January 18, 1957
This George Keller is driving me insane. Maybe it’s the immigrant mentality. In fact, I’m working up a theory that Americans are driven by ambition in direct proportion to how recently they’ve set foot on these shores.
I mean, I once thought Lambros had a bullet up his ass. But he was born here. It was his father’s generation that came over on the boat. But nothing, absolutely nothing, tops the frenzied drive of this Hungarian, barely two months in America. I mean, if he were a locomotive he’d explode, he’s stoking his fire so hot.
When I wake up at what for me is the ungodly hour of 8:00 A.M., he’s already hard at work, having long since eaten breakfast. Almost every day he tells me with a kind of gleeful pride that he was first man in the dining hall. (Compare this to Newall, who revels in the distinction of never once having gotten up for breakfast in his entire Harvard career.)
George borrowed fifty bucks from me (which he’ll pay back as soon as his scholarship money comes through), and bought a portable recorder he takes to every class.
Now in the afternoons he plays back the lectures—and sometimes not just once—till he practically knows them by heart. Lots are in Russian. Which may be great for him, but makes me feel like I’m suddenly living in the Kremlin. Needless to say, George has the suite pretty much to himself during the days.
We did have a little problem about Ted and Sara. While George was very understanding of their need for a place to be alone, he insisted that he wouldn’t mind if they used my bedroom as long as he could keep studying in the living room.
I had to explain to him very tactfully that they would mind very much. George finally agreed to go and sit in the house library from four to six-thirty on the days Ted and Sara are in temporary residence.
Now here’s a shocker. I have no idea what time he goes to bed. In fact, I have the sneaking suspicion that the guy doesn’t sleep at all! And I had this really weird experience late the other night.
After a hard session of drinking at the Porc, nature obliged me to get up at around 2:00 A.M. As I was standing in the john taking care of my needs, I suddenly heard this ghostly voice emanating from the shower, saying things like, “begin-began-begun, bite-bit-bitten, sing-sang-sung.”
I called out to George, but, instead of answering me directly, he simply went on rehearsing his verbs in that tile echo chamber.
Then I pulled back the shower curtain. There he was, naked except for his new à la mode jockey shorts, holding an English grammar. He barely noticed me as he droned on, hammering new words into his head.
I warned him that he’d drive himself to death. To which he replied, “Drive-drove-driven.”
I went to the sink, picked up a glass of cold water, and poured it over his head. He shivered and looked at me with comatose astonishment, then ripped the curtain from my hand, slammed it closed, and continued his verbal gymnastics.
“Show-showed-shown, speak-spoke-spoken.”
Shit, I thought. He can kill himself for all I care.
I shut the bathroom door behind me so that at least Newall could have some peace, staggered back to my bed, and went to sleep.
Or, as George would have put it, sleep-slept-slept.
“Hello, Dad. It’s Jason. I’ve got some great news.”
“I can’t hear you, son. There’s a terrific racket going on behind you. Where are you calling from?”
“Racket’s a good word for it. The whole squash team’s in my room. They just voted for next year’s varsity captain and for some stupid reason they chose me.”
“Son,” the elder Gilbert said elatedly, “that’s just terrific news. I can’t wait to tell your mother. And you know what? I bet you’ll be tennis captain, too.”
As Jason hung up, he felt a kind of vague, inexplicable sadness. For his dad’s last remark had unsettled him. After all, he had been calling to announce a great success. And though his father was obviously delighted, he had concluded with the pretty unsubtle expectation that his son would bring him still more glory. Where would it end?
“Hey, Captain,” Newall interrupted giddily, “are you still sober?”
“Yeah.” Jason laughed. “Couldn’t let my dad think we were all a bunch of drunken bums, which naturally we are.”
His teammates roared appreciatively. There were a dozen of them crowded in his little room, plus several hangers-on including Ted and Sara. Andrew Eliot had brought them along to get a glimpse of the more athletic creatures in the Harvard bestiary.
Originally Newall had intended these festivities to be a surprise. But then George Keller had refused to let them use their own room to hold the party. Newall had no alternative but to tell Jason in advance, so they could use his suite.
“How is that dingbat?” Jason asked, while pouring out a Bud. “I bet he’s out memorizing the Encyclopedia Britannica by now.”
“Don’t laugh,” cautioned Andrew. “Besides studying like a maniac for all his courses, he also reads every inch of The New York Times—including real estate and recipes—and writes down every word he doesn’t know.”
“And that includes the Sunday edition,” Newall added, “when the goddamn paper’s practically as long as War and Peace.”
“Well,” said Jason, “you gotta admire a guy like that.”
“I’ll be happy to admire him,” Newall retorted, “if only someone else would room with him.”
Suddenly the members of the squash team started clinking glasses and calling boozily for silence. It was time to toast their newly chosen captain. The most eloquent of them was Tod Anderson, former Andover captain, now number three on the varsity.
Tod raised his glass and spoke a tribute appropriate for such a gathering of jocks. “To our beloved new leader, Jason Gilbert, ace racket-man and incomparable ass-man. May his shots in court drop as often as his shorts in bed.”
Just after seven, the final partyers began to disperse, and the squash team, as prearranged, started strolling through the streets of Cambridge toward the Hasty Pudding Club. Thursday was steak night, the best buy in Cambridge for $1.75.
As they trooped down Mount Auburn toward Holyoke Street, the knights of the Harvard Squash Varsity broke into a euphoric variant of the college’s most popular fight song:
With Gilbert in triumph flashing
Mid the strains of victory
Poor Eli’s brains we are smashing
Into blue obscurity …
They grew only slightly more sedate as they shuffled up the wooden steps of the clubhouse, at number 12, and mounted the stairs, past two centuries of theatrical posters, to the dining room where Newall had reserved a large table for the entire group.
Naturally they put Jason at the head, which cheered him immensely, because his prominent position drew the attention of every other Pudding member’s date. To these ordinary mortals’ discomfiture, their female guests kept smiling at the man of the hour. And he smiled disarmingly back at them.
At about ten o’clock Jason, Andrew, and Dickie Newall were weaving their way back to Eliot House when something occurred to the captain-elect.
“Hey,” he remarked, “I didn’t see Anderson at dinner. Did he duck the party or something?”
“C’mon, Jason,” Newall responded with liquid lightheartedness, “you know Tod’s not a member of the Pudding.”
“How come?” asked Jason, surprised that such a popular athlete should not be in the eating society that took almost a third of all upperclassmen.
“Haven’t you noticed that Anderson’s a Negro?” Newall chided.
“So what?” said Jason.
“Come on, Gilbert,” Dickie continued, “the Pudding’s not that liberal. I mean, we’ve still got to keep somebody out.”
Thus, even on the night of such personal triumph, Jason Gilbert was once again reminded that although all Harvard undergraduates are equal, some are more equal than others.
Professor Samuel Eliot Morison was among the most eminent members of the Harvard faculty, and by far the most prolific. Renowned for his many volumes of naval history and his chronicles of Harvard, this distinguished gentleman was also, as his middle name suggests, vaguely related to the Eliot in The Class of ’58.
Andrew had been gliding along for almost three years now, flitting like a bee from major to major (English, American studies, even Ec. for a few silly weeks). But now his senior tutor sent him an ultimatum: he had to choose a subject and stick to it. Knowing that he had to graduate from Harvard with a degree in something, he was panicked into seeking professional advice.
Gathering his courage, he wrote Professor Morison a note. And was agreeably surprised to receive an immediate invitation to visit the great man in his map-lined office deep in the stacks of Widener.
“What a real pleasure,” he remarked as they shook hands. “I see before me living proof that old John Eliot’s line is vibrant still. I knew your father when he was an undergraduate and tried to get him to help me a bit with my colonial history. But I guess the banking branch seduced him.”
“Yes,” Andrew averred politely, “Dad is sort of fond of money.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” said Morison, “especially since so much Eliot philanthropy has helped to build this college. My own namesake, Samuel Eliot, endowed the first professorship of Greek back in 1814. Tell me, Andrew, what’s your major?”
“That’s just it, sir. I’m a junior and I still haven’t made up my mind.”
“What do you think you’ll be doing after college?”
“Well, naturally, I’ll have to do some military service—”
“The Eliots have long served with honor in the navy,” he commented.
“Yes, sir, Admiral Morison,” Andrew replied. But did not tell him that that was why he was thinking of the army.
“And after that?”
“I guess Dad expects me to be some sort of banker.” After all, he thought, I’m coming into so much dough in four years I’ll at least have to visit where the bonds are kept. That’s sort of banking, isn’t it?
“Well, then,” said Morison, “you’ll have a fine vocation. Now you ought to choose a major that will give you some enriching avocation. Have you ever thought about the history of your own family?”
“Dad never lets me forget it,” Andrew responded with honesty and some discomfort. “I mean, while I was still in diapers he was already lecturing me about our noble Heritage. To be frank sir, it’s a bit off-putting. I mean, over pablum I was hearing about John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians, and great-granddad Charles, the famous Harvard President. I was practically smothered by the foliage on our family tree.”
“But you’ve just leapfrogged several centuries,” the admiral remarked. “What about the Revolutionary War? Do you know where all the Eliots were during ‘the times that tried men’s souls’?”
“No, sir. I just assumed they were shooting off their muskets around Bunker Hill.”
Now the professor smiled. “Then I think I have some enlightenment for you. The eighteenth century Eliots were splendid diarists. And we have records in their very words of what they saw and did during the Revolution.
“Andrew, I can think of nothing more exciting, especially for an Eliot, than studying what Harvard graduates were up to at that time. It could be a splendid topic for a senior thesis.”
At this point Andrew had to confess. “Sir, I think I should tell you that my grades are not exactly at the honors level. They’d never let me write a dissertation.”
The great historian smiled.
“Then you can have the essence of true education, Andrew. I’ll arrange for you to have tutorial with me, and well go through the Eliot diaries together. Grades won’t enter into it. Just reading them will be their own reward.”
Andrew left Morison’s office almost breathless with elation. Now there was a chance that in addition to receiving a diploma, he might even get an education.
At times he desperately wanted the rehearsals of Arcadia to end, so the damn ballet would be performed and close. Then he would never have to see Maria again.
At other times he wished the preparations would go on forever. Six afternoons a week in February and March he had to sit for several hours at the keyboard as Maria put the ballet on its feet. Drilling the dancers, demonstrating the movements, and often coming over to lean on the piano and ask the composer’s advice.
It was that damn blue leotard of hers. No, how could he blame the garment when what was driving him crazy was the body it so tantalizingly accentuated.
Perhaps the worst part of all was when they would go out for a bite afterward to discuss how the ballet was going. She was so warm and friendly, and their conversations would go on for hours. Agonizingly, these evenings grew more and more to seem like dates. Yet Danny knew they weren’t.
Once, when she had Asian flu, he went to visit her in the Infirmary and brought a flower. He sat down by her bed and tried to cheer her up with silly anecdotes. She laughed a lot and, when he rose to leave, said, “Thanks for coming, Danny. You’re a pal.”
That’s all he was, goddammit, just a lousy pal. And yet how could it be otherwise? She was beautiful and confident—and tall. And he was none of these.
And worst of all, what pretext could he possibly invent to see her once the performances had ended?
Opening night finally arrived. All the self-styled Harvard cognoscenti assembled in Radcliffe’s Agassiz Theater to sit in judgment on Maria Pastore’s choreography and Daniel Rossi’s score.
Danny was too involved conducting to notice how it was going, although at several points the audience burst into applause. Was it for the music or the dance?
• • •
Since most of the performers were abstemious, the party was held in an adjacent rehearsal room, where brackish Kool-Aid punch was served and a few daring souls drank beer.
Harvard theatrical premieres are just like those on Broadway in one respect. The performers all sit up waiting for the reviews. The only difference is that in Cambridge they merely keep vigil for the verdict of the Crimson.
At about eleven, someone sprinted in with Sonya Levin’s comments for tomorrow’s Crime. For a journal by implicit policy supercilious, the review began with some pretty enthusiastic remarks about Maria’s choreography, which was deemed “dynamic and imaginative, with touches of lighthearted invention.”
Then Miss Levin turned her attention to Danny Rossi. Or rather her guns. In her opinion,
the music, though ambitious and energetic, was, to say the least, derivative. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but Stravinsky and Aaron Copland could justifiably ask Rossi to pay royalties.
To Danny’s consternation, this was all being read aloud by the stage manager, who was growing steadily uneasier as he recited.
Danny was stung. Why was this sarcastic Crimson smartass trying to make herself look good at his expense? Did she have any idea how this would hurt?
He felt a sudden urge to run out of the room. Just as he stood, there was a hand on his shoulder. It was Maria.
“Hey, Danny—”
“Don’t bother,” he muttered bitterly. He could not turn around and face her. And forgetting he had left his parka folded on a backstage chair, he started slowly out of the room.
As soon as he reached the stairway he quickened his pace. He had to get the hell out of there. To escape all those pitying glances.
When he reached the ground floor he noticed the sign pointing toward the public telephone and remembered his promise to call Dr. Landau as soon as the performance was over.
Oh, shit, no. How can I repeat those crushing things that bitch reviewer said? In fact, how could he ever call his teacher now? He was a failure. A conspicuous and public failure. Like that long-ago day on the high school track.
He pushed open the glass door and walked out into the cold March night, insensitive to the harsh wind hitting his face. He was too preoccupied with the thought that this unexpected turn of events would deprive him of his beloved teacher’s respect.
Danny always knew he would be Landau’s last pupil. And he wanted to be his best.
He could go no farther. He sat down on the stone steps and put his head in his hands.
“Hey, Rossi, what are you doing there? You’ll catch pneumonia.”
Maria was standing above him, just outside the door.
“Go away, Pastore. You shouldn’t hang around with second-raters.”
Ignoring his words, she came down and sat a step below him.
“Listen, Danny, I don’t care what Sonya says. I think your music’s brilliant.”
“Everybody in the college’s gonna read that tomorrow morning. That’ll give those bastards in Eliot House a few laughs.”
“Don’t be silly,” she replied. “Most of those preppies can’t read anyway.” And then added gently, “I only wish you’d believe that I hurt just as much as you.”
“Why? You got good reviews.”
“Because I love you.”
“You can’t,” he answered as an unwilling reflex. “You’re much too tall.”
She could not help laughing at this absurd reaction.
Then he began to laugh as well. And reached down and drew her toward him. They kissed.
After a moment Maria gazed at him and smiled. “Now it’s your turn.”
“What?”
“I mean, is this a one-way thing or not?”
“No,” he answered softly. “I love you too, Maria.”
They did not feel the chill wind blow as they continued to embrace.
Harvard spring vacations can mean many things to many people.
Seniors stay in place to finish off their dissertations, which are due the day that classes recommence. The more affluent undergraduates fly off to Bermuda for that fabled rite known as College Week. The program includes sunning, sailing, waterskiing, calypso dancing, and—at least hypothetically—seducing the girls who flock there for most of the same reasons.
Spring normally visits Cambridge in name only. And athletic muscles need the vernal warmth to tone them for the crucial competitions yet to come.
The track team gets to fly to Puerto Rico. Which sounds more exotic than it is. Because, unlike the tourists on the beaches of Bermuda, the harriers get up at 5:00 A.M., go ten miles before breakfast, and then sleep all day until it’s time to run again that afternoon. Few have the energy, or even the desire, to seek out se[unclear]oritas in the evening.
Tennis, golf, and baseball tour the southern states to limber up, competing against some of the local universities. These teams live less ascetically than the runners, and thus have reservoirs of energy for nighttime entertainment. After dinner they strut through the richly landscaped campuses wearing an irresistible lodestone for the lovely southern coeds: sweaters with that noble H.
After a hard-earned victory against the University of North Carolina, Jason Gilbert and his teammates were preparing to go out and captivate the female population of Chapel Hill. As they dressed and showered, Dain Oliver, the coach, was offering constructive criticism to his men—including Jason, who, although he’d won, had looked a little sluggish on the court.
“Because I’m tired, coach,” he was protesting. “All this traveling and practicing and playing matches isn’t really what you’d call a picnic.”
“Come on, Gilbert,” Dain reprimanded with good humor, “you’ve been putting too much effort into postgame partying. May I remind you this is not supposed to be a holiday?”
“Hey, coach, you do remember that I won today, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but you were sleeping on your feet. So shape up, or I’ll slap a curfew on you. Do you read me, Gilbert?”
“Yessir. Sorry, mother dear.”
As laughter echoed even from the shower room, a graying academic type in suit and tie appeared and asked to have a few words with the coach.
“Who is that guy?” Jason whispered to Newall, who was drying himself at an adjacent locker.
“Probably an FBI man after you, Gilbert,” he quipped. “I think you’ve violated the Mann Act four or five times so far this week.”
Before Jason could reply, the coach was calling for the team’s attention.
A dozen players in varying states of undress obediently assembled.
Coach Oliver addressed them. “Guys, this gentleman is Rabbi Yavetz, the director of the U.N.C. Hillel Society. He tells me that this evening is the first night of the Passover holiday. And all Jewish players on the team are welcome to attend his service.”
“It will be short and festive,” the rabbi added in a southern accent. “Just a simple seder with some pretty good food and the songs I hope your granddads taught you.”
“Any takers?” asked the coach.
“I’ll be glad to come,” said sophomore Larry Wexler, new to the team at number seven. “That’ll smooth things over with my parents, who were sort of disappointed that I won’t be home.”
“Anybody else?” Oliver inquired, glancing at Jason Gilbert.
He looked back blandly and replied, “Thanks a lot, but I’m not really … interested.”
“You’re always welcome if you change your mind,” the rabbi said. And then turned to Larry Wexler. “I’ll send one of our members to the dorm where y’all are staying about half past six.”
When the clergyman departed, Newall asked with casual curiosity, “Say, Wexler, what’s this holiday for, anyway?”
“It’s kind of neat,” replied the sophomore. “It celebrates the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. You know, when Moses said, ‘Let my people go.’ ”
“Sounds like a colored folks’ jamboree,” Newall commented.
“Listen,” Wexler retorted, “as Disraeli once told an English bigot, ‘When my ancestors were reading the Bible yours were still swinging from trees.’ ”
An hour later, as he was carefully adjusting the knot in his Varsity Club tie, Larry Wexler noticed a reflection in the mirror.
It was Jason—dressed, with uncharacteristic formality, in a sedate blue blazer.
“Hey, Wexler,” he said uneasily, “if I go to this thing, will I look like a total asshole? I mean, I don’t know what to do.”
“No sweat, Gilbert. All you’ve got to do is sit, listen, and then eat. I’ll even turn the pages for you.”
They were about four dozen, seated at long tables in a private dining room of the Student Union.
Rabbi Yavetz made some brief introductory remarks.
“In a real sense, Passover is the cardinal holiday on the Jewish calendar. For it fulfills the central commandment of our faith, as put forth in Exodus, Chapter Thirteen—that of reminding our children in every generation that the Lord delivered us from oppression in Egypt.”
Jason listened mutely as the celebrants took turns reading from the biblical account and singing psalms of praise. At one point he whispered to Larry, “How come you all know the same tunes?”
“They’re from the Top Ten of 5000 B.C. Your ancestors must have been on a very slow camel.”
Jason was relieved when the dinner was served. For then the conversation became very much twentieth-century collegiate and he did not feel like an odd man out.
During the meal Larry whispered, “Did any of it mean anything to you—you know, culturally?”
“Sort of,” Jason replied, with politeness if not much conviction. For in truth he had not really understood what this ritual had to do with him in 1957.
And yet, before the evening ended, he did.
When the service continued, the rabbi bade everyone rise to pray for the coming of the Messiah. At this point he added a note of more recent history:
“We are all, of course, aware that the ancient Egyptians were far from the last to try to destroy our people. As recently as Passover 1943, the brave Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, starved and almost without arms, began their last heroic stand against the Nazis who were besieging them.
“This did not happen to our forefathers, it happened to our very own relatives. Uncles, aunts, grandparents—and for some of us, brothers and sisters. It is of them—and the six million others murdered by Hitler—that we think at this moment.”
There was a sudden hush.
Jason saw a young man at the first table lower his head and begin to weep silently.
“Did you lose any relatives—over there?” Jason whispered.
Larry Wexler looked at his teammate and answered somberly, “Didn’t we all?”
A moment later they were again seated, singing festive songs.
The formalities concluded not long after. They were followed by some unofficial socializing with the attractive coeds, who, enjoined by a double code of hospitality, flocked to welcome the two visitors from Harvard.
At a little before eleven, Larry and Jason were walking through the darkened campus back to their dorm.
“I don’t know about you, Gilbert,” Larry commented, “but I’m really glad I went. I mean, don’t you think it’s good to know about our roots?”
“I guess so,” Jason Gilbert answered half-aloud. And thought, My own roots seem just to go back to a courthouse twenty years ago. When some accommodating judge gave my father a new, non-Jewish name.
And to secure our future, he mortgaged all our past.
As they walked on, he mused further. I wonder why Dad had to do it. I mean, this guy Wexler’s no worse off than I. In fact, he’s better. He’s got an identity.
Jason returned from the spring tour changed in one official way. After their match against a group of former college all-stars now serving with the Marines in Quantico, Virginia, he had succumbed to the blandishments of a persuasive recruiting officer and signed up for the Platoon Leaders Class.
He had decided that this would be a great way to discharge his military obligation since, unlike the ROTC program, it would meet only during the next two summers. Then, after graduation, he’d go straight into the Marines and serve a two-year stint as an officer. There were even heavy hints that after basic training he might be transferred to Special Services and could spend his tour of duty hitting tennis balls.
But first another battle lay before him. There was Yale to face in May. And the New Haven hordes were out to get revenge.
“No.”
“Please.”
“No!”
Maria Pastore sat bolt upright, her face flushed.
“Please, Danny, for God’s sake, do we have to go through this all the time?”
“Maria, you’re being unreasonable.”
“No, Danny, you’re being cruel and insensitive. Can’t you understand I have my principles?”
Danny Rossi could get nowhere with Maria.
Though for the first few weeks they had lived in a kind of paradise for two, alone amid the crowds of Cambridge, they soon encountered serious ethical differences.
Maria was the nicest, kindest, brightest, and most beautiful young woman he had ever met. And she adored him. But the problem was—for reasons he refused to understand, or at any rate accept—she would not sleep with him. In fact, she would permit considerably less than that.
They would embrace and kiss each other passionately while lying on his couch, but whenever he so much as slipped his hand beneath her sweater, all her ardor suddenly turned to rigid panic.
“Please, Danny. Please don’t.”
“Maria,” he reasoned with her patiently, “this is not a fly-by-night affair. We really care for each other. I only want to touch you because I love you.”
She stood up, and pulling down her sweater pleaded with him to appreciate her feelings.
“Danny, we’re both Catholic. Can’t you understand it’s wrong to do this sort of thing before you’re married?”
“What sort of thing?” he said exasperatedly. “Where is it written in the Bible that a man can’t touch a woman’s breasts? In fact, the Song of Songs—”
“Please, Danny,” she said quietly, but with obvious inward agony, “you know it isn’t that. It would never stop there.”
“But I swear to you I won’t ask for more.”
Maria looked at him, her cheeks red, and said candidly, “Hey look, maybe you think you could break off right in the middle. But I know myself. I know that once we reached that point, I couldn’t stop.”
For a moment this confession elated Danny. “Then in your heart you do want to go all the way?”
She nodded, with a look of shame.
“Danny, I’m a woman. I’m in love with you. And I’ve got a lot of passion bottled up inside me. But I’m also a religious Catholic. The sisters taught us that to do this is a mortal sin.”
“Hey look,” he now persisted as if in a university debate. “Can you, an enlightened Radcliffe girl in 1957, tell me you really think you’ll burn in hell if you go to bed with someone you love?”
“Before I’m married, yes,” she answered without hesitation.
“God, I don’t believe this,” he responded, running out of patience. And of arguments.
Overcome with dizzying desire to convince this sensual conservative, he said impetuously, “Look, Maria, we’ll be married someday. Isn’t that enough for you?”
Perhaps she was too upset to notice that he had actually mentioned matrimony. In any case she answered, “Danny, please believe, by everything that’s holy, I simply can’t forget the way I’ve been brought up. My priest, my parents, no—I won’t evade responsibility and put the blame on them—it’s my belief. I want to give my husband my virginity.”
“Jesus, that’s so antiquated. Haven’t you read Kinsey? Maybe ten percent of women do that nowadays.”
“Danny, I don’t care if I’m the last girl on this earth. I’m going to be chaste until my wedding night.”
To which, having reached the end of his rhetorical tether, Danny could but answer with a near-involuntary, “Shit.”
Then, trying to rein in his own passion, he said, “Okay, okay, let’s forget this whole thing and have some dinner.”
As he started to put on his tie, he was surprised to hear her answer, “No.”
He whirled and barked, “Now what?”
“Danny, let’s be honest. Neither of us can go on like this. Because we’re starting to get angry with each other. And that means all our tender feelings will inevitably dissipate.”
She stood up. As if to put him at a physical as well as moral disadvantage.
“Danny, I really care for you a lot,” she said. “But I don’t want to see you—”
“Anymore?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, “but for a while anyway. Look, you’ve got Tanglewood this summer. I’ll be working back in Cleveland. Maybe the separation will do us good. We’ll both have time to think.”
“But didn’t you hear me say I want to marry you?”
She nodded. And then answered softly, “Yes. But I’m not sure you know if you really mean it. That’s why we need time apart.”
“At least can we write to each other?” Danny asked.
“Please, let’s.”
Maria then walked to the door and turned. She looked at him silently for a moment and then murmured, “You’ll never know how much this hurts me, Danny.”
Then she left.
By the spring of 1957 George Keller was as intellectually prepared as anyone in The Class to take courses in the normal language of instruction at Harvard College.
Not unexpectedly, he had chosen to major in government. For Brzezinski had explained how, with his fluent Russian and firsthand knowledge of Iron Curtain politics, he’d be indispensable in Washington.
Among the courses he selected for the spring was Government 180, Principles of International Politics, even though the name of the professor had evoked in him some of his original feelings of paranoia. For the instructor was one William Palmer Eliot—yet another (alleged) relative of his roommate, Andrew.
Still, it was a fateful choice. For Eliot’s assistant was a chubby young instructor who spoke English with a foreign accent heavier than George’s. His name was Henry Kissinger. And by some uncanny mutual telepathy they gravitated toward each other.
Kissinger, a refugee like George, albeit from wartime Germany, had also been a Harvard undergraduate (and likewise anglicized his first name). He had acquired an uncanny grasp of politics—both in theory and practice. Dr. K. (as he was affectionately known) already directed something called the Harvard International Seminar. And was on the board of what was probably the world’s most important political journal, Foreign Affairs.
George thought his own cleverness had gotten him Kissinger as section man, only to discover that the teacher had made all the necessary efforts to win him for his discussion group. Neither man was disappointed.
Among other things, Kissinger was impressed by George’s command of the Russian language. But it was his own burning ambition to be number one at Harvard (and, by extension, in the world) that most made him want to enlist the young Hungarian for his team. For he knew how much his archrival Zbig Brzezinski desperately desired to keep George in his own sphere of influence.
After a section meeting early in the term, he stopped George and said, “Mr. Keller, may I see you for a moment? I would like to add a word or two about your recent essay.”
“Certainly,” George said politely, suddenly afraid his paper had been less than the original and perceptive analysis he himself considered it.
“Was it all right, Professor?” George asked when the last student had departed. Keen academic strategist, he had astutely bestowed on Kissinger the title of Professor when he knew full well he was a mere instructor. The honoree was clearly flattered. Or at least he smiled broadly.
“Your paper, Mr. Keller, was not just ‘all right.’ It was absolutely first rate. I’ve never seen an essay that so perceptively distinguished all the subtleties of the various East European philosophies.”
“Thank you, Professor,” George replied elatedly.
“I know you are one of our new imports from Hungary. What were you studying in Budapest?”
“Law. Soviet law, of course. Pretty useless, eh?”
“Depends to whom. Personally, for my researches I would welcome someone who was expert in this area and could read Russian easily.”
“Well, sir, to be quite above the boards,” George replied, “I didn’t finish my degree. So you could hardly say I was an expert.”
Kissinger’s eyes twinkled behind his thick, black-rimmed glasses.
“Perhaps in Hungary you would not qualify as such, but in Cambridge people even with your experience are as rare as hen’s teeth—”
“Or snowflakes in July perhaps?” suggested George, to demonstrate his range of English idioms.
“Indeed,” Dr. K. replied. “So if you have time, I would like to hire you as a research assistant. The European Study Center pays two dollars an hour, which is pretty good. And there would be the additional incentive of our possibly finding a senior-thesis topic in the work you will be doing.”
“Are you intimating that you might personally direct my dissertation?”
“Young man, I’d be insulted if you didn’t ask me,” Kissinger responded with seductive affability. “So do I take it then that you accept my offer, George? Or do you want to think about it? Maybe talk it over with your faculty adviser? Who is it, that young Polish fellow Brzezinski?”
“It’s all right, I’ll explain things to Zbig. When shall I start working, Dr. Kissinger?”
“Come to my office after lunch today. And, George, from now on, when we’re not in class, please call me Henry.”
And thus Junior Year concluded.
While in the outside world, Eisenhower had been reelected President by his loving U.S. family, one of The Class had been chosen as the minister of millions to the Lord himself. For when the reigning Aga Khan was dying, he unexpectedly chose his grandson, Prince Karim ’58, to succeed him as spiritual leader of the millions of Ismaili Moslems.
Many members of The Class saw this as an augury that they too would be blessed by heaven.
George Keller had traveled farthest—both geographically and mentally. After barely seven months, he had truly conquered the English language. Sentence structure bent to his will. Words had become mere pawns in a power play to breach the walls of argument and capture minds.
He now was free to climb the academic mountain. And here he had a magisterial mentor. For if Harvard served him no other purpose, it had brought him close to Henry Kissinger, with whom his mind worked in uncanny synchronicity.
Thus, he was rewarded with the enviable summer job of acting as Dr. K.’s special assistant in organizing the International Seminar and editing its journal, Confluence.
The program had gathered several dozen government officials and important intellectuals from both sides of the Iron Curtain for a series of colloquia and public lectures, to make them more sensitive to the new postwar configurations of the global family.
Part of George’s duties was to fraternize among the representatives from the Eastern bloc countries and find out what they really thought of Harvard, the seminar—and even Kissinger himself.
Despite their initial wariness, they all ultimately succumbed to George’s European charm and, at one point or another, spoke far more candidly than they had ever imagined they would in the alien confines of a Western capitalist university.
Of course, nothing in Henry’s brief to George suggested that he need go as far as to become physically intimate with any of the participants. This he did on his own initiative.
Perhaps it was something about the sultry Cambridge weather, the sudden stimulation of seeing bevies of non-Radcliffe girls stroll through the Yard in the shortest of shorts and the tightest of T-shirts.
Or perhaps the guilt that had inspired George’s self-induced chastity—a kind of subliminal penance—had been absolved by time.
In early August he went to bed with one of Poland’s leading journalists. She was nearly forty and a woman of the world. Her comments on George’s amorous technique, therefore, carried substantial weight.
“Young man,” she whispered, “you are the most expert lover I have ever known—”
George smiled.
“—And the coldest,” she quickly added. “You do everything as if you have learned it from a textbook.”
“Do you doubt my sincerity?” he asked good-humoredly.
“Of course not,” she replied with a sly smile. “I never for a minute believed that you had any. You are their spy, yes?”
“Of course.” George grinned. “The director wants me to find out which delegate is the best in bed.”
“And?” she inquired saucily.
“If they ever give a Lenin Prize for sex, you would win hands down.”
“Ah, George,” she cooed, “you talk as elegantly as you screw. You have a great future ahead of you.”
“In what field do you think?” he asked, genuinely eager to learn how such a woman of the world viewed him.
“It’s obvious,” she replied. “There is one profession which needs an equal quantity of your two best talents. I mean, of course, politics.”
And she pulled him to her to engage once again in the dialectic of Eros.
Jason Gilbert’s march to sporting glory went on unimpeded. He had won the IC4A Tennis Title for the second straight year. And, as if that were not sufficient kudos, his teammates demonstrated the exceptional esteem in which they held him by voting him their captain—as they already had for squash.
Though normally not vindictive, he could not keep himself from sending to his Old Blue headmaster, Mr. Trumbull, the lengthy Crimson article that assessed his extraordinary number of sporting achievements to date. And, as the encomium concluded, “Who can dare to speculate what further heights Gilbert will reach with yet another year to go?”
Ted and Sara’s love had grown to such intensity that the mere notion of having to spend two months apart became an intolerable prospect. She therefore persuaded her parents to allow her to attend Harvard Summer School and sublet a flat in North Cambridge. Sara’s mother was more than slightly dubious about her daughter’s sudden passion to take on yet more academic work. But her father, to whom she could confide the fact that mother’s suspicions were in fact correct, was generous in his support and helped her win the day.
It was a long and passionate summer (during which they even made love one starry night in Harvard Yard itself, in the quadrangle behind Sever Hall). Parting on Labor Day was a painful wrench. Sara cried the entire week before they had to give up the apartment.
For Danny Rossi, the summer of ’57 was a kind of overture to the highest point yet in his musical career.
Munch had booked him to perform with the Boston Symphony on October 12, when he would play Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. Those trills in the opening movement would have reverberations around the musical world. When he jubilantly called Dr. Landau to tell him the news, he was thrilled to hear that his teacher had been saving money for the plane fare and intended to be present at the concert.
Still, Danny’s imminent debut offered far less joy than he had always dreamed it would. For his junior year had taken from him more than it had bestowed. The humiliation of the Crimsons pan for his ballet still haunted him. And then there was the tortured relationship with Maria.
He had hoped their separation through the summer would allow him time to clarify his thoughts and possibly to seduce a few girls at Tanglewood to fortify his masculine self-image. But a sudden tragedy cast a huge pall on everything.
The very night he arrived at Tanglewood, his mother called to tell him that Dr. Landau had suffered a fatal heart attack. In a haze of grief, Danny packed and flew out for his teacher’s funeral. At the graveside he cried unashamedly.
When, after the brief service the mourners started to disperse, his mother, whom he had not seen in three long years, implored him to come home. She told Danny it was Dr. Landau’s final wish that he be reconciled with his father.
And so the prodigal son returned at last to the house where he had spent such a miserable adolescence.
Arthur Rossi seemed to have changed both inwardly and outwardly. He was subdued now. There were furrows in his face, and he was completely gray at the temples.
For a fugitive instant, Danny felt a pang of remorse. As if his father’s outward signs of physical decline had somehow been his fault.
But as they stood there facing each other wordlessly for those first awkward moments, Danny forced himself to remember how callously this man had treated him. But he could no longer find it in himself to hate his father. Still, he could not love him, either.
“You’re looking well, son.”
“You too, Dad.”
“It—it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
That was the full extent of what he could say. Danny’s long-cherished fantasy of a paternal apology was just that—a figment of his own childish desires.
Thus, with a quiet magnanimity born of grief and newly found indifference, Danny offered his hand to signal that their quarrel was finally at an end. The two even embraced.
“I’m really glad, son,” Arthur Rossi murmured. “Now we can all let bygones be bygones.”
Yeah, thought Danny, what the hell. It’s so unimportant now. The only man who ever acted like a real father to me is dead.