The Class

by Erich Segal

  As soon as they were alone Danny told Hurok that he’d done an agonizing reappraisal of his life, his lifestyle, and what he had accomplished. In balance, he’d decided that he should be spending more time on composition.

  After all, he reasoned, who remembers Mozart as a pianist—or even Liszt? But what they wrote abides forever.

  “Also, I think I owe it to Maria and the girls to spend more time at home. I mean, before I know it they’ll be grown up and gone. And I won’t ever have enjoyed them.”

  Hurok listened patiently and did not interrupt his virtuoso. Perhaps he was consoling himself with the thought that many great performers in the past had opted for a premature retirement. And then, after a few years absence from the intoxication of applause, had returned and concertized more actively than ever.

  “Danny, I respect your decision,” he began. “I won’t try to disguise the fact that I’m distressed—because you have so many wonderful years ahead of you. All I’ll ask is that you finish out the two or three commitments left on this year’s program. Is that reasonable?”

  Danny hesitated for a minute. After all Hurok’s kindness to him, the impresario at least deserved the truth.

  And yet Danny could not bring himself to tell it.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said softly. “But I have to stop immediately. Of course, I’ll write to all the orchestras concerned and give them my apologies. You might—” He hesitated. “You might invent a kind of sickness for me. Hepatitis maybe.”

  “I wouldn’t like to do that,” Hurok answered. “All my life I’ve tried to be above board in my dealings, and it’s much too late for me to change. I’ll just look through my schedules and see if I can fill your dates with artists of your caliber.”

  With an undisguised look of sadness on his face, he began to shuffle through his papers. Suddenly he gave a wistful little chuckle.

  “What is it?” asked Danny.

  “I’ve already found one pianist whom I can substitute for you in Amsterdam—young Artur Rubinstein, age eighty-eight!” Fearing he would be unable to retain his composure much longer, Danny stood up to leave.

  “Thanks, Mr. Hurok. Thank you for everything.”

  “Look, Danny, I hope we’ll stay in touch. In any case, I’ll be at the premiere of your first symphony.”

  “Thanks.”

  He turned to go. The old man then called out to him as an afterthought, “Danny, if it’s facing audiences that’s the problem, you could still record. Look at Glenn Gould and Horowitz. There are so many brilliant performances still locked up inside you.”

  Danny simply nodded and walked out. He could not say to Mr. Hurok that the pianists he had named still had the use of both their hands.

  At 2:00 A.M. Danny was sitting at home in the near-total darkness of his third-floor studio. A gentle voice interrupted his solitary anguish. It was like a small candle at the end of a long shadowy cave.

  “What’s wrong, Danny?” Maria asked. She was in her nightgown and bathrobe.

  “What makes you think there’s anything wrong?”

  “Well, for one thing, you’re sitting in the dark, so you’re obviously not writing. For another, I haven’t heard any real music for hours. I mean, that’s unless you consider a million repetitions of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ real music.”

  “Mozart wrote a whole series of variations on that tune,” he replied without conviction.

  “Yes, I know. It’s a favorite encore of yours. But I don’t hear any variations, Danny. That’s why I’ve come up. You know I’ve never interrupted you before.”

  “Thanks. I’d appreciate it if you stuck to that policy.”

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong. Just leave me alone, please.”

  He was inwardly glad that she disobeyed him and came over to kneel by his chair.

  But when she reached out to take his hands, he withdrew them quickly.

  “Danny, for the love of God, I can see you’re going through hell. I know you need me now, darling, and I’m here. I want to help.”

  “You can’t help me, Maria,” he answered bitterly. “Nobody can.”

  For the moment he could say no more.

  “It’s your left hand, isn’t it? Look, I’ve known something was wrong since that evening in the studio. I’ve passed your bedroom late at night and seen you sitting by the lamp, just staring at it with a kind of panic.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my left hand,” he answered coldly.

  “I’ve seen it tremble at dinner, Danny. And I’ve watched you try to hide it. Don’t you think you should see a doctor?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  He did not respond verbally. Instead he began to weep.

  She put her arms around him.

  “Oh, Maria,” he sobbed, “I can’t play the piano anymore.”

  And then he told her everything. His tragic journey that had begun at Dr. Whitney’s and ended with Dr. Weisman.

  When he’d finished the story, for a long time they did nothing but cry in each other’s arms.

  Finally she dried her own tears and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders.

  “Now you listen to me, Daniel Rossi. As terrible as this thing is, it isn’t fatal. You’ll still have a career. You’ll still be involved in music. And most important, you’ll still be alive to be with your family. And most especially with me.

  “I didn’t marry you because you could outplay Liszt. I didn’t marry you because you were a star. I married you because I loved you and I believed you when you once said that you needed me. Danny, darling, we can get through this together.” Maria kept holding him as he leaned on her shoulder, sobbing softly.

  And, unlike all those audiences that clap and then go home, she would always be there.

  She stood up and took his hand. “Come on, Rossi, let’s get some sleep.”

  They descended the stairway arm in arm. And when they reached the second floor, she did not let go. Instead she drew him down the corridor.

  “Your bedroom?” he asked.

  “No, Danny. Our bedroom.”

  ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY

  May 11, 1978

  It was ego-crushing time today. The Twentieth Anniversary Report of The Class arrived.

  There were some surprises. Although, of course, I read about it last year in the papers, it was still amazing to read Danny Rossi’s entry and to see confirmed that he has actually retired from the piano. I’m in awe at the courage it must have taken for him to turn his back on all that public adoration. He’s also given up conducting in Los Angeles. And will base all his activities in Philadelphia.

  Although one of the reasons he gave was that he wanted to compose more, it was evident that his primary motivation was his wish to spend more time with his wife and kids. As he put it, they’re what really matter in this life.

  I’m awed by the guy’s humanity. The way he’s put his values into focus.

  On the gloomy side, in addition to the handful of deaths announced, I’ve noticed that a lot of long-term marriages have lately broken up. As if one of the partners couldn’t shift his or her gears into the third decade.

  I guess the Eisenhower marriages remained unchanged by the Democratic Camelot that JFK created. But probably—to keep on with the metaphor—the Nixon years made couples listen to the tapes of their relationships. To face the truth about themselves and leave.

  On the bright side, several of our classmates have kids who’re freshmen.

  On the dark side, my son isn’t one of them. Or maybe I should say my former son, since I haven’t heard from him at all.

  Even after all this time, whenever I pick up my mail, I pray that maybe there’s a letter or a card from him. Or something. And if I see a longhaired hippie begging on the street I always give the guy at least a buck or two, hoping that wherever Andy is, somebody else’s father will be generous to him.

  I can’t let mys
elf believe that I’ve lost him forever.

  Naturally, in my own report I didn’t mention that my kid’s disowned me. I simply said that I was tired of Wall Street and, in looking for a change, lucked out. I’ve been asked by the director of the new Campaign for Harvard College to come up to Cambridge and join the team that’s trying to raise three hundred and fifty million for our alma mater.

  Needless to say, when Frank Harvey called me with that offer, I jumped at the chance. Not only to leave the concrete capital of all my sorrows, but to start life anew in the only place I’ve ever been happy.

  Basically, my job involves contacting members of our Class, reestablishing our old rapport, and, after due ingratiation, getting them to cough up big for Harvard.

  Since I really believe in what I’m doing, I don’t look at it as selling. It’s more akin to missionary work. As an added bonus, I’ve been put on the committee that’s planning our big Twenty-fifth Reunion (June 5, 1983)! It’s said to be a high point of our lives—and I’m entrusted to make sure it is.

  Naturally, I spoke to Lizzie before giving Harvard my consent. She’s growing up to be a super person—I guess no thanks to me. Although the fact that Mummy lives so far away has, I think, been a help. I see her several times a month and feel we’re getting closer now.

  Being a romantic (like her dad), she keeps urging me to find a wife. I kind of make a joke of it. But every morning when I look at that one lonely toothbrush in the glass, I know she’s right.

  Maybe being back at Harvard I’ll regain my confidence.

  But then I’m not sure I ever had any.

  Alexander Haig did not win the Republican nomination in 1980. But Ronald Reagan, who did, and was subsequently elected President, chose him as Secretary of State.

  Haig, then head of United Technologies in Hartford, immediately called his fellow Connecticut resident, George Keller, and offered him the government’s second-highest foreign-policy position—Deputy Secretary of State.

  “How soon could you start, old buddy?” Haig asked.

  “Well, anytime,” said George elatedly. “But Reagan doesn’t even take office till January.”

  “Yeah, but I’m going to need you before then to prepare for my confirmation hearing with the Foreign Relations Committee. There are some guerrillas in the senatorial jungle who’ve been waiting years to take a shot at me.”

  Haig was not exaggerating. For his examination lasted five days. Questions were fired at him from every angle. All the ghosts of Watergate were unearthed. Not to mention Vietnam, Cambodia, the NSC wiretaps, Chile, the CIA, and the Nixon pardon.

  As he sat beside his future boss, occasionally whispering a word or two, George felt the sleeping demons in him start to wake. During his own upcoming confirmation hearing, would some hostile senator or young ambitious congressman discover his little “favor” for the Russians long ago?

  But his worries turned out to be in vain. Since the committee vented so much spleen at Haig, all residual anti-Nixon animus was spent. George was not only eloquent and poised but witty. And approved by unanimous vote.

  The Haig-Keller foreign-policy team started strongly and impressively, fulfilling Reagan’s promise to put new muscle into the American leadership.

  And yet, paradoxically, George found the Secretary of State to be somewhat insecure in private. At the end of one long work session, George felt comfortable enough to broach the matter.

  “Al, what’s eating you?”

  “George,” he replied, welcoming the opportunity to unburden himself, “how can I run foreign policy when I never get to see Reagan alone? There are always a half-dozen of his California cronies putting their two cents in. I swear if this keeps up I’ll offer him my resignation.”

  “That’s a very Kissingeresque gesture.” George smiled.

  “Yeah.” Al grinned. “And it always worked for Henry.”

  Haig made his move the following week after a White House luncheon for the Prime Minister of Japan. He asked the President for five “completely private” minutes of his time.

  Reagan threw his arm warmly around Haig’s shoulder. “Al, I’d be glad to give you ten.”

  As George stood watching the two men walk around the White House lawn, Dwight Bevington, the National Security Adviser, was suddenly at his shoulder.

  “Say, George,” he said with bonhomie, “if your boss is trying an end run, he’s wasting his time. Besides, we all know who the real brains are at State. In fact, I think you and I should try to make our contacts closer.”

  Before George could reply, the Secretary returned, a broad smile on his face.

  “I don’t know what it is about Ronnie,” beamed Haig, as they were riding together back to State, “but he sure can make a guy feel good. He dismissed my offer to resign and promised we’d have direct communication. Say, I saw that Bevington was buttonholing you. Digging for anything?”

  “In vain,” George said calmly.

  “Good man. You know I’m counting on your loyalty, old buddy.”

  George Keller was now certain that his boss’s days were numbered. And he began positioning himself to jump ship before it sank.

  He started having occasional lunches with Bevington just to offer him the benefit of his own experience. But he always reported the meetings to his boss.

  He was never overtly disloyal to Alexander Haig. Possibly because events moved so swiftly that he didn’t have the chance.

  Desperate to prove his effectiveness to the Reagan administration, the Secretary of State found a rare opportunity in the spring of 1982.

  Argentine troops invaded the Falkland Islands. And to protect their tiny colonial outpost, Britain sent a huge armada steaming toward a military confrontation in the South Atlantic.

  Haig got the President’s approval to attempt to avert bloodshed by a Kissinger-like shuttle between London and Buenos Aires.

  He woke George in the middle of the night and told him to be at Andrews Air Force Base at 0600 hours.

  From then on, there was no day and no night for the two diplomats. They snatched what sleep they could in the jet ferrying them back and forth between England and Argentina, through endless time zones, from frustration to frustration.

  Then, just before the British attacked, Haig miraculously convinced Argentina’s General Galtieri to withdraw his troops and negotiate. It looked like a real coup.

  As they were fastening their seat belts for the long ride home, George congratulated his boss, “Al, I think you won a big one.”

  But just as the plane door was shutting, a messenger arrived with a letter from Prime Minister Costa Mendez.

  “Aren’t you going to read it?” George asked.

  “I don’t have to,” Haig said with a weary sigh. “I know it’s my death warrant.”

  Indeed, the execution of Alexander Haig had taken place while he was still in the air.

  An unnamed White House source said the administration saw his fruitless mission as mere “grandstanding.” The press took the cue and began to quote various authoritative sources that “Haig is going to go, and go quickly.”

  George Keller had more frequent lunches with Dwight Bevington.

  • • •

  He was sitting at his desk polishing a lengthy telex to Phil Habib, then shuttling between Damascus and Jerusalem, when his secretary buzzed.

  “Dr. Keller, there’s a phone call from Thomas Leighton.”

  “You mean The New York Times reporter?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “Well, put him on.”

  If this was indeed the Thomas Leighton, investigative journalist and author of a highly praised book about Russia, it was a favorable signal.

  The journalist had possibly been tipped that George was in the wings to succeed Haig. And, like his Harvard mentor, George intended to play the press like a piano.

  “Thank you for taking my call, Dr. Keller. I’d like to ask a favor. I’m on leave from the Times to write a book about your former boss
, Henry Kissinger.”

  “Is it a snow job or a hatchet job?”

  “I hope it’ll be an honest job,” the reporter replied. “I won’t say I haven’t heard some nasty things about him. That’s why, if you let me have a couple hours of your time, I might get a more balanced picture.”

  “I see your point,” George said, thinking that it would be nice to have such an important journalist on his future team. “Suppose we meet for lunch sometime next week. Is Wednesday good for you?”

  “It’s fine,” said Leighton.

  “Let’s meet at Sans Souci at twelve.”

  The first thing that struck him was the reporter’s youth. He looked less like a Pulitzer Prize winner than a candidate for the Crimson. When George said this to Leighton, he confessed, “Well, actually I did write for the Crime. I was Class of ’64.”

  They chatted cordially about their college experiences. Then the journalist got down to business.

  “As I’m sure you know, not everybody views Kissinger as a knight in shining armor.”

  “No,” George concurred. “But that’s the price you pay when you wield power. What sort of mud are they throwing at Henry?”

  “Well, everything from ‘war criminal’ to ‘ruthless manipulator,’ and lots in between. You’d be surprised, he had a reputation even at Harvard.”

  “Yes.” George smiled. “I was his student.”

  “I know that, too. I also know you deserve your nickname of being ‘Kissinger’s shadow.’ Isn’t it true that you were as privy as any man alive to every significant decision he ever made?”

  “That’s a slight exaggeration,” George replied, trying to affect humility. And then joked, “I mean, he didn’t take me into his confidence about marrying Nancy. Anyway, what’s the thrust of your book?”

  “I get the impression that your boss was—how can I put it?—sort of amoral. That he played the game of world politics with human beings as pawns.”

  “That’s rather brutal,” George interrupted.

  “Which is why I want to hear your side of it,” Leighton responded. “I’ll give you a few examples. Some insiders I’ve interviewed say he deliberately withheld arms from the Israelis during the Yom Kippur war to ‘soften’ them into a better negotiating mood.”