I knew I’d regret lending Klein the Derrida books. I knew it would mean a lost night’s sleep.
‘Klein…’
‘I just, I can’t fully make sense of it. Steve, this is your field. You’ve got to explain it to me. I… I think I see where it fits — it’s so bloody fractal — but I just can’t quite…I’m afraid I’m going to have to really learn French for this guy, Steve. I mean, not just that oo-la-la crap that got me through Foucault. He’s…’
‘Do you know what time it is, Klein?’
‘Uhhhh. hold on.’
‘No, Klein…’
Too late. I glanced at Elaine. I wondered if the little bug inside her was awake or asleep. The duvet had become twisted around her slightly swollen belly. A thin line of saliva trailed from her mouth, watering the faded flowers on the pillowcase.
‘It’s almost three-thirty.’
‘Klein. ’ I sighed and stared vacantly at Elaine’s heavy breasts.
‘You really have to go back to Heidegger,’ I began.
I started having doubts about fractals and such the day one of my undergrads — a gaunt, black-clad cultural studies major with the unlikely moniker of B. Bronski — came to class wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the Mandelbrot set on the front and ‘I ♥ Chaos’ on the back. This same kid handed in a term paper with the title: ‘The Prosthetic Aesthetic: Fractal Postmodernism in the Cyberpunk/Splatterpunk Imperative.’ After that I figured it was only a matter of time before old Benoit himself performed a turn on Oprah.
Not that I entirely understand the stuff. If poked sternly with a pointed stick I can creditably acquit myself with an explication of strange attractors and sensitive dependence on initial conditions — God knows, I’ve heard Klein go on about it enough — but it’s still something of a strain for me. A lifetime in comparative literature departments has taken its toll on a scientific aptitude which wasn’t terrific to begin with.
Once upon a time, I dreamed about becoming an astronomer — next best thing to astronaut — but Cs and Ds in physics and calculus quickly stymied such fancies and sent me running for the shelter of Chaucer’s little helpers.
Still, my interest never entirely waned. I kept up with Drexler on nanotechnology, and was hyping VR and cyber-culture long before Wired magazine. Barnsley and Gleick and all the others opened up new worlds for me even as I completed my doctorate in English. I sprang for a top-of-the-line PC and high-res monitor when that kind of stuff was still an arm and a leg, and played with fractal-generating software, staying up into the wee hours, reliving the ‘star-gate’ sequence from 2001.
And I re-channelled my interest from science to science fiction, cajoling the department chair into letting me teach a graduate seminar by throwing a little Pynchon and Lessing in with the Dick and Ballard. I set to work on the definitive study of Olaf Stapledon and even scammed some funding to organize a small conference on popular science and science fiction.
Which was where I met Klein.
‘Klein call?’
I nodded and gave Elaine a mug and a kiss. It was a morning ritual and sort of unwritten contract that I get up first and bring her tea in bed. I like it. The ritual, I mean. Like any red-blooded American — even a Yank at (well, near) Oxford — I hate tea.
‘He wake you? I didn’t see you stir.’
She took a series of quick, tiny sips, the way the dog laps his water, and leaned back against the pillows.
‘No,’ she said, ‘but I dreamed of bells.’
‘Wedding bells?’
‘Don’t be a cheek. What did he want this time?’
I stood at the mirror adjusting my tie. My sole sop to respectability. I ran the back of my fingers under my chin and decided maybe I should have shaved after all.
‘He wanted me to explain deconstruction to him.’
‘Aauuuughhh,’ Elaine laughed and Darjeeling sprayed out of her nose. She dabbed at it with her nightie, still giggling. ‘What in the world for?’
I stared at my face in the mirror. A nasty zit was blooming in the crease between my nose and cheek, and my hair had visibly thinned again during the night. Where did it go?
‘You know Klein. He’s on to another of his big ideas. Something about a relationship between deconstruction and chaos theory. Really, the bastard already knows it better than I do. You remember Derrida’s notion of sous rature, putting things under erasure?’
Elaine half-squinted at me. ‘Ehhhhh. ’
I sat on the edge of the bed, softly rubbing her belly. I often do it without even thinking. ‘You know how he writes a word, then crosses it out, but leaves the crossed-out expression in the text?’
‘I think I vaguely remember. It’s been a while, though, and I could never stomach any of that crap.’
‘Yeah, it’s all a bit of a con. Or a decon. But erasure’s meant to indicate a concept or idea that’s under question or whose meaning is to be doubted. An idea that’s been negated, but not dismissed. By placing it sous rature, it can be there and not there at the same time. Well, that’s a nasty simplification, but you get the idea.’
‘Uh-huh. ’
‘So Klein thinks this somehow ties in with fractal geometry. After reading some Derrida, he’s decided that deconstruction is, and I quote, “a chaotic philosophical function”. And he claims that the process is dangerous because it has fractal contours. Something about gamma matrices approaching a threshold in maximum likelihood models.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I know, I know. He explained it to me for an hour, but I didn’t get it, and it was four o’clock in the damn morning. Anyway, he’s all excited about it, so we’re going to meet for lunch. But you know Klein.’
‘We all know Klein,’ Elaine sighed. I kissed her again and headed out the door. I thought she said something and stuck my head back in the room.
‘How’s that?’
Her hands were folded over the empty mug resting lightly on her bulging stomach and she stared at the wall with her head cocked slightly to one side.
‘I thought I heard bells again,’ she said.
The student union is the oldest building on campus: a massive Gothic structure embraced by thick tendons of ivy and perched at the edge of Library Slope. The Senior Common Room offers a stunning view of the valley below and a sparkling expanse of water to the northwest. The place was packed, but Klein had already secured seats. The canteen food was your basic pre-processed, post-industrial gruel, but the university subsidizes the prices so there’s always a queue.
Klein looked his usual dishevelled self, every bit the absent-minded professor. He wore a creased, sky blue shirt that was a couple of sizes too big, with the cuffs flapping loose and the buttons fastened all the way up to his chin. His black polyester pants nearly matched the shade of his peeling Hush Puppies, but he wore them at high tide depth and they didn’t go at all with the brown socks that drooped around his bony ankles. Klein’s kinky red hair was thin across the top, lending him an unfortunate Bozo the Clown look exaggerated by his over-large nose. The bags under his eyes were thick and dark as war paint, and magnified by a pair of cheap glasses that were filthy beyond belief.
Klein hadn’t shaved and had his usual odour about him. It was the smell of someone who’s just come off a lengthy flight: not dirty, exactly, but musky and tired. Klein works odd hours and on more than one occasion I’ve been around when his wife — a truly stunning redhead named Margaritte — has had to publicly scold him about bathing. Klein never gets embarrassed; he just forgets such mundanities.