"Oh, my!" said Hopkins. "We should never think of dealing with him by such authoritarian tactics. We don't believe in them. Besides, he's threatened to run away and become a real bum, a drifter, begging and stealing for his living."
Stella said: "You know, Willy, we always thought you were kind of a Fascist, the dictatorial way you brought up yours. Now I'm not sure."
I shrugged. "At least, they seem to be turning into hardworking squares, so we must have done something right. But now I've got to run over to the First National to see Evans."
I took the car I had rented at the airport and went to the bank, the entrance to which was flanked by a pair of big date palms. Evans, the treasurer, and the bank's lawyer met me. We three spent the afternoon going through the contents of the late Mary Trumbull Hammerstein's safe-deposit box and bank-account statements. I had to be there in person because the estate was in litigation, with a contested will and lots of money involved. A local judge had ordered the bank to turn Mrs. Hammerstein's papers over only to an official of my bank, which was the executor of the decedent's estate.
When five o'clock came, the lawyer was finished, but Evans and I still had work to do. Evans suggested that he and I come back at eight, so that we could complete the job and I could take my 'plane the next day.
Back at the Hopkinses', I met Robert Hopkins, whom I had not seen for several years. He was a small, pale, weedy, hollow-chested youth, with enough hair to qualify as the Dog-Faced Man in a circus. He wore clothes of such ragged denim that he might have been a castaway recently rescued from an uninhabited island.
He gave me a limp hand, saying: "Oh, yeah, you're my Uncle Willy. Do I understand you're—like—a banker?" He made it sound as if he were accusing me of mass murder.
"Yes," I said. "That's how I earn my living, such as it is."
He looked at me as if I had crawled out from under a flat stone and turned to his parents. "Say, when do we eat? I gotta get back to the campus. Big rally tonight."
"Please, Bob dear," said Stella. "Your father hasn't had time to serve the cocktails yet."
Robert snorted. "Okay, if you want to fool around with that middle-class crap. But I got business. Gotta eat by six-thirty at the latest."
"We'll try to hurry, Robert," said Avery Hopkins, nervously pouring. "Here's yours, Willy. Waes hail!"
"Drink hail!" I responded, pleased with myself for being able to return his verbal serve. Robert was silent during our hasty cocktail hour. When Stella had served dinner, I asked him:
"What's this rally you're attending?"
"Why, the usual thing. To protest, like, this obscene, immoral war, and pollution of the ecology—"
"Excuse me, Robert," said Avery Hopkins, "but I think you mean 'pollution of the environment.' 'Ecology' is the science of the environment, not the environment itself."
"Oh, who cares, Dad? Anyway, we're gonna protest pollution and racism and Fascism and sexism and capitalism and imperialism and grading and intelligence tests and—"
When Robert paused for breath, I said: "That's a pretty broad spectrum of complaints. Don't you think you'd get further if you concentrated on one thing at a time?"
"Oh, you wouldn't understand, Uncle Willy. You're on the other side of the barricades from us."
"Some of my banking friends consider me a bright pinko liberal," I said mildly.
"Oh, that's worse than a real conservative! You guys are always trying to damp down the class conflict, but we gotta have class struggle if we're ever gonna smash the System. We need it to raise the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. I mean, like, you may be a decent sort of guy in your private life, but you belong to the oppressing class. Also, you're an old man past forty, so you just couldn't understand us young progressive types. Might as well be talking Greek."
"Well," I said, "I have at least read Marx's Capital. Have you?"
"Marx? Naw. He's not relevant any more. The Communists have become, like, just another bunch of bureaucratic squares. All they want is to take over the system and run it for their own benefit. But we gotta overthrow the system, smash it to pieces, and start over. Now if you'd read Marcuse—"
"I have; that is, one of his books."
"What ja think?"
"I thought it the worst lot of rhetorical balderdash since Mein Kampf. All about how Man wants this and needs that and ought to do the other thing. He throws around a lot of abstractions having no connection with the real world— with what any real man or group of men wants—"
As I spoke, Robert became more and more excited. Now he jumped up from his half-eaten dinner, shouting:
"All right, we'll show you old mother-fuckers! We'll get you, like we got that reactionary sociologist! You're all parts of the system that's grinding down the people. You talk about our violence, but you use violence against us all the time, like sending your Fascist pig cops to beat us up! You're too yellow to do your own dirty work, so you hire the pigs to do it! Well, fuck the system, and fuck you, too!"
He slammed out, leaving Avery, Stella, and me staring. It was one of the more uncomfortable moments of my life. Avery Hopkins muttered:
"Willy, I can't tell you how sorry I am that you should be subjected to such barbarous discourtesy—"
"My fault, I'm afraid," I said. "I should have shut up instead of needling him."
After groveling apologies all around, I asked: "Who was the reactionary sociologist?"
"Oh," said Hopkins, "he meant Vincent Rosso, the one who had his office blown up. Lost his right foot and all his scientific data."
"I read something about that in the Eastern papers. What was his offense?"
"He believed in heredity, so that made him a racist, an imperialist, and other dreadful things."
After I had helped with the dishes, I collected the things I needed for the evening session at the bank. Looking at Armando, lying amid my socks, I thought: if you ever need supernatural help, Wilson Newbury my lad, now is the time, with a horde of young idealists on the rampage. I put the statuette in my brief case.
Evans awaited me in front of the First National. The watchman, a white-haired ex-cop named Joshua, let us in.
After another hour, we were just wrapping up the transfer of the Hammerstein papers to my custody. We worked in an inner office, so as not to be seen through the picture windows. It has always seemed foolish to me to build large expanses of glass into the walls of a bank, which ought if anything to resemble a medieval fortress. But the First National of San Romano was some architect's dream, with vast panes of plate glass outside and fancy wooden paneling within.
Joshua knocked on the door. When told to enter, he came in with Robert Hopkins, the latter breathing hard. The watchman said:
"Mr. Newbury, is this your nephew? Says he's Professor Hopkins's son."
"Yes, Josh, he is. What's up?"
"There's a big crowd outside, making a holler. So this young man came to the door and asked me to let him in. He wants to warn you."
"Yes, Bob?"
"Uncle Willy! You and Mr. Evans better split. The comrades are gonna destroy this symbol of repression, and if you're inside—well, I'm sorry I blew my top. Like, I didn't mean I really wanted to see you fried alive."
"Good God!" said Evans. "I'll call the cops."
"Won't do any good," said Robert. "The fuzz are already out there, but they're not doing anything. You guys better get the hell out while you can."
"That damned city council!" said Evans. "They told the police to handle the students with the utmost restraint, because they didn't want any more of the bad publicity the town got from last February's bust. Let's go."