Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

When Rudolph got out of the car, some of the students at the windows recognised him and greeted him with a wild, triumphant howl. Somebody leaned out the window and shook Jean’s picture, so that it looked as though she were doing an obscene dance.

Ottman was standing beside his car, a big bandage over one eye, making his cap sit on the back of his head. Only six of the policemen had helmets. Rudolph remembered vetoing a request from Ottman for two dozen more helmets six months before, because it had seemed an unnecessary expense.

‘Your secretary told us you were on your way,’ Ottman said, without any preliminaries, ‘so we held off on any action until you got here. They have Dorlacker and two professors locked in there with them. They only took the building at six o’clock tonight.’

Rudolph nodded, studying the building, At a window on the ground floor he saw Quentin McGovern. Quentin was a graduate student now and had a job as an assistant in the chemistry department. Quentin was grinning down at the scene. Rudolph was sure that Quentin saw him and he felt that the grin was directed, personally, at him.

‘Whatever else happens tonight, Ottman,’ Rudolph said. ‘I want you to arrest that black man there, the third window from the left on the ground floor. His name is McGovern and if you don’t get him here get him at his home.’

Ottman nodded. ‘They want to talk to you. sir. They want you to go in there and discuss the situation with them.’

Rudolph shook his head. There’s no situation to be discussed.’ He wasn’t going to talk to anybody under the photograph of his naked wife. ‘Go in and clear the building.’

‘It’s easier said than done,’ Ottman said. ‘I’ve already called on them three times to come out. They just laugh.’

‘I said clear the building,’ Rudolph was raging, but cold. He know what he was doing.

‘How?’ Ottman asked.

‘You’ve got weapons.’

‘You don’t mean you want us to use guns?’ Ottman said incredulously. ‘As far as we know, none of them is armed.’

Rudolph hesitated. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No guns. But you’ve got clubs and you’ve got tear gas.’

‘You sure you don’t want us just to sit tight and wait till they get tired?’ Ottman said. He sounded more tired himself than any of the students in the building would ever be. ‘And if things don’t improve, ask for the Guard, maybe?’

‘No, I don’t want to sit and wait.’ Rudolph didn’t say it, but he knew that Ottman knew he wanted that picture down immediately. ‘Tell your men to start with the grenades.’

‘Mr Mayor,’ Ottman said slowly, ‘you’ll have to put that in writing for me. Signed.’

‘Give me your pad,’ Rudolph said.

Ottman gave him the pad, and Rudolph used the fender of Ottman’s car to steady it and wrote out the order, making sure that his handwriting was clear and legible. He signed his name and gave the pad back to Ottman, who tore off the top sheet on which Rudolph had written and carefully folded the piece of paper and put it in the pocket of his blouse. He buttoned the pocket of the blouse and then went along the line of police, some thirty strong, the town’s entire force, to give his orders. As he passed them, the men began to put on their gas masks.

The line of police moved slowly across the lawn towards the building, their shadows, in the haze of the floodlights, intense on the brilliant green grass. They did not keep a straight line, but wavered uncertainly, and they looked like a long, wounded animal, searching not to do harm, but to find a place to hide from its tormentors. Then the first grenade shot off through one of the lower windows and there was a shout from within. Then more grenades were sent through other windows and the faces that had been there disappeared and one by one the policemen, helping each other, began to climb through the windows into the building.

There hadn’t been enough police to send around to the back of the building, and most of the students escaped that way. The acrid smell of the gas drifted out towards where Rudolph was standing, looking up towards where Jean’s picture was still hanging. A policeman appeared at the window above and ripped it away, taking it in with him.

It was all over quickly. There were only about twenty arrests. Three students were bleeding from scalp wounds and one boy was carried out with his hands up to his eyes. A policeman said he was blinded but that he hoped it was only temporary, Quentin McGovern was not among the group arrested.

Dorlacker came out with his two professors, their eyes tearing. Rudolph went over to him. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

Dorlacker squinted to see who was addressing him. Tm not talking to you, Jordache,’ he said. Tm making a statement to the press tomorrow and you can find out what I think of you if you’ll buy your own paper tomorrow night’ He got into somebody’s car and was driven away.

‘Come on,’ Rudolph said to Scanlon. ‘Drive me home.’

As they drove away from the campus, ambulances passed them, their sirens going. A school bus, for the students who had been arrested, lumbered past them.

‘Scanlon,’ Rudolph said, ‘as of tonight, I’m no longer Mayor of this town, am I?’

Scanlon didn’t answer for a long time. He scowled as he watched the road and he wheezed like an old man when he had to turn a corner. ‘No, Mr Jordache,’ he finally said, ‘I wouldn’t think you were.’

1968

This time, when he got off the plane at Kennedy, there was nobody there to greet him. He was wearing dark glasses and he moved uncertainly, He hadn’t written Rudolph that he was coming because he knew from Gretchen’s letters that Rudolph

had enough to think about without bothering with a half-blind brother. While he was working on the boat in the Antibes harbour during the winter, a line had snapped and whipped across his face and the next day he had started having dizzy spells and suffering from double vision. He had pretended nothing was wrong, because he didn’t want Kate and Wesley to worry about him. He had written Mr Goodhart for the name of an eye specialist in New York and when he received Goodhart’s answer had announced to Kate that he was going to New York to arrange finally about his divorce. Kate had been after him to marry her and he didn’t blame her. She was pregnant and was due to have the child in October and it was the middle of April already.

She had made him buy a new suit and he was ready to face any lawyer or doorman now. He was wearing the dead Norwegian’s pea jacket because it was still in good condition and there was no sense in throwing money away.

A planeload of people who had been on a ski holiday had landed just before him and the baggage hall was full of skis and tanned, healthy-looking, f ancily dressed men and women, many of them loud and more or less drunk. He tried not to be anti-American as he searched for his bag.

He took a cab, although it was expensive, because he felt he couldn’t cope with getting on and off the airport bus and fiddling with his bag again and struggling to find a taxi in New York.

‘The Paramount Hotel,’ he said to the taxi driver and settled back wearily on the seat, closing his eyes.

When he had checked in and gone up to his room, which was small and dark, he called the doctor. He would have liked to go over right away, but the nurse said that the doctor couldn’t see him before eleven o’clock the next day. He undressed and got into bed. It was only six o’clock New York time, but it was eleven o’clock Nice time and he had taken the plane at Nice. His body felt as though he hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours.

The retina is partially detached,’ the doctor said. The examination had been slow and thorough and painful. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to turn you over to a surgeon.’