“—let me guess, fun? I have to say, you have a somewhat bizarre concept of fun.”

“I was going to say, to improve my German, which I need for my research.”

That made a little more sense. All of the philosophers Witold researched, he explained, wrote in German.

“What, Heidegger?”

He smiled. “More like Frege.” I would soon learn that exactly no analytic philosophers read Heidegger—not even for alleged fun—and that simply by not floating out of the nearest window on a miniature dirigible powered by his own smugness, Witold was proving to be among the nicest philosophers in the world. Meanwhile, the guy he was talking about, Gottlob Frege (I discovered via Dr. Wikipedia half an hour later), was the founder of first-order symbolic logic, otherwise known as the math class everyone in college takes when they don’t want to take math (except it pretty much is math; burn). I had never heard that name in my life—as far as I knew it could be spelled Freyga, and he could have been Estonian or something, and just written in German for kicks. But, now having two entire quarters of graduate school behind me, I behaved accordingly, which is to say I nodded sagely.

“Anyway,” Witold said, “in Eli’s class we read Der Verschollene.”

I was impressed—most Anglophones used the English name for Kafka’s least-known novel, Amerika. “I really liked it,” he said. “Every sentence was like its own adventure.”

That might have been the most exactly correct thing I’d ever heard, and from a fucking amateur, no less. And then, Witold opened his mouth and these words came out of it: “Do you like Kafka?” Did this person seriously just ask this question? So overwhelmed was I with the different options of expressing how much I did, indeed, like Kafka that my brain coagulated into a dollop of goo, of the sort the frat guy on the elliptical next to me had slathered liberally into his hair. So I did what I always do when I’m overwhelmed, which is make the worst choice possible. (This is why, if I make the error of entering a New York City bodega hungry, I will always, always exit with a bag of Bugles.)

I hopped down off the elliptical machine, which, let’s face it, was little more than an unwieldy prop covered in undergrad germs, and with no prelude whatsoever, I lifted up the back of my NKOTB shirt far enough for him to see that two-inch-high K. I’d had inked on the small of my back when I was living in Williamsburg in 1999, nihilistic and jubilant to be free of a bad relationship.

“I,” I said, “have a tattoo.” Witold cleared his throat.

“Well, I’m, uh, interested in reading more by Kafka in German,” he said. “Do you have anything to recommend?”

“I would be honored to make you an itemized list,” I said, approximately seventy-five times faster than I had heretofore been exercising. “Annotated, of course. I’ll try not to make it too long. I’ll just put the best stuff on there. I promise. Just the best stuff. A list!”

“Sure,” he said. “Oh,” he added, as I returned to my nominal evening of exercise, “what’s your name?”

Two excruciatingly paced days later, I got his e-mail address off the Logic and Philosophy of Science website and thanked the thousand spires of Prague that academics are so easy to stalk. I began composing the first volley of a full-court e-mail charm offensive—and they said the years I spent studying Kafka’s letters to Milena and Felice were wasted—but then I realized two things. One: If I wrote in German, that would be both more charming and excellent pretense for corresponding all quarter, because Witold wanted to work on his German, right? I’d be a free tutor and all he’d have to do was pay attention to me. Two: I still hadn’t asked his name, so he was going to realize I’d looked him up. All the more reason to write in German; I made sure the sentence wherein I admitted to having asked Jeff his name was extremely convoluted and possibly above his level (or, at any rate, enough of “its own little adventure” that he’d enjoy reading it so much that he’d have to give me a chance). After much agonizing, I explained to him, I would like to recommend the following Kafka works, with the following annotations:

The Trial, his best-known work, although a bit more difficult than Der Verschollene and it drags a bit in the middle; also, DID YOU KNOW that the order of its chapters is an editorial reconstruction, because Kafka never finished it and skipped all over the place in his notebook?

“In the Penal Colony,” short story of about thirty-five pages about a torture machine; extremely violent and bloody, several possible allegorical parallels to the industrial revolution. (P.S.: DO NOT pay attention to ANYONE who compares this story to the HOLOCAUST because it was written in 1915! They do NOT know what they’re talking about!)

“A Hunger Artist,” short story about a guy who starves himself for sport but nobody comes to see him anymore. Very sad.

“A Country Doctor,” I bet you can guess what it’s about. Gross scene depicting an open wound full of worms. Common assignment in upper-level German courses for undergraduates.

“The Bucket Rider,” possible critique of capitalism. Two pages long.

“The Judgment,” about a guy and his dad and their pretty bad relationship; odd sex joke at the end.

“Contemplations,” my personal favorite, collection of few dozen paragraph-length mini-stories, all enchanting. Favorites: “The Trees,” “The Next Village,” “Resolutions.”

Several agonizing days later, my breath caught in the back of my throat as the name Witold Romanoff appeared in my inbox, with a message composed in careful German, thanking me very much for my suggestions and saying that he would choose The Trial, because he happened to own it already. (Oh, how the tables had turned since 1993.) Would I, he wrote, like to get together and talk about it when he finished? Of course! I wrote back, while thinking God DAMMIT, man, why did you have to choose the longest and most difficult of all those things? “A Country Doctor” is six pages long! “The Trees” is THREE SENTENCES! We could be discussing it NOW! By the time you get through the interminable Lawyer-Manufacturer-Painter chapter it’s going to be 2010! Gah!

I had to think of something. Handsome, nice, well-adjusted, not-jerkish, not-pompous single male graduate students were rare enough at UC-Irvine that I’d spent all year there without running across one. (Not that I’d been looking. Heidegger was all the boyfriend I needed.) But still, hadn’t I already seen at least one other girl making a move? Possibly an undergraduate, who of course would lack my intellectual gravitas and life experience but in their place would have youth, which at the decrepit age of twenty-nine I sincerely believed I no longer possessed? It was entirely possible that by the time Witold finished The Trial, he could have impregnated that girl, and they’d be moved into family housing, and I’d see him pushing a stroller down the bike path and pretend not to know him.

What could I possibly have to offer Witold the hot logician with the weird name that an undergraduate girl did not? I did a quick scan around my room: Improperly hung black curtains to block out the merciless morning sun? Possibly. A minifridge full of hard cider and Becherovka, a spicy-sweet Czech liqueur that is supposed to cure all ailments? Maybe, but the undergrads probably had Jell-O shots in their minifridges, and also no cellulite. What did I have that could possibly override cellulite?

My eyes finally alighted upon a DVD of Triumph of the Will sitting on top of my TV, floor model tube set I’d talked the guy at Best Buy into selling me for fifty-two dollars. I’d seen Triumph of the Will before—or at least I’d convincingly pretended to—but I was supposed to watch it “again” as an assignment for my Violence and Modernism course. So, here was what I had to offer. Would anyone else, ever, think to ask someone on a first date to view the world’s most famous Nazi propaganda film, helmed by the world’s most famous person who never returned my fax? It was worth a shot. In the invitation I sent, I matter-of-factly included the sentence Hier ist meine Telefonnummer, like it was a business necessity and not a substantial overture, a feat made entirely possible by the majestic default officiousness of the German vernacular. (A pretty fair trade-off for Heideggerese, I supposed.)

And it worked! Witold called. Later that week, I dragged my friend Eileen away from her fifteenth reading of Johann Georg Hamann’s Aesthetica in nuce to come help me pick the perfect outfit for my nebulous maybe-date. (“Put down the ‘angel speak’ and come give me some ‘human speak’ about how to do my hair, please,” I implored.) We sat on the foot of my bed watching Law & Order and drinking hard pear cider from my minifridge; I figured I’d have one or two while I was waiting for the hot logician with the weird name to show, and then the two of us would clear out the rest of my stash while we heckled Nazis—and then we’d, you know, see what happened. By the time the doorbell of my prefab student apartment rang, I was a few ciders deep as I left Eileen in my room and elbowed my roommate and Elena out of the way to get to the door. (Wonderful women both, but third-date introductions for sure.)

As the door swung open, my slightly buzzed brain immediately began doing calculations: Clean shirt (yes). Scraggly week-old stubble (no). Came bringing something (yes). Came bringing a half-eaten bag of Trader Joe’s cookies (no). To be fair, said cookies were a special kind of chocolate-dipped macaroon only available at certain Southern California Trader Joe’s during the years of 2005–2008, and they were spectacular, but I didn’t know this yet. So when he said, quite gamely and cleverly, “I thought macaroons would be a good companion to Nazi propaganda,” because it was Jewish food, because he, like me, is part Jewish, I was so busy wondering why he didn’t like me enough to shave his face that I didn’t even appreciate the joke, and I forgot about the macaroons entirely.

I tried to beat back the tide of panic that was rising in my torso. Eileen was still in my room at this point, as per my instructions, so that it would be apparent that I was cool and popular and had many exciting engagements per evening from which to choose. “Hello,” she said, like a normal person.

“This is Eileen!” I interjected. “She’s in the German department with me. She is my friend. WE ARE FRIENDS.”

She gave me a duly impressed look as she showed herself out. All right, so not the effervescent demonstration of my popularity I’d hoped, but I still had one more armament in the Schuman arsenal of seduction: minifridge. “Can I offer you something to drink?” I asked.

“I’ll just take some water,” he said.

Oh, no. “Wait,” I said, “check out what I have, and then tell me if you just want water.”

I opened it with a flourish to show off my collection of hard ciders, Trader Joe’s brand Hefeweizen, Becherovka, vodka, and two Vitamin Waters.

“Really,” he said. “Water’s fine.”

Fuck. Had I misjudged the entire evening? Was he planning on chugging a perfunctory sip of agua and politely watching ten minutes of Heinrich Himmler prancing around out of politeness, before running off to go on his real date of the night? Because he was too nice to say nein outright to the Girl Who Reads Kant in German, with the big sad staring eyes and the gnarled wrist tendons? Was this a carpal tunnel syndrome pity date? I supposed there was only one way to find out. I at least had the wherewithal to switch to Vitamin Water, and I popped in the movie as Witold perused my bookshelf, removed his jacket (he’d been living in California long enough to wear a jacket outdoors at night, which I still refused to do), and made himself comfortable at the foot of my bed, which was the best and also only place to watch my television.

As the never-ending opening credits of Triumph des Willens played—twenty years after the World War … sixteen years after the beginning of German suffering … nineteen months after Germany’s rebirth—the pear cider wore off, and Witold and I slipped into conversation. Riefenstahl’s creepy masterpiece is, after all, dialogue-free for long stretches (unless you count the roar of seven hundred thousand people yelling Heil Hitler)—thus, although it was somewhat strange to have der Führer smiling creepily at his teenaged fans as a backdrop, the movie afforded plenty of opportunity for us to begin getting to know each other.

Witold had been born and raised in Brooklyn, the oldest child of Polish immigrants. His father was also named Witold. His parents had had sincere plans to name their firstborn son Michael, an unobtrusive American name that nobody would ever misspell or mispronounce. Once he was born, however, his father took one look at him, naked and covered in slime (Witold left out this part, but I think it’s important not to romanticize childbirth), and became so overcome with emotion that he decided to give the boy his own name, despite the playground taunts, butchering, and general onerousness that would surely follow. “I hated my name when I was a kid,” Witold said. “I went by Willy for all of middle school. Now that I’m an adult, though, I like it.” I liked it, too. We talked about everything in the world but graduate school: Disneyland (which he hated); the beach (which he loved); vegetarian food (which we both ate); this one bodega near the NYU campus that makes terrible sandwiches (which we both remembered); and the time that I was rearranging my bag on the subway platform to accommodate one of said terrible sandwiches and dropped my wallet right onto the tracks, and when I got it back I felt lucky but also kind of pissed because the sandwich had, of course, been awful. Bodega food was terrible, we agreed, but we missed every single one of those bodegas anyway, because there was nowhere in Irvine with any character. He mentioned the fact that Irvine left him feeling “dead inside” with such gentleness and good humor that I almost didn’t realize what he meant. I quickly forgot that we weren’t drinking—in fact, I quickly forgot about everything, including my Kramer-style neighbor Elena, who poked her sweaty head in around 1:00 A.M. to tell us to “keep it down.” This was not because we were being loud, but because our regular-volume conversation was drowning out the voices in her head.

I excused myself to the bathroom and beckoned her to follow so she would not be left alone with Witold to find out that he studied the philosophy of math, and thus would ostensibly want to hear all about her dissertation plans, which involved Henri Bergson and “like, fractals and stuff; I don’t know, the math shit will be easy, I’ll figure it out later.”

“You’ve got to cool it down in there,” she said as I washed my hands.

“Get your mind out of the gutter! We’re just talking.”

“No,” she said. “I mean you’re laughing, like, way too much and way too hard. I can hear it from my apartment. It sounds really overeager. Like, be cool, Rebecca. Be cool.”

I splashed some water on my face. “First off,” I said, “I’m not cool, so I wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression. And also, this happens to be what I sound like when I’m happy. Which probably seems unusual because you’ve never heard it before.”

By the time Witold left with a chaste hug, it managed not to send me into paroxysms of insecurity because it was four in the morning, and I figured that even the nicest Polish New Yorkers with weird names would probably find reason to extricate themselves from a hellish garbage nightmare situation before the break of day, if they so desired. After he walked out the door, I noticed that he’d left that light California jacket by my bookshelf. Score! A George Costanza–type leave-behind. We’d even talked about Seinfeld, so, obvious. I had no choice but to e-mail him to arrange a handoff, which then facilitated the procurement of a second date—this time to view my second-favorite documentary, Hell House, which is about a conservative evangelical church’s haunted house of sin. This date involved no alcohol whatsoever, also ended at four in the morning, and didn’t end in a hug.

For those next few months in 2006, which then turned into years that spooled out after 2006 like so much sun-baked Orange County asphalt, Witold and I ended up having quite a few small adventures with each other, sometimes even setting out into the dread OC on purpose: to the Borat movie at the mall we called “the Speculum,” where it took us half an hour to find a parking space and I was just happy to spend the time with him; to an Indian restaurant in Tustin where the food was so spicy that I had a beet-red face for two days afterward; on a series of increasingly subversive walks in our unwalkable neighborhood, one of which had us scrambling along for an hour in a drainage ditch; on a road trip to Los Angeles on a gloriously clear day, where we sat in the garden of the Getty Museum talking for so long that the guard had to come kick us out; to many mornings and afternoons spent on the beach, some even in the frigid, terrifying water, where he demonstrated how to jump into the waves head-on so that they couldn’t smash me down on the sand (he’d learned that, of course, the hard way).

By March of my second year of grad school, I was no longer scared by Martin Heidegger or admitting I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about, and Witold and I had been going out for almost a year, so I was also no longer scared that nobody would ever love me again. And then, my family experienced a sudden and traumatic event—an Ereignis, if you will. My grandfather drowned in a canoeing accident. On the surface, if you hear someone explain that her ninety-four-year-old grandpa just passed away, it doesn’t sound shocking—but the grandpa in your mind’s eye is not my grandpa, who still went canoeing every day, who built entire tree houses in an hour, whose bare adoration of his grandchildren could power a small train. Every kid thinks her grandpa is immortal, but it’s rare that a thirty-year-old adult believes this to be so with such tenacity—because her grandfather, who has survived Nazis, and heart disease, and even an unfortunate dalliance with two-week-old corned beef, goddamned near was immortal. Before I had to leave for a three-day trip to Chicago for the funeral, Witold drove us to the beach and sat with me while I looked out on the water and thought about drowning, with his arm around me, staring out at those waves.

As he dropped me off at the airport later, he told me he admired what he called my “stubborn insistence” on facing my grief directly. When I returned, he picked me up, and we drove home as the setting sun turned the sky a vibrant purplish pink. I was exhausted from sadness, from so many grieving Schumans in one place, and from withstanding the mind-bogglingly tone-deaf insistence of my cousin’s asshole husband that we get together again someday when I wasn’t “so stressed out.” (“I am not stressed out,” I told that fucker. “My grandfather just died. I’m sad.”) As we drove on, and the sky and the burnt desert hills around us grew brighter and then darker, I began to feel the first stirrings of relief, of knowledge that yes, my immortal grandpa was dead and it had ripped a gaping and permanent hole into my family, but somehow, with enough care and gentleness from the people who loved me, old and new, I would be all right eventually. “I don’t know what it is,” Witold said, as we stopped at a traffic light, “but these past months I’ve been feeling a lot more alive.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I know what you mean.”

We drove in silence for two more stoplights—so, it being Orange County, three more miles—and watched the sky soften together.

It was, I thought but didn’t say aloud, a moment of pure human joy, just coming into view.