Читать книгу The Mandrake Root - Martha Ostenso - Страница 8

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While they walked in the November starlight, Eric Stene glanced down at the blurred shape of his friend, Professor Sibert Mueller. It had been on Eric’s suggestion that they had taken this road skirting the edge of town instead of the paved avenue that led from the hospital steps down through the business center of Anders.

There must be a moon rising somewhere, Eric thought indifferently. He had rather lost track of the phases during his recent illness. Mueller would want to be home before the moon rose. That happened to be his peculiar complex, or phobia, or fixation—or whatever newer word they had for it this year. Eric recalled the evening, two years ago, when the professor had painfully confessed his abiding dread, had explained it through the fact that boyhood companions had whooped with mirth at his silhouette against a full moon, because his deformed upper spine was comically suggestive of a bag of stolen chickens. And Mueller was as afraid of moonlight now, at forty-five, as he had been when he was a boy of ten. A good thing, Eric thought, to have something definite, something nameable, to be afraid of, instead of this opaque ambiguity which was life itself.

“For one thing,” Sibert was rumbling carefully down into the collar of his overcoat, “you make too much uff it, Eric. You should take it as a kick upstairs. How else would you ever have got away from our little den of bigotry and intolerance? Look at me! I shall be in Anders College for the rest of my days. If someone had kicked me out fifteen years ago—when I was as young as you, Eric—”

“Thanks, Sibert,” Eric broke in. “I know you’re trying to be helpful, but it’s no good, old man. I don’t see why you should object so strongly when I tell you that I’m through with teaching. As a profession, it’s—it’s immoral. When a teacher of English Literature has to weigh every word he speaks in the classroom, for fear of offending the powers that be, I don’t understand how you’ve managed all these years in Philosophy.”

“It requires what you call a saving sense of humor, of course,” Mueller observed drily.

“Oh, hell!” Eric’s mouth tugged across his large, good teeth. “I suppose Dempster has kept his job all these years because of his saving sense of humor.”

“It might be—it might be,” Mueller replied. “On the other hand—ah—I have already explained President Dempster, eh? He is a man of no intellect. But he is not altogether a fool, either. Look, now! It is very simple, Eric. A tall, good-looking young man comes down from the state university where he was a hero on the football field—he comes down to teach English at Anders. He has blue eyes and light hair, he has what they call personality. He has original methods in the classroom. He is human, and the students like him—too much, eh? The older professors are not pleased. Hunh! They wait for him to make a mistake—to say something, do something they do not like. Well, it is unfortunate. Nature takes a hand. One day when our young professor is at work at his desk, the young girl with the red hair comes in and throws her arms around him. Anywhere else, perhaps, there would be no harm done, no offense. But one of the older professors sees what happens and the next day President Dempster calls our young professor into his office. The young man does the foolishness to resign. Then—more foolishness—he goes to another town to deliver a lecture that has been arranged and he comes back sick. For six weeks he is in the hospital. After that, he does me the honor to stay at my house—and then tells me he is through with teaching forever. This young man, who is one of the few I have met with the genius for teaching. Hunh! It is all very funny, no?”

Eric’s laugh was bitter. “Genius for teaching! Education is a waste of time, Sibert—especially here in America. Droves of students—year in and year out—turned in and turned out—without selection when they enter, and without any claim to distinction when they leave. The average human brain is little more than a lump of paleozoic ooze.”

“Hunh! You are not yet fully recovered from your illness, Eric,” Mueller said hurriedly. “You must rest—in body and mind. A sickness distorts—”

“On the contrary, it defines margins, crystallizes the shape of things.”

“What, then, are you going to do?” Mueller asked helplessly.

“I don’t know yet. I’ve been thinking about it. I have a little money left in the bank—and I have the rent from the farm—about four hundred a year, after the taxes are paid. Barker wants me to keep on with the articles in The Horizon—if it doesn’t fold up soon. I’ve thought—”

“Well, we shall take time to think, Eric—and time to talk, too. And you will stay with me until you have decided. Let us go in. Natalie will be here any moment.”

They had come to Sibert Mueller’s gate.