vol5-no2

LOST VERB LAUNDROMAli

TRI-QUARTERLY

VOLUME

NUMBER

TWO

70<t

NORTHWESTERN

UNIVERSITY

WINTER

Robert Plant Armstrong

Notes on A Java Year

3

William J. Sonzski The One True

Religion

12

Leona Brandes Yeager

Health of Northwestern Students

19

and The Bosh Syndrome or Battle Fatigue

..

23

cs-. A. Dragstedt

25

Obiter Dicta Medica

Jacob Leed Poems

28

David E. Neelon To The Downfall

30

Mary E. Henrikson The Major Concern of Today's College 34

Woman

Linda 0' Riordan

Hyer Tesiker Ederim THE TRI-QUARTERLY is a magazine de­ voted to fiction, poetry, and articles of

36

Thomas J: Bracken

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

Lost Verb in the Laundromat

42

Richard S. Platz The

44

Explosion

Tri-Quarterly

limited to persons who have some con­ nection with the University. Copyright, 1963,

by Northwestern University. All rights re­ served.

are

NORTHWESTERN

UNIVERSITY

WINTER

Number Two

Volume 5

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. BILLINGTON

and

MELVIIJLE

Arts, Dean JAMES H. WILLIAM B.

M.

BARKER

HERSKOVITS

MC BURNEY

of the College of Liberal Speech, Dr.

of the School of

WARTMAN of the School of Medicine, and Mr. JAMES of the Board of Trustees.

UNDERGRADUATE

EDITORS:

G.

M.

ROBERTSON,

HERBERT

SUSAN F. MC ILVAINE, FORREST ATHERTON, and CAROLYN BURROWS.

TRI-QUARTERLY is distributed by Northwestern Uni­ versity Press, and is under the business management of the Press. Design, layout, and production are by the University THE

Publications Office.

Art Editor for this issue is Lauretta Akkeron. THE TRI­ QUARTERLY symbol on the cover, designed by Miss Akkeron, was developed from the ancient symbol for unity, historically an important aspiration for the artist, philosopher, and scholar.

NOTES ON A

JAVA YEAR

DRAWINGS BY WM. A. NORMAN

listen. "And now you educated Yanks come along with your technological services. English teach­

By Robert Plant Armstrong

-

In the

complex efforts of the western societies to deal

with the nations of the East since World War II, Indo­

nesia, with its antagonism to the Dutch and its sympathy for the Chinese, is an important country but a difficult one

for Americans to know. In the article below, the

by a personal narrative of his year's stay in Jogjakarta in 1959, to insights into the Indo­ author leads

nesian

us,

character

and

the

cultural

traditions

which

formed it.

Robert Plant Armstrong came to Northwestern in 1960 as

Director of the University Press. He had had previous

experience

as

an

editor

at Alfred A.

Knopf, as field

editor at Harpers, and as Director of the University of Arizona Press. He is a native of West Virginia, but took

his undergraduate training at the University of Arizona.

During World War II he served in the

United States

Navy in the Pacific theater. His advanced degrees were received at the State University of Iowa (M.A. '46) and at Northwestern

(Ph.D. '57) in English and Anthropolo­

gy respectively. He taught English for four years at the

University of Montana, and last fall taught a course in Anthropology at Northwestern. In the spring quarter last year he traveled in Africa,

Program

on

a

grant from the

of African Studies.

I T ISN'T

me

personally the

man

at

the

vice, here and present. But my own uncertainties too keen to dismiss him with this. I have to

Winter, 1963

indeed!" He shakes his head, meaning "This

heirs of Raffles.

May God have mercy on you." question his sanction for he did. as He has thirty-seven having spoken in and about years Singapore, and I but one day.

I've seen nothing but the Hotel Raffles and its bar; he an imperial glory and a creeping extinction.

Of course, it isn't only the flatterers one meets at a bar whom one remembers. Indeed, I've for­ gotten the hundreds of good Joes, shared mirth, reciprocated drinks. But I remember with sharp discomfort the four or five unpleasant drunks I've sat next to, and the few whose social or political Then he leaves. I don't

views I've contested. And

so

with this brief Aus­

tralian, for I suspect he is dead right. Unwittingly, perhaps I have assumed the mantle of Raffles. I a gentle could well be an instrument of policy -

imperialist, out to mine the riches of an exotic life, paying in return with a coin good only in the gold and sterling areas: the English tongue.

From Raffles through the colonial administra­ tors and the missionaries to me. It's a staggering and finally funny evolution. To my recent friend, it is apparent that the process has rather been one of devolution. I finish my drink, go to my room to pack for the trip to Jakarta, then smoke a slow and thoughtful cigarette. *

bar

is talking about. It's a way of life actually. I know, theoretically, that I'm merely the triggering de­ are

ers

is the end," and raises his glass in salute. "To the

*

*

Kemajoran Airport is to the

a nearly Western facade city of Jakarta. One can buy curios here

and drinks. That is about all behalf. But

even

less

can

one

may say in its

be said for the Hotel

3

Dharma Nirmala. To add to an essential discom­

with one another. Within the central blocks of the

fort that

city are strident architectural paradoxes: tiny, au­ village against modern hotel, the squal­ or of city poor next to the pretenses of the rich, Javanese crowding against foreigner, beggar-sell­ er against modern shop.

pervades

may not have

a

the

room

city,

I discover that

to himself.

one

Accordingly,

I

share a kind of enormous cell with another Amer­

ican and a Czech, neither of whom is in at the mo­ ment. The bed which is mine has been

slept in at

least once before, and the mosquito netting is torn.

This presages are

bad night, especially since there

a

neither screens nor panes

on

the narrow win­

dow.

At the bathroom my shock is increased. I am introduced to the douse bath and I struggle for

trying

to

mount

just enough to be able to dash the bucket of cold water over my too hot body. When I have finished, I dry myself with a soiled undershirt. At the stool comes a painful discovery that later experiences moments,

broaden: there Indonesia.

are

vital

-

for paper in discoveries these, and the

more

Elementary

my. courage

uses

trauma they induce is

equally elementary.

Refreshed at last and outside, I face a great ca­ nal where in turn I see a man defecating, a wom­ an bathing her child, and a boy brushing his teeth.

A betjak, a kind of outsized and reversed tricycle small passenger seat built over the two front wheels, draws up beside me. I cannot under­ with

a

stand the

tukang betjak, but I know well enough asks, so I yield to the sense of novelty and agree to ride with him. Starting to climb in, I fear I shall tip the flimsy carriage, throwing the what he

tonomous

I will never find either

beauty or warmth here.

And though come to find a place in my affections for Java, Jakarta will remain a singular and desperate blight. It is, in an awful way, a symbol for the Republic: an Indonesian govern­ ment sitting hotly encumbered in the scaling shells of Dutch governmental buildings, wielding the symbols but few. of the responsibilities of I shall

power. *

I

by

*

awakened at three-thirty in the morning shouting below the window of my

am a

*

man

shared

room.

It is not necessary to understand either mad or cursing

Javanese to know he is

roommate, who earlier gave precious bottles of Pilsen tell me rouses to the man is raving against beer,

-

or

both.

me

Czech

My

one

of his

Americans. How can I know? My fellow American

sleeps nobly undisturbed beneath his good

net.

As for me, I must once again practice the tedious of withdrawing care from my body and submitting it uncontested to the countless vam­ pirical wisps which assault me in the dark.

yoga

*

...

*

operator, who sits behind and above the passenger

seat, into the canal. This is nearly what happens, so he dismounts, taking firm hold of the vehicle while, still skeptical, I seat myself.

"J akarta" means peaceful, victorious settle­ ment. So it may once have been; but not today.

Now it sprawls designless, hot, dirty, frenzied in a way. One cannot perceive this city in terms of familiar patterns of urban development. It is squat and intricate. Disparate is the only word which comes to my aid as I try to comprehend its -

thousand discrete parts,

all somehow intricated

After the mighty liners that flew me this far, twelve-passenger Heron that will take

the little me

I

to Jogjakarta

am

a

seems

timid flier at

insubstantial and chancy.

best, and this plane does

nothing for my sense of confidence. I revile my­ self for the shadowy ethnocentrism which causes me

against

my

will to question the airmanship pilots. Together with two other

of the Indonesian

American teachers and half I rise over the Java Sea.

a

dozen Indonesians,

Breathtakingly then we

sweep down and south across the breadth of the island. The thin craft almost flutters in flight, as,

when shimmering in white effort, does the bird for which it is named.

Below

us

lies the green, anonymous

land, here

forested, there adorned with myriad silver rice channels, intricately tracing out the contours of again a volcano rises sullenly floor, waiting to flood forth un­ made rock from the burning entrails of the earth.

the land. Now and

from the island's

It is difficult to believe that this island below us

supports the greatest population density of the

world, for aside from the rice fields, it is rare to see signs of human life. plane lifts, wheels, falls, lift" again. Now more clearly the structure of air. Con­ ditioned by the image the plane's name invokes, I begin to feel almost exhilarated, so I start to The

I know

chat. When my American friend reminds me I am an anthropologist, I suddenly feel much as

4

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

face of what had devolved upon me. Five hun­ dred thousand years ago men lived on this land

always singly, in shadows or in far away places.

Starkly Homo Soloensis, the fossil from the royal c-ity of Solo, takes on the uncomfortable dimen­

below. Over

sion of an even less comfortable pun.

I did in the Raffles bar

uncomfortable in the

-

twenty thousand human generations

bring me to this flight, and half a million years of speech find me uttering careless inanities. It is an awesome thought. I smile at my friend, say that the engine's noise makes conversation dif­ ficult, and return to contemplating the ancient, verdured plains which bore and buried Pithecan­ thropus and Homo Soloensis.

In Jogjakarta of course it is different. It is not that there

fewer peasant

are

women

and their

but rather that they become less

plugs, frequent, intermingled now among more urban types. Since it

is

still

morning, the sidewalks

crowded

are

with people. The streets prove to be an imponder­ able

tangle of bicycles and betjak. There is ap­ in the tiny steps, the elegant parent ease hands, the small, highly formalized patterns of the batik clothing, the initial silence with which buyer confronts seller and seller gazes back. Yet there is intensity too, controlled impatience with those who do not yield quickly or enough in the folk-sanctioned process of bargaining, joyless laughter when two bicycles collide.

I cannot accept the crowd indifferently. In­ -

*

,.

*

Jogjakarta is both a political enclave within Republic of Indonesia and the capital city of that state. It is hereditarily ruled by a sultan, assisted by a paqualam, who historically was a minor vassal king to the sultan. The royal prerogatives of the sultan have been validated by the national government, in recognition of his singular and heroic services to the native army in their revolution against the Dutch. At the air­ port in Jogja, as the area is familiarly called, I witness an intriguing little scene which tells me much about modern Indonesia. In leaving the plane there is an Alfonse-Gaston routine be­ one an tween two passengers army colonel, and the other the paqualam himself. The colonel insists the paqualam leave the craft first, and the paqualam in turn defers to the colonel. Per­ haps largely because this is merely a routine flight for the paqualam, while for the colonel it is an official visit, the army exits before the royalty.

Later, however, I find that this incident is every bit as revealing as I had thought, but what I had thought to have been revealed quite wrong. The paqualam had not granted precedence for the the

-

colonel. His had been

oblige.

The

upper

a

class

classic act of noblesse

Javanese,

particularly

those affiliated with the Kraton, the sultan's pal­ ace, inevitably take undemocratic precedence which has since ancient days been their due. Now­

adays it is interpreted

as

respect rather than

prerogative, but the dimension of the behavior is quite the same. *

*

*

is populated-tinily, so tinily that signs might not be observed from the air.

The major cities are six, and together they But Java

the

claim no more than seven millions of the island's

sixty millions. The bulk of the population is pit­ tanced among a profligacy of villages. Riding from the airport to the city, one becomes instant­ ly aware of this. Everywhere there are people.

Squatting men, silent children, tiny but ponder­ ously burdened women with brown plugs of to­ bacco jutting from their mouths. So inevitable indeed is this appurtenance that I come to re­ gard it as a kind of navel from which they seem to suck their lives from the brown yields of earth. The people rarely occur in groups almost -

Winter,

1963

deed, I relate myself to it, not only because I am a conspicuous foreigner and they, to me, an ex­

people. There seems to be some further es­ of difference which constitutes a point of uniqueness in my experience with their crowd.

The people on the streets seem to be aware of a total formal organization of human beings to which they singly contribute consent and con­ formity. There is no attempt to call attention otic

sence

either to the individual havior

Even

and

attire

or

his person. Both be­

circumspect and similar.

are

pickpockets who haunt certain areas pattern, and when one of them has chosen and picked his victim, there is no general the

fit into the

alarm. The crowd maintains its poise. A man has

robbed, and

been

exchanged;

money

a

fact

of

economic life has occurred.

shops are a continuing frustration of un­ goods, luxuries that are no more than basic necessities to me, and an endlessly classic schedule of prices. Toiletries, hardware, appli­ these are ances, clothing large enough for me not to be found. Bread is rare, liquor rarer, and milk almost non-existent. But there is plenty of rice, and orange crush and tea are bountiful. I reach the point where I cannot immediately ab­ sorb any more impression. The perceptual idioms are as strange to my mind as the words are to The

familiar

-

my

I

ears.

seek

within which to to

principle tures

into

familiar

some

nexus

organize my experiences -:- some

structure

sights, sounds,

and

tex­

known pattern. I have nothing im­ available save the manual for my

a

mediately camera,

find

to

I

so

clutch

at it

in my

fastly thinking of lens apertures, ineptitude with color film. �

*

pocket, stead­ glare, and my

*

The Balai Bahasa Inggeris, which is the school at which I

delights

am

me

to

to

teach, is OIi Djalan Sajidan. It

say

this.

Once

I

saw,

in

Con-

5

necticut, a place called Obtuse Hill, and I always thought what a piquant address that would make.

This is even better. I am perversely pleased by

experience which serves adequately as an intro­ duction to living in Jogja. From the hotel I have both movies easy access to the shops, theatres

this

and

nonsense.

The all

school

is

staffed

both

Indonesians­

by Javanese, of whom one is the director

and

-

Americans. Our task is to train teachers of Eng­ lish for the secondary schools, for English has been made the official second language of the Re­ public, replacing Dutch, which of course stands as a

symbol of colonialism. The first language, Ba­ Indonesia, is a pidginized language, com­

hasa

pounded primarily of Malayan, with small mix­ tures of Dutch, Portuguese, and English. While it serves well enough as a national language, per­ mitting communication among the speakers of a few hundred different languages and dialects, its usefulness as a language of science and interna­ tional commerce is questionable.

All of the Americans

for myself have been

save

trained in the teaching of English as a second language. My position is anomalous. Though I

anthropologist, I am to teach literature.

Interestingly enough, this makes good sense, since it will not be long before I am to discover that the ordinary cliches in terms of which litera­ ture is taught in the United States have little significance here. One must start at the beginning, examining literature much as he would any other body of human behavior, forging broad concepts am

an

which

will

make

of

sense

common

elements.

-

hundred

at

the

school

At

students.

the

are

fewer

sister

there

than

one

institution

in

around

fifty.

Sumatra, present need for English teachers in the Republic is placed at somewhere in the vicinity of ten thousand. The discrepancy is so vast that the need becomes only theoretical, and no one but

Bukkittinggi,

are

The

the director frets. Most of the students

are

anese, with

Sumatra,

a

sprinkling of others from

J av­

Bali, Madura, and Timor. Because of their pre­ dominating role in Indonesian political affairs, the Javanese

are

the heirs of much resentment

in the other islands.

Furthermore, because of this

and the inter-ethnic frictions which exist among

the various groups in the highly heterogeneous nation, the Javanese students will be cursed and stoned when they finally leave to teach in some of the other islands. This pathetically highlights the

inadequacy

of

the

All-Indonesian

fiction

and

restaurants.

Furthermore, the hotel is only little more than half a mile from the school, which fact, even though I am regularly picked up by the station wagon, represents a convenience. An additional attraction is the presence in the hotel of two single women teachers, also engaged in the English lan­ guage project. The hotel is reasonably spacious; it is endowed with an attractive patio, and the service is good. In the dining room, where I take most of my meals at first, one can order a multi­ coursed rijstaffel, which is not as consummately spiced as he will find in the devilish sauces at the restaurants not ordinarily frequented by Euro­ peans. Soon I tire of this compromise, however, and decide to brave the genuine Javanese diet.

Primarily I eat plain boiled rice, with fish, beef, or chicken

-

all in

a

sauce

of fire

-

Since these nightly ventures take

and fresh fruit. me

farther and

night, I begin frequently to learn something of the Javanese life.

It is not long before, in accordance with the sub­ away from the hotel at

tle dictates of my own past, I become afflicted with urbophobia. My students, to whom the Hotel Garuda represents the ultimate in luxury, do not quite understand this desire to move, but with their characteristic good grace begin scouring the

flanks of the city for a suitable house. Since they are

Enrolled

dance-drama

Javanese

-

reticent about

so

letting

me

know much of

their intimate home

life, I anticipate that wher­ ever I am finally placed will not be typical.

Furthermore, my students and Indonesian col­ leagues know nothing of S., the manager of Hotel

Garuda. A devout anti-American who devotes the energy of his corpulent body to observing the ac­ tivities of the two women and myself, subsequent­

ly reporting them to the police, S. is a connoisseur of petty insult and annoyance. The women fare worse than I do, and in the room of one of them, who in perfect respectability entertains a Dutch­ man on her porch, he posts a copy of the official regulations listing the penalties for prostitution.

Every evening students come to visit. Whether by mystique or design I am not sure at first (later it proves to be the latter), but there appears to be a rotating schedule of who will visit and when. In­ variably the same number, they arrive and leave together. They are always unhurried, though brief,

Jakarta is trying to create. Granted that fictions may be effective, still, realistically, there is none

The fact that I can after a while anticipate almost

the most devoted nationalist who forgets his

verbatim the evening's conversations does not les­

save

particular ethnic affiliation to insist that he is only Indonesian. Until such time as ethnic diversity is taken into account at a policy level, there will continue to be stonings, forays of raw murder among ethnic-grouped segments of university populations, and political fragmentation.

For the first week I live at the Hotel Garuda,

6

an

and their visits conform to

sen

the

moreso

one's

a

definable pattern.

pleasure of seeing them. Here, vastly home, students become part of

than at

personal life.

We sit from six-thirty to seven on my balcony, I

answering the obvious questions about the United States and, in my turn, asking the obvious ones about Indonesia. We are mutually tolerant and reNORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

spectful. When drinks of soda or fruit juice are served, the students do not drink until I say the

required invitation, "silahkan." is no rush toward the glasses,

a

Even then there

tendency I myself

must

guard against.

Eventually a significant look from the leader of the visit prompts one of the students to look at his watch. Abruptly then, without the slightest con­ versational transition, someone says, "Well, sir, we must leave," and the visit is terminated. It has been pro-forma and almost ritualistically precise.

Behind it lies duty, to be sure, but a duty happily discharged. It is a manifestation of the same atti­ tude that, though I often wish the opposite des­ perately, prompts them to seat me at the front of any public gathering (serving me tea when few others are served), order betjak for me, bargain for

in the

me

find

a

me

shops, and with the greatest

care

house.

It turns out that there are not enough houses in Jogja to supply the demand, so for the time being I am settled in the pavilion of an upper-class Javanese

w 0 man.

Mrs.

P.

proves

to

soon

be

the

living refutation of

by hand. Her avarice does not interfere seriously with my life, however, since, moral issues not­ withstanding, for the first time in my life I am a rich

man.

I take breakfast of bread,

where they sell ice cream and sometimes beer, or, and preferably, at a small earthen-floored Chinese

kept from being filthy by the roam the place eating several chickens scraps. What recommends this place is the fried pigeon, which, together with fried noodles and orange crush, constitutes a feast.

In back of my room is a small kompong, where poorer Javanese live in incredible density. As far as I have been able to discover, there is no hour of the night when all the people are simultaneous­ ly asleep. I am awakened at all hours by men bathing and singing, by women comforting crying babies, or by young girls laughing over shared intimacies. Besides the noise, there is the night heat, which makes sleeping with a sheet impossible, and the mosquitoes which m a k e sleeping restaurant which is

which

without it a heroic

the common notion t hat

have on

ordeal.

Americans

The Javanese pa­ or

gandok,

the house constituting the front end. A high wall,

viciously crowned with broken bottles, forms one longitudinal side, while the remaining end and are

areas

more

pests

than

count

usually slip

I

can

into the net when

is formed around an inner, rectangular patio, with

side

mos­

fective, but

"materialism."

vilion,

The

quito netting is ef­

monopoly

a

cheese, and

coffee with her, for an additional one hundred "rupes." Lunch and dinner I have at Toko Oen,

divided into

bedrooms, baths, working

and servants' rooms. My quarters here con­

sist of a bedroom and sitting porch, in addition to

I

do.

I

Besides,

slowly growing intoxicated

am

from sleeping with a DDT spray beside me, and from inhaling the noxious odor of a punk which creates away.

a smudge reported to drive the insects

However, the mosquitoes find my flesh so

desirable they are willing to brave any obstacles and

display frightening ingenuity

to

get

to

it.

douse bath. Madame lives in state in the

There· are in addition the traumas of being often

big house, though her mode of life is penurious comparison with what she could afford. She

by the honking onslaughts of a pair particularly vile geese who inhabit the and who, I believe, harbor strong, carniv­ patio

my

own

in

forty-seven Chevrolet, which in itself im­ plies almost untold wealth, two pianos (one of owns

a

which she rents to

a

friend at the school for the

usurious rate of three hundred

rupias

a

month),

and has a storeroom full of fine batik cloth, jewels, and money.

She has

Bank of Indonesia,

a

never

learned to trust the

trait with which I somewhat

sympathize. Though she is Javanese, and though her son was a revolutionary hero, there is no doubt that she is thoroughly "Dutchified."

The rent for my quarters is nine hundred rupias a month. Food and laundry are not included. An Australian, who teaches chemistry at Gadja Mada University, pays only three hundred for a similar room including these additional services. By way of contrast, her servants receive less than thirty twice a rupias a month, plus food, lodging, and year cheap batik tjap, that is, cloth which is stamped by metal stencil rather than being drawn -

-

Winter,

1963

shocked

awake

of

orous

toward

desires I

me.

As

if

this

were

not

by the enough, of vicious lizard crescendo a a hiccoughing tokke, once

am

frozen into

awareness

who has found his way to my bedside. Accord­ ingly, and to the smiling disapproval of my host­ ess,

I determine to look for other

One any

gets

never

quarters.

to know the Javanese

intimate, meaningful

sense

sure, the students constitute

-

at least.

not in

To be

somewhat excep­ tion to this rule, but students seem always to be a a

kind of anomalous social group. I have never been invited into

a

Javanese home, and I have been in

Java now for over five months. I am less annoyed

by this than fascinated, and about it I

am

every time I think

reminded of those

cunning little

models physicists make of molecular structures.

Here the- model is only partly visible. I can see no more

than three

or

four of the little balls,

and

7

practicing critics. In this role,

their significant relationships elude me. I know at

the viewers

least that the Javanese sense of modesty and self­

young man discusses with another the relative merits of the kasar style bold, vigorous, ironic

the assumption that their houses deprecation are not good, and that no one would want to visit -

them anyway is one element in the constella­ tion. Another undoubtedly is the closely-knit fam­ -

ily group which is premised upon the confidence among family members in their ability to provide for their

own

security, both emotional and

eco­

nomic.

one

-

-

and the infinitely fastidious, flowing movements

of the halus. Nor is the exercise of the critical

faculty limited to such broad topics. Indeed I often hear patient debate devoted to a question of the execution of hand ger

and indeed

-

even

fin­

movement.

-

as in the shadow puppet plays, presented in relief. Hand and head movements, the positioning of the torso, the ex­

In the

dance,

To expect that the two girls and myself all single and alone would, in contrast to our two

action

is

married friends, be more apt to receive such gen­

tension

of

tle courtesies, would be but the offspring of a purely American expectation. We are even more

two-dimensionally. The body is never foreshort­ ened, with movements directed from the actor toward the audience. It is never presented at right angles to the plane of the viewer's face, but al­ ways parallel with it. It seems as though popu­ lation density were more than mere statistics

-

-

adrift than they. Actually there is a satisfactory social attitude to explain why this is not the case.

In Java, as in some other parts of the world, high value is placed upon both age and maturity. In the

family, in contrast to our own pattern, integrated into a family of adults.

Their privileges are few and sharply defined.

Javanese

children

are

However, age is not merely The

si1l;e

qua

a

function of years.

of adult social status is

non

the Javanese.

So, despite the fact that as teacher

and American I

largely receive,

entitled to respect, which I I am otherwise naked of signifi­

partial world, ut­ terly public and of two dimensions polite com­ and polite charm. The dimension of posure spontaneity and intimacy is utterly lacking. a

-

relegated to the hinterland of the public culture, I devote my energies to it­ predominantly to the classical dance. As human culture itself is a deep metaphor for the historical experiences of a people, so art, as a part of culture, is a symbol of a people's life. It mir­ rors

am

attitudes

their

are

Javanese dance is

and

their

interests.

The

highly formalized, intricate,

had been mindful of the

they

One finds the avoidance of

full-dimensionality paintings, depicting the sultan, or scenes of the kraton, are done in a boldly primitivistic style, and in two dimen­ in other

sions.

arts

The

offer

well.

as

bas

relief

Folk

of

the

not very interested

a

or

abundant temples convincing illusion

of three dimensions. Batik from the strates

flatness is to be found in the music of the game­

lan, which, predominantly eurythmic, fails to dis­

play any concern with dynamic melodic develop­ ment.

Such

observations, to be sure, are drawn from system of values, but in these terms my are they apt and descriptive. The characteristic of avoiding three dimensionality is so general that I suspect it is a cultural motif, and signifi­ own

cant in the life of the Javanese.

Its

manifestations

varied

are

is not to be found.

continuum

Rather, all the dances derive largely from

from the ancient tales of the area,

a

spiral. Standing at one point,

I

may

and their dramatic element is

each

see

as

an

level

of

the

apparent cir­

cle. The emphasis is upon the formal, depersonalization of art

equal to their kinaesthetic virtues. In personal

and

terms the dimension of depth is absent here also.

intimacy. ity, each progression is logical­ ly and irrevocably a part of the

of

public characters. They belong to tradition and to the entire populace. Accord­ ingly individualism in the dance is discouraged.

The dancers bring nothing to the roles they in­ terpret save a culturally sanctioned intensity of training.

As I sit at night in a crimson and gilt dance pendopo, I observe with interest that this sense of public ownership is so keen that it makes of 8

are

demon­

formalized, two­ dimensional geometric patterns. And the same

...

The roles

area

wealth of interest in

a

indeed like the rising phases of

Mahabarata,

executed

Perhaps in the early days of the magnitudi­ nous presence of the royal sultan sitting before them, and had dreaded to reach out against him. dance

after Nietzsche's old term, Apollonian. Furthermore, it is almost completely exoteric a public art. "Pure" dance as such

subtle. It is in sum,

the

all

am

cant social stature. I live in

Since I

these

-

to the dancers.

mar­

riage. Until a man has married, he is the social equivalent of a rather special child. Thus the bachelor in Jogjakarta, though he has years, pro­ fessional stature, and an irregularly prestigious national background, poses an acute problem to

limbs

the

human

sence

contact,

the

ab­

of

But in real­

so

with the living of life

whole.

And

itself. The emphasis upon for­ malism creates an especially­ if

gently unbending people.

Many of them, as I have found, have great, though reserved -

When they have given it, they do not withdraw it. When they have dedicated

warmth.

easily hatred, that is not readily displaced either.

So it is with decisions also, whether at the per­

their

sonal

at

or

the

national

Upon the Dutch, this process of irreversability settled with particular vigor. There is a mass paranoia which exists with respect to the Dutch Holland, in their view, tries unrelenting­ ly to regain her island empire.

-

ance

formalism

because to

elasticity, it is

creates

not

sat.

To

level.

has

But

liurang that bitter resistance against the Dutch settled and endured. It was here, in fact, that for a while the provisional revolutionary government

great

only the

resist­

Dutch who

fall heir to

misery. The Chinese receive their share as well. They are almost without excep­ tion the object of barely hidden contempt. Some­ times with justification, but more often than not without such niceties, .they share with the Dutch the allegations of all ills, public and private. In­ deed, as not only Mister S. of the hotel demon­ strates, it is the American as well, and con­ ceivably any outsider who remains overlong in the area, who becomes the object of their anxie­ ties.

a

certain extent their uneasiness is reduced

by my decision to take one of the students to live with

from

Su­

named Muhammed and called Piet.

Os­

me

-

a

Everyone tells me it is madness to take a house in

village of Kaliurang, but there are so many advantages I cannot resist the temptation. There are disadvantages, to be sure. Kaliurang is a small village, situated nine hundred metres up on the slope of angry volcano Merapi. Furthermore,

the

it is twenty-seven kilometers from the limits of my village to the edge of Jogja, and since I have car, I must rely twice a day upon a captious, springless, crowded and tempestuous bus. I ration­ no

alize my

perhaps rash action to

pointing· out that this is no

friends

by greater commuting my

problem than that faced by hundreds of thousands of suburbanites

at home.

Aside from all this, however, there is much of a positive nature to be said in behalf of the decision.

Kaliurang is a lovely spot. From the front porch of my house I have an unobstructed view straight across the coastal plain, where at night I can see the distant, twinkling lights of Jogja, clear to the Indian Ocean. There 'are no mosquitoes in Kaliu­ rang, neither is it hot. Indeed, at night two blan­ kets feel comfortable. Nor is there any bustle here, and when I return home each afternoon, it is like daily transforming my life. Furthermore there are no other Europeans in the village. Indeed, there is not a member of my race this side of Jogja. This too is desirable, since it forces me to find my re­ laxation with the villagers, a necessity which pro­ vides its own justification. True, their experiences are not extensive, and, since they do not distin­ guish the various varieties of white men, I am a "Belanda American," or American Dutchman.

This leaves

a

residue of uneasiness

among

my

servants who

environment in which I live. In the long run, it is

the

-

item

-

plant

or

which escapes

atten­

whether

asks

anthropologist

remote

our

"participant observation" is desirable, feeling that involvement with a people stands in the way of ob­

jective study. I think a little about this question at first, but since more than anthropologist I have become a kind of dungareed Rousseau, I cease to give it serious regard. I have too little time left to study my village. There is the fatigue I must nap off each day after I return from Jogja. Final­ ly, it is inescapably true that as a teacher in one of their own schools, I have, will-me, nil-me, be­ come

involved.

Thus the

tions with which the

strict cultural denota­

anthropologist is concerned

closely as I can, coming nearer to cultural connotations trying to intuit something of the hidden bounty of life, are

denied me. I live instead

as

-

which makes

it

more

meaningful than

a

mere

neat structure. The difference here is somewhat that

between

a

grammarian and

a

poet.

Both

work with language, but in

vastly different ways.

In place of interviews, therefore, I have quiet conversation and laughter. My analyses are in­ formal and I forge more metaphors than con­ structs. Piet is my primary "informant," and I permit myself to delight in him. One evening he rushes into the house to insist I

come

to view the "drizzle of stars" of the

On another

with him

Milky way. walking, we

occasion, when we are by a sharp cry from above. When I see that a hawk has just attacked a small bird, I comment upon the cry of the victim, but Piet asks, "Or was it the laughter of the hawk?"

But since there is no police authority in Kaliu­ not beyond rang, I do not go out much at night my porch where I loiter to listen to the immacu­ late silence and to gaze down upon the plain of are

startled

-

darkness,

1963

one

cranny of the village tion.

J ava,

Winter,

unaccustomed to my ways. In

doubtful if there is

and natural. It is natural because it

in Ka-

are

fact, his additional roles of companion and student make his value greater than his explicit dutie would suggest. Because of our virtual isolation, the minimal sociological group we form soon be­ comes a productive one, and before long I am ex­ ploring under his guidance the natural and social

friends. Such a reaction on their part is gratifying was

boy

gregarious

matra, tensibly, it is Piet's duty to act as interpreter and to take charge of administering the execution of household details, which are only somewhat mul­ tiplied, though unbelievably confounded, by four

Sometimes At length I am settled. I have a house to myself.

bright,

barely discernible as diverse intensities of undulating,

ultimately

expending 9

themselves in night. At times I hear from some distant village party the faint gonging chords of

gamelan orchestra making

a

tured that it seems at night

music

a

so

struc­

nearly like an

more

exotic constellation to be beheld rather than affair for the

an

ears.

asleep. He plants, he reaps, he feeds;

for rest and food after

long day of painstaking into wispy age at wear themselves They

labor.

a

lilliputian jobs, at which the primitive tools they use require herculean labors. Pak Moel, my gardener, whose careful dignity transmutes the simian line of his eyes, clips the grasses of my lawn with a small knife. His aged wife prepares sufficient meal for the day with a pestle taller and heavier than she.

And in

miniature ter­

a

struggles knee-deep in mud behind two giant buffalo and an unwieldy plow. At dusk all this has passed with the day. All are bathed now, the children have their final play, and the men sit on their haunches, smoking black cigar­ ettes into which they have pared fragrant woods.

Perhaps they are too tired to talk; perhaps they have little to say. But whatever the reason, they sit silently and alone. Yet they are never too lost race

a

man

to take note of me when I pass. I have never be­

part of the natural order, so that When I walk by the old men bow, giving me Javanese come

greeting, using the dialect they

reserve

for the

a

vast

irony beyond even this I get one evening Piet, who, like many of his generation, is a nominal Moslem. We are discussing the worsen­ ing of the local political situation, where the Communists are making steady gains in the kompongs, "What will happen," he states sadly, "was ordained by God ten thousand years before today."

An

from

evenings are short. Unlike the people of the city, the villagers seem all to go to bed early and at one time. At midnight I am probably the only person in the whole area who remains awake. When my Coleman lamp sighs and then is silent, I sit in the darkness, aware on earth's breast of what I could not sense from the sky: sleeping. humanity. Man pervades the night But the

...

Man teems

10

on

and in the earth

a

.

.

.

awake

.

.

.

and in

earth her

to

own

man

edge deeply, undress, and yield myself to the private world of my own sleep. breathe

The school at which I teach receives support both the government of Indonesia and a

from

foundation in the United States. We have no more than two

or

three hundred books in

our

library,

and these are of such heterogeneity and triviality as

to be useless for any serious purpose. Accord­

ingly, when I am assigned to teach a course in the teaching of literature I have never had one I am confronted by a situation designed myself to give pause to the most bluff pedagogue: so far -

-

I

as

aware, there exists not one book

am

subject between my classroom sity in Singapore.

on

the

and the univer­

share of the ingenuity that characterizes my heritage, and my students, who But I have my

are

by no

own,

are

own

means

without

a

large share of their

my allies. We have no library,

vent one, and while we're about it

we

so we

in­

found their

first seminar. Together we determine the kinds of books we should need if we were to read for such a course, and together we give titles and authors to

those

needs, and subsequently build outlines for

them. With a theoretical library of fifty imaginary

titles,

we

are

ready to prepare seminar papers.

Less interested

irony of Javanese life. If of they speak democracy, they do so in the rhetoric of an unequal society. Selamet, the son of Pak Moel, speaks of freedom, using the dialect of inferior to superior. I am doubtful whether Pak Moel himself has ever given recognition to the term. What he would mean by equality, if he thought about it, would be the chance to be on a par with other gardeners, never with Mrs. P. By freedom he would mean the license to con­ tinue stooping in my presence, a prerogative I tried at first to deny him. lies

death returns

thinks thus he is at peace. of the great silence is near and so I

The

sultan.

Herein

in

share. When

It is the walks at dusk that I most value. It is

then that I see the villagers preparing themselves

and

ordure

niques,

we

fact than in research tech­

m

invent our information, obliged only to

attribute it to the most likely books in our "li­ brary." On one occasion when it becomes clear to a

student that the fiction she must invent does

likely to be subsumed under one of our a new book, maintaining, when challenged, that she borrowed the book on inter-library loan.

But more than the living concern me. There are

not seem

titles,

she introduces

the dead as well

not the royal sultans, for they proud boasts. Their few laws fallen into forgotten custom and their taxes long ago levied and spent, they are nothing now save regal are

but

terms in

...

once

the nomenclature of an age. On my visits

to the monuments of the past I pay homage to the

unremembered multitudes who wrought the royal

tombs, the temples, the forgotten walls. How ob­ durate in death

are

common men.

In all their in­

finite unknown-ness they yet support the symbols of their time. And the countless laborers who beneath the gnawing, equa,torial sun for god and king have stored among the stones their ripest energies.

These are the vaults of generations: Cleft of its crest, a mountain bears, like a yoke across its neck, a royal city of tombs. While there are on earth edifices more grand, there is none more stately than those of Imagin. Three-hun­ dred-sixty-five steps, each majestically high and wide, stripe into the mountain's living back like strove

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

lashes from

a

each

a

whip. A regal calendar is Imogiri,

dynasty, each month a monarch served still by men who, with life, eke the pre­ cious minutes of his estate. And modestly in neigh­ boring plain is temple Prambanan, to Siva, where Destroyer goddess stares through grey, impassive stone (the stone itself born of the destroyer Mer­ api) upon immaculate bullock lying into sun, shimmering in simplicity. The Water Palace, de­ cayed to stumps of grandeur, boasts a mosque once roofed with tortoise shell, once Allah's bub­ year

ble in

sacred lake. I see at the Water Palace

a

a

peacock screen carved of rock to feathered fine­ ness;

I

behold

the

stream-rinsed

stone

it

shields.

Here

a

vast

couches

of

where

en­

hall

rings of solidarity. Fraternalism begins to from behind its prison of familial bonds.

All this is not to say that the Javanese lack

feelings of solidarity or security. On the con­ trary. Late weening and placement in a closely knit family group would guarantee such feelings.

It is merely that their extra-familial contacts are tenuous and lack intensity. They are geared, furthermore, to the social forms of aristocracy, where mobility is all but impossible. Under these

conditions, therefore, it is are

reality beyond

the wind that carries

have done Java.

pressure

Indonesia is

I

All

poverty.

self-determination. This is not the

am

not

one

to think of 'a catastrophe

so new

learning,' so tentative in the use of critical thought, stand little chance of retaining what they gained in the forties.

By slow attrition the masses of Moslem, Socialist, and Nationalist parties will flake 'away, the die-hards fleeing to Darul Islam or its equivalent.

elite of

same

And so, with the speed of all rare, in­ periods of our lives, my Java year

expedient to

tense

brothers and equal, and so the were spread. But the plan has

ends.

Merapi has erupted, but unremark­

ably,

and

one's

men

are

countrymen

believe

that

misfired. In the areas outside Java democracy has taken hold

as a

vital idea; hence the fre­

quent, peripheral attrition the oligarchy in Jakarta dreads and tries to pass off central Java the events less open to the

on

were

the Dutch. But in

different, though no

exploitation of the central gov­

she would more

knowledge of it. Before democratization could be accomplished, before brotherhood could be felt, the ancient two-dimensionality and inner­ ness must be breached. Communism, through its careful regimen of workers and fictions of ad­ dress, has given the people a meaningful context in which they may meet one another. They call one another brother. They feel the first dim stir-

Winter,

1963

am

somewhat

ashamed

of

Kaliurang before it. We have given a most unusual production of Pygmalion in which Liza, played by a girl from the Kraton, effects an anglicized interpretation of Javanese market behavior, while for her ball scene she wears not a puffed gown but the splendid batik

One speaks of democracy, the peasant of Java reasons, so it must exist. But experientially, he no

I

have fled

ernment.

has

age in

all

have

stories

It is

new

emotional

to

soft-drink of democracy offered the popu­ lace. The fictions of democracy have been

helpful and necessary.

the

of reality to events. These people,

than popu­

inebriate with the brew

much with the

in .removed terms. The personal equation is the only one which gives a dimension

crowded than the rest of

more

as

In

equiv­ providing depth in a society without inter­ personal depth they have made a coup.

Other political parties have accepted existing conditions and have not imple­ mented their words with village action.

Indonesia; it is more urbanized, more unionized, more communized. But behind and

words

alent of

forms, to the ultimate stupa, a heaven high, the celestial form.

What still, uncounted minions of mor­ tality find triumph in these stones!

lation

the

ears.

In earlier days the Christian missionary preceded or accompanied the administra­ tive arm of imperialism. In his work the missionary managed to provide a struc­ ture of belief congenial to the rigmarole of comradeship and equality the new doc­ trine brought with it. Now the communists

of Bhuddic

Communism in Java lies

images

strange to them, having little

It is this gap which the Communist Party has to a meaningful extent bridged.

to their

played, thrusting its dead tower to heaven as emptily as any castle ruined on Rhine. There a royal voyeur's room, unsubtly though deftly placed be­ tween two maidens' pools of imperial scale and execution. From this Babylon to Bhud­ da's shrine, Borobudur, a universe of form where, level after level, man's life strives to the summit of Guatama's perfection.

Like the Divina Comedia in lava, it mounts, sickened,' through man's gross substance, breathless through the whirls

more

clear that the

of brotherhood

tertainments

Java is

peep

regal

wear

in court. Never did Liza appear

at her moment of empty triumph than

when played upon our small platform beneath the

deep soft skies of Javanese night with the sounds of gamelan distant. I recall, as I prepare to leave, my brief bar friend at the

Raffles, and I smile.

Like many of my imperialistic predecessors, I cannot make a tally. I have trained, but the more' noble accomplishment has been my students'. Per­

haps it is always thus. It is not easy, as the Heron rises

swiftly, to look back less than wistfully.

11

William J. Sonzski

William J. Sonzski was one of the first student editors of

The One

The Tri-Quarterly. When, in the Winter issue, J959, his

lively undergraduate story about the goings-on after a Northwestern-Wisconsin football game was published the magazine lost a faculty subscriber on the grounds that "if students behave like that, I don't want to know

about it." Since his graduation he has worked for sev­

True

eral publishing houses in Chicago, played an important

part in the exposure of the political graft in Stickney, Illinois

which he

for

the

Chicago praised by Daily News, worked on the writing staff of Sidney R. -

was

Yates in his campaign for the United States Senate, and

Religion

is presently organizing his own public relations firm. He

married

Marguerite Ulrich (Kappa

Northwestern)

and

they

live

Alpha

with

their

Theta

at

daughter

Gretchen Lee, aged two, in Old Town, Chicago.

C RUELL Y,

prevent any emotional outburst, table, stiffly and silently, after announcing his decision to move out of Hyde to

in for the last time, I had never noticed how tall

Father left the dinner

the Church

Park

that my many water-colors of it were wrong and had not captured the intricate construction. And

final. And

was

continue school at St.

so

it

was

final. I would not

Mary's or serve Mass there

was

bulletin board.

And with Father cleverly out of the room, my ob­ jections had no target. My spoon tracked "foot­

at the far end of

arm, and I saw Patricia was crying, too. Her face was awful, like a prune. I stopped, because I couldn't tolerate looking so ugly. Everything took on

excessive colors through wet

"Patrrcia with us The

on

new

will

eyelashes.

graduate from St. Mary's and be

weekends. And

house is

so

you'll love it, Michael.

much like

a

farm with all

of trees and gardens."

"Why can't I stay with her and go to St. Mary's?"

"Why, you'll want to be meeting your new friends and going through school with them." sorts

"No,

I

won't."

"Don't worry,

Mikey," Patricia said through a

distorted mouth, "we'll have lots of fun."

"Maybe you will, but I won't."

Nobody had an answer to that.

The day before we were to leave, a gold and red, Indian summer-like Saturday, Mother and I drove to St. Mary's to say good-bye. Taking everything 12

complicated. I realized

yet Sister Angela almost always chose one for the

any longer. I thought I knew how a lion at the zoo must feel the first time the iron gate swings shut.

steps through my pudding.

"Michael," Mother said, "finish your dessert, and don't be sad." She placed a hand softly on my

and how

The Sisters

were

a

talking in the convent garden cloistered passageway. I liked

the way our foot-steps echoed and re-echoed along the way, and there was no other sound. Sister Angela, whom all the boys thought it would be nice to marry some day, was sitting on a stone bench with Sister Beatifica. We boys tried to ig­

Sister Beatifica whenever possible. She had reputation for pulling hair.

nore a

"Good

afternoon, Sisters," Mother said. "You

know we're leaving tomorrow after Mass, and Mi­

chael would like to say

good-bye."

I bowed my head from the shoulders.

Sister Angela smiled and her pretty, full cheeks pressed against the starched confines of her hood.

"We'll miss you,

Michael,

at Mass and at school

this fall."

"I will miss

Sister, too," I said, focusing on the garden walk. I would miss Sister Angela.

Sister Beatifica snapped us all to attention with a cough. Even Mother. Her bluish hands disap­ peared behind her habit, and only her white, lined face was visible. "Look at me, young man," she said. Her head tottered in my direction, like a pa­ pier-mache mask. I could not look at it long. mortar between the bricks of the

NORTHWESTERN

TRI -QUARTERLY

"Yes, Sister Beatifica," I said, bowing my head and leaving it there.

"I understand you're going to attend school this fall."

a

public

I

glanced wide-eyed at Mother.

"Yes, Sister," she said. "Until a place opens in the third grade at St. Aloysius. It's the only Catho­

chilled by the echo of a door closing somewhere after an invisible someone. drove home, the boulevard and squarish brick homes were lifeless as though from some As

we

austere

glance. All of

moved or

neighbors had either

our

at their

were

summer

lic Church for miles."

"Sister Angela

hoped you would visit her when

This seemed to spur Sister Beatifica on, and her

we're in the City," Mother said.

"You must realize," she said to disgraceful thing -leaving a Cath­ olic school for a public school where you will be to of the of the Church." lies enemies exposed

"Of course, Michael. It's not moving a great distance."

eyes

brightened.

me, "this is

a

-

shook my head and realized that was the wrong thing to do. Sister Beatifica hated ignorance

"We won't be

as

much

She looked up

sin.

as

the tree-tops with a hu­ smile, and I naively felt re­

across

morless, prophetic

lieved. "How well I know this

course

of events.

Little I

by little you shall fall away." glanced hopefully at Sister Angela.

Mother

were

She and

silent.

-

said.

tresses of the Church. A thin smile added wrinkles

not

Michael."

going Hell, Mary's while Mother talked with Patricia's Sister, Sister Roseanne, who was also pretty but not as pretty as Sister Angela. I did not have to go to confession but made a good to

are

I waited inside St.

act of contrition anyway,

morning.

so

I could receive in the

I knelt on the Saint Mary side of the al­

tar where the velvet

chin. That was

a

railing felt soft under

my

safe place.

by the complexity of the vaulted arch, which I had granted so long. The columns, straight­

edged and tall, had as many corners

as

the vault­

ed ribs that met at their tops. There was for

a reason

everything. It wasn't as though someone had

just decided to build a column. It had to be put in the right place. That's what had been wrong with my drawings. I hadn't bothered about the reasons.

I felt much the way I had the night of the first Billy Conn-Joe Louis fight when I listened to it on the radio with Dad. In wanting Joe Louis to win

so

badly mainly, I think, because most people wanted a white man to knock out "the Nigger"-I actually hated Billy Conn. And finally in the thirteenth round, Don Dunphy's voice rose, as it always had: "It's Louis with a left jab an' a right cross­ an' two left jabs to the midsection a left hook and a right to the head and Conn is down!"

That threat had been destroyed, but now I was faced with a new one, and it seemed terrifying and dangerous without precedent. How could I ever go to Notre Dame and play fullback after going to a public school? And worse.

-

-

-

The residue of incense suffocated me, and I was

Winter,

1963

Sunday in the warmth and preparation, I

On

able to convince myself Sister Beatifica had said it. But after Mass, when we set out

and had driven

for

over

hour in

an

silence,

I

knew she had.

pretentious suburb of Chicago with a pretentious name and an expressway downtown, was then sparsely populated farm country. Our relatives had wryly called it the "Sticks," but to Dad it was very much like the Rock City, Indiana, of his boyhood. He constantly What is

now

a

remarked how wonderful the smell was.

Light streamed through the stained glass high in the nave and bathed the immense white tripartite altar in red and gold. Looking up I was stunned taken for

new

being here."

I traced curliques in the dust on the dash­ board. "Why did Sister Beatifica say that to me about falling away?" I asked cautiously.

"Oh, that's her way, Michael. She's elderly and very stern. She meant nothing by it," Mother

was

"You

been away awhile and you've friends, I'll bet you'll hardly miss

we've

"After made

"It's only a matter of time now," Sister Beati­ fica continued, her eyes roaming the sooty but­ to her face.

coming back, will we?" as though we're

"I think it is."

I

almost

homes in Mich­

igan City, it seemed.

About

fifteen

minutes

solitary farm, highway onto a gravel road. Our driveway, a finer, white gravel, was a mile from the highway, and approaching it, we saw our nearest neighbor a quarter mile further past

a

turned off the state

we

down the road. Their house was dark and looked

though

as

it had risen out of the

ground rather

than having been built.

Our house

gradual rise at the end of radiantly white­ washed, and had been built by the former owner himself over a five-year period. For some reason, was

on

a

the elm-lined drive. It was brick,

he

had

was

made

the

walls

double

a

thickness.

It

this kind of sturdiness that was attractive to

Dad, and his first words about the house that it was

more

solid

were

than the old home in

even

Hyde Park. gable in my second floor room, I a lawn, filled with as­ frontage sorted fruit trees, that dipped down to the road.

A tall hedge obscured the road except for the driveway entrance. The neighboring farmhouse was dark, and I could not imagine anyone living From

could

the

see

our

-

there.

Patricia would not start next week end.

coming

I realized I

was

out until the

alone

upstairs.

13

It

terribly eerie, because

was

there

were,

about

to

of

return

as

street

no

course,

dusk settled, lamps. I was

when

downstairs

I

heard

the

spin stupidly. Except for the few 1 had dragged along, the snakes had disappeared in the straw bed.

grinding sound of footsteps on gravel and the low, occasional

of

voices.

And

then

I

murmuring them, shadows passing slowly by the break in the hedges, trudging toward the now invisible farm house. They passed, six I thought; but minutes, seemingly hours after their footsteps had vanished, no light came from the house. All was dark and quiet except for the katydids.

Lying in bed in the new darkness, I thought this a was place where someone could surely fall saw

away.

Dad

neighbors were Hollanders and electricity only when necessary, because they were frugal. During our first week I ven­ tured near their property, on very brief, cautious expeditions, but never caught as much as a glimpse of life. "They're in the fields by five," Dad explained, "finishing up harvest, and get back usually after dark.

On the following Sunday a five-year-old Ford, filled with our silent neighbors, groaned past our drive as we returned from Mass at St. Aloysius, fifteen miles away. We waved, but they re­ said

our

used

"

mained

motionless

who nodded

for

except

stiffly.

the

old

driver

Their

church, Dad said, was a short distance away, equidistant between them and a related family. Together they comprised the congregation and had built the church which was small and wooden, painted white.

It looked nothing like a church and, I thought, very irreverent.

evening I was reading in my room when footsteps came again at precisely the same time as the previous Sunday. Again the dark figures disappeared and the farm house re­ mained dark and silent. They had returned from evening church services, Dad later told me.

N ext morning 1 bicycled through the orchard, filling my basket with enough pears and apples to last through a long exploration of the ghostly That

the

farm.

The house and seen

a

was

low and made of

slate roof. It

and

certainly

farm house T had

shingle-wood nothing I had ever like the white, rambling

was

not

Determined to find

seen.

one, I set out across a

like

row

of hot-beds

straw toward what looked like

a

some­

packed in

barn.

slithering sound under my black streaks darting the through spokes. They were snakes, some of them long enough to become caught in the spokes and slap against my legs. There seemed to be hundreds of them as 1 raced along the interminable path. A scream pounded in my chest as 1 reached the end and jumped from the bi­ cycle. It described a wide arc and landed with a grating noise against the cinder road. 1 jumped on a rock, shaking and watching the front wheel At first 1 heard

wheels

14

and

then

a

saw

lt

A shrill, staccato giggle came from behind me. came again from a patch of tall weeds near

the

barn.

Gradually

terror

my

of

the

snakes

my ridiculous sta­ down and picked up a

grew to embarrassment tion on the rock. I jumped

over

stone.

"Who's there?" I demanded, still shaking uncontrollably.

The high-pitched titter came again.

"Come out, or I'll throw this stone," 1 said.

It came again, but muffled.

1 threw the stone hard against the shack. The rotting wood splintered with a menacing crack.

The giggle stopped, and through the weeds, look­ ing more indignant than frightened, a small girl emerged.

"Ya d'n hafta be so nasty, fer Pete's sake," she said. A giggle forced its way out again. She stifled it and pushed a strand of blond hair from her eyes. Her braids looked like the used to decorate Christmas trees.

angel hair

"I only wanted to find out who it was," I said, regaining my poise somewhat since she was not

quite

my

age.

She nodded in the direction of the hotbeds and hooked

a

"Don't

hafta

thumb be

in

the

strap of her overalls.

ascarda

them

snakes."

She

walked nonchalantly into the beds and kicked the

nearly two feet long darted out, grabbed it by the tail before it could es­ cape. She held it behind its gaping mouth and car­ ried it toward me. The snake continued to wiggle as though it were crawling on some surface.

"See," she said, "jus' a Ii'I ole garter snake.

They hide in the manure cuz it's cool." straw. A snake

and she

It looked like

The

girl

a

rattler to

clamped her

me.

tongue between her teeth

whip. She lofted it through the air, and it squirmed a few feet leaving a thin trail of blood. Then it stopped.

"Don't worry," she said with an indolent shrug.

"He's dead." Her teeth were dazzling white, large and straight, not at all child-like.

"Yer the new people from Chicago, ain'tcha?" and cracked the snake like

a

I nodded.

"Yer

Catholics, ain'tcha?"

"Yes.

"

She stared at my shoes and clothes, silently, her

thumbs hooked pugnaciously on her overalls. Then with a thin smile she turned and motioned for me to follow. "This is our farm. Come on, I'll show ya

th' barn."

At first I worse

hesitated, feeling certain something dark, menacing

than snakes lived in the

shed. Mother had me

always cautioned Patricia and

about rats in the coal bin. But when the girl

turned

impatiently with her hands on her hips, I

followed.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

The shed was black and weather-beaten, not red

"Well,

can't

swim

Hell

Hole, cuz Dad'U shoot ya, this bein' our propity." Still ob­ viously impressed, she grinned kindly. "Course in ya

across

ought to be. Inside it smelled of damp rotting wood. The now empty cow and horse stalls exuded the hot, pungent odor of straw and manure. There was something frightening

th' winter Hell Hole freezes over and jus 'fore Christmas, Dad takes Buttercup acrosst and plows

about the filth and disorder. The barn would never

the

be clean.

Looking back at Hell Hole my heart sank imag­ ining its grotesque, decomposed contents.

A small herd of cows grazed behind a barbed wire fence, occasionally viewing us with long, sad stares. The girl slipped under the fence and walked through the herd. She returned and showed me a handful of spiny nodules.

"Them's cockleburs. They get stuck on the cow's udder and poison her milk."

barns

as

earth and

"The

cows are

grazing. We'll see 'rn out in the

pasture later. Dad's plowin' with Buttercup. She's our horse."

She gathered a handful of oats from

a

bin and munched them. I tasted some, they were dusty and bland. I poured the remainder in my

pocket.

We walked by I was

a large oblong steep tank which, told, she and her brothers were allowed to

swim in. The water

was

black and covered with

vegetation. "We're 'lowed to go in after the sets are warshed. Them's onions;" she said helpfully.

"Don't you have a better place to swim?"

Not at all rebuffed, she strode to the far end of

the barn and pushed back a heavy door on rollers.

The

sun

burst in

and then I

our

saw

the

eyes, pond. It stretched several hundred yards from the

doorway where it lapped gently at the moss-cov­ ered pilings of the barn. The surface was a golden green in the morning sun.

1 stood transfixed by my first genuine swimming

snow

back so's

c'n skate."

we

1 asked her what an udder was, and she clicked her tongue. "Thut's where the milk is, fer Pete's

sake."

We continued up to the

She selected "All those

a

weed and clamped her teeth on it.

fields

b'long to

us,

there and th'

corn

"Well,

1 know

that," she said, glaring

wished I

were

"The

people

there.

church?"

"Why is it haunted?" I asked, quite certain it might be in view of recent experiences.

"Well, folks tell it's still haunted by the quarry workers what was caught when they hit a under­ ground river. That 'as a long time ago. Folks tell

"Oh, no," 1 said, gestion.

"Why not?"

all still an' white with 'uz

arms

hanging

down." She narrowed her eyes in a furtive glance.

"Th'

gottum up witha hook in his

stared back

We walked

across

the

arm."

She

pond.

along a ramshackle dock to a bank

that rose gently to a grove of cottonwood. "C'n ya

truly swim five times 'cross and back?" she asked, squinting.

1 spat in the lapping water to establish my mas­ culinity. "I've swam further." I thought I had, trying to recall the comparative length of the YMCA pool.

Winter,

1963

moved

that

secretively.

was

me.

drive, high,

green roof, looked serene and friendly. The sur­ rounding lawn and orchards touched with peach and red apples had the calm of a sacristy. 1

church," she said.

He

at

At the end of the winding, white gravel our house, glistening white under the

She hunched her shoulders and lowered her voice

they're still down ther in the crane what was brung up." She stared across the Hell Hole and a gentle breeze scattered several strands of white-golden hair across her eyes. "Couple years back, brother Rolph gut hisself drowned, an' it was a long time b'fore Sherriff's men gut 'm up.

out

all those sweet williams

an'

"That's my house," I said.

never

way

out ta th' State road."

"We're not 'lowed to swim in Hell Hole," she said shaking her head.

"Why not?" I leaned out to get a complete view. caught my shirt and tried to pull me back.

"Fer Pete's sake. Ya wanna get drowned?"

"I could swim back and forth five times," 1 said majestically.

"Well, ya wouldn' want to cuz it's haunted."

all the

railroad tracks." She pointed to a for lorn railroad line in the distance. "An' all this pas­ ture, an' those over there, an' the fields out

ta th'

hole.

She

and sat in the

crest

shade of the grove, leaning against a cottonwood.

"Will

you

shocked

b'longed

to

our

be

to

our

very

sug-

at

goin' the

"Catholics aren't allowed to."

"What fer?"

"Because

we

have

the one

true

religion."

"Oh." We

sat

silently,

the

smell of grass around

warm

us.

A

sun

cow

raising

the

moaned at the

salt lick.

"Dad's the minister at our church," she said in­

formatively.

"I thought he was a farmer."

"He is, an' he started the church. Should say his folks did long time ago." She looked at me startled. "There ain't no Catholic church around

here." Then she lics.

giggled. "There arin't no Catho­

"

ignored her unwillingly. "There are Catholic everywhere," I said finally.

"Kinda like road apples?"

I

churches

"What's that?"

15

She picked up a stone and tossed it into tant pile of horse droppings.

I stood up and said she wouldn't

that if she were

a

a

dis­

get away with

A

shrill

voice

that

this

small

Parks to go. The brother loaded full crates onto

called

her.

to

Her

"Oh, fer Pete's sake,"

We walked back

was

n,ame

she said

getting

the

many leaves

extremely

together past Hell Hole and

lifted my

I

astonished

silently,

the cart, and soon we were bouncing back along the road. Katrin got two turnips and we peeled

up. "Coooooooooooomiiiiinnnnn!"

the shack.

waited

group had singly emptied a field far larger than White Sox Park. There were many more Sox

boy and she had better take it

back.

Katrin.

and

off.

It tasted

Katrin

wet

sharp,

finished

hers

and

hungrily

but did not take a second.

and Katrin ad­

bicycle,

good.

At the pump

we

filled the horse trough with

mired it silently. She no longer seemed smart alecky but rather awed by the shiny red Schwinn.

clean water which Buttercup sucked up thirstily.

Her jowls pumped forcefully. I patted her and ran

A

through her mane, enormously thrilled have such long and intimate contact with a horse. Katrin eyed me quizzically and paid no at­ tention whatever to Buttercup.

of her mouth

corner

dropped, and she folded

her hands behind her. I thought I liked her much

Patricia, who was never quiet.

"You can ride on the back," I said, tapping the

more than

my hand

to

luggage carrier. She did not say a word but im­ mediately got on. I showed her how to hold on and rest her feet on the lug bolts of the axle so her cuffs wouldn't get caught.

We took the road back to the house. Katrin got

tion to

off and stood at the handle bars

rise a short distance to a swineyard where several

stroking the fox­

We left the horse and walked out to the west

pasture where Katrin had to

remove

burs from

helped although apprehensive about being gored or kicked. But the cows paid no atten­

the

I

cows.

us.

We walked down the other side of the

tail. "I've gotta take coffee out ta the field. Ya

sows

c'n come an' ride on the back of the horse cart."

simple peaked roofs with a single wall in the rear.

I said I had to go home, and Katrin asked if I'd

like

to

go

the

out

day.

next

"They're pickin'

turnips, an' ya c'n have one ta eat."

"Okay," I said noncommitally.

That night I was acutely aware of the country darkness. I would have liked going to a movie or perhaps playing basketball at St. Mary's gym.

Without Patricia and with Mother reading, wait­ ing for Dad, the big house was a dark enemy.

Hell Hole and its horribly maimed residents continually reminded me I did not belong here.

and piglings snorted busily. Their sties were

One of the sties

was

empty and around it there

miniature

corn

stalks grown from kernels

were

that had eluded the pigs. They would die in the first frost, before reaching maturity.

Katrin

picked

two,

ears

and

peeled them ba­

nana-fashion. They were tender, even the cob. We ate the entire

ear

and the silk

as

well, leaning

against the sty, which, in the sun, was luxuriously hot

against

our

backs.

"Are ya startin' school this fall?"

Although it seemed I would fall off, I didn't mainly

going into the fourth grade," I replied, thinking I certainly looked that old.

"I'm goin' ta the third," she said.

"Of course, I'll be going to a Catholic school be­ fore long." I was primarily reassuring myself.

"Oh," she said appreciatively.

Katrin then thoroughly surprised me by leaning her head softly on my shoulder. She said nothing and did not move. Gradually I could smell her hair, hot in the sun like a freshly scrubbed puppy.

It occurred to me, curiously, that we were not two boys. And what I felt I had never felt before. So I eventually thought our difference and the feeling were involuntary. That night I inadvertently thought about Katrin a great deal. The recollec­ tion of her hair against my cheek strangely re­

because Buttercup never exceeded a slow walk.

enacted the sensation that she was the left side of

The worst had not come, and for all I knew the falling away had already begun. It all seemed unnatural.

so

day I saw Buttercup for the first marvelous old strawberry mare great sagging abdomen. One of Katrin's

But the next

time. She with

a

brothers

was

came

a

from the fields at

tercup slowly drawing

a

cart.

noon

with But­

The cart

was

ac­

tually a large door, like one on the barn, fastened to

an

axle and wheel from

some

grander vehicle,

perhaps from a grander day.

We loaded the cart with milk the

can

rear

At the under

a

a

crate of food and

a

filled with coffee. Katrin and I sat at of

the

cart, which bumped violently.

turnip

field we laid the crate and coffee

tree.

Katrin's

parents

and

two

older

brothers

trudged slowly to the cart. They all wore overalls, including her mother, and rubber knee pads, because one knelt constantly to pick turnips. Katrin's mother smiled prettily but no one so

anything to me. Her brothers did not much as recognize my presence, and no one said

offered Katrin or me any food.

I

16

helped unload empty bushels from the

cart

"I'm

my

body.

School in that county started later than in Chi­ cago because of harvest. In the next two weeks I

either forgot the sinister atmosphere I had once sensed, or else discovered it never really existed.

I was too busy with Katrin in the last days of har­ vest even to notice what had been barely percepti­

ble to begin with. I would be at the farm sitting by the hand pump when Katrin's father came out every morning with a spotless galvanized bucket

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

cooking water. He would offer a crisp "Gud mornin' and then chew as though he had tobacco

trin's father, because I was faced with an area about which I knew nothing. What was a woman?

in his mouth. I

Sister Beatifica,

for

"

eventually discerned he did

not

chew tobacco but that his upper plates required inordinate pressure in the morning. He never

spoke further than the greeting.

We would then go to the barn for

milking. Late

morning chill would cause the warm milk

summer

to steam in the bucket. Mother was aghast when I

told her

I

had

tasted

after

some

had

it

been

chilled. She explained pasteurization to me.

Although I never was accepted into the family,

only Katrin's oldest brother, Horst, overtly ob­ jected to me. At nineteen, he was most influential, and even Katrin grew quiet when he lost his tem­ per. One morning when the rented hay baler broke down while I was feeding wire into it, Horst blamed me directly. Although I had not been re­ sponsible, and the others knew it, they sileritly continued working while Horst bawled me out. I gradually wanted more and more to punch his ruddy, acne face.

Mother suggested one morning that I invite Ka­ trin to go into town with us that evening and see movie. We had not been to

a

month

and after

a

movie in

our

Sister Angela, who affected and chest much

arm

mind, but still I could not discern nudity. It hap­ pened too suddenly.

After the first time, Katrin was not to place her head so wonderfully on my shoulder again. I was not, as that first time, to smell the clean animal odor of her silver hair. She did, however, continue to live

as

become

my left arm and in my chest. And I had

buffer between her and the monotony

a

that existed before me.

We

charged

a

up

haystack with enough laughing to the top.

mentum

to

carry

us

bounced

on

the

edge

of

horse

We with

cart

tion we both must have known before.

"Ah don't

go back ta school next

wanna

week,

do you,

Mikey?"

"Unnh," I would reply, munching

casion. I asked Katr in

and store up fruit an'

weekly

the

mo­

bushels of turnips to choose from. It was an ex­ citement heightened by the extra-ordinary isola­

and cowboy movies in Chicago this became an oc­

there,

Katrin

was gone, and a of no description stood stark naked in my

woman

bled down my wrist.

"Let's jes hang a tarp

a

as

did, were not women.

And then, in an instant, she

first

diet of serials

even

the left

near

me

a

beet that

the empty

in the corn cribs. Katrin and I cleaned up the herd

pig sty we never gotta turnips see people or Horst ag'in."

"And every morning we can get to the cows

and had our dessert of young corn, which was not

and milk'm first."

right

after

milking.

After lunch we were to help Horst repair slats

sweet as two weeks earlier. We sat

as

over

on

the rise

Hell Hole watching for Horst to return with

materials. Even at noon the sun seemed lower and a

like tinsel in the wind. "Ah don't like milk any­ "

way.

"Can't

be

"And I don't like Horst, and I'm gonna crack a good one, one of these days."

him

was

grey. goin' with

ya

inta

town

tonight."

"You can't?"

"You do

that, Mikey," Katrin would say, gig­ because, I thought, we both despised

gling,

"Nope. Can't." She leaned on an elbow from her sitting position. Her slender arm, sunburned and freckled, was lost in a rough woolen shirt that was too large. Her white teeth, white as though just scrubbed with cold well water, gnashed a weed.

"Why not?"

"Ain't 'lowed to go to no mavin' picture shows.

Horst.

Ain't 'lowed ta go ta no shows."

"You never saw a movie?" I sat up and stared

tricia visited

at the tiny nose twitching, the blinking blue eyes.

acing

"Nope." mean you've never seen Gene Autry, an' Jones, an' any of them?"

She looked up blankly, shaking her head. "Dad

"You

Buck

tells it's the devil's own with evil women.

so's

"No," Katrin would say, her bangs shimmering

few leaves had gathered under the cottonwoods.

Hell Hole

over

men

an' naked

We ain't none of us ta see 'm."

My first reaction was that there must be movies

The

few days of summer were radiant, sky only slightly grey from clouds. It still warm in the fields in spite of an oc­ last

with the was

casional

stab

of

autumn

in

cottonwoods. There had been

Sister

Beatifica on

or

St.

the no

Mary's,

shade

of

the

time to think of even

when

Pa­

weekends. The odors and dark­

and forlorn

landscape were no longer men­ foreign. I avoided all thoughts of going back to school and even partially rationalized that since public school would damn me, I had better not attend against the Church's wishes. ness

It

or

would

be

intolerable

not

to

clean

the

herd

Buttercup, smoothing down her poor, shaggy hide. I had become expert with a pitch­ fork, and Katrin's Dad had allowed me to scythe and water

around nude. I floundered at that point, having no

down weeds around the Allis-Chalmers pump en­ gine on the bank of Hell Hole. The clatter and

certain

smell

I

hadn't

seen

with

conception

bevies of

the

of

women

female

prancing

body. Katrin

of

Buttercup's harness

would

be

sorely

looked exactly like a boy, 'and so did Patricia until

missed.

recently when she had become particular about sharing a room with me. I did not refute Ka-

And then, because I was never really a part of it, one day the oppressive miasma came back.

not

Winter,

1963

17

It

was

a

sow

was

to

Hole

grey day and damp to begin with. A be slaughtered at the edge of Hell the

where

brothers

had

rigged

block

a

and tackle. She screamed from the time she

hobbled

was

the horse cart and all the way down the slope from the swineyard to Hell Hole. As on

Buttercup plodded over ruts and chuck holes, the cart dipped and rose abruptly. Because of her fat, the sow rolled comically whenever the cart dipped, and she seemed completely helpless in spite of her It

enormous

size. There

was

heavi­

a

in the air that she also must have sensed.

ness

was

sad because

to her

going ly ignored.

no

one

Her

rescue.

had any intention of

screams

complete­

were

recalled the day before when she

I

had rooted merrily about the sty, dumbly content.

But today she was human. Something that she also felt warned her, and she became vicious when they raised her from the cart.

He jumped back when blood

spurted down his squealed piercingly, louder than before. Her hind quarters kicked, and Katrin's Dad pulled the tackle tighter. She was now strung taut, upside down. Horst stabbed again. The sow pulled her front hooves loose and chest

and

almost

The

arm.

touched

her

sion that sent Horst

father the

snatched

sow

walked

sow

me.

Her lips. they do after your mouth is open for a long time.

"Go-o-oily."

I turned and began walking down the road, kicking up puffs of dust. Katrin followed a short distance and stopped. "Kin ya come ta th' pas­ ture and bring in the herd?"

I shook my head without turning or stopping and I noticed that blood continued to drop where my teeth had gone cleanly through my lip.

School was a two-room affair with a large lawn enclosed by a fence. There were thirty of us who mainly played tag. In a matter of days those of us who understood football organized a team.

Very soon football became the most important part of my day, and I would dream during les­ sons about spinning through the line, dodging

and breaking away to countless touch­ Although we had very little equipment, I imagined I wore the gold and blue of a Notre Dame uniform. None of the boys had heard of tacklers

Notre Dame.

Gradually, although not completely, Katrin no longer resided within me. Nevertheless, I per­

reeling backwards. Katrin's sticker, and in squeal became

the

hind quarters

the

relaxed. Her

in

convul­

a

a

moment

a

low gur­

what Horst would do. But I stood paralyzed as he strode toward me.

formed

more

I had not

I

paused

maker," he said still red­ faced from his clumsiness. He wiped his bloodied

looked

more

hand across my face.

"You swine." I spat in his face.

time,

I

ducked

under

his

left

hand,

had

and

to

reach up to land a right solidly on his mouth. A red light popped. When I could see again, Horst had both knees

on

my chest.

I could

see

his fist

coming down like a hammer, but it did not hurt.

Then I couldn't

see

it any

more.

A scarecrow with a leather face lifted me to my

feet. He said nothing while he wiped my face with a

coarse

handkerchief. I did not feel at all

em­

barrassed with Katrin

looking at me, only a tin­ gly, painless throbbing.

"What in God's creation's the trouble with ye, Horst? Twice't age th' little fella."

"But, Da-ad," Horst whined, "he

b'long here." He glared at me. get ott a here, Creases

jes

"Why don't ya jes

ya little sucker."

slapped Horst down to the spot where

he

stood

and walked back to the slaughter.

"All right," Horst said,

kneeling in the cinders.

"Git outta here. Git back to your neked women picture shows and yer whore nuns. Why don't ya

18

jes get

on

on

my way to the herd

In the

partial sunlight it

as

though

I had returned

which I had survived. Now,

to

a

battle site

where countless

dangers had lurked, only bare trees begged piti­ fully for protection.

From the rise there

was no sign of life except thought I would wait for Katrin and skipped through the pasture to the swine­ yard. There a wind rustled the corn stalks and seemed all the mightier. I ripped off an ear of corn and peeled it. It had grown hard and taste­ less. I tossed it into a trough and stood silently on what might have been a wind-swept deck, the corn snapping like sails.

for the herd.

I

straightened

voice. But I

was

ready

I drew closer.

luminated by

a

the

at

direction. The wind as

deepened in the scarecrow's face. He

would be.

sad than forboding. Nothing seemed sinister any longer. I felt confident for the first

I

don't

talked to Katrin since

as

at Hell Hole

she

trouble

much

so

day of the slaughter. And when Mother told me about a place unexpectedly opening up at St. Aloysius, I had the pretext to see her. where

little

way

brilliantly when she watched our game inconspicuously from the side lines. And Mother mentioned one evening to Dad that she was the prettiest girl in school.

gle that lasted for several minutes.

As soon as the trouble started, I:. had known

"Ya

toward

slowly

the

parched

downs.

Horst seemed to enjoy plunging in the pig stick­ er.

Katrin

looked

rose

In

low

sound

and turned

one

Horst's

quickly in its

and battered the stalks of the

empty sties, il­

fragment of sunset, I

watched them for

of

saw

them. I

while, standing tall over the longer, but a fear of Horst brought me to my knees, and I crawled away slowly over hoofprints baked into the a

corn, and wanted to watch

earth.

outta here?"

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

HEALTH OF NORTHWESTERN STUDENTS Introduction: be

to

young

Too

old

accepted

for

a

in

the

pediatrician, health

too

programs and away

internists, unsure of health care, this is the plight personal physician of college students. of

from one's

-

History: Health Services have developed to meet this need. A century ago, President Stearns re­ ported to the Amherst College Board of Trustees,

breaking down of the health of the stu­ dents, especially in the spring of the year, which is exceedingly common, involving the necessity of leaving college in many instances and crip­ pling the energies and destroying the prospects of not a few remaining, is, in my opinion, wholly "The

unnecessary, and proper measures could be taken to

prevent it." Colleges throughout the country

began to pay attention to the health of. students.

At Northwestern in 1879, the "Tripod" called the attention of the University authorities to the "poor physique displayed by honor students."

In 1883, a resident physician was provided at Women's College. As medicine became more exact, more quantitative resources were devel­ oped,

the

and

through

Student

succession

a

infirmaries.

The

eventually unified

Health

of

women's

Out-patient in

the

Service

moved

men's

and

Department

stucco

house

at

was

625

Emerson Street with scattered supervised rooms In 1951, an infirmary

for the ill in dormitories. was

established on the fifth floor of Willard Hall.

Ten years later all the facilities in a new building, Searle Hall,

were

installed

especially

de­

signed to meet the health needs of young adult college students, including an extremely flexible Out-patient Department with diagnostic, labora­ tory, x-ray facilities, 44 beds in a cheerfully decorated infirmary to meet the students' need of respiratory infections, upset tummies, and injuries. Parenthetically, it should be said that

Winter,

1963

By Leona Brandes Yeager

there is

minor

such

no

thing

as

minor

illnesses, only

physicians.

Standards for

College Health Program have by the American College Health Association with the following objectives: "To maintain a state of optimum health, both physi­ cal and emotional among the student body and staff, to indoctrinate each student with proper attitudes, and to instill good habits of personal and community health. An adequate health pro­ a

been established

healthful and safe physical and environment, health education, and

assures

gram

emotional health

a

It discovers

care.

physical

and emotional

in their

early stages, when they may problems be correctable, prevents loss of time and pro­ motes the pursuit of academic work by main­ tenance of health through the prevention and treatment of illness, and provides opportunity for research relating to basic health problems of the student and of his environment."

The

Northwestern

University Student

Program begins when

student

is

Health

considered

University. Students with history of previous illness are evaluated by

for a

a

admission

the

to

the Student Health Service for advice rective

measures

and

cor­

before they are admitted. After

entering student is examined by his personal physician, and his medical rec­ each

admission,

recommendations, are sent to the Health Service prior to the student's arrival on campus. During new student week, with

ords,

Student all

new

Searle

have

students

Hall.

Health

chest

health

records

made

recommendations

a

for

are

conference

at

reviewed

and

optimum health.

A

urinalysis, and other evaluations as indicated by his personal record are obtained.

A

x-ray,

review

of

new

student

records

reveals

that

poorly immunized to small­ pox, tetanus, polio, or diptheria; two per cent need rechecking for past or present cardiac some

20 per cent

are

19

Yeager is Associate Professor of Medi­ cine at Northwestern; a member of the staffs of Evans­

Leona Brandes

ton, Cook

County (attending) and Saint Francis (by courtesy) Hospitals, and Director of the Northwestern University Student Health

Service.

Born

Manville,

in

Illinois, she received her M.D. at Northwestern in 1944, served cago

as

County Hospital and Chi­ Hospital (where she became

resident at Cook

Wesley

Memorial

acting director of laboratories), and studied on a fellow­

ship at the New York Postgraduate Hospital and Medi­ cal School of the New York University-Bellevue Medical

Center. She belongs to a diversity of professional soci­ eties and

her field of internal medicine

publishes in

for young adults. She is presently Chairman of the CommiHee of Standards for the American College Health Association.

This article, together with one of her characteristical­ ly succinct analyses of a collegiate health situation, was prepared at the request of the editor for The Tri-Quar­ terly.

The Health Service is concerned with the pre­ of athletic injuries due to organized

vention

sport and to horseplay. It is through coordination the Department of Intramural Activities that our injuries have been reduced. Yet in­ juries do occur, indicating the need for more supervision and more pre-game training. with

and

five

cent need rechecking problems which could in­ terfere with academic or social adjustment.

problems;

per

because of emotional

MEDICAL CARE

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE It is

Periodic health teachers

are

appraisals

are

urged. Student

examined to conform with the state

requirements, and in addition, are advised about health problems in relation to their profession.

Campus food handlers are examined at yearly intervals.

On the initial visit to the Student Health Serv­

ice, each student is advised and given a memo­ randum regarding his immunization status. Fur­ thermore, immunizations are urged when epi­ demics, such as influenza, indicate the need for protection. The Infectious Disease Program con­ sists of evaluating all patients, isolating when indicated, and protecting contacts. Particular at­ tention is given to tuberculosis prevention. Rheu­ matic

fever

programs

are

and

bacterial

endocarditis

operative, including

ture project and follow-up

control

throat cul­

a

all hemolytic strep­ tococcus sore throats. The development of mental health many

in

on

requires collaboration with departments striving for an environment on

which

the campus

students

may

learn

how

to

mature,

develop creativity and independence.

Not

all

drop-outs for health

reasons

the Student Health Service's attention.

come

to

Drop-outs

themselves may fail to realize theirs is a health problem. Among 149 school le avers reviewed

important to provide ambulatory medical

services for all student needs. Pressures

on

dents'

efficient

time

must

make

such

services

stu­

easily available. This is facilitated by an appointment system. Acute and chronic diseases must be identified early and treated skillfully.

Incipient chronic diseases must be considered before diagnostic markers are apparent. All hints of cardiovascular, pulmonary, renal disease, or and

emotional disability are evaluated to avoid chron­ ic

disorder.

dents

with

Psychiatric facilities evaluation

provide

and treatment of

stu­

brief

a

duration for acute emotional

exacerbation

needing

of

problems or acute problems. In students psychiatric treatment, the

chronic

prolonged

Student Health Service makes arrangements for private care and uses community resources.

During the last academic were

is

year,

31,678 visits

made to the Student Health Service. This

broken down

according

to

usage

as

follows:

4.13 Number of office calls per registered student Number of patient days in the infirmary per regis­ tered student 0.55 Number of patient days in the hospital per regis­ -

-

0.16 tered student Number of Student Health Service Laboratory tests 3.9 per registered student -

-

41 Incidence of gastroenteritis per 1,000 students Incidence of possible or proven infectious mono­ 22 nucleosis per 1,000 students 60 Mental Health visits per 1,000 students Hospital and infirmary admission rate per 100 stu­ dents during the period -

-

this past year, at least 46

were

due to emotional

problems and 9 were due to infectious mononucle­ osis.

20

-

NORTHWESTERN

TRI -QU ARTERLY

Admissions per 100 students at Evanston Hospi­ tal- 2.2 Admissions per 100 students at Willard Infir­ mary -17

Days of care per hospitalization average Searle Hall Infirmary Evanston

Hospital

Medical

In-Patient

Northwestern

that

-

3.26 5.72 -

Services: no

where in the world and is built around

It

is

a

policy

student who

is

too

at

ill to

be up and around should be permitted to stay in a dormitory. Hospital needs of college students differ from

general public in the following

the

ways: in residences at college require infir­ mary care for illnesses frequently treated at home.

2. The nature of their illness may require isolation.

Most college infirmaries need to provide hospi­ 1. Students

talization for chickenpox, mumps, rubella, and measles.

3. Their illnesses often come in repeated seasonal

epidemics.

4. Many of the mild emotional disturbances are alleviated by removal from stress with infirmary 5.

care, and other emotional supports.

Hospitalization on the campus expedites the

dent's return to

class

in

the

classes.

Often he

convalescent

financing such a health program, the North­ western University health fees are expected to cover the needs of young adults, and to provide an insurance program (carried by an outside agency). This hospital program is available any­ In

can

period,

or

stu­

attend a his class

and designed for program students. On individual application, this

our

patient

vacation tion

coverage.

should

provides

Money

set

aside for

used

for

illness.

be

not

out­

college educa­

Perhaps

compulsory health insurance pro­ gram should tax the poor risk, the individual

eventually who

can

a

but

does

take

not

proper

care

of his

health.

Medical Records: An accumulative medical

rec­

legal document, and the medi­ cal data and information are strictly confidential and privileged communication. These can be released only upon written authorization of the patient or his legal guardian. Psychiatric rec­ are ords kept separately from the general ord is

a

medical

medical record.

work may be brought to him in the hospital.

The Environmental Health and Safety Program is

an

essential aspect of the total

college health

program, and is basic to the student's need for a safe and healthful place to live, play, work and

study,

Health

Education

is

vital

a

part

of

a

good

program will and affect the health of the individual his future

college

health

some

a

Every visit should in­

family and community. clude

Such

program.

such instruction

as

commonly heard

1. The need for diagnosis before "shot gun" cure

the

common

therapy.

cold.

3. How not to burn the candle at both ends.

4. The need for rest in restoring injured parts, 5.

determinants

and

man." 1

Such

Development of self-awareness.

prevalance in necessary for plan­

disease

of

knowledge

is

ning facilities for medical care, such as: the number of infirmary beds

the optimum physician-patient ratio the optimum nurse-patient ratio the optimum ancillary services per patient.

Graph

in the clinics:

2. Penicillin does not

Epidemiology: According to the modern defini­ tion "epidemiology is a study of the distribution

indicates

I*

a

pattern

of

campus.

Excess

incidence

respiratory

illness

on

mands

investigation and re-enforcements.

our

de­

IMacMahon, B.; Pugh, T. F.; and Ipsen, J. Epidemio­ logic Methods. Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1960

I

102.7

500

INCIDENCE OF UPPER RESPIRATORY INFECTION

i

.isian ,

i 400

� \

By QUARTER. Influenza

1957 -'58

_._.

1960-61

---

1961-62

---

1962.-63

••••••• -

"'

New stu.dent week

\ �

• 0 0 u

300

\ \

""' 0

'" •

S" 200 :z

100

1112.131415161118191101\11 SPRING

Apr.

Winter, 1963

Moy

June

21

special risk groups are identified, programs are directed to the special groups where they will accomplish the greatest good. For example, an increase of tuberculosis is expected in medi­ If

been found to be associated with acute respira­ tory diseases. No one virus is the cause of the cold.

resistance

Host

is

an

important factor. preventing epi­

Influenza vaccine is effectrve in

with

demic influenza. Adeno virus vaccine has been

someone

inflicted with tuberculosis. Consequent­

useful in military recruits, but this has not proved

ly,

intensive

students

cal

our

students

or

who

program

have

lived

concentrated

is

on

these groups. of

Methods

epidemiology

have

improving our campus milieu.

been

For

used

in

in

vaccine

the cold. fessional

ance and to provide a healthier environment.

An outbreak of atypical pneumonia was studied.

The malady was discovered to be transmitted from person to person by oral route, and the in­

cubation period was established at 12 to 15 days.

Isolation of cases will prevent secondary cases.

3. The early recognition and identification of a so­ called "harmless" smoke bomb which exploded in a fraternity stairwell led to appropriate medi­ cal care and to the establishment of dangers of such a screening bomb when released indoors.

4. Continual evaluation of injuries has led to im­

problems, but only a few of these need to be designated as emotionally ill. Students who con­ sult a psychiatrist should consider this as an educational process, releasing energies for aca­ demic pursuits.

Mortality in this age group is mercifully low.

During the last 15 years, the following deaths were reported (some of these were on leave of absence for health reasons at the time of death): 1. Accidents

provement of safety practices. cyanosis or purple skins in 2.

athletes showed that fresh ink from sweatshirts absorbed through the skin. This is prevented

Statistics

on

to

"morbidity

and

trends.

measure

mortality"

are

Nomenclature

is

important, and unfortunately, the official Stand­ ard Nomenclature used for medical diagnosis does not always cover our work in prevention and education. Such terms as pre-marital coun­ seling, travel advice, academic pressures, room­ mate problems are descriptive, but need to be standardized. In looking over our diagnostic files, note

we

this

better

attend school

to

in

increase

an

mean

care

ulcerative colitis.

permitting

too

much

Does

these students

antibiotics

during while at the youth, University? We note over the years an increase in malignancy. Our statistics are too small to be significant. However, the development of a Tumor Registry in all universities will clarify this suggestion. In these instances, the urogenital system is often involved. If this impression per­ sists when large numbers of cases are evaluated, their

or

or

too

Cancer

Education

women

to

young

men

By

far

seek

much

must

pelvic

stress

encourage these young examination and these

to heed testicular

the

most

common

swellings.

illness

seen

at

the

Student Health Service is the upper respiratory infection. At the moment, some 50 viruses have

22

Plane

5

Other

3 16

Malignancies

12

4. Miscellaneous

11

Cardiovascular Other

6.

venders.

18

3. Suicide

was

by laundering after marking.

Riders in a closed homecoming float developed transient vague symptoms which, on investiga­ tion, were found to have been produced by excess carbon monoxide. Now all floats and generators are properly ventilated.

7. Forty-four sorority girls with marked skin flushes fifteen minutes after eating, were examined and a vasodilator drug, sodium nicotinate, in the ground beef was found to be the responsible agent. This demands more inspection of meat

26

Auto

5. The' investigation of

necessary

groups. Hopefully a multi­ chemical will soon conquer

or

About 10 per cent of college students use pro­ help in understanding their emotional

example:

1. Social and academic pressures are studied with collaborative efforts to improve individual toler­ 2.

civilian

useful

valent

these

In

6 5

should work

prevention. carefully.

The campus must be aware of significant symp­ toms, such as insomnia, withdrawal, depressions, Clues

and

we

areas,

suicide

to

must

be

on

evaluated

threat

or attempt of suicide should be insignificant. Braaten and Darling> describe the psychodynamic features of suicide attempts as anger, hostility, and excessive com­ petitiveness, excessive dependency, moderate to severe depression, fears about masculinity-femi­ ninity, crises in love attachments, severe study

no

considered

difficulties and Automobile

self-hate.

are being evaluated in throughout the country at the present time. There has been improvement in vehicles and improvement in highways, but this is not sufficient. Driving ability must also be appraised and improved. Some of these deaths belong in the classification of suicide because of

several

the In

accidents

studies

elements

of

self-destruction.

conclusion, it might be said that if we were

successful in

our

further

for

programs, a Health

there would be

no

Service.

However, College Health Services have a heavy responsi­ bility in studying and understanding the health needs of young adults, of providing health care and in education of students to optimum health as parents and citizens.

Programs must be continually evaluated to remain flexible to meet the need of a dynamic population and ever-changing environment. need

2 Fortieth Annual Health Association

the

American College

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Meeting

of

THE

BOSH

SYNDROME OR BATTLE

FATIGUE

By Leona Brandes Yeager

DEFINITION

Syndrome, seen in college students, the battle-fatigue described by

The Bosh

is

similar

to

Grinker in his Men Under Stress.t This is

commonly tion.

In

classified

the

factor has

Bosh

been

as

situational

stress

Syndrome, however,

added.

now

Personal Factors reac­

another

Students leave the bat­

tleground on the advice of their attending physi­ cians, return home, and spontaneously are re­ lieved and refreshed. On seeing their family physician, parents, or counsellors, the following reaction occurs: "Bosh! You're a healthy speci­ men.

school!

No

is

treatment

necessary.

grounds with unrecognized syndromes. Another, lesser, peak of incidence is seen in students about to graduate.

Return

to

"

There is a

an

group, young adults

are

1 Unsolved conflicts with parents.

2.

Identity confusion.

3. Illness at home; illness of parents.

4. Parental discord.

5.

ETIOLOGY

downs.

This

syndrome is usually endemic, but may reach epidemic proportions at examination time when exposure to other tizing factor. As long as recurrences

cases

may

be

a

sensi­

underlying pathology is are possible. The inci­

dence does not vary with sex or race. It occurs in students living away from home, on a college campus, at times of

stress, in new students, and previous battle-

students who transferred from

Winter, 1963

Inability to secure privacy in group living. use of drugs, pepper-ups or calmer­

6. The

Predisposing Factors

unsolved,

individual predisposition.

However, commonly involved with becoming independent, choosing a career, and selection of mates. The following precipitat­ ing factors are evident: as

7.

Philosophical

confusion

encountered

with

studies.

8. Pressures

due

to

different

cultural

back­

ground.

9. Grade pressures.

10. Excessive lack of sleep.

11. Excessive use of alchohol.

12. Poor nutrition.

IGrinker, Roy R.: Men Under Stress. Blakiston, 1945

23

13. Pressures

from

who is unable to

society. Today, a student perform is said to "hurt

not only himself but the nation."

14. Guilt

feelings aroused by the knowledge that his education is supported by endow­ ments; by the knowledge that he is keeping with

Competition and

out of school.

else

someone

15.

now

siblings, parental figure,

Russians.

the

DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS Differential diagnosis is difficult, but it is neces­ sary

to consider

such possibilities

as

infectious

mononucleosis, upper respiratory infections, ul­ cers, obscure viral infections, hormone disturb­ ances. Usually the thyroid is blamed. The mod­ ern trend is to blame the adrenal, which often results in expensive investigations.

PROGNOSIS

PATHOLOGY Favorable factors include: The pathogenesis of this syndrome is related to a predisposing personality, in which older and

important conflicts

are

The

unsolved.

1. Youth

2.

Early recognition Understanding of the syndrome by faculty, parents, and personal physicians 4. Insight on the part of the student.

reaction

3.

repetition of old reactions particular quality of stress is significant, as well as quantity of stress. Every

to current stress is to these conflicts.

a

A

individual has his Achilles' heel. At its onset, the syndrome may be minor, but continued exposure

pathology and spread. The onset be may gradual, insidious, or abrupt. There may be a history of a previous episode.

increases

the

SYMPTOMATOLOGY Most

commonly, one sees:

Anxiety

a

were

to become

become) pregnant?"

my

girl

drive

too

(or cause

"What

if

I

fast and kill someone?" "What if I flunk out of school?"

If untreated, this syndrome may lead to deva­ stating effects, such as withdrawal from school, inability to live to one's capacity. Sometimes a student escapes into pseudo-health, giving up his symptoms rather than attaining real insight into his difficulties, and operating thereafter on

lower" level of effectiveness.

and fears

"What if I to

COMPLICATIONS

if

"What

(Unconsciously,

the

I

disappoint student

may

my

be

parents?" punishing

TREATMENT

battleground. This may accomplished by a few days away from the campus, or by return home.

2. Psychotherapy, which may be very brief, 1. Removal from

the

be

his parents by seeking failure.)

and consist of alleviation of symptoms and

elimination of underlying pathology causing

Confusion

it, producing a dynamic change to permit in­ creased capacity, enjoyment, self-expression, and creativity.

Withdrawal from social activities Lack of energy Unusual fatigue Exhaustion

Inability to concentrate Inability to perform Inability to sleep and inability

PREVENTIVE MEASURES 1. Emotional

to

eat

as

the

illness worsens.

Often, these reactions may be converted to organic symptoms, such as headache, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, nasal congestion, gain of weight. Sometimes, "acting out" occurs, using the University and the University officials as

security as a child is important. emancipation of youngsters from childhood dependence on parents.

3. Healthy campus environment, which permits the student to react to the University as substitute parental figures. The University, in turn, must accept the transference hon­ estly and with integrity, in order to allow 2. Gradual

the

substitute parents.

4.

Physical examination often reveals gross signs anxiety, such as expressionless face, rigidity of muscles, tension of speech, loss of sparkle, tremulousness.

Inattention

to

grooming may be evident. Systematic organ ex­ amination is often within normal limits. Labora­

tory evaluations 24

are

also within

un­

and must encourage

syndrome, appropriate treatment.

the students to seek

of

sometimes

independent.

away from the campus must

derstand the

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION

and

student to become

Physicians

normal limits.

5. More attention to young adult medicine with understanding of young adults who frequent­

ly fail to mention these symptoms, or else accept symptoms as normal patterns.

6. Students must gain insight into their con­ flicts in order to become wise parents for the next generation of college students.

NORTHWESTERN

TRl-QUARTERLY

OBITER DI[TA MEDI[A*

By Carl A. Dragstedt

Carl A. Dragstedt, a native of Montana, is Professor of

suggest that in spite of your ardent efforts, you

member of the

probably neglected some of the most im­ portant issues that confront us, but I am going to do so anyway. I am persuaded to do this because of a peculiar sense of public duty, be­ cause I have been aggravated by medical educa­

Northwestern and

Pharmacology attending staff of Passavant Memorial Hospital. When at

a

he came to the Medical School in 1926 he had served

Army in World War I, taken his Rush Medical College (M.D., degrees 1921) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1923), practiced medicine at Kenmore, North Dakota, and taught at the Universities of Chicago and Iowa. He has published some 140 articles, mainly on anaphylaxis, histamine, digitalis, and epinephrine. He is a member of many of the principal societies in the medical world,

in the United States

advanced

and in the

at

course

of

a

distinguished

career

has

re­

ceived many honors and served in the highest positions in a diversity of national committees, institutes, and pro­

have

tion for 48 years, and because Dr. Colwell offered free meal. You will note that I

am reading prepared manuscript. This is partly be­ cause the serious import of what I have to say merits this dignity, and partly because it has been my observation that many a public speaker, without the restraining anchor or a manuscript,

me

a

from

has

a

been swept own

I

not

fessional societies in his field.

do

issues that

Concerning the collection of absurdities printed be­ low at the request of The Tri-Quarter/y Dr. Drag­ stedt says: "The Department of Medicine has a staff of -

over

-

200 who instruct concurrently at five separate hos­

pitals. last spring the department held a week-end workshop at a Wisconsin resort to discuss teaching ob­ jectives, methods, problems, etc. I was invited as an outsider to attend the sessions, and to render a sort of

grandstand-quarterback's comment on the proceedings.

This is the result."

So

far to

sea

a

deal

with

time

you've

neglected, but I wish to cite

to

all

of

the

few examples.

In

the

first

place, every reputable general, a campaign, not only plans the attack in minute detail, but also plans a retreat against the possibility that events may not go so well as hoped. Now I ask you: "What have you planned as your retreat?" "What are you going when

planning

to do with this fine educational machine if there are

is

medical students to educate?" Now, this silly chimera that I have dreamed up, but

no

no

probability that has been prophesied by Dean Young's reports on student registration for the

for

two

days in

a

able are

reasons

are

two formid­

for the decline in medical student

registration which have not as yet been resolved,

multi-faceted

attack upon the problems of a medical education.

I know you will think it presumptuous of me to 1963

undertow

a

DR. COLWELL, ladies and gentlemen: You

Winter,

the

have

past several years. Since there

being engaged

by

tongue-tide, that he nearly drowned in the effluvia of his own expostulation. of his

*

Presented March 31, 1962, to the Department of Med­ icine, Northwestern University Medical School.

25

it is probable that this decline will continue to the vanishing point and medical students will be extinct

as

as

the dodo bird.

made, and to think that my

son

should be

around from house tOI house through this

with

going country, squirt in

box of pills in one hand and a (to ameliorate suffering), is a

a

the other

its

thought supposed I should have to contemplate."

And at about this same time Chesney said that doctors were recruited from families having a num ber of children, by selecting "one son of the family thought to be too weak to labor on the farm, too indolent to do any bodily exertion, too stupid for the bar, and too immoral for the pulpit.

Something has to be done to restore the doctor as the flower of our civilization. Perhaps we have to go back to smelling like iodoform and assafe­ tida as that's the way it was during Stevenson's day.

In the second place, I wager you have neglected to analyze the problem of grantsmanship. There are many people in the Department of Medicine working on grants of various kinds, and there will be more in the future. Thus the getting of grants is art important issue. I presume you have read the items referring to Professor C. North­ cote Parkinson's recent discussion of this subject.

He describes the predicament of Dr. Lockstock

writers

of the firm of Lockstock and Barrel, whose

first of these

The we

unresolved

well into the

are

cine and

people

that

is

reasons

do-it-yourself medi­

of

era

being instructed to diagnose

are

and treat themselves by radio, television, maga­ zine and newspaper. Consider for a moment what television is

It shows

doing.

how

anti­

an

goes esophagus, through the stomach and duodenum into the aorta, takes a down

tussive

the

off

clavicle

the

into

then

the

and

returns

cough control

center like the 8-ball

going into the corner pock­ et. A contraption called a nasograph, shows how a nasal decongestant opens up all eight sinuses

so

snort out

can

you

in

mucus

as

many

fireboat! And that analgesic which is just like a doctor's prescription one sees it get into that three-compartment cranium, loosen streams

a

as

-

the

elastic

twist the

air.

that

on

evil

that

tension

thingamabobb, un­ corkscrew, and arrest

looking

swings of that blacksmith's hammer in mid Currently the man who acts the part of a

doctor states that 3 out of 4 doctors recommend

ingredients, but I understand that the copy­ are going to change this to the following: "Your neighbors use it, why don't you?"

It is unnecessary for

to recall for you the

me

prodigious job of educating the public in medical matters which is done by the magazines and newspapers. Why even our own Dr. Van Dellen gets into the act of teaching people to be their own Sydenham, Osler or Sigmund Freud.

The

second

unresolved

for

declining medical student registration is that the public image of the doctor is being held up to scorn.

This is just another way of saying he is in bad odor. He starts out as a Freshman smelling like his cadaver in the anatomy laboratory. In his Sophomore year he overlays this with some dog and cat

In

urine.

his

reason

Junior

year

he

adds

the

smells of Lubofax and KY jelly and in his Senior year the smells of ether or ethylene or other noxious gas. Then, as he becomes an Intern or Resident and is of

acquire the bedside

anxious to

attending man, he takes on the smells of soft-soap and banana oil. Now Senator manner

his

Kefauver and others have turned up their at these assorted smells.

You

see

we

have

come

full

noses

cycle. It isn't too

long ago that Robert Louis Stevenson was eulo­ gizing the physician as the flower of our civili­ zation. But, before that, you may recall what Marion

Sims

said

him

of

to

his

his

son

intent

to

when

the

latter

medicine:

study apprised "Well, I suppose that I can not control you; but it is a profession for which I have the utmost contempt. There is honor to be

26

no

science in it. There is

achieved in it;

never

"

quick sortie into the pelvis, caroms

I

no.

reputation

no

to be

grants

expanded to the point where he was employing 432 technicians, and was so busy arranging their salaries, fringe benefits, vacation time, coffee­ break hours, recreational facilities and attending their weddings and the christenings of their babies, that he no longer had any time for re­ search. Well of

course

professional spoofer is

much

you

a

in

his

so

Professor Parkinson is you may not

comments.

serious suggestion

grants coming. It is

a

as

a

suspect there

But I want to to how to

simple

matter.

give keep the

You do

a

nice little research job and keep completely mum

about it. You

are

now

in

position to write up a

grant application, because you know precisely what instruments and apparatus were

first class

needed, what experimental animals were neces­ sary, what pitfalls had to be watched out for, what the significance of the results might be and so

on.

So of

course

you

get the grant. You now

have the money with which to tackle

something else, and meanwhile you gradually write up your first research, which validates you as a grantee who made good. As your new problem begins to jell or be fruitful, you are approaching the time to make an application regarding it. In short, you always keep applying for financial assistance to do what you have already done, and you can keep the grants coming steadily.

I have mentioned only one angle of grantsman­ ship, but I think it shows that this is an area that should not be neglected.

In the third place I doubt if you have given adequate attention to this blind testing business.

One of the most frequent investigative chores NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

in medicine is that of

most remarkable illustration is that of the Ama­

a

nita Muscaria, a fungus employed by many Si­ berian tribes (---) as a substitute for alcoholic

determining the efficacy of drug or treatment procedure. It is an obligation of yours to teach and demonstrate new

this to your students. You are all well aware of the placebo effect and that one can discount th is

psychological variable somewhat by administer­ ing blanks or placebos to one set of patients while a parallel group of patients receives the test drug or treatment. This procedure, where the patient doesn't know whether or not he is receiving an active agent, is called a blind test.

Investigators

have

claimed, however, that

if in

addition to the patient not knowing, the doctor also doesn't know, the results of the test are still more

convincing. This is called the double blind

test.

Now

I

Department

have

read

many

of Medicine to

papers

from

the

if anyone had conclusion. If a

see

carried this thing to its logical single blind is better than no blind, and if a double blind is better than a single blind, just

imagine what a triple or quadruple blind would get you! In my mind's eye, I can see a blind­ folded patient, a blind-folded doctor, a blind-folded pharmacist, and a blind-folded nurse, fighting it

liquors to produce excitement and inebriation. It imparts an intoxicating quality to the urine, which continues for a considerable time after taking it.

A man, for example, may have intoxicated him­ self today by eating some of the fungus; by the

morning he will have slept himself sqber ; by drinking a teacupful of his urine, he will become as powerfully intoxicated as on the pre­ ceding day. Thus (--) with a very few Ama­ nitae, a party of drunkards may keep up their debauch for a week, and by means of a second person taking the urine of the first, a third of the second, and so on, the intoxication may be propa­ gated through five or more individuals."

It is quite clear from this statement that the discovery that the active principle is excreted unchanged in the urine was a matter of popular as well as professional knowledge more than 100 next

but

ago. Now don't you think that these mod­

years

authors

ern

evidence

should have cited this

century old

in

spite of any to literary

sheer honesty, they may have had of

out

out in a ward like an Australian tag team. Beecher

misgivings

and the Massachusetts General Hospital never had

niceties?

In the fifth

anything like this!

and last

I

venture

the

Oath and to the Code of Ethics of The American

puts it, everyone is getting into the

Medical Association.

are

But

I have

what

in

mind

is the sort of thing Sir James Paget referred to in his unfinished autobiography. You may recall

Paget amplified his professional income for a time by some medical writing. He wrote a number of articles came

to

letter

A,

for

a

some

Biographical Dictionary, sort

of

end

at

the

close

the

that a good deal of his eloquence posterity. However, he worked under an exacting and demanding editor who insisted upon scrupulous honesty. Paget said, "I learned more than ever the value or necessity of always referring, if possible, to the very book, volume, and page quoted from, or from which any state­ ment is made, and the similar necessity of veri­ fying every reference made from another. Noth­ ing could teach the difficulty, necessity, and rarity of accuracy in writing as did this work in biography." was

so

lost to

The

reason

I

brought this

up

is that. I have

just concluded reading some paper dealing with the isolation, chemical identification and synthe­ sis

of

the

active

principles

of

some poisonous highly meritorious work, the report states that the active principle is excreted completely unchanged in the urine.

This is a highly interesting and significant point but let me now read to you the following

mushrooms. Incidental to this

-

courses

act.

There

in

biochemistry

although

these

enzyme

addicts incline toward

the term

"inborn

errors

and

logy

of metabolism."

I

would

like

to

call

your

attention

to

Dr.

Ingle's interesting case. On a bright summer day in 1887, the First Baptist Church of a small town in northern Iowa was having an ice-cream social. They were celebrating the achievement of their choir on coming in seventh in an 8 team competition at a cappella singing in the nearby county seat. The Reverend Or­ ville Diorets was accorded the customary honor of dishing out the ice-cream. In his shirt sleeves, because of the warmth of the day, and also to better display the new suspenders presented to him by the Ladies Aid Society, he was stooped over the large ice-cream freezer. While in this unguarded and vulnerable position, a neutron, spinning and twisting its way from some cosmic explosion, cascaded down from the great beyond, and entered his left and more pendant gonad

Dwight

:

near

the attachment of the mesorchium.

lided

with

shook

it

cleotide or

a

molecule

of

ribonucleic

and

from its sugar moiety. The nu­ longer knew whether it was DNA

RNA. The Reverend Diorets

of Materia Medica and Therapeutics: "But the

in

one

It col­

acid

loose no

the event which modified the

1963

ask

genetics in departments of zoology, botany, anatomy, pediatrics, microbio­ now

words from the 1851 edition of Pereira's Elements

Winter,

to

ness? Chromosomes, genes, DNA and RNA are the fad of the moment and as Jimmy Durante

which of

about

genetics busi­

what

you

done

place,

place, what have you done about fostering a program in ethics and honesty? I know that you give lip service to the Hippocratic

In the fourth

have

as

was

unaware

of

chemistry of a gene

of his germ cells and the mutation did not

27

manifest itself in his son, who became a rural mail carrier. But his grandson, Percy T. Diorets

Behold the

mighty dinosaur,* prehistoric lore, Not only for his weight and strength But for his intellectual length.

You will observe by his remains Famous in

a bore testimony to this rare event mutation which greatly affected his behavior. He became -

scholar,

a

view

In

even

yes,

something

of

a

scientist,

inclination to study medicine. of what I said in the first section of

but he showed

The creature had two sets of brains­

an

One in his head

this paper, you will understand the consternation which this aberrant behavior engendered. If it

The other at his

wasn't for the rescuing and comforting knowledge

As well

Thus he could

genetics, his parents and grandparents would thought it was the result of something they

of

No

have

Speaking which

to

DNA

polynucleotide generation to generation, I con­ confused.

It's

If

something like when

it

is

obvious

that

this

priori

problem bothered him

a

bit:

one

If

something slipped his forward mind by the one behind; And if in error he was caught He had a saving afterthought.

As he thought twice before he spoke He had no judgments to revoke; For he could think without congestion, Upon both sides of every question.

'Twas rescued

made you laid me." summary,

a

brain found the pressure strong It passed a few ideas along;

Johnny came home from school after his first sex lesson and said to his mother: "Mummy, did you lay the egg which made me?" To which his mother replied: "Well son, I always thought of it the other way 'round. I thought the egg that In

reason

posteriori.

So wise he was, so wise and solemn, Each thought filled just a spinal column.

and RNA business, as carries the hereditary

information from tinue to be

a

He made both head and tail of it.

had done. of this

as

(the usual place), spinal base.

medical

teaching something that can. be looked at and in two ways. We need to emulate about thought is

the

as

Defunct ten million years at least.

capacities for this sort of immortalized by Bert Leston Taylor

dinosaur

thing

Oh, gaze upon this model beast,

were

whose

follows:

*Reprinted with the permission of the Chicago Tribune

,

\�"f'�J

POEMS

By Jacob Leed

"

·il·

'\'

Jacob Leed

was

born in Lititz,

small old Moravian town in

Pennsylvania. After his

versity of Iowa, and the University of Chicago. He has taught at Penn State and, since 1958, at Northwestern. His poetry has appeared in the Black Mountain Review and the Nation, and he is a contributor to the forthcoming William Carlos Williams issue of the Beloit Poetry Journal.

Toward Skokie Thunder rattles the windowpane and wanders off westward over the Sanitary Canal

muttering vacantly about the flimsy construction of these houses,

28

a

early schooling there, he attended Harvard College, the Writer's Workshop of the Uni­

An

Elderly Woman Heavily Made Up Death's slow rain wears What Life turned stone.

In mind, in bone,

All processes

are

theirs:

Hers. her face alone.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Skeletons Working translated from Baudelaire's Le Squeleue Laboureur In anatomical plates

that lie about on the dusty quays where many a dead book

sleeps like an antique mummy (designs to which a serious, skillful, ancient artist, though his subject's bleak, has imparted Beauty)

Museum Piece Clock, calendar, compass, oracle, and more, oncenow so wholly out of our use its movements make no there we

II

Solemn, un-rebelling serfs, from that field you dig,' straining every backbone or skinned muscle, what strange harvest do you take, forced labor from the morgue, and what farmer's barn do you have to fill?

Clear and

sense

to us,

few of its parts

can name

or

trace.

Gazing up where it hangs displayed for our revery, we think perhaps of men and times who knew all about what it was for and wish we were among them.

you see-last touch in these mysterious horrors­

the Flayed and the Skeletons digging like slaves.

are

Watching Out see in the sun watched liz are whose tongue flicks apprehensively.

You a

When the light changes

stepping from the hot curb slightly fearing that that car might not stop I lick my lips.

and

appalling emblem hard,

of a fate too

do you wish to show tha t not even in the ditch is sleep sure, that to

us

even

Nothingness is a traitor,

that everything, Death too, lies to us, and that sempiterrially,

alas, we will have to, perhaps, in

an

unknown country

All Is Still All is still

except that the light trembles on the lake and small white waves

along the shore and lazy leaves move in intricate delicate ways. run

strip the tough ground and thrust against an iron spade bare, bleeding foot?

our

Morning, Alone Observation from the Prudential Building The

height, the height

pains me with queasy jolts and I almost black out

seeing how far far down I might fall to where autos and freight cars can't be picked up and set. on other tracks, where a stomp of the foot could not smash the buildings, where you cannot toss a fistful of those walking straws into the green ditch which you cannot dam up with a few rocks and some sand.

It's a long way down to the toyland that, at this

belittling distance,

the world is.

Winter, 1963

While you slept I woke, and the light gray sky hung near the windowpane; when I looked out, I saw the white town where I was born with a lane of black glistening in the dawn and one yellow street lamp still on.

Finis At the end of a day I've swallowed like foul

quack medicine a light green insect walks the dark walnut table­

leaps, disappears.

29

By David E. Neelon WE WERE

and turned my arms, imagining the car feel in my about the fourth

drink, I guess.

The two girls were a little behind, although Barb on

may not have been. She could almost keep up with

Terry, and he wasn't going very fast yet. He and 1 were talking about a sports car race. 1 told him how fast this one particular car is, and he agreed because he had home.

Mona,

seen

my

it in

girl,

was

a

race

near

his

own

listening and nursing

her drink because she wanted to know what this

racing thing is all about. It was pretty important and she didn't really understand what it

to us,

took to make a man race cars for the sheer satis­

faction of it.

If there

were

money

enough, she

would have understood right away, but there isn't

always.

"You know," I said to Terry, "this guy Holbert is really smooth. If 1 could drive half as smoothly as he can, man, I could be so car

good. With a faster

asked what he

ed fast.

"Right! Beautiful!" said Terry. He was

as

in­

volved as I was in the fine bit of driving I had just

he could be great."

Barb

grip and in the toe of my right foot. I braked once hard, the clutch then, and a downshift from fourth to third, clutch out and rev the engine slightly at the same time, cut the wheel in a little as you hit the engine, and the car is placed in the turn with the rear end sliding gracefully and in control.

Then as I passed the apex of the curve (I imag­ ined seeing my mark for that, a culvert in the banking beside the track) 1 came down harder on the gas and straightened the steering wheel grad­ ually in just the same arc as the rear wheels came around in as they lost their slip, then down hard and accelerate into the straight, shifting up again quickly without slowing at all. 1 kept the im­ passive look, then moved the gearshift with my hand and made a sound like a Ferrari being shift­

drove, and

1

told her

a

done at the bar. It wasn't easy to shift

there, I

TO THE DOWNFALL Porsche RS. It's a German car, and the RS model

thought. The stool

is

were

strictly for racing. You never see them on the

"They aren't fast?" Mona asked me.

"Well, they go like hell for the engine they have, but it isn't fast enough if you stack them up against a Ferrari or a Maserati or a Cooper."

"Tell her how they corner, Jim." Terry was get­ ting a little high now. He had his excited look in his eyes, and when that came along it was bound to be a wild night.

"On rails, that's how they corner. There's where they stay near the big cars in the races.

They can go faster around the corners. This Hol­ bert, f'r instance" (There was that spastic tongue again. Now why with only four or five drinks could I not talk, especially when there was always so much to talk about?), "he's so fast and smooth in the corners on this track I was telling you about, and yet he never seems to be working. There's the sign of a good driver, he never works at it. If you see him working hard, he's probably going faster than he really feels he should. The best guys never look as if it were any different to go through one

turn at

eighty-five or

one

hundred· and

five. Just smooth and cool."

looked, arms out almost straight, slightly reclining seating position, head erect, but neck not stiff, leaning slightly in the di­ rection of the turn, very relaxed. I looked calm I

30

was

too

narrow.

bucket seat and would hold

wished it

I

me

better.

I looked at Barb for

street.

this

a

showed

how

it

approval, and she was al­ most as happy about the imitation as Terry was.

She had driven his

car

and knew what it

like. I looked at Mona and she had her her

was

glass to

lips. She could take bigger gulps of Scotch

than any girl I'd ever known. I looked at her, and she

laughed, almost choking.

Setting her glass down, she

said,

"You're

"

crazy.

it, but what did it matter? would be crazy and very fast, and

I knew she meant

Tonight

we

what difference did it make at all?

Terry and Barb were whispering intimacies to other, so I pushed all our empty glasses to the bartender's side, and he came by and picked each

them up with the money.

It

was

my round. We

alternated.

"Bill," Terry called to him. "Have one with us.

We'll all drink to the flash."

Bill came back with the

I

have

a

beer and our glasses and

stopped to figure price of his own drinks. I'll bet he doesn't; he's a good fellow that change.

whether

or

never

not he takes out the

way.

"To

flash," said Mona, lifting her glass. going faster and getting higher.

"To the flash and the boom," said Terry with an expansive wave of his elbow.

Now

the

she

was

NORTHWESTERN

TRI -QU ARTERLY

"To one hell of

a

boom," I said, and everyone

circuits. He with

a

night of the Cuban thing. We' set out just after the gravity of the President's

deed

one

It

was

the first

talk had settled. We meant that about the boom.

likely to us that we'd hear it in a little while, and you need something on a night like that when you know there isn't a damned thing

It seemed

you can do.

Mona's eyes

getting into

and I

she

clouding, depressions. The higher saw

was

she got, the lower down she could go into these things if you let her.

"Friends," I said, sliding off the stool into a standing position, "let's drink to a greater and more lasting good." My voice was getting deep­ er

and

more

while

solemn and ceremonial. It wasn't

a

a

of the fastest

We drank to him.

men.

as

broke in the

we

drinks that Bill

new

brought.

of her

one

was

"To Austin Healeys in general, and ours in particular," toasted Barb. Terry and I each had of the English sports cars, and the girls one loved them. We all drank our glasses dry to the honor of the cars. Then the toasting stopped for a

were

reserved

looking Englishman long' mustache, and Graham Hill was in­

drank to that.

"You folks enlist yet?" Bill asked someone

as

he mixed

Manhattan.

a

"No, man, we're waiting for the missiles.

They'll be right along, so we wouldn't even have time to train. That's why we're here. Then we go out tonight and head for the boondocks where wait for the fall-out and have

can

we

a

ball."

Barb

and

being funny, laughed. starting downhill again, and I tried to cheer her up without saying anything.

"You know," said Bill, "I had a guy in here about eight o'clock. He had all his stuff in a couple of suitcases. He sat right down there in front of the tap, said he was heading for someplace up around Hudson's Bay, and he wasn't coming

Terry

was

Mona

was

back until it

all

was

over.

I threw him three of

special spiders, and he went home wife. Anybody want a special?" my

his

to

"All around,

Bill," I said. We all switched to special spider and had about four each.

Bill's

Bill had

drink

once

more

told

he had

me

never

than four of his

seen

concoctions

anyone at

one

sitting.

"Let's drink to downfalls." It and her favorite

was

drinking game.

Barb's idea

We all ordered

again because you had to have plenty to start out with while drinking to downfalls. You thought of a lot of things in

a

hurry that you could use in

the game.

"Let's drink to the downfall of classes tomor­

row," said

Mona.

"It's been

arranged," I said, and we all drank

downfall anyway.

to its

"The downfall of Barb

stuff."

was

police and laws and all that beginning to stumble over

words. We always had the downfall of the law; it seemed to work for the four of us.

job really. "To the beauty of my Mona."

Her eyes brightened, and we all drank to her. It

bad

was

a

I gave my toast to the downfall of motherhood and the American Way. They liked that, but Mona

blushed

well-conceived toast.

Terry rose and just as solemnly offered one to his girl, and he and Barb drank from each other's

Bill

"To the fastest

in the

to be

true.

the

"To

Graham

Hill,"

returned

Terry. Graham

Hill had just won the World Championship of Drivers on the European Grand Prix road racing

Winter,

1963

came

past making his rounds and offered

toast to the downfall of

the

world," suggested Mona, meaning Terry and me. It was a nice compliment, but it was a delusion. It was not men

little.

Nicky Krushchev.

Nicky," we all agreed.

Terry rose and called for quiet. It was his turn a

us

"To

glasses.

a

downfall

of

solemn.

"Jim, girls, Bill, will

you

join

in

drinking

to

downfall of the odds?"

"What's he mean, the odds?" Mona asked

me.

"Drink to its downfall." And she did with the rest of us.

31

"But

he

what's

about the odds?

mean

What

"Tell her about the odds, Terry."

"You tell her.

"

"Mona, the odds are what we play against all playing against them right now.

We played against the odds that we'd get belted in the car coming down here tonight, and we play against the odds that we'll get vaporized by some character's thermonuclear toy. Those are easy odds, though. Everybody plays against them all the time. Then there are the tough ones, where the odds get close, like when we run the cars fast through blind turns, or when these guys we talk the time. We're

about

and drive their

race

at the

cars

limit of adhesion to the road,

or

absolute

when a test pilot

plane at its design limit for. the first time." My "s" sounds were getting slurred again.

"That's where the real odds are, when you're playing right up against the limit, and at any minute something can simply say 'snuff' and flies

a

new

you are snuffed. The odds

can

snuff you out

then and there, but when you're that close,

had been

right

you're

He

was

almost

shouting,

about what

speaking softly

we

believed.

why drink to the downfall of the odds?"

"But Mona

with

not

was

us,

and

the

game

was

"They're what you live for," she said.

Terry said decisively, "One more toast, and then let's go raise hell. My friends, here's to the downfall of practically everything." ruined.

Mona

was

warm

around her

arm

as

friendly when I put

and

my

started out the door. She

we

had passed her limit and was quite high, but it was a different kind of high from mine. Terry sang

German, and Barb joined in because he had taught her the words.

German

a

Barb

had

marching

song in

the

"to

echoed

downfall"

when

we

drained our glasses the last time. She knew what we

meant.

Mona didn't

didn't feel the

same

seem

to

know, and she

emotional lift we had at just

being alive there on the dark street, scuffing the leaves that were stuck by stale rain moisture to the pavement. It was going to be slippery driving back, but there was something Terry and I both knew. Tonight we would be fast, and we would drive better than we ever had before.

The cars were parked together and looked alike

except that mine His

was

a

little

was

black and

older

and

Terry's white.

slightly slower, but

that didn't show to any but experienced eyes. We all got in and fastened the belts. I started my car roar

his

and revved it high to hear the that and

deep, throaty

Austin Healey makes. Terry caught revved in unison with mine, then we an

backed out and started down the

winding streets past parked cars, heading for the highway. When the light went green we pulled west together, white first, then black. We shifted fast and 32

five

The

miles per hour.

but for the white

road

was

and the

car

empty

now

black and their

similar sounds.

"That was nice," said Mona. She hadn't said anything since we'd started out. That was one thing she had learned, that I liked it quiet when I drove like this. It requires concentration of all your senses to be right, and tonight it was a little trickier than usual. The wheels

were

sliding

bit where the pavement was damp. When just we shifted from second to third I saw Terry's car a

slither

only

a

little sideways,

and mine started

I could

imagine his hands moving the wheel almost imperceptibly in the same direction, then back again to straight, just as mine did as we kept the cars in line. I didn't answer Mona, only smiled, and she took the idea and settled back to enjoy the ride.

We approached the first long turn into the to go the same way.

hills

really living."

"Right!" said Terry. but I

smoothly. I grinned when I came back from third as quickly as that particular car can be shifted. It sounded. wonderful, and we kept gaining speed, then leveled out around seventy­

to fourth

odds?"

about

at

eighty.

I

wanted

to

where

see

would brake. Because of the

dampness it speed sign entering the curve. Usually we ran a hundred yards deep­ er before braking and downshifting for the turn.

Tonight he was very fast for the wetness and passed the sign, then fifty yards farther in he braked, and we saw his tail lights go bright red, then normal, then bright red again, as Terry braked, downshifted, and braked again. I left him a little longer space than usual between the cars. He braked hard and I saw him begin to skid,

Terry

should be near the first

then correct and turn.

limit

his proper line for the my braking an instant longer than that I wouldn't slide in the middle of resume

I held

he did

so

the turn on the wetness. We the gas at the

were

both giving our

time -and

running very here, even when the road was dry, but everything was under con­ trol. The car was beautiful, smooth, running per­ fectly on the downshifts and the hard accelera­ tion, braking just the way I wanted it to. We cars

fast. I had

accelerated

never

same

gone this fast

together,

and

I

went

out

a

little

slower than I could have to

give Terry's slower car a chance. When we were through Barb turned and waved, and Mona waved back. It had been beautiful, and now we were starting downhill rapidly. I couldn't say exactly how fast, probably ninety-five to ninety-eight or so. You never know exactly because you are concentrating on the feel of the car, and your eyes are watching

everything, ing up,

the

car

slower trips through to

in

front, the next turn com­ picked out on

your mark that you have

brake

and

shift.

as

the place where you have

You

watch

all these things

mechanically, and they register in the system in your head that tells you what to do at exactly the right split second. Your absolute alertness is NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

unpredictable, maybe a hole in the pave­ ment that could bounce your car just when you

for the

want it all

the

on

road; maybe,

the

was

as

case

tonight, a wet patch where you will slide; maybe another car; or maybe something wrong with the car you are following. This is where you really play the odds, because you are quite sure what do under normal conditions.

can

you

unexpected

From the

suddenness

the risk and the

comes

That's why I know everything he did, but I could not tell you from observation. He was all part of what I was doing, and he has I1-0 particular place in the memory of the act, just as I have no place in his memory.

There is

only a short stretch through the hills

where we could drive like that. We entered a little

later, and it was a place to slow down, you

town

had to. We had our fun in the hills in those turns,

and shock of losing the car and not being able to

and after that you want to slow down and savor it

get it back before it hits something and stops it­ self. You don't think of any of this, though, when

a

entering a series of turns at over ninety

are

you

miles per hour, and you know without of

shadow

a

doubt that the third turn into the series of

a

is

reverses

good for

no

more

than

forty-one

miles per hour in your car. You concentrate on the driving, the rush of sound that tells you how fast you are moving and in what direction and how the engine is performing and what you can ask of it. You concentrate

safely your

feet

whether the

and

how

hands

and

and

body

that

tell

you

is holding the road or sliding more there is left before you

car

much

Mona

was

quite sober as we drove through the

She had probably been very scared. Barb had been too, but she understood being scared. town.

"Jim, I never saw you drive like that. We were going faster than I've ever dreamed we could there. Now I see how those people feel when they're in a race. But I can't see why you do it.

You could have been killed. We all could have."

the feel of

on

while. Then you want to go back and do it again

and again.

I didn't

answer

for

a

while. There wasn't very

much I could say. She would never understand.

"Is it because of tonight, Jim? What happened

turn, and upon braking just as hard as you have

tonight with war and all, did that upset you? Have thing before, the drinking, and that toasting, and the wild driving?" There was a pause between each question as she waited

to and no harder. At the same

for

lose control.

You

concentrate

upon

stepping

on

your brakes at just the right moment before each

point you concen­

trate on the perfect act of timing that makes you

brake, shift, and each

turn

the

car

so

it enters

that

and in the

the

you done this kind of

an

answer.

Finally I said, "We've driven this way a lot be­ fore, but never quite as well. Each time it gets

from just right angle degree of slide. It must enter smoothly with no jerk from your braking or your shifting or your turning. If you handle the car roughly when you are fast in a turn, it will jump away from you, and you will be sliding and for a time, at least, out of control. There is no other thought in your mind than the perfection of your timing and your placement and your handling of the car. If all this is right, it is the most self-fulfill­ ing thing a man can do, or one of them any­

faster and closer to the limit."

way. If you do not

good deal of Arizona and Colorado, where he found the

corner

proper

car

up wrong

have

concentrate, or if you line the or a shift, you

miss your brakes

or

probably gone and killed yourself,

but you

knew this when you started.

Terry was absolutely perfect in these corners in the hills. He entered each turn from just the cor­ rect angle with his

car

running right on that hair­

line limit that lies between the fastest way your car can

sibly

round

a curve

get around.

and the way it cannot pos­

Terry'S car was only

my doing the thing

myself.

a

part of

It was there ahead of

me, running with me, its brake lights flashing just

where mine would flash only a tick of the clock later, and it was sliding wide through a turn in front of me just started my

as

I lined up for that

curve

and

entry drift. All of this just registered, and I know from what I do what Terry car

in its

David E. Neelon likes to take off on long trips, en;oying the country. He has wandered from Nova Scotia down to

the Florida Keys, with Cape Cod a special stopover.

He has in

West

San

explored the back country of the Alleghanies Virginia and Pennsylvania, and has seen a

Juan

Range of the Colorado Rockies the

most

beautiful country he has seen. Chicago, he says, is "the

city that I love most," and he came to the Midwest to college (Waltham, Massachusetts is his home) "looking for

some

new

ideas and to

explore

a

part of the

country I hadn't seen before." He likes to write both poetry and stories, but does not expect to become a professi9nal writer. Instead, he is in the School of Busi­ ness,

a

senior this year, ma;oring in Transportation and

World Trade. Concerning the story below, he says: "My inherited from my father, who cars have

love of racing

cars

introduced

to the sport. Since then fast

me

was

become a fascination, and the very rare men who

are

great racing drivers have become artists to me."

must have done. He did it

perfectly, and there is only one way to do this piece of driving perfectly.

Winter,

1963

33

The Major

Concern of

Today's

College WOlllan Mary E. Henrikson Mary E. Henrikson is a junior in the College of Liberal Arts, majoring in composition. Though she was born in New York State, and lived for a time in Massachusetts, most of her life has

been spent in Michigan. Her home

is at Grand Rapids. She reports that in her summers she

has worked in a camp kitchen, aHended a secretarial at her family's cottage on Lake Michigan school, and -

-

wriHen

a

good many stories and collected rejections

for them.

I T IS indisputable that students attend college in order to get an education. For the most part, the men attending college are there in order to for the

prepare themselves

occupations they in­

tend to pursue when they leave the hallowed halls of the

University. Women too attend college to become educated, and to prepare themselves for the occupations they intend to pursue when they leave. But, for a woman, this occupation is defi­

nitely two-fold.

Ask any number of college came

in

to

mind

women.

college.

-

these

women

Some have definite are

They have

most

at this

why they

the dedicated secretary perfect career in mind for a large law firm, the dedicated social worker out in the Chicago slums, helping the poor of the city to have better lives, the dedicated anthro­ pologist in the hills of Africa, trekking through the jungle in search of scholarly data, and so forth. Slightly below these on the career scale, we -

find the teacher, also dedicated

-

this time to the

pursuit of spurring the nation's youth on to their own scholarly careers.

By the time these

same

college

women

have

reached their junior and senior years, they have decided that they have come to college "to be-

34

For what?

Now girls, let's be why did you really come college? Probably slightly more than 50% of

to

-

because all of your friends go to col­ After lege. all, when all of your friends are going, came

you

can't

and

work

right away. "people" think? And besides, some­ day you may marry one of those friends, and it just

you

go

out

What would

"his" wife not to have gone to college. She has to be able to talk intelligently with him and his friends. Now we are getting down wouldn't do for

to the true concern of

occupations

frequently freshmen point a picture of the

educated."

come

frank with each other

todays college woman.

The next 10% of you are probably at college be­

should go to college intelligently with her hus­ band some day when she marries, and to be able to support herself well, if need be, in the mean­ time. I'll let you in on a secret, girls Daddy cause -

to

Daddy said

be

able

to

a

woman

talk

-

is in hope that you will meet some nice college­ educated gentleman while you are there. This

suggests our third category. The next 25% of the college are the ones who came "to get What they mean by this is that at they are college to get a husband, but I would like to ask them, just for the record, what kind of an education they are after.

"Well ? Oh, well rounded one," you say. I guess just a nice

women at an

education."

...

-

you

mean

one

that will enable you to talk intel-

NORTHWESTERN

TRI -QUARTERLY

ligently with your husband and his friends some day when you marry.

Now remaining, we have slightly less than 15(/i, of all college women. This 15% are the girls who say that they want to do something for the world and whether or not they marry makes no difference to them.

In

this

group

we

have

the

in

pre-med, who are usually the first to marry. Out of this 15% then, about 10% are just not being honest with themselves. True, they do want to do something for the world, but just as much, they want to do something for themselves, namely get married. Maybe about 4% really don't care if they get married or not. Of this 4%, 3%% will probably get married anyway. But exempting this 4% who are not interested in marriage, let's go back again and look at the other 96%. In some way or another, their college education is directly concerned with their hus­ bands-to-be. Now girls, again let's be honest.

Where do you plan to meet these husbands? At college, of course. There is nothing really wrong with going to college campaigning to meet your future mate. All of your plans are geared to be­ ing able to talk intelligently to your husband; you'd better find a husband who can talk at least as intelligently as you can. Yes, a college cam­ pus is undoubtedly the best market place for a college educated husband. Shaw's Superman may even be hiding behind those ivy-covered women

-

walls.

Mary

is

an

She has

come

to

Ivy College

average

college

freshman.

seeking an educa­

that she will be able to talk

intelligently (whom she is also seek­ ing at Ivy College). She is taking Freshman for she is only average and didn't English into an for advanced course, French "pro" she only has one year left to take. Besides, French is a "nice" language. Mary is sure that the husband she is going to find at Ivy College will be taking her to Paris some day; she really so

with her husband-to-be

-

-

ought to know

a

little bit of French. In addition

this, she is taking Biology. Mary's mother said she should take Biology so that some day when she marries, she will know about "those things." This may be where Mary will meet hubby-to-be. Mary's fourth course, Western Civ­ ilization, is going to enable her to talk intelli­ gently to hubby, whom she is going to meet in Biology.

During rush week Mary pledges one of the "top" to

houses

belong to one of the "top" houses with which Mary's house dates. Mary has now accomplished the primary task of her college career-a college man

has fallen in love with her. Now she can turn

her concern to academics; her next biggest task is to decide which

courses

will complete her educa­

tion and will enable her to continue

talking in­

telligently with John.

In her

sophomore

year

Mary takes Introduc­

tion to Anthropology to broaden her scope into a more complete understanding of people of other

cultures. Of

course

John doesn't know

anything

about Anthropology, and really couldn't care less,

but then maybe after they

are

married, some of

John's friends will be interested. She also takes

Introduction to the Understanding of Art, for any­ one who wants to be truly educated must under­ stand Art. At Christmastime more

year,

Mary

what is expected of love.

At

the

end

during their sopho­ Pinning is

and John get pinned.

college students who are in

of her

sophomore year, Mary is forced declare her major to the University, which reports that it is happy that Mary has de­ cided to become the 1,729th person to declare him­ self an English major at Ivy College. Actually, the College might not have been quite so pleased if John.

Mary had recorded her real major During her junior year at Ivy College, Mary de­ cides that maybe she had better take a few edu­ cation courses so that she can help John get through graduate school. After convincing herself that she really does love children, Mary registers for American Public Education, and the Teaching of English.

By the end of Mary's senior year she is engaged to John. She has a large diamond on her left hand which John couldn't afford but a girl has to have a diamond, and it might as well be large enough to be properly appreciated. What's wrong with time payments anyway? Incidentally, she is a qualified English teacher. Mary was never that fond of English, but she is fond of John, and being an English teacher is a "nice" thing for the wife of a graduate student.

In June, Mary and John become man and wife.

John is returning to Ivy College for his Masters in Nuclear Physics. Mary is an English teacher.

Mary has fulfilled her purpose for attending col­ lege, she is no longer concerned. She has her edu­ cation; she can talk intelligently with John and John's friends; but most of. all, she has John. As far as value goes, in these days when dowries are supposed to be non-existent, Mary has for John a substantial one she has spent $12,000 of her fa­ for him. And John, ther's money on education he has she is and Mary, well, putting him through school. graduate to

-

Smith

tion

Biology Lab. over their fetal pig. John takes Mary for coffee at the grill, and several cups later they fall in love. Incidentally, John just happens to

on

campus,

for

her

mother

and

father

thought it would be good for Mary to join a so­ rority. Mary's mother was especially pleased when she learned that Mary pledged the house she herself was affiliated with. Mary felt that by pledging one of the "top" houses, she would be associating with men in the "top" houses who would be "cool" as well as intelligent to talk to.

True to form, Mary Smith meets John Jones in

Winter,

1963

-

-

-

-

�

35

HYER TESIKER EDERIM

By Linda O'Riordan

I COULD HEAR the sounds of voices conversing in

a

foreign language. On each of the three days

of my visit, the strange syllables had awakened me.

Since my arrival in Turkey, I had been

sleeping lightly. At home it always took at least a good shake to get me awake, but here I readily awoke, conscious of the unfamiliar sounds.

I opened my eyes and squinted at the foot of my

bed.

"Ugh! There it is. Why did you have to choose me for your bedfellow, you ugly old cat? Go sleep somewhere else."

The cat

obviously felt she was bestowing some

kind of honor upon me, but I disliked her pany. I realize now that I should have that

the

family's

fourteen

decided

to

join this

one.

thankful

hadn't

I

"Goily, do

wish Gretchen

been

other

here.

were

put you in your place!" Gretchen

com­

was

cats

She'd

my Ameri­

family's black and silver German shepherd. me smirk. A meeting between the two would certainly be interesting. The cat had probably never seen a dog, for in Turkey dogs are considered to be unclean.

Anyone who has come in contact with a dog is in an unholy state can

The thought made

and cannot pray to Allah until he rids himself of contamination. I wondered how a cat that had never

seen

a

dog would

react

to

Gretchen.

I

knew what Gretchen would do to the cat.

I looked down

stretched

out

at the lean cat

on

my

checked

again. She was bedspread just

No, Linda, I said to myself. Remember that you're a kind of U.S. ambassador, and ambassa­ don't

go

around

kicking Turkish

cats.

Resisting the murderous impulse that tempted my leg, I swung out of bed. My feet hit the floor.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a minute, looking

blankly at the 36

stucco

wall

across

from

me.

I

to

touch

Even though two feet the

to

away

the

or

so.

the

I

head

consisted of French

extended leg. enough, I missed it

with

stood

which

window, from

wall

it looked close

by

was

of

my

an

up

and went

over

about

three

bed.

The window

steps

doors, which faced the Bos­

phorus and which, when open, exposed me to a three story drop into the garden below. A wood­ en bar bisected the opening between the doors.

I felt fairly safe, but the bar offered no protection

for

which

might accidently wander edge of the window. looked down into the yard next to ours to a

cat

poor

too close to the

I see

my

animals. I called them

"mine" because

I had been

feeding them little bits of food every day. I fed the turkey from the large box of too sweet Turkish candy. The pig received the sugared dates, and I gave the goat some of my over-ripe olives. Friends of my Turkish family had given the food to me. This was their way of making the "Amerikali" feel welcome. My heart had opened up to them even though my stomach refused to accept their gifts. I felt no qualms about giving the food to the animals, for I was certain that their

constitutions

were

stronger than mine. If

they weren't then, they are now.

Satisfied

that

turned to my

the

were all right, I closet-dresser, which

animals

combination

squeezed between the head of my bed and Dressing was simple. There was never any problem of deciding what to wear, for I had been allowed to bring only thirty-five pounds of luggage with me.

After dressing, I made up the bed with the cat still on it and walked out into the large, square hall adjacent to my room. Following the sounds of the voices, I walked through a door across from my bedroom and entered the living room.

My Turkish mother, Anem, greeted me in English. was

the

inches from my right foot.

dors

tried

window.

-

-

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

indo O'Riordan was born in Houston, Texas, but her ome is now in Kansas City, Kansas. She is a junior in

�e Col/ege of Liberal Arts, majoring in English Compo­

Ition, and has held numbertheof outside and inside including employment Infirmary, waiting rbs, local restaurant, and feeding rats in the IJb/e at a

at

I went out of the

on

This house still

Turkey as an American Field Service Exchange Stu­ fent from her high school an experience drawn upon n the narrative below. She is presently working for this �ar's Symposium. She hopes to spend the summer with

The bedrooms

,

living room door,

across

the

seems

upside down,

the first

on

were

I

thought.

floor, the break­

fast room and porch, upstairs. It seemed strange to go upstairs to eat breakfast.

-

We lived in

father

ish

the central office in

at

you

breakfast room.

isycho/ogy Department. When she was sixteen she went

lew York

Then

and started up the stairs which led to the

hall,

a

�e American Field Service

Eat your breakfast quickly.

"Yes.

will get ready."

"All right."

four story apartment. My Turk­ the whole building, but my

a

owned

mother's relatives lived there with

City.

us.

An uncle

occupied the first floor, and another uncle and two aunts lived on the second. We occupied the third and fourth floors.

Rafat

waiting for

was

stairs. Rafat

at the top of the family's three serv­

me

of the

one

was

pride in his "good looks" amused me. was good looking by Turkish stand­ Perhaps I. ards; only know he was good looking by his own.

He was also very proud of his English.

He knew twelve words of the language. Every morning he would say to me, "My name is Rafat. ants. His

he

"Good name

morning, Sucer." Sucer

for

"Did you We will go on

her nick­

was

sleep well? a trip."

me.

We have

a

surprise.

Four days ago I had completed the thirty-six hour, twelve thousand mile trip from Kansas City to Istanbul. The thought of traveling more was

appealing.

not

"Where

are

we

going?"

"Esra has invited

Gemlik is I had were

no

us

to

come

visit in Gemlik.

Yalova."

near

idea who had invited

us

where

or

we

going. I guessed that a relative was probably

I

look

like

tache.

If

Rafat's

that Americans

whatever the

not like

an, because

was

was

-

a

man

I had not yet learned to

or

wom­

associate

gender with any of the Turkish names. As for the names of the towns, well, they were still I must have shown my lack

much

gibberish. understanding, because Servet, my Turkish brother, began to explain.

"Esra is the sister of my mother; he is my so

of

aunt." Servet had trouble with gender, too. He continued, "Esra has not seen an Amerikali.

No one in her town has. about

American

will tell them Servet

They also do not know Service.

Field

about American

We Field

think

you

Service?"

politician in the family. He knew I could not refuse an opportunity to tell someone about the American Field Service, the student exchange program which had sponsored my trip to Turkey.

"Are all of us going?" I asked.

"I will not go," Babam, my Turkish father, replied. "I have to stay in Istanbul. I cannot the

was

leave my work." He was

a

member of the Turk­

ish Senate.

"When

Anem's

James Dean with

statement

were

true,

a

I

mus­

could

drink milk for breakfast.

I did

goat's milk. Warm goat's milk repulsed

me, but I drank it anyway.

Every morning come

in to teach

teach

him

the

I

as

me

was a

eating, Rafat would

Turkish word.

word

I

would

English. He con­ sidered his command of the English language far superior to mine of Turkish, because I could same

in

'

not say

Dean,

"My name

is Rafat. I look like James

the American movie

star," in Turkish. I

knew only three words: yes, hello and goodbye.

He tapped on the table to signal that the lesson

begin. He shook his head and then something that sounded like "hi air tesh i ker e der im." I repeated it until he seemed fairly satisfied with my pronunciation. Then it was

about to

said

was

my turn to instruct him.

"Hyer

tesiker

Before

Rafat could

ederim-no."

repeat,

Gin,

my

Turkish

sister, walked into the room. "It means 'no thank you.' "

"Okay, thanks."

I

began again, "Hyer tesiker

ederim-No thank you." Rafat repeated it

sev­

eral times.

are

we

reply

"Today!"

Winter,

seen

easily understand just why I never had seen James Dean wearing a mustache.

Rafat brought in my breakfast of bread, cheese, and a tumbler of warm goat's mille My Turkish family had bought the goat's milk es­ pecially for me, because someone had told them

involved, but I couldn't even tell whether Esh­ name

Dean, the American movie

James

star." I had never

1963

going?"

startled

me.

"Today."

"Did you finish your breakfast yet?" Giil inter­ rupted. She was anxious for me to go get ready.

"Yes. Well, Girlegiile, Rafat."

37

"Goodbye.

Gill room.

"

and I

ran

down the

I

not

at

was

ahead, but she

all

into

my

We arrived in the dusty city of Gemlik about five-thirty that afternoon. The whole family were

about the

trip

standing outside their house waiting for us. They

me

were

stairs

excited

and

She practically pushed

was.

impatient

to

see

their first American. We

began to supervise my prep­ arations. Her small frame was packed with en­

all stood in front of the house for about thirty minutes while they exclaimed about me. I felt

ergy. She darted around the

in her excite­

much more like a prize dog than a guest. I couldn't

inadvertently delayed my preparation.

My closet looked rather empty after I finished, for I needed almost everything I had brought

blame them, however, for I remembered that I too had felt like exclaiming the first time I en­ countered

a

with

Finally appeared

we

into the

room

and

room

ment, and

me.

We crossed the Bosphorus

on

the eleven o'clock

Turk. into

went

the

A

house.

take

the prospect of telling my friends in the United States that I had commuted

Birzen.

He

picked

up

my

toward

the

stairs.

He

was

Europe to Asia. I leaned over the rail and gulped the salty wind. The ferry gently shifted under me. I loved being a Eurasian commuter.

though his frame was slight, his muscles were well developed and firm. He motioned for me

I chuckled

ferry.

at

from

On the way across, Anem bought us sticks of chocolate. Each stick was about as rich as two

Hershey bars. We had three sticks apiece. On the other side of the Bosphorus, we caught another ferry to take us south. This part of the trip lasted for about three hours, which we spent munching I longed for my animal friends. on pastry.

We concluded the

trip with

a

wild,

try ride in a 1949 Chevrolet coupe the

car

to take

about

were

.

cross-coun­

We had hired

from Yalova to Gemlik.

us

They

forty miles apart. The road system

in

Turkey, at least in the more rural parts of Turkey, is almost non-existent. The driver merely pointed the car in whatever direction seemed to be right and off we went. A consistent man, the driver kept the accelerator pressed to the floor at all times. Fortunately, the car's condition kept it from going much over forty.

During the less harrowing parts of the ride, talked about Gemlik. Actually I questioned and they answered me. I found out that there two children in my "mother's sister's fam­

ily"-a little girl "Do

a

boy

seven.

approached the bottom of the at my feet. I didn't under­ gestured stairs, stand what he meant. He smiled, bent over and removed one of my shoes. I took off the other,

and

we

.

in Istanbul.

My brother looked at my sister with "Nothing."

a

secret

beg him to tell me,

so

I did.

to

He gave in after the proper teasing delay. "There

is

to

me

four stories

was

a

room

on

apartments. Birzen took

the fourth floor. It

a

I

remember

that

the

"Mehmet will

be there. He will want to know you. I think he will want to dance with you. And we will swim meet

the

large boat from Greece and you will who is

not

a

man."

"What?"

"You will see. He is a-I do not know the word.

You will see."

38

of

the

chair

of furniture.

it.

Birzen set my- suitcase on the bed and opened I thought he was going to unpack, but he

only wanted to look at the clothes inside. Curiosity evidently made him momentarily forget his place a as servant. He was especially impressed by my nylon things. This did not surprise me, be­ cause

Anem and Gill had reacted in much the

way about the nylon. It was unavailable Turkey for anything but stockings. Even Ser­

same

in

vet and Babam had asked to

see

this wonderful

suddenly left the suitcase and walked

the door. He turned toward

me

to

.

"Gillegille goodbye," I said to him. He left a slight nod. Just after he disappeared the doorway, my Turkish cousin, EIC;in, through came into the room.

"Swim?" She pronounced it in a high-pitched voice that was obviously de­ lighted with the new foreign word "Swim?"

-

"Evet -yes."

of any kind

man

back

short

something other than swimming.

the

small

accentuated the heaviness of the other two pieces

the door behind her. There

see

was

simply furnished with a large double bed, heavy looking dresser, and a small chair.

in his eyes. "We will go to it. It will be fun for us." Just sixteen, Servet was now interested in

and

ours

high, but it

and

special place for dancing." Enthusiasm was

a

It, too,

similar to

was

with

smile.

me

stairs.

hadn't been divided into

He

we

"About what, Servet?"

He wanted

climbed the

I noticed that this house

material.

forgot to tell her about the Servet's voice stopped.

" .

and

Al­

size.

my

he

they have servants, too?"

"Only one. Oh, .

ten

was

and walked

suitcase about

name

to follow. When I

we

were

luggage. His

servant

our

to

She

giggled and on

ran

out of the was

it and I hoped no

room.

no

lock

one

I closed or

catch

would walk

in

accidentally while I was changing my clothes. put on my swimming suit, but spent several minutes looking for my swimming cap. I decided

I

I had left it in Istanbul.

I

was

heard

a

just reaching for the doorknob when I "Corne in," I called. Then

timid knock.

I felt rather foolish for I realized that my words

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

probably wouldn't be understood. "Evet?" There no

was

response.

opened the door and there stood Birzen with a huge Turkish towel draped over his arm. He questioningly motioned toward the stairs. I nodded I

second

was

the

through two rooms; Servet, Giil, and

kitchen.

cousins, EIC;in waiting for me. two

and

Muzaffer,

were

When I returned to the bathroom, I discovered that I had

the

chair.

must have

and

opened it. His grin broadened as he pointed down. My eyes followed the line of his arm, and I understood why they had laughed.

The lake began two steps below the back door. I should say the garbage began two steps below the back door, because the water wasn't visible for three hundred feet or so. Even though my reac­ tion to the view wasn't exactly a smile of delight, Taking

a

under water

and into the

deep breath I dived in and as long as I could. I surfaced, of refuse

gasping. There was still a

sea

ahead of

and I left it behind.

As the

Another try,

me.

floating

began to set, we swam back in and hoisted our salty selves onto the bottom step.

Birzen was waiting for us with towels and buckets of fresh water, which he poured over us. He wrapped my towel around me and rubbed my and shoulders arms vigorously. The others sun

watched him for

a

moment

and then continued

rubbing themselves. Servet commented later that only Birzen's favorites received such attention.

Birzen followed me upstairs. I left him standing just outside my door. A few minutes passed before I heard him go down the stairs. Since it was only ten minutes until

eight, I decided to take a short nap before dinner. As I stretched out on the bed, I realized how tired the combination of traveling and swimming had left me. I dozed for forty minutes or so, too exhausted to sleep. When I finally roused myself enough to squint at the clock on the dresser, it was eight:thirty. I rolled out of bed and ambled down the hall to the bath­

room, me

hoping that washing my face would wake

up.

rooms were

bathroom

The

consisted

of

two

small

of unequal size. In the larger front room metal basin supporting a pump-like

a

mechanism and the floor

near

a

the

table with table

was

a a

pitcher on it. On pair of wooden

platform shoes. They were to be worn in the ad­ jacent room, in which there was only a small hole in the middle of a sloping floor. The strong odor of this small

room

made my eyes water and my

I looked around for

something I could wipe my nose with, but there wasn't anything I could use. I went back to my room for kleenex,

nose

run.

Winter,

1963

soap

and towel.

I

As I walked back into my room, I noticed a crumpled white heap on the floor by the bed. It

joined in. My lack of understanding

been obvious, for Muzaffer ran over to the kitchen

swam

my

wondered if it were lake water.

there

walked

mixture.

forgotten

the

was

steps

now

was

Giil and Servet laughed at my question. Fol­ lowing a quick translation of it, my cousins

I followed the others down the

the United

my

"Is the beach far from here?"

door

from

me

too lazy to go back to my room a second time, so I splashed water on my face and rinsed my hands. The water wasn't very refreshing. I

and he started down. I followed. We returned to the first floor and went

which I had brought with States.

nylon nightgown which Birzen had ad­

mired. I

picked it up, tossed it on the bed, and to my still packed suitcase on the

over

I should unpack now, I thought, but I'll have plenty of time tomorrow. Maybe I'll just leave my things in my suitcase. After all, we'll only be here a week. No, I'd better unpack. I'll do it to­ morrow,

though. I took out what I needed and slid

the suitcase under the bed.

It was almost nine o'clock, so I dressed quickly.

I didn't want to be late to dinner. As I started out the door, I half turned and

glanced back over my

shoulder to check the appearance of the room. I hadn't heard Birzen return, and didn't realize that he

was

startled

me.

standing just outside the door. He "Marhaba-hello," I said shakily

and started down the stairs. He followed me.

We ate dinner at nine. I wasn't at all

hungry during the day. I found myself having to force down the oily food so there were two piled on my dinner plates that I wouldn't embarrass my Turkish family by being impolite. In Turkey it is rude not to eat all the food served you. Even though I was uncom­ fortably full after the first course, I managed to stuff my way through the following four courses.

I was generally excluded from the conversation because my hosts' English was as limited as my Turkish. I could only sit there and bulge. because I had eaten

so

much

-

-

After

dinner

all

of

us

went

out

to

walk

-

I

should say waddle through the town and down to the docks. During the walk Anem turned to me.

-

"Tomorrow we will go on a picnic. We will leave early in the morning and we will return at night.

We will go to a beach near another city."

"That should be fun!

What time should I get

up?"

"Six o'clock. I will call you."

"Imagine getting up at six o'clock to go on a picnic! I thought. I'll never make it! Soon I for­ got about the picnic, however, because my sur­ roundings claimed all of my attention. I was sur­ prized to see so many people out walking this late at night. At home the streets were empty by ten : thirty, at least during the week.

The docks were crowded with sailors. Maybe I'll see an American, I thought hopefully. I didn't really want to talk to one, I just wanted to­ well, maybe I did want to talk to one. I was so intent upon looking for an American that I didn't

39

notice that the attention of directed at

grabbed

me.

my

I wasn't

a

nearby sailor

was

of him until he

aware

and then my waist. I tried to only choked on the rising sounds.

arm

scream, but I

His

tight hold and harsh voice paralyzed me for an instant; then I began to struggle. His grip and his foreign rasping became more tightened intense as he pulled me along the street. No one semed to notice. No one tried to help. Fear numbed me. I thought no one would come. Sud­ denly Birzen appeared and somehow made the sailor release

me.

"Oh Birzen, thank God you followed me!" I felt

My thoughts were hysterical. He's getting Stay away from me! He's going! He's leav­

God! up.

ing! The door closed behind him. I cried.

I was still crying as I got out of bed and to the door. There

over

was no

lock. The

ran

chair,

I'll prop the chair underneath the doorknob. The

back of the chair was too short. I chest and tried to too

was

heavy;

crawled back on

push

ran over

it. I couldn't

move

to the

it; it

the bed. I gave up and the bed. I didn't try to think; I

so

was

just cried. I cried for my own country, for the Turkish family that couldn't hear me. I cried be­ I was sick, alone and afraid cause terribly -

safe with Birzen.

afraid.

We returned to the group. No one had noticed my absence. After Birzen had explained what had

When my sobs subsided, fragments of thought The picnic began to appear. I'm alone

happened they bustled me home, all the while ex­ pressing their shock, fear, and apology. Anem re­ membered to scold me gently.

That night I crawled into bed thoroughly ex­ hausted. During the day I had been worn out by travel, crammed with food, and numbed with fear.

Tomorrow I'm not going to get up until six o'clock. The delightful anticipation shattered when I remembered the picnic. Oh, joy. Six whole hours of sleep. The thought made me cross. I heard someone going down the stairs. Must be Birzen, I thought, and fell asleep.

A churning sensation in my stomach woke me

They left me here alone They left me

-

up. The clock said four: fifteen. I slid out of bed

...

.

.

...

.

.

.

They're having fun Why did I come?

The American Field Service

...

made

The

.

.

.

Mr. Gallatti

thought of Mr. Gallatti

Mr.

Gallatti!

me

feel better. He was the head of the ex­

change organization, and all of us loved him. To he was "Uncle Steve." I remembered the way

us

"Uncle Steve" had

spoken to

us

just before we

left the United States. He always made us feel as

though we were furthering a noble cause. "Each of you is an ambassador from the United States to your

adopted country.

Always remember that

your actions can be very influential in the realm of international relations. Will you create an oasis of

ing had subsided before I realized that Birzen was holding me up. He led me back to bed and then went downstairs to get Anem. She came immedi­ ately, washed me off with a cool cloth, and left to make me some tea. I fell asleep before she re­

understanding, or will you add to the great desert misunderstanding that already exists?"

I began to feel a little bit noble and a lot better.

Uncle Steve certainly knows what he Oh no!

I was struck by a sudden thought. What if Birzen were only trying to wake me up? What if he didn't mean anything at all? I was startled out of sleep and couldn't think clearly. I just jumped to the first conclusion that popped into my head. I'll bet I scared him, too. Oh, he surely was just trying to

turned.

wake me up. That must have been it. I'll have to

and headed for the bathroom. The churning was rising. I ran into the larger room, jammed my feet into the wooden shoes, and stumbled into the other room.

Just as I reached the small hole in the floor

I vomited. I heaved

again and again. The vomit­

The next morning I woke up slowly. For a while I could not decide whether or not there really was

crawling up and down my

arm. Maybe that fly tickling sensation was just part of my dream. I could feel it go up my shoulder, over to my neck, and then back the way it had come. Up my shoul­ My God! That's someone's der, over to my hand! As I flipped over on my side, the hand drew a

...

away. It

was

Birzen's. For

instant I felt only

an

surprised, but then I was terribly afraid.

-

response.

Anem!

"What time is it?

The

picnic!

She's

gone!

Birzen, marhaba!" Silence. It's

only Birzen. No. Birzen doesn't look at

me

like

that. Birzen is different. That is Birzen. Birzen!

"Birzen, marhaba! Answer me!" I was shouting.

My voice was like a shrill siren. I'll leave. No, can't with just my nightgown "Birzen, you leave. Go away, go away. Please go away." Oh .

40

.

.

.

.

.

apologize, I guess.

I noticed

an

empty feeling in my stomach and

realized I was hungry. I looked at the clock. Well,

wonder I'm hungry, it's twelve thirty! I'll go downstairs and make some tea. Yes, of course, no

tea for the ambassador. The

thought amused me.

Maybe some bread, too. Bread and tea. I wonder what the real ambassador has for breakfast. Prob­

ably milk for his ulcer, warm, goat's milk.

I looked around the room from my perch on the

It's just Birzen, I tried to console myself. It's hello." There was just Birzen, "Marhaba Birzen no

of

high bed. What had I done with my suitcase?

Then I remembered, it was under the bed. I stretched over

across

the bed

on

my stomach and slid

until the edge of the mattress was

my waist. Braced by case with the other. It

one

even

with

arm, I tugged at my suit­

began to slide toward me. myself. I'll be downstairs in five minutes. Five minutes and I'll be sipping tea.

The door opened. My head snapped up and I scrambled to a sitting position. It was Birzen,

I made

a

bet with

NORTHWESTERN

TRI -QUARTERLY

at

leering

"Marhaba, Birzen." My

me.

didn't sound

strong

as

was no answer.

voice

it should have. There

as

He stood there for a moment, look­

I want to uh. ing at me. "Birzen, I In my confusion, I averted my uh, I gaze to the floor. He lunged.

"Let go of me! Let go, let go. 0 God, God!" I writhed frantically. He tightened his grasp and .

.

.

...

pushed

me

I'll

"No, no. Let go!" An erroneous thought leaped

It was dark outside when I was

"How do you feel?" Her tone of voice revealed

instant. I used that

instant to kick with all my force. He fell back. I leaped off the bed and bolted across the room. I

grabbed the chair and whirled around to face him, holding the chair in a down-thrust position.

Confused, he turned and charged through the door.

put down the chair, pulled

my

suitcase out

from under the disheveled bed, and dressed. Then I sat down on the chair. The afternoon passed, but I was not was

aware of it. I obliterated all thoughts. I

afraid

to

face

the

horrors

would recreate. Semblances of

which

thinking

thought began to

push into my mental vacuum. I didn't want them, but they came anyway. I couldn't stop them. I remembered all of it: the shock, the fear, what he'd done. It was horrible. I won't think about it any

Winter,

1963

more.

I'll forget about it. I'll

expected

favorable

a

answer.

"We

are

sorry you did not come with us. You will go with

tomorrow."

ly I searched for a Turkish word. "Hyer Tesiker ederim! no thank you. Hyer tesiker ederim." ridiculous words had no effect.

My In a sudden motion, he released his grip with one hand and pressed down on my neck with his arm. He was cutting off my wind. My hands au­ tomatically rushed up to pull his arm away. At the same time that I grabbed his arm, his other hand dived beneath the three layers of nylon. The skin on my thigh contracted'. My fists flailed about wildly. He increased the pressure on my neck and I began to choke. Suddenly he raised the pressing arm and I jerked back toward the head of the bed. He swiftly grabbed my neck and slammed my head against the headboard. A pillow softened the impact.

I was momentarily stunned. His hands leaped at the advantage. They raced up my thighs. An arm passed my waist, its hand grasping ahead.

The complete contraction of my body that followed an

awoke, but the light did,

there. I smiled. She

was

too. There was a pause. I was aware' of the clock's,

made

threw him off balance for

...

ticking. It was eight:thirty. I looked back at her.

us

I

and Anem

on

into my mind. He can't understand me. Frantical­ -

something I won't I'll forget

about

forget! I slept.

that she

down.

think

remember. I'll forget about it..

.

"

...

can't

I

forget.

Absolutely nothing

could

have

again. "Birzen said you well. You did not be sick all day?" stay home

me

are

I stiffened at the mention of Birzen's name. She

noticed it.

"You do not like Birzen?"

I

did not

answer.

"Do you not feel well again?"

"I feel

fine, just fine," I said, answering the

second question and ignoring the first.

"Are you unhappy?

Do

you

miss

your

home

in the United States?"

"No, I'm

I'm very

not homesick.

happy with

my Turkish family."

"Today you have been unhappy," she persisted.

It was a statement. She was quiet, thinking. "Does a

person make you unhappy?"

"Yes.

"

"Does Birzen make you unhappy?"

"No." "Does Birzen frighten you?"

"No." "You do not tell the truth."

I looked down at the sheets. "No."

makes you unhappy.

Birzen frightens you. But Servet said to you about "I

do not

Birzen."

know.

Birzen

Suddenly she realized. "Ah, I think you

did not understand what Servet spoke.'"

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh Sucer, Sucer. I did not tell you. I should sure you understand. It is different in

have make

America. Birzen likes to feel women's bodies. Do not be afraid. There

are many Birzens in Turkey.

They dress like men and act like men. Some want to fight in the wars. We are not afraid of them because we know they are sick. We try to help

them. We let Birzen feel

been with

our

bodies. Birzen has

long time. She will not hurt us; she will not hurt you."

"SHE!

our

family

a

"

41

if you will a dark evening. It is late, late three a.m. into finals week, and the campus

rehash of lectures, and he knew all the plot outlines, spicing these up with personal touches, little perceptive observations and essences. Yes,

is filled with the soft beat of typewriters and the

sir.

er

PICTURE

haunt of

heavy

The

whispering

freshly-cracked

over

Sheridan

Road, were it not for the scattering of dust and leaves, could serve as a runway for free spirits. Only one

texts.

streets

are

empty.

He

gave

what

wanted

was

and

-

it

made

him sick. He remembers that last quarter, part on one of his blue books was,

of the comment

"extremely perceptive!" Tuh!

all the way to

cold has drawn his face tight, and his begin to water. The tip of his nose feels as if it were part of another body, or as if someone were touching it. He wonders at the deception.

Chapel from where he walks op­ posite the tennis courts. Yes, it looks to him

He knows that if he closes his eyes, it does feel exactly as if someone were touching his nose.

like

He

dirty pair of sneakers makes tracks down its side­ walk, breaking the cold emptiness.

The Alice

of sneakers

wearer

can

see

Millar

runway, and he day invades his

long

a

which every the

curses

cold

and

up closer around his

the

curses

traffic

potential mall. He

snuggles his laundry bag shoulder; the breeze is at

least fended from his face. The wearer of sneakers

The

eyes

head aches. He wonders whether the pain is from the cold

or

from the other. Then

sneakers whistles and tries to put.

his

step. Happy. Oh, hell

yes.

our a

wearer

of

bounce into

Happy-happy. A

branch falls from the nearest tree.

The

pain is again. It throbs like a dying en­ gine. Above, the clouds tumble in heavy black billows, rhythmically disguising the moon. The of sneakers remembers the saying among

wearer

the coeds, "finals trauma." He wants to agree.

The comers of his books dig through the laundry

bag into his neck. He twists the bag. He thinks perhaps the hurry has caused the head pain. He remembers all the plans to stop the last minute rush. He thinks the study chart must have fallen off the wall. He can stand a little frustration; it is an old thing. He knows no one can do it all.

It would be impossible. He knows you can get to the point where you can rattle off the names of Henry the Eighth's wives, and find recurring patterns in Austro-Hungarian bureaucracies, and plot graphs right off. Sure. Sure. It comes. He knows that he and others pretend to be flunking out, in order to cram, and learn, and memorize; and it's the spotted cat which tiptoes across Noyes that bothers him. The cat. And throwing his book at it wouldn't help, it would make the

He is over;

glad

on

questioned.

he

had

He gave,

as

can

slightly

walks for

and

eyes

several feet.

that way, and tries to see how grope into the night. He stumbles

warmer

on

protruding pavement and forgets the

game.

Again the beat of the pain becomes a sadness.

The wearer of sneakers has lost his

appetite, his

week; he sees it.

But the physical pain, he knows, may be just what is needed to make him see the reality, to give him the answer, to let him find the handle.

He only knows that at three a.m., walking down Noyes Street, Evanston, Illinois, he craves hon­ est meaning in his life. To know! To know! Not just to perceive with the senses nor only to comprehend, or conceive in the mind. To really know is to him, is But he hesitates in the cold. He can only think of "the manner in which" of

sense

order

within

.

some

in

unknown verb

perspective,

to

.

this

.

moves.

--_

To know is to

in

-­

proportional impor­

perspective? To understand in proportional importance? And in proportional

tance.

To

know

Thomas

J.

Bracken

he

reports

that

in

his

presently

lives

education

in

has

Chicago,

been

but

scattered

through four high schools and a variety of states east of the Missi�sippi. In the early fifties, when his father was recalled to military service, he spent two years in a year in Nuremberg, and another in Frank­ Germany -

furt. He is a senior in the college of Liberal Arts, major­

ing in composition and now at work upon a novel called Flies

on

Summer Eves. His activities in

college include

Student Symposium Speakers Committee, English Club,

been

University Theatre, Workshop Theatre, and Waa-Mu. He plans to continue his studies after graduation, with

he

Stanford his first choice of schools.

at least that two

two

pain worse.

he

far

walks further south and cuts across

a parking lot, turning westward. He begins to mumble to him­ self. He mumbles to take the pain away, for his

his

closes

He feels

of his

finals

are

tested, ultimately remembers, the prop-

By Thomas J. Bracken

j

----

•

Lost Verb 11

importance to what? The hideousness of this last

question frightens him,

the

loneliness of not having the

horrible

horrible,

He puts down his notes. He walks to the dryer and turns the handle. He inserts the dimes.

answer.

"Oh, thank

He walks in silence. His body distracts him as he smells the steam from the darkened Chinese

laundry and knows he is He walks on, crosses the all-night laundromat.

The

of wash

destination.

street, and enters the

He

goes

to

right."

"I

having much trouble here," the negro

am

adds in quickly, but the dryer, whirring to a start, drowns out the last of his words.

"What?"

of sneakers thinks there is

wearer

else in the laundromat. row

his

near

kindly."

you very

"S' all

no

the

one

"I

closest

machines, and setting his bag down,

having much trouble here."

am

"Yea, sort traptions.

of

hard

figure

to

these

out

con­

"

Then he takes

opens two of the lids.

outline and

bag,

and

notes

philosophy them

places

from

out

edge

of

the

on

his

Plato of

a

the

third

The African smiles. "I am having much trouble also at the elevator."

machine. He begins separating the white clothes into one washer, the clothes which might run

"What?"

into another. He does it

rapidly, systematically.

Happy. Happy. Yeah. Yeah. From his bluejeans he takes several dimes and feeds them into the machine. A soap flakes

scattering of the all-important, white

He hears bent over ence. on

"Oh!

room,

and sees,

of feet

shuffling

a

of the

far end

near

the

dryers,

basket of clothes. It makes

a

at

no

differ­

He knows he has the power to concentrate

him. He

hops up onto the top of a machine, and opening his philosophy notes, begins the rote: "J'he sole realities in the world are the Ideas, are

not

ideas

such

as

pass

through

the

existing forever in a region outside time and space, changeless them­ selves, and unaffected by changes in material and on. But a voice interrupts: objects "You will pardon me? I am -" the voice I hev no change. Could stumbles in difficulty, "I you give me dimes for this?" A dark hand holds a quarter.

There stands ashy, short negro. His hair is kinky, his skin a very deep brown. His blue woolen slacks are of a foreign cut. His eyes speak not of this country. A quarter, yes. minds of

men

but entities

"

..

-

The

wearer

of

sneakers

slowly

offers

three

dimes and takes the quarter.

machine fails. He does not know how to turn the The

wearer

of

sneakers

Don't sweat it."

and the

wearer

to them. The

wearer

fills

ket with

contents

their

cycles,

carries With

the it

from

have

to

both

next

dryer

to

fling the bundle flies

one

with

difficulty gets the thing going.

walks

machines

into the machine

The

wearer

handle.

the

and

African's.

the

pretends

At

The African waits

last

he

all the

while, shy-faced, noble.

The

only sound is that of the machines,

the two

stand side

as

side dumbly staring

by dizzying pattern of the tumbling clothes.

The buttons beat against metal with confident regularity. The negro smiles. men

at the

Finally, the wearer of sneakers speaks: "Nothing like this in your country, huh?"

"Yes,

I would

have similar."

we

suppose

"Really? Laundromats. No kidding."

"Not laundromats. But

people are having

some

such machines there."

sees

this

and

"My mother had what "No kidding. I don't you live

his problem. His

hospital.

verb;. the verb!

you

no

call

thought you people

mostly

in straw

apparent

reason,

'wringer.''' ...

that is,

villages'?"

The African smiles and says,

for

problem

the

and the door is slammed.

wonders if he should help. He hesitates. It is not is the

to

of sneakers

plastic laundry bas­

a

"Hunh."

"Oh, thank you, very kindly." The African speaks with a trace of British. He walks back to the dryer, but his attempt to start the infernal handle.

railroad."

The washers near the entrance have completed

the

body

a

his memory work. Another person won't bother

which

elevator

Yes."

"I am afraid I must look quite a bumpkin yesterday when I board the false train."

and the lids close.

-

"The "Oh.

"I

"No," then adds was

born

in

a

"

he Laundromat 43

"Are you

"No.

prince?"

a

This

created equal' and all that."

I

another mistake.

is

just Af­

am

Budje Kwamwar."

"My pleasure, Budgy." Then silence.

rican. I

"We have

go to school here?"

"I am here next quarter.

"Do you

I

am

finds

a

comeback. "But is it reany

"Say, you know, we've been studying your con­

countries are, deep in their nature, non­ democratic, and will probably stay that way. In

your

chance-"

"What is the meaning of this

man's

'democ­

"You

have

only here, American democracy,

only American."

The African nim bly feeds another dime into his

dryer. Again the two just stand and watch.

"Look, I'm sorry if I offended you," the wearer of sneakers apologizes almost to himself.

"No. No. It is politics which does such." The African breaks into a grin. "I am glad to talk.

I

from where it is very

am

and he makes some kind of

racy'?"

"Well.

I

suppose,

democracy?"

I mean-"

"No,

early."

tinent in my global perspectives class. A profes­ sor of mine named Morvitz says that many of

a

democracy."

own

It may have a dissimilar name. It is African."

A heavy wind blows against the front window of the laundromat.

fact there's

our

"Yea." The wearer looks at the dryer. He soon

am

'government of the people,

by the people, for the people.' 'That all men are

warm. a

strange, jumbled

gesture which the wearer misses, it is

cold, and

.

.

.

I

am

very

The sun-"

"

but, here unhappy because ...

By Richard S. Platz

"Last night I saw upon the stair

"No, no, nothing wrong. But there's something witness," answered the man in the room, closing the door behind his visitor. The host was a short man with tousled hair, dirty cover-alls, and a torn white shirt. "I've been working all night preparing for an experiment, and I'm ready to try it now. But I wanted some­ one to witness it, and naturally the first person I want you to

A little man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today;

Gee, I wish he'd go away."

A.nonymous

I

T � DOORS of the self-service elevator opened and Mr. Wilson

stepped

down the hall to

room

out.

He walked

1003 and knocked

briskly on

the

door. He was dressed in a gray business suit and carried

an

umbrella under his left

could knock

he

again, the

arm.

Before

door

opened

and he

my

desk

"You know I'm

busy at the office, John. My God, I thought something had happened to you.

If I'd known you just wanted-" "Wait till YOU see what this is all about," pleaded the other. "Just give me fifteen minutes of your time. I'll guarantee that you'll see one of the most remarkable things you've ever seen.

Please?"

stepped in.

"There

was

a

wanted to

see

me.

thing wrong?"

44

" ...

note

on

It said

that

you

urgent. Is there any­

Mr. the

Wilson

stood

proposition.

teen minutes.

for

a

moment, considering right. Fif­

Then he smiled. "All

For old time's

sake."

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

of loneliness."

The

is scared

wearer

by

the intensity of feel­

ing, and only looks at the spinning garments he repeats the African's words to himself.

But the negro looks out the

window, and be­

to

runs

after him.

door, yelling: "But only look! But only look!" The

wearer

sky has opened and sent large white snow a sudden fall. The white is falling and the negro has gone crazy. everywhere The

flakes down in "But look!

He

runs

He rubs

to

But look!" touch each flake

with his

onto his forehead and

hands.

kicking along the pavement. He holds out his pink tongue snow

runs

and lets the delicate formations dissolve

bright pupils staring upward in amazement and gratitude. "But look! This is the his

colator,

am being in snow!" and he swallows perfect, damp drops.

The wearer sees that the clouds are tumbling and tumbling as if never to stop. The snow has already blurred the street lamp and made fine rims on the no-parking signs.

"The first time!" the African bubbles, upwards.

"Yeah!" the wearer shouts above the quietness, and shivers his being from his cloth shoes, to the tip of his out-stretched tongue, to his snow

flrst time I the

to the

gins

run

as

The laughter descends and heightens with joy.

He is laughing in bubbles, laughing like a per­

at

covered eyes.

its

touch.

"But look!

But look!" He

Richard S. Platz

was

laughs ecstatically.

born in Safford, Arizona,

but

Waukegan, I/Jinois. He is a junior in the of Liberal Arts, specializing in English litera­ CoJ/ege ture and in philosophy. He intends after his graduation to go on to professional study but has not yet decided whether he wants to be a lawyer or a teacher. Last summer he worked as a day laborer in New Mexico, digging foundations for cement laying at the HoJ/oman grew up in

Air Force Base, after which he went to San Diego and

hitchhiked from there home. He is a member of Delta Tau Delta. He reports that he likes to read, play basket­

baIJ, and think about philosophy, a combination of pursuits which may explain why his athletic appear­ ances

have been intramural rather than varsity.

"Thanks, Mr. Wilson. Won't you sit. down over here on the sofa while I explain what this is all about?" John quickly cleared a cloth and some tools from the sofa, and his guest sat down. Then he pulled up another chair facing him.

"Now what sort of an experiment is this that needs

a

witness?"

"Now remember, you promised me fifteen min­ utes.

"

Mr. Wilson nodded.

"Well," said John, "you know about the little man inside the refrigerator who turns the light on

when you open the door and off when you The same little man who turns your

close it?

Winter,

1963

alarm clock

to wake you up in the

on

and sometimes just pushes the stem don't wake up until noon?"

The

businessman

that his friend

was

morning, in

so

you

started

to smile, but saw smiling. "What are you

not

talking about?"

"Come little

Mr.

on,

The

Wilson, who

you

know

makes

about

the

the

telephone ring when you least expect it."

"All right, I know what you're talking about, but I still don't see what you're driving at. I thought you were running some sort of experi­ man.

one

ment."

I

am,

I

first,

can

you

think

man

does?"

"Yes,

am.

I'm

coming to that. But anything else the little

of

shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, all things, I suppose. He makes the voice

Wilson

Mr. sorts

of

come

out of

radio

a

" ...

"Yes, yes, that's a good one." John was happy to

see

that his

friend understood

so

well.

"He

things. He controls things we can't even begin to imagine."

"Please, John, I've got things to do. What are does

all sorts

of

you up to?"

John looked satisfied. Then he leaned forward and said in

a

low voice, "I'm

going to try to kill

that little man."

"What?"

"I think I know how I

can

kill the little

man

45

who does

all the

mysterious things around the

world,"

but I don't find it funny wasting my time joking when I have work to do," John

caught his arm. "I am serious. I have something to show you. You promised to give me "

"Look, John Mr. "You promised, coming to John's eyes.

••

Wilson."

Tears

were

"

"Look

...

"A

promise is

Mr.

Wilson returned

down.

promise."

a

the

sofa

and

posture of

one

pre­

sullenly

He assumed

the

to

pared to stick to his word, even to the bitter end.

happy again and went on with his explanation as if nothing had happened. "The whole idea came to me after dinner last night. I was sitting in that chair over there and thinking about the man in the refrigerator. It had been years since I'd thought of him at all. My arm was resting on the table next to me, and suddenly the idea came to me.

My fingers were touching the table in one place and the heel of my hand was touching in a different place. Don't you see, I was in con­ tact with the plane of the table in two separate places."

John

are

we

sion of

a

of your mind."

was

ignored these remarks. "Let me show you something," he said, and walked over to a corner of the room. From a table he picked up a large object and brought it over to the sofa. It was primarily the three sides of a corner of a box; there were three sh iny, metal planes inter­ secting each other at right angles. In the center of this were ten brown, waxy tubes, and the whole thing was wound around with a silver wire which spiraled to a point.

"Is

what

this

he

understood; was

nor

even

did

trying

it

been

you've

working

on

all

asked Mr. Wilson. He was pleased to see

night?"

his friend

did indeed have

some­

thing to show him. "What is it?"

John

the

turned

contraption

around in his hands,

admiring it, showing it off. "See these things, ten of them?" he asked, pointing to the waxy tubes.

The other nodded.

"These are sticks of dynamite-" be

"Hey,

careful

with

those,

John."

"Don't worry. If these explode, they won't hurt anything around here. You see, these three plates will direct the blast perpendicularly

Mr. Wilson gave no indication that

that he

time. The little

John

fifteen minutes."

0

same

talking about is in another dimen­ higher order, and he controls all the unexplainable phenomena in this world."

Mr. Wilson watched his friend closely, but couldn't find any hint that he was making a joke.

"You're nuts. You know, I really think you're out man

The businessman stood up and started toward the door, "I thought you were serious at first,

sat

many different places at the

appear

to under­

stand.

away from themselves. The blast will be directed

"Nobody really thinks the little man exists," continued John, "because it is impossible to be in more than one place at a given instant. How on if can this little man be turning the lights

at

someone

in New York and

someone

in Los An­

open their

refrigerator doors at the same time? He can't be, everyone says. But I was touching the table in two separate places at the geles

time."

same

John wanted in

stubborn

a

response,

silence.

He

but his guest sat

was

glaring

at

on

John.

"Look at it this

way," John went on, "a two­ dimensional figure, a plane figure, could have contact with a line, one dimension, in more than one place at one time by leaving the line and coming back to it. In the same way, a three­ dimensional figure, like me for instance, can touch a plane in more than one place, as I touched the plane of the table in separate places last night."

This Wilson

time the

silence lasted

so

finally asked,"So what?"

"Just this: A four-dimensional able

46

to

long that Mr.

contact

our

right

angles

being would be world

in

three-dimensional

man-by firing from this dimension into the next."

"Now dynamite isn't

something to play around

with.

." Mr. Wilson had located his umbrella

and

preparing to make

was

a

run

for the door.

"And besides, this silver tubing is also direct­ ing the explosion to a point which would be the fifth point of an equi-vertical pentahedron made up by the rest of the structure. That fifth point does not exist in this dimension. Don't worry."

John took up his invention' and walked into

an

adjoining room. As soon as he was out of sight, Mr.

Wilson

jumped up and ran to the door. No worth getting blown to bits over. friendship John could take care of himself, this time. But he was

hesitated with his hand was

a

slight chance,

on

the doorknob. There

after

all, that his friend

might know what he was doing, and sneaking out in the middle of

rudeness.

three-dimensional

from

away

space. It will explode into the fourth dimension.

This is the only way I have of getting at the little

He

went into the

he

was

an

engagement is the height of something obscene and

muttered other

room

to tell his friend that

leaving. As he walked through the doorNORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

he

way,

John doing

saw

something inside his

dynamite had been. A small cloud of smoke drifted upward. Both men dropped their arms

refrigerator.

"Just

a

in.

second." John must have heard him After

and gazed into the chest.

"1 don't know what kind of

stepped back.

There on the upper shelf of the refrigerator was come

a

short while he

a joke you're try­ ing to pull," said Mr. Wilson, "but 1 don't like it.

I'm getting out of here."

John stood where he was and stared blankly into the refrigerator as if he couldn't quite grasp the significance of his own experiment.

the device he had made. Two wires led from it to the light in the upper corner. The

light was not

lit.

set," said John. "As

"All

soon

as

1

shut this

Out in the

door and plug in the refrigerator, I'll be ready for him. Then when 1 open the door, the little

light, and at the same time he will detonate the dynamite. It will explode into his dimension and destroy him." John shut the door, and, before Mr. Wilson could stop him, he stooped down and plugged in the refrigerator.

Standing up, he reached for the handle. "Now

his

walked down the ten

Wilson, jumping forward and

arm

free and

was

a

pulled

sound

the

of

and

the door

swung open

a

muffled

revealing

a

slight concussion

and

fire-cracker.

door

The

pulled out nothing happened.

flights of stairs. There was

much confusion in the walked

The

out

the

lobby, but he ignored it back

door

to

his

Mr.

car.

Wilson

shining brightly probably didn't notice that the interior light did not go on when he opened the car door. But he was quite annoyed when he turned the key in the ignition and nothing happened.

open.

Instantly there

but

lighter it, apparently needed a new flint, for he couldn't even get a spark. He threw the cigarette on the floor, stuck the lighter back in his pocket, and rang again for the elevator. After a few minutes of waiting, he concluded it was out of order and

grabbing his friend. "Do you want to blow us to pieces!" They wrestled in silence for a moment until John got his

and struck

It

1'11-"

"No!" cried Mr.

Wilson rang for the self Impatiently he took out a cigar­

ette and put it in his mouth. Then he

will turn on the

man

hall Mr.

service elevator.

charred tray where the

sun

was

so

ado� in- 91JIJrl � (JJWm_) NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS STENDAHL'S MEMOIRS OF A TOURIST, translated with "

like

...

a

shower of bright sparks..

.

Mr.

Seager's

a

preface by Allan Seager, line drawings by Roger Barr

translation is

so

crisp and graceful it

never

reads like one."­

ROBERT HALSBAND, New York Times. "

a

...

handsomely produced book, with simple, pleasant drawings

...

"-MAURICE

DOLBIER, New York Herald Trib-

une. " ...

the novelist's travel book makes surprisingly good reading."-Richmond TimeS-Dispatch.

$6.95

MAGELLAN'S VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD: THREE CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS edited with an Introduction and Commentary by Charles E. Nowell " ...

a

fundamental work for anyone who desires both the English version of the story of this path-breaking voyage up-to-date evaluation of the scholarly production about the voyage that has appeared during the past four half centuries."-LEWIS HANKE.

and

an

and

a

This edition of three of the best contemporary accounts of man's first circumnavigation of the globe has been pro­ vided with several maps, in the style of the period, representing conceptions of the world as seen by cartographers and navigators at the beginning of the Age of Discovery.

Maps $7.50

SHERLOCK HOLMES, ESQ., AND JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.:

AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THEIR AFFAIRS

by Orlando Park "I think this is an admirable and necessary addition to the mounting Holmes' bibliography The chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences at Northwestern has produced an

...

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"-VINCENT STARRETT.

entertaining and stimulat­ $10.00

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Winter,

1963

man.

Maps, illus.

$5.50

47