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back one of them into a corner of a room packed with undergraduates in full cry to have what he called a quiet talk. Tête-à-tête he could be dazzling. He listened carefully to what was said to him or at least gave that impression. He was less good in groups, especially groups of men. His timidity was one reason—he compensated for it by what I called his Penthesilea-meets-son-of-Peleus preciousness—and his utter ignorance of sports was another. He had never been to a baseball game. Archie had dragged him to a couple of football games at Soldiers’ Field and tried to explain to him the basics. Henry could discourse on books with great brio, and that is what he presumably talked about with those girls. However, the girls who came to these parties, even if they liked books, intimidated him by their provocative, hard-edged manners and staccato wit, and by their trick of creating an illusion of physical intimacy, of almost being in your arms, an illusion they could dispel as quickly as it had been created. Instead, he had dates with Radcliffe girls Archie called Henry’s dogs: sincere and nice girls too fat or too skinny, with legs bowed or shaped like a Percheron’s. He made no mystery of why. You can ask them out at the last minute, he explained, you don’t have to huff and puff for the privilege of feeling them up, and the risk of rejection is minimal. It was all true, but I thought he was selling himself short. Although he certainly didn’t fit the
Stover at Yale
stereotype, he was handsome, and it wasn’t his conversation alone that made him fleetingly attractive to the girls at parties given by Archie’s friends. I preached the lesson of self-confidence to Henry over and over. He would hear me out very politely. Once, exasperated, I asked whether this was another manifestation of the Jewish problem and, if it was, did he tell the dogs that he was a Jew. Cool as a cucumber, he replied that of course it was, it was all about being Jewish. As to what he told the dogs, he said there was no general rule: it depended on what he was doing with them. I was puzzled. This seemed a departure from his policy neither to deny Jewism nor proclaim it unbidden. Did he kiss or fondle them without saying that he was a Jew, but inform them if something more was in the offing? I said to myself that he surely told them, and right away was shocked by my own attitude. Did it imply that being Jewish was like having untreated gonorrhea?
    Sometime before Thanksgiving Henry told me he thought he had found Penthesilea in his humanities course. The cavernous space of Sanders barely held the crowd drawn by lectures of the visiting professor, a well-known and controversial litterateur. So far, Henry had studied the girl only from a distance, but, if it was indeed Penthesilea, he knew her more prosaic name: Margot Hornung. Another girl called Sue, next to whom he usually sat, had told him all about her. They had attended the same girls’ school in the city. Henry thought Sue liked him. Yes, she’s a dog, he admitted. Sue and he talked before and after class, passed notes to each other, and went for tea and English muffins at Hayes-Bickford. He had never met a bigger gossip. I was curious to hear the tales she told, but Henry said there wasn’t any point until I had confirmed the identification. He proposed that I come to Sanders for that purpose the next day. It was a silly idea: we had each had the same opportunity to study her looks. Finally, I gave in, in part because I was curious about the visiting professor. We got to Sanders early, and there were still some empty seats up front, but Henry pulled me along to one of the back rows. When I protested, he said that I’d be able to hear perfectly well. Anyway, that was where Sue sat, and she was saving our places. She turned out to be a pleasant-looking blond who showed braces over tiny yellow teeth when she smiled. Henry sat down between us. The hall was filling up, and I had begun to