52 Stories

story by kpbstevens

A Short Discourse on Ambrose Bierce

Professor Bauerschmidt leaned back in his chair and gazed out of the windows as the students came into the seminar room.  He rolled a long piece of chalk back and forth between his lips.  Paul sat down next to Eudora and watched her go through her pre-class routine.  She took three pencils out of her bag and arranged them in a neat row beside her notebook.  She took out her water bottle and unscrewed the cap half-way.  Her hands looked very full to him, as if the life inside her was pushing against the skin of her fingers, trying to get out.  Bauerschmidt sighed and took the chalk out of his mouth.  He sat forward in his chair and held the chalk between his first two fingers.  He gesticulated with it as he talked, and when he wasn’t talking he put it back between his lips.

“Ambrose Bierce,” he said.  “Ambrose Bierce said that ‘for every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin.  His enemies have only to find it.’  Nice phrase, isn’t it?  From The Devil’s Dictionary, for those of you who are taking notes.”  He gave a rheumy, nicotine laden cough.  “Ambrose Bierce,” he repeated, rolling the words over his tongue.  He glanced down at his own notes.  “He wrote that ‘This is a world of fools and rogues, blind with superstition, tormented with envy, consumed with vanity, selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions - frothing mad!’  Not the kindest view of humanity.  But there was something interesting about old Ambrose Bierce.  Those of you who did the reading for today know that in stories like ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ and ‘Chickamauga’ people can escape that madness through the help of their imaginations.  The confederate spy who’s being executed, the child who’s wandering through the battle, they have moments of survival, maybe even moments of grace, because they can slip into illusions.”

Eudora raised her hand.  Bauerschmidt swiveled his eyes around to her and nodded, sitting back and putting the piece of chalk between his lips.  “But those illusions don’t really help them much, do they?  I mean, Peyton Farquhar dies in the end, the child finds his village destroyed.”

“True,” Bauerschmidt said.  “He pretended to be cynical.  Or maybe you don’t think he was only pretending.  But consider the end of his life.  He disappeared into the Mexican desert.  He said he was going to join up with Pancho Villa.  Can you imagine a seventy-one year old man, a man who suffered from asthma, wandering into the desert after a revolutionary army without a spark of hope in his chest?  He wanted the illusions for himself.  Well?  Do you disagree, Miss Moxey?”

Eudora looked down at her carefully arranged notebook and pencils.  “I guess I don’t know enough about it.”  Paul’s hand twitched.  He wanted to cover her fingers with his own.

Bauerschmidt took the chalk out of his mouth and wiped at his lips with the back of his hand, smearing chalk dust across them.  “He could create illusions,” Bauerschmidt said softly, almost sadly.  “He published a book under an assumed name.  A book that attacked waltzing because it was lascivious.  Then he wrote columns in the newspaper under his own name, attacking the book because he wanted to cause a controversy and drum up sales.”

“A hoax,” another student said.

“Yes,” Bauerschmidt said.  “A hoax.  And maybe that is what separates a hoax from an illusion.  A hoax isn’t meant for serious purposes.”

“But it can be,” Eudora said, interrupting.  Bauerschmidt looked at her and waited.  “That hoax, it was meant to make fun of prudishness, right?  To, I don’t know, to poke fun at something ridiculous in society.”

Bauerschmidt nodded.  He sighed and looked at the window.  “But what do you think is more noble?  A hoax is idle mockery.  An illusion…well, an illusion can be beautiful.”

Paul stared across the square seminar room table at Bauerschmidt’s face.  He turned his head and looked at Eudora.  She was looking at Bauerschmidt, her full, crimped lips pursed with concentration.  Paul wrote on a scrap of paper and handed it to Eudora.  Do you think he’s going to cry?

She gave him a sharp, intent, disappointed look.  He blushed.  “It’s a serious question,” he mouthed.  He hoped that she could tell from his face that he was serious, that there was no mockery of Bauerschmidt.  She shook her head and looked away.

Paul felt his body grow warm and he looked down at his hands, which he held in his lap.  He heard Bauerschmidt start talking again, but he didn’t pay attention.  His gaze shifted from his own lap to Eudora’s, to the taut, thin blue of her jeans, to the fall of her t-shirt away from her breasts.  He had to convince her that he had meant no harm, that he had felt something for Bauerschmidt, that he agreed with Bauerschmidt, that Bauerschmidt’s words had filled him with a deep longing, a hope for his own sustained illusions.  He wanted to unclasp his hands and reach one to touch her leg under the table.

He shifted his eyes and stared at the side of her face.  She glanced at him, then glanced away, and then glanced back again.  She studied his face.  He kept it a careful picture of misery.  Her mouth relaxed, and she gave him a little smile, and nodded.

He found himself grinning.  It had been so secret, this interchange.  No one else in the class had known that it was going on.  A tiny world of private drama for just him and Eudora.  And perhaps for Bauerschmidt, who had taken the chalk out of his mouth and was rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, watching Paul and Eudora as another student talked.

Tags: /ambrose bierce /an occurrence at owl creek bridge /chickamauga /love /illusions /hoaxes