Young Writers Society

A Demonstration

A floor-length turquoise cloak and bright purple hat on the hat stand outside the kitchen announced the presence of Professor Z. –as Zephyros had come to be called among the students of the University. None of the students knew where he came from or even what he professed, but the staff did, and they held strongly to the belief that he was a genius, even though every planned lecture or speech was evaded.

He attended all of the staff meetings, but usually made origami or flew paper airplanes out of what was supposed to be note-paper. He would always be the first to request more coffee, tea, scones, etc. And when asked his opinion on the matter at hand, he would mistake “Examinations” for “Jam and Cake” or “The Board of Trustees” for “Mustard in Tea,” which he didn’t think sounded very appetizing and suggested they not serve. These activities and remarks made the staff think that this Professor only came to the meetings for the refreshments, which he enjoyed and guzzled more than any other staff member.

Once, the chief cook, an enormous man by the name of Gregory Pilsnup with the theory that anything, if ground, chopped or mashed thoroughly enough, can be made into nutritious –if not particularly tasty– soup, was at a meeting and noticed how much the old professor enjoyed his food, for they never served soup at the meetings and, other than his soup theory, Gregory was a very good cook. He had told Professor Z. that he could come for a free meal or snack anytime, and had showed the old man to the kitchen. The two had since become good friends and the Professor could usually be found with his cat Bora in the kitchen, constructing a Sidney Opera House out of artichoke petals or an Eiffel Tower out of green beans. Afterward, he and the cook would always eat the structures with great, solemn ceremony.

At one such time, a young woman of twenty or so –a student at the university– walked into the kitchen. The Professor, at the moment, was creating an Empire State Building out of crackers glued together with a mixture of gooseberry jam and goat butter. He told the woman that the cook was out, but she said,

“No matter; I came for you.”

The old gentleman grinned and his eyebrows bounced. “Do you want to help with the construction?”

“Well I would love to,” she laughed, leaning down to pet Bora, “but I was sent by my mother, Gillian Buckram, the vise-president of the university,” The woman in question happened to be the one who had urged the old man to make a speech at his first dinner on campus. “I am to tell you that you are wanted in the teacher’s lounge. I’ll take you there.”

He assented and flung on his cloak and hat. He snatched up Bora, but the woman told him that her mother didn’t allow animals in the lounge, so the cat was left behind.

They walked through the courtyard separating the new part of the university building (where the kitchen was located) from the old part (where the lounge was located). The courtyard had once been the front yard of the university and was very grand. There was a big fountain in the shape of three maidens dancing within a moat the width of an Olympic swimming pool and three and a half feet deep. The fountain and pool were set down below ground level, requiring five steps to get to the rim of the pool, where students could always be found studying or doing homework.

When they got to the lounge, the young woman parted with the older gentleman, telling him that since she had no classes, she would meet him back at the kitchen to work on the Empire State Building. This threw the aged professor into ecstasies and he entered the lounge in a good temper.

The teacher’s lounge was in the old part of the university, that is to say, the pre-renovation part, along with the Dining Hall, Entrance Hall and a bunch more important Halls. The lounge wasn’t a Hall though, it was but a simple, small library containing a circle of swivel chairs around a table and lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves and built-in ladders.

In a high-backed throne on the other side of the table from the door, sat Gillian Buckram. Her chair, of course, wasn’t actually a throne, but it gave the strong impression, which was backed by her aura of importance and superiority. She wore a rigid, formal suit and tie and her black hair enclosed her head like a hardhat, protecting her mind from un-business-like fun. She tried to smile, but her facial muscles seemed too stiff, so she pursed her painted lips instead. She gestured to one of the swivel chairs and said, “Seat yourself, Professor.”

He bowed humbly, hat at heart, and obliged.

“Well,” The woman began.

The Professor rummaged in his bag and selected a book.

The woman pursed her lips harder and continued, “first of all,”

But she didn’t get much further, for the gentleman had settled himself into a swivel chair and was kicking off of the table with his feet. Soon, he was gyrating madly. He drew out a pencil and Gillian Buckram saw that the book the old man had in hand was a sketchpad on which he was drawing.

“What are you doing, Professor Zephyros?” She inquired, annoyed.

“I am drawing the world as it looks when I am spinning.” He responded, kicking the table again. “It is quite fascinating, you should try.” Here, he tore a page from his pad and slowed down a bit, so that he could toss it to her, along with a pencil from his pocket.

“But, Professor,” she said, setting the art supplies aside and patting her hardhat as if to make sure it was secured preperly. “Please, this is a respectable university!”

Still spinning, the Professor nodded, but uttered no verbal response. He held up his sketchpad and admired his work, then, he stopped himself and looked about the room.

“Are you dizzy now?” The vice-president asked, scornfully.

“Not in the least!” He said, grinning. He stood up and squinted around the lounge. Presently, he walked around the room, opening all of the window shades. The sun danced in gratefully.

Gillian Buckram, irritated that she couldn’t find any particular symptoms to confirm this gentleman’s insanity, –for she was a psychologist– furrowed her brow and puckered her lips so hard, that it seemed as though they were like to fall off, considering that they were mostly made of lipstick.

Satisfied, he sat down again and kicked off from the table. His cloudy head, face and complexion, combined with the light gray chair made the spinning professor look like a tornado. His head bobbed up and down, from his subject to his portrayal and his hand moved across the paper in rapid linear motions.

“Stop at once!” The woman commanded, but to no avail. “Professor Zephyros, do you not understand that this is a reputable and prestigious institution?”

No answer.

“Do you expect us to tolerate such childish behavior?”

Again, no response from the tornado.

“Do stop spinning!”

Eventually, he slowed and did stop. He admired his work, and then held it up proudly for the woman to see. She flapped her hand and looked away, annoyed.

“Will you please listen to what I have to say?”

No response, she took that for a yes and continued.

“Thank you, now: Firstly, our staff has all read most of your works and we understand that you are a genius in many fields. But we haven’t seen evidence of this, especially in our little meeting today. We invited you here when we heard that you were in town and expected you to teach the students something via a lecture, speech or demonstration. Why haven’t you?”

“I don’t have much to say or demonstrate, yet, sister.”

“Call me Dr. Buckram.” She said, irritated and hoping that her hardhat would hold through such an onslaught of informality. Then, when he didn’t say anything, she asked,

“What do you plan to profess while here?”

“I have no plans.”

“What do you want to do while here, then?”

He thought. “Well, I would like to keep spinning in this chair and—”

“Oh, just go back to your useless pastimes and games, but keep in mind, if you don’t give a lecture, demonstration or speech within the next week, you will not be able to stay in our generous lodgings for much longer. You are dismissed!”

Outside the lounge, Valerie Buckram, Gillian’s daughter –who had been listening to the whole conversation– ground her teeth and bit her lip, trying to think of a plan.

***

When Valerie and Zephyros got back to the kitchen and finished the Empire State building, the Professor and Gregory began making plans for especially long and extraordinarily hard baguettes to be made for a proposed fencing match. They made a bunch of other plans too, but Valerie cut in and reminded the two that, by order of her “Majesty” Gillian Buckram, the Professor would need to give a speech, lecture or demonstration soon in order to stay long enough to put these plans into action.

Then, before she could explain the situation to Gregory, the cook was behind a big pot of gruel (or what he would call soup) and thousands of industrial appliances were beeping and snorting. He was preparing dinner for every one who wouldn’t go somewhere else for dinner –including some janitors, a number of staff members, several professors and quite a few students and teachers of all kinds –but back to Valerie and Zephyros.

“Maybe you should give a demonstration?” Valerie suggested.

“A demonstration of what?”

“Well… anything I suppose.”

“Just anything?”

“Well virtuallyyes, or so I assume,”

He grinned, and Valerie knew that she no longer needed to think of a plan.

***

During the next week, the Professor’s edible creations turned from famous buildings to famous places. He had made a broccoli, water and mashed potato Central Park and a pumpkin ice-cream Grand Canyon. But he soon tired of these and moved into representative abstraction. One such construction, entitled “Vivid Imaginings of Anti-Chaotic Plots” was a colorful mush of raw vegetables (namely: carrots, celery and various sweet peppers soaked in beet juice) representing the chaos, surrounded by a uniform circle of slightly wilted cabbage, representing the anti-chaotic plots. And the whole scene (meant to be viewed from above) was washed over with a mix of oil and balsamic vinegar, to make it hazy like a dream, or imagining, without draining the color from the piece, making the imagining vivid. In a word, it was a masterpiece of which the Professor was vastly proud. And it was quite tasty, too.

***

On the following Saturday, Professor Z. was walking through the courtyard with an open green umbrella over his head –as if he expected the exceedingly clear and sunny sky to precipitate– and four large cloth sacks (one purple; one orange; one blue and one green) slung over his shoulder.

As he was walking, he opened more and more colorful umbrellas until he looked like nothing more than a walking ball of bristling umbrellas. He ambled over to the pool and sat down on the rim. The perpetual group of scholars regarded him with an amused eye.

Since almost everyone walked through the courtyard around this time of day, and everyone who walked by stopped to observe, within five minutes, everyone was either in the courtyard, or (within ten minutes) huddled against the open windows of the university buildings surrounding the courtyard. They saw that for some reason or another, the fountain had been turned off.

Slowly, the umbrella ball began to exfoliate. Once the umbrellas were separated from the gentleman, the crowd saw that they were not ordinary umbrellas, but very deep ones, with a plug as of those on bathtubs.

As the expectant crowd watched, the old gentleman set an umbrella down in the water like a boat. Then, he pushed it across the pool to the other side. He ran around to the other side and did something that astounded all of the crowd members: he sat gingerly into the boat (which, because of its unusual, deep shape, held his weight) and propelled himself across with two large spatulas, borrowed from Gregory for the occasion.

Then, he snatched up his orange sack and jumped again into the boat, but, rather than pushing himself across, he poured some of the contents of the sack (which proved to be orange sand) into the umbrella and opened the bathtub plug. As he glided along, pouring sand through the hole and propelling himself forward with the spatulas, the sand poured out of his boat, marking his winding and serpentine trail.

When he got to another wall of the pool, he plugged up the outlet and jumped out. Then, he asked the crowd if any of them would like to try. He picked four of the many raised hands and filled their umbrellas with different colors of sand. After talking to them for a little while in huddle formation, he handed each of the volunteers two spatulas and set them on their way.

Soon, there was a maze of multi-colored paths on the bottom of the water. After a few people had tried (including Valerie) the Professor grabbed six of his seven umbrellas and in the seventh one, pushed himself over to the statue in the middle. He gave each of the dancing maidens one umbrella for each hand, and then pushed himself back to the wall again to admire his handiwork.

Just then, Gregory came from the kitchen with a huge cake shaped like the Professor and people began to bustle his way. For those who were looking from the windows far above, the pool and statue looked so celebratory that they began to mince paper and throw it down as confetti. Some of the shredded paper –people below would later notice– was especially frustrating homework or problem sets. At this moment, Gillian Buckram walked stiffly into the courtyard. She had a way of walking as if her shoes were much too tight and her skirt way too taut. She looked about with a disapproving eye that made confetti cease and all fall silent.

“What is happening here?” She asked.

Her daughter pranced up to her and said, winking: “A demonstration.”

“A demonstration of what,” Gillian thought, one eyebrow raised, “his madness?” But she said nothing, for, she realized, she had been the one to encourage it in the first place.