That Day the Rabbi Left Town (3 page)

Curiously, when he told Thorvald Miller about his good fortune, his view was much like that of Roger Fine, and he manifested neither envy of Jacobs nor resentment at having been passed over. “Oh, you were sure to get it, Mord. You're a scholar and they don't want to lose you. Me, I'm just run-of-the-mill. Maybe I'll get tenure in time if I can hang on long enough.”

They were friends and worked out together at the gym almost every afternoon when their last classes were over. Jacobs looked scholarly. He was twenty-nine, of medium height, olive-skinned, with dark brown hair surmounting a high forehead. His gray slacks were rarely pressed. One was apt to assume that the suede leather patches on the sleeves of his tweed jacket actually covered holes in the elbows. He was slim and wiry and played a good game of squash.

Miller, thirty-one, was several inches taller, six feet, with a heavy, muscular body. He was blond with a bulging forehead and wide cheekbones. He was always properly dressed. His mother, who lived with him and kept house for him, saw to that. He usually wore suits, and they were always pressed. He wore bow ties and only white shirts, and because he thought they were healthy, white socks. The net effect was that of a farm boy dressed up for a visit to the city.

Although the two had no interests in common other than the college, they usually lunched together, and when Jacobs had made arrangements to see Clara Lerner, his fiancée in Barnard's Crossing, Miller drove him out, dropped him off at her house, and then went on to his own house, which was in another section of the town. He picked Jacobs up the following morning to take him into Boston if he had stayed over.

Although Jacobs had come from a small town in Pennsylvania to study at Harvard, any awe of Cambridge and Boston that he might have had, had long since been dissipated by the time he had taken his doctorate. To him, Boston was merely the city adjoining Cambridge, and he attached no prestige to teaching at Windermere.

He had accepted appointment there in preference to others that had been offered because he thereby had ready access to both the Widener Library at Harvard and the Boston Public Library, as well as because his fiancée lived in Barnard's Crossing and worked in Boston.

To Miller, on the other hand, Boston was still the Athens of America, and the fact that he had obtained a teaching position in a Boston college was a matter of constant self-congratulation. He had come from a small farming town in South Dakota, and had received his doctorate from a state university of no great academic distinction. So he was charmed by this great city with its famous institutions; the world-renowned Boston Symphony, the Mass. General Hospital, the Museum of Fine Arts, as well as the colleges—Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Tufts. He was charmed by the manners, the accent. And by the thought that he was now part of it all.

He had taken a house in Barnard's Crossing in part because he thought the sea air would be good for his mother's asthma, but also because it was on Boston's North Shore with its numerous yacht clubs, where Boston Brahmins had summered since colonial times. Not that he knew any Brahmins, or had ever met one, but he felt the atmosphere was right.

He would have preferred a friend with a name other than Jacobs, but the two got along well together. During the regular school year, both had three-o'clock classes, so both repaired to the gym shortly after four and worked out for an hour or so every day except Wednesdays when Miller had a mysterious engagement elsewhere.

On one occasion, Jacobs asked him, “Where do you go on Wednesday, Thor?”

Miller grinned. “Wednesday, I see a whore lady for a roll in the hay.” Then seriously, “You know, Mord, if you're not married and you're teaching in a coed school, you should get your ashes hauled regular, or else you're apt to start fooling around with some coed who flashes a thigh as she crosses her leg, and get into a lot of trouble.”

Chapter 4

The oldest member of the English Department, indeed of the entire Windermere College faculty, was Malcolm Kent. The official retirement age was sixty-seven, and he was seventy. It was not because of his scholarship, which was mediocre at best, nor of his popularity with the faculty or the student body, which was negligible, but because he had married Matilda Clark, now deceased, who had been the last descendant of Ezra Clark, one of the founders of the school, who had donated the brownstone front on Clark Street that had housed the school in its early years. As the school grew, it acquired one by one the other houses on Clark Street; all except the brownstone on the corner, which was the Clark residence where Matilda had lived.

She had willed the building to the college with the proviso that she and her husband would continue to live there and that the college would maintain it.

Professor Kent, something of a dandy, wore dark gray suits and shirts with starched collars. He was well aware of his strategic position as the husband of the late Matilda Clark, and did not hesitate to presume on it. When he turned sixty-seven and it was suggested to him that he retire, he said, “Then what will I do? No, I'll stay on for a while.”

The matter came up and was discussed at one of the quarterly meetings of the Board of Trustees. Charles Dobson, who had a Cadillac agency in the city, said, “Look, even in today's market the Clark house is worth at least two million dollars. If he got sore at us—”

“What could he do? The house was willed to us.”

“Yeah, but he's got dower rights.”

“I thought they abolished dower rights in this state.”

“He's also got general power of appointment,” said George McKittrick, who came down from Bangor, Maine, to attend the meeting. “If he decided to sell it off to somebody, we'd go to court, of course, but my lawyer tells me we'd probably lose.”

“He only teaches a couple of courses,” said Dobson, “so what harm if he gives them another year or so?”

“Yes, but he hangs around the English office all day,” said Nelson Ridgeway.

“So?”

“So he's a pest. Someone comes in to talk to one of the other men in the department, he'll butt into the conversation. I'm sort of friendly with Sugrue, the head of the department, and he told me that once when he wanted to talk to him, he barged into his classroom and interrupted the lecture.”

“It's just that he's old and friendless.”

In the end, they decided that the desirability of the house far outweighed his nuisance value and voted to let him stay on.

So he stayed on, giving a course in Classics of English Literature, and for the rest of the day reading newspapers and magazines and engaging in idle conversation with anyone who appeared to be free, usually about the important people he had met. Occasionally he would ask someone to get a book for him from the college library, explaining that he could not go himself because he had twisted his ankle and it pained him to go up and down stairs. Most often it was Sarah McBride whom he would ask. The usual formula was, “Sarah, my love, would you do me a small favor?”

She usually complied because, as she explained to Mordecai Jacobs, “He's a big shot here and since I don't have a Ph.D. and am the latest appointee, I'm the most vulnerable. He's always touching me, on the arm, on the shoulder, when he asks me. He has a class in the room next to mine for my three-o'clock, and he puts his hand around my waist when we go back to the English office. He says it steadies him going down the stairs. I told Lew about it, and he was all for going to see him and telling him to lay off, but I couldn't have that. It might cause all kinds of trouble for me.”

Because of his connection with the Clark family, he occasionally received invitations to receptions given by the charities and institutions to which Ezra Clark had formerly contributed, and then for the next few days tell what he had said to the head of the Mass. General Hospital or to the senator who had been the guest speaker.

One day, just before the Fourth of July vacation, in the afternoon, he came in dressed in tuxedo and patent leather pumps, but with the ends of his bow tie hanging loose from his collar. “Does anyone here know how to tie a bow tie?” he asked. “I've got a tendinitis and can't raise my left arm.”

“Isn't it just like tying a shoelace?” Jacobs said.

“Why don't you use one of those that hook on?” asked Roger Fine.

“Oh, impossible. I'd be just as apt to wear polyester as a clip-on tie.”

Just then, Thorvald Miller entered. Kent's eyes lit up. He pointed at Miller's throat.

“You can tie a bow tie,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Then will you please tie mine?”

“Sure, turn around.”

He turned around, and as Miller reached over his shoulders, Kent murmured, “When my wife used to tie my bow tie, she also had me turn around.”

“It's the only way you can do it,” said Miller. “There.”

Kent felt of the knot at his throat and then went to the small mirror on the wall. “Beautiful;” he pronounced. “You must come over to my place and have a drink with me.”

“Well, I was going to work out in the gym.”

“I insist. Besides, there's something I want to show you.”

Miller looked at Jacobs and shrugged. “Okay.”

When next Jacobs asked Miller if he was going to the gym, Miller answered, “No, Mord, I'm having tea with Kent.” Jacobs got the impression that Miller was prideful at the idea of taking afternoon tea, which he probably regarded as a Boston custom.

At noon the next day when Jacobs suggested they go to the cafeteria for lunch, Miller said, “I'm going with Kent.” He then went on to explain, “Look, Mord, Kent is a power here, and I figure the only way I'm going to get tenure is with him behind me.”

“I understand, Thor.”

Friday afternoons when Jacobs normally went to Barnard's Crossing to spend the weekend with the Lerners, his future in-laws, he could usually count on a ride by Miller, but this Friday Miller told him, “Look, Mord, I won't be able to drive you out this afternoon. Kent is coming out for the weekend, and I'm driving his car.”

“Sure, I understand.”

“See, this house I'm living in, it turns out that his folks, or his wife's folks, I guess, well, they built it. They owned all the land down there from the old Boston Road to the cove, and he said he'd like to see it again.”

From then on, Miller and Kent always seemed to be together. Roger Fine referred to them as the Odd Couple, and the sobriquet caught on. No longer did Kent hang around the English office; he was apt to stay at home, and Miller would join him there when he was free.

Kent spent almost every weekend in Barnard's Crossing with the Millers, and he was frequently invited by Thorvald's mother to come out for dinner on Wednesdays to keep her company until her son got home. On occasion, he took the bus that ran along the old Boston Road, and then walked up the right-of-way to Evans Road and the Miller residence.

At the end of the Summer Session Thorvald Miller was promoted to the rank of associate professor and given tenure.

Chapter 5

The Ritual Committee worked conscientiously through the summer. They listened to the tape recordings of sermons submitted by candidates for the job. A couple sent in videotapes that, needless to say, showed the candidate in full regalia—black gown, long silk prayer shawl, and a high yarmulke like those worn by cantors. They visited several synagogues so that they could see the candidate on his home ground, and they invited a few, the more likely ones, to come to Barnard's Crossing to celebrate a Sabbath. This consisted of the candidate conducting the Friday evening service, which involved a short sermon, the Saturday morning service, calling for a somewhat longer, more formal sermon, and the Saturday evening or Havdala service. Since there was a collation of tea or coffee and cake provided by the Sisterhood after the Friday service and frequently a
kiddush
with wine and whiskey to wash down herring or smoked fish on crackers after the Saturday morning service, the attendance was fairly large at both and there was plenty of opportunity for the general congregation to meet with the candidate.

The members of the Ritual Committee had been unable to agree on a single candidate, but they had finally arrived at a short list of three, and late in August the Board of Directors met as a committee of the whole to select one. Only about fifteen members of the Board attended regularly, week after week, some of them because they had children in the Sunday School whom they would deliver at nine o'clock and found it more convenient to attend the Board meeting than to go home and have to return for their children at noon. There were others who attended only occasionally. On this Sunday, however, almost all came because they had been notified that the meeting would be for the purpose of selecting a new rabbi.

Al Bergson, the president, rapped for order and said, “All right, let's get the show on the road. I suggest that we dispense with the usual procedure and just spend the time talking rabbi. Any objections?”

“No, let's get on with it.”

“Sure, why waste time?”

Similar cries from several others showed that the Board concurred wholeheartedly.

“All right. Now, one or more members of the Ritual Committee checked twenty-three candidates, of which eight were recent seminary graduates. Some of them have had temporary jobs—”

“The rest are rabbis with regular congregations?”

“You mean all those rabbis with jobs want out? What's wrong with them? What's wrong with the job?”

“Are we offering more money than most congregations are?” asked Dr. Marcus.

“As I explained when the subject first came up,” said Bergson, “we're on the low side salary-wise. A couple of those who applied would have to take a sizable cut to come here.”

“So why—”

“Why would they want to come here? Because we're less than twenty miles from Boston, one of the great cultural centers of the world with the symphony and the museum and all the colleges, and it's also one of the great medical centers of the world.”