The Lecturer's Tale
The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes, published by Picador USA
(Page 3 of 3)
"Professor who?" he called out, uncharacteristically ironic, and stepping backward he tumbled over a young woman in a witch's costume who had stooped just at that moment to pick up a pen. Nelson fell spectacularly, wide-eyed, his long arms thrown out, his briefcase turning slowly above the heads of the crowd. He seemed to fall a very long time, long enough in fact to count off one more slow stroke of the bell—eleven—and as he landed on his back the wind was knocked out of him. At the same moment he thrust his right index finger into the spokes of a passing mountain bike, which sliced it cleanly off and sent it flying. The bicyclist skidded, squealing to a stop. The girl rose from where Nelson had knocked her over, her pointed black hat still improbably in place, her kohl-rimmed eyes wide, her hands pressed to her red mouth. Nelson sat up breathlessly at the center of a gawking circle of undergraduates, and he saw his severed finger still rolling in a little arc against the pavement.
Whoa, he thought. He felt no pain, but lifting his right hand, he saw thick blood welling at a slow boil out of the stump of his finger.
Why am I not surprised? he thought. He lay back slowly as if moving through water, until the back of his head rested on the cold, gritty pavement. He knew he was about to pass out, and he blinked up at the clock tower leaning over him, silhouetted against the clouds roiling overhead. Twelve, tolled the bell, the hands of the clock stabbing straight up like blades. Why is this happening to me? thought Nelson. Isn't getting fired enough? How will I take care of my family? Won't anybody help me?
Someone was shouting. There was slow movement at the edge of his vision. Then, just before he passed out, Nelson thought he saw, framed by the white clock face of the tower looming against the churning clouds, the figure in the black cape bending over him. The mask was gone, and Nelson saw, or thought he saw, within the hood of the cape, a faceless face, a silvery oblong with no eyes, nose, or mouth. As he blinked up at this apparition, the clock tower tolled one last, impossible beat. Thirteen.
"What can I do for you, Professor Humboldt?" said the empty face, and then everything went black.
Nelson awoke again briefly, flat on his back, opening his eyes to fluorescent bars of light flashing by above him. Squinting against the glare, he glimpsed uniforms ahead of him and on either side. A black paramedic wearing a white plastic glove held Nelson's injured hand upright by the wrist, while a woman with blonde hair tied in a bun carried his finger in a plastic bag like a leftover, the plastic sagging from the weight and smeared with blood. The black paramedic saw that Nelson's eyes were open.
"Do you want me to call your sister?" he asked.
"My sister?" Nelson said. His mouth was very dry. He didn't have a sister.
"I don't know, man," said the paramedic. "You said something about your weird sister."
"Where am I?" said Nelson, and he passed out again.
Hours later Nelson struggled up out of a narcotic haze, and found himself tucked up to the chin in a hospital bed, wearing a backless gown. His right hand rested on the covers, swathed to the elbow in bandages and a splint. He blinked at the dead gray eye of the television suspended beyond the end of his bed, then turned to the window. There, before a handsome nighttime view of wooded hills and the streaming red-and-white of rush-hour traffic, he saw his wife, Bridget, dozing in a chair. She was nearly as tall as Nelson, but more slender and a good deal more graceful, a former dancer in fact. She had folded herself into the hospital chair with her long legs under her and her head propped up on her hand. Her face was paler than usual, and there were lines in her neck and around her eyes that Nelson had never noticed before. He tried to speak to her, but his mouth was parched. As he watched, her eyelids fluttered, and she shuddered, and Nelson felt another pang of guilt and terror at their future. She opened her eyes and saw he was awake, and she unfolded herself and came to the bed, stooping to kiss his forehead and run her hand over his thinning hair. She poured him a cup of water and held it to his lips.
He swallowed and said, "Where are the girls?"
"With Rachel." She meant their neighbor in married housing, the wife of an Israeli postdoc.
"Are they upset?" He let her give him another drink.
"Oh, honey, they don't even know yet."
"Trick or treat."
Bridget widened her eyes, and Nelson wondered if he had been delirious. He struggled to sit up a little higher.
"I was supposed to take them," he said. "Trick-or-treating."
"Shh." Bridget touched his lips. "Rachel took them with her kids. How do you feel?"
He lifted his right hand, swathed like a mummy's, palm flat, fingers together. His right index finger seemed to be in place, though he couldn't feel it at all; in fact his whole body felt as if it were wrapped in cotton. Painkillers, he decided.
"Let me get the doctor." Bridget smoothed his hair and headed for the door.
"Oh, Bridget, we can't afford this," Nelson said weakly, but she only smiled and went into the hall.
She came back a few minutes later with a trim Asian-American man, younger than Nelson. His name tag said DR. GEE. He told Nelson jauntily that they were able to reattach the digit, that Nelson would have some movement in it, not much, but that he would never feel anything in his finger again.
"We'll let you out of here tomorrow," Dr. Gee said. "We can take the bandages off in a week to ten days. The stitches'll come out later. You'll look a little like Frankenstein for a while." The doctor smiled. "From the knuckle down anyway."
"My husband is an English professor." Bridget sat on the edge of the bed, her arm around her Nelson's shoulders. "He teaches Frankenstein."
"Really." Dr. Gee's eyes dulled, and Nelson wondered if this young man had read a novel, any novel, since his freshman year. Having heard that his patient taught Frankenstein, Nelson supposed that the doctor had a mental image of a classroom full of enormous, pallid men with flat heads and bolts in their necks, wedged into little classroom desks, with Nelson up front declaiming, "Water good. Fire bad. " As he thought this, Nelson felt something the doctor had just said he shouldn't, a twinge in his reattached finger like a pinprick. He winced, forcing the little fantasy away. Nelson disapproved of sarcasm, especially at the expense of students. No doubt he was affected by the drugs.
"Sweetheart, are you alright?" Bridget moved aside while Dr. Gee peered into each of Nelson's eyes with a penlight and checked his pulse and offered to increase the dosage of his painkillers. Nelson declined, and he thanked the doctor for saving his finger. He offered Dr. Gee his good hand, and they shook awkwardly. As soon as the doctor left, Nelson said, "I have to check out of here tonight. We can't afford this."
He sat upright and swung his legs out of the bed, and Bridget tried to gentle him back against the pillow. He didn't struggle, but he wouldn't lie back down either. He took both her hands between the fingers of his good hand. "Bridget, I have to tell you something."
"It can wait."
"No, it can't." Nelson tugged his wife back down on the bed next to him.
"I'm not a professor anymore," he said.
"Okay, a visiting adjunct lecturer," she said, with a bitter smile.
"Listen," Nelson said, and he squeezed her hand and told her about his meeting with Professor Victorinix just before the accident: that he had lost his job today, that they were about to lose their health insurance and their home as well. He kept his eyes on hers as he told her everything, but even in his cottony cocoon of codeine he had never felt so ashamed in his life. In Bridget's eyes her concern for him struggled with her anger at what she saw as his ill-usage by the department. His wife's anger was never far below the surface; she was an Irish girl.
"Sweetheart, please don't say anything just now." He squeezed her fingers with his good hand. "I know I'm still insured, but there's the deductible to consider. What if one of the girls gets sick? Think how much even one night in this room is costing us."
She followed his glance around the bright little room, and he saw that he nearly had her convinced. He squeezed her hand again. "Please help me get dressed, and then you can drive me home."
Bridget opened her mouth to speak, but she kissed him on the cheek instead and helped him to his feet. The light in her eyes withdrew immediately though, and he knew she was enduring their humiliation in silence, worrying it like a sore tooth. She'd never completely understood the life of the young academic: why he taught four classes a semester for a fraction of the salary of professors who taught two, why he was never paid for the articles he published, why he stayed up till all hours of the night writing comments on the papers of students who would only throw them away after looking at the grade. But for now she held her tongue and went to fetch his clothes from the closet. Nelson stood and wobbled away from the bed. He leaned unsteadily against the window, his breath misting on the glass. He watched the cars rushing by in the road below, a white blur of headlights coming one way, a red stream of taillights going the other, and he was grateful for the numbness of the drugs.
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