Youth Without God Read Free Page B

they were pondering my words.

3. THE RICH PLEBEIANS
    FROM TEN O’CLOCK TILL ELEVEN WAS ONE OF my geography periods. I must give out the essays on the colonial question which I had marked the day before. I have mentioned already that in accordance with instructions one could say little against the contents of these compositions.
    So while distributing them, I confined my observations to a few remarks on style, spelling, and sentence formation. For instance, I told B—one of the B’s—that he mustn’t keep going over the left margin. R should have spaced his work better. Z should know that the plural of colony isn’t spelt with a “y.” Only when I came to N, I couldn’t pass it over.
    “You’ve said in your essay,” I told him, “that we white peoples are far in advance of the negroes in civilization and culture, and you’re quite right. But you shouldn’t have said that it doesn’t matter whether the negroes live or die.They’re human too, you know.”
    He looked up at me very steadily for a moment, and a hostile expression ran like a shadow over his face. Or was I mistaken? He took his note-book, nodded very correctly, and sat down again in his place.
    I was soon to discover that I had not been mistaken.
    For only next day, N’s father showed up during my “parents’ hour”—the hour I set aside once a week to keep in touch with my boys’ people. They come to me to inquireabout their children’s progress and ask a lot of questions, most of which are very unimportant. Tradesmen, officials, officers, business men—such are my boys’ fathers. Not a working-class man among them.
    With many of them, I have the impression that the thoughts which their sons’ essays inspire in them are very similar to mine. But we just meet and smile and talk about the weather. Most of these fathers are older than I. One of them is hoary with age! The youngest was only twenty-eight two weeks ago. He married at seventeen—a manufacturer’s daughter. He’s a very smart fellow. When he turns up, it is always in his open sports car. His wife stays in the car and I can see her from up here. At least, I can see her hat, her arms, and her legs.
    You could have a son too, I have thought to myself: but I can easily control any wish I have to bring a son into the world. To be shot down in some war …
    N’s father confronted me. He had a very self-assured manner and looked squarely into my eyes.
    “I’m Otto N’s father,” he began.
    “I’m delighted to meet you, Mr. N,” I responded with a bow; of course, I invited him to sit down, but he would not.
    “My presence here,” he went on, “is due to a somewhat serious occurrence. An occurrence which might well have grave consequences. My son Otto told me yesterday afternoon—and he was highly indignant about it—that you, his teacher, had madean outrageous remark—”
    “I?”
    “You, sir!”
    “When?”
    “During your geography lesson yesterday. Your pupils wrote an essay on the colonial question, and you remarkedto my Otto: ‘Negroes are human too.’ You understand me?”
    “No.”
    I was speaking the truth: I didn’t. He looked at me, summing me up. God, what a stupid fool he looked.
    “My presence here,” he continued, pompously emphatic, “arises from the fact that from my earliest years I have struggled for what is just. And now I put you this question—did you voice that odious sentiment of yours on the negro question, in that class and at that time—or did you not?”
    “I did,” I answered with a smile I could not restrain. “Your presence here, otherwise—”
    “Please,” he interrupted me sharply. “I am not in a mood for joking. You don’t know yet what the expression of such a sentiment about negroes implies. It’s sabotage—sabotage of the Fatherland! Oh, don’t pretend you are not aware of it! I know only too well the secret ways in which you try to undermine the souls of these innocent children, and how you spread the poisonous