Гарри Кемельман - Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red

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 good-looking 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."