Flavia's Blog

It was the heat, Peter thought, lifting his bag that bulged with the weight of unmarked essays up over his shoulder, it was the heat that was causing his sleepless nights, the eczema and by god, how he loathed it. He thought about his lecture for that morning. He was not looking forward to it. The faculty had recently told him that they were concerned that lately he’d been neglecting his responsibilities. He stopped again, took of his glasses and wiped them in the corner of his shirt. Placing them back on his sweaty face, he realised that everything he relied upon to keep him safe was sliding in and out of focus. His thoughts returned to what he could control, but even that was becoming difficult. What did they know anyway, he was an expert in the field, where would the literature department be without him, how dare they? Growing angry, he yanked his bag up again, fighting the bitterness that had lately lodged in his throat. He would show them.

He’d grown to despise his students’ constant etymological desire to dissect him and their persistent need to magnify him beyond endurance, picking over his every word, those odd clusters of letters that fell from his mouth, only to peddle them back into their essays. His brow darkened, all the stuff that students filled their heads with these days, what hope in hell did they have, those over confident wretches swollen with the gluttony of modern life, shamelessly flaunting those darker aspects of the soul. So accustomed were they to their obsession with gain and the belief that they could have it all had only conspired in them to grow complacent and greedy. He’d grown tired of reviewing his lectures, preferring to deliver the continuation of his stagnant ideas; same themes into the same bloodless, dried and withered artery, nourishing the corpulent student body.

He walked into the university, past the bicycle shed, bypassing the recent new wing with its monstrous coloured glass cafeteria, where he could make out vague outlines of bodies, eagerly discussing what, he’d rather not know and skirted around the right hand side of the cafeteria and into the older reassuring building. He climbed the flights of stairs to his room, passing a whistling cleaner and up to the forth floor. Nobody else was about, well he would rather prefer not to meet anybody yet, what with the rumours he had heard regarding his performance and the up and coming appointment with his superiors. He had nothing to say to his colleagues anyhow, he knew that lately they had taken to gossiping about him behind his back. As if they really had nothing better to do all day than pick him apart with their talons, digesting every wretched morsel of him.

He opened the door to his room, but recoiling from the stuffiness of it, went over to the sash window and opened it. He gazed down at the recently added ornamental lake where some ducks were waddling clumsily on its edge and a female student sat on one of the recently added benches with a book in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
He dropped his bag down, his mind returned to the outstanding marking of those essays, if he was lucky maybe two or three might be worth reading. He sat in his green armchair and rolled tobacco in a liquorice paper between his yellow fingertips. His desk was tidy, in fact almost empty apart from his in-tray and his pen pot, which was actually a wooden mug painted in various animal prints, brought back from Nairobi from one of his students. He retrieved a black pen from it and, after opening his bag, pulled out the stack of essays in their neat plastic wallets and began to wonder what insights those eager students might have salvaged from the wreckage of his own lectures on the inner workings of characters, plot and the various interwoven themes of his 19th century Russian literature module. He was rarely stirred.

His room fell quiet. Only the punctuation of the clock upon the shelf of his ceiling to floor bookcase indicated the passing of time. Indeed, if someone happened to come in at that moment they would have found him hunched up over his desk, hiding from those essays or, as lately he had begun to do, from himself. He lay slumped like this late into the morning, free to sleep safely in his enclosure keeping the creeping darkness at bay, where he could flee from the shadows, the succubus of his febrile tortured nights and away from the darkness within him.

Disturbed by a bluebottle bouncing noisily back and forth upon the pane of his window, Peter, now lying with his head in the crook of his arm, was intrigued to see if it could find its way out. After a few moments, he sat up and taking his handkerchief from his pocket, wiped it across his forehead. Glancing again at the pile of unmarked essays in front of him and loudly cursing, he grabbed them before standing up to stuff them into his bag, when a knock at the door jolted him out of his thoughts.
Dropping the pile of papers onto the floor and barely able to keep the irritation out of his voice, muttered, ‘Come in.’ When the door opened, he didn’t bother to look up from picking up the essays.

‘Hi Pete, how it’s going? Bloody hell, it’s like a furnace in here,’ Marcus interjected into the airless room, while running a hand through his thick untidy, fair hair causing it to stand on end.
Glaring at the irritatingly handsome face of his younger colleague, admonished, ‘It’s Peter,’ while placing the essays on his desk.
Unabashed, Marcus continued, ‘Yep, sorry. Peter. Listen have you got that volume of Chekhov plays I leant you?’ Peter looked blankly at him, causing Marcus to add helpfully, ‘Penguin.’ He smiled despite noticing Peter’s mouth form into a tight lipped line.
‘Why on earth would I want to borrow a book from you? I have my own.’ He peered at the young man in front of him.
‘Don’t you remember you borrowed it a few weeks ago?’
Peter, pushing his glasses up over his nose, added, ‘Well I’m positive that I haven’t borrowed your Chekhov plays. Are you sure it wasn’t a student or someone else?’
He was still having trouble imagining how someone like Marcus Wreathen had ever got his doctorate so young. He had had to slave for years to get to this position, years, the disappointment, the fear of never being good enough. Obviously, Marcus had been blessed.
‘No, I don’t forget who I lend my books to.’ He quietly challenged his older colleague, before casually walking over to the bookcase to cast his eyes over the various spines on Peter’s shelf.
Seething with ill concealed contempt, Peter joined Marcus, if only to prove that he hadn’t leant him the damn book, anyway he would’ve remembered, but that was before his tormented nights. Everything was different now.
‘That’s the one, there, the one you’ve almost got your finger on.’ Marcus moved over beside his colleague and looking at him, suddenly spluttered, ‘My god Pete, you look awful.’
‘Peter!’ he repeated sharply, avoiding the young man’s eyes.
‘Sorry,’ Marcus smiled sheepishly revealing dimples, rendering him even more attractive. ‘Everyone knows that I’m useless at names.’ Puzzled by Peter’s irritability and absentmindedness, he put it down to tiredness. He certainly looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week, his eyes were swollen and ringed in red, almost like someone had taken a fine nibbed pen and outlined them and his cheeks were sunken. ‘You need a holiday, get away for a bit, escape the demons.’ Laughing, he playfully swiped an arm out towards him. Astonished, he watched Peter flinch before recoiling from him.
‘Just take the bloody book,’ he groaned, walking over to his chair and taking out his blue handkerchief he mopped his brow, ‘god it’s so damn hot.’ His inside was writhing again, filling up the pit of his stomach.
As Marcus left the room with his book, he turned and added, ‘Go easy eh.’

Peter looked at the younger man. It was right then at that very moment that he hated Marcus’s cheerfulness, his good looks and the ease with which he conducted himself. He sighed heavily, running a sticky hand over his damp forehead. God, he felt weak and old. How the hell had he forgotten about the book and wasn’t it bloody typical that it was that idiot’s as well? Inwardly he cringed at his forgetfulness, while going over the exchange in his head, pulling apart every word that had been uttered between them. My god, he thought, jumping up, he planted the book, he knows about the faculty’s lack of faith in my capabilities. Clearly, he was attempting to drive him out, to usurp his position, the bastard. Clutching onto this diagnosis of the situation before him, he resolved to speak to Professor Thompson right away.

With this thought coagulating like wet concrete in his mind, Peter left his room shortly after, but just as he stepped out of his room, he paused as a sensation, like insects crawling over the back of his neck, alerted him to the familiar plague of nausea that lately accompanied his decisions to take action. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, his hands became sticky, the rush of blood, the vice upon his skull. In his flight, he ran into two students whose faces were unrecognisable from the contortions caused by their giggles. As he fled, they were momentarily silenced by the spectacle that their lecturer presented before them and, as he left the building, he swore that their heinous giggles were aimed directly at him, swooping down upon him, chasing him out of the door and out into the motionless air.

He pulled his collar away from his neck, gulping in thickly. He slumped down upon the bench by the ornamental lake and taking his hanky from out of his pocket, he wiped it across his forehead, stilling his heart, his hands and brushing away the insects. How he hated the way Marcus, him of all people, had attempted to prise the mask off his face. Oh he would deny it of course. They always did, smirking under their pretence of concern. After all, the little smarmy creep was barely off his mother’s milk and he hadn’t even been at the faculty for a year, yet he was behaving as if he had the same experience, the same level of knowledge and insight as himself. How much had his failings and what dreadful aspect of him had become exposed in front of him. That jumped up smirking idiot! Had it been that innermost secret part of him? He couldn’t bear the rankness, that fetid scourge that raged within him to be unmasked by a man who had so evidently wormed his way into the good books of the professor.

He stood up, pacing back and forth, that was it, it was Marcus. He almost ran from the campus, shoving his way past the eager sweaty faces of his puffed up students. Christ didn’t they ever stop excessively consuming, bloated on their own overblown egotistical selves. To his utter dismay, one managed to stand right in front of him as he swerved left towards the gate.
‘Dr Gray, my appointment?’
‘Oh. Sorry,’ he coughed, casting a wild eye over one of his weaker students. ‘It will have to wait. It’s an emergency.’
‘Oh. Dr Gray, I hope everything will be ok,’ she called after his hastily retreating figure, astonished to see him suddenly stumble, then right himself before finally heading off in the direction of the town.