“Wasn’t there someone who was going to make an offer?”
“No.”
“But you said that, didn’t you?”
“She changed her mind.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t like the tiles in the bathroom.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t know.”
“What’s the plan now?”
“The market will decide, but it’s selective.”
“Are you going to have more open houses?”
“Saturday. Another house on our street is for sale, too. We’re going to have a new open house on the same day as theirs.”
“Same kind of house?”
“Yup.”
“Uh-oh.”
I looked at him.
“What did you just say?”
“I said uh-oh.”
There was that stabbing sensation in my chest, more intense than before. I tried to detect whether any pain was radiating to my arms, because according to the doctor that was a sure sign of a heart attack.
“I have to go,” I said. “I’m giving a lecture.”
“I thought you said it was an exam?”
“That too.”
“Did you hear that I’m going to Russia?”
“Is that where your girlfriend lives?”
“No, she’s from Lillesand. Like I said.”
“Huh.”
“Internationalization.”
“What about it?”
“That’s why I’m going to Russia.”
“Right.”
“I was selected to be part of the delegation that’s going to look into the feasibility of setting up an exchange program with Saint Petersburg State University. Because of my extensive internationalization expertise.”
“I thought Peter and Ingvill were going, too?”
“Yes, but they don’t have the same expertise. Peter’s coming just because he happens to have been to Russia before, and Ingvill . . . Well, to be honest, I don’t really get why she’s on the committee at all. She has neither the academic clout nor the background in bilateral exchange agreements.”
“Ugh.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m just glad I’m not going.”
“Not just anyone gets selected to be part of a delegation like this.”
“No, obviously. Anyway, I have to get going now.”
I hustled Frank out the door and locked it, before jogging down the hall murmuring my silent thanks that at least I wasn’t going to Russia.
I was still doing that ten minutes later as I tried to summarize Lacanian ontology in the foul-smelling chemistry lab I’d been assigned to teach in.
“What is real,” I stated, “is everything we can’t capture in words or thoughts, everything that can’t be categorized or explained, like desire or trauma.” Or Tehom, I thought to myself. “And in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, ‘the real’ is all the unwritten letters, everything that remains unsaid, all the ghosts.”
I could tell they had divided themselves into pretty much two camps. Half the class was tuning out and surfing the Internet on their cell phones, but the other half was on the verge of getting it. And I knew that if I just played my cards right, we could quickly reach the point where on the last day of the semester they would climb up onto their chairs and declaim: O Ingrid! My Ingrid! Our fearful trip is done; The ship has weather’d every Tehom, the prize we sought is won.
That was my dream scenario, to lead them to an epiphany and then experience a moment of all-encompassing acknowledgment that would bathe the entirety of my pedagogical existence in golden light. Because I was the captain of this ship. And I was leading us all toward the final goal.
Life-altering insight. Fundamental understanding.
So I gave it my all. I drew diagrams and scribbled incomprehensible words on the board and managed to push aside all thoughts of the selective housing market. For a while, it seemed as if Lacan had designed all his incomprehensible theories with Henry James in mind, as if the two of them worked in perfect symbiosis. The one shed light on the other and vice versa. It was like I was burning with fever. I was in the zone and had a continual string of new epiphanies myself. The whole lecture was like one enormous victory lap.
When a student who had never opened his mouth raised his hand toward the end of the class, my joy was complete. Sweaty and exhausted, like a cross-country skier flinging herself over the finish line, I called on him expectantly.
“Yes?”
He eyed me from under his ball cap and waited a moment. I could already hear the words in my head: O Ingrid! My Ingrid!
“I think we’ve had enough of a mindfuck for one day,” he finally said.
The room went quiet. Mindfuck? Did he really just say that?
I tried to swallow the lump that suddenly appeared in my throat, feverishly searching for something to say that was funny or would put him in his place. Something that would affirm my captaincy and ensure that at the end of the semester they would still climb up on their chairs.
But there was nothing.
“Fine,” I croaked. “Same time next week.”
No one made eye contact with me on the way out.
I told Bj?rnar about it over dinner.
“What does mindfuck mean?” Jenny asked.
“It means messing around with someone’s head,” I informed her.
“Is that what you do at work?”
“No.”
“What do you really do at work?”
“Read books and write about them and teach other people about them.”
“Do flies live inside us?” Alva interrupted.
“No,” Bj?rnar said. “They don’t.”
“Can I be excused?”
“Yes.”
I cleared the table and Bj?rnar did the dishes.
“Mindfuck,” I complained. “Can you believe he said mindfuck? About Jacques Lacan! I am super good at explaining Lacan. I own Lacan! And Henry James. I own Henry James!”
There was that quivering feeling again. I wished I knew where the off button was.
But it didn’t seem like Bj?rnar had heard any of what I had said. He was staring into the sink. I didn’t like it when he did that. It might mean he was worried. And if Bj?rnar was worried, things were bad. In the realm of what really mattered.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked without really wanting to know the answer.