Ph.
D.
WALLACE MARKFIELD
T
HE GIRL
opposite Auerbach put her book down and stretched
her arms easily. Her open coat slipped off her shoulders and Auerbach
looked closely at her white blouse, watching the way her breasts
arched before the pull of her muscles. He knew that by stretching out
his foot he could nudge the tip of her shoe and she would look up
at him. But where was the girl with whom he could carry it through?
Last year there had been the little blond student, arguing concepts
with him after class, meeting him each day in the library so that
he might point out books to her. So easy
it
could have been, with her
tight, pert little body.
She rose, the girl opposite him, and Auerbach watched her down
the long aisle. Holding his eyes near the tautness of her skirt, he,
Auerbach, knew he must find it again, the warm center that lay within
history. He bent down to the book, reading quickly, transfating easily.
Epic sweep almost entered the words, and the stillness of the room
enthralled him as he sought it, almost as a Talmudist, the X quantity
of revolution. He knew that one could run naked in historiography,
lashed by the intricacies of each turn and problem. It would not be
long now before he could live in his period, know that within his
hands he held something more than a tool.
To be like Crane, the trick of objectivity combined with the
warn1th and passion that came from your own personality. Turning
fact into myth and myth into fact, and then destroying both, that
was the trick. Sometimes in class he might rouse some interest for
the first week, or even the second week. The students would do their
reading, the discussions might pierce the fatty tissue toward the center,
but then, slowly and almost artfully the thing would die out, and he
would be left cold by the sound of his own voice.
Auerbach leaned back against the chair, and made his knees a
fulcrum upon which to rest the book. The· words lost their unity,
rubbed and irritated his mind. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps there
was a method in setting up the
cahiers
in volumes of a foot and a
