The Child Buyer (20 page)

Mr. BROADBENT. And he conducted you to Mr. Jones's room at the Mulhausen?

BARRY RUDD. It was a suite. On the way in, when Mr. Cleary mentioned the name Wissey Jones at the desk, it was like waving a wand. Everyone began to bow and say sir, even to me. Mr. Jones had only been there three days, and it was as if he owned the place.

Mr. BROADBENT. So then Mr. Jones received you.

BARRY RUDD. He was in a dressing gown made out of the silk with a Paisley design—splotches that looked like a bunch of Paramecia caudata, a species of unicellular slipper animalcule that is found in abundance in putrefying infusions; with the result that I had at once a reaction of mild nausea. His folding motorcycle was in one corner of the room. This was the living room of what the hotel calls the Uncas Suite, named for Le Cerf agile, the nimble deer, as the French called Uncas, with prints of Mohegans and rather cheesy Indian motifs—but the room's on the southeast corner of the building, and it was flooded with cheerful sunlight.

Mr. BROADBENT. How did the conversation begin?

BARRY RUDD. With suspicion and black looks. I guess Mr. Jones felt that the G-man had crossed wires on him, and the G-man must have been afraid that the child buyer was going to queer him with the Superintendent, or something. As they sat glaring at each other I wondered, as I have many times: Why don't looks mix or bump when they meet? Why can't you feel

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an angry look when it hits your cheek? Sometimes when Momma looks at me I have a sensation of warmth on my skin and it almost seems to me as if it's a kind of ray she emits from her eyes. I know what you're thinking, Senator Skypack: 'Unscientific/ I know. I can almost feel your look, Senator. B-r-r-r-r!

Mr. BROADBENT. Please go on, Master Rudd.

BARRY RUDD. Mr. Jones was imperious. How dared Mr. Cleary oppose him? Mr. Cleary stuck his lower lip out and said I was too young at ten to make an irrevocable commitment to science, or to anything else. I hadn't even gone through puberty; wasn't a man yet by a long shot. It was too early to start burning bridges. Mr. Cleary jabbed manfully at a pillow next to him, as if emphasis and punishment were synonymous. 'How does the youngster know at this point that he won't decide in ten years to be not a scientist but, let's say, a baker, or a bricklayer, or a certified public accountant?' He stared at me while he was saying that, I guess to see how I'd respond to those gratuitous down-gradings; I didn't care. I've known since I was eight that I'm going to be a scientist. He said, 'What if he's a failure?' That didn't bother me either; being a failure doesn't enter into my plans. You know what I thought? I thought: 'Listen, Mr. G-man, Shubert and Mozart were both dead before they reached your age. There isn't all the time in the world. Liebig discovered fulminic acid when he was sixteen. Galileo discovered the isoch-ronism of the pendulum when he was seventeen. Pascal invented a calculating machine when he was nineteen. Braille devised his alphabet when he was twenty. Colt designed his revolver when he was sixteen. Keats wrote "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" when he was twenty. Weber isolated sulphur sesqui-oxide when he was nineteen. Raphael painted the Granduca Madonna at twenty-one. Wolsey graduated from Oxford at fourteen. Maybe I was already old to be starting as a classifying biologist. Linnaeus began to learn plant names at four, and at

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eight he had his own garden where he grew all sorts of wild flowers and plants that he collected. Don't talk to me about making a commitment too early!'

Mr. BROADBENT. Go on, please—about the interview.

BARRY RUDD. Mr. Jones began asking the G-man about the various intelligence tests that had been given to me, and Mr. Cleary talked about his talent search. He gave my standings on the Minifie Gestalt Partial-Clue Puzzle and the Psycho-Kines-thetic Draw-Mama Test, and the Pankhurst Tell-Who, and the Olmstcad-Diffendorff Game. Then Mr. Jones said, 'But what about his intelligence, Cleary?' Undistinguished, the G-man said. Low on the Olmstead-Diffendorff Game. Mediocre standing on two national-norm group tests. He rattled off scores and statistics; he seemed for a few moments to have stuffed percentiles and medians and average reliabilities and coefficients of data into his cheek pouches, as a red squirrel, Scuirus hudsonicus, secretes the meats of nuts.

Mr. BROADBENT. What was the child buyer's reaction?

BARRY RUDD. He asked if there had ever been a Binct or a Wcchsler. The G-man said thcre'd been a Binet given in another school system, Treehampstead; but Pequot doesn't accept records from outside the district.

Senator MANSFIELD. Were you curious to hear your own I.Q.?

BARRY RUDD. I was feeling detached—as if all this talk had nothing whatsoever to do with me. For some reason I kept thinking about Dr. Gozar, who was the first person to make me realize that everything in this world isn't known.

Mr. BROADBENT. What happened next?

BARRY RUDD. It seems that Mr. Cleary had been scurrying around gathering ammunition to use on the child buyer, and he said he had a memorandum from Miss Perrin, and he handed it to Mr. Jones to read, and after Mr. Jones finished it he passed it to me. This thing did hurt me, because I like Miss Perrin.

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Mr. BROADBENT. Can you remember the gist of it?

BARRY RUDD. I can remember every word of it. 'Barry Rudd is a lot brighter than I am. But he slumps in his chair, keeps his eyes down, chews pencils, and repels affection. Anecdotes as requested. (i) I put him on the list of blackboard cleaners, which thrills most of the children, but as soon as he saw his name put down he said, "Great!" in a very disgusted manner. (2) I wanted to show an audio-visual film strip in social studies but could not get the holes in the edge of the i6-mm. film to mesh with the little cogs in the projector. Barry stepped forward unbid and more or less pushed me aside and fixed it, but he did it with bad grace and went out of his way to make me feel stupid. (3) He let a cheese sandwich from his cold lunch stay in his desk and rot until it smelled intolerably. (4) I put my hand on his shoulder while talking to him. I like to touch my children, and most of them look as if they need to be cuddled, especially some of the hard-mouth Intervale boys. Generally my children are glad to be petted. Not Barry. He flinched and pulled away as if I had leprosy. It makes me feel queer when love is answered with hate. He can be cold and clammy, yet sometimes his eyes seem to be appealing for help/

Senator SKYPACK. Mr. Broadbent, we should get ahold of that document. It ought to be entered here as an exhibit.

BARRY RUDD. As I was reading it, I thought, What does a teacher really know about his pupils? At fifteen Mirabcau, who baffled his family, was packed off to Versailles to be educated in the household of a M. de Sigrais. At the end of three months Sigrais announced to the parents that he'd remain the boy's jailer as long as they liked, but he couldn't do a thing with his mind.

Mr. BROADBENT. Carry on, please, with your account.

BARRY RUDD. The G-man said I had a certain richness of imagination but some carelessness in the handling of it; that I

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was uncritical on the whole. He said I had a sneaky streak, and glibness bordering on mendacity. lie cited the answers I'd given on a form as to what I'd like to be when I grow up—and I'll confess, I had my tongue in my cheek that day. I was fed up with the G-man's everlasting boondoggling snoopery. I answered: One. Banker. Two. Forest ranger. Three. Christian Science Healer. That same day, I remember, I gave a lot of purposely mixed-up multiple-choice answers on sports, in an aptitude test, really just for the heck of it: that pucks are used in archery, fruit-basket is a kissing game, whist is played with pins, snap is played with mallets, and canvasbacks are a kind of tent.

Senator SKYPACK. You knew better?

BARRY RUDD. Of course. Canvasbacks— Nyrocae valisineriae —a kind of tent?

Senator SKYPACK. By God, I do think that's sneaky, Mr. Chairman, to just thumb your nose at the great institution of public education that way.

BARRY RUDD. Mr. Cleary referred to gifted students as 'the monster quotient' and kept talking about me as a 'deviate/

Senator MANSFIELD. I noticed that was Miss Henley's favorite word, too, sonny. I don't blame you for bridling at that.

Senator SKYPACK. You got a better word, Mr. Chairman?

BARRY RUDD. While they were talking about their busybody old tests, I was having one of my regressive reveries—thinking that all my knowledge was innate; I'd been born with it. I've often been amnesic as to the source of my information, and I've just felt that I'd 'always known/ 'I just knew it/ When I used to believe in God I long had the image of facts and stories having been written in pencil on a sort of reel of microfilm made out of skin in my head by Him before I was born. I thought of God as being able to talk big and write very small.

Senator SKYPACK. Top off the rest of it, he's a blasphemer.

BARRY RUDD. I didn't intend any disrespect of your views,

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Senator.

Mr. BROADBENT. Back to the child buyer and Mr. Cleary, please, Master Rucld.

BARRY RUDD. Mr. Jones began to heap ridicule on Mr. Cleary's talent search, and the G-man got talking in what seemed to me a confused way. The real problem is emotional/ he said. The child is disturbed. The blinking of his eyes—have you noticed that? That's not normal in a child his age. lie's been on the brink. I've seen tears well up in his eyes. He's really afraid of Dr. Gozar. Well, I admit, Dr. Gozar's the dynamic type; everybody's afraid of her to some extent. But I've had to handle this boy with kid gloves. He blinks. I toyed with the idea of referring him to a psychiatrist but decided against it. I made my own psychiatric evaluation. The mother's the moving force. Look, I'm not the policy maker here. The administration makes the policy. What happens if every time a child comes to me and says, "I want to be on the talent chart," we put him there? There'd be repercussions, and I don't mean maybe. We've got standards. This child missed out on his fundamentals, some of them. He's got to learn to catch a ball. Be a boy. Besides, we can't spend all day on one pupil—we couldn't justify that to the Board of Finance, I'll tell you that. We feel there are other things in life besides biological research. That boy's one-sided. He knows little or nothing about associating with his peers. He isn't interested in girls. The boy has to learn to be a citizen and conform in some respects. No son of mine would be allowed to carry the kind of load Dr. Gozar puts on that child. We don't have the time of day in public school for cases that get too special. This is mass education.' And so forth. He just rattled on. Till Mr. Jones cut in and asked him what Mr. Cleary's own 'psychiatric evaluation' was that he'd said he'd made. 'This is rather technical stuff,' the G-man said. 'I believe that this boy, in reaction against the mother's psycho-cultural rejection-guilt-anx-

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iety-overprotection cyclical pattern, is suffering from a rather clear-cut nipple fixation, together with a certain amount of vulva emulation.'

Senator SKYPACK. By gorry. What did Mr. Jones say to that?

BARRY RUDD. He said, 'Come off it, Cleary, don't hand me that Sigmund Fraud. Or Carl Jungle or Alfred Addled, either/

Senator SKYPACK. That child buyer's really an enlightened fella, he doesn't stand for any nonsense, does he?

BARRY RUDD. I was taking some notes on the back of Miss Perrin's memorandum in a shorthand of my own that I'd devised, and when the G-man noticed me doing that he got very excited. 'See? See?' he shouted—as if my doodling along in that way, really just to occupy myself, proved that I was a mental case. Mr. Cleary began talking about my lack of social adjustment in school. He said I prefer the company of older people to that of my own age group, and he said that the 'regular guys' bully me.

Senator MANSFIELD. How did this make you feel—the two of them talking about you right in front of you, as if you were a sick cat or dog?

BARRY RUDD. I felt detached—mildly interested. When the G-man talked about my seeking out older people, I thought, 'So did Hegel, Descartes, Voltaire!' Not that I consider myself one of them. But John Sano bores me. And when the G-man talked about the bullies, I thought of the German apothegm, 'When Pythagoras discovered the theorem of the right triangle, he sacrificed a hundred oxen; since then, whenever a new truth has been unveiled, all oxen have trembled/

Senator SKYPACK. You think you know more about his business than the Guidance Director, is that the size of it?

BARRY RUDD. I must say, Senator, for a so-called educator, Mr. Cleary has an odd way of grading mental abilities: A stupid person is one who lets himself be victimized; a gifted person is one who's shrewd. He thinks intelligence is cleverness. Since he

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thinks he's a 'realist/ thinks moral values are nothing but cant, he has the great advantage of not having to decide what he really believes—his morality is the cops, his golden rule is don't get caught. Yet, I've got to admit the G-man's honest; I mean to say, he sees himself as honest and other people see him as honest. Perhaps the two views make him, practically speaking, honest indeed, though they aren't the same. The G-man thinks he's honest because he can spot 'good' people and 'talented' people for what they really are—hypocrites and neurotics. He's so honest that a public display of genuine affection or loyalty or self-sacrifice is liable to make him feel sick at his stomach. When other people look at him, they see a man who's honest because he doesn't steal and because he sticks by his word even when he knows he's mistaken.

Mr. BROADBENT. This is the first time, Master Rudd, that we've heard you speak with real feeling. I take it you were not quite so detached as you've told us you were.

BARRY RUDD. My view is that I'm not maladjusted, I'm intensified. There's a difference.

Mr. BROADBENT. Let's get back to the interview. Tell us—