Civitas Chapter 2 Le Pastis en Berlin
Civitas: How to Die Together with Your Scholar Collegues
By Tristan Norman
Ed. Aran Meredith & Northern Mittler Solomon
Chapter 2
Le Pastis en Berlin
In the next installation Igor found himself in the institution building of the Archives of the Anarch’s City, although technically it was the old building of a comparative politics research hub from a university whose name doesn’t want to be specified. And he was at the top level, in Civitas you can usually have any level, as long as you have three. It was supposed to be an opening ceremony or opening reception. In mind that the dress code is semi-formal, Igor pulled out his only suit (workwear in blue-grey), this kind of situation was to be updated very quickly, because he found he was supposed to wear this or that every day in the office.
He has many ties, he was wearing a silver-grey one. When he entered the venue the lighting was dazzling or bedazzling, depending on the particular situation, Bourdain and Periwinkle were conversing about a new edition of Celtic myth for other-than-public consumption, Langenberg and Schmit were arguing with Stoker over some topic of nobody’s concern, Metzelder didn’t come, he was half-expecting him/her to not to come, Siberstern and little Fran was discussing some student’s research topic, Julian was standing by to listen with wine. Landon Aragon was late, he wore formal, everything except for a bowtie. Escarra was passionately petting Kit the mermaid’s head.
Secretly applauding himself he went to read the company profiles before everything and everything, sightseeing that there were hors d'oeuvre, warm rain and warm wine on the side table, Igor first went to say hi to the wines, he unconsciously chose a glass of champagne, because everything is worth a celebration.
The champagne was acceptable, because no one wanted to appear like a corrupted bureaucrat from the first night. Igor went to greet Professor Elizabeth Periwinkle, because the Professor gave him a little help when he did the initial research for his book (although on Sarah’s referral).
“Good evening to you, I hope you are accommodating to new living.” Elizabeth was very polite, because she had one or two things to learn about academic politics. What is more trepid than academic politics? Schmoozing academic politics with foreigners.
Igor shook, well, swirled his wine, “Em, I’m settling in time.” “Transition is a long and qualitative process.” Bourdain said so, what he was implying might be the requirement of intellect and experiential intellect.
“Knowledge experiential, experiential knowledge.” Igor pushed back the piece.
“Not completely but just a bit.” Langenberg came up with a phrase, although Igor absentmindedly thought what he meant was “just a tip.” “Our young friend should know that in our industry talent is unimportant; talent designates everything.”
“Forget about it, Elsje.” Peri denounced the notion, “Talent is not nominative, and extravagant solutions to talent solutions are not solutions to talent.” A talented answer to a talented question.
“Hence what are we resolving for?” Bourdain pretended to be intrigued.
“We don’t resolve, we research.” Elizabeth answered in trivial politeness. What she wished to say is that, we don’t burn, we slash. A marginally timider reply might be “We don’t resolve, us research.” But what did she know of the Atlantic connections?
It seems like they all know each other, the one who didn’t is Igor. Schmit and Stoker were still not over it, now they were at ultra-modernism’s colonial question, and recognized the very form of multinational corporation is a type of exploitation and neo-colonialism. The time had reached its fullest, Siberstern pulled out a flask and drank a one-man’s portion of reagent, and proceeded to engulf all of it in front of Julian and Fran. This cohort welcomed Igor’s presence, and then they changed their language of choice to modern French.
Fran asked, “It’s good that you are here in Civitas, have you considered what to complete and achieve?” What remained unsaid was that aren’t you wasting all your youthful time?
Igor cracked a joke, “I still live in a hotel, and attempted to live in the presence that was one step ahead.” Julian hummed to that, “As long as you figured the one step you made is correct.” Siberstern appeared to be optimistic, “A change of habitat is a change of water. Hope for the best, hope for the future.” Igor said “I (perhaps) must.”
At this time the mermaid with soapy green hair came after him. To play? He was not sure. “Hey! You looked like you need some condiment.” He had dumped Escarra, the latter went to the talkshop about mutual exploitation. “Do you have some good ideas?” “Yes, I am the idea.” Melika returned the joke.
“Very well, do you mind if I ask why are you wearing a cross pendant?” Kit, Christopher, or some other posh derivatives shook his head, “I was in seminary, sometimes we wore these earrings or nose rings.” Igor recalled he was studying religious wars. “If that’s the case, I’m learning new things.”
“Another question, do you prefer Paris or Berlin?” This was a reference question, it took him a long time to think about it that way.
Been there done that. “I’ve only been to Berlin, home is anywhere.” He said to the stateless kid, which is incorrect, outlander mermaids were living overseas.
Kit opened a conspiratorial smile, “I’ll tell you a secret, drink less, look at them, many of them have alcoholic deterrents.” The correct wording was alcohol deterrent, but like always, Kit didn’t know what he was saying, especially if it was in his third or fourth language.
“On this point I can outmatch him, if his metabolism is human.” Igor is confident on this matter, because he and his chess buddies liked to drink competitively, and he maintained a decent winning rate.
Equally with a higher winning rate is Luxembourg’s Schmit, though perhaps it was because he transplanted the topic from politics to economic theories. Stoker further turned the conversation into how much their institution had taken from Hell’s Conservative Party (HRC), to which Schmit answered nonchalantly, “Maybe less, maybe more.”
Escarra briefly said hi to Igor and went on serpenting and hissing with Professor Aragon, because he does not want to exchange pleasantry with another colonizer’s spawn. This is not to confuse with another Professor’s Aragon, although he got that joke quite often.
To not make the matter awkward, Igor first went to formally say hello to Landon. “Igor Miroslav *handshake*.” Who’s that young man? “So I’ve heard.” “I’ve heard about you, parent one asked me to read a few of your articles.” Saying other people’s journals as articles was both unprofessional and unbecoming. “Aha, all good words, isn’t it?” Igor made a formal and formally confused face, “So it seems.” Because he didn’t read, he just browsed through the abstracts and skirted with Zoran.
Then the trading words-trading swords mini group was over, and Igor moved on to flatter them, Lesile said he could call him Lesile, because he didn’t believe in bureaucracy/crazy. It was only then he compelled Schmit to say in proper words, “I’m Charel.” “French?” Lesile gladly exposed him. “Luxembourgian.” Schmit took it very seriously. “Right. Professor Miroslav Jr is French?”
“Em, I was born in state, albeit mixed.” Igor was forced to file in a diversity statement, because back then Czech didn’t permit dual citizenship, and travel-study inside one’s own home, to use a euphemism, is a mess.
“Ah, isn’t that the case.” The two nodded respectively. “French is one of the official languages of Civitas, if Civitas has one official language.” Said Stoker convolutedly, for someone who’s using a fake name, he was surprisingly direct.
Igor didn’t quite catch that, it appeared that on the board Gabriel (Gabriel playing Monsieur Bai Yanshang) is a French-speaking person. “Civitas appeared to be an internationalists’/international jurists’ city.” Igor didn’t imply the pun.
“You bet.” Stoker put a lot of chips on a sports student, because he found out disregarding the public opinion, he seemed to have been head-hunted by Northern.
When there was still a sad base for the champagne, a tiny flying bug dropped into his glass in an act of kamikaze. Igor thought about the potential suspects, and calmly expressed “Excuse me,” went to the side table to retrieve a public spoon no one used, tilted the stirring stem to pick up the bug, appropriated a napkin to patch it up, and considered whether it was better to display the scene of the crime or destroy all evidence, and in turn duskily put the bug into the trash. Gut.
People were discreetly watching, Igor discreetly placed his glass on the table, and worked himself for another glass. All eyes were eyeing. He raised the glass and displayed a formulaic smile, “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry I didn’t prepare a speech, I’d like to use this opportunity to welcome a first-class team to gather in Civitas, I trust you have a lot to write about and a lot to say, and welcome you to say something to/with me. It’s a cohort and consociation, but the institution is instituted by its members, so are we aiming for co-prosperity and collaboration? It’s not a question to feed into the knowledge realm and political realm, I believe everyone is resourceful and sourcing. This academic year has a lot of exciting conferences and gatherings, I look forward to working with each one of you, that’s it, à votre santé.”
We hope you didn’t poison the wine or water, because if that’s the case we will too. Professors here with some qualms with the French system also said a la vôtre reluctantly. Although his non-speech made him sound like an idiot, but that’s half of the position and half of the charm. Periwinkle signalled to him that he had passed level 1 of the game, which deserved a pat on the back or a pat on the head, depending on perspective. Because people didn’t want great expectations, rather a kind of promising reassurance. So it goes the age of rationality, what was left for them is the constant competition(copilotcy) between the irrational and the unrational.
They also said this and that, all delightful bypassing irreverent words. Igor arrogantly belittled himself, as theoretically Langenberg praised nominally the book that invited him to Civitas. Although game theory is out of his forte, but why was that the case? He drank some nondescript elven wine, and commented “The broad stroke narration of chapter seven was just right,” which made Igor wonder if he had just read the seventh chapter. Striking. Not to mention he didn’t ask for help mid-book, the editing phase is another story.
After a third or a second to third drink of grapes Igor replaced himself back into the Diplomat’s Hotel. On his way home he pondered why for heaven’s sake the new institute’s building façade looked like a tilted hourglass on the side: with an obtuse indent on the second floor, and how did they persuade the barbershop on the first floor to move into another location, a better one, he supposed. For it is quite obvious the modernistic building was not brick-by-brickly built, but conjured. For Mages love their geometrics.
Perching on his three-to-four-person sofa, he opened another two bottles of nice beverages from the well-stocked shelf, and mixed red and white like a cultured barbarian. Everything south of Hadrian’s wall. When he was three quarter done he remembered what had transposed when he was still in single-digit years. What had happened was more or less he asked Sarah why he had 24 fathers.
Sarah was intrigued, and said so far it was 25. He thought that should be the end of it, but on a normal day after the normal meal he was summoned to the master bedroom, and saw a shirtless Zoran (with white fluffy chest hairs on chest).
“Komm und sieh deinen Vater.” Sarah sat on the fairer side of the bed and commented lukewarmly. Then the flap of skins on Professor Miroslav’s chest flayed open and divided like the red sea, a bloodied swarm showed off its antenna, it climbed out a little bit, and emerged like a palm-sized malnutritional scorpion.
Zoran used his parasitic form to slightly tilt his tail to Igor’s direction, it was a cordial gesture.
“Hallo, danke, dass du es mir erzählt hast.” Igor blinked his human eyes and said, that was how his endurance ability was nurtured and sustained. He later learned that his father could live until the day the Earth (or Terra, as the swarm called her) is no more, which gave him some very basic cognition of birth, death, illness and livelihood.
Igor was a good boy, so he collected the empty bottles and tossed them into the trash bin. He was groomed to do the house chores from a very young age, or in other words, to clean up after himself, because neither Professor Miroslav nor Professor de Fernand wanted to do, and neither did they want to ask for domestic help. He gossamerly went to change to loungewear or pyjamas, only wearing a fake shirt top without pants because that’s what we called style, and hanged his two-piece suits into the closet: look at this stuff, a dark-coloured fall and winter coat, a couple of pants, a couple of t-shirts and a swarm of shirts. For rebellion’s purposes they were not categorized according to seasons or colours, but hanged close to each other in a haphazard fashion.
Igor brushed his teeth, changed to warm water to wash his face, then applied a little black bottle of serum, a little black bandage eye cream and an oil-free night cream which the brand didn’t want to disclose its name. Once Sarah told him when he intruded into the second master bedroom’s restroom, do not trust in eye cream, all eye creams are liars. He said why do you continue to use them? She said, “Perhaps for business formality.” Which she meant for business formality. So he robbed a jar from her. That was it, because from very little he knew his face is very important, at least before arriving to Civitas.
When he reached the IM level amidst picking up a new language, grasping theories, and continuing on an instrument he didn’t want, once at Christmas he received a black bandage eye cream as holiday present. “Do vampires celebrate Christmas?” “Not all vampires.” Sarah tried not to smile and mimicked his line, actually according to some old-fashioned (kindred) people, those are impolite words.
