Erich Segal - The Class

He whirled and barked, “Now what?”

“Danny, let’s be honest. Neither of us can go on like this. Because we’re starting to get angry with each other. And that means all our tender feelings will inevitably dissipate.”

She stood up. As if to put him at a physical as well as moral disadvantage.

“Danny, I really care for you a lot,” she said. “But I don’t want to see you —”

“Anymore?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, “but for a while anyway. Look, you’ve got Tanglewood this summer. I’ll be working back in Cleveland. Maybe the separation will do us good. We’ll both have time to think.”

“But didn’t you hear me say I want to marry you?”

She nodded. And then answered softly, “Yes. But I’m not sure you know if you really mean it. That’s why we need time apart.”

“At least can we write to each other?” Danny asked.

“Please, let’s.”

Maria then walked to the door and turned. She looked at him silently for a moment and then murmured, “You’ll never know how much this hurts me, Danny.”

Then she left.

By the spring of 1957 George Keller was as intellectually prepared as anyone in The Class to take courses in the normal language of instruction at Harvard College.

Not unexpectedly, he had chosen to major in government. For Brzezinski had explained how, with his fluent Russian and firsthand knowledge of Iron Curtain politics, he’d be indispensable in Washington.

Among the courses he selected for the spring was Government 180, Principles of International Politics, even though the name of the professor had evoked in him some of his original feelings of paranoia. For the instructor was one William Palmer Eliot — yet another (alleged) relative of his roommate, Andrew.

Still, it was a fateful choice. For Eliot’s assistant was a chubby young instructor who spoke English with a foreign accent heavier than George’s. His name was Henry Kissinger. And by some uncanny mutual telepathy they gravitated toward each other.

Kissinger, a refugee like George, albeit from wartime Germany, had also been a Harvard undergraduate (and likewise anglicized his first name). He had acquired an uncanny grasp of politics — both in theory and practice. Dr. K. (as he was affectionately known) already directed something called the Harvard International Seminar. And was on the board of what was probably the world’s most important political journal, Foreign Affairs .

George thought his own cleverness had gotten him Kissinger as section man, only to discover that the teacher had made all the necessary efforts to win him for his discussion group. Neither man was disappointed.

Among other things, Kissinger was impressed by George’s command of the Russian language. But it was his own burning ambition to be number one at Harvard (and, by extension, in the world) that most made him want to enlist the young Hungarian for his team. For he knew how much his archrival Zbig Brzezinski desperately desired to keep George in his own sphere of influence.

After a section meeting early in the term, he stopped George and said, “Mr. Keller, may I see you for a moment? I would like to add a word or two about your recent essay.”

“Certainly,” George said politely, suddenly afraid his paper had been less than the original and perceptive analysis he himself considered it.

“Was it all right, Professor?” George asked when the last student had departed. Keen academic strategist, he had astutely bestowed on Kissinger the title of Professor when he knew full well he was a mere instructor. The honoree was clearly flattered. Or at least he smiled broadly.

“Your paper, Mr. Keller, was not just ‘all right.’ It was absolutely first rate. I’ve never seen an essay that so perceptively distinguished all the subtleties of the various East European philosophies.”

“Thank you, Professor,” George replied elatedly.

“I know you are one of our new imports from Hungary. What were you studying in Budapest?”

“Law. Soviet law, of course. Pretty useless, eh?”

“Depends to whom. Personally, for my researches I would welcome someone who was expert in this area and could read Russian easily.”

“Well, sir, to be quite above the boards,” George replied, “I didn’t finish my degree. So you could hardly say I was an expert.”

Kissinger’s eyes twinkled behind his thick, black-rimmed glasses.

“Perhaps in Hungary you would not qualify as such, but in Cambridge people even with your experience are as rare as hen’s teeth —”

“Or snowflakes in July perhaps?” suggested George, to demonstrate his range of English idioms.

“Indeed,” Dr. K. replied. “So if you have time, I would like to hire you as a research assistant. The European Study Center pays two dollars an hour, which is pretty good. And there would be the additional incentive of our possibly finding a senior-thesis topic in the work you will be doing.”

“Are you intimating that you might personally direct my dissertation?”

“Young man, I’d be insulted if you didn’t ask me,” Kissinger responded with seductive affability. “So do I take it then that you accept my offer, George? Or do you want to think about it? Maybe talk it over with your faculty adviser? Who is it, that young Polish fellow Brzezinski?”

“It’s all right, I’ll explain things to Zbig. When shall I start working, Dr. Kissinger?”

“Come to my office after lunch today. And, George, from now on, when we’re not in class, please call me Henry.”

And thus Junior Year concluded.

While in the outside world, Eisenhower had been reelected President by his loving U.S. family, one of The Class had been chosen as the minister of millions to the Lord himself For when the reigning Aga Khan was dying, he unexpectedly chose his grandson, Prince Karim ’58, to succeed him as spiritual leader of the millions of Ismaili Moslems.

Many members of The Class saw this as an augury that they too would be blessed by heaven.

George Keller had traveled farthest — both geographically and mentally. After barely seven months, he had truly conquered the English language. Sentence structure bent to his will. Words had become mere pawns in a power play to breach the walls of argument and capture minds.

He now was free to climb the academic mountain. And here he had a magisterial mentor. For if Harvard served him no other purpose, it had brought him close to Henry Kissinger, with whom his mind worked in uncanny synchronicity.

Thus, he was rewarded with the enviable summer job of acting as Dr. K.’s special assistant in organizing the International Seminar and editing its journal, Confluence .

The program had gathered several dozen government officials and important intellectuals from both sides of the Iron Curtain for a series of colloquia and public lectures, to make them more sensitive to the new postwar configurations of the global family.

Part of George’s duties was to fraternize among the representatives from the Eastern bloc countries and find out what they really thought of Harvard, the seminar — and even Kissinger himself.

Despite their initial wariness, they all ultimately succumbed to George’s European charm and, at one point or another, spoke far more candidly than they had ever imagined they would in the alien confines of a Western capitalist university.

Of course, nothing in Henry’s brief to George suggested that he need go as far as to become physically intimate with any of the participants. This he did on his own initiative.

Perhaps it was something about the sultry Cambridge weather, the sudden stimulation of seeing bevies of non-Radcliffe girls stroll through the Yard in the shortest of shorts and the tightest of T-shirts.