Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

In his plans Rudolph had argued for a place for a good restaurant, as well as the theatre, to attract trade in the evenings as well. The theatre, used for plays during the summer, could be turned into a movie house for the rest of the year. He also proposed building a middle-priced housing development along the lake, and suggested that the marshy and up to now unusable land at one end of Calderwood’s holdings could be used for light industry.

Coached by Johnny Heath, Rudolph had meticulously outlined all the benefits the law allowed on enterprises of this kind.

He was sure that his arguments for making a public company out of the new Calderwood Association was bound to sway the old man. The real assets and the earning power, first of the store and then of the centre, would insure a high price of issue for the stock. When Calderwood died, his heirs, his wife and three daughters, would not be faced with the possibility of having to sell the business itself at emergency prices to pay the inheritance taxes, but could sell off blocks of stock while holding on to the controlling interest in the corporation.

In the year that Rudolph had been working on the plan and digging into corporation and tax and realty laws, he had been cynically amused by the manner in which money protected itself legally in the American system. He had no moral feeling about trying to turn the laws to his own advantage. The game had rules. You learned the rules and abided by them. If there were another set of rules you would abide by them.

Professor Denton was waiting for him, at the bar, uncomfortable and out of place among other patrons, none of whom looked as though they had ever been near a college.

‘Good of you,’ Denton said, in a low, hurried voice, ‘good of you to come, Jordache. I’m drinking bourbon. Can I order you something?’

‘I don’t drink during the day,’ Rudolph said, then was sorry he said it, because it sounded disapproving of Denton, who was drinking at a quarter past noon.

‘Quite right,’ Denton said, ‘quite right. Keep the head clear. Ordinarily, I wait until the day’s work is over myself, but…’ He took Rudolph’s arm. ‘Perhaps we can sit down.’ He waved towards the last booth of the row that lined the wall opposite the bar. ‘I know you have to get back.’ He left some change on the bar for his drink, carefully counting it out, and still with his hand holding Rudolph’s arm, guided him to the booth. They sat down facing each other. There were two greasy menus on the table and they studied them.

‘I’ll take the soup and the hamburger,’ Denton said to the waitress. ‘And a cup of coffee. How about you, Jordache?’

The same,’ Rudolph said.

The waitress wrote the order down laboriously on her pad, illiteracy a family heritage. She was a woman of about sixty, grey haired and shapeless in an incongruously pert, revealing orange uniform with a coquettish, small, lace apron, age paying its iron debt to the ideal of youthful America. Her ankles were swollen and she shuffled flatly as she went back towards the kitchen. Rudolph thought of his mother, of her dream of the neat little candlelit restaurant that had never materialised. Well, she had been spared the orange uniform.

‘You’re doing well, Jordache,’ Denton said, hunched over the table, his eyes worried and magnified behind the thick, steel-rimmed glasses. He waved his hand impatiently, to ward off any contradiction. ‘I hear, I hear,’ he said. ‘I get reports from many sources. Mrs. Denton, for one. Faithful customer. She must be in the store three times a Week. You must see her from time to time.’

‘I ran into her only last week,’ Rudolph said.

‘She tells me the store is booming, booming, a new lease of life, she says. Very big-city. All sorts of new things. Well, people like to buy things. And everybody seems to have money these days. Except college professors.’ Indigence creased Denton’s forehead briefly. ‘No matter. I didn’t come her to complain. No doubt about it, Jordache, you did well to turn down the job in the department. The academic world,’ he said bitterly.

“Rife with jealousy, cabals, treachery, ingratitude, a man has to walk as if on eggs. Better the world of business. Give and take. Dog eat dog. Frankly. On the up and up.’

‘It isn’t exactly like that,’ Rudolph said mildly. ‘Business.’

‘No, of course not,’ Denton said. ‘Everything is modified by character. It doesn’t pay to ride a theory too hard, you lose sight of the reality, the living shape. At any rate, I’m gratified at your success, and I’m sure that there was no compromise of principle involved, none whatsoever.’

The waitress appeared with their soup. Denton spooned it in. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘if I had it to do all over again, I’d avoid the ivy-covered walls like the plague. It has made me what you see today, a narrow man, an embittered man, a failure, a coward___’

‘I wouldn’t call you any of those things,’ Rudolph said, surprised at Denton’s description of himself. Denton had always seemed to Rudolph to be pleased with himself, enjoying acting out his visions of economic villainy before a captive audience of young people.

‘I live in fear and trembling,’ Denton said, through the soup. ‘Fear and trembling.’

‘If I can help you in any way,’ Rudolph began. ‘I’d…’

‘You’re a good soul, Jordache, a good soul,’ Denton said. ‘I picked you out immediately. Serious among the frivolous. Compassionate among the pitiless. On the search for knowledge where others were merely searching for advancement. Oh, I’ve watched you carefully through the years, Jordache. You’re going to go far. Mark my words. I have been teaching young men for over twenty years, thousands of young men, they have no secrets from me, their future has no mysteries for me. Mark my words, Jordache.’

Denton finished his soup and the waitress came and put down their hamburger steaks and coffee.

‘And you won’t do it by riding roughshod over your fellow-men,’ Denton went on, darting at his hamburger with his fork. ‘I know your mind, I know your character, I observed you through the years. You have a code, a sense of honour, a fastidiousness of mind and body. These eyes don’t miss much, Jordache, in class or out.’

Rudolph ate silently, waiting for the spate of approval to die down, knowing that Denton must have a great favour to ask to be so effusive before making his demand.

‘Before the war,’ Denton went on, chewing, ‘there were more young men of your mould, clear seeing, dependable, honourable. Most of them are dead now, killed in places whose names we have almost forgotten. This generation - ‘ he shrugged despairingly. ‘Crafty, careful, looking to get something for nothing, hypocritical. You’d be astounded at the amount of cheating I find in each examination, term papers. Ah, if I had the money, I’d get away from it all, live on an island.’ He looked nervously at his watch. Time, ever on the wing,’ he said. He peered around the dark bar conspiratorially. The booth next to theirs was empty and the four or five men hunched over the bar near the doorway were well out of earshot. ‘Might as well get to the nub of it.’ Denton dropped his voice and leaned forward over the table. ‘I’m in trouble, Jordache.’

He’s going to ask me for the name of an abortionist, Rudolph thought wildly. Love on the Campus. He saw the headlines. History Professor Makes History by Moonlight with Coed. Doctor in Jail. Rudolph tried to keep his face noncommittal and went on eating. The hamburger was grey and soggy and the potatoes were oily.

‘You heard what I said?’ Denton whispered.

‘You’re in trouble, you said.’

‘Exactly.’ There was a professorial tone of approval - the student had been paying attention. ‘Bad trouble.’ Denton sipped at his coffee, Socrates and hemlock. They’re out to get me.’