Original Prin

by Randy Boyagoda

  Two hours later, he was still talking. Every single person in the hall, other than Rae, who was taking detailed notes, was asleep. Prin was nearly asleep himself. But he kept going, this time into a summary-review of his earlier point about Martin Buber’s I-Thou interpersonal ethic obtaining in asymmetrical terms when it came to understanding Gregor’s relationship to his family, pre- and post-metamorphosis, and likewise for Ondaatje’s English Patient’s relationship to his penis when it’s both a sleeping and awakened seahorse.

  Twenty minutes later, someone nudged one of the Minister’s staffers, who in turn sent a text. Within a minute the Minister came from nowhere onto the stage pretending to be an airplane soaring straight into Prin. He mouthed First Class, clapped him on the back, and turned to the audience, which was just waking up and stretching.

  “Amazing! Thank you for your words, your wisdom, Professor Prin. So this concludes our first Drag Racer Talk. It’s already been posted, and I hope it breaks the internet, right? You can access it from here, um, soon, but anyway, believe me, people will be watching this everywhere. Now I want to say, before you all return to work, that we need to ask ourselves one question, every day, in these jobs. We need to ask ourselves one question, right now.

  “You know the question. You know the answer. So. Friends.

  “Who wants to be a butterfly?”

  29

  “Way to go, team!” said the Chinese real estate developer.

  He brought a bucket of champagne to the table where Prin, Wende, and Rae were sitting. Knees were sort-of touching under the table. They were in a Frenchified cafeteria somewhere deep inside another building within the government complex, one that housed the offices of foreign embassies. Now and then, as tonight, the embassies could book the employee cafeteria and, for a short period of time and with no social media allowed and provided the mess was cleaned up before midnight, treat it like home territory.

  The French certainly were.

  The fluorescent overhead lights had been shut off, and candles and dark-shaded lamps placed in the middle of metal tables covered in creamy white tablecloths. Here and there were little vases of pretty desert flowers and baskets of steaming bread—baguettes flown in from Paris, par-baked and then frozen, then finished in local ovens. The bread was crispy and soft and warm and chewy. The food counter, also covered in creamy white cloth, was set up with bottles of wine and beer and champagne. Two bald, stubbly men took drink orders while a third ran electronic dance music off his laptop. He was dressed in a tri-colour Adidas tracksuit. Twenty or so people, mostly foreign contractors and diplomatic staff, most of them young and bespectacled and thin, were drinking and laughing and strutting to the music.

  Knees were definitely touching.

  Prin shifted away.

  Wende shifted closer.

  Prin adjusted his chair again and then reached and clinked his glass with the others before sipping. He was still waiting for an explanation of what they were celebrating, beyond the end of Ramadan, French-embassy style, and also why the Chinese real estate developer was here and why he was so happy about Prin’s Kafka lecture.

  And how were they a team? Why were they a team?

  “Thank you for the champagne and your kind words about my talk … I’m sorry, I still haven’t learned your name,” Prin said.

  “Just call me The Nephew. Everyone does. And even if you don’t know who my uncle is, the point is that I have an uncle. An Uncle Uncle. Back in Beijing. You know what I mean?” said The Nephew.

  “Not exactly,” Prin said.

  “Probably better for everyone,” Wende said.

  Prin glared at her while wondering how she was able to keep her shirt that unbuttoned without anything showing. She was smiling at The Nephew, who was re-gelling his hair into great, sharp spikes while surveying the room. Eventually a woman at another table made what technically could be construed as eye contact. He bolted. A moment later, he texted Rae to bring the bucket of champagne to his new table.

  “Listen, Wende, something is clearly going on here between you and The Nephew—”

  “Are you jealous?” she asked.

  “And with the people here in Dragomans, with me and my university somehow caught in the middle of it all. Look, I’ve left my family behind to be here, and I just gave that exhausting and kind of stressful talk, and I have a responsibility to let my colleagues know whether it makes more sense to open this satellite campus in Dragomans or sell our last building to … The Nephew. That’s what I was told my role was here —”

  “It doesn’t have to be. It can be more,” Wende said.

  “I don’t want it to be more, Wende! I am not interested. And keep your knees to yourself,” Prin said.

  “What do you mean? It’s a small table,” Wende said.

  “I am not interested in this,” Prin said.

  “You know I hate indeterminate pronoun usage. Say it, Prin. Say it and I will leave you alone,” Wende said.

  “I am not interested in you!” Prin said.

  She was about to say something but instead bit her lip. Her eyes, normally blue-gray shiny buttons, grew big and glassy, teary. Never mind the dragon-queen jewellery and sour-lip stuff, Wende looked like a lost little girl just then. He almost wanted to—but she got up from the table and left the room through a side door that had a picture of stairs on it.

  Prin sat alone. He drank down his glass of cold, sweet champagne and watched all the happy, drunken bad dancers around him. So she was interested. All these years later. A junior staffer from the French embassy, as sober as an ayatollah, was circulating through the crowd to obtain insurance waiver release consents. All told, Prin was feeling pretty good and true and right. Here was temptation, real and right in his face, and he’d turned it away. All these years later. She had invited all of this, for reasons Prin didn’t know or care to know. He was here for work, only he was confused what that meant now. Looking across the cafeteria, Prin tried to get Rae’s attention—she’d tell him what was going on with The Nephew. But she was mostly blocked from Prin’s view by The Nephew’s chunky, Versace’d shoulders, which kept yukking up and down at whatever the woman beside him was saying. Prin got up to leave, waived the need for the waiver and so had to sign a “waiver waiver.” He made for the main exit and then his pants buzzed. It was a VaultTok text from Wende.

  “Are you sure?”

  30

  Below the words, an image resolved itself.

  He pushed through the side door and she was right there, waiting for him, all her buttons now undone. Her mouth seeking his, she pressed into him, all over him. Prin shook his head away from hers and tried to get past her. He did not try as hard as he could have.

  She took him by the hand and walked down the hall to a metal staircase leading to the roof. There was a low humming all around from the air conditioning units, and they could see the rooftops of other buildings in the complex, most of them dotted with men holding cigarettes and big guns. Two approached them right away but then nodded and left, grinning. One gave Prin a green-gloved thumbs-up.

  He wanted to kiss her again. No, he wanted to be kissed by her again. No, he wanted to kiss her again. Because, thank God for prostate cancer, what did it matter? Beyond the brain spark at the thought of what she had shown him, what she was offering him, what she was giving him, after all these years, he felt nothing. He could feel nothing. Head, heart, hips: Nothing. At least, he felt nothing in his head and hips.

  Technically, this could only lead to nothing.

  So he kissed her.

  She pressed close and moved him with everything she had. Nothing. She ran her hand down his chest, hooked one of her thighs between his legs, and pressed and rubbed. Now her hand pressed down against his hip bone and slid across the front of his pants and searched and searched and stopped. Dropped. She pushed him away and walked to a further, darker part o
f the roof. Prin followed.

  “You’re terrible,” Wende said.

  “What? Why?” Prin said.

  “You’re terrible. You’re a fucking bad person. The last few minutes have made it really, really clear that you’re not interested in me, at least not like you used to be. You’re only doing this to prove it,” Wende said.

  “Wait. You think that because I didn’t get an, I don’t have an … that that means something?” Prin asked.

  “For people like us, who live so much in our heads, that’s the kind of incontrovertible truth we need, yes. I bet those moron security guards got hard just watching,” Wende said.

  “Just from seeing you,” Prin said.

  She put her hands on him again.

  “Wende, stop. This isn’t going to work. I’m sorry to have to explain this but—”

  But what? Why did Prin have to explain this? Maybe she didn’t know about the cancer. Molly had told her about something else, in the kitchen. What? It didn’t matter. He was invincibly impotent. She was invincibly ignorant. Why not keep things that way?

  “But what?” she asked.

  “But nothing, I guess. Actually, I’m the one who has questions. Never mind my kissing you back and coming out here. That’s something I’m going to have to deal with myself now. I’m a married man. I’m a married man. I’m a—”

  “Say it three times and it’ll feel true?” she asked.

  “Why have you been trying to do this? After all these years, and after the way we ended things, the way you ended things, and with your fancy life now, I’m supposed to believe that you still have feelings for me? Really? I don’t. I don’t believe that. So what is it? What’s the truth? Are you trying to entrap me? Does this have to do with The Nephew?” Prin said.

  “Ha. As if I’d need to do that. As if you were really that crucial to what’s going on, Prin. It’s kind of cute, actually. The Nephew is here in Dragomans with us because we’re combining the plans,” Wende said.

  “Meaning?” he asked.

  “Meaning, UFU is going to provide diplomas to Dragomans students in Eldercare Studies. The students will study here and then come to Toronto for internships at the condominium The Nephew is going to build on your campus. Everyone wins,” Wende said.

  “And how long has this been the plan? Wait, it’s been the plan from the beginning, hasn’t it! That’s why that video we show at the condo lecture has all the young Arab people smiling in the background. Right?” Prin said.

  “Does it really matter? You’re still going to have a job, and you’re going to help some Middle Eastern orphans get educations and jobs in Canada. Do you really care more about that than me?” Wende said.

  “Yes! Of course I do!” he said.

  “Well, fine. Fuck you, too. And believe me, there’s no entrapment going on here. I’ve been trying to figure something out for a long time, and it’s not about you, and it’s not about us,” Wende said.

  “Oh, let me guess … it’s about you? That Wende the ice queen bitch-goddess of the wordplay universe can have any man she wants, even the happily married Catholic professor she once dated and cheated on?” Prin said.

  He was surprised at how angry it came out. It shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have done any of this. What was Prin doing here, all this nothing, when the everything that was his life was somewhere else, waiting for him, smiling?

  God had said Go. He’d come. But for this?

  “You don’t get it, Prin. You never got it,” Wende said.

  “Please, enlighten me. Actually, don’t. I’m going to bed. I’ll teach the seminar in the morning and then I’m going home. I’ll discuss this with people at the university, and also, yes, I’m going to tell Molly about all of this, all of it. And it’s going to be awful—you know why? Because what just got wrecked, with you, by you, is real,” Prin said.

  “Wait, please, just wait. That’s it. That’s what you don’t get,” Wende said.

  He should have turned and gone. But also, he should have never come up to the roof, gone to the stairs, followed her out of the party, gone with her to the party, left Molly and the girls behind. He should never have come to Dragomans. But God had said Go. He had. He could not deny that any more than he could deny what he’d just done with Wende, what he’d failed to do for Molly. But really, Lord, for this? Also, he should have deleted the picture Wende sent him. But he forgot.

  “You know I’m sort of Jewish, right?” Wende said.

  “Okay,” Prin said.

  “So once, when I was a little girl—”

  “Seriously? It’s going to be one of those?” Prin asked.

  “I still remember you telling me about playing peekaboo with candles in church to prove God existed. There’s also a passage from Infinite Jest I could quote, something about using tennis to prove the existence or non-existence of God. Would that be more acceptable?” Wende asked.

  “Just tell the childhood story,” Prin said.

  “So I never have before. Do you understand? I never have, to anyone,” Wende said.

  “Okay,” Prin said.

  “We were driving west one summer. We had a station wagon. My sister and I were allowed to sleep in the big, boxy trunk. Usually, we fought. She was older. I was smarter. I was prettier. I make more money. Way more money. But anyway, we didn’t fight when we camped out in the back of the station wagon. We arranged our heads side by side so that we could see the stars while my father drove.

  “I remember hearing my mother complain when my father bought coffee and said no to a motel for the night. But we loved it. We got set up all nice and cozy in our sleeping bags and ignored the motor oil and the little red jerrycan smells. We just watched and watched, and it was all disappearing road and the black shapes of tall trees and millions of stars passing through the rear window. Rebekah had her head beside mine. She told me we should pretend we were lying on the backs of carousel horses that had broken free and were flying to the moon. She was my older sister. She was trying to be nice. But even then, and I was probably ten years old, it sounded so childish. I said okay but I wasn’t lying on any flying carousel horse. I was thinking about when we would go to my grandparents’ house in Newark for Passover. They always recited this really long kind of story and prayer at the same time about the history of the Jewish people and I remember this one time—”

  “The Haggadah,” Prin said.

  “Yes, you’re more Catholic and more Jewish than I am, congratulations. Can I continue?”

  “Go on,” Prin said.

  It had been a clue on Jeopardy, three rejected-article submissions ago. Molly and the girls. Why was he listening to this unbuttoned woman instead of calling home? Because he couldn’t call home. He’d have to tell, or not tell, and he couldn’t. Not yet.

  “So, God told Abraham: I will make your descendants as many as the stars in the sky. And this one time my grandfather looked over at me and nodded and everyone was looking at me and I could tell I was supposed to say thank you or wow or something. But I didn’t. Then my sister leaned over and says ‘We’re the stars in the sky,’ and I thought, no we’re not. We’re some people sitting around a dining-room table in New Jersey with a lot of candles and it’s hot and I’m wearing the crinkly dress I hate and the barrettes in my hair are too tight and I can’t eat the bread yet. I looked at my mom and dad and sister and grandparents all looking at me and I thought: How are we stars? How are we anything except a bunch of “me”s? And then it all went away, just like that, Prin.”

  “What went away?” Prin asked.

  “I didn’t believe in any of it. In God. The worst was that I didn’t even know I didn’t believe until that dinner. But whatever, I was a kid, I was hungry and hated my hair and I didn’t think much more about it until the next summer, when we were lying there in the trunk of the car and looking up at the sky, at all those stars. They were b
right and pretty and I tried to feel something about them, about God and Abraham and me and the rest of us, but they were just things hanging in the air. And we’re just things on the ground. And thinking that made me feel very lonely. So I said to my sister, maybe hoping she’d convince me otherwise, ‘You don’t really think that’s us, do you? Like grandpa says God says?’

  “Rebekah said: ‘Stop it, Wende, or I’ll tell mom you’re asking weird questions. And I bet she’ll tell grandpa. You need to go to sleep now.’

  “I waited for her to answer me or tell on me but she just went to sleep.

  “And I was so, so alone, Prin, in the back of the car, looking up as my dad drove and drove. I don’t know how long this went on for, only that I kept telling myself this is it, this is what it’s like.”

  “What’s like?” Prin asked.

  “To be us. To be me,” Wende said.

  “Did it make you want to scream?” Prin asked.

  “Why would it?” Wende asked.

  “When I was a kid, I once saw a man screaming and screaming and I thought it was because he thought there was nothing out there,” Prin said.

  He hadn’t even told Molly about the man in the hospital parking lot. He had to get away from this.

  “So are you saying when you were a kid, you were like me? We—”

  “No. I am not like you.”

  Wende said nothing. She looked away. Then she looked back. Prin worried she was going to put her hands on him again but that was wrong. That wasn’t what was on her face. She had taken and tried to take more and yes, he had let her try and still she wanted more from him.

  “You’re waiting for me to be, what, moved by that story, Wende? Impressed that you were once the youngest atheist in America? Or maybe you want me to feel sorry for you, because apparently you’ve never had what you think I’ve always had?” Prin said.

  “There it is again! Like when you said something about that screaming man. Your voice was different. Are you saying you don’t?” Wende asked.

  She looked, for a moment, hopeful. Not just bitten and sad but also just a little hopeful.