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Date:         Mon, 14 Sep 1992 13:34:00 EDT
From:         Gilbert Smith <N567126@NCSUADM.ACS.NCSU.EDU>
Subject:      WHTMITL7
Comments: To: English Language Discussion Group <words-l@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>

What Happened To Me In The Library 7
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19)  My work done for the day, I make my way to my HSH, where
my tc/sw is waiting for me with questions about the message
left on my answering machine:
   "Who do you know with a Central European accent?"
   "Nobody, except all your Czech friends who call all the
    time."
   "This was no Czech.  This was.... uh...."
   "Hungarian, perhaps?"
   "How did you know?  Is this one of your e-mail <friends>?"
   "I don't know anything about it.  Period.  Where's my
    dinner?"
   "Dinner, schminnerschnitzel... get it yourself."
20) Finally, the gift of sleep comes, and I have a dream that
I am unable to related to anything that has happened to me in
my <real> existence.  A woman with long blond tresses is floating
in a murky pool covered with algae and calla lillies, calling out
to me in a voice marked by a thick Portuguese accent....  I try to
move toward her, but Juan Pablo Forner steps out of the reeds
with a basket in his hand, saying "Is this your illigitimate *child*?
You should know that this simply is not *done* and you have not
responded to our brightly coloured forms for three months."  Then,
a man who identifies himself as an Armenian stonemason points to a
curtain, which miraculously draws back and reveals the babe, being
carried away by all the ants in the world, while the babe cries
out "Dont call me Ms. Bunerrosa, my name is Ms. Von Krusenstjerna,
or if you prefer Ms. Von Krusenstjerna da Bunerrosa, but *never*
Ms. Bunerrosa, comprende?"  The woman with blond tresses is
suddenly revived and raises her feet, which are clothed in beautiful
black patent leather cocktail shoes, on the bottoms of which are
inscribed the words: "Hopefully, my mother has honed the pruning
shears."   I awake and check to see if my equipment is still in
place.  My tc/sw says, foggily: "Stop shaking the bed.  What are
you *doing*?"  I drift off to sleep, peaceful sleep.
.
20)  A new day of research, during which I find, to my amazement,
in the Swedish archives of the D. H. Hill Library, a diary written
by the mother of an Armenian youth who spent some time in Stockholm.
With the help of a colleague who studied four semesters of Armenian
at Penn, I am able to read the testimony of this mother, who swears
that:
    a) the mother of Agnes was an unwilling employee of the brothel
    b) that the Portuguese Ambassador was always impotent and the
        castration provoked from him only the comment "I didn't
        need them anyway....."
    c)  that the child Agnes was always only marginally socialized
    and,
    d)  that the child-bride Agnes had included in her own diary,
    during her stay at the Feldisejetscoem Gimnejetsium, sketches
    of a wedding dress that presaged that worn by the character
    Melissa von Stumpinshump at her wedding to the Baron in the
    third novel, which in turn presaged the dress worn by Agnes
    herself as she entered the sewers for the last time.
.
21)  After a full day of very rewarding work, feeling myself
almost ready to make that post in which is detailed the complete
story of Agnes, I retire to the university coffee-shop, where I
get a cup of black coffee with sugar and settle down for a smoke,
one of the few today, and see lying before me a copy of today's
_Technician_, and the headline to a story at the bottom of page
one:  "Library Officials Ponder Behavioral Problems In Restrooms
As Housekeeping Staff Refuse To Deal With Patrons Urinating On
Floor"....  I do not read this article, but search the coffee-shop
with surreptitious gaze for familiar faces, but see none.
.
22) After a visit to my faculty study, in search of brightly
coloured forms, after finding none, I return to my office to type
up my notes on Agnes, then home to fix my own supper and ignore
questions about communication practices on the net.  Then to sleep,
and to resist the temptation to dream the dream of ambassadors and
priests and brides afloat then dragged to murky death.  Tomorrow is
another day and I shall be done with Agnes, hopefully.
--ggs