It was the right thing to do, Sarah thought. Her mother would do it, even with the pain. The professor couldn’t be angry after two months. She wouldn’t be out of control. Sarah had to do it. Everything else was going so well. She would ace her Comps. Hopfgartner was really putting her through the ringer. He could be relentless when he had to be. With a split personality, he could be tough and oh-so-sweet too, when you got to know him. It was just such a difference when he decided to help you, when you were on his side. But it was also scary. Sarah was in now, and maybe for a while, but his moods went on and off like a light switch. She thought she was in until she left Yale. She should make the most of it. God, she hadn’t worked this hard in two years, but she was ready for those Comps. She just had to finish these books, prepare those answers, check for any loose ends or off-the-wall questions. Sarah had to get ready to be grilled by the old man one more time, after Thanksgiving. Everything was set, except for one thing. Sarah just had to talk to Neumann. She wouldn’t be out of control. Who knew what she would do if she began to hate Sarah forever.
“I’ll just sit there and take her best shot,” Sarah said to herself. “I’ll let her punish me. I screwed her completely and she’ll want revenge. I’ll let her have it. I’ll let her have the power. Then she won’t be able to hate me forever and I won’t have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”
Sarah Goodman dried her naked body with the thick blue towel her mother had bought at the new Wal-Mart just outside of Des Moines. The shower stalls were empty. Most of the other graduate students in Helen Hadley Hall had left for the weeklong Thanksgiving break. It was her last big chunk of time before her Comps in December. It was Friday, the last “official” day before the break. Regina Neumann had her normal office hours for her students from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m.
Sarah unlocked her room. As she turned the knob, a man with a clear Indian accent asked, “Sarah, you are still here?”
Sarah turned. It was Bharat Patel. “Oh, my God. You scared me, Bharat,” she said, out of breath. She propped open the door with her right calf.
“I am sorry. I just wanted to say ‘hello.’ Not too many of us are here for the break,” he said, that signature smile on his face. Bharat Patel never seemed to suffer any of the internal turmoil of most graduate students. He didn’t sit around and gossip with the other Indian students in the communal kitchen. He was always polite; he smiled this wide, toothy and handsome smile whenever he saw you. Everyone liked him, but if he had close friends they certainly weren’t in Helen Hadley. Sarah had heard from others that he worked extremely hard, and once in a while he did look exhausted. Yet he still smiled. She took notice because Bharat seemed especially friendly toward her. They had cooked dinner together a few times. The last time she had also noticed his thick forearm muscles, the way he moved so lightly, like a graceful middleweight. His skin was smooth and richly dark. When he smiled, it seemed as if shiny light bulbs glowed inside his cheeks. Even so, she really didn’t know who he was.
“Sorry I’m a little jumpy. Sort of spooky when everyone’s gone.”
“Spooky?”
“You know, like a haunted house. Like Halloween and spirits and ghosts.”
“Oh, spirits. Don’t worry, Sarah. I am not a spirit. You are so funny,” he said, smiling again.
Suddenly she realized she was naked under her robe. But he didn’t seem to be checking her out. She folded her arms over her chest anyway. “So you’re here for the break too?”
“Yes. I must finish my prospectus this semester.”
“This semester? Wait a minute, isn’t this your second year?”
“And you’re finishing your prospectus already?”
“Yes.”
“That’s unbelievable! How?”
“Well, Sarah, I will tell you. I don’t have a choice. I don’t have money after the second year. No more scholarships in India. I have to apply for dissertation scholarships this year or I can’t come back. My family has no money to give me. But my adviser says I will have no trouble finding a scholarship. He told me, you know what he told me, that he will give me the money himself if he has to.”
“Wow. What a great guy.”
“Oh, he is very great. A great man. A Nobel winner. But I will not take his money. I must finish this semester and start my dissertation on Riemann’s Hypothesis in January. I know I will do it.”
“When you want a break, let’s cook dinner together again. Just slip a note under my door,” Sarah said, and returned his smile. Who was this Bharat Patel? Now, for some unknown reason, she really wanted to know. A strange peace seemed to emanate from his shiny brown eyes.
“I would enjoy that very much. I will write you a note,” he said, and waved goodbye as he glided down the hall to the other end of the third floor. He disappeared into the darkness.
Sarah pulled on her old jeans. Sarah hadn’t heard a word from Professor Neumann since the incident at Otto’s office. If the other students knew the gossip, she hadn’t heard about it. They still treated her with a smug disdain. Maybe Neumann had already put the situation behind her, had kept it to herself and had just decided Sarah had been manipulated by someone more powerful than her.
After two months, Sarah was more certain than ever about her lie. It had been exactly the right thing to do. Now she was getting real help from Hopfgartner. She was more confident than ever about her work. Her glorious dream was now a concrete plan. In three years, when she returned home, there would be no messy compromises of living unfulfilled. She’d have the best of both worlds. Only one last potential obstacle remained.
Sarah knocked on Regina Neumann’s door. She was sure the professor would be expecting no interruptions during her office hours. Everyone was leaving for the Thanksgiving holiday. The professor was probably deep in thought and focused on writing more poetry, like Rilke, one of her favorites. The knock at the door would interrupt her chain of thought, and perhaps upset her. Still, during the holidays, who wouldn’t be in a pleasant mood? As Sarah waited, pondering whether to return to her room, she heard clearly, “Please come in.”
“May I please talk to you for a few minutes?” Sarah asked from the open doorway, with a soft, hoarse voice that surprised her.
“All right,” Neumann said coldly. The professor’s jaw barely moved when she uttered those words. Her entire body was deadly still, as if a self faraway had said the words without her consent. Her black coal eyes glowed with a strange fire. Her face turned dead white, like the face of a porcelain doll.
“I know you’re very angry with me, Professor Neumann. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for what I did. I truly am. But I had no choice.”
“You had no choice?” Professor Neumann hissed.
“I am just terribly sorry. That’s what I wanted to say most of all. You didn’t deserve what I did to you. I hope you accept my apology. I just didn’t want to get involved. I’m not as strong a person as you are.” The wooden door had closed like the lid to a crypt behind Sarah.
“Sarah, you listen to me very carefully,” Neumann replied in a pitiless monotone. The professor seemed possessed by her demons. There, and yet not there. Sarah imagined screams in this silence. She imagined violence, yet the room was still. She imagined an animal mouth after her flesh, yet only logic and reason and the flaming arrow of truth seemed pointed at her heart. What kind of damage could the truth cause? What harm would words ever do to her? “You have done nothing to me. Nothing at all. I know you lied. Otto knows you lied. You’re simply Hopfgartner’s liar. If that’s what you want to be, that’s your business. What concerns me is what effect it will have on you and your work.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I noticed this first in your Goethe paper last year and this only confirms it. That paper, if I am not mistaken, was basically ‘using’ the viewpoint Humboldt developed long ago to analyze German Romantic poetry. In fact, ‘using’ is probably too kind a word. You basically borrowed his analysis.”
“But Professor Neumann! What are you saying? I cited him several times in my footnotes and certainly in my bibliography. I almost worked myself to death on that paper!”
“Please, you tell me yourself if my reading of your term paper is incorrect. Did you or did you not cite Humboldt simply in the periphery of your main analysis, as if he were merely tangential to your paper?”
“Well, I don’t know. I guess I did.”
“But wasn’t that how you structured your entire approach to Goethe?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sarah said, her voice a whisper.
“Well, that’s my point exactly. Intellectual dishonesty will eventually catch up with you, Sarah. You are being trained to be a scholar with the highest standards. Those who read your work may not tell you directly, and maybe they should, but your intellectual dishonesty is plain to them and certainly plain to me.”
“I did my best,” Sarah stammered, tears in her eyes.
“You are an adult now, Sarah. Search your own heart. See if the work you have been turning in, the work that has gotten you this far, see if it is not derivative, naïve and often superficial. That is not what we do at Yale. There is no substitute for originality, for the hard work of the mind. It’s better that you learn that lesson now.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sarah’s whole body was shaking. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She wanted to vomit.
“The problem, I believe, the reason you may never become a true scholar, is that your dishonesty, unfortunately, has become part of your character. Now, of course, you may find a job in some small university of low repute, but whatever you produce will most likely be worthless, unless of course you change your ways. Now the question is whether you can change the heart of a liar. I have often seen that you cannot. Why? Well, in the academy, those who are dishonest are often those who do not have the mental ability for originality. To compensate for a lack of innate ability, they lie. The ruse works for a while, but then they are uncovered for what they are. The university may preach opportunity and diversity and having an open mind. But what it practices is the search for truth, and this search is relentless and brutal. While the ‘outcomes’ may not be clear, it is clear who can pursue them honestly, and who cannot. It may be better for you to do something worthwhile, Sarah. That’s my advice to you. Don’t waste your life chasing unachievable dreams.”
Sarah stood without moving. After a few seconds of dead silence, she said, “Thank you, Professor Neumann.” She opened the door and stumbled into the hallway, stunned.
The streets seemed a watery blur. As she walked through Yale to her room in Helen Hadley, Sarah repeatedly tripped on the sidewalk cracks on Temple Street. She sobbed uncontrollably. A priest from St. Mary’s Church, who was fixing a broken latch on the back door of the chapel, saw her and stopped his work and asked if he could help her. She shook his hand for no reason at all, blurted out that she was from Iowa and thanked him for being so kind. But she couldn’t look him in the eye. A drumbeat inside her head shocked her with a bleak fury. Miraculously she made her way home, and when she arrived collapsed onto her bed, blinded by her tears.
Sarah woke up early in the evening. She had slept most of the day. Her head pulsed like a hot chunk of magma. She could see the orange streaks of the setting sun on one corner of the white window frame.
Professor Neumann’s accusations swirled in her head. The bitch, Sarah thought, had extracted her revenge. None of it was true. Neumann just wanted to tear her apart. Was Sarah really “intellectually dishonest”? She hated herself. In her heart, Sarah felt worthless and wretched. Why had she ever bothered to come to Yale? Why had she done this to herself? Why hadn’t she stayed in Iowa?
What was she going to tell her family? She had lied to everyone! Sarah thought. She had lied to her mother and her grandmother. Straight A’s in German literature? An essay winner? The recipient of the University of Iowa’s summer scholarship to study in Germany? All of it lies! Ingenuous, derivative crap! That hateful bitch was right, Sarah concluded. She would never be like her. She would never produce anything of lasting value.
The drumbeats were louder in Sarah’s head. Her mind swelled, and then released her into an abyss. She couldn’t go forward and she couldn’t go back. She was a failure. A liar. She imagined what her mother would say, and her devastating disappointment.
“Mama, please,” she muttered to herself, “I just wanted you to be proud of me. But I lied to make up the truth. I lied to pull myself up from the muck I know. I lied and lied and hoped, somehow, it would metamorphose into the truth. I know who I am now. I know what I am. I know at least that much!”
Sarah was at the window’s ledge. The cold November wind lifted up a few strands of her blond hair. The air seemed to call her forward. The evergreens swayed so peacefully, too. Suddenly she realized what she was about to do, and a terror gripped her. She gasped and crumbled to the floor in tears. A sharp knock was at her door. Slowly the heavy wooden door opened by itself.
“Sarah? I found your keys in the lock, and you know New Haven, so I … Sarah! What is wrong?” Bharat rushed forward. “Did someone attack you? Sarah! What happened? Please talk to me.” He hugged her shoulders and cleared away the wet strands of hair from her face. He pulled the window closed, and she collapsed into his arms.
“Oh, Bharat! I hate myself!”
“But no, Sarah! You are a good person!”
“Please don’t leave me alone. I don’t know what to do.”
“Of course not! I will stay with you. What is this sadness I see? What happened to my Sarah?”
“I’m a liar, Bharat. I’m a complete liar. I don’t deserve to be at Yale.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense, Sarah. I am sorry to tell you this, but you are wrong about yourself. You are just digging a pit for your soul.” His loud reproach startled her. She dried her eyes. Bharat was angry; at once he looked like a different person.
Sarah told him what Regina Neumann had done and ascribed it to a bitter “professional rivalry” between Neumann and her own adviser. How could she tell Bharat the truth? He would think she was a liar and a slut.
“But she’s right about me, Bharat,” Sarah whispered, barely able to talk. He was brewing black tea for her. She sat on her bed, her back against the wall. The skin around her eyes was puffy and raw. He nimbly went about gathering utensils, cups and napkins. He left briefly to get food for both of them from his room. When he returned, he immediately stroked her hair and rubbed her cheek affectionately, a gentle reassurance of his presence.
“No, Sarah. I am sorry if I am contrary today, but this professor is not right about you. You must understand that in your own heart. I will tell you something you may not want to hear. But I think you are much too vulnerable for your own good. You seek validation from the outside only. In mathematics, you know when you are right, if you have made a mistake. At least most of the time. ‘Most of the time’ is ninety-nine percent of the time. You might overlook an assumption that needs a proof. Or your own proof might have a fallacy. But if you work carefully, step by step, you will know you are right. My adviser is but to confirm my conclusions, and often I must explain exactly what I did. Other mathematicians will also check my work, undoubtedly. I know that in the social sciences, in German literature, it is not as clear-cut. But the principle should still hold true. If you can work carefully and confirm rigorously what you have done, using your own tests, then the outside world will come to you. Not the other way around.”
“But I’ve been dissatisfied with my own work. I know I’ve lied to myself about the quality of my work here. I don’t deserve to be here. She’s right. I just want to get by and go back home. I’m stupid and lazy.”
“Sarah, just listen to yourself. This woman has destroyed your confidence. Didn’t you tell me that you were finally making real progress with your own adviser? That’s how it’s done. Very slowly. Didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe that is what you need. Someone on your side, not someone kicking you and making you feel like nothing. Stay away from this Neumann. She has obviously forgotten what it is to be a teacher,” Bharat said, refilling her cup with tea. “That is the first thing. The next thing is to know there is nothing wrong with your desire to return home. ‘Academic achievement,’ at a place like this, is often the achievement of power without spirit. It is winning by annihilating your opponent. I went to a philosophy seminar once. And the talk was so imprecise, which I had expected. But what was surprising was this fight to the death, this who ‘won’ and who ‘lost.’ It’s as if some in the humanities have taken the precise rendering of results in the real sciences to fields that are by nature imprecise. So you are left with imprecise debates declaring their certitude with nothing but loudness and guile. ‘Being right’ is just the current whim of a herd of eloquent idiots. Don’t mistake me. I believe truth in the humanities exists. But it is the practical understanding of the human spirit. They will know more about that in Iowa than in a transient community like this one. You will only gain if you return home.”
“Maybe I should.”
“After you finish your work here,” he said quickly, a grin on his face.
“After I finish my work here,” she repeated and finally smiled in return. He had laid out two dishes heaped with basmati rice and curry chicken with spinach. “Bharat, can I ask you a personal question?”
“Ask me anything.”
“Well, did you like me before?”
“I like you now.”
“I mean, Were you interested in dating me?”
“Frankly, yes,” he said, embarrassed.
“And now?”
“I still like you,” he said. Sarah leaned over and slowly kissed his lips.
“Bharat, if you want to, you can stay here tonight.”
“Thank you, Sarah. Thank you very much. I will tell you, quite frankly again, that is more than I ever dreamed of. And I will also tell you that you have completely succeeded in confusing a good mathematician. You are the expert here. But let us do one thing for both of us. Let us wait. You will pass your Comps, and I will see if my head stops spinning, even just a revolution or two. I want to be with you very much, Sarah. But let us wait a bit, and then that night will be a perfect one.”
“Okay, it’s a deal.”