The Savage Professor

by Robert Roper

  “Turn the other way,” he ordered. “That’s right—your face goes over here.”

  “Like this?”

  He struggled to pull his pants down. “Yes, that’s right. Now, be sure to hide your teeth. Put them behind your lips.”

  “Lhok thiffs?”

  “Yes. Very good.”

  Good God. Good God. He could almost see her in the dark, the slurping sounds she made like echolocations. She was admirable in many ways, many.

  “That good?”

  “Did I tell you to stop? No, I didn’t. Continue, or there will be further harsh spanking.”

  A lovely night. Lovely. The most fun in decades, it seemed to Landau. Couldn’t sleep for a while, had to do it a second time, a second go, at his age! Then they both slept soundly, then awoke together at some dark hour of the night. Not much talk between them. But why had she said that fanciful thing, “You have to do everything yourself”? Had she divined something about him, the need to hear those words, exactly? Maybe she said that to every man she met—it was her patented icebreaker. Or maybe she had sensed something in his situation, his need to hear just that, just that.

  Awoke at dawn, went to the bathroom. When he came back his bed was fragrant of sex. Oh, it’s good to be a heterosexual sometimes! It is my way of choice! Fell into a fun dream as soon as his head hit the pillow, racing downhill in a powerful car, the Volvo longboat, eccentric vehicle from yesteryear. No view over the high dashboard. Barreling downhill faster and faster with no view at all, unconcerned about a smash.

  “I had the most brilliant dream,” he said as soon as he awoke. “Full of speed and thrilling danger.”

  “You like danger, do you?”

  “No, I don’t, actually. I’m kind of a timid soul. I’m so happy to see you here, though, on the neighboring pillow. So happy.”

  “Are you? You know, I’ve been quite shameless, and I want to apologize. You knew I had a thing about you, didn’t you?”

  “I—I couldn’t believe it. I’m not an object of desire usually.”

  “You don’t know. In a certain kind of woman’s eyes you are—definitely you are.”

  “What gave me a hint was the lavender ink. Seductive, that.”

  “Yes, it always works.”

  Good God—and where did this come from? Normally, it took him hours to recover, days, the prostate no longer youthful, spendthrift, prolific.

  “If you want to make love again,” she said, “you’ll have to lick my pussy. I’m a little sore.”

  “Okay, I can do that.”

  “I hope you don’t mind me speaking so frankly. I thought with you, probably I could say whatever I want.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  More fun. Great fun. They took a slow start on the day. He made them oatmeal for breakfast, then gave her an umbrella when she left, at eleven. It was raining again.

  Now the swelling of the chest. The feeling of things not being so bad, after all, for a man of the world. Wasn’t it Chekhov, in “Lady With Lap-dog,” who warns of the irrepressible male urge to preen, to light a cigar, following first sex? He had a sudden urge to work, sat at his computer again. Wrote more of something. Printed out a paper he dimly remembered from the late seventies, by S. Boichenko, eccentric Ukrainian set theorist. All those years ago it had given him a special feeling.

  Midafternoon, he set out on foot, by crooked streets and steep interconnecting paths down toward the university library. A police cruiser came into view, and it was in view again as he crossed Spruce Street. Absurd not to have a car, to be on foot at his age, in his situation. Was he inflicting on himself the deprivations of the maid, who had bused and BARTed everywhere, often schlepping cleaning tools? Why hadn’t he bought her an old Corolla, say, as a friendly gesture? She would have loved that.

  Walked the campus, did not stop at the library, after all. Squalling, spitting rain. People hurrying between buildings, raincoats flapping. Landau had his parka hood up, and in a reflecting windowpane he saw his wolfish silhouette. Was someone getting his image right now, “streaming” it on the Internet? Move along there, then.

  On BART. At the MacArthur station, he transferred to the Fremont Line—his plan to go to his San Francisco office, to hunt up two other papers by Boichenko, unavailable online, yielding to a more obscure whim, to taste a new kind of Mexican food, called a huarache. He had been reading about huaraches everywhere—people were raving about them, food writers and common citizens alike. A culinary innovation, a flat corn oval like the sole of a sandal, bidding fair to replace the taco as the Mexican food-platform of choice. Got off at Fruitvale station. Signage in Spanish outside the building: International Boulevard reminded him of certain avenues in Ensenada, hand-painted signs, small shops, security bars, everything pitched at a low level of expectation, a high level of Mexicanness. Bar Azteca con Mesa de Pool. Supermercado Hudiberto. Carniceria Mi Pueblo. Mi Grullense, a van selling burritos. A brooding dispirit over all, possibly due to the rain. A quiet medium forlornness.

  Cantina Chaqmal, a grim-looking place, squalid. Landau stuck his head inside and then slowly withdrew it. Serious drinkers in there, standing at a low bar. Several wearing baseball caps. One man was having a coughing fit that verged on gagging.

  Here were two huarache restaurants, on a single block of rain-splashed International Boulevard. El Huarache Nayar was brightly lit and had gaudy Aztec warrior murals, bare-chested men in giant feather headdresses, at their feet half-naked women in sinuous postures of desire. The photos of combination platters in a window promised more than he could handle—better order à la carte. Down the block was a second restaurant, less gaudy, called simply Huaracheria, “the huarache-making place.” Somehow it looked more promising, though it had but a single pair of customers at a table far in the back.

  They were okay, the huaraches. Like oblong tostadas, beans and cheese and lettuce piled on, one of them called huarache azteca, pieces of fried cactus mixed with rib meat, and one called huarache con huevo, with an egg. He ordered one of each, although each was abnormally large. After eating he sat facing outdoors, underwhelmed by the experience, feeling the victim of a clever marketing campaign: he had been seeing that word everywhere, and it had predictably evoked in him the desire to taste this new thing, this huarache, as if that were something entirely new in the universe of food. But wouldn’t you know it, the novelty had begun and ended with the shape of the tortilla. Fooled again.

  An Oakland police car stopped out front. Landau observed it, the officers in the front seat bending forward, peering through their wet windshield—now one gestured at the window seat where Landau himself was reposing. Their dome light flashed twice.

  “Professor? Is that you?”

  What? Who?

  Why, it was Heitor—Heitor Burgos-Pereira, right here by his elbow. “My God, what are you doing here, Heitor? I thought you were in Palo Alto.”

  “Professor. What are you doing here, may I ask?”

  Landau gestured at his plates. “I’m eating huaraches. Like everybody else these days.”

  Heitor, the Brazilian health official. The gifted research biostatistician, former postdoc. He wore a dove-gray Gore-Tex duster, looked in a happy mood.

  “This my ’hood, Professor, I stay around here sometimes. Como te gustan los huaraches, pretty great, hunh? First-rate?”

  “Yes, each one was bigger than my head.”

  There was someone hiding just behind Heitor—a young woman, standing there patiently, unassumingly. Landau turned to see her better.

  “Hello there,” he said. “I’m Anthony.”

  “Hi.”

  Heitor made introductions: Graciela, she was a schoolteacher, she lived in the Fruitvale, just a couple of blocks away.

  “What school do you work at?”

  “Me? Oh, it’s called Lakeshore Beginnings. It’s been around for a w
hile.”

  “Is that that fancy old Montessori school? Where the preschool costs a mere twenty grand a semester?”

  “No, not that one, I know which one you mean. It’s just a little independent school.”

  One of the policemen came indoors. He was a short-necked white man with an intimidating mustache, one that grew densely from his upper lip right up to the bottom of his nose. He seemed displeased about something.

  “Heitor, I thought you had a Lucile Packard grant. Doesn’t that come with an office at Stanford?”

  “Yeah, but I been working up here, too. With your old friend Wally Winckelmann. He talks about you sometimes. You should come by.”

  “Maybe I will, sometime.”

  Heitor was Argentine, but he spoke fluent Portuguese as well as Spanish. And English, and French. Wait—his mother was Brazilian, Landau recalled, which pushed him further toward the Brazilian side. But he seemed de-Brazilified today—his accent less like Paul Henreid’s in Casablanca, “Hi dair, my name iss Poul,” more standard Mexican, border-states Mexican, “I bean stoodying thees bad Inglish for two yeerce, mano, an’ I steal don’ get eet, goddam.”

  “Winckelmann, Winckelmann. Didn’t he retire years ago? What’s with these old disease-counters, anyhow, they can’t stay out of the game. Taking up the space that should go to you younger fellows.”

  “Yeah, but he’s great, Wally is, he’s just like you, Professor. The mind is a steel box, and you can’t get anything past him. He’s got everything up there in that box.”

  “I used to have something up there, too. Now I forget where I put my box.”

  Heitor and modest, pleasant Graciela walked out into the rain. The storm lessened, and the Oakland police cruiser, Landau noticed, was now parked at the curb. Several huaraches to go: he heard the policeman placing an order in the back of the room. Should I get a bag for this half huarache con huevo, he wondered, will they be offended if I leave it on my plate? No, I don’t think it matters.

  Not possible that the police had followed him here. Just not possible. Yet here was the patrol car, parked outside the window. The rain started falling again. Not buying a car to replace the BMW had been partly because of this, because he was sure to be followed everywhere, if he drove—he didn’t want to make this experience a car-chase comedy, too. But they could follow you on foot as easily as in a car; pick you up when you came out of a metro, for instance. Ah, the bloody cell phone, that was it! He pulled his out, thought about smashing it. But no, I need it; I have to make a call right now, in fact.

  Strangers called him just to rant these days. Yet he had refused to change his mobile number: it was his number, after all. He went to the WC. Toilet, bare sink, crank-style window over toilet. In some scenarios I would go out this way, he reflected, leaving my phone behind, to confuse them. But I like having the police know where I am, more or less. The Berkeley police are helpful, though I’m not sure about Oakland.

  He made his call. He removed the window screen over the toilet, stood up on the toilet seat, and went clumsily out through the window, sideways.

  There. Take that, you flatfeet, you. Hurried along in the misty rain, headed eastward. After a mile the rain was less, was no more. Suddenly the sky cleared—the overcast peeled away, like an opening eye.

  “I am Anthony Landau,” he said when the door opened on Fairfax Street, a small green house.

  “Please, señor. With much pleasure.”

  He entered. Interview to be conducted in Spanish, apparently. Should be okay, if they didn’t talk too fast.

  “I need a housecleaner,” he explained. “I want someone to come every two weeks, nothing fancy, no cooking or laundry, just the usual. Straight housecleaning.”

  “Where is your apartment, sir?”

  “It’s not an apartment, it’s a house. A medium-big house.”

  “Fine, where is this medium-big house?”

  Landau named his address.

  “Berkeley, you say? Well, that’s a problem, señor. We don’t like to go that far,” the woman said, “that can be hard for us.”

  “It’s right on a bus line, the fifty-one.”

  “I will have to talk to them. It makes them difficulties, all that traveling.”

  The woman might have been Elfridia’s older sister. The same height, but stockier, button-black-eyed—not Mayan-looking, very Indian-looking, however. Maybe fifteen years older.

  “They tell me that they don’t like to, that it’s not good out there. With all that traveling. Anyway, I’ll ask them.”

  “I would pay double.”

  “Double, you say? You’d go double?”

  “Yes. Two hundred forty dollars a visit. Because of the travel.”

  Someone else now came into the living room. She might have been one of the cousins, but Landau didn’t recognize her—couldn’t see her that well.

  “You’re from Chiapas, aren’t you?” he asked the first woman.

  “Yes, I come from there, from around Comitán.”

  “Yes, it says so on your Craigslist post. I’ve been looking for you for a while,” Landau said, “for some people to clean from Chiapas.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  The young one in the corner switched on a lamp.

  “I remembered that you all came from one town or place. I guess it was Comitán, I know I’ve heard that name.”

  “Yes, I come from Comitán.”

  Why was he sounding so insinuating all of a sudden, so threatful? He heard the tone of his own voice, but he had less than ideal control of himself in Spanish.

  “Please. I just want to ask you one more question. Then, I’ll go.”

  They were both standing very still now, both the women from Chiapas. The younger one in the back seemed poised for flight—just one more word in the wrong pitch, insinuating the wrong thing, and she was gone.

  “Did your friend Elfridia have a boyfriend?”

  “Did what?”

  “Did she have a boyfriend. A lover. Anybody important to her like that. You know.”

  No response. Complete and utter bafflement, apparently.

  “Because, that might explain things. I’m not a policeman, I promise you. I have nothing to do with the police, nothing at all. I am the man who was at the house, I’m Anthony Landau, it was my house where it happened, but I didn’t do anything to Elfridia, I swear, and I feel just terrible about it, really terrible. Say someone came to visit her that day. A boyfriend, a novio, somebody she knew. They wanted a quiet place to be together, just for a few hours. I understand that, that’s fine. But if that’s not the way it happened, then I can’t figure it out.”

  The possible cousin slipped out of the room.

  “Señor, I don’t know this person. Who is this, this Elfridia?”

  “Elfridia. She was your sister. Or I don’t know, your friend, your cousin. She got killed. Maybe she was your niece. You look very much like her. I know she was something to you.”

  He pulled some bills out of his wallet.

  “Here are two hundred dollars, señora. I don’t mean to insult you, but I want you to have this. I know your time is valuable.” He laid the bills on a footstool nearby.

  The woman watched him do this. She shook her head doubtfully.

  “No, think about it, please. That’s just for you.”

  The younger one came back in. Two other young women followed her.

  Now a man came in as well, a stout, broad-chested fellow of about fifty, not much taller than five feet himself, wearing brown work boots. They were Red Wing boots—Landau could just tell. The man had the air of someone interrupted in the middle of dinner. All right, this better be important, what’s up.

  “There’s two hundred dollars,” Landau said. “And here’s three hundred more. That’s for all your trouble.”

  The man watched him.
“Hey, don’t put that there, amigo,” he suddenly protested, in barely accented English. “Put that away.”

  “Sorry. I’m not very good at this. Excuse me if I did it wrong, I mean no offense.”

  “What’s with you, man? Put it away.”

  “I want to know if Elfridia had a visitor. That’s all. Tell me, and I’ll go.”

  “A what?”

  “A visitor. Someone who came to my house. Elfridia, your good friend. Maybe your sister, your neighbor back home. I don’t know. Elfridia Mattos Tojolobal.”

  The man shook his head. He knew no such person, and even to be talking this way was all wrong, completely wrong.

  “Nobody knows if she did?” Landau asked the assemblage. “If she had anybody she knew who came to see her at my house?”

  The first young woman, possible cousin, dropped her head to her chest. Landau looked over at her.

  “Did she?”

  With a tormented look, this one looked back at Landau. She seemed to nod—anyway, it was something like a nod.

  “Yes? Did you ever meet him?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Did Elfridia tell you his name?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “But someone came, you think she had someone.”

  “She—had a hope.”

  “A hope, you say?”

  “Yes. A hope that he might come.”

  The young woman dropped her head again. The short man quietly picked up the money, put it in his shirt pocket.

  “Could you come over here, please?” Landau asked. “Talk to me for just a minute?” After a moment, the young woman came a bit closer.

  “I just want to know—did she bring him to my house once, or were there a number of visits, was it a regular thing?”

  “No. Maybe just once.”

  “Just once? And was that the day? The day she was hoping he would come?”

  “Yes, maybe it was.”

  She didn’t know, really. She looked stricken; it was a disaster, a terrible thing, and Landau felt bad for making her think of it again. Elfridia had been her friend: he saw that in her expression.