Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red

by Harry Kemelman

  “I know all about that,” she said calmly. “She was a cheap little whore, the original sweetheart of Sigma Chi—and all the other fraternities.”

  “He told you all this? Why?”

  “Because we’re interested in each other,” she said, getting to her feet.

  “Betty, the man called him an over-sexed—”

  “Well, I could do with a little of that after Malcolm.”

  “Betty!”

  “Look Dad, I might as well tell you. John and I are going to be married.”

  He stared at her.

  “Don’t look so shocked. And I’m not going to be put off just because a man of forty is not celibate. Now, aren’t you going to wish me good luck?”

  “But with a coed!”

  “Big enough, old enough. You don’t suppose your coeds here at Windemere are all innocent virgins, do you?”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “But I still cannot approve of male members of the faculty—well—having relations—that is, taking advantage of their position to—why—se-duce female members of the student body.” He started again. “Look Betty, I’m as modern about these things as any man my age can be. But it’s not right for a faculty member—I mean, just from the point of view of fairness, because he can take advantage of his position. If nothing else, think what it indicates of his character.”

  “Fairness! Character!” She gave a hard laugh. “Dad, let me clue you in on the facts of life in the seventies. Sex is a woman’s business; it’s her specialty, her field of concentration. If any affairs are going on at Windemere between faculty and student, and I’m sure there are, believe me, it’s something that the girl has initiated and is managing. And she’ll usually be the one who terminates it when she finds someone else or has decided she’s had enough. Now this affair of John’s down at Logan, and others he’s probably had at the other places he taught, well, he might think they were his doing but you can bet that in each case it was the girl’s.”

  “Betty, are you having an affair with him?”

  “Dad, you’re sweet. No, I’m not but it’s just because it hasn’t developed that way—not yet anyway. Have I shocked you?” She looked at him in amusement.

  “Do you love this man, Betty?”

  “I’m not a teenager with a crush, if that’s what you mean. I find him attractive. He’s good-looking and intelligent.”

  “But you’ve only just met him. You don’t really know him.”

  “Yes, and I practically grew up with Malcolm and see what happened,” she said. “I’ve known John for almost two months now. It’s long enough.”

  “Just because you made a mistake once—”

  “I’m thirty-five and John is forty. Our backgrounds are similar. He comes of an old New England family, and he’s unattached. He’s the most eligible man around. If I wait, I’ll end up marrying some widower with a couple of kids who’s looking for a housekeeper to work without pay—if I’m lucky. As for any affairs he’s had with some silly little coeds, well, if he hadn’t had any, then I’d have cause to worry. What else can a bachelor professor in a small college town do? Would you rather have him make time with the wives of his colleagues?”

  “Most men marry.”

  “Then he wouldn’t be available to me. Look Dad, I’m going to marry him. Right now we’re keeping it quiet because he has some silly idea people won’t understand, but make up your mind to it. Don’t worry, Dad,” she hugged him impulsively, “I know you’ll like him once you get to know him better.”

  “Has Billy met him yet?” he said.

  “As a matter of fact, we’re driving up to see him Saturday morning. I’m sure he and Billy will get along fine.”

  “And what about your plans for the future?”

  “That depends on you,” she said. “John would like to stay on here, but he considers his present position as acting chairman demeaning. When the last bulletin passed him over, he was going to resign, but I persuaded him to wait. If he does decide to leave, we could live for a while on the little money Mother left me while he looks around for another job. I suggested it, but he’s too proud to accept it. But if he’s given tenure and appointed permanent chairman, we could get married right away, and then we’d go on living here.”

  “But that has to be by a vote of the trustees.”

  “Have they ever turned down a single recommendation of yours?”

  “No—o.”

  “Please, Dad!”

  She looked as anxious as a child. And what did he really know to Hendryx’s discredit? Still, it went against the grain to use the authority of his position in a purely family matter. On the other hand, Betty wasn’t the only one. Dean Hanbury had urged him to make the promotion, so it probably would work to the benefit of the department and the school. “Well, perhaps I’ll talk to Dean Hanbury,” he said tentatively.

  She knew she had won. “Oh thanks, Dad.” She gave him another kiss. “When will you see her?”

  He thumbed through his pocket diary. “Let’s see, tomorrow is Friday. I don’t have anything on for the morning.” He made a note. “Friday the thirteenth. You superstitious?” He smiled at her. “I’ll see her tomorrow morning.”

  She blew him a kiss and then hurried up the stairs. “I’ve got to change.”

  “I thought you were going to stay in tonight….”

  “Oh, but I want to tell John the good news.”

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  They couldn’t use Abner Selzer’s place because his roommate had the flu, and Yance Allworth and Mike O’Brien both lived at home. So they had agreed to meet at Judy Ballantine’s pad even though it was way to hell and gone on the other side of town, in the West End. At least, they would not be disturbed. Besides, since this Judy was shacking up with Ekko, two of the five were already there. She lived three flights up in a tenement house that real estate gougers had prettied up with tiled shower stalls and cabinet kitchenettes and a few sticks of furniture so that they could charge an arm and a leg to students, nurses, and interns at the Mass General Hospital, who couldn’t find anyplace else.

  Ekko appropriated the one chair. It was a wing-back job whose fabric was not only faded but marred by cigarette burns caused by the carelessness, if not actual vandalism, of the previous tenants who resented the inflated rent they had to pay. “Just pin on a couple of lace dollies and it’ll look like new,” the renting agent had said.

  Judy, although a senior, looked like a young girl. Not only was she tiny, but her face had a childlike expression with a small rosebud mouth and large innocent dark eyes. She sat on the floor, her head against Ekko’s knee, flicking her cigarette in the general direction of the ashtray on the floor. With her other hand she massaged his calf under his trouser leg.

  On the ratty sofa with sagging springs sat Mike O’Brien who worked part-time in a bank and so wore a regular suit and a white shirt and even a tie for God’s sakes; his fat little fingers were intertwined on his lap.

  Yance Allworth lay on the floor, his handsome Afro resting on a cushion he had pulled off the sofa. He was wearing fringed pants of purple leather and a pink silk shirt that contrasted dramatically with his dark black skin. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep as Abner Selzer, bearded and with hair nearly down to his shoulders, reported on his conversation with the dean.

  “I arranged it for half-past two today because—” he broke off. “Jeez Judy, do you have to feel him up while we’re having a meeting?”

  “Screw you,” she said amiably.

  “Get on with it,” said Ekko, patting her head like a dog’s.

  “—because that’s when Millie Hanbury suggested,” he concluded.

  “Screw Millie Hanbury,” said Allworth through half closed lips.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t mind,” said Selzer. “She’s got some built.”

  “You’d mind, all right,” said Judy. “She’s a dyke.”

  “How do you know?” asked O’Brien, interested.

 
“It stands to reason,” Judy said. “She was a Phys. Ed. major in college. All those Phys. Ed. types are. What I’d like to know is why we got to meet her at half-past two on a Friday.”

  “Friday the thirteenth,” Yance Allworth murmured.

  “Because Friday the place is like a ghost town. There won’t be anyone around. Just us.”

  “So what kind of pressure can we bring with just the five of us?”

  “More than if we held the meeting Monday morning as you suggested, Judy,” Selzer retorted. “Then we could get maybe fifty kids, seventy-five at the most. And Hanbury would take one look, see we could only scare up a handful, and know right away she held all the cards.”

  “How do you know we’d only get fifty?” asked O’Brien.

  “Because that’s the name of the game nowadays,” said Selzer. “You know how many signatures we got to our petition? With Fine as a drawing card? A hundred and nineteen. That’s all we could get in a whole week, one hundred and nineteen lousy signatures. So when Hanbury suggested Friday afternoon, I snapped it up because that way we don’t show our weakness.”

  “I bet if we’d joined with the Weathervanes, we’d have got a hell of a lot more,” said O’Brien.

  “Screw the Weathervanes,” Allworth murmured.

  “You and me both,” said Ekko. “That’s a freaked out bunch of crazies that I wouldn’t join on a streetcar in a rush hour.”

  “They’re real revolutionaries,” O’Brien insisted.

  “They’re real zombies, is what they are,” said Ekko. “You say, half-past two, Abner? Okay, so it’s half-past two. Did you tell her why we wanted to see her?”

  “No, but she knows we’re pushing for Fine naturally because of the sign on the Marble.”

  “I told you Roger asked us to lay off,” said Ekko.

  “Screw Roger Fine,” said Allworth.

  “Right,” Selzer agreed. “We aren’t doing this for Fine. He’s just an example. We’re interested in like a principle.”

  “That’s right, Ekko,” said Judy. “If they’re going to drop any teacher that sides with us, where in hell we going to get faculty support?”

  They argued back and forth, getting nowhere, until it was time to split. Ekko saw them out, but on the landing he took Selzer aside.

  “I didn’t want to say it in front of the others, but Roger is pretty upset about the petition and even more about our meeting with Millie. You see, he’s already resigned.”

  “Resigned? What the hell—”

  “He had to,” said Ekko. “He says they had him over a barrel and made him write out a letter of resignation. Millie’s got it in her safe right this minute. I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody, but with the meeting today I figured we ought to go kind of easy—you know, keep it like general—so we shouldn’t end up with egg all over our face.”

  “Yeah.” Already the wheels were spinning as Selzer began revising his strategy. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe we ought to let her spring it on us, and then just tell her we know but feel he was forced into it.”

  “I still think—”

  Selzer felt his leadership questioned. “Look, you want to handle it, Ekko?”

  “No, I just don’t want to see Rog get the short end of the stick.”

  “Don’t worry. All along, the best I ever figured was a draw.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “We’d lose on Fine, but we’d get a promise on somebody else.”

  “Yeah. Well, keep it in mind.” Ekko turned, then said: “Say, does anybody else know about this meeting?”

  “I didn’t tell anybody. Why?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want any of those crazy Weathervanes to come pushing in. Then the dean would use that as an excuse to lower the boom on Roger.”

  “Who would tell them?”

  “Well, Mike is always talking about how the Weathervanes would do this and the Weathervanes would do that, and I’ve seen him with that Aggie broad.”

  Selzer considered and then shook his head. “Nah, Mike’s all right. He just talks. It makes up for the square clothes he has to wear at the bank.” He laughed and clumped down the stairs to catch up the others.

  They separated at the Charles Street train station, Yance and Abner taking the stairs to the overhead while O’Brien continued into the city. After a block or so, Mike stopped at a drugstore pay phone and, carefully closing the door of the booth, dialed a number. The phone rang half a dozen times before it was answered. “Yeah?”

  “Is Aggie there?” asked O’Brien.

  “Aggie who?”

  “Just Aggie. Just see if Aggie’s there.”

  He waited and then another voice, a woman’s voice, said, “Hi, lover.”

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Rabbi Small did not look forward to meeting his last class of the week, but each Friday he would hope that this time there would be a normal complement. And each time he would be disappointed.

  He could not avoid the feeling of resentment, even though he knew it was irrational; and this Friday, the thirteenth, was no different: a dozen students were present and he was annoyed. He closed the door behind him, and without a word of greeting, mounted the platform.

  Nodding briefly, he turned his back to write the assignment on the blackboard and when he turned around he received a profound shock: half the class was gone! Then he saw that they had not left the room but were sitting on the floor in the aisles.

  He was not in the mood for joking; he never was on a Friday. “Will you please come to order,” he called.

  There was no response. Those still in their chairs looked down at their open notebooks, reluctant to meet his eye.

  “Please take your seats.”

  No movement.

  “I cannot give my lecture while you are sitting on the floor.”

  “Why not?” It was Harry Luftig, who asked from the floor, not impertinently—politely, in fact.

  For a moment the rabbi was uncertain what to say. Then he had an idea. “To sit on the floor is a sign of mourning with us Jews,” he said. “The devout sit on the floor during the seven-day mourning period. We also do it on the Ninth of Av, the day of the destruction of the temple. In the synagogues we sit on the floor or on low stools and recite from the Book of Lamentations. But now it is Friday afternoon and the Sabbath is approaching. Mourning is explicitly forbidden on the Sabbath.”

  Of course Sabbath was still hours away, but he peered down at them through his thick glasses to see if they would accept his explanation as a face-saving way of giving up their little joke. He thought one of them was about to rise, but he only shifted position on the floor.

  Suddenly he was angry—and hurt. These were not children. Why should he have to put up with it? Without another word, he picked up his books and left the room.

  He strode resolutely down the corridor, his footsteps echoing hollowly in the silent building. His face was grim as he came to his office and, unlocking the door, went in.

  He was surprised, not too pleasantly, to find Professor Hendryx tilted back in his swivel chair, talking on the phone.

  He waved his free hand at the rabbi, said goodbye into the instrument and jerked himself to a sitting position to set it on its cradle.

  He glanced at his watch. “Quarter-past one. Don’t you have a class?”

  The rabbi pulled up the visitor’s chair and sat down across the desk. “That’s right. I walked out on them.”

  Hendryx grinned. “What happened? They try to give you the business?”

  “I don’t know what they were trying,” said the rabbi, indignation creeping into his voice, “but whatever it was, I didn’t regard their behavior as conducive to teaching.”

  “What did they do?”

  The rabbi told him, concluding, “And once having gone out on a limb by giving it a certain religious significance, I had no other alternative.”

  “But they didn’t buy it.”

  “I’m afraid not. No one on
the floor budged.”

  “So you walked out.”

  The rabbi nodded. “I couldn’t think what else to do.”

  “You weren’t here yesterday, were you, Rabbi?” Hendryx asked with seeming irrelevance.

  “No. I just come for my classes. What happened yesterday?”

  Professor Hendryx drew his pipe from his pocket and filled it from a canister on the desk. “Well, it really began Wednesday.” He scratched a large wooden match into flame on the underside of the desk and held it to his pipe. He puffed on it gently, then went on. “On Wednesday the newspapers reported a visit made by the Citizens Committee on Penal Reform to Norfolk Reformatory for Boys. They found the usual deplorable conditions: overcrowding, broken windows, toilets that don’t flush, cockroaches in the kitchen. And they were given the usual excuses by the warden: lack of funds, lack of trained personnel, divided authority. But there was something new since their last visit. There were no chairs in the recreation room and the inmates had to sit on the floor. The warden explained that he had ordered the chairs removed because they had been used for rioting in the rec room the week before. Most of the committee refused to buy it. They pointed out that the floor was uncarpeted and was cold and drafty, that the health of the little bastards was being jeopardized, and ail the rest. Didn’t you read about it?”

  “Yes, but what’s it got to do with my class?”

  “I’m coming to that.” He puffed on his pipe. “President Macomber is a member of that committee, and he was one of the few who not only did not protest but even supported the warden. So the next day—yesterday, this is—our students, the more involved among them at least, decided to sit out the week on the floor in all classes in protest against their president.”