Silas Timberman

by Howard Fast

  He had always told himself that he knew nothing at all about children, and he was inordinately pleased to discover otherwise; yet he never presumed, never took liberties, never condescended. He never turned away questions and he never attempted to answer something he was incapable of answering properly.

  In other words, with them he was an entirely different person than he was with anyone else, but very much the person he desired to be.

  This morning, as they turned into Oak Common, the park of magnificent oaks in the very center of the campus, he reflected again on the great beauty of Clemington. It seemed to him that as he grew older, as he came closer to the end of things for himself, he became more and more keenly aware of all aspects of beauty. The mornings were sharper and more refreshing; the colors of autumn leaves were more vivid; laughter became more like music; and the tall, handsome, free-striding young people who made up the student body were even more beautiful than he remembered them as being, more possessed of all the godly gifts of youth. Clemington was a well favored place. The immense quadrangle of ivy-covered granite buildings enclosed what was widely admitted to be the finest campus in the middle west, and in Amsterdam’s own rovings on the continent and in England, he had found nothing he liked better. Yet even this familiar and admitted situation grew upon him and increased its virtue of comeliness. This morning, it laid hold of him with added intensity; he was absorbed in it, and Geraldine’s voice came to him as from a great distance. She had to repeat what she was saying.

  “My dear,” he said. “I’m sorry. Do you know what I was doing? I was thinking how lovely this place is. Did that ever occur to you and Susan?”

  “I guess it’s nice,” Susan said. “It’s kind of dull.”

  “I want to know why you got mad at daddy this morning,” Geraldine said.

  “I wouldn’t say that I got mad at him.”

  “Oh, yes. You were mad at him,” Geraldine insisted.

  “Now, I was not,” said Amsterdam soberly, addressing himself to the girls straightforwardly and flatly. “I was not mad at him—not at all. Perhaps a little annoyed, a little provoked, but not angry. There is a difference, you know. I like Silas and consider him a friend. He’s a very unusual man.”

  “Do you think so?” Susan asked.

  “I think so, yes—for reasons I can’t explain to you as easily as I might like to. You see, Silas has two rare qualities called integrity and honesty—”

  “What does that mean?” Susan wanted to know.

  It always happened. All his life, the old man had dealt with words offhandedly; they were easy to use, old tools that he had given up thinking about a long, long time ago. Now two little girls returned words to him, all sorts of words. “Well, what does it mean?” he asked. “Do you know, Geraldine?” For himself, he wanted time to think about it.

  “I know about honesty. That means not to steal or lie. That means that you’re honest. I think I know what integrity means, but I can’t explain it.”

  He realized that he could not explain it either. Suppose he told them that it meant a state of wholeness; would that explain it any better? And what was the state of wholeness that it referred to? It was easy to say that a man became one with himself, but what real validity lay in such a concept? Was he himself whole with himself? He had become somewhat alarmed, if the truth be told, at the announcement that the university would set up its own air raid civil defense organization; but when he approached Timberman, he had rationalized his alarm into an affront to his own precious sense of logic, and even now he did not know precisely why he was alarmed or just what he had expected Silas Timberman to do or say about it. His strides became longer and longer, until the two children were running to keep up with him.

  “Ike, I can’t walk so fast,” Susan protested.

  He apologized profusely and came to a stop. They had emerged from the grove now and in front of them was the stretch of green lawn that led to the Science Building and Whittier Hall. Here was where the children turned off the campus and down the road to their school, and he found himself grateful that the discussion would proceed no further.

  “Please don’t be mad at him, Ike,” Geraldine said.

  They left him standing there alone, rather puzzled with himself and not altogether pleased with himself, and there he stood for minutes, stuffing his pipe, lighting it, puffing it, contemplating the increasing flow of boys and girls over the lawn, and trying to think through a very cloudy matter indeed. But his thoughts reached no logical, positive conclusion, and the striking of the big clock on the tower of the Science Building recalled him to the needs of the day.

  * * *

  It is only natural that the case of Silas Timberman was more often and thoroughly reviewed in his own mind than in the mind of anyone else, and his own picture of all the facts and factors that went into the making of it was both more and less complete than what is provided by the official files. If he had a tendency to seize upon seemingly unimportant factors, it was because subjectively he required apparent motivations rather than a more subtle integration into a vast and complex whole. Later on, he would examine his own origins more closely, and resist less the possibility that he was different from most of his colleagues, and this would come as he developed his own understanding of the forces that produced his colleagues—and as his own desire to be like them in so many ways lessened. However, for a good while to come, he would cling to the belief that the visit of Ike Amsterdam on this particular Monday morning was a prime factor.

  He had not gone more than a dozen paces from his home this morning when he experienced an almost irresistible desire to return and say something to Myra in the way of explanation. He did not turn back, however, because he was unclear as to what he might say; although he was quite clear in his feeling of being found lacking, which began a deepening depression rather unusual for him. For uncertain reasons, he now disliked both himself and the picture he was certain he had presented to Myra, and he felt a sudden sense of loss, desolation, and abandonment. When Brian called after him, “Wait for me—wait for me, daddy!” he stiffened almost guiltily and stood quite impassive, briefcase in hand, waiting for the impact of the child’s hurtling body. Brian noticed the difference and stopped short in front of Silas, his enthusiasm suddenly dampened.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Nothing—nothing,” Silas said, feeling rather foolish in the pose he had struck for the little boy.

  “Bring me something back?”

  “What?”

  “You bring back something. Bring me a water gun. Bring me a space gun, will you?” The round, pudgy, freckled face stared at him with simple, uncomplicated hope, faith and trust. Bring me a gun, said the child. Silas picked him up in his arms and assured him that he would bring him something. “You forgot your briefcase!” Brian called, running after him.

  Age and weariness far beyond his forty years rode him as he walked toward the campus. Unlike Amsterdam, he saw little of the beauty for which Clemington was so justly famous. His thoughts went toward Myra; he had a beautiful, witty and accomplished wife—who in turn was possessed of a plodding and unspectacular husband, a person whose days of accomplishment were hardly to be distinguished from each other, whose intelligence was modest at best, and who moved without thought or particular purpose to no particular destination other than old age or retirement. Yet, he asked himself, wasn’t most life like that, and weren’t the periods of so-called happiness no more than intermittent glandular easements, and wasn’t it possible that he might not be envied by people who had neither refrigerators nor cars, could they but know him as he knew himself? However, he had enough wit of his own to realize that such philosophizing was neither profound nor particularly adult; and he was almost grateful to run into Ed Lundfest and thereby be relieved of the sole company of his own thoughts.

  “Beautiful morning, Silas,” Lundfest said, gulping air as if he had suddenly been confronted with a totally new atmosphere. “October is our best month
at Clemington. No doubt about that—no doubt at all. Only one word to describe it—salubrious. An old-fashioned word, but in situations like this, there are no substitutes for sound, old-fashioned language. Don’t you agree?”

  Silas did not agree; and the knowledge that he would be easily dishonest in his failure to express disagreement did not raise his spirits. He had never fully admitted to himself how thoroughly he disliked Professor Edward Lundfest; for to have done so would have made it next to impossible to continue amicable relations with a man who was head of his department. Instead, he fragmentized the question; he considered Lundfest’s manner of speech ridiculous, his bearing pompous, his use of language infantile—yet he continued to propose to himself that he respected the man. At this moment, he would have bet his last dollar that Lundfest had only the vaguest notion of the meaning of salubrious, but he would have died before he would have brought himself to ask.

  “A very nice morning,” he said, disliking himself.

  “Football weather,” Lundfest continued, and as if by magic materialized two chunky, round-cheeked boys out of the throng of students passing by, gave them the time of day, and asked how things looked for the weekend game and how this year’s squad was shaping up. Silas winced at the thought that he would not have recognized either of the boys, that he knew nothing about the 1950 squad, and that he was singularly lacking in all the various side-effects that contributed to academic success. Lundfest never denied the rumor that he had been a considerable player himself, and he looked the part, broad-shouldered, handsome in a heavy-set way, with a great head of hair that was turning iron-gray. In himself, he combined the scholar and the man of deeds, and if Silas had contempt for Lundfest the scholar, the man of deeds drew his grudging envy.

  “Good boys,” he told Silas, “damn good boys.” They walked on, and he asked Silas how it looked for this semester, offering his opinion that in two weeks, a skillful teacher should have all of his problems catalogued and denned.

  “I don’t anticipate too many problems,” Silas answered.

  “No—well, that’s good, admirable, if I may say so. I wish I could say as much for myself. You took the run-over in American Literature, didn’t you, Silas?”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  “Of course. Only—this question of making Mark Twain the pivot of the whole matter—well, I sometimes feel that it becomes more a question of Mark Twain than of American literature.”

  “I wouldn’t say I make Mark Twain the pivot of everything. Possibly I use him as a standard of measurement—as a carpenter might use a level. I find that necessary.”

  “Well, you would,” Lundfest smiled, “seeing as how you’re writing a book on the man. Although for the life of me,” he added, “I can’t see the place for another book on Mark Twain. But that’s for your judgment, not mine. I have always considered Mark Twain to be the very opposite of a profound writer, more of a skilled entertainer, clown, and pamphleteer, a man concerned with surface effects and surface manifestations, and ready to twist the facts every which way, so long as he achieves his desired effect.”

  All of this was the last thing in the world that Silas expected this morning from Ed Lundfest. A lecture, indeed a denunciation of Mark Twain, out of nothing and out of nowhere, was hardly typical of Lundfest; and the abruptness of it left Silas baffled, angry, and for the moment, wordless. The reference to the book he was writing was particularly pointed, for as Lundfest knew, he had been at work on it, intermittently, for three years—with little enough progress. But most of all, he resented the comment on profundity, coming as it did from a man for whose intellectual achievements he had so little respect.

  “I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings,” Lundfest said.

  “No—not at all.”

  “No morning for an argument, is it, Silas?”

  “No—”

  “Then I have stepped on your toes. Well, suppose we bite into that another time. We’ll talk it out and get at the root of it. As a matter of fact, there was something else entirely that I wanted to mention to you. You have until nine-thirty, haven’t you?”

  They were at Whittier Hall now. Silas nodded. The man was his superior, officer, boss, employer—what you will. When you broke with the head of your department, you found another university; so you composed yourself and swallowed your anger, and you nodded amiably; and Silas was an amiable and good-natured man. It might also be observed that English teachers were not exactly rare, even talented ones, and Silas did not know whether he was talented with anything more than persistence and a retentive memory. Certainly, he did not think so at this moment.

  “Suppose we chat a few minutes. I want to speak to you about the convocation this afternoon.”

  Again Silas nodded, still unable to trust himself to speak in a tone sufficiently warm and pleasing to convince Lundfest that their relationship remained congenial; but he made no real connection with Lundfest’s remark, nor did he relate the mention of the convocation to Ike Amsterdam’s argument.

  “I’ve been discussing it with Dr. Cabot,” Lundfest went on, “and he’s desirous that it should be a complete success. I may tell you, Silas, that this thing has ramifications not entirely local—”

  It soothed Silas to note the subtle misuse of words, and his flush of anger died as he began to listen.

  “—not local by any means, but rather pertaining to the state picture and the national picture as well. I might say that Clemington finds itself in a position of unique importance. You know as well as I do, Silas, that there is a most peculiar apathy toward civil defense all over the country ever since the war began in Korea.”

  “I imagine most people don’t like the war particularly.”

  “Well, of course, Silas. War isn’t something one likes, any more than one likes communists or Nazis. But war exists, and frequently it’s necessary. Here, we were faced with an act of cynical aggression, a bare-handed advance by the red tide. You might say that we faced our Rubicon and crossed it in Korea, and I would question whether there ever was a purer struggle, a nobler action than our country took in this war. And mind you, I say this as a Republican—but this transcends politics. Don’t you agree with me?”

  “I haven’t thought of it in just that way,” Silas said.

  “Damn it all, there’s our trouble! We don’t think of things! Our attitude is—leave me alone to mind my own business, to live my own life. Well, that might have been an acceptable attitude in 1890—but it’s a most provoking and unpatriotic attitude in 1950!”

  Silas was trying to think and listen, to remember and relate, to explore his own mind and his own feelings, and to decide exactly how much of his own thinking it would be wise to express here and now. The fact of the matter was that he was not called upon for expression of opinion. What Lundfest thought was Lundfest’s affair. A man had the right to think as he pleased. For himself, he had thought very little concerning this war, and now he realized that this very lack of thought and judgment was in itself a conscious act. He did not want to think about the war. In that, Lundfest was absolutely right. He wanted to be left alone—with his work, his wife, and his three children. He had done his years of service; he had seen one war through, and now he was past forty and beyond any call—and he remembered, in this brief passage of complex thought, how often he thanked all fate that Brian was only six years old. Yet that was only natural, and he resented Lundfest’s implied monopoly of patriotic passion. In Silas’ formative years, patriotism, when it went deeper than the cheap patter of politicians, was considered something reserved to a man and his conscience and rather embarrassing when bared to the public gaze; patriotism was a word one used rarely and judiciously, and certainly, since 1945, he himself had been rather painstaking with the word. Like many men whose years in the army had been a mixture of discomfort, boredom and doubt, he rarely referred to his own part in the war; however, he was almost prompted to ask Lundfest where his patriotism had been at that time. That he did not do so was a tribu
te to his own balance and judgment; for here it was not yet ten o’clock in the morning, and both tension and trouble had intruded upon a fairly normal and satisfactory pattern of life.

  “Perhaps,” he admitted, unable to think of any other reply both noncommittal and less than humiliating.

  “Not that I blame you, Silas,” Lundfest went on. “You’re our average American, and certainly no one should be dressed down for that. But these are not average times, and we have to get over being average people.”

  “Does he listen to himself?” Silas wondered. “Does he hear himself? Here is the head of my department at a great university, a leading figure in a college of fine arts—can he talk like that and hear himself?” The problem grew upon him, and he stared at Lundfest with a fascination which the other mistook for respect.

  “I think we can begin to get over it this afternoon, at convocation,” Lundfest nodded. “In my discussion with President Cabot, it was felt that if one group took the lead in volunteering for civil defense, there might be an overwhelming response, a sort of bandwagon effect, so as to speak. Believe me, Dr. Cabot is under no illusions as to the apathy on campus, and because he was not willing to face an inexplicable and unforgivable default, he consulted with me in terms of our department. I assure you, I was flattered and honored, not for myself of course, but for the department. He suggested a unanimous enrollment of the entire department for civil defense. Naturally, I agreed with him.”