He was alone: he spoke aloud, but in a low voice, in order to feel the unreality of this blasphemy.
It was a moonless night, full of stars.
There was no thunder and no lightning.
Yes, but what, he thought with a livid snarl, but what if anybody else thinks I’m not?
Ah, but they’d like to, the swine.
They hate me, and are jealous of me because they can’t be like me, so they belittle me if they can.
They’d like to say it, if they dared, just to hurt me.
For a moment his face was convulsed with pain and bitterness: he craned his neck, holding his throat with his hand.
Then, as was his custom, when he had burnt his heart out, he began to look nakedly and critically at the question.
Well, he went on very calmly, what if I’m not?
Am I going to cut my throat, or eat worms, or swallow arsenic?
He shook his head slowly but emphatically.
No, he said, I am not.
Besides, there are enough geniuses.
They have at least one in every high school, and one in the orchestra of every small-town movie.
Sometimes Mrs. Von Zeck, the wealthy patroness of the arts, sends a genius or two off to New York to study.
So that, he estimated, this broad land of ours has by the census not less than 26,400 geniuses and 83,752 artists, not counting those in business and advertising.
For his personal satisfaction, Eugene then muttered over the names of 21 geniuses who wrote poetry, and 37 more who devoted themselves to the drama and the novel.
After this, he felt quite relieved.
What, he thought, can I be, besides a genius?
I’ve been one long enough.
There must be better things to do.
Over that final hedge, he thought, not death, as I once believed — but new life — and new lands.
Erect, with arm akimbo on his hip, he stood, his domed head turned out toward the light: sixty, subtle and straight of body, deep-browed, with an old glint of hawk-eyes, lean apple-cheeks, a mustache bristle-cropped.
That face on which the condor Thought has fed, arched with high subtle malice, sophist glee.
Below, benched in rapt servility, they waited for his first husky word.
Eugene looked at the dull earnest faces, lured from the solid pews of Calvinism to the shadowland of metaphysics.
And now his mockery will play like lightning around their heads, but they will never see it, nor feel it strike.
They will rush forward to wrestle with his shadow, to hear his demon’s laughter, to struggle solemnly with their unborn souls.
The clean cuffed hand holds up an abraded stick.
Their stare follows obediently along its lustre.
“Mr. Willis?”
White, bewildered, servile, the patient slave’s face.
“Yes, sir.”
“What have I here?”
“A stick, sir.”
“What is a stick?”
“It’s a piece of wood, sir.”
A pause.
Ironic eyebrows ask their laughter.
They snicker smugly for the wolf that will devour them.
“Mr. Willis says a stick is a piece of wood.”
Their laughter rattles against the walls.
Absurd.
“But a stick IS a piece of wood,” says Mr. Willis.
“So is a tree or a telephone-pole.
No, I’m afraid that will not do.
Does the class agree with Mr. Willis?”
“A stick is a piece of wood cut off at a certain length.”
“Then we agree, Mr. Ransom, that a stick is not simply wood with unlimited extension?”