Erich Segal - The Class

“Thanks,” said Ted, trying to ignore the fact that the chairman had not offered even the most perfunctory compliment about his lecture. “I’ll get Rob and Sara.”

“No, Rob won’t be joining us,” Dunster intoned. “I thought an intimate dinner would be best for you to meet the senior colleagues. Incidentally, Ken Bunting had a conflicting commitment and couldn’t make it. But I know he’ll want to chat with you.”

As he ushered the two guests of honor out of the auditorium, Sara could not help feeling a twinge of pity for Robbie.

They entered the candlelit restaurant of the Windsor Arms, where, at a corner table, the rest of the Classics Department’s senior faculty were waiting.

“Ah, Professor Lambros,” murmured Dunster, “you’ve brought the department out in force.”

The three other full professors stood as they approached. Dunster made the introductions.

“Professor and Mrs. Lambros, this is Graham Foley, our archaeologist….”

A balding spheroid rose and shook hands wordlessly.

“And Digby Hendrickson, our historian.”

A lithe little man cracked the first smile of the evening. “Hi there, call me Digby. May I call you Ted and Jane?”

“If you’d like,” Ted smiled back diplomatically, “but my wife’s name is actually Sara.”

“And this,” quoth Dunster in conclusion, pointing to a tall, middle-aged preppie with straight flaxen hair combed down across his forehead, “is our missing Hellenist, Ken Bunting.”

“Sorry I couldn’t make your lecture, Lambros,” he apologized. “But, of course, I’ll probably read it when it’s published, won’t I?”

“I don’t know,” said Sara, who had quickly analyzed the situation. “It was just a few ideas that Ted put together. It would need a lot of working up.”

At first Ted was astonished at his wife’s downplaying of his scholarship. This feeling quickly changed to gratitude when he beheld the warm response her understatement had evoked in Canterbury’s Hellenist.

“Indeed,” said Bunting. “All this precipitance to get things in print — that’s rather rife at Harvard, isn’t it?”

“Uh — I suppose so.”

“Shall we order, then?” said Chairman Dunster, “Do I hear martinis all around?”

His colleagues were unanimously in favor, although the archaeologist merely nodded his assent.

By seven-thirty all that had been served were large cocktails and small talk. Sara tried to keep herself and Ted sober by buttering bread sticks, thickly spreading the cheese dip on Ritz crackers, and dropping unsubtle hints like, “I hear the salmon’s very good here. What would you recommend we eat, Professor Dunster?”

Ted’s mind was working feverishly, trying to determine where the power base lay in this group. In preparation for his visit, he had read every article the Canterbury department members had produced. It hadn’t taken that long. He decided to address their Greek scholar on his most important article, “The Symbolism of Homer’s Catalogue of Ships.”

“Professor Bunting, I was intrigued by your piece in TAPA on the end of Iliad Two. Your theory about the Attic contingent was —”

At this point the mellifluous voice of Chairman Dunster interrupted with the welcome announcement, “Mademoiselle is here to transcribe our dinner selections.”

Sara Lambros inwardly sang hallelujah.

Suddenly, the silent archaeologist rose and totally dumbfounded Ted and Sara by articulating several syllables.

“It’s past my bedtime,” he announced to no one in particular. “ ’Night, all. Thanks for the free booze.” Then immediately reverting to his prior muteness, he nodded at the guests of honor and departed.

“He’s lying.” Dunster sneered. “He’s just going home to watch the tube. Can you imagine,” he inquired of Sara Lambros, “that man watches television?”

“Many people do,” she answered noncommittally.

“Does your husband have a predilection for that medium?” he probed.

“Oh, we don’t own a set,” she answered blandly. Thinking, Let him call it poverty or snobbery as long as he approves.

Two further hours passed without a single reference to a Greek or Latin author. Ted was trying desperately to comprehend it all. But he remembered Sara’s words: “It’s a club, you’re being judged to join a club.”

“Do you play tennis, Lambros?” Bunting of the thousand ships inquired.

“Oh,” Ted lied, “a bit. Actually, I’m trying to improve my game.” And made a mental note that if he ever got this job, he’d have one of Sara’s brothers give him lessons.

“Old Bunting here’s the glory of our whole department,” piped Digby the historian. “He was IC4A runner-up in fifty-six. In fact, he had a big match today — against a new instructor from the Government Department.” And then turning to his semichampion colleague he inquired, “Didya whip him, Ken?”

Professor Bunting nodded modestly. “Six-four, five-seven, six-three, six-one. It took so long it almost made me late for dinner.”

“Whoopee,” Digby trumpeted, “we’ll drink to that.”

But as they toasted Kenneth Bunting for this minor tennis triumph, Sara brooded, You pompous jock. Couldn’t you have put your match off to come hear my husband’s lecture?

Later when they were alone, Ted finally allowed himself to say what they had both been thinking all through dinner.

“Christ, what shits they are.”

“Hey, look, Ted,” Sara answered, slightly giddy from the whole experience, “there are shits at Harvard too. But these were such a bunch of little shits.”

She woke at dawn to find her husband staring out the window.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Sara asked solicitously. “Did it all get to you?”

“No,” he answered quietly, still staring at the town green, “it’s just the opposite.”

“You mean you’re pleased at how they mauled you yesterday?”

“No, it’s this place. It takes my breath away. I think we could be really happy here.”

“Who are we going to talk to?” she asked plaintively. “The trees? The babbling brooks say more than that autistic archaeologist!”

He lowered his head. “Those student questions yesterday were pretty good.”

She did not react.

“The library’s fantastic.…”

She still did not respond.

“This place has got some really fine departments. French, for instance. And that Lipton guy in Physics worked on the atomic bomb —”

“Hey, Ted,” she interrupted gently, “you don’t have to use sophistry with me. This place does have a sense of history. And I know something in you still can’t face the world without the epaulets of ‘Ivy League’ on your shoulders. It’s something I can’t understand, but I’ll have to accept.”

“It’s a nice location, Sara.”

“Yeah, just a three-hour drive from Harvard.…”

“Two and a half,” he said softly.

The breakfast room looked like an orange grove. At every table, couples varying from middle-age to old sat monochromatically garbed. The gentlemen wore orange blazers, their ladies all had Canterbury scarves.

“Is this some kind of reunion?” Ted asked Tony Thatcher as he sat down to breakfast with the dean.

“No,” Thatcher answered, “it’s like this all year ’round. The old grads don’t just come up for the football games — they’re always making ‘sentimental journeys.’ ”

“I can appreciate their feelings,” Ted remarked.

“I’m glad,” the dean replied, “because I’d like to see you here at Canterbury.”

“I take it from your use of the first-person singular that there isn’t unanimity in the department.”