University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Spring 5-13-2016 The Tiberius Torture Christian Thomas University of New Orleans, New Orleans, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Thomas, Christian, "The Tiberius Torture" (2016). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2195. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2195 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. 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The Tiberius Torture A Novel A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing by Christian Thomas B.A. University of California, Davis, 1992 May, 2016 Table of Contents Chapter 1…………………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 2………………………………………………………………………………………..11 Chapter 3………………………………………………………………………………………..19 Chapter 4………………………………………………………………………………………..25 Chapter 5………………………………………………………………………………………..30 Chapter 6………………………………………………………………………………………..56 Chapter 7………………………………………………………………………………………..80 Chapter 8………………………………………………………………………………………..94 Chapter 9………………………………………………………………………………………106 Chapter 10……………………………………………………………………………………..118 Chapter 11……………………………………………………………………………………..131 Chapter 12……………………………………………………………………………………..136 Chapter 13……………………………………………………………………………………..155 Chapter 14……………………………………………………………………………………..189 Vita……………………………………………………………………………………………194 ii Chapter 1 I looked up from the essay I was grading and saw Duncan’s tan, leathery face peeking in through my doorway. His dyed eyebrows were jacked up high, questioning, and his bleached teeth were gleaming. “Hey-ay Joe,” he sang to the rhythm of the Hendrix song, “How did your mee-ting go?” People have been singing that song to me since I was in middle school and started going by Joe instead of Joseph. I never should have switched; but once you do it, it’s hard to go back. I gave him a look, and he came inside the cramped little box the university calls my office and sat in an old chair my students use when they come to my office hours. “So,” he said. “Was it bad, terrible, or apocalyptic?” “Terrible,” I said. Duncan creaked forward in the chair. “You still have a chance then?” “Not really,” I said. “A ghost of a chance, maybe.” “Ghosts are real,” he said dramatically. “All historians know that.” This was a typical Duncanism. He promoted his classes with titles like, Corpses Whispering: Burial Practices in Medieval Eastern Europe, and Istanbul Past & Present: A Ghost Tour. “Sure,” I said, “the past lives in our classes, but I don’t think I’m going to be teaching those much longer. Not here, anyway.” Duncan leaned back, frowning. “What exactly did she say?” 1 The meeting, I told him, had started the same way my last review had. Rajvi, the chair of our department, had said in a Miranda Rights tone: “In order to grant tenure to prospective candidates in the History Department, the University requires at least one book and several peer- reviewed articles that significantly advance the scholarship of the candidate’s area of study – ” Duncan shook his head. “Everyone in the department knows that. Did she say it just to take a dig at you?” I shrugged. “She had a checklist in front of her. I think she wants to make sure that she fires me by the book. No pun intended.” He smiled, showing his big white teeth. “She was just covering her ass. I don’t think she wants to fire you. Did she give you any wiggle room?” “She gave me an ultimatum. She said that given where I am right now, it would be impossible to expect me to complete my book by the beginning of the fall term, when I have to submit it as part of my tenure package.” Duncan scratched his scalp under his thin, dyed hair. “You’ve got most of the summer. Could you expand on that Vesuvius article? Is there enough there to make a book out of?” “No,” I said. “I don’t mean a good book,” he said. “I’m talking about a very thin, really shitty one.” I shook my head. “I need a lot more time to research, and I have to get lucky – you know how it is – I have to discover something decent enough to get me the publishing contract.” It was true; I’d been trying for months to build on the last article I’d published, which argued that Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 CE had crippled Italian wine production for over a decade. I suspected, though, that the eruption had done much more, that when Vesuvius obliterated Italy’s most innovative ancient vineyards, it had set back winemaking throughout the 2 entire Mediterranean for generations. But I was having trouble finding enough supporting evidence to take my thesis beyond mere speculation. I had little nuggets of evidence here and there, but not even close to enough for a long scholarly work. And, I have to admit that I hadn’t been researching as energetically as I should have been, given my precarious academic position. Maybe I was scared that if I kept digging, I’d find out that I was wrong – that Vesuvius hadn’t really had the grand, far-reaching effect on wine that I wanted it to have had. When I voiced this, Duncan said, “I hear ya, there are no guarantees with that, or any other line of research. You might crash and burn. But, if you do find some enticing bit of research to support the creation of your great scholarly opus, what then? Rajvi will try to buy you another year to actually write the thing?” “That’s the idea,” I said. “If I can get a book contract by the end of the summer, she may be able to push my tenure package through on the promise that I’ll follow through next year.” Duncan looked skeptical. “What publisher?” “Berkeley Press,” I said. He made a face. “Peggy Talbot?” “I don’t have any other options,” I said. “She’s the only editor I have any connection to.” He looked up at the ceiling, thinking. Then he said, “All the editors I know are on the Medieval side of things, or Renaissance. Does Rajvi know anyone she could put you in contact with?” “I think she would have said.” Duncan sighed. “I just hate to see you go down that road again – ” “I don’t have a lot of options,” I said. “And Peggy’s open to seeing a book proposal sometime soon, probably August.” 3 “OK,” Duncan said. “You and Peggy together, on a hot August night.” “It’s not a date.” “Cheer up,” Duncan said, smiling. “The meeting could have been worse. Rajvi must have really gone to bat for you with the dean to give you this chance. I didn’t think she liked you that much.” “She doesn’t,” I said. “She probably only gave me this so-called chance so she won’t feel so guilty when she actually does fire me in the fall. I’ve only got a couple months to do something she knows takes years, even with luck.” Duncan bobbed his head to the side. “OK, so it’s not a great chance, but it’s something. Let’s celebrate.” I tapped the pile of students’ bluebooks on my desk. “I have to finish grading these.” “Do ’em tomorrow,” he said, springing up from his chair. “Tonight, we’re going to drink, we’re going to barbecue, and we’re going to make battle plans.” We drove the forty-five minutes from the University up to Duncan’s house in Los Olivos, up in the wine country. It’s a cute little town where they filmed some scenes from the movie Sideways. Duncan’s ranch-style house is sprawling but is filled with so much clutter that it feels less lonely than I think it would otherwise. Duncan, like a lot of professors, has stuffed his place with enough books to fill a library. He plays the oboe, too, and has old wooden oboe-precursors hung all over the walls. But his maps – those are the things that make his house such fun to wander around. Most are from the medieval period – Duncan is a medievalist; but my favorite is a moth- eaten tapestry-map of Istanbul, intricately woven with bright green and gold thread during the 4 time of Suleiman the Magnificent. (I love his name. Alexander was “great” – so were Pompey and Constantine. But Suleiman was fucking magnificent.) Duncan says he bought the tapestry- map in Turkey in 1972 for a hundred fifty dollars, but who knows what it’d be worth if he tried to sell it now. Duncan’s kitchen looks like it was last remodeled about the same year he bought the map, with dark wooden cabinets and yellow Formica countertops. There was a bottle of wine sitting there when we walked in; Duncan had opened it that morning and covered it with cheesecloth to let it breath. He enjoys wine almost to a fault, like a lot of people in the Santa Barbara area. Wine might, in fact, be one of the main reasons I got hired at UCSB.