Rameau's Niece

by Cathleen Schine

  In that moment, Margaret realized he would never have thrown his leg over anyone but her. His sense of order, of his own power, would not permit it. His egotism made sure that his generosity was not squandered but celebrated. To his students he gave what was due them—his bountiful teaching. His largess was in quantity and quality, not in the diversity of his gifts. It would have been unseemly, in his own eyes, for him to pop his adoring students. He was their teacher. He gave them teachings. To Lily, he gave his companionship and running tips. Oh Christ, he was just an innocent jogger. While she! She!

  "Did you actually think I was, was fucking Richard? Richard the homo?" she blurted out in a tone of as much ironic outrage as she could muster. "I was just taking a bath."

  And, you know, I also fucked an Adonis. Same difference.

  "A bath?" Edward said, laughing. "That's the truth?"

  Is it the truth? Margaret wondered. What is truth? Is it true to say "I was innocently taking a bath" without also saying "after a roll in the hay? With the fabulous physique of Dr. Lipi? With my dentist?" Is it true that I slept with Dr. Lipi, is that truth, or is this truth, that I'm here with you, that you're everything? If I rely solely on my senses at this moment, Dr. Lipi does not exist. There is only Edward. If I rely on reason, still Dr. Lipi doesn't exist, never did exist, never could exist. There is only Edward.

  It is true that I threw myself into another man's bed. I did it. I experienced it. I remember it. I know it. It is a true statement. But there are an infinity of true statements. They are not all equal in value. A statement is true if and only if it corresponds to facts. A statement that conveys more information has a greater informative or logical content than a statement that conveys less information. It is a better statement. The greater the content of a true statement, the better it is as an approach to the truth. "I love you, Edward" has greater content than "I fucked Dr. Lipi." So "I love you, Edward" is a better statement.

  "The truth, Edward, the real truth is that I love you." She said it so quietly she almost couldn't hear the words herself. Edward stared at her, steadily and seriously, until, unnerved, she looked away.

  "Margaret," he said, and he sounded angry. "Are you quite certain? This time?"

  "Well, there can be no certainty—"

  "For Christ's sake, Margaret..."

  Which of the young men does she like best? asked Walt Whitman. Which of the young men does Margaret like best? asked Margaret, and she knew the answer. An unseen hand pass'd over their bodies, over Edward's body. It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs, from his temples and ribs as she looked at him, at his temples and ribs and his terrible, relentless eyes. Perhaps he thought of the poem, too, for he leaned over the desk toward her, just a little, and very slowly. Margaret saw his hand lying on the desk just inches from hers, and, as she watched, her hand reached across those inches to touch him, to pull him toward her as she stood and leaned across the desk until he stood, too, his face against hers, his hands descending tremblingly, her hands descending tremblingly, until they had both descended tremblingly and completely onto the scarred desktop. Pencils and pens, books and journals and Styrofoam cups, Eve's preposterous paper on the twenty-eight-year-old woman and her twenty-eight young men all gave way to their pedagogic struggle.

  The growth of all knowledge consists in the modification of previous knowledge, she thought in a last wild gesture toward reason. Kant said our intellect imposes its laws on our sensations. But how rarely it succeeds!

  "Edward..." Reality resists our laws, she wanted to say, her face pressed into his chest, her hands pulling his jacket away, his shirt. We make mistakes again and again. Karl Popper says so.

  "Popper," she gasped, unaware she had spoken.

  We modify our laws, Edward, we modify our knowledge.

  He looked down at her and smiled.

  I made mistakes again and again, she thought. I modified. And now I know.

  "The method of science is the method of bold conjecture," she gasped, feeling a bold conjecture pressed suddenly down upon her.

  "Do shut up, Margaret."

  Bold conjectures and the ingenious and severe attempts to refute them, she thought.

  Her shirt had dropped somewhere onto the floor with several periodicals. Edward's narrow chest was against her, her face was against his, their legs tangled, the world back in its proper orbit.

  He was her bold conjecture. She could not refute him.

  "Thorough," she whispered.

  This was a thorough critical discussion. Severe and ingenious testing.

  "Severe and ingenious."

  "Yes, Margaret," Edward said, his voice hoarse in her ear. "Whatever, darling."

  They lay quietly, wet with sweat, uncomfortable, their position absurd, their pleasure infinite.

  In light of this critical discussion, in light of this severe testing, this ingenious testing, this modification of knowledge, this redemption, this remarriage, this lesson, this search for truth, this fucking on a desktop in an airless office, you seem by far to be the best, Edward, the best tested, the strongest. You seem to be the one nearest to truth.

  "You're the best," Margaret whispered to her husband. "Of all my theories, Edward, you are the best."

  MYSELF: And so, if you think carefully about it, you will agree that in the end our truest opinions are not the ones we have never changed, but those to which we have most often returned.

  EPILOGUE

  Margaret Nathan's book, Rameau's Niece and the Satin Underground, was eventually published, and while early reviews were on the whole respectful, even enthusiastic, a certain contradiction—some called it an egregious error—was soon widely noticed. "Ms. Nathan discusses the obvious connection between the eighteenth-century text Rameau's Niece and Diderot's Rameau's Nephew," one typical review remarked. "What she (incredibly!) fails to mention is that though Diderot wrote Rameau's Nephew in 1761 or thereabouts, he showed it to no one, as far as we know. It was not published until 1805, posthumously, and then only in a German translation made by Goethe from a transcription of a manuscript discovered in St. Petersburg."

  "Oh God!" said Margaret. "I forgot."

  How did the anonymous author borrow from a book that did not exist? Margaret asked herself this question, the obvious question, the question that would have brought her great scholarly renown had she thought to ask it before. Discovering a historical diamond, she had held it up to the light and marveled only at a prism.

  Was Diderot himself the author? Did one of his friends, shown Rameau's Nephew in confidence, write his own unpublished response? Or was it Diderot's mistress? One of his students, perhaps, one with silky brown hair. Maybe Rameau's niece wrote Rameau's Niece! Rising from her bed, where she had spent the last several weeks in speechless mortification, Margaret began her research. And, dimly, she recalled something Diderot had said. Perhaps it was Diderot, anyway; perhaps it was what he said: It is my job to seek truth, not to find it.