THE FEAR OF INNOCENCE
789
"All right, I'm a whore! A sweet, green revolutionary whore
full of jism-a lucky, smart whore you'd give a complete set of Lenin
to change places with."
"No-I don't think so. It's hard to be sure, but I really don't-"
I was a damn sight more certain than I sounded, but I dared not
say so; -I dared not.
I
bang the desk now with that little muscle on
the underside of my palm, grown tough from such banging, but
I
cannot redeem that pastness. Hal had taught me envy and envy un–
nerved me; when
I
had first met
him
he was writing little stories
for boys' Sunday School magazines, and afterwards fishing pieces for
Field and Stream;
later there would be those deliberate compositions
that would win prizes in National Collegiate Writing Contests
("There's always a formula,-any jerk can learn it,
if
he can learn
anything!"), while I could still only hope that my continued clum–
siness was the warrant of some scruple guarding from premature
success a talent that would not die with the boy's undifferentiated
itching. And so I never dared open myself to the reproach of envy,
to say simply,
"It
is wrong,
wrong.
I certainly would not do it."
I could not seem to advocate virtue, to play the Pharisee for
truth's sake even. Confined to the resources of the sneer, the blase
wink-or else acceptance,
I
ignored the possibility of saying,
"I
despise
and
envy you; let us forgive one another," but endured the
rewards of callow pragmatism, tried in my embarrassment the kid's
conventional irony: "Not me! I'm too young for such glory!"
"He's too young-He doesn't think so! All one-legged blas–
phemers of Jesus, he doesn't
think
so. Listen! you'd like the three–
volume edition of Proust boxed, a subscription to the
New Masses,
orchestra seats to a play every week and cocktails after the show-"
"Not a purely intellectual appeal,
I
see. The flesh is- "
But he didn't stop for my interruption; it was as if his demon–
stration that he came dear at least beyond the customary par of con–
tempt, depended not only on the sum of these items, but on the speed
of the telling, the impact of their totality. "A new casting rod, con–
certs, operas, and-maybe (I'll have your testes if you tell this to
anyone) -just maybe, Harvard!"
"And what's your quid pro quo, and how many fingers does
it take?"
"Fingers! Fingers! the crudity of the rising generation, the
