Special Topics in Calamity Physics

by Marisha Pessl

  "Well, I'm not sure, exactly," I said.

  He nodded and said nothing more.

  "Have you written about Nachtlich recently?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "No. Why?"

  "Remember the way we met Hannah Schneider—she was in Fat Kat Foods and then she reappeared at the shoe store?" "Yes," he said, after a moment. "Ada Harvey described the same thing when she told me how Hannah

  met her father. She'd planned the whole encounter. So I was worried maybe you were her next victim, because you were writing something—"

  "Sweet," Dad interjected, "as flattered as I'd be for Miss Baker to choose me as her target—never been anyone's target before—there is no Night-watchmen, not any longer. They're considered by even the most laid-back of political theorists to be a mere fantasy. And what are fantasies? What we use to pillow ourselves against the world. Our world, it's a cruel parquet—murder to sleep on. Besides, this isn't the age of revolutionaries, but an age of isolationaries. Man's proclivity today is not to unite, but to cut himself off from others, step on them, grab as much dough as he can. As you know too, history is cyclical and we're not due for another uprising—even a silent one—for another two hundred years. More to the point, I remember reading an in-depth piece about Catherine Baker being a Parisian gypsy in origin, so however thrilling it may sound, it's still rather tenuous to assert Schneider and Baker were the same woman. Given the odd way she told all of this to you, how do you know she didn't simply read a book, a real page-turner about the mysterious Catherine Baker, then let her imagination run wild? Maybe she wanted you to believe, for everyone to believe before she killed herself, that that had been her life, a life of upheaval and causes—she, Bonnie, some other dope, Clyde. That way she might live forever, nest-ce pas? She'd leave behind a thrilling Life Story, not the dreary editorial that was her truth. Such are the lies people tell. And they're a dime a dozen."

  "But what about the way she met Smoke — ?" "All we know for certain is that she liked to pick up men in food settings," Dad said with authority. "She was looking for love amidst frozen peas."

  I stared at him. He did have a few infinitesimal points. On www.iron butterfly.net the author claimed Catherine Baker had been a French gypsy. And given the heaving-bodice posters in Hannah's classroom, I could conceive how it was somewhat plausible she might devise a more exciting life for herself. Just like that, Dad could poke serious holes in my rowboat theory, make it look embarrassingly overdesigned and ill considered (see "De Lorean DMC-12," Capitalist Blunders, Glover, 1988).

  "So I'm nuts," I said.

  "I didn't say that," he said sharply. "Certainly, your little theory is elaborate. Far-fetched? Absolutely. But it is, in a word, remarkable. And rather exciting. Nothing like news of silent revolutionaries to get the blood rushing into one's head — "

  "You believe me?" He paused and turned his face up to the ceiling to consider this, as only Dad could consider things. "Yes," he said simply. "I do."

  "Really?"

  "Of course. You know I've a soft spot for the far-fetched and fantastical. The wholly ludicrous. I suppose there are a few details to further shape — " "I'm not crazy."

  He smiled. "To the ordinary, untrained ear you might sound slightly unhinged. But to a Van Meer? You sound rather ho-hum."

  I leapt from the couch and hugged him.

  "Now you wish to hug me? So I take it you've forgiven me for not telling you about my imprudent encounters with that strange and wayward woman, whom we shall now call, given her subversive connections, Blackbeard?"

  I nodded.

  "Thank God," he said. "I don't think I could have survived another blitzkrieg of books. Especially with that twenty-pound edition of The World's Famous Orations still on the shelf. Do you feel like eating something?" He brushed hair off my forehead. "You've grown too thin."

  "All of this must have been what Hannah wanted to tell me on the mountain. Remember?"

  "Yes—but how are you planning to dispense your findings? Will we co-author a book, entitled, say, Mixed Nuts: Conspiracies and Anti-American Dissidents in Our Midst or Special Topics in Calamity Physics, something with a bit of rumba to it. Or will you write a bestseller with all the names changed, the proverbial, 'Based on a true story,' written on the first page to sell more copies? You'll have the entire country terrified that unhinged activists are working as teachers in their schools, poisoning the minds of their dear dullard children."

  "I don't know."

  "Now here's an idea—you'll simply jot it down in your diary, an anecdote for your grandchildren to read upon your death when they go through your belongings neatly arranged in an antique steamer trunk. They'll sit around the dinner table, murmuring in incredulous voices, 'I can't believe Grandma did that, all at the tender age of sixteen.' And via this diary, which will be auctioned at Christie's for nothing less than $500,000, a story of small town terror will float away by word of mouth into one of magical realism. Blue van Meer will be said to have been born with a pig's tail, the troubled Miss Schneider driven to fanaticism due to a love that went unrequited for centuries, a Love in the Time of Cholera, and your friends, the Miltons and the Greens, they will be the revolutionaries staging thirty-two armed uprisings and losing every one. And we can't forget your dad. Wise and withered in the background, the General in His Labyrinth on his seven-month river voyage from Bogota to the sea."

  "I think we'll go to the police," I said.

  He chuckled. "You're pulling my leg."

  "No. We have to go to the police. Immediately."

  "Why?"

  "We just have to."

  "You're not being realistic."

  "Yes, I am."

  He shook his head. "You're not thinking. Let's say there's truth to it. You'll need evidence. Testimonials of former group members, manifestos, recruitment processes—which will all be rather difficult to find, won't they, if your suspicions about undetectable murder tactics are correct. More important, there's an inherent risk when someone comes forward, pointing a finger. Have you thought about that? Coming up with a theory is all very thrilling, but if there's truth to it, it's no longer a round of Wheel of Fortune. I won't allow you to draw attention to yourself, assuming, of course, any of this is true, which we will probably never know with any certainty. Going to the police is gallant for simpletons, for nitwits—but what purpose would it serve? So the sheriff can have a story for his donut break?"

  "No," I said. "So lives can be saved."

  "How touching. Just whose life are you saving?"

  "You can't just go kill people because you don't like what they're doing. That makes us animals. Even-even if we can never find it we still have to try for..." I trailed off into silence, because I wasn't exactly sure what we had to try for. "Justice," I said weakly.

  Dad only laughed. " 'Justice is a whore who won't let herself be stiffed and collects the wages of shame even from the poor.' Karl Kraus. Austrian essayist."

  " 'All good things may be expressed in a single word,' " I said. " 'Freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy. And hope/ Churchill." " 'As thou urgest justice, be assured /Thou shalt have justice more than thou desirest.' Merchant of Venice." " 'Justice wields an erratic sword / grants mercy to fortunate few / Yet if man doesn't fight for her / 'Tis chaos he's left to.' "

  Dad opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, frowning. "Mackay?"

  "Gareth van Meer. 'The Revolution Betrayed.' Civic Journal of Foreign Affairs. Volume six, issue nineteen."

  Dad smiled, tilted his head back and gave a very loud "Ha!"

  I'd forgotten about his "Ha!" Usually he reserved it for faculty meetings with a Dean, when a fellow colleague said something humorous or stirring and Dad was slightly perturbed he hadn't thought to say it, so he said a very loud Ha!, partly an expression of annoyance and partly to suck the room's attention back to him. Now, however, when he looked at me, unlike those faculty meetings with a Dean (Dad allowed me to sit in the corner whenever I was out sick with a mild head cold
and, without stirring, swallowing all potential sneezes, I listened to the assembled Ph.D.s with chalky complexions and thinning hair, speaking in weighty voices of Knights at the Round Table) Dad had big, bare tears shivering there, ones that threatened to slide shyly from his eyes like modest girls in bathing suits removing their towels, making a slow, embarrassed move toward the pool.

  He stood, put a hand on my shoulder and moved past me to the door.

  "So be it, my Justice-seeker."

  I sat in front of the empty chair for another moment or two, surrounded by the books. They all had a silent, haughty perseverance about them. They weren't going to be destroyed by any launch at a human, oh no. With the exception of The Heart of the Matter, which had belched up a clump of pages, the others were intact, gleefully open and showing off their pages. Their tiny black words of wisdom remained in perfect order, sitting in pristine rows, unmoving, attentive like schoolchildren impervious to the influence of a naughty child. Common Sense was open next to me, peacocking its pages.

  "Stop moping and get in here," called Dad from the kitchen. "You must eat something if you're going to wage war on flabby-armed, potbellied radicals. I don't think they age all that well, so you'll probably be able to outrun them."

  34

  Paradise Lost

  For the first time since Hannah died, I slept through the night. Dad called such sleeps "The Sleep of Trees," which was not to be confused

  with "The Sleep of Hibernation" or "The Sleep of Dead-Tired Dogs." The Sleep of Trees was the most absolute and rejuvenating of sleeps. It was only darkness, no dreams, a leap forward in time.

  I didn't stir when the alarm went off, nor did I wake up to hear Dad shouting from downstairs the Van Meer Vocabulary Wake-up Call.

  "Wake up, sweet! Your word of the day is pneumococcus!"

  I opened my eyes. The phone was ringing. The clock by my bed read 10:36 A.M. The answering machine clicked on downstairs.

  "Mr. Van Meer, I wanted to notify you that Blue is not in school today. Please call us and give a reason for her absence." Eva Brewster curtly recited the number to the main office and hung up. I waited for Dad's footsteps to come through the hall to find out who'd called, but I heard nothing but the clinking of silverware in the kitchen.

  I climbed out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, splashed water on my face. In the mirror, my eyes looked unusually large, my face thin. I was cold, so I pulled the comforter off my bed, wrapped it around me and walked with it down the stairs.

  "Dad! Did you call the school?"

  I entered the kitchen. It was empty. The clinking I'd heard was the breeze through the open window hitting the silverware wind chime over the sink. I switched on the downstairs light and called into the stairwell.

  "Dad!" I used to dread a house without Dad in it. It could feel empty as a can, a shell, a blind desert skull of a Georgia O'Keefe painting. Growing up, I had a variety of techniques to avoid the truth of the house without Dad. There was "The Watch General Hospital with Very Loud Volume" (surprisingly comforting, more than one would imagine) and the Put On It Happened One Night (Clark Gable without an undershirt could distract anyone).

  Late morning light poured through the windows, bright and vicious. I opened the refrigerator and saw with some surprise, he'd made a fruit salad. I reached in, picked out a grape, ate it. Also in the refrigerator was lasagna, which he'd attempted to cover with too small a piece of tinfoil; it left two corners and a side exposed like a winter coat leaving entire shins bare, half the person's arms and neck. (Dad was always unable to correctly eyeball the required length for tinfoil.) I ate another grape and called his office.

  The Political Science Department assistant answered the phone.

  "Hey, is my dad there? It's Blue."

  "Hmm?"

  I glanced at the clock. He didn't have a class until 11:30 A.M. "My dad. Dr. Van Meer. Can I talk to him please? It's an emergency." "He's not coming in today," she said. "There's that conference in Atlanta, right?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "I thought he went to Atlanta, replacing the man who was in the car accident—?"

  "What?"

  "He requested permission for a substitute this morning. He won't be in for the— "

  I hung up.

  "Dad!"

  I left the comforter in the kitchen, raced down the stairs to his study, switching on the overhead light. I stood in front of his desk, staring at it. It was bare. I yanked open a drawer. It was empty. I yanked open another. It was empty. There was no laptop, no legal pads, no desk calendar. The ceramic mug was empty too, where he usually kept his five blue ink pens and five black ink pens next to the green desk lamp from the agreeable Dean at the University of Arkansas at Wilsonville, which also was gone. The tiny bookshelf next to the desk was completely empty too, apart from five copies of Marx's Das Kapital (1867).

  I sprinted up the stairs, through the kitchen, down the hall, yanking open the front door. The blue Volvo station wagon was parked where it always was, in front of the garage door. I stared at it, at the egg-blue surface, the rust around the wheels.

  I turned back inside and ran to his bedroom. The curtains were open. The bed was made. Yet his old sheepskin loafers purchased at Bet-R-Shoes in Enola, New Hampshire, were not capsized beneath the television, nor were they beneath the upholstered chair in the corner. I moved toward the closet and slid open the door.

  There were no clothes. There was nothing—nothing but hangers jittering along the pole like birds, frightened when people stepped too close to the bars to stare at them.

  I ran into his bathroom, swung open the medicine cabinet. It was bare. So was the shower. I touched the side of the tub, feeling its stickiness, the few remaining drops of water. I looked at the sink, a trace of Colgate toothpaste, a tiny drop of shaving cream dried on the mirror.

  He must have decided we're moving again, I told myself. He went to fill out a Change-of-Address card at the Post Office. He went to the supermarket for moving boxes. But the station wagon wouldn't start, so he called a taxi.

  I went into the kitchen and played the answering machine, but there was only the message from Eva Brewster. I looked on the counter for a note, but there wasn't one. Again, I called the Political Science Department assistant, Barbara, pretending I knew all about the conference in Atlanta; Dad said there was "a motor-mouth on Barbara, coupled with the foul stench of the ridiculous." (He cheerfully referred to her as "the Haze woman.") I called the conference by a specific name, quickly decided beforehand. I think I called it SPOUFAR, "Safe Political Organization for the Upholding of First Amendment Rights," or something to that effect.

  I asked her if Dad had left a number where she could contact him.

  "No," she said.

  "When did he notify you?"

  "Left a message at six this morning. But, wait, why don't you—?"

  I hung up.

  I wrapped the comforter around me, turned on the television, watched Cherry Jeffries in a yellow suit the color of a road sign with shoulder pads so sharp they could cut down trees. I checked the clock in the kitchen, the clock in my bedroom. I walked outside and stared at the blue station wagon. I sat in the driver's seat and turned the key in the ignition. It started. I ran my hands along the steering wheel, over the dashboard, stared at the backseat, as if there might be a clue somewhere, a revolver, candlestick, rope or wrench carelessly left behind by Mrs. Peacock, Colonel Mustard or Professor Plum after killing Dad in the library, conservatory or billiard room. I examined the Persian carpets in the hall, searching for singular imprints of shoes. I checked the sink, the dishwasher, but every spoon, fork and knife had been put away.

  They'd come for him.

  Members of Nachlicht had come for him in the night, placed a linen handkerchief (embroidered with a red N in the corner) dabbed with a bit of sleeping potion over his unsuspecting snoring mouth. He hadn't been able to struggle because Dad, although tall and hardly skinny, wasn't a fighter. Dad preferred intellectual debate to
physical assault, eschewed contact sports, considered wrestling and boxing "faintly preposterous." And although Dad respected the art of karate, judo, tae kwan do, he himself had never learned a single move.

  They'd meant to take me, of course, but Dad had refused. "No! Take me instead Take me!" And so the Nasty One—there was always a Nasty One, the one who had scant regard for human life and bullied the others—pressed a gun to his temple and ordered him to call the university. "And you'd better sound normal or I'll blow your daughter's brains out while you watch."

  And then they made Dad pack his own bags in the two large Louis Vuitton duffle bags June Bug Eleanor Miles, age 38, had given to Dad so he'd remember her (and her spiky teeth) every time he packed his bags. Because even though, sure, they were "revolutionaries" in the classical sense of the word, they were not barbarians, not South American guerrillas or Muslim extremists who relished the odd beheading every now and then. No, they held fast to the belief that all human beings, even those held against their will, waiting for certain political demands to be met, required his/her personal belongings, including corduroy pants, tweed jackets, wool sweaters, Oxford shirts, shaving kits, toothbrushes, razors, soaps, dental floss, peppermint exfoliating foot scrubs, Timex watches, GUM cufflinks, credit cards, lecture notes and old syllabi, notes for The Iron Grip.

  "We want you to be comfortable," said the Nasty One.

  That night, he still hadn't called.

  No one had, with the exception of Arnold Lowe Schmidt of The New Seattle Journal of Foreign Policy, telling the machine how thawry he was that Dad had declined hith invitathon of writhing a cover pieth on Cuba, but to pleath keep the periodical in mind if he wanthed "a preeminent repothitory for the publicathon of hith death."

  Outside, I walked around the house some twenty times in the dark. I stared into the fishpond, devoid of fish. I returned inside, sat on the couch watching Cherry Jeffries, picking at the half-eaten bowl of fruit, which the radicals had allowed Dad to prepare before they carried him away.

  "My daughter has to eat!" Dad commanded.