He stands up from the boxes and looks out the window. To the east, in the distance, rises the steeple of a chapel, fragile and faint. The light changes. A cloud drifts over the sun. Then the sun is uncovered again, the little room fills up with light.
He lets down the blinds but keeps the slats open. Strips of light slide from the wall to the floor. He returns to his boxes, unpacks. A set of keys. A faded photograph of a young woman with auburn hair. Two old letters from John. These last things he puts carefully in a drawer. Most of the boxes are books. He stacks them against the wall, the muscles flexing in his arms. The room darkens as another cloud passes over the sun, lightens, darkens again.
Now he lies on the upholstered couch in the corner. He begins writing. He writes on a white pad of paper, wavy lines and strange signs, mathematical symbols. He closes his eyes for a while, begins writing again. Someone knocks at his door, but he doesn't hear. He imagines corrugated surfaces, magnified again and again. He calculates and imagines, while the room glows and dims and the sun slides slowly across the floor.
Dr. Lang, let me say again that it's good to have you on the faculty, says the dean. Bennett smiles. The dean, an historian, is small but long, with a thin, tubular neck that protudes far beyond his collar. His eyes lie close together. He has the manner of an animal accustomed to darkness and damp.
excerpted from Good Benito (pages 3-4)
A Novel by Alan Lightman (copyright 1994)
published by Warner Books (1996)