Silas Timberman

by Howard Fast

  Myra, quite unexpectedly, was waiting for Silas as he came out of Whittier Hall at two o’clock. She smiled at him, and he grinned back, and for a moment it was being young again and in love and filled with the sight and sound of the person you loved.

  “I thought you’d want company,” she said.

  “Did you?”

  “Uh-huh. How’s the speech? Did you get anything written?”

  “No. I’ll manage. I’ll say a few words and it’ll be all right. I’m glad you came.”

  They linked arms. There was no rain now, but it was cold and windy, with a gray sky overhead. The paths and the lawns were full of dead leaves, sodden leaves and new-fallen leaves dancing over the wet carpet. Even from where they were at Whittier Hall, across the whole length of the campus, they could see the eddy of students beginning to gather around the Civil War monument in Union Plaza, but hundreds of others criss-crossed the campus in apparent unconcern; and Silas realized that the events of such deep moment in his life left many others in this place indifferent or apathetic. Was it that way all over, across the whole land, each alone in his own petty agony?

  “They look not and care not to see for whom the bell tolls,” he thought to himself, and then remembered that a few weeks ago he had cared as little as they—I hoe my own row and you hoe yours.

  With a sense of shock, Myra saw the grief on his face.

  “Silas!”

  “It’s nothing,” he said, and when he smiled, the smile was true. There was a time with him when one mood was long-lasting and even; but of late, he had been shaken by many things, and the moods came and went.

  “How do you feel?” Myra asked him.

  “Do you know how I feel—I feel like we’ve just met, and I’m in love with you, and I’m afraid because the love won’t be returned. That’s how I feel.”

  “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said in a long, long time, Si.” Still she regarded him anxiously. “I’m sorry about last night. Don’t be afraid about me, Si. Don’t you think I’ll stick with you? I will.” They walked across the campus, arm in arm, the wind growing colder and more violent. “This will make it bad for the meeting, won’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered, and the truth of it was that he knew little or nothing about such things, or what could possibly be expected from an outdoor meeting of protest—yet there was a world where nothing came easily or gently, where all things were fought for, and where men put their shoulders together again and again, because they had no other strength than their numbers, their bare hands multiplied, their angry voices. As they approached the crowd of students and faculty gathering for the demonstration, Myra’s heart was unexpectedly lifted, and the wild, savage abandon of sky and wind caught her up, filled her with a feeling of youth and strength and pride—and made her strangely happy, so that her arm tightened around Silas’ and her body pressed closer to his. He, on the other hand, was drawn back in fleeting passages of memory to his own youth, the small, badly-weathered house, within walking distance of the saw mill where his father had worked, and then other houses as one mill and another closed, the land stripped bare of trees, exhausted—as inevitably as his father was exhausted, dried up, bent and broken with work and left with no other pride and possession than his son, who would live by the wealth of his knowledge and not by the toil of his hands.…

  * * *

  When he stood up to speak, on the broad granite base of the Civil War monument, the bearded man of stone behind him, compassionate and large and unadorned with sophistry, each arm supporting a wounded boy—surprising in its reminder that wars are fought by boys—when he stood up to speak there, Silas knew what he would say, even though he had not known in any conscious way a few moments before. He stood there, facing the microphone, looking at almost a thousand upturned faces; and in the beginning, he was very nervous, his hands in his pockets and the palms of his hands wet and his collar wet too; but then the nervousness went away, and he was completely calm. It was apparent to Myra and to many others listening and watching that this tall, mild-looking man, framed by the old stone monument and the wild, wind-tossed sky, was a dramatic figure indeed, a memorable figure—even before he began to speak—in himself a plea for logic and reason in a dying age of logic and reason; but to Silas, there was only his own inner concentration on a resolution of conflicting and confused thoughts—and thereby, as he spoke, he let the past die; even knowing that the future was highly speculative and still unmade.

  He spoke slowly and quietly, rather amazed and pleased at the way the amplifying system the students had rigged up projected his voice, and then as he went on, his voice grew sharper and harder; but at first, he said quietly.

  “Until today, I felt fairly alone. A few friends were always near, but not enough to keep me from feeling that sense of being alone. I will not be alone any more. I do not know what the outcome of this shameful affair will be, and even if there is never again a meeting on campus as large and heartwarming as this, I will know that hundreds of our students have hearts to feel with and voices to make their feelings articulate.

  “I thought last night that I would speak about my friend, Professor Amsterdam, whom I cherish and love and honor, and who has honored me with his friendship; but it would ill-become me to defend him. He needs no defense; honorable men have never needed character witnesses. Instead, I want to speak of that thing behind the action which has been taken against him—that murky and deadening cloud of fear and terror that has been spreading all over the land.

  “It is a strange tyranny, indeed, a tyranny which most of us will not admit—and thereby will not face. It is a tyranny easy to live with, for the only price it asks is the surrender of honor and of reason—and it seems that we are rapidly coming to a point where we have only contempt for reason and a very primitive understanding of honor. I say this humbly, for until a few weeks ago, I was one of those who sternly denied that any tyranny existed, and a part of the process of my own education, you all know—indeed, the whole world knows by now, to our own shame.

  “Now, an old and venerated faculty member has been suspended. I know that the human race is proficient in the means of cruelty toward men, so perhaps the public removal and disgrace of a teacher is not among the worst punishments that can be visited upon a man. But think of what it means. It is the death of a part of a man, the highest part of him, perhaps, the part which he can give to others, so that his life will have meaning and usefulness; and of course, it is naive to think that a teacher so suspended, and with a so-called political-moral cloud hanging over him, could find work in any other school. He could not. He could go then and pretend to write his memoirs or to translate Horace anew, if he were well fixed financially; but if not—and what teacher has wealth?—he can start the rounds of job-hunting, if anyone will have him.

  “This is no ancient knowledge on my part. This is what I learned in two agonizing weeks—but learned upon a base that existed, and I tell you it exists for every teacher in America. We live in fear and we work in fear, and most of us scream louder and louder that we are not afraid. There is our mighty shield, which is a paper shield and nothing more. All that we saw in Hitler’s Germany—”

  He was interrupted here. At this point, a voice cried out, shrilly and clearly, “And what about Soviet Russia?”

  Silas stopped, his train of thought broken, his body held with a rigidity that resembled paralysis, that relaxed itself only slowly and painfully. All else that he had intended to say had disappeared; there were only these few words left,

  “I know nothing about Soviet Russia—and so little about America, so terribly little.…”

  Myra told him it was a good talk, a very good talk, clear and straightforward and to the point, and short, as the best speeches are. But that could not put aside his own deep conviction that he had failed. He had said too little and he had not said it well. He had made no plea for the reinstatement of Ike Amsterdam, even though he had intended to do so ultimately, and he had said not
one word about Alvin Morse. As if the thought had conjured him up, Morse pushed through the crowd, Hartman Spencer and two other students with him.

  “I want to thank you,” Morse began, his face open and serious. “That took guts.” Silas had not realized how small Morse was, how wizened and pinched, a boy out of Dickens, the head tilted and straining, precisely like one of the old Cruikshank illustrations. He was not prepossessing, and you had to think twice about him until you saw how his eyes burned, how tense and eager his body was—and then you wanted him to like you and admire you. First Lennox and then Morse; and it came to Silas that in all his years at Clemington, he had never known students before, not in this way, not man to man, with no podium between them. He began to explain to Morse why he had said nothing about his removal from Fulcrum, but Morse shook his head impatiently,

  “No—that’s not to the point, sir. What you said was to the point. I am in no danger, but you are.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sunday: November 11, 1950

  THE SUBPOENAS

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE SUBPOENAS

  Somewhat more than a week later, on a Sunday evening, Silas and Myra were finishing supper when the bell at the front door sounded. More accurately, the chimes sounded. When someone pressed the doorbell, there were four notes—ta-da-da—and then a sudden drop on the final da. When they bought the house, Silas had disliked those chimes and had made a mental note to have them ripped out and an old-fashioned, ordinary doorbell installed; but he had never reached a point where he was willing to spend the money to satisfy a foolish prejudice, and instead he went on hating the sound and building up around it almost a structure of folklore, with the chimes as the central factor of small frustrations and petty aspirations.

  The chimes sounded as Silas and Myra were finishing a very late meal—which they sometimes did on a Sunday, starting the day late with breakfast, and finally, at the day’s end, getting the children to bed before they sat down to eat. It was the one meal during the week which they ate without the children, except on those fairly infrequent occasions when they had people in to dinner or were out for dinner themselves, and therefore it was special and they lingered over it and talked about a lot of things that had piled up during the week and made for good conversation, even if they were things of no great importance. The meal was therefore precious to them and they were just starting with their coffee and dessert, and Silas had a warm, good feeling about the world and himself and Myra, wherefore the interruption annoyed him and the chimes annoyed him and provoked him to say,

  “Now who the devil can that be? Was anyone coming here tonight, Myra?”

  “No one that I know of,” Myra said, and then he went to the door and opened it. A man he had never seen before stood there and asked him, in a soft drawl, whether he was Professor Silas Timberman.

  “I am,” Silas answered.

  “Well, I’m an officer for the Senate Committee on Internal Expenditures, and I’m here to serve you with a subpoena, which I shall now proceed to do.” And with that, he handed Silas a folded sheet of white paper.

  For a moment, Silas just stared at it, wordlessly and not without a feeling of simple terror—as if this were a long-journeying fate which he had always somehow or other sensed and which had only now overtaken him. He felt his heart quicken its beat, the walls of his chest constrict and a tiny hammering, like a tic, in his cheeks. Quite senselessly, he thought of the chimes and tried to remember why he had never liked them; but his thoughts had nothing to do with what was happening now, or his terror either, and he had to consciously reach out for his thoughts, gather them, and face them to the matter in hand. Then he became calmer and was able to ask,

  “What do you mean? What is this?”

  “It’s a subpoena.”

  “Why? For what? Are you sure you want me?”

  “Why don’t you look at it, Professor. Your name is on it.”

  Myra had come to the door now. She sensed his fear, as if it were actually present as an aura in the air around them, and she turned on the hall light. “What is it, Silas?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know.” He opened the subpoena, and they read it together. It said matter of factly that he was instructed to appear before the Senate Committee on Internal Expenditures to give testimony at ten o’clock on the morning of Wednesday, November 14, 1950. Failure to appear would be held as a contempt. That, indeed, was all that it said, and its very terseness and matter of factness served to dispel the last shreds of his panic. He was able to put a reassuring hand on, Myra’s arm and ask the man at the door,

  “What on earth is the Senate Committee on Internal Expenditures? What would they want from me?”

  “I don’t draw up the subpoenas, Professor—I only serve them.” And then he said a polite goodnight and walked over to where his car was waiting.

  Silas and Myra went back to the kitchen and Silas sat down at the kitchen table again, an automatic sequence of motion that took them to the only place they could think of going. The coffee was cold. Myra poured it into an empty pot and refilled the cups from the percolator.

  “I don’t understand it,” she said.

  “Senate Committee on Internal Expenditures.”

  “Why should they want you?”

  “I don’t know—unless it has something to do with all this damned insanity.”

  “Then why would it be a Senate Committee on Internal Expenditures?”

  “Isn’t that Senator Brannigan’s committee?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem so terrible, yet in another way it does. I thought I had gotten over being afraid. Did this scare you as much as it did me, Si?”

  “More.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I think I’ll call Ike Amsterdam,” Silas said, and then Myra said, “Finish your coffee first.”

  * * *

  Amsterdam answered the phone, and as soon as he heard Silas’ voice, he began to chuckle. “Welcome,” he said. “Have you joined the society?”

  “What society? Damn it, Ike, be serious! Myra and I are both very upset. Someone rang my bell a little while ago and served me with a subpoena from the Senate Committee—something about expenditures.”

  “Internal expenditures. I got mine at seven o’clock. So did Hart Spencer. Brady just called to announce that he got his. Federman is on his way over here with Kaplin. Edna Crawford was first on the list, I believe.”

  “Ike, what does it all mean?”

  “It means another in the current series of dirty investigations, and this time, they’ve picked Clemington. The more honor to us, I suppose. Silas, I think you ought to come on over here. The rest of them are coming, and I’ve managed to get MacAllister, a lawyer in Indianapolis and a damn good fellow in every way. He agreed to drive out tonight, although he may be a little late. What’s the time and date on your subpoena?”

  “I think it said ten o’clock, Wednesday morning.”

  “Same as the rest, and that gives us very little time. It means we’ll have to leave day after tomorrow.”

  “Leave?”

  “For Washington.”

  “Well, I haven’t made up my mind that I’m going to Washington or anywhere else,” Silas said petulantly.

  “Don’t argue about it on the phone, Silas. Come on over.”

  He went back to the kitchen and told Myra, “He wants me to come over to his place.”

  “I think you ought to.”

  “Why? Damn it, Myra, there are six of them besides myself—and I don’t like the whole taste of it. I don’t want to get mixed up in something.”

  She said very patiently, “Silas, talk sense. You are mixed up in something.”

  “In what—what, for God’s sake?”

  “Si, don’t start shouting at me.” She got up and went around behind his chair and put her arms around his shoulders. “Si, Si—are we going to tear each other apart every time this happens? I know how you feel. I feel the same way. It’
s not that we’re cowards, but we’ve never been prepared for anything like this. We’ve never known about anything like this. Can’t you see what’s happening, Si?”

  He shook his head dumbly. His eyes were wet with tears now, and he wanted to put his face down on the table and cry. He felt like a small boy caught in an endless sequence of hopeless traps and overwhelming disasters.

  Myra said softly and gently, “Let me try to put it into words, Si. I know you better than anyone in the world, I think, maybe better in some ways than you know yourself. I know what you always believed in—very simple things, good things, so I’d get angry with you and say to myself, ‘That damnfool boy scout.’ Oh, I’d get so angry, I’d want you to scream, shout at me, hit me, anything—but underneath it I was glad you were the way you were. I was glad you believed in what you did, even if it wasn’t true, even if it was your own little dream. That all men were essentially decent, that we lived in a land of equality and democracy where the good always triumphed over the evil, that might was not right and that justice always triumphed—and that here in this university, honest men taught the truth. Isn’t it strange, Si—but maybe not so strange—that you should think that way and not me, you dragging yourself out of poverty and misery by your bootstraps, and me lapping at honey from the day I was born; but maybe that’s why you had to think that way; and now it’s beginning to fall all to pieces. It’s easier for me. I rubbed the dirt off from the time I could think. I saw my father lie and cheat and swindle from the time I was old enough to understand that God is green and crinkly. I saw him sell houses that had no plumbing in them and roofs that wouldn’t keep the mist out—and I heard him swear to poor people who could barely speak English that new roofs and plumbing had just been installed. I drank my first glass of wine at the victory celebration, where he and the mayor and Tom Randolph, the local banker, had pooled thirty thousand dollars to bribe the Governor and four legislators, so that they were able to buy up enough worthless land in the water shed where the new reservoir was to be built, to come out of the deal, each of them with a half-million dollars of the public funds: Just the small start that was, the beginning—and even if I didn’t know anything much else, I knew about my father and mother and their friends. But you don’t know that, Si, and when you know it, you don’t believe it—and don’t you see that now what you do believe has a price too. Everything, my darling Si. Decency, honesty, straightforwardness, democracy, justice—all the things that we talk about so glibly—well, you’re trying to hold onto them, and it’s costing. You must understand that, Si!”