RED NIGHTS
619
representation. I wasn't vain. I didn't look down on the boys. In some
ways I needed the school as much as they did, and I certainly felt
closer to them than to the children at conventional schools.)
But of course the Southbury School, except for one incident, was
as uninterested in me as the world it symbolized. Which
is
as it should
be. While I passed through the luxurious agonies of growing up,
desperately trying to get through to a psychologist in the library of the
Administration building, there were boys next door who were never
going to grow up at all, boys who would starve to death without
someone to feed them.
I was alone in the library reading
Life
magazine. A man stopped
in the hallway and looked at me through the double glass doors.
I watched him come in without raising my head.
"Hi,"
he said casually. "What are you reading?"
"Just this magazine."
"It's a good issue. I've read it myself." He spoke to me as
if
we
were old friends. "You remember me, don't you?"
It
came to me in a flash. He'd mistaken me for one of the boys.
Perhaps the boy from the movies who looked so much like me. A
bewildering array of emotions exploded simultaneously ... confu–
sion, embarrassment, a kind of childish love, apprehensiveness, but
behind it all, as steady as the solid bar of sunlight across the polished
table, triumph. The moment was at hand.
"Oh course you're not really reading it, are you?" he said. "You
mean you're looking at the pictures."
"No. I'm reading it."
"Don't you remember me? I'm Dr. Janetello."
I hesitated, trying to think up an answer, but he went on.
"Would you mind reading something for me?"
I looked down at the page. "Members of the eighty-second air–
borne reserves bailout over Colorado. Four thousand men took part
in a mock attack...."
"That's enough," he said. There were two books on the table
that I'd taken from the shelves. He picked them up.
"The Short
Stories of de M aupassant
and
Pickwick Papers.
Do you read this
too?"
"Yes. I liked
David Copperfield
so I thought I'd
try
this."
