I shook my head helplessly. “I suppose my reading has been scattered.” Her look indicated agreement but not absolution. “Haggershaven is a college?”
“No. Haggershaven is ... Haggershaven.” She resumed her equanimity, her air of smiling tolerance. “It’s hardly a college since it has no student body nor faculty. Rather, both are one at the haven. Anyone admitted is a scholar or potential scholar anxious to devote himself to learning. I mean for its own sake. Not many are acceptable.”
She need hardly have added this; it seemed obvious I could not be one of the elect, even if I hadnt offended her by never having heard of Haggershaven. I knew I couldnt pass the most lenient of entrance examinations to ordinary colleges, much less to the dedicated place she represented.
“There arent any formal requirements for fellowship,” she went on, “beyond the undertaking to work to full capacity, to pool all knowledge and hold back none from scholars anywhere, to contribute economically to the Haven in accordance with decisions of the majority of fellows, and to vote on questions without consideration of personal gain. There! That certainly sounds like the stuffiest manifesto delivered this year.”
“It sounds too good to be true.”
“Oh, it’s true enough.” She moved close and I caught the scent of her hair and skin. “But there’s another side. The haven is neither wealthy nor endowed. We have to earn our living. The fellows draw no stipend; they have food, clothes, shelter, whatever books and materials they need—no unessentials. We often have to leave our own individual work to do manual labor to bring in food or money for all.” “Ive read of such communities,” I said enthusiastically. “I thought they’d all disappeared fifty or sixty years ago.”
“Have you and did you?” she asked contemptuously. “Youll be surprised to learn that Haggershaven is neither Owenite nor Fourierist. We are not fanatics nor saviors. We don’t live in phalansteries, practice group marriage or vegetarianism. Our organization is expedient, subject to revision, not doctrinaire. Contribution to the common stock is voluntary and we are not concerned with each other’s private lives.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Haggerwells. I didnt mean to annoy you.”
“It’s all right. Perhaps I’m touchy; all my life Ive seen the squinty suspiciousness of the farmers all around, sure we were up to something immoral, or at least illegal. Youve no idea what a prickly armor you build around yourself when you know that every yokel is cackling, ‘There goes one of them; I bet they ...’ whatever unconventional practice their imaginations can conceive at the moment. And the parallel distrust of the respectable schools. Detachedly, the haven may indeed be a refuge for misfits, but is it necessarily wrong not to fit into the civilization around us?”
“I’m prejudiced. I certainly havent fitted in myself.”