Erich Segal: The Class

“No,” the young scholar replied. “They’re all a waste of time. Besides, I’m premed. I have to take things like Chem Twenty. What’s your chosen career, Jason?”

God, thought Jason, do I have to be interviewed just to be this wonk’s cellmate?

“To tell the truth, I haven’t decided yet. But while I’m thinking about it, shouldn’t we go out and buy some basic furniture for the living room?”

“What for?” D. D. asked warily. “We each have a bed, a desk, and a chair. What else do we need?”

Well, said Jason, “a couch might be nice. You know, to relax and study in during the week. We could also use an icebox. So we’d have something cold to serve people on the weekends.”

“People?” D. D. inquired, somewhat agitated. “Do you intend to have parties here?”

Jason was running out of patience.

“Tell me, David, did you specifically request an introverted monk as your roommate?”

“No.”

“Well, you didn’t get one. Now, are you going to chip in for a second-hand couch or not?”

“ I don’t need a couch,” he replied sanctimoniously.

“Okay,” said Jason, “then I’ll pay for it myself. But if I ever — see you sitting on it, I’ll charge you rent.”

Andrew Eliot, Mike Wigglesworth, and Dickie Newall spent all that afternoon scouring the furniture emporia in and around the Square and procured the finest leatherette pieces available. After expending three hours and $195, they stood at the ground floor of G-entry with all their treasures.

“God,” Newall exclaimed, “I shudder to think how many lovelies will succumb on this incredible chaise longue. I mean they’ll just take one look at it, disrobe, and hop right on.

“In that case, Dickie,” Andrew interrupted his old buddy’s reverie, “we’d better lug it up the stairs. If a Cliffie passes while we’re standing here you might just have to perform in public.”

“Don’t think I couldn’t,” Newall answered with bravado, quickly adding, “come on let’s get this paraphernalia up the stairs. Andy and I’ll take the couch.” And then, turning to the largest member of their trio, he called out, “Can you manage that chair by yourself, Wigglesworth?”

“No sweat,” the tall athlete replied laconically. And with that he lifted the huge armchair, placed it on his head as if it were a large padded football helmet, and started up the stairwell.

“That’s our mighty Mike,” Newall quipped. “Fair Harvard’s future crew immortal and the first man from this college who’ll play Tarzan in the movies.”

“Just three more steps. Please, you guys,” Danny Rossi implored.

“Hey, listen, kid, the deal was we’d deliver it. You didn’t say there would be stairs. We always take pianos in an elevator.”

“Come on,” Danny protested, “you guys knew that they don’t have any in Harvard dorms. What’s it going to take for you to deliver this up just three more steps into my room?

“Another twenty bucks,” replied one of the burly delivery men.

“Hey, look, the damn piano only cost me thirty-five.”

“Take it or leave it, kid. Or you’ll be singin’ in the rain.”

“I can’t afford twenty bucks,” Danny moaned.

“Tough titty, Harvard boy,” growled the more talkative of the two movers. And they ambled off.

Danny sat there on the steps of Holworthy for several minutes pondering his great dilemma. And then the notion came to him.

He placed the rickety stool in position, lifted the lid of the ancient upright, and began, first tentatively and then with increasing assurance, to animate the fading ivories with “The Varsity Drag.”

Since most of the windows in the Yard were open because of the Indian Summer weather, it was not long before a crowd surrounded him. Some spirited freshmen even began to dance. To get in shape for conquests up at Radcliffe and on other social battlefields.

He was terrific. And his classmates were genuinely thrilled to discover what a talent they had in their midst. (“The guy’s another Peter Nero,” someone remarked.) At last Danny finished — or thought he had. But everybody clapped and shouted for more. So he started taking requests for pieces as varied as “The Saber Dance” and “Three Coins in the Fountain.”

At last, a university policeman happened on the scene. It was just what Danny had been hoping for.

“Listen,” the officer growled, “you can’t play a pianer outside in the Yard. You gotta move this here instrument into a dorm.”

The freshmen booed.

“Hey, listen,” Danny Rossi said to his enthusiastic audience. “Why don’t we all bring this piano up the stairs to my room and then I’ll play all night.”

There were cheers of assent as half a dozen of the strongest present started carrying Danny’s upright with festive alacrity.

“Wait a minute,” the cop warned, “remember, no playing after ten P.M. Them are the rules.”

More hisses, boos, and grunts as Danny — Rossi politely answered, “Yes, sir, Officer. I promise I’ll only play till dinnertime.”

Though he, of course, was not privileged to be moving from the cubicle he’d occupied throughout his high school days, Ted Lambros nonetheless spent much of that afternoon purchasing essential items in The Coop.

First and foremost, a green bookbag, a must for every serious Harvard man — a utilitarian talisman that carried the tools of your trade and identified — you as a bona fide scholar. He also bought a large, rectangular crimson banner whose white felt letters proudly boasted “Harvard — Class of 1958,” And, while other freshmen were hanging identical chauvinistic fabrics on the walls of their dormitories in the Yard, Ted hung his over the desk in his tiny bedroom.

For good measure, he acquired an impressive-looking pipe from Leavitt & Pierce, which he would someday learn to smoke.

As the afternoon waned, he checked and rechecked his carefully purchased secondhand wardrobe and inwardly pronounced himself ready to meet tomorrow’s Harvard challenge.

And then, the magic aura broken, he headed up Massachusetts Avenue to The Marathon, where he would have to don the same old hokey costume in order to serve lamb to the lions of Cambridge.

It was a day of standing on lines. First in the morning at Memorial Hall, and then just after 6:00 P.M., when the dinner column began to form at the Freshman Union, winding outside, down its granite steps, and almost into Quincy Street. Naturally, each freshman wore a tie and jacket — although the garments varied in color and quality, depending on the means and background of the wearer. The rules explicitly proclaimed that the only civilized attire in which a Harvard man could take a meal.

But these formally accoutred gentlemen were in for a rude surprise. There were no dishes.

Instead, their food was scooped out into a tan plastic doggy bowl divided into unequal sections of undetermined purpose. The only rational compartment was the cavity within the hub of this contraption, which could hold a glass of milk.

Ingenious as it was, it could not hide the fact that freshman food was absolutely wretched.

What was that gray sliced stuff slapped at them at the first station? The serving biddies claimed it was meat. It looked like innersoles to most and tasted much that way to all. It was no consolation that they could eat all they wanted. For who would ever want more of this unchewable enigma?

The only real salvation was the ice cream. It was plentiful and filling. And to an eighteen-year-old this can compensate for almost any culinary lapse. And did so in prodigious quantities.