The Nausea of Professor Beneditti

There was a strange feeling that would often take possession of Professor Arturo Beneditti.

As he sat his tired body (yet it was only noon and not a very busy day at work)  down to a continental lunch at the university cafetaria, this feeling gripped him again.  The Feeling was vapid, formless, and rose spontaneously from deep within his abdominal cavity, like visceral disgust or fear, except it lacked any sort of vehemence.  In fact nothing about it was sharply defined or strongly textured. If the Professor had any artistic talent, he would have painted it as an inconsistent dull grey mass with maybe some purple and green tinging the edges. But he felt it was quite pointless to paint the Feeling. He found painting a pointless exercise. 

This was a busy time of the day at the cafe. A group of raucous students occupied the large circular table to his right. They had their eyes glued to the TV screen - it was some sort of sporting event, the kind of thing these college students usually enjoy. At other times the wild elation and commotion might annoy the Professor, and he would take critical note of the mass mobilization that organized sports was capable of - and how it was like a systematic tribal ritual of bloodlust that served as an effective substitute for war in peacetime - an outlet for many people's surplus aggression hormones. But not today.  The Feeling precluded any possibility of strong reactions to events around him. It rendered him a passive observer - it just filled him with a sense of hollowness.  He stared for a few seconds, unblinking - at the little men on the TV screen, then somehow one of the students caught his attention.  He focussed on his bare sinewy arms, the tremendous youthful energy that seemed to twitch nervously in them, the strange design tattooed on his bicep. The young man fit in so perfectly well with this world of university cafetarias, raucous sports crowds, fashionably dressed sorority women, promising careers, happy conversations, casual bonds of love and friendship, weekdays and weekends - a world where each day was chopped into easily understood and executed chunks of work and play. This was a being alien to the Professor and could not elicit any feeling in him - only a passive act of observation. Meanwhile, the strange feeling rolled about in his head like a stone being rolled back and forth in the empty hold of a ghost ship - he would have heard it if feelings could be heard.  He turned to the small table in front of him.

This was occupied by a young man and woman, who seemed very involved with each other.  The man was formally attired, in neatly ironed, spotlessly clean, shirt and trousers, his hair brushed back with an air of self-assuredness.  He was doing most of the talking, while the woman did most of the laughing.  He looked like he had got a very cushy executive job recently and was brightly talking about his plans, maybe "their" plans. The woman wore a casual top and plain shorts like many students wore in this university. She toyed with the food on her plate, often looked up smiling at the man's face, sometimes lightly brushing his hair or touching his forearm as she tossed her own head back to laugh at some something funny he had said. Well, funny to her at least. The Professor noticed the light freckles on her arms,  the black bra straps that peeped out from under her top on her shoulders, the tangle of brown hair that she had this annoying habit of tossing around from time to time - and tried to imagine what she looked like up close from the young man's seat. He must have a good view of her cleavage. Were his eyes straying there from time to time?  He was eminently qualified to look, to even place his hand on her shapely thighs under the table, this well-dressed, visibly enterprising young man.  Yet the Professor took no voyeuristic delight in his observations - the Feeling seemed to permit tainting itself by neither erotic nor jealous shades. Nor did he feel any pangs of guilt for ogling the woman or trying to imagine details of their personal affairs.  He generally felt cynical about relationships since his wife of 10 years had left him for a younger businessman - the feeling did nothing to dispel that attitude, only it dulled the edges and rendered the memories painless. Professor Beneditti had seen enough of the couple, and turned to his left, and somewhat to his distress, caught the eye of a graduate student from his department.

This student was now smiling at him, then waving, and now horror of horrors, he was coming in his direction probably to ask to sit at his table, and have a conversation.  This student was an earnest young man, very devoted to his studies, rather too much in fact for the Professor's tastes. He hung on every word the Professor said, wanted every little opportunity to talk to the Professor so that  he could get to "intellectually improve"  himself (to use the student's own awkward turn of phrase), and framed his questions with so much gullible earnestness that it annoyed the hell out of the Professor.  No, none of his bright ideas made any sense. None of them were worthy of publication.  His  notions of the subject were romanticized and antiquated.  He was dull, both in his intellect and his appearance. And the worst part? He didn't appreciate how dull he was.

The Professor pretended not to see and looked down on his own plate instead. Maybe that would deter the over-eager student.  He rolled the cold spaghetti around his fork and stared intently at a fried broccoli floret. He had not really noticed his food till then and had just been mechanically shoveling food into his mouth. The broccoli looked dull and sad and lonely, and positively unappetizing. It could be a piece of mineral as much as a piece of food for all he cared. This is what the Feeling did to him.  It wore him out, wore out his appetite  - for food and for life in general. Nothing seemed to matter except for his passive existence in a corner of the known universe, as a vacuous observer, quite devoid of meaning and action. Professor Beneditti realized he could be a piece of rock or a broccoli, and nothing significant about the Universe (or the University) would change. When the student called out his name, he pretended not to hear and continued to dawdle with his food.

The crisis had been averted. The graduate student had gone back to his place. He was still looking in the Professor's direction, perplexed by his rudeness. Why had his advances for an "intellectual exchange" been so summarily rejected?  The Professor got up to go, leaving the piece of broccoli behind  in his plate. Somehow the idea that it was a broccoli, that would taste a hell lot like other broccolis he had eaten before, that it would immutably belong to a Platonic category of broccolis, disturbed him.  He felt nauseated by it.  Yes that was it! The Feeling that seized him so suddenly, so frequently, so overwhelmingly, was a lot like nausea.  He found no pleasure in finding a name to give to his condition.

Professor Beneditti decided to take a walk on the paved path that went around the lake. Maybe the fresh air would make the nausea would go away?  Why, he had enjoyed being alone in natural surroundings so much, in his youth.  There was no escaping youth in natural surroundings on campus though, for he immediately spotted a teenaged boy coming in his direction on his skateboard. No doubt, a college freshman and his inseparable mode of transport. So much for solitude, thought the Professor, but before he could think or see much more of anything, the boy was crashing into him. The treacherous skateboard had flipped, the boy had been unable to avert the collision (it was a narrow path) and the Professor went down with a yelp of pain. His arm was hurt. He got up clutching his arm, feeling insanely angry with this irresponsible young man, and sent out a tirade of the choiciest swear words in his direction. The young man, the boy really, for he looked even more vulnerable and helpless now, was down on the ground, wincing in pain, unable to get up for he had hurt his leg badly.  The Professor hated this young man for spoiling his walk, for injuring his hand, for causing him to fall in this entirely undignified manner, for his callow recklessness.  Then suddenly he realized that this intense anger was the first strong emotion he had felt that day, that ridiculously flailing about before falling was his first purposeful act in the day. This was like being part of a familiar world again. He helped the boy back on his feet, and was suddenly laughing and hugging the confused boy.  The boy did not understand that he had helped to cure Professor Arturo Beneditti's nausea for the day, and continued to wince with a very physical pain in his leg - probably a twisted ankle.


This could be viewed is an adaptation of sorts of Jean-Paul Sartre's novel but the ending is my own take on the subject.