Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

“Yes,” he said simply. “I do.”

“Really?”

“Of course. You know I’ve a soft spot for the far-fetched and fantastical. The wholly ludicrous. I suppose there are a few details to further shape—”

“I’m not crazy.”

He smiled. “To the ordinary, untrained ear you might sound slightly unhinged. But to a Van Meer ? You sound rather ho-hum.”

I leapt from the couch and hugged him.

“ Now you wish to hug me? So I take it you’ve forgiven me for not telling you about my imprudent encounters with that strange and wayward woman, whom we shall now call, given her subversive connections, Blackbeard?”

I nodded.

“Thank God,” he said. “I don’t think I could have survived another blitzkrieg of books. Especially with that twenty-pound edition of The World’s Famous Orations still on the shelf. Do you feel like eating something?” He brushed hair off my forehead. “You’ve grown too thin.”

“All of this must have been what Hannah wanted to tell me on the mountain. Remember?”

“Yes — but how are you planning to dispense your findings? Will we coauthor a book, entitled, say, Mixed Nuts: Conspiracies and Anti-American Dissidents in Our Midst or Special Topics in Calamity Physics , something with a bit of rumba to it. Or will you write a bestseller with all the names changed, the proverbial ‘Based on a true story’ written on the first page to sell more copies? You’ll have the entire country terrified that unhinged activists are working as teachers in their schools, poisoning the minds of their dear dullard children.”

“I don’t know.”

“Now here’s an idea — you’ll simply jot it down in your diary, an anecdote for your grandchildren to read upon your death when they go through your belongings neatly arranged in an antique steamer trunk. They’ll sit around the dinner table, murmuring in incredulous voices, ‘I can’t believe Grandma did that, all at the tender age of sixteen.’ And via this diary, which will be auctioned at Christie’s for nothing less than $500,000, a story of small town terror will float away by word of mouth into one of magical realism. Blue van Meer will be said to have been born with a pig’s tail, the troubled Miss Schneider driven to fanaticism due to a love that went unrequited for centuries, a Love in the Time of Cholera , and your friends, the Miltons and the Greens, they will be the revolutionaries staging thirty-two armed uprisings and losing every one. And we can’t forget your dad. Wise and withered in the background, the General in His Labyrinth on his seven-month river voyage from Bogotá to the sea.”

“I think we’ll go to the police,” I said.

He chuckled. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“No. We have to go to the police. Immediately.”

“Why?”

“We just have to.”

“You’re not being realistic.”

“Yes, I am.”

He shook his head. “You’re not thinking. Let’s say there’s truth to it. You’ll need evidence. Testimonials of former group members, manifestos, recruitment processes — which will all be rather difficult to find, won’t they, if your suspicions about undetectable murder tactics are correct. More important, there’s an inherent risk when someone comes forward, pointing a finger. Have you thought about that ? Coming up with a theory is all very thrilling, but if there’s truth to it, it’s no longer a round of Wheel of Fortune . I won’t allow you to draw attention to yourself, assuming, of course, any of this is true, which we will probably never know with any certainty. Going to the police is gallant for simpletons, for nitwits — but what purpose would it serve? So the sheriff can have a story for his donut break?”

“No,” I said. “So lives can be saved.”

“How touching. Just whose life are you saving?”

“You can’t just go kill people because you don’t like what they’re doing. That makes us animals. Even — even if we can never find it we still have to try for…” I trailed off into silence, because I wasn’t exactly sure what we had to try for. “Justice,” I said weakly.

Dad only laughed. “‘Justice is a whore who won’t let herself be stiffed and collects the wages of shame even from the poor.’ Karl Kraus. Austrian essayist.”

“‘All good things may be expressed in a single word,’” I said. “‘Freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy. And hope.’ Churchill.”

“‘As thou urgest justice, be assured / Thou shalt have justice more than thou desirest.’ Merchant of Venice .”

“‘Justice wields an erratic sword / grants mercy to fortunate few / Yet if man doesn’t fight for her / ’Tis chaos he’s left to.’”

Dad opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, frowning. “Mackay?”

“Gareth van Meer. ‘The Revolution Betrayed.’ Civic Journal of Foreign Affairs . Volume six, issue nineteen.”

Dad smiled, tilted his head back and gave a very loud “Ha!”

I’d forgotten about his “Ha!” Usually he reserved it for faculty meetings with a Dean, when a fellow colleague said something humorous or stirring and Dad was slightly perturbed he hadn’t thought to say it, so he said a very loud Ha! partly an expression of annoyance and partly to suck the room’s attention back to him. Now, however, when he looked at me, unlike those faculty meetings with a Dean (Dad allowed me to sit in the corner whenever I was out sick with a mild head cold and, without stirring, swallowing all potential sneezes, I listened to the assembled Ph.D.s with chalky complexions and thinning hair, speaking in weighty voices of Knights at the Round Table), Dad had big, bare tears shivering there, ones that threatened to slide shyly from his eyes like modest girls in bathing suits removing their towels, making a slow, embarrassed move toward the pool.

He stood, put a hand on my shoulder and moved past me to the door.

“So be it, my Justice-seeker.”

I sat in front of the empty chair for another moment or two, surrounded by the books. They all had a silent, haughty perseverance about them. They weren’t going to be destroyed by any launch at a human, oh no. With the exception of The Heart of the Matter, which had belched up a clump of pages, the others were intact, gleefully open and showing off their pages. Their tiny black words of wisdom remained in perfect order, sitting in pristine rows, unmoving, attentive like schoolchildren impervious to the influence of a naughty child. Common Sense was open next to me, peacocking its pages.

“Stop moping and get in here,” called Dad from the kitchen. “You must eat something if you’re going to wage war on flabby-armed, potbellied radicals. I don’t think they age all that well, so you’ll probably be able to outrun them.”

For the first time since Hannah died, I slept through the night. Dad called such sleeps “The Sleep of Trees,” which was not to be confused with “The Sleep of Hibernation” or “The Sleep of Dead-Tired Dogs.” The Sleep of Trees was the most absolute and rejuvenating of sleeps. It was only darkness, no dreams, a leap forward in time.

I didn’t stir when the alarm went off, nor did I wake up to hear Dad shouting from downstairs the Van Meer Vocabulary Wake-up Call.

“Wake up, sweet! Your word of the day is pneumococcus! ”

I opened my eyes. The phone was ringing. The clock by my bed read 10:36 A.M. The answering machine clicked on downstairs.

“Mr. Van Meer, I wanted to notify you that Blue is not in school today. Please call us and give a reason for her absence.” Eva Brewster curtly recited the number to the main office and hung up. I waited for Dad’s footsteps to come through the hall to find out who’d called, but I heard nothing but the clinking of silverware in the kitchen.