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Fran slams into Bernard’s office and throws herself into the chair in front of his desk. “Jesus, I can’t believe how ridiculous students are. Are they getting more ridiculous? Is that possible?”
She waits for a couple of seconds for Bernard to respond but he stays slumped face down on his desk, face mashed into the computer keyboard. Impatient, she taps on the top of his head.
When her hand comes away oddly sticky, she grimaces and looks around for something to wipe it on. “Bernard!” she snaps.
“What? What? What?” Bernard sputters as he bolts upright. His unshaven cheek is imprinted with a set of keyboard marks. “Can’t a man pass out in his own office in peace these days?”
“Shut up, I have important complaining to do” Fran insists as she continues to look for something to wipe her hand on. “I really think the students are getting stupider. Either the university’s lowering its standards or I’m raising mine, and given the sort of person I’m willing to date these days I don’t think it’s me.”
“What are you even talking about?” Bernard snaps.
“Stupidity, whatever,” Fran gestures with her hand. “Bernard, do you have a rag or something around here? Your hair is disgusting again and I touched it.”
Bernard’s look is scathing. “Why would I keep rags around here? And who told you to touch my hair?” He pats at it sulkily, then wipes his hands off on his jacket.
“It’s hardly my fault your hair is disgusting, is it?” Fran asks, militant. “At least give me a piece of paper or something; I think this is jam.”
“Fine,” Bernard huffs, and gestures at the pile of marked essays on the front of his desk. “You could use one of those I suppose. It’s all full of shite anyway.”
Fran peers at one of them. “You’ve given this one an A.”
Bernard gestures with one hand while the other roves in his pockets for a cigarette, looking distracted. “Have I? Who cares? Where are my cigarettes?” Then, looking increasingly paranoid, “you’ve taken them, haven’t you? Give them back to me!” He paws vaguely at Fran over the desk but she holds him at bay with one hand while she picks up the essay to read more closely.
“You’ve written here that this is a spectacular failure of research and grammar, and that it’s barely fit to be used as toilet paper.” She starts reading even as she slaps at him in response to his pawing, making him squint and flinch away. He retreats, looking like a cat that’s had its fur rubbed the wrong way.
“So?” He demands, looking like he’d like nothing more than to start up again and Fran enjoys his flinch when she gestures widely with the paper.
“So,” she repeats, “if it’s so awful, why does it have a A?” Then, with a dawning sense of realisation, “Oh Bernard, the A is for arse, isn’t it?”
Bernard looks mulish. “So what if it is?”
Fran throws her hands up in the air. “How did you ever manage to get hired? How did you manage -” She gestures wildly around the large office with its bookshelves covered with haphazardly piled books and ashtrays, food wrappers peeking out here and there, a stained throw lying half on and half off a spare chair and buried under a mound of essays that look like they’ve been there since 1986.
“I'll have you know I'm perfectly good at my job,” Bernard retorts, while pulling a small clump of hair from his head with one hand while gesturing imperiously with the other. “Now shut up and hand me that essay. It's full of nonsense and you're full of... whatever, so you'd go well together.”
Fran wordlessly hands him back the essay and Bernard tears a strip off the bottom of the topsheet, lays the hair out on it and rolls it into an approximation of a cigarette. He grabs his stapler from under another precariously placed pile of books, sending the pile thudding to the floor, and staples the edge of his makeshift cigarette shut. He lights the end and then yelps when the hair burns too quick, singing the tips of his fingers.
“Fuck,” he howls and drops it so that the embers lie on the wine-stained, cheap synthetic carpet. Fran has to march round the desk and stomp on the small burn mark until any minor flames are out.
“I could’ve told you that wouldn’t work,” she says with some satisfaction. “You tried it last week too, remember?”
Bernard looks at her, hangdog. “Why should I remember anything? You, more than anyone, should know that I make it a point to wipe this hell hole from my memory every chance I get. Otherwise I’d never be able to stand being here.” His hand sweeps out and thunks against the old desktop, making it wobble precariously. Bernard has to lunge across the desk to save it because there’s only so many times he can pimp Manny out to IT before they’re going to realise what a useless waste of flesh he is and stop coming over to fix the computer.
Fran waits until Bernard has the computer resituated before she flops into the chair in front of his desk and puts her heels up against the monitor. “Anyway, let’s go back to my important complaining.” Bernard waves his hand at her, frantically going through the drawers on his desk.
“So you know how there’s been that thing going around about how we need to give students a chance to “evaluate the courses” and “respond to their feedback” with offers to change things?”
Bernard makes a face of sneering disgust and she points to it and says, “yes, exactly. Anyway, my evaluations came in today and you wouldn’t believe the rubbish these kids have written.” She drags open her handbag and pulls out a sheaf of papers. “Just look at this! ‘The lecture needs to include more reference materials’ and ‘there should be more structured coursework’. Coursework!” she sputters, “As if structure and references and coursework have anything to do with art! Art is about freedom. About sensuality. About the expression of the soul.”
“Bollocks,” Bernard offers, newly discovered cigarette lit and dangling from his lower lip.
“Yes, that too,” Fran concedes, looking over at the smoke alarm to double check, and sure enough there’s a ratty, hole-ridden sock taped over it. “But they can hardly expect me to come up with something useful now, can they?”
“Who knows,” Bernard groans, “these universities expect the balls of the world from us these days.”
Fran sits up. “Have they made demands of you as well? What are you being asked to do?”
“Some nonsense about showering before class and showing up on time.” Another pile of papers on the desk sways before collapsing in a heap onto the floor. “Also something about returning essays.”
Fran huffs. “Honestly, you’d think we weren’t working our fingers to the bone already.”
Bernard scowls at her. “Well, at least you’ve got it easy. You’ve got nothing but art students to deal with. Two minutes of gibberish about some ‘art for art’s sake’ and the beauty of Raphael’s David and they’ll think it’s all German expressionism and run away to France.”
“It’s Michelangelo's David,” Fran corrects.
“One of the turtles anyway.” Bernard waves her away, already bored. “Anyway, why are you here? Besides wasting my time and ruining my office.”
Fran kicks at his terminal warningly and Bernard has to lunge for the computer monitor again to prevent it from going over the side. She pulls her feet in after and curls into the space of the chair. “I thought I’d come get Manny and see if he had any real ideas for how to help me out of this.”
As if summoned by the mere mention of his name, Manny wanders into the office then, a giant bag of books on one shoulder and yet another large pile of essays cradled in his hands. “Bernard, these need to be second marked by the end of today to go back. Oh, hullo, Fran.”
He automatically avoids the giant piles of collapsed books and papers to dump the new pile of essays on Bernard’s desk in the space the fallen pile of essays used to occupy.
“Feh!” Bernard spits, and shoves the papers over to tumble onto the ever growing pile on the floor. Manny sighs and comes forward to pick them off the floor and start stacking them again.
“Manny,” Fran trills. “Just the man for the job. What do you know about art?”
Manny stops glaring at Bernard to preen. “What don’t I know about art?”
“Everything,” Bernard snaps. They both ignore him.
“I need to design some sort of actual course for the university,” Fran tells Manny. “The students are demanding it.”
Manny looks excited. “I know! Isn’t it great?” Then, having seen the black looks shot his way by both of them, “Not that it’s great at all. In fact, it’s terrible. Students wild with power. Radical change. Communism. The death of all that’s meaningful.”
He looks at Fran to gauge whether he’s on the right track here and she nods at him benevolently. “What sort of course are we talking here?” he checks.
Fran slumps in the chair and shoves her face into her hands. “I don’t know! I suppose I’ll have a couple of weeks or something to come up with a plan over summer.”
Bernard bolts upright from where he’d been slumping towards his keyboard again. “No! I forbid it! Summer is for drinking and empty campuses and bad choices. I refuse to have your work ethic ruining my holiday.”
“But Bernard,” Manny says, “weren’t you supposed to plan the new courses for –”
Bernard holds up a hand. “One more word out of you and I’ll be asking you to submit that revised thesis you’ve been sitting on for the last ten years.” Manny looks chastened and fearful. “That’s right,” Bernard leans towards him, menacing. “You won’t be a student any more. You’d be on the open market. Job hunting.” He draws the last words out with a malicious relish.
Manny trembles. “You – you wouldn’t be cruel enough to do that to me. I’d be lost. I’d have to pay full price for the bus. They’d take my student card away!”
“You wouldn’t be able to use the copy machine,” Fran adds, barely looking up from where she’s still reading student evaluations.
“I wouldn’t be able to use the copy machine,” Manny chokes. He throws himself at Bernard’s feet and tries to cling to his leg. “Bernard, please, no. You can’t do this to me!”
Bernard kicks at him. “Get away.” When Manny continues to stare at him, he sighs as if hugely put upon. “Fine. I won’t.” Then, as if immediately regretting this moment of softness, “Now go away and mark all those essays again in different ink so it looks like I did it.”
“You won’t regret this,” Manny starts to gather the essays together.
Bernard scowls and waves him away. “Go away and bother someone else.” He points to Fran. “Take this one with you.”
“But what do I do about my class?” Fran moans, refusing Manny’s attempts to pull her out of the chair, slapping at his hands and ignoring his cries.
“I don’t know. Make it a research essay class. Let the buggers work for their own stuff.” Bernard waves her off. “More credits. Open assignments.”
Fran stares at him. “D’you know, that’s actually brilliant.”
“It’s what he does for all his classes,” Manny tells her. “Anything he didn’t inherit the notes for.”
Bernard looks up to find the two of them staring down at him, judging. “What? Oh come on, like anyone’s ever gotten into this business for the love of teaching!”
Fran’s voice drips with condescension, “Well, I got into it for the love of art.”
Manny looks confused. “I thought you got into it because you shagged your teacher.”
Fran continues to look condescending for another minute before giving it up for lost. “Would you believe his name was Art?” she offers.
“Why are you two still here?” Bernard howls.
“Ignore him, Manny,” Fran advises.
Manny, however, looks considering. “Actually,” he says, “why would someone like Bernard get into teaching?”
Fran pulls a cigarette out of her bag and lights up. “I’ve always assumed campus security mistook him for someone else and let him in. Then he just found a hole and nested, like a badger. Or a mole of some sort. And now years later, here we all are.”
They both look at Bernard who’s uncovered half a cheese sandwich in one of the books on his desk and is now eating it, focused on taking big bites, like a grown man forced into a production of Oliver Twist.
“You’re probably right there,” Manny says, and Fran nods.
“Well,” Fran says, gathering her things, “I’m far too sober for any of this.”
Bernard bolts upright and flails himself into a coat, already halfway to the door.
It being nearly 11 AM, the pub is largely empty. There’s a small group of students sitting in a dark corner looking shell-shocked, a giant stack of books in front of them.
Fran immediately sets Bernard on them - “Here, you! Are you in my class? You all look like shite English majors. Go away and do something useful with your lives!” – so that the three of them can settle in.
“How much time do we have before the board meeting?” Fran asks, looking around to check if anyone good is around but the pub’s current clientele of hungover fishermen and precocious graduates yield no possibilities.
“Who even cares?!” Bernard bellows, abruptly shoving Manny out the side of the booth and nearly overbalancing in the attempt. “Manny! Drink!”
“All right,” Manny says, “but just the one, Bernard. This meeting’s an important one and we’ve only got half an hour before you have to leave to get there.”
Bernard ignores him with the vehemence of a cat saddled with an owner who can’t work a can opener. “Drink!” he howls again.
“It’ll be fine, Manny,” Fran soothes. “It’s only 30 minutes. How much trouble could he get in by then.”
Bernard staggers upright from the couch in his office. “Oh my god,” he slurs, “what time is it?”
Manny looks at him in concern from where he’s sitting at the desk, red pen at the ready, a massive stack of essays covered in pen marks. “It’s 4.30.”
“Shite,” Bernard yowls, scrabbling his coat on and trying to slap his hair into an acceptable shape. He stands and then nearly collapses into the pile of empties surrounding his couch. “I’m going to be late for the fucking meeting.”
Manny looks at him blankly. “Bernard, it’s Friday.”
“Yes. So?” he booms, weaving on his feet.
Manny sighs. “It’s Friday the weekend before class reopens.”
Bernard stares at him, eyes narrowed in confusion while he roots in his pockets for his pack of cigarettes. “What?”
Manny sighs. “I kept telling you this would happen. It’s nearly the new term.”
Bernard stares at him nonplussed, and presses the heel of his palm deep into his eye socket as if that will somehow control the volcano his head has become. “But what about the stupid meeting, all that nonsense about a research project?”
“Due in less than a week,” he confirms with a solemn nod.
“Ah.” Bernard steps around the empties, staggering only once, and puts his nose in the air. “Any chance I bothered to tell you what the project was?”
Manny rolls his eyes and puts the red pen down. “You told the whole campus. You insisted on shouting it from the top of the library like you were Braveheart.”
“Yes, well,” Bernard sniffs, “remind me.”
Manny sighs. “A book on Joyce.” When Bernard looks blank, he clarifies, “James Joyce.” When this doesn’t seem to spark any bells either, he tries, “Irish writer? Considered one of the greatest voices of the modernist movement? Any of this ringing a bell? No.” Manny heaves a deep breath. “Never mind. Suffice to say, Joyce had a lot of sex and was drunk in a lot of gutters. A bit of a shambles, really.”
“Sounds to me like a perfectly respectable way to carry on,” Bernard says, and promptly falls over yet another pile of empties.
“How in the fuck am I supposed to come up with a book in a week?” Bernard says, standing in a corner of Fran’s class watching her hand out lists of potential research assignments. He snatches one from her, scanning it quickly. “And where did you find all of this nonsense anyway? The Impressionists? The Surrealists? These all sound like wanky hipster bands.”
Fran snatches the paper back. “They’re all Art. I found them on SparkNotes so it must be true.”
Manny waggles his finger warningly. “That’s naughty. The computers catch you for these things now, you know.”
Bernard huffs. “Stop talking nonsense and ignoring my very important problem! How am I supposed to write a whole book?”
Fran throws her hands in the air. “I don’t know. Why are you assuming that I know?”
Bernard grumbles and slumps more fully onto her desk. “God,” he yowls, “how can this be happening?”
“What if,” Manny offers, gesturing wildly with his hands, “you do a sort of experimental book. I mean, the sort of immersive thing that’s all the rage these days in the Art forums.”
“You could do that, couldn’t you, Bernard?” Fran muses, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “I mean, cut out the sex, and the writing, and any sort of acclaim, and that’s basically just your life anyway, isn’t it?”
“Exactly!” Manny cheers. “You could do it like a reversioning of Ulysses!”
“Haven’t read it,” Bernard says flatly.
Manny pauses for a moment but chooses not to engage and push on. “Not a problem. I’ll just tell you the story. So, there’s this fellow, Stephen Dedalus, and he’s friends – well, not really friends, more like forced acquaintances. Well, actually maybe a bit more than forced acquaintances – Anyway, there’s a bit about how Mulligan has invited this other bloke to stay with them and somehow insulted his mother. And then there’s a bit where someone says history puts them to sleep and then Stephen has a piss behind some rocks on a beach.”
He checks in on Bernard and sees that he’s looking particularly confused and revolted, which seems about right for this section of the book. He continues, “Then there’s another man called Leopold Bloom, and his wife is having an affair and so he has a shit in the toilet and thinks about it. He’s really into Shakespeare and he drinks a lot and hangs out in churches before riding around with strange men. I think that’s how he meets Stephen.”
“Is the point of this story ever going to show up?” Bernard snaps.
“Oh no,” Manny says gleefully, with all the excitement of an English researcher with the chance to pass on knowledge of the modernists. “There is no point. That’s the point!”
“Manny,” Bernard says softly, smiling and holding his arms out as if for a hug. “Come here.”
Manny lights up and holds his arms out as well, and walks straight into the punch.
“Well, that was inevitable,” Fran mutters, and continues to count her assignment sheets.
About two days later, Bernard bursts into Fran’s class with her fourth years with Manny, whose shiner is coming in nicely, two steps behind him.
“It’s a terrible idea!” Manny announces pre-emptively at Fran’s questioning look, “but he won’t be stopped.”
“I’ve got it!” Bernard howls, sweaty, exhausted, and thoroughly out of breath. “Art, writing, it’s all bollocks from different angles. Surely the little bastards can be good for something for once in their useless lives.”
“Bernard, they can hear you,” Manny announces. Then he sidles up to his side and whispers, “You’d better stop now or you're going to get a very bad student review.”
Bernard turns a look of faked concern upon him. He bunches his hands into fists under his chin like a giant baby and mocks in a high-pitched voice, “Oh? Really? Oh, woe is me! Students don't like me! A snotty teen's opinion has the ability to decide my life.”
Manny nods. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Bernard punches him in the other eye and Manny topples over like a stack of unmarked essays.
“Now, where were we?” Bernard asks the class.
Later, at the pub, Fran attempts to console Bernard, who’s face down in a bag of chips trying to suffocate himself.
“I could've told you they were useless. All that demanding a real syllabus; not a drip of real creative urge in the lot of them," Fran says.
Bernard doesn’t say a word, just raises his empty wine glass. Fran sighs and leans back in her chair so she can see the bartender. “A bottle of your cheapest red. And keep them coming.”
She tries to pat his head but immediately discovers the same sticky jam-like stuff is still in there.
“Ugh, Bernard,” she complains, wiping her hand off as best as she can on the upholstery of the booth. “Wash your hair!”
Bernard squints his eyes open at some point to find that they’ve managed to shift back to his office during their drinking binge. He’s splayed out face down on a couch on top of what feels like a million books and bottles, an old scarf some student must’ve left behind opened up and tucked around his shoulders.
He can hear Manny and Fran whispering, the sounds stabbing like knives into his hungover brain.
“It’s not a bad idea, but do you really think you can pull it off?” Fran whispers, the sound like a hissing snake striking straight into the back of Bernard’s skull.
“He’s got loads of them!” Manny says, not even really bothering to keep his voice down. Bernard thinks vaguely of murder. “I’ve been rewriting his essay feedback for years. It should all still be in the flat.”
Bernard makes a loud indignant sound he hopes conveys his outrage at noise and light and the general horror of having to deal with people at all and the world in general.
“Aww,” Manny coos.
Bernard resentfully ignores him and turns over on his pile of books to go back to sleep.
So it eventually turns out that Bernard has, in fact, managed to write a book. Albeit a “book” scribbled drunkenly on student essay feedback forms, and on the backs of paper napkins and coasters, most of which are assembled higgledy-piggeldy from the pockets of his coats and some from the unexplored corners of his office (where Manny is now afraid to go since there seem to be a race of rat kings breeding amidst some of the books).
It takes about two days without any sleep and forty-eight Costa runs for Manny to type it up, rush it through the binding process, and submit it to Bernard’s publisher and the university assessment panel.
In the end, it’s a rambling mess of stream of thought observations about the local students and a castigation of the shitty piss they serve in the pub.
The head of the university assessment panel is… displeased.
“It was a wet fart of a pint but he wanted it like he wanted sex, which was possibly not at all but with the vague longing for its foul aftermath of shame, and perhaps the way it sometimes made the light glisten off a hideous beard though yes the pint was lovely yes I would have preferred wine but I have no money yes you can pay yes the pint yes what a horrible pint,” the man reads out.
“To be fair,” Bernard offers, trying to focus through the haze of his continued drunken stupor, “it probably really was a piss of a pint. That place is terrible for choice.”
The man straightens, pursing his lips. “Get out,” he yells. “Out!” He actually physically comes around the desk and hustles Bernard out in his rage.
“You’re lucky the university isn’t looking to press charges for fraud,” he screams.
“Well,” says Manny. “At least we tried?”
Bernard punches him again.
The university fires him.
The book wins a Pulitzer.