A Lonely Immortality

Janet A tall blonde man is hunched over a large mahogany desk, he is furiously scribbling in a small leather-bound book. His script is beautiful, looping Cyrillic text spans the white paper in blue ink. His eyes are squinted in concentration as he finishes his last word with a deep twist and a heaving dot. Leaning back he sighs, his brow furrowed in residual concentration, a deep satisfying breath leaving his body. His tiny brunette assistant, knowing the professor’s movements and non-verbal motions well after 10 years of service, comes scurrying into the room. “Are you finished, Professor James?” She asks with a comfortable smile. He nods “I am Janet, I am.” She smiles with greater warmth, gathering the collection of leather-bound notebooks from the desk, each carefully numbered for her ease. “I’ll get started with the typing then.” She bustles out of the room with 20 or so books balanced in her arms. It was a good and interesting job for her. The professor produced a book every six months or so, each carefully and arduously handwritten in the same leather-bound notebooks. She would type them up as he started the next, pausing to ask for clarification where old world words were used, but mostly she would work without pause each working day. Enjoying the details and textures of the stories told. As far as she could tell, he must research each tale to some unknown extent as each of his historical tomes was told from the first person and gave the effect of being written by an observer. She would work for free but for the need to eat, his books were that captivating she loved to read them as she worked. Often taking home the book she would be transcribing the next day so she could enjoy it unencumbered by the need to work. Professor James was a beautiful man, with a high brow and chiselled jaw. His eyes would vary from the warmest pools of the cerulean sea to the coolest arctic blue in an instant. His dark blonde hair usually sat unkempt on his head, brushed back absentmindedly by his large hands. Hands that had seen the value of hard work, rough and manly. He would spend days in a trance-like state, his pen moving without effort as he scribed, those beautiful blue eyes glazed by memory and deep thought. It was safe to say that the 35-year-old Janet, who had started as his secretary, had a huge crush on her boss. At 45, Janet’s crush had mellowed into the deepest respect and affection for the man with whom she spent every day. She would worry about him most days, positive that he was a deeply lonely man who needed to find something outside of the study and classroom in which he spent all of his life. Even she had her cat to go home to each night, but the professor never mentioned anything about his personal life, barring the occasional ‘I’m meeting friends tonight’ on those days when he arrived at work dressed in slightly less haphazardly put-together clothes. Janet had found the professor in a night class studying the classics following a disastrous divorce which tore her sense of self to the very core. Each night that week, she had appeared in a different class looking for something to help fill the new void in her life. That night was her second trip to the classics course, having loved the stories that had been told. The usual professor had called off that night and Professor James was standing in. He had stood before the class, dressed in tweed and a creased cotton shirt, his hair tumbling over his eyes as he fought a losing battle to keep it back with willpower and hand swipes alone. He told the story of Odysseus to the class and had them hanging on his every word with his hypnotically soft words. At the end of the class, he had announced that he was looking for an assistant to help with his classes and publishing schedules. Janet had almost leapt from her chair in eagerness, holding herself back barely until the rest of the students had been dismissed. She spoke with enthusiasm to the professor about her experience in administration. He wasn’t particularly interested, asking “Do you type?” she answered affirmatively, and he responded “Good, Good, I don’t.” She chuckled at this, not realising he was serious. The next day she arrived at his office to be presented with the now common pile of notebooks and the instruction to type them up. Within hours she was transfixed, within days she was in love. Over the next few years she realised her ardour would never be requitted and, without malice or upset, settled into her life as his constant companion, working alongside the man she adored was simply enough for her. Henry “Janet” he shouts through the partition door. She jumps up and immediately runs to his side. “Yes Professor” she replies. “Hmm” he looks surprised to see her as he lifts his eyes from the new empty notebook “Oh yes, I’m off out tonight. Could you lock up when you’re done?” She beams at him, telling him that yes, she could before skipping back to her desk. He watches her in deep thought, ‘I wonder how old she is now, do I need to think about her retiring yet?’ He had long since given up on guessing the ages of the humans he worked alongside, they could be 30 or 60 and he would have little clue now, they had so many ways of keeping themselves young that it was simply impossible to tell. ‘Check personnel file’ he scribbles on a post it note before standing up and pulling on his coat. November in England was cold, and he gathered odd looks if he went out in his shirt sleeves. Looking into the darkened glass in his office window to check his reflection, he shrugs, accepting that he looks OK, brushes his hand through the unruly mop of hair he decides it’s maybe time for a trim. He turns to the door, dismissing the vanity that drew him to check out his reflection, and heads out of the office. Waving goodbye to his faithful assistant, he turns his collar against the wind and steps into the street. Taking a deep breath as he hits the street, the smell of the outdoor space hits him. A mixture of smoke, chemicals and garbage swelling into his senses. ‘hmm’ he thought ‘never clean, just different’, before he turns and heads across the city to meet his old friends at the private club they share. It’s been a year this time, he muses as he walks on the frosted pavement. It seems to get longer and longer before their meetings now. I suppose the longer we live the shorter the days get. He stifles a gag as he walks past what is obviously from the queue, a popular ‘fast’ food joint. The spice they throw into the food now baffles him. Still, no one seems happy with a simple dish anymore. The last time he ate out he ordered a simple beef stew to find it drowning in paprika and chilli when it arrived. Even the potatoes were laced with garlic and butter. The older he grew, the less he seemed to understand the world, or so it seemed at least. He knew tonight he would be lectured about re-joining society a little and stopping living in the past of his books and lectures, but after a lifetime some habits were hard to break and some heartbreaks too deep to recover from. A deep sigh shudders through his frame as he continues his walk through the cold, cramped London streets. As he allows his thoughts to overwhelm him, distracting him from the age-old grime that coats the city, he is forever drawn back to he finds himself walking through a younger city, smiling as the memory takes on substance around him. The cries of street sellers start to take on resonance in his ears, ‘hot pies’ was the one that would bring him running every day, even on the days he couldn’t afford to buy, the smell of the hot pastry and meat juices would draw him towards them. The feel of rough straw and dirt becomes the texture under his feet. Feeling the dust gather around his ankles, he kicks against the floor to send up more flurries of soil. The smell takes on a more organic stench, horse manure replacing car fumes, general decay becoming more apparent in the air unmasked by plastic wrappings and chemicals. The cadence of the noise around him alters softly, the roar of traffic becomes an altogether more chaotic swell of voices, crashes and animals whinnying and barking. As far back as he remembers, this city has never been quiet, days and nights of noise and activity, a sudden crash at 2am doesn’t raise an eyebrow now any more than it did when he was young. He is sure that could he visit the cities earlier days he would find a period where silence reigned, but in his lifetime the noise has become the blanket he drapes over his shoulders as a comfort. The noise, the dirt, the stench, the noise are home for him. He hopes to never have to leave again.