Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw Page B

subjects.’
    ‘It is,’ Rudolph said. ‘Pa, there’s no sense in talking about it, you’ve got to see her.’
    Jordache flicked a spot off the wood. Then he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and began rolling down his sleeves. He swung his windjacket over his shoulder, like a working man, and picked up his cloth cap and put it on his head, and stated walking. Rudolph followed him, not daring to suggest that perhaps it would be a good idea if his father went home and put on a suit before the conversation with Miss Lenaut.
    Miss Lenaut was seated at her desk correcting papers when Rudolph led his father into the room. The school building was empty, but there were shouts from the athletic field below the classroom windows. Miss Lenaut had put lipstick on at least three more times since Rudolph’s class. For the first time, he realised that she had thin lips and plumped them out artificially. She looked up when they came into the room and her mouth set. Jordache had put his windjacket on before entering the school and had taken off his cap, but he still looked like a workman.
    Miss Lenaut stood up as they approached the desk.
    ‘This is my father, Miss Lenaut,’ Rudolph said.
    ‘How do you do, sir?’ she said, without warmth.
    Jordache said nothing. He stood there, in front of the desk, chewing at his moustache, his cap in his hands, proletarian and subdued.
    ‘Has your son told you why I asked you to come this afternoon, Mr Jordache?’
    ‘No,’ Jordache said, ‘I don’t remember that he did.’ That peculiar, uncharacteristic mildness was in his voice, too. Rudolph wondered if his father was afraid of the woman.
    ‘It embarrasses me even to talk about, it.’ Miss Lenaut immediately became shrill again. ‘In all my years of teaching … The indignity … From a student who has always seemed ambitious and diligent. He did not say what he had done?’
    ‘No’, Jordache said. He stood there patiently, as though he had all day and all night to sort out the matter, whatever it turned out to be.
    ‘Eh, bien,’ Miss Lenaut said, ‘the burden devolves upon my
    shoulders.’ She bent down and opened the desk drawer and took out the drawing. She did not look at it, but held it down and away from her as she spoke. ‘In the middle of my classroom, when he was supposed to be writing a composition, do you know what he was doing?’
    ‘No,’ said Jordache.
    ‘This!’ She poked the drawing dramatically in front of Jordache’s nose. He took the paper from her and held it up to the light from the windows to get a better look at it. Rudolph peered anxiously at his father’s face, searching fpr signs. He half expected his father to turn and hit him on the spot and wondered if he would have the courage to just stand there and take it without flinching or crying out. Jordache’s face told him nothing. He seemed quite interested, but a little puzzled.
    Finally, he spoke. ‘I’m afraid I can’t read French,’ he said.
    ‘That is not the point,’ Miss Lenaut said excitedly.
    “There’s something written here in French.’ Jordache pointed with his big index finger to the phrase, ‘Je suis folle d’amour,’ that Rudolph had printed on the drawing of the blackboard in front of which the naked figure was standing.
    ‘I am crazy with love, I am crazy with love.’ Miss Lenaut was now striding up and down in short trips behind her desk.
    ‘What’s that?’ Jordache wrinkled his forehead, as though he was trying his best to understand but was out in waters too deep for him.
    “That’s what’s written there.’ Miss Lenaut pointed a mad finger at the sheet of paper. ‘It’s a translation of what your talented son has written there. “I am crazy with love, I am crazy with love.” ‘ She was shrieking now.
    ‘Oh, I see,’ Jordache said, as though a great light had dawned on him. ‘Is that dirty in French?’
    Miss Lenaut gained control of herself with a visible effort, although she was biting her