Leon addresses the class: “The author calls this book his ‘most important work because of its mental capacity’ and yet this novel is about a man who runs from his life because he can’t handle what he’s becoming. Sound familiar? You’ve probably read a version of the same story six, maybe seven thousand times, seen it in films, and heard it in music and productions.”
Leon paces the room, holding his hands in front of him. “What makes it different from all the others is how inherently selfish the author approached the story. He took an old tale, used that as the spine for his work, and then proceeded to use all his own concerns, memories, defeats, victories, and perceptions about the world to fuel the pages. If postmodernism gave us comfort in the absurd, then it also gave us the ability to make that same comfort a first world concern: hence, the shorthanded AAM Generation Literature, which lasts for around two hundred years, from 1991 to 2250. Their motto: We are always the centre of our own story. Over four-hundred years, one Technological Revolution, the distribution and monopolization of the space program, and hundreds of paradigm shifts later we can still look back and consider these works unique. Why?”
The boy, Jamie Bell, slouches in his seat while the girl next to him cocks her head to the side, giving Leon her attention. Leon can see a small phoenix emblazoned across her wrist, the fire tipped wings reach around like a bracelet of orange and yellow. On it, the name ‘Zen Koriyama’ is inked in cursive. Lacey Barks.
“They’re the same story, but from an individual point of view? But how does that account for symbolism and metaphor on the grander scale?” Lacey asks.
A door opens at the back of the classroom.
The creak of the hinges is enough to cause Lacey to turn her head along with the rest of the class, and gives Leon time to step forward and pick up a newspaper he’d bought at the Duty Free Shoppe across from campus.
The culprit of the interruption takes a seat at the back of the room, five rows behind the other students. Leon instantly recognizes the black, shoulder tousled hair and the mascara stained eyes of Casey Hayes. Leon ignores her, but can’t help feeling the same way all professors must when the Director of Academia steps into his or her classroom.
Leon ruffles the pages of the newspaper to grab the class’ attention.
“What does this look like to you?” He asks Lacey.
“I don’t know – a period newspaper?”
“It has no meaning to you.” Leon steps closer to her desk and sets it in front of her. She watches it, then watches Leon.
“Should it?”
“No. You haven’t experienced anything with it yet. If you were to write about this newspaper, right now, your story would be called emotionless, bland, and without a founding in reality,” he says.
Leon picks the paper up and hands it to the student sitting next to her. Jamie Bell looks annoyed that Leon has chosen to pick on him again. “But if Jamie here lost his data pad, was denied access to his credit source, got kicked out of school, maybe kicked out of his flat with no place to stay, nothing to eat, and no connection to his much valued electronics, then this newspaper would be his only chance at regaining the world he once knew. A long time ago these things were invaluable. With government regulating print publications ensuring they have all the amenities of electronic print, he would instantly travel back hundreds of years technologically. His story would be filled with emotion. It would have drama, humour, and maybe a few adult situations. Either way, it would be his story because he experienced it.”
Leon picks up the newspaper and tosses it back to his desk. It flutters before falling off the edge, and he can hear a trio of students stifle a laugh at this. “His story would have to be selfish; otherwise, there would be no story. Symbols give that to us.”
Leon looks at Jamie, who’s turned his attention – possibly for the first time since the semester began – inwards. Jamie contemplates what Leon has said in a way that Leon understands. He prompts Jamie to speak, to finish the example for him, “and what does that mean to you, Mr. Bell?”
“What’s important to me should be important to everyone?” he says.
“Not should,” Leon laughs. “Could. Potentials. Could be important. Which leads to the next lecture: why everything I have just said can be taken as a compliment and with a grain of salt.”
Casey Hayes clears her throat. It echoes from the back to the front. Leon looks at the digital interface lining his desk and recognizes the time just as quickly as he recognizes the sound of the students shuffling to pack up their stuff.
There used to be a time when they would stay behind and talk. Some would ask him questions – now he fears that all of them are as personality-less as the girl with the phoenix tattoo, Lacey. Some teachers call them Blank Slates. There aren’t too many Bells these days. Very quickly, as if the room had never been filled with students, silence sets in. Casey Hayes fills it by tapping her fingers on the desk.
“I couldn’t tell,” Leon asks Casey as she stands and walks down to the proscenium. “Did they start to pack up because I looked at the clock, or because they knew the time?”
“Leon,” she begins, “do you have a minute?”
“Depends on if I’ll need it later,” Leon says. He reclines back against the desk with a forced smile. He ignores her confusion and ushers her to a seat in the front row. “What can I help you with?”
“It’s about the program.” Casey steps onto the stage and leans past him. She bends over and picks up the newspaper, setting it on the desk before flattening it on the surface. The projector, having not been turned off, switches to reflective mode and throws the image of the first page onto the wall. Casey reads the headline over Leon’s shoulder. It’s something decrying Earth’s technological stagnation by a theoretical physicist from Madrid.
“Let me guess,” Leon leans forward, a move he’s learned from years of teaching. “We need to hire six hundred more professors because the upcoming year has a projection of ten billion students all wanting to sign up for my classes?”
This gets a smile. It hangs on Casey’s lips a little too long.
“Close,” she says. “Only nine million. I’m guessing from your attitude you haven’t seen the actual projections?”
“Not yet. You know I don’t like to step outside the semester.”
In this moment, Leon still feels comfortable. His chest relaxes as he takes in a deep breath. His mind races towards another joke; a ghostly tremor tickles his fingers as if they’re ready to keep beat to some unnamed tune playing in his mind. But the Leon experiencing this memory doesn’t want to feel comfortable. He knows what’s coming. Casey Hayes comes out of her office very rarely, and hardly ever does she walk in at the end of a class.
“You’ve been here for a long time,” she begins. “And yet, the number of students actively signing up for your courses is still the lowest in the department.”
“I’m not liking where this is going, so can I assume you’re leading with the bad news first?” Leon asks.
“Think of it this way, Dr. Bishop,” Casey says. “You were just teaching A.A.M. Gen, which is a subset of English Lit. I mean, you’re teaching a class that covers a good deal of literary progression – that’s a lot, don’t you think?”
“Just tell me, how much of our budget are you cutting?”
“None,” Casey says. The small-talk ends. “In fact, the budget for your department will technically be higher. I’m transferring you to a subcategory and relinquishing control of Lit and Language to Professor Rothrock, where she will delegate your specialty into a subset of that field, instead of having its own department. She might even be changing the name a bit to appeal to other students.”
There is a moment of silence. Leon waits for Casey to say she’s kidding, but the punch line never comes. Instead, she follows up with a patronizing smile and extra words that feel rehearsed.
“I mean,” she begins, “you’ll still be teaching all the subsets you like, but for now, we just need to slim
things down.”
Leon says nothing.
“Your job is safe,” she unwittingly condescends. “You’re the best person we have when it comes to that kind of lit, and we’ll aid your students the best we can in helping them finish their degrees if they’ve chosen to major in your field. I mean, you’re the best we have - we would never let you go. We have everything covered. This?” She refers to the meeting by unclasping her hands gesturing outward. “This is just a formality. It’s as meaningless as your newspaper.”
“You can’t say that,” he says. “I’ve devoted years to this. I’ve been the heart and soul of this department. I created this damn program; you didn’t even have a functioning Literature department until I came. How can you delegate something to a subset so easily?”
Casey stands up and joins him beside the desk. She doesn’t notice that Leon is holding himself up rather than leaning on the desk for comfort. She places her hand on his. The cold of her fingers makes Leon jolt his attention to her. It makes him wake up. “You’ll be okay, Leon. Just remember: we have you in an embrace, not a headlock.”
The memory flashes – as Present Moments are prone to do - to a scene hours later. Outside of the classroom, he owns a home in Dowanhill overlooking the Queensborough Gardens in Glasgow. The home is decorated with books, most of which Leon has never opened – the ones he uses are in his office in the back, adjacent to his bedroom. He brings most of the classroom texts from his own personal collection.
Lining the halls hang a series of portraits, most of which are him with Daniel.
In each picture – thanks to the state of the memory – Leon can’t see Daniel. His body and face are fuzzed out. Some are from Daniel’s home town of Edinburgh, near Holyrood Park and Arthur’s Seat; all of these contain two fur–laden cairn terriers named Manny and Coto – dogs that Daniel has had since the inception of their relationship. The rest of the photographs are in Glasgow near the Gardens.
As he leaves his path in the sitting room, Leon dismisses the pictures and the feelings they bring back. He doesn’t know what to call himself anymore. Is he still the Professor when he’s just relegated to a subset? But still, he knows this is a trifle. It’s only served to unearth something deeper within, a fear that he still can’t admit to himself. In Edinburgh another event awaits him. Only, Leon won’t know about it until after it happens. He’s too busy pacing, patronizing himself. In the hallway, he can remember the classroom. Casey Hayes. It never changes in his mind. It sounds like Daniel berating him for not standing up for his program when he had the chance. Even saying it that way sounds passive – they’d talked for two hours in the car about Leon not being more forceful, but here it means nothing because it’s in the past. The feelings of lack of definition begin to grow.
The doubt of deserving the life he’s built has taken root.
With the two bowls filled with aromatic sweetness, I handed Melanie her drink. I sat on the ground next to her and waited for her to sip at her own before swirling my bowl and taking a large gulp. It tasted the way it smelled, and I suddenly craved a pie with fresh rhubarb and strawberry in not-a-drink format. A soft rumble shook the room, another cloud of dust settled around us. I covered my bowl, but Melanie was oblivious to it. Her eyes were wide and brimmed with tears. I needed to distract her until Davion returned. That, in its own respect, was my own way of keeping my mind off everything.
“You seemed upset before,” I started. I only knew one thing about her, and even though it seemed a brash topic, it was better than discussing the situation we were currently in.
“I came searching for my father.”
“Is he at the Abbey?”
“Not the Abbey,” she said. “I came here just for Davion.”
“And blood, from the sound of it.”
She blushed and took another sip. “Well, if you had the same history with him, you’d be doing the same.”
“I shouldn’t trust him?”
“Take it to mean whatever you want,” she said. “He’s probably a trustworthy person. All I know is that when my Dad walked out on us, Davion’s trustworthiness went out the window for me. There’s a fine line between someone’s life choices and when those same things hurt other people.”
I looked her up and down. The mental picture of Melanie I’d seen before wasn’t the same. She had seemed younger in the Abbey, maybe in her early twenties. Her makeup had smudged enough to cast doubt on that, but now I could see her hair was ragged from age; there was a distinct, lingering musk of being unwashed for days. And fear. It forced a constant twitch in her fingers. This wasn’t a woman whose father had just walked out on her – she was much too old to be that reliant. She was searching for closure. Maybe that was how she’d been able to push the destruction of Sondranos out of her mind. I envied her.
“How old are you?”
“Old enough,” she said.
“Which implies you grew up fast,” I responded.
“Who gave you permission to qualify me?”
“My line of work.”
She paused, unconcerned with asking for me to clarify. “My Dad walked out on my family when I was thirteen – about fifteen years ago. God, I hated him.”
“It’s taken you a long time then,” I said. I was getting good at bad questions.
“It wasn’t until my Mom passed a few months ago that I decided to find my Dad and let him know what he did to her. She never recovered. Died miserable and alone and hating me because I reminded her of him. The typical love story.”
“And you had enough to go on to bring you here?”
“No. All the paths led to the MacKinnon Commune outside of town. That’s the commune Davion works with.”
“The Commune with a gift shop.”
“No, that’s the Abbey. The Commune doesn’t have anything like that. I think.”
“What’s the difference, aren’t they all branches of the same thing?”
“Religious wordplay. Words are the foundation of everything here. Davion returns to it once every month with reports and new recruits.” She pointed upwards as if the wine cellar encompassed the entirely of the Abbey. “I’ve figured this place is the way station for those wishing to join the commune. So, when I learned that my Dad joined after leaving us, I did my research and figured he must have met Davion.”
“And what makes you think Davion remembers your father?”
“I don’t,” she said. “At least, I’m starting to think that. I just want proof before I go all the way out there. If he isn’t there, I’ll need a damn good reason to get out.”
“Why is that?”
“Have you ever met the daughter of an alcoholic? Afraid to drink because she might like it too much? Religion’s the same way,” she looked at me with cold, calculated eyes. This was a woman who would understand why I’d decided to run. Another rumble shook the cellar. More dust cascaded and danced down the beams of light. I looked back at Melanie, who’d closed her eyes. She shut them against memory as well as the dust.
“We all have impressions of people. What matters is how we interpret them when the details change,” I said. It was all I could think to add as I felt like I’d just stepped into a situation I never belonged in.
“Well,” Melanie’s face soured, and her expression shifted to one of disgust. “My impression of Davion is that he’s a sod. When I came this morning, I told myself ‘I’m not letting him brush me away this time’.”
“I think that was wise of you,” I said.
Melanie opened her mouth and looked at me, cock eyed. The professor part of me had been speaking. Patronizing, belittling. Or maybe this was what Melanie heard when Davion pushed her aside for other matters. Either way, she shook her head and finished the rest of her wine. She closed her mouth and I heard grit crunching between her teeth. She then handed me her bowl, glowering. I took it semi-apologetically and walked back to the cask.
“I’m fully aware of what’s going on,” Melanie mumbled.
I still didn�
�t believe her. There was distance in her eyes – as far away as my students’ on the last day of class. She stopped talking long enough to make my heart drop. She cocked her head to the side and brushed a couple loose strands of her blonde hair behind her ear.
“You hear that?”
I listened. I couldn’t hear anything outside, but the music still played – something by the Devotions. “What do you hear?”
She pointed upwards and I followed her finger. I didn’t see anything she would have been pointing at. Instead, I heard the radio click off and the song started over again. It got a few more notes into the tune before the song’s skipping interrupted the melody. The radio whined, and then the tune was gone. In its place was a voice – one that was very familiar.
“All units: we require medical attention,” said the co-pilot who’d told me about the Abbey and the shop. His voice was unmistakable. It was soft, but it bounced off the cellar speakers, using the silence as an amplifier. “Coordinates embedded with this transmission. I don’t know what’s going on but if anyone’s available please help. We’ve hijacked a local signal, but I don’t even know if this will go through. They’re coming. We need…”
The transmission cut off. Not even static filled the cellar.
Chapter Three:
Two kinds
I had been deep in my thoughts of Daniel and home and wondering if I should have been out in the Abbey yards looking for survivors when the door to the cellar door clamoured open. Melanie shrieked in response. She dropped her bowl, startled. Whatever Blanc de Noirs was left jumped across the room and soaked into the floor.
“Davion?” Melanie called out.
I looked up towards the stairs. Two silhouetted figures descended. The first figure carried the second by wrapping an arm around the other’s chest.
Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop Page 3