Indignation

“And now you’re living alone, I see. Living by yourself under the eaves in Neil Hall.”

“This far into the semester, that was the only empty room I could find, sir.”

“Drink some more water, Marcus. It’ll help.”

But my mouth was no longer dry. I was no longer sweating either. I was angered, in fact, by his saying “It’ll help,” when I considered myself over the worst of my nervousness and performing as well as anybody my age could be expected to in this situation. I was angered, I was humiliated, I was resentful, and I would not even look in the direction of the glass. Why should I have to go through this interrogation simply because I’d moved from one dormitory room to another to find the peace of mind I required to do my schoolwork? What business was it of his? Had he nothing better to do than interrogate me about my dormitory accommodations? I was a straight-A student — why wasn’t that enough for all my unsatisfiable elders (by whom I meant two, the dean and my father)?

“What about the fraternity you’re pledging? You’re eating your meals there, I take it.”

“I’m not pledging a fraternity, sir. I’m not interested in fraternity life.”

“What would you say your interests are, then?”

“My studies, sir. Learning.”

“That’s admirable, to be sure. But nothing more? Have you socialized with anyone at all since you’ve come to Winesburg?”

“I work on weekends, sir. I work at the inn as a waiter in the taproom. It’s necessary for me to work to assist my father in meeting my expenses, sir.”

“You don’t have to do that, Marcus — you can stop calling me sir. Call me Dean Caudwell, or call me Dean, if you like. Winesburg isn’t a military academy, and it’s not the turn of the century either. It’s 1951.”

“I don’t mind calling you sir, Dean.” I did, though. I hated it. That’s why I was doing it! I wanted to take the word “sir” and stick it up his ass for singling me out to come to his office to be grilled like this. I was a straight-A student. Why wasn’t that good enough for everybody? I worked on weekends. Why wasn’t that good enough for everybody? I couldn’t even get my first blowjob without wondering while I was getting it what had gone wrong to allow me to get it. Why wasn’t that good enough for everybody? What more was I supposed to do to prove my worth to people?

Promptly the dean mentioned my father. “It says here your father is a kosher butcher.”

“I don’t believe so, sir. I remember writing down just ‘butcher.’ That’s what I’d write on any form, I’m sure.”

“Well, that’s what you did write. I’m merely assuming that he’s a kosher butcher.”

“He is. But that’s not what I wrote down.”

“I acknowledged that. But it’s not inaccurate, is it, to identify him more precisely as a kosher butcher?”

“But neither is what I wrote down inaccurate.”

“I’d be curious to know why you didn’t write down ‘kosher,’ Marcus.”

“I didn’t think that was relevant. If some entering student’s father was a dermatologist or an orthopedist or an obstetrician, wouldn’t he just write down ‘physician’? Or ‘doctor’? That’s my guess, anyway.”

“But kosher isn’t in quite the same category.”

“If you’re asking me, sir, if I was trying to hide the religion into which I was born, the answer is no.”

“Well, I certainly hope that’s so. I’m glad to hear that. Everyone has a right to openly practice his own faith, and that holds true at Winesburg as it does everywhere else in this country. On the other hand, under ‘religious preference’ you didn’t write ‘Jewish,’ I notice, though you are of Jewish extraction and, in accordance with the college’s attempt to assist students in residing with others of the same faith, you were originally assigned Jewish roommates.”

“I didn’t write anything under religious preference, sir.”

“I can see that. I’m wondering why that is.”

“Because I have none. Because I don’t prefer to practice one religion over another.”

“What then provides you with spiritual sustenance? To whom do you pray when you need solace?”

“I don’t need solace. I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe in prayer.” As a high school debater I was known for hammering home my point — and that I did. “I am sustained by what is real and not by what is imaginary. Praying, to me, is preposterous.”

“Is it now?” he replied with a smile. “And yet so many millions do it.”

“Millions once thought the earth was flat, sir.”

“Yes, that’s true. But may I ask, Marcus, merely out of curiosity, how you manage to get by in life — filled as our lives inevitably are with trial and tribulation — lacking religious or spiritual guidance?”

“I get straight A’s, sir.”

That prompted a second smile, a smile of condescension that I liked even less than the first. I was prepared now to despise Dean Caudwell with all my being for putting me through this tribulation.

“I didn’t ask about your grades,” he said. “I know your grades. You have every right to be proud of them, as I’ve already told you.”

“If that is so, sir, then you know the answer to your question about how I get along without any religious or spiritual guidance. I get along just fine.”

I had begun to rile him up, I could see, and in just the ways that could do me no good.

“Well, if I may say so,” the dean said, “it doesn’t look to me like you get along just fine. At least you don’t appear to get along just fine with the people you room with. It seems that as soon as there’s a difference of opinion between you and a roommate, you pick up and leave.”

“Is there anything wrong with finding a solution in quietly leaving?” I asked, and within I heard myself beginning to sing, “Arise, ye who refuse to be bondslaves! With our very flesh and blood we will build a new Great Wall!”

“Not necessarily, no more than there is anything wrong with finding a solution in quietly working it out and staying. Look where you’ve wound up — in the least desirable room on this entire campus. A room where no one has chosen to live or has had to live for many years now. Frankly, I don’t like the idea of you up there alone. It’s the worst room at Winesburg, bar none. It’s been the worst room on the worst floor of the worst dorm for a hundred years. In winter it’s freezing and by early spring it’s already a hotbox, full of flies. And that’s where you’ve chosen to spend your days and nights as a sophomore student here.”

“But I’m not living there, sir, because I don’t have religious beliefs — if that is what you are suggesting in a roundabout way.”

“Why is it, then?”

“It’s as I explained it—” I said, meanwhile, in full voice, in my head, singing, “China’s masses have met the day of danger”—“in my first room I couldn’t get sufficient sleep because of a roommate who insisted on playing his phonograph late into the night and reciting aloud in the middle of the night, and in my second room I found myself living with someone whose conduct I considered intolerable.”

“Tolerance appears to be something of a problem for you, young man.”

“I never heard that said about me before, sir,” said I at the very instant I inwardly sang out the most beautiful word in the English language: “In-dig-na-tion!” I suddenly wondered what it was in Chinese. I wanted to learn it and go around the campus shouting it at the top of my lungs.

“There appear to be several things you’ve never heard about yourself before,” he replied. “But ‘before’ you were living at home, in the bosom of your childhood family. Now you’re living as an adult on his own with twelve hundred others, and what there is for you to master here at Winesburg, aside from mastering your studies, is to learn how to get along with people and how to extend tolerance to people who are not carbon copies of yourself.”

Stirred up now by my stealthy singing, I blurted out, “Then how about extending some tolerance to me? I’m sorry, sir, I don’t mean to be brash or insolent. But,” and, to my own astonishment, leaning forward, I hammered the side of my fist on his desk, “exactly what is the crime I’ve committed? So I’ve moved a couple of times, I’ve moved from one dorm room to another — is that considered a crime at Winesburg College? That makes me into a culprit?”

Here he poured some water and himself took a long drink. Oh, if only I could have graciously poured it for him. If only I could have handed him the glass and said, “Calm down, Dean. Try this, why don’t you?”