everybody have to have a heart of gold? Come in, for God’s sake. I want to berate you.
But it was Vanderbyl who opened the door and came in and quickly shut the door behind him.
He removed his gloves and pushed his hood back and stood there in his stooped way. His face looked as if it had crumpled with exhaustion and subsequent attempts to smooth it out had been unsuccessful. Dark circles under his eyes, points of white at the corners of his mouth. A man to whom sleep was a stranger.
I apologize for the disruption. May I sit down?
He removed his boots and sat on my desk chair in his parka. He stretched his hands out before him as if checking the lengths of his arms, then let them rest in his lap, a collection of long fingers, bony wrists. He lapsed into stillness.
There was nothing for me to say under the circumstances. I sat back against the wall, wrapped in my sleeping bag that smelled of Rebecca.
A rustling of parka as Vanderbyl roused himself. I thought he was going to go hurtling back out into the night, but he went down on his knees. He clasped his hands in front of his chest and shook them before me as if they were chained.
Is this what you want? he said.
Kurt, for God’s sake.
If this is what you want, you have it. All right? You have it. It must feel good, right? Must fill your heart with joy?
Of course not. Please get up.
But you’re the one who put me here. You must want me here, isn’t it?
No.
You and my wife. Together, you have crushed me into nothing.
She had reasons, you have none. Kurt, you split from her. You left her. You’re separated.
A trial separation. I wanted her to realize she wants to stay with me. It turns out I am the one doing all the realizing.
That’s the trouble with experiments. They rarely yield the data we expect.
Is it because of the hiring committee? Is it because you didn’t get tenure?
That was years ago, Kurt.
You must realize that was nothing personal. There was simply a more suitable candidate.
That’s debatable.
It was duly debated. It was not an easy decision. Nor was it unanimous. But in the end-for a number of reasons-Klimov was the committee’s choice.
You were chair. You had ultimate control.
And here I am.
He held his clasped hands out to me again. Even on his knees, Vanderbyl was looking down at me.
I was angry then, I said. Full of resentment, perhaps even hatred. But I’m perfectly content at Carleton, and I don’t believe in revenge.
Are you so certain? I didn’t believe in jealousy.
He got to his feet and reached for the chair. For a moment I feared he was going to raise it over his head and smash my skull with it. He dragged it closer and sat down.
But now I do. Proved upon the pulses, as the poet says. How ridiculous that I–I, who pride myself on nothing so much as my reason-should see that reason overthrown by a simple fact of anatomy. All logic, all judgment gone from me, leaving me reduced to whatever is left when they are gone. I am yearning and appetite, loneliness and lust. I am rage and grief and helplessness, the whole sorry-no, the mere sorry, the merest, weakest, sleepless sorry thing. Amusing for you, of course-to see me devoured alive.
No, Kurt. I’m sorry you’re in pain.
Yes, yes. Of course you are.
Well, that’s the nature of jealousy, isn’t it? Keeps you at the centre of the story?
When you’re being eaten by a shark, it’s difficult to see it from the shark’s point of view.
I’m in love with her, Kurt.
Then I ask you, as a man in love, to recognize what I am going through. And if revenge is your motive, I am here to tell you the knife is in my heart and yours is the hand twisting it. I am on my knees before you. Begging you to stop.
Kurt.
We have worked together many times. We do not know each other well, but well enough. You know that I have a large ego. Such an easy target. I ask you to measure my words to you now against that nature and calculate what it is costing me.
Kurt.
I don’t come here empty-handed. Brenner is retiring next year. You’d start with full tenure.
I have tenure at Carleton.
You’d have almost no teaching, no committees. Full research sabbaticals. And the salary would be higher. We could probably make it as high as mine.
Jesus, Kurt.
If I had money of my own, I would give it to you, but you probably have more than me. I am not a wise investor. Perhaps we could come to some quiet arrangement.
Kurt, she isn’t mine to sell.
She isn’t yours at all. Rebecca is my wife. Do you know what that means? Do you have any idea? It’s not a piece of paper. It’s not a matter of a ceremony. It means I have watched her grow from a graduate student, still a girl really, into a fully mature and wise woman. I have been there in the big moments of her life-achieving her master’s degree, the day she defended her dissertation. I have been there for the disappointments, the setbacks. I have watched her walk face first into the most cruel academic traps. She thinks everyone is her friend, everyone wishes her well, until they don’t.
That was not my experience of Rebecca, and I said so. Whether he heard me or not, I’ve no idea.
I held her at her mother’s funeral, he said. I have heard her talk in her sleep, stroked her hair when she woke up from some nightmare. Driven her to the emergency room and sat with her hour after hour. I’ve never seen anyone so sick. They gave her five bags of fluid, Durie, five bags of saline. It caused her temperature to plummet and she shook on the gurney as if possessed by epilepsy. And the car accident-did she tell you about the car accident?
I said no, but it hardly mattered. He didn’t hear me.
Norway. We were going far too fast. Terrible weather, fog and sleet, and the driver lost control and we woke up in some tiny little outpost clinic, not a hospital. I received a broken arm only, but Rebecca had a deep gash in her leg and desperately needed a transfusion. I woke up covered in her blood. They had a line in my arm and took my blood for a transfusion-we have the same type. She is literally of my blood, Durie, that’s what the word wife means in this particular instance, in case you don’t happen to know or care.
I tried to speak some calming words, but he was raving now.
It means also, yes, I have hurt her. Because I am a man and I am vain and stupid and weak. I have hurt her and felt her tears soak through my shirt when I have given her my abject apologies. But it isn’t just that. It is not such big things always. Not so long ago I was looking for a stamp or some scissors or something and I opened her desk drawer and you know what I found? I found a ticket, a torn ticket, for an evening of Bach concertos. No great virtuoso, no acclaimed orchestra, but it was the first place we had gone together, and she had kept the ticket and glued it to a piece of fine paper and written the date underneath in her beautiful handwriting, with the words The first place I went with Kurt.
Kurt, please. It’s late. Let’s just work together as best we can.
I have heard her giggle on the phone like a schoolgirl, I have heard her singing off-key at the top of her voice when she thought no one was home. You think because you fuck her you’re somehow closer? Yes, sure, look away, I don’t blame you. And it’s not just the little things either, it’s the less than that. The nothings. I get up in the morning and she is there, Durie. She is there, you understand. Year after year, day after day. This person I know I don’t deserve, every day.
Was there. You took her for granted, Kurt.
