I sit up. As I adjust my limbs, I notice that my body is covered in long colorless scratch marks that I sure as hell hope heal before I see Kevin. “Your conference is here?” What did he do again, or did we never get around to that? “Oh, are you with the chemists?”
“I’m on the soccer team.”
“Ha.” His comment was a little weird, come to think of it. What kind of academic really sets out to shatter competitors? Not the ones I know; we know each other’s foibles too well. Like most academic disciplines, we’re an incestuous little circle. A bit of spite is as harsh as it gets.
He smiles. “Actually, I’m with the linguistics conference.”
I gape at him. “Me, too.”
Who have I just screwed? There are eight hundred people in our linguistics conference. Christopher who? I wish I could reach into my night table for the conference catalogue and quickly check.
“Oh, jolly good. What is your area of expertise?”
I cough slightly in embarrassment. There’s a pecking order of importance in my greater field. And Volapük sure as hell is near the bottom rung. “You first,” I practically squeak.
“Volapük,” he says. When I don’t say anything back, he adds, “You know what that is?”
“Of course,” I begin. I can’t finish my sentence as my heart is pounding so fast.
“I didn’t mean to insult your linguistics knowledge, but not everybody”—he picks up my limp hand with a worried look. “Hey, are you that disappointed in my specialty?”
While there are academics whose research overlaps with mine, many with papers that reference Volapük and Johann Scheleyer, the Catholic priest in Baden who invented it, there are only three of us in the world dimwitted enough to make this kook’s language a full-time calling card.
Columbia Professor Dr. David Mitchell is the big name in the field. He put this obscure topic on the academic map in the early seventies, when he wrote the first formal articles for journals. He specializes in over seven obscure languages. Despite all of his degrees, he demands everyone call him Dave. The younger academics in the constructed language field love this eccentric dearly; this is a man who knows all the lyrics to every psychedelic sixties song, even the more obscure ones like “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night” by Strawberry Alarm Clock.
The only other Volapük authority that I’ve ever come across—and only by reading his very occasional journal publications—is the mysterious Christopher T. Brown. The last one, which has nothing shocking in its content, was published without any academic affiliation listed under his name.
This is just great for whatever bit of academic reputation I have. “So,” I say as calmly as possible, “how are you going to shatter your competition? What is your presentation about?”
He looks at me like I’m an insane woman, which admittedly, at this moment, I am.
“I’m just curious. I mean, why would you shatter your competition? Who says that about their colleagues at a conference.”
Nothing follows except for Kit’s decision to pat me on the head as if to say don’t get all neurotic on me, you crazy little American.
My face radiates disgust. I stand up, nude and mad at his blasé response. I take a deep breath. “I’d like you to leave.”
“What just happened here? What have I said that’s so offensive to you?”
I can’t answer him.
“What about the Bulls game?” Kit says desperately.
I grab my leather knapsack and open the front pouch.
“This is ridiculous,” he sputters as I shove the tickets into his hand.
“Please, Kit. Just go,” I say in a clear and irate voice.
Eventually my bloody fling gets the message. He eyes his wristwatch like a losing coach checking the clock.
“Go,” I say.
He quietly exits with the tickets.
A few minutes later, I wing a purple go-go boot against the door.
CHAPTER 5
The Presentation
There’s a steady stream of instrumental defunked funk in the elevator ride down from the seventeenth floor to the conference room level. I’m not looking forward to seeing anyone, let alone speaking. I’m saddled with a thumping headache and the stinging, looping memories of yesterday’s abrupt turnabout from romantic to tragic.
My cell phone rings as I step onto the plum corporate carpet outside the elevator. I’m so busy obsessing about what went awry that I don’t even bother to check the caller ID. Was I wrong to kick Kit out? Should I have told him who I am? I know I should have, but I froze. Getting him out of my room seemed like the best course of action at the time.
“Hey, cutie! Everything cool with you?”
“Yeah,” I say with a start. Kevin. I’d never called him. I take a seat on a black leather couch in the foyer. “What’s new on your end?”
“Same old cyber shit, but hey I saw Dave Grohl this morning coming out of the Thirty-fourth Street Station. Just an average schmo getting off the E train.”
“I forget who he is.”
“You’re about to be embarrassed here. Dave Grohl like in the Foo Fighters? Like in Nirvana?”
“Sorry. Of course.”
“He had headphones on, headed to Madison Square Garden. I’m pretty sure his band is playing there next week. I wished I were going where he was going. Maybe things are more interesting in your part of the country?”
“Nah.”
“Are you jet-lagged?”
“Not really. I’m just going over my material for my presentation.”
“So what did you do last night?”
I gulp and think.
“Are you there?”
One of the linguists I just barely know waves to me. He’s a prematurely graying wiseass that my closer “friends” on the conference circuit have nicknamed Palindrome for his insistence on inserting a palindrome whenever possible in conversation. “Did you say your name is Stella? Stella won no wallets!”
I nod hello to Palindrome, and then as coolly as possible say to Kevin, “I saw an old college buddy and then I hung around the hotel with one of the Volapükists.” I’m not going to fib a night of Solitary Boggle and minibar M&M’s. I’m not that righteous about lying, but I’m just not a very good bullshit artist. I’d rather withhold information than lie.
“Damn. You’re so high-falutin’. How many Volapükists are there?”
“Enough,” I say honestly. “So what about you?”
“Are you kidding? With you out of town? The mouse is away—the cat shall play.”
“Excuse me?” I say after another small start. Who’s confessing what here?
“Poker night with the Three Musketeers. I even got a spot outside Josh’s building thanks to Doug’s radar. Takes a drunkard in search of a beer to tell you where the best parking spots are.”
I force a reply: “Is that so?” A long chat with Kevin right now would be akin to voluntarily hooking myself up to thumbscrews. “Well, I have to get going. My presentation is in a few minutes.”
“Good luck. Afterwards, eat a slice of deep dish for me.”
“Will do.”
I have to break up with him in person. He’d probably never know I cheated, so why even tell him? I was going to break up with him anyway, wasn’t I? I will away the mangy thoughts of infidelity. I’m way too anxious about Kit’s presentation to deal with my mounting guilt. As I rise from the couch, I hear, “Shari Diamond!”
Bethany Klein is an elegant Esperantist with a perfectly pressed pantsuit and a henna-pack black bob.
“Looking forward to your talk?” Bethany says with a warm smile.
“It’ll be fun,” I manage. “How was the flight in from Seattle?”
“Perfect. Come, let’s walk together. I want to show you pictures of the newest rogue in my life.”
I’m grateful for those pictures of nine-month-old Caleb Gerald Klein-Moskowitz. Another sixty seconds delaying doom.
The sorry story on the dissertation: five years a
go, I naively put all my dissertation eggs into the Volapük basket. As I finished up my full-scholarship English literature masters at NYU, I intended to continue there with a Ph.D. dissertation on Sir Thomas Malory’s background as a knight, and the influence his profession held over his great work, The Death of Arthur.
That all changed when I met a fellow coffee drinker in a Dodgers cap at the East Village Starbucks. He had an amazing face, with expressive sunken eyes and white lashes. If he didn’t have a strong Brooklyn accent, I’d describe him as an Orkney Pict, those ancient Brits who inspired the Scottish legends of Fairy Folk.
He had spotted me reading a book about the literature of Middle English, and leaned over to ask me a question.
“You ever heard of a language called Volapük?” he said in a higher pitched voice than I expected.
I hadn’t.
He told me he was an amateur linguist, and then he told me all about this universal language I’d never heard of that, at the height of popularity, had three million businessmen fluent in it for international trade. My elf was certain that there was an elderly farmer in upstate New York who’d learned the language from his father. Like Doctor Doolittle, the farmer was rumored to talk in Volapük to his animals, but in his case merely to keep what he remembered of this language alive. His children apparently weren’t interested, so the animals would have to do. As our Starbucks swizzle sticks swizzled, the caffeinated tale continued: “This was not a language he learned from a textbook. It was passed on to him the same way second generation Americans learned Italian or Yiddish. Every day the Volapük farmer supposedly took a cane and walked around naming his animals in Volapük, and parts of the landscape.”
Every time he said Volapük, a little gob of saliva fell on his crotch. But he was quite convincing.
After he left abruptly, I sat and thought.
Earlier that week, after depleting most of my savings with one month’s worth of bill-paying, I had read a New York Magazine article on young academics that tilled their dissertation subject and wrote lighter user-friendly nonfiction books that got extraordinary advances, and sometimes even film deals.
While I sipped my second double latte a crazy life strategy gelled in my head: I’d drop my King Arthur dissertation plans and find this secluded Volapük farmer. Even though my advisor, Dr. Cox, was a well-known sweetie, he was also a professor in linguistics; he’d never go for it, would he? How would I go about finding the farmer? Cox would ask me right away.
But if I could…
I allowed myself another flight of imagination: I’d get my doctorate, a childhood dream, yet I’d make hay of my degree with a mainstream memoir about my search that would sell to a big publishing house. I’d never have to ask my brother Gene for a wad of money to keep me afloat. (Not that I ever had. Before true poverty I’ve always managed to get a mind-numblingly boring temp secretarial job.)
The more I thought about my plan, the more in love with it I was. I’d have some rare adventures to boot.
Later that week, I gingerly brought up my encounter with the Starbucks linguist to Dr. Cox. Instead of laughing at me, or barking sense into me, he nodded enthusiastically: “A treasure hunt. You obviously have passion for this subject, and those with passion finish what they start.” He felt my new Ph.D. idea could still fall under his official guidance precisely because he was one of the few faculty members whose expertise straddled literature and linguistics. “I’ll get this through,” he said unreservedly.
Only after departmental approval did I realize I’d forgotten to ask the man where the farmer lived upstate. How would I ever find him? I’ve never seen the Starbucks guy there again; he just seemed to pop up from the Earth’s crust and disappear again. But I sold myself on the romance of this career turn, and I was certain that all of the details would fall in place.
They haven’t.
I do know that there are over eighteen-thousand dairy farms in New York State. Since that fateful day in Starbucks, I’ve been to three upstate cattle sales, and three different New York agriculture fairs, including one where I gained more than passing knowledge of poultry, and where I was taken to lunch by a poultry farmer with an Ask me about my cock! belt buckle who said he knew exactly who I was asking about, but in the end knew absolutely nothing about Volapük at all.
My last attempt to find the Volapük farmer turned into a comfort session for a distraught rancher whose population of prize-winning cows had been reduced by severe cattle tick fever over the previous week.
Underwhelmed by my lack of success, I contacted the amateur Volapük association, full of enthusiasts stricken with linguistic curiosity after reading about real universal languages. This mainly encompassed the hardcore science fiction and fantasy fans that actually have bothered to learn Star Trek scriptwriter Marc Okrand’s Klingon and J.R.R. Tolkein’s Orcish and Quenya.
After four years, I’m supposed to be the pro linguist, but how am I any more informed than the Hobbit readers? I’m marooned in an academic hell of my own making.
I’ve replayed those fifteen minutes in Starbucks a thousand times in my head. The man with the story was about seventy-five, much older than your typical Starbucks customer. Could I have been duped? He could have been mistaken, or even worse, a chronic liar.
But what would the man have gained by spinning what either one of my long-deceased Yiddish-speaking grandmothers would have called a bubbemeister, a tall tale? Nothing. Surely nothing. He just looked caffeinated, and eager to share his amateur linguistic knowledge.
So part of me holds out hope that I just haven’t found the farmer yet. Did Stanley stop looking when told that his quest for Dr. Livingstone was folly?
“Maybe you’ll get a clue about the farmer at the conference,” Dr. Cox said when I awkwardly asked him about funding to go to Chicago. He was well aware of my impending use-by date for NYU subsidy.
Noam Chomsky, the rock star of libertarian socialism, is concurrently the rock star of linguistic theory. Years ago he famously floated the theory that language has a universal way of developing in children. His star participation in this conference was one of the reasons I wanted to go in the first place, and I was peeved when I realized my pod of presenters—participating in what most linguists deride as the “dead language” panel—was a meager alternative to the keynote morning lecture in the Grand Salon ballroom. Because of Chomsky’s talk, details of which have not been revealed in the catalogue, there is a skeletal audience of only thirteen people in the Frank Lloyd Wright Conference Room where Kit and myself are to give our dueling Volapük presentations. With Kit’s pledge to “shatter his competition,” I wonder if the lackluster crowd disappoints him. I steal a glance over to his side of the long dais table, and he sneaks a quick look back.
I give him a lackluster wave.
He waits a few seconds to return it. He must be shocked to see me on the dais with him. He grabs the program and mouths, “S. Roberta?”
I nod.
His mouth forms a little O.
I shrug.
He must sense my telepathic message: Let’s talk later.
He’s still pretty damn attractive in that wool jacket; I’ll give him that. I’d hoped in the toxic afterglow of last night’s catastrophe my silly lust would wear off. It’s the man that counts, not the tweed.
I glance to see who else is in the room besides Kit, myself, Palindrome and Bethany Klein. Dave Mitchell is here of course, Mr. Casual, unshaven and dressed up for his Volapük lecture in a T-shirt that bears a vulture and the words Dead End—one-upping last year’s crowd-pleaser T-shirt that read, I Bring Nothing to the Table. There is a smattering of the other Esperantists I’d met at the last linguistics conference in Ithaca and have a big smile relationship with.
I wipe the puddle of cola someone’s knocked over on my presentation seat and sip from my own can of Diet Coke. The audio man asks me to test my mic.
“Hello, hello,” I say. Help, help.
Kit looks at me like he can hear me
think. He removes his glasses as he tests his mic, blowing into it like it’s an empty bottle.
“Words please,” the audio man barks. “You’re going to kill the mic!”
“Allo, allo.” Kit’s cheeks turn pink as he speaks, and with his genetic makeup, he’s pretty pink-cheeked already.
“Hey, Mr. Tambourine man,” Dave sings into his mic. There is a small giggle from the people seated in the room as he continues halfway through the song.
When the soundcheck is all done, Dave whispers in his crusty voice (almost certainly modeled on Bob Dylan’s): “Mystery solved. Christopher T. Brown is British.”
“Yes,” I say numbly.
“Sounds Cambridge to me, though there’s something else in there, too, I think.”
I choose my words carefully. “You’re on the money. I spoke to him earlier.”
Dave Mitchell nods, pleased with himself.
Recognizing accents also comes easily to me. I think I have all significant American regional accents down. Sometimes, like when I’m on the F Train, I take pity on classical composer Glenn Gould who suffered a world of sounds no one else around him could hear. My ear is not in that league, not by a mile. But Dave’s may be; he can almost always pin more specifics than me on any talking English voice. Last conference I heard him nail linguists’ accents to Tottenville, Staten Island; Adelaide, South Australia; Vancouver Island, Canada, as well as recognizing San Franciscan American-born Chinese.
As Kit reads to himself the paper he’s scheduled to present after me, I see an additional parcel in front of him. What could that be? I glance again at what he has listed in the program. “New developments in the research of Volapük.” Again his academic affiliation is unlisted. Who could afford such a low-paying career? What sort of a pampered life does he live beyond being a Cambridge grad?
The head panelist is Sadiqa Fawzi, an Arabic woman who has published an extremely well-received article on the vestiges of Ancient Sumerian spoken in contemporary marshland Iraq. She acknowledges the room and begins the panel. “Our first speaker is Bethany Klein, whose paper is entitled ‘Reexamining Orkan: Esperanto as an influence on Mork and Mindy.’”
The Anglophile Page 6
