Blindfold by Siri Hustvedt

Author:Siri Hustvedt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

FOUR

It all started with a handshake. I waited forty-five minutes to see him that day, standing outside his office with a crowd of other students who also wanted an interview. When it was finally my turn, I walked through the door and closed it behind me. “Professor Rose,” I said. “My name is Iris Vegan.” I reached across the desk and offered him my hand. He looked at me, and I saw nothing in his face. I might have been a stone. Then he lowered his eyelids. He didn’t move. His forearms were hidden in his lap. My hand hung in midair, and I noticed that my fingers were trembling, but I didn’t take it back. I won’t, I thought. It can hang here forever. I stared at him and he continued to gaze at me. This went on for maybe half a minute. Then the corner of his mouth moved. It wasn’t a smile but a tiny nervous quiver. He laid his hand in mine very limply. I squeezed it hard and sat down. I don’t remember what he asked me or what I said, but I do recall his gray hair and green eyes, and that in this early memory he looks different from the way I would remember him later. The interview ended abruptly. “Thank you, Miss Vegan,” he said. “I will expect you in class on Tuesday.”

I had been admitted to the coveted seminar: Hegel, Marx, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel. Professor Rose couldn’t have been much over fifty, but he had the mannerisms of an aging academic star, obviously beset by the affliction common to men in his place: contempt for students. At the same time, I found it hard to dismiss him, and I don’t think it was only the rumors of his remarkable intelligence. Seeing him left an oddly sensual impression on me. It must have been his voice. He was wooden in his body, but when he spoke, the tone of his voice was highly changeable and sensitive, and it stayed with me—a sonorous trace in my ear.

The twelve of us—eight men and four women—seldom spoke in the seminar. Professor Rose would interrupt his monologue only to bark out a question. These inquiries were rarely open-ended. Usually they were factual, involving dates and names, but on occasion he would ask for an interpretation. That was worse, because we knew that the professor had a specific response in mind. Still, our intimidation made us unusually rigorous. And Professor Rose worked hard, intent on elucidating the miasma of Hegel. He read passages aloud and then took them apart, proceeding word by word, always referring to the German, and under the pressure of his examination there were moments of startling clarity. We read novels, too, and these books served as an escape from the tortuous road of philosophy. One afternoon in October, we were discussing The Possessed. It was raining outside, and the windows in Dodge Hall were clouded by water so dense it seemed to fall in sheets.

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