But I'm certain before the final reports are turned in, all the journals will be combed for additional data."
I didn't know what to say.
To hear him admit that both of them were ignorant of whole areas in their own fields was terrifying.
"What languages do you know?" I asked him.
"French, German, Spanish, Italian, and enough Swedish to get along."
"No Russian, Chinese, Portuguese?"
He reminded me that as a practicing psychiatrist and neurosurgeon he had very little time for languages.
And the only ancient languages that he could read were Latin and Greek.
Nothing of the ancient Oriental tongues.
I could see he wanted to end the discussion at that point, but somehow I couldn't let go.
I had to find out just how much he knew. I found out.
Physics: nothing beyond the quantum theory of fields.
Geology: nothing about geomorphology or stratigraphy or even petrology. Nothing about the micro- or macro-economic theory.
Little in mathematics beyond the elementary level of calculus of variations, and nothing at all about Banach algebra or Riemannian manifolds.
It was the first inkling of the revelations that were in store for me this weekend.
I couldn't stay at the party. I slipped away to walk and think this out.
Frauds—both of them.
They had pretended to be geniuses.
But they were just ordinary men working blindly, pretending to be able to bring light into the darkness.
Why is it that everyone lies?
No one I know is what he appears to be.
As I turned the corner I caught a glimpse of Burt coming after me.
"What's the matter?" I said as he caught up to me. "Are you following me?"
He shrugged and laughed uncomfortably.
"Exhibit A, star of the show.
Can't have you run down by one of these motorized Chicago cowboys or mugged and rolled on State Street?"
"I don't like being kept in custody."
He avoided my gaze as he walked beside me, his hands deep in his pockets.
"Take it easy, Charlie. The old man is on edge.
This convention means a lot to him.
His reputation is at stake."
"I didn't know you were so close to him," I taunted, recalling all the times Burt had complained about the professor's narrowness and pushing.
"I'm not close to him." He looked at me defiantly. "But he's put his whole life into this.
He's no Freud or Jung or Pavlov or Watson, but he's doing something important and I respect his dedication—maybe even more because he's just an ordinary man trying to do a great man's work, while the great men are all busy making bombs."
"I'd like to hear you call him ordinary to his face."
"It doesn't matter what he thinks of himself.
Sure he's egotistic, so what?
It takes that kind of ego to make a man attempt a thing like this.
I've seen enough of men like him to know that mixed in with that pompousness and self-assertion is a goddamned good measure of uncertainty and fear."
"And phoniness and shallowness," I added.
"I see them now as they really are, phonies. I suspected it of Nemur. He always seemed frightened of something.
But Strauss surprised me."
Burt paused and let out a long stream of breath.
We turned into a luncheonette for coffee, and I didn't see his face, but the sound revealed his exasperation.
"You think I'm wrong?"
"Just that you've come a long way kind of fast," he said.
"You've got a superb mind now, intelligence that can't really be calculated, more knowledge absorbed by now than most people pick up in a long lifetime.
But you're lopsided.
You know things.
You see things.