Free The Grasshopper King by Jordan Ellenberg Page A

consonants.
    â€œYou just said one twice,” she’d say, and I’d go back, repeating, trying to illuminate the difference between the dental and semipalatal t , the proper position of the tongue.
    Or: “What does that one mean?”—although of course she already knew.
    â€œI kicked the dog,” I told her, pretending to think about it, playing along.
    â€œThat poor dog,” she said. “Every single night.”
    â€œIt depends on the translation. Tonight the dog deserved it.”
    She pursed her lips like a skeptical child; but what followed was adult enough, and any doubts I may have had were put aside.
    I’m wondering now what sort of impression I’ve given of Julia. I had taken her at first for a free spirit, a carpe-deist—mostly, perhaps, on the basis that she was willing to sleep with me. I had thought we’d always be doing foolish and impressive things, things she’d have to drag me into but that afterwards I’d agree we couldn’t have missed. But she was not exactly that type. I had assumed—on the same basis—that she had been promiscuous; but in fact, I was only her third lover (how I hate that word) and by far the one she had least made to wait. She had withheld herself, I learned, even from the carnie who’d made off with her. “I think I meant to do it,” she said, “but somehow my back hurt fromall the driving and there was never a convenient time.” No barefoot cartwheels through the sprinklers for Julia, no sudden changes of hair color, never a ludicrous purchase. She wasn’t shy, but only duty made her really sociable. With my parents she was easy and deferent; she praised my mother’s couscous and seemed, even to me, to mean it. At heart, I’d learned, she was deeply domestic; she seemed happy enough staying home with me, sitting at her desk in the opposite leg of our L , writing her thesis as my egg salad waned.
    She must never have imagined we would stay together so long. I think her idea, conscious or not, was to do something about my awfulness; and that, by now, she had accomplished. But something made her stay. I do not want to exaggerate my charms. It may be that I was still more awful than I thought.
    Thinking back now, it seems to me that those dog-kicking weeks were the happiest time I have known. I have it absolutely clear: the comforting hum and clack of Julia’s electric typewriter from around the corner, so sharp I imagine I can reproduce the rhythm of it, whole sentences at a time. Effortlessly I can call to mind the taste of egg yolk and mayonnaise lingering on my tongue and on the ridge behind my teeth; and I could describe, if I chose, every flaw in the bricks of the wall I faced. On that wall, just above the edge of my desk, someone (a long-ago line worker, I supposed) had chiseled out the words, “ THIS IS THE LIFE .” At the time it must have been ironic. But for me—my hyperextended tantrum of an adolescence forgotten, my meeting with Higgs and all that followed still ahead—it was the plain truth. What could I do but agree? Guilelessly, with all my heart?

CHAPTER 3
    LITTLE BUG, LITTLE BUG
    One morning in January, McTaggett asked me about my plans for the future. We were sitting in the shabby coffee shop where we had shifted our meetings some weeks before. Our relationship, removed from the classroom, had grown informal. As often as not we would pass over the elided ultrasubjunctive entirely and devote our hour to departmental politics, the day’s news, the generally degraded status of the college and the state. McTaggett always looked unhappy; on occasion he visibly despaired, and the best mood he ever mustered was downcast. At the same time he took a frantic interest in my own good cheer. Whenever I showed any reaction to one of his gloomy anecdotes, he seemed startled and ashamed.
    â€œHey, but no,” he’d say, “don’t let this old man