The Dinosaur Feather

Anna. Anna waved back and walked through the revolving doors to Building 12.
    The Department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology consisted of offices and laboratories arranged on either side of a long, windowless corridor. The first office belonged to Professor Lars Helland, Anna’s internal supervisor. He was a tall thin man without a single wrinkle. This was remarkable. Biologists, as a rule, made a point of never protecting their skin when doing fieldwork. The only clues that revealed he was in his late fifties were white flecks in his soft beard, a slowly spreading bald patch and a photograph on his desk of a smiling woman and a teenage girl with braces on her teeth.
    Anna was convinced that Professor Helland loathed her; she certainly loathed him. During the nine months he had been supervising her dissertation, he had barely taken the time to offer her any guidance. He was permanently crotchety and uninterested, and when she asked a specific question, he would go off on an irrelevant tangent and couldn’t be stopped. It had angered Anna from the start and she had seriously considered making a formal complaint. Now she had resigned herself to the situation and she tried, as far as possible, to avoid him. She had even left her dissertation in his pigeonhole last Friday, rather than hand it to him in person. When she checked the pigeonhole for the fourth time, her dissertation was gone.
    The door to Professor Helland’s office was ajar. Anna tiptoed past it. Through the gap she could see part of Helland’s recliner, the last centimetres of two grey trouser legs, feet in socks and one shoe lying carelessly discarded with the sole facing up. Typical. When Helland was in his office, he spent most of his time lying in his recliner, reading, surrounded by a Coliseum-like structure of books and journals piled up in disarray around him. Even on the very rare occasions they had met, Helland had been reclining as if he were a nobleman receiving an audience.
    Helland wasn’t alone. Anna could hear an agitated voice and she instinctively slowed down. Could it be Johannes? She tried to make out what they were talking about, but failed. She would have to find out later, she thought, and accelerated down the corridor.
    Anna and Johannes shared a study. Johannes had finished his MSc, but he had been allowed to stay on because he wasco-writing a paper with Professor Helland, who had been his supervisor as well. Anna could vividly recall her first day in the department last January when Helland had shown Anna into the study where Johannes was already working. Anna recognised him instantly from her undergraduate days and had spontaneously thought ‘oh, shit.’ Later she wondered at her reaction because, until then, they had never actually spoken.
    Johannes looked weird, and he was weird. He had ginger hair and looked at her as though he was leering at her with slightly sticky eyes behind his round, unfashionable glasses. For the first three weeks, she deeply resented having to share a study with him. His desk looked like a battlefield, there were half-empty mugs of tea everywhere, he never aired the room, never tidied up, every day he forgot to switch his mobile to silent and though he apologised, it was still infuriating. However, he seemed delighted to have acquired someone to share the tiny study with and talked non-stop about himself, his research and global politics.
    During those first few weeks Anna deliberately kept him at a distance. She went to the refectory on her own, even though it would have been obvious to ask if he wanted to join her, she gave curt replies to his questions to discourage him from striking up a conversation, and she declined his friendly suggestion that they take turns to bring cakes. Yet Johannes persisted. It was quite simply as if he failed to register her aloofness. He chatted and told stories, he laughed out loud at his own jokes, he brought in interesting articles she might want to read, he always made tea for both of them and added milk and honey to her cup, just the way she likedit. And, at some point, Anna started to thaw. Johannes was warm and funny, and he made her laugh like she hadn’t laughed in . . . well, years. Johannes was extraordinarily gifted, and she had allowed herself to be put off by his peculiar appearance. Nor were his eyes sticky, as she had first thought, they were open and attentive, as though he was making an effort, as though what she said really