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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.
“You ham shaved your department!” Kosteas liked to shout, or else, “Explain this barefaced lack of pies!”
Arneri numbered among the happy few to receive credit for their service, saved by a humorlessness that colored his early years. He did not, however, come away unscathed. At twenty-six he developed a stress-induced ulcer and lay in the clinic long enough to null a term, but not long enough to dissuade his first wife from leaving him for good. Maestro Kosteas, too, later quit academia to cause havoc elsewhere; Arneri, meanwhile, would live on in the shadow of this brief yet bitter encounter with death. The ulcer itself was cured with extract of cabbage, but the quality of life in the Pidgeon promised further ulcers, cabbage-juice, and worse. Arneri grew conscious of his health and eventually found a personal physician, introduced by Lavinia Perregia at the man’s own housewarming party. An avid fan of Arneri’s work, the physician persuaded the Maestro to sign a copy of Somnambulant City—an exchange he would soon come to regret.
At first, Arneri merely complained of nerves and migraines, but age soon exacerbated his fatalism. One night, he appeared in the smallest hours of the morning and rang the bell several times, alarmed by a flutter under his ribs.
“A heart attack,” he gasped.
“You’re drunk,” observed the physician, while atop the stair his wife yawned between muttered imprecations for her husband and his terrorist.
“I am dying,” said Arneri, drawing himself up. “I haven’t time to be civil about it.”
The ordeal got him a prescription for exotic blood-thinners and exercise. The thinners were more likely to hurt than heal, but the physician proved as resourceful as he was vindictive, and issued cheap vitamin tablets while charging for the actual specimen.
(“We should move to Tressignora,” the physician's wife suggested, “where there are parks for the twins.”
“If we do that he has won,” said the physician.)
The exercise entailed swims at the Prospero Fontana Memorial Gymnasium. Arneri took to the challenge as usual. At the outset he visited the pools three times a week on Optimsdays, Lucsdays, and Privdays, with a regularity that inspired the St Lucida Natation Club to change meeting hours. But his editor and aides soon grew wise and began staging ambushes by the doors. Fearing the editor’s wrath nearly as much as he hated consoling the aides, Arneri then took to skulking in desultorily, through the bougainvillea. It was in that rich tunnel of green and magenta that he encountered an unkempt Maximilian Joule, who appeared to be doing the same. It turned out that Maestro Joule was squatting in the faculty offices, all the while using Gymnasium facilities for the various necessities of personal hygiene. Trouble at the hearth, guessed Arneri. A secret girl, one without much self-esteem. He regarded Max Joule with new respect, all the while making sure to issue condolences upon finding Joule preening his mustache in the dressing rooms. At this Joule usually harrumphed, thinking how nice it would be to strangle his nemesis on the spot. The sight of Joule’s suffering, coupled with exercise, kept Arneri feeling cheerful and fit, causing him to drink less and proving that a prescription can work despite itself.
“You ham shaved your department!” Kosteas liked to shout, or else, “Explain this barefaced lack of pies!”
Arneri numbered among the happy few to receive credit for their service, saved by a humorlessness that colored his early years. He did not, however, come away unscathed. At twenty-six he developed a stress-induced ulcer and lay in the clinic long enough to null a term, but not long enough to dissuade his first wife from leaving him for good. Maestro Kosteas, too, later quit academia to cause havoc elsewhere; Arneri, meanwhile, would live on in the shadow of this brief yet bitter encounter with death. The ulcer itself was cured with extract of cabbage, but the quality of life in the Pidgeon promised further ulcers, cabbage-juice, and worse. Arneri grew conscious of his health and eventually found a personal physician, introduced by Lavinia Perregia at the man’s own housewarming party. An avid fan of Arneri’s work, the physician persuaded the Maestro to sign a copy of Somnambulant City—an exchange he would soon come to regret.
At first, Arneri merely complained of nerves and migraines, but age soon exacerbated his fatalism. One night, he appeared in the smallest hours of the morning and rang the bell several times, alarmed by a flutter under his ribs.
“A heart attack,” he gasped.
“You’re drunk,” observed the physician, while atop the stair his wife yawned between muttered imprecations for her husband and his terrorist.
“I am dying,” said Arneri, drawing himself up. “I haven’t time to be civil about it.”
The ordeal got him a prescription for exotic blood-thinners and exercise. The thinners were more likely to hurt than heal, but the physician proved as resourceful as he was vindictive, and issued cheap vitamin tablets while charging for the actual specimen.
(“We should move to Tressignora,” the physician's wife suggested, “where there are parks for the twins.”
“If we do that he has won,” said the physician.)
The exercise entailed swims at the Prospero Fontana Memorial Gymnasium. Arneri took to the challenge as usual. At the outset he visited the pools three times a week on Optimsdays, Lucsdays, and Privdays, with a regularity that inspired the St Lucida Natation Club to change meeting hours. But his editor and aides soon grew wise and began staging ambushes by the doors. Fearing the editor’s wrath nearly as much as he hated consoling the aides, Arneri then took to skulking in desultorily, through the bougainvillea. It was in that rich tunnel of green and magenta that he encountered an unkempt Maximilian Joule, who appeared to be doing the same. It turned out that Maestro Joule was squatting in the faculty offices, all the while using Gymnasium facilities for the various necessities of personal hygiene. Trouble at the hearth, guessed Arneri. A secret girl, one without much self-esteem. He regarded Max Joule with new respect, all the while making sure to issue condolences upon finding Joule preening his mustache in the dressing rooms. At this Joule usually harrumphed, thinking how nice it would be to strangle his nemesis on the spot. The sight of Joule’s suffering, coupled with exercise, kept Arneri feeling cheerful and fit, causing him to drink less and proving that a prescription can work despite itself.