ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY. Long before I came to Harvard I dreamed of being a chorus girl.

November 4, 1955

Long before I came to Harvard I dreamed of being a chorus girl.

Not only is it a lot of laughs, but it’s also a great way to meet women.

For over a century now the Hasty Pudding Club has been producing an annual all-male musical comedy. The authors are usually the best wits in the college (that’s how Alan J. Lerner ’40 trained to write My Fair Lady ).

But the show’s legendary status is not due to the quality of the script, but rather the quantity of the chorus line. For this unique corps de ballet is peopled by brawny preppie jocks in drag, kicking up their hairy muscular legs.

After its Cambridge run, this mindless and fairly gross extravaganza makes a brief tour of cities selected for the hospitality of their alumni and, most important, the nubility of their daughters.

I remember years ago, when my dad first took me to one of these productions, thinking the thundering hoof beats of the can can guys would quite literally bring down the house. They made that whole wooden building on Holyoke Street tremble.

This year’s production (the 108th) is called A Ball for Lady Godiva — which should give you some idea of the refined level of its humor.

Anyway, the first afternoon of tryouts looked like an elephants’ convention. I mean, some of the football players made a crewman like Wigglesworth seem sylphlike by comparison. There was no question that all these mastodons were dying to be one of Lady Godiva’s chambermaids — which is how they were going to dress this year’s Rockettes.

I knew the competition would be rough, so I worked out with weights (toe raises and squats) to beef up my leg muscles in hopes of getting them to look incongruous enough to make the grade.

We each got about a minute to sing something, but I think the whole issue was decided in the split second when we were asked to roll up our trousers.

They called us alphabetically, and, with knees knocking, I walked up on stage to sing a snatch of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in my very lowest baritone.

I sweated for two days waiting for them to post the cast list this afternoon.

It contained two surprises.

Neither Wig nor I got to be chambermaids. Mike — to his eternal glory — captured the coveted role of Fifi, Lady Godiva’s debutante daughter.

And J — O shame! — was cast as Prince Macaroni, one of the suitors for his hand.

“Great,” Mike enthused, “I’m actually rooming with one of my costars.”

I was not amused. I was thinking that I’d failed again.

I wasn’t even man enough to be a girl.

***

It was the usual Friday night at The Marathon. Every table was packed with chattering Harvard men and their dates. Socrates urged his staff to hurry along since there was a vast crowd of people standing outside waiting their turn. Up front near the cashier’s desk there seemed to be some argument going on. Socrates called across to his elder son in Greek, “Theo, go and help your sister.”

Ted hastened to the rescue. As he approached, he could hear Daphne protesting, “Look, I am terribly sorry but you must have misunderstood. We never take reservations on the weekends.”

But the tall, supercilious preppie in the Chesterfield coat seemed quite adamant that he had booked a table for 8:00 P.M. and was not about to stand outside on Mass. Avenue with (in so many words) the hoi polloi. Daphne was relieved to see her brother arrive.

“What’s going on, sis?” Ted asked.

“This gentleman insists he had a reservation, Teddy. And you know our policy about weekends.”

“Yes,” Ted responded, and turned immediately to the protesting client to explain, “we would never —”

He stopped in mid-sentence when he noticed who was standing next to the irate, distinguished-looking man.

“Hi, Ted,” said Sara Harrison, who was manifestly embarrassed at her escort’s rudeness. “I think Alan’s made a mistake. I’m terribly sorry.”

Her date glared at her.

“I don’t make such errors,” he stated emphatically, and immediately turned back to Ted. “l cafled yesterday evening and spoke to some woman. Her English wasn’t very good so I was quite explicit.”

“That must have been Mama,” Daphne offered.

“Well, Mama should have written it down,” insisted the punctilious Alan.

“She did,” said Ted, who now had a large reservations book in his hand. “Are you Mr. Davenport?”

“I am,” said Alan. “Do you see my reservation for eight o’clock?”

“Yes. It’s listed for last night, Thursday — when we do accept reservations. Look.” He offered the document.

“How can I read that, man? It’s in Greek,” he protested.

“Then ask Miss Harrison to read it to you.”

“Don’t involve my date in your mess-up, waiter.”

“Please, Alan, he’s a friend of mine. We’re both in classics. And he’s right.” Sara pointed to the approximation of “Davenport” scribbled by Mrs. Lambros for eight o’clock the previous night. “You must have forgotten to tell her it was for the next day.”

“Sara, what on earth is the matter with you?” Alan snapped. “Are you taking some illiterate woman’s word against mine?”

“Excuse me, sir,” said Ted, reining in his temper as best he could. “I’m sure my mother is no less literate than yours. She just happens to prefer writing in her native tongue.”

Sara tried to end the increasingly bitter dispute.

“Come on, Alan,” she said softly, “let’s go for a pizza. That’s all I wanted in the first place.”

“No, Sara, there’s a matter of principle involved here.”

“Mr. Davenport,” Ted said quietly, “if you’ll stop blustering I’ll give you the next available table. But if you persist in this obnoxious behavior, I’ll throw you the hell out.”

“I beg your pardon, garçon,” Alan responded. “I happen to be a third-year law student, and since I am in no way inebriated, you have no right to eject me. If you try, I’ll sue the pants off you.”

“Excuse me,” Ted replied. “You may have learned a lot of fancy concepts at Harvard Law, but I doubt if you studied the Cambridge city ordinances that allow a proprietor to kick out somebody — inebriated or not — if he’s making a disturbance.”

By now Alan had sensed that this was turning into a jungle duel, with Sara as the prize.

“I dare you to throw me out,” he snapped.

For a second nobody moved. Clearly, the two antagonists were squaring off for a battle.

Daphne sensed that her brother was about to imperil their whole livelihood and whispered, “Please, Teddie, don’t.”

“Would you care to step outside, Alan?” said a voice.

Alan was startled. For it was Sara who had spoken these words. He glared down at her.

“No,” he retorted angrily. “I’m going to stay here and have dinner.”

“Then you’ll eat it alone,” she replied, and marched out.

As Daphne Lambros thanked God many times under her breath, Ted stormed into the kitchen, where he began to pound his fists against the wall.

In an instant his father arrived. “Ti diabolo echeis , Theo? What’s this ridiculous behavior? The house is full, the customers are complaining. Do you want to ruin me?”

“I want to die,” Ted shouted, continuing to attack the wall.

“Theo, my son, my eldest, we have a living to earn. I beg you to go back and take care of tables twelve through twenty.”

Just then Daphne stuck her head through the kitchen door.

“The natives are getting restless,” she said. “What’s the matter with Teddie?”

“Nothing!” Socrates growled. “Get back to the cash register, Daphne!”

“But, Papa,” she replied timorously, “there’s a girl who wants to speak to Theo —the one who sort of refereed the fight.”

“Omigod!” Ted gasped and took one step toward the men’s room.

“Where the hell are you going now?” Socrates barked.

“To comb my hair,” said Ted as he disappeared.

Sara Harrison was standing shyly in a corner, shivering slightly in her coat, even though the place was overheated.

Ted walked up to her. “Hi,” he said with the casual expression he had frantically rehearsed in front of the mirror.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she began.

“That’s okay.”

“No, let me explain,” she insisted. “He was an insufferable bore. He was like that from the minute he picked me up.”

“Then why do you date a guy like that?”

“Date? That creature was a fix-up. His-mother-knows-my-mother sort of thing.”

“Oh,” said Ted.

“I mean filial duty has its limits. If my mother ever tries that again, I’ll say I’m taking holy vows. He was the pits, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.” Ted Lambros smiled.

Then there was an awkward pause.

“Uh — I’m sorry,” Sara repeated, “I guess I’m keeping you from your work.”

“They can all starve, for all I care. I’d rather talk to you.”

Omigod , he thought to himself. How did that slip out?

“Me too,” she said shyly.

From the vortex of the busy restaurant his father called out in Greek, “Theo, get back to work or I’ll put my curse on you!”

“I think you’d better go, Ted,” Sara murmured.

“Can I ask just one question first?”

“Sure.”

“Where’s Alan now?”

“In hell, I suppose,” Sara replied. “At least that’s where I told him to go.”

“That means you haven’t got a date tonight,” Ted grinned.

“Theo!” his father bellowed. “I will curse you and your children’s children.”

Ignoring the increased paternal threat, Ted continued, “Sara, if you can wait another hour, I’d like to take you to dinner.”

Her reply was a single syllable: “Fine.”

The cognoscenti knew that the Newtowne Grill, beyond Porter Square, served the best pizza in Cambridge. This is where, at eleven o’clock, Ted brought Sara (in the family’s beat-up Chevy Biscayne) for their first dinner date. He had finished his chores at The Marathon with extraordinary speed, for there were wings on his heart.

They sat at a table by the window, where a red neon sign flashed periodically on their faces, giving the whole atmosphere the feeling of a dream — which Ted still half-believed it was. While waiting for their pizza they each sipped a beer.

“I can’t understand why a girl like you would even dream of accepting a blind date,” said Ted.

“Well, it’s better than sitting home studying on a Saturday night, isn’t it?”

“But you must be besieged with offers. I mean, I always imagined you were booked up through 1958.”

“That’s one of the great Harvard myths, Ted. Half of Radcliffe sits around feeling miserable on Saturday night because everybody at Harvard just assumes somebody else has asked them out. Meanwhile, all the girls at Wellesley have roaring social lives.”

Ted was amazed. “I wish to hell I had known. I mean, you never mentioned …”

“Well, it’s not the sort of thing you bring up over Creek verbs and English muffins,” she replied, “although I sometimes wished I had.”

Ted was nearly bowled over.

“Do you know, Sara,” he confessed, “I’ve been dying to ask you out since the very first minute I saw you.”

She looked at him with sudden brightness in her eyes.

“Well, what the hell took you so long — am I that intimidating?” she asked.

“Not anymore.”

He parked the Chevy in front of Cabot Hall and walked her to the door. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes.

“Sara,” he said firmly, “I’ve waded through a year of English muffins for this.”

And he kissed her with the passion that he’d stored up in a million fantasies.

She responded with an equal fervor.

When at last he started home, he was so intoxicated that he barely felt his feet make contact with the ground. Then suddenly he stopped. Oh shit, he thought, I left the car in front of Cabot Hall! He dashed back to retrieve it, hoping Sara would not notice his idiotic error from her window.

But at that moment, Sara Harrison’s eyes were not focused on anything. She was simply sitting motionless on her bed, staring into space.

The final lyrics of Greek 2B were by an author not generally known for amorous verse — Plato.

“It’s ironic,” Professor Havelock remarked, “but the philosopher who banished poetry from his Ideal Republic was himself the author of perhaps the most perfect lyric ever written.” And he then read out in Greek one of the famous Aster epigrams.

Star of my life, to the stars your face is turned;

Would I were the heavens, looking back at you with ten thousand eyes.

Appropriately enough, the bells of Memorial Hall tolled the end of the class. As they walked out the door together, Ted whispered to Sara, “I wish I were the heavens.”

“Nothing doing,” she replied. “I want you right nearby.”

And they walked toward The Bick hand in band.

***

November is the cruelest month — at least for ten percent of the sophomore class. For it is then that the Final Clubs (so called because you can belong to only one) make their definitive selections. These eleven societies exist merely on the edge of Harvard life. But it is, one may say, the gilt edge.

A Final Club is an elite, if homogeneous, institution where rich preppies can go and have drinks with other rich preppies. These gentlemanly sodalities do not intrude on college life. Indeed, the majority of Harvard men barely know they exist.

But, needless to say, November was a busy month for Messrs. Eliot, Newall, and Wigglesworth. Their suite was a veritable mecca for tweedy pilgrims, flocking to implore them to join their order.

Like modern musketeers, the three decided they’d stick together. Though they got invited to punches for most of the clubs, it was pretty clear that they’d go to either the Porcellian, the AD, or the Fly.

In fact, if all got asked, they knew they’d join the Porc. If you’re going to bother with these things, it might as well be the undisputed number one, “the oldest men’s club in America.”

Having been included in the P.C.’s last-cut dinner, they assumed they were in.

Back at Eliot, they were still in their penguin suits, nursing a final digestif , when there was a sudden knock at the door.

Newall quipped that it might be some desperate emissary from another club — perhaps the AD, which took Franklin D. Roosevelt when the Porcellian blackballed him.

It turned out to be Jason Gilbert.

“Am I disturbing you guys?” he asked somberly.

“No, not at all,” Andrew responded. “Come in and join us for a brandy.”

“Thanks, but I never touch the stuff,” he replied.

His glance made them curiously self-conscious about their attire.

“The final dinner, huh?” he inquired. “Yeah,” Wig replied casually.

“The Porc?” he asked.

“Right the first time,” Newall sang out.

But neither Mike nor Dick sensed the tinge of bitterness in Jason’s voice.

“Was it a tough decision, guys?” he asked.

“Not really,” said Wig. “We had a couple of other options, but the P.C. seemed the most attractive.”

“Oh,” said Jason. “It must feel great to be wanted.”

“You ought to know,” Newall quipped. “Every lovely at The Cliffe burns incense to your picture.”

Jason didn’t smile. “That’s probably because they don’t realize I’m a leper.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Gilbert?” Andrew asked.

“I’m talking about the fact that while almost every guy I know got at least one invitation to the first punch of a club, I wasn’t even asked by the lowly BAT. I never realized I was such an asshole.”

“Come on, Jason,” Newall said reassuringly. “Final Clubs are a bunch of crap.”

“I’m sure they are,” he replied. “Which is why you guys are all thrilled to be joining one. I just thought that being tuned to the club mentality, you might have some notion as to what precisely they found so obnoxious about me.”

Newall, Wig, and Andrew looked uncomfortably at one another, wondering who would have to explain to Jason what they had assumed was obvious. Andrew could see that his roommates weren’t up to it. So he made a stab at the not-so-commendable facts of Harvard life.

“Hey, Jason,” he began. “Who are the guys that mostly get asked to the clubs?

Preppies from St. Paul’s, Mark’s, Groton. It’s kind of a common bond. You know, birds of a feather flocking together and so forth. You can see what I mean?”

“Sure,” Gilbert retorted ironically. “I just didn’t go to the right prep school, huh?”

“Yeah,” Wig quickly agreed. “Right on target.”

To which Jason replied, “Horseshit.”

There was a deathly silence in the room. Finally Newall grew annoyed that Jason had broken their mellow mood.

“For Christ’s sake, Gilbert, why the hell should a Final Club have to take Jews? I mean, would the Hillel Society want me?”

“That’s a religious organization, dammit! And they wouldn’t want me. I mean, I’m not even —”

He stopped, his sentence half-completed. For a moment, Andrew thought that Jason had been about to say he wasn’t Jewish. But that would be absurd. Could a Negro stand there and suggest he wasn’t black?

“Hey, listen, Newall,” Wigglesworth piped up, “the guy’s our friend. Don’t piss him off more than he is.”

“I’m not pissed off,” Jason said in a quiet fury. “Let’s just say I’m uncomfortably enlightened. Good night, birds, sorry to have interrupted your flocking together.”

He turned and left the room.

That called for another round of brandy and a philosophical observation from Michael Wigglesworth. “Why’s a neat guy like Jason that defensive about his background? I mean, there’s nothing so bad about being Jewish. Unless you really care about stupid things like Final Clubs.”

“Or being President of the United States,” added Andrew Eliot.

--*--

November 16, 1955

Dear Dad,

I didn’t get into a Final Club. I know in the scheme of things it’s not that important, and I really don’t care that much about having another place to go and drink.

Still, what really bothers me is that I wasn’t even considered. And most of all the reason why.

When I finally worked up the guts to ask some of my friends (at least I always thought they were my friends) for an explanation, they didn’t pussyfoot around. They just came straight out and told me that the Final Clubs never take Jews. Actually, they put it in such a genteel way that it hardly sounded like prejudice.

Dad, this is the second time I’ve been rejected for something simply because people regard me as Jewish.

How do you reconcile this with the fact that you’ve always told me we were Americans “just like everybody else”? I believed you — and I still want to. But somehow the world doesn’t seem to share your opinion.

Perhaps being Jewish is not something you can remove like a change of clothing.

Maybe that’s why we’re getting all of the prejudice and none of the pride.

There are lots of really gifted people here at Harvard who think being Jewish is some kind of special honor. That confuses me as well. Because now more than ever I’m not sure exactly what a Jew is. I just know lots of people think I’m one.

Dad, I’m terribly confused and so I’m turning for help to the person I respect most in the world. It’s important that I solve this mystery.

Because until I find out what I am, I’ll never find out who I am.

Your loving son,

Jason

His father did not answer this disturbing letter. Instead, he canceled a full day of business meetings and took the train straight up to Boston.

When Jason walked out of squash practice he could hardly believe his eyes.

“Dad, what are you doing here?”

“Come on, son, let’s go to Durgin Park and have one of their super steaks.”

In a sense, the choice of restaurant said everything. For the world-famous chophouse near the abattoirs of Boston had no booths or private corners. With its inverted snobbery, it placed bankers and busmen at the same long tables with red checkered cloths. A kind of forced democracy of the carnivorous.

Perhaps the elder Gilbert was sincerely unaware that inti mate communication was impossible in such a setting. Perhaps he chose it merely out of an atavistic feeling of protectiveness. He’d feed his boy to somehow compensate for all the hurt he felt.

In any case, amid the clatter of heavy china plates and shouting, from the open kitchen, all that Jason came away with was the fact that Dad was there to back him up. And he’d always be. Life was full of disappointments. The only way to deal with minor setbacks was to fight back harder still.

“Someday, Jason,” he had said, “when you’re a senator, the boys who turned you down now will be mighty sorry. And believe me, son, this painful incident — and hey, I really hurt with you — won’t mean a thing.”

Jason accompanied his father to South Station for the midnight train. Before he climbed aboard, the elder Gilbert patted Jason on the shoulder and remarked, “Son, there’s no one in the world I love more than you. Always remember that.”

Jason walked back toward the subway feeling strangely empty.

***

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

Sara Harrison sat bolt upright, her face flushed.

“Come on, Ted. How many times in your life have you refused to make love to a girl?”

“I take the Fifth Amendment,” he protested.

“Ted, it’s dark here and you still look embarrassed as hell. I don’t care how many girls you’ve slept with before me. I just wish you’d let me join the club.”

“No, Sara. It just doesn’t seem right in the back of a Chevrolet.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, I do, dammit. I mean, I want our first time to be somewhere a little more romantic. You know, like the banks of the Charles.”

“Are you crazy, Ted? It’s freezing! What about the Kirkland Motel? I’ve heard their policy is pretty lax.”

Ted sat up and shook his head. “No go,” he sighed despondently. “The guy that owns it is a family friend.”

“Which brings us back to this lovely Chevrolet.”

“Please, Sara, I want this to be different. Look — next Saturday we can drive to New Hampshire.”

“New Hampshire? Have you lost your mind? You mean from now on we’ll have to drive a hundred miles every time we want to make love?”

“No no no,” he protested. “Just till I can find a decent place. God, if ever I wished I lived in a House, it’s now. At least those guys can have women in their rooms in the afternoons.”

“Well, you don’t, and I’m stuck in a Radcliffe dorm that only lets men visit once in a blue moon …”

“Well, when’s the next blue moon?”

“Not till the last Sunday of next month.”

“Okay. We’ll wait till then.”

“And what are we supposed to do in the meantime — take cold showers?”

“I don’t see why you’re in such a hurry, Sara.”

“I don’t see why you’re not.”

In truth Ted could not explain the qualms he felt about the prospect of “going all the way” with her. He had grown up with the notion that love and sex were for two completely different kinds of women. While he and his buddies took swaggering pride in their exploits with girls who “went down,” none of them would ever have dreamed of marrying anyone who was not a virgin.

And though he dared not admit it even to himself, something subconscious in him wondered why a “nice” girl like Sara Harrison was so eager to make bye. And so he welcomed the delay till Visitors’ Sunday at her dorm. It would give him more time to reconcile the antitheses of sensuality and love.

Still there was a nagging question in the back of his mind and he searched for ways to broach it delicately.

Sara sensed that he was anxious about something.

“Hey, what’s eating you?”

“I don’t know. It’s just — I wish I’d been the first.”

“But you are, Ted. You’re the first man I’ve ever really loved.”

***

“Andrew — are you busy tonight?” Ted asked nervously. “I mean, could you spare me five minutes after the library closes?”

“Sure, Lambros. Want to go downstairs to the Grill for a couple of cheeseburgers?”

“Uh? Well, actually, I’d prefer someplace a little more private.”

“We could take the food up to my room.”

“That would he great. I’ve got something special to drink.”

“Ah, Lambros, that sounds really interesting.”

At a quarter past midnight, Andrew Eliot placed two cheeseburgers on the coffee table in his suite, and Ted produced a bottle from his bookbag.

“Have you ever tasted retsina?” he asked. “It’s the Greek national drink. I’ve brought you some as a kind of gift.”

“What for?”

Ted lowered his head and mumbled, “Actually, it’s sort of a bribe. I need a favor from, you, Andy, a really big favor.”

From the embarrassed look on his friend’s face, Andrew was sure he was about to be hit for a loan.

“I really don’t know how to say this,” Ted began, as Andrew poured the retsina.

“But whether you say yes or no, swear you’ll never tell a soul about this.”

“Sure sure, of course. Now spill — you’re giving me a heart attack from the tension.”

“Andy,” Ted started shyly, “I’m in love …”

He stopped again.

“Uh, congratulations,” Andrew responded, uncertain of what else to say.

“Thanks, but you see, that’s the problem.”

“I don’t get it, Lambros. What’s the problem?”

“Promise you won’t make any moral judgments?”

“Frankly, I don’t think I have any morals that I know of.”

“Listen, could I borrow your room a couple of afternoons a week?”

“That’s it? That’s what’s giving you a brain hemorrhage? When do you need it?”

“Well,” he replied, “house parietal rules let you have girls in the room between four and seven. Do you and your roommates need this place in the afternoons?”

“No sweat. Wigglesworth’s got crew and then eats at the Varsity Club, Ditto for Newall with tennis. I work out in the JAB. So that leaves you a clear field for whatever you’ve got in mind.”

Ted was suddenly beaming.

“God, Eliot, how can I ever thank you?”

“Well, the occasional bottle of retsina isn’t a bad idea. There’s only one thing — I’ll have to know this girl’s name so I can sign her in as my guest. It’ll be a little tricky at first, but the super’s a good guy.”

They established a system that would enable Ted and his inamorata (“an absolute goddess” named Sara Harrison) to enjoy the hospitality of Eliot House. All he had to do was give Andrew a few hours’ warning.

Ted was effusive with gratitude and floated out of the room as if on a cloud.

Andrew was left wondering, as that clever Yalie Cole Porter put it, “What is this thing called love?”

He sure as hell didn’t know.

***

The spring belonged to Jason Gilbert.

He finished his initial season of varsity squash undefeated. And Went straight on to unseat the current captain for the number-one singles slot on the tennis team. Here, too, he did not lose a match. He then crowned his sophomore achievements by winning both the IC4A and Eastern College titles.

These ultimate exploits made him the first member of The Class to have his picture on the sports page of the more widely circulated version of the Crimson , i.e., The New York Times .

If he had suffered any psychic damage from the unhappy experience with the Final Clubs, it was in no way apparent — at least to his athletic opponents.

In every American college there is always a figure known as the BMOC — “Big Man on Campus.” Harvard prided itself on not recognizing this as a valid designation.

Semantics notwithstanding, at this moment in the drama of undergraduate life, the undisputed hero — or in Shakespeare’s words “the observed of all observers” — was indisputably Jason Gilbert, Jr.

Danny Rossi’s esteem in the tiny music community could not counteract the chagrin he felt after the humiliating destruction of his piano. He hated Eliot House, and even at times began to resent Master Finley for bringing him to this den of obnoxious pseudo-sophisticates.

His disdain was reciprocated by most of the house members. And he ate almost every meal alone — except when Andrew Eliot would catch sight of him, sit down, and try to cheer him up.

Ted Lambros’s growing involvement with Sara demonstrated the validity of the platonic notion that love draws the mind to higher planes. He got straight A’s in all his classics courses. Moreover, he no longer felt himself a total alien from campus life. Perhaps because he was spending so many afternoons a week at Eliot House.

Andrew could only sit on the sidelines and marvel at how his classmates were developing. Petals were opening, blossoms emerging. Sophomore year was a glorious awakening for the entire Class.

It had been a time of hope. Of confidence. Of boundless optimism. Almost every member of The Class left Cambridge thinking, We’ve only half-begun.

When, in truth, it was half-over.

***

Danny Rossi’s second summer at Tanglewood had been even more memorable than his first. Whereas in 1955 his most exalted task was, as he himself put it with self-deprecating humor, “polishing Maestro Munch’s baton,” in 1956 he actually got to wave it in front of the orchestra.

The white-haired Frenchman had developed a grandfatherly affection for the eager little Californian. And, to the consternation of the other students at the Festival School, gave Danny every opportunity to make “real” music.

When Artur Rubinstein came up to play the Emperor Concerto , for example, Munch volunteered Danny to turn the virtuoso’s pages during rehearsal.

At the first break, Rubinstein, legendary for his prodigious musical, memory, bemusedly demanded to know why the conductor had stuck so familiar a score in front of his face. To which Munch replied with a sly grin that it was for the page turner’s benefit. So that Danny Rossi could study the master up close. “The boy is on fire,” he added.

“Weren’t we all at that age?” Rubinstein smiled.

Moments later he invited Danny to his dressing room, to hear his interpretation of the concerto.

Danny began hesitantly. But by the time he had reached the allegro of the third movement, he was too involved to be diffident. His fingers were flying. In fact, he stunned himself by the uncanny ease with which he played at such a frantic tempo.

At the end he looked up, breathless and sweating.

“Too fast, huh?”

The virtuoso nodded, but with admiration in his eyes. “Yes,” he acknowledged.

“But extremely good nonetheless.”

“Maybe I was just nervous, but this keyboard made it feel like I was rolling down a hill. It sort of sped me up.”

“Do you know why, my boy?” Rubinstein asked. “Since I am not gifted with great size, the Steinway people kindly manufactured this piano with the keys one-eighth smaller. Look again.”

Danny marveled at Artur Rubinstein’s personal piano. For on it he, who was also not “gifted with great size,” could stretch a full thirteenth with ease.

Then the master generously remarked, “Listen, we all know that I don’t need any pages turned. So why not stay here and play to your heart’s content?”

On another occasion, at an outdoor run-through of Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro , Munch suddenly gave a histrionic sigh of weariness and said, “This Massachusetts weather is too hot and humid for a Frenchman. I need five minutes in the shade.”

He then motioned to Danny. “Come here, young man,” he said, extending his baton.

“I think you know the piece enough to wave this stick in front of these musicians. Take over for a minute and be sure they behave.”

With this he left Danny feeling very naked and alone on the podium before the entire Boston Symphony.

Of course the orchestra had several assistant conductors and répétiteurs precisely for occasions such as this. And they stood on the sidelines burning with a lot more than summer heat.

He was really high that night. And as soon as he got back to his boarding house, Danny phoned Dr. Landau.

“That’s wonderful,” the teacher commented with pride. “Your parents must be delighted.”

“Yeah,” Danny answered half-evasively. “I — uh — would you mind calling Mom and telling her about it?”

“Daniel,” Dr. Landau answered gravely, “this melodrama with your father has gone on too long. Look, this is a perfect opportunity to make a gesture of conciliation.”

“Dr. Landau, please try to understand. I just can’t bring myself to …” His voice trailed off.