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“Boarding for a week will be five dollars fifty,” Miss Bates says, while Jo looks around the parlour with keen interest. Miss Bates’ Boarding House for Gentile Ladies in Need can be found on the corner of the Ninth and Tenth Street, between a station of the firemen’s brigade and bakery. Its parlour radiates a positively red hue, slowly fading into a dull grey. Dust has seeped into everything from the carpet to the soft pink tapestry and the spines of books. At least there are books—wherever there are books Jo feels a little less lost and a little more at home.
She has come to New York to be free of Laurie’s sweet, overbearing affections, leaving dear Marmee and her sisters behind. But, despite embarking on a new world of her own, her first thought is still a letter home. Later, up in her little attic-room she opens the window, and lets in the suffocating, rigid summer air and the music that floats in with it. It must come from the parlour, the soft sound of the piano whose every note feels like a waterdrop on her travel-worn heart, guiding her pen along the scratchy paper. It reminds her of Beth, sweet Beth, who would very well deserve a place in the holy books for all her saintly goodness.
The melody changes, distorts to a cacophony of sounds as someone smashes the keys, jolting her out of her reverie. Then it’s over. The noise of the Great City filters out any remaining sounds, and Jo closes her window on the sweltering summer heat. It’s soon dinner, and she decides to leave her letter to the night, where, by the candlelight, she can afford herself the luxury of privacy again. For now, she satisfies with going downstairs to see, and perhaps meet the other inhabitants of the boarding house.
The dining room is empty, the parlour deserted—whoever played on the piano is evidently gone. She only chances a glance into the kitchen, then jerks her head back, before the wide mistress of the kitchen, hard at work, could yell at her for loitering. Instead she discovers for herself the laundry-room, a cramped, steam-filled little room in the basement, then she walks along the row of doors on the corridors. Finally, she returns to the parlour to run her eyes through the faded titles on the bookshelves. She eventually settles down in one of the armchairs with an edition of Wordsworth—she looks around before she throws one leg over the arm of the chair, and she begins to read, losing herself in the melody of the words.
She resurfaces two hours later to the sound of the dinner bell. Doors swing open, feet trample on the floor, and the desolate house swarms to life. Seven women sit around the long dining room table, more focused on the lamb they are being served than on the newcomer; nevertheless, when she accidentally crosses their line of sight, they greet her with friendly nods, and help her to the potato. Plates exchange hands, cutlery clatters, and the well-bred, gentile ladies of the boarding house laugh and twitter. Jo sits at the corner of the table, eating as well as the others. The lamb and potato is not much and it runs out quickly, but it’s rich and filling. There’s no dessert, no coffee, and even the luke-warm tea has to be asked for twice, but eventually it arrives for two of the ladies.
They vary in age, build and hair-colour; the oldest is well-over forty, and the youngest seems to be around seven, belonging to her mother, a little, doe-eyed woman of five and twenty. Miss Bates circumnavigates the table, making sure everybody is full and satisfied.
“Professor Bhaer, please—” She snatches a barely lit pipe out of her hands, and Professor Bhaer sighs.
“Beg pardon, madame.” Her soft, round curves are startlingly different from anything Jo has ever seen: her sister’s elegant features or her own sharp edges. It’s intriguing. There’s a strong accent coating her words when she speaks, her dark eyes gleaming with mischief as she takes back her pipe.
“It’s not ladylike to smoke, Professor Bhaer,” reproves her Miss Bates, “especially not in company.”
She buries the pipe in the pocket of her vest. Her gaze meets Jo’s own, and Jo feels her cheeks warm with a curious heat, as though she’s done something inappropriate. But Professor Bhaer just squints at her, and says, “It is always nice to see new faces in our little home.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m Jo,” she says, trying to conjure up Amy’s elegance for a flicker of a thought.
“Professor Friderika Bhaer.” She must be around thirty, but her eyes are bright as youth. Her dark hair is put up in a tight bun, and there’s a shiny sheen of sweat over her thin, pink upper lip. Jo flinches, when she realizes she’s been staring at her mouth, but Professor Bhaer just smiles, and stands, bidding goodbye to the company for the night. That is all—Jo’s first meeting with Professor Friderika Bhaer, who will soon come to change her life.
*
There’s a storm brewing in the sweltering heat. The dark clouds enclosing the sky keep it in, and it builds, and it builds, until with a crash of lightning the tension breaks, and there it is: the perfect summer storm in the middle of the afternoon. Jo’s writing desk is close to a window—the wind whirls up her papers and knocks over her inkpots. She scrambles to close it, rain beating against her face, drenching her from head to toe until her hair sticks to her forehead in wet strands. The storm is stronger than her. The wind bursts open the window with a bang, the windowpane scrapes against Jo’s hand as she snatches after it.
“Let me help!” Another pair of arms joins the struggle, until they’re able to close the window with their joint forces. Only now, in the tamed pitter-pattering of the rain, can Jo examine her saviour, and she takes a step back in surprise.
“Professor Bhaer…”
“Miss March,” she nods. There’s a humming in her s-s. “I heard yelling.”
“Thank you.” As a writer, Jo’s aware how the continuity of these sentences makes no sense, but Professor Bhaer understands her all the same, and she smiles.
“Always a pleasure to help a boarding fellow.” She nods, then she’s off; a few moments later, while cleaning her desk, Jo sees her round form step out of the house, wet to the point of darkness in a matter of minutes. What on earth is she doing outside in such weather?
Jo spends the afternoon composing her letter—one such intelligence takes her more than one day since she can never be satisfied with just that day’s events. Besides, sending a letter through states is no cheap business, and a lady in Jo’s position is ought to be economic. She wonders about her new serial too, taken up by the Mercury, about lovable rogues and soft, rosebud-pink heroines. The first two chapters have been popular with her audience, and now Jo plans to introduce the leader of the highwaymen, a horrible, dark, fearsome man, who will turn out to be the heroine’s long-lost older brother who is believed to have perished in a shipwreck. As it will turn out, he hasn’t; instead, he has taken up robbery, and Jo can almost hear his diabolical laughter when the sound of the dinner bell jolts her out of her reverie. With a heavy sigh, she resolves to finish her letter some other time, she’s daydreamed the time away so.
Rushing down the stairs, she thinks once again of Professor Bhaer, whether she has come back from her mysterious errand in the storm. Indeed, she has, and now she sits on the left side of the table, smoking her pipe.
“Professor!” says Miss Bates reproachfully.
Jo feels the corners of her lips stray for a smile at the Professor’s comically heavy sigh. She hopes to sit next to her, but she has no such luck; she’s forced to the opposite side of the table, so she cannot help but lean forward in a most unladylike manner when she starts up the conversation.
“It sure is daring to leave the house in such dreadful weather!” The rain is still beating on the windows, and although there are no trees nearby, the wind shakes the very core of the house.
“Don’t worry about me, dear Miss March, my daring deed has been worth it.”
“Is that so?”
“Indeed. I have secured my reading for tonight.”
“So you’ve run out for a book!”
There’s that smile again, that all-knowing soft smile playing on those too pink lips.
“I heard you’re fond of books yourself, Miss March. I would say you have ventured as far as to write them.”
In a moment of clumsiness, Jo drops the large spoon for the potatoes, while taking it from her neighbour. The spoon clatters into the bowl. Jo’s cheeks feel ablaze with a terrible heat.
“How…”
The Professor nods towards Jo’s inky fingers, and she hides them under the table, grabbing fistfuls of her own skirt. Professor Bhaer laughs.
“Oh, no, no, do not be embarrassed, Miss March, writing is a wonderful vocation. I wish I had the favour of the Muse, but alas, I am too much of a critic, and too little an artist.”
“You’re a professor of…?”
“Literature, yes. German literature, but I am a devoted admirer of your beautiful language. Shakespeare, for instance… Oh, I could hold lectures on Shakespeare.”
“I’m afraid I’m no Shakespeare,” Jo says, and her voice trembles with a bitter envy.
“Do not fear, Miss March.” Professor Bhaer smiles at her, before she devotes her attention to her mashed potatoes. “You do not have to be a genius to create something worthwhile.”
*
The next time Jo sees her, the Professor is on her knees in the moderately dignified position of a racehorse under little Tina, the house’s youngest boarder. Jo watches it all through a crack in the parlour door, where she’s peered in for merely a moment, but then she’s stayed, captivated. The Professor’s dark hair is affray, her face flushed as she trots ‘round the room on her hands and knees, while little Tina screams, “Faster, faster!” Jo presses a hand to her mouth to suppress her laughter, and in her careless amusement she leans against the door. It gives in to her weight, and she tumbles into the room.
The Professor startles.
“I didn’t mean to—” Jo starts, but she cuts off, when the mother of little Tina dashes past her.
“Tina, dearest, I told you not to bother the Professor!”
The Professor looks oddly relieved, when the fussing Tina gets lifted off her, and led out in a string of apology.
“No problem, no problem at all, she has behaved like an angel,” she assures the mother as she follows behind, sparing Jo only a cordial nod. It leaves Jo feeling guilty for some unspeakable reason.
The next time they meet it is at dinner. The Professor eats like always, takes out her pipe like always, puts it away with a grimace like always, still, something’s amiss. Her eyes never once wander towards Jo—she starts shivering without the playful warmth of her gaze. What is it that she has done?
She attempts to start up a conversation, summoning Amy’s grace from the distance.
“I hope you had a pleasant day, Professor.”
“Thank you, Miss March.” The smile she receives is dry as the summer day, but Jo sees an opening.
“I hear you’re giving lessons.”
“Yes. I teach German to curious young ladies, who wish to broaden their mind. Do you wish to take lessons also?”
Jo jumps, when she knocks over the salt, a nervous giggle escapes her lips. “Oh, dear…”
The Professor reaches over to help her, so in a wave of possessive bravery, Jo catches the Professor’s wrist and asks, “What have I done?”
“I am afraid I do not follow, Miss March.” The Professor cocks her head to the side. “What have you done?”
There’s a gentle cough behind Jo.
“It’s not particularly ladylike to hold hands over the dinner table,” says Miss Bates, the all-seeing eye of the dining room, and Jo lets go of the Professor as if she has burnt her. Her temper has got the better of her again despite all these years of practice. She apologizes to the Professor profusely, and she’s quick to finish her dinner in burning silence. But escaping to her room holds no relief; she paces around in anxious circles, replaying the conversation in her head. Such a fool she was, such a nervous fool, losing her temper so disgracefully because the Professor treated her a tad coolly—Not even that, the Professor treated her the same as always, it was only her unreasonable guilt that tainted the evening. Because what has the Professor ever done? Not looked at her perhaps—but perhaps it was indeed a little bit rude to look everywhere except at Jo...
Her temper flares up again, and she bursts out of her room into the suffocating darkness of the corridor. She can hear little Tina’s giggles and her mother’s tired, faint voice. She can hear Miss Bates praying softly in the room at the top of the stairs. She can hear a young lady cough; another sighs, she can hear the creaks of her bed. Her steps are unsteady as she moves towards the Professor’s room, but before she could knock, she feels the pull of a warm breeze on her cheeks. At the end of the corridor, the door to the balcony is open, and there is a sudden, quick light, a pipe being lit. The Professor is out there.
It’s the heat that chases Jo after her. It’s the bated breath of summer that strips her off all manners, so she goes, and stands next to the Professor.
“Miss March,” she nods. She’s looking at the city ahead, the ever-building yellow lights.
“What have I done?” Jo asks. “What have I done for you to treat me like this?”
Finally, the Professor turns to face her.
“If I was ever impolite to you, I apologize. It was never my intention to offend dear Miss March.”
Jo’s cheeks are ablaze.
“I think—I have the distinct sense that I am being avoided.” She puts it into words as gingerly as she can, but she feels it still manages to offend. She startles, when the Professor bursts into laughter.
“You are young.” She shakes her head. “You are young, Miss March, and you are passionate, so surprising to an old woman like me.”
“What do you—”
“I am ashamed, Miss March,” the Professor cuts her off, smiling. “I am ashamed, and being so, turn away my head.”
“Ashamed?” echoes Jo. “What does such a woman like you ever need to be ashamed of?”
“You are too kind.” The Professor turns to the city again. “But I have fought so long and so hard for respect in my field. Would it be possible for me not to feel ashamed when I am unmasked as an old woman who plays horse for children’s games?”
Jo casts her eyes down, silent. Only now can she see—the Professor is barefoot.
“And you, Miss March—Can you respect me the same as before?” she asks.
“I can. I do.” She can say that with perfect certainty that’s bigger than her. “And I do wish to take lessons.”
The Professor smiles. “Now you are only humouring me.”
But Jo feels a little lighter, a little easier than before. The balance of the world has been restored, and Professor Bhaer’s warm gaze has once again found its object.
*
The Professor is a wonderful teacher, patient, even when it’s the third time the words roll off Jo’s tongue all wrong; too smooth when they should be rough, and too rough where softness is required. Watching the Professor speak her mother tongue is still a peculiar pleasure amidst her own hesitant fumbling with the new language. And the Professor understands, she knows the difficulty of learning something new, for she spent her whole life learning.
“How did you become a professor?” Jo asks to catch her breath in-between tables of verbs.
The Professor just smiles.
“No, no, Miss March, in this room we only speak German.”
So Jo gathers her scarce knowledge of German to ask, “Where you studied?” The Professor gently corrects her before she says,–
“In Switzerland. Now please look at this next table of words—”
“Why Switzerland?” Jo cuts her off. There’s a hint of lenient irritation in the Professor’s eyes.
“Why, Miss March, do you wish to study in Switzerland as well?”
Jo colours.
“No, I—” She could never afford that, and besides, her affinity lies elsewhere. She merely wants—She simply has the faint wish to see the Professor’s lips move with the taste of her mother tongue again. “I was only asking. General curiosity, I suppose.”
“Or maybe you find my lessons too dry.” The Professor says this as good-naturedly as she says everything else, but Jo is still struck with horror at the possibility of offending her.
“No, absolutely not, I—”
The Professor takes her hand, and Jo stills. Doesn’t even breathe.
“Why, Miss March, do I frighten you?” The Professor pulls away. “I was simply going to suggest seeing a play by the local university’s German Association. It would be a precious opportunity to hear other ways of pronunciation besides my own.”
“Do you think I’d understand a whole play?” Jo’s voice is unusually faint, even to her own ears.
“If not, I am more than glad to translate.” Jo can already feel the Professor’s warmth next to her, her breath on her hot cheeks in the darkness of the theatre, but then she adds, “It is a wonderful teaching opportunity, Miss March, I will bring all my students if you don’t mind.”
A twinge to her heart. It smarts.
“Of course not.”
It’s not the first time she has felt like this. There have been women—beautiful, smart, talented women—who left her similarly breathless, who pulled her in like gravity, who struck a chord in her heart. She has felt like this many time, but the ache of it, that forbidden warmth of it hasn’t dulled. What was she expecting, really? The Professor must have many similar admirers among her students, Jo isn’t special, nor particularly interesting to the Professor, there’s no need for her to invite Jo alone. And maybe it’s better for the both of them she hasn’t. What would her father say if she pursued this queer attraction? What would Marmee think? And would Jo herself be brave enough to fight for her desires?