“You see,” said Busch, with a chuckle, “how annoyed my disciple from Louvaine looks, he is in a bad temper because he couldn’t go to the Hôpital … But I ask you, mademoiselle, what on earth was the point of going to the Hôpital …”
“I agree!” said Marta, staring him in the eye, closer to the professor, flirtatious in a predatory way that was new to me. “Dullards like that kind of thing. Museums give me a stomachache. They’re almost as boring as my lectures at the university.”
I was naturally very upset, but I let it go. The professor was a raging madman. Marta was going for the kill at a spectacular pace.
“By the way, mademoiselle,” said the professor, “apparently you are a student. Santaniol told me that was the case yesterday …”
“Yes, sir, at the University of Lille,” said Marta with remarkable aplomb.
“And in which faculty are you enrolled? I assume you don’t like Pharmacy …”
“I’m enrolled in Arts, specializing in modern languages, English and German, to be precise …”
“Do you have a good grasp of English, mademoiselle?”
Marta looked to me for confirmation.
“The mademoiselle has perfect English,” I said extremely confidently. It wasn’t hard, because I knew it was actually true.
The professor was delighted. He had tilted his hat over the back of his neck and now and then wet his lips on the glass of port he’d been served, he couldn’t take his eyes off Marta: he looked at her enraptured. He did so quite without ceremony, as he seemed to think he had a right to do so. It is very likely that, as soon as he’d seen how quickly Marta had gone along with his opposition to the visit to the Hôpital, he’d concluded that he was in the company of two people who were incompatible — like so many — and, consequently, on a terrain open to his maneuvers. Later on, when he heard that the young lady knew English, his senile rapture was compounded by an evident interest he didn’t try to conceal.
“Dear friend,” the professor suddenly declared, “this young lady is a dream … Obviously, dreams never become real. But the fact is I could do with a young lady, a young lady with her very qualifications, for some of the business I’m handling at the moment …”
“Is it some scholarly endeavor?” asked Marta, flirting childishly — outrageously.
“No, no, no! My days as a scholar are over. I imagine your friend must have told you what my current thinking is about such activities. No way! I could do with someone to collaborate in other kinds of tasks that are altogether much more exciting.”
“It’s a foregone conclusion, professor … When people talk, they start to understand each other. I was rather under the impression she had no specific work on,” I added, quite idly, just passing the time of day.
Marta gave me a slight nod — in gratitude, I imagine.
“Where do you live, mademoiselle?” asked the professor, getting agitated. “I suppose you must live in Lille …”
“Not at all, sir … I live in Ypres where I give English lessons to the children of a family and conversation classes to some crazy old ladies,” replied Marta with her usual grace.
“So you can easily give those up?”
“Indeed it’s summer and they’ve stopped. In fact, I soon hope to be restarting all that …”
“I could offer you some well-paid work, just a few hours. I’m sure we’d soon agree to terms. I only need to be sure of one thing, that’s quite cruciaclass="underline" your discretion. The work I can offer you involves being completely discreet.”
“Don’t scare me off, professor!” exclaimed Marta with a mixture of fear and candor. “If it’s something so delicate, perhaps I’m no use.”
“Pray understand, mademoiselle …!” said Busch, putting his pale, arthritic hand on Marta’s. “You must understand … I only say that as a preventive measure.”
The second Marta saw the professor’s hand on hers, she gave me a rather startled look; her first inclination was to take hers away, but she didn’t. She must have had second thoughts, and decided that the best thing would be to let things follow their natural course.
Busch, who was downing his third port of the morning, must have noticed Marta’s hesitancy, perhaps he felt her hand stiffen — and thought he was duty bound to apologize.
“Do forgive me,” he said in a tone that was at once smarmy and shy. “That was — how should I put it? — an unconscious professorial tic. If you like, a rather paternal, university gesture … It doesn’t mean your hand isn’t very beautiful. Your hand is long … Long hands aren’t what you call unpleasant …”
“Oh please, don’t worry …” replied the young lady, with a smile that was both an angel’s and a cynic’s. “You are such a lively, admirable man, at your age …”
“How old would you say I am, mademoiselle? Very old, naturally …” snapped the professor, suddenly seeming worried, if not anguished.
“No … But I wouldn’t like to get this wrong. Maybe fifty-five …?”
“Fifty-three … I look older, of course. I’ve led such a stupid, ridiculous, wrong-headed life! Even though it depended on me, I can’t understand how I could be so insane. I’ve spent my whole life filling in filing cards … in reality throwing a shadow over what others wrote perfectly clearly. Believe me it’s sad to feel that one has wasted one’s life in pursuit of vacuous nonsense. I wish I could make up for it, but it’s irreversible, that time has passed …”
“But what’s fifty-five?” the young lady asked, bubbling with optimism.
“Sorry, you’re wrong, mademoiselle. He said fifty-three …” I said to shortcircuit the friction her slip might cause.
“Yes, of course,” she rushed to add. “What is it to be fifty-three if you are so lively?”
“What do you mean, mademoiselle? I imagine that is exactly what I am not.”
“I don’t believe it. Life is all about finding the right fit, about being in the right place at the right time. The people who manage to do that redouble their energy levels. Professor, you should find the right fit, should sort yourself out an agreeable life. You would live long and, above all, would make the most of it.”
“I live the life of a bohemian,” exclaimed the professor in a blend of vanity and sadness. “You could say that I’m not settled. I get little return from my work, because I’m so chaotic. The young lady is right: I need to sort myself out and find the right place to be.”
“Of course you do!” trumpeted Marta. “That’s the way to get a proper return and while you’re about it you could …”
“Say no more, mademoiselle, say no more!” exclaimed the professor enthusiastically. “You have remarkable insight …”
That dialogue was a strange, derisory business. Marta had exerted such extraordinary pressure on the old scholar that he was on the point of collapse. The fact they had been so close had clearly helped; at a certain age closeness — of the mental variety — can be fatal. The swoon the professor had fallen into was perfectly natural. By the side of his decrepitude, Marta seemed like a goddess — a goddess in the superficial, literary sense of the word, I mean a pleasant, easily approachable young woman, qualities that don’t abound. What was most striking about Marta was her icy coldness. She had lied with such surprising confidence. She had got poor Lazarus to rise with her mere presence, and given him the vague possibility of companionship by mouthing four clichés in support of his crazy way of thinking. But perhaps most curious of all was the astounding rapidity with which the new situation had been created. At times it felt as if things had gone too quickly and assumed an over-favorable light to be drawn to a normal conclusion. But Marta gave no signs of being worried at all, seemed very sure about what she was doing, and looked to be in complete control.