Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

  “Back in a flash.” Nikos pulled his shirt off over his head as he walked into the bathroom, offering Cady a glimpse of his toned, if furry, chest and stomach. “Make yourself comfortable,” he called before shutting the door behind him.

  Cady felt a little excited and a little embarrassed to be in his bedroom. The only place to sit was his bed, and she perched. She felt like she did sitting on the doctor’s examining, self-conscious, not wanting to make too much of a wrinkle.

  Over the sound of the shower running, she heard Nikos begin to sing like a comical version of an operatic tenor, clearly meant for her amusement. She smiled and relaxed. Nikos was always trying to entertain her, to make her feel at ease, and he was good at it. She wondered if she could ever tell him about hearing the voices, the ghosts. No, she feared it would remind him of Eric and drive him away. No one wants to experience tragedy twice. Cady caught herself—was she a tragedy already?

  She didn’t want to think about that and looked out the window. The sun was setting sooner these days and had just slipped behind the roof of Lowell’s opposite wing, painting the sky a seashell pink and the clouds a dusky lilac. Cady reached to turn on the lamp beside his bed. As soon as the light was on, she noticed the soft gleam of a pair of freshwater pearl earrings lying atop his bedside table.

  Nikos stopped singing and Cady heard the water squeak off. Moments later, he emerged with combed back hair, shiny pink shoulders and only a towel around his waist, smelling of boy-clean scents like wintergreen and spice. Clearly comfortable with his body, he grinned at her. “That’s better.”

  Cady blushed. “Great. Now put some clothes on.”

  “I already have a sweater.” Nikos gestured at his furry torso. He crossed the room and pulled clothes from his dresser. “Relax, Archer, I’m not coming on to you, I show off like this to everyone.”

  “I guess so,” Cady said, rapping her fingernails beside the earrings. “Or I didn’t know you had your ears pierced.”

  “Oh.” Nikos blanched. “Sorry about that.” He swept the earrings off the table and into the drawer below. She had never seen him at a loss for words before.

  “No, it’s fine.” Cady had hoped to come off playfully, but she had missed the mark and regretted mentioning it. She didn’t want to appear jealous when she wasn’t—was she?

  “I should put these on,” he said, patting the clothes in his arms.

  “Do you want me to wait outside?”

  “No no, I’ll dress in the bathroom. One more moment, and then we’ll finally get something to eat.”

  He disappeared again, leaving Cady to feel like she had dampened their lighthearted rapport. But when he emerged again, fully dressed, his jaunty ease had returned. “There we are.”

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Yes, but before we go, I want to show you something.” He crossed the room to one of his bookshelves, and pulled a thin little volume from the shelf. He handed her what looked like a children’s book. “Eric gave this to me.”

  “Really?” It was a vintage Little Golden Book of The Sword in the Stone. “This was his favorite Disney movie when we were kids. He used to watch it over and over. I haven’t thought of it in years.”

  He sat down on the bed next to her. “It was one of my favorites as well. The story of a skinny nerd destined for the throne holds a certain appeal for swotty lads. We’d once lamented the lack of VHS players to indulge in the nostalgia. He gave it to me as of a gag gift, but I cherish it now. He inscribed it.”

  She opened the inside cover, and just seeing Eric’s familiar scrawl made a knot in her chest. Below the “This Book Belongs To” he had written:

  Archimedes,

  Found this at a sidewalk sale and thought of my favorite owl.

  Thanks for having my back on this quest, you know I have yours.

  We’ll keep the pikes off our tail.

  Yours,

  Wart

  Cady smiled, and her whole body relaxed. “He called you ‘Archimedes?’ ”

  “It fits. I’m Greek, short …”

  “And the eyebrows!”

  He popped one for effect. “Guilty as charged.”

  She laughed in delight. It was so wonderful to have a happy memory about Eric, even one that didn’t belong to her. She felt a rush of gratitude for the man sitting beside her. “This is awesome, thank you.” She handed it back to him. “Eric really cared about you.”

  “We were very good friends.” He bowed his head, and Cady saw his jaw clench with emotion.

  Cady put her hand on his shoulder, which seemed to revive him.

  “I’m sick of dining hall food, aren’t you?” he said. “I have something else I want to show you.”

  37

  Outside, the night was bitter cold but beautiful. The busy activity of Harvard Square seemed smiled upon by a crescent moon in the clear indigo sky. After they had left Lowell House, she and Nikos had gotten a quick slice of Sicilian pizza at Noch’s and then stopped at Burdick’s to get their extra-rich hot chocolate for the walk through the square. Nikos took her hand and held onto it inside his pocket to keep warm.

  “Where are we going?” Cady asked.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  They walked up Garden Street, past the old colonial cemetery, strolling together in stride. He kept her laughing, and before she knew it, they had gone beyond the Quad dorms and turned left into a compound of buildings Cady had never seen before. It wasn’t until they stopped that she read the sign on the manicured green: harvard-smithsonian center for astrophysics. Then they cut through the Quad, a set of dorms more removed from the main campus, and walked down the quiet brick sidewalk to another compound Cady had never seen before. At the front of the manicured green, a sign read center for astrophysics.

  “Have you ever been to an observatory?” Nikos asked.

  Her gaze traveled from his face up to the domed building behind him and she laughed in surprise. “No, but isn’t it closed by now?”

  “I’ve a friend who’s an astronomy concentrator, so I called in a favor.” Nikos began to nose around the shrubbery. “Look for a ski hat.”

  Cady poked around with the giddy anxiety of breaking the rules. She spotted an Icelandic hat beneath a bush. “Is this it?” She lifted the hat by its red pom-pom, and when she did, a swipe card fell out of it.

  Nikos snatched the card from the mulch. “We’re in.” He led her away from the front door and around the side. “We can enter this little annex over here, it connects to the observatory.”

  Cady followed him to the annex, a small building that looked like a brick box, no windows at all, so when they stepped inside, it was pitch black. Nikos used his iPhone as a flashlight to locate the light switch. When he flipped it, the light that came on was warm and dim, unlike the typical fluorescents throughout most of the science buildings, and revealed a single room packed with rows of olive-green metal shelves and a narrow passage in between. Each shelf was fully stocked with slim volumes bound in plain white cloth covers in various states of age and yellowness—a library, mummified.

  “What is this place?” Cady whispered. The only sounds were the buzzing of an old light bulb and the fan of a humidifier. She approached one of the bookshelves and peered at the strange handwritten titles made up of cryptic letters and numbers, or, on the most tattered covers, Roman numerals.

  “I believe they’re archival astronomy photos or slides or something. Jim, my mate who left us the swipe card, told me about it once, I was only half-listening.”

  They’re photographic plates of the night sky.

  Whit—Cady thought, surprised at the way she felt her heart lift.

  Nikos continued, “Apparently Harvard has a half million of them from the predigital days.”

  The collection stretches back to the 1880s, it’s the only complete collection of both hemispheres.
<
br />   “Now they don’t know what to do with them all. Jim’s working with some History of Science professor to try to digitize the catalog, but each plate must be individually cleaned and scanned by hand and the process is slow, so with five hundred thousand, it would take years or something ridiculous.”

  They map the night sky entire.

  “How do you know all this?” Cady asked them both.

  “Jim prattles on about it, once you get him going he doesn’t stop.”

  I’ve taken several astronomy classes, so I’ve worked with the plates before. An airshipman is only a glorified sailor, so I ought to know how to read the stars.

  “I think it’s a Sisyphean task if there ever was one. And with the incredible telescopes and technology we have now, I don’t know why we bother preserving these. But I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  Can you imagine?

  Nikos went on, “Harvard loves to be the sole proprietor of all things arcane and obsolete.”

  Every star in the sky.

  “Every star in the sky,” Cady repeated. “That’s incredible.”

  Nikos glanced back at her. “I suppose so.” He walked over to one of the shelves, pulled one of the envelopes and began to open it.

  “Are you supposed to touch them?”

  “You don’t think it’s in good hands?” Nikos drew the glass plate from its sleeve. The plate was translucent and vaguely gray in the center, like a dirty windowpane. When he held it up to the light above, she could see it was freckled with dots no larger than a grain of sand. “Do you want to know the best part?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “There’s no backup.” Nikos loosed his grip on it for a moment, letting it drop a few inches before catching it.

  “Jesus, Nikos!”

  He cackled.

  “Put it back right now.”

  “Ooh, I like this mean mummy voice on you. God knows how they actually read the things.”

  They’re photo negatives.

  “Let me see,” Cady said, intrigued.

  I can show you how to read them. See that machine over there? That’s the lightbox, the switch is on the side.

  Cady followed Whit’s directions while Nikos watched. With his guidance, she peeled a heavy leather drape off a machine to reveal the slanted surface of the lightbox. She clipped the plate into place and hit the switch. The light flickered on, illuminating the miniature constellations and all manner of scribbled notes and numbers from astronomers long past. She traced the edge of the glass with her finger; here was a century-old record of the heavens, laid over the present.

  Nikos leaned over her shoulder. “It’s got writing on it.”

  The annotations are my favorite part. Notes about the coordinate locations, mostly.

  “How could they possibly see what they were calculating?” Nikos asked. “They’re practically microscopic.”

  You’ll need the magnifying loupe. Professor Johnston usually leaves one on the shelf below. Is it there?

  “Here,” Cady said, locating the small cylindrical magnifying glass. “The magnifying loupe.”

  “Look at you!” Nikos looked at her with awe. “Magnifying ‘loupe’ and whatnot. Have you been here before? How do you know so much about astronomy?”

  “Space camp,” she lied.

  Nikos smirked. “You’re so full of it.”

  But Cady could tell he was unaccustomed to having her in the lead. Looking around this room she had never imagined existed, she was transfused with an uncanny sense of familiarity. She could feel that Whit knew his way around.

  “C’mon, who wants to look at old scribblings and dots when we can see the real thing?” Nikos dismissed a century of scholarship with a wave of his hand. “Let’s go to the main observatory, I want to show you the telescope.” He led her through a passage to the main building and over to the elevator bay. The ding of the arriving elevator pinged loudly off the walls of the empty space, making Cady nervous someone would find them. Nikos seemed unconcerned, stepping aside to let her enter the elevator before him. Inside, he pushed the last button on the wall.

  “It’s the thirteenth floor,” Cady said.

  “Yes, top floor, of course.”

  “No, I mean, don’t buildings normally skip the thirteenth floor? You know, for luck.”

  Nikos smiled up at the rising numbers. “We’re inside a Harvard University science building. Superstition ceases to exist.” The doors opened, and they found themselves surrounded by the typical classrooms and offices. Nikos turned and handed her her coat. “M’lady.”

  “Do I need this?”

  “It will be cold outside on the roof.”

  Cady had been so preoccupied, it hadn’t occurred to her that the observatory was literally outside on the roof of the building. She followed him up a final flight of stairs, lit with only a string of red lights along the ground; Nikos explained that red lighting is the only color that doesn’t interfere with night vision. The cold air rushed in when Nikos pushed through the heavy door to the roof. It was windy so high up, but the view was beautiful. It was a clear night, she could see the dorms of the nearby Quad as a checkerboard of glowing yellow windows, and the lights of Harvard Square twinkled beyond them. They walked down a narrow metal gangway to the observatory, whose silver, domed body squatted on the concrete roof like an alien spaceship. It took another swipe with Jim’s ID and an added passcode Nikos had written on scrap paper, but finally they were inside.

  The observatory was a huge dome with cobalt blue walls papered with astronomical images and a white roof crisscrossed with latitudinal and longitudinal lines, but of course, the enormous telescope descending from the very center of the roof dominated the space. Its enormous diameter at the top tapered down so narrow at the bottom eyepiece that the machine gave the impression of a drill bearing down more than pointing up; Cady was reluctant to stand beneath it.

  Out of the plates archive, Nikos had regained his usual commanding affect, striding to the telescope and settling into the chair that ran on a circular track.

  The Great Refractor. Whit’s voice returned. Cady found herself glad they hadn’t left him in the annex. Fifteen-inch-diameter lens, it’s the most powerful telescope in the United States, its only twin is in the Poulkovo Observatory in Russia. Twenty feet of carved mahogany. Can you imagine a more glorious end for a tree?

  But the telescope in front of Cady did not match Whit’s description. The machine before her was constructed of gleaming white metal, modern and cold. “When was this telescope put in?”

  In the late 1840s, I think. It’s a masterpiece.

  “I’m not sure. It can’t be that old. Everything here is state of the art,” Nikos answered.

  Cady and Whit were in the same place but looking at different things, like time folded over. She supposed Whit couldn’t see Nikos, or anything else in the room as it is now, only her. He was an echo projected into her world, and she was projected into his.

  “I’ve used this once before in a freshman seminar. Let’s see if I remember.” Nikos eyed some switches on a control panel near the telescope.

  First we’ve got to get the door open so we can actually see some sky. Over here on the wall. You can see why I like it in here. The wooden plank floor, the wheel—it feels like being aboard a ship.

  The floor was no longer wood, but Cady’s eyes were drawn to a lever of sorts mounted on the wall. “Nikos, is there a door or window we have to open up to look out of?”

  “Of course. How stupid of me. Yes, I think it’s this handle here.” Nikos released some element and punched a keypad beside it.

  I warn you, it’s going to get chilly. Here, take my jacket.

  “I’m fine.”

  “What was that?” Nikos called.

  Thankfully, a loud grinding sound answered for her as the ceiling split open. The
once-hidden door retracted to reveal a widening slice of dense, dark sky. Even to the naked eye, the stars looked bright and crisp. But the telescope was not lined up with aperture in the ceiling.

  “This is my favorite part.” Nikos crossed the room to hit a different button, and the ground beneath Cady growled as the entire floor rotated. She had to catch herself against the stair banister to keep from losing her footing.

  “You could’ve warned me!”

  “What fun would that be?” Nikos showed her how the telescope worked, first setting it up himself and then guiding her how to use it. “There. Can you see anything?”

  Cady sat down in the rolling track, sliding back and forth, before steadying herself on the hull of the enormous telescope. She squeezed one eye shut and peered into it. She had never seen so many stars, or so vividly. Some were diamonds, bright and clear, others were bleary eyes of red or blue.

  They say fate is written in the stars, but the irony is that stars don’t project the future, they reflect the past. If you think about it, every time you look at a star, you’re looking back in time. The North Star is four hundred thirty light-years away, so when you see it shining, the light hitting your eyes is already four hundred thirty years old.

  So it’s an illusion, Cady thought. The real star could be gone by the time you see it.

  No, it’s all real, the star’s shape, its brightness, its changes, all the stages of its life—there’s nothing false about it, it’s simply translated across time.

  Nikos spoke at her shoulder. “Can you see the Milky Way? Here, let me adjust it for you.”

  Cady scooted aside while he fussed with it.

  You and I have both lost someone. I like to think they’re like the stars. Their light hasn’t gone out. Candlelight goes out. But something as bright as a star, or a soul, that light moves on.