Evastina was surprised to see Heiberg out of bed, standing near the stove in nothing but his long underwear. Heiberg too was shocked. He just gaped and put his finger to the corner of his eye.
        "There are some men who've come up to see you, Professor. I thought I'd better--"
        "Men?"
        "The mayor and four others. Quick. You'd better get back in bed. What on earth were you up to anyway?"
        "Just a bath. You may not believe it but I do bathe occasionally, Evastina."
        "A bath? But it's still far too cold in here," Evastina chided, grabbing a blanket from the bed and throwing it over his shoulders.
        Heiberg was irked and began to cough.
        "See?" she said with kindly fury. "Just listen to that nasty cough."
        "What on earth can they want with me?"
        "You can't guess?" She was in motion everywhere, picking up the book of Jacobson's poems he had dropped by the bed, smoothing his sheets, plumping up his pillows.
        "Now get in and I'll stay and make tea."
        Heiberg did as he was told, feeling less like a child than as if he and Evastina shared the tacit solidarity of a married couple preparing for unwelcome but unavoidable guests.
        Only after he was settled and well covered up did Evastina consent to open the door. The men trudged in, stamping their feet. The mayor growled about being kept waiting in the cold, pulled off his gloves, and blew ostentatiously on his fingers.
        Evastina went to the kitchen while the men surrounded Heiberg's bed. Of course the mayor did the talking. He explained about the thing on the beach. This he did clumsily and Evastina was pleased to note that Heiberg did not make things easier for him by mentioning what she had already told him.
        " . . . And so, Professor Heiberg," the mayor wound up rather lamely, "it seemed to us that you might be able to tell us what it is."
        "From the little you've just said I can hardly tell a thing. Do you men have anything to add?"
        Three of the men shook their heads.
        "Maybe you could come and have a look for yourself," suggested the fourth.
        "That's impossible!" Evastina thundered from the kitchen. "Can't you see he's not well enough to go out now the weather's turned?"
        They were all abashed. Everyone knew that Heiberg had come to the island to die. It was obvious. He smiled at the men and gave a helpless shrug as if to say, "What can I do? Women rule us all." Aloud he assumed a professional tone, "If I'm to tell you anything I'll need better information. To begin with some accurate drawings. And a number of technical observations and three or four measurements."
        Evastina carried in a wooden tray with mugs of tea for everyone. "I'll see to it for you," she announced. "I'm quite good at drawing."
        The two youngest fishermen blushed.
        In his late twenties Heiberg developed a condition that plagued him for weeks on end. He finally consulted an eye specialist. This worthy gentleman listened to Heiberg's description of his symptoms with a knowing smile and, when he had finished, nodded twice, leaned forward on his leather chair, and put his hands on his knees.
        "Your condition's not in the least uncommon or likely to have serious consequences, though I grant the persistence of the muscle contractions for several weeks is unusual. Unusual and, for you, doubtless unpleasant. As a scientist you'll appreciate knowing the name of your malady. It is called Eyelid Myokymia, which is a sub-form of the uncontrolled spasm of muscle tissue called in general Myoclonus. As you say, it's not particularly painful in itself but a considerable annoyance all the same. In cases more extreme than your own it can manifest itself as a distorting twitch and even occluded vision. The sole treatment in these instances is to inject the muscles of the eye with a relaxant compound. This yields only temporary relief and, frankly, is out of the question in a case as mild as yours."
        "So I just have to live with it?"
        The doctor shrugged good-naturedly.
        The fact of having lost control over even so small a part of his body as an eyelid was all but intolerable to Heiberg. He had tried rubbing, warm compresses, darkness.
        "The condition is often exacerbated, some even say triggered, by specific behavioral factors. These include lack of sleep, the consumption of caffeine, stress, smoking, and eyestrain."
        "Of all of which I can boast."
        The doctor grinned as though Heiberg had just said something droll. "I thought as much. Well, you could try sleeping more, reading less, giving up your briar and your coffee. It might help, but then, to be perfectly frank, it might not."
        "No rewards even for renunciation?"
        The doctor threw up his hands in a paroxysm of mirth. "Your condition is what we medical types call idiopathic, Dr. Heiberg."
        "A fine word!"
        "Indeed it is, one which places a decorous cover over the unplumbed abyss of our ignorance, you might say."
        Heiberg left the expert having gained nothing but a very slightly augmented vocabulary.
        His condition continued to trouble Heiberg, sometimes waxing, at others waning and, worst of all, without any determinable pattern. He was never free of it for more than a week. Anything might set if off--brushing his eye while washing, a prolonged stare, late reading, even just waking up. He took to studying his face in the mirror, fascinated by the vibrating muscle below his right eye clenching and unclenching all on its own, as if it contained a tiny beating heart. After fifteen minutes or so this twittering made for a slight pressure on his eye to which he responded by placing the tip of his forefinger on the offending muscle and pressing lightly. While this gesture did not by any means end the contractions, it did ease the pressure a little. Before long this gesture became unconscious, itself a sort of tic.
        One evening at the end of a university banquet Heiberg found himself seated next to Evald Hanson, an emeritus professor of chemistry. Hanson was asking him about the latest theories on the nature of light--waves or particles or both?--when he observed that Heiberg kept pressing his finger to his eye.
        "A twitch, eh?"
        "I'm sorry. Myokymia of the eyelid. It's driving me crazy."
        "I can well believe it. I myself suffered from myokymia when I was your age. Perhaps it's a sort of occupational hazard."
        "Perhaps so."
        Hanson stubbed out his cigar and turned his head toward Heiberg. "Would you care to hear an odd story?"
        "Certainly."
        Hanson took a sip of port before beginning. "When my own twitching began it was much worse than yours appears to be. I honestly thought I'd lose my mind. Everybody noticed it, you see, so it was an embarrassment to me in company as well as an irritant when I was alone. If people mentioned it I was chagrined, and if they said nothing it was even worse. One day I went to buy a new suit. My tailor was an old Jew named Feingold. I had been going to him for years, ever since my father took me to him for my first suit. He was almost an uncle.
        " 'That twitching in your eye,' he said, 'it bothers you?'
        "I answered him rather sharply. 'Of course it does.'
        " 'You've been to see a doctor then?'
        "I told him that I had but that nothing could be done for me.
        " 'I thought as much,' Feingold said, and he proposed that I visit a certain rabbi, a refugee who had only recently arrived in the city.
        "I assured him that it would be pointless. 'Not only am I not a Jew, Feingold, I'm an atheist.'
        "The tailor shrugged. 'Suit yourself,' he said, 'but this rabbi is said to be very wise. Over there in the East they know plenty of things we don't. Let me just give you his address. Perhaps you'll change your mind.'
        "Not wishing to offend Feingold, I took the slip of paper he pressed on me, put it in my pocket and promptly forgot all about it. However, a week or so later--another week of unrelieved torment--I was clearing out my pockets before having the suit cleaned and there was the address of the wonder-working rabbi.
        "You can well imagine what sort of condition I was in when I tell you that I actually went to see the man. It turned out to be a remarkable experience."
        Hanson paused to summon a waiter and fortify himself with another glass of port.
        "And did this miracle rabbi from the East cure you?" Heiberg asked facetiously as the old man's glass was being filled.
        "No, but listen. I found him living in one room in a building next to the old synagogue; you know, the one near the custom house that burned down it must be twenty years ago. The room was so crammed with books it was a wonder anyone could live in it. I had expected an old man with a long white beard and a fringed prayer shawl. I had always assumed rabbis were all old men, but to my surprise this one was a young fellow of about my own age.
        "I knocked and he let me in. He cleared a space for me on the couch that must have served as his bed and offered me some tea which he served not in a cup but in a glass and then he began chattering amusingly about his neighbors who kept chickens in their apartment. I was fascinated by his accent and his exceptional vitality. I listened to the whole story of the poultry without interrupting. Only then did he ask me why I'd come.
        "I couldn't hide my embarrassment at being there; in fact, I decided to make up some story or other and get away as soon as possible. But, of course, he noticed my twitch and interrupted whatever cock-and-bull story I was telling him. 'Now, now, you're here because of your eye, aren't you, Professor?'
        "I was astounded and complimented him on what I took to be his preternatural insight. He laughed and observed that skeptics are the most gullible people because they don't know what to believe. The remark was impertinent but made with such good humor that I too had to laugh. Of course then he told me that Feingold had already informed him about my case.
        " 'Judging by your hesitation, Professor, would it be fair to say that you are, in a certain sense, here against your will?'
        " 'That's putting it a little strongly,' I said.
        " 'Then I apologize. You must forgive me. I am merely a humble immigrant while you are a famous professor, a man of science. Let me tell you a little story. If it fails to enlighten at least it may amuse you. Once in the university town of Lvov a great scientist, not unlike yourself, was walking through the streets with his students trailing behind him when they came on a little Jewish boy who was hurrying to the yeshiva, the study house. Perhaps the professor was amused by the boy's comical appearance or maybe he wished to take the occasion to make a point to his students. In any event, he grabbed the boy by the shoulder like this.' And here the rabbi actually clapped his hand on my own shoulder, held me fast, and put his face right up to mine like this. '"Look here, my little fellow," said the scientist as he took a coin from his pocket. "I'll give you this gold crown if you can tell me where God lives." The boy, quite undaunted, looked up at the man and answered him in a loud voice, "And I'll give you two crowns if you can tell me where He doesn't!"
        Both Heiberg and Hanson laughed at the story, though it was not entirely clear at what or whom they were laughing.
        "Wait. There's more," said Hanson. "The rabbi looked me in the eye and told me that there was no cure for my twitch because it was an expression of a portion of my soul that I had denied and was trying to bury. I still remember the quaint way he put it. He said, 'The watch that we have mislaid goes on ticking for a time even though it's lost,' or some such thing. Then he added something. He said, 'But I will tell you this. There is one way and one way only to get relief from your twitching and this is a kiss on the eye from a woman who loves you."
        "Just like the Flying Dutchman," Heiberg said mockingly. "How romantic!"
        Hanson nodded and smiled. "I told him I'd already tried warm compresses but he only laughed at me.
        " 'Either you've willfully misunderstood me, Professor, or, as I suspect, you are being ironic. It isn't the warmth or the moisture of her kiss but the love the woman feels for you that will do the trick."
        Old Hanson was exhilarated by telling his tale. With an almost triumphant gesture he turned his stiff torso toward Heiberg, who could see in the candlelight every wrinkle on his face.
        "Well, what do you think?"
        "It really is a fascinating story."
        "And true, Heiberg, a true story."
        "I assure you I didn't think--"
        "No, I mean the rabbi was right--at least in my case. You see shortly after that I met my wife. One night after a skating party I offered to see her home. We were in high spirits but she quite astonished me when at the door of her house she got up on tiptoe and kissed me right on the eye. Just imagine. No doubt she was aiming for my cheek, as she's often insisted, but you'll understand when I say that the pleasure of that moment of surcease was ineffable. Naturally I recalled what the rabbi had said, what I had mocked and even now feel rather silly having mentioned to you. I remember that as I was leaving he cited a text. 'It is written that to have married a good woman is already to have fulfilled the Law.' A very Jewish sentiment but I hope it is true, for our engagement was announced within a month's time. Regine and I have been happily married for nearly forty years."
        "Please accept my belated congratulations. And what about the twitching?"
        "The rabbi was right there as well, I suppose. It didn't leave me entirely until around the time I was appointed to my chair. And even today, seeing you . . . Still, just as he promised I could always find a few moments of solace thanks to Regine."
        God, women, science. No doubt it was because his mind had been trotting behind this formidable troika that Heiberg recalled Hanson's story; for it involved all three. He thought almost with shame of how he had made use of it, of the rabbi's oriental wisdom.
        The first time was a few months after his conversation with Hanson at the banquet. He had begun an affair with a young woman of beauty and intelligence, an archivist at the University library. One night, exasperated by the contractions in his eyelid, he asked her if she could stand to put her lips on it. She willingly agreed and at once the twitching ceased.
        "Oh, I can feel it," she cried. "It tickles."
        The very next week Heiberg had broken off the affair.
        He was not a marine biologist. Any fisherman on the island knew more than Heiberg about the sea and its denizens. He didn't even like to eat fish. Four generations earlier his family had given up life by the sea for the complicated professions of the city. He might have told the islanders, but could they be expected to distinguish between one species of scientist and another? Wouldn't they think he was simply too lazy or too preoccupied with his dying to trouble himself with their little mystery? Why should he undermine their faith in him, however tentative, however misplaced? After all, he was flattered by it. If they believed he could tell them something worthwhile about some dead animal, why should he protest ignorance? Besides, he really did intend to make an effort through Evastina. He reasoned that, in the end, when the time came to throw up his hands they would be no worse off and, who knows, perhaps more prepared to accept the mystery of the world and the limitations of human science.
        The latter was a lesson that Heiberg himself had been learning all through his career, one which his approaching dissolution was driving home. Theoretical physics has its proper ironies, he had said in one of his last lectures. A good physicist, he advised his students, must grasp that scientific knowledge has limits but at the same time never presume to know what these limits are.
        Heiberg was surprised by the devotion with which Evastina threw herself into her researches. Her visits were now filled with reports and revisions of those reports. He had to examine her preliminary sketches, which he thought genuinely excellent, and reply to her requests for further directions. Soon she herself was proposing measurements and additional physiological investigations.
        From Evastina, Heiberg learned that the creature was approximately seventeen meters in length, predominantly black in color, with eyes set forward on a rounded head at the end of an elongated neck, rather than on the sides, as with whales. Its mouth had three sets of teeth which, from Evastina's drawings, he could tell were those of a carnivore. Instead of the flukes of a whale its body tapered to a single lateral fin three meters across and shaped something like a manatee's. It had a huge set of gills and, astonishingly, a curiously depressed aperture on the dorsal surface that, though apparently too small for the purpose, might have served as a blow hole. From one unmistakable indication Evastina concluded that the beast had been a male. The body itself was now completely frozen.
        Perseus had faced nothing more terrifying in defending Andromeda off the Joppa coast.
        One day Heiberg, examining her rendering of the monster's head, said, "Evastina, you ought to have become a scientist yourself, or an artist."
        The girl blushed with pleasure. "I only want to help you."
        "No, I mean it. You've done extraordinarily well. Believe me, nobody at the University could have done better."
        "And yet?" added the girl, catching something in his tone.
        Heiberg broke into a terrific fit of coughing and when it had passed he said, "Excuse me. And yet I'm baffled. I've no idea what the creature is."
        Unwilling to give up, Evastina suggested that she might get some of the men to saw the creature open so that she could draw its internal organs for him.
        "I'm afraid that would be no use. For all I know it may be something never before seen, a new species."
        Her face lit up. "Do you really think so? A new species?"
        "It's possible."
        "Then what if I were to send my drawings to the University? You could tell me where, I mean who should see them."
        Heiberg was surprised again, not so much by the girl's ardor or her altogether sensible proposal as by the pang of jealousy he felt, as if he were a failed Perseus, as if Andromeda had saved herself. Another fit of coughing covered his discomfiture. Evastina ran to fetch him a glass of water.
        His eye had begun twitching again; it had been twitching incessantly for five days. It felt like a punishment, as though God had chosen this cunning way to get back at him for his presumption and vanity, for seeking to see and know but never to love. And I'll give you two crowns if you can tell me where He doesn't, the Jewish boy had said to get the better of the professor in Lvov. Even a lost watch ticks, said the rabbi to Evald Hanson. And now there was this colossal beast that he could not see except through the clear eyes of a girl and about which he understood nothing at all.
        Evastina, who desired knowledge more than he did, who had far more of the romance of science in her than remained to him, came back into the room with the glass of water and Heiberg said aloud, "Perhaps the beast is death." He was not even speaking to the girl; he had only meant to allow himself a bitter and self-pitying joke, but as soon as the words were out the idea seized him.
        Evastina had never looked lovelier or more vital than now, when she began to cry for his sake, as if he were the Flying Dutchman. He watched her tears with fascinated delight.
        "Evastina, my dear," he whispered, "forgive me. I'll tell you where to send your drawings. I'll even go to see the beast for myself. Yes, I want to go to Bjelsen's Strand with you. We'll go over everything together. And I'll take you to the University. And I want to smoke my pipe again too. Why not? But please, please would you do me one very great favor?"
        She brushed at her tears. "Yes?"
        "Do you think you could give me a kiss right here, just on my eye?"