conversation/01

[rokuta]

Arriving fresh-faced and ready to instruct at St Lucida, the young Gaspard Arneri found his junior fellowship mentored by Maestro Francis Kosteas. The otherwise soft-spoken Kosteas was locally infamous, foisted on newcomers for the bouts of indigestion which sparked his temper at random. These bouts rendered him metathetic, so that those on the business end of Kosteas’s readings-out felt the ungainly urge to laugh, cower, and correct him all at once.

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light/06

[rokuta]

But as Esenin turned the key, the prospect of a week off work began to weigh on him. There was nothing for it but to hole up in his little bedroom, steeling his thesis and stomach for another bout of getting sneezed on at MGU. To sleep and wake under the nymphs with some regularity. Or to call up Lyonka after all, so they could get a feel for the remaining grasses at Romanovo while Dunia was busy with the baby. The scene behind the pane now seemed sealed in, preserved for all mankind like a museum piece, The Last Day On Earth. The desks were strewn with the debris of the morning. Panteleev's had on it a glass of tea, mostly full and sweating condensation still, as if abandoned in the path of some calamity.

( +++ )