The Visiting Professor

by Robert Littell

  My father …

  My father was clutching the German Luger he had brought back from the Great Patriotic War and had produced, along with the Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Manual, every time he told the story of how he had personally liberated Poland, as if the existence of these two trophies proved he had been there. Tactful as always, he had climbed into the bathtub before shooting himself so as not to stain our precious East German linoleum with blood. His unblinking eyes were riveted on mine, they contained, it seemed to me then, it seems to me now, a melancholy reproach, an unspoken question. Why did you do it? his eyes asked. And then he was staring at me. I do not know how at the age of six I knew such a thing, he was, this is a true detail, staring at me without seeing me. Which was when I put two and two together and figured out what the word meant that my parents had refused to explain me.

  The word was death.

  I also figured out what had happened to my lost turtle and my lost goldfish and my mother’s youngest brother, my crazy uncle Hippolyte who brought me striped candy canes every time he came over until one day he stopped coming over and my mother burned all the snapshots of him in the family album. Maybe it was all that information clicking into place in such a short span of time which overloaded my cerebral circuits; maybe it was the sight of one of the faceless men closing my father’s eyes with his soiled, sausage-thick fingers—whatever the reason, my head started spinning from all the questions which suddenly had inconvenient answers.

  I do not usually have an eye for detail, but in this case I am able to reconstruct the scene as clearly as if the whole episode took place yesterday. By the age of six I had already developed the lifelong habit of avoiding the chaos of the moment by slipping into fictions. I remember holding my breath, hoping against hope this was a fiction I could slip out of.

  I lost all hope when the faceless men stuffed my father’s body into a bloodstained burlap sack and dragged it down the stairs, the elevator as usual was out of order, and pitched it into the back of an open truck. Gazing down from my apartment window through the tears streaming from my eyes, they turned bloodshot from crying so much, they would stay that way for the rest of my interminable life, I could see the burlap sack rolling from side to side as the truck pulled away from the building.

  With the advantage of hindsight, I can identify this as the precise moment my childhood ended. After the suicide of my father, I was never young again. Emotionally speaking, I froze in my tracks. The emotions I experienced that day are the emotions which dominate my life today. If I loathe and fear chaos, it does not come from nowhere.

  For some people it is always too late to have a childhood, forget happy.

  Where was I?

  Another brittle explosion reached my ears. I wheeled around in time to see the sheriff kick away the lock he had shot off and push through the glass door. Inside, a rag doll of a body lay motionless on the floor. Overhead, the “Purchase from Purchase” sign sizzled irritably. Automobiles roared up to the curb. Tires squealed. Journalists brandishing cameras and microphones and klieg lights and tape recorders crowded up to the door, elbowing each other to get a better look at the late unlamented perpetrator. Exploding flashbulbs strobe-lit the scene. The sheriff, his pistol and bullhorn dangling along the gold stripes of his trousers, emerged from the glass building. He walked with a jerky gait, as if every second frame was missing from the film. He answered a few questions, shook his head, gestured with his chin toward me.

  The next thing I knew the cruiser with me huddled in the backseat was adrift in a sea of reporters. Flashbulbs detonated in my face, a long television camera snaked into the car through the open window, its lens whirring in and out as it tried to focus on my tear-streaked face.

  “Can you tell us how you figured out the identity of the serial killer?”

  “I can say you I used game theory, also the theory of randomness, to prove the perpetrator was trying to make his crimes look random. This discovery led directly to the serial killer.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Come again?”

  “Would you run that past us once more looking straight into the camera?”

  “It is as plain as the nose on your face. The conscious effort to produce randomness negates randomness.”

  “What is it about randomness that grabs you?”

  “Whether the universe is random or determined shapes up as the ultimate philosophic question. Our view of the structure of the universe, of why we are passengers on the planet Earth, depends on the answer. The quest for a single example of pure, unadulterated randomness can thus be seen as the search for God.”

  “What are you, some kind of religious nut?”

  “Say, aren’t you the visiting professor at the Institute for Chaos-Related Studies who stopped the bulldozer at the nuclear-waste site?”

  “Could you comment on how it feels to solve a crime that stumped the police?”

  Before I could open my mouth, a journalist called, “Could you tell us how it feels to be responsible for someone’s suicide?”

  “Would you say whether you ever killed anyone before?”

  A cry burst from my heart of hearts: “For God’s sake, I was only six. I wasn’t even a consenting adolescent, forget adult.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he was only sixty.”

  “He doesn’t look a day over fifty.”

  “Would you share with us your secret to looking younger than you are?”

  “Do you follow a special diet?”

  “Do you exercise regularly?”

  “Did you have plastic surgery?”

  “What about hair implants?”

  “Is there any truth to the rumor that you lied about your age to avoid the draft in the Soviet Union?”

  “There is no Soviet Union anymore,” I started to explain, but my words were drowned out by a barrage of questions.

  “Would you give us your views on a common European currency?”

  “Would you give us your views on the European Common Market?”

  “Would you give us your views on euthanasia?”

  I wanted to say them I was more familiar with the predicament of youth in Europe, but it was obvious nobody would have paid the slightest attention to my answer.

  “What do you think of American crime?”

  “What do you think of American criminals?”

  “What do you think of America?

  “Can you tell us if you’ve learned anything from your visit here?”

  I managed to slip a word in. “I learned to wear my heart on my sleeve. I learned how a city on the Euphrates can be more Florida than Miami.”

  “Are you seriously suggesting it’s safe to put fluoride in drinking water?”

  “Are you for or against family values?”

  “What’s your position on infidelity?”

  “What is your position on incest?”

  “If God was really against incest,” I started to explain, “He would have created two Edens within commuting distance of each other,” but I might as well have been whistling into the wind.

  “Do you agree with those who claim that serial murder is a search for serial orgasm?”

  “Speaking as an expert on chaos, do you think premature ejaculation can be cured?”

  “Does theoretical chaos hold out hope for men who can’t achieve orgasm?”

  I could barely speak; I felt the words catch in my throat. “It is a matter of getting a jump start,” I managed to say, “of being downwardly mobile. … The next thing you know, whoooosh, you are pushing the speed limit on the Interstate.”

  “Are you saying you’re against the fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit?”

  “He fielded that question last time we interviewed him,” an anchorwoman noted.

  A siren wailed in the distance, its pitch rising as it approached. The heads of the journalists craned toward the sound. “Thank you for the interview, Mr. Falk,” one of the reporters called through
the open window. The television lens zoomed back until it was nesting in the camera. The journalists scurried away to film the arrival of the white truck with the pulsating light that sent tiny orange explosions skidding across the rain-soaked road.

  The sight of the orange light released in me a flood of memories. I thought of the truck spewing sand onto the icy road the night I arrived in Backwater and the tiny orange explosions on the ice-lacquered pavement, I thought of the ice storm that had been caused by the Siberian night moth, I thought of Occasional Rain jump-starting my battery, I thought of her warm mouth closing over a part of me it had not been to before.

  Could it be, was it within the realm that I had fallen wildly, eternally, achingly in love with a girl who actually existed?

  Shaken, shaking, I stumbled away from the sheriff’s cruiser. Drifting between the used cars in the lot toward the street, I heard Word Perkins’s demented cackle reverberating in my brain.

  In the beginnin’ was the Woid …

  The rain had let up, a damp darkness shrouded the scene. Down the block the journalists thronged around the white truck. Norman and Bobby and Bubba, looking like ghostly angels in the harsh white light of the kliegs, pushed through the crowd with a stretcher containing the perpetrator gift-wrapped in the sheriff’s yellow slicker. They came up behind the tailgate and folded back the wheels under the stretcher and maneuvered the corpse into the back of the truck and closed the doors. Norman rapped his knuckles twice on the side of the truck.

  The siren started wailing again, at first feebly, then with an intensity that reminded me of my mother’s inhuman shriek. I pressed my palms against my ears, dampening the sound. At least Word Perkins would not be disturbed by the noise, I thought.

  … the Woid was whit God.

  As the truck pulled away from the curb and started down the street toward me, I caught sight of letters gleaming over the windshield. They read:

  I racked my exhausted brain, but could not recall anything even remotely resembling this in my Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Manual or my other English sourcebooks. Nor did it strike me as being Lilliputian.

  Which meant it was a new language.

  The King’s English had slipped into chaos.

  The sheriff detonates the head of a match with his thumbnail and holds the flame to the tip of the cigar jutting from his mouth. “I’d go an French-kiss uh horse’s arse,” he allsows, interrupting himself to suck the cigar into life, “just to see the faces on the Criminal Investigation boys when they catch the evenin’ news.” He exhales, bats away the smoke. “You gotta hand it to the perpetrator,” he rambles on. “Killin’ hisself the way he did went’n saved the county the expense of uh trial, not to mention eventual incarceration.”

  Norman is unusually subdued as he wheels the sheriff’s cruiser onto the Interstate, direction Backwater. “Believe it or not, I never seen no one blow his brains out before,” he announces.

  “I seen uh perpetrator once,” the sheriff says, sinking back into his memories, “it was up in Boston, I was only uh depety sheriff at the time, he got wind he was gonna get arrested an’ rigged uh garden hose from the exhaust into his car, then locked hisself in an’ started up the motor. He went’n killed hisself listenin’ to uh Judy Garland tape.” The sheriff’s eyes screw up into a nostalgic squint as he hoarsely croaks the words. “ ‘I’m al-ways chay-sin’ rain-bows …’ That song was still playin’, back ‘n’ forth, back ‘n’ forth, when we busted into the car. Funny how a tune can stick in your head.”

  Sheriff Combes twists in his seat belt to talk to Lemuel, who is lost in the darkness in a corner of the backseat. “You bein’ un-American an’ all, I don’t expect as how you’re familiar with rainbow chasin’.”

  Lemuel says moodily. “I have chased a rainbow or two in my day.”

  Norman says, “If rainbow chasin’s anything like ambulance chasin’, it’s against the law.”

  They cruise the Interstate without a word for half a dozen miles. Norman breaks the silence. “Word Perkins rubbing the dumdum with garlic before he shot himself to death proved the perpetrator was the perpetrator.”

  “Garlic, hell, goin’ an’ killin’ hisself is what proved he was the perpetrator,” the sheriff says. “Perpetrators who didn’t perpetrate don’t blow their brains out.”

  “There are exceptions to your rule,” Lemuel remarks darkly.

  “Why would a perpetrator kill himself if he’s not the perpetrator?” Norman asks innocently.

  Before Lemuel can respond, an eighteen-wheeler coming from the other direction blinds Norman and the sheriff with its brights. Norman flicks his headlights several times, then raises an arm to shade his eyes. “Son of a bitch,” he swears.

  Bubba’s voice, crackling with static, bursts over the car radio. “What’cha say I hang a U and nail the fucka?”

  The sheriff glances at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. “We’re late already,” he says into the microphone. “If we don’t show up at the Kampus Kave before they polish off their lasagnes, the state cops’ll go an’ arrest the perpetrator theirselves.”

  Lemuel catches a glimpse of Norman’s eyes in the rear view mirror. The deputy sheriff is peering into the mirror, trying to penetrate the darkness in the backseat. “I just thought of somethin’, “ he says, “namely, old Lemuel back there used to share an apartment with the broad who cuts hair in Backwater.”

  Lemuel realizes Norman is on the verge of putting two and two together, realizes also that the deputy sheriff is simple-minded enough to decide it equals four. “What’s-Her-Face and I broke up in April,” he says quickly. “I have not seen … hide nor hair of her since.”

  “Lemuel here is a bona fidee hero,” the sheriff says, trailing after his own thoughts. “I’m gonna go ‘n’ put him in for uh citizens’ medal for assistin’ the law enforcement authorities.”

  The cruiser speeds past the sign planted at the spot where the countryside ends and the village of Backwater begins. Lemuel catches a glimpse of it through the car window. “Backwater University—Founded 1835. Home of the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Chaos-Related Studies.” Underneath someone has spray-painted the words “Chaos sucks!”

  Could it be … Is it within the realm … Has he stumbled across another, until now unsuspected, property of chaos? Or was the graffiti merely a chapter heading in The Greenhorn’s Guide to Polite Oral Sex?

  Norman spots the Rebbe’s house and starts to slow down. Lemuel leans forward. “Can you drop me downtown?” he asks casually. “I am scheduled to access the supercomputer over at the Institute until midnight.”

  A minute later Norman eases the cruiser up to the curb behind the two state police cars parked in front of the Kampus Kave. The cruiser with Bobby and Bubba in it pulls up behind them. The sheriff corkscrews in his seat and offers a three-fingered handshake over his shoulder.

  “I’d give uh hell of a lot to know what you do on that computer of yours when you’re not solvin’ serial murders.”

  Lemuel, pushing open the door, says, “It is a relevant question, I am glad you asked it. What I do is plunge through the decimal expansion of pi toward infinity.”

  “Uh-huh,” Norman grunts.

  “Don’t it make your head swim?”

  One foot out the door, Lemuel says, “Compared to the high you get from infinity, marijuana is kids’ stuff.”

  Lemuel starts down the block toward the Institute, glances back to make sure the coast is clear, doubles back and peeks through the “e” of the “Kampus Kave” on the window. Molly, all smiles, is distributing toothpicks to the four state troopers and a television cameraman as they slide out of the booth and shake paws with the sheriff and his deputies.

  Lemuel realizes he does not have an instant to lose. He lumbers diagonally across Main Street, passes the twenty-four-hour laundromat, turns into the unpaved alleyway, takes the steps of the narrow wooden staircase two at a time. His chest heaving, he presses his ear to the door. Hearing nothing, he fee
ls for the key hidden over the cement lintel. When his fingers close over it he feels a surge of relief. His hand trembles as he tries to fit the key into the lock. He fills his lungs with air, steadies his right hand with his left, inserts the key and opens the door.

  The room is awash in the eerie light cast by the projector with the piece of mauve silk over it. Mayday, curled up on her blanket, stares at Lemuel with unblinking eyes filled with cataracts and reproach.

  Lemuel bends down and strokes the dog’s head. “Hey, it is me, L. Fucking Falk,” he whispers in the dog’s ear. “I did not go to Miami-on-the-Euphrates after all.”

  On the phonograph, a needle is scratching in the end grooves of a record. Lemuel spots garments flung carelessly over the back of the couch and instinctively begins to fold them—a pleated miniskirt, a body-hugging ribbed sweater, sea-green tights, gray Calvin Klein underpants. His hearts, the one in his chest, the one on his sleeve, skip several beats as he folds a pin-striped button-down shirt, a pair of designer jeans, silk boxer shorts.

  From the bedroom come the soft gasps that originate in the back of the throat of someone fucking.

  Lemuel listens for a moment, then stepping silently over the dog, snatches The Hite Report from the shelf. Grasping it in his suddenly clammy hands, he backs out of the room, locks the door behind him, puts the key back on the lintel.

  He just has time to duck between a garage filled with Spring Fest floats and an abandoned building before headlights appear at both ends of the alley. Twisting and turning to avoid potholes, four automobiles crawl slowly toward each other along the unpaved road and meet under the staircase leading to Rain’s loft. The headlights snap off. Car doors slam. Metal taps echo on the wooden steps. Knuckles drum on the door.

  “Anybody home?” The voice has Norman’s unmistakable twang.

  “Call again, Norman.”

  “You in there, Rain?”

  A naked electric bulb flickers on over the lintel. The door opens. A familiar voice reacts to the presence of the law enforcement contingent. “Z’up, Norman? Z’up, Sheriff?”