The Summer of Hugo's Discontent
A humor short story
This story is my submission for the monthly Symposium of the Soaring Twenties Social Club. The upcoming edition is the STSC’s annual fiction collection.
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As everyone everywhere knows, previous stories featuring our beleaguered Classical Philology graduate student Hugo Davenport were told exclusively from his perspective. This is the result of gaining my information solely from Hugo himself. As a result, his perspective was the only point of view I had. However, I have undertaken additional research into recent events at the University of Florence and through various interviews I have gained valuable insights into the perspectives of many of the other principal players in the ongoing saga of academic life at Florence. As such, I have shifted the perspective of this story, even though it heavily features Hugo, from first to third person so as to also tell the story from the point of view of the other actors on Florence’s grand stage. Good day.
***
Hugo Davenport had a problem. It was the end of the spring semester and try as he might he had been unable to obtain a teaching post for the summer. Funds were tight and his Uncle Baxter Davenport, the grey-suited boisterous hulk of a benefactor, was incommunicado in one of the many far reaches of the world.
For Hugo, this should have been a time of celebration, of relaxation. Another year done and dusted. Another year behind him with a few sticky moments to be sure—he had narrowly avoided having to give a talk to the gathered luminaries of the department just a few weeks before. Another year in which he didn’t settle on a dissertation topic or take any decisive steps towards graduation (he shuddered at the word) or the wider world beyond. Like many graduate students in the humanities, he was comfortably ensconced in the world of dusty seminar rooms, fragrant libraries, overpriced lattes, organic cigarettes, artisanal small-batch craft beer, and ramshackle apartments, although Hugo prided himself on his comfortable two-bedroom pied-à-terre. He was in many ways the German shepherd that had caught the 1989 Grumman LLV driven by the local mailman and was now settling down to a well-earned nap.
But life was not without its difficulties and Hugo was badly in need of funds. The rent was paid but a little ready money for the summer was called for.
So that bright August morning in late May Hugo found himself wandering the main quadrangle of the University of Florence staring intently at the ground in front of him as if twenty dollar bills might spring from the cracks in the pavement like rats from a sinking ship.
He wore his traditional off-duty uniform, which was the uniform of many a graduate student: sneakers, jeans, and a plain forest green t-shirt. Not everyone wore green, of course. Some wore jeans and a red t-shirt. Others wore jeans and a gray t-shirt. Instead of a t-shirt some wore long-sleeved henleys or button-up shirts with a collar worn open over a t-shirt. Some, strangely enough, didn’t wear jeans and a t-shirt at all. That’s not to say they went around in the buff waggling their bits about, rather they just wore other clothes, though what those clothes might be is a mystery since they were so rarely seen as to be the stuff of legend.
So Hugo, swathed in jeans and t-shirt, wandered around campus this way and that but before he knew it his stomach, attached somewhat indirectly to his feet, led him to The Jittery Scholar.
Janie was too busy for pleasantries so after he paid for his double espresso Hugo was looking around the place for somewhere to sit when he spotted Larkland Carter, known as Lark to his friends, sitting at a table in the corner.
Lark was of average height with brown hair and a rather insipid chin.
Hugo slid into the seat opposite.
“Hey, Lark.”
“Hugo.”
“What’re you up to?”
“Reading,” Lark said, inclining his head toward the book open in front of him.
“Whatcha reading?”
He held up the book. The cover read:
Guerilla Warfare
Ernesto Che Guevera
“Any good?”
“Some interesting ideas.”
“Communism in action. That sort of thing?”
“Sure.”
Despite Lark’s laconism and apparent distraction, Hugo forged ahead.
“Listen, I’m glad I ran into you,” he said, poking the espresso cup with an anxious finger, “could I have a couple thousand dollars and, barring that haha, do you have any leads on summer work? Any professors in your department need a research assistant?”
Lark thought for a moment. “No, not that I know of. I’m not teaching this summer either. I’ve been focusing on fundraising for the University of Florence Communist Collective Action Committee, or UFCCAC for short.” He suddenly sat up straight. “You know,” Lark said, snapping his fingers, “if you want to help the cause, which I’m sure you do—you’re a good comrade, right?—we’re having a bit of a rally on campus on Friday. There’s going to be a bake sale and I’ll be giving a speech. You should come and you could say a few words too. I’m sure you’ve taught a ton of classes as a teaching assistant. You could talk about your experience and the low pay and the exploitation of graduate TA’s. It would really get people fired up, I think, and help get some more contributions to the UFCCAC fund.”
Hugo thought for a moment. Then another moment. Getting roped into taking part in some radicalist demonstration wasn’t what he’d had in mind for his Friday when he had approached Lark but Hugo was not one to leave a friend in the lurch. A friend was a friend, after all, as the poet said.
“Sure, I’m always happy to help a friend and I definitely could talk for a minute or thirty about graduate TA exploitation. Main quad tomorrow? What time?”
“Yeah, eleven Friday morning.”
“I see you communists like to sleep in too. Alright, see you then. I’ll leave you to your book. Let me know how it ends. I’m dying to know what Mr. Che did to get all those t-shirts made of him.”
***
In his third-floor office of Wittersham Hall, the Classics department building, Professor Llewellyn Malvern sat at his desk drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Lost in thought, he looked aimlessly around the room. Shelves up on shelves of books with piles of books springing up here and there like weeds in an untended garden. A coat stand with hat and overcoat. Two armchairs with exposed stuffing. A lamp with a crooked shade.
It was no good. He picked up the piece of paper on the desk and re-read the email he had printed out. He liked to do that, print out emails. It gave him something to crumple and throw in the bin.
Dear Professor Malvern,
I hope all is well. Unfortunately I will not be able to work as your research assistant this summer. My aunt has contracted bubonic plague and I have to go to Peterborough (in the UK) to take care of her and help her recover. I heard that Hugo is looking for work. I hope he can help you.
Sincerely,
Phoebe Ashton
Professor Malvern snorted. Bubonic plague! No one got bubonic plague anymore. He was sure she was making that up.
Still, he couldn’t force her to work, even though he felt that she should have been able to work remotely.
“Surely they must have internet in Peterborough, wherever that is,” he said.
Professor Malvern crumpled the paper and tossed it at the recycling bin in the corner. It missed.
He let out a heavy sigh. After the last disappointing episode with Hugo when he failed to give the seminar talk he was directed to give, he was loath to rely on the unreliable Davenport yet again. However, there seemed to be no alternative. Every other graduate student in the department was spoken for or otherwise off campus doing whatever it was grad students did over the summer. Starve mostly, he suspected. As it were, he had no memory of that time in his life. He suspected he had done a lot of reading in graduate school but he couldn’t quite be sure. He had definitely done his work, unlike the no good Davenport.
He sighed again and swiveled his chair to look out the window. There were oak and sycamore, maple and beech standing proud on the quad. And there amidst the wonderful greenery of May was Hugo Davenport walking morosely toward Wittersham Hall.
Professor Malvern got to his feet resignedly and after opening the ancient window with some difficulty leaned outside.
“Hi! Hugo!”
Hugo’s head twisted side to side and threatened to spin off. Happily it remained tethered to his cervical vertebrae.
“Hugo!”
The willowy PhD student, his eyes bulging wildly from his thin face, finally looked up in the direction of Professor Malvern.
“Oh, hi! Yes, professor?”
“Come up, will you? I want to talk.”
“Me?”
“No, the other Hugo standing behind you. Yes, you. Get up here.”
Professor Malvern eyed the young man as he flounced into a chair. He couldn’t make up his mind about Hugo, whether or not he liked him or disliked him or merely tolerated him. Professor Malvern decided that for the moment he would tolerate Hugo, even if Hugo’s hair, carelessly tousled, annoyed him for some unknown reason.
Malvern scratched his bald head. “Hugo, my RA has done a runner and I’m in need of some assistance this summer.”
“Phoebe? What happened?”
“She claims her aunt has contracted,” he paused and cleared his throat, “bubonic plague.”
Hugo laughed and then hurriedly coughed. “Wow, that’s terrible. I didn’t know it was still around.”
“Apparently it is,” Professor Malvern said exasperatedly. “I meant to give Phoebe a chance to get some RA experience and all that but here we are. So, I’m in need of a research assistant for the summer and since you’ve performed that role adequately in the past I thought you might be a good fit. I’m still working on my manuscript, with which you’re very familiar, and I could also use your help with a couple fellowship applications and getting journals from some of the dustier corners of the library. Can I count on you?”
Hugo sat up straight. “Oh, yes, absolutely, Professor.”
“Good, good. It’s the regular hourly summer pay. I’ll put through the paperwork and you’ll probably get an email or something as confirmation. I don’t know how the graduate school handles it. I’m a professor not a secretary.”
Hugo nodded and smiled good humoredly. Although it was probably Professor Malvern’s responsibility to figure these things out, Hugo wasn’t about to bite the hand that feeds or was about to feed.
Malvern pursed his lips and looked at Hugo with a vague air of disapproval. “Yes, well, that’s all for now. Thank you, Hugo.”
Hugo spent the next few days fetching copies of obscure Classics journals with titles like Transactions of the Mid-Atlantic Philological Society, Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie, and Transaktionen der Münchner Virgil-Gesellschaft, finding the articles Malvern wanted, scanning them, sending the scans to Malvern, and dropping physical copies in his mailbox in Wittersham Hall.
These searches required Hugo to plumb the depths of the main library, not just the smaller Classics library, which was reserved for the more commonly used and mainstream Classics monographs and journals. Hugo did not mind avoiding the Classics library because it meant avoiding Bishop, the Classics librarian and resident tyrant, as well as Thomas Delavan who had developed a distinct dislike of Hugo and was habitually posted up at the best table in the place.
The main library at Florence University was a cavernous maze of floors, half-floors, and subfloors, filled with old cast iron shelves, newer aluminum shelves, and movable shelves all full of small books, big books, leather books, cloth-bound books, some straight, some leaning, some caked with years of dust and smelling, the older books especially, of mildew.
Hugo like to pull books from the shelves and sample their particular bouquets. He plucked a large leather book with the year 1892 stamped in gilt letters on the spine. Ignoring the title he opened the book to a random page, stuck his nose deep into the spine, and inhaled. Over a hundred years of maturing had produce a spectacular bouquet of aged paper and leather with notes of mold and mildew.
He kept busy in this way until Friday morning came and Hugo, remembering his promise to Lark, got up early at ten, had a quick coffee at The Jittery Scholar, and made his way to campus. At one end of the main quadrangle on the steps of the student union a modest group of black-shirted, red-bereted communists was assembled. Lark stood out slightly higher on the steps with a bullhorn in hand. He waved to Hugo and came over.
“Hey, Hugo. We’re just going to get started in a minute. Did you check out the bake sale? Flower made some really good brownies, just regular brownies,” he said with a wink, “and Bransif made chocolate chip cookies, and Petrov brought Soviet tea cakes. They’re really good, covered in powdered sugar and filled with nuts and things.”
“Russian tea cakes?”
“No. Soviet tea cakes.”
“Ah, okay. Do I have to pay or does everyone just get some or how does it work?”
“It’s a bake sale.”
“Yeah but you’re communists. Shouldn’t they just be the property of the collective?”
“How are we supposed to raise money for UFCCAC?”
“What do you need money for? You’re Communists.”
“I don’t think you really get the idea.”
“I guess I don’t.”
Lark shook his head, mounted the steps, and raised the bullhorn. “Brothers and sisters, comrades and friends. Welcome and thank you for coming today. As you know, the University of Florence Communist Collective Action Committee is working on huge slate of projects and efforts to galvanize the workers of the university and beyond, from here all the way to the mayor’s office and beyond. You don’t need to hear me say it but, as we all know, when workers unite and seize the means of production we are unstoppable! We must come together, graduate teaching assistants, janitorial staff, groundskeepers, truck drivers, office staff, faculty, everyone together to oppose the parasitical dominance of the managerial class at the University of Florence epitomized by the ever expanding bureaucracy, the ranks of deans and provosts and vice presidents and presidents presiding over us, the workers that keep this university running day in and day out!
“The distinction between the worker and the parasite could not be clearer. Without the deans and provosts and presidents, the university would continue on with little or no disruption. Without the faculty and graduate teaching assistants and janitors and maintenance workers, the university would cease to exist! Expand this distinction out to the rest of Florence, the rest of society, the rest of the country, and it still holds. Everywhere the workers are up against the wall with the barrels pointing at our hearts, the rifles held by managers and CEOs and landlords and rent-seekers and bureaucrats. We have but one choice: unite! Only through collective action will the workers of Florence, the country, and the world be free from the yoke of the elite, the aristocrats, the bureaucrats, the useless classes carried around on the backs of the workers, bending us under the weight of their venality and greed.”
A murmur of approval rippled through the small crowd, most in black shirts and red berets. Hugo wasn’t sure about all the talk of parasites but he agreed with the gist of Lark’s message, especially about pay for graduate teachers.
Lark continued, “If you haven’t yet had a chance, please check out the bake sale. There’s a lot of good stuff there. Now, I’d like to introduce my friend Hugo Davenport who is a graduate student and graduate teaching assistant here at the University of Florence. He is going to speak a little about his experience as a teaching assistant.”
Lark handed Hugo the bullhorn. “Hi, everyone. My name’s Hugo. I’ve been a graduate teaching assistant here for a number of years and I’ve certainly seen a thing or two. As you know we’re represented by a union on campus, which I’m totally in favor of, especially because the administration likes to mess with us and not pay us on time and leave us without a contract when they already agreed to sign a new contract in the past. Really anything the administration—from the provost all the way up to the president—any contract they sign isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”
Supportive murmurs in the crowd.
“So we get our pay late, extra fees are taken out, it’s less than was promised, and all that adds salt in the wound of the fact that we’re doing a huge portion of the labor of teaching on campus. TAs teach classes on their own, we teach group sessions of the large lecture classes doing the grunt work of the faculty…”
Hugo droned on this way while the warm sun and the sound of his voice cast a spell over the audience, lulling them to the edge of drowsiness.
***
Across the blossoming quad, Professor Malvern was heading down the steps from Wittersham Hall, a book under one arm and his bag slung over the other, the sun shining off his bald head, but otherwise presenting a somewhat dour figure in black jeans and a black sweater. Making his way down the long side of the quad, he noticed the commotion at the far end on the steps of the student union. Normally he would avoid any kind of collection of students but his curiosity was piqued and consequently he proceeded to the edge of the crowd and stopped to listen.
Malvern was shocked to find that leading this rally of degenerate radicals was none other than his current research assistant, Hugo Davenport. He stood, mouth agape, and listened to the drivel emanating from Hugo’s mouth.
***
Hugo was feeling good about his speech. He had begun strong and wended his way through the particulars of being a teaching assistant and, despite nudges from Lark, he was going full steam ahead into complaints about faculty and undergraduate students alike, how faculty took little interest in the particulars of their large lecture courses and students could barely keep themselves awake in class when they bothered to come at all, and that really, when he thought about it, maybe it would be better to get rid of tenure, get rid of faculty altogether, put them out on an ice floe somewhere, and the TAs could take over their classes and their salaries and do things properly.
It was just then that a sudden ejaculation rang out.
“Hugo Davenport!”
Startled from his reverie, Hugo stiffened and looked around like a hunted prairie dog. Professor Malvern’s hawk-like visage emerged from the edge of the crowd, his voice booming. “Hugo, what are you doing? What a bunch of nonsense you’re spouting, getting rid of faculty. What are you doing fraternizing with these radicals begging for money? Is this communist talk? Are you a communist? Is that what’s going on here? You’re showing your true colors? Is that color red by any chance? This is really too much to take on board. I give you a chance to be my RA this summer and this is how you repay me? I really don’t believe it. I’m at a loss for words, a complete loss for words. Talk about biting the hand that feeds and taking the whole arm with it. I guess you want my head on a pike now too. Well, I won’t be so obliging. You and all your black-shirted friends can stuff it.”
Boos rang out from the crowd.
“No, no—Professor Malvern, I—I’m just doing a favor. I was just asked to say a few words—”
“You certainly said some choice ones. Get rid of faculty? Who’s going to teach undergraduate courses, not to mention graduate courses? You? You don’t know a preposition from a particle. You want to teach classes? You can’t even figure out what your dissertation topic is.”
“That hurts. It’s a big decision and—”
“Of course it’s a big decision, but that doesn’t mean that you get to avoid it and just coast for the rest of your life. Get a grip. You know what, forget being my RA. I won’t have some commie who hates me working for me. You’re fired!”
The crowd, watching silently, then murmuring angrily, then contorting their faces in rage had heard enough. An empty packet of American Spirits arced through the air and bounced off Professor Malvern’s bald pate.
Malvern raged. “Who threw that? Who threw that?”
The crowd advanced on him.
“Get out of here, parasite!”
“Workers of the world unite!”
Empty packets of American Spirits rained down on Malvern by the dozen.
“Screw you, commies! You can’t beat me that easily.”
Tomatoes and heads of rotten lettuce pelted Malvern in and about the face. He threw up his hands to protect himself.
Hugo, reminded of Darth Vader in the throne room scene at the end of The Return of the Jedi, where Darth Vader looked back and forth between his son and his emperor, deciding where his loyalties lay, looked first at Malvern, then at Lark and the crowd, then back at Malvern. He had decided.
Hugo launched himself through the crowd and threw his body between Malvern and the barrage of rotten vegetables and moldy crusts of bread winging their way through the air. He stood tall, throwing his hands wide.
“Enough! He’s not the enemy. All things considered, he’s been pretty good to me. He’s challenged me, pushed me to be better. I’m the one who hasn’t taken those opportunities when they were presented. He gave me a job when I needed one, against his better judgment. We don’t always see eye-to-eye but I owe Professor Malvern a lot. And one day, I’d like to be him, tenured and doing good research. Isn’t that what we all want?”
The crowd of black shirts and red berets stared at Hugo. The world held its collective breath.
“Get the traitor!”
Depleted of rotten vegetables and other refuse, the crowd turned to the bake sale table. Brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and Soviet tea cakes pelted Hugo in the face.
“Run, Professor! They mean business.”
“I never run.”
The crowd advanced. The air was thick with baked goods. Somewhere in the back, Lark was pleading for calm.
“Now’s not the time for heroics, Professor! Live to fight another day. Run!”
Malvern turned and ran and Hugo followed. They tore up the quad toward Wittersham Hall. Reaching the eaves of the building they ran up the steps, the crowd of communists hard on their heels.
Racing ahead, Hugo ran down the hall to the first floor section of the Classics department library, a collection that was housed on multiple floors and overflowed with 19th and 20th century books left by professors of yore or no longer wanted by the main library.
“Bar the door, Professor!”
“With what? The doors open out.”
“Just throw these then,” Hugo said, shoving an armful of books at Malvern.
The crowd was at the doors. One opened and a red-beret man with a Lenin beard and glasses charged in. Hugo hoofed a book at him and scored a direct hit. The doors remained propped open by his unconscious body.
“Wait, what was that?” Malvern said.
“What?”
“What book? Don’t throw the good ones.” Malvern started sorting through the jumble of books in his arms.
“Professor, give me a book.”
“Wait, I have to check…no, not Barcombe, not Henfield—very good on Plutarch—not Geislingen—”
“Professor!”
“Here, take Langport, Analysis of Vergil’s Messianic Eclogue; his conclusions were all wrong.”
Hugo heaved the heavy tome. It flapped open, pages fluttering, and knocked the berets off a half-dozen rioters.
“I need more books, Professor!”
“One minute, one minute. Wait…wait…here! Augsburg, Römische Geschichte. Wrong and unreadable.”
Augsburg’s life’s work sailed through the air and landed ineffectually with a thud on the ground. The communists were growing wise to Hugo’s tactics.
“More books, Professor!”
The vanguard of the University of Florence Communist Collective Action Committee advanced up the stairs toward the open doors, eyes blazing beneath their red berets, hands reaching out for professor and student.
Just then, a shower of water drenched the leading Reds. A voice cried out from on high, “Behold and beware, vile usurpers. None shall pass this sacred threshold! That was cold water. The next shall be boiling. Just try me, you dirty commies!”
The vanguard stopped, dazed and looking around stupidly. Realizing they’d been outmaneuvered they retreated, dragging their fallen and shooting dirty looks at Hugo, Malvern, and the third-floor window over the door.
Outside, Hugo and Malvern looked up above the door to see the glasses, long nose, and shock of white hair characteristic of Professor Riggs sticking out the open window. His normally vacant expression had been substituted for outright ferocity.
“Medieval tactics, gentlemen! Or perennial, I might say. Much like cats, communists hate water.”
“I didn’t know that,” Hugo said.
Malvern shrugged.
“Do you really have boiling water up there, Professor?” Hugo said, but Riggs had disappeared. Perhaps it was better not to know. Hugo’s impression of the little man had shifted significantly.
“Well, Hugo,” Malvern said. “Never a dull moment with you around. I am going to go home and take a shower and wash the stink of communist and rotten tomato off me. I’ll see you tomorrow about ten o’clock and I’ll have some new work for you to do.”
“Does that mean…”
Malvern shot him a look.
“Oh, right then. Thanks.”
As he watched Malvern retreat into the building, Hugo realized his un-firing was all the thanks he would ever get from Malvern and that was alright by him.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, strictly a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance, perceived resemblance, or similarity to any other fictional works, to actual events or persons, living or dead, and any perceived slights of people, places, or organizations are products of the reader’s imagination. This fiction is the result of a partnership between a human writer and the character(s) he accessed with his creative subconscious as he raced through the story with them. No AI of any kind, generative or otherwise, was used in any way to write this story.
This is really funny, thank you!