vol4-no3

CONTRIBUTORS IN THIS ISSUE:

Walter A.

Netsch, Jr.

Susan McIlvaine Marion and Ali Bulent Cambel

James R. Johnston Frederick S. Stimson Meno H. Louise

Spann

Midgley Orcutt

Marcia Masters

JoAnna Sympson Knox Munson Felix Pollak

SPRING Volume 4

Number Three

NORTHWESTERN

70c

UNIVERSITY

Walter A. Netsch, Jr.

Master-Planning the College or University

3

Susan McIlvaine

12

Loss

Marion and Ali Bulent Cambel

Magnetoftuidmechanics and The Fourth State of Matter

15

James R. Johnston

21

Something Old Frederick S. Stimson Ariel and Caliban

22

Meno H. Spann The Horned Hero, The Noble Savage The Detached Tooth

26

Louise Midgley Orcutt

32

Young Mapp's Progress Marcia Masters One Evening at Mrs. William

42

Vaughan Moody's

THE TRI-QUARTERLY is a magazine de­ voted to fiction, poetry, and articles of general interest, published in the fall, winter, and spring quarters at Northwestern Univer­ sity, Evanston, Illinois. Subscription rates: $2.00 yearly within the United States; $2.15, Canada; $2.25, foreign. Single copies will be sold locally for $.70. Contributions, cor­ respondence, and subscriptions should be addressed to THE TRI-QUARTERLY, care of the Northwestern University Press, 1840 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois. Contribu­ tions unaccompanied by a self-addressed en­ velope and return postage will not be re­ turned. Except by invitation, contributors are limited to persons who have some con­ nection with the University. Copyright, 1961,

by Northwestern University. All rights re­ served.

JoAnna Sympson

43

Variation of a Theme Knox Munson

46

What Might Is Spring Felix Pollak

Communion with

a

46

Thief

Tri-Quarterly UNIVERSITY

NORTHWESTERN Volume 4

Number Three

SPRING

Views expressed in the articles published are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the editors.

EDITORIAL BOARD, The editor is EDWARD B. HUNGERFORD. Senior members of the advisory board are Professors RAY A. Bll.LINGTON and MELVllJLE HERSKOVlTS of the College of Liberal Arts, Dean JAMES H. MC BURNEY of the School of Speech, Dr. WILLIAM B. WARTMAN of the School of Medicine, and Mr .JAMES M. BARKER of the Board of Trustees. .

UNDERGRADUATE Me

EDITORS,

LOUISE

M.

ORCUTl',

SUSAN

F.

lLVAINE, and FORREST G. ROBINSON.

THE

TRI-QUARTERLY is distributed by Northwestern Uni­

versity Press, and is under the business management of the Press.

The plan to extend the Evanston campus of Northwest­

University by building man-made land in Lake Michigan has begun an exciting adventure in campus planning. Mr. Walter A. Netsch, Jr. is the architect for this project. ern

Mr. Netsch received his architectural training at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is presently

general partner in charge of design for the Chicago Office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. He has been

responsible for such projects as the U.S. Naval Post­ graduate School in Monterey, California; the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado; the New York Life Insurance Company Lake Meadows Apartments and Club Building in Chicago; the Grinnell Col/ege Library in Grinnell, Iowa; the Chicago Under­ graduate Campus for the University of Illinois; and for various plans connected with the Massachusetts Insti­ tute of Technology, and the Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He is a member of the Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council of Chicago, the Advisory Committee for the Graduate School of Architecture at the Univer­

sity of Illinois, the State Board of Architectural Exam­ iners for the State of Illinois, the M.I. T. Jury Thesis Committee, and the Committee for the Advancement of Architectural Education for the Association of ate Schools of Architecture,

Collegi­

the University of Michigan.

He has lectured at many colleges and universities in this country and in Canada.

Master-

The article following was written for THE TRI-QUAR­ TERl Y at the invitation of the editors.

Planning the

College or University

By Walter A. Netsch, Jr.

3

A college

limiting factor

university today provides in its most of the elements, frustrations, complexity and confusions of an urban society. Many believe that directions in planning for the campus, which is a special segment of that society, can lead to directions applicable to the urban planning prob­ lem. While this is abstractly true, no evaluation of this particular problem or the opportunities has been undertaken. The college and university are currently being dissected in social, economic (in relation to society or salaries), or academic areas or

and these analyses are invaluable documents for testing the environmental fabric and capacity for planning a campus. In this presentation the em­ phasis will be placed upon the resources, history, contemporary factors, congenital influences, possi­ bilities, and examples of planning the college or university.

The smallest portion will be the historical sec­ tion, for while extremely important, it is best left to the architectural and social historians. One of

the most

is

an

prevalent assumptions is that planning

abstract visual process and

can

in

occur

a

Assuming that capability and artistry exist, the resource most required is a Gestalt be­ tween planner and the college or university as to vacuum.

the possibilities and aims that reflect purpose

and

quality of a the

vitality

for

the

an

institution.

campus is measured

ongoing If

the

by the aims of

students, the faculty, the academic resources,

and the

administration,

it is also measured and

influenced by the community, the alumni, eco­ nomic capability, and the environment and the As in any urban

the

fabric, physical structures. incongruity of any factor influencing the aims must be recognized and isolated as it occurs. In the most idealistic generality, a college or univer­ sity exists to provide the student the cultural, physical and intellectual stimulation for beginning maturity and the desire to continue the search for fulfillment when leaving the campus. To the fac­ ulty falls not only the responsibility of fulfilling the students' needs, but that of preserving and extending cultural and intellectual knowledge.

With the early academies in Western Civilization, diversity in teachers and methods was already

required and

the

first demand. The

storage of information resources

were

was

not very

a

com­

plex but the environment, whether Sparta or Athens, reflected and influenced the educational process. Mark Hopkins' log never existed. With the increase in knowledge, administration as­ sumed more and more responsibility for the or­ ganization of the educational process and the need for physical environment and the physical require­ ments. Therefore, for many centuries administra­ tive policy was assumed by religious groups or monarchies which influenced and determined not

growth of knowledge but also dissemination. Through this time, the most

only the its

4

rate

and

and

was

the

dichotomy between past

beliefs and the relegation of education

new

prerogative of the few. With the advent of science and industry and the rebirth of classical knowledge, educational institutions became one of the primary industries of an industrial society and were instrumental in accelerating academic demands for economic capability and structures.

Through these beginnings the importance of cam­ pus environment prevailed, for the cultural re­ sponsibility of environment was accepted by the administration and academic community. Al­ to the

though untrained eyes are not aware, Oxford was built in its time of its time, changing and evolving, maintaining in its college program a mytosis, a repetitive cell process with logical limits, a factor long forgotten by both planners and administra­ and culturally unrecognized by faculties tors The

themselves.

insistence

selectivity and our original

on

limited enrollments alone preserved

colleges and universities as environmental and cultural fabrics. It is interesting that the informal solutions have survived better, and this can be visualized in a comparison of the site plans of Harvard University and the University of Virginia.

However, where social mores and "stage set" attitudes attempted to reproduce the success of the earlier institutions in the growth west, failure has been the general rule. This rule is most often interpolated as the failure of the stage set itself, but more consideration should be given to the failure in scale and hierarchy, for the stage set seldom measured the environmental relation­

ships of structures which made a group of build­ ings a community and was forced to emphasize individual

outside

structures

their

of

cultural

value or out of context with the basic educational

(Classical solutions have provided fluidity changing educational patterns when the scale is monumental.

Environmentally scaled plans have provided fluidity for growth in repetitive pat­ needs. in

terns, and the overscaled environmental patterns have new

provided opportunities construction.)

A

pattern of three campuses Institute

setts

of

for

detailed -

demolition and

site

plan growth (Massachu­

classical

environmental

Technology),

(Harvard), and the monumental environmental (University of Illinois Urbana) show directly in their several stages of development the success and failures in the periodic assessment of con­ cept, growth and scale.

-

As

an

example, the site plan of the Massachu­ Technology shows the contrast

setts Institute of

between the effect of

temporary and heterogene­

ously located structures and the current Master Plan extending the formal concept originally es­ tablished reestablishing the advantages of for­ -

mal planning.

The

most

been the

one

successful that

campus

in

the

past has

recognized beyond purely vis-

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

In considering the educational environment and

trends in higher education, four basic ideas pre­

I

#

�I--.:·.:...ii_� II -!j

dominate.

First,

new

-

teaching techniques. The

increas­

ing use of audio-visual aids, closed circuit televi­

sion, and films affect the design of buildings and their spatial relationships.

Second, flexibility. Rapid change and growth will require building spaces which permit ready conversion and expansion. Building elements -

which

serve

functional

similar

use

should

be

similar in design.

Third, variety in the environment. Each uni­ versity activity should be in the type of structure which can be utilized most efficiently. Classrooms -

I

and

laboratories

generate

movements

mass

of

students in short periods between classes. These can best be housed in three or four-story buildings which do not require passenger elevators. Offices and seminary rooms generating smaller and -

distributed traffic

can be housed evenly high-rise buildings. Lecture rooms, the library and the student union require specialized struc­

more

-

in

tures.

Fourth, er

inter-disciplinary opportunities. High­

-

education

is

moving

toward

inter­

closer

relationship among the academic fields of study.

To meet this development, a building should be designed to serve a function rather than a dis­ cipline. Classrooms and laboratories should be interchangeable and usable for various kinds of courses, both for economy and for inter-disciplin­ ary contact.

Much Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts. Site plan.

Cambridge,

ual terms the purposeful organization of the great

university. Today, the questions revolve about our capacity to see if the scientific revolution has made enough of an imprint on campus life to contribute with the arts to the concept and pro­ vide

new

avenues

in campus planning.

Further

influences upon the campus will be made by the revolution in student attitudes toward education

changing teaching techniques. In this area provide a more sophisticated school secondary product, a re-analysis of re­ an search, emphasis on individual study, a direc­ tion toward large lecture halls and smaller semi­ nars, and a direction toward the laboratory in humanities and social science. Teaching tech­ niques cross both boundaries in arts and science, and in the area of campus planning bring about the most radical influences in campus form, for they reflect most directly the Gestalt aims of the college or university. and

the future should

Spring,

1962

has

been

said

of

the

evils

of

object­

orientation in current society. Colleges and uni­ versities have been leading the assault in pro­

posing new approaches to this problem by the recognition of inter-disciplinary doctrines; the secondary schools in team teaching; and the scientific research centers which use primarily the academic inter-disciplinary approach. Campus plans, until recently, have not taken advantage of this environment. It seems as if pre-ordained con­ cepts of the university, maintaining isolated structures devoted to an individual discipline or department, must dot the campus plan. No individ­ ual concept can more limit a plan, more violate known problems in future expansion, or more inhibit inter-disciplinary opportunities. As in the past, the building type should develop from the academic

parity The

of

community of uses, not from the individual discipline.

concept of planning

academic campus

dis­

an

must

recognize the

the

special ingredient of character and bring to this process the process

as

visual elements of environment. To grasp imme­

diately these elements we can visualize the two basic attributes those totality and urbanity -

individual

buildings

-

which express

a

totality, yet 5

integrate in this environment a

Gothic cathedral,

-

Greek temple,

a

cities which have an urban

or

the city that has a quality, regardless of size series of major and minor important spaces with visually ordered connections such as Florence or Venice, parts of Paris or London, and in academic -

communities

Oxford or parts of Harvard. Each

-

reflect known totality and urbanity visual attributes but rely on specific use of the basic planning process. Listed they appear prosaic, but if tested against actual environmental conditions, reveal major failures in campus planning: of these

-

-

1. Are the constant factors in campus planning

being utilized to self-generate the campus the library, lecture center, community cultural areas, social areas, community -

areas?

2. Is

each

scholastic

To relate verbally an essentially visual, statisti­ cal and perpetual problem as campus design re­ quires some explanation of the design process.

It is axiomatic that the greater the fund of ex­ perience, the larger the empathy and capacity to but in the design process the necessity to withhold the act of decision, the design leap, as Professor Bush-Brown of the handle

any

problem,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology calls it, re­

quires patience and fortitude

on

behalf of both

client and architect. When the social, intellectual and scholastic fabric is as diffuse and complex as

at present,

planning requires many more steps

process is the misunderstanding between process and object-including an unwillingness to ascribe

pattern or as deterrents and energy

theoretical qualities or aims in what is usually an

3. Is the

use

of the four social

areas

creatively developed private, vate, semi-public, and public?

4. Is

the

hierarchy

of

space

of space

semi-pri­

-

consonant

with

the use of the space on the campus?

5. Is

each building vying for attention, or is a capacity to integrate visual environ­

there

ment towards a total concept?

6. Are the

problems of flexibility, integration services, and new teaching techniques being reconsidered in new orders of geometry, or new concepts in "surge" spaces? of

7. Is

technical

campus

considered

individual

structures

the

pedestrian or even as a community? community,

8. Are

as

a

still

related

to

dream

fantasy architecture of bygone eras or business fantasy architecture for "mid­ dle majority" acceptance?

9. Are the administration and the

ing

faculty will­

attempt a reintegration of the teach­

to

ing Gestalt and the visual environment?

10. Does the

college community accept the

re­

sponsibility of visual environment?

Master-planning a college or university has ground rules but the application of these rules to actual conditions requires an honest

basic

evaluation as

of

we

social

and

may desire

scholastic

an

goals.

As

intellectual nirvana,

colleges and universities have not and will

not attain

6

for

environment.

transposition and movement of stu­ dents and faculty, as pedestrians, as bicy­ clists, as autoists, planned to reinforce the expenditures?

most

lead to individual solutions

than in the historical past.

the

campus

much

energizers in terms of cultural and social opportu­ nity, an equally important re-evaluation of the effects of restraint in uncoordinated planning can

one.

However,

a

re-evaluation of the

The other

difficulty in discussion of the design

assemblage rather than a concept. In the final resolution, judgments respecting values are im­ perative-judgments that escape complete anno­ tation. The design process provides the widest scope for these judgments but without them re­ mains a system only. The planning process sub­ divides into four major areas in campus plan­ ning-preparation, concept, resolution and devel­ opment. Within each of these areas overlapping actions occur. In the preparation period it is es­ sential to synthesize within each category the aims of the institution, the statistical program for the institution, the visual and technical charac­ teristics of the site and the surrounding environ­ ment as well as special theoretical and practical research on educational theories, spatial order­ ings,

aesthetics The

and

first

new

three

materials

and

tech­

be

niques. charted, dia­ described to grammed, and provide the basis for the conceptual phase. Included in this area are both the hopes and the hard facts of a campus plan. The second phase of the preparation requires the synthesis of the- elements into two areas-the first, an objective resolution combining the basic program aims and site factors into an analysis through flow diagrams of the hierarchical relation­ ship of the program, the inter-demands of spaces and volumes, and the effectiveness of energizers for campus community life. Here, specific oppor­ tunities in teaching techniques, concepts of growth, areas of community life, and regional planning provide not one but a series of different diagrams available for review. Concurrently, with this analysis, certain abstract possibilities in con­ cept will become apparent and these concepts at this stage are abstract compositions explaining the visual potential that social theory, spatial can

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

theory, structural theory

inspire from the

may

program diagrams. At this time a program may appear diffuse and unresolvable. To emphasize the realism in programming, an assumption could be made

on

a

campus

plan that the automobile be

omitted as policy from consideration. At this time,

policy or no, the problem should be interjected to make certain what effects would occur. An equal­

ly effective challenge in assumptions can be made regarding the size of a library, its relation to undergraduate and graduate programs, the ques­ tion of central library or separate libraries, or the scope of the materials considered as a library resource. In either of these examples, the physi­ cal effects

of different decisions

eliminate

and

determine whole areas of the preparation period.

However, without broad searches at this time cut and patch results will occur. For in the free ,

inter-relationship of aims and programs, all influ­ ences and economics, value judgments, and per­ ceptual goals (or dogmatic decisions) contribute one most appropriate scheme-the Design

to

Leap.

Later

discussion

of

specific plans will

three

show separate resolutions of specific programs.

Knowledge of structures contemplated becomes

increasingly

a

factor in detail

broad spectrum of allocation

development.

can

The

be determined

specific details. Rules of thumb are ap­ propriate for general assumptions only. A survey of most liberal arts campuses including junior colleges shows that academic undergraduate fa­

United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Site plan.

without

cilities average 125 square feet per student en­ rolled. Where greater scope in programs is of­ fered or better library or lecture programs occur, the individual average would rise. A figure closer to 150 square feet per student is more

appropri­ graduate programs are added, this fig­ ure rises above 200 square feet per student, and as advanced research programs develop, especially with special grants, the square footage relation­ ship to enrollment disappears. However, the con­ cept of scale is immediately heightened when living requirement areas are added. This averages approximately 235 square feet per student housed.

An automobile requires 300 square feet per park­ ing and maneuver area so that exclusive of the demands for physical education fields recreation or special cultural elements, the per student are competing beyond those required for pure academics. Partial or ignored answers to these "peripheral" areas have destroyed many campus plans. Campuses originally pedestrian in ate. When

spa�e program�

nature

now

buildings.

resemble

urban

Walking distances

parking lots with

are

often lengthened

beyond reasonable limits. Today a campus of 5,000 students or more is an urban unit and re­ quires new and special answers. As the primary aim of an academic community is determinable, a concept utilizing the whole spectrum of the de-

Spring,

1962

sign process coupled with perceptive knowledge of teaching environment can lead to new theories and plans. If, for example, the land use of a cam­ pus could be totally integrated without relegating living to defined peripheral areas, new uses of teaching spaces, library and study areas could be considered. Concepts analyzing enrollment size in major and minor units or colleges could also be re-evaluated.

In

applying the primary aims to campus planning, the examples following relate to three campus plans: one existing, Northwestern Uni­ versity; and two new, University of Illinois-Con­ gress Circle, Chicago, and The Air Force Acade­ Colorado Springs, Colorado. Each has an entirely different academic program, site location, student size and relation to the community.

my,

The Academic Campus of the Air Force Acade­ my

is

situated

foothills

on

a

mesa

at

the base

of the

which

rise Mountains, abruptly 2,000 backdrop. The mesa site sloping to the east provides the articula­ tion of levels which not only defines the cadet and public activities but provides a three dimensional of

the

Rocky

feet and form the

terrace enclosed by natural land forms to contrast

with the architectural character of the The

Cadet

Quarters

are

the

focal

buildings. point of the

cadet activities. From this center the cadet has access

at the intermediate or campus level to the

formation area, the

large paved area south of the 7

Gf!n 1

'_I

1====::::::::­

[0 � ]Il,�� I

71 University of Illinois, Congress Circle Campus, Chicago. Illinois. Site plan.

Quarters, the Dining Hall, the Academic Building and the Library. From the formation area the cadets can march by ramps to the Parade Ground east of the campus. The pageantry inherent in such activities is dramatized by the ramps, while protecting the privacy of the campus area. The cadets and the public jointly use the Social Hall, Administration Building and the Chapel which are located west of the immediate campus on a large plaza or Court of Honor overlooking the Cadet Campus. The natural land forms intrude into the Court articulating the Chapel. The cadet circula­ tion level joins at the Court of Honor through the Reception Gardens, and this junction provides ac­ cess to the Auditorium, Ballrooms, and Social Rooms.

The .

University

of Illinois 'at

Congress Circle,

high-rise buildings-staff and administra­

tive offices, engineering and science offices, Union

high-rise, and two research, graduate and service buildings; several low-rise buildings, including two laboratory buildings, engineering and sci­ ence; fine and applied arts building; three groups of classroom buildings; two major parking struc­ tures, each with a capacity of 3,000 cars and a 200-car lot on the east -side ; research, graduate and service centers; the Auditorium and Exhibit Gallery; the Hull Mansion, after restoration; and 8

the

Campus Center,

Center,

with

the

Library, Lecture

and Student Union.

through the campus, most students along the two-level express walkway running north and south. The walkway connects directly with major campus buildings, and the lower level provides all-weather protection. En­ To

move

will enter

trance

points can be controlled for security.

Northwestern

University, situated in a north­ Chicago facing Lake Michigan, found it necessary to consider the problem of ex­ panding its 86-acre campus. Most of the future building sites needed are going to be in the Ev­ anston Campus area. In surveying new land to ern

suburb

the

west

of

and north

of the present campus, the

University found the cost might run to $350,000 an

situated at the city's crossroads, will be composed of five

Northwestern University,

Evanston, Illinois. Site plan.

acre-if property could be purchased. Then,

re­

campus-expansion plan suggested, toward the end of the last century, for filling in an membering area

a

of Lake

Michigan, we turned our eyes east­

ward to this vast, open expanse.

engineering survey determined that building only one­ quarter the amount of purchasing land in Evans­ ton. In addition, this new land would permit (1) the design of a dramatic, inspiring campus, and (2) the expansion of the campus without reo moving land from the Evanston tax rolls. The An

man-made land in the lake would cost

proposed

lake-fill

will

total

65

NORTHWESTERN

acres

and

will

TRI-QUARTERLY

United States Air Force Academy Colorado Springs, Colorado.

View of campus.

United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Flow diagram.

double the land

mitting

an

area

east of Sheridan

Road,

per­

unusual land-space-to-building ratio.

One is first

impressed by the grain or scale and older buildings on the Northwestern campus and the larger, new build­ ings on this campus and the other campuses.

This change in scale reflects the integration of more than one discipline into the structure and the larger enrollments of current campus pro­ between the smaller

grams. The differences between the sizes reflects the grain of the individual campus and its rela­

tion to the awesome

environment.

A

different

grain, the

scale of the broad plains and mountains

-the problem of infinity-determined in part the plan of the Air Force Academy. The other deter­

minant was perceptual in explaining to the visitor the activities of the campus. As over one million visitors come to the Academy, watch a parade or tour the

grounds, the campus must lead both a a private existence. Here the natural public environment touches and intrudes at specific points peripherally.

At Northwestern, the expansion program de­ veloped along the lake shore reintegrates the lakefront into the campus, preserving a vista of water and varying the character of the water and land forms, reflecting not only the characteristics and

of the natural

the

1962

v

environment but their relation to

specific potential needs

Spring,

J

of the campus.

9

University of Illinois at Congress Circle is contrastingly urban, surrounded on two sides by major expressways. Here, also, the initial pro­ gram of 20,000 undergraduate students, and 6,000 The

cars

is

a

core

of smaller

scaled structures.

In

these three campuses, varying in student size be­ tween 2,500, 9,500 (projected) and 23,000 (pro­

jected), emphasizing both liberal arts, science and engineering, individual plans have resulted, varying in scale and grain as influenced by the program and by site characteristics.

adds the human scale in the

The illustration

basic pedestrian pattern. Patterns of access from

living units, public transit and parking areas dis­ solve into problems of the pedestrian alone. Walk­

ing becomes

a

destination

pattern

establishing

focus. At the Air Force Academy, living and study.

academics, dining

and

library facilities

revolve

about a triangular pattern scaled to the ability of

tures to separate patterns for Liberal Arts and Science and Engineering linked by social and cul­ tural group activities. Again, the natural environ­ ment provides a series of foci contrasting the

urban character of the Liberal Arts Plaza and the character

of Science

and

Meadow and the water

areas.

Here scale,

num­

bers, and circulation patterns form the internal net. The Air Force

Academy has two-dimension­

ally a single net, but the inter-relationships within a single structure (and a smaller enrollment) sim­ plify the order. Lecture rooms occupy the center vertically with laboratories at the lower level, classrooms, staff and library at the upper level, and parking at grade level. Essentially a similar pattern develops at Congress Circle effected by increased enrollment and no restrictions on public access.

The Congress Circle campus develops a single with intensive uses concentrated in that

center

The proposed

area,

preliminary plan for Northwestern develops from the existing struc-

scientific

Technology with the informal open area of Deering

the total student body to assemble and march be­ tween elements.

and

urban

use

gradually diminishing

diminishes. Here 20,000 or

the

intensity of

more

students will

as

University of Illinois, Congress Circle Campus, Chicago, Illinois. Flow diagram.

University of Illinois, Congress Circle Campus, Chicago, Illinois. View of center of campus.

NORTHWESTERN

10

TRI-QUARTERLY

generate

an

urban

atmosphere

about

a

single

focus-a university square or plaza. Lecture units

join with outdoor theatre and plaza surrounded by classrooms, teaching laboratories, library and student center, and then peripherally with heavy laboratories, research and staff offices and seminars

and administration.

The Northwestern program is not completely formulated but anticipates generation about a at

greatly enlarged library Deering, complex incorporating the arts, the theatre, as a

of units

well

as

additional programs to enrich the curric­

existing student enrollment. The science engineering unit will also rotate about the

ula for and

science library

this

area.

as

and the campus plan.

develop, contrast­

ing the academic and cultural elements with rec­

If we are to find solutions for planning in the urban environment, the college campus plan can be the catalyst. In no other segment of the en­ vironment exists a grouping with greater capacity to assist in establishing both the problem and the

potential. Despite this, most campuses will con­ tinue to be an assemblage, without visual purpose or beauty, until the problem of the visual en­ vironment is considered worthy of research, theo­ ry, process and discrimination.

The philosopher Paul Weiss, in his recent book Nine Basic Arts, re-affirms this need when refer­ not until they ring to architects in saying ". .

reation and student activities.

character

is

is

three

.

take seriously the need to explore the possibilities

Each of these campus plans is obviously differ­ ent in two dimensional site drawings. As the final determinant

are

tect of form and enclosure.

research enrichment occurs in

A series of foci will

Here the differences

revealed in scale and structure, the surrounding environment, and the interpretation by the archi­

the

eventual

dimensional, by the building design

determined

of

bounding

become

alert

spaces to

in

spectable, revelatory, difficult

as

multiple

architecture

ways

as

creative

an

and

will

art, at

they

as

re­

least

as

any other."

Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

Flow

diagram.

Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

View of Lakefront Development.

Spring,

1962

11

Photograph by

Herb Comess

By Susan McIlvaine

College of liberal Arts, majoring in English. 80rn in Summit, New Jersey, Susan Mcilvaine is

senior in the

a

she has spent most of her life in Skaneateles, "a small New

England town in Upstate New York." At North­

western she has been

a

member of the freshman and

sophomore honorary societies, recipient of the J. ScoH Clark Prize for creative writing, a member of the Sym­

posium Speaker's CommiHee, and a student editor of THE TRI-QUARTERl Y. After graduation in the fall quar­ ter this year, she intends to do graduate work in the Russian language.

teasing became more urgent. They hoped he would not disappoint them.

"AUez-vous-en," they taunted him, and so he tore off his clothes and

With

ping.

and

eyes

glance

one

In

paddling seaward, in

swam

with at

afternoon, in French.

There had been

one

or

two

Italians

lying out in the sun, but after awhile they became annoyed at the students' loudness and left. The warm Riviera beach belonged to them for the moment, so they capered and teased each other kicking sand all over their white tropical pants. was still cold for swimming, even �e weather but the sun warmed the sand until it wading, steamed deceptively, and the atmosphere seemed almost tropical. Then the six students began the game of daring each other, with the obsessive gaiety of friends who are not yet close friends.

Finally the blond boy from Bretagne demon­ '

strated with energy that he would be the

one

to

take the first dip in the Mediterranean. The others

rushed around him and coaxed, glad that some one of them at last might break the monotony of

being gay with no reason. He began to tug at his tight-fitting slacks and they to goad him; now the 12

his

blond

a

dive and

head

soaked

circle, only the wet head brilliant grin.

The others

a

his

him

in

Parisian started to

the beach in the middle of the

he

admiration, and the small his clothes, casually, careful not to disturb the cigarette in his mouth.

They watched for a few minutes, their excite­ ment diminishing. The dark one, who had taken off all except his sweatshirt, sat down to finish his cigarette. The others followed and arranged themselves cross-legged, still watching the watet.

The blond head disappeared, leaving a small whirlpool in one of the swells. The five on the beach began halfheartedly to throw sand at each other and to pull off their shirts. After five min­ utes they looked closely at the place where their friend had ducked under the water. One by one they fell silent and smoked their cigarettes and began to feel sticky from the frantic running around. The air was becoming uneasy.

Then they saw the lighter patch of something floating a little under the surface of the incoming

squinted

on

shoulder

his

second he had bellied out into

a

was

showing,

six of them, all jabbering and laughing

over

bounded away into the water, knees high, look­ ing very pale in the bluish reflection of the sea.

dark. He

T hey arrived

flung them to either side

grinning roguishly. H� stepped to the edge of the wash, where the waves left a pile of debris, and watched the waves lap­ shutting his

remove

swell. *

*

*

Leo the Turk sat hunched forward

staring

at

the

ocean

with his usual

NORTHWESTERN

the

pier, expression

on

TRI-QUARTERLY

of mild indifference.

Beside him

the

policeman

and tried

how I found out?"

sighed reproachfully again.

"Now, please, will you try to tell me about it?

companion nodded absent-mindedly, then realizing that Leo had begun his story of the

Now?"

drowning, he stabbed at his notebook once more.

His

"This afternoon earlier the sky

Leo the Turk shrugged his shoulders and rested

very blue.

was

his

hands, gently folded, between his knees. He watched his feet dangle over the water. "Yes, yes, in a minute, please."

You probably saw it where you were. Perhaps you did not notice it. But always I notice blue

policeman sat down beside him and began slap his notebook against the concrete of the pier. "Sir, you must understand you are the last and I must have your statement, just like the rest. Please?" He was tired; it was the sixth

notice them.

The

to

...

witness he had interviewed. The others had been ashamed and incoherent and not much this one, the last, did not

now

help, and

to want to

seem

talk, and when he did, his Italian was poor. Ex­ asperating. Sitting around on the hard stone pier 'that shook every time a wave rammed it, waiting for this bland-faced, black-eyed Greek or Turk or whatever he was to speak.

Leo the

The

looked

up

and

over

the

water

it is not

to

where

not at all."

sky began. "No, there, policeman hurriedly fumbled open his book

and scratched on the first page.

"Not where?

What?" he asked. Leo the Turk

turned his face

slowly and looked dazedly toward

him.

"Nowhere. In me. But first you must understand that I

am

Turks

are

really not a Turk, and not terrible. very .passionate."

"Yes. Go on." The policeman wrote down "not Turk, not terrible" in his book.

"That is what they call me, Terrible Turk. But that is not what you want, I suppose. You want saw of that." He pointed to the mound

what I

covered

with

striped blanket "But I felt nothing."

"Yes,

a

That

yes.

makes

no

on

the

beach.

difference."

"Of the

,

season.

thetically. "Go on, go on."

"No? Oh, come, sir, I haven't "You don't understand at

"

all, you know. 1 think

perhaps because you never had it in the first place. Of course you don't miss it when it is gone if it was never there." The policeman sat ab­ jectly, saying nothing. It was impossible to write down what this Turk was saying. "Feeling, you know. You course

never

it was

know until it is gone, unless of there, and then it makes no

never

difference." Once again the policeman closed his

pad and settled himself to wait. Leo went on, his eyes squinting at the waning sun, so only black crescents of eyelashes showed against his pale face. "1 did not know until today. Shall I tell you

Spring,

1962

for,

to

it, and little droplets of water make it hazy­ you see there? Look where I am pointing. No horizon, yes? That is what the droplets do. You cannot tell sea from sky.

"It is warm, but I know that it will get colder later, so I put on a sweater, this sweater." He plucked at the black turtle-necked sweater he was wearing and peered over at the policeman's writ­ ing. "So I run downstairs and outside. I am going for a walk. Here is this blue sky and this blue Mediterranean

and

out in

the

middle

little

are

white wispy clouds that you know must be in the sky but you can't really tell because there is no horizon.

"I walk down to the beach to kick stones and

Thud, thud, that is the ocean dropping on beach. A tense sound. Waves breaking are very tense things, you know. One watches this definite flowing ridge of water, waiting and know­ ing that in a second it will break into a million bits, but never knowning exactly when. Like peo­ ple.

"Soon I find myself getting tense too. Or per­ haps I have been tense all the time and simply impose my own mood on the waves, but I don't realize the tenseness until I have been sitting on this flat rock watching for some time listen. the

"

...

"What flat rock

...

a

mile,

...

excuse

me."

I suppose. But you must

understand that I sit there and get and

tense. I

the

imagine bigger and bigger. Swishthumpswish. more

come

waves

to find peace in the

more are

1

tense

getting

think of

ocean

and

wonder how, because now all I can hear is the swishthudswish and the throb and the insistent

moving in on

Leo shook his head.

to the Riviera

see

those who

This happens all the time during I understand." He nodded sympa­

course.

come

So I look out of my hotel window and there is the sky so blue that 1 must squint to

"Over there. A

The black eyes of Leo the unterrible non-Turk pored over his face. "Yes, yes what? So you understand?'

skies. That is what 1

me

and I

am

tense.

"I have to get up and walk. This sitting is no good for me now. Along that line where the

stop there are pink rocks with long strands seaweed growing from them. They wash up

waves

of

and down like sirens' hair. There is

a

crowd of

people at the end of the beach that I am walking Something to distract me from myself, I think, so 1 begin to walk toward them with my arms swinging, very relaxed." Leo the Turk stood up on the pier and began to walk back and forth behind the policeman. He pushed his hands into his pockets.

"Well, 1 am not fooling myself. Still arm-swing­ ing I look at the sea and suddenly 1 am under­ on.

water

swimming.

13

"

"How did you get underwater? Dive, wade. the

myself as though I am underwater swimming, swimming as hard and fast as I can, trying to reach a place I must get "No,

no,

listen. I

long silence. The policeman looked

A

up to

see

Leo the Turk hunched and shivering.

policeman interrupted.

"Go on, please. You did not tell him the water cold."

see

to. I know I must, but I cannot see where it is because the water is filled with little bits of sea­

was

"Yes, because I did not feel the importance. did not feel that

." Leo

.

passed

I

his hand in

front of his eyes to blot out the still-blue sky.

"Yes. So I walk away then, because I am begin­

weed and

tiny things that color everything the and same, only a little sun filters down. There is no height or depth or distance or weight or sound and I don't know whether I am swimming the right way or not, or whether I am far away or so close I can almost touch. My lungs begin to feel as though they will burst and they burn at the bottoms and my throat burns and I am dizzy, but

.

I must take another stroke and another. I realize

ning to realize that this is the despair, that nothing is so important any more. Everything is smaller than life-size, and the horror is I am be­ coming used to it. So while I am walking away I hear splashing sounds and suppose the boy is running into the water, and the others scream and shout at him. I go along the beach over more rocks that are covered with seaweed hair. I begin

that I

am

to

and I

am

feeling despair and then I hear a shout really only walking along the water holding my breath. I let it out, feeling very silly.

My fingers are cold, so I rub them.

"Still I walk toward the

people who are shout­ ing just looking. I know that I must think this out by my­ self, just as one swims underwater always alone."

Leo stopped and looked down. "You are not writing." at something. I intend to walk past them,

going too fast. Besides, I need facts.

How many people?" The policeman drew his head closer to the notepad.

"You

are

run

as

fast as I

the

in

still

can over

the rocks. Behind me

background is the shout,

even

the

wave-thud cannot shut it out. I reach the end of the beach and start back, very slowly.

The

seems calmer now.

notice that sometimes in the late afternoon

ever

the

becomes

sea

forgotten

quite calm? Of

course

I

had

the time.

slip quietly to my feet and am careful to make footprints that point straight "But

I

Everything shouting is gone. Did you

...

the waves

ahead, like some child's game.

"So I

am

watching my feet carefully,

fore I know it I

am

back at the

shouting. All is

and be­

place where the

it sidles up to his toes. He peers over his shoulder at his fellows and I hear a word I

quiet now, and hypnotized whis­ per. The policeman strained to hear, on the verge of telling him to speak up.

"The boys stand there on the beach and once more they do not see me. They look down too, and I see that there are five of them now; the sixth, the bold blond boy, lies on the beach covered with his coat. I must walk close by them because the tide is making the beach narrower. As I look down I see his face is blue-white, and his hair damp. One of the others is brushing it across di­ agonally as it should fall on his forehead, but it is stiff and gummy with sand. He is dead, of course. That is all I feel. He is dead, of course.

Then I am shaking, and my hands sweat and I think I will be sick. But not for the drowned boy, for myself. Some of the others' pants are wet; they are all slumped over and pale and tired and sick. They say nothing to me and me to them, but I just walk on, out to this pier. I sit down and watch them, the underfed sand birds, aim­ lessly pecking and casting around for something, if only to look at. Then one goes, I suppose to summon you. And I sit and wait for something to happen. To me, I think. But nothing does."

The policeman sat for awhile, waiting for more.

Finally, "Is that all?" There was a touch of

understand.

sarcasm

"Six.

They are students. I can tell because of the way they all have the same haircuts and talk in French and wear same-looking old clothes; I don't know why I think this except that it is the -way I dressed as a college student. For a second I become interested in them and the feeling of despair at whatever I am despairing of is sub­ merged. I surmise they are from Paris, living on the Italian

R-iviera for

a

vacation because it is

They are all active and cheaper, much too fast for me to under­ daring, talking stand. One begins to pull off his clothes; he is thin and pale, with dry blond hair fallen diagonally across his forehead. His trousers are very tight and his legs slender under them. He tosses him­ but still Riviera.

self back and fourth and

ridding himself of his

shirt, his eyes closed

as

if

attending

coat to

a

tribal rite. A look of rapture-no, that is not so-a look

of relish

coat before

on

his face. Another

it falls

catches his

the sand; they all laugh I stand back from happily. them, only watching, because they seem so young and unconcerned, on

though only two or three years younger than 1.

"The thin fellow tears all his clothes off, and he stands at the water's wash

edge, looking down

at the

as

It

means

"go ahead." He

answers

back "cold." I feel I should tell him the water is very cold this time of year, but the French does not come, and besides it seems not so important."

14

boys

were

very

calm." Leo's voice went on in

in

his

voice.

He

a

passed the notebook

mechanically to Leo for his signature.

"Of am

course

that

is all.

It is

more

than

all. I

sorry. I ramble too much."

NORTHWESTERN

TRI -QU ARTERL Y

Ali Bulent Cambel, a native 01 Turkey, offended Robert

College, Istonbul, where he received his undergraduate degree in the College of Arts and Sciences. He began the study of engineering at the University 01 Istanbul, and continued his study 01 various aspects of engineer. ing at Massachuseffs Institute 01 Technology, California Institute 01 Technology (M.S. 1946), and State Univer­ sity of Iowa (Ph.D. 1950). He came to Northwestern in 1953 and is presently Walter P.

Murphy Distinguished

Prolessor 01 Mechanical Engineering, Chairman of the

Department of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Gas Dynamic Laboratory at the Technological Insti­ tute. He has published extensively on gas dynamics, plasma dynamics, and aerothermochemistry. Books by him on real gases and on magnetolluidmechanics will appear shortly. In 1959 he received the G. Edward Pendray Award Irom the American Rocket Society, and in 1960 the Curtis W. Mcgraw Award from the Society for Engineering Education.

Marion Cambel, his wife, co-author of the article

below, was born in New York City, grew up in Pasa­ dena, California, and graduated from the University of California in 1944.

Among her activities is a year

with the American Friends Service Committee in

a

re­

mote village in central Mexico, affiliation with the same

organizatior. in helping to find employment lor return­ ing Japanese Americans, and work with an international

Photograph by Herb Comess

group in the Caltech Athenaeum.

This article

on

plasma

was

for THE TRI­

written

QUARTERLY upon the invitation of the editors.

By Marion and Ali Bulent Cam bel

MAGNETOFLUIDMECHANICS AND THE FOURTH STATE OF MATTER ThrOUghout exists

a

the

timeless

stretches

state of matter which lights

of

our

space and

sun

all the stars, and accounts for many cosmic phe­ We Earth dwellers, comfortably familiar

matter

because

other states of

its

properties

found in the

are

matter, yet they remain uneasily

satisfied with that description for lack of a better

Irving Langmuir, in his research on ionized

nomena.

one.

with our three states of matter, solid, liquid and gas, are only dimly aware of this fourth state of

gases, used the term plasma. This nomen, though open to some question, has been used widely and

matter, although we encounter it when we are transfixed by the beauty of the Aurora Borealis or startled by a gaudy display of lightning during a

is

summer

of

rainstorm. We observe it also in the light

fluorescent tube

a

or

the

arc

of

a

welding

torch.

Because the fourth state of matter is a relatively new

revelation and its study is in its infancy, its observers, like many fond parents, are

scientific

pondering

a

who would

suitable name for it. There balk at

Spring, 1962

calling it

a

fourth

are

those

state

of

sometimes

found

state of matter"

following the

almost in

a

term

"fourth

and

species

genus

relationship.

If a diatomic gas, such as air, is heated to a very high temperature, its molecules, which are neu­ tral electrically, have the bond between their atoms stretched to the breaking point. When this atomic bond is torn, generally around 1800° F, dis­ sociation

occurs.

As

the

temperature

higher levels,

the electrons

atomic

become

nuclei

in

excited.

orbit Their

rises

to

around the excitation

15

accelerates as the temperature increases until one

electrons

or

more

a

condition which

are

ripped

from their

orbits,

board back and forth rapidly so that the round checkers hit each other, and bounce back and

longer neutral electrically because of the defi­

forth without finding their proper holes. Though crudely oversimplified, this macroscopic image

ciency of electrons. The resulting mixture of mole­

simulates the process of oscillations.

cules, atoms, positively charged ions and nega­ tive electrons is called a plasma.

Some scientists liken plasma oscillations to the trembling of jelly in a bowl when the bowl is shaken. The comparison probably is responsible for the word pLasma, first used in the term proto­ pLasma which was introduced into scientific termi­ nology in 1839 by the Czech biologist J. Purkynie for the jelly-like medium interspersed by numer­ ous particles which constitutes the body of cells.

causes

the

atoms

to

be

no

If, in this process, everyone of the atoms has one electron, the mixture is termed a fully ionized plasma. However, a plasma state

lost at least

may exist when not all the molecules have their

atomic bonds torn.

The latter state is called

a

partially ionized plasma. In space, environmental conditions are conducive to the development of fully ionized plasma, but on our cold and dense planet certain hospitable conditions must be pro­ vided artificially for its generation.

The range of plasma temperatures is consider­ able. Some plasmas are fairly cool, while other

plasmas are exceedingly hot. In the case of hot plasmas, there is no known earth substance which can

survive their contact. On

our

sun

and other

bodies, gravitational forces to hold hot plasma par­ the sufficiently strong but on ticles together, the earth the gravitational field is too weak to be of practical value. This dif­ ficulty can be overcome by the use of magnets.

Plasma is a good conductor of electricity due to the presence of electrons, and electricity is sub­ ject to magnetism, hence, with the application of a magnet the plasma will tend to stick to invisible lines of magnetic force. enormous

stellar

the

are

A variety of oscillations is present in a plasma by virtue of its most important characteristic, namely the electrical properties caused by charged particles. Consider an electrically neu­ tral plasma, that is, one consisting of equal num­ bers of electrons and positive ions, and assume that the charged particles are arranged in a hy­ pothetical equilibrium position. To visualize this, it might be helpful to think of a Chinese checker­ board where one playing space is filled with the round checkers. Every other checker represents an electron, while the checker between two elec­ trons represents a positive ion. By some tech­ nique, the nature of which is immaterial, one or more tiny and active electrons having a negative charge are dislodged from the equilibrium posi­ tion while the

more

stable and massive ions with

positive charges remain firmly in their equilib­ rium positions. The displacement of the electrons produces a surplus of positive charges which con­ stitute an attractive force in recalling the depart­ ing electrons. The electrons rush back with such intent that they overshoot their original equilib­ rium position, effecting another inequality of

charges.

As the process

trons oscillate about their a

state of

16

with magnets and mercury yielded the name mer­

cury-dynamics. Physicists and electrical engineers have called their study plasma physics or plasma dynamics, although these terms do not necessarily imply the presence of an externally applied mag­ netic field. Magnetohydrodynamics, or the use of magnet with conducting fiuids in motion, has

a

designated by at least one physicist as "the active, the most widely studied and most important branch of modern physics." Aerody­ namicists have highlighted their discipline with magnetoaero-dynamics which, of course, suggests experiments with magnets and air in motion, while mechanical engineers, experimenting with magnets and gases in motion, coined the word been

most

magnetogasdynamics.

With the abundance of names describing differ­ ent facets of this infant

study, some clarification provided by Theodore von Karman, the dean of modern engineering, who de­ voted a major portion of a lecture to the use of magnetofluidmechanics when treating the subject in a general sense. A perusal of current literature still finds most of these descriptive names, with was

a

needed.

It

was

bow in the direction of von Karman, and a lean­

ing towards magnetohydrodynamics. Neverthe­ less, because of the American penchant for reducing all affectionately regarded entities to letter abbreviations, magnetohydrodynamics most often is referred to

as

MHD.

In preceding paragraphs plasma

was

described

repeats itself, the elec­

high temperature that its particles are charged and agitated to a great degree. Also it was suggested that with the intro­

equilibrium position in

duction of a magnet the behavior of a plasma can

If the Chinese checker­

be

great agitation. mind, imagine moving the

board idea is still in

It may be inferred from the foregoing that the study of the fourth state of matter involves an intertwining of customary disciplines, for its ap­ parent simplicity is really complex, yet a zealous specialist might claim his discipline to constitute a unifying core. This may account for the multi­ tude of names that have been used in attempts to describe it. The astrophysicists, who first ob­ served the natural phenomena, labeled their study cosmical electrodynamics. Experiments

as

a

gas heated to such

controlled,

or

a

at least modified.

mechanics, using the general term, NORTHWESTERN

Magnetofiuid­ comes

about

TRI-9U ARTERL Y

when to

magnetic field is applied at right angles an electrically conducting fluid in motion. Due

to

the

a

interaction of the two fields

an

electric

rate with which energy is radiated

increasing temperature. this

action is

improves with

The law which governs

called the

Stefan-Boltzmann

law.

action, radiations

field is induced at right angles to both. At this point a number of phenomena and forces occur

Indeed, if there were

which

never

reach

source

temperature, rejected energy can be radi­ emptiness of space.

are

explained and utilized by equations

from various disciplines of science and engineer­

ing.

The net effect is the production of useful thrust.

Why should useful thrust be obtained in this

the

from

sun

no

which

such

foster life

on

earth would

planet. Thus, because the sink temperature of a magnetofluidmechanic device will be relatively high, though not so high as its our

ated away into the

manner? Has not the jet engine, to use one ex­ ample, furnished man with useful thrust? The

Among the numerous applications of magneto­ fluidmechanics, seven merit special attention:

the designers of energy who invariably refer to the first two laws of thermodynamics and the Carnot

tion techniques, the

is

answer

provided by

conversion devices

cycle efficiency.

The Carnot cycle,

a

highly idealized hypotheti­

In the realm of materials science and

produc­ engineer is vitally interested in determining the properties and in observing the behavior of materials at high temperatures.

For this purpose, not

even

solar furnaces similar

cal cycle devised by N. L. Sadi Carnot, who was a

to Archimedes'

contemporary of Napolean Bonaparte, considers losses whatsoever; yet its efficiency is not 100 per cent because the second law of thermodynam­ ics states that any engine must operate between

destroyed Epipolae, produce sufficiently high temperatures.

The high temperatures associated with plasmas make them ideally suitable for such studies. Fur­ ther, the cutting, formation and coating of ma­ terials can be accomplished conveniently and rap­

no

two reservoirs of thermal energy,

ing

a

high temperature input energy,

obtains its

from

one source

which

the other

a

the

hav­

cycle

sink at

a

lower temperature to which an engine must reject

discharge the thermal energy which it cannot use to advantage. Although the Carnot cycle can or

never

be built and may be termed

a

"dream

en­

gine," it serves as a model to emulate. In the case a fast airplane, the source of energy is at the temperature of the fire in its engines, something around 3000 F. The thermal energy entering the engine is partially converted into the thrust which enables the plane to travel. During this conver­ sion, the gases of combustion lose part of their thermal energy and leave the engine .at around 800 F. They are discharged to the sink, in this case the air, which is possible because the air is of

at

a

much lower temperature.

Carnot showed that the

efficiency of an engine

is improved if the range of operating temperatures is

increased;

it is

ideal to have

a

high

source

a

burning mirror, reputed to have

fleet of Roman ships off the slope of

idly with plasma torches.

Flow control is another

area

where magneto­

fluidmechanics can be of valuable assistance. The flow of liquid metals, for example, molten sodium­ potassium solutions found in nuclear reactors, necessitates unusual pumping, controlling and measurement techniques. Also, flow measurement is promising in medical applications where the

flow rate of blood

or

other saline solutions

can

be measured.

In the field of eral

directions

research

communications, there are sev­ which magnetofluidmechanics

in

should bear fruitful results.

The iono­

sphere consists of the strata of the earth's atmos­ phere where high intensity radiations from the sun ionize the gases. These layers of plasma have been used for decades ror

in

across

as

a

communications mir­

transmitting radio waves over oceans and continents.

Further

information

can

be

temperature and a low sink temperature. Chemi­

added to the fund of knowledge through continued

cal kinetics indicate that fossil

study of the ionospheric layers. In front of hyper­ sonic ballistic missiles there occurs a plasma sheath due to the conversion of high kinetic energies to thermal energy through which the communications engineer must devise means to propagate signals for homing or other modes of communication and guidance. Further, because the jet trail emanating from chemical rockets contains electrically charged particles, guidance and other telemetering devices must take cog­

fuels, even with additives, cannot yield burning temper­ atures much higher than 3000 F. But because plas­ mas occur at much higher temperatures the source temperature will be high, and hence a high Carnot cycle efficiency can be achieved.

Therefore, plasmas offer the possibility of design­ ing highly efficient energy convertors. exotic

In accordance with the second law of thermo­

dynamics, it is necessary to dispose of the re­ jected energy to the sink. In outer space there is little if any air, and it seems difficult to find

nizance of the influence which ionized gases have on

electromagnetic signals.

useful scavenger. Yet it is known from electro­

Within the realm of the flight sciences, the ever

magnetic theory that energy may travel through a void. In fact, in a void energy can be trans­ ferred by radiation alone, and furthermore the

increasing speed of flight vehicles makes neces­ sary a rigorous understanding of boundary layer control and re-entry schemes. For instance, by in-

a

Spring,

1962

17

cone

of

it

vehicle,

a

Assuming this stability, the plasma particles

suitable

magnetic fields in the nose is possible to modify the velocity and the temperature gradients in the boundary layer of the conducting gases adjacent to the surfaces. To make the safe re-entry of hy­ personic vehicles into the atmosphere possible, various modes of ablation cooling, gliding or drag increasing devices may be applied. More simply, with schemes developed through the study of m agnetofluidmechanics, a braking action can be applied to vehicles entering the atmosphere just as an automobile is braked by the friction of

corporating

mechanical devices. In research laboratories aero­

move

across

magnetic field lines. On the magnetic lines

the

other hand, their motion along the

unimpeded. The problem, in this case, is to develop configurations of the magnetic field which will prevent hot plasma particles from escaping out the ends of this route. A number of configura­ tions have been proposed which form the basis for various approaches; among them, experi­ mental efforts have been based upon the pinch concept, the stellerator concept, and the mag­ is

netic mirror concept.

dynarnicists concerned with high speed flight are particularly interested in the plasmas generated

The race to tap thermonuclear power by way of the fusion process is not necessarily a race to obtain a more effective and clean weapon of de­

by shock waves of missiles. With a plasma arc jet. or an electromagnetic shock tube, which simulates hypersonic effects, the air stream is

humanist may think, both the scientist and the engineer are very much concerned about con­

struction.

Contrary

what

to

the

anti-science

rippled by a standing shock wave upon meeting a

tinued generation of life. It is

solid body. Because the temperatures encountered

that at our present rate of consumption and at the

approximate actual values, it is possible to study laboratory an otherwise inaccessible prob­

rate

in the

insufficient

lem.

rich in fossil fuels who

see

and the

not"

One of the most difficult

problems encountered working with extremely hot gases is the con­

in

tainment of fusion processes, often referred to

as

recognized fact

population growth, fossil fuels

of

serves

a

within

century.

a

"have

methods to augment the

tries electrical power

Both

the

may

inroads into their nations

be

nations re­

seeking supply. In several coun­ are

already flows from nuclear

when the

fission plants, but fissionable fuels, too, are an exhaustible supply. Furthermore, fission power

of

presents another problem: disposal of radioactive

the

H-Bomb."

"controlled

There

was

a

period

subject of plasma physics, in the words scientist, was "becoming un­ fashionable and was regarded by most physicists as a rather charming subject, full of small, color­ ful experiments, where there was little left to discover and whose only real justification was an

anonymous

the amusement of those who bothered to waste their time

on

nism

fusion, plasma physics again subject of interest to the physicist and

a

mecha­

control

to

became

it." With the search for

a

understanding of the all­ embracing discipline of magnetofluidmechanics may bring controlled fusion closer to reality. engineer.

A

better

The fuel for fusion is found in

ordinary water. deuterium, heavy isotope of hydrogen.

Although only a small fraction of the hydrogen

It

is

a

deuterium, the deuterium in one gallon of water has an energy equivalent to 350 gallons of gasoline. When two deuterium nuclei collide at a very high temperature, they fuse to form helium. The temperature of the deuterium nuclei (deuteron) must be about 6,000,000 F for in natural water is

such

a process to be self-sustaining. When vast amounts of energy are released in nuclear fusion,

the hot

plasma particles

helices and "tied"

can

be bent into

tight

around the lines of force

by externally applied magnetic field. This gives rise to the popular expresson "magnetic bottle." an

It

is

essential

to

use

a

mechanism

stabilize the hot plasma in such will not escape from the

a

that

manner

will

that it

magnetic lines of force against -the walls of the container where it would dissipate energy, thereby causing a collapse of the fusion reaction. to squirt rapidly

18

waste. If the fusion reaction can be tapped and put to work, it will solve the fuel supply problem as long as there is water on our planet, and solve

it without appreciable radioactive by-products.

application of magnetofluidmechanics propulsion. In general, electric space propulsion systems may be classified under three headings, namely, electrostatic, electrother­ mal and electromagnetic. In electrothermal pro­ pulsion engines, electrical energy is used to gen­ erate high temperature plasmas which are then accelerated in a suitable nozzle, converting the high level thermal energy into kinetic energy.

Because no external magnetic field is applied, Another

is in the field of

the acceleration is ered

in

chemical

ence

is

that

quite similar to that encount­

propulsion devices. The differ­ chemical engines, the stored is transformed into thermal energy by vir­ energy of a tue chemical reaction, whereas in an elec­ trothermal engine the stored energy is converted into thermal energy during a physical reaction.

In electromagnetic propulsion engines the plasma is produced as in the electrothermal engine and may be accelerated similarly. However, added thrust or acceleration is produced by applying an external magnetic field. Finally, in electrostatic propulsion engines, charged particles such as ions or colloid droplets are ejected in streams. in

In conventional the

chemical

or

energy

nuclear steam power plants stored in the fuel is con­

verted into thermal energy, thence into mechani­ energy and finally into electrical energy. In

cal

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

the magnetoftuidmechanical power plant one or more of these steps may be obviated. However, the greatest

advantage is due to the fact that in

the generator, the rotating armature consisting of the copper wire conductor is replaced by a

linearly accelerated stream of electrically con­ ducting plasma and thus there are no moving parts which are subject to mechanical stress. sketchy description of applications might end.

With these

the story of the fourth state of matter But it would be

a

poor chronicle which did not

include the antecedence of these applications. Who were

the curious

ones

of the past who observed

nature minutely and jotted down their findings,

in

sat

secluded

physical

rooms

which

laws

to

now

formulate are

the

or

great

interlaced within

this intricate study?

a

Ampere and Faraday had been keen observers experimental evidence. Now there was need for someone with a command of theory to develop their investigations and, as so often it occurred in that remarkable "age of enlightenment," a of

brilliant Scotch theoretician, James Clerk Max­ well, was moved by the genius of the empirical

Ampere and Faraday had propounded.

Faraday's concept of lines of force. In developing it, he tried to imagine a physical model embodying the lines whose be­

laws that

Maxwell believed in

havior could be reduced to formulas and numbers.

In tracing the history of magnetofluidmechanics,

The resulting paper, published when Maxwell was

would

25, explained many of the observed facts concern­

know

the

origin of the Universe for, as indicated earlier, our planet swirls in a veritable ocean of plasma. As yet scientists have not found the key to that secret, and theologians are still wrestling with it; hence this outline of magnetofluidmechanics begins in it

charges (or masses). Faraday, proposing to ex­ plain electricity as a mechanical system, asserted the existence of lines of force running through space: actual physical entities with properties of tension, attraction, repulsion and motion.

later

be

helpful

to

Although history records magnetic effects as early as 50 BC when Thales of Miletus first de­ the

frightened when

most

magnetic properties

of

lodestones,

we now magnetoftuidmechanic effects, wish to exploit them, were not recognized until

true

as

concepts. After

day's and

theorizing,

he

in

corporated

his

More than a century and a half later the studies of Andre Marie

Ampere in France and Michael Faraday in England culminated in establishing

the close relation between

electricity and magne­

tism. In

fact, Faraday may be credited as being the first magnetohydrodynamicist. Recalling Gil­ bert's observation that the Earth is River to be

a

magnet and

an

electrolyte

conductor of electricity, Faraday sus­ two electrodes into the Thames and at­ pended a

tempted to measure the electricity produced. Al­ though Faraday failed in this one particular ex­ periment, he was supremely successful in others as witnessed by the Faraday generator and the Faraday pump, both of which still bear his name as tribute to his original conception of them.

Most theorists of that period who tried to ana­ lyze the relationship between electricity and gravi­ tation used the term" action at a distance." They envisioned a charge (or mass) at one point in space influencing a charge (or mass) at another point in space without any linkage between the

1962

the

Treatise in

now

well

known

on

1864.

Electricity It

H.

and

Hertz

Magnetism, published applications of Maxwell's theories

in radio transmission.

Spring,

at first al­

was

again returned to Fara­ questioning, experimenting

wrote

Gilbert, who, then serving as a court physician to Queen Elizabeth I, recognized our planet to be a giant magnet. Gilbert conducted many experi­ ments on magnetism and published his observa­ tions in 1600 in a book entitled De Magnete which still is of classical significance since scientists continue to study the Earth as a magnet.

and thus

"I

such mathematical

and constantly used field equations which were in­

who found the

knowing

saw

force made to bear upon the subject, and then wondered to see that the subject stood it well." A

the latter part of the 16th century. It was William

the Thames

I

few years later Maxwell

period.

scribed

ing electricity. Faraday was delighted and appre­ ciative. He wrote to Maxwell:

In

1901,

a

clever

was

experimentalist, the Italian

Guglielmo Marconi, succeeded in sending

a

wire­

less message from Cornwall to Newfoundland, a distance of 2100 miles. From a practical view­

point, sending messages over such long distances was a great achievement; however, Marconi's experiment also led to a breathtaking scientific conclusion: the signal must have followed the earth's curvature. The probable phenomenon was explained by Oliver Heaviside, an English physi­ cist, and A. E. Kennelly, an American electrical engineer, who suggested that Marconi's signal reached Newfoundland after having been reflected down to the earth by a reflecting zone in space.

E. V. Appleton carried this study further, showing the existence of ionized layers surrounding our planet.

As

one

individual after another added

on

the trail of marker indi­

electromagnetic phenomena cating a possible direction to the next curious observer, yet other scientific trails were being a

marked in similar fashion.

The

general fluidmechanic equation of motion Navier, who first derived

bears the name of both it

in 1822

and Stokes,

who discussed its details

in 1845. Louis Marie Henri Navier

was

a

French

engineer, with the usual academic training of his time and place, who taught mathematics at the 19

Ecole Poly technique. In the one major scientific paper of his life, which he presented to the Acade­

hagen, he revived Faraday's experiment in the

mie des Sciences, he extended the basic Eulerian

day had attempted to produce electricity from a conductor flowing in a magnetic field, Hartmann attempted to pump mercury by subjecting it to a magnetic field. Hartmann was no mere gadget­ eer. With Lazarus he studied the fluidrnechanic

equations of motion

to include molecular forces.

During the

next twenty-five years there were a attempts to make Navier's equation more workable. It was Sir George Gabriel Stokes,

number of

professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge,

a

who replaced Navier's general coefficient with one

which stood for in

Advances

dynamic viscosity. thermodynamics, too,

were

con­

Thames but this time in

reverse.

Whereas Fara­

pheonomena associated with the flow of mercury in a magnetic field and gave the subject its first of many names, mercury-dynamics.

A strong

impetus surged into the field of mag­

tributing to the many laws which would later be brought together in the discipline of magneto­

netofluidmechanics when, in 1942 Hannes Alfven, Professor of Electronics at the Royal Institute of

fluidmechanics. And here again James Clerk Max­

Technology in Stockholm, combined the equations of Stokes-Navier with the equations of Maxwell

well

applied

his

patient,

able

mind.

Maxwell

mathematically the behavior of gas if they were perfectly elastic spheres, as particles such as billiard balls, acting on one another during impact. The German physicist, Ludwig Boltz­ mann, who recognized the significance of Max­ well's work in this area, refined and generalized Maxwell's proof, showing that Maxwell's distri­ bution was the only possible equilibrium state of a gas. However, both Maxwell and Boltzmann realized that this equilibrium state is the ther­ modynamic condition of maximum entropy, the

analytically that waves must rise in a conducting liquid when the liquid is subject to a magnetic field and when the latter is pulsed. Sug­ gesting that his waves were electromagnetic­ hydrodynamic waves, Alfven reported his findings in a short letter to the editor of Nature Magazine.

Today Alfven's waves are to the experimental

most disordered state in which the least amount

Gases was published in by two English mathematicians, Sydney Chapman and T. G. Cowling, it incorpo­

examined

of energy is available. Working independently and in friendly rivalry, Maxwell in England and Boltz­ in Germany made notable progress in ex­ plaining the behavior of gases by statistical me­ chanics, but after a time they ran into difficulties; for instance, they were unable to write theoretical formulas for the specific heats of certain gases. mann

The

result

of

their

work

led

the

to

Maxwell­

Boltzmann distribution function

in­

which, though idealization, served the purpose for over forty years, and still because

adequate

is in

of

its

extreme

use.

Saha,

a

of

their

constituent

professor of physics at Calcutta University, was pioneering in research on the progressive breaking of atoms molecules

matter

into

parts at high temperatures. The significance of Saha's work is that ionization of

a

gas is

encour­

aged with increasing temperature and decreasing pressure.

The appropriate basic theory of was

an

developed by Irving Langmuir,

ionized gas the Ameri­

chemist, in the early nineteen-twenties.

Throughout the next fifteen years a number of investigations continued to add to the subject but can

in

a

that

relatively isolated manner. It was inevitable the moment in history would come when

someone

would

fluidmechanician the canoist:

see

that the trails of electromag­

as

rocks in white water

A monumental classic called The Mathematical

1939.

Written

rated the solutions of the Maxwell-Boltzmann dis­

tributions which Sydney Chapman and David En­

skog had analyzed independently and with differ­ ent details within the year 1916-17. In addition, the book described the mathematical ous

conduction

Van Allen belts.

1950 and 1957

magnetofluidmechanics gained considerable momentum. In 1950 de Hoff­ man and Edward Teller formulated the theory of magnetohydrodynamic shocks and in 1956 Walter Elsasser formulated the magnetohydrodynamic dynamo theory. It was also in 1956 that Lyman Spitzer wrote an elegant, small monograph en­ titled The Physics of Fully Ionized Gases in which he sought to analyze theoretically the behavior of a gas composed entirely of electrons and bare nuclei, and in so doing incorporated the investi­ gation of all those who had contributed to the field before him. One year later T. G. Cowling published his Magnetohydrodynamics. A signifi­ cant

event

States

Air

field of

occurred

Force

in

the

20

when its

the

United

entry into the

magnetoftuidmechanics on the University.

The Dane, J. Hartmann, broke the new trail from the juncture. In 1937, working towards im­

city of Copen-

1957

announced

campus of Northwestern

the

theory of gase­

and diffusion viscosity, including quantum theory. It was also Sydney Chapman who later predicted the existence of the thermal

theory, fluid mechanics, statistical mechan­ and ics thermodynamics must converge.

in

to

Theory of Non-Uniform

netic

proved streetcar service

are

they are always there; something of

which to beware.

Between

Between 1910 and 1920, M. N.

and

to show

Evanston

Since 1957 two trends have become evident in

study of the fourth state of matter: one is widespread effort to convert the science of rn agnetofluidrr-echanics into technological applieathe

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

tions, some of which have been mentioned here;

the master of

the other involves the many scholars who continue

guided by the

scientific

studies

properties of plasma and the motion of conducting fluids under the influence of magnetic fields. Despite the nu­ merous

related

obstacles to be

pronged attack, there

the

to

overcome are

within the two­

individuals who claim

magnetofluidmechanics is est a blished suffi­ ciently so as to pose no further major problems.

that

They are already out on the scientific frontier probing unknown areas of relativistic and quan­ tum magnetofluidmechanics. To them Alfven's waves serve only as a darkened lighthouse serves

radar-equipped ship, for they are speed of light.

Thus, through the yea rs, observant scientists and engineers have added to the immense accumulation of known facts which enable

doors

the

opens

further

to

and

abundant

more

knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility."

straightened around at home better. And you can us sometimes, like on Sunday, say. Or I'll

JAMES R. JOHNSTON, who sends

here.

little

send

this short short­

and

Mark

Delorous

to

up

see

The old man looked away from her again.

from the School of Journalism in 1958.

She talked faster.

linoleum

dully sounded down the shiny

hallway and faded behind

a

swinging

door.

Mary Garback uncrossed and recrossed her long nyloned legs, critically studying her ankles, which she always considered too thick.

She looked

at her

father, sitting next to her, staring blankly at a bad picture of a meadow scene hanging on the opposite wall of the small waiting room.

"Dad.

over

"

"You'll have other

cards with. And the

man

neither turned his head

nor

gave

old man's eyes were filled with water but he was "It's Harry too, Dad.

Harry says he'll leave un­

less you go." She sat and waited but the old

man

sun

all

"Can't you at least understand that part?" Her voice was loud in the hush of the room.

"You know that part about Harry is true. He'd me God he would. Is that what

leave me. So help

you want? Do you want

bit of

see

the fire

over

escape bal­

came

suddenly

stopped talking

her hands until the

an

nurse

came

man

stared

at

back down the hall

"Who's a

going

going to sign the papers?" she asked in

Mary Garback looked at her father and then slowly got up and took the offered pen and bent over to scratch her name on the document lying on

the table.

"If you are ready, Mr. your room

now," the

got up difficulty.

Clark, I can show you to

nurse

said to the old

from his chair with

a

"Dad, it shouldn't be like this. At least say good-by. Please. You can at least say good-by."

The old man, without

a word, turned and shuf­ shiny linoleum hallway toward

The nurse gave

a

here.

for

the hall.

Spring,

1962

while.

Until I

get

Garback

quick look to Mary Garback's

face and then turned to follow the old

little

man.

great deal of

It doesn't have to be forever, a

wall

through

crisp, starched voice.

"I'll come and see you, Dad," Mary called to him. "This Sunday, I'll come."

is all

the

the swinging doors and into the room.

inches,

that this

quiet

unlighted cigarette end-for-end in

and the old

to be for the best.

Maybe just

the

and

back into the little room again.

the swinging doors.

did not say anything.

"Oh, Dad, don't you

comes

full of

moved his face that toward her

few

that

but he

man care

a

sun

cony. You'll see, Dad, you'll like it here where you can sit in the sun all day."

was

The old lines and

a

You know how much you like to sit in the sun.

It'll be so much better than trying to get the little

fled off down the

to be alone?"

me

play

was

day and read the papers. Or you can just anything if you don't want to.

He

did not move a muscle.

said that there

sit there, not doing

She turned

not crying.

to talk to here. To

chairs in it. When it's warm out you can sit in the

any indication that he had heard her.

"Dad, listen to me." Her voice was taut with close-lipped emotion. The old man shifted his weight in the chair without taking his eyes from the picture on the wall.

"You've got to understand about this, Dad. There's my side too. It's not as if I'm committing some awful crime. Is it, Dad?" The question hung in the deadened air and the

men

nurse

big yard in back with lots of big comfortable

She

The old

you

"

story, lives in Michigan City, Indiana. He graduated

HEELS

to

perhaps, in the words of Michael Faraday: "It is the great beauty of our science that advance­ ment in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausing the subject of research,

visit

THE NURSE'S

us

approach the fourth state of matter with some understanding. Their motivation is expressed best,

SOMETHING OLD us

a

man

down

21

Since

the days of the Spanish American War and

by Richard Harding Davis and others, comparatively little Latin American news-either coverage

accurate,

that

during

distorted

or

war-has

as

he maintained it in

appeared

the

was

North

American press. The flurry of publicity accorded Latin America by the Office of the Coordinator of

Inter-American Affairs

was

mild and short-lived.

BY FREDERICK S. STIMSON

the occasion of the trips below the border of Nixon and Kennedy, the revolutions

Only recently,

on

in

Cuba, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic­

to

name

but

a

few headline makers-has

such

begun to win front-page space. Apparently coming true at long last is the prophecy, once uttered by an editor of a popular U.S. weekly, that someday Latin American affairs would in­ terest our reading public as vitally as Russian news-incidentally, he failed to foresee that it

news

ARIEL AND

would be the Russians who would force us to take this interest.

When our press becomes truly pan-American in its coverage, we may become aware of the depth

CALIBAN

of the bitterness toward us of Mexico, the Spanish West

Indies, Central, and South America. Despite friendly gestures or dictators, despite the reputedly warm welcome extended the Ken­ nedys, an innate antipathy exists. It might just as well be admitted that this is not a superficial or sporadic emotion. Deep-seated and permanent, it actually forms as integral a part of the Spanish and Portuguese Americans' cultural heritage and outlook, as, for instance, their devotion to the cult of the individual; it has been indoctrinated in them since childhood much as has their Spanish type of religious faith.

Reasons for this antipathy have been boiled down to two major and many minor ones: first, acts of imperialism by our government; second, exploitation of natural resources by our Big Busi­ occasional

ness; the minor ones include

our

racial discrimi­

nation, the arrogance and snobbery of Yankee tourists, embassy officials, and members of "American Colonies" abroad; the tawdry picture of us painted by Hollywood; careless and sloppy reporting of Latin American affairs by our "light­ ning journalists," who, after twenty-four hours on

the scene, write

an

article

or

even

a

book;

Needless to say, all these complaints have been leveled at us so insistently, not only and

so

on.

by Latin Americans, but by other foreigners, that -now that the period of our soul-searching and somewhat conscience-strickenness is waning­ they have become faintly irritating cliches.

Perhaps, as Princeton's Americo Castro pointed out in his still popular textbook, lberoameru:a (The Dryden Press, 1941, 1946, and 1954), another cause of the dislike may be the inferiority com­ plex of Latin Americans, or, more properly speak­ ing, Ibero-Americans. Although outwardly they scorn

22

our

mechanization

and maintain that life

not revolve around splendid refrigerators washing machines, but around the artistic and spiritual, inwardly they may covet those handy appliances. Perhaps, to take a ludicrous example, if ice were cheap, clean, and available, Latins of certain countries would stop insisting that iced drinks are bad for their digestion.

does

and

Whatever the tional least

reason

resentment a

basic

for Latin America's tradi­

toward

the

United

for

the

maintenance

reason

States,

at

and

continuity of this resentment can be singled out.

This is one our journalists and government officials seldom refer to-Latin America's literature. Our

neighbors are culture-conscious, no doubt of that, and even those unable to finish the bachillerato, much less the doctorate, read

avidly, especially classics, not only prose, but poetry.

And throughout the history of Spanish American literature, including the most aesthetic and ivory­ tower literary movements, runs a strong current of antagonism toward the "white bear" of the their

own

North.

Now that the field of Spanish American (and occasionally Brazilian) literature, for years dis­

dained by style-setting ivy-league universities, has at last been admitted into their curriculums, other

institutions of higher learning have followed suit.

And our youth is now studying that literature

becoming aware of this major cause of the perpetuation of anti-Yankeeism. Early New Eng­ land leaders of the teaching of modern languages and

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Frederick S. Stimson has had career

a

varied and colorful

that has brought him into prolonged contact with

the peoples of Central and South America and the Cc­ ribbean

area.

He has held

American countries with the

positions in

Department of State and

From J944 to J946 he was director 01 the United States

Cultural Institute in Medellin, Colombia. Later he

was

Assistant Public Affairs Officer with our embassy in San

Salvador. He has also been a professor at the Univer­

sity 01 Antioquia, Colombia. Research lor a new book has twice taken him to Cuba. A graduate 01 The Ohio State University, he studied also at the Ecole Francaise

and did graduate work at Harvard,

Middlebury

education.

Sarmiento's

various Latin

the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.

01

far as to maintain that we had made great strides culturally, at least in the field of public

so

Princeton, and the University of Michigan, where he took his Ph.D. in J952. He has published several books

fifty articles and reviews having to do with Latin American letters and affairs. Presently ready lor publication are a lile of the Cuban poet Valdes and a history 01 Spanish American culture. He is Assistant and some

Professor of Romance Languages at Northwestern.

voice

was

lone

a

one,

however,

in that early period, before so many of our so-called acts of aggression had taken place. More even

typical was the voice of a slightly later romantic, the

Colombian

poet,

Rafael

Pombo

(1833-1912), York,

who also visited the United States. In New

with

diplomatic post, he mastered English and

a

became a friend of Bryant and Longfellow. Unlike

Sarmiento, Pombo returned to his native land to make deprecatory remarks in verse about the country and people he had visited.

In Spanish America, romantic writing continued well into the nineteenth century to culminate in the school of Modernism, a refinement of romanti­ cism and deadly enemy of the parallel current of realism. Spanish Americans are proud of their Modernism, for it was one of the very few literary schools to originate in home territory where often writers simply imitate whatever style is in vogue on the Peninsula. This movement, however, was popular that it influenced the mother country, traditionally somewhat indifferent toward her colonial authors. Angry slurs about the Yankee so

literature, which is as strict­ as disdainful of political ly and sociological matters as were its models, French Parnassianism and Symbolism.

Ruben Dario (1867-1916), who, incredibly abound

even

in this

art for art's sake and

literature, brought up to admire the polish English masterpieces, finally ac­ cepted Spanish Peninsular literature of the Golden Age. Then, a relatively few years ago, their suc­ cessors acknowledged the possibility that content and

of French and

as well as style should be taken into account; and that, since emotion has had much to do with shap­

ing history, emotion-packed literature

can

help

interpret the past. Thereupon came the reluc­ tant acceptance of the sometimes crude and un­ us

polished, but sincere, spontaneous, and emotional literature of Spanish America, a genre which may tell us more about a time and place than does the objective historical writing.

Among the literary heroes of the past, still studied by the youth of Spanish America and now being studied by our own college young peo­ ple, perhaps only one stands out as a real friend to the United States, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-88), once president of Argentina. A leader of the romantic school, he became famous with his Eticusuio (1845), a prose work attacking the bar­ barism of gauchos under the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877), a caudillo whose atrocities more

are

said to have exceeded those of the

recent Peron.

form in his native

Fighting for educational re­

land, Sarmiento came to the United States to study our educational system, visit with the Horace Manns, and receive an honorary doctorate at the University of Michigan.

He approved our material progress; he even went

Spring,

1962

enough, was somehow able to rise above his ob­ scure Nicaraguan background to become the most celebrated of the Modernist poets, late in his ca­ left his ivory tower to attack Theodore reer Roosevelt's imperialism in Latin America, though afterwards the poet laughed at having waxed in­ dignant over political affairs. In "To Roosevelt" (1905), for instance, he boasted that though we had energy and awe-inspiring military strength, Spanish America had poets, the indigenous culture of the Aztec and Incan civilizations, and, perhaps most important of all, a religion: "And though you may have everything, you lack one thing­ God!

"

The Peruvian Jose Santos Chocana

(1875-1934), only a popular poet of this same literary school, but also a forceful propagandist, was equally indignant. In harsh, strident verse, the kind he accused Yankees of writing (probably he was referring in particular to Walt Whitman), he not

cried

that

the he

United

States

advised his

was

to

torturing

his

distrust the

America; people blue-eyed, blond men of the North. In "Epic of the Pacific," his prophecy that in the end it would be the dark-haired West erners,

Isthmus,

who

would

now seems

Indians, not these North­

punch

a

canal

through the

somewhat inaccurate.

The Modernist, in prose rather than poetry, who

wielded the greatest political influence Enrique Rodo (1871-1917) of Uruguay.

was

Jose

His

best

23

seller Ariel

(1900) quickly became and perhaps remained the ethical Bible for Spanish American youth; it was the voice of the southern continent protesting against another culture, that of North America. Herein is set forth in beautiful, if some­ what repetitious and declamatory prose, the con­ trast between Anglo-Saxon and Latin America which has become fixed in the minds of foreign­ ers: Shakespeare's character Ariel symbolizes the cultural and intellectual aristocracy of the South, an aristocracy that tries to withstand the ma­ terialism of another character from The Tempest, Caliban, symbolizing the North.

It has been pointed out that Rode's classic not intended

as

a

was

deliberate attack on the United

States; rather, Redo, like other turn-of-the-cen­ tury critics such as Santayana, Wilde, and Ruskin, was attacking positivism. a philosophy of life that had been spreading in this hemisphere during the nineteenth century. It just happened that the United States served as a perfect example of the crass results of such an attitude. But many Span­ ish American readers, especially young ones, fail­ ing to perceive this fine distinction, learn from Ariel only that our country is materialistic, god­ less, and uncultured, while Latin America stands for the better things of life, the spiritual.

Rodos

criticism

in

the

first

decade

of

this

gentler than that of the group of whose influence was felt in the second essayists decade. While he attacked us from a philosophical standpoint, his successors did so from a more specific, political one. Prompting their indigna­ tion were two closely related Yankee policies, the Monroe Doctrine and what has been variously called "Manifest Destiny," "Elder Sister policy," "Big Stick policy," and "Dollar Diplomacy."

These and restatements of them were put into practice with acts of aggression, beginning with the Mexican War and lasting through the Spanish American one, which angered all Latin America.

Found especially irritating were the Platt Amend­ ment in Cuba of 1901, the affair of the Panama Canal in 1903, Henry Cabot Lodge's Magdalena Bay resolution of 1912, and at various times the landing of U.S. troops in Nicaragua, Mexico, Hai­ ti, and Honduras. century

Proof

was

of

the

similar incidents

provoked

anger

is

fact

the

in the main dedicated

that

exclusively

by

these

the

essayists, philosophy

to

and

a mob and fined $2000 for breaking policeman's arm; it extended, amusingly enough, even to Yankee women. In Aladdin's Lamp (1915), he spoke of poor ones who "get on a barrel in the center of the street and harangue a multitude no less imbecile than they; exalted with mysticism, they swell the ranks of the Sal­ vation Army and vote on election day for the

insulted by a

president of one of those anti-alcoholic societies members, with Lutheran hypocrisy, get

whose

drunk only at home." Of the rich ones, he said that their scandalous reputation for vulgarity and bad taste had spread over the world; he referred "sausage and bacon queens" of Chicago and gave fits to Anna Gould in Paris. In novels

to the

and collections of essays, such as The Political and Social Evolution of Hispanic America (1911),

evidenced his fear of U.S.

is

economic imperi­

alism. To his credit, however, it should be pointed out that he did not put all the blame on us and ex­

elements; he realized that internal factors work, too, namely Spanish American in­ ertia and political corruption. ternal

were

at

Carrying on the torch of anti-imperialism was Argentina's Manuel Ugarte (1878-1951), coiner of the derogatory phrase, the "colossus of the North." Although he always claimed that he was not anti-Yankee, his Destiny of a Continent (1923) is perhaps the most vicious of all the books here mentioned. In this he inveighed against specific political moves, such as the Platt Amendment, which he considered imperialistic. Ugarte's cru­ sade for liberation from the

menace

of the colos­

took him to almost every country in America (although several Central American ones, reput­

sus

edly fearful of U.S. reprisals, refused him entry) even to Columbia University (despite pro­ tests of our State Department, so it was said) and

where, in 1912, he lectured Latin America." Later he

"The

on

Future of

remark, ironi­ cally enough, that it was there where he was given the most freedom to speak openly. was

to

Less vindictive were essayists such as the very

distinguished Mexicans, Jose Vasconcelos (18821959) and Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959). The former, not only a prolific writer, but an educator and a revoluntionary hero, once exiled to the United States and once almost president of Mexico, was one

of the many to criticize our racial discrimina­

tion. In The Cosmic Race

(1925) he boasted that

while four races, red, black, yellow, and white, were assimilating in his land where the best ele­

and literature, were so incensed as to turn to political writing. This contingent, comprismg Spanish America's outstanding writers of all times in this genre, called upon the Spanish New World to unite in combat against further aggres­

whites had purged Yankeeland of Indian and other colored blood. San Francisco's

sion from the North.

young

The

earliest of these

distrust

was

impassioned disciples of novelist and essayist,

Venezuela's

(1874-1944). His hatred of Yankees began in New York City when he was Rufino Blanco-Fombona

24

ments of each would combine to form

a

fifth, the

cosmic race,

ladies,

he

cried,

refused

officials of the Japanese Navy. our

to

dance with

He warned that

purification of blood would lead to degeneracy.

Reyes prose

not

only

of Mexico's

greatest stylists, creative writers, and scholars of was

one

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Golden Age literature, but

a

distinguished diplo­ diplomatic posts

that

produced by

a

needle

stuck

in

broken

a

(In Spanish America, the country's great authors and intellec­ tuals.) In "Panorama of America" (1918), in­ cluded in the series AnaLogies and Differences, he presented political analysts' sharp criticisms of

record. To try another metaphor, the old chest­ nuts are simply being reheated.

the Monroe Doctrine. For which America

dines (1956), by Guatemala's president from 1945 to 1951, Juan Jose Arevalo, perhaps an effective

the

mat.

go

to

was

the

Doctrine designed? It would save North America from European aggression, but would it save America

Latin

from

a

North

American

one?

Would it protect Peru from Colombia from the United

Chile, or Mexico and States? The goal of artificial was and impossible, pan-Americanism because North and South America share nothing in common, not their race, not their language, not even their religion, philosophy of life, tradi­ tions, or customs.

Dishearteningly enough for us, practically all these distinguished essayists-including two oth­ ers of about the same period, born in the eighties, Peru's Francisco Garcia Calderon and Argentina's Ricardo Rojas-believed that Latin America's sal­

lay in looking toward

Europe, not the United States, in importing European, not Yan­ kee, culture. They all advocated not the fusion of North and South America, pan-Americanism, but the fusion of Europe and the Spanish New World, the Indies, into "Eurindia," as Rojas called it.

The anti-Yankee literary attacks continue to­ day, of course. In poetry these are being written by supporters of. Fidel Castro and by one of the most famous living poets in the Spanish language, Pablo Neruda (1904-). We might smile wryly upon reading the following, for instance, from a new vation

collection of excellent translations of this Chile­ an's work: When the trumpets had sounded and all was

in readiness on the face of the earth,

Jehovah divided his universe:

Anaconda, Ford Motors, Coca-Cola Inc., and similar entities: the most succulent item of all,

The United Fruit Company Incorporated reserved for itself: the heartland

and coasts of my country, the delectable waist of America.

They rechristened their properties: the "Banana Republics"-l In general, however, the vociferous among the

contemporary critics are authors of very minor stature. The really great masters of artistic in­ vective are gone, though their influence is still

being exercised

on

the youth of Spanish America.

Most of these devoid of

present-day second-raters are so originality and vigor that the sound is

Recently reprinted in Spanish, for instance, at published in an English

Castro's orders and also

edition is the slanderous The Shark and the Sar­

writer of

propaganda, but never a distinguished literary figure (see Time [January 5, 1962], p. 27).

Here he attacks not only U.S. imperialism, but, like Neruda, our Big Business, in particular, of course, the United Fruit Company.

The

writer,

prolific

Relgis

Eugen

(1895-),

a

Rumanian refugee living in Uruguay, often calls attention to our materialism and bad taste. In his 'TweLve Capitals

(1961), he seems to imply that

these characteristics of ours account for West Ber­ lin's present

gaudiness and corruption, which he

describes in great detail. But his far more gifted predecessor in Uruguay, Rodo, belittled us with such superior artistry that by comparison Relgis ranks as a weak imitation of the master.

Almost unending is the list of Spanish American authors who have contributed to

destroying any friendship and love that might have been ex­ tended us, and their criticism would fill volumes.

Mentioned here have been mainly the most cele­ brated figures, not only from the standpoint of

widespread political influence,

but from

that of

literary one, authors of firmly established Spanish American classics. But by the

no

and

artistic

means

are

all of them

included; omitted,

for

instance, are the many novelists, such as Romulo Gallegos (1884-), once elected to the presidency who have included an of Venezuela, "Ugly American" in their casts of characters.

Since

writers

these

two

span

centuries

and.

ranging geographically from Argentina to Mexico, a great deal of territory, their influence has been long and wide. It seems especially awesome when we consider that their works are the ones being read today by the school children of Spanish America. This literary influence has thus helped to turn antipathy toward the United States into not just an occasional flare-up, but a part of the Latin Americans' cultural heritage.

Now that in this

our

universities

are

teaching courses

literature, our youth is learning about this

traditional source of resentment. Perhaps bureau­ crats and

should

journalists,

learn

Spanish

as

well

as

(although

college students, some

of

these

English translation) and take such courses, for a better understanding not only of literature, but of the reasons why much of Latin America is going-or, has gone-Commu­ works

appear

in

nist. And these and similar books contain excel­ ISeZected Poems of Pablo Neriuia, tr. Ben Belitt (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1961), p. 149. Reproduced with permission of Grove Press, Copyright c 1961.

Spring,

1962

lent

background material for members Corps stationed below the border.

of

the

Peace

25

�r Meno Spann

THE HORNED HEROTHE NOBLE SA VAGETHE DETACHED TOOTH Spann was born in Koblenz, Germany. He studied German literature and philology at the Universities of Gottingen, Berlin, and Marburg. As a student he won several championships as a gymnast and ;avelin thrower, but a Bremen stevedore, he says, prevented him from becoming a prize fighter. After receiving his doctorate in Mar­ burg in 1928 he came to the United States, where he taught in the German departments

Meno

of Cornell, the Universities of Oregon, Iowa, and North Carolina and, since 1943, at Northwestern. Mr. Spann has traveled widely in Europe, Africa, and Mexico and is a passionate bull fighting fan (afficionado) who has partaken in what he calls rustic free­ for-ails with young horned heroes.

He has published articles and textbooks in his field, in this country; and in Germany contributed to various newspapers and magazines. Mr. Spann's essay was wriHen in response to an invitation from the editors.

AN OLD CHRONICLE

of

Thuringia reports a strange supposedly happened at the in 1520. With a little reading of Erfurt University between the lines the following scene can be re­ constructed: One evening the students rushed out of a lecture room, trampling over each other and screaming as if flames or the fiend were searing their heels. In the abandoned room remained only one person, a small, pale man in a black gown, smiling contemptuously. It was Dr. Johann Faus­ tus, who had just lectured on Homer-not as the regular professors used to lecture, but in a way only he, the first among the necromancers could do it, conjuring up before the eyes of the students event

that

the heroes and monsters of the

Odyssey. But the

giant Polyphemus with a Grecian leg dangling from his gory lips! By Astoreth, he had been too much for these weak-minded bursars.

There are good

reasons

26

were

products of the pedagogical

magic lantern. Looking at the sable sorcerer as the legend sees him we might say he taught litera­ ture with

the help of

magic. That must sound

wonderful to anyone who has ever tried to explain the

his

changing visions of man, his life, his history, orders, values, and quests, his uplifts and

downfalls, his heavens and hells while having to rely on conceptual language which too often is obscure where light is needed. Granted, Dr. Faustus cast his questionable lights about where

quotations would have sufficed, but that does not make this scene less fascinating or weaken the wish to have magic at their disposal of all those who realize that words fail them where more than

intellectual

understanding is needed, where a way

is sought into a new realm of feeling. But at such

points the "widely-noised conjuror" may help us if

to believe that this dra­

matic lecture really took place and that the appa­ ritions

mancer's hypnotic powers, the students' faith in black magic, and a primitive forerunner of the

necro-

we

learn from him how he conducted that

forgettable

class

on

Homer.

Of

course

un­

some

changes will be necessary. Instead of his lanterna NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QU ARTERLY

Photograph by Herb Comess

magic a we shall have to use a motion picture projector, and instead of his hypnotic sorcery some art-magic. Then we shall be ready for that embarrassing moment when we feel the waning power of our words; we'll shift to

a

different lan­

Let

us

assume

that

a

professor of literature,

a

heretic in his

field, is discussing the nature of tragedy. He speaks about "gameness" as the chief quality of the tragic hero. The tragic hero sees or

feels doom

approaching but he does not yield,

guage, a language of images and scenes such as illustra­ our short motion pictures will provide

he does not use any subterfuge or smart evasion.

He meets it head on. "Incidentally," says the

tive motion

professor, "that is why the Spaniards call the brave bull 'tOTO tonto,' the 'stupid bull,' but the word 'stupid' has in this case only the laudatory meaning of heroically stubborn, heroically unable and unwilling to think his way out. Socrates dis­ liked the tragic hero because he was not rational, but the descendants of Dionysus must go fate­

-

pictures like the

three described in

this article.

"Described," that disappointing word, has to be are not real scripts but of motion descriptions pictures reeled off so far before the mental eye. But one aspect of only used since what follows

these "movies of the mind" should be pointed out.

They were "shot on location": they are based on actual experiences in the lands of the fighting bull and the lion, separated only by a small body of water, and in abattoirs and tea rooms, separated only by a little lapse of memory. Having ex­ plained the nature of the three "scripts" we must ask the reader to try to see them rather than merely to read them ...

Spring,

1962

intoxicated to the can

flesh,

'moment

of

truth.'

Here

you

relationship between the stage of the the arena, and the stage of the spirit, the

see

the

theater." At this

point the

lecturer

sees

in the

eyes of his students the signal to switch on the electric mechanism which will in seconds produce

rolled-down screen, semidarkness, and the be­ ginning of the paraphrastic film: a

27

the sand and the motionless starers

The Horllt'd Hero A blue circle above,

a

yellow circle below, they

hold all the faces, gestures, dots of black hair, dots of white shirts, curved rows of knees and

piercing shouts: Ga seosa ! Cc rI't';:(1 !

Old, Ra­ fael!

Que te quite 1a Macarena, ladron! 1 The shouts and the wavering roar turn into the music of the pasodob1e torero. � The pasodoble prances -

-

like the horse of the medieval man who rides into the

arena

in

dressed

the

old

Spaniard's black. glittering golden

The pasodoble swaggers like the who walk

men

on

the sand below,

as

those onlv

above the roar, the belly fear, and the pesetas. The pasodoble is hollow and far­ off like the heavv trampling in the dark passage­

can

walk who

are

and the pasodoble is strong as the huffing gallop with which the bull breaks into the sun. And now his weight comes and goes past the glittering golden man, hidden in the yielding folds, and

way t

gleaming

horns slide out into the deathless

air.

Youth and strength and sleek blackness hit with fury and drive into goading steel and into the

great pain. But the joy of feeling the struggling horse's weight in the lifting jerk is greater. New

goading, and the emptiness mocks anew, but greater than the hunger for air and the hunger for

ing of night and that the patter of running feet and whispers receding farther and farther away are the coming of silence. High on the shoulders of stunned men the doud matador is carried from the arena.

fighting cape covers his face and his

His

wounds and trails over the sand.

Now comes the most difficult part of the film, a

throughout reminds the au­ dience of the bull fight they just saw. Furious Hamlet ballet which

Hamlet in black breaks into the circle of his death

glittering king appears, but Hamlet is wounded and goaded by the picas and banderillas of outrageous fortune while he strikes fight. The golden

mocking air. Now old Pol on ius approaches with the tired gait of a picador horse. He hides the

behind the red ment

and

torn

arras

arras

receive the estocada.

struggles and sways on death-heavy legs, and stumbling falls. Three flower-bedecked mules are hitched to the heavy head, which lolls on the mas­ sive neck as chains are pulled and ropes are tightened for a glorious arrastre.:l High up into he

the blue rises the shout and the noise of the hands.

The mules jump, the big black body is moved through the roar that honors him, while the muz­

zle, open in death, fills with sand.

Another

end

is

available:

-

A

sharp toss,

a

blurred sand, spectators, muleta whirl through the

air, a stunning fall, closed eyes opening when the heavy trampling moves away, eyes showing an awareness growing over the pain in the pierced and ripped groin that the shadows spreading over

lCarbonated drinks, beer-Hi, Raphael-May the Ma­ carena (Virgin of Hope) abandon thee, scoundrel!

2Musical piece composed to be played at bullfights, with a tragic undertone which puts it decidedly out of the class of circus music.

Habet!" But he is still on

-

legs and with his last strength he runs his enemy through, the evasive glitter. He has de­ served his arrastre. Four captains carry him away and for his passage

The soldiers' music and the rites of war

Speak loudly for him. it

"

*

ball-points rush to write down the story of

the noble savage whom Jean Jack Rousseau did not invent. "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this prod­ uct of the wide open spaces in nature and Rous­

seau's experience was to serve as a paragon for the product of the wide, open city; but city dwell­ have always yearned for him. They called him by different names. He was the man of the golden

ers

age and the dweller of the lost paradise. His an­ tagonist lived in opulent Samaria and Babylon

by the prophets. Bernardino de Sahagun, missionary in newly con­ quered Mexico, made the important discovery anathematized

Franciscan

that the new flocks of docile Indians would make up for the losses

in souls which the church had

suffered through the heretic wolves of the Refor­ mation. There was,

more

important perhaps than far, the desire of

all the factors mentioned thus

all highly developed civilizations to take off their elaborate costumes and walk naked.

Of course, coral necklaces, feathered headgear and tattooed tribal designs are not the only char­

acteristics of the noble savage. He has tended sheep in Arcadia, he has spurned the luxurious

"The process of dragging the bull from the arena, which can be turned into a last honor for a fighting

4"He got it.

bull of outstanding courage.

was

28

move­

his

The

against horn point, the bull moves

the

behind which it was killed and Hamlet

...

Sword point

sees

the

at

charges through the death circle after the glitter­ ing golden man. The last tercio has begun: now he is ready for death and cleverly he is tricked to

hunger to drive the pointed horn into the glittering thing and to drive with straining sinews and spreading hoofs and to throw the glitter into the air and drive into it again, and

like a rising black wave, but the flash is in him:

but Hamlet

height of his rage and pain pierces the cloth. The bony nag is covered with the

is the

to throw and drive.

the com­

the

stillness and the green and cool far away from the

yellow circle

are

..

Shout in Roman

arenas

when

a

gladiator

severely hit.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QU ARTERLY

life of Rome in the

Danube. He was

territory beyond Rhine and

cottager in Wakefield and the virtuous much-suffering proletarian when capital­ a

ism was in its infancy. He was a negro plantntion worker who got religion and later rhythm. He lives on as a financial help to underdeveloped and

overdeveloped countries because all who live un­ der thatched roofs or big hats who yodel or sing only in a minor key help their countries' tourist industry. But back

to

Of

Rousseau.

course

we

and

the

at

"simba"

word

they make hurling

movements with their arms. The chant dies down

background as the warriors run in scattered formation, with sinewy stalking strides, through the high grass at the foot of the but is heard in the

Usambara Mountains. They carry spears in their hands, formidable with four-foot blades, but neat and

well-balanced.

Their

ox-hide

shields

would

look Homeric if it were not for the designs painted on

them, which are as old as the Homeric world.

could say to him: Were you

there, Jean Jaques?

Short swords and clubs rub against thighs lithe as

but that won't do. There is

certain truth in the

all the wild things which are stirred up and scurry

a

concept of the noble savage, but only if we estab­ lish one complementary concept, namely the noble of culture. Voltaire in Cirey, in the salon of Marquise du Chatelet, hurling brilliant bans mots at quickly moving subjects of conversation, is to the sensitive eye of moralist, cultural critic, or aesthete just as pleasing as a Masai warrior hurling his heavy spear into five hundred pounds of galloping simba. man

the

Both the primitive man and the trained man of a

high culture

"dialect"

literal

are

their

and

authentic.

"French"

and

They speak flawlessly The

their

in

true

the

metaphorical trast-figure to the noble savage is the man who has lost his authenticity. Unauthentic existence is "ignoble." At this remark the ball-points slow down and the professor pushes the button. A sense.

shield appears over two crossed spears the shield appears the title:

con­

and

on

away

as

the hunters advance.

Close-up of faces.

Hard, strong lines around aquiline noses. Metal pieces dangle from the ears and strike the tense slender necks. The eyes are deep-set and fear only that which but

nothing

through darkness and dreams,

moves

that

moves

through grass and

sun.

The leader of the hunters has a large cone­ shaped cap made of the mane of a full-grown lion, which he had killed single-handed. Behind the hunters, a close-up of white faces under fedoras and above steering-wheels, racing behind a fire­ truck.

The tension of the chase

makes fat and

sunken cheeks rosy. A donga appears, and in the deep grass on the other side, visible only for a

moment,

a

scrubby,

muscled neck

short

like

mane

on

a

thick­ the in­

and, striking snake, furiated, lashing tail. A hollow, questioning roar is answered with silence. The deep grass on the a

other side moves, and the tawny back rises above and falls below

the lion trots away from the The speedy hunters diving into the ravine

The Noble Savage A

strong African

sun

makes the black skin of

Masai spearmen glisten. The restfulness and re­ laxation of their deep squat betrays muscles and

ligaments of another world. At the fire pieces of are acquiring a superficial crust and

Kudu meat

the calabash with

a

mixture of ox blood and milk

goes from hand to hand. Interspersed fleeting con­

of supping white men collapsed in chairs, grouped around a table covered with food and medicine bottles with a close-up of slightly dislocated vests over gently undulating swellings, causing tiny mother-of-pearl buttons to scrape the edge of the table. Cigar smoke rises and changes into a lone smoke column standing over the dying fire of the African's with a close-up of hard black flanks sucked in and pushed out in slightly faster rhythm than that of the scraping buttons. trast-scenes

Clatter of typewriter keys, slapping sound of a belt, chorus chant of a commercial be­

conveyor

a microphone all in the same rhythm. The slapping and clatter cease, but the chorus chant goes on, climaxing every stanza with the word "eaties," shouted with considerable force. In the same rhythm and simultaneously, the Masai spearmen sing, climaxing each stanza a moment

fore

later with "simba." They dance around the fire

Spring,

1962

as

donga. and emerging on the other bank resemble black otters crossing a small body of water. From un­ derneath a thorn tree, rises again, wilder and louder, the voice of the lion. The patches of sun and the zigzag shadows under the thorn trees move. Wild, piercing cries fly out, and with them, curving and flashing through the sunlight, the first spear. It sticks in the mane. The shaft whips wildly in the galloping, charging beast. Flash aft­ er flash the spears strike and trail along, hanging from the bleeding fur. Suddenly, in the midst of shrill shouts and raised shields, the lion is stretched out before the grouped spearmen. The scene does not look gruesome, but as the dancing hunters chant their deeply-felt, deeply-earned mu­ sic, relieving the strain of their courage in rhythms which belong to these plains like the un­ dulating high grass and the bizarre thorn trees, they appear functioning, congruous, satisfying deep moral and aesthetic demands. But for a mo­ ment, wedged into the triumphant dance around the spear-felled simba, there must appear another scene:

the fedora-bedecked fire-truck chasers

are

closing in on two stretcher-bearers who struggle through the satisfied crowd carrying a screaming living thing, hurt by a building raging with fire, suffering agonies deeper and fiercer than anything 29

the well-muscled killer of cattle felt when steel

mic times created the lamb. But that is

blades sliced into his lungs.

which can't

The hunters draw their spears out of the dead lion and point with praising nods at the first blade

the

that flew and sank matted

point

deep into the chest

in the

mane

eye must stare when

hip

on

that

a fancy satisfy us. Blake's refusal to accept

tiger in the

same

world in which the lamb

lives dodges the tragic aspect of existence, for which Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are better in­

at which the hunter's

terpreters than the English mystic. They

and shoulder hurl the

see

it is time.

oh, I

-

."

.

weapon. The spear belongs to the leader with the

cone-shaped fur cap. His face appears, a certain mouth; the eyes begin to soften, and now he gazes at a shield which a black man holds up before him, a black man from the white man's world. And on the partitions of that shield he sees the strange things the visitor tells

fierceness around the

about

a

-

elephant,

herd of monsters, each bigger than an running faster than wild beast, locked

to each other

on an iron spoor; black men fight­ ing stony walls far below the steppes with heavy spears that thrust without being pushed; black

holding

men

golden discs,

in their hands which

they

strange leaves and

receive for

fighting the

stone wall. Tribes farther

south, he knows, take such leaves and give women and cattle for them.

The

keen hunter's

wall. Coal dust once

and

are

eyes

facing

the

sparkles in the hair which

stone was

covered by the lion cap. The hard shoulders the deep chest tremble behind the heavy

drill. The eaties-simba

rhythm is heard,

but the

simba cry is weak and indistinct and "Eaties" sounds lound and triumphant as the drill bites

deep into the stone wall.

The hunter's

eyes

have

lost

all fierceness

as

they look from beneath a fedora at the skyscrap­ ers of Johannesburg. The spearman has yellow shoes, blue trousers and a striped jacket. No longer is he a pleasing sight to artist, moralist, or humanist. A radio sings out into the street the rhythmic chant that swells into the eatie cry, and the stalking hunger-legs in cheap, blue trous­ ers, and the nimble feet, hardened against thorn and stone, but not against shoes and concrete, break clumsily into the lion dance. The busy people in the stone kraal look at him and giggle and a policeman comes and gives the unpaid clown a shove and says to him, "Voruit!":i There might be

concluding part to this film: "Authenticity Regained," but that script has to wait until Clio has written a fresh chapter on her

new

a

scroll, entitled "Africa." *

*

Prologue William Blake sits at the desk of his study in his newly rented cottage at Felpham, Butts.

he

who

had

a

and

made

simple

of such

an

the lamb answer.

make thee?'

to

near

Chich­

his

patron

the

in London" detaches

itself from the letter and

becomes blurred, finally dissolving into a vapor cloud which follows Blake into the kitchen where a

leg of lamb on the

stove is

spreading its own

vapors. The two vapors blend and in its appears,

big as

horse, a lamb which speaks in bleating

a

tones to the startled poet: Did heee who maaaade the laaaamb maaaake theeeee?

For

a

moment there is no motion and the

looks like

clear

Blake

scene

engraving with this title: The Lamb feareth Tigers and Leg of Lamb eating Mystics. The vapors become thicker and as they a

away

new

a

v

title becomes

visible

on

the

screen:

The Detached Tooth Strains

Schubert's

from

125, No.1,

merge

with

string quartette, Op. spring warmth flooding

from the blueness above over which

Botticelli orange into

the

yellow­ green-blue tapestry cozy tea room.

Metal rattles gently against chinaware, and there is the fluctuating hum of human voices with grove

slowly

changes

a

pattern of

a

occasional little outbursts of vowels and sibilants.

*

looking at the tiger's 'fearful sym­ Blake asks the old question which occurs metry' in every theodicy in one form or the other: 'Did ...

follow

We

letter

pen's way over the paper and read: "The villagers of Felpham are not mere rustics; they are polite and modest.

Meat is cheaper than in London; but the sweet air _If Blake puts his pen down and gets up. In this moment the sentence "Meat is cheaper than

A thin haze "

writing

Sussex,

ester,

Thomas

a

The

poet

of

cigarette smoke and consomme

away by the ventilators enough to prevent the guests' noses from becoming aroused. The hum of conversation be­ vapors

is

wafted

not

fast

comes

more

intense

and

connects

itself

with

He attributed the creation

un-Words-worthian animal as the tiger

to the cruel demon

Urizon, while Los in precos"The

scene should be inspired by Blake's engraving "The Horse" in Letters of W. Blake, edited by A. G. B.

'-'Afrikaans for:

30

Get moving!

Russell, p. 184.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

twenty matrons seated around a long table. Smiles

disappear in

and gentle communicative half twists of shoulder and little

dened but still sparkling, the sunlight plays on them and they blend into one long gleaming

neat coiffures

butcher's knife. The steer lies motionless and the

puffs of exhaled smoke whirling past expand into a spring sky over 11 Miltonian meadow of "pansies, violets, and as­ phodels." Watteau shepherdesses flutter and gig­ gle behind thick woolly sheep, displaying a liter­ ary whiteness. The shepherdesses

are soon

joined

by pastoral ephebes, who drive gently knock­ kneed steers with round movements of their arms,

emitting melodious exclamations. The two groups mingle and break up into harmonious couples whose sweet laughter melts into that of the ma­ trons, who have again become visible. Youthful their

half-hidden by

graceful uniforms, are circling the their maiden slenderness matrons, inserting where the heavy line of sitters shows openings.

They put down brown, crusty steaks, fluffy mashed waitresses,

curves

the stiff linen of their

potatoes and asparagus in pleasing heaps. Now the forearm of the leading matron reaches for

the

fur

and

come

out

again red­

long blade in a dark hand slits through fur split­

ting white, hand and knife disappear in a gaping hole, and suddenly the red gusher spurts up in heart rhythm. The rhythm becomes slower, the gusher begins to sink, and finally there is only a trickle; but now the steer lies with buckled legs on a mountainous pile of mashed potatoes over­ run

with

the

rivulets

of

blood

from

the

hole

above his chest.

It is night but in the light of huge candles the on his white hill and shepherds and

steer rests

shepherdesses joining hands with the matrons cir­ cle it slowly to the sad piping of a shepherd's flute.

The

sun

rises, and

as

the light

appear twelve hunters in

grows

there moral­

unfeeling

leather-encased, looking legs. They listen to the tale of the ma­ trons. They take their caps off and look up at the steer with horror first and then with deep com­ passion. The whiteness of the hill changes into a gray bullet-scarred wall; a key-chain rattles, an iron door squeaks, and a tiger steps slowly before the wall. The matrons scream furiously and the hunters with pinched lips do not let him out of their sight while slowly taking the position of a firing squad. The tiger walks to the center of the wall, his head hanging, his shoulder-blades jogging through bristling fur. He faces the hunters and growls while they take aim with military precision. In this moment William Blake appears

dazed

and stops the executioners with outstretched arms.

the instruments of civilized eating. It is

a

forearm

and

she

with

pendulous,

reaches, the

ladylike in

fat,

bare as

circumference

grows and becomes hard-muscled and black. Truck mo­ arm

outside, drowning out the noises of lowing, trampling cattle. The black forearm goes up with a sledge hammer and crashes down on tors

rattle

the curly,

dusty, board-like forehead of the steer,

and the steer's eyes look dead, and all his bulk strikes the tiles. with bony knees, shaggy cattle

knees, and

one

splits

open,

snake

the

tiles.

The

over

and blood steer

lies

begins to heavy and

on his opened knee, he stretches his big head, and his dewlap goes taut. His

slimy muzzle touches the tiles below, and the dewlap wrinkles and shrinks and becomes small and human, and it is the leading matron's tiny dewlap. She swings it to the left and to the right and then she holds it straight as she lifts the first lump of squeezed-off, cut-off roasted muscle fibers to her mouth, and as her teeth and lips close over it they are a tiger's jaws closing around the steer's throat. The sparkling fangs

Hunters, matrons, shepherds and shepherdesses crowd around him as he speaks eagerly to them.

One by one the different characters walk over to the tiger. The last one is Blake. He calls and a little lamb appears and stands fearlessly next to the tiger. Blake ties a sign around its neck with I kill an inscription growing larger and larger: young blades of grass and verdant landscapes

An amateur and spare-time editor, so it appears, makes a good many mistakes. Mine in the last issue of The Tri-QuarterZy were not to notice that an e had been dropped from the title of George E. Spink's poem, which should properly have been printed "Haecceity," and to misname the author of "Norris's Wake." who is James D. Dilts (not George). I'm sorry for these slips.

E.B.H.

Tri-QuarterZy contains stories undergraduate editors, I should like to make clear that the decision to print the work of stu­ dent editors is wholly mine, not theirs. The undergradu­

Spring,

1962

become deserts under my teeth.

Since this issue of The

by two of

our

ates whom I invite to

serve as editors are students who known to me as able writers, and the invitation is made with some expectation that they will be contributors to the magazine.

E.B.H. are

31

Photograph by Herb Comess

print, Irom time to time, a lew pieces 01 fiction that are longer than the usual magazine short story. This is the second story

THE TRI-QUARTERl Y proposes to

that

have

printed by Louise Orcutt, presently a senior in the College 01 liberal Arts and a maior in we

English.

YOUNG MAPP'S

PROGRESS:

Miss Orcutt reports that she began writing during her

freshman year in high school when she was living on a farm in Accomac, Virginia, and that her returns so for

have been a dictionary, two certificates, a hammocle, an American

last year, the winning of the very substantial Shuman Award at Northwestern. She has served as secretory for Alpha Lambda Delta (freshman women's honorary

society), business manager of Syllabus, house president for Kappa Delta Sorority, council member for the West· minster

a

journey of Jour miles or so

Legion medal, two novels, a gold leey, and,

Fellowship, residence counselor at Willard Hall

("life with forty freshmen is full of surprises"), and for two

y�ars

as

an

undergraduate

QUARTERLY. 80th her parents

plans

to enter

editor of THE TRI·

are

teachers and she

graduate school, after her graduation

in the

BY LOUISE MIDGLEY ORCUTT

32

coming fall quarter, to prepare herself for col· lege teaching. Her home is in River Forest, II/inois.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

He congratulated Aunt Hope would

himself

on

the fact that his

forgive him for stopping at the motel. He would not suffer himself to be never

confined in her flowered

her cat-hair­

wallpaper, bedspreads, her oppressing Victori­

covered lace

His special technical interest was in the matu­ an ambition-if that was

ration process. He had

impassioned a word, then a fancy-to freeze finally the growth of a chicken embryo in a photograph, perhaps a series of photographs, to

too

with you, eat with you, drink tea with

pictures. "I will walk with you, talk you," he thought with Uncle Enoch's words, "but only

make the life of the chick stand still-captured, observable, like all nakedness a little absurd.

when invited twice."

aunt, full of mysterious words such

an

bedroom

The

high when he pulled into the drive of the Midpoint Pines Motel. Here no one knew him, here no one knew even Enoch Mapp.

The trade was tourist, the place itself laid in the tallest clump of pines its owner could find in Virginia on the highway south to Florida, the atmosphere comfortably artificial like the world sun

still

was

of the voice sat behind the desk holding poised fly swatter and eyeing the buzzing speck that had come in with Justin. "Expect you're on a vacation?" Justin nodded.

"Escape from the smart move.

You'll that's a right routine, city be having dinner, Suh?" more

accepted

return;

a

foolish=-something apart I'll rest." He

from

the

key

no,

that

was

"I

think

either.

that

was

handed

him and left the office. Only by forcing his atten­ tion to the planting of one foot before the other, he crossed the

capital,

as

let.

The

photograph of Enoch Mapp was frayed

gravel drive. wondering with the

of the

membrance

from

Justin's

last

photograph had traveled in Justin's Bi­ military academy and to such summer camps and ranches as his parents' Connecticut friends approved. Sometime during college, about ble to the

the second year, the Bible had gone home in a box of useless but unmarketable textbooks to be stored

in the attic.

photograph had been creased

The

then and put in a hidden corner of Justin's wallet.

The wall clock mounted above the

seemed to have

a

gaping pic­ single luminous

hand, creasing it through the middle.

threw himself

the

...

the bed.

across

"My foolish young Justin," he had reminded himself in the patronizing tone of the elder broth­ he had

by

returns because

never

ries of what is

who

had, "people disappointed they concoct colorful memo­

in

are

reality

had

drab."

And

avoid

so

Justin

learned Mapp, painful emotions, had gone about retouching his memo­ ries of the farm. He used only black and white film for his mental photographs, labeling them and sorting them onto pages of his Album, putting some

to

far in the back.

detached

interest

in

a

He did correct

such

all this with the view

of

reality

which he had

in

the

in

applied to butterfly collections academy and pickled embryonic animals

university, the objectivity which soberly nodding fellowship committees agreed would make of him a thoroughly capable if unin­ spired research biologist. his work at the

Spring,

1962

the

year the

bright-eyed colored boy, dressed in a white please the northern clientele, left his bag on the chair. The boy grinned and flashed white teeth, reminding Justin of another boy When the boy was gone. he drew the thin cur­ tains to close out as much sun as possible and

A

coat to

on

summer

farm in Virginia with his Uncle Enoch. After that

ture window

curiosity of a spectator whether he would fall.

er

at

the edges and creased through the middle, under­

picture and behind the head were a barn and a strip of tomato field, slightly out of focus.

Enoch's eyes were squinting fiercely into the sun; and the right side of his face, turned slightly toward the camera, glistened with perspiration just as it probably had done on the day of his stroke. The picture was the only surviving re­

a

escape,

though it were the Stroke of Fate. prompted his journey, her letter and that strange old photograph in his wal­ a

Her absurd letter had

Midpoint Pines was a sooth­

came

owner

an

"misfor­

as

tune" and "Enoch's condition" and "Stroke" with

lining the eyes. The man's head filled the center

return when he

ing, waning reminder of that other world which made its way blindly through the county, unnotic­ ing and unnoticed, on southern pilgrimages.

"Welcome to Midpoint Pines," drawled a mod­ est voice, "finest in southern hospitality." The

Not

the absurd letter from his

was

to

to which Justin would leave the Peninsula.

And then there

The

room

black now, except for a few rays of neon from the sign, MIDPOINT. Justin rolled toward was

the

wall,

Mapp's

but

face

the

blinking

seem

He rolled back. On

the

off on

off on

...

of the

rhythm

made

light

to grow from

cracks

...

between

Enoch

pine knots. ...

the

it had

sections

of the road and it carried him to questions that he

wanted not to ask.

Of course, when he finished his

degree his fam­

ily would take pleasure in it. Pleasure is no decent

word, let it be X. X then equalled the sun on his back, picking tomatoes with Henry William, and wouldn't his mother have howled if she'd known

he'd

picked

with

tomatoes

she would have been very have Taken was

never

Steps

...

Henry William, calm but

no

she would

perhaps that was why he coming back, though

able to arrange

there had been no

screaming, just silent quarrels

with her and with himself, looks with which no one could argue and he had bent to the parental

Will and had not come back before it was too late.

Tomorrow night he would drive back to the uni­

versity. On were

...

off

on

the road to the

...

He wondered if this

place where

one

no

longer 33

watched the

picture but stepped into it. (Impos­ sible where was his sense impossible tonight, had he left it in Connecticut?) ...

.

He waved

his hand

.

.

the blanket.

There, everything was in order again, the Album closed.

Next event on that schedule he called living, to to sleep, to sleep.

He slept

as

one

over

stretched through the middle of the field, down to the water. Although no postal rider had taken the

eighty years, the oyster shell surface lay just below a film of topsoil, waiting to gnaw the plowshare, and so the old road lay unmolested route for

in the middle of the field. His eyes now took this path that he and Henry William, the two of them

like

a

pair of

summers

met him

so

grown unable to dream.

taken.

eyes, had often on the way.

Many

The ocean water at the mouth of Onanick Chan­ nel

bewitched, Henry William had told him.

was

II

It buoyed them up and carried them out a hundred

The farm lay almost four miles from the high­

yards into the protected cove behind the sandbar and then they would come ashore, every time a

way, within sight of the ocean.

Perhaps it was the

morning sun on the water that he wanted to see as much as the farm, or perhaps, as another part himself

of

cynically pretended

was

the

whole

truth, he could not face his Aunt Hope nor what would remain of his uncle after his stroke. They must have taken Uncle

Enoch into town to his

sister's house, to be nursed. And so with a shake his shoulders, behind the wheel of the car,

of

Justin tried to make all of his in

move

one

The road

quarreling selves

direction.

He

was

watched for the

old

house to

appear

around every bend, and when at last he turned

a

him, he held his breath. Twice as large as his mind had photo­ graphed it. Such a bright yellow paint would have curve

and

looked

so

saw

it there in front of

tasteless in Connecticut that he'd for­

gotten it was just that shade, but here with the green trees crowding up to the lawn, with the gray barn behind and the green fields full of blos­ soming soybeans, a white house would have stuck out like clean fingers on a bean picker. Or it would

have been fl�cked with dust before the

paint had

dried.

He

from

up

It

mouth.

the

wasn't

work like

swimming, it was like being carried in your moth­ er's

arms.

A rattle of the porch screen drew his breath in.

When he turned he

shoulder

saw

the old man,

heavily against the rusting

watching him like

animal

an

resting one and

screen

contented

grown

with its cage.

Justin hurried to the porch door and stepped in.

"Uncle

Enoch.

it's

Uncle, the

Justy. old

Remember

stared Hearing name, him at then the the eyes through postal road, followed something up the road and rested with curiosity on Justin. "Uncle, it's Justy. Your neph­ me?"

teasing him, turning first into a narrow black ribbon that led away from the high­ way and between the loblolly pines, until it be­ came a dirt strip rutted from the rains, patched with oyster shells and disguised under pine nee­ dles.

ways

ew.

the

I've come to-to

see

man

you, Uncle Enoch."

The old man held out a hand, weakly

as though Justy shook it, and when the hand came out again uncertainly, he shook it once more.

"Let's sit down, Uncle." Justin waited awkwardly for the old man to let himself into a

it were

a

paw.

wicker chair and than sat in the across

from him.

swinging couch

"Well," he said. "It

sure

has

long time. How are you, Uncle?" And he answered for the old man, "You look just fine, real well. Well ." he smiled as vigorously as he could, and finally saw an echo of his smile on been

a

.

.

the old man's face. Justin wished he could feel

only

a

concern

or

pity

or

something

he

could

approve of in himself-instead he felt fascinated was

annoyed than he wished to be

more

that the place looked

so

trim. When his aunt had

written him of Uncle Enoch's stroke, he had im­ agined himself charging in to the rescue, arrang­

ing to have the grass mowed and the fields har­ vested, paying stoic calls on what was left of the man he had known and then departing, duty done, and perhaps writing a brief note to his father to tell him how his neglected elder brother was

getting

on.

That had seemed

a

sensible role,

by the thin-veined hands and the relaxed expres­ sion in the staring blue eyes of the face. The eyes drifted from Justin to the trees or to an imaginary person behind him, coming up the postal road.

Justin hardly realized that the photograph was of the

same

face.

The

old

man's

soft

hair

was

brushed back, cut short and unevenly like a small

boy's. His eyes were opened wide, and where a bone had worked the cheek in and out when his

a

uncle was angry, now there was only the curious,

useful one, that could not be attacked by the side

lips-parted expression of a child.

"Who's keeping house, Uncle? Is someone tak­ He ing care of, well, things? Is Aunt

of him which attacked him with every complex of the

psychologists, every uncertainty

every sin of the theologians, which he could concoct him­

self-at least it

was

this could be

escape.

His over

34

an

more

feet followed his the

fields.

The

sensible than

eyes

thinking

around the house,

abandoned

postal

route

"

....

stopped as the old man waved his left hand and angrily into his trouser pocket, in a gesture Justin remembered.

"Hell, naw." The old man seemed looking for thrust the other

other words.

"It's

" ...

he nodded toward the

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

kitchen, inside the porch doorway. "It's her," he said at last, pleased with himself.

Justin

the

be satisfied with

to

pretended

an­

poles. When he reached the kitchen door, he thought he would ask if he could help.

Instead he reached out and accepted three fish

"That's nice," he said. "I'm glad to hear it." He saw that the old man leaned back in

which she handed him. She leaned her head to one

his chair and looked out

tanned

swer.

over

the

treetops

once

Justin got up, thinking he would look inside,

more.

but the old man turned his chair toward him and

few moments he watched the trees with

a

his uncle. Then he looked again at the postal road,

finally at the fields of soybeans.

and

He scolded

himself for not speaking to the old man and he began again. "There aren't any tomatoes or sweet "

potatoes or

...

he watched the old man's face

darken. "But then, the soybeans look good grow­ ing, don't they? Nice even rows, hardly a weed.

Nobody

had

ever

fields

cleaner

than

did.

you

Uncle." He broke off, feeling he had addressed

a

corpse, using the past tense as he so often did of himself. (Justin Mapp, said the elder brother in

himself, just what did you expect? Coward. Elder brother was drowning out the little voice that cried duty duty duty and four selves quarrelled with the foolish one that wandered up the postal road.

This

man

been this man's

had been his uncle

nephew

...

or

had been

had

he

had

...

been, this sense of having been at twenty-four was not even tragic, only ludicrous.)

"Mnephew used to," the old man began thickly to this stranger on the couch, "mnephew used to drive the

...

I

"

the

.

fields, drove her up and down

.

.

."

his eyes counted the trees and watched the postal road

again. Justin hoped he would doze off. "He

used

to

matoes

drive

her

.

.

clean

.

atoes

saw

instead the

plants, struggling

clean

to­

up

rows

of soy­

of

rows

in the sun,

prize tomato bearing heavy

fruit.

"Uncle," he said again. "You remember

me,

I'm Justy."

"Mind you leave the 'em."

mumbled

him

without

the

old

seeing

man

him.

and

then

"Did

j'no

Jus'y ?"

Justin

the

Gutting

Mapp straightened himself in his chair,

angry that his eyes were growing hot for the

ond time in two

He

days. he saw a blur in the doorway.

was

angrier

sec­

yet when

"Young Mistah Mapp, we been waitin' on ya."

A huge woman held into a faded cotton dress was

the

remembered

he

hadn't

she hear'd about the will." She took the fish from

plopped them into the crackling pan. "Ain't that something, now, a stove you just turn the handle and watch. Sizzle, sizzle, jump

his hands

and

"It

long

were

a

" ...

hot one, 'last

and my nephew come up to help dig out the bad plants. You could have served the sun on a plate for

a

fried egg, if you could have found it in all of haze."

mess

Justin

began

rinsing his

as

followed

her

she walked. Her

sunk into her shoes like stout telegraph

1962

hands.

"How

long

"

ago

...

"Running water, too, now ain't that somethin'.

Running water and a real stove to heat it on. Hee, I do enjoy myself!" long ago

" ...

Justin

last

began again.

Just

August, boy.

"Why, dropped over in field, he did, and the tractor running up the rows, wrecking everything. My nephew come up to help me clean out the damp rot, don't you know;

the

and there he

was.

Oh

me.

Just like Mr.

Betsey

two years ago. Work harder than the devil.

An'

oh he missed you, he did. Used to talk about you all the time, he did."

He saw her watching him closely. "I've been at

off

He

August. Sizzle, sizzle.

Ooh, I most melted away, I did. Right warm and damp, we had a lot of damp rot in the potatoes

of her dress bloom and close

Spring,

In the on

the

doorway. already leaving into the kitchen, watching the large blue flowers

legs

trial.

heads," she said. "It fla­

he

fish,

noon

the university for quite

the

were

on

day before. The smell went to his head and the look of their glassy eyes made him lean against the sink slightly. "I sure do appreciate your taking care of him," he said as he glared at the staring fish. "I was afraid he'd have to be in town, you know, at my aunt's. It's good for him to be here on his own place."

"Mind you leave the heads on," she said again.

"My aunt only wrote two weeks ago. How long ago did, well, when exactly was his stroke?" He cut deliberately, wondering what good reason there was for his shaking, he who had dissected so many specimens.

"Oh, don't expect as how she wrote till eaten since

"How

"Helloson," at

was

vors

that

Now they both looked out over the

looked

that he

scraper and set to work

a

fish.

" ...

beans and

'em up

now

sink he found

"How

man

clean

"My nephew's son caught

to the channel."

lil' fish!"

...

.

straight

...

nodded his head forward intently, "Drive 'er up and down never missed a weed .

from the soil.

a

could have been cut

that

"

"Tractor?

The old

broad smile worked its way through

a

face

He realized

frowned, so he sat down again.

For

side and

a

while, and I can't leave

my work very well. In fact I've only got two days as

it is."

And then the whole of

him. "Last August, last August.

its

struck

Why didn't some35

body tell me?" He realized when he'd said it, was nothing to tell then. "Isn't there any­ I thing can do?" he heard himself whisper. "Isn't there anything I can do, Mrs there

"

....

"Mrs. Betsey. Child, don't you listen to nothing?" She grinned again .

"

"Isn't there anything

He was nearly shout-

ing.

"Go wash up your face and take off that pretty

jacket 'fore you spill on it," she said. "Young Mistah Mapp, a woman'd think you was going to church." He turned to leave the to

she

uncle,"

your

called.

room.

She

"And talk

watched

him

search the bottom of his pockets for something to say. Her smile faded and came again, softer, like a fresh plowed furrow. "Tell him what you done

last, and if you get through 'fore things is fixed, tell him over. It won't make

since he

saw

you

him no never mind."

He walked out to the

porch.

"Uncle Enoch," he began, "I thought you might like

to

hear

waited for

a

about what I've nod

been

and then went

on

doing."

He

did like that, and I started work at the uni­

versity. Research. You'll never guess what I'm doing research on, Uncle." He hoped for a look of interest, and finally decided to watch the trees that his uncle was watching. "I'm working with emb with chickens, Uncle. Only they aren't ...

beautiful Reds like the coop.

You

ones

remember how

you had in the barn we

chased them the

afternoon they got loose, how we finally found the old

hen

back

way

thought there was

a

up

the

telegraph cut?" He

flicker of smile.

painted metal barrel top. It it, and green trim. She placed the plates around the small table and pushed the old man's chair up to it. "There you is," she that looked like

a

on

announced. "You gotta try this mess of fish. Your nephew Justy caught 'em for you this morning," she

said, winking at Justin. The old man smiled

and

picked up his fork.

They got through

the

interest in. Justin

meal

by Mrs. Betsey's

willing to talk, it kept him from seeing the glassy eye of the fish on his plate and from thinking about the way his stom­

"Now I got a hen," she said lifting another bite into the old man's mouth, "goes moping about the

yard like a girl wants to be took dancing."

"I'm afraid I don't know much about that," he said. The fish eye looked accusingly out of the plate. His head wanted something to rest on. "I

just study little chicks."

"Just hatched?"

"Well, just before they're hatched."

She had the good grace to change the subject.

"They pay you good?"

"Not so very good."

"Got a gal yet?" She winked at him.

"No, not yet. Not much time for that."

"What you

was

Her nod was most polite.

When the meal

doing

you

for

a

living

now,

Mistah

"Well, I'm sity. I'm in

was

over, she took the

finally

for his nap. The motionless warm air and the swaying of the couch had nearly put him

old

man

to sleep while she was gone. He was in the middle

of the tomato

field, bending over the row across

from Henry William, when he saw her feet across from him. He

straightened up. "I can't stay but day," he started. "1 just came to see if I could

help,

to be

sure

.

.

.

well,

1

thought Aunt Hope

would be taking care of him. 1 thought it had only

just happened, you see." What he was saying sounded miserable to one of himselves, but the others said, so you've finally been honest enough to admit you've had enough of this nonsense. He saw her nodding and felt she wasn't grinning, even

inside, now. right nice if

you

she said. "It won't be such

could

stay a long while,

while," you know, and then you can get back to whatever you want to get back to. She pulled her sagging body up suddenly and tugged at her dress. "Lord, boy. Don't be so glum about it, we don't anybody live for ever. But if you could stay a spell."

He wanted to

a

speak, he began to say that he experiments and that there

had to get back to his was

Mapp?"

nothing he could do-but that sounded like

parents-that with all his talking to himself ready for this be­ cause he'd forgotten about leaving himself here ten years ago, that what he was looking for, yes, he had come here looking for something, stupid his

graduate assistant at the univer­ the biology department." a

"Biology. That ain't what our potatoes got, but pretty near it. Oh, it was terrible damp weather and they got all moulded on the leaves. Is it awful 36

doing if you ain't got a gal?"

"Well, I take pictures sometimes. The university pays for pictures of the lab to use in the alumni magazine."

ach felt.

"What

"

"It would be

grace. She guided the old man's fork and asked Justin questions, which the old man began to take an

stance.

a

Mrs. Betsey came then with a round metal tray

had poinsettias

"

...

without it.

"Anyway, I finished college-you remember that beautiful book you sent me when I graduated, I sure

damp where you is? You don't look terrible healthy youself."

"No, not so damp. You see, biology is a subject like geometry or well "Had a brother onc't got all through high school.

He was right good at geometry. Drew me little pictures on my cake frosting."

"I study plants and animals, chickens for in­

and his Album he hadn't been

as

it was, and what it was was gone in his uncle's

NORTHWESTERN

TRI -QU ARTERLY

face and he didn't know where

else, good God,

there wasn't any place to look for it, and that if all this sounded like selfish talk when you'd bC(,11 told the uncle who

was

most of the

parents in

your life was going to die, he couldn't help it, because that was how he was-selfish and protect­

(It will rain, Uncle. Best county, son. And we can use Uncle.

We He can use it, Justy.) it, turned slowly from the window and got ready for bed, putting on his uncle's pajamas, which Mrs. Betsey had left on the opened bed covers. the

ed with riflery and biology and all the other things he'd learned to protect himself, from well, maybe from this

but he said none of this, and only bit

...

his lip hard, like a child, and put his head between his knees to keep from

falling over. When he felt him, huge and soft, he did not move, but stared silently at the floor, tasting salt in his mouth and feeling ashamed of his tears.

her

around

arm

He spent the afternoon silently on the porch, thinking not of himselves, as he usually did, but of pine trees and plowing. "Wear an old hat when you go aplowing," Henry William had warned him with round, earnest eyes. "Oh, you'll see why, Mista'h Mapp, you'll see." And that serious laugh that showed his white teeth. How those gulls gath­ ered, when the two of them ran the tractor up the field. Before they could get once around with the plow, he learning to drive and Henry William standing on the hitching bar of the tractor, hang­ ing onto the back of his jacket, they saw two hundred gulls beating their wings and squawking over their heads, some soft gray, some masked with black. When they had come full circle around the huge field and begun plowing the next furrow, laying it softly beside the first one, Justin watched these ermine kings collect grubs in the fresh

earth. He was afraid the tractor tires would catch

them, but as he reached them they flew up from under the tractor, circling about the human heads, squawking and leaving white droppings on his hat. "Eat hearty, Mistah Gull, Suh! See, I told you you'd see why you wear a hat, Mistah Mapp."

It was awful, but with Henry William he could laugh.

They ate supper quietly, too, with the old man asking him in half belief, "Did you know mneph­ ew?" After supper he noticed without protesting that Mrs. Betsey was carrying his suitcase up­ stairs. He sat

the couch until she

on

came

down

moon

in thin haze.

damn weather

He

was

in the

man

afraid that

tonight he might

to dream, but his mind poured into the dark, through an invisible crack, into an empty night.

Slowly, in the lightening morning, he listened while a mocking bird poured notes into the cup which Justin held in the sleep-stiffened fingers of his mind. When the notes ceased, he dumped them like coffee grounds and went back to sleep.

III

Since it was now mid-morning of the second day, and Mrs. Betsey had already answered two early phone calls from Aunt Hope-the first to know if he had arrived, the second to inquire if he were up yet, he resolved to pay his respects (the financial expression seemed appropriate) before his aunt "Took Steps." Above all, he did not want her

to

come

the farm to fetch him.

out to

he set out with Mrs.

Betsey's

"up the neck and left a piece, by the drygoods store and past the corner, you can't miss such a big white 'house"-and thus he arrived in his aunt's parlor by eleven, but only when invited twice.

Paintings of pale, manly children gathered fa­

milially about a brave sad-eyed dog, or a grave sad-eyed mother, scarred the living room walls.

The threadbare rugs suited the black horsehair­ covered sofa and the heavy drapes were success­

ful

in

barring

the

Aunt

sunlight.

floor and kissed him that merely not

the cheek with

on

yet warm,

was peeling and one of the steps cracked, the old wood worn. He caught him­ self estimating the cost of enamel and knew he was staying until something broken and worn

she

him

led

filled with

pected him to t-ake

The

room

the bed

was

was

glass and

one

exactly the

same:

the

quilt

to

on

a

few moments,

at the

black line of the tree tops and then up at the sky, where fragile clouds were blowing, covering

Spring,

1962

warm

"Opuntia Chihuhuensis," pride.

sun

porch,

that she

saw

biological

ex­

interest in

she

remarked

with

blue-gray bit of rubber with long spines. yes, the glochids are hand­ he some," said, sifting through mental pages of forgotten and ignored biology.

Justin

saw

brown

a

"Ah

"Thankyou, dear."

one

looking

the

smell of earth unlike the

casual

of his; bookcases, of oak, were waiting. He sat on the

window sill for

the two old

a

a

her collection of cacti.

the stairbacks

away had been made new.

was

smile

a

straightened her lips. As the tea was

rich smell of the fields. Justin

was

a

ing cold even late this July morning, came silent­ ly from the edge of the rug onto the polished

Mapp."

creaking stairs, telling

in

Hope,

starched green blouse buttoned at the throat, look­

which

He went then up the

So

careful directions­

and said, "Your bed's all tucked up, young Mistah

himself there was no reason to stay. The paint of

be able

He wondered how

the

soon

he could

politely leave

steaming porch.

"Sclerocactus Polyancistrus," she said. He a

mass

of

spines with nothing but

a

saw

tiny sugges37

of green core suggesting it was alive. He imagined it briefly as the corpse of a self-protect­

tion

"Don't let her get you into don't owe her '8 thing." "

a

corner, dear!

You

ing old maid.

"The beauty of the species," said his aunt, "lies in the arrangement of the spines. The pat­ terns are numerous, as I'm sure you know, dear.

if his wife didn't tell you about it, well, you're the

Here is another variety." She waved to

only one that hasn't been told."

farther back

trough

on

a narrow

"Owe

"I haven't

Enoch

the porch.

"They bloom so seldom," he said, looking for a plant near the doorway to study. He felt him­ self prickling with the heat. "I imagine it's a great thrill to you when they bloom." was caught by a pink flower delicately out of place. The fragile flower was only partially opened, brilliant, fresh, touched with sticky dew. She saw his interest and came to it, standing proudly, coldly, possessively it as she might have with her children. near Justin stared again at the blossom, as though

afraid

to

believe.

"Echinocereus

Reichenbachi.

They do flower so seldom, you know."

He would have touched it

friend, but she reminded him that their tea was waiting. as

a

Back in the

parlor, on the prickly horsehair sipping lukewarm tea, Aunt Hope to ask him a few questions. thought good couch

cover,

tried tea

very wise of you to leave him

calculation

The

on

his

own

she

successful;

was

place."

nodded

in

trapped agreement.

...

cup and took

a

breath with which

explain himself. "Do be careful where you put that, Justin. It leaves such marks on the furni­ to

ture." He took the cup from the small varnished table and looked for a saucer. There was none.

"I've been so busy the last few years

...

for

a

"That

could do anything

suppose

right mind

as .

.

it is.

I

only here

thought I'd

see

if I

."

she

than he would be with either of us.

"He left

across

the

too beautiful to fit the

room

was."

something," said Justin

me

uncom­

fortably.

"Something? Everything."

He looked

at his

aunt

now.

Her

ankles

were

twisted tightly against each other, and the leather in the toes of her shoes worked in and out, in a seen the way he had seen the

way he had

...

jaw bone of his uncle working the cheek in and out, in and out. He was profoundly amused, sadly amused.

"That time is are

a

long way off," he lied.

intelligent people," said his aunt. "We

know that isn't

so.

We must face up to the tragic

truths of life. We must prepare

" ...

"Auntie," he said to hurry things. "I can't be running a farm at long distance from Connecticut. want to sell his

farm," and now that he thought

perhaps that was why his uncle had chosen him for his heir, "so what do you advise?" He of it

hoped he sounded collected, though he felt his eyes resting on the painted blossoms. They were carefully detailed at the tips, blooming confidently into rich color at the fullest part of the pitcher.

"I do know

a

man

who'd rent it, if

you're not

quarrelsome with him about the amount. Or if you wish to

just turn things over to me, when you're dear, I'd work something out for

"I'm sure it will work out." He got up, forget­ ting the empty tea cup. It dropped onto the rug, rolled sideways but did not break. He replaced it on

the table. This time his aunt did not correct

him.

He remembered the pitcher now. There was an at

a

room.

"I don't suppose she has mentioned the will to

you."

The disinterested tone of her words startled him from his admiration of the pitcher. He waited for

watching a glow behind her rouged cheeks which was not the pink of the blossoms.

38

ever

"

pitcher of milk glass, painted with soft pink blossoms, which

her to go on,

he

as

away, of course,

said with the unkindest of seems," "he is smiles, happier with the Betsey woman

was

three years ago," said his aunt. "I have to admit he was as much in his

was we

"

short time

Justin stared

cup

you.

that I couldn't really leave. I'm

"It

bring them together until he saw his sitting on his knee and the room going

slowly around it. "Told what?"

" ...

"Nonsense." "

Betsey witness it, and

Uncle Enoch must have known that. But I wouldn't

"Well, young man," she said at last, "it cer­ tainly has been a long time since I've seen you."

Her eyes, with the glitter of maiden aunts, passed judgment on him. Now hers was the winning cal­ He culation, but the wheel would turn' again set down his

more.

you understand. But

will,

fit to have Mr.

saw

to

"We

Betsey has taken good care of him, you needn't worry." He calculated. "It was really

the

The words sounded emptier than his tea cup. pieces of something drifted apart and he

"Enoch is about the same, I imagine?"

"Mrs.

seen

Broken

And then his eye

that seemed

he said and waited for

...

old tea set which had

grandfather's home, milkglass cups and

belonged in Justin's great­ tea set of softly painted this pitcher, which Uncle

a

Enoch, as the eldest of the three children in his generation, had owned.

"Company china," he said. "That's what Uncle it, isn't it?"

Enoch used to call

The twisted ankles of Aunt Hope untwisted and she stood. "I use it to water the cacti, dear."

NORTH WESTERN

TRI -QU ARTERLY

ARTHROPODA

feeling his hand rismg, again as she watched him with a cold, suspicious detachment. Now he hated her with the chilling exasperation in which He hated her violently,

But then he looked at her

one

hates

mirror.

a

"The tea was refreshing," he said. "But I think "But you haven't said a word to me about your

day," he said and then heard his

...

man

asleep in the afternoon

porch, mouth round and empty, head nodding. And so he found his camera in the trunk sun on

the

walking on the road be­ amusing himself at first by setting up the tripod to take close-ups of the fragile white soy bean blossoms. The breeze would disappear until he had them focused and then they would begin to bend and quiver, making him wait for their pleasure. A squirrel had stopped his nut hunting to watch, reminding Justin of a long tramp through the brush which he and Henry William made one day. They were hunting for a squirrel then, to prove themselves with Henry William's .22, but the word had gotten around and the squirrels were gone. Now, when Justin raised his camera, the squirrel posed and eyed him, waited for the click. Then he ran behind a log at the edge of the woods. When Justin reached the log, there was nothing but the flash of a red tail on a nearby tree. of the

car

and started

tween the field and the woods,

Justin hunted

in

earnest

now,

snapping here

where the pattern of light on the floor of the woods attracted him, there where a

branch 'and trusted his

a

lizard sat calmly on coat to

spotted

blend

into the orange patches on the pine bark. Under stone he found four beetles and a sluggish

a

worm.

He had

reached

for

the

largest of the

specimen, when realizing what he was doing he pulled back his hand and rolled the stone back into place. beetles

as

a

In the August sun of ten years ago, when the jelly fish took over the cove, he and Henry Wil­

liam had taken long walks up the beach into the marsh. How they laughed at the thousands of tiny sand crabs that suddenly

came

out from between

their toes.

"They won't bite, Henry William. See, I'm not scared! The gritty mud at the marsh edge was alive with them, scampering sideways down to the water. Down each other's backs stuck them, and Justin had kept the

one

bottles, pickled and labeled.

sun

was

sat on the stone

high, the birds were silent. He awhile, smelling the warm pine,

and then brushed the

ants

from

shoes

his

and

walked.

words. So he had already decided to stay another

He found the old

best known in

Sand Crab

His parents had sent him to camp the next year.

The

embryo experiments. And I'm so interested."

day

common name: were

I ought to get back now. Thank you so much."

"Another

Decapoda Emirita (Hippa)

they

he found

in his

pocket when he undressed that night. He a small bottIe, to show his par­ ents when he went home, only to discover it did

had pickled it in

In a field beyond his uncle's farm he watched potato pickers. A big Negro was lording it on the seat of the tractor, watching the pickers and turn­ ing over the hills with a deep-set plow. Ten pick­ ers followed slowly behind the tractor, dropping farther from it all the time. They hunted in the mounds of earth and pulled out the potatoes, throwing them into burlap sacks. Bending low, then straightening into a half-way bend, they made a rhythmic pattern of red bandannas and blue or khaki work shirts. Nearby, three pickers leaned against the trunk, where empty sacks were piled. They smoked and laughed at each other, tossing phrases he could catch no word of. He felt a deeply ridiculous envy of potato pickers, who knew without question that it was theirs to sack

potatoes.

Mrs.

Betsey was leaning over the sink, cutting laughing to herself, when he came in. "Hee, hee," she said, shaking her blue cotton flowers, "now most folks go for a walk when they go walking, but you carry a hunting bag."

"That's my camera case. I use it for specimens up beans and

too."

"Looks like

a

hunting bag to me." She sliced

beans and didn't look at the camera he was

more

holding out to show her. "What you hunting?"

He showed her the picture. "It doesn't look much like him now, does it?" he said.

"He

were

felt she

was

a

handsome one,

weren't he?"

being polite.

I've remembered him like this for now

I'm not

remember.

He

sure

whether it's he

or

so

long that

the picture I

"

"Well, it's a fair likeness." She read his frown.

"Course, young Mistah Mapp, who ever heard of a man looking one way for a whole day, let alone all those years."

And

so

he put the

camera

and the

photograph

away and stuffed his hunting bag in the closet.

He spent an evening of evenings in his old room.

There had been too many books

on

anatomy and

physiological chemistry and maturation in embry­ onic cells since those soft summer nights, like this

one,

when

the

land

breeze

blew

back

the

semblance turned into a "desirable factor" and he

yellowed, papery old curtains and cooled the per­ spiration on his neck as he sat before the glass doors of the book case, greedily reading the titles.

The sun of the day and the warm air of the eve­

found that many specimens of life, like

ning had so far turned his head that he could re-

not

even

remind him of the

the marsh

Spring,

silly little crabs on

edge. But somehow that lack of

1962

re­

39

read

The Talisman that evening without the slightest embarrassment at himself. He thanked Sir Walter, best knight of them all, for the glory of Saladin and of the great-hearted Crusader Rich­ ard in this world of unabashed coincidences.

It

nearly midnight when he finished, but he could not end his reading there. He moved his

was

leather

brown

smooth

cushion

cabinet

oak

of

across

his

the

floor

uncle's

to

the

books.

The

had been his own, filled by his uncle with the great romances, from Sinbad to Arthur.

glass

wave

pages were blurring, but he continued to his hand and rant in a whisper for the audi­

ence

of his five selves:

The

Hope. I do believe, as you say, that fear tends much to men's Good, to make them right at their beginning to go on pilgrimage ...

He

night with a small candle, a small bulb, by in all these books, read, to wonder

the

one

But the oak cabinet he had

never

opened, it had

always been "not yet" when he asked. And so he opened it now with the same excitement he had felt opening the glass years ago. He could not help wondering of the photograph and of the defiant eyes.

The shelf was trim

as

the fields had been when

face then, of old John Bunyan or of Mapp, bending fiercely the pages, lighting a

saw

Enoch

which to

...

there one man fit to laugh at the others?

was

Hope. Well said; I believe you have said the truth.

Are we now almost got past the Enchanted Ground?

Christian. Why? are you weary of this discourse?

Hope. No, verily, but that I would know where we are.

Christian. We have not now above two miles further to go thereon. But let us return to our matter ...

Enoch Mapp had been there. The books were old:

Justin

many of the leather bindings were cracked and powdering with age. They were ordered, backs

eyes. Here he was on the desert, on driving the camel on

forming perfect line across the shelves of the book case. A whole shelf of agricultural books,

off

a

then a forbidding

of theology texts. That

on

with

prised Justin. The third shelf held a full set of Dickens and most of Scott, with spaces the pre­

There

moved to Justin's

The fourth shelf

waterfall of print, sliding before the

.

.

.

seeking Saladin, .

.

off

on

.

.

.

His strong hands gripped leather reins

...

courage of one who knows whom he and what general he serves. Excelsior!

the

seeks

cise size of the volumes of Scott which had been

a

.

sur­

row

was

lay the oasis just ahead, with its blinking sign. There waved the loblolly pines in the cool damp evening air of the desert. There lay neon

the

the contented camels that stared at him like wise

motley-paper pamphlets yellowed with age and then an assorted line of books, short and tall.

squirrels. Saladin was shaking his lance, a great brown thorn of a weapon, a glochid that might impale you. And Suh Justin, with all the dignity and the drooping-shouldered superiority of the bearer of the white man's burden, slid with care from his hiccoughing camel. He noticed that the

case.

was

most

Some

were

old

student editions, of cheap hard

black bindings on which the titles could no longer be seen. The visible ones were alphabetical-Dar­ win, Hardy, Hausman, Huxley, Renan. It was on this shelf that one book sat deeper than its neigh­ bors, turned backwards so that its pages showed instead of the

binding.

pulled the book delicately from the shelf. red leather binding dropped crumbs on the

Justin Its

floor and left

a

stain on his hands. He turned the

stiff pages, starched and scorched with time, until he found the title page. Pilgrim's Progress. He

laughed at his expectations, but he did not put it back-instead he moved his lamp to the open window and placed his cushion there. He sat there in the breeze, reading farther and farther into the night, drawn along by the moralistic capitals that marched across the pages, laughing at Old Bunyan in his dank prison and too at Young Mapp, sitting in a damp draft ...

Then Prudence thought good to ask him questions, and desired his answer to them.

a

few

Prudence. Do you not think sometimes of the coun­ try from whence you came?

Christian. Yea, but with much shame and detesta­ tion. Truly, if I had been mindful of that country from whence I came out, I might have had the op­ portunity to have returned; but now I desire a better

country

wore

a

great blue flowered sash, cut of

hand. "I he

charged by Richard Coeur de Lion," began, wondering dimly what speech he was am

about to utter.

and

Saladin

with

a

tea

"Do

bitterly, you not think country from whence you came?" Justin, unmoved by the seductive land breeze, raised his weapon and continued, "To

cup

muttered

saluted him

sometimes

of

the

to the death." challenge you to single combat "Nonsense," said Saladin. "And be careful where you put that thing, it does scratch the furniture ...

so." Now Saladin moved closer, and Justin could see that he was dressed in green from beard to

sandal, his starched shirt buttoned at the throat, tightly. Justin raised the sword which the desert air was melting, set it for fS and 1/50, and with the

deadly click the sword and the dread enemy

melted away.

Henry William's untroubled laugh echoed in the desert, sweeping away the studious camels. Justin woke himself with his

laughing.

...

Prudence. Do you not yet bear away with you some of the things that you were conversant withal?

Christian. Yes, but greatly against my will; especial­ ly my inward and carnal cogitations ...

40

Saladin

the most fine spun cotton feed bags. Now Justin saw himself walking toward the Saladin, sword in

There

the face in front of him, with stub­ shaking him. It was a woman's face, he finally realized, Mrs. Betsey's face. was

born eyes,

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

He's gone, Justin heard.

Then he was awake.

"He just went in his sleep," she was saying.

He looked at her closely-she wasn't crying, but her voice

was

"Keeping watch" would have been in order, but a body nude of life, drank on the and so they tea porch and word­

it seemed indecent to watch

dry and low.

"I

thought

lessly watched the sun rise no redder than usual.

I heard

crying, but when I went in the room it was just too quiet. He's gone and left."

Justin did not answer. He put aside the book in

his lap and got up.

The bare bulb of the wall light by the door made shadows in the covers and on the face. The old man's skin matched the yellowed wallpaper, with its fine rose flowers almost faded away and its branching cracks and peelings. The head faced the window with staring eyes.

hoping he would

only a cadaver. He cursed himself for wondering only about himself, and then cursed his curse. He tried to think, the poor old fellow, who was so good to me years ago, has his rest. He tried to think it, but he was suddenly glad that he didn't really think any such thing. He stopped thinking for at least two minutes and looked at the old man and then the window, from which the postal road was barely visible in the before dawn shadows. He suddenly wondered how long it had been since he had not thought about himself and himselves, how long since he had just thought about nothing, which was the next best thing to something other than yourself, just nothing. Or see

about death, that was almost like thinking about nothing. It rested him more than the early morn­ ing breeze. All quarrels were quiet, even the birds outside were unready to peep the first note.

The

magic was short. Growing light made the starchy face repulsive. Custom took its place in Justin's mind, and some unworded peace with the old man gave way to worded pity. He looked again at Mrs. Betsey and began wondering again what she had wanted from the old man. He looked at

himself, knowing

there

something he had wanted from Uncle Enoch, something for again

The morning of this third day was aging quickly he made the inevitable phone call. Aunt Hope appeared with the speed of a grubhunting gull, her gray dress and her concerned sadness looking bought and hung in the closet for the when

occasion. Her kiss froze his cheek.

At the door of the

Justin was terrified of himself, not

IV

was

elbow

on

the

room

molding,

he waited,

while

leaning one paid her re­

she

spects. He wanted to return her entertainment and shout, "Homo Sapiens. They bloom so seldom, you know." She was being so correct.

"Really, Justin," she said with quiet piety as

pulled the sheet over the eyes that stared at postal road. "I can see it's a good thing I'm here to take care of things."

They went downstairs and sipped the tea that Mrs. Betsey poured with cautious tips of the pot and served with cold furrowed looks that caught Justin's eyes and escaped Miss Mapp's entirely.

"I have such a nice spot picked out," Aunt Hope told him consolingly.

"Spot?"

"In the churchyard. Near the Parks'. Quite respectable. Large enough"-she sipped in resig­ nation-"for me to lie with him, when the time she

the

comes."

"Hmm." "It's only a question of the papers. I've

talked to the which

sign

did

She waited

sexton."

not

"Of

come.

already

for

course,

his nod, you should

" ...

"I?" She drew herself up,

injured.

"I

surely thought,

ar­ Justin, that you would take care of the of estate.

At out Enoch's rangements least, I certainly thought that was how you would have .

.

money or a place to live or useful to do and if his was something

himself. If hers

something

was

he hunted for himself,

inheritance in

an

inheritance that wasn't

will, then who was to the magic passed and he blamed judge Again her fretfully for not crying, just a little. He felt warm tears in his eyes and had congratulated before he himself realized they were selfish, showy tears. He blamed her anyway, and walked an

a

paper

...

eyes

were

still

Justin reached down,

close them

and

wanted it."

"Naturally," he said. "I'll take thing."

to

out

the

window.

staring righteously and dutifully, to

cover

them

with

the

sheet.

His hand was nearly touching them, nearly shad­ owing them from the light of the window, when he heard the low words of Mrs. Betsey.

This time he nodded.

"Perhaps this afternoon?"

She tried to sound

Mrs. Betsey refilled the tea cup,

carefully bring­ ing liquid quivering just above the edge of the cup. It could not be picked up. the

"This

to

dome

a

afternoon," said Justin.

Aunt Hope rose to leave. "The best part is the shade. Such a nice wide tree, keeps the sun off the grass all

They understood each other.

place. Just

1962

of every-

"You onLy need sign the papers."

"Don't you dare."

Spring,

care

unconcerned.

to the corpse.

The

.

...

day long. Such

as

a

cool, comfortable

he would have wanted

" ...

41

Would have wanted, would have wanted. "He always wanted," said Justin, "to be in the sun."

She wilted into her starched collar.

"Justin!"

Her face grew puffy and her breath short. "At time like this."

So she was getting from

Enoch,

even

a

now, what

she had always wanted, the role of martyr. She was glad, he realized, that he had inherited the

property, and she was glad he had insulted her efforts to now

that

take no

one

care

of

poor

old

else seemed to

Enoch's

care

body

about him.

She was glad to play the suffering sister, she who had

never

played the loving one. It was a better

part. So they each wanted something for them­ selves, and wanted with it to think themselves unselfish. Hurray for Henry William. Even the memory of him might teach him to laugh at

was

by the porch door, about to leave with

cardboard box.

He

a

from behind her and

came

pulled it away.

"What you doing?" she said crossly.

"Unpacking." He pulled out a pair of worn sandals, a small bunch of newspaper that guarded a garden pot of fuzzbuds, and a battered frying pan.

"Those be mine!" She tested him,

"Young Mis­

tah Mapp."

"Just what gives you the right to leave when you know

I'd

starve

Christian.'

on

own

my

cooking. It isn't

,

He pulled the four milkglass tea cups with soft pink blossoms from the bottom of the box.

"Those be mine." They both waited.

"They're very pretty," he said. "Shall we have

himself.

"You know best," he said. "I'll come this after­ to sign the papers." She did not turn to acknowledge his promise.

The spring of the screen door whined. The frame slammed and rattled. And Mrs. Betsey, too,

noon

tea in them

sometimes, when I've come in from

plowing?"

She tilted her head and

grinned, then ordered had, "Mind you wear a hat aplowing, Justin Mapp."

like

the

mother he had

never

Marcia Masters (Mrs. William A. Schmid) is a poet and the daughter of a poet- Edgar Lee Masters. She has received several awards for her poetry, published in "The Saturday Review of Litera­ ture" and "Poetry Magazine," and has served as a trustee of "Poetry Magazine." She lives in Kenil­ worth. At Northwestern she studied under John Crowe Ransom.

One Evening at Mrs. William Vaughan Moody's Father stayed at home the night we went to Mrs.

Moody'sBecause he did not like her politics; And so, shivering with rain and loneliness, We hurried down the streets of brownstone mansions, Past the breathless windows, squinting like owls From out their velvet curtains. on Groveland Looked warm and tempting; And when we pushed the bellThe great door opened onto Clocks, tiptapping.

But Mrs. Moody's house

Stamping our coats off, We shook our curls in place upon And curtsied to Mrs. Moody

our

And feasts went past us, stopped, went past again, Borne through the air by Hindu servants, Turbaned with golden lamplight, and treading barefoot,

Their arms curved up, shapely as urns,And bearing trays, laden with curried dishes, Saffron chickens, kumquats deep in syrup; Chocolates frilled with white narcissi, Or bluebells sprouting leaves of green.

fresh lace collars,

Who led us up the stairway Round a landing banked with fern, Past many doors, and flickering candlesticks, To the quiet of her room, Not made for robes, or lace, or uncapped scents; The ceiling, higher than the trees outside, Stared down, a long ways off, upon a flowering silver brush and comb.

When we carne down, we raced up to the huge square mattress That dangled from above on copper chains; We jumped on it, and pushed, and floated, Kicking our patent leathers as we would kick at flames.

And then we saw the poetsCountryfuls of poets: Some had the rumpled strength of shepherds With voices tousled by the wind;

Others, shy, and slim, were listening to the fire­ Red and sapphire coals cupped in an old iron basket That matched the fences down the street.

42

Women, dressed in smoky colors, Mysterious as Chinese lanterns, Held cigarettes in long jet holders, Ivory, or amber.

Around the firelight, orange and purple mingled: Elephant tusks lay on tables drowsed in Paisley; A samovar that almost puffed away a drapery Sculptured a beggar out of steamThat came to life, and hobbled off A well-fed figure.

Spinsters with dry-wheat bosoms, And rings of garnet or lapis-lazuli, Circled by prairie poets, Exchanging proclamations.

And then Tagore took us aside To hear the seashells of his poems.

And when we left, a few small cakes came with us, And a fan whose life was almost gone; We stepped out' to the street Where the raindrops, like a crowd of urchins, Were playing jacks on Mrs. Moody's steps.

Marcia Masters.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Sympson is a junior in the College 01 Liberal Arts. She was born in Kansas, and (her lather was in JoAnna

the U.S. Air Force) has lived in Florida, Missouri, Okla­

homa, Texas, the Panama Canal Zone, and South Dakota. For the past three summers she has worked as a surgical and obstetrical technician at the Sioux

Valley Hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

VARIATION OF A THEME T he night battered itself against the windows, in, but the artificial trying desperately from the the bed stubbornly beside light lamp refused it admittance. Hester was reading and waiting, trying to be patient, when a pain seared through her abdomen, continuing around and to

down her back.

come

She looked at the clock

the

on

"Fine, Doctor," she replied, "I'm fine."

I thought I'd better come down and see how you were getting along. It won't be too much longer now," he added gently. "I thought I heard you crying. Do you want me to call the welfare worker? Which one was handling your case?"

"Mrs. Bennet, but please, I don't want anyone."

Hester.

"Well,

"Are you sure?"

"I'm very sure."

bedstand and fumbled for the buzzer pinned to the

pillowcase. Her fingers pushed the center in and a nurse came quickly into the room. three

minutes apart now and last "They're about 45 seconds," Hester reported quietly.

The nurse checked her, saying she had dilated four to five centimeters and was doing just fine.

They'd fix a table for her and notify the doctor Hester

thought

matter-of-fact. how she

the

feeling,

was

nurse

She hadn't or

was

the

only one in the labor

rooms

at

It made her angry to think that they not care what happened to her and the

exercises

easier

when

I

showed

the

time

time when she was much younger and loved to

climb

the time.

it

again. It was natural for her to be alone, especially now of all times. She remembered

a

She wouldn't have minded the nurses' blunt be­

that she

once

ask

havior if they had been busy but Hester could see

of those

He left, turning out the lights before he stepped

and

anything.

make

out of the room, and she was alone in warm dark

efficient

if she needed

some

comes."

bothered to

too

even

"Well, try you.

They'll

and

of her progress. And then she left.

By [o Anna Sympson

Sometimes

trees.

school she would take

a

in

the

afternoon

sketching pad

after

attached

to a clipboard, hang it around her neck, put some pencils in her teeth, and climb an old scrub oak a grove of trees behind their house. It gave her freedom, a different perspective, and she could see the bay from the limb, splashing itself

tree in

might baby. After all, wasn't she just as important as any other woman who was getting ready to de­

time she hadn't heard her mother's call and had

liver?

lost all the

She

life

within

lay quietly feeling her, mysterious, frightening. She knew that heaviness would never leave her body. Reaching out she switched off the light by the bed and felt the warm dark blind her panic and make her more the fear of being alone. acutely aware of fear She turned over on her side, her face towards the window, feeling as she did so the wet fluid between her legs. Stars were making themselves known to her through the dark, immediately be­ coming her friends, and suddenly she found her­ self crying, indulging in what she called at times self-pity.

Suddenly she felt a hand gripping her shoulder -

and she turned to face whoever it was.

"How are you doing, Hester?"

Everyone at the hospital called her by her first Miss, or Mrs., just

name, Hester. No last name,

Spring, 1962

on

a

white

sand beach

sense

shadows and of the

she

could

not

see.

One

of time until the deepened dark of changing sky had made her aware

lateness;

and she

remembered how

con­

cerned her mother had been and how relieved to find she

all

right. Her mother had always Odd, but now she was worried about her mother. Things change and people change: nothing, nothing is permanent. Hester knew her parents had wanted to be with her, but was

worried about her.

somehow she wished to spare them at this time.

They never could quite understand why or when she wanted to be alone and now she was alone, terribly, frighteningly alone.

Another pain brought her thoughts back t o the immediate situation. It was unlike the others, more demanding in its hardness, and again she fumbled for the buzzer, perspiration dripping from her forehead.

They said it was air-conditioned in the delivery 43

rooms

but Hester was past feeling hot or cold. All

she was

aware

of was the heaviness in her

body,

him, and knowing this she smiled from

loved

within herself.

fighting itself lower and lower. The huge over­ light rayed heat downwards to her body.

Her feet had been pushed upwards into stirrups, a most undignified position. What if he could see her now? And she laughed aloud privately to her­

to the

self but the others in the room heard it.

to say.

head

"Here, dear, take a deep breath of this."

Hester shook her head. need any yet.

"No,

not

yet.

don't

"

Somehow, she thought, they managed to rob it stage, her position exposing her parts, and

a

the ritualistic dress of the

doctor, seemed too un­

real, unnatural, holding back the life within her which

straining to

was

come

out to

make itself

"Give her some cyclo with the next pain," the "Hester, with the

doctor said to the anesthetist.

pain I want you to push down. Grip those bars by your side and pull on them like you're rowing a boat. Will you do that for me?" next

"Now," she said to the anesthe­ placed over her face. She feel herself could bearing down hard.

Hester nodded.

tist and

mask

a

"It's all

was

right, Hester. The pain's gone.

I don't

yourself out." The doctor you turned to the young intern by his side. "Check her for a ROA or LOA position. Well, what is it?" want

to

wear

"I can't tell, doctor, it's rotating."

"I'm not sure," came the hesitant reply. sure you're in the right place? Wake man," and the doctor gave an exasperated sigh.

"Are you

up,

"Hester, with this next pain I'm going to inject

something like novocaine and make

a

small cut.

we call an episiotomy." At least the patient with me, Hester thought to her­

That's what doctor is

self. Her eyes grew round and she could feel her protruding belly covered with green sheets grow

tight.

ness

her

up to surround her heart and choke breathing passage. "What is it? she asked. come

doctor looked at the nurse, who nodded. a fine boy, and he has ten fingers and

The

"A boy, ten

toes.

I

think

he'll

about

in

weigh

seven

Hester could

see

his eyes above the mask and

they looked as if they were smiling' at her.

They took her back to her room immediately and let her hold the baby until they reached the nursery. She kissed the small form, looking at its nakedness beneath the blankets, realizing how

completely alone it was now. He was covered in places with his

white

a

cream-like

substance

dear, take a

deep breath. That's it."

Hester breathed the sweet-smelling gas grate­ fully and felt herself relax. It was a hard feeling, painful, but yet so wonderful she wanted to laugh and cry. Nine months of carrying part of him

inside of her would almost be

over

and it would

part of him which she would never let go of.

and

blinked

uncomprehensibly at her. He wouldn't be alone, she told herself, not ever, not eyes

for one minute.

Two days later she called her parents to inform them that

they had

a

mother

seven

had

pound, three ounce asked if there

was grandson. she wanted said no.

Her and Hester anything to father said that they would drive up pick her and the baby up when she was dismissed from the hospital. And then it was her mother speaking again. "Hester, dear, what are you feeding him so I can be sure to get some formula ready?"

"I'm breast feeding him, Mom," she replied.

There the you,

was

small silence

a

phone. And then Hester.

very

We'll be

on

the other end of

quietly,

"I breast fed

there in two

days," and

then she hung up.

The welfare worker had Hester

"Come on,

a

tiredness. A cry pierced the shafts of light from the overhead beacon and Hester felt the heavi­

Her

'Can you feel the frontella then?"

be

with rather quickly. Her whole in­ aware of a great

over

side relaxed and she became

pounds, too."

heard.

•

on

place and time she was experiencing now.

"Well, Hester, one more push should do it."

"I'll try, Doctor," was all she could manage It was

I

of all its beauty and significance. The bright lights of

the peroneum now." The doctor's voice brought her turned thoughts back head's

the

"Ah,

sign

some

pa­

pers, muttering how unusual it all was, and she should think of the child. They would find a good

home for it and it would get the best of care, probably better than she could give it. And Hester

had stood there, smiling, saying that she was his mother, looking at the yellow-blanketed mass in the middle of the bed.

when

They had always wanted her to give her child up, but how could she? And especially now, now

the

that she had let the small mouth have her breast,

She

knew

what

now

her

mother

had

meant

they had talked before she left to go to Her parents had been understanding and she was grateful. They had even wanted her to stay in their home town to have her baby but somehow she couldn't put them through that. She had felt secure and protected in their love, but she

home.

had to

shame

44

she

go

away.

felt,

It

mingled

was

a

with

curious

pride.

kind She

of

had

body. How could she, after know­ ing that he had been bathed in her blood, and their have her whole

two systems had been one for three-fourths of a year? No, he was too much hers now.

Her parents Hester

that

came

they

that afternoon. It seemed to

both

looked

sad

NORTHWESTERN

around their

TRI-QUARTERLY

though they smiled and tried to look happy.

She realized then, with a bitter feeling, what she

"Oh hell." Her father's voice softened.

eyes

I

and

know

know that other

have

"You to

city, find employment, and support herself and baby, but her mother had argued that she

girls get married, that the percentage of nonvirgin brides is probably on the increase. And we know thai she loves this child, don't we? Well, that's all that counts. Sure, sure, it's going to be hard to take having an 'unmarried' mother on our hands, but after all she is our daughter and our respon­ sibility no matter how old she is and she's not quite twenty-one yet."

"I'm sorry, Jerold, but I'm afraid for her sake

would have trouble finding anyone suitable to stay

and ours."

had done to them. Hester knew she had been her father's pride and now, how was he going to ex­ plain his daughter's illegitimate child to his busi­

associates, his friends? They

ness

all knew her

too well and she knew she couldn't lie. She didn't want to fabricate

even

story. Before, she had

a

suggested to them that she would move to another the

with the

baby and then, too, she would probably

have

harder time because she wouldn't

a

deny

"Elizabeth, Elizabeth. It must have been hard her, too. You and I both knew what there was

on

anything. At least in their own community people might accept it. But Hester knew they never

between them and it wasn't blind adolescent pas­ sion. Oh, to hell with what anyone else thinks,

would.

anyway."

Every mile they got closer to home filled Hester with more apprehension. Her father had looked a

little uncomfortable when he noticed her the

ing infant, changed his diapers, putting the soiled ones in a diaper bag they had bought her.

It was night when they drove into the driveway.

It was a beautiful night and she pressed the baby to her, assuring herself that it wasn't a dream.

They walked quietly into the house and her mother fixed dinner, everything that was Hester's favorite, and she ate hungrily. Afterwards she helped her mother with the dishes, answering he} questions half shyly, feeling a communion that had never been there before because now they each

level.

kissed her father

She

other

as

women

on

the

and

same

goodnight, leaving

him to the rest of his newspaper, and went into their room now. Her parents had her room -

taken great pains in into a nursery.

fixing

up half her old

room

Hester undressed and

She

fell

slipped quietly into bed. asleep immediately because the long

trip had tired her

out.

But

in

two

hours

awakened and decided that she wanted a

"Yes, but we didn't. We wanted her are we

do about it? Condemn ourselves?

No!

"Oh this god-damn crazy world. Let's stop talk­ ing about it, Elizabeth. It's done.

Her mother was crying again now and Hester leaned weakly against the wall. The phrase "un­ married mother" stung her to go in and throw her

as

and she wanted

around her

parents

she slowly walked back up the stairs? No, that

couldn't be it. She

opened the door

to her bed­

confused with herself. It

was only utterly to What wasn't natural, it, keep belonged to you, what was a part of you? Yes, she could see it now.

That's why her parents had offered her their love, and especially now. She needed it more

room,

crib

she had ever needed it.

looked down

and wondered

if

the

at

tiny infant in the

she would be

able to

do

the right thing for him when the time came. But her parents were going to have to go through an

awful lot just for her.

she wasn't

"Oh, Jerold, I just don't know what to do.

She's not like other girls, you should know that.

She always tried to do, to be everything we al­ ways wanted her to be, but now this."

"That's right, but how can we blame ourselves or her?

We brought her up in a middle-class society and taught her to believe in a middle-class code of morals, forgetting that sometimes they don't stretch to cover everything. You aren't sorry she kept the baby, are you, Elizabeth?"

"No, that's what I wanted her to do. Do you

only three of them

Spring, 1962

ears

arms

and tell them how sorry she was to make them suffer. Was she being selfish, she thought to herself

what she was saying.

"Oh, you know, what other people will say."

all,

She could see her father light his pipe.

Hester

"Take what?"

After

do make mistakes."

now than

think we can take it?"

going to

we're all human beings. And you know that people

glass of

voices she stopped short. Her mother seemed to be crying and Hester walked softly closer to hear

to finish

her education first. So now, what

she

milk. She put on her robe and went downstairs to the kitchen. Hearing her mother's and father's

get married when

they wanted to."

nurs­

but her mother had smiled

understood

"We should have let them

sure

she

was

And worth

against

that

at

it.

moment

There

everyone

else

were

and

pretty small number to her. she anyway to deny her child a home,

three seemed like Who

was

a

father, and everything that she had? She could see

all this

clearly

now

that

she

was

at home

and surrounded by these familiar elements. across the bed, the shadows lacing themselves over her, and far away she heard the pounding of water or. the white sand. You can't really be alone, she thought, not completely alone any more. But it seemed to her that her soul was lying naked, cold, bathed in black darkness, alone in a room somewhere, totally alone.

She threw herself

from the trees

45

TFhat .�I;gh' Is Spring Knox Munson studied (1939-40) under Lew Sarett at the School of Speech and wal a clese friend of the poet. Mr. Knox hll$ published many poems in magazinel, anthologiel, and textbooks: his volume of poems, "So Little Done," received a number of awards. Hil home is in Wilmette.

What unbelievable strength in this blade of grass,

Effortlessly splitting the stonelike ground!

What wizardry!

The

morning glory vine, the hollyhock, the spears

Of mint push up until the imperforate earth Gives way.

The tender lily of the valley joins the turning Of the hard earth.

What might is spring!

The rain comes, beating an angry fist.

The wind sweeps heedlessly, relentlessly.

The new-born fronds weather the merciless

Flogging.

Of what are these feathery mysteries made?

What brand of zeal? What enduring

strength?

What shame this strength is not for man!

I grasp the unabatable design-

The mortal herd is out of tune.

Knox Munson

COMMUNION WITH A THIEF Pollak, formerly Curator of Deering Library's Special Collections, and now in charge of the Rare

By Felix Pollak bed, I am thinking of him;

Felix

noon.

Book

and I have the feeling that he is thinking of me also. He of course knows considerably more about

Department of the University of Wisconsin, was

born in Vienna, received his doctorate in jurisprudence at

the University of Vienna, and degrees in library from the University of Buffalo and the Uni­

science

versity of Michigan. He has published prose and poetry in

Austrian

and German in

this country,

periodicals, and in many including his translations

magazines of some amusing squibs by the Austrian writ�r, Alfred Polgar, which he contributed to THE TRI-QUARTERl Y in

1959.

T here is and the

46

strangely strong bond between me thief who plundered my car this aftera

me

As I lie in my

than I about him

but that is in the nature

-

of our relationship.

By now he may have read my correspondence with a little magazine editor and, if he is literary­ minded, browsed through the issues of Poetry, Harper's and The New Yorker that were on top of my shirts in the suitcase. I wonder what he

thought of the profile on Susanne Langer, a su­ far as I had read. as perb piece of writing And does he agree or disagree with Mr. C. Wright Mill's sympathetic appraisal of Fidel Castro? I'll never know, alas, even should the police find him which, the police assured me, is most un­ likely.

-

-

NORTHWESTERN

TRI -QUARTERLY

If he, at this late hour, is like

me

day's labors, he may be doing so in my pa­ jamas; though he might, conceivably, be squeam­ ish about wearing another man's pajamas before laundering them. Since he stole my things late in the afternoon in a busy street of Chicago's asphalt jungle, he has perhaps not yet disposed of my typewriter, a present from my brother and my companion for many years. In case the thief de­ cides to try it out before selling it so that he can, with a good conscience, reassure the poten­ tial buyer as to its working condition and appraise him of possible flaws, he will, I'm afraid, discover that the "e" has a tendency to get stuck. I must admit I've been slothful about getting it fixed, since it seems to be my nature to put up

his

with continual small annoyances rather than face

the larger discomfort of doing something about them. It would be intriguing to know whether the new

owner

will

be

a

procrastinating weakling

like myself, or a man of bold and energetic action who won't stand for any nonsense. In my case, much as I grieve about the loss of the typewriter, am somehow relieved that the problem of hav­ ing that "e" repaired is no longer with me. There is some truth to the saying that every loss has its gain and of course vice versa, as the new

I

-

owner will find out.

In the reflex camera which I had trustingly left the car seat next to the typewriter was a partially exposed film containing, I had reason to believe, some especially good shots. To hope that the thief will have the decency to have the film he has my ad­ developed and mail it to me dress from various sources, including my check on

-

book

-

would no doubt be naive. But will he have

it developed at all, compelled

by the curiosity to

sights my eyes had seen, what places to, what my wife and my friends and perhaps even I myself do look like?

Or will he simply and rudely open the camera and throw the ruined film away? If the latter, I hope life will do likewise to him some dark and rainy day, and my electric razor, which he also find

out

what

I

had

acquired, will

been

burn his

skin

even

Will he be

resting from

worse

than it

course

occurred to

me

that he

him

try to purchase his needs and perhaps even his luxuries, with the unused checks in my check­ book, but I am not too worried about that eventu­ ality, really. In the first place, he has rather convincingly demonstrated his basic aversion to the procurement of merchandise by purchase, and in the seond place, I shall tomorrow morning work out a very clever and top secret code sign which all my future checks must bear in order to be honored by the bank. That may not teach him

a

lesson, but it will afford me protection, a selfish, dog-eats-dog world a world

and this is I

never

-

made but according to whose

must live, very sorry.

Spring, 1962

at

other

mores

I

shirts from

now

on?

all, and

my

collars

choke him.

On the

hand, it would be a shame to throw those

good shirts away, and they'll be hard to sell with all the big sales coming up right after Christmas.

Perhaps he has a relative who fits my size, a son, or a brother, or even a cousin. And as for my wife's cosmetic kit, I do hope its contents will bring that magic, miracle-wrapped touch-and­ glow to a skin he likes to touch. May that skin belong to a comely and deserving woman, prefer­ ably young, who in return will give the kind of happiness only she can give to a thoughtful and generous friend and provider, Amen.

The representatives of the Chicago Police De­ both of them built to fit the cliche partment assured me, as I have men­ adjective "burly" I harbor any false hopes that needn't tioned, -

-

apprehending my thief. As far in no danger as they were concerned, he was from them, and wherever he was sitting, he was sitting as safe as in Abraham's lap. Their un­ wavering confidence in their inability was awe­ "How can you be so positive you won't some. find him?" I inquired. "Mister," one of them said indulgently, "we have experience in those mat­ their

regarding

ters. It's

our

job. Just leave it to us, we'll do our

best. And take it from us, you'll never see them goods again. Your safest bet is to have insurance."

"Yeah," agreed his colleague, "take that type­ Why, the guy can afford to sell it for 20 bucks! That's a bargain, ain't it?" "A bargain!"

I exclaimed. "Man, it's a steal!" "Well sir, there you are," he grinned proudly, adding, "At that price, I'd buy it myself." "Even though you'd suspect that it's hot?" He shrugged, eyeing me with condescension.

"That, mister, is human nature," he explained. "In our profession you got writer.

to understand human nature."

He turned to his

partner. "Am I right, Mac?" Mac agreed with him. "Particularly at Christmas," he said cryp­

tically.

The notion that

may

my

the thought that my sleeve length may not fit

had mine, without ever shaving him clean!

It has of

wearing

Or will he be disappointed by my taste in colors and patterns? Some meanness in me laughs at

one

of their

colleagues might

have my belongings in his possession at this very minute fleetingly came to my mind, but I thought it wiser

not

to

voice

it; they might have mis­

construed my meaning. "Well then, Merry Christ­

mas," I said heartily. "May Santa be good to you!" "Merry Christmas, sir," they responded with

all

the

cheer

of

the

season,

and

as

they

turned and marched away, I resolved to take my loss into their stride.

But now,

night,

my

lying here

at

this

late

hour

of

the

extrasensory perception that the thief

and I

are mentally communing with each other palpable to me as the moon that hangs high and tissue-paper transparent in the paling sky behind my window.

is

as

47

boks

new

from NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS THE

HU�IA:�aTIES

SCIEN

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"What is

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POETS 1:\

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PROGRESS

Critcal

Prefaces

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Edu-ard B.

Ten

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Hungerford

Richard Wilbur, Rich· Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, Stanley Kunitz, V. Cunningham, Randall Jar­ William DeWitt Snodgrass, Howard Nemerov, J.

ard Ebeht.

Include

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\Ierwin.

The

critques are provided w ith

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originally published in Tr i-Quarterly.

I'a�es 2 I

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IN

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by Robert

THE

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Mayo students of prose fiction the nearly forgotten mag­

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pages 62

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