“Morning,” Logan says on entering the lab. “Guess what I just saw?”
Logan is still wearing his sporty outdoor coat and has an expression that speaks of both shock and entertainment.
“Bring it on, my day can’t get worse.”
“Babette and Barry… walking hand-in-hand to university.”
My mouth falls open. I press my jaw bone back in its normal position. Lucy and Hanna come out of the office and all three of us stare at Logan as if he just told us God has been proven to exist and is in the lab next door knitting socks for Jesus.
“O.M.G.” Lucy whispers.
“What?” Hanna asks, almost shouting.
“This is why she has been smiling occasionally lately, and is sometimes even late!” I say.
Babette really had been smiling of late, which is something she traditionally only did for one bizarre reason – Mark entering the room. She still never talked to us, but she was running around with bouncy energy. She evidently had something going on but we didn’t know who or what it was – till now.
“Poor Barry, it didn’t even seem to have an effect on his depression,” Lucy adds.
“Maybe he likes to have Babette sitting on top of him like a werewolf crying for her prey,” I say.
Logan looks disturbed, makes the stop sign with his hands, shakes his head, but smiles. “Getting a red steak thrown on his plate for breakfast…” I add.
Lucy muses, “She’ll probably lock him up in the cold room to die when he dumps her. We’ve all seen what’s happening with Quinn.”
“What does he have to do with it?” I ask.
“They had a one night stand after a Christmas party, the year before you arrived,” Hanna clarifies.
“Is that why she hates Quinn so much?” I ask.
Lab meeting or not, at least once a week Babette would explode at Quinn, and he would send salvoes straight back at her. Quinn wasn’t innocent, he relished provoking Babette.
“Yes. Babette wanted more but Quinn wasn’t interested – the neck bites looked like a vampire attacked him,” Lucy says. “You got the feeling it was a rough night in all sorts of grim ways…”
“You girls are awful!” Logan says, smiling, and walks to the office.
I quickly add a few microliters of plasmid solution to the Eppendorf with competent E. coli cells, heat shock them, and place them back on ice. Lucy waits, holding two cups to be filled with Prof. Homer Simpson’s coffee. We walk downstairs and luckily find Felix in his cubicle. Through the glass window we watch William screwing a high drying rack in the middle of Elizabeth-Pipi-Longstocking’s bench. There is no way that anyone could still work there. “What is he doing?” Lucy asks.
“Elizabeth installed drying racks for our glasswear on the sides of all the benches in the lab, but she didn’t actually ask us if we wanted them. They’re on the side of the bench, so no one minds them. However, not so for William. For days, he would screw his rack off and then Elizabeth would stubbornly screw it back on. I guess he’s had enough of the on/off game and is trying to make a point…”
“Right…” I say.
Together we walk to the little kitchen in the large office. “You girls coming to James Watson’s lecture?” Felix asks, placing the water tank in the machine.
This is the James Watson, of course. Eager Felix has a notebook and pen at the ready. He is positively itching to get into that lecture theatre.
“You mean listen to the douche who discovered the structure of DNA?” I say, feigning lack of respect for one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century.
“Yup, that douche,” Felix smiles.
We wait until Lucy’s cup is filled and, as soon as the noise of the machine indicates it has finished pumping water, William is present and correct: to secure the precious water tank and lock it in his drawer.
“She won’t screw that rack on my bench again,” he states triumphantly.
“No, do you think she or you or both of you need psychotherapy to sort this out?” Felix asks. “Her whistling might well deepen the therapeutic effect.”
The four of us make our way to the largest lecture theatre, which is on the other side of campus. If William’s drawer had lacked a lock I seriously doubt he would have attended this starriest of star lectures. I am starting to like William despite, or maybe even because of, his strange traits, but I still feel sorry for people working with him. William seems to respect Felix and they rub along surprisingly well. Lucy and I are now good friends with Felix, and William has somehow sort of loosely grown on us in recent weeks; weirdness, of one sort or another, being the gel that lumps us together.
“I just went through all the pre-exams of the undergrads,” says William, who has been teaching at the department for over a year now.
He shakes his head in a manner suggesting the results have not been awe-inspiring.
“And?” Felix asks, smiling as ever.
William sighs deeply, “You shouldn’t let monkeys study chemistry, they just don’t get the point.”
As we walk out of the door, it seems like the whole chemistry building is emptying at once. There are streams of people on the paths outside, all with the same destination. They could have combined the James Watson lecture with a fire alarm exercise; nobody is going to miss this.
It is overcast, rain looks imminent. On my way to see one of the biggest science stars in the world, I watch a few dozen rabbits jumping around the grass looking for food. There is a plague of them on campus. I don’t suppose it matters because nobody is trying to control it. There is a big, fat red cat fighting a lonely war against the rabbit plague. Occasionally he catches a fluffy baby bunny whereupon he will take three days to actually eat it all. The fat cat drags the little thing to a bush and lays with it, or rather pieces of it by the second day, until it’s all finished. We’ve all watched this elongated process in horrid fascination. Fatso’s favourite spot in the bush is just before the KB House canteen. However, this dismal creature is not around to blight this exciting day.
“Apparently Watson was supposed to come two years ago, but the University of Edinburgh withdrew the invitation,” says William.
“Why?” Lucy asks.
“In one of his speeches just before he was to come here, Watson claimed that Africans are less intelligent than white people, and black people are basically genetically inferior,” William says.
“Ah, a highly educated racist,” I say.
“Yes.”
“But now, a few years later, he is not a racist anymore? Or, what?” I ask.
“He apologised.”
“Did he apologise for stealing Rosalind Franklin’s x-ray structures as well?” I ask.
This is a legendary bone of contention in modern science.
“Have you seen his TED talk?” Lucy asks.
“I did indeed,” says Felix. “He clearly admits that the x-ray forming the basis of the structure was made by Rosalind Franklin.”
“Maybe Franklin not getting the proper amount of credit stirred up too much debate around the world and he got too scared to not mention her?”
“He is still claiming that Rosalind Franklin did not really want to draw the structure because she wasn’t really a chemist,” says Lucy.
“She was a chemist,” I say.
“We will never know the true story, or who really deserves the credit,” says Felix. “It never changes; people stealing each other’s work, turning science into a soap opera.” “But let’s see what he says today,” William adds.
The lecture theatre is overcrowded. Every last seat is occupied and already people are settling on the aisle stairs between the seats. It’s not really a surprise that someone like James Watson attracts such a crowd; arguably, he did nothing less than lay the foundation of modern molecular biology with his discovery. The people look excited. In our lab we’ve been talking about James Watson gracing our campus for over a week. I too feel excited, a bit like being introduced to the Queen somehow – apparently a racist mal
e queen, I just discovered, which bothers my liberal sensibility, but still I am excited to be here.
We sit down on the congested stairs, behind each other, and await the learned genius. As per every introduction in the scientific world, the speaker gets complimented on how great his or her contribution has been to the world of science. In the event, this introduction is suitably brief; come to think, in a hall full of budding and accomplished scientists, the introduction could have been reduced to just two words, ‘James’ and ‘Watson’.
Watson walks on stage, slowly. He wears a too-large pair of trousers, a shirt and a blazer. His bald head is covered with liver spots and his back is bent. He is old, very old, and his speech is unclear. It takes me a few minutes to get acquainted with his pronunciation or, to be blunt, his lack of it. He mumbles and mumbles unexcitedly and, to my amazement at least, does not talk about the discovery of DNA.
Instead, he talks about all the great scientists he has met during his long life. I follow it for a while, waiting for actual content, but there isn’t any. Out of boredom I look at my watch and see that we are only twenty minutes in. This isn’t a lecture, or even a speech. It’s just a long boast. “I know very important person A, research Institute B was named after him, and BTW I am really bloody important myself, so there!” That was all there was; a long, bland statement of something everyone in the room already knew.
The people around me look as disappointed as myself. My right leg starts to tremble impatiently and I regret that I did not bring something to read or that I can’t kill time knitting. Just about anything would be preferable to listening to embarrassing and pointless trumpet blasting. I gaze round the theatre trying to calculate how much money is being wasted just here and now? Thirty minutes in, I check to see if I can escape, but there is no way through this crowd. I resent listening to the self-love of an old man who is wasting so many people’s time.
When the lecture finally finishes, people applaud. Are they applauding themselves for lasting the whole hour? The applause is of a peculiar polite character, such that might greet an amateur theatre company on the opening night of a dismal show. Of course the moderator says a few nice words before we all stand up, ready to head back to our labs, hoping we never become like James Watson – the opposite of what we hoped on the way here.
“That was really good,” a girl declares to someone else in front of me.
“Really?” Felix says from behind her. “You really thought it was good?”
About twenty people turn towards us, some look surprised, some entertained.
“Quite honestly, I found it really shit,” says William. “Probably the worst lecture I ever attended.”
A few people laugh, others turn away, not wishing to acknowledge the depressing fact.
“He joked in his TED talk that he doesn’t really like to talk about his DNA discovery anymore,” Felix says, while we cross campus back to the chemistry building.
“Well, that was pretty clear,” I say. “Just an old man babbling.”
“If you are old and famous you can serve up this shit,” William says.
A few other PhD students, walking within listening distance, agree it was a disappointing lecture.
Two of them introduce themselves to each other. Apparently they haven’t met before. “Jonas” one says, “Peter” the other says.
“Jonas?” William interrupts. “I thought you were called Billy?”
The tall, blond guy who just introduced himself as Jonas looks at William, surprised. “You are from Sweden, right?” William adds.
“Yes, I am,” Jonas says, still looking perplexed about how people came to think he was called Billy.
“So, it’s Billy… called after the IKEA wardrobe,” says William, maintaining a very serious face.
Felix is indicating without words to Jonas and the others that William is nuts and should be taken with a grain of salt.
All the students are laughing, though somewhat uncomfortably. A long silence follows.
Just before entering the School of Chemistry, William slaps Jonas on the shoulder. “Was just a joke, pal!”
It was blunt stereotyping, ultra weird and profoundly pointless. And yet infinitely more memorable than anything famous James Watson had to say. How utterly dispiriting.
It is early evening as Mark enters the lab. I feel that all my colleagues are evaporating but as I am pouring plates I cannot escape. My muscles are tensing up as he walks towards me, holding a scientific paper in his hand.
“Babette here?” Mark asks, in his default barking tone.
“No, she left.”
Mark looks surprised. Babette rarely leaves early.
“Barry?”
“Left as well.”
I consider telling him about the new turtle-dove couple we have in the lab and that I suspect Barry is currently being chewed by Babette, but I don’t. I can see in his eyes that despite me being second or third choice he cannot resist talking about the paper he holds in his hand. Enthusiastically he starts explaining about the findings of a paper on a random cofactor-dependent enzyme. During his monologue, he shows me tables and figures. He tells me that some of this research can be implemented into the KBL project and so on and on and on… I know this will end. Just wait patiently. Keep yourself quiet like a dead body and you will be fine.
Abruptly he changes topics and tells me about all the fantastic things Brian discovered lately and what a great researcher he is. To me, it doesn’t sound too fancy at all, but I don’t really care. I am aware that my boredom is apparent, possibly oozing out of my every pore – I can’t help it any more. About half an hour in, I can literally see his mood drop like a ton weight from a balcony. “How is your LpxC project going?”
He speaks sharply, pinning me down on the lab chair with his eyes. “Still struggling with the plasmids.” True statement but wrong answer, for sure.
“We’ll just publish what you have so far. Write me a draft for a paper and send it to me by Monday.” No way!
“But that would go to a B class journal…,” I stutter, seeing my one and half years’ worth of failed experiments summarised in a magazine as glamorous as a primary school newsletter.
“We publish it, and you can focus on KdtA.” Oh yes, that megalomaniac project that doesn’t have any future in our lab. Excellent idea.
“Can’t we just buy the plasmids?” I ask, desperately.
“No! Next week, I want it on my desk.”
“But…”
“Get over it!” Mark barks, striding to the door.
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_27
Chapter 27
Karin Bodewits1
(1)Munich, Germany
Karin Bodewits
Email: [email protected]
With pleading eyes Lucy says goodbye. “Don’t do it,” she whispers, standing in the doorway of my flat entrance; after a small dinner party to celebrate the acceptance of my LpxC paper in a low-impact scientific journal.
“Of course not,” I say.
Lucy’s parting look does not suggest trust. She knows, as she closes the door, Erico and I will be alone in the flat. She also knows that inmates of Lab 262 have been known to take refuge in each other’s beds. Short affairs and one-night stands tend to be as far as it goes. Invariably, the net result is that the atmosphere in the lab actually manages to deteriorate.
Lab romances are commonplace throughout academia, of course. We are spending most of our waken lives in a small room together. Sometimes weeks pass during which our only serious contact with humanity is with each other. Frankly, we get bored. And we are not like pandas, which can exist in a cage for years sharing only shoots of bamboo. Or maybe it is an unconscious act of protest, akin to those promiscuous dissidents in former Bloc countries and Milan Kundera novels, whereby people affirm their freedom from brute authority and dependency by escaping into sex.
Less dramatically, it has a wearying inevitability about it. Babette and Barry had just proven that the scarcity of sanity in our bubble lowers expectations… Also their affair, which has trundled on for weeks now, has accentuated the atmosphere at work. Barry not only walks gloomily with his shoulders down now, but also as if he fears a shock stick from a jailer. He still talks to Mark and Babette, but to no one else. Sometimes, if Babette is not around, he exchanges a few sad words with Logan, but that is it. Babette is looking and acting more human than before, but she is still not talking to us – sex is only liberating to a point. Mark has by now figured out that they are dating and regards it as good reason to subject both of them to his monologues at once. Almost every day they sit in his office like Athos, Porthos and Aramis bolstering each other, by way of ground-breaking research plans, which will lead precisely nowhere.
“Really, don’t worry,” I assure Lucy as she closes the door.
I hear her walking down the stairs and walk back to the living room to face Erico. I am not attracted to him. He is a few inches shorter than me for a start. He’s funny, no doubt, but simply not my type. He is changing the music from Amy MacDonald to blues. He turns away from the stereo and looks at me.
“Can I stay over?” he enquires carefully, though the words are somewhat pointed.
“You can, but nothing will happen between us.”
“Can I sleep in your bed?”
“If you stay on your side.”
“Why?”
“Because my sister told me that all Italian men have a small one?”
Erico looks confused and slightly irritated. “How does she know?”
“She had sex with one, and he had a small one.”
I speak in a light clinical manner making it clear that I am not prepared to even engage on the subject.
“She slept with one?”
“Yes, one. But I don’t see any reason to repeat the experiment.”
“So I can stay over, but I can’t touch you.”
“That’s the deal.”
“Okay, I take it. I’m too lazy to cycle home.”
You Must Be Very Intelligent Page 25
