Erich Segal - The Class

O tidings of comfort and joy!

As soon as Ted and Sara returned to Windsor, they began to look for a house. And to take lessons in cross-country skiing. The omnipresent whiteness gave the campus an aura of enchantment.

After a few weeks of searching, they found a solid old place on Barrington Road with a magnificent view of the mountains. It needed fixing up, but then, as Ted rationalized, this activity would be an outlet for some of his wife’s creative energies.

For, though she never complained, slipping and sliding down icy winter paths was not exactly summa felicitas for Sara Lambros. She began to toy with the idea of graduate school, studying the Harvard catalog to work out courses she could squeeze into a weekly forty-eight-hour visit to Cambridge.

Ted did not discourage her. Yet, at the same time, he did not disguise the fact that he felt her absence, even for so short a time, might have a negative effect on little Teddy.

But then Sara was soon heavily involved in refurbishing the house.

With all this nesting, hibernating, growing roots in snow and so forth, it was natural that the couple wanted to increase and multiply. (“Teddie would enjoy a little sister, don’t you think?”) And yet each month brought only disappointment.

“Damn,” Sara would exclaim. “I’m really sorry, Ted.”

“Hey look,” he would reply. “Maybe we just screwed up on the calculations. Stay loose. Be patient, honey.”

“I will,” she’d answer, with a wan smile, “Just promise that you won’t lose patience with me.”

He took her in his arms.

“Listen, for another kid like Teddie, I’d gladly wait a dozen years.”

His words were comforting, but with each succeeding lunar cycle seemed to be spoken with a little less conviction.

When Ted wrote Cameron Wylie to report the good news of his tenure, the Regius Professor’s reply included more encouragement to visit Oxford.

Though he had been but newly elevated, Ted was bold enough to ask the college for leave of absence. As he argued in his letter, a break from teaching would allow him to complete his research on Euripides. This, he subtly implied, would bring further glory to the college. The response of the executive committee that adjudicated his petition was quite unexpected.

“Lambros,” said the provost, as they questioned him in camera , “we’re prepared to grant your rather premature petition, if you’ll agree to give us something in return.”

“Sure, anything,” said Ted, secure in the awareness that, with tenure guaranteed, he could not be bounced even if he ultimately reneged.

“If we let you go to Oxford,” said an elder member of the committee, “we’d expect on your return that you’d take on the chairmanship of classics — for at least five years.”

Ted could hardly credit what he had heard. Were they actually requesting that he accept the leadership of his department as a favor? How quickly academic decorations now were rushing to be pinned upon his chest.

And yet he knew enough not to reveal excessive eagerness.

“Well, I’ll commit to three,” he answered with a smile. “And we can haggle after that.”

“You’ve got a deal, Professor Lambros,” said the provost. “I think the college has a rising star in you.”

Yesterday was “Moratorium Day.” All over the country there were protests against the war in Vietnam.

No one was surprised that there were demonstrations in Washington, New York, and Berkeley. But what astonished a lot of hard-liners were the gatherings in such unlikely places as Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, and Denver.

And what really staggered people was the antiwar march — of all places — on Wall Street .

I worked as hard as hell trying to encourage people from the financial community to find the guts to join our noontime walk for peace. I spent the better part of a week making phone calls to all sorts of executives, trying to convince them that the war was wrong not only morally but economically. (The latter argument was very helpful.) I got a lot of curses and hang-ups, but I also got a lot of recruits.

Still, in my wildest dreams, I never imagined that we’d amass a crowd of nearly ten thousand. Someone was quoted in today’s Times as saying it was the largest demonstration ever staged on the Street.

It was a clear, sunny day, and as we strode along, most of us wearing black armbands, above us a skywriting plane spelled out “For Peace.” Our journey ended at old Trinity Church, whose pews were soon filled to overflow. There, one after another, nearly a hundred of the most important corporate executives in the country rose to the stone pulpit to take turns reciting the names of the boys killed in Southeast Asia.

Among the readers were several former cabinet members and an amazing number of partners in the big investment banks. These guys, I think, were the bravest. Because the companies whose shares they traded were directly involved in the war.

For some unknown reason — maybe my last name — I was asked to be one of the readers. It was an honor that made me sick at heart.

Of course, today was the aftermath. My old competitive spirit took pleasure to see in the morning paper that our Wall Street rally had outdrawn the one in Central Park. I hope the jeans-and-guitar crowd hears about this and realizes that we gray-flannel guys have consciences too.

Then I got to the office and the heat began. Most of the partners of Downs, Winship, were far from pleased by my activities. The day before, they had told me — some in not so many words — that I was an unpatriotic bastard, disloyal to my country as well as to them. I took their opprobium as politely as I could, figuring it would dissipate in a few days.

But I didn’t expect the phone call that came at exactly nine-thirty. The blast of “You blathering idiot!” nearly blew my ear off. It was Dad.

For the better part of twenty minutes he ranted on, barely pausing for breath. About what a fool I was. Did I not realize, he asked, what damage “shenanigans” like yesterday’s march could cause? Was I not literate enough to read that my own trust portfolio had several thou sand shares of Oxyco, most of whose business relied on defense contracts?

I couldn’t reply to any of this because he wouldn’t stop talking long enough to let me do so. But finally he asked me something that was not rhetorical.

Did I not think I had disgraced the Eliot name?

Usually he grinds me into the ground with this sort of question, but this time I had an answer.

Was the Reverend Andrew Eliot disloyal to King George in 1776? Or did he follow the course his con science dictated?

This kind of stopped Dad in his tracks.

He clearly could not think of how to react. So after a minute I reminded him, “That’s what the Revolution was all about, Dad.” I then politely said goodbye and hung up.

It was the first time in my entire life that I stood up to him and had the last word.

Andrew’s was far from an isolated case. The conflict in Vietnam was tearing America apart on every level. Hawks against doves, rich against poor, parents against their children.

And it put a near-unbearable strain on the relations between George Keller and Catherine Fitzgerald.

On October 15, 1969, she had dared to take the day off to join the Washington protest march. And when she saw George the next evening, Cathy had “forgotten” to remove the black armband from her coat.

“Would madam care to check her wrap?” asked the maître d’ as he showed them to a table in Sans Souci.

“Yes,” George quickly answered.