15

On the Monday of Holy Week, Prin came to campus to have his first Skype conversation with his counterparts in Dragomans. He wasn’t especially keen about this. Lecturing old people involved neither occasional travel to the Middle East nor grading, which was pretty good. He also wanted Rae to have a chance to bring her family over from China. In the days since the lecture, Prin had heard from Wende that the presentation had gone over very well, something she conveyed as much in a series of supremely businesslike notes sent through a secure messaging app called VaultTok. She told Prin that he and Rae would do more of these events between May and November, when the committee was required to make its recommendation about the future of the school. Prin had also heard directly from an older woman who attended his talk in pearls and yoga pants. She was especially taken with Prin’s reflections on the seahorse-shaped penis in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. In fact, she thought the atrium should feature an aquarium filled with them (seahorses).

The UFU meeting room filled with a happy, tinny melody and the flat-screen on the far wall swirled and stuttered into the image of three light brown people sitting around a small table in a bright, bland room. They were all smiling and waving. Prin smiled and waved back. Wende was supposed to join them but she texted that she was running late, so they began the meeting without her.

Prin learned that the professors who would be working at the future UFU international campus —known as both FUFU and UFU2—were all Dragoman natives who’d been living in the US, teaching at assorted small, precarious places, and returned home to help found the new institution after the civil war ended. Some had brought their American-born children with them.

And that snowy rhinoceros at the Toronto Zoo thought her parents were crazy!

Wende slipped into the room just as they were discussing what kinds of connections students might make between Kafka’s stories and their lives.

“It’s an interesting question,” Prin said.

“Is it one you could explore for us sometime?” asked Shahad, one of the fledgling Dragomans professors.

“Actually, my own area of expertise—”

“Is very much in line with that,” Wende said.

“Hi Wende, good to see you again. Are we still thinking of end of July? It’s the perfect time here, just when Ramadan is ending, only it’ll be hotter than Montana, sorry!” said Shahad.

“Good to see you too, Shahad, and yes, that’s what we’re planning. It’s going to be great,” said Wende.

“Sorry, what’s going to be great? And how do you know each other?” Prin asked.

Smiling and nodding at the screen, Wende explained that she used to work with Shahad at her old college in Montana. Just then, Fr. Pat slipped into the room and took over the conversation, making a series of jokes about his golf game, the Middle East, and sand traps. He said he was very, very grateful for their initial support. Immensely grateful. Get-down-on-both-knees grateful.

“That’s not us, that’s the Minister! Also, sorry, but Wende, is Prin the … Catholic one?” said Shahad.

“Yes, Prin is one of our Catholic faculty members, but like UFU itself, he is extremely inclusive and diverse,” Fr. Pat said.

“No reason to be nervous, Padre! Actually, we’ve had Catholics in Dragomans for centuries. Under one of the earlier dictators, it was the Catholics, I’m pretty sure, who took over the Jewish quarter in the capital after the Jews were—”

“Oh, isn’t that fascinating!” Fr. Pat said.

“Prin, can you see behind me?” Shahad asked.

“Yes, why?” Prin asked.

He could see great blue sky and square, washed-out limestone buildings and surprisingly close black mountains. But why was this Professor Shahad trying to distract him from whatever else was going on here? How did a Skype conversation about curriculum planning lead to, well, what, exactly?

“Can we get back to curriculum planning?” Prin asked.

“Of course, in a moment. But this is your Holy Week, yes? So, one of those mountains has a chapel that has something to do with the Passion of the Christ. Not Mel Gibson, the real thing, the, you know, what the Bible says happened. That mountain is said to be part of the story. Something happened there, at the time of the crucifixion,” she said.

“Really? What’s it called?” Prin said.

He wondered if the air was heavy and still in there. It must have been. Then what wind blew through? Did it still carry the saving breath of God or now only the smell of gasoline, gun-smoke, beard-sweat?

“Sorry, I don’t know the details, I’m secular, what you call a ‘none,’ not a nun. Get it?” said Shahad.

Fr. Pat roared and slapped his knees so hard he bruised his palms on the titanium.

“Anyway, when you come here at the end of Ramadan to give your lecture on Kafka, we’ll make sure you visit. Totally safe!” Shahad said.

Wende brushed past him to take control of the keyboard. She ended the call and smiled at Prin. Fr. Pat smiled at Prin, too. He was flanked by smiles.

“I’m not going over there,” Prin said.

“Oh, come on, Prin, we all believe in you,” Fr. Pat said.

“You have to, and I know you want to,” Wende said.

Was she doing it on purpose? He remembered the last time she’d said that to him! But then suddenly all of it—the longing and the regret and the regret for the longing—all of it blew away. Prin looked around. He heard a rushing in his ears. He felt a sudden pulling at his chest, a reaching in, a telling he knew not how to tell.

He looked around.

Then he heard it. A voice. The Voice.

Go.

Go?

Go.

Was anyone else hearing this, feeling it? Were they noticing it, about him? But they were smiling the same way, Wende and Fr. Pat, and the screen where that great big black Biblical mountain had just flashed was now just a plain white blank. Something had happened there, long ago.

Something had happened here, too, just now.