Him Her Him AgainThe End of Him Page 2

  “It was a typo,” I had said. “I meant ‘receive.’ ”

  “Jolly good. Carry on. Now. When you write ‘in 1934,’ do you mean ‘in the year 1934’?”

  There is nothing else in the English language that “in 1934” could possibly mean, but I kept that to myself. A week later, Geoffrey Guppy departed for Guinea-Bissau to do research and I was given a stand-in, Sean Shanahan, a scholar of revolution, who liked sherry and gossip. He believed that students were adults and should be treated as such, which meant he had affairs with some of them, though not with me. It also meant that he never broached the subject of my thesis. Geoffrey Guppy never returned to Cambridge, so don’t worry about keeping track of his name. Sean Shanahan remained my temporary adviser forever. He will prove to be of only minor significance in this story. If you forget his name, I’ll remind you the next time it comes up.

  * * *

  If a teacher believes that a certain undergraduate is not sharp enough to cut it in academia, is it the teacher’s responsibility to dissuade said student from continuing his or her education, thereby saving the student money and time, or should the teacher respect the student’s autonomy and simply hope that he or she will figure it out eventually?

  Eugene and I began discussing this issue when he mentioned that a student of his from Princeton had recently asked for advice about applying to graduate schools. Eugene considered the student mediocre.

  “You told him he was stupid?!” I said.

  “I used a different word,” Eugene said. “ ‘Obtuse.’ ”

  “And what did he say?” I said.

  “He said thank you,” Eugene said. “He must have been thinking of ‘astute.’ ”

  Eugene and I were still in my room, though we hadn’t been there as long as you probably think, maybe a half hour. We were having instant coffee, which I found delicious because it was Dutch. It didn’t bother me that the coffee contained specks of crud—all the more bohemian. I later realized I’d been drinking metal fragments from the electric kettle. I am including this detail in case I get a mysterious disease and the doctors need help with the diagnosis.

  “You said he had a B-plus average at Princeton,” I said. “How obtuse could he be?” Was there a way, I strained to think, to work in the fact without seeming to brag that I, too, had a commendable college grade point average?

  “To make a career in philosophy you have to be brilliant,” said the person who was making his career in philosophy.

  “He could be a late bloomer. You never know,” said the person who was beginning to fear she was an overachiever mistaken for an underachiever.

  “Believe me,” he said, stirring his coffee, “you can tell everything from day one.”

  “Isn’t that playing God?” I said, thinking the phrase was sophisticated. I was also thinking that I should probably tell Eugene, still stirring away, that those were specks of crud, not lumps of coffee, in his coffee.

  “I don’t believe in God,” he said. “And if I were a believer, I certainly wouldn’t believe in deism.” Deism? What did deism have to do with it? I was out of my league. “Maybe French deism, but certainly not the deism of Holingbroke or Locke,” Eugene said. Does that clarify anything for you? Because it didn’t for me. Then again, as I said, I was out of my league.

  “Well, it’s still cruel,” I said.

  “Honesty, in the long run, is always kindest,” Eugene said. He set his mug on the bed table and was done with it.

  Our conversation was rife with ironies and I missed them all. One always does when everything is going well. “Then again,” Eugene said, “you know, of course, what Nietzsche said about lying?” This is what I came to Cambridge for, I thought: stimulating intellectual conversation.

  There are two ways to deal with an awkward pause. You can fill the void by babbling or you can suppose it’s the other person’s fault and wait it out. Hold on. There’s a third approach. You can exploit the opportunity and make a sexual advance. I was afraid that Eugene would go for that, so I preemptively asked him, “Are there any rivers in Nebraska?” Eugene had grown up in Missouri.

  “There’s the Niobrara River, obviously,” said Eugene, “and the Platte River and the Missouri River and the Republican River and the Loup River, both the North Loup and the South Loup.” Eugene picked up his knapsack. He had that gearing-up-to-say-good-bye look.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, “I mean besides those? Tributaries.” Eugene got up. “Or maybe byways,” I said. That might have been the end of him for me. I had an awful suspicion that a byway was a minor road, having nothing to do with a river. But the door opened.

  “You’re here!” said Libby, meaning me, not Eugene. Standing next to her was a guy I’d never seen before and, instantly, I understood what had happened. When I had adjusted my curtains to hide the bottle of milk, I’d inadvertently arranged them in a way that sent Libby, who—remember?—could see my window from hers, a message that I was leaving and she could use my room for entertaining. Our elaborate semaphore system, based on which lights were on and how the curtains were drawn, included code for “Trying to work. Please disturb”; “Wake me up by noon”; “I’m drunk. Do you have aspirin? What day is it?”; and “I just thought of another reason I despise Tamar Grubley.” Libby’s room, by the way, was too messy for trysts.

  I know you’re thinking: Ewwww, lending out your room for that? But we had illicit keys to the closet where housekeeping kept fresh linen. And lest you think I got the short end of the deal, I should mention that Libby allowed me the use of her computer (mine had crashed without warning) and whatever else was in her room while she was at lectures, the library, and engaged in other studious activities. Libby was able to play and work whereas I couldn’t do either. But my room was neat. And I had to get out of it immediately.

  I grabbed Eugene’s arm. “This is Eugene,” I said with haste, “and he and I are going for a walk.”

  We walked along the gravel path that squared the Front Court of the college, a large turf of grass that had been perfectly tended for well over five hundred years. Then we cut the corner and walked on the grass, though signs in many languages clearly stated, KEEP OFF THE GRASS UNLESS YOU ARE A FELLOW OF THE COLLEGE! It doesn’t sound thrilling, but believe me, it was.

  We continued down the path, past a grand building that looked like a little nation’s capitol. When we made our way to the Back Lawn, I was glad to be noticed by a show-off who had gone to college with me in the United States and was using every last pence of her National Science Foundation Fellowship to buy upmarket wine. Eugene was terrific-looking and I knew she’d be jealous.

  (At this point, I think it behooves me to tell you what Eugene looked like. But description is the part I skip when I read a book, so let’s just leave it that he was terrific-looking, okay? And kind of, well, nondescript. If you really care what color his hair was or whether his eyes were shaped like almonds or pistachios, write to me and I’ll send you a picture.)

  But here’s the more important part: we were also noticed on the Back Lawn by Oliver Qas (pronounced like the French word for “what”). Oliver Qas was a theologian in his second year from Trinidad, who was maybe more terrific-looking than Eugene and with whom I’d almost had a fling when I arrived in Cambridge and who flourished a walking stick. I could count on Oliver saying hello in a flirty way and he did. “If it isn’t the toast of two hemispheres,” he said.

  On the other hand, I was not glad to be noticed by Laurence Hesseltine, a rabbity-looking English third-year studying artificial intelligence, who’d been chosen by Stephen Hawking as one of the undergraduates whose job it was to push him around in his wheelchair and guess what he was saying. Laurence saw me and waved, bending his fingers as if he were waving to a baby. I started to wave back but in midgesture worried that this might encourage Laurence, who had never spoken to a girl, to speak to me, so I combed my fingers through my hair as if that had been my intention all along.

  Eugene noticed none of thes
e people. He was explaining the sorites paradox, also known as the heap paradox. “One grain of sand isn’t a heap,” he said. I kicked a stone. “And if you add one more grain of sand, it still isn’t a heap, do you follow?”

  Eugene and I caught up with the stone and I kicked it again.

  “If you add a third grain of sand,” Eugene said, “it still isn’t a heap. And so forth ad infinitum. It seems, then, that there can be no such thing as a heap of sand. Yet, we know there is. Which is why it’s called a paradox.”

  “The heap paradox,” Eugene said, “was at the root of a lot of debates—when is a fetus a living being, when is the budget too high, when do you pull your troops out of a war that seems a lost cause? Where do you draw the line?”

  I did some more stone kicking. “Do you know the book Seven Types of Ambiguity?” I said, referring to a book they had made me read in school. I had a vague hunch it was relevant to what Eugene was talking about. I needed Eugene to think that I was smart.

  Eugene nodded. “William Empson,” he said.

  “Don’t you think a better title would be Seven or Eight Types of Ambiguity?” I said. I needed Eugene to think I was clever, too. Eugene chuckled.

  We had come to the Backs, the strip of land that was on the side of the Cam opposite to my dorm. The Cam, lined with willow trees, was closer to a creek than a river, but beautiful. Students and tourists glided by in punts. The lawns were covered with daffodils and those little purple flowers that I think are called crocuses. The sun was setting. I thought, This is what I’m supposed to think is romantic. Now Eugene kicked the stone.

  We stood, facing each other. He fixed his eyes on me and I wondered what was next. How do two people move from talking to not talking to doing it? He raised his hand. Was he going to kiss me? Then he scratched his shoulder. I have to tell you the idea of what might happen made me anxious, which may explain why I was, as I will later demonstrate, the least experienced twenty-one-year-old, if you don’t count Mormons, who, come to think of it, are probably married by twenty-one, so scratch that. At least, I thought, Eugene didn’t look like a man. He looked my age, or even younger.

  “Did any presidents come from Missouri?” I said.

  TWO

  Before I forget, I must tell you that the guy Libby brought to my room turned out to be the heir to the Weetabix fortune. Weetabix is the number-one cereal manufacturer in Great Britain. A couple of days after Libby and the heir met, she returned to her room from breakfast and found it jam-packed with boxes of Weetabix, Weetabix Banana Mini-Crunch, Alpen Caribbean Crunch, Alpen Nutty Crunch, Alpen Blackberry & Apple, Instant Ready Brek, Strawberry and Yogurt Bars, and Choco-rrific Wheatos. We don’t know how he managed to get into her room, but we figured he paid off the head porter. There were no boxes of Alpen Original, Libby’s favorite, and she wanted to ask for some, but since she had no intention of seeing the heir ever again, I convinced her to skip it.

  This was typical Libby. I don’t mean guys always gave her grain products. I mean that she had incredible allure. Even Laurence Hesseltine was so bewitched he followed Libby around for months, goo-goo eyed. Finally, he mustered up the guts to say, “Would one like to have a cup of coffee with me?” She obliged.

  I am probably the last person who could tell you exactly what it was about Libby that grabbed hold of guys, but unfortunately, I am the only person you know who knew her. She was seductive, I think, because she loved men; all men—she wasn’t picky. Who else would even have touched Pip Summerland III, who snacked on dog food? Or Tibor Wike, who argued fiercely about everything from how to wear a college scarf to the existence of Satan, only to signal the end of a debate by falling asleep, suddenly and profoundly? Libby’s success might also have had something to do with her fluency. If you know six languages, it’s easy to pick up a seventh. Same with men for Libby. Men flocked to her because men flocked to her. Also, she had big you-know-whats.

  None of this applied to me.

  Two nights after Eugene didn’t kiss me in the Fellows Garden, we went to see State of the People at the Arts Cinema, which we’d chosen over Strip Nude Before Your Killer at the Victoria Theatre because the Arts allowed patrons to book tickets over the phone. And in case you’re wondering what exactly did happen in the garden: we’d run into the dean of the chapel, who lectured Eugene and me about the nonalignment of certain chancels with their naves, sort of wrecking the mood for us. I was partly relieved.

  As it turned out, the movie was relevant to me since, at the time, I was a neo-Marxist and, along with many of my friends, felt that Trotskyism was old-fashioned and Maoism . . . I can’t remember what was wrong with Maoism but it was definitely infra dig, though I secretly loved that Little Red Book. Don’t, however, presume I was against money. “I didn’t deposit the check you sent,” I wrote to my parents, “because someone told me the pound was going to drop. The pound went up 2.8 cents! I lost about $14! Speaking of money, would you be willing to give me extra for my birthday if I promise not to hitchhike? There’s a killer loose in East Anglia.”

  Anyway, during the arson sequence in State of the People, Eugene put his arm around me and whispered “Stellar!” I took the arm as a compliment but not the “stellar.” After the movie, back in my room, we drank Lipton tea with powdered cream, ate McVities digestive biscuits, and went over the pros and cons of stressing the first syllable rather than the second in “hegemony.”

  “Are you aware,” said Eugene, walking purposively toward me, “that a few dissenting scholars pronounce it with a g”—he leaned over and kissed the top of my head, then pulled back, looking me straight in the eye—“that is hard?” I realize that probably sounds stupid, but it didn’t at the time. Eugene looked as if he was going to kiss me again, possibly on the lips this time.

  Here’s what I was thinking: This better not be like the last time someone kissed me.

  That fiasco had taken place my first night in England. I’d like to blame it all on jet lag but no amount of fatigue gets me off the hook. Here’s what happened: Oliver Qas—the guy who said I was the toast of two hemispheres—had made himself known to me at the get-together that the social and political science department was throwing for new students. The party, if that’s what you wanted to call it, was held in the department common room, a small space lit with flickering discount lamps and furnished with plastic tables and nonmatching plastic chairs, all of which looked as if it had been left over from a tag sale. Most of the students congregated by the cheese, consuming more Cheddar than one ought to at 11 P.M. Or any time.

  When Oliver Qas appeared, I’d been trying to get away from a Fiona something, who was throwing back paper cups of wine as she described the methodology for her study of the British Civil Service in India during the years 1933 to 1935. “I have a floor-to-ceiling map of the country,” she said. “Green pushpins represent subjects I’ve interviewed, red pushpins represent subjects I plan to interview as soon as I can locate them, yellow pushpins represent subjects who are dead or blind, blue pushpins—”

  “Must come straightaway to my rooms for vodka and such,” said Oliver Qas, taking my arm and sweeping me away from Fiona, who had designs to make her way through the entire color spectrum. Oliver had long black curls, and a sculpted body you could learn anatomy from. (I know I said I was against description—and I really am—but here I’m quoting Libby.) Oliver was wearing white tails as a “delightful little treat” for the guests. The guests were dressed in grub. Oliver was a second-year student who studied hermeneutics, I think because most people didn’t know what it was. Also, because he thought it was about getting stoned.

  He led me up the winding staircase of a musty building the color of the Financial Times, with leaded-glass windows, arched ceilings, and large rooms that overlooked the river. You would pay a lot of money to live in a building like this, despite its being cold and damp and having no doorman. We walked to the top floor and entered the living room by way of an unlocked door. There was a leatherlike sofa, a furl
ike rug, and a real-glass bong. I wondered what someone so suave was doing with someone so unsuave, someone whose father had said to her when she was fifteen and had not yet tried marijuana, “If I met someone your age who hadn’t tried marijuana, I would think there was something wrong.”

  In one supersonic motion, Oliver Qas took off his shirt and pants. He took a puff on the bong and looked at me expectantly. “I don’t think I want to do this,” I said, feeling presumptuous to suggest that he in fact had wanted to do something. What if he said he was just hot? It was a chance I had to take.

  “Oh, rot,” he said. I didn’t know what he meant, but I knew enough not to ask.

  “I’m kind of involved with someone in America,” I said, looking away tragically.

  “That’s rubbish.” He was on to something. Nobody was less involved with someone in America or anyone anywhere else in the world than I was.

  “No, really,” I said. “We kind of made a pact to not see other people, I think. A six-month trial. We’re right in the middle of it. Also, I have to unpack.”

  Oliver shrugged. “See you about, then,” he said blithely and gave me a chummy kiss on the cheek. He turned and walked into his bedroom.

  Where I went from Oliver Qas’s is anyone’s guess. My sense of direction is so bad that in order to figure out which direction is, for example, west, I must mentally lay out a map of the United States in my brain and take note which side California is on. Moreover, I had arrived in Cambridge only about fourteen hours earlier. And so I immigrantishly roamed the grounds of the college in darkness, searching for my dorm or another human being. I would have sworn I had walked to the end of the earth, but in fact had probably crisscrossed a fairly small area closed in by a gate. Finally, I happened upon the porter’s lodge. It was locked, though, for after 2 A.M. the night porter went to bed and anyone wishing to pass through the gates had to wake him up. This I was disinclined to do, given that I had no idea whether I was meant to be going to or from.