Meeting the Enemy

HE AWOKE ONE morning in Winthrop to gray and red, colors of perfidy. Bricks, rain and Memorial Hall: blood, sweat, tears. A slight stomache ache precluded moussaka. Time to ask big questions, time to consider things buried in black and white reading lists. So he was driven to sleep 12 hours at a time, to postpone thinking although ideas danced fitfully. He contemplated writing a book on procrastination, but he knew he'd never finish. Thin layers of tension peeled away, evincing gastric elegies. Thought would have to wait.

He awoke the next morning in sterile Stillman to gray and white. Safely sheltered away from the outside's pall, he rolled over and roalled their whispers. Disease had attacked his glands, his spleen, his liver. Is he a drinker? they asked down the hall. No, his friends answered. But could we please have gamma globulin shots just to make sure? You won't get it, don't worry, his friends were told. He hoped his friends wouldn't get "it." Elsie's could not be seen from his bed, but no matter; the roast beef specials would wait, wait in the small, cold corner of his cranium, along with Bartley burgers and egg rolls.

A mist settled into rain, and The Garage, a bit to the right--neck bend necessary--conjured smells of rubber tire. Perne in a gyre. Do we dare remember the burden of the past? Rain resolved into puddles, 7:30 a.m., an hour and a half more to the burden bestowed by Weimar--or was it Bismarck?--no, his eyes waxed yellow, his urine bilious. Hitler would have to wait.

Hostage in arid white Stillman, he didn't care at all. He rather liked it; the disease had consumed him, and his person would absorb it. He was one bloated gland. He would not relent.

Tom Brokaw's pleasant rasp filled the room. A profound sense of food notstalgia beset him. He was a glass of apple juice. Jane Pauley began to cloy, and abruptly disappeared. Nothing to read. He would kill the nurse if she ever again opened the blinds and woke him and took his blood at 7:30 a.m.

A sticky day and his t-shirt was wet with sweat. He chose to forego the thick air, so he stayed prone and parched until he felt stiff and starched. Consider the limit as n approaches infinity...if n is infinitely far away, what of 2n? A sticky question, so take instead the limits to growth...when does a less developed country become developed? When does mortality end and force begin? Sketch the graph. Draw the line. Are martyrs altruists or egoistic hedonists at heart? But it all harks back to the distinction between Nazism and Hitlerism--if, in fact, one exists...

The nurse was treading dangerously. He needed a weapon, maybe the syringe which sapped his blood. Properly aimed, released with sufficient velocity...he started calculating the arc. Maybe he would grab the electric thermometer and use it as a bludgeon. But he would have to wait.

THE HOLLOW ROOM vibrated with the sounds of the streets of Tehran. His mind walked the streets of Cambridge, footsteps echoing. Perini's boys were digging up the Square, rat tat tat. He heard the brutality inflicted on the helpless pavement, and yelled for them to stop. They wouldn't, so he shivered and screamed at the cranes, "Louder, louder!" The noise persisted. He rolled over to swing apple juice.

At 3:30 a.m., he arose to open the blinds. It was blacked out. Happy that the gray had dissipated, he fell asleep in the chair, staring into the dark.

At 7:30 a.m., the nurse shook him awake, and scolded him for sleeping without a blanket. She survived.

Fine, he would take the test, the test of wills, of the will to power, the will to survive. He would will, but still, the gray sky and purplish blood and jaundice and the nurse and Elsie's and Hitler tortured him. He thought he would fail the test

They all told him not to be impatient. "It could be three days or three months," they said. They really didn't know. They, or course, were the enemy. With reasonable certainty, they could predict that they weren't quite sure just how long it would be. They only brought him apple juice and syringes. They were winning.

Discuss, compare and contrast. 'Frame a number of questions relevant to this course. Answer them. Be prepared to support your response. Present evidence. This is only a test...

He had angst, plenty of angst. He knew he would be free soon, only to be trapped. All the tutors to see, sheepish explanations to be proffered, books he would have to skim, words he would have to write. More enemies than he had imagined. Brokaw blared, Pauley pouted. In Tehran, they shouted.

The nurse disturbed him no longer. He didn't care about relinquishing blood. He loved the smell of apple juice in the morning. The bright white room shielded him from the gray and red and sweat and tears.

Then they told him he could leave. Suddenly, he walking the streets, alone, toward the Charles. Hunched, his head began to throb, then pound, then implode. Bismarck, and the rest of them, awaited.