What if I don’t give the right answer, then what? He’ll think I’m stupid, like everyone else. Why else would I be in summer school? He’ll lose interest. All the teachers know what kind of a crappy student I am—word gets around. What if I make something up and it sounds ridiculous? What if I pretend to understand what he’s saying when I obviously don’t? Oh, God! That would be the unforgivable sin. It was best to confess my ignorance. So, raising back up, I said, “I don’t know, sir.”
“The fool who persists in his folly will become … wise!” he shouted grandly.
What can he be talking about? I wondered. But it was too late; his gaze had gone and he was out the window again. This was going slowly, it was true, but at least I had determined that Mr. Herman knew my name, my first name. That was something; no, more than something—it was an enormous validation.
Then he spoke again. “‘Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.’ This is one of the ‘Proverbs of Hell’ by William Blake. Have you heard of him? Of course you haven’t. How could you? Go, go and read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Immediately! Then come back and see me.” He waved me off. “Now go!”
“Yes sir, I will sir. Thank you, sir.”
As I moved toward the exit, he jumped up from behind his desk, startling me. I stopped and turned around. He began to recite—shouting the words—as though the words were printed in flaming letters at the back of the classroom:
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who present, past and future sees
Whose ears have heard,
The Holy Word
That walk’d among the ancient trees.
“Blake, sir?” I asked from the doorway.
“Of course, William Blake. Think about those divine words, my dear.”
“I will, sir. Thank you, sir. I’ll go to the library right now, and read everything I can about Blake, sir. Thank you very much!”
I was drenched in sweat, head spinning as I closed the door. The Great Man had spoken, knew my name, even called me “dear.” Maybe he had given me some sort of blessing. In any case, it was something to hold on to.
I cut my next class and took the subway downtown to the Donnell Library on 53rd and 6th to find out who this Blake fellow was. But while I was sitting there staring, trying to make sense of Blake’s weird prophecies, the thought kept pounding in my ears: Mr. Herman knows my name. He called me Henry. Mr. Herman said “dear” to me.
It was a revelation.
Looking back now, that crazy moment probably salvaged high school for me. It gave me a sense of burgeoning self-worth. It made me think that maybe, just maybe, someone could see in me something beyond failure, something beyond a D- student without skill or prospects, who bit his nails and couldn’t keep his laces tied, who lived with a mother who lived in a locked bedroom filled with boxes of garbage, and a father for whom money and power were paramount.
Maybe I could become an artist. Mr. Herman had said: “Hear the voice of the Bard!” Why had he said that to me? Someday I might write something that would live on, even if whatever I wrote would be less incomprehensible than William Blake’s. I read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and tried to read The Book of Urizen. It made no sense at all to me, but that didn’t matter—the book’s prophetic tone was proof of its profundity! I had been chosen. Delivered from slavery. Of course, I would work to become an artist.
I began to read everything I could get my hands on, and spent my evenings reading far more than I was capable of understanding. But had I not been given a sign? A promise? Yes, the great man intimated that one day I might evolve into a different sort of human being from the abject failure I knew myself to be. My mother chastised me for “escaping” into literature and taunted me with the name “Holden Caulfield” in reference to Salinger’s hero. I had asked him, and Mr. Herman told me that there was nothing wrong with escape. Escaping into a world of books, he suggested, was far better than the “reality” of one’s miserable life, wasn’t it? True greatness involved relinquishing lesser concerns, removing lesser people.
“Why did Hamlet feel no remorse about the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?” he asked. I did not know. “The elect need not concern themselves with such things,” he said.
It was rumored among the boys in the Upper School that Mr. Herman had inappropriately close relationships with a few of his favorites. Why wasn’t I selected as one of the chosen? Some, I had heard, had even gone to visit him at his home—an unimaginable honor! I was never included in this elite group and remember how envious I was of those strange, brilliant boys whom Herman singled out for special attention. Many of them were from broken homes like me, and I started to notice that they even began to talk, walk, dress, and cut their hair like him! They even fell into trances just as he did! I would have given anything to have been invited into this tiny circle, to worship at the feet of this high priest. He mentioned that he planned to lead a trip of boys to Perugia, Italy, to study Italian Renaissance art. I saw my father and begged him to let me go. I cried when he refused.
Decades later, reading about the serial pedophilia that took place at Horace Mann during the 60s and 70s, it occured to me that my father’s refusal to let me go may have saved my life. Who knows what happened to those “lucky” boys who went with him to Perugia? Numerous stories of Herman’s emotional abuse of his students over decades have now been documented. They suggest that he deliberately crossed the line separating pedagogy and pedophilia; his need to control young minds grew indistinguishable from the actions of a predator. Now in his eighties, he still lives in a lavish home in California bought for him by grateful former students. Some of these acolytes still apparently live with him decades after they graduated. It is said that they support “Daddy’s” every whim; dressing like him, drinking special cocktails, and taking their meals together. Herman’s home is called “Satis House,” after Miss Havisham’s splendid residence in Great Expectations. Like its model in Dickens, this latter-day Satis House is a place where time has stopped.
After coming under Mr. Herman’s influence, I chose to be alone. I avoided my friends after school, then stopped seeing them altogether. Instead of living people, I discovered companionship in a pantheon of literary figures who were more real and more interesting than anyone I actually knew. Foremost among these was Holden Caulfield, of course, whom I began to imitate by popping up the collar of my jacket, and flinging a long muffler over my shoulder. But in addition to Holden, each week brought on some new, fantastic identity. I copied down Mr. Herman’s eclectic suggestions of what I should read in a special notebook. While I now avoided homework as mundane and beneath me, I scrupulously embraced these titles, and saw in their heroes more interesting versions of myself. I took these treasures with me to the wooden benches of Grand Central Station, where I sat among bums and drunks, reading Crime and Punishment or The Castle until late into the night. Then I walked home to my mother’s apartment to sleep.
Due to my new feverish interest in literature and art, I started doing better in English classes and was able to pull up my average to a C. I didn’t have to repeat classes at summer school as I had in previous years. I wanted to be as far away as possible from my parents and Horace Mann until I had to return next fall. My father found me a job as an assistant camp counselor upstate in Cold Spring, New York, sixty miles from the city. I would have time to read, be far from home, and even earn some money. I had no idea how it would change my whole life.
The basketball court, of all places, was where I first met him. I had given up sports as not befitting my new artistic vocation. However, during the first week of orientation at Surprise Lake Camp, I observed counselors playing half-court pick-up games of two-on-two in the evenings. The courts were lit, and the weird yellow glare on the smooth green surface of the courts gave the pick-up games a glamorous theatricality. I watched the other counselors play, but chose not to participate, Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha tucked firmly into the waistband of my shorts.
/> As I stood by watching these middle class kids from Long Island trying to play ball, I noticed one boy who obviously knew what he was doing. Instead of just chucking the ball up and waiting for the rebound to clang off the rim, he remained under the basket waiting for his teammates to shoot from the outside. He knew how to box out his opponent, and put back the rebound for an easy layup. His game was disciplined and physical. Finally, someone around here knew how to play basketball.
During the break between games, I carefully placed Siddhartha on a small patch of grass, and started shooting around with the others. Seeing that I was no worse than most, I was asked to join in a makeshift tournament. I said no, until the boy who had so impressed me with his physical presence and determination looked in my direction and encouraged me—then I said “yes.” We were about the same height, but he was a few years older and maybe twenty-five pounds heavier. He introduced himself as Adar. It means “Noble” in Hebrew, he said to me.
In the glow of the floodlights, there were perhaps a dozen counselors watching our game, but it felt like I was at Madison Square Garden warming up. The game began and I was on fire, hitting virtually every outside shot I took. Adar and I worked together like a machine, beating team after team, sometimes with cleverness and passing, other times through my outside shooting or his rebounding. After hitting one long jumper from about twenty feet, I turned and watched Adar smile. That said it all: we could win, and we would win the tournament. We were a team. I saw Adar tear his shirt off at the start of the next game where we were to be “skins,” and held my breath: sweat trickled in rivulets down the line of hair on his bronzed chest toward his navel. His muscular body seemed like that of a man—not skinny, undefined, and hairless like mine—and it was with difficulty that I tore my eyes away.
After we won the tournament, we talked and realized we had more in common than just basketball. He was a painter, he said. These words, delivered with absolute certainty and purpose, ripped through my body like a jolt of electricity: a painter! I told him about my love of art and my solitary afternoon visits to the art museums in the city. He was from Brooklyn, and had never been to the Frick. This emboldened me to talk about how much I knew, then to confess something I had never told anyone before: I hoped one day to become a writer. Saying those words aloud was like tasting a magic draught—bitter and strange on the tongue. I swallowed, and the utterance was now inside me! Saying it aloud to Adar—his very name suggested strength—made it seem that much more real. Maybe I could become something other than Norman and Rita’s idiot son, a failure in school, losing things, a boy shuffling through New York City tripping over his laces—maybe one day I could possess the kind of greatness that Mr. Herman had told me was known only by the truly great: Shakespeare, Michelangelo. That night our friendship began; we stayed up all night talking about Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman; about great, tormented artists; about Van Gogh, Beethoven, and Dostoevsky. About where our dreams would take us, and where we would take our dreams. By the next morning I felt I already was a writer, just as he was a painter. The following day he introduced me to his favorite: Ayn Rand and her philosophy called “The Virtue of Selfishness.” He leant me his copy of The Fountainhead.
“The people around us are all so small,” Adar said extending a tightly muscled forearm. “We must never allow ourselves to become diminished.” I instantly thought of Mr. Herman, and what he had said about Hamlet’s indifference to sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths: “The elect need not concern themselves with such things.”
“From what you have told me,” Adar said, “I know you are far more than the sum of the inferior people who gave you birth,” he said. “And as you grow into the person you are destined to become, this gap will only grow wider and more visible.” He had never allowed his parents to control him, he said. Since he had been a child, he had gone to work. Even now, at Surprise Lake Camp, he was working to pay his tuition for art school in the fall. I was ashamed that I went to a private school like Horace Mann, and even more ashamed at never having to earn a cent in my life. I couldn’t imagine having to work at a job to pay for my education. It was always a given that I would go to college, and that it would be paid for by my father. That was how things worked in my world.
Talking with Adar gave me a sense of my latent power, yet our conversations also filled me with a sense of my own weakness and dependence compared with his. He never said it in so many words, but it was implied: I was the spoiled child of wealthy parents; I never had to work or fight for anything, even my own freedom. As he said, “You have not yet begun to take responsibility for yourself; and if you don’t, you can never become an artist. Or a man.” The words stung. But they also thrilled with promise.
One night after he put his campers to bed, we walked for a mile or so to be alone, away from the camp. This was technically against the rules, but what did we care about rules? At the edge of a field, Adar stopped. I did the same. I assumed he wanted to sit down, so I sat on a tree stump circled by sweet-smelling grass. Adar, however, maintained his upright position.
“You’re their creature, you know,” he said, towering above me. His eyebrows were dark, much darker than the color of his sandy hair, and they nearly met in the middle of his forehead. His face had a gravity my contemporaries lacked. “Until you’re financially free, you’ll never be emotionally free,” he said with certainty. “You will remain enslaved.” His words had an Absoluteness to them, which was terrifying.
“You don’t understand,” I said feebly, looking up. “It’s not that easy.…”
Adar shrugged. “What is true is never easy,” he said, walking ahead of me and flinging the words back over his shoulder.
I scrambled to catch up.
By the time we returned to our bunks, I realized how dependent I was on my parents to provide not only food and lodging, but even a weird kind of security. That was why I was a slave. Until I was truly free—economically and emotionally—I would never be able to create.
It didn’t take long for me to confide in Adar about my parents, including the physical beatings I received from my father throughout childhood. I told him about my father’s belt buckle, which had scarred my thighs and bottom so visibly I was ashamed to undress at Phys. Ed. I even told him about my abduction to Vermont, which I had sworn to myself never to tell anybody else as long as I lived. Before we had known one another two days, I had unearthed all the secret places of my heart. I told him about Mr. Herman, and the discoveries I had recently made. Night after night we expressed our amazement at the depth of our friendship, and how superior we were compared to others, not only to the shallow counselors at Surprise Lake, but to people everywhere. If we remained true to ourselves and our mission, we were destined to become the leaders of an artistic revolution! As soon as I began writing, I would share my work with him, and he would show his paintings to me. We would visit museums, go to movies together. The future, which, until very recently seemed non-existent, was now filled with exciting possibilities. There was no limit to what we could achieve.
In the midst of dreaming about our “Union,” as Adar aptly called it, we dismissed our mundane duties as camp counselors. Being older and having been at Surprise Lake before, Adar’s duties were far more onerous than mine. I was only a junior counselor. But we both dismissed the irksome reminders of our delinquency as beneath us: what were a bunch of spoiled, rich kids compared with the bright, new world unfolding around us?
A reprimand was delivered from the camp director that we had been reported absent from the campgrounds. We joked about the director’s pompous tone, his typewritten message on Surprise Lake stationery. Then a personal message came, threatening Adar with dismissal, and me with suspension. We were summoned to meet with Mr. Meyer, the camp director.
Mr. Meyer was wearing a Surprise Lake Camp staff T-shirt and matching shorts, like we did, only he wore socks that went up to his knees like a scout master’s. His cabin had real furniture in it, not just stacks of b
unks. He even had a window air conditioning unit. There were framed photographs of smiling campers dating back to the 1930s. He smiled and offered us a seat on a couch, and as we sat, a Negro woman who worked in the kitchen came in and passed us a plate of chocolate chip cookies. I took a cookie; it was still warm from the oven.
“No thank you,” Adar said abruptly. I quickly put my cookie back on the plate. I wasn’t going to have a cookie if Adar didn’t have one, too.
Mr. Meyer addressed himself to Adar. “You boys seem to be getting along well. I’m pleased to see that. We like our counselors getting along; it’s a part of the Surprise Lake experience to make us all feel like one happy family.” He smiled and paused. “But our first responsibility is and must be to our campers; our second is to their parents; and only the third is to ourselves. What concerns me here is that you boys seem to have forgotten those priorities, and placed your friendship above your responsibilities as counselors, for which you are being paid. Mr. Bornstein, you have now received two warnings about not properly monitoring your campers, and I trust that there will not be need for a third.” A lengthy pause followed during which I grew increasingly nervous. Where was this heading? I looked at Mr. Meyer; then back at Adar. Should we apologize? Or should we just hang our heads and return chastened to our cabins?
To my surprise, Adar said nothing. From where I sat, he seemed to be glaring at Mr. Meyer with smoldering brows and clenching his powerful jaw muscles. I was frightened by the heavy silence. It reminded me of my father’s tone, and as a child, I knew what was required. When Mr. Meyer’s eye turned to me, I stammered that I was sorry—it would not happen again. Mr. Meyer seemed pleased and stood up.
The Poison Tree Page 12
