Гарри Кемельман: Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red

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.

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, Hendryx 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."