Читать книгу The Ninth Wave - Eugene Burdick - Страница 15

Table of Contents

In their junior year Mike and Hank rented a small cottage behind a professor’s house on the campus. The cottage was isolated from the professor’s house by a thick hedge, a lemon tree and two apricot trees. The cottage was very cheap. It rented for sixteen dollars a month.

In their sophomore year they had both gotten scholarships which paid for tuition. They still had to pay for books, the rent on the cottage, laundry and, finally, food. The food was the worst. By their junior year they had spent almost all of the poker winnings on food. And most of the food had been eaten by Hank.

Hank became hungrier all the time. Even when he had eggs, bacon, fried potatoes and toast for breakfast he was hungry by the middle of the morning and had to eat three or four doughnuts and a few cups of coffee. It was the same in the middle of the afternoon. He would stand by the counter in the soda fountain and rapidly eat three large ice cream cones; his teeth crunching the soft shell of the cone, not tasting the ice cream, but forcing it down his throat as fast as he could. Vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, coffee, rocky-road; he ate all of them with equal eagerness. He was unaware that he hunched his shoulders when he ate, bent slightly forward, as if protecting the food he was eating or sheltering it from the view of others. All he knew that when he had eaten he could go back to his books and study again.

But it was the nights that were difficult. They would be reading in the cottage and around midnight Hank would look up from his books. In front of him was the evidence of the night’s work; pencil drawings of intricate ganglia, cross sections of muscle tissues, the beautiful and exotic shapes of bacteria. He wanted to go on with the reading, but he could not. Somewhere, at the very outer edge of his consciousness, the thin taut membrane of his attention had been slit. It was tiny and faraway, he could almost ignore it, but that was impossible. Hunger came gushing in on him. His mouth started to water, his stomach turned tight with hunger, his intestines growled. He looked back at the book and the words were dim and blurred. His fingertips trembled slightly and he knew he could not read until he had eaten.

He stood up and spoke in a voice that was falsely casual.

“I’m going over to the Cellar for a bite,” he said. “Want to come along?”

Mike would shake his head and Hank walked over to the bureau and took two dollars out of the cigar box. Forty-five minutes later he would return and slip into the room. He picked up his book. For a moment he was aware of the hard round knob of his belly pushing against his belt, a strange distension that would vanish in an hour and leave him skinnier than before. Almost with disgust he thought of the hamburgers, malted milk and pie that he had eaten. Then he would be lost in the book again and would not think of anything until three in the morning when he stood up, stripped off his clothes and fell naked into bed. In the morning he would step out of the bed, brush his teeth and with the sweet minty flavor of the toothpaste still in his mouth he would be ravenous. He would trot down the street to the Cellar.

Hank tried everything to cut down his appetite. Once for a three-week period, he took little cellulose reducing pills, followed by three glasses of water. The pills expanded into a huge mass in his stomach, his belly bulged out round and turgid. But the hunger was still there, cutting through the soft watery mass of cellulose. He had to eat, forcing the food into an already full stomach and he felt distended, unnatural. Another time he tried eating fruit and nuts because someone told him that these would reduce his appetite. He ate peaches, oranges, apples, bananas, grapefruit and pears. He ate them until the juice dripped off his chin and he broke out in a rash. But they did not reduce his appetite.

In the end he gave up and attempted to keep a stock of food in the cottage. It did not matter what the food was, just so there was plenty of it. He ate soya-bean cereal with buttermilk, yogurt and cheese. The cottage was littered with the moist paper cartons in which delicatessens sell their yellowish potato salad, milk bottles, soda-cracker crumbs, the skin of salamis, crusts, apple cores and banana peels.

Even so there were nights when there was no food in the cottage, for Hank did not think of food when he was close to a grocery store. He discovered slowly all of the restaurants in the town that were open all night. His favorite was a Chinese restaurant that served a huge bowl of fried rice and shreds of pork for fifty cents. When this was closed he ate at a drugstore which featured a hot roast beef sandwich which floated in a circle of solid, glycerinlike gravy and was flanked by two round balls of mashed potatoes.

“We have to do something about our food costs,” Mike said at the beginning of their junior year. “If we can cut down on what we are spending there we can get by the rest of this year and our senior year on what is left of the poker money.”

“What about hashing?” Hank asked. “Lots of guys have hashing jobs. Just wait on table and you get your lunch and dinner.”

“But what about the rest of the time? What do we eat then?” Mike asked.

Hank squirmed in the chair. He looked down at his fingers. They were dirty. His stomach convulsed, saliva gathered in the back of his mouth and poured around his teeth. He was hungry. Like an animal, he thought. Like a slobbering, damned animal.

“I said no crap about money, Mike,” Hank said. “For Christ’s sake we’ve still got money in the cigar box, haven’t we?”

“Sure. About three hundred bucks,” Mike said.

“Well, let’s worry when that’s gone.”

Hank looked back at his book, picked up his pencil.

“No. We’ll worry about it now,” Mike said. “If we wait until next year it’ll be too late.”

“I’m not going to worry about it,” Hank said. He refused to look up from his book.

“I’ll worry about it,” Mike said. “I just want to make sure you’ll go along with whatever arrangements I make.”

“O.K., O.K. I’ll go along,” Hank said. He started to copy the complicated, beautifully involved bones of the knee onto a fresh page. “With anything. Stop talking about it.”

Mike got Hank a job in a bakery. It was a perfect job. Hank only had to work from eight at night until midnight. When he came to the bakery everyone else had left. Hank’s job was to operate the bread-wrapping machine. The cooling loaves were neatly stacked in a huge rotating rack and Hank had only to load the machine with wax paper and press the button. The loaves came pouring out the side of the machine, each of them neatly wrapped. Every fifteen minutes a bell rang and the machine needed more wax paper. The rest of the time Hank could read. It was perfect.

When Hank came to work the first thing he did each night was to take a loaf of hot bread and cut it in half. Then he went to the refrigerator and took out a cube of butter. He put the cube of butter between the halves of hot bread. The butter melted into a warm, yellow pool. When he bit into the bread he could smell the warm yeasty odor and the butter ran between his fingers. He usually ate two loaves of bread and butter during his four-hour shift. When he left at midnight he carefully selected a big sack of coffee cakes, doughnuts, rye bread, cookies and cupcakes. During the day he ate out of the bag, washing the food down with a few quarts of milk. He never became tired of the bakery goods. During the time he was working at the bakery he actually saved money.

Mike had intended to get a job hashing, but something happened. Mike got into a controversy with Julius Mardikan, an Armenian graduate student from Fresno. Mardikan was the section leader for one of the sections of a large upper-division history course. Mardikan was short, fat, very bright-eyed and a promising Ph.D. candidate. He received two hundred dollars a quarter for teaching the section and he was happy.

Hank and Mike were both in Mardikan’s section and for the first month they listened placidly to his lectures. In the second month Mardikan began to lecture on Luther.

“Before Luther the medieval society was unified and solid,” Mardikan said. “Although people were born into a rigid society they knew exactly where they fitted into the society and they were happy. Everyone had a sense of security, of belonging. Everyone accepted the status quo.”

Mike sat up in his chair and put his hand in the air. For a few moments Mardikan did not see it for he was talking with absorption, almost love, of his favorite period in history. Finally he saw Mike’s hand.

“Yes, Mr. Freesmith?” he said.

“Do you mean that in the medieval society there was no discontent and no unrest?” Mike said.

“Scholarly work indicates that there was very little unrest and discontent during that period. Certainly it was a much calmer and more satisfied period than the present.”

“Scholarly work on what?” Mike asked. “How do the scholars know this? What do they look at?”

“Religious documents, psalm books, monastery records, records left by merchants. That sort of thing.”

Mardikan spoke more slowly and cautiously, careful of a trap, his bright eyes narrowing with concentration.

“What would a psalm book or a merchant’s record tell you about the way people actually felt? Couldn’t they actually be miserable and unhappy even if the merchant’s records showed a profit?” Mike asked.

The class laughed. The smile vanished from Mardikan’s face. His teeth separated and showed his tongue. He licked his lips and looking away from Mike spoke very slowly.

“The work of Max Weber for one and Tawney for another would seem to indicate very precisely that the medieval man was a very secure and intact sort of person,” Mardikan said.

This was not altogether true, but Mardikan did not know that. Later he came to know it well. Mike wrote “Weber” and “Tawney” in his notebook and then looked up.

“I don’t believe they were right,” Mike said. “People were always pretty much the way they are now. Probably always will be.”

“And how are they now, Mr. Freesmith?” Mardikan asked.

He was surer now. He felt that he had control again.

“People are ...” Mike hesitated. Then he went on. “People are scared. I don’t know if that means they’re insecure. I just know they’re scared. And I think they always have been.”

The class murmured its disapproval. Mardikan smiled.

“I’m sure Mr. Freesmith that the scholarly community would be grateful for your profound views on this matter,” he said.

The class laughed. Mike smiled. The discussion went on to another subject.

That afternoon Mike bought Tawney’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. He checked out three of Weber’s books from the library. The next morning when the section met Mike put his hand up before a word had been spoken.

“Mr. Mardikan, do you know what jacquerie is?” Mike asked.

Mardikan hesitated. The smile froze on his face and then was fractured by his nervous tongue.

“In a general sense,” Mardikan said. “Yes. I know very generally.”

“Jacquerie is agrarian or peasant revolution,” Mike said. “During the medieval period there were over two hundred examples of jacquerie in Europe. Peasants revolting and killing their lords, burning up the manor houses, raping the women, taking possession of the land. Does that sound like a secure and happy society to you?”

The class stared at Mike. Mardikan pressed against the blackboard. With his fingers he turned a piece of chalk and it became soggy in his hand.

“A few cases of peasant revolt do not mean that the total society was demoralized, Mr. Freesmith,” Mardikan said.

“Of course not,” Mike said. “But do you know that there were also countless cases where the people stormed the monasteries and burned them down and threw the monks out into the snow? What about that? And did you know that almost every feudal estate had a police force? That most of the gallant knights spent their time either fighting the serfs or plotting against their boss?” Mike lifted a heavy red book and turned it slowly over in his hands. “It’s all right here in this book. People then were just like people now.”

“I don’t think, Mr. Freesmith, that a few scattered pieces of evidence are enough to overthrow the well-considered views of the best historical scholars,” Mardikan said.

He was sweating though and when the class was over and he stepped away from the blackboard he left a round black shiny circle of sweat and his tweed jacket was covered with chalky reversed words which he had soaked off of the blackboard.

From the start it was a losing battle for Mardikan. Mike began to read everything. He read anthropology, sociology, psychology, mathematics, philosophy, ethics, history and logic. He stole books from the library, bought used books in Palo Alto, borrowed books and bought still more books. Some books he glanced at, threw under his bed and never opened again. Some books he read twice. A few books he read over and over, marking the pages, scribbling in the margins. Mike’s eyes became red from reading and he was quite unaware of it. The cottage began to overflow with books. They spilled off the tables, squashed the salami skins into the rug; they slid under the bed and gathered dust; they were stacked under the washbasin and were covered with water stains.

“I thought you were going to get a job hashing,” Hank said in the middle of the year.

“Sure, I was, but I don’t have time now,” Mike said. “I’ve got too much to read. No time to work.”

“Why do you want to prove that Mardikan was wrong about medieval society?” Hank asked. “You keep after him like it was a battle.”

“Battle?” Mike looked up with surprise. “You’re crazy. I don’t give a damn about Mardikan. Also I don’t care about the medieval society argument any more. I’m reading other things.”

“What other things?”

“Lots of things. History, sociology, just about everything. I just realized this year that there was something in books except fiction. I never thought before that the people who wrote all those books believed them; that they studied history or people or situations and then tried to write about them in books. I thought they invented it all out of their heads.”

“Is it pretty good stuff?” Hank asked cautiously.

Mike looked up and thought for a moment. He shook his head.

“Most of it is crap. Real crap. Every once in a while one of them puts down something honestly. It sounds hard and real. Then he takes a look at it, realizes how grim it sounds and rushes to cover it over with a bunch of crazy interpretations and explanations. Some of them never say anything real. They just write. Like I said, most of it is crap.”

As they talked Hank realized that Mike really did not see that he was engaged in a battle with Mardikan. Actually he was hardly aware that Mardikan existed. The Armenian was just someone on whom he could try his ideas and reading. But everyone else saw it as a battle. Students from other sections began to drop into Mardikan’s section and sometimes the room was overcrowded. Also graduate students started to come to the section meetings.

The section became fabled around the campus. The pattern of the section became set. Every day Mardikan walked in, leaned against the blackboard and looked around the room. Mike’s hand went up in the air. Mardikan called on him and the struggle commenced. Mike brought old and obscure books to class; he quoted from notes; he referred to little-known periodicals; he challenged the authority of great and well-known historians and discovered almost anonymous sociologists and supported their interpretations. The class was confused, but they were delighted. At the end of every hour Mardikan came away from the board with a slight moist sound and left the glistening mark of his nervousness on the hard black material.

Mardikan capitulated in the middle of the third quarter. They were discussing anarchism and Mardikan was defending the viewpoint expounded in the textbook which had been issued to the class.

“The textbook is wrong when it states that anarchists are optimistic about human nature,” Mike said. “The anarchists are as pessimistic about human nature as Spencer or Malthus or Adam Smith. They ...”

“That is not the generally accepted view,” Mardikan said. He was tensed against the blackboard, his hands held rigidly in front of his waist, the fingers spread defensively. He fought against Mike’s words, the way a small overtrained terrier will fight against a tough mongrel. “Generally there is a view ...”

“A general view that is held by people who have not read the anarchists,” Mike said. The class took a sudden breath. Mike picked up a small bound copy of a newspaper. “Right here it says something that is right on the nose.”

“What are you quoting from?” Mardikan asked.

“The newspaper put out by the Society of Egoists,” Mike said.

“All right, Mr. Freesmith. There is no need to read from it,” Mardikan said. He began to gather up the papers on the table in front of him. “That is all for today.”

He walked out the door, his shoulders slumped forward. He stumbled on the door jamb, recovered and disappeared into the corridor. The class got up silently and left.

Mardikan went to the chairman of the Department of History and asked to talk with him.

“It’s no use, sir,” he said. “I can’t keep up with Freesmith. I have orals to study for, my wife is pregnant, I take time out for meals, I read the daily newspapers. Freesmith doesn’t do any of those things. He just reads and he understands what he reads. Oh, I’m not sure he understands what he reads, but he can use what he reads; he knows how to manipulate it. I can’t keep up with him. I want to drop out for a year and then I’ll pick up my studies again.”

The chairman looked at Mardikan’s fingers, at his tired face, at the dull eyes and he told Mardikan that he thought the year’s leave of absence was a good idea.

In the summer vacation between their junior and senior years they went to Santa Barbara and worked. They hoed beans, picked lemons, curried polo ponies in Montecito, cleaned fish at a fish-canning factory and were bar boys at a big hotel during Fiesta. They wound up the summer with eighty dollars in cash, a half case of bonded whisky they had stolen from the hotel, two cashmere sweaters they found in the lockerroom at the polo grounds, a pair of hand-tooled shoes that an Englishman had placed outside his hotel door not knowing that they would fit Mike, and a case of canned tuna which was a gift from the owner of the fish-canning factory.

When they got back to the cottage at Stanford Mike looked at it as if he were seeing it for the first time. He looked at the heaps of dusty books, the bits of food on the floor. He noticed a stream of ants flowing in and out of an old box of crackers, each ant waving a tiny shred of cracker above its head. He noticed that the clothes hanging from hooks needed cleaning and he wondered how long they had been that way.

Mike got the cigar box out and counted the money. There was less than a hundred dollars.

“O.K.,” Mike said, almost as if he were talking to himself.

“O.K. what?” Hank asked.

“O.K., I’m going to go to law school,” Mike said. “I just made up my mind.”

“Why law school?” Hank asked.

Mike looked at Hank and for the first time his eyes shifted away and Hank saw a protective, private look cross Mike’s face.

“Why not?” Mike asked.

“I don’t give a damn what you do. I won’t give you reasons why you shouldn’t go to law school. I just thought you might have some good reasons for doing it.”

“Maybe I do,” Mike mused. “Just maybe I do. Anyway what we’ve got to worry about now is financing me through law school and you through medical school. What are you going to do about finances?”

“Well, if my grades don’t drop they tell me I’ll get a scholarship which will take care of the tuition,” Hank said. “And I’ll keep working in the bakery. It doesn’t cut into my studies. I’ve even worked out some wooden braces on the wrapping machine so that I only have to load it with paper every forty-five minutes. I’m all set. What about you?”

“I should get a hashing job, but it takes too much time,” Mike said. “I still have a lot of reading I have to do and I don’t have much time. I can’t take a hashing job.”

“What’ll you do? Don’t kid yourself, Mike. You can’t get through law school like this. You’ll be up against competition. Most of your competition won’t be working on the outside either. You have to get a job, but if it takes too much time you’d better give up law school until you’ve got some money saved.”

“Christ, I’ll worry about law school when I get to it,” Mike said. “Right now I’m worrying about this year; what I’m going to eat, how often, and how? Five minutes after that I’ll start to worry about getting through law school.”

Something flitted through Mike’s mind; elusive, vague, suggestive somehow of a cashmere sweater and a look of well-being. He could not fasten it down.

“Maybe you could get a job at the bakery,” Hank said. “They’ve been getting more business and they may put on another person on the wrapping machine.”

The impressions going through Mike’s mind slipped together and in a quick moment of recollection a name crossed his mind: Connie Burton. She was the girl who had been in the experiment. She had worn a cashmere sweater. Somehow she looked expensive, groomed, as if she had money. Mike made up his mind.

“Thanks, Hank, but I think I’ll try a few other things first,” Mike said. “O.K.?”

“Sure. I don’t care what you do, just so you do something.”

Mike looked around at the room again; the books, the bits of smeared food, the dust. He liked it. The cottage had been a good place. Idly he put his foot out and blocked the passage of one of the streams of ants. They hesitated, milled in microscopic confusion, waved their bits of cracker in the air. Then cautiously they began to move around his foot, following in the general direction indicated by a few fast-scurrying scouts. Mike raised his foot and slapped it down directly on a cluster of the ants. He stood up.

“I’ll do something,” he said. “I don’t know what, but it’ll be something.”