“So, I should jump off a bridge because it scares me?”
“Do you want to jump off a bridge, Abdul?”
“No, but you said—”
“Come on, Abdul. Think a little bit, O.K.? Come on. Give me something, man. Dig. Push, Abdul. Push. Let’s go back to Hamlet. What does any of this have to do with this guy, Hamlet?”
And then the bell rang. Which is what often happened. He’d leave us with a question. The class would end and we’d file out wondering. We’d exchange knowing looks with one another. Even if we weren’t friends, we were bound together somehow. And those of us who’d fallen for him always returned ready and nervous, wanting so much for him to notice us. And afraid that he would.
* * *
The days got shorter as October came to an end. Sometimes I ate lunch with Lily when she was around. Otherwise, I ate alone and read whatever he told us to read. I ran cross-country and usually stayed after school to train. I made some friends. Or I met some people to talk to anyway. Mostly though I kept to myself. I rarely saw my father. In the evenings I ate dinner with my mom at the small table in the kitchen.
All I wanted was to live the life Silver wanted us to live.
By then we’d read Sartre, The Book of Job, and Hamlet. The days were cold and beautiful and I tried to pay attention to them. I tried to pay attention to everything. Above all else it’s what he seemed to want from us.
Waiting for the métro those mornings, I always hoped he’d see me. I dressed for him and stood with a book open, waiting. When I heard someone descending the steps onto the platform I’d furrow my brow as if immersed in my reading.
I saw him from time to time. He’d slip into a different car, or sit with his back to me. Those days I never had the courage to speak to him. Sometimes we’d walk from the métro to school together. I waited for him to ask me questions but he asked very little. He was warm. He smiled. Always said good morning.
“Good weekend?” he’d ask. “Doing O.K.?” He meant after what we’d seen together. But when I thought about that man dying in front of me I thought mostly of how it brought us to Au Petit Suisse. Put me there at a table with Silver. How he’d taken care of me. How I thought maybe I even took care of him. The event itself didn’t haunt me the way the school counselor thought it should. I’d been obligated to meet with her once a week.
During those walks with him from the métro, he’d sometimes ask about the reading: did I like it? Was it interesting to me? I gave generic answers while I searched for something intelligent and original—witty, spontaneous observations that would reveal my maturity, the wisdom beyond my years. They never came.
And then, as we entered the gates of the school, I’d lose him to the morning crush.
* * *
On November eighth he handed out copies of The Stranger.
From my notebook:
November 8, 2002
Stranger—read for the weekend.
Saturday—Place de la République—manif.
And then one of his handouts clipped and pasted onto the page:
From the NY Times—1968—John Weightman:
As a white African, he evolved a kind of solar paganism fraught with melancholy. “Nuptials” celebrates the union of the young man with the natural beauty of sun, landscape, and sea. “The Wrong Side and the Right Side” signifies that life, even when lived to the full in the ideal circumstances of the Mediterranean, has its undercurrent of sadness. “There is no love of life without despair about life” is one of the aphorisms coined by Camus to express this view. He means that even in moments of intense lyrical appreciation—for instance, when bathing in the summer sea with his girlfriend, like Meursault, the hero of The Stranger—he is conscious of some inherent tragedy in the universe.
That was a Friday. He read sections of the essays aloud to us. Ariel wrote across her stapled packet, “Are we still in elementary school?” She turned it and showed Aldo who grinned his moron grin, lank hair hiding his face.
But the rest of us listened. Even Colin had stopped smirking. Over the last month he had taken on an air of near-violent intensity. He spoke less and less, scratching away, paying careful attention. He hadn’t returned to class for a week after he’d walked out. And then one day he was back, ten minutes late. Silver said nothing, only nodded at him as he walked tentatively into the room. As the days passed he began to concentrate. He leaned in toward Silver. I thought it was an act at first, a provocation. But it wasn’t. He’d made some decision and since his return there’d been only one incident, when we discussed Hamlet.
Silver had written on the board, “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust. The dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam; whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away, etc.—Ham 5.1.”
“Why?” he’d asked us, “is Hamlet talking about Alexander and Caesar?”
“We all return to dust,” I said without thinking and then looked up, surprised to hear my own voice.
He smiled at me. “Yes,” he said. “Go on, Gilad.”
“It doesn’t matter who we are. Were. We die. We disintegrate. We fill holes. That’s it. That’s all.”
“And so?”
I looked down at the quotation I’d copied on my page. When I looked up I met his eyes. He seemed to be studying me, curious. I felt the warmth of affection, of pride. Chosen. To be looked at that way by him. I couldn’t speak.
“And so,” this was Colin, “nothing matters. But we have to live anyway. That’s the problem. Nothing matters but we have to live anyway. Even though we end up in someone’s ass, we have to live anyway.”
Laughter.
“I was with you up to the ass part,” Silver said.
“He says,” Colin was flipping fast through his copy of the play, his cheeks red. “Here! ‘To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?’”
Silver smiled at him and nodded his head. “Look at the note, Colin. A bunghole is a hole bored into a barrel.”
Ariel laughed too loud. Colin narrowed his eyes.
“However, the point you make remains. You said that nothing matters but we have to live anyway. Go on.”
There was a silence. Then, “No matter who you are or what you’ve done in your life, you end up dirt.” Colin turned to Ariel and said, nearly spitting, “We all end up dirt.”
“Exactly,” Rick said to himself.
“Except,” I said.
Colin turned to me. We looked at each other for the first time that year. I was struck by his anger, the rage in his eyes. It frightened me. And it made me jealous.
“Except?” Silver asked.
“Except it isn’t totally true.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t have to live. That’s the whole point. That’s Sartre. That’s Shakespeare here. That’s the whole question. To be or not to be. That’s the question. To live or die. To die. To sleep.”
Colin looked at me. His eyes softened, he nodded his head. “You’re right,” he said.
“They’re right,” I answered daring a fraction of a smile. He relaxed. Nodded his head again in approval.
“And so we choose what to do with our lives. We do even if we don’t. We choose by not choosing. That’s what Sartre says, right?” Hala, who’d fallen quiet those last weeks, was leaning forward again. “We either kill ourselves or we do something with our lives. That’s it. Those are the choices.”
“Totally,” Lily said chewing pensively on a braid.
Jane laughed and looked up at Silver.
Rick nodded to himself. Abdul stared at his desk nodding in silent dissent. Cara, her head back, studying the ceiling, asked, “So that’s what he means by absurd? I mean that’s the absurd thing? We die anyway but have to live.”
“Totally,” Lily said smiling at Cara.
“Totally.”
Cara looked at Silver for confirmation but he only gave a slight grin.
It felt to me then, for all of us who were on his side, who loved him, as if something important had happened. It had little to do with the philosophy, such that it was, and everything to do with Silver, with having pleased him, with having become, in some way, adult. It was a feeling of adventure and family.
“What crap,” Ariel said.
We all turned to her, all of us except Colin who fell still, staring into the middle distance.
“Killing yourself isn’t an option. It’s wrong. Come on. Life isn’t as simple as that. There’s instinct, there’s, human, I don’t know, you don’t just like, what? Jump off a bridge? You can’t live as if suicide is a real option. It’s such a stupid idea. I mean how can you sit there and swallow that crap?” She looked around the room as if the question was one she actually wanted answered.
“That’s a good question, Ariel,” Silver said. “Can anyone answer it?”
I took a breath to speak.
But then Colin turned to her and said, coldly, slowly, emphasizing every word, “Shut your fucking mouth. Shut the fuck up.”
Silver stood up and said sharply, “Colin,” and then again, “Colin, stop now.”
His eyes dark and mean, Colin turned toward Mr. Silver as if he couldn’t understand why he’d been interrupted. What was there to say? What could Silver want at that moment?
“Colin, go,” he gestured toward the door with a slight nod of his head.
No one moved or spoke. The two of them locked eyes. Then Colin stood up and turned to Ariel. Her eyes were bright with anger. She was impossibly pretty. Colin looked directly at her. I saw her face. I saw her weaken, saw her eyes reflect something like fear. I watched the blood beating through her long neck.
“Colin, now.”
“You’re nothing,” he whispered in that thick, comical, menacing Dublin accent. “Nothing, right.”
He took his things and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
WILL
I taught seminar last period that day. They’d read Camus’s lyrical essays over the weekend and I was looking forward to the discussion. I hadn’t had time to prepare and I imagined that perhaps reading Camus again might provide me some sense of calm.
Gilad and Colin were sitting next to each other when I walked in and when I saw them together I felt an immediate thrill of paternal pride. Gilad, who’d been so isolated since the beginning of the year, might now have a friend. And Colin, who’d pushed me so hard, was so deliberate in his belligerence, had, nearly overnight, become interested almost to the point of obsession, in every word I spoke. Seeing the two of them sitting side by side buoyed me. And it wasn’t only those two: there was Lily and her braids, her natural demeanor, her easy laugh. Hala, who could have passed for a thirty-year-old lawyer, whip smart, sarcastic, and funny, her pure disdain for Abdul. Cara, her dark cynicism, her silence, her detachment, and her unabashed disregard for assignments, long black hair in her eyes, her occasional flashes of interest. Jane, having abandoned her purple hair and angel wings, rising up through the mire of adolescence. And Rick who’d been so aloof, had taken to crushing and precise retorts to Ariel’s various commentaries and diatribes. Suddenly there was an enthusiasm for the class, for me, for philosophy, and there was an alliance, a building sense of unity as if, in a moment, all the pieces had fallen into place.
There had been a day, weeks before, when I’d stopped talking altogether, when, in discussing the last act of Hamlet, I’d let go entirely. They took off, making connections themselves, listening to one another, pushing one another, laughing. There was that rare upswing, a growing excitement, entirely driven by interest, by their own enthusiasm for the play. They were beyond the classroom, they were sailing as I stood in the corner. I could have slipped out the door, could have left them to it. But I wanted to watch. I wanted to see it. It was the best thing, better than any love, any passion, any meal. It was the truest, rarest, sweetest thing I knew and for whatever it was, five minutes, ten, we were all out there together. They carried me.
But Ariel couldn’t allow it. She cut it off. We were all fools. She claimed to be offended by the notion of suicide as a viable choice, as a choice at all. And the whole thing fell apart. Colin lost his temper. That kid, a straining mass of muscles. He might have hit her. It didn’t seem impossible in the moment. I had to send him out. As much as I sympathized, I couldn’t let it go.
Later that afternoon I walked with Colin around the field.
“You understand right?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“O.K., I wanted to make sure. While you didn’t choose the best way to say what you felt, I do know you weren’t the only one in the room to feel the way you did.”
We passed a group of kids sitting in a circle on the grass, notebooks open.
When we were out of earshot, Colin began, “She—”
But I interrupted him. “I know. She can be difficult and she makes you angry, but at the very least you have to tolerate her. Ignore her if you can.”
He nodded. “It’s not that, sir. She’s, look, you have to understand. I think you should know. I mean you were good to me. You gave me the time. You did what you said. I kept expecting to be called into the office. But, you know, nothing happened, no one came. I liked it, I liked coming to class because I wanted to. It made a difference.”
“I’m glad for that. You were brave to challenge me, to walk out.”
He nodded, “Thanks for the chance. Seriously, Mr. Silver.” He paused. “The thing is that you should know she hates you.”
I laughed. “I’m used to students hating me. It’s part of being a teacher.”
He shook his head, “No, but I think this is different maybe. She really hates you. She says things about you.”
“Things like what?”
“You really want to know? You want me to tell you? I think you should maybe just know that she says them. Know that she’s a . . . she’s mean.”
She’s mean. It was an uncharacteristically innocent thing for him to say. I stopped walking and turned to him. It was the first time I didn’t trust Marie.
“If you don’t want to tell me, don’t. But I appreciate your being concerned.”
In class, Ariel had lost some of her bravado, spoke less, seemed frightened by Colin. She never dared to look in his direction. Instead, she brooded, ignored everyone, even Aldo, abandoning him to a hostile majority. He had nowhere to turn. He’d been too long Ariel’s loyal ally, muttering and smirking his way through the semester. And Aldo didn’t dare solicit Abdul Al Mady’s company, for Abdul moved in a social world far beneath his own.
So at the beginning of November it was among those kids, during that seminar, that I felt a familiar sense of strength, a faint sense of the future. Most of them were with me. The other three were hamstrung. They’d have to sit silent or come around, and really I didn’t need them. The rest of us, we were making something, we were alive in there. It was all I had, and I suppose I imagined then, foolishly, that it was all they had too, and that it would be enough.
GILAD
Silver had tried to continue the discussion, end it with some kind of normalcy, but when the bell rang we were for once all grateful. Ariel had gone quiet. The rest of us too. On the métro home that afternoon I tried to understand what it was that made her fight him so hard. It made no sense to me. All her friends were doing their best to have him notice them.
As far as I knew there’d been no repercussions after Colin’s explosion. Since then we’d begun saying hello to each other in the halls.
“What’s up, man?” he’d say.
It made me feel stronger. I found intimacy in those exchanges. I looked forward to them.
And now, weeks later, a cold Friday afternoon, the poplar trees across the field waving in long, slow gestures, their yellow leaves full of
sunlight, I listened to Silver read the week to an end:
“‘Space and silence weigh equally upon the heart. A sudden love, a great work, a decisive act, a thought that transfigures, all these at certain moments bring the same unbearable anxiety, quickened with an irresistible charm. Living like this, in the delicious anguish of being, in exquisite proximity to a danger whose name we do not know, is this the same as rushing to your doom? Once again, without respite, let us race to our destruction. I have always felt I lived on the high seas, threatened, at the heart of a royal happiness.’”
He looked up.
“Don’t follow along. Look out the window. Close your eyes. But listen.” I did and it felt to me that I wasn’t alone.
“From Albert Camus’s ‘The Sea Close By’” he told us and then repeated a line obviously memorized, “‘I have always felt I lived on the high seas, threatened, at the heart of a royal happiness.’”
And then uncharacteristically he used the first person: “I’ve always felt this way.”
I opened my eyes and when I saw him I thought he was going to cry. He wasn’t acting. He couldn’t have been. It would’ve been impossible.
He looked out the window, then returned to his yellowed paperback. “‘There are women in Genoa whose smile I loved for a whole morning. I shall never see them again and certainly nothing is simpler. But words will never smother the flame of my regret. I watched the pigeons flying past the little well at the cloister in San Francisco, and forgot my thirst. But a moment always came when I was thirsty again.’”
There were only a few minutes left before the bell. He looked, after reading this last line, the same line he’d read on Monday, wistful in a way I’d never seen him.
“What was it that Camus was thirsty for?” he asked. “What are you thirsty for?”
Hala raised her hand, but he shook his head, “Have a good weekend,” he said. “And read.”
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