Stepping Westward

by Malcolm Bradbury

  ‘It’s time for your class,’ said Froelich.

  Walker picked up his teaching plan and the Freshman Reader and set out across campus, into the cold air. An aroma of treachery seemed to fill the world in which he had been moving so unsuspectingly. Even the trees and the paths seemed no longer reliable, and the faces of the students he passed seemed very foreign indeed. Though he was unsure of his alliances and his connections, and hadn’t thought about them very much, missing all that sensitivity to the political which those trained in institutions possess, Walker had felt that there were certain stabilities – human ones: that Jochum was his friend, that Froelich was, that the teaching staff of the department was on the whole behind him. He knew now that his appointment had been disputed; but he assumed that the human appeal of his existence had put an end to that. And he also assumed that the human took precedence over the political; this he took to be an essential rule of life. But now the wind seemed overnight to have overturned all these connections and assumptions. The sensation of being a foreigner and of having done things a foreigner shouldn’t do affected him deeply, because the easiness of American life had brought him to feel that foreignness wasn’t an issue. So he stood at his desk and looked at his students, wondering what he should teach them, perplexed by the cast of their minds. For some reason Jabolonski was back. ‘I thought you transferred to another instructor,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, well, I did, but it all seemed kind of crazy to me, so, well, shoot, I come back to you.’

  One of the girls, with long fair hair and white bobby-socks, a Scandinavian type, said, ‘Are you really a red, Mr Walker?’

  ‘No,’ said Walker. ‘Did you read the assignment?’ The assignment was Swift’s Modest Proposal, one of the few works of any pretension in the Freshman Reader. ‘What did you think of it?’

  ‘I disagreed with it,’ said the Scandinavian girl. ‘I don’t think even under any circumstances people should eat children. I mean, I guess there’s another point of view, but I don’t think I’d agree with it.’

  ‘That’s a very humane view, Miss Lindstrom,’ said Walker, ‘but why don’t you think people should eat children?’

  Miss Lindstrom looked at Walker with bright blue eyes. ‘Are you really in favour of eating children, Mr Walker? Are you really?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Walker. ‘Was Swift?’

  ‘Was who?’ said Miss Lindstrom.

  ‘Was Swift? Jonathan Swift who wrote the essay I asked you to read.’

  ‘Well, I guess he must have been,’ said Miss Lindstrom. ‘He wouldn’t have said he was if he wasn’t, would he?’

  ‘What about that?’ Walker looked round the class. He began to feel a little uneasy, for a number of the class looked distinctly hostile; he was now bearing not only his burden, but Swift’s as well. His gaze went round the room and he noticed, huddled in the back row, holding a large cleaner’s bag, a large man wearing a raincoat and a trilby hat. The hat didn’t entirely conceal the red hair of Hamish Wagner. Walker knew that one of Wagner’s tasks was to sit in on the composition classes and check on the competence of the teachers. The graduate students were the usually selected victims, and they had interesting stories of the considerable lengths to which Wagner went in concealment, donning janitor’s coveralls, appearing in Bermuda shorts and a freshman’s beanie, and the like. What disturbed Walker was that it should be this class, and this particular time, that Wagner should have picked on him; in any case, he had the impression that it was only the graduate students who were supposed to be checked on in this way. Walker dropped his gaze and noticed that, at the front of the classroom, Jabolonski was sitting straining, with outstretched hand. At Walker’s glance he said, ‘I think the guy was kidding.’

  Miss Lindstrom looked at Mr Jabolonski. ‘Why would he be kidding?’ she asked. ‘What would he kid about a thing like that for?’

  ‘Well, duh, I dunno, but maybe he was tryin’ to get sumpn done about all dat famine and all.’

  ‘What’s the name for that kind of literary procedure?’ Walker asked.

  Mr Jabolonski ducked his head and scratched it with a large hand; after a moment he said, ‘Duh, I dunno, lyin’?’

  ‘It’s irony,’ said Miss Hackle, an independent and bright girl in a dirndl. ‘It’s an oblique procedure which suggests the opposite of what’s said.’

  ‘In this case, yes,’ said Walker, feeling more at ease now. ‘And why would he want to use it, do you think, Miss Hackle?’

  ‘Well, to shock people into what Mr Jabolonski over there said just now,’ said Miss Hackle.

  Miss Lindstrom shook her head in confusion. ‘You mean he didn’t want people to eat children at all?’ Students all around her began saying ‘Yes’ and ‘That’s right’ and her face grew flushed. ‘Well, I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘Supposing someone had taken him seriously and they had. He’d be responsible, then, wouldn’t he? Anyway, I don’t understand why these writers have to be so smart. Why can’t they say what they think right out, ’stead of going around confusing people?’

  Miss Hackle said, ‘I guess he thought nobody would do it. I guess he thought people couldn’t do anything so terrible.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Walker. ‘He didn’t think so very much of human nature.’

  ‘You see,’ said Miss Lindstrom, ‘I guess he did mean it. And I think it’s terrible, Mr Walker, I really do.’ At this a gallant, anarchistic student who wore a Mohican haircut, his head scraped bare except for a thin band of hair across his skull, and who had in previous classes expressed a high regard for Walker, was roused to sudden protest.

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘we ought to look at this one again. Maybe there is a real case for cannibalism, but we haven’t thought it through properly yet. I mean, a lot of races have practised this thing; are we right to condemn it unheard?’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ said Miss Lindstrom.

  ‘That’s because you’re prejudiced against it from the start,’ said the student with the Mohican haircut.

  ‘Is nothing sacred in this class, Mr Walker?’ asked Miss Lindstrom.

  Walker flushed red and looked uneasily at Hamish Wagner, but he had gone right out of sight behind his dry-cleaner’s bag. ‘Swift wasn’t in favour of cannibalism,’ he said. ‘He took up a complex intellectual position which I’m now going to explain to you.’ He talked for a while and when he had finished he saw Mr Jabolonski’s hand waving in the air. Mr Jabolonski’s question was why literary guys had to be so confusing. ‘Why do they have to make everything so difficult? Why don’t they just accept things the way they are?’

  ‘What was it John Stuart Mill said?’ asked Walker: ‘ “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” ’

  ‘Well, I can’t stand these guys who question everything,’ said Mr Jabolonski.

  ‘You like yourself as you are?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Jabolonski. ‘I’d be crazy if I didn’t. I didn’t come to university to improve my mind, Mr Walker. I come here to, duh, train me for a job. That’s what you guys don’t realize. You’re always wantin’ to change my values. You want us to think like you do, irony and all that crap. And what happens? You just get yourselves into trouble is what happens.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Lindstrom. ‘And I don’t think it’s right for you to call people who don’t agree with you pigs.’

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’ said Walker. But Miss Hackle and the student with the Mohican haircut were deeply roused.

  ‘He’s right,’ said Miss Hackle. ‘People who refuse to think about themselves are just animals.’ The class dissolved into bedlam. When the bell trilled on the hour, students went out of the classroom raging at one another, and Walker tucked his books under his arm in exhaustion and embarrassment. Hamish Wagner had contrived to leave the room in the middle of a press of disputants, and he foresaw his report: subversive teaching, abuse of the students, e
xpression of an untenable opinion. He hurried out of the building and noticed Wagner striding along the path ahead of him, his cleaner’s bag over his shoulder, on his way back to the English Building. Worry made him chase after him. ‘Hello, Hamish,’ he called.

  ‘Oh, what ho, old chap,’ said Hamish.

  ‘I saw you in class,’ said Walker, ‘I’m afraid it was a bit confused. I think probably they’re a little upset because of the fuss about my lecture.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I thought it was a nice class,’ said Hamish. ‘I have a few criticisms. Maybe you don’t want to hear them, but I have been teaching a good few years now, and with increasing experience and study has come wisdom . . .’

  ‘I’d like to hear them,’ said Walker.

  ‘Well, good, that’s how it should be,’ said Hamish. ‘No, I thought there were some weaknesses in presentation. I’d mark you high for teaching content, but I’d put you low on a few other things. Like standing and sitting. I like to see a teacher who moves around a lot, keeps the class interested. You sat on the corner of the desk without moving except to go to the blackboard once and write down sustenance. And that’s another thing, blackboard use. I like to see a full use of visual aids in a class: blackboard, mimeographed materials, use of opaque projector. You know, those secretaries in the office will mimeograph any teaching aids you want any time you want them. You just have to give reasonable notice.’

  ‘Yes, quite,’ said Walker.

  ‘Hope that don’t sound critical. Look at it as my job.’

  ‘I will, Hamish,’ said Walker.

  ‘Of course you were right,’ said Hamish. ‘They are pigs. In the sense defined in that passage.’

  ‘Oh, not all of them,’ said Walker. ‘Some of them understand what it’s all about – Miss Hackle and the boy with the funny haircut.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s true,’ said Wagner. ‘They’re not pigs; they’re nuts. Well . . . all very interesting.’

  Watching Hamish Wagner retire into his office, Walker realized that the encounter had strengthened him rather; he was capable of fighting back. And so instead of returning to the office where he belonged he went into the English Department telephone booth and made a call. ‘Is that Dr Jochum?’ he asked.

  ‘Who is this here, please?’ said Jochum’s voice, shouting into the telephone.

  ‘It’s James Walker.’

  ‘Ah, my friend, I have been vondering about you. But first I have a rebuke to make. I am disappointed in your lecture.’

  ‘I gathered that you’d led a protest about it to the President.’

  ‘Ah, I thought you were not calling just to get acquainted, as we say in America.’

  ‘Did you?’ asked Walker.

  ‘Did I inspire that protest? Yes, but it was not a protest about your lecture. It was a protest that the President had not publicly affirmed that academic freedom and the loyalty oath are compatible.’

  ‘How are they?’

  ‘Oh, vell, it is quite simple, surely. I know you vill not agree, because you are a liberal and you do not understand conspiracy. Do you not think there is more academic freedom here than there is in Russia or Hungary or Estonia?’

  ‘Yes, clearly.’

  ‘Then what happens when, within the context of academic freedom, men use that freedom to advance the view that it is intellectually necessary to create a society in which that freedom is taken away?’

  ‘That’s just saying that in the open market bad ideas drive out good.’

  ‘And is there no evidence in the world that that is true?’

  ‘I suppose in the short term there is.’

  ‘But in the long term truth will prevail. Is it doing? It didn’t prevail where I came from. There are no guarantees. You see, you are an optimist and live on hope. I am a pessimist and live on experience. I told you all this before. You are my friend; I am not attacking you. But I have had a harder life than yours; I learned my lesson. Now it is necessary to say what I have learned. Of course, I hope it vill cause no trouble for you . . .’

  ‘I don’t see how it can’t.’

  ‘Vell, it is a silly business, it will soon be forgotten. Then we shall meet again, I hope.’

  ‘Yes, I hope so.’

  ‘One day you vill believe these things too.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Walker. ‘But we’ll meet. After all, that’s what academic freedom is about.’

  ‘Ah, vell, good fortune and a good Noel,’ said Jochum. ‘Soon the snow vill fall and you vill see another Party. It is so lovely here.’

  ‘I hope they keep me here to see it.’

  ‘They vill,’ said Jochum. ‘Of course they vill.’

  ‘I guess it’s going to snow,’ said Patrice Froelich. ‘That means a white Christmas, great. Funny how it always snows around the beginning of the Christmas vacation.’

  ‘Yeah, we arrange it so the students going west can get trapped in the passes,’ said Froelich. ‘It leaves us with some places vacant for next semester.’ Walker sat on the divan reading the first chapter of Cindy Handlin’s novel, The Eye of My I, which she had submitted to the graduate creative writing class: it began ‘Who is any of us?’, and Walker didn’t understand it. It was the last day of classes before the vacation began, and Walker was to return to his room in International House the following day. For over a week there had been no news of the Trouble, no reports in the press, no letters in his mail. The AAUP meeting had taken place a week ago, but about it no one, not Froelich, not Bourbon, had spoken a word. Froelich, when pressed, just said, ‘It went fine,’ and since there had been no demand that he leave, not even an insistence that he sign that cursed blank form on his desk, he had not thought about the matter again. He thought that, if asked, he was prepared to sign it; all the benefits of his stand had been reaped, none of them by him. Unless, perhaps, there was a tiny glow of pride and principle? If so, the zest of that had gone; he felt himself back where he was before, cold winter Walker, with nothing achieved to speak of except a new veneration in the creative writing class, where he was freely spoken of as a ‘genius’. It struck him as odd, yet not inconsistent, that this praise came, not because he wrote like a writer, but because he had spoken like one. And that, at least, was something achieved. if he could hold on to it. Perhaps he had grown, then, but how did he know?

  Patrice went into the kitchen to make tea; they had instituted this English ceremony daily since Walker had been their guest. It never tasted quite the same, and the expatriate ritual gave more of a thrill to the Froelichs than it did to Walker, but it was a good winter institution and Walker recalled Jochum’s comments about the way it slowed the pace of life. That didn’t seem a bad thing, after the last weeks.

  ‘There’s a call for you, Jamie,’ shouted Patrice from the kitchen.

  Walker said, ‘For me?’ and picked up the phone. ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Hi,’ said a voice.

  ‘Who is that?’ said Walker.

  ‘Who is this? You don’t know?’

  ‘No,’ said Walker.

  ‘Guess,’ said the voice.

  ‘It would be easier to be told.’

  ‘But not so much fun. I’ll give you a clue. It’s an old friend from way back.’

  ‘I didn’t know I had any old friends,’ said Walker.

  ‘Only new ones?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker.

  ‘Well, tell me something. Are you a knight of infinity yet?’

  ‘Is it Miss Snowflake?’

  ‘Sure it is,’ said Julie Snowflake.

  ‘How nice,’ said Walker, and then, since he was in America, ‘How marvellous.’

  ‘Isn’t it great? I’m here. I’ve come. How are you, duckie?’

  ‘Oh, pretty well. How are you?’

  ‘Just fine, really fine. And can’t wait to see you. Who is this Froelich you’re staying with?’

  ‘He’s one of the English faculty.’

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘
Married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nice wife?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker. ‘Look, how long are you here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m heading out west for Christmas.’

  ‘How did you come?’

  ‘I have a car. I just rattle around all over now. I’m staying at my brother’s apartment. Boy, what a creep that kid is. Still, it lets me see this town. I think I like it. It looks like fun. Is it fun?’

  ‘Yes, it is really,’ said Walker. ‘Well, we must meet.’

  ‘Okay, fix it. I’m free all the time.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Julie.

  ‘I’ll just check,’ said Walker. He put his hand over the telephone and said to the Froelichs, ‘Am I doing anything tonight?’

  ‘We’re all going over to Dean French’s for a buffet supper. Who is this?’

  ‘A friend of mine from the ship coming over.’

  ‘A girl?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker.

  ‘Well, bring her along. Does she have a car?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker.

  ‘Have her stop by here for you.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Oh, any time,’ said Froelich, ‘around seven.’

  ‘Julie?’ said Walker into the telephone. ‘Write down this address.’ He gave it. ‘Have you got that?’ he went on. ‘Well, can you stop by at seven and I’ll take you to a party?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Julie, ‘a faculty party?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker.

  ‘Great,’ said Julie, ‘I always love gate-crashing faculty parties. On seven. I’ll bring you a bouquet.’

  ‘This is nice,’ said Walker.

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Miss Snowflake, hanging up.

  Froelich said: ‘Is she a student?’

  ‘Yes, she’s at Hillesley.’

  ‘How old?’ asked Patrice.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, about nineteen.’

  ‘And you slept with her on the boat coming over,’ said Froelich.

  ‘No, I just talked to her.’

  ‘Ah-ha,’ said Froelich. ‘And she came out here to see you.’

  ‘No, not at all, she has a brother at Benedict Arnold, a veterinarian.’