Mar. 28, 2011 at 3:28pm with 7 notes
What you did matters. Or, The Girl With The Number Tattoo  #7 By the time she reached the Center, she was wet like a street dog, her hair damp and shapeless, her make-up free face pale white, lips pursed together. She marched into her cubicle, pulled of the wet jacket and sweater, took out an old, but warm fleece coat, switched on her macbook which had been patiently waiting for her in the shelf. The look at the beautiful, reliable machine relaxed her somewhat: things worked, after some work, all would be in place again. She reached further in her shelf, retrieved a box of earl grey tea-bags from Hudson Bay and a dark chocolate bar, and then headed for the kitchen, cooking herself a thermos bottle of tea. She stood by the ever-lasting electric kettle, eyes tightly closed, concentrating on the Roma article, thinking hard of the line of inquiry. This is when the door opened and a plump shape walked in, giving off a vague feeling of self-emmersed laughter. Thompson has been there since 7am; his advisor told him he would like to see the third chapter soon, and Thompson understood it as an invitation to cancel his coy flirt with the morning jogging, and now was spending twelve hours a day in his carrel. He updated his facebook status to “Lettische Waffen-SS Einheit  Eiserne Granathand & me, as of February 1943”, and told his mother in Idaho that the next time she could call him was on December 23. He was a PhD student of Dennis Clark, the most famous Holocaust scholar in the world, and the fact that Clark himself condescended to supervise him, was both a lasting self-confirmation, but also a source of pressure, too. If it needed him to be even more serious, even more dedicated, to read longer, to go through more and longer materials, and to criticize other people’s work farther — he would do it. He would do anything to prove the world, and himself, that he was a serious scholar and a great human being, with an understated, and yet refined, sense of humor. Take this young woman from Quebec, wasn’t she a sociologist? Marguerite — she could very well use his insights. It is only historians who do proper empirical research — he was very skeptical of abstract sociological theories, just as Professor Clark stressed in his classes — he would need to sit down with this Marguerite and explain it to her. She seemed nice enough, though, and if he would take the time to explain to her the importance of his work, she could certainly learn. Just between you and me: she was very good looking. Of course, he didn’t appreciate these overly made-up women, who smelled far from perfume and wore short skirts, whose one pair of shoes would pay his mother’s year worth of restaurant checks. On the other hand, there was undeniably something about Marguerite — she was still quite young, and somehow delicate and fragile. He wanted to protect her, take her home with him to his parent’s farm, have her eat decent food, fried eggs and ham, wear a nice warm long wind jacket.  There was a time in the life of every great researcher to find himself a female companion, and as he thought about it, he would certainly have enough stature to afford a more, to say, experimental partner, a political scientist, even a foreigner. Though Marguerite, as far as foreigners went, spoke English really well; much better than the Slovak twins, who picked a fight with him the other day, when he wanted to explain to them why James Waller is the new pope of extreme violence research. Chopping the English grammar to pieces, rolling each R, gutturaling their Hs, they told him quite clearly that they neither did respect Waller, nore him, nor —- the worst! — Professor Clark’s penultimative book. It was a sad world, and Thompson felt yet again very lonely in his struggle for establishing the truth and historical events, as they really happened. Marguerite turns around, disturbed from her train of thought and sees a figure, one of those awfully looking awkward young guys from the weekly presentations, all red-cheeked and constantly overperspirating. She is focused on her essay and draws a blank on the identity of the person in front of her, and so she casts her eyes low and growls hi. She wills the water to cook. Thompson’s thoughts return to Marguerite. How pretty she was, now, her hair all wet, and in a sensible warm fleece jacket! and how pale. Did she sleep well? Perhaps she was sick? Perhaps she felt lonely? Women, after all, are so much more emotional creatures, and cannot hold to the pressure of the drastic academic life as well as men — not to speak of the haunting topic of the Holocaust. He was strong, and wouldn’t let the topic get under his skin, but a soft female — it must be taxing on her. Probably she was overwhelmed with all the senseless dying. He still remembered a class hysterically crying undergrads he had to TA in his first term. It was only understandable she was upset. He would help her. Are you ok? he says and reaches out to pat her shoulder — you look so pale today — did you sleep ok? Marguerite jumps back. That’s all she needed! Now this creature is trying to touch her. This is what you have when you creep out from your comfort zone — the jackals start descending on you, and the losers. She needs to draw a line between her world, and theirs. Thank you very much, I am excellent, she says as icily as she only can. I didn’t sleep much tonight indeed, but for the best reasons, if you understand, she adds, pouring the finally boiling water into her thermos bottle, is angry, almost spoils it on her left hand, leaves poodle of hot water on the desk, and leaves with decisive steps the gloomy kitchen. Thompson stands back, wonders what she meant to say, decided that it’s a quirk of her English, pours himself more of the tasteless filter coffee and goes back to his carrel, where, in a swirl of inspiration, writes down the two and half pages describing the massacre of Keringa. Marguerite is very angry when she sits down in front of her laptop, so angry that she types into her skype status don’t talk to me and switched her status to unavailable, and starts outlining the essay’s structure. Three hours later, she is well into the third page, the chocolate bar is almost finished, as is the thermos bottle. Now it’s a good time to call her head of department and explain to him why she shouldn’t be the undergraduate administrator. She hisses to her neighbor, Michelle, I need to make this call, Michelle saintly and somewhat absent-mindedly nods, and so Marguerite dials 9-1 (the Museum’s phone system treated Canada as an annexed territory, but at least it was less hassle with the pre-dialing) and starts talking to Jean-Pierre. Some ten minutes later, she is talking her head off and rubbing her neck in concentration, the door opens, and there stands Adam, looking more like a puppy than she has ever seen a man. Marguerite scribbles on a stick-in my department — I will come by after, taps on his belly, and shoves him gently away. Adam walks away, clutching the yellow note. Eventually, she talks the old fox of her chair from assigning her administrative tasks, takes out her compact and a lipstick she was keeping up in the shelf as an iron reserve, does a reasonable job of covering up the dark circles and adding red cheeks, and walks over to Adam’s windowless office. Ah, Rachel, I think Martin Rapoport was asking for you, I was just in the main office, she throws at Adam’s office neighbor, who picks up her notebook and runs away. Marguerite sits down in her chair, smiles brightly, and says to Adam, who looks like a child visiting a dentist, his face an only question: That was fun yesterday! We should hang out more often, don’t you think?, and with very little ado, she invites herself for Sunday evening for dinner at his place. Sunday noon, Marguerite reclines at home at her sofa, wearing a silk kimono, her hair in a towel with a hair mask; she put on Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail, and is now reading the Sunday Times. Yesterday was fun, she was at dinner with the Canadian cultural attaché, with whose son she studied at the EHESS; his wife made her favorite glazé caramelized apples. Later on, she will call her mother, as she does every Sunday, who updates her about her cousin’s Cécile divorce woes. She eats a pink grapefruit. She enjoys being alone, all by herself; all was neatly organized, and she could quitely think matters around her. Take this Adam: she wouldn’t allow herself grow all emotional and sentimental. She had a reputation to stand up to. She walks over to her book shelf, and takes the annotated Oxford third edition of Richard III — she sometimes used it in her Poli Scie 101. Here it went: Was ever woman in this humor woo’d? Was ever woman in this humor won? I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long. Amused, she goes to her bedroom, puts on the pretty light green La Perla lingerie and looks at herself in the mirror: very slender, with small breasts and pearl-white skin, all nicely shaped. She is very beautiful, she thinks, and is pleased. She probably is the prettiest thing Adam will ever touch in his life. Over dinner, she chats amusing stories from her Québec childhood, about her many cousins, aunts and uncles, she gesticulates and is very vivacious, asks for a second helping, and drinks quickly. Adam is in awe of her, and happy like a child (alone he didn’t have a happy childhood, so it is not a good comparison). Eventually she exclaims Why don’t you show me the rest of your place? pulls him behind herself, and goes for the door where she rightly assumes the bedroom is. It is somewhat chilly and small, there is a Vasarely poster on the wall, and on the night stand Ryszard Kapuściński’s Travels with Herodotus together with a box of night dragee sweets. Marguerite pushes Adam on the bed and holds his mouth [THE CYBER SECURITY WARNING: the following content is inappropriate and was erased. All future occurences will be monitored and reported to the Tech Help] Eventually, she loosens the strap of the robe, and lets him go. She is still breathless, her chest quickly raises and drops, and although it is still cold in the room, she is covered in sweat, as she lies down. Adam lies besides, rubbing his wrists. By the time blood returns to his arms, he strokes Marguerite’s belly, but by then he finds her sound asleep.

What you did matters. Or, The Girl With The Number Tattoo  #7

By the time she reached the Center, she was wet like a street dog, her hair damp and shapeless, her make-up free face pale white, lips pursed together. She marched into her cubicle, pulled of the wet jacket and sweater, took out an old, but warm fleece coat, switched on her macbook which had been patiently waiting for her in the shelf. The look at the beautiful, reliable machine relaxed her somewhat: things worked, after some work, all would be in place again. She reached further in her shelf, retrieved a box of earl grey tea-bags from Hudson Bay and a dark chocolate bar, and then headed for the kitchen, cooking herself a thermos bottle of tea. She stood by the ever-lasting electric kettle, eyes tightly closed, concentrating on the Roma article, thinking hard of the line of inquiry. This is when the door opened and a plump shape walked in, giving off a vague feeling of self-emmersed laughter. Thompson has been there since 7am; his advisor told him he would like to see the third chapter soon, and Thompson understood it as an invitation to cancel his coy flirt with the morning jogging, and now was spending twelve hours a day in his carrel. He updated his facebook status to “Lettische Waffen-SS Einheit  Eiserne Granathand & me, as of February 1943”, and told his mother in Idaho that the next time she could call him was on December 23. He was a PhD student of Dennis Clark, the most famous Holocaust scholar in the world, and the fact that Clark himself condescended to supervise him, was both a lasting self-confirmation, but also a source of pressure, too. If it needed him to be even more serious, even more dedicated, to read longer, to go through more and longer materials, and to criticize other people’s work farther — he would do it. He would do anything to prove the world, and himself, that he was a serious scholar and a great human being, with an understated, and yet refined, sense of humor. Take this young woman from Quebec, wasn’t she a sociologist? Marguerite — she could very well use his insights. It is only historians who do proper empirical research — he was very skeptical of abstract sociological theories, just as Professor Clark stressed in his classes — he would need to sit down with this Marguerite and explain it to her. She seemed nice enough, though, and if he would take the time to explain to her the importance of his work, she could certainly learn. Just between you and me: she was very good looking. Of course, he didn’t appreciate these overly made-up women, who smelled far from perfume and wore short skirts, whose one pair of shoes would pay his mother’s year worth of restaurant checks. On the other hand, there was undeniably something about Marguerite — she was still quite young, and somehow delicate and fragile. He wanted to protect her, take her home with him to his parent’s farm, have her eat decent food, fried eggs and ham, wear a nice warm long wind jacket.  There was a time in the life of every great researcher to find himself a female companion, and as he thought about it, he would certainly have enough stature to afford a more, to say, experimental partner, a political scientist, even a foreigner. Though Marguerite, as far as foreigners went, spoke English really well; much better than the Slovak twins, who picked a fight with him the other day, when he wanted to explain to them why James Waller is the new pope of extreme violence research. Chopping the English grammar to pieces, rolling each R, gutturaling their Hs, they told him quite clearly that they neither did respect Waller, nore him, nor —- the worst! — Professor Clark’s penultimative book. It was a sad world, and Thompson felt yet again very lonely in his struggle for establishing the truth and historical events, as they really happened.

Marguerite turns around, disturbed from her train of thought and sees a figure, one of those awfully looking awkward young guys from the weekly presentations, all red-cheeked and constantly overperspirating. She is focused on her essay and draws a blank on the identity of the person in front of her, and so she casts her eyes low and growls hi. She wills the water to cook.

Thompson’s thoughts return to Marguerite. How pretty she was, now, her hair all wet, and in a sensible warm fleece jacket! and how pale. Did she sleep well? Perhaps she was sick? Perhaps she felt lonely? Women, after all, are so much more emotional creatures, and cannot hold to the pressure of the drastic academic life as well as men — not to speak of the haunting topic of the Holocaust. He was strong, and wouldn’t let the topic get under his skin, but a soft female — it must be taxing on her. Probably she was overwhelmed with all the senseless dying. He still remembered a class hysterically crying undergrads he had to TA in his first term. It was only understandable she was upset. He would help her.

Are you ok? he says and reaches out to pat her shoulder — you look so pale today — did you sleep ok?

Marguerite jumps back. That’s all she needed! Now this creature is trying to touch her. This is what you have when you creep out from your comfort zone — the jackals start descending on you, and the losers. She needs to draw a line between her world, and theirs.

Thank you very much, I am excellent, she says as icily as she only can. I didn’t sleep much tonight indeed, but for the best reasons, if you understand, she adds, pouring the finally boiling water into her thermos bottle, is angry, almost spoils it on her left hand, leaves poodle of hot water on the desk, and leaves with decisive steps the gloomy kitchen. Thompson stands back, wonders what she meant to say, decided that it’s a quirk of her English, pours himself more of the tasteless filter coffee and goes back to his carrel, where, in a swirl of inspiration, writes down the two and half pages describing the massacre of Keringa.

Marguerite is very angry when she sits down in front of her laptop, so angry that she types into her skype status don’t talk to me and switched her status to unavailable, and starts outlining the essay’s structure. Three hours later, she is well into the third page, the chocolate bar is almost finished, as is the thermos bottle. Now it’s a good time to call her head of department and explain to him why she shouldn’t be the undergraduate administrator. She hisses to her neighbor, Michelle, I need to make this call, Michelle saintly and somewhat absent-mindedly nods, and so Marguerite dials 9-1 (the Museum’s phone system treated Canada as an annexed territory, but at least it was less hassle with the pre-dialing) and starts talking to Jean-Pierre.

Some ten minutes later, she is talking her head off and rubbing her neck in concentration, the door opens, and there stands Adam, looking more like a puppy than she has ever seen a man. Marguerite scribbles on a stick-in my department — I will come by after, taps on his belly, and shoves him gently away. Adam walks away, clutching the yellow note. Eventually, she talks the old fox of her chair from assigning her administrative tasks, takes out her compact and a lipstick she was keeping up in the shelf as an iron reserve, does a reasonable job of covering up the dark circles and adding red cheeks, and walks over to Adam’s windowless office.

Ah, Rachel, I think Martin Rapoport was asking for you, I was just in the main office, she throws at Adam’s office neighbor, who picks up her notebook and runs away. Marguerite sits down in her chair, smiles brightly, and says to Adam, who looks like a child visiting a dentist, his face an only question:

That was fun yesterday! We should hang out more often, don’t you think?, and with very little ado, she invites herself for Sunday evening for dinner at his place.

Sunday noon, Marguerite reclines at home at her sofa, wearing a silk kimono, her hair in a towel with a hair mask; she put on Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail, and is now reading the Sunday Times. Yesterday was fun, she was at dinner with the Canadian cultural attaché, with whose son she studied at the EHESS; his wife made her favorite glazé caramelized apples. Later on, she will call her mother, as she does every Sunday, who updates her about her cousin’s Cécile divorce woes. She eats a pink grapefruit. She enjoys being alone, all by herself; all was neatly organized, and she could quitely think matters around her. Take this Adam: she wouldn’t allow herself grow all emotional and sentimental. She had a reputation to stand up to. She walks over to her book shelf, and takes the annotated Oxford third edition of Richard III — she sometimes used it in her Poli Scie 101. Here it went:

Was ever woman in this humor woo’d?

Was ever woman in this humor won?

I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long.

Amused, she goes to her bedroom, puts on the pretty light green La Perla lingerie and looks at herself in the mirror: very slender, with small breasts and pearl-white skin, all nicely shaped. She is very beautiful, she thinks, and is pleased. She probably is the prettiest thing Adam will ever touch in his life.

Over dinner, she chats amusing stories from her Québec childhood, about her many cousins, aunts and uncles, she gesticulates and is very vivacious, asks for a second helping, and drinks quickly. Adam is in awe of her, and happy like a child (alone he didn’t have a happy childhood, so it is not a good comparison). Eventually she exclaims Why don’t you show me the rest of your place? pulls him behind herself, and goes for the door where she rightly assumes the bedroom is. It is somewhat chilly and small, there is a Vasarely poster on the wall, and on the night stand Ryszard Kapuściński’s Travels with Herodotus together with a box of night dragee sweets. Marguerite pushes Adam on the bed and holds his mouth

[THE CYBER SECURITY WARNING: the following content is inappropriate and was erased. All future occurences will be monitored and reported to the Tech Help]

Eventually, she loosens the strap of the robe, and lets him go. She is still breathless, her chest quickly raises and drops, and although it is still cold in the room, she is covered in sweat, as she lies down. Adam lies besides, rubbing his wrists. By the time blood returns to his arms, he strokes Marguerite’s belly, but by then he finds her sound asleep.

  1. gehdamedame posted this