Vol. 16 No. 1 1949 - page 18

PARTISAN REVIEW
was able again to hear,
"really
good! Of course, I know very little
about Plato--"
"Plato--a fascist! Socrates-a worse fascist!" A middle-aged,
untidy man had thrust between our shoulders an emphatic head,
something just short of madness in the frantic eyes, the compulsive
facial gestures.
A
moment later his body followed. "Goodman, a
plumber!" he declared himself in
his
spasmodic phrasing, and sensing
our bewilderment, "Goodman-the name. Plumber-the profession."
And he added, to make sure we had not forgotten the occasion of
his
materialization, "Plato--a fascist!"
"You'll have to define your terms, Mr. Goodman," Timothy
rebuked
him
with the mild disdain of the schoolteacher.
"Terms!" The word apparently enraged him beyond control.
"An academician! Listen, young man-when the Republicans took
from Franco Toledo, where do you think was the last stand from
the fascist militia,
hah?"
He stopped dramatically, his eyes plunging
from one of us to another in desperate patience. "No answer. I,
Goodman, I'll tell you. In the University. In the office from the
Philosophy Department. Terms!" He subsided into a furious and
triumphant silence.
"That's no answer. Answer Mr. Cargill-he said define your
terms!" It was a new voice, truculent, not quite certain, and looking
up I saw that the young man who had sat beside me in the Reading
Room, the one with the extraordinary neck, had joined us. It seemed
to me strange that he had appeared on so trite a phrase, like anyone.
I wondered
if,
perhaps, he were wholly unconscious of his strange
skill.
Goodman jerked his head forward in violent recognition and
disgust.
"You!
You, I know, Professor Simone." The boy, it ap–
peared, taught Literature occasionally as a substitute in our High
Schools. "Back to your Ivory Tower!"
"Answer him, that's
all,"
Simone persisted, almost whining, "just
answer him."
I do not recall quite how
it
happened, but a few moments later
we were
all
(except Mrs. Johnson who had gone off saying something
about a baby-sitter) in a beer-joint around the corner, screaming
at each other. For the first time in my life, I had left the Library
without pausing on the steps to permit myself a full awareness of it:
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