Gentlemen Read Online Free Page B

be any more real? You would not be able to see it or touch it. It would exist only in your mind. Suppose, for example, I was lying?”
    The smile crept back onto his face.
    â€œAnd here are two more for you to ponder,” he said, turning away.
    Haberman picked up the chalk and wrote on the board. We couldn’t see what he was writing, since he made a better bore than a window, but when he stepped back we could see two new words at the end of the list: CRIME and PUNISHMENT. We’d seen those words before, since that was the book he’d handed out the week before. It was on most of our desks, Crime and Punishment, by some Russian dude.
    Haberman gave all his classes the same books. It was like a point of pride or whatever. He said, actually said to us, that he could teach Melville to a stone—hard to miss the point there, looking down at the new copy of Moby-Dick on yourdesk—and maybe he could, if he made the questions easy enough. The first question on our test had been “What kind of animal was Moby-Dick?” But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t put us through a lot of hot air along the way. We figured he gave the same little speeches to all his classes, too, about metaphors and allusions and shadows in caves.
    We figured this latest book would just be more of the same. So now that he brought it up it was like he actually had a point with all of this barrel crap, and we were probably getting to it. Still, it felt like Tommy could walk in right now, lean over and say, What’d I miss? And I could say, Nothing much, and not be far off. He’d say, What’s with the tub? And I’d just shrug. I looked over at the door but there was no one there.
    â€œAnd what are these?” said Haberman, flicking the point of the chalk back and forth between the two new words. “Mr. Benton?”
    And it was pretty clear he wanted me to say ideas, but I didn’t exactly want to be his go-to guy, so I held up my copy of the book and said, “Homework.”
    I got a few laughs out of that line and Haberman frowned, but before he said anything, Lara was like, “Ideas!” She was truly happy to figure this one out, like a puppy finding a squeak toy.
    â€œThat’s right!” he said, turning toward her.
    She leaned forward, in case he asked her something else, but he just plowed ahead on his own.
    â€œWhat is a crime? What is it really? It is the idea that someone has done something wrong. One person may consider something a crime, and another person might consider it something else. The characters in this book certainly cannot agree. Is a fight in the hallway a crime? It fits the definition of assault, but it is more likely to end in detention after school than in a courtroom. Why is that? A minor has some wine in church; is that underage drinking or religious expression?”
    And this is why people hate people like him. He wasn’t wrong, exactly, but he was full of crap, because there are laws. Obviously. They’re written down and if you break them and you aren’t careful, you go to jail or get your head kicked in by the cops, and just because it hadn’t happened to him or anyone he knew didn’t mean it wasn’t real, that it was all an idea. I do something serious and my life is flushed down the pipes, and sure, I might do it anyway, but that’s a chance I’m taking, and I still know the fact of the matter. But he just kept going, acting like he was on a roll.
    â€œAnd what is punishment? Well, it comes after a crime, doesn’t it, after a crime or at least a transgression of some sort? The ideas are linked. They are universal. Tsumi to batsu, that is crime and punishment in Japanese. I don’t know why I remember that; I just do.”
    And I was thinking: I don’t know why I don’t care; I just don’t.
    â€œThe concept, and it is eastern as well as western, is that the crime creates an imbalance, and the