Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red (3 page)

“That house there. Rabbi. It practically bankrupted him when he built it, but of course he had to have a big house because he was a Hanbury, and Millie, she couldn’t play with her rich cousins and their friends – they had ponies and sailboats when they were kids growing up and later on, their own cars and trips to Europe, and she couldn’t afford any of that. Even so, she wasn’t permitted to play with the ordinary kids in town. Because she was a Hanbury.”

“But surely at school she’d meet –”

Lanigan shook his head vigorously. “You still don’t understand about the Hanburys, her cousins all went to private schools and she had to go to the public school because Arnold Hanbury couldn’t afford anything else. But they wouldn’t let her associate with the common folk, they had this old woman that worked for them for little more than board and lodging – Nancy – Nancy something – it’ll come to me, anyway, one of her duties was to wait for Millie at the school gate and hustle her home as soon as school let out.”

“What about college?”

“Not even there, she went to a school in Boston and commuted from here. It was an all-girls’ school, too, where they teach physical education – you know, to be a gym teacher. Now, if a girl wants to latch onto a man she’s got to go where men are available, right? Lots of men, and I don’t suppose being a graduate of a physical education school helps either. It might even scare a man off. You know, a fellow makes a pass at a girl, he figures the worst that can happen, he’ll get his face slapped. But if she’s a physical education type, he could wind up with his jaw broken.” He laughed coarsely. “I’d worry about it myself, the two lady gym teachers at the high school aren’t married either.”

“It’s surprising that she got to be dean if all she had was a Phys. Ed, degree.” the rabbi remarked.

“Why, what’s a dean supposed to do?”

“Well, the dean is head of the faculty,” said the rabbi, “and usually a scholar of some distinction.”

“Could be you’re a little out of date, Rabbi. I know the dean at the community college in Lynn, he used to be the manual training teacher and coach of the football team right here in the high school half a dozen years ago. I gather that these days what they want is some forceful executive type who can keep the kids in line.”

As they drove along, the rabbi told him of Dean Hanbury’s offer.

“Are you going to take it?”

“I think so. It will be an interesting change.”

“How does Miriam feel about it?”

“I haven’t talked to her about it yet.”

The rabbi encountered little difficulty when he made his announcement. Of course, it would not have been a Temple Board meeting without some questions.

“What if there’s a funeral. God forbid, on one of the days you’re teaching, Rabbi?”

“I’ll merely notify my class I will be unable to meet them.”

“How about the minyan. Rabbi? Does this mean you won’t be able to make it on the days you teach?”

“I might not. But of course, my role as rabbi does not include being the permanent tenth man at the daily minyan. It seems to get along very nicely without me when I can’t make it now.”

After he had left and they were making their way to their cars in the parking lot, they voiced their real feelings.

“I notice the rabbi kept talking about Windemere College, but the full name is Windemere Christian College, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but to me it’s kind of funny a rabbi should teach in a Christian college.”

“That don’t mean a thing these days, they got boys going to girls’ schools, girls going to boys’ schools, and Jewish kids going even to Catholic schools.”

“Yeah, but that it should be Christian right in the name! I wouldn’t mind if it were something like Notre Dame, for instance.”

“Notre Dame! You know what that means? It means ‘Our Lady.’ And you know who’s the Lady they’re referring to?”

“So? What I mean is you can’t tell from just the name. Besides. Mary was a Jewish girl, wasn’t she?”

They laughed, then someone raised another objection: “What bothers me is the way he told us, he just announces he’s taking a teaching job, he doesn’t ask us, he just tells us.”

“You think he’s getting paid for it?”

“You kidding? Did you ever hear of a rabbi taking a job for nothing?”

“Well, all I can say is he’s supposed to be working here full-time. So if he’s getting paid, then bigod he ought to turn that money over to our treasury, same as if some engineer over at the GE works out some invention, he owes it to GE.”

“Yeah: that’ll be the day.”

“Well, I think somebody ought to ask him.”

“All right. I’ll appoint you a committee of one.”

“I don’t mean me. But the president ought to, or the treasurer.”

“Hell, they do it all the time. When they go off someplace to give a lecture, do they turn the money in? And some of these hotshot rabbis they do more talking outside the temple than in it.”

“Some of the rabbi’s sermons, I wouldn’t mind if they were outside, to tell the truth.”

They guffawed.

“It’s not like it’s someplace like Harvard or M.I.T..” said Norman Phillips, who was in the advertising business. “That would give the temple some prestige. But Windemere?” He emphasized his disparagement by swinging an imaginary golf club in a long approach shot to the green, although in his mid-forties. Norm was with it in the matter of clothes: two-tone fancy shoes, wide flared trousers worn low on the hips and supported by a heavy leather belt with a massive brass buckle. His long hair was not cut by a barber but shaped by a hair stylist. His opinions carried a certain weight with the other members of the board who assumed he knew what the young people of the community were thinking.

“What’s wrong with Windemere?” demanded Malcolm Selzer belligerently. “My Abner goes there and he says it’s a damn good school, he ought to know because his first year he was at Harvard and he likes Windemere better.” Malcolm Selzer was definitely not with it clothes-wise. In the refrigerator business where you had to push heavy models around the sales floor, or even lend a hand to the boys loading the truck, it was hard enough just to keep your clothes clean and pressed.

“Wasn’t your Abner’s name in the paper the time they had the bombing there? I seem to remember him giving out some kind of statement from the student organization.”

Malcolm Selzer nodded proudly. “That’s right, he had nothing to do with it, of course, but he’s a big shot in the student organization, meets with committees from the faculty and the administration, the kids these days, they’re involved; not like in our time.”

Miriam, the rabbi’s wife, also had questions, she was tiny with a mass of blonde hair that seemed to overbalance her, she had wide blue eyes that gave her face a schoolgirl ingenuousness, but there was determination in the set of the mouth and in the small rounded chin. “Are you going to have any trouble with the board over this, David?”

“No. I don’t think so. None that I can’t handle.”

“But won’t it mean a lot of extra work?”

“Not really, maybe some quiz papers to correct every now and then. Preparing my lectures won’t take much time.”

She asked whether he was really keen on it, or was it just the money.

“Well, the extra money can be useful. It makes another trip to Israel possible.”

“And a new rug for the living room?” she asked slyly.

He laughed. “And a new rug for the living room,” he agreed.

“Well, it will be a change of pace for you. I suppose. It’s just that..,” she hesitated.

“What?”

“Well, knowing you. I know it’s not the money at all. It’s the teaching you’re interested in, isn’t it?”

“So?”

“So I just hope you won’t be disappointed. Colleges and college students have changed a lot since you were in school, you know.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said confidently, “not really.”

Dean Hanbury swung her car sharply into an alley; drove down the narrow, muddy passageway behind two rows of apartment houses, made another sharp turn, and brought the car to rest against the wire-netting shielding some cellar windows.

“This is the school parking lot?” the rabbi asked in surprise. Dean Hanbury had suggested he ride with her to learn the way to the school.

“This is my parking spot,” she said, pointing to a small wooden sign that said “Dean Hanbury.”

“At least it’s been mine since we took over this apartment building a couple of years ago. I like it because on rainy days I can go through the back door and come out right across the street from the administration building.”

They mounted the granite steps of the administration building, whose sandstone and red brick gave it an institutional look, all the other buildings resembled apartment houses. “This is the one and original building of the school,” she explained. “After we grew, we built on some vacant land and then over the years gradually acquired the apartment buildings between.”

“These are all student dormitories?” he asked.

“Oh no, we remodeled them just as we’re planning to do with the one across the way, there are still a couple of tenants on the top floor who’ve left but still have some of their furniture there, and oh yes. Professor Hendryx has an apartment on the first floor. But that was because when he joined us from down South, he just didn’t have a place to live.”

She led him up wide stairs flanked by a massive mahogany balustrade. “You’ll be sharing an office with him, by the way, the poor man doesn’t know it yet, but I can’t think of any other place to put you. Professor Hendryx is acting head of the English Department. I think you’ll like him, he’s originally from Barnard’s Crossing, too. So you’ll have something in common.”

She unlocked her office. “My secretary has the week off between trimesters,” she explained. “The place is like a morgue right now, but once classes start this building – the whole area – is simply mobbed. You’ll be lucky to find a parking spot, that’s important to remember, because your class is required to wait only eight minutes after the hour for you to appear, and believe me, come in after the eight minutes and they’re gone.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand it, they don’t go anyplace in particular; like as not they’re sitting on the front steps, but they won’t remain in the classroom even if they see you coming along the street, there’s a kind of impatience among young people these days, although things have quieted down considerably in the last year or so, the change in the draft law probably had a great deal to do with it, we still get student agitation from time to time, of course, but nothing compared to ‘68 and ‘69, although there was a bombing last year. I’m sure you read about it in the papers.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Our students weren’t responsible. I’m sure,” she said quickly. “The police are fairly certain it was the work of outsiders – the Weathervane organization probably. Of course, some of our students could be members, well, if you’ll excuse me. I’ll see to the mail. But first let’s see if President Macomber is free.”

She spoke into the phone. “Ella? Dean Hanbury. Has President Macomber come in yet? Oh, I see, well, I’m in my office with Rabbi Small. You’ll let me know, won’t you?”

She hung up. “He’s busy at the moment,” she said.

There was a knock on the half-open door, and a workman with a tool kit stuck his head in. “Professor Hendryx’s office?”

“No.” said Dean Hanbury. “It adjoins this one. I’m sure he’s not in yet, though.”

“That’s all right, ma’am. I can start here, the order calls for cutting into your line.” The man ran his eyes expertly along the telephone wire above the molding of the chair rail. It fed over the frame of the closet door, then along the picture molding. “You say his office is right on line with this one?”

“Yes –” A bump sounded from the other side of the wall. “Oh, he must have come in, after all,” she said. “Come along. Rabbi. I’ll introduce you.”

They went down one corridor and then another and she stopped in front of a door whose upper panel of translucent glass had a long diagonal crack. “We’ll have to replace that.” said the dean mechanically, as though she had said it many times before.

She knocked and Professor Hendryx let them in, he was of medium height with a van dyke beard that emphasized a full sensuous underlip, a pipe jutted out of one corner of his mouth. His eyes were dark and appeared even darker behind tinted glasses in heavy tortoiseshell frames, he was wearing slacks and a tweed sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. His shirt was open at the collar, he wore a silk kerchief, knotted with fastidious negligence around his throat, the rabbi estimated he was a little older than himself, perhaps thirty-eight, even forty.

The dean introduced the two men and then said. “I’m afraid you and the rabbi will have to double up. John, there’s no other place in the building. Mr. Raferty can put in another desk.”

“Where?” asked Hendryx, surprised and annoyed. “It’s almost impossible to move about in this cubbyhole as it is. If you put another desk in there’ll be no room between them. Will we climb over them to sit down?”

“I was thinking of a smaller desk, John.”

“I don’t really need a desk.” said the rabbi quickly. “Just a place to leave my hat and coat, and perhaps a text or two.”

“Well, that’s all right then/ she remarked brightly. “I’ll leave you two to get better acquainted.”

Hendryx circled the desk and pulled out his swivel chair so savagely that it banged against the rear wall, incidentally explaining for the rabbi how the Dean had known he was in the office. Finding Hendryx’s annoyance embarrassing, since he was the innocent cause of it. David Small looked around the dusty shelves lining the rear wall, the lower ones filled with stacks of bluebooks yellow with age. “It is rather confined,” he remarked.

“It’s little more than a damn closet. Rabbi, although it’s better than the intolerable clack of the English office on the first floor where I spent two years, actually, this was a storeroom for freshman themes and exams and old library books. It’s pretty bleak, but I hope to bring over some more of my things and fix it up a little when I get a chance, that print” – pointing to a large framed drawing of medieval London – “is mine, and so is that bust of Homer” – nodding to a large plaster cast on the top shelf immediately above him, he tilted back in his chair and stretched out his legs so that he was almost lying down, in what the rabbi would come to know as a characteristic pose.