Malcolm Guest

Excerpt 1

When I first met Malcolm Guest I was totally unimpressed.  We were in the same class, special English 5a, juniors in high school, and he would contradict everything I said.  He was seated several rows to the left, and without fail, I saw an arm waving in the air, as though it were meant to strike me down, and after the teacher’s recognition and sigh, “Of course Vogel’s views concerning the role of the class struggle in ancient Rome are ridiculous.  The Gracchi give us the best example…”

One day, after class, we scowled at one another, and began talking.  There was a certain charm and nervous vitality about him that made me change my initial impression.  I was part of the Supercilious Group in school, and Malcolm belonged to the Amorphous Group containing the artists, writers, poets, and those weak in mathematics.  My group formed the elite: the physicists, mathematicians, and chemists.  But Malcolm, although appearing to belong to the artists, was already an individual.  He attempted to blend both groups within himself.  He would read advanced texts on mathematical reasoning without being able to perform simple arithmetic.

I had to work in the afternoons.  My family had escaped from Germany in 1938, and my father arrived in America bewildered, fearful, and beaten spiritually by anti-Jewish laws.  He could not manage to make money, and I helped out as best I could.  This prevented a fuller friendship with Malcolm outside school.  Anyway, he was very busy in those days trying to save society from itself.  He had just completed The Brothers Karamazov, I discovered, and this book, followed by The Idiot, made him believe that Prince Myshkin was the only type of person worth anything in this world.  He would walk with his shoulders bent in humility, try to hollow his cheeks to give himself the air of an ascetic, and smile idiotically to express joy.

Excerpt 2

The experience in the West was exactly what I was looking for.  The desert, the canyons, everything served to restore the spirit I had lost in the Army.  It is true that when things look forlorn, returning to the simplicities of a field, a forest, an animal community will cause a sort of reintegration.  Of course I didn’t go to the extent of an Alyosha and bend down to kiss the earth.  I left these histrionics to Malcolm.

He had, meanwhile, passed his examinations.  They lasted for five months, scattered over the weeks, and when they were completed, he had no other choice but to leave Europe and Barbara.  No other choice but the one he had chosen.

He insisted that he would make a choice, but the harder he tried, the more confused he became.  The ancestral roots he so vainly searched for entangled him so well that no action was taken.

I learned from many sources that he did attempt to forget Barbara.  He tried other women.  They came in all sizes and importance.  He was physically in America again, but his thoughts always reached out without success to Lake Léman.  The result was rather tragic, and quite usual.  More hatred, bitterness, and vindictiveness.

And Barbara?  How could she continue to exist without her Malcolm.  The meeting of two people who gave themselves so completely to each other and then could find no unity.  She abruptly became ill.  I used to be skeptical about Tristan and Isolde legends.  Now I believe them.  The magic potion doesn’t have to be drunk.  Perhaps it’s hormonal.  Whatever it is, Barbara slowly died.

Malcolm continued in his roots, and can still be met, searching, excusing himself, and always very alone.  Those who agree with his position are as empty and hateful as the historical and self-imposed situation.

The demon-Pan died with the separation.