‘Let’s not go into that; now what is it you want?’

‘I don’t want anything of you; it is Professor Patterson the Director of the Woodrow Wilson School, who wants you to see him.’

‘Professor Patterson – the Director of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs?’ I repeated after her.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘When?’

‘I cannot tell you. But are you free all today?’

‘In the morning, yes.’

‘Well, I’ll find out from Professor Patterson when he can see you. He is at a meeting now.’

‘And you have no idea what he wants me for?’

‘No, Mr Clark, I have told you I do not know what the Professor wants to see you for. But I’ll ring later and tell you the hour of appointment.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

I hung up the receiver and stumbled up, straight back into bed. Israel had already finished his toilet, and closing the door behind him, looked at me with the anxious eye of the qualified doctor that he was, not of the quacks and powerful performers whose power and antics drove him out of the profession into the yet more sterile one of political study, but of a doctor still able to panic on behalf of a patient because he is a fellow creature in pain and needing personal help and care. I pulled my coverlet up over my face, and before he could find out what the matter was with me, the telephone bell went again and he ran out to take it.

‘That woman again,’ he returned immediately to report, ‘and she wants you in person she says.’

So I pottered again, this time into deeper mystery and a growing sense of anger.

‘Yes, Mr Clark, can you come over at nine tomorrow? professor Patterson will be in the office to see you then.’

‘So early?’

‘Why, don’t you have classes as early as that?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Are you saying you cannot get up that early to attend classes?’

‘Well, I happen not to have early classes.’

‘You will have to come, anyway. The Director will be in his office between nine and eleven o’clock in the morning, and you’d better make sure you report there on time.’

‘Well, about ten then.’

‘What’s that you say?’

‘I said would ten-thirty to eleven suit the Professor?’

‘Now you are calling the hour, but I’ll find out from him and let you know. But try on your part, and call us.’

‘Thank you.’ After which I hugged the wall back into my room and bed. Israel, guessing that I wanted to rest more and be alone, lugged his bag of books to his shoulders and tramped out to the Firestone Library, a mile on the other side of the campus. I think I must have drowsed more with the dying of his footsteps down the steps and out on the walk through the inner court. When I woke up again with my body more relaxed and my senses beginning to focus, the smell of food was all about the place and I felt ­uncommonly hungry for breakfast, which I do not normally take. The hour bells of Princeton’s many towers, always discordant and never agreeing among themselves, began then their staggered tolling, and looking at my watch, I saw it was long past noon. It now dawned upon me I had been up more than once before, and suddenly nightmare and the day’s actual business each fell into place.

That terrible nightmare came actually as a repeat of my experience of America during the Cuban Crisis six months or more before. Then in Princeton the continuous tearing past overhead of jet-bombers and the horrid noise of other air-craft taking off from military bases close by and returning again from missions known only to those who had profits to gain from plunging the world into war, would not let one sleep. Nor would the mammoth parade by TV stations, whether signing on or off, of all the armed forces and armament at the instant call and command of the American people should that scoundrel Castro and his new-found uncle Nikita Kruschev be mad enough to refuse moving out those missiles aimed at the heart of the United States.

‘Will you really go to war?’ I had asked the Colonel who I must add, grew almost youthful in those terrible days of tension when every true American male expected to be called up as if service like that would again save anybody.

‘Yes.’ He made no bones about the matter. ‘The Russians have played with us for too long. Now that we mean business, we hope for their own good they take us seriously.’

‘How are we for fall-out shelter?’

‘Oh, very good,’ the Colonel disclosed. ‘The Firestone Library can take the entire student body and faculty members and their families, and quite a good number of town people to boot.’

I thought of heavy walls crashing and damming up gates to the underground shelter before the few left after the blast had time to scurry like rats inside their holes, and of rubble and tumbled down structures sealing up and burying people alive like miners marooned in shafts and caves steaming hot and perhaps flooding up as well. And then all in a flash I recalled the stories and reports that a top-secret brain computing machine stationed on the campus actually dictated to America’s fleet of polaris and other nuclear submarines where and when they must deploy themselves and fan-out undersea in their long, deep dives to provide for America and her Free World a constant invisible bulwark. In the event of war therefore Princeton offered the Russians a palpable hit, either directly or as part of the devastation that would be New York or Philadelphia.

‘Well, is that all the protection one can expect?’ I laughed to cover up the cry in my throat.

‘That’s very good protection for anybody,’ the Colonel said. ‘There are millions not so provided for.’ Which was true. Not that the millions thought much about the matter for themselves, anyway. There was the jolly fellow I shared drinks with at the Peacock Inn the night the Cuba quarantine was declared.

‘What do you think of it all?’ I asked.

‘Me?’ he spread out his arms. ‘Kennedy is Irish and I am Irish. So what’s there to say? Anything he does is good enough for me. I fought in Africa in the last War, and I guess am not too old to strap my boots on once more.’ Such are the loyalties at work for the great American cause.

‘And you have no plans to fly Parvin Fellows home?’

‘No,’ the Colonel ruled. ‘They will have to take things as they come – with everybody, I’m afraid.’

‘I think I better book myself a seat home on the next plane,’ I said flippantly. And getting back into my room, I slept fitfully through that vision of America I had just dreamed a second time.

Odd, wasn’t it? Recalling my imminent interview with the Director of the Woodrow Wilson School, an interview still carrying for me some air of mystery, I rang up his secretary to apologize for not calling much earlier and also to find out whether or not she had herself called as we seemed to have agreed and not got me. Professor Patterson’s secretary was out for lunch, some neutral voice told me, but I could call again in an hour if I so wished. That suited me fine, for I could then have lunch myself. Because service in both the breakfast-room and Procter Hall was over already, and not having any stomach to fall across town for a meal, I made for the machine-room on the basement floor, and got myself some chocolate milk and cakes in real American fashion in praise of which I had written this little song:

A dime

in the slot,

And anything

from coke to coffee

Spews down your throat,

from crackers to candy

Breaks against the enamel

wear of your teeth,

(And as TV minstrels

will have it ahead