Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

From the contagion of the world’s slow stain

He is secure, and now can never mourn

A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;

Professor Mollison came bustling in with the half-apologetic smile of an absent-minded man who is afraid he is always late. He stopped at the door, sensing by the quiet that this was no ordinary Tuesday morning in his classroom. He peered nearsightedly at Crane writing swiftly in rounded chalk letters on the blackboard.

Mollison took out his glasses and read for a moment, then went over to the window without a word and stood there looking out, a graying, soft-faced, rosy-cheeked old man, the soberness of his expression intensified by the bright sunlight at the window.

“Nor,” Crane was writing, the chalk making a dry sound in the silence,

when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn ,

With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn .

When Crane had finished, he put the chalk down neatly and stepped back to look at what he had written. A girl’s laugh came in on the fragrance of cut grass through the open window and there was a curious hushing little intake of breath all through the room.

The bell rang, abrasively, for the beginning of classes. When the bell stopped, Crane turned around and faced the students seated in rows before him. He was a lanky, skinny boy, only nineteen, and he was already going bald. He hardly ever spoke in class and when he spoke, it was in a low, harsh whisper.

He didn’t seem to have any friends and he never was seen with girls and the time he didn’t spend in class he seemed to spend in the library. Crane’s brother had played fullback on the football team, but the brothers had rarely been seen together, and the fact that the huge, graceful athlete and the scarecrow bookworm were members of the same family seemed like a freak of eugenics to the students who knew them both.

Steve knew why Crane had come early to write the two verses of Shelley’s lament on the clean morning blackboard. The Saturday night before, Crane’s brother had been killed in an automobile accident on the way back from the game, which had been played in San Francisco. The funeral had taken place yesterday, Monday. Now it was Tuesday morning and Crane’s first class since the death of his brother.

Crane stood there, narrow shoulders hunched in a bright tweed jacket that was too large for him, surveying the class without emotion. He glanced once more at what he had written, as though to make sure the problem he had placed on the board had been correctly solved, then turned again to the group of gigantic, blossoming, rosy California boys and girls, unnaturally serious and a little embarrassed by this unexpected prologue to their class, and began to recite.

He recited flatly, without any emotion in his voice, moving casually back and forth in front of the blackboards, occasionally turning to the text to flick off a little chalk dust, to touch the end of a word with his thumb, to hesitate at a line, as though he had suddenly perceived a new meaning in it.

Mollison, who had long ago given up any hope of making any impression on the sun-washed young California brain with the fragile hammer of nineteenth-century Romantic poetry, stood at the window, looking out over the campus, nodding in rhythm from time to time and occasionally whispering a line, almost silently, in unison with Crane.

“‘… an unlamented urn,’” Crane said, still as flat and unemphatic as ever, as though he had merely gone through the two verses as a feat of memory. The last echo of his voice quiet now in the still room, he looked out at the class through his thick glasses, demanding nothing. Then he went to the back of the room and sat down in his chair and began putting his books together.

Mollison, finally awakened from his absorption with the sunny lawn, the whirling sprinklers, the shadows of the trees speckling in the heat and the wind, turned away from the window and walked slowly to his desk. He peered nearsightedly for a moment at the script crammed on the blackboards, then said, absently, “On the death of Keats. The class is excused.”

For once, the students filed out silently, making a point, with youthful good manners, of not looking at Crane, bent over at his chair, pulling books together.

Steve was nearly the last one to leave the room and he waited outside the door for Crane. Somebody had to say something, do something, whisper “I’m sorry,” shake the boy’s hand. Steve didn’t want to be the one, but there was nobody else left. When Crane came out, Steve fell into place beside him and they went out of the building together.

“My name is Dennicott,” Steve said.

“I know,” said Crane.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.” There was no trace of grief in Crane’s voice or manner. He blinked through his glasses at the sunshine, but that was all.

“Why did you do that?”

“Did you object?” The question was sharp but the tone was mild, offhand, careless.

“Hell, no,” Steve said. “I just want to know why you did it.”

“My brother was killed Saturday night,” Crane said.

“I know.”

“‘The death of Keats. The class is excused.’” Crane chuckled softly but without malice. “He’s a nice old man, Mollison. Did you ever read the book he wrote about Marvell?”

“No,” Steve said.

“Terrible book,” Crane said. “You really want to know?” He peered with sudden sharpness at Steve.

“Yes,” Steve said.

“Yes,” Crane said absently, brushing at his forehead, “you would be the one who would ask. Out of the whole class. Did you know my brother?”

“Just barely,” Steve said. He thought about Crane’s brother, the fullback. A gold helmet far below on a green field, a number (what number?), a doll brought out every Saturday to do skillful and violent maneuvers in a great wash of sound, a photograph in a program, a young, brutal face looking out a little scornfully from the page. Scornful of what? Of whom? The inept photographer? The idea that anyone would really be interested in knowing what face was on that numbered doll? The notion that what he was doing was important enough to warrant this attempt to memorialize him, so that somewhere, in somebody’s attic fifty years from now, that young face would still be there, in the debris, part of some old man’s false memory of his youth?

“He didn’t seem much like John Keats to you, did he?” Crane stopped under a tree, in the shade, to rearrange the books under his arm. He seemed oppressed by sunshine and he held his books clumsily and they were always on the verge of falling to the ground.

“To be honest,” Steve said, “no, he didn’t seem much like John Keats to me.”

Crane nodded gently. “But I knew him,” he said. “I knew him. And nobody who made those goddamned speeches at the funeral yesterday knew him. And he didn’t believe in God or in funerals or those goddamned speeches. He needed a proper ceremony of farewell,” Crane said, “and I tried to give it to him. All it took was a little chalk, and a poet, and none of those liars in black suits. Do you want to take a ride today?”

“Yes,” Steve said without hesitation.

“I’ll meet you at the library at eleven,” Crane said. He waved stiffly and hunched off, gangling, awkward, ill-nourished, thin-haired, laden with books, a discredit to the golden Coastal legend.

They drove north in silence. Crane had an old Ford without a top and it rattled so much and the wind made so much noise as they bumped along that conversation would have been almost impossible, even if they had wished to talk. Crane bent over the wheel, driving nervously, with an excess of care, his long pale hands gripping the wheel tightly. Steve hadn’t asked where they were going and Crane hadn’t told him. Steve hadn’t been able to get hold of Adele to tell her he probably wouldn’t be back in time to have lunch with her, but there was nothing to be done about that now. He sat back, enjoying the sun and the yellow, burnt-out hills and the long, grayish-blue swells of the Pacific beating lazily into the beaches and against the cliffs of the coast. Without being told, he knew that this ride somehow was a continuation of the ceremony in honor of Crane’s brother.