The War Between the Tates: A Novel (40 page)

“Blacks do not have more status,” Brian corrected her. “The establishment is just more scared of them. If you were black, they’d be afraid you’d bomb Burnham Hall, or hold Dibble hostage in his office.”

“Yes! That’s what we should do,” Sara said stubbornly. “Only we’ve got no guts. We’ve let ourselves be brainwashed too long.” She gave Brian an accusing, discouraged look, such as another woman might give an incompetent repairman, and turned back to Jenny. “Come on, let’s split. We’ve got to get that meeting organized.”

From the departmental point of view things have turned out for the best, but Brian regrets that the protest has ended in a rout. Sara had held her meeting last night, and Wendy dutifully attended the first two hours of it. (Brian, as usual, did not go; he would have been unwelcome, not as a professor, but as a man.) She reported that there was a lot of discussion still going on when she left, but no plan of action. Brian was not surprised; women alone can never really get a cause together. It is not only that they are too gentle, but also, as he has read recently, that they lack the male bonding instinct, the tradition of cooperation against a common enemy.

Wendy has poured him another cup of coffee, and is cooking herself a brownish mess of health-food cereal and nuts and raisins when the telephone rings. It is Linda, breathlessly asking to speak to her.

“For you.” Brian holds out the receiver.

“Hi ...What? ...Oh, wow! ...Fantastic ...No, we didn’t hear the radio. Gee, I don’t know. Wait a sec.” She turns around. “Linda says they’ve taken over Dibble’s office! She’s going over there now, and she wants me to come with her. Oh, hey, isn’t that far out?”

“Taken over his office?” Brian drops the
Times,
causing the Cosmopolitan Girl on the back page to become smeared with egg and marmalade, and stands up. He is torn between reluctance to speak with Linda and wish for information. But he recalls her habitual inaccuracy, and the first impulse wins. “Tell her you’ll call back. And turn on WCUR.”

“I’ll call you back ...As soon as I can ...She says she can’t wait,” Wendy reports, hanging up.

“... more bulletins as they are received,” the radio announces. “And now a message from Bud Wordsworth, president of the Savings Bank.” Brian turns down the sound, knowing from experience that this pompous commercial will last sixty seconds.

“They’ve taken over Dibble’s office,” he repeats. “How many of them?”

“About twelve or fifteen, Linda said. Nearly everybody who stayed at the meeting last night. She would’ve been with them, only she had to teach her eight o’clock class. Hey, isn’t it just fine, though?”

Brian does not reply, but checks his watch: it is a quarter after nine. “And what’s Dibble doing?” he asks.

“Nothing, I guess. He was talking on the phone for a while, but then they cut the wire.”

“You mean he’s in there with them?”

“Oh, yeh.” Wendy grins. “That’s the whole idea. Sara was talking about it last night, but I didn’t think she’d convince them. They’re holding him hostage, like you told them to.” She gazes at Brian proudly.

“Oh, Christ.” A vision comes to him of Donald Dibble at his desk, surrounded—indeed jostled, for the room is hardly ten feet square—by angry girl students. Again Brian has the sense of his own power to affect circumstances; but this time it is the uncontrolled, ignorant power of the sorcerer’s apprentice.

He turns the radio up again, hearing first that savings are grow-power for our community and then that everything Wendy has said is true. He learns that although campus patrolmen have been called to the scene, no action has yet been taken against the demonstrators; and that neither William Guildenstern, chairman of the political science department, or Ned Kane, dean of the Humanities, has made any statement.

An undertone of amusement in the voice of the campus reporter causes Brian to realize for the first time that there is a humorous, even farcical side to the situation. Whatever happens now, Dibble’s goose is cooked. For the rest of his life he will be known locally as that professor who was imprisoned by a gang of girls. People will make jokes about it, including people who know Dibble well enough to suspect that the worst thing he could imagine is to be locked in a room with fifteen women. For the first time since Linda’s call, Brian smiles, then laughs aloud.

But of course to Dibble it is no joke. Or to Bill Guildenstern. “I’d better get up there,” he says. “Come on. Leave the dishes, for God’s sake”

“You realize I don’t want you to go into the building,” he informs Wendy as they ride down in the elevator five minutes later.

“But I told Linda,” Wendy mews. She is now dressed for revolutionary action, in jeans and boots and an old fringed cowboy jacket with peace symbols blazed on the lapels. Her pale, fine yellow hair is loose, her eyes bright. “I promised her—”

“I don’t care what you promised Linda,” returns Brian, who has also changed his clothes, though in the other direction, replacing his cord pants and knit jersey with a suit, shirt and tie in anticipation of his interview with Bill and Ned Kane. “I don’t want you involved in this misguided affair.”

“Misguided?” she wails. “But it was your idea!”

“It was not my idea,” Brian corrects her as the elevator comes to rest with its customary cough and bump. “I’ve never recommended political violence of any sort,” he continues, determined to make it clear that the occupation of Dibble’s office cannot be blamed on him. “As soon as you do something illegal you’re in the wrong, and then, even if you win, you lose morally.”

“Yeh.” Wendy stops in the foyer. “That’s what Zed says. Every time you do a violent act you lose a year on the Path, he says.”

“Does he.” Brian holds the outside door open and motions her through, suppressing further remarks which occur to him in the interest of expediency. Nevertheless it irritates him profoundly that Wendy should still refer her opinions to a middle-aged life dropout who has fused his mental circuits with religious nonsense and drugs. It does not improve his estimate of this creep that he should turn out to be an old Cambridge acquaintance of Erica’s.

It is obvious as they turn onto campus that something unusual is happening. The parking lot by Burnham Hall is full of official-looking cars, some without U stickers, and as Brian pulls into a fortunately vacated space he sees two men getting out of a panel truck with what looks like a portable television camera. On the side of the building facing the quad there is a small but growing crowd of spectators and journalists. He follows their gaze to the second-floor window of Dibble’s office, but can make out nothing past the glare of sun on glass.

Cautioning Wendy again not to follow him, he enters Burnham. There are more spectators in the hallway; he pushes through them with difficulty and expostulation, thinking as he often does that students seem to be getting larger and ruder every year. He explains his way past two campus cops guarding the stairs and another at the top. At the far end of the upstairs hall he can see a crowd of people, all men. He recognizes some of them: two boys from the campus paper whom he knows, Jenny’s bearded friend Mark, and the sad hitchhiker Stanley. He does not approach, but turns into the department office, where Bill is in conference with representatives of the administration and the Safety Division.

“Ah, Brian.” It is a sigh of relief. “Excuse me a moment, gentlemen.” Bill draws Brian aside into his secretary’s office (now empty) and in a tense and distracted manner attempts to fill him in: Dibble has been imprisoned for over an hour now. Several people have tried to talk to him on the phone and persuade him to make what is after all a rather slight concession, but without success. Now the line has been cut, and the gang of male sympathizers will let no one through. Worse still, both Dean Kane and President Backson are out of town.

Having no one to pass the buck to in this, his first serious crisis has obviously been too much for Bill. His voice rises and falls nervously as he speaks, and he keeps patting his upper arms with both hands as if to assure himself that he is still there.

“I know some of those kids,” Brian volunteers finally. In contrast to Bill he feels quite calm. “They might let me in. But it’s no use my talking to Don; he hates my guts. Why don’t you try John Randall?”

“I called him.” Bill almost grins. “He won’t have anything to do with it—says the protesters have forfeited their rights by taking illegal action.”

“Uh huh.” It is what he would have, expected from Randall.

“Of course there’s the Safety Division,” Bill admits, anticipating a recommendation Brian is not going to make. “But that might be dangerous.” Pat, pat.

“You think they’d hurt the girls?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the girls would hurt the cops. But either way—You can imagine the news stories. We’ve got to get Don out of there; when I spoke to him on the phone half an hour ago he was already hysterical.”

“You want to get Don out.” Though Brian speaks slowly, plans are rocketing through his brain. There is a way, he is sure. Somehow the scene outside on the quad under Dibble’s window is part of it—Yes.

“I have an idea,” he says. “Wait—not here.” He gestures with his head toward Helen Wells and the secretaries in the outer office. Helen has been with the political science department longer than he, and the others have always seemed nice, obliging girls. But they are women, and one of them may be a spy. He draws Bill back into the chairman’s office, and leaning close across the table where the other men are sitting with worried expressions on their faces, outlines his plan.

Fifteen minutes later Brian emerges from a custodian’s closet in the basement of Burnham Hall. He looks slightly odd, for he is wearing Bill Guildenstern’s raincoat which is much too long for
him
and would ordinarily also be too wide. Now, however, it fits snugly over the fifty feet of heavy knotted rope that is wrapped around his body under his suit jacket, giving him the outward shape of a fat man or a pregnant woman.

On the stairs to the first floor he meets Hank Andrews.

“Well! You’ve heard the good news, I take it?” Hank grins and leans against the banister. But Brian has no time for conversation.

“Yes, I’m on my way to see Don now.” He suppresses the impulse to confide in Hank, promising himself that later he will explain everything, accept his friend’s congratulations.

“You’re going into Don’s office?” Hank frowns. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you ...They won’t let you in anyhow,” he adds more easily.

“I think they may. I know some of them.”

“Even so. I don’t advise it.”

“And what would you advise?” Brian asks impatiently. He advances to the next step, bringing his head on a level with Hank’s.

“I would suggest that you follow the example of Our Leader: leave town at once in any crisis.” Hank’s tone is so serious that Brian decides he is joking.

“It’s too late for that; I’ve just promised Bill I’d do what I can. He’s quite
non compos,
” he adds, smiling.

“You might have a sudden illness.” Hank puts his hand on Brian’s shoulder, an unusual gesture.

Brian stops smiling. Usually he enjoys his friend’s jokes and respects his opinion; now he remembers that Hank has always avoided responsibility—he recently refused again to be considered for chairman, for instance. He thinks that although Hank is six feet tall, he is a passive intellectual, a coward, who would not dare conceive or carry out Brian’s present plan. “I’ll see you later.” He goes up another step; now he is taller than Hank.

“Seriously,” Hank continues. “Let Bill worry—Hey, what’ve you got there?” he asks as his hand slides off Brian’s shoulder and down over the bulge of knotted rope. But Brian does not reply, or even look back as he ascends the stairs, two at a time.

Nine o’clock classes are ending, and there are even more people in the hall for him to push through. The cops do not question him this time; perhaps they have already been alerted to what will soon happen.

Upstairs the sympathizers are still on guard outside Dibble’s office, accompanied now by a reporter and photographer from the local paper who take notes and snap Brian’s picture. As he had anticipated, he has little trouble persuading Mark and Stanley to let him speak with the protesters. But when Sara and a girl named Pat, who resembles her, come out into the hall, it is nearly impossible to convince them to give him some time alone with Dibble.

“We can’t talk if you’re all in there, you must see that,” he insists, wishing he had pretty Jenny, or even Linda Sliski, to deal with instead of these militant tomboys. “Dibble’s got to have privacy to negotiate, to save his face—”

“We’re not interested in saving his ugly face,” interrupts Sara’s confederate, a skinny small girl with long mouse-colored braids.

“But you’ve got to consider what effect all this has on him. Dibble’s not a well man,” Brian improvises. “He has heart trouble.”

“Dibble couldn’t have heart trouble,” Sara retorts. “He has no heart. You should have heard some of the things he said to us in there.”

“He called us stupid, spoiled little girls,” Pat volunteers indignantly.

“He told Linda she was a denatured female, and he said he was going to see she never held another academic job in her life.”

“Very aggravating.” Brian prevents himself from smiling even slightly. “But the question is, do you want to win this battle, or don’t you? Are you going to let yourself be distracted by propaganda, by name-calling and threats? I think at least you should tell them all in there that I’ve offered to talk to Dibble, and put it to a vote,” he adds, seeing Sara hesitate.

“Well. Okay. Come on, Pat.”

For some minutes Brian waits in the hall, listening to the sounds of argument from behind the door and wondering if Mark or Stanley or the others notice anything suspicious about his appearance. Finally the door opens; Sara beckons to Brian and tells him it has been decided that he can see Dibble alone, but only for ten minutes. Behind her the other protesters crowd out into the hall—a small mob of badly dressed, angry-looking girls. All of them stare at Brian, a few with looks of distrust.