Page 45 of Katabasis
“Oh, that’s nothing. One time he made me grade sixty undergrad exams in an afternoon because he forgot to do it himself.”
“Well, one time he made me clean up all my chalk dust and weigh it so he could estimate how much money we’d wasted.”
Peter snickered. “One time he threw a fully charged capacitor at my head without warning.”
“Did it hit you?” Alice asked, alarmed.
“Just my hands. I tried to catch it, I didn’t know it was charged. The shock sent me convulsing on the floor, and my hair stood up for hours. I’d never seen him laugh so hard.”
“He never hurled anything at my head.” Alice couldn’t decide if this made her feel superior or jealous.
“It was only just the capacitor,” said Peter. “That one time. The rest was mainly, you know, verbal.”
“Right. You’re not cut out for this. You’re a waste of funding. You don’t seem like you even want to be here.”
“Oh, yeah, he’s fond of that one. One time he said offhand that I was worthless until I learned German.”
“Did you?”
“I bought a phrasebook that afternoon and stayed up all night.” Peter’s voice hitched, and she shot him an alarmed look, before she realized he was breaking up not with sobs but with giggles. “Then I greeted him with ‘Wie geht’s’ the next morning, and he—and he looked at me like I’d gone mad.”
“Lebensmüde,” said Alice.
“Sitzfleisch,” said Peter.
This sent them into hysterics.
“God.” Alice pressed her hands against her face. They came away wet. She was crying from laughter. This had never happened before; she did not know that people actually cried from laughter. “If anyone heard us talking they reallywouldreport it all to the dean.”
“Oh, I know! Inappropriate faculty-student relationships. Abuse of power. That sort of thing.”
“I hate that language. It makes it seem like we’re children.”
“Helpless victims.”
“Didn’t know what we were getting into.”
“Eyes wide shut.” Peter glanced sideways at her. “You know, I went to his funeral.”
“No, really?”
“Not the real one. Not with his family, or anything like that. Just the university memorial service.”
Alice remembered seeing the invitation, staring at it for a very long time, and then ripping it into tiny shreds. “I guess I forgot to go.”
Which was an obvious lie, as she did not forget things, but Peter did not press. “Right, I didn’t see you there.”
“So how was it?”
“It was so odd,” said Peter. “They were giving these eulogies about how kind and magnificent and generous he was—basic stuff, you know, they could have been describing anyone. The master called him a legendary teacher. Helen Murray got up and uttered all these platitudes about what a great mind he was. You know what he used to say about her behind her back?”
“That she was a spousal hire pretending to be a scholar?”
“Well—that too. But also, Thatcher without an ass.”
Alice snickered.
“Anyhow,” said Peter, “the whole time I was thinking, we’re the only ones who knew him. All of him. The good, the bad, the hilarious, and all the contradictions. The honest part of him. He was only ever his real self in the lab. Even at his very worst. Even when he was frustrated, when he was being a bully, all that. All he cared about was finding the truth. He wept and prostrated himself before the truth. And we got to know that part of him. I feel very lucky for that.”
