The Weird Insights of a Scobberlotcher

Fifteen Sounds Neon Red

I'm doing my best with it but it's difficult to shoehorn myself into this one upside down. I see a cup floating in front of me. It's a cup of coffee I'm holding. It's steaming. I feel a cold wind. There's snow clinging to my boots. Then I recognise the drab brick exterior. I'm back at college. Can't think what else to do with my life. Why not spend the rest of it in study?

Now I'm inside. Coffee's there in front of me. I'm sitting behind a table in the one meeting room in the entire Classics department. I can still smell the toasting buns, onion, mustard, ketchup, relish and fries from the hot dog joint in the far end of the building. Always thought there was something vaguely ironic about it. A college founded by the Jesuit order puts the Classics department offices in the basement of a multipurpose old pile well off campus. And there we all are. Me. Three Jesuit priests in black vestments. Three lay professors in blue jeans. Only the endearingly poorly dressed Dr. Sumner dissents in grey flannels and an old, chalk stained tweed jacket with the elbow patches that wink at the observant. We're here to adjudicate a complaint from one of the students in my class about her mark on a recent test. Don't know how I got dragged into this. Price of friendship, I guess. Coerced into joining two of the profs in a committee reviewing the papers for any signs of bias, misjudgement or error. A job threatening to bring a lack of popularity down on all our heads from the subject of the investigation, professor Guntner. My Roman history prof. But they have tenure. My position is more tenuous.

I've already read them all. Ostensibly on the topic of the Punic wars, they were varying shades of execrable. Even mine, though really it was just bad. Nicely documented, well written, but complete horseshit. I got an 'A' so I could forgive myself. Most of the others were so bad that they cast doubt on the actual mental capacity of their authours. One wandered off onto the topic of transcendental meditation. Another was two paragraphs long. But judging from her marks Professor Guntner didn't see it that way. The one that kept referring to the Punish Wars she gave a B+. So this is going to be tricky. Then Guntner lodges a formal complaint about the process and the whole issue gets escalated within the department. Starts sucking in bystanders. Things start to wander off topic, veer into old grievances. And that's what's happening now.

I'm sitting way at the back of the room, silent, embracing exclusion as an intellectual inferior. The discussion begins with a review of the review process, starts to meander somehow, then suddenly takes a sharp turn and lurches into testy. Father Casey and professor Williams start arguing over some recondite point of an obscure paper that may or may not yet have been published. They're getting more excited than the topic justifies. Suddenly Father Casey gets angry, stands up, walks across to professor Williams and grabs his upper arm. Professor Williams shouts "unhand me, Father!" He doesn't. So Williams swings a punch. It connects. Holy crap, he just hit a priest! A Jesuit! Then Father Casey rights himself and swings back. With some authority. Before he took orders he was an amateur boxer. I knew it but I guess nobody told Professor Williams. And he's down. Looks like a TKO. Then everyone is into it. Some are punching. Some are prying. Hard to tell who's who. I thought these guys existed on some higher plane. How easily they descend at the first sight of an exposed throat. Wow! They're all just dicks with a degree. Wonder if it's any different over in Modern Languages.

"That's what I taught at Syracuse"

This time I almost got whiplash when we took the non-sequitur off ramp.

"What?"

"That's what I taught at Syracuse University. I was in the Modern Languages department. I was an associate professor."

"You? You were a professor? At an American university?"

"Yes, like I say, Syracuse. What's wrong with that?"

"Uh, nothing I guess. How many languages do you speak?"

"Seven."

"And where did you get your degrees?"

"I didn't. It's a gift. I pick up languages the way some people pick up colds."

Another drag. Another cloud. Her expression through the smoke was different now. She had a sort of Mona Lisa smile. If Mona had lived to a hundred.

"But you're... you're a gypsy."

"Roma. And no I'm not, I'm Jewish. You don't know anything about me."

"No shit, Sherlock, or whatever your name is. So why are you dressed like one?"

"I just like the clothes. I travelled with the Roma after I ran away from the shtetl."

"The shtetl?"

"Yes, I was the only one who escaped the pogrom. Travelled from Ukraine to France just before the war. I got a fake passport, sailed to New York, got some fake credentials and got the job in Syracuse. I loved upstate, loved the faculty but ended up having trouble with immigration. So, here I am saving your ass."

"An old Jewish gypsy who escaped the Nazis, became a fraudulent professor at a university then ended up as a fortune teller here on the beach decades later. O.k, now I've heard everything."

"No, as a matter of fact you haven't. Here, another card."

She tossed the Ten of Cups in front of me.