That Day the Rabbi Left Town (9 page)

“But he can divorce her, if he wants to,” said the other female student.

“Not unless she is willing to accept the bill of divorcement, Ms. Sachs,” said the rabbi. “Not since the ruling of Rabbi Gershom in the eleventh century. Originally we were a polygamous society, as were all other societies at the time. But we have made changes in our rules, or reinterpreted them, to conform to more modern habits of thought. And those changes give us an insight to the general attitude of our people.

“The emphasis in this course will be not on reading or research, but on thought. Much of what we know, or think we know, is based on something we've heard or read. I think that's the trouble with modern scholarship and collegiate study all the way up to the doctorate. I'm going to ask you to think about the material we will be dealing with rather than memorizing what someone has said about it. So I'd rather you didn't take notes in this class. Listen and think about what I say or what any one of your classmates says. And don't be afraid of disagreeing with me. I'll appreciate the compliment of your thinking about it and arriving at another conclusion.”

He paused and looked at them to see if they had understood. “And to give you a little practice, your assignment for next time—”

“You've already given us an assignment for next time.”

“That wasn't really an assignment; merely a chance to introduce yourselves to me. But all right, this will be for Monday, almost a week from today. It will give you a little practice in what we've been talking about. According to Isaiah, we were to be a light unto the nations. Well, have we been? I want you to think about it and be prepared to report on it, in detail, at our Monday meeting.”

As they trooped out of the room, the students discussed the class and the rabbi. “What do you think? Think he's going to make us work?”

“Well, the guy that signed my program, my adviser, said he didn't think he'd be likely to give a snap course.”

“Look, it's an elementary course, so if you've been to Hebrew School—you have, haven't you?—what can he teach you, you don't already know?”

“So why take the course?”

“Well, maybe he's got like a new slant on it. Besides, it'll please my old man.”

“You got a point there. Maybe when I talk to my mom, I'll tell her and she'll be able to brag about it to her bridge group.”

Chapter 13

Sarah McBride lingered on to explain, to apologize. “I'm sorry I was late, Rabbi, but the English office is a crazy place on the first day of classes. I suppose the other offices are, too. But Professor Kent said he simply had to have a book, a catalog of some kind, and I was free at the moment, so I had to go.”

“Busy, was he?”

“No, just bossy. Usually he has Professor Miller running his errands, but Miller is an adviser,
L
to
P
, I think. You know, they're supposed to check student programs to see if they're eligible for the courses they've selected. So he couldn't go.”

“Professor Kent is head of your department?”

“No, that's Bob Sugrue. Professor Kent is—well, he's important. I don't know why. You see, I'm kind of new here, but I know he's important by the way he acts and how others act towards him.”

“And Professor Miller is his assistant?”

“I don't think it's anything official, but they're together a lot.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, I'd better get going if I'm going to get any lunch. I've a one-o'clock. How about you? You going to the cafeteria?”

“I'm afraid not. I can't eat—”

“Oh, you mean you've got to eat kosher. Well, they have salads and soups. Those are all right, aren't they?”

“Probably, but for today at least I'll just have the sandwich my wife prepared.”

“Well, then I'll be going.” At the door she stopped. “Oh, Professor Fine heard I was auditing your course and asked me to say hello for him and that he'd drop by first chance he gets. He's an adviser, too. You know him, don't you?”

“He married a girl from Barnard's Crossing and I officiated at his wedding.”

It was after he had finished his sandwich that Professor Roger Fine poked his red head through the door and called out, “Greetings, Rabbi. Colleagues again! I see you've finished your lunch,” as the rabbi crumpled the plastic wrapper that had contained his sandwich. “How about coming down to the faculty cafeteria for a cup of coffee?”

The rabbi stood up. “Sounds good.” And then as they headed for the door, “You don't need your cane anymore?”

“Only if I have to walk some distance. I carry it coming here and going home, but I don't need it while I'm in the building. Lord knows I can use a cup of coffee. We've got an electric percolator up in the English office, but the cups are never properly washed, just rinsed, and in any case I want to get away from my desk. I'm an adviser—to all students whose names begin with
A
through
E
. Upperclassmen know better, of course, but freshmen think I am there to actually give them advice. ‘I want to study the environment, so should I take French or Spanish?' Nowadays, they're all concerned about the environment, and whales and dolphins, and the spotted owl.”

“I suppose every generation has to have its special cause. In my day it was civil rights and blacks,” the rabbi remarked.

The faculty cafeteria, when they arrived, was almost empty.

“Not too many here,” observed the rabbi. “Is it the food?”

“Oh, no. It's the hour. At noon you'd have trouble finding a table. But by one o'clock, the place is as it is now, practically empty. It fills up again around three, and they have a fair number till seven, the late-afternoon and evening classes.”

“Late-afternoon classes, a special group?”

“Oh, yes. Extension courses. Schoolteachers mostly. See, they get extra credit and higher pay when they take courses. And because we're situated where we can be easily reached, especially by streetcar, we do very well. Of course, we also get a lot of people who are not schoolteachers, you know, retired people.”

They went to the counter, received their cups of coffee, and then sat down at a small table in the center of the room. Another pair entered the room, and Fine murmured, “Ah, the Odd Couple.”

The rabbi looked up. “The Odd Couple?”

“Yeah, Miller and Kent. That's what we call them. They're always together.”

Professor Kent acknowledged their presence with a nod, but his younger companion, Professor Miller, waved and called out, “Hi, Roger.” Instead of joining them, however, Professor Kent marched determinedly to a table in the far corner of the room while Miller went to the counter to get coffee for both of them.

“Odd because of the difference in their ages?”

“Well, that, too. But Kent is always bragging about the important people he knows because he was married to the last of the Clarks, and Miller is a nobody from North Dakota or Nebraska. And since neither of them is a scholar, it can't be because they are engaged in some research together. I can understand Miller, sort of. Because Kent lives in that big house on the corner and was married to Matilda Clark, he thinks he is aristocracy. And he thinks it was Kent that got him tenure, so he's grateful.”

“And could he have got tenure through Kent's influence?”

Fine shrugged. “I don't know. According to Bob Sugrue, our department head who is a friend of one of the members of the Board of Trustees, the college handles Kent with kid gloves because of that house he lives in. It was willed to the college by his wife, but Kent can throw a monkey wrench into the works; dower rights, or some such thing. So they let him stay on although he's beyond the retirement age. And when a female member of the department complained of sexual harassment, because he's a lecherous old bugger, it was the woman who left. We had three and now we've only got one, Sarah McBride. And I'm waiting for the day when her husband, Lew, comes to see him and tells him he'll break his arm if he doesn't stop pawing his wife.”

Chapter 14

When the International Correspondence School, headquartered in St. Louis, decided to open a branch office in London, with the vague notion of perhaps establishing it as their head office since London would carry more prestige than St. Louis, Michael Canty, who had been with the company since graduating from high school five years before, managed to get himself included in the small crew that was being sent over. He had started as an office boy and was now one of the correspondence clerks at no great increase in salary. But whereas he had formerly run errands, filed, dusted, and gone out for coffee, he now corrected papers and wrote letters. No special knowledge was required for either function: the answers the students sent in were matched against the approved answers; and the letters consisted of selecting and arranging prewritten paragraphs in a letter of encouragement or approval.

He rented a room in a boardinghouse not far from the company office. There was a double hot plate in the room, and even a couple of pots and a few dishes, but except for an occasional pot of tea, he ate in one of the many pubs or cheap restaurants nearby. In the evening he usually sought out free entertainment, lectures, a church service, or the Visitors' Gallery in the House of Commons when Parliament was in session. He couldn't afford the theater or a nightclub on his salary. Sometimes he was able to make the acquaintance of a girl, and once in a while persuaded one to spend the night with him.

He received an occasional increase in salary, but they were very small increases because the enterprise did not prosper. When at the end of seven years, it was decided to close the London branch, Mike Canty was still living in the same boardinghouse.

But he had himself undergone some change. He had gradually lost his flat midwestern accent, at first unconsciously, and then consciously as he realized that in England it had social significance. He was particularly bothered about his name, Michael, or more commonly, Mike Canty. He felt that it had a low-class ring to it. He experimented with Canté and Cantay. Finally he changed it to Malcolm Kent.

He could have gone back to St. Louis, and he was quite certain that if he did, he would be offered a job in the head office. But he had been with the company for over ten years, and what had it got him? On the other hand, what hope had he, an American, of getting a job with an English company? No, he would return to the States, but not to St. Louis; he would go to New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia, somewhere on the coast. He finally decided on Boston because there was a direct flight there from Heathrow, and because he had heard that it was a little like an English city.

He found a room on Beacon Hill, and spent a few days in walking around the city. It was late August and the weather was balmy. Armed with a map of the city, he visited the Public Gardens and the Esplanade, and the Common where people made speeches from portable lecterns to passersby on Marxism, militant Christianity, and flat earth geography, quite like London's Hyde Park.

But soon he decided he had to find a job. He studied the want ads in the newspapers and visited each of the employment agencies listed in the yellow pages of the telephone directory. He stood in lines; he filled out forms.

He had no trade, seemingly no skills at all. For clerical jobs, women were preferred. As for jobs that called for physical strength or stamina, he did not have the build for them. He was a little below average in height—five inches above five feet—and he was thin and scrawny. His thin face with deep-set eyes, short, straight nose, and pointed chin was attractive, even good-looking, but not marketable.

There were a number of ads for salesmen, but most paid on a commission basis, and usually involved the need for a car.

In the Sunday paper he noticed a small, discreet ad for the “Williams Teachers' Agency, Ada Williams, Manager.” It offered no indication that jobs were available, and he suspected that payment of a fee was necessary for registration. But finding himself on School Street one day where the agency was located, he decided to inquire. After all, he had been in the teaching business, hadn't he?

The agency occupied a suite of two rooms: the outer room had a desk and several wooden armchairs, and was presumably occupied by a secretary, possibly out to lunch since it was noon. The door to the inner office was open, and a tall, handsome woman sitting behind a mahogany desk invited him to come in and sit down.

He explained that he had worked for a correspondence school in London but had not ever engaged in classroom instruction. He implied without saying so explicitly that he had made up lessons and examinations, although his work had in fact been purely clerical.

“This was in the field of English?”

“Yes, language and literature.”

“Did you ever take courses in Education?”

“In Education?”

She smiled. “I see you haven't. I'm afraid you can't teach in a public school, not in this state, unless you have had a course in Education.” He looked so disappointed that she added, “You could take an extension course at one of the colleges, or go to Summer School.”

“But then I wouldn't be eligible until next year,” he protested.

“Of course, colleges don't require Education courses, and neither do private schools. Colleges usually require a graduate degree, however,” she said.

“And private schools?”

“I'm afraid they don't pay very much.”

“I don't mind. It would give me a start, and I could use the experience in applying for another job. It's just that I'd like to get started.”

She nodded to show she was sympathetic; he was so eager, so anxious. “It's late in the season and I don't have a job in my books right now. Of course, something might come in at the last minute: a teacher gets sick or resigns to take another job.” She hesitated for a moment, and then with a decided shake of her head in rejection of a thought that had occurred to her, she said, “But the chances of a job coming in that you could fill are so remote that I don't think it would be even worth your while to register. The fee is ten dollars, but I don't suppose …”