The Fires of Spring by James A. Michener
David learned that if he wanted to talk with Joe Vaux he would have to learn a great deal about Russia. He read many books and never quite understood what it was that had happened. But for some strange reason he would not tell Vaux what he knew about Tschilczynski. He had learned, for example, that the great mathematician had taught in St. Petersburg and that he had fled to Paris during the Revolution. A Quaker had met him there and brought him back to Dedham, where other Quakers had taught him the rudiments of English and had paid his salary at the college.
Then one day Joe Vaux burst into David’s room and cried, “I knew! I knew if I stuck on his neck long enough I’d find out!” He closed the door with soft caution and confided to David, “Tschilczynski’s a counter-revolutionist! He’s meeting with a group of White Russians in Philadelphia.”
David refused to comment. Instead, he asked, “Why are you so worried about the Revolution?”
Vaux dropped his hands and stared at his friend. “I’m worried about everything!” he said. “I’m worried about Mexico and Yugoslavia and Germany. Aren’t you?”
“No,” David admitted.
The slim, gnarled Bostonian was about to explode but he controlled himself and grinned at David. “You’ll wake up some day! Guys from … Where is it? Cow Center? You just need more sleep than the rest of us.”
And that first autumn at Dedham there were other stirrings and brooding thoughts that must be part of any good college. A droning professor would say somthing that suddenly illuminated the known world like a vast light. Or at night the student body would burst into an unpredictable display of emotion over a football game. Bonfires would flame toward the sky and florid speeches such as Scipio might have delivered erupted from student leaders. The meager college band would play, mostly off key, and a hundred night voices would softly intone the opening words of the song that would forever haunt David’s mind with a sense of autumn: “Fair Dedham, in that distant day …”
Immanuel Tschilczynski was a mammoth man. He was well over six feet tall and towered above the rostrum from which he tried to explain the principles of mathematics. He wore a shaggy moustache that spilled over his lip like a muddy waterfall, and a dull scar led from the right corner of his mouth. Students were of two opinions about that scar. Some said Tschilczynski got it when his wife gashed him—in Lwow, of all places—with a razor. Others maintained that it was a relic of the professor’s student days in Germany.
If David had kept his mouth shut he would not have become involved with Professor Tschilczynski, but he had a habit of solving algebraic equations instantaneously, under his breath, He had worked so diligently with Miss Chaloner that college algebra was quite a bore, for when the Russian wrote an equation like x2 + 45x = −164, David would see at once that the answer must be (x + 41) and (x + 4).
One day Dr. Tschilczynski saw David’s lips moving and guessed what was happening. He asked his student to solve four quadratics in rapid succession. “How are you doink it?” the Russian demanded.
“I think of them as compensating reciprocals on a slide rule.”
“You knowink the rule, yes?”
“Yes, sir. I imagine the reciprocal index to C. Then I guess what the factors are.”
The professor dropped his chalk and said, “You mean … you gan wisualize a rule? Set? In your head?”
“Yes,” David replied.
Tschilczynski wrote three complicated quadratics on the board. Then, where David could not see, he wrote the correct answers for the class to watch. “Now, you like to tryink this one?” he asked. David rattled off the answers and grinned as the students applauded. “Now this one,” Tschilczynski directed. Again the answer was relatively simple. “And now!” the Russian said. “We tryink maybe this one, too!”
“I don’t seem to get that one,” David said. “Must be some decimal places. If I had to guess I’d say 3.6 and something like 43.7.”
Professor Tschilczynski opened a drawer and produced a beautiful twenty-inch rule. “Try this,” he said. David fumbled with it for a moment and then found two scales he knew.
“Well,” he laughed nervously. “I was off on that one!”
“The gorrect answers?” Tschilczynski asked. David read them rapidly and the class applauded again. The towering Russian nodded gravely, as if the accolade were for him. “How were you disgoverink this?” he asked David.
“I had a very good teacher,” David replied.
The professor’s face broke into a massive grin. He raised his big, stubby hands in the air and said, “You had one egzellent teacher! Tomorrow you report to galgulus. Algebra you know already too much.”
But calculus was too difficult for David. He studied hard to catch up, but whenever he faced the difficult formulae his mind came to a jolting stop. After several such experiences his stomach muscles began to tighten up and he underwent sweaty frustration.
“I can get this!” he swore to himself. “If those other lunks can get it, I can.” But he did not catch on. Much of his difficulty was caused by Professor Tschilczynski, whose explanations of the calculus merely confused him. The great Russian would stand at the board and his eyes would light up with pleasure at the beautiful process he was about to unravel. But after a few bumbling phrases he would start to write equations with either his left or right hand—or with both—and when the board was in hopeless chaos he would start to erase terms with the heel of his hand until only a simple equation remained. Then he would smile like a child and cry, “So you seeink! It’s obwious!” He was known among his students as Old Obwious, but David did not learn the calculus.
For a week he ignored his other classes and started painstakingly at the beginning of his book, pondering each step. Still he did not learn and became irritated. He remained after class and said, “I don’t think I can keep up with this class.”
The big Russian grinned with real pleasure. “Is wery diffgult, galgulus? Good! Pretty soon it all gomes glear, like daylight. Then you seeink how beautiful it is!”
So David went back to his midnight desk and his calculus book. “I’ll learn this damned thing,” he muttered over and over. He cut classes for two days and stayed pinned to the slim volume of principles that eluded him. At night he could not sleep because of the writhing formulae that twisted through his mind, and then on the third day, about eleven o’clock in the morning, the vast design took shape. It was wonderful and pleasing. He closed his hot eyes and admitted, “I’d like to be a math professor. This is what I’ve been looking for.” He did not confide to himself that what he sought was a world of neat categories organized into known patterns. At Paradise he had tried submerging himself in the fiery, intemperate world of poetry and love. The experience had been too vital for him to hammer into neat shapes. “I want to be a mathematician,” he said that morning. “I like the cleanness of it.”
When he informed Tschilczynski of this the big Russian clapped him on the shoulder. “Fine! Today you begome my assistant. Then we plan your future! University of Tchicago. Maybe Leipsic! Gambridge!”
But when David submitted his first batch of corrected exam papers for the Russian’s review he received a shock. “What you runnink?” Tschilczynski cried. “Yet a kindergarten?” He pointed to a red 15 that David had added onto an otherwise dull paper. “What’s this?” he demanded.
“We always got 15 for neatness and setting up the paper right,” he explained.
In a rage Tschilczynski tore up the papers and grabbed a fresh pile. “Like this we gorrect!” he stormed. With a red pencil he flashed through the papers. “In one million years this one don’t gatch the idea!” he bellowed. “Zero!” He stamped it furiously upon the offending paper. “Is too much, already, zero!” he shouted at the next. He whisked through the yellow sheets, looking always for those papers which displayed correct processes of analysis. When he had them segregated, he marked each with a violent 100. He started to give the others zero, but David interrupted.
“Some of those are not so bad!” he in
The brooding Russian hesitated. “Which ones you think-ink?” he asked.
David shuffled the papers for more than four minutes, with Tschilczynski staring over his shoulder. “These,” he said. “You can’t give them zero.”
“By me is OK,” Tschilczynski cried. “Them we give 60.” He splashed the mark across each paper and David thought: “I’ll change them later.” Then the Russian asked, “What’s this neatness you talk about?”
David explained Miss Chaloner’s theory of mathematics as training in precision and beauty. At this Tschilczynski exploded. “Neatness, margins, straight lines!” he bellowed. “In mathematigs is only one thing! That understanding, way down deep. Is he got that? OK, he’s yet a mathematician.”
The big Russian continued, stamping up and down his narrow office. “Nice lines! Bah! For twelf dollars a week you are gettink draftsmen to do that. Nice lines anybody can draw. In Ameriga you got already one million men gan draw nice lines. But to wisualize a problem! To see all sides at once. That don’t come from no nice lines! I’m tellink you, David, the best way to be a rotten man is to bother with nice lines!”
Suddenly Tschilczynski stopped ranting and grabbed a pencil. He scribbled equations until they spilled over onto a second sheet. “Look!” he cried joyously. “I knew it! All day long I been tryink to solve that equation. How beautiful it is!” He stood back and studied the problem that had preyed upon his mind since breakfast. Even when quarreling with David he had been pondering that complex thought. He dropped the sheet and said quietly, “I tell you what, David. You takink them papers home. You give some of them higher marks. Maybe I was too egzited.”
But if Tschilczynski thought a fugitive equation could get him excited, he had much to learn. Joe Vaux started auditing second-semester calculus. He sat in profound contemplation of Tschilczynski’s more than customarily turgid explanations. He leaned far forward in his chair and nodded sagely whenever the Russian said, “From there, it’s obwious …” Tschilczynski derived comfort from the fact that at last a student could keep up with him. He was a bit surprised, therefore, when Vaux rose to his feet upon the invitation: “Any qvestions?”
“Yes, professor,” the wiry young man said. “Do you think that the free spirit of science can flourish in a capitalist society?”
Tschilczynski wiped his forehead. “What kind of a qvestion is that?” he asked. “We go on with the lesson.”
That night the story about Joe Vaux’s question skipped about the campus. The sager students took it as further proof that Joe was a trouble maker. On Thursday some of the senior men discussed the problem of what to do with this difficult freshman, and on Friday Dr. Tschilczynski’s class was crowded.
When his first demonstration ended in customary obscurity, Tschilczynski asked if there were any questions. Vaux rose and asked, “Do you agree that in the field of abstract science as well as in the field of applied science Soviet specialists are far ahead of those in capitalist countries?”
“I must ask you …” the professor began.
“Throw him out!” an engineer cried, and before Tschilczynski could intercede, four husky football players grabbed lean Joe Vaux and dragged him from the room.
This caused consternation on the campus. A faculty investigation followed which uncovered embarrassing situations. For example, Dr. Tschilczynski had no idea who was in his classes. Furthermore, Joe Vaux was attending nine different classes and flunking three for which he was duly registered.
It was agreed that Joe would have to be dismissed, and news of this was welcomed on the campus; but before the sentence could be put into effect Dr. Tschilczynski reported to the president and argued with him for more than an hour. That night the Russian said to David, “A uniwersity is got no right to set itself up as a geeper of little rules and regulations. Let Mr. Waux take fifty glasses, if he can get an edugation that way. A uniwersity is …”
“This is only a college,” David interrupted. The Russian stopped and looked at him.
“True,” the professor said. “A collitch is yet a small uniwersity. But it must not be small in the big things. Things like gettink an edugation.”
The upshot was that Mr. and Mrs. Vaux were called down to Dedham. They were remarkable people, not at all like the substantial parents from Philadelphia who preened themselves on the fact that their daughters had been invited to the Phi Kappi Psi dance or that their sons played football. The Vauxes were tight, belligerent Irish people who had worked bitterly hard all their lives. They were bewildered by Dedham and mortified that their son should be in trouble. They made him promise to behave. “No more roisterin’,” Mr. Vaux warned him. “A boy like you gets a chance like this once in a million years.”
They liked David and cautiously asked him if he would keep an eye on their son. “Watch after him,” Mrs. Vaux pleaded; but the entire visit was torn into a wrenching experience when it came time for the bewildered couple to go back to Boston. Joe and David took them to the station, where Joe promised them again that he would behave. Then, as the train came around the bend, Joe suddenly caught his parents’ hands and held them, gnarled and knotted, in David’s face.
“These are the badges of their honor!” Vaux said, as if he were about to cry. “Look at them!”
The train puffed to a stop and Joe kissed his parents good-bye. “What did you mean by doing that?” David asked.
Vaux turned on him furiously as the train chugged away. “What have you ever done to justify yourself on this earth?” he demanded. All the way back to the dormitory he railed at David as if he hated him, and before David could reply four big upper-classmen came to take Vaux away.
“We want to talk with you!” the big men said.
Next day the story broke all over the campus. The student leaders had taken Joe to a room and messed him up a bit “to knock some sense into his head.” But Joe had broken loose and had grabbed a chair. He had also kicked one of the seniors in the crotch, so that a true roughhouse had developed. “He’s a regular alley fighter!” the senior men reported.
The faculty heard about this and considered firing Joe for good, but when they saw the respect that Joe and the seniors now had for one another they dropped proceedings. Dr. Tschilczynski explained this to David: “Sometimes is even Qvakers got to see that a little physical wiolence is necessary. It glears up the air, sort of.”
If David had avoided going to Dr. Tschilczynski’s room, he might still have escaped involvement with the big Russian; but one day the professor said, “You like to gorrect your papers with me, yes?” and he led David to his quarters.
His room was a gloomy, forbidding place, in the home of a Greek restaurant-keeper’s widow. She was a blowsy Southern European who took no pains to keep the professor’s room clean. At first she had tried to do so, but he had complained that she mussed his papers. Now she left the big, sloppy man alone.
There was a samovar in the middle of the room and beneath it a battered tin of solidified alcohol. His clothes closet was merely a section of the room partitioned off by beaver board and green draperies that did not close. There were two unmatched stuffed chairs, and it was easy to detect which was the professor’s, for it was smeared with butter. There was a sink in the corner filled with saucers and glasses.
But more than the dirt David noticed the books and papers. Tschilczynski had hundreds of books piled about the floor in toppling stacks. His two tables were hidden by jumbled papers, on top of which rested the plates from which he had eaten his lunch. With a generous brush of his hand the Russian indicated his American quarters and said, “I abologize for the appearance. I’m yet a wery dirty man.” He cleared a space for David at one of the tables and dragged up the battered chair. “I let you use my chair,” he said.
Soon David was immersed in his work, oblivious of the confusion about him. Then he looked up and saw that the restaurant-keeper’s widow was cleaning the room and Tschilczynski was gone. David smiled at her and she blushed like a peas
The widow giggled, grabbed a trayful of dishes and said in parting, “Men! Men!”
Outside, in the yard, the Russian called lustily for David to come to the window. “A robin!” he cried. “Loog at him chumping!” The big man studied the friendly bird for some minutes and banged his way back into the room. “Gomes sprink,” he said like a poet, “I got to be movink. Listen to me, David. Never make good resolutions in the winter. Always in the sprink That’s when life starts to roll, I tell you.”
That night he walked David back to the dormitories and in the quadrangle he had a happy idea. “Tomorrow we both gut glasses and go into Philadelphia! We go to Leary’s!”
They went into Philadelphia on an early train and wandered down Market Street to the famous old bookstore that had served generations of scholars. “Now we see somethink!” he cried like a boy on his first trip to Paradise. He pulled from the long shelves book after book on a bewildering variety of subjects.
“What do we want all these for?” David asked.
“These are for you!” the Russian replied in much surprise. “My assistant with no library! Ah, no!” He picked out one book in particular, a treatise by Karl Pearson. “And this one special! This Karl Pearson! He is the father of all modern knowledge. In biology, medicine, egonomics, edugation, chemistry … At the foundation of any positive science is always Karl Pearson.” He would not let Leary’s wrap that book. “He takes it with him!” he announced to the manager. “It’s for him the beginnink of a new life.”
The two mathematicians—David with his new bible—walked up Market Street and felt the quiet breath of spring upon the city. “It’s nice!” Tschilczynski said. “Even in a city is nice, sprink.” At the Earle Theatre the Russian noticed that vaudeville was showing. “Well!” he cried exuberantly. “In the theatre best of all is waudewille!” He bought two tickets and led David into the darkened theatre. A cheap movie was three-quarters finished. In a loud whisper the Russian announced, “But with waudewille the worst part is the movies.”