normal person could understand, taking delight in insulting the students, insisting on being addressed as Professor. He felt like hate-beaming into their slant-eyes, smiling:
Heavy starch in the shirts, One Hung Low.
Total scam, no one gave a shit. Most of the students gave up and went home after a few months, forfeiting two years' tuition paid in advance. The others got the energy leeched out of them and turned into bums-pissing away days sunning themselves on the beach, nights given over to smoking dope, jerking off under the mosquito netting, wandering the island trying to seduce twelve-year-old Gauguin-girls.
Depraved. He knew if he let himself be sucked into their apathy, he'd be sidetracked from the Schwann mission. Wondered how to insulate himself, decided an identity change was in order-identity changes always cleansed the mind, renewed the spirit.
And he knew which identity to assume, the only one that would enable him to float above it all.
He went and talked to the dean. Slantiest slant of all, nasty little shit with greasy Dracula hair, oily yellow skin, pig eyes, pencil-line mustache, potbelly as if he'd swallowed a melon. But with a fancy Dutch name: Professor Anton Bromet Van der Veering, M.D., D.Sc.
Pretentious little scrotebag.
Sitting behind a big, messy desk, surrounded by books he never read. Smoking a meerschaum pipe carved in the shape of a naked woman.
Slant took a long time to light the pipe, made him stand there for a while before acknowledging his presence. He filled the time by visualizing smashing the scrote's face, meerschaum chips atop the bloody yellow pulp like confectioners' sugar on a lemon tart
Yes, what is it?
I want to change my name, Dean.
What? What are you talking about?
I want to change my name.
Surely this is a legal matter, to be taken up with-
Legal matters don't concern me. Dean. This is a personal issue.
Talking low and serious, one doctor to another, the way he'd seen Doctor confer with his associates while discussing a case.
Scrote was confused. Dense. I really don't see what-
From now on I want to be known as Dieter Terrif.
Spelling it.
Confusion in the pig eyes: This your real name? Terrif?
In a manner of speaking.
I don't-
It's my real name.
Then why did you enroll as-
A long story, Dean.
Charming smile: And for our purposes, irrelevant. The important thing is from now on I want to be known as Dieter Terrif. When I graduate, the diploma will say Dieter Terrif, M.D.,Ph.D.
A slip. The scrote caught it, pounced on it:
We don't grant Ph. D.'s, Mister-
I realize that. I'm planning on continuing my studies past the M.D. Surgical pathology, histological research.
Scrote was definitely confused. That was the problem with dealing with inferior types.
Really, now, this is highly irregular.
Scrote fondled the breasts of the meerschaum lady, pig eyes widening as he watched the money land on his desk.
One, two, three, four, five hundred-dollar bills, fanned out like a green poker hand.
Will this help regularize it?
A greedy hand reaching out. Then, hesitation. More greed.
Five hundred more landed on the desk.
What do you say, Dean?
Well, I suppose
Little shit held a grudge against him after that, looked at him strangely every time they passed each other.
No matter. His new identity cleansed him. Six months of medical studies went by fast, despite tropical storms and heavy rains that brought more mosquitoes to the island; a plague of hairy spiders, spiny lizards, and other creepy-crawlies making their way into the dormitories, scuttling across night sheets, melding bad dreams with reality.
