The Professor. Charlotte Stein

into a book labyrinth.

      One wrong turn and I’ll be lost for ever in literature.

      A fate that sounds markedly better than the one I can expect here. He asks me to sit, but doing so is impossible. The only chair in here is the creaking, broad-backed old thing he takes, beneath the window. My options are the desk that runs all along the wall beside us, or a stack of books. At a pinch I could go out and get the chair from the hall, but doing so would pose another problem.

      The only available space for it is about an inch from him. Our knees would probably touch if I managed to wedge it in there. Every time he moved I would feel him, and I can’t let that happen. I’m already sweating and red-faced. My limbs are watery and nothing is working right, and it gets worse every time I notice something new about him. Like his sideburns, too thick and too heavy and all amazing. And the scars that feather up from underneath his starched collar.

      As though he really did burst out of his suit-skin once.

      He rampaged across some malevolent, ink-black moors.

      The ones that only exist inside me.

      ‘Maybe I should just stand,’ I say, finally.

      But he dismisses the idea with a wave of his hand.

      ‘Oh, I should think you will be here long enough to need one. There is a stool behind the stack of Dickens novels to your right. Draw it up, and we can begin.’

      Begin what? I think, over and over, yet none of the words reach my mouth.

      I just do as he suggests, primed for an exasperated noise from him every time I make a mistake. I send books sprawling to the floor and bang the leg of the narrow stool against some solid part of him, wincing all the while. It doesn’t even occur to me that he hasn’t made a sound until I sit down. Then I dare to look at him, and find no irritation or amusement.

      On the contrary – his gaze is as flatly assessing as ever.

      Like an anthropologist, cataloguing me for later.

      ‘Now, to the matter at hand. Or should I say the problem?’

      ‘If there is one you have to know I didn’t mean to cause it.’

      ‘So then you handing in this piece of work was unintentional.’

      ‘Completely unintentional. It was just an accident.’

      ‘You accidentally handed in an erotic story.’

      He doesn’t so much as raise an eyebrow, but I hear the amusement in his voice. It’s dark and deep and way down at the back of his throat, but it’s definitely there.

      ‘I know it sounds ridiculous, Professor –’

      ‘Utterly absurd, but really whether you deliberately did this deed or not is rather beside the point, don’t you think?’

      ‘I have no idea. I don’t know what the point is. I spent all night trying to guess.’

      ‘And what was your very best attempt?’

      I hesitate. Partly because this conversation is strangling me.

      Mostly because telling the truth might make this happen:

      ‘That you wanted to give me a real roasting.’

      ‘I see. And by roasting you mean insults, that sort of thing.’

      ‘Pretty much, yes. In fact no, exactly that.’

      ‘You thought I was going to tear a strip off you.’

      ‘It had occurred to me that you might.’

      ‘Well, to be honest I have half a mind to.’

      He glances away as he says it, as if I’m not worth the full weight of his contempt. I only get half-measures. Other, more important students are permitted full explanations and disappointed looks. He doesn’t make them twist in the wind as he builds up to whatever this is going to be – though maybe they would never twist in the wind anyway. They probably don’t find it hard to breathe, or make bloody semi-circles in the palms of their hands. They don’t have to brace themselves, the way I do.

      By the time he finishes his thought I’m wincing away from him.

      I practically flinch at the first word – but I’m a fool to do it.

      ‘Do you have any idea how irritating it is to spend three terms assessing your mediocre nonsense, when you were capable of producing work of this calibre? Endless interminable essays written in the most pedestrian style possible…I ought to put a piece in the newspaper. “Student Deliberately Bores Lecturer To Death. Motivation as yet undetermined.”’

      I mean, did he say ‘calibre’ there? Is ‘calibre’ good?

      I think so, but it’s awfully hard to tell when your mind has just slid sideways. It takes almost everything I have to respond to him, and when I do I know how I sound. Stuttery and flustered and focusing on completely the wrong thing.

      ‘That isn’t…I didn’t deliberately bore you to death.’

      ‘Ah, so that was accidental too.’

      ‘No. What? No, no. I just –’

      ‘You slipped and fell into twenty pages of codswallop about Remains of the Day. Or did you come up with that load of old bollocks about duty being more important than passion in your sleep?’

      I think my mouth drops open. The ‘calibre’ comment was bad enough.

      But to have the boldfaced nerve to claim that.

      ‘But you said that was what it meant. You said duty was a passion of its own, and underlined it seventeen times on the board in permanent marker. Professor Tate complained!’

      ‘Professor Tate is an insufferable ignoramus.’

      ‘That doesn’t change the fact that you just criticised me and berated me for something you yourself actually believe.’

      ‘Ah, but that is the exact problem, Miss Hayridge. Just because I believe something does not mean that you are obliged to do the same. It seems to me that you spend a great deal of your time telling people exactly what you think they might want to hear, and doing things exactly as you think might best please them, instead of daring to be as brilliant as you quite possibly are.’

      I go to say something when he’s done with this little speech. Something as hot-headed and outraged as my comments a moment ago. No, that isn’t the case at all, you don’t know anything about me, I think, but by the time the words get to the tip of my tongue I can’t let them emerge.

      Shock wipes them out, and leaves only the weakest words behind.

      ‘I don’t believe passion is more important than duty.’

      ‘I see. So you think he was right to throw his single, tiny, glimmering chance of happiness away to be a butler for a Nazi.’

      ‘That’s a really uncharitable reading of the book, Professor. He had no idea he was the butler of a Nazi. He thought they were all wise and doing the right thing and besides – maybe he wouldn’t have been happy. Did you think about that? He might have hated being married to her. He might have come to despise her, once away from everything he knew.’

      ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right. Never loving or being loved sounds like a marvellous way to live your life,’ he says, and now that amusement is back. Thicker though, this time. Harsher, somehow, and with a slight twist to his lips once he’s done speaking.

      Not quite a bitter sneer, I think.

      But almost.

      ‘He loved his work.’

      ‘Did his work love him? Did it keep him warm at night, do you think? Perhaps in those long hours he spent reading about other people enjoying the delight of a romance, he comforted himself with the thought