Ian Caldwell - The Rule of Four

The first thesis deadline I missed came three days later, when I realized, half-sunk in a pile of Aldrovandi photocopies, that a draft of my final chapter on Frankenstein lay unfinished on my desk. My advisor, Dr. Montrose, a sly old English professor, saw my bloodshot look and knew I must be up to something. Never suspecting it was anyone other than Mary Shelley who'd kept me up so many nights, he let the deadline slip. The next one slipped too, and so, very quietly, began the lowest period of my senior year, a stretch of weeks when no one seemed to notice my slow withdrawal from my own life.

I slept through morning classes, and spent afternoon lectures working riddle solutions in my head. More than one night I watched Paul break from his studies early, hardly past eleven, to walk with Charlie to Hoagie Haven for a late-night sandwich. They always asked me to come along, then asked if they could bring me anything back, but I always refused, at first because I took pride in the monastic quality my life had assumed, then later because I saw something derelict in the way they seemed to be ignoring their work. The night Paul went to get ice cream with Gil instead of doing more research on the Hypnerotomachia , I imagined for the first time he wasn't pulling his own weight in our partnership.

You've lost your focus, I told him. My eyes were getting worse because I had to read in the dark, and it couldn't have come at a worse time.

I've what? Paul said, turning around before climbing to his bunk. He thought he'd misheard.

How many hours are you spending on this a day?

I don't know. Maybe eight.

I've put in ten every day this week. And you're the one going to get ice cream?

I was gone for ten minutes, Tom. And I made a lot of progress tonight. What's the problem?

It's nearly March. Our deadline is in a month.

He let the pronoun pass. I'll get an extension.

Maybe you should work harder.

It was probably the first time anyone had ever spoken those words in Paul's presence. I'd seen him angry only a handful of times, but never like that.

I am working hard. Who do you think you're talking to?

I'm close to figuring out the riddle. Where are you?

Close? Paul shook his head. You're not doing this because you're close. You're doing it because you're lost. That riddle shouldn't be taking you this long. It shouldn't be that hard. You've just lost patience.

I glared at him.

That's right, he said, as if he'd been waiting to say it for days. I've almost worked out the next riddle, and you're still working on the last one. But I've been trying to stay out of this. We work at our own paces, and you don't even want my help. So fine, do it alone. Just don't try turning this back on me.

We didn't speak again that night.

Had I listened, I might've learned my lesson earlier. Instead, I went out of my way to prove Paul wrong. I began working later and waking earlier, making a habit of rolling my alarm back fifteen minutes each day, hoping he would notice the steady imposition of discipline on the untended quarters of my life. Each day I found a new way to spend more time with Colonna, and each night I tallied my hours like a miser counting coins.

Eight on Monday; nine on Tuesday; ten on Wednesday and Thursday; almost twelve on Friday.

What do a blind beetle, a night-owl, and a twist-beaked eagle share? Horned beetles are hung around the necks of infants as a remedy against disease, Pliny wrote; gold beetles make a poisonous honey, and are unable to survive in a locality near Thrace called Cantha role thus; black beetles congregate in dark corners, and are found mostly in baths. But blind beetles?

I found more time by not walking out to Cloister for meals: every round trip to Prospect Avenue cost me half an hour, and eating in company, rather than alone, probably cost another half as well. I stopped working in the President's Room at Ivy, both to avoid seeing Paul and to save the minutes I would otherwise have spent in transit. I kept phone calls to a minimum, shaved and showered only as necessary, let Charlie and Gil answer the door, and made a science of the economies I could produce by giving up the humble reliables of my life.

What do a blind beetle, a night-owl, and a twist-beaked eagle share ? Of creatures that can fly and are bloodless, Aristotle wrote, some are coleopterous or sheath-winged, like the beetle; of birds that fly by night, some have crooked talons, such as the night-raven and owl; and in old age the upper beak of the eagle grows gradually longer and more crooked, such that the bird slowly dies of starvation. But what do the three of them share?

Katie, I'd decided, was a lost cause. Whatever she'd been to me, she became someone else for Donald Morgan. How I saw so much of them, when I left my room so little, must've had its answer in my thoughts and dreams, where they were constantly making fools of themselves. In corners and alleys, in shadows and clouds, there they were: holding hands and kissing and making sweet talk, all of it for my benefit, flaunting the way a shallow heart is quickly broken but just as quickly fixed. There was a black bra of Katie's that she'd left in my room long ago, which I'd never remembered to return, and it became a sort of trophy to me, a symbol of the part of herself she'd left behind, which Donald couldn't have. I had visions of her standing naked in my bedroom, souvenirs of the day we'd enjoyed our own company so much that she forgot herself around me, forgot that I was someone else, and let her inhibitions go. Every detail of her shape stayed with me, every freckle on her back, every gradation of shadow beneath her breasts. She danced to the music that came over my alarm clock, running one hand through her hair, keeping one hand over the invisible microphone in front of her mouth, and I was the only audience.

What do a blind beetle, a night-owl, and a twist-beaked eagle share? They all fly-but Pliny says that beetles sometimes burrow. They all breathe-but Aristotle says that insects do not inhale. They never learn from their mistakes, for Aristotle says that many animals have memory… but no other creature except man can recall the past at will . But even men fail to learn from the past. By that yardstick, we are all of us blind beetles and night-owls.

On Thursday, the fourth of March, I reached the high-water mark of my time with the Hypnerotomachia . That day I spent fourteen hours rereading sections of six Renaissance natural historians and making twenty-one single-space pages of notes. I went to no classes, ate all three meals at my desk, and slept exactly three and a half hours that night. I hadn't seen Frankenstein in weeks. The only other thoughts that had crossed my mind were of Katie, and those just compelled me to make an even greater shambles of my life. The sheer mastery of myself was addictive. Something must've been, because I'd made almost no progress on the riddle.

Shut the books, Charlie finally said that Friday night, taking a stand. He pulled me by the collar in front of a mirror. Look at yourself.

I'm fine— I began, ignoring the lupine thing that stared back at me, all red eyes and pink nose and scruff.

But Gil stood at Charlie's side. Tom, you look like hell. He stepped into the bedroom, something he hadn't done in weeks. Listen, she wants to talk to you. Stop being so stubborn.

I'm not being stubborn. I've just got other things to do.

Charlie grimaced. Like what, Paul's thesis?

I scowled, waiting for Paul to stand up for me. But he just stood there behind them, silent. For more than a week he'd hoped that an answer was just around the bend, that I was making progress against the riddle, just painful progress.

We're going to the arch sing at Blair, Gil said, meaning the Friday a cappella concert held outdoors.