Silas Timberman

by Howard Fast

  The regular election of new staff for the fall semester, Alvin Morse as the new editor and Frank Hoffenstein as the managing editor, both of them seniors in the School of Journalism, made no immediate apparent difference in Fulcrum. As with the previous editors, they gave ample space to the football squad and took up as a cause and an issue the construction of an adequate stadium. They ran a not too daring article on patterns of sexual behavior on campus, printed those letters which resulted from it, and then printed a series of letters on the question of why there was no Negro teacher on Clemington’s faculty, a series which brought a calm and judicious comment, in letter form, from President Cabot—who approved the thought students were giving to this matter, cited it as an instance of the inevitability of “the American way,” and stated flatly that the standards of Clemington were scholastic and moral standards, pure and simple, and that anyone who met them, be he Jew or gentile, black or white, would be welcomed to the faculty. As for the Korean War, Fulcrum gave it formal support, echoing the position of the administration and condemning aggression, just as Fulcrum got out a special issue on the question of civil defense.

  In all of this, there was nothing to indicate the position it would take in its October 30th issue.

  * * *

  It was fortunate, Silas felt, that he had not read Fulcrum before his morning class on that Monday; for if he had, he could hardly have ignored it and might well have been drawn into a discussion he was hardly prepared for. As it was, most of his students had read it, and several asked him whether he had. No, he had not, he replied, but he would immediately—immediately upon getting out of this, for he had a sensation of a class at odds with itself and himself, fragmented and confused—and his own confusion at not knowing what was in Fulcrum only worsened the situation. Yet he would not permit himself to exhibit such obvious weakness as to halt his lecture and peer into the newspaper, even though a number of students were doing just that—to a point where he was prompted to remark caustically,

  “Whatever attraction Fulcrum has, suppose you pretend that mine is greater. Put the papers away.”

  Afterwards, he writhed over this small stupidity on his part—after he had read the two editorials, which he was able to do immediately after the class, alone in the security of his office. The first editorial, lead-off on page three, and a full column, was written by Alvin Morse. It was titled, Samuel B. Clemens, Communist, and it went on to say:

  “An incident has occurred here at Clemington which has gone far enough to make us heartily ashamed of ourselves, and which may in time make us the laughing stock of the nation. We consider it so shocking that we have decided to deal with it forthrightly, bringing the whole matter out into the open where it properly belongs.

  “This incident began with the decision, on the part of a respected member of the English Department, to base a survey syllabus for the semesters of 1950–1951 on the concept of Mark Twain as the decisive and determining factor in modern American literature. While some may disagree with this concept, one must admit that it is not unprecedented, and certainly no one will gainsay the importance of Mark Twain on our native literary scene.

  “Proceeding with his plan, the professor in question announced to his class that he would use Mark Twain’s little known short novel, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyberg, as the central focus of his investigation, and characterized the work as an attack upon ‘Babbittry and the Chamber of Commerce mentality.’ The professor’s characterization was challenged in class as parallelism with subversive thinking—the challenge coming from one of the students. Subsequently, this student and two others went to the department head, where they accused the professor in question of deliberately furthering communist aims. We are informed that while the department head doubted the deliberate intention of the professor, he agreed in general with the criticism and promised to act.

  “He kept his promise. The professor was confronted with his procedure and instructed to abandon it—in specific, to cease all mention and discussion of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg. The obvious implications were attached to a refusal to comply.

  “Which is precisely why we decided to go ahead with the publication of this editorial in this fashion—without interviewing or discussing said editorial with either of the two faculty members concerned, but with a scrupulous check and cross-check of facts. We felt that such a procedure, that of advice and consultation, would result in enough pressure to bury the incident completely. We were determined that it should not be buried.

  “In our checking of details, we read The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg most carefully, and found it a rewarding and intelligent piece of satire—a bitter attack upon hypocrisy and false piousness. If this be communism, then we say, as an earlier American did of treason, make the most of it. We take our place with Mark Twain—to speak up and criticize without fear.

  “We hold that the entire affair is compounded out of dangerous stupidity and even more dangerous panic, and we know of no better way of giving comfort to the enemy than to exhibit such arrant Philistinism. Unopposed, such tendencies mean the end of all free inquiry.”

  The second editorial, in the next column, was written by Frank Hoffenstein, managing editor, and was titled, “Another Point of View.” It ran to greater length than Morse’s editorial, beginning by stating.

  “In deference to the long and hallowed traditions of Fulcrum, we accepted the editor’s procedure without agreeing with it. Nevertheless, we hold that a single point of view is not sufficient, and maintain the privilege of stating our own.

  “We do not dispute the facts which the editor puts forth, for we have checked them with him; but we object vigorously to his interpretation of these facts. Unlike the editor, we have no fears about being the laughing stock of the nation, nor do we consider the incident shocking in the manner in which he does. Our own fear is the fear of falling into a trap which has in the past caught so many so called ‘principled’ and ‘liberal’ souls. Our own fear is the fear of being ‘used.’

  “Like the editor, we also read the story in question. This story might have been harmless half a century ago when Mark Twain wrote it. It might have had some relationship to the truth then, though we doubt it.

  “However, it is not harmless today. The proposition of this story, very cleverly put, is a simple one, to wit—that all men of substance, wealth and ambition are bad, and that the poor and the loafers are good. We believe that there are good poor and bad poor, good rich and bad rich. But the only group that deals with these ideas as generalizations today are the communists—to stir up what they call ‘class hatred’ as a prelude to overthrow of the government by force and violence.

  “Of course, Mark Twain was not a communist, and our colleague only muddies the water by placing such emphasis on that fact. What is more to the point—and we have no hesitation in saying so—is that the ideas of Mark Twain are extremely useful to the communists today—not only useful to them, but used by them.

  “We did some cold, hard-headed research on this question—and we are willing to let the facts speak for themselves. We went to the library and examined a year—1949—of publications, various shades of red. The Daily Worker, alas, was not among them, but we found three solid party-liners and checked references to and quotes from Mark Twain. Among the three, we found a total of ninety-seven references and seventeen separate quotations. And all of them favorable, we need not say.

  “In other words, Samuel B. Clemens, take it or leave it, is the most popular in the American red galaxy of writers. The facts show it; they also show that the closest runner-up, Theodore Dreiser, is mentioned only fourteen times in all three publications and quoted only three times.

  “Our colleague holds that neither he nor Mark Twain is responsible for what the reds do; but what is important is that they do it. We tend to become a little impatient with the fuzzy thinking of liberals who pick up the red bait, ad nauseum. Even a child does not burn itself twice at the same stove. The so-called ‘liberals’
play a dreary tune to the effect that anyone who shows some hard-headed, everyday common sense in face of the red menace is a reactionary. But aren’t the true liberals those who fight consistently to keep the red terror from triumphing in America?

  “There is a woolly kind of logic that holds writers like Mark Twain to be sacred, and the commies gleefully use this logic. But let us just suppose that the enemy seized a pile of cannon balls from the War of Independence and fired them square at us. Would we cheerfully stand up to be killed, holding that these cannon balls were sacred, no matter which way they were flying? We would not. We would state flatly and unequivocally that these are weapons of the enemy which must be destroyed.

  “We know that the analogy is contrived, but we hold that it is nevertheless valid. The misused professor does not have our sympathies. We may leave his motives to be decided at some future date, but we have a firm opinion about his results. We do not yet believe that Clemington is a haven for the teaching of communism.”

  Silas finished reading, went back to the first editorial, read a paragraph or two over again, and then shook himself out of the trance into which he had fallen.

  “Good Lord,” he said.

  He brought out pipe and matches, and then decided that he wanted a cigarette very much and began to hunt through his desk drawers for one. Lawrence Kaplin walked in then, and asked whether he was looking for something.

  “A cigarette?”

  Kaplin gave him one, lit it for him, and watched him smoke for a moment. “Reading, Silas?” he asked gently.

  “Damn it! Have you read this?”

  “Silas, I don’t think there’s anyone at the university who hasn’t read it by now. Fulcrum is sold out, and the issue of Monday, October 30th, will unquestionably become a collector’s item.”

  “But what on earth does it mean?”

  “You know what it means, Silas. It means that if you give youngsters a free hand in publishing and editing a paper, they’re going to pull a whopper every so often. This is it.”

  “But how the devil did they know—?”

  “Everyone knew, Silas. I knew. Selma knew. You know how that kind of thing gets around.”

  “But these aren’t just youngsters—they’re capable journalists. I know Morse—” He thought of him then, a small, sandy-haired, thin-faced man of twenty-five, a war veteran, sharp, alert, bitter. He had taken four classes with Silas—too bitter, perhaps, in school on the GI Bill of Rights and saturated with a love for literature and contempt for word-mongering. How did he work and write alongside of Hoffenstein?

  “Who is Hoffenstein?” he asked Kaplin. “I don’t think I know him.”

  “I don’t know him too well either. I had him in one class, I believe. About twenty-two, clever—shrewd might be a better word for it. Big, handsome, dark fellow. Father was a German publisher, I think, and fled Hitler in ’thirty-three—a liberal or social-democrat of sorts, or whatever they called them over there. That was the father. He must have fled well-padded, because now he owns a large printing plant in Cleveland and seems to have a lot of money. I know about him because he printed an edition of Canterbury Tales for which I did the preface, and I had lunch with him when he was down here. That’s the father. I don’t know much about the son, except that he’s very effective in a dirty sort of way. That last paragraph of his is the foulest thing of its kind that I ever had the displeasure of reading in Fulcrum.”

  “But why? Why?” Silas demanded. “I don’t know the boy. What could have prompted him? What was he after? In all conscience, how could he say that? You don’t move up to a man and slander him willfully, thoughtlessly, just as an exercise in journalism.”

  “Morse was no kinder to Lundfest.”

  “But he didn’t accuse him of communism?”

  “Is that what bothers you so much, Silas?”

  “Jesus God, Lawrence, we live in this world! Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a communist! And now to have this tag pinned on to me—I don’t understand!”

  “Why not, Silas? It’s a common tag these days. Music is being played, and we have to learn to dance to the melody. We don’t know how yet, you and I, but we have to learn.”

  “Learn what? Is there some secret code here that I’m too stupid to understand? Or do you think I’m a communist, too, Larry?”

  “No, I don’t think you’re a communist,” Kaplin replied, a little wearily. “Neither does Hoffenstein accuse you of being one, if you’ll just read that through more carefully. Also, why do you protest so much? Suppose he had called you a Jew? There are Jews who are Jews, and they manage to live with it. And I suppose that there are communists who are communists and somehow manage to live with it. Maybe they comb their hair over their horns.”

  “That isn’t what I meant at all.”

  “What did you mean? Suppose he said you took dope, or drank too much. You’d laugh it off, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t preach to me about how much you abhor drunks.”

  “But this is different.”

  “I know. This is fear. I’m afraid too. But what are we afraid of? Have you tried to figure that out? What are we afraid of, Silas, that someone just breathes the word communism, and suddenly we lose all signs and habits of civilization and culture and intelligence and turn into terror-stricken primitives? Is it because we’re afraid of losing our jobs? But we wouldn’t act so irrationally and blindly if our doctors told us we had cancer and only a little while to live? It’s something deeper—”

  “But the long and short of it is that I’m not a communist,” Silas insisted.

  “Aren’t you? Silas, the truth is that I don’t think you know any more than I do about communism, and that’s very little. But we both know something else. We know what happens to people who are called communist. That’s the folklore of our time, isn’t it? A Jew knows. He can cover up his nostrils with a gold-plated quilt, but still the stink of burning flesh comes through. Do you remember Pat Simmons? He taught Modern French Literature back in ’35 and ’36, when you first came onto the faculty, and then he left to enlist in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and went to fight for the Republic of Spain, until the Franco people took him and pulled out his fingernails and gouged out his eyeballs and cut off his genitals—enough for two columns in the New York Times. We remember that kind of thing, and Pat Simmons wasn’t a communist either, but the memory is strung up and down our nerve fibres, and we know all about the Gestapo and what they did to communists, and that’s also lodged somewhere in our brain, next door to the home of fear, and so we hate communism and we abhor it, but what good does it do?”

  Staring at the other man miserably, groping for something, seeking for something to latch onto, Silas protested, “Yet when it came to civil defense—”

  “I know. I’m no hero, and in four more years I’ll be sixty, and all my life I’ve been afraid of physical violence, and if I lose this job I’ll never work anywhere again, but I try not to lie to myself. That’s a small virtue and a smaller salve to my conscience, but it’s some use—”

  “And what do I do?” Silas asked.

  “Frankly, I don’t know. I would think you do nothing at all, and ride it out. But I don’t know. Have you seen Lundfest yet?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “I caught a glimpse of him marching into Cabot’s office.”

  “I imagine he’ll be upset.”

  “I imagine so,” Kaplin smiled.

  * * *

  The speculation was valid, as Silas learned only a short while later; Kaplin had left him alone in the office, and he was gathering up his papers for his next class when Lundfest entered, and it was a relief to Silas to discover that he himself was not terribly disturbed. He had been doing a good deal of thinking during the past few minutes, not philosophically, but in the sense of putting many small things at hand together and getting some sort of a pattern out of it. He understood quite well that the first part of courage was knowing and admitting that you were afraid; and once that was accomplished in t
he present crisis, he felt that he was able to live with the situation for the time being. As had been the case with Myra, he was coming to the conclusion that the seeming inevitability of events, the interworking of cause and effect, was a part of his own nature as well as the result of objective circumstances, Even when something like this Fulcrum incident occurred, apparently apart from him and out of his control, it did not leave him without alternatives and various escape hatches. He was no puppet dangling on another’s strings, nor was there any given moment when he was denied the exercise of his own free will—and a sense of humor helped him toward this realization. In part, yet not wholly, he was prepared to admit that Kaplin was right concerning his horror at the charge of communism—to the extent that he never mentioned it in his short but bitter conversation with Lundfest.

  Lundfest made no attempt to conceal either his anger or the direction it took. Throwing a crumpled copy of Fulcrum on the desk, he informed Silas that he was held responsible for it.

  “That’s a hell of a note,” Silas said softly.

  “Is it? In the first place, what Morse writes is a lie—and I intend to see that he pays for it! I never threatened you with reprisals if you did not change your syllabus! There were no implications whatsoever! And the only occasion where the matter arose was that evening at your house—between the two of us—in a private conversation! What have you got to say to that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing! Is that you’re attitude?”

  “Damn it, Ed—what should my attitude be? Suppose you tell me. I read those editorials only a little while ago, and I know no more about it than what I read. I was not consulted—any more than I imagine you were. If I had been, I would have fought like hell for that stuff not to be printed.”

  “I don’t believe you!”