How to convey the Professor to the station? That was the question. Tell him a train was waiting for him – and for him alone? Remind him of his duty to the hopeless of Europe?
The landlady could not have been more obliging; she practically tiptoed around him. She blushed to remember his dancing naked in his room. But she knew an educated man when she saw one.
So: how convey the Professor to the train station? ‘Collude lightly’ is generally the advice in these situations. But more was called for in this instance, it seemed to me. The Professor was excitable, his gestures expansive. The landlady did her best, but her voice tended to rise several modulations whenever she addressed the Professor, each word enunciated for maximum comprehension. “The – Professor – likes – to –take – long –walks. Don’t you Professor? Long walks?” On this occasion, however, the Professor replied with a kiss, and blood drained from the poor woman’s face.
It was the promise of flowers did the trick, the prospect of welcome down the line. And so, come dusk, the Professor was conveyed to the station. He laughed at the faces the houses made along the way. When he saw the train, he wept for the way it waited with such distinction.
Geraint Jonathan
(Image by CJA)
Saragun Springs 
Geraint
This creates many questions. I see some thinking dementia, and as some form of “ridding” by the Landlady. But I would rather think he was needed for the “hopeless of Europe”–an eccentric genius, the last hope against the Reich (heaven forbid “for”). Since it is up for interpretation I pick the happier scene. Greer Garson will greet him with flowers.
You have done so much with so few words!
Leila
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This fiction raises many more questions that it answers. What is the true story of the professor’s departure? Where is he bound, and why? What is behind it? He can apparently be inveigled to act in a certain way, but who is pulling the strings and again, why? Government agents? A concerned relative. A do-gooder society of some sort. I kept thinking of WW II era deportation of Jews to death camps and the perfidy expressed in transporting the victims. This fiction is very brief, and I don’t know enough to who how to feel about it.
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Geraint
If any single one of us were to look around at the astonishing mystery and mysteries that surround us now and every day and truly realize how much mystery we are surrounded with and by every single day and every single second of our lives, from the beginning to the end, that individual would instantly drop to the ground in astonishment and terror and either hide their head in the sand like an ostrich or just plain expire from the sublime terror of it all. If God has a face we would never be able to believe what it looks like (maybe one reason he doesn’t show it to us…).
I don’t know exactly who the Professor is in the piece, but I do know, FOR SURE, that he is somebody. Somebody who is “real,” someone with a long backstory and a long history, someone who lives in a recognizable world we all inhabit, someone who is unique, and unusual, someone who is called “The Professor,” someone who is in motion and is going somewhere real, someone who is a multifaceted character who’s presented in a manner that somewhat resembles Hemingway’s Iceberg Technique, where we see a tiny fraction above the surface and sense (and feel) the rest of the reality beneath, behind, within, and underneath (AND ABOVE) the surface.
“Elliptical” may be a better word for brevity and you are a master of both brevity and the elliptical.
Many among us do not realize the heights that micro-fiction can be taken to (in the right hands). There are many micro-fictions which are MUCH more valuable than entire novels that have been sold for millions of dollars. (“The Prodigal Son” comes to mind; it was written (in the air) for free and told and re-told for free and has shaped human history to a degree that no one can even begin to fathom).
This piece gives the reader a fully fleshed out world and it asks (without asking) the reader to THINK ABOUT IT before leaping to conclusions and summary judgements.
After all, no one really knows why Gregor Samsa turned into a bug, either (or who Godot really is).
Dale
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Thank you for the comments. The man in mind was Prof Nietzsche – who would soon enough be carrying bits of paper in his pockets, each bit bearing his own name, in case he forgot it.
Geraint
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An effective microfiction. Character development and a narrative arc in so few words. I especially like the last two lines.
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Geraint
One more thing–
I love having questions linger. I have an ego and I’d rather work my mind than be led around by the nose. This has many meanings and I cannot imagine that a creative person such as yourself worries about such when you create something. I bet you know when to put down the pen, because it shows! So many do not know when to let lay.
Leila
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