Rich Man, Poor Man

“It isn’t exactly like that,” Rudolph said mildly. “Business.”

“No, of course not,” Denton said. “Everything is modified by character. It doesn’t pay to ride a theory too hard, you lose sight of the reality, the living shape. At any rate, I’m gratified at your success, and I’m sure that there was no compromise of principle involved, none whatsoever.”

The waitress appeared with their soup. Denton spooned it in. “Yes,” he said, “if I had it to do all over again, I’d avoid the ivy-covered walls like the plague. It has made me what you see today, a narrow man, an embittered man, a failure, a coward …”

“I wouldn’t call you any of those things,” Rudolph said, surprised at Denton’s description of himself. Denton had always seemed to Rudolph to be pleased with himself, enjoying acting out his visions of economic villainy before a captive audience of young people.

“I live in fear and trembling,” Denton said through the soup. “Fear and trembling.”

“If I can help you in any way,” Rudolph began. “I’d …”

“You’re a good soul, Jordache, a good soul,” Denton said. “I picked you out immediately. Serious among the frivolous. Compassionate among the pitiless. On the search for knowledge where others were merely searching for advancement. Oh, I’ve watched you carefully through the years, Jordache. You’re going to go far. Mark my words. I have been teaching young men for over twenty years, thousands of young men, they have no secrets from me, their future has no mysteries for me. Mark my words, Jordache.”

Denton finished his soup and the waitress came and put down their hamburger steaks and coffee.

“And you won’t do it by riding roughshod over your fellow men,” Denton went on, darting at his hamburger with his fork. “I know your mind, I know your character, I observed you through the years. You have a code, a sense of honor, a fastidiousness of mind and body. These eyes don’t miss much, Jordache, in class or out.”

Rudolph ate silently, waiting for the spate of approval to die down, knowing that Denton must have a great favor to ask to be so effusive before making his demand.

“Before the war,” Denton went on, chewing, “there were more young men of your mold, clear seeing, dependable, honorable. Most of them are dead now, killed in places whose names we have almost forgotten. This generation—” he shrugged despairingly. “Crafty, careful, looking to get something for nothing, hypocritical. You’d be astounded at the amount of cheating I find in each examination, term papers. Ah, if I had the money, I’d get away from it all, live on an island.” He looked nervously at his watch. “Time, ever on the wing,” he said. He peered around the dark bar conspiratorially. The booth next to theirs was empty and the four or five men hunched over the bar near the doorway were well out of earshot. “Might as well get to the nub of it.” Denton dropped his voice and leaned forward over the table. “I’m in trouble, Jordache.”

He’s going to ask me for the name of an abortionist, Rudolph thought wildly. Love on the Campus. He saw the headlines. History Professor Makes History by Moonlight with Coed. Doctor in Jail. Rudolph tried to keep his face noncommittal and went on eating. The hamburger was gray and soggy and the potatoes were oily.

“You heard what I said?” Denton whispered.

“You’re in trouble, you said.”

“Exactly.” There was a professorial tone of approval—the student had been paying attention. “Bad trouble.” Denton sipped at his coffee, Socrates and hemlock. “They’re out to get me.”

“Who’s out to get you?”

“My enemies.” Denton’s eyes sca

“When I was in school,” Rudolph said, “you seemed to be well liked everywhere.”

“There are currents, currents,” Denton said, “eddies and whirlpools that the undergraduate never has an inkling of. In the faculty rooms, in the offices of power. In the office of the President himself. I am too outspoken, it is a failing of mine. I am naive, I have believed in the myth of academic freedom. My enemies have bided their time. The vice-chairman of the department, I should have fired him years ago, a hopeless scholar; I restrained myself only out of pity, lamentable weakness. As I said, the vice-chairman, yearning for my job, has prepared a dossier, scraps of gossip over a drink, lines out of context, insinuations. They are preparing to offer me up as a sacrifice, Jordache.”

“I think you’d better tell me specifically what’s happening,” Rudolph said. “Then perhaps I’d be able to judge if I could help.”

“Oh, you could help, all right, no doubt about that.” Denton pushed the half-eaten hamburger away from him. “They have found their witch,” he said. “Me.”

“I don’t quite understand …”

“The witch hunt,” Denton said. “You read the papers like everybody else. Throw the Reds out of our schools.”

Rudolph laughed. “You’re no Red, Professor, you know that,” he said.

“Keep your voice low, boy.” Denton looked around worriedly. “One does not broadcast on this subject.”

“I’m sure you have nothing to worry about, Professor,” Rudolph said. He decided to make it seem like a joke. “I was afraid it was something serious. I thought maybe you’d got a girl pregnant.”

“You can laugh,” Denton said. “At your age. Nobody laughs in a college or a university anymore. The wildest charges. A five-dollar contribution to an obscure charity in 1938, a reference to Karl Marx in a class, for God’s sake, how is a man to teach the economic theories of the nineteenth century without mentioning Karl Marx! An ironic joke about prevalent economic practices, picked up by some stone-age moron in a class in American History and repeated to the moron’s father, who is the Commander of the local American Legion Post. Ah, you don’t know, boy, you don’t know. And Whitby gets a yearly grant from the State. For the School of Agriculture. So some wind-bag of an upstate legislator makes a speech, forms a committee, demands an investigation, gets his name in the newspaper. Patriot, Defender of the Faith. A special board has been set up within the university, Jordache, don’t mention it to a soul, headed by the President, to investigate charges against various members of the faculty. They hope to head off the State, throw them a few bodies, mine chief among them, not imperil the grant from the State. Does the picture grow clearer, Jordache?”

“Oh, Christ,” Rudolph said.

“Exactly. Oh, Christ. I don’t know what your politics are …”

“I don’t have any politics,” Rudolph said. “I vote independently.”

“Excellent, excellent,” Denton said. “Although it would have been better if you were a registered Republican. And to think that I voted for Eisenhower.” He laughed hollowly. “My son was in Korea and he promised to end the war. But how to prove it. There is much to be said for public balloting.”

“What do you want me to do, Professor?” Rudolph asked. “Specifically?”

“Now we come to it,” Denton said. He finished his coffee. “The board meets to consider my case one week from today. Tuesday at two P.M. Mark the hour. I have only been allowed to see a general outline of the charges against me; contributions to Communist front organizations in the thirties, atheistic and radical utterances in the classroom, the recommendation of certain books for outside reading of a doubtful character. The usual academic hatchet job, Jordache, all too usual. With the temper of the country what it is, with that man Dulles roaring up and down the world, preaching nuclear destruction, with the most eminent men traduced and dismissed like errand boys in Washington, a poor teacher can be ruined by a whisper, the merest whisper. Luckily, they still have a sense of shame at the university, although I doubt it will last the year, and I am to have a chance to defend myself, bring in witnesses to vouch for me …”