The Class (4 page)

rebuilt with his own hands, souping it up and even adding a dual fiberglass exhaust, -

The entire Gilbert household-Mom, Dad, Julie, Jenny the housekeeper and her husband Maxwell the gardener- were waiting to see him off.

There was much kissing and embracing. And a short valedictory from his father. -

"Son, I won't wish you luck because you don't need it. You were born to be number one-and not just on the tennis court." Though Jason did not show it, these parting words had the opposite of their intended effect. For he was already uneasy

at the prospect of leaving home and testing his mettle against the real big leaguers of his generation. That

last-minute reminder of Dad's high expectations made him even more nervous.

Still, he might have taken comfort had he known that his adoring father's speech had been echoed several hundred times that day by several hundred other parents who were also sending their uniquely gifted progeny off to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Five hours later, Jason stood outside his assigned freshman dormitory, Straus A-32, on which a scrap of torn yellow paper was taped.

To my roommate: I always nap in the afternoon, so please be quiet.

Thank you.

It was signed simply "D.D."

Jason quietly unlocked the door and carried his baggage practically on tiptoe into the one free bedroom. After

placing his suitcases on the metal bed (it creaked slightly), he glanced out the window. - -

He had a view-and all the noise-of hectic Harvard Square. But Jason didn't mind. He was actually in a buoyant mood,

since there was still enough time left to stroll to Soldier's Field and find a pickup game of tennis. Already dressed in white, he merely grabbed his Wilson and a can of Spauldings. Luckily, he recognized a varsity player who had defeated

him in a summer tournament two years earlier. The guy was happy to see Jason again, agreed to hit a few, and then

quickly learned how much the new arrival had improved. When he got back to Straus Hall, there was another yellow

note on the door, announcing that D.D. had gone to dinner and would then proceed to the library (the library-they hadn't even registered!) to study, and would be back just -before

10:00 P.M. If his roommate planned on coming in after that, would he be kind enough to be as quiet as possible.

Jason showered, put on a fresh Haspel cord jacket, grabbed

a quick bite at a cafeteria in the Square, then tooled up to

Radcliffe to scout the freshman girls. He returned about ten-thirty and was duly respeciful of his unseen roommate's need for rest.

The next morning he woke to find yet another note.

I have gone to register.

If my mother calls, tell her I had a good dinner last night. -Thanks.

Jason crumpled up this latest communiqué and marched off to join the line that now stretched well around the block outside Memorial Hall.

- The high intentions of his message notwithstanding, the elusive D. D. was not by any means the first member of The Class to register. For at the very stroke of nine, the large portals of Memorial Hall had opened to admit Theodore Lambros.

Three minutes earlier, Ted had left his home on Prescott Street to stride over and claim a tiny but indelible place in the history of the oldest college in America.

To his mind, he had entered Paradise.

A

ndrew Eliot's father drove him down from Maine in the family's vintage station wagon, laden with carefully packed trunks containing tweed and shetland jackets, white buck shoes, assorted moccasins, rep ties, and a term's supply of

button-down and tab-collar shirts. in short, his school uniforms.

As usual, father and son did not speak much to each other. Too many centuries of Eliots had gone through this same rite of passage to make conversation necessary.

They parked by the gate closest to Massachusetts Hall

(some of whose earlier occupants had been George Washington's soldiers). Andrew- ran into the Yard and rushed up to Wig

G-21 to enlist the aid of his former prep school buddies in hauling his gear. Then, as they were toting barge and

lifting bale, he found himself momentarily standing alone with his father. Mr. Eliot took the occasion to impart a bit of worldly advice.

"Son," he began, "I would be very grateful if you did your best not to flunk out of here. For though there are innumerable seéondary schools in this great land of ours, there is only one Harvard." -

Andrew gratefully acknowledged this astute paternal

counsel, shook his father's hand, and raced off to the dorm. His two roommates had already begun to help him unpack. Unpack his liquor, that is. They were toasting their reunion after a summer of self-styled debauchery in Europe.

"Hey, you guys," he protested, "you could at least have asked me. Besides, we've got to go register."

"Come off it, Eliot," said Dickie Newall as he took another swig. "We walked past there just a while ago and there's a line around the goddamn block." -

"Yeah," Michael Wigglesworth - affirmed, "all the weenies want to get there first. The race, as we well know, is not always to the swift." -

"I think it is at Harvard," Andrew politely suggested.

"But in any case, it isn't to the smashed. I m going over."

"I knew it." Newall sniggered. "Old Eliot, my man, you've got the makings of a first-class wonk."

Andrew persisted, undaunted by this preppie persiflage.

"I'm going, guys."

"Go on," Newall said, dismissing him with a haughty wave.

"If you hurry back we'll save you some of your Haig & Haig. By the way, where's the rest of it?" -

And so Andrew Eliot marched through Harvard Yard to join the long, winding thread of humanity-and ultimately to

- be woven into the multicolored fabric called The Class

of '58.

B

y now The Class was all in Cambridge, though it would take several hours more for the last of them to be officially enrolled. -

Inside the cavernous hail, beneath a giant stained-glass window, stood the future leaders of the world. Nobel Prize winners, tycoons of industry, brain surgeons, and a few dozen insurance salesmen.

First they were handed large manila envelopes with all the forms to be signed (in quadruplicate for the Financial Office,

quintuplicate for the Registrar, and, inexplicably, sextuplicate for the Health Department). For all this paperwork they sat side by side at narrow tables that stretched forever and seemed to meet only in infinity. Among the questionnaires to be completed was one for Phillips Brooks House, part of which asked for religious affiliation (response was optional). -

Though none of them was particularly pious, Andrew Eliot, Danny Rossi, and Ted Lambros marked the boxes next to Episcopal, Catholic, and Greek Orthodox, respectively. Jason

Gilbert, on the other hand, indicated that he had no religious

affiliation whatsoever.

After the official registration, they had to run an

endless gauntlet - of wild, paper-waving proselytizers, all vociferously urging Harvard's now-official freshmen to join the Young Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, mountain -

climbers, scuba divers, and so on. -

Countless irrepressible student- hucksters noisily cajoled them to subscribe to the Crimson ("Cambridge's oniy breakfast-table daily"), the Advocate ("so you can say you read these guys before they got their Pulitzers"), and the Lampoon ("if you work it out, it comes to about a penny a

laugh"). In short, none but the most determined misers or abject paupers emerged with wallets unscathed.

Ted Lambros could sign up for nothing as his schedule was already fully committed to courses academic - by day and culinary by night.

Danny Rossi put his name down for the Catholic Club, assuming that religious girls would be a little shyer and therefore easier to meet. Maybe they would even be as inexperienced as he.

Andrew Eliot made his way through all this welter like a seasoned explorer routinely hacking through dense foliage. The kind of social clubs that he'd be joining did their recruitment in a more sedate and far less public fashion. - And Jason Gilbert, except for buying a quick subscription

to the Crimson (so-he could send the chronicles of his achieve-

ments home to Dad and Mom), strode calmly through the

phalanx of barkers, much like his ancestors had traversed the

Red Sea, and returned to Straus.

Miracle of miracles, the mysterious D. D. was actually

awake. Or at least his bedroom door was open and someone was lying on the bed, face enveloped by a physics text.

Jason hazarded direct discourse. "Hi there, are you D. D?" A pair of thick, horn-rimmed spectacles cautiously peeked above the book.

"Are you my roommate?" a nervous voice responded.

"Well, I've been assigned to Straus A thirty-two, Jason answered.

"Then you're my roommate," the young man logically

concluded. And after carefully marking with a paper clip the line where he had left off reading, he put down his book, rose and

offered a somewhat cold and clammy hand.

"I'm David Davidson," he said.

"Jason Gilbert."

D. D. then eyed his roommate suspiciously and asked, "You don't smoke, do you?" -

"No, it's bad for the wind. Why do you ask, Dave?"

"Please, I prefer to be called David," he replied. "I ask because I specifically requested a nonsmoking roommate. Actually I wanted a single, but they don't allow freshmen to live alone."

"Where are you from?" Jason inquired.

"New York. Bronx High School of Science. I was a finalist in the Westinghouse Competition. And you?"

"Long Island. Syosset. All I've been is finalist in a

couple of tennis tournaments. Do you play any sport, David?"

"No," the young scholar replied. "They're all a waste of time. Besides, I'm pre-med. I have to take things like Chem Twenty. What's your chosen career, Jason?"

God, thought Jason, do I have to be interviewed just to be this wonk's cellmate?

"To tell the truth, I haven't decided yet. But while I'm thinking about it, shouldn't we go out and buy some basic furniture for the living room?" -

"What for?" D. D. asked warily. "We each have a bed, a desk, and a chair. What else do we need?"

Well, said Jason, "a couch might be nice. You know, to relax and study in during the week. We could also use an

icebox. So we'd have something cold to serve people on the weekends."

"People?" D.D. inquired, somewhat agitated. "Do you intend to have parties here?" -

Jason was running out of patience.

"Tell me, David, did you specifically request an introverted monk as your roommate?"

"No."

"Well, you didn't get one. Now, are you going to chip in for a second-hand couch or not?"

"I don't need a couch," be replied sanctimoniously.

"Okay," said Jason, "then I'll pay for it myself. But if I

ever -see you sitting on it, I'll charge you rent." Andrew Eliot, Mike Wigglesworth, and Dickie Newall spent all that afternoon scouring the furniture emporia in and

around the Square and procured the finest leatherette pieces available. After expending three hours and $195, they stood at the ground floor of G-entry with all their treasures.

"God," Newall exclaimed, "I shudder to think how many lovelies will succumb on this incredible chaise longue. I mean they'll just take one look at it, disrobe, and- hop right

on.

"in that case, Dickie," Andrew interrupted his old buddy's reverie, "we'd better lug it up the stairs. If a Cliffie passes while we're standing here you might just have to perform in

public." -

"Don't think I couldn't," Newall answered with bravado, quickly adding, "come on let's get this paraphernalia up the stairs. Andy and I'll take the couch." And then, turning to the largest member of their trio, he called out, "Can you manage that chair by yourself, Wigglesworth?"

"No sweat," the tall athlete replied laconically. And with that he lifted the huge armchair, placed it on his head as if it were a large padded football helmet, and started up the stairwell.

"That's our mighty Mike," Newall quipped. "Fair Harvard's future crew immortal and the first man from this college who'll play Tarzan in the movies."

"Just three more steps. Please, you guys," Danny Rossi implored.

"Hey, listen, kid, the deal was we'd- deliverY it. You

didn t say there would be stairs. We always take pianos in an elevator."

"Come on," Danny protested, "you guys knew that they don't have any in Harvard dorms. What's it going to take for you to deliver this up just three more steps into my room?

"Another twenty bucks," replied one of the burly delivery men.

"Hey, look, the damn piano only cost me thirty-five."

"Take it or leave it, kid. Or you'll be singin' in the rain." -

"I can't afford twenty bucks," Danny moaned.

"Tough titty, Harvard boy," growled the more talkative of the two movers. And they ambled off.

Danny sat there on the steps of Holworthy for several

minutes pondering his great dilemma. And then the notion came to him. -

He placed the rickety stool in position, lifted the lid of the ancient upright, and began, first tentatively and then

with increasing assurance, to animate the fading ivories with

"The Varsity Drag."

Since most of the windows in the Yard were open because of the Indian Summer weather, it was not long before a crowd