To Jacob, looking back, Francis seemed to have been involved in a failure of the imagination. He had been unable to imagine the feelings of the head of the department which were complex and yet also convenient enough. This failure was important because in so many ways Francis had devoted his will to making himself impressive to other human beings.
Now Jacob bore in mind how Rudyard had applauded Francis’ stand, although it had cost Francis the status in life he desired so much. Rudyard had declared that no other answer was possible without an absolute loss of self-respect. Yet had Rudyard been confronted with the same choice, Jacob was sure that he would not have hesitated in making the answer which was convenient and profitable. Whether Rudyard knew this to be true of himself or not, he too was involved in the same loss of imagination, for he did not recognize how much Francis had hurt himself. “No one fools anyone much, except himself,” said Jacob to himself. “How do I fool myself?”
Francis had soon become a teacher in the public school system, and devoted himself with energy and concentration to his sexual life. For five days each week he taught from nine until three and then from four until midnight his obsession with sexual pleasure took hold of him and in time preoccupied him so much that all the other things which had interested him were forgotten. The drudgery of teaching in a high school was the basis of the intense system with which he dealt with actuality, performing his duties as a teacher with thoroughness because this made him feel secure and full of control when he let himself go after school.
He let himself go more and more. He came less frequently to the Saturday evenings of the circle, and when he did come, he conferred most often with Rudyard, discussing his adventures and conquests. He told Marcus Gross, who was boisterous and ebullient about his own orthodox desires, that no one knew what sexual pleasure was until he became homosexual. He said also that everyone was really homosexual. Only fear, ignorance, foolishness, and shame kept all human beings from being aware of true passion and satisfaction.
Yet Jacob wondered if Francis did not permit himself passages of intellectual doubt. His sexual preoccupation had become not only a fixed idea which annihilated all other ideas, as one addicted to opium withdraws more and more from all other things; it had become a kind of sunlight: Francis had at first regarded all things in that light and he had come at last to see only the sunlight and nothing else.
“Perhaps one ought not to praise love too much,” Jacob said to himself, “what will become of Francis in ten years or when he is middle-aged? He will have no wife, no house and no child. He has made an absolute surrender to one thing and in the end he may have nothing.”
Jacob arose from the park bench and began to walk through the park, paying attention only to the movements of his mind.
“On the other hand,” he said to himself, “I can’t say for certain that anyone else has or will have more than Francis who at least has what he wants most of all.”
He thought of Marcus Gross, who like Francis taught in a public high school, but was otherwise unlike him. Marcus was the scapegoat and butt of the circle, a part which he often seemed to enjoy. He was extremely serious about everything, even the prepared jokes by means of which he attempted to show his sense of humor, and he was protected by an impenetrable insensitivity from the epithets and the insults directed at him. In fact, he rejoiced in the insulting remarks made about him and to him, for he felt that such attention showed him as an interesting and rich character. Thus when the story of his visit to a house of prostitution was discussed in his presence, after he had been betrayed by the boy who had taken him, when the very choreography of his visit, his awkwardness, his disrobing, his gestures of affection were enacted before him, he was delighted. And he laughed as at another human being when the comedians came to the moment when the girl was said to have said to Marcus: “You like it buck naked, big boy?” When this quotation was reached, Marcus laughed more loudly than anyone else.
Attacked with a cruelty untouched by pity or compunction, Marcus often provided unbearable provocation. Often in the unpleasant, sodden New York summer, he entered the Bell household and went straight to the bathroom without greeting or explanation, bathed and returned in his bare feet to the living room, unable to understand why his behavior was regarded as boorish and self-absorbed. He was disturbed and hurt only when he was not kept acquainted with all that had occurred in the life of the circle, or when Rudyard attacked him, and even then he was often able to defend himself by answering Rudyard in ways which he regarded as hilarious. When Rudyard looked merely perplexed, Marcus only repeated what he had said, adding: “The trouble with you is that you have no sense of humor!” To the astonishment of all, he was offended at unexpected times, for no principle or consistent region of sensitivity could be discerned in his hurt feelings. Yet when Marcus stalked from the house at a remark which was no different from many at which he had smiled complacently, and when he did not return for weeks, an effort was made to discover what had offended him. When he returned, he behaved as if he had not been absent, he took part in the conversation as if he had been present all the while, and when Rudyard, annoyed, said to him: “How do you know?” moved by Marcus’ authoritative participation in the discussion, Marcus replied briefly: “I heard,” for he refused no matter what effort was made, to discuss his absences.
Unlike as were Francis and Marcus (they were extremes, the one courtly, the other uncouth) they were also very different from Edmund Kish and Ferdinand Harrap.
“And what about myself?”Jacob asked himself. “And Rudyard and Laura?”
Edmund had for four years been a student of philosophy, waiting to be asked to be a teacher. There were not many jobs to be had, but when there was one, some other student, not Edmund, was given the job. Yet Edmund was clearly superior to the others. The professors, the higher powers who possessed all the favors, at first had been enchanted with Edmund. He was energetic, original and impressive. He was learned and in love with his subject. But he loved to argue and argument excited him always until he betrayed his assumption that the other human being was a fool.
“Yet he does not think that everyone else is a fool,” thought Jacob. “Not at alclass="underline" he only thinks that he is smarter. Then why does he act like that? Perhaps he is trying to prove to himself that he is smart, perhaps he is never sure of that.”
Triumphant in his arguments with other students, Edmund sought to be full of deference when he spoke with his teachers, especially after he had been passed by for years. But as soon as a qualification or reservation was suggested, Edmund forgot the politeness he had promised himself. He rehearsed to his teachers the ABC’s of the subject and raised objections, which clearly implied that the teacher knew nothing whatever.
His teachers in the end feared and disliked him, and although they were unable to condemn him directly, they spoke of him in letters of recommendation as “a gifted but difficult person.” This satisfied them that they were just and was sufficient to keep him from getting any job he wanted.
“What is it?” Jacob asked himself. “Is it something in the darkness of the family life from which we have all emerged which compels Edmund to assert himself like that? Is it his two brothers, his father’s tyranny, or his mother’s unequal affections? That’s just one more thing we don’t know.”