vol5-no2

TRI-QUARTERLY

LOST VERB LAUNDROMAli

THE TRI-QUARTERLY is a magazine devoted to fiction, poetry, and articles of general interest, published in the fall, winter, and spring quarters at Northwestern University, 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, correspondence, and subscriptions should be addressed to THE TRI-QUARTERLY, care of the Northwestern University Press, 1840 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois. Contributions unaccompanied by a self-addressed envelope and return postage will not be returned. Except by invitation, contributors are limited to persons who have some connection with the University. Copyright, 1963, by Northwestern University. All rights reserved.

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 HERSKOVITS of the College of Liberal Arts, Dean JAMES H. MC BURNEY of the School of Speech, Dr. WILLIAM B. WARTMAN of the School of Medicine, and Mr. JAMES M. BARKER of the Board of Trustees.

UNDERGRADUATE EDITORS: SUSAN F. MC ILVAINE, FORREST G. ROBERTSON, HERBERT M. ATHERTON, and CAROLYN BURROWS. THE TRI-QUARTERLY is distributed by Northwestern University Press, and is under the business management of the Press. Design, layout, and production are by the University Publications Office.

Art Editor for this issue is Lauretta Akkeron. THE TRIQUARTERLY 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.

By Robert Plant Armstrong

In the complex efforts of the western societies to deal with the nations of the East since World War II, Indonesia, 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 author leads us, by a personal narrative of his year's stay in Jogjakarta in 1959, to insights into the Indonesian 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 Anthropology 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, on a grant from the Program of African Studies.

I T ISN'T me personally the man at the bar is talking about. It's a way of life actually. I know, theoretically, that I'm merely the triggering device, here and present. But my own uncertainties are too keen to dismiss him with this. I have to

Winter, 1963

NOTES ON A JAVA YEAR

DRAWINGS BY WM. A. NORMAN

listen. "And now you educated Yanks come along - with your technological services. English teachers indeed!" He shakes his head, meaning "This is the end," and raises his glass in salute. "To the heirs of Raffles. May God have mercy on you." Then he leaves. I don't question his sanction for having spoken as he did. He has thirty-seven years in and about 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 forgotten 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 views I've contested. And so with this brief Australian, for I suspect he is dead right. Unwittingly, perhaps I have assumed the mantle of Raffles. I could well be an instrument of policy - a gentle 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 administrators 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.

Kemajoran Airport is a nearly Western facade to the city of Jakarta. One can buy curios here and drinks. That is about all one may say in its behalf. But even less can be said for the Hotel

Dharma Nirmala. To add to an essential discomfort that pervades the city, I discover that one may not have a room to himself. Accordingly, I share a kind of enormous cell with another American and a Czech, neither of whom is in at the moment. The bed which is mine has been slept in at least once before, and the mosquito netting is torn. This presages a bad night, especially since there are neither screens nor panes on the narrow window.

At the bathroom my shock is increased. I am introduced to the douse bath and I struggle for moments, trying to mount my. courage - 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 broaden: there are more vital uses for paper in Indonesia. Elementary discoveries these, and the trauma they induce is equally elementary.

Refreshed at last and outside, I face a great canal where in turn I see a man defecating, a woman bathing her child, and a boy brushing his teeth. A betjak, a kind of outsized and reversed tricycle with a small passenger seat built over the two front wheels, draws up beside me. I cannot understand the tukang betjak, but I know well enough what he 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 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.

"Jakarta" means peaceful, victorious settlement. 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

with one another. Within the central blocks of the city are strident architectural paradoxes: tiny, autonomous village against modern hotel, the squalor of city poor next to the pretenses of the rich, Javanese crowding against foreigner, beggar-seller against modern shop.

I will never find either beauty or warmth here. And though I shall 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 government sitting hotly encumbered in the scaling shells of Dutch governmental buildings, wielding the symbols but few. of the responsibilities of power.

I am awakened at three-thirty in the morning by a man shouting below the window of my shared room. It is not necessary to understand Javanese to know he is either mad or cursing - or both. My Czech roommate, who earlier gave me one of his precious bottles of Pilsen beer, rouses to tell me the man is raving against 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 yoga of withdrawing care from my body and submitting it uncontested to the countless vampirical wisps which assault me in the dark. *

After the mighty liners that flew me this far, the little twelve-passenger Heron that will take me to Jogjakarta seems insubstantial and chancy. I am a timid flier at best, and this plane does nothing for my sense of confidence. I revile myself for the shadowy ethnocentrism which causes me against my will to question the airmanship of the Indonesian pilots. Together with two other American teachers and half a dozen Indonesians, I rise over the Java Sea. 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 the land. Now and again a volcano rises sullenly from the island's floor, waiting to flood forth unmade rock from the burning entrails of the earth. 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.

The plane lifts, wheels, falls, lift" again. Now I know more clearly the structure of air. Conditioned by the image the plane's name invokes, I begin to feel almost exhilarated, so I start to chat. When my American friend reminds me I am an anthropologist, I suddenly feel much as

I did in the Raffles bar - uncomfortable in the face of what had devolved upon me. Five hundred thousand years ago men lived on this land below. Over 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 difficult, and return to contemplating the ancient, verdured plains which bore and buried Pithecanthropus and Homo Soloensis.

Jogjakarta is both a political enclave within the 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 airport 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 between two passengers - one an 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. Perhaps 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 colonel. His had been a classic act of noblesse oblige. The upper class Javanese, particularly those affiliated with the Kraton, the sultan's palace, inevitably take undemocratic precedence which has since ancient days been their due. Nowadays it is interpreted as respect rather than prerogative, but the dimension of the behavior is quite the same.

But Java is populated-tinily, so tinily that the signs might not be observed from the air. The major cities are six, and together they claim no more than seven millions of the island's sixty millions. The bulk of the population is pittanced among a profligacy of villages. Riding from the airport to the city, one becomes instantly aware of this. Everywhere there are people. Squatting men, silent children, tiny but ponderously burdened women with brown plugs of tobacco jutting from their mouths. So inevitable indeed is this appurtenance that I come to regard 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

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 dimension of an even less comfortable pun.

In Jogjakarta of course it is different. It is not that there are fewer peasant women and their plugs, but rather that they become less frequent, intermingled now among more urban types. Since it is still morning, the sidewalks are crowded with people. The streets prove to be an imponderable tangle of bicycles and betjak. There is apparent ease - in the tiny steps, the elegant 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. Indeed, I relate myself to it, not only because I am a conspicuous foreigner and they, to me, an exotic people. There seems to be some further essence 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 conformity. There is no attempt to call attention either to the individual or his person. Both behavior and attire are circumspect and similar. Even the pickpockets who haunt certain areas fit into the pattern, and when one of them has chosen and picked his victim, there is no general alarm. The crowd maintains its poise. A man has been robbed, and money exchanged; a fact of economic life has occurred.

The shops are a continuing frustration of unfamiliar goods, luxuries that are no more than basic necessities to me, and an endlessly classic schedule of prices. Toiletries, hardware, appliances, clothing large enough for me - these are 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 absorb any more impression. The perceptual idioms are as strange to my mind as the words are to my ears. I seek to find some familiar nexus within which to organize my experiences -:- some principle to structure sights, sounds, and textures into a known pattern. I have nothing immediately available save the manual for my camera, so I clutch at it in my pocket, steadfastly thinking of lens apertures, glare, and my ineptitude with color film.

The Balai Bahasa Inggeris, which is the school at which I am to teach, is OIi Djalan Sajidan. It delights me to say this. Once I saw, in Con-

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 this nonsense.

The school is staffed by both Indonesiansall Javanese, of whom one is the director - and Americans. Our task is to train teachers of English for the secondary schools, for English has been made the official second language of the Republic, replacing Dutch, which of course stands as a symbol of colonialism. The first language, Bahasa Indonesia, is a pidginized language, compounded primarily of Malayan, with small mixtures of Dutch, Portuguese, and English. While it serves well enough as a national language, permitting communication among the speakers of a few hundred different languages and dialects, its usefulness as a language of science and international commerce is questionable.

All of the Americans save for myself have been trained in the teaching of English as a second language. My position is anomalous. Though I am an 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 literature 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 which will make sense of common elements. Enrolled at the school are fewer than one hundred students. At the sister institution in Bukkittinggi, Sumatra, there are around fifty. The 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 the director frets. Most of the students are J avanese, with a sprinkling of others from Sumatra, Bali, Madura, and Timor. Because of their predominating 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 Jakarta is trying to create. Granted that fictions may be effective, still, realistically, there is none save the most devoted nationalist who forgets his 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, an

experience which serves adequately as an introduction to living in Jogja. From the hotel I have easy access to the shops, theatres - both movies and Javanese dance-drama - 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 language 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 multicoursed rijstaffel, which is not as consummately spiced as he will find in the devilish sauces at the restaurants not ordinarily frequented by Europeans. 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 - and fresh fruit. Since these nightly ventures take me farther and frequently away from the hotel at night, I begin to learn something of the Javanese life.

It is not long before, in accordance with the subtle 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 so reticent about letting me know much of their intimate home life, I anticipate that wherever I am finally placed will not be typical.

Furthermore, my students and Indonesian colleagues know nothing of S., the manager of Hotel Garuda. A devout anti-American who devotes the energy of his corpulent body to observing the activities of the two women and myself, subsequently 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 Dutchman 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. Invariably the same number, they arrive and leave together. They are always unhurried, though brief, and their visits conform to a definable pattern. The fact that I can after a while anticipate almost verbatim the evening's conversations does not lessen the pleasure of seeing them. Here, vastly moreso than at home, students become part of one's 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 re-

spectful. When drinks of soda or fruit juice are served, the students do not drink until I say the required invitation, "silahkan." Even then there is no rush toward the glasses, a 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 conversational 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 attitude that, though I often wish the opposite desperately, 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 me in the shops, and with the greatest care find me a 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. soon proves to be the living refutation of the common notion t hat Americans have a monopoly on "materialism."

The Javanese pavilion, or gandok, is formed around an inner, rectangular patio, with the house constituting the front end. A high wall, viciously crowned with broken bottles, forms one longitudinal side, while the remaining end and side are divided into bedrooms, baths, working areas and servants' rooms. My quarters here consist of a bedroom and sitting porch, in addition to my own douse bath. Madame lives in state in the big house, though her mode of life is penurious in comparison with what she could afford. She owns a forty-seven Chevrolet, which in itself implies almost untold wealth, two pianos (one of 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 never learned to trust the Bank of Indonesia, a 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 rupias a month, plus food, lodging, and - twice a year - cheap batik tjap, that is, cloth which is stamped by metal stencil rather than being drawn

Winter, 1963

by hand. Her avarice does not interfere seriously with my life, however, since, moral issues notwithstanding, for the first time in my life I am a rich man. I take breakfast of bread, cheese, and coffee with her, for an additional one hundred "rupes." Lunch and dinner I have at Toko Oen, where they sell ice cream and sometimes beer, or, and preferably, at a small earthen-floored Chinese restaurant which is kept from being filthy by the several chickens which roam the place eating 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 simultaneously 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 without it a heroic ordeal. The mosquito netting is effective, but more pests than I can count usually slip into the net when I do. Besides, I am slowly growing intoxicated from sleeping with a DDT spray beside me, and from inhaling the noxious odor of a punk which creates a smudge reported to drive the insects away. However, the mosquitoes find my flesh so desirable they are willing to brave any obstacles and display frightening ingenuity to get to it. There· are in addition the traumas of being often shocked awake by the honking onslaughts of a pair of particularly vile geese who inhabit the patio and who, I believe, harbor strong, carnivorous desires toward me. As if this were not enough, once I am frozen into awareness by the hiccoughing crescendo of a tokke, a vicious lizard who has found his way to my bedside. Accordingly, and to the smiling disapproval of my hostess, I determine to look for other quarters.

One never gets to know the Javanese - not in any intimate, meaningful sense at least. To be sure, the students constitute a somewhat exception to this rule, but students seem always to be 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 every time I think about it I am 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

their significant relationships elude me. I know at least that the Javanese sense of modesty and selfdeprecation - the assumption that their houses are not good, and that no one would want to visit them anyway - is one element in the constellation. Another undoubtedly is the closely-knit family group which is premised upon the confidence among family members in their ability to provide for their own security, both emotional and economic.

To expect that the two girls and myself - all single and alone - would, in contrast to our two married friends, be more apt to receive such gentle courtesies, would be but the offspring of a purely American expectation. We are even more 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 Javanese family, in contrast to our own pattern, children are integrated into a family of adults. Their privileges are few and sharply defined. However, age is not merely a function of years. The si1l;e qua non of adult social status is marriage. Until a man has married, he is the social equivalent of a rather special child. Thus the bachelor in Jogjakarta, though he has years, professional stature, and an irregularly prestigious national background, poses an acute problem to the Javanese. So, despite the fact that as teacher and American I am entitled to respect, which I largely receive, I am otherwise naked of significant social stature. I live in a partial world, utterly public and of two dimensions - polite composure and polite charm. The dimension of spontaneity and intimacy is utterly lacking. Since I am relegated to the hinterland of the public culture, I devote my energies to itpredominantly 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 mirrors their attitudes and their interests. The Javanese dance is highly formalized, intricate, subtle. It is in sum, after Nietzsche's old term, Apollonian. Furthermore, it is almost completely exoteric a public art. "Pure" dance as such is not to be found. Rather, all the dances derive from the ancient tales of the area, largely from the Mahabarata, and their dramatic element is equal to their kinaesthetic virtues. In personal terms the dimension of depth is absent here also. The roles are of public characters. They belong to tradition and to the entire populace. Accordingly individualism in the dance is discouraged. The dancers bring nothing to the roles they interpret 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

the viewers practicing critics. In this role, one young man discusses with another the relative merits of the kasar style - bold, vigorous, ironic - 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 - and indeed even finger - movement.

In the dance, as in the shadow puppet plays, action is presented in relief. Hand and head movements, the positioning of the torso, the extension of the limbs - these are all executed two-dimensionally. The body is never foreshortened, 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 always parallel with it. It seems as though population density were more than mere statistics to the dancers. Perhaps in the early days of the dance they had been mindful of the magnitudinous presence of the royal sultan sitting before them, and had dreaded to reach out against him.

One finds the avoidance of full-dimensionality in other arts as well. Folk paintings, depicting the sultan, or scenes of the kraton, are done in a boldly primitivistic style, and in two dimensions. The bas relief of the abundant temples offer a not very interested or convincing illusion of three dimensions. Batik from the area demonstrates a wealth of interest in formalized, twodimensional geometric patterns. And the same flatness is to be found in the music of the gamelan, which, predominantly eurythmic, fails to display any concern with dynamic melodic development.

Such observations, to be sure, are drawn from my own system of values, but in these terms they are apt and descriptive. The characteristic of avoiding three dimensionality is so general that I suspect it is a cultural motif, and significant in the life of the Javanese. Its varied manifestations are indeed like the rising phases of a spiral. Standing at one point, I may see each level of the continuum as an apparent circle. The emphasis is upon the formal, depersonalization of art and human contact, the absence of intimacy. But in reality, each progression is logically and irrevocably a part of the whole.

And so with the living of life itself. The emphasis upon formalism creates an especiallyif gently - unbending people. Many of them, as I have found, have great, though reserved

warmth. When they have given it, they do not easily withdraw it. When they have dedicated their hatred, that is not readily displaced either. So it is with decisions also, whether at the personal or at the national level.

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

But because formalism creates great resistance to elasticity, it is not only the Dutch who fall heir to misery. The Chinese receive their share as well. They are almost without exception the object of barely hidden contempt. Sometimes with justification, but more often than not without such niceties, .they share with the Dutch the allegations of all ills, public and private. Indeed, as not only Mister S. of the hotel demonstrates, it is the American as well, and conceivably any outsider who remains overlong in the area, who becomes the object of their anxieties.

At length I am settled. I have a house to myself. Everyone tells me it is madness to take a house in the 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, it is twenty-seven kilometers from the limits of my village to the edge of Jogja, and since I have no car, I must rely twice a day upon a captious, springless, crowded and tempestuous bus. I rationalize my perhaps rash action to my friends by pointing· out that this is no greater commuting 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 Kaliurang, neither is it hot. Indeed, at night two blankets 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 relaxation with the villagers, a necessity which provides its own justification. True, their experiences are not extensive, and, since they do not distinguish the various varieties of white men, I am a "Belanda American," or American Dutchman. This leaves a residue of uneasiness among my friends. Such a reaction on their part is gratifying and natural. It is natural because it was in Ka-

Winter, 1963

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

To a certain extent their uneasiness is reduced by my decision to take one of the students to live with me - a bright, gregarious boy from Sumatra, named Muhammed and called Piet. Ostensibly, it is Piet's duty to act as interpreter and to take charge of administering the execution of household details, which are only somewhat multiplied, though unbelievably confounded, by four servants who are unaccustomed to my ways. In 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 becomes a productive one, and before long I am exploring under his guidance the natural and social environment in which I live. In the long run, it is doubtful if there is one item - plant or remote cranny of the village - which escapes our attention.

Sometimes the anthropologist asks whether "participant observation" is desirable, feeling that involvement with a people stands in the way of objective 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. Finally, it is inescapably true that as a teacher in one of their own schools, I have, will-me, nil-me, become involved. Thus the strict cultural denotations with which the anthropologist is concerned are denied me. I live instead as closely as I can, coming nearer to cultural connotations - trying to intuit something of the hidden bounty of life, 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 informal and I forge more metaphors than constructs. Piet is my primary "informant," and I permit myself to delight in him. One evening he rushes into the house to insist I come with him to view the "drizzle of stars" of the Milky way. On another occasion, when we are walking, we are startled 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 Kaliurang, I do not go out much at night - not beyond my porch where I loiter to listen to the immaculate silence and to gaze down upon the plain of Java, barely discernible as diverse intensities of darkness, undulating, ultimately expending

themselves in night. At times I hear from some distant village party the faint gonging chords of a gamelan orchestra making a music so structured that it seems at night more nearly like an exotic constellation to be beheld rather than an affair for the ears.

It is the walks at dusk that I most value. It is then that I see the villagers preparing themselves for rest and food after a long day of painstaking labor. They wear themselves into wispy age at 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 a miniature terrace a man 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 cigarettes 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 to take note of me when I pass. I have never become part of the natural order, so that When I walk by the old men bow, giving me Javanese greeting, using the dialect they reserve for the sultan.

Herein lies a vast irony of Javanese life. If they speak of 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 continue stooping in my presence, a prerogative I tried at first to deny him.

An irony beyond even this I get one evening from Piet, who, like many of his generation, is a nominal Moslem. We are discussing the worsening 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."

But the 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: humanity. Man pervades the night sleeping. Man teems on and in the earth awake

asleep. He plants, he reaps, he feeds; and in ordure and in death returns to earth her own share. When a man thinks thus he is at peace. The edge of the great silence is near and so I breathe deeply, undress, and yield myself to the private world of my own sleep.

The school at which I teach receives support from both the government of Indonesia and a 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. Accordingly, when I am assigned to teach a course in the teaching of literature - I have never had one myself - I am confronted by a situation designed to give pause to the most bluff pedagogue: so far as I am aware, there exists not one book on the subject between my classroom and the university in Singapore.

But I have my own share of the ingenuity that characterizes my heritage, and my students, who are by no means without a large share of their own, are my allies. We have no library, so we invent one, and while we're about it we 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 m fact than in research techniques, we invent our information, obliged only to attribute it to the most likely books in our "library." On one occasion when it becomes clear to a student that the fiction she must invent does not seem likely to be subsumed under one of our titles, she introduces a new book, maintaining, when challenged, that she borrowed the book on inter-library loan.

But more than the living concern me. There are the dead as well not the royal sultans, for they are but once proud boasts. Their few laws fallen into forgotten custom and their taxes long ago levied and spent, they are nothing now save regal terms in 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 obdurate in death are common men. In all their infinite unknown-ness they yet support the symbols of their time. And the countless laborers who strove 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-hundred-sixty-five steps, each majestically high and wide, stripe into the mountain's living back like

lashes from a whip. A regal calendar is Imogiri, each year a dynasty, each month a monarch served still by men who, with life, eke the precious minutes of his estate. And modestly in neighboring plain is temple Prambanan, to Siva, where Destroyer goddess stares through grey, impassive stone (the stone itself born of the destroyer Merapi) upon immaculate bullock lying into sun, shimmering in simplicity. The Water Palace, decayed to stumps of grandeur, boasts a mosque once roofed with tortoise shell, once Allah's bubble in a sacred lake. I see at the Water Palace a peacock screen carved of rock to feathered fineness; I behold the stream-rinsed couches of stone it shields. Here a vast hall where entertainments 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 between two maidens' pools of imperial scale and execution. From this Babylon to Bhudda'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 of Bhuddic forms, to the ultimate stupa, a heaven high, the celestial form. What still, uncounted minions of mortality find triumph in these stones!

Java is more crowded than the rest of Indonesia; it is more urbanized, more unionized, more communized. But behind Communism in Java lies more than population pressure and poverty. All elite Indonesia is inebriate with the brew of self-determination. This is not the same soft-drink of democracy offered the populace. The fictions of democracy have been helpful and necessary. It is expedient to have one's countrymen believe that all men are brothers and equal, and so the stories were spread. But the plan has misfired. In the areas outside Java democracy has taken hold as a vital idea; hence the frequent, peripheral attrition the oligarchy in Jakarta dreads and tries to pass off on the Dutch. But in central Java the events were different, though no less open to the exploitation of the central government.

One speaks of democracy, the peasant of Java reasons, so it must exist. But experientially, he has no knowledge of it. Before democratization could be accomplished, before brotherhood could be felt, the ancient two-dimensionality and innerness must be breached. Communism, through its careful regimen of workers and fictions of address, 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

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

All this is not to say that the Javanese lack feelings of solidarity or security. On the contrary. 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 clear that the images of brotherhood are strange to them, having little reality beyond the wind that carries the words to their ears. It is this gap which the Communist Party has to a meaningful extent bridged.

In earlier days the Christian missionary preceded or accompanied the administrative arm of imperialism. In his work the missionary managed to provide a structure of belief congenial to the rigmarole of comradeship and equality the new doctrine brought with it. Now the communists have done as much with the new age in Java. In providing the emotional equivalent of depth in a society without interpersonal depth they have made a coup. Other political parties have accepted existing conditions and have not implemented their words with village action.

I am not one to think of 'a catastrophe in .removed terms. The personal equation is the only one which gives a dimension of reality to events. These people, so new to 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.

And so, with the speed of all rare, intense periods of our lives, my Java year ends. Merapi has erupted, but unremarkably, and I am somewhat ashamed of have fled 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 she would wear in court. Never did Liza appear more regal 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'. Perhaps it is always thus. It is not easy, as the Heron rises swiftly, to look back less than wistfully.

William J. Sonzski

William J. Sonzski was one of the first student editors of 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 several publishing houses in Chicago, played an important part in the exposure of the political graft in Stickney, Illinois - for which he was praised by the Chicago Daily News, worked on the writing staff of Sidney R. Yates in his campaign for the United States Senate, and is presently organizing his own public relations firm. He married Marguerite Ulrich (Kappa Alpha Theta at Northwestern) and they live with their daughter Gretchen Lee, aged two, in Old Town, Chicago.

The One True Religion

CRUELLY, to prevent any emotional outburst, Father left the dinner table, stiffly and silently, after announcing his decision to move out of Hyde Park was final. And so it was final. I would not continue school at St. Mary's or serve Mass there any longer. I thought I knew how a lion at the zoo must feel the first time the iron gate swings shut. And with Father cleverly out of the room, my objections had no target. My spoon tracked "footsteps through my pudding.

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

"Patrrcia will graduate from St. Mary's and be with us on weekends. And you'll love it, Michael. The new house is so much like a farm with all sorts 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."

"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

in for the last time, I had never noticed how tall the Church was and how complicated. I realized that my many water-colors of it were wrong and had not captured the intricate construction. And yet Sister Angela almost always chose one for the bulletin board.

The Sisters were talking in the convent garden at the far end of a 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 ignore Sister Beatifica whenever possible. She had a reputation for pulling hair.

"Good afternoon, Sisters," Mother said. "You know we're leaving tomorrow after Mass, and Michael 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 mortar between the bricks of the garden walk. I would miss Sister Angela.

Sister Beatifica snapped us all to attention with a cough. Even Mother. Her bluish hands disappeared 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 papier-mache mask. I could not look at it long.

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

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

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 Catholic Church for miles."

This seemed to spur Sister Beatifica on, and her eyes brightened. "You must realize," she said to me, "this is a disgraceful thing -leaving a Catholic school for a public school - where you will be exposed to the lies of enemies of the Church."

I shook my head and realized that was the wrong thing to do. Sister Beatifica hated ignorance almost as much as sin.

She looked up across the tree-tops with a humorless, prophetic smile, and I naively felt relieved. "How well I know this course of events. Little by little you shall fall away."

I glanced hopefully at Sister Angela. She and Mother were silent.

"It's only a matter of time now," Sister Beatifica continued, her eyes roaming the sooty buttresses of the Church. A thin smile added wrinkles to her face. "You are going to Hell, Michael."

I waited inside St. 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 act of contrition anyway, so I could receive in the morning. I knelt on the Saint Mary side of the altar where the velvet railing felt soft under my chin. That was a safe place.

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 by the complexity of the vaulted arch, which I had taken for granted so long. The columns, straightedged and tall, had as many corners as the vaulted ribs that met at their tops. There was a reason for 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 crossan' 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

chilled by the echo of a door closing somewhere after an invisible someone.

As we drove home, the boulevard and squarish brick homes were lifeless as though from some austere glance. All of our neighbors had either moved or were at their summer homes in Michigan City, it seemed.

"Sister Angela hoped you would visit her when we're in the City," Mother said.

"We won't be coming back, will we?"

"Of course, Michael. It's not as though we're moving a great distance."

"I think it is."

"After we've been away awhile and you've made new friends, I'll bet you'll hardly miss being here."

I traced curliques in the dust on the dashboard. "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 said.

On Sunday in the warmth and preparation, I was able to convince myself Sister Beatifica had not said it. But after Mass, when we set out and had driven for over an hour in silence, I knew she had.

What is now a 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 remarked how wonderful the smell was.

About fifteen minutes past a solitary farm, we turned off the state 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 down the road. Their house was dark and looked as though it had risen out of the ground rather than having been built.

Our house was on a gradual rise at the end of the elm-lined drive. It was brick, radiantly whitewashed, and had been built by the former owner himself over a five-year period. For some reason, he had made the walls a double thickness. It was this kind of sturdiness that was attractive to Dad, and his first words about the house were that it was more solid even than the old home in Hyde Park.

From the gable in my second floor room, I could see our frontage - a lawn, filled with assorted 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 there.

Patricia would not start coming out until the next week end. I realized I was alone upstairs.

It was terribly eerie, because as dusk settled, there were, of course, no street lamps. I was about to return downstairs when I heard the grinding sound of footsteps on gravel and the low, occasional murmuring of voices. And then I saw 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 was a place where someone could surely fall away.

Dad said our neighbors were Hollanders and used electricity only when necessary, because they were frugal. During our first week I ventured 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 remained motionless except for the old driver who nodded stiffly. 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.

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

Next morning 1 bicycled through the orchard, filling my basket with enough pears and apples to last through a long exploration of the ghostly farm.

The house was low and made of shingle-wood and a slate roof. It was like nothing I had ever seen and certainly not like the white, rambling farm house T had seen. Determined to find someone, I set out across a row of hot-beds packed in straw toward what looked like a barn.

At first 1 heard a slithering sound under my wheels and then saw black streaks darting through the 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 bicycle. 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

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

A shrill, staccato giggle came from behind me. lt came again from a patch of tall weeds near the barn. Gradually my terror of the snakes grew to embarrassment over my ridiculous station on the rock. I jumped down and picked up a 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, looking 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 angel hair used to decorate Christmas trees.

"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 thumb in the strap of her overalls.

"Don't hafta be ascarda them snakes." She walked nonchalantly into the beds and kicked the straw. A snake nearly two feet long darted out, and she grabbed it by the tail before it could escape. She held it behind its gaping mouth and carried 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."

It looked like a rattler to me.

The girl clamped her tongue between her teeth and cracked the snake like a 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?" 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 hesitated, feeling certain something worse than snakes lived in the dark, menacing shed. Mother had always cautioned Patricia and me about rats in the coal bin. But when the girl turned impatiently with her hands on her hips, I followed.

The shed was black and weather-beaten, not red as barns ought to be. Inside it smelled of damp earth and rotting wood. The now empty cow and horse stalls exuded the hot, pungent odor of straw and manure. There was something frightening about the filth and disorder. The barn would never be clean.

"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 a large oblong steep tank which, I was 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 our eyes, and then I saw the pond. It stretched several hundred yards from the doorway where it lapped gently at the moss-covered pilings of the barn. The surface was a golden green in the morning sun.

1 stood transfixed by my first genuine swimming hole.

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

"Why not?" I leaned out to get a complete view. She 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." She hunched her shoulders and lowered her voice secretively.

"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 underground river. That 'as a long time ago. Folks tell they're still down ther in the crane what was never 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. He was all still an' white with 'uz arms hanging down." She narrowed her eyes in a furtive glance. "Th' gottum up witha hook in his arm." She stared back across the pond.

We walked 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 masculinity. "I've swam further." I thought I had, trying to recall the comparative length of the YMCA pool.

Winter, 1963

"Well, ya can't swim across Hell Hole, cuz Dad'U shoot ya, this bein' our propity." Still obviously impressed, she grinned kindly. "Course in th' winter Hell Hole freezes over and jus 'fore Christmas, Dad takes Buttercup acrosst and plows the snow back so's we c'n skate."

Looking back at Hell Hole my heart sank imagining 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."

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 crest and sat in the shade of the grove, leaning against a cottonwood. She selected a weed and clamped her teeth on it. "All those fields b'long to us, all the way out ta th' railroad tracks." She pointed to a forlorn railroad line in the distance. "An' all this pasture, an' those over there, an' the fields out there and th' corn an' all those sweet williams out ta th' State road."

"That's my house," I said.

"Well, 1 know that," she said, glaring at me.

At the end of the winding, white gravel drive, our house, glistening white under the high, green roof, looked serene and friendly. The surrounding lawn and orchards touched with peach and red apples had the calm of a sacristy. 1 wished I were there.

"The people that moved b'longed to our church," she said. "Will you be goin' to our church?"

"Oh, no," 1 said, shocked at the very suggestion.

"Why not?"

"Catholics aren't allowed to."

"What fer?"

"Because we have the one true religion."

"Oh."

We sat silently, the warm sun raising the smell of grass around us. A cow moaned at the salt lick.

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

"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 giggled. "There arin't no Catholics.

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

"Kinda like road apples?"

"What's that?"

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

I stood up and said she wouldn't get away with that if she were a boy and she had better take it back.

A shrill voice called to her. Her n,ame was Katrin. "Oh, fer Pete's sake," she said getting up. "Coooooooooooomiiiiinnnnn!"

We walked back together past Hell Hole and the shack. I lifted my bicycle, and Katrin admired it silently. She no longer seemed smart alecky but rather awed by the shiny red Schwinn. A corner of her mouth dropped, and she folded her hands behind her. I thought I liked her much more than Patricia, who was never quiet.

"You can ride on the back," I said, tapping the luggage carrier. She did not say a word but immediately 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 off and stood at the handle bars stroking the foxtail. "I've gotta take coffee out ta the field. Ya c'n come an' ride on the back of the horse cart."

I said I had to go home, and Katrin asked if I'd like to go out the next day. "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, waiting for Dad, the big house was a dark enemy. Hell Hole and its horribly maimed residents continually reminded me I did not belong here. The worst had not come, and for all I knew the falling away had already begun. It all seemed so unnatural.

But the next day I saw Buttercup for the first time. She was a marvelous old strawberry mare with a great sagging abdomen. One of Katrin's brothers came from the fields at noon with Buttercup slowly drawing a cart. The cart was actually 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 a crate of food and a milk can filled with coffee. Katrin and I sat at the rear of the cart, which bumped violently. Although it seemed I would fall off, I didn't mainly because Buttercup never exceeded a slow walk.

At the turnip field we laid the crate and coffee under a 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 said anything to me. Her brothers did not so much as recognize my presence, and no one offered Katrin or me any food.

I helped unload empty bushels from the cart

and waited silently, astonished that this small group had singly emptied a field far larger than White Sox Park. There were many more Sox Parks to go. The brother loaded full crates onto the cart, and soon we were bouncing back along the road. Katrin got two turnips and we peeled the many leaves off. It tasted sharp, wet and extremely good. Katrin finished hers hungrily but did not take a second.

At the pump we filled the horse trough with clean water which Buttercup sucked up thirstily. Her jowls pumped forcefully. I patted her and ran my hand through her mane, enormously thrilled to have such long and intimate contact with a horse. Katrin eyed me quizzically and paid no attention whatever to Buttercup.

We left the horse and walked out to the west pasture where Katrin had to remove burs from the cows. I helped although apprehensive about being gored or kicked. But the cows paid no attention to us. We walked down the other side of the rise a short distance to a swineyard where several sows and piglings snorted busily. Their sties were simple peaked roofs with a single wall in the rear. One of the sties was empty and around it there were miniature corn stalks grown from kernels that had eluded the pigs. They would die in the first frost, before reaching maturity.

Katrin picked two, ears and peeled them banana-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?"

"I'm 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 before 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 recollection of her hair against my cheek strangely reenacted the sensation that she was the left side of my body.

School in that county started later than in Chicago 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 harvest even to notice what had been barely perceptible 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

for cooking water. He would offer a crisp "Gud mornin' and then chew as though he had tobacco in his mouth. I 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 summer morning chill would cause the warm milk to steam in the bucket. Mother was aghast when I told her I had tasted some after it had been chilled. She explained pasteurization to me.

Although I never was accepted into the family, only Katrin's oldest brother, Horst, overtly objected to me. At nineteen, he was most influential, and even Katrin grew quiet when he lost his temper. 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 responsible, 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 Katrin to go into town with us that evening and see a movie. We had not been to a movie in our first month there, and after a weekly diet of serials and cowboy movies in Chicago this became an occasion. I asked Katrin right after milking.

After lunch we were to help Horst repair slats in the corn cribs. Katrin and I cleaned up the herd and had our dessert of young corn, which was not as sweet as two weeks earlier. We sat on the rise over Hell Hole watching for Horst to return with materials. Even at noon the sun seemed lower and a few leaves had gathered under the cottonwoods. Hell Hole was grey.

"Can't be goin' with ya inta town tonight."

"You can't?"

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

"You never saw a movie?" I sat up and stared at the tiny nose twitching, the blinking blue eyes.

"Nope."

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

She looked up blankly, shaking her head. "Dad tells it's the devil's own with evil men an' naked women. We ain't none of us ta see 'm."

My first reaction was that there must be movies I hadn't seen with bevies of women prancing around nude. I floundered at that point, having no certain conception of the female body. Katrin looked exactly like a boy, 'and so did Patricia until recently when she had become particular about not sharing a room with me. I did not refute Ka-

Winter, 1963

trin's father, because I was faced with an area about which I knew nothing. What was a woman? Sister Beatifica, even Sister Angela, who affected me near the left arm and chest much as Katrin did, were not women.

And then, in an instant, she was gone, and a woman of no description stood stark naked in my mind, but still I could not discern nudity. It happened 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 my left arm and in my chest. And I had become a buffer between her and the monotony that existed before me.

We charged up a haystack with enough momentum to carry us laughing to the top. We bounced on the edge of the horse cart with bushels of turnips to choose from. It was an excitement heightened by the extra-ordinary isolation we both must have known before.

"Ah don't wanna go back ta school next week, do you, Mikey?"

"Unnh," I would reply, munching a beet that bled down my wrist.

"Let's jes hang a tarp over the empty pig sty and store up fruit an' turnips so's we never gotta see people or Horst ag'in."

"And every morning we can get to the cows and milk'm first."

"No," Katrin would say, her bangs shimmering like tinsel in the wind. "Ah don't like milk anyway.

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

"You do that, Mikey," Katrin would say, giggling, because, I thought, we both despised Horst.

The last few days of summer were radiant, with the sky only slightly grey from clouds. It was still warm in the fields in spite of an occasional stab of autumn in the shade of the cottonwoods. There had been no time to think of Sister Beatifica or St. Mary's, even when Patricia visited on weekends. The odors and darkness and forlorn landscape were no longer menacing or 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. It would be intolerable not to clean the herd and water Buttercup, smoothing down her poor, shaggy hide. I had become expert with a pitchfork, and Katrin's Dad had allowed me to scythe down weeds around the Allis-Chalmers pump engine on the bank of Hell Hole. The clatter and smell of Buttercup's harness would be sorely missed.

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

It was a grey day and damp to begin with. A sow was to be slaughtered at the edge of Hell Hole where the brothers had rigged a block and tackle. She screamed from the time she was hobbled on the horse cart and all the way down the slope from the swineyard to Hell Hole. As 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 enormous size. There was a heaviness in the air that she also must have sensed. It was sad because no one had any intention of going to her rescue. Her screams were completely ignored. I recalled the day before when she 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.

Horst seemed to enjoy plunging in the pig sticker. He jumped back when blood spurted down his chest and arm. The sow 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 almost touched her hind quarters in a convulsion that sent Horst reeling backwards. Katrin's father snatched the sticker, and in a moment the sow relaxed. Her squeal became a low gurgle that lasted for several minutes.

As soon as the trouble started, I:. had known what Horst would do. But I stood paralyzed as he strode toward me.

"Ya little trouble maker," he said still redfaced from his clumsiness. He wiped his bloodied hand across my face.

"You swine." I spat in his face.

I ducked under his left hand, and had 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 embarrassed with Katrin looking at me, only a tingly, 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 jes don't b'long here." He glared at me. "Why don't ya jes get otta here, ya little sucker."

Creases deepened in the scarecrow's face. He 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 jes get outta here?"

Katrin walked slowly toward me. Her lips. looked parched the way 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' pasture 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 lessons about spinning through the line, dodging tacklers and breaking away to countless touchdowns. 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 Notre Dame.

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

I had not so much as talked to Katrin since the 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.

I paused at Hell Hole on my way to the herd where she would be. In the partial sunlight it looked more sad than forboding. Nothing seemed sinister any longer. I felt confident for the first time, as though I had returned to a battle site on which I had survived. Now, where countless dangers had lurked, only bare trees begged pitifully for protection.

From the rise there was no sign of life except for the herd. I thought I would wait for Katrin and skipped through the pasture to the swineyard. 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 tasteless. I tossed it into a trough and stood silently on what might have been a wind-swept deck, the corn snapping like sails.

I straightened at the low sound of Horst's voice. But I was ready and turned quickly in its direction. The wind rose and battered the stalks as I drew closer. In one of the empty sties, illuminated by a fragment of sunset, I saw them. I watched them for a while, standing tall over the corn, and wanted to watch longer, but a fear of Horst brought me to my knees, and I crawled away slowly over hoofprints baked into the earth.

HEALTH OF NORTHWESTERN STUDENTS

By Leona Brandes Yeager

Introduction: Too old for a pediatrician, too young to be accepted in the health programs of internists, unsure of health care, and away from one's personal physician - this is the plight of college students.

History: Health Services have developed to meet this need. A century ago, President Stearns reported to the Amherst College Board of Trustees, "The breaking down of the health of the students, especially in the spring of the year, which is exceedingly common, involving the necessity of leaving college in many instances and crippling the energies and destroying the prospects of not a few remaining, is, in my opinion, wholly 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 developed, and the Student Health Service moved through a succession of women's and men's infirmaries. The Out-patient Department was eventually unified in the stucco house at 625 Emerson Street with scattered supervised rooms for the ill in dormitories. In 1951, an infirmary was established on the fifth floor of Willard Hall. Ten years later all the facilities were installed in a new building, Searle Hall, especially designed to meet the health needs of young adult college students, including an extremely flexible Out-patient Department with diagnostic, laboratory, 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

there is no such thing as minor illnesses, only minor physicians.

Standards for a College Health Program have been established by the American College Health Association with the following objectives: "To maintain a state of optimum health, both physical 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 program assures a healthful and safe physical and emotional environment, health education, and health care. It discovers physical and emotional problems in their early stages, when they may be correctable, prevents loss of time and promotes the pursuit of academic work by maintenance 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 Health Program begins when a student is considered for admission to the University. Students with a history of previous illness are evaluated by the Student Health Service for advice and corrective measures before they are admitted. After admission, each entering student is examined by his personal physician, and his medical records, with recommendations, are sent to the Student Health Service prior to the student's arrival on campus. During new student week, all new students have a health conference at Searle Hall. Health records are reviewed and recommendations made for optimum health. A chest x-ray, urinalysis, and other evaluations as indicated by his personal record are obtained. A review of new student records reveals that some 20 per cent are poorly immunized to smallpox, tetanus, polio, or diptheria; two per cent need rechecking for past or present cardiac

Leona Brandes Yeager is Associate Professor of Medicine at Northwestern; a member of the staffs of Evanston, Cook County (attending) and Saint Francis (by courtesy) Hospitals, and Director of the Northwestern University Student Health Service. Born in Manville, Illinois, she received her M.D. at Northwestern in 1944, served as resident at Cook County Hospital and Chicago Wesley Memorial Hospital (where she became acting director of laboratories), and studied on a fellowship at the New York Postgraduate Hospital and Medical School of the New York University-Bellevue Medical Center. She belongs to a diversity of professional societies and publishes in her field of internal medicine 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 characteristically succinct analyses of a collegiate health situation, was prepared at the request of the editor for The Tri-Quarterly. problems; and five per cent need rechecking because of emotional problems which could interfere with academic or social adjustment.

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

Periodic health appraisals are urged. Student teachers are 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 Service, each student is advised and given a memorandum regarding his immunization status. Furthermore, immunizations are urged when epidemics, such as influenza, indicate the need for protection. The Infectious Disease Program consists of evaluating all patients, isolating when indicated, and protecting contacts. Particular attention is given to tuberculosis prevention. Rheumatic fever and bacterial endocarditis control programs are operative, including a throat culture project and follow-up on all hemolytic streptococcus sore throats. The development of mental health on the campus requires collaboration with many departments striving for an environment in which students may learn how to mature, develop creativity and independence.

Not all drop-outs for health reasons come to the Student Health Service's attention. Drop-outs themselves may fail to realize theirs is a health problem. Among 149 school le avers reviewed this past year, at least 46 were due to emotional problems and 9 were due to infectious mononucleosis.

The Health Service is concerned with the prevention of athletic injuries due to organized sport and to horseplay. It is through coordination with the Department of Intramural Activities that our injuries have been reduced. Yet injuries do occur, indicating the need for more supervision and more pre-game training.

MEDICAL CARE

It is important to provide ambulatory medical services for all student needs. Pressures on students' time must make such services efficient and 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 emotional disability are evaluated to avoid chronic disorder. Psychiatric facilities provide students with evaluation and treatment of a brief duration for acute emotional problems or acute exacerbation of chronic problems. In students needing prolonged psychiatric treatment, the Student Health Service makes arrangements for private care and uses community resources. During the last academic year, 31,678 visits were made to the Student Health Service. This is broken down according to usage as follows:

Number of office calls per registered student - 4.13

Number of patient days in the infirmary per registered student - 0.55

Number of patient days in the hospital per registered student - 0.16

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

Incidence of gastroenteritis per 1,000 students - 41

Incidence of possible or proven infectious mononucleosis per 1,000 students - 22

Mental Health visits per 1,000 students - 60

Hospital and infirmary admission rate per 100 students during the period

Admissions per 100 students at Evanston Hospital- 2.2

Admissions per 100 students at Willard Infirmary -17

Days of care per hospitalization average

Searle Hall Infirmary - 3.26 Evanston Hospital - 5.72

In-Patient Medical Services: It is a policy at Northwestern that no student who is too ill to be up and around should be permitted to stay in a dormitory. Hospital needs of college students differ from the general public in the following ways:

1. Students in residences at college require infirmary care for illnesses frequently treated at home.

2. The nature of their illness may require isolation. Most college infirmaries need to provide hospitalization 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 care, and other emotional supports.

5. Hospitalization on the campus expedites the student's return to classes. Often he can attend a class in the convalescent period, or his class 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 a vital part of a good college health program. Such a program will affect the health of the individual and his future family and community. Every visit should include some such instruction as commonly heard in the clinics:

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

2. Penicillin does not cure the common cold.

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

4. The need for rest in restoring injured parts,

5. Development of self-awareness.

In financing such a health program, the Northwestern 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 anywhere in the world and is built around our outpatient program and designed for college students. On individual application, this provides vacation coverage. Money set aside for education should not be used for illness. Perhaps eventually a compulsory health insurance program should tax the poor risk, the individual who can but does not take proper care of his health.

Medical Records: An accumulative medical record is a medical legal document, and the medical 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 records are kept separately from the general medical record.

Epidemiology: According to the modern definition "epidemiology is a study of the distribution and determinants of disease prevalance in man." 1 Such knowledge is necessary for planning 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 I* indicates a pattern of respiratory illness on our campus. Excess incidence demands investigation and re-enforcements.

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

INCIDENCE OF UPPER RESPIRATORY INFECTION By QUARTER.

\ \ \ Winter, 1963 1957 -'58 1960-61 1961-62 1962.-63New stu.dent week

If 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 medical students or students who have lived with someone inflicted with tuberculosis. Consequently, our intensive program is concentrated on these groups.

Methods of epidemiology have been used in improving our campus milieu. For example:

1. Social and academic pressures are studied with collaborative efforts to improve individual tolerance and to provide a healthier environment.

2. An outbreak of atypical pneumonia was studied. The malady was discovered to be transmitted from person to person by oral route, and the incubation period was established at 12 to 15 days. Isolation of cases will prevent secondary cases.

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

4. Continual evaluation of injuries has led to improvement of safety practices.

5. The' investigation of cyanosis or purple skins in athletes showed that fresh ink from sweatshirts was absorbed through the skin. This is prevented by laundering after marking.

6. Riders in a closed homecoming float developed transient vague symptoms which, on investigation, 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 venders.

Statistics on "morbidity and mortality" are necessary to measure trends. Nomenclature is important, and unfortunately, the official Standard Nomenclature used for medical diagnosis does not always cover our work in prevention and education. Such terms as pre-marital counseling, travel advice, academic pressures, roommate problems are descriptive, but need to be standardized. In looking over our diagnostic files, we note an increase in ulcerative colitis. Does this mean better care permitting these students to attend school or too much antibiotics during their youth, or too much stress while at the 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 persists when large numbers of cases are evaluated, Cancer Education must encourage these young women to seek pelvic examination and these young men to heed testicular swellings.

By far the most common illness seen at the Student Health Service is the upper respiratory infection. At the moment, some 50 viruses have

been found to be associated with acute respiratory diseases. No one virus is the cause of the cold. Host resistance is an important factor. Influenza vaccine is effectrve in preventing epidemic influenza. Adeno virus vaccine has been useful in military recruits, but this has not proved useful in civilian groups. Hopefully a multivalent vaccine or chemical will soon conquer the cold.

About 10 per cent of college students use professional help in understanding their emotional problems, but only a few of these need to be designated as emotionally ill. Students who consult a psychiatrist should consider this as an educational process, releasing energies for academic 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 26 Auto 18

In these areas, we should work on prevention. Clues to suicide must be evaluated carefully. The campus must be aware of significant symptoms, such as insomnia, withdrawal, depressions, and no threat or attempt of suicide should be considered insignificant. Braaten and Darling> describe the psychodynamic features of suicide attempts as anger, hostility, and excessive competitiveness, excessive dependency, moderate to severe depression, fears about masculinity-femininity, crises in love attachments, severe study difficulties and self-hate.

Automobile accidents are being evaluated in several studies 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 the elements of self-destruction.

In conclusion, it might be said that if we were successful in our programs, there would be no further need for a Health Service. However, College Health Services have a heavy responsibility 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.

2 Fortieth Annual Meeting of the American College Health Association

THE SYNDROME BATTLE

BOSH

DEFINITION

The Bosh Syndrome, seen in college students, is similar to the battle-fatigue described by Grinker in his Men Under Stress.t This is now commonly classified as situational stress reaction. In the Bosh Syndrome, however, another factor has been added. Students leave the battleground on the advice of their attending physicians, return home, and spontaneously are relieved and refreshed. On seeing their family physician, parents, or counsellors, the following reaction occurs: "Bosh! You're a healthy specimen. No treatment is necessary. Return to school!

ETIOLOGY

Predisposing Factors

This syndrome is usually endemic, but may reach epidemic proportions at examination time when exposure to other cases may be a sensitizing factor. As long as underlying pathology is unsolved, recurrences are possible. The incidence 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 students who transferred from previous battle-

Winter, 1963

OR FATIGUE

By Leona Brandes Yeager

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

Personal Factors

There is an individual predisposition. However, as a group, young adults are commonly involved with becoming independent, choosing a career, and selection of mates. The following precipitating factors are evident:

1 Unsolved conflicts with parents.

2. Identity confusion.

3. Illness at home; illness of parents.

4. Parental discord.

5. Inability to secure privacy in group living.

6. The use of drugs, pepper-ups or calmerdowns.

7. Philosophical confusion encountered with studies.

8. Pressures due to different cultural background.

9. Grade pressures.

10. Excessive lack of sleep.

11. Excessive use of alchohol.

12. Poor nutrition.

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

13. Pressures from society. Today, a student who is unable to perform is said to "hurt not only himself but the nation."

14. Guilt feelings aroused by the knowledge that his education is supported by endowments; by the knowledge that he is keeping someone else out of school.

15. Competition with siblings, parental figure, and now the Russians.

PATHOLOGY

The pathogenesis of this syndrome is related to a predisposing personality, in which older and important conflicts are unsolved. The reaction to current stress is a repetition of old reactions to these conflicts. A particular quality of stress is significant, as well as quantity of stress. Every individual has his Achilles' heel. At its onset, the syndrome may be minor, but continued exposure increases the pathology and spread. The onset may be gradual, insidious, or abrupt. There may be a history of a previous episode.

SYMPTOMATOLOGY

Most commonly, one sees:

Anxiety and fears

"What if I were to become (or cause my girl to become) pregnant?" "What if I drive too fast and kill someone?" "What if I flunk out of school?" "What if I disappoint my parents?" (Unconsciously, the student may be punishing his parents by seeking failure.)

Confusion

Withdrawal from social activities

Lack of energy

Unusual fatigue

Exhaustion

Inability to concentrate

Inability to perform

Inability to sleep and inability 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 substitute parents.

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION

Physical examination often reveals gross signs of anxiety, such as expressionless face, rigidity of muscles, tension of speech, loss of sparkle, and sometimes tremulousness. Inattention to grooming may be evident. Systematic organ examination is often within normal limits. Laboratory evaluations are also within normal limits.

DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS

Differential diagnosis is difficult, but it is necessary to consider such possibilities as infectious mononucleosis, upper respiratory infections, ulcers, obscure viral infections, hormone disturbances. Usually the thyroid is blamed. The modern trend is to blame the adrenal, which often results in expensive investigations.

PROGNOSIS

Favorable factors include:

1. Youth

2. Early recognition

3. Understanding of the syndrome by faculty, parents, and personal physicians

4. Insight on the part of the student.

COMPLICATIONS

If untreated, this syndrome may lead to devastating 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 a lower" level of effectiveness.

TREATMENT

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

2. Psychotherapy, which may be very brief, and consist of alleviation of symptoms and elimination of underlying pathology causing it, producing a dynamic change to permit increased capacity, enjoyment, self-expression, and creativity.

PREVENTIVE MEASURES

1. Emotional security as a child is important.

2. Gradual 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 honestly and with integrity, in order to allow the student to become independent.

4. Physicians away from the campus must understand the syndrome, and must encourage the students to seek appropriate treatment.

5. More attention to young adult medicine with understanding of young adults who frequently fail to mention these symptoms, or else accept symptoms as normal patterns.

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

DI[TA MEDI[A*

By Carl A. Dragstedt

Carl A. Dragstedt, a native of Montana, is Professor of Pharmacology at Northwestern and a member of the attending staff of Passavant Memorial Hospital. When he came to the Medical School in 1926 he had served in the United States Army in World War I, taken his advanced degrees at Rush Medical College (M.D., 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, and in the course of a distinguished career has received many honors and served in the highest positions in a diversity of national committees, institutes, and professional societies in his field.

Concerning the collection of absurdities printed below - at the request of The Tri-Quarter/y - Dr. Dragstedt says: "The Department of Medicine has a staff of over 200 who instruct concurrently at five separate hospitals. last spring the department held a week-end workshop at a Wisconsin resort to discuss teaching objectives, 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."

DR. COLWELL, ladies and gentlemen: You are being engaged for two days in a multi-faceted attack upon the problems of a medical education. I know you will think it presumptuous of me to

Winter, 1963

suggest that in spite of your ardent efforts, you have probably neglected some of the most important 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, because I have been aggravated by medical education for 48 years, and because Dr. Colwell offered me a free meal. You will note that I am reading from a prepared manuscript. This is partly because 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, has been swept So far to sea by the undertow of his own tongue-tide, that he nearly drowned in the effluvia of his own expostulation.

I do not have time to deal with all of the issues that you've neglected, but I wish to cite a few examples.

In the first place, every reputable general, when planning 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 to do with this fine educational machine if there are no medical students to educate?" Now, this is no silly chimera that I have dreamed up, but a probability that has been prophesied by Dean Young's reports on student registration for the past several years. Since there are two formidable reasons for the decline in medical student registration which have not as yet been resolved,

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

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

The first of these unresolved reasons is that we are well into the era of do-it-yourself medicine and people are being instructed to diagnose and treat themselves by radio, television, magazine and newspaper. Consider for a moment what television is doing. It shows how an antitussive goes down the esophagus, through the stomach and duodenum into the aorta, takes a quick sortie into the pelvis, then returns and caroms off the clavicle into the cough control center like the 8-ball going into the corner pocket. A contraption called a nasograph, shows how a nasal decongestant opens up all eight sinuses so you can snort out mucus in as many streams as a fireboat! And that analgesic which is just like a doctor's prescription - one sees it get into that three-compartment cranium, loosen the elastic on that tension thingamabobb, untwist that evil looking corkscrew, and arrest the swings of that blacksmith's hammer in mid air. Currently the man who acts the part of a doctor states that 3 out of 4 doctors recommend its ingredients, but I understand that the copywriters are going to change this to the following: "Your neighbors use it, why don't you?"

It is unnecessary for me to recall for you the 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 reason 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 urine. In his 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 anxious to acquire the bedside manner of his attending man, he takes on the smells of soft-soap and banana oil. Now Senator Kefauver and others have turned up their noses at these assorted smells.

You see we have come full cycle. It isn't too long ago that Robert Louis Stevenson was eulogizing the physician as the flower of our civilization. But, before that, you may recall what Marion Sims said to his son when the latter apprised him of his intent to study medicine: "Well, I suppose that I can not control you; but it is a profession for which I have the utmost contempt. There is no science in it. There is no honor to be achieved in it; no. reputation to be

made, and to think that my son should be going around from house tOI house through this country, with a box of pills in one hand and a squirt in the other (to ameliorate suffering), is a thought I never 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 assafetida 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. Northcote Parkinson's recent discussion of this subject. He describes the predicament of Dr. Lockstock of the firm of Lockstock and Barrel, whose grants expanded to the point where he was employing 432 technicians, and was so busy arranging their salaries, fringe benefits, vacation time, coffeebreak hours, recreational facilities and attending their weddings and the christenings of their babies, that he no longer had any time for research. Well of course Professor Parkinson is a professional spoofer so you may not suspect there is much in his comments. But I want to give you a serious suggestion as to how to keep the grants coming. It is a simple matter. You do a nice little research job and keep completely mum about it. You are now in position to write up a first class grant application, because you know precisely what instruments and apparatus were needed, what experimental animals were necessary, 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 grantsmanship, 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

in medicine is that of determining the efficacy of a new drug or treatment procedure. It is an obligation of yours to teach and demonstrate this to your students. You are all well aware of the placebo effect and that one can discount th is psychological variable somewhat by administering 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 have read many papers from the Department of Medicine to see if anyone had carried this thing to its logical conclusion. If a 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 blindfolded patient, a blind-folded doctor, a blind-folded pharmacist, and a blind-folded nurse, fighting it out in a ward like an Australian tag team. Beecher and the Massachusetts General Hospital never had anything like this!

In the fourth place, what have you done about fostering a program in ethics and honesty? I know that you give lip service to the Hippocratic Oath and to the Code of Ethics of The American Medical Association. But what I have 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 for a Biographical Dictionary, which came to some sort of end at the close of the letter A, so that a good deal of his eloquence was lost to 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 statement is made, and the similar necessity of verifying every reference made from another. Nothing could teach the difficulty, necessity, and rarity of accuracy in writing as did this work in biography."

The reason I brought this up is that. I have just concluded reading some paper dealing with the isolation, chemical identification and synthesis of the active principles of some poisonous mushrooms. Incidental to this 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 words from the 1851 edition of Pereira's Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics: "But the Winter, 1963

most remarkable illustration is that of the Amanita Muscaria, a fungus employed by many Siberian tribes (---) as a substitute for alcoholic 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 himself today by eating some of the fungus; by the next morning he will have slept himself sqber ; but by drinking a teacupful of his urine, he will become as powerfully intoxicated as on the preceding day. Thus (--) with a very few Amanitae, 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 propagated 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 years ago. Now don't you think that these modern authors should have cited this century old evidence out of sheer honesty, in spite of any misgivings they may have had as to literary niceties?

In the fifth and last place, I venture to ask what have you done about the genetics business? Chromosomes, genes, DNA and RNA are the fad of the moment and as Jimmy Durante puts it, everyone is getting into the act. There are now courses in genetics in departments of zoology, botany, anatomy, pediatrics, microbiology and biochemistry although these enzyme addicts incline toward the term "inborn errors of metabolism."

I would like to call your attention to Dr. Dwight 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 Orville 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 near the attachment of the mesorchium. It collided with a molecule of ribonucleic acid and shook it loose from its sugar moiety. The nucleotide no longer knew whether it was DNA or RNA. The Reverend Diorets was unaware of the event which modified the chemistry of a gene in one of his germ cells and the mutation did not

manifest itself in his son, who became a rural mail carrier. But his grandson, Percy T. Diorets bore testimony to this rare event - a mutation which greatly affected his behavior. He became a scholar, yes, even something of a scientist, but he showed an inclination to study medicine. In view of what I said in the first section of this paper, you will understand the consternation which this aberrant behavior engendered. If it wasn't for the rescuing and comforting knowledge of genetics, his parents and grandparents would have thought it was the result of something they had done.

Speaking of this DNA and RNA business, as to which polynucleotide carries the hereditary information from generation to generation, I continue to be confused. It's something like when 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 made you laid me."

In summary, it is obvious that this medical teaching is something that can. be looked at and thought about in two ways. We need to emulate the dinosaur whose capacities for this sort of thing were immortalized by Bert Leston Taylor as follows:

Behold the mighty dinosaur,*

Famous in prehistoric lore,

Not only for his weight and strength

But for his intellectual length.

You will observe by his remains

The creature had two sets of brains­

One in his head (the usual place),

The other at his spinal base.

Thus he could reason a priori

As well as a posteriori.

No problem bothered him a bit:

He made both head and tail of it.

So wise he was, so wise and solemn,

Each thought filled just a spinal column.

If one brain found the pressure strong

It passed a few ideas along;

If something slipped his forward mind

'Twas rescued 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.

Oh, gaze upon this model beast, Defunct ten million years at least.

*Reprinted with the permission of the Chicago Tribune

POEMS

By Jacob Leed

Jacob Leed was born in Lititz, a small old Moravian town in Pennsylvania. After his early schooling there, he attended Harvard College, the Writer's Workshop of the University 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,

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.

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)

you see-last touch in these mysterious horrorsthe Flayed and the Skeletons digging like slaves.

Museum Piece

Clock, calendar, compass, oracle, and more, oncenow so wholly out of our use its movements make no sense to us, there are few of its parts we 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. 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 appalling emblem of a fate too hard, do you wish to show that 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 strip the tough ground and thrust against an iron spade our bare, bleeding foot?

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.

Watching Out

You see in the sun a watched lizare whose tongue flicks apprehensively.

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

All Is Still

All is still except that the light trembles on the lake and small white waves run along the shore and lazy leaves move in intricate delicate ways.

Morning, Alone

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 tableleaps, disappears.

By David E. Neelon

WE WERE on about the fourth drink, I guess. The two girls were a little behind, although Barb 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 seen it in a race near his own home. Mona, my girl, was listening and nursing her drink because she wanted to know what this racing thing is all about. It was pretty important to us, and she didn't really understand what it took to make a man race cars for the sheer satisfaction 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 good. With a faster car he could be great."

Barb asked what he drove, and 1 told her a

and turned my arms, imagining the car feel in my 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 imagined 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 gradually 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 impassive look, then moved the gearshift with my hand and made a sound like a Ferrari being shifted fast.

"Right! Beautiful!" said Terry. He was as involved as I was in the fine bit of driving I had just 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 is strictly for racing. You never see them on the street.

"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 getting 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 Holbert, 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 this one turn at eighty-five or one hundred· and five. Just smooth and cool."

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

thought. The stool was too narrow. I wished it were a bucket seat and would hold me better.

I looked at Barb for approval, and she was almost as happy about the imitation as Terry was. She had driven his car and knew what it was like. I looked at Mona and she had her glass to her 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.

I knew she meant it, but what did it matter? Tonight we would be crazy and very fast, and what difference did it make at all?

Terry and Barb were whispering intimacies to each other, so I pushed all our empty glasses to the bartender's side, and he came by and picked 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 a beer and our glasses and the change. I have never stopped to figure whether or not he takes out the price of his own drinks. I'll bet he doesn't; he's a good fellow that way.

"To the flash," said Mona, lifting her glass. Now she was going faster and getting higher.

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

"To one hell of a boom," I said, and everyone drank to that.

It was the first night of the Cuban thing. We' set out just after the gravity of the President's talk had settled. We meant that about the boom. It seemed 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 you can do.

Mona's eyes were clouding, and I saw she was getting into one of her depressions. The higher 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 deeper and more solemn and ceremonial. It wasn't a

bad job really. "To the beauty of my Mona." Her eyes brightened, and we all drank to her. It was a well-conceived toast.

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

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

"To Graham Hill," returned Terry. Graham Hill had just won the World Championship of Drivers on the European Grand Prix road racing

Winter, 1963

circuits. He was a reserved looking Englishman with a long' mustache, and Graham Hill was indeed one of the fastest men. We drank to him.

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

"You folks enlist yet?" Bill asked as he mixed someone a Manhattan.

"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 we can wait for the fall-out and have a ball."

Terry was being funny, and Barb laughed. Mona was 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 back until it was all over. I threw him three of my special spiders, and he went home to his wife. Anybody want a special?"

"All around, Bill," I said. We all switched to Bill's special spider and had about four each. Bill had once told me he had never seen anyone drink more than four of his concoctions at one sitting.

"Let's drink to downfalls." It was Barb's idea and her favorite drinking game. 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 tomorrow," said Mona.

"It's been arranged," I said, and we all drank to its downfall anyway.

"The downfall of police and laws and all that stuff." Barb was beginning to stumble over words. We always had the downfall of the law; it seemed to work for the four of us.

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

Bill came past making his rounds and offered us a toast to the downfall of Nicky Krushchev. "To the downfall of Nicky," we all agreed. Terry rose and called for quiet. It was his turn to be solemn.

"Jim, girls, Bill, will you join in drinking to the 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.

"But what's he mean about the odds? What odds?"

"Tell her about the odds, Terry."

"You tell her.

"Mona, the odds are what we play against all the time. We're 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 about race and drive their cars at the absolute limit of adhesion to the road, or when a test pilot flies a new 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 you are snuffed. The odds can snuff you out right then and there, but when you're that close, you're really living."

"Right!" said Terry. He was almost shouting, but I had been speaking softly about what we believed.

"But why drink to the downfall of the odds?" Mona was not with us, and the game was ruined. "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."

Mona was warm and friendly when I put my arm around her as we started out the door. She had passed her limit and was quite high, but it was a different kind of high from mine. Terry sang a German marching song in German, and Barb joined in because he had taught her the words. Barb had echoed "to the downfall" when we drained our glasses the last time. She knew what we meant. Mona didn't seem to know, and she didn't feel the same 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 was black and Terry's white. His was a little older and slightly slower, but that didn't show to any but experienced eyes. We all got in and fastened the belts. I started my car and revved it high to hear the deep, throaty roar that an Austin Healey makes. Terry caught his and revved in unison with mine, then we 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

smoothly. I grinned when I came back from third to fourth as quickly as that particular car can be shifted. It sounded. wonderful, and we kept gaining speed, then leveled out around seventyfive miles per hour. The road was empty now but for the white car and the 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 just a bit where the pavement was damp. When we shifted from second to third I saw Terry's car slither only a little sideways, and mine started to go the same way. 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 hills at about eighty. I wanted to see where Terry would brake. Because of the dampness it should be near the first speed limit sign entering the curve. Usually we ran a hundred yards deeper 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, then correct and resume his proper line for the turn. I held my braking an instant longer than he did so that I wouldn't slide in the middle of the turn on the wetness. We were both giving our cars the gas at the same time -and running very fast. I had never gone this fast here, even when the road was dry, but everything was under control. The car was beautiful, smooth, running perfectly on the downshifts and the hard acceleration, braking just the way I wanted it to. We accelerated 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, the car in front, the next turn coming up, your mark that you have picked out on slower trips through as the place where you have to brake and shift. 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

for the unpredictable, maybe a hole in the pavement that could bounce your car just when you want it all on the road; maybe, as was the 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 you can do under normal conditions. From the unexpected comes the risk and the suddenness and shock of losing the car and not being able to get it back before it hits something and stops itself. You don't think of any of this, though, when you are entering a series of turns at over ninety miles per hour, and you know without a shadow of a doubt that the third turn into the series of reverses is 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 safely ask of it. You concentrate on the feel of your feet and hands and body that tell you whether the car is holding the road or sliding and how much more there is left before you lose control. You concentrate upon stepping on your brakes at just the right moment before each turn, and upon braking just as hard as you have to and no harder. At the same point you concentrate on the perfect act of timing that makes you brake, shift, and turn the car so that it enters each corner from just the right angle and in the proper 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-fulfilling thing a man can do, or one of them anyway. If you do not concentrate, or if you line the car up wrong or miss your brakes or a shift, you have 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 correct angle with his car running right on that hairline limit that lies between the fastest way your car can round a curve and the way it cannot possibly get around. Terry'S car was only a part of my doing the thing myself. 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 as I lined up for that curve and started my car in its entry drift. All of this just registered, and I know from what I do what Terry must have done. He did it perfectly, and there is only one way to do this piece of driving perfectly.

Winter, 1963

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 town later, and it was a place to slow down, you had to. We had our fun in the hills in those turns, and after that you want to slow down and savor it a while. Then you want to go back and do it again and again.

Mona was quite sober as we drove through the town. She had probably been very scared. Barb had been too, but she understood being scared.

"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."

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 tonight with war and all, did that upset you? Have you done this kind of thing before, the drinking, and that toasting, and the wild driving?" There was a pause between each question as she waited for an answer.

Finally I said, "We've driven this way a lot before, but never quite as well. Each time it gets faster and closer to the limit."

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 explored the back country of the Alleghanies in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and has seen a good deal of Arizona and Colorado, where he found the San 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 Business, a senior this year, ma;oring in Transportation and World Trade. Concerning the story below, he says: "My love of racing cars was inherited from my father, who introduced me to the sport. Since then fast cars have become a fascination, and the very rare men who are great racing drivers have become artists to me."

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 school, and - at her family's cottage on Lake Michigan - wriHen a good many stories and collected rejections for them.

IT 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 prepare themselves for the occupations they intend 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 definitely two-fold.

Ask any number of college women why they came to college. Some have definite occupations in mind - these are most frequently freshmen women. They have at this point a picture of the perfect career in mind - the dedicated secretary 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 anthropologist 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-

come educated." For what? Now girls, let's be frank with each other - why did you really come to college? Probably slightly more than 50% of you came because all of your friends go to college. After all, when all of your friends are going, you just can't go out and work right away. What would "people" think? And besides, someday you may marry one of those friends, and it wouldn't do for "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 to the true concern of todays college woman.

The next 10% of you are probably at college because Daddy said a woman should go to college - to be able to talk intelligently with her husband some day when she marries, and to be able to support herself well, if need be, in the meantime. I'll let you in on a secret, girls - Daddy is in hope that you will meet some nice collegeeducated gentleman while you are there. This suggests our third category. The next 25% of the women at college are the ones who came "to get an education." What they mean by this is that they are at 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, just a nice - well rounded one," you say. I guess you mean one that will enable you to talk intel-

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 women 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 husbands-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 being 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 campus is undoubtedly the best market place for a college - educated husband. Shaw's Superman may even be hiding behind those ivy-covered walls.

Mary Smith is an average college freshman. She has come to Ivy College seeking an education so that she will be able to talk intelligently with her husband-to-be (whom she is also seeking at Ivy College). She is taking Freshman English - for she is only average and didn't "pro" into an advanced course, French - for 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 ought to know a little bit of French. In addition to 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 Civilization, is going to enable her to talk intelligently to hubby, whom she is going to meet in Biology.

During rush week Mary pledges one of the "top" houses on campus, for her mother and father thought it would be good for Mary to join a sorority. 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

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 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 education and will enable her to continue talking intelligently with John.

In her sophomore year Mary takes Introduction 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 anyone who wants to be truly educated must understand Art. At Christmastime during their sophomore year, Mary and John get pinned. Pinning is what is expected of college students who are in love.

At the end of her sophomore year, Mary is forced to declare her major to the University, which reports that it is happy that Mary has decided to become the 1,729th person to declare himself an English major at Ivy College. Actually, the College might not have been quite so pleased if Mary had recorded her real major - John.

During her junior year at Ivy College, Mary decides that maybe she had better take a few education 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 college, she is no longer concerned. She has her education; 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 father's money on education - for him. And John, well, he has Mary, and she is putting him through graduate school.

HYER TESIKER EDERIM

By Linda O'Riordan

ICOULD 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 company. I realize now that I should have been thankful that the family's fourteen other cats hadn't decided to join this one.

"Goily, do I wish Gretchen were here. She'd put you in your place!" Gretchen was my American family's black and silver German shepherd. The thought made 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 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 at the lean cat again. She was stretched out on my checked bedspread just inches from my right foot.

No, Linda, I said to myself. Remember that you're a kind of U.S. ambassador, and ambassadors 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 stucco wall across from me. I

tried to touch the wall with an extended leg. Even though it looked close enough, I missed it by two feet or so. I stood up and went over to the window, which was about three steps away from the head of my bed. The window consisted of French doors, which faced the Bosphorus and which, when open, exposed me to a three story drop into the garden below. A wooden bar bisected the opening between the doors. I felt fairly safe, but the bar offered no protection for a poor cat which might accidently wander too close to the edge of the window.

I looked down into the yard next to ours to 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 the animals were all right, I turned to my combination closet-dresser, which was squeezed between the head of my bed and the window. 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.

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 CompoItion, and has held a number of outside and inside rbs, including employment at the Infirmary, waiting on IJb/e at a local restaurant, and feeding rats in the isycho/ogy Department. When she was sixteen she went Turkey as an American Field Service Exchange Stufent 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 �e American Field Service at the central office in lew York City.

"Good morning, Sucer." Sucer was her nickname for me. "Did you sleep well? We have a surprise. We will go on a trip."

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 not appealing.

"Where are we going?"

"Esra has invited us to come visit in Gemlik. Gemlik is near Yalova."

I had no idea who had invited us or where we were going. I guessed that a relative was probably involved, but I couldn't even tell whether Eshwhatever the name was - was a man or woman, because I had not yet learned to associate gender with any of the Turkish names. As for the names of the towns, well, they were still so much gibberish. I must have shown my lack of understanding, because Servet, my Turkish brother, began to explain.

"Esra is the sister of my mother; he is my aunt." Servet had trouble with gender, too. He continued, "Esra has not seen an Amerikali. No one in her town has. They also do not know about American Field Service. We think you will tell them about American Field Service?"

Servet was the 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 leave my work." He was a member of the Turkish Senate.

"When are we going?" Anem's reply startled me. "Today."

"Today!"

Winter, 1963

"Yes. Eat your breakfast quickly. Then you will get ready."

"All right."

I went out of the living room door, across the hall, and started up the stairs which led to the breakfast room.

This house still seems upside down, I thought. The bedrooms were on the first floor, the breakfast room and porch, upstairs. It seemed strange to go upstairs to eat breakfast.

We lived in a four story apartment. My Turkish father owned the whole building, but my mother's relatives lived there with 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 was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Rafat was one of the family's three servants. His pride in his "good looks" amused me. Perhaps he was good looking by Turkish standards; I. 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. I look like James Dean, the American movie star." I had never seen James Dean with a mustache. If Rafat's statement were true, I could 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 especially for me, because someone had told them that Americans drink milk for breakfast. I did not like goat's milk. Warm goat's milk repulsed me, but I drank it anyway.

Every morning as I was eating, Rafat would come in to teach me a Turkish word. I would teach him the same word in English. He considered his command of the English language far superior to mine of Turkish, because I could not say "My name is Rafat. I look like James Dean, 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 was about to begin. He shook his head and then said 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 my turn to instruct him.

"Hyer tesiker ederim-no."

Before Rafat could 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 several times.

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

"Yes. Well, Girlegiile, Rafat."

"Goodbye.

Gill and I ran down the stairs and into my room. I was not at all excited about the trip ahead, but she was. She practically pushed me into the room and began to supervise my preparations. Her small frame was packed with energy. She darted around the room in her excitement, and inadvertently delayed my preparation. My closet looked rather empty after I finished, for I needed almost everything I had brought with me.

We crossed the Bosphorus on the eleven o'clock ferry. I chuckled at the prospect of telling my friends in the United States that I had commuted from 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.

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 on pastry. I longed for my animal friends.

We concluded the trip with a wild, cross-country ride in a 1949 Chevrolet coupe We had hired the car to take us from Yalova to Gemlik. They were about 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, we talked about Gemlik. Actually I questioned and they answered me. I found out that there were two children in my "mother's sister's family"-a little girl ten and a boy seven.

"Do they have servants, too?"

"Only one. Oh, we forgot to tell her about the Servet's voice stopped.

"About what, Servet?"

My brother looked at my sister with a secret smile. "Nothing."

He wanted me to beg him to tell me, so I did. He gave in after the proper teasing delay. "There is a special place for dancing." Enthusiasm was in his eyes. "We will go to it. It will be fun for us." Just sixteen, Servet was now interested in something other than swimming. "Mehmet will be there. He will want to know you. I think he will want to dance with you. And we will swim and see the large boat from Greece and you will meet the man who is not a man."

"What?"

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

We arrived in the dusty city of Gemlik about five-thirty that afternoon. The whole family were standing outside their house waiting for us. They were impatient to see their first American. We all stood in front of the house for about thirty minutes while they exclaimed about me. I felt much more like a prize dog than a guest. I couldn't blame them, however, for I remembered that I too had felt like exclaiming the first time I encountered a Turk.

Finally we went into the house. A servant appeared to take our luggage. His name was Birzen. He picked up my suitcase and walked toward the stairs. He was about my size. Although his frame was slight, his muscles were well developed and firm. He motioned for me to follow. When I approached the bottom of the stairs, he gestured at my feet. I didn't understand what he meant. He smiled, bent over and removed one of my shoes. I took off the other, and we climbed the stairs.

I noticed that this house was similar to ours in Istanbul. It, too, was four stories high, but it hadn't been divided into apartments. Birzen took me to a room on the fourth floor. It was small and simply furnished with a large double bed, a heavy looking dresser, and a small chair. I remember that the short back of the chair accentuated the heaviness of the other two pieces of furniture.

Birzen set my- suitcase on the bed and opened it. 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 as a servant. He was especially impressed by my nylon things. This did not surprise me, because Anem and Gill had reacted in much the same way about the nylon. It was unavailable in Turkey for anything but stockings. Even Servet and Babam had asked to see this wonderful material.

He suddenly left the suitcase and walked to the door. He turned toward me

"Gillegille - goodbye," I said to him. He left with a slight nod. Just after he disappeared through the doorway, my Turkish cousin, EIC;in, came into the room. "Swim?" She pronounced it in a high-pitched voice that was obviously delighted with the new foreign word "Swim?"

"Evet -yes."

She giggled and ran out of the room. I closed the door behind her. There was no lock or catch of any kind on it and I hoped no one would walk in accidentally while I was changing my clothes. I put on my swimming suit, but spent several minutes looking for my swimming cap. I decided I had left it in Istanbul.

I was just reaching for the doorknob when I heard a timid knock. "Corne in," I called. Then I felt rather foolish for I realized that my words

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

I opened the door and there stood Birzen with a huge Turkish towel draped over his arm. He questioningly motioned toward the stairs. I nodded and he started down. I followed. We returned to the first floor and went through two rooms; the second was the kitchen. Servet, Giil, and my two cousins, EIC;in and Muzaffer, were there waiting for me.

"Is the beach far from here?"

Giil and Servet laughed at my question. Following a quick translation of it, my cousins joined in. My lack of understanding must have been obvious, for Muzaffer ran over to the kitchen door 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 reaction to the view wasn't exactly a smile of delight, I followed the others down the steps and into the mixture. Taking a deep breath I dived in and swam under water as long as I could. I surfaced, gasping. There was still a sea of refuse floating ahead of me. Another try, and I left it behind.

As the sun 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 arms and shoulders vigorously. The others 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 bathroom, hoping that washing my face would wake me up. The bathroom consisted of two small rooms of unequal size. In the larger front room were a metal basin supporting a pump-like mechanism and a table with a pitcher on it. On the floor near the table was a pair of wooden platform shoes. They were to be worn in the adjacent 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 nose run. 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,

Winter, 1963

which I had brought with me from the United States.

When I returned to the bathroom, I discovered that I had now forgotten my soap and towel. I was 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 wondered if it were lake water.

As I walked back into my room, I noticed a crumpled white heap on the floor by the bed. It was the nylon nightgown which Birzen had admired. I picked it up, tossed it on the bed, and walked over to my still packed suitcase on the chair.

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 tomorrow, 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 standing just outside the door. He startled me. "Marhaba-hello," I said shakily and started down the stairs. He followed me.

We ate dinner at nine. I wasn't at all hungry because I had eaten so much during the day. I found myself having to force down the oily food piled on my dinner plates - there were two - so 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 uncomfortably 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.

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 forgot about the picnic, however, because my surroundings claimed all of my attention. I was surprized 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 towell, maybe I did want to talk to one. I was so intent upon looking for an American that I didn't

notice that the attention of a nearby sailor was directed at me. I wasn't aware of him until he grabbed my arm and then my waist. I tried to scream, but I only choked on the rising sounds. His tight hold and harsh voice paralyzed me for an instant; then I began to struggle. His grip tightened and his foreign rasping became more 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. Suddenly Birzen appeared and somehow made the sailor release me.

"Oh Birzen, thank God you followed me!" I felt safe with Birzen.

We returned to the group. No one had noticed my absence. After Birzen had explained what had happened they bustled me home, all the while expressing their shock, fear, and apology. Anem remembered to scold me gently.

That night I crawled into bed thoroughly exhausted. 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 up. The clock said four: fifteen. I slid out of bed 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 vomiting 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 immediately, washed me off with a cool cloth, and left to make me some tea. I fell asleep before she returned.

The next morning I woke up slowly. For a while I could not decide whether or not there really was a fly crawling up and down my arm. Maybe that 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 shoulder, over to my My God! That's someone's hand! As I flipped over on my side, the hand drew away. It was Birzen's. For an instant I felt only surprised, but then I was terribly afraid.

It's just Birzen, I tried to console myself. It's just Birzen, "Marhaba Birzen - hello." There was no response. Anem! The picnic! She's gone! "What time is it? 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

God! My thoughts were hysterical. He's getting up. Stay away from me! He's going! He's leaving! The door closed behind him. I cried.

I was still crying as I got out of bed and ran over to the door. There was no lock. The chair, I'll prop the chair underneath the doorknob. The back of the chair was too short. I ran over to the chest and tried to push it. I couldn't move it; it was too heavy; so was the bed. I gave up and crawled back on the bed. I didn't try to think; I just cried. I cried for my own country, for the Turkish family that couldn't hear me. I cried because I was sick, alone and afraid - terribly afraid.

When my sobs subsided, fragments of thought began to appear. I'm alone The picnic They left me here alone They're having fun They left me Why did I come?

The American Field Service Mr. Gallatti Mr. Gallatti! The thought of Mr. Gallatti made me feel better. He was the head of the exchange organization, and all of us loved him. To us he was "Uncle Steve." I remembered the way "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 understanding, or will you add to the great desert of 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 wake me up. That must have been it. I'll have to apologize, I guess.

I noticed an empty feeling in my stomach and realized I was hungry. I looked at the clock. Well, no wonder I'm hungry, it's twelve thirty! I'll go downstairs and make some tea. Yes, of course, tea for the ambassador. The thought amused me. Maybe some bread, too. Bread and tea. I wonder what the real ambassador has for breakfast. Probably milk for his ulcer, warm, goat's milk.

I looked around the room from my perch on the high bed. What had I done with my suitcase? Then I remembered, it was under the bed. I stretched across the bed on my stomach and slid over until the edge of the mattress was even with my waist. Braced by one arm, I tugged at my suitcase with the other. It began to slide toward me. I made a bet with 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,

leering at me. "Marhaba, Birzen." My voice didn't sound as strong as it should have. There was no answer. He stood there for a moment, looking at me. "Birzen, I uh. I want to uh, I In my confusion, I averted my 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 down.

"No, no. Let go!" An erroneous thought leaped into my mind. He can't understand me. Frantically I searched for a Turkish word. "Hyer Tesiker ederim! - no thank you. Hyer tesiker ederim." My ridiculous words had no effect.

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 automatically 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 threw him off balance for an 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.

I 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 aware of it. I obliterated all thoughts. I was afraid to face the horrors which thinking would recreate. Semblances of 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 more. I'll forget about it. I'll

forget. I can't think about something I won't remember. I'll forget about it.. I'll forget I'll forget! I slept.

It was dark outside when I awoke, but the light was on and Anem was there. I smiled. She did, too. There was a pause. I was aware' of the clock's, ticking. It was eight:thirty. I looked back at her.

"How do you feel?" Her tone of voice revealed that she expected a favorable answer. "We are sorry you did not come with us. You will go with us tomorrow." Absolutely nothing could have made me stay home again. "Birzen said you are well. You did not be sick all day?"

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 not homesick. I'm very 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."

"I do not know. Birzen makes you unhappy. Birzen frightens you. But Servet said to you about 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 have make sure you understand. It is different in 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 our bodies. Birzen has been with our family a long time. She will not hurt us; she will not hurt you."

"SHE!

PICTURE if you will a dark evening. It is late, late three a.m. into finals week, and the campus is filled with the soft beat of typewriters and the heavy haunt of whispering over freshly-cracked texts. The streets are empty. Sheridan Road, were it not for the scattering of dust and leaves, could serve as a runway for free spirits. Only one dirty pair of sneakers makes tracks down its sidewalk, breaking the cold emptiness.

The wearer of sneakers can see all the way to Alice Millar Chapel from where he walks opposite the tennis courts. Yes, it looks to him like a long runway, and he curses the traffic which every day invades his potential mall. He curses the cold and snuggles his laundry bag up closer around his shoulder; the breeze is at least fended from his face. The wearer of sneakers walks further south and cuts across a parking lot, turning westward. He begins to mumble to himself. He mumbles to take the pain away, for his head aches. He wonders whether the pain is from the cold or from the other. Then our wearer of sneakers whistles and tries to put. a bounce into his step. Happy. Oh, hell yes. Happy-happy. A branch falls from the nearest tree.

The pain is again. It throbs like a dying engine. Above, the clouds tumble in heavy black billows, rhythmically disguising the moon. The wearer of sneakers remembers the saying among 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 pain worse. He is glad at least that two of his finals are over; on two he had been tested, ultimately questioned. He gave, as he remembers, the prop-

er rehash of lectures, and he knew all the plot outlines, spicing these up with personal touches, little perceptive observations and essences. Yes, sir. He gave what was wanted - and it made him sick. He remembers that last quarter, part of the comment on one of his blue books was, "extremely perceptive!" Tuh!

The cold has drawn his face tight, and his eyes 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. He knows that if he closes his eyes, it does feel exactly as if someone were touching his nose. He closes his eyes and walks for several feet. He feels warmer that way, and tries to see how far he can grope into the night. He stumbles slightly 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 sense of order within this 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 honest 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" some unknown verb moves. To know is to in perspective, to in proportional importance. To know in perspective? To understand in proportional importance? And in proportional

Thomas J. Bracken presently lives in Chicago, but he reports that his education has been 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 Germany - a year in Nuremberg, and another in Frankfurt. He is a senior in the college of Liberal Arts, majoring 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, University Theatre, Workshop Theatre, and Waa-Mu. He plans to continue his studies after graduation, with Stanford his first choice of schools.

By Thomas J. Bracken

Lost Verb

importance to what? The hideousness of this last question frightens him, the horrible, horrible loneliness of not having the answer.

He walks in silence. His body distracts him as he smells the steam from the darkened Chinese laundry and knows he is near his destination. He walks on, crosses the street, and enters the all-night laundromat.

The wearer of sneakers thinks there is no one else in the laundromat. He goes to the closest row of wash machines, and setting his bag down, opens two of the lids. Then he takes his Plato outline and philosophy notes from out of the bag, and places them on the edge of a third machine. He begins separating the white clothes into one washer, the clothes which might run 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 scattering of the all-important, white soap flakes - and the lids close.

He hears a shuffling of feet and sees, at the far end of the room, near the dryers, a body bent over a basket of clothes. It makes no difference. He knows he has the power to concentrate on his memory work. Another person won't bother 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, which are not ideas such as pass through the minds of men but entities existing forever in a region outside time and space, changeless themselves, and unaffected by changes in material objects and on. But a voice interrupts:

"You will pardon me? I am -" the voice stumbles in difficulty, "I - I hev no change. Could 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.

The wearer of sneakers slowly offers three dimes and takes the quarter.

"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 machine fails. He does not know how to turn the handle. The wearer of sneakers sees this and wonders if he should help. He hesitates. It is not his problem. His problem is the verb;. the verb!

He puts down his notes. He walks to the dryer and turns the handle. He inserts the dimes.

"Oh, thank you very kindly."

"S'all right."

"I am having much trouble here," the negro adds in quickly, but the dryer, whirring to a start, drowns out the last of his words.

"What?"

"I am having much trouble here."

"Yea, sort of hard to figure out these contraptions.

The African smiles. "I am having much trouble also at the elevator."

"What?"

"The elevator railroad."

"Oh. Yes."

"I am afraid I must look quite a bumpkin yesterday when I board the false train."

"Oh! Don't sweat it."

The washers near the entrance have completed their cycles, and the wearer of sneakers walks to them. The wearer fills a plastic laundry basket with the contents from both machines and carries it to the dryer next to the African's. With one fling the bundle flies into the machine and the door is slammed. The wearer pretends to have difficulty with the handle. At last he gets the thing going. The African waits all the while, shy-faced, noble.

The only sound is that of the machines, as the two men stand side by side dumbly staring at the dizzying pattern of the tumbling clothes. The buttons beat against metal with confident regularity. The negro smiles.

Finally, the wearer of sneakers speaks: "Nothing like this in your country, huh?"

"Yes, I would suppose we have similar."

"Really? Laundromats. No kidding."

"Not laundromats. But some people are having such machines there."

"Hunh."

"My mother had what you call 'wringer.'''

"No kidding. I thought you people that is, don't you live mostly in straw villages'?"

The African smiles and says, "No," then adds for no apparent reason, "I was born in a hospital.

he Laundromat

"Are you a prince?"

"No. This is another mistake. I am just African. I am Budje Kwamwar."

"My pleasure, Budgy." Then silence. "Do you go to school here?"

"I am here next quarter. I am early."

A heavy wind blows against the front window of the laundromat.

"Say, you know, we've been studying your continent in my global perspectives class. A professor of mine named Morvitz says that many of your countries are, deep in their nature, nondemocratic, and will probably stay that way. In fact there's a chance-"

"What is the meaning of this man's 'democracy'?"

"Well. I suppose, 'government of the people, by the people, for the people.' 'That all men are

By Richard S. Platz

"Last

night I saw upon the stair

A little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today; Gee, I wish he'd go away." A.nonymous

created equal' and all that."

"We have our own democracy."

"Yea." The wearer looks at the dryer. He soon finds a comeback. "But is it reany democracy?" It may have a dissimilar name. It is African."

"No, I mean-" "You have only here, American democracy, only American."

The African nimbly 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 am from where it is very warm. The sun-" and he makes some kind of a strange, jumbled gesture which the wearer misses, but, here it is cold, and I am very unhappy because

T� DOORS of the self-service elevator opened and Mr. Wilson stepped out. He walked briskly down the hall to room 1003 and knocked on the door. He was dressed in a gray business suit and carried an umbrella under his left arm. Before he could knock again, the door opened and he stepped in.

"There was a note on my desk that you wanted to see me. It said urgent. Is there anything wrong?"

"No, no, nothing wrong. But there's something I want you to 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 someone to witness it, and naturally the first person

"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?"

Mr. Wilson stood for a moment, considering the proposition. Then he smiled. "All right. Fifteen minutes. For old time's sake."

of loneliness."

The wearer is scared by the intensity of feeling, and only looks at the spinning garments as he repeats the African's words to himself. But the negro looks out the window, and begins to run to the door, yelling: "But only look! But only look!" The wearer runs after him.

The sky has opened and sent large white snow flakes down in a sudden fall. The white is falling everywhere and the negro has gone crazy. "But look! But look!"

He runs to touch each flake with his hands. He rubs snow onto his forehead and runs kicking along the pavement. He holds out his pink tongue and lets the delicate formations dissolve at its touch.

"But look! But look!" He laughs ecstatically.

The laughter descends and heightens with joy. He is laughing in bubbles, laughing like a percolator, his bright pupils staring upward in amazement and gratitude. "But look! This is the flrst time I am being in snow!" and he swallows the 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 covered eyes.

Richard S. Platz was born in Safford, Arizona, but grew up in Waukegan, I/Jinois. He is a junior in the CoJ/ege of Liberal Arts, specializing in English literature 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 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 basketbaIJ, and think about philosophy, a combination of pursuits which may explain why his athletic appearances 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 minutes.

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 close it? The same little man who turns your

Winter, 1963

alarm clock on to wake you up in the morning, and sometimes just pushes the stem in so you don't wake up until noon?"

The businessman started to smile, but saw that his friend was not smiling. "What are you talking about?"

"Come on, Mr. Wilson, you know about the little man. The one who makes 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 experiment."

"Yes, I am, I am. I'm coming to that. But first, can you think of anything else the little man does?"

Mr. Wilson shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, all sorts of things, I suppose. He makes the voice come out of a radio

"Yes, yes, that's a good one." John was happy to see that his friend understood so well. "He does all sorts of things. He controls things we can't even begin to imagine."

"Please, John, I've got things to do. What are 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

who does all the mysterious things around the world,"

The businessman stood up and started toward the door, "I thought you were serious at first, 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 fifteen minutes."

"Look, John

"You promised, Mr. Wilson." Tears were coming to John's eyes.

"Look

"A promise is a promise."

Mr. Wilson returned sullenly to the sofa and sat down. He assumed the posture of one prepared to stick to his word, even to the bitter end.

John was 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 contact with the plane of the table in two separate places."

Mr. Wilson gave no indication that he understood; nor did it appear that he was even trying to understand.

"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 can this little man be turning the lights on if someone in New York and someone in Los Angeles 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 same time."

John wanted a response, but his guest sat on in stubborn silence. He was glaring at John.

"Look at it this way," John went on, "a twodimensional 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 threedimensional 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 time the silence lasted so long that Mr. Wilson finally asked,"So what?"

"Just this: A four-dimensional being would be able to contact our three-dimensional world in

many different places at the same time. The little man we are talking about is in another dimension of a 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 of your mind."

John 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 intersecting 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 this what you've been working on all night?" asked Mr. Wilson. He was pleased to see his friend did indeed have something to show him. "What is it?"

John turned the 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-" "Hey, be 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 away from themselves. The blast will be directed at right angles away from three-dimensional space. It will explode into the fourth dimension. This is the only way I have of getting at the little 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 was preparing to make a run for the door.

"And besides, this silver tubing is also directing 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 friendship was worth getting blown to bits over. John could take care of himself, this time. But he hesitated with his hand on the doorknob. There was a slight chance, after all, that his friend might know what he was doing, and sneaking out in the middle of an engagement is the height of rudeness. He muttered something obscene and went into the other room to tell his friend that he was leaving. As he walked through the door-

way, he saw John doing something inside his refrigerator.

"Just a second." John must have heard him come in. After a short while he stepped back. There on the upper shelf of the refrigerator was the device he had made. Two wires led from it to the light in the upper corner. The light was not lit.

"All set," said John. "As soon as 1 shut this door and plug in the refrigerator, I'll be ready for him. Then when 1 open the door, the little man will turn on the 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 1'11-"

"No!" cried Mr. Wilson, jumping forward and grabbing his friend. "Do you want to blow us to pieces!" They wrestled in silence for a moment until John got his arm free and pulled the door open.

Instantly there was a slight concussion and the sound of a muffled fire-cracker. The door swung open revealing a charred tray where the

dynamite had been. A small cloud of smoke drifted upward. Both men dropped their arms and gazed into the chest.

"1 don't know what kind of a joke you're trying 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.

Out in the hall Mr. Wilson rang for the self service elevator. Impatiently he took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. Then he pulled out his lighter and struck it, but nothing happened. 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 walked down the ten flights of stairs. There was much confusion in the lobby, but he ignored it and walked out the back door to his car.

The sun was shining brightly so Mr. Wilson 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.

ado� in- 91JIJrl � (JJWm_)

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS

STENDAHL'S MEMOIRS OF A TOURIST, translated with a preface by Allan Seager, line drawings by Roger Barr like a shower of bright sparks.. Mr. Seager's 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 Tribune.

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 and an up-to-date evaluation of the scholarly production about the voyage that has appeared during the past four and a half centuries."-LEWIS HANKE.

This edition of three of the best contemporary accounts of man's first circumnavigation of the globe has been provided 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 "-VINCENT STARRETT. The chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences at Northwestern has produced an entertaining and stimulating guide to the affairs of the most famous of all detective teams in fiction. $10.00

THROUGH MASAILAND WITH JOSEPH THOMSON, edited by Roland Young

This is one of the most appealing adventure stories ever to come out of nineteenth century Africa. Thomson, a young Scotsman, was commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the country between the East African coast and Lake Victoria. The result is both a narrative of high adventure in an enchanting land and also the portrait of a bold and courageous young man. Maps, illus. $5.50

Winter, 1963