He had come here fifteen years ago for his doctorate, a year or two after Edward Cavan had moved over from Columbia. Those were the days of their long argumentative walks, when he was the outlander and Cavan the insider, and for Ivan the irregular bricks after the hard cement paths of Urbana seemed like the pavement of Heaven. Gradually in those fifteen years he had absorbed Cambridge and made himself part of it, with the big house on Francis Avenue the final stage of taking possession. He could not imagine life without the Charles River, without the ugly black-faced clock on Memorial Hall, without the queer bare spaces of the Common which he was now crossing, where children rubbed smooth the cannon, and no one perhaps but Ivan Goldberg remembered that it was Lincoln who stood in the middle of the high Civil War monument. But now today these familiar and consoling sights were no longer his. They observed him as if he were a criminal. He felt at bay. This made him walk faster and stand straighter than he usually did. He failed to greet a former student who gave him a tentative smile and saw the smile vanish. Appleton Chapel rang two as he pushed open the door of Longfellow Hall at Radcliffe. He was annoyed to find he was slightly out of breath and took refuge in the bleak instructor’s room with its empty fireplace, its memorial plaque and smell of dead cigarette smoke. Here he forced himself to wait nine minutes. Then he climbed the single flight of stairs and faced eight men sitting round a long oval table.

He knew that he was smiling faintly as he always did when he was nervous. He knew the effect this would have and did have. “My name’s Goldberg,” he announced briskly as he sat down. They introduced themselves one by one, Kovarsky, Mead, Zausmer, Herrera, Keith, Hastings, Servi, Anangnos. Then there was silence as Ivan Goldberg laid his brief case on the table, took from it a folder marked Seminar, American Lit. and said, “One of you no doubt has a paper to read. Shall we begin?”

It would have been appropriate, it was necessary that he say a few words of introduction, that he break the atmosphere of hostility by some reference to Edward Cavan. But he simply could not do it. It was clear to him that if he even spoke Edward’s name, his voice would break, he would disgrace himself and be unable to go on. So in pure self-defense he talked brilliantly about the paper, which was an analysis of the early realistic novels of Howells. He did it the more brilliantly because he did it without mentioning Cavan’s name. As he left the classroom he realized that his shirt was soaked through.

“He’s a cold fish—” This much he heard as the door closed behind him.

IV

IV