“No.”
Sharpe let his hand drop abruptly. He walked over to the long French window closed against a light rain that was changing to drifting snowflakes. He stood looking out across the darkening campus, and Rann, watching him, saw his hands clench behind his back. He did not speak, half-afraid to break Sharpe’s silence. Then suddenly Sharpe turned and went back to his chair. His face was pale and set, his lips pressed together and his eyes averted from Rann. He took up the sheets he had laid on the table, and put them together.
“I don’t want to criticize this yet,” he said in his usual voice. “You have an excellent idea here—the relation between the creation of science and art—but you’ve dashed it off. I want you to take it back, think it through, and rewrite it. Yes, it’s already well done, but you can carry it much further—complete it. Then when you’ve finished the creative work, we’ll criticize it together, you and I. If it’s as good as I think it will be, we might even get it published in a magazine where I publish some of my own stuff.”
“Wouldn’t it help me to hear your preliminary criticism, sir?”
“No. There must be no criticism during the creative process—not even self-criticism, Rann. Creation and criticism are antithetical and cannot be carried on at the same time. Remember that. You’re a creator, Rann. Of that I now have no doubt. I envy you. Leave criticism to me. I’m a critic by nature, and a damn good teacher as a result.”
He smiled and handed the sheets back to Rann. Then he stood up.
“Your mother will be wondering where the hell you are. I am responsible for delivering you safely into her hands. It’s midnight. How the hours fly when one is—interested!”
He followed Rann to the door of the hall. There he paused, his hand on the knob. Still a few inches shorter, Rann, the boy, looked up and met the dark and tragic eyes of the man. Yes, tragic was the word. Sharpe’s eyes were filled with sadness, though his lips smiled as he looked down upon the young and wondering face. Suddenly leaning forward, he kissed Rann’s cheek.
“Good night—good night,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Good night, my dear!”
“DID HE LIKE YOUR THEME?” his mother asked. She did not usually wait for him to come home because she knew he did not like it. It made him uneasy, or at least less free if he thought of her sitting there by the fire in the living room, waiting for him. But tonight she was there.
“It’s only in rough form,” he said. “I have to do some more thinking on it.”
“What’s it about?” she asked.
“I can’t explain,” he said shortly, and then, in apology, “I’m tired—we had a real session.”
She rose. “You’d better go straight to bed. Good night, son.”
“Good night,” he said, and then, hesitating, he kissed her cheek as usual.
Each night he kissed her cheek with increasing reluctance, a childhood habit he wished he could break without hurting her. While his father lived, he had kissed them both, but now he wanted to be done with it. He went to his own room in confusion with himself. He did not want to kiss his mother, but he still felt on his own cheek the touch of the man’s lips—Donald Sharpe, his teacher and, he had taken for granted, his friend. The kiss remained there, at once repulsive and exciting. What did it mean? He knew that in some countries, in France, for example, men kissed men and it was merely a greeting. But this was not France. And he had never seen a man kiss a man. He, of course, was not yet fully a man, but he was fifteen, he was growing tall and he had to shave once in a while. He could not accept the kiss as casual. It was too unusual. He felt half-shy, half-pleased, but puzzled. Of course he knew things, his father had talked to him, but he had scarcely listened—he’d been interested at the moment in some project he had begun with turtles’ eggs. He had found the eggs one Sunday when he and his father had walked, as they usually did on Sundays, outside the town in the fields. It had been spring and they had stopped at a pond and he brought the eggs home and hatched them in the garage, three of them at least, but the turtles had died.
He bathed now as usual before he went to bed and, lying full-length in the lusciously hot water, he surveyed his changing body with a new interest that he could not understand. It was the same body he washed every night, but tonight he was different. He felt a new life in his body, a sensitivity, an awareness, not yet an emotion but an awareness. Did the kiss mean some sort of love? Could this be possible? A sign of friendship, perhaps? But did men kiss when they were friends? In college he had no friends, since he was always so much younger than the others.
However his mind wandered, it kept returning to Donald Sharpe. He saw himself sitting in that library facing the man he so admired. He saw Sharpe’s face, handsome in a delicate, vivid fashion; he heard the melodious voice, the rapid brilliant speech. Then he saw himself at the door and felt again not only on his cheek but throughout his whole body the touch of Sharpe’s lips. Alarmed, enticed, and half-ashamed, he got himself out of the tub abruptly and dried himself with quick, harsh rubbing of the big towel. In bed, his pajamas buttoned and the string fastened about his waist, he turned on the bedside light and took up the book he was reading,
The next morning he felt a new impetus to rewrite his theme and make it as perfect as possible. His professor felt something special toward him, and he longed for Sharpe’s praise and further criticism.
“TESLA,” SHARPE SAID, “WAS OF course the real genius—not Edison, although Edison was the better businessman and was clever at publicity. But Tesla was the creator at the most authentic pitch. He was a finely educated man, and Edison was not. Tesla had a profound knowledge of the past. It was at his service. When he established his own laboratory—it took him a while to realize he must have control of his own work—the whole world was astounded at all that poured out of it, the amazing inventions, the absolute proof that his complete alternating-current system had immense advantage over Edison’s direct-current system. There’s never been anything like it in importance—at least in the field of electrical engineering. Edison’s system could only serve an area about a mile in diameter, while Tesla’s system could transmit for hundreds of miles.… Are you listening to me, Rann?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, but he was not. He was watching the mobile, handsome face opposite him. The fire burned between them, he on one side of the fireplace and Sharpe on the other. Outside, an early snowstorm wrapped the house in silence. There was no wind. The snow fell thickly, silently.
“The real problem,” Sharpe continued, “was to find a man whose mind was large enough to comprehend and put to use the discoveries and inventions of a genius as great as Tesla’s. Westinghouse was that man.”
He put down the sheets of Rann’s thesis. “It’s a strange truth,” he said, musing, “that every genius has to find his complement, the man who understands and can put to use what the creator creates. We don’t seem to find creativity and its practical application in the same person.”
He looked, half-smiling, at Rann’s eager, listening face.
“What a beautiful boy you are,” he said softly. The sheets slipped from his hands to the floor. “I wonder what we are to be to each other, you and I! Do you ever dream of love, Rann?”
Rann shook his head, entranced, shy, suddenly almost afraid—but of what?
Sharpe stooped and collected the sheets. He put them neatly together and placed them on the table beside his chair. Then he went to the wide window at the far end of his study and looked out. A streetlamp shone dimly through the all-but-impenetrable snow. He drew down the shade. “You had better spend the night with me,” he said, returning to his chair. “Your mother will worry about your walking so far in this storm. So shall I. You may have my guest room. That’s where my younger brother stays when he comes to visit me.”
“I’ll have to telephone my mother,” Rann said.
“Of course. There’s the telephone, on my desk. Tell her my Filipino houseman will give us a good dinner.”
He took up the sheets and glanced over them one by one, seeming not to hear the conversation.
“He’s invited me to stay because of the storm. But will you be all right, Mother?”
“Oh yes,” his mother said, almost gaily. “Mary Crookes is here. She came in an hour ago—she was shopping and simply couldn’t get home through the storm. She was just breathless when she reached our house. I’d asked her to stay, anyway. It’s really not safe to be out alone in such a storm. The wind is beginning to blow a gale. I’ll feel safe about you if you’re with Dr. Sharpe. Good night, darling—see you tomorrow.”
Rann hung up the receiver. “By chance she has a friend with her—someone who lives on the edge of town
