You Must Be Very Intelligent

by Karin Bodewits

  Part III: Year 2

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017

  Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_19

  Chapter 19

  Karin Bodewits1

  (1)Munich, Germany

  Karin Bodewits

  Email: office@karinbodewits.com

  I close the front door of the flat and start to run. I charge through the residential area east of Gorgie Road and then through an industrial park until I hit the cycle lane to Leith. I follow the tree-lined path which lies a few metres above the city and then I take the steep muddy stairs down to the wide stream known as Water of Leith. I run the stairs up and down till the muscles in my thighs burn. I run as fast as I can through the forest surrounding the Water, over beautiful little wooden bridges. It is the land around this stream which I will always remember as the most enchanting part of Edinburgh; the hanging trees, the verdant little hills rising steeply from both sides of the water, and the unexpected calm – seemingly far away from the hustle and bustle of the City in which it lies.

  I am often to be found here, especially at weekends. Today it is exceptionally quiet, even for the early morning which is normally the preserve of dog owners. There is a layer of fog hanging over the river. I follow the stream and run as fast as I can till the trees and greenery come to an end and the river makes its way through Dean Village – an exclusive part of Edinburgh resonating with picturesque history. I turn round and run the same way home. It is only about five miles there and back but I am covered in sweat and completely out of breath.

  Daniel is standing in the kitchen, wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt. He pours boiling water on top of the layer of dry coffee powder in the French press. He takes a bag of bake-off breads from the shelf and turns on the oven.

  “We need to talk,” I say, standing still in the doorway, breathing loudly.

  “Okay,” he says, placing the coffee and two mugs on the table.

  We both sit down on the benches that I had painted red the weekend after the plasmid fiasco. Like the running, the painting was some sort of meditative exercise to clear my mind. This noble quest for doctorate glory was supposed to prove I have a brilliant mind, yet it has rendered me unable to think freely and confidently. But at least I know it. After my run, life seems a touch clearer: “Daniel, I think it’s better if you go back to the Netherlands.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am not sure I still want to be with you.”

  He looks at me genuinely surprised, I think.

  “What?” he sort of whispers.

  We both fall into silence, like two strangers with nothing to say to each other. As we sit here, I imagine discussing everything I feel or have not felt during the six years since we met, but I don’t: How can I tell him after travelling together – illegally hitchhiking into Tibet, celebrating New Year with a village family in remote central China, sleeping with nomads in Kazakhstan, all the times we camped in mysterious wilderness – that it was the experience that made me happy, not him? How do I say I never intended to stay with him for long, that I was not in love with him, that it just dragged on without clear reason? Am I supposed to say that I hate the way he never seems to succeed at anything, more than the fact itself? Or that I do not believe he can ever hope to find happiness by doing nothing? How can I express the truth without hurting him horribly, perhaps for life?

  After a while I drop the bombshell, “I’ve booked you a flight, you leave tonight.”

  “Tonight? So… you already made your decision?” Eh… yes. Please tell me we’re done here?… But I know, nobody ever gets to just skip away from a long relationship, even if it is long dead…

  His tone of voice suggests that he doesn’t like the fact that I made the decision alone. It’s casual enough, like the way you might react if your partner did not involve you in picking the next movie to watch.

  “Yes.” That is all I can think to say by way of elaboration.

  He looks flabbergasted, as if he cannot quite comprehend what is going on and didn’t expect it despite the millions of signals I am sure I sent. From the expression on my face he can probably read that I am deadly serious. I know he needs time to come round. I know I want this over.

  “But I was planning to marry you. I was even making plans to ask you!” I was afraid of that. And I wouldn’t be good for you…

  “I’m sure you will find someone else.”

  “I don’t want to look for someone else.” Then don’t. Let me go! PLEASE…

  Not long ago he told me that he was very happy, in contrast to many of his friends. He was in the luxurious position of not having to hunt for girls – a process he finds very draining. When he spoke those words, I felt a twinge – I already knew he would be rejoining his friends in that draining activity. But I didn’t know it would be so soon.

  “We have done so many things together. How can you throw all of that away?” The thought of doing even more together certainly helps. Oh God, this is so over.

  Tears are welling up in his eyes.

  “When we’re travelling we get along well. We can spend hours together in trains, buses or in pubs. But don’t you realise that outside of those times we don’t flow well together? There is no passion.”

  “What bullshit! There is passion. After all these years we still have sex – often. And we do things together.”

  “We have sex every other day Daniel, not more, not less. It is like a duty, nothing else.”

  He doesn’t like the topic, he never did. How often I have pointed out that it was not good enough for me, that I wanted something different. I veer away from that eternally touchy subject: “Besides, passion is not all about sex. It is something different for me as well. I want to be longing to get back to a partner I respect. But if I have the choice I seem to opt to do stuff without you. I stay late in the lab, and try to go out with others.”

  “Are you seeing someone else?”

  “No,” I lie.

  “So, there is still a chance.” No.

  Daniel begins to cry proper. I go to his side of the table, give him a kiss on his electrostatic hair and wrap an arm around him. I am not sure if I ever saw him cry before, maybe when his grandmother died but even then I’m not sure.

  “It will all be fine,” I whisper, while caressing his back.

  He tries to kiss me on my mouth and I decline at first. When he tries again to move his mouth close to mine, I decide to reply to his kiss. After so many years, one more kiss doesn’t matter. With his mouth pressed on mine I feel his anxiety. He is afraid to be alone. So am I.

  Slowly, I push him away from me, signalling that kiss was final. I walk to the oven, get the bread out and place it on the table, but neither of us eats. We just sit. Daniel is still sobbing. I feel defeated.

  “I will help you pack,” I say, and stand up from the kitchen table.

  I am sitting on the window sill, watching the city slowly come alive. The rooster in the City Farm on the other side of the road is crowing when Daniel comes in and asks me for a cigarette. Smoking so early is usually not his thing. We both light one and stare at the people passing on Gorgie Road. We gaze at the old buildings, admiring their beautiful architecture, but we don’t speak. Thank God there is music in the background to break the otherwise painful silence. I wonder if Daniel will miss the view, which he has arguably been savouring far too much in recent months. Perhaps he will put it all behind himself quickly, forget Edinburgh the moment he leaves it. I hand over the whole pack of cigarettes; I guess he needs it more than me. I pull a large suitcase out of the wardrobe in the living room.

  “What about my boat?” he asks.

  Oh yes, the damn boat. Waiting to be sailed; sleeping, somewhere at a sailing club close to the Forth Road Bridge. Daniel has a small, one person sailing boat that, like its owner, exists in permanent passivity… lying around somewhere. Daniel insisted on his parents dragging it along to Edinburgh for Christmas. He envisioned golden oppor
tunities to pick up his old hobby in his new home. It never happened.

  “You need to pick it up by car later,” I say and walk to the door.

  “I guess so.”

  “I will be in the lab for a few hours,” I say, though I have no idea where I might go.

  I do go to the lab; let the time dissolve in experiments. I return an hour before he is likely to leave. I need the confirmation that he is actually gone. When I enter the flat I see the large suitcase standing ready at the front door, which is a comforting sight. Without clothes on the floor, the flat looks empty as if Daniel is no longer a presence here. And it is just the ghost of Daniel sitting and smoking at the window sill – precisely where I left him this morning. He doesn’t greet me. He seems to be thinking, or dreaming, I can’t tell. He looks desolate for sure.

  “You know what scares me most, Ka?” Daniel says, still looking out of the window.

  “No,” I say.

  “That you won’t pull back!… Once you have made the decision to separate from me you will stick to it, even though you might miss me and might want me back.”

  He starts to cry again and his shoulders are rocking. This time I decide to stay at a physical distance. Between sobs, he says: “By taking me back, after a week or even a month, you would have to admit you made the wrong decision. That you failed to dump me.”

  He looks me in the eyes and adds: “And Karin doesn’t fail. She never fails.”

  He walks out of the living room and opens the front door. When I hear it closing I know he is gone. I start to cry.

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017

  Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_20

  Chapter 20

  Karin Bodewits1

  (1)Munich, Germany

  Karin Bodewits

  Email: office@karinbodewits.com

  I can’t concentrate, and I can’t work. It’s nobody’s fault but mine. I dumped Daniel over a week ago and I feel desperately sad.

  I am practical, I know it will pass. But that knowledge is of limited solace. Of course lots of people get into this situation, especially my PhD peers, failing to keep relationships alive over time and distance, and during penury while ardently pursuing another passion. Knowing that doesn’t help either. I feel small and vulnerable and lost abroad at the end of a relationship. Life still hurts and looks evermore like a pointless chore we tend to because we have nothing else to do.

  I wish I could lose myself in my PhD, yet non-stop all day long I try to figure out ways to avoid the lab as if I would thus avoid this overwhelming bleakness.

  “You look amazing! This whole being single thing suits you well,” Lucy says, with obvious sarcasm, when I enter the lab just before midday.

  Logan starts laughing on the other side of the bench as if this were the best joke ever.

  “Oh, don’t laugh,” I say, with a weak smile.

  “Sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t have, but you don’t look fit.”

  “Ibu plus coffee breakfast doesn’t make anyone light up like a Christmas tree.”

  “Go home,” Lucy says. “Relax for a few days, then come back.”

  “I do not want to relax and I do not want to be alone in my flat.”

  I walk over to KB House and slip into my running shoes. I run down the campus hill and turn north at Dalkeith Road to the steep incline leading towards Holyrood Park. My body, hitherto unaccustomed to chain-smoking and heavy drinking, has become intimately acquainted with both in the last few days, so now it pays the bill. My lungs hurt and my liver aches, but as time passes, I imagine the organs cleansing and replenishing. I run through the park along the foot of Arthur’s Seat passing a few ponds sitting pretty in the midday sun. Lots of office workers have brought their lunches out to enjoy the rare weather; probably not as many as you would expect based on the size of the town, but this is Scotland, people are simply not hung up on weather.

  I am wearing a headset, listening to music as loud as my ears can endure. By the time I reach the Palace of Holyroodhouse on the other side of the park, I feel my head is emptying – clearing – for the first time in days. I don’t feel anything apart from tiredness in my legs. I run back along South Clerk Street, much slower than before, and walk the last bit up to campus. After my shower, I see a few of my colleagues having lunch in the little garden behind the canteen. I’m still not hungry. And I notice I am still not ready to socialise because I decide against joining them.

  Back in the lab it is just Barry and Logan working on the new chemicals database. Barry did not get a summer student to supervise but he got responsibility for the database instead. He is so pleased with this assignment that his arms seem to hang even lower than before. Logan hands me a sheet of barcodes.

  “Why don’t you help out?” he says with a supportive smile.

  “A perfect task for today,” I reply, taking the sheet out of his hands.

  For hours thereafter I lift bottle after bottle of chemicals off the shelf above me, register what is in the bottle and how much is left, and then I stick a barcode on it. While doing this, it sometimes seems that the number of bottles still to be done is increasing and, at best, never shrinks. I estimate that in the unlikely scenario of combining forces, it would take us at least another full day to finish. In our lab, we have so many chemicals which no one ever uses, and many of them are toxic. They have been sitting here for years upon years; many presumably purchased in the days when the lab was still run by Prof. Gilton. Some stick to the shelves, many of the bottles have faded labels and decayed lids. This makes it difficult to tell what is, or has been but, worse, it also makes you wonder how much of this potentially harmful – even carcinogenic – stuff is seeping into the air around us. I collect all the unidentifiable chemicals and the ones which have long passed their expiry date and place them in a plastic box for disposal.

  Late in the afternoon a bottle chances through my hands with the name of a 13C isotope-labelled amino acid which rings a bell. If I recall correctly someone from another research group wrote a round robin email, just this morning, asking to borrow this particular compound. I take the bottle to the office and compare the name on the label with the text in the email. It is identical. Felix, working in Lab 018, wants this. Hurrah, yet another excuse to get out of the lab. I don’t risk phoning in case Felix is not around or already has the chemical.

  I pass the chemical stores and enquire where I can find Lab 018? “Just around the corner, first door on the right,” says the young guy pointing in the direction of the main corridor.

  It’s a clear direction, but when I open the door, with the right number written on a sign next to it, I am in an office. And what an office! Forget about fair distribution of goods! The roof isn’t poured in gold, but that’s about it… From just a step inside the door I gaze in wonder for a few seconds. Our lab would fit in here at least four times over – and this is just their office! There is a corner with sofas, a large conference table which could seat twenty people, a projector in the middle and a several desks with computers and printers. The walls are decorated with scientific posters and framed covers of Nature and Science magazines. If you make it onto those covers, you rock!

  I’ve clearly entered a hallowed working space, inhabited by one of the gilded robes of the university; a Professor who has unequivocally made it. Just next to the door there is a kitchen block with a large coffee machine on top. Mark doesn’t want us to have a coffee machine in our office; curiously, not even if we purchase it ourselves. I guess he doesn’t want to forego the soliloquising opportunities of coffee breaks at KB House. A machine would save us all money; in my case about 5% of my humble stipend. The thought that I pay to listen to Mark’s monologues somewhat rankles.

  There are a few people chatting at the kitchen block so I venture to ask who Felix is? In so doing I take a step forward whereupon a bald, overweight, middle-aged man, holding a pack of crisps and looking like Homer Simpson in a too short T-shirt, notices my p
resence and tells me: “No chemicals in the office, young lady.”

  “But I’m looking for a guy called Felix,” I say.

  Homer Simpson looks around the circle of people he is talking to, all much younger than him, expecting someone to enlighten me.

  “Probably in the lab,” says a tall, blond guy, gesturing to a glass door.

  “Thanks.”

  I take a few steps in the direction of the door. “Wait. You can’t walk with chemicals through here, just walk around,” says Homer Simpson, though with a friendly tone, indicating that I have to enter the lab via the main corridor. Pedantic Flabby.

  I obey silly Homer and walk out through the door I came in.

  The lab turns out to be even larger than the office and, presumably due to its glass roof, boiling hot. There is heavy metal music playing, medium loud, and everyone is working in fume hoods, wearing a lab coat and safety goggles. Except during the practical classes I teach, I never wear safety glasses. It is not necessary in our lab although we undoubtedly break the health and safety regulations by working with carcinogenic solvents like chloroform unprotected. However, we have nothing that can actually explode, or at least that is what I assumed till a few hours ago; but with all those unknown chemicals freely evaporating or forming dust I am not sure anymore. Homer’s lab is so different; people are doing hard-core chemistry and for sure they need protection. It’s industrious and scientific and really quite hypnotic and uplifting.

  A guy washing his hands at the sink next to the door greets me and asks if he can help. I explain I’m looking for a guy called Felix and he nods in the direction of a fume hood at the back. “The red-haired guy,” he adds.

  Without saying anything, he points to a box with safety goggles for visitors on a table next to me. I pick the only red plastic goggles, place them on my nose and cross the lab. I pause next to Felix.