Benjamin Hass found Cambridge difficult. Fitting in, being seen, being heard, were as impossible as catching the slippery weed in the Cam. Then he met Michaela. She was Korean-American, studying psychology but making it sound like poetry. After three weeks he dared to ask her on a trip down the river. It was a calculated choice: he had no money and little talent to impress. Rowing looked pretty easy and boat hire was cheap. His calculations went hideously wrong within five yards of the mooring. �You can�t row, can you?� she said. His shrug aimed for light irony and achieved nothing but the clunking of oars against the boat. �I rowed for Purdue,� she said, taking the oars with small, competent hands. �So what do you study?� she asked, as she put her exquisite back into the stroke. �Literature.� He couldn�t think of anything to add. �Oh literature �� her voice was flat and she pronounced it lidderature. �Well, that�s � good.� �I know it�s not useful, not like medicine or �� Michaela�s tiny body moved them across the water so fast he felt dizzy. �You�re a pretty strange case, you know that?� �Am I?� �Yeah, I think so. You�re kinda shy, but not in a gay-shy way. Is it a Briddish thing?� He was starting to hate her. Michaela continued, hissing slightly with each thrust of the oars, �So I�m interested in why you asked me out here if you can�t row. I mean it�s not like � romantic or anything.� Benjamin looked around. It wasn�t. Not any more. �So why did you come out with me then?� To his own ears his desperation sounded adolescent � no, pre-adolescent, like a nine-year-old who discovers his parents have been humouring him. �Like I said, you�re an interesting case. I don�t think we have people like you in the US of A.� �Like me?� �You know. Not neurotic exactly. What is it you Briddish call it? Shy? We�d say socially maladjusted back home.� In the middle of the river, under her scrutiny, he felt the wound to his esteem and knew it would ebb and flow, suck and swallow, for the rest of his life. Benjamin returned to his rooms, claiming tonsillitis, and thought over his options. Then he transferred to a former polytechnic and studied Geography. He would focus on studying things you couldn�t hurt and that wouldn�t hurt you. He became a river expert, spending years in Russia, researching the Lena and the Amur, rivers that became ice roads in winter, and managing never to get involved with hot or cold war politics. As for blackmail, anything that was offered: whisky, drugs, women, black-market furs, he would simply refuse. His colleagues thought him cold, factual, emotionless. Only in death did he reveal a anything of himself. In a note detailing funeral arrangements he asked for his gravestone to be engraved simply with his name and the words Rivers Still Run When Frozen Over.