This one's just playful.
Pleasurable.
Stijn’s three
new post-docs arrived on a Monday morning. He showed them their work-stations
in the lab, and let his assistant Richard give them the obligatory safety
introduction, which would be followed up later by a full safety course. Some of
the chemicals they worked with, like osmium tetroxide, are extremely dangerous,
and they needed to know fairly quickly how to handle them. He told them to come
back to his office at 11, and he’d give them a tour of the facility.
Bang on 11 they all
trooped in, obviously anxious to please the boss. They seemed like a nice
bunch. The most senior, Aleksandr – Sasha – was from the Ukraine, and Stijn had read his
paper on synthetic proteins with great interest. Tamiko (oligonucleotides) was
from Japan, and she seemed the quietest of the three. Bahira (methylation
mechanisms) was from Beirut, and she was just stunningly beautiful. All three
of them were said, on their applications, to have excellent English, but sadly
for him, none of them spoke Dutch, Stijn’s native tongue.
He spoke about
their projects, their own research and how that fitted in to the bigger
picture. This wasn’t a first post-doc for any of them, so he could take a few
short cuts with them. Then he gave them a tour of the Department, and ended up in
the staff restaurant, where he got them registered so that they could use it on
their own later. It was run as a buffet, with lots of international dishes
reflecting the multi-national status of the place. But of course, this being
Germany, potatoes, sausages and thick creamy sauces were prominent.
Stijn introduced
them to some of his colleagues, and he could tell that Bahira in particular was
attracting a lot of attention. The afternoon was mostly taken up with getting
their apparatus and chemicals ordered from central stores, and then he said
that he’d take them out for a meal that night. He suggested Busumo’s sushi
restaurant, primarily for Tamiko, but he figured the other two would like it
too. They said yes, and Bahira said she
thought it would be ‘pleasurable’. ‘Pleasurable?’ Stijn said.
‘Is that not the
right word? I regret my error, please correct me, Professor van Dijkstra.’
‘Please call me
Jongen, it’s my nick-name. And ‘pleasurable’ is fine, but maybe a bit formal.’
‘What should I
say?’
‘Good, or nice,
or maybe even great. If you were American, swell would work too.’
‘Thank you…
Jongen. I am beholden to you.’
Stijn smiled.
She was delightful, and he just loved the archaisms she was coming out with.
‘Did you learn
your English in Beirut?’
‘Yes, I attended
the American school until my parents were killed in an ambuscade – Beirut is a
very tempestuous city, and they were entrapped in the middle of a feud. Then my
brother and I went to live with my aunt and uncle. He had a marvellous library
of books in English – Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Sir Walter Scott, George
Eliot.’
And then the
penny dropped. She’d been brought up on classic novels, hence her language.
‘Your English is
wonderful, Bahira, and I look forward to conversing with you for the next six
months.’
‘I also would
find it… swell to have colloquies with you.’
Busumo’s was his
favourite Japanese restaurant in Göttingen, and pretty grand by any standards,
but he wanted to impress his students. Maybe in a few weeks they’d be informal
enough for the Nudelhaus or the Kartoffelhaus, but this was special. The
waitress was Japanese, and she chattered away to Tamiko before their innate
politeness made them switch to a mixture of English and German. Stijn ordered
miso soup and green tea for them all, and asked the waitress to bring a chef’s
selection of sashimi, sushi and cooked dishes. Bahira was not vegetarian, but
of course she could not eat pork. She tucked in with gusto to the other dishes,
and was very appreciative.
‘The fish is
sliced so thin as to be almost incorporeal, but the flavour is epicurean’
Stijn took a
note of that word so he could look it up in his dictionary later. The meal was
great, and he impressed Tamiko by telling the waitress ‘Gochisōsama, desh’ta’,
which is what you say in Japan after a meal you’ve enjoyed.
Over the next
couple of months he got to know them all really well, and he’d formed a strong
attachment to Bahira. She was very good with her lab work, and extremely easy
to talk with – easy on the eye too.
‘What does your
name mean?’ he asked her once, early on.
‘It means brilliant,
resplendent, or perhaps bright-hued.’
‘They would all fit.’
he said.
And then came
the evening of that conversation.
‘I have not met
your wife, Herr Professor.’
‘I have no wife,
Bahira, there is no Frau Professor van Dijkstra. There was once, but she left
me three years ago.’
‘That is sad.
What occasioned your schism, if I may be so bold?’
‘She was doing
an advanced German course, and it became physical. She told me she had found
herself as a woman, and she ran off with two of her tutors to an FKK nudist colony
on the Baltic, not far from Warnemünde. So she found herself and lost me. I
believe she felt that to be an equitable exchange, but I was not similarly convinced
at the time.’
‘That must have
been such a disappointment for you, so injurious,’ she said.
‘It was, but in
retrospect you could conclude it was an injudicious decision on her part. It
has left me free to make new friends and to enjoy the companionship of
delightful and beautiful young women such as yourself. Would you be
disconcerted if I were to tell you that I have become rather enamoured of you?’
‘No Jongen, that
would be entirely acceptable to me, and I am desirous of further conference
with you on this topic, which is so close to my heart.’
‘And mine,
dearest Bahira. I feel we are close to being consanguineous in this matter.’
So it was that,
at the end of her six-month post-doc, she applied for and got the post as
Stijn’s new Research Assistant. Six months after that they were married, and he
found that life with the new Frau Professor van Dijkstra was entirely
pleasurable.
Copyright ©
Colin Will 2021
