Eugene thought so. It was one of his few Utopias.
Sometimes, when he was in a chafed and bitter temper, he would hear a burst of laughter from a student’s room, and he would turn snarling, and curse them, believing they laughed at him. He inherited his father’s conviction at times that the world was gathered in an immense conspiracy against him: the air about him was full of mockery and menace, the leaves whispered with treason, in a thousand secret places people were assembled to humiliate, degrade, and betray him. He would spend hours under the terrible imminence of some unknown danger: although he was guilty of nothing but his own nightmare fantasies, he would enter a class, a meeting, a gathering of students, with cold constricted heart, awaiting exposure, sentence, and ruin, for he knew not what crime. Again, he would be wild, extravagant, and careless, squealing triumphantly in their faces and bounding along possessed with goaty joy, as he saw life dangling like a plum for his taking.
And thus, going along a campus path at night, fulfilled with his dreams of glory, he heard young men talking of him kindly and coarsely, laughing at his antics, and saying he needed a bath and clean underwear. He clawed at his throat as he listened.
I think I’m hell, thought Eugene, and they say I stink because I have not had a bath. Me! Me! Bruce-Eugene, the Scourge of the Greasers, and the greatest fullback Yale ever had! Marshal Gant, the saviour of his country! Ace Gant, the hawk of the sky, the man who brought Richthofen down! Senator Gant, Governor Gant, President Gant, the restorer and uniter of a broken nation, retiring quietly to private life in spite of the weeping protest of one hundred million people, until, like Arthur or Barbarossa, he shall hear again the drums of need and peril.
Jesus-of-Nazareth Gant, mocked, reviled, spat upon, and imprisoned for the sins of others, but nobly silent, preferring death rather than cause pain to the woman he loves. Gant, the Unknown Soldier, the Martyred President, the slain God of Harvest, the Bringer of Good Crops. Duke Gant of Westmoreland, Viscount Pondicherry, twelfth Lord Runnymede, who hunts for true love, incognito, in Devon and ripe grain, and finds the calico white legs embedded in sweet hay. Yes, George-Gordon-Noel-Byron Gant, carrying the pageant of his bleeding heart through Europe, and Thomas-Chatterton Gant (that bright boy!), and François-Villon Gant, and Ahasuerus Gant, and Mithridates Gant, and Artaxerxes Gant, and Edward-the-Black-Prince Gant; Stilicho Gant, and Jugurtha Gant, and Vercingetorix Gant, and Czar-Ivan-the-Terrible Gant. And Gant, the Olympian Bull; and Heracles Gant; and Gant, the Seductive Swan; and Ashtaroth and Azrael Gant, Proteus Gant, Anubis and Osiris and Mumbo-Jumbo Gant.
But what, said Eugene very slowly into the darkness, if I’m not a Genius? He did not ask himself the question often. He was alone: he spoke aloud, but in a low voice, in order to feel the unreality of this blasphemy. It was a moonless night, full of stars. There was no thunder and no lightning.
Yes, but what, he thought with a livid snarl, but what if anybody else thinks I’m not? Ah, but they’d like to, the swine. They hate me, and are jealous of me because they can’t be like me, so they’ll belittle me if they can. They’d like to say it, if they dared, just to hurt me. For a moment his face was convulsed with pain and bitterness: he craned his neck, holding his throat with his hand.
Then, as was his custom, when he had burnt his heart out, he began to look nakedly and critically at the question.
Well, he went on very calmly, what if I’m not? Am I going to cut my throat, or eat worms, or swallow arsenic? He shook his head slowly but emphatically. No, he said, I am not. Besides, there are enough geniuses. They have at least one in every high school, and one in the orchestra of every small-town movie. Sometimes Mrs. Von Zeck, the wealthy patroness of the arts, sends a genius or two off to New York to study. So that, he estimated, this broad land of ours has by the census not less than 26,400 geniuses and 83,752 artists, not counting those in business and advertising. For his personal satisfaction, Eugene then muttered over the names of 21 geniuses who wrote poetry, and 37 more who devoted themselves to the drama and the novel. After this, he felt quite relieved.
What, he thought, can I be, besides a genius? I’ve been one long enough. There must be better things to do.
Over that final hedge, he thought, not death, as I once believed—but new life—and new lands.
Erect, with arm akimbo on his hip, he stood, his domed head turned out toward the light: sixty, subtle and straight of body, deep-browed, with an old glint of hawk-eyes, lean apple-cheeks, a mustache bristle-cropped. That face on which the condor Thought has fed, arched with high subtle malice, sophist glee.
Below, benched in rapt servility, they waited for his first husky word. Eugene looked at the dull earnest faces, lured from the solid pews of Calvinism to the shadowland of metaphysics. And now his mockery will play like lightning around their heads, but they will never see it, nor feel it strike. They will rush forward to wrestle with his shadow, to hear his demon’s laughter, to struggle solemnly with their unborn souls.
The clean cuffed hand holds up an abraded stick. Their stare follows obediently along its lustre.
“Mr. Willis?”
White, bewildered, servile, the patient slave’s face.
“Yes, sir.”
“What have I here?”
“A stick, sir.”
“What is a stick?”
“It’s a piece of wood, sir.”
A pause. Ironic eyebrows ask their laughter. They snicker smugly for the wolf that will devour them.
“Mr. Willis says a stick is a piece of wood.”
Their laughter rattles against the walls. Absurd.
“But a stick is a piece of
