The Nature of Truth: A Novel --by Sergio Troncoso (sergiotroncoso.com)

The Nature of Truth: A Novel

By Sergio Troncoso

Drawings by Jorge Enciso

Chapter One

Helmut's throat tingled. His maroon cotton shirt was soaked at the shoulders and sleeves. Outside, New Haven had finally crossed the threshold into spring with a breeze warm enough for the skimpiest of jogging shorts. Helmut Sanchez searched his pant pockets for another fresh paper towel. His throat quivered. Suddenly he couldn't breathe. He sucked the dense air of his office, and coughed a wave of gagging, unstoppable coughs. He popped a Ricola lemon-mint drop in his mouth.

There was a knock at his door. The knob was already turning before he looked up. He just wanted to be alone for a day. See the old man. Then go to the library.

"What are you doing here?" Ariane Sassolini asked, standing in front of Helmut's desk, one hand cradling a stack of manila folders. Her big brown eyes blazed. She looked even severe with her dark brown hair in a braid. "I knew you weren't going to listen. You're so stubborn."

"I need to finish this. I just can't stay home with a cold. I'm fine, really," Helmut said. He wiped his nose on his index finger.

"Just look at you. You should be home in bed."

"After this, I'll go home. Don't have sick days anyway."

"Hah! Knew you were going to say that. I checked. You've never taken a sick day in two years."

"Okay, so I'm a liar. But Hopfgartner needs to check-"

"Fuck Hopfgartner," she interrupted in a low and deadly voice, pushing the door close behind her. "Let him wait a couple of days until you're better. Go home. Please."

"Just this on Thomas Bernhard. Then I'm done for the week," he said. His nose felt like it was glowing with fire. Dry paper towels chafed his skin raw. Helmut wiped his nose with his hand again and, underneath his desk, smeared the clear slime over his palms.

"Helmut, I want you to go home. Hopfgartner's your boss, not your master," she said loudly.

"That's very nice." He was too weary to bite back with any real force. Maybe two months ago he would've told her to leave him alone, to get the hell out of his face. Maybe two months ago he would've ignored her. But not now. Ariane Sassolini had gotten under his skin. He even felt ashamed when he yelled at her. She was good for him, simply like no other. And he knew she probably realized this too.

"You deserve it. You're killing yourself for this pervert. Please go home."

Helmut thought about this for a moment. Maybe he shouldn't have told Ariane about the March "mid-term" he had overheard the professor administer to one of his prettier students last week. An excruciating, two-hour exam, as it were, with a bittersweet ending. Ariane was already familiar with Werner Hopfgartner's reputation. That didn't move her one bit. But Helmut's recalling of the escapade, blow by blow, that indeed had gotten a rise out of her. She was disappointed in him, as if her beloved Helmut, of all people, had been caught with a particularly grotesque pornographic magazine. Maybe she thought he was also a pervert for eavesdropping. She was really getting under his skin.

"OK," he said. "I'll go home as soon as I talk to Hopfgartner about Bernhard. OK?" Helmut wiped his nose. It was gushing.

"All right."

"Thanks," Helmut said, as Ariane blew him a kiss from the door. He smiled, but he just wanted to be alone. His head throbbed.

"Oh, here." She yanked the door open again as it settled to a close. "Almost forgot these. Stop wiping your nose on your hands." She winked at him and dropped a large clump of fresh tissues on his desk.

After Ariane left, Helmut thought about Professor Hopfgartner as a pervert. Sure, after a year of working for him, Helmut had finally discovered Hopfgartner's dalliances. And in a bizarre way, this discovery had encouraged Helmut to stay at Yale. Who wouldn't have appreciated the situation? A good job that paid you more than enough to live on. Easy research work, at least for a native German speaker with university training. And only twenty hours a week, more or less. Now, he also had a boss who had sex with undergraduate and graduate students in his office. It was an easy and an interesting job. Or so Helmut had thought a year ago.

But the professor's exploits had worn thin. Helmut started daydreaming about New Mexico again. He felt guilty about not visiting his mother. Then he had finally focused on Ariane and talked to her when he had picked up his mail in the main office of the German Department. She was definitely a pretty face. When she asked him out this past September, he expected nothing more than a little romantic tension between them. But then --after that first movie-- she reached up and kissed him right on the lips. It was a shock. Her eyes didn't just beseech him; they took what they wanted. After a week, they were making love in her apartment, and he knew he was just keeping up with her lead. Helmut had not felt so good since he had boarded the transatlantic flight in Frankfurt, a week after his emotional university graduation. And now, here was the culmination of his own sweet weakness: Ariane was getting under his skin. He tried to fight it. He ignored it for a while and had fun. But today, it was right in his face. He was falling in love with this woman.

The easiest way to distract himself from feeling like another Odysseus mesmerized by a siren's enchantments was to plunge into his work for Hopfgartner. Helmut loved to wander through the stacks of Yale's Sterling Library and the New York Public Library. He began to ferret out even the most difficult requests of Professor Hopfgartner. The easy ones were contemporary articles in Literatur und Kritik and Neue Rundschau, a few newspaper clippings from Die Zeit, and interviews in Der Spiegel. Sometimes Helmut spent a couple of weeks in hot pursuit of a more esoteric volume. This was how he made a discovery: Many academic bureaucrats were thieves and cowards. How often, in one library after another, had a particular volume been "lost" or a specific article ripped out? These were the real perverts, Helmut thought. Professor Hopfgartner was a sex maniac, but at least the old man wasn't skulking around the stacks with a box cutter.

In fact, Helmut had a certain amount of admiration for Werner Hopfgartner. True, the old man was a sexual predator. But he got away with it. Even the professor's marriage, to a nondescript Hausfrau cursed with a horrific Viennese accent, didn't hinder him. Wasn't there something to be said for an old geezer who didn't want to die quietly and gracefully, with all his trophies only in the past?

Helmut also reveled in the peace and quiet of reading for a living. He wasn't pressured to finish his summaries and rewrites beyond the vague deadlines the taciturn and moody professor blurted out from time to time. Helmut Sanchez measured the "reality" of a deadline by Hopfgartner's facial expression. If his astonished blue eyes appeared more immense than usual, his pink forehead bulging with three quivering ridges, then the deadline was as real as stone. Anything less and Helmut could take his time. As of late, Helmut had found himself not only finishing his work on schedule, but also looking up articles by or about Werner Hopfgartner. What better project could there be than this ancient Casanova?

It was also a matter of pride for Helmut. He saw the retinue of young Yalies at the professor's door. The graduate students in black from head to foot, the great pretenders. Their eyes dilated wildly, their faces severe, somebody's idea of authentic intensity. The younger undergraduates acted like excellent lap dogs: obsequious, at least clear about who possessed the real power. Helmut, if he could help it, would not be such a coward. He found out what the professor's interests were. He knew how to talk to the old man. Helmut Sanchez would not become a mere worker and servant. Once he started to make positive suggestions to his boss, it was clear the professor was pleased. Here was an intelligent research assistant with initiative, and without the beggar's slop and shuffle. And these nods of approbation were the only things Helmut wanted, no more, no less. That, and the ability to control his time.

Helmut cleared his throat and wiped his nose on a wad of tissue again and knocked on Werner Hopfgartner's door.

"Yes?" the professor said through the door.

"It's me, Professor Hopfgartner."

"Helmut. Please come in."

Helmut pushed the door open and stepped inside. The office was dark except for the professor's desk lamp shining on the papers in front of Hopfgartner's face. A smoky film drifted through the air. Helmut finally found the cigar on top of an ashtray, which rested on a row of books on a small shelf next to the professor's desk. One day, he thought, this old German is going to burn himself alive.

"Came for Bernhard," Helmut said quickly, standing directly in front of Hopfgartner's desk. He understood he wasn't meant to sit down unless it was explicitly suggested. Whenever he was asked to sit, it meant a new project, another major editing job, a detailed progress report on this or that.

"Here it is. I finished it this morning. I have only a few minor changes, Helmut. Hervorragend! Very good work. Excellently written."

"Thank you. I'm almost finished with Christa Wolf too. I should have something for you in a week or two," Helmut said, exaggerating. His voice sounded strange, as if he had been speaking inside a cavernous sewer. He jammed the wet tissue inside his pocket.

"Very well," Hopfgartner huffed, shifting his bulk in the chair. The professor looked like a giant water beetle attired in only the finest Harris Tweed. Not one wrinkle was on his forehead. Maybe Helmut could get away with only one more article before the summer break in six weeks. "Bernhard has to go out this week. That must be clear, Helmut. Eisenstein is already pestering me about it. You have his address, right?"

"Yes I do. This week. No problem. I'll do the corrections immediately and send it out," Helmut said.

He picked up his most recent draft of the Thomas Bernhard article and noticed only two red marks on the first page, but a lengthy note at the bottom. He sighed. Did he want another footnote? An entirely new section? It was time to start thinking about quitting. He could enjoy a summer in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, fishing in the mountains with his mother. Imagine the fat, old beetle pumping an undergraduate.

"Helmut, bitte. Ein Moment," Helmut heard just as he started for the door. "Have you already begun work on the Compilation?" Werner Hopfgartner shuffled through a stack of papers on his desk, not even looking at Helmut.

"Yes. I'm picking up more material from the library today," Helmut said, wiping his nose.

"Oh, excellent." Hopfgartner seemed pleasantly and genuinely surprised. "I've already made some commitments on this material and we need to have a first draft early next autumn. By the time I return from Switzerland in September," he said. Hopfgartner's bright blue eyes stared at Helmut without blinking, trying to pierce the facade of this precocious underling. "Es ist sehr wichtig."

"I'll do what I can."

"A first draft no later than the end of September."

"Over one hundred pages of written text. With the research and bibliography. I'll do the best I can on the Compilation," Helmut said tartly. He could finish the work in eight weeks, maybe six, if he put his mind to it. But why did Hopfgartner have to be such an asshole?

"I just want you to be clear about the importance of the Compilation. It will probably be my last major work before I retire."

"I understand. Professor, I also have something important on my mind." Turn the screws right through the black beetle's shell. See the tiny legs squirm until they freeze in trauma.

"Oh?" Now the great, astonished eyes were like gas flames.

"Well, I have been thinking of other possibilities for me. Here at Yale and beyond."

"I see."

"But I enjoy working for you. I work hard and try to anticipate what you want. I like doing this research for you. I enjoy the hunt. I even thought of applying to graduate school one day."

"No doubt you would make an excellent graduate student. I would help you any way I can, of course."

"Thank you very much. I'm sure your help would be indispensable. But I am happy here, most of the time. I also feel a responsibility to you since I know you only have one more year. I don't want to leave you out on a limb."

"Es ist klar. It would be difficult to replace you in such a short time. What can I do to keep you, my dear Helmut?" Hopfgartner asked.

"Well, I'm having difficulty making ends meet, Professor. My rent goes up in June," Helmut said, his eyes downcast, so ready to receive his morsel from that beneficent beetle. He was lying, and maybe Hopfgartner could see right through him. But Helmut also knew he had the beetle by its little balls.

"You do deserve a raise, Helmut. No question about it. When was the last time I increased your pay?"

"Just over a year ago," Helmut said. "Ten percent."

"Consider it done. A fifteen percent raise this time. My endowment had quite a surplus last year. If I don't use it soon, the money's returned to the general fund. It should be no problem at all."

"Thank you, Professor Hopfgartner. And don't worry. I'll have the Compilation's first draft by September. I'll get to it right away."

"Danke schön. Oh, I almost forgot. Where is my mind today? A retrospective for the faculty club. Just ten or fifteen pages. You'll find my notes in here," Hopfgartner said, a slight smile on his face. "I need it by the end of next week." He handed Helmut a sheaf of yellow legal pad papers.

"OK," Helmut said, the pages almost burning his fingertips. Touché, you old bastard. Message received loud and clear.

Helmut closed the door to his office, plucked out a wad of tissues from his pocket, and cleared his nose with a gigantic snort. Ariane had it all wrong, Helmut thought. Hopfgartner wasn't a pervert. He was a hypocrite. A smart, hard-driving, even amusing hypocrite. Helmut dropped the Hopfgartner article he had finished reading the night before into his backpack.

Hopfgartner intended the Compilation to be a synthesis and expansion of his views about literature and philosophy. German culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the professor wrote, had achieved a community as distinct about the good and the right as that of classical Greece. What the professor's clear and convincing prose advocated, in an almost revolutionary tone and certainly with a poetic cadence, was the creation of a set of real community values. Then, and only then, would adherence to such values be authentic to a culture. Individuals in such an authentic society would become true human beings, the full potential of man. Anything less would be "fakery" or "decadence" or "the moral abyss of modernity" or "the bleakness of the soul." Modern society, the virtuous Hopfgartner concluded, was on the bleak and lonely road of pernicious individualism and nihilistic hedonism.

Before Helmut pedaled home on his old blue ten-speed, he filled out another search request for the interlibrary loan network. Jonathan Atwater had already mailed him a notice that a previous request, which Helmut had submitted a month ago, had finally arrived. He might as well pick it up today and see what the fuss was all about. In February, Helmut had been casting his net wide to retrieve even the remotest prospect for the professor's Compilation. But then Atwater had told him there were "difficulties" with finding these new requests. He had thought that odd. Anyway, Helmut had forgotten about these articles until the notice finally arrived in a crisp, new interoffice mail envelope. Now, after a month, Helmut had already pinpointed exactly what the professor wanted. Yet the old request would have to be dealt with. Atwater would give him the business for weeks if he didn't at least pick it up and pretend to use it.

Helmut yanked the door's thick steel ring and stepped blindly into the darkness of Sterling Library. He pushed open the inner foyer door. A puff of steam shot out from a radiator in the shadows. The air inside was cold and damp. In front of him, two lines of students were ready to check out books under the mosaic of the Goddess of Knowledge behind the circulation desk. Another line was at the copy machines, which flashed and droned like dragons trapped in a box. He showed his ID to the bored security guard and turned into the first floor stacks, toward Mr. Atwater's office. Atwater was the assistant librarian in charge of interlibrary loan requests. A friend.

"Hello?" Helmut said quietly, knocking twice on the oak frame of the open door with opaque glass, a gumshoe's door. A genteel older gentleman, about forty-five, sat engrossed in Gabriel García Márquez's Cien Años de Soledad, his spectacles on the bridge of his pink nose. Mr. Atwater had puffy light brown eyebrows and a head of thin gray hair. He wore a candy-apple red bow tie and a perfectly starched blue oxford shirt. A dozen books, in German and Spanish, were neatly arranged on his desk in front of him. Helmut noticed a small red leather edition of Goethe's poems atop a stack of white papers and manila folders.

"Helmut. Please, come in," Mr. Atwater said, warbling as he usually did just a note higher than normal. "Sit down. Here. Take a look while I bring you a cup of coffee. Bought it on Saturday at an old bookstore in Meriden. Incredible, isn't it? Only thirty dollars for that edition!"

"But I was on my way-" Helmut protested weakly, but Mr. Atwater was already out the door and bounding down the hall. Helmut glanced at the poetry book in his hand, a leather bound edition with gilded pages from the late nineteenth century. He reluctantly sat down on the black wooden chair emblazoned in gold with the crest of Yale. Lux et Veritas.

"This is what you came for, I presume," Mr. Atwater said, striding into the room, handing Helmut four volumes, and placing a Harvard-Radcliffe mug of coffee on the edge of the desk in front of Helmut.

"Thank you so much. Yes, I've been waiting for-" Helmut said before he sneezed in a roar. He yanked a pink tissue from his pocket. His head seemed to swell in this heat.

"Oh, my. You're sick, Helmut," Mr. Atwater said, his small blue eyes gazing intently at Helmut. "Go home. You need to go home right away. Coffee's the worst for you. A diuretic. You need nourishing liquids. Don't take a sip! I'll bring you some herb tea instead."

"No, no, please, Jonathan," Helmut pleaded, holding up his hand before Mr. Atwater shot up from his chair again. "This is fine. Just a couple of gulps. I'm going home now."

"Good. Rest's what you need. A hot bath will clear your sinuses. You have a humidifier?"

"Yes," Helmut lied. Jonathan Atwater was a good friend, yet he could also be overwhelming. "Thank you. I'll just take it easy for the next few days."

"A wise plan. If I can do anything, just let me know."

"Appreciate that. I just had this search request I wanted to leave with you."

"I'll start on it immediately. Here's the confirmation for Geschichte und Literatur Österreichs, just sign at the bottom," Mr. Atwater said.

He gave Helmut two sheets of paper, the first a barely legible pink carbon of his original request, the second an agreement to return the books by such-and-such a date to Yale, which would return them to the library or archive that owned them. "What a quest for those!" Mr. Atwater said. "At least we finally found them."

"Thanks, Jonathan." Helmut drank half a mug of coffee and pushed the four volumes into his backpack.

Suddenly he had the eerie feeling of having remembered some long-forgotten fact. He signed the second sheet of paper. He folded it back and glanced at the first sheet. Ach! He had originally requested Österreich in Geschichte und Literatur. There it was, in fading blue ink. This was the wrong literary review for the years 1957, 1961, 1965, and 1970. Mr. Atwater had made a rare mistake. Helmut's shoulder's slumped. He felt bloated and depressed. He handed back the sheets to Mr. Atwater.

"These should be easy," Mr. Atwater said, reviewing the new request from Helmut. "In fact, I'm surprised Yale doesn't have them."

"It's nothing urgent," Helmut muttered. He thought he had the beginnings of a headache behind his left ear. What would be the point of telling Mr. Atwater he had wasted a month looking for the wrong review, especially when Helmut probably didn't need the right one anyway? He gulped down the rest of the coffee and stood up. "Thanks again. I'll give you a call next week."

"Straight to bed for you, Helmut. You look incredibly pale."

"I'll be all right."

"Take good care."

Helmut smiled politely and walked toward the circulation desk. Outside, it was gusty and warm for March. He might as well peruse these four volumes of Geschichte und Literatur Österreichs. He didn't have much to lose. If Jonathan Atwater was right, they were obscure, if not rare, reviews. Helmut’s back ached, but the bike ride to Orange Street was quick and his backpack didn't seem too heavy.

Chapter Two

Not until April 29 did Helmut open the 1961 volume of Geschichte und Literatur Österreichs. The Thomas Bernhard article had been mailed weeks ago. The semester was about to end, and finals would begin in a week. Helmut was putting the final touches on Christa Wolf. Before Hopfgartner left for his summer vacation of hiking on the Alps, they would bounce the essay back and forth a few times. Helmut had indeed discovered a few articles in Geschichte und Literatur Österreichs he might include in the Compilation. Wednesday night-Thursday morning he was reading an article on the American revival after the Kennedy election. It was 2:30 a.m. and Helmut needed something to distract him from the brain chatter that kept him awake. Suddenly, in the table of contents of the second quarter issue from 1961, he noticed that a W. Hopfgartner had written a lengthy, three-page letter to the editor. Helmut's heart leapt. What a fantastic coincidence! Perhaps Mr. Atwater's efforts had not been in vain.

Helmut didn't read the letter, and instead checked the biographical lines at the end. Yes! The author was a W. Hopfgartner who had also been a professor of literature. So there was a chance W. Hopfgartner was the selfsame Werner Hopfgartner who now employed him.

The year 1961 was the year Professor Hopfgartner had arrived in America as the newest tenured professor at Smith College. After the Wall had gone up in Berlin, a spiritual incarceration had been plastered atop the existential malaise of the Continent. A double burden, Hopfgartner had told him, which had simply been too much to bear. Helmut dropped the 1961 volume into his backpack. He would copy it tomorrow. Maybe he'd read it over the weekend. The Christa Wolf final rewrite had been delayed long enough. Helmut turned off his reading lamp and reset his alarm clock.

***

A few hours later, at 6:50 a.m. on Thursday morning, Ariane hovered over her sky blue wool rug, her nose inches from the southwestern pattern. Heavy beads of sweat dripped from her forehead. Her arms quivered. She pushed hard against the floor, grimaced, and blocked out Elton John's "Rocket Man" on the radio. Thirty pushups --slowly-- her back flat as a board. Ariane finished the last one, flipped herself onto her back, exhaled slowly, and relaxed her arms above her head like a giant bird squashed on the ground. Three sets of twenty-five sit-ups, with her legs bent at the knees, were almost too easy. She jumped up and touched her toes to stretch her calves and thighs. She could feel her butt was tighter now. No more jello wiggle. She slipped on her runner's gloves, lime green with a black thunderbolt across the knuckles, and trotted out the door.

Jogging around Hamden had always been a pleasant way to begin her day. She ran three or four miles four times a week, and worked out at home. She seemed to simmer with extra energy whenever she exercised, and maybe that was the reason she and Helmut usually had such a sweet Saturday night. He'd often run with her Saturday mornings. He'd be pumped up all day too. Then, by nightfall, they'd be rested and oh-so-ready for one thing to lead to another.

But she wasn't thinking of Helmut as she turned onto Whitney and headed north. She was nervous. Her eyes focused on the road and the cars that zipped through the crisp, April morning air. She searched for any sign of a Ford Explorer: ruby red, whitewall tires, Connecticut plates that began with a J and ended with the numbers four hundred eight-six or four hundred fifty-six.

Two weeks ago, on a morning like this one, two white men, in sweatshirts and jeans, black hair (or was the passenger's hair lighter, more brown than black?), had stopped a few feet in front of her on Whitney Avenue. They whistled and called her a "hot bitch" and told her they'd give her a ride anywhere she wanted to go. For five dreadful minutes, that SUV coasted by her side until she jogged into a lawn and banged on the front door, not really desperate but incensed. The Explorer screeched down Whitney and disappeared. These jerks had ruined her day, and yes, she admitted, they had frightened her. Why did people like that exist? Helmut offered to run with her every morning, but she accepted his invitation only on Saturdays. Getting up at six on weekday mornings would be murder for him. So for the past two weeks, Monday through Friday, she had randomly changed the hours and days she ran in the morning. She had not seen the Ford Explorer since. She had also concocted new routes. But today, she was on her old route to confront her fears.

Her legs pumping hard on the sidewalk, Ariane thought about how Helmut was so much better than those idiotic Neanderthals. No doubt, Helmut was sexy. A handsome face with dark brown eyes and dark hair, that Latin allure. His soulful stare. Big shoulders, big arms, and tall. Helmut was a nice size man. But none of that explained more than her occasional double-take whenever he had walked into the German Department. These things, together, certainly did not explain more than their first date. If she had been younger (she was twenty-five, a year younger than Helmut) and swept up by a particularly reckless spirit, this attraction might have been enough for a one-night stand. But that's not why he had been more than intriguing that first week. That's not why she had invited him over to her place so quickly. On their first date, Helmut had been a gentleman, but not stuffy or boring, and more curiously, he seemed self-possessed. This wasn't conceit but more like a unique quality of earnestness. He wasn't trying to please her. He was just a straightforward, nice guy with a serious mind. He wasn't trying to get her into bed. He preferred to argue about politics! He didn't try to be anything other than who he was, a self-contained person, somewhat erudite, definitely energetic, independent, and opinionated. By separating him from the crowd, and in a way from her, this smoldering intensity made him much sexier than what his appearance alone could have accomplished.

Her breathing and pace were steady now. There was no sign of the Explorer. After three more blocks on Whitney, she'd turn into her neighborhood again. Suddenly a red flash pulled onto the street, about six or seven blocks ahead. But it was only a Corvette. She was all right. She focused on her breathing again. Her heart fluttered inside her chest for several seconds, and then it was fine again, like a well-lubricated piston. Maybe she should just stop being so paranoid. It probably wouldn't happen again. She was safe and almost home.

***

At the end of dinner, Ariane remembered the small raise the department chairman had given her. But before she could mention it, Helmut said he was short of cash and blushed. Azteca didn't accept plastic. So she saved her good news for next week. Anyway, it was Saturday night. That's what really mattered.

"You know Regina Neumann?" Ariane asked, turning her Corolla into the shadows of Whitney Avenue. She assumed they'd stay at her place this weekend, an assumption Helmut had not resisted for two months now. She had the DVD. Her apartment was also bigger and nicer than his. She had a small second bedroom she had converted into a den. She didn't have the dilapidated, second-hand furniture he seemed to adore. Why on earth hadn't he thrown out that torture-rack of a bed? Ariane really cared for Helmut, but one thing she did not like was his perfection of the ascetic student lifestyle.

"Not really. I know who she is. Talked to her a few times at the Christmas parties."

"Well, she's making noise about your boss again. Yesterday, after I had my weekly meeting with the Eggman, she was waiting outside."

As she crossed the Hamden town line, Ariane remembered she had already picked up "Breakfast at Tiffany's" at Flicks Video yesterday. Fresh sheets were on the bed. She had vacuumed the rugs. A new votive candle, lemon-scented, waited on her night table.

"Was she. What'd she say this time?"

"Heard only bits and pieces. The usual. 'Why is the department tolerating his outrageous behavior? It's a blatant abuse of power. The students are the victims.' The Eggman called her bluff. Told her to file an official complaint if she had proof this time. A student willing to talk."

"And?"

"She said she would. She promised it would happen. The Eggman's really sick of her. Sick of both of them, really. I think he's glad Hopfgartner's finally gone next year. If he touches him, he's dead meat with the higher-ups. At least that's what I heard."

"So Otto won't get squished anymore."

"That's right. My poor little Eggman won't crack," she said, smiling. There was a parking spot across the street from her house. She rented the second floor from an old widow who kept a three-foot statue of the Virgin Mary on a pedestal inside the front door, a ceramic bowl of fresh holy water at her feet. Once in a while, a long-stem rose also magically appeared next to the virgin's tiny feet. Mrs. Polletta had not said a word about Helmut's and Ariane's comings and goings as long as they were absolutely quiet in the hallway and the stairs. Ariane found the deadbolt key of her door, and they walked into her apartment without a word.

"Was she the same one who complained last year?"

"Who?"

"Regina Neumann."

"That was her all right. But this year, she was pissed off. You know what kind of a mouse she is."

"Don't really."

"Well, when the Eggman said he'd talk to Hopfgartner again, I could almost hear her choke on the words," Ariane said. "She probably cried, she was so angry. But Otto knows how far he can get with everybody. That's why he runs the place."

"What did you get?" Helmut asked, picking up the white plastic bag with the DVD. Suddenly, a thunderbolt cracked in the distance. They stared at each other for a few seconds. Rain droplets, fat and splashy, knocked against the windows.

After the movie, Ariane turned off the TV and popped out the diskette from the DVD. Her apartment was silent again. It had been raining steadily since that first thunderbolt, and now she could occasionally hear a car splash through a street puddle. The gutter in front of her sidewalk gurgled outside her window. Helmut was brushing his teeth in the bathroom. She slipped on a white Dallas Cowboys T-shirt after she snapped open her bra and dropped it in the laundry bin. She clicked on her reading lamp as Helmut undressed next to her closet. She stared at the votive candle next to the lamp and her Seiko alarm clock and her book, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. The matches and the candle. Should she just go ahead and light it? He did say he was exhausted. Maybe tomorrow they'd be fresh and ready.

"So, thumbs up or thumbs down?" Helmut asked, his back to her, folding his pants and shirt on her reading desk. His shoulders were muscular and wide. His chest was sprinkled with wiry black hair. And although he was just a bit soft around the middle, he seemed perfectly proportioned, with long, thick, powerful legs that made him appear lanky and robust.

"What?"

"The movie."

"Oh, I liked it," Ariane said. "Really excellent."

She got into bed.

"But I really don't know what he saw in her," she said, under the covers, her legs crossed, the Friday New Haven Register on her chest. "Seems a stretch."

"I agree. Too much sap. But entertaining. What a picture of New York! Wish it was still like that."

Ariane noticed that Helmut slipped on a T-shirt too. Sometimes, when he wanted to make love, when he had only that idea in his mind, he'd step up to the bed, fling off his underwear, and climb in naked. She never turned him down after that point. She didn't want to say no because she knew how wonderful their love-making could be. If, on some night, she'd sense his eagerness beforehand, but she was too tired or sleepy, Ariane would hug and kiss him as he undressed, before the underwear was off, before the risk of embarrassment. She'd tell him she was tired, kiss him luxuriously on the lips, and ask him to make love to her in the morning. He was always so understanding. He would kiss her delicately. She'd sleep snugly then, her mind awash with the coming bliss of the morning.

What kind of night was tonight? She wasn't sure. She was certainly interested, but maybe he really was tired.

"Want the paper?" Ariane asked, her shiny, black hair cascading over her shoulders. Her slim, angular body poked up in curves and ridges under the beige blanket on her queen-size bed, like a statue of Isis buried in the Egyptian sand. She had pulled the blanket to her chest, as if it had been a bath towel wrapped around her freshly anointed body.

"The front page, if you're done."

"Sure. Wanna run tomorrow?"

"OK. You haven't seen those idiots again, have you?" Helmut asked, his eyes scanning the front page. A lunatic with a knife had slashed two grad students, an assistant professor, a waitress, and half a dozen other patrons at a local café. The attack happened on an otherwise quiet night, fifteen minutes before midnight. One victim was near death. Another had been almost decapitated.

"No. How are your shin splints?"

"I didn't feel a lot of pain today. Can we take it a little slow tomorrow?" he asked, wondering whether he would regret running two days in a row. Last week, after pushing himself on a slightly longer run, he could barely walk afterward. The pain had been intense, as if a red-hot needle had been jammed into the bone. But it was hard to say no to Ariane. It was hard to look at her, and be with her, and think the contrary of what she wanted.

"Of course. You sure? We'll take it easy. A full half-hour of stretching. Just the legs. You still don't stretch, do you?"

"Not really."

"That's what we'll do. OK?"

"Thanks." Helmut stretched his toes underneath the sheets. A dull line of pain throbbed over his right shin. "Mind if I turn off my light?"

"No. I'm done," Ariane said, flicking off her light first and sliding deeply into the bed. She reached over to rub his chest and kiss him goodnight. His light also suddenly went out. An absolute abyss. As she stroked his chest slowly, their faces edged closer in the dark. Ariane's lips found his cheek and then his lips, and slowly opened and welcomed him to her remote cave in the rain.

Her mouth moved tenderly over his, and he could not help but press against her, her chest gently touching his. He pressed insistently against her hips. His hand, like a butterfly, floated under her shirt and traced the line of her spine at a slow and electrifying pace. Ariane could feel him edge closer to her side of the bed. Their kiss seemed to spread from head to foot. Helmut now by her side, his other hand traced the outline of her face, as if to create a fresh mental portrait of the beauty lying before him. Against her thigh, Ariane could feel Helmut's most precious morsel, already engorged with hot blood, flexing and finding itself.

His hand glided over her stomach, just caressing the edge of her sweetest realm. Then his fingers grazed over her ribs and swirled and climbed to the top of one breast until two fingers gently squeezed her brown nipple. They squeezed and then released it, first from this plane, and then from another. Ariane moaned and exhaled. Her tongue flicked over his and encouraged him. His fingers jumped to the other breast, slowly encircling it too. But then these fingers --oh, delicious injustice!-- jumped away and collapsed on the first breast again. She groaned and wiggled closer to him, as if pushing herself onto a ledge. His hand finally returned and allowed her to appreciate how sweet waiting could be. Her mind reeled. She sensed her body floating in the dark.

"Let me take this off," she whispered. She pulled her T-shirt off and threw it toward what she thought was a chair. Helmut jumped out of bed, startling her. She thought she saw his own T-shirt fly across the room. She heard quick footsteps around her, objects being moved. What could he be up to? Then a dry hiss, and from that hiss rose a tiny flame. The candle! Helmut stood a few inches in front of her, in the glowing light, the match still in hand, his body naked and finally free. He was the real beauty, she thought.

"It's better in the candlelight," he said, dropping the match in an empty glass.

"Get in here." When he climbed into bed again, slipping underneath the sheets, Ariane took his face in her hands. She kissed his cheeks and his lips and bit him gently on the neck, promising to herself that she'd do whatever he wanted, and even more than he could imagine.

Helmut lifted his head and kissed her mouth and twirled like a serpent in an embrace until he was on top of her, his face nudging hers and his lips caressing her neck. He seemed truly consumed by her scent and her touch and her sweet explications. Ariane arched her back and delicately stroked his muscles with her fingers. His lips traced a meandering line across her chest, inciting every nerve. Her olive skin was taut. Her breasts, perfectly round and full, seemed to glow with an aura. His tongue encircled them gently, fluttering at the base, as if seeking a fragile treasure. His lips kissed her skin, jumped to another spot, and finally reached her nipple, teased it, and fell back to the white softness below. First one breast, then the other. One hand, the fingers tracing little circles, crossed into her own precious forest, touched her lightly near the most delicate of nerves, and explored every fold and crevice with a soft promise. One breast, and the titillation between her legs. His breath, and the kisses dancing near her ribs. Her other breast, this assault of joy from one side and then the other! A million microbursts stunned the air! Her head was spinning! Ariane careened toward Mars. She moaned deeply and almost grunted with happiness. She was finally wet, and he knew that too. But instead of plunging inside of her, he stepped back for a moment. Oh, more of this sweet waiting! To what asteroid was he taking her now? Helmut scooted down to her legs, touched her hips, and gently pulled off her panties in the darkness.

He cradled one leg at a time in his hands, brushed her thighs with more kisses. For a few seconds, a pair of fingers massaged her wet vulva with a delectable rhythm. Ariane pushed her head into the pillow, stretched her calves and thighs, and released her arms into this cloud of a bed. The night seemed a dreamland of possibilities. Helmut's hands carefully pulled her legs apart, rubbing and consoling them a step further into absolute vulnerability. His fingers kneaded the soft flesh of her behind. His mouth jumped from one inch of skin to another, not quite ever reaching this wet and undulating chasm. A tongue flickered ever so close to it, a dragon's exquisite heat and fire. His mouth touched these other pink lips, kissed them and licked them, and finally plunged inside. Then he retreated. His hands reached for her breasts and stroked them. Again he plunged inside of her. His tongue fluttered like hummingbird wings and then gently pushed toward the very center of her existence. This bewitching dance! Back and then forth. Ariane's chest heaved, and she panted, and exhorted him, and then released herself to an utter joy that trembled like a taut string. Minute upon minute, this joy crested, until every muscle in her body, each pore and every nerve nodule in her mind, begged to erupt into this dusk. Ariane stroked his hair gently, her mind in pieces, and with a wavering voice asked him to come inside of her. Already there was a salty smell in the air, like the smell of the sea. Helmut kissed her cheeks and her lips, as if thanking her for these delights. He was on top of her, and she pressed her fingers into his back.

Engorged and throbbing, his penis slowly penetrated her, its blood a hot and swirling river. Their skin sparkled and cracked and lashed out at this incredible, ever expanding torture. An electric field imploded. Helmut kissed Ariane, hovering over her like a muscular archangel poised at the sweetest gate to heaven. She was ready, but not quite there. Her sleek legs were coiled around his trunk-like calves and thighs. He pushed himself another inch inside of her. Arcs of explosions enveloped her sun. He pushed inside of her again, deeper, and then pulled himself out slowly, pumping her rhythmically until he was almost completely engulfed by this wave himself. But not quite yet. Ariane yelped and was nearly out of breath. These gasps of love inside of her, this morsel so hard and so gentle, this swoon, this motion, this man. Helmut finally plunged in and stayed in, rocking himself back and forth over her, still climbing this crescendo. Oh, terrific God! Thank you stars for this impossible moment! Ariane burst into billions of bits of matter and disintegrated against Mars and lunged toward Jupiter. And this was just the beginning of the end.

For two hours Helmut made love with Ariane. His stamina had always seemed incredible to her, but tonight it was simply preposterous. What light could've suddenly flashed inside of him? What purpose? Was it a chance event? Had she somehow induced it? He had been the best lover she had ever had, but now he had catapulted himself even beyond that. He listened to her. He sacrificed for her. He was her friend. The struggle would be to maintain this passion as they grew to be even better companions. The goal would be simply to repeat this fantastic reality. One more time Ariane finished in bliss. And then again. Now her focus was to bring him to her own place in the heavens. Ariane grabbed his buttocks with both hands and matched his rhythm. Oh, this was so especially sweet! With a muffled grunt --Helmut had always been rather silent in bed, unlike Ariane-- he released a gush of his own precious life. He grunted again, almost roaring, and exploded with a rage. Wave upon wave seemed to crash inside of her. This throbbing metamorphosed into something for her, and just for her, to keep. She welcomed it and received it and gathered every last bit of it, all just for him. This was simply the sweetest it had ever been, a Saturday night to remember.

***

The next morning, the first Sunday of May, the rain had stopped. They were in the shower together, the coffeepot brewing the "Latin American Roast" that Ariane had discovered on sale at Stop & Shop.

"Think I'm going home to do a little work," Helmut s