Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz Read Free Book Online Page B

Nina’s and Esther’s second-floor dormitory room with the beige institutional curtains and brown bedspreads on the twin beds. Esther and I were the restless ones, changing our places nightly—the beds, the floor, the windowsill. Nina and Gabrielle were always, reliably, where they were. Gabrielle sat on the new amber shag rug that was losing its glow from absorbing Esther’s cigarette ash. She would have preferred a bare floor but she made do. Long-legged, hard-muscled, and ponytailed, Gaby did warm-ups in second position, flexing and pointing her bare feet, widening nightly the angle between her thighs till by graduation it was close to a hundred eighty degrees. In our freshman year she had directed a modern-dance performance illustrating the myth of Prometheus. That was how we became friends. We were in the corps, cavorting after her as she leaped magnificently across the gym, a living torch, even her flying hair one of the deeper shades of flame.
    Nina took the single armchair, rust-colored. She fit in it best, neatly combed and neatly dressed in tweed skirts and nylon stockings that she didn’t remove till bedtime. She always looked impeccably like a lady. Her oval face, with its straight, clean features, was never shiny; her dark hair never escaped its pins. Everything about her face and body was fine and understated, so that later, when she deliberately cultivated glamor, it was like adorning a neutral base. I didn’t room with Nina, so I never saw her in morning disarray. But even in the required swimming course she remained herself, tall, slender, and composed in the regulation tank suit which made the rest of us anonymous. Our lockers were adjacent; as she undressed she folded away every light and clean undergarment. She never complained about menstruation, as everyone else in swimming sooner or later did; there was never a sign of it; she was unspotted and strove to believe the world was likewise. The years to come would unravel her beliefs and blot her purity, but leave her ladyhood intact.
    Earth, water, air, fire, Professor Boles told us the first day of The History of Philosophy 101. The story began simply. The second week they were all three out with flu. I was delegated to take good notes and report back without fail, as if the course were a serialized detective story. I went to the sickroom around midnight, fixed them tea and handed around the notes. Esther and Nina huddled under blankets, Nina in a bathrobe for once.
    “She’s still wearing that gray tweed suit but she changed the blouse. And her hair wasn’t so wild today, and she had lipstick on. Maybe she was going out to lunch. The best thing she said isn’t even in the notes. You know how she tosses out these little gems? It’s not really philosophy, I guess. Thales, the one who said everything was water, also figured out how to measure the height of a pyramid. If you were ancient Greeks and had to measure the height of a pyramid, what would you do?” Silence. I crossed the room and paused a moment, for suspense. “He waited until that time of day when a man’s shadow became equal to his height. Then he measured the shadow of the pyramid.”
    They didn’t seem very interested.
    “Actually,” said Nina, “he could have measured a man’s shadow at any time of day and then applied whatever proportion he found to the pyramid.”
    “God, she’s so smart,” said Esther despairingly from her bed. It was true, Nina was extremely smart. I certainly would not have thought of that. Did Thales? And yet it did not have the same poetic Tightness.
    “For some reason,” I said, “that little story fills me with wonder. Why is that?”
    “Because,” said Gabrielle. She was lying on the floor groaning with muscle aches but flexing and pointing her feet so as not to waste time. “Because it’s based simply on the measure of a man. Or it could be a woman just as easily. From the size and scope of one human body you can discover immense secrets