You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [64]
Silver nodded impatiently, his slight gesture bordering on the ironic. “Anyone else?” he asked.
I raised my hand now. It was a formality I’d long ago abandoned. My own ironic gesture. Silver turned to me. He’d walked to the window and opened it and was leaning with his elbow resting on the frame, looking away from us. I felt the cold air chill the sweat on my neck. I was grateful for the cold, thankful that he’d opened the window and again, I felt sympathy for him, warmth, and I wondered briefly if perhaps he’d opened the window for me, seen my face flushed, the sweat on my forehead. I wished for it. And again I felt as if I were betraying him.
But I kept my hand raised.
“You don’t have to,” he began still looking away from us. Then he turned back to the room, shook his head and said, “Yes, Gilad,” in the same tone he might have used with Ariel.
I was holding my notebook open. “Can I read you something? It’s Sartre.”
He nodded and I read, “‘What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterward.’”
Again, there was nothing. No response. No noise. No shuffling of papers, or the sound of pen pushing across paper, no whispering. I looked at Silver, who raised his eyes at me and said nothing.
“‘Encounters himself.’ You said that to encounter yourself, it’s the point when you suddenly understand, when you begin, when you no longer can pretend that life is otherwise, when you realize the truth of the world. That’s more or less what you said, I think. That’s how I have it.” Again, I spoke with the faintest edge of irony and in false deference.
“Yes,” Silver replied. “I think that’s right. Yes.”
“And you think that your students, not to mention all the other kids here who you don’t teach, but who know you, who see you around, who hear about you. You think they’ve encountered themselves?”
When he didn’t answer, I returned to my notebook and read aloud the Camus passage I’d read on Saturday in the Square Laurent Prache:
It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm—this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.
I read slowly with a confidence and strength of voice I’d never possessed in his class, or, perhaps, ever in my life. I expected to hear noise, Ariel whispering to Aldo, Lily giggling, but no one made a noise.
“You think, Mr. Silver, that those sophomores you teach, that they’re weary? That for them the why has arisen?”
I was sweating again despite the cold air filling the room.
Silver nodded slowly, watching me carefully, as if confirming something to himself. He smiled and this time it was something else, pride perhaps. And in that smile I felt satisfaction, pleasure, happiness, all because he’d been impressed, because he was pleased with me. He smiled and nodded and closed the window and returned to his desk, to his usual place.
“I do,” he said. “Yes. However, you clearly disagree, Gilad. You’ve certainly done your homework.”
I shook my head. I was no longer angry. He’d disarmed me.
“We have, sir, we’ve done our homework, Gilad, and I,” Colin said.
And then Ariel began: “What crap. What total crap. What a cop out. You think you can do what you want to do? That the responsibility is on us? On the students? You claim, like, what? That it’s all just equal? That you have no more power than we do? No advantage?”
Silver had pushed himself off the desk and was standing facing her. She had gone so red it seemed the blood was seeping into her eyes.
“Ariel, watch the way you speak to me, I—”
“Why? Because you’re the teacher? And I’m the student? You can do as you like, right? And then you make it all O.K., justify it all with this bullshit?” She flipped her copy of The Stranger onto