by Aubrey Rose
“I teach all of the higher level courses I can manage with my schedule.” Patterson seethed. “But then again, I happen to enjoy making a contribution to this university.”
“The last contribution I made,” Eliot said, “was handed out as bonus grants to already-tenured professors.”
“Not at all!” Patterson cried out. “The money came from the general fund.”
“I’m no idiot,” Eliot said. “The year before my contribution there was no money for grants. I wonder where you happened to find such funds?”
“The grants were handed out to those who increased the prestige of the university!”
“By publishing reams of tedious, uninspired dreck. I fail to see how that does anything for Pasadena’s prestige.”
Dr. Patterson flushed a bright red. Eliot tried to remember how much of the bonus the department chair had claimed for himself. Although he couldn’t remember names, he remembered math, and the chair’s papers had been supremely lacking in actual mathematics. He focused his research almost entirely on statistical economics, and for the past few years had been pushing out newly-polished computer generated statistics on the same basic market algorithms, over and over again.
“But then...what of your research, Dr. Herceg?” Dr. Patterson said, trying to regain the upper ground. His forehead was beginning to glisten unattractively with tiny beads of sweat. “When was the last time you published anything?”
“I’m sure you know that better than I do,” Eliot replied. “As I said, I’m working on a difficult problem.”
“Surely you can publish something!”
“The problem has not been solved.”
“But surely...surely—”
“I won’t publish my work until it’s done,” Eliot said.
Patterson exhaled loudly through his nose.
“When do you expect your work to be done and first ready to publish?”
“When it’s done,” Eliot said. “And not a moment sooner.”
“That’s unacceptable!” Patterson rapped the top of his desk with his hand. “A completely unacceptable answer! You haven’t published a single paper in the years you’ve been here!”
“What did Gauss say about Dirichelet’s publications?” Eliot leaned forward, his face growing hot with anger. “Jewels are not weighed on a grocery scale!”
Patterson sighed. “Your reputation has waned in this country, Dr. Herceg. I can’t force the department to keep your fellowship on for another year like this.”
“Then don’t.” Eliot paused. “ Are we finished?”
“You’ll lose your visa. You’ll have to go back—”
“Are we finished?” A streak of fury flashed behind Eliot’s eyes and he hissed the words.
Patterson stood up behind his desk. He leaned forward across the papers and extended one trembling hand. His gaze flickered over to Eliot’s scar, then quickly back.
“I look forward to seeing your work published,” he said.
“So do I,” Eliot said. He shook the man’s clammy palm once, forcefully, turned on his heel and left.
The inanity of it all! A dull fury burned in the embers of Eliot’s heart. To be forced back into a game of prestige and reputation! And then for Patterson to threaten his fellowship—
A bluff. The same game lay at the heart of all organizations, academia most of all. Eliot strode past the reception area, pushing his way out the door and past a group of tittering students. They still believed in the purity of academics, in the chase of knowledge above all else. He hoped that they wouldn’t learn the truth until much later, until they had already done something significant.
Dr. Patterson was more right than even he knew. Eliot’s work had stalled. True, his initial forays into the experimental field of projective groups had broken new ground. When he was only a kid of twenty, he had published paper after paper on projective algorithms without breaking a sweat, and if he never published again he would still be remembered as having made significant contributions to the field of mathematics. Now, though, stuck on a monumental problem, Eliot felt himself losing hope.
The snow fell, and he had forgotten his gloves. He sat down on the bench in front of the library. It was cold outside, colder than he had ever known it to be in California. The soft, drifting snowflakes reminded him of his home, of Hungary. Of walking by the Danube in the springtime as the surface of the water crystallized at the edges, the delicate floes of ice breaking off from the riverbank and floating down slowly in the current.
He had come to America to escape, but there was no escaping his memories. As his eyes glazed over, the sounds of the Budapest streets filled his ears. He clasped his hands between his legs and felt her hand in his as they walked alongside the river. And as the snowflakes tumbled one by one at his feet, he heard her laughing next to him.
Clare, my Clare.
His heart rewound the years and played them back. Every memory ached with painful longing alongside the beauty. The summer picnics, the winters by the fireplace, all tinted red and dark and lonely.
A snowflake landed on his nose, and he was back on his estate with her, playing in the bright cold morning. She had made him a snow angel, and the back of her coat was dusted white with snow, her hair tinged with the drops of it that had already melted. He heard her voice ringing from far away.
"Eliot! Come make angels with me!"
He turned to see her falling backwards, her arms spread out to either side, her face beaming, reflecting the sunshine. She fell into the snowdrift, her arms and legs already sweeping the ground into the winged shape. He walked over and she smiled up at him from the ground.
“You try now,” she said.
He turned and closed his eyes, letting himself fall backwards, but as he fell he felt his stomach rise in his throat, and a cloud moved over the sun. His breath emptied from his chest as he hit the ground, and for a moment he felt as though he would die from suffocation—there was no air in the world.
“Eliot!” He heard the cry again, the piercing echo of her voice turned frightened. He opened his eyes and turned to reach out to her, but she was gone. The only trace of her left was the thin marking of the angel she had made, already filling with soft drifts of snow.
Eliot shook his head and came back to the present. This was California. A chill ran down his spine, but it was not due to the cold.
Ten years ago. Ten years to the day.
Not for the first time, he thought of what would happen if his life were to end right now. He had nothing to show for the past decade but an endless muddle of pages of mathematical work in the wastebasket. Useless, really. The ghost of his wife haunted him in dreams and reality both. No matter where he looked, Clare was there. Hiding in the crowds, in the face of the women he passed on the sidewalk. He shut himself up and hid, because it was easier than seeing her face everywhere.
He felt numb. Always there had been something to sustain him, a new problem in mathematics or the touch of his lovely Clare’s hand. Now... he had shut himself up in his work and produced nothing. He had closed off his heart and loved nothing. A veil had fallen over his world, had crept over his vision slowly, until he could not see at all except through a haze. Bit by bit, obligations had replaced his desires and he had ceased, finally, to want anything. Air went in and out of his lungs, but he did not breathe.
Eliot did not know how long he had been sitting on that bench when he looked up and saw a woman standing in front of him, a coffee in her outstretched hand.
Valentina? That wasn’t my name. Why had I lied? I rushed up the stairs to the second floor, the magic of the past few minutes evaporating quickly in the warm crowded air of the library. Everything felt too strange for words, and I couldn’t get Eliot’s face out of my mind. That scar, and those eyes...
My study group sat at a long oak table near the back side of the room, by the windows. I could spot Quentin’s bright red hair a mile away, and he gestured wildly all around him as he talked. Mark sat across from him, the calm bespectacled g
eek. Together, we made up the nerdiest group of math majors on campus, but Mark and I took solace that no matter how bad it got, we could never outnerd Quentin. Outside, the snow fell against the glass, the only indication that this night was anything but normal.
“Brynn!” Mark waved at me, shaking his black hair out of his eyes. “You’re late!”
What’s up, Brynn?” Quentin gave a half-nod my way.
“Sorry,” I said, dumping my backpack onto the table. Pages of notebook paper scattered across the hard polished surface and one of them fluttered against the candle in the middle of the table. I grabbed the paper quickly before remembering that the flicker of light was electric. Silly me. “I... um, I was practicing down at the music hall.”
Again a lie. I never lied. But something in me wanted to keep the handsome man in the black coat a secret. Something special. Just for me.
“Oh cool, I didn’t see you there,” Mark said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Did you hear they might open up the midnight piano room on Sunday?”
“Really?” I asked.
“The what?” Quentin sounded annoyed. “Pianos? Really, people? Can we please get back to these proofs?” He had three pages of scrawled notes in front of him and looked as though he wanted to set the whole thing on fire.
“You’d like this,” Mark said, ignoring his protests. “It’s a ghost story.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Quentin said dryly. “Unless it’s the ghost of Euclid haunting this problem set.”
“That bad?” I said, not looking forward to the work.
“It’s the hardest problem set we’ve done all year.”
“No, but really. There’s a ghost in the practice hall,” Mark insisted, his eyes bright behind his glasses. “You’ve heard the story, right Brynn?”
“Sure,” I said. My eyes quickly scanned the problem set, which did indeed look menacing. “The midnight piano ghost.”
“See? Everybody who plays has heard of it.”
“The music department has a ghost? No fucking way.” Quentin’s voice was tinged with curiosity. “Tell me.”
Mark pulled the candle across the table and bent down so that the electric flame illuminated him from under his chin, reflecting in his dark eyes. When he spoke, he tried to sound eerie, but his somewhat-nasal voice spoiled the effect.
“There’s a room in the back of the practice hall that’s always been locked. Inside is a really old Bosendorfer piano.”
“Not just any Bosendorfer. A Grand Imperial Bosendorfer. Eight octaves,” I added.
“Thanks for the lesson, music nerd,” Quentin said. “What about the ghost?”
“Nobody’s ever seen it,” Mark said, his voice lowering. “But late at night, really late at night...”
“Midnight, if you want to be exact,” I interjected.
“Just when the clock strikes midnight,” Mark continued, “if you listen, you can hear the ghost playing in that locked room.”
Quentin’s eyes widened.
“No fucking way.”
“Way,” Mark said.
“So which problem are you guys working on?” I said. I’d heard this tale too many times to be impressed. Quentin shoved the book my way, his finger pressed to the second practice section.
“Why won’t they open the ghost room up?” Quentin asked, still riveted by Mark’s story. Of course, it was just a story, no matter how many times the music majors repeated it in hushed tones. Nobody believed that there was actually a ghost in the old locked room. Some prankster with a remote control playing a radio through the air ducts, more like.
“Some rich philanthropist guy gifted the piano to the school,” Mark said, shoving the candle back to the center of the table. “I guess they don’t want anyone messing it up, so they don’t let anyone use it.”
“Makes sense,” Quentin said, rolling his eyes. “Music people.”
“But Dr. Stetson said they might be opening it up Sunday for a special showing to music majors,” Mark said.
“So much for us second-class citizens.” I lifted my eyes away from my textbook and joined Mark in an exaggerated shrug. The music majors always looked down their nose at the math and science kids who came to the practice halls to play just for fun.
“You couldn’t go anyway, dummies,” Quentin said. “We have that thing on Sunday.”
“What thing?” Mark said.
“The internship Budapest thing. The one with all the tests and shit.”
“That’s Sunday?”
“I’ve only reminded you every day for the past week,” Quentin said.
“Oh, shit,” I said. With all the panic over upcoming exams, I had forgotten what day it was. “Sunday?” My job had me scheduled all afternoon.
“Look at this,” Quentin said, leaning back in his chair and balancing on only two legs while he spread his arms out, gesturing toward me and Mark. “The creme de la fucking creme, and they forget the most basic of shit. This is the test of the year, assholes.”
“I didn’t forget,” Mark said. “I just forgot the day.”
“You there, Brynn?” Quentin snapped his finger in front of my nose.
My attention returned to the table.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have to get someone to cover my shift.”
“Get Shannon to do it.” Mark shrugged. “She’ll do it if you tell her what it’s for.”
“Sure, get Shannon to do it.” Quentin said, flipping a textbook page. “Can we get on with this problem set already?”
“Sure, how did you get that number nine was an equivalence relation?”
Quentin let his chair fall forward to the ground with a loud crack. Two students at the other end of the library perked their heads up like meerkats at the sound, but Mark and Quentin were already bent over, hot in debate about whether or not the relation in number nine had the symmetric property.
After we had finished a couple of problems, Mark turned to me and spoke softly. “You better ask your roommate soon if you want her to cover your shift. This is important to you, right?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. I didn’t want to talk about it here. Not in front of Quentin. Mark only knew my secret because of an accidental slip of the tongue, and I wasn’t about to let Quentin see my pain, too.
"Hey, did you see the weather for tomorrow?" I asked, hoping to change the subject.
“We heard on the radio that it might snow for another three days,” Quentin said. "Do you know what that idiot newscaster said about it snowing today? ‘What are the chances?’ she said. ‘What are the chances?’ I hate it when non-math people talk about probability. "
"What are the chances of it snowing today?" Mark said.
"The chances are one hundred percent," Quentin said. "Do you know how I know?"
"Because you know everything," I said, placing my chin on top of my folded hands.
"Because it is snowing," Quentin said. "That's how I know."
"But... it could've not snowed," I said.
"Wrong." Quentin wasn’t one to mince words.
"Wait. Is this that thing with the destiny and the quantum physics you’ve been going on about all week?" Mark said. He waved one hand in front of his face. "Wait. Brynn. Don't get him started."
"Every particle in the universe has led us up to this point," Quentin said. “Every quark of every atom of every molecule has led us here.”
"Great. Now you got him started."
"Every single snowflake falling outside of this window was created due to the interaction of millions and millions of particles over billions and billions of years. Because it is falling, it was meant to fall. There was no other way for it to happen."
Mark leaned back in his chair and put his hands on top of his head. "Thanks, philosopher king. See what I told you, Brynn? This is worse than that one month he decided to go vegetarian."
“I did go vegetarian, you idiot. I’m still vegetarian.”
"So there's no such thing as probability?" I
asked. "Like, if everything has to happen in a particular way, then everything that happens has one hundred percent probability."
"Exactly," Quentin said. "Well, no. If you have perfect initial conditions, then you can theoretically figure out what will happen in the next step of the universe."
“Perfect initial conditions.”
"So everything has to happen in a certain way," Mark said. "Isn’t that predetermination? Like, God?”
"There is no God." Quentin said. "It's just physics."
I let my head fall forward onto the table in mock relief. "Whew! Glad that’s settled. Guess we can do some of this homework now."
“What do you think, Brynn?” Mark asked, not letting the subject drop. “God or physics? Or free will?”
“Or ghosts,” Quentin said. “Don’t forget ghosts.”
“I am one hundred percent indifferent to matters of fate,” I said, picking up my pen. “Sorry to bring it up. Let’s do these homework problems.”
“I bet you think it’s fate,” Quentin said, but turned to the next question along with me.
If fate was guiding my life, it was doing a piss poor job of it, I thought. And although on the surface I agreed with Quentin, I had to think that there was something else to the way the universe worked. I couldn’t accept the fact that my mother’s death had sentenced me to such a horrible fate just by chance. If randomness had broken my life, how could I hope to put together the pieces myself? I had to believe in some kind of free will, or at least a rational destiny, that would give some meaning to the darkness that had crept into my world.
Three hours later, we had untangled most of the thorniest questions in the homework set. Question nine hung between us unanswered, with Mark and Quentin still arguing over symmetry on a subtle point in the relation’s definition. The caffeine had long since disappeared from my system, and I covered my mouth in a deep yawn.
“Ok, guys,” Quentin said, closing his book with a decisive thud. “See you all tomorrow at the auditorium, where I will beat every single one of you motherfuckers out for that internship.”
Mark guffawed. “You wish,” he said.