You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [23]
“I do, sir.”
“So why make the point?”
“You asked us to correct you, sir.”
“Indeed I did. I also asked you not to call me sir and yet you’ve done so three times since I made that request.”
“It’s habit, sir. Sorry.”
I remember their exchange because Mr. Silver indulged Colin. It would have been so much easier to brush him off, to ignore his questions, to tell him to shut up. But he played the game. Teachers, in my experience, didn’t do that kind of thing. They didn’t banter with the class clown. They were always trying to get somewhere before the bell rang. They didn’t have the confidence to risk being outsmarted by one of us.
Mr. Silver didn’t seem to have anywhere to go. He didn’t seem concerned with covering the chapter or even finishing the conversations we’d started.
“What’s with the scribble, Mr. Silver?” Hala asked, exasperated by the conversation.
He smiled at her and turned back to Colin, “Are we finished?”
Colin nodded.
“Before we deal with the scribble let’s deal with the, to be true to the translated text, paper knife. Hala, what does Sartre say about the paper knife?”
“He says that a letter opener,” she smiled at him, flirting, “has an essence before it exists.”
“Exactly. Unlike?”
“Unlike me.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that according to Sartre we have no essence before we exist. Meaning that we, unlike a letter opener or a paper knife are here without some, like, preconceived plan for what we’re here for.”
Mr. Silver nodded his head slowly and smiled at Hala.
“Precisely,” he said taking a dramatic pause. “And why is that relevant or interesting at all? Why should we care? What are the implications of that idea? What does it have to do with your lives? Why would Sartre have any reason to defend existentialism? After all, the purpose for giving this lecture in the first place was as a defense of existentialism.”
Immediately, Colin answered. “Why should we take for granted that it even is interesting? That we should care? That there are any implications? That it has anything to do with our lives?”
Colin leaned back with his thin arms crossed across his chest and his eyebrows raised.
Mr. Silver looked at Colin. We were all watching him. He held Colin’s gaze and then slowly a faint grin appeared.
“Would anyone like to answer Colin’s questions?”
“Because, dude, one thing is that it totally denies the existence of God.”
This was Lily who’d been sitting next to me drawing a looping design in her notebook. Lily, with her long hippie skirts and giant sweaters, her hemp bag and her ever-changing braids, looked down at her drawing and shook her head.
“What’s your name?”
She told him, still looking down at her paper, her cheeks flushed as if embarrassed by her outburst and its passion.
“Go on, Lily,” he said looking at Colin who was staring at the ceiling.
She took a breath and looked, for the first time, directly at Colin. She waited for him to make eye contact and when he did he shrugged his shoulders and widened his eyes aggressively.
“Look, man. If there’s no plan for us before we’re born then either God doesn’t exist or he’s just fucking with us. Sorry.”
Silver shook his head, “Go on. Say what you have to say.”
“O.K., so if God has no plan for us, or doesn’t exist at all then a lot of people are going to be pissed off. So that’s one thing. And the other thing is that if Sartre’s right, if we’re here and there’s no reason then we’re pretty much fucked. Sorry.”
We laughed, thrilling at the novelty of obscenity in the classroom. Silver shrugged his shoulders, “Can anyone add to that? Is Lily right? Let’s assume for the sake of this discussion that Sartre is right, that there is no plan and, even, that there’s no God. Are we, as Lily suggests, ‘pretty much fucked’?”
Sitting in the dead middle of the classroom, Abdul Al Mady, wide-eyed and nervous, nodded his head.
Silver turned to him. “This seems to interest you. Tell me your name.”
“Abdul,” he said quietly. “And, um, I, I don’t know what you’re saying really. God exists and it