by Howard Fast
“They’re always drunk on television.”
“It’s true, this is obviously television coming to life,” nodded Myra. “We’ll stick to tea.”
“Silas is famous, isn’t he?” Susan asked. “It’s nice to have someone in the family who’s famous.”
“It’s not nice at all,” Geraldine said, and then Myra left the rest of it and walked in with the tea to where Silas faced a roomful of men and women and note pads and cameras—and reflected that in a way it was true, fame or infamy being equally enticing to a perpetually bored and hungry public who could find enticing, between the war and horror headlines, the proposition that Samuel B. Clemens was a tool of the communists. As Myra put down the tea things, Silas was talking, but managed a grateful nod at her appearance, even as he said,
“No—no, I must repeat that. I will not confirm or deny any part of those two editorials. I believe in freedom of the press. I believe in the unique tradition of expressing that freedom which Fulcrum has established. But just as they are free to print what they please, so am I free to make no comment concerning the truth or untruth of what they print.”
“Good, good for Silas!” Myra thought. “Don’t let them pin you down to anything. Walk a tight rope. We’re both going to learn that to perfection. We’re both going to become expert tight rope walkers.”
“But don’t you see, Professor Timberman,” the Associated Press man insisted, “a refusal to deny will be taken as confirmation.”
“Be that as it may, I will neither confirm nor deny.”
“Off that line a bit,” said a reporter from Indianapolis, “what is your opinion about Mark Twain being a tool of the communists?”
“I think it’s just as ridiculous as it sounds.”
“Then you don’t think he could be used as a tool of the communists?”
“I have no idea what tools the communists use, and I don’t particularly care. Possibly, communists use hammers as tools. That doesn’t mean that we must immediately throw every hammer into the Grand Canyon. I think this kind of talk is nonsense and dangerous nonsense at that.”
A tall, darkly handsome young man, who had been introduced to Myra as Hoffenstein of Fulcrum, said quietly.
“But communists are also dangerous, aren’t they, Professor?”
“I think you might answer that, Mr. Hoffenstein, since you seem to be an authority on the subject.”
“I could answer it, Professor. Yes, they are very dangerous indeed, and no subterfuge is beyond them.”
“Wait a minute, Hoffenstein,” the campus correspondent for the Times put in. “You’re not being interviewed. The point is this, Professor Timberman—isn’t it possible that a story like The Man That Corrupted Hadleyberg, and I haven’t read it myself, since you can’t find a copy on campus now for love or money, but isn’t it possible that such a story could play right into the hands of the communists and put across just what they’re trying to put across? Now I don’t mean that when Mark Twain wrote it, he had subversion in mind and was out to overthrow the government, but isn’t it possible that that’s just what he put into the story and just what the communists need?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that question,” Silas said wearily. “I don’t know what the communists need. If they need The Man That Corrupted Hadleyberg, I would be exceedingly surprised, and I imagine Mark Twain would be too. I have always regarded the story as a small masterpiece of wit and irony and a brilliant polemic against hypocrisy and greed—a story as singularly American as anything in our literature and one which can be read profitably by any normal person. That is my opinion, and I see no need to change it.”
“And you will go on teaching this?”
Silas had anticipated that this question would be asked, and therefore he had asked it of himself again and again, and so far as he knew, he had no answer to it—and yet now that it was asked of him directly, he realized that there was only one answer he could possibly make. All else that he had thought of and toyed with and speculated upon went by the boards, and he said the only thing he could say,
“Of course I will. If I believe it, I must go on teaching it.” And then he looked at Myra, and she met his eyes and there was just a trace of a smile on her mouth, somehow a new kind of smile and not like what he remembered.
* * *
He was sitting in the livingroom, stuffing his pipe and wondering whether there was a book he wanted to read tonight, when Myra came in from putting the children to bed and remarked,
“Well, Si, how does it feel to be a hero?”
“Hero, hell,” he said.
“Your language is changing with the situation.”
“I suppose so. You know, I have to live with myself, Myra.”
“You also have to live with me.”
“So I’m beginning to understand. I thought I knew you, but every time you make a decision, it’s apparently made on the basis of my doing the opposite of what you feel I should do.”
“That’s because you’re you, not me.”
“Wasn’t I a damn fool with that crowd of reporters?”
“I thought you did all right.”
“Maybe—I don’t know. It was such a damn fool children’s spectacle—no, kids wouldn’t put up with it. Where is our sense of humor, Myra? They played it all straight. Where the devil is it?”
“Gone with the snows of yesteryear, maybe—or maybe we never had much. Why don’t we forget it, Si?”
“It won’t forget me. Do you think Cabot will forget and forgive? Do you think Ed Lundfest will?”
“I don’t very much care.”
“Then I look for a job somewhere else—”
“Not that, either, Si. That boy from Texas—what did you say his name was?”
“Lennox.”
“Yes, Lennox. The more I think of what he said, the more I begin to understand all this. For the moment, do nothing, Si—nothing that you don’t have to do.”
“All right. And how would you like to go to the movies tonight?”
“We can’t,” Myra sighed. “Ike Amsterdam phoned, and he’s coming over tonight—with Alec Brady and Edna Crawford—and Spencer too, perhaps—a whole delegation of them.”
They arrived soon afterwards, five of them, Amsterdam, Brady, Spencer, Miss Crawford, and Leon Federman, a tiny, twisted, crippled man, only four feet, ten inches tall on his crutches, with eyes that were like spots of fire and a voice as soft and melodious as music. He found his way to a chair where he made himself comfortable so efficiently and precisely that his very movements dissolved sympathy or pity—and then sent his deep, resonant voice at Silas to pick out and arrange the substance of the day. Edna Crawford, a tall, square-shouldered and handsome woman of sixty or so, went into the kitchen, kissed Myra in a business-like way, and then helped her bring out ice and glasses, and tea and cookies for those who wanted it. Ike Amsterdam sat on the piano bench, regarding Silas quizzically, and Spencer and Brady sank into the soft comfort of the couch.
Federman dominated the group, drawing out of Silas the events of the day, arranging them, and putting them to rest with pungent comment. “So fame comes to Clemington,” he said finally. “Fame and infamy. Thereby, we are already a footnote to the history of the time, and it’s only the beginning. The trouble is, Silas,” he declared emphatically, “that you suffer the disease of all mild and modest men. You are unable to face yourself with any perspective; and out of that, you are unable to estimate the importance of this event. Just as the housewife is unable to compete with the butcher in her judgment of untimely beef, so is the average citizen inclined to ignore the stink of news when it’s right under his nose. Make no mistake. When the mighty Times and Tribune and the godly Associated Press seek out a backwash like Clemington, it is because we have become new, potent and special news, and at this moment in the bazaars of Bombay and at the money counters of Hong Kong and in the hallowed cafes of Paris—yes, and on the Siberian tundra, they are reading about the infamy of one, Lundfest, and t
he stalwart bewilderment of one, Timberman. Mark Twain belongs to mankind, and it’s as risky to read him out of the folklore of America as it is to dispose of Abe Lincoln.”
“Well said,” nodded Miss Crawford. “But don’t sell Silas short. From what Myra said, those reporters ate out of his hand.”
“They eat out of no one’s hand,” Ike Amsterdam put in. “Hold your judgment, Edna, until you see what they have written. You know what Mark Twain called them—dogs that feast on the sorrows of mankind. God, that men should live so short a time! You know, I saw him in New York—it seems like only yesterday—walking up Fifth Avenue, just a block or two above Washington Square, with his white suit, cigar and stick and mustache. I was just a youngster then, and I stopped and stared, and he nodded at me. I cherish that nod. I pass it on to you, Silas. Only the dead can be measured, and by all that is holy, he measures.”
Brady sipped at a glass of Scotch and asked Silas about Lennox. “He said he would talk to you. Did he?”
Wondering why Lennox discussed things of that sort with Alec Brady, Silas told them what the Texan had said. He tended to soften judgments, and Myra filled in, anger rising in her as she repeated the earlier estimate of Hoffenstein.
“The point is,” she said, “according to Lennox, Hoffenstein is cold about this—cold as ice. It’s not what he feels about Silas, but his need for a symbol, any symbol that he may profit by. First I wouldn’t believe it, but when he came to the press conference, when he had the colossal gall to come here and to bait Silas to his face, then I believed it.”
“How did he bait Silas?” Brady wanted to know.
Silas repeated the sequence of question and answer, as well as he could remember, and Ike Amsterdam said.
“There is the explanation—a matter of deadly convenience. The symbol is required. Always you begin with the symbol.”
“I don’t follow you,” Silas said, shaking his head.
“We should have told you,” Brady explained, “but you had enough of your own. That’s why we came over tonight instead of letting you and Myra get some well-deserved rest. Today—as a matter of fact, at two o’clock this afternoon—Cabot suspended Ike.”
“What?”
“But on what grounds?” Myra cried. “How could he?”
“On the grounds of disloyalty and moral turpitude.”
“But there’s no loyalty oath here,” Silas said. “Disloyal to what? And moral turpitude—God save us!”
“Actions inimical to the weal and welfare of the university, or something of the sort, and the moral turpitude was thrown in for the fine sound of it.”
“Moral turpitude,” Edna Crawford repeated. “Can you imagine, Silas, Ike Amsterdam and moral turpitude. That’s one thing I intend to talk to Anthony C. Cabot about, privately, pointedly, and directly.”
“Well, it’s all nonsense,” said Myra. “It’s all a fitting climax to a sufficiently insane day. Just consider, here we are, seven of us, grown men and women, sober people, reasonably intelligent people, and all of us talking and acting as if we were playing out the last chapter of Alice in Wonderland. Silas is a communist and Ike is immoral and subversive, and therefore, Clemington totters on the brink of ruin. Consider it.”
“We have considered it,” Federman nodded. “Most carefully, believe me, Myra. Nonsense it is, but nonsense in itself is no argument or defense. We are not living in the age of reason, but in something else entirely. The logical person to be suspended should have been Silas. But it was not. Why do you suppose they chose Ike?”
“Why is Silas the logical candidate? What is logical about this whole thing?”
“Look, Myra,” Federman said softly, “logic is in a point of view. There is a new struggle for power in this land, in every city in every village and on every college campus—a struggle for the minds of men, a struggle against reason and logic and decency and science and truth—a struggle to prepare one hundred and sixty million people for a holocaust. The object of that struggle is fear, and it is being conducted, from the point of view of those who manage it, with cold, implacable logic. In terms of our logic, it should have been Silas. He is out on a limb. He has been accused of communism. He refused to participate in civil defense, so he is bait for every drum-beater and cheap professional patriot. And as a final clincher, he doesn’t bow down before the stern deacons of the church. But in terms of their logic—which, I assure you, is better thought out, Ike is preferable. Silas is a war veteran and Mark Twain is still somewhat sacrosanct, and there’s too much heat on this for the moment to suit their purposes. Let Ike be the example now. I assure you, they know nothing and care nothing about communists. At another time, it would have been witches or dissenters. Today, it’s your man of principle and of courage, and such they will be able to discharge, persecute, imprison and kill with impunity. Unless—”
Unless what? Silas saw that, one by one, they were turning to him? Why him? Even Myra was more able to come to grips with this thing than he was, and until now his deepest feeling was that of a man floundering in a morass and sinking steadily into it. Why did they turn to him, look to him—when he could give nothing in return, nothing but his own fear and confusion?
“Unless we fight this in some way,” Edna Crawford said. “Don’t you see what it means to Ike, Silas, and why they picked him? In three years, he would be Professor Emeritus and untouchable. When Lazarus Meyers passed away, he designated Ike to take over the observatory, a life position under the Symington Grant. But Cabot has deliberately refrained from making any appointment to the observatory. He hates and fears Ike, just as he hates and fears anyone who sees through him and isn’t afraid of him—”
“And now Ike has given him the opening he wanted,” Spencer nodded.
Silas turned to Amsterdam. “Ike, I’m terribly sorry,” he said weakly.
“Old men shouldn’t whimper or ask for pity—”
“That’s all as may be,” Brady said sharply, “and the evening’s late. What we mean to do is to reverse this suspension before any hearing is arranged to make it permanent. A lot of the students know about it and are damned unhappy about it. They want to hold a meeting on campus, a large and positive meeting, the kind we haven’t had since before the war. They want you to speak there, Silas.…”
CHAPTER FOUR
Thursday: November 2, 1950
THE PROTEST
CHAPTER FOUR
THE PROTEST
On Wednesday night, November 2nd, the day before the scheduled campus protest meeting in defense of Ike Amsterdam, Silas sat up late working on the text of his remarks for the following day. It was with some wonder and not a little humility that he reflected upon the fact that he, whose days were spent in lecturing, had never made a public address; and as he examined the variety of doubts and fears which possessed him, he came to the conclusion that not the least among them was a horror of raising his voice outside of the sheltering walls of a classroom. Shelter had been a deep and important factor in his life—and perhaps a good deal of his life had been a search for such shelter, shelter from all the wild storms that blew in a world that never touched him, shelter from the frightful things that men did to each other, shelter from the ogres of hunger and cold, shelter from the murky and complicated disputes called politics. A classroom was such shelter; a man was a king in his classroom, and the students listened—and always he, Professor Timberman, was someone who knew a little more than the next person.
But in this case, he was far from sure that he knew more than the next person, and floundering and struggling through words to express his anger at what was happening to a man close and dear to him, he seemed to be making no progress at all. In the deepest sense, he was writing against desire; for when all was said and done, his desire still was that he should live in peace, with the hand of no man raised against him. He looked around him at his little study, and thought to himself that this was truly what a man desired, the solid comfort and reassurance of it, the comfortable oak desk at which he w
orked, the shelves of books from floor to ceiling, the little storehouses of wisdom through the centuries, each of them so solidly encased with threads of origin, culture and tradition, each of them lighting one aspect or another of man’s thought and civilization—and to light their light, the old green-shaded lamps, the comfort of chairs, the prints which he and Myra had selected so carefully to decorate the wall, the hooked rug upon the floor, with its pattern of a fine ship in full sail and its quaint old Latin inscription: Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. How often he had intended to look that up and discover whether it came from Cicero or elsewhere, and how often he had rolled the words on his tongue, I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I consider a matter of indifference to me. Well put, and grandly put, and this was the substance of the close comfort here; but then it came to him that it was not so at all, and all the substance and security here was as hollow as one of those tropical gourds, where the fruit drys up and leaves only hard seeds to rattle in the emptiness. He glanced at the neat pile of manuscript paper which contained the three chapters he had already completed and which he had titled, tentatively, Mark Twain and the Country of His Choice, and realized with a sick feeling of utter despair that it was a fraud, that he knew little of the real Mark Twain, the man who hated and raged and stormed, and even less of the country of his choice.
When he looked again at his books, his many, precious, treasured books, he could only think of those writers of ancient Egypt who, frozen in the still tyranny of their culture, spent whole lifetimes sedulously copying works even more ancient—and deluding themselves that they were practicing the lost creative art of literature.
He was relieved when Myra came in and sat down, and looked at him half-humorously, half-questioningly, in that particular way she had.
“The children are sleeping,” she said. “Sleeping children are more beautiful than anything in the world, I’m sure—and more relaxing, and what do you think? I brought in wood and made a fire, so we could sit by it and hold hands. Isn’t that a nice idea? How does it go?”
