Pleasurable

 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