Tales From the Massage Parlour
At the risk of repeating myself, I am never surprised at who walks into the Parlour. We’ve seen them all here, priests, cab drivers, bishops, roofers, builders, academics; you name him and he’s a client at the Blue Eden. John_ seventy-five percent of our callers are called John, the name John must somehow mysteriously make them more randy_ once stopped dead in the middle of some action, sat up and started mumbling to himself. Then he began waving and his hands strangely, pursed his lips, smiled and nodded. He apologised and said that he needed to go as the idea he had just had needed immediate attention. He’ll come back in a day or two. He paid and pulled his trousers up without washing himself, and left. He turned up next day looking pleased and relaxed. He explained that he had been stuck for a year on a thorny point in his research, but lo and behold, while he was in the middle of the fuck yesterday he saw the light. And did your idea work? I asked. You bet, he said. He was up all night polishing the rough edges and sent the paper to The Annals of Mathematics for publication this morning. He had a great come that day.
He visited me quite regularly. He had told me once that his wife had left him for his post-graduate student, and admitted that it was his fault. He did not mean to neglect her, or not to listen to her, but when Galois theory takes possession of your mind, it’s like a drug. You lose your appetite, your notion of time. If an idea occurs to you at four in the morning, you jumped out of bed and worked on it. You lost all sense of time, you were never hungry or thirsty, you stop listening to people, only the voice in your head mattered. And your wife left you.
‘And I’ll you in strict confidence, Jodie, I once wet myself at my desk. I had not felt the need to pee, the signals were there, but I was too absorbed by my equation.’ I did not tell him, but I too, when I am stressed and have nightmares every night, have been known to wet my bed.
John_ I gathered later that he was Gabriel_ once told me that unsurprisingly he had had no real friends since Amelia left him, that I was about the only person he socialised with. He was not in love with me, rest assured, he said, but the hour he spent with me every week was much more important for the human rapport than for the sex.
Then last week Gabriel came in, and in no time at all we were downstairs.
‘Did you wake up in the middle of the night last night?’ I teased. No, he replied, at the moment he was really taking a break as his brain could not handle anything serious after the incredible result that he had achieved.
So we got down to business. In the middle of our hoos and hahs his mobile phone rang. He shook his head, he was not going to answer it. Go on, I urged, it might be important. Reluctantly he picked it and answered. I could not hear the conversation, but after three minutes when he had finished, he was shaking. Bad news? I asked. He could not answer but started blinking at a rate of knots. I stared at him like an idiot.
‘Just been told I’d won a Field’s,’ he muttered.
‘What’ a Field’s when it’s at home,’ I asked. By now his shaking had doubled in intensity.
‘D’you know the Nobel Prize?’ he asked. Sort of, I nodded. The Field’s medal, he explained, is the highest accolade awarded to a mathematician_ a sort of Nobel Prize for mathematicians. Like one million euros on top of everything. You get invited to all the big universities to talk about your work and get massive fees. Good on you, I said.
‘You must help me celebrate,’ he said. Sure. After a minute, he asked where would I like to go. There’s an Italian restaurant on The Bridges_, I began, but he stopped me.
‘No, I mean, a holiday abroad, a couple of weeks at least, just say the word.’
‘Iceland,’ I blurted out. Great idea, he said, then Iceland it is. He’d tell me next week the dates when he can do it.
When he came next week he was looking pretty glum. I dared not question him, but he answered my unasked question.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘told you I don’t have friends, but didn’t know I had enemies. That call was a hoax!’
