"Vernor, good night."
These words I dared whisper, only just loud enough for Vernor Matheius to hear if he wished to hear, or to ignore if he wished to ignore, and leaving the coffeehouse I saw him glance up in my wake frowning, unsmiling, without recognition, yet without an expression of annoyance or rejection either.
I ran back to my residence hall, breathless and elated.
He doesn't hate me. One day, he will love me.
The drama of such sightings. Where panels in the world's opacity slide open unexpectedly, a brilliant blinding sunshine floods us with warmth. Often in the university library I observed Vernor Matheius at a discreet distance. In so busy a place, the observation of another isn't at all difficult; isn't risky, or not very risky; there were very good reasons for me to prowl about the library's third level which was the domain of philosophy, religion, and theology; before I'd come to know Vernor Matheius, I'd spent hours reading philosophy journals in a cramped little lounge with a single long smudged table and a half-dozen chairs usually occupied by graduate students in philosophy (you could recognize them instantly: many were older, worn, bewhiskered, graying as if they'd been questing truth for a long time, decades and centuries and their faces had grown parched as soil in a time of drought); nothing excited me more than to open the pages of such publications as Ethics, The Journal of Metaphysics, Philosophical Review, even Thomist intrigued me; though after I'd fallen in love with Vernor Matheius, the periodicals room held less of an enchantment. Of course it was in exciting proximity to Vernor Matheius himself. Of course I knew exactly where Vernor Matheius's carrel was, amid a row of fifteen carrels assigned to advanced graduate students; on this crucial evening I was wearing a pale yellow angora sweater and a pleated tartan plaid skirt that swung at my hips, it was so large for me, and yet (I reasoned) so very classy; what others might call preppy; I believed that I looked attractive; mirrors assured me, my somewhat feverish face had been made into an attractive female face; my hair had not been shampooed for several days perhaps but I'd taken care to comb it in a provocative style as my Kappa sisters had once taught me; my facial expression, too, was subtly calibrated, a thoughtful look neither piously somber nor annoyingly cheerful. As if a comforting voice had assured me You are worthy of being loved, you are not a clown and a fool and a garbage-digger and shameless offering yourself to this man like a whore not knowing how even to offer herself. It had been thirteen days since Vernor Matheius had brought me to his apartment, and within five crushing minutes sent me away again. Thirteen days of shame, remorse, mortification, and hope: hope craven as a kicked dog who whimpers with pleasure at the mere presence of his master. Thirteen days of waking in a coffin-sized bed too exhausted and heavy-hearted to push myself out of bed, unless I woke exhilarated and manic, my pulses racing. He has made me so happy. By existing he has allowed me to exist. In such a nerved-up state I was inspired to write: the outermost layer of my skin had been peeled away, now the very air hurt me, and wakened me.
One day, fever dreams of this time would be transcribed into the formalist prose pieces of what would be my "first book" unknown and unguessed-at, as a galaxy many light-years distant, in this fevered time.
Making my way along the row of carrels. There, Vernor Matheius's carrel! Yet when Vernor glanced up at me, I seemed not to have expected to see him; in my preppy clothes and pink lip gloss, I didn't smile at him until he smiled at me; a smile leapt instantaneously between us, like a lighted match.
His voice was low, gravelly-"You. 'Anellia.' What the hell are you doing here, this time of night?"
His eyes frankly stared; beautiful lashed eyes of an unnatural size, strained and glaring behind the schoolboy glasses, as if the eyeballs were pushing through the sockets. Obviously he knew (did he?) that I was seeking him out and yet he didn't send me away, he didn't express displeasure; eagerly I thought He has taken pity on me, my very need of him. As a master about to kick his dog pauses, seeing in the dog's shimmering eyes a capacity for love, and for hurt, that exceeds the master's wish to give pain. I saw how Vernor took in the pleated tartan skirt that had once been the possession of an American girl whose parents had so loved her, they'd lavished her with expensive clothes; I saw how Vernor took in the angora sweater, which fitted my small chest snug as a child's sweater, which perhaps it had once been. My happy smile Here I am! let me love you! don't deny me! I will cease to exist! as in an even voice I told Vernor Matheius that I often worked up here, this was my favorite place in the library, I'd discovered it early in my freshman year.
"Especially the periodicals room. As soon as I first stepped inside, and saw, I think it was the Journal of Metaphysics-I knew this was where I belonged."
Vernor laughed. He had no reason to doubt me, yet he was behaving as if he doubted me. Shutting the heavy book he'd been reading, a commentary on Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and shoving it away.
13
"It's late. I better walk you home." Adding, as a point of information, "Your home."
"But it isn't a 'home,' it's just a place I stay." "Any 'home' is 'just a place I stay.' That's its essence." We were leaving the library together. A leeching-wet wind shoved against us. Not a sentimental wind. Not a wind of romance. I loved this wind, it made Vernor Matheius feel protective of me. Sidelong he regarded me quizzically, with a kind of interest. Though not touching me. Propositions came to me, skeins of words. Remarks to make Vernor smile, or laugh. But I couldn't speak. My heart was pounding as rapidly as it pounded sometimes in my sleep.
I had been reading Wittgenstein. There are no philosophical problems, only linguistic misunderstandings. Was this so? If so, -why write at such length about it? I could understand Vernor's attraction to such a philosophy. Spartan, rigorous. Surpassingly skeptical. Well, good: philosophers should be skeptical. (No one else is: the mass of mankind is credulous as a gigantic infant, willing to suck any teat.) In the presence of a man like Vernor Matheius it was wisest to say very little. You could see, Vernor could love only a woman who said very little, for speech makes us vulnerable, exposes us. What Vernor liked about silence was that he could break it when he wished. Saying, after a long pause, "You are a strange girl, Anellia. But you know that. Tell me this one thing: what d' you want?"