estates.” Pitiable anglophilia, Steve thought. Ticky-tack. Absurd. There were twenty-five miles to go. They swerved onto the highway and through a succession of small factory towns, bleak, similar, and gray, a huddle of mean houses that needed paint, and a string of stores around the industrial heart, the factories clustered like a pile of cement boxes. The sun, which had been a pallid smudge under dirty clouds, now disappeared. The last remains of snow lay in grimy ridges on the shady side of the streets, while grit, along with scraps of paper, blew in the foggy air. A sudden gust shook the hanging signs above storefronts and sent a tin can skittering in a crazy dance across the curb and under the wheels of the car. It began to drizzle. The melancholy was almost unbearable.
