History. a Mess.
Page 3
Now I knew that wasn’t so. Neither were the overgrown creatures who sometimes stood at the foot of my bed when I was a child staying over at someone else’s house. Flickering outlines of blurred human figures seen in my half-awake state, rooms constantly moving. Walls shifting to and fro. Just like had happened a month ago:
Professor Lucy had given the green light and I was finishing up the dissertation. Tying up loose ends. Everything was clicking together and spring was in the air. I set the manuscript down on the table and thought to myself it was probably the last time I’d handle the old tome. A sense of loss and a relief. All I had left now was a single word in a single sentence in a lone entry. I was unsure if I had transcribed it right. It was on day 221. Near the end of the journal. I found the page immediately and swiftly scanned the text. But something wasn’t right, I couldn’t find the sentence. In fact, there was nothing I recognized in the text, nothing I understood at a glance. I soon realized that this was not the same text I had transcribed. It was one page earlier. In other words, there were two entries with the same number. And it seemed to be the case that I had only transcribed one of them. The earlier one. I did not know how I had scrolled past the second entry even though it was listed as the same day and for a moment I wondered if I should even bother to pore through the text; one entry was hardly likely to change much. But I did not have to read far to see what it was, just glance at a few words. That caused me to read the entry carefully. And to read it again and again in the hope that these few sentences would change their meaning, that they might be understood in any other way than the one presenting itself to me.
I looked around. Where was I? I looked back at the book, watching the letters fall down the pages, changing to numerals, numbers to hours, days and years. Amounts. Pounds. How many of them were there? Sixty thousand? And where had I taken them from again? I set my trembling hands on the open book, looked at the manuscript custodian, the older one, in conversation with my first-year teacher, Professor Barrington, over at the front desk. There were a few other people around. Impeccable, respected scholars who narrowed their eyes at me then turned away and smiled contentedly to themselves as they continued with what they were doing. Who had decided to let me in here? Who had thought it a good idea to let my hands touch this ancient manuscript? I closed the book and stood up from the table without putting it back in the box. Then I set off down the long hallway with my eyes on the decorative glass at its end. But it did not matter how long I walked, I could not seem to get nearer to the end, to the door out of the hall. The walls seemed to follow me, they moved toward me and away, floating with their beautifully bound books ten meters up into the rafters.
I don’t remember having left the building, but I remember being outside a grocery store near my home. Inside the adjacent alley. What was I doing there? Had I thrown up behind the trash can? I have no memory of how I got home, but once I got there I didn’t have any medication, not that it really mattered as I don’t remember having felt much pain. Except I did feel pain. Pain so deep that when Hans told me he had been offered a position back home, I decided to follow him. I’d gotten sick. I needed to rest before I could finish.
I get up from the sea-green plush and go into the kitchen, past the hallway mirror, a woman in a thin nightgown with uncombed mouse-gray hair down to her shoulders. I take some cookbooks from a drawer. Appetizers. Grilled sandwiches with asparagus and goat cheese, baguettes with artichoke and goat cheese, tomato pie with goat cheese, baked bread with asparagus salad, asparagus salad with artichoke and goat cheese. I put my shaking hand to my mouth. Hans is on the phone to a friend. Talking about tomorrow night. He’s going out while I host my old girlfriends. All seven of them.
So it’s not exactly a real conversation
At the round table. Bonný, Ester, Sigga A., Sigga D., Tína, Bjarnfríður Una, and Guðbjörg. Bonný the anthropologist; Ester the nurse, the coach’s wife; Sigga A. the biochemist; Sigga D. the engineer; Tína the freelance actress, of her own volition, by her own account; Bjarnfríður Una the political candidate; Guðbjörg, between jobs; Bonný, graying and now a doctoral candidate. Ester, chestnut haired and olive-skinned, living in a forest-green townhouse in the suburbs with several sons and a husband unhappy with his lot; Sigga A., light-haired, expert and acclaimed in her field, married but childless, inscrutable and more distant with the passing years; Sigga D., my favorite, also light-haired but only down to her shoulders, the mother of two girls, pictured in her company’s brochure wearing a safety helmet; Tína, full of plans, opinions, and with the longest hair, light red; Bjarnfríður Una, her hair cropped uncompromisingly short; Guðbjörg, all of a sudden a realtor boasting ten microscopic images in her newspaper advertisement, pallid, bad skin; Bonný, heading to some conference on some topic or other; Ester, never heading anywhere; Sigga A., keeping quiet when the conversation turns to people’s health; Sigga D., helping others along; Tína striving to come to know everything between heaven and earth, roughly; Bjarnfríður Una, wearing Icelandic-crafted jewelry around her neck, passing biting judgment on contemporary society, individual initiative and self-reliance; Guðbjörg, a self-professed nerd, wearing costume jewelry bought at thirty thousand feet, claiming some particular thing is surreal; Bonný, divorced but now a part of a European research network, declaring something is epic; Ester, “yes, yes”; Sigga A., filthy rich, wearing frameless glasses; Sigga D., looking for common ground; Tína, claiming to be an introvert and talking about political theater, the theater’s conversation with the nation; Bjarnfríður Una cutting off Tína’s words about political theater; Guðbjörg trying to reinforce Tína’s words about political theater; Bonný discussing coffee; Ester discussing chocolate; Sigga A. and silence; Sigga D. discussing coffee and chocolate; Tína discussing chocolate and coffee; Bjarnfríður Una discussing red wine; Guðbjörg discussing white wine; Bonný talking about a book that takes place in the Middle Ages; Tína talking about the same book; Bonný connecting; Tína too: “Think about it, all of you, twelve hundred years and nothing’s changed!” Bonný talking about the past as a mirror of the nation; Tína about the past as a source of self-esteem; Bonný about mindfulness and being fully present; Ester about mindfulness; Sigga A. heading to the bathroom; Sigga D. talking about mindfulness; Tína about mindfulness; Bjarnfríður Una not entirely sure about mindfulness; Guðbjörg pretty sure; Bonný about herself and something else; Ester about herself and something else; Sigga D. about Ester and the same; Sigga A. returning from the toilet; Tína about herself and one other thing; Bjarnfríður about herself and one more thing; Guðbjörg about herself and a completely different thing; Bonný, wearing a fur collar at some opening party; Ester wearing a fur collar but not at any party; Sigga A. wearing a fur collar at some opening party; Sigga D. wearing a fur collar at some opening party; Tína, not wearing a fur collar but still at some opening party; Bjarnfríður Una wearing a fur collar at some opening party; Guðbjörg wearing a fur collar at some opening party; Bonný, Ester, Sigga A., Sigga D., Tína, Bjarnfríður Una, Guðbjörg. And me. With a fur collar?
Each woman’s speech begins with one and the same personal pronoun; the next speaker usually makes no effort to understand the previous speaker’s perspective, only picks up the thread to serve her own story. So it’s not exactly a real conversation. And thus the merry-go-round continues apace until it stops as one of them, quite by chance, manages to make a profound contribution to the discussion, and sweeps away the ugly deliquescence of so many little things. Most often that’s Tína, and she finds it no problem to corral Bjarnfríður, too. As the former asks the meaning of economic growth in one part of the world if famine, violence, and ferocious disturbances claw their way into another part, I stand up and clear the empty dishes off the table. I put the crockery in my sink and let the jet of water drown out the suffocation of these recurrent conflicts, scraping away remnants of goat cheese, tomatoes and asparagus, all the while wondering what shapes people’s opinions, whether they’re maintained by a
ctual conviction or just stubbornness based on some old belief that perhaps owes itself to chance anyway, to some coincidence or to bad company. And that leads me to ponder other people’s relationships. I think about the past, how strange it is, how ancient. Then I grab the third wine bottle of the six people had brought me, and feel heat rise to my face at the thought of the missing seventh bottle and my guess as to who chose to come to this gathering empty-handed. But when I walk back into the dining room, it occurs to me that the dissolving of the vexed relationships at the round table seems somehow integral to the system. That is, the mechanism isn’t propelled by these women’s disposition to agreement alone, but more because most of them, especially Sigga A., Ester and Guðbjörg, a pointed formation, long ago decided to go through life without forming opinions on all the conflicts flaring up all around the world, without trying to get to the bottom of their source or fathom what they’re about. And that is how it happened: from the memories of their school years, those developmental moments, these women spin the fine, tremendously strong thread that has ever since bound them together, ensuring peace and joy and laughter for the remainder of the evening.
And everyone wanted their words to be heard more than once that evening, so much so that I forgot the questions that I thought ought to have been in the air ever since this group of women walked into the dining room.
“Right,” he said, smirking as though he’d half expected me
Lucy. Drawn from the Latin name Lucius and entering into the native English tongue via the Norman invasion of England in 1066. The most audacious of my fellow students, or mainly the men, mocked him from time to time, but they were of course so obviously just trying to conceal the terrified respect they had for him. My respect for Lucy was not mixed with fear. I only feared him. What’s more, his behavior toward me made it clear he didn’t expect much from me. If you really could call it behavior: I was never completely clear whether he knew who I was during the first year of my studies, although I was formally his student. It was not until the first year was over that he called me in for a meeting.
I left my house early in the morning and as I was midway between my house and the building where he had his office it started to rain; I clutched my coat around me and ran. That didn’t do anything to prevent me from arriving at my destination drenched; what’s more, it meant that I arrived not only wet but also panting.
Professor Lucy directed me to a seat with a silent, firm gesture. He was on the phone. I sat down, caught my breath, but could hardly relax in the deep leather chair that had glued itself to my sopping coat. In front of me was a low table; on top of it were stacks of books and papers, and Lucy sat on the other side of this, at his desk, his back turned to me, which looked out through an old stained-glass window. From his conversation, one could tell he was unhappy with the person to whom he was speaking. But I could not ascertain why; the conversation took place in Spanish and it ended angrily, something I saw as much as heard because Lucy broke off the conversation by hanging up on the person at the other end of the line. I watched his neck tense above his chairback, how he slid his hands down his face in reaction before he turned his chair around away from his desk at a snail’s pace.
We were facing one another. He leaned back, crossing his feet to reveal his red nylon socks and white, hairless tibia. He straightened his pants leg at the thigh to stop his knees bursting through the linen. He looked at me like he was still thinking about the phone call and right away I sensed the distance between us. It was something much bigger than these stacks of books, this little table and the oriental rug underneath it. And there was nothing I could do about it. Oh, it was terrible not to be able to even depend on any sexual interest from him at this moment where he had such little faith in my intelligence. Terrible, that is, not to matter either in substance or spirit. I was ashamed of thinking this way, but other male professors would likely have given me a chance, at least momentarily, trembling as I was there, drenched in my light raincoat. But Lucy did not even invite me to take my things off, any more than he fetched me something to dry myself off with or offered me a cup of tea. He just got right to the point. I needed, now, to think about my thesis. Had I come up with something specific in the field I had chosen? He did not wait for a response but said he had something for me. Then he straightened his legs and inspected his fine leather shoes, a gesture that was a kind of preface to his speech:
Not long ago, one of his colleagues had come across a manuscript related to his particular specialty. The diary of a man who might possibly be the author of several works Lucy had written a little about many years back. He had only taken a glancing look at the manuscript himself, submerged as he was in other projects—“snowed under”—but was quite convinced that the author of the diary, signed only with the initials S. B., would turn out to be the painter S. B., the artist responsible for the famous portrait of Viscount Tom Jones.
Right! Was I supposed to know the portrait? But of course, I nodded, entirely eager, although there was in reality no need for such dissembling in this man’s presence; I barely got to open my mouth. I only had to accept the project, which, it went without saying, was a unique opportunity for a young scholar. It wasn’t like well-preserved manuscripts from seventeenth century Western Art History grew on trees. Lucy plucked up a little fragment of paper and wrote on it the name and the number of the manuscript. Having done that, he did something I did not expect. He took my hand, smiled and wished me good luck. That farewell was even less convincing than his weak, clammy handshake.
Soon after, I stood outside his building, scrap of paper in hand. The rain had stopped and I decided there was no reason to wait. I was excited to see the manuscript, even if I knew it was a better idea to start by reading something about the work of this S. B. And to clap eyes on the famous painting. Who did he say, Tom Jones? Would I be able to discover what made this work so distinctive? I didn’t even know where it was on display.
I had never been to the manuscript library before and was not entirely certain about the system there in the darkness, but soon a friendly young man materialized in front of me, the custodian; before he was able to so much as say good morning, I’d pushed Lucy’s fragment of paper at him. “Right,” he said, smirking as though he’d half-expected me. I sat on a hard, wooden bench in a dark booth and lit a little lamp attached to a bookshelf in front of the desk. I looked about; there were not many people around.
I was watching a young, focused woman in the neighboring booth when the custodian bustled over and set a brown cardboard box on the desk in front of me. He extended his hands invitingly, and then vanished. I carefully opened the box and took out the book. It was much thicker than I expected, bound in pergament, and considering its age, it was in very good condition. As I opened the book, I wondered if I shouldn’t have white gloves on my hands or something. This was all so old and so beautiful. Yes, old, exactly! I stared at the first page and flipped forward. What was this? It was almost as if the lines were collapsing into one another, so cramped were they lying there and filling the pages entirely. And the writing. What had I gotten myself into? I had never learned to read anything like this. Nor had I ever worked with such an old text. I had been reading scholarly articles. First and foremost, I had been reading pictures. As, actually, had Lucy himself. And it was then that I realized why this “great opportunity” had been placed in my hands; he had emphasized getting a copy of my transcript when the work was done. It was clear that I needed help. And that is how I met Mrs. Mary Howard. One of these old, prestigious scholars at the university who had never completed her doctorate.
But it was a grind nonetheless; the result was by and large a poor report of the young artist’s daily pottering, since he did not write much about his art. Not until day 203. Then my study took a completely new direction. Day number 203 was not just a remarkable discovery on its own, revealing that S. B. was indeed responsible for the Tom Jones portrait; it changed the manuscript as a whole, for it contained the clue that
the author was a woman. What once seemed a petty testimony to everyday, recurrent actions now gained a different meaning; with the aid of a great weight of theoretical material I was able to mine historical significance from almost every word in the manuscript. I drank in everything that had been written about the period, about art and women. And I learned new concepts.
After I delivered Lucy a copy of the transcript, as agreed, I did not have much contact with him. Even my discovery did not change my relationship with him or my status in his eyes. I met him a few times after our first meeting and, of course, told him about what I had been turning up, but he seemed primarily pleased that it was now possible to make clear that the creator of the images he himself had researched was the author of the diary. If I could show that the author and artist was also a woman, that would be truly interesting.