Thats what it was, sir,¨ I said.
His balletic hands flitted in time to the logic of his thoughts before he spoke again. He was a fellow pianist. And then he said, First of all, you were not hired to teach History. Second of all, the students who come to Tarkington need no further instructions in how it feels to be defeated. They would not be here if they themselves had not failed and failed. The Miracle on Lake Mohiga for more than a century now, as I see it, has been to make children who have failed and failed start thinking of victory, stop thinking about the hopelessness of it all.¨
There was just that one time,¨ I said, and Im sorry.¨
Cough. One cough.
Wilder said he didnt consider a teacher who was negative about everything a teacher. I would call a person like that an Ľunteacher. Hes somebody who takes things out of young peoples heads instead of putting more things in.¨
I dont know as Im negative about everything,¨ I
Whats the first thing students see when they walk into the library?¨ he said.
Books?¨ I said.
All those perpetual-motion machines,¨ he said. I saw that display, and I read the sign on the wall above it. I had no idea then that you were responsible for the sign.¨
He was talking about the sign that said THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.¨
All I knew was that I didnt want my daughter or anybodys child to see a message that negative every time she comes into the library,¨ he said. And then I found out it was you who was responsible for it.¨
Whats so negative about it?¨ I said.
What could be a more negative word than Ľfutility?¨ he said.
ĽIgnorance, I said.
There you are,¨ he said. I had somehow won his argument for him.
I dont understand,¨ I said.
Precisely,¨ he said. You obviously do not understand how easily discouraged the typical Tarkington student is, how sensitive to suggestions that he or she should quit trying to be smart. Thats what the word Ľfutile means: ĽQuit, quit, quit.
And what does Ľignorance mean?¨ I said.
If you put it up on the wall and give it the promi
nence you have,¨ he said, its a nasty echo of what so many Tarkingtonians were hearing before they got here: ĽYoure dumb, youre dumb, youre dumb. And of course they arent dumb.¨
I never said they were,¨ I protested.
You reinforce their low self-esteem without realizing what you are doing,¨ he said. You also upset them with humor appropriate to a barracks, but certainly not to an institution of higher learning.¨
You mean about Yen and fellatio?¨ I said. I would never have said it if Id thought a student could hear me.¨
I am talking about the entrance hail of the library again,¨ he said.
I cant think of what else is in there that might have offended you,¨ I said.
It wasnt I who was offended,¨ he said. It was my daughter.¨
I give up,¨ I said. I wasnt being impudent. I was abject.
On the same day Kimberley heard you talk about Yen and fellatio, before classes had even begun,¨ he said, a senior led her and the other freshmen to the library and solemnly told them that the bell clappers on the wall were petrified penises. That was surely barracks humor the senior had picked up from you.¨
For once I didnt have to defend myself. Several of the Trustees assured Wilder that telling freshmen that the clappers were penises was a tradition that antedated my arrival on campus by at least 20 years.
But that was the only time they defended me, although I of them had been my student, Madelaine Astor, n?e Peabody, and 5 of them were parents of those I had taught. Madelaine dictated a letter to me
afterward, explaining that Jason Wilder had promised to denounce the college in his column and on his TV show if the Trustees did not fire me.
So they dared not come to my assistance.
She said, too, that since she, like Wilder, was a Roman Catholic, she was shocked to hear me say on tape that Hitler was a Roman Catholic, and that the Nazis painted crosses on their tanks and airplanes because they considered themselves a Christian army. Wilder had played that tape right after I had been cleared of all responsibility for freshmens being told that the clappers were penises.
Once again I was in deep trouble for merely repeating what somebody else had said. It wasnt something my grandfather had said this time, or somebody else who couldnt be hurt by the Trustees, like Paul Slazinger. It was something my best friend Damon Stern had said in a History class only a couple of months before.
If Jason Wilder thought I was an unteacher, he should have heard Damon Stern! Then again, Stern never told the awful truth about supposedly noble human actions in recent times. Everything he debunked had to have transpired before 1950, say.
So I happened to sit in on a class where he talked about Hitlers being a devout Roman Catholic. He said something I hadnt realized before, something I have since discovered most Christians dont want to hear:
that the Nazi swastika was intended to be a version of a Christian cross, a cross made out of axes. Stern said that Christians had gone to a lot of trouble denying that the swastika was just another cross, saying it was a primitive symbol from the primordial ooze of the pagan past.
And the Nazis most valuable military decoration was the Iron Cross.
And the Nazis painted regular crosses on all their tanks and airplanes.
I came out of that class looking sort of dazed, I guess. Who should I run into but Kimberley Wilder?
What did he say today?¨ she said.
Hitler was a Christian,¨ I said. The swastika was a Christian cross.¨
She got it on tape.
I didnt rat on Damon Stern to the Trustees. Tarkington wasnt West Point, where it was an honor to squeal.
Madelaine agreed with Wilder, too, she said in her letter, that I should not have told my Physics students that the Russians, not the Americans, were the first to make a hydrogen bomb that was portable enough to be used as a weapon. Even if its true,¨ she wrote, which I dont believe, you had no business teffing them that.¨
She said, moreover, that perpetual motion was possible, if only scientists would work harder on it.
She had certainly backslid intellectually since passing her orals for her Associate in the Arts and Sciences Degree.
I used to tell classes that anybody who believed in the possibility of perpetual motion should be boiled alive like a lobster.
I was also a stickler about the Metric System. I was famous for turning my back on students who mentioned feet or pounds or miles to me.
They hated that.
I didnt dare teach like that in the prison across the lake, of course.
Then again, most of the convicts had been in the drug business, and were either Third World people or dealt with Third World people. So the Metric System was old stuff to them.
Rather than rat on Damon Stern about the Nazis being Christians, I told the Trustees that I had heard it on National Public Radio. I said I was very sorry about having passed it on to a student. I feel like biting off my tongue,¨ I said.
What does Hitler have to do with either Physics or Music Appreciation?¨ said Wilder.
I might have replied that Hitler probably didnt know any more about physics than the Board of Trustees, but that he loved music. Every time a concert hail was bombed, I heard somewhere, he had it rebuilt immediately as a matter of top priority. I think I may actually have learned that from National Public Radio.
I said instead, If Id known I upset Kimberley as much as you say I did, I would certainly have apologized. I had no idea, sir. She gave no sign.¨
What made me weak was the realization that I had been mistaken to think that I was with family there in the Board Room, that all Tarkingtonians and their parents and guardians had come to regard me as an uncle. My goodnessXthe family secrets I had learned over the years and kept to myself! My lips were sealed. What a faithful old retainer I was! But that was all I was to the Trustees, and probably to the students, too.
I wasnt an uncle. I was a member of the Servant Class.
They were letting me go.
Soldiers are discharged. People in the workplace are fired. Servants are let go.
Am I being fired?¨ I asked the Chairman of the Board incredulously.
Im sorry, Gene,¨ he said, but were going to have to let you go.¨