Professor stopped talking and looked into the sea where a seagull was still diving for a mackerel.
" What attracted you to her?" I asked.
Professor sighed and said: " Her eyes, how much peace I attained just by looking. Her eyes; how wonderful earth felt when I looked into her eyes. Whenever we were alone she wanted to learn. I explained quantum mechanics, geophysical terminology, and English literature. I had much to teach and she was a fine student, with a flexible mind. She was never afraid to admit her ignorance. She asked many questions:
" `Is it necessary for there to be a difference between energy and matter? May I join independent clauses by a comma?'
" I wondered at her lust for learning. Once we were having get-together party, she turned away to ask me something about the transit effects of light and colour in Impressionist painting. One day she was holding a big bundle of books from the library. I asked when she got time to read all those heavy books.
" `I have always time, professor. This is the best way to prevent fear and loneliness.'
" I kissed her hand and said; `I love it when you speak like this, I love your knowledge which sparkles in your eyes. How can I forget that evening when I delivered a lecture on astronomical history?'
" She held my hand and said, You are a wonderful man. It is no wonder you have such success in your work!'
" I blushed at this, red as a boiled lobster. She smiled and said, Your modesty makes you all the more adorable.'
" She was an intelligent girl. I loved her mind. You know what made her distinctive from other girls? Other girls were collections of body parts controlled by a mind, but she was a mind supported by body parts.
" She had only one dream in her life: that was to travel across space and visit the moon. Since her childhood she had been dreaming it. Once she told me about her childhood, spent in the poor village of India. Her secondary school Education passed in a blur of solitary break times, wandering the school grounds or sitting under trees with a pad and pen; lunch breaks in the library, accompanied only by science fiction, right thumb sucked in deepest concentration, left gripping the pen. At home, after completing homework, she would spend her time in dreaming of space and moon. She passed exams with distinction but it was nothing for her. This
Page | 67