The Affair: Ch1

He's a professor, but not mine, of history and Classics at my college, with dark brown hair and dark, deep-set eyes and a strong squarish chin. He never talked to me until the day we were stuck in the elevator in the Hirsch Humanities Building, and he was trying to light a cigarette. He asked me for a lighter which I had kept in the back pocket of my jeans under my winter coat.

"Thanks," he mutters elegantly into his palm, with the Marlborough dangling between his teeth, a hint of his pink tongue showing.

I smile for too long at him, when he had stopped looking.

"How long do you think we'll be here?" I ask, a natural deference to authority, or his natural gravitas. He looked deeply intelligent, as if his Oxford education had imprinted itself upon his brows, cheeks, forehead and eyes. His eyes look so dark, so black that you could scarcely see the pupil. They were opaque eyes that frightened me and because of this, intrigued me.

He fiddles with his coat lapel, fingering the tweed material with his index and thumb.

"A while," he replies, looking up now from his coat and into my eyes, "Aren't you that Dillon girl? I read your thesis on Plath. Needs work. I can see how you tried to play the feminist aspect on Hughes but it fell short."

I frown, the space between my thick brows contracting and wrinkling. I try to remember his name; it was something vaguely Germanic and almost a throwback to the decadence of Weimar. Vogel. Heinrich Vogel.

'Mr Vogel, are you actually German?' I ask, unembarassed at this point to reveal willingly my youth and lack of decorum.

His square black block eyebrows shoot up his unlined forehead. He grins a little, his yellow smoker teeth glinting under the fluorescent lights of the enclosed elevator. He is about to say something but there is a sudden jerk and the elevator begins to move downward again. I totter slightly, and the elevator stops on the fifth floor.

'Yes, once upon a time. East German, actually.'

The door slides open, and Vogel studies me, curiously, lingering on my books.

'Ah, you study German. Fluent?'

'Not really, I took it up just now, in college...'

'Good, very good,' and he leaves. I stand in the elevator staring at the space he was for a long time before I press the button to close the door.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The classes are empty again, without meaning because I am thinking about him. I wonder how old he is and if he has any children and whether he likes the sound of rain falling against window panes. He looks as if he doesn't eat or sleep much- his cheeks are sunken and graced by stubble and there are becoming dark shadows under his eyes.

I think of his long, graceful, calloused fingers and for some reason I think of France and buttered scallops, the smell of garlic and long hearty baguettes. The professor stops talking. He is asking about some essay that we are supposed to write. He is looking at the girl beside me, and she volunteers to read out her essay on Ted Hughes. I remember that I hate him because I love Plath, and her voice lulls me to sleep. Soporific, I think, and feel foolishly proud of myself.

As I walk back to my dorm, I see him talking to an younger woman beside the cafeteria. They could be twins, except she has short blonde hair and she is almost taller than him. They do not appear to be warm towards each other. I realise he looks like Jeremy Irons, just slightly taller, and younger.

He sees me and the corners of his mouth lift upwards slightly.