Special topics in calamity physics - By Marisha Pessl Page 0,38

hands, setting it free only at the last possible second.

Dad, on Having a Secret, Well-Laid Plan: "There is nothing more delirious to the human mind."

VIII

Madame Bovary

There was a poem Dad was quite fond of and knew by heart, entitled "My Darling" or "Mein Liebling" by the late German poet, Schubert Koenig Bonheoffer (1862-1937). Bonheoffer was crippled, deaf, had only one eye, but Dad said he was able to discern more about the nature of the world than most people in possession of all their senses. For some reason, and perhaps unfairly, the poem always reminded me of Hannah.

"Where is the soul of my Darling?" I ask,

Oh, somewhere her soul must be,

It lives not in words, nor in promises,

Mutable as gold hers can be.

"It's in the eyes," the great poets say, "

'Tis where the soul must dwell."

But watch her eyes; they glisten bright

At news of heaven and of hell.

I once believed her crimson lips,

Marked her soul soft as winter's snow,

But then they curled at tales dismal, sad;

What it meant, I could not know.

I thought her fingers, then, her slender hands,

'Cross her lap, they're delicate doves,

Though sometimes cold as ice to touch,

They surely hint of all she loves.

Aye, but there are moments she waves farewell,

I confess my Darling I do not follow,

She vanishes from view 'fore I reach the road,

Windows bare, house quiet and hollow.

And at times I wish I might read her walk,

Like a sailor his map o' the sea,

Or find instructions for her looks,

Explaining all she hopes will be.

How curious such an enlightened life!

God Himself wouldn't deign to doubt her

Instead, I'm left a-wondering,

Darling's shadows lurking about her.

Dinner at Hannah's was a honey-bunch tradition, held more or less every Sunday for the past three years. Charles and his friends looked forward to the hours at her house (the address itself, a little enchanting: 100 Willows Road) much in the way New York City's celery-thin heiresses and beetroot B-picture lotharios looked forward to noserubbing at the Stork Club certain sweaty Saturday nights in 1943 (see Forget About El Morocco: The Xanadu of the New York Elite, the Stork Club, 1929-1965, Riser, 1981).

"I can't remember how it all started, but the five of us just got on with her famously," Jade told me. "I mean, she's an amazing woman—anyone can see that. We were freshman, taking her film class, and we'd spend hours after school sitting in her classroom talking about any old thing—life, sex, Forrest Gump. And then we started going to dinner and things. And then she invited us over for Cuban food and we stayed up all night howling. About what I don't remember, but it was amazing. Of course, we had to be hush-hush about it. Still do. Havermeyer doesn't like relationships between teachers and students that go beyond faculty advising or athletic coaching. He's afraid of shades of gray, if you know what I mean. And that's what Hannah is. A shade of gray."

Of course, I didn't know any of this that first afternoon. In fact, I wasn't even positive I knew my own name as I rode next to Jade, the very disturbing person who only two days prior had maliciously directed me toward the Demonology Guild.

I'd actually assumed I'd been stood up again; by 3:30 P.M. there'd been no sign of her, or anyone. That morning, I'd hinted to Dad that I might have a Study Group later that afternoon (he'd frowned, surprised I was willing to subject myself again to such torture), but in the end, there was no need to give him a lengthier explanation; he'd disappeared to the university, having left a critical book on Ho Chi Minh in his office. He'd phoned to say he'd simply finish his latest Forum essay there—"The Trappings of Iron-Clad Ideologies," or something to that effect—but would be home for dinner. I'd sat down in the kitchen with a chicken salad sandwich, resigned to an afternoon of Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text (Faulkner, 1990), when I heard the extended howl of a car horn in the driveway.

"I'm appallingly late. I am so sorry," a girl shouted through the inch-opened, tinted window of the blubbery black Mercedes beached at the front door. I couldn't see her, only her squinting eyes of indeterminate color and some beach-blond hair. "Are you ready? Otherwise I might have to take off without you. Traffic's a bitch."

Hastily, I grabbed keys to the house and the first book I could find, one of Dad's favorites, Civil War Endgames (Agner, 1955), and ripped a page