Fiction: Ivy League
Teaching was nearly over and the summer vacation was before us, and one professor had already left Seoul....
Teaching was nearly over and the summer vacation was before us, and one professor had already left Seoul. The school administration didn’t allow it, but for the last three years Arnie Falsman left four weeks early. He made his students, whose classes were usually on Tuesday and Thursday, come in every Friday, sometimes not to a classroom but to a bar, and taught extra hours, so that he could leave four weeks early.
Nobody complained and he just quietly disappeared towards the end of every semester, which was weird because he made himself very noticeable, like the first time I met him.
“You’re fat. Your stomach holds more weight than is appropriate,” he started. “Your liver likely has a lining of fat that impedes normal function and increases the risk of disease and cancer.”
I’m a simple guy, and responded in a way that I thought was appropriate. I was overheard by the Dean and she scowled. She took me aside and explained.
“You must excuse Arnold’s eccentricity. Arnold Falsman is a genius.”
Her eyes battered in admiration as she spoke. “His work on the aesthetics of modern cinema is groundbreaking and we’re incredibly lucky to have him at the school.”
Everyone else called him Arnie. They elaborated further: “He’s a savant”; “He has no social etiquette and peculiar habits, but oh, what a brain”; and the best of all, “Just to talk with him makes me wither as a scholar.” Both male and female professors, and our one professor who preferred to be labelled “they” were enamored with Arnie Falsman’s intellect.
It kind of rubbed off on you, and I started to think he was a genius as well. Every time I saw him, I have to admit, I kind of watched to see if there was something I could learn.
I once followed him down a corridor. He walked not in the center of the corridor, but always at one edge or the other, like the pens in his pocket were too heavy and drove him towards the wall. He leaned into it so that his hair but not his head skimmed along the wall as if he were somehow dusting it or trying to make his hair stand on end with static electricity. I tried it once but kept bumping my head on the wall.
I peered into his classroom from an angle so he couldn’t see me. He sat amongst the students instead of standing at the lectern. He sat there rocking back and forth at a nervous pace, and with his hair never brushed, but rather patted down, and his focus zooming in and out, he was to the unknowing outsider, a meth tweaking Manson family madman amongst college students.
I tried the same, but found that students were not enamored by my words. Some thought I was having a stroke. They didn’t bother to call an ambulance.
“Arnie Falsman always tells the truth”, my friend Yun-a told me, “Always”.
Yun-a and I started at the university at the same time. I remember because her first words to me were “what the hell are you staring at?” and I’ve always avoided making eye contact ever since.
Yun-a protected Arnie in a motherly sort of way. She was real nice.
In a faculty meeting just before mid-term, he told one professor that he drinks too much and stank of old kimchi and soju; he told another she was too old to be pregnant and that her children are at risk of chromosomal abnormalities; and he told yet another professor that living on campus in the same dorm as undergraduate students and teaching gender studies encouraged rumors that he was a sexual predator. Yun-a excused and explained.
“He’s just saying what everyone else is thinking but are too afraid to say,” she argued. “You know it’s the truth, but you prefer to hear polite lies.”
In some ways, she was right. Yun-a was a professor of journalism, and had once worked at the New York Times, so knew about truth and lies.
I liked Yun-a, and from the day I met her, wanted to know her better, but being socially awkward, did nothing about it. I wanted to say something, but couldn’t. Arnie Falsman didn’t have this problem.
At a faculty meeting some time ago, in one of those brief moments where different groups gather together and talk, and I sit alone waiting for the meeting to start, Yun-a let it out that she and Arnie were dating.
She’d always liked Arnie or the idea of Arnie - a genius admired by everyone but somehow dependent on those closest to him. She later told me how it started.
Arnie asked her to a cafe. He always went to the same cafe and sat in the same back central booth - so nobody could attack him from behind and so he had two ways to escape. He only drank bubble tea. Sometimes he had to move the ice cubes about with his straw or shake the cup, but wouldn’t leave until he’d eaten every last bubble.
I didn’t question Yun-a about the cafe, the booth or the bubbles, as I’d already heard it from other professors. John Stilts, who teaches philosophy, went to the same cafe with Arnie. John said that some ice cubes had stuck together at the bottom of Arnie’s cup and trapped the last little black bubble. Arnie refused to leave until it melted and was small enough to eat. Others had similar stories.
Yun-a said Arnie sat in his usual place. He didn’t say anything until his bubble tea arrived, then he spoke.
“I want to see if your breasts fit in my mouth.”
Yun-a spat out some coconut ice-tea latte, and bade him back to her house. For the first time ever, he left a bubble-tea without finishing all the bubbles.
So Yun-a and Arnie had gone out for about six weeks when he left. I was kind of glad he left early because I was not keen on seeing people fawn over him at the last faculty meeting. There’s always a meal after the last faculty meeting and everyone drinks too much. There’s just exams and grading to go before most every foreign professor flies home for the summer, so it’s kind of like an office Christmas Party, drunken skank and all.
We went to a second and third bar, and then somehow, to tell the truth, I can’t remember how, I ended up in a booth with Yun-a. We talked for a while about teaching, her trip to Papeete, and about how Korea had become so popular, but her eyes wandered away in thought. Being in a booth alone with her was what I’d always wanted, but it was in no way what I really wanted because in the end, she just talked about Arnie.
“I’m worried about Arnie.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, “Why?”
“He told me that he loved me...” Her voice trailed off as she looked around to make sure no one was listening. “...and told me that he couldn’t lie to me anymore.”
Her eyes filled with tears ready to stream down her face and her voice faltered. “He left me… a box… and an email to contact him if I want to… to… continue the relationship.”
She paused, and took a deep breath. “I don’t want to look through it alone. Will you come back with me?”
It wasn’t the invite I wanted, but it was impossible to say no. As we walked back, my thoughts raced. Was he secretly married? Was he dying and didn’t want to involve Yun-a in a doomed relationship? Was he a spy and his mission ended? Yun-a held my hand tight and I managed to savor that moment, knowing it was going no further.
The box was neat and well-ordered with a contents list sitting atop a series of folders. It contained pay slips, news clippings, vast amounts of categorized email correspondence, state registry forms, passport applications, and a series of nearly finished and planned academic papers and funding applications. Together they told a story.
Arnie Falsman was really Bernard Rielman, a supervisor at an Ivy League school academic affairs department. When the reclusive Arnold Falsman, Associate Professor of Modern Cinematography and son of Dr. Baine Falsman - a major benefactor, was committed to a criminal psychiatric facility, the school ensured there was no media coverage.
Bernard was responsible for clearing up the committed Arnold Falsman’s office, collating his research materials, and filing his correspondence. Bernard, who looked similar enough, changed his name in a neighboring state, sent a few emails about the desire to work in East Asia, and ultimately took a job at our university. He didn’t even have to interview. The Dean was so infatuated with the Ivy League credentials of Arnie Falsman, she just appointed him.
Bernard brought with him some of Arnold Falsman’s books and photos from his desk, most of his research materials and funding applications, and all of his credentials nailed on the wall. Bernard became Arnie. Seoul was close enough for Ivy League infatuation, but far enough to hide.
“You know,” she said as her voice trailed off towards the bathroom. “He’s been lying to me all this time.”
“But Yun-a, if you love him, if you really love him, he's telling you the truth now!”
There was a pause before she started again. “I knew it all along…” she said, continuing her previous line of thought as she raised her voice to reach me behind the closed bathroom door. “There was always something fake about him telling the truth. I knew it, I knew it…”
“How did you know?”
“It was the damned bubbles.” She said as she came back to the room. Her eyes were now wide, intense and darting around the room like a predator searching for prey.
“On our first date he left the damned bubbles because he wanted to fuck. I could see it in his eyes - horny con artist eyes - eyes like every other guy. It was all fake.”
It reminded me of when I was introduced to Arnie. After he told me I was fat, I didn’t know how to respond, so just said what first came to me.
“Oh, yeah? You look like a bag of shit, you dirty fuck.”
He paused. For an instant, just a simple instant, and I saw an unmistakable glint in his eyes. It was the start of a smile that didn’t reach his mouth or stretch across his face, but was just a momentary, knowing gleam, from one exiled social impostor to another. That spark in his eye wanted to jump into a broad embracing smile and for just an instant it did - then the Dean pulled me aside to explain his brilliance.
To stay in character that long and fool that many people, he must’ve wanted to let someone know at some stage that it was a ruse, and maybe, just maybe, I came closest to calling his bluff.
The last I heard, Arnie or rather Bernie, was in Laos, driving a bulldozer on a construction team that made primitive mud dwelling and solo log cabin videos on YouTube.