Silas Timberman (24 page)

Silas was on his feet, raging, “Lies! Lies! I tell you, he lies in his teeth!”

His friends pulled him down before the marshals could reach him. “You make it no better,” MacAllister pleaded. “It's bad, Silas, but you make it no better. For Christ's sake, listen—listen, I tell you! Your life is going to depend on what he says. You can't stop him. Listen to him.”

“Mr. Allen, is Professor Timberman a member of the Communist Party?”

“He is.”

(Listen to him. Listen to every word. You are going to a new school, the school of Brannigan …)

“In other words, Mr. Allen, a decision was arrived at to use Mark Twain to discredit the school administration—particularly to discredit Professor Edward Lundfest, who already had moved to block Professors Kaplin and Timberman?”

“That is correct.”

“On the basis that Mark Twain's place in the hearts of Americans was too secure to be shaken?”

“Yes, sir. They considered him an impregnable ally.”

(Listen to him, then. This is Bob Allen, Sue Allen's husband, a young, delightful couple. Try to understand why he is doing this. Others have done it, and still others will do it. Listen, as MacAllister says. You wasted your life in the Humanities. You should have been studying disease, as a scientist does. Ike Amsterdam is a scientist. Look at him. He is not shocked. He is quite calm, and amused. Evidently, Bob Allen is no stranger to him …)

“It was usually Professor Brady who argued for the petition. He had a lot to do with it.”

“Then it was Professor Brady who supervised the circulation of the peace petition?”

“It was.”

“In your opinion, Mr. Allen, was Professor Brady interested in peace when he undertook this action?”

“In my opinion, he was not. His only interest was to help rob us of our greatest weapon against communist tyranny, the atom bomb.”

“Do you have any specific information to support such an opinion?”

“I do. In discussing it with me, both he and Professor Timberman stressed the fact that if enough signatures were gotten to the petition, it would make the use of the atomic weapon impossible.”

(Look at Brady and remain silent. Brady is also silent, a figure in contemplation. Brady is a historian. The whole world of man parades in his contemplation. Brady is silent, contemplative, and curious—and interested, immensely interested …)

“In other words, Professor Timberman charged you to remain aloof from civil defense?”

“That is right.”

“Were any witnesses present at this time?”

“Professor Kaplin was present.”

“And did Professor Kaplin agree with Professor Timberman?”

“He expressed a tactical disagreement. He thought this was not the issue to come to grips with President Cabot on. He felt that since most Americans are unquestionably loyal, they could not be rallied against civil defense—”

(Kaplin has aged twenty years. Where does Kaplin go from here? Has he saved enough money to live on for a while, if he lives very frugally? What a strange thought—to be thinking about money now, Silas! How much money have
you
saved? At least, you are lucky not to be a Jew. Or are you? Consider Federman. They say every penny he saves goes to pay doctor bills. If you have to understand Bob Allen, then you also have to understand Federman. Federman is a scientist. The proper study of mankind is man—or something of that sort. Federman and Brady are both intrigued; they don't want to miss a word. And even Hartman Spencer has the attitude of a man observing a particularly interesting experiment. You wouldn't have thought that of Hartman, so very much the gentleman. They kept offering him headmasterships at preparatory schools. Not now. No more headmasterships offered to Hartman Spencer …)

“And this meeting on campus, you say, was the work of the communist cell operating directly?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have named the men on subpoena here from Clemington. Is Miss Edna Crawford also a part of this cell?”

“She is,” answered Bob Allen, very regretfully.

(Edna Crawford too. Miss Edna Crawford, an old spinster. There was always a legend, a lover dead in this war or that war—something to explain a very handsome woman who continues to be a spinster. Curious to recall that Edna Crawford had once remarked that she always voted Republican because she just didn't like the antics of Democrats. Probably there was never any lover dead in any war; women don't remain spinsters for reasons like that. Suppose you were to stand up now and cry, “Not Edna—anyone else, but not Edna. When you do it to Edna, a world ends, a world crumbles to pieces, and there is no putting it back together again. Don't you understand? Can't you understand that?” But you are past the ability to stand up and shout such things. Look at Ednaa instead. Miss Crawford has not ended. Stiff as a ramrod, her blue eyes are burning with hatred and anger. Then what happens when you begin this kind, of thing, when you do this kind of thing to such a person? What happens then?)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Monday: December 3, 1950

THE STONE

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE STONE

Silas made his sixteenth telephone call by actual count. This time it was Steve Cavanaugh, who liked to fancy himself the Mencken of Indiana, and who had written a nationally famous little book that had unexpectedly become a best seller. The book was called,
Images: How to Make Them and Break Them
. Silas encircled Cavanaugh's name with a pencil and then asked the operator for the number. Cavanaugh himself answered the phone.

“Hello, Cavanough,” Silas said. “This is Timberman—Silas Timberman.”

There was that gaping silence that Silas knew so well by now. “Oh, yes—yes, of course. How are you?”

“Good enough,” Silas said. “Cavanaugh, I'm calling about something a few of us feel very deeply, the question of what is happening to this college. Brady and Amsterdam and I thought that if forty or fifty of the faculty could sit down and talk about this, we might come up with something. Or maybe not. But we feel we've got nothing to lose by trying—” He could almost hear Cavanaugh saying to himself, Of course, you've got nothing to lose, you poor bastard!

“Yes—quite so. I suppose it should be done. But you have no idea how up to my ears I am, Silas. Correcting papers, two extra seminars, I couldn't think of it for another two weeks. I mean, I couldn't find an evening, Silas. I mean, you know how I feel about this kind of thing. I've stayed out of politics, but this kind of thing—”

“I know,” Silas said. He hung up the phone. The next name on the list was Joel Seever, and Silas sat and regarded the telephone with a fine mixture of hostility and distaste. Geraldine came into his study and saw him sitting there, and suddenly became anxious and over-protective, and wanted to know did he have a headache, or wasn't he feeling well? It made Silas smile. “Come over here, Gerry,” he said. “How about giving me a hug and a kiss—just special, because I love you so much.” He picked her up on his lap and held her there in his embrace, and she said.

“You're different.”

“How?”

“Since all this trouble started.”

“Trouble? We haven't so much trouble.”

“You're nicer,” she said sadly. She was growing up, he realized. They were all growing up. He decided that he would walk over and see Joel Seever, who lived only a few blocks away. There was time enough to go there and be back for dinner.

“Where are you off to?” Myra asked, as he was putting on his coat.

“Over to talk to Joel Seever.”

“You know, it's snowing.”

“The first snow of the year,” he thought, as he went outside. Myra had said it was snowing, but she was saying, why walk over there and hurt yourself more? Joel Seever is the same as the others.

He turned up the collar of his coat as he came outside. It was just fading twilight, and the snow was in soft, big flakes, one of those early snows that are not lasting, a presage of winter. Silas had always loved best of the whole year those days that are not of any season, but between seasons, days when something is dying and something else is being made, days when the currents of life seem to run fast and full and rich. It helped his spirits. “Why not Joel Seever?” he asked himself, recalling that Seever had signed the peace petition. He felt that if there was a break, an opening somewhere, even in terms of a handful of people, others would follow. Logic and reason were not inconsiderable forces, and one would think that to those who lived by logic and reason, they would be irresistible.

With his thoughts thus occupied, he had walked the few blocks between his house and Seever's, and he felt the persuasion of his own inner arguments as he knocked on the door. Ruth Seever opened it. They had never been too close, but their acquaintance was an old one; Ruth could hardly be rude, but when you know that a person is uncertain of his welcome, you go out of your way to compensate for that. A little surprised, she said, “Why, hello, Silas. I suppose you're looking for Joel.” She did not go out of her way to compensate for his uncertainty, but led him inside, and he stood in the hallway in his coat, hurt by the small stab of rejection, and standing there, looked at the house newly, wondering for the first time why houses of Clemington were so much the same, the same inside and outside, the furniture the same, the sounds the same, with nothing specific to say, this is the home of Joel Seever, who is a man and an individual in his own right.

He blamed his own bitterness, and when Seever appeared, tall, white-haired, with his ruddy, good-looking face as striking as always, Silas tried to be at ease and casual. Seever's greeting was warm enough. There was a time when Silas would not have measured the warmth or coolness of a greeting, nor would he have been concerned. Now a greeting was a barometer of many things and a summation of history as well.

“Why don't we find a quiet corner and talk,” Seever suggested. Silas hoped he was not taking Seever away from important things that he had planned, and Seever said no, he just happened to have an hour with nothing planned at all. Anyway, he was glad to see Silas, he said, and asked whether it had been rough.

“I suppose so,” Silas agreed. “You make adjustments, however, and that seems to me to hold a certain danger. It's so easy to adjust. When we were in Washington at the hearing, we adjusted to the notion that we would be suspended. When the suspension came through for each of us a few days after we returned, we had already adjusted, and therefore we hardly made a fight of it. We're beginning to understand the process now. If anyone had told me a month ago that today I'd be without a job, dishonorably suspended for subversive activities, with a whole life to remake—why I would have said he was insane.”

“And rightly so,” Seever nodded. “But isn't there a good chance of being reinstated, Silas? I mean, you will go before the faculty board of review?”

“Which now consists of Cabot, Lundfest and Pepham. That isn't it. Suppose there were three average deans on the board—what chance would we have even then?”

“Yet they can't prove you're a communist.”

“Precisely. And I wasn't suspended for being a red—none of us was. The language of the suspension order decries our unwillingness to cooperate—behavior unbecoming a teacher. It's like quicksilver. You can't take hold of it, you can't grasp it. That's the whole devilish quality of it, Joel—it runs through your fingers and it's caustic. It eats away a little at a time. Not the way they did it in Germany. There it was crude, blatant, with shouting and strutting and posturing and all sorts of nonsense about blood and race and leader. They made professors ride on carts of dung and led them through the streets with ropes around their necks and signs hanging from their shoulders. It shocked the world. Everyone said, ‘What beasts they are! What cruel, inhuman beasts!' Here they do it differently—no ropes, no carts of dung, no indignity except the single indignity of taking away from a man his livelihood, his career and his hope. And all for his own good. If you'll only cooperate, and be a good American—like Bob Allen—then all is forgiven. You can live with us, if only you'll take steps to make it impossible for you to live with yourself. Everything nicely done with due process—as befitting a democracy. But the end result is the same. Joel, do you realize that over five hundred teachers have been driven out of the school system in just this fashion? I didn't know—and I wouldn't have believed. It had to happen to me first.”

“When you put it that way, it does seem rather frightful,” Seever admitted.

“How else can I put it, Joel?”

“The point is, what can we do about it? When you come right down to it, Silas, there's precious little we can do.”

“I can't accept that. I've been discussing it with Brady and Federman, and they feel there is something we can do.”

“We're all going to pay a price for that damned peace petition of Brady's. Of all the childish, foolish—”

“Joel,” Silas said patiently, “I don't want to get into that argument. It wasn't Brady's petition, but I won't even argue it. The point is that we're in a situation, and we must do something about it. And we think we can. You have to ask why they limited this thing to seven faculty members. They could just as well have made it ten or twenty or thirty—but they left it at seven. Why? Well, the answer is fairly obvious. Seven can be handled; seven is not too few—and also not too many. Twenty would be a major incident, and thirty out of one university might be too much to handle. On the other hand, fifty or a hundred might blow the whole thing up in their faces. Well, we know there are at least a hundred members of this faculty who are decent people—people of conscience, people who feel and understand what is happening. We want to bring these people together, and then perhaps add to their number, so that never again will a handful of faculty members be isolated the way we were isolated—”