Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [88]
“She’d listen to you, I bet. All right, get lost! There isn’t any more, for Christ’s sake.” He stood up, lifting a loaded briefcase. “Please, Vinnie.”
Vinnie rose too, and retreated several steps from the crowd of pigeons. She looked at Fred Turner standing on the porch of the British Museum, waiting for her answer in a clutter of equally demanding and unreasonable iridescent birds, with his tall athletic figure thrown off-balance by overloaded feelings and an overloaded briefcase. At that moment she realized that he had enrolled himself in the class of persons (usually but not always ex-students) who take it for granted that Vinnie will write them recommendations, give them letters of introduction to colleagues abroad, read their books and articles, and take an interest in their personal and professional happiness. Typically, the fulfillment of any such request does not discharge the obligation, but rather recharges it, just as the use of an automobile recharges its battery. The academic relation of protéger to protégé is a closed electrical circuit not subject to the law of entropy; often it sends out sparks until death.
For Vinnie, one of the advantages of being in England is that she can escape most of these parasites (though a few, of course, have pursued her by mail). Now here is Fred, who has elected himself her protégé simply because they are in the same department, and in the same foreign city, and she is a quarter-century older. And also probably because, quite without having intended it, she is in a sense responsible for his present situation. She was on the department committee that granted him a study leave, and she had invited him to the party at which he met Rosemary Radley.
Sighing, Vinnie told Fred that if the opportunity arose she would try to talk to Rosemary. She had little expectation of succeeding in this assignment, and privately wished that she might have no chance to carry it out. Since she became ill the next day, that wish was granted, though not in a very pleasant manner. But as Vinnie has often noted, both in folklore and in real life, that is the way with most wishes.
Perhaps Fred is somewhat pitiable at the moment, Vinnie thinks as she lies in bed with her lukewarm hot-water bottle, but he is not really the right sort of person for her to contemplate. In the long run, there is no reason to feel sorry for him. He is young, healthy, handsome, smart, well-educated, and—though Vinnie has no intention of ever telling him this—regarded in the English Department as a corner. Right now he feels sore and disoriented because Rosemary has thrown him over, but he will recover. Many other women will love him; his career will steadily advance; and unless he is struck by a car or a deadly disease or some other form of lightning his whole life will be irritatingly fortunate
Whereas Vinnie is alone, and will probably always be alone. When she is ill, as now, there will never be anyone to listen sympathetically to her symptoms and bring her fresh-squeezed orange juice without being repelled by her appearance or smearing her with condescending pity like glaucous gooseberry jam. She is fifty-four years old; she is going to get older. And as she gets older she will be ill more often and for longer periods of time, and no one will really care very much.
Fido, or Self-Pity, who has been half dozing beside Vinnie for nearly three days, thumps his feathery tail on the comforter, but she shoves him away. Though she has a perfect right to be sorry for herself now, she knows how perilous it is to overindulge it. To go on feeding and petting Fido, even to acknowledge his existence too often, will fatally encourage him. He will begin to grow larger, swelling from the breadth and height of a beagle to that of a retriever—a sheepdog—a Saint Bernard. If she doesn’t watch out, one day Vinnie will be followed everywhere by an invisible dirty-white dog the size of a cow. Though other people won’t be able to visualize him as she does, they will be subliminally aware of his presence. Next to him she will look