‘Well, I am not at all happy and sure about our own logistics,’ he had told me.
It was in this class I had first met Israel Rosenfield, a brilliant MD now turned candidate for the PhD in polities. Nobody could understand such a change. On the other hand, with his scientific training and a mind exceptionally sharp, he seemed to understand all pretensions and professions there gathered, and because he could not keep to himself the diagnosis for which he personally very much wanted a cure, he got into no end of trouble. ‘Oh, that young man,’ the Colonel on our way from Ford’s Mahwah had admitted hearing of him, ‘he fights every problem. Quite like you!’ And there were several things needing proof from life, as day in day out in the large classroom down on the basement floor at the Woodrow Wilson Building, one saw the world chopped up and quartered into two polar camps, one the free world, the other the Communist bloc, each lurking like savages or beasts of prey in the dark to eat up the other unto the last. Boxes, circles, arrows, or genealogical trees formed the favourite and familiar symbols and audio-visual devices and aids endlessly chalked up on the blackboard to catalogue and analyse national ideologies, international groupings and alliances, and the emergence and direction of new blocs on the world scene, stressing how ineffective these were without a striking nuclear stockpile like that possessed by the Americans and the Russians. One camp, it seemed, had more of a dynamic philosophy to live by vis-a-vis the worn-out Christian beliefs peddled by the other. But these were sentiments and surmises quickly wiped off the board. ‘One never knows if the FBI chaps are around,’ the professor used to warn them as he made sure of a clean slate on the wall.
One pet subject of those classes was that of the famous Games Theory, Put in crude layman terms, it goes like this. Suppose two roads were open to two opposing groups of soldiers, and one camp had to use one of these roads at all costs. Which should its commanding officer choose since the enemy has both under strict watch? Either way, and by a toss-up, says the game theorist! In other words, a complete abandonment of a calculated and reasoned-out choice, and reliance in a blind plunge, since the enemy knows already anyway all the plans possible. Haphazard as it may sound to the simple ear, the top strategists and policy-makers of the great powers seem to have taken for quite some time now many a decisive move, fraught with dangers for millions, by simply playing this game, so like a blind-man’s buff to the novitiate. And the absolute virtue of the top-secret, superguarded computer on the campus, I was told, lay in its powers to dictate the hazard at the peril of the enemy. For example, the perpetual stationing of America’s nuclear striking submarines deep in the Atlantic and elsewhere. Or to cite a more down-to-earth, work-a-day instance. How should America react if it came to the hearing of the President and the public that one US citizen was bumped off in Moscow? Now, the expected and safe answer can always be got by a diligent application of the master mind to the game – to satisfy conditions varying from a street brawl to the planting of missiles in a sphere belonging to another; or so the lectures suggested.
‘Dr Van de Velde himself expressed surprise that I stuck it that long, almost to end of term,’ I offered an excuse. ‘The whole course had little to do with events happening in actual life. And as a journalist that’s all I deal with.’
‘That may be so,’ Professor Patterson conceded. ‘But could you tell me what other things you have done since coming here and which you have found of benefit?’
‘Well, I have been attending a course on the Development of American Literature –’ I began.
‘Professor Thorpe says he has not seen you for some time,’ he cut in quietly.
‘I have been absent for a couple of times,’ I defended myself like the real schoolboy and truant they had made me out to be. ‘Yes, I missed classes only two or three times, and on those occasions I had good reasons to – in fact the professor himself permitted me, for example, when I was going to give a reading at Adelphi College.’ Incidentally, that was a performance I heard later was broadcast by the Voice of America and beamed all over Africa, without their first seeking my permission or making any payment since.
‘Well, apart from the Parvin seminar compulsory for the group but which I hear you missed going to quite a number of times, you cannot really pin down any particular course you have done. The professor who takes the Comparative Politics course for which you registered says he doesn’t even remember your face. It is evident therefore Princeton has had nothing to offer you.’
At that stage of the interview, I thought I might as well have a really straight talk about it, since it became then pretty obvious that the Colonel had taken great care and pains to compile his case. I reviewed for the benefit of the professor the attempts the Colonel and I had made together to find me a suitable course to pursue at Princeton for that one year and special programme I was there. In the Politics Department we had found no opening of practical value, nor had Professor Downer’s English School, except for Professor Thorpe’s classes held later in the session and several miles out in his home on the outskirts of Princeton. Philosophy, psychology, economics, architecture, and all the other fields of study like engineering and the physical sciences, for which the place is justly famous, I had shown no nose or training for. So at one point it was suggested that I should go and attend undergraduate classes on creative something or the other.
‘Professor Patterson, had I come for a second degree,’ I began, ‘I should know what to do and how to set about it. A Parvin Fellowship is hardly the way to that.’
‘That’s right,’ the professor punctuated me.
‘Well, I wouldn’t try to dispute the charge about those courses, except perhaps to state that even if I regarded myself as a regular student, that should not remove my right to skip classes and pay for it at exams.’
‘That’s the British system, isn’t it?’
‘But I wouldn’t say I have wasted my time coming here,’ I tried to assure him.
‘How have you used it?’
‘Well, beside attending those classes they are good enough to concede me, I have done a couple of plays and written a number of poems since coming here.’
‘Couldn’t you have done that elsewhere other than coming here?’
‘Yes, one of the plays, perhaps, but not the poems which mostly are out of my US experience.’
‘So you could easily have locked yourself up in a New York hotel and done the same thing. We have not given you a sabbatical, have we?’ he asked. There was a sudden twinkle to his eyes.
‘Well, I suppose that’s a legitimate charge, but I should have thought the Parvin fellowship was to allow me room for development here in Princeton.’
‘That may be so, but the fact is that you have shown disdain for everything Princetonian and American. That has been the impression of everybody here who has expressed an opinion about you.’
‘Disdain how?’
‘You see, we don’t mind people talking politics and socialism here. That’s not the point at all. This is a healthy community. You may not find all that you want here. Your colleagues however, seem to have, as have thousands of others. So do you think it is of benefit to you and us that your fellowship continues?’
‘Is there anything left of it but the round-trip?’
‘That’s exactly the point,’ the professor underlined it for me to see. ‘You have spent much of your time out of here travelling while others stayed in and studied. Now it is their turn to go out.’
‘That’s fair enough.’
‘Well, what do you think we should do with you?’
‘What does a guest do when the host shows him the setting sun?’
‘Well, we don’t want any bad feelings, but it is the opinion of all that, since you have shown nothing but disdain for Princeton and the US, there could be no point in continuing the association further.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, rising to go which brought the professor also to his feet, hands in his pockets again. ‘And how soon am I expected to leave here?’ I asked.
‘That would be for Dr Van de Velde to work out. But I suppose as soon as he can straighten out things with the Graduate School people.’
‘One point I should like cleared. Does this end here in Princeton? I mean, can I continue with any activities I have outside of here?’
‘The point, well, is this. Once your association with Princeton terminates, the College, I think, will write accordingly to the Immigration Authorities to state they are no longer sponsoring you for the visa you may be holding, and in that case, I gather, there is nothing left for you but to leave the US immediately. But I should ask Dr Van de Velde about that.’
‘I see.’ I said goodbye.
The Colonel had the administrative details of my departure already well in hand, when I brushed past his breathless secretary, who, it goes without saying, knew everything. Surprisingly, and even beyond my own expectation and the promise I had given the other Parvin people, who at this point wanted to take all sorts of steps impossible for their kind, I appeared most collected and calm for my last interview with the old Colonel. This seemed to unsettle him, for he literally jumped at me when, taking the liberties of a valedictory speech, I expressed surprise and a sense of injustice that the private and recruit had not been warned earlier in the campaign of his shortcomings. That would have offered the rascal a fair chance of either choosing to fall into line or quitting at the outset. Instead the company commander, showing no real sign of offence or concern at any time, had left him unreprimanded, only to have him courtmartialled at the point of general and final discharge, booting him out in ignominy at the last minute.
‘Don’t you teach me how to do my duties, you whipper- snapper!’ the Colonel lunged dangerously at me. I could see from the corner of my eye his secretary start out of her seat. ‘I’ll throw you out of here now on your neck if you try any more of your cheek here.’
‘Well, you certainly have thrown me out on a limb already,’ I said sweetly.
‘You have been a delinquent student, a disgrace to the College and your country. You were brought here as a journalist and an ambassador, but what have you done with all the opportunities placed at your disposal here?’
Still maintaining a sweetness and calm foreign to me, I asked whether the occasional absence from classes made one a delinquent student, especially where grades were not taken and no examinations were sat for to tell the best parrot. I also made it clear that at no time did I regard myself as representing anybody or any country, and therefore whatever disgraceful acts I had done must be visited on me alone as a free and willing agent of myself alone.
