“You have time to check-in and refresh yourselves; a bus will take us to the conference hall in an hour,” Mark states.
I walk the stairs to the second floor and let my body flop onto the large double bed with all my clothes still on. I consider my options for possibly having a nap, while marvelling at the absence of interior design. I had got up at 4:00 a.m. this morning to be at the airport on time, after a full week of long days and evenings in the lab. I had desperately, and unsuccessfully, tried to get a few more results before heading to Venice – to have something to discuss with the experts in my field. I am dead tired but the chances of recharging are grim. I could sleep for half an hour, but that would be just the amount to make me desperate to sleep for hours. I better get ready and see if I can get my hands on a strong Italian espresso or three.
The conference starts early afternoon. The room in which we will spend our next three days looks more like a large winter garden than a lecture theatre. We are about seventy scientists, working in different countries at different universities, sharing the same topic for years. Many seem to know each other. Most, if not all, seem to know James. He has guru status in the field, having worked on cystic fibrosis and its associated bugs throughout his entire career. And he is a curiously strong, low-key presence. He always wears a smooth shirt with the upper three buttons open; fluffy grey chest hair jumps from his shirt and is partly flattened by a shark tooth on a leather band around his neck. The surfer-style necklace suggests youthfulness but the years are catching up with his face. His eyes are always wide open, indicating enormous engagement with his work, but they have grown watery with time, and the iris colour has almost faded to grey. A few toothpick-thick hairs sprout from his nostrils and his face is wrinkled. Yet it seems like every wrinkle tells its own story, as if his life and research is engraved in them.
James relishes telling stories from research in the past, the history of the disease and about epidemic outbreaks that killed large numbers of cystic fibrosis patients. Every time Mark and I visit him in the Royal Infirmary he tells his stories. He sits on a large office chair, surrounded by lots of old woody plants that have taken many years to nurture and are strewn amid bewildering piles of papers and books. A replica of an early microscope sits atop a shelf above his head, while he shares what they knew about superbugs forty years ago compared to what we know now. If he could talk about Scottish history and his own childhood in the same way, I would love to be his granddaughter sitting on his lap listening to him for hours.
Today I am proud to be connected to him, to be at this conference which he will open with a keynote lecture. He stands in front of the audience, waiting for a young guy to transfer his PowerPoint slides from USB to computer. He is waiting patiently, not showing any nerves. When all is ready he starts talking quietly, but with that same passion and emotion I have heard in his office. For one hour he is on home ground, talking about times gone by and the scientific developments he has experienced. He expresses deep care for the patients he has worked with. People hang on his lips, including me.
A person that made a life choice, who has a single-minded research focus. He is married to science, married to academia. He will keep his office, with the microscope and woody plants until death or disease separates him from them. Could I ever be passionate about something the way he is? Could I ever devote all my time and the expenditure needed to become such a refined, admirable researcher?
James finishes his talk with the words that he is hoping for a productive conference with lively scientific discussions bringing us closer to the target of developing drugs and getting the superbugs under control. So we are part of the same familia after all? He receives applause and much shorter presentations by other researchers follow.
They all present work which has already been published in scientific journals – I have read it, and I am tired. A short discussion follows every presentation, but nobody in the audience seems to give a different perspective on the research which has been presented and nobody offers their thoughts on how to continue the work. During the fourth presentation I whisper to Hanna: “They all just present stuff that has been published already.”
“Yeah,” she says, looking as bored as I feel.
“What’s the point of that?”
Before Hanna can answer my question the young guy next to us, who neither me nor Hanna knows, interjects, “In settings like this the risk is too high – you cannot present something that has not been published yet.”
“What risk?” I ask.
“The competition is fierce in this room. We all work on the same topic. It is too easy to steal each other’s results.”
“But are we not supposed to work together instead of against each other?”
He chortles at my lingering naivety and whispers: “In an ideal world yes, but that is not the reality. The reality is that we all want and need to be the first one to discover things.”
I look at the young guy who sports half-long hair, a three-day beard and a light pink shirt. He is a few years older than me, maybe a postdoc or a young group leader.
“Are we not meant to share scientific advances, to improve the lot of humanity?”
I’m playing devil’s advocate by now and he laughs openly. “The first priority is to secure research funding. To get the best funds, you need to be the best… My PhD supervisor always told me: In academia there is no second place. You either win or you lose.”
“So, what exactly are we all doing here then?”
I’m starting to feel slightly rude for talking through someone else’s talk but it is fun coming across this blunt fellow. He lifts his shoulders in a way that clearly states he doesn’t really know the answer to my question. After a thoughtful break, he gets back to me: “We have a beer together and, on some projects, we do collaborate with each other”.
Okay, so we are just pretending.
When the coffee break is announced, he sticks out his hand to me. I shake it briefly. “I am Marco Julienne by the way.”
“Ah, you work for Professor Wittburg in Vancouver? I am Karin, working in Edinburgh. We had email contact before, about the tri-parental mating technique. Remember?”
“Of course I remember!”
“What a coincidence! How is your research going? Did you get the bugs manipulated?”
“Yeah, it’s fine, it worked.”
“Are you guys following up on the WaaA project?”
He nods. Slightly uncomfortably, he looks out of the window, as if he is keen to stop the conversation.
“Did you guys manage to purify it?”
He turns his head towards me. His eyes move up and down while he exhales through his nose.
“I am sorry Karin, I would love to speak with you, but I am not allowed to talk about my research.”
After the conference dinner I collapse on the bedcovers and find myself gazing at black mouldy circles on the ceiling, which seem to symbolise this tainted experience for me. I am unable – or desperately unwilling – to believe that this conference has nothing to do with a group of bright experts from all over the world trying to solve a problem. Yet we are people keeping our data secret from each other until we publish it. We are people who are scared of the dishonesty and bad behaviour of others, and of course suspicious people are the ones to suspect… We are all fighting our own corners, we see each other as opponents, we are looking for selfish affirmation while pretending to search for scientific truth. We are all desperately yearning for recognition – after long and lonely hours on the bench. We are people with a professional – and financial – existence dependent upon being first, on being the winner. It’s all a mad hoax, our research has nothing to do with ideals…
Wearily I reach for my blinking telephone on the night stand. The first message is from my mum, who has clearly forgotten that I am in Venice and just phoned for chit-chat. “Hi Ka… just curious how you’re doing… all fine here… dad has man flu, thinks he’ll die, just a cough, nothing serious… give m
e a ring when you have time, no urgency…”
The second message is from Daniel, and his voice disturbs me; “Hi Ka, it’s me. Listen, can you call me back? I’m sure you’re busy, but there’s something with Karel. He’s in hospital. Just call me back, will you? Miss you, bye.”
Karel, a friend from my undergraduate days, is not known for his healthy and safe lifestyle choices. I take the shower I have been craving, and can’t help worrying about him. I wrap my body in the largest white towel available, which is not large and only white-ish, and flop back onto the bed to phone Daniel.
“Hi, it’s me. What’s with Karel? Bike crash again?”
“No, Ka. No,” says Daniel in a completely unfamiliar tone.
“So… what…” I hear my voice sounding scared.
“Ka… I’m going to be frank. Karel has got cancer and he won’t survive long.”
“What?!” I squeak.
“Apparently he had a strange pimple on his neck that was getting bigger by the day and his PhD colleagues told him to go and see a doctor, which he did. That was a couple of days ago. It transpires he has a very aggressive, deadly form of connective tissue cancer. They can’t do anything for him.”
I feel a pressure behind my eyes. I try to swallow but my throat won’t clear to let me speak. I take a few deep breaths and try to phrase something but all that comes out is a shrill noise. Eventually I manage to talk in a horribly high-pitched voice, “But they can’t know? Right? Not so quick.”
“Apparently they can.”
“But… How long?… What’s his life expectancy?”
“They can’t tell exactly, but probably a couple of weeks.”
“A COUPLE OF WEEKS!!!… Fuck… he can’t finish his PhD!” I say quietly.
“That is probably not his biggest problem.”
“True… Of course…”
We stay on the phone for at least half an hour, though with long breaks in the conversation. Daniel tells me when he heard about it and explains that Karel unsuccessfully tried to reach me this afternoon.
“It is probably too late to phone back,” I say.
“Yes, he is really tired, sleeps most of the time.”
“When are you going home to see him?”
That question cleared my mind. To hell with all my experiments… Mark wants results, and I still have no plasmids for the US and the purification of the protein I just expressed before Italy, and… As if Daniel is reading my mind on the other side of the line he goes on, pointedly. “You are going home, right? To visit Karel? You can use your work as an excuse not to see me, but you are not seriously going to say that you are too busy to visit a friend who is suddenly dying.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going. I just need to figure out when would be the best time.”
“Yeah, right. I am sure you will make a good decision.”
Daniel is deploying a condescending tone which triggers me at the best of times. It is the same tone he uses when I snack before a late dinner, fretting that I will lose my appetite.
“Why the patronising tone? I’ll be back in Edinburgh in less than 36 hours. I will book a flight to the Netherlands immediately. Meanwhile do me a favour and keep your boiled-up resentments to yourself!”
I press the red button to hang up.
I throw the towel on the floor, turn the pillow round to have the dry side and pull the blanket up to my chin. I am angry with Daniel, but somewhere inside I know what really infuriates me is that Daniel read my mind well. Would I prioritise the progress of my PhD over the last chance to see a friend alive? Am I as mad as this mad game we are all playing at this conference where we’re all determined not to confer?… No! I’m telling Mark tomorrow I’m going home this weekend.
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_17
Chapter 17
Karin Bodewits1
(1)Munich, Germany
Karin Bodewits
Email: [email protected]
I sit down on the window sill resting my legs on the rocking chair in front of it. A bottle of wine stands next to me, my hands unwrap the cellophane of the packet of cigarettes I bought on the way home – it’s an exciting, urgent little ritual for us sad addicts – and Tom Waits’ smoky voice is sound-tracking the moment perfectly. It is only Thursday and I feel emotionally, physically and mentally exhausted. Mark had informed us during one of our ill-fated coffee breaks on Monday that he expected all of us to attend a scientific conference lasting all of the next day, in Dundee. So today had been a predictable mixture of boredom and bad food in a concertinaed lab week; I had worked long hours to stay on track, despite my schedule being somewhat pointless.
Yesterday I acquired an MSc student to supervise in the lab. He is clearly a passionate researcher; quite tirelessly devoted to discovering which of our female bachelor students might be willing to slap the mattress with him. Life beyond that obvious purpose seems to consist entirely of annoying me. He is witty enough, but useless; doesn’t know how to hold a pipette and can’t make serial dilutions or any other calculation a ten year old could be taught. In keeping with the general absurdity of my PhD, the Angewandte Chemie paper and the latest results I gathered have boosted my motivation. I have the feeling that I could make a footprint in the scientific community, but a student screwing up my days is not helpful.
I let the side of my head rest against the window, inhale deeply from the cigarette and watch the pedestrians, cars and buses weaving their way along Gorgie Road. It’s busy even though it is after 9:00 p.m. A guy strolls past; he’s about my age and, based on his looks and gait, I momentarily believe I am looking at Karel. But of course I am not a necromancer and Karel hopefully has better things to do in his after-life than haunt Edinburgh eating saggy chips from a newspaper.
After Venice, I had travelled back to the Netherlands to visit him in the hospital. It had been a sunny day and we sat ourselves on a bench in front of the University Medical Centre. He wasn’t allowed to leave the premises – too sick. The pimple on his neck had been removed but was making a very visible comeback. More cockle-like growths were appearing on his face. Though the cancer was so clear and present, and evidently uncontrollable, Karel dreamt about his future; beyond his PhD, far away from the prick who employed him. I guess he was hoping a miracle would happen and he would survive. I found it difficult when he talked of this future which would never be, but of course I just listened.
Though I respected his optimism, I didn’t want to boost his ill-founded hope. At a deep level he knew as well as anyone there was no hope. Through his optimistic words you could sense his pain and sadness, and that he was scared. Karel, too, had dreamt of becoming a doctor and making an impact on the scientific world. He too had devoted his life to science, and he was good at it. But fate curtailed any meaningful outcome. Despite Karel occupying a bed in the same hospital where he was doing his PhD research, his supervisor never visited him in his final weeks.
A couple of weeks later I travelled again, this time for the funeral. Karel’s PhD supervisor offered the research project to Karel’s best friend the day after he died – even before he was buried. “The project has been stalled for too long already,” he had said.
Karel had been sick for merely a few weeks. Even so, apparently the research was lingering badly. I never met his boss but I wondered what sort of half-man he was?
Are these the people that will make an impact on the world? Does academia really let people through because they are good researchers, regardless of their humanity? Is it really only good publications that matter? Are these the people we want to have as role models for future generations of PhD students? For our children? I like to believe that only good leaders can build a winning team, but evidence is sometimes scant…
During the days immediately following Karel’s death I tried to understand what Karel must have felt and thought when he heard he would soon be dying. Then my mi
nd blocked the story out, completely, as if it never happened. Tonight Karel has re-entered my mind with surprising force. Did he regret spending his last two years in that lab? How did he feel knowing that he would never finish his PhD? Did it matter to him at all? Is it a superficiality or did it appear so to him? I suspect it did, but I don’t really know what was going through his mind. I don’t understand it, and somehow I hope I never will. My face is pressed against the window, I down a glass of wine and light another cigarette to keep my emotions under control. Despite my efforts, I feel immensely sad and then a beep from my laptop punctures the mood. Once upon a youthful day I tingled to the sound, thinking somebody was trying to reach me, probably just to say hello or send some silly message but, even so, someone wanted to share their world with me. When I was in China I was Pavlov’s dog racing to the call of the beep to hear from my precious friends back home. No more. Today that sound triggers anxiety.
My heart is lurching. It is him. It must be him. Mark has crept right into my life like an omnipresent parasite gnawing away at my well-being. Day and night, my life revolves around my PhD now – or, more accurately, around Mark. Between 9:30 a.m. and stupid o’clock in the evening, there is always a chance that an email is being pinged my way, quite a high chance. I doubt he has the faintest idea what they do to my heart rate, neck muscles and breathing.
Slowly I walk to the laptop and my hands are shaking when I open my email. Praise the Lord – or whoever – it is not Mark. It’s the girl in the US, who I only know through email.
You Must Be Very Intelligent Page 15
