The Librarian and the Professor
(Placed in the first round of the Canadian Authors Association Winners Circle Short Story contest and published in Existere magazine 2004)
Shane Joseph

He looked aristocratic, from a different part of the world, foreign and mysterious, yet sad and detached. He glanced at her during those odd moments when she passed the research section, where he was found surrounded by books, notepaper and a few curious students. She did not mind his furtive glances, in fact she was flattered. Who else gave her a second look in those days? Aristocratic, that’s how she remembered him when he first knocked at her office door five years ago, following the advertisement she had pinned on the notice board at the library. He had been about Jack’s age too.

“It’s an annex on the lakefront, just behind the master cottage my late husband and I built. The rent is seven hundred and fifty a month over the summer.”

“Just what I need,” he said. “Three months to write my book. The one I’ve wanted to write all these years.” He had an Indian accent; yet an Oxford education had dulled its edges and made it easier on the ear.

She would visit the cottage on weekends and see him next door. He drove a minivan, which carried all his worldly possessions – a PC, several books, some cutlery and crockery, a large musical instrument he said was a kind of a sitar, and a small bag of clothes. In fact he did not care much for his appearance, spending that long summer in flowing white or off-white shirts and jeans, his thick, greying hair getting longer and finally ending up in a little pony tail. Yet his carriage and confidence prevented him from looking like a bum. His presence around the property started to grow on her rather quickly.

On sultry afternoons, when she sat on the dock by the boat reading, he would emerge shortly after two o’clock in running shoes and jogging shorts and take off along Lakeshore Drive, returning about an hour later, lathered in perspiration. Then he would head down to the water by the dock and do deep-breathing exercises for another fifteen minutes. In the evening, sad sitar music wafted over to the master cottage where she would be rustling a solitary meal, too tired to go into the town, or not wanting to hear any more sympathetic sighs such as, “and Jack was so young…fifty-two…such a pity.” Often, while tending the roses that were going wild, now that Jack wasn’t around to help, she would see her tenant through the open window, working at his PC; he would get up and pace, return to the machine, sometimes staring off into space for long intervals.

One day she received a mild shock. Returning to the cottage with groceries, she stopped off at the annex with the newspaper she had offered to get him, as he had been pre-occupied with his PC all morning. She tapped on the door but got no answer. Peeping in with a loud, “hello,” she stiffened. He was standing on his head, propped up against the far wall. He was naked from the waist up (or was it down?). His shorts had bunched up around the crotch, outlining the shape of a large penis and big testicles bursting to be free – ground zero of her stunned and startled gaze. The clock ticked as her face reddened to blushing-bride crimson. A speedboat roared by before they came out of their respective freeze-frames. He quickly uncoiled from the wall and straightened up with an apologetic look, reaching out for the familiar white shirt to cover himself. “Sorry. Yoga. It helps uncover the creative blocks.” 

                             *                                 *                              *

She wondered whether she was prying too much and tried to stay away. After all, he was a tenant, and tenants were owed their privacy. But her own life was a wasteland. Jack had passed away only the year before from a cancer no one could associate with such a healthy man. Three months and he was gone. What a waste and a shock. Now here she was, a widow, not quite fifty, the opportunity to have children sacrificed to the exigencies of twin careers – he in public service, she in the library sciences. Her friends had advised her to try the dating scene again and a couple of months ago she had placed a tentative foot forward. But three disastrous dates with jaded men intent only on sex – and devious sex at that – had put her off. Her job as head of the university library in Toronto had sustained her during the grieving. The cottage provided refuge on weekends, but it also brought back memories of the happy times she and Jack had spent together. Therefore, she had been hoping to alter the cottage scenery somewhat, perhaps take in a tenant now and again. That’s when Professor Ram Lal, newly arrived contract faculty member and professor of Afro-Asian philosophy, decided to approach her in response to her advertisement.

She researched his credentials before accepting him – the weirdos on recent dates had made her cautious. His past was sketchy: born and educated in India, post graduate degree from Oxford, professor in Nigeria for many years, immigrated to Canada ten years ago. Any other information was scant. On campus he was known as the taciturn one.

She did not go up to the lake the following weekend. Instead, she busied herself with city activities. There was the Mozart concert downtown and the new movie about Iris Murdoch’s life. She envied Iris – free spirit, determined to make her point in a masculine world, satisfying her innermost desires and cravings, and yet having a loving man to care for her right to the end of an eventful life.

The following Friday, she took some lieu time owed, and returned to the cottage around mid-day. At first glance she thought he had vacated the place, barely halfway into the lease. The annex looked deserted and the minivan wasn’t in the driveway. By evening she was pacing the living room, periodically glancing out the window towards the lake. When headlights finally broke the mist outside, her heart leaped.

When she heard steps on the gravel path and a tap on her door, her mouth went a trifle dry.

“Oh, hello Mrs. Jackson – Anne – you are back?” He was standing on her doorstep, looking as relieved as she was, holding a parcel in his hand.

“Good evening Ram – Mr. Lal.”

“Do you like chapattis? I bought you some from the city.” Jack and she had often enjoyed Indian food down on Gerrard Street

She invited him in, a little eagerly she thought. She wondered how Iris would have done it. He stepped across the threshold tentatively. “I really shouldn’t stay.”

“Stay at least and share this meal with me,” she tried to sound matter-of-fact, but came across as pleading. And he obliged.

Later, they sat outside on her deck and looked out onto the lake, stomachs satisfied with the spicy food and glasses of iced tea hitting the spot, while the spicy aromas of chapatti and sambar lingered in the cool misty air,. She was beginning to feel mellow.

“Did you drive to Toronto, just to buy Indian food?” she asked coyly.

He laughed. “That was one of the reasons. Actually, my daughter is getting married soon and I had to see to some arrangements. I am trying not to get too involved in these things these days.”

“You have a family!”

“Yes. My son is already married. He is a computer engineer in Ottawa. My daughter is just finishing her Master’s.”

“That’s a great accomplishment.”

“Thank you.”

“And your wife…?”

He took a sip of his iced tea. His glass was almost empty.

She reached for the pitcher. “Do you want some more?”

“No thank you.”

They sat in silence. The mist had thickened on the lake. Soon they would have to go indoors. She was dreading the next step, unsure where it would lead.

“How’s your book coming along?”

“It’s a struggle.”

“They usually are.” She was relieved he was talking again. “I tried to write once. All I ended up with were short stories and poetry.”

“Poetry is nice. I wish I could write poetry.”

“What are you writing about?”

He paused for a long minute, then drained his glass.

“Desire…”

Her palms began to sweat despite the cool air. The seriousness of his tone as he uttered that word was chilling. She shuddered at a sudden bizarre image of him naked, with enlarged loins, sweating and breathing deeply by the lake over her suntanned body as they made love to sitar music.

“Desire is the cause of all suffering. That’s what my book is all about.”

He got up and gathered the plates. “May I wash the dishes?” She was too flustered to reply and merely nodded. He went indoors. She heard him washing at the kitchen sink and still hesitated going inside. She heard the slap of the front screen door. In a moment she saw him coming around the side of the cottage back to the deck.

“Thank you for the company tonight, Anne,” he said. “You are very kind, and you have beautiful eyes. Do one thing. Please look up the meaning of one word in the library next week – Brahmacharya. That may explain things. Goodnight!”

                            *                                    *                                     *

She decided to cook traditional English fare that Sunday evening and brave a Monday morning run back into the city. There was Yorkshire pudding, her mother’s favourite, and bangers ’n’ mash, her father’s indulgence from his military days. After all, Ram had been to Oxford, he should appreciate her cooking. At noon, with the pudding in the oven, she stepped over to the annex. He was typing away at his PC as usual.

“I wonder if you would like to come over for dinner tonight?” she asked.

A frown crossed his face. She decided to be bold in her rising panic. “It’s time for me to return the favour from Friday night.”

“I’m not sure. I have to get this chapter finished and it’s the hardest part. Besides, my daughter may call me this evening.” He didn’t look anything like the man who had complimented her on her eyes only a couple of days before.

Excuses, excuses – served her right for chasing a man so unashamedly. “Well, there’s plenty of food, I’ve been cooking all day!” He was torn, and she knew it. Serve him right too!  Would Iris have done this?

By seven o’clock, she had showered and changed into a pretty floral dress, one that did not accentuate the emerging middle age spread. She lit candles around the dining table and put on Burt Bacharach. She opened the bottle of Californian Shiraz, although she did not know if he drank alcohol. This was her cultural experience, though; he’d just have to accept it graciously. Then she switched on the porch light and waited, taking a preliminary glass of the red wine to calm her nerves.

At eight o’clock, into her third glass, she decided to walk over to his side of the property and tell him what a coward and a cop-out he was – just like all the other men she had met since Jack’s death. She downed the glass, shut the oven off – to hell with the food, let it get cold for all she cared – and stumbled down the path to the annex to tell him what for.

The wavy sitar music hit her dulled senses and she paused unsteadily on the porch, hand upraised to pound on the half-open door. There was a plaintive cry, almost a pleading in the sad notes. She peered inside.

There he was in the center of the studio-like room, a bed off to one side, table and PC off to the other; nothing between – all very neat and tidy. Seated on the floor in only his shorts, the sitar in his arms was like a baby being rocked to sleep – yet its music was transmitting from his very soul. He was wracked with sobbing and every shudder of his body was flowing into the instrument and emerging in the form of wailing music.

The effects of the wine evaporated quickly and she stood there, unseen, locked into his sorrow, feeling the same loss. Jack had died, but she had never really expunged the grief. Now this music was drawing it out of her. This half naked, tormented man in the center of the room was pulling at her every heartstring as he drew on the strings of the sitar. It was frightening to admit, but he was cleansing her.

She couldn’t remember how long she stood by the door that by now had swung fully open in the gentle breeze coming off the lake. Finally, spent from his outpouring, Ram Lal slumped over the instrument, and was silent. She backed away and nearly fell down the steps. She staggered back to the master cottage, feeling weak, yet free of the anger with which she had arrived.

Then she cried and cried as had Ram moments before. It was a powerful, almost sexual release. He had touched her emotions in a way she had not anticipated. She finished the remainder of the Shiraz and felt fabulously light headed. She staggered about the kitchen, gulping handfuls of the Yorkshire pudding and bangers to quell the huge appetite that had suddenly welled up inside her – just like a post-coital pig-out; something she and Jack had often indulged in. Finally, satiated, she staggered into her bed and fell asleep fully clothed. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” was all she kept muttering, before falling into a dead sleep; something she had not had since Jack had taken ill.

                                      *                                 *                                  *

“Brahmacharya” – the act of sexual renunciation or celibacy. She didn’t find it in the Canadian dictionary, but in an encyclopaedia dedicated to religions and philosophies that had emanated from the Indus Valley in India over the last three and half centuries. She spent the whole week reading up on the subject. It gripped her to the point of obsession. Renunciation of desire was the prescribed way to end greed, wars, and other conflicts in the world. Gandhi had practiced it; Jesus Christ too, although he wasn’t a Hindu. “Desire is the cause of all suffering,” was a phrase uttered by the Buddha, another adherent. And now Professor Ram Lal was embroiled in it – and writing a book about it too. She wondered what desires he was stifling, when, as far she was concerned, all he was succeeding in doing was releasing dormant passions within her.

She was determined to confront him and understand this paradox. The next weekend she went down to the cottage again. She stayed out of his sight Friday night and the greater part of the following morning. At about three o’clock on Saturday, when the sun was at its warmest, she went down to the boating dock. She knew he would have returned from his run and would be wrapping up his deep breathing by then. She had dieted all week and felt slimmer and more agile. She wore her black, two piece swim suit and did not take her wrap with her. She was going to be Iris at least for the next couple of hours.  She even had Iris’s book The Black Prince as a prop for the meeting.

“I looked up that word,” she said, pulling a deck chair over and lying on it, her arms raised above her head.

He continued his deep breathing, looking away from her. Just when she was about to speak again to draw his attention, he said, “I’m glad you understand, now.”

“I don’t understand. It’s selfish.”

“Yet it’s supposed to be the most self-less thing in the world. That’s the eternal conundrum.” He was towelling himself now and turning towards her, surveying her body on the deck chair.

“Is that why your wife left you?”

“I left her. It was the only way.” Again, that sad look.

“It’s too much to ask anyone. After all we are human,” she said unapologetically.

He came over and hovered above her chair. The bulge in his shorts was at her eye level and she did not want to take her eyes off it.

He bent down to her, his breath inches from her face. She could smell the Indian spices emanating from his open, sweaty pores making him musky, mysterious.

“That is why I live alone now. I am practicing what we all should gravitate to in the end. But the rest of the world does not understand – does not let me be. My wife represented the rest of the world.”

“And your children?”

“Yes, them too – they are my manifestations of desire. And that’s why I don’t write poetry – another desire”

“Why are you doing this?”

“It’s my calling. At a certain point in their evolution, it’s everyone’s calling.”

“Is that what you are putting in your book?”

“Yes. But it is a challenge for us mortals. I am on the cusp of either succeeding or failing.”

She felt a stir of hope. He was not lost to asceticism yet. But who would have first claim to him if he turned back – his wife or Anne Jackson, widow and librarian?

As if in response he said, “My wife and I divorced two years ago when I chose Brahmacharya, before I came to the university. It was a formality, a barrier I needed to put between us, so that I would not to be pulled back.”

He knelt by her this time and his breath was stronger on her face now. “But you are pulling me back. From the day I first laid eyes on you.” She felt her nipples harden at his words. She wanted to grip him, pull him towards her, smother him with kisses and have him inside her, never to be released again.

She was reaching out, throwing all caution away – Iris, you will be proud of me –when he pulled back, stood up quickly and moved away. The spell was broken.

“Tomorrow – let it be tomorrow. Tonight I am writing the final chapter, my conclusion of this experiment. Tomorrow, I will know. Please wait until tomorrow.” Then he hurried up the path leading to the annex and went indoors.

She flung The Black Prince deep into the lake and slumped back in the deck chair. “Iris – I bet you never had it this hard!” she shouted across the gently rolling waters.

            *                                         *                                               *

She slept fitfully that night. Her body ached for him. She was aroused and hanging on the edge. “Damn him,” she said for the umpteenth time as she rolled in bed, clamping a pillow firmly between her legs, determined not to give into those baser instincts that were trying to get out of control and spoil the purity she intended to share only with him.

She must have dozed around dawn, but woke when she heard an engine start nearby. Must be the garbage truck. She rolled back to sleep. Then woke with a start. She pulled on her housecoat hurriedly and ran barefoot to the back door. The lights were on in the annex.

“No, no!” She was shouting, running and panting up the steps of the annex to burst in through the front door, which, as usual, was unlocked.

The room was as clean as when she had leased it initially. All traces of Indian cooking had been scrubbed and Lysol’ed away. He was gone. On the desk was a manuscript with a note attached.

 My dear Anne:

This manuscript is for you – it will never get published, for the hero never gets the girl in the end as he does in all good novels. But it helped me come to terms with myself. When I wrote the final chapter, I realized it is so easy to give up. But I have traveled too far and given up too much, to fail now. A marriage of twenty-five years, two accomplished children and a lifetime of learning, and hopefully, evolving. I have to continue my quest, as I am sure you have to continue yours. I am leaving early and do not expect a refund of the unused lease – in fact this manuscript is a gift to you for showing me the right path in my life – even though it may not coincide with yours. My best wishes to you – I am sure we will see each other at the university.  I am sorry if I stirred emotions in you that were better left dormant. Perhaps, sometime in the future when our life passions have dried up, we will have the detachment to be friends. I asked this of my wife, but being many years younger than me, and the extraverted soul she is, she never understood.

           Goodbye!

            Ram

                     *                                           *                                               *

That all happened five years ago. The manuscript was a story about a librarian and a professor who never consummated their feelings. She still works at the library and he has recently been awarded tenure at the university. He drops in to do his research from time to time, and they nod at each other and are civil. He looks calmer now, not so tormented. Over these five years she has had other sexual encounters but they have never had the wholeness that existed with Jack. And so she has compartmentalized her life with her late husband into a learning journey that began and ended, and does not need to be replicated. Menopause has come and gone and there is no more desperation to be joined with another in order to be whole. She is whole, and the detachment that she could not believe existed in humans, has begun to take hold.

She knocked down the annex and planted a few trees that now provide a new look and feel to the cottage property. She likes being alone now, and understands what the professor was pursuing. The other day, she wrote him a brief e-mail:

Dear Ram:

Sorry that it’s taken five years to reply, but I was waiting for the detachment you described to arrive, before I could relate to you on your level. I think that I am almost there now. Would you like to take tea at the campus sometime and talk about that great subject of yours – desire?

When he responded, her heart pattered smoothly, free of the excitement of his earlier advances, and at ease with the finality of a milestone reached.

Dear Anne:

To say ‘I like’ would be desirous. Let’s say that it would be ‘mutually agreeable.’ Three o’clock on Thursday afternoon? – Ram.