The Brothers K

by David James Duncan

  “In order to become a true revolutionary,” Dr. Gurtzner continued, “you must first of all jettison your ability to recall or honor the complexities of a nuanced historic or personal past. More details explain things more, but less details confuse things less, and a leader out to galvanize thousands of zealous followers must consistently shun complexity, even at the cost of lucidity and truth.

  “For this same reason, friendships with those who fail to become co-revolutionaries must be eliminated. The revolutionary ideology, once installed in the mind, must be the sole regulator of all human relationships. Those who refuse to undergo the same ‘installation,’ however much you may love them, are no longer to be trusted. Jefferson himself complained of this loss. There were excellent people among the Tories. There are always excellent people on both sides. And to adopt an ideology is to take to one side only. This is why even the most justifiable revolution is certain to destroy friendships, families, cross-cultural exchanges and every other nuanced type of human connection. Believe me, this is an inevitable cost.”

  The size of the lecture hall, the wild garb and serious faces of the students, the gravity and formality of Gurtzner’s manner, all of it thrilled me. Everett hadn’t spotted me yet, but I’d no trouble spotting him, sitting way down in front, wearing blue jeans with little U.S. flags on the knees—and I was even thrilled by the knee emblems. But I’d begun to feel just a little confused by what I was hearing. In fact I tried to catch Everett’s eye, to assure him with a wink or grin that I didn’t think Dr. Gurtzner was talking about any loss of nuance or growing distances between him and our family, or at least between him and me. But he was too far away, or too intent, to spot me.

  “Because he has eliminated both his past and his friendships,” the old man continued, “the revolutionary soon finds himself disenfranchised, impoverished and surrounded by compatriots whose beliefs he has already memorized, whose utterances he can therefore predict and whose company he often begins to abhor. This is what we might call the Valley Forge stage of the revolt. And it takes a great cause indeed to carry the rebel forces past it. Rebel comrades are, after all, not natural friends, not community, not family, but merely unchosen, inescapable company. And since it is frequently those persons who can’t tolerate their own personalities who are the first to pawn their inner selves in for an ideology, rebel leaders have a tendency to be what we might justifiably call ‘intolerable people’—people whose early abdication of their lives has given them seniority and authority over those who are often their betters.”

  Hearing the way Everett cleared his throat (and the laughter it created around him), I was certain that he intended to say or do something to “set the record straight” soon. A lot of students were glancing at him, so I guess everyone who knew him felt the same way. It made Dr. Gurtzner’s lecture nerve-wracking, but also terribly exhilarating: “Out on the streets, and in the society at large, what the increasingly disgruntled rebel forces soon long to see is not peace but panic and upheaval, not understanding or tolerance but solidarity, not the weaponless fight to instill life in ancient traditions but a vandalistic smashing of all tradition. Once the struggle moves from the text and tongue out into the world, all cultural icons and social modi operandi are to be obliterated, for chaos adds fuel to the revolutionary fires. As for the increasingly frequent injustices, the abdicated responsibilities, the injuries of the innocent, the expatriations and deaths caused by the rebel forces themselves, these are to be written off as minor compared to the oppression inflicted upon humanity by the power to be toppled. ‘Regrettable but necessary side effects’ is a favorite phrase …”

  “Bullshit,” said Everett. Loudly. And I felt the blood rush to my face.

  “Pardon me?” said Professor Gurtzner.

  “I said bullshit. Because what are we talking about here? Which revolution? You started out on Vietnam, so you must mean the student revolt in this country. Right? So what about it? What are we students upset about? ’Nam. Racism in the South. The Cold War and the arms race. Because that’s the violence. Yet that’s what this university’s rationalistic conscience finds acceptable. That’s what it supports with grants and research that sooner or later boil down to more violence. So what’s this crap about violent revolutionaries? It’s the nonrevolutionaries, it’s the fucking status quo, who are killing people! So, with all due respect, I say bullshit.”

  A lot of students were murmuring approval, and a few were shouting “Right on!” But the old man remained perfectly calm. “The next time you wish to express an opinion, Mr. Chance,” he began, “a raised hand will do.” He then turned to the class and said, “I was not discussing the student protest in this country, actually. I was making some general statements about the revolutionary character, based on the revolutions with which I am familiar. As I recall, I was about to say that these ‘regrettable side effects’ inflicted by the rebel forces usually bring about one of two results. The most common is a totalitarian backlash, some form of police state. The less common is outright social chaos, to give ‘revolution’ a less romantic name. And in the iconoclastic smog of such an all-out upheaval, several new species of what we might call ‘secondary leaders’ appear as if out of thin air. The first to be heard from are usually leather-lunged, brash, clever young men who can think on their feet and coin memorable phrases. ‘Steal This Book!’ ‘Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh’ …”

  Almost everyone laughed at this. But Everett didn’t.

  “These clowns and wits are often courageous, and can be excellent entertainment. They enflame crowds, make lightning-quick rationalizations of indefensible actions, and truly believe, in their paucity of belief, that ‘anything is possible,’ ‘everything can be improved,’ so why not smash it all and rebuild from the ground up? Far less amusing are the social architects and manipulators who follow in the wake of the revolution proper. The twist Alexander Hamilton so soon gave to the ideals of Jefferson is, perhaps, too subtle an example to make my point. What Stalin did in the name of Lenin and Marx may be more familiar to you. In any case, what this second wave of ideologists inevitably ignores, or what their indoctrinated minds perhaps cannot perceive, is the aimless complexity, the lushness, the infinite variety of life. This is why their programs, their social solutions, are always so rationalistic in conception and inflexible in implementation. It’s also why they so soon resort to violence. And since these people have very limited senses of humor, this violence often lands first upon the very wits and defiant heroes who had won the people’s hearts in the first place. At this point—which is usually reached with dismaying swiftness—the revolution and the people it was meant to help have already gone their separate ways.”

  Everett raised his hand. The doctor continued: “I would like to emphasize that this separation of the leaders from the people is inevitable in every case. Almost any people will rebel against terrible oppression, but no people can remain revolutionary for long. I don’t claim to know the reason for this. I cherish the mystery. For no reason, or mysterious reasons, it is the natural tendency, if not the essence, of a people to create and cultivate endless variety. Whereas the aim of all ideologues—including revolutionaries—is to create sameness.”

  Everett raised his other hand now, and raised a chorus of mirth as he sat there like a man held at gunpoint. But the doctor was unflappable. “What no social, political or religious program will ever manage to take into account is the people’s inevitable love and reverence for what mankind really does hold in common. The earth and the hearth fire. The rivers and sky. The richness and complexity of human relationships, and of the changing seasons. The divinity they believe infuses it all. This is why revolutions begin with justifiable unrest, and may rise to open rebellion, but also why, after turning to violence, they rapidly begin to subside.”

  Now Everett stood up, his hands still held high, and cried, “See where hand-raising gets us? Will all those women and children in Vietnamese rice paddies who wish not to be napalmed please raise their han
ds when the next squadron of Phantom jets fly over?”

  There was laughter, and murmurs of approval and disapproval. He said, “Will all those innocent Hanoi bystanders who wish not to be obliterated please step outside and raise their hands during the next midnight American B-52 barrage?”

  There was outright applause. He shouted, “Will Martin Luther King, Jr., please raise his hand so that J. Edgar Hoover’s hirelings will know which of you look-alike black dudes he’s supposed to waste?”

  Another big cheer. And some angry scowls too. Judging by the faces, I’d say the students were divided just about in half. But Everett’s half were making all the noise right now.

  “Our Mr. Chance,” Dr. Gurtzner said calmly, “has selected me as his enemy today. Yet, like him, I oppose the war. And like him, I deplore the death of Dr. King. Unlike him, I feel there is a difference between a lecture hall and a street corner. I refuse to forget, for example, that Dr. King was a scholar, and that the facts he discovered in libraries and lecture halls helped reveal to him how best to conduct his life outside them. If Dr. King had marched in his classrooms, or name-called in them, or massacred the truth in hopes of inciting his classmates to riot, he would not have been the—”

  “I spoke the truth, buddy!” Everett interrupted. “It’s human beings who are being massacred, by powers well represented at this school! And the hidden message of your soft-spoken tirade against every revolutionary from Jefferson to the Chicago Seven was: Shuttup, sit down, and accept it! You’re just students.”

  Dr. Gurtzner sighed, shook his head, and slowly lit the cigar he’d only mouthed all day. Turning to his class, he said, “Anyone too undisciplined, too self-righteous or too self-centered to live in the world as it is has a tendency to ‘idealize’ a world which ought to be. But no matter what political or religious direction such ‘idealists’ choose, their visions always share one telling characteristic: in their utopias, heavens or brave new worlds, their greatest personal weakness suddenly appears to be a strength. In a ‘religiously pure’ community, for example, any puritanical blockhead who was unable to love his neighbor or turn the other cheek can suddenly sweep the entire world into the category of ‘Damned’ and pass himself off as ‘Saved.’ Similarly, in Mr. Chance’s revolutionary army, the rudeness and petulance of a mere spoiled brat can suddenly pass itself off as passionate concern for Vietnamese peasants or the black Southern poor. I hope the rest of you are not too impassioned to note, however, that neither these people nor their oppressors are present in this room, and that the enemy he seems bent on exposing is just an old professor who detests the same war.”

  Dr. Gurtzner got a lot of applause for this reply—including mine. But before it was over, Everett boomed, “I hope you’re also not too self-complacent to notice that there’s a valid disagreement here nonetheless. There’s an ROTC building on this campus, nuclear vessels in our harbor, manufacturers of weapons components all over the city and military research being done in and by this university. This school, this town, this whole state is rolling in Pentagon money—peasant-killer money. And pardon my brattiness, but I don’t see anything polite about ignoring these things. What I’ve been hearing all day is basically this: since our government doesn’t happen to be murdering anybody in this very room, since it’s only inferior American males who aren’t rich or bright or lucky enough to be students here who have to nail the Vietnamese people to the crosses that this school helps build, let’s forget the whole problem!”

  Everett got an ovation for this blast too, but the volume was not quite what it had been. People were using their brains now, so they were more interested in hearing Gurtzner’s reply than in making a public show of the correct political sentiments. Puffing away at his cigar, and pacing round and round his lectern, the old man said, “Undetected and unpunished murderers stroll the streets of this and every city on any given day, Mr. Chance. We know this for certain. But if all people refused to fulfill their obligations and duties until all such criminals were caught and punished, we’d soon die. Because a Skagit Valley poultry farmer ignored global oppression and injustice long enough to harvest the eggs in our omelets this morning, you and I have the energy to stand here talking. It is now my duty to ignore the same problems long enough to give what I have to offer to this class. If you have no such duties, Mr. Chance, then you are free to leave us for the streets, and to shout and curse and hand out leaflets to your heart’s content. But this is a scholarly gathering. Our chief difference of opinion is with regard to vocation, Mr. Chance. Perhaps because I have one, and you don’t.”

  “What is your vocation?” Everett asked.

  “If you chose to be a student,” Gurtzner replied, “I think I could demonstrate some proficiency as a professor.”

  “Of what?” Everett fired back. “Advanced cigar smoking 308? Undermining Just Causes with Eloquence 404? You’re an exterminator, not a professor! You’re trying to exterminate the Counterculture.”

  Dr. Gurtzner sighed, turned to the class, and said, “I hope the majority of you are not too excited by these epithets to observe that Mr. Chance, for all his superficial spontaneity, is now speaking solely from the text of his ideology. He now considers himself ‘Counter’ and me ‘Culture.’ He is the ‘Saved’ and I the ‘Damned.’ When this stage is reached, rational dialogue is of course impossible, and the fellow in my position has no choice but to accept Mr. Chance’s personal jesus as his lord and savior, so to speak, or to call in the National Guard, or perhaps to shoot himself in despair. Today, however, let me close by answering his accusation as best I can.

  “What I would wish for the so-called Counterculture is that it be more than a disenfranchised tribe whose sole rite of initiation is disillusionment with the existing culture, as symbolized by one’s parents, the Pentagon and the Ku Klux Klan. I would wish that its members accept neither my tweed coat nor Mr. Chance’s knee patches as a sign of authority, but judge us both by the cogency of our thoughts. I would wish that rather than fancy itself ‘counter’ to the culture, its compassionate ideas would take root in the land and people, and begin to transform them both. But if Mr. Chance does in fact speak for his ‘culture,’ I fear this breath of fresh air, this grass-roots movement in which even old men like myself have placed such hope, will soon become an empty excuse for youthful effrontery, a faddish cloak for self-indulgence and drug dealers, and a primary cause of a fascistic political and cultural backlash.”

  With that, the old expatriated Austrian gathered his notes, gave us a last little bow, and strolled away from the smoke-shrouded lectern and out the side exit to a wild round of applause …

  But then Everett—who to my mind had just been thoroughly dismantled—was surrounded by a crush of admirers! “Far fucking out!” shouted his housemate, Stoner Steve, pounding him on the back.

  “Down goes the Ottoman Empire!” cried a red-haired woman who apparently couldn’t quite recall where Austria was.

  “You routed him, man!” chortled a guy with hair sproinging out to his shoulders.

  “Bodacious words!” drooled a stoned-looking fellow who was suckling an empty pipe.

  “Thanks, man” “Hey, thanks” “Thanks a lot,” crooned my brother.

  “I’m Melanie,” gushed a fawning young lady in some sort of gunnysack dress. “And I just had to thank you for letting the old fossil have it between the eyes. I mean, when he’d let you talk at all, you were incredible!”

  Everett shrugged. When he should have retched. I didn’t get it.

  Then a brunette in a black leotard top that blew half my circuits and a pair of timeworn jeans that blew the other half moved to the front of the circle, smiled a smile I’d have seriously considered dying for, and I thought, Good God! No wonder he acts like this! But then, to my astonishment and delight, she gushed, “I just had to thank you for letting the old fossil give it to you between the eyes! I mean, when you weren’t pathetic, you were almost totally full of shit. And it was brave of you. You’re a hell of a str
aight man. It takes courage to sacrifice yourself like that.”

  Everett’s jaw dropped—soundlessly for once—while the girl spun away in a cadenza of black and blue that left my brother’s heart and brain the same colors. We all stared helplessly. “Who was that?” somebody finally asked.

  “Natasha,” smirked Melanie.

  “Natasha who?” croaked Everett.

  “How would I know?” Melanie huffed. “Natasha the Russian-lit freak. Natasha from Arizona. Natasha the fascist bitch who thinks Chekhov, Goldwater and Tolstoy are God.”

  “Far fucking out,” remarked the adaptable Stoner Steve.

  4. Tariki

  If a man wishes to be sure of the road he walks on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.

  —St. John of the Cross

  To trip over a bike and damage a shoulder was no great setback for a faith-filled phenom like Irwin. The shoulder, for anything short of javelin-throwing, was still perfectly serviceable, and Irwin had always been able to give up gifts and glory as blithely as he attained them. The only problem with this injury was the timing: it was sustained at the height of the Vietnam draft. The loss of his athletic scholarship therefore meant that he had to carry a full academic load, to make decent grades in order to maintain his student deferment, and to take out student loans as well as get a full-time work-study job as a campus grounds-keeper in order to continue with school. This sudden change from doing what came naturally (throwing javelins) to what came effortfully (working sixteen-hour days as a scholar/drudge) was the toughest transition he’d ever been called on to make. But it wasn’t the quantity of work that made it so. Irwin loved manual labor, was the extreme opposite of lazy, and was a decent student too. It was his character, his nature, that made his situation so difficult.