The Centaurus

Those who remain inside the school are ignorant of the weather and yet like fish taken up by a swifter ocean current they sense some change. The atmosphere of the auditorium accelerates. Things are not merely seen but burst into vision.

Voices carry further. Hearts wax bold. Peter leads Pe

Secret knowledge of his spots obsesses him; should he tell her? Would it, by making her share the shame, wed them inextricably; make her, by bondage of pity, his slave? Can he, so young, afford a slave? On fire with such cruel calculations, he turns his red back on the crowd shoving and sluggishly interweaving around the soft-drink bin. When an iron hand seizes his arm above the elbow and brutally squeezes, it might be one of a hundred idiots.

But it is Mr. Zimmerman, the Supervising Principal. Simultaneously he has seized Pe

Peter angrily tugs his arm away from the grip. The grip tightens. “He begins to look like his father’s son,” Zimmer man says to Pe

“Mr. Zimmerman,” he says, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“Full of questions like his father,” Zimmerman says to Pe

“I wanted to ask you,” Peter says, “what are the humanist values implicit in the sciences?” Pe

“He shows you those? Do you think he should?”

“I don’t know. What affects him affects me.”

“I am wondering if it doesn’t place too great a responsibility on you. Peter, I value your father enormously. But he does have, as of course you can see-you’re an intelligent boy- a tendency to be irresponsible.”

Of all possible charges this seems to Peter the least applicable. His father, that blind blanched figure staggering down the steps in a debtor’s cardboard box…

“It places,” Zimmerman goes on gently, “a greater responsibility on those around him.”

“I think he’s awfully responsible,” Peter says, hypnotized by the meditative caressing action of Zimmerman’s thumb on Pe

Zimmerman’s smile stretches. “Of course, you see him from a different angle than I do. I saw my own father in the same way.”

They see many things the same way, these two; they both see other people as an arena for self-assertion. There is a ground of kinship which makes their grappling possible. Peter feels this, feels a comradeship intertwined with antagonism and a confidence in the midst of his fear. The principal has blundered in seeking intimacy; distance and silence are always most powerful. Peter stares him in the face and, an instant short of irrevocable rudeness, glances away. He feels the side of his neck blushing in the ma

Zimmerman quickly blurts, “Tickets?” To Peter’s surprise this seems to have scored. The principal’s wrinkles are shadowed forth at the new tilt of his head; he seems old. Triumphantly Peter feels descend upon him, his father’s avenger, this advantage over the antagonist: he has more years to live. Ignorant and impotent here and now, in the dimension of the future he is mighty. Zimmerman murmurs, seems in his mind to stumble. “I’ll have to speak to him about this,” he says, half to himself.

Overreached. The possibility of a truly disastrous betrayal makes Peter’s stomach grovel as it used to when he was a child and ru

Again, the strengths have shifted. Zimmerman’s hand leaves Pe

It is a photograph of the O.H.S. track team in 1919. They are all wearing old-fashioned black undershirts and the manager wears white ducks and a straw hat. Even the trees in the background-which are the trees of the Poorhouse Lane, only smaller than they are now-look old-fashioned, like pressed flowers. A brow

“We never lost a meet.” The finger, dense with existence, everpresent, drops away. Without another word to the young couple Zimmerman moves off down the hall, huge-backed. Students jostle to clear him a path.

The hall is emptying, the varsity game begi

On the halfway landing they are out of sight. The bulb burning over the girls’ entrance below the steel-mullioned window here casts upward in distorted rhomboids enough light to see by. There must be light enough for her to see. Her naked arms seem silver, her crimson lips black. His own shirt seems black. He unbuttons one sleeve. “Now this is a very sad secret,” he says. “But because I love you you should know it.”