The Green Revolution Read Free Page A

could have known that when the four regular quarters of the games had been played out the two teams would find themselves tied. Not even Cassandra could have foreseen that the Navy game would go into overtime. Into three overtimes, in the last of which Navy would score and hope would finally die in Philip’s breast and in those of many others.
    But all that lay in the future.
    Otto and Roger were in the study leafing through an ancient folio volume, a product of the first generation of printing, the commentary of Thomas Aquinas on all the epistles of St. Paul. Otto was now in his nineties, his health not good but his mind clear and his zeal for learning unchanged. He was disposing of his considerable and valuable library.
    â€œI want you to have this,” he had just said to Roger.
    â€œIf only I could afford it.”
    â€œI meant as a gift.”
    Roger’s astonishment was as great as Philip’s when he burst into the apartment, returning from the stadium where Notre Dame had just lost to Southern Cal, though that of one brother was the astonishment of pleasure, that of the other the astonishment of the betrayed.
    â€œWe lost!”
    Otto Bird, one of the great figures on the Notre Dame faculty during the past half century, always impeccably dressed, easily one of the most learned men Roger had ever known, looked at Philip in surprise.
    â€œWe lost again!” Philip’s voice had dropped to a horrified whisper, his expression that of the devout when they repeat a heretical phrase.
    â€œWhat was the score?” Roger asked, his pudgy hand moving reverently over a page of the volume he had just acquired, feeling the imprint the letters had made centuries ago on the paper.
    â€œWe should have won!”
    Otto’s interest in the athletic fortunes of the university to which he had devoted a long lifetime was, not to put too fine a point upon it, minimal, but he had become accustomed to outbursts such as Philip’s over the years. He had found that sympathetic silence was the best response, a silence that could be interpreted as acquiescence in the burden of the outburst. His benign expression had not altered on autumn Mondays when all around him in the faculty lounge each play of the previous Saturday’s game was subjected to professorial if not professional analysis. Well, why not? Noncombatants write the history of battles, outwit Napoleon while comfortable at their desks, say yea or nay to Churchill’s plan for a second front in World War II, not across the Channel but up through the “soft underbelly of Europe.” Wars are more easily waged in retrospect, and games that had been lost on Saturday are turned into possible victories on Monday. Otto did not condescend to such colleagues. After all, what is teaching but a long retrospective conversation about the achievements of others?
    It was clear that Roger and his guest were not to be let off easily. A thoroughly disenchanted review of the game followed.
    â€œWe could have won it if only…”
    The sensible course Philip outlined had not been followed by the coaching staff. How could their decisions be attributed to misfortune? Only inepititude on the sidelines could explain such a failure to win the game and winning was the expected ending of every Notre Dame game.
    Eventually Phil fell silent, and into the silence Otto introduced the games Aeneas had scheduled for his crew, bringing their ships ashore and letting the contests begin. Afterward, there was a massive feast for the contestants.
    â€œI have often thought,” Otto said softly, “that we are unwise to reverse that order. Our feasting and burnt offerings come before the game.”
    â€œThere will be no feasting and celebrating tonight,” Phil said. He rose and wandered off, and Roger and his guest returned to a discussion of the early days of printing, with especial reference to the folio volume that Otto had given Roger as a gift.
    When