Short Century_A Novel

by David Burr Gerrard

  A man who was angry because he had been denied tenure, and who invented a conspiracy theory to justify the failure: nothing so unusual about that. Though he would never directly admit to anything so foolish, I was able to glean from later conversations that a friend of his at Yale claimed to be fairly certain he could get him a job with the University, so he moved to New Haven.

  “There’s less anti-Semitism now than there used to be,” I said. “Just a couple of years ago the school reformed its admissions policy. They pay more attention to academic standards now, so it’s harder to get in just because you’re a blueblood.”

  Rothstein eyed me up and down, reminding me very much of the way Miranda had eyed me the first time we met. “Where did you go to prep school?”

  “Well, I…”

  “I’m sorry, did you tell me your name?”

  “I’m Arthur Hunt. Huntington.”

  “You seem unsure.”

  “You’re a fake, Professor Rothstein,” Miranda said. “Or does it make sense for me to call you Professor, since you’re not one?”

  To my surprise, he looked honestly hurt by this, and he foolishly proceeded to defend himself by describing his work, which had to do with various issues in molecular biology too esoteric for me to understand. As he spoke I felt more at ease. Perhaps he had a good idea or two, but the man was deluded, a blowhard, ground into resentment by career disappointment. Not a sexual threat.

  “All of that is nice,” she said. “But you’re still a fake. You say you don’t care about your family but everything you say makes it clear that that’s a lie. ”

  He looked at her for a moment before responding.

  “I think of my family all the time. Standing in the kitchen looking up at my mother as she cooked, playing games with my older sister, that sort of thing. I think about what their final years and particularly their final minutes must have been like. But that does not mean I would not be substantially better off if I could forget about them.”

  Miranda put both of her hands on her abdomen; I hadn’t noticed until that instant that she always did this when she felt a rush of sympathy.

  “I think you’re right that it’s better to forget about the past,” she said. “I’ve always thought that, Professor Rothstein, ever since I first started reading you. That’s why I admire you so much. I know it seems like I don’t but I really do admire you. But aren’t you saying that we should forget about the future as well as the past?”

  “If politicians avoid thermonuclear warfare, it will be by accident, and I don’t have all that much faith in chance. Do you really think mankind is going to see the next millennium?”

  He was saying, of course, that ours would be a short century. And yet here I am writing this in 2012, so clearly he was wrong.

  “That sounds very easy to me,” Miranda said. “You’ve had a very difficult life, more difficult than I could imagine, but you’ve made the easy choice of shutting yourself off to the world. Arthur had a very easy life but he made a difficult choice—he decided to break himself off from a family that exploits the world. He doesn’t even drive a car—his father offered to buy him one, but Arthur refused.”

  I winced at all of this.

  “You’re really quite intelligent,” Rothstein said. “You’re on to something about the dubious morality of my background.”

  “That’s not what I said. I just said that… Why do you have to twist my words like that?”

  “Well, if that was what you were arguing, you would have been right.”

  Rothstein took a breath and looked at me.

  “And you. I wonder what you’ll do. A homemade bomb in a café? Maybe you’ll set a policeman on fire. Or perhaps you’ll find a child in a diner, lure him to the parking lot, and slit his throat. I hope you won’t be so literal that you murder your father.”

  Setting a fire: I had never thought of that before. Everything in this room was flammable. It would be almost pitiably easy to burn Rothstein’s house to the ground. (Did I imagine myself as a god, outside my body, looking down at the house and throwing a lightning bolt? Probably not.) I was formulating an answer, but Miranda preempted me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “Arthur’s not cruel.”

  Rothstein made a noise at this that was almost a chuckle, but not quite.

  f

  “He’s kind of like a little boy,” Miranda said later. “You know how little boys are always saying things to make themselves sound wise to the ways of the world? He’s like that.”

  “Why did you make up that lie? About the car?”

  “That wasn’t a lie. You don’t have a car.”

  “But you said I refused a car.”

  “I think maybe I gave him too much credit,” she said. “He’s very smart, of course, but he’s really vulnerable, and it makes him say things nobody could possibly really believe.” She looked at her nails. “Do you think you’re capable of violence?”

  “What? No.”

  “Why do you think he said you were?”

  “How should I know? Do you think I’m capable of violence?”

  “Well, maybe violence is what we need.”

  “No. It’s not. I don’t think that and neither do you.”

  “No, I don’t think that. It’s funny, people say that women are turned on by violence but I really don’t think it’s true. Do you think Emily gets turned on by violence?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re really totally non-violent, you’re totally incapable of doing anything violent or anything terrible, and that’s what attracted me to you. I’ll never forget that first day, when you were so witty. You’re so witty that you would never need to use violence.”

  I was having difficulty keeping track of whether she thought I was witty or not, and of why she thought I was witty in the first place. “Yeah.”

  “But I guess it’s always surprising when people become violent. So maybe you’ll go out and buy a shotgun. Will you make me your accomplice or your victim?”

  f

  For three or four weeks, Miranda and I were at Rothstein’s house almost every day. So was Neville, whom Miranda must have invited at some point. The question of my wanting to do something terrible never came up—the phrase “Do I want to do something terrible?” even came to sound silly after I repeated it in my head for several days—but it was never exactly absent while we sat in Rothstein’s kitchen and ate eggs and talked. Sometimes I went over alone, while Miranda was at Smith.

  “The title of my book is a lie,” he said to me once. “The dominion of pleasure does not exist. There is not an inch of real estate over which death does not have dominion. Sex is too paltry a revenge against death to be called a revenge at all; it is just a pinprick on the butcher’s thumb. But a pinprick is the best you can do if you are a pin.”

  Conversations with Rothstein consisted mostly of monologues, monologues that would begin with his battles with the biology department, wind their way through his opinion as to, say, why Adorno was correct about jazz but wrong about Bach, which in turn might shift to something about the behavior of dung beetles that I could not follow, which in turn would lead to thoughts on the idiocies of his students at Turon University, always returning to his battles with the Yale biology department. Occasionally Norture would interject with some elaboration, either superfluous or obtuse, on a point Rothstein had made; I made objections to Rothstein’s arguments that he countered with ease; Miranda for the most part was silent. For the most part. I should have seen the creeping affection in her offhand, mocking asides. I should have seen that it was the very fact that she had caught a glimpse of his ridiculousness that allowed her to fall in love with him.

  f

  In the interest of tormenting my younger self, here is the ballad of the courtship of Jersey Rothstein and Miranda Schuldenfrei. (Mayb
e it was inappropriate to send what follows to Sydney, but once I started writing about Daisy I couldn’t stop writing about the Rothsteins, and I thought Sydney would want to know at least some of the conclusions I’ve come to about her parents.)

  Let’s say that you’re Miranda and you want to make love to Jersey. It hasn’t occurred to you yet—the man is far too old for you and besides, he is ridiculous, and you could never love a man who is ridiculous. And his ideas are all wrong. But his wrong ideas fructify your own ideas; they will help you develop the brilliant way of looking at the world that you are sure will occur to you soon, as long as you keep thinking. You want to hear Rothstein talk more, unimpeded by Arthur and Norture—really, before you spent so much time listening to the two of them interrupt and contradict each other and Rothstein, and then backtrack and amend and withdraw, you had no concept of how much the two of them have in common, or of the puerility of the two boys you have loved, how loquaciously defensive they are without having much of anything to defend (I would argue that I have outgrown this puerility while Norture has not, but yes, in the sixties we were both puerile). You want to visit Rothstein alone, but this is logistically impossible because you are in New Haven only when you are visiting Arthur. Do you look for a time when you can speak to Rothstein—say, one evening when Rothstein asks Arthur and Norture to go buy some wine, which would take them forever because they would argue over which wine involved the least amount of colonial exploitation—and then set up a private meeting? But how do you do this without seeming to have sexual intentions? Perhaps you say: “There are some things I’d like to talk about with you that I don’t want to talk about in front of Arthur. I really don’t intend this as some sort of romantic rendezvous or anything. I know it probably sounds that way.” At which Rothstein nods sagely and says: “Of course, I’d be delighted to discuss whatever is on your mind.” And there is the slightest hint of a smile on his lips. Perhaps it is only after you see Rothstein’s smile that you understand how nervous you were that he would reject you. But you do not want to have sex with him, you want to learn from him, and you will make a trip from Smith on a Tuesday evening to do so. Throughout the bus ride you worry that you will run into Arthur on campus, and you know that if you do whatever lie you tell will be unconvincing. Still, the thought of lying to Arthur gives you a thrill; you hope you do see him. You hug your knees to your chest on the bus seat and fiddle with the ten-dollar bill that you always keep in your boot. No, it is not the thought of lying that gives you a thrill. It is the thought of telling the truth. Of saying without equivocation or apology: “Arthur, I don’t want to see you anymore.” For months you have been terrified of dumping Arthur, and why? Arthur is sweet sometimes but needy. That’s what nobody admits about men, how needy they are, how they need to be reminded all the time how brilliant and strong they are and how independent and astute and erotically gifted. And how noble and moral and correct on all the great ethical issues of the day. You know it is not possible but you actually feel as though your nipples are sore from all of Arthur’s need. This is how it must feel to nurse an infant. You must break up with him before you grow to hate him even more. Many of the things you give him he doesn’t even ask for, and perhaps he does not actually need them, perhaps his need doesn’t have an object and he is simply raw need personified. And you are just as needy as he is: another reason to break up. The two of you spend so much time convincing each other that you’re both so ethically committed, but really, you have done absolutely nothing. You must act on your politics or shut up. Or both. And whatever you do, it must be without Arthur. Without Arthur or Rothstein. The worst thing you could do would be to jump from man to man, as though you were a disease. If Rothstein makes a move on you, you’ll reject him.

  Rothstein betrays no hint of a leer when he opens the door; nor does he betray any delight in seeing you. His cheeks are haggard and his general appearance is resigned. Resigned to what? To the fact that he will never get a job? Or to the fact that he is going to sleep with you tonight? You should walk out right now. If his eyes betray no hint of a leer, that is only because he is such an experienced and successful lecher; you have to be hopeless to leer. Perhaps he is so confident of his sexual powers that he is bored by the inevitability of sleeping with you. He says something about being glad you came by for a chat, and you swallow your anger long enough to respond with perfunctory gratitude. He sidesteps the spear on the African warrior statue, level with his neck. You could walk underneath the spear but you sidestep it as well, as though he will not notice how short you are. He offers to cook an omelet for you, but you say you are not hungry. How about some toast? Well, maybe some toast. You search his eyes for some sign of calculation. Maybe he doesn’t even enjoy sex, but only the conquest; this would explain how tired he looks now that all that is left is the act. Or so he thinks. The marks that you dimly see on the wall above the living room sofa are probably notches for every girl from Smith, Vassar, and even Briarcliff whom he’s ever made love to, and every girl at Yale now that the school is co-ed. That’s absurd: he just moved here. You have no reason to believe he is any sort of womanizer—you have not seen him with any girl. As he leads you to his living room you can only catch his eyes for seconds at a time, as he shifts his head. He seems to be trying to think of something to say, and the fact that he is trying without success is charming. His eyes are lovely and heavy, and whatever is making him suffer has nothing to do with sex. As he sits down on the couch he takes on that childishly serious look that Arthur always has, for a moment it seems that Rothstein could in fact be Arthur trying to absorb some point in Marcuse or Marx as you and he lay on his too-stiff bed, or maybe he could be Arthur in the Nevada desert concentrating comically underneath the hood of the Mercedes. Suddenly you feel a surge of affection for Arthur that you haven’t felt in a long time, and almost out of habit you put your hands in Rothstein’s hair, as though he were Arthur. And Rothstein looks up at you, honestly surprised, which makes you certain he did not plan to try to seduce you. Of course this may just be another seduction tactic, but you are tired of this line of thought; if it is a seduction tactic, admit that it has worked, and leave it at that. But you do not think it is a tactic. Rothstein looks more childish, needier than Arthur ever has, but instead of turning you off this only makes you want to kiss him, and you do.

  Contrary to your expectations, cheating on Arthur does not give you any thrill. Plotting the route between the bus stop and Rothstein’s house so as not to run into Arthur; escaping from Arthur’s room in the middle of the night without waking him up and without getting caught in violation of parietals; touching Rothstein no more than surreptitiously when Arthur is in the room; maintaining a smile when Arthur rubs your stomach: all these things make you ashamed, not because they constitute adultery, but because they are an imitation of adultery. As with a girl who puts on her mother’s lipstick, your playing at adultery does nothing but make it clear what a child you are. Adultery is the only thing more ridiculous than monogamy, and the only thing more ridiculous than adultery is whatever it is that you’re doing with Rothstein. You are a child and Arthur is a child. You hate Arthur for acting like the two of you are married all the time, and whenever he touches you you get shivers of eternal childhood; this is how hellish it must feel to be a child forever. And of course he mistakes those shivers for excitement.

  It is not excitement you feel with Rothstein, not quite. Nor is it the protection, alternately hard and soft, of a father figure. Rothstein has nothing in common with your father beyond his veiny hands (you like to trace the veins on his hands, just as you did with your father when you were a little girl). Moles on their eyelids: another thing Rothstein and your father share. A general looseness to the skin, as though their skeletons were losing pull. But the two share nothing beyond the things shared by all men over the age of forty or so and a refusal to talk about their pasts—though Rothstein will at least acknowledge his past, unlike your father, who walked out of the room every
time you asked him what he did before you were born. There is in Rothstein nothing of your father’s volatility. The more time you spend with Rothstein, the more you poke at him, the more comments you make to affront his vanity, the absurdity of his hopes at Yale. You poke at him not out of cruelty or, as was the case when you first met him, to grab at some power over him, but out of love. You insult him not out of a hope that he will lose his delusions, but out of a lover’s curiosity. You want to know everything about him, you want to know how he moves, how he catches himself when he feels himself about to trip in the shower, the sounds he makes when he chews and how those sounds differ depending on how hungry he is, and you want to know how he reacts to affronts to his vanity, and more crucially how he reacts to repeated affronts to his vanity from someone he seems to love, in most of the admittedly arbitrary measures you have for judging such things (the watery look in his eye, the eagerness to see you). And there is a difference between how Rothstein reacts to these affronts now and how he reacted to them when he first knew you. No longer does he respond with sarcasm, possibly glad for the affront because he enjoys refining and displaying his sarcasm more than he enjoys pitying himself. Now when you affront him he looks sad and responds defensively, pathetically, about how he just had a conversation with someone in the biology department and it really does look as if something might come through. You keep waiting for him to respond with rage, as your father would have, to throw you out of his house or perhaps to take off his belt and to try to hit you—you are curious whether you could outrun Rothstein, as you could always outrun your father. But rage is not something that Jersey seems capable of; he couldn’t even find it in himself to feel rage at the Nazis. You are surprised at your surprise that you love him for this. That your father may have been a Nazi—he always talked about how much he hated America and the Jews, and your parents never explained their background to your satisfaction—is the most obvious but not the most salient distinction between him and Jersey. It is not until now that you understand just how much your father needed to feel enraged, with what devotion he searched for the next humiliation. When he sent you to the butcher shop for cut-rate meat, he did not need meat, in fact he probably could have sustained himself with nothing but his bile; he needed to be humiliated in front of the butcher, so that he could then hate the butcher, and throw a punch at the butcher, which would then cause him to break his hand, another cause for humiliation and another reason to hate the butcher. Like a child who lives only to redress a swiped ice cream cone or some sand kicked in his face. And like a piece of machinery from Freud’s assembly line, you were prepared to find a man just like your father. Isn’t that what you have seen in Arthur? Wasn’t all of your talk of wit simply a cover for what really attracted you to him, his constant need to be enraged? A rage so overpowering that he has no idea it is there, that it has made him, to most outward appearances, meek. (Yes, she probably thought this. Let no one say that I can’t follow empathy all the way into masochism.)