You Must Be Very Intelligent

by Karin Bodewits

  “Hi Ka, how are you? Or more importantly, how was he?”

  “I have a slight headache. And him… not impressive, boring.”

  “I told you that Hungarian pizza bakers are not good in bed,” she says with an ironic tone in her voice.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I guess you had an inspiring breakfast conversation with him?”

  “Yes. Riveting. Brilliant bit of action from you this morning by the way, cheers.”

  “Haha, how did he react?”

  “Rather slowly. But he fucked off eventually.”

  While trying to get my moist hands into purple lab gloves I say to Lucy, “I literally bumped into Ajit just before.”

  “Ah, is he there?”

  “Of course. Isn’t he always in on weekends? Not at the moment though – just went home for lunch.”

  “That’s good, I need to talk to him,” she says.

  “Are you not worried?” I ask her, while she places eight large vessels with broth on a tray.

  She looks at me with question marks in her eyes. “About the content of your thesis?… I mean, Ajit is doing all the novel stuff. Your thesis will be very dull, no?”

  “Yeah, it won’t be too inspiring. Mark said during my second year exam it will be fine, though. But, yes, I’m worried about it.”

  “Is it really possible to get a PhD when you haven’t done anything new?”

  “Apparently so. I’ve basically just purified the same protein for three years.”

  “It was like a technician position, wasn’t it?”

  “Yip, it’s been donkey work.”

  Her tone makes it plain I just asked her an extremely silly question, but I have abused my body and brain, and charm is not on my agenda today. Lucy continues with a smile, “And right now I am purifying… a bit more! Still, soon I will be in Senegal, enjoying the sunshine.”

  Why is she so kind-spirited? I wish I could be so accepting and nice. I hate the world today.

  I place my 50 mL falcon tubes in a rusty centrifuge, press the lid down with my elbow and set the timer to five minutes. “You think there might be a paper coming out?” I ask after sitting down on the bench opposite Lucy.

  “Well, Ajit thinks so, but then again we all know he is a pathological optimist.”

  Lucy is right. Before she started to write up, Ajit visited our lab a few times per week to discuss research with her. He always informs Lucy that their work will soon be published in one of the best peer-reviewed journals; Nature, Science or Angewandte Chemie. “We are really not far from it, Lucy! We will soon have a very good paper together…”

  “Sure,” Lucy always replies in a weary tone that very clearly states; “Ajit, I love your optimism, you are sweet, but I’m just patronising you. Here, in the McLean lab, losing faith is a badge of honour. Our paper will never happen. And by the way, Santa doesn’t exist either.”

  I tell Lucy, “Yes, Ajit is still dreaming… now that you’re not there during the week, he sometimes tells me about your glorious paper.”

  “I told him recently there’s a fair chance that even if we got enough results to draft a paper, it might well land on Mark’s desk, where it can lie beside all the other ignored papers, to all intents and purposes resting peacefully like Sleeping Beauty for a hundred years…”

  “Poor Ajit.”

  I take the tubes out of the centrifuge; I only need to isolate DNA from the bugs I just spun down. It’s a very straightforward task yet I start to feel allergic to it – I have done it all too often by now. We chat about the night before and the Hungarian pizza baker who was in my bed this morning – it all seems sort of dreamlike now. We are laughing; I shake from the lack of sleep and the alcohol still making its way through my bloodstream. After a few minutes, and a couple of practical steps down the line, I realise that I added the solutions to my DNA extraction in the wrong order.

  “Noooo! I can’t believe it! Any moron can do this, but I manage to cock it up! Over and over again! Yet again I have to start from where I was two days ago.”

  Lucy clearly feels sorry for me, but she doesn’t say anything. I sit down and put my head between my hands. “I can’t be bothered starting again today, it can wait till tomorrow.”

  The tragic truth is: Today or tomorrow, it doesn’t matter a shirt button. I do not even know if this whole experiment made sense in the first place. At the moment I have dozens of half-started projects, all given to me by Mark. With most of them I am not even sure anymore what exactly I already did. There are insane amounts of papers and books to read on my desk, which Mark keeps adding to. I decide to work on one project one day and on another the next. I cycle to the hospital to conduct experiments; sometimes they are experiments which I believed made sense when I woke up in the morning but then I enter the Royal Infirmary Lab and decide it doesn’t make sense to do them after all. Usually I pop my head in to say hello to Sharon and Leonie, to find out about her latest Rugby injuries and hospital goings-on. Then I head back to the School of Chemistry without having done any actual work.

  My mind is constantly spinning with thoughts, research ideas; trying to find out what is sort of promising and worth working on, what could potentially save my PhD… and while I am trying to sift through this mess for meaning, Mark pressures me to generate results for even more projects. It’s a spiralling mess, but Mark will broker no discussion.

  Most days I can rightly conclude that I might as well have slept all morning and spent the afternoon getting pie-eyed in the park with the winos. At least then I wouldn’t have gotten stressed, and Mark wouldn’t have gotten irked at my inability to distil his torrent of gobbledigook ideas.

  “I’ll come with you,” Lucy says.

  We pack our stuff, smoke a cigarette in front of the building and cycle back home.

  “Again, why did you advise me to take the pizza baker home?” I shout to her, cycling behind me.

  “I did not advise you to bring him home.”

  “You did! You told me it would be good to have a one-night stand!”

  “It would. But maybe not with him!”

  “Why is it a good idea anyway? This one-night stand thing?”

  “Fun? To stop dreaming about this Alex? There are billions of reasons.”

  “I am not dreaming about Alex.”

  “Oh, you are!”

  “Whatever…”

  We park our bikes at the entrance of the flat and lock them onto the Victorian railings. My legs feel heavy when we climb the two floors up. As soon as I unlock the front door, my nose scents something bad. “Bah, it smells like him in here,” I say.

  Lucy laughs.

  “Don’t you smell him?”

  “No Ka, I don’t.”

  I remove all the bed sheets and open the windows but the smell doesn’t seem to leave my nose.

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017

  Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_37

  Chapter 37

  Karin Bodewits1

  (1)Munich, Germany

  Karin Bodewits

  Email: office@karinbodewits.com

  At 11:30 a.m. I am sitting behind my desk in the living room. I drink from the coffee standing in front of me, and it feels like I am sleeping with my eyes wide open. I am exhausted even though I slept deeply and lengthily. We had been out for dinner and a pub crawl, for Lucy’s valedictory evening. Logan, Linn, Felix, Greg and William had joined us as we shuffled from one run-down hovel to the next. It had been fun, and intense, but we had got home by 1:00 a.m. and went to sleep quickly. Still, getting out of bed feels harder than on those many occasions when we drank well into the small hours. I feel physically tired and spiritually wearied. In recent weeks I have gotten increasingly nervous at the horrifying thought of finishing my PhD empty-handed, or even worse… not finishing at all. I wake in the middle of the night with my mind racing, like a frightened rabbit in headlights. I think about all the projects, and what a failure I
am, and what on Earth am I going to do next, and if there is the slightest chance I can save the situation?… I say I “think” but thinking is too active; this feels static and passive, like being devoured – by anxiety.

  I open my laptop to check my email. One from Mark.Karin,

  I don’t want you to spend so much time at the hospital. You should work in the chemistry department instead!!!

  Best,

  Mark

  I only think for a couple of seconds and then type my reply.Dear Mark,

  No worries about me working in the hospital. I am at home, not working at all.

  Best, Karin

  As I press the send bottom, I feel confident. Flashing through me is an unfamiliar feeling; pride in standing up for myself. It is the same as I felt when I dared to object to just one of Mark’s silly research proposals. A job well done! I need to ignore that Logan or Linn or whoever Mark catches in the lab first might be the designated target of his random wrath. They won’t be thrilled, that’s for sure, but what can we do? It’s just plain wrong to cow-tow to Mark; once in a while somebody inevitably takes a futile stand. Today it’s me. I sigh, lift my head and smile.

  Lucy notices and asks, “What did you just do?”

  She is folding clothes to put in her suitcase. I let her read the emails. “You got your last will and testament ready?” she asks.

  “I don’t have any money or goods. But I can write down some old-fashioned ideals for posterity…”

  “I’ll take your chopping board instead.”

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  I feel liberated standing up for myself, even though it is pointless, counter-productive and likely to cause collateral I will feel guilty about. Glory is fleeting; troubles are long-lasting…

  I get myself ready and cycle to campus. From the corridor I listen for Mark’s voice in Lab 262. Sometimes I wonder if other supervisors in the department are aware of the dark, explosive tone which Mark deploys on his inmates when no outsider is around. Maybe there are people in the Department who feel sorry for us, or at least pity us. During the first 18 months of my PhD, Patricia Crick, who runs her own group on the ground floor, would occasionally pop her head in to see how we were getting on; always when Mark was at a conference or on holidays. But I haven’t seen her for months. I was told that Mark and Patricia had collaborated on a project until Mark grabbed aggressively at Quinn’s arm during one of their project meetings. Since then she never visited again. I don’t hear Mark, so I open the door.

  Both Logan and Linn look up at me as I walk in. “Seriously Ka, what did you write to Mark?” Logan asks.

  “Why?”

  Linn clarifies, “He came in before and he wasn’t pleased. He ended up ranting for at least half an hour about the maintenance of the FPLCs and the mess in the cold room, but it was clear that it was about something you did. It was all quite unfair.”

  I tell them about the emails this morning and their faces yield to resignation.

  “Can you maybe think about us the next time you want to do something like that?” Logan asks.

  I know they are right. I feel bad about making Mark shout at them. I knew when I clicked on “send” that Mark would storm into the lab to vent. I knew it, and still I did it. Why on Earth did I not phone to warn them?

  “I am sorry. Next time I will warn you.”

  “That would be appreciated,” Logan says.

  “If there is a next time…” Linn adds.

  “Is he so angry?” I ask.

  “Hell yes, he’s furious!” Linn says.

  I sit down behind my computer and start to search the Internet, though I don’t know what I’m searching for. A few minutes later I am sitting at the Bunsen burner, picking some colonies from an agar plate that I spread yesterday, when I hear Mark enter. Instantly I consider hiding behind the fridge. But he would find me and I would look silly.

  Mark pauses next to me ticking with his key chain on the bench and releasing a very audible sigh. I am visibly nervous. I know that this man – who I know to be nothing more than a bitter individual – is going to lacerate my psyche at any moment.

  For what feels like a long time, in reality probably just a few seconds, he looks at me without saying anything, as if he doesn’t know what to say. He could ask me about the email – which would be directly going to the heart of the matter – but he doesn’t. Eventually he barks, “I want your results on the ACP project on my desk this afternoon!” ACP?

  “I don’t have any results on that project. I have been working on KdtA, as we discussed last week.”

  “ACP I asked you for!” he barks again.

  His eyes roll, he shakes his head in disbelief and ticks his keys even louder on the table. I feel my hands stopping to shake and the strange nerves in my belly disappearing. I open my mouth and want to shout back. I want to tell him that he is wrong. Don’t shout back. Don’t shout back. You are above all that. And fuck, you need to get your PhD! You need to get your fucking PhD… I feel my shoulders sinking and a deep feeling of sadness overtakes me. I look him straight in the eye and for the first time, in the presence of Mark, there is a tear running down my cheek.

  He looks at me for a few seconds. Surprised. Confused. “Sorry,” he says, then buggers off.

  Linn walks towards me as the lab door falls close. “Arsehole,” she says.

  “He is,” I say and walk to the office.

  I fetch my coat and dig in my drawer to see if I have a forgotten pack of cigarettes somewhere, but there is nothing. I go outside in the hope of finding a fellow addict who could spare me a cig, but there aren’t any. I head to the Simpson lab, beg one from Felix and walk back outside. Prof. Gilton is there now, puffing away.

  “Karin, nice to see you!” he says, in his informal and happy way.

  “Hi,” I say, much more reserved.

  “We need to arrange a date for your second year viva. Soon.”

  Every PhD student at the School of Chemistry sits two exams before the final graduation. I knew that the second year viva is not much of an exam; it’s a mere formality to check you are on track with your project. I was supposed to have mine last summer, but so far Mark has postponed it.

  “I asked Mark a few months ago, but he said he is busy and it can wait.”

  “No, it can’t! We need to make sure you finish in time. I will talk to Mark and arrange a date.”

  “That would be great,” I say, hoping this exam might clarify what I am actually working on.

  I come home early evening to find Lucy stretched out on the sofa smoking a cigarette, with a large suitcase next to her. I sit on the window sill, resting my feet on the rocking chair, and light my own cigarette.

  “How did Mark react?” Lucy asks.

  “SSsshh…” I hiss, indicating that I don’t want to talk about it.

  Lucy nods, understandingly.

  “Are you not having a date with ice cream man tonight?” Lucy asks, referring to a guy I gave my phone number yesterday evening in the pub.

  “I had him on the phone this afternoon. He sounded like a total schmuck. I told him I’ve got swine flu.”

  Lucy looks at me and laughs.

  We sit next to each other without saying much. It is unusual for us not to talk when we are in the same room, but I guess we are both mentally preparing for her departure. To break the silence I walk to my laptop on the small desk, connect it to the boxes and call up John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane. We both laugh and start to sing along.

  When the song ends Lucy stands up and gets into her coat. I follow her to the corridor to say goodbye.

  “First Vlad and now you…” I say, feeling close to tears.

  Of course, having Vlad leaving a couple of months ago was nowhere near as bad as Lucy leaving now, but still it had been a painful goodbye.

  “Oh, come on now. You have no reason to be so unhappy. You have great people around you. Felix, Greg… if you need some crazy input, William, and if you get really bored you
can always ring the Hungarian pizza baker or Alex,” Lucy says.

  “You know Alex is off-limits,” I say, forcing a smile. “And the pizza baker was a been-there-done-that-never-again experience.”

  “I will come back at least twice. Once to submit and once for my PhD defence.”

  I throw my arms around her and give her one last hug before she walks down the stairs. “Have a good trip!”

  “Take a stand, alright? Don’t work for free and stay strong! Promise?”

  “Promise!” I say wondering how on Earth I will stick to that, feeling as lost and bereft as I do now. “Think about me walking through the Meadows in the drizzling rain when you sit in the sunshine.”

  “Will do,” she says and walks down the stairs.

  I do not close the door of my flat until I hear the front door of the building fall close.

  Less than two hours after Lucy leaves, the doorbell rings. I am not expecting anyone but I buzz them in and wait at the front door of my flat to see who climbs the stairs – Felix and Greg. “Hi,” I say enthusiastically.

  “Surprise!”

  “Sure is.”

  “We were just round the corner and thought we’d call in and say hi,” Felix says.

  I suspect that there is about a zero percent chance that they just happened to be round the corner – what the hell would they be doing there, together – and they are here solely to cheer me up, which is touching. I feel grateful.

  “You want something to drink?”

  “Oh, we brought something,” Greg says and opens a backpack full of different types of Belgian beers plus two bottles of wine, white and red.

  “You don’t mind that we just stopped by, do you?” Felix asks, already seated on one of the benches in the kitchen.

  “Not at all!” I say, feeling rescued from depression by their not-at-all spontaneous visit.

  “We got something for you!” Felix says, handing me an envelope.

  “What is it?” I ask, curiously ripping it open; it contains three tickets saying Hearts versus Rangers. “Football?”