The Study of Animal Languages

by Lindsay Stern

  “I think I answered my own question, from before,” she continues, “but there were just a couple of comments you made that I couldn’t read.” She rummages in her handbag, producing the rumpled pages and glancing at my office door, just across the way from the reading room. “Do you have a second?”

  “I have all the time in the world,” I say, too loudly, because she hesitates.

  To set her at ease I turn and unlock my door, suddenly grateful for the intrusion. The ache in my chest is yielding now, to rising fury. By comparison, anger feels like a relative of joy.

  “Is Professor Baum’s dad okay?” Natasha ventures, as I toss my coat over my swivel chair.

  Frank’s outburst at the party, she must mean. She has managed to sound concerned, though the glitter in her eyes suggests otherwise. What delicious gossip we must have given her.

  “He’s not, actually.” I sit down on the edge of my desk.

  Her eyes roam down my body, and I remember what I am wearing. She has rarely seen me without a blazer on, let alone in my pajamas. I fold my arms over my T-shirt, feeling my chest hair pricking through the thin cotton.

  I say, “He’s being checked into the hospital as we speak.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Natasha shifts her weight, then adds falteringly: “Is there anything I can do?”

  I chuckle. “Just bring that here.” I gesture at the chapter in her hand. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Like a lapdog, she obeys, hovering by the bookcase as I clarify my scribbled edits. When I am finished I say, “Can I ask you something?”

  She glances at my bandaged cheek. Her hair is gathered in a heavy braid, so glossy it looks wet.

  Without waiting for her reply I say, “What attracts you to this stuff?”

  “To Wittgenstein?”

  “To philosophy.”

  She bites her lip. Then, to my surprise, she answers in earnest: “I don’t know. It speaks to me, I guess. I’m sure you can understand that.”

  She smiles at me, and I realize that I have no idea what she is talking about. Whatever passion drove me from Boston to Albuquerque to Rhode Island, into the farce of a tenured professorship—the freedom to say anything, now that you have nothing left to say!—has long gone cold. But what does it matter, now that my marriage has gone up in smoke?

  I clear my throat. “You’re smart, Natasha. You’re a delightful person. I gather your parents are wealthy.”

  Her smile fades.

  “The average readership of an academic paper is 0.6,” I continue. I had come across the figure somewhere. It is probably false, but it is certainly true for mine. “If you’re lucky, your papers will earn you tenure, and you’ll get to spend the rest of your life talking to yourself.”

  “Are you—” she begins, but I interrupt her.

  “As for me”—my heart is pounding again, but it only spurs me on—“I could have done something with my life. I could have stood for something, or someone. Instead I’m standing here, wasting your time.”

  “Are you having a midlife crisis, or something?”

  A question, a provocation. She regards me candidly. Watching her, I am suddenly tired of pretending obliviousness to the fact that her questions—sincere, intelligent—are also ways of flirting.

  “Because I think you’re a great professor,” she says.

  There is a trace of down on her upper lip. She smiles again, shyly, and I decide to call her bluff.

  Sixteen

  Relationships between students and faculty members have been banned at the College for decades. Of the three professors caught breaking the rule, two have been fired. No untenured professor would dream of returning an advance, and—even among permanent faculty—only an imbecile would make the first move.

  I become that imbecile. In an instant I have pushed Natasha against the bookcase, freeing a small primer on Kant. It skims her shoulder before landing on my foot, and as I kick it off I press myself against her. My heart is beating in my dick, which has risen to the occasion, so full it is almost in pain. Her lips are softer than they look. I plunge my tongue between them, feeling a frisson of relief at counteracting Prue’s betrayal. Then I grab a fistful of her hair and kiss her neck and collarbone, at which point I realize she is speaking.

  The words drift toward me, as though through fog: “Wait . . . please . . .”

  I draw back, still clutching her hair, and take her gaze like a bullet.

  “Oh no . . .” I hear myself say. “Oh god.”

  As I stumble back against my desk she flattens herself against the bookcase, gulping air. Her face is white.

  “I’m sorry.” I force myself to look her in the eye. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  Still fighting to catch her breath, she stares at me in terror. There is a halo of lipstick around her mouth.

  I bolt out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the building, dodging Clarice Hussein, who calls after me. Her voice propels me across the road and into the main quadrangle, where a few students are sledding on trays filched from the dining hall. Watching them, I suddenly forget why I have come to campus. Then, feeling the lightness in my arms, I remember my briefcase. The logic exams. Though my phone is still in my pocket, I have left them upstairs, along with my coat. There is no question of going back for them. Not now—and perhaps not ever, depending on how Natasha chooses to handle my behavior.

  A sound leaves me—less a shout than a whimper of incredulity—materializing as a cloud of vapor. I curse, shivering, as much to bury the sound as to rekindle my anger. Sure enough, the rage returns, fiercer than before, and then I am back in motion, my ears ringing, crossing the quad in ten huge strides. I take a sharp left, still running, not so much planning where to go as reading my intentions from the movement of my feet.

  The chapel bell tolls. I am close to elation now, less and less able to deny where I am headed, though I have almost no chance of finding him there.

  The English Department shares an entrance with the Student Union, which is open. I swerve into the atrium, past the Center for Community Service and café, weaving around a group of students. One of them—Jacob, from my logic class—waves to me. I charge past him, sprinting up the stairs toward the offices above.

  There is still time to recover myself. The part of me I recognize is urging me to turn back, gather my things, and book a hotel. But that would force me to assess the damage I have caused, and I have fallen too far now to keep from plunging further.

  I find his door beside a restroom, at the end of a dim hallway. “Dalton Field,” reads his nameplate. I stare at it, collecting myself. Then I knock three times.

  Silence. I hold my breath, scouring the quiet for the sound of him. On the phone his voice had sounded far away, steeped in the noises of urban rush. Though he is teaching this semester, I cannot picture him frequenting this musty corridor. Berlin or New York, maybe, but not here. Inside the neighboring office someone coughs.

  The knob gives in my hand. He must be inside, then. I open the door.

  Light streams through the windows. There are towering shelves, a broadloom, a floor vase printed with Fabergé eggs. No Dalton, however. His leather chair is empty. His desk consists of a broad, converted door, bearing a spiral-bound calendar. In the corner is a plant with fleshy, succulent leaves. There is a samovar beside it, mounted on a teak credenza. The air smells faintly of mint.

  A scuffing sound comes from the hallway. I slip inside and dodge behind the samovar, but it is only his colleague next door, locking up. She retreats down the hall, whistling to herself, and then her footsteps echo from the stairwell.

  It is then that I remember what he’d said on the phone—something about a book event. I dart behind his desk, scanning for clues. Today’s leaf of the calendar reads “Reading @ Bart’s, Noon.” The bookstore: Prue’s favorite spot in town. My watch says 12:37. It mus
t be under way, then, just down the road. Through his window the shop is almost visible, tucked between the movie theater and the green cornice of the town hall. A five-minute walk, at most.

  I arrive in two. A blown-up cover of Forgive Me Not dominates the glassed-in display, surrounded by hardbound copies of the thing. I push the door open slowly to avoid sounding the entrance chime. It tinkles anyhow, and a few people glance my way.

  Dalton is stationed behind the music stand the bookseller has set up in lieu of a lectern. Harsh white light illuminates him from a spotlight mounted on the ceiling, its glow diluted by the daylight coming through the front windows. The sleeves of his Oxford shirt are bunched up near his elbows, revealing two muscular forearms. The seats before him—arranged around a center aisle—are full.

  “Not every day, though,” he says, and grins.

  Laughter swells from the audience, and I take my position behind a chair in the back row, where a grizzled man is crocheting.

  “Scout’s honor,” Dalton adds. Then he scans the faces, gripping the stand like a sprinter about to vault.

  He must be taking questions, then. Perfect. I raise my hand.

  Dalton squints. “Hey . . . Ivan, right?”

  The smile he offers me is confident, postcoital. Nonetheless, he has not succeeded in disguising a ripple of tension along his jaw.

  Three dozen faces turn toward me, expectant. With a dash of fear, I wonder whether Prue’s is among them. It isn’t, of course.

  “I was hoping we could do this in private,” I begin. “But it looks like that won’t be possible.”

  A few people stir, but Dalton only frowns. The poor thing must be dizzy with fear.

  “We both know you have something to tell me,” I say. “I have a question about your novel, in the meantime.”

  He cocks his head. A born philanderer. His wife will find out soon enough.

  “The marriage you depict in the book,” I say. “My question is, who inspired it? Your wife, or mine?”

  People are murmuring now. The grizzled man sets down his yarn.

  “I can’t tell,” I say, “because, rather than expose the vicissitudes of love—as you clearly hoped to do—or anything whatsoever about the human beings involved, your prose does nothing but conjure up a vague sense of ennui that feels more masturbatory than anything.”

  The bookseller stands up. So does a plump, red-faced man in the first row.

  “Whoa,” Dalton says, as though speaking to a horse. “Can we back up?”

  Not quite an admission of guilt—not yet—but enough to drive me up the aisle, buoyed by adrenaline, and by the strange and repugnant sense that my transgression with Natasha has united us.

  “I disliked you from the moment we met,” I say, nearing him. “I found you arrogant and gauche. Your wife . . .” Remembering my Google search, I add, “Robin, is it? I doubt she’ll even be surprised when she finds out.”

  He backs away from me, tripping over one leg of the music stand. The red-faced man steps between us, but I evade him, close enough now to smell Dalton’s cologne.

  “Let’s slow down for a second, okay?” he says, raising his hands.

  “I’ll slow down when you stop fucking my wife.”

  “Holy shit,” a young voice whispers. Someone calls out, “Stop that man!”

  There is a general rustling, and as I grab Dalton by the wrists I half expect the crowd to rise up and charge me as one.

  “I think you are referring to me?” the red-faced man says. He glances from me to Dalton and back, pointing a short, dimpled finger at his chest. Despite his thick black hair, he looks north of fifty, with a shiny forehead and pouchy blue eyes.

  I tighten my grasp on Dalton’s arms, but he makes no effort to free himself.

  He says, “This is Robin, my husband.”

  “You’d better work on your alibi,” someone bellows.

  The voice is mine. Nevertheless, I have the curious impression that it has come from someone else, someone vivid and invincible, who might as well be dancing as he winds up and strikes Dalton across the face.

  Seventeen

  My solution to the Gettier problem rests on a thought experiment. To the question How can we really know anything, if we cannot rule out the possibility that our knowledge might be true simply by chance? I pose the following case: an archer draws his bow in a thunderstorm, aiming it at a passing hawk. Though his technique is poor, the wind carries his arrow to the bird, which falls dead.

  Knowledge is like this. Beliefs may be accurate, in other words, but for all the wrong reasons. They may be inaccurate, on the other hand, for all the right ones. Yet the Gettier problem dissolves if we shift our focus from the relation of a given belief to chance—represented, in the thought experiment, by the relation of the arrow to the wind—to the skill of the archer. The question Is the belief justified? yields to another: Can the knower be trusted?

  “. . . husband of that scientist I was telling you about,” someone is saying behind me. As he speaks again, I realize it is Dalton.

  “You know, Prue, the one who gave that speech?” he adds, and another voice murmurs in recognition. “Yeah. The one I was calling on the way here.”

  My cheek is squashed against the complete poems of Elizabeth Bishop, my wrists locked in place by the bookseller’s moist hands. After I smacked Dalton, he shoved me against the wall. The side of my palm is still stinging from the impact.

  “Do you think he’s on something?” someone murmurs.

  There is a silence. From the corner of my eye I see a few audience members lingering near the doorway of the shop, snapping my picture with their phones.

  “I’ll call the police,” the bookseller says. “Should I call the police?”

  “Just let me talk to him,” Dalton replies.

  “I’m not so sure—”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t sue.”

  The grip around my wrists relaxes, and I turn to find Dalton sitting on a vacated chair in the front row. The red-faced man has crouched down before him, cradling his face. Dalton’s upper lip is swollen.

  “You’re not seeing her?” I hear myself say.

  “I don’t play for that team, my friend,” Dalton says. He starts to speak again, but then something occurs to him. “Wait . . .” His eyes narrow. “Was that you on the phone this morning?”

  I make no sign of affirmation, but he says, “That’s why—” Then he cuts himself off, glancing at the red-faced man. “Babe, I just realized what happened.”

  “This fucker hit you, is what happened,” the man says. Softly, he blows on Dalton’s lip.

  The words echo back to me: My husband, Robin. Can it be?

  “Prue—I thought she hung up on me, remember?” Dalton is saying. He stabs his thumb in my direction. “He did.”

  “You know this person?” the bookseller asks Dalton. He glares at me, adjusting his suspenders. We have met in passing, once or twice, but he must not recognize me. I can hardly blame him.

  “I certainly don’t,” Robin says.

  My limbs are tingling. The ringing has reentered my ears, so I barely hear Dalton answer, “I do. There’s been a misunderstanding.”

  He is still studying me in disbelief.

  “I thought . . .” I manage to say, but it comes out as a wheeze.

  All three of them stare at me, waiting. Their schadenfreude is too much to bear.

  I scuttle toward the door, prompting the few remaining onlookers to flatten themselves against the bookcases. Then I head back across campus, down the hill, and up our street, jogging, and then running, to keep warm.

  * * *

  —

  OUR CAR IS in the driveway. Prue must be back from the hospital, then. I burst in through the back door, so cold I can no longer feel my hands. Her drowned cell phone is still in the measuring cup on the c
ounter, like a fossil from another world. She is probably showering, or in the study. Though I know it won’t be possible, at least for long, all I want to do is hold her.

  First I turn on the kitchen faucet, running my fingers under warm water. They are just beginning to thaw when a floorboard groans behind me.

  Prue says softly, “What were you thinking?”

  She must have heard by now. If Dalton had texted her—and he probably had—the message would have come through on her laptop. Or maybe he’d called her on the house phone. And if not him, someone else. Chances were good that she’d had at least a friend of a friend in the audience.

  I turn, drying my hands on my sweatpants. She is standing in the threshold, still dressed in the sweater and dark jeans she was wearing this morning. Her arms are folded across her chest.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” I say. My voice—nasal, querulous—horrifies me, but I press on. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  I have never seen her this angry. Her voice has dropped in pitch. Whatever happens, I can tell that it will be necessary to proceed very carefully, disguising every advance as a concession.

  “I should have been open with you,” I say. “But I’ve felt so distant from you lately, and I”—my voice is trembling, but her gaze does not waver—“I was a coward.”

  Through the window, I catch a trace of motion. Josip is scattering salt on the steps leading up to his apartment, a dead cigar between his lips.

  “You’re still managing to make this about you,” Prue says. “It’s amazing.”

  She picks up one of the smaller flowerpots, containing daffodils, then adds, “I commend you. Seriously.”

  “The point is . . .” I take a breath. “I slapped him. That’s all. It was terrible, but that’s all. I’ll go apologize. Right now, if you want. I’ll do anything. Whatever it takes.”

  Her face drops. “Wait, what?”