Erich Segal - The Class

“Don’t be derisive,” George Keller retorted. “I have come to make a small request of you.”

“Me? But, George, I’m just a dumb old jock.”

“I know,” said Keller with the tiniest of smiles. “That’s exactly how you can assist me.”

“How?” asked Jason.

“Could you teach me tennis, Gilbert? I’d be most appreciative.”

Jason looked somewhat baftled. “Why tennis? And why me?

“It’s obvious,” said George. “Last summer proved to me that it is the most — how shall I put it? — socially advantageous sport. And you, of course, are the most skilled practitioner of it at Harvard.”

“I’m deeply flattered, Keller. But, unfortunately, I’m committed to beating the shit out of all the guys who’ll be gunning for me in the NCAAs next week. I really haven’t got the time.”

George Keller’s look of expectation turned to one of disappointment. “I’d be glad to pay you, Jason. Anything you say.”

“It isn’t the money. I’d teach you free —”

“When?” George quickly asked.

“Hell, I don’t know,” said Jason, feeling cornered, “maybe sometime during Graduation Week.”

“Sunday the eighth — at five o’clock? I know there is nothing planned for then.” The guy knew the entire schedule by heart!

“Okay,” Jason capitulated with a sigh. “Do you have a racket?”

“Of course,” said George, “and I have balls.”

“I knew that without asking,” Jason murmured as he shut his door.

George Keller stood there beaming with satisfaction. The sarcasm had escaped even the magniloquent new master of the English language.

Andrew Eliot was already waiting outside the History Department when the General-Exam grades were posted. For one of the rare times of his life off the athletic field, he was perspiring.

A swarm of students rushed forward as the department secretary came out of the chairman’s office to pin the results on the bulletin board.

Fortunately, Andrew was tall enough to see over the heads of the mob. What he read astonished him. He walked numbly back to Eliot House and phoned his father.

“What in blazes is the matter, son? It’s still expensive-calling hours.”

“Dad,” Andrew mumbled in a haze, “Dad, I just wanted you to be the first to know …”

The young man hesitated.

“Come on, my boy, speak up. This is costing you a fortune.”

“Dad, you won’t believe this but — I passed my Generals. I’m going to graduate.”

The announcement at first struck Andrew’s father speechless.

Finally he said, “Son, that is good news. I frankly never thought you’d do it.”

As a kind of anodyne for the trauma of our symbolic rebirth, Harvard arranges a series of assorted ceremonies for Senior Week, culminating in Thursday morning’s sacred laying on of hands.

The Baccalaureate Service on Sunday in Memorial Church was a pretty desultory affair. At least, that’s what I heard from one of the guys who actually went. It wasn’t exactly a big draw.

Monday’s formal dance — for some reason called the Senior Spread — was much better attended. About half The Class filled the Lowell House courtyard, clad in rented white dinner jackets, dancing into the wee hours to the mellow saxophone sounds of Les and Larry Elgart’s orchestra.

I guess if it had an educational purpose, which I assume everything at Harvard does, it was to give us a preview of what it would be like to be middle-aged.

The band gave an occasional nod to musical modernity with one or two cha-cha-chas — the current terpsichorean vogue — and also some Elvis tunes. But it was soft and gentle stuff like “Love Me Tender.”

Oh yes, we did have dates. I blush to say that Newall and I had a social arrangement with Jason, somewhat analogous to my sartorial-exchange policy with Ted Lambros. We got his hand-me-downs.

But, of course, when you get an ex from Gilbert, they are still in exceptionally fine condition. As Joe Keezer might put it, “hardly worn.” The only problem is they still have this vestigial attachment to Jason.

The result being that while he was dancing with this incredible blonde (a tennis journalist he’d picked up at some tournament), Lucy, my so-called date, and Melissa, who was supposed to be with Newall, kept angling to stay in his line of vision in hopes they could scrounge a single dance with our Class Leader.

Needless to say, even with our own considerable charm, Dickie and I didn’t get to first base with either of our girls. But at least we had a lovely on our arms, which I suspect was the motivation for a lot of the pairings that evening. I think that Ted and Sara were among the maybe dozen or so couples who were actually involved romantically.

Tomorrow night we have yet another jolly event — for which Gilbert has already obtained me an escort — a moonlight cruise in Boston Harbor. Newall is going to pass on that one since, for some irrational reason, he’s afraid he might get seasick. And how would that look the next morning, when he’s due to be commissioned as a naval officer?

But as this artificial carnival continues, I keep wondering more and more why no one really seems to be enjoying it.

And I’ve come to what I think is a profound conclusion. The Class is really not a class. I mean, we’re not a brotherhood — or anything at all cohesive for that matter.

In fact, the time we spent here was a kind of truce. A cease-fire in the war for fame and power. And in two more days the guns come out again.

Though it had rained intermittently throughout the earlier part of Commencement Week, Harvard’s apparent connections in Very High Places succeeded in making Thursday, June 12, 1958, a hot and sunny day, perfect for the university’s 322d Commencement Ceremony.

Everyone seemed to be in costume. From the rented black caps and gowns of the undergraduates to the electric pink of the doctoral candidates. Or the eighteenth-century garb of the sheriff of Middlesex County, who rode in on horseback to open the proceedings.

Led by Jason Gilbert and the two other marshals, The Class of ’58 marched through the Yard, around University Hall, and into the vast area between Memorial Church and Widener Library. For a few hours every year, rows of wooden seats spring up and this sylvan space is magically transformed into “Tercentenary Theater.”

As had been the practice for three centuries, the solemnities began with an oration in Latin — which perhaps sixteen people understood and everybody else pretended to.

This year’s speaker, selected two weeks earlier by the Classics Department, was Theodore Lambros of Cambridge, Massachusetts. His speech was entitled “ De optimo genere felicitatis ” — on the noblest form of happiness.

The Latin salutatorian’s task is, as the word suggests, to greet the dignitaries present in hierarchical order. First President Pusey, then the governor of Massachusetts, deans, pastors, and so forth.

But the crowd is really waiting for the traditional greetings to the Radcliffe girls (who, of course, come at the very end).

Twenty thousand pairs of hands applauded. But none more vigorously than those of the proud Lambros family.

After all the salutations, the orator is supposed to pronounce a small homily. And Ted had chosen as his message the fact that the highest form of happiness was to be found in truly unselfish friendship toward one’s fellow man.