The Green Revolution

by Ralph McInerny

  Jimmy met Phil for coffee in a place out on 31. Not much talk at the outset, and then, “Jimmy, I don’t like it.”

  “The coffee?”

  “The body on the putting green.”

  “The suicide.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “No.”

  “So let’s get serious.”

  Getting serious involved checking out all the groups that had suddenly formed to raise hell on one basis or another. It turned out that Phil had more than an abstract interest. Roger was being harassed.

  “They were waiting for him after class. His golf cart was festooned with toilet paper. A huge balloon had been attached to it. Do you know what they’re calling him?”

  “What?”

  “The Goodyear Blimp.”

  “What brought this on?”

  “His name appears on a list of supporters of the proposal to shut down Notre Dame football.”

  “Geez.”

  “He doesn’t remember giving his consent. Apparently he didn’t say no forcefully enough. Now he has become the poster boy for the outfit.”

  It was pretty clear that Phil did not like his little brother being made fun of. Ever since they had come to Notre Dame, Roger had been treated royally. Lots of enthusiastic students, teach anything he wanted, an ideal situation. The present situation was a complete reversal of that. Phil had gotten used to being told his brother was the best thing that had happened to Notre Dame in recent years. Now he was being made a figure of fun. The Goodyear Blimp!

  “He taking it bad?”

  “Jimmy, he thinks it’s funny. You know Roger.”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “I know what you mean. He insists on keeping that replica of the blimp on his golf cart as he goes around campus.”

  “Can this hurt him?”

  “That’s his point. He is the Huneker Professor of Catholic Studies. For life. Jimmy, they pay him a bundle, I’ll say no more.”

  “So why are you worried?”

  “God damn it, he’s my brother.”

  “He’s not heavy, he’s your brother?”

  “No and yes.”

  That was good enough for Jimmy. So they called on Professor Lipschutz.

  * * *

  “You’re Roger’s brother?” Lipschutz said to Phil. “The man is a genius.”

  “People keep telling me that. He’s also naive. He doesn’t remember giving permission to add his name to your list.”

  “Oh, there’s no doubt of that. Professor Bird was a witness.”

  “Professor Bird doesn’t remember giving permission for his name to be used either.”

  “Have they asked that their names be withdrawn?”

  This was the sticky point. Roger was rather enjoying being pilloried in public, and Otto Bird had simply murmured, “o tempora, o mores.”

  “Cicero,” Roger had explained.

  As far as Phil was concerned, that was an unsavory suburb of Chicago.

  “Ask them to remove your name, Roger,” he had suggested.

  “Phil, it’s a tempest in a teapot,” Roger had replied.

  Which didn’t give them a lot of clout with Lipschutz. He had been regarding Phil with a sad expression.

  “You represent the university, don’t you?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “In a sense, yes, a quite disinterested sense. I want this institution to regain its soul.”

  “By dropping football?”

  “That is only a start.”

  “Do you realize what they are doing to Roger? They’re calling him the Goodyear Blimp.”

  “I know. He called to tell me that. He seemed exuberant about it.”

  “What exactly does your group have in mind? Other than having my brother made a fool of?”

  “If I told you, you would alert your employers.”

  * * *

  Father Carmody, it turned out, had a mole in the organization, Wessel.

  “A good man, in his way. Simply has no appreciation for sports. It was a streak of idealism that made him susceptible to Lipschutz. I can understand that. Of course, Lipschutz’s motives are complicated.”

  Lipschutz, Father Carmody told them, was badgering the administration to start a research center modeled on the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, with himself as director.

  “Grant him a few premises and it’s not a bad idea. At least, no more wacky than a lot of others that have gained support in recent years. The man wants a sinecure.”

  “What’s he got?”

  Father Carmody explained the term.

  “It is a feature of the modern university,” he said sadly. “Everyone is out for number one. For Lipschutz, football is merely a target of opportunity.”

  10

  Bartholomew Hanlon had the permissible thought that it was his interview with Professor Rimini that had given focus to the current campus rumblings. The professor had raised the question of the number of Catholics on the football team, and Bartholomew had gotten a good article out of that. The collapse of Notre Dame football had somehow seemed to give credence to the Weeping Willow Society’s concerns about the drift of the university toward secularism. Raising the question of the number of Catholics on the faculty had doubtless been important, but to many it seemed abstract. Professors came one at a time and did not wear percentages on their foreheads. Besides, to friend and foe alike, while the problem could be stated in the present, the solution, if any, lay far off in a misty future. How many of us are truly worried about how the world will look in fifty years, seventy-five years? But to ask how many Catholics were on a football team that had amassed the worst record in the history of Notre Dame could focus the mind. And would this have been clarified if Bartholomew had not interviewed Professor Rimini? Or if he had not written the article about John Wesley and John Foster Natashi?

  In order to keep the pot boiling, the interviewing went on.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Rimini said, when Bartholomew looked in the open door of his office.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong? Just because you made me sound like Fulton Sheen on a bad day? Half my non-Catholic colleagues think I’m on a crusade to run them off the reservation.” He stopped to inhale. “Come in and close the door.”

  “Professor Rimini, if I misquoted you, we’ll run a correction.”

  “Please, no. I mean it. I shouldn’t have talked to you. It’s my fault, I should have known better.”

  “That makes me look pretty bad.”

  The suggestion that zealots should ask how many Catholics are on the football team had not been a serious one, perhaps. Rimini had considered it the reductio ad absurdum of the efforts of the Weeping Willow Society. Now, to his alarm, he was being looked upon as the foremost agitator to rid the campus of non-Catholics.

  “I’ve heard from the AAUP! Spurred on by people here, of course.”

  “What’s the AAUP?”

  “The American Association of University Professors. Not much of a threat, believe me. I’m a member. But I also got a call from the ACLU.”

  The representative of the ACLU said they were looking into the possibility that Rimini’s activities fit under recent hate crime legislation.

  “That’s crazy, Professor. The article made it clear that you couldn’t care less about the percentage of Catholics on the faculty.”

  “Of course it’s clear. You don’t think people actually read, do you? It was your headline that did it.”

  RIMINI RECALLS TEAM HUDDLE AT MASS. He had told Bartholomew of those early morning team Masses on game day. He said it with a sort of sneer, asking Bartholomew if he knew that God was Irish.

  “Only on his mother’s side.”

  Rimini had roared. “That’s good. You ought to write.”

  His message now was Don’t write.

  “But surely if you’re being harassed and threatened…”

  “Did I say that? Did I use those words, harass, threaten?
” He clamped his hand on his bald head, moving it around as if he were looking for the seams.

  Rimini had liked the reference to his own years on the team, however.

  “Were the players smaller then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  A knock on the door. Rimini shouted something, and the door opened to reveal a huge man. He dipped his head and came into the office.

  “You’ve become famous,” he said to Rimini.

  “Here’s the culprit. He wrote the story.”

  The large man nodded. “Lots of typos.” He extended a large hand. “George Wintheiser.”

  “Don’t talk to him,” Rimini urged, half seriously. “He’ll ruin your name.”

  “You played football,” Bartholomew said. From an early age he had stuffed his memory with data on Notre Dame football. He had not fed this habit much of late, but those boyhood efforts had created a vast database of scores, statistics, honors, bowls.

  “A little.”

  “A little!” Rimini said. “The MVP in the Super Bowl!”

  Bartholomew looked more closely at the man’s large hands. On his right hand was unmistakably the NFL championship ring. On his left hand was his Notre Dame ring, which nearly concealed a plain gold band. Wintheiser took the easy chair, and Bartholomew remained in the chair across the desk from Rimini, an uncomfortable chair, doubtless to discourage students from long stays.

  “Professor Rimini was telling me of the rough treatment he’s been getting for recalling the religious practices of the team in his time.”

  “It was the same when I played,” Wintheiser said.

  “Were all the players Catholic?”

  “Oh, no, but everyone came to those Masses.”

  “Was it required?”

  Wintheiser looked at him. “No more than playing football in the first place.”

  “This is all off the record,” Rimini said, when Bartholomew felt he should leave the two alumni alone.

  “Bartholomew,” Wintheiser said, “if I were you, I’d go after the critics of the team. What a comic crew.”

  “Not a bad idea.” Not a particularly good one either. The attack on Roger Knight had made him an even more sympathetic figure. Iggie Willis was dead. And Bartholomew had no desire to make fun of someone like Frank Parkman.

  * * *

  “M. Le Professeur, puis-je avoir une minute de votre temps?”

  Guido Senzamacula jumped nervously. He turned with an agonized expression when Bartholomew, coming up behind him in a Decio hallway, made his foray into French.

  “The object is not to fit French into English boxes, young man. The object is to speak French.”

  “I never had conversational French,” Bartholomew said, following Senzamacula into his office. The professor closed the door.

  “Good,” he whispered. “If you want conversation, go to France. Even Quebec.”

  “Professor, I see that your name is on Professor Lipschutz’s demand that Notre Dame abandon football.”

  “What?” He seemed genuinely surprised.

  “It’s been in all the papers, the student papers.”

  Senzamacula’s hands lifted involuntarily as he looked at the ceiling. “Please. No offense, but I never read such papers.”

  “Well, anyway, here’s your name.”

  Senzamacula took the paper and read with visible horror. “Ban football? Me? What would Piero say?”

  “Piero?”

  “My son. Television.”

  Senzamacula dropped into his desk chair like an unopened parachute. He stared at Bartholomew but apparently did not see him. The saga of his son Piero, born at Notre Dame, educated at Notre Dame, Notre Dame through and through, from the top of his headphones to the soles of his workaday sneakers, followed.

  “What does he do?”

  “He televises games. He doesn’t work the camera anymore. He’s in the truck, directing it all.”

  “Notre Dame games.”

  “All of them. He tells me he has not missed a game since he graduated. That sounds impossible. Like Father Hesburgh saying he has said Mass every day since his ordination, no matter where he happened to be, Moscow, the South Pole, wherever. I’m sure it’s true, though.”

  “Professor, you are absolutely certain you did not give Professor Lipschutz permission to put your name on that list?”

  Senzamacula actually lifted his hand. “As God is my judge.”

  Again he picked up the paper Bartholomew had given him. “Bird! Knight! I can’t believe that they signed this petition.”

  It seemed another and related story.

  * * *

  Lipschutz was in his hideaway office in Brownson behind Sacred Heart, one of a string of offices that looked out on a parking lot. Bartholomew had wheedled the location from the secretary of Lipschutz’s department.

  “Yes, yes, come in.”

  Lipschutz was moving around the office, shifting books from one surface to another; there were piles of manuscripts on the desk. His computer was aglow.

  “I have to correct proofs for three books at the same time.” His eyes grazed over Bartholomew. “I have been asked to lecture in Berlin in the spring.” He pointed to the wall. “Those are my honorary degrees.”

  “I hate to interrupt…”

  “Nonsense, nonsense. Sit down. That document in the gold frame? A tribute from the Swiss government. I am currently at work on four different volumes.”

  “Amazing.”

  “I also work at home. Young man, you see before you a specimen of the much discussed but seldom beheld research professor.”

  Lipschutz’s reddish hair was cut in a sort of military style, his beard clipped; he was lean, and his belt was high above his hips, cinching his narrow waist. There was a gap of inches between his shoes and the bottoms of his pants. He had all the nervousness of a sparrow with bluebirds in the vicinity, his head looking now here, now there, now everywhere.

  “A suggestion, young man.” He paused. “What is your name?”

  “Bartholomew Hanlon.”

  “Interesting. Bartholomew, your story should emphasize the positive. The university is striving for excellence? Good. It wants to achieve status as a research university? Better. But those are words, phrases. It must be made concrete. Personal.”

  He waited for Bartholomew to grasp his point.

  “I think you should concentrate on a living, breathing research professor. Describe his day, his projects, his achievements.”

  Bartholomew glanced at the wall. “An excellent idea.”

  “I will tell you everything you need to know. I have offprints of articles. I could give you some of those.” His tone was reluctant. “My books, of course, are in the library.”

  “Professor Guido Senzamacula says he did not give you permission to put his name on your petition to abandon football.”

  “Nonsense. Of course he did.” Rows of very even teeth were revealed in a smile reminiscent of Teddy Roosevelt’s. “You have heard of the absentminded professor?”

  “He was surprised to see the names of Otto Bird and Roger Knight on the petition.”

  “I secured those myself.”

  “They’re making fun of Roger Knight, you know.”

  “I know, I know. They killed Socrates.”

  Lipschutz was less forthcoming when asked about the demonstration his group allegedly planned.

  “A mere means. To get their attention. The administration has to understand that I am the best friend they have.”

  “Have you made that point to them?”

  “They can’t possibly not know it.”

  He gave Bartholomew an offprint of one of his articles, “There Are No Rights in Roman Law,” assuring him that he would give the press every help he could.

  Setting off to see Roger Knight, it occurred to Bartholomew that it would be at least as easy to caricature and lampoon Lipschutz as it was Roger Knight. The Goodyear Blimp. Despite his love for Roger Knight, Bartholomew smiled.

/>   11

  He canceled his classes. He couldn’t sleep. He longed to talk to Piero and yet he avoided him. Every day he had gone to Cedar Grove to visit the grave of his wife and son, consulting them to find out what he could do to convince Piero that he had not signed Lipschutz’s abominable petition.

  “Dad, I believe you. Calm down.”

  “I want you to forgive me!”

  “All right, I forgive you.”

  Words. Of course Piero would say what he asked him to say. He was a good son, a son he had betrayed. In Cedar Grove he had the distinct feeling that Jessica agreed.

  What must the administration think of him? Guido Senzamacula had brought with him from the Old World the unformulated conviction that superiors are superiors, bosses are bosses. Tenure? Did anyone really believe that the university wouldn’t be able to get rid of a rebellious professor? His phone kept ringing, and he let it ring. Piero had insisted that he have caller ID, and he knew it was the ineffable Lipschutz calling to badger him. Piero came by at least once a day. He was staying in a motel with his crew; so much for the hope that he would make use of his old room.

  “Dad, get out of the house. Teach your classes. You’re cracking up.”

  Was he? Sometimes he thought that for years he had been waiting for such an occasion, that he longed to just let go and drift away, into sleep, retirement, even death.

  “It won’t be long,” he whispered over the graves in Cedar Grove.

  To die, to sleep. Not even music soothed his tortured breast. The Mozart concertos he loved now seemed only to jangle his nerves. One night, under cover of darkness, he crept across campus to Decio, let himself in, and sat in his office with the lights out. It was ridiculous. He knew it was ridiculous. He knew Piero was concerned about him. But he could not wish away the thought that after so many happy years at Notre Dame he had allowed Lipschutz to make a pariah of him.

  He could make a statement, publicly declare that his name had been used without his permission. No one would believe him. It would be his word against that of the eloquent Lipschutz. His colleague infuriated him by dismissing Guido’s claim that he had not signed the petition to remove football once and forever from Notre Dame. What was Notre Dame without football? That could be the opening sentence of his declaration, letting the administration know he was on their side. The game that Guido did not understand, that he personally cared nothing for, loomed now as large on the horizon of his mind as the golden dome. He should have made an effort to like football. Out of loyalty to the university. To be on even better terms with Piero. Like a remorseful penitent, he promised God that he would attend every home game for the rest of his life.