Several people ran in search of Michael.
“Did you know they were looking for you?” I asked Ramon.
“Not exactly,” he said. “I knew someone from the English department had been trying to reach me, but they never said what it was about and I figured it was just some kind of bureaucratic thing that could wait until after the show was over.”
“Well, the show is over for now, unless we—unless Professor Waterston can fix this,” I said.
Something suddenly occurred to me. I’d been calling Wright and Blanco “doctor.” They referred to Michael as “Professor Waterston.” So did I, usually, when talking about him to anyone from the college. But why? As far as I knew, Caerphilly College had no rule, official or unspoken, that you only called tenured professors “doctor.” I knew adjunct professors in several other departments whom everyone called doctor. As far as I could remember, there were only three Ph.D.s at Caerphilly College that everyone always called “professor” rather than “doctor”—Michael and his drama colleagues, Abe Sass and Art Rudmann. Maybe I was imagining things or being oversensitive, but this felt to me like a deliberate slight. From now on, I was going to fling Michael’s doctorate in their faces at every opportunity.
Dr. Michael himself appeared at my side.
“You wanted me?” he said. “Time to head for the hospital?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Though if Dr. Wright and Dr. Blanco continue to annoy me, you may need to take them.”
“Annoy you? Wright and Blanco? How?”
“They say I can’t do my dissertation on Señor Mendoza, and the play is canceled,” Ramon said.
Michael’s reaction was lost in a sudden outburst of exclamations and oaths in two languages from the crowd of students.
“Down with the English department!”
“Those jerks!”
“Censorship! Censorship!”
“Discrimination!”
I wasn’t up to deciphering what was being said in Spanish, but I assumed the gist was about the same.
“Professor, can they do that?” one student asked.
“Qué pasó?” Señor Mendoza ask. “Qué pasó?”
Three of the students began explaining to him, simultaneously, in rapid-fire Spanish. At first he looked confused, then he seemed to catch on.
“Villains!” he shouted. “Infamy! Let me accost them!”
I was bracing myself to intervene—to leap out of my chair, or at least yell at him to stop. But I realized he didn’t seem to be going anywhere. He began speaking loudly and rapidly in Spanish. The students gathered around him, but considering his vehement tone, they were strangely subdued, as if struggling to understand him.
“What’s he saying?” I whispered to Michael.
“No idea,” Michael whispered back. “When he gets excited, he lapses into Catalan. Which none of us speaks.”
Probably just as well, since from watching him I deduced that he was trying to incite the students to do something. From the expressions on their faces, I suspected the students were just as far out at sea as I was, but apparently they all assumed everyone else understood every word and had begun applauding and cheering diligently.
“Then how do you know it’s Catalan?” I whispered to Michael.
“He apologized the first time he lapsed into it.”
Señor Mendoza began shouting things that ended with either Sí? or No! The students could take a hint. They began roaring back “Sí!” or “No!” whenever Señor Mendoza paused for a response.
Michael beckoned me into the pantry, where it was a little quieter.
“So just exactly what did they say—Blanco and Wright?”
“Wright said Ramon’s dissertation topic was unsuitable because it was Spanish,” I said. “Caerphilly is an English-language institution. And Blanco said the play was unsuitable and offensive, and it’s off, too. Who is he, anyway?”
“One of the president’s pet bureaucrats,” Michael said. “Has his finger in everything. Spends all his time on projects no one either understands or wants. Big on introducing new paperwork—he’s killed more trees than all the arsonists in California ever will. Sticks his nose in everything from academic standards to the portion sizes in the cafeteria. Currently about the least popular man on campus because his department hasn’t been able to get the heating plant problem solved. And Wright, of course—”
“Is a member of your committee,” I said.
“A problem member.” He sighed. “Not to mention a serious contender for the position of English department chair the next time that becomes vacant. But we have to deal with her. Let’s go see if we can straighten this out.”