The Class

by Erich Segal

  “Danny,” the impresario said paternally, “am I a booking agent or a nursemaid? You will go out and do more New Havens.”

  Such was the success of the pre-concert propaganda campaign that the audience filling Carnegie Hall on the night of Danny’s New York debut was more predisposed to worship than to judge.

  During the lengthy standing ovation at the end of the concert, Bernstein pulled Danny onto the podium and held his hand aloft like a victorious boxer’s. Danny was indeed a new world champion. He had won where it counted most.

  The reception was held in the sumptuous penthouse of one of the Philharmonic’s trustees. Although Danny was now indisputably a major, star, by no stretch of his own imagination (or ego) was he the greatest luminary present.

  There were famous actors who, just a few years earlier, he would have shyly asked for an autograph. There were other world-renowned musicians, as well as important political figures. Cover girls were as abundant as the uniformed waitresses serving caviar.

  And yet, incredibly, they all were flocking around wanting to meet him.

  Not unexpectedly, he was asked to play. A Steinway grand was wheeled into the center of the living room and its lid propped open.

  Danny had anticipated that at this hour of the night, after so arduous an effort, he would not be at his best in some classical piece. He had therefore prepared a little jeu d’esprit.

  Before sitting down, he made a short speech.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “my thank yous could go on forever. So forgive me if I mention just two people in particular. First Mr. Hurok for having such faith and supporting me all this time—”

  “Excuse me, my dear boy,” the impresario joked, “it’s you who have been supporting me.”

  “And if Lenny doesn’t mind, I’d like to express my gratitude to him at the keyboard.”

  Danny began with a fortissimo rendition of the piano entrance to the concerto he had played that night. He then quickly switched to a jazz medley of the tunes from Bernstein’s West Side Story.

  The audience was enchanted and would not let him leave the piano.

  “What now?” Danny asked ingenuously. “I’m running out of material.”

  Bernstein smiled and suggested, “Why not do unto others what you just did unto me?”

  Danny nodded, sat down again and for nearly half an hour poured forth jazz versions of My Fair Lady as well as standards by Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and Irving Berlin. Finally he pleaded exhaustion.

  Later in the evening, a dapper executive type waved a business card in front of him and murmured something about doing an album along the lines of that night’s improvisations.

  Just as the man retreated, an extremely elegant brunette approached Danny and said in dulcet tones, “Mr. Rossi, I very much enjoyed your performance this evening. I hope Jack and I can entice you to come and play for a small group at the White House sometime.”

  Battle weary and a little high, Danny had at first merely nodded politely and said, “That’s very nice. Thanks a lot.”

  Only after she had gracefully turned and walked off did he realize that he had been talking to the wife of the President of the United States.

  ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY

  March 10, 1959

  After graduating I expected to find myself metaphorically, but not literally, at sea.

  Yet here I am crossing the Atlantic on a ship of the U.S. Navy. Knowing of my family’s distinguished record in this branch of the services, I had been determined not to follow where I might stumble in their footsteps.

  But when the ninety-day notice suddenly came from the army, I panicked and thought, I don’t want to spend the next two years of my life marching around some bog. So I signed up for the navy. I mean, how bad can things be on a ship? At least there’s nowhere to hike.

  I found out otherwise, however. A sailor’s existence can be hell. While my old roomie Newall is an ensign stationed out in San Francisco waiting for a ship full of guys to whom he can bark orders as they cruise the tropics, I thought I’d give myself a real dose of what life without privilege is like. So I’m seeing the navy as a simple white-hat, an enlisted man.

  Anyway, after basic I was assigned to the destroyer tender St. Clare as an ordinary swabbie. Our task is to escort the USS Hamilton as a kind of oceangoing nanny. My initial duties were twofold. First, keeping the St. Clare shipshape. In other words, scrubbing decks. And second, acting as a football for our chief petty officer, who somehow took an instant dislike to me. I couldn’t figure out why. I never said I was from Harvard or even went to college. (Someone later told me that he thought I was “obnoxiously polite”—whatever that means.)

  But the guy was fixated on giving me grief. And when I wasn’t doing the many extra tasks he set for me, or standing watch, he would storm into our bunkroom and confiscate as “trash” whatever the hell I was reading.

  Once I thought I’d try to get my own back at him.

  I indicated at evening mess that I felt like turning in early to read, and hurried back to settle in with … the Holy Bible. Sure enough, he barged in a few minutes later and, without even looking, ripped the book from my hands, bellowing, “Sailor, you are polluting your mind!”

  And it was then that I indicated, in front of two other guys, that I had been merely enriching my soul with the Scriptures.

  All he could manage was, “Oh,” replaced the book on my bunk, and marched out.

  I had won that battle all right. But unfortunately I lost the war.

  After that, the guy rode me day and night. At one point I was so desperate that I thought of going AWOL. But then, of course, we were a thousand miles from the nearest landfall. There are, after all, some advantages to being in the army.

  If this was real life, I’d had enough of it. And if I was to survive the navy, I had to get my hands and knees off the deck.

  When I was certain that this guy was on another part of the ship, I went to see the first lieutenant to plead for a transfer of duty. I didn’t give the real reason, I just said that I felt I might have some other talents that could better serve the navy.

  Like what? he inquired.

  Like what, indeed? I thought to myself. But off the top of my head I suggested that I had a kind of yen to write. And that seemed to impress him. So, much to my chief petty officer’s disappointment at not being able to drive me into leaping off the ship, I’ve been transferred to our information office.

  Here I’m kind of an editor and journalist, writing for the various internal navy newspapers, as well as forwarding the more interesting stories to Washington for wider dissemination.

  This has turned out to be a pretty neat job. Except my one chance for a wire-service break was censored by the captain. I thought it was a good story. I mean, it had excitement, thrills, surprise, and so forth—even a touch of humor. But somehow the upper echelons didn’t see it that way.

  Last week when we were just entering the Mediterranean, it was a terribly dark foggy night. (Dramatic start, huh?) And in the perilous obscurity we collided with another ship. No hands were lost, though some repairs would have to be done at the next port of call.

  What I found so fascinating was that we had actually collided with our own destroyer. I mean, I thought the story had a certain human interest value.

  But the captain felt otherwise. He argued that American ships never did that sort of thing.

  Assuming it was a journalist’s task to report the truth, I pointed out that we had in fact just done so.

  At this he blew his top and hurled at me a veritable thesaurus of synonyms for lack of intelligence. His essential message was that the U.S. Navy may make an occasional error, but they sure as hell don’t send out a press release.

  I will be discharged in one year, three months, eleven days. With any luck it will be honorably.

  In any case, it cannot be too soon.

  Sara had finished at the top of her class.

  Actually, nothing in her p
revious educational experience gave any hint that she would excel her fellow Radcliffe graduates in the arts of shorthand and typing. But sure enough, at the end of that first summer, she could take down dictation at an admirable 110 words per minute and could type an amazing 75.

  “I don’t think any further courses could possibly improve your chances in the job market, Sara,” counseled Mrs. Holmes, head of the summer course. “With your speeds and educational background, you’re more than ready for an executive secretarial position. I suggest you start following up the want ads.”

  Buoyed by this encouragement, Sara and Ted set about checking the newspapers. There seemed to be so many openings in Cambridge that she could probably find something within walking distance of their apartment on Huron Avenue.

  Her first two interviews resulted in firm offers and a real dilemma. The job with the vice-president of the Harvard Trust paid a lavish seventy-eight bucks a week, whereas the University Press had an opening with longer hours offering a mere fifty-five. Yet, it was clear which attracted both husband and wife.

  First of all, the Press was closer (you could even slide there in a snowstorm). Secondly, it offered the possibility of advancement (“With your languages, you might move into copy editing fairly soon,” Mrs. Norton, the personnel director, had remarked when she saw Sara’s initial reaction to the proposed salary).

  Perhaps the most attractive dimension, as they both realized, was that it could be a rich source of top-level information about the Classics world. They would be among the first to know who was writing a book on what, and whether it was going to be accepted or rejected. This sort of intelligence might prove invaluable at Ted’s job-seeking time.

  Graduate school was much more rigorous than he had ever anticipated. To earn a Ph.D., you had to take some brutally difficult seminars in Linguistics, Comparative Grammar, Metrics, Greek and Latin Stylistics, and so forth. Fortunately, he was blessed with a nightly dinner partner with whom he could discuss such esoterica.

  From as early as the summer they first lived together, Ted had always insisted on cooking the evening meals. But now, since he believed the chef should have his classical studying finished before entering the kitchen, Sara had the uncomfortable prospect of having to wait till nearly ten o’clock before her husband would begin to prepare their deipno (dinner).

  This posed some delicate problems of diplomacy. For what sane woman could object to a delicious meal accompanied by choice Greek wine, served with music and soft candlelight by a highly professional waiter—who would then sit down and tell you how much he loved you. And after dinner would join you in bed.

  How could a woman tell such a husband that, though the evenings were enchanted, the mornings after she could barely stay awake at her typewriter? Sara therefore concluded that the only way to solve this predicament was to learn the secrets of Lambros cuisine from Mama herself. This way, while Ted was still struggling with Indo-European etymologies, she could be starting dinner.

  Thalassa Lambros was flattered by her daughter-in-law’s interest and did everything she could to accelerate her culinary education. This included detailed memos, which Sara diligently studied.

  By January she was confident enough to arrogate the task of cooking dinner. And none too soon. For Ted would be facing a battery of language exams at the end of the spring semester.

  The German requirement was killing him. Dammit, he had often thought, why does so much important classical scholarship have to be written in this preposterously difficult language? Here again, Sara, who had taken three years of German in school, was able to help him acquire a feeling for its periodic sentence structure. And by plowing through several articles with him, showed how he could intuit the general meaning of a passage from the classical citations in the text.

  After one of these mini-tutorials, he looked at her with unadulterated affection and said, “Sara, where the hell would I be without you?”

  “Oh, probably out seducing some attractive graduate student.”

  “Don’t you even joke like that,” Ted whispered, reaching over to caress her.

  With Sara’s help and encouragement, Ted successfully jumped all the examination hurdles and began a thesis on Sophocles. As a reward he was made a teaching fellow in Finley’s Humanities course.

  He tossed and turned but still could not get back to sleep.

  “Darling, what’s the matter?” Sara asked, placing her hand gently on his shoulder.

  “I can’t help it, honey. I’m so damned scared about tomorrow.”

  “Hey,” she said soothingly, “it’s understandable—the first class you’ve ever taught in your life. It would be unnatural if you weren’t nervous.”

  “I’m not nervous,” he replied, “I’m absolutely catatonic.” He sat up on the side of the bed.

  “But, darling,” she reasoned, “it’s only a Hum Two discussion. The kids will be more frightened than you. Can’t you remember your first freshman section?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I was a scared little townie. But they say the damn undergraduates are getting smarter and smarter. And I keep having this ridiculous fantasy that some world-famous professor is going to decide to drop in unannounced tomorrow.”

  Sara glanced at the alarm clock. It was nearly 5:00 A.M., and there was no point in trying to talk Ted into going back to sleep.

  “Hey, why don’t I make some coffee and listen to what you plan to say? It could be a kind of dress rehearsal.”

  “Okay,” he sighed, relieved to be liberated from the prison of his bed.

  She quickly made two large mugs of Nescafé and they sat down at the kitchen table.

  At seven-thirty she began to laugh.

  “What the hell’s the matter? What did I do wrong?” Ted asked anxiously.

  “You crazy Greek.” She smiled. “You’ve just talked brilliantly about Homer for nearly two hours. Now, since all you’ve got to do is kill fifty minutes, don’t you think you’re adequately prepared to confront your first freshmen?”

  “Hey,” he smiled, “you’re some good psychologist.”

  “Not really. I just happen to know my husband better than he knows himself.”

  The date, the time, and the place of Ted’s first class are indelibly engraved in his memory. On Friday, September 28, 1959, at 10:01 A.M., he entered a discussion room in the Alston Burr Science Building. He unpacked a ridiculous number of books, all with carefully marked passages he could read aloud should he run out of ideas. At 10:05 he wrote his name and office hours on the blackboard and then turned to confront the students.

  There were fourteen of them. Ten boys and four girls, their spiral notebooks open and pencils ready to transcribe his every syllable. Jesus, he suddenly thought, they’re going to write down what I say! Suppose I make some incredible mistake and one of the kids shows it to Finley? Worse still, suppose one of them with a million years of prep-school Classics catches me right here? Anyway, Lambros, it’s time to start.

  He opened his yellow notepad to his meticulously outlined remarks, took a breath, and looked up. His heart was beating so loud that he half-wondered if they could hear it.

  “Uh—just in case somebody thinks he’s in a physics class, let me start by saying that this is a Hum Two section and I’m your discussion leader. While I’m taking your names down, you can learn mine. I’ve written it on the board. It happens to be the Greek word for ‘brilliance,’ but I’ll leave you guys to make up your minds about that after a few weeks.”

  There was a ripple of laughter. They seemed to like him. He began to warm to the task.

  “This course deals with nothing less than the roots of all Western culture, and the two epics ascribed to Homer constitute the first masterpieces of Western literature. As we’ll see in the weeks to come, the Iliad is the first tragedy, the Odyssey our first comedy.…”

  After that moment he never once looked down at his prepared text. He simply rhapsodized about the greatness of Homer, his style, the oral tradition and early Greek
concepts of heroism.

  Before he knew it, the class was nearly over.

  “Hey,” he said with a smile, “I guess I got a little carried away. I should stop here and ask if you have any questions.”

  A hand shot up in the back row.

  “Have you read Homer in Greek, Mr. Lambros?” asked a young, bespectacled Cliffie.

  “Yes,” Ted answered proudly.

  “Could you possibly recite a bit of it in the original, just so we could get a feel of how it sounded?”

  Ted smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

  Now, though he had the Oxford texts on the table, he found himself passionately reciting the beginning of the Iliad from memory, putting special stress on words they might possibly comprehend—like heroon for “heroes” in line four. He reached the crescendo at line seven, emphasizing dios Achilleus, “godlike Achilles.” Then he paused.

  To his utter amazement, the tiny class applauded. The bell rang. Ted felt a sudden surge of relief, elation, and fatigue. He had no idea how it had gone until assorted comments filtered to him as the students left the room.

  “God, we lucked out,” he heard one say.

  “Yeah, this guy is dynamite,” said another.

  The last thing Ted heard—or thought he did—was a female voice offering the opinion, “He’s even better than Finley.”

  But surely that was the figment of a tired imagination. For John H. Finley, Jr., was one of the greatest teachers in Harvard history.

  Jason Gilbert made the first months of his Sheldon Fellowship for traveling a balanced combination of culture and sport. He took part in as many European tournaments as he could, but gave almost as much time to museum going as he did to tennis playing.

  Though forbidden by the terms of his award from doing formal academic work, he spent the winter researching a Comparative Study of International Skiing—with special emphasis on the slopes of Austria, France, and Switzerland.

  When his enthusiasm for the sport began to defrost, he headed for Paris, city of a million sensuous attractions. He knew no French but was fluent in the international language of charm, and never had to look very far to find a female guide.