The Cloisters by Hays Katy

Author:Hays, Katy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2022-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

When the symposium was over, I waited for Rachel on the steps of the Morgan, leaning against one of the nineteenth-century concrete urns that had been planted with white, trailing annuals. She had been detained inside by Marcel, who wanted to be sure she had an opportunity to meet some of the presenters. I longed to be the kind of scholar people cornered at the end of events to introduce their students to, if only so I could make excuses as to why I had to leave: lunch with the director of the Frick, a waiting town car, a library full of books desperate to be read. Rachel, it was clear, was going to become one of those people.

“Did you enjoy yourself?”

It was Aruna, who had appeared soundlessly at my side.

“I did.”

“I find these sorts of things exhausting now,” she said. “Almost sad. All these aging obsessives, still fretting over the same works that have vexed scholars for centuries. Have you ever wondered why you want to be here, and not”—she pulled out a cigarette case and held it out to me—“on Wall Street, making real money?”

I declined, wondering if one day I would just say yes. Become a smoker too. Some days it seemed inescapable.

“Don’t idolize it,” she said.

“I don’t.”

“Don’t lie, either.”

She tapped some ash off the end of her cigarette, and I laughed.

“So many of us here just wanted to spend our lives studying something. To be in libraries and classrooms, to be in archives and museums, to feel history through the things it left behind. But to do that is not to be with the living, Ann. You must remember that. And some of us survive all this death better than others.”

“To me,” I said, “this seems very much alive.”

“Yes. But that’s a fiction. It’s dead. All of it. That’s the real task of the scholar, to become a necromancer. Do you know what I mean, Ann?”

“I do.” But I wasn’t sure I did.

“Good. Because so many of us forget the true purpose is to reanimate the thing, even sometimes at the cost of animating ourselves.”

Standing on those stairs it was hard not to feel the weight of the past around us. After all, weren’t museums just mausoleums? Quite literally in the case of The Cloisters.

“Have you considered law school?” asked Aruna.

I looked at her and she just laughed.

“It might not be too late,” I said.

“Well, if this summer still hasn’t dissuaded you,” she said, “please feel free to come to me for advice in the fall. It helps to have someone on the inside.”

“Thank you,” I said, meaning it.

“And good for you. Not making a fool of yourself by attempting to pander to every faculty member in attendance. Desperation. Always a bad look. Particularly in academia, where we reward effortless achievement, not years of struggle.” She stepped on the end of her cigarette and pressed a cool hand on my arm. “That’s what Rachel has learned faster than most,” she whispered.

A quick squeeze and

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