You Must Be Very Intelligent

by Karin Bodewits

  I show him his side of the bed and change into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. He undresses to his boxer shorts and gets under the blankets. I comment, “Sex between us would be perfunctory. I don’t want it. I feel jaded and unromantic.”

  “Oh.”

  “Still, it’s nicer to sleep together than alone, isn’t it?”

  “Well, normally when I share a bed with a girl more happens than just two people lying next to each other.”

  “It’s the unusual things in life you will tell your grandchildren.”

  “You’re weird, Ka.”

  “Who isn’t when you get to know them?”

  As agreed, he stays on his side of the bed.

  With my coat already on, I stand in the doorway of my bedroom. “If you want to sleep longer that’s okay, but I need to do a few things before my parents arrive.”

  Erico is taking a moment to remember where he is and how he got here.

  “Ah, you told me your parents were coming, it’s fine, I can nap at home.”

  “The one-night stand thing got a new meaning last night, didn’t it?”

  Erico smiles. “It did. I’m not sure if I will tell my friends about it.”

  It wasn’t something to boast about, two young people not having sex in the same bed. It was friendly, downright familiar, but oh-so perfectly empty and low-key like the work life we were sheltering from.

  I enter a small DIY shop on Atholl Place. An imposing, muscled guy wearing a wife-beater shirt and denims strides towards me. He looks around forty, though this may be an overestimate owing to his unhealthy demeanour and the splatter of old-fashioned tattoos on him. A particularly aggressive one runs from his neck up to his ear. A Harley Davidson belt and a leather body warmer would render him the quintessential Hell’s Angel. “Can I help?” he asks in a coarse, Scottish accent.

  “I’m looking for a mousetrap,” I say very politely.

  He leads me to the other end of the shop and points at all the mousetraps on a shelf. “Cool,” I say and take one of the small pieces of wood with a little metal bar on top. They remind me of my childhood in the countryside; keeping mice out of the house during winter was a mini-war. Mr. Muscle regards me with unnerving suspicion.

  “What do you need that for?” he growls.

  “I’ve got mice in my flat,” I say feeling oddly attacked; what else would I want a mouse trap for?

  “Well, you don’t have to kill them! Do you?”

  He regards me with brazen contempt, like I am a defective member of society he is determined to march into the Maoist re-education camp he has recently reopened. I feel vulnerable to this condemnation. I don’t necessarily want to kill the mice, but my parents are coming and I do not want to look like I have jettisoned all standards and happily live in squalor with them. I have a bad feeling that standards are precisely what this life is costing me. I want to at least pretend I am doing something about the mice.

  “What’s the alternative; isn’t poisoning even worse?” I ask, pointing at the pink bottle with poison, recalling rotten, shrivelled bodies of mice in my parents’ garage.

  “You don’t need to poison them either!” he says this with eyes wide open beneath distractingly thick eyebrows. He really does think I am an awful person.

  “Here!” he says.

  With his right arm, which is covered with a tattoo of a bleeding girl hanging upside down on a cross, he reaches for a small wooden box. He opens the lid and shows me what’s inside; a labyrinth built from tiny wooden planks. It is beautifully made. It even looks quite fun for mice.

  “You place some food here. They can only go in. They cannot get out. Every morning you check to see if there is one in there. If there is, you release it in the park.”

  “Does that really work?”

  “You have to put it in the right place.”

  “How do I know the right place?”

  “Put some flour on the floor before you go to bed. In the morning you will see where they walk. Put the wooden cage on their path.”

  “You’re telling me I should cover my whole floor with flour?!”

  “Yes! What you were planning was just animal torture!”

  Feeling eminently bully-able these days, I reply, “Okay, I’ll take that.”

  I pay six times more than I would have paid for a normal and probably more effective mousetrap. Mr. Muscle follows me outside and lights a cigarette in front of the shop. I open the wooden box before stuffing it in my backpack, feeling sorry for the mouse I will never catch, and cycle in the direction of George Street.

  It is a cold day, and a winter glare makes me teary. I feel the mascara stinging lightly in my eyes. However, the sun is out and the air feels good in my lungs. From several spots on George Street you can see the Forth River just before it flows into the North Sea. There are numerous cargo boats making their way to and from the port. I wonder what goods they carry and who is crewing them. I stop to smoke a cigarette and have a few peaceful minutes overlooking the distant water. It’s a spacious, dramatic view, and the tobacco smoke coming out of my mouth makes it even dreamier.

  I feel a pounding in my head from the evening before. I was hoping I had avoided a hangover, but here it comes. My mobile rings in the pocket of my coat. Who is phoning me before ten on a Saturday morning?! Who died?

  “Hi Ka, hope I didn’t wake you?” says Logan.

  “No, what’s up?”

  “The FPLCs are running dry. Seems you forgot to put the timer on and the buffer ran out. It has been pumping air for hours. I stopped them for you, but you might need to come in to fix it properly.” So that’s it with the preparation for my parents.

  “Shit! I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  I get back on my bike and cycle frantically through the Saturday crowds and traffic, up past Edinburgh Castle, over South Bridge towards campus. I am just locking my bike in front of the chemistry building when Felix walks out of the main door. He doesn’t wear a coat and holds a pack of cigarettes in his hand.

  “Hi!”

  “Why are you here so early?” I ask.

  “I couldn’t sleep after 4:00 a.m., so I thought I might as well do something useful.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m helping a friend with application documents, and it’s easier to do that in the office than in my apartment.”

  “Can’t he write them himself?”

  “He can, but it is a kind of psychological support as well. He’s just in a grim situation.”

  I am pressed for time but I am curious about why Felix chose to fill in forms for someone else in the middle of the night. His friend’s sorry story turns out to be a tale of our times… a scientist who has been post-doctoring for over six years; the last two years taking contracts in Switzerland which last no longer than two months each. He gets paid as a technician; far below his education level.

  “Sounds like precarious seasonal work, except all year round,” I say.

  “Yes, it’s fine if you’re backpacking in Australia at eighteen but, being almost forty, having lots of degrees in your pocket and having devoted your life to science, it’s scant reward. It’s become clear he’ll never make it in academia – he didn’t get to publish enough.”

  “He only realises now that he’s not good enough?”

  “He has always been the best at everything he does. But he was unlucky in his last two projects. He wants to leave academia, but he’s too old, too specialised.”

  “I get it.”

  Academia is a pyramid, and many are trying to get to the top. There is only room for a tiny fraction of PhDs on that little summit; a fraction, which is even getting smaller as the number of PhDs has increased rapidly in recent years. While one might reasonably expect to cling to the side, however far up you got, the reality is that as long as you are not secured by a permanent contract, you might roll off the side at any time – and it might be entirely beyond your control – and then you find yourself at the bottom of society. Having t
humped to the ground, you are not valued higher than a fresh graduate, and sometimes less than people who have never gone to university or college. The shunned academic is seen as an age-defected greyhound in a world that fetishes malleable youth. I had read and heard all that before, but so far it had been an obscure notion. Maybe we only sense the danger during our postdoc years, when it is already getting late… Or maybe this is stuff I do not like thinking about. None of us does. We try to ignore it and tell ourselves that we will be different.

  Naively I enquire, “What about becoming a university teacher or a professor at a less famous university?”

  “Even in Kazakhstan, the competition for professorships is fierce nowadays! And you know university teaching positions are like gold dust. They cut the money and the stability right out of the middle tiers.”

  All I can think to say is “Hmmmm.”

  “He’ll find something but it won’t be easy, probably a lowly job.”

  I listen sadly and Felix continues; he knows I am just waking up to these facts of life. “It’s fine to work your ass off for a salary lower than a manual labourer on a building site if it leads somewhere, but it doesn’t any more… We’re all living on pretentions to the past. Now you can be deemed superfluous at any point, and most of us will be… Sometimes scientists get stuck abroad when it happens, and aren’t able to go back to their home country; people like me aren’t part of the social system anymore, meaning no unemployment benefits back home if we fail, and only scant pensions, as we didn’t ‘contribute’ for years.”

  Felix is obviously touched by the subject, as for a change he doesn’t smile. He cares about his friend and is expressing fears that lurk in him as well. Frantic as I feel, I’m slowed down by the ominous weight of his friend’s fate.

  I pull myself together and rush off to the lab, where there is no sign of Logan or anyone else. I get into my lab coat, spin an extra scarf around my neck and go straight to the cold room where the FPLCs are standing. I can see straight away that air has got into every single tube. I prepare fresh buffer in the hope that the damage is reparable. My hands start to freeze from being at 4 degrees for too long but by then I am hopeful that the air is out of the system. My telephone rings.

  “Good morning! You sound awake,” my mum says.

  “Yes, I’m in the lab.”

  “You do remember that we’re coming today?”

  “Yes, mum. I just needed to do something quick. Where are you?”

  “I was calling to tell you we’re at the airport. Your dad printed out the travelling schedule, and according to that we will be at your apartment in thirty minutes, okay?”

  Aaaaaaaaaargh! Thirty minutes! I need at least twenty minutes to cycle home and I’m not ready to leave! The flat is a bloody mess unless Erico cleaned it, in which case I would invite him to stay over every weekend.

  “Sure.”

  “I hope you’re ready for us.”

  My head starts spinning and I consider trying to delay their arrival – I can think of no tricks, options or lies. I bolt downstairs to the Simpson group and ask Felix to exchange the buffer for me in half an hour.

  “No problem, off you go!”

  I rush home and calculate that I have between five and seven minutes before my parents ring the bell. I collect all the empty bottles of beer and wine from the evening before and chuck the lasagna stained plates in the sink. I wipe the kitchen table and benches at vigorous speed as if it were a competitive sport. I throw all material stuff in a wash basket. I take out the hoover – a rare event, hence the mice no doubt – and race it over the floor. Just as I almost finish hoovering the living room, the doorbell rings.

  “Hi, I’ll buzz you up!” I say, trying to sound leisurely.

  The time it takes my parents to walk up the two flights of stairs I spent spreading flour over my wooden floor and placing the mouse labyrinth in the middle. It’s a clever touch, looks organised and thoughtful – the handiwork of someone with standards.

  “Hello,” my mum says overly excited, before giving me three kisses on the cheeks.

  She looks far too fresh for having left their house at ridiculous o’clock this morning. My father stands in the doorway behind her, holding something that looks like a large bag containing an electronic device I probably don’t want. I don’t like being burdened with large possessions.

  “Can I go through, so I can set this down?”

  “What is it?” I ask, trying to sound cheerful.

  “A computer. It’s not new, but it works. And the university can install whatever they want on it to get you online.”

  “Oh wow. That’s great!” I say, genuinely excited.

  Now I have a computer as well as a desk. So reduced am I, these two commonplace items stir feelings of enormous well-being deep inside me.

  “Thank you so much!”

  “Hopefully it works, because they weren’t happy with me bringing it in the plane.”

  “Coffee?”

  “That would be nice,” mum answers.

  I jump over the flour to get to the sink.

  “What’s that for?” she asks, pointing at the flour and the cage.

  “It’s a mousetrap.”

  “What’s the flour for?”

  “That is just to check if I placed it in the right spot of the room. The mice leave footprints in the flour.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Shall we get you a proper trap?”

  “No. I want to try this first.”

  Parents are a lifelong touchtone with your own reality. Right now, my reality consists of trying to impress my parents with how grown up I am. But only this morning I was bullied into buying the mousetrap I didn’t want. My experiments are going awry and, even worse, I’m not sure it matters since my job – my supposed raison d’etre – is probably going nowhere in reverse gear like Felix’s friend in Switzerland. I share beds with colleagues I do not want to sleep with. Of course, I don’t reveal any of this. I successfully impress my parents the way one is supposed to, while seeing myself as just another desperate, phony pseudo-adult in the crowded rut of academia.

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017

  Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_28

  Chapter 28

  Karin Bodewits1

  (1)Munich, Germany

  Karin Bodewits

  Email: office@karinbodewits.com

  “Ka, I need to talk to you!”

  Vlad is on the phone sounding even stranger than usual; worried, or excited, I really can’t tell.

  “You okay?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Is Daniel okay?”

  Thankfully, I haven’t heard from Daniel for months, but as far as I know, Vlad is still in touch with him.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him for a while. I saw on Facebook, apparently he is a bike courier now. Perhaps he was hit by a garbage truck and is dead.”

  “Yes Vlad, very Russian. Where are you?”

  “The airport.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere. I just came back.”

  “Ah yes, a research trip…”

  Vlad is always on alleged research trips, all over the world. He is extraordinarily adept at misappropriating funds. Brazil, Namibia, Iceland, USA… you name it and Vlad will have convinced some funding body in the scientific world that he needs to collect some random samples from a deserted beach in that country in order to continue his ground-breaking research.

  He must be a wondrously talented grant writer as his publication output from the University of Edinburgh is precisely zero. Given that his supervisor has not published for the past twelve years, it seems fair to assume that his output will remain non-existent throughout his PhD. It is a shame because Vlad – despite some socially challenging behaviours – is a remarkably intelligent man who could perform meaningfully in another environment. Such is modern academia that hi
s intelligence is squandered on the debatable art of grant sponging. Mostly he travels alone but occasionally he takes along a random girl he met online.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “No! At least I don’t think so, I’m not sure… I can’t tell you by telephone.”

  He laughs, which would be reassuring, were it not for the strange pitch of his voice.

  “Are you at home?” he asks.

  “I am.”

  “I catch the next airport bus and will be there in half an hour or so.”

  “Shall I come to Haymarket to help you carry your bags?”

  “Women don’t carry bags, Ka.”

  Less than an hour later, Vlad drops off his bags in the little hallway of my flat and sits on one of the red benches in the kitchen. He looks at the silver strainer lying upside down on the wooden floor.

  “Do I see that right? There is a mouse in there?”

  “Yes! I caught it! Just before…”

  “You caught it?” He sounds astonished.

  “It took me a long time.”

  “And what are you going to do with it? Kill it?”

  “I don’t know. I am not going to kill it. I thought…”

  “Throw it out of the window!” Vlad says slightly disgusted at the thought that he’s sharing a room with a mouse.

  “Vlad… I live on the second floor. I am not throwing mice out of the window. Apart from the fact that it would be animal torture, what would the pedestrians think about flying mice? ”

  “It is only one, Ka.”

  “You think one is fine?”

  “Yes.” Vlad looks entertained.

  “I would rather take it to the graveyard on the other side of the road.”

  “Oh, come on! Would it not be funny that you walk on the street eating some disgusting fish and chips and all of a sudden there is a mouse falling into your food?”

  “Hilarious. Why are you here?”

  He doesn’t answer and looks like he isn’t sure anymore whether to tell me or not. I fill up the kettle to make tea and repeat: “Why are you here? Do I need alcohol to handle the story?”