Erich Segal - The Class

“Yeah,” he replied, protracting the ambiguity. “My fiancée’s name is the United States Marines. I owe them my body for two years starting in September.”

“What a waste of a nice body.” She smiled. “When are you going back?”

“Oh, I’ve got another three weeks or so yet,” he answered. And then looked her in the eye. “Which I’d like to spend with you — and I don’t mean playing tennis.”

“I think that could be arranged,” she replied.

“I’ve got my VW,” he said. “Where would you like to go?”

“Well, I’ve always wanted to see Venice.”

“Why?” Jason asked.

“Because it’s got canals like Amsterdam.”

“I can’t think of a better reason,” he replied.

They took their time, driving first through the mountain roads of Switzerland. Then down into Italy, spending a few days on the banks of Lake Como. And all the time they talked.

Jason soon felt that he knew all her friends intimately and could practically list them by name. And Fanny discovered that her new boyfriend was a lot more complex than the handsome blond tennis player she had first admired across a crowded lobby.

“What kind of American are you?” she asked, as they were picnicking by the lakeside.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, unless you are a red Indian, your family must have come from somewhere. Is Gilbert an English name?”

“No, it’s just made up. When my grandparents came to Ellis Island, they were called Gruenwald.”

“German?”

“No. Russian. Russian Jewish, actually.”

“Ah, then you are Jewish,” she said with apparent interest.

“Well, only vaguely.”

“How can one be only vaguely Jewish? It would be like being only vaguely pregnant, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, America’s a free country. And my father decided that since the religion didn’t mean anything to him, he might as well, as he put it, join the mainstream.”

“But that’s impossible. A Jew cannot be anything but a Jew.”

“Why not? You’re a Protestant, but couldn’t you become Catholic if you wanted to?”

A look of incredulity crossed her face.

“For an intelligent person you make such a naive argument, Jason. Do you think Hitler would have spared you and your family because you denied your faith?”

He began to grow irritated. What was she driving at?

“Why does everybody invoke Hitler in trying to convince me that I’m Jewish?” he asked.

“My God, Jason,” she replied, “don’t you realize what the Atlantic Ocean spared you in your childhood? I grew up in the shadow of the Nazis. I saw them take our neighbors away. My family even hid a Jewish girl during the whole war.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Eva Goudsmit. We grew up like sisters. Her parents owned a china factory and were — so they thought — pillars of the Dutch community. But that didn’t impress the soldiers who took them off.”

“What happened to them?” Jason asked quietly.

“The same thing that happened to millions of Jews all over Europe. After the war, Eva searched and searched. She went to all kinds of agencies, but they could find nothing. All they traced was a distant cousin living in Palestine. So when she finished school she went off to join him. We still keep in touch. In fact, every few summers I go and visit her kibbutz in the Galilee.”

That conversation and several others like it in the weeks they spent together crystallized in Jason’s mind a firm desire to learn about his heritage. And ironically, he owed this resolution not to another Jew but to a Christian Dutch girl of whom he was growing fonder each day.

He had wanted to drive her all the way back to Amsterdam and take the plane from there. But they both fell so in love with Venice that they lingered till it was nearly time for Jason to report for duty.

Their parting at the airport disconcerted him. After they’d kissed and embraced dozens of times, Jason swore fervently that he would write her at least once a week.

“Please don’t feel you have to say these things, Jason. It’s been very lovely and I’ll always think of you with affection. But we’d both be very silly to think that we’ll sit pining for each other for two years.”

“Speak for yourself, Fanny,” he protested. “I mean, if you felt as strongly for me as I do for you —”

“Jason, you’re the nicest man I’ve ever met. And I ye never felt as close to anyone. Why don’t we just see what happens — as long as we have no false illusions.”

“Have you read the Odyssey , Fanny?”

“Yes, of course. The couple were separated for twenty years.”

“So what’s twenty-four months compared to that?”

“The Odyssey , my love, is a fairy tale.”

“Okay, my cynical little Dutch girl,” Jason replied, affecting a John Wayne posture to impress her, “you just promise to answer every letter I write and we’ll see what happens.”

“I promise.”

They embraced a final time. He walked off toward his flight. As he reached the door of the plane he looked at the observation gate and saw her standing there.

Even at that distance he could see tears streaming down her cheeks.

Danny Rossi woke up slightly confused at finding himself in a strange, if lavish, hotel room. Because of his packed concert schedule he was used to changing bedrooms as often as pajamas. But he had always been sure of exactly where he was. What country. What city. What orchestra. What hotel.

As he tried to clear the cobwebs from his mind, he perceived five glittering gold statuettes on the dresser just beyond the bed. Then it slowly began to come back to him.

Last night had been the annual Grammy Awards ceremony, honoring the best achievements in the record industry. It had been held at a festive gala in the grand ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. He had flown in just in time to register at the Beverly Wilshire, change into a tux, and hurry down to the limo where two PR toadies were waiting to escort him to the ceremony.

Danny’s victory as best classical soloist was not unexpected. After all, the awards are as much for playing the media as playing an instrument. And he had become a master of both.

While it was arguable that his interpretation of the complete Beethoven piano concerti was the best thing put on disk during the previous twelve months, it was indisputable that his publicity campaign was nonpareil.

But what had created the stir last evening was the fact that he had won a second Grammy for best solo jazz album. This was the culmination of a pleasant little irony that had begun the night of his debut with the New York Philharmonic, when he had improvised all those show tunes at the party.

The gentleman who had requested an audience did indeed contact him the following day. He turned out to be Edward Kaiser, president of Columbia Records, and he was absolutely certain that there was a vast “crossover audience” that would lap up Danny’s musical trifles like cotton candy.

At first Rossi on Broadway had a slow but steady sale based mainly on Danny’s gradually growing popularity. But his appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show launched him higher than astronaut John Glenn. It accelerated sales from three thousand to seventy-five thousand “units” per week.

The Sullivan broadcast also came at an especially fortuitous time. For the evening it was aired, the Grammy ballots were in the mail to the voters. Earlier, smart money would have picked Count Basie as a surefire winner. But after Ed’s monotonal but hyperbolic introduction (“America’s great new musical genius”), it was a totally different ball game.

Thus it was that Danny wrote another page of musical history — winning Grammies in both the classical and jazz categories in a single day. Indeed, as Count Basie himself was overheard to remark, he was “a lucky little pécker.”