Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop (4 page)

“
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.”