Yet, the soul has remarkable powers of regeneration. As years passed, and the number of different recorded versions neared two hundred, Danny gradually began to believe that
he actually had composed "The Stars Are Not Enough."
And, what the hell, given half a chance, he probably could have.
ANDREW ELIOT'S DIARY -
-May 15, 1968
Practically living as I do at the New York Harvard Club, I
was probably the first guy outside of Cambridge
to see a copy of the Decennial Report, which chronicles
our class's progress in the first ten years since graduation. I note a tendency of the less successful guys to write
longer histories than their more shining counterparts. I mean, one character goes on for paragraphs in tedious
detail about his uneventful army service, his choice of wife, what his kids both weighed at birth, and so forth. Also how challenging life is in Daddy's shoe-manufacturing business
("We've had to - move our operations from New England to Puerto Rico and are now exploring the possibility of relocating in the Far East").
The only thing he doesn't talk about at length is his divorce. That's where I might have found something to empathize with. Anyway, it's clear to see through the thick clouds of his verbosity that he's trying to disguise a life of quiet desperation. He concludes with the philosophical observation, "If the shoe fIts, you've got to wear it."
In other words, he's taken four whole pages to inform us that he's on his way to being a successful failure.
On the other hand, Danny Rossi merely lists the
- dates of his marriage and his daughters' births, the things he's written, and the prizes he's won. That's all. He didn't even offer a pithy conclusion like "I've been very lucky," or "I owe it all to eating Wheaties," or some such. And yet who hasn't seen his face in all the papers and
read at least a half dozen stories that all but deify him? I bet a lot of guys who thought he was a weenie are now boasting to their wives and kids that they were
buddies with him in the college days. I confess that I
even exaggerate my passing friendship with him, too.
Ted Lambros's entry was also brief and to the point. He
and Sara had enjoyed the decade at Harvard. He was gratified that his Sophocles book had received favorable reviews, and he and his family were looking forward to the new challenge of living and teaching at Canterbury.
Neither Jason Gilbert nor George Keller sent in a response, both for reasons I well understood. Jason, with
whom I'm still in touch by letter, has been through a hell of a lot.
And George is just the same old paranoid, suspicious nut. He didn't even vouchsafe any of the meager information he gives me when we have lunch. -
Unlike a lot of my classmates, I thought I'd try to be honest in my capsule history. -
My two years in the navy got a sentence, and I didn't glorify them. Then I simply noted that after seven years at Downs, Winship, I'd been elected a vice-president.
Then I said that the greatest joy I've had is watching my children grow. And the greatest disappointment that my marriage didn't work.
I don't think many people bothered reading my entry, but I
didn't give much away.
I didn't mention that I'm really not that much of a
success in investment banking. I owe my promotion to the fact that a couple of buddies and I helped float Kintex, which
grew to be the world's largest producer of The Pill. And hence took off like a wild rocket. (Sheer luck-or was it a subconscious way of regretting that I had allowed myself to have children with such an unfit mother?)
I didn't say that though there are thousands of new
singles' bars sprouting all over First Avenue for so-called successful guys like me to meet fairly neat women, my life is desperately lonely.
I spend every weekend trying to reconnect with my kids
(Andy now seven, Lizzie four), to little avail. Faith seems to have given up sex in favor of booze-and her face shows it. Apparently the only time she sobers up is when she's telling
the kids what a bastard I am. And I only have a couple of hours on Saturdays to try to counter this calumny.
My one solace still seems to come from Harvard. Though
I've bought a fancy pad in a new high-rise on East
Sixty-first Street, I spend most of my time playing squash at the H-Club and socializing with the guys. I help the Schools Committee recruit good men for "the age that is waiting before." I'm even thinking of running for the Alumni
Council-which would give me a nice pretext to go up and walk in the Yard again.
In short, I'm no happier than the garrulous shoe salesman. On the other hand, I think I hide it a little better.
Ted
Lambros prepared himself for his new life at Canterbury with typical enthusiasm. He spent the summer of
'68 packing books and notes, improving his old lectures,
and-most important-taking tennis lessons at Soldier's Field. As they were settling into the ramshackle house they had rented from the college on North Windsor Street, Sara cautioned him, "You know, honey, if you actually beat Bunting, he'll never vote for you."
"Hey," he replied jocularly, "you're speaking to the great tactician. I've got to be just good enough for him to want to keep me as a sparring partner-or whatever they call it."
But there was more than the tennis vote to worry them. The department had three other senior classicists-and also influential wives. -
Naturally, there had to be a separate dinner with each couple. Henry Dunster made the first move and invited them. The present Mrs. D. was Henry's third, and there was every indication that she might not be the last. Predictably, he made a sort-of-pass at Sara. Which did not flatter her at all. -
"I mean, he wasn't vulgar," she complained to Ted as they drove home, "it's that he was so ludicrously tentative. He wasn't even man enough to be an honest flirt. God, what a creep." -
Ted reached over and took Sara's hand.
"One down," he whispered, "three to go."
The next hurdle on this steeplechase to tenure was a
dinner with the Hendricksons-Digby, the historian, and his loving wife, Amelia. Theirs was indeed a marriage of true minds, for they thought as one. They shared a love of hiking, mountaineering, and a fervid paranoia that everyone in the department was out to steal Digby's history courses.
"I think it's awful," Sara commented, "but in a way their jealousy is understandable, History, after all, is the foundation of the classics."
Digby took her point and ran with it a little further.
"Not just the foundation, Sara, it's the whole shebang. Literature is nice, but what the heck, when all is said and done it's only words. History is facts."
"I'll buy that," said Ted Lambros, specialist in literature, clouding his mind and swallowing his pride.
Sara had already started action on the distaff front. In fact, her "friendship" with Ken Bunting's wife had blossomed
into weekly soup-and-sandwich luncheon dates at The Huntsman. Dotty was a self-styled social ~arbiter who neatly
pigeon-holed the Canterbury wives into one of two categories:
"real class" or "no class." And Sara Lambros of the New York banking Harrisons was certainly genuine cream, not ReddiWhip. And since Dotty was, as -she put it, a blueblood from
Seattle, she regarded Sara as a soulmate. The only difference was their marriages.
"Tell me," Dotty asked in furtive tones, "what's it like being married to, you know, a Latin type?"
Trying mightily to keep a straight face, Sara patiently explained that Greeks, though dark and-to some eyes, -
perhaps-a little swarthy, weren't quite the same as "Latins." Still, she understood the interrogatory innuendo and replied that she assumed all men were basically alike.
"You mean, you've known a lot?" asked Dotty Bunting, titillated and intrigued. -
"No," Sara answered calmly, "I just mean-yon know- they have the same equipment."
Dotty Bunting turned a vivid crimson.
Sara quickly changed the subject and sought Dotty's
counsel on the "real class" children's dentists in the area.
One thing was clear. If Mrs. Bunting had a vote, Sara certainly would have it. It remained to be seen what influence she had on her husband. And that could be
determined only when the two couples actually met for dinner. Again, consistent with traditional collegiality, the Buntings asked the new arrivals to their home.
The conversation, as anticipated, was tennis-oriented. Bunting jocularly accused Ted of dodging his innumerable invitations to "come and hit a few." Ted volleyed back that he'd been so involved in setting up the house and starting courses that his game was far too rusty to give Bunting even token competition. -
"Oh, I'm sure he's only being modest, Sara," Dotty Bunting gushed. "I bet he even played for the varsity."
"No, no, no," Ted protested, "I wasn't nearly good enough. Tennis is one of the few sports Harvard actually is not bad in.
-"Yes," Ken allowed, "it was a Harvard guy who beat me for the IC4A title back in fifty-six." -
Unwittingly, Ted had reopened the most painful wound in Bunting's sporting memories. Ken now began to hemorrhage verbally.
"1 really should have won it. But that Jason Gilbert was such a crafty New York type. He had all sorts of sneaky little shots." - -
"I never thought of New York people as particularly
'crafty,'" Sara said ingenuously. "I mean, I'm from Manhattan too."
"Of course, Sara," Bunting quickly said apologetically.
"But -Gilbert-which was probably not his name for very long- was one of those, you know, Jewy characters."
There was an awkward pause. Sara held back to let her husband speak up in defense of their Harvard classmate. - Then, seeing that Ted was having trouble finding an
appropriate response, Sara mentioned casually, "Jason was The
Class of '58, with Ted and me."
"Oh," said Dotty Bunting. "Did you know him?"
"Not very well," Sara replied, "but he dated a few girls from my dorm. He was very good-looking."
"Oh," said Dotty, wanting to hear more.
"Say," Ken interrupted, "whatever happened to old Jason?
His name seems to have disappeared from the pages of Tennis
World."
"The last I heard, he'd gone to live in Israel," Ted answered. "Indeed?" Bunting smiled. "He should be very happy there." Ted looked at Sara, his glance imploring her advice on what to say. This time, she too was at a loss. The best she could come up with was, "This dessert is marvelous. You must give me the recipe."
Left for last because they seemed the toughest nuts to crack were Foley, the stone-faced archaeologist, and his equally impenetrable wife. Sara made countless attempts to fix a time with them. But they always seemed to have some
previous engagement. At last, she verbally threw up her hands and
said, "Please, name any night you're free. It's fine with us."
"I'm sorry, dear," Mrs. Foley said cheerfully, "we're busy then."
Sara hung up politely and turned to Ted. "What the hell, we've got three out of four. That ought to do it."
Collegiality aside, Ted grew more and more to love the Canterbury way of life. He was pleased that Sara seemed to be adapting to rusticity as well as coming to appreciate the
rich classics section of Hillier Library. She read all the latest journals from cover to cover and would even brief him over dinner on what was new in the ancient world.
The students were enthusiastic, and he felt the same
toward them. And, of course, it didn't hurt Ted's ego that his course in Greek drama drew the largest crowd in the department.
Raves for his teaching soon reached the office of the
dean. And Tony Thatcher thought it now opportune to sound out all the classicists about Ted's tenure. He elicited affirmative responses from the Hellenist, the Latinist, and the historian. And from the archaeologist he even got a nod. All would have come off without the slightest hitch had it
not been for the affair with young Chris Jastrow.
In certain circumstances it might have been a touching sight-a muscular Adonis in an orange crew-necked sweater
emblazoned with a C, sleeping like a mighty lion in the sun.