The Ninth Wave

by Eugene Burdick

  His followers were almost all girls and most of them came to Stanford from Catholic preparatory schools. Although he was profoundly anti-clerical and most of the girls in his classes had long ago renounced Catholicism, he and they were convinced that only the rigors of a Catholic education could provide the preparation for the type of intellectual exertion that students must make under Professor Moon's direction. Only those who had endured the doctrinaire training of nuns could appreciate that Boethius made St. Thomas clear; that Berdyaev contained all of the mysteries of Lenin and Stalin's political behavior; that the vulgarities of Kant were made meaningful by the works of Moritz Lazarus. Professor Moon was only thirty-five, but already he was engaged in writing a book which he had entitled "The Daemons of History," and which was to be a history of the little-known, anonymous, but critical people who in the interstices of history had really formed the ideas which less gifted, but more distinguished men had made popular. The book was slow work and Professor Moon smiled wistfully when asked about its progress. He had no optimism as to when it would be finished. His following was convinced the work would be published posthumously and they shared a peculiar pride because of this knowledge.

  Professor Moon looked up from his lecture notes and caught sight of two figures walking across the Quad. The glare of the sun was so bright that the two figures were black and featureless, edged by light. As the spectral figures walked into the shade of the corridor, they regained their identity and Professor Moon could see that one of them was Mike Freesmith and the other was Hank Moore. He looked back down at his lecture notes and hoped the boys would walk by his office. In a moment, however, there was a knock on his door. Professor Moon hesitated only long enough to put his lecture notes in a drawer, take out a small book on Hugo of Saint-Victor's, "Summa Sententiarum," and then he called softly, "Come in."

  "Hello, Mike; hello, Hank," he said as they came in. "Sit down. To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

  "Just passing by and thought you might be in," Mike said. "Have you got a minute?"

  "A minute? Lots of minutes. As Milton said, 'Immovable, infix'd and frozen round, Periods of time,' and I have plenty of them to spare," Professor Moon said. "A much overrated poet," he muttered almost to himself and smiled at his visitors.

  Mike sat down in a chair across the room and put his feet up on an empty bookshelf. He was wearing blue jeans and moccasins and a T-shirt. Hank stood beside the door, leaning against the wall.

  "I heard your radio lecture the other night," Mike said. "It was pretty good. 'Good Men and Bad Taste,' that was a good title."

  "Yes," Professor Moon said. "Not much to it, you know. Doubt if they'll ever ask me to do it again."

  He had been invited to give one in a series of radio lectures by university professors on whatever subject the speaker wished to discuss. Most of the other speakers had attempted to give a popular version of their specialty. But Professor Moon had resolved to keep the same standards he employed in the classroom; indeed, he made the lecture somewhat more difficult. It had been heavy with allusions to little-known artists, poets, and writers; the sentences had been models of difficult, precise language. The station manager had blinked at him in astonishment when he was through and this had rewarded Professor Moon for his labors.

  "A few things you said I didn't understand," Mike said. Professor Moon watched Mike's legs. Mike's blue jeans were tight and the muscles of his calves bulged solidly and then flattened as he pushed himself back and forth in a short arc. "You said that everyone had good taste, but that modern society had corrupted the natural good taste that every man possesses. Wasn't that it?"

  "Yes, that was it. The argument was a bit complex, but that was the essence of it," Professor Moon said. He was vaguely irritated by the way Mike simplified the discussion; it was almost as if the boy wanted to take away the elegance of words, to reduce them to hard, flat statements.

  "Well, you don't really believe that, do you?" Mike said.

  Professor Moon looked sharply away from Mike's legs, over Mike's face, and then down at the book in front of him.

  "Of course I do," he said.

  "Why?"

  "There is a good deal of evidence that when people have not been told what to like or their taste has not been corrupted they will choose the most beautiful thing in a completely natural way. Primitive tribes, for example, will prefer Beethoven to boogie-woggie if you give them a chance to express a preference."

  "But it doesn't prove anything. What does it mean to say that an isolated, natural individual likes Beethoven more than boogie-woogie? I remember in the lecture you said that almost everyone at birth has a sense of color that is as good as Van Gogh's."

  "But the society corrupts the natural capacity for good taste," Professor Moon said.

  "That's the point," Mike said. "Everyone, everyplace, lives in some sort of a society. There are no isolated, natural individuals. Everyone lives in a group. What difference does it make if everyone has natural equipment as good as Van Gogh's? The minute they're born it starts to change; the group bangs it around, alters it, modifies, corrupts. By the time a kid is three years old his color appreciation is as good as the group around him. And most of the time that's pretty awful."

  "The taste of the group doesn't have to be bad," Professor Moon said. "There is no reason why the society has to brutalize the individual. What I mean is that there are real standards of beauty and the society could help the individual to see these clearly if the society were properly organized. Why does a society have to insist upon bad taste? Why can't it insist upon good taste? That's the point, Mike. If it's true that simple and unsophisticated people have good taste, why can't society just let that taste develop instead of insisting that everyone have very, very bad taste?"

  Mike leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. The sunlight outside was bright and clear, but it was so broken and diffused by the dull sandstone walls, the dusty grass and patches of shade that it entered the office as a golden haze. The light shifted and moved; was made tangible by motes that hung motionless in the still air. A beam of light fell on Mike's bare arm and surrounded each hair with a minute glow. Professor Moon watched Mike's hand curl into a fist and he flinched. But Mike only tapped his kneecap gently with the fist.

  "But there aren't any simple unsophisticated people around any more," Mike said. "Maybe every person has the potential to become a Michelangelo, the nerves, eyes, color sense, imagination. If you say so I'll believe it. But the fact is that they don't all become Michelangelos. The great mass of the people just don't care about taste or beauty or whatever you want to call it. Look, the mass of people don't even determine what popular taste is. Do you think the mass of the people determine what kind of beautiful cars they are going to buy? Hell no. A little group of men is busy right now in Detroit deciding what we are going to like and admire in new cars ten years from now. If it's beetle shaped and squat and dripping chrome, why in 1949 we'll stand around and admire it and go in debt to buy one. But we don't determine what is beautiful or ugly. All we do is wait to be told what is beautiful in cars and then fight like hell to buy one."

  "You're right, of course," Professor Moon said. "Popular taste is incredibly bad now, but that is because it had to be weaned away from a sense of taste and beauty that was once almost perfect. Whenever the awful hand of industrialism and commerce has touched anything it has become tawdry and distorted."

  "Do you really believe that?" Mike asked.

  "Of course. That's why I'm partly communist and partly Catholic. The communist is right in de-emphasizing private property. If the mass of people weren't driven to own property, to blindly acquire more and more, they could be interested in what is beautiful and tasteful. If private property were eliminated, then the natural law of the Catholics would make sense. Either doctrine by itself is senseless, but if private property were eliminated, then Catholicism would make sense."

  Professor Moon looked anxiously at Mike. He had a nagging doubt
that he sounded childish or sentimental when he talked to Mike. He wanted very much to sound convincing.

  "It narrows down to two issues," Hank said. Mike and Professor Moon swung their heads around to look at him and he flushed and spoke very rapidly. "One, does each individual really have the natural capacity that Professor Moon thinks he has? Second, if each individual does have a high natural capacity why doesn't he develop it?"

  "O.K., I'll buy that," Mike said. "I think people may have the natural capacity. Probably you can make a statesman out of a kid born in the slums if you start soon enough and work hard enough. So it comes down to the second question. Why don't these wonderful individuals live up to their potential? Everyone agrees they don't. Professor Moon, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, everyone. They all look around and think the men they see are pathetic, inadequate, scared, shameful."

  "Right," Professor Moon said crisply. "It's obvious that men don't live up to their capacity. In my radio lecture I tried to indicate why. I stated that individuals don't live up to their potential because the society corrupts them. Change the society and the individuals can live more fully."

  "No, it's more than that," Mike said, speaking very slowly. He sat up in his chair, took his feet off the desk. "It's not the society. It's something inside of people. Maybe they've got all the potential for good inside, but they've also got something else inside of them too."

  "Like what?" Hank asked.

  "Like a feeling they'd like to bitch everything up," Mike said. "Like a feeling they'd like to break something up even if they can see it's good. It's hard to say it. Look, prize fights are more expensive than symphony concerts. And everyone is always telling everybody else that they ought to like concerts more than prize fights; their teachers, the newspapers, the radios. And everyone is always telling them that prize fighting is cruel and anti-social and vulgar. So why do more people go to prize fights than go to concerts? I'm not sure. But I've got a hunch."

  "I've got a hunch too," Professor Moon said. "The hunch is that there are more fight arenas around than there are symphony halls."

  He laughed, but Mike looked at him without smiling, almost as if he did not hear.

  "No, that's not it," Mike said, going slowly, feeling his way. "It's like they know that they don't want the best thing. They want something else . . . they want the thing that isn't best. Because it isn't the best, because they've been told that they shouldn't want it they want it. Oh, not all of them. Some little quiet guys go to the opera and hate it, but they do it because they think they should. And some people, a very few, actually prefer the opera to the prize fight."

  Mike paused. Hank and Professor Moon were watching him. He was embarrassed. He walked over and looked out the window, watching the distant whirling of the sprinklers.

  "Well, now, Mike," Professor Moon said. "You have a good healthy interest in the way people actually behave and I must confess that you see such behavior with much more clarity than most young people. But certainly it is important to see that people are motivated by other things than just envy."

  "I didn't mean just envy," Mike said defensively. "I didn't say it the way I wanted."

  "But that's what you said," Professor Moon went on. He felt more secure now.

  Mike swung around and looked at Professor Moon. He put his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans and stood with his legs apart.

  "Mike is a little intoxicated with history and psychology," Hank said. "He gets things mixed up and they come out in queer ways."

  Mike knew that Hank was trying to take him off the hook. He grinned and stepped into the center of the room.

  "Professor Moon understands about queer ways," Mike said. Professor Moon's smile vanished abruptly. "He is tolerant about queer ways."

  Mike stood with his shoulders hunched belligerently. Professor Moon looked sharply away from Mike, ran his eyes over the rows of books. His forehead was very pale and his lips were pressed together.

  "Let's go, Mike," Hank said. "We've got to get going."

  Professor Moon looked up and his face was collapsed and formless, his lower lip struggling to regain its shape. The only firm thing in his face was a tear that glittered sharply in each eye. He automatically waved to them and his face creased in the smile which he gave students leaving his office. As Mike and Hank walked by the window of his office they could hear him sniffling and they knew without looking that he had his head down on the desk.

  They walked by the Japanese gardener and stepped out of the shade of the passageway into the gathered, yellow, intense heat of the Quad. The heat flowed from the stones of the buildings, gathered in pools of dead air that smelled of scorched cement, burnt palm leaves and an utter absence of moisture. It was an aseptic, crisp hotness. They walked through it as if it were water; slowed by the density of it; feeling their nostrils distend as if searching for air. Drops of sweat popped out on their foreheads and were pulled into the dry atmosphere and in a few minutes their faces were powdered by small particles of dried salt.

  "Hot day. Really hot day," Mike said. "I like hot days."

  Hank did not reply. Their feet scraped over the stones of the Quad and the sound floated over the dead scorched air and came back rounded and plump off the thick walls. They walked by a small circle of palm trees and brilliant summer flowers. Above them the bright mosaic work of the chapel glittered.

  "You son of a bitch," Hank said. "You had to let him know that you know he is a queer. Is that the only reason you stopped by his office?"

  "No," Mike said.

  "He's a quiet little guy. He's a good teacher. He doesn't bother anyone. Why did you say that to him?"

  "Why not?" Mike asked.

  "Why not? Is that an answer?" Hank asked savagely. "You go in and hurt someone and I ask you why and you say 'why not.' Even if he is a queer what's wrong with that?"

  "Nothing's wrong with it," Mike said and he was grinning. "And if nothing's wrong with it why not talk about it? Maybe it's just like having the mumps or going to the movies. Maybe Moon likes to talk about it."

  "Shut up."

  "I don't get it. Being queer is all right, we say. Maybe it's better than being normal. Maybe it's being superior. But we can't talk about this fine thing. It's very bad to mention to a queer that he possesses this fine thing."

  "That's not why you said it; to be nice and conversational," Hank said wearily. "You said it to hurt him. You said it for the same reason that you talk tough to Mardikan and Connie. You want to see if you can break through and find something that a person is scared of. You like to find the soft spot and then press it hard, drive your finger into it. O.K., forget it. I just don't want to hear it any more."

  They came to the end of the Quad. There was a water fountain in one of the columns and Mike stopped for a drink. When he finished he ran the stream of water over his face and stood up. The water ran into his T-shirt, turned the thin cotton a wet gray color. He turned around and looked down the Quad; almost straight into the sun.

  "Sit down, Hank," Mike said. "I want to talk."

  They sat down on the hot cement, full in the sun. The smell of hot asphalt came faintly off the surface of the Quad.

  "Go ahead, talk," Hank said.

  "You're wrong about me wanting to hurt Moon. I don't care one way or the other about him. I don't care if he's happy or miserable."

  "Well, why did you say it then?"

  "It's hard to say it just right. But I didn't do it to hurt him. I said it to see what he was scared of. I found out he's scared of being a queer. Maybe it's possible to be a queer and not be scared of it, but I had to find out. That's why I pushed him. I didn't want to hurt him though."

  "Why did you want to find out what he's scared of?" Hank asked. He looked sideways at Mike.

  Mike was staring down the Quad, his eyes narrowed against the sun.

  "I'm not sure," Mike said slowly. "To test a theory, I guess. To see if there are any exceptions; to find if there are any guys that aren't afraid of something. It'
s like an itch, Hank. I see a guy like Moon or one of the rich kids on the Row. Or even some bright little character in class who seems to have it made. I just start to itch with curiosity when I see a guy with a perfect little world, everything consistent, everything balanced . . . the guy happy in the middle of the world. I don't believe in it. I have to see if it's real."

  "And is it?"

  "No. It never is. Everybody is always scared of something. After a while you get good at finding out what it is. Sometimes I can find out what it is without pushing very hard. Sometimes the guy doesn't even know what I'm doing. Sometimes you have to push harder . . . like with Moon. But I don't do it to make the guy miserable. That's not it."

  Hank felt something relax inside of him. He knew Mike was telling the truth. They sat quietly in the sun for a while. The heat made black dots crawl before their eyes and the sharp lines of the buildings quivered, broke, slowly reshaped. A dog trotted into the far end of the Quad, stood black and perfect and diminished, swung its head to study the emptiness and quiet. The dog's tongue dripped. After a few seconds it trotted back into the shade and disappeared.