HURDY GURDY

Benjamin Weed, a history professor at a small northeastern college, is enlisted by the department chairman to clean out the office of a recently deceased colleague. The office is one of the nicest on campus, and Benjamin is told that he can have the office once it is empty. The colleague’s daughter, Elizabeth (Izzy) Shockley, reveals to Benjamin that her father, Ted, had been working on a significant research project that no one else seems to know about. Benjamin initially finds no evidence of any project, but Izzy is adamant that something important is there. She takes up residence in the office, and refuses to leave until the research is found. Benjamin is annoyed with Izzy at first, but grows fond of her over time, eventually defending her against the efforts of the college to remove her from the building. When Benjamin comes across a series of emails between Ted and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania about someone called “Hurdy Gurdy,” he becomes curious, and he and Izzy embark on an investigation that leads them to an Italian opera singer, and the attention of the FBI.

ONE

At first, I thought someone was trying to shove me off the platform and into the path of the oncoming train. I dug in my heels and pushed my weight away from the track, nearly falling over backwards in the process. The guy had his hands on me, but only to steady himself. He grunted an apology and continued to race down the platform. I regained my balance and watched to see where he would end up, wondering if he was being chased by the police or just vying for a seat in the café car. But the man ducked into a stairwell instead and headed up to the station. Perhaps he had been on the wrong platform, or perhaps he was up to no good. I checked my backside, making sure he hadn’t stabbed me in the kidney, then patted myself down to see if he had grabbed my wallet. There were no open wounds, and nothing was missing, but I did find something in my jacket pocket that wasn’t there before—a thumb drive.

I wasn’t expecting to receive a thumb drive, at least not now when I was on the way home, thinking my trip to Philadelphia had been a waste of time. The hand-off couldn’t have been clumsier, and I imagined the courier was probably an over-anxious teaching assistant in Penn’s history department, told to slip the drive into my jacket pocket as inconspicuously as possible. “I’ve come to Penn to learn history,” he might have been thinking as he chased me down, “not espionage.”

I left the drive in my pocket until I was seated on the train. I sat by a window and took out my laptop. A woman sat down next to me. She looked harmless, but I kept an eye on her. Everyone was suspect now. My computer’s USB port was on the opposite side from the woman, so it would be difficult for her to snatch the drive out of the computer and run for the exit.

A message came up on the screen, asking me if I wished to review the contents of the drive. I clicked “yes,” and was then taken to a screen that asked for the password.

“Password?” I mumbled, then shot another glance at the woman, making sure she was still minding her business. The train started moving out of the station. I fished around in my pocket hoping to find a scrap of paper with the password written on it, but Jessie Owens had only left a thumb drive, and then only uttered one word before racing off, which was, “Sorry.” My fingers hovered over the keyboard, and I stared at the letters, wracking my brain for an appropriately clever word or phrase. The train cleared the station and I looked out the window. A billboard along the Schuylkill Expressway told people to “Hear the word of God.” And there it was, Hear God. I angled the screen further away from my neighbor and typed in “Hurdy Gurdy.”

—————

All of this cryptic business started several weeks ago at the funeral of Ted Shockley, who died of a brain aneurysm, well before his time, just sixty years old.  He and I had been colleagues at Kensington College, a small liberal arts school outside of Washington D.C. The reception was at his house, where he lived with his thirty-six year old daughter, Elizabeth. I couldn’t remember having met her before, she was not much younger than me, and when I offered my condolences and said I was sorry that we couldn’t have met under other circumstances, she corrected me, showing little sign of having just lost her father, and reminded me of the dinner party she had given a couple of years ago, one that I had apparently attended.

“We served butterflied leg of lamb, remember?” she said. “The Professor cooked. He loved to cook. He was a marvelous chef. And he loved to eat. When people asked about his hobbies, he’d say cooking and eating.”

It seemed odd that Elizabeth Shockley referred to her father as “The Professor.” It made her sound like a Victorian spinster. I wondered if that’s what his wife had called him, too. She had also died before her time, succumbing to cancer. Shockley was devastated by her loss, and took a six-month leave of absence. Elizabeth, who had moved back into the house to take care of her mother, stayed on to now look after her father, The Professor. She never left.

I had come to the funeral to pay my respects, but also as a favor to the department chairman, Dieter Graff, who preferred only to be called, Doctor Graff. He had rallied the faculty and asked that we come to the funeral, though no one seemed to understand why the chairman felt it was necessary to exert his influence. Ted Shockley was reasonably well liked, and would have drawn a good crowd even without prodding. As for me, I didn’t know Ted particularly well, but wanted to keep up appearances with Doctor Graff, who would soon decide which of the faculty would be given Ted’s office. The office was coveted because it was a corner office. It had twice as many windows as most other offices, including mine, and had great views of the quad. It was also over-sized, with a conference table that sat six people. Ted Shockley routinely ate his lunch at the table. He was a champion eater.

“I didn’t know he liked to cook,” I said.

“We rarely went out to eat, he loved cooking so much. I can’t remember the last time I cooked anything.” Her attention wandered, and she finally began to look melancholy, though it wasn’t immediately clear whether she was missing her father, or worried about where her next meal would come from.

Elizabeth Shockley was a small woman, barely over five feet, and probably not much more than a hundred pounds. She looked like someone who ate only what was required. When she walked, she looked like a gymnast taking her first few steps before a tumbling run. She was dressed in black, fittingly, but her outfit was better suited for the gym: black sneakers, black tights, a short black skirt that hugged her thighs, and a black zippered sweatshirt on top of a black tee shirt. The outfit was in stark contrast to her hair, which was short and silvery blond, like the color of pearls.

“He was a good man,” I said, knowing I wasn’t really qualified to judge his character. I barely knew him.

“He had a lot of respect for you,” she said, now fumbling through the small purse she was carrying. The reception was at her house, and I couldn’t understand why she would have her purse with her. Given the size of the purse—the strap barely registered the weight of the thing—it should not have taken as long as it did to find whatever it was she was looking for. I wasn’t altogether sure I was meant to wait, that whatever she was looking for had to do with me. At last, she withdrew a folded piece of paper, and handed it to me, not bothering to unfold it, as if she was passing a note.

“What’s this?” I said. At first I thought it might be a letter from Ted, but he had died suddenly, and wouldn’t have had time to write anyone a note.

“Open it.”

I unfolded the note, expecting to see writing, but found a printed picture instead. I stared at it for a few seconds, not sure what I was looking at. The picture was of a man lying in bed, face up, eyes closed. He was partially covered by a blanket. I looked closer. The quality was terrible. It looked like something that had been spit out of a cheap color printer, low on ink.

“Is this?”

“The Professor,” she said. “The last time I saw him.”

She came alongside and looked at the print with me. She sighed.

“He looked so peaceful. He could have been asleep.”

Consumed by morbid dissonance, I cleared my throat, as if something had gotten stuck there, and tried handing back the print.

“I don’t need it anymore,” she said. And with that, she walked away, leaving me to wonder if she was handing out the bedroom picture of her dead father to all her guests, or if I was the exception.

The picture reminded me of the images of Abraham Lincoln, lying on the too small bed he had been wedged into after getting shot in the head. I was never quite sure if he was still alive in those pictures, his mind vaguely aware of his surroundings as his internal organs shut down. I wondered if there might yet have been some vestiges of life flickering in Shockley’s body when his daughter took the picture. Had she taken it before the ambulance arrived, having decided that the Professor was dead? Was her grief so muted that she felt no shame in grabbing her cell phone and capturing a few images, perhaps having arranged the body first? Or was she in shock, doing whatever she could to make the event seem like just another memorable moment in their lives together.

Elizabeth was soon surrounded by other well-wishers, if that’s what you called guests at a funeral, but she wasn’t poking through her under-sized purse, evidently sparing this group cadaver shock. I folded up the picture of the dead, or near-dead, professor and stuffed it in my pocket. It wasn’t something I could leave on the coffee table.

The new semester had just begun, and there were several students at the reception, mostly female, mostly hovering around Dieter Graff. Doctor Graff was the kind of person who easily drew the attention of other people. He was tall, blond and altogether Aryan-looking, a product of Nazi Germany’s eugenics program in the mid-twentieth century. Women adored him, and there were always waiting lists for the courses he taught. Men liked him, too, and though he directed most of his attention to women, there was always talk of homosexual tendencies. I had never seen any evidence of this, but then, I wasn’t sure what homosexual tendencies were. He seemed to like everyone.

What was it that made a man attractive, I wondered, watching Graff hold the attention of those around him? Good looks played a part, certainly, but even attractive people could be dull. Perhaps it was presentation—the ability to tell a good story and not be condescending. I had begun to think that maintaining a pleasant facial expression was the key. My own expression tended to get bunched up when I wasn’t in conversation, giving people the idea that I was dealing with some inner turmoil. It was a great defense mechanism when you wanted to be left alone. At times people came up to me and asked if everything was okay. I worked at looking pleasant, but wasn’t very good at it, and sometimes smiled at strangers in a way that made them think I was up to something.

And, of course, it wasn’t good form to smile at a funeral. Pained expressions were the norm here, so I bunched up my eyebrows and soldiered on, hoping to have a chance to talk to Herr Professor Doctor Dieter Graff.

“Oh, Professor Weed, I’m so sorry about Professor Shockley,” a young woman said, coming up to me.

Professor Weed was me. It was an unfortunate name, particularly for a college professor, but one I rarely had to spell. My father told me it was a shortened version of our real name, assigned to my paternal great grandparents on Ellis Island a hundred years ago, though he had no idea what the actual surname was. I had done some research, digging through several ship’s manifests of that era. I came across a few Wiedemanns and some Wiedenbachs, but none of them had the first names of my great grandparents. Maybe their first names were truncated, too.

Whatever my real surname was, I preferred to be called by my middle name, Benjamin. My first name was Harris, which was also unfortunate. My mother was a Holocaust survivor whose parents had been hunted down and murdered by the Nazis. She never liked to promulgate our Jewish heritage, so she gave her children Anglo-Saxon first names. How she thought I would go through life with the name Harris Weed, was beyond me, like I was a piece of fabric from the Outer Hebrides—Harris Tweed. My students called me Professor Weed, stretching out the double “e” in endearing stoner fashion.

“It was a shock to all of us,” I said, making an unintended pun. I thought the woman might have taken one of my classes, though I couldn’t remember her name. I was terrible with names. I would have been happy if everyone in the world wore name tags, with the first name in large letters so it could be seen easily, though mine wouldn’t include my first name.

“You look so sad,” she said. “Were you close?”

“I always look this way.”

She cocked her head, looking confused. She was pretty, and had dark hair tied up behind her head. She wore horned-rim glasses. I thought her name might be Tanya, or Sophie.

“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m a little unsettled.”

“Well, we all are. This may be premature, but do you know who will be taking over his classes?”

“Which one are you taking?”

“Fascism.”

“You should ask Doctor Graff that question.”

“He’s too hard to get to. I thought you might know.”

“I expect you’ll get an email or something.”

“Sure.” She tapped her chin and glanced around the room, looking for another professor who might be better informed.

“It’s nice to see so many students here,” I said. “I guess I didn’t know how popular he was.”

“Professor Shockley was the best,” she said, eyes still wandering.

What about me? I wanted to say, but still wasn’t sure she had ever taken one of my classes. In any event, I knew that “the best,” as used by this generation, was not an absolute, but rather a term of affection, as if to say the person was wonderful.

“Are you a history major?”

“English. But I like reading history. I hope to take one of your classes soon.”

“Which one?” I asked, glad to know I might have the opportunity to show her that I was the best, too.

“Depends on the reading list. My name is Sophie Gerwitz, by the way.”

She gave me a little wave of her hand, indicating that she preferred not to have me shake it with mine. But then, I didn’t want to shake hands either. Handshaking was a thing of the past.

“You sure you haven’t already taken one of my classes?” I said. “Your name is familiar.”

“Oh, you would have remembered me if I did.”

I nodded and smiled. She was either supremely confident or supremely irritating. Possibly both. Still I found her intriguing—a challenge, perhaps.

“What are you teaching this semester? Maybe I’ll transfer, depending on what they do with Professor Shockley’s class.”

“World Genocide,” I said.

“Sounds charming.”

“Very little history is charming.”

“Is that your area of expertise? Genocide?”

“There are others. But, yes.” Somehow I got the impression that Sophie Gerwitz was judging me; that she thought anyone who taught the history of mass murder must also be afflicted by some disturbing social malady.

“Why? Doesn’t that keep you up at night?”

“I have a lot of victims in my family,” I said, determined to show her I was deserving of her respect.

“Victims of genocide, really?”

“My mother’s parents and the rest of her family were murdered by the Nazis during World War Two. She was the only survivor.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“How would you know?”

Sophie Gerwitz’s cell phone rang. She excused herself, sounding genuinely sorry our conversation had to end, and set off in search of a quieter place to take the call, though most of the room was quiet given the nature of the event. I was sorry, too. I was prepared to tell her some of the awful stories, if she asked, wanting to impress upon her that evil was a worthwhile area of study.

The one part of the room that was not so quiet was the tight circle of admirers that had formed around Doctor Graff, who was sharing some amusing anecdote. One woman laughed, bad form at a funeral for sure, and the woman next to her put her finger to her lips, grabbing the offender by the arm, though clearly struggling to contain her own laughter.

I walked by the wall of worshippers, hoping to make eye contact with the doctor, just to make sure he knew I was there. He looked up as I approached, and kept his eyes on me while finishing whatever sentence he was in the middle of. I waved, assured now that he had acknowledged my attendance.

“Benjamin, can I speak to you for a moment?” he said, and then to his admirers, “Please excuse me.”

A few of the abandoned looked at me disapprovingly for having interrupted their fun, forcing them to have to sink back into their funereal dispositions.

“Sad business,” Graff said, then smiled. “Glad to see you.”

Graff had come to the United States to attend Princeton as an undergraduate, and retained something of his German accent, though without the harsh guttural edge. His calm, authoritative voice was easy to listen to, and another reason that he and his lectures were so popular.

“Something of a shock,” I said. “His daughter seems to be bearing up well.”

“Lovely woman. Very devoted to her father.”

Graff was a traditionalist, and as my girlfriend had walked out on me nearly a year ago, mid-forties staring me in the face, I wondered if he was dropping a hint. I suppose that I was a traditionalist, too, but always seemed to have trouble getting close enough to women to the point where marriage entered the discussion. Or maybe I just hadn’t met the right woman yet.

“Listen,” he said, “I need you to take over his Fascism class, just for this semester. Can you do this? Tuesdays and Thursdays at nine? It does not conflict with your other courses. Typically I’d get one of the junior guys to do it, but it’s such a specialized curricula. You’re the only one in the department qualified to teach it.”

I looked away from Graff—his eyes were bearing down on me—and pretended to be unduly burdened. He was right, though. I was the only one qualified now to teach the class. Still, here was the opening I needed.

“I need something from you, Dieter.”

“The office, yes?”

I nodded.

“You’re negotiating with me?”

“I’m doing you a favor, and you’re doing me a favor.”

“It’s yours. You can help Professor Shockley’s daughter clean it out, yes?”

“She needs help?”

“She came to me and asked if someone could help her go through Ted’s things. She doesn’t know what to keep. She’s afraid she will throw something away that might be of value to the department. The sooner the office is cleaned out, the sooner you can move in. You can schedule a time with her directly, yes?”

I said that I would, and left Doctor Graff to rejoin his flock. In a matter of minutes he had managed to complete three administrative chores, pushing two of them onto me. I had gotten the office, though, and that was the main thing. I was happy to teach the Fascism class, and going through Shockley’s books and papers would only take a couple of hours.  All in all, a reasonable compromise.

Before leaving, I stopped in the guest bathroom, which was not much bigger than an airplane restroom, though with much poorer lighting. The walls were an odd shade of green, and were covered with photographs of the Shockley’s. I wondered why anyone would hang pictures of themselves in the bathroom. I felt self-conscious exposing myself in front of the now-dead Ted and his long-dead wife, who were peering down at me from the table of some restaurant, doing the thing Ted loved doing best. I had to look away, in order to get things flowing, and noticed that all of the other pictures in the bathroom were also of the Shockleys eating at restaurants, the two of them, sometimes with Elizabeth in tow. She had told me they seldom went out to eat, owing to Shockley’s love for cooking, and yet here was evidence of them patronizing at least ten different restaurants. Maybe the pictures were hung in the bathroom to serve as a commentary on the Shockleys’ opinion of eating out. But why were there so many of them?  I thought about the artwork in my guest bathroom, and what it might say about me. There was just one piece, a small picture of an astronaut relieving himself on the moon, a majestic fountain of pee arcing into the thin lunar gravity. Bathroom humor, some would call it, which is why I hung it there.

I came back into the living room and found Elizabeth standing by the front door, accepting parting condolences from her guests. As I approached, she stepped toward me, as if to indicate there was more to say than just goodbye. I hadn’t intended to bring up the sorting of her father’s office, it didn’t seem appropriate just yet, but I didn’t have to.

“Did Doctor Graff speak to you about the Professor’s office?” she said.

“He did,” I said, confused. “How did you know he spoke to me about it?”

“I asked for you, Professor Weed.”

My eyebrows tightened, and I recalled the images of Elizabeth and her parents watching me pee in her downstairs toilet.

“I told you that the Professor always thought highly of you,” she said. “You have similar passions.”

I assumed she was speaking of academic passions. I had never been much of a cook.

“I’ll be there in the morning,” she said. “Can you come by then?”

“Why don’t you decide what you want to keep first, and then I’ll look at the rest of it.”

Elizabeth Shockley shook her head in a determined fashion and tugged on the strap of her micro-purse.

“Will you come with me into the kitchen for a moment, Professor Weed?”

“You can call me Ben.” But before I could say anything else she bounced away toward the kitchen. I followed her, and noticed the turning heads of the remaining guests, wondering how they could leave without Elizabeth there to say goodbye.

The kitchen looked like a restaurant kitchen, the kind on display at those open plan establishments, where the patrons watched their meals being prepared. The oven had six burners, and looked as if structural reinforcement was necessary to keep it from plunging through the floor.

“Some kitchen,” I said.

“Oh yes,” she said. “This is where the Professor was happiest.”

I noticed the floor had some give to it, not a hard surface, but some material that was easier on the feet.

“Listen, Professor Weed, no one else can hear what I’m going to tell you.”

I’m not sure why, but I had a sudden premonition Elizabeth Shockley was going to tell me that her father was still alive, ready to cook his next meal. I nodded, to let her know she had my attention, and shifted my weight from one foot to the other, still fascinated by the flooring.

“The Professor was working on something,” she said. “Something important. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, other than to say it was significant, and that he was very excited about it. I don’t think he told anyone else.”

“Ted was doing research?” This was surprising news. There were no post-graduate programs at Kensington College and few of the professors did any research. Most were strictly teachers, including myself. Faculty members wrote the occasional paper, and edited some textbooks, but no one was going to win a Nobel Prize.

“Well, I’m not sure,” she said. “That’s why I need you to go through the office first. I need you to find what he was working on.”

She made me promise to come by the office in the morning, and then hurried back to her remaining guests. I was left alone in the kitchen, wondering what it was Ted Shockley had been working on. Maybe a cookbook? A collection of his favorite recipes? Somehow I couldn’t accept the idea of Ted working on an important piece of research, or any research for that matter. I had always wanted to do research myself, but there was an inordinate amount of reading involved, and most of it was usually uninteresting or poorly written, sometimes both. And none of my ideas ever seemed good enough. Ted Shockley’s idea might be no better. Or maybe it wasn’t his idea at all. Maybe he got lucky and stumbled on something new. I bent down and pushed my fingers into the floor, to get a better sense of what I was standing on. The material was as agreeable to my hands as it was to my feet. It had a warmth and traction to it. If an uncarpeted floor could be inviting, this one was.

I went to the other side of the kitchen and looked through the doorway. Across the hall I could see Ted’s study, close at hand, probably situated there so he could keep an eye on the stove while he worked. If he really was working on something important, something he didn’t want other people to know about, wouldn’t he do it here at home? Surely this must have occurred to Elizabeth.

I went across the hall and stepped into the study, feeling I had been given tacit approval to do so. The floor was wood, not as comfortable as the kitchen floor, with an oriental rug laying in front of the desk. The desk was cleared, except for a computer and a landline phone. The bookshelves were empty, save for a series of references on European history that Shockley had edited. There was a distinct lack of clutter. Even the walls were bare, except for a framed photo of Shockley and two other men. They were sitting at a table in a restaurant, of course, looking very academic, as though they had been discussing weighty issues. Were these two men working on the secret project, too? Neither of them were familiar. They weren’t from the college. If Ted Shockley really admired me so much, why hadn’t he invited me to work with him? It all seemed rather tenuous, but I would soon learn otherwise.