Two men

Two men, on a journey in September, in a bed in a room not much bigger than the bed, are discussing the one small window. The one in his forties calls himself 'invalid' and afraid of 'the air of the night.' He wants the window closed. The other, in his seventies, pleads for the window open--'we will be suffocated'--and promises to share his Theory of Colds if the younger hops into bed and gives ear: 'I will convince you.'

I remember the year I joined the faculty of the same school where my father-in-law had both studied and taught for many decades. At the orientation, the two of us were assigned to the same room in a dormitory: two cots in a small, airless room on the top floor of a castle-like building. We, this man--teacher and coach of many subjects and sports, methodical, conscientious, funny, mischievous, popular and humble--and I, talked into the evening, sweltering in the last summer heat, each intrigued by each other professionally, as well as personally. It was the forging of a new link in our relationship.

Moved by curiosity to to his reasons, the younger man decided to run the risk of a cold. The older man began 'a harangue on air and cold and respiration and perspiration,' while the other remembered, 'I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep and left him and his philosophy together; but I believe they were equally sound and insensible within a few minutes after me, for the last words I heard pronounced were more than half asleep.'

Later, in the darkness, I woke to hear truly stentorian snoring that filled the space. Waiting for sleep to recommence, I thought of how amazing it was that I was there, with that job, and alongside this impressive man.

The two men were traveling to make one last attempt at averting bloody war. We two were just beginning a school year, and, for me, a new career. Their negotiation lasted only a few hours; my term at the school a dozen years or so. After each, extraordinary developments: new, thrilling, scary, transformative.

G.K, were we like the great sage Benjamin Franklin and his scrappy sidekick John Adams on that bed in the New Jersey hostel in 1776? You'd be the first to laugh at the suggestion and quite rightly. But wasn't there on both occasions that special mixture of intimacy and momentousness? To that, I think you'd agree. At least, we'd talk.