Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

In spite of every effort on the part of his parents, however, Chris was completely silent during the meal, and immediately afterward declared that he must go home.

“I got chores to do,” he explained abruptly.

THAT NIGHT HIS PARENTS CAME as near to a quarrel as he had ever heard. He was working on the water-powered engine, a project that had now progressed beyond the drawing he had finished in school. He had worked on it only intermittently in school, for he had learned even in his brief experience with himself that there were periods when he must allow his brain to rest by putting it to other matters. If he allowed it to puzzle too long over an invention or task, then there would come a moment when it simply refused to clarify a difficulty that must of course be clarified. Every puzzlement must be clarified. What he was working on now were the angles of the paddles or wings of the wheel. Each must be slightly different from the other, yet exactly in the right relationship to every other. It was in this moment of delicate adjustment that he heard his father’s voice infused with unwonted irritation.

“But Susan, the boy is learning nothing in this school!”

His mother replied with equal vigor. “He’s learning how to live with people of his own age!”

“Susan, you don’t realize our responsibility for a brain like his!”

“I don’t want him to grow up lonely!” Her voice broke, as though she were trying not to cry.

“But he will always be lonely—you must accept the fact!”

“On certain levels I do accept it, but not on every level. He must be able to live with other people, enjoying other people even if they can’t be on his level. He must have some relief from himself.”

“He can never have relief from himself. A few hours—no, not even that. In fact, he will never be as lonely as he will be with other people.”

“Oh, why do you say that? You break my heart.”

“Well, it stands to reason—it’s when he is with other people that he will feel his difference most keenly.”

“Darling, what shall we do?”

“Teach him to accept himself. He’s a loner. We know it. He must know it—and learn that he has joys and resources that ordinary people can never know. He’ll know wonder as long as he lives—think what endless joy that will be! Always the reaching mind, always the searching curiosity! Don’t feel sorry for our son, Susan, my love. Rejoice, that unto us such a son is born! Our responsibility is to see that he fulfills himself, that he is not wasted. He must be allowed to proceed at his own top speed. No, Susan, I insist—we have to find the right school, the right teachers, even if we have to make it. Miss Downes knows it, bless her. She’s miserable at not being able to devote herself to him. That’s why she told you he should be in the sixth or seventh grade. I say he shouldn’t be in any grade but his own. He must go at his own speed. It’s our responsibility to see that he has his freedom.”

THE NEXT AUTUMN HE FOUND HIMSELF in a new school in the same town, a small new school whose principal and teacher was his own father. There were other pupils, three girls and four boys. He did not know any of them. Five of them came from neighboring towns, two boys were from his own town, their fathers professors in science. The schoolroom was a large attic above the college gymnasium. The four walls were filled with shelves of books, except for the dormer windows. The building was so high that these windows looked out on treetops, and he had the feeling of being on a mountain. There was no schedule of studies. Sometime during the day his father introduced a subject, mathematics or science or literature. He read to them, up to a point, and then, posing a problem, he left it to them to solve. They could search among the books unguided or ask for guidance if they liked. Almost always the boys searched unguided. Almost always the girls asked for guidance.

“Not because the girls are inferior,” his father told his mother one evening. “It is only because they think they are inferior.”

“Or are afraid they are,” his mother said.

“Same thing?”

“Not at all—if they’re only afraid, they still have hope.”

No one mentioned grades, no one spoke of marks. He himself grew interested in Latin because of his absorption with words, and was soon reading Virgil with relish. One language led to another and then his father introduced new teachers, a French woman, an aging Italian singer whose voice had cracked, the Spanish professor who was the head of the foreign language department in the college.

His father drew upon the college faculty for all their teachers. New pupils came from other parts of the country, until they reached the limit of twenty.

His father seemed to exert no pressure upon his pupils, but if a pupil lagged in curiosity or concentration he paid particular heed to that one for a matter of weeks until curiosity awakened again. If it did not, the pupil was returned to where he came from.

“Why did you send Brad back to New York, Father?”

“Talent isn’t enough, brains aren’t enough,” his father replied. “There has to be the hunger and thirst to know that involves energy and perseverance. I try to rouse the desire to know. If I fail, then I send the child home to his parents.”

“You’re experimenting with these children,” his mother observed somewhat coldly.

“It’s an experiment,” his father agreed. “But I am not making it. I am only discovering what is there—or not there. I am sorting.”

HE WAS TWELVE WHEN HE was ready for college entrance examinations and he passed them with ease.

“Now,” his father said, “you are ready to see the world for yourself. I’ve been saving for years for this day. Your mother, you, and I are going on a long, long journey. We may be gone for several years. Then, perhaps at sixteen, you’ll go to college. I don’t know. You may not want to go.”

Alas, the long, long journey with his father and mother was never to take place. Instead his father took an entirely different journey with them—a lonely journey into death. It began so slowly that none of them noticed its beginning.

“You are working too hard,” his mother said to his father one day in June. They were to go abroad in July.

“I’ll rest a week or two after school closes,” his father replied.

He remembered his father always as tall and thin, and he had scarcely noticed his suddenly excessive thinness. Now he looked at his father. As usually they did after their evening meal, they sat on the cool side porch, facing the lawn enclosed by a hedge high enough to shield them from the street. His father lay outstretched on a long chair. Nothing more was said. They sat listening to the music from the stereo in the living room. But he was to remember that evening forever, because, after his mother had spoken, he examined his father’s face as he leaned back in his chair, the eyes closed, the lips pale, the cheeks hollowed. He observed a certain fragility that had not been a part of his father’s natural appearance. That night he went to bed anxious, and he drew his mother aside. “Is my father sick?” he asked.

“He’s going to the hospital the day after school closes and have a thorough checkup,” his mother said, and she pursed her lips together firmly.

He hesitated, noticing everything without knowing, as he always did, the shape of his mother’s lips, the upper one bowed, the lower full, a beautiful mouth. And at the same moment the environment impressed itself upon his senses, the open windows and the triangled leaves of the sycamore trees stirring in the breeze, the picture upon the wall over the mantelpiece of soft green hills, a winding country road, a stone wall, a house and barn, and over it all the mistiness of early spring. SPRING AT WOODSTOCK, the top of the frame read. Woodstock, Vermont, was his mother’s hometown, and the picture, she always said, kept her from being homesick here in Ohio. But there seemed nothing more to say, and he went on his way to his room and bed.