AN: Hey guys. AN at the end as usual if you feel like it. Hope you enjoy. T.I.
Note: Bold = Foreign Language.
Chapter II
His teacher still seemed to be waiting for an answer as Percy remained silent in his chair. He wanted to look away, or stare at anything else to ease the tension he felt, but the commanding eyes of Mr. Goldberg left him no room for escape.
Finally, his teacher let a sigh and what sounded like a slight laughter. "Well, I guess this is introductory Latin, and I was guessing you knew at least a little bit about the language if you came to study, but alas I was mistaken." Every word he spoke was clear and articulate, having no sense of doubt or double meaning. Percy didn't know why, but he felt almost compelled to listen to this man.
"Look, Mr. Goldberg," Percy started after feeling he had to come clean about his intentions and problems. "I have ADHD. I'm bad with reading and languages in general. I took this class because I thought that you wouldn't bother teaching a class that had only one student. I'm sorry and I would understand if you wanted to kick me out to some other foreign language class. I'll just pack my stuff and go." Percy finished, having told him way more than he ever first intended. Why he was so compelled by him, he had no idea.
Percy got up and was about to take his bag and go tell Ms. Nancy that he would just find some other language and fail miserably when Mr. Goldberg talked to him again. And again, he was compelled to listen.
"You told me about the reason you're here, the problems you face, and your hopes for this class, but in all of this, you never even mentioned your name, my anonymous student." Mr. Goldberg stepped away from the blackboard and started walking towards Percy, his stance straight and graceful, almost like a dancer. Maybe he ran side gigs for the school's ballet clubs?
"And please, just call me Mark. Mr. Goldberg just makes me feel my age." He gave a slight smile, but Percy knew that with his looks he couldn't be over thirty. Was this a joke of some kind?
"Oh… Okay then… Mark," Saying a teacher's first name felt weird for Percy. "My name is Percy. Short for Perseus. You know, the mythological hero and all?" Percy at least felt that he should give the teacher the basic respect and tell him his own name.
"Ah Perseus. A grand name. One that is filled with promise and adventure. But also danger." Mark mused, smiling slightly once again, as if he was in on a secret joke about him that Percy had no idea of.
"You say that you have a hard time to write and read English, yet you speak it well enough Percy. Tell me, did you know that about sixty percent of the modern words in the English language come from Latin?" Mark asked, suddenly changing his tone to one more suited for a lecturer.
Percy knew that English and other romantic languages were based on Latin, but he had no sense of the scale. Sixty percent was one hell of a scale. As he pondered, Mark once again reached the blackboard, marker in hand, he wrote a word on the board.
"Tell me Percy, what word do you see here?" Mark asked, as he moved out of the way for Percy to be able to see what was written.
Curious, he stared at the word that was written on the board, and his breath was held. The letters didn't move. They stayed where they were, not trying to evade his eye to brain connection. He could read it perfectly and instantly. And even more shocking was the fact that he knew what it meant.
On the board, in capital letters alone, was the word "VERBVM". He stared at the board, then back to Mark, then back to the board, and so on until he saw the little smile on Mark's face expand into a full blown grin.
"Well, your answer, Percy?" Mark questioned.
"VERBVM, pronounced Uerbum. Literally means word." Percy didn't know how he knew, he just did. "What kind of black magic is this?" He asked.
"Very good. Now, do you know what word the Romans took most seriously out of the rest of them?" Mark questioned again, ignoring Percy's comment.
He expected some sort of epiphany or divine intervention, just like in the way that he knew how to read, pronounce and translate the Latin word, but it seemed that whatever god watched him decided to take a quick coffee break.
"I'm sorry sir, I have no idea." He admitted, feeling somewhat down after the last experience he had with the word.
"Eh, don't worry about it. I saw your history curriculum, horrible stuff really. No wonder you guys get killed so easily." Mark remarked. "Anyway, sit down Percy, we have a lot of ground to cover. Lucky for you you're my only student so we can advance in your studies faster than most."
Get killed? What was that all about? As in killed in exams? Percy felt a bit lost, but as he continued to watch the word on the board, expecting it to suddenly betray him and start moving into an unreadable, incomprehensible mess, he was let down. The word stayed there, static and readable. And that excited him beyond anything he ever felt before. He hurried and sat in the front row, in front of the board at full attention, ready to learn. Wow. That was new.
"We cannot learn anything new without first inspecting and understanding its history. The twists and turns of time change a lot of aspects about our understanding of things. To know history, is to know everything." Mark once again adopted his lecturer tone. "Tell me Percy, what do you know about the history of the Roman republic?" Mark asked.
The rest of the lesson flew by for Percy as he found himself more and more entranced with Mark's teachings. He was very meticulous, went down to the most minute detail about every single aspect of the history of Rome and its people. Their inception and the myths of Romulus and Remus, and of Aeneas of Troy, through the seven kings that ruled over them, and into the rule of the people in the form of the republic or 'RESPVBLICA' as Mark had written on the board.
When his teacher looked towards his watch to check the time, it was like Percy was snapped out of a deep trance. "That's all the time we have today Percy. Tomorrow we'll continue out little prologue to the people whose language we're learning." Mark got up, wiped the board clean and proceeded to open the classroom door.
"Mr. Goldberg, I have a question." Percy noted, quite to his surprise. He never asked questions in class.
"I told you, call me Mark. And I assume this was rather a lecture than an active lesson we just had, what do you want to ask?" His teacher seemed to scan the hallway for some reason before turning towards Percy again.
He wanted to ask how it's possible for him to read Latin so clearly and without problem, but he decided that asking such a question was meaningless. What would a Latin teacher know about ADHD disorders? So he picked a different, more simple question.
"How old are you?" Percy almost mumbled. When the realization hit him that he actually asked such a thing, he wanted to slap his face with his hands. "I'm sorry that was stupid of me you clearly don't have to tell me anything that personal." He quickly added, trying to save himself at least some embarrassment.
He expected Mark to leave and close the door behind him, but that never happened. Instead, Percy only saw a wide grin on his teachers face. But that was no ordinary grin. That was the grin of a person that knows something that you don't, and that usually wasn't a very good thing in Percy's experience.
"How old do you think I am?" He asked back, his mysterious grin never leaving his face.
At this point Percy really had no idea how to retort. What was this weird game they were playing? Whatever it was he felt like his teacher currently had an ace up his sleeve for poker, while Percy was playing a whole different game, like checkers, or Settlers of Catan. Not the same game at all.
"Um… Thirty-five?" He finally replied after a rather long and still silence. The grin on Mark's face never left. If anything, it only grew bigger as if mocking his sorry attempt to answer.
"Thirty-three since last week Percy, thank you for asking." The grin turned into a smile and then into a full blown laugh as his teacher's voice carried down the school's hallway.
"You really are amusing Percy. I didn't expect that. It's time to go. And please, don't get eaten up by monsters. That would be rather a shame in your current state. I still have much to pass onto you. Ave, Perseus." Mark smiled once again. He even winked and then exited the classroom, probably towards the teacher's lounge.
Percy just stood there inside the classroom, still boggled by the honesty and weird nature of his teacher's retort. Don't get eaten up? What was he a five-year-old? Shrugging, he packed his things and headed towards the school gate.
When he got home, Percy booted up his old and rather beaten up laptop computer and started searching for his teacher online. Percy felt rather bad for suspecting his teacher, but still, that air of mystery around him compelled Percy to complete the missing parts that he felt just weren't connecting.
The search proved to be rather stale and one sided. The man was a genius. A Masters at philosophy and Ph.D. at classics and ancient history, and he was only thirty-three! Percy suspected he might be lying. Percy then tried to find more information about the personal life of his teacher. And that's when things got weird.
No official date of birth, no mention of parents or family, place of living before the start of his college education or any other information was available through his search. Was it possible in this day and age to actually not know anything about the early life of anyone? Percy found his suspicions, and the air of mystery around Mark Goldberg's being increase with every hit of a key on his computer.
Pictures of Mark showed him accepting awards, receiving his degrees and there was even a YouTube video of him debunking that weird History Channel show about ancient aliens, which was quite entertaining for Percy. As he got back to the image search, an image he never noticed appeared.
It was blurry, probably taken from a low quality mobile phone camera. But even with such a low quality Percy could identify the face of his Latin teacher. The picture depicted him looking at a huge pillar that looked like it was made of white stone. Percy thought it was limestone at first, but the pillar looked old, and limestone wouldn't hold for such a long time. On the pillar were engraved countless images, depicting animals and humans, but Percy couldn't tell exactly what was going on due to the low quality of the photo.
What Percy found even stranger was the expression on his teacher's face. He looked a little younger than he was currently, but his eyes, his eyes seemed to hold the soul and image of a man even older than the old pillar he was staring at. Percy wasn't sure what emotions his gaze held, but somehow he felt something along the lines of… Remorse? Anger? Sadness? It was a vortex of emotion, one so deep and complex Percy couldn't possibly unravel its true meaning.
Sighing, and noticing it was getting late, Percy closed his computer, took a shower and changed, and got to bed. The questions in his head never leaving him.
And Percy dreamed.
AN:
Hello all! And welcome to another installment of Gladius Philosophi.
A few things I forgot to mention last time:
1. I am a Uni student of general history. Updates will be coming hopefully regularly, but according to my exam schedule there could be slight delays. Expect updates every day/three days/week.
2. English is not my native language, and I currently don't have a Beta. Sorry in advance for any error in spelling/grammar, even though I do try and go through and fix everything before I post.
Things are starting to get interesting. Poor Percy and life's mysteries.
See you on the next one!
AVE!
T.I.