“I’m sure you know that better than I do,” Eliot replied. “As I said, I’m working on a difficult problem.”
“Surely you can publish something!”
“The problem has not been solved.”
“But surely…surely—”
“I won’t publish my work until it’s done,” Eliot said.
Patterson exhaled loudly through his nose.
“When do you expect your work to be done and first ready to publish?”
“When it’s done,” Eliot said. “And not a moment sooner.”
“That’s unacceptable!” Patterson rapped the top of his desk with his hand. “A completely unacceptable answer! You haven’t published a single paper in the years you’ve been here!”
“What did Gauss say about Dirichelet’s publications?” Eliot leaned forward, his face growing hot with anger. “Jewels are not weighed on a grocery scale!”
Patterson sighed. “Your reputation has waned in this country, Dr. Herceg. I can’t force the department to keep your fellowship on for another year like this.”
“Then don’t.” Eliot paused. “ Are we finished?”
“You’ll lose your visa. You’ll have to go back—”
“Are we finished?” A streak of fury flashed behind Eliot’s eyes and he hissed the words.
Patterson stood up behind his desk. He leaned forward across the papers and extended one trembling hand. His gaze flickered over to Eliot’s scar, then quickly back.
“I look forward to seeing your work published,” he said.
“So do I,” Eliot said. He shook the man’s clammy palm once, forcefully, turned on his heel and left.
The inanity of it all! A dull fury burned in the embers of Eliot’s heart. To be forced back into a game of prestige and reputation! And then for Patterson to threaten his fellowship—
A bluff. The same game lay at the heart of all organizations, academia most of all. Eliot strode past the reception area, pushing his way out the door and past a group of tittering students. They still believed in the purity of academics, in the chase of knowledge above all else. He hoped that they wouldn’t learn the truth until much later, until they had already done something significant.
Dr. Patterson was more right than even he knew. Eliot’s work had stalled. True, his initial forays into the experimental field of projective groups had broken new ground. When he was only a kid of twenty, he had published paper after paper on projective algorithms without breaking a sweat, and if he never published again he would still be remembered as having made significant contributions to the field of mathematics. Now, though, stuck on a monumental problem, Eliot felt himself losing hope.
The snow fell, and he had forgotten his gloves. He sat down on the bench in front of the library. It was cold outside, colder than he had ever known it to be in California. The soft, drifting snowflakes reminded him of his home, of Hungary. Of walking by the Danube in the springtime as the surface of the water crystallized at the edges, the delicate floes of ice breaking off from the riverbank and floating down slowly in the current.
He had come to America to escape, but there was no escaping his memories. As his eyes glazed over, the sounds of the Budapest streets filled his ears. He clasped his hands between his legs and felt her hand in his as they walked alongside the river. And as the snowflakes tumbled one by one at his feet, he heard her laughing next to him.
Clare, my Clare.
His heart rewound the years and played them back. Every memory ached with painful longing alongside the beauty. The summer picnics, the winters by the fireplace, all tinted red and dark and lonely.
A snowflake landed on his nose, and he was back on his estate with her, playing in the bright cold morning. She had made him a snow angel, and the back of her coat was dusted white with snow, her hair tinged with the drops of it that had already melted. He heard her voice ringing from far away.
“Eliot! Come make angels with me!”
He turned to see her falling backwards, her arms spread out to either side, her face beaming, reflecting the sunshine. She fell into the snowdrift, her arms and legs already sweeping the ground into the winged shape. He walked over and she smiled up at him from the ground.
“You try now,” she said.
He turned and closed his eyes, letting himself fall backwards, but as he fell he felt his stomach rise in his throat, and a cloud moved over the sun. His breath emptied from his chest as he hit the ground, and for a moment he felt as though he would die from suffocation—there was no air in the world.#p#分页标题#e#
“Eliot!” He heard the cry again, the piercing echo of her voice turned frightened. He opened his eyes and turned to reach out to her, but she was gone. The only trace of her left was the thin marking of the angel she had made, already filling with soft drifts of snow.