84
PARTISAN REVIEW
OF THIS TIME. OF THAT PLACE
(Continued from page 81)
into the interior. At last he held in his hand what he was after, a torn
and crumpled copy of
Life and Letters.
"I learned it from here," he said, holding it out.
Howe looked at him sharply, his hackles a little up. But the boy's
face was not only perfectly innocent, it even shone with a conscious
admiration. Apparently nothing of the import of the essay had touched
him except the wonderful fact that his teacher was a "man of letters."
Yet
this seemed too stupid and Howe, to test it, said, "The man who wrote
that doesn't think it's wonderful."
Tertan made a moist hissing sound as he cleared his mouth of saliva.
His head, oddly loose on his neck, wove a pattern of contempt in the
!lir. "A critic," he said, "who admits
prima facie.
that he does not under·
;tand." Then he said grandly, "It is the inevitable fate."
It was absurd, yet Howe was not only aware of the absurdity but
of a tension suddenly and wonderfully relaxed. Now that the "attack"
was on the table between himself and this strange boy and subject
to the boy's funny and absolutely certain contempt, the hidden force of"
his feeling was revealed to him in the very moment that it vanished. All
unsuspected, there had been a film over the world, a transparent but
discoloring haze of danger. But he had no time to stop over the brightened
aspect of things. Tertan was going on. "I also am a man of letters.
Putative."
"You have written a good deal?" Howe meant to be no more than
polite and he was surprised at the tenderness he heard in his words.
Solemnly the boy nodded, threw back the dank lock and sucked
in
a deep anticipatory breath. "First, a work of homiletics, which is a
defense of the principles of religious optimism against the pessimism
of Schopenhauer and the humanism of Nietzsche."
"Humanism? Why do you call it humanism?"
"It is my nomenclature for making a deity of man," Tertan replied
negligently. "Then three fictional works, novels. And numerous essays
in
science, combating materialism. Is it your duty to read these
if
I
bring them to you?"
Howe answered simply, "No, it isn't exactly my duty but I shall be
happy to read them."
Tertan stood up and remained silent. He rested his bag on the chair.
With a certain compunction-for it did not seem entirely proper that,
of two men of letters, one should have the right to blue-pencil the other,
to grade him or to question the quality of his "sentence structure"–
Howe reached for Tertan's papers. But before he could take them up, the
boy suddenly made his bow-to-Abelard, the stiff inclination of the body
with the hands seeming to emerge from the scholar's gown. Then he
was
gone,
