Friday evening
October 30, 1964
Geliebtes Madchen:
It really isn’t cricket
That you should be made sicket
By the tiny little “bug”
That causes flu.
For it just is not the ticket
And here’s hopin that you lick it
Before it has the chance
To get the best of you.
Actually, when I saw the vacant seat alongside Sylvia in the Ent 50 class and Sylvia told me only that you hadn’t come, my heart sank for I thought you might be seriously ill.
I explained the exam (or discussed it) after handing out the papers and then I passed around a number of things to be seen – some photographs (enlarged) to show the scales on butterfly and moth wings, pictures of carpenter ants to show how different true ants are from termites, and then photos of our three types of termites in the Santa Clara Valley; also live termites collected partly by a student & partly by me to show that my prophecy that the first sunshine after the first good fall rain would bring them out:
“A prophet who can show signs in the Heavens
Has some chance of being believed”
And the termites never fail me!
Then when I glanced in “your” direction and saw a bowed head of black hair looking at one of the photos, I thought you had quietly slipped in and I felt relieved. However, “your” seat was so placed that “you” were largely hidden, and then – when “you” left so abruptly when the bell rang without so much as an acknowledgement of my query on the outline of the “Epic” I submitted (for the very good reason that you hadn’t been there at all and Sylvia had taken your papers for you), I was sure there must really have been something badly wrong – otherwise “you” wouldn’t have left in such haste – and I was dismal again.
After the usual after-class questions and a stop at the Bacty(?) storeroom to check with Betty Walker about the daily [page 2] mid-afternoon snack she brings me and which I hadn’t been able to find because the refrigerator where she puts the lunch (snack) had been moved out of the prep room adjoining Room 112, I got down to my office & called your number to get the score, only to get no response, so I felt worse, thinking maybe I’d missed contact for the whole weekend. I always do notice you when you come into class or if you’re already there when I arrive, but today the timing for everything seemed to be off. As a matter of fact, if I followed any impulses and weren’t inhibited by the usual social taboos, I’d probably look at you the whole hour and direct my lecture to you. But, of course I don’t want to embarrass you nor draw undue attention to either of us, so I make as good a pretense of indifference as I can. And since your were my student assistant for a short while I could easily explain the brief extra notice I often take of you at the close of class. But you might as well realize – as perhaps you already do – you’re pretty discerning – you still are the most compelling magnet I know in my present “circle” of those I especially love or esteem.
An hour after my first attempt at the phone – as I thought you may have gone shopping, no matter how badly you felt – I was rewarded by your voice and something of its usual warmth, even though you told me you were ill. I was overjoyed, because I felt as one of our English poets (Browning?) did when he wrote
“God’s in his Heaven
All’s right with the world.”
Mixed with my joy at making content & knowing you’d take things easy enough to recover (probably) over the weekend, was a real pain at the pit of my stomach for it hurts me, really, when I hear you are ill. Here’s hoping, however, that, by the time you read this, you will be your “old” self again (an ever young bit of spring time & fresh mountain air) and all set for your exam in European Civ. on Monday morning. My fingers are crossed and I fervently wish you the utmost of luck – and I hope the “learning by the cards” will begin to pay off in this exam. I’ll be eager to hear how it impresses you and later how you really come out of it. Any improvement will show that [page 3] you’ve begun to move back up the ladder again.
Incidentally, on Thurs. P.M. I went over to the Spartan Bookstore & bought me four paperbacks – Two of Havelock Ellis’s leading books on the psychology of sex, etc. – I’d read only short snatches of his writings before. I also got a book of 5 detailed “stories” (case histories in detail) by and American psychiatrist on types with which he feels Americans should be acquainted. And I got one on “Gestalt Psychology” that I’ve long need to read about in detail.
On the way back I found Amadou Bandé sitting on a bench looking through a folder he’d just purchases for his first examination in Cultural Anthropology that he’s taken by now – but I guess I told you about this. However, Betty Walker saw us and this P.M. commented on how interesting he looked. She also asked me to bring him with me next time I have dinner with her. So there’s one more contact that will help overcome his shyness & broaden his chance to learn English. Perhaps you’ll go with me to Betty’s sometime. I’m sure you’d like her. She is one of the really open, friendly, thinking persons among our younger faculty.
And here it is – I’ve written 5 pages already (writing to you is among the easiest things I do – I hope you don’t mind) When I had intended starting with the little verse on the first page and then offering you a few of my entomological limericks to give you an extra laugh to help you get well. Now, I’ll have to start the limericks on this sheet & finish them on a “next one” for lack of room here.
(Machilis, a jumping relative of the silverfish)
Scotch Pegleg Machilis
One day while out hikin
O’er a moss-covered stone
Did nibble some lichen (Mac’s a vegetarian)
“Tis much better than hay,”
He was then heard to say;
For I’m very much likin this lichen.
There’s a gay young red leggéd grasshopper
With an appetite man, that’s a whopper.
He eats night and day,
[page 4]
He’s funny that way;
But so were his mommer & pooper.
A big strong long hornéd beetle
Through the trunk of a thick oak did wheedle.
When asked how he did it,
He smiled as he said it,
“Each day I bit off just a leetle.”
Pious-eyed is the lovely green mantis
But she don’t wear no shirt nor no pantis
And when time comes to sup,
She’ll gobble anything up (She’s carnivorous)
She’ll eat even her uncles and antis.
Well more, perhaps, anon. Like the famous early English diarist, the time has come for the to write “And so to bed.”
In closing, however, let me make just one more remark. Your “acting” ability – as when you put on a show of feeling good, when actually you were feeling lousy – I’m well aware of – especially now, but when your voice sounds so genuine & sincere to me – when you’re talking to me – I plead for the justification for believing, as I do, that it’s true. You know how much you mean to me. And having found such a daughter-companion-equal – for you are all of these to me, don’t ever let me wake up & discover that any part of it isn’t so. As I’ve said, I’ll declare again – I want to help you realized the best of all your dreams and ambitions in any way I can – and any contribution I make will have absolutely no strings attached. So long as you repay the effort at all my effort alone will have been worth all the gamble there is to it. But if you ever do decide to break my heart – please do it all at once so it will be devastating! Then I’ll be so demoralized that I’ll be able to jump off the Bay Bridge without ever having a chance to discover what hit me. Don’t let me die by inches in slow discovery. I don’t anticipate anything like this at all of course, you are too bright a light & too great a joy to me but maybe the contrast will make this reality more clear. Anyway love & sweet dreams as always
Carl
Dr. Carl Duncan and Patricia Whiting Collection (SJSU)
