“Wow, you must be very intelligent.”
I lift my shoulders, not knowing what to say. I feel quite astonishingly unintelligent this morning. After a short moment of uncomfortable silence the old lady says: “You should be proud.”
She gives me a supportive look. And for a moment I feel as if she could be my grandmother watching my graduation ceremony. I am in that delicate, raw, hungover state and I feel my body filling up with emotions, again, the same random emotions I managed to drink away quite well yesterday evening. But these ones are more about my PhD than my relationship, I think.
“Maybe,” I say smiling.
“Where are you from?”
“The Netherlands.”
“Oh lovely. I’ve been to Amsterdam a few times… going with the boat from Harwich to Hook of Holland. I was so sea sick… ill over board… years ago when I was still able to party into the small hours.”
She laughs, shaking her hips playfully and holding tightly to her stick. I am slightly shocked and ask if she’s okay? The hip-shaking soon has everyone at the bus stop staring. A few people laugh but others look worried, like me.
“Oh, come on, I’m not THAT old!” she squeaks loudly, while looking around the full audience, her arms and stick lifted up in mock protest. “I will show you something.”
She slowly walks to the metal fence separating the pavement from the private property behind. She hangs her stick carefully on the bars and claps her hands until a few of the bus stop audience softly start clapping the same rhythm, while trying to keep their brollies above their heads. She places her hands just above her hips and starts making large dance steps, lifting her knees high into the air. It looks ropy but she is keeping the rhythm. Every time a foot hits the floor she claps a heel on the pavement twice. It takes only about thirty seconds of warm-up before her hands leave her hips to make full-blown dance moves. From the way she moves one assumes she has full control of her old body and skinny legs but still a few people are poised ready to catch her if she stumbles. She seems extraordinarily happy. And the audience, including myself, is suitably entertained for a few minutes, until the bus arrives.
“That was awesome,” I say, handing back her stick.
Her breathing is heavy and she struggles to speak. Nevertheless, she manages a very friendly greeting for the bus driver. The bus is crowded and a young guy stands up to offer her a seat. She takes her plastic headscarf off and blonde curls jump out like spring feathers. She looks slightly younger now, but still she must be at least eighty.
The bus is staying far south of the city centre, driving towards the east. At walking pace we pass the posh, private school, George Watson’s College, where parents clog up the road with proud, shiny SUVs. The bus engine makes a worrying sound as we overtake a small group of high school students, all attired in perfectly ironed uniforms.
“If I had a child I would never bring it here,” says the old lady, throwing a disapproving look at the SUVs.
“You don’t have children?” I ask.
“Oh, no. Children were not for me. I married late and with the wrong husband. Not the type of man you would want to present as a dad to your children.”
She makes slapping gestures with her hand. I would like her to tell me more, but it seems inappropriate to ask.
“I married a Scottish man, but he isn’t alive anymore. I am free.”
“You don’t want to go back to England?”
“Oh no, I love Edinburgh. It’s a good town, and the people are lovely.”
The motor of the bus is working hard, making its way up West Mains Road. I press the stop button. “You need to get out at campus too?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Oh no, my child, I will go a few stations further to the Royal Infirmary. I need to visit my cardiologist.”
“Your heart seems fine.”
She giggles like a schoolgirl and says: “One needs little risks in life.”
“True. It was nice to meet you.”
“A welcome pleasure.”
When the bus stops and we can see the statue of Joseph Black the old lady says: “It is a very good university.”
I smile and jump out wishing I was as happy as her.
I enter the lab much later than I normally do. My feet are wet and cold. All my colleagues seem to be delayed; just Babette working at the bench, giving me her customary angry look the moment I enter, and soon emitting harrumphy-grumpy-snorty noises – the usual fare. It sounds so automatic I sometimes wonder if she knows she does it. “Good morning, Babette, a pleasure to see you! What a lovely day.” I speak enthusiastically while dropping off my coat. I spray isopropanol over part of the bench to clean it and walk to the hot room to get a few Erlenmeyers containing E. coli. I empty the flasks into six centrifuge bottles and use scales to check if they all weigh exactly the same, before placing them in the centrifuge. It’s not rocket science; most tasks in the lab merely require patience and minimal concentration.
Babette storms out the moment Lucy comes in, who looks in bad shape.
“Hangover?”
“Yes. But you look much too fit after two bottles of red and a beer.”
“I feel miserable. But I met a happy person today – they do exist…”
I start telling Lucy about the old lady at the bus stop but suddenly the lab door swings open at brutal speed; had anyone been behind it they would be seriously hurt. It is Vlad. He pauses dramatically in the doorway, holding a small box of ice and scanning the room furtively. Realising there is no one here except Lucy and me, he steps inside.
“Pleasure to see you both,” he says, focusing solely on Lucy.
He is smiling, trying to be charming but actually being cringey.
“Oh Vlad, it is an absolute delight to see you as well,” I say.
“Are you married yet, Lucy?”
“No, still waiting for a prince to come along.”
“The last one fell off his roan, so she dumped him,” I add.
“I’m still available; I could get you a horse,” Vlad whispers playfully, knowing he doesn’t have a chance with Lucy.
“Great! Make it a Shetlander, it’ll fit in my pot.”
“You want to cook it?!”
“What else would you do with it?”
“Okay, I better get you something else than a horse. But listen, we need to find you a new husband, Ka… urgently.”
Though addressing me, he is still looking at Lucy.
“Yes,” I say. “I thought about that chubby Chinese noodle chap in your office.”
“Benjamin?”
“If he is called that, yes.”
“I think you might be in his league. As you are quite tall he will not crunch you when he lays on top of you.” Don’t visualise this… don’t, don’t…
“Good point.”
“I will tell him to wear a clean T-shirt and I will give him step-by-step instructions on how to start a conversation.”
“Sounds perfect. Why are we being honoured with your presence? Did your lab mates kick you out?”
“I don’t get kicked out by my lab mates, Ka. They would not dare.”
I laugh. He looks harmless, too much like Mr Bean, never a Bruce Willis whatever fantasies he might delude himself with. I cannot imagine anyone ever being afraid of Vlad.
“Anyway, I just wondered if I could have some BL21 competent cells from your magic freezer.”
“Sure, anything for a poor guy like you.”
“I’m not poor, Ka. I can buy Lucy everything she wants. It is just my supervisor who does not apply for any significant lab funds. Or maybe he does apply, but doesn’t get any as he has not published for over twelve years now.”
“Twelve years!!?”
Vlad has a different supervisor than Daniel had, but apparently there are high-flyers to be found on the eight floor of the Darwin building.
“Yep. I also don’t know what he is doing the whole day. Maybe sitting in his office drinking tea. I was thinking about this
: I start to see the upside of a long period of limbo, during which you worry, you fret from one fixed-term contract to the next one before anyone gives you a professorship. All those years of job insecurity, at least they make sure you work to prove you’re good! These Darwinian years do indeed separate the wheat from the chaff.”
“How poetic!” I think about what he said for a moment. “However, lots of excellent but ground-down wheat falls by the wayside with the chaff,” I say.
“Hm. Yes. That is true. But shit happens.” Is there any bottom to Russian fatalism?
I dig through the −80 degrees freezer to find the right cells, all the while wondering if both the Darwinian and the cuddly paths are wrong and a halfway house is missing from modern academia?
“Maybe there is a better method,” I say. “Certainly, blatant laziness should not be permitted while some of us are enslaved!”
“Life is slavery.” Nope, there is no bottom to Russian fatalism…
“Do you happen to have the ptrc99a plasmid in your lab?” I ask, placing the Eppendorf with BL21 cells in his ice bucket.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Could you send an email round the Biology Department asking if anyone else has it?”
“I’d better send you the mail list, and you ask for it yourself. I don’t have a good reputation. They probably won’t help me.”
“Really? A skilled diplomat like you, Vlad?”
“I better leave with the cells before your supervisor comes.”
Vlad sounds strangely insecure.
“He won’t eat you.”
“I’m not sure about that, he looks like he might.”
He opens the door and turns around once more. “Come to our lab for lunch, I have some nice cheese and olives in the fridge. You might like it as well, Lucy.”
One has to marvel at his persistence in the face of all-out, constant and mocking rejection.
“We have got a lab meeting at 11:30 a.m. I’m afraid we won’t make lunch,” I say while the door is closing.
“A lab meeting?” Lucy asks, her face looking even paler than when she entered.
“Yep.”
“Shit.”
All lab meetings are dreadful, every last one of them; a sort of oppression booster lest we forget.
I place the cell debris in the freezer and look at the clock; still some time to kill before the lab meeting. I get the agar plates, which I spread yesterday, out of the stove. I expect to find single colonies of E. coli grown on the agar but the plates are empty. I throw them in the bin, then sit in the office resting my wet feet on the dusty heater behind my desk, letting time pass by. This is not what I ever thought I would want to do en route to becoming a doctor?
With German punctuality, Logan locks the office door at 11:30 a.m. and we walk together from the lab to the seminar room. “Ready for another morning talking about KBL?” he whispers.
“Oh yes, can’t wait to hear the latest! You never know, maybe we will talk about your project instead?”
“I doubt Mark even knows the name of the enzyme I’m working on.”
“Probably not.”
Indeed Mark does not have a clue what Logan is doing. We all have long recognised that Logan’s project, which is industry-funded, is permitted solely because it brings in money – Mark has no interest in it whatsoever. There are several generally unrelated projects running in our lab. The KBL project is Marks’ favourite. He is obsessed with it. I think if someone were to ask Mark to rank the projects he supervises, there would be lots of empty space after KBL, though mine and Hanna’s would probably be next, followed by Erico’s then Quinn’s. Lucy’s would be fourth or fifth and Logan’s would be at the bottom if Mark remembered to add it at all. The injustice of his support, both financial and scientific, angers most of us. It is like having a handful of children being allocated social benefits and only one being fed.
For the first fifteen minutes Babette presents her KBL research with short sentences, hectically waving at different PowerPoint slides. Her voice quickly becomes husky; she is clearly unaccustomed to speaking at length. I ponder what it is like for her family when she goes home for Christmas. Does she get angry when other people sit at the same table to have food? Or what if someone dares to say good morning to her?
After the presentation the meeting goes on for over two hours, exactly the way everyone expected it to; Mark, Barry and Babette talking about KBL, and the rest of us just room-fillers- sort of figurants adorning their higher dialogue.
Every now and then Mark asks us a question, I suppose trying to involve us in the discussion, but he mostly ends up shaking his head – after correctly sensing a profound absence of interest and knowledge in every response. He doesn’t understand that we do not share his passion for this one single protein. I guess most of us could have developed some interest by now, but the unfairness of the ludicrous overemphasis kills the sharing spirit.
“Any other points to discuss?” Mark finally snarls.
He looks round the table. We are all thinking the exact same thing: I will kill anyone who speaks.
It is the unwritten rule of Lab 262 that these moments are not suck-up opportunities. It is often at this point that people go to war. It is mainly Babette and Quinn sniping through vituperative gun sights – spraying bullets of derision at each other – and they usually load up and fire a bit even before this starting signal. Now they both let rip big-time. The rest of us pre-emptively wear stony expressions to deflect stray insults until the show is over. I confess to a certain Schadenfreude – some days, but not today. It is too warm in the room and the oxygen level is too low. Headache without nausea is the best possible state my body can hope to achieve right now.
I sense my mood going from baseline boredom to aggression, my headache is throbbing and I know my blood sugar has dropped to the bare minimum. I need food. Thankfully Babbette and Quinn react slower than normal and for a moment it seems like nothing much more will happen. Barry sighs and lets his arms hang next to his chair, clearly waiting for someone to call an end to this dismal gathering. Hanna looks like she might eat Barry if she doesn’t get hold of her daily bagel very soon. Even Lucy’s eyes have lost sparkle. Just when Babette opens her mouth and wants to fire, Logan says: “I guess we are all quite hungry and need some food.”
Babette moans and sputters, almost soundless.
“I agree,” Mark says, ignoring Babette’s disgruntled expression which includes the weird exposure of her gums. “Another time Babette, okay?” he adds and smiles at her.
We all stand, lift our notebooks and walk towards the door. “Just one thing, Quinn. Eva needs to move flats this weekend in Stirling. It would be good if you could drive up there on Saturday morning and help her.” I beg your pardon? Why exactly would Quinn help your girlfriend move?
Quinn lifts his head and pauses for a few seconds before turning around to face Mark. He lets his tongue roll over his lips and then bites it. His eyes are screening the door as if considering his options and looking for a reply. Slowly he turns around and says: “Sure Mark, what time?”
“Nine is early enough. Eva doesn’t like getting up early.” Quinn neither, and to be in Stirling at nine means rising about seven in Edinburgh – it ’ s a one-hour drive.
“No problem.”
All of us, except for Mark and Babette, leave the room. A few steps down the corridor Quinn punches the wall. “Fuck!”
“Why did you say yes?” I ask.
“Why?! Because I should have finished my PhD three months ago already! I want to have some chance of getting out here!”
Most of us head to KB House to score a sandwich which failed to sell during lunchtime; stodge that recharges very minimally. Back in the lab, I still don’t feel up to work. Maybe I never will – it’s a liberating fantasy… I fetch cigarettes from my desk drawer. Lucy notices and joins me downstairs between the chemical waste containers.
“This colleague of Felix’s, Simon, he is really weird,” Lucy
says pointing at two guys smoking outside of the gate. “Did he tell you he only has one ball?”
“That was indeed the first thing he mentioned. He actually told me a lot about his genitals before I even knew his name. I think I know all measurements in all dimensions, both erect and limp, but not if it’s imagined or real.”
“Freaking weird.”
“Maybe he wanted to raise curiosity? Aren’t you interested to know what it is like to have sex with a one-ball men?”
“I don’t feel that desire, no. You?”
“No.”
We walk back upstairs and start to work.
Feeling defeated, I stand at the bus stop in the evening. Felix, passing the bus stop on his bike, sees me and stops.
“You take the bus?”
“Not normally. I got a flatty yesterday after the pub.”
“You need help fixing it?” I definitely do.
“Is that not stereotyping me? Do you think I am a woman who does not know her way around a toolbox?”
“Up to you.” Fix it, oh please fix it…
“Okay, if you don’t mind.”
“Where do you live?”
“Twenty-six Gorgie Road.”
“I’ll drop by tomorrow morning before work, around eight.”
“Thanks,” I say, feeling quite dreamy and looked after.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, just this strange thing. Mark told Quinn to help his girlfriend move flats over the weekend, all the way up in Stirling. Quinn clearly doesn’t want to help, but is going anyway, because he is afraid he might otherwise be stuck in his PhD forever. I don’t know… it just seems wrong.”
“Ka, if your PhD supervisor asks you to paint his house, you don’t ask ‘why?’, you ask ‘what colour?’”
“But it’s wrong!”
“It is.”
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_23
Chapter 23
Karin Bodewits1
(1)Munich, Germany
Karin Bodewits
Email: [email protected]
You Must Be Very Intelligent Page 21