Afterward, when the academic focus of the evening ended and something approaching a social hour began, Maximilian Fein appeared to be in an excellent mood. He drifted among his student guests like any responsible host; he laughed more frequently and with more warmth than usual; Marya was gratified that he paid so much attention, however obliquely and circumspectly, to her. He was witty, entertaining. A master of the wayward and revealing detail—the detail that suddenly sets an entire relationship into perspective. Did they know, for instance, that Freud’s wife Martha was a compulsive housekeeper and husbandkeeper, so attentive to her genius that she even put toothpaste on his toothbrush daily? And the motherly wife of one of the local geniuses (a youngish mathematician: no names supplied) not only brought his food to him on a tray three times a day, but bathed him, shampooed his hair, helped him dress every morning . . . while his brain spun its incalculable fancies and his eyeballs rolled inward. “The privilege of genius appears to be a curse to others,” Fein observed. “But in fact it provides a sacred obligation, a religious ‘path,’ to the close-at-hand—the adoring spouse; and, by way of the spouse, the larger world is served. Thus genius is a phenomenon of symbiosis; it can only be a relationship, not a condition in itself.”

Marya could hear his voice distinctly. The Germanic—southern Germanic—accent; the erratic rhythm of the sentences—slow and almost drawling, rapid at the close. She could see the gleam of his metal-framed glasses but of course she could not see his eyes.

Before meeting Fein, Marya would not have thought that one might have a sacred obligation to another person; she had long given up—in fact she had rejected with distaste—the very notion of the convent, the cloistered life, decades spent in selfless adoration of Christ. It had not occurred to her that there might exist mortal versions of Christ . . . human and secular saviors. But then she had lived her life until now in what she saw as a remote and irrelevant corner of the world.

She meant to leave; she saw with surprise that a half-hour had passed rapidly by. But some books on a nearby shelf drew her attention—old editions of the Bardo Thödol with numerous commentaries by English, German, French, Italian scholars. And here, close at hand, Theologie und Glaube, A History of Satan in the Netherlands, Finnische und Estnische Volksmärchen. In an old mahogany cabinet, untidy copies of The Journal of Modern Gnostic Studies dating back to 1946; a yellowed stack of offprints of an article by Fein himself (“The Coniunctio of Male and Female in the Drawings of Opicinus de Canistris”) published in the Winter 1958 issue. Squatting, her leg muscles beginning to ache, Marya read excitedly through the essay. It dealt with issues Fein was to explore some years later, in more detailed form, in his masterful study of the medieval, Quête du Saint Graal. She wondered: Would anyone ever notice, if she took a copy of the essay away with her? . . . for it was an offprint, after all, printed up to be given away to colleagues and students; surely, if Fein knew of her interest, he would happily give it to her, perhaps even with an inscription.