The curtain-veiled window was ajar. A thin ray stretched diagonally through the dim office to the desk. A smoldering wisp rose diagonally following the ray of sunlight towards the window, originating from a square malachite ashtray… rough, as if created by an ancient master. Behind the desk sat Professor Peter Blear. He was thirty five. His reddened eyes peered at the monitor through rectangular horn-rimmed glasses. His right hand slowly dragged the mouse towards him on its mat – lines of Greek text made way for fresh ones. Above the lines were reflected two balding patches surrounded by short black hair. He glanced down and jotted something on a sheet of paper, his neck pricked by sprouting stubble. The sparsely adorned back of his head illuminated the screen.
His autarchic boss Joan, director of the university’s Ancient History Department at the Faculty of History, had gone home long ago. Every wily professor had also cleared out, leaving him with the scientific conference program project. He wrote e-mails to his colleagues until late that evening and toiled in search of new publications on the Internet covering “Economic and Cultural Delian League Member City-State Inter-relationships”. Peter read, wrote, typed. But sometimes, like red wine in an amphora, his body filled with ardent fury. He threw the mouse – it hung from the table by its cord. He threw a pen – it bounced off the staunchly latched door. He pushed off from his desk – his wheeled office chair slammed into the wall. Everyone was off taking care of their own business, once again dumping their workload on him. As usual, he had failed to refuse!
But the tension vanished when he remembered that his vacation begins on Friday. He smiled thinking about this, using his heels to drag the office chair back to its initial location. With a smile that wouldn’t leave his round face, he kept reading about ancient Greece in Greek, English and German.
In the morning, during a break between courses, Joan scribbled all over Peter’s plan while grimacing. She was a tall forty-ish buxom American whose chest was always in her interlocutor’s face, and which students couldn’t help staring at. Her face, when she spoke to him or about him, was always as agitated as the tempestuous sea. It either winced with discontent or displayed a forced smile. Blear found Joan unpleasant; because of her insincerity, her loud voice… but even more because of the sheepishness she inspired in him. He listened to her dissatisfied remarks. He felt uncomfortable that her abrupt barking, like that of a drill sergeant, could be heard in the hallway where teachers and students passed, even though he knew everyone was used to her power over him. Joan, as if on purpose, continued to speak louder and louder. Peter continued to fear telling her to tone it down. More than shame, he felt irritated knowing that the conference plan used in the end will be his. She’ll only shuffle a few words around and change the title. But he kept his irritation under control. He just sat before her like a student, hands on his knees, fingernails lined up in neat rows like the shields mounted along the flanks of a Greek trireme.
Leaving the office to get to his course, he got a sympathetic glance from Liz, secretary at the Faculty of History. It was humiliating.
Peter walked in the hallway – everyone seemed to be staring at him with indulgence or superiority – he looked down as usual. Students often forgot to greet him, or smiled silently while trying to crush Peter with haughty looks – teachers crossed him with a grin, or failed to notice him at all – everything intimidated him. His concentration failed and he lost himself in the openness of the classroom.
So now, the auditorium door slammed shut, showing how nervous he was. Every pair of eyes in the room stared. Peter said, too softly, “Let’s get started”. Conversation could be heard coming from the back row. This irritated him. They were the smallest minor group – only eight people – but they were his favorites. Here he taught students how to correctly pronounce the Ionic dialect of ancient Greece, which hadn’t sounded right on the planet for millennia. Blear taught them his personal pronunciation, which didn’t at all resemble the practical version of the English-speaking Ancient Greek professors. He stubbornly defied all objections, even discontent – claiming that his pronunciation variant was the fruit of scientific research and that the Ancients spoke this way.
They weren’t first year students, so now and then one could hear the Ionic dialect of ancient Greece for a few minutes in this twenty-first century American university classroom. One talked about commerce, that merchant ships had arrived at the port loaded with wheat, that one could buy large quantities of oil, that the olive harvest had been good and there would be no limit to exporting olives and olive oil. Talking with the students and listening to their discourse, he felt for a moment in an ancient Greek polis, on a market square. This made him happy. Happiness glimmered within him, like a lantern flame in a dark room. He went to the cafeteria while savoring this magical feeling of ancientness recreated in the twenty-first century. He gathered his lunch onto his tray. It seemed to him that the students had also felt Greece, its life, its universe. He sat at a table and smiled mindlessly.
