Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red

by Harry Kemelman

  “They did it in your classes? What did you do?”

  “Oh, I paid no attention to them,” said Hendryx. “I just went right ahead with my lecture. Some of the instructors made some sarcastic remarks, but nothing much happened.” He laughed. “Ted Singer—you know, sociology—said that since it was a topsy-turvy world perhaps they ought to go all the way and stand on their heads. And one girl took him up on it for the rest of the period. A good ten minutes, he said. She’s into yoga, I suppose.” He smiled and showed a mouthful of even white teeth. “Her skirt flopped over, of course, but Singer reported that unfortunately she was wearing these pantyhose they wear nowadays so there was nothing to see.”

  The rabbi suspected that the story had been colored to get a rise out of him. Because he was a rabbi, he supposed, his colleague frequently made suggestive remarks to see if he could shock him. “Are you sure it’s only for this week?”

  “That’s my understanding. Why?”

  “Because if it continues, I won’t stand for it.”

  Hendryx looked at him in surprise. “Why not? Why should you care?”

  “Well, I do.” Glancing at his watch, he said, “I better go see the dean.”

  Hendryx stared. “Whatever for?”

  “Well, I walked out on my class.”

  “Look Rabbi, let me tell you the facts of academic life. The dean doesn’t give a damn if you walk out on a class occasionally, or even if you meet with them at all. What you do in your classroom is your business. Last year, Professor Tremayne announced a three-week reading period in the middle of February and took off for Florida. Of course, Tremayne is the kind of teacher who may provide greater benefit to his students by his absence than his presence.”

  “Nevertheless, I think I’ll tell her about it anyway. Besides, I’ve got to turn in my mid-semester failure notices.”

  Hendryx whistled. “You mean you’re really sending out flunk notices after all I told you?”

  “But last week I received a notice that the lists were due Monday, the sixteenth.”

  “Rabbi, Rabbi,” said Hendryx, “when was the last time you had any connection with a college?”

  “I’ve lectured to Hillel groups.”

  “No, I mean a real connection.”

  “Not since I was a student, I suppose, fifteen or sixteen years ago. Why?”

  “Because in the last sixteen years—hell, in the last six—things have changed. Where have you been? Don’t you read the papers?”

  “But the students—”

  “Students!” Hendryx said scornfully. “What in the world do you think college cares about students? The primary purpose of college nowadays is to support the faculty, presumably a society of learned men, in some degree of comfort and security. It’s society’s way of subsidizing such worthwhile pursuits as research and the growth of knowledge. Society has the uneasy feeling that it’s important for someone to care about such irrelevancies as the source of Shakespeare’s plots or whether the gentleman above me”—nodding to the bust of Homer on the shelf above his head—“was responsible for the Homeric poems or if he was just one of a committee, or the influence of the Flemish weavers on the economy of England during the Middle Ages, or the effect of gamma rays on the development of spyrogyra.

  “We’re set apart in the grove of academe to fritter away our lives while the rest of the world goes about its proper business of making money or children or war or disease or pollution, or whatever the hell they’re into. As for the students, they can look over our shoulders if they like and learn something. Or they can pay their tuition fees which help support us and hang around here for four years having fun. Personally, I don’t give a damn which they do, as long as they don’t interfere with my quite comfortable life, thank you.”

  He drew deeply on his pipe and, removing it from his mouth, blew the smoke in the rabbi’s direction.

  “And you don’t feel you owe the students anything?” the rabbi asked quietly.

  “Not a damn thing. They’re just one of the hazards of the game, like a sandtrap on a golf course. As a matter of fact, we do do something for them. After four years, they are given that degree you were talking about which entitles them to apply for certain jobs. Or to go on to a higher degree which they can cash into money by becoming doctors, lawyers, accountants. Not the fairest arrangement from the point of view of those who can’t afford college, but quite normal in this imperfect world. Hell, is it any different in the tight trades where you have to serve a useless apprenticeship before you can join a union?” He shook his head, as if answering his own question. “The only trouble comes when the students catch on, as they have in recent years, and kick up a fuss or stage a demonstration as your class did today.”

  “But if the college is for the faculty, and the student is here merely to mark time, why should you care what he does?”

  Hendryx smiled. “Actually, I don’t. Not unless it kills the goose that laid the golden egg. And that what’s been happening the last few years. The student sensed he was being had. Of course he’d known all along that what he was getting here wasn’t worth what he was paying. I once figured out it costs him about ten dollars per lecture. God, my lectures aren’t worth that. Are yours? How smart does a student have to be to figure it out for himself? Still, he went along because he had to have the degree to get any sort of a job or train for any sort of profession. But then they rang in the war on him, and it struck him as a bit much: this degree we were giving him turned out to be just a ticket, sometimes one way, to Vietnam. So he rebelled.”

  “It also gave him a four-year moratorium from the war,” observed the rabbi.

  “Yes, it did, but that’s human nature. Things have quieted down a lot in the last year or two, what with the change in the draft law and winding down the war, and the students have quieted down correspondingly. But they acquired the habit of protest, even violence, and that we can’t have. There was a bombing here, you know.”

  “Yes, I read about it of course, but that was last year.”

  “You never know,” said Hendryx. “Take this very afternoon. The dean is seeing a committee on the Roger Fine business. Maybe, probably, all they’ll do is talk. Nevertheless, she thought it advisable to call me and tell me to stand by.”

  “Because you’re head of the English Department?”

  “I’m only acting head. No, she wants me around in case there’s trouble.”

  “Trouble?” The rabbi considered. “I’ve seen their poster on the Marble, of course. Professor Fine must be popular with the students for them to get up a petition for him.”

  Hendryx shrugged. “Maybe. On the other hand, students, some of them anyhow, will take any opportunity to pick a fight. I don’t know how popular Roger Fine is. He’s a good-looking fellow, so I suppose the girls go for him. That red hair—” He broke off. “Somehow I don’t think of red hair in connection with your people. Do you suppose there was some hanky-panky between his mother or grandmother and some Russian or Polish soldier?”

  “If so,” said the rabbi quietly, “it was probably involuntary, during a pogrom. But actually there is a genetic strain of red hair among our people. King David was supposed to be red-haired.”

  “Really? Well anyway, a handsome young professor is always popular with the women. Even though he is a cripple.”

  “Would that make a difference?” the rabbi asked.

  “Oh, I’m not saying he’s so crippled he’s repulsive. He walks with a cane and in a curious sort of way, that may even make him more attractive. Like a modern Lord Byron. He looks a little like him, come to think of it, with that lock of hair falling over his forehead.” He chuckled. “A red-headed Byron. A minor physical disability sometimes can be quite an asset. Look at the Hathaway shirt guy, or your own General Moshe Dayan, for that matter.”

  “Why aren’t they rehiring him?” said the rabbi, to get back to the point.

  “Well, that’s just it. They don’t have to give any reason. Maybe Prex or the de
an spotted him walking down the corridor with his fly open, or maybe even goosing one of the coeds. How would I know? It could be anything.”

  The rabbi went down the corridor toward the dean’s office, but just as he reached it he saw her door close. He hesitated a moment, and then, remembering the pending committee meeting, decided not to disturb her.

  On his way out of the empty building, he noticed the large English office on the first floor was lit. He looked in and saw Professor Roger Fine sitting alone at his desk, abstracted.

  He called to him. “Can I give you a lift back to Barnard’s Crossing?”

  Startled, Fine looked up. “Oh hello, Rabbi. No, I’ve got my car here. Thanks just the same. I—I’m waiting for a phone call.”

  As he let himself out the front door, the rabbi wondered if the poor fellow really was waiting for a phone call, or whether he was waiting for the results of the committee meeting that could decide his fate.

  Although it was well into autumn, the weather was mild and balmy, and David Small rode with the window down. He was beginning to relax and enjoy the drive when he passed a couple of students sitting on the sidewalk and they reminded him of what had happened earlier in his classroom. He tried to put it out of his mind by concentrating on the approaching Sabbath when one should be at peace with the world. He pictured Miriam setting the table, laying out the twisted Sabbath loaves and the kid-dush wine.

  He visualized his arrival and her greeting: “Shabbat Shalom, David,” and then the inevitable, “And how did it go today?”

  And he would answer, “Well, it was—you see, the other day President Macomber went to visit the Boys’ Reformatory as a member of some special citizen’s committee, and …” It just wouldn’t do. He could not minimize the fiasco. If he tried, she would sense that he was holding something back and it would be even worse.

  Up ahead he saw a roadside cafeteria and pulled in. He badly wanted a cup of coffee.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  What’s with the briefcase?” Abner asked Ekko as they met in front of the administration building. “What’s in it?”

  “Nothing,” said Ekko, “but I figured it would look businesslike. After all, we’re going like to a conference.”

  Abner looked at him doubtfully and then said: “Well, there won’t be any conference if we don’t get there. Let’s go.”

  Upstairs Dean Hanbury pulled up some chairs in front of her desk and locked the office safe. Adjusting the Venetian blind against the sun, she returned to her desk and began to knit placidly, waiting for the student delegation to arrive. Promptly at half-past two they entered, Judy Ballantine and Abner Selzer first, followed by Ekko, with his dispatch case, which he placed conspicuously on his lap.

  The dean smiled graciously and continued to knit while the students shot glances at each other, uncertain how to begin. They felt somehow they had been put on the defensive even before the conference had begun.

  Ekko cleared his throat. “Look here, Miss Hanbury—”

  “Cool it, Ekko,” Selzer ordered curtly. Then he said, “We’re here on what we consider important business, Dean Hanbury.”

  She inclined her head to denote agreement.

  “Well, with you knitting, it kind of throws us off, if you see what I mean. It’s like you don’t consider this very important.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Selzer. It’s a habit with me. I’m afraid I knit even at faculty meetings.”

  She placed her knitting in the plastic bag at her feet. “There now, is that better? What can I do for you?”

  “Well, first we’d like to take up the matter of Professor Roger Fine,” said Judy.

  “You said, ‘first.’ Are there other things?”

  “There are other things,” said Selzer.

  “Well, why don’t you tell me what they are. Perhaps there are some on which we are in substantial agreement and we can settle those at once.”

  “We’d rather take them up one at a time, Miss Hanbury,” said Abner.

  She shrugged.

  “We’d like to begin with the matter of Roger Fine.”

  “Very well. But first let me ask you just what your position is in the matter. Has he asked you to represent him?”

  “We are representing him.”

  “But has he requested that you do so? Because if he has, if you are acting as his official representative, then I think you should have a written authorization from him to that effect.”

  “We don’t have any written authorization, Miss Hanbury,” said Selzer easily, “but he knows of our interest in the matter. I guess everyone does since we’ve been circulating a petition on his behalf.”

  “And did he authorize that? And how many signatures did you get, Mr. Selzer?”

  “We got plenty, Miss Hanbury.”

  “May I see the petition?” She eyed the case on Ekko’s lap. “Do you have it there?”

  “We didn’t bring it,” said Abner.

  “But why not? You circulate a petition and get signatures. I assume the petition was addressed to the administration. I can’t understand why you would circulate a petition and then not bring it. Wasn’t that the purpose of this meeting, or at least one of the purposes—to formally present the petition so that the administration could consider it and act on it?”

  “Let’s say it wasn’t really a petition. Let’s say it was a resolution. A petition means that we’d be asking for something. We’re not really asking.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’re demanding.”

  There were nods of agreement.

  Dean Hanbury considered. Then she nodded. “Very well, what is it that you’re demanding? And in whose name? Is this a demand merely of this committee, or do you claim to represent the entire student body?”

  “You’re damn right we represent the student body,” O’Brien exploded.

  Selzer gave him a withering glance.

  “If you represent the student body, Mr. Selzer,” she went on, “then more than ever I must see the petition or the resolution, or whatever you call it. I must have some assurance that you represent more than fifty percent, a majority of the student body. If you are making a demand, the normal procedure, in the absence of a vote, would be to count the signatures and then look them over to make sure there are no duplicates and that all signers are bona fide students of the school.”

  “Look, Miss Hanbury,” said Selzer, “you’re just fencing. Let’s put it this way: we represent the concerned students of Windemere. And it doesn’t really matter whether we are authorized representatives of Roger Fine or not. Because the issue is more important than a particular person. The issue is whether the administration has the right to fire a member of the faculty because it doesn’t like his political opinions. Now that’s the issue and it’s the only issue.”

  “Oh, I thought you had a number of issues.”

  “I mean that’s the only issue in this particular case.”

  “That’s a legitimate issue, Mr. Selzer, and I’m frank to admit that it is important enough to justify any member of the school raising the question—if it were true. But I’m afraid you’ve been misled. Professor Fine was not fired, in the first place. He was hired for a definite period, and at the end of this semester his contract expires. That’s all there is to it. When you engage an electrician, say, to install a fixture, you pay him when he’s done; then he leaves. I’m sure you wouldn’t expect that just because he has installed one fixture he is now entitled to do all the electrical work in the house. I’m sure Professor Fine realized the conditions of his employment, and his political opinions had nothing to do with it. If he had been dropped before he had completed his contract, then you might have a case, but he is teaching now and will continue to teach, I trust, until the end of the term in accordance with his contract.”

  “Why wasn’t he reappointed then?” demanded Selzer.

  “Because he wasn’t hired with that in mind. He was hired to fill a temporary need. And for a spe
cific period.”

  “But you are going to hire another instructor for the English department. As a matter of fact, we have it on good authority that you intend to hire two new men.”

  “That may be,” said Dean Hanbury. “It’s a matter for the president to decide, and I can’t speak for him. I doubt if he has even made up his mind yet. But that does not affect the situation with Professor Fine. There is nothing to prevent him from making formal application for the job, in which case his candidacy would be considered along with all others who apply and no doubt his experience here last year would be one of the points considered.”

  “And what of his radicalism?” exploded Judy Ballantine.

  “I don’t know anything about his politics,” replied Dean Hanbury. “He has never discussed them with me, or with the president, to my knowledge.”

  “How about his article in The Windrift on Vietnam and the Army?”

  “I don’t recall it, Miss Ballantine. I don’t believe I read it.” She swiveled her chair around and gazed out the window at the street below.

  This was more than Judy could take. She jumped to her feet. “That’s a crock of shit and you know it. Everybody in school read that article and everybody talked about it.”

  The dean did not answer. Instead, she rose and went to the door. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said, and walked out, closing the door behind her.

  They looked at each other uncertainly. Selzer turned on Judy. “You asshole,” he said.

  “Now, Abner, Judy didn’t mean anything,” said Ekko. “Hanbury probably just went to the can.”

  “Or maybe to see Prex,” suggested O’Brien. “She’ll be back.”

  “Maybe she just wants to let on she’s sore. Then when she comes back, we feel funny and don’t push so hard.”

  They discussed it, wandering around the room, looking at the pictures on the wall, pecking at the keys of the typewriter while waiting for her to return.

  “If she was going to walk out on us,” said Judy after awhile, “wouldn’t she have told us to leave?”