Fool School (15 page)

"Tomorrow," says Nuncle to the two of us, "bring your
recorders after lunch." We nod.

Hero leads us upstairs, to what I hope is our last
class of the day. We don't have candles to leave at the bottom of
the steps, but then, it's still clinging to high summer and there's
still light out the thin arrowloop windows.

The smell of vellum and wood together is very nice. I
wish Mass smelled this way, without the scent of stinky smoky
incense. Above the reclined form of Hamlin, who is a black resting
hedgehog in the far end of the room, is a very large crystal
lanthorn of a style I'm never seen. It had not been there when
Malcolm and I met Hamlin on the tour.

The lanthorn's surface is like unto a pinecone's, a
grid of white spikes layered and layered. I'm not sure whether each
spike is manufactured separately or whether a truly master
glassblower has done this all at once, created a white pinecone
cylinder with an oil lamp built into it. I see the lid has glass
tubes for air, rather than simply holes, and I imagine it's been
constructed to be fireproof, perhaps even unbreakable. Warm light
floods.

The desks are angled, of gold-colored wood, with the
iron scroll-turners nearly blocking one's view of the front table.
The seats are hard but sculpted to prevent the legs from falling
asleep. The light from the lanthorn comes from the back, it's
enough to illuminate the surface, and the desks are angled just
enough that there is not much shadow. The professor will be less
well lit at the front. Darkness arrives shallowly from the
night.

A procession of scuffy shoe noises rises from the
stairwell. This must be the Classics professor. I hope he'll be
easy and engaging, being (I assume) the last class of each day.

A face smooth, pointed like a badger's, no folds
around the eyes, lips clenched in consternation, birdlike,
ferretlike, cleanshaven and therefore rather womanly. I've known
hardly any man without at least an attempt at a beard. Nuncle even
has a patch of stubble around his cancer, sixteenish-year-old
Perille has a youth's point of hairs on the bottom of the chin and
top of the lip, but the Classics professor chooses to shave so
close that he--and it is a he, I can spot a woman anywhere--he
looks like a newborn in a long black robe. Only the eyes--ah! The
eyes. They practically burst from their smooth, sunken sockets,
orbs of life and wisdom and--dare I say it--humor. This, this is
what I want from a jesting professor, a sparkle of boyishness.
Perhaps he remembers what it was like being our age. He's young, I
decide, probably not thirty, the youngest professor by far.

"New ones," says the Classics professor to Malcolm
and I. He smiles and lays down a pair of slim bound books of cut
parchment on the large desk in front. I look around the library and
see only maybe ten books. All the rest are scrolls, of which there
are scores.

Yessir, I say, and hear Hamlin harrumphing behind me.
That's right, we're not to speak unless directed to.

"I'd better teach today, then," says the Classics
professor, and I wonder what he normally does. He has a pair of
stones in his hand, and I wonder if he'll throw them at me, but
instead he lays his two books on a broad desk and uses the stones
to prop them open. I see writing on the pages, stopping at the same
line on each book. The professor takes five quills from his robe
pocket, the feathers are all squished, and he withdraws a straight
knife from beneath his robe and pares the quill nibs and divides
them, deftly forming reservoirs, he's clearly had practice. Two of
the quills are approaching their feather-ends, one is brand new. He
withdraws a long phial of powdered red ink--I don't know what kind
of ink it is--and a pair of bowls with tall sides and a pig's
bladder waterskin and mixes his inks with a few shakes of each,
turning powder to liquid, swirling the red liquid by turning the
bowls between a thumb and middle finger. He sets the two bowls to
either side of the books, lays a short quill beside each bowl,
throws the back of his robe over his chair and seats himself. His
eyes sparkle.

"What does a jest do?" he says aloud.

Something very strange happens now. The pointed face
and robe blackness stay perfectly still, but the man's hands rise
and take up a quill each and dip into red and begin moving
absolutely in unison, writing in the pages of the books. They are
each writing the same words, you can tell by the way they follow
the same paths. Only, his left hand is bent at the wrist, writing
backward, and the right hand writes forwards. No one should have
this skill, it must be devilry. But his voice is clear and plain,
and his face fair, and I feel off of center and left of right.

"A jest is a way of telling a story about ourselves,"
he says, staying perfectly still as he speaks. His hands dip
quills, shake in unison, and return to the page. "It's the story,
the sequence of cause and effect, that draws our interest. The
familiarity. The rise of expectations, and the fulfillment of
them--or not. A story that's clearly familiar to us and easy to
glean the purpose of is called a
parabola
, or parable in
English. Relatable, brief, meant to clarify a message or make it
more immediate. Consider the lilies of the field, that sort of
thing. Conversely, a story about foreign lands and strange
practices is called
allegory
. Allegory is a way of
highlighting how unusual our life is by contrasting it to
another's. Like with a parable, an allegory works best when we can
compare it easily with our own life. A well-contrasted allegory is
called a
satire
."

I know this word well, Papa spoke of it.

"Here is a satire." His hands lose their rhythm as a
page of writing comes to an end, and the professor--whose name I
still don't know, or remember, at least--Wendel-something?--reaches
down and shakes a very fine sand onto the four open pages, left and
right, left and right, then lifts the books and shakes the sand
loosely onto the floor.

"The vizier of the Saracens burst into the Sultan's
chambers and knelt and kissed the Sultan's feet. 'My lord, the
Christians are attacking,' the vizier says. 'How can this be?' the
Sultan replies. 'We're surrounded by miles of uncrossable desert on
every side.' 'Sire,' the vizier says, 'they are tunneling under the
desert, through the sand.' 'Well then,' says the Sultan, 'dig up
the desert, so that they are once again exposed to the harsh
Saracen sun.' So the desert was laboriously dug down to the clay
beneath the surface, and a hundred tons of sand shipped away to far
India. Once the task was complete, the Sultan was astounded to find
himself at the point of fifty Christian lances. 'How did you come
to cross my miles of uncrossable desert?' the Sultan shrieks. 'We
crawled through miles of sand,' says the Christian king. 'How can
this be?' says the Sultan. 'I just had all our sand sold to India
to prevent just such an invasion.' 'Oh, that's simple,' says the
Christian king. 'When we saw that we would be exposed to the
elements on our way to Araby, we purchased a hundred tons of sand
from far India to give us cover from the hot Saracen sun.' "

It's funny. I'm enjoying listening to the Classics
professor talk. I hope he'll talk the entire time.

"The most important element of a satire is the
immediacy," the professor says, his back framed by the vertical
black line that is the open window, a breeze blowing summertime air
across the paper, assisting its drying. "A story need not be
hilarious to be worth telling, if it rings true, although it always
helps to be hilarious. Sometimes it's enough to say something that
is perfectly true, but which no one else will dare admit. For
example, Hamlin is very fat. He looks like a giant baby."

We turn to look.

"I shall spit in your ale," Hamlin states
imperiously.

"And he is holding up his girth with a table," says
the Classics professor. "Now, let's add an element of the surreal
to our factual statement. Imagine, if you will, such a table with
little wheels on the bottom. Suddenly Hamlin can roll himself
around, like a big boy."

We laugh.

"By amending our exciting new factual statement with
a surreal twist, we have created a small jest. But it's not as
sharp as it might be. By amending the facts still further, with
rhetoric, we add a sharper element. Here, for example, is a
rhetorical flourish we might use:
antiphrasis
, meaning to
insult by praising."

"I will not be insulted. You may, however, praise
me," says Hamlin over his nose.

"Oh Chamberlain of this most esteemed library," says
the Classics professor. "What commitment, maintaining a bulk that
insures your permanent presence inside your ward! What a
catastrophe it would be if a mind that wanders like yours does were
accompanied by a body that also wanders."

Hamlin's piggy eyes scan we students, looking for
signs of humor. "What are you goblins looking at?" he demands. I
believe I detect an undercurrent of good humor, but I am cautious
about letting on that I know.

With two clunks, a spray of sand falls to the floor,
and the professor turns the page again. I almost stand and ask what
he's writing, but I have chosen not to, and remain undistinguished
in my chair.

"Now," says the Classics professor, "for the rest of
our time this evening, one of you will read aloud from a scroll,
and the rest of you will copy. You three--wait, where's the other
boy?" the Classics professor says.

Perille holds up a fist vaguely.

"Violence. I might have guessed. Well, he'll have to
catch up with
Sir Tristram et Mme. Ysolde
in his spare time.
Now. You." He indicates me. "Seat yourself at the desk ahead of me.
And Hamlin, if you would?"

"Shall I mash your food for you, too?" the
chamberlain mutters as he rises heavily and stumbles languorously
across the room, a black gazebo of fabric, retrieving a scroll of
parchment, giving the backside of the roll several squirts with a
small glass plunger, sending a thin mist onto the paper and letting
the halves unfold, slipping it onto the rollers.

"Thank you, Hamlin. Now, while in many cases you will
be expected to invent your own jests for each occasion, you'll be
called upon regularly to recite the half-dozen great stories in
part or whole. If you cannot recite every given fragment of the
Arthur story, the Tristram, the Romance of the Rose, the Travels of
Mandeville, the exploits of the Æthelings, and the Ilium saga, then
you are guaranteed to anger your patron, which is never advisable.
You. Must know. All of it. Capisce?"

I nod.

"Read aloud . . ." He looks expectantly at me, and I
say Tom, "Tom."

I look down at the scramble of red-brown scrawl and
fear what I must admit.

I shake my head. I am only two yards from the
professor. I feel his eyes on me. I can't speak.

"Tom, please begin. Don't be afraid. You'll be doing
plenty of public speaking, best to begin now."

"I can't read, professor."

Silence. Two short quills are placed next to two
half-finished pages. I am to be scolded. I can feel it.

Instead, the professor rises and runs, not a jaunt
but a flat-out run down the stairs. Robes swish. A rainfall of
footsteps scatters and echoes up at us. I rise in fear, but there
is nothing, he's gone down the stairwell. In my mind I imagine the
professor bursting out the doors, falling to his knees on the
barren earth and crying aloud to the heavens that such a thing
should be. How could, in this day and age, a thirteen-year-old boy
be illiterate? Why, O lord of heaven, should the world be full of
such ignorance and desolation?

I hear sniggering behind me. Perille and the girl-boy
are sharing a laugh. I don't understand anything. Hero has his hand
over his mouth, disguising a smile.

I hear: "Thomas?" It's Hamlin. "Here."

I file between the desks to where the chamberlain has
returned to his accustomed spot. "You seem perplexed," Hamlin says
to me, not unkindly. "Professor Weatherford has trouble with his
posterior nethers. Nervous debility. It's expected you will
endeavor not to disrupt his equilibrium with the unexpected or
un-looked-for, and if, ahem, the good professor should be so
unfortunate as to
go off
," and I hear Perille behind me,
cracking up, "you will make no mention of it at any time. You will
treat him with courtesy always. And that," he says, raising his
voice slightly, "goes for you as well, Mizyer Perry. Now," and he
is speaking very kindly to me, "I shall take it upon myself to
teach you letters, so that you can begin learning the great stories
in as timely a fashion as possible. Report to me each
luncheon--before you eat, you understand--and I will instruct you.
If you complete your letters expeditiously, I will send you to
luncheon. Is it agreed?"

I yessir.

"Bed then, Thomas. Young man?" Hamlin addresses
Malcolm. "Have you your letters?"

Malcolm yessirs, and Hamlin sends me away, while the
others stay. I descend the staircase shame-faced, and as I reach
the lower hall, I pass Weatherford, who is pimpernel-red. His eyes
fall to the floor as he identifies me, as if he's trying to
remember something, and he mutters as I pass, but there are no
words there, only the blunt shapes of monosyllabic madness. He
smells, smells of both fresh midden and a flowery burst of fine
perfume.

Bed, a bustle of rocks in a bag. I wonder whether my
nascent studentship of letters under Professor Weatherford is
forever spoiled. I don't know, and I can't sleep, so I rise and
ascend the stairs to the huge heavy exterior door.

It won't open. It's locked, and thumps against the
iron mechanism. I check but there's no key above the door or in the
vicinity, not under the rug, no way out. If there were a fire, I
think, we'd be condemned . . . but the building is stone, and won't
burn.