Evening of the Good Samaritan Read Free Page A

students went on to study for the priesthood. He was not a scholar, not in terms admissible to Hogan, for, his being a Thomist, Fitzgerald’s logic was proscribed; he believed in absolutes of truth. But it was typical of this administration that students wishing to study scholastic philosophy would be taught by a scholastic. Fitzgerald was the next best thing to a Jesuit. And there were times, such as the days just past, when he reminded Hogan of one: he was a lovely mixture of caution and righteousness.
    “That’s the important thing,” he said. “There you have it.”
    Fitzgerald looked sharply at him to see if he were speaking his own mind or trying to provoke him. It was hard to tell from Hogan’s face. His eyes were not unkind, but the lines at his mouth were perpetually sardonic, his smile always suggesting skepticism or, worse, mockery, an attitude Fitzgerald envied even while he condemned it. Hogan’s head nodded a little almost constantly, a tic of some sort pulling at his eye. That a man as frail as he should remain an atheist and a radical was to Fitzgerald incomprehensible.
    Hogan considered himself far less than a radical in his chosen field. He taught economics and identified himself with Keynes. He had been one of the men tapped by Washington in the early days of the New Deal. The economics suited him: he believed in capitalism if labor were strong enough to strike a balance in the bargaining; he thought its control until that time the proper province of government. But Washington politics appalled him, the maneuvering for power destructive of the whole ideal. He had not stayed there long.
    The library woman, making the rounds of several coteries, trying to find an opening for herself, unintentionally wheeled back to them. “There you are again!” she cried, shot her smile at them, and made off in another direction.
    “Damned woman,” Fitzgerald said.
    Hogan chuckled. He felt almost giddy with relaxation, benevolent even unto Fitzgerald.
    Fitzgerald cast a quick, scrutinous gaze over the company. Hogan forestalled his escape. “I have a favor to ask of you, professor. On the surface it may seem presumptuous, but I assure you in the end, it won’t be.”
    He was interrupted by the arrival of a short, stout, balding man who came up to them shaking his finger in anticipation of what he had to say. “There is a man! Ach, a man like a god, our Hawkins. Did you ever hear such words before? A poet. He should be an emperor. And a man of God, of religion. You hear me, Jonathan? The man is of God, I say. Do you deny it?”
    Hogan laid his hand on the shoulder of his friend. “Professor Fitzgerald, do you know Doctor Mueller?”
    The two men, already acquainted, merely nodded for Mueller was talking again, his accent coming through the more strongly the more rapid his speech. Its being Austrian, there ran through it a steady sound of buzzing. “Once I knew one other man like him, my good patron, the archduke, Otto, God preserve him. It is the only hope for Europe, a man like him. Cultured, liberal, a patron of music, of science … and yes, of women. His mother, the Empress Zita, what beauty! There now, I spit on Hitler!”
    Hogan smiled wryly and gently patted the back of his friend. Long and thin, short and thickset, they made a curious pair, a proper study in the variations in human anatomy. “Would God your Archduke Otto would do the same.”
    Mueller very nearly jumped up and down. He gave the effect of so doing even though his toes did not leave the floor. “He will! You will see. You will see.”
    “I am much afraid,” Hogan said softly, “it will be Hitler who will spit on the Archduke.”
    “Oh, that man,” Mueller said, shaking his jowl like a mastiff. “He is the greatest bastard in the world.”
    “Easily that,” Hogan said.
    Fitzgerald said, “The trouble with men like Hogan, Dr. Mueller, they think they are the only ones who hate Hitler.”
    “We are. At least, we are the only ones