You Must Be Very Intelligent

by Karin Bodewits

  When I get the falcon tube filled with a threadlike substance out of the freezer, he actually compliments me, “Well done.” Wow. Which leadership course did you take?

  I hand it to the Mediterranean man.

  “Shall I take some out?” he asks in a warm, soft tone with a slight accent that I cannot place.

  “Actually, you can take it all. I’m not sure I will ever need it. I just isolated it to learn the technique, nothing more.”

  “Okay, thank you very much,” he says looking at the run-of-the-mill material in the tube as if he has never seen anything quite like it before.

  “Is it pure?”

  “It needs another thirty minutes of ultracentrifuge after suspending it. I can do it if you wish.”

  “That’s very helpful, but I can ask one of my people to spin it.”

  He thanks me another time before walking in the direction of the door. Neither man sees any need to share with me why they require it. And I don’t ask. I know my place.

  As they walk out of the lab I catch a glimpse of the undergraduate Frankenhooker freak, walking through the corridor right past our lab. With his head slightly bent to the front, he quickly peeks in, his grey-blueish eyes flicking around. I feel the hairs on my arm stand up… What a freak!…

  Or is this place driving me nuts?

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017

  Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_13

  Chapter 13

  Karin Bodewits1

  (1)Munich, Germany

  Karin Bodewits

  Email: office@karinbodewits.com

  “But… but… Hanna showed me what to do…” I stutter.

  “No! Hanna’s name is not going to be on there!” Mark speaks firmly, pointing at the manuscript of the Mediterranean guy on his desktop. Four authors are being listed, and I am one of them.

  “But… eh… but…” Hanna will kill me! Hopefully quick and pain-free, but if I am unlucky she will poison me with her huge stock of the highly toxic LPS.

  “N.O.” He spells the letters out staring hard at me.

  I’m at a loss. I look around his messy, small office, not sure if I can or should give it another shot. I want Hanna’s name on the paper, desperately. I need to believe there is justice in the academic world, that work is being credited to the right persons. I need to believe I am not an intellectual thief. I’m stalling for time, looking round as if for inspiration. There is a desk, a small table, an armchair and a few bookshelves. High stacks of scientific papers fill virtually all available space. There are basic chemistry books on the shelves which Mark probably uses as reference works for his undergrad teaching duties. Despairing and conflicted, I look to the window, which overlooks the small courtyard of the chemistry building, which no one is supposed to enter. It’s all so dismal. The sun is shining outside but this room is as gloomy as a room with a window can ever be, like a cell. It feels fitting. I vaguely ponder if it’s even gloomier one floor down. Mark is waiting for me to accept defeat and exit stage left or, more aptly, to fuck off.

  Eventually he strikes a note of finality; dismisses me with curt instruction, not unlike a bored tin-pot dictator confidently demanding subservience. “Send me the exact materials and a description of the methods you used, tonight.”

  At your service, Sir.

  “What format?”

  “Word.”

  “I mean… for which journal?”

  My voice is trembling, I’ve surrendered. And it’s wrong; me, him, what is happening, it’s all plain wrong, some things are just wrong!

  “Angewandte Chemie.”

  I swallow.

  “Be happy with it. It’s a good journal. It’s good for your career. And you didn’t need to do much for it.” Very little indeed.

  Tragically, this is a rare moment during life under Mark’s auspices when one should be happy. It’s not Nature, it’s not Science, but it’s damn good! Angewandte Chemie [Applied Chemistry] is one of the top three chemistry journals, definitely enough to wet the pants of most chemists. I should be thrilled to appear there, even as second author. Instead, this being Mark’s world, which is all-too-typical of modern academia, I feel the ground sink beneath me. I feel shame. And I see fragile relations with my long-suffering fellow inmates of Lab 262 evaporate like meaning in bong fumes. Never, ever, ever is Hanna going to show me anything again. And I don’t blame her.

  With heavy legs I step over two trees worth of paper and leave Mark’s office. I know I should be kissing the sky, but I feel a pressure on my chest, and a headache is beating its arrival.

  Hanna wasn’t best pleased two weeks ago, when I nonchalantly told her that Mark had come in with the other guy to ask for her LPS. I told her Mark had reacted unreasonably, as if her going for lunch had been beyond the pale. I saw her eyes enlarging behind the thick red glasses, her jaw falling down. Her face did not express “Mark-is-such-an-idiot” in her usual way; rather, it suggested I had done something wrong. After a few seconds of glaring at me as if I just told her I am dating her dad, she sneered, uncharacteristically, “If there is a paper coming out it should have my name on it!”

  Her tone did not suggest a woman inclined to mercy.

  This was probably the first time it hit home to me just how fierce academic competition can be. How such an innocent action could lead to an interpersonal drama; after all, it is the publication record that counts. I had heard poignant stories before; like the lab book of a PhD student from the Johnson group mysteriously disappearing the previous Christmas. The data therein reappeared in a published paper, under her co-worker’s name, with no mention of her anywhere. It was shocking, brazen even, yet life carried on with a “shit happens” shrug from all observers.

  “Don’t worry about it. It is too hypothetical to even discuss such a daft event. How big is the chance that anything will come out?”

  I managed to calm her down. She soon agreed it wasn’t worth discussing. Such matters seemed of no relevance to us in Lab 262, because our output, as far as the trained eye could see, suggested there would never be anything worth arguing about when it came to publications.

  Yet it came to pass, and with unfeasible haste. The paper had surely been written already? WTF?!

  Presumably the Mediterranean guy is a “real researcher” in a proper lab with proper equipment. Maybe he had been actively recruited by the university and is actually one of the rising stars I had hoped Mark was. Mark got a permanent lectureship at an early stage in his career and, I thought, should therefore be a bright spark in the department. But I have since learned that those open-ended tenure tracks are not as prestigious as they sound. People like Mark are being promoted under the internal career advancement system which can drearily and inexorably elevate B-class scientists to meaningless heights. It is commonly understood that such career paths are much beloved by the slovenly and useless. During my time in Edinburgh I will see Mark muddle through the system and witness his elevation from Lecturer, to Senior Lecturer and – shortly after – to Reader. I dare say this trajectory disgruntles Mark in the long run; no title thus gained can obscure his status as threadbare underpants, a research scientist promoted purely and obviously for time served and boxes ticked. Ouch, indeed…

  But the Mediterranean must be unconnected to the “automatic career advancement system” of the University of Edinburgh. I might have met the real deal, an actual real researcher, achieving his ambition, and just making a career stop-over in Edinburgh, later to be actively recruited for a full professorship somewhere else. His ambition and presumed passion for science is possibly very impressive, and his political skills downright awesome. So many can only plod, so few can only run…

  I go back to the lab, and find Hanna writing at one of the desks. As she will find out sooner or later, I feel I better tell her myself about the publication, but not now. I’ll work up the courage later… Nervously I check my lab book to ensure I have all the necessary data and protocols
to fulfil Mark’s stipulations; in order to send him the materials and methods section this evening. I slip the blue book into my bag, quickly finish my lab work and leave much earlier than normal to go home. I feel reduced. I am reduced.

  As I open the door of the apartment, I hear Daniel walking towards me. He finished his project in early March and has been at home since, for many weeks now. He is applying for jobs, allegedly, though very stealthily it would seem as there is no evidence of said activity.

  “A couple of colleagues are coming for dinner,” he announces excitedly, before I have even taken my coat off.

  I let my bag drop on the old wooden floor and close the front door. “Since when do unemployed people have colleagues?”

  Daniel throws his head back and rests his eyes on the roof as if praying for relief from my palpable disappointment in him. He looks so much less happy than when I entered. I feel sorry for him which, in the long run, is probably far more offensive than my sarcasm.

  In a friendlier tone, I ask: “Are you going to tell me who’s coming?”

  He pauses for a few seconds and says, “Vlad and Edward.”

  Vlad has come to our flat a few times since our first encounter at the biology department. Though he drinks not a droplet of alcohol, he entertains me with his views on the University of Edinburgh, the biology department and life in general. Nothing is censored, he has no diplomatic filter, and he has angles on everything. “Cool, I like those guys.”

  Daniel is relieved.

  “I won’t have much time to join you, though. I need to finish something for Mark this evening.”

  “Of course you do,” he says, slightly irritated.

  I lean against the kitchen and tell him about the text for the paper I need to finish and the story with Hanna.

  “Wow, that’s pretty fucked.”

  Daniel isn’t known for analysing everything to death, or for his inner need to solve complex problems, but perhaps that renders him a convenient collocutor. He listens and says supportive words, rather than annoying you with all sorts of solutions you don’t want to hear. I’m hard on him at times. He is a good man, a good person to share a glass of wine with, maybe even two…

  “It is.”

  I go to the living room and open my laptop. Daniel follows me and hangs in the doorway.

  “Ka? Why are you always working?”

  Not this rubbish, not now, dude.

  “I just want to do a good PhD. I want to publish.”

  I do not say that for weeks I have spent most evenings either in the lab or in the pub in order to minimise the time at home with him. I do not say that I can’t listen to his stories, his dreams of becoming rich and what “special offer” rubbish he bought from my tight PhD stipend at Lidl’s. I do not say that I can’t bear to see him run his hand through his messy hair once more while he smokes my cigarettes at the kitchen table. I do not say that I am sick of coming home to find the house in an absolute mess when he has been at home the whole day. I do not say that I simply can’t handle sitting in the same room as him anymore. I do not say our relationship has died, that I feel embarrassed by his ambition. I do not want to let that devouring sadness into the room.

  “Okay,” he says in a way that at least sounds satisfied, and he goes back to the kitchen while I start writing.

  I read a random article recently published in Angewandte Chemie to check the house style. Champions League Chemistry compared to the village football we play in Lab 262. I start typing exactly what I did in the lab so that every researcher who would want to repeat the research could do so, even though I strongly doubt any ever will. There are a few things to look up, but I finish the text much quicker than I expect, and conclude that if I ever write a book after my PhD, I will opt for a cook book; surely the easiest way to fill up pages quickly. I take the manuscript Mark handed me and try reading it, but it deals with matters far from my research field. I don’t totally understand what it is all about, I can’t even decide if it’s useful or just throwing a hell of a lot of pseudo-light on non-existent problems. Luckily for the authors I am not judging it on its significance to the world. For me it doesn’t matter. I stuff the paper back into my backpack, press the send button for my email to Mark, close my computer and join the guys in the kitchen.

  The next day I come in shortly before 9:00 a.m. and nervously stare over the bottle graveyard below while waiting for Hanna. I hold fire until she has taken her coat off and settled into the seat she occupies for the first ten minutes of every working day to plan her experiments.

  “Hanna?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I maybe talk to you for a second?”

  “Sure.”

  “You remember the LPS we talked about two weeks ago? With this young guy who came to ask for it? It will get published after all.”

  She crosses her arms and looks at me with her big brown eyes, awaiting whatever is coming and fearing the worst. She doesn’t ask what the research is about. It doesn’t matter. All that counts is authorship. “I really tried. But Mark does not want to add your name to the paper.”

  With a tone of voice that is somewhere between shouting and squeaking, she blurts at me, “I knew this would happen!… This is so unfair!…”

  I opt for a silent reply, let her get it out, but I can think of nothing to say anyway.

  She shakes her head. “What did Mark say?”

  I actually stutter, “Not much… that I did the hands-on work and… and therefore I should be co-author. I tried twice… but he wasn’t up for discussing it… not at all…”

  “I stood next to you and told you exactly what to do!”

  She is now shouting more than squeaking.

  “I know.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Yes! I did.”

  She squeezes her hands into fists and takes a deep breath.

  “I’ll talk to him!”

  She strides out of the lab, leaving me feeling relieved, for having told her, but also feeling about two centimetres tall for being party to shoddy deceit and needless callousness.

  I guess Mark isn’t in his office yet, but as it is semester time and he is teaching an undergrad course, she might be lucky and catch him this early. It doesn’t take long for Hanna to come back.

  “He will add me,” Hanna states, obviously relieved.

  “Oh cool.” Thank god.

  “You will be second, and I will be third author. It should have been the other way around, but I can live with that,” she says, irritated.

  “Okay,” I reply, neutral.

  “He is such a bastard. I can’t believe he did not want to add me.” Hallelujah! Mark is the enemy now…

  “Yep. Luckily it’s all fine now, we’re both authors on an article we didn’t do much for.” And we both don’t understand.

  Hanna smiles.

  “Where is it being submitted to?”

  “Angewandte Chemie.”

  Caught by surprise, Hanna slaps her hand in front of her mouth.

  “AWESOME.”

  Carrying notebooks, which we hardly ever write a word in, Lucy, Logan and I are walking to the small lecture theatre for the obligatory weekly seminar of the bio- and organic chemistry section.

  “What was that with Hanna all about?” Lucy asks concerned.

  “Just a stupid thing about the authorship on a paper,” I say, and tell them an abbreviated version.

  Babette storms past us, also holding a note book and a pen, not saying a word. “I can imagine Hanna didn’t like that too much,” Logan says, while all three of us sit down in one of the middle rows of the theatre.

  “Me too,” I say.

  There is a young, tall, handsome blond guy uploading his presentation on the computer.

  “Boring presentation or not, we’ve got something nice to watch for the next thirty minutes,” I state.

  Logan hisses.

  “I hope you’re not being serious,” Lucy says, rolling her eyes.

  “He�
��s good-looking, isn’t he?”

  “Have you noticed he doesn’t even wear shoes?”

  “That makes him unique, mysterious somehow.”

  “We have different taste, Ka. I do not find guys who present in front of the whole department in woollen socks hot.”

  “Check his torso! And the chest hair sticking out of his shirt. Seriously, he could wear a wrap-over vest and still be hot.”

  “I don’t want to imagine this guy in a vest,” says Logan. “It’s just wrong! Could we please change topics?”

  “In a sec Logan, we are not finished yet… Ka, are you joking? He could star in Planet of the Apes.”

  “At least he doesn’t look like he would slink off with his tail between his legs if we encountered a bear in the forest.”

  “Yes, Ka, but we’re in Edinburgh, not Kamchatka. What if your next hometown is Paris… then you would walk along the Champs-Élysées with your monkey, because he asked you out, didn’t he, to go eat some bananas…”

  Logan is putting his palms over his ears. The blond guy positions himself, confidently, on his thick woollen socks, in the middle of the room, and starts to talk with a heavy, hoarse voice. Why do I find him so charming?

  Within a few minutes I forget about the stupid paper, my research, Daniel… and everything else that drives me nuts. For a moment, I am just here and now, and open to enjoying life again.

  Looking back I was profoundly relieved the meaningless authorship farce was over. It never occurred to me that it wasn’t over and, in a way, still isn’t. Because of the name of the journal this sordid little farce, dealing with matters far, far away from my research field, is a highlight on my curriculum vitae to this day, and possibly for the rest of my life.

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017