The Class (25 page)

Still, it was a fateful choice. For Eliot's assistant was a chubby young instructor who spoke English with a foreign

accent heavier than George's. His name was Henry Kissinger. And by some uncanny mutual telepathy they gravitated toward each other.

Kissinger, a refugee like George, albeit from wartime Germany, had also been a Harvard undergraduate (and likewise anglicized his first name). He had acquired an uncanny grasp of politics-both in theory and practice. Dr. K. (as he was affectionately known) already directed something called the Harvard International Seminar. And was on the board of what was probably the world's most important political journal, Foreign Affairs.

George thought his own cleverness had gotten him Kissinger as section man, only to discover that the teacher had made all the necessary efforts to win him for his discussion group. Neither man was disappointed.

Among other things, Kissinger was impressed by George's command of the Russian language. But it was his own burning ambition to be number one at Harvard (and, by extension, in the world) that most made him want to enlist the young Hungarian for his -team. For he knew how much his archrival Zbig Brzezinski desperately desired to keep George in his own sphere of influence.

After a section meeting early in the term, he stopped

George and said, "Mr. Keller, may I see you for a moment? I

would like to add a word or two about your recent essay."

"Certainly," George said politely, suddenly afraid his

paper had been less than the original and perceptive analysis he himself considered it.

"Was it all right, Professor?" George asked when the last student had departed. Keen academic strategist, he had astutely bestowed on Kissinger the title of Professor when he knew full well he was a mere instructor. The honoree was clearly flattered. Or at least he smiled broadly.

"Your paper, Mr. Keller, was not just 'all right.' It was absolutely first rate. I've never seen an essay that so percep

tively distinguished all the subtleties of the various

East European philosophies."

"Thank you, Professor," George replied elatedly.

"I know you are one of our new imports from Hungary. What

were you studying in Budapest?"

"Law. Soviet law, of course. Pretty useless, eh?"

"Depends to whom. Personally, for my researches I would welcome someone who was expert in this area and could read Russian easily."

"Well, sir, to be quite above the boards," George replied,

"I didn't finish my degree. So you could hardly say I was- an expert."

Kissinger's eyes twinkled behind his thick, black-rimmed glasses. - -

"Perhaps in Hungary you would not qualify as such, but in Cambridge people even with your experience are as rare as hen's teeth-"

"Or snowflakes in July perhaps?" suggested George, to demonstrate his range of English idioms.

"Indeed," Dr. K. replied. "So if you have time, I would

like to hire you as a research assistant. The European Study Center pays two dollars an hour, which is pretty good. And there would be the additional incentive of our possibly finding a senior-thesis topic in the work you will be doing."

"Are you intimating that you might personally direct my dissertation?"

"Young man, I'd be insulted if you didn't ask me,"

Kissinger responded with seductive affability. "So do I take it then that you accept my offer, George? Or do you want to think about it? Maybe talk it over with your faculty adviser? Who is it, that young Polish fellow Brzezinski?"

"It's all right, I'll explain things to Zbig. When shall I

start working, Dr. Kissinger?"

"Come to my office after lunch today. And, George, from now on, when we're not in class, please call me Henry."

A

nd thus Junior Year concluded.

While in the outside world, Eisenhower had been reelected President by his loving U.S. family, one of The Class had been chosen as the minister of millions to the Lord himself For when the reigning Aga Khan was dying, he unexpectedly

chose his grandson, Prince Karim '58, to succeed him as spiritual leader of the millions of Ismaili

Moslems.

Many members of The Class saw this as an augury that they too would be blessed by heaven. -

George Keller had -traveled farthest-both geographically and mentally. After barely seven months, he had truly conquered the English language. Sentence structure bent to his will. Words had become mere pawns in a power play to breach the walls of argument and capture minds.

He now was free to climb the academic mountain. And here he had a magisterial mentor. For if Harvard served him no

other purpose, it had brought him close to Henry Kissinger, with whom his mind worked in uncanny synchronicity.

Thus, he was rewarded with the enviable summer job of acting as Dr. K. 's special assistant in organizing the International Seminar and editing its journal, Confluence. The program had gathered several dozen government

officials and important intellectuals from both sides of the Iron Curtain for a series of colloquia and public lectures, to make them more sensitive to the new postwar configurations of the global family.

Part of George's duties was to fraternize among the representatives from the Eastern bloc countries and find out what they really thought of Harvard, the seminar-and even Kissinger himself.

Despite their initial wariness, they all ultimately succumbed to George's European charm and, at one point or

another, spoke far more candidly than they had ever imagined they would in the alien confines of a Western capitalist university.

Of course, nothing in Henry's brief to George suggested that he need go as far as to become physically intimate with any of the participants. This he did on his own initiative.

Perhaps it was something about the sultry Cambridge weather, the sudden stimulation - of seeing bevies of

non-Radcliffe girls stroll through the Yard in the shortest of shorts and the tightest of T-shirts.

Or perhaps the guilt that had inspired George's

self-induced chastity-a kind of subliminal penance-had been absolved by time.

In early August he went to bed with one of Poland's

- leading journalists. She was nearly forty and a woman of the world. Her comments on George's amorous technique, therefore, carried substantial weight.

"Young man," she whispered, "you are the most expert lover

1 have ever known-" - George smiled.

"-And the coldest," she quickly added. "You do everything as if you have learned it from a textbook." -

"Do you doubt my sincerity?" he asked good-humoredly. "Of course not," she replied with a sly smile. "I never for a minute believed that you had any. You are their spy,

yes?"

"Of course." George grinned. "The director wants me to find out which delegate is the best in bed."

"And?" she inquired saucily.

"If they ever give a Lenin Prize for sex, you would win

- hands down. ".

"Ah, George," she cooed, "you talk as elegantly as you screw. You have a great future ahead of you."

"In what field do you think?" he asked, genuinely eager to learn how such a woman of the world viewed- him.

"It's obvious," she replied. "There is one profession which needs an equal quantity of your two best talents. F mean, of course, politics."

And she pulled him to her to engage once again in the dialectic of Eros,

Jason Gilbert's march to sporting glory went on unimpeded. He had won the IC4A Tennis Title for the second straight year. And, as if that were not sufficient kudos, his teammates demonstrated the exceptional esteem in which

they held him by voting him their captain-as they already had for squash.

Though normally not vindictive, he could not keep himself from sending to his Old Blue headmaster, Mr. Trumbull, the lengthy Crimson article that assessed his extraordinary

number of sporting achievements to date. And, as the encomium concluded, "Who can dare to speculate what further heights Gilbert will reach with yet another year to go?"

Ted and Sara's love had grown to such intensity that the mere notion of having to spend two months apart became an intolerable prospect. She therefore persuaded her parents to allow her to attend Harvard Summer School and sublet a flat in North - Cambridge. Sara's mother was more than slightly dubious about her daughter's sudden passion to take on yet

more academic work. But her father, to whom she could confide the fact that mother's suspicions were in fact correct, was generous in his support and helped her win the day.

It was a long and passionate summer (during which they

even made love one starry night in Harvard Yard itself, in

the quadrangle behind Sever Hall). Parting on Labor Day was a painful wrench. Sara cried the entire week before they had to give up the apartment.

For Danny Rossi, the summer of '57 was a kind of overture to the highest point yet in his musical career.

Munch had booked him to perform with the Boston Symphony on October 12, when he would play Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto. Those trills in the opening movement would have

reverberations around the musical world. When he jubilantly called Dr. Landau to tell him the news, he was thrilled to hear that his teacher had been saving money for the plane fare and intended to be present at the concert.

Still, Danny's imminent debut offered far less joy than he had always dreamed it would. For his junior year had taken from him more than it had bestowed. The humiliation of the Crimson's pan for his ballet still haunted him. And then there was the tortured relationship with Maria.

He had hoped their separation through the summer would

allow him time to clarify his thoughts and possibly to seduce a

few girls at Tanglewood to fortify his masculine

self-image. But a sudden tragedy cast a huge pall on everything.

The very night he arrived at Tanglewood, his mother called to tell him that Dr. Landau had suffered a fatal heart

attack. In a haze of grief, Danny packed and flew out for his teacher's funeral. At the graveside he cried unashamedly. When, after the brief service the mourners started to

disperse, his mother, whom he had not seen in three long years, implored him to come home. She told Danny it was Dr. Landau's final wish that he be reconciled with his father. And so the prodigal son returned at last to the house

where he had spent such a miserable adolescence. Arthur Rossi seemed to have changed both inwardly and

outwardly. He was subdued now. There were furrows in his face, and he was completely gray at the temples.

For a fugitive instant, Danny felt a pang of remorse. As

if his father's outward signs of physical decline had somehow been his fault.

But as they stood there facing each other wordlessly for

those first awkward moments, Danny forced himself to remember how callously this man had treated him. But he could no

longer find it in himself to hate his father. Still, he could not love him, either.

"You're looking well, son."

"You too, Dad."

"It-it's been a long time, hasn't it?"

That was the full extent of what he could say. Danny's

long-cherished fantasy of a paternal apology was just that-a figment of his own childish desires.

Thus, with a quiet magnanimity born of grief and newly found indifference, Danny offered his hand to signal that

their quarrel was finally at an end. The two even embraced.

"I'm really glad, son," Arthur Rossi murmured. "Now we can all let bygones be bygones."

Yeah, thought Danny, what the hell. It's so unimportant

now. The only man who ever acted like a real father to me is dead. -

ANDREW ELIOT'S DIARY

August 8, 1957

All summer I had one foot in the future and the other in the past (don't ask me which I like better).

Since-with any luck-I'll be graduating next June, Father