Erich Segal - The Class

“Any university in particular?”

“In America, the two best are Harvard and Yale. But you’d better say you want to go to Harvard.”

“Why?”

Miki smiled. “Because for a Hungarian, ‘Yale’ is too hard to pronounce.”

They finally parted company on the Ringstrasse.

“Good luck, Georgie.”

“Miki, I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me.”

Several moments later George discovered an envelope in his pocket. It contained Miki’s future address in Highland Park, Illinois. And twenty-five U.S. dollars.

The American Red Cross committee seemed fairly impressed with George’s academic background. But instead of receiving an air ticket, he was assigned to barracks on the outskirts of town. This wouldn’t do.

George approached a fresh-faced official wearing a Red Cross tag that identified him as:

ALBERT BEDDING

English-Deutsch-Français

“Excuse me, Mr. Redding,” George said politely. “I would like to go to Harvard.”

“Who wouldn’t?” The young man laughed. “I got turned down flat. And I was third in my graduating class and editor of the paper. But don’t you worry, we’ve got lots of colleges. You’ll finish your studies, I’ll promise you that.”

But George had a trump card, one of the “key American phrases” Miki had taught him on their march from Eisenstadt to Vienna.

“Mr. Redding,” he said with a slight quaver in his voice, “I — I want to be in America… for Christmas.”

It worked! George could see from the expression on Redding’s face that he was moved by this lonely refugee’s yearning.

“You’re a good fella, you know that?” he said with genuine affection. “Look — give me your name and I’ll see what I can do.”

Gyorgy Kolozsdi spoke his freshly minted appellation for the first time. “It’s Keller. George Keller.”

“Well, George,” said Albert, “I can’t promise anything, but come back and see me tomorrow morning, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And if there’s anything you need in the meantime —”

“There is,” George interrupted this gentle attempt to brush him off. “I understand it is possible to get messages on the Voice of America, yes?”

“Uh, sure. That’s not my department, but I could pass it on.” He withdrew a pad and pencil from his jacket pocket and George dictated.

“I would simply like it said please that… ‘Mr. Karl Marx has died.’”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, please.”

The young man looked up at George and inquired diffidently, “Say, don’t they know this behind the Iron Curtain?”

“It may shock some people,” George replied. “Anyway, thank you, mister. I will return tomorrow early.”

At seven-thirty the next morning, Albert Redding was in a state of shock.

“I dunno,” he muttered to George, waving a telegram in his left hand. “Maybe I should have been born Hungarian.”

“What is it?”

“I just do not believe this luck,” the young man repeated in dismay. “Listen to this: ‘To the Field Director, American Red Cross, Vienna — Harvard University has set up a committee to seek out and subsidize one or two qualified refugee students from Hungarian universities. We would appreciate complete details on any potential candidates. Please reply to me with fullest particulars. Signed, Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Assistant Professor of Government.’ ”

Redding looked wide-eyed at George. “Do you believe that?”

“Who knows? But let us anyway quickly send this person a report about me.”

The response came within twenty-four hours. This young refugee was just the sort of candidate they were looking for. The rest was merely bureaucratic detail.

Eight days afterward, George Keller boarded a bus for Munich, where he was placed on an aircraft; twenty-six hours later, he alighted at Newark Airport, USA. He was not at all tired by the long journey. It had allowed him time to memorize more of his newest acquisition, a book called Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary .

Customs at the airport was perfunctory. It had to be. All George possessed were two books, three newspapers, and some clean underwear the Red Cross had given him. As he walked tentatively out of the Immigration area, a pale angular man with a crewcut held out his hand.

“George Keller?”

He nodded, still slightly unfamiliar with his new name.

“I’m Professor Brzezinski. Welcome to America. We’ve arranged for you to sleep tonight at the New York Harvard Club.”

Andrew first met George Keller after lunch in Master Finley’s office. Professor Brzezinski had just brought the young refugee over from South Station and made the introductions. He then gave Andrew two hundred dollars and asked him to take George around the Square and fit him out with all the basic clothes he’d need. They would have to be thorough, since the Hungarian didn’t even have pajamas. Lest Andrew get the wrong idea, Brzezinski cautioned, “We are on a tight budget, Mr. Eliot. So I think it wise you do most of your shopping at The Coop.”

As soon as they reached the Square, George began to read the billboards out loud, and then he eagerly asked, “Do I pronounce these words correctly, Andrew?”

He recited everything from slogans such as “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco” to “Eight Minutes to Park Street” (on the electric sign over the subway). And then he would immediately try to use this, verbiage in a sentence like, “What do you think, Andrew? Shall we buy some Lucky Strike? I’m told that it is fine tobacco and it is very good to smoke.” Or, “I hear the journey into Park Street, which is known to be the center of Boston city, is eight minutes only from this Harvard Square. Am I correct?”

He then listened with frenetic intensity to whatever nonsense Andrew replied, immediately asking for definitions of words he had not understood.

“Please, George,” Andrew begged at last, “I feel like a walking dictionary.”

Not that George wasn’t grateful. He kept effusively repeating things like, “Andrew, you’re a really cool cat.”

The preppie wondered where the refugee had picked up slang like that. But then concluded that it must be a translation from Hungarian.

Inside The Coop, George acted like a child in Santa’s storehouse. He had never seen such an array of merchandise in his whole life. What struck him most was the amazing brightness of the colors.

“Back in my home — my former home, I mean to say — all things were gray,” he commented. “Also a great big drag.”

Despite a gleam in his eyes that made Andrew think he wanted to buy everything in the place, when it came down to selecting the most trivial of items, George was enormously fastidious. They stood in the underwear department and engaged in a long dialectic as to whether the majority of Harvard men wore boxer shorts or “the most cool of them” preferred the jockey type (Every part of him had to be fashionably American.)

They ran the same investigative gamut when it came to socks and ties. Andrew steered him toward the reps, of course.

With notebooks and similar supplies, it was a good deal easier. George simply picked everything that had the college emblem on it (even the ballpoint pens, strictly a tourist item).

And yet he was a little leery when Andrew explained that Harvard types carried their stuff around in a green bookbag.

“Why green? Is not the official university color this winelike crimson?”

“Yeah,” Andrew sputtered, at a loss for words, “but —”

“Then what is the reason you make me buy green?”

“Hey, George, I honestly don’t know. It’s just an old tradition. I mean, all the cool people —”