The place was air-conditioned.
Jimmie sighed and sat down on a stool. Here was one spot-one niche in the hostile Midwestern city, in the unfamiliar world of America—where he was going to be perfectly at home.
Old Cholmondeley, he thought, would give his right eye for this joint. Percy would give his other arm. Well, this was America. In America—they had everything. He wondered which of the pressing problems he would start on. His wonderment took his thoughts a long way—to the heart of the battle in Europe; he tried to weigh the relative strategic values of succeeding here, or succeeding there—if he should succeed at all.
Finally, grunting, he walked to a rack of test tubes, took one down, poured into it some powdered iron, looked at it for a full five minutes, set it back in the rack, picked up a pencil that had never been used, and commenced to write a prodigality of equations on long sheets of yellow paper.
He was studying these when his door pushed open. Because Miss Melrose had said no one would disturb him unless he rang, Jimmie knew who had opened his door.
“’Lo, Willie,” he said.
“How do you like it?”
“Don’t need to answer, do I? If my brain was as sound as your lab we’d have the war won in a week!”
Mr. Corinth chuckled soundlessly. He sat down on another stool and squinted for some time at his employee. “Who hit you?”
“My brother.” The response was complacent. “Uh-huh. Biff’s got a bad temper.
War, eh?”
“Domestic relations,” Jimmie answered, smiling ruefully, “seem to hinge on international relations.”
“Out here in the West they do, anyhow. They ought to draft that puppy pretty soon.”
“They did.”
Mr. Corinth pulled on his white mustache, apparently to hide a smile. “SO he hit you. Did you see it coming?”
Jimmie had been studying his equations again. He looked up, not with irritation, but in a way that showed his preoccupation. “No.”
“Thought not.” The old man yawned and stretched. “Jimmie, put the foolscap away. I want to talk.”
“Okay!” He smiled indulgently and tossed down the pencil.
“Plenty of time for chemistry. Time goes on forever, and chemistry’s part of it.
Not enough time for people on the other hand, no matter what. I like to feel the fellows working for me are in the proper mood. It’s my hunch that the mood you’re in is everything. You can come over to this glass maze week after week and figure out how to pick an atom off here and stick it on yonder; but if you’re in the wrong mood you never get any valuable answers. On the other hand, you can go out and lie pie-eyed drunk in the gutter for a month and come in here for one day, and if you feel hot you can discover more than ten men in ten lifetimes. Funny!”
“Still,” Jimmie said, “I don’t propose to try the inspirational method of the gutter.”
“Plenty sore, aren’t you?”
Jimmie was going to deny that. But he said, “Yes. Plenty.”
“Well, when people are sore it’s because they’re afraid. Every damn’ solitary time.
Maybe not afraid of exactly what they seem to be sore at—but afraid of something behind it. What do you think you’re afraid of, at this point?”
“Afraid?” He laughed unsympathetically. “Nothing.”
“Sure you are. Scared dizzy. You love your family, Jimmie. You’re that kind of an egg. As loyal as a darned dog. And you’ve blown ’em high as kites, I bet. Started scenes—Biff hit you at breakfast? I thought so. You’re scared—but I’ll let you figure out of what.
You know, Jimmie, you have a lot to catch up on.”
“Evidently.”
“Think about that—for one thing.”
Jimmie suddenly had a mental picture of his father, reading the morning paper. “If your psychology is sound—if rage is a sign of fear—then my old man must be about dead of fright these days!” He described the passionate perusal.
Mr. Corinth snorted. “Yes, there’s men doing that all over the country. Sore at the president because they’re scared of what he’ll do. But that’s not the main thing these days.
That’ll wash—one way or another—according to what the majority of the American people think they want. It’s what they think they want that matters. What their attitude is. Hitler’s propaganda fellows understand that. Jimmie, how many times do you believe you can change your mind and still keep believing in yourself?” The younger man cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t get it.”
“Well, suppose—” Mr. Corinth took out a large linen handkerchief. “Suppose I said this was black. You think it’s white. But suppose I finally convince you it’s black. All right. I’ve reversed your attitude once. Now. Suppose somebody else comes along and makes you realize it’s white again. That’s twice your opinion has changed.
“Now. You’re going along thinking it’s a white handkerchief. But suppose—just for the hell of it—that the underside of this darned thing really is black. And suppose you can see a reflection of that side in a mirror. And suppose, also, it happens to be a matter of life and death importance to you that the whole handkerchief should be black. And suppose I—who have already convinced you once that it was black—start to work on you again. You have a motive for thinking this whole thing is black. I tell you it is—and prove it, let’s say, by phoney physics. Let’s say, you’ve always pretended to know a lot about physics—though you don’t. Suppose, also, a lot of men who are leaders in your field—not all, but a lot—start saying this handkerchief of mine is all black. What do you do now?
“Naturally, you get convinced again that the darned thing is as black as the Ace of Spades on both sides. Why? Because you’ve made that mistake once. Because you have a dire personal need to think it’s all black. And because the big shots above you say it’s black. Jimmie—that’s the most important thing in the world today. That’s what’s the matter with your family. They can’t start all over again with the basic facts, line ’em up impartially, change their opinions for about the fifth time, and come up once more, finally and for all, with the true bill of goods!”
“That just states the problem. How do you solve it?”
The old man tipped his stool back against a high table and peered at Jimmie. “You know your family. You know your country—or, at least, what your country has stood for in the past. ‘We hold all men to be created free and equal.’ That sort of stuff. You solve their problem. I’ll help you out, though. For years I’ve been pasting up scrapbooks of things I thought were important. All sorts of things. Newspaper clippings and items from magazines. Pages from books—most whole books only do have a couple of worth-while pages in ’em. My scrapbooks aren’t perfect—they missed a lot—but I’ll lend ’em to you.
They’ll help you catch up on your American history.”
“I need to,” Jimmie said.
“Mmmm. I’ll send the books over to your house. Maybe your family’ll peek into ’em. They’ll remind them of a lot they’ve overlooked.”
Jimmie grinned. “I bet.”
Mr. Corinth took a cigar from his disreputable waistcoat pocket and struck a match. He puffed ruminatively. “Your people—most people—don’t realize what has happened to them. It’s so big, so abrupt, so demanding of enormous mental change, that they can’t realize. Takes more time than they’re willing to take to think. More intellectual honesty than your father or your mother are in the habit of using. I don’t believe either Roosevelt or Churchill ever understood exactly what’s happened to all of us on this planet. I mean about this isolation business. When folks do understand what has happened, this word ‘isolation’ just about won’t exist any more.”