The Graduate

by Charles Webb

  “You should try and figure out your own feelings in the matter. You should rely on your own feelings.”

  “And forget about my father’s.”

  “That’s right. I really think that’s right.”

  Elaine stood and walked to the desk for the envelope. She picked it up and fitted the letter into it.

  “Now listen,” Benjamin said, standing. “We’ll go down and get the blood tests done right now.”

  “You have no right to ask me to do that.”

  “But I’m begging you to do it, Elaine!”

  “Well you have no right to beg me to do it.”

  “But I can’t help it.”

  Elaine walked slowly across the room to the door. “Elaine?”

  “I have to go study now,” she said.

  “But could we please get married first?” he said, hurrying after her. “Then you could study after that.”

  “No.”

  “But Elaine?”

  “What.”

  “You aren’t—I mean what you said about calling the police—”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Benjamin.”

  “But what’s going to happen.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll talk to my father when he comes.”

  “Will you tell him we want to get married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you tell him there’s nothing to do to stop us?”

  “I’ll tell him we love each other.”

  “You will?”

  She nodded, opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. Benjamin waited till she had gone part way down the stairs, then rushed out the door after her. “Elaine?” She stopped.

  “Will you please stay here with me?”

  She turned around and walked back to where he was standing. She kissed him. “I’ll just be in my room studying,” she said. “But could you bring your books up here? I’ll be quiet.”

  “I won’t run away,” she said.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise you I won’t run away.”

  “Because I’d just go crazy, Elaine,” he said, taking her hands. “I’d just go completely out of my mind.”

  Mr. Robinson came the next morning. Benjamin was standing at his window looking down at the street when a taxi stopped in front of the rooming house and Mr. Robinson stepped out. Benjamin stared down at him as he paid the driver, then looked up and listened as the front door of the rooming house was opened and as Mr. Robinson climbed the stairs up to the second story. It was quiet a moment, then there was a knock on Benjamin’s door. Benjamin held his breath and waited. The knock came again.

  “Yes?”

  The door was opened and Mr. Robinson stepped inside. Benjamin turned around. When Mr. Robinson saw him he stopped completely still. He looked at Benjamin a long time, then began clearing his throat. He put his hand up over his mouth and cleared his throat for several moments.

  “Do you want—” he said finally, “do you want to try and tell me why you did it?”

  Benjamin shook his head. “I don’t—I don’t—”

  “Do you have a special grudge against me you’d like to tell me about?” Mr. Robinson said, again clearing his throat. “Do you feel a particularly strong resentment for me for some reason?”

  Benjamin was still shaking his head. “No,” he said, “it’s not—”

  “Is there something I’ve said that’s caused this contempt? Or is it just the things I stand for that you despise.”

  “It was nothing to do with you, sir.”

  “Well Ben, it was quite a bit to do with me,” Mr. Robinson said, “and I’d like to hear your feelings about me if you have any. I’d like to know why you’ve done this to me.”

  “Not to you!”

  “Well yes, Ben, to me. You’ve betrayed my trust, you’ve betrayed my confidence. Do you have a reason—”

  “There was no reason for it, Mr. Robinson.”

  “Well,” Mr. Robinson said. “I can see why you’d like to say no one’s responsible, I can understand how you might like to leave it at that, but Ben, you’re a little old to be saying you’re not responsible—”

  “I am responsible!”

  “You’re responsible for it but there was no reason for it? That’s an interesting—”

  “There was no personal—no personal—”

  “No personal element involved?”

  “There was not.”

  “Well,” Mr. Robinson said, “that’s an interesting way of looking at it, Ben. When you sleep with another man’s wife and you can say there was no—”

  “Mr. Robinson,” Benjamin said, taking a step forward. “It was my fault. I’m trying—”

  “Ben, I think we’re two civilized human beings. Do you think it’s necessary to threaten each other?”

  “I am not threatening you.”

  “Do you want to unclench your fists, please? Thank you.”

  “I am trying to tell you I have no personal feelings about you, Mr. Robinson. I am trying to tell you I do not resent you.”

  “You don’t respect me terribly much either, do you.”

  “No I don’t.”

  Mr. Robinson nodded. “Well,” he said, “I don’t think we have a whole lot to say to each other, Ben. I do think you should know the consequences of what you’ve done. I do think you should know that my wife and I are getting a divorce soon.”

  “But why!” Benjamin said.

  “Why?”

  “It shouldn’t make any difference what happened!”

  “That’s—that’s quite a statement, Ben,” he said. “Is that how you feel? That what you’ve done is completely inconsequential?”

  “Listen to me,” Benjamin said, taking another step forward. “We got—we got into bed with each other. But it was nothing. It was nothing at all. We might—we might as well have been shaking hands.”

  “Shaking hands,” Mr. Robinson said. “Ben, I think you’re: old enough to know there’s a little difference between shaking hands with a woman and—”

  “There wasn’t!”

  “Oh?” Mr. Robinson said, raising his eyebrows. “I always thought when you took off your clothes and got into bed with a woman and had intercourse with her there was a little more involved than—”

  “Not in this case!”

  “Not in this case,” Mr. Robinson said, nodding. “Well. That’s not saying much for my wife, is it.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sure my wife considers herself a little more exciting in bed than you’d make her out.”

  “You miss the point.”

  “Not at all, Ben,” he said. “The point’s very well taken. I’m sure Mrs. Robinson’s technique could stand a little brushing up.”

  “You are distorting everything I say!”

  “Don’t shout at me, Ben.”

  “The point is,” Benjamin said, shaking his head and holding his hands up beside himself. “The point is I don’t love your wife. I love your daughter, sir.”

  Mr. Robinson looked down at the floor. “Well,” he said. “I’m sure you think you do, Ben, but after a few times in bed with Elaine I feel quite sure you’d get over that as quickly as you—”

  “What?”

  “I think we’ve talked about this enough,” Mr. Robinson said. He glanced at his watch. “I don’t know how far I can go, Ben. I don’t know if I can prosecute or not, but I think maybe I can. In the light of what’s happened I think maybe I can get you behind bars if you ever look at my daughter again.”

  “What?”

  “Ben?” he said. “I don’t want to mince words with you. I think you’re totally despicable. I think you’re scum, I think you’re filth. And as far as Elaine’s concerned you’re to get her out of your filthy mind right now. Is that perfectly clear to you?”

  Benjamin stood staring at him.

  Mr. Robinson stared back. “Well Ben,” he said. “I don’t want to play around with you. You do what you want. But if you choose to make troub
le you can be quite sure you’ll get a good deal of trouble right back.”

  When Mr. Robinson left, Benjamin remained in the center of his room and looked straight ahead at the door. He listened to the man’s footsteps moving down the hall and then down the stairs. The front door of the building opened and banged shut. Benjamin hesitated a moment, then rushed out of his room, leaving the door open behind him, and ran down the stairs and out on the sidewalk. Mr. Robinson was walking toward a taxi parked at the corner of the block beside a phone booth. Benjamin waited until he had opened the back door of the cab and had begun to climb in, then rushed to the corner and jumped into the phone booth, yanking its door closed behind him. He grabbed a handful of change from one of his pockets. Most of it fell on the floor of the booth but he kept one dime in his hand and dropped it into the telephone. He glanced a moment down through the glass wall of the booth at Mr. Robinson sitting in the back of the taxi. Mr. Robinson looked up through the window at Benjamin for an instant, then leaned forward and said something to the driver. The cab lurched away from the curb and sped down the street.

  Benjamin dialed quickly. The moment he finished dialing he looked up to see the taxi speeding on down the street, then turning around a corner and disappearing out of sight toward the dormitory. He pushed the receiver against his ear and clenched his fist. The phone rang. Then there was silence. Then it rang again.

  “Answer this phone!”

  There was a click. “Wendell Hall,” a girl said.

  “Get me Elaine Robinson,” Benjamin said. “Room two hundred.”

  “One moment, please.”

  Benjamin glanced again at the corner where the cab had disapeared, then began clenching and unclenching his fist beside him.

  “Sir?” the girl said. “The extension on her floor is busy right—”

  “Break in.”

  “Sir?”

  “Break in! Cut in!”

  “Sir, I’m not allowed to—”

  “This is an extreme emergency,” Benjamin said, pressing the receiver harder against his ear. “I am telling you to cut in and get Elaine Robinson on this phone. Now!”

  There was no answer.

  “Do you hear me!”

  “Well,” the girl said finally, “I’m not sure if I should be doing—”

  “Cut in! Now!”

  Benjamin heard the girl clear her throat. “Excuse me,” he heard her say. “I have an emergency call on the line for Elaine Robinson. Could you possibly suspend your conversation and call her to the phone?”

  Benjamin nodded.

  “She’ll be right on the line,” the girl said.

  Benjamin waited, listening carefully. Finally he heard the sound of footsteps, then a noise as the receiver of the phone was being picked up, then a girl’s voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Now listen to me, Elaine. Your father was just here. He’s on his way over. He’s not quite in his right mind and I don’t know what he’ll say and I don’t know what he’ll do. But I want you to promise me that you will not do anything or go anywhere with him without calling me first. I want you to write down this number and before you even go out of the building—”

  “Excuse me.”

  “What?”

  “This is kind of embarrassing. But I’m not Elaine.”

  “What?”

  “I’m her roommate. Elaine went out with her father about half a minute ago.”

  Benjamin spent the rest of the day walking back and forth in front of Elaine’s dormitory watching girls come in and go out of the door. Elaine did not return. Several times during the late afternoon and early evening he noticed small groups of girls gathered in the windows of the dormitories looking down at him and once a girl came out of one of the buildings and walked up to him to ask if anything was wrong.

  “No,” Benjamin said.

  He didn’t bother to eat dinner but kept walking back and forth while it was getting dark and after it had gotten dark and the lights were turned on along the street and inside the quadrangle. Just after midnight he walked into the lobby and to the girl behind the desk.

  “I want to know if there’s any way a girl could come in here and go up to her room without being seen,” he said.

  “In this building?”

  “Yes.”

  “She could come up from the basement,” the girl said.

  “The basement.”

  “There’s a cafeteria down in the basement,” the girl said. “She could have taken the elevator from the cafeteria all the way up to her room.”

  “But how would she get in the basement.”

  “She might have come in on the other side of one of the dorms.”

  “Call Elaine Robinson’s room please,” Benjamin said. “Room two hundred.”

  “Well it’s too late,” the girl said.

  “I don’t have to talk to her,” Benjamin said. “But I have to know if she’s up there.”

  “I’m sure she is,” the girl said. “All the girls have to be in by now.”

  “You’re sure.”

  The girl nodded.

  “You are absolutely sure she’s up there.”

  “She has to be.”

  “All right,” Benjamin said. “Thank you.”

  He did not get to sleep until nearly dawn. When he awoke it was late in the morning. He jumped out of his bed, dressed quickly and hurried across the street for a cup of coffee. Then he trotted over the several blocks to the dormitory and into the lobby.

  “Call down Elaine Robinson,” he said. “Room two hundred.”

  The girl dialed her telephone and waited, tapping on the desk with a wooden pencil.

  “No one answers,” she said.

  “Keep trying.”

  She listened a few moments longer into the phone, then shook her head. “Most all the girls are in class now,” she said, hanging up.

  “How can I find out which class she’s in.”

  “I don’t think you can.”

  “I have to.”

  The girl frowned. “You might try the cafeteria,” she said. “The girls all eat lunch down there in about ten minutes.”

  Under the dormitory was a long concrete tunnel with light bulbs evenly spaced along the top of it and at the end of the tunnel two glass doors. They were locked and several girls had already formed a small line behind them. Benjamin hurried through the tunnel to the doors and looked through them into a large room filled with empty tables and chairs and surrounded by shiny aluminum counters, where old men and women wearing white clothes were fitting large steaming pots down into spaces for them and setting out plates of salad and plates of pie and plates of cake on glass shelves above several of the aluminum counters. Far across on the other side of the room were two more glass doors where Benjamin could see other girls beginning to form a line in another tunnel. He tried the doors.

  “This is just for those of us in the quad,” the first girl in line said.

  He looked into the cafeteria, then turned to the girls beside him. “Do any of you know Elaine Robinson,” he said.

  They looked at him and one near him shook her head. Benjamin turned to the glass doors again. Several moments later one of the old women in white clothes walked slowly across the room with a key in her hand and unlocked the doors. She pulled them back to the wall so they would stay open and the girls began filing in. They picked up trays and silverware and pushed the trays along the silver counter, lifting dishes of meat and salad and pie onto them. Benjamin hurried in and across the room toward the other tunnel. A woman in white rushed up to him.

  “This is only for the girls,” she said.

  “Do you know a girl named Elaine Robinson.”

  “No,” she said. “And I don’t know as you’re supposed to be in here.”

  “This is extremely important,” Benjamin said.

  He found his way quickly through the rest of the tables between himself and the other tunnel. He glanced at the girls as they added themselves to the end of t
he line stretching farther and farther back into the tunnel. Elaine was not there. Benjamin walked into the tunnel and part way back along the line.

  “Do you know a girl named Elaine Robinson,” he said to one of the girls.

  She shook her head and moved one place forward.

  “Do you know Elaine Robinson.”

  “I’m sorry,” the next girl said. She smiled and moved one up in line.

  Within the space of ten or fifteen minutes the cafeteria was nearly filled with girls sitting at tables or holding their trays at the side of the room, looking for a place to sit or moving quickly along the counters picking out plates of food. Benjamin hurried back and forth in the room, glancing around at the girls sitting down and at the new girls as they appeared at the end of the two lines in the dimly lit tunnels but Elaine did not appear. Finally he stopped at the end of one of the tables that was nearly filled. He waited until the girls had stopped lifting forkfuls of food up from their dishes and into their mouths and were looking at him.

  “Do any of you know Elaine Robinson,” he said.

  They shook their heads. Benjamin moved to the next table.

  “Elaine Robinson. Do any of you know her.”

  They shook their heads.

  The lines in the two tunnels became shorter and shorter as the cafeteria slowly filled up. Finally there were only two or three places left in the whole room and the two lines dwindled and disappeared. Benjamin scanned all the tables a final time then hurried to a table at the edge of the room.

  “I want to borrow your chair,” he said to a girl seated close to the wall. She turned to frown at him. Benjamin put his hands on the back of her chair. She rose slowly and he pulled it next to the wall.

  “I want you to tap on your water glass,” he said to the next girl at the table.

  “What?”

  “Like this,” Benjamin said. He picked up the knife from her tray and began tapping its handle against the side of her water glass. Then he handed it back to her. “Please do that for me,” he said. The girl frowned at her knife a moment, then began tapping it against the glass.

  Benjamin stood up on the chair. The girls seated around the tables closest to him had already stopped eating and were looking “up at him. Then the tables in the middle of the room became quiet and finally it was completely quiet with all the girls and the old men and women behind the counters perfectly silent and perfectly still.