Life After Genius

by M. Ann Jacoby

  “I love Bach,” Herman says. “His compositions are flawless. If one could turn mathematical equations into music, they’d sound just like Bach, don’t you agree?”

  As a matter of fact, Mead has had that thought, but never in a million years would he have presumed that anyone else on the planet would have made the same observation. Least of all Herman. “I’ve never really thought about it,” he says.

  Herman places his hands behind his head and closes his eyes. Oh Christ. What if he falls asleep? Mead looks at the rug on the floor between his bed and Forsbeck’s. It’s one of those oval braided rugs, the kind one always sees on the floor in front of an open hearth, or at the feet of some grandmother in a children’s fairy tale. His Aunt Jewel gave it to him right before he left for college. It probably wouldn’t be too bad to sleep on. Which is what Mead is figuring he’s going to have to do if Herman doesn’t get his butt out of Mead’s bed real soon. This is so like Herman, to barge in and take over without even asking. Mead reaches for his book —so he can finish reading the chapter he started before he was so rudely interrupted —and glances down at Herman. He actually looks like a nice enough person when his face is in repose, when he isn’t smirking at some thought or somebody. When he’s awake, however, Herman gives Mead the feeling that he is looking down at the world, that he thinks he is better than everybody else because his father is filthy rich and his family vacations in Europe. What must it be like to be handed all this —a top-notch education at a top-notch university —and never have done anything to earn it other than being born into the right family? Mead can’t imagine that it means very much to Herman. Perhaps that is why the bad attitude. Perhaps if being here meant as much to him as it does to Mead, the guy wouldn’t go around acting like such a jerk all the time.

  Herman opens his eyes and Mead pulls back, startled. “I thought you were asleep,” he says.

  “Really? You weren’t going to kiss me?”

  “What? No, I was just reaching for my book.”

  Herman shuts off the radio and hops out of Mead’s bed. When he reaches the door, he turns back and says, “Thanks for the company. I’ll see you around.” And then he closes it.

  Mead stares at the crack under the door. Herman stands there for another good minute before he finally leaves.

  THE CLASS THEY ARE TAKING TOGETHER is called Function Theory. Mead usually arrives early, seeing as how his previous class is in the same building, but today he makes a point of arriving late because he doesn’t want Herman to try to sit with him. Not after last night. So he hides out in the men’s room, inside one of the stalls, to kill time. A moment later the professor who teaches the class, the aforementioned Dr. Kustrup, enters the bathroom. He brushes his teeth at the sink, runs a comb through his hair, and splashes cologne on his cheeks as if he were preparing for a date instead of a lecture. He is also the chairman of the math department. Newly elected. Mead would never have voted for the man, if he had had a say, that is. He would never have signed up for this class, either, if he could have avoided it. Not after the experience Mead had in the last class he took with Dr. Kustrup. But the subject matter of the course made it too important for Mead to boycott —in light of the thesis he has to write —and he can always go to Dr. Alexander after class to decode any nonsense in the day’s lecture. Perhaps Dr. Kustrup is taking extra care to look the part of his new role. Mr. Important-on-Campus. Mr. Top-of-the-Heap. But it will take more than toothpaste and a splash of cologne to cover up the mathematical stench coming from his mouth.

  Mead waits until the professor has left then slips down the hall and into the classroom just as the lecture begins. He never even looks around to see if Herman is present. Mead doesn’t have to because before class is over Dr. Kustrup will undoubtedly call on “Mr. Weinstein” to answer some question or other. He always does. Without fail. Being as how Herman is the twinkle in the chairman’s eye. His star pupil. At the end of class, Mead is the first one out the door.

  But somehow, despite all his dodging and avoiding, Mead runs into Herman anyway. In the library when his guard is down, his mind focused on the critical line, the line on which all non-trivial zeros of the zeta function are said to lie —at least those that have been calculated. But is it true for all zeta zeros? The Riemann Hypothesis says yes but no mathematician — in the 130 years since this theory was written —has been able to either prove or disprove it.

  Something flutters down through the air like a leaf and lands on Mead’s open textbook, obscuring some of the absolute and relative values of the error term. It’s a concert ticket. Mead looks up and sees Herman standing over him, holding an identical ticket in his hand. “Bach,” he says. “Front-row orchestra seats. This Friday.”

  “I can’t go,” Mead says.

  “It’s just two hours. You can study when you get back.”

  “This is an eighty-dollar ticket and I don’t have eighty dollars.”

  Herman pulls out a chair and sits down across from Mead, leans over the table, and says, “It’s on me. Or rather, it’s on Dr. Kustrup, who invited me to join him and his wife for an evening on the town. Me and a date, that is. Only I’m not seeing anyone seriously right now so I thought, who do I know who would really enjoy this?”

  Not seeing anyone? But Mead was under the distinct impression that Herman was dating Cynthia Broussard and that he has been doing so since freshman year. What happened? Did they break up? Not that it makes any difference. Not anymore. It was a long time ago when Mead asked her out. Water under the bridge and all that. The idea of attending a concert with Dr. Stuckup Kustrup bothers him far more. But then hasn’t Mead told himself that he is over that betrayal too? Oh, what the hell. It’s Bach and it’s free. Mead stares at the ticket. The great harpsicordist Gustav Leonhardt will be conducting. Mead would cut off his right arm to see that man conduct a live concert. “Two hours?” he says.

  “I’ll have you home before your carriage turns back into a pumpkin.”

  DR. STUCKUP KUSTRUP’S WIFE is a plump woman. Rubenesque. If it were a cold night and the heat got cut off, she is the one with whom a person would most want to curl up. The professor opens the passenger door and offers his elbow, which she takes with her right hand, using the other hand to keep the hem of her dress from dragging on the ground. He may be a prick but he also appears to be a gentleman.

  Mead follows the Kustrups and Herman up the steps and into the concert hall. He has walked past this building a dozen times but never actually been inside of it. And the thing is, no photograph could ever do justice to the sheer magnitude of the space. The high-domed ceilings and massive chandeliers make Mead feel small and insignificant. A mere mortal among giants. The way he felt in church as a child. And when the music fills the air, it is as if God himself has entered the concert hall. Forget all those sermons the ministers used to go on at length about week after week, trying to hammer the word of God into Mead’s head and make it stick. If there is a God, this is how he communicates. Through music. And if there is a vehicle through which God speaks best, it is Johann Sebastian Bach. The only distraction is Dr. Kustrup, or rather his cologne. The same stuff he slapped on his neck before class. The smell reminds Mead of the inside of a barn in winter. It makes his eyes water and his nose itch but even that cannot take away from the pleasure of Bach.

  During the intermission, Dr. Kustrup buys three glasses of wine: one for himself, one for his wife, and one for Herman. Even though Herman is only twenty. Mead orders a glass of seltzer with a twist of lime.

  “I’m so glad you could join us this evening, Mr. Fegley,” Dr. Kustrup says. “How are you enjoying the concert so far?”

  “The company pales in comparison,” Mead says.

  The professor laughs. “You haven’t changed, Mr. Fegley. You’re still every bit the high-minded youth I first met nearly three years ago.” He turns away to talk to Herman.

  “So you’re the infamous Theodore Mead Fegley,” Mrs. Kustrup says. “Herman tells me you’re quite the g
enius.”

  “Herman has talked to you about me?”

  “Oh, yes. He talks about all the people who impress him and he’s met quite a few of those through his father. Herman idolizes brilliant men but doesn’t quite see himself as one of them. As an intellectual. I disagree, I think Herman is quite brilliant, don’t you?”

  Mead looks over at Herman, who is laughing at something Dr. Kustrup has just said as if it were funny. But the professor is one of the dullest and most self-serving men Mead has ever been unfortunate enough to meet. An opinion that is apparently not shared by Herman. Or maybe it is. It’s impossible to say for sure. That must be why the professor gives Herman such high marks on all his papers. The idiot doesn’t even know he is being snowed.

  “He’s gifted,” Mead says. “I’ll give you that.”

  As they leave the concert hall, Dr. Kustrup invites “the boys” back to his house for coffee. Mead throws Herman a dirty look. The deal was two hours. The concert and nothing more. Herman smiles and says, “I’m afraid I can’t this evening, Dr. Kustrup. I have a paper due on Monday that I haven’t even started. You know how it goes.” And so the professor drops them off at the dorm.

  “Thank you,” Mead says to Herman when they reach the second floor of the dorm, where Mead’s room is. “For everything. I enjoyed it.”

  “You can’t beat Bach,” Herman says.

  “No, you can’t,” Mead says and heads down the hall. When he reaches the door to his room, he glances back and notices that Herman is still standing there on the landing. He looks striking in a suit, like a model posing for an ad for a luxury car or an expensive bottle of champagne. Moneyed but vacuous. He appears to be lost in thought, gazing at somebody or something that isn’t there. Then he snaps out of it, looks up, and sees Mead looking back. “Good night,” he says and continues on up the stairs.

  Mead changes out of his suit, returning it to the back of his closet where it will remain until graduation day, now just a few months off, and settles down to read more about critical lines and relative error. Since it is Friday, Forsbeck will be out until the wee hours of the morning, off indulging in some all-night pizza party with his many and sundry friends. And Mead is finding it hard to stay focused on the pages of his book. He misses the seesawing sound of Forsbeck’s snoring, which helps to drown out the other noises in the dorm. The thudding bass of someone’s stereo. The opening and closing of doors. The giggle of a female in heat. Every time footfalls come down the hall, Mead braces for the sound of someone knocking on his door. Not just someone, but Herman. Mead’s new best friend. All of a sudden. Out of the blue. For reasons unknown. But each time the feet walk right on by.

  He looks up from his book and glances out the window for the hundredth time. Maybe he should have accepted the professor’s invitation. After all, he had been enjoying himself. Perhaps they would have sat around the professor’s fireplace and discussed music. Shared their views on Leonhardt’s interpretation of the variations. Mead would have enjoyed that too. They could have listened to a studio recording of the same piece (which Dr. Kustrup must surely own) and compared it to the performance they just heard, an experience that could never be had back in High Grove, Illinois, where all that anyone ever listens to on the radio are weather reports or the market-share values of pork bellies, soybeans, and corn.

  Mead glances out the window for the hundred-and-first time and sees Herman walking away from the dorm. He has changed out of his Giorgio Armani suit into a pair of blue jeans, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. He walks fast, as if he is cold or in a hurry, pulls open the door of the student center, and disappears inside. Mead does his best to return his attention to his textbook, looking up from time to time to see when Herman comes back, only he never does. At midnight, the lights in the student center are shut off and the door is locked. At two o’clock, Mead closes his book, turns out the light, and crawls into bed.

  The next morning, when Mead is coming back from the cafeteria —having eaten his breakfast before most of his peers arose —he runs into Herman in the stairwell. Heading out. He looks well rested and is wearing another suit. “Morning,” he says as he passes by Mead at a trot and keeps going. And Mead decides that Herman must have slipped back into the building while he was deep into reading about real and imaginary axes of the value plane.

  MEAD HAS NEVER BEFORE BEEN on the fourth floor of his dorm and for some reason it surprises him how much it resembles his own floor with the same gray carpeting, same brown doors, and same scuffed-up, off-white walls. Some of these doors are open, some closed. Music floats out of one of the open doors: the whining guitar of an angst-ridden rock star. It’s a tune Mead recognizes —the recognition a by-product of living in the dorms —but he could never put a name to it. A boy emerges from one of the other rooms. He smiles at Mead as he passes by him on his way down the hall to the bathroom. A boy Mead has never seen before. Or maybe he has. Maybe Mead has passed the guy on the stairs a hundred times and just doesn’t remember.

  Mead continues down the hall of brown doors until he finds number 48. It happens to be one of the closed doors, meaning that Herman may or may not be inside. Mead raises his hand to knock and then hesitates. What if Herman is out and his roommate is in? Mead has no idea what he would say to the guy. What reason he would give for his unexpected appearance. He looks down at the CD in his hand. A two-disc set of Bach’s orchestral suites conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He bought it yesterday even though he doesn’t own a CD player because he figured that Herman probably does own one and because he thought the guy might enjoy listening to this recording with him. It seemed like a good idea at the time but now Mead just feels stupid.

  He turns to leave as the boy who passed him on the way to the bathroom passes him again on the way back to his room. “Try knocking again. He usually studies with his headphones on,” the guy says, then disappears behind a closed door.

  Whether he is referring to Herman or to his roommate, Mead has no way to know, but he knocks anyway, softly, as if he doesn’t mean it, and someone says, “Come in.”

  Mead opens the door, sees Cynthia Broussard sitting on the bed, and blushes. So apparently she and Herman are still dating. Cynthia looks good. Great actually, as if she just stepped out of the pages of Vogue magazine. A far cry from the pretty but plain girl Mead met freshman year. Having a rich boyfriend apparently agrees with her. “Sorry,” he says. “I must have the wrong room,” and starts to back out. But before he can close the door, Herman gets up off the other bed —the one against the opposite wall —and grabs the knob.

  “Mr. Fegley,” he says. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  “You’re busy,” Mead says. “I’ll come back another time.”

  “Don’t be silly. Cynthia doesn’t mind, do you, sweetheart? I mean, it’s not as if we were in here having sex or something.” And Cynthia blushes, as if she is embarrassed to have been caught not having sex.

  “Where are my manners,” Herman says. “Cynthia, this is Mead Fegley.”

  “I know,” Cynthia says. “How have you been, Mead?”

  “So you two know each other,” Herman says. “Should I be jealous?”

  “We were friends,” Cynthia says. “Freshman year.”

  “I should go,” Mead says and starts to back out of the room again.

  “What’s that you’ve got there, Fegley?” Herman says. “A CD?” And he snatches the set out of Mead’s hand before Mead can leave. “Ah, a German recording of our dear friend Bach. Did you know that the overture suite originally found its place at the beginning of an opera? An invention of the French, its slow introduction of royal gesture was intended to symbolize the appearance of the sovereign. These particular suites were created during Bach’s last stay in Köthen before commencing his cantorate at the Leipzig Thomas church.”

  “Impressive,” Cynthia says, her eyes glistening as if Herman has just read her a love sonnet by Shakespeare.

  “Really, I should go,” Mead says and tri
es to take the CD back but Herman dodges his hand, removes the silvery disc from its case, and pops it into his player. As the music swells, filling the drab dorm room with all the richness of the ages, Herman gestures for Mead to sit down on the unoccupied bed —the one on which he was just sitting —and plunks himself down next to Cynthia. Tucking his stocking feet up under his thighs, yoga-style, Herman closes his eyes and appears to absorb the music through every pore of his body. Cynthia closes her eyes, too, and rests her head on his shoulder.

  Mead sits on the unoccupied bed as if it were a straight-backed chair. Too embarrassed to look at the lovey-dovey couple, he chooses instead to gaze around the room. The walls are bare except for a calendar that boasts a black-and-white photograph of the Eiffel Tower. It hangs above a desk cluttered with textbooks, ledger pads, and a typewriter. The old-fashioned kind with circular keys that stick if not properly oiled. Only, knowing Herman, it probably isn’t just any old typewriter but the one on which Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. Or the one Steinbeck used to create The Grapes of Wrath.

  Sitting on the other desk in the room are an open bag of potato chips, a six-pack of Pepsi (with two cans missing), and a half-eaten package of Oreo cookies, but no books, pads, or pens that might suggest the presence of a roommate, which means that Herman bunks alone, another undeniable sign of the privileges afforded to the well-to-do. What Mead doesn’t understand, however, is why Herman has chosen to reside in a dorm in the first place, when it is obvious —by the full-length suede jacket hanging on the back of his door and the closet overflowing with designer suits and shirts and shoes —that he could well afford to take an apartment off campus.

  “Listen to that,” Herman says. “The trumpet and bass-drum.”

  “Some people believe it wasn’t part of the original suite,” Mead says.

  “Some people are idiots,” Herman says, eyes still closed. “It’s obviously been integrated into the orchestra movement as an activating moment.”