98
PARTISAN REVIEW
Howe rose to conclude the visit. "All right then-in two weeks."
It was that day that the Dean imparted to Howe the conclusion of
the case of Tertan. It was simple and a little anticlimactic. A physician
had been called in, and had said the word, given the name.
"A classic case, he called it," the Dean said. "Not a doubt in
the
world," he said. His eyes were full of miserable pity and he clutched
at a word. "A classic case, a classic case." To his aid and to Howe's
there came the Parthenon and the form of the Greek drama, the
Aris–
totelian logic, Racine and the Well-Tempered Clavichord, the blueness
of the Aegean and its clear sky. Classic-that is to say, without a doubt,
perfect in its way, a veritable model, and, as the Dean had been told,
sure to take a perfectly predictable and inevitable course to a foreknown
conclusion.
It was not only pity that stood in the Dean's eyes. For a moment
there was fear too. "Terrible," he said, "it is simply terrible."
Then he went on briskly. "Naturally we've told the boy nothing.
And naturally we won't. His tuition's paid by his scholarship and we'll
continue him on the rolls until the end of the year. That will be kindest
After that the matter will
be
out of our control. We'll see, of <;ourse,
that he gets into the proper hands. I'm told there will be no change,
he'll go on like this, be as good as this, for four to six months.
And
so we'll just go along as usual."
So Tertan continued to sit in Section 5 of English lA, to his class–
mates still a figure of curiously dignified fun, symbol to most of
them of the respectable but absurd intellectual life. But to his teacher
he was now very different. He had not changed-he was still the
grey·
hound casting for the scent of ideas and Howe could see that he was still
the same Tertan, but he could not feel it. What he felt as he looked
at the boy sitting in his accustomed place was the hard blank of a fact.
The fact itself was formidable and depressing. But what Howe was
chiefly aware of was that· he had permitted the metamorphosis of Tertan
from person to fact.
As much as possible he avoided seeing Tertan's upraised hand
and
eager eye. But the fact did not know of its mere factuality, it continued
its existence as if it were Tertan, hand up and eye questioning, and one
day it appeared in Howe's office with a document.
"Even the spirit who lives egregiously, above the herd, must have
its relations with the fellowman," Tertan declared. He laid the document
on Howe's desk. It was headed "Quill and Scroll Society of Dwight
College. Application for Membership."
"In most ways these are crass minds," Tertan said, touching
the
paper. "Yet as a whole, bound together in their common love of letters,
they transcend their intellectual lacks since it is not a paradox that the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
"When are the elections?" Howe asked.
"They take place tomorrow."
