“Gosh—”
“Hi, Mr. Hurok,” Arthur Rossi interposed. “I’m Danny’s dad. If you would like, we could have breakfast in the morning.”
Danny shot a withering glance at his father, and then turned back to the impresario. “I’m very flattered, sir. If we could talk some other time—”
“Of course, of course,” Hurok said with enthusiastic understanding. “We’ll chat again when you’re less busy.”
He then politely said good night and left with the director. Now there were only four of them. Danny, his parents, and Maria.
“Well,” Arthur Rossi jested, smiling at Maria, “here we are, just us Italians.” He was avoiding Danny’s gaze. For he knew that just a moment earlier he had overstepped the newly redrawn boundaries of their father-son relationship. And he was afraid of Danny’s anger.
“With everyone’s permission,” said Gisela Rossi, “I would like very much to drink a toast to someone who was here tonight only in spirit.”
Danny nodded and they raised their glasses.
“To Frank Rossi—” his father began.
And then suddenly stopped himself as he heard his younger son whisper, with supreme self-control, “No, Dad, not tonight.”
There was a silence. Then Mrs. Rossi murmured, “To the memory of Gustave Landau. Let us pray that God let Danny’s music go to heaven tonight so such a fine man could take pride.”
They drank somberly.
“That was Danny’s teacher,” she told Maria.
“I know,” she answered softly. “Danny’s told me all about how much he—loved him.”
There was a sudden pause as no one knew what to say next.
At last Maria spoke again. “I don’t want to spoil the party, but it’s kind of late. I think I’d better take a taxi home to Radcliffe.”
“If you can wait a minute,” Danny offered, “I’ll be glad to take you and then have the driver drop me back at Eliot.”
“No, no,” she protested. “I mean, the orchestra’s given you this terrific suite. It will be a lot more fun than just a metal bed in a Harvard house.”
Maria suddenly felt a tinge of embarrassment at the way she had put her last remark. Would that give the elder Rossis the impression that she’d been in Danny’s bedroom?
In any case, before she knew it, Arthur and Gisela had said good night and headed for their own room farther down the corridor.
Danny and Maria stood side by side in the descending elevator, looking straight ahead.
As they were heading for the door, Danny stopped her gently. “Hey, Maria,” he whispered, “let’s not separate tonight. I want to be with you. I mean, I want to share this special night with someone I really love.”
“I’m tired, Danny, honestly I am,” she answered softly.
“Maria, listen,” Danny pleaded, “come upstairs with me. Let’s share that room—and be a couple.”
“Danny,” she responded tenderly, “I know what all this meant to you. But we really don’t belong together. Especially after tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you change up there. I’m happy for your big success, but you’ve just entered a whole new world where I don’t feel comfortable at all.”
He tried not to be angry, but he couldn’t help it.
“Is that just another excuse for saying you won’t come to bed with me?”
“No,” Maria whispered with emotion in her voice, “I saw tonight that there’s no room for anybody in your life. The spotlight isn’t big enough.”
She turned and started walking through the darkened lobby toward the exit.
“Maria, wait!” he called. His voice echoed slightly in the marble hall.
She stopped and said, “Please, Danny, don’t say any more. I’ll always have the fondest memories of you.”
Then she said barely audibly, “Goodbye.” And disappeared through the revolving door.
Danny Rossi stood in the deserted lobby on the night of his greatest triumph, rent by feelings of elation and a sense of loss. But finally, there in the darkness, he convinced himself that this was the price he had to pay.
For fame.
Ted and Sara were now totally inseparable. They took almost all the same courses, and their conversations—except when making love—were mainly about the classics.
They even chose congenial topics for their senior theses. Sara got Professor Whitman to direct her essay on Hellenistic Portrayals of Eros—focusing on Apollonius of Rhodes. And Ted got Finley himself to supervise his dissertation, which compared Homer’s two great antithetical female characterizations, Helen and Penelope.
Every afternoon they sat opposite each other in Widener Library grinding away, punctuating their assiduity by passing silly notes to each other in Latin or Greek.
At about four o’clock they would join the exodus of jocks who were on their way to practice. Only their field of play was in Andrew’s new room.
And yet, since they had returned to Harvard for their senior year, they were both increasingly aware that their entire idyll, like the halcyon days of college, had eventually to reach its conclusion. Or perhaps some sort of consummation.
Ted had applied to Harvard Graduate School in Classics, and Sara was toying with doing the same, although her parents had indicated that they might be willing to subsidize a year of European study.
This was by no means an expression of disapproval of her relationship with Ted. For they had never met him and knew little, if anything, about him.
Sara, on the other hand, had become a regular weekly guest at the Lambros’s Sunday dinners and felt almost a part of the family—which was what Mama Lambros prayed each week she would become.
They were not ambivalent about the future, these passionate lovers of the classics and each other. They never discussed marriage. Not because either of them doubted the other’s will to wed, but simply because they both took it for granted that their commitment to each other was for life. The ceremony would be just a formality.
They both knew that the Greek words for man and woman also meant husband and wife. And thus semantically, as well as spiritually, they were already married.
George returned to Eliot House for his senior year feeling as much or more American and Harvardian than his classmates.
Since his need for study was so great, he had amicably separated from his preppie roommates and moved into a single.
“Now you can keep yourself up all night,” Newall had jested.
George felt like an artillery officer. He had spent his junior year at Harvard getting his bearings. He had passed the summer taking aim—selecting an ideal senior thesis. After all, who was better suited to write on “The Hungarian Revolution as Portrayed by the Soviet Press”? As Dr. K. strongly hinted, it could be publishable.
He was now ready to use his newly acquired ammunition to eliminate all barriers in his path to political triumph.
But what, in fact, was he after? This was the question Kissinger asked him the afternoon the seminar ended, as they sat in his air-conditioned office sharing congratulatory glasses of iced tea.
“You could be a professor at Harvard,” Henry assured him.
“I know.” George smiled. “But is that where your ambitions stop, Henry?”
With the tables turned, his mentor laughed uneasily and tried to answer with deflecting jocularity.
“Well,” he laughed, “I of course would not mind becoming the emperor. Would you?”
“I would not even mind being President,” George smiled, “but even you are ineligible for that. There, Henry, we must share similar disappointments. We are fated both of us never to reach the top.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Keller,” Kissinger said, his index finger raised. “You seem to be under the mistaken illusion that the men in the White House actually run the country. Let me quickly disabuse you. They are mostly quarterbacks who rely heavily on their coach’s advice. You and I, George, are both in a position to become indis
pensable advisers. That would be exciting, don’t you think?”
“You mean what attracts you is sort of the power behind the throne?”
“Not exactly. What interests me is what one can achieve with power. Splendid things, believe me.”
George nodded, with a grin. He raised his glass and toasted, “More power to you, Henry.”
Jason Gilbert returned to Cambridge from a summer of Marine Corps training tanned and fit. More muscular than ever.
As soon as he arrived, he headed over to see Eliot and Newall in their new double, free from the mad Hungarian. There was ice-cold beer and tales of love and war to tell. Newall, in the naval ROTC program, had spent the summer touring the Pacific on an aircraft carrier. Before returning home he went, as he put it, “totally berserk” for a week in Honolulu. Which he gleefully recounted in minute detail.
Jason’s summer in the blazing southern sun had been a little different. First there was the drill sergeant who really had it in for all the Ivy League boys. At one point, for some petty infraction, the guy had made him jog around the base in combat boots and full pack for a whole hour in the blazing sun.
“That must have killed you,” Eliot remarked while opening a second beer.
“It wasn’t all that bad,” Jason said casually. “I was in shape, remember. But, of course, I acted like I was about to have a heart attack.”
“Good ploy,” said Newall. “I hear those Marine types can be sadists anyway.”
“I actually felt sorry for the guy,” Jason said unexpectedly.
“How come?” Newall asked.
“I kind of understand why he was riding us so hard in camp,” he explained, somewhat subdued, “ ’cause off the base, life in Virginia isn’t all that great if you’re not white.
“One Saturday when we were off, the guys went into town to gorge ourselves on ice cream. We were sitting there in Howard Johnson’s when this sergeant happened to pass by. And, asshole that I am, I waved to him to come and join us.”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Andrew.
“You won’t believe this, but he just stood out there and gave us all the finger. And on Monday we were doing so damn many push-ups we were almost living on the ground.”
“I don’t get it,” Andrew said. “I mean, you guys were only being friendly, weren’t you?”
“Of course, but naive Jason Gilbert hadn’t clicked that off the base, the town of Quantico is segregated like before the Civil War. Can you believe this member of the U.S. military was not allowed to have an ice cream in that place with us? That’s why he was so pissed off. He thought that we were mocking him.”
“No shit,” said Newall. “That’s amazing in this day and age. Christ, Gilbert, bet that made you happy that you’re only Jewish.”
Jason, staring at his teammate and supposed friend, deflected the unwitting insult like a skillful boxer. “Newall, I’ll forgive that last remark because I know you’re congenitally stupid.”
The eternal mediator, Andrew Eliot, deftly changed the subject. “Hey, listen, guys, I’ve got the latest Freshman Register. Why don’t we check out the new crop and get our bids in early, huh?”
“Sounds good to me,” said Newall, happy to move back to neutral ground. “What do you say, old Gilbert? Shall we cast our eyes upon the lovelies of the Class of ’61?”
Jason smiled. “At least you’re consistent, Newall,” he jibed, “always last man off the mark. I did my homework yesterday. The pick of the new talent is Maureen McCabe. And I’m taking her to Norumbega Park tonight.”
ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY
November 24, 1957
We start our college lives, symbolically as well as literally, in the ignominy of the End Zone. But our progress brings us to the happy culmination. In senior year, we get to sit right on the fifty-yard line near the President and the most distinguished alumni, whom the college honors with this pride of place.
Ironically of course, as first-year grads we’ll be back in the End Zone come next fall. So a gang of us decided to make this year’s Harvard-Yale game into a gigantic farewell blast.
Newall and I contacted some of our old prep school buddies down in New Haven and arranged for floors and couches for us all to sack out on.
We even got a place for Gilbert, who reciprocated by having his sister Julie fix us up with some of her more desirable (and we hoped pliable) girlfriends from Briarcliff.
Julie’s Cliff, unlike the one in Cambridge, Mass., is a much more pragmatic ladies’ college that puts the emphasis where it belongs—on pulchritude and charm. I mean, brains are okay for a girl in moderation, but the Radcliffe types are so goddamn intellectual—and competitive—that they sometimes make you forget why the Lord created women.
Not that I have anything against Radcliffe. If I ever had a daughter, I’d want her to go there. It’s just that when it comes to marriage, I think I’m much better off in the Briar patch.
Julie Gilbert came through with real dishes for Newall and myself. And we fixed her up with our Yale host, Charlie Cushing, a really sweet fellow. Which is a polite way of saying he’s got perfect manners but not a brain in his head (I mean, he makes me look like Einstein).
Our seats in Yale Bowl were indeed sensational. We sat on the fifty-yard line with luminaries of the world scattered around us like confetti at a birthday party.
Four rows down from me were President Pusey and the deans, politely clapping when our boys did something good (which was not very often).
Ten yards to my left was our Massachusetts senator, Jack Kennedy, and his neat wife, Jackie. They were less sedate than most of the old grads in that distinguished section, shouting their lungs out for Harvard to score against the wild, hypertrophied, and, alas, all-too-competent Yalies.
Unfortunately, not even the strenuous vociferations of a U.S. senator could help our boys that day. Yale steamrolled over us 54–0.
Oh what the hell, I thought, during the postgame festivities back at Branford College, these Yalies have so little to be proud of, let them at least win the goddamn game.
One afternoon in early December, Sara gazed across the pillow and smiled. “Ted, isn’t it about time you asked my parents for my hand?”
“And what if they say no?”
“Then we’ll just set two fewer places at the wedding party,” she replied.
“I don’t get it. Do you care what they think or don’t you?”
“Oh, nothing will keep me from staying this close to you forever,” she answered. And then added with shy sincerity, “But it would make me happy if my father liked you. And I’m sure he will. Mummy wouldn’t approve of anybody I brought home.”
Ted was understandably nervous. For he wanted very much to please Sara by finding favor with her father. Hence, he spent the days prior to their visit trying to learn as much as he could about the man she so admired.
Who’s Who informed him that Philip Harrison was St. Paul’s, Harvard ’33, a decorated naval officer, and one of the most successful merchant bankers in the country.
Moreover, his name appeared at frequent intervals in The New York Times as having paid a visit to advise the current White House resident on some particularly thorny economic issue.
He had sired three sons. But his daughter was the apple of his eye. And to hear Sara tell it, he was the incarnation of every possible virtue.
Boy, thought Ted, if there’s anything to this Oedipal business, I haven’t got a prayer!
• • •
“I think the blue would be great for Christmas dinner, Ted.”
“How about the gray flannel for dinner and saving the blue for church?”
They were scouring Andrew’s wardrobe for fashionable holiday regalia to help Ted make the best possible impression.
“Look, Lambros, it doesn’t really matter. Old Man Harrison’s not gonna judge you by your clothes.”
“You mean your clothes.” Ted smiled. And then asked nervously, “But what about her mother—or don’t you th
ink I have a chance with her?”
As a friend, Andrew thought it best to free Ted from all illusions. “No, Lambros, she’d probably like you at her daughter’s wedding as a waiter, but definitely not as the groom. I mean, take all my clothes—even my damn club tie, if it’ll make you feel any better. But I’m afraid you couldn’t impress Daisy Harrison unless you had a crown on your head. And that I can’t lend you.”
“You’re doing wonders for my confidence,” Ted grumbled.
Andrew leaned over and grabbed his friend by the shoulders. “Hey, hasn’t three and a half years of Harvard taught you that it’s not who you are, it’s what you are?”
“You can talk, Eliot. You’ve probably still got all the labels from the Mayflower on your suitcase.”
“Come on, Ted, I’d trade places with you any day. What good is it that my ancestors came over if I can’t even get a date for New Year’s Eve. Am I getting through to you?”
“Yeah, I guess.…”
“Good. Now pick up your preppie costumes and go snow her parents.”
They took the Merchants Limited on the 23rd of December. Though the overheated train was packed with students chattering gaily or bellowing carols and other spiritual ditties like “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog” and “Blue Suede Shoes,” Ted and Sara sat reading quietly, barely exchanging a word.
“Who’s meeting us at Greenwich?” Ted finally asked as they pulled out of Stamford.
“Probably one of my brothers. Daddy usually works late before a holiday.”
“What are the odds of any of them actually liking me?”
“That’s a little too close to call,” Sara answered. “I mean, Phippie and Evan are bound to feel a little jealous of the fact that you’re at Harvard and they both got shot down.”
“No kidding—not even with all your father’s influence?”
“Daddy’s not an alchemist,” Sara smiled, “and their board scores were far from golden. No, Lambros, you and he will be the only Harvard men at table. Does that make you feel a little better?”