The War Between the Tates: A Novel

by Alison Lurie

  “I’ll call you back ...As soon as I can ...She says she can’t wait,” Wendy reports, hanging up.

  “... more bulletins as they are received,” the radio announces. “And now a message from Bud Wordsworth, president of the Savings Bank.” Brian turns down the sound, knowing from experience that this pompous commercial will last sixty seconds.

  “They’ve taken over Dibble’s office,” he repeats. “How many of them?”

  “About twelve or fifteen, Linda said. Nearly everybody who stayed at the meeting last night. She would’ve been with them, only she had to teach her eight o’clock class. Hey, isn’t it just fine, though?”

  Brian does not reply, but checks his watch: it is a quarter after nine. “And what’s Dibble doing?” he asks.

  “Nothing, I guess. He was talking on the phone for a while, but then they cut the wire.”

  “You mean he’s in there with them?”

  “Oh, yeh.” Wendy grins. “That’s the whole idea. Sara was talking about it last night, but I didn’t think she’d convince them. They’re holding him hostage, like you told them to.” She gazes at Brian proudly.

  “Oh, Christ.” A vision comes to him of Donald Dibble at his desk, surrounded—indeed jostled, for the room is hardly ten feet square—by angry girl students. Again Brian has the sense of his own power to affect circumstances; but this time it is the uncontrolled, ignorant power of the sorcerer’s apprentice.

  He turns the radio up again, hearing first that savings are grow-power for our community and then that everything Wendy has said is true. He learns that although campus patrolmen have been called to the scene, no action has yet been taken against the demonstrators; and that neither William Guildenstern, chairman of the political science department, or Ned Kane, dean of the Humanities, has made any statement.

  An undertone of amusement in the voice of the campus reporter causes Brian to realize for the first time that there is a humorous, even farcical side to the situation. Whatever happens now, Dibble’s goose is cooked. For the rest of his life he will be known locally as that professor who was imprisoned by a gang of girls. People will make jokes about it, including people who know Dibble well enough to suspect that the worst thing he could imagine is to be locked in a room with fifteen women. For the first time since Linda’s call, Brian smiles, then laughs aloud.

  But of course to Dibble it is no joke. Or to Bill Guildenstern. “I’d better get up there,” he says. “Come on. Leave the dishes, for God’s sake”

  “You realize I don’t want you to go into the building,” he informs Wendy as they ride down in the elevator five minutes later.

  “But I told Linda,” Wendy mews. She is now dressed for revolutionary action, in jeans and boots and an old fringed cowboy jacket with peace symbols blazed on the lapels. Her pale, fine yellow hair is loose, her eyes bright. “I promised her—”

  “I don’t care what you promised Linda,” returns Brian, who has also changed his clothes, though in the other direction, replacing his cord pants and knit jersey with a suit, shirt and tie in anticipation of his interview with Bill and Ned Kane. “I don’t want you involved in this misguided affair.”

  “Misguided?” she wails. “But it was your idea!”

  “It was not my idea,” Brian corrects her as the elevator comes to rest with its customary cough and bump. “I’ve never recommended political violence of any sort,” he continues, determined to make it clear that the occupation of Dibble’s office cannot be blamed on him. “As soon as you do something illegal you’re in the wrong, and then, even if you win, you lose morally.”

  “Yeh.” Wendy stops in the foyer. “That’s what Zed says. Every time you do a violent act you lose a year on the Path, he says.”

  “Does he.” Brian holds the outside door open and motions her through, suppressing further remarks which occur to him in the interest of expediency. Nevertheless it irritates him profoundly that Wendy should still refer her opinions to a middle-aged life dropout who has fused his mental circuits with religious nonsense and drugs. It does not improve his estimate of this creep that he should turn out to be an old Cambridge acquaintance of Erica’s.

  It is obvious as they turn onto campus that something unusual is happening. The parking lot by Burnham Hall is full of official-looking cars, some without U stickers, and as Brian pulls into a fortunately vacated space he sees two men getting out of a panel truck with what looks like a portable television camera. On the side of the building facing the quad there is a small but growing crowd of spectators and journalists. He follows their gaze to the second-floor window of Dibble’s office, but can make out nothing past the glare of sun on glass.

  Cautioning Wendy again not to follow him, he enters Burnham. There are more spectators in the hallway; he pushes through them with difficulty and expostulation, thinking as he often does that students seem to be getting larger and ruder every year. He explains his way past two campus cops guarding the stairs and another at the top. At the far end of the upstairs hall he can see a crowd of people, all men. He recognizes some of them: two boys from the campus paper whom he knows, Jenny’s bearded friend Mark, and the sad hitchhiker Stanley. He does not approach, but turns into the department office, where Bill is in conference with representatives of the administration and the Safety Division.

  “Ah, Brian.” It is a sigh of relief. “Excuse me a moment, gentlemen.” Bill draws Brian aside into his secretary’s office (now empty) and in a tense and distracted manner attempts to fill him in: Dibble has been imprisoned for over an hour now. Several people have tried to talk to him on the phone and persuade him to make what is after all a rather slight concession, but without success. Now the line has been cut, and the gang of male sympathizers will let no one through. Worse still, both Dean Kane and President Backson are out of town.

  Having no one to pass the buck to in this, his first serious crisis has obviously been too much for Bill. His voice rises and falls nervously as he speaks, and he keeps patting his upper arms with both hands as if to assure himself that he is still there.

  “I know some of those kids,” Brian volunteers finally. In contrast to Bill he feels quite calm. “They might let me in. But it’s no use my talking to Don; he hates my guts. Why don’t you try John Randall?”

  “I called him.” Bill almost grins. “He won’t have anything to do with it—says the protesters have forfeited their rights by taking illegal action.”

  “Uh huh.” It is what he would have, expected from Randall.

  “Of course there’s the Safety Division,” Bill admits, anticipating a recommendation Brian is not going to make. “But that might be dangerous.” Pat, pat.

  “You think they’d hurt the girls?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the girls would hurt the cops. But either way—You can imagine the news stories. We’ve got to get Don out of there; when I spoke to him on the phone half an hour ago he was already hysterical.”

  “You want to get Don out.” Though Brian speaks slowly, plans are rocketing through his brain. There is a way, he is sure. Somehow the scene outside on the quad under Dibble’s window is part of it—Yes.

  “I have an idea,” he says. “Wait—not here.” He gestures with his head toward Helen Wells and the secretaries in the outer office. Helen has been with the political science department longer than he, and the others have always seemed nice, obliging girls. But they are women, and one of them may be a spy. He draws Bill back into the chairman’s office, and leaning close across the table where the other men are sitting with worried expressions on their faces, outlines his plan.

  Fifteen minutes later Brian emerges from a custodian’s closet in the basement of Burnham Hall. He looks slightly odd, for he is wearing Bill Guildenstern’s raincoat which is much too long for him and would ordinarily also be too wide. Now, however, it fits snugly over the fifty feet of heavy knotted rope that is wrapped around his body under his suit jacket, giving him the outward shape of a fat man or a pregnant woman.

 
; On the stairs to the first floor he meets Hank Andrews.

  “Well! You’ve heard the good news, I take it?” Hank grins and leans against the banister. But Brian has no time for conversation.

  “Yes, I’m on my way to see Don now.” He suppresses the impulse to confide in Hank, promising himself that later he will explain everything, accept his friend’s congratulations.

  “You’re going into Don’s office?” Hank frowns. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you ...They won’t let you in anyhow,” he adds more easily.

  “I think they may. I know some of them.”

  “Even so. I don’t advise it.”

  “And what would you advise?” Brian asks impatiently. He advances to the next step, bringing his head on a level with Hank’s.

  “I would suggest that you follow the example of Our Leader: leave town at once in any crisis.” Hank’s tone is so serious that Brian decides he is joking.

  “It’s too late for that; I’ve just promised Bill I’d do what I can. He’s quite non compos,” he adds, smiling.

  “You might have a sudden illness.” Hank puts his hand on Brian’s shoulder, an unusual gesture.

  Brian stops smiling. Usually he enjoys his friend’s jokes and respects his opinion; now he remembers that Hank has always avoided responsibility—he recently refused again to be considered for chairman, for instance. He thinks that although Hank is six feet tall, he is a passive intellectual, a coward, who would not dare conceive or carry out Brian’s present plan. “I’ll see you later.” He goes up another step; now he is taller than Hank.

  “Seriously,” Hank continues. “Let Bill worry—Hey, what’ve you got there?” he asks as his hand slides off Brian’s shoulder and down over the bulge of knotted rope. But Brian does not reply, or even look back as he ascends the stairs, two at a time.

  Nine o’clock classes are ending, and there are even more people in the hall for him to push through. The cops do not question him this time; perhaps they have already been alerted to what will soon happen.

  Upstairs the sympathizers are still on guard outside Dibble’s office, accompanied now by a reporter and photographer from the local paper who take notes and snap Brian’s picture. As he had anticipated, he has little trouble persuading Mark and Stanley to let him speak with the protesters. But when Sara and a girl named Pat, who resembles her, come out into the hall, it is nearly impossible to convince them to give him some time alone with Dibble.

  “We can’t talk if you’re all in there, you must see that,” he insists, wishing he had pretty Jenny, or even Linda Sliski, to deal with instead of these militant tomboys. “Dibble’s got to have privacy to negotiate, to save his face—”

  “We’re not interested in saving his ugly face,” interrupts Sara’s confederate, a skinny small girl with long mouse-colored braids.

  “But you’ve got to consider what effect all this has on him. Dibble’s not a well man,” Brian improvises. “He has heart trouble.”

  “Dibble couldn’t have heart trouble,” Sara retorts. “He has no heart. You should have heard some of the things he said to us in there.”

  “He called us stupid, spoiled little girls,” Pat volunteers indignantly.

  “He told Linda she was a denatured female, and he said he was going to see she never held another academic job in her life.”

  “Very aggravating.” Brian prevents himself from smiling even slightly. “But the question is, do you want to win this battle, or don’t you? Are you going to let yourself be distracted by propaganda, by name-calling and threats? I think at least you should tell them all in there that I’ve offered to talk to Dibble, and put it to a vote,” he adds, seeing Sara hesitate.

  “Well. Okay. Come on, Pat.”

  For some minutes Brian waits in the hall, listening to the sounds of argument from behind the door and wondering if Mark or Stanley or the others notice anything suspicious about his appearance. Finally the door opens; Sara beckons to Brian and tells him it has been decided that he can see Dibble alone, but only for ten minutes. Behind her the other protesters crowd out into the hall—a small mob of badly dressed, angry-looking girls. All of them stare at Brian, a few with looks of distrust.

  “Where’s Wendy?” Linda asks him, also distrustfully.

  “Outside.” Brian pushes forward through the crowd to avoid further questioning, keeping both arms pressed against his body to prevent the rope from unwinding.

  “Ten minutes,” Sara warns him.

  “He’s not going to listen to you, you know,” Jenny says, touching his arm earnestly. “He’s all freaked out.”

  “Could be.”

  Brian smiles at her, shrugs, and enters Dibble’s office, shutting the door firmly behind him. Both the room and its occupant look definitely deranged. The drawers of the filing cabinet are pulled open, with papers and files scattered on the desk and floor. There are female boots and coats piled everywhere, and a white, obsessed expression on Dibble’s face as he rises from behind his desk, fixing his eyes on Brian and speaking in a thin, hoarse caricature of his normal voice.

  “I know what you’re here for, Tate,” he cries. “I know you’re responsible for this outrage, and let me tell you it doesn’t surprise me, oh no, I’m not at all surprised.” He shakes his head several times. “But it’s no use your coming in here. I’m not going to negotiate with any little rabble-rouser, oh no, oh no.” Again he shakes his head very rapidly, like a wet dog. “I have no interest whatsoever in negotiation. I’ve already made my position, my position quite clear. I expressed myself clearly to Bill Guildenstern, I think. I told him, I said, if you have any slight regard for academic frin—principles of academic freedom, any professional integrity or loyalty—

  Brian does not attempt to interrupt, or make the persuasive speech he had thought of as Plan One; he realizes that Jenny was right, and besides there is not enough time. He begins to unbutton Bill’s raincoat, Plan Two.

  “—loyalty to your profession, any conscience or any rudimentary conscience, which quite frankly I doubt, and I say the same to you, because you are certainly quite well aware of the legal sanctions which can and should have been imposed at once, several hours ago, at the earliest possible moment, against these disgusting—” Abruptly Dibble ceases speaking. An expression of astonishment, then of panic comes over his face as he observes Brian removing first his jacket, then his sweater. “Wha! Why the hell you doing?” he brays, backing into the corner as Brian approaches.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” Brian replies in a low, controlled voice, leaning toward Dibble. “Don’t shout like that, just keep talking normally.” He throws his jacket on a heap of girls’ coats. “Can you climb down a rope?”

  “What?”

  “A rope,” Brian repeats patiently, feeling behind him for the loose end. “I said, can you climb down a rope?”

  Dibble turns, following Brian’s gaze. “You want me to climb out that window?” he asks in a shrill half-whisper.

  “That was the plan I suggested to Bill and Chief Beaver.” Brian hauls a rough, heavy loop of knotted rope around his body. It is hard work, and slow—too slow for the time they have. “I told them I thought you’d be able to manage it.” He drops the rope and tries to push down the whole coil at once.

  “You told them? I could, I suppose,” Dibble says, with some vanity—he is known to spend several hours a week in the college gym, jogging and at times lifting weights. “But it’s unnecessary. Quite unnecessary. All that’s needed is to alert the Safety Division, they’re quite well equipped for emergencies, they have mace now, since the trouble last year—It would be a very simple matter—Tear gas too I believe. They should have been called in at once.”

  “Bill won’t take responsibility for sending in the cops. He’s waiting until Dean Kane gets back tonight,” Brian explains, struggling impatiently with the rope. Though he sucks in his breath and shoves down with all his strength so that the coarse knots dig into his hands, he cannot budge it. “If you wa
nt to stay here with those girls until tonight, you can,” he pants angrily.

  “No.” Dibble glances rapidly from window to door. “But in my opinion—”

  “Then shut up, please, and take hold of this.” Brian throws the free end of the rope across the desk. “We haven’t that much time.” Backing away, he begins to rotate, unwinding the rope. “You’ve got to pull ...Harder ...That’s right.”

  He continues to turn: past the bookshelves, the littered desk, the window, the gaping files, the door; past Dibble, who pulls on the rope while continuing to ex pound his opinions, of which Brian catches isolated phrases each time he comes around:

  “... moral cowardice ... utter stupidity ... in my view ...

  At last the rope is free. Brian halts, breathless; but the room still turns. He is dizzy, almost nauseous. He puts a hand to his head and staggers toward Dibble’s desk, now covered with coarse serpentine loops.

  “... feeble-minded administrators ... unprecedented ...

  “Just a sec.” Brian blinks, swallows. “All right. Now we’ll fasten this end to—” He pauses, looking around the spinning room. He had planned tying the rope to one leg of the desk, but Dibble’s modernistic desk has no legs. “—to that pipe there,” he improvises, pointing upward.

  Unfortunately the ceiling in these old buildings is very high, while Brian is short. To reach the pipe he has to put a chair on the desk and climb up on it.

  “Wait. Now, hand me the rope. No, damn it, the end.”

  “... impudently reading my private correspondence ... valuable manuscripts ... Dibble continues, automatically handing up the rope. Brian is not listening; he is still very dizzy, conscious of moving slowly, of time passing rapidly, of the door with its two long rectangular panels of opaque glass and the heavy shadows of the crowd waiting behind it in the hall—If they should open that door—

  “... utterly intolerable ... legal action ...

  Finally the rope is fixed, the knot secure; Brian tests it with his full weight as he climbs down. Four minutes left. Hastily, he clears the sill, knocking books and coats to the floor.