Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red

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 titled 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 form 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 all 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."

"They did it in your classes? What did you do?"

"Oh, I paid no attention to them." said Hendryx. "I just went right ahead with my lecture. Some of the instructors made some sarcastic remarks, but nothing much happened." He laughed. "Ted Singer— you know, sociology— said that since it was a topsy-turvy world perhaps they ought to go all the way and stand on their heads, and one girl took him up on it for the rest of the period, a good ten minutes, he said, she's into yoga. I suppose." He smiled and showed a mouthful of even white teeth. "Her skirt flopped over, of course, but Singer reported that unfortunately she was wearing these pantyhose they wear nowadays so there was nothing to see."

The rabbi suspected that the story had been colored to get a rise out of him. Because he was a rabbi, he supposed, his colleague frequently made suggestive remarks to see if he could shock him. "Are you sure it's only for this week?"

"That's my understanding. Why?"

"Because if it continues. I won't stand for it."

Hendryx looked at him in surprise. "Why not? Why should you care?"

"Well, I do." Glancing at his watch, he said. "I better go see the dean."

Hendryx stared. "Whatever for?"

"Well, I walked out on my class."

"Look Rabbi, let me tell you the facts of academic life, the dean doesn't give a damn if you walk out on a class occasionally, or even if you meet with them at all. What you do in your classroom is your business. Last year. Professor Tremayne announced a three-week reading period in the middle of February and took off for Florida. Of course. Tremayne is the kind of teacher who may provide greater benefit to his students by his absence than his presence."

"Nevertheless, I think I'll tell her about it anyway. Besides, I’ve got to turn in my mid-semester failure notices."

Hendryx whistled. "You mean you're really sending out flunk notices after all I told you?"

"But last week I received a notice that the lists were due Monday, the sixteenth."

"Rabbi. Rabbi." said Hendryx, "when was the last time you had any connection with a college?"

"I’ve lectured to Hillel groups."

"No, I mean a real connection."

"Not since I was a student. I suppose, fifteen or sixteen years ago. Why?"

"Because in the last sixteen years— hell, in the last six— things have changed. Where have you been? Don't you read the papers?"

"But the students—"

"Students!" Hendryx said scornfully. "What in the world do you think college cares about students? The primary purpose of college nowadays is to support the faculty, presumably a society of learned men, in some degree of comfort and security. It's society's way of subsidizing such worthwhile pursuits as research and the growth of knowledge. Society has the uneasy feeling that it's important for someone to care about such irrelevancies as the source of Shakespeare's plots or whether the gentleman above me"— nodding to the bust of Homer on the shelf above his head— "was responsible for the Homeric poems or if he was just one of a committee, or the influence of the Flemish weavers on the economy of England during the Middle Ages, or the effect of gamma rays on the development of spyrogyra."We're set apart in the grove of academe to fritter away our lives while the rest of the world goes about its proper business of making money or children or war or disease or pollution, or whatever the hell they're into, as for the students, they can look over our shoulders if they like and learn something. Or they can pay their tuition fees which help support us and hang around here for four years having fun. Personally, I don't give a damn which they do, as long as they don't interfere with my quite comfortable life, thank you."

He drew deeply on his pipe and, removing it from his mouth, blew the smoke in the rabbi's direction.

"And you don't feel you owe the students anything?" the rabbi asked quietly.

"Not a damn thing, they're just one of the hazards of the game, like a sandtrap on a golf course, as a matter of fact, we do do something for them, after four years, they are given that degree you were talking about which entitles them to apply for certain jobs. Or to go on to a higher degree which they can cash into money by becoming doctors, lawyers, accountants. Not the fairest arrangement from the point of view of those who can't afford college, but quite normal in this imperfect world, hell, is it any different in the tight trades where you have to serve a useless apprenticeship before you can join a union?" He shook his head, as if answering his own question. "The only trouble comes when the students catch on, as they have in recent years, and kick up a fuss or stage a demonstration as your class did today."

"But if the college is for the faculty, and the student is here merely to mark time, why should you care what he does?"

Hendryx smiled."Actually, I don't. Not unless it kills the goose that laid the golden egg, and that what's been happening the last few years, the student sensed he was being had. Of course he'd known all along that what he was getting here wasn't worth what he was paying. I once figured out it costs him about ten dollars per lecture. God, my lectures aren't worth that, are yours? How smart does a student have to be to figure it out for himself? Still, he went along because he had to have the degree to get any sort of a job or train for any sort of profession. But then they rang in the war on him, and it struck him as a bit much: this degree we were giving him turned out to be just a ticket, sometimes one way, to Vietnam. So he rebelled."

"It also gave him a four-year moratorium from the war." observed the rabbi.

"Yes, it did, but that's human nature. Things have quieted down a lot in the last year or two, what with the change in the draft law and winding down the war, and the students have quieted down correspondingly. But they acquired the habit of protest, even violence, and that we can't have, there was a bombing here, you know."

"Yes. I read about it, of course, but that was last year."

"You never know." said Hendryx. "Take this very afternoon, the dean is seeing a committee on the Roger Fine business, maybe, probably, all they'll do is talk.

Nevertheless, she thought it advisable to call me and tell me to stand by."

"Because you're head of the English Department?"

"I'm only acting head. No, she wants me around in case there's trouble."

"Trouble?" The rabbi considered. "I’ve seen their poster on the Marble, of course. Professor Fine must be popular with the students for them to get up a petition for him."

Hendryx shrugged. "Maybe. On the other hand, students, some of them anyhow, will take any opportunity to pick a fight. I don't know how popular Roger Fine is, he's a good-looking fellow, so I suppose the girls go for him, that red hair—" He broke off. "Somehow I don't think of red hair in connection with your people. Do you suppose there was some hanky-panky between his mother or grandmother and some Russian or Polish soldier?"

"If so." said the rabbi quietly, "it was probably involuntary, during a pogrom. But actually there is a genetic strain of red hair among our people. King David was supposed to be red-haired."

"Really? Well anyway, a handsome young professor is always popular with the women. Even though he is a cripple."

"Would that make a difference?" the rabbi asked.

"Oh, I'm not saying he's so crippled he's repulsive, he walks with a cane and in a curious sort of way, that may even make him more attractive. Like a modern Lord Byron, he looks a little like him, come to think of it, with that lock of hair falling over his forehead." He chuckled. "A red-headed Byron, a minor physical disability sometimes can be quite an asset. Look at the Hathaway shirt guy, or your own General Moshe Dayan, for that matter."

"Why aren't they rehiring him?" said the rabbi, to get back to the point.

"Well, that's just it, they don't have to give any reason. May be Prex or the dean spotted him walking down the corridor with his fly open, or maybe even goosing one of the coeds. How would I know? It could be anything."

The rabbi went down the corridor toward the dean's office, but just as he reached it he saw her door close, he hesitated a moment, and then, remembering the pending committee meeting, decided not to disturb her.

On his way out of the empty building, he noticed the large English office on the first floor was lit, he looked in and saw Professor Roger Fine sitting alone at his desk, abstracted.

He called to him. "Can I give you a lift back to Barnard's Crossing?"

Startled. Fine looked up. "Oh hello, Rabbi. No, I've got my car here. Thanks just the same. I— I'm waiting for a phone call."

As he let himself out the front door, the rabbi wondered if the poor fellow really was waiting for a phone call, or whether he was waiting for the results of the committee meeting that could decide his fate.

Although it was well into autumn, the weather was mild and balmy, and David Small rode with the window down.

He was beginning to relax and enjoy the drive when he passed a couple of students sitting on the sidewalk and they reminded him of what had happened earlier in his classroom, he tried to put it out of his mind by concentrating on the approaching Sabbath when one should be at peace with the world, he pictured Miriam setting the table, laying out the twisted Sabbath loaves and the kiddush wine.

He visualized his arrival and her greeting:" Shabbat Shalom, David." and then the inevitable. "And how did it go today?"

And he would answer. "Well, it was— you see, the other day President Macomber went to visit the Boys' Reformatory as a member of some special citizen's committee, and..." It just wouldn't do, he could not minimize the fiasco. If he tried, she would sense that he was holding something back and it would be even worse.

Up ahead he saw a roadside cafeteria and pulled in, he badly wanted a cup of coffee.