BY MITCHELL TOEWS
Copyright is held by the author.
“WELCOME TO the University of Victoria, Clearihue Building, Room 101, English 121 for 1973. If that is not the university, building, room, course or year in which you had hoped to find yourself, please leave immediately. I am Professor Bloom.”
She pauses. Looks up, then at her watch. Continues.
“If you must, you may smoke in the hallway. Be aware, however . . . any topics covered while you are absent from the lecture theatre to satisfy your addiction will certainly be on your personalized exam.”
She stops, lips tightening, not in a smirk, exactly. More like that of a devious child, caught in the act and pleased with the confrontation.
Head rising slowly, she engages us in a field observation, as one might a flock of incontinent geese in a park, then flips open a spiral notebook on her desk. I study her from my elevated perch in the top row of the lecture hall. She has an effete English accent, blonde hair, and rigid posture. Expensively clad — a woven suit the colour of winter primrose — Professor Bloom is as tiny and imperious as any Shakespearean queen. “Wot kind of bloomin’ Prof issis, then?” I whisper in my worst Mary Poppins Cockney.
Perhaps sensing my inquisitive return stare, she stirs and, with a snap, closes her notebook. I feel her gaze rest on me. Cold water runs up my back as she points.
“You, hiding in the back. Do you have your copy of Waiting for Godot with you?”
“Yes.”
“Stand up and read aloud. Before you start, please tell us one interesting thing about yourself.”
“Where shall I begin?” I say, fumbling for my used black and white Godot in my new blue and gold Kraft Dinner backpack; the one my parents earned by selling two skids of macaroni in the month of July, in our small store, in our far away town on the prairies.
“Good question, indeed. Where do we all begin? For your reading, try the beginning. For your self-revealing anecdote, choose anything at all, but be succinct.”
Eyes wide, I stand, feeling awkward, high above the many faces turned toward me with the expectation that I would make the country bumpkin metaphor literal. I did not disappoint.
“I play intramural volleyball on a team from my Biology lab. We’re the ‘Recreants,’ and there’s a picture of an ant on our shirts . . .”
She lifts her hand and flops her wrist as though she was Joyce’s Gretta and I was poor, smitten Gabriel, the Irish snow falling and collecting on my Mennonite shoulders. “What is your name, Recreant?”
“I’m Zehen, Matthew,” I say with instant regret and see the barely discernable facial tremor I will come to know as her smile.
Clutching a pen as one might a switchblade in an alley, she jabs and says, “Ahead, go, Zehen, Matthew!”
***
Mitchell Toews, author of the 2023 collection of short stories, Pinching Zwieback (At Bay Press), has placed stories in numerous journals, anthologies, and contests. A novel is set for a spring 2026 launch with At Bay, and Mitch is also curating a second collection of stories for publication in December 2026 with another small Canadian press.
I want more of Zehen, Matthew and any professor that can trade a pen for a switchblade 🙂
The Zehens reside in Pinching Zwieback (At Bay Press, 2023). Justy, Matt’s mom, could probably “talk in knives” if she had to. Doctor Rempel (a scalpel man), Breezy, and—no doubt—Grandma Zehen add to the general spirit of unruliness. Cheers from Jessica Lake.