“We cannot comprehend the vastness that is history,” the man called Woman continued. “Our capacity for knowledge is mortal even if our bodies are deified. We are incapable of knowing with certainty what has happened while at the same time we are unable to stop ourselves from wondering why we are here and from whence we have come. This is the stimulus, the incentive for the study of and the belief in history.
“We, you and I, have been propelled to this moment by nothing less than the conspiracy of eternity. The attempt to understand this scheme is the object of our study like a carrot is the goal of the work-weary mule dragging the plow and imagining something sweet.
“Those of us who crave the carrot of historical knowledge must be aware that we will never achieve this goal but that in our wake we will create something beautiful, fertile and, quite possibly, terrible. We must, as scholars of an impossible study, realize that while history is definite, the human investigation of the past can only be art, the one truly deconstructionist art — because the only way to capture the essence of history is to make it up.”
John stopped at that point not so much for dramatic effect as a natural pause in this improvised discourse.
“My first lecture is often brief. Later on we may go overtime. That said, are there any questions so far?”
Five or six hands went up. John studied the faces of his students. They seemed engaged.
“When you speak,” he said, “I’d like you to give us your name and any other information you deem pertinent. In this way I’ll get to know you and you will further identify yourself with your query.
“Yes,” he said, pointing. “The woman in the red blouse.”
“Star Limner,” said a twentysomething white woman whose black hair was heavy and damp from a recent shower. She sat in the second row on John’s right. “Second-year poli-sci major.”
“What’s your question, Ms. Limner?”
“Excuse me, Professor Woman, but it sounds like you’re saying that nothing has ever happened in the past and that we can’t believe anything we study.”
“Yeah,” a brutish young man from the third row chimed in.
“And your name is?” John asked the heavy-muscled student who was clad in overalls and a black-and-white-check T-shirt.
“Pete.”
“Pete what?”
“Tackie.”
Pete Tackie was also white with straight brown hair that came down to his ears. He wasn’t fat but rather beefy with small eyes and a frown that John imagined never relaxed, even in sleep.
“And what would you like us to know about you, Mr. Tackie?”
“I wasn’t askin’ a question,” the dour young man complained.
“I asked,” John said, “for anyone speaking to give us their name and anything else we should know.”
Pete Tackie rubbed his face with broad, strong fingers.
“I play rugby,” he said. “I came here from Dearborn.”
“Michigan?”
“Yeah.”
Smiling, the young associate professor held Pete Tackie’s gaze for a few seconds. He had learned how to keep order by sticking to the promises and requests he made.
“No to the first part of your question, Ms. Limner,” John said, still looking at the rugby player. Then he turned to her. “Quite the opposite — everything has happened. This much is apparent. So you’re right, I’m saying you cannot believe anything you study because it is, necessarily, incomplete speculation... albeit, sometimes quite convincing speculation.”
“But how can that be?” another young woman asked. When John turned toward her she shrugged and said, “Beth Weiner from Santa Monica, California. I haven’t declared a major yet but it’ll probably be business or maybe economics.”
“You were saying, Ms. Weiner?” John asked.
“We know that there was a Civil War, that all those people died.”
“Excuse me, but why was that war fought?”
“Over slavery,” a student in the front row said.
This was the only male student who was formally dressed. He wore a blue blazer, tan slacks and a white dress shirt. The only thing missing, John thought, was a tie. His hair was black and his eyes might have been green.
The young man smiled and said, “Jack Burns. I’m from right up the highway in Phoenix.”
“So, Mr. Burns,” John said. “You don’t subscribe to the notion that the war was waged over a disagreement concerning economic questions and the southern states’ sovereign right of secession?”
“Well,” a sweatshirted black student said. “Micah Short, here. Maybe the war had other causes, but they seceded because Lincoln was going to free the slaves.”
“But he said that he wouldn’t demand freedom for the slaves,” the professor argued, “only that new states could not be slaveholders.”
“But they thought he would.”
“I see,” the professor said doubtfully; “they thought... Let me ask you this. Was there a Holocaust in which six million Jews were exterminated?”
Voices sprouted among the class without identification and maybe, John thought, without volition.
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
“Sure there was.”
“Well maybe not all that many,” one dark-haired girl said.
“And who are you?” John asked gently.
“Tamala Marman. I want to be a history major.”
“What do you mean?” a girl in the second row challenged. She was Asian, possibly Japanese. “We know the number. The records have been counted.”
John thought of asking her name but didn’t want to slow the interaction.
“It was a big war,” Tamala Marman argued. “A lot of people got away. And people overreact when they see horrible things. Somebody could say that they saw a thousand bodies when really there were only a couple of hundred.”
“Only a couple of hundred?” Pete Tackie shouted. “What are you? A Nazi?”
“I’m just talking about the numbers. Maybe there were only three million dead. It’s possible. That’s all I’m saying.”
“No,” said a male student with a deep commanding voice. “There were more than six million killed. They have the names and Nazi records. The families have remembered them.”
Following this claim silence filled the room.
“And you are?” John asked the handsome young man in the center seat of the first row.
“Justin Brown.” He had a tanned complexion and steady gray eyes. “I’m a chem major, senior. This is an elective course for me.”
“And so,” Professor John Woman said after an appreciative silence, “we have learned from Justin Brown that the Holocaust really did occur and that the number, approximately six million, is an accurate count.”
One or two heads nodded. Every eye in the room was on John.
“What proof has he put forth?”
“The proof is in—” Justin Brown began.
“Please, Mr. Brown, allow some of the other students to reply.”
“Sandra Levy,” a walnut-haired woman chimed in, “transfer from BU. We believe him because he said it with conviction and passion.”
“That is correct,” John allowed.
“But what I say is true,” the chem major complained.
“Of course it is, Justin. Of course. It’s true on many levels. You know because of your reading of books, Allied reports, and the trials at Nuremburg. You know because of the state of Israel and its commitment to Jewish peoples around the world. But...” John Woman paused and gazed around the classroom. Through the bank of tinted windows that made the outer wall he could see the desert under cloudless skies. “But does that make it a true history or simply something that many of us believe? I say this to you not because I want to negate your beliefs. Really the opposite is true. I’m teaching this course because history is being rewritten, reenvisioned and reedited every day, every hour of every day. There are people out there who would like to tell you that there was no Holocaust whatsoever. They write books, give speeches, make arguments that sway especially those who have no passion for the subject. Deconstructionist history is not a spurious branch of study. It is what every enemy of everything you believe practices day and night. Who killed the two million Cambodians and the Argentine Aborigines? Who was responsible for the slaughter of the Hutu and Tutsi, Congolese and Somali? Who profited from the slave routes to the Caribbean, North and South America?”