The Fire Hazards of Chasing Perfection - 1. 1. Ius gentium

Mister, here is my complaint,
I’m sure you’ll understand;
Love is killing me,
But I cannot love.

I chase after perfection
In me and in others,
I chase after perfection
In order to love.

I burn in my own fire,
Mercy, Mister, mercy!
Love is killing me,
But I cannot love!

— Alfonsina Storni, Complaint [Queja] (1920)

1.

Lucas Valverde woke up in a pool of his own vomit.

Finding the motivation to peel himself off the floor of his bleak studio apartment was harder still than actually doing so, even with the vertigo and the migraine and the urge to barf up another coat to the drying puddle on the linoleum floor.

Tired dark eyes stared back at him in the mirror. He was still wearing his button-up, once pristine white but now stained in all sorts of colors—yellow, grey, and an angry splatter of burgundy red—. He ran a hand through his short brown hair, only to find it had not escaped the scope of the puke, either.

He needed a shower.

It wasn't until after he'd stumbled back from the bathroom that he noticed the buzzing of his phone on the table, rattling aggressively with a cascade of incoming messages, the noise amplified by the clinking of empty bottles beside it.

He tried to remember what day it was.

Sunday.

And it was still early in the morning, from what little he could see from his meager window.

He was never needed on Sundays, not with this much insistence, at least.

With sluggish steps he made his way to the phone, the screen of which he was unpleasantly surprised to find cracked all across.

His eyes took a moment to adjust to the kaleidoscope-like filter of the broken screen. Over ten missed calls and a bombardment of unread messages from classmates, colleagues and even Jose all jumped at him with menacing urgency.

In the end, he found out from a sterile mail notice from the university's institutional newsletter.

"It is with deep sorrow..."

Lucas put the phone face-down on the table again, his knees suddenly weaker than before. Instinctively, his right hand went to the watch on his wrist.

Everything crashed down.

***

Lucas remembered well the first time he met Pascual.

Back then, Pascual was still just “Di Falco”, a name that carried with it the weight of infamy in the winding halls of the illustrious University of Buenos Aires School of Law.

“Did you really sign up with Di Falco?”

“You’re insane.”

“I thought you wanted to graduate in due time, Valverde.”

Even among freshmen, the legendary status of Pascual Di Falco and the subject he taught—international private law, with its particularly boring and unnecessarily theory-ridden syllabus—were the stuff of ignominy, a boogeyman that even other professors enjoyed poking fun at from time to time.

Still, somehow, plenty adventurous (or sometimes just unfortunately misinformed) upperclassmen signed up for Di Falco’s class each year, corresponding to the start of the degree’s advanced cycle. Lucas was one of the former type of students.

He harbored a strong—if not well concealed—dislike for those students who opted for the lighter classes, the less demanding professors, the easy ways out. The type of students who took the Buenos Aires prestige for granted, who simply went to class for the sake of getting their degree and moving on with their lives.

Lucas had earned every single one of his exemplary grades through hard work and determination, and this time would be no different.

That first class took place on a hot summer day.

International private law was taught at one of the older lecture halls in the palatial school building, but not even the tall windows and even taller walls could placate the stifling humid mid-afternoon heat, which only worsened with the multitude of expectant students awaiting their first look at the infamous professor.

The whole class was suffocating with the vapor of nervous anticipation.

The man in question arrived thirteen minutes late.

Professor Pascual Di Falco was a tall man of languid features. His hair and neatly-trimmed beard had once been a distinct shade of auburn that stood in sharp contrast with the pale of his skin; at sixty-one, however, grey streaks ran through them like a sigil of age. Wire-rimmed glasses framed his steel-blue eyes, as did dark bags brought about by sleepless nights.

The first half of the class was spent on mind-numbing administrative babble and idle talk of the general contents of the syllabus. Slowly, but surely, Lucas felt his classmates settle down, the restlessness of anticipation replaced by the possibility of Di Falco being just another unfriendly professor of the bunch.

“Now, class.”

Lucas would never forget that first exchange. He would never forget that first tentative question posed so lightly, so nonchalantly. He would never forget the wording, and the way Pascual leaned back on his desk as he scanned the room, gauging something unreadable by his cold expression alone.

“Where can we find the earliest precedents of extraterritoriality in history?”

At least ten hands had gone up before the question had been posed, Lucas’s included.

Of course, he would know the answer to an obvious question.

Professor Di Falco let the expectant class wait as he selected the person who would answer.

You.

The finger was pointing towards Lucas.

“Ius gentium,” he said, loud enough for the whole class to hear.

Di Falco hummed. Then, for the first time in the hour or so he’d been standing before them, his face lightened up: a knowing smirk drew on the contours of his mouth, and when he spoke, his tone was lit by sardonic delight.

“Word of advice, class,” he said, adjusting the rim of his glasses, seemingly addressing no one in particular. “No matter how much confidence you’ve misplaced on yourself, sometimes, raising your hand to participate just for the sake of participating is not the best course of action.”

Red heat travelled from Lucas’s neck up to the crown of his head. The silence that followed that was sepulchral. He would have gotten up and left had the prospect of further humiliation not been even more devastating.

So he simply sat there, hoping no one would look his way for the remainder of the class and the professor would forget he’d ever opened his mouth.

Someone else might’ve dropped the class after that. Other, less acidic professors taught the same subject with much less intensity. He’d taken summer courses for extra credit in years prior, by all means, dropping a class would have not affected his record in the slightest.

But Lucas was not like that.

He’d signed up for a class known for its difficulty, and he would not stop just because a contemptible professor had relished in making a fool of him in front of the entire class.

Even back in high school, Lucas had always done particularly well in subjects when he had a reason to dislike the teacher. It was about proving himself, showing he was good enough to do well even with the authority figure against him; it was about not giving them the pleasure of grading him with anything less than stellar.

In some cases, he’d ended up befriending those teachers—he was, after all, their best student, how could they not become at least a bit close?—. That intense relationship with his academic performance had guided him into finding his passion; it had led him here, to the most prestigious law school in the country.

But when Lucas went back home that day, the knot in the pit of his stomach still unresolved, and opened the international private law book on the dining table, he had no idea just how close he would get to that vicious professor named Pascual Di Falco.

***

That semester was bitter work.

Besides his part-time job and having to stay on top of his other classes (which were, admittedly, less intense but still time consuming), Lucas took it upon himself to become an expert on the matter of international private law—as told by Di Falco—.

He did every reading two, three, four times over. He researched Di Falco’s extensive bibliography, finding time to read some of his extracurricular books to get a broader understanding of the subject. He recorded each class and transcribed them once he got home, and that mellow baritone voice became his night time companion.

And he participated in class.

It took some time before he gained the confidence to speak up after that hilly first day. But after a couple of weeks, Lucas felt sufficiently ready to start answering questions—both the professor’s and other’s students, much to the chagrin of the rest of the class—with much success.

He never stepped a wrong foot again.

Most importantly, however: Di Falco had begun to take notice of him.

It was in subtle hints; the way he nodded slightly when he spoke, how he looked in Lucas’s direction when he posed questions, as if expecting him to answer by default. Each passing week, each class, Lucas felt the rush of dopamine that came with hitting the right spot, saying the right thing, being acknowledged the right way.

That success came at a price.

His already scant social life took a dip. His sister Jose, accustomed to weekly updates in the form of either visits or phone calls, began to hound him for his negligence. The sleepless nights reading and transcribing paragraphs on international jurisdiction, theories of natural law and civil codes meant he wasn’t performing as well at the dreary customs office job Jose had secured for him.

He’d never been so tired.

But it all paid off eventually.

It was after turning in one of the many reports the class was infamous for requiring, the last one before the final exam. The class had ended and, like the rest of the students, Lucas made his way to Di Falco’s desk to deposit the reports—he’d spent the past two nights editing and formatting his references—. He was about to leave when the professor’s low voice called out his name.

“Valverde, is it?”

A shot of fear crossed Lucas’s spine. Had he finally said something wrong? Had he been answering too many questions?

A few people still remained in the room, either talking amongst themselves before heading off or waiting for the next class that would take place there.

The professor regarded him for an instant, his expression unreadable. Up close like this, Lucas could catch subtle whiffs of lavish cologne and something else he couldn’t quite recognize, but was undoubtedly just as expensive.

His hand posed on the pile of reports.

“Am I going to find references to my past bibliography on this report too, Valverde?”

Lucas gulped down.

“I know it wasn’t part of the curricula, but I made sure to–”

Pascual’s hand, warm and firm, was a groundwire on Lucas’s shoulder.

“Easy there, I never said it was a bad thing,” he said. “I actually found it impressive. Few students bother to do any further reading, let alone of my own work.”

Lucas felt the blood return to his face, and found himself releasing a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“In fact,” he leaned back on the desk, a gesture Lucas was all too familiar with by now. “I was going to ask if you’d like to be a TA for my class.”

A spark in a leaf storm. That’s how it all began.

***

Spending half his time and energy working as an unpaid TA was the last thing Lucas needed in his life.

It was excruciatingly demanding. Answering student mails, grading reports, sitting idle in classes he’d already sat for the semester prior, it all took a toll on his performance both at school and work and he was aware of it. He was skipping classes and readings left and right, something he’d never even dreamed of doing before.

Jose pointed it out to him more than once. She’d walked those same halls just two years before; she was all too aware of what it entailed, and of the stringent requirements of Di Falco’s class.

“You’re not going to get anything out of it, Luquitas,” she’d said.

But he did.

He got to spend time with Pascual outside of class, in meetings of the university chair office, and followed him around in the various other lectures and miscellaneous academic activities to which he was invited. All on the professor’s request.

And watching Pascual teach from the other side was a marvellous thing. Once you got past his abstruse personality, you could appreciate the sheer weight of his knowledge, and the mastery with which he exercised the office of teaching.

It allowed Lucas to focus on those things he hadn’t had time to notice before, when he was just a student trying to ace a class: Pascual’s mannerisms; the way he spoke with vast, rich vocabulary without even having to think about it; the way he commanded a whole room with inherent gravitas.

Lucas couldn’t say how it happened. Or how it began to happen, rather.

It simply felt natural. The more time he spent with Pascual, the closer the two became, he simply felt like he could stop hiding the way he felt. He would casually mention he’d rather sit for classes when it was no longer necessary, just to watch Pascual at work. He would take the B line train all the way to Pascual’s office just to deliver graded reports or whatever else was required of him.

And it wasn’t like Pascual was none the wiser. Lucas knew as much.

It was obvious he enjoyed the way Lucas fawned over him. It could’ve been a thing of ego, or at least, that’s what Lucas thought of it at first. And he wouldn’t have minded that, anyway.

But then there were those looks…

Stolen glances across the lecture hall. Furtive pats on Lucas’s back that lingered a little too long. Sometimes they would spend entire afternoons together in Pascual’s office, both of them focused on their own work, the presence of the other tantalizing enough on its own.

Then there were the gifts. A half-empty flask of cologne Pascual didn’t need anymore; a signed first-edition copy of Pascual’s first book. The Rolex; rusty, leather-strapped, with a little crack near the five.

It all drove Lucas insane.

It was everything he’d ever wanted, but it still wasn’t enough.

***

The first time they kissed, Lucas felt as though he was dreaming.

It was late at night—too late—, but he’d still insisted on delivering a batch of graded reports to the office. Pascual had not refused.

Crossing the threshold of that Napoleon III-style 1930’s building in the Retiro district always, invariably, felt like magic. Pascual’s cozy studio office was perched near the top. Towering bookcases and perpetually dim lighting gave life to the place, and at night, the city lights poured from the tall windows as if filtered through an otherworldly veil.

When Lucas arrived, Pascual was at his desk as usual, a glass of whiskey in hand, the air heavy with tobacco smoke and old book musk.

He poured Lucas a shot as well, and the way his fingers lingered on the rim of the glass made Lucas feel drunk without having taken a single sip. He leaned against the desk, eyes cold as a blizzard, shirt crumpled after a long day—the sleeves rolled up, and just enough buttons open for greyed chest hairs to peek out—.

In this proximity, Lucas felt as though air was unbreathable if it didn’t carry with it the familiar scent of Armani cologne.

Pascual’s hand cupped his chin, and Lucas knew he could never break away from that touch.

“You’re beautiful,” Pascual said, and Lucas did not get a chance to say anything back.