After
Math
by Amy Babich (writing as Miriam Webster)
© 1997
ISBN# 0-9647171-1-5
$12.95
Chapter 1: Metempsychosis
IMMEDIATELY UPON HIS DEMISE, Ray Bellwether's priorities changed drastically. His concern for the reputation of the Department evaporated. His pride in his own modest fame dwindled to nothing. The paternal love he had borne his fractious students abated. And his love of mathematics, the love of a lifetime, became a vague, bubbly affection, its object uncertain. The love of mathematics was turned into a white drunken mist, which effervesced and evaporated, giving off perfumes which lulled and intoxicated Ray Bellwether. He felt pleasantly warm and sleepy. It was 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, and Ray Bellwether sat, as always at 3:30 of a Friday afternoon, at his desk in the Graduate Advisor's office. He sat slumped over his desk. He had lost interest in his work. Metempsychosis was setting in. His position was awkward and yet he felt comfortable. Warm, sticky blood coagulated at the base of his neck — a novel, surprisingly pleasant sensation.
In the corridor outside the Graduate Advisor's office, the ritual pandemonium which began each semester was beginning to die down for the day. The crowd of forlorn undergraduates attempting in vain to get calculus classes was beginning to dwindle. Frustrated youngsters — baby-faced girls with eye-make-up streaked with crocodile tears meant to melt the stony heart of the Department of Mathematics, baby-faced boys red with premature apoplexy, from storming and railing, in vain, at the fearless Department of Mathematics — were now shambling home to their dorms to drown, burn, or quench, in some other way, their seasonal sorrow. This uncomfortable ritual was performed at the start of each autumn in the Mathematics Department of the huge University of the Southwest, where, for some reason, there were never enough calculus classes for the number of students required to take calculus.
The youngsters cursed, whined, shrugged, and drifted away. They had been injured, but not by Ray Bellwether. His hands were clean of their blood. For these were undergraduates. It was the graduate students — older, wearier, and more inured to mental torture — whom Ray Bellwether was privileged to torment, for the good of their unfortunate souls.
The souls of the undergraduates, in fact, were (with a few exceptions) of small concern to the Mathematics Department. The undergraduates came to the Department, stood in long (but not, strictly speaking, endless) lines, and were eventually taught a modicum of calculus for their pains. Then they left, and what became of their souls mattered, perhaps, to the School of Engineering, or the Business School, or the Computer Science Department, but scarcely to the Department of Mathematics. The undergraduates belonged to someone else, or to no one. The graduate students, on the other hand, were the property of the Department of Mathematics, and their spiritual guidance was in the capable hands of Ray Bellwether. We refer here to the pre-mortem Ray Bellwether, that Ray Bellwether, good old Ray Bellwether. That Ray Bellwether no longer existed, for metempsychosis was setting in, and his priorities were changing drastically.
In an age when so many regions were closed to smokers, Francie Archer's office was balm in Gilead. Smokers and nonsmokers alike congregated here. On this particular Friday (the aforementioned Friday), Ulalume Peters, graduate student in topology, burst through Francie's open doorway, and burst into tears.
"I made it," she said, after a minute. "He said I wasn't a serious student, he said all these horrible things about me, and I answered him coolly and levelly, and I didn't cry. And now I'm going to cry."
She cried. She looked terrible. She wept and wept, trying to stop, trying to joke for Francie, who was, after all, a fellow-sufferer.
Francie's office mate George Woolright came into the room, and sized up the situation immediately. "Ray Bellwether, I presume," he said.
"How did you guess?" asked Ulalume.
"Elementary, my dear Ulalume," said George. "We detectives have an easy job around here. Damsels or fair youths in distress are nearly always traceable to Ray Bellwether. I'll bet he told you—" he pretended to think— "that your priorities are all wrong."
"That's right," said Ulalume. "How did you know?"
"Ray says that to everyone," said Francie, "at least on Fridays. His bark is worse than his bite. Don't worry about it, Ulalume. Have a cigarette."
"Thanks." Ulalume accepted Francie's cigarette and light. "It's good to know I'm not crazy. How did it go with you?"
"How did what go?"
"Registration."
"Oh, I haven't registered yet," said Francie. "I'll have to, of course. But so far I just can't face talking to Ray."
"He's so unreasonable," said Ulalume, happy again, drawing deeply on her cigarette. "What does he want?"
Ray Bellwether wanted a number of things. He wanted nothing from Ulalume Peters. For a few moments he had coveted her large green eyes, but now he wanted nothing from her whatsoever. We speak of the postmortem Ray Bellwether, a comparatively free spirit, longing for chains. He wanted drapes in his office. He wanted to bear a child. He wanted to be an opera singer, or a glacier — curious how hard it was to distinguish. He wanted — and this desire shocked him because of its firmness and solidity in a world strangely lacking in these qualities — to eradicate utterly, within living memory, the University of the Southwest. To wipe humanity's collective memory clean, as if no such place had ever existed.
Why he desired this was not clear to Ray Bellwether. That he desired it was clear. Clarity, goal of mathematicians, philosophers' idol, beautiful clarity. Ray Bellwether extended, without force, a hand without mass, moved it without will in a smooth arc, and shattered a crystal vase, itself curiously massless. His priorities were drastically changed. The catalyst was his demise.
The beginning of the semester almost requires the historical present. It is part of the eternal recurrence of the same. A trivial, nasty part; it tests our patience, and surely this is part of the point of the eternal recurrence of the same.
In the Mathematics Department of the University of the Southwest, the semester begins with a desultory bacchanal: a beer party for nervous people. It will be carried to a satisfactory saturnalian finish by the oldest graduate students, who expect, privately, to graduate when Gabriel blows his horn.
Ray Bellwether (pre-mortem) is fond of these students. He expects them to graduate this year. With a little prodding from their guardian angel (not Gabriel).
These students more or less despise Ray Bellwether. They regard him as a mixture of Polonius and the Sphinx, and would hail as the hero of the hour any plausible combination of the best in Hamlet and Oedipus.
There is a certain attempt, by the graduate students, to close ranks, to exclude the Sphinx-Polonius before he even arrives. Some people say that Oedipus gave the wrong answers to the questions of the Sphinx, that in his troubled old age he lacked even the consolation of having had, at one time, the right answer.
This possibility haunts the graduate students. Some of them are not sure exactly who are the Sphinx and Polonius. This makes for a general discomfort, in which one's clothing seems to be inside out, or somehow not to fit right.
With enough beer, it will all seem right, think the older and more experienced Hamlets.
Enter, ill at ease, some of the elder members of the court. These are the Graduate Faculty. Ray Bellwether's crowd lacks Ray Bellwether. This is an occasion for general mourning, for Ray obviates the need of talking shop. He reads, he knows French and German, he gossips, he exudes bonhomie. Ray Bellwether is a jolly good fellow and, as such, is sorely missed by his crowd.
"Where's Ray?"
"I knocked on his door at three — no answer. He must have left early."
"Had to take his son to the dentist, I expect. That kid has terrible trouble with his teeth."
There is some talk of dentists. Ray's crowd is pleased. The ball of conversation is rolling. Let it roll. But Ray's crowd leaves early. It is a cautious crowd, not eager to push its luck. Exeunt Ray's crowd, 5:15, with pride and relief. The more drunken graduate students take this as their cue to start singing. Song, sweet raucous song, dominates the next hour.
Ray Bellwether felt his figurative pulse quicken. His literal pulse had stopped a while before.
|
Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, |
Beautiful lines. Death is the cool night . . . Yes, thought Ray Bellwether. Beautiful, but all wrong. Clearly the author had no experience of death. But no . . . Ray Bellwether frowned. Heine is dead. Yes, yes, said a voice in his head impatiently, but he wrote the poem about death before he died. Time sequence. Very important.
Well, what about this, then: "What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you . . . "
Raymond Chandler, in the person of Philip Marlowe. Ray frowned and considered. He was dead. And were oil and water, in fact, the same as wind and air to him? He tried introspection. Inconclusive. Unscientific, anyway.
"What I need," said Ray Bellwether, rising gossamer-like but unsteady — the drunken motion of the newly dead —"is some oil and water and some wind and air. Then I can just compare them. That'll do it."
Uneasily, he consulted his spirit, which seemed satisfied with the proposed arrangement. He gathered himself in a sort of gossamer fog. Looked at his hat, decided he wouldn't need it. Better check over his agenda before going out. A dead man's work is never done.
Locate and make decisive comparison between, on the one hand, oil and water, and, on the other, wind and air. Look into opportunities for employment in the next Ice Age. Attempt rebirth in circumstances permitting both childbearing and becoming a prima donna. Is that it? Certainly plenty of work right there.
I might have missed something, thought Ray Bellwether. Let's check. Last chance.
He ran an incorporeal hand through his corporeal brain. Interesting sensation. With a last attachment to this life, Ray deeply regretted not being able to share what he saw now with his son Claude. Bright boy. Budding scientist. Bad teeth, but the mind is more important. Or is it? Ray Bellwether hovered in gossamer doubt.
Forget it, he told himself. I'm trying to get a little last data here. Last chance. Not much left; a lot has been smashed and it's all cooling.
He had never done this before, as far as he knew, so he kept his hand in the moist cooling brain for a while. Who knows how long it takes? His mind wandered. It cost him an effort to keep his hand fixed. He made the effort. Half his mind continued to wander.
If I ever need to inhabit this office again, thought Ray Bellwether, I'll put in purple drapes. How can one think without "the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain?" But why would I ever come back here? Or want to think?
Then he remembered. An electric shock ran from his hand to his mind. Obliterate, eradicate, utterly destroy the Mathematics Department. Its reputation. The University. The town in which it sat. Within living memory
Of the pre-mortem Ray Bellwether nothing remained. The electric shock had been his last gasp. The postmortem Ray went out, to do his work with a will.
It was 5:30 Friday afternoon. The fall semester had officially begun. Monday was Labor Day. Classes would begin Tuesday. The world sighed, and recommenced its turning.