Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red (4 page)

Fishing in his pocket, he brought forth a tiny brass figurine with which he tamped down the tobacco in his pipe, he puffed gently during the operation, and when his pipe was drawing satisfactorily again, he returned the tamper to his pocket.

“So you’re the new instructor in Jewish Thought and Philosophy,” he said. “I knew your predecessor. Rabbi Lamden, according to one of my students who took his course, he used the time to give little lectures on morality. Believe me, it was a most satisfactory arrangement all around, as far as the students were concerned, it was an easy three credits, as far as Lamden was concerned, it was a pleasant few hours a week for which he got some extra money, and I suppose he could always salve his conscience with the thought that he was returning his students to the religion of their forefathers.”

“I see.”

“Of course, the administration stood to gain from the course.” said Hendryx. “As you know, the official title of the school is Windemere Christian College, the catalogue and the bulletin we send out to prospective students are careful to explain the school is completely non-denominational, and that’s the actual truth. I’m sure the trustees – one of whom is the insurance tycoon Marcus Levine, one of your kind, I presume, judging by the name – would be happy to drop the. ‘Christian,’ but it would involve all sorts of legal complications. Now we get quite a few Jewish students, not only from around here but also from the New York-New Jersey area. It’s a fallback school, you see, and their parents are apt to jib at sending them to a school clearly labeled Christian. So it helps if there’s a course in Jewish Thought and Philosophy, taught by a real honest-to-goodness rabbi.” He grinned broadly. “From their point of view, you’re a kind of Judas sheep. I suppose.”

“You don’t like Jews, do you?” asked David Small curiously.

“How can you say so. Rabbi? Some of my best friends are Jews.” He smiled sardonically. “I know you people consider that the stock rationalization tag of the anti-Semite, but I suspect that in a way it’s true. You people are just the opposite of the Irish in that respect, the individual Jews one knows are dedicated, idealistic, selfless; and yet one is convinced that all the rest one does not know are cunning, grasping, and crassly materialistic, the Irish on the other hand, are supposed to be gay, quixotically gallant, unworldly, even though the Irishmen of one’s acquaintance might be drunken, quarrelsome blackguards whose word no sensible person would accept.” He smiled, showing even white teeth. “No, I don’t consider myself the least bit anti-Semitic, but I guess I’m rather outspoken, and when a thought occurs to me I don’t hesitate to say it. You might call me a sort of devil’s advocate.”

“Some of my best friends are devil’s advocates,” said the rabbi.

There was a knock on the door. Hendryx jerked into a sitting position and circled the desk to admit a man carrying a short aluminum ladder. It was the telephone serviceman.

“I’m here to install the phone,” he said. “Where do you want it? On the desk?”

“Right.”

Resting his ladder against the shelves, the serviceman began measuring the wall with a folding rule, he moved his ladder behind the swivel chair and climbed to the top shelf, he grasped the plaster bust with both hands as if to remove it, and then finding it too heavy to lift easily, he slid it along the shelf.

“Hey; what the hell do you think you’re doing with that statue?” demanded Hendryx. “I want it right there.”

“I’ll put it back, don’t worry;” the man said. “The wire has to come through behind it so I can run it down to the desk.”

“Well see that you do.”

The man drilled the hole and then left to return to the dean’s office, Hendrix felt it necessary to explain his show of temper. “I was given that bust by the first class I ever taught. It isn’t anything you can pack easily – it must weigh fifty or sixty pounds – but I’ve lugged it around with me from job to job for the last dozen years.”

The rabbi nodded sympathetically, although he suspected the outburst at the serviceman was caused by Hendryx’s earlier displeasure on learning he would have to share his office.

Another knock; this time it was Dean Hanbury. “We can go up to see President Macomber now,” she said.

President Macomber was a tall, gray-haired man, dressed in slacks, sportshirt, and nylon windbreaker, a bag of golf clubs lay on the floor in one corner of his office. “I just played nine holes,” he said to explain his costume. “Do you play golf. Rabbi?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Pity. You have a parish, or…?”

“I have a congregation in Barnard’s Crossing.”

“Of course,” he nodded enthusiastically. “You’re from Dean Hanbury’s hometown, well, I imagine it’s like being minister of a church or pastor of a parish. I mean, you’ve probably got a board of vestrymen you’ve got to get along with.”

“We have a board of directors.”

“That’s what I mean, and I’m sure you’d find it a lot easier to work with that board if you played golf. You can come to an understanding on a golf course a lot easier than sitting across a table decked out in a tie and business suit, a college president these days is a combination salesman and public relations man; and take it from me, there’s nothing like a golf course to transact business. Think about it, well, Rabbi. I’m happy you were able to join us.”

He extended his hand to signify the meeting was over. “What do you hear from Betty?” the dean asked.

President Macomber smiled. “She’s almost completed her residence requirement.” He shook his head in amusement. “Sorry. Rabbi, but it’s hard to break the habit of academic lingo. My daughter is in Reno,” he explained to the rabbi, “getting a divorce.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” said the rabbi.

“No need to be. It’s one of those things. You people believe in divorce, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, as a cure for an impossible marriage.” said the rabbi.

“Well, that’s what this was.” And to Dean Hanbury, “If everything goes according to Hoyle, she’ll be back here as Betty Macomber again by next week.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” said Millicent Hanbury.

“Well, again. Rabbi, we’re happy to have you with us, and if you have any problems, don’t hesitate to come and see me.”

Rabbi Small returned to his office for his hat and coat, and finding Professor Hendryx busy with grade lists and uncommunicative, he wandered down to the first floor of the building to wait for the faculty meeting to begin. It was scheduled for eleven o’clock and by half-past ten the teachers began to arrive, the rabbi killed time, idly looking at the commemorative tablets, dingy oil paintings, and yellowing portrait photographs of earlier presidents and deans – women in stiff lace collars and oval pince-nez, just as he had originally pictured Dean Hanbury – that lined the walls of the marble-floored, rotunda-like foyer. Faculty members greeted each other, with someone occasionally looking at him curiously, but no one came over.

Then he heard his name called. Turning, he saw the tall figure of Roger Fine advancing toward him. “I thought it was you,” Fine said, “but I couldn’t imagine what you were doing here.”

“I’m going to be teaching here.” said the rabbi, pleased to see a familiar face. “I’m giving the course in Jewish Thought and Philosophy.”

“I’ve only been here since last February myself.” said Fine, “but wasn’t there another rabbi listed in the catalogue?”

“Yes. Rabbi Lamden.”

“Oh, you take turns at the course?”

Rabbi Small laughed. “No, he couldn’t give it this year and they asked me to fill in.”

“Well, that’s great.” said the young man. “Maybe we could arrange to drive in together if our hours correspond. You been assigned an office yet?”

“The dean arranged for me to share an office with a Professor Hendryx.”

“No kidding?” He began to laugh. “Did I say something fanny?”

Instead of answering, Fine hailed a fat young man who was passing. “Hey; Slim, come here a minute. I want you to meet Rabbi Small, the man that married me.”

The young man extended a hand. “And you’re checking up on him. Rabbi?”

“Slim Marantz is also in the English Department,” he said to David Small. “The rabbi is teaching the course in Jewish Philosophy, Slim, and Millie just assigned him to the same office with Hendryx.”

“You’re kidding.” And Marantz began to laugh.

“And you thought Millie had no sense of humor,” said Fine.

The rabbi looked questioningly from one grinning young man to the other. Fine proceeded to explain. “John Hendryx has been clamoring for a private office ever since he arrived at Windemere a couple of years ago.”

Marantz amplified: “He objected to the loud, friendly chaos of the English office.”

“Not conductive to concentration.” mimicked Fine.

“And totally inimical to his fine, high pronunciamentos on all subjects philosophical, psychological, sociological –”

“And racial, especially Jewish racial.” added Fine.

“Right. So when he was made acting head of the department early in the summer session, he demanded a private office and Millie Hanbury managed to find him an oversized closet on the second floor, a poor thing, but his own.”

“His very words.” explained Fine with relish. “Needless to say, there was no great mourning in the English office when he moved. No one got up a petition begging him to reconsider; no black-bordered resolution of regret was passed.”

“If truth be told.” said Marantz. “while there was no dancing between or on the desks, there was quiet rejoicing, more in keeping with the grove of academe.”

“And now you tell me. Rabbi, that Millie has put you in with him.” said Fine. “Do you wonder we find it amusing?”

“And a rabbi at that.” said Marantz, shaking his head in wonder.

“What’s my being a rabbi got to do with it?” asked David Small.

“Because he’s an anti-Semitic sonofabitch.” said Fine. “Oh, not the Elders of Zion type; more like ‘some of my best friends are Jewish.’”

“He told me so this morning.” the rabbi admitted. “Aha!”

“But. I didn’t find it offensive. Besides. I don’t expect to be using the office much. I doubt we’ll be seeing much of each other.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Rabbi.” said Marantz, “he’s polite enough. My desk was beside his in the English office for the couple of years that he was there, and I never got into a hassle with him. On the other hand. Fine here has a quick fuse. I’ll bet it’s as much on your account. Roger, that he wanted out of the English office. Unless, he wanted a private place where he could make out with a chick.”

“So he could lecture her on Chaucerian rhyme schemes?” laughed Fine.

“It’s hard telling with those dark glasses he always wears, but I seem to have detected a random glint of interest when a goodlooking coed passed by.” His face split in a wide grin. “Hey; you don’t suppose it’s Millie he’s got a thing for and that’s why he moved up to the second floor?”

“Now that would really be something.” said Fine with a chortle and then cut it off. “Cool it,” he said. “Here she comes.”

Dean Hanbury walked toward them purposively. “There you are, Rabbi. I wanted to make sure you knew where to go for the faculty meeting, welcome back, Dr. Marantz, Professor Fine.”

President Macomber’s Normally cheerful countenance was somber as he listened.

“There’s no question about it.” the dean said. “Two quizzes were given in that Miss Dunlop’s section and she failed both of them – badly, the final was the departmental exam, the same exam for all seven sections, and consisted of a hundred questions –”

“A hundred?”

“That’s right. It was an objective test – short, two-or three-word answers. Each of the section men submitted ten questions and Professor Hendryx added thirty of his own. No one else saw those thirty questions except Professor Fine, who was given the job of mimeographing the exam.”

“Professor Hendryx’s secretary?” suggested the president.

“He doesn’t have one. Besides. Professor Hendryx assured me he had typed the stencil himself.”

“All right.”

“Kathy Dunlop got an A in the exam, and it averaged out with the two quizzes to give her a C-minus in the course.”

“She could have studied hard and boned up for it, you know.” the president observed.

“Professor Hendryx checked with Mr. Bailen, her instructor, the girl answered every single question correctly. Mr. Bailen said he couldn’t have done it himself. Eighty-five right is an A; one hundred is unheard of, the way these objective tests work, no one is expected to get all the answers correct.”

“All right.” said Macomber. “But why assume Professor Fine is to blame? The girl could have got it from a discarded sheet in the wastepaper basket, or from one of the janitors.”

Dean Hanbury shook her head. “Professor Fine was instructed to take a reading on the automatic counter before and after running off the stencil, the difference between the two numbers was one hundred and fifty-three, and that was the exact number of copies he turned in to Professor Hendryx.”

“I see. Did you talk to Professor Fine?”

“No. I didn’t think it advisable until I had discussed it with you. I might mention that, according to Professor Hendryx, on several occasions Professor Fine has remarked that examinations were a lot of nonsense.”

“With that attitude I imagine Professor Fine is quite popular with his students.” said Macomber wryly.

“I believe he is,” she admitted, “and with the younger members of the faculty as well, he’s quite outspoken and is regarded as concerned, that’s the term they use nowadays – concerned: He was the leader in the movement to recruit black students, and even organized a tutoring service for them among the younger members of the faculty, he wrote the article in The Windrift that I showed you, if you remember.”

“Oh; yes, the red-headed chap? Walks with a cane?”

“That’s the one, he came at midyears on a one-year contract, so if you decide to drop him there should be no problem with the AAUP.”

“Well now,” said Macomber. “let’s not be hasty. Just because he has no tenure and no legal right to a hearing, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t cause a lot of trouble if we failed to grant him one. You yourself say he’s popular with students and faculty. This is just the sort of thing that could be blown up into a student protest. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. Millicent, that’s the last thing we need now with school opening in a couple of days.”