Jasmine

by Winston Aarons

  “ . . . as for me, I became concerned, but was still not suspicious, though I should have been, I have dealt with so many divorces. I suppose her periodic slipping out of our lives before, for the sake of her art, blinded me to what was going on. It was something my youngest boy said while I was taking him to soccer practice one Saturday. He told me he saw his mother hug a man at the supermarket.” He said ‘She doesn’t hug you the way she hugged him. They hugged each other for a very long time.’ “He then told me who you were. Marguerite must have introduced you by name.”

  “I thought it was just a friendly hug he had witnessed and that his anxiety about his mother’s behavior caused him to read more into it. I didn’t give much thought to what my son had said until one day last week. Marguerite had seemed stressed and troubled for several days. I still thought it had to do with something that had happened at the university. But when I came home from work that day, she had made dinner, but she did not eat or sit with us at the table, which she always did.” ‘I must leave you,’ she had said, ‘it’s the end of the semester. I have a lot of work to do.’ “It’s then that I began to worry that she might get sick over whatever it was that was bothering her. I left the table to convince her to have dinner with us. As I approached the door of her studio, I overheard her talking on the phone to Julian Plum. At first, I thought she was talking about me. But the next thing that came out of her mouth made me realize she was talking about someone else, not me. I caught the name Sor.” ‘Sor’s in love with me,’ I heard her telling Julian. ‘But he expects more from me than I can give him at this point in my life.’ “Having heard this, I retreated without talking to her, and rejoined the boys at the table.”

  “I had no idea who ‘Sor’ was. But I remembered what my son had told me. She had introduced them to a Professor Avraham. I went to my computer and pulled up the names of the university’s faculty. That’s why I’m here. Not to do you harm, but to ask that you leave Marguerite alone. She’s not as strong as you might presume she is. Two years ago she suffered a nervous breakdown. I don’t know what brought it on, but she exhibited the same symptoms she has been exhibiting in the last few weeks. It took her about five months to come back to herself. She had to take a semester’s leave of absence from the college. I’m trying to prevent a recurrence of this. That’s why I’m here. You strike me as a decent man. I think you’ll understand.”

  “I do understand,” Sor said. By now he felt much less uncomfortable with Spares than he did while Spares was describing the events that eventually made it possible for him to link Sor with Marguerite. He did not see him as a threat. The poor man, he thought, only wanted to say his piece and protect his wife. “I had no idea she had experienced the emotional crisis of which you speak,” Sor said. “She didn’t share that information with me.”

  “Well, now you know,” Spares said. “That’s why I’m here. I want to protect her from having another episode.”

  Sor had no idea that Marguerite had had a nervous breakdown. She did tell him, though, that she had had an affair with a man two years before and that it was a disaster. It probably brought about her emotional collapse. The time of her sickness coincided with the affair. Poor bastard, Sor thought, glancing at Spares, he has no idea. He is completely in the dark about his wife’s affair. Sor was disappointed that Marguerite had not discussed her nervous breakdown with him. Didn’t she trust him? Maybe she thought if she told him, he’d lose interest in her. That I’d think her to be some kind of nut case, and stay away from her because she was emotionally fragile.

  “I love my wife, Sor, and I don’t want her to suffer like that again,” Spares said calmly. “We’re both educated men, though in these situations, our education serves little purpose. Men and women are jealous and possessive. We don’t like other people getting too close to our mates, or climbing into bed with them. I’m therefore asking you to leave my wife alone. We have two lovely boys. They adore their mother. And she loves them. I do not think she can be persuaded to leave them. For her emotional state, for my two boys and, yes, for me, too, I ask that you comply with my wishes, and not see her again. She does not know that I know about her relationship with you. And she doesn’t know that I have come to see you. I’m relying on you not to mention it in your communications with her. That would only complicate the matter and bring her more misery.”

  Sor started to say something but Spares stopped him. “I don’t want to hear your side of the story,” he said. “All I ask is that you respect my wishes and not see my wife anymore. I think if you truly care for her you will not want her to experience another emotional episode like the one she had two years ago.”

  Spares got up, put on his jacket, and slowly turned and walked toward the door. But he suddenly stopped, as if he had forgotten something, as if there was something else he wanted to say before leaving. But he said nothing. He took a long look at Sor, a frown on his face, and turned and left, closing the door behind him.

  Shaken, Sor was relieved to see Spares go without his visit becoming more unpleasant. He was grateful that Spares insisted he didn’t say anything in his defense. What could he have said? That he had slept with his wife? Slept with her and was still in love with her? That he wanted her in his life? That he didn’t care whether she was married or not, or had children? There was no defending what he had done. He was guilty of trying to ruin another man’s marriage, wanting the man’s wife to go away with him. He thought Spares had shown great restraint under the circumstances.

  Sor was about to get up when the door to his office was suddenly and violently flung open. It made a loud banging sound when it slammed into the wall.

  It was Spares, his face congealed into a menacing grimace. It communicated uncontrolled anger, and hatred.

  “Listen, Avraham,” Spares said—the nice, civilized, and even-tempered lawyer thrust aside, and in his place an angry, jealous husband. “I’m warning you, leave my wife alone. I’ll not be responsible for my actions if you persist in seeing her.” He was standing in front of Sor’s desk, both hands resting on it, his body leaning forward, staring directly, angrily, into Sor’s face. Sor feared for the worse. He smelled violence.

  “I mean it, Avraham, stop seeing Marguerite,” he said at the top of his voice. Sor could see the swollen veins pulsing on the man’s large forehead. “Stop seeing her. Stop calling her. She’s my wife. She’s my children’s mother. Leave her alone, Avraham, or so help me God, I will not be responsible for my actions. Do you understand?” And again, even louder, this time raising his fisted right hand from the desk and shaking it threateningly in front of Sor’s face, “Do you understand?”

  Spares then turned and walked out of the office. He violently pulled the door shut behind him. The room seemed to reverberate, the pane of glass in the door rattled in its frame, and something, some integral part of Sor, shaken to its core, collapsed. He tried to get up to lock the door lest Spares decided to return, but he couldn’t stand up. His legs were no longer under him. It’s as if they were stolen, deleted from his body. He sat in his chair like a man who had just been thoroughly tortured, both physically and mentally, his torturer leaving the mere husk of a man behind, sitting numbly in his chair.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “What am I going to do,” was Sor’s first thought when he finally pulled himself together after Spares’s departure. He knew he’d have to respect the man’s wishes. He couldn’t take his threat lightly. A jealous man, a man fighting to hold on to his wife and his marriage is a dangerous man. He still saw Spares’s huge fist pummeling the air in front of his face and the enlarged veins on his forehead. There was anger in the man. Rage. Sor had to forget Marguerite. Not just because of Spares’s threat. He had to accept it was over between them. He had to walk away though his feelings for her were still alive, as alive in him as when they first met.

  He had to leave his office. Take a walk. Talk to someone. He must look like hell, he thoug
ht. The blood in his face must have all drained out. He had bent down to look for the sunglasses he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk when the door opened.

  “Christ,” he shouted out, thinking it was Spares paying him another visit.

  It was Samantha Steele. He was relieved. But what did she want? Her visits were never the I-dropped-by-to-see-how-you’re-doing type.

  “My, my, you’re certainly happy to see me, Sor,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Samantha. It wasn’t meant for you. I thought it was someone else.”

  “Who was that man who just left your office? He almost ran me over. He seemed very angry.”

  She’d never met Marguerite’s husband. Good, Sor thought. “A student’s father,” he lied. “He came to ask about his son’s poor grades in one of my classes.”

  “But why that much anger? He seemed livid.”

  “I showed him my records of his son’s grades and explained his general lack of initiative in my class. His son had deservedly received a very low grade.”

  “You handled it well, Sor.”

  Samantha sat down. She picked up the stone Sor’s friend had brought him from Masada, studied its sharp contours, then returned it to his desk.

  “I hear you had a meeting with Solomon,” she said. “How did it go?”

  “Fine. We chatted. I’m sure you know why I was there.”

  “Yes, some freshmen’s complaint about you ruining the school’s property, and their concern that you are probably headed for a nervous breakdown.”

  “I think they missed the message, Samantha. It’s something I do with all my students. I try to teach them how to see, how to observe, how to look beyond the mere surface of things, the importance of tearing away that insubstantial outer layer to see what’s under it.”

  “And destroying the school’s property in the process?” she said, smiling, showing her trademark set of white, flawless teeth.

  “Oh! The Formica strip! I was a little radical. It was already loose, partially off, and I thought it would serve my purpose well.”

  Samantha laughed, and then, in a more serious tone, said, “God, I should have been there. Why didn’t I have teachers like you, Sor?”

  She picked up the Masada stone again and was looking at it more intently than before. Sor explained how he came by it. She knew about Masada and the Jews who took their own lives rather than surrender to the Romans. “The length men will go to, eh, Sor, to protect what they believe in and love.”

  Sor, still thinking of Spares’s visit while Samantha spoke, looked through the open door of his office. The sun was bright on the tall plant with the enormous leaves that resembled an elephant’s ear—he could never remember its name. It grew in a great clump around the base of the royal palm that stood directly in front of his office. A light breeze shook the large leaves. They swayed sluggishly and ponderously.

  It was then, while looking at the large, clumsy plants, that the impulse came over him to put an end to everything. Give up his job at the university. Leave Florida. The words seemed to spill from his lips uncontrollably, without warning.

  “I’ll be leaving the university at the end of the semester, Samantha. I’m getting stale here. I need a change.”

  Samantha looked shocked. “You must be joking,” she said. “You were just with Solomon. You didn’t mention it to him. He told me you both talked and everything was fine. So what happened since then to change your mind?”

  “When I met with him I was thinking about it, but I wanted to wait until the end of the semester, after my grades were in, before notifying you and Dean Solomon.”

  “But do you have a job?”

  “I applied to several universities, and since my visit with Dean Solomon, I received a letter from New Mexico State. They’ve asked me to come for an interview. The interview is purely perfunctory, they said. The job’s mine, if I want it. I’ve decided to take it.”

  Samantha looked at the floor. “Well, I guess I can’t convince you to stay. You seem firm in your decision.”

  “My mind’s made up,” Sor said, decisively. “I think it will be best for everyone. Also, I’ve always been attracted to the Southwest. Its landscape calls me. Clarity, Samantha. Maybe I’ll find more clarity there. I’ve become somewhat moribund in Florida. The constant sun, the unchanging weather—my brain has become stagnant, fallen asleep.”

  Samantha stood up. “Please, if there’s anything I can do, come and see me. And please, see me before you go.”

  Sor stood up. They hugged. “I’ll miss you, Samantha,” he said.

  “I’ll miss you, too, Sor. You’re a special breed of teacher”

  Sor was happy Samantha didn’t enquire about his wife’s feeling regarding his decision to leave the university. He’d have to lie again. And lying did not sit well with him.

  As soon as Samantha left, Sor called Olephant. He was in his office. A student had an appointment to see him shortly, but he insisted Sor come over. “I have a brew going as we speak,” he said. “It’ll be fresh when you get here. And a student brought me some almond cookies her mother made. They’re delicious.”

  Sor told Olephant about Steele’s visit, the state of his relationship with Marguerite, and all that had happened since he saw him last. He then told him of his decision to leave the university. Olephant was shocked by the last piece of news. “You’re pulling my leg, Sor,” he said. “You can’t leave because of a woman. That doesn’t make sense. And her husband’s threats—I wouldn’t take that seriously. It’s only a last, desperate attempt to hold on to his wife and marriage. From what you told me about him, he’s not the type to do you bodily harm. For Christ’s sake, the man’s not an animal.”

  Olephant then tried to convince Sor to remain in Florida. “If you must leave, find a position with one of the nearby universities in the area,” he told Sor. “Don’t go to New Mexico. It gets cold there. For Christ sake, man, you won’t like it.”

  Finally, after Sor had explained that although Marguerite was the catalyst for him leaving, he had for some time felt the desire to move on and place himself in a new environment, Olephant gave up. “I understand, Sor. It’s just that I’ll miss you.”

  When the student arrived, and they had to part company, Olephant, very emotional, hugged Sor. “Well, old friend,” he said, “don’t forget to call. Let’s keep in touch. Who knows, if Ethel keeps up her spiteful behavior, I might join you in New Mexico.”

  He met with Dean Solomon the next day. Solomon offered him a promotion and more money in an attempt to seduce him to stay. But Sor had made up his mind and could not be convinced to stay. In parting, Solomon again advised Sor to visit Italy. “If not Rome, go to Sicily,” he said as Sor was leaving his office. “There are some fine Greek temples, some of the best preserved in the world, in Agrigento. Visit them.”

  Sor did not tell Julian Plum that he was leaving the university, and made no attempt to see him before he left. Plum, though, had sent him an e-mail in which he wished him good luck for the future, and that he was sorry to see him go. Sor did not reply to his e-mail.

  Three weeks later, Sor boarded a plane to take up his position with New Mexico State University. Looking through the window when the plane was near Albuquerque, Sor felt elated, happy that he had made the decision to leave Florida. He knew he was taking a lot of pain with him, the consequence of unrequited love, but the space between him and Marguerite would act like a kind of poultice for his wound.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Cogito ergo sum. Sor wrote the words on the freshly cleaned whiteboard—his was the first class to be held in the room that morning—and as he wrote, he spoke clearly, loudly, each word for the class to hear.

  “The French philosopher, Rene Descartes, came up with the phrase,” Sor told the class of freshmen. “Translated, it means, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ It is
very important stuff to keep in mind lest we forget our special status among living things, and why we are not like the beasts in the fields munching mindlessly on grass, why we are different, why we are humans, why we wear shoes and make computers and send our brothers and sisters into space.”

  Sor then walked to the other side of the board and wrote, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, again speaking the words out loud as he wrote them. “These are the first words in the Gospel of John in the Christian Bible. Please ignore “and the Word was God.’ We’ll leave that portion of the sentence for the theologians to ponder. We’ll only concern ourselves with ‘In the beginning was the Word…’ the Word being, for us, language, speech, which has been so crucial to man’s development and evolution as a species. Thinking is a wonderful thing, but without words, without the invention of language, how would we think, where would thinking get us? And what could thinking alone possibly do for us without language, without the ability to speak, without the all-mighty tongue with all its words and, of course, hand in hand with our ability to speak, our ability to write, to be able to put words on paper, tap them onto our screens, text-message one another. And this…”

  The noise from the film the instructor was showing in her Introduction to Cinema class in the adjoining room drowned out what Sor was saying. He fondled the felt-tipped pen he used to write his notes on the board and patiently waited for the cinematic commotion to come to an end. He thought he heard metallic objects slamming into each other, maybe cars colliding. There were screams. And then silence.

  “And this tongue”—he thrust out his tongue and began tapping it with his index finger—“this, this toad-like piece of flesh in my mouth,” he continued, when the noise had abated, “that loves to sleep in its warm pool of saliva—I like to think of the saliva as a kind of grease that oils the machinery of speech—this conveyor of words, thoughts and ideas, this fleshy instrument of communication opens the world to us, and decisively separates us from our less articulate primate relatives.”