GIRL IN BLACK
37
It had not been lust then which had bugged the janitor's eyes
and slavered his lips; only jealousy. J ealousy ! And knowing this,
Professor Snow knew himself widowed forever, and bent to the
lifelong task of fastening the bones back together into a semblance
of life, as the survivor in a house of death bends to his game
of solitaire.
II
"Are you sure you're looking for Humanities l02?" Professor
Frost asked, for the girl in the black raincoat had dropped his course
after the second day ; and he had been able to see her afterwards
only at a distance, scurrying across the campus with a motion of
the hips that even far off and under cloth had moved him desperate–
ly. "But I hate her," he had reminded himself on those occasions,
even as he was reminding himself now, "since in rejecting my course
she has rejected Dante as well as me."
This time he managed to say aloud only "Dante" before the
coat she had extended for an instant like demonic wings dropped
and she was revealed, her back to him, of course, quite naked, as
he had all along known her to be beneath the covering that con–
cealed nothing. "Tomorrow I will begin my book on the
Vita
Nuova,"
he said, more dazzled by the delicate nodes of her spine
than he would have thought, a little less moved by the pearl-pale
buttocks. Oddly enough, he spoke aloud; and, almost overcome by
embarrassment, remembered just in time that she had listened to
not a word he said during the brief period she had sat before him
in class. "Good," he said to himself, "excellent," and turned her
around quickly, stepping back just in time to avoid being hit in the
face (he crouched for the effort) by her large pallid breasts, the
nipples like purple bruises. Even before he saw what he knew only
after a baffled moment to be a Chastity Belt, he realized that he
had forgotten forever the names of the three indistinguishable flat–
chested women who had been up to the thirty-fifth year of his life
his
only mistresses.
"But how?" he asked, "what do I- "and followed her hand
which pointed delicately to the tag dangling between her
legs.
She
said nothing, and, indeed, he remembered he had never heard her
speak.
«To open,"
the legend on the tag read,
"first move Lever A
